Title: The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 05 (of 12)
Author: Burke, Edmund, 1729-1797
Language: English
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THE WORKS

OF

THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

EDMUND BURKE

IN TWELVE VOLUMES

VOLUME THE FIFTH

JOHN C. NIMMO

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

MDCCCLXXXVII



CONTENTS OF VOL. V.

OBSERVATIONS ON THE CONDUCT OF THE MINORITY, PARTICULARLY IN THE
LAST SESSION OF PARLIAMENT, 1793                                       1

PREFACE TO THE ADDRESS OF M. BRISSOT TO HIS CONSTITUENTS;
  WITH AN APPENDIX                                                    65

LETTER TO WILLIAM ELLIOT, ESQ., OCCASIONED BY A SPEECH MADE IN
THE HOUSE OF LORDS BY THE **** OF *******, IN THE DEBATE CONCERNING
LORD FITZWILLIAM, 1795                                               107

THOUGHTS AND DETAILS ON SCARCITY                                     131

LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD ON THE ATTACKS MADE UPON MR. BURKE AND HIS
PENSION, IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS, BY THE DUKE OF BEDFORD AND THE
EARL OF LAUDERDALE, 1796                                             171

THREE LETTERS TO A MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT ON THE PROPOSALS FOR
PEACE WITH THE REGICIDE DIRECTORY OF FRANCE.

    LETTER I. ON THE OVERTURES OF PEACE                              233

    LETTER II. ON THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF THE FRENCH
    REVOLUTION AS IT REGARDS OTHER NATIONS                           342

    LETTER III. ON THE RUPTURE OF THE NEGOTIATION; THE TERMS
    OF PEACE PROPOSED; AND THE RESOURCES OF THE COUNTRY FOR
    THE CONTINUANCE OF THE WAR                                       384



OBSERVATIONS

ON THE

CONDUCT OF THE MINORITY

PARTICULARLY IN THE

LAST SESSION OF PARLIAMENT.

ADDRESSED TO

THE DUKE OF PORTLAND AND LORD FITZWILLIAM.

1793.



LETTER

TO

HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF PORTLAND.


MY DEAR LORD,--The paper which I take the liberty of sending to your
Grace was, for the greater part, written during the last session. A few
days after the prorogation some few observations were added. I was,
however, resolved to let it lie by me for a considerable time, that, on
viewing the matter at a proper distance, and when the sharpness of
recent impressions had been worn off, I might be better able to form a
just estimate of the value of my first opinions.

I have just now read it over very coolly and deliberately. My latest
judgment owns my first sentiments and reasonings, in their full force,
with regard both to persons and things.

During a period of four years, the state of the world, except for some
few and short intervals, has filled me with a good deal of serious
inquietude. I considered a general war against Jacobins and Jacobinism
as the only possible chance of saving Europe (and England as included in
Europe) from a truly frightful revolution. For this I have been
censured, as receiving through weakness, or spreading through fraud and
artifice, a false alarm. Whatever others may think of the matter, that
alarm, in my mind, is by no means quieted. The state of affairs
_abroad_ is not so much mended as to make me, for one, full of
confidence. At _home_, I see no abatement whatsoever in the zeal of the
partisans of Jacobinism towards their cause, nor any cessation in their
efforts to do mischief. What is doing by Lord Lauderdale on the first
scene of Lord George Gordon's actions, and in his spirit, is not
calculated to remove my apprehensions. They pursue their first object
with as much eagerness as ever, but with more dexterity. Under the
plausible name of peace, by which they delude or are deluded, they would
deliver us unarmed and defenceless to the confederation of Jacobins,
whose centre is indeed in France, but whose rays proceed in every
direction throughout the world. I understand that Mr. Coke, of Norfolk,
has been lately very busy in spreading a disaffection to this war (which
we carry on for our being) in the country in which his property gives
him so great an influence. It is truly alarming to see so large a part
of the aristocratic interest engaged in the cause of the new species of
democracy, which is openly attacking or secretly undermining the system
of property by which mankind has hitherto been governed. But we are not
to delude ourselves. No man can be connected with a party which
professes publicly to admire or may be justly suspected of secretly
abetting this French Revolution, who must not be drawn into its vortex,
and become the instrument of its designs.

What I have written is in the manner of apology. I have given it that
form, as being the most respectful; but I do not stand in need of any
apology for my principles, my sentiments, or my conduct. I wish the
paper I lay before your Grace to be considered as my most deliberate,
solemn, and even testamentary protest against the proceedings and
doctrines which have hitherto produced so much mischief in the world,
and which will infallibly produce more, and possibly greater. It is my
protest against the delusion by which some have been taught to look upon
this Jacobin contest at home as an ordinary party squabble about place
or patronage, and to regard this Jacobin war abroad as a common war
about trade or territorial boundaries, or about a political balance of
power among rival or jealous states. Above all, it is my protest against
that mistake or perversion of sentiment by which they who agree with us
in our principles may on collateral considerations be regarded as
enemies, and those who, in this perilous crisis of all human affairs,
differ from us fundamentally and practically, as our best friends. Thus
persons of great importance may be made to turn the whole of their
influence to the destruction of their principles.

I now make it my humble request to your Grace, that you will not give
any sort of answer to the paper I send, or to this letter, except barely
to let me know that you have received them. I even wish that at present
you may not read the paper which I transmit: lock it up in the drawer of
your library-table; and when a day of compulsory reflection comes, then
be pleased to turn to it. Then remember that your Grace had a true
friend, who had, comparatively with men of your description, a very
small interest in opposing the modern system of morality and policy, but
who, under every discouragement, was faithful to public duty and to
private friendship. I shall then probably be dead. I am sure I do not
wish to live to see such things. But whilst I do live, I shall pursue
the same course, although my merits should be taken for unpardonable
faults, and as such avenged, not only on myself, but on my posterity.

Adieu, my dear Lord; and do me the justice to believe me ever, with most
sincere respect, veneration, and affectionate attachment,

Your Grace's most faithful friend,

And most obedient humble servant,

EDMUND BURKE.

BEACONSFIELD, Sept. 29, 1793.



OBSERVATIONS.


Approaching towards the close of a long period of public service, it is
natural I should be desirous to stand well (I hope I do stand tolerably
well) with that public which, with whatever fortune, I have endeavored
faithfully and zealously to serve.

I am also not a little anxious for some place in the estimation of the
two persons to whom I address this paper. I have always acted with them,
and with those whom they represent. To my knowledge, I have not
deviated, no, not in the minutest point, from their opinions and
principles. Of late, without any alteration in their sentiments or in
mine, a difference of a very unusual nature, and which, under the
circumstances, it is not easy to describe, has arisen between us.

In my journey with them through life, I met Mr. Fox in my road; and I
travelled with him very cheerfully, as long as he appeared to me to
pursue the same direction with those in whose company I set out. In the
latter stage of our progress a new scheme of liberty and equality was
produced in the world, which either dazzled his imagination, or was
suited to some new walks of ambition which were then opened to his view.
The whole frame and fashion of his politics appear to have suffered
about that time a very material alteration. It is about three years
since, in consequence of that extraordinary change, that, after a
pretty long preceding period of distance, coolness, and want of
confidence, if not total alienation on his part, a complete public
separation has been made between that gentleman and me. Until lately the
breach between us appeared reparable. I trusted that time and
reflection, and a decisive experience of the mischiefs which have flowed
from the proceedings and the system of France, on which our difference
had arisen, as well as the known sentiments of the best and wisest of
our common friends upon that subject, would have brought him to a safer
way of thinking. Several of his friends saw no security for keeping
things in a proper train after this excursion of his, but in the reunion
of the party on its old grounds, under the Duke of Portland. Mr. Fox, if
he pleased, might have been comprehended in that system, with the rank
and consideration to which his great talents entitle him, and indeed
must secure to him in any party arrangement that _could_ be made. The
Duke of Portland knows how much I wished for, and how earnestly I
labored that reunion, and upon terms that might every way be honorable
and advantageous to Mr. Fox. His conduct in the last session has
extinguished these hopes forever.

Mr. Fox has lately published in print a defence of his conduct. On
taking into consideration that defence, a society of gentlemen, called
the Whig Club, thought proper to come to the following
resolution:--"That their confidence in Mr. Fox is confirmed,
strengthened, and increased by the calumnies against him."

To that resolution my two noble friends, the Duke of Portland and Lord
Fitzwilliam, have given their concurrence.

The calumnies supposed in that resolution can be nothing else than the
objections taken to Mr. Fox's conduct in this session of Parliament; for
to them, and to them alone, the resolution refers. I am one of those who
have publicly and strongly urged those objections. I hope I shall be
thought only to do what is necessary to my justification, thus publicly,
solemnly, and heavily censured by those whom I most value and esteem,
when I firmly contend that the objections which I, with many others of
the friends to the Duke of Portland, have made to Mr. Fox's conduct, are
not _calumnies_, but founded on truth,--that they are not _few_, but
many,--and that they are not _light and trivial_, but, in a very high
degree, serious and important.

That I may avoid the imputation of throwing out, even privately, any
loose, random imputations against the public conduct of a gentleman for
whom I once entertained a very warm affection, and whose abilities I
regard with the greatest admiration, I will put down, distinctly and
articulately, some of the matters of objection which I feel to his late
doctrines and proceedings, trusting that I shall be able to demonstrate
to the friends whose good opinion I would still cultivate, that not
levity, nor caprice, nor less defensible motives, but that very grave
reasons, influence my judgment. I think that the spirit of his late
proceedings is wholly alien to our national policy, and to the peace, to
the prosperity, and to the legal liberties of this nation, _according to
our ancient domestic and appropriated mode of holding them_.

Viewing things in that light, my confidence in him is not increased, but
totally destroyed, by those proceedings. I cannot conceive it a matter
of honor or duty (but the direct contrary) in any member of Parliament
to continue systematic opposition for the purpose of putting government
under difficulties, until Mr. Fox (with all his present ideas) shall
have the principal direction of affairs placed in his hands, and until
the present body of administration (with their ideas and measures) is of
course overturned and dissolved.

To come to particulars.

1. The laws and Constitution of the kingdom intrust the sole and
exclusive right of treating with foreign potentates to the king. This is
an undisputed part of the legal prerogative of the crown. However,
notwithstanding this, Mr. Fox, without the knowledge or participation of
any one person in the House of Commons, with whom he was bound by every
party principle, in matters of delicacy and importance, confidentially
to communicate, thought proper to send Mr. Adair, as his representative,
and with his cipher, to St. Petersburg, there to frustrate the objects
for which the minister from the crown was authorized to treat. He
succeeded in this his design, and did actually frustrate the king's
minister in some of the objects of his negotiation.

This proceeding of Mr. Fox does not (as I conceive) amount to absolute
high treason,--Russia, though on bad terms, not having been then
declaredly at war with this kingdom. But such a proceeding is in law not
very remote from that offence, and is undoubtedly a most
unconstitutional act, and an high treasonable misdemeanor.

The legitimate and sure mode of communication between this nation and
foreign powers is rendered uncertain, precarious, and treacherous, by
being divided into two channels,--one with the government, one with the
head of a party in opposition to that government; by which means the
foreign powers can never be assured of the real authority or validity of
any public transaction whatsoever.

On the other hand, the advantage taken of the discontent which at that
time prevailed in Parliament and in the nation, to give to an individual
an influence directly against the government of his country, in a
foreign court, has made a highway into England for the intrigues of
foreign courts in our affairs. This is a sore evil,--an evil from which,
before this time, England was more free than any other nation. Nothing
can preserve us from that evil--which connects cabinet factions abroad
with popular factions here--but the keeping sacred the crown as the only
channel of communication with every other nation.

This proceeding of Mr. Fox has given a strong countenance and an
encouraging example to the doctrines and practices of the Revolution and
Constitutional Societies, and of other mischievous societies of that
description, who, without any legal authority, and even without any
corporate capacity, are in the habit of proposing, and, to the best of
their power, of forming, leagues and alliances with France.

This proceeding, which ought to be reprobated on all the general
principles of government, is in a more narrow view of things not less
reprehensible. It tends to the prejudice of the whole of the Duke of
Portland's late party, by discrediting the principles upon which they
supported Mr. Fox in the Russian business, as if they of that party also
had proceeded in their Parliamentary opposition on the same mischievous
principles which actuated Mr. Fox in sending Mr. Adair on his embassy.

2. Very soon after his sending this embassy to Russia, that is, in the
spring of 1792, a covenanting club or association was formed in London,
calling itself by the ambitious and invidious title of "_The Friends of
the People_." It was composed of many of Mr. Fox's own most intimate
personal and party friends, joined to a very considerable part of the
members of those mischievous associations called the Revolution Society
and the Constitutional Society. Mr. Fox must have been well apprised of
the progress of that society in every one of its steps, if not of the
very origin of it. I certainly was informed of both, who had no
connection with the design, directly or indirectly. His influence over
the persons who composed the leading part in that association was, and
is, unbounded. I hear that he expressed some disapprobation of this club
in one case, (that of Mr. St. John,) where his consent was formally
asked; yet he never attempted seriously to put a stop to the
association, or to disavow it, or to control, check, or modify it in any
way whatsoever. If he had pleased, without difficulty, he might have
suppressed it in its beginning. However, he did not only not suppress it
in its beginning, but encouraged it in every part of its progress, at
that particular time when Jacobin clubs (under the very same or similar
titles) were making such dreadful havoc in a country not thirty miles
from the coast of England, and when every motive of moral prudence
called for the discouragement of societies formed for the increase of
popular pretensions to power and direction.

3. When the proceedings of this society of the Friends of the People, as
well as others acting in the same spirit, had caused a very serious
alarm in the mind of the Duke of Portland, and of many good patriots,
he publicly, in the House of Commons, treated their apprehensions and
conduct with the greatest asperity and ridicule. He condemned and
vilified, in the most insulting and outrageous terms, the proclamation
issued by government on that occasion,--though he well knew that it had
passed through the Duke of Portland's hands, that it had received his
fullest approbation, and that it was the result of an actual interview
between that noble Duke and Mr. Pitt. During the discussion of its
merits in the House of Commons, Mr. Fox countenanced and justified the
chief promoters of that association; and he received, in return, a
public assurance from them of an inviolable adherence to him singly and
personally. On account of this proceeding, a very great number (I
presume to say not the least grave and wise part) of the Duke of
Portland's friends in Parliament, and many out of Parliament who are of
the same description, have become separated from that time to this from
Mr. Fox's particular cabal,--very few of which cabal are, or ever have,
so much as pretended to be attached to the Duke of Portland, or to pay
any respect to him or his opinions.

4. At the beginning of this session, when the sober part of the nation
was a second time generally and justly alarmed at the progress of the
French arms on the Continent, and at the spreading of their horrid
principles and cabals in England, Mr. Fox did not (as had been usual in
cases of far less moment) call together any meeting of the Duke of
Portland's friends in the House of Commons, for the purpose of taking
their opinion on the conduct to be pursued in Parliament at that
critical juncture. He concerted his measures (if with any persons at
all) with the friends of Lord Lansdowne, and those calling themselves
Friends of the People, and others not in the smallest degree attached to
the Duke of Portland; by which conduct he wilfully gave up (in my
opinion) all pretensions to be considered as of that party, and much
more to be considered as the leader and mouth of it in the House of
Commons. This could not give much encouragement to those who had been
separated from Mr. Fox, on account of his conduct on the first
proclamation, to rejoin that party.

5. Not having consulted any of the Duke of Portland's party in the House
of Commons,--and not having consulted them, because he had reason to
know that the course he had resolved to pursue would be highly
disagreeable to them,--he represented the alarm, which was a second time
given and taken, in still more invidious colors than those in which he
painted the alarms of the former year. He described those alarms in this
manner, although the cause of them was then grown far less equivocal and
far more urgent. He even went so far as to treat the supposition of the
growth of a Jacobin spirit in England as a libel on the nation. As to
the danger from _abroad_, on the first day of the session he said little
or nothing upon the subject. He contented himself with defending the
ruling factions in France, and with accusing the public councils of this
kingdom of every sort of evil design on the liberties of the
people,--declaring distinctly, strongly, and precisely, that the whole
danger of the nation was from the growth of the power of the crown. The
policy of this declaration was obvious. It was in subservience to the
general plan of disabling us from taking any steps against France. To
counteract the alarm given by the progress of Jacobin arms and
principles, he endeavored to excite an opposite alarm concerning the
growth of the power of the crown. If that alarm should prevail, he knew
that the nation never would be brought by arms to oppose the growth of
the Jacobin empire: because it is obvious that war does, in its very
nature, necessitate the Commons considerably to strengthen the hands of
government; and if that strength should itself be the object of terror,
we could have no war.

6. In the extraordinary and violent speeches of that day, he attributed
all the evils which the public had suffered to the proclamation of the
preceding summer; though he spoke in presence of the Duke of Portland's
own son, the Marquis of Tichfield, who had seconded the address on that
proclamation, and in presence of the Duke of Portland's brother, Lord
Edward Bentinck, and several others of his best friends and nearest
relations.

7. On that day, that is, on the 13th of December, 1792, he proposed an
amendment to the address, which stands on the journals of the House, and
which is, perhaps, the most extraordinary record which ever did stand
upon them. To introduce this amendment, he not only struck out the part
of the proposed address which alluded to insurrections, upon the ground
of the objections which he took to the legality of calling together
Parliament, (objections which I must ever think litigious and
sophistical,) but he likewise struck out _that part which related to the
cabals and conspiracies of the French faction in England_, although
their practices and correspondences were of public notoriety. Mr. Cooper
and Mr. Watt had been deputed from Manchester to the Jacobins. These
ambassadors were received by them as British representatives. Other
deputations of English had been received at the bar of the National
Assembly. They had gone the length of giving supplies to the Jacobin
armies; and they, in return, had received promises of military
assistance to forward their designs in England. A regular correspondence
for fraternizing the two nations had also been carried on by societies
in London with a great number of the Jacobin societies in France. This
correspondence had also for its object the pretended improvement of the
British Constitution. What is the most remarkable, and by much the more
mischievous part of his proceedings that day, Mr. Fox likewise struck
out everything in the address which _related to the tokens of ambition
given by France, her aggressions upon our allies, and the sudden and
dangerous growth of her power upon every side_; and instead of all those
weighty, and, at that time, necessary matters, by which the House of
Commons was (in a crisis such as perhaps Europe never stood) to give
assurances to our allies, strength to our government, and a check to the
common enemy of Europe, he substituted nothing but a criminal charge on
the conduct of the British government for calling Parliament together,
and an engagement to inquire into that conduct.

8. If it had pleased God to suffer him to succeed in this his project
for the amendment to the address, he would forever have ruined this
nation, along with the rest of Europe. At home all the Jacobin
societies, formed for the utter destruction of our Constitution, would
have lifted up their heads, which had been beaten down by the two
proclamations. Those societies would have been infinitely strengthened
and multiplied in every quarter; their dangerous foreign communications
would have been left broad and open; the crown would not have been
authorized to take any measure whatever for our immediate defence by sea
or land. The closest, the most natural, the nearest, and at the same
time, from many internal as well as external circumstances, the weakest
of our allies, Holland, would have been given up, bound hand and foot,
to France, just on the point of invading that republic. A general
consternation would have seized upon all Europe; and all alliance with
every other power, except France, would have been forever rendered
impracticable to us. I think it impossible for any man, who regards the
dignity and safety of his country, or indeed the common safety of
mankind, ever to forget Mr. Fox's proceedings in that tremendous crisis
of all human affairs.

9. Mr. Fox very soon had reason to be apprised of the general dislike of
the Duke of Portland's friends to this conduct. Some of those who had
even voted with him, the day after their vote, expressed their
abhorrence of his amendment, their sense of its inevitable tendency, and
their total alienation from the principles and maxims upon which it was
made; yet the very next day, that is, on Friday, the 14th of December,
he brought on what in effect was the very same business, and on the same
principles, a _second_ time.

10. Although the House does not usually sit on Saturday, he a _third_
time brought on another proposition in the same spirit, and pursued it
with so much heat and perseverance as to sit into Sunday: a thing not
known in Parliament for many years.

11. In all these motions and debates he wholly departed from all the
political principles relative to France (considered merely as a state,
and independent of its Jacobin form of government) which had hitherto
been held fundamental in this country, and which he had himself held
more strongly than any man in Parliament. He at that time studiously
separated himself from those to whose sentiments he used to profess no
small regard, although those sentiments were publicly declared. I had
then no concern in the party, having been, for some time, with all
outrage, excluded from it; but, on general principles, I must say that a
person who assumes to be leader of a party composed of freemen and of
gentlemen ought to pay some degree of deference to their feelings, and
even to their prejudices. He ought to have some degree of management for
their credit and influence in their country. He showed so very little of
this delicacy, that he compared the alarm raised in the minds of the
Duke of Portland's party, (which was his own,) an alarm in which they
sympathized with the greater part of the nation, to the panic produced
by the pretended Popish plot in the reign of Charles the
Second,--describing it to be, as that was, a contrivance of knaves, and
believed only by well-meaning dupes and madmen.

12. The Monday following (the 17th of December) he pursued the same
conduct. The means used in England to coöperate with the Jacobin army in
politics agreed with their modes of proceeding: I allude to the
mischievous writings circulated with much industry and success, as well
as the seditious clubs, which at that time added not a little to the
alarm taken by observing and well-informed men. The writings and the
clubs were two evils which marched together. Mr. Fox discovered the
greatest possible disposition to favor and countenance the one as well
as the other of these two grand instruments of the French system. He
would hardly consider any political writing whatsoever as a libel, or as
a fit object of prosecution. At a time in which the press has been the
grand instrument of the subversion of order, of morals, of religion,
and, I may say, of human society itself, to carry the doctrines of its
liberty higher than ever it has been known by its most extravagant
assertors, even in France, gave occasion to very serious reflections.
Mr. Fox treated the associations for prosecuting these libels as tending
to prevent the improvement of the human mind, and as a mobbish tyranny.
He thought proper to compare them with the riotous assemblies of Lord
George Gordon in 1780, declaring that he had advised his friends in
Westminster to sign the associations, whether they agreed to them or
not, in order that they might avoid destruction to their persons or
their houses, or a desertion of their shops. This insidious advice
tended to confound those who wished well to the object of the
association with the seditious against whom the association was
directed. By this stratagem, the confederacy intended for preserving the
British Constitution and the public peace would be wholly defeated. The
magistrates, utterly incapable of distinguishing the friends from the
enemies of order, would in vain look for support, when they stood in the
greatest need of it.

13. Mr. Fox's whole conduct, on this occasion, was without example. The
very morning after these violent declamations in the House of Commons
against the association, (that is, on Tuesday, the 18th,) he went
himself to a meeting of St. George's parish, and there signed an
association of the nature and tendency of those he had the night before
so vehemently condemned; and several of his particular and most intimate
friends, inhabitants of that parish, attended and signed along with him.

14. Immediately after this extraordinary step, and in order perfectly to
defeat the ends of that association against Jacobin publications,
(which, contrary to his opinions, he had promoted and signed,) a
mischievous society was formed under his auspices, called _The Friends
of the Liberty of the Press_. Their title groundlessly insinuated that
the freedom of the press had lately suffered, or was now threatened
with, some violation. This society was only, in reality, another
modification of the society calling itself _The Friends of the People_,
which in the preceding summer had caused so much uneasiness in the Duke
of Portland's mind, and in the minds of several of his friends. This new
society was composed of many, if not most, of the members of the club of
the Friends of the People, with the addition of a vast multitude of
others (such as Mr. Horne Tooke) of the worst and most seditious
dispositions that could be found in the whole kingdom. In the first
meeting of this club Mr. Erskine took the lead, and directly (without
any disavowal ever since on Mr. Fox's part) _made use of his name and
authority in favor of its formation and purposes_. In the same meeting
Mr. Erskine had thanks for his defence of Paine, which amounted to a
complete avowal of that Jacobin incendiary; else it is impossible to
know how Mr. Erskine should have deserved such marked applauses for
acting merely as a lawyer for his fee, in the ordinary course of his
profession.

15. Indeed, Mr. Fox appeared the general patron of all such persons and
proceedings. When Lord Edward Fitzgerald, and other persons, for
practices of the most dangerous kind, in Paris and in London, were
removed from the King's Guards, Mr. Fox took occasion in the House of
Commons heavily to censure that act, as unjust and oppressive, and
tending to make officers bad citizens. There were few, however, who did
not call for some such measures on the part of government, as of
absolute necessity for the king's personal safety, as well as that of
the public; and nothing but the mistaken lenity, with which such
practices were rather discountenanced than punished, could possibly
deserve reprehension in what was done with regard to those gentlemen.

16. Mr. Fox regularly and systematically, and with a diligence long
unusual to him, did everything he could to countenance the same
principle of fraternity and connection with the Jacobins abroad, and the
National Convention of France, for which these officers had been removed
from the Guards. For when a bill (feeble and lax, indeed, and far short
of the vigor required by the conjuncture) was brought in for removing
out of the kingdom the emissaries of France, Mr. Fox opposed it with all
his might. He pursued a vehement and detailed opposition to it through
all its stages, describing it as a measure contrary to the existing
treaties between Great Britain and France, as a violation of the law of
nations, and as an outrage on the Great Charter itself.

17. In the same manner, and with the same heat, he opposed a bill which
(though awkward and inartificial in its construction) was right and wise
in its principle, and was precedented in the best times, and absolutely
necessary at that juncture: I mean the Traitorous Correspondence Bill.
By these means the enemy, rendered infinitely dangerous by the links of
real faction and pretended commerce, would have been (had Mr. Fox
succeeded) enabled to carry on the war against us by our own resources.
For this purpose that enemy would have had his agents and traitors in
the midst of us.

18. When at length war was actually declared by the usurpers in France
against this kingdom, and declared whilst they were pretending a
negotiation through Dumouriez with Lord Auckland, Mr. Fox still
continued, through the whole of the proceedings, to discredit the
national honor and justice, and to throw the entire blame of the war on
Parliament, and on his own country, as acting with violence,
haughtiness, and want of equity. He frequently asserted, both at the
time and ever since, that the war, though declared by France, was
provoked by us, and that it was wholly unnecessary and fundamentally
unjust.

19. He has lost no opportunity of railing, in the most virulent manner
and in the most unmeasured language, at every foreign power with whom we
could now, or at any time, contract any useful or effectual alliance
against France,--declaring that he hoped no alliance with those powers
was made, or was in a train of being made.[1] He always expressed
himself with the utmost horror concerning such alliances. So did all
his phalanx. Mr. Sheridan in particular, after one of his invectives
against those powers, sitting by him, said, with manifest marks of his
approbation, that, if we must go to war, he had rather go to war alone
than with such allies.

20. Immediately after the French declaration of war against us,
Parliament addressed the king in support of the war against them, as
just and necessary, and provoked, as well as formally declared against
Great Britain. He did not divide the House upon this measure; yet he
immediately followed this our solemn Parliamentary engagement to the
king with a motion proposing a set of resolutions, the effect of which
was, that the two Houses were to load themselves with every kind of
reproach for having made the address which they had just carried to the
throne. He commenced this long string of criminatory resolutions against
his country (if King, Lords, and Commons of Great Britain, and a decided
majority without doors are his country) _with a declaration against
intermeddling in the interior concerns of France_. The purport of this
resolution of non-interference is a thing unexampled in the history of
the world, when one nation has been actually at war with another. The
best writers on the law of nations give no sort of countenance to his
doctrine of non-interference, in the extent and manner in which he used
it, _even when there is no war_. When the war exists, not one authority
is against it in all its latitude. His doctrine is equally contrary to
the enemy's uniform practice, who, whether in peace or in war, makes it
his great aim not only to change the government, but to make an entire
revolution in the whole of the social order in every country.

The object of the last of this extraordinary string of resolutions moved
by Mr. Fox was to advise the crown not to enter into such an engagement
with any foreign power so as to hinder us from making a _separate_ peace
with France, or which might tend to enable any of those powers to
introduce a government in that country other than such as those persons
whom he calls the people of France shall choose to establish. In short,
the whole of these resolutions appeared to have but one drift, namely,
the sacrifice of our own domestic dignity and safety, and the
independency of Europe, to the support of this strange mixture of
anarchy and tyranny which prevails in France, and which Mr. Fox and his
party were pleased to call a government. The immediate consequence of
these measures was (by an example the ill effects of which on the whole
world are not to be calculated) to secure the robbers of the innocent
nobility, gentry, and ecclesiastics of France in the enjoyment of the
spoil they have made of the estates, houses, and goods of their
fellow-citizens.

21. Not satisfied with moving these resolutions, tending to confirm this
horrible tyranny and robbery, and with actually dividing the House on
the first of the long string which they composed, in a few days
afterwards he encouraged and supported Mr. Grey in producing the very
same string in a new form, and in moving, under the shape of an address
of Parliament to the crown, another virulent libel on all its own
proceedings in this session, in which not only all the ground of the
resolutions was again travelled over, but much new inflammatory matter
was introduced. In particular, a charge was made, that Great Britain had
not interposed to prevent the last partition of Poland. On this head
the party dwelt very largely and very vehemently. Mr. Fox's intention,
in the choice of this extraordinary topic, was evident enough. He well
knows two things: first, that no wise or honest man can approve of that
partition, or can contemplate it without prognosticating great mischief
from it to all countries at some future time; secondly, he knows quite
as well, that, let our opinions on that partition be what they will,
England, by itself, is not in a situation to afford to Poland any
assistance whatsoever. The purpose of the introduction of Polish
politics into this discussion was not for the sake of Poland; it was to
throw an odium upon those who are obliged to decline the cause of
justice from their impossibility of supporting a cause which they
approve: as if we, who think more strongly on this subject than he does,
were of a party against Poland, because we are obliged to act with some
of the authors of that injustice against our common enemy, France. But
the great and leading purpose of this introduction of Poland into the
debates on the French war was to divert the public attention from what
was in our power, that is, from a steady coöperation against France, to
a quarrel with the allies for the sake of a Polish war, which, for any
useful purpose to Poland, he knew it was out of our power to make. If
England can touch Poland ever so remotely, it must be through the medium
of alliances. But by attacking all the combined powers together for
their supposed unjust aggression upon France, he bound them by a now
common interest not separately to join England for the rescue of Poland.
The proposition could only mean to do what all the writers of his party
in the Morning Chronicle have aimed at persuading the public to, through
the whole of the last autumn and winter, and to this hour: that is, to
an alliance with the Jacobins of France, for the pretended purpose of
succoring Poland. This curious project would leave to Great Britain no
other ally in all Europe except its old enemy, France.

22. Mr. Fox, after the first day's discussion on the question for the
address, was at length driven to admit (to admit rather than to urge,
and that very faintly) that France had discovered ambitious views, which
none of his partisans, that I recollect, (Mr. Sheridan excepted,) did,
however, either urge or admit. What is remarkable enough, all the points
admitted against the Jacobins were brought to bear in their favor as
much as those in which they were defended. For when Mr. Fox admitted
that the conduct of the Jacobins did discover ambition, he always ended
his admission of their ambitious views by an apology for them, insisting
that the universally hostile disposition shown to them rendered their
ambition a sort of defensive policy. Thus, on whatever roads he
travelled, they all terminated in recommending a recognition of their
pretended republic, and in the plan of sending an ambassador to it. This
was the burden of all his song:--"Everything which we could reasonably
hope from war would be obtained from treaty." It is to be observed,
however, that, in all these debates, Mr. Fox never once stated to the
House upon what ground it was he conceived that all the objects of the
French system of united fanaticism and ambition would instantly be given
up, whenever England should think fit to propose a treaty. On proposing
so strange a recognition and so humiliating an embassy as he moved, he
was bound to produce his authority, if any authority he had. He ought to
have done this the rather, because Le Brun, in his first propositions,
and in his answers to Lord Grenville, defended, _on principle, not on
temporary convenience_, everything which was objected to France, and
showed not the smallest disposition to give up any one of the points in
discussion. Mr. Fox must also have known that the Convention had passed
to the order of the day, on a proposition to give some sort of
explanation or modification to the hostile decree of the 19th of
November for exciting insurrections in all countries,--a decree known to
be peculiarly pointed at Great Britain. The whole proceeding of the
French administration was the most remote that could be imagined from
furnishing any indication of a pacific disposition: for at the very time
in which it was pretended that the Jacobins entertained those boasted
pacific intentions, at the very time in which Mr. Fox was urging a
treaty with them, not content with refusing a modification of the decree
for insurrections, they published their ever-memorable decree of the
15th of December, 1792, for disorganizing every country in Europe into
which they should on any occasion set their foot; and on the 25th and
the 30th of the same month, they solemnly, and, on the last of these
days, practically, confirmed that decree.

23. But Mr. Fox had himself taken good care, in the negotiation he
proposed, that France should not be obliged to make any very great
concessions to her presumed moderation: for he had laid down one
general, comprehensive rule, with him (as he said) constant and
inviolable. This rule, in fact, would not only have left to the faction
in France all the property and power they had usurped at home, but most,
if not all, of the conquests which by their atrocious perfidy and
violence they had made abroad. The principle laid down by Mr. Fox is
this,--"_That every state, in the conclusion of a war, has a right to
avail itself of its conquests towards an indemnification_." This
principle (true or false) is totally contrary to the policy which this
country has pursued with France at various periods, particularly at the
Treaty of Ryswick, in the last century, and at the Treaty of
Aix-la-Chapelle, in this. Whatever the merits of his rule may be in the
eyes of neutral judges, it is a rule which no statesman before him ever
laid down in favor of the adverse power with whom he was to negotiate.
The adverse party himself may safely be trusted to take care of his
_own_ aggrandizement. But (as if the black boxes of the several parties
had been exchanged) Mr. Fox's English ambassador, by some odd mistake,
would find himself charged with the concerns of France. If we were to
leave France as she stood at the time when Mr. Fox proposed to treat
with her, that formidable power must have been infinitely strengthened,
and almost every other power in Europe as much weakened, by the
extraordinary basis which he laid for a treaty. For Avignon must go from
the Pope; Savoy (at least) from the King of Sardinia, if not Nice.
Liege, Mentz, Salm, Deux-Ponts, and Basle must be separated from
Germany. On this side of the Rhine, Liege (at least) must be lost to the
Empire, and added to France. Mr. Fox's general principle fully covered
all this. How much of these territories came within his rule he never
attempted to define. He kept a profound silence as to Germany. As to
the Netherlands he was something more explicit. He said (if I recollect
right) that France on that side might expect something towards
strengthening her frontier. As to the remaining parts of the
Netherlands, which he supposed France might consent to surrender, he
went so far as to declare that England ought not to permit the Emperor
to be repossessed of the remainder of the ten Provinces, but that _the
people_ should choose such a form of independent government as they
liked. This proposition of Mr. Fox was just the arrangement which the
usurpation in France had all along proposed to make. As the
circumstances were at that time, and have been ever since, his
proposition fully indicated what government the Flemings _must_ have in
the stated extent of what was left to them. A government so set up in
the Netherlands, whether compulsory, or by the choice of the
_sans-culottes_, (who he well knew were to be the real electors, and the
sole electors,) in whatever name it was to exist, must evidently depend
for its existence, as it had done for its original formation, on France.
In reality, it must have ended in that point to which, piece by piece,
the French were then actually bringing all the Netherlands,--that is, an
incorporation with France as a body of new Departments, just as Savoy
and Liege and the rest of their pretended independent popular
sovereignties have been united to their republic. Such an arrangement
must have destroyed Austria; it must have left Holland always at the
mercy of France; it must totally and forever cut off all political
communication between England and the Continent. Such must have been the
situation of Europe, according to Mr. Fox's system of politics, however
laudable his personal motives may have been in proposing so complete a
change in the whole system of Great Britain with regard to all the
Continental powers.

24. After it had been generally supposed that all public business was
over for the session, and that Mr. Fox had exhausted all the modes of
pressing this French scheme, he thought proper to take a step beyond
every expectation, and which demonstrated his wonderful eagerness and
perseverance in his cause, as well as the nature and true character of
the cause itself. This step was taken by Mr. Fox immediately after his
giving his assent to the grant of supply voted to him by Mr. Serjeant
Adair and a committee of gentlemen who assumed to themselves to act in
the name of the public. In the instrument of his acceptance of this
grant, Mr. Fox took occasion to assure them that he would always
persevere _in the same conduct_ which had procured to him so honorable a
mark of the public approbation. He was as good as his word.

25. It was not long before an opportunity was found, or made, for
proving the sincerity of his professions, and demonstrating his
gratitude to those who had given public and unequivocal marks of their
approbation of his late conduct. One of the most virulent of the Jacobin
faction, Mr. Gurney, a banker at Norwich, had all along distinguished
himself by his French politics. By the means of this gentleman, and of
his associates of the same description, one of the most insidious and
dangerous handbills that ever was seen had been circulated at Norwich
against the war, drawn up in an hypocritical tone of compassion for the
poor. This address to the populace of Norwich was to play in concert
with an address to Mr. Fox; it was signed by Mr. Gurney and the higher
part of the French fraternity in that town. In this paper Mr. Fox is
applauded for his conduct throughout the session, and requested, before
the prorogation, to make a motion for an immediate peace with France.

26. Mr. Fox did not revoke to this suit: he readily and thankfully
undertook the task assigned to him. Not content, however, with merely
falling in with their wishes, he proposed a task on his part to the
gentlemen of Norwich, which was, _that they should move the people
without doors to petition against the war_. He said, that, without such
assistance, little good could be expected from anything he might attempt
within the walls of the House of Commons. In the mean time, to animate
his Norwich friends in their endeavors to besiege Parliament, he
snatched the first opportunity to give notice of a motion which he very
soon after made, namely, to address the crown to make peace with France.
The address was so worded as to coöperate with the handbill in bringing
forward matter calculated to inflame the manufacturers throughout the
kingdom.

27. In support of his motion, he declaimed in the most virulent strain,
even beyond any of his former invectives, against every power with whom
we were then, and are now, acting against France. In the _moral_ forum
some of these powers certainly deserve all the ill he said of them; but
the _political_ effect aimed at, evidently, was to turn our indignation
from France, with whom we were at war, upon Russia, or Prussia, or
Austria, or Sardinia, or all of them together. In consequence of his
knowledge that we _could_ not effectually do _without_ them, and his
resolution that we _should_ not act _with_ them, he proposed, that,
having, as he asserted, "obtained the only avowed object of the war (the
evacuation of Holland) we ought to conclude an instant peace."

28. Mr. Fox could not be ignorant of the mistaken basis upon which his
motion was grounded. He was not ignorant, that, though the attempt of
Dumouriez on Holland, (so very near succeeding,) and the navigation of
the Scheldt, (a part of the same piece,) were among the _immediate_
causes, they were by no means the only causes, alleged for Parliament's
taking that offence at the proceedings of France, for which the Jacobins
were so prompt in declaring war upon this kingdom. Other full as weighty
causes had been alleged: they were,--1. The general overbearing and
desperate ambition of that faction; 2. Their actual attacks on every
nation in Europe; 3. Their usurpation of territories in the Empire with
the governments of which they had no pretence of quarrel; 4. Their
perpetual and irrevocable consolidation with their own dominions of
every territory of the Netherlands, of Germany, and of Italy, of which
they got a temporary possession; 5. The mischiefs attending the
prevalence of their system, which would make the success of their
ambitious designs a new and peculiar species of calamity in the world;
6. Their formal, public decrees, particularly those of the 19th of
November and 15th and 25th of December; 7. Their notorious attempts to
undermine the Constitution of this country; 8. Their public reception of
deputations of traitors for that direct purpose; 9. Their murder of
their sovereign, declared by most of the members of the Convention, who
spoke with their vote, (without a disavowal from any,) to be perpetrated
as an example to _all_ kings and a precedent for _all_ subjects to
follow. All these, and not the Scheldt alone, or the invasion of
Holland, were urged by the minister, and by Mr. Windham, by myself, and
by others who spoke in those debates, as causes for bringing France to a
sense of her wrong in the war which she declared against us. Mr. Fox
well knew that not one man argued for the necessity of a vigorous
resistance to France, who did not state the war as being for the very
existence of the social order here, and in every part of Europe,--who
did not state his opinion that this war was not at all a foreign war of
empire, but as much for our liberties, properties, laws, and religion,
and even more so, than any we had ever been engaged in. This was the war
which, according to Mr. Fox and Mr. Gurney, we were to abandon before
the enemy had felt in the slightest degree the impression of our arms.

29. Had Mr. Fox's disgraceful proposal been complied with, this kingdom
would have been stained with a blot of perfidy hitherto without an
example in our history, and with far less excuse than any act of perfidy
which we find in the history of any other nation. The moment when, by
the incredible exertions of Austria, (very little through ours,) the
temporary deliverance of Holland (in effect our own deliverance) had
been achieved, he advised the House instantly to abandon her to that
very enemy from whose arms she had freed ourselves and the closest of
our allies.

30. But we are not to be imposed on by forms of language. We must act on
the substance of things. To abandon Austria in this manner was to
abandon Holland itself. For suppose France, encouraged and strengthened
as she must have been by our treacherous desertion,--suppose France, I
say, to succeed against Austria, (as she had succeeded the very year
before,) England would, after its disarmament, have nothing in the world
but the inviolable faith of Jacobinism and the steady politics of
anarchy to depend upon, against France's renewing the very same attempts
upon Holland, and renewing them (considering what Holland was and is)
with much better prospects of success. Mr. Fox must have been well
aware, that, if we were to break with the greater Continental powers,
and particularly to come to a rupture with them, in the violent and
intemperate mode in which he would have made the breach, the defence of
Holland against a foreign enemy and a strong domestic faction must
hereafter rest solely upon England, without the chance of a single ally,
either on that or on any other occasion. So far as to the pretended sole
object of the war, which Mr. Fox supposed to be so completely obtained
(but which then was not at all, and at this day is not completely
obtained) as to leave us nothing else to do than to cultivate a
peaceful, quiet correspondence with those quiet, peaceable, and moderate
people, the Jacobins of France.

31. To induce us to this, Mr. Fox labored hard to make it appear that
the powers with whom we acted were full as ambitious and as perfidious
as the French. This might be true as to _other_ nations. They had not,
however, been so to _us_ or to Holland. He produced no proof of active
ambition and ill faith against Austria. But supposing the combined
powers had been all thus faithless, and been all alike so, there was one
circumstance which made an essential difference between them and
France. I need not, therefore, be at the trouble of contesting this
point,--which, however, in this latitude, and as at all affecting Great
Britain and Holland, I deny utterly. Be it so. But the great monarchies
have it in their power to keep their faith, _if they please_, because
they are governments of established and recognized authority at home and
abroad. France had, in reality, no government. The very factions who
exercised power had no stability. The French Convention had no powers of
peace or war. Supposing the Convention to be free, (most assuredly it
was not,) they had shown no disposition to abandon their projects.
Though long driven out of Liege, it was not many days before Mr. Fox's
motion that they still continued to claim it as a country which their
principles of fraternity bound them to protect,--that is, to subdue and
to regulate at their pleasure. That party which Mr. Fox inclined most to
favor and trust, and from which he must have received his assurances,
(if any he did receive,) that is, the _Brissotins_, were then either
prisoners or fugitives. The party which prevailed over them (that of
Danton and Marat) was itself in a tottering condition, and was disowned
by a very great part of France. To say nothing of the royal party, who
were powerful and growing, and who had full as good a right to claim to
be the legitimate government as any of the Parisian factions with whom
he proposed to treat,--or rather, (as it seemed to me,) to surrender at
discretion.

32. But when Mr. Fox began to come from his general hopes of the
moderation of the Jacobins to particulars, he put the case that they
might not perhaps be willing to surrender Savoy. He certainly was not
willing to contest that point with them, but plainly and explicitly (as
I understood him) proposed to let them keep it,--though he knew (or he
was much worse informed than he would be thought) that England had at
the very time agreed on the terms of a treaty with the King of Sardinia,
of which the recovery of Savoy was the _casus fœderis_. In the teeth of
this treaty, Mr. Fox proposed a direct and most scandalous breach of our
faith, formally and recently given. But to surrender Savoy was to
surrender a great deal more than so many square acres of land or so much
revenue. In its consequences, the surrender of Savoy was to make a
surrender to France of Switzerland and Italy, of both which countries
Savoy is the key,--as it is known to ordinary speculators in politics,
though it may not be known to the weavers in Norwich, who, it seems, are
by Mr. Fox called to be the judges in this matter.

A sure way, indeed, to encourage France not to make a surrender of this
key of Italy and Switzerland, or of Mentz, the key of Germany, or of any
other object whatsoever which she holds, is to let her see _that the
people of England raise a clamor against the war before terms are so
much as proposed on any side_. From that moment the Jacobins would be
masters of the terms. They would know that Parliament, at all hazards,
would force the king to a separate peace. The crown could not, in that
case, have any use of its judgment. Parliament could not possess more
judgment than the crown, when besieged (as Mr. Fox proposed to Mr.
Gurney) by the cries of the manufacturers. This description of men Mr.
Fox endeavored in his speech by every method to irritate and inflame. In
effect, his two speeches were, through the whole, nothing more than an
amplification of the Norwich handbill. He rested the greatest part of
his argument on the distress of trade, which he attributed to the war;
though it was obvious to any tolerably good observation, and, much more,
must have been clear to such an observation as his, that the then
difficulties of the trade and manufacture could have no sort of
connection with our share in it. The war had hardly begun. We had
suffered neither by spoil, nor by defeat, nor by disgrace of any kind.
Public credit was so little impaired, that, instead of being supported
by any extraordinary aids from individuals, it advanced a credit to
individuals to the amount of five millions for the support of trade and
manufactures under their temporary difficulties, a thing before never
heard of,--a thing of which I do not commend the policy, but only state
it, to show that Mr. Fox's ideas of the effects of war were without any
trace of foundation.

33. It is impossible not to connect the arguments and proceedings of a
party with that of its leader,--especially when not disavowed or
controlled by him. Mr. Fox's partisans declaim against all the powers of
Europe, except the Jacobins, just as he does; but not having the same
reasons for management and caution which he has, they speak out. He
satisfies himself merely with making his invectives, and leaves others
to draw the conclusion. But they produce their Polish interposition for
the express purpose of leading to a French alliance. They urge their
French peace in order to make a junction with the Jacobins to oppose the
powers, whom, in their language, they call despots, and their leagues, a
combination of despots. Indeed, no man can look on the present posture
of Europe with the least degree of discernment, who will not be
thoroughly convinced that England must be the fast friend or the
determined enemy of France. There is no medium; and I do not think Mr.
Fox to be so dull as not to observe this. His peace would have involved
us instantly in the most extensive and most ruinous wars, at the same
time that it would have made a broad highway (across which no human
wisdom could put an effectual barrier) for a mutual intercourse with the
fraternizing Jacobins on both sides, the consequences of which those
will certainly not provide against who do not dread or dislike them.

34. It is not amiss in this place to enter a little more fully into the
spirit of the principal arguments on which Mr. Fox thought proper to
rest this his grand and concluding motion, particularly such as were
drawn from the internal state of our affairs. Under a specious
appearance, (not uncommonly put on by men of unscrupulous ambition,)
that of tenderness and compassion to the poor, he did his best to appeal
to the judgments of the meanest and most ignorant of the people on the
merits of the war. He had before done something of the same dangerous
kind in his printed letter. The ground of a political war is of all
things that which the poor laborer and manufacturer are the least
capable of conceiving. This sort of people know in general that they
must suffer by war. It is a matter to which they are sufficiently
competent, because it is a matter of feeling. The _causes_ of a war are
not matters of feeling, but of reason and foresight, and often of remote
considerations, and of a very great combination of circumstances which
_they_ are utterly incapable of comprehending: and, indeed, it is not
every man in the highest classes who is altogether equal to it. Nothing,
in a general sense, appears to me less fair and justifiable (even if no
attempt were made to inflame the passions) than to submit a matter on
discussion to a tribunal incapable of judging of more than _one side_ of
the question. It is at least as unjustifiable to inflame the passions of
such judges against _that side_ in favor of which they cannot so much as
comprehend the arguments. Before the prevalence of the French system,
(which, as far as it has gone, has extinguished the salutary prejudice
called our country,) nobody was more sensible of this important truth
than Mr. Fox; and nothing was more proper and pertinent, or was more
felt at the time, than his reprimand to Mr. Wilberforce for an
inconsiderate expression which tended to call in the judgment of the
poor to estimate the policy of war upon the standard of the taxes they
may be obliged to pay towards its support.

35. It is fatally known that the great object of the Jacobin system is,
to excite the lowest description of the people to range themselves under
ambitious men for the pillage and destruction of the more eminent orders
and classes of the community. The thing, therefore, that a man not
fanatically attached to that dreadful project would most studiously
avoid is, to act a part with the French _Propagandists_, in attributing
(as they constantly do) all wars, and all the consequences of wars, to
the pride of those orders, and to their contempt of the weak and
indigent part of the society. The ruling Jacobins insist upon it, that
even the wars which they carry on with so much obstinacy against all
nations are made to prevent the poor from any longer being the
instruments and victims of kings, nobles, and the aristocracy of
burghers and rich men. They pretend that the destruction of kings,
nobles, and the aristocracy of burghers and rich men is the only means
of establishing an universal and perpetual peace. This is the great
drift of all their writings, from the time of the meeting of the states
of France, in 1789, to the publication of the last Morning Chronicle.
They insist that even the war which with so much boldness they have
declared against all nations is to prevent the poor from becoming the
instruments and victims of these persons and descriptions. It is but too
easy, if you once teach poor laborers and mechanics to defy their
prejudices, and, as this has been done with an industry scarcely
credible, to substitute the principles of fraternity in the room of that
salutary prejudice called our country,--it is, I say, but too easy to
persuade them, agreeably to what Mr. Fox hints in his public letter,
that this war is, and that the other wars have been, the wars of kings;
it is easy to persuade them that the terrors even of a foreign conquest
are not terrors for _them_; it is easy to persuade them, that, for their
part, _they_ have nothing to lose,--and that their condition is not
likely to be altered for the worse, whatever party may happen to prevail
in the war. Under any circumstances this doctrine is highly dangerous,
as it tends to make separate parties of the higher and lower orders, and
to put their interests on a different bottom. But if the enemy you have
to deal with should appear, as France now appears, under the very name
and title of the deliverer of the poor and the chastiser of the rich,
the former class would readily become not an indifferent spectator of
the war, but would be ready to enlist in the faction of the
enemy,--which they would consider, though under a foreign name, to be
more connected with them than an adverse description in the same land.
All the props of society would be drawn from us by these doctrines, and
the very foundations of the public defence would give way in an instant.

36. There is no point which the faction of fraternity in England have
labored more than to excite in the poor the horror of any war with
France upon any occasion. When they found that their open attacks upon
our Constitution in favor of a French republic were for the present
repelled, they put that matter out of sight, and have taken up the more
plausible and popular ground of general peace, upon merely general
principles; although these very men, in the correspondence of their
clubs with those of France, had reprobated the neutrality which now they
so earnestly press. But, in reality, their maxim was, and is, "Peace and
alliance with France, and war with the rest of the world."

37. This last motion of Mr. Fox bound up the whole of his politics
during the session. This motion had many circumstances, particularly in
the Norwich correspondence, by which the mischief of all the others was
aggravated beyond measure. Yet this last motion, far the worst of Mr.
Fox's proceedings, was the best supported of any of them, except his
amendment to the address. The Duke of Portland had directly engaged to
support the war;--here was a motion as directly made to force the crown
to put an end to it before a blow had been struck. The efforts of the
faction have so prevailed that some of his Grace's nearest friends have
actually voted for that motion; some, after showing themselves, went
away; others did not appear at all. So it must be, where a man is for
any time supported from personal considerations, without reference to
his public conduct. Through the whole of this business, the spirit of
fraternity appears to me to have been the governing principle. It might
be shameful for any man, above the vulgar, to show so blind a partiality
even to his own country as Mr. Fox appears, on all occasions, this
session, to have shown to France. Had Mr. Fox been a minister, and
proceeded on the principles laid down by him, I believe there is little
doubt he would have been considered as the most criminal statesman that
ever lived in this country. I do not know why a statesman out of place
is not to be judged in the same manner, unless we can excuse him by
pleading in his favor a total indifference to principle, and that he
would act and think in quite a different way, if he were in office. This
I will not suppose. One may think better of him, and that, in case of
his power, he might change his mind. But supposing, that, from better or
from worse motives, he might change his mind on his acquisition of the
favor of the crown, I seriously fear, that, if the king should to-morrow
put power into his hands, and that his good genius would inspire him
with maxims very different from those he has promulgated, he would not
be able to get the better of the ill temper and the ill doctrines he has
been the means of exciting and propagating throughout the kingdom. From
the very beginning of their inhuman and unprovoked rebellion and
tyrannic usurpation, he has covered the predominant faction in France,
and their adherents here, with the most exaggerated panegyrics; neither
has he missed a single opportunity of abusing and vilifying those who,
in uniform concurrence with the Duke of Portland's and Lord
Fitzwilliam's opinion, have maintained the true grounds of the
Revolution Settlement in 1688. He lamented all the defeats of the
French; he rejoiced in all their victories,--even when these victories
threatened to overwhelm the continent of Europe, and, by facilitating
their means of penetrating into Holland, to bring this most dreadful of
all evils with irresistible force to the very doors, if not into the
very heart, of our country. To this hour he always speaks of every
thought of overturning the French Jacobinism by force, on the part of
any power whatsoever, as an attempt unjust and cruel, and which he
reprobates with horror. If any of the French Jacobin leaders are spoken
of with hatred or scorn, he falls upon those who take that liberty with
all the zeal and warmth with which men of honor defend their particular
and bosom friends, when attacked. He always represents their cause as a
cause of liberty, and all who oppose it as partisans of despotism. He
obstinately continues to consider the great and growing vices, crimes,
and disorders of that country as only evils of passage, which are to
produce a permanently happy state of order and freedom. He represents
these disorders exactly in the same way and with the same limitations
which are used by one of the two great Jacobin factions: I mean that of
Pétion and Brissot. Like them, he studiously confines his horror and
reprobation only to the massacres of the 2d of September, and passes by
those of the 10th of August, as well as the imprisonment and deposition
of the king, which were the consequences of that day, as indeed were the
massacres themselves to which he confines his censure, though they were
not actually perpetrated till early in September. Like that faction, he
condemns, not the deposition, or the proposed exile or perpetual
imprisonment, but only the murder of the king. Mr. Sheridan, on every
occasion, palliates all their massacres committed in every part of
France, as the effects of a natural indignation at the exorbitances of
despotism, and of the dread of the people of returning under that yoke.
He has thus taken occasion to load, not the actors in this wickedness,
but the government of a mild, merciful, beneficent, and patriotic
prince, and his suffering, faithful subjects, with all the crimes of the
new anarchical tyranny under which the one has been murdered and the
others are oppressed. Those continual either praises or palliating
apologies of everything done in France, and those invectives as
uniformly vomited out upon all those who venture to express their
disapprobation of such proceedings, coming from a man of Mr. Fox's fame
and authority, and one who is considered as the person to whom a great
party of the wealthiest men of the kingdom look up, have been the cause
why the principle of French fraternity formerly gained the ground which
at one time it had obtained in this country. It will infallibly recover
itself again, and in ten times a greater degree, if the kind of peace,
in the manner which he preaches, ever shall be established with the
reigning faction in France.

38. So far as to the French practices with regard to France and the
other powers of Europe. As to their principles and doctrines with
regard to the constitution of states, Mr. Fox studiously, on all
occasions, and indeed when no occasion calls for it, (as on the debate
of the petition for reform,) brings forward and asserts their
fundamental and fatal principle, pregnant with every mischief and every
crime, namely, that "in every country the people is the legitimate
sovereign": exactly conformable to the declaration of the French clubs
and legislators:--"La souveraineté est _une, indivisible, inalienable,
et imprescriptible_; elle appartient à la nation; aucune _section_ du
peuple ni aucun _individu_ ne peut s'en attribuer l'exercise." This
confounds, in a manner equally mischievous and stupid, the origin of a
government from the people with its continuance in their hands. I
believe that no such doctrine has ever been heard of in any public act
of any government whatsoever, until it was adopted (I think from the
writings of Rousseau) by the French Assemblies, who have made it the
basis of their Constitution at home, and of the matter of their
apostolate in every country. These and other wild declarations of
abstract principle, Mr. Fox says, are in themselves perfectly right and
true; though in some cases he allows the French draw absurd consequences
from them. But I conceive he is mistaken. The consequences are most
logically, though most mischievously, drawn from the premises and
principles by that wicked and ungracious faction. The fault is in the
foundation.

39. Before society, in a multitude of men, it is obvious that
sovereignty and subjection are ideas which cannot exist. It is the
compact on which society is formed that makes both. But to suppose the
people, contrary to their compacts, both to give away and retain the
same thing is altogether absurd. It is worse, for it supposes in any
strong combination of men a power and right of always dissolving the
social union; which power, however, if it exists, renders them again as
little sovereigns as subjects, but a mere unconnected multitude. It is
not easy to state for what good end, at a time like this, when the
foundations of all ancient and prescriptive governments, such as ours,
(to which people submit, not because they have chosen them, but because
they are born to them,) are undermined by perilous theories, that Mr.
Fox should be so fond of referring to those theories, upon all
occasions, even though speculatively they might be true,--which God
forbid they should! Particularly I do not see the reason why he should
be so fond of declaring that the principles of the Revolution have made
the crown of Great Britain _elective_,--why he thinks it seasonable to
preach up with so much earnestness, for now three years together, the
doctrine of resistance and revolution at all,--or to assert that our
last Revolution, of 1688, stands on the same or similar principles with
that of France. We are not called upon to bring forward these doctrines,
which are hardly ever resorted to but in cases of extremity, and where
they are followed by correspondent actions. We are not called upon by
any circumstance, that I know of, which can justify a revolt, or which
demands a revolution, or can make an election of a successor to the
crown necessary, whatever latent right may be supposed to exist for
effectuating any of these purposes.

40. Not the least alarming of the proceedings of Mr. Fox and his friends
in this session, especially taken in concurrence with their whole
proceedings with regard to France and its principles, is their eagerness
at this season, under pretence of Parliamentary reforms, (a project
which had been for some time rather dormant,) to discredit and disgrace
the House of Commons. For this purpose these gentlemen had found a way
to insult the House by several atrocious libels in the form of
petitions. In particular they brought up a libel, or rather a complete
digest of libellous matter, from the club called the Friends of the
People. It is, indeed, at once the most audacious and the most insidious
of all the performances of that kind which have yet appeared. It is said
to be the penmanship of Mr. Tierney, to bring whom into Parliament the
Duke of Portland formerly had taken a good deal of pains, and expended,
as I hear, a considerable sum of money.

41. Among the circumstances of danger from that piece, and from its
precedent, it is observable that this is the first petition (if I
remember right) _coming from a club or association, signed by
individuals, denoting neither local residence nor corporate capacity_.
This mode of petition, not being strictly illegal or informal, though in
its spirit in the highest degree mischievous, may and will lead to other
things of that nature, tending to bring these clubs and associations to
the French model, and to make them in the end answer French purposes: I
mean, that, without legal names, these clubs will be led to assume
political capacities; that they may debate the forms of Constitution;
and that from their meetings they may insolently dictate their will to
the regular authorities of the kingdom, in the manner in which the
Jacobin clubs issue their mandates to the National Assembly or the
National Convention. The audacious remonstrance, I observe, is signed
by all of that association (the Friends of the People) _who are not in
Parliament_, and it was supported most strenuously by all the
associators _who are members_, with Mr. Fox at their head. He and they
contended for referring this libel to a committee. Upon the question of
that reference they grounded all their debate for a change in the
constitution of Parliament. The pretended petition is, in fact, a
regular charge or impeachment of the House of Commons, digested into a
number of articles. This plan of reform is not a criminal impeachment,
but a matter of prudence, to be submitted to the public wisdom, which
must be as well apprised of the facts as petitioners can be. But those
accusers of the House of Commons have proceeded upon the principles of a
criminal process, and have had the effrontery to offer proof on each
article.

42. This charge the party of Mr. Fox maintained article by article,
beginning with the first,--namely, the interference of peers at
elections, and their nominating in effect several of the members of the
House of Commons. In the printed list of grievances which they made out
on the occasion, and in support of their charge, is found the borough
for which, under Lord Fitzwilliam's influence, I now sit. By this
remonstrance, and its object, they hope to defeat the operation of
property in elections, and in reality to dissolve the connection and
communication of interests which makes the Houses of Parliament a mutual
support to each other. Mr. Fox and the Friends of the People are not so
ignorant as not to know that peers do not interfere in elections as
peers, but as men of property; they well know that the House of Lords
is by itself the feeblest part of the Constitution; they know that the
House of Lords is supported only by its connections with the crown and
with the House of Commons, and that without this double connection the
Lords could not exist a single year. They know that all these parts of
our Constitution, whilst they are balanced as opposing interests, are
also connected as friends; otherwise nothing but confusion could be the
result of such a complex Constitution. It is natural, therefore, that
they who wish the common destruction of the whole and of all its parts
should contend for their total separation. But as the House of Commons
is that link which connects both the other parts of the Constitution
(the Crown and the Lords) _with the mass of the people_, it is to that
link (as it is natural enough) that their incessant attacks are
directed. That artificial representation of the people being once
discredited and overturned, all goes to pieces, and nothing but a plain
_French_ democracy or arbitrary monarchy can possibly exist.

43. Some of these gentlemen who have attacked the House of Commons lean
to a representation of the people by the head,--that is, to _individual
representation_. None of them, that I recollect, except Mr. Fox,
directly rejected it. It is remarkable, however, that he only rejected
it by simply declaring an opinion. He let all the argument go against
his opinion. All the proceedings and arguments of his reforming friends
lead to individual representation, and to nothing else. It deserves to
be attentively observed, _that this individual representation is the
only plan of their reform which has been explicitly proposed_. In the
mean time, the conduct of Mr. Fox appears to be far more inexplicable,
on any good ground, than theirs, who propose the individual
representation; for he neither proposes anything, nor even suggests that
he has anything to propose, in lieu of the present mode of constituting
the House of Commons; on the contrary, he declares against all the plans
which have yet been suggested, either from himself or others: yet, thus
unprovided with any plan whatsoever, he pressed forward this unknown
reform with all possible warmth; and for that purpose, in a speech of
several hours, he urged the referring to a committee the libellous
impeachment of the House of Commons by the association of the Friends of
the People. But for Mr. Fox to discredit Parliament _as it stands_, to
countenance leagues, covenants, and associations for its further
discredit, to render it perfectly odious and contemptible, and at the
same time to propose nothing at all in place of what he disgraces, is
worse, if possible, than to contend for personal individual
representation, and is little less than demanding, in plain terms, to
bring on plain anarchy.

44. Mr. Fox and these gentlemen have for the present been defeated; but
they are neither converted nor disheartened. They have solemnly declared
that they will persevere until they shall have obtained their
ends,--persisting to assert that the House of Commons not only is not
the true representative of the people, but that it does not answer the
purpose of such representation: most of them insist that all the debts,
the taxes, and the burdens of all kinds on the people, with every other
evil and inconvenience which we have suffered since the Revolution, have
been owing solely to an House of Commons which does not speak the sense
of the people.

45. It is also not to be forgotten, that Mr. Fox, and all who hold with
him, on this, as on all other occasions of pretended reform, most
bitterly reproach Mr. Pitt with treachery, in declining to support the
scandalous charges and indefinite projects of this infamous libel from
the Friends of the People. By the animosity with which they persecute
all those who grow cold in this cause of pretended reform, they hope,
that, if, through levity, inexperience, or ambition, any young person
(like Mr. Pitt, for instance) happens to be once embarked in their
design, they shall by a false shame keep him fast in it forever. Many
they have so hampered.

46. I know it is usual, when the peril and alarm of the hour appears to
be a little overblown, to think no more of the matter. But, for my part,
I look back with horror on what we have escaped, and am full of anxiety
with regard to the dangers which in my opinion are still to be
apprehended both at home and abroad. This business has cast deep roots.
Whether it is necessarily connected in theory with Jacobinism is not
worth a dispute. The two things are connected in fact. The partisans of
the one are the partisans of the other. I know it is common with those
who are favorable to the gentlemen of Mr. Fox's party and to their
leader, though not at all devoted to all their reforming projects or
their Gallican politics, to argue, in palliation of their conduct, that
it is not in their power to do all the harm which their actions
evidently tend to. It is said, that, as the people will not support
them, they may safely be indulged in those eccentric fancies of reform,
and those theories which lead to nothing. This apology is not very much
to the honor of those politicians whose interests are to be adhered to
in defiance of their conduct. I cannot flatter myself that these
incessant attacks on the constitution of Parliament are safe. It is not
in my power to despise the unceasing efforts of a confederacy of about
fifty persons of eminence: men, for the far greater part, of very ample
fortunes either in possession or in expectancy; men of decided
characters and vehement passions; men of very great talents of all
kinds, of much boldness, and of the greatest possible spirit of
artifice, intrigue, adventure, and enterprise, all operating with
unwearied activity and perseverance. These gentlemen are much stronger,
too, without doors than some calculate. They have the more active part
of the Dissenters with them, and the whole clan of speculators of all
denominations,--a large and growing species. They have that floating
multitude which goes with events, and which suffers the loss or gain of
a battle to decide its opinions of right and wrong. As long as by every
art this party keeps alive a spirit of disaffection against the very
Constitution of the kingdom, and attributes, as lately it has been in
the habit of doing, all the public misfortunes to that Constitution, it
is absolutely _impossible_ but that some moment must arrive in which
they will be enabled to produce a pretended reform and a real
revolution. If ever the body of this _compound Constitution_ of ours is
subverted, either in favor of unlimited monarchy or of wild democracy,
that ruin will _most certainly_ be the result of this very sort of
machinations against the House of Commons. It is not from a confidence
in the views or intentions of any statesman that I think he is to be
indulged in these perilous amusements.

47. Before it is made the great object of any man's political life to
raise another to power, it is right to consider what are the real
dispositions of the person to be so elevated. We are not to form our
judgment on those dispositions from the rules and principles of a court
of justice, but from those of private discretion,--not looking for what
would serve to criminate another, but what is sufficient to direct
ourselves. By a comparison of a series of the discourses and actions of
certain men for a reasonable length of time, it is impossible not to
obtain sufficient indication of the general tendency of their views and
principles. There is no other rational mode of proceeding. It is true,
that in some one or two perhaps not well-weighed expressions, or some
one or two unconnected and doubtful affairs, we may and ought to judge
of the actions or words by our previous good or ill opinion of the man.
But this allowance has its bounds. It does not extend to any regular
course of systematic action, or of constant and repeated discourse. It
is against every principle of common sense, and of justice to one's self
and to the public, to judge of a series of speeches and actions from the
man, and not of the man from the whole tenor of his language and
conduct. I have stated the above matters, not as inferring a criminal
charge of evil intention. If I had meant to do so, perhaps they are
stated with tolerable exactness. But I have no such view. The intentions
of these gentlemen may be very pure. I do not dispute it. But I think
they are in some great error. If these things are done by Mr. Fox and
his friends with good intentions, they are not done less dangerously;
for it shows these good intentions are not under the direction of safe
maxims and principles.

48. Mr. Fox, Mr. Sheridan, and the gentlemen who call themselves the
Phalanx, have not been so very indulgent to others. They have thought
proper to ascribe to those members of the House of Commons, who, in
exact agreement with the Duke of Portland and Lord Fitzwilliam, abhor
and oppose the French system, the basest and most unworthy motives for
their conduct;--as if none could oppose that atheistic, immoral, and
impolitic project set up in France, so disgraceful and destructive, as I
conceive, to human nature itself, but with some sinister intentions.
They treat those members on all occasions with a sort of lordly
insolence, though they are persons that (whatever homage they may pay to
the eloquence of the gentlemen who choose to look down upon them with
scorn) are not their inferiors in any particular which calls for and
obtains just consideration from the public: not their inferiors in
knowledge of public law, or of the Constitution of the kingdom; not
their inferiors in their acquaintance with its foreign and domestic
interests; not their inferiors in experience or practice of business;
not their inferiors in moral character; not their inferiors in the
proofs they have given of zeal and industry in the service of their
country. Without denying to these gentlemen the respect and
consideration which it is allowed justly belongs to them, we see no
reason why they should not as well be obliged to defer something to our
opinions as that we should be bound blindly and servilely to follow
those of Mr. Fox, Mr. Sheridan, Mr. Grey, Mr. Courtenay, Mr. Lambton,
Mr. Whitbread, Mr. Taylor, and others. We are members of Parliament and
their equals. We never consider ourselves as their followers. These
gentlemen (some of them hardly born when some of us came into
Parliament) have thought proper to treat us as deserters,--as if we had
been listed into their phalanx like soldiers, and had sworn to live and
die in their French principles. This insolent claim of superiority on
their part, and of a sort of vassalage to them on that of other members,
is what no liberal mind will submit to bear.

49. The society of the Liberty of the Press, the Whig Club, and the
Society for Constitutional Information, and (I believe) the Friends of
the People, as well as some clubs in Scotland, have, indeed, declared,
"that their confidence in and attachment to Mr. Fox has lately been
confirmed, strengthened, and increased by the calumnies" (as they are
called) "against him." It is true, Mr. Fox and his friends have those
testimonies in their favor, against certain old friends of the Duke of
Portland. Yet, on a full, serious, and, I think, dispassionate
consideration of the whole of what Mr. Fox and Mr. Sheridan and their
friends have acted, said, and written, in this session, instead of doing
anything which might tend to procure power, or any share of it
whatsoever, to them or to their phalanx, (as they call it,) or to
increase their credit, influence, or popularity in the nation, I think
it one of my most serious and important public duties, in whatsoever
station I may be placed for the short time I have to live, effectually
to employ my best endeavors, by every prudent and every lawful means, to
traverse all their designs. I have only to lament that my abilities are
not greater, and that my probability of life is not better, for the
more effectual pursuit of that object. But I trust that neither the
principles nor exertions will die with me. I am the rather confirmed in
this my resolution, and in this my wish of transmitting it, because
every ray of hope concerning a possible control or mitigation of the
enormous mischiefs which the principles of these gentlemen, and which
their connections, full as dangerous as their principles, might receive
from the influence of the Duke of Portland and Lord Fitzwilliam, on
becoming their colleagues in office, is now entirely banished from the
mind of every one living. It is apparent, even to the world at large,
that, so far from having a power to direct or to guide Mr. Fox, Mr.
Sheridan, Mr. Grey, and the rest, in any important matter, they have
not, through this session, been able to prevail on them to forbear, or
to delay, or mitigate, or soften, any one act, or any one expression,
upon subjects on which they essentially differed.

50. Even if this hope of a possible control did exist, yet the declared
opinions, and the uniform line of conduct conformable to those opinions,
pursued by Mr. Fox, must become a matter of serious alarm, if he should
obtain a power either at court or in Parliament or in the nation at
large, and for this plain reason: he must be the most active and
efficient member in any administration of which he shall form a part.
That a man, or set of men, are guided by such not dubious, but delivered
and avowed principles and maxims of policy, as to need a watch and check
on them in the exercise of the highest power, ought, in my opinion, to
make every man, who is not of the same principles and guided by the
same maxims, a little cautious how he makes himself one of the
traverses of a ladder to help such a man, or such a set of men, to climb
up to the highest authority. A minister of this country is to be
controlled by the House of Commons. He is to be trusted, not
_controlled_, by his colleagues in office: if he were to be controlled,
government, which ought to be the source of order, would itself become a
scene of anarchy. Besides, Mr. Fox is a man of an aspiring and
commanding mind, made rather to control than to be controlled, and he
never will be nor can be in any administration in which he will be
guided by any of those whom I have been accustomed to confide in. It is
absurd to think that he would or could. If his own opinions do not
control him, nothing can. When we consider of an adherence to a man
which leads to his power, we must not only see what the man is, but how
he stands related. It is not to be forgotten that Mr. Fox acts in close
and inseparable connection with another gentleman of exactly the same
description as himself, and who, perhaps, of the two, is the leader. The
rest of the body are not a great deal more tractable; and over them, if
Mr. Fox and Mr. Sheridan have authority, most assuredly the Duke of
Portland has not the smallest degree of influence.

51. One must take care that a blind partiality to some persons, and as
blind an hatred to others, may not enter into our minds under a color of
inflexible public principle. We hear, as a reason for clinging to Mr.
Fox at present, that nine years ago Mr. Pitt got into power by
mischievous intrigues with the court, with the Dissenters, and with
other factious people out of Parliament, to the discredit and weakening
of the power of the House of Commons. His conduct nine years ago I still
hold to be very culpable. There are, however, many things very culpable
that I do not know how to punish. My opinion on such matters I must
submit to the good of the state, as I have done on other occasions,--and
particularly with regard to the authors and managers of the American
war, with whom I have acted, both in office and in opposition, with
great confidence and cordiality, though I thought many of their acts
criminal and impeachable. Whilst the misconduct of Mr. Pitt and his
associates was yet recent, it was not possible to get Mr. Fox of himself
to take a single step, or even to countenance others in taking any step,
upon the ground of that misconduct and false policy; though, if the
matters had been then taken up and pursued, such a step could not have
appeared so evidently desperate as now it is. So far from pursuing Mr.
Pitt, I know that then, and for some time after, some of Mr. Fox's
friends were actually, and with no small earnestness, looking out to a
coalition with that gentleman. For years I never heard this circumstance
of Mr. Pitt's misconduct on that occasion mentioned by Mr. Fox, either
in public or in private, as a ground for opposition to that minister.
All opposition, from that period to this very session, has proceeded
upon the separate measures as they separately arose, without any
vindictive retrospect to Mr. Pitt's conduct in 1784. My memory, however,
may fail me. I must appeal to the printed debates, which (so far as Mr.
Fox is concerned) are unusually accurate.

52. Whatever might have been in our power at an early period, at this
day I see no remedy for what was done in 1784. I had no great hopes
even at the time. I was therefore very eager to record a remonstrance on
the journals of the House of Commons, as a caution against such a
popular delusion in times to come; and this I then feared, and now am
certain, is all that could be done. I know of no way of animadverting on
the crown. I know of no mode of calling to account the House of Lords,
who threw out the India Bill in a way not much to their credit. As
little, or rather less, am I able to coerce the people at large, who
behaved very unwisely and intemperately on that occasion. Mr. Pitt was
then accused, by me as well as others, of attempting to be minister
without enjoying the confidence of the House of Commons, though he did
enjoy the confidence of the crown. That House of Commons, whose
confidence he did not enjoy, unfortunately did not itself enjoy the
confidence (though we well deserved it) either of the crown or of the
public. For want of that confidence, the then House of Commons did not
survive the contest. Since that period Mr. Pitt has enjoyed the
confidence of the crown, and of the Lords, and _of the House of
Commons_, through two successive Parliaments; and I suspect that he has
ever since, and that he does still, enjoy as large a portion, at least,
of the confidence of the people without doors as his great rival. Before
whom, then, is Mr. Pitt to be impeached, and by whom? The more I
consider the matter, the more firmly I am convinced that the idea of
proscribing Mr. Pitt _indirectly_, when you cannot _directly punish_
him, is as chimerical a project, and as unjustifiable, as it would be to
have proscribed Lord North. For supposing that by indirect ways of
opposition, by opposition upon measures which do not relate to the
business of 1784, but which on other grounds might prove unpopular, you
were to drive him from his seat, this would be no example whatever of
punishment for the matters we charge as offences in 1784. On a cool and
dispassionate view of the affairs of this time and country, it appears
obvious to me that one or the other of those two great men, that is, Mr.
Pitt or Mr. Fox, must be minister. They are, I am sorry for it,
irreconcilable. Mr. Fox's conduct _in this session_ has rendered the
idea of his power a matter of serious alarm to many people who were very
little pleased with the proceedings of Mr. Pitt in the beginning of his
administration. They like neither the conduct of Mr. Pitt in 1784, nor
that of Mr. Fox in 1793; but they estimate which of the evils is most
pressing at the time, and what is likely to be the consequence of a
change. If Mr. Fox be wedded, they must be sensible that his opinions
and principles on the now existing state of things at home and abroad
must be taken as his portion. In his train must also be taken the whole
body of gentlemen who are pledged to him and to each other, and to their
common politics and principles. I believe no king of Great Britain ever
will adopt, for his confidential servants, that body of gentlemen,
holding that body of principles. Even if the present king or his
successor should think fit to take that step, I apprehend a general
discontent of those who wish that this nation and that Europe should
continue in their present state would ensue,--a discontent which,
combined with the principles and progress of the new men in power, would
shake this kingdom to its foundations. I do not believe any one
political conjecture can be more certain than this.

53. Without at all defending or palliating Mr. Pitt's conduct in 1784, I
must observe, that the crisis of 1793, with regard to everything at home
and abroad, is full as important as that of 1784 ever was, and, if for
no other reason, by being present, is much more important. It is not to
nine years ago we are to look for the danger of Mr. Fox's and Mr.
Sheridan's conduct, and that of the gentlemen who act with them. It is
at _this_ very time, and in _this_ very session, that, if they had not
been strenuously resisted, they would not only have discredited the
House of Commons, (as Mr. Pitt did in 1784, when he persuaded the king
to reject their advice, and to appeal from them to the people,) but, in
my opinion, would have been the means of wholly subverting the House of
Commons and the House of Peers, and the whole Constitution actual and
virtual, together with the safety and independence of this nation, and
the peace and settlement of every state in the now Christian world. It
is to our opinion of the nature of Jacobinism, and of the probability,
by corruption, faction, and force, of its gaining ground everywhere,
that the question whom and what you are to support is to be determined.
For my part, without doubt or hesitation, I look upon Jacobinism as the
most dreadful and the most shameful evil which ever afflicted mankind, a
thing which goes beyond the power of all calculation in its
mischief,--and that, if it is suffered to exist in France, we must in
England, and speedily too, fall into that calamity.

54. I figure to myself the purpose of these gentlemen accomplished, and
this ministry destroyed. I see that the persons who in that case must
rule can be no other than Mr. Fox, Mr. Sheridan, Mr. Grey, the Marquis
of Lansdowne, Lord Thurlow, Lord Lauderdale, and the Duke of Norfolk,
with the other chiefs of the Friends of the People, the Parliamentary
reformers, and the admirers of the French Revolution. The principal of
these are all formally pledged to their projects. If the Duke of
Portland and Lord Fitzwilliam should be admitted into that system, (as
they might and probably would be,) it is quite certain they could not
have the smallest weight in it,--less, indeed, than what they now
possess, if less were possible: because they would be less wanted than
they now are; and because all those who wished to join them, and to act
under them, have been rejected by the Duke of Portland and Lord
Fitzwilliam themselves; and Mr. Fox, finding them thus by themselves
disarmed, has built quite a new fabric, upon quite a new foundation.
There is no trifling on this subject. We see very distinctly before us
the ministry that would be formed and the plan that would be pursued. If
we like the plan, we must wish the power of those who are to carry it
into execution; but to pursue the political exaltation of those whose
political measures we disapprove and whose principles we dissent from is
a species of modern politics not easily comprehensible, and which must
end in the ruin of the country, if it should continue and spread. Mr.
Pitt may be the worst of men, and Mr. Fox may be the best; but, at
present, the former is in the interest of his country, and of the order
of things long established in Europe: Mr. Fox is not. I have, for one,
been born in this order of things, and would fain die in it. I am sure
it is sufficient to make men as virtuous, as happy, and as knowing as
anything which Mr. Fox, and his friends abroad or at, home, would
substitute in its place; and I should be sorry that any set of
politicians should obtain power in England whose principles or schemes
should lead them to countenance persons or factions whose object is to
introduce some new devised order of things into England, or to support
that order where it is already introduced, in France,--a place in which
if it can be fixed, in my mind, it must have a certain and decided
influence in and upon this kingdom.

This is my account of my conduct to my private friends. I have already
said all I wish to say, or nearly so, to the public. I write this with
pain and with an heart full of grief.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] It is an exception, that in one of his last speeches (but not
before) Mr. Fox seemed to think an alliance with Spain might be proper.



PREFACE

TO THE

ADDRESS OF M. BRISSOT

TO HIS CONSTITUENTS.

TRANSLATED BY

THE LATE WILLIAM BURKE, ESQ.

1794.



PREFACE TO BRISSOT'S ADDRESS.


The French Revolution has been the subject of various speculations and
various histories. As might be expected, the royalists and the
republicans have differed a good deal in their accounts of the
principles of that Revolution, of the springs which have set it in
motion, and of the true character of those who have been, or still are,
the principal actors on that astonishing scene.

They who are inclined to think favorably of that event will undoubtedly
object to every state of facts which comes only from the authority of a
royalist. Thus much must be allowed by those who are the most firmly
attached to the cause of religion, law, and order, (for of such, and not
of friends to despotism, the royal party is composed,)--that their very
affection to this generous and manly cause, and their abhorrence of a
Revolution not less fatal to liberty than to government, may possibly
lead them in some particulars to a more harsh representation of the
proceedings of their adversaries than would be allowed by the cold
neutrality of an impartial judge. This sort of error arises from a
source highly laudable; but the exactness of truth may suffer even from
the feelings of virtue. History will do justice to the intentions of
worthy men, but it will be on its guard against their infirmities; it
will examine with great strictness of scrutiny whatever appears from a
writer in favor of his own cause. On the other hand, whatever escapes
him, and makes against that cause, comes with the greatest weight.

In this important controversy, the translator of the following work
brings forward to the English tribunal of opinion the testimony of a
witness beyond all exception. His competence is undoubted. He knows
everything which concerns this Revolution to the bottom. He is a chief
actor in all the scenes which he presents. No man can object to him as a
royalist: the royal party, and the Christian religion, never had a more
determined enemy. In a word, it is BRISSOT. It is Brissot, the
republican, the Jacobin, and the philosopher, who is brought to give an
account of Jacobinism, and of republicanism, and of philosophy.

It is worthy of observation, that this his account of the genius of
Jacobinism and its effects is not confined to the period in which that
faction came to be divided within itself. In several, and those very
important particulars, Brissot's observations apply to the whole of the
preceding period before the great schism, and whilst the Jacobins acted
as one body; insomuch that the far greater part of the proceedings of
the ruling powers since the commencement of the Revolution in France, so
strikingly painted, so strongly and so justly reprobated by Brissot,
were the acts of Brissot himself and his associates. All the members of
the Girondin subdivision were as deeply concerned as any of the Mountain
could possibly be, and some of them much more deeply, in those horrid
transactions which have filled all the thinking part of Europe with the
greatest detestation, and with the most serious apprehensions for the
common liberty and safety.

A question will very naturally be asked,--What could induce Brissot to
draw such a picture? He must have been sensible it was his own. The
answer is,--The inducement was the same with that which led him to
partake in the perpetration of all the crimes the calamitous effects of
which he describes with the pen of a master,--ambition. His faction,
having obtained their stupendous and unnatural power by rooting out of
the minds of his unhappy countrymen every principle of religion,
morality, loyalty, fidelity, and honor, discovered, that, when authority
came into their hands, it would be a matter of no small difficulty for
them to carry on government on the principles by which they had
destroyed it.

The rights of men and the new principles of liberty and equality were
very unhandy instruments for those who wished to establish a system of
tranquillity and order. They who were taught to find nothing to respect
in the title and in the virtues of Louis the Sixteenth, a prince
succeeding to the throne by the fundamental laws, in the line of a
succession of monarchs continued for fourteen hundred years, found
nothing which could bind them to an implicit fidelity and dutiful
allegiance to Messrs. Brissot, Vergniaud, Condorcet, Anacharsis Clootz,
and Thomas Paine.

In this difficulty, they did as well as they could. To govern the
people, they must incline the people to obey. The work was difficult,
but it was necessary. They were to accomplish it by such materials and
by such instruments as they had in their hands. They were to accomplish
the purposes of order, morality, and submission to the laws, from the
principles of atheism, profligacy, and sedition. Ill as the disguise
became them, they began to assume the mask of an austere and rigid
virtue; they exhausted all the stores of their eloquence (which in some
of them were not inconsiderable) in declamations against tumult and
confusion; they made daily harangues on the blessings of order,
discipline, quiet, and obedience to authority; they even showed some
sort of disposition to protect such property as had not been
confiscated. They who on every occasion had discovered a sort of furious
thirst of blood and a greedy appetite for slaughter, who avowed and
gloried in the murders and massacres of the 14th of July, of the 5th and
6th of October, and of the 10th of August, now began to be squeamish and
fastidious with regard to those of the 2nd of September.

In their pretended scruples on the sequel of the slaughter of the 10th
of August, they imposed upon no living creature, and they obtained not
the smallest credit for humanity. They endeavored to establish a
distinction, by the belief of which they hoped to keep the spirit of
murder safely bottled up and sealed for their own purposes, without
endangering themselves by the fumes of the poison which they prepared
for their enemies.

Roland was the chief and the most accredited of the faction. His morals
had furnished little matter of exception against him. Old, domestic, and
uxorious, he led a private life sufficiently blameless. He was therefore
set up as the _Cato_ of the republican party, which did not abound in
such characters.

This man, like most of the chiefs, was the manager of a newspaper, in
which he promoted the interest of his party. He was a fatal present
made by the revolutionists to the unhappy king, as one of his ministers
under the new Constitution. Amongst his colleagues were Clavière and
Servan. All the three have since that time either lost their heads by
the axe of their associates in rebellion, or, to evade their own
revolutionary justice, have fallen by their own hands.

These ministers were regarded by the king as in a conspiracy to dethrone
him. Nobody who considers the circumstances which preceded the
deposition of Louis the Sixteenth, nobody who attends to the subsequent
conduct of those ministers, can hesitate about the reality of such a
conspiracy. The king certainly had no doubt of it; he found himself
obliged to remove them; and the necessity, which first obliged him to
choose such regicide ministers constrained him to replace them by
Dumouriez the Jacobin, and some others of little efficiency, though of a
better description.

A little before this removal, and evidently as a part of the conspiracy,
Roland put into the king's hands, as a memorial, the most insolent,
seditious, and atrocious libel that has probably ever been penned. This
paper Roland a few days after delivered to the National Assembly,[2] who
instantly published and dispersed it over all France; and in order to
give it the stronger operation, they declared that he and his brother
ministers had carried with them the regret of the nation. None of the
writings which have inflamed the Jacobin spirit to a savage fury ever
worked up a fiercer ferment through the whole mass of the republicans
in every part of France.

Under the thin veil of _prediction_, he strongly _recommends_ all the
abominable practices which afterwards followed. In particular, he
inflamed the minds of the populace against the respectable and
conscientious clergy, who became the chief objects of the massacre, and
who were to him the chief objects of a malignity and rancor that one
could hardly think to exist in an human heart.

We have the relics of his fanatical persecution here. We are in a
condition to judge of the merits of the persecutors and of the
persecuted: I do not say the accusers and accused; because, in all the
furious declamations of the atheistic faction against these men, not one
specific charge has been made upon any one person of those who suffered
in their massacre or by their decree of exile.

The king had declared that he would sooner perish under their axe (he
too well saw what was preparing for him) than give his sanction to the
iniquitous act of proscription under which those innocent people were to
be transported.

On this proscription of the clergy a principal part of the ostensible
quarrel between the king and those ministers had turned. From the time
of the authorized publication of this libel, some of the manoeuvres long
and uniformly pursued for the king's deposition became more and more
evident and declared.

The 10th of August came on, and in the manner in which Roland had
predicted: it was followed by the same consequences. The king was
deposed, after cruel massacres in the courts and the apartments of his
palace and in almost all parts of the city. In reward of his treason to
his old master, Roland was by his new masters named Minister of the Home
Department.

The massacres of the 2nd of September were begotten by the massacres of
the 10th of August. They were universally foreseen and hourly expected.
During this short interval between the two murderous scenes, the furies,
male and female, cried out havoc as loudly and as fiercely as ever. The
ordinary jails were all filled with prepared victims; and when they
overflowed, churches were turned into jails. At this time the relentless
Roland had the care of the general police;--he had for his colleague the
bloody Danton, who was Minister of Justice; the insidious Pétion was
Mayor of Paris; the treacherous Manuel was Procurator of the Common
Hall. The magistrates (some or all of them) were evidently the authors
of this massacre. Lest the national guard should, by their very name, be
reminded of their duty in preserving the lives of their fellow-citizens,
the Common Council of Paris, pretending that it was in vain to think of
resisting the murderers, (although in truth neither their numbers nor
their arms were at all formidable,) obliged those guards to draw the
charges from their muskets, and took away their bayonets. One of their
journalists, and, according to their fashion, one of their leading
statesmen, Gorsas, mentions this fact in his newspaper, which he
formerly called the Galley Journal. The title was well suited to the
paper and its author. For some felonies he had been sentenced to the
galleys; but, by the benignity of the late king, this felon (to be one
day advanced to the rank of a regicide) had been pardoned and released
at the intercession of the ambassadors of Tippoo Sultan. His gratitude
was such as might naturally have been expected; and it has lately been
rewarded as it deserved. This liberated galley-slave was raised, in
mockery of all criminal law, to be Minister of Justice: he became from
his elevation a more conspicuous object of accusation, and he has since
received the punishment of his former crimes in proscription and death.

It will be asked, how the Minister of the Home Department was employed
at this crisis. The day after the massacre had commenced, Roland
appeared; but not with the powerful apparatus of a protecting
magistrate, to rescue those who had survived the slaughter of the first
day: nothing of this. On the 3rd of September, (that is, the day after
the commencement of the massacre,[3]) he writes a long, elaborate,
verbose epistle to the Assembly, in which, after magnifying, according
to the _bon-ton_ of the Revolution, his own integrity, humanity,
courage, and patriotism, he first directly justifies all the bloody
proceedings of the 10th of August. He considers the slaughter of that
day as a necessary measure for defeating a conspiracy which (with a full
knowledge of the falsehood of his assertion) he asserts to have been
formed for a massacre of the people of Paris, and which he more than
insinuates was the work of his late unhappy master,--who was universally
known to carry his dread of shedding the blood of his most guilty
subjects to an excess.

"Without the day of the 10th," says he, "it is evident that we should
have been lost. The court, prepared for a long time, waited for the
hour which was to accumulate all treasons, to display over Paris the
standard of death, and to reign there by terror. The sense of the
people, (_le sentiment_,) always just and ready when their opinion is
not corrupted, foresaw the epoch marked for their destruction, and
rendered it fatal to the conspirators." He then proceeds, in the cant
which has been applied to palliate all their atrocities from the 14th of
July, 1789, to the present time:--"It is in the nature of things,"
continues he, "and in that of the human heart, that victory should bring
with it _some_ excess. The sea, agitated by a violent storm, roars
_long_ after the tempest; but _everything has bounds_, which ought _at
length_ to be observed."

In this memorable epistle, he considers such _excesses_ as fatalities
arising from the very nature of things, and consequently not to be
punished. He allows a space of time for the duration of these
agitations; and lest he should be thought rigid and too scanty in his
measure, he thinks it may be _long_. But he would have things to cease
_at length_. But when? and where?--When they may approach his own
person.

"_Yesterday_," says he, "the ministers _were denounced: vaguely_,
indeed, as to the _matter_, because subjects of reproach were wanting;
but with that warmth and force of assertion which strike the imagination
and seduce it for a moment, and which mislead and destroy confidence,
without which no man should remain in place in a free government.
_Yesterday, again_, in an assembly of the presidents of all the
sections, convoked by the ministers, with the view of conciliating all
minds, and of mutual explanation, I perceived _that distrust which
suspects, interrogates, and fetters operations_."

In this manner (that is, in mutual suspicions and interrogatories) this
virtuous Minister of the Home Department, and all the magistracy of
Paris, spent the first day of the massacre, the atrocity of which has
spread horror and alarm throughout Europe. It does not appear that the
putting a stop to the massacre had any part in the object of their
meeting, or in their consultations when they were met. Here was a
minister tremblingly alive to his own safety, dead to that of his
fellow-citizens, eager to preserve his place, and worse than indifferent
about its most important duties. Speaking of the people, he says "that
their hidden enemies may make use of this _agitation_" (the tender
appellation which he gives to horrid massacre) "to hurt _their best
friends and their most able defenders. Already the example begins_: let
it restrain and arrest a _just_ rage. Indignation carried to its height
commences proscriptions which fall only on the _guilty_, but in which
error and particular passions may shortly involve the _honest man_."

He saw that the able artificers in the trade and mystery of murder did
not choose that their skill should be unemployed after their first work,
and that they were full as ready to cut off their rivals as their
enemies. This gave him _one_ alarm that was serious. This letter of
Roland, in every part of it, lets out the secret of all the parties in
this Revolution. _Plena rimarum est; hoc atque illac perfluit_. We see
that none of them condemn the occasional practice of murder,--provided
it is properly applied,--provided it is kept within the bounds which
each of those parties think proper to prescribe. In this case Roland
feared, that, if what was occasionally useful should become habitual,
the practice might go further than was convenient. It might involve the
best friends of the last Revolution, as it had done the heroes of the
first Revolution: he feared that it would not be confined to the La
Fayettes and Clermont-Tonnerres, the Duponts and Barnaves, but that it
might extend to the Brissots and Vergniauds, to the Condorcets, the
Pétions, and to himself. Under this apprehension there is no doubt that
his humane feelings were altogether unaffected.

His observations on the massacre of the preceding day are such as cannot
be passed over. "Yesterday," said he, "was a day upon the events of
which it is perhaps necessary to leave a _veil_. I know that the people
with their vengeance _mingled a sort of justice_: they did not take for
victims _all_ who presented themselves to their fury; they directed it
to _them who had for a long time been spared by the sword of the law_,
and who they _believed_, from the peril of circumstances, should be
sacrificed without delay. But I know that it is easy to _villains and
traitors_ to misrepresent this _effervescence_, and that it must be
checked; I know that we owe to all France the declaration, that the
_executive power_ could not foresee or prevent this excess; I know that
it is due to the constituted authorities to place a limit to it, or
consider themselves as abolished."

In the midst of this carnage he thinks of nothing but throwing a veil
over it,--which was at once to cover the guilty from punishment, and to
extinguish all compassion for the sufferers. He apologizes for it; in
fact, he justifies it. He who (as the reader has just seen in what is
quoted from this letter) feels so much indignation at "vague
denunciations," when made against himself, and from which he then feared
nothing more than the subversion of his power, is not ashamed to
consider the charge of a conspiracy to massacre the Parisians, brought
against his master upon denunciations as vague as possible, or rather
upon no denunciations, as a perfect justification of the monstrous
proceedings against him. He is not ashamed to call the murder of the
unhappy priests in the Carmes, who were under no criminal denunciation
whatsoever, a "_vengeance_ mingled with a _sort of justice_"; he
observes that they "had been a long time spared by the sword of the
law," and calls by anticipation all those who should represent this
"_effervescence_" in other colors _villains and traitors_: he did not
than foresee how soon himself and his accomplices would be under the
necessity of assuming the pretended character of this new sort of
"_villany and treason_", in the hope of obliterating the memory of their
former real _villanies and treasons_; he did not foresee that in the
course of six months a formal manifesto on the part of himself and his
faction, written by his confederate Brissot, was to represent this
"_effervescence_" as another "_St. Bartholomew_" and speak of it as
"_having made humanity shudder, and sullied the Revolution forever_."[4]

It is very remarkable that he takes upon himself to know the motives of
the assassins, their policy, and even what they "believed." How could
this be, if he had no connection with them? He praises the murderers for
not having taken as yet _all_ the lives of those who had, as he calls
it, "_presented themselves_ as victims to their fury." He paints the
miserable prisoners, who had been forcibly piled upon one another in
the Church of the Carmelites by his faction, as _presenting themselves_
as victims to their fury,--as if death was their choice, or (allowing
the idiom of his language to make this equivocal) as if they were by
some accident _presented_ to the fury of their assassins: whereas he
knew that the leaders of the murderers sought these pure and innocent
victims in the places where they had deposited them and were sure to
find them. The very selection, which he praises as a _sort of justice_
tempering their fury, proves beyond a doubt the foresight, deliberation,
and method with which this massacre was made. He knew that circumstance
on the very day of the commencement of the massacres, when, in all
probability, he had begun this letter,--for he presented it to the
Assembly on the very next.

Whilst, however, he defends these acts, he is conscious that they will
appear in another light to the world. He therefore acquits the executive
power, that is, he acquits himself, (but only by his own assertion,) of
those acts of "_vengeance mixed with a sort of justice_," as an
"_excess_ which he could neither foresee nor prevent." He could not, he
says, foresee these acts, when he tells us the people of Paris had
sagacity so well to foresee the designs of the court on the 10th of
August,--to foresee them so well as to mark the precise epoch on which
they were to be executed, and to contrive to anticipate them on the very
day: he could not foresee these events, though he declares in this very
letter that victory _must_ bring with it some _excess_,--that "the sea
roars _long_ after the tempest." So far as to his foresight. As to his
disposition to prevent, if he had foreseen, the massacres of that
day,--this will be judged by his care in putting a stop to the massacre
then going on. This was no matter of foresight: he was in the very midst
of it. He does not so much as pretend that he had used any force to put
a stop to it. But if he had used any, the sanction given under his hand
to a sort of justice in the murderers was enough to disarm the
protecting force.

That approbation of what they had already done had its natural effect on
the executive assassins, then in the paroxysm of their fury, as well as
on their employers, then in the midst of the execution of their
deliberate, cold-blooded system of murder. He did not at all differ from
either of them in the principle of those executions, but only in the
time of their duration,--and that only as it affected himself. This,
though to him a great consideration, was none to his confederates, who
were at the same time his rivals. They were encouraged to accomplish the
work they had in hand. They did accomplish it; and whilst this grave
moral epistle from a grave minister, recommending a cessation of their
work of "vengeance mingled with a sort of justice," was before a grave
assembly, the authors of the massacres proceeded without interruption in
their business for four days together,--that is, until the seventh of
that month, and until all the victims of the first proscription in Paris
and at Versailles and several other places were immolated at the shrine
of the grim Moloch of liberty and equality. All the priests, all the
loyalists, all the first essayists and novices of revolution in 1789,
that could be found, were promiscuously put to death.

Through the whole of this long letter of Roland, it is curious to remark
how the nerve and vigor of his style, which had spoken so potently to
his sovereign, is relaxed when he addresses himself to the
_sans-culottes,_--how that strength and dexterity of arm, with which he
parries and beats down the sceptre, is enfeebled and lost when he comes
to fence with the poniard. When he speaks to the populace, he can no
longer be direct. The whole compass of the language is tried to find
synonymes and circumlocutions for massacre and murder. Things are never
called by their common names. Massacre is sometimes _agitation_,
sometimes _effervescence_, sometimes _excess_, sometimes too continued
an exercise of a _revolutionary power_.

However, after what had passed had been praised, or excused, or
pardoned, he declares loudly against such proceedings _in future_.
Crimes had pioneered and made smooth the way for the march of the
virtues, and from that time order and justice and a sacred regard for
personal property were to become the rules for the new democracy. Here
Roland and the Brissotins leagued for their own preservation, by
endeavoring to preserve peace. This short story will render many of the
parts of Brissot's pamphlet, in which Roland's views and intentions are
so often alluded to, the more intelligible in themselves, and the more
useful in their application by the English reader.

Under the cover of these artifices, Roland, Brissot, and their party
hoped to gain the bankers, merchants, substantial tradesmen, hoarders of
assignats, and purchasers of the confiscated lands of the clergy and
gentry to join with their party, as holding out some sort of security to
the effects which they possessed, whether these effects were the
acquisitions of fair commerce, or the gains of jobbing in the
misfortunes of their country and the plunder of their fellow-citizens.
In this design the party of Roland and Brissot succeeded in a great
degree. They obtained a majority in the National Convention. Composed,
however, as that assembly is, their majority was far from steady. But
whilst they appeared to gain the Convention, and many of the outlying
departments, they lost the city of Paris entirely and irrecoverably: it
was fallen into the hands of Marat, Robespierre, and Danton. Their
instruments were the _sans-culottes_, or rabble, who domineered in that
capital, and were wholly at the devotion of those incendiaries, and
received their daily pay. The people of property were of no consequence,
and trembled before Marat and his janizaries. As that great man had not
obtained the helm of the state, it was not yet come to his turn to act
the part of Brissot and his friends in the assertion of subordination
and regular government. But Robespierre has survived both these rival
chiefs, and is now the great patron of Jacobin order.

To balance the exorbitant power of Paris, (which threatened to leave
nothing to the National Convention but a character as insignificant as
that which the first Assembly had assigned to the unhappy Louis the
Sixteenth,) the faction of Brissot, whose leaders were Roland, Pétion,
Vergniaud, Isnard, Condorcet, &c., &c., &c., applied themselves to gain
the great commercial towns, Lyons, Marseilles, Rouen, Nantes, and
Bordeaux. The republicans of the Brissotin description, to whom the
concealed royalists, still very numerous, joined themselves, obtained a
temporary superiority in all these places. In Bordeaux, on account of
the activity and eloquence of some of its representatives, this
superiority was the most distinguished. This last city is seated on the
Garonne, or Gironde; and being the centre of a department named from
that river, the appellation of Girondists was given to the whole party.
These, and some other towns, declared strongly against the principles of
anarchy, and against the despotism of Paris. Numerous addresses were
sent to the Convention, promising to maintain its authority, which the
addressers were pleased to consider as legal and constitutional, though
chosen, not to compose an executive government, but to form a plan for a
Constitution. In the Convention measures were taken to obtain an armed
force from the several departments to maintain the freedom of that body,
and to provide for the personal safety of the members: neither of which,
from the 14th of July, 1789, to this hour, have been really enjoyed by
their assemblies sitting under any denomination.

This scheme, which was well conceived, had not the desired success.
Paris, from which the Convention did not dare to move, though some
threats of such a departure were from time to time thrown out, was too
powerful for the party of the Gironde. Some of the proposed guards, but
neither with regularity nor in force, did indeed arrive: they were
debauched as fast as they came, or were sent to the frontiers. The game
played by the revolutionists in 1789, with respect to the French guards
of the unhappy king, was now played against the departmental guards,
called together for the protection of the revolutionists. Every part of
their own policy comes round, and strikes at their own power and their
own lives.

The Parisians, on their part, were not slow in taking the alarm. They
had just reason to apprehend, that, if they permitted the smallest
delay, they should see themselves besieged by an army collected from all
parts of France. Violent threats were thrown out against that city in
the Assembly. Its total destruction was menaced. A very remarkable
expression was used in these debates,--"that in future times it might be
inquired on what part of the Seine Paris had stood." The faction which
ruled in Paris, too bold to be intimidated and too vigilant to be
surprised, instantly armed themselves. In their turn, they accused the
Girondists of a treasonable design to break _the republic one and
indivisible_ (whose unity they contended could only be preserved by the
supremacy of Paris) into a number of _confederate_ commonwealths. The
Girondin faction on this account received also the name of
_Federalists_.

Things on both sides hastened fast to extremities. Paris, the mother of
equality, was herself to be equalized. Matters were come to this
alternative: either that city must be reduced to a mere member of the
federative republic, or the Convention, chosen, as they said, by all
France, was to be brought regularly and systematically under the
dominion of the Common Hall, and even of any one of the sections of
Paris.

In this awful contest, thus brought to issue, the great mother club of
the Jacobins was entirely in the Parisian interest. The Girondins no
longer dared to show their faces in that assembly. Nine tenths at least
of the Jacobin clubs, throughout France, adhered to the great
patriarchal Jacobinière of Paris, to which they were (to use their own
term) _affiliated_. No authority of magistracy, judicial or executive,
had the least weight, whenever these clubs chose to interfere: and they
chose to interfere in everything, and on every occasion. All hope of
gaining them to the support of property, or to the acknowledgment of any
law but their own will, was evidently vain and hopeless. Nothing but an
armed insurrection against their anarchical authority could answer the
purpose of the Girondins. Anarchy was to be cured by rebellion, as it
had been caused by it.

As a preliminary to this attempt on the Jacobins and the commons of
Paris, which it was hoped would be supported by all the remaining
property of France, it became absolutely necessary to prepare a
manifesto, laying before the public the whole policy, genius, character,
and conduct of the partisans of club government. To make this exposition
as fully and clearly as it ought to be made, it was of the same
unavoidable necessity to go through a series of transactions, in which
all those concerned in this Revolution were, at the several periods of
their activity, deeply involved. In consequence of this design, and
under these difficulties, Brissot prepared the following declaration of
his party, which he executed with no small ability; and in this manner
the whole mystery of the French Revolution was laid open in all its
parts.

It is almost needless to mention to the reader the fate of the design to
which this pamphlet was to be subservient. The Jacobins of Paris were
more prompt than their adversaries. They were the readiest to resort to
what La Fayette calls the _most sacred of all duties, that of
insurrection_. Another era of holy insurrection commenced the 31st of
last May. As the first fruits of that insurrection grafted on
insurrection, and of that rebellion improving upon rebellion, the
sacred, irresponsible character of the members of the Convention was
laughed to scorn. They had themselves shown in their proceedings against
the late king how little the most fixed principles are to be relied
upon, in their revolutionary Constitution. The members of the Girondin
party in the Convention were seized upon, or obliged to save themselves
by flight. The unhappy author of this piece, with twenty of his
associates, suffered together on the scaffold, after a trial the
iniquity of which puts all description to defiance.

The English reader will draw from this work of Brissot, and from the
result of the last struggles of this party, some useful lessons. He will
be enabled to judge of the information of those who have undertaken to
guide and enlighten us, and who, for reasons best known to themselves,
have chosen to paint the French Revolution and its consequences in
brilliant and flattering colors. They will know how to appreciate the
liberty of France, which has been so much magnified in England. They
will do justice to the wisdom and goodness of their sovereign and his
Parliament, who have put them into a state of defence, in the war
audaciously made upon us in favor of that kind of liberty. When we see
(as here we must see) in their true colors the character and policy of
our enemies, our gratitude will become an active principle. It will
produce a strong and zealous coöperation with the efforts of our
government in favor of a Constitution under which we enjoy advantages
the full value of which the querulous weakness of human nature requires
sometimes the opportunity of a comparison to understand and to relish.

Our confidence in those who watch for the public will not be lessened.
We shall be sensible that to alarm us in the late circumstances of our
affairs was not for our molestation, but for our security. We shall be
sensible that this alarm was not ill-timed,--and that it ought to have
been given, as it was given, before the enemy had time fully to mature
and accomplish their plans for reducing us to the condition of France,
as that condition is faithfully and without exaggeration described in
the following work. We now have our arms in our hands; we have the means
of opposing the sense, the courage, and the resources of England to the
deepest, the most craftily devised, the best combined, and the most
extensive design that ever was carried on, since the beginning of the
world, against all property, all order, all religion, all law, and all
real freedom.

The reader is requested to attend to the part of this pamphlet which
relates to the conduct of the Jacobins with regard to the Austrian
Netherlands, which they call Belgia or Belgium. It is from page
seventy-two to page eighty-four of this translation. Here their views
and designs upon all their neighbors are fully displayed. Here the whole
mystery of their ferocious politics is laid open with the utmost
clearness. Here the manner in which they would treat every nation into
which they could introduce their doctrines and influence is distinctly
marked. We see that no nation was out of danger, and we see what the
danger was with which every nation was threatened. The writer of this
pamphlet throws the blame of several of the most violent of the
proceedings on the other party. He and his friends, at the time alluded
to, had a majority in the National Assembly. He admits that neither he
nor they _ever publicly_ opposed these measures; but he attributes their
silence to a fear of rendering themselves suspected. It is most certain,
that, whether from fear or from approbation, they never discovered any
dislike of those proceedings till Dumouriez was driven from the
Netherlands. But whatever their motive was, it is plain that the most
violent is, and since the Revolution has always been, the predominant
party.

If Europe could not be saved without our interposition, (most certainly
it could not,) I am sure there is not an Englishman who would not blush
to be left out of the general effort made in favor of the general
safety. But we are not secondary parties in this war; _we are principals
in the danger, and ought to be principals in the exertion_. If any
Englishman asks whether the designs of the French assassins are confined
to the spot of Europe which they actually desolate, the citizen Brissot,
the author of this book, and the author of the declaration of war
against England, will give him his answer. He will find in this book,
that the republicans are divided into factions full of the most furious
and destructive animosity against each other; but he will find also that
there is one point in which they perfectly agree: that they are all
enemies alike to the government of all other nations, and only contend
with each other about the means of propagating their tenets and
extending their empire by conquest.

It is true that in this present work, which the author professedly
designed for an appeal to foreign nations and posterity, he has dressed
up the philosophy of his own faction in as decent a garb as he could to
make her appearance in public; but through every disguise her hideous
figure may be distinctly seen. If, however, the reader still wishes to
see her in all her naked deformity, I would further refer him to a
private letter of Brissot, written towards the end of the last year, and
quoted in a late very able pamphlet of Mallet Du Pan. "We must" (says
our philosopher) "_set fire to the four corners of Europe_"; in that
alone is our safety. "_Dumouriez cannot suit us_. I always distrusted
him. Miranda is the general for us: he understands the _revolutionary
power_; he has _courage, lights_," &c.[5] Here everything is fairly
avowed in plain language. The triumph of philosophy is the universal
conflagration of Europe; the only real dissatisfaction with Dumouriez is
a suspicion of his moderation; and the secret motive of that preference
which in this very pamphlet the author gives to Miranda, though without
assigning his reasons, is declared to be the superior fitness of that
foreign adventurer for the purposes of subversion and destruction. On
the other hand, if there can be any man in this country so hardy as to
undertake the defence or the apology of the present monstrous usurpers
of France, and if it should be said in their favor, that it is not just
to credit the charges of their enemy Brissot against them, who have
actually tried and condemned him on the very same charges among others,
we are luckily supplied with the best possible evidence in support of
this part of his book against them: it comes from among themselves.
Camille Desmoulins published the History of the Brissotins in answer to
this very address of Brissot. It was the counter-manifesto of the last
holy revolution of the 31st of May; and the flagitious orthodoxy of his
writings at that period has been admitted in the late scrutiny of him by
the Jacobin Club, when they saved him from that guillotine "which he
grazed." In the beginning of his work he displays "the task of glory,"
as he calls it, which presented itself at the opening of the Convention.
All is summed up in two points: "To create the French Republic; _to
disorganize Europe; perhaps to purge it of its tyrants by the eruption
of the volcanic principles of equality_."[6] The coincidence is exact;
the proof is complete and irresistible.

In a cause like this, and in a time like the present, there is no
neutrality. They who are not actively, and with decision and energy,
against Jacobinism are its partisans. They who do not dread it love it.
It cannot be viewed with indifference. It is a thing made to produce a
powerful impression on the feelings. Such is the nature of Jacobinism,
such is the nature of man, that this system must be regarded either with
enthusiastic admiration, or with the highest degree of detestation,
resentment, and horror.

Another great lesson may be taught by this book, and by the fortune of
the author and his party: I mean a lesson drawn from the consequences of
engaging in daring innovations from an hope that we may be able to limit
their mischievous operation at our pleasure, and by our policy to secure
ourselves against the effect of the evil examples we hold out to the
world. This lesson is taught through almost all the important pages of
history; but never has it been taught so clearly and so awfully as at
this hour. The revolutionists who have just suffered an ignominious
death, under the sentence of the revolutionary tribunal, (a tribunal
composed of those with whom they had triumphed in the total destruction
of the ancient government,) were by no means ordinary men, or without
very considerable talents and resources. But with all their talents and
resources, and the apparent momentary extent of their power, we see the
fate of their projects, their power, and their persons. We see before
our eyes the absurdity of thinking to establish order upon principles of
confusion, or with the materials and instruments of rebellion to build
up a solid and stable government.

Such partisans of a republic amongst us as may not have the worst
intentions will see that the principles, the plans, the manners, the
morals, and the whole system of France is altogether as adverse to the
formation and duration of any rational scheme of a republic as it is to
that of a monarchy, absolute or limited. It is, indeed, a system which
can only answer the purposes of robbers and murderers.

The translator has only to say for himself, that he has found some
difficulty in this version. His original author, through haste, perhaps,
or through the perturbation of a mind filled with a great and arduous
enterprise, is often obscure. There are some passages, too, in which his
language requires to be first translated into French,--at least into
such French as the Academy would in former times have tolerated. He
writes with great force and vivacity; but the language, like everything
else in his country, has undergone a revolution. The translator thought
it best to be as literal as possible, conceiving such a translation
would perhaps be the most fit to convey the author's peculiar mode of
thinking. In this way the translator has no credit for style, but he
makes it up in fidelity. Indeed, the facts and observations are so much
more important than the style, that no apology is wanted for producing
them in any intelligible manner.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] Presented to the king June 13; delivered to him the preceding
Monday.--TRANSLATOR.

[3] Letter to the National Assembly, signed, _The Minister of the
Interior_, ROLAND; dated Paris, Sept. 3rd, _4th year of Liberty_.

[4] See p. 12 and p. 13 of this translation.

[5] See the translation of Mallet Du Pan's work, printed for Owen, p.
53.

[6] See the translation of the History of the Brissotins by Camille
Desmoulins, printed for Owen, p. 2.



APPENDIX.

 [The Address of M. Brissot to his Constituents being now almost
 forgotten, it has been thought right to add, as an Appendix,
 that part of it to which Mr. Burke points our particular
 attention and upon which he so forcibly comments in his
 Preface.]


Three sorts of anarchy have ruined our affairs in Belgium.

The anarchy of the administration of Pache, which has completely
disorganized the supply of our armies; which by that disorganization
reduced the army of Dumouriez to stop in the middle of its conquests;
which struck it motionless through the months of November and December;
which hindered it from joining Beurnonville and Custine, and from
forcing the Prussians and Austrians to repass the Rhine, and afterwards
from putting themselves in a condition to invade Holland sooner than
they did.

To this state of ministerial anarchy it is necessary to join that other
anarchy which disorganized the troops, and occasioned their habits of
pillage; and lastly, that anarchy which created the revolutionary power,
and forced the union to France of the countries we had invaded, before
things were ripe for such a measure.

Who could, however, doubt the frightful evils that were occasioned in
our armies by that doctrine of anarchy which, under the shadow of
equality of _right_, would establish equality of fact? This is universal
equality, the scourge of society, as the other is the support of
society: an anarchical doctrine which would level all things, talents
and ignorance, virtues and vices, places, usages, and services; a
doctrine which begot that fatal project of organizing the army,
presented by Dubois de Crancé, to which it will be indebted for a
complete disorganization.

Mark the date of the presentation of the system of this equality of
fact, entire equality. It had been projected and decreed even at the
very opening of the Dutch campaign. If any project could encourage the
want of discipline in the soldiers, any scheme could disgust and banish
good officers, and throw all things into confusion at the moment when
order alone could give victory, it is this project, in truth, so
stubbornly defended by the anarchists, and transplanted into their
ordinary tactic.

How could they expect that there should exist any discipline, any
subordination, when even in the camp they permit motions, censures, and
denunciations of officers and of generals? Does not such a disorder
destroy all the respect that is due to superiors, and all the mutual
confidence without which success cannot be hoped for? For the spirit of
distrust makes the soldier suspicious, and intimidates the general. The
first discerns treason in every danger; the second, always placed
between the necessity of conquest and the image of the scaffold, dares
not raise himself to bold conception, and those heights of courage which
electrify an army and insure victory. Turenne, in our time, would have
carried his head to the scaffold; for he was sometimes beat: but the
reason why he more frequently conquered was, that his discipline was
severe; it was, that his soldiers, confiding in his talents, never
muttered discontent instead of fighting. Without reciprocal confidence
between the soldier and the general, there can be no army, no victory,
especially in a free government.

Is it not to the same system of anarchy, of equalization, and want of
subordination, which has been recommended in some clubs and defended
even in the Convention, that we owe the pillages, the murders, the
enormities of all kinds, which it was difficult for the officers to put
a stop to, from the general spirit of insubordination,--excesses which
have rendered the French name odious to the Belgians? Again, is it not
to this system of anarchy, and of robbery, that we are indebted for the
_revolutionary power_, which has so justly aggravated the hatred of the
Belgians against France?

What did enlightened republicans think before the 10th of August, men
who wished for liberty, _not only for their own country, but for all
Europe? They believed that they could generally establish it by exciting
the governed against the governors, in letting the people see the
facility and the advantages of such insurrections_.

But how can the people be led to that point? By the example of good
government established among us; by the example of order; by the care of
spreading nothing but moral ideas among them: to respect their
properties and their rights; to respect their prejudices, even when we
combat them: by disinterestedness in defending the people; by a zeal to
extend the spirit of liberty amongst them.

This system was at first followed.[7] Excellent pamphlets from the pen
of Condorcet prepared the people for liberty; the 10th of August, the
republican decrees, the battle of Valmy, the retreat of the Prussians,
the victory of Jemappes, all spoke in favor of France: all was rapidly
destroyed by _the revolutionary power_. Without doubt, good intentions
made the majority of the Assembly adopt it; they would plant the tree of
liberty in a foreign soil, under the shade of a people already free. To
the eyes of the people of Belgium it seemed but the mask of a new
foreign tyranny. This opinion was erroneous; I will suppose it so for a
moment; but still this opinion of Belgium deserved to be considered. In
general, we have always considered our own opinions and our own
intentions rather than the people whose cause we defend. We have given
those people a will: that is to say, we have more than ever alienated
them from liberty.

How could the Belgic people believe themselves free, since we exercise
for them, and over them, the rights of sovereignty,--when, without
consulting them, we suppress, all in a mass, their ancient usages, their
abuses, their prejudices, those classes of society which without doubt
are contrary to the spirit of liberty, but the utility of whose
destruction was not as yet proved to them? How could they believe
themselves free and sovereign, when we made them take such an oath as we
thought fit, as a test to give them the right of voting? How could they
believe themselves free, when openly despising their religious worship,
which religious worship that superstitious people valued beyond their
liberty, beyond even their life; when we proscribed their priests; when
we banished them from their assemblies, where they were in the practice
of seeing them govern; when we seized their revenues, their domains, and
riches, to the profit of the nation; when we carried to the very censer
those hands which they regarded as profane? Doubtless these operations
were founded on principles; but those principles ought to have had the
consent of the Belgians, before they were carried into practice;
otherwise they necessarily became our most cruel enemies.

Arrived ourselves at the last bounds of liberty and equality, trampling
under our feet all human superstitions, (after, however, a four years'
war with them,) we attempt all at once to raise to the same eminence
men, strangers even to the first elementary principles of liberty, and
plunged for fifteen hundred years in ignorance and superstition; we
wished to force men to see, when a thick cataract covered their eyes,
even before we had removed that cataract; we would force men to see,
whose dulness of character had raised a mist before their eyes, and
before that character was altered.[8]

Do you believe that the doctrine which now prevails in France would have
found many partisans among us in 1789? No: a revolution in ideas and in
prejudices is not made with that rapidity; it moves gradually; it does
not escalade.

Philosophy does not inspire by violence, nor by seduction; nor is it the
sword that begets love of liberty.

Joseph the Second also borrowed the language of philosophy, when he
wished to suppress the monks in Belgium, and to seize upon their
revenues. There was seen on him a mask only of philosophy, covering the
hideous countenance of a greedy despot; and the people ran to arms.
Nothing better than another kind of despotism has been seen in the
_revolutionary power_.

We have seen in the commissioners of the National Convention nothing but
proconsuls working the mine of Belgium for the profit of the French
nation, seeking to conquer it for the sovereign of Paris,--either to
aggrandize his empire, or to share the burdens of the debts, and furnish
a rich prize to the robbers who domineered in France.

Do you believe the Belgians have ever been the dupes of those
well-rounded periods which they vended in the pulpit in order to
familiarize them to the idea of an union with France? Do you believe
they were ever imposed upon by those votes and resolutions, made by what
is called acclamation, for their union, of which corruption paid one
part,[9] and fear forced the remainder? Who, at this time of day, is
unacquainted with the springs and wires of their miserable puppet-show?
_Who does not know the farces of primary assemblies, composed of a
president, of a secretary, and of some assistants, whose day's work was
paid for?_ No: it is not by means which belong only to thieves and
despots that the foundations of liberty can be laid in an enslaved
country. It is not by those means, that a new-born republic, a people
who know not yet the elements of republican governments, can be united
to us. Even slaves do not suffer themselves to be seduced by such
artifices; and if they have not the strength to resist, they have at
least the sense to know how to appreciate the value of such an attempt.

If we would attach the Belgians to us, we must at least enlighten their
minds by _good writings_; we must send to them _missionaries_, and not
despotic commissioners.[10] We ought to give them time to see,--to
perceive by themselves the advantages of liberty, the unhappy effects of
superstition, the fatal spirit of priesthood. And whilst we waited for
this moral revolution, we should have accepted the offers which they
incessantly repeated to join to the French army an army of fifty
thousand men, to entertain them at their own expense, and to advance to
France the specie of which she stood in need.

But have we ever seen those fifty thousand soldiers who were to join our
army as soon as the standard of liberty should be displayed in Belgium?
Have we ever seen those treasures which they were to count into our
hands? Can we either accuse the sterility of their country, or the
penury of their treasure, or the coldness of their love for liberty? No!
despotism and anarchy, these are the benefits which we have transplanted
into their soil. We have acted, we have spoken, like masters; and from
that time we have found the Flemings nothing but jugglers, who made the
grimace of liberty for money, or slaves, who in their hearts cursed
their new tyrants. Our commissioners address them in this sort: "You
have nobles and priests among you: drive them out without delay, or we
will neither be your brethren nor your patrons." They answered: "Give us
but time; only leave to us the care of reforming these institutions."
Our answer to them was: "No! it must be at the moment, it must be on the
spot; or we will treat you as enemies, we will abandon you to the
resentment of the Austrians."

What could the disarmed Belgians object to all this, surrounded as they
were by seventy thousand men? They had only to hold their tongues, and
to bow down their heads before their masters. They did hold their
tongues, and their silence is received as a sincere and free assent.

Have not the strangest artifices been adopted to prevent that people
from retreating, and to constrain them to an union? It was foreseen,
that, as long as they were unable to effect an union, the States would
preserve the supreme authority amongst themselves. Under pretence,
therefore, of relieving the people, and of exercising the sovereignty in
their right, at one stroke they abolished all the duties and taxes, they
shut up all the treasuries. From that time no more receipts, no more
public money, no more means of paying the salaries of any man in office
appointed by the States. Thus was anarchy organized amongst the people,
that they might be compelled to throw themselves into our arms. It
became necessary for those who administered their affairs, under the
penalty of being exposed to sedition, and in order to avoid their
throats being cut, to have recourse to the treasury of France. What did
they find in this treasury? ASSIGNATS.--These assignats were advanced at
par to Belgium. By this means, on the one hand, they naturalized this
currency in that country, and on the other, they expected to make a good
pecuniary transaction. Thus it is that covetousness cut its throat with
its own hands. _The Belgians have seen in this forced introduction of
assignats nothing but a double robbery_; and they have only the more
violently hated the union with France.

Recollect the solicitude of the Belgians on that subject. With what
earnestness did they conjure you to take off a retroactive effect from
these assignats, and to prevent them from being applied to the payment
of debts that were contracted anterior to the union!

Did not this language energetically enough signify that they looked
upon the assignats as a leprosy, and the union as a deadly contagion?

And yet what regard was paid to so just a demand? It was buried in the
Committee of Finance. That committee wanted to make anarchy the means of
an union. They only busied themselves in making the Belgic Provinces
subservient to their finances.

Cambon said loftily before the Belgians themselves: The Belgian war
costs us hundreds of millions. Their ordinary revenues, and even some
extraordinary taxes, will not answer to our reimbursements; and yet we
have occasion for them. The mortgage of our assignats draws near its
end. What must be done? Sell the Church property of Brabant. There is a
mortgage of two thousand millions (eighty millions sterling). How shall
we get possession of them? By an immediate union. Instantly they decreed
this union. Men's minds were not disposed to it. What does it signify?
Let us make them vote by means of money. Without delay, therefore, they
secretly order the Minister of Foreign Affairs to dispose of four or
five hundred thousand livres (20,000_l._ sterling) _to make the
vagabonds of Brussels drunk, and to buy proselytes to the union in all
the States_. But even these means, it was said, will obtain but a weak
minority in our favor. What does that signify? _Revolutions_, said they,
_are made only by minorities. It is the minority which has made the
Revolution of France; it is a minority which, has made the people
triumph_.

The Belgic Provinces were not sufficient to satisfy the voracious
cravings of this financial system. Cambon wanted to unite everything,
that he might sell everything. Thus he forced the union of Savoy. In
the war with Holland, he saw nothing but gold to seize on, and
assignats to sell at par.[11] "Do not let us dissemble," said he one day
to the Committee of General Defence, in presence even of the patriot
deputies of Holland, "you have no ecclesiastical goods to offer us for
our indemnity. IT IS A REVOLUTION IN THEIR COUNTERS AND IRON CHESTS[12]
that must be made amongst the DUTCH." The word was said, and the bankers
Abema and Van Staphorst understood it.

Do you think that that word has not been worth an army to the
Stadtholder? that it has not cooled the ardor of the Dutch patriots?
that it has not commanded the vigorous defence of Williamstadt?

Do you believe that the patriots of Amsterdam, when they read the
preparatory decree which gave France an execution on their goods,--do
you believe that those patriots would not have liked better to have
remained under the government of the Stadtholder, who took from them no
more than a fixed portion of their property, than to pass under that of
a revolutionary power, which would make a complete revolution in their
bureaus and strong-boxes, and reduce them to wretchedness and rags?[13]
Robbery and anarchy, instead of encouraging, will always stifle
revolutions.

"But why," they object to me, "have not you and your friends chosen to
expose these measures in the rostrum of the National Convention? Why
have you not opposed yourself to all these fatal projects of union?"

There are two answers to make here,--one general, one particular.

You complain of the silence of honest men! You quite forget, then,
honest men are the objects of your suspicion. Suspicion, if it does not
stain the soul of a courageous man, at least arrests his thoughts in
their passage to his lips. The suspicions of a good citizen freeze those
men whom the calumny of the wicked could not stop in their progress.

You complain of their silence! You forget, then, that you have often
established an insulting equality between them and men covered with
crimes and made up of ignominy.

You forget, then, that you have twenty times left them covered with
opprobrium by your galleries.

You forget, then, that you have not thought yourself sufficiently
powerful to impose silence upon these galleries.

What ought a wise man to do in the midst of these circumstances? He is
silent. He waits the moment when the passions give way; he waits till
reason shall preside, and till the multitude shall listen to her voice.

What has been the tactic displayed during all these unions? Cambon,
incapable of political calculation, boasting his ignorance in the
diplomatic, flattering the ignorant multitude, lending his name and
popularity to the anarchists, seconded by their vociferations, denounced
incessantly, as counter-revolutionists, those intelligent persons who
were desirous at least of having things discussed. To oppose the acts of
union appeared to Cambon an overt act of treason. The wish so much as to
reflect and to deliberate was in his eyes a great crime. He calumniated
our intentions. The voice of every deputy, especially my voice, would
infallibly have been stifled. There were spies on the very monosyllables
that escaped our lips.

FOOTNOTES:

[7] The most seditious libels upon all governments, in order to excite
insurrection in Spain, Holland, and other countries,--TRANSLATOR.

[8] It may not be amiss, once for all, to remark on the style of all the
philosophical politicians of France. Without any distinction in their
several sects and parties, they agree in treating all nations who will
not conform their government, laws, manners, and religion to the new
French fashion, as _an herd of slaves_. They consider the content with
which men live under those governments as stupidity, and all attachment
to religion as the effect of the grossest ignorance.

The people of the Netherlands, by their Constitution, are as much
entitled to be called free as any nation upon earth. The Austrian
government (until some wild attempts the Emperor Joseph made on the
French principle, but which have been since abandoned by the court of
Vienna) has been remarkably mild. No people were more at their ease than
the Flemish subjects, particularly the lower classes. It is curious to
hear this great oculist talk of couching the _cataract_ by which the
Netherlands were _blinded_, and hindered from seeing in its proper
colors the beautiful vision of the French republic, which he has himself
painted with so masterly an hand. That people must needs be dull, blind,
and brutalized by fifteen hundred years of superstition, (the time
elapsed since the introduction of Christianity amongst them,) who could
prefer their former state to the _present state of France_! The reader
will remark, that the only difference between Brissot and his
adversaries is in the _mode_ of bringing other nations into the pale of
the French republic. _They_ would abolish the order and classes of
society, and all religion, at a stroke: Brissot would have just the same
thing done, but with more address and management.--TRANSLATOR.

[9] See the correspondence of Dumouriez, especially the letter of the
12th of March.

[10] They have not as yet proceeded farther with regard to the English
dominions. Here we only see as yet _the good writings_ of Paine, and of
his learned associates, and the labors of the _missionary clubs_, and
other zealous instructors.--TRANSLATOR.

[11] The same thing will happen in Savoy. The persecution of the clergy
has soured people's minds. The commissaries represent them to us as good
Frenchmen. I put them to the proof. Where are the legions? How! thirty
thousand Savoyards,--are they not armed to defend, in concert with us,
their liberty?--BRISSOT.

[12] _Portefeuille_ is the word in the original. It signifies all
movable property which may be represented in bonds, notes, bills,
stocks, or any sort of public or private securities. I do not know of a
single word in English that answers it: I have therefore substituted
that of _Iron Chests_, as coming nearest to the idea.--TRANSLATOR.

[13] In the original _les reduire à la sansculotterie_.



A

LETTER

TO

WILLIAM ELLIOT, ESQ.,

OCCASIONED BY

THE ACCOUNT GIVEN IN A NEWSPAPER OF THE SPEECH MADE IN THE HOUSE OF
LORDS BY THE **** OF *******

IN THE DEBATE

CONCERNING LORD FITZWILLIAM.

1795.



LETTER.


BEACONSFIELD, May 28,1795.

My dear sir,--I have been told of the voluntary which, for the
entertainment of the House of Lords, has been lately played by his Grace
the **** of *******, a great deal at my expense, and a little at his
own. I confess I should have liked the composition rather better, if it
had been quite new. But every man has his taste, and his Grace is an
admirer of ancient music.

There may be sometimes too much even of a good thing. A toast is good,
and a bumper is not bad: but the best toasts may be so often repeated as
to disgust the palate, and ceaseless rounds of bumpers may nauseate and
overload the stomach. The ears of the most steady-voting politicians may
at last be stunned with "three times three." I am sure I have been very
grateful for the flattering remembrance made of me in the toasts of the
Revolution Society, and of other clubs formed on the same laudable plan.
After giving the brimming honors to Citizen Thomas Paine and to Citizen
Dr. Priestley, the gentlemen of these clubs seldom failed to bring me
forth in my turn, and to drink, "Mr. Burke, and thanks to him for the
discussion he has provoked."

I found myself elevated with this honor; for, even by the collision of
resistance, to be the means of striking out sparkles of truth, if not
merit, is at least felicity.

Here I might have rested. But when I found that the great advocate, Mr.
Erskine, condescended to resort to these bumper toasts, as the pure and
exuberant fountains of politics and of rhetoric, (as I hear he did, in
three or four speeches made in defence of certain worthy citizens,) I
was rather let down a little. Though still somewhat proud of myself, I
was not quite so proud of my voucher. Though he is no idolater of fame,
in some way or other Mr. Erskine will always do himself honor. Methinks,
however, in following the precedents of these toasts, he seemed to do
more credit to his diligence as a special pleader than to his invention
as an orator. To those who did not know the abundance of his resources,
both of genius and erudition, there was something in it that indicated
the want of a good assortment, with regard to richness and variety, in
the magazine of topics and commonplaces which I suppose he keeps by him,
in imitation of Cicero and other renowned declaimers of antiquity.

Mr. Erskine supplied something, I allow, from the stores of his
imagination, in metamorphosing the jovial toasts of clubs into solemn
special arguments at the bar. So far the thing showed talent: however, I
must still prefer the bar of the tavern to the other bar. The toasts at
the first hand were better than the arguments at the second. Even when
the toasts began to grow old as sarcasms, they were washed down with
still older pricked election Port; then the acid of the wine made some
amends for the want of anything piquant in the wit. But when his Grace
gave them a second transformation, and brought out the vapid stuff
which had wearied the clubs and disgusted the courts, the drug made up
of the bottoms of rejected bottles, all smelling so wofully of the cork
and of the cask, and of everything except the honest old lamp, and when
that sad draught had been farther infected with the jail pollution of
the Old Bailey, and was dashed and brewed and ineffectually stummed
again into a senatorial exordium in the House of Lords, I found all the
high flavor and mantling of my honors tasteless, flat, and stale.
Unluckily, the new tax on wine is felt even in the greatest fortunes,
and his Grace submits to take up with the heel-taps of Mr. Erskine.

I have had the ill or good fortune to provoke two great men of this age
to the publication of their opinions: I mean Citizen Thomas Paine, and
his Grace the **** of *******. I am not so great a leveller as to put
these two great men on a par, either in the state, or the republic of
letters; but "the field of glory is a field for all." It is a large one,
indeed; and we all may run, God knows where, in chase of glory, over the
boundless expanse of that wild heath whose horizon always flies before
us. I assure his Grace, (if he will yet give me leave to call him so,)
whatever may be said on the authority of the clubs or of the bar, that
Citizen Paine (who, they will have it, hunts with me in couples, and who
only moves as I drag him along) has a sufficient activity in his own
native benevolence to dispose and enable him to take the lead for
himself. He is ready to blaspheme his God, to insult his king, and to
libel the Constitution of his country, without any provocation from me
or any encouragement from his Grace. I assure him that I shall not be
guilty of the injustice of charging Mr. Paine's next work against
religion and human society upon his Grace's excellent speech in the
House of Lords. I farther assure this noble Duke that I neither
encouraged nor provoked that worthy citizen to seek for plenty, liberty,
safety, justice, or lenity, in the famine, in the prisons, in the
decrees of Convention, in the revolutionary tribunal, and in the
guillotine of Paris, rather than quietly to take up with what he could
find in the glutted markets, the unbarricadoed streets, the drowsy Old
Bailey judges, or, at worst, the airy, wholesome pillory of Old England.
The choice of country was his own taste. The writings were the effects
of his own zeal. In spite of his friend Dr. Priestley, he was a free
agent. I admit, indeed, that my praises of the British government,
loaded with all its incumbrances, clogged with its peers and its beef,
its parsons and its pudding, its commons and its beer, and its dull
slavish liberty of going about just as one pleases, had something to
provoke a jockey of Norfolk,[14] who was inspired with the resolute
ambition of becoming a citizen of France, to do something which might
render him worthy of naturalization in that grand asylum of persecuted
merit, something which should entitle him to a place in the senate of
the adoptive country of all the gallant, generous, and humane. This, I
say, was possible. But the truth is, (with great deference to his Grace
I say it,) Citizen Paine acted without any provocation at all; he acted
solely from the native impulses of his own excellent heart.

His Grace, like an able orator, as he is, begins with giving me a great
deal of praise for talents which I do not possess. He does this to
entitle himself, on the credit of this gratuitous kindness, to
exaggerate my abuse of the parts which his bounty, and not that of
Nature, has bestowed upon me. In this, too, he has condescended to copy
Mr. Erskine. These priests (I hope they will excuse me, I mean priests
of the Rights of Man) begin by crowning me with their flowers and their
fillets, and bedewing me with their odors, as a preface to their
knocking me on the head with their consecrated axes. I have injured, say
they, the Constitution; and I have abandoned the Whig party and the Whig
principles that I professed. I do not mean, my dear Sir, to defend
myself against his Grace. I have not much interest in what the world
shall think or say of me; as little has the world an interest in what I
shall think or say of any one in it; and I wish that his Grace had
suffered an unhappy man to enjoy, in his retreat, the melancholy
privileges of obscurity and sorrow. At any rate, I have spoken and I
have written on the subject. If I have written or spoken so poorly as to
be quite forgot, a fresh apology will not make a more lasting
impression. "I must let the tree lie as it falls." Perhaps I must take
some shame to myself. I confess that I have acted on my own principles
of government, and not on those of his Grace, which are, I dare say,
profound and wise, but which I do not pretend to understand. As to the
party to which he alludes, and which has long taken its leave of me, I
believe the principles of the book which he condemns are very
conformable to the opinions of many of the most considerable and most
grave in that description of politicians. A few, indeed, who, I admit,
are equally respectable in all points, differ from me, and talk his
Grace's language. I am too feeble to contend with them. They have the
field to themselves. There are others, very young and very ingenious
persons, who form, probably, the largest part of what his Grace, I
believe, is pleased to consider as that party. Some of them were not
born into the world, and all of them were children, when I entered into
that connection. I give due credit to the censorial brow, to the broad
phylacteries, and to the imposing gravity of those magisterial rabbins
and doctors in the cabala of political science. I admit that "wisdom is
as the gray hair to man, and that learning is like honorable old age."
But, at a time when liberty is a good deal talked of, perhaps I might be
excused, if I caught something of the general indocility. It might not
be surprising, if I lengthened my chain a link or two, and, in an age of
relaxed discipline, gave a trifling indulgence to my own notions. If
that could be allowed, perhaps I might sometimes (by accident, and
without an unpardonable crime) trust as much to my own very careful and
very laborious, though perhaps somewhat purblind disquisitions, as to
their soaring, intuitive, eagle-eyed authority. But the modern liberty
is a precious thing. It must not be profaned by too vulgar an use. It
belongs only to the chosen few, who are born to the hereditary
representation of the whole democracy, and who leave nothing at all, no,
not the offal, to us poor outcasts of the plebeian race.

Amongst those gentlemen who came to authority as soon or sooner than
they came of age I do not mean to include his Grace. With all those
native titles to empire over our minds which distinguish the others, he
has a large share of experience. He certainly ought to understand the
British Constitution better than I do. He has studied it in the
fundamental part. For one election I have seen, he has been concerned in
twenty. Nobody is less of a visionary theorist; nobody has drawn his
speculations more from practice. No peer has condescended to superintend
with more vigilance the declining franchises of the poor commons. "With
thrice great Hermes he has outwatched the Bear." Often have his candles
been burned to the snuff, and glimmered and stunk in the sockets, whilst
he grew pale at his constitutional studies; long, sleepless nights has
he wasted, long, laborious, shiftless journeys has he made, and great
sums has he expended, in order to secure the purity, the independence,
and the sobriety of elections, and to give a check, if possible, to the
ruinous charges that go nearly to the destruction of the right of
election itself.

Amidst these his labors, his Grace will be pleased to forgive me, if my
zeal, less enlightened, to be sure, than his by midnight lamps and
studies, has presumed to talk too favorably of this Constitution, and
even to say something sounding like approbation of that body which has
the honor to reckon his Grace at the head of it, Those who dislike this
partiality, or, if his Grace pleases, this flattery of mine, have a
comfort at hand. I may be refuted and brought to shame by the most
convincing of all refutations, a practical refutation. Every individual
peer for himself may show that I was ridiculously wrong; the whole body
of those noble persons may refute me for the whole corps. If they
please, they are more powerful advocates against themselves than a
thousand scribblers like me can be in their favor. If I were even
possessed of those powers which his Grace, in order to heighten my
offence, is pleased to attribute to me, there would be little
difference. The eloquence of Mr. Erskine might save Mr. ***** from the
gallows, but no eloquence could save Mr. Jackson from the effects of his
own potion.

In that unfortunate book of mine, which is put in the _Index
Expurgatorius_ of the modern Whigs, I might have spoken too favorably
not only of those who wear coronets, but of those who wear crowns.
Kings, however, have not only long arms, but strong ones too. A great
Northern potentate, for instance, is able in one moment, and with one
bold stroke of his diplomatic pen, to efface all the volumes which I
could write in a century, or which the most laborious publicists of
Germany ever carried to the fair of Leipsic, as an apology for monarchs
and monarchy. Whilst I, or any other poor, puny, private sophist, was
defending the Declaration of Pilnitz, his Majesty might refute me by the
Treaty of Basle. Such a monarch may destroy one republic because it had
a king at its head, and he may balance this extraordinary act by
founding another republic that has cut off the head of its king. I
defended that great potentate for associating in a grand alliance for
the preservation of the old governments of Europe; but he puts me to
silence by delivering up all those governments (his own virtually
included) to the new system of France. If he is accused before the
Parisian tribunal (constituted for the trial of kings) for having
polluted the soil of liberty by the tracks of his disciplined slaves, he
clears himself by surrendering the finest parts of Germany (with a
handsome cut of his own territories) to the offended majesty of the
regicides of France. Can I resist this? Am I responsible for it, if,
with a torch in his hand, and a rope about his neck, he makes _amende
honorable_ to the _sans-culotterie_ of the Republic one and indivisible?
In that humiliating attitude, in spite of my protests, he may supplicate
pardon for his menacing proclamations, and, as an expiation to those
whom he failed to terrify with his threats, he may abandon those whom he
had seduced by his promises. He may sacrifice the royalists of France,
whom he had called to his standard, as a salutary example to those who
shall adhere to their native sovereign, or shall confide in any other
who undertakes the cause of oppressed kings and of loyal subjects.

How can I help it, if this high-minded prince will subscribe to the
invectives which the regicides have made against all kings, and
particularly against himself? How can I help it, if this royal
propagandist will preach the doctrine of the Rights of Men? Is it my
fault, if his professors of literature read lectures on that code in all
his academies, and if all the pensioned managers of the newspapers in
his dominions diffuse it throughout Europe in an hundred journals? Can
it be attributed to me, if he will initiate all his grenadiers and all
his hussars in these high mysteries? Am I responsible, if he will make
_Le Droit de l'Homme_, or _La Souverainté du Peuple_ the favorite parole
of his military orders? Now that his troops are to act with the brave
legions of freedom, no doubt he will fit them for their fraternity. He
will teach the Prussians to think, to feel, and to act like them, and to
emulate the glories of the _régiment de l'échafaud_. He will employ the
illustrious Citizen Santerre, the general of his new allies, to instruct
the dull Germans how they shall conduct themselves towards persons who,
like Louis the Sixteenth, (whose cause and person he once took into his
protection,) shall dare, without the sanction of the people, or with it,
to consider themselves as hereditary kings. Can I arrest this great
potentate in his career of glory? Am I blamable in recommending virtue
and religion as the true foundation of all monarchies, because the
protector of the three religions of the Westphalian arrangement, to
ingratiate himself with the Republic of Philosophy, shall abolish all
the three? It is not in my power to prevent the grand patron of the
Reformed Church, if he chooses it, from annulling the Calvinistic
sabbath, and establishing the _décadi_ of atheism in all his states. He
may even renounce and abjure his favorite mysticism in the Temple of
Reason. In these things, at least, he is truly despotic. He has now
shaken hands with everything which at first had inspired him with
horror. It would be curious indeed to see (what I shall not, however,
travel so far to see) the ingenious devices and the elegant
transparencies which, on the restoration of peace and the commencement
of Prussian liberty, are to decorate Potsdam and Charlottenburg
_festeggianti_. What shades of his armed ancestors of the House of
Brandenburg will the committee of _Illuminés_ raise up in the
opera-house of Berlin, to dance a grand ballet in the rejoicings for
this auspicious event? Is it a grand master of the Teutonic order, or is
it the great Elector? Is it the first king of Prussia, or the last? or
is the whole long line (long, I mean, _a parte ante_) to appear like
Banquo's royal procession in the tragedy of Macbeth?

How can I prevent all these arts of royal policy, and all these displays
of royal magnificence? How can I prevent the successor of Frederick the
Great from aspiring to a new, and, in this age, unexampled kind of
glory? Is it in my power to say that he shall not make his confessions
in the style of St. Austin or of Rousseau? that he shall not assume the
character of the penitent and flagellant, and, grafting monkery on
philosophy, strip himself of his regal purple, clothe his gigantic limbs
in the sackcloth and the _hair-shirt_, and exercise on his broad
shoulders the disciplinary scourge of the holy order of the
_Sans-Culottes_? It is not in me to hinder kings from making new orders
of religious and martial knighthood. I am not Hercules enough to uphold
those orbs which the Atlases of the world are so desirous of shifting
from their weary shoulders. What can be done against the magnanimous
resolution of the great to accomplish the degradation and the ruin of
their own character and situation?

What I say of the German princes, that I say of all the other dignities
and all the other institutions of the Holy Roman Empire. If they have a
mind to destroy themselves, they may put their advocates to silence and
their advisers to shame. I have often praised the Aulic Council. It is
very true, I did so. I thought it a tribunal as well formed as human
wisdom could form a tribunal for coercing the great, the rich, and the
powerful,--for obliging them to submit their necks to the imperial laws,
and to those of Nature and of nations: a tribunal well conceived for
extirpating peculation, corruption, and oppression from all the parts of
that vast, heterogeneous mass, called the Germanic body. I should not be
inclined to retract these praises upon any of the ordinary lapses into
which human infirmity will fall; they might still stand, though some of
their _conclusums_ should taste of the prejudices of country or of
faction, whether political or religious. Some degree even of corruption
should not make me think them guilty of suicide; but if we could suppose
that the Aulic Council, not regarding duty or even common decorum,
listening neither to the secret admonitions of conscience nor to the
public voice of fame, some of the members basely abandoning their post,
and others continuing in it only the more infamously to betray it,
should give a judgment so shameless and so prostitute, of such monstrous
and even portentous corruption, that no example in the history of human
depravity, or even in the fictions of poetic imagination, could possibly
match it,--if it should be a judgment which, with cold, unfeeling
cruelty, after long deliberations, should condemn millions of innocent
people to extortion, to rapine, and to blood, and should devote some of
the finest countries upon earth to ravage and desolation,--does any one
think that any servile apologies of mine, or any strutting and bullying
insolence of their own, can save them from the ruin that must fell on
all institutions of dignity or of authority that are perverted from
their purport to the oppression of human nature in others and to its
disgrace in themselves? As the wisdom of men mates such institutions,
the folly of men destroys them. Whatever we may pretend, there is always
more in the soundness of the materials than in the fashion of the work.
The order of a good building is something. But if it be wholly declined
from its perpendicular, if the cement is loose and incoherent, if the
stones are scaling with every change of the weather, and the whole
toppling on our heads, what matter is it whether we are crushed by a
Corinthian or a Doric ruin? The fine form of a vessel is a matter of use
and of delight. It is pleasant to see her decorated with cost and art.
But what signifies even the mathematical truth of her form,--what
signify all the art and cost with which she can be carved, and painted,
and gilded, and covered with decorations from stem to stern,--what
signify all her rigging and sails, her flags, her pendants, and her
streamers,--what signify even her cannon, her stores, and her
provisions, if all her planks and timbers be unsound and rotten?

    Quamvis Pontica pinus,
    Silvæ filia nobilis,
    Jactes et genus et nomen inutile.

I have been stimulated, I know not how, to give you this trouble by what
very few except myself would think worth any trouble at all. In a speech
in the House of Lords, I have been attacked for the defence of a scheme
of government in which that body inheres, and in which alone it can
exist. Peers of Great Britain may become as penitent as the sovereign of
Prussia. They may repent of what they have done in assertion of the
honor of their king, and in favor of their own safety. But never the
gloom that lowers over the fortune of the cause, nor anything which the
great may do towards hastening their own fall, can make me repent of
what I have done by pen or voice (the only arms I possess) in favor of
the order of things into which I was born and in which I fondly hoped to
die.

In the long series of ages which have furnished the matter of history,
never was so beautiful and so august a spectacle presented to the moral
eye as Europe afforded the day before the Revolution in France. I knew,
indeed, that this prosperity contained in itself the seeds of its own
danger. In one part of the society it caused laxity and debility; in the
other it produced bold spirits and dark designs. A false philosophy
passed from academies into courts; and the great themselves were
infected with the theories which conducted to their ruin. Knowledge,
which in the two last centuries either did not exist at all, or existed
solidly on right principles and in chosen hands, was now diffused,
weakened, and perverted. General wealth loosened morals, relaxed
vigilance, and increased presumption. Men of talent began to compare, in
the partition of the common stock of public prosperity, the proportions
of the dividends with the merits of the claimants. As usual, they found
their portion not equal to their estimate (or perhaps to the public
estimate) of their own worth. When it was once discovered by the
Revolution in France that a struggle between establishment and rapacity
could be maintained, though but for one year and in one place, I was
sure that a practicable breach was made in the whole order of things,
and in every country. Religion, that held the materials of the fabric
together, was first systematically loosened. All other opinions, under
the name of prejudices, must fall along with it; and property, left
undefended by principles, became a repository of spoils to tempt
cupidity, and not a magazine to furnish arms for defence. I knew, that,
attacked on all sides by the infernal energies of talents set in action
by vice and disorder, authority could not stand upon authority alone. It
wanted some other support than the poise of its own gravity. Situations
formerly supported persons. It now became necessary that personal
qualities should support situations. Formerly, where authority was
found, wisdom and virtue were presumed. But now the veil was torn, and,
to keep off sacrilegious intrusion, it was necessary that in the
sanctuary of government something should be disclosed not only
venerable, but dreadful. Government was at once to show itself full of
virtue and full of force. It was to invite partisans, by making it
appear to the world that a generous cause was to be asserted, one fit
for a generous people to engage in. From passive submission was it to
expect resolute defence? No! It must have warm advocates and passionate
defenders, which an heavy, discontented acquiescence never could
produce. What a base and foolish thing is it for any consolidated body
of authority to say, or to act as if it said, "I will put my trust, not
in my own virtue, but in your patience; I will indulge in effeminacy, in
indolence, in corruption; I will give way to all my perverse and vicious
humors, because you cannot punish me without the hazard of ruining
yourselves."

I wished to warn the people against the greatest of all evils,--a blind
and furious spirit of innovation, under the name of reform. I was,
indeed, well aware that power rarely reforms itself. So it is,
undoubtedly, when all is quiet about it. But I was in hopes that
provident fear might prevent fruitless penitence. I trusted that danger
might produce at least circumspection. I flattered myself, in a moment
like this, that nothing would be added to make authority
top-heavy,--that the very moment of an earthquake would not be the time
chosen for adding a story to our houses. I hoped to see the surest of
all reforms, perhaps the only sure reform,--the ceasing to do ill. In
the mean time I wished to the people the wisdom of knowing how to
tolerate a condition which none of their efforts can render much more
than tolerable. It was a condition, however, in which everything was to
be found that could enable them to live to Nature, and, if so they
pleased, to live to virtue and to honor.

I do not repent that I thought better of those to whom I wished well
than they will suffer me long to think that they deserved. Far from
repenting, I would to God that new faculties had been called up in me,
in favor not of this or that man, or this or that system, but of the
general, vital principle, that, whilst it was in its vigor, produced the
state of things transmitted to us from our fathers, but which, through
the joint operation of the abuses of authority and liberty, may perish
in our hands. I am not of opinion that the race of men, and the
commonwealths they create, like the bodies of individuals, grow effete
and languid and bloodless, and ossify, by the necessities of their own
conformation, and the fatal operation of longevity and time. These
analogies between bodies natural and politic, though they may sometimes
illustrate arguments, furnish no argument of themselves. They are but
too often used, under the color of a specious philosophy, to find
apologies for the despair of laziness and pusillanimity, and to excuse
the want of all manly efforts, when the exigencies of our country call
for them the more loudly.

How often has public calamity been arrested on the very brink of ruin by
the seasonable energy of a single man! Have we no such man amongst us? I
am as sure as I am of my being, that one vigorous mind, without office,
without situation, without public functions of any kind, (at a time when
the want of such a thing is felt, as I am sure it is,) I say, one such
man, confiding in the aid of God, and full of just reliance in his own
fortitude, vigor, enterprise, and perseverance, would first draw to him
some few like himself, and then that multitudes, hardly thought to be in
existence, would appear and troop about him.

If I saw this auspicious beginning, baffled and frustrated as I am, yet
on the very verge of a timely grave, abandoned abroad and desolate at
home, stripped of my boast, my hope, my consolation, my helper, my
counsellor, and my guide, (you know in part what I have lost, and would
to God I could clear myself of all neglect and fault in that loss,) yet
thus, even thus, I would rake up the fire under all the ashes that
oppress it. I am no longer patient of the public eye; nor am I of force
to win my way and to justle and elbow in a crowd. But, even in solitude,
something may be done for society. The meditations of the closet have
infected senates with a subtle frenzy, and inflamed armies with the
brands of the Furies. The cure might come from the same source with the
distemper. I would add my part to those who would animate the people
(whose hearts are yet right) to new exertions in the old cause.

Novelty is not the only source of zeal. Why should not a Maccabæus and
his brethren arise to assert the honor of the ancient law and to defend
the temple of their forefathers with as ardent a spirit as can inspire
any innovator to destroy the monuments of the piety and the glory of
ancient ages? It is not a hazarded assertion, it is a great truth, that,
when once things are gone out of their ordinary course, it is by acts
out of the ordinary course they can alone be reëstablished. Republican
spirit can only be combated by a spirit of the same nature,--of the same
nature, but informed with another principle, and pointing to another
end. I would persuade a resistance both to the corruption and to the
reformation that prevails. It will not be the weaker, but much the
stronger, for combating both together. A victory over real corruptions
would enable us to baffle the spurious and pretended reformations. I
would not wish to excite, or even to tolerate, that kind of evil spirit
which evokes the powers of hell to rectify the disorders of the earth.
No! I would add my voice with better, and, I trust, more potent charms,
to draw down justice and wisdom and fortitude from heaven, for the
correction of human vice, and the recalling of human error from the
devious ways into which it has been betrayed. I would wish to call the
impulses of individuals at once to the aid and to the control of
authority. By this, which I call the true republican spirit, paradoxical
as it may appear, monarchies alone can be rescued from the imbecility of
courts and the madness of the crowd. This republican spirit would not
suffer men in high place to bring ruin on their country and on
themselves. It would reform, not by destroying, but by saving, the
great, the rich, and the powerful. Such a republican spirit we perhaps
fondly conceive to have animated the distinguished heroes and patriots
of old, who knew no mode of policy but religion and virtue. These they
would have paramount to all constitutions; they would not suffer
monarchs, or senates, or popular assemblies, under pretences of dignity
or authority or freedom, to shake off those moral riders which reason
has appointed to govern every sort of rude power. These, in appearance
loading them by their weight, do by that pressure augment their
essential force. The momentum is increased by the extraneous weight. It
is true in moral as it is in mechanical science. It is true, not only in
the draught, but in the race. These riders of the great, in effect, hold
the reins which guide them in their course, and wear the spur that
stimulates them to the goals of honor and of safety. The great must
submit to the dominion of prudence and of virtue, or none will long
submit to the dominion of the great. _Dîs te minorem quod geris,
imperas_. This is the feudal tenure which they cannot alter.

Indeed, my dear Sir, things are in a bad state. I do not deny a good
share of diligence, a very great share of ability, and much public
virtue to those who direct our affairs. But they are incumbered, not
aided, by their very instruments, and by all the apparatus of the state.
I think that our ministry (though there are things against them which
neither you nor I can dissemble, and which grieve me to the heart) is by
far the most honest and by far the wisest system of administration in
Europe. Their fall would be no trivial calamity.

Not meaning to depreciate the minority in Parliament, whose talents are
also great, and to whom I do not deny virtues, their system seems to me
to be fundamentally wrong. But whether wrong or right, they have not
enough of coherence among themselves, nor of estimation with the public,
nor of numbers. They cannot make up an administration. Nothing is more
visible. Many other things are against them, which I do not charge as
faults, but reckon among national misfortunes. Extraordinary things must
be done, or one of the parties cannot stand as a ministry, nor the other
even as an opposition. They cannot change their situations, nor can any
useful coalition be made between them. I do not see the mode of it nor
the way to it. This aspect of things I do not contemplate with pleasure.

I well know that everything of the daring kind which I speak of is
critical: but the times are critical. New things in a new world! I see
no hopes in the common tracks. If men are not to be found who can be got
to feel within them some impulse, _quod nequeo monstrare, et sentio
tantum_, and which makes them impatient of the present,--if none can be
got to feel that private persons may sometimes assume that sort of
magistracy which does not depend on the nomination of kings or the
election of the people, but has an inherent and self-existent power
which both would recognize, I see nothing in the world to hope.

If I saw such a group beginning to cluster, such as they are, they
should have (all that I can give) my prayers and my advice. People talk
of war or cry for peace: have they to the bottom considered the
questions either of war or peace, upon the scale of the existing world?
No, I fear they have not.

Why should not you yourself be one of those to enter your name in such a
list as I speak of? You are young; you have great talents; you have a
clear head; you have a natural, fluent, and unforced elocution; your
ideas are just, your sentiments benevolent, open, and enlarged;--but
this is too big for your modesty. Oh! this modesty, in time and place,
is a charming virtue, and the grace of all other virtues. But it is
sometimes the worst enemy they have. Let him whose print I gave you the
other day be engraved in your memory! Had it pleased Providence to have
spared him for the trying situations that seem to be coming on,
notwithstanding that he was sometimes a little dispirited by the
disposition which we thought shown to depress him and set him aside, yet
he was always buoyed up again; and on one or two occasions he discovered
what might be expected from the vigor and elevation of his mind, from
his unconquerable fortitude, and from the extent of his resources for
every purpose of speculation and of action. Remember him, my friend, who
in the highest degree honored and respected you; and remember that great
parts are a great trust. Remember, too, that mistaken or misapplied
virtues, if they are not as pernicious as vice, frustrate at least their
own natural tendencies, and disappoint the purposes of the Great Giver.

Adieu. My dreams are finished.

FOOTNOTES:

[14] Mr. Paine is a Norfolk man, from Thetford.



THOUGHTS AND DETAILS

ON

SCARCITY.

ORIGINALLY PRESENTED

TO THE RIGHT HON. WILLIAM PITT,

IN THE MONTH OF NOVEMBER,

1795.



THOUGHTS AND DETAILS

ON

SCARCITY.


Of all things, an indiscreet tampering with the trade of provisions is
the most dangerous, and it is always worst in the time when men are most
disposed to it,--that is, in the time of scarcity; because there is
nothing on which the passions of men are so violent, and their judgment
so weak, and on which there exists such a multitude of ill-founded
popular prejudices.

The great use of government is as a restraint; and there is no restraint
which it ought to put upon others, and upon itself too, rather than that
which is imposed on the fury of speculating under circumstances of
irritation. The number of idle tales spread about by the industry of
faction and by the zeal of foolish good-intention, and greedily devoured
by the malignant credulity of mankind, tends infinitely to aggravate
prejudices which in themselves are more than sufficiently strong. In
that state of affairs, and of the public with relation to them, the
first thing that government owes to us, the people, is _information_;
the next is timely coercion: the one to guide our judgment; the other to
regulate our tempers.

To provide for us in our necessities is not in the power of government.
It would be a vain presumption in statesmen to think they can do it.
The people maintain them, and not they the people. It is in the power of
government to prevent much evil; it can do very little positive good in
this, or perhaps in anything else. It is not only so of the state and
statesman, but of all the classes and descriptions of the rich: they are
the pensioners of the poor, and are maintained by their superfluity.
They are under an absolute, hereditary, and indefeasible dependence on
those who labor and are miscalled the poor.

The laboring people are only poor because they are numerous. Numbers in
their nature imply poverty. In a fair distribution among a vast
multitude none can have much. That class of dependent pensioners called
the rich is so extremely small, that, if all their throats were cut, and
a distribution made of all they consume in a year, it would not give a
bit of bread and cheese for one night's supper to those who labor, and
who in reality feed both the pensioners and themselves.

But the throats of the rich ought not to be cut, nor their magazines
plundered; because, in their persons, they are trustees for those who
labor, and their hoards are the banking-houses of these latter. Whether
they mean it or not, they do, in effect, execute their trust,--some with
more, some with less fidelity and judgment. But, on the whole, the duty
is performed, and everything returns, deducting some very trifling
commission and discount, to the place from whence it arose. When the
poor rise to destroy the rich, they act as wisely for their own purposes
as when they burn mills and throw corn into the river to make bread
cheap.

When I say that we of the people ought to be informed, inclusively I
say we ought not to be flattered: flattery is the reverse of
instruction. The _poor_ in that case would be rendered as improvident as
the rich, which would not be at all good for them.

Nothing can be so base and so wicked as the political canting language,
"the laboring _poor_." Let compassion be shown in action,--the more, the
better,--according to every man's ability; but let there be no
lamentation of their condition. It is no relief to their miserable
circumstances; it is only an insult to their miserable understandings.
It arises from a total want of charity or a total want of thought. Want
of one kind was never relieved by want of any other kind. Patience,
labor, sobriety, frugality, and religion should be recommended to them;
all the rest is downright _fraud_. It is horrible to call them "the
_once happy_ laborer."

Whether what may be called the moral or philosophical happiness of the
laborious classes is increased or not, I cannot say. The seat of that
species of happiness is in the mind; and there are few data to ascertain
the comparative state of the mind at any two periods. Philosophical
happiness is to want little. Civil or vulgar happiness is to want much
and to enjoy much.

If the happiness of the animal man (which certainly goes somewhere
towards the happiness of the rational man) be the object of our
estimate, then I assert, without the least hesitation, that the
condition of those who labor (in all descriptions of labor, and in all
gradations of labor, from the highest to the lowest inclusively) is, on
the whole, extremely meliorated, if more and better food is any standard
of melioration. They work more, it is certain; but they have the
advantage of their augmented labor: yet whether that increase of labor
be on the whole a _good_ or an _evil_ is a consideration that would lead
us a great way, and is not for my present purpose. But as to the fact of
the melioration of their diet, I shall enter into the detail of proof,
whenever I am called upon: in the mean time, the known difficulty of
contenting them with anything but bread made of the finest flour and
meat of the first quality is proof sufficient.

I further assert, that, even under all the hardships of the last year,
the laboring people did, either out of their direct gains, or from
charity, (which it seems is now an insult to them,) in fact, fare better
than they did in seasons of common plenty, fifty or sixty years ago,--or
even at the period of my English observation, which is about forty-four
years. I even assert that full as many in that class as ever were known
to do it before continued to save money; and this I can prove, so far as
my own information and experience extend.

It is not true that the rate of wages has not increased with the nominal
price of provisions. I allow, it has not fluctuated with that
price,--nor ought it; and the squires of Norfolk had dined, when they
gave it as their opinion that it might or ought to rise and fall with
the market of provisions. The rate of wages, in truth, has no _direct_
relation to that price. Labor is a commodity like every other, and rises
or falls according to the demand. This is in the nature of things;
however, the nature of things has provided for their necessities. Wages
have been twice raised in my time; and they hear a full proportion, or
even a greater than formerly, to the medium of provision during the
last bad cycle of twenty years. They bear a full proportion to the
result of their labor. If we were wildly to attempt to force them beyond
it, the stone which we had forced up the hill would only fall back upon
them in a diminished demand, or, what indeed is the far lesser evil, an
aggravated price of all the provisions which are the result of their
manual toil.

There is an implied contract, much stronger than any instrument or
article of agreement between the laborer in any occupation and his
employer,--that the labor, so far as that labor is concerned, shall be
sufficient to pay to the employer a profit on his capital and a
compensation for his risk: in a word, that the labor shall produce an
advantage equal to the payment. Whatever is above that is a direct
_tax_; and if the amount of that tax be left to the will and pleasure of
another, it is an _arbitrary tax_.

If I understand it rightly, the tax proposed on the farming interest of
this kingdom is to be levied at what is called the discretion of
justices of peace.

The questions arising on this scheme of arbitrary taxation are these:
Whether it is better to leave all dealing, in which there is no force or
fraud, collusion or combination, entirely to the persons mutually
concerned in the matter contracted for,--or to put the contract into the
hands of those who can have none or a very remote interest in it, and
little or no knowledge of the subject.

It might be imagined that there would be very little difficulty in
solving this question: for what man, of any degree of reflection, can
think that a want of interest in any subject, closely connected with a
want of skill in it, qualifies a person to intermeddle in any the least
affair,--much less in affairs that vitally concern the agriculture of
the kingdom, the first of all its concerns, and the foundation of all
its prosperity in every other matter by which that prosperity is
produced?

The vulgar error on this subject arises from a total confusion in the
very idea of things widely different in themselves,--those of
convention, and those of judicature. When a contract is making, it is a
matter of discretion and of interest between the parties. In that
intercourse, and in what is to arise from it, the parties are the
masters. If they are not completely so, they are not free, and therefore
their contracts are void.

But this freedom has no farther extent, when the contract is made: then
their discretionary powers expire, and a new order of things takes its
origin. Then, and not till then, and on a difference between the
parties, the office of the judge commences. He cannot dictate the
contract. It is his business to see that it be _enforced_,--provided
that it is not contrary to preëxisting laws, or obtained by force or
fraud. If he is in any way a maker or regulator of the contract, in so
much he is disqualified from being a judge. But this sort of confused
distribution of administrative and judicial characters (of which we have
already as much as is sufficient, and a little more) is not the only
perplexity of notions and passions which trouble us in the present hour.

What is doing supposes, or pretends, that the farmer and the laborer
have opposite interests,--that the farmer oppresses the laborer,--and
that a gentleman, called a justice of peace, is the protector of the
latter, and a control and restraint on the former; and this is a point
I wish to examine in a manner a good deal different from that in which
gentlemen proceed, who confide more in their abilities than is fit, and
suppose them capable of more than any natural abilities, fed with no
other than the provender furnished by their own private speculations,
can accomplish. Legislative acts attempting to regulate this part of
economy do, at least as much as any other, require the exactest detail
of circumstances, guided by the surest general principles that are
necessary to direct experiment and inquiry, in order again from those
details to elicit principles, firm and luminous general principles, to
direct a practical legislative proceeding.

First, then, I deny that it is in this case, as in any other, of
necessary implication that contracting parties should originally have
had different interests. By accident it may be so, undoubtedly, at the
outset: but then the contract is of the nature of a compromise; and
compromise is founded on circumstances that suppose it the interest of
the parties to be reconciled in some medium. The principle of compromise
adopted, of consequence the interests cease to be different.

But in the case of the farmer and the laborer, their interests are
always the same, and it is absolutely impossible that their free
contracts can be onerous to either party. It is the interest of the
farmer that his work should be done with effect and celerity; and that
cannot be, unless the laborer is well fed, and otherwise found with such
necessaries of animal life, according to its habitudes, as may keep the
body in full force, and the mind gay and cheerful. For of all the
instruments of his trade, the labor of man (what the ancient writers
have called the _instrumentum vocale_) is that on which he is most to
rely for the repayment of his capital. The other two, the _semivocale_
in the ancient classification, that is, the working stock of cattle, and
the _instrumentum mutum_, such as carts, ploughs, spades, and so forth,
though not all inconsiderable in themselves, are very much inferior in
utility or in expense, and, without a given portion of the first, are
nothing at all. For, in all things whatever, the mind is the most
valuable and the most important; and in this scale the whole of
agriculture is in a natural and just order: the beast is as an informing
principle to the plough and cart; the laborer is as reason to the beast;
and the farmer is as a thinking and presiding principle to the laborer.
An attempt to break this chain of subordination in any part is equally
absurd; but the absurdity is the most mischievous, in practical
operation, where it is the most easy,--that is, where it is the most
subject to an erroneous judgment.

It is plainly more the farmer's interest that his men should thrive than
that his horses should be well fed, sleek, plump, and fit for use, or
than that his wagon and ploughs should be strong, in good repair, and
fit for service.

On the other hand, if the farmer ceases to profit of the laborer, and
that his capital is not continually manured and fructified, it is
impossible that he should continue that abundant nutriment and clothing
and lodging proper for the protection of the instruments he employs.

It is therefore the first and fundamental interest of the laborer, that
the farmer should have a full incoming profit on the product of his
labor. The proposition is self-evident; and nothing but the malignity,
perverseness, and ill-governed passions of mankind, and particularly the
envy they bear to each other's prosperity, could prevent their seeing
and acknowledging it, with thankfulness to the benign and wise Disposer
of all things, who obliges men, whether they will or not, in pursuing
their own selfish interests, to connect the general good with their own
individual success.

But who are to judge what that profit and advantage ought to be?
Certainly no authority on earth. It is a matter of convention, dictated
by the reciprocal conveniences of the parties, and indeed by their
reciprocal necessities.--But if the farmer is excessively
avaricious?--Why, so much the better: the more he desires to increase
his gains, the more interested is he in the good condition of those upon
whose labor his gains must principally depend.

I shall be told by the zealots of the sect of regulation, that this may
be true, and may be safely committed to the convention of the farmer and
the laborer, when the latter is in the prime of his youth, and at the
time of his health and vigor, and in ordinary times of abundance. But in
calamitous seasons, under accidental illness, in declining life, and
with the pressure of a numerous offspring, the future nourishers of the
community, but the present drains and blood-suckers of those who produce
them, what is to be done? When a man cannot live and maintain his family
by the natural hire of his labor, ought it not to be raised by
authority?

On this head I must be allowed to submit what my opinions have ever
been, and somewhat at large.

And, first, I premise that labor is, as I have already intimated, a
commodity, and, as such, an article of trade. If I am right in this
notion, then labor must be subject to all the laws and principles of
trade, and not to regulations foreign to them, and that may be totally
inconsistent with those principles and those laws. When any commodity is
carried to market, it is not the necessity of the vendor, but the
necessity of the purchaser, that raises the price. The extreme want of
the seller has rather (by the nature of things with which we shall in
vain contend) the direct contrary operation. If the goods at market are
beyond the demand, they fall in their value; if below it, they rise. The
impossibility of the subsistence of a man who carries his labor to a
market is totally beside the question, in this way of viewing it. The
only question is, What is it worth to the buyer?

But if authority comes in and forces the buyer to a price, what is this
in the case (say) of a farmer who buys the labor of ten or twelve
laboring men, and three or four handicrafts,--what is it but to make an
arbitrary division of his property among them?

The whole of his gains (I say it with the most certain conviction) never
do amount anything like in value to what he pays to his laborers and
artificers; so that a very small advance upon what _one_ man pays to
_many_ may absorb the whole of what he possesses, and amount to an
actual partition of all his substance among them. A perfect equality
will, indeed, be produced,--that is to say, equal want, equal
wretchedness, equal beggary, and, on the part of the partitioners, a
woful, helpless, and desperate disappointment. Such is the event of all
compulsory equalizations. They pull down what is above; they never raise
what is below; and they depress high and low together beneath the level
of what was originally the lowest.

If a commodity is raised by authority above what it will yield with a
profit to the buyer, that commodity will be the less dealt in. If a
second blundering interposition be used to correct the blunder of the
first and an attempt is made to force the purchase of the commodity, (of
labor, for instance,) the one of these two things must happen: either
that the forced buyer is ruined, or the price of the product of the
labor in that proportion is raised. Then the wheel turns round, and the
evil complained of falls with aggravated weight on the complainant. The
price of corn, which is the result of the expense of all the operations
of husbandry taken together, and for some time continued, will rise on
the laborer, considered as a consumer. The very best will be, that he
remains where he was. But if the price of the corn should not compensate
the price of labor, what is far more to be feared, the most serious
evil, the very destruction of agriculture itself, is to be apprehended.

Nothing is such an enemy to accuracy of judgment as a coarse
discrimination, a want of such classification and distribution as the
subject admits of. Increase the rate of wages to the laborer, say the
regulators,--as if labor was but one thing, and of one value. But this
very broad, generic term, _labor_, admits, at least, of two or three
specific descriptions: and these will suffice, at least, to let
gentlemen discern a little the necessity of proceeding with caution in
their coercive guidance of those whose existence depends upon the
observance of still nicer distinctions and subdivisions than commonly
they resort to in forming their judgments on this very enlarged part of
economy.

The laborers in husbandry may be divided,--First, Into those who are
able to perform the full work of a man,--that is, what can be done by a
person from twenty-one years of age to fifty. I know no husbandry work
(mowing hardly excepted) that is not equally within the power of all
persons within those ages, the more advanced fully compensating by knack
and habit what they lose in activity. Unquestionably, there is a good
deal of difference between the value of one man's labor and that of
another, from strength, dexterity, and honest application. But I am
quite sure, from my best observation, that any given five men will, in
their total, afford a proportion of labor equal to any other five within
the periods of life I have stated: that is, that among such five men
there will be one possessing all the qualifications of a good workman,
one bad, and the other three middling, and approximating to the first
and the last. So that, in so small a platoon as that of even five, you
will find the full complement of all that five men _can_ earn. Taking
five and five throughout the kingdom, they are equal: therefore an error
with regard to the equalization of their wages by those who employ five,
as farmers do at the very least, cannot be considerable.

Secondly, Those who are able to work, but not the complete task of a
day-laborer. This class is infinitely diversified, but will aptly enough
fall into principal divisions. _Men_, from the decline, which after
fifty becomes every year more sensible, to the period of debility and
decrepitude, and the maladies that precede a final dissolution. _Women_,
whose employment on husbandry is but occasional, and who differ more in
effective labor one from another than men do, on account of gestation,
nursing, and domestic management, over and above the difference they
have in common with men in advancing, in stationary, and in declining
life. _Children_, who proceed on the reverse order, growing from less to
greater utility, but with a still greater disproportion of nutriment to
labor than is found in the second of those subdivisions: as is visible
to those who will give themselves the trouble of examining into the
interior economy of a poor-house.

This inferior classification is introduced to show that laws prescribing
or magistrates exercising a very stiff and often inapplicable rule, or a
blind and rash discretion, never can provide the just proportions
between earning and salary, on the one hand, and nutriment on the other:
whereas interest, habit, and the tacit convention that arise from a
thousand nameless circumstances produce a _tact_ that regulates without
difficulty what laws and magistrates cannot regulate at all. The first
class of labor wants nothing to equalize it; it equalizes itself. The
second and third are not capable of any equalization.

But what if the rate of hire to the laborer comes far short of his
necessary subsistence, and the calamity of the time is so great as to
threaten actual famine? Is the poor laborer to be abandoned to the
flinty heart and griping hand of base self-interest, supported by the
sword of law, especially when there is reason to suppose that the very
avarice of farmers themselves has concurred with the errors of
government to bring famine on the land?

In that case, my opinion is this: Whenever it happens that a man can
claim nothing according to the rules of commerce and the principles of
justice, he passes out of that department, and comes within the
jurisdiction of mercy. In that province the magistrate has nothing at
all to do; his interference is a violation of the property which it is
his office to protect. Without all doubt, charity to the poor is a
direct and obligatory duty upon all Christians, next in order after the
payment of debts, full as strong, and by Nature made infinitely more
delightful to us Pufendorf, and other casuists, do not, I think,
denominate it quite properly, when they call it a duty of imperfect
obligation. But the manner, mode, time, choice of objects, and
proportion are left to private discretion; and perhaps for that very
reason it is performed with the greater satisfaction, because the
discharge of it has more the appearance of freedom,--recommending us
besides very specially to the Divine favor, as the exercise of a virtue
most suitable to a being sensible of its own infirmity.

The cry of the people in cities and towns, though unfortunately (from a
fear of their multitude and combination) the most regarded, ought, in
_fact_, to be the _least_ attended to, upon this subject: for citizens
are in a state of utter ignorance of the means by which they are to be
fed, and they contribute little or nothing, except in an infinitely
circuitous manner, to their own maintenance. They are truly _fruges
consumere nati_. They are to be heard with great respect and attention
upon matters within their province,--that is, on trades and
manufactures; but on anything that relates to agriculture they are to be
listened to with the same _reverence_ which we pay to the dogmas of
other ignorant and presumptuous men.

If any one were to tell them that they were to give in an account of all
the stock in their shops,--that attempts would be made to limit their
profits, or raise the price of the laboring manufacturers upon them, or
recommend to government, out of a capital from the public revenues, to
set up a shop of the same commodities, in order to rival them, and keep,
them to reasonable dealing,--they would very soon see the impudence,
injustice, and oppression of such a course. They would not be mistaken:
but they are of opinion that agriculture is to be subject to other laws,
and to be governed by other principles.

A greater and more ruinous mistake cannot be fallen into than that the
trades of agriculture and grazing can be conducted upon any other than
the common principles of commerce: namely, that the producer should be
permitted, and even expected, to look to all possible profit which
without fraud or violence he can make; to turn plenty or scarcity to the
best advantage he can; to keep back or to bring forward his commodities
at his pleasure; to account to no one for his stock or for his gain. On
any other terms he is the slave of the consumer: and that he should be
so is of no benefit to the consumer. No slave was ever so beneficial to
the master as a freeman that deals with him on an equal footing by
convention, formed on the rules and principles of contending interests
and compromised advantages. The consumer, if he were suffered, would in
the end always be the dupe of his own tyranny and injustice. The landed
gentleman is never to forget that the farmer is his representative.

It is a perilous thing to try experiments on the farmer. The farmer's
capital (except in a few persons and in a very few places) is far more
feeble than commonly is imagined. The trade is a very poor trade; it is
subject to great risks and losses. The capital, such as it is, is turned
but once in the year; in some branches it requires three years before
the money is paid: I believe never less than three in the turnip and
grass-land course, which is the prevalent course on the more or less
fertile sandy and gravelly loams,--and these compose the soil in the
south and southeast of England, the best adapted, and perhaps the only
ones that are adapted, to the turnip husbandry.

It is very rare that the most prosperous farmer, counting the value of
his quick and dead stock, the interest of the money he turns, together
with his own wages as a bailiff or overseer, ever does make twelve or
fifteen per centum by the year on his capital. I speak of the
prosperous. In most of the parts of England which have fallen within my
observation I have rarely known a farmer, who to his own trade has not
added some other employment or traffic, that, after a course of the most
unremitting parsimony and labor, (such for the greater part is theirs,)
and persevering in his business for a long course of years, died worth
more than paid his debts, leaving his posterity to continue in nearly
the same equal conflict between industry and want, in which the last
predecessor, and a long line of predecessors before him, lived and died.

Observe that I speak of the generality of farmers, who have not more
than from one hundred and fifty to three or four hundred acres. There
are few in this part of the country within the former or much beyond the
latter extent. Unquestionably in other places there are much larger.
But I am convinced, whatever part of England be the theatre of his
operations, a farmer who cultivates twelve hundred acres, which I
consider as a large farm, though I know there are larger, cannot proceed
with any degree of safety and effect with a smaller capital than ten
thousand pounds, and that he cannot, in the ordinary course of culture,
make more upon that great capital of ten thousand pounds than twelve
hundred a year.

As to the weaker capitals, an easy judgment may be formed by what very
small errors they may be farther attenuated, enervated, rendered
unproductive, and perhaps totally destroyed.

This constant precariousness and ultimate moderate limits of a farmer's
fortune, on the strongest capital, I press, not only on account of the
hazardous speculations of the times, but because the excellent and most
useful works of my friend, Mr. Arthur Young, tend to propagate that
error (such I am very certain it is) of the largeness of a farmer's
profits. It is not that his account of the produce does often greatly
exceed, but he by no means makes the proper allowance for accidents and
losses. I might enter into a convincing detail, if other more
troublesome and more necessary details were not before me.

This proposed discretionary tax on labor militates with the
recommendations of the Board of Agriculture: they recommend a general
use of the drill culture. I agree with the Board, that, where the soil
is not excessively heavy, or incumbered with large loose stones, (which,
however, is the case with much otherwise good land,) that course is the
best and most productive,--provided that the most accurate eye, the most
vigilant superintendence, the most prompt activity, which has no such
day as to-morrow in its calendar, the most steady foresight and
predisposing order to have everybody and everything ready in its place,
and prepared to take advantage of the fortunate, fugitive moment, in
this coquetting climate of ours,--provided, I say, all these combine to
speed the plough, I admit its superiority over the old and general
methods. But under procrastinating, improvident, ordinary husbandmen,
who may neglect or let slip the few opportunities of sweetening and
purifying their ground with perpetually renovated toil and undissipated
attention, nothing, when tried to any extent, can be worse or more
dangerous: the farm may be ruined, instead of having the soil enriched
and sweetened by it.

But the excellence of the method on a proper soil, and conducted by
husbandmen, of whom there are few, being readily granted, how, and on
what conditions, is this culture obtained? Why, by a very great increase
of labor: by an augmentation of the third part, at least, of the
hand-labor, to say nothing of the horses and machinery employed in
ordinary tillage. Now every man must be sensible how little becoming the
gravity of legislature it is to encourage a board which recommends to
us, and upon very weighty reasons unquestionably, an enlargement of the
capital we employ in the operations of the hand, and then to pass an act
which taxes that manual labor, already at a very high rate,--thus
compelling us to diminish the quantity of labor which in the vulgar
course we actually employ.

What is true of the farmer is equally true of the middle-man,--whether
the middle-man acts as factor, jobber, salesman, or speculator, in the
markets of grain. These traders are to be left to their free course;
and the more they make, and the richer they are, and the more largely
they deal, the better both for the farmer and consumer, between whom
they form a natural and most useful link of connection,--though by the
machinations of the old evil counsellor, _Envy_, they are hated and
maligned by both parties.

I hear that middle-men are accused of monopoly. Without question, the
monopoly of authority is, in every instance and in every degree, an
evil; but the monopoly of capital is the contrary. It is a great
benefit, and a benefit particularly to the poor. A tradesman who has but
a hundred pound capital, which (say) he can turn but once a year, cannot
live upon a _profit_ of ten per cent, because he cannot live upon ten
pounds a year; but a man of ten thousand pounds capital can live and
thrive upon five per cent profit in the year, because he has five
hundred pounds a year. The same proportion holds in turning it twice or
thrice. These principles are plain and simple; and it is not our
ignorance, so much as the levity, the envy, and the malignity of our
nature, that hinders us from perceiving and yielding to them: but we are
not to suffer our vices to usurp the place of our judgment.

The balance between consumption and production makes price. The market
settles, and alone can settle, that price. Market is the meeting and
conference of the _consumer_ and _producer_, when they mutually discover
each other's wants. Nobody, I believe, has observed with any reflection
what market is, without being astonished at the truth, the correctness,
the celerity, the general equity, with which the balance of wants is
settled. They who wish the destruction of that balance, and would fain
by arbitrary regulation decree that defective production should not be
compensated by increased price, directly lay their _axe_ to the root of
production itself. They may, even in one year of such false policy, do
mischiefs incalculable; because the trade of a farmer is, as I have
before explained, one of the most precarious in its advantages, the most
liable to losses, and the least profitable of any that is carried on. It
requires ten times more of labor, of vigilance, of attention, of skill,
and, let me add, of good fortune also, to carry on the business of a
farmer with success, than what belongs to any other trade.

Seeing things in this light, I am far from presuming to censure the late
circular instruction of Council to lord-lieutenants, but I confess I do
not clearly discern its object. I am greatly afraid that the inquiry
will raise some alarm, as a measure leading to the French system of
putting corn into requisition. For that was preceded by an inquisition
somewhat similar in its principle, though, according to their mode,
their principles are full of that violence which _here_ is not much to
be feared. It goes on a principle directly opposite to mine: it presumes
that the market is no fair _test_ of plenty or scarcity. It raises a
suspicion, which may affect the tranquillity of the public mind, "that
the farmer keeps back, and takes unfair advantages by delay"; on the
part of the dealer, it gives rise obviously to a thousand nefarious
speculations.

In case the return should on the whole prove favorable, is it meant to
ground a measure for encouraging exportation and checking the import of
corn? If it is not, what end can it answer? And I believe it is not.

This opinion may be fortified by a report gone abroad, that intentions
are entertained of erecting public granaries, and that this inquiry is
to give government an advantage in its purchases.

I hear that such a measure has been proposed, and is under deliberation:
that is, for government to set up a granary in every market-town, at the
expense of the state, in order to extinguish the dealer, and to subject
the farmer to the consumer, by securing corn to the latter at a certain
and steady price.

If such a scheme is adopted, I should not like to answer for the safety
of the granary, of the agents, or of the town itself in which the
granary was erected: the first storm of popular frenzy would fall upon
that granary.

So far in a political light.

In an economical light, I must observe that the construction of such
granaries throughout the kingdom would be at an expense beyond all
calculation. The keeping them up would be at a great charge. The
management and attendance would require an army of agents,
store-keepers, clerks, and servants. The capital to be employed in the
purchase of grain would be enormous. The waste, decay, and corruption
would be a dreadful drawback on the whole dealing; and the
dissatisfaction of the people, at having decayed, tainted, or corrupted
corn sold to them, as must be the case, would be serious.

This climate (whatever others may be) is not favorable to granaries,
where wheat is to be kept for any time. The best, and indeed the only
good granary, is the rick-yard of the farmer, where the corn is
preserved in its own straw, sweet, clean, wholesome, free from vermin
and from insects, and comparatively at a trifle of expense. This, and
the barn, enjoying many of the same advantages, have been the sole
granaries of England from the foundation of its agriculture to this day.
All this is done at the expense of the undertaker, and at his sole risk.
He contributes to government, he receives nothing from it but
protection, and to this he has a _claim_.

The moment that government appears at market, all the principles of
market will be subverted. I don't know whether the farmer will suffer by
it, as long as there is a tolerable market of competition; but I am
sure, that, in the first place, the trading government will speedily
become a bankrupt, and the consumer in the end will suffer. If
government makes all its purchases at once, it will instantly raise the
market upon itself. If it makes them by degrees, it must follow the
course of the market. If it follows the course of the market, it will
produce no effect, and the consumer may as well buy as he wants;
therefore all the expense is incurred gratis.

But if the object of this scheme should be, what I suspect it is, to
destroy the dealer, commonly called the middle-man, and by incurring a
voluntary loss to carry the baker to deal with government, I am to tell
them that they must set up another trade, that of a miller or a
meal-man, attended with a new train of expenses and risks. If in both
these trades they should succeed, so as to exclude those who trade on
natural and private capitals, then they will have a monopoly in their
hands, which, under the appearance of a monopoly of capital, will, in
reality, be a monopoly of authority, and will ruin whatever it touches.
The agriculture of the kingdom cannot stand before it.

A little place like Geneva, of not more than from twenty-five to thirty
thousand inhabitants,--which has no territory, or next to none,--which
depends for its existence on the good-will of three neighboring powers,
and is of course continually in the state of something like a _siege_,
or in the speculation of it,--might find some resource in state
granaries, and some revenue from the monopoly of what was sold to the
keepers of public-houses. This is a policy for a state too small for
agriculture. It is not (for instance) fit for so great a country as the
Pope possesses,--where, however, it is adopted and pursued in a greater
extent, and with more strictness. Certain of the Pope's territories,
from whence the city of Rome is supplied, being obliged to furnish Rome
and the granaries of his Holiness with corn at a certain price, that
part of the Papal territories is utterly ruined. That ruin may be traced
with certainty to this sole cause; and it appears indubitably by a
comparison of their state and condition with that of the other part of
the ecclesiastical dominions, not subjected to the same regulations,
which are in circumstances highly flourishing.

The reformation of this evil system is in a manner impracticable. For,
first, it does keep bread and all other provisions equally subject to
the chamber of supply, at a pretty reasonable and regular price, in the
city of Rome. This preserves quiet among the numerous poor, idle, and
naturally mutinous people of a very great capital. But the quiet of the
town is purchased by the ruin of the country and the ultimate
wretchedness of both. The next cause which renders this evil incurable
is the jobs which have grown out of it, and which, in spite of all
precautions, would grow out of such things even under governments far
more potent than the feeble authority of the Pope.

This example of Rome, which has been derived from the most ancient
times, and the most flourishing period of the Roman Empire, (but not of
the Roman agriculture,) may serve as a great caution to all governments
not to attempt to feed the people out of the hands of the magistrates.
If once they are habituated to it, though but for one half-year, they
will never be satisfied to have it otherwise. And having looked to
government for bread, on the very first scarcity they will turn and bite
the hand that fed them. To avoid that _evil_, government will redouble
the causes of it; and then it will become inveterate and incurable.

I beseech the government (which I take in the largest sense of the word,
comprehending the two Houses of Parliament) seriously to consider that
years of scarcity or plenty do not come alternately or at short
intervals, but in pretty long cycles and irregularly, and consequently
that we cannot assure ourselves, if we take a wrong measure, from the
temporary necessities of one season, but that the next, and probably
more, will drive us to the continuance of it; so that, in my opinion,
there is no way of preventing this evil, which goes to the destruction
of all our agriculture, and of that part of our internal commerce which
touches our agriculture the most nearly, as well as the safety and very
being of government, but manfully to resist the very first idea,
speculative or practical, that it is within the competence of
government, taken as government, or even of the rich, as rich, to supply
to the poor those necessaries which it has pleased the Divine
Providence for a while to withhold from them. We, the people, ought to
be made sensible that it is not in breaking the laws of commerce, which
are the laws of Nature, and consequently the laws of God, that we are to
place our hope of softening the Divine displeasure to remove any
calamity under which we suffer or which hangs over us.

So far as to the principles of general policy.

As to the state of things which is urged as a reason to deviate from
them, these are the circumstances of the harvest of 1794 and 1795. With
regard to the harvest of 1794, in relation to the noblest grain, wheat,
it is allowed to have been somewhat short, but not excessively,--and in
quality, for the seven-and-twenty years during which I have been a
farmer, I never remember wheat to have been so good. The world were,
however, deceived in their speculations upon it,--the farmer as well as
the dealer. Accordingly the price fluctuated beyond anything I can
remember: for at one time of the year I sold my wheat at 14_l._ a load,
(I sold off all I had, as I thought this was a reasonable price,) when
at the end of the season, if I had then had any to sell, I might have
got thirty guineas for the same sort of grain. I sold all that I had, as
I said, at a comparatively low price, because I thought it a good price,
compared with what I thought the general produce of the harvest; but
when I came to consider what my own _total_ was, I found that the
quantity had not answered my expectation. It must be remembered that
this year of produce, (the year 1794,) short, but excellent, followed a
year which was not extraordinary in production, nor of a superior
quality, and left but little in store. At first, this was not felt,
because the harvest came in unusually early,--earlier than common by a
full month.

The winter, at the end of 1794 and beginning of 1795, was more than
usually unfavorable both to corn and grass, owing to the sudden
relaxation of very rigorous frosts, followed by rains, which were again
rapidly succeeded by frosts of still greater rigor than the first.

Much wheat was utterly destroyed. The clover-grass suffered in many
places. What I never observed before, the rye-grass, or coarse bent,
suffered more than the clover. Even the meadow-grass in some places was
killed to the very roots. In the spring appearances were better than we
expected. All the early sown grain recovered itself, and came up with
great vigor; but that which was late sown was feeble, and did not
promise to resist any blights in the spring, which, however, with all
its unpleasant vicissitudes, passed off very well; and nothing looked
better than the wheat at the time of blooming;--but at that most
critical time of all, a cold, dry east wind, attended with very sharp
frosts, longer and stronger than I recollect at that time of year,
destroyed the flowers, and withered up, in an astonishing manner, the
whole side of the ear next to the wind. At that time I brought to town
some of the ears, for the purpose of showing to my friends the operation
of those unnatural frosts, and according to their extent I predicted a
great scarcity. But such is the pleasure of agreeable prospects, that my
opinion was little regarded.

On threshing, I found things as I expected,--the ears not filled, some
of the capsules quite empty, and several others containing only
withered, hungry grain, inferior to the appearance of rye. My best ears
and grain were not fine; never had I grain of so low a quality: yet I
sold one load for 21_l._ At the same time I bought my seed wheat (it was
excellent) at 23_l._ Since then the price has risen, and I have sold
about two load of the same sort at 23_l._ Such was the state of the
market when I left home last Monday. Little remains in my barn. I hope
some in the rick may be better, since it was earlier sown, as well as I
can recollect. Some of my neighbors have better, some quite as bad, or
even worse. I suspect it will be found, that, wherever the blighting
wind and those frosts at blooming-time have prevailed, the produce of
the wheat crop will turn out very indifferent. Those parts which have
escaped will, I can hardly doubt, have a reasonable produce.

As to the other grains, it is to be observed, as the wheat ripened very
late, (on account, I conceive, of the blights,) the barley got the start
of it, and was ripe first. The crop was with me, and wherever my inquiry
could reach, excellent; in some places far superior to mine.

The clover, which came up with the barley, was the finest I remember to
have seen.

The turnips of this year are generally good.

The clover sown last year, where not totally destroyed, gave two good
crops, or one crop and a plentiful feed; and, bating the loss of the
rye-grass, I do not remember a better produce.

The meadow-grass yielded but a middling crop, and neither of the sown or
natural grass was there in any farmer's possession any remainder from
the year worth taking into account. In most places there was none at
all.

Oats with me were not in a quantity more considerable than in commonly
good seasons; but I have never known them heavier than they were in
other places. The oat was not only an heavy, but an uncommonly abundant
crop.

My ground under pease did not exceed an acre or thereabouts, but the
crop was great indeed. I believe it is throughout the country exuberant.
It is, however, to be remarked, as generally of all the grains, so
particularly of the pease, that there was not the smallest quantity in
reserve.

The demand of the year must depend solely on its own produce; and the
price of the spring corn is not to be expected to fall very soon, or at
any time very low.

Uxbridge is a great corn market. As I came through that town, I found
that at the last market-day barley was at forty shillings a quarter.
Oats there were literally none; and the inn-keeper was obliged to send
for them to London. I forgot to ask about pease. Potatoes were 5_s_. the
bushel.

In the debate on this subject in the House, I am told that a leading
member of great ability, _little conversant in these matters_, observed,
that the general uniform dearness of butcher's meat, butter, and cheese
could not be owing to a defective produce of wheat; and on this ground
insinuated a suspicion of some unfair practice on the subject, that
called for inquiry.

Unquestionably, the mere deficiency of wheat could not cause the
dearness of the other articles, which extends not only to the provisions
he mentioned, but to every other without exception.

The cause is, indeed, so very plain and obvious that the wonder is the
other way. When a properly directed inquiry is made, the gentlemen who
are amazed at the price of these commodities will find, that, when hay
is at six pound a load, as they must know it is, herbage, and for more
than one year, must be scanty; and they will conclude, that, if grass be
scarce, beef, veal, mutton, butter, milk, and cheese _must_ be dear.

But to take up the matter somewhat more in detail.--If the wheat harvest
in 1794, excellent in quality, was defective in quantity, the barley
harvest was in quality ordinary enough, and in quantity deficient. This
was soon felt in the price of malt.

Another article of produce (beans) was not at all plentiful. The crop of
pease was wholly destroyed, so that several farmers pretty early gave up
all hopes on that head, and cut the green haulm as fodder for the
cattle, then perishing for want of food in that dry and burning summer.
I myself came off better than most: I had about the fourth of a crop of
pease.

It will be recollected, that, in a manner, all the bacon and pork
consumed in this country (the far largest consumption of meat out of
towns) is, when growing, fed on grass, and on whey or skimmed milk,--and
when fatting, partly on the latter. This is the case in the dairy
countries, all of them great breeders and feeders of swine; but for the
much greater part, and in all the corn countries, they are fattened on
beans, barley-meal, and pease. When the food of the animal is scarce,
his flesh must be dear. This, one would suppose, would require no great
penetration to discover.

This failure of so very large a supply of flesh in one species naturally
throws the whole demand of the consumer on the diminished supply of all
kinds of flesh, and, indeed, on all the matters of human sustenance.
Nor, in my opinion, are we to expect a greater cheapness in that article
for this year, even though corn should grow cheaper, as it is to be
hoped it will. The store swine, from the failure of subsistence last
year, are now at an extravagant price. Pigs, at our fairs, have sold
lately for fifty shillings, which two years ago would not have brought
more than twenty.

As to sheep, none, I thought, were strangers to the general failure of
the article of turnips last year: the early having been burned, as they
came up, by the great drought and heat; the late, and those of the early
which had escaped, were destroyed by the chilling frosts of the winter
and the wet and severe weather of the spring. In many places a full
fourth of the sheep or the lambs were lost; what remained of the lambs
were poor and ill fed, the ewes having had no milk. The calves came
late, and they were generally an article the want of which was as much
to be dreaded as any other. So that article of food, formerly so
abundant in the early part of the summer, particularly in London, and
which in a great part supplied the place of mutton for near two months,
did little less than totally fail.

All the productions of the earth link in with each other. All the
sources of plenty, in all and every article, were dried or frozen up.
The scarcity was not, as gentlemen seem to suppose, in wheat only.

Another cause, and that not of inconsiderable operation, tended to
produce a scarcity in flesh provision. It is one that on many accounts
cannot be too much regretted, and the rather, as it was the sole _cause_
of a scarcity in that article which arose from the proceedings of men
themselves: I mean the stop put to the distillery.

The hogs (and that would be sufficient) which were fed with the waste
wash of that produce did not demand the fourth part of the corn used by
farmers in fattening them. The spirit was nearly so much clear gain to
the nation. It is an odd way of making flesh cheap, to stop or check the
distillery.

The distillery in itself produces an immense article of trade almost all
over the world,--to Africa, to North America, and to various parts of
Europe. It is of great use, next to food itself, to our fisheries and to
our whole navigation. A great part of the distillery was carried on by
damaged corn, unfit for bread, and by barley and malt of the lowest
quality. These things could not be more unexceptionably employed. The
domestic consumption of spirits produced, without complaints, a very
great revenue, applicable, if we pleased, in bounties, to the bringing
corn from other places, far beyond the value of that consumed in making
it, or to the encouragement of its increased production at home.

As to what is said, in a physical and moral view, against the home
consumption of spirits, experience has long since taught me very little
to respect the declamations on that subject. Whether the thunder of the
laws or the thunder of eloquence "is hurled on _gin_" always I am
thunder-proof. The alembic, in my mind, has furnished to the world a far
greater benefit and blessing than if the _opus maximum_ had been really
found by chemistry, and, like Midas, we could turn everything into gold.

Undoubtedly there may be a dangerous abuse in the excess of spirits; and
at one time I am ready to believe the abuse was great. When spirits are
cheap, the business of drunkenness is achieved with little time or
labor; but that evil I consider to be wholly done away. Observation for
the last forty years, and very particularly for the last thirty, has
furnished me with ten instances of drunkenness from other causes for one
from this. Ardent spirit is a great medicine, often to remove
distempers, much more frequently to prevent them, or to chase them away
in their beginnings. It is not nutritive in _any great_ degree. But if
not food, it greatly alleviates the want of it. It invigorates the
stomach for the digestion of poor, meagre diet, not easily alliable to
the human constitution. Wine the poor cannot touch. Beer, as applied to
many occasions, (as among seamen and fishermen, for instance,) will by
no means do the business. Let me add, what wits inspired with champagne
and claret will turn into ridicule,--it is a medicine for the mind.
Under the pressure of the cares and sorrows of our mortal condition, men
have at all times and in all countries called in some physical aid to
their moral consolations,--wine, beer, opium, brandy, or tobacco.

I consider, therefore, the stopping of the distillery, economically,
financially, commercially, medicinally, and in some degree morally too,
as a measure rather well meant than well considered. It is too precious
a sacrifice to prejudice.

Gentlemen well know whether there be a scarcity of partridges, and
whether that be an effect of hoarding and combination. All the tame race
of birds live and die as the wild do.

As to the lesser articles, they are like the greater. They have followed
the fortune of the season. Why are fowls dear? Was not this the farmer's
or jobber's fault? I sold from my yard to a jobber six young and lean
fowls for four-and-twenty shillings,--fowls for which two years ago the
same man would not have given a shilling apiece. He sold them afterwards
at Uxbridge, and they were taken to London to receive the last hand.

As to the operation of the war in causing the scarcity of provisions, I
understand that Mr. Pitt has given a particular answer to it; but I do
not think it worth powder and shot.

I do not wonder the papers are so full of this sort of matter, but I am
a little surprised it should be mentioned in Parliament. Like all great
state questions, peace and war may be discussed, and different opinions
fairly formed, on political grounds; but on a question of the present
price of provisions, when peace with the Regicides is always uppermost,
I can only say that great is the love of it.

After all, have we not reason to be thankful to the Giver of all Good?
In our history, and when "the laborer of England is said to have been
once happy," we find constantly, after certain intervals, a period of
real famine, by which a melancholy havoc was made among the human race.
The price of provisions fluctuated dreadfully, demonstrating a
deficiency very different from the worst failures of the present moment.
Never, since I have known England, have I known more than a comparative
scarcity. The price of wheat, taking a number of years together, has had
no very considerable fluctuation; nor has it risen exceedingly until
within this twelvemonth. Even now, I do not know of one man, woman, or
child that has perished from famine: fewer, if any, I believe, than in
years of plenty, when such a thing may happen by accident. This is owing
to a care and superintendence of the poor, far greater than any I
remember.

The consideration of this ought to bind us all, rich and poor together,
against those wicked writers of the newspapers who would inflame the
poor against their friends, guardians, patrons, and protectors. Not only
very few (I have observed that I know of none, though I live in a place
as poor as most) have actually died of want, but we have seen no traces
of those dreadful exterminating epidemics which, in consequence of
scanty and unwholesome food, in former times not unfrequently wasted
whole nations. Let us be saved from too much wisdom of our own, and we
shall do tolerably well.

It is one of the finest problems in legislation, and what has often
engaged my thoughts whilst I followed that profession,--What the state
ought to take upon itself to direct by the public wisdom, and what it
ought to leave, with as little interference as possible, to individual
discretion. Nothing, certainly, can be laid down on the subject that
will not admit of exceptions,--many permanent, some occasional. But the
clearest line of distinction which I could draw, whilst I had my chalk
to draw any line, was this: that the state ought to confine itself to
what regards the state or the creatures of the state: namely, the
exterior establishment of its religion; its magistracy; its revenue; its
military force by sea and land; the corporations that owe their
existence to its fiat; in a word, to everything that is _truly and
properly_ public,--to the public peace, to the public safety, to the
public order, to the public prosperity. In its preventive police it
ought to be sparing of its efforts, and to employ means, rather few,
unfrequent, and strong, than many, and frequent, and, of course, as
they multiply their puny politic race, and dwindle, small and feeble.
Statesmen who know themselves will, with the dignity which belongs to
wisdom, proceed only in this the superior orb and first mover of their
duty, steadily, vigilantly, severely, courageously: whatever remains
will, in a manner, provide for itself. But as they descend from the
state to a province, from a province to a parish, and from a parish to a
private house, they go on accelerated in their fall. They _cannot_ do
the lower duty; and in proportion as they try it, they will certainly
fail in the higher. They ought to know the different departments of
things,--what belongs to laws, and what manners alone can regulate. To
these great politicians may give a leaning, but they cannot give a law.

Our legislature has fallen into this fault, as well as other
governments: all have fallen into it more or less. The once mighty state
which was nearest to us locally, nearest to us in every way, and whose
ruins threaten to fall upon our heads, is a strong instance of this
error. I can never quote France without a foreboding sigh,--ΈΣΣΕΤΑΙ ΉΜΑΡ
Scipio said it to his recording Greek friend amidst the
flames of the great rival of his country. That state has fallen by the
hands of the parricides of their country, called the Revolutionists and
Constitutionalists of France: a species of traitors, of whose fury and
atrocious wickedness nothing in the annals of the frenzy and depravation
of mankind had before furnished an example, and of whom I can never
think or speak without a mixed sensation of disgust, of horror, and of
detestation, not easy to be expressed. These nefarious monsters
destroyed their country for what was good in it: for much good there was
in the Constitution of that noble monarchy, which, in all kinds, formed
and nourished great men, and great patterns of virtue to the world. But
though its enemies were not enemies to its faults, its faults furnished
them with means for its destruction. My dear departed friend, whose loss
is even greater to the public than to me, had often remarked, that the
leading vice of the French monarchy (which he had well studied) was in
good intention ill-directed, and a restless desire of governing too
much. The hand of authority was seen in everything and in every place.
All, therefore, that happened amiss, in the course even of domestic
affairs, was attributed to the government; and as it always happens in
this kind of officious universal interference, what began in odious
power ended always, I may say without an exception, in contemptible
imbecility. For this reason, as far as I can approve of any novelty, I
thought well of the provincial administrations. Those, if the superior
power had been severe and vigilant and vigorous, might have been of much
use politically in removing government from many invidious details. But
as everything is good or bad as it is related or combined, government
being relaxed above as it was relaxed below, and the brains of the
people growing more and more addle with every sort of visionary
speculation, the shiftings of the scene in the provincial theatres
became only preparatives to a revolution in the kingdom, and the popular
actings there only the rehearsals of the terrible drama of the Republic.

Tyranny and cruelty may make men justly wish the downfall of abused
powers, but I believe that no government ever yet perished from any
other direct cause than its own weakness. My opinion is against an
overdoing of any sort of administration, and more especially against
this most momentous of all meddling on the part of authority,--the
meddling with the subsistence of the people.



A

LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD

ON

THE ATTACKS MADE UPON MR. BURKE AND HIS PENSION, IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS,

BY

THE DUKE OF BEDFORD AND THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE,

EARLY IN THE PRESENT SESSION OF PARLIAMENT.

1796.



LETTER.


My lord,--I could hardly flatter myself with the hope that so very early
in the season I should have to acknowledge obligations to the Duke of
Bedford and to the Earl of Lauderdale. These noble persons have lost no
time in conferring upon me that sort of honor which it is alone within
their competence, and which it is certainly most congenial to their
nature and their manners, to bestow.

To be ill spoken of, in whatever language they speak, by the zealots of
the new sect in philosophy and politics, of which these noble persons
think so charitably, and of which others think so justly, to me is no
matter of uneasiness or surprise. To have incurred the displeasure of
the Duke of Orleans or the Duke of Bedford, to fall under the censure of
Citizen Brissot or of his friend the Earl of Lauderdale, I ought to
consider as proofs, not the least satisfactory, that I have produced
some part of the effect I proposed by my endeavors. I have labored hard
to earn what the noble Lords are generous enough to pay. Personal
offence I have given them none. The part they take against me is from
zeal to the cause. It is well,--it is perfectly well. I have to do
homage to their justice. I have to thank the Bedfords and the
Lauderdales for having so faithfully and so fully acquitted towards me
whatever arrear of debt was left undischarged by the Priestleys and the
Paines.

Some, perhaps, may think them executors in their own wrong: I at least
have nothing to complain of. They have gone beyond the demands of
justice. They have been (a little, perhaps, beyond their intention)
favorable to me. They have been the means of bringing out by their
invectives the handsome things which Lord Grenville has had the goodness
and condescension to say in my behalf. Retired as I am from the world,
and from all its affairs and all its pleasures, I confess it does kindle
in my nearly extinguished feelings a very vivid satisfaction to be so
attacked and so commended. It is soothing to my wounded mind to be
commended by an able, vigorous, and well-informed statesman, and at the
very moment when he stands forth, with a manliness and resolution worthy
of himself and of his cause, for the preservation of the person and
government of our sovereign, and therein for the security of the laws,
the liberties, the morals, and the lives of his people. To be in any
fair way connected with such things is indeed a distinction. No
philosophy can make me above it: no melancholy can depress me so low as
to make me wholly insensible to such an honor.

Why will they not let me remain in obscurity and inaction? Are they
apprehensive, that, if an atom of me remains, the sect has something to
fear? Must I be annihilated, lest, like old John Zisca's, my skin might
be made into a drum, to animate Europe to eternal battle against a
tyranny that threatens to overwhelm all Europe and all the human race?

My Lord, it is a subject of awful meditation. Before this of France,
the annals of all time have not furnished an instance of a _complete_
revolution. That revolution seems to have extended even to the
constitution of the mind of man. It has this of wonderful in it, that it
resembles what Lord Verulam says of the operations of Nature: It was
perfect, not only in its elements and principles, but in all its members
and its organs, from the very beginning. The moral scheme of France
furnishes the only pattern ever known which they who admire will
_instantly_ resemble. It is, indeed, an inexhaustible repertory of one
kind of examples. In my wretched condition, though hardly to be classed
with the living, I am not safe from them. They have tigers to fall upon
animated strength; they have hyenas to prey upon carcasses. The national
menagerie is collected by the first physiologists of the time; and it is
defective in no description of savage nature. They pursue even such as
me into the obscurest retreats, and haul them before their revolutionary
tribunals. Neither sex, nor age, nor the sanctuary of the tomb, is
sacred to them. They have so determined a hatred to all privileged
orders, that they deny even to the departed the sad immunities of the
grave. They are not wholly without an object. Their turpitude purveys to
their malice; and they unplumb the dead for bullets to assassinate the
living. If all revolutionists were not proof against all caution, I
should recommend it to their consideration, that no persons were ever
known in history, either sacred or profane, to vex the sepulchre, and by
their sorceries to call up the prophetic dead, with any other event than
the prediction of their own disastrous fate.--"Leave me, oh, leave me to
repose!"

In one thing I can excuse the Duke of Bedford for his attack upon me and
my mortuary pension: He cannot readily comprehend the transaction he
condemns. What I have obtained was the fruit of no bargain, the
production of no intrigue, the result of no compromise, the effect of no
solicitation. The first suggestion of it never came from me, mediately
or immediately, to his Majesty or any of his ministers. It was long
known that the instant my engagements would permit it, and before the
heaviest of all calamities had forever condemned me to obscurity and
sorrow, I had resolved on a total retreat. I had executed that design. I
was entirely out of the way of serving or of hurting any statesman or
any party, when the ministers so generously and so nobly carried into
effect the spontaneous bounty of the crown. Both descriptions have acted
as became them. When I could no longer serve them, the ministers have
considered my situation. When I could no longer hurt them, the
revolutionists have trampled on my infirmity. My gratitude, I trust, is
equal to the manner in which the benefit was conferred. It came to me,
indeed, at a time of life, and in a state of mind and body, in which no
circumstance of fortune could afford me any real pleasure. But this was
no fault in the royal donor, or in his ministers, who were pleased, in
acknowledging the merits of an invalid servant of the public, to assuage
the sorrows of a desolate old man.

It would ill become me to boast of anything. It would as ill become me,
thus called upon, to depreciate the value of a long life spent with
unexampled toil in the service of my country. Since the total body of my
services, on account of the industry which was shown in them, and the
fairness of my intentions, have obtained the acceptance of my sovereign,
it would be absurd in me to range myself on the side of the Duke of
Bedford and the Corresponding Society, or, as far as in me lies, to
permit a dispute on the rate at which the authority appointed by _our_
Constitution to estimate such things has been pleased to set them.

Loose libels ought to be passed by in silence and contempt. By me they
have been so always. I knew, that, as long as I remained in public, I
should live down the calumnies of malice and the judgments of ignorance.
If I happened to be now and then in the wrong, (as who is not?) like all
other men, I must bear the consequence of my faults and my mistakes. The
libels of the present day are just of the same stuff as the libels of
the past. But they derive an importance from the rank of the persons
they come from, and the gravity of the place where they were uttered. In
some way or other I ought to take some notice of them. To assert myself
thus traduced is not vanity or arrogance. It is a demand of justice; it
is a demonstration of gratitude. If I am unworthy, the ministers are
worse than prodigal. On that hypothesis, I perfectly agree with the Duke
of Bedford.

For whatever I have been (I am now no more) I put myself on my country.
I ought to be allowed a reasonable freedom, because I stand upon my
deliverance; and no culprit ought to plead in irons. Even in the utmost
latitude of defensive liberty, I wish to preserve all possible decorum.
Whatever it may be in the eyes of these noble persons themselves, to me
their situation calls for the most profound respect. If I should happen
to trespass a little, which I trust I shall not, let it always be
supposed that a confusion of characters may produce mistakes,--that, in
the masquerades of the grand carnival of our age, whimsical adventures
happen, odd things are said and pass off. If I should fail a single
point in the high respect I owe to those illustrious persons, I cannot
be supposed to mean the Duke of Bedford and the Earl of Lauderdale of
the House of Peers, but the Duke of Bedford and the Earl of Lauderdale
of Palace Yard,--the Dukes and Earls of Brentford. There they are on the
pavement; there they seem to come nearer to my humble level, and,
virtually at least, to have waived their high privilege.

Making this protestation, I refuse all revolutionary tribunals, where
men have been put to death for no other reason than that they had
obtained favors from the crown. I claim, not the letter, but the spirit
of the old English law,--that is, to be tried by my peers. I decline his
Grace's jurisdiction as a judge. I challenge the Duke of Bedford as a
juror to pass upon the value of my services. Whatever his natural parts
may be, I cannot recognize in his few and idle years the competence to
judge of my long and laborious life. If I can help it, he shall not be
on the inquest of my _quantum meruit_. Poor rich man! he can hardly know
anything of public industry in its exertions, or can estimate its
compensations when its work is done. I have no doubt of his Grace's
readiness in all the calculations of vulgar arithmetic; but I shrewdly
suspect that he is little studied in the theory of moral proportions,
and has never learned the rule of three in the arithmetic of policy and
state.

His Grace thinks I have obtained too much. I answer, that my exertions,
whatever they have been, were such as no hopes of pecuniary reward could
possibly excite; and no pecuniary compensation can possibly reward them.
Between money and such services, if done by abler men than I am, there
is no common principle of comparison: they are quantities
incommensurable. Money is made for the comfort and convenience of animal
life. It cannot be a reward for what mere animal life must, indeed,
sustain, but never can inspire. With submission to his Grace, I have not
had more than sufficient. As to any noble use, I trust I know how to
employ as well as he a much greater fortune than he possesses. In a more
confined application, I certainly stand in need of every kind of relief
and easement much more than he does. When I say I have not received more
than I deserve, is this the language I hold to Majesty? No! Far, very
far, from it! Before that presence I claim no merit at all. Everything
towards me is favor and bounty. One style to a gracious benefactor;
another to a proud and insulting foe.

His Grace is pleased to aggravate my guilt by charging my acceptance of
his Majesty's grant as a departure from my ideas and the spirit of my
conduct with regard to economy. If it be, my ideas of economy wore false
and ill-founded. But they are the Duke of Bedford's ideas of economy I
have contradicted, and not my own. If he means to allude to certain
bills brought in by me on a message from the throne in 1782, I tell him
that there is nothing in my conduct that can contradict either the
letter or the spirit of those acts. Does he mean the Pay-Office Act? I
take it for granted he does not. The act to which he alludes is, I
suppose, the Establishment Act. I greatly doubt whether his Grace has
ever read the one or the other. The first of these systems cost me, with
every assistance which my then situation gave me, pains incredible. I
found an opinion common through all the offices, and general in the
public at large, that it would prove impossible to reform and methodize
the office of pay-master-general. I undertook it, however; and I
succeeded in my undertaking. Whether the military service, or whether
the general economy of our finances have profited by that act, I leave
to those who are acquainted with the army and with the treasury to
judge.

An opinion full as general prevailed also, at the same time, that
nothing could be done for the regulation of the civil list
establishment. The very attempt to introduce method into it, and any
limitations to its services, was held absurd. I had not seen the man who
so much as suggested one economical principle or an economical expedient
upon that subject. Nothing but coarse amputation or coarser taxation
were then talked of, both of them without design, combination, or the
least shadow of principle. Blind and headlong zeal or factious fury were
the whole contribution brought by the most noisy, on that occasion,
towards the satisfaction of the public or the relief of the crown.

Let me tell my youthful censor, that the necessities of that time
required something very different from what others then suggested or
what his Grace now conceives. Let me inform him, that it was one of the
most critical periods in our annals.

Astronomers have supposed, that, if a certain comet, whose path
intersected the ecliptic, had met the earth in some (I forgot what)
sign, it would have whirled us along with it, in its eccentric course,
into God knows what regions of heat and cold. Had the portentous comet
of the Rights of Man, (which "from its horrid hair shakes pestilence and
war," and "with fear of change perplexes monarchs,") had that comet
crossed upon us in that internal state of England, nothing human could
have prevented our being irresistibly hurried out of the highway of
heaven into all the vices, crimes, horrors, and miseries of the French
Revolution.

Happily, France was not then Jacobinized. Her hostility was at a good
distance. We had a limb cut off, but we preserved the body: we lost our
colonies, but we kept our Constitution. There was, indeed, much
intestine heat; there was a dreadful fermentation. Wild and savage
insurrection quitted the woods, and prowled about our streets in the
name of Reform. Such was the distemper of the public mind, that there
was no madman, in his maddest ideas and maddest projects, who might not
count upon numbers to support his principles and execute his designs.

Many of the changes, by a great misnomer called Parliamentary Reforms,
went, not in the intention of all the professors and supporters of them,
undoubtedly, but went in their certain, and, in my opinion, not very
remote effect, home to the utter destruction of the Constitution of this
kingdom. Had they taken place, not France, but England, would have had
the honor of leading up the death-dance of democratic revolution. Other
projects, exactly coincident in time with those, struck at the very
existence of the kingdom under any Constitution. There are who remember
the blind fury of some and the lamentable helplessness of others; here,
a torpid confusion, from a panic fear of the danger,--there, the same
inaction, from a stupid insensibility to it; here, well-wishers to the
mischief,--there, indifferent lookers-on. At the same time, a sort of
National Convention, dubious in its nature and perilous in its example,
nosed Parliament in the very seat of its authority,--sat with a sort of
superintendence over it,--and little less than dictated to it, not only
laws, but the very form and essence of legislature itself. In Ireland
things ran in a still more eccentric course. Government was unnerved,
confounded, and in a manner suspended. Its equipoise was totally gone. I
do not mean to speak disrespectfully of Lord North. He was a man of
admirable parts, of general knowledge, of a versatile understanding
fitted for every sort of business, of infinite wit and pleasantry, of a
delightful temper, and with a mind most perfectly disinterested. But it
would be only to degrade myself by a weak adulation, and not to honor
the memory of a great man, to deny that he wanted something of the
vigilance and spirit of command that the time required. Indeed, a
darkness next to the fog of this awful day lowered over the whole
region. For a little time the helm appeared abandoned.

    Ipse diem noctemque negat discernere cœlo,
    Nec meminisse viæ mediâ Palinurus in undâ.

At that time I was connected with men of high place in the community.
They loved liberty as much as the Duke of Bedford can do; and they
understood it at least as well. Perhaps their politics, as usual, took a
tincture from their character, and they cultivated what they loved. The
liberty they pursued was a liberty inseparable from order, from virtue,
from morals, and from religion,--and was neither hypocritically nor
fanatically followed. They did not wish that liberty, in itself one of
the first of blessings, should in its perversion become the greatest
curse which could fall upon mankind. To preserve the Constitution
entire, and practically equal to all the great ends of its formation,
not in one single part, but in all its parts, was to them the first
object. Popularity and power they regarded alike. These were with them
only different means of obtaining that object, and had no preference
over each other in their minds, but as one or the other might afford a
surer or a less certain prospect of arriving at that end. It is some
consolation to me, in the cheerless gloom which darkens the evening of
my life, that with them I commenced my political career, and never for a
moment, in reality nor in appearance, for any length of time, was
separated from their good wishes and good opinion.

By what accident it matters not, nor upon what desert, but just then,
and in the midst of that hunt of obloquy which ever has pursued me with
a full cry through life, I had obtained a very considerable degree of
public confidence. I know well enough how equivocal a test this kind of
popular opinion forms of the merit that obtained it. I am no stranger to
the insecurity of its tenure. I do not boast of it. It is mentioned to
show, not how highly I prize the thing, but my right to value the use I
made of it. I endeavored to turn that short-lived advantage to myself
into a permanent benefit to my country. Far am I from detracting from
the merit of some gentlemen, out of office or in it, on that occasion.
No! It is not my way to refuse a full and heaped measure of justice to
the aids that I receive. I have through life been willing to give
everything to others,--and to reserve nothing for myself, but the inward
conscience that I had omitted no pains to discover, to animate, to
discipline, to direct the abilities of the country for its service, and
to place them in the best light to improve their age, or to adorn it.
This conscience I have. I have never suppressed any man, never checked
him for a moment in his course, by any jealousy, or by any policy. I was
always ready, to the height of my means, (and they wore always
infinitely below my desires,) to forward those abilities which
overpowered my own. He is an ill-furnished undertaker who has no
machinery but his own hands to work with. Poor in my own faculties, I
ever thought myself rich in theirs. In that period of difficulty and
danger, more especially, I consulted and sincerely coöperated with men
of all parties who seemed disposed to the same ends, or to any main part
of them. Nothing to prevent disorder was omitted: when it appeared,
nothing to subdue it was left uncounselled nor unexecuted, as far as I
could prevail. At the time I speak of, and having a momentary lead, so
aided and so encouraged, and as a feeble instrument in a mighty hand--I
do not say I saved my country; I am sure I did my country important
service. There were few, indeed, that did not at that time acknowledge
it,--and that time was thirteen years ago. It was but one voice, that no
man in the kingdom better deserved an honorable provision should be made
for him. So much for my general conduct through the whole of the
portentous crisis from 1780 to 1782, and the general sense then
entertained of that conduct by my country. But my character as a
reformer, in the particular instances which the Duke of Bedford refers
to, is so connected in principle with my opinions on the hideous changes
which have since barbarized France, and, spreading thence, threaten the
political and moral order of the whole world, that it seems to demand
something of a more detailed discussion.

My economical reforms were not, as his Grace may think, the suppression
of a paltry pension or employment, more or less. Economy in my plans
was, as it ought to be, secondary, subordinate, instrumental. I acted on
state principles. I found a great distemper in the commonwealth, and
according to the nature of the evil and of the object I treated it. The
malady was deep; it was complicated, in the causes and in the symptoms.
Throughout it was full of contra-indicants. On one hand, government,
daily growing more invidious from an apparent increase of the means of
strength, was every day growing more contemptible by real weakness. Nor
was this dissolution confined to government commonly so called. It
extended to Parliament, which was losing not a little in its dignity and
estimation by an opinion of its not acting on worthy motives. On the
other hand, the desires of the people (partly natural and partly infused
into them by art) appeared in so wild and inconsiderate a manner with
regard to the economical object, (for I set aside for a moment the
dreadful tampering with the body of the Constitution itself,) that, if
their petitions had literally been complied with, the state would have
been convulsed, and a gate would have been opened through which all
property might be sacked and ravaged. Nothing could have saved the
public from the mischiefs of the false reform but its absurdity, which
would soon have brought itself, and with it all real reform, into
discredit. This would have left a rankling wound in the hearts of the
people, who would know they had failed in the accomplishment of their
wishes, but who, like the rest of mankind in all ages, would impute the
blame to anything rather than to their own proceedings. But there were
then persons in the world who nourished complaint, and would have been
thoroughly disappointed, if the people were ever satisfied. I was not of
that humor. I wished that they _should_ be satisfied. It was my aim to
give to the people the substance of what I knew they desired, and what I
thought was right, whether they desired it or not, before it had been
modified for them into senseless petitions. I knew that there is a
manifest, marked distinction, which ill men with ill designs, or weak
men incapable of any design, will constantly be confounding,--that is, a
marked distinction between change and reformation. The former alters the
substance of the objects themselves, and gets rid of all their essential
good as well as of all the accidental evil annexed to them. Change is
novelty; and whether it is to operate any one of the effects of
reformation at all, or whether it may not contradict the very principle
upon which reformation is desired, cannot be certainly known beforehand.
Reform is not a change in the substance or in the primary modification
of the object, but a direct application of a remedy to the grievance
complained of. So far as that is removed, all is sure. It stops there;
and if it fails, the substance which underwent the operation, at the
very worst, is but where it was.

All this, in effect, I think, but am not sure, I have said elsewhere. It
cannot at this time be too often repeated, line upon line, precept upon
precept, until it comes into the currency of a proverb,--_To innovate is
not to reform_. The French revolutionists complained of everything; they
refused to reform anything; and they left nothing, no, nothing at all,
_unchanged_. The consequences are _before_ us,--not in remote history,
not in future prognostication: they are about us; they are upon us. They
shake the public security; they menace private enjoyment. They dwarf the
growth of the young; they break the quiet of the old. If we travel, they
stop our way. They infest us in town; they pursue us to the country. Our
business is interrupted, our repose is troubled, our pleasures are
saddened, our very studies are poisoned and perverted, and knowledge is
rendered worse than ignorance, by the enormous evils of this dreadful
innovation. The Revolution harpies of France, sprung from Night and
Hell, or from that chaotic Anarchy which generates equivocally "all
monstrous, all prodigious things," cuckoo-like, adulterously lay their
eggs, and brood over, and hatch them in the nest of every neighboring
state. These obscene harpies, who deck themselves in I know not what
divine attributes, but who in reality are foul and ravenous birds of
prey, (both mothers and daughters,) flutter over our heads, and souse
down upon our tables, and leave nothing unrent, unrifled, unravaged, or
unpolluted with the slime of their filthy offal.[15]

If his Grace can contemplate the result of this complete innovation, or,
as some friends of his will call it, _reform_, in the whole body of its
solidity and compound mass, at which, as Hamlet says, the face of heaven
glows with horror and indignation, and which, in truth, makes every
reflecting mind and every feeling heart perfectly thought-sick, without
a thorough abhorrence of everything they say and everything they do, I
am amazed at the morbid strength or the natural infirmity of his mind.

It was, then, not my love, but my hatred to innovation, that produced my
plan of reform. Without troubling myself with the exactness of the
logical diagram, I considered them as things substantially opposite. It
was to prevent that evil, that I proposed the measures which his Grace
is pleased, and I am not sorry he is pleased, to recall to my
recollection. I had (what I hope that noble Duke will remember in all
his operations) a state to preserve, as well as a state to reform. I had
a people to gratify, but not to inflame or to mislead. I do not claim
half the credit for what I did as for what I prevented from being done.
In that situation of the public mind, I did not undertake, as was then
proposed, to new-model the House of Commons or the House of Lords, or
to change the authority under which any officer of the crown acted, who
was suffered at all to exist. Crown, lords, commons, judicial system,
system of administration, existed as they had existed before, and in the
mode and manner in which they had always existed. My measures were, what
I then truly stated them to the House to be, in their intent, healing
and mediatorial. A complaint was made of too much influence in the House
of Commons: I reduced it in both Houses; and I gave my reasons, article
by article, for every reduction, and showed why I thought it safe for
the service of the state. I heaved the lead every inch of way I made. A
disposition to expense was complained of: to that I opposed, not mere
retrenchment, but a system of economy, which would make a random
expense, without plan or foresight, in future, not easily practicable. I
proceeded upon principles of research to put me in possession of my
matter, on principles of method to regulate it, and on principles in the
human mind and in civil affairs to secure and perpetuate the operation.
I conceived nothing arbitrarily, nor proposed anything to be done by the
will and pleasure of others or my own,--but by reason, and by reason
only. I have ever abhorred, since the first dawn of my understanding to
this its obscure twilight, all the operations of opinion, fancy,
inclination, and will, in the affairs of government, where only a
sovereign reason, paramount to all forms of legislation and
administration, should dictate. Government is made for the very purpose
of opposing that reason to will and to caprice, in the reformers or in
the reformed, in the governors or in the governed, in kings, in senates,
or in people.

On a careful review, therefore, and analysis of all the component parts
of the civil list, and on weighing them against each other, in order to
make as much as possible all of them a subject of estimate, (the
foundation and corner-stone of all regular, provident economy,) it
appeared to me evident that this was impracticable, whilst that part
called the pension list was totally discretionary in its amount. For
this reason, and for this only, I proposed to reduce it, both in its
gross quantity and in its larger individual proportions, to a certainty;
lest, if it were left without a _general_ limit, it might eat up the
civil list service,--if suffered to be granted in portions too great for
the fund, it might defeat its own end, and, by unlimited allowances to
some, it might disable the crown in means of providing for others. The
pension list was to be kept as a sacred fund; but it could not be kept
as a constant, open fund, sufficient for growing demands, if some
demands would wholly devour it. The tenor of the act will show that it
regarded the civil list _only_, the reduction of which to some sort of
estimate was my great object.

No other of the crown funds did I meddle with, because they had not the
same relations. This of the four and a half per cents does his Grace
imagine had escaped me, or had escaped all the men of business who acted
with me in those regulations? I knew that such a fund existed, and that
pensions had been always granted on it, before his Grace was born. This
fund was full in my eye. It was full in the eyes of those who worked
with me. It was left on principle. On principle I did what was then
done; and on principle what was left undone was omitted. I did not dare
to rob the nation of all funds to reward merit. If I pressed this point
too close, I acted contrary to the avowed principles on which I went.
Gentlemen are very fond of quoting me; but if any one thinks it worth
his while to know the rules that guided me in my plan of reform, he will
read my printed speech on that subject, at least what is contained from
page 230 to page 241 in the second volume of the collection[16] which a
friend has given himself the trouble to make of my publications. Be this
as it may, these two bills (though achieved with the greatest labor, and
management of every sort, both within and without the House) were only a
part, and but a small part, of a very large system, comprehending all
the objects I stated in opening my proposition, and, indeed, many more,
which I just hinted at in my speech to the electors of Bristol, when I
was put out of that representation. All these, in some state or other of
forwardness, I have long had by me.

But do I justify his Majesty's grace on these grounds? I think them the
least of my services. The time gave them an occasional value. What I
have done in the way of political economy was far from confined to this
body of measures. I did not come into Parliament to con my lesson. I had
earned my pension before I set my foot in St. Stephen's Chapel. I was
prepared and disciplined to this political warfare. The first session I
sat in Parliament, I found it necessary to analyze the whole commercial,
financial, constitutional, and foreign interests of Great Britain and
its empire. A great deal was then done; and more, far more, would have
been done, if more had been permitted by events. Then, in the vigor of
my manhood, my constitution sunk under my labor. Had I then died, (and
I seemed to myself very near death,) I had then earned for those who
belonged to me more than the Duke of Bedford's ideas of service are of
power to estimate. But, in truth, these services I am called to account
for are not those on which I value myself the most. If I were to call
for a reward, (which I have never done,) it should be for those in which
for fourteen years without intermission I showed the most industry and
had the least success: I mean in the affairs of India. They are those on
which I value myself the most: most for the importance, most for the
labor, most for the judgment, most for constancy and perseverance in the
pursuit. Others may value them most for the _intention_. In that,
surely, they are not mistaken.

Does his Grace think that they who advised the crown to make my retreat
easy considered me only as an economist? That, well understood, however,
is a good deal. If I had not deemed it of some value, I should not have
made political economy an object of my humble studies from my very early
youth to near the end of my service in Parliament, even before (at least
to any knowledge of mine) it had employed the thoughts of speculative
men in other parts of Europe. At that time it was still in its infancy
in England, where, in the last century, it had its origin. Great and
learned men thought my studies were not wholly thrown away, and deigned
to communicate with me now and then on some particulars of their
immortal works. Something of these studies may appear incidentally in
some of the earliest things I published. The House has been witness to
their effect, and has profited of them, more or less, for above
eight-and-twenty years.

To their estimate I leave the matter. I was not, like his Grace of
Bedford, swaddled and rocked and dandled into a legislator: "_Nitor in
adversum_" is the motto for a man like me. I possessed not one of the
qualities nor cultivated one of the arts that recommend men to the favor
and protection of the great. I was not made for a minion or a tool. As
little did I follow the trade of winning the hearts by imposing on the
understandings of the people. At every step of my progress in life, (for
in every step was I traversed and opposed,) and at every turnpike I met,
I was obliged to show my passport, and again and again to prove my sole
title to the honor of being useful to my country, by a proof that I was
not wholly unacquainted with its laws and the whole system of its
interests both abroad and at home. Otherwise, no rank, no toleration
even, for me. I had no arts but manly arts. On them I have stood, and,
please God, in spite of the Duke of Bedford and the Earl of Lauderdale,
to the last gasp will I stand.

Had his Grace condescended to inquire concerning the person whom he has
not thought it below him to reproach, he might have found, that, in the
whole course of my life, I have never, on any pretence of economy, or on
any other pretence, so much as in a single instance, stood between any
man and his reward of service or his encouragement in useful talent and
pursuit, from the highest of those services and pursuits to the lowest.
On the contrary, I have on an hundred occasions exerted myself with
singular zeal to forward every man's even tolerable pretensions. I have
more than once had good-natured reprehensions from my friends for
carrying the matter to something bordering on abuse. This line of
conduct, whatever its merits might be, was partly owing to natural
disposition, but I think full as much to reason and principle. I looked
on the consideration of public service or public ornament to be real and
very justice; and I ever held a scanty and penurious justice to partake
of the nature of a wrong. I held it to be, in its consequences, the
worst economy in the world. In saving money I soon can count up all the
good I do; but when by a cold penury I blast the abilities of a nation,
and stunt the growth of its active energies, the ill I may do is beyond
all calculation. Whether it be too much or too little, whatever I have
done has been general and systematic. I have never entered into those
trifling vexations and oppressive details that have been falsely and
most ridiculously laid to my charge.

Did I blame the pensions given to Mr. Barré and Mr. Dunning between the
proposition and execution of my plan? No! surely, no! Those pensions
were within my principles. I assert it, those gentlemen deserved their
pensions, their titles,--all they had; and if more they had, I should
have been but pleased the more. They were men of talents; they were men
of service. I put the profession of the law out of the question in one
of them. It is a service that rewards itself. But their _public
service_, though from their abilities unquestionably of more value than
mine, in its quantity and in its duration was not to be mentioned with
it. But I never could drive a hard bargain in my life, concerning any
matter whatever; and least of all do I know how to haggle and huckster
with merit. Pension for myself I obtained none; nor did I solicit any.
Yet I was loaded with hatred for everything that was withheld, and with
obloquy for everything that was given. I was thus left to support the
grants of a name ever dear to me and ever venerable to the world in
favor of those who were no friends of mine or of his, against the rude
attacks of those who were at that time friends to the grantees and their
own zealous partisans. I have never heard the Earl of Lauderdale
complain of these pensions. He finds nothing wrong till he comes to me.
This is impartiality, in the true, modern, revolutionary style.

Whatever I did at that time, so far as it regarded order and economy, is
stable and eternal, as all principles must be. A particular order of
things may be altered: order itself cannot lose its value. As to other
particulars, they are variable by time and by circumstances. Laws of
regulation are not fundamental laws. The public exigencies are the
masters of all such laws. They rule the laws, and are not to be ruled by
them. They who exercise the legislative power at the time must judge.

It may be new to his Grace, but I beg leave to tell him that mere
parsimony is not economy. It is separable in theory from it; and in fact
it may or it may not be a _part_ of economy, according to circumstances.
Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy. If
parsimony were to be considered as one of the kinds of that virtue,
there is, however, another and an higher economy. Economy is a
distributive virtue, and consists, not in saving, but in selection.
Parsimony requires no providence, no sagacity, no powers of combination,
no comparison, no judgment. Mere instinct, and that not an instinct of
the noblest kind, may produce this false economy in perfection. The
other economy has larger views. It demands a discriminating judgment,
and a firm, sagacious mind. It shuts one door to impudent importunity,
only to open another, and a wider, to unpresuming merit. If none but
meritorious service or real talent were to be rewarded, this nation has
not wanted, and this nation will not want, the means of rewarding all
the service it ever will receive, and encouraging all the merit it ever
will produce. No state, since the foundation of society, has been
impoverished by that species of profusion. Had the economy of selection
and proportion been at all times observed, we should not now have had an
overgrown Duke of Bedford, to oppress the industry of humble men, and to
limit, by the standard of his own conceptions, the justice, the bounty,
or, if he pleases, the charity of the crown.

His Grace may think as meanly as he will of my deserts in the far
greater part of my conduct in life. It is free for him to do so. There
will always be some difference of opinion in the value of political
services. But there is one merit of mine which he, of all men living,
ought to be the last to call in question. I have supported with very
great zeal, and I am told with some degree of success, those opinions,
or, if his Grace likes another expression better, those old prejudices,
which buoy up the ponderous mass of his nobility, wealth, and titles. I
have omitted no exertion to prevent him and them from sinking to that
level to which the meretricious French faction his Grace at least
coquets with omit no exertion to reduce both. I have done all I could to
discountenance their inquiries into the fortunes of those who hold large
portions of wealth without any apparent merit of their own. I have
strained every nerve to keep the Duke of Bedford in that situation
which alone makes him my superior. Your Lordship has been a witness of
the use he makes of that preëminence.

But be it that this is virtue; be it that there is virtue in this
well-selected rigor: yet all virtues are not equally becoming to all men
and at all times. There are crimes, undoubtedly there are crimes, which
in all seasons of our existence ought to put a generous antipathy in
action,--crimes that provoke an indignant justice, and call forth a warm
and animated pursuit. But all things that concern what I may call the
preventive police of morality, all things merely rigid, harsh, and
censorial, the antiquated moralists at whose feet I was brought up would
not have thought these the fittest matter to form the favorite virtues
of young men of rank. What might have been well enough, and have been
received with a veneration mixed with awe and terror, from an old,
severe, crabbed Cato, would have wanted something of propriety in the
young Scipios, the ornament of the Roman nobility, in the flower of
their life. But the times, the morals, the masters, the scholars, have
all undergone a thorough revolution. It is a vile, illiberal school,
this new French academy of the _sans-culottes_. There is nothing in it
that is fit for a gentleman to learn.

Whatever its vogue may be, I still flatter myself that the parents of
the growing generation will be satisfied with what is to be taught to
their children in Westminster, in Eton, or in Winchester; I still
indulge the hope that no _grown_ gentleman or nobleman of our time will
think of finishing at Mr. Thelwall's lecture whatever may have been left
incomplete at the old universities of his country. I would give to Lord
Grenville and Mr. Pitt for a motto what was said of a Roman censor or
prætor (or what was he?) who in virtue of a _Senatusconsultum_ shut up
certain academies,--"_Cludere ludum impudentiæ jussit_." Every honest
father of a family in the kingdom will rejoice at the breaking-up for
the holidays, and will pray that there may be a very long vacation, in
all such schools.

The awful state of the time, and not myself, or my own justification, is
my true object in what I now write, or in what I shall ever write or
say. It little signifies to the world what becomes of such things as me,
or even as the Duke of Bedford. What I say about either of us is nothing
more than a vehicle, as you, my Lord, will easily perceive, to convey my
sentiments on matters far more worthy of your attention. It is when I
stick to my apparent first subject that I ought to apologize, not when I
depart from it. I therefore must beg your Lordship's pardon for again
resuming it after this very short digression,--assuring you that I shall
never altogether lose sight of such matter as persons abler than I am
may turn to some profit.

The Duke of Bedford conceives that he is obliged to call the attention
of the House of Peers to his Majesty's grant to me, which he considers
as excessive and out of all bounds.

I know not how it has happened, but it really seems, that, whilst his
Grace was meditating his well-considered censure upon me, he fell into a
sort of sleep. Homer nods, and the Duke of Bedford may dream; and as
dreams (even his golden dreams) are apt to be ill-pieced and
incongruously put together, his Grace preserved his idea of reproach to
_me_, but took the subject-matter from the crown grants _to his own
family_. This is "the stuff of which his dreams are made." In that way
of putting things together his Grace is perfectly in the right. The
grants to the House of Russell were so enormous as not only to outrage
economy, but even to stagger credibility. The Duke of Bedford is the
leviathan among all the creatures of the crown. He tumbles about his
unwieldy bulk, he plays and frolics in the ocean of the royal bounty.
Huge as he is, and whilst "he lies floating many a rood," he is still a
creature. His ribs, his fins, his whalebone, his blubber, the very
spiracles through which he spouts a torrent of brine against his origin,
and covers me all over with the spray, everything of him and about him
is from the throne. Is it for _him_ to question the dispensation of the
royal favor?

I really am at a loss to draw any sort of parallel between the public
merits of his Grace, by which he justifies the grants he holds, and
these services of mine, on the favorable construction of which I have
obtained what his Grace so much disapproves. In private life I have not
at all the honor of acquaintance with the noble Duke; but I ought to
presume, and it costs me nothing to do so, that he abundantly deserves
the esteem and love of all who live with him. But as to public service,
why, truly, it would not be more ridiculous for me to compare myself, in
rank, in fortune, in splendid descent, in youth, strength, or figure,
with the Duke of Bedford, than to make a parallel between his services
and my attempts to be useful to my country. It would not be gross
adulation, but uncivil irony, to say that he has any public merit of his
own to keep alive the idea of the services by which his vast landed
pensions were obtained. My merits, whatever they are, are original and
personal: his are derivative. It is his ancestor, the original
pensioner, that has laid up this inexhaustible fund of merit which makes
his Grace so very delicate and exceptious about the merit of all other
grantees of the crown. Had he permitted me to remain in quiet, I should
have said, "'Tis his estate: that's enough. It is his by law: what have
I to do with it or its history?" He would naturally have said, on his
side, "'Tis this man's fortune. He is as good now as my ancestor was two
hundred and fifty years ago. I am a young man with very old pensions; he
is an old man with very young pensions: that's all."

Why will his Grace, by attacking me, force me reluctantly to compare my
little merit with that which obtained from the crown those prodigies of
profuse donation by which he tramples on the mediocrity of humble and
laborious individuals? I would willingly leave him to the Herald's
College, which the philosophy of the _sans-culottes_ (prouder by far
than all the Garters, and Norroys, and Clarencieux, and Rouge-Dragons
that ever pranced in a procession of what his friends call aristocrats
and despots) will abolish with contumely and scorn. These historians,
recorders, and blazoners of virtues and arms differ wholly from that
other description of historians who never assign any act of politicians
to a good motive. These gentle historians, on the contrary, dip their
pens in nothing but the milk of human kindness. They seek no further for
merit than the preamble of a patent or the inscription on a tomb. With
them every man created a peer is first an hero ready-made. They judge of
every man's capacity for office by the offices he has filled; and the
more offices, the more ability. Every general officer with them is a
Marlborough, every statesman a Burleigh, every judge a Murray or a
Yorke. They who, alive, were laughed at or pitied by all their
acquaintance make as good a figure as the best of them in the pages of
Guillim, Edmondson, and Collins.

To these recorders, so full of good-nature to the great and prosperous,
I would willingly leave the first Baron Russell and Earl of Bedford, and
the merits of his grants. But the aulnager, the weigher, the meter of
grants will not suffer us to acquiesce in the judgment of the prince
reigning at the time when they were made. They are never good to those
who earn them. Well, then, since the new grantees have war made on them
by the old, and that the word of the sovereign is not to be taken, let
us turn our eyes to history, in which great men have always a pleasure
in contemplating the heroic origin of their house.

The first peer of the name, the first purchaser of the grants, was a Mr.
Russell, a person of an ancient gentleman's family, raised by being a
minion of Henry the Eighth. As there generally is some resemblance of
character to create these relations, the favorite was in all likelihood
much such another as his master. The first of those immoderate grants
was not taken from the ancient demesne of the crown, but from the recent
confiscation of the ancient nobility of the land. The lion, having
sucked the blood of his prey, threw the offal carcass to the jackal in
waiting. Having tasted once the food of confiscation, the favorites
became fierce and ravenous. This worthy favorite's first grant was from
the lay nobility. The second, infinitely improving on the enormity of
the first, was from the plunder of the Church. In truth, his Grace is
somewhat excusable for his dislike to a grant like mine, not only in its
quantity, but in its kind, so different from his own.

Mine was from a mild and benevolent sovereign: his from Henry the
Eighth.

Mine had not its fund in the murder of any innocent person of
illustrious rank,[17] or in the pillage of any body of unoffending men.
His grants were from the aggregate and consolidated funds of judgments
iniquitously legal, and from possessions voluntarily surrendered by the
lawful proprietors with the gibbet at their door.

The merit of the grantee whom he derives from was that of being a prompt
and greedy instrument of a _levelling_ tyrant, who oppressed all
descriptions of his people, but who fell with particular fury on
everything that was _great and noble_. Mine has been in endeavoring to
screen every man, in every class, from oppression, and particularly in
defending the high and eminent, who, in the bad times of confiscating
princes, confiscating chief governors, or confiscating demagogues, are
the most exposed to jealousy, avarice, and envy.

The merit of the original grantee of his Grace's pensions was in giving
his hand to the work, and partaking the spoil, with a prince who
plundered a part of the national Church of his time and country. Mine
was in defending the whole of the national Church of my own time and my
own country, and the whole of the national Churches of all countries,
from the principles and the examples which lead to ecclesiastical
pillage, thence to a contempt of _all_ prescriptive titles, thence to
the pillage of _all_ property, and thence to universal desolation.

The merit of the origin of his Grace's fortune was in being a favorite
and chief adviser to a prince who left no liberty to their native
country. My endeavor was to obtain liberty for the municipal country in
which I was born, and for all descriptions and denominations in it. Mine
was to support with unrelaxing vigilance every right, every privilege,
every franchise, in this my adopted, my dearer, and more comprehensive
country; and not only to preserve those rights in this chief seat of
empire, but in every nation, in every land, in every climate, language,
and religion, in the vast domain that still is under the protection, and
the larger that was once under the protection, of the British crown.

His founder's merits were, by arts in which he served his master and
made his fortune, to bring poverty, wretchedness, and depopulation on
his country. Mine were under a benevolent prince, in promoting the
commerce, manufactures, and agriculture of his kingdom,--in which his
Majesty shows an eminent example, who even in his amusements is a
patriot, and in hours of leisure an improver of his native soil.

His founder's merit was the merit of a gentleman raised by the arts of a
court and the protection of a Wolsey to the eminence of a great and
potent lord. His merit in that eminence was, by instigating a tyrant to
injustice, to provoke a people to rebellion. My merit was, to awaken the
sober part of the country, that they might put themselves on their
guard against any one potent lord, or any greater number of potent
lords, or any combination of great leading men of any sort, if ever they
should attempt to proceed in the same courses, but in the reverse
order,--that is, by instigating a corrupted populace to rebellion, and,
through that rebellion, introducing a tyranny yet worse than the tyranny
which his Grace's ancestor supported, and of which he profited in the
manner we behold in the despotism of Henry the Eighth.

The political merit of the first pensioner of his Grace's house was that
of being concerned as a counsellor of state in advising, and in his
person executing, the conditions of a dishonorable peace with
France,--the surrendering the fortress of Boulogne, then our outguard on
the Continent. By that surrender, Calais, the key of France, and the
bridle in the mouth of that power, was not many years afterwards finally
lost. My merit has been in resisting the power and pride of France,
under any form of its rule; but in opposing it with the greatest zeal
and earnestness, when that rule appeared in the worst form it could
assume,--the worst, indeed, which the prime cause and principle of all
evil could possibly give it. It was my endeavor by every means to excite
a spirit in the House, where I had the honor of a seat, for carrying on
with early vigor and decision the most clearly just and necessary war
that this or any nation ever carried on, in order to save my country
from the iron yoke of its power, and from the more dreadful contagion of
its principles,--to preserve, while they can be preserved, pure and
untainted, the ancient, inbred integrity, piety, good-nature, and
good-humor of the people of England, from the dreadful pestilence which,
beginning in France, threatens to lay waste the whole moral and in a
great degree the whole physical world, having done both in the focus of
its most intense malignity.

The labors of his Grace's founder merited the "curses, not loud, but
deep," of the Commons of England, on whom _he_ and his master had
effected a _complete Parliamentary Reform_, by making them, in their
slavery and humiliation, the true and adequate representatives of a
debased, degraded, and undone people. My merits were in having had an
active, though not always an ostentatious share, in every one act,
without exception, of undisputed constitutional utility in my time, and
in having supported, on all occasions, the authority, the efficiency,
and the privileges of the Commons of Great Britain. I ended my services
by a recorded and fully reasoned assertion on their own journals of
their constitutional rights, and a vindication of their constitutional
conduct. I labored in all things to merit their inward approbation, and
(along with the assistants of the largest, the greatest, and best of my
endeavors) I received their free, unbiased, public, and solemn thanks.

Thus stands the account of the comparative merits of the crown grants
which compose the Duke of Bedford's fortune as balanced against mine. In
the name of common sense, why should the Duke of Bedford think that none
but of the House of Russell are entitled to the favor of the crown? Why
should he imagine that no king of England has been capable of judging of
merit but King Henry the Eighth? Indeed, he will pardon me, he is a
little mistaken: all virtue did not end in the first Earl of Bedford;
all discernment did not lose its vision when his creator closed his
eyes. Let him remit his rigor on the disproportion between merit and
reward in others, and they will make no inquiry into the origin of his
fortune. They will regard with much more satisfaction, as he will
contemplate with infinitely more advantage, whatever in his pedigree has
been dulcified by an exposure to the influence of heaven in a long flow
of generations from the hard, acidulous, metallic tincture of the
spring. It is little to be doubted that several of his forefathers in
that long series have degenerated into honor and virtue. Let the Duke of
Bedford (I am sure he will) reject with scorn and horror the counsels of
the lecturers, those wicked panders to avarice and ambition, who would
tempt him, in the troubles of his country, to seek another enormous
fortune from the forfeitures of another nobility and the plunder of
another Church. Let him (and I trust that yet he will) employ all the
energy of his youth and all the resources of his wealth to crush
rebellious principles which have no foundation in morals, and rebellious
movements that have no provocation in tyranny.

Then will be forgot the rebellions which, by a doubtful priority in
crime, his ancestor had provoked and extinguished. On such a conduct in
the noble Duke, many of his countrymen might, and with some excuse
might, give way to the enthusiasm of their gratitude, and, in the
dashing style of some of the old declaimers, cry out, that, if the Fates
had found no other way in which they could give a[18] Duke of Bedford
and his opulence as props to a tottering world, then the butchery of
the Duke of Buckingham might be tolerated; it might be regarded even
with complacency, whilst in the heir of confiscation they saw the
sympathizing comforter of the martyrs who suffer under the cruel
confiscation of this day, whilst they beheld with admiration his zealous
protection of the virtuous and loyal nobility of France, and his manly
support of his brethren, the yet standing nobility and gentry of his
native land. Then his Grace's merit would be pure and new and sharp, as
fresh from the mint of honor. As he pleased, he might reflect honor on
his predecessors, or throw it forward on those who were to succeed him.
He might be the propagator of the stock of honor, or the root of it, as
he thought proper.

Had it pleased God to continue to me the hopes of succession, I should
have been, according to my mediocrity and the mediocrity of the age I
live in, a sort of founder of a family: I should have left a son, who,
in all the points in which personal merit can be viewed, in science, in
erudition, in genius, in taste, in honor, in generosity, in humanity, in
every liberal sentiment and every liberal accomplishment, would not have
shown himself inferior to the Duke of Bedford, or to any of those whom
he traces in his line. His Grace very soon would have wanted all
plausibility in his attack upon that provision which belonged more to
mine than to me. He would soon have supplied every deficiency, and
symmetrized every disproportion. It would not have been for that
successor to resort to any stagnant, wasting reservoir of merit in me,
or in any ancestry. He had in himself a salient, living spring of
generous and manly action. Every day he lived he would have repurchased
the bounty of the crown, and ten times more, if ten times more he had
received. He was made a public creature, and had no enjoyment whatever
but in the performance of some duty. At this exigent moment the loss of
a finished man is not easily supplied.

But a Disposer whose power we are little able to resist, and whose
wisdom it behoves us not at all to dispute, has ordained it in another
manner, and (whatever my querulous weakness might suggest) a far better.
The storm has gone over me; and I lie like one of those old oaks which
the late hurricane has scattered about me. I am stripped of all my
honors, I am torn up by the roots, and lie prostrate on the earth.
There, and prostrate there, I most unfeignedly recognize the Divine
justice, and in some degree submit to it. But whilst I humble myself
before God, I do not know that it is forbidden to repel the attacks of
unjust and inconsiderate men. The patience of Job is proverbial. After
some of the convulsive struggles of our irritable nature, he submitted
himself, and repented in dust and ashes. But even so, I do not find him
blamed for reprehending, and with a considerable degree of verbal
asperity, those ill-natured neighbors of his who visited his dunghill to
read moral, political, and economical lectures on his misery. I am
alone. I have none to meet my enemies in the gate. Indeed, my Lord, I
greatly deceive myself, if in this hard season I would give a peck of
refuse wheat for all that is called fame and honor in the world. This is
the appetite but of a few. It is a luxury, it is a privilege, it is an
indulgence for those who are at their ease. But we are all of us made to
shun disgrace, as we are made to shrink from pain and poverty and
disease. It is an instinct; and under the direction of reason, instinct
is always in the right. I live in an inverted order. They who ought to
have succeeded me are gone before me. They who should have been to me as
posterity are in the place of ancestors. I owe to the dearest relation
(which ever must subsist in memory) that act of piety which he would
have performed to me: I owe it to him to show that he was not descended,
as the Duke of Bedford would have it, from an unworthy parent.

The crown has considered me after long service: the crown has paid the
Duke of Bedford by advance. He has had a long credit for any service
which he may perform hereafter. He is secure, and long may he be secure,
in his advance, whether he performs any services or not. But let him
take care how he endangers the safety of that Constitution which secures
his own utility or his own insignificance, or how he discourages those
who take up even puny arms to defend an order of things which, like the
sun of heaven, shines alike on the useful and the worthless. His grants
are ingrafted on the public law of Europe, covered with the awful hoar
of innumerable ages. They are guarded by the sacred rules of
prescription, found in that full treasury of jurisprudence from which
the jejuneness and penury of our municipal law has by degrees been
enriched and strengthened. This prescription I had my share (a very full
share) in bringing to its perfection.[19] The Duke of Bedford will stand
as long as prescriptive law endures,--as long as the great, stable laws
of property, common to us with all civilized nations, are kept in their
integrity, and without the smallest intermixture of the laws, maxims,
principles, or precedents of the Grand Revolution. They are secure
against all changes but one. The whole Revolutionary system, institutes,
digest, code, novels, text, gloss, comment, are not only not the same,
but they are the very reverse, and the reverse fundamentally, of all the
laws on which civil life has hitherto been upheld in all the governments
of the world. The learned professors of the Rights of Man regard
prescription not as a title to bar all claim set up against old
possession, but they look on prescription as itself a bar against the
possessor and proprietor. They hold an immemorial possession to be no
more than a long continued and therefore an aggravated injustice.

Such are _their_ ideas, such _their_ religion, and such _their_ law. But
as to _our_ country and _our_ race, as long as the well-compacted
structure of our Church and State, the sanctuary, the holy of holies of
that ancient law, defended by reverence, defended by power, a fortress
at once and a temple,[20] shall stand inviolate on the brow of the
British Sion,--as long as the British monarchy, not more limited than
fenced by the orders of the state, shall, like the proud Keep of
Windsor, rising in the majesty of proportion, and girt with the double
belt of its kindred and coëval towers, as long as this awful structure
shall oversee and guard the subjected land,--so long the mounds and
dikes of the low, fat, Bedford level will have nothing to fear from all
the pickaxes of all the levellers of France. As long as our sovereign
lord the king, and his faithful subjects, the lords and commons of this
realm,--the triple cord which no man can break,--the solemn, sworn,
constitutional frank-pledge of this nation,--the firm guaranties of
each other's being and each other's rights,--the joint and several
securities, each in its place and order, for every kind and every
quality of property and of dignity,--as long as these ensure, so long
the Duke of Bedford is safe, and we are all safe together,--the high
from the blights of envy and the spoliations of rapacity, the low from
the iron hand of oppression and the insolent spurn of contempt. Amen!
and so be it! and so it will be,--

    Dum domus Æneæ Capitolî immobile saxum
    Accolet, imperiumque pater Romanus habebit.

But if the rude inroad of Gallic tumult, with its sophistical rights of
man to falsify the account, and its sword as a make-weight to throw into
the scale, shall be introduced into our city by a misguided populace,
set on by proud great men, themselves blinded and intoxicated by a
frantic ambition, we shall all of us perish and be overwhelmed in a
common ruin. If a great storm blow on our coast, it will cast the whales
on the strand, as well as the periwinkles. His Grace will not survive
the poor grantee he despises,--no, not for a twelvemonth. If the great
look for safety in the services they render to this Gallic cause, it is
to be foolish even above the weight of privilege allowed to wealth. If
his Grace be one of these whom they endeavor to proselytize, he ought to
be aware of the character of the sect whose doctrines he is invited to
embrace. With them insurrection is the most sacred of revolutionary
duties to the state. Ingratitude to benefactors is the first of
revolutionary virtues. Ingratitude is, indeed, their four cardinal
virtues compacted and amalgamated into one; and he will find it in
everything that has happened since the commencement of the philosophic
Revolution to this hour. If he pleads the merit of having performed the
duty of insurrection against the order he lives in, (God forbid he ever
should!) the merit of others will be to perform the duty of insurrection
against him. If he pleads (again God forbid he should, and I do not
suspect he will) his ingratitude to the crown for its creation of his
family, others will plead their right and duty to pay him in kind. They
will laugh, indeed they will laugh, at his parchment and his wax. His
deeds will be drawn out with the rest of the lumber of his
evidence-room, and burnt to the tune of _Ça, ira_ in the courts of
Bedford (then Equality) House.

Am I to blame, if I attempt to pay his Grace's hostile reproaches to me
with a friendly admonition to himself? Can I be blamed for pointing out
to him in what manner he is like to be affected, if the sect of the
cannibal philosophers of France should proselytize any considerable part
of this people, and, by their joint proselytizing arms, should conquer
that government to which his Grace does not seem to me to give all the
support his own security demands? Surely it is proper that he, and that
others like him, should know the true genius of this sect,--what their
opinions are,--what they have done, and to whom,--and what (if a
prognostic is to be formed from the dispositions and actions of men) it
is certain they will do hereafter. He ought to know that they have sworn
assistance, the only engagement they ever will keep, to all in this
country who bear a resemblance to themselves, and who think, as such,
that _the whole duty of man_ consists in destruction. They are a
misallied and disparaged branch of the House of Nimrod. They are the
Duke of Bedford's natural hunters; and he is their natural game. Because
he is not very profoundly reflecting, he sleeps in profound security:
they, on the contrary, are always vigilant, active, enterprising, and,
though far removed from any knowledge which makes men estimable or
useful, in all the instruments and resources of evil their leaders are
not meanly instructed or insufficiently furnished. In the French
Revolution everything is new, and, from want of preparation to meet so
unlooked-for an evil, everything is dangerous. Never before this time
was a set of literary men converted into a gang of robbers and
assassins; never before did a den of bravoes and banditti assume the
garb and tone of an academy of philosophers.

Let me tell his Grace, that an union of such characters, monstrous as it
seems, is not made for producing despicable enemies. But if they are
formidable as foes, as friends they are dreadful indeed. The men of
property in France, confiding in a force which seemed to be irresistible
because it had never been tried, neglected to prepare for a conflict
with their enemies at their own weapons. They were found in such a
situation as the Mexicans were, when they were attacked by the dogs, the
cavalry, the iron, and the gunpowder of an handful of bearded men, whom
they did not know to exist in Nature. This is a comparison that some, I
think, have made; and it is just. In France they had their enemies
within their houses. They were even in the bosoms of many of them. But
they had not sagacity to discern their savage character. They seemed
tame, and even caressing. They had nothing but _douce humanité_ in their
mouth. They could not bear the punishment of the mildest laws on the
greatest criminals. The slightest severity of justice made their flesh
creep. The very idea that war existed in the world disturbed their
repose. Military glory was no more, with them, than a splendid infamy.
Hardly would they hear of self-defence, which they reduced within such
bounds as to leave it no defence at all. All this while they meditated
the confiscations and massacres we have seen. Had any one told these
unfortunate noblemen and gentlemen how and by whom the grand fabric of
the French monarchy under which they flourished would be subverted, they
would not have pitied him as a visionary, but would have turned from him
as what they call a _mauvais plaisant_. Yet we have seen what has
happened. The persons who have suffered from the cannibal philosophy of
France are so like the Duke of Bedford, that nothing but his Grace's
probably not speaking quite so good French could enable us to find out
any difference. A great many of them had as pompous titles as he, and
were of full as illustrious a race; some few of them had fortunes as
ample; several of them, without meaning the least disparagement to the
Duke of Bedford, were as wise, and as virtuous, and as valiant, and as
well educated, and as complete in all the lineaments of men of honor, as
he is; and to all this they had added the powerful outguard of a
military profession, which, in its nature, renders men somewhat more
cautious than those who have nothing to attend to but the lazy enjoyment
of undisturbed possessions. But security was their ruin. They are
dashed to pieces in the storm, and our shores are covered with the
wrecks. If they had been aware that such a thing might happen, such a
thing never could have happened.

I assure his Grace, that, if I state to him the designs of his enemies
in a manner which may appear to him ludicrous and impossible, I tell him
nothing that has not exactly happened, point by point, but twenty-four
miles from our own shore. I assure him that the Frenchified faction,
more encouraged than others are warned by what has happened in France,
look at him and his landed possessions as an object at once of curiosity
and rapacity. He is made for them in every part of their double
character. As robbers, to them he is a noble booty; as speculatists, he
is a glorious subject for their experimental philosophy. He affords
matter for an extensive analysis in all the branches of their science,
geometrical, physical, civil, and political. These philosophers are
fanatics: independent of any interest, which, if it operated alone,
would make them much more tractable, they are carried with such an
headlong rage towards every desperate trial that they would sacrifice
the whole human race to the slightest of their experiments. I am better
able to enter into the character of this description of men than the
noble Duke can be. I have lived long and variously in the world. Without
any considerable pretensions to literature in myself, I have aspired to
the love of letters. I have lived for a great many years in habitudes
with those who professed them. I can form a tolerable estimate of what
is likely to happen from a character chiefly dependent for fame and
fortune on knowledge and talent, as well in its morbid and perverted
state as in that which is sound and natural. Naturally, men so formed
and finished are the first gifts of Providence to the world. But when
they have once thrown off the fear of God, which was in all ages too
often the case, and the fear of man, which is now the case, and when in
that state they come to understand one another, and to act in corps, a
more dreadful calamity cannot arise out of hell to scourge mankind.
Nothing can be conceived more hard than the heart of a thorough-bred
metaphysician. It comes nearer to the cold malignity of a wicked spirit
than to the frailty and passion of a man. It is like that of the
Principle of Evil himself, incorporeal, pure, unmixed, dephlegmated,
defecated evil. It is no easy operation to eradicate humanity from the
human breast. What Shakspeare calls the "compunctious visitings of
Nature" will sometimes knock at their hearts, and protest against their
murderous speculations. But they have a means of compounding with their
nature. Their humanity is not dissolved; they only give it a long
prorogation. They are ready to declare that they do not think two
thousand years too long a period for the good that they pursue. It is
remarkable that they never see any way to their projected good but by
the road of some evil. Their imagination is not fatigued with the
contemplation of human suffering through the wild waste of centuries
added to centuries of misery and desolation. Their humanity is at their
horizon,--and, like the horizon, it always flies before them. The
geometricians and the chemists bring, the one from the dry bones of
their diagrams, and the other from the soot of their furnaces,
dispositions that make them worse than indifferent about those feelings
and habitudes which are the supports of the moral world. Ambition is
come upon them suddenly; they are intoxicated with it, and it has
rendered them fearless of the danger which may from thence arise to
others or to themselves. These philosophers consider men in their
experiments no more than they do mice in an air-pump or in a recipient
of mephitic gas. Whatever his Grace may think of himself, they look upon
him, and everything that belongs to him, with no more regard than they
do upon the whiskers of that little long-tailed animal that has been
long the game of the grave, demure, insidious, spring-nailed,
velvet-pawed, green-eyed philosophers, whether going upon two legs or
upon four.

His Grace's landed possessions are irresistibly inviting to an agrarian
experiment. They are a downright insult upon the rights of man. They are
more extensive than the territory of many of the Grecian republics; and
they are without comparison more fertile than most of them. There are
now republics in Italy, in Germany, and in Switzerland, which do not
possess anything like so fair and ample a domain. There is scope for
seven philosophers to proceed in their analytical experiments upon
Harrington's seven different forms of republics, in the acres of this
one Duke. Hitherto they have been wholly unproductive to
speculation,--fitted for nothing but to fatten bullocks, and to produce
grain for beer, still more to stupefy the dull English understanding.
Abbé Sieyès has whole nests of pigeon-holes full of constitutions
ready-made, ticketed, sorted, and numbered, suited to every season and
every fancy: some with the top of the pattern at the bottom, and some
with the bottom at the top; some plain, some flowered; some
distinguished for their simplicity, others for their complexity; some of
blood color, some of _boue de Paris_; some with directories, others
without a direction; some with councils of elders and councils of
youngsters, some without any council at all; some where the electors
choose the representatives, others where the representatives choose the
electors; some in long coats, and some in short cloaks; some with
pantaloons, some without breeches; some with five-shilling
qualifications, some totally unqualified. So that no
constitution-fancier may go unsuited from his shop, provided he loves a
pattern of pillage, oppression, arbitrary imprisonment, confiscation,
exile, revolutionary judgment, and legalized premeditated murder, in any
shapes into which they can be put. What a pity it is that the progress
of experimental philosophy should be checked by his Grace's monopoly!
Such are their sentiments, I assure him; such is their language, when
they dare to speak; and such are their proceedings, when they have the
means to act.

Their geographers and geometricians have been some time out of practice.
It is some time since they have divided their own country into squares.
That figure has lost the charms of its novelty. They want new lands for
new trials. It is not only the geometricians of the Republic that find
him a good subject: the chemists have bespoke him, after the
geometricians have done with him. As the first set have an eye on his
Grace's lands, the chemists are not less taken with his buildings. They
consider mortar as a very anti-revolutionary invention, in its present
state, but, properly employed, an admirable material for overturning all
establishments. They have found that the gunpowder of _ruins_ is far
the fittest for making other _ruins_, and so _ad infinitum_. They have
calculated what quantity of matter convertible into nitre is to be found
in Bedford House, in Woburn Abbey, and in what his Grace and his
trustees have still suffered to stand of that foolish royalist, Inigo
Jones, in Covent Garden. Churches, play-houses, coffeehouses, all alike,
are destined to be mingled, and equalized, and blended into one common
rubbish,--and, well sifted, and lixiviated, to crystallize into true,
democratic, explosive, insurrectionary nitre. Their Academy _del
Cimento_, (_per antiphrasin_,) with Morveau and Hassenfratz at its head,
have computed that the brave _sans-culottes_ may make war on all the
aristocracy of Europe for a twelvemonth out of the rubbish of the Duke
of Bedford's buildings.[21]

While the Morveaux and Priestleys are proceeding with these experiments
upon the Duke of Bedford's houses, the Sieyès, and the rest of the
analytical legislators and constitution-venders, are quite as busy in
their trade of decomposing organization, in forming his Grace's vassals
into primary assemblies, national guards, first, second, and third
requisitioners, committees of research, conductors of the travelling
guillotine, judges of revolutionary tribunals, legislative hangmen,
supervisors of domiciliary visitation, exactors of forced loans, and
assessors of the maximum.

The din of all this smithery may some time or other possibly wake this
noble Duke, and push him to an endeavor to save some little matter from
their experimental philosophy. If he pleads his grants from the crown,
he is ruined at the outset. If he pleads he has received them from the
pillage of superstitious corporations, this indeed will stagger them a
little, because they are enemies to all corporations and to all
religion. However, they will soon recover themselves, and will tell his
Grace, or his learned council, that all such property belongs to the
_nation_,--and that it would be more wise for him, if he wishes to live
the natural term of a _citizen_, (that is, according to Condorcet's
calculation, six months on an average,) not to pass for an usurper upon
the national property. This is what the _serjeants_-at-law of the rights
of man will say to the puny _apprentices_ of the common law of England.

Is the genius of philosophy not yet known? You may as well think the
garden of the Tuileries was well protected with the cords of ribbon
insultingly stretched by the National Assembly to keep the sovereign
_canaille_ from intruding on the retirement of the poor King of the
French as that such flimsy cobwebs will stand between the savages of the
Revolution and their natural prey. Deep philosophers are no triflers;
brave _sans-culottes_ are no formalists. They will no more regard a
Marquis of Tavistock than an Abbot of Tavistock; the Lord of Woburn will
not be more respectable in their eyes than the Prior of Woburn; they
will make no difference between the superior of a Covent Garden of nuns
and of a Covent Garden of another description. They will not care a rush
whether his coat is long or short,--whether the color be purple, or blue
and buff. They will not trouble _their_ heads with what part of _his_
head his hair is out from; and they will look with equal respect on a
tonsure and a crop. Their only question will be that of their Legendre,
or some oilier of their legislative butchers: How he cuts up; how he
tallows in the caul or on the kidneys.

Is it not a singular phenomenon, that, whilst the _sans-culotte_
carcass-butchers and the philosophers of the shambles are pricking their
dotted lines upon his hide, and, like the print of the poor ox that we
see in the shop-windows at Charing Cross, alive as he is, and thinking
no harm in the world, he is divided into rumps, and sirloins, and
briskets, and into all sorts of pieces for roasting, boiling, and
stewing, that, all the while they are measuring _him_, his Grace is
measuring _me_,--is invidiously comparing the bounty of the crown with
the deserts of the defender of his order, and in the same moment fawning
on those who have the knife half out of the sheath? Poor innocent!

    "Pleased to the last, he crops the flowery food,
    And licks the hand just raised to shed his blood."

No man lives too long who lives to do with spirit and suffer with
resignation what Providence pleases to command or inflict; but, indeed,
they are sharp incommodities which beset old age. It was but the other
day, that, on putting in order some things which had been brought here,
on my taking leave of London forever, I looked over a number of fine
portraits, most of them of persons now dead, but whose society, in my
better days, made this a proud and happy place. Amongst those was the
picture of Lord Keppel. It was painted by an artist worthy of the
subject, the excellent friend of that excellent man from their earliest
youth, and a common friend of us both, with whom we lived for many years
without a moment of coldness, of peevishness, of jealousy, or of jar, to
the day of our final separation.

I ever looked on Lord Keppel as one of the greatest and best men of his
age, and I loved and cultivated him accordingly. He was much in my
heart, and I believe I was in his to the very last beat. It was after
his trial at Portsmouth that he gave me this picture. With what zeal and
anxious affection I attended him through that his agony of glory,--what
part my son, in the early flush and enthusiasm of his virtue, and the
pious passion with which he attached himself to all my
connections,--with what prodigality we both squandered ourselves in
courting almost every sort of enmity for his sake, I believe he felt,
just as I should have felt such friendship on such an occasion. I
partook, indeed, of this honor with several of the first and best and
ablest in the kingdom, but I was behindhand with none of them; and I am
sure, that, if, to the eternal disgrace of this nation, and to the total
annihilation of every trace of honor and virtue in it, things had taken
a different turn from what they did. I should have attended him to the
quarter-deck with no less good-will and more pride, though with far
other feelings, than I partook of the general flow of national joy that
attended the justice that was done to his virtue.

Pardon, my Lord, the feeble garrulity of age, which loves to diffuse
itself in discourse of the departed great. At my years we live in
retrospect alone; and, wholly unfitted for the society of vigorous life,
we enjoy, the best balm to all wounds, the consolation of friendship, in
those only whom we have lost forever. Feeling the loss of Lord Keppel at
all times, at no time did I feel it so much as on the first day when I
was attacked in the House of Lords.

Had he lived, that reverend form would have risen in its place, and,
with a mild, parental reprehension to his nephew, the Duke of Bedford,
he would have told him that the favor of that gracious prince who had
honored his virtues with the government of the navy of Great Britain,
and with a seat in the hereditary great council of his kingdom, was not
undeservedly shown to the friend of the best portion of his life, and
his faithful companion and counsellor under his rudest trials. He would
have told him, that, to whomever else these reproaches might be
becoming, they were not decorous in his near kindred. He would have told
him, that, when men in that rank lose decorum, they lose everything.

On that day I had a loss in Lord Keppel. But the public loss of him in
this awful crisis!--I speak from much knowledge of the person: he never
would have listened to any compromise with the rabble rout of this
_sans-culotterie_ of France. His goodness of heart, his reason, his
taste, his public duty, his principles, his prejudices, would have
repelled him forever from all connection with that horrid medley of
madness, vice, impiety, and crime.

Lord Keppel had two countries: one of descent, and one of birth. Their
interest and their glory are the same; and his mind was capacious of
both. His family was noble, and it was Dutch: that is, he was of the
oldest and purest nobility that Europe can boast, among a people
renowned above all others for love of their native land. Though it was
never shown in insult to any human being, Lord Keppel was something
high. It was a wild stock of pride, on which the tenderest of all hearts
had grafted the milder virtues. He valued ancient nobility; and he was
not disinclined to augment it with new honors. He valued the old
nobility and the new, not as an excuse for inglorious sloth, but as an
incitement to virtuous activity. He considered it as a sort of cure for
selfishness and a narrow mind,--conceiving that a man born in an
elevated place in himself was nothing, but everything in what went
before and what was to come after him. Without much speculation, but by
the sure instinct of ingenuous feelings, and by the dictates of plain,
unsophisticated, natural understanding, he felt that no great
commonwealth could by any possibility long subsist without a body of
some kind or other of nobility decorated with honor and fortified by
privilege. This nobility forms the chain that connects the ages of a
nation, which otherwise (with Mr. Paine) would soon be taught that no
one generation can bind another. He felt that no political fabric could
be well made, without some such order of things as might, through a
series of time, afford a rational hope of securing unity, coherence,
consistency, and stability to the state. He felt that nothing else can
protect it against the levity of courts and the greater levity of the
multitude; that to talk of hereditary monarchy, without anything else of
hereditary reverence in the commonwealth, was a low-minded absurdity,
fit only for those detestable "fools aspiring to be knaves" who began to
forge in 1789 the false money of the French Constitution; that it is one
fatal objection to all _new_ fancied and _new fabricated_ republics,
(among a people who, once possessing such an advantage, have wickedly
and insolently rejected it,) that the _prejudice_ of an old nobility is
a thing that _cannot_ be made. It may be improved, it may be corrected,
it may be replenished; men may be taken from it or aggregated to it; but
_the thing itself_ is matter of _inveterate_ opinion, and therefore
_cannot_ be matter of mere positive institution. He felt that this
nobility, in fact, does not exist in wrong of other orders of the state,
but by them, and for them.

I knew the man I speak of: and if we can divine the future out of what
we collect from the past, no person living would look with more scorn
and horror on the impious parricide committed on all their ancestry, and
on the desperate attainder passed on all their posterity, by the
Orléans, and the Rochefoucaults, and the Fayettes, and the Vicomtes de
Noailles, and the false Périgords, and the long _et cetera_ of the
perfidious _sans-culottes_ of the court, who, like demoniacs possessed
with a spirit of fallen pride and inverted ambition, abdicated their
dignities, disowned their families, betrayed the most sacred of all
trusts, and, by breaking to pieces a great link of society and all the
cramps and holdings of the state, brought eternal confusion and
desolation on their country. For the fate of the miscreant parricides
themselves he would have had no pity. Compassion for the myriads of men,
of whom the world was not worthy, who by their means have perished in
prisons or on scaffolds, or are pining in beggary and exile, would leave
no room in his, or in any well-formed mind, for any such sensation. We
are not made at once to pity the oppressor and the oppressed.

Looking to his Batavian descent, how could he bear to behold his
kindred, the descendants of the brave nobility of Holland, whose blood,
prodigally poured out, had, more than all the canals, meres, and
inundations of their country, protected their independence, to behold
them bowed in the basest servitude to the basest and vilest of the human
race,--in servitude to those who in no respect were superior in dignity
or could aspire to a better place than that of hangmen to the tyrants to
whose sceptred pride they had opposed an elevation of soul that
surmounted and overpowered the loftiness of Castile, the haughtiness of
Austria, and the overbearing arrogance of France?

Could he with patience bear that the children of that nobility who would
have deluged their country and given it to the sea rather than submit to
Louis the Fourteenth, who was then in his meridian glory, when his arms
were conducted by the Turennes, by the Luxembourgs, by the Boufflers,
when his councils were directed by the Colberts and the Louvois, when
his tribunals were filled by the Lamoignons and the D'Aguesseaus,--that
these should be given up to the cruel sport of the Pichegrus, the
Jourdans, the Santerres, under the Rolands, and Brissots, and Gorsas,
and Robespierres, the Reubells, the Carnots, and Talliens, and Dantons,
and the whole tribe of regicides, robbers, and revolutionary judges,
that from the rotten carcass of their own murdered country have poured
out innumerable swarms of the lowest and at once the most destructive of
the classes of animated Nature, which like columns of locusts have laid
waste the fairest part of the world?

Would Keppel have borne to see the ruin of the virtuous patricians, that
happy union of the noble and the burgher, who with signal prudence and
integrity had long governed the cities of the confederate republic, the
cherishing fathers of their country, who, denying commerce to
themselves, made it flourish in a manner unexampled under their
protection? Could Keppel have borne that a vile faction should totally
destroy this harmonious construction, in favor of a robbing democracy
founded on the spurious rights of man?

He was no great clerk, but he was perfectly well versed in the interests
of Europe, and he could not have heard with patience that the country of
Grotius, the cradle of the law of nations, and one of the richest
repositories of all law, should be taught a new code by the ignorant
flippancy of Thomas Paine, the presumptuous foppery of La Fayette, with
his stolen rights of man in his hand, the wild, profligate intrigue and
turbulency of Marat, and the impious sophistry of Condorcet, in his
insolent addresses to the Batavian Republic.

Could Keppel, who idolized the House of Nassau, who was himself given to
England along with the blessings of the British and Dutch Revolutions,
with Revolutions of stability, with Revolutions which consolidated and
married the liberties and the interests of the two nations
forever,--could he see the fountain of British liberty itself in
servitude to France? Could he see with patience a Prince of Orange
expelled, as a sort of diminutive despot, with every kind of contumely,
from the country which that family of deliverers had so often rescued
from slavery, and obliged to live in exile in another country, which
owes its liberty to his house?

Would Keppel have heard with patience that the conduct to be held on
such occasions was to become short by the knees to the faction of the
homicides, to entreat them quietly to retire? or, if the fortune of war
should drive them from their first wicked and unprovoked invasion, that
no security should be taken, no arrangement made, no barrier formed, no
alliance entered into for the security of that which under a foreign
name is the most precious part of England? What would he have said, if
it was even proposed that the Austrian Netherlands (which ought to be a
barrier to Holland, and the tie of an alliance to protect her against
any species of rule that might be erected or even be restored in France)
should be formed into a republic under her influence and dependent upon
her power?

But above all, what would he have said, if he had heard it made a matter
of accusation against me, by his nephew, the Duke of Bedford, that I was
the author of the war? Had I a mind to keep that high distinction to
myself, (as from pride I might, but from justice I dare not,) he would
have snatched his share of it from my hand, and held it with the grasp
of a dying convulsion to his end.

It would be a most arrogant presumption in me to assume to myself the
glory of what belongs to his Majesty, and to his ministers, and to his
Parliament, and to the far greater majority of his faithful people: but
had I stood alone to counsel, and that all were determined to be guided
by my advice, and to follow it implicitly, then I should have been the
sole author of a war. But it should have been a war on my ideas and my
principles. However, let his Grace think as he may of my demerits with
regard to the war with Regicide, he will find my guilt confined to that
alone. He never shall, with the smallest color of reason, accuse me of
being the author of a peace with Regicide.--But that is high matter, and
ought not to be mixed with anything of so little moment as what may
belong to me, or even to the Duke of Bedford.

I have the honor to be, &c.

EDMUND BURKE.

FOOTNOTES:

[15]

    Tristius haud illis monstrum, nec sævior ulla
    Pestis et ira Deûm Stygiis sese extulit undis.
    Virginei volucrum vultus, fœdissima ventris
    Proluvies, uncæque manus, et pallida semper
    Ora fame.

Here the poet breaks the line, because he (and that _he_ is Virgil) had
not verse or language to describe that monster even as he had conceived
her. Had he lived to our time, he would have been more overpowered with
the reality than he was with the imagination. Virgil only knew the
horror of the times before him. Had he lived to see the revolutionists
and constitutionalists of France, he would have had more horrid and
disgusting features of his harpies to describe, and more frequent
failures in the attempt to describe them.

[16] London, J. Dodsley, 1792, 3 vols. 4to.--Vol. II. pp. 324-336, in
the present edition.

[17] See the history of the melancholy catastrophe of the Duke of
Buckingham. Temp. Hen. VIII.

[18] At si non aliam venturo fata Neroni, etc.

[19] Sir George Savile's act, called The _Nullum Tempus_ Act.

[20] "Templum in modum arcis."--TACITUS, of the temple of Jerusalem.

[21] There is nothing on which the leaders of the Republic one and
indivisible value themselves more than on the chemical operations by
which; through science, they convert the pride of aristocracy to an
instrument of its own destruction,--on the operations by which they
reduce the magnificent ancient country-seats of the nobility, decorated
with the _feudal_ titles of Duke, Marquis, or Earl, into magazines of
what they call _revolutionary_ gunpowder. They tell us, that hitherto
things "had not yet been properly and in a _revolutionary_ manner
explored,"--"The strong _chateaus_, those _feudal_ fortresses, that
_were ordered to be demolished_ attracted next the attention of your
committee. _Nature_ there had _secretly_ regained her _rights_, and had
produced saltpetre, for the _purpose_, as it should seem, _of
facilitating the execution of your decree by preparing the means of
destruction_. From these _ruins_, which _still frown_ on the liberties
of the Republic, we have extracted the means of producing good; and
those piles which have hitherto glutted the _pride of despots_, and
covered the plots of La Vendée, will soon furnish wherewithal to tame
the traitors and to overwhelm the disaffected,"--"The _rebellious
cities_, also, have afforded a large quantity of saltpetre. _Commune
Affranchie_" (that is, the noble city of Lyons, reduced in many parts to
an heap of ruins) "and Toulon will pay a _second_ tribute to our
artillery."--_Report, 1st February_, 1794.



THREE LETTERS

ADDRESSED TO

A MEMBER OF THE PRESENT PARLIAMENT,

ON THE

PROPOSALS FOR PEACE WITH THE REGICIDE DIRECTORY OF FRANCE.

1796-7.



LETTER I.

ON THE OVERTURES OF PEACE.


My Dear Sir,--Our last conversation, though not in the tone of absolute
despondency, was far from cheerful. We could not easily account for some
unpleasant appearances. They were represented to us as indicating the
state of the popular mind; and they were not at all what we should have
expected from our old ideas even of the faults and vices of the English
character. The disastrous events which have followed one upon another in
a long, unbroken, funereal train, moving in a procession that seemed to
have no end,--these were not the principal causes of our dejection. We
feared more from what threatened to fail within than what menaced to
oppress us from abroad. To a people who have once been proud and great,
and great because they were proud, a change in the national spirit is
the most terrible of all revolutions.

I shall not live to behold the unravelling of the intricate plot which
saddens and perplexes the awful drama of Providence now acting on the
moral theatre of the world. Whether for thought or for action, I am at
the end of my career. You are in the middle of yours. In what part of
its orbit the nation with which we are carried along moves at this
instant it is not easy to conjecture. It may, perhaps, be far advanced
in its aphelion,--but when to return?

Not to lose ourselves in the infinite void of the conjectural world, our
business is with what is likely to be affected, for the better or the
worse, by the wisdom or weakness of our plans. In all speculations upon
men and human affairs, it is of no small moment to distinguish things of
accident from permanent causes, and from effects that cannot be altered.
It is not every irregularity in our movement that is a total deviation
from our course. I am not quite of the mind of those speculators who
seem assured that necessarily, and by the constitution of things, all
states have the same periods of infancy, manhood, and decrepitude that
are found in the individuals who compose them. Parallels of this sort
rather furnish similitudes to illustrate or to adorn than supply
analogies from whence to reason. The objects which are attempted to be
forced into an analogy are not found in the same classes of existence.
Individuals are physical beings, subject to laws universal and
invariable. The immediate cause acting in these laws may be obscure: the
general results are subjects of certain calculation. But commonwealths
are not physical, but moral essences. They are artificial combinations,
and, in their proximate efficient cause, the arbitrary productions of
the human mind. We are not yet acquainted with the laws which
necessarily influence the stability of that kind of work made by that
kind of agent. There is not in the physical order (with which they do
not appear to hold any assignable connection) a distinct cause by which
any of those fabrics must necessarily grow, flourish, or decay; nor, in
my opinion, does the moral world produce anything more determinate on
that subject than what may serve as an amusement (liberal, indeed, and
ingenious, but still only an amusement) for speculative men. I doubt
whether the history of mankind is yet complete enough, if ever it can be
so, to furnish grounds for a sure theory on the internal causes which
necessarily affect the fortune of a state. I am far from denying the
operation of such causes: but they are infinitely uncertain, and much
more obscure, and much more difficult to trace, than the foreign causes
that tend to raise, to depress, and sometimes to overwhelm a community.

It is often impossible, in these political inquiries, to find any
proportion between the apparent force of any moral causes we may assign
and their known operation. We are therefore obliged to deliver up that
operation to mere chance, or, more piously, (perhaps more rationally,)
to the occasional interposition and irresistible hand of the Great
Disposer. We have seen states of considerable duration, which for ages
have remained nearly as they have begun, and could hardly be said to ebb
or flow. Some appear to have spent their vigor at their commencement.
Some have blazed out in their glory a little before their extinction.
The meridian of some has been the most splendid. Others, and they the
greatest number, have fluctuated, and experienced at different periods
of their existence a great variety of fortune. At the very moment when
some of them seemed plunged in unfathomable abysses of disgrace and
disaster, they have suddenly emerged. They have begun a new course and
opened a new reckoning, and even in the depths of their calamity and on
the very ruins of their country have laid the foundations of a towering
and durable greatness. All this has happened without any apparent
previous change in the general circumstances which had brought on their
distress. The death of a man at a critical juncture, his disgust, his
retreat, his disgrace, have brought innumerable calamities on a whole
nation. A common soldier, a child, a girl at the door of an inn, have
changed the face of fortune, and almost of Nature.

Such, and often influenced by such causes, has commonly been the fate of
monarchies of long duration. They have their ebbs and their flows. This
has been eminently the fate of the monarchy of France. There have been
times in which no power has ever been brought so low. Few have ever
flourished in greater glory. By turns elevated and depressed, that power
had been, on the whole, rather on the increase; and it continued not
only powerful, but formidable, to the hour of the total ruin of the
monarchy. This fall of the monarchy was far from being preceded by any
exterior symptoms of decline. The interior were not visible to every
eye; and a thousand accidents might have prevented the operation of what
the most clear-sighted were not able to discern nor the most provident
to divine. A very little time before its dreadful catastrophe, there was
a kind of exterior splendor in the situation of the crown, which usually
adds to government strength and authority at home. The crown seemed then
to have obtained some of the most splendid objects of state ambition.
None of the Continental powers of Europe were the enemies of France.
They were all either tacitly disposed to her or publicly connected with
her; and in those who kept the most aloof there was little appearance of
jealousy,--of animosity there was no appearance at all. The British
nation, her great preponderating rival, she had humbled, to all
appearance she had weakened, certainly had endangered, by cutting off a
very large and by far the most growing part of her empire. In that its
acme of human prosperity and greatness, in the high and palmy state of
the monarchy of France, it fell to the ground without a struggle. It
fell without any of those vices in the monarch which have sometimes been
the causes of the fall of kingdoms, but which existed, without any
visible effect on the state, in the highest degree in many other
princes, and, far from destroying their power, had only left some slight
stains on their character. The financial difficulties were only pretexts
and instruments of those who accomplished the ruin of that monarchy;
they were not the causes of it.

Deprived of the old government, deprived in a manner of all government,
France, fallen as a monarchy, to common speculators might have appeared
more likely to be an object of pity or insult, according to the
disposition of the circumjacent powers, than to be the scourge and
terror of them all: but out of the tomb of the murdered monarchy in
France has arisen a vast, tremendous, unformed spectre, in a far more
terrific guise than any which ever yet have overpowered the imagination
and subdued the fortitude of man. Going straight forward to its end,
unappalled by peril, unchecked by remorse, despising all common maxims
and all common means, that hideous phantom overpowered those who could
not believe it was possible she could at all exist, except on the
principles which habit rather than Nature had persuaded them were
necessary to their own particular welfare and to their own ordinary
modes of action. But the constitution of any political being, as well as
that of any physical being, ought to be known, before one can venture to
say what is fit for its conservation, or what is the proper means of its
power. The poison of other states is the food of the new Republic. That
bankruptcy, the very apprehension of which is one of the causes assigned
for the fall of the monarchy, was the capital on which she opened her
traffic with the world.

The Republic of Regicide, with an annihilated revenue, with defaced
manufactures, with a ruined commerce, with an uncultivated and
half-depopulated country, with a discontented, distressed, enslaved, and
famished people, passing, with a rapid, eccentric, incalculable course,
from the wildest anarchy to the sternest despotism, has actually
conquered the finest parts of Europe, has distressed, disunited,
deranged, and broke to pieces all the rest, and so subdued the minds of
the rulers in every nation, that hardly any resource presents itself to
them, except that of entitling themselves to a contemptuous mercy by a
display of their imbecility and meanness. Even in their greatest
military efforts, and the greatest display of their fortitude, they seem
not to hope, they do not even appear to wish, the extinction of what
subsists to their certain ruin. Their ambition is only to be admitted to
a more favored class in the order of servitude under that domineering
power.

This seems the temper of the day. At first the French force was too much
despised. Now it is too much dreaded. As inconsiderate courage has given
way to irrational fear, so it may be hoped, that, through the medium of
deliberate, sober apprehension, we may arrive at steady fortitude. Who
knows whether indignation may not succeed to terror, and the revival of
high sentiment, spurning away the delusion of a safety purchased at the
expense of glory, may not yet drive us to that generous despair which
has often subdued distempers in the state for which no remedy could be
found in the wisest councils?

Other great states having been without any regular, certain course of
elevation or decline, we may hope that the British fortune may fluctuate
also; because the public mind, which greatly influences that fortune,
may have its changes. We are therefore never authorized to abandon our
country to its fate, or to act or advise as if it had no resource. There
is no reason to apprehend, because ordinary means threaten to fail, that
no others can spring up. Whilst our heart is whole, it will find means,
or make them. The heart of the citizen is a perennial spring of energy
to the state. Because the pulse seems to intermit, we must not presume
that it will cease instantly to beat. The public must never be regarded
as incurable. I remember, in the beginning of what has lately been
called the Seven Years' War, that an eloquent writer and ingenious
speculator, Dr. Brown, upon some reverses which happened in the
beginning of that war, published an elaborate philosophical discourse to
prove that the distinguishing features of the people of England had been
totally changed, and that a frivolous effeminacy was become the national
character. Nothing could be more popular than that work. It was thought
a great consolation to us, the light people of this country, (who were
and are light, but who were not and are not effeminate,) that we had
found the causes of our misfortunes in our vices. Pythagoras could not
be more pleased with his leading discovery. But whilst, in that
splenetic mood, we amused ourselves in a sour, critical speculation, of
which we were ourselves the objects, and in which every man lost his
particular sense of the public disgrace in the epidemic nature of the
distemper,--whilst, as in the Alps, goitre kept goitre in
countenance,--whilst we were thus abandoning ourselves to a direct
confession of our inferiority to France, and whilst many, very many,
were ready to act upon a sense of that inferiority,--a few months
effected a total change in our variable minds. We emerged from the gulf
of that speculative despondency, and wore buoyed up to the highest point
of practical vigor. Never did the masculine spirit of England display
itself with more energy, nor ever did its genius soar with a prouder
preëminence over France, than at the time when frivolity and effeminacy
had been at least tacitly acknowledged as their national character by
the good people of this kingdom.

For one, (if they be properly treated,) I despair neither of the public
fortune nor of the public mind. There is much to be done, undoubtedly,
and much to be retrieved. We must walk in new ways, or we can never
encounter our enemy in his devious march. We are not at an end of our
struggle, nor near it. Let us not deceive ourselves: we are at the
beginning of great troubles. I readily acknowledge that the state of
public affairs is infinitely more unpromising than at the period I have
just now alluded to; and the position of all the powers of Europe, in
relation to us, and in relation to each other, is more intricate and
critical beyond all comparison. Difficult indeed is our situation. In
all situations of difficulty, men will be influenced in the part they
take, not only by the reason of the case, but by the peculiar turn of
their own character. The same ways to safety do not present themselves
to all men, nor to the same men in different tempers. There is a
courageous wisdom: there is also a false, reptile prudence, the result,
not of caution, but of fear. Under misfortunes, it often happens that
the nerves of the understanding are so relaxed, the pressing peril of
the hour so completely confounds all the faculties, that no future
danger can be properly provided for, can be justly estimated, can be so
much as fully seen. The eye of the mind is dazzled and vanquished. An
abject distrust of ourselves, an extravagant admiration of the enemy,
present us with no hope but in a compromise with his pride by a
submission to his will. This short plan of policy is the only counsel
which will obtain a hearing. We plunge into a dark gulf with all the
rash precipitation of fear. The nature of courage is, without a
question, to be conversant with danger: but in the palpable night of
their terrors, men under consternation suppose, not that it is the
danger which by a sure instinct calls out the courage to resist it, but
that it is the courage which produces the danger. They therefore seek
for a refuge from their fears in the fears themselves, and consider a
temporizing meanness as the only source of safety.

The rules and definitions of prudence can rarely be exact, never
universal. I do not deny, that, in small, truckling states, a timely
compromise with power has often been the means, and the only means; of
drawling out their puny existence; but a great state is too much
envied, too much dreaded, to find safety in humiliation. To be secure,
it must be respected. Power and eminence and consideration are things
not to be begged; they must be commanded: and they who supplicate for
mercy from others can never hope for justice through themselves. What
justice they are to obtain, as the alms of an enemy, depends upon his
character; and that they ought well to know before they implicitly
confide.

Much controversy there has been in Parliament, and not a little amongst
us out of doors, about the instrumental means of this nation towards the
maintenance of her dignity and the assertion of her rights. On the most
elaborate and correct detail of facts, the result seems to be, that at
no time has the wealth and power of Great Britain been so considerable
as it is at this very perilous moment. We have a, vast interest to
preserve, and we possess great means of preserving it: but it is to be
remembered that the artificer may be incumbered by his tools, and that
resources may be among impediments. If wealth is the obedient and
laborious slave of virtue and of public honor, then wealth is in its
place and has its use; but if this order is changed, and honor is to be
sacrificed to the conservation of riches, riches, which have neither
eyes nor hands, nor anything truly vital in them, cannot long survive
the being of their vivifying powers, their legitimate masters, and their
potent protectors. If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free:
if our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed. We are bought by the
enemy with the treasure from our own coffers. Too great a sense of the
value of a subordinate interest may be the very source of its danger, as
well as the certain ruin of interests of a superior order. Often has a
man lost his all because he would not submit to hazard all in defending
it. A display of our wealth before robbers is not the way to restrain
their boldness or to lessen their rapacity. This display is made, I
know, to persuade the people of England that thereby we shall awe the
enemy and improve the terms of our capitulation: it is made, not that we
should fight with more animation, but that we should supplicate with
better hopes. We are mistaken. We have an enemy to deal with who never
regarded our contest as a measuring and weighing of purses. He is the
Gaul that puts his _sword_ into the scale. He is more tempted with our
wealth as booty than terrified with it as power. But let us be rich or
poor, let us be either in what proportion we may, Nature is false or
this is true, that, where the essential public force (of which money is
but a part) is in any degree upon a par in a conflict between nations,
that state which is resolved to hazard its existence rather than to
abandon its objects must have an infinite advantage over that which is
resolved to yield rather than to carry its resistance beyond a certain
point. Humanly speaking, that people which bounds its efforts only with
its being must give the law to that nation which will not push its
opposition beyond its convenience.

If we look to nothing but our domestic condition, the state of the
nation is full even to plethora; but if we imagine that this country can
long maintain its blood and its food as disjoined from the community of
mankind, such an opinion does not deserve refutation as absurd, but pity
as insane.

I do not know that such an improvident and stupid selfishness deserves
the discussion which perhaps I may bestow upon it hereafter. We cannot
arrange with our enemy, in the present conjuncture, without abandoning
the interest of mankind. If we look only to our own petty _peculium_ in
the war, we have had some advantages,--advantages ambiguous in their
nature, and dearly bought. We have not in the slightest degree impaired
the strength of the common enemy in any one of those points in which his
particular force consists,--at the same time that new enemies to
ourselves, new allies to the Regicide Republic, have been made out of
the wrecks and fragments of the general confederacy. So far as to the
selfish part. As composing a part of the community of Europe, and
interested in its fate, it is not easy to conceive a state of things
more doubtful and perplexing. When Louis the Fourteenth had made himself
master of one of the largest and most important provinces of
Spain,--when he had in a manner overrun Lombardy, and was thundering at
the gates of Turin,--when he had mastered almost all Germany on this
side the Rhine,--when he was on the point of ruining the august fabric
of the Empire,--when, with the Elector of Bavaria in his alliance,
hardly anything interposed between him and Vienna,--when the Turk hung
with a mighty force over the Empire on the other side,--I do not know
that in the beginning of 1704 (that is, in the third year of the
renovated war with Louis the Fourteenth) the state of Europe was so
truly alarming. To England it certainly was not. Holland (and Holland is
a matter to England of value inestimable) was then powerful, was then
independent, and, though greatly endangered, was then full of energy and
spirit. But the great resource of Europe was in England: not in a sort
of England detached from the rest of the world, and amusing herself
with the puppet-show of a naval power, (it can be no better, whilst all
the sources of that power, and of every sort of power, are precarious,)
but in that sort of England who considered herself as embodied with
Europe, but in that sort of England who, sympathetic with the adversity
or the happiness of mankind, felt that nothing in human affairs was
foreign to her. We may consider it as a sure axiom, that, as, on the one
hand, no confederacy of the least effect or duration can exist against
France, of which England is not only a part, but the head, so neither
can England pretend to cope with France but as connected with the body
of Christendom.

Our account of the war, _as a war of communion_, to the very point in
which we began to throw out lures, oglings, and glances for peace, was a
war of disaster, and of little else. The independent advantages obtained
by us at the beginning of the war, and which were made at the expense of
that common cause, if they deceive us about our largest and our surest
interest, are to be reckoned amongst our heaviest losses.

The Allies, and Great Britain amongst the rest, (and perhaps amongst the
foremost,) have been miserably deluded by this great, fundamental error:
that it was in our power to make peace with this monster of a state,
whenever we chose to forget the crimes that made it great and the
designs that made it formidable. People imagined that their ceasing to
resist was the sure way to be secure. This "pale cast of thought"
sicklied over all their enterprises, and turned all their politics awry.
They could not, or rather they would not, read, in the most unequivocal
declarations of the enemy, and in his uniform conduct, that more safety
was to be found in the most arduous war than in the friendship of that
kind of being. Its hostile amity can be obtained on no terms that do not
imply an inability hereafter to resist its designs. This great, prolific
error (I mean that peace was always in our power) has been the cause
that rendered the Allies indifferent about the _direction_ of the war,
and persuaded them that they might always risk a choice and even a
change in its objects. They seldom improved any advantage,--hoping that
the enemy, affected by it, would make a proffer of peace. Hence it was
that all their early victories have been followed almost immediately
with the usual effects of a defeat, whilst all the advantages obtained
by the Regicides have been followed by the consequences that were
natural. The discomfitures which the Republic of Assassins has suffered
have uniformly called forth new exertions, which not only repaired old
losses, but prepared new conquests. The losses of the Allies, on the
contrary, (no provision having been made on the speculation of such an
event,) have been followed by desertion, by dismay, by disunion, by a
dereliction of their policy, by a flight from their principles, by an
admiration of the enemy, by mutual accusations, by a distrust in every
member of the Alliance of its fellow, of its cause, its power, and its
courage.

Great difficulties in consequence of our erroneous policy, as I have
said, press upon every side of us. Far from desiring to conceal or even
to palliate the evil in the representation, I wish to lay it down as my
foundation, that never greater existed. In a moment when sudden panic is
apprehended, it may be wise for a while to conceal some great public
disaster, or to reveal it by degrees, until the minds of the people have
time to be re-collected, that their understanding may have leisure to
rally, and that more steady councils may prevent their doing something
desperate under the first impressions of rage or terror. But with regard
to a _general_ state of things, growing out of events and causes already
known in the gross, there is no piety in the fraud that covers its true
nature; because nothing but erroneous resolutions can be the result of
false representations. Those measures, which in common distress might be
available, in greater are no better than playing with the evil. That the
effort may bear a proportion to the exigence, it is fit it should be
known,--known in its quality, in its extent, and in all the
circumstances which attend it. Great reverses of fortune there have
been, and great embarrassments in council: a principled regicide enemy
possessed of the most important part of Europe, and struggling for the
rest; within ourselves a total relaxation of all authority, whilst a cry
is raised against it, as if it were the most ferocious of all despotism.
A worse phenomenon: our government disowned by the most efficient member
of its tribunals,--ill-supported by any of their constituent parts,--and
the highest tribunal of all (from causes not for our present purpose to
examine) deprived of all that dignity and all that efficiency which
might enforce, or regulate, or, if the case required it, might supply
the want of every other court. Public prosecutions are become little
better than schools for treason,--of no use but to improve the dexterity
of criminals in the mystery of evasion, or to show with what complete
impunity men may conspire against the commonwealth, with what safety
assassins may attempt its awful head. Everything is secure, except what
the laws have made sacred; everything is tameness and languor that is
not fury and faction. Whilst the distempers of a relaxed fibre
prognosticate and prepare all the morbid force of convulsion in the body
of the state, the steadiness of the physician is overpowered by the very
aspect of the disease.[22] The doctor of the Constitution, pretending to
underrate what he is not able to contend with, shrinks from his own
operation. He doubts and questions the salutary, but critical, terrors
of the cautery and the knife. He takes a poor credit even from his
defeat, and covers impotence under the mask of lenity. He praises the
moderation of the laws, as in his hands he sees them baffled and
despised. Is all this because in our day the statutes of the kingdom are
not engrossed in as firm a character and imprinted in as black and
legible a type as ever? No! the law is a clear, but it is a dead letter.
Dead and putrid, it is insufficient to save the state, but potent to
infect and to kill. Living law, full of reason, and of equity and
justice, (as it is, or it should not exist,) ought to be severe, and
awful too,--or the words of menace, whether written on the parchment
roll of England or cut into the brazen tablet of Borne, will excite
nothing but contempt. How comes it that in all the state prosecutions of
magnitude, from the Revolution to within these two or three years, the
crown has scarcely ever retired disgraced and defeated from its courts?
Whence this alarming change? By a connection easily felt, and not
impossible to be traced to its cause, all the parts of the state have
their correspondence and consent. They who bow to the enemy abroad will
not be of power to subdue the conspirator at home. It is impossible not
to observe, that, in proportion as we approximate to the poisonous jaws
of anarchy, the fascination grows irresistible. In proportion as we are
attracted towards the focus of illegality, irreligion, and desperate
enterprise, all the venomous and blighting insects of the state are
awakened into life. The promise of the year is blasted and shrivelled
and burned up before them. Our most salutary and most beautiful
institutions yield nothing but dust and smut; the harvest of our law is
no more than stubble. It is in the nature of these eruptive diseases in
the state to sink in by fits and reappear. But the fuel of the malady
remains, and in my opinion is not in the smallest degree mitigated in
its malignity, though it waits the favorable moment of a freer
communication with the source of regicide to exert and to increase its
force.

Is it that the people are changed, that the commonwealth cannot be
protected by its laws? I hardly think it. On the contrary, I conceive
that these things happen because men are not changed, but remain always
what they always were; they remain what the bulk of us ever must be,
when abandoned to our vulgar propensities, without guide, leader, or
control: that is, made to be full of a blind elevation in prosperity; to
despise untried dangers; to be overpowered with unexpected reverses; to
find no clew in a labyrinth of difficulties; to get out of a present
inconvenience with any risk of future ruin; to follow and to bow to
fortune; to admire successful, though wicked enterprise, and to imitate
what we admire; to contemn the government which announces danger from
sacrilege and regicide whilst they are only in their infancy and their
struggle, but which finds nothing that can alarm in their adult state,
and in the power and triumph of those destructive principles. In a mass
we cannot be left to ourselves. We must have leaders. If none will
undertake to lead us right, we shall find guides who will contrive to
conduct us to shame and ruin.

We are in a war of a _peculiar_ nature. It is not with an ordinary
community, which is hostile or friendly as passion or as interest may
veer about,--not with a state which makes war through wantonness, and
abandons it through lassitude. We are at war with a system which by its
essence is inimical to all other governments, and which makes peace or
war as peace and war may best contribute to their subversion. It is with
an _armed doctrine_ that we are at war. It has, by its essence, a
faction of opinion and of interest and of enthusiasm in every country.
To us it is a Colossus which bestrides our Channel. It has one foot on a
foreign shore, the other upon the British soil. Thus advantaged, if it
can at all exist, it must finally prevail. Nothing can so completely
ruin any of the old governments, ours in particular, as the
acknowledgment, directly or by implication, of any kind of superiority
in this new power. This acknowledgment we make, if, in a bad or doubtful
situation of our affairs, we solicit peace, or if we yield to the modes
of new humiliation in which alone she is content to give us an hearing.
By that means the terms cannot be of our choosing,--no, not in any part.

It is laid in the unalterable constitution of things,--None can aspire
to act greatly but those who are of force greatly to suffer. They who
make their arrangements in the first run of misadventure, and in a
temper of mind the common fruit of disappointment and dismay, put a seal
on their calamities. To their power they take a security against any
favors which they might hope from the usual inconstancy of fortune. I am
therefore, my dear friend, invariably of your opinion, (though full of
respect for those who think differently,) that neither the time chosen
for it, nor the manner of soliciting a negotiation, were properly
considered,--even though I had allowed (I hardly shall allow) that with
the horde of Regicides we could by any selection of time or use of means
obtain anything at all deserving the name of peace.

In one point we are lucky. The Regicide has received our advances with
scorn. We have an enemy to whose virtues we can owe nothing, but on this
occasion we are infinitely obliged to one of his vices. We owe more to
his insolence than to our own precaution. The haughtiness by which the
proud repel us has this of good in it,--that, in making us keep our
distance, they must keep their distance too. In the present case, the
pride of the Regicide may be our safety. He has given time for our
reason to operate, and for British dignity to recover from its surprise.
From first to last he has rejected all our advances. Far as we have
gone, he has still left a way open to our retreat.

There is always an augury to be taken of what a peace is likely to be
from the preliminary steps that are made to bring it about. We may
gather something from the time in which the first overtures are made,
from the quarter whence they come, from the manner in which they are
received. These discover the temper of the parties. If your enemy
offers peace in the moment of success, it indicates that he is satisfied
with something. It shows that there are limits to his ambition or his
resentment. If he offers nothing under misfortune, it is probable that
it is more painful to him to abandon the prospect of advantage than to
endure calamity. If he rejects solicitation, and will not give even a
nod to the suppliants for peace, until a change in the fortune of the
war threatens him with ruin, then I think it evident that he wishes
nothing more than to disarm his adversary to gain time. Afterwards a
question arises, Which of the parties is likely to obtain the greater
advantages by continuing disarmed and by the use of time?

With these few plain indications in our minds, it will not be improper
to reconsider the conduct of the enemy together with our own, from the
day that a question of peace has been in agitation. In considering this
part of the question, I do not proceed on my own hypothesis. I suppose,
for a moment, that this body of Regicide, calling itself a Republic, is
a politic person, with whom something deserving the name of peace may be
made. On that supposition, let us examine our own proceeding. Let us
compute the profit it has brought, and the advantage that it is likely
to bring hereafter. A peace too eagerly sought is not always the sooner
obtained. The discovery of vehement wishes generally frustrates their
attainment, and your adversary has gained a great advantage over you
when he finds you impatient to conclude a treaty. There is in reserve
not only something of dignity, but a great deal of prudence too. A sort
of courage belongs to negotiation, as well as to operations of the
field. A negotiator must often seem willing to hazard the whole issue
of his treaty, if he wishes to secure any one material point.

The Regicides were the first to declare war. We are the first to sue for
peace. In proportion to the humility and perseverance we have shown in
our addresses has been the obstinacy of their arrogance in rejecting our
suit. The patience of their pride seems to have been worn out with the
importunity of our courtship. Disgusted as they are with a conduct so
different from all the sentiments by which they are themselves filled,
they think to put an end to our vexatious solicitation by redoubling
their insults.

It happens frequently that pride may reject a public advance, while
interest listens to a secret suggestion of advantage. The opportunity
has been afforded. At a very early period in the diplomacy of
humiliation, a gentleman was sent on an errand,[23] of which, from the
motive of it, whatever the event might be, we can never be ashamed.
Humanity cannot be degraded by humiliation. It is its very character to
submit to such things. There is a consanguinity between benevolence and
humility. They are virtues of the same stock. Dignity is of as good a
race; but it belongs to the family of fortitude. In the spirit of that
benevolence, we sent a gentleman to beseech the Directory of Regicide
not to be quite so prodigal as their republic had been of judicial
murder. We solicited them to spare the lives of some unhappy persons of
the first distinction, whose safety at other times could not have been
an object of solicitation. They had quitted France on the faith of the
declaration of the rights of citizens. They never had been in the
service of the Regicides, nor at their hands had received any stipend.
The very system and constitution of government that now prevails was
settled subsequent to their emigration. They were under the protection
of Great Britain, and in his Majesty's pay and service. Not an hostile
invasion, but the disasters of the sea, had thrown them upon a shore
more barbarous and inhospitable than the inclement ocean under the most
pitiless of its storms. Here was an opportunity to express a feeling for
the miseries of war, and to open some sort of conversation, which,
(after our public overtures had glutted their pride,) at a cautious and
jealous distance, might lead to something like an accommodation.--What
was the event? A strange, uncouth thing, a theatrical figure of the
opera, his head shaded with three-colored plumes, his body fantastically
habited, strutted from the back scenes, and, after a short speech, in
the mock-heroic falsetto of stupid tragedy, delivered the gentleman who
came to make the representation into the custody of a guard, with
directions not to lose sight of him for a moment, and then ordered him
to be sent from Paris in two hours.

Here it is impossible that a sentiment of tenderness should not strike
athwart the sternness of politics, and make us recall to painful memory
the difference between this insolent and bloody theatre and the
temperate, natural majesty of a civilized court, where the afflicted
family of Asgill did not in vain solicit the mercy of the highest in
rank and the most compassionate of the compassionate sex.

In this intercourse, at least, there was nothing to promise a great deal
of success in our future advances. Whilst the fortune of the field was
wholly with the Regicides, nothing was thought of but to follow where it
led: and it led to everything. Not so much as a talk of treaty. Laws
were laid down with arrogance. The most moderate politician in their
clan[24] was chosen as the organ, not so much for prescribing limits to
their claims as to mark what for the present they are content to leave
to others. They made, not laws, not conventions, not late possession,
but physical Nature and political convenience the sole foundation of
their claims. The Rhine, the Mediterranean, and the ocean were the
bounds which, for the time, they assigned to the Empire of Regicide.
What was the Chamber of Union of Louis the Fourteenth, which astonished
and provoked all Europe, compared to this declaration? In truth, with
these limits, and their principle, they would not have left even the
shadow of liberty or safety to any nation. This plan of empire was not
taken up in the first intoxication of unexpected success. You must
recollect that it was projected, just as the report has stated it, from
the very first revolt of the faction against their monarchy; and it has
been uniformly pursued, as a standing maxim of national policy, from
that time to this. It is generally in the season of prosperity that men
discover their real temper, principles, and designs. But this principle,
suggested in their first struggles, fully avowed in their prosperity,
has, in the most adverse state of their affairs, been tenaciously
adhered to. The report, combined with their conduct, forms an infallible
criterion of the views of this republic.

In their fortune there has been some fluctuation. We are to see how
their minds have been affected with a change. Some impression it made on
them, undoubtedly. It produced some oblique notice of the submissions
that were made by suppliant nations. The utmost they did was to make
some of those cold, formal, general professions of a love of peace which
no power has ever refused to make, because they mean little and cost
nothing. The first paper I have seen (the publication at Hamburg) making
a show of that pacific disposition discovered a rooted animosity against
this nation, and an incurable rancor, even more than any one of their
hostile acts. In this Hamburg declaration they choose to suppose that
the war, on the part of England, _is a war of government, begun and
carried on against the sense and interests of the people_,--thus sowing
in their very overtures towards peace the seeds of tumult and sedition:
for they never have abandoned, and never will they abandon, in peace, in
war, in treaty, in any situation, or for one instant, their old, steady
maxim of separating the people from their government. Let me add, (and
it is with unfeigned anxiety for the character and credit of ministers
that I do add,) if our government perseveres in its as uniform course of
acting under instruments with such preambles, it pleads guilty to the
charges made by our enemies against it, both on its own part and on the
part of Parliament itself. The enemy must succeed in his plan for
loosening and disconnecting all the internal holdings of the kingdom.

It was not enough that the speech from the throne, in the opening of the
session in 1795, threw out oglings and glances of tenderness. Lest this
coquetting should seem too cold and ambiguous, without waiting for its
effect, the violent passion for a relation to the Regicides produced a
direct message from the crown, and its consequences from the two Houses
of Parliament. On the part of the Regicides these declarations could not
be entirely passed by without notice; but in that notice they discovered
still more clearly the bottom of their character. The offer made to them
by the message to Parliament was hinted at in their answer,--but in an
obscure and oblique manner, as before. They accompanied their notice of
the indications manifested on our side with every kind of insolent and
taunting reflection. The Regicide Directory, on the day which, in their
gypsy jargon, they call the 5th of _Pluviose_, in return for our
advances, charge us with eluding our declarations under "evasive
formalities and frivolous pretexts." What these pretexts and evasions
were they do not say, and I have never heard. But they do not rest
there. They proceed to charge us, and, as it should seem, our allies in
the mass, with direct _perfidy_; they are so conciliatory in their
language as to hint that this perfidious character is not new in our
proceedings. However, notwithstanding this our habitual perfidy, they
will offer peace "on conditions _as_ moderate"--as what? as reason and
as equity require? No,--as moderate "as are suitable to their _national
dignity_." National dignity in all treaties I do admit is an important
consideration: they have given us an useful hint on that subject: but
dignity hitherto has belonged to the mode of proceeding, not to the
matter of a treaty. Never before has it been mentioned as the standard
for rating the conditions of peace,--no, never by the most violent of
conquerors. Indemnification is capable of some estimate; dignity has no
standard. It is impossible to guess what acquisitions pride and ambition
may think fit for their _dignity_. But lest any doubt should remain on
what they think for their dignity, the Regicides in the next paragraph
tell us "that they will have no peace with their enemies, until they
have reduced them to a state which will put them under an
_impossibility_ of pursuing their wretched projects,"--that is, in plain
French or English, until they have accomplished our utter and
irretrievable ruin. This is their _pacific_ language. It flows from
their unalterable principle, in whatever language they speak or whatever
steps they take, whether of real war or of pretended pacification. They
have never, to do them justice, been at much trouble in concealing their
intentions. We were as obstinately resolved to think them not in
earnest: but I confess, jests of this sort, whatever their urbanity may
be, are not much to my taste.

To this conciliatory and amicable public communication our sole answer,
in effect, is this:--"Citizen Regicides! whenever _you_ find yourselves
in the humor, you may have a peace with _us_. That is a point you may
always command. We are constantly in attendance, and nothing you can do
shall hinder us from the renewal of our supplications. You may turn us
out at the door, but we will jump in at the window."

To those who do not love to contemplate the fall of human greatness, I
do not know a more mortifying spectacle than to see the assembled
majesty of the crowned heads of Europe waiting as patient suitors in the
antechamber of Regicide. They wait, it seems, until the sanguinary
tyrant Carnot shall have snorted away the fumes of the indigested blood
of his sovereign. Then, when, sunk on the down of usurped pomp, he shall
have sufficiently indulged his meditations with what monarch he shall
next glut his ravening maw, he may condescend to signify that it is his
pleasure to be awake, and that he is at leisure to receive the proposals
of his high and mighty clients for the terms on which he may respite the
execution of the sentence he has passed upon them. At the opening of
those doors, what a sight it must be to behold the plenipotentiaries of
royal impotence, in the precedency which they will intrigue to obtain,
and which will be granted to them according to the seniority of their
degradation, sneaking into the Regicide presence, and, with the relics
of the smile which they had dressed up for the levee of their masters
still flickering on their curled lips, presenting the faded remains of
their courtly graces, to meet the scornful, ferocious, sardonic grin of
a bloody ruffian, who, whilst he is receiving their homage, is measuring
them with his eye, and fitting to their size the slider of his
guillotine! These ambassadors may easily return as good courtiers as
they went; but can they ever return from that degrading residence loyal
and faithful subjects, or with any true affection to their master, or
true attachment to the constitution, religion, or laws of their country?
There is great danger that they, who enter smiling into this Trophonian
cave, will come out of it sad and serious conspirators, and such will
continue as long as they live. They will become true conductors of
contagion to every country which has had the misfortune to send them to
the source of that electricity. At best, they will become totally
indifferent to good and evil, to one institution or another. This
species of indifference is but too generally distinguishable in those
who have been much employed in foreign courts, but in the present case
the evil must be aggravated without measure: for they go from their
country, not with the pride of the old character, but in a state of the
lowest degradation; and what must happen in their place of residence can
have no effect in raising them to the level of true dignity or of chaste
self-estimation, either as men or as representatives of crowned heads.

Our early proceeding, which has produced these returns of affront,
appeared to me totally new, without being adapted to the new
circumstances of affairs. I have called to my mind the speeches and
messages in former times. I find nothing like these. You will look in
the journals to find whether my memory fails me. Before this time, never
was a ground of peace laid, (as it were, in a Parliamentary record,)
until it had been as good as concluded. This was a wise homage paid to
the discretion of the crown. It was known how much a negotiation must
suffer by having anything in the train towards it prematurely disclosed.
But when those Parliamentary declarations were made, not so much as a
step had been taken towards a negotiation in any mode whatever. The
measure was an unpleasant and unseasonable discovery.

I conceive that another circumstance in that transaction has been as
little authorized by any example, and that it is as little prudent in
itself: I mean the formal recognition of the French Republic. Without
entering, for the present, into a question on the good faith manifested
in that measure, or on its general policy, I doubt, upon mere temporary
considerations of prudence, whether it was perfectly advisable. It is
not within, the rules of dexterous conduct to make an acknowledgment of
a contested title in your enemy before you are morally certain that your
recognition will secure his friendship. Otherwise it is a measure worse
than thrown away. It adds infinitely to the strength, and consequently
to the demands, of the adverse party. He has gained a fundamental point
without an equivalent. It has happened as might have been foreseen. No
notice whatever was taken of this recognition. In fact, the Directory
never gave themselves any concern about it; and they received our
acknowledgment with perfect scorn. With them it is not for the states of
Europe to judge of their title: the very reverse. In their eye the title
of every other power depends wholly on their pleasure.

Preliminary declarations of this sort, thrown out at random, and sown,
as it wore, broadcast, were never to be found in the mode of our
proceeding with France and Spain, whilst the great monarchies of France
and Spain existed. I do not say that a diplomatic measure ought to be,
like a parliamentary or a judicial proceeding, according to strict
precedent: I hope I am far from that pedantry. But this I know: that a
great state ought to have some regard to its ancient maxims, especially
where they indicate its dignity, where they concur with the rules of
prudence, and, above all, where the circumstances of the time require
that a spirit of innovation should be resisted which leads to the
humiliation of sovereign powers. It would be ridiculous to assert that
those powers have suffered nothing in their estimation. I admit that
the greater interests of state will for a moment supersede all other
considerations; but if there was a rule, that a sovereign never should
let down his dignity without a sure payment to his interest, the dignity
of kings would be held high enough. At present, however, fashion governs
in more serious things than furniture and dress. It looks as if
sovereigns abroad were emulous in bidding against their estimation. It
seems as if the preëminence of regicide was acknowledged,--and that
kings tacitly ranked themselves below their sacrilegious murderers, as
natural magistrates and judges over them. It appears as if dignity were
the prerogative of crime, and a temporizing humiliation the proper part
for venerable authority. If the vilest of mankind are resolved to be the
most wicked, they lose all the baseness of their origin, and take their
place above kings. This example in foreign princes I trust will not
spread. It is the concern of mankind, that the destruction of order
should not, be a claim to rank, that crimes should not be the only title
to preëminence and honor.

At this second stage of humiliation, (I mean the insulting declaration
in consequence of the message to both Houses of Parliament,) it might
not have been amiss to pause, and not to squander away the fund of our
submissions, until we knew what final purposes of public interest they
might answer. The policy of subjecting ourselves to further insults is
not to me quite apparent. It was resolved, however, to hazard a third
trial. Citizen Barthélemy had been established, on the part of the new
republic, at Basle,--where, with his proconsulate of Switzerland and the
adjacent parts of Germany, he was appointed as a sort of factor to deal
in the degradation of the crowned heads of Europe. At Basle it was
thought proper, in order to keep others, I suppose, in countenance, that
Great Britain should appear at this market, and bid with the rest for
the mercy of the People-King.

On the 6th of March, 1796, Mr. Wickham, in consequence of authority, was
desired to sound France on her disposition towards a general
pacification,--to know whether she would consent to send ministers to a
congress at such a place as might be hereafter agreed upon,--whether
there would be a disposition to communicate the general grounds of a
pacification, such as France (the diplomatic name of the Regicide power)
would be willing to propose, as a foundation for a negotiation for peace
with his Majesty _and his allies_, or to suggest any other way of
arriving at the same end of a general pacification: but he had no
authority to enter into any negotiation or discussion with Citizen
Barthélemy upon these subjects.

On the part of Great Britain this measure was a voluntary act, wholly
uncalled for on the part of Regicide. Suits of this sort are at least
strong indications of a desire for accommodation. Any other body of men
but the Directory would be somewhat soothed with such advances. They
could not, however, begin their answer, which was given without much
delay, and communicated on the 28th of the same month, without a
preamble of insult and reproach. "They doubt the sincerity of the
pacific intentions of this court." She did not begin, say they, yet to
"know her real interests." "She did not seek peace _with good faith_."
This, or something to this effect, has been the constant preliminary
observation (now grown into a sort of office form) on all our overtures
to this power: a perpetual charge on the British government of fraud,
evasion, and habitual perfidy.

It might be asked, From whence did these opinions of our insincerity and
ill faith arise? It was because the British ministry (leaving to the
Directory, however, to propose a better mode) proposed a _congress_ for
the purpose of a general pacification, and this they said "would render
negotiation endless." From hence they immediately inferred a fraudulent
intention in the offer. Unquestionably their mode of giving the law
would bring matters to a more speedy conclusion. As to any other method
more agreeable to them than a congress, an alternative expressly
proposed to them, they did not condescend to signify their pleasure.

This refusal of treating conjointly with the powers allied against this
republic furnishes matter for a great deal of serious reflection. They
have hitherto constantly declined any other than a treaty with a single
power. By thus dissociating every state from every other, like deer
separated from the herd, each power is treated with on the merit of his
being a deserter from the common cause. In that light, the Regicide
power, finding each of them insulated and unprotected, with great
facility gives the law to them all. By this system, for the present an
incurable distrust is sown amongst confederates, and in future all
alliance is rendered impracticable. It is thus they have treated with
Prussia, with Spain, with Sardinia, with Bavaria, with the
Ecclesiastical State, with Saxony; and here we see them refuse to treat
with Great Britain in any other mode. They must be worse than blind who
do not see with what undeviating regularity of system, in this case and
in all cases, they pursue their scheme for the utter destruction of
every independent power,--especially the smaller, who cannot find any
refuge whatever but in some common cause.

Renewing their taunts and reflections, they tell Mr. Wickham, "that
_their_ policy has no guides but openness and good faith, and that their
conduct shall be conformable to these principles." They say concerning
their government, that, "yielding to the ardent desire by which it is
animated to procure peace for the French Republic and for all nations,
it will not _fear to declare itself openly_. Charged by the Constitution
with the execution of the _laws_, it cannot _make_ or _listen_ to any
proposal that would be contrary to them. The constitutional act does not
permit it to consent to any alienation of that which, according to the
existing laws, constitutes the territory of the Republic."

"With respect to the countries _occupied by the French armies, and which
have not been united to France_, they, as well as other interests,
political and commercial, may become the subject of a negotiation, which
will present to the Directory the means of proving how much it desires
to attain speedily to a happy pacification." That "the Directory is
ready to receive, in this respect, any overtures that shall be just,
reasonable, and compatible _with the dignity of the Republic_."

On the head of what is _not_ to be the subject of negotiation, the
Directory is clear and open. As to what may be a matter of treaty, all
this open dealing is gone. She retires into her shell. There she expects
overtures from _you_: and you are to guess what she shall judge just,
reasonable, and, above all, _compatible with her dignity_.

In the records of pride there does not exist so insulting a declaration.
It is insolent in words, in manner; but in substance it is not only
insulting, but alarming. It is a specimen of what may be expected from
the masters we are preparing for our humbled country. Their openness and
candor consist in a direct avowal of their despotism and ambition. We
know that their declared resolution had been to surrender no object
belonging to France previous to the war. They had resolved that the
Republic was entire, and must remain so. As to what she has conquered
from the Allies and united to the same indivisible body, it is of the
same nature. That is, the Allies are to give up whatever conquests they
have made or may make upon France; but all which she has violently
ravished from her neighbors, and thought fit to appropriate, are not to
become so much as objects of negotiation.

In this unity and indivisibility of possession are sunk ten immense and
wealthy provinces, full of strong, flourishing, and opulent cities, (the
Austrian Netherlands,) the part of Europe the most necessary to preserve
any communication between this kingdom and its natural allies, next to
Holland the most interesting to this country, and without which Holland
must virtually belong to France. Savoy and Nice, the keys of Italy, and
the citadel in her hands to bridle Switzerland, are in that
consolidation. The important territory of Liege is torn out of the heart
of the Empire. All these are integrant parts of the Republic, not to be
subject to any discussion, or to be purchased by any equivalent. Why?
Because there is a law which prevents it. What law? The law of nations?
The acknowledged public law of Europe? Treaties and conventions of
parties? No,--not a pretence of the kind. It is a declaration not made
in consequence of any prescription on her side,--not on any cession or
dereliction, actual or tacit, of other powers. It is a declaration,
_pendente lite_, in the middle of a war, one principal object of which
was originally the defence, and has since been the recovery, of these
very countries.

This strange law is not made for a trivial object, not for a single port
or for a single fortress, but for a great kingdom,--for the religion,
the morals, the laws, the liberties, the lives and fortunes of millions
of human creatures, who, without their consent or that of their lawful
government, are, by an arbitrary act of this regicide and homicide
government which they call a law, incorporated into their tyranny.

In other words, their will is the law, not only at home, but as to the
concerns of every nation. Who has made that law but the Regicide
Republic itself, whose laws, like those of the Medes and Persians, they
cannot alter or abrogate, or even so much as take into consideration?
Without the least ceremony or compliment, they have sent out of the
world whole sets of laws and lawgivers. They have swept away the very
constitutions under which the legislatures acted and the laws were made.
Even the fundamental sacred rights of man they have not scrupled to
profane. They have set this holy code at nought with ignominy and scorn.
Thus they treat all their domestic laws and constitutions, and even what
they had considered as a law of Nature. But whatever they have put their
seal on, for the purposes of their ambition, and the ruin of their
neighbors, this alone is invulnerable, impassible, immortal. Assuming to
be masters of everything human and divine, here, and here alone, it
seems, they are limited, "cooped and cabined in," and this omnipotent
legislature finds itself wholly without the power of exercising its
favorite attribute, the love of peace. In other words, they are powerful
to usurp, impotent to restore; and equally by their power and their
impotence they aggrandize themselves, and weaken and impoverish you and
all other nations.

Nothing can be more proper or more manly than the state publication,
called a _Note_, on this proceeding, dated Downing Street, the 10th of
April, 1796. Only that it is better expressed, it perfectly agrees with
the opinion I have taken the liberty of submitting to your
consideration. I place it below at full length,[25] as my justification
in thinking that this astonishing paper from the Directory is not only a
direct negative to all treaty, but is a rejection of every principle
upon which treaties could be made. To admit it for a moment were to
erect this power, usurped at home, into a legislature to govern mankind.
It is an authority that on a thousand occasions they have asserted in
claim, and, whenever they are able, exerted in practice. The
dereliction, of this whole scheme of policy became, therefore, an
indispensable previous condition to all renewal of treaty. The remark of
the British Cabinet on this arrogant and tyrannical claim is natural and
unavoidable. Our ministry state, that, "_while these dispositions shall
be persisted in, nothing is left for the king but to prosecute a war
that is just and necessary_."

It was of course that we should wait until the enemy showed some sort of
disposition on his part to fulfil this condition. It was hoped, indeed,
that our suppliant strains might be suffered to steal into the august
ear in a more propitious season. That season, however, invoked by so
many vows, conjurations, and prayers, did not come. Every declaration of
hostility renovated, and every act pursued with double animosity,--the
overrunning of Lombardy,--the subjugation of Piedmont,--the possession
of its impregnable fortresses,--the seizing on all the neutral states of
Italy,--our expulsion from Leghorn,--instances forever renewed for our
expulsion from Genoa,--Spain rendered subject to them and hostile to
us,--Portugal bent under the yoke,--half the Empire overrun and
ravaged,--were the only signs which this mild Republic thought proper to
manifest of her pacific sentiments. Every demonstration of an implacable
rancor and an untamable pride were the only encouragements we received
to the renewal of our supplications.

Here, therefore, they and we were fixed. Nothing was left to the British
ministry but "to prosecute a war just and necessary,"--a war equally
just as at the time of our engaging in it,--a war become ten times more
necessary by everything which happened afterwards. This resolution was
soon, however, forgot. It felt the heat of the season and melted away.
New hopes were entertained from supplication. No expectations, indeed,
were then formed from renewing a direct application to the French
Regicides through the agent-general for the humiliation of sovereigns.
At length a step was taken in degradation which even went lower than all
the rest. Deficient in merits of our own, a mediator was to be
sought,--and we looked for that mediator at Berlin! The King of
Prussia's merits in abandoning the general cause might have obtained for
him some sort of influence in favor of those whom he had deserted; but I
have never heard that his Prussian Majesty had lately discovered so
marked an affection for the Court of St. James's, or for the Court of
Vienna, as to excite much hope of his interposing a very powerful
mediation to deliver them from the distresses into which he had brought
them.

If humiliation is the element in which we live, if it is become not only
our occasional policy, but our habit, no great objection can be made to
the modes in which it may be diversified,--though I confess I cannot be
charmed with the idea of our exposing our lazar sores at the door of
every proud servitor of the French Republic, where the court dogs will
not deign to lick them. We had, if I am not mistaken, a minister at that
court, who might try its temper, and recede and advance as he found
backwardness or encouragement. But to send a gentleman there on no other
errand than this, and with no assurance whatever that he should not
find, what he did find, a repulse, seems to me to go far beyond all the
demands of a humiliation merely politic. I hope it did not arise from a
predilection for that mode of conduct.

The cup of bitterness was not, however, drained to the dregs. Basle and
Berlin were not sufficient. After so many and so diversified repulses,
we were resolved to make another experiment, and to try another
mediator. Among the unhappy gentlemen in whose persons royalty is
insulted and degraded at the seat of plebeian pride and upstart
insolence, there is a minister from Denmark at Paris. Without any
previous encouragement to that, any more than the other steps, we sent
through, this turnpike to demand a passport for a person who on our part
was to solicit peace in the metropolis, at the footstool of Regicide
itself. It was not to be expected that any one of those degraded beings
could have influence enough to settle any part of the terms in favor of
the candidates for further degradation; besides, such intervention would
be a direct breach in their system, which did not permit one sovereign
power to utter a word in the concerns of his equal.--Another repulse. We
were desired to apply directly in our persons. We submitted, and made
the application.

It might be thought that here, at length, we had touched the bottom of
humiliation; our lead was brought up covered with mud. But "in the
lowest deep, a lower deep" was to open for us still more profound
abysses of disgrace and shame. However, in we leaped. We came forward in
our own name. The passport, such a passport and safe-conduct as would be
granted to thieves who might come in to betray their accomplices, and no
better, was granted to British supplication. To leave no doubt of its
spirit, as soon as the rumor of this act of condescension could get
abroad, it was formally announced with an explanation from authority,
containing an invective against the ministry of Great Britain, their
habitual frauds, their proverbial _Punic_ perfidy. No such state-paper,
as a preliminary to a negotiation for peace, has ever yet appeared. Very
few declarations of war have ever shown so much and so unqualified
animosity. I place it below,[26] as a diplomatic curiosity, and in
order to be the better understood in the few remarks I have to make upon
a peace which, indeed, defies all description. "None but itself can be
its parallel."

I pass by all the insolence and contumely of the performance, as it
comes from them. The present question is not, how we are to be affected
with it in regard to our dignity. That is gone. I shall say no more
about it. Light lie the earth on the ashes of English pride! I shall
only observe upon it _politically_, and as furnishing a direction for
our own conduct in this low business.

The very idea of a negotiation for peace, whatever the inward sentiments
of the parties may be, implies some confidence in their faith, some
degree of belief in the professions which are made concerning it. A
temporary and occasional credit, at least, is granted. Otherwise men
stumble on the very threshold. I therefore wish to ask what hope we can
have of their good faith, who, as the very basis of the negotiation,
assume the ill faith and treachery of those they have to deal with? The
terms, as against us, must be such as imply a full security against a
treacherous conduct,--that is, such terms as this Directory stated in
its first declaration, to place us "in an utter impossibility of
executing our wretched projects." This is the omen, and the sole omen,
under which we have consented to open our treaty.

The second observation I have to make upon it (much connected,
undoubtedly, with the first) is, that they have informed you of the
result they propose from the kind of peace they mean to grant you,
--that is to say, the union they propose among nations with the view of
rivalling our trade and destroying our naval power; and this they
suppose (and with good reason, too) must be the inevitable effect of
their peace. It forms one of their principal grounds for suspecting our
ministers could not be in good earnest in their proposition. They make
no scruple beforehand to tell you the whole of what they intend; and
this is what we call, in the modern style, the acceptance of a
proposition for peace! In old language it would be called a most
haughty, offensive, and insolent rejection of all treaty.

Thirdly, they tell you what they conceive to be the perfidious policy
which dictates your delusive offer: that is, the design of cheating not
only them, but the people of England, against whose interest and
inclination this war is supposed to be carried on.

If we proceed in this business, under this preliminary declaration, it
seems to me that we admit, (now for the third time,) by something a
great deal stronger than words, the truth of the charges of every kind
which they make upon the British ministry, and the grounds of those foul
imputations. The language used by us, which in other circumstances would
not be exceptionable, in this case tends very strongly to confirm and
realize the suspicion of our enemy: I mean the declaration, that, if we
do not obtain such terms of peace as suits our opinion of what our
interests require, _then_, and in _that_ case, we shall continue the war
with vigor. This offer, so reasoned, plainly implies, that, without it,
our leaders themselves entertain great doubts of the opinion and good
affections of the British people; otherwise there does not appear any
cause why we should proceed, under the scandalous construction of our
enemy, upon the former offer made by Mr. Wickham, and on the new offer
made directly at Paris. It is not, therefore, from a sense of dignity,
but from the danger of radicating that false sentiment in the breasts of
the enemy, that I think, under the auspices of this declaration, we
cannot, with the least hope of a good event, or, indeed, with any
regard to the common safety, proceed in the train of this negotiation.
I wish ministry would seriously consider the importance of their seeming
to confirm the enemy in an opinion that his frequent use of appeals to
the people against their government has not been without its effect. If
it puts an end to this war, it will render another impracticable.

Whoever goes to the Directorial presence under this passport, with this
offensive comment and foul explanation, goes, in the avowed sense of the
court to which he is sent, as the instrument of a government dissociated
from the interests and wishes of the nation, for the purpose of cheating
both the people of France and the people of England. He goes out the
declared emissary of a faithless ministry. He has perfidy for his
credentials. He has national weakness for his full powers. I yet doubt
whether any one can be found to invest himself with that character. If
there should, it would be pleasant to read his instructions on the
answer which he is to give to the Directory, in case they should repeat
to him the substance of the manifesto which he carries with him in his
portfolio.

So much for the _first_ manifesto of the Regicide Court which went along
with the passport. Lest this declaration should seem the effect of
haste, or a mere sudden effusion of pride and insolence, on full
deliberation, about a week after comes out a second. This manifesto is
dated the 5th of October, one day before the speech from the throne, on
the vigil of the festive day of cordial unanimity so happily celebrated
by all parties in the British Parliament. In this piece the Regicides,
our worthy friends, (I call them by advance and by courtesy what by law
I shall be obliged to call them hereafter,) our worthy friends, I say,
renew and enforce the former declaration concerning our faith and
sincerity, which they pinned to our passport. On three other points,
which run through all their declarations, they are more explicit than
ever.

First, they more directly undertake to be the real representatives of
the people of this kingdom: and on a supposition, in which they agree
with our Parliamentary reformers, that the House of Commons is not that
representative, the function being vacant, they, as our true
constitutional organ, inform his Majesty and the world of the sense of
the nation. They tell us that "the English people see with regret his
Majesty's government squandering away the funds which had been granted
to him." This astonishing assumption of the public voice of England is
but a slight foretaste of the usurpation which, on a peace, we may be
assured they will make of all the powers in all the parts of our vassal
Constitution. "If they do these things in the green tree, what shall be
done in the dry?"

Next they tell us, as a condition to our treaty, that "this government
must abjure the unjust hatred it bears to them, and at last open its
ears to the voice of humanity." Truly, this is, even from them, an
extraordinary demand. Hitherto, it seems, we have put wax into our ears,
to shut them up against the tender, soothing strains, in the
_affettuoso_ of humanity, warbled from the throats of Reubell, Carnot,
Tallien, and the whole chorus of confiscators, domiciliary visitors,
committee-men of research, jurors and presidents of revolutionary
tribunals, regicides, assassins, massacrers, and Septembrisers. It is
not difficult to discern what sort of humanity our government is to
learn from these Siren singers. Our government also; I admit, with some
reason, as a step towards the proposed fraternity, is required to abjure
the unjust hatred which it bears to this body of honor and virtue. I
thank God I am neither a minister nor a leader of opposition. I protest
I cannot do what they desire. I could not do it, if I were under the
guillotine,--or, as they ingeniously and pleasantly express it, "looking
out of the little national window." Even at that opening I could receive
none of their light. I am fortified against all such affections by the
declaration of the government, which I must yet consider as lawful, made
on the 29th of October, 1793,[27] and still ringing in my ears. This
Declaration was transmitted not only to all our commanders by sea and
land, but to our ministers in every court of Europe. It is the most
eloquent and highly finished in the style, the most judicious in the
choice of topics, the most orderly in the arrangement, and the most rich
in the coloring, without employing the smallest degree of exaggeration,
of any state-paper that has ever yet appeared. An ancient writer
(Plutarch, I think it is) quotes some verses on the eloquence of
Pericles, who is called "the only orator that left stings in the minds
of his hearers." Like his, the eloquence of the Declaration, not
contradicting, but enforcing, sentiments of the truest humanity, has
left stings that have penetrated more than skin-deep into my mind and
never can they be extracted by all the surgery of murder; never can the
throbbings they have created be assuaged by all the emollient cataplasms
of robbery and confiscation. I _cannot_ love the Republic.

The third point, which they have more clearly expressed than ever, is of
equal importance with the rest, and with them furnishes a complete view
of the Regicide system. For they demand as a condition, without which
our ambassador of obedience cannot be received with any hope of success,
that he shall be "provided with full powers to negotiate a peace between
the French Republic and Great Britain, and to conclude it _definitively_
between the TWO powers." With their spear they draw a circle about us.
They will hear nothing of a joint treaty. We must make a peace
separately from our allies. We must, as the very first and preliminary
step, be guilty of that perfidy towards our friends and associates with
which they reproach us in our transactions with them, our enemies. We
are called upon scandalously to betray the fundamental securities to
ourselves and to all nations. In my opinion, (it is perhaps but a poor
one,) if we are meanly bold enough to send an ambassador such as this
official note of the enemy requires, we cannot even dispatch our
emissary without danger of being charged with a breach of our alliance.
Government now understands the full meaning of the passport.

Strange revolutions have happened in the ways of thinking and in the
feelings of men; but it is a very extraordinary coalition of parties
indeed, and a kind of unheard-of unanimity in public councils, which can
impose this new-discovered system of negotiation, as sound national
policy, on the understanding of a spectator of this wonderful scene, who
judges on the principles of anything he ever before saw, read, or heard
of, and, above all, on the understanding of a person who has in his eye
the transactions of the last seven years.

I know it is supposed, that, if good terms of capitulation are not
granted, after we have thus so repeatedly hung out the white flag, the
national spirit will revive with tenfold ardor. This is an experiment
cautiously to be made. _Reculer pour mieux sauter_, according to the
French byword, cannot be trusted to as a general rule of conduct. To
diet a man into weakness and languor, afterwards to give him the greater
strength, has more of the empiric than the rational physician. It is
true that some persons have been kicked into courage,--and this is no
bad hint to give to those who are too forward and liberal in bestowing
insults and outrages on their passive companions; but such a course does
not at first view appear a well-chosen discipline to form men to a nice
sense of honor or a quick resentment of injuries. A long habit of
humiliation does not seem a very good preparative to manly and vigorous
sentiment. It may not leave, perhaps, enough of energy in the mind
fairly to discern what are good terms or what are not. Men low and
dispirited may regard those terms as not at all amiss which in another
state of mind they would think intolerable: if they grow peevish in this
state of mind, they may be roused, not against the enemy whom they have
been taught to fear, but against the ministry,[28] who are more within
their reach, and who have refused conditions that are not unreasonable,
from power that they have been taught to consider as irresistible.

If all that for some months I have heard have the least foundation, (I
hope it has not,) the ministers are, perhaps, not quite so much to be
blamed as their condition is to be lamented. I have been given to
understand that these proceedings are not in their origin properly
theirs. It is said that there is a secret in the House of Commons. It is
said that ministers act, not according to the votes, but according to
the dispositions, of the majority. I hear that the minority has long
since spoken the general sense of the nation; and that to prevent those
who compose it from having the open and avowed lead in that House, or
perhaps in both Houses, it was necessary to preoccupy their ground, and
to take their propositions out of their mouths, even with the hazard of
being afterwards reproached with a compliance which it was foreseen
would be fruitless.

If the general disposition of the people be, as I hear it is, for an
immediate peace with Regicide, without so much as considering our public
and solemn engagements to the party in France whose cause we had
espoused, or the engagements expressed in our general alliances, not
only without an inquiry into the terms, but with a certain knowledge
that none but the worst terms will be offered, it is all over with us.
It is strange, but it may be true, that, as the danger from Jacobinism
is increased in my eyes and in yours, the fear of it is lessened in the
eyes of many people who formerly regarded it with horror. It seems, they
act under the impression of terrors of another sort, which have
frightened them out of their first apprehensions. But let their fears,
or their hopes, or their desires, be what they will, they should
recollect that they who would make peace without a previous knowledge of
the terms make a surrender. They are conquered. They do not treat; they
receive the law. Is this the disposition of the people of England? Then
the people of England are contented to seek in the kindness of a
foreign, systematic enemy, combined with a dangerous faction at home, a
security which they cannot find in their own patriotism and their own
courage. They are willing to trust to the sympathy of regicides the
guaranty of the British monarchy. They are content to rest their
religion on the piety of atheists by establishment. They are satisfied
to seek in the clemency of practised murderers the security of their
lives. They are pleased to confide their property to the safeguard of
those who are robbers by inclination, interest, habit, and system. If
this be our deliberate mind, truly we deserve to lose, what it is
impossible we should long retain, the name of a nation.

In matters of state, a constitutional competence to act is in many cases
the smallest part of the question. Without disputing (God forbid I
should dispute!) the sole competence of the king and the Parliament,
each in its province, to decide on war and peace, I venture to say no
war _can_ be long carried on against the will of the people. This war,
in particular, cannot be carried on, unless they are enthusiastically in
favor of it. Acquiescence will not do. There must be zeal. Universal
zeal in such a cause, and at such a time as this is, cannot be looked
for; neither is it necessary. Zeal in the larger part carries the force
of the whole. Without this, no government, certainly not our
government, is capable of a great war. None of the ancient, regular
governments have wherewithal to fight abroad with a foreign foe, and at
home to overcome repining, reluctance, and chicane. It must be some
portentous thing, like Regicide France, that can exhibit such a prodigy.
Yet even she, the mother of monsters, more prolific than the country of
old called _ferax monstrorum_, shows symptoms of being almost effete
already; and she will be so, unless the fallow of a peace comes to
recruit her fertility. But whatever may be represented concerning the
meanness of the popular spirit, I, for one, do not think so desperately
of the British nation. Our minds, as I said, are light, but they are not
depraved. We are dreadfully open to delusion and to dejection; but we
are capable of being animated and undeceived.

It cannot be concealed: we are a divided people. But in divisions, where
a part is to be taken, we are to make a muster of our strength. I have
often endeavored to compute and to class those who, in any political
view, are to be called the people. Without doing something of this sort,
we must proceed absurdly. We should not be much wiser, if we pretended
to very great accuracy in our estimate; but I think, in the calculation
I have made, the error cannot be very material. In England and Scotland,
I compute that those of adult age, not declining in life, of tolerable
leisure for such discussions, and of some means of information, more or
less, and who are above menial dependence, (or what virtually is such,)
may amount to about four hundred thousand. There is such a thing as a
natural representative of the people. This body is that representative;
and on this body, more than on the legal constituent, the artificial
representative depends. This is the British public; and it is a public
very numerous. The rest, when feeble, are the objects of
protection,--when strong, the means of force. They who affect to
consider that part of us in any other light insult while they cajole us;
they do not want us for counsellors in deliberation, but to list us as
soldiers for battle.

Of these four hundred thousand political citizens, I look upon one
fifth, or about eighty thousand, to be pure Jacobins, utterly incapable
of amendment, objects of eternal vigilance, and, when they break out, of
legal constraint. On these, no reason, no argument, no example, no
venerable authority, can have the slightest influence. They desire a
change; and they will have it, if they can. If they cannot have it by
English cabal, they will make no sort of scruple of having it by the
cabal of France, into which already they are virtually incorporated. It
is only their assured and confident expectation of the advantages of
French fraternity, and the approaching blessings of Regicide
intercourse, that skins over their mischievous dispositions with a
momentary quiet.

This minority is great and formidable. I do not know whether, if I aimed
at the total overthrow of a kingdom, I should wish to be incumbered with
a larger body of partisans. They are more easily disciplined and
directed than if the number were greater. These, by their spirit of
intrigue, and by their restless agitating activity, are of a force far
superior to their numbers, and, if times grew the least critical, have
the means of debauching or intimidating many of those who are now sound,
as well as of adding to their force large bodies of the more passive
part of the nation. This minority is numerous enough to make a mighty
cry for peace, or for war, or for any object they are led vehemently to
desire. By passing from place to place with a velocity incredible, and
diversifying their character and description, they are capable of
mimicking the general voice. We must not always judge of the generality
of the opinion by the noise of the acclamation.

The majority, the other four fifths, is perfectly sound, and of the best
possible disposition to religion, to government, to the true and
undivided interest of their country. Such men are naturally disposed to
peace. They who are in possession of all they wish are languid and
improvident. With this fault, (and I admit its existence in all its
extent,) they would not endure to hear of a peace that led to the ruin
of everything for which peace is dear to them. However, the desire of
peace is essentially the weak side of that kind of men. All men that are
ruined are ruined on the side of their natural propensities. There they
are unguarded. Above all, good men do not suspect that their destruction
is attempted through their virtues. This their enemies are perfectly
aware of; and accordingly they, the most turbulent of mankind, who never
made a scruple to shake the tranquillity of their country to its centre,
raise a continual cry for peace with France. "Peace with Regicide, and
war with the rest of the world," is their motto. From the beginning, and
even whilst the French gave the blows, and we hardly opposed the _vis
inertiæ_ to their efforts, from that day to this hour, like importunate
Guinea-fowls, crying one note day and night, they have called for
peace.

In this they are, as I confess in all things they are, perfectly
consistent. They who wish to unite themselves to your enemies naturally
desire that you should disarm yourself by a peace with these enemies.
But it passes my conception how they who wish well to their country on
its ancient system of laws and manners come not to be doubly alarmed,
when they find nothing but a clamor for peace in the mouths of the men
on earth the least disposed to it in their natural or in their habitual
character.

I have a good opinion of the general abilities of the Jacobins: not that
I suppose them better born than others; but strong passions awaken the
faculties; they suffer not a particle of the man to be lost. The spirit
of enterprise gives to this description the full use of all their native
energies. If I have reason to conceive that my enemy, who, as such, must
have an interest in my destruction, is also a person of discernment and
sagacity, then I must be quite sure, that, in a contest, the object he
violently pursues is the very thing by which my ruin is likely to be the
most perfectly accomplished. Why do the Jacobins cry for peace? Because
they know, that, this point gained, the rest will follow of course. On
our part, why are all the rules of prudence, as sure as the laws of
material Nature, to be, at this time reversed? How comes it, that now,
for the first time, men think it right to be governed by the counsels of
their enemies? Ought they not rather to tremble, when they are persuaded
to travel on the same road and to tend to the same place of rest?

The minority I speak of is not susceptible of an impression from the
topics of argument to be used to the larger part of the community. I
therefore do not address to them any part of what I have to say. The
more forcibly I drive my arguments against their system, so as to make
an impression where I wish to make it, the more strongly I rivet them in
their sentiments. As for us, who compose the far larger, and what I call
the far better part of the people, let me say, that we have not been
quite fairly dealt with, when called to this deliberation. The Jacobin
minority have been abundantly supplied with stores and provisions of all
kinds towards their warfare. No sort of argumentative materials, suited
to their purposes, have been withheld. False they are, unsound,
sophistical; but they are regular in their direction. They all bear one
way, and they all go to the support of the substantial merits of their
cause. The others have not had the question so much as fairly stated to
them.

There has not been in this century any foreign peace or war, in its
origin the fruit of popular desire, except the war that was made with
Spain in 1739. Sir Robert Walpole was forced into the war by the people,
who were inflamed to this measure by the most leading politicians, by
the first orators, and the greatest poets of the time. For that war Pope
sang his dying notes. For that war Johnson, in more energetic strains,
employed the voice of his early genius. For that war Glover
distinguished himself in the way in which his muse was the most natural
and happy. The crowd readily followed the politicians in the cry for a
war which threatened little bloodshed, and which promised victories that
were attended with something more solid than glory. A war with Spain was
a war of plunder. In the present conflict with Regicide, Mr. Pitt has
not hitherto had, nor will perhaps for a few days have, many prizes to
hold out in the lottery of war, to tempt the lower part of our
character. He can only maintain it by an appeal to the higher; and to
those in whom that higher part is the most predominant he must look the
most for his support. Whilst he holds out no inducements to the wise nor
bribes to the avaricious, he may be forced by a vulgar cry into a peace
ten times more ruinous than the most disastrous war. The weaker he is in
the fund of motives which apply to our avarice, to our laziness, and to
our lassitude, if he means to carry the war to any end at all, the
stronger he ought to be in his addresses to our magnanimity and to our
reason.

In stating that Walpole was driven by a popular clamor into a measure
not to be justified, I do not mean wholly to excuse his conduct. My time
of observation did not exactly coincide with that event, but I read much
of the controversies then carried on. Several years after the contests
of parties had ceased, the people were amused, and in a degree warmed
with them. The events of that era seemed then of magnitude, which the
revolutions of our time have reduced to parochial importance; and the
debates which then shook the nation now appear of no higher moment than
a discussion in a vestry. When I was very young, a general fashion told
me I was to admire some of the writings against that minister; a little
more maturity taught me as much to despise them. I observed one fault in
his general proceeding. He never manfully put forward the entire
strength of his cause. He temporized, be managed, and, adopting very
nearly the sentiments of his adversaries, he opposed their inferences.
This, for a political commander, is the choice of a weak post. His
adversaries had the better of the argument as he handled it, not as the
reason and justice of his cause enabled him to manage it. I say this,
after having seen, and with some care examined, the original documents
concerning certain important transactions of those times. They perfectly
satisfied me of the extreme injustice of that war, and of the falsehood
of the colors which, to his own ruin, and guided by a mistaken policy,
he suffered to be daubed over that measure. Some years after, it was my
fortune to converse with many of the principal actors against that
minister, and with those who principally excited that clamor. None of
them, no, not one, did in the least defend the measure, or attempt to
justify their conduct. They condemned it as freely as they would have
done in commenting upon any proceeding in history in which they were
totally unconcerned. Thus it will be. They who stir up the people to
improper desires, whether of peace or war, will be condemned by
themselves. They who weakly yield to them will be condemned by history.

In my opinion, the present ministry are as far from doing full justice
to their cause in this war as Walpole was from doing justice to the
peace which at that time he was willing to preserve. They throw the
light on one side only of their case; though it is impossible they
should not observe that the other side, which is kept in the shade, has
its importance too. They must know that France is formidable, not only
as she is France, but as she is Jacobin France. They knew from the
beginning that the Jacobin party was not confined to that country. They
knew, they felt, the strong disposition of the same faction in both
countries to communicate and to coöperate. For some time past, these two
points have been kept, and even industriously kept, out of sight. France
is considered as merely a foreign power, and the seditious English only
as a domestic faction. The merits of the war with the former have been
argued solely on political grounds. To prevent the mischievous doctrines
of the latter from corrupting our minds, matter and argument have been
supplied abundantly, and even to surfeit, on the excellency of our own
government. But nothing has been done to make us feel in what manner the
safety of that government is connected with the principle and with the
issue of this war. For anything which in the late discussion has
appeared, the war is entirely collateral to the state of Jacobinism,--as
truly a foreign war to us and to all our home concerns as the war with
Spain in 1739, about _Guardacostas_, the Madrid Convention, and the
fable of Captain Jenkins's ears.

Whenever the adverse party has raised a cry for peace with the Regicide,
the answer has been little more than this: "That the administration
wished for such a peace full as much as the opposition, but that the
time was not convenient for making it." Whatever else has been said was
much in the same spirit. Reasons of this kind never touched the
substantial merits of the war. They were in the nature of dilatory
pleas, exceptions of form, previous questions. Accordingly, all the
arguments against a compliance with what was represented as the popular
desire (urged on with all possible vehemence and earnestness by the
Jacobins) have appeared flat and languid, feeble and evasive. They
appeared to aim only at gaining time. They never entered into the
peculiar and distinctive character of the war. They spoke neither to the
understanding nor to the heart. Cold as ice themselves, they never could
kindle in our breasts a spark of that zeal which is necessary to a
conflict with an adverse zeal; much less were they made to infuse into
our minds that stubborn, persevering spirit which alone is capable of
bearing up against those vicissitudes of fortune which will probably
occur, and those burdens which must be inevitably borne, in a long war.
I speak it emphatically, and with a desire that it should be marked,--in
a _long_ war; because, without such a war, no experience has yet told us
that a dangerous power has ever been reduced to measure or to reason. I
do not throw back my view to the Peloponnesian War of twenty-seven
years; nor to two of the Punic Wars, the first of twenty-four, the
second of eighteen; nor to the more recent war concluded by the Treaty
of Westphalia, which continued, I think, for thirty. I go to what is but
just fallen behind living memory, and immediately touches our own
country. Let the portion of our history from the year 1689 to 1713 be
brought before us. We shall find that in all that period of twenty-four
years there were hardly five that could be called a season of peace; and
the interval between the two wars was in reality nothing more than a
very active preparation for renovated hostility. During that period,
every one of the propositions of peace came from the enemy: the first,
when they were accepted, at the Peace of Ryswick; the second, where they
were rejected, at the Congress at Gertruydenberg; the last, when the war
ended by the Treaty of Utrecht. Even then, a very great part of the
nation, and that which contained by far the most intelligent statesmen,
was against the conclusion of the war. I do not enter into the merits of
that question as between the parties. I only state the existence of that
opinion as a fact, from whence you may draw such an inference as you
think properly arises from it.

It is for us at present to recollect what we have been, and to consider
what, if we please, we may be still. At the period of those wars our
principal strength was found in the resolution of the people, and that
in the resolution of a part only of the then whole, which bore no
proportion to our existing magnitude. England and Scotland were not
united at the beginning of that mighty struggle. When, in the course of
the contest, they were conjoined, it was in a raw, an ill-cemented, an
unproductive, union. For the whole duration of the war, and long after,
the names and other outward and visible signs of approximation rather
augmented than diminished our insular feuds. They were rather the causes
of new discontents and new troubles than promoters of cordiality and
affection. The now single and potent Great Britain was then not only two
countries, but, from the party heats in both, and the divisions formed
in each of them, each of the old kingdoms within itself, in effect, was
made up of two hostile nations. Ireland, now so large a source of the
common opulence and power, and which, wisely managed, might be made much
more beneficial and much more effective, was then the heaviest of the
burdens. An army, not much less than forty thousand men, was drawn from
the general effort, to keep that kingdom in a poor, unfruitful, and
resourceless subjection.

Such was the state of the empire. The state of our finances was worse,
if possible. Every branch of the revenue became less productive after
the Revolution. Silver, not as now a sort of counter, but the body of
the current coin, was reduced so low as not to have above three parts in
four of the value in the shilling. In the greater part the value hardly
amounted to a fourth. It required a dead expense of three millions
sterling to renew the coinage. Public credit, that great, but ambiguous
principle, which has so often been predicted as the cause of our certain
ruin, but which for a century has been the constant companion, and often
the means, of our prosperity and greatness, had its origin, and was
cradled, I may say, in bankruptcy and beggary. At this day we have seen
parties contending to be admitted, at a moderate premium, to advance
eighteen millions to the exchequer. For infinitely smaller loans, the
Chancellor of the Exchequer of that day, Montagu, the father of public
credit, counter-securing the state by the appearance of the city with
the Lord Mayor of London at his side, was obliged, like a solicitor for
an hospital, to go cap in hand from shop to shop, to borrow an hundred
pound, and even smaller sums. When made up in driblets as they could,
their best securities were at an interest of twelve per cent. Even the
paper of the Bank (now at par with cash, and generally preferred to it)
was often at a discount of twenty per cent. By this the state of the
rest may be judged.

As to our commerce, the imports and exports of the nation, now
six-and-forty million, did not then amount to ten. The inland trade,
which is commonly passed by in this sort of estimates, but which, in
part growing out of the foreign, and connected with it, is more
advantageous and more substantially nutritive to the state, is not only
grown in a proportion of near five to one as the foreign, but has been
augmented at least in a tenfold proportion. When I came to England, I
remember but one river navigation, the rate of carriage on which was
limited by an act of Parliament. It was made in the reign of William the
Third. I mean that of the Aire and Calder. The rate was settled at
thirteen pence. So high a price demonstrated the feebleness of these
beginnings of our inland intercourse. In my time, one of the longest and
sharpest contests I remember in your House, and which rather resembled a
violent contention amongst national parties than a local dispute, was,
as well as I can recollect, to hold the price up to threepence. Even
this, which a very scanty justice to the proprietors required, was done
with infinite difficulty. As to private credit, there were not, as I
believe, twelve bankers' shops at that time out of London. In this their
number, when I first saw the country, I cannot be quite exact; but
certainly those machines of domestic credit were then very few. They are
now in almost every market-town: and this circumstance (whether the
thing be carried to an excess or not) demonstrates the astonishing
increase of private confidence, of general circulation, and of internal
commerce,--an increase out of all proportion to the growth of the
foreign trade. Our naval strength in the time of King William's war was
nearly matched by that of France; and though conjoined with Holland,
then a maritime power hardly inferior to our own, even with that force
we were not always victorious. Though finally superior, the allied
fleets experienced many unpleasant reverses on their own element. In two
years three thousand vessels were taken from the English trade. On the
Continent we lost almost every battle we fought.

In 1697, (it is not quite an hundred years ago,) in that state of
things, amidst the general debasement of the coin, the fall of the
ordinary revenue, the failure of all the extraordinary supplies, the
ruin of commerce, and the almost total extinction of an infant credit,
the Chancellor of the Exchequer himself, whom we have just seen begging
from door to door, came forward to move a resolution full of vigor, in
which, far from being discouraged by the generally adverse fortune and
the long continuance of the war, the Commons agreed to address the crown
in the following manly, spirited, and truly animating style:--

"This is the EIGHTH year in which your Majesty's most dutiful and loyal
subjects, the Commons in Parliament assembled, have assisted your
Majesty with large supplies for carrying on a just and necessary war, in
defence of our religion, preservation of our laws, and vindication of
the rights and liberties of the people of England."

Afterwards they proceed in this manner:--

"And to show to your Majesty and all Christendom that the Commons of
England will not be _amused_ or diverted from their firm resolutions of
obtaining by WAR a safe and honorable peace, we do, in the name of all
those we represent, renew our assurances to your Majesty that this House
will support your Majesty and your government against all your enemies,
both at home and abroad, and that they will effectually assist you in
the prosecution and carrying on the present war against France."

The amusement and diversion they speak of was the suggestion of a treaty
_proposed by the enemy_, and announced from the throne. Thus the people
of England felt in the _eighth_, not in the _fourth_ year of the war. No
sighing or panting after negotiation; no motions from the opposition to
force the ministry into a peace; no messages from ministers to palsy and
deaden the resolution of Parliament or the spirit of the nation. They
did not so much as advise the king to listen to the propositions of the
enemy, nor to seek for peace, but through the mediation of a vigorous
war. This address was moved in an hot, a divided, a factious, and, in a
great part, disaffected House of Commons; and it was carried, _nemine
contradicente_.

While that first war (which was ill smothered by the Treaty of Ryswick)
slept in the thin ashes of a seeming peace, a new conflagration was in
its immediate causes. A fresh and a far greater war was in preparation.
A year had hardly elapsed, when arrangements were made for renewing the
contest with tenfold fury. The steps which were taken, at that time, to
compose, to reconcile, to unite, and to discipline all Europe against
the growth of France, certainly furnish to a statesman the finest and
most interesting part in the history of that great period. It formed the
masterpiece of King William's policy, dexterity, and perseverance. Full
of the idea of preserving not only a local civil liberty united with
order to our country, but to embody it in the political liberty, the
order, and the independence of nations united under a natural head, the
king called upon his Parliament to put itself into a posture "_to
preserve to England the weight and influence it at present had on the
councils and affairs_ ABROAD. It will be requisite _Europe_ Should see
you will not be wanting to yourselves."

Baffled as that monarch was, and almost heartbroken at the
disappointment he met with in the mode he first proposed for that great
end, he held on his course. He was faithful to his object; and in
councils, as in arms, over and over again repulsed, over and over again
he returned to the charge. All the mortifications he had suffered from
the last Parliament, and the greater he had to apprehend from that newly
chosen, were not capable of relaxing the vigor of his mind. He was in
Holland when he combined the vast plan of his foreign negotiations. When
he came to open his design to his ministers in England, even the sober
firmness of Somers, the undaunted resolution of Shrewsbury, and the
adventurous spirit of Montagu and Orford were staggered. They were not
yet mounted to the elevation of the king. The cabinet, then the regency,
met on the subject at Tunbridge Wells, the 28th of August, 1698; and
there, Lord Somers holding the pen, after expressing doubts on the state
of the Continent, which they ultimately refer to the king, as best
informed, they give him a most discouraging portrait of the spirit of
this nation. "So far as relates to England," say these ministers, "it
would be want of duty not to give your Majesty this clear account: that
there is _a deadness and want of spirit in the nation universally_, so
as not at all to be disposed to _the thought of entering into a new
war_; and that they seem to be _tired out with taxes_ to a degree beyond
what was discerned, till it appeared upon the occasion of _the late
elections_. This is the truth of the fact, upon which your Majesty will
determine what resolutions are proper to be taken."

His Majesty did determine,--and did take and pursue his resolution. In
all the tottering imbecility of a new government, and with Parliament
totally unmanageable, he persevered. He persevered to expel the fears of
his people by his fortitude, to steady their fickleness by his
constancy, to expand their narrow prudence by his enlarged wisdom, to
sink their factious temper in his public spirit. In spite of his people,
he resolved to make them great and glorious,--to make England, inclined
to shrink into her narrow self, the arbitress of Europe, the tutelary
angel of the human race. In spite of the ministers, who staggered under
the weight that his mind imposed upon theirs, unsupported as they felt
themselves by the popular spirit, he infused into them his own soul, he
renewed in them their ancient heart, he rallied them in the same cause.

It required some time to accomplish this work. The people were first
gained, and, through them, their distracted representatives. Under the
influence of King William, Holland had rejected the allurements of every
seduction, and had resisted the terrors of every menace. With Hannibal
at her gates, she had nobly and magnanimously refused all separate
treaty, or anything which might for a moment appear to divide her
affection or her interest or even to distinguish her in identity from
England. Having settled the great point of the consolidation (which he
hoped would be eternal) of the countries made for a common interest and
common sentiment, the king, in his message to both Houses, calls their
attention to the affairs of the _States General_. The House of Lords
was perfectly sound, and entirely impressed with the wisdom and dignity
of the king's proceedings. In answer to the message, which you will
observe was narrowed to a single point, (the danger of the States
General,) after the usual professions of zeal for his service, the Lords
opened themselves at large. They go far beyond the demands of the
message. They express themselves as follows.

"We take this occasion _further_ to assure your Majesty we are very
sensible of _the great and imminent danger to which the States General
are at present exposed; and we do perfectly agree with them in believing
that their safety and ours are so inseparably united that whatsoever is
ruin to the one must be fatal to the other_.

"And we humbly desire your Majesty will be pleased _not only_ to make
good all the articles of any _former_ treaty to the States General, but
that you will enter into a strict league offensive and defensive with
them _for our common preservation; and that you will invite into it all
princes and states who are concerned in the present visible danger
arising from the union of France and Spain_.

"And we further desire your Majesty, that you will be pleased to enter
into such alliances with the _Emperor_ as your Majesty shall think fit,
pursuant to the ends of the treaty of 1689: towards all which we assure
your Majesty of our hearty and sincere assistance; not doubting, but,
whenever your Majesty shall be obliged to engage for the defence of your
allies, _and for securing the liberty and quiet of Europe_, Almighty God
will protect your sacred person in so righteous a cause, and that the
unanimity, wealth, and courage of your subjects will carry your Majesty
with honor and success _through all the difficulties of a_ JUST WAR."

The House of Commons was more reserved. The late popular disposition was
still in a great degree prevalent in the representative, after it had
been made to change in the constituent body. The principle of the Grand
Alliance was not directly recognized in the resolution of the Commons,
nor the war announced, though they were well aware the alliance was
formed for the war. However, compelled by the returning sense of the
people, they went so far as to fix the three great immovable pillars of
the safety and greatness of England, as they were then, as they are now,
and as they must ever be to the end of time. They asserted in general
terms the necessity of supporting Holland, of keeping united with our
allies, and maintaining the liberty of Europe; though they restricted
their vote to the succors stipulated by actual treaty. But now they were
fairly embarked, they were obliged to go with the course of the vessel;
and the whole nation, split before into an hundred adverse factions,
with a king at its head evidently declining to his tomb, the whole
nation, lords, commons, and people, proceeded as one body informed by
one soul. Under the British union, the union of Europe was consolidated;
and it long held together with a degree of cohesion, firmness, and
fidelity not known before or since in any political combination of that
extent.

Just as the last hand was given to this immense and complicated machine,
the master workman died. But the work was formed on true mechanical
principles, and it was as truly wrought. It went by the impulse it had
received from the first mover. The man was dead; but the Grand Alliance
survived, in which King William lived and reigned. That heartless and
dispirited people, whom Lord Somers had represented about two years
before as dead in energy and operation, continued that war, to which it
was supposed they were unequal in mind and in means, for near thirteen
years.

For what have I entered into all this detail? To what purpose have I
recalled your view to the end of the last century? It has been done to
show that the British nation was then a great people,--to point out how
and by what means they came to be exalted above the vulgar level, and to
take that lead which they assumed among mankind. To qualify us for that
preëminence, we had then an high mind and a constancy unconquerable; we
were then inspired with no flashy passions, but such as were durable as
well as warm, such as corresponded to the great interests we had at
stake. This force of character was inspired, as all such spirit must
ever be, from above. Government gave the impulse. As well may we fancy
that of itself the sea will swell, and that without winds the billows
will insult the adverse shore, as that the gross mass of the people will
be moved, and elevated, and continue by a steady and permanent direction
to bear upon one point, without the influence of superior authority or
superior mind.

This impulse ought, in my opinion, to have been given in this war; and
it ought to have been continued to it at every instant. It is made, if
ever war was made, to touch all the great springs of action in the human
breast. It ought not to have been a war of apology. The minister had, in
this conflict, wherewithal to glory in success, to be consoled in
adversity, to hold high his principle in all fortunes. If it were not
given him to support the falling edifice, he ought to bury himself under
the ruins of the civilized world. All the art of Greece and all the
pride and power of Eastern monarchs never heaped upon their ashes so
grand a monument.

There were days when his great mind was up to the crisis of the world he
is called to act in.[29] His manly eloquence was equal to the elevated
wisdom of such sentiments. But the little have triumphed over the great:
an unnatural, (as it should seem,) not an unusual victory. I am sure you
cannot forget with how much uneasiness we heard, in conversation, the
language of more than one gentleman at the opening of this
contest,--"that he was willing to try the war for a year or two, and, if
it did not succeed, then to vote for peace." As if war was a matter of
experiment! As if you could take it up or lay it down as an idle frolic!
As if the dire goddess that presides over it, with her murderous spear
in her hand and her Gorgon at her breast, was a coquette to be flirted
with! We ought with reverence to approach that tremendous divinity, that
loves courage, but commands counsel. War never leaves where it found a
nation. It is never to be entered into without a mature
deliberation,--not a deliberation lengthened out into a perplexing
indecision, but a deliberation leading to a sure and fixed judgment.
When so taken up, it is not to be abandoned without reason as valid, as
fully and as extensively considered. Peace may be made as unadvisedly as
war. Nothing is so rash as fear; and the counsels of pusillanimity very
rarely put off, whilst they are always sure to aggravate, the evils
from which they would fly.

In that great war carried on against Louis the Fourteenth for near
eighteen years, government spared no pains to satisfy the nation, that,
though they were to be animated by a desire of glory, glory was not
their ultimate object; but that everything dear to them, in religion, in
law, in liberty, everything which as freemen, as Englishmen, and as
citizens of the great commonwealth of Christendom, they had at heart,
was then at stake. This was to know the true art of gaining the
affections and confidence of an high-minded people; this was to
understand human nature. A danger to avert a danger, a present
inconvenience and suffering to prevent a foreseen future and a worse
calamity,--these are the motives that belong to an animal who in his
constitution is at once adventurous and provident, circumspect and
daring,--whom his Creator has made, as the poet says, "of large
discourse, looking before and after." But never can a vehement and
sustained spirit of fortitude be kindled in a people by a war of
calculation. It has nothing that can keep the mind erect under the gusts
of adversity. Even where men are willing, as sometimes they are, to
barter their blood for lucre, to hazard their safety for the
gratification of their avarice, the passion which animates them to that
sort of conflict, like all the shortsighted passions, must see its
objects distinct and near at hand. The passions of the lower order are
hungry and impatient. Speculative plunder,--contingent spoil,--future,
long adjourned, uncertain booty,--pillage which must enrich a late
posterity, and which possibly may not reach to posterity at all,--these,
for any length of time, will never support a mercenary war. The people
are in the right. The calculation of profit in all such wars is false.
On balancing the account of such wars, ten thousand hogsheads of sugar
are purchased at ten thousand times their price. The blood of man should
never be shed but to redeem the blood of man. It is well shed for our
family, for our friends, for our God, for our country, for our kind. The
rest is vanity; the rest is crime.

In the war of the Grand Alliance most of these considerations
voluntarily and naturally had their part. Some were pressed into the
service. The political interest easily went in the track of the natural
sentiment. In the reverse course the carriage does not follow freely. I
am sure the natural feeling, as I have just said, is a far more
predominant ingredient in this war than in that of any other that ever
was waged by this kingdom.

If the war made to prevent the union of two crowns upon one head was a
just war, this, which is made to prevent the tearing all crowns from all
heads which ought to wear them, and with the crowns to smite off the
sacred heads themselves, this is a just war.

If a war to prevent Louis the Fourteenth from imposing his religion was
just, a war to prevent the murderers of Louis the Sixteenth from
imposing their irreligion upon us is just: a war to prevent the
operation of a system which makes life without dignity and death without
hope is a just war.

If to preserve political independence and civil freedom to nations was a
just ground of war, a war to preserve national independence, property,
liberty, life, and honor from certain universal havoc is a war just
necessary, manly, pious; and we are bound to persevere in it by every
principle, divine and human, as long as the system which menaces them
all, and all equally, has an existence in the world.

You, who have looked at this matter with as fair and impartial an eye as
can be united with a feeling heart, you will not think it an hardy
assertion, when I affirm that it were far better to be conquered by any
other nation than to have this faction for a neighbor. Before I felt
myself authorized to say this, I considered the state of all the
countries in Europe for these last three hundred years, which have been
obliged to submit to a foreign law. In most of those I found the
condition of the annexed countries even better, certainly not worse,
than the lot of those which were the patrimony of the conqueror. They
wanted some blessings, but they were free from many very great evils.
They were rich and tranquil. Such was Artois, Flanders, Lorraine,
Alsatia, under the old government of France. Such was Silesia under the
King of Prussia. They who are to live in the vicinity of this new fabric
are to prepare to live in perpetual conspiracies and seditions, and to
end at last in being conquered, if not to her dominion, to her
resemblance. But when we talk of conquest by other nations, it is only
to put a case. This is the only power in Europe by which it is
_possible_ we should be conquered. To live under the continual dread of
such immeasurable evils is itself a grievous calamity. To live without
the dread of them is to turn the danger into the disaster. The influence
of such a France is equal to a war, its example more wasting than an
hostile irruption. The hostility with any other power is separable and
accidental: this power, by the very condition of its existence, by its
very essential constitution, is in a state of hostility with us, and
with all civilized people.[30]

A government of the nature of that set up at our very door has never
been hitherto seen or even imagined in Europe. What our relation to it
will be cannot be judged by other relations. It is a serious thing to
have a connection with a people who live only under positive, arbitrary,
and changeable institutions,--and those not perfected nor supplied nor
explained by any common, acknowledged rule of moral science. I remember,
that, in one of my last conversations with the late Lord Camden, we were
struck much in the same manner with the abolition in France of the law
as a science of methodized and artificial equity. France, since her
Revolution, is under the sway of a sect whose leaders have deliberately,
at one stroke, demolished the whole body of that jurisprudence which
France had pretty nearly in common with other civilized countries. In
that jurisprudence were contained the elements and principles of the law
of nations, the great ligament of mankind. With the law they have of
course destroyed all seminaries in which jurisprudence was taught, as
well as all the corporations established for its conservation. I have
not heard of any country, whether in Europe or Asia, or even in Africa
on this side of Mount Atlas, which is wholly without some such colleges
and such corporations, except France. No man, in a public or private
concern, can divine by what rule or principle her judgments are to be
directed: nor is there to be found a professor in any university, or a
practitioner in any court, who will hazard an opinion of what is or is
not law in France, in any case whatever. They have not only annulled all
their old treaties, but they have renounced the law of nations, from
whence treaties have their force. With a fixed design they have outlawed
themselves, and to their power outlawed all other nations.

Instead of the religion and the law by which they were in a great
politic communion with the Christian world, they have constructed their
republic on three bases, all fundamentally opposite to those on which
the communities of Europe are built. Its foundation is laid in Regicide,
in Jacobinism, and in Atheism; and it has joined to those principles a
body of systematic manners which secures their operation.

If I am asked how I would be understood in the use of these terms,
Regicide, Jacobinism, Atheism, and a system of correspondent manners,
and their establishment, I will tell you.

I call a commonwealth _Regicide_ which lays it down as a fixed law of
Nature and a fundamental right of man, that all government, not being a
democracy, is an usurpation,[31]--that all kings, as such, are usurpers,
and, for being kings, may and ought to be put to death, with their
wives, families, and adherents. The commonwealth which acts uniformly
upon those principles, and which, after abolishing every festival of
religion, chooses the most flagrant act of a murderous regicide treason
for a feast of eternal commemoration, and which forces all her people to
observe it,--this I call _Regicide by Establishment_.

Jacobinism is the revolt of the enterprising talents of a country
against its property. When private men form themselves into associations
for the purpose of destroying the preëxisting laws and institutions of
their country,--when they secure to themselves an army by dividing
amongst the people of no property the estates of the ancient and lawful
proprietors,--when a state recognizes those acts,--when it does not make
confiscations for crimes, but makes crimes for confiscations,--when it
has its principal strength and all its resources in such a violation of
property,--when it stands chiefly upon such a violation, massacring by
judgments, or otherwise, those who make any struggle for their old legal
government, and their legal, hereditary, or acquired possessions,--I
call this _Jacobinism by Establishment_.

I call it _Atheism by Establishment_, when any state, as such, shall not
acknowledge the existence of God as a moral governor of the world,--when
it shall offer to Him no religious or moral worship,--when it shall
abolish the Christian religion by a regular decree,--when it shall
persecute, with a cold, unrelenting, steady cruelty, by every mode of
confiscation, imprisonment, exile, and death, all its ministers,--when
it shall generally shut up or pull down churches,--when the few
buildings which remain of this kind shall be opened only for the purpose
of making a profane apotheosis of monsters whose vices and crimes have
no parallel amongst men, and whom all other men consider as objects of
general detestation and the severest animadversion of law. When, in the
place of that religion of social benevolence and of individual
self-denial, in mockery of all religion, they institute impious,
blasphemous, indecent theatric rites, in honor of their vitiated,
perverted reason, and erect altars to the personification of their own
corrupted and bloody republic,--when schools and seminaries are founded
at public expense to poison mankind, from generation to generation, with
the horrible maxims of this impiety,--when, wearied out with incessant
martyrdom, and the cries of a people hungering and thirsting for
religion, they permit it only as a tolerated evil,--I call this _Atheism
by Establishment_.

When to these establishments of Regicide, of Jacobinism, and of Atheism,
you add the _correspondent system of manners_, no doubt can be left on
the mind of a thinking man concerning their determined hostility to the
human race. Manners are of more importance than laws. Upon them, in a
great measure, the laws depend. The law touches us but here and there,
and now and then. Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify,
exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform,
insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe in. They give
their whole form and color to our lives. According to their quality,
they aid morals, they supply them, or they totally destroy them. Of this
the new French legislators were aware; therefore, with the same method,
and under the same authority, they settled a system of manners, the most
licentious, prostitute, and abandoned that ever has been known, and at
the same time the most coarse, rude, savage, and ferocious. Nothing in
the Revolution, no, not to a phrase or a gesture, not to the fashion of
a hat or a shoe, was left to accident. All has been the result of
design; all has been matter of institution. No mechanical means could be
devised in favor of this incredible system of wickedness and vice, that
has not been employed. The noblest passions, the love of glory, the love
of country, have been debauched into means of its preservation and its
propagation. All sorts of shows and exhibitions, calculated to inflame
and vitiate the imagination and pervert the moral sense, have been
contrived. They have sometimes brought forth five or six hundred drunken
women calling at the bar of the Assembly for the blood of their own
children, as being Royalists or Constitutionalists. Sometimes they have
got a body of wretches, calling themselves fathers, to demand the murder
of their sons, boasting that Rome had but one Brutus, but that they
could show five hundred. There were instances in which they inverted and
retaliated the impiety, and produced sons who called for the execution
of their parents. The foundation of their republic is laid in moral
paradoxes. Their patriotism is always prodigy. All those instances to be
found in history, whether real or fabulous, of a doubtful public spirit,
at which morality is perplexed, reason is staggered, and from which
affrighted Nature recoils, are their chosen and almost sole examples for
the instruction of their youth.

The whole drift of their institution is contrary to that of the wise
legislators of all countries, who aimed at improving instincts into
morals, and at grafting the virtues on the stock of the natural
affections. They, on the contrary, have omitted no pains to eradicate
every benevolent and noble propensity in the mind of men. In their
culture it is a rule always to graft virtues on vices. They think
everything unworthy of the name of public virtue, unless it indicates
violence on the private. All their new institutions (and with them
everything is new) strike at the root of our social nature. Other
legislators, knowing that marriage is the origin of all relations, and
consequently the first element of all duties, have endeavored by every
art to make it sacred. The Christian religion, by confining it to the
pairs, and by rendering that relation indissoluble, has by these two
things done more towards the peace, happiness, settlement, and
civilization of the world than by any other part in this whole scheme of
Divine wisdom. The direct contrary course has been taken in the
synagogue of Antichrist,--I mean in that forge and manufactory of all
evil, the sect which predominated in the Constituent Assembly of 1789.
Those monsters employed the same or greater industry to desecrate and
degrade that state, which other legislators have used to render it holy
and honorable. By a strange, uncalled-for declaration, they pronounced
that marriage was no better than a common civil contract. It was one of
their ordinary tricks, to put their sentiments into the mouths of
certain personated characters, which they theatrically exhibited at the
bar of what ought to be a serious assembly. One of these was brought out
in the figure of a prostitute, whom they called by the affected name of
"a mother without being a wife." This creature they made to call for a
repeal of the incapacities which in civilized states are put upon
bastards. The prostitutes of the Assembly gave to this their puppet the
sanction of their greater impudence. In consequence of the principles
laid down, and the manners authorized, bastards were not long after put
on the footing of the issue of lawful unions. Proceeding in the spirit
of the first authors of their Constitution, succeeding Assemblies went
the full length of the principle, and gave a license to divorce at the
mere pleasure of either party, and at a month's notice. With them the
matrimonial connection is brought into so degraded a state of
concubinage, that I believe none of the wretches in London who keep
warehouses of infamy would give out one of their victims to private
custody on so short and insolent a tenure. There was, indeed, a kind of
profligate equity in giving to women the same licentious power. The
reason they assigned was as infamous as the act: declaring that women
had been too long under the tyranny of parents and of husbands. It is
not necessary to observe upon the horrible consequences of taking one
half of the species wholly out of the guardianship and protection of the
other.

The practice of divorce, though in some countries permitted, has been
discouraged in all. In the East, polygamy and divorce are in discredit;
and the manners correct the laws. In Rome, whilst Rome was in its
integrity, the few causes allowed for divorce amounted in effect to a
prohibition. They were only three. The arbitrary was totally excluded;
and accordingly some hundreds of years passed without a single example
of that kind. When manners were corrupted, the laws were relaxed; as the
latter always follow the former, when they are not able to regulate them
or to vanquish them. Of this circumstance the legislators of vice and
crime were pleased to take notice, as an inducement to adopt their
regulation: holding out an hope that the permission would as rarely be
made use of. They knew the contrary to be true; and they had taken good
care that the laws should be well seconded by the manners. Their law of
divorce, like all their laws, had not for its object the relief of
domestic uneasiness, but the total corruption of all morals, the total
disconnection of social life.

It is a matter of curiosity to observe the operation of this
encouragement to disorder. I have before me the Paris paper
correspondent to the usual register of births, marriages, and deaths.
Divorce, happily, is no regular head of registry amongst civilized
nations. With the Jacobins it is remarkable that divorce is not only a
regular head, but it has the post of honor. It occupies the first place
in the list. In the three first months of the year 1793 the number of
divorces in that city amounted to 562; the marriages were 1785: so that
the proportion of divorces to marriages was not much less than one to
three: a thing unexampled, I believe, among mankind. I caused an inquiry
to be made at Doctors' Commons concerning the number of divorces, and
found that all the divorces (which, except by special act of Parliament,
are separations, and not proper divorces) did not amount in all those
courts, and in an hundred years, to much more than one fifth of those
that passed in the single city of Paris in three months. I followed up
the inquiry relative to that city through several of the subsequent
months, until I was tired, and found the proportions still the same.
Since then I have heard that they have declared for a revisal of these
laws: but I know of nothing done. It appears as if the contract that
renovates the world was under no law at all. From this we may take our
estimate of the havoc that has been made through all the relations of
life. With the Jacobins of France, vague intercourse is without
reproach; marriage is reduced to the vilest concubinage; children are
encouraged to cut the throats of their parents; mothers are taught that
tenderness is no part of their character, and, to demonstrate their
attachment to their party, that they ought to make no scruple to rake
with their bloody hands in the bowels of those who came from their own.

To all this let us join the practice of _cannibalism_, with which, in
the proper terms, and with the greatest truth, their several factions
accuse each other. By cannibalism I mean their devouring, as a nutriment
of their ferocity, some part of the bodies of those they have murdered,
their drinking the blood of their victims, and forcing the victims
themselves to drink the blood of their kindred slaughtered before their
faces. By cannibalism I mean also to signify all their nameless,
unmanly, and abominable insults on the bodies of those they slaughter.

As to those whom they suffer to die a natural death, they do not permit
them to enjoy the last consolations of mankind, or those rights of
sepulture which indicate hope, and which mere Nature has taught to
mankind, in all countries, to soothe the afflictions and to cover the
infirmity of mortal condition. They disgrace men in the entry into life,
they vitiate and enslave them through the whole course of it, and they
deprive them of all comfort at the conclusion of their dishonored and
depraved existence. Endeavoring to persuade the people that they are no
better than beasts, the whole body of their institution tends to make
them beasts of prey, furious and savage. For this purpose the active
part of them is disciplined into a ferocity which has no parallel. To
this ferocity there is joined not one of the rude, unfashioned virtues
which accompany the vices, where the whole are left to grow up together
in the rankness of uncultivated Nature. But nothing is left to Nature in
their systems.

The same discipline which hardens their hearts relaxes their morals.
Whilst courts of justice were thrust out by revolutionary tribunals, and
silent churches were only the funeral monuments of departed religion,
there were no fewer than nineteen or twenty theatres, great and small,
most of them kept open at the public expense, and all of them crowded
every night. Among the gaunt, haggard forms of famine and nakedness,
amidst the yells of murder, the tears of affliction, and the cries of
despair, the song, the dance, the mimic scene, the buffoon laughter,
went on as regularly as in the gay hour of festive peace. I have it from
good authority, that under the scaffold of judicial murder, and the
gaping planks that poured down blood on the spectators, the space was
hired out for a show of dancing dogs. I think, without concert, we have
made the very same remark, on reading some of their pieces, which, being
written for other purposes, let us into a view of their social life. It
struck us that the habits of Paris had no resemblance to the finished
virtues, or to the polished vice, and elegant, though not blameless
luxury, of the capital of a great empire. Their society was more like
that of a den of outlaws upon a doubtful frontier,--of a lewd tavern for
the revels and debauches of banditti, assassins, bravoes, smugglers,
and their more desperate paramours, mixed with bombastic players, the
refuse and rejected offal of strolling theatres, puffing out ill-sorted
verses about virtue, mixed with the licentious and blasphemous songs
proper to the brutal and hardened course of life belonging to that sort
of wretches. This system of manners in itself is at war with all orderly
and moral society, and is in its neighborhood unsafe. If great bodies of
that kind were anywhere established in a bordering territory, we should
have a right to demand of their governments the suppression of such a
nuisance. What are we to do, if the government and the whole community
is of the same description? Yet that government has thought proper to
invite ours to lay by its unjust hatred, and to listen to the voice of
humanity as taught by their example.

The operation of dangerous and delusive first principles obliges us to
have recourse to the true ones. In the intercourse between nations, we
are apt to rely too much on the instrumental part. We lay too much
weight upon the formality of treaties and compacts. We do not act much
more wisely, when we trust to the interests of men as guaranties of
their engagements. The interests frequently tear to pieces the
engagements, and the passions trample upon both. Entirely to trust to
either is to disregard our own safety, or not to know mankind. Men are
not tied to one another by papers and seals. They are led to associate
by resemblances, by conformities, by sympathies. It is with nations as
with individuals. Nothing is so strong a tie of amity between nation and
nation as correspondence in laws, customs, manners, and habits of life.
They have more than the force of treaties in themselves. They are
obligations written in the heart. They approximate men to men without
their knowledge, and sometimes against their intentions. The secret,
unseen, but irrefragable bond of habitual intercourse holds them
together, even when their perverse and litigious nature sets them to
equivocate, scuffle, and fight about the terms of their written
obligations.

As to war, if it be the means of wrong and violence, it is the sole
means of justice amongst nations. Nothing can banish it from the world.
They who say otherwise, intending to impose upon us, do not impose upon
themselves. But it is one of the greatest objects of human wisdom to
mitigate those evils which we are unable to remove. The conformity and
analogy of which I speak, incapable, like everything else, of preserving
perfect trust and tranquillity among men, has a strong tendency to
facilitate accommodation, and to produce a generous oblivion of the
rancor of their quarrels. With this similitude, peace is more of peace,
and war is less of war. I will go further. There have been periods of
time in which communities apparently in peace with each other have been
more perfectly separated than in later times many nations in Europe have
been in the course of long and bloody wars. The cause must be sought in
the similitude throughout Europe of religion, laws, and manners. At
bottom, these are all the same. The writers on public law have often
called this _aggregate_ of nations a commonwealth. They had reason. It
is virtually one great state, having the same basis of general law, with
some diversity of provincial customs and local establishments. The
nations of Europe have had the very same Christian religion, agreeing in
the fundamental parts, varying a little in the ceremonies and in the
subordinate doctrines. The whole of the polity and economy of every
country in Europe has been derived from the same sources. It was drawn
from the old Germanic or Gothic Custumary,--from the feudal
institutions, which must be considered as an emanation from that
Custumary; and the whole has been improved and digested into system and
discipline by the Roman law. From hence arose the several orders, with
or without a monarch, (which are called States,) in every European
country; the strong traces of which, where monarchy predominated, were
never wholly extinguished or merged in despotism. In the few places
where monarchy was cast off, the spirit of European monarchy was still
left. Those countries still continued countries of States,--that is, of
classes, orders, and distinctions, such as had before subsisted, or
nearly so. Indeed, the force and form of the institution called States
continued in greater perfection in those republican communities than
under monarchies. From all those sources arose a system of manners and
of education which was nearly similar in all this quarter of the
globe,--and which softened, blended, and harmonized the colors of the
whole. There was little difference in the form of the universities for
the education of their youth, whether with regard to faculties, to
sciences, or to the more liberal and elegant kinds of erudition. From
this resemblance in the modes of intercourse, and in the whole form and
fashion of life, no citizen of Europe could be altogether an exile in
any part of it. There was nothing more than a pleasing variety to
recreate and instruct the mind, to enrich the imagination, and to
meliorate the heart. When a man travelled or resided, for health,
pleasure, business, or necessity, from his own country, he never felt
himself quite abroad.

The whole body of this new scheme of manners, in support of the new
scheme of polities, I consider as a strong and decisive proof of
determined ambition and systematic hostility. I defy the most refining
ingenuity to invent any other cause for the total departure of the
Jacobin Republic from every one of the ideas and usages, religious,
legal, moral, or social, of this civilized world, and for her tearing
herself from its communion with such studied violence, but from a formed
resolution of keeping no terms with that world. It has not been, as has
been falsely and insidiously represented, that these miscreants had only
broke with their old government. They made a schism with the whole
universe, and that schism extended to almost everything, great and
small. For one, I wish, since it is gone thus far, that the breach had
been so complete as to make all intercourse impracticable: but, partly
by accident, partly by design, partly from the resistance of the matter,
enough is left to preserve intercourse, whilst amity is destroyed or
corrupted in its principle.

This violent breach of the community of Europe we must conclude to have
been made (even if they had not expressly declared it over and over
again) either to force mankind into an adoption of their system or to
live in perpetual enmity with a community the most potent we have ever
known. Can any person imagine, that, in offering to mankind this
desperate alternative, there is no indication of a hostile mind, because
men in possession of the ruling authority are supposed to have a right
to act without coercion in their own territories? As to the right of
men to act anywhere according to their pleasure, without any moral tie,
no such right exists. Men are never in a state of _total_ independence
of each other. It is not the condition of our nature: nor is it
conceivable how any man can pursue a considerable course of action
without its having some effect upon others, or, of course, without
producing some degree of responsibility for his conduct. The
_situations_ in which men relatively stand produce the rules and
principles of that responsibility, and afford directions to prudence in
exacting it.

Distance of place does not extinguish the duties or the rights of men;
but it often renders their exercise impracticable. The same circumstance
of distance renders the noxious effects of an evil system in any
community less pernicious. But there are situations where this
difficulty does not occur, and in which, therefore, those duties are
obligatory and these rights are to be asserted. It has ever been the
method of public jurists to draw a great part of the analogies on which
they form the law of nations from the principles of law which prevail in
civil community. Civil laws are not all of them merely positive. Those
which are rather conclusions of legal reason than matters of statutable
provision belong to universal equity, and are universally applicable.
Almost the whole prætorian law is such. There is a _law of neighborhood_
which does not leave a man perfect master on his own ground. When a
neighbor sees a _new erection_, in the nature of a nuisance, set up at
his door, he has a right to represent it to the judge, who, on his part,
has a right to order the work to be stayed, or, if established, to be
removed. On this head the parent law is express and clear, and has made
many wise provisions, which, without destroying, regulate and restrain
the right of _ownership_ by the right of _vicinage_. No _innovation_ is
permitted that may redound, even secondarily, to the prejudice of a
neighbor. The whole doctrine of that important head of prætorian law,
"_De novi operis nunciatione_," is founded on the principle, that no
_new_ use should be made of a man's private liberty of operating upon
his private property, from whence a detriment may be justly apprehended
by his neighbor. This law of denunciation is prospective. It is to
anticipate what is called _damnum infectum_ or _damnum nondum factum_,
that is, a damage justly apprehended, but not actually done. Even before
it is clearly known whether the innovation be damageable or not, the
judge is competent to issue a prohibition to innovate until the point
can be determined. This prompt interference is grounded on principles
favorable to both parties. It is preventive of mischief difficult to be
repaired, and of ill blood difficult to be softened. The rule of law,
therefore, which comes before the evil is amongst the very best parts of
equity, and justifies the promptness of the remedy; because, as it is
well observed, "_Res damni infecti celeritatem desiderat, et periculosa
est dilatio_." This right of denunciation does not hold, when things
continue, however inconveniently to the neighborhood, according to the
_ancient_ mode. For there is a sort of presumption against novelty,
drawn out of a deep consideration of human nature and human affairs; and
the maxim of jurisprudence is well laid down, "_Vetustas pro lege semper
habetur_."

Such is the law of civil vicinity. Now where there is no constituted
judge, as between independent states there is not, the vicinage itself
is the natural judge. It is, preventively, the assertor of its own
rights, or, remedially, their avenger. Neighbors are presumed to take
cognizance of each other's acts. "_Vicini vicinorum facta præsumuntur
seire_." This principle, which, like the rest, is as true of nations as
of individual men, has bestowed on the grand vicinage of Europe a duty
to know and a right to prevent any capital innovation which may amount
to the erection of a dangerous nuisance.[32] Of the importance of that
innovation, and the mischief of that nuisance, they are, to be sure,
bound to judge not litigiously: but it is in their competence to judge.
They have uniformly acted on this right. What in civil society is a
ground of action in politic society is a ground of war. But the exercise
of that competent jurisdiction is a matter of moral prudence. As suits
in civil society, so war in the political, must ever be a matter of
great deliberation. It is not this or that particular proceeding, picked
out here and there, as a subject of quarrel, that will do. There must be
an aggregate of mischief. There must be marks of deliberation; there
must be traces of design; there must be indications of malice; there
must be tokens of ambition. There must be force in the body where they
exist; there must be energy in the mind. When all these circumstances
combine, or the important parts of them, the duty of the vicinity calls
for the exercise of its competence: and the rules of prudence do not
restrain, but demand it.

In describing the nuisance erected by so pestilential a manufactory, by
the construction of so infamous a brothel, by digging a night-cellar for
such thieves, murderers, and house-breakers as never infested the world,
I am so far from aggravating, that I have fallen infinitely short of the
evil. No man who has attended to the particulars of what has been done
in France, and combined them with the principles there asserted, can
possibly doubt it. When I compare with this great cause of nations the
trifling points of honor, the still more contemptible points of
interest, the light ceremonies, the undefinable punctilios, the disputes
about precedency, the lowering or the hoisting of a sail, the dealing in
a hundred or two of wildcat-skins on the other side of the globe, which
have often kindled up the flames of war between nations, I stand
astonished at those persons who do not feel a resentment, not more
natural than politic, at the atrocious insults that this monstrous
compound offers to the dignity of every nation, and who are not alarmed
with what it threatens to their safety.

I have therefore been decidedly of opinion, with our declaration at
Whitehall in the beginning of this war, that the vicinage of Europe had
not only a right, but an indispensable duty and an exigent interest, to
denunciate this new work, before it had produced the danger we have so
sorely felt, and which we shall long feel. The example of what is done
by France is too important not to have a vast and extensive influence;
and that example, backed with its power, must bear with great force on
those who are near it, especially on those who shall recognize the
pretended republic on the principle upon which it now stands. It is not
an old structure, which you have found as it is, and are not to dispute
of the original end and design with which it had been so fashioned. It
is a recent wrong, and can plead no prescription. It violates the rights
upon which not only the community of France, but those on which all
communities are founded. The principles on which they proceed are
_general_ principles, and are as true in England as in any other
country. They who (though with the purest intentions) recognize the
authority of these regicides and robbers upon principle justify their
acts, and establish them as precedents. It is a question not between
France and England; it is a question between property and force. The
property claims; and its claim has been allowed. The property of the
nation is the nation. They who massacre, plunder, and expel the body of
the proprietary are murderers and robbers. The state, in its essence,
must be moral and just: and it may be so, though a tyrant or usurper
should be accidentally at the head of it. This is a thing to be
lamented: but this notwithstanding, the body of the commonwealth may
remain in all its integrity and be perfectly sound in its composition.
The present case is different. It is not a revolution in government. It
is not the victory of party over party. It is a destruction and
decomposition of the whole society; which never can be made of right by
any faction, however powerful, nor without terrible consequences to all
about it, both in the act and in the example. This pretended republic is
founded in crimes, and exists by wrong and robbery; and wrong and
robbery, far from a title to anything, is war with mankind. To be at
peace with robbery is to be an accomplice with it.

Mere locality does not constitute a body politic. Had Cade and his gang
got possession of London, they would not have been the lord mayor,
aldermen, and common council. The body politic of France existed in the
majesty of its throne, in the dignity of its nobility, in the honor of
its gentry, in the sanctity of its clergy, in the reverence of its
magistracy, in the weight and consideration due to its landed property
in the several bailliages, in the respect due to its movable substance
represented by the corporations of the kingdom. All these particular
_molecules_ united form the great mass of what is truly the body politic
in all countries. They are so many deposits and receptacles of justice;
because they can only exist by justice. Nation is a moral essence, not a
geographical arrangement, or a denomination of the nomenclator. France,
though out of her territorial possession, exists; because the sole
possible claimant, I mean the proprietary, and the government to which
the proprietary adheres, exists and claims. God forbid, that if you were
expelled from your house by ruffians and assassins, that I should call
the material walls, doors, and windows of ---- the ancient and honorable
family of ----! Am I to transfer to the intruders, who, not content to
turn you out naked to the world, would rob you of your very name, all
the esteem and respect I owe to you? The Regicides in France are not
France. France is out of her bounds, but the kingdom is the same.

To illustrate my opinions on this subject, let us suppose a case, which,
after what has happened, we cannot think absolutely impossible, though
the augury is to be abominated, and the event deprecated with our most
ardent prayers. Let us suppose, then, that our gracious sovereign was
sacrilegiously murdered; his exemplary queen, at the head of the
matronage of this land, murdered in the same manner; that those
princesses whose beauty and modest elegance are the ornaments of the
country, and who are the leaders and patterns of the ingenuous youth of
their sex, were put to a cruel and ignominious death, with hundreds of
others, mothers and daughters, ladies of the first distinction; that the
Prince of Wales and the Duke of York, princes the hope and pride of the
nation, with all their brethren, were forced to fly from the knives of
assassins; that the whole body of our excellent clergy were either
massacred or robbed of all and transported; the Christian religion, in
all its denominations, forbidden and persecuted; the law totally,
fundamentally, and in all its parts, destroyed; the judges put to death
by revolutionary tribunals; the peers and commons robbed to the last
acre of their estates, massacred, if they stayed, or obliged to seek
life in flight, in exile, and in beggary; that the whole landed property
should share the very same fate; that every military and naval officer
of honor and rank, almost to a man, should be placed in the same
description of confiscation and exile; that the principal merchants and
bankers should be drawn out, as from an hen-coop, for slaughter; that
the citizens of our greatest and most flourishing cities, when the hand
and the machinery of the hangman were not found sufficient, should have
been collected in the public squares and massacred by thousands with
cannon; if three hundred thousand others should have been doomed to a
situation worse than death in noisome and pestilential prisons. In such
a case, is it in the faction of robbers I am to look for my country?
Would this be the England that you and I, and even strangers, admired,
honored, loved, and cherished? Would not the exiles of England alone be
my government and my fellow-citizens? Would not their places of refuge
be my temporary country? Would not all my duties and all my affections
be there, and there only? Should I consider myself as a traitor to my
country, and deserving of death, if I knocked at the door and heart of
every potentate in Christendom to succor my friends, and to avenge them
on their enemies? Could I in any way show myself more a patriot? What
should I think of those potentates who insulted their suffering
brethren,--who treated them as vagrants, or at least as mendicants,--and
could find no allies, no friends, but in regicide murderers and robbers?
What ought I to think and feel, if, being geographers instead of kings,
they recognized the desolated cities, the wasted fields, and the rivers
polluted with blood, of this geometrical measurement, as the honorable
member of Europe called England? In that condition, what should we think
of Sweden, Denmark, or Holland, or whatever power afforded us a churlish
and treacherous hospitality, if they should invite us to join the
standard of our king, our laws, and our religion,--if they should give
us a direct promise of protection,--if, after all this, taking advantage
of our deplorable situation, which left us no choice, they were to treat
us as the lowest and vilest of all mercenaries,--if they were to send us
far from the aid of our king and our suffering country, to squander us
away in the most pestilential climates for a venal enlargement of their
own territories, for the purpose of trucking them, when obtained, with
those very robbers and murderers they had called upon us to oppose with
our blood? What would be our sentiments, if in that miserable service we
were not to be considered either as English, or as Swedes, Dutch, Danes,
but as outcasts of the human race? Whilst we were fighting those battles
of their interest and as their soldiers, how should we feel, if we were
to be excluded from all their cartels? How must we feel, if the pride
and flower of the English nobility and gentry, who might escape the
pestilential clime and the devouring sword, should, if taken prisoners,
be delivered over as rebel subjects, to be condemned as rebels, as
traitors, as the vilest of all criminals, by tribunals formed of Maroon
negro slaves, covered over with the blood of their masters, who were
made free and organized into judges for their robberies and murders?
What should we feel under this inhuman, insulting, and barbarous
protection of Muscovites, Swedes, or Hollanders? Should we not obtest
Heaven, and whatever justice there is yet on earth? Oppression makes
wise men mad; but the distemper is still the madness of the wise, which
is better than the sobriety of fools. Their cry is the voice of sacred
misery, exalted, not into wild raving, but into the sanctified frenzy of
prophecy and inspiration. In that bitterness of soul, in that
indignation of suffering virtue, in that exaltation of despair, would
not persecuted English loyalty cry out with an awful warning voice, and
denounce the destruction that waits on monarchs who consider fidelity
to them as the most degrading of all vices, who suffer it to be punished
as the most abominable of all crimes, and who have no respect but for
rebels, traitors, regicides, and furious negro slaves, whose crimes have
broke their chains? Would not this warm language of high indignation
have more of sound reason in it, more of real affection, more of true
attachment, than all the lullabies of flatterers who would hush monarchs
to sleep in the arms of death? Let them be well convinced, that, if ever
this example should prevail in its whole extent, it will have its full
operation. Whilst kings stand firm on their base, though under that base
there is a sure-wrought mine, there will not be wanting to their levees
a single person of those who are attached to their fortune, and not to
their persons or cause; but hereafter none will support a tottering
throne. Some will fly for fear of being crushed under the ruin; some
will join in making it. They will seek, in the destruction of royalty,
fame and power and wealth and the homage of kings, with Reubell, with
Carnot, with Révellière, and with the Merlins and the Talliens, rather
than suffer exile and beggary with the Condés, or the Broglies, the
Castries, the D'Avarays, the Sérents, the Cazalès, and the long line of
loyal, suffering, patriot nobility, or to be butchered with the oracles
and the victims of the laws, the D'Ormessons, the D'Esprémesnils, and
the Malesherbes. This example we shall give, if, instead of adhering to
our fellows in a cause which is an honor to us all, we abandon the
lawful government and lawful corporate body of France, to hunt for a
shameful and ruinous fraternity with this odious usurpation that
disgraces civilized society and the human race.

And is, then, example nothing? It is everything. Example is the school
of mankind, and they will learn at no other. This war is a war against
that example. It is not a war for Louis the Eighteenth, or even for the
property, virtue, fidelity of France. It is a war for George the Third,
for Francis the Second, and for all the dignity, property, honor,
virtue, and religion of England, of Germany, and of all nations.

I know that all I have said of the systematic unsociability of this
new-invented species of republic, and the impossibility of preserving
peace, is answered by asserting that the scheme of manners, morals, and
even of maxims and principles of state, is of no weight in a question of
peace or war between communities. This doctrine is supported by example.
The case of Algiers is cited, with an hint, as if it were the stronger
case. I should take no notice of this sort of inducement, if I had found
it only where first it was. I do not want respect for those from whom I
first heard it; but, having no controversy at present with them, I only
think it not amiss to rest on it a little, as I find it adopted, with
much more of the same kind, by several of those on whom such reasoning
had formerly made no apparent impression. If it had no force to prevent
us from submitting to this necessary war, it furnishes no better ground
for our making an unnecessary and ruinous peace.

This analogical argument drawn from the case of Algiers would lead us a
good way. The fact is, we ourselves with a little cover, others more
directly, pay a _tribute_ to the Republic of Algiers. Is it meant to
reconcile us to the payment of a _tribute_ to the French Republic? That
this, with other things more ruinous, will be demanded, hereafter, I
little doubt; but for the present this will not be avowed,--though our
minds are to be gradually prepared for it. In truth, the arguments from
this case are worth little, even to those who approve the buying an
Algerine forbearance of piracy. There are many things which men do not
approve, that they must do to avoid a greater evil. To argue from thence
that they are to act in the same manner in all cases is turning
necessity into a law. Upon what is matter of prudence, the argument
concludes the contrary way. Because we have done one humiliating act, we
ought with infinite caution to admit more acts of the same nature, lest
humiliation should become our habitual state. Matters of prudence are
under the dominion of circumstances, and not of logical analogies. It is
absurd to take it otherwise.

I, for one, do more than doubt the policy of this kind of convention
with Algiers. On those who think as I do the argument _ad hominem_ can
make no sort of impression. I know something of the constitution and
composition of this very extraordinary republic. It has a constitution,
I admit, similar to the present tumultuous military tyranny of France,
by which an handful of obscure ruffians domineer over a fertile country
and a brave people. For the composition, too, I admit the Algerine
community resembles that of France,--being formed out of the very scum,
scandal, disgrace, and pest of the Turkish Asia. The Grand Seignior, to
disburden the country, suffers the Dey to recruit in his dominions the
corps of janizaries, or asaphs, which form the Directory and Council of
Elders of the African Republic one and indivisible. But notwithstanding
this resemblance, which I allow, I never shall so far injure the
Janizarian Republic of Algiers as to put it in comparison, for every
sort of crime, turpitude, and oppression, with the Jacobin Republic of
Paris. There is no question with me to which of the two I should choose
to be a neighbor or a subject. But. situated as I am, I am in no danger
of becoming to Algiers either the one or the other. It is not so in my
relation to the atheistical fanatics of France. I _am_ their neighbor; I
_may_ become their subject. Have the gentlemen who borrowed this happy
parallel no idea of the different conduct to be held with regard to the
very same evil at an immense distance and when it is at your door? when
its power is enormous, as when it is comparatively as feeble as its
distance is remote? when there is a barrier of language and usages,
which prevents corruption through certain old correspondences and
habitudes, from the contagion of the horrible novelties that are
introduced into everything else? I can contemplate without dread a royal
or a national tiger on the borders of Pegu. I can look at him with an
easy curiosity, as prisoner within bars in the menagerie of the Tower.
But if, by _Habeas Corpus_, or otherwise, he was to come into the lobby
of the House of Commons whilst your door was open, any of you would be
more stout than wise who would not gladly make your escape out of the
back windows. I certainly should dread more from a wild-cat in my
bedchamber than from all the lions that roar in the deserts behind
Algiers. But in this parallel it is the cat that is at a distance, and
the lions and tigers that are in our antechambers and our lobbies.
Algiers is not near; Algiers is not powerful; Algiers is not our
neighbor; Algiers is not infectious. Algiers, whatever it may be, is an
old creation; and we have good data to calculate all the mischief to be
apprehended from it. When I find Algiers transferred to Calais, I will
tell you what I think of that point. In the mean time, the case quoted
from the Algerine Reports will not apply as authority. We shall put it
out of court; and so far as that goes, let the counsel for the Jacobin
peace take nothing by their motion.

When we voted, as you and I did, with many more whom you and I respect
and love, to resist this enemy, we were providing for dangers that were
direct, home, pressing, and not remote, contingent, uncertain, and
formed upon loose analogies. We judged of the danger with which we were
menaced by Jacobin France from the whole tenor of her conduct, not from
one or two doubtful or detached acts or expressions. I not only
concurred in the idea of combining with Europe in this war, but to the
best of my power even stimulated ministers to that conjunction of
interests and of efforts. I joined them with all my soul, on the
principles contained in that manly and masterly state-paper which I have
two or three times referred to,[33] and may still more frequently
hereafter. The diplomatic collection never was more enriched than with
this piece. The historic facts justify every stroke of the master. "Thus
painters write their names at Co."

Various persons may concur in the same measure on various grounds. They
may be various, without being contrary to or exclusive of each other. I
thought the insolent, unprovoked aggression of the Regicide upon our
ally of Holland a good ground of war. I think his manifest attempt to
overturn the balance of Europe a good ground of war. As a good ground
of war I consider his declaration of war on his Majesty and his kingdom.
But though I have taken all these to my aid, I consider them as nothing
more than as a sort of evidence to indicate the treasonable mind within.
Long before their acts of aggression and their declaration of war, the
faction in France had assumed a form, had adopted a body of principles
and maxims, and had regularly and systematically acted on them, by which
she virtually had put herself in a posture which was in itself a
declaration of war against mankind.

It is said by the Directory, in their several manifestoes, that we of
the people are tumultuous for peace, and that ministers pretend
negotiation to amuse us. This they have learned from the language of
many amongst ourselves, whose conversations have been one main cause of
whatever extent the opinion for peace with Regicide may be. But I, who
think the ministers unfortunately to be but too serious in their
proceedings, find myself obliged to say a little more on this subject of
the popular opinion.

Before our opinions are quoted against ourselves, it is proper, that,
from our serious deliberation, they may be worth quoting. It is without
reason we praise the wisdom of our Constitution in putting under the
discretion of the crown the awful trust of war and peace, if the
ministers of the crown virtually return it again into our hands. The
trust was placed there as a sacred deposit, to secure us against popular
rashness in plunging into wars, and against the effects of popular
dismay, disgust, or lassitude, in getting out of them as imprudently as
we might first engage in them. To have no other measure in judging of
those great objects than our momentary opinions and desires is to throw
us back upon that very democracy which, in this part, our Constitution
was formed to avoid.

It is no excuse at all for a minister who at our desire takes a measure
contrary to our safety, that it is our own act. He who does not stay the
hand of suicide is guilty of murder. On our part, I say, that to be
instructed is not to be degraded or enslaved. Information is an
advantage to us; and we have a right to demand it. He that is bound to
act in the dark cannot be said to act freely. When it appears evident to
our governors that our desires and our interests are at variance, they
ought not to gratify the former at the expense of the latter. Statesmen
are placed on an eminence, that they may have a larger horizon than we
can possibly command. They have a whole before them, which we can
contemplate only in the parts, and often without the necessary
relations. Ministers are not only our natural rulers, but our natural
guides. Reason, clearly and manfully delivered, has in itself a mighty
force; but reason in the mouth of legal authority is, I may fairly say,
irresistible.

I admit that reason of state will not, in many circumstances, permit the
disclosure of the true ground of a public proceeding. In that case
silence is manly, and it is wise. It is fair to call for trust, when the
principle of reason itself suspends its public use. I take the
distinction to be this: the ground of a particular measure making a part
of a plan it is rarely proper to divulge; all the broader grounds of
policy, on which the general plan is to be adopted, ought as rarely to
be concealed. They who have not the whole cause before them, call them
politicians, call them people, call them what you will, are no judges.
The difficulties of the case, as well as its fair side, ought to be
presented. This ought to be done; and it is all that can be done. When
we have our true situation distinctly presented to us, if then we
resolve, with a blind and headlong violence, to resist the admonitions
of our friends, and to cast ourselves into the hands of our potent and
irreconcilable foes, then, and not till then, the ministers stand
acquitted before God and man for whatever may come.

Lamenting, as I do, that the matter has not had so full and free a
discussion as it requires, I mean to omit none of the points which seem
to me necessary for consideration, previous to an arrangement which is
forever to decide the form and the fate of Europe. In the course,
therefore, of what I shall have the honor to address to you, I propose
the following questions to your serious thoughts.--1. Whether the
present system, which stands for a government, in France, be such as in
peace and war affects the neighboring states in a manner different from
the internal government that formerly prevailed in that country?--2.
Whether that system, supposing its views hostile to other nations,
possesses any means of being hurtful to them peculiar to itself?--3.
Whether there has been lately such a change in France as to alter the
nature of its system, or its effect upon other powers?--4. Whether any
public declarations or engagements exist, on the part of the allied
powers, which stand in the way of a treaty of peace which supposes the
right and confirms the power of the Regicide faction in France?--5. What
the state of the other powers of Europe will be with respect to each
other and their colonies, on the conclusion of a Regicide peace?--6.
Whether we are driven to the absolute necessity of making that kind of
peace?

These heads of inquiry will enable us to make the application of the
several matters of fact and topics of argument, that occur in this vast
discussion, to certain fixed principles. I do not mean to confine myself
to the order in which they stand. I shall discuss them in such a manner
as shall appear to me the best adapted for showing their mutual bearings
and relations. Here, then, I close the public matter of my letter; but
before I have done, let me say one word in apology for myself.

In wishing this nominal peace not to be precipitated, I am sure no man
living is less disposed to blame the present ministry than I am. Some of
my oldest friends (and I wish I could say it of more of them) make a
part in that ministry. There are some, indeed, "whom my dim eyes in vain
explore." In my mind, a greater calamity could not have fallen on the
public than the exclusion of one of them. But I drive away that, with
other melancholy thoughts. A great deal ought to be said upon that
subject, or nothing. As to the distinguished persons to whom my friends
who remain are joined, if benefits nobly and generously conferred ought
to procure good wishes, they are entitled to my best vows; and they have
them all. They have administered to me the only consolation I am capable
of receiving, which is, to know that no individual will suffer by my
thirty years' service to the public. If things should give us the
comparative happiness of a struggle, I shall be found, I was going to
say fighting, (that would be foolish,) but dying, by the side of Mr.
Pitt. I must add, that, if anything defensive in our domestic system
can possibly save us from the disasters of a Regicide peace, he is the
man to save us. If the finances in such a case can be repaired, he is
the man to repair them. If I should lament any of his acts, it is only
when they appear to me to have no resemblance to acts of his. But let
him not have a confidence in himself which no human abilities can
warrant. His abilities are fully equal (and that is to say much for any
man) to those which are opposed to him. But if we look to him as our
security against the consequences of a Regicide peace, let us be assured
that a Regicide peace and a constitutional ministry are terms that will
not agree. With a Regicide peace the king cannot long have a minister to
serve him, nor the minister a king to serve. If the Great Disposer, in
reward of the royal and the private virtues of our sovereign, should
call him from the calamitous spectacles which will attend a state of
amity with Regicide, his successor will surely see them, unless the same
Providence greatly anticipates the course of Nature. Thinking thus, (and
not, as I conceive, on light grounds,) I dare not flatter the reigning
sovereign, nor any minister he has or can have, nor his successor
apparent, nor any of those who may be called to serve him, with what
appears to me a false state of their situation. We cannot have them and
that peace together.

I do not forget that there had been a considerable difference between
several of our friends (with my insignificant self) and the great man at
the head of ministry, in an early stage of these discussions. But I am
sure there was a period in which we agreed better in the danger of a
Jacobin existence in France. At one time he and all Europe seemed to
feel it. But why am not I converted with so many great powers and so
many great ministers? It is because I am old and slow. I am in this
year, 1796, only where all the powers of Europe were in 1793. I cannot
move with this precession of the equinoxes, which is preparing for us
the return of some very old, I am afraid no golden era, or the
commencement of some new era that must be denominated from some new
metal. In this crisis I must hold my tongue or I must speak with
freedom. Falsehood and delusion are allowed in no case whatever: but, as
in the exercise of all the virtues, there is an economy of truth. It is
a sort of temperance, by which a man speaks truth with measure, that he
may speak it the longer. But as the same rules do not hold in all cases,
what would be right for you, who may presume on a series of years before
you, would have no sense for me, who cannot, without absurdity,
calculate on six months of life. What I say I _must_ say at once.
Whatever I write is in its nature testamentary. It may have the
weakness, but it has the sincerity, of a dying declaration. For the few
days I have to linger here I am removed completely from the busy scene
of the world; but I hold myself to be still responsible for everything
that I have done whilst I continued on the place of action. If the
rawest tyro in politics has been influenced by the authority of my gray
hairs, and led by anything in my speeches or my writings to enter into
this war, he has a right to call upon me to know why I have changed my
opinions, or why, when those I voted with have adopted better notions, I
persevere in exploded error.

When I seem not to acquiesce in the acts of those I respect in every
degree short of superstition, I am obliged to give my reasons fully. I
cannot set my authority against their authority. But to exert reason is
not to revolt against authority. Reason and authority do not move in the
same parallel. That reason is an _amicus curiæ_ who speaks _de plano_,
not _pro tribunali_. It is a friend who makes an useful suggestion to
the court, without questioning its jurisdiction. Whilst he acknowledges
its competence, he promotes its efficiency. I shall pursue the plan I
have chalked out in my letters that follow this.

FOOTNOTES:

[22] "Mussabat tacito medicina timore."

[23] Mr. Bird, sent to state the real situation of the Duc de Choiseul.

[24] Boissy d'Anglas.

[25] "This Court has seen, with regret, how far the tone and spirit of
that answer, the nature and extent of the demands which it contains, and
the manner of announcing them, are remote from any disposition for
peace.

"The inadmissible pretension is there avowed of appropriating to France
all that the laws actually existing there may have comprised under the
denomination of French territory. To a demand such as this is added an
express declaration that no proposal contrary to it will be made or even
listened to: and this, under the pretence of an internal regulation, the
provisions of which are wholly foreign to all other nations.

"While these dispositions shall be persisted in, nothing is left for the
king but to prosecute a war equally just and necessary.

"Whenever his enemies shall manifest more pacific sentiments, his
Majesty will at all times be eager to concur in them, by lending
himself, in concert with his allies, to all such measures as shall be
best calculated to reëstablish general tranquillity on conditions just,
honorable, and permanent: either by the establishment of a congress,
which has been so often and so happily the means of restoring peace to
Europe; or by a preliminary discussion of the principles which may be
proposed, on either side, as a foundation of a general pacification; or,
lastly, by an impartial examination of any other way which may be
pointed out to him for arriving at the same salutary end.

"_Downing Street, April 10th_, 1796."

[26] _Official Note, extracted from the Journal of the Defenders of the
Country_.

 "EXECUTIVE DIRECTORY.

 "Different journals have advanced that an English
 plenipotentiary had reached Paris, and had presented himself to
 the Executive Directory, but that, his propositions not having
 appeared satisfactory, he had received orders instantly to quit
 France.

 "All these assertions are equally false.

 "The notices given in the English papers of a minister having
 been sent to Paris, there to treat of peace, bring to
 recollection the overtures of Mr. Wickham to the ambassador of
 the Republic at Basle, and the rumors circulated relative to the
 mission of Mr. Hammond to the Court of Prussia. The
 _insignificance_, or rather the _subtle duplicity_, the PUNIC
 _style_ of Mr. Wickham's note, is not forgotten. According to
 the partisans of the English ministry, it was to Paris that Mr.
 Hammond was to come to speak for peace. When his destination
 became public, and it was known that he went to Prussia, the
 same writer repeated that it was to accelerate a peace, and not
 withstanding the object, now well known, of this negotiation was
 to engage Prussia to break her treaties with the Republic, and
 to return into the coalition. The Court of Berlin, faithful to
 its engagements, repulsed these _perfidious_ propositions. But
 in converting this intrigue into a mission for peace, the
 English ministry joined to the hope of giving a new enemy to
 France _that of justifying the continuance of the war in the
 eyes of the English nation, and of throwing all the odium of it
 on the French, government_. Such was also the aim of Mr.
 Wickham's note. _Such is still, that of the notices given at
 this time in the English papers_.

 This aim will appear evident, if we reflect how difficult it is
 that the ambitious government of England should sincerely wish
 for a, peace that would _snatch from it its maritime
 preponderancy, would reëstablish the freedom of the seas, would
 give a new impulse to the Spanish, Dutch, and French marines_,
 and would carry to the highest degree of prosperity the industry
 and commerce of those nations in, which it has always found
 _rivals_, and which it has considered as _enemies_ of its
 commerce, when they were tired of being its _dupes_.

 "_But there will no longer be any credit given to the pacific
 intentions of the English ministry when it is known that its
 gold and its intrigues, its open practices and its insinuations,
 besiege more than ever the Cabinet of Vienna, and are one of the
 principal obstacles to the negotiation which, that Cabinet would
 of itself be induced to enter on for peace_.

 "They will no longer _be credited_, finally, when the moment of
 the rumor of these overtures being circulated is considered.
 _The English nation supports impatiently the continuance of the
 war; a reply must be made to its complaints, its reproaches_:
 the Parliament is about to reopen, its sittings; the mouths of
 the orators who will declaim against the war must be shut, the
 demand of new taxes must be justified; and to obtain these
 results, it is necessary to be enabled to advance, that the
 French government refuses every reasonable proposition of
 peace."



[27] "In their place has succeeded 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."--"They [the Allies] have had to encounter acts of aggression
without pretext, open violations of all treaties, unprovoked
declarations of war,--in a word, whatever corruption, intrigue, or
violence could effect, for the purpose, so openly avowed, of subverting
all the institutions of society, and of extending' over all the nations
of Europe that confusion which has produced the misery of France. This
state of things cannot exist in France, without involving all the
surrounding powers in one common danger,--without giving them the right,
without imposing it upon them as a duty, to stop the progress of an evil
which exists only by the successive violation of all law and all
property, and which attacks the Fundamental principles by which mankind
is united in the bonds of civil society."--"The king would propose none
other than equitable and moderate conditions: not such as the expenses,
the risks, and the sacrifices of the war might justify, but such as his
Majesty thinks himself under the indispensable necessity of requiring,
with a view to these considerations, and still more to that of his own
security and of the future tranquillity of Europe. His Majesty desires
nothing more sincerely than thus to terminate a war which he in vain
endeavored to avoid, and all the calamities of which, as now experienced
by France, are to be attributed only to the ambition, the perfidy, and
the violence of those whose crimes have involved their own country in
misery and disgraced all civilized nations."--"The king promises on his
part the suspension of hostilities, friendship, and (as far as the
course of events will allow, of which the will of man cannot dispose)
security and protection to all those who, by declaring for a monarchical
government, shall shake 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_."

 Declaration sent by his Majesty's command to the commanders of
 his Majesty's fleets and armies employed against France and to
 his Majesty's ministers employed at foreign courts. _Whitehall,
 Oct_. 29, 1793



[28] "Ut lethargicus hic, cum fit pugil, et medicum urget."--HOB.

[29] See the Declaration.

[30] See Declaration, Whitehall, October 29, 1793.

[31] Nothing could be more solemn than their promulgation of this
principle, as a preamble to the destructive code of their famous
articles for the decomposition of society, into whatever country they
should enter. "La Convention Nationale, après avoir entendu le rapport
de ses comités de finances, de la guerre, et diplomatiques réunis,
fidèle au _principe de souveraineté de peuples, qui ne lui permet pas de
reconnaître aucune institution qui y porte atteinte_" &c., &c.--_Décree
sur le Rapport de Cambon, Dec. 18, 1702_. And see the subsequent
proclamation.

[32] "This state of things cannot exist in France, without involving all
the surrounding powers in one common danger,--without giving them the
right, without imposing it upon them as a duty, to stop the progress of
an evil which ... attacks the fundamental principles by which mankind is
united in the bonds of civil society."--_Declaration 29th Oct., 1793_.

[33] Declaration, Whitehall, Oct. 29, 1793.



LETTER II.

ON THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AS IT REGARDS OTHER
NATIONS.


My dear Sir,--I closed my first letter with serious matter, and I hope
it has employed your thoughts. The system of peace must have a reference
to the system of the war. On that ground, I must therefore again recall
your mind to our original opinions, which time and events have not
taught me to vary.

My ideas and my principles led me, in this contest, to encounter France,
not as a state, but as a faction. The vast territorial extent of that
country, its immense population, its riches of production, its riches of
commerce and convention, the whole aggregate mass of what in ordinary
cases constitutes the force of a state, to me were but objects of
secondary consideration. They might be balanced; and they have been
often more than balanced. Great as these things are, they are not what
make the faction formidable. It is the faction that makes them truly
dreadful. That faction is the evil spirit that possesses the body of
France,--that informs it as a soul,--that stamps upon its ambition, and
upon all its pursuits, a characteristic mark, which strongly
distinguishes them from the same general passions and the same general
views in other men and in other communities. It is that spirit which
inspires into them a new, a pernicious, a desolating activity.
Constituted as France was ten years ago, it was not in that France to
shake, to shatter, and to overwhelm Europe in the manner that we behold.
A sure destruction impends over those infatuated princes who, in the
conflict with this new and unheard-of power, proceed as if they were
engaged in a war that bore a resemblance to their former contests, or
that they can make peace in the spirit of their former arrangements of
pacification. Here the beaten path is the very reverse of the safe road.

As to me, I was always steadily of opinion that this disorder was not in
its nature intermittent. I conceived that the contest, once begun, could
not be laid down again, to be resumed at our discretion, but that our
first struggle with this evil would also be our last. I never thought we
could make peace with the system; because it was not for the sake of an
object we pursued in rivalry with each other, but with the system itself
that we were at war. As I understood the matter, we were at war, not
with its conduct, but with its existence,--convinced that its existence
and its hostility were the same.

The faction is not local or territorial. It is a general evil. Where it
least appears in action, it is still full of life. In its sleep it
recruits its strength and prepares its exertion. Its spirit lies deep in
the corruptions of our common nature. The social order which restrains
it feeds it. It exists in every country in Europe, and among all orders
of men in every country, who look up to France as to a common head. The
centre is there. The circumference is the world of Europe, wherever the
race of Europe may be settled. Everywhere else the faction is militant;
in France it is triumphant. In France is the bank of deposit and the
bank of circulation of all the pernicious principles that are forming in
every state. It will be a folly scarcely deserving of pity, and too
mischievous for contempt, to think of restraining it in any other
country whilst it is predominant there. War, instead of being the cause
of its force, has suspended its operation. It has given a reprieve, at
least, to the Christian world.

The true nature of a Jacobin war, in the beginning, was by most of the
Christian powers felt, acknowledged, and even in the most precise manner
declared. In the joint manifesto published by the Emperor and the King
of Prussia, on the 4th of August, 1792, it is expressed in the clearest
terms, and on principles which could not fail, if they had adhered to
them, of classing those monarchs with the first benefactors of mankind.
This manifesto was published, as they themselves express it, "to lay
open to the present generation, as well as to posterity, their motives,
their intentions, and the _disinterestedness_ of their personal views:
taking up arms for the purpose of preserving social and political order
amongst all civilized nations, and to secure to _each_ state its
religion, happiness, independence, territories, and real
constitution."--"On this ground they hoped that all empires and all
states would be unanimous, and, becoming the firm guardians of the
happiness of mankind, that they could not fail to unite their efforts to
rescue a numerous nation from its own fury, to preserve Europe from the
return of barbarism, and the universe from the subversion and anarchy
with which it was threatened." The whole of that noble performance ought
to be read at the first meeting of any congress which may assemble for
the purpose of pacification. In that piece "these powers expressly
renounce all views of personal aggrandizement," and confine themselves
to objects worthy of so generous, so heroic, and so perfectly wise and
politic an enterprise. It was to the principles of this confederation,
and to no other, that we wished our sovereign and our country to accede,
as a part of the commonwealth of Europe. To these principles, with some
trifling exceptions and limitations, they did fully accede.[34] And all
our friends who took office acceded to the ministry, (whether wisely or
not,) as I always understood the matter, on the faith and on the
principles of that declaration.

As long as these powers flattered themselves that the menace of force
would produce the effect of force, they acted on those declarations; but
when their menaces failed of success, their efforts took a new
direction. It did not appear to them that virtue and heroism ought to be
purchased by millions of rix-dollars. It is a dreadful truth, but it is
a truth that cannot be concealed: in ability, in dexterity, in the
distinctness of their views, the Jacobins are our superiors. They saw
the thing right from the very beginning. Whatever were the first motives
to the war among politicians, they saw that in its spirit, and for its
objects, it was a _civil war_; and as such they pursued it. It is a war
between the partisans of the ancient civil, moral, and political order
of Europe against a sect of fanatical and ambitious atheists which means
to change them all. It is not France extending a foreign empire over
other nations: it is a sect aiming at universal empire, and beginning
with the conquest of France. The leaders of that sect secured _the
centre of Europe_; and that secured, they knew, that, whatever might be
the event of battles and sieges, their _cause_ was victorious. Whether
its territory had a little more or a little less peeled from its
surface, or whether an island or two was detached from its commerce, to
them was of little moment. The conquest of France was a glorious
acquisition. That once well laid as a basis of empire, opportunities
never could be wanting to regain or to replace what had been lost, and
dreadfully to avenge themselves on the faction of their adversaries.

They saw it was _a civil war_. It was their business to persuade their
adversaries that it ought to be a _foreign_ war. The Jacobins everywhere
set up a cry against the new crusade; and they intrigued with effect in
the cabinet, in the field, and in every private society in Europe. Their
task was not difficult. The condition of princes, and sometimes of first
ministers too, is to be pitied. The creatures of the desk and the
creatures of favor had no relish for the principles of the manifestoes.
They promised no governments, no regiments, no revenues from whence
emoluments might arise by perquisite or by grant. In truth, the tribe of
vulgar politicians are the lowest of our species. There is no trade so
vile and mechanical as government in their hands. Virtue is not their
habit. They are out of themselves in any course of conduct recommended
only by conscience and glory. A large, liberal, and prospective view of
the interests of states passes with them for romance, and the principles
that recommend it for the wanderings of a disordered imagination. The
calculators compute them out of their senses. The jesters and buffoons
shame them out of everything grand and elevated. Littleness in object
and in means to them appears soundness and sobriety. They think there is
nothing worth pursuit, but that which they can handle, which they can
measure with a two-foot rule, which they can tell upon ten fingers.

Without the principles of the Jacobins, perhaps without any principles
at all, they played the game of that faction. There was a beaten road
before them. The powers of Europe were armed; France had always appeared
dangerous; the war was easily diverted from France as a faction to
France as a state. The princes were easily taught to slide back into
their old, habitual course of politics. They were easily led to consider
the flames that were consuming France, not as a warning to protect their
own buildings, (which were without any party-wall, and linked by a
contignation into the edifice of France,) but as an happy occasion for
pillaging the goods, and for carrying off the materials of their
neighbor's house. Their provident fears were changed into avaricious
hopes. They carried on their new designs without seeming to abandon the
principles of their old policy. They pretended to seek, or they
flattered themselves that they sought, in the accession of new
fortresses and new territories a _defensive_ security. But the security
wanted was against a kind of power which was not so truly dangerous in
its fortresses nor in its territories as in its spirit and its
principles. They aimed, or pretended to aim, at _defending_ themselves
against a danger from which there can be no security in any _defensive_
plan. If armies and fortresses were a defence against Jacobinism, Louis
the Sixteenth would this day reign a powerful monarch over an happy
people.

This error obliged them, even in their offensive operations, to adopt a
plan of war against the success of which there was something little
short of mathematical demonstration. They refused to take any step which
might strike at the heart of affairs. They seemed unwilling to wound the
enemy in any vital part. They acted through the whole as if they really
wished the conservation of the Jacobin power, as what might be more
favorable than the lawful government to the attainment of the petty
objects they looked for. They always kept on the circumference; and the
wider and remoter the circle was, the more eagerly they chose it as
their sphere of action in this centrifugal war. The plan they pursued in
its nature demanded great length of time. In its execution, they who
went the nearest way to work were obliged to cover an incredible extent
of country. It left to the enemy every means of destroying this extended
line of weakness. Ill success in any part was sure to defeat the effect
of the whole. This is true of Austria. It is still more true of England.
On this false plan, even good fortune, by further weakening the victor,
put him but the further off from his object.

As long as there was any appearance of success, the spirit of
aggrandizement, and consequently the spirit of mutual jealousy, seized
upon all the coalesced powers. Some sought an accession of territory at
the expense of France, some at the expense of each other, some at the
expense of third parties; and when the vicissitude of disaster took its
turn, they found common distress a treacherous bond of faith and
friendship.

The greatest skill, conducting the greatest military apparatus, has
been employed; but it has been worse than uselessly employed, through
the false policy of the war. The operations of the field suffered by the
errors of the cabinet. If the same spirit continues, when peace is made,
the peace will fix and perpetuate all the errors of the war; because it
will be made upon the same false principle. What has been lost in the
field, in the field may be regained. An arrangement of peace in its
nature is a permanent settlement: it is the effect of counsel and
deliberation, and not of fortuitous events. If built upon a basis
fundamentally erroneous, it can only be retrieved by some of those
unforeseen dispensations which the all-wise, but mysterious, Governor of
the world sometimes interposes, to snatch nations from ruin. It would
not be pious error, but mad and impious presumption, for any one to
trust in an unknown order of dispensations, in defiance of the rules of
prudence, which are formed upon the known march of the ordinary
providence of God.

It was not of that sort of war that I was amongst the least
considerable, but amongst the most zealous advisers; and it is not by
the sort of peace now talked of that I wish it concluded. It would
answer no great purpose to enter into the particular errors of the war.
The whole has been but one error. It was but nominally a war of
alliance. As the combined powers pursued it, there was nothing to hold
an alliance together. There could be no tie of _honor_ in a society for
pillage. There could be no tie of a common _interest_, where the object
did not offer such a division amongst the parties as could well give
them a warm concern in the gains of each other, or could, indeed, form
such a body of equivalents as might make one of them willing to abandon
a separate object of his ambition for the gratification of any other
member of the alliance. The partition of Poland offered an object of
spoil in which the parties _might_ agree. They were circumjacent, and
each might take a portion convenient to his own territory. They might
dispute about the value of their several shares, but the contiguity to
each of the demandants always furnished the means of an adjustment.
Though hereafter the world will have cause to rue this iniquitous
measure, and they most who were most concerned in it, for the moment
there was wherewithal in the object to preserve peace amongst
confederates in wrong. But the spoil of France did not afford the same
facilities for accommodation. What might satisfy the House of Austria in
a Flemish frontier afforded no equivalent to tempt the cupidity of the
King of Prussia. What might be desired by Great Britain in the West
Indies must be coldly and remotely, if at all, felt as an interest at
Vienna, and it would be felt as something worse than a negative interest
at Madrid. Austria, long possessed with unwise and dangerous designs on
Italy, could not be very much in earnest about the conservation of the
old patrimony of the House of Savoy; and Sardinia, who owed to an
Italian force all her means of shutting out France from Italy, of which
she has been supposed to hold the key, would not purchase the means of
strength upon one side by yielding it on the other: she would not
readily give the possession of Novara for the hope of Savoy. No
Continental power was willing to lose any of its Continental objects for
the increase of the naval power of Great Britain; and Great Britain
would not give up any of the objects she sought for, as the means of an
increase to her naval power, to further their aggrandizement.

The moment this war came to be considered as a war merely of profit, the
actual circumstances are such that it never could become really a war of
alliance. Nor can the peace be a peace of alliance, until things are put
upon their right bottom.

I don't find it denied, that, when a treaty is entered into for peace, a
demand will be made on the Regicides to surrender a great part of their
conquests on the Continent. 'Will they, in the present state of the war,
make that surrender without an equivalent? This Continental cession must
of course be made in favor of that party in the alliance that has
suffered losses. That party has nothing to furnish towards an
equivalent. What equivalent, for instance, has Holland to offer, who has
lost her all? What equivalent can come from the Emperor, every part of
whose territories contiguous to France is already within the pale of the
Regicide dominion? What equivalent has Sardinia to offer for Savoy, and
for Nice,--I may say, for her whole being? What has she taken from the
faction of France? She has lost very near her all, and she has gained
nothing. What equivalent has Spain to give? Alas! she has already paid
for her own ransom the fund of equivalent,--and a dreadful equivalent it
is, to England and to herself. But I put Spain out of the question: she
is a province of the Jacobin empire, and she must make peace or war
according to the orders she receives from the Directory of Assassins. In
effect and substance, her crown is a fief of Regicide.

Whence, then, can the compensation be demanded? Undoubtedly from that
power which alone has made some conquests. That power is England. Will
the Allies, then, give away their ancient patrimony, that England may
keep islands in the West Indies? They never can protract the war in good
earnest for that object; nor can they act in concert with us, in our
refusal to grant anything towards their redemption. In that case we are
thus situated: either we must give Europe, bound hand and foot, to
France, or we must quit the West Indies without any one object, great or
small, towards indemnity and security. I repeat it, without any
advantage whatever: because, supposing that our conquest could comprise
all that France ever possessed in the tropical America, it never can
amount in any fair estimation to a fair equivalent for Holland, for the
Austrian Netherlands, for the Lower Germany,--that is, for the whole
ancient kingdom or circle of Burgundy, now under the yoke of Regicide,
to say nothing of almost all Italy, under the same barbarous domination.
If we treat in the present situation of things, we have nothing in our
hands that can redeem Europe. Nor is the Emperor, as I have observed,
more rich in the fund of equivalents.

If we look to our stock in the Eastern world, our most valuable and
systematic acquisitions are made in that quarter. Is it from France they
are made? France has but one or two contemptible factories, subsisting
by the offal of the private fortunes of English individuals to support
them, in any part of India. I look on the taking of the Cape of Good
Hope as the securing of a post of great moment; it does honor to those
who planned and to those who executed that enterprise; but I speak of it
always as comparatively good,--as good as anything can be in a scheme
of war that repels us from a centre, and employs all our forces where
nothing can be finally decisive. But giving, as I freely give, every
possible credit to these Eastern conquests, I ask one question:--On whom
are they made? It is evident, that, if we can keep our Eastern
conquests, we keep them not at the expense of France, but at the expense
of Holland, our _ally_,--of Holland, the immediate cause of the war, the
nation whom we had undertaken to protect, and not of the Republic which
it was our business to destroy. If we return the African and the Asiatic
conquests, we put them into the hands of a nominal state (to that
Holland is reduced) unable to retain them, and which will virtually
leave them under the direction of France. If we withhold them, Holland
declines still more as a state. She loses so much carrying trade, and
that means of keeping up the small degree of naval power she holds: for
which policy alone, and not for any commercial gain, she maintains the
Cape, or any settlement beyond it. In that case, resentment, faction,
and even necessity, will throw her more and more into the power of the
new, mischievous Republic. But on the probable state of Holland I shall
say more, when in this correspondence I come to talk over with you the
state in which any sort of Jacobin peace will leave all Europe.

So far as to the East Indies.

As to the West Indies,--indeed, as to either, if we look for matter of
exchange in order to ransom Europe,--it is easy to show that we have
taken a terribly roundabout road. I cannot conceive, even if, for the
sake of holding conquests there, we should refuse to redeem Holland,
and the Austrian Netherlands, and the hither Germany, that Spain, merely
as she is Spain, (and forgetting that the Regicide ambassador governs at
Madrid,) will see with perfect satisfaction Great Britain sole mistress
of the isles. In truth, it appears to me, that, when we come to balance
our account, we shall find in the proposed peace only the pure, simple,
and unendowed charms of Jacobin amity. We shall have the satisfaction of
knowing that no blood or treasure has been spared by the Allies for
support of the Regicide system. We shall reflect at leisure on one great
truth: that it was ten times more easy totally to destroy the system
itself than, when established, it would be to reduce its power,--and
that this republic, most formidable abroad, was of all things the
weakest at home; that her frontier was terrible, her interior feeble;
that it was matter of choice to attack her where she is invincible, and
to spare her where she was ready to dissolve by her own internal
disorders. We shall reflect that our plan was good neither for offence
nor defence.

It would not be at all difficult to prove that an army of an hundred
thousand men, horse, foot, and artillery, might have been employed
against the enemy, on the very soil which he has usurped, at a far less
expense than has been squandered away upon tropical adventures. In these
adventures it was not an enemy we had to vanquish, but a cemetery to
conquer. In carrying on the war in the West Indies, the hostile sword is
merciful, the country in which we engage is the dreadful enemy. There
the European conqueror finds a cruel defeat in the very fruits of his
success. Every advantage is but a new demand on England for recruits to
the West Indian grave. In a West India war, the Regicides have for their
troops a race of fierce barbarians, to whom the poisoned air, in which
our youth inhale certain death, is salubrity and life. To them the
climate is the surest and most faithful of allies.

Had we carried on the war on the side of France which looks towards the
Channel or the Atlantic, we should have attacked our enemy on his weak
and unarmed side. We should not have to reckon on the loss of a man who
did not fall in battle. We should have an ally in the heart of the
country, who to our hundred thousand would at one time have added eighty
thousand men at the least, and all animated by principle, by enthusiasm,
and by vengeance: motives which secured them to the cause in a very
different manner from some of those allies whom we subsidized with
millions. This ally, (or rather, this principal in the war,) by the
confession of the Regicide himself, was more formidable to him than all
his other foes united. Warring there, we should have led our arms to the
capital of Wrong. Defeated, we could not fail (proper precautions taken)
of a sure retreat. Stationary, and only supporting the royalists, an
impenetrable barrier, an impregnable rampart, would have been formed
between the enemy and his naval power. We are probably the only nation
who have declined to act against an enemy when it might have been done
in his own country, and who, having an armed, a powerful, and a long
victorious ally in that country, declined all effectual coöperation, and
suffered him to perish for want of support. On the plan of a war in
France, every advantage that our allies might obtain would be doubled
in its effect. Disasters on the one side might have a fair chance of
being compensated by victories on the other. Had we brought the main of
our force to bear upon that quarter, all the operations of the British
and Imperial crowns would have been combined. The war would have had
system, correspondence, and a certain direction. But as the war has been
pursued, the operations of the two crowns have not the smallest degree
of mutual bearing or relation.

Had acquisitions in the West Indies been our object, on success in
France, everything reasonable in those remote parts might be demanded
with decorum and justice and a sure effect. Well might we call for a
recompense in America for those services to which Europe owed its
safety. Having abandoned this obvious policy connected with principle,
we have seen the Regicide power taking the reverse course, and making
real conquests in the West Indies, to which all our dear-bought
advantages (if we could hold them) are mean and contemptible. The
noblest island within the tropics, worth all that we possess put
together, is by the vassal Spaniard delivered into her hands. The island
of Hispaniola (of which we have but one poor corner, by a slippery hold)
is perhaps equal to England in extent, and in fertility is far superior.
The part possessed by Spain of that great island, made for the seat and
centre of a tropical empire, was not improved, to be sure, as the French
division had been, before it was systematically destroyed by the
Cannibal Republic; but it is not only the far larger, but the far more
salubrious and more fertile part.

It was delivered into the hands of the barbarians, without, as I can
find, any public reclamation on our part, not only in contravention to
one of the fundamental treaties that compose the public law of Europe,
but in defiance of the fundamental colonial policy of Spain herself.
This part of the Treaty of Utrecht was made for great general ends,
unquestionably; but whilst it provided for those general ends, it was in
affirmance of that particular policy. It was not to injure, but to save
Spain, by making a settlement of her estate which prohibited her to
alienate to France. It is her policy not to see the balance of West
Indian power overturned by France or by Great Britain. Whilst the
monarchies subsisted, this unprincipled cession was what the influence
of the elder branch of the House of Bourbon never dared to attempt on
the younger: but cannibal terror has been more powerful than family
influence. The Bourbon monarchy of Spain, is united to the Republic of
France by what may be truly called the ties of blood.

By this measure the balance of power in the West Indies is totally
destroyed. It has followed the balance of power in Europe. It is not
alone what shall be left nominally to the Assassins that is theirs.
Theirs is the whole empire of Spain in America. That stroke finishes
all. I should be glad to see our suppliant negotiator in the act of
putting his feather to the ear of the Directory, to make it unclench the
fist, and, by his tickling, to charm that rich prize out of the iron
gripe of robbery and ambition! It does not require much sagacity to
discern that no power wholly baffled and defeated in Europe can flatter
itself with conquests in the West Indies. In that state of things it can
neither keep nor hold. No! It cannot even long make war, if the grand
bank and deposit of its force is at all in the West Indies. But here a
scene opens to my view too important to pass by, perhaps too critical to
touch. Is it possible that it should not present itself in all its
relations to a mind habituated to consider either war or peace on a
large scale or as one whole?

Unfortunately, other ideas have prevailed. A remote, an expensive, a
murderous, and, in the end, an unproductive adventure, carried on upon
ideas of mercantile knight-errantry, without any of the generous
wildness of Quixotism, is considered as sound, solid sense; and a war in
a wholesome climate, a war at our door, a war directly on the enemy, a
war in the heart of his country, a war in concert with an internal ally,
and in combination with the external, is regarded as folly and romance.

My dear friend, I hold it impossible that these considerations should
have escaped the statesmen on both sides of the water, and on both sides
of the House of Commons. How a question of peace can be discussed
without having them in view I cannot imagine. If you or others see a way
out of these difficulties, I am happy. I see, indeed, a fund from whence
equivalents will be proposed. I see it, but I cannot just now touch it.
It is a question of high moment. It opens another Iliad of woes to
Europe.

Such is the time proposed for making _a common political peace_ to which
no one circumstance is propitious. As to the grand principle of the
peace, it is left, as if by common consent, wholly out of the question.

Viewing things in this light, I have frequently sunk into a degree of
despondency and dejection hardly to be described; yet out of the
profoundest depths of this despair, an impulse which I have in vain
endeavored to resist has urged me to raise one feeble cry against this
unfortunate coalition which is formed at home, in order to make a
coalition with France, subversive of the whole ancient order of the
world. No disaster of war, no calamity of season, could ever strike me
with half the horror which I felt from what is introduced to us by this
junction of parties under the soothing name of peace. We are apt to
speak of a low and pusillanimous spirit as the ordinary cause by which
dubious wars terminate in humiliating treaties. It is here the direct
contrary. I am perfectly astonished at the boldness of character, at the
intrepidity of mind, the firmness of nerve, in those who are able with
deliberation to face the perils of Jacobin fraternity.

This fraternity is, indeed, so terrible in its nature, and in its
manifest consequences, that there is no way of quieting our
apprehensions about it, but by totally putting it out of sight, by
substituting for it, through a sort of periphrasis, something of an
ambiguous quality, and describing such a connection under the terms of
"_the usual relations of peace and amity_." By this means the proposed
fraternity is hustled in the crowd of those treaties which imply no
change in the public law of Europe, and which do not upon system affect
the interior condition of nations. It is confounded with those
conventions in which matters of dispute among sovereign powers are
compromised by the taking off a duty more or less, by the surrender of a
frontier town or a disputed district on the one side or the other, by
pactions in which the pretensions of families are settled, (as by a
conveyancer making family substitutions and successions,) without any
alteration in the laws, manners, religion, privileges, and customs of
the cities or territories which are the subject of such arrangements.

All this body of old conventions, composing the vast and voluminous
collection called the _Corps Diplomatique_, forms the code or statute
law, as the methodized reasonings of the great publicists and jurists
form the digest and jurisprudence, of the Christian world. In these
treasures are to be found the _usual_ relations of peace and amity in
civilized Europe; and there the relations of ancient France were to be
found amongst the rest.

The present system in France is not the ancient France. It is not the
ancient France with ordinary ambition and ordinary means. It is not a
new power of an old kind. It is a new power of a new species. When such
a questionable shape is to be admitted for the first time into the
brotherhood of Christendom, it is not a mere matter of idle curiosity to
consider how far it is in its nature alliable with the rest, or whether
"the relations of peace and amity" with this new state are likely to be
of the same nature with the _usual_ relations of the states of Europe.

The Revolution in France had the relation of France to other nations as
one of its principal objects. The changes made by that Revolution were
not the better to accommodate her to the old and usual relations, but to
produce new ones. The Revolution was made, not to make France free, but
to make her formidable,--not to make her a neighbor, but a
mistress,--not to make her more observant of laws, but to put her in a
condition to impose them. To make France truly formidable, it was
necessary that France should be new-modelled. They who have not
followed the train of the late proceedings have been led by deceitful
representations (which deceit made a part in the plan) to conceive that
this totally new model of a state, in which nothing escaped a change,
was made with a view to its internal relations only.

In the Revolution of France, two sorts of men were principally concerned
in giving a character and determination to its pursuits: the
philosophers and the politicians. They took different ways, but they met
in the same end.

The philosophers had one predominant object, which they pursued with a
fanatical fury,--that is, the utter extirpation of religion. To that
every question of empire was subordinate. They had rather domineer in a
parish of atheists than rule over a Christian world. Their temporal
ambition was wholly subservient to their proselytizing spirit, in which
they were not exceeded by Mahomet himself.

They who have made but superficial studies in the natural history of the
human mind have been taught to look on religious opinions as the only
cause of enthusiastic zeal and sectarian propagation. But there is no
doctrine whatever, on which men can warm, that is not capable of the
very same effect. The social nature of man impels him to propagate his
principles, as much as physical impulses urge him to propagate his kind.
The passions give zeal and vehemence. The understanding bestows design
and system. The whole man moves under the discipline of his opinions.
Religion is among the most powerful causes of enthusiasm. When anything
concerning it becomes an object of much meditation, it cannot be
indifferent to the mind. They who do not love religion hate it. The
rebels to God perfectly abhor the Author of their being. They hate Him
"with all their heart, with all their mind, with all their soul, and
with all their strength." He never presents Himself to their thoughts,
but to menace and alarm them. They cannot strike the sun out of heaven,
but they are able to raise a smouldering smoke that obscures him from
their own eyes. Not being able to revenge themselves on God, they have a
delight in vicariously defacing, degrading, torturing, and tearing in
pieces His image in man. Let no one judge of them by what he has
conceived of them, when they were not incorporated, and had no lead.
They were then only passengers in a common vehicle. They were then
carried along with the general motion of religion in the community, and,
without being aware of it, partook of its influence. In that situation,
at worst, their nature was left free to counterwork their principles.
They despaired of giving any very general currency to their opinions:
they considered them as a reserved privilege for the chosen few. But
when the possibility of dominion, lead, and propagation presented
themselves, and that the ambition which before had so often made them
hypocrites might rather gain than lose by a daring avowal of their
sentiments, then the nature of this infernal spirit, which has "evil for
its good," appeared in its full perfection. Nothing, indeed, but the
possession of some power can with any certainty discover what at the
bottom is the true character of any man. Without reading the speeches of
Vergniaud, Français of Nantes, Isnard, and some others of that sort, it
would not be easy to conceive the passion, rancor, and malice of their
tongues and hearts. They worked themselves up to a perfect frenzy
against religion and all its professors. They tore the reputation of the
clergy to pieces by their infuriated declamations and invectives, before
they lacerated their bodies by their massacres. This fanatical atheism
left out, we omit the principal feature in the French Revolution, and a
principal consideration with regard to the effects to be expected from a
peace with it.

The other sort of men were the politicians. To them, who had little or
not at all reflected on the subject, religion was in itself no object of
love or hatred. They disbelieved it, and that was all. Neutral with
regard to that object, they took the side which in the present state of
things might best answer their purposes. They soon found that they could
not do without the philosophers; and the philosophers soon made them
sensible that the destruction of religion was to supply them with means
of conquest, first at home, and then abroad. The philosophers were the
active internal agitators, and supplied the spirit and principles: the
second gave the practical direction. Sometimes the one predominated in
the composition, sometimes the other. The only difference between them
was in the necessity of concealing the general design for a time, and in
their dealing with foreign nations: the fanatics going straight forward
and openly, the politicians by the surer mode of zigzag. In the course
of events, this, among other causes, produced fierce and bloody
contentions between them; but at the bottom they thoroughly agreed in
all the objects of ambition and irreligion, and substantially in all the
means of promoting these ends.

Without question, to bring about the unexampled event of the French
Revolution, the concurrence of a very great number of views and passions
was necessary. In that stupendous work, no one principle by which the
human mind may have its faculties at once invigorated and depraved was
left unemployed; but I can speak it to a certainty, and support it by
undoubted proofs, that the ruling principle of those who acted in the
Revolution _as statesmen_, had the exterior aggrandizement of France as
their ultimate end in the most minute part of the internal changes that
were made. We, who of late years have been drawn from an attention to
foreign affairs by the importance of our domestic discussions, cannot
easily form a conception of the general eagerness of the active and
energetic part of the French nation, itself the most active and
energetic of all nations, previous to its Revolution, upon that subject.
I am convinced that the foreign speculators in France, under the old
government, were twenty to one of the same description then or now in
England; and few of that description there were who did not emulously
set forward the Revolution. The whole official system, particularly in
the diplomatic part, the regulars, the irregulars, down to the clerks in
office, (a corps without all comparison more numerous than the same
amongst us,) coöperated in it. All the intriguers in foreign politics,
all the spies, all the intelligencers, actually or late in function, all
the candidates for that sort of employment, acted solely upon that
principle.

On that system of aggrandizement there was but one mind: but two violent
factions arose about the means. The first wished France, diverted from
the politics of the Continent, to attend solely to her marine, to feed
it by an increase of commerce, and thereby to overpower England on her
own element. They contended, that, if England were disabled, the powers
on the Continent would fall into their proper subordination; that it was
England which deranged the whole Continental system of Europe. The
others, who were by far the more numerous, though not the most outwardly
prevalent at court, considered this plan for France as contrary to her
genius, her situation, and her natural means. They agreed as to the
ultimate object, the reduction of the British power, and, if possible,
its naval power; but they considered an ascendancy on the Continent as a
necessary preliminary to that undertaking. They argued, that the
proceedings of England herself had proved the soundness of this policy:
that her greatest and ablest statesmen had not considered the support of
a Continental balance against France as a deviation from the principle
of her naval power, but as one of the most effectual modes of carrying
it into effect; that such had been her policy ever since the Revolution,
during which period the naval strength of Great Britain had gone on
increasing in the direct ratio of her interference in the politics of
the Continent. With much stronger reason ought the politics of France to
take the same direction,--as well for pursuing objects which her
situation would dictate to her, though England had no existence, as for
counteracting the politics of that nation: to France Continental
politics are primary; they looked on them only of secondary
consideration to England, and, however necessary, but as means necessary
to an end.

What is truly astonishing, the partisans of those two opposite systems
were at once prevalent, and at once employed, and in the very same
transactions, the one ostensibly, the other secretly, during the latter
part of the reign of Louis the Fifteenth. Nor was there one court in
which an ambassador resided on the part of the ministers, in which
another, as a spy on him, did not also reside on the part of the king:
they who pursued the scheme for keeping peace on the Continent, and
particularly with Austria, acting officially and publicly; the other
faction counteracting and opposing them. These private agents were
continually going from their function to the Bastile, and from the
Bastile to employment and favor again. An inextricable cabal was formed,
some of persons of Rank, others of subordinates. But by this means the
corps of politicians was augmented in number, and the whole formed a
body of active, adventuring, ambitious, discontented people, despising
the regular ministry, despising the courts at which they were employed,
despising the court which employed them.

The unfortunate Louis the Sixteenth[35] was not the first cause of the
evil by which he suffered. He came to it, as to a sort of inheritance,
by the false politics of his immediate predecessor. This system of dark
and perplexed intrigue had come to its perfection before he came to the
throne; and even then the Revolution strongly operated in all its
causes.

There was no point on which the discontented diplomatic politicians so
bitterly arraigned their cabinet as for the decay of French influence in
all others. From quarrelling with the court, they began to complain of
monarchy itself, as a system of government too variable for any regular
plan of national aggrandizement. They observed that in that sort of
regimen too much depended on the personal character of the prince: that
the vicissitudes produced by the succession of princes of a different
character, and even the vicissitudes produced in the same man, by the
different views and inclinations belonging to youth, manhood, and age,
disturbed and distracted the policy of a country made by Nature for
extensive empire, or, what was still more to their taste, for that sort
of general overruling influence which prepared empire or supplied the
place of it. They had continually in their hands the observations of
Machiavel on Livy. They had Montesquieu's _Grandeur et Décadence des
Romains_ as a manual; and they compared, with mortification, the
systematic proceedings of a Roman Senate with the fluctuations of a
monarchy. They observed the very small additions of territory which all
the power of Prance, actuated by all the ambition of France, had
acquired in two centuries. The Romans had frequently acquired more in a
single year. They severely and in every part of it criticized the reign
of Louis the Fourteenth, whose irregular and desultory ambition had
more provoked than endangered Europe. Indeed, they who will be at the
pains of seriously considering the history of that period will see that
those French politicians had some reason. They who will not take the
trouble of reviewing it through all its wars and all its negotiations
will consult the short, but judicious, criticism of the Marquis de
Montalembert on that subject. It may be read separately from his
ingenious system of fortification and military defence, on the practical
merit of which I am unable to form a judgment.

The diplomatic politicians of whom I speak, and who formed by far the
majority in that class, made disadvantageous comparisons even between
their more legal and formalizing monarchy and the monarchies of other
states, as a system of power and influence. They observed that France
not only lost ground herself, but, through the languor and unsteadiness
of her pursuits, and from her aiming through commerce at naval force
which she never could attain without losing more on one side than she
could gain on the other, three great powers, each of them (as military
states) capable of balancing her, had grown up on the Continent. Russia
and Prussia had been created almost within memory; and Austria, though
not a new power, and even curtailed in territory, was, by the very
collision in which she lost that territory, greatly improved in her
military discipline and force. During the reign of Maria Theresa, the
interior economy of the country was made more to correspond with the
support of great armies than formerly it had been. As to Prussia, a
merely military power, they observed that one war had enriched her with
as considerable a conquest as France had acquired in centuries. Russia
had broken the Turkish power, by which Austria might be, as formerly she
had been, balanced in favor of France. They felt it with pain, that the
two Northern powers of Sweden and Denmark were in general under the sway
of Russia,--or that, at best, France kept up a very doubtful conflict,
with many fluctuations of fortune, and at an enormous expense, in
Sweden. In Holland the French party seemed, if not extinguished, at
least utterly obscured, and kept under by a Stadtholder, leaning for
support sometimes on Great Britain, sometimes on Prussia, sometimes on
both, never on France. Even the spreading of the Bourbon family had
become merely a family accommodation, and had little effect oh the
national politics. This alliance, they said, extinguished Spain by
destroying all its energy, without adding anything to the real power of
France in the accession of the forces of its great rival. In Italy the
same family accommodation, the same national insignificance, were
equally visible. What cure for the radical weakness of the French
monarchy, to which all the means which wit could devise, or Nature and
fortune could bestow, towards universal empire, was not of force to give
life or vigor or consistency, but in a republic? Out the word came: and
it never went back.

Whether they reasoned right or wrong, or that there was some mixture of
right and wrong in their reasoning, I am sure that in this manner they
felt and reasoned. The different effects of a great military and
ambitious republic and of a monarchy of the same description were
constantly in their mouths. The principle was ready to operate, when
opportunities should offer, which few of them, indeed, foresaw in the
extent in which they were afterwards presented; but these opportunities,
in some degree or other, they all ardently wished for.

When I was in Paris in 1773, the treaty of 1756 between Austria and
France was deplored as a national, calamity; because it united France in
friendship with a power at whose expense alone they could hope any
Continental aggrandizement. When the first partition of Poland was made,
in which France had no share, and which had farther aggrandized every
one of the three powers of which they were most jealous, I found them in
a perfect frenzy of rage and indignation: not that they were hurt at the
shocking and uncolored violence and injustice of that partition, but at
the debility, improvidence, and want of activity in their government, in
not preventing it as a means of aggrandizement to their rivals, or in
not contriving, by exchanges of some kind or other, to obtain their
share of advantage from that robbery.

In that or nearly in that state of things and of opinions came the
Austrian match, which promised to draw the knot, as afterwards in effect
it did, still more closely between the old rival houses. This added
exceedingly to their hatred and contempt of their monarchy. It was for
this reason that the late glorious queen, who on all accounts was formed
to produce general love and admiration, and whose life was as mild and
beneficent as her death was beyond example great and heroic, became so
very soon and so very much the object of an implacable rancor, never to
be extinguished but in her blood. When I wrote my letter in answer to M.
de Menonville, in the beginning of January, 1791, I had good reason for
thinking that this description of revolutionists did not so early nor so
steadily point their murderous designs at the martyr king as at the
royal heroine. It was accident, and the momentary depression of that
part of the faction, that gave to the husband the happy priority in
death.

From this their restless desire of an overruling influence, they bent a
very great part of their designs and efforts to revive the old French
party, which was a democratic party, in Holland, and to make a
revolution there. They were happy at the troubles which the singular
imprudence of Joseph the Second had stirred up in the Austrian
Netherlands. They rejoiced, when they saw him irritate his subjects,
profess philosophy, send away the Dutch garrisons, and dismantle his
fortifications. As to Holland, they never forgave either the king or the
ministry for suffering that object, which they justly looked on as
principal in their design of reducing the power of England, to escape
out of their hands. This was the true secret of the commercial treaty,
made, on their part, against all the old rules and principles of
commerce, with a view of diverting the English nation, by a pursuit of
immediate profit, from an attention to the progress of France in its
designs upon that republic. The system of the economists, which led to
the general opening of commerce, facilitated that treaty, but did not
produce it. They were in despair, when they found, that, by the vigor of
Mr. Pitt, supported in this point by Mr. Fox and the opposition, the
object to which they had sacrificed their manufactures was lost to their
ambition.

This eager desire of raising France from the condition into which she
had fallen, as they conceived, from her monarchical imbecility, had been
the main spring of their precedent interference in that unhappy American
quarrel, the bad effects of which to this nation have not as yet fully
disclosed themselves. These sentiments had been long lurking in their
breasts, though their views were only discovered now and then in heat
and as by escapes, but on this occasion they exploded suddenly. They
were professed with ostentation, and propagated with zeal. These
sentiments were not produced, as some think, by their American alliance.
The American alliance was produced by their republican principles and
republican policy. This new relation undoubtedly did much. The
discourses and cabals that it produced, the intercourse that it
established, and, above all, the example, which made it seem practicable
to establish a republic in a great extent of country, finished the work,
and gave to that part of the revolutionary faction a degree of strength
which required other energies than the late king possessed to resist or
even to restrain. It spread everywhere; but it was nowhere more
prevalent than in the heart of the court. The palace of Versailles, by
its language, seemed a forum of democracy. To have pointed out to most
of those politicians, from their dispositions and movements, what has
since happened, the fall of their own monarchy, of their own laws, of
their own religion, would have been to furnish a motive the more for
pushing forward a system on which they considered all these things as
incumbrances. Such in truth they were. And we have seen them succeed,
not only in the destruction of their monarchy, but in all the objects
of ambition that they proposed from that destruction.

When I contemplate the scheme on which France is formed, and when I
compare it with these systems with which it is and ever must be in
conflict, those things which seem as defects in her polity are the very
things which make me tremble. The states of the Christian world have
grown up to their present magnitude in a great length of time and by a
great variety of accidents. They have been improved to what we see them
with greater or less degrees of felicity and skill. Not one of them has
been formed upon a regular plan or with any unity of design. As their
constitutions are not systematical, they have not been directed to any
_peculiar_ end, eminently distinguished, and superseding every other.
The objects which they embrace are of the greatest possible variety, and
have become in a manner infinite. In all these old countries, the state
has been made to the people, and not the people conformed to the state.
Every state has pursued not only every sort of social advantage, but it
has cultivated the welfare of every individual. His wants, his wishes,
even his tastes, have been consulted. This comprehensive scheme
virtually produced a degree of personal liberty in forms the most
adverse to it. That liberty was found, under monarchies styled absolute,
in a degree unknown to the ancient commonwealths. From hence the powers
of all our modern states meet, in all their movements, with some
obstruction. It is therefore no wonder, that when these states are to be
considered as machines to operate for some one great end, that this
dissipated and balanced force is not easily concentred, or made to bear
with the whole force of the nation upon one point.

The British state is, without question, that which pursues the greatest
variety of ends, and is the least disposed to sacrifice any one of them
to another or to the whole. It aims at taking in the entire circle of
human desires, and securing for them their fair enjoyment. Our
legislature has been ever closely connected, in its most efficient part,
with individual feeling and individual interest. Personal liberty, the
most lively of these feelings and the most important of these interests,
which in other European countries has rather arisen from the system of
manners and the habitudes of life than from the laws of the state, (in
which it flourished more from neglect than attention,) in England has
been a direct object of government.

On this principle, England would be the weakest power in the whole
system. Fortunately, however, the great riches of this kingdom, arising
from a variety of causes, and the disposition of the people, which is as
great to spend as to accumulate, has easily afforded a disposable
surplus that gives a mighty momentum to the state. This difficulty, with
these advantages to overcome it, has called forth the talents of the
English financiers, who, by the surplus of industry poured out by
prodigality, have outdone everything which has been accomplished in
other nations. The present minister has outdone his predecessors, and,
as a minister of revenue, is far above my power of praise. But still
there are cases in which England feels more than several others (though
they all feel) the perplexity of an immense body of balanced advantages
and of individual demands, and of some irregularity in the whole mass.

France differs essentially from all those governments which are formed
without system, which exist by habit, and which are confused with the
multitude and with the complexity of their pursuits. What now stands as
government in France is struck out at a heat. The design is wicked,
immoral, impious, oppressive: but it is spirited and daring; it is
systematic; it is simple in its principle; it has unity and consistency
in perfection. In that country, entirely to cut off a branch of
commerce, to extinguish a manufacture, to destroy the circulation of
money, to violate credit, to suspend the course of agriculture, even to
burn a city or to lay waste a province of their own, does not cost them
a moment's anxiety. To them the will, the wish, the want, the liberty,
the toil, the blood of individuals, is as nothing. Individuality is left
out of their scheme of government. The state is all in all. Everything
is referred to the production of force; afterwards, everything is
trusted to the use of it. It is military in its principle, in its
maxims, in its spirit, and in all its movements. The state has dominion
and conquest for its sole objects,--dominion over minds by proselytism,
over bodies by arms.

Thus constituted, with an immense body of natural means, which are
lessened in their amount only to be increased in their effect, France
has, since the accomplishment of the Revolution, a complete unity in its
direction. It has destroyed every resource of the state which depends
upon opinion and the good-will of individuals. The riches of convention
disappear. The advantages of Nature in some measure remain; even these,
I admit, are astonishingly lessened; the command over what remains is
complete and absolute. We go about asking when assignats will expire,
and we laugh at the last price of them. But what signifies the fate of
those tickets of despotism? The despotism will find despotic means of
supply. They have found the short cut to the productions of Nature,
while others, in pursuit of them, are obliged to wind through the
labyrinth of a very intricate state of society. They seize upon the
fruit of the labor; they seize upon the laborer himself. Were France but
half of what it is in population, in compactness, in applicability of
its force, situated as it is, and being what it is, it would be too
strong for most of the states of Europe, constituted as they are, and
proceeding as they proceed. Would it be wise to estimate what the world
of Europe, as well as the world of Asia, had to dread from Genghiz Khân,
upon a contemplation of the resources of the cold and barren spot in the
remotest Tartary from whence first issued that scourge of the human
race? Ought we to judge from the excise and stamp duties of the rocks,
or from the paper circulation of the sands of Arabia, the power by which
Mahomet and his tribes laid hold at once on the two most powerful
empires of the world, beat one of them totally to the ground, broke to
pieces the other, and, in not much longer space of time than I have
lived, overturned governments, laws, manners, religion, and extended an
empire from the Indus to the Pyrenees?

Material resources never have supplied, nor ever can supply, the want of
unity in design and constancy in pursuit. But unity in design and
perseverance and boldness in pursuit have never wanted resources, and
never will. We have not considered as we ought the dreadful energy of a
state in which the property has nothing to do with the government
Reflect, my dear Sir, reflect again and again, on a government in which
the property is in complete subjection, and where nothing roles but the
mind of desperate men. The condition of a commonwealth not governed by
its property was a combination of things which the learned and ingenious
speculator, Harrington, who has tossed about society into all forms,
never could imagine to be possible. We have seen it; the world has felt
it; and if the world will shut their eyes to this state of things, they
will feel it more. The rulers there have found their resources in
crimes. The discovery is dreadful, the mine exhaustless. They have
everything to gain, and they have nothing to lose. They have a boundless
inheritance in hope, and there is no medium for them betwixt the highest
elevation and death with infamy. Never can they, who, from the miserable
servitude of the desk, have been raised to empire, again submit to the
bondage of a starving bureau, or the profit of copying music, or writing
_plaidoyers_ by the sheet. It has made me often smile in bitterness,
when I have heard talk of an indemnity to such men, provided they
returned to their allegiance.

From all this what is my inference? It is, that this new system of
robbery in France cannot be rendered safe by any art; that it _must_ be
destroyed, or that it will destroy all Europe; that to destroy that
enemy, by some means or other, the force opposed to it should be made to
bear some analogy and resemblance to the force and spirit which that
system exerts; that war ought to be made against it in its vulnerable
parts. These are my inferences. In one word, with this republic nothing
independent can coexist. The errors of Louis the Sixteenth were more
pardonable to prudence than any of those of the same kind into which the
allied courts may fall. They have the benefit of his dreadful example.

The unhappy Louis the Sixteenth was a man of the best intentions that
probably ever reigned. He was by no means deficient in talents. He had a
most laudable desire to supply by general reading, and even by the
acquisition of elemental knowledge, an education in all points
originally defective; but nobody told him (and it was no wonder he
should not himself divine it) that the world of which he read and the
world in which he lived were no longer the same. Desirous of doing
everything for the best, fearful of cabal, distrusting his own judgment,
he sought his ministers of all kinds upon public testimony. But as
courts are the field for caballers, the public is the theatre for
mountebanks and impostors. The cure for both those evils is in the
discernment of the prince. But an accurate and penetrating discernment
is what in a young prince could not be looked for.

His conduct in its principle was not unwise; but, like most other of his
well-meant designs, it failed in his hands. It failed partly from mere
ill fortune, to which speculators are rarely pleased to assign that very
large share to which she is justly entitled in all human affairs. The
failure, perhaps, in part, was owing to his suffering his system to be
vitiated and disturbed by those intrigues which it is, humanly speaking,
impossible wholly to prevent in courts, or indeed under any form of
government. However, with these aberrations, he gave himself over to a
succession of the statesmen of public opinion. In other things he
thought that he might be a king on the terms of his predecessors. He was
conscious of the purity of his heart and the general good tendency of
his government. He flattered himself, as most men in his situation will,
that he might consult his ease without danger to his safety. It is not
at all wonderful that both he and his ministers, giving way abundantly
in other respects to innovation, should take up in policy with the
tradition of their monarchy. Under his ancestors, the monarchy had
subsisted, and even been strengthened, by the generation or support of
republics. First, the Swiss republics grew under the guardianship of the
French monarchy. The Dutch republics were hatched and cherished under
the same incubation. Afterwards, a republican constitution was, under
the influence of France, established in the Empire, against the
pretensions of its chief. Even whilst the monarchy of France, by a
series of wars and negotiations, and lastly by the Treaties of
Westphalia, had obtained the establishment of the Protestants in Germany
as a law of the Empire, the same monarchy under Louis the Thirteenth had
force enough to destroy the republican system of the Protestants at
home.

Louis the Sixteenth was a diligent reader of history. But the very lamp
of prudence blinded him. The guide of human life led him astray. A
silent revolution in the moral world preceded the political, and
prepared it. It became of more importance than ever what examples were
given, and what measures wore adopted. Their causes no longer lurked in
the recesses of cabinets or in the private conspiracies of the factious.
They were no longer to be controlled by the force and influence of the
grandees, who formerly had been able to stir up troubles by their
discontents and to quiet them by their corruption. The chain of
subordination, even in cabal and sedition, was broken in its most
important links. It was no longer the great and the populace. Other
interests were formed, other dependencies, other connections, other
communications. The middle classes had swelled far beyond their former
proportion. Like whatever is the most effectively rich and great in
society, these classes became the seat of all the active politics, and
the preponderating weight to decide on them. There were all the energies
by which fortune is acquired; there the consequence of their success.
There were all the talents which assert their pretensions, and are
impatient of the place which settled society prescribes to them. These
descriptions had got between the great and the populace; and the
influence on the lower classes was with them. The spirit of ambition had
taken possession of this class as violently as ever it had done of any
other. They felt the importance of this situation. The correspondence of
the moneyed and the mercantile world, the literary intercourse of
academies, but above all, the press, of which they had in a manner
entire possession, made a kind of electric communication everywhere. The
press, in reality, has made every government, in its spirit, almost
democratic. Without the great, the first movements in this revolution
could not, perhaps, have been given. But the spirit of ambition, now for
the first time connected with the spirit of speculation, was not to be
restrained at will. There was no longer any means of arresting a
principle in its course. When Louis the Sixteenth, under the influence
of the enemies to monarchy, meant to found but one republic, he set up
two; when he meant to take away half the crown of his neighbor, he lost
the whole of his own. Louis the Sixteenth could not with impunity
countenance a new republic. Yet between his throne and that dangerous
lodgment for an enemy, which he had erected, he had the whole Atlantic
for a ditch. He had for an outwork the English nation itself, friendly
to liberty, adverse to that mode of it. He was surrounded by a rampart
of monarchies, most of them allied to him, and generally under his
influence. Yet even thus secured, a republic erected under his auspices,
and dependent on his power, became fatal to his throne. The very money
which he had lent to support this republic, by a good faith which to him
operated as perfidy, was punctually paid to his enemies, and became a
resource in the hands of his assassins.

With this example before their eyes, do any ministers in England, do any
ministers in Austria, really flatter themselves that they can erect, not
on the remote shores of the Atlantic, but in their view, in their
vicinity, in absolute contact with one of them, not a commercial, but a
martial republic,--a republic not of simple husbandmen or fishermen, but
of intriguers, and of warriors,--a republic of a character the most
restless, the most enterprising, the most impious, the most fierce and
bloody, the most hypocritical and perfidious, the most bold and daring,
that ever has been seen, or indeed that can be conceived to exist,
without bringing on their own certain ruin?

Such is the republic to which we are going to give a place in civilized
fellowship,--the republic which, with joint consent, we are going to
establish in the centre of Europe, in a post that overlooks and
commands every other state, and which eminently confronts and menaces
this kingdom.

You cannot fail to observe that I speak as if the allied powers were
actually consenting, and not compelled by events, to the establishment
of this faction in France. The words have not escaped me. You will
hereafter naturally expect that I should make them good. But whether in
adopting this measure we are madly active or weakly passive or
pusillanimously panic-struck, the effects will be the same. You may call
this faction, which has eradicated the monarchy, expelled the
proprietary, persecuted religion, and trampled upon law,[36]--you may
call this Prance, if you please; but of the ancient France nothing
remains but its central geography, its iron frontier, its spirit of
ambition, its audacity of enterprise, its perplexing intrigue. These,
and these alone, remain: and they remain heightened in their principle
and augmented in their means. All the former correctives, whether of
virtue or of weakness, which existed in the old monarchy, are gone. No
single new corrective is to be found in the whole body of the new
institutions. How should such a thing be found there, when everything
has been chosen with care and selection to forward all those ambitious
designs and dispositions, not to control them? The whole is a body of
ways and means for the supply of dominion, without one heterogeneous
particle in it.

Here I suffer you to breathe, and leave to your meditation what has
occurred to me on the _genius and character_ of the French Revolution.
From having this before us, we may be better able to determine on the
first question I proposed,--that is, How far nations called foreign are
likely to be affected with the system established within that territory.
I intended to proceed next on the question of her facilities, _from the
internal state of other nations, and particularly of this_, for
obtaining her ends; but I ought to be aware that my notions are
controverted. I mean, therefore, in my next letter, to take notice of
what in that way has been recommended to me as the most deserving of
notice. In the examination of those pieces, I shall have occasion to
discuss some others of the topics to which I have called your attention.
You know that the letters which I now send to the press, as well as a
part of what is to follow, have been in their substance long since
written. A circumstance which your partiality alone could make of
importance to you, but which to the public is of no importance at all,
retarded their appearance. The late events which press upon us obliged
me to make some additions, but no substantial change in the matter.

This discussion, my friend, will be long. But the matter is serious; and
if ever the fate of the world could be truly said to depend on a
particular measure, it is upon this peace. For the present, farewell.

FOOTNOTES:

[34] See Declaration, Whitehall, Oct. 29, 1793.

[35] It may be right to do justice to Louis the Sixteenth. He did what
he could to destroy the double diplomacy of France. He had all the
secret correspondence burnt, except one piece, which was called
_Conjectures raisonnées sur la Situation actuelle de la France dans le
Système Politique de l'Europe_: a work executed by M. Favier, under the
direction of Count Broglie. A single copy of this was said to have been
found in the cabinet of Louis the Sixteenth. It was published with some
subsequent state-papers of Vergennes, Turgot, and others, as "a new
benefit of the Revolution," and the advertisement to the publication
ends with the following words: "_Il sera facile de se convaincre_, QU'Y
COMPRIS MÊME LA RÉVOLUTION, _en grande partie_, ON TROUVE DANS CES
_MEMOIRES_ ET CES _CONJECTURES_ LE GERME DE TOUT CE QUI ARRIVE
AUJOURD'HUI, _et qu'on ne peut, sans les avoir lus, être bien au fait
des intérêts, et même des vues actuelles des diverses puissances de
l'Europe_." The book is entitled _Politique de tous les Cabinets de
l'Europe pendant la Règnes de Louis XV. et de Louis XVI_. It is
altogether very curious, and worth reading.

[36] See our Declaration.



LETTER III.

ON THE RUPTURE OF THE NEGOTIATION; THE TERMS OF PEACE PROPOSED; AND THE
RESOURCES OF THE COUNTRY FOR THE CONTINUANCE OF THE WAR.


Dear Sir,--I thank you for the bundle of state-papers which I received
yesterday. I have travelled through the negotiation,--and a sad,
founderous road it is. There is a sort of standing jest against my
countrymen,--that one of them on his journey having found a piece of
pleasant road, he proposed to his companion to go over it again. This
proposal, with regard to the worthy traveller's final destination, was
certainly a blunder. It was no blunder as to his immediate satisfaction;
for the way was pleasant. In the irksome journey of the Regicide
negotiations it is otherwise: our "paths are not paths of pleasantness,
nor our ways the ways to peace." All our mistakes, (if such they are,)
like those of our Hibernian traveller, are mistakes of repetition; and
they will be full as far from bringing us to our place of rest as his
well-considered project was from forwarding him to his inn. Yet I see we
persevere. Fatigued with our former course, too listless to explore a
new one, kept in action by inertness, moving only because we have been
in motion, with a sort of plodding perseverance we resolve to measure
back again the very same joyless, hopeless, and inglorious track.
Backward and forward,--oscillation, space,--the travels of a postilion,
miles enough to circle the globe in one short stage,--we have been, and
we are yet to be, jolted and rattled over the loose, misplaced stones
and the treacherous hollows of this rough, ill-kept, broken-up,
treacherous French causeway!

The Declaration which brings up the rear of the papers laid before
Parliament contains a review and a reasoned summary of all our attempts
and all our failures,--a concise, but correct narrative of the painful
steps taken to bring on the essay of a treaty at Paris,--a clear
exposure of all the rebuffs we received in the progress of that
experiment,--an honest confession of our departure from all the rules
and all the principles of political negotiation, and of common prudence
in the conduct of it,--and to crown the whole, a fair account of the
atrocious manner in which the Regicide enemies had broken up what had
been so inauspiciously begun and so feebly carried on, by finally, and
with all scorn, driving our suppliant ambassador out of the limits of
their usurpation.

Even after all that I have lately seen, I was a little surprised at this
exposure. A minute display of hopes formed without foundation and of
labors pursued without fruit is a thing not very flattering to
self-estimation. But truth has its rights, and it will assert them. The
Declaration, after doing all this with a mortifying candor, concludes
the whole recapitulation with an engagement still more extraordinary
than all the unusual matter it contains. It says that "His Majesty, who
had entered into the negotiation with _good faith_, who had suffered
_no_ impediment to prevent his prosecuting it with _earnestness and
sincerity_, has now _only to lament_ its abrupt termination, and to
renew _in the face of all Europe the solemn declaration_, that, whenever
his enemies shall be _disposed_ to enter on the work of general
pacification in a spirit of conciliation and equity, nothing shall be
wanting on his part to contribute to the accomplishment of that great
object."

If the disgusting detail of the accumulated insults we have received, in
what we have very properly called our "solicitation" to a gang of felons
and murderers, had been produced as a proof of the utter inefficacy of
that mode of proceeding with that description of persons, I should have
nothing at all to object to it. It might furnish matter conclusive in
argument and instructive in policy; but, with all due submission to high
authority, and with all decent deference to superior lights, it does not
seem quite clear to a discernment no better than mine that the premises
in that piece conduct irresistibly to the conclusion. A labored display
of the ill consequences which have attended an uniform course of
submission to every mode of contumelious insult, with which the
despotism of a proud, capricious, insulting, and implacable foe has
chosen to buffet our patience, does not appear to my poor thoughts to be
properly brought forth as a preliminary to justify a resolution of
persevering in the very same kind of conduct, towards the very same sort
of person, and on the very same principles. We state our experience, and
then we come to the manly resolution of acting in contradiction to it.
All that has passed at Paris, to the moment of our being shamefully
hissed off that stage, has been nothing but a more solemn representation
on the theatre of the nation of what had been before in rehearsal at
Basle. As it is not only confessed by us, but made a matter of charge on
the enemy, that he had given us no encouragement to believe there was a
change in his disposition or in his policy at any time subsequent to the
period of his rejecting our first overtures, there seems to have been no
assignable motive for sending Lord Malmesbury to Paris, except to expose
his humbled country to the worst indignities, and the first of the kind,
as the Declaration very truly observes, that have been known in the
world of negotiation.

An honest neighbor of mine is not altogether unhappy in the application
of an old common story to a present occasion. It may be said of my
friend, what Horace says of a neighbor of his, "_Garrit aniles ex re
fabellas_." Conversing on this strange subject, he told me a current
story of a simple English country squire, who was persuaded by certain
_dilettanti_ of his acquaintance to see the world, and to become knowing
in men and manners. Among other celebrated places, it was recommended to
him to visit Constantinople. He took their advice. After various
adventures, not to our purpose to dwell upon, he happily arrived at that
famous city. As soon as he had a little reposed himself from his
fatigue, he took a walk into the streets; but he had not gone far,
before "a malignant and a turbaned Turk" had his choler roused by the
careless and assured air with which this infidel strutted about in the
metropolis of true believers. In this temper he lost no time in doing to
our traveller the honors of the place. The Turk crossed over the way,
and with perfect good-will gave him two or three lusty kicks on the seat
of honor. To resent or to return the compliment in Turkey was quite out
of the question. Our traveller, since he could not otherwise acknowledge
this kind of favor, received it with the best grace in the world: he
made one of his most ceremonious bows, and begged the kicking Mussulman
"to accept his perfect assurances of high consideration." Our countryman
was too wise to imitate Othello in the use of the dagger. He thought it
better, as better it was, to assuage his bruised dignity with half a
yard square of balmy diplomatic diachylon. In the disasters of their
friends, people are seldom wanting in a laudable patience. When they
are such as do not threaten to end fatally, they become even matter of
pleasantry. The English fellow-travellers of our sufferer, finding him a
little out of spirits, entreated him not to take so slight a business so
very seriously. They told him it was the custom of the country; that
every country had its customs; that the Turkish manners were a little
rough, but that in the main the Turks were a good-natured people; that
what would have been a deadly affront anywhere else was only a little
freedom there: in short, they told him to think no more of the matter,
and to try his fortune in another promenade. But the squire, though a
little clownish, had some home-bred sense. "What! have I come, at all
this expense and trouble, all the way to Constantinople only to be
kicked? Without going beyond my own stable, my groom, for half a crown,
would have kicked me to my heart's content. I don't mean to stay in
Constantinople eight-and-forty hours, nor ever to return to this rough,
good-natured people, that have their own customs."

In my opinion the squire was in the right. He was satisfied with his
first ramble and his first injuries. But reason of state and common
sense are two things. If it were not for this difference, it might not
appear of absolute necessity, after having received a certain quantity
of buffetings by advance, that we should send a peer of the realm to the
scum of the earth to collect the debt to the last farthing, and to
receive, with infinite aggravation, the same scorns which had been paid
to our supplication through a commoner: but it was proper, I suppose,
that the whole of our country, in all its orders, should have a share of
the indignity, and, as in reason, that the higher orders should touch
the larger proportion.

This business was not ended because our dignity was wounded, or because
our patience was worn out with contumely and scorn. We had not disgorged
one particle of the nauseous doses with which we were so liberally
crammed by the mountebanks of Paris in order to drug and diet us into
perfect tameness. No,--we waited till the morbid strength of our
_boulimia_ for their physic had exhausted the well-stored dispensary of
their empiricism. It is impossible to guess at the term to which our
forbearance would have extended. The Regicides were more fatigued with
giving blows than the callous cheek of British diplomacy was hurt in
receiving them. They had no way left for getting rid of this mendicant
perseverance, but by sending for the beadle, and forcibly driving our
embassy "of shreds and patches," with all its mumping cant, from the
inhospitable door of Cannibal Castle,--

    "Where the gaunt mastiff, growling at the gate,
    Affrights the beggar whom he longs to eat,"

I think we might have found, before the rude hand of insolent office was
on our shoulder, and the staff of usurped authority brandished over our
heads, that contempt of the suppliant is not the best forwarder of a
suit,--that national disgrace is not the high-road to security, much
less to power and greatness. Patience, indeed, strongly indicates the
lore of peace; but mere love does not always lead to enjoyment. It is
the power of winning that palm which insures our wearing it. Virtues
have their place; and out of their place they hardly deserve the
name,--they pass into the neighboring vice. The patience of fortitude
and the endurance of pusillanimity are things very different, as in
their principle, so in their effects.

In truth, this Declaration, containing a narrative of the first
transaction of the kind (and I hope it will be the last) in the
intercourse of nations, as a composition, is ably drawn. It does credit
to our official style. The report of the speech of the minister in a
great assembly, which I have read, is a comment upon the Declaration.
Without inquiry how far that report is exact, (inferior I believe it may
be to what it would represent,) yet still it reads as a most eloquent
and finished performance. Hardly one galling circumstance of the
indignities offered by the Directory of Regicide to the supplications
made to that junto in his Majesty's name has been spared. Every one of
the aggravations attendant on these acts of outrage is, with wonderful
perspicuity and order, brought forward in its place, and in the manner
most fitted to produce its effect. They are turned to every point of
view in which they can be seen to the best advantage. All the parts are
so arranged as to point out their relation, and to furnish a true idea
of the spirit of the whole transaction.

This speech may stand for a model. Never, for the triumphal decoration
of any theatre, not for the decoration of those of Athens and Rome, or
even of this theatre of Paris, from the embroideries of Babylon or from
the loom of the Gobelins, has there been sent any historic tissue so
truly drawn, so closely and so finely wrought, or in which the forms are
brought out in the rich purple of such glowing and blushing colors. It
puts me in mind of the piece of tapestry with which Virgil proposed to
adorn the theatre he was to erect to Augustus upon the banks of the
Mincio, who now hides his head in his reeds, and leads his slow and
melancholy windings through banks wasted by the barbarians of Gaul. He
supposes that the artifice is such, that the figures of the conquered
nations in his tapestry are made to play their part, and are confounded
in the machine,--

                                     utque
    Purpurea intexti tollant aulæa Britanni;

or, as Dryden translates it, somewhat paraphrastically, but not less in
the spirit of the prophet than of the poet,--

    "Where the proud theatres disclose the scene,
    Which interwoven Britons seem to raise,
    And show the triumph which their shame displays."

It is something wonderful, that the sagacity shown in the Declaration
and the speech (and, so far as it goes, greater was never shown) should
have failed to discover to the writer and to the speaker the inseparable
relation between the parties to this transaction, and that nothing can
be said to display the imperious arrogance of a base enemy which does
not describe with equal force and equal truth the contemptible figure of
an abject embassy to that imperious power.

It is no less striking, that the same obvious reflection should not
occur to those gentlemen who conducted the opposition to government. But
their thoughts were turned another way. They seem to have been so
entirely occupied with the defence of the French Directory, so very
eager in finding recriminatory; precedents to justify every act of its
intolerable insolence, so animated in their accusations of ministry for
not having at the very outset made concessions proportioned to the
dignity of the great victorious power we had offended, that everything
concerning the sacrifice in this business of national honor, and of the
most fundamental principles in the policy of negotiation, seemed wholly
to have escaped them. To this fatal hour, the contention in Parliament
appeared in another form, and was animated by another spirit. For three
hundred years and more, we have had wars with what stood as government
in France. In all that period, the language of ministers, whether of
boast or of apology, was, that they had left nothing undone for the
assertion of the national honor,--the opposition, whether patriotically
or factiously, contending that the ministers had been oblivious of the
national glory, and had made improper sacrifices of that public interest
which they were bound not only to preserve, but by all fair methods to
augment. This total change of tone on both sides of your House forms
itself no inconsiderable revolution; and I am afraid it prognosticates
others of still greater importance. The ministers exhausted the stores
of their eloquence in demonstrating that they had quitted the safe,
beaten highway of treaty between independent powers,--that, to pacify
the enemy, they had made every sacrifice of the national dignity,--and
that they had offered to immolate at the same shrine the most valuable
of the national acquisitions. The opposition insisted that the victims
were not fat nor fair enough to be offered on the altars of blasphemed
Regicide; and it was inferred from thence, that the sacrifical
ministers, (who were a sort of intruders in the worship of the new
divinity,) in their schismatical devotion, had discovered more of
hypocrisy than zeal. They charged them with a concealed resolution to
persevere in what these gentlemen have (in perfect consistency, indeed,
with themselves, but most irreconcilably with fact and reason) called an
unjust and impolitic war.

That day was, I fear, the fatal term of _local_ patriotism. On that day,
I fear, there was an end of that narrow scheme of relations called our
country, with all its pride, its prejudices, and its partial affections.
All the little quiet rivulets, that watered an humble, a contracted, but
not an unfruitful field, are to be lost in the waste expanse, and
boundless, barren ocean of the homicide philanthropy of France. It is no
longer an object of terror, the aggrandizement of a new power which
teaches as a professor that philanthropy in the chair, whilst it
propagates by arms and establishes by conquest the comprehensive system
of universal fraternity. In what light is all this viewed in a great
assembly? The party which takes the lead there has no longer any
apprehensions, except those that arise from not being admitted to the
closest and most confidential connections with the metropolis of that
fraternity. That reigning party no longer touches on its favorite
subject, the display of those horrors that must attend the existence of
a power with such dispositions and principles, seated in the heart of
Europe. It is satisfied to find some loose, ambiguous expressions in
its former declarations, which may set it free from its professions and
engagements. It always speaks of peace with the Regicides as a great and
an undoubted blessing, and such a blessing as, if obtained, promises, as
much as any human disposition of things can promise, security and
permanence. It holds out nothing at all definite towards this security.
It only seeks, by a restoration to some of their former owners of some
fragments of the general wreck of Europe, to find a plausible plea for a
present retreat from an embarrassing position. As to the future, that
party is content to leave it covered in a night of the most palpable
obscurity. It never once has entered into a particle of detail of what
our own situation, or that of other powers, must be, under the blessings
of the peace we seek. This defect, to my power, I mean to supply,--that,
if any persons should still continue to think an attempt at foresight is
any part of the duty of a statesman, I may contribute my trifle to the
materials of his speculation.

As to the other party, the minority of to-day, possibly the majority of
to-morrow, small in number, but full of talents and every species of
energy, which, upon the avowed ground of being more acceptable to
France, is a candidate for the helm of this kingdom, it has never
changed from the beginning. It has preserved a perennial consistency.
This would be a never failing source of true glory, if springing from
just and right; but it is truly dreadful, if it be an arm of Styx, which
springs out of the profoundest depths of a poisoned soil. The French
maxims were by these gentlemen at no time condemned. I speak of their
language in the most moderate terms. There are many who think that they
have gone much further,--that they have always magnified and extolled
the French maxims,--that; not in the least disgusted or discouraged by
the monstrous evils which have attended these maxims from the moment of
their adoption both at home and abroad, they still continue to predict
that in due time they must produce the greatest good to the poor human
race. They obstinately persist in stating those evils as matter of
accident, as things wholly collateral to the system.

It is observed, that this party has never spoken of an ally of Great
Britain with the smallest degree of respect or regard: on the contrary,
it has generally mentioned them under opprobrious appellations, and in
such terms of contempt or execration as never had been heard
before,--because no such would have formerly been permitted in our
public assemblies. The moment, however, that any of those allies quitted
this obnoxious connection, the party has instantly passed an act of
indemnity and oblivion in their favor. After this, no sort of censure on
their conduct, no imputation on their character. From that moment their
pardon was sealed in a reverential and mysterious silence. With the
gentlemen of this minority, there is no ally, from one end of Europe to
the other, with whom we ought not to be ashamed to act. The whole
college of the states of Europe is no better than a gang of tyrants.
With them all our connections were broken off at once. We ought to have
cultivated France, and France alone, from the moment of her Revolution.
On that happy change, all our dread of that nation as a power was to
cease. She became in an instant dear to our affections and one with our
interests. All other nations we ought to have commanded not to trouble
her sacred throes, whilst in labor to bring into an happy birth her
abundant litter of constitutions. We ought to have acted under her
auspices, in extending her salutary influence upon every side. From that
moment England and France were become natural allies, and all the other
states natural enemies. The whole face of the world was changed. What
was it to us, if she acquired Holland and the Austrian Netherlands? By
her conquests she only enlarged the sphere of her beneficence, she only
extended the blessings of liberty to so many more foolishly reluctant
nations. What was it to England, if, by adding these, among the richest
and most peopled countries of the world, to her territories, she thereby
left no possible link of communication between us and any other power
with whom we could act against her? On this new system of optimism, it
is so much the better: so much the further are we removed from the
contact with infectious despotism. No longer a thought of a barrier in
the Netherlands to Holland against France. All that is obsolete policy.
It is fit that France should have both Holland and the Austrian
Netherlands too, as a barrier to her against the attacks of despotism.
She cannot multiply her securities too much; and as to our security, it
is to be found in hers. Had we cherished her from the beginning, and
felt for her when attacked, she, poor, good soul, would never have
invaded any foreign nation, never murdered her sovereign and his family,
never proscribed, never exiled, never imprisoned, never been guilty of
extra-judicial massacre or of legal murder. All would have been a golden
age, full of peace, order, and liberty,--and philosophy, raying out from
Europe, would have warmed and enlightened the universe; but, unluckily,
irritable philosophy, the most irritable of all things, was pat into a
passion, and provoked into ambition abroad and tyranny at home. They
find all this very natural and very justifiable. They choose to forget
that other nations, struggling for freedom, have been attacked by their
neighbors, or that their neighbors have otherwise interfered in their
affairs. Often have neighbors interfered in favor of princes against
their rebellious subjects, and often in favor of subjects against their
prince. Such cases fill half the pages of history; yet never were they
used as an apology, much less as a justification, for atrocious cruelty
in princes, or for general massacre and confiscation on the part of
revolted subjects,--never as a politic cause for suffering any such
powers to aggrandize themselves without limit and without measure. A
thousand times have we seen it asserted in public prints and pamphlets,
that, if the nobility and priesthood of France had stayed at home, their
property never would have been confiscated. One would think that none of
the clergy had been robbed previous to their deportation, or that their
deportation had, on their part, been a voluntary act. One would think
that the nobility and gentry, and merchants and bankers, who stayed at
home, had enjoyed their property in security and repose. The assertors
of these positions well know that the lot of thousands who remained at
home was far more terrible, that the most cruel imprisonment was only a
harbinger of a cruel and ignominious death, and that in this mother
country of freedom there were no less than _three hundred thousand_ at
one time in prison. I go no further. I instance only these
representations of the party, as staring indications of partiality to
that sect to whose dominion they would have left this country nothing to
oppose but her own naked force, and consequently subjected us, on every
reverse of fortune, to the imminent danger of falling under those very
evils, in that very system, which are attributed, not to its own nature,
but to the perverseness of others. There is nothing in the world so
difficult as to put men in a state of judicial neutrality. A leaning
there must ever be, and it is of the first importance to any nation to
observe to what side that leaning inclines,--whether to our own
community, or to one with which it is in a state of hostility.

Men are rarely without some sympathy in the sufferings of others; but in
the immense and diversified mass of human misery, which may be pitied,
but cannot be relieved, in the gross, the mind must make a choice. Our
sympathy is always more forcibly attracted towards the misfortunes of
certain persons, and in certain descriptions: and this sympathetic
attraction discovers, beyond a possibility of mistake, our mental
affinities and elective affections. It is a much surer proof than the
strongest declaration of a real connection and of an overruling bias in
the mind. I am told that the active sympathies of this party have been
chiefly, if not wholly, attracted to the sufferings of the patriarchal
rebels who were amongst the promulgators of the maxims of the French
Revolution, and who have suffered from their apt and forward scholars
some part of the evils which they had themselves so liberally
distributed to all the other parts of the community. Some of these men,
flying from the knives which they had sharpened against their country
and its laws, rebelling against the very powers they had set over
themselves by their rebellion against their sovereign, given up by those
very armies to whose faithful attachment they trusted for their safety
and support, after they had completely debauched all military fidelity
in its source,--some of these men, I say, had fallen into the hands of
the head of that family the most illustrious person of which they had
three times cruelly imprisoned, and delivered in that state of captivity
to those hands from which they were able to relieve neither her, nor
their own nearest and most venerable kindred. One of these men,
connected with this country by no circumstance of birth,--not related to
any distinguished families here,--recommended by no service,--endeared
to this nation by no act or even expression of kindness,--comprehended
in no league or common cause,--embraced by no laws of public
hospitality,--this man was the only one to be found in Europe, in whose
favor the British nation, passing judgment without hearing on its almost
only ally, was to force (and that not by soothing interposition, but
with every reproach for inhumanity, cruelty, and breach of the laws of
war) from prison. We were to release him from that prison out of which,
in abuse of the lenity of government amidst its rigor, and in violation
of at least an understood parole, he had attempted an escape,--an escape
excusable, if you will, but naturally productive of strict and vigilant
confinement. The earnestness of gentlemen to free this person was the
more extraordinary because there was full as little in him to raise
admiration, from any eminent qualities he possessed, as there was to
excite an interest, from any that were amiable. A person not only of no
real civil or literary talents, but of no specious appearance of
either,--and in his military profession not marked as a leader in any
one act of able or successful enterprise, unless his leading on (or his
following) the allied army of Amazonian and male cannibal Parisians to
Versailles, on the famous 6th of October, 1789, is to make his glory.
Any otter exploit of his, as a general, I never heard of. But the
triumph of general fraternity was but the more signalized by the total
want of particular claims in that case,--and by postponing all such
claims in a case where they really existed, where they stood embossed,
and in a manner forced themselves on the view of common, shortsighted
benevolence. Whilst, for its improvement, the humanity of these
gentlemen was thus on its travels, and had got as far off as Olmütz,
they never thought of a place and a person much nearer to them, or of
moving an instruction to Lord Malmesbury in favor of their own suffering
countryman, Sir Sydney Smith.

This officer, having attempted, with great gallantry, to cut out a
vessel from one of the enemy's harbors, was taken after an obstinate
resistance,--such as obtained him the marked respect of those who were
witnesses of his valor, and knew the circumstances in which it was
displayed. Upon his arrival at Paris, he was instantly thrown into
prison, where the nature of his situation will best be understood by
knowing that amongst its _mitigations_ was the permission to walk
occasionally in the court and to enjoy the privilege of shaving himself.
On the old system of feelings and principles, his sufferings might have
been entitled to consideration, and, even in a comparison with those of
Citizen La Fayette, to a priority in the order of compassion. If the
ministers had neglected to take any steps in his favor, a declaration of
the sense of the House of Commons would have stimulated them to their
duty. If they had caused a representation to be made, such a proceeding
would have added force to it. If reprisal should be thought advisable,
the address of the House would have given an additional sanction to a
measure which would have been, indeed, justifiable without any other
sanction than its own reason. But no. Nothing at all like it. In fact,
the merit of Sir Sydney Smith, and his claim on British compassion, was
of a kind altogether different from that which interested so deeply the
authors of the motion in favor of Citizen La Fayette. In my humble
opinion, Captain Sir Sydney Smith has another sort of merit with the
British nation, and something of a higher claim on British humanity,
than Citizen La Fayette. Faithful, zealous, and ardent in the service of
his king and country,--full of spirit,--full of resources,--going out of
the beaten road, but going right, because his uncommon enterprise was
not conducted by a vulgar judgment,--in his profession Sir Sydney Smith
might be considered as a distinguished person, if any person could well
be distinguished in a service in which scarce a commander can be named
without putting you in mind of some action of intrepidity, skill, and
vigilance that has given them a fair title to contend with any men and
in any age. But I will say nothing farther of the merits of Sir Sydney
Smith: the mortal animosity of the Regicide enemy supersedes all other
panegyric. Their hatred is a judgment in his favor without appeal. At
present he is lodged in the tower of the Temple, the last prison of
Louis the Sixteenth, and the last but one of Marie Antoinette of
Austria,--the prison of Louis the Seventeenth,--the prison of Elizabeth
of Bourbon. There he lies, unpitied by the grand philanthropy, to
meditate upon the fate of those who are faithful to their king and
country. Whilst this prisoner, secluded from intercourse, was indulging
in these cheering reflections, he might possibly have had the further
consolation of learning (by means of the insolent exultation of his
guards) that there was an English ambassador at Paris; he might have had
the proud comfort of hearing that this ambassador had the honor of
passing his mornings in respectful attendance at the office of a
Regicide pettifogger, and that in the evening he relaxed in the
amusements of the opera, and in the spectacle of an audience totally
new,--an audience in which he had the pleasure of seeing about him not a
single face that he could formerly have known in Paris, but, in the
place of that company, one indeed more than equal to it in display of
gayety, splendor, and luxury,--a set of abandoned wretches, squandering
in insolent riot the spoils of their bleeding country: a subject of
profound reflection both to the prisoner and to the ambassador.

Whether all the matter upon which I have grounded my opinion of this
last party be fully authenticated or not must be left to those who have
had the opportunity of a nearer view of its conduct, and who have been
more attentive in their perusal of the writings which have appeared in
its favor. But for my part, I have never heard the gross facts on which
I ground my idea of their marked partiality to the reigning tyranny in
France in any part denied. I am not surprised at all this. Opinions, as
they sometimes follow, so they frequently guide and direct the
affections; and men may become more attached to the country of their
principles than to the country of their birth. What I have stated here
is only to mark the spirit which seems to me, though in somewhat
different ways, to actuate our great party-leaders, and to trace this
first pattern of a negotiation to its true source.

Such is the present state of our public councils. Well might I be
ashamed of what seems to be a censure of two great factions, with the
two most eloquent men which this country ever saw at the head of them,
if I had found that either of them could support their conduct by any
example in the history of their country. I should very much prefer their
judgment to my own, if I were not obliged, by an infinitely
overbalancing weight of authority, to prefer the collected wisdom, of
ages to the abilities of any two men living.--I return to the
Declaration, with which the history of the abortion of a treaty with the
Regicides is closed.

After such an elaborate display had been made of the injustice and
insolence of an enemy who seems to have been irritated by every one of
the means which had been commonly used with effect to soothe the rage of
intemperate power, the natural result would be, that the scabbard in
which we in vain attempted to plunge our sword should have been thrown
away with scorn. It would have been natural, that, rising in the fulness
of their might, insulted majesty, despised dignity, violated justice,
rejected supplication, patience goaded into fury, would have poured out
all the length of the reins upon all the wrath which they had so long
restrained. It might have been expected, that, emulous of the glory of
the youthful hero[37] in alliance with him, touched by the example of
what one man well formed and well placed may do in the most desperate
state of affairs, convinced there is a courage of the cabinet full as
powerful and far less vulgar than that of the field, our minister would
have changed the whole line of that unprosperous prudence which hitherto
had produced all the effects of the blindest temerity. If he found his
situation full of danger, (and I do not deny that it is perilous in the
extreme,) he must feel that it is also full of glory, and that he is
placed on a stage than which no muse of fire that had ascended the
highest heaven of invention could imagine anything more awful and
august. It was hoped that in this swelling scene in which he moved, with
some of the first potentates of Europe for his fellow-actors, and with
so many of the rest for the anxious spectators of a part which, as he
plays it, determines forever their destiny and his own, like Ulysses in
the unravelling point of the epic story, he would have thrown off his
patience and his rags together, and, stripped of unworthy disguises, he
would have stood forth in the form and in the attitude of an hero. On
that day it was thought he would have assumed the port of Mars; that he
would bid to be brought forth from their hideous kennel (where his
scrupulous tenderness had too long immured them) those impatient dogs of
war whose fierce regards affright even the minister of vengeance that
feeds them; that he would let them loose, in famine, fever, plagues,
and death, upon a guilty race, to whose frame, and to all whose habit,
order, peace, religion, and virtue are alien and abhorrent. It was
expected that he would at last have thought of active and effectual war;
that he would no longer amuse the British lion in the chase of mice and
rats; that he would no longer employ the whole naval power of Great
Britain, once the terror of the world, to prey upon the miserable
remains of a peddling commerce, which the enemy did not regard, and from
which none could profit. It was expected that he would have reasserted
the justice of his cause; that he would have reanimated whatever
remained to him of his allies, and endeavored to recover those whom
their fears had led astray; that he would have rekindled the martial
ardor of his citizens; that he would have held out to them the example
of their ancestry, the assertor of Europe, and the scourge of French
ambition; that he would have reminded them of a posterity, which, if
this nefarious robbery, under the fraudulent name and false color of a
government, should in full power be seated in the heart of Europe, must
forever be consigned to vice, impiety, barbarism, and the most
ignominious slavery of body and mind. In so holy a cause it was presumed
that he would (as in the beginning of the war he did) have opened all
the temples, and with prayer, with fasting, and with supplication,
(better directed than to the grim Moloch of Regicide in France,) have
called upon us to raise that united cry which has: so often stormed
heaven, and with a pious violence forced down blessings upon a repentant
people. It was hoped, that, when he had invoked upon his endeavors the
favorable regard of the Protector of the human race, it would be seen
that his menaces to the enemy and his prayers to the Almighty were not
followed, but accompanied, with correspondent action. It was hoped that
his shrilling trumpet should be heard, not to announce a show, but to
sound a charge.

Such a conclusion to such a declaration and such a speech would have
been a thing of course,--so much a thing of course, that I will be bold
to say, if in any ancient history, the Roman for instance, (supposing
that in Rome the matter of such a detail could have been furnished,) a
consul had gone through such a long train of proceedings, and that there
was a chasm in the manuscripts by which we had lost the conclusion of
the speech and the subsequent part of the narrative, all critics would
agree that a Freinshemius would have been thought to have managed the
supplementary business of a continuator most unskillfully, and to have
supplied the hiatus most improbably, if he had not filled up the gaping
space in a manner somewhat similar (though better executed) to what I
have imagined. But too often different is rational conjecture from
melancholy fact. This exordium, as contrary to all the rules of rhetoric
as to those more essential rules of policy which our situation would
dictate, is intended as a prelude to a deadening and disheartening
proposition; as if all that a minister had to fear in a war of his own
conducting was, that the people should pursue it with too ardent a zeal.
Such a tone as I guessed the minister would have taken, I am very sure,
is the true, unsuborned, unsophisticated language of genuine, natural
feeling, under the smart of patience exhausted and abused. Such a
conduct as the facts stated in the Declaration gave room to expect is
that which true wisdom would have dictated under the impression of those
genuine feelings. Never was there a jar or discord between genuine
sentiment and sound policy. Never, no, never, did Nature say one thing
and Wisdom say another. Nor are sentiments of elevation in themselves
turgid and unnatural. Nature is never more truly herself than in her
grandest forms. The Apollo of Belvedere (if the universal robber has yet
left him at Belvedere) is as much in Nature as any figure from the
pencil of Rembrandt or any clown in the rustic revels of Téniers.
Indeed, it is when a great nation is in great difficulties that minds
must exalt themselves to the occasion, or all is lost. Strong passion
under the direction of a feeble reason feeds a low fever, which serves
only to destroy the body that entertains it. But vehement passion does
not always indicate an infirm judgment. It often accompanies, and
actuates, and is even auxiliary to a powerful understanding; and when
they both conspire and act harmoniously, their force is great to destroy
disorder within and to repel injury from abroad. If ever there was a
time that calls on us for no vulgar conception of things, and for
exertions in no vulgar strain, it is the awful hour that Providence has
now appointed to this nation. Every little measure is a great error, and
every great error will bring on no small ruin. Nothing can be directed
above the mark that we must aim at: everything below it is absolutely
thrown away.

Except with the addition of the unheard-of insult offered to our
ambassador by his rude expulsion, we are never to forget that the point
on which the negotiation with De la Croix broke off was exactly that
which had stifled in its cradle the negotiation we had attempted with
Barthélemy. Each of these transactions concluded with a manifesto upon
our part; but the last of our manifestoes very materially differed from
the first. The first Declaration stated, that "_nothing was left_ but to
prosecute a war _equally just and necessary_." In the second the justice
and necessity of the war is dropped: the sentence importing that nothing
was left but the prosecution of such a war disappears also. Instead of
this resolution to prosecute the war, we sink into a whining lamentation
on the abrupt termination of the treaty. We have nothing left but the
last resource of female weakness, of helpless infancy, of doting
decrepitude,--wailing and lamentation. We cannot even utter a sentiment
of vigor;--"his Majesty has only to lament." A poor possession, to be
left to a great monarch! Mark the effect produced on our councils by
continued insolence and inveterate hostility. We grow more malleable
under their blows. In reverential silence we smother the cause and
origin of the war. On that fundamental article of faith we leave every
one to abound in his own sense. In the minister's speech, glossing on
the Declaration, it is indeed mentioned, but very feebly. The lines are
so faintly drawn as hardly to be traced. They only make a part of our
_consolation_ in the circumstances which we so dolefully lament. We rest
our merits on the humility, the earnestness of solicitation, and the
perfect good faith of those submissions which have been used to persuade
our Regicide enemies to grant us some sort of peace. Not a word is said
which might not have been full as well said, and much better too, if the
British nation had appeared in the simple character of a penitent
convinced of his errors and offences, and offering, by penances, by
pilgrimages, and by all the modes of expiation ever devised by anxious,
restless guilt, to make all the atonement in his miserable power.

The Declaration ends, as I have before quoted it, with a solemn
voluntary pledge, the most full and the most solemn that ever was given,
of our resolution (if so it may be called) to enter again into the very
same course. It requires nothing more of the Regicides than to famish
some sort of excuse, some sort of colorable pretest, for our renewing
the supplications of innocence at the feet of guilt. It leaves the
moment of negotiation, a most important moment, to the choice of the
enemy. He is to regulate it according to the convenience of his affairs.
He is to bring it forward at that time when it may best serve to
establish his authority at home and to extend his power abroad, A
dangerous assurance for this nation to give, whether it is broken or
whether it is kept. As all treaty was broken off, and broken off in the
manner we have seen, the field of future conduct ought to be reserved
free and unincumbered to our future discretion. As to the sort of
condition prefixed to the pledge, namely, "that the enemy should be
disposed to enter into the work of general pacification with the spirit
of reconciliation and equity," this phraseology cannot possibly be
considered otherwise than as so many words thrown in to fill the
sentence and to round it to the ear. We prefixed the same plausible
conditions to any renewal of the negotiation, in our manifesto on the
rejection of our proposals at Basle. We did not consider those
conditions as binding. We opened a much more serious negotiation
without any sort of regard to them; and there is no new negotiation
which we can possibly open upon fewer indications of conciliation and
equity than were to be discovered when we entered into our last at
Paris. Any of the slightest pretences, any of the most loose, formal,
equivocating expressions, would justify us, under the peroration of this
piece, in again sending the last or some other Lord Malmesbury to Paris.

I hope I misunderstand this pledge,--or that we shall show no more
regard to it than we have done to all the faith that we have plighted to
vigor and resolution in our former Declaration. If I am to understand
the conclusion of the Declaration to be what unfortunately it seems to
me, we make an engagement with the enemy, without any correspondent
engagement on his side. We seem to have cut ourselves off from any
benefit which an intermediate state of things might furnish to enable us
totally to overturn that power, so little connected with moderation and
justice. By holding out no hope, either to the justly discontented in
France, or to any foreign power, and leaving the recommencement of all
treaty to this identical junto of assassins, we do in effect assure and
guaranty to them the full possession of the rich fruits of their
confiscations, of their murders of men, women, and children, and of all
the multiplied, endless, nameless iniquities by which they have obtained
their power. We guaranty to them the possession of a country, such and
so situated as France, round, entire, immensely perhaps augmented.

"Well," some will say, "in this case we have only submitted to the
nature of things." The nature of things is, I admit, a sturdy
adversary. This might be alleged as a plea for our attempt at a treaty.
But what plea of that kind can be alleged, after the treaty was dead and
gone, in favor of this posthumous Declaration? No necessity has driven
us to _that_ pledge. It is without a counterpart even in expectation.
And what can be stated to obviate the evil which that solitary
engagement must produce on the understandings or the fears of men? I
ask, what have the Regicides promised you in return, in case _you_
should show what _they_ would call dispositions to conciliation and
equity, whilst you are giving that pledge from the throne, and engaging
Parliament to counter-secure it? It is an awful consideration. It was on
the very day of the date of this wonderful pledge,[38] in which we
assumed the Directorial government as lawful, and in which we engaged
ourselves to treat with them whenever they pleased,--it was on that very
day the Regicide fleet was weighing anchor from one of your harbors,
where it had remained four days in perfect quiet. These harbors of the
British dominions are the ports of France. They are of no use but to
protect an enemy from your best allies, the storms of heaven and his own
rashness. Had the West of Ireland been an unportuous coast, the French
naval power would have been undone. The enemy uses the moment for
hostility, without the least regard to your future dispositions of
equity and conciliation. They go out of what were once your harbors, and
they return to them at their pleasure. Eleven days they had the full use
of Bantry Bay, and at length their fleet returns from their harbor of
Bantry to their harbor of Brest. Whilst you are invoking the propitious
spirit of Regicide equity and conciliation, they answer you with an
attack. They turn out the pacific bearer of your "how do you dos," Lord
Malmesbury; and they return your visit, and their "thanks for your
obliging inquiries," by their old practised assassin, Hoche. They come
to attack--what? A town, a fort, a naval station? They come to attack
your king, your Constitution, and the very being of that Parliament
which was holding out to them these pledges, together with the
entireness of the empire, the laws, liberties, and properties of all the
people. We know that they meditated the very same invasion, and for the
very same purposes, upon this kingdom, and, had the coast been as
opportune, would have effected it.

Whilst _you_ are in vain torturing your invention to assure them of
_your_ sincerity and good faith, they have left no doubt concerning
_their_ good faith and _their_ sincerity towards those to whom they have
engaged their honor. To their power they have been true to the only
pledge they have ever yet given to you, or to any of yours: I mean the
solemn engagement which they entered into with the deputation of
traitors who appeared at their bar, from England and from Ireland, in
1792. They have been true and faithful to the engagement which they had
made more largely,--that is, their engagement to give effectual aid to
insurrection and treason, wherever they might appear in the world. We
have seen the British Declaration. This is the counter Declaration of
the Directory. This is the reciprocal pledge which Regicide amity gives
to the conciliatory pledges of kings. But, thank God, such pledges
cannot exist single. They have no counterpart; and if they had, the
enemy's conduct cancels such declarations,--and, I trust, along with
them, cancels everything of mischief and dishonor that they contain.

There is one thing in this business which appears to be wholly
unaccountable, or accountable on a supposition I dare not entertain for
a moment. I cannot help asking, Why all this pains to clear the British
nation of ambition, perfidy, and the insatiate thirst of war? At what
period of time was it that our country has deserved that load of infamy
of which nothing but preternatural humiliation in language and conduct
can serve to clear us? If we have deserved this kind of evil fame from
anything we have done in a state of prosperity, I am sure that it is not
an abject conduct in adversity that can clear our reputation. Well is it
known that ambition can creep as well as soar. The pride of no person in
a flourishing condition is more justly to be dreaded than that of him
who is mean and cringing under a doubtful and unprosperous fortune. But
it seems it was thought necessary to give some out-of-the-way proofs of
our sincerity, as well as of our freedom from ambition. Is, then, fraud
and falsehood become the distinctive character of Englishmen? Whenever
your enemy chooses to accuse you of perfidy and ill faith, will you put
it into his power to throw you into the purgatory of self-humiliation?
Is his charge equal to the finding of the grand jury of Europe, and
sufficient to put you upon your trial? But on that trial I will defend
the English ministry. I am sorry that on some points I have, on the
principles I have always opposed, so good a defence to make. They were
not the first to begin the war. They did not excite the general
confederacy in Europe, which was so properly formed on the alarm given
by the Jacobinism of France. They did not begin with an hostile
aggression on the Regicides, or any of their allies. These parricides of
their own country, disciplining themselves for foreign by domestic
violence, were the first to attack a power that was our ally by nature,
by habit, and by the sanction of multiplied treaties. Is it not true
that they were the first to declare war upon this kingdom? Is every word
in the declaration from Downing Street concerning their conduct, and
concerning ours and that of our allies, so obviously false that it is
necessary to give some new-invented proofs of our good faith in order to
expunge the memory of all this perfidy?

We know that over-laboring a point of this kind has the direct contrary
effect from what we wish. We know that there is a legal presumption
against men, _quando se nimis purgitant_; and if a charge of ambition is
not refuted by an affected humility, certainly the character of fraud
and perfidy is still less to be washed away by indications of meanness.
Fraud and prevarication are servile vices. They sometimes grow out of
the necessities, always out of the habits, of slavish and degenerate
spirits; and on the theatre of the world, it is not by assuming the mask
of a Davus or a Geta that an actor will obtain credit for manly
simplicity and a liberal openness of proceeding. It is an erect
countenance, it is a firm adherence to principle, it is a power of
resisting false shame and frivolous fear, that assert our good faith and
honor, and assure to us the confidence of mankind. Therefore all these
negotiations, and all the declarations with which they were preceded and
followed, can only serve to raise presumptions against that good faith
and public integrity the fame of which to preserve inviolate is so much
the interest and duty of every nation.

The pledge is an engagement "to all Europe." This is the more
extraordinary, because it is a pledge which no power in Europe, whom I
have yet heard of, has thought proper to require at our hands. I am not
in the secrets of office, and therefore I may be excused for proceeding
upon probabilities and exterior indications. I have surveyed all Europe
from the east to the west, from the north to the south, in search of
this call upon us to purge ourselves of "subtle _duplicity_ and a
_Punic_ style" in our proceedings. I have not heard that his Excellency
the Ottoman ambassador has expressed his doubts of the British sincerity
in our negotiation with the most unchristian republic lately set up at
our door. What sympathy in that quarter may have introduced a
remonstrance upon the want of faith in this nation I cannot positively
say. If it exists, it is in Turkish or Arabic, and possibly is not yet
translated. But none of the nations which compose the old Christian
world have I yet heard as calling upon us for those judicial purgations
and ordeals, by fire and water, which we have chosen to go through;--for
the other great proof, by battle, we seem to decline.

For whose use, entertainment, or instruction are all those overstrained
and overlabored proceedings in council, in negotiation, and in speeches
in Parliament intended? What royal cabinet is to be enriched with these
high-finished pictures of the arrogance of the sworn enemies of kings
and the meek patience of a British administration? In what heart is it
intended to kindle pity towards our multiplied mortifications and
disgraces? At best it is superfluous. What nation is unacquainted with
the haughty disposition of the common enemy of all nations? It has been
more than seen, it has been felt,--not only by those who have been the
victims of their imperious rapacity, but, in a degree, by those very
powers who have consented to establish this robbery, that they might be
able to copy it, and with impunity to make new usurpations of their own.

The King of Prussia has hypothecated in trust to the Regicides his rich
and fertile territories on the Rhine, as a pledge of his zeal and
affection to the cause of liberty and equality. He has seen them robbed
with unbounded liberty and with the most levelling equality. The woods
are wasted, the country is ravaged, property is confiscated, and the
people are put to bear a double yoke, in the exactions of a tyrannical
government and in the contributions of an hostile irruption. Is it to
satisfy the Court of Berlin that the Court of London is to give the same
sort of pledge of its sincerity and good faith to the French Directory?
It is not that heart full of sensibility, it is not Lucchesini, the
minister of his Prussian Majesty, the late ally of England, and the
present ally of its enemy, who has demanded this pledge of our
sincerity, as the price of the renewal of the long lease of his sincere
friendship to this kingdom.

It is not to our enemy, the now faithful ally of Regicide, late the
faithful ally of Great Britain, the Catholic king, that we address our
doleful lamentation: it is not to the _Prince of Peace_, whose
declaration of war was one of the first auspicious omens of general
tranquillity, which our dove-like ambassador, with the olive-branch in
his beak, was saluted with at his entrance into the ark of clean birds
at Paris.

Surely it is not to the Tetrarch of Sardinia, now the faithful ally of a
power who has seized upon all his fortresses and confiscated the oldest
dominions of his house,--it is not to this once powerful, once
respected, and once cherished ally of Great Britain, that we mean to
prove the sincerity of the peace which we offered to make at his
expense. Or is it to him we are to prove the arrogance of the power who,
under the name of friend, oppresses him, and the poor remains of his
subjects, with all the ferocity of the most cruel enemy?

It is not to Holland, under the name of an ally, laid under a permanent
military contribution, filled with their double garrison of barbarous
Jacobin troops and ten times more barbarous Jacobin clubs and
assemblies, that we find ourselves obliged to give this pledge.

Is it to Genoa that we make this kind promise,--a state which the
Regicides were to defend in a favorable neutrality, but whose neutrality
has been, by the gentle influence of Jacobin authority, forced into the
trammels of an alliance,--whose alliance has been secured by the
admission of French garrisons,--and whose peace has been forever
ratified by a forced declaration of war against ourselves?

It is not the Grand Duke of Tuscany who claims this declaration,--not
the Grand Duke, who for his early sincerity, for his love of peace, and
for his entire confidence in the amity of the assassins of his house,
has been complimented in the British Parliament with the name of "_the
wisest sovereign in Europe_": it is not this pacific Solomon, or his
philosophic, cudgelled ministry, cudgelled by English and by French,
whose wisdom and philosophy between them have placed Leghorn in the
hands of the enemy of the Austrian family, and driven the only
profitable commerce of Tuscany from its only port: it is not this
sovereign, a far more able statesman than any of the Medici in whose
chair he sits, it is not the philosopher Carletti, more ably speculative
than Galileo, more profoundly politic than Machiavel, that call upon us
so loudly to give the same happy proofs of the same good faith to the
republic always the same, always one and indivisible.

It is not Venice, whose principal cities the enemy has appropriated to
himself, and scornfully desired the state to indemnify itself from the
Emperor, that we wish to convince of the pride and the despotism of an
enemy who loads us with his scoffs and buffets.

It is not for his Holiness we intend this consolatory declaration of our
own weakness, and of the tyrannous temper of his grand enemy. That
prince has known both the one and the other from the beginning. The
artists of the French Revolution had given their very first essays and
sketches of robbery and desolation against his territories, in a far
more cruel "murdering piece" than had over entered into the imagination
of painter or poet. Without ceremony they tore from his cherishing arms
the possessions which he held for five hundred years, undisturbed by all
the ambition of all the ambitious monarchs who during that period have
reigned in France. Is it to him, in whose wrong we have in our late
negotiation ceded his now unhappy countries near the Rhone, lately
amongst the most flourishing (perhaps the most flourishing for their
extent) of all the countries upon earth, that we are to prove the
sincerity of our resolution to make peace with the Republic of
Barbarism? That venerable potentate and pontiff is sunk deep into the
vale of years; he is half disarmed by his peaceful character; his
dominions are more than half disarmed by a peace of two hundred years,
defended as they were, not by force, but by reverence: yet, in all these
straits, we see him display, amidst the recent ruins and the new
defacements of his plundered capital, along with the mild and decorated
piety of the modern, all the spirit and magnanimity of ancient Rome.
Does he, who, though himself unable to defend them, nobly refused to
receive pecuniary compensations for the protection he owed to his people
of Avignon, Carpentras, and the Venaissin,--does he want proofs of our
good disposition to deliver over that people, without any security for
them, or any compensation to their sovereign, to this cruel enemy? Does
he want to be satisfied of the sincerity of our humiliation to France,
who has seen his free, fertile, and happy city and state of Bologna, the
cradle of regenerated law, the seat of sciences and of arts, so
hideously metamorphosed, whilst he was crying to Great Britain for aid,
and offering to purchase that aid at any price? Is it him, who sees that
chosen spot of plenty and delight converted into a Jacobin ferocious
republic, dependent on the homicides of France,--is it him, who, from
the miracles of his beneficent industry, has done a work which defied
the power of the Roman emperors, though with an enthralled world to
labor for them,--is it him, who has drained and cultivated the Pontine
Marshes, that we are to satisfy of our cordial spirit of conciliation
with those who, in their equity, are restoring Holland again to the
seas, whose maxims poison more than the exhalations of the most deadly
fens, and who turn all the fertilities of Nature and of Art into an
howling desert? Is it to him that we are to demonstrate the good faith
of our submissions to the Cannibal Republic,--to him, who is commanded
to deliver up into their hands Ancona and Civita Vecchia, seats of
commerce raised by the wise and liberal labors and expenses of the
present and late pontiffs, ports not more belonging to the
Ecclesiastical State than to the commerce of Great Britain, thus
wresting from his hands the power of the keys of the centre of Italy, as
before they had taken possession of the keys of the northern part from
the hands of the unhappy King of Sardinia, the natural ally of England?
Is it to him we are to prove our good faith in the peace which we are
soliciting to receive from the hands of his and our robbers, the enemies
of all arts, all sciences, all civilization, and all commerce?

Is it to the Cispadane or to the Transpadane republics, which have been
forced to bow under the galling yoke of French liberty, that we address
all these pledges of our sincerity and love of peace with their
unnatural parents?

Are we by this Declaration to satisfy the King of Naples, whom we have
left to struggle as he can, after our abdication of Corsica, and the
flight of the whole naval force of England out of the whole circuit of
the Mediterranean, abandoning our allies, our commerce, and the honor of
a nation once the protectress of all other nations, because strengthened
by the independence and enriched by the commerce of them all? By the
express provisions of a recent treaty, we had engaged with the King of
Naples to keep a naval force in the Mediterranean. But, good God! was a
treaty at all necessary for this? The uniform policy of this kingdom as
a state, and eminently so as a commercial state, has at all times led us
to keep a powerful squadron and a commodious naval station in that
central sea, which borders upon and which connects a far greater number
and variety of states, European, Asiatic, and African, than any other.
Without such a naval force, France must become despotic mistress of that
sea, and of all the countries whose shores it washes. Our commerce must
become vassal to her and dependent on her will. Since we are come no
longer to trust to our force in arms, but to our dexterity in
negotiation, and begin to pay a desperate court to a proud and coy
usurpation, and have finally sent an ambassador to the Bourbon Regicides
at Paris, the King of Naples, who saw that no reliance was to be placed
on our engagements, or on any pledge of our adherence to our nearest and
dearest interests, has been obliged to send his ambassador also to join
the rest of the squalid tribe of the representatives of degraded kings.
This monarch, surely, does not want any proof of the sincerity of our
amicable dispositions to that amicable republic, into whose arms he has
been given by our desertion of him.

To look to the powers of the North.--It is not to the Danish ambassador,
insolently treated in his own character and in ours, that we are to give
proofs of the Regicide arrogance, and of our disposition to submit to
it.

With regard to Sweden I cannot say much. The French influence is
struggling with her independence; and they who consider the manner in
which the ambassador of that power was treated not long since at Paris,
and the manner in which the father of the present King of Sweden
(himself the victim of regicide principles and passions) would have
looked on the present assassins of France, will not be very prompt to
believe that the young King of Sweden has made this kind of requisition
to the King of Great Britain, and has given this kind of auspice of his
new government.

I speak last of the most important of all. It certainly was not the late
Empress of Russia at whose instance we have given this pledge. It is not
the new Emperor, the inheritor of so much glory, and placed in a
situation of so much delicacy and difficulty for the preservation of
that inheritance, who calls on England, the natural ally of his
dominions, to deprive herself of her power of action, and to bind
herself to France. France at no time, and in none of its fashions, least
of all in its last, has been ever looked upon as the friend either of
Russia or of Great Britain. Everything good, I trust, is to be expected
from this prince,--whatever may be without authority given out of an
influence over his mind possessed by that only potentate from whom he
has anything to apprehend or with whom he has much even to discuss.

This sovereign knows, I have no doubt, and feels, on what sort of bottom
is to be laid the foundation of a Russian throne. He knows what a rock
of native granite is to form the pedestal of his statue who is to
emulate Peter the Great. His renown will be in continuing with ease and
safety what his predecessor was obliged to achieve through mighty
struggles. He is sensible that his business is not to innovate, out to
secure and to establish,--that reformations at this day are attempts at
best of ambiguous utility. He will revere his father with the piety of
a son, but in his government he will imitate the policy of his mother.
His father, with many excellent qualities, had a short reign,--because,
being a native Russian, he was unfortunately advised to act in the
spirit of a foreigner. His mother reigned over Russia three-and-thirty
years with the greatest glory,--because, with the disadvantage of being
a foreigner born, she made herself a Russian. A wise prince like the
present will improve his country; but it will be cautiously and
progressively, upon its own native groundwork of religion, manners,
habitudes, and alliances. If I prognosticate right, it is not the
Emperor of Russia that ever will call for extravagant proofs of our
desire to reconcile ourselves to the irreconcilable enemy of all
thrones.

I do not know why I should not include America among the European
powers,--because she is of European origin, and has not yet, like
France, destroyed all traces of manners, laws, opinions, and usages
which she drew from Europe. As long as that Europe shall have any
possessions either in the southern or the northern parts of that
America, even separated as it is by the ocean, it must be considered as
a part of the European system. It is not America, menaced with internal
ruin from the attempts to plant Jacobinism instead of liberty in that
country,--it is not America, whose independence is directly attacked by
the French, the enemies of the independence of all nations, that calls
upon us to give security by disarming ourselves in a treacherous peace.
By such a peace, we shall deliver the Americans, their liberty, and
their order, without resource, to the mercy of their imperious allies,
who will have peace or neutrality with no state which is not ready to
join her in war against England.

Having run round the whole circle of the European system, wherever it
acts, I must affirm that all the foreign powers who are not leagued with
France for the utter destruction of all balance through Europe and
throughout the world demand other assurances from this kingdom than are
given in that Declaration. They require assurances, not of the sincerity
of our good dispositions towards the usurpation in France, but of our
affection towards the college of the ancient states of Europe, and
pledges of our constancy, our fidelity, and of our fortitude in
resisting to the last the power that menaces them all. The apprehension
from which they wish to be delivered cannot be from anything they dread
in the ambition of England. Our power must be their strength. They hope
more from us than they fear. I am sure the only ground of their hope,
and of our hope, is in the greatness of mind hitherto shown by the
people of this nation, and its adherence to the unalterable principles
of its ancient policy, whatever government may finally prevail in
France. I have entered into this detail of the wishes and expectations
of the European powers, in order to point out more clearly not so much
what their disposition as (a consideration of far greater importance)
what their situation demands, according as that situation is related to
the Regicide Republic and to this kingdom.

Then, if it is not to satisfy the foreign powers we make this assurance,
to what power at home is it that we pay all this humiliating court? Not
to the old Whigs or to the ancient Tories of this kingdom,--if any
memory of such ancient divisions still exists amongst us. To which of
the principles of these parties is this assurance agreeable? Is it to
the Whigs we are to recommend the aggrandizement of France, and the
subversion of the balance of power? Is it to the Tories we are to
recommend our eagerness to cement ourselves with the enemies of royalty
and religion? But if these parties, which by their dissensions have so
often distracted the kingdom, which by their union have once saved it,
and which by their collision and mutual resistance have preserved the
variety of this Constitution in its unity, be (as I believe they are)
nearly extinct by the growth of new ones, which have their roots in the
present circumstances of the times, I wish to know to which of these new
descriptions this Declaration is addressed. It can hardly be to those
persons who, in the new distribution of parties, consider the
conservation in England of the ancient order of things as necessary to
preserve order everywhere else, and who regard the general conservation
of order in other countries as reciprocally necessary to preserve the
same state of things in these islands. That party never can wish to see
Great Britain pledge herself to give the lead and the ground of
advantage and superiority to the France of to-day, in any treaty which
is to settle Europe. I insist upon it, that, so far from expecting such
an engagement, they are generally stupefied and confounded with it. That
the other party, which demands great changes here, and is so pleased to
see them everywhere else, which party I call Jacobin, that this faction
does, from the bottom of its heart, approve the Declaration, and does
erect its crest upon the engagement, there can be little doubt. To them
it may be addressed with propriety, for it answers their purposes in
every point.

The party in opposition within the House of Lords and Commons it is
irreverent, and half a breach of privilege, (far from my thoughts,) to
consider as Jacobin. This party has always denied the existence of such
a faction, and has treated the machinations of those whom you and I call
Jacobins as so many forgeries and fictions of the minister and his
adherents, to find a pretext for destroying freedom and setting up an
arbitrary power in this kingdom. However, whether this minority has a
leaning towards the French system or only a charitable toleration of
those who lean that way, it is certain that they have always attacked
the sincerity of the minister in the same modes, and on the very same
grounds, and nearly in the same terms, with the Directory. It must
therefore be at the tribunal of the minority (from the whole tenor of
the speech) that the minister appeared to consider himself obliged to
purge himself of duplicity. It was at their bar that he held up his
hand; it was on their _sellette_ that he seemed to answer
interrogatories; it was on their principles that he defended his whole
conduct. They certainly take what the French call the _haut du pavé_.
They have loudly called for the negotiation. It was accorded to them.
They engaged their support of the war with vigor, in case peace was not
granted on honorable terms. Peace was not granted on any terms,
honorable or shameful. Whether these judges, few in number, but powerful
in jurisdiction, are satisfied,--whether they to whom this new pledge is
hypothecated have redeemed their own,--whether they have given one
particle more of their support to ministry, or even, favored them with
their good opinion or their candid construction, I leave it to those who
recollect that memorable debate to determine.

The fact is, that neither this Declaration, nor the negotiation which is
its subject, could serve any one good purpose, foreign or domestic; it
could conduce to no end, either with regard to allies or neutrals. It
tends neither to bring back the misled, nor to give courage to the
fearful, nor to animate and confirm those who are hearty and zealous in
the cause.

I hear it has been said (though I can scarcely believe it) by a
distinguished person, in an assembly where, if there be less of the
torrent and tempest of eloquence, more guarded expression is to be
expected, that, indeed, there was no just ground of hope in this
business from the beginning.

It is plain that this noble person, however conversant in negotiation,
having been employed in no less than four embassies, and in two
hemispheres, and in one of those negotiations having fully experienced
what it was to proceed to treaty without previous encouragement, was not
at all consulted in this experiment. For his Majesty's principal
minister declared, on the very same day, in another House, "his
Majesty's deep and sincere regret at its unfortunate and abrupt
termination, so different from the wishes and _hopes_ that were
entertained,"--and in other parts of the speech speaks of this abrupt
termination as a great disappointment, and as a fall from sincere
endeavors and sanguine expectation. Here are, indeed, sentiments
diametrically opposite, as to the hopes with which the negotiation was
commenced and carried on; and what is curious is, the grounds of the
hopes on the one side and the despair on the other are exactly the same.
The logical conclusion from the common premises is, indeed, in favor of
the noble lord; for they are agreed that the enemy was far from giving
the least degree of countenance to any such hopes, and that they
proceeded in spite of every discouragement which the enemy had thrown in
their way. But there is another material point in which they do not seem
to differ: that is to say, the result of the desperate experiment of the
noble lord, and of the promising attempt of the great minister, in
satisfying the people of England, and in causing discontent to the
people of France,--or, as the minister expresses it, "in uniting England
and in dividing France."

For my own part, though I perfectly agreed with the noble lord that the
attempt was desperate, so desperate, indeed, as to deserve _his_ name of
an experiment, yet no fair man can possibly doubt that the minister was
perfectly sincere in his proceeding, and that, from his ardent wishes
for peace with the Regicides, he was led to conceive hopes which were
founded rather in his vehement desires than in any rational ground of
political speculation. Convinced as I am of this, it had been better, in
my humble opinion, that persons of great name and authority had
abstained from those topics which had been used to call the minister's
sincerity into doubt, and had not adopted the sentiments of the
Directory upon the subject of all our negotiations: for the noble lord
expressly says that the experiment was made for the satisfaction of the
country. The Directory says exactly the same thing. Upon granting, in
consequence of our supplications, the passport to Lord Malmesbury, in
order to remove all sort of hope from its success, they charged all our
previous steps, even to that moment of submissive demand to be admitted
to their presence, on duplicity and perfidy, and assumed that the object
of all the steps we had taken was that "of justifying the continuance of
the war in the eyes of the English nation, and of throwing all the odium
of it upon the French." "The English nation" (said they) "supports
impatiently the continuance of the war, and _a reply must be made to its
complaints and its reproaches_; the Parliament is about to be opened,
_and the mouths of the orators who will declaim against the war must be
shut; the demands for new taxes must be justified; and to obtain these
results, it is necessary to be able to advance that the French
government refuses every reasonable proposition for peace_." I am sorry
that the language of the friends to ministry and the enemies to mankind
should be so much in unison.

As to the fact in which these parties are so well agreed, that the
experiment ought to have been made for the satisfaction of this country,
(meaning the country of England,) it were well to be wished that persons
of eminence would cease to make themselves representatives of the people
of England, without a letter of attorney, or any other act of
procuration. In legal construction, the sense of the people of England
is to be collected from the House of Commons; and though I do not deny
the possibility of an abuse of this trust as well as any other, yet I
think, without the most weighty reasons and in the most urgent
exigencies, it is highly dangerous to suppose that the House speaks
anything contrary to the sense of the people, or that the representative
is silent, when the sense of the constituent, strongly, decidedly, and
upon long deliberation, speaks audibly upon any topic of moment. If
there is a doubt whether the House of Commons represents perfectly the
whole commons of Great Britain, (I think there is none,) there can be no
question but that the Lords and the Commons together represent the sense
of the whole people to the crown and to the world. Thus it is, when we
speak legally and constitutionally. In a great measure it is equally
true, when we speak prudentially. But I do not pretend to assert that
there are no other principles to guide discretion than those which are
or can be fixed by some law or some constitution: yet before the legally
presumed sense of the people should be superseded by a supposition of
one more real, (as in all cases where a legal presumption is to be
ascertained,) some strong proofs ought to exist of a contrary
disposition in the people at large, and some decisive indications of
their desire upon this subject. There can be no question, that,
previously to a direct message from the crown, neither House of
Parliament did indicate anything like a wish for such advances as we
have made or such negotiations as we have carried on. The Parliament has
assented to ministry; it is not ministry that has obeyed the impulse of
Parliament. The people at large have their organs through which they can
speak to Parliament and to the crown by a respectful petition, and
though not with absolute authority, yet with weight, they can instruct
their representatives. The freeholders and other electors in this
kingdom have another and a surer mode of expressing their sentiments
concerning the conduct which is held by members of Parliament. In the
middle of these transactions this last opportunity has been held out to
them. In all these points of view I positively assert that the people
have nowhere and in no way expressed their wish of throwing themselves
and their sovereign at the feet of a wicked and rancorous foe, to
supplicate mercy, which, from the nature of that foe, and from the
circumstances of affairs, we had no sort of ground to expect. It is
undoubtedly the business of ministers very much to consult the
inclinations of the people, but they ought to take great care that they
do not receive that inclination from the few persons who may happen to
approach them. The petty interests of such gentlemen, their low
conceptions of things, their fears arising from the danger to which the
very arduous and critical situation of public affairs may expose their
places, their apprehensions from the hazards to which the discontents of
a few popular men at elections may expose their seats in
Parliament,--all these causes trouble and confuse the representations
which they make to ministers of the real temper of the nation. If
ministers, instead of following the great indications of the
Constitution, proceed on such reports, they will take the whispers of a
cabal for the voice of the people, and the counsels of imprudent
timidity for the wisdom of a nation.

I well remember, that, when the fortune of the war began (and it began
pretty early) to turn, as it is common and natural, we were dejected by
the losses that had been sustained, and with the doubtful issue of the
contests that were foreseen. But not a word was uttered that supposed
peace upon any proper terms was in our power, or therefore that it
should be in our desire. As usual, with or without reason, we
criticized the conduct of the war, and compared our fortunes with our
measures. The mass of the nation went no further. For I suppose that you
always understood me as speaking of that very preponderating part of the
nation which had always been equally adverse to the French principles
and to the general progress of their Revolution throughout
Europe,--considering the final success of their arms and the triumph of
their principles as one and the same thing.

The first means that were used, by any one professing our principles, to
change the minds of this party upon that subject, appeared in a small
pamphlet circulated with considerable industry. It was commonly given to
the noble person himself who has passed judgment upon all hopes from
negotiation, and justified our late abortive attempt only as an
experiment made to satisfy the country; and yet that pamphlet led the
way in endeavoring to dissatisfy that very country with the continuance
of the war, and to raise in the people the most sanguine expectations
from some such course of negotiation as has been fatally pursued. This
leads me to suppose (and I am glad to have reason for supposing) that
there was no foundation for attributing the performance in question to
that author; but without mentioning his name in the title-page, it
passed for his, and does still pass uncontradicted. It was entitled,
"Some Remarks on the Apparent Circumstances of the War in the Fourth
Week of October, 1795."

This sanguine little king's-fisher, (not prescient of the storm, as by
his instinct he ought to be,) appearing at that uncertain season before
the rigs of old Michaelmas were yet well composed, and when the
inclement storms of winter were approaching, began to flicker over the
seas, and was busy in building its halcyon nest, as if the angry ocean
had been soothed by the genial breath of May. Very unfortunately, this
auspice was instantly followed by a speech from the throne in the very
spirit and principles of that pamphlet.

I say nothing of the newspapers, which are undoubtedly in the interest,
and which are supposed by some to be directly or indirectly under the
influence of ministers, and which, with less authority than the pamphlet
I speak of, had indeed for some time before held a similar language, in
direct contradiction to their more early tone: insomuch that I can speak
it with a certain assurance, that very many, who wished to
administration as well as you and I do, thought, that, in giving their
opinion in favor of this peace, they followed the opinion of
ministry;--they were conscious that they did not lead it. My inference,
therefore, is this: that the negotiation, whatever its merits may be, in
the general principle and policy of undertaking it, is, what every
political measure in general ought to be, the sole work of
administration; and that, if it was an experiment to satisfy anybody, it
was to satisfy those whom the ministers were in the daily habit of
condemning, and by whom they were daily condemned,--I mean the _leaders_
of the _opposition_ in _Parliament_. I am certain that the ministers
were then, and are now, invested with the fullest confidence of the
major part of the nation, to pursue such measures of peace or war as the
nature of things shall suggest as most adapted to the public safety. It
is in this light, therefore, as a measure which ought to have been
avoided and ought not to be repeated, that I take the liberty of
discussing the merits of this system of Regicide negotiations. It is not
a matter of light experiment, that leaves us where it found us. Peace or
war are the great hinges upon which the very being of nations turns.
Negotiations are the means of making peace or preventing war, and are
therefore of more serious importance than almost any single event of war
can possibly be.

At the very outset, I do not hesitate to affirm, that this country in
particular, and the public law in general, have suffered more by this
negotiation of experiment than by all the battles together that we have
lost from the commencement of this century to this time, when it touches
so nearly to its close. I therefore have the misfortune not to coincide
in opinion with the great statesman who set on foot a negotiation, as he
said, "in spite of the constant opposition he had met with from Prance."
He admits, "that the difficulty in this negotiation became most
seriously increased, indeed, by the situation in which we were placed,
and the manner in which alone the enemy would _admit_ of a negotiation."
This situation so described, and so truly described, rendered our
solicitation not only degrading, but from the very outset evidently
hopeless.

I find it asserted, and even a merit taken for it, "that this country
surmounted every difficulty of form and etiquette which the enemy had
thrown in our way." An odd way of surmounting a difficulty, by cowering
under it! I find it asserted that an heroic resolution had been taken,
and avowed in Parliament, previous to this negotiation, "that no
consideration of etiquette should stand in the way of it."

Etiquette, if I understand rightly the term, which in any extent is of
modern usage, had its original application to those ceremonial and
formal observances practised at courts, which had been established by
long usage, in order to preserve the sovereign power from the rude
intrusion of licentious familiarity, as well as to preserve majesty
itself from a disposition to consult its ease at the expense of its
dignity. The term came afterwards to have a greater latitude, and to be
employed to signify certain formal methods used in the transactions
between sovereign states.

In the more limited, as well as in the larger sense of the term, without
knowing what the etiquette is, it is impossible to determine whether it
is a vain and captious punctilio, or a form necessary to preserve
decorum in character and order in business. I readily admit that nothing
tends to facilitate the issue of all public transactions more than a
mutual disposition in the parties treating to waive all ceremony. But
the use of this temporary suspension of the recognized modes of respect
consists in its being mutual, and in the spirit of conciliation in which
all ceremony is laid aside. On the contrary, when one of the parties to
a treaty intrenches himself up to the chin in these ceremonies, and will
not on his side abate a single punctilio, and that all the concessions
are upon one side only, the party so conceding does by this act place
himself in a relation of inferiority, and thereby fundamentally subverts
that equality which is of the very essence of all treaty.

After this formal act of degradation, it was but a matter of course that
gross insult should be offered to our ambassador, and that he should
tamely submit to it. He found himself provoked to complain of the
atrocious libels against his public character and his person which
appeared in a paper under the avowed patronage of that government. The
Regicide Directory, on this complaint, did not recognize the paper: and
that was all. They did not punish, they did not dismiss, they did not
even reprimand the writer. As to our ambassador, this total want of
reparation for the injury was passed by under the pretence of despising
it.

In this but too serious business, it is not possible here to avoid a
smile. Contempt is not a thing to be despised. It may be borne with a
calm and equal mind, but no man by lifting his head high can pretend
that he does not perceive the scorns that are poured down upon him from
above. All these sudden complaints of injury, and all these deliberate
submissions to it, are the inevitable consequences of the situation in
which we had placed ourselves: a situation wherein the insults were such
as Nature would not enable us to bear, and circumstances would not
permit us to resent.

It was not long, however, after this contempt of contempt upon the part
of our ambassador, (who by the way represented his sovereign,) that a
new object was furnished for displaying sentiments of the same kind,
though the case was infinitely aggravated. Not the ambassador, but the
king himself, was libelled and insulted,--libelled, not by a creature of
the Directory, but by the Directory itself. At least, so Lord Malmesbury
understood it, and so he answered it in his note of the 12th November,
1796, in which he says,--"With regard to the _offensive and injurious_
insinuations which are contained in that paper, and which are only
calculated to throw new obstacles in the way of the accommodation which
the French government professes to desire, THE KING HAS DEEMED IT FAR
BENEATH HIS DIGNITY to permit an answer to be made to them on his part,
in any manner whatsoever."

I am of opinion, that, if his Majesty had kept aloof from that wash and
offscouring of everything that is low and barbarous in the world, it
might be well thought unworthy of his dignity to take notice of such
scurrilities: they must be considered as much the natural expression of
that kind of animal as it is the expression of the feelings of a dog to
bark. But when the king had been advised to recognize not only the
monstrous composition as a sovereign power, but, in conduct, to admit
something in it like a superiority,--when the bench of Regicide was made
at least coordinate with his throne, and raised upon a platform full as
elevated, this treatment could not be passed by under the appearance of
despising it. It would not, indeed, have been proper to keep up a war of
the same kind; but an immediate, manly, and decided resentment ought to
have been the consequence. We ought not to have waited for the
disgraceful dismissal of our ambassador. There are cases in which we may
pretend to sleep; but the wittol rule has some sense in it, _Non omnibus
dormio_. We might, however, have seemed ignorant of the affront; but
what was the fact? Did we dissemble or pass it by in silence? When
dignity is talked of, a language which I did not expect to hear in such
a transaction, I must say, what all the world must feel, that it was not
for the king's dignity to notice this insult and not to resent it. This
mode of proceeding is formed on new ideas of the correspondence between
sovereign powers.

This was far from the only ill effect of the policy of degradation. The
state of inferiority in which we were placed, in this vain attempt at
treaty, drove us headlong from error into error, and led us to wander
far away, not only from all the paths which have been beaten in the old
course of political communication between mankind, but out of the ways
even of the most common prudence. Against all rules, after we had met
nothing but rebuffs in return to all our proposals, we made _two
confidential communications_ to those in whom we had no confidence and
who reposed no confidence in us. What was worse, we were fully aware of
the madness of the step we were taking. Ambassadors are not sent to a
hostile power, persevering in sentiments of hostility, to make candid,
confidential, and amicable communications. Hitherto the world has
considered it as the duty of an ambassador in such a situation to be
cautious, guarded, dexterous, and circumspect. It is true that mutual
confidence and common interest dispense with all rules, smooth the
rugged way, remove every obstacle, and make all things plain and level.
When, in the last century, Temple and De Witt negotiated the famous
Triple Alliance, their candor, their freedom, and the most
_confidential_ disclosures were the result of true policy. Accordingly,
in spite of all the dilatory forms of the complex government of the
United Provinces, the treaty was concluded in three days. It did not
take a much longer time to bring the same state (that of Holland)
through a still more complicated transaction,--that of the _Grand
Alliance_. But in the present case, this unparalleled candor, this
unpardonable want of reserve, produced, what might have been expected
from it, the most serious evils. It instructed the enemy in the whole
plan of our demands and concessions. It made the most fatal discoveries.

And first, it induced us to lay down the basis of a treaty which itself
had nothing to rest upon. It seems, we thought we had gained a great
point in getting this basis admitted,--that is, a basis of mutual
compensation and exchange of conquests. If a disposition to peace, and
with any reasonable assurance, had been previously indicated, such a
plan of arrangement might with propriety and safety be proposed; because
these arrangements were not, in effect, to make the basis, but a part of
the superstructure, of the fabric of pacification. The order of things
would thus be reversed. The mutual disposition to peace would form the
reasonable base, upon which the scheme of compensation upon one side or
the other might be constructed. This truly fundamental base being once
laid, all differences arising from the spirit of huckstering and barter
might be easily adjusted. If the restoration of peace, with a view to
the establishment of a fair balance of power in Europe, had been made
the real basis of the treaty, the reciprocal value of the compensations
could not be estimated according to their proportion to each other, but
according to their proportionate relation to that end: to that great end
the whole would be subservient. The effect of the treaty would be in a
manner secured before the detail of particulars was begun, and for a
plain reason,--because the hostile spirit on both sides had been
conjured down; but if, in the full fury and unappeased rancor of war, a
little traffic is attempted, it is easy to divine what must be the
consequence to those who endeavor to open that kind of petty commerce.

To illustrate what I have said, I go back no further than to the two
last Treaties of Paris, and to the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, which
preceded the first of these two Treaties of Paris by about fourteen or
fifteen years. I do not mean here to criticize any of them. My opinions
upon some particulars of the Treaty of Paris in 1763 are published in a
pamphlet[39] which your recollection will readily bring into your view.
I recur to them only to show that their basis had not been, and never
could have been, a mere dealing of truck and barter, but that the
parties being willing, from common fatigue or common suffering, to put
an end to a war the first object of which had either been obtained or
despaired of, the lesser objects were not thought worth the price of
further contest. The parties understanding one another, so much was
given away without considering from whose budget it came, not as the
value of the objects, but as the value of peace to the parties might
require.

At the last Treaty of Paris, the subjugation of America being despaired
of on the part of Great Britain, and the independence of America being
looked upon as secure on the part of France, the main cause of the war
was removed; and then the conquests which France had made upon us (for
we had made none of importance upon her) were surrendered with
sufficient facility. Peace was restored as peace. In America the parties
stood as they were possessed. A limit was to be settled, but settled as
a limit to secure that peace, and not at all on a system of equivalents,
for which, as we then stood with the United States, there were little or
no materials.

At the preceding Treaty of Paris, I mean that of 1763, there was
nothing at all on which to fix a basis of compensation from reciprocal
cession of conquests. They were all on one side. The question with us
was not what we were to receive, and on what consideration, but what we
were to keep for indemnity or to cede for peace. Accordingly, no place
being left for barter, sacrifices were made on our side to peace; and we
surrendered to the French their most valuable possessions in the West
Indies without any equivalent. The rest of Europe fell soon after into
its ancient order; and the German war ended exactly where it had begun.

The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle was built upon a similar basis. All the
conquests in Europe had been made by France. She had subdued the
Austrian Netherlands, and broken open the gates of Holland. We had taken
nothing in the West Indies; and Cape Breton was a trifling business
indeed. France gave up all for peace. The Allies had given up all that
was ceded at Utrecht. Louis the Fourteenth made all, or nearly all, the
cessions at Ryswick, and at Nimeguen. In all those treaties, and in all
the preceding, as well as in the others which intervened, the question
never had been that of barter. The balance of power had been ever
assumed as the known common law of Europe at all times and by all
powers: the question had only been (as it must happen) on the more or
less inclination of that balance.

This general balance was regarded in four principal points of view: the
GREAT MIDDLE BALANCE, which comprehended Great Britain, France, and
Spain; the BALANCE OF THE NORTH; the BALANCE, external and internal, of
GERMANY; and the BALANCE OF ITALY. In all those systems of balance,
England was the power to whose custody it was thought it might be most
safely committed.

France, as she happened to stand, secured the balance or endangered it.
Without question, she had been long the security for the balance of
Germany, and, under her auspices, the system, if not formed, had been at
least perfected. She was so in some measure with regard to Italy, more
than occasionally. She had a clear interest in the balance of the North,
and had endeavored to preserve it. But when we began to treat with the
present France, or, more properly, to prostrate ourselves to her, and to
try if we should be admitted to ransom our allies, upon a system of
mutual concession and compensation, we had not one of the usual
facilities. For, first, we had not the smallest indication of a desire
for peace on the part of the enemy, but rather the direct contrary. Men
do not make sacrifices to obtain what they do not desire: and as for the
balance of power, it was so far from being admitted by France, either on
the general system, or with regard to the particular systems that I have
mentioned, that, in the whole body of their authorized or encouraged
reports and discussions upon the theory of the diplomatic system, they
constantly rejected the very idea of the balance of power, and treated
it as the true cause of all the wars and calamities that had afflicted
Europe; and their practice was correspondent to the dogmatic positions
they had laid down. The Empire and the Papacy it was their great object
to destroy; and this, now openly avowed and steadfastly acted upon,
might have been discerned with very little acuteness of sight, from the
very first dawnings of the Revolution, to be the main drift of their
policy: for they professed a resolution to destroy everything which can
hold states together by the tie of opinion.

Exploding, therefore, all sorts of balances, they avow their design to
erect themselves into a new description of empire, which is not grounded
on any balance, but forms a sort of impious hierarchy, of which France
is to be the head and the guardian. The law of this their empire is
anything rather than the public law of Europe, the ancient conventions
of its several states, or the ancient opinions which assign to them
superiority or preëminence of any sort, or any other kind of connection
in virtue of ancient relations. They permit, and that is all, the
temporary existence of some of the old communities: but whilst they give
to these tolerated states this temporary respite, in order to secure
them in a condition of real dependence on themselves, they invest them
on every side by a body of republics, formed on the model, and dependent
ostensibly, as well as substantially, on the will of the mother republic
to which they owe their origin. These are to be so many garrisons to
check and control the states which are to be permitted to remain on the
old model until they are ripe for a change. It is in this manner that
France, on her new system, means to form an universal empire, by
producing an universal revolution. By this means, forming a new code of
communities according to what she calls the natural rights of man and of
states, she pretends to secure eternal peace to the world, guarantied by
her generosity and justice, which are to grow with the extent of her
power. To talk of the balance of power to the governors of such a
country was a jargon which they could not understand even through an
interpreter. Before men can transact any affair, they must have a
common language to speak, and some common, recognized principles on
which they can argue; otherwise all is cross purpose and confusion. It
was, therefore, an essential preliminary to the whole proceeding, to fix
whether the balance of power, the liberties and laws of the Empire, and
the treaties of different belligerent powers in past times, when they
put an end to hostilities, were to be considered as the basis of the
present negotiation.

The whole of the enemy's plan was known when Lord Malmesbury was sent
with his scrap of equivalents to Paris. Yet, in this unfortunate attempt
at negotiation, instead of fixing these points, and assuming the balance
of power and the peace of Europe as the basis to which all cessions on
all sides were to be subservient, our solicitor for peace was directed
to reverse that order. He was directed to make mutual concessions, on a
mere comparison of their marketable value, the base of treaty. The
balance of power was to be thrown in as an inducement, and a sort of
make-weight to supply the manifest deficiency, which must stare him and
the world in the face, between those objects which he was to require the
enemy to surrender and those which he had to offer as a fair equivalent.

To give any force to this inducement, and to make it answer even the
secondary purpose of equalizing equivalents having in themselves no
natural proportionate value, it supposed that the enemy, contrary to the
most notorious fact, did admit this balance of power to be of some
value, great or small; whereas it is plain, that, in the enemy's
estimate of things, the consideration of the balance of power, as we
have said before, was so far from going in diminution of the value of
what the Directory was desired to surrender, or of giving an additional
price to our objects offered in exchange, that the hope of the utter
destruction of that balance became a new motive to the junto of
Regicides for preserving, as a means for realizing that hope, what we
wished them to abandon.

Thus stood the basis of the treaty, on laying the first stone of the
foundation. At the very best, upon our side, the question stood upon a
mere naked bargain and sale. Unthinking people here triumphed, when they
thought they had obtained it; whereas, when obtained as a basis of a
treaty, it was just the worst we could possibly have chosen. As to our
offer to cede a most unprofitable, and, indeed, beggarly, chargeable
counting-house or two in the East Indies, we ought not to presume that
they would consider this as anything else than a mockery. As to anything
of real value, we had nothing under heaven to offer, (for which we were
not ourselves in a very dubious struggle,) except the island of
Martinico only. When this object was to be weighed against the
Directorial conquests, merely as an object of a value at market, the
principle of barter became perfectly ridiculous: a single quarter in the
single city of Amsterdam was worth ten Martinicos, and would have sold
for many more years' purchase in any market overt in Europe. How was
this gross and glaring defect in the objects of exchange to be supplied?
It was to be made up by argument. And what was that argument? The
extreme utility of possessions in the West Indies to the augmentation of
the naval power of France. A very curious topic of argument to be
proposed and insisted on by an ambassador of Great Britain! It is
directly and plainly this:--"Come, we know that of all things you wish a
naval power, and it is natural you should, who wish to destroy the very
sources of the British greatness, to overpower our marine, to destroy
our commerce, to eradicate our foreign influence, and to lay us open to
an invasion, which at one stroke may complete our servitude and ruin and
expunge us from among the nations of the earth. Here I have it in my
budget, the infallible arcanum for that purpose. You are but novices in
the art of naval resources. Let you have the West Indies back, and your
maritime preponderance is secured, for which you would do well to be
moderate in your demands upon the Austrian Netherlands."

Under any circumstances, this is a most extraordinary topic of argument;
but it is rendered by much the more unaccountable, when we are told,
that, if the war has been diverted from the great object of establishing
society and good order in Europe by destroying the usurpation in France,
this diversion was made to increase the naval resources and power of
Great Britain, and to lower, if not annihilate, those of the marine of
France. I leave all this to the very serious reflection of every
Englishman.

This basis was no sooner admitted than the rejection of a treaty upon
that sole foundation was a thing of course. The enemy did not think it
worthy of a discussion, as in truth it was not; and immediately, as
usual, they began, in the most opprobrious and most insolent manner, to
question our sincerity and good faith: whereas, in truth, there was no
one symptom wanting of openness and fair dealing. What could be more
fair than to lay open to an enemy all that you wished to obtain, and the
price you meant to pay for it, and to desire him to imitate your
ingenuous proceeding, and in the same manner to open his honest heart to
you? Here was no want of fair dealing, but there was too evidently a
fault of another kind: there was much weakness,--there was an eager and
impotent desire of associating with this unsocial power, and of
attempting the connection by any means, however manifestly feeble and
ineffectual. The event was committed to chance,--that is, to such a
manifestation of the desire of France for peace as would induce the
Directory to forget the advantages they had in the system of barter.
Accordingly, the general desire for such a peace was triumphantly
reported from the moment that Lord Malmesbury had set his foot on shore
at Calais.

It has been said that the Directory was compelled against its will to
accept the basis of barter (as if that had tended to accelerate the work
of pacification!) by the voice of all France. Had this been the case,
the Directors would have continued to listen to that voice to which it
seems they were so obedient: they would have proceeded with the
negotiation upon that basis. But the fact is, that they instantly broke
up the negotiation, as soon as they had obliged our ambassador to
violate all the principles of treaty, and weakly, rashly, and
unguardedly to expose, without any counter proposition, the whole of our
project with regard to ourselves and our allies, and without holding out
the smallest hope that they would admit the smallest part of our
pretensions.

When they had thus drawn from us all that they could draw out, they
expelled Lord Malmesbury, and they appealed, for the propriety of their
conduct, to that very France which we thought proper to suppose had
driven them to this fine concession: and I do not find that in either
division of the family of thieves, the younger branch, or the elder, or
in any other body whatsoever, there was any indignation excited, or any
tumult raised, or anything like the virulence of opposition which was
shown to the king's ministers here, on account of that transaction.

Notwithstanding all this, it seems a hope is still entertained that the
Directory will have that tenderness for the carcass of their country, by
whose very distemper, and on whose festering wounds, like vermin, they
are fed, that these pious patriots will of themselves come into a more
moderate and reasonable way of thinking and acting. In the name of
wonder, what has inspired our ministry with this hope any more than with
their former expectations?

Do these hopes only arise from continual disappointment? Do they grow
out of the usual grounds of despair? What is there to encourage them, in
the conduct or even in the declarations of the ruling powers in France,
from the first formation of their mischievous republic to the hour in
which I write? Is not the Directory composed of the same junto? Are they
not the identical men who, from the base and sordid vices which belonged
to their original place and situation, aspired to the dignity of
crimes,--and from the dirtiest, lowest, most fraudulent, and most
knavish of chicaners, ascended in the scale of robbery, sacrilege, and
assassination in all its forms, till at last they had imbrued their
impious hands in the blood of their sovereign? Is it from these men that
we are to hope for this paternal tenderness to their country, and this
sacred regard for the peace and happiness of all nations?

But it seems there is still another lurking hope, akin to that which
duped us so egregiously before, when our delightful basis was accepted:
we still flatter ourselves that the public voice of France will compel
this Directory to more moderation. Whence does this hope arise? What
public voice is there in France? There are, indeed, some writers, who,
since this monster of a Directory has obtained a great, regular,
military force to guard them, are indulged in a sufficient liberty of
writing; and some of them write well, undoubtedly. But the world knows
that in France there is no public,--that the country is composed but of
two descriptions, audacious tyrants and trembling slaves. The contests
between the tyrants is the only vital principle that can be discerned in
France. The only thing which there appears like spirit is amongst their
late associates, and fastest friends of the Directory,--the more furious
and untamable part of the Jacobins. This discontented member of the
faction does almost balance the reigning divisions, and it threatens
every moment to predominate. For the present, however, the dread of
their fury forms some sort of security to their fellows, who now
exercise a more regular and therefore a somewhat less ferocious tyranny.
Most of the slaves choose a quiet, however reluctant, submission to
those who are somewhat satiated with blood, and who, like wolves, are a
little more tame from being a little less hungry, in preference to an
irruption of the famished devourers who are prowling and howling about
the fold.

This circumstance assures some degree of permanence to the power of
those whom we know to be permanently our rancorous and implacable
enemies. But to those very enemies who have sworn our destruction we
have ourselves given a further and far better security, by rendering the
cause of the royalists desperate. Those brave and virtuous, but
unfortunate adherents to the ancient Constitution of their country,
after the miserable slaughters which have been made in that body, after
all their losses by emigration, are still numerous, but unable to exert
themselves against the force of the usurpation evidently countenanced
and upheld by those very princes who had called them to arm for the
support of the legal monarchy. Where, then, after chasing these fleeting
hopes of ours from point to point of the political horizon, are they at
last really found? Not where, under Providence, the hopes of Englishmen
used to be placed, in our own courage and in our own virtues, but in the
moderation and virtue of the most atrocious monsters that have ever
disgraced and plagued mankind.

The only excuse to be made for all our mendicant diplomacy is the same
as in the case of all other mendicancy, namely, that it has been founded
on absolute necessity. This deserves consideration. Necessity, as it has
no law, so it has no shame. But moral necessity is not like
metaphysical, or even physical. In that category it is a word of loose
signification, and conveys different ideas to different minds. To the
low-minded, the slightest necessity becomes an invincible necessity.
"The slothful man saith, There is a lion in the way, and I shall be
devoured in the streets." But when the necessity pleaded is not in the
nature of things, but in the vices of him who alleges it, the whining
tones of commonplace beggarly rhetoric produce nothing but indignation:
because they indicate a desire of keeping up a dishonorable existence,
without utility to others, and without dignity to itself; because they
aim at obtaining the dues of labor without industry, and by frauds would
draw from the compassion of others what men ought to owe to their own
spirit and their own exertions.

I am thoroughly satisfied, that, if we degrade ourselves, it is the
degradation which will subject us to the yoke of necessity, and not that
it is necessity which has brought on our degradation. In this same
chaos, where light and darkness are struggling together, the open
subscription of last year, with all its circumstances, must have given
us no little glimmering of hope: not (as I have heard it was vainly
discoursed) that the loan could prove a crutch to a lame negotiation
abroad, and that the whiff and wind of it must at once have disposed the
enemies of all tranquillity to a desire for peace. Judging on the face
of facts, if on them it had any effect at all, it had the direct
contrary effect; for very soon after the loan became public at Paris,
the negotiation ended, and our ambassador was ignominiously expelled. My
view of this was different: I liked the loan, not from the influence
which it might have on the enemy, but on account of the temper which it
indicated in our own people. This alone is a consideration of any
importance; because all calculation formed upon a supposed relation of
the habitudes of others to our own, under the present circumstances, is
weak and fallacious. The adversary must be judged, not by what we are,
or by what we wish him to be, but by what we must know he actually is:
unless we choose to shut our eyes and our ears to the uniform tenor of
all his discourses, and to his uniform course in all his actions. We may
be deluded; but we cannot pretend that we have been disappointed. The
old rule of _Ne te quæsiveris extra_ is a precept as available in policy
as it is in morals. Let us leave off speculating upon the disposition
and the wants of the enemy. Let us descend into our own bosoms; let us
ask ourselves what are our duties, and what are our means of discharging
them. In what heart are you at home? How far may an English minister
confide in the affections, in the confidence, in the force of an English
people? What does he find us, when he puts us to the proof of what
English interest and English honor demand? It is as furnishing an answer
to these questions that I consider the circumstances of the loan. The
effect on the enemy is not in what he may speculate on our resources,
but in what he shall feel from our arms.

The circumstances of the loan have proved beyond a doubt three capital
points, which, if they are properly used, may be advantageous to the
future liberty and happiness of mankind. In the first place, the loan
demonstrates, in regard to instrumental resources, the competency of
this kingdom to the assertion of the common cause, and to the
maintenance and superintendence of that which it is its duty and its
glory to hold and to watch over,--the balance of power throughout the
Christian world. Secondly, it brings to light what, under the most
discouraging appearances, I always reckoned on: that, with its ancient
physical force, not only unimpaired, but augmented, its ancient spirit
is still alive in the British nation. It proves that for their
application there is a spirit equal to the resources, for its energy
above them. It proves that there exists, though not always visible, a
spirit which never fails to come forth, whenever it is ritually
invoked,--a spirit which will give no equivocal response, but such as
will hearten the timidity and fix the irresolution of hesitating
prudence,--a spirit which will be ready to perform all the tasks that
shall be imposed upon it by public honor. Thirdly, the loan displays an
abundant confidence in his Majesty's government, as administered by his
present servants, in the prosecution of a war which the people consider,
not as a war made on the suggestion of ministers, and to answer the
purposes of the ambition or pride of statesmen, but as a war of their
own, and in defence of that very property which they expend for its
support,--a war for that order of things from which everything valuable
that they possess is derived, and in which order alone it can possibly
be maintained.

I hear, in derogation of the value of the fact from which I draw
inferences so favorable to the spirit of the people and to its just
expectation from ministers, that the eighteen million loan is to be
considered in no other light than as taking advantage of a very
lucrative bargain held out to the subscribers. I do not in truth believe
it. All the circumstances which attended the subscription strongly spoke
a different language. Be it, however, as these detractors say. This with
me derogates little, or rather nothing at all, from the political value
and importance of the fact. I should be very sorry, if the transaction
was not such a bargain; otherwise it would not have been a fair one. A
corrupt and improvident loan, like everything else corrupt or prodigal,
cannot be too much condemned; but there is a short-sighted parsimony
still more fatal than an unforeseeing expense. The value of money must
be judged, like everything else, from its rate at market. To force that
market, or any market, is of all things the most dangerous. For a small
temporary benefit, the spring of all public credit might be relaxed
forever. The moneyed men have a right to look to advantage in the
investment of their property. To advance their money, they risk it; and
the risk is to be included in the price. If they were to incur a loss,
that loss would amount to a tax on that peculiar species of property. In
effect, it would be the most unjust and impolitic of all
things,--unequal taxation. It would throw upon one description of
persons in the community that burden which ought by fair and equitable
distribution to rest upon the whole. None on account of their dignity
should be exempt; none (preserving due proportion) on account of the
scantiness of their means. The moment a man is exempted from the
maintenance of the community, he is in a sort separated from it,--he
loses the place of a citizen.

So it is in all _taxation_. But in a _bargain_, when terms of loss are
looked for by the borrower from the lender, compulsion, or what
virtually is compulsion, introduces itself into the place of treaty.
When compulsion may be at all used by a state in borrowing the occasion
must determine. But the compulsion ought to be known, and well defined,
and well distinguished; for otherwise treaty only weakens the energy of
compulsion, while compulsion destroys the freedom of a bargain. The
advantage of both is lost by the confusion of things in their nature
utterly unsociable. It would be to introduce compulsion into that in
which freedom and existence are the same: I mean credit. The moment that
shame or fear or force are directly or indirectly applied to a loan,
credit perishes.

There must be some impulse, besides public spirit, to put private
interest into motion along with it. Moneyed men ought to be allowed to
set a value on their money: if they did not, there could be no moneyed
men. This desire of accumulation is a principle without which the means
of their service to the state could not exist. The love of lucre, though
sometimes carried to a ridiculous, sometimes to a vicious excess, is the
grand cause of prosperity to all states. In this natural, this
reasonable, this powerful, this prolific principle, it is for the
satirist to expose the ridiculous,--it is for the moralist to censure
the vicious,--it is for the sympathetic heart to reprobate the hard and
cruel,--it is for the judge to animadvert on the fraud, the extortion,
and the oppression; but it is for the statesman to employ it as he finds
it, with all its concomitant excellencies, with all its imperfections on
its head. It is his part, in this case, as it is in all other cases,
where he is to make use of the general energies of Nature, to take them
as he finds them.

After all, it is a great mistake to imagine, as too commonly, almost
indeed generally, it is imagined, that the public borrower and the
private lender are two adverse parties, with different and contending
interests, and that what is given to the one is wholly taken from the
other. Constituted as our system of finance and taxation is, the
interests of the contracting parties cannot well be separated, whatever
they may reciprocally intend. He who is the hard lender of to-day
to-morrow is the generous contributor to his own payment. For example,
the last loan is raised on public taxes, which are designed to produce
annually two millions sterling. At first view, this is an annuity of two
millions dead charge upon the public in favor of certain moneyed men;
but inspect the thing more nearly, follow the stream in its meanders,
and you will find that there is a good deal of fallacy in this state of
things.

I take it, that whoever considers any man's expenditure of his income,
old or new, (I speak of certain classes in life,) will find a full third
of it to go in taxes, direct or indirect. If so, this new-created income
of two millions will probably furnish 665,000_l._ (I avoid broken
numbers) towards the payment of its own interest, or to the sinking of
its own capital. So it is with the whole of the public debt. Suppose it
any given sum, it is a fallacious estimate of the affairs of a nation to
consider it as a mere burden. To a degree it is so without question, but
not wholly so, nor anything like it. If the income from the interest be
spent, the above proportion returns again into the public stock;
insomuch that, taking the interest of the whole debt to be twelve
million three hundred thousand pound, (it is something more,) not less
than a sum of four million one hundred thousand pound comes back again
to the public through the channel of imposition. If the whole or any
part of that income be saved, so much new capital is generated,--the
infallible operation of which is to lower the value of money, and
consequently to conduce towards the improvement of public credit.

I take the expenditure of the _capitalist_, not the value of the
capital, as my standard; because it is the standard upon which, amongst
us, property, as an object of taxation, is rated. In this country, land
and offices only excepted, we raise no faculty tax. We preserve the
faculty from the expense. Our taxes, for the far greater portion, fly
over the heads of the lowest classes. They escape too, who, with better
ability, voluntarily subject themselves to the harsh discipline of a
rigid necessity. With us, labor and frugality, the parents of riches,
are spared, and wisely too. The moment men cease to augment the common
stock, the moment they no longer enrich it by their industry or their
self-denial, their luxury and even their ease are obliged to pay
contribution to the public; not because they are vicious principles, but
because they are unproductive. If, in fact, the interest paid by the
public had not thus revolved again into its own fund, if this secretion
had not again been absorbed into the mass of blood, it would have been
impossible for the nation to have existed to this time under such a
debt. But under the debt it does exist and flourish; and this
flourishing state of existence in no small degree is owing to the
contribution from the debt to the payment. Whatever, therefore, is taken
from that capital by too close a bargain is but a delusive advantage: it
is so much lost to the public in another way. This matter cannot, on the
one side or the other, be metaphysically pursued to the extreme; but it
is a consideration of which, in all discussions of this kind, we ought
never wholly to lose sight.

It is never, therefore, wise to quarrel with the interested views of
men, whilst they are combined with the public interest and promote it:
it is our business to tie the knot, if possible, closer. Resources that
are derived from extraordinary virtues, as such virtues are rare, so
they must be unproductive. It is a good thing for a moneyed man to
pledge his property on the welfare of his country: he shows that he
places his treasure where his heart is; and revolving in this circle, we
know, that, "wherever a man's treasure is, there his heart will be
also." For these reasons, and on these principles, I have been sorry to
see the attempts which have been made, with more good meaning than
foresight and consideration, towards raising the annual interest of this
loan by private contributions. Wherever a regular revenue is
established, there voluntary contribution can answer no purpose but to
disorder and disturb it in its course. To recur to such aids is, for so
much, to dissolve the community, and to return to a state of unconnected
Nature. And even if such a supply should be productive in a degree
commensurate to its object, it must also be productive of much vexation
and much oppression. Either the citizens by the proposed duties pay
their proportion according to some rate made by public authority, or
they do not. If the law be well made, and the contributions founded on
just proportions, everything superadded by something that is not as
regular as law, and as uniform in its operation, will become more or
less out of proportion. If, on the contrary, the law be not made upon
proper calculation, it is a disgrace to the public; wisdom, which fails
in skill to assess the citizen in just measure and according to his
means. But the hand of authority is not always the most heavy hand. It
is obvious that men may be oppressed by many ways besides those which
take their course from the supreme power of the state. Suppose the
payment to be wholly discretionary. Whatever has its origin in caprice
is sure not to improve in its progress, nor to end in reason. It is
impossible for each private individual to have any measure conformable
to the particular condition of each of his fellow-citizens, or to the
general exigencies of his country. 'Tis a random shot at best.

When men proceed in this irregular mode, the first contributor is apt to
grow peevish with his neighbors. He is but too well disposed to measure
their means by his own envy, and not by the real state of their
fortunes, which he can rarely know, and which it may in them be an act
of the grossest imprudence to reveal. Hence the odium and lassitude with
which people will look upon a provision for the public which is bought
by discord at the expense of social quiet. Hence the bitter
heart-burnings, and the war of tongues, which is so often the prelude to
other wars. Nor is it every contribution, called voluntary, which is
according to the free will of the giver. A false shame, or a false
glory, against his feelings and his judgment, may tax an individual to
the detriment of his family and in wrong of his creditors. A pretence of
public spirit may disable him from the performance of his private
duties; it may disable him even from paying the legitimate contributions
which he is to furnish according to the prescript of law. But what is
the most dangerous of all is that malignant disposition to which this
mode of contribution evidently tends, and which at length leaves the
comparatively indigent to judge of the wealth, and to prescribe to the
opulent, or those whom they conceive to be such, the use they are to
make of their fortunes. From thence it is but one step to the
subversion of all property.

Far, very far, am I from supposing that such things enter into the
purposes of those excellent persons whose zeal has led them to this kind
of measure; but the measure itself will lead them beyond their
intention, and what is begun with the best designs bad men will
perversely improve to the worst of their purposes. An ill-founded
plausibility in great affairs is a real evil. In France we have seen the
wickedest and most foolish of men, the constitution-mongers of 1789,
pursuing this very course, and ending in this very event. These
projectors of deception set on foot two modes of voluntary contribution
to the state. The first they called patriotic gifts. These, for the
greater part, were not more ridiculous in the mode than contemptible in
the project. The other, which they called the patriotic contribution,
was expected to amount to a fourth of the fortunes of individuals, but
at their own will and on their own estimate; but this contribution
threatening to fall infinitely short of their hopes, they soon made it
compulsory, both in the rate and in the levy, beginning in fraud, and
ending, as all the frauds of power end, in plain violence. All these
devices to produce an involuntary will were under the pretext of
relieving the more indigent classes; but the principle of voluntary
contribution, however delusive, being once established, these lower
classes first, and then all classes, were encouraged to throw off the
regular, methodical payments to the state, as so many badges of slavery.
Thus all regular revenue failing, these impostors, raising the
superstructure on the same cheats with which they had laid the
foundation of their greatness, and not content with a portion of the
possessions of the rich, confiscated the whole, and, to prevent them
from reclaiming their rights, murdered the proprietors. The whole of the
process has passed before our eyes, and been conducted, indeed, with a
greater degree of rapidity than could be expected.

My opinion, then, is, that public contributions ought only to be raised
by the public will. By the judicious form of our Constitution, the
public contribution is in its name and substance a grant. In its origin
it is truly voluntary: not voluntary according to the irregular,
unsteady, capricious will of individuals, but according to the will and
wisdom of the whole popular mass, in the only way in which will and
wisdom can go together. This voluntary grant obtaining in its progress
the force of a law, a general necessity, which takes away all merit, and
consequently all jealousy from individuals, compresses, equalizes, and
satisfies the whole, suffering no man to judge of his neighbor or to
arrogate anything to himself. If their will complies with their
obligation, the great end is answered in the happiest mode; if the will
resists the burden, every one loses a great part of his own will as a
common lot. After all, perhaps, contributions raised by a charge on
luxury, or that degree of convenience which approaches so near as to be
confounded with luxury, is the only mode of contribution which may be
with truth termed voluntary.

I might rest here, and take the loan I speak of as leading to a solution
of that question which I proposed in my first letter: "Whether the
inability of the country to prosecute the war did necessitate a
submission to the indignities and the calamities of a peace with the
Regicide power?" But give me leave to pursue this point a little
further.

I know that it has been a cry usual on this occasion, as it has been
upon occasions where such a cry could have less apparent justification,
that great distress and misery have been the consequence of this war, by
the burdens brought and laid upon the people. But to know where the
burden really lies, and where it presses, we must divide the people. As
to the common people, their stock is in their persons and in their
earnings. I deny that the stock of their persons is diminished in a
greater proportion than the common sources of populousness abundantly
fill up: I mean constant employment; proportioned pay according to the
produce of the soil, and, where the soil fails, according to the
operation of the general capital; plentiful nourishment to vigorous
labor; comfortable provision to decrepit age, to orphan infancy, and to
accidental malady. I say nothing to the policy of the provision for the
poor, in all the variety of faces under which it presents itself. This
is the matter of another inquiry. I only just speak of it as of a fact,
taken with others, to support me in my denial that hitherto any one of
the ordinary sources of the increase of mankind is dried up by this war.
I affirm, what I can well prove, that the waste has been less than the
supply. To say that in war no man must be killed is to say that there
ought to be no war. This they may say who wish to talk idly, and who
would display their humanity at the expense of their honesty or their
understanding. If more lives are lost in this war than necessity
requires, they are lost by misconduct or mistake: but if the hostility
be just, the error is to be corrected, the war is not to be abandoned.

That the stock of the common people, in numbers, is not lessened, any
more than the causes are impaired, is manifest, without being at the
pains of an actual numeration. An improved and improving agriculture,
which implies a great augmentation of labor, has not yet found itself at
a stand, no, not for a single moment, for want of the necessary hands,
either in the settled progress of husbandry or in the occasional
pressure of harvests. I have even reason to believe that there has been
a much smaller importation, or the demand of it, from a neighboring
kingdom, than in former times, when agriculture was more limited in its
extent and its means, and when the time was a season of profound peace.
On the contrary, the prolific fertility of country life has poured its
superfluity of population into the canals, and into other public works,
which of late years have been undertaken to so amazing an extent, and
which have not only not been discontinued, but, beyond all expectation,
pushed on with redoubled vigor, in a war that calls for so many of our
men and so much of our riches. An increasing capital calls for labor,
and an increasing population answers to the call. Our manufactures,
augmented both for the supply of foreign and domestic consumption,
reproducing, with the means of life, the multitudes which they use and
waste, (and which many of them devour much more surely and much more
largely than the war,) have always found the laborious hand ready for
the liberal pay. That the price of the soldier is highly raised is true.
In part this rise may be owing to some measures not so well considered
in the beginning of this war; but the grand cause has been the
reluctance of that class of people from whom the soldiery is taken to
enter into a military life,--not that, but, once entered into, it has
its conveniences, and even its pleasures. I have seldom known a soldier
who, at the intercession of his friends, and at their no small charge,
had been redeemed from that discipline, that in a short time was not
eager to return to it again. But the true reason is the abundant
occupation and the augmented stipend found in towns and villages and
farms, which leaves a smaller number of persons to be disposed of. The
price of men for new and untried ways of life must bear a proportion to
the profits of that mode of existence from whence they are to be bought.

So far as to the stock of the common people, as it consists in their
persons. As to the other part, which consists in their earnings, I have
to say, that the rates of wages are very greatly augmented almost
through the kingdom. In the parish where I live it has been raised from
seven to nine shillings in the week, for the same laborer, performing
the same task, and no greater. Except something in the malt taxes and
the duties upon sugars, I do not know any one tax imposed for very many
years past which affects the laborer in any degree whatsoever; while, on
the other hand, the tax upon houses not having more than seven windows
(that is, upon cottages) was repealed the very year before the
commencement of the present war. On the whole, I am satisfied that the
humblest class, and that class which touches the most nearly on the
lowest, out of which it is continually emerging, and to which it is
continually falling, receives far more from public impositions than it
pays. That class receives two million sterling annually from the
classes above it. It pays to no such amount towards any public
contribution.

I hope it is not necessary for me to take notice of that language, so
ill suited to the persons to whom it has been attributed, and so
unbecoming the place in which it is said to have been uttered,
concerning the present war as the cause of the high price of provisions
during the greater part of the year 1796. I presume it is only to be
ascribed to the intolerable license with which the newspapers break not
only the rules of decorum in real life, but even the dramatic decorum,
when they personate great men, and, like bad poets, make the heroes of
the piece talk more like us Grub-Street scribblers than in a style
consonant to persons of gravity and importance in the state. It was easy
to demonstrate the cause, and the sole cause, of that rise in the grand
article and first necessary of life. It would appear that it had no more
connection with the war than the moderate price to which all sorts of
grain were reduced, soon after the return of Lord Malmesbury, had with
the state of politics and the fate of his Lordship's treaty. I have
quite as good reason (that is, no reason at all) to attribute this
abundance to the longer continuance of the war as the gentlemen who
personate leading members of Parliament have had for giving the enhanced
price to that war, at a more early period of its duration. Oh, the folly
of us poor creatures, who, in the midst of our distresses or our
escapes, are ready to claw or caress one another, upon matters that so
seldom depend on our wisdom or our weakness, on our good or evil conduct
towards each other!

An untimely shower or an unseasonable drought, a frost too long
continued or too suddenly broken up with rain and tempest, the blight of
the spring or the smut of the harvest will do more to cause the distress
of the belly than all the contrivances of all statesmen can do to
relieve it. Let government protect and encourage industry, secure
property, repress violence, and discountenance fraud, it is all that
they have to do. In other respects, the less they meddle in these
affairs, the better; the rest is in the hands of our Master and theirs.
We are in a constitution of things wherein "_modo sol nimius, modo
corripit imber_."--But I will push this matter no further. As I have
said a good deal upon it at various times during my public service, and
have lately written something on it, which may yet see the light, I
shall content myself now with observing that the vigorous and laborious
class of life has lately got, from the _bon-ton_ of the humanity of this
day, the name of the "_laboring poor_." We have heard many plans for the
relief of the "_laboring poor_." This puling jargon is not as innocent
as it is foolish. In meddling with great affairs, weakness is never
innoxious. Hitherto the name of poor (in the sense in which it is used
to excite compassion) has not been used for those who can, but for those
who cannot labor,--for the sick and infirm, for orphan infancy, for
languishing and decrepit age; but when we affect to pity, as poor, those
who must labor or the world cannot exist, we are trifling with the
condition of mankind. It is the common doom of man, that he must eat his
bread by the sweat of his brow,--that is, by the sweat of his body or
the sweat of his mind. If this toil was inflicted as a curse, it is, as
might be expected, from the curses of the Father of all blessings; it is
tempered with many alleviations, many comforts. Every attempt to fly
from it, and to refuse the very terms of our existence, becomes much
more truly a curse; and heavier pains and penalties fall upon those who
would elude the tasks which are put upon them by the great Master
Workman of the world, who, in His dealings with His creatures,
sympathizes with their weakness, and, speaking of a creation wrought by
mere will out of nothing, speaks of six days of _labor_ and one of
_rest_. I do not call a healthy young man, cheerful in his mind and
vigorous in his arms, I cannot call such a man _poor_; I cannot pity my
kind as a kind, merely because they are men. This affected pity only
tends to dissatisfy them with their condition, and to teach them to seek
resources where no resources are to be found, in something else than
their own industry and frugality and sobriety. Whatever may be the
intention (which, because I do not know, I cannot dispute) of those who
would discontent mankind by this strange pity, they act towards us, in
the consequences, as if they were our worst enemies.

In turning our view from the lower to the higher classes, it will not be
necessary for me to show at any length that the stock of the latter, as
it consists in their numbers, has not yet suffered any material
diminution. I have not seen or heard it asserted; I have no reason to
believe it: there is no want of officers, that I have ever understood,
for the new ships which we commission, or the new regiments which we
raise. In the nature of things, it is not with their persons that the
higher classes principally pay their contingent to the demands of war.
There is another, and not less important part, which rests with almost
exclusive weight upon them. They furnish the means

        "how War may, best upheld,
    Move by her two main nerves, iron and gold,
    In all her equipage."

Not that they are exempt from contributing also by their personal
service in the fleets and armies of their country. They do contribute,
and in their full and fair proportion, according to the relative
proportion of their numbers in the community. They contribute all the
mind that actuates the whole machine. The fortitude required of them is
very different from the unthinking alacrity of the common soldier or
common sailor in the face of danger and death: it is not a passion, it
is not an impulse, it is not a sentiment; it is a cool, steady,
deliberate principle, always present, always equable,--having no
connection with anger,--tempering honor with prudence,--incited,
invigorated, and sustained by a generous love of fame,--informed,
moderated, and directed by an enlarged knowledge of its own great public
ends,--flowing in one blended stream from the opposite sources of the
heart and the head,--carrying in itself its own commission, and proving
its title to every other command by the first and most difficult
command, that of the bosom in which it resides: it is a fortitude which
unites with the courage of the field the more exalted and refined
courage of the council,--which knows as well to retreat as to
advance,--which can conquer as well by delay as by the rapidity of a
march or the impetuosity of an attack,--which can be, with Fabius, the
black cloud that lowers on the tops of the mountains, or, with Scipio,
the thunderbolt of war,--which, undismayed by false shame, can patiently
endure the severest trial that a gallant spirit can undergo, in the
taunts and provocations of the enemy, the suspicions, the cold respect,
and "mouth honor" of those from whom it should meet a cheerful
obedience,--which, undisturbed by false humanity, can calmly assume that
most awful moral responsibility of deciding when victory may be too
dearly purchased by the loss of a single life, and when the safety and
glory of their country may demand the certain sacrifice of thousands.
Different stations of command may call for different modifications of
this fortitude, but the character ought to be the same in all. And
never, in the most "palmy state" of our martial renown, did it shine
with brighter lustre than in the present sanguinary and ferocious
hostilities, wherever the British arms have been carried. But in this
most arduous and momentous conflict, which from its nature should have
roused us to new and unexampled efforts, I know not how it has been that
we have never put forth half the strength which we have exerted in
ordinary wars. In the fatal battles which have drenched the Continent
with blood and shaken the system of Europe to pieces, we have never had
any considerable army, of a magnitude to be compared to the least of
those by which in former times we so gloriously asserted our place as
protectors, not oppressors, at the head of the great commonwealth of
Europe. We have never manfully met the danger in front; and when the
enemy, resigning to us our natural dominion of the ocean, and abandoning
the defence of his distant possessions to the infernal energy of the
destroying principles which he had planted there for the subversion of
the neighboring colonies, drove forth, by one sweeping law of
unprecedented despotism, his armed multitudes on every side, to
overwhelm the countries and states which had for centuries stood the
firm barriers against the ambition of France, we drew back the arm of
our military force, which had never been more than half raised to oppose
him. From that time we have been combating only with the other arm of
our naval power,--the right arm of England, I admit,--but which struck
almost unresisted, with blows that could never reach the heart of the
hostile mischief. From that time, without a single effort to regain
those outworks which ever till now we so strenuously maintained, as the
strong frontier of our own dignity and safety no less than the liberties
of Europe,--with but one feeble attempt to succor those brave, faithful,
and numerous allies, whom, for the first time since the days of our
Edwards and Henrys, we now have in the bosom of France itself,--we have
been intrenching and fortifying and garrisoning ourselves at home, we
have been redoubling security on security to protect ourselves from
invasion, which has now first become to us a serious object of alarm and
terror. Alas! the few of us who have protracted life in any measure near
to the extreme limits of our short period have been condemned to see
strange things,--new systems of policy, new principles, and not only new
men, but what might appear a new species of men. I believe that any
person who was of age to take a part in public affairs forty years ago
(if the intermediate space of time were expunged from his memory) would
hardly credit his senses, when he should hear from the highest authority
that an army of two hundred thousand men was kept up in this island, and
that in the neighboring island there were at least fourscore thousand
more. But when he had recovered from his surprise on being told of this
army, which has not its parallel, what must be his astonishment to be
told again that this mighty force was kept up for the mere purpose of an
inert and passive defence, and that in its far greater part it was
disabled by its constitution and very essence from defending us against
an enemy by any one preventive stroke or any one operation of active
hostility? What must his reflections be, on learning further, that a
fleet of five hundred men of war, the best appointed, and to the full as
ably commanded as this country ever had upon the sea, was for the
greater part employed in carrying on the same system of unenterprising
defence? What must be the sentiments and feelings of one who remembers
the former energy of England, when he is given to understand that these
two islands, with their extensive and everywhere vulnerable coast,
should be considered as a garrisoned sea-town? What would such a man,
what would any man think, if the garrison of so strange a fortress
should be such, and so feebly commanded, as never to make a sally,--and
that, contrary to all which has hitherto been seen in war, an infinitely
inferior army, with the shattered relics of an almost annihilated navy,
ill-found and ill-manned, may with safety besiege this superior
garrison, and, without hazarding the life of a man, ruin the place,
merely by the menaces and false appearances of an attack? Indeed,
indeed, my dear friend, I look upon this matter of our defensive system
as much the most important of all considerations at this moment. It has
oppressed me with many anxious thoughts, which, more than any bodily
distemper, have sunk me to the condition in which you know that I am.
Should it please Providence to restore to me even the late weak remains
of my strength, I propose to make this matter the subject of a
particular discussion. I only mean here to argue, that the mode of
conducting the war on our part, be it good or bad, has prevented even
the common havoc of war in our population, and especially among that
class whose duty and privilege of superiority it is to lead the way
amidst the perils and slaughter of the field of battle.

The other causes which sometimes affect the numbers of the lower
classes, but which I have shown not to have existed to any such degree
during this war,--penury, cold, hunger, nakedness,--do not easily reach
the higher orders of society. I do not dread for them the slightest
taste of these calamities from the distress and pressure of the war.
They have much more to dread in that way from the confiscations, the
rapines, the burnings, and the massacres that may follow in the train of
a peace which shall establish the devastating and depopulating
principles and example of the French Regicides in security and triumph
and dominion. In the ordinary course of human affairs, any check to
population among men in ease and opulence is less to be apprehended from
what they may suffer than from what they enjoy. Peace is more likely to
be injurious to them in that respect than war. The excesses of delicacy,
repose, and satiety are as unfavorable as the extremes of hardship,
toil, and want to the increase and multiplication of our kind. Indeed,
the abuse of the bounties of Nature, much more surely than any partial
privation of them, tends to intercept that precious boon of a second
and dearer life in our progeny, which was bestowed in the first great
command to man from the All-Gracious Giver of all,--whose name be
blessed, whether He gives or takes away! His hand, in every page of His
book, has written the lesson of moderation. Our physical well-being, our
moral worth, our social happiness, our political tranquillity, all
depend on that control of all our appetites and passions which the
ancients designed by the cardinal virtue of _temperance_.

The only real question to our present purpose, with regard to the higher
classes, is, How stands the account of their stock, as it consists in
wealth of every description? Have the burdens of the war compelled them
to curtail any part of their former expenditure?--which, I have before
observed, affords the only standard of estimating property as an object
of taxation. Do they enjoy all the same conveniences, the same comforts,
the same elegancies, the same luxuries, in the same or in as many
different modes as they did before the war?

In the last eleven years there have been no less than three solemn
inquiries into the finances of the kingdom, by three different
committees of your House. The first was in the year 1786. On that
occasion, I remember, the report of the committee was examined, and
sifted and bolted to the bran, by a gentleman whose keen and powerful
talents I have ever admired. He thought there was not sufficient
evidence to warrant the pleasing representation which the committee had
made of our national prosperity. He did not believe that our public
revenue could continue to be so productive as they had assumed. He even
went the length of recording his own inferences of doubt in a set of
resolutions which now stand upon your journals. And perhaps the
retrospect on which the report proceeded did not go far enough back to
allow any sure and satisfactory average for a ground of solid
calculation. But what was the event? When the next committee sat, in
1791, they found, that, on an average of the last four years, their
predecessors had fallen short, in their estimate of the permanent taxes,
by more than three hundred and forty thousand pounds a year. Surely,
then, if I can show, that, in the produce of those same taxes, and more
particularly of such as affect articles of luxurious use and
consumption, the four years of the war have equalled those four years of
peace, flourishing as they were beyond the most sanguine speculations, I
may expect to hear no more of the distress occasioned by the war.

The additional burdens which have been laid on some of those same
articles might reasonably claim some allowance to be made. Every new
advance of the price to the consumer is a new incentive to him to
retrench the quantity of his consumption; and if, upon the whole, he
pays the same, his property, computed by the standard of what he
voluntarily pays, must remain the same. But I am willing to forego that
fair advantage in the inquiry. I am willing that the receipts of the
permanent taxes which existed before January, 1793, should be compared
during the war, and during the period of peace which I have mentioned. I
will go further. Complete accounts of the year 1791 were separately laid
before your House. I am ready to stand by a comparison of the produce of
four years up to the beginning of the year 1792 with that of the war. Of
the year immediately previous to hostilities I have not been able to
obtain any perfect documents; but I have seen enough to satisfy me,
that, although a comparison including that year might be less favorable,
yet it would not essentially injure my argument.

You will always bear in mind, my dear Sir, that I am not considering
whether, if the common enemy of the quiet of Europe had not forced us to
take up arms in our own defence, the spring-tide of our prosperity might
not have flowed higher than the mark at which it now stands. That
consideration is connected with the question of the justice and the
necessity of the war. It is a question which I have long since
discussed. I am now endeavoring to ascertain whether there exists, in
fact, any such necessity as we hear every day asserted, to furnish a
miserable pretext for counselling us to surrender at discretion our
conquests, our honor, our dignity, our very independence, and, with it,
all that is dear to man. It will be more than sufficient for that
purpose, if I can make it appear that we have been stationary during the
war. What, then, will be said, if, in reality, it shall be proved that
there is every indication of increased and increasing wealth, not only
poured into the grand reservoir of the national capital, but diffused
through all the channels of all the higher classes, and giving life and
activity, as it passes, to the agriculture, the manufactures, the
commerce, and the navigation of the country?

The Finance Committee which has been appointed in this session has
already made two reports. Every conclusion that I had before drawn, as
you know, from my own observation, I have the satisfaction of seeing
there confirmed by that great public authority. Large as was the sum by
which the committee of 1791 found the estimate of 1786 to have been
exceeded in the actual produce of four years of peace, their own
estimate has been exceeded during the war by a sum more than one third
larger. The same taxes have yielded more than half a million beyond
their calculation. They yielded this, notwithstanding the stoppage of
the distilleries, against which, you may remember, I privately
remonstrated. With an allowance for that defalcation, they have yielded
sixty thousand pounds annually above the actual average of the preceding
four years of peace. I believe this to have been without parallel in all
former wars. If regard be had to the great and unavoidable burdens of
the present war, I am confident of the fact.

But let us descend to particulars. The taxes which go by the general
name of Assessed Taxes comprehend the whole, or nearly the whole,
domestic establishment of the rich. They include some things which
belong to the middling, and even to all but the very lowest classes.
They now consist of the duties on houses and windows, on male servants,
horses, and carriages. They did also extend to cottages, to female
servants, wagons, and carts used in husbandry, previous to the year
1792,--when, with more enlightened policy, at the moment that the
possibility of war could not be out of the contemplation of any
statesman, the wisdom of Parliament confined them to their present
objects. I shall give the gross assessment for five years, as I find it
in the Appendix to the Second Report of your committee.

1791 ending 5th April 1792  £1,706,334
1792                  1793   1,585,991
1793                  1794   1,597,623
1794                  1795   1,608,196
1795                  1796   1,625,874

Here will be seen a gradual increase during the whole progress of the
war; and if I am correctly informed, the rise in the last year, after
every deduction that can be made, affords the most consoling and
encouraging prospect. It is enormously out of all proportion.

There are some other taxes which seem to have a reference to the same
general head. The present minister many years ago subjected bricks and
tiles to a duty under the excise. It is of little consequence to our
present consideration, whether these materials have been employed in
building more commodious, more elegant, and more magnificent
habitations, or in enlarging, decorating, and remodelling those which
sufficed for our plainer ancestors. During the first two years of the
war, they paid so largely to the public revenue, that in 1794 a new duty
was laid upon them, which was equal to one half of the old, and which
has produced upwards of 165,000_l._ in the last three years. Yet,
notwithstanding the pressure of this additional weight,[40] there has
been an actual augmentation in the consumption. The only two other
articles which come under this description are the stamp-duty on gold
and silver plate, and the customs on glass plates. This latter is now, I
believe, the single instance of costly furniture to be found in the
catalogue of our imports. If it were wholly to vanish, I should not
think we were ruined. Both the duties have risen, during the war, very
considerably in proportion to the total of their produce.

We have no tax among us on the most necessary articles of food. The
receipts of our Custom-House, under the head of Groceries, afford us,
however, some means of calculating our luxuries of the table. The
articles of tea, coffee, and cocoa-nuts I would propose to omit, and to
take them instead from the excise, as best showing what is consumed at
home. Upon this principle, adding them all together, (with the exception
of sugar, for a reason which I shall afterwards mention,) I find that
they have produced, in one mode of comparison, upwards of 272,000_l._,
and in the other mode upwards of 165,000_l._, more during the war than
in peace.[41] An additional duty was also laid in 1795 on tea, another
on coffee, and a third on raisins,--an article, together with currants,
of much more extensive use than would readily be imagined. The balance
in favor of our argument would have been much enhanced, if our coffee
and fruit ships from the Mediterranean had arrived, last year, at their
usual season. They do not appear in these accounts. This was one
consequence arising (would to God that none more afflicting to Italy, to
Europe, and the whole civilized world had arisen!) from our impolitic
and precipitate desertion of that important maritime station. As to
sugar,[42] I have excluded it from the groceries, because the account of
the customs is not a perfect criterion of the consumption, much having
been reëxported to the North of Europe, which used to be supplied by
France; and in the official papers which I have followed there are no
materials to furnish grounds for computing this reëxportation. The
increase on the face of our entries is immense during the four years of
war,--little short of thirteen hundred thousand pounds.

The increase of the duties on beer has been regularly progressive, or
nearly so, to a very large amount.[43] It is a good deal above a
million, and is more than equal to one eighth of the whole produce.
Under this general head some other liquors are included,--cider, perry,
and mead, as well as vinegar and verjuice; but these are of very
trifling consideration. The excise duties on wine, having sunk a little
during the first two years of the war, were rapidly recovering their
level again. In 1795 a heavy additional duty was imposed upon them, and
a second in the following year; yet, being compared with four years of
peace to 1790, they actually exhibit a small gain to the revenue. And
low as the importation may seem in 1796, when contrasted with any year
since the French treaty in 1787, it is still more than 3000 tuns above
the average importation for three years previous to that period. I have
added sweets, from which our factitious wines are made; and I would have
added spirits, but that the total alteration of the duties in 1789, and
the recent interruption of our distilleries, rendered any comparison
impracticable.

The ancient staple of our island, in which we are clothed, is very
imperfectly to be traced on the books of the Custom-House: but I know
that our woollen manufactures flourish. I recollect to have seen that
fact very fully established, last year, from the registers kept in the
West Riding of Yorkshire. This year, in the West of England, I received
a similar account, on the authority of a respectable clothier in that
quarter, whose testimony can less be questioned, because, in his
political opinions, he is adverse, as I understand, to the continuance
of the war. The principal articles of female dress for some time past
have been muslins and calicoes.[44] These elegant fabrics of our own
looms in the East, which serve for the remittance of our own revenues,
have lately been imitated at home, with improving success, by the
ingenious and enterprising manufacturers of Manchester, Paisley, and
Glasgow. At the same time the importation from Bengal has kept pace with
the extension of our own dexterity and industry; while the sale of our
printed goods,[45] of both kinds, has been with equal steadiness
advanced by the taste and execution of our designers and artists. Our
woollens and cottons, it is true, are not all for the home market. They
do not distinctly prove, what is my present point, our own wealth by our
own expense. I admit it: we export them in great and growing quantities:
and they who croak themselves hoarse about the decay of our trade may
put as much of this account as they choose to the creditor side of money
received from other countries in payment for British skill and labor.
They may settle the items to their own liking, where all goes to
demonstrate our riches. I shall be contented here with whatever they
will have the goodness to leave me, and pass to another entry, which is
less ambiguous,--I mean that of silk.[46] The manufactory itself is a
forced plant. We have been obliged to guard it from foreign competition
by very strict prohibitory laws. What we import is the raw and prepared
material, which is worked up in various ways, and worn in various shapes
by both sexes. After what we have just seen, you will probably be
surprised to learn that the quantity of silk imported during the war has
been much greater than it was previously in peace; and yet we must all
remember, to our mortification, that several of our silk ships fell a
prey to Citizen Admiral Richery. You will hardly expect me to go through
the tape and thread, and all the other small wares of haberdashery and
millinery to be gleaned up among our imports. But I shall make one
observation, and with great satisfaction, respecting them. They
gradually diminish, as our own manufactures of the same description
spread into their places; while the account of ornamental articles which
our country does not produce, and we cannot wish it to produce,
continues, upon the whole, to rise, in spite of all the caprices of
fancy and fashion. Of this kind are the different furs[47] used for
muffs, trimmings, and linings, which, as the chief of the kind, I shall
particularize. You will find them below.

The diversions of the higher classes form another and the only
remaining head of inquiry into their expenses: I mean those diversions
which distinguish the country and the town life,--which are visible and
tangible to the statesman,--which have some public measure and standard.
And here, when, I look to the report of your committee, I, for the first
time, perceive a failure. It is clearly so. Whichever way I reckon the
four years of peace, the old tax on the sports of the field has
certainly proved deficient since the war. The same money, however, or
nearly the same, has been paid to government,--though the same number of
individuals have not contributed to the payment. An additional tax was
laid in 1791, and during the war has produced upwards of 61,000_l._,
which is about 4000_l._ more than the decrease of the old tax, in one
scheme of comparison, and about 4000_l._ less, in the other scheme. I
might remark, that the amount of the new tax, in the several years of
the war, by no means bears the proportion which it ought to the old.
There seems to be some great irregularity or other in the receipt. But I
do not think it worth while to examine into the argument. I am willing
to suppose that many, who, in the idleness of peace, made war upon
partridges, hares, and pheasants, may now carry more noble arms against
the enemies of their country. Our political adversaries may do what they
please with that concession. They are welcome to make the most of it. I
am sure of a very handsome set-off in the other branch of expense,--the
amusements of a town life.

There is much gayety and dissipation and profusion which must escape and
disappoint all the arithmetic of political economy. But the theatres are
a prominent feature. They are established through every part of the
kingdom, at a cost unknown till our days. There is hardly a provincial
capital which does not possess, or which does not aspire to possess, a
theatre-royal. Most of them engage for a short time, at a vast price,
every actor or actress of name in the metropolis: a distinction which in
the reign of my old friend Garrick was confined to very few. The
dresses, the scenes, the decorations of every kind, I am told, are in a
new style of splendor and magnificence: whether to the advantage of our
dramatic taste, upon the whole, I very much doubt. It is a show and a
spectacle, not a play, that is exhibited. This is undoubtedly in the
genuine manner of the Augustan age, but in a manner which was censured
by one of the best poets and critics of that or any age:--

            Migravit ab aure voluptas
    Omnis ad incertos oculos, et gaudia vana:
    Quatuor aut plures aulæa premuntur in horas,
    Dum fugiunt equitum turmæ, peditumque catervæ;--

I must interrupt the passage, most fervently to deprecate and abominate
the sequel:--

    Mox trahitur manibus regum fortuna retortis.

I hope that no French fraternization, which the relations of peace and
amity with systematized regicide would assuredly sooner or later draw
after them, even if it should overturn our happy Constitution itself,
could so change the hearts of Englishmen as to make them delight in
representations and processions which have no other merit than that of
degrading and insulting the name of royalty. But good taste, manners,
morals, religion, all fly, wherever the principles of Jacobinism enter;
and we have no safety against them but in arms.

The proprietors, whether in this they follow or lead what is called the
town, to furnish out these gaudy and pompous entertainments, must
collect so much more from the public. It was but just before the
breaking out of hostilities, that they levied for themselves the very
tax which, at the close of the American war, they represented to Lord
North as certain ruin to their affairs to demand for the state. The
example has since been imitated by the managers of our Italian Opera.
Once during the war, if not twice, (I would not willingly misstate
anything, but I am not very accurate on these subjects,) they have
raised the price of their subscription. Yet I have never heard that any
lasting dissatisfaction has been manifested, or that their houses have
been unusually and constantly thin. On the contrary, all the three
theatres have been repeatedly altered, and refitted, and enlarged, to
make them capacious of the crowds that nightly flock to them; and one of
those huge and lofty piles, which lifts its broad shoulders in gigantic
pride, almost emulous of the temples of God, has been reared from the
foundation at a charge of more than fourscore thousand pounds, and yet
remains a naked, rough, unsightly heap.

I am afraid, my dear Sir, that I have tired you with these dull, though
important details. But we are upon a subject which, like some of a
higher nature, refuses ornament, and is contented with conveying
instruction. I know, too, the obstinacy of unbelief in those perverted
minds which have no delight but in contemplating the supposed distress
and predicting the immediate ruin of their country. These birds of evil
presage at all times have grated our ears with their melancholy song;
and, by some strange fatality or other, it has generally happened that
they have poured forth their loudest and deepest lamentations at the
periods of our most abundant prosperity. Very early in my public life I
had occasion to make myself a little acquainted with their natural
history. My first political tract in the collection which a friend has
made of my publications is an answer to a very gloomy picture of the
state of the nation, which was thought to have been drawn by a statesman
of some eminence in his time. That was no more than the common spleen of
disappointed ambition: in the present day I fear that too many are
actuated by a more malignant and dangerous spirit. They hope, by
depressing our minds with a despair of our means and resources, to drive
us, trembling and unresisting, into the toils of our enemies, with whom,
from the beginning of the Revolution in France, they have ever moved in
strict concert and coöperation. If, with the report of your Finance
Committee in their hands, they can still affect to despond, and can
still succeed, as they do, in spreading the contagion of their pretended
fears among well-disposed, though weak men, there is no way of
counteracting them, but by fixing them down to particulars. Nor must we
forget that they are unwearied agitators, bold assertors, dexterous
sophisters. Proof must be accumulated upon proof, to silence them. With
this view, I shall now direct your attention to some other striking and
unerring indications of our flourishing condition; and they will, in
general, be derived from other sources, but equally authentic: from
other reports and proceedings of both Houses of Parliament, all which
unite with wonderful force of consent in the same general result.
Hitherto we have seen the superfluity of our capital discovering itself
only in procuring superfluous accommodation and enjoyment, in our
houses, in our furniture, in our establishments, in our eating and
drinking, our clothing, and our public diversions: we shall now see it
more beneficially employed in improving our territory itself: we shall
see part of our present opulence, with provident care, put out to usury
for posterity.

To what ultimate extent it may be wise or practicable to push inclosures
of common and waste lands may be a question of doubt, in some points of
view: but no person thinks them already carried to excess; and the
relative magnitude of the sums laid out upon them gives us a standard of
estimating the comparative situation of the landed interest. Your House,
this session, appointed a committee on waste lands, and they have made a
report by their chairman, an honorable baronet, for whom the minister
the other day (with very good intentions, I believe, but with little
real profit to the public) thought fit to erect a board of agriculture.
The account, as it stands there, appears sufficiently favorable. The
greatest number of inclosing bills passed in any one year of the last
peace does not equal the smallest annual number in the war, and those of
the last year exceed by more than one half the highest year of peace.
But what was my surprise, on looking into the late report of the Secret
Committee of the Lords, to find a list of these bills during the war,
differing in every year, and[48] larger on the whole by nearly one
third! I have checked this account by the statute-book, and find it to
be correct. What new brilliancy, then, does it throw over the prospect,
bright as it was before! The number during the last four years has more
than doubled that of the four years immediately preceding; it has
surpassed the five years of peace, beyond which the Lords' committees
have not gone; it has even surpassed (I have verified the fact) the
whole ten years of peace. I cannot stop here. I cannot advance a single
step in this inquiry without being obliged to cast my eyes back to the
period when I first knew the country. These bills, which had begun in
the reign of Queen Anne, had passed every year in greater or less
numbers from the year 1723; yet in all that space of time they had not
reached the amount of any two years during the present war; and though
soon after that time they rapidly increased, still at the accession of
his present Majesty they were far short of the number passed in the four
years of hostilities.

In my first letter I mentioned the state of our inland navigation,
neglected as it had been from the reign of King William to the time of
my observation. It was not till the present reign that the Duke of
Bridgewater's canal first excited a spirit of speculation and adventure
in this way. This spirit showed itself, but necessarily made no great
progress, in the American war. When peace was restored, it began of
course to work with more sensible effect; yet in ten years from that
event the bills passed on that subject were not so many as from the year
1793 to the present session of Parliament. From what I can trace on the
statute-book, I am confident that all the capital expended in these
projects during the peace bore no degree of proportion (I doubt, on
very grave consideration, whether all that was ever so expended was
equal) to the money which has been raised for the same purposes since
the war.[49] I know that in the last four years of peace, when they rose
regularly and rapidly, the sums specified in the acts were not near one
third of the subsequent amount. In the last session of Parliament, the
Grand Junction Company, as it is called, having sunk half a million, (of
which I feel the good effects at my own door,) applied to your House for
permission to subscribe half as much more among themselves. This Grand
Junction is an inosculation of the Grand Trunk; and in the present
session, the latter company has obtained the authority of Parliament to
float two hundred acres of land, for the purpose of forming a reservoir,
thirty feet deep, two hundred yards wide at the head, and two miles in
length: a lake which may almost vie with that which once fed the now
obliterated canal of Languedoc.

The present war is, above all others of which we have heard or read, a
war against landed property. That description of property is in its
nature the firm base of every stable government,--and has been so
considered by all the wisest writers of the old philosophy, from the
time of the Stagyrite, who observes that the agricultural class of all
others is the least inclined to sedition. We find it to have been so
regarded in the practical politics of antiquity, where they are brought
more directly homo to our understandings and bosoms in the history of
Borne, and above all, in the writings of Cicero. The country tribes were
always thought more respectable than those of the city. And if in our
own history there is any one circumstance to which, under God, are to be
attributed the steady resistance, the fortunate issue, and sober
settlement of all our struggles for liberty, it is, that, while the
landed interest, instead of forming a separate body, as in other
countries, has at all times been in close connection and union with the
other great interests of the country, it has been spontaneously allowed
to lead and direct and moderate all the rest. I cannot, therefore, but
see with singular gratification, that, during a war which has been
eminently made for the destruction of the lauded proprietors, as well as
of priests and kings, as much has been done by public works for the
permanent benefit of their stake in this country as in all the rest of
the current century, which now touches to its close. Perhaps after this
it may not be necessary to refer to private observation; but I am
satisfied that in general the rents of lands have been considerably
increased: they are increased very considerably, indeed, if I may draw
any conclusion from my own little property of that kind. I am not
ignorant, however, where our public burdens are most galling. But all of
this class will consider who they are that are principally menaced,--how
little the men of their description in other countries, where this
revolutionary fury has but touched, have been found equal to their own
protection,--how tardy and unprovided and full of anguish is their
flight, chained down as they are by every tie to the soil,--how
helpless they are, above all other men, in exile, in poverty, in need,
in all the varieties of wretchedness; and then let them well weigh what
are the burdens to which they ought not to submit for their own
salvation.

Many of the authorities which I have already adduced, or to which I have
referred, may convey a competent notion of some of our principal
manufactures. Their general state will be clear from that of our
external and internal commerce, through which they circulate, and of
which they are at once the cause and effect. But the communication of
the several parts of the kingdom with each other and with foreign
countries has always been regarded as one of the most certain tests to
evince the prosperous or adverse state of our trade in all its branches.
Recourse has usually been had to the revenue of the Post-Office with
this view. I shall include the product of the tax which was laid in the
last war, and which will make the evidence more conclusive, if it shall
afford the same inference: I allude to the Post-Horse duty, which shows
the personal intercourse within the kingdom, as the Post-Office shows
the intercourse by letters both within and without. The first of these
standards, then, exhibits an increase, according to my former schemes of
comparison, from an eleventh to a twentieth part of the whole duty.[50]
The Post-Office gives still less consolation to those who are miserable
in proportion as the country feels no misery. From the commencement of
the war to the month of April, 1796, the gross produce had increased by
nearly one sixth of the whole sum which the state now derives from that
fund. I find that the year ending 5th of April, 1793, gave 627,592_l._,
and the year ending at the same quarter in 1796, 750,637_l._, after a
fair deduction having been made for the alteration (which, you know, on
grounds of policy I never approved) in your privilege of franking. I
have seen no formal document subsequent to that period, but I have been
credibly informed there is very good ground to believe that the revenue
of the Post-Office[51] still continues to be regularly and largely upon
the rise.

What is the true inference to be drawn from the annual number of
bankruptcies has been the occasion of much dispute. On one side it has
been confidently urged as a sure symptom of a decaying trade: on the
other side it has been insisted that it is a circumstance attendant upon
a thriving trade; for that the greater is the whole quantity of trade,
the greater of course must be the positive number of failures, while the
aggregate success is still in the same proportion. In truth, the
increase of the number may arise from either of those causes. But all
must agree in one conclusion,--that, if the number diminishes, and at
the same time every other sort of evidence tends to show an augmentation
of trade, there can be no better indication. We have already had very
ample means of gathering that the year 1796 was a very favorable year of
trade, and in that year the number of bankruptcies was at least one
fifth below the usual average. I take this from the declaration of the
Lord Chancellor in the House of Lords.[52] He professed to speak from
the records of Chancery; and he added another very striking fact,--that
on the property actually paid into his court (a very small part, indeed,
of the whole property of the kingdom) there had accrued in that year a
net surplus of eight hundred thousand pounds, which was so much new
capital.

But the real situation of our trade, during the whole of this war,
deserves more minute investigation. I shall begin with that which,
though the least in consequence, makes perhaps the most impression on
our senses, because it meets our eyes in our daily walks: I mean our
retail trade. The exuberant display of wealth in our shops was the sight
which most amazed a learned foreigner of distinction who lately resided
among us: his expression, I remember, was, that "_they seemed to be
bursting with opulence into the streets_." The documents which throw
light on this subject are not many, but they all meet in the same point:
all concur in exhibiting an increase. The most material are the general
licenses[53] which the law requires to be taken out by all dealers in
excisable commodities. These seem to be subject to considerable
fluctuations. They have not been so low in any year of the war as in the
years 1788 and 1789, nor ever so high in peace as in the first year of
the war. I should next state the licenses to dealers in spirits and
wine; but the change in them which took place in 1789 would give an
unfair advantage to my argument. I shall therefore content myself with
remarking, that from the date of that change the spirit licenses kept
nearly the same level till the stoppage of the distilleries in 1795. If
they dropped a little, (and it was but little,) the wine licenses,
during the same time, more than countervailed that loss to the revenue;
and it is remarkable with regard to the latter, that in the year 1796,
which was the lowest in the excise duties on wine itself, as well as in
the quantity imported, more dealers in wine appear to have been licensed
than in any former year, excepting the first year of the war. This fact
may raise some doubt whether the consumption has been lessened so much
as, I believe, is commonly imagined. The only other retail-traders whom
I found so entered as to admit of being selected are tea-dealers and
sellers of gold and silver plate, both of whom seem to have multiplied
very much in proportion to their aggregate number.[54] I have kept apart
one set of licensed sellers, because I am aware that our antagonists may
be inclined to triumph a little, when I name auctioneers and auctions.
They may be disposed to consider it as a sort of trade which thrives by
the distress of others. But if they will look at it a little more
attentively, they will find their gloomy comfort vanish. The public
income from these licenses has risen with very great regularity through
a series of years which all must admit to have been years of prosperity.
It is remarkable, too, that in the year 1793, which was the great year
of bankruptcies, these duties on auctioneers and auctions[55] fell below
the mark of 1791; and in 1796, which year had one fifth less than the
accustomed average of bankruptcies, they mounted at once beyond all
former examples. In concluding this general head, will you permit me, my
dear Sir, to bring to your notice an humble, but industrious and
laborious set of chapmen, against whom the vengeance of your House has
sometimes been levelled, with what policy I need not stay to inquire, as
they have escaped without much injury? The hawkers and peddlers,[56] I
am assured, are still doing well, though, from some new arrangements
respecting them made in 1789, it would be difficult to trace their
proceedings in any satisfactory manner.

When such is the vigor of our traffic in its minutest ramifications, we
may be persuaded that the root and the trunk are sound. When we see the
life-blood of the state circulate so freely through the capillary
vessels of the System, we scarcely need inquire if the heart performs
its functions aright. But let us approach it; let us lay it bare, and
watch the systole and diastole, as it now receives and now pours forth
the vital stream through all the members. The port of London has always
supplied the main evidence of the state of our commerce. I know, that,
amidst all the difficulties and embarrassments of the year 1793, from
causes unconnected with and prior to the war, the tonnage of ships in
the Thames actually rose. But I shall not go through a detail of
official papers on this point. There is evidence, which has appeared
this very session before your House, infinitely more forcible and
impressive to my apprehension than all the journals and ledgers of all
the Inspectors-General from the days of Davenant. It is such as cannot
carry with it any sort of fallacy. It comes, not from one set, but from
many opposite sets of witnesses, who all agree in nothing else:
witnesses of the gravest and most unexceptionable character, and who
confirm what they say, in the surest manner, by their conduct. Two
different bills have been brought in for improving the port of London. I
have it from very good intelligence, that, when the project was first
suggested from necessity, there were no less than eight different plans,
supported by eight different bodies of subscribers. The cost of the
least was estimated at two hundred thousand pounds, and of the most
extensive at twelve hundred thousand. The two between which the contest
now lies substantially agree (as all the others must have done) in the
motives and reasons of the preamble; but I shall confine myself to that
bill which is proposed on the part of the mayor, aldermen, and common
council, because I regard them as the best authority, and their language
in itself is fuller and more precise. I certainly see them complain of
the "great delays, accidents, damages, losses, and extraordinary
expenses, which are almost continually sustained, to the hindrance and
discouragement of commerce, and the great injury of the public revenue."
But what are the causes to which they attribute their complaints? The
first is, "THAT, FROM THE VERY GREAT AND PROGRESSIVE INCREASE OF THE
NUMBER AND SIZE OF SHIPS AND OTHER VESSELS TRADING TO THE PORT OF
LONDON, the river Thames, in and near the said port, is in general so
much crowded with shipping, lighters, and other craft, that the
navigation of a considerable part of the river is thereby rendered
tedious and dangerous; and there is great want of room in the said port
for the safe and convenient mooring of vessels, and constant access to
them." The second is of the same nature. It is the want of regulations
and arrangements, never before found necessary, for expedition and
facility. The third is of another kind, but to the same effect: That the
legal quays are too confined, and there is not sufficient accommodation
for the landing and shipping of cargoes. And the fourth and last is
still different: they describe the avenues to the legal quays (which,
little more than a century since, the great fire of London opened and
dilated beyond the measure of our then circumstances) to be now
"incommodious, and much too narrow for the great concourse of carts and
other carriages usually passing and repassing therein." Thus our trade
has grown too big for the ancient limits of Art and Nature. Our streets,
our lanes, our shores, the river itself, which has so long been our
pride, are impeded and obstructed and choked up by our riches. They are,
like our shops, "bursting with opulence." To these misfortunes, to these
distresses and grievances alone, we are told, it is to be imputed that
still more of our capital has not been pushed into the channel of our
commerce, to roll back in its reflux still more abundant capital, and
fructify the national treasury in its course. Indeed, my dear Sir, when
I have before my eyes this consentient testimony of the corporation of
the city of London, the West India merchants, and all the other
merchants who promoted the other plans, struggling and contending which
of them shall be permitted to lay out their money in consonance with
their testimony, I cannot turn aside to examine what one or two violent
petitions, tumultuously voted by real or pretended liverymen of London,
may have said of the utter destruction and annihilation of trade.

This opens a subject on which every true lover of his country, and, at
this crisis, every friend to the liberties of Europe, and of social
order in every country, must dwell and expatiate with delight. I mean to
wind up all my proofs of our astonishing and almost incredible
prosperity with the valuable information given to the Secret Committee
of the Lords by the Inspector-General. And here I am happy that I can
administer an antidote to all despondence from the same dispensary from
which the first dose of poison was supposed to have come. The report of
that committee is generally believed to have derived much benefit from
the labors of the same noble lord who was said, as the author of the
pamphlet of 1795, to have led the way in teaching us to place all our
hope on that very experiment which he afterwards declared in his place
to have been from the beginning utterly without hope. We have now his
authority to say, that, as far as our resources were concerned, the
experiment was equally without necessity.

"It appears," as the committee has very justly and satisfactorily
observed, "by the accounts of the value of the imports and exports for
the last twenty years, produced by Mr. Irving, Inspector-General of
Imports and Exports, that the demands for cash to be sent abroad"
(which, by the way, including the loan to the Emperor, was nearly one
third less sent to the Continent of Europe than in the Seven Years' War)
... "was greatly compensated by a very large balance of commerce in
favor of this kingdom,--greater than was ever known in any preceding
period. The value of the exports of the last year amounted, according to
the valuation on which the accounts of the Inspector-General are
founded, to 30,424,184_l._, which is more than double what it was in any
year of the American war, and one third more than it was on an average
during the last peace, previous to the year 1792; and though the value
of the imports to this country has during the same period greatly
increased, the excess of the value of the exports above that of the
imports, which constitutes the balance of trade, has augmented even in a
greater proportion." These observations might perhaps be branched out
into other points of view, but I shall leave them to your own active and
ingenious mind. There is another and still more important light in
which, the Inspector-General's information may be seen,--and that is, as
affording a comparison of some circumstances in this war with the
commercial history of all our other wars in the present century.

In all former hostilities, our exports gradually declined in value, and
then (with one single exception) ascended again, till they reached and
passed the level of the preceding peace. But this was a work of time,
sometimes more, sometimes less slow. In Queen Anne's war, which began in
1702, it was an interval of ten years before this was effected. Nine
years only were necessary, in the war of 1739, for the same operation.
The Seven Years' War saw the period much shortened: hostilities began in
1755; and in 1758, the fourth year of the war, the exports mounted above
the peace-mark. There was, however, a distinguishing feature of that
war,--that our tonnage, to the very last moment, was in a state of great
depression, while our commerce was chiefly carried on by foreign
vessels. The American war was darkened with singular and peculiar
adversity. Our exports never came near to their peaceful elevation, and
our tonnage continued, with very little fluctuation, to subside lower
and lower.[57] On the other hand, the present war, with regard to our
commerce, has the white mark of as singular felicity. If, from internal
causes, as well as the consequence of hostilities, the tide ebbed in
1793, it rushed back again with a bore in the following year, and from
that time has continued to swell and run every successive year higher
and higher into all our ports. The value of our exports last year above
the year 1792 (the mere increase of our commerce during the war) is
equal to the average value of all the exports during the wars of William
and Anne.

It has been already pointed out, that our imports have not kept pace
with our exports: of course, on the face of the account, the balance of
trade, both positively and comparatively considered, must have been much
more than ever in our favor. In that early little tract of mine, to
which I have already more than once referred, I made many observations
on the usual method of computing that balance, as well as the usual
objection to it, that the entries at the Custom-House were not always
true. As you probably remember them, I shall not repeat them here. On
the one hand, I am not surprised that the same trite objection is
perpetually renewed by the detractors of our national affluence; and on
the other hand, I am gratified in perceiving that the balance of trade
seems to be now computed in a manner much clearer than it used to be
from those errors which I formerly noticed. The Inspector-General
appears to have made his estimate with every possible guard and caution.
His opinion is entitled to the greatest respect. It was in substance, (I
shall again use the words of the Report, as much better than my own,)
"that the true balance of our trade amounted, on a medium of the four
years preceding January, 1796, to upwards of 6,500,00_l._ per annum,
exclusive of the profits arising from our East and West India trade,
which he estimates at upwards of 4,000,000_l._ per annum, exclusive of
the profits derived from our fisheries." So that, including the
fisheries, and making a moderate allowance for the exceedings, which Mr.
Irving himself supposes, beyond his calculation, without reckoning what
the public creditors themselves pay to themselves, and without taking
one shilling from the stock of the landed interest, our colonies, our
Oriental possessions, our skill and industry, our commerce and
navigation, at the commencement of this year, were pouring a new annual
capital into the kingdom, hardly half a million short of the whole
interest of that tremendous debt from which we are taught to shrink in
dismay, as from an overwhelming and intolerable oppression.

If, then, the real state of this nation is such as I have described,
(and I am only apprehensive that you may think I have taken too much
pains to exclude all doubt on this question,)--if no class is lessened
in its numbers, or in its stock, or in its conveniences, or even its
luxuries,--if they build as many habitations, and as elegant and as
commodious as ever, and furnish them with every chargeable decoration
and every prodigality of ingenious invention that can be thought of by
those who even incumber their necessities with superfluous
accommodation,--if they are as numerously attended,--if their equipages
are as splendid,--if they regale at table with as much or more variety
of plenty than ever,--if they are clad in as expensive and changeful a
diversity, according to their tastes and modes,--if they are not
deterred from the pleasures of the field by the charges which government
has wisely turned from the culture to the sports of the field,--if the
theatres are as rich and as well filled, and greater and at a higher
price than ever,--and (what is more important than all) if it is plain,
from the treasures which are spread over the soil or confided to the
winds and the seas, that there are as many who are indulgent to their
propensities of parsimony as others to their voluptuous desires, and
that the pecuniary capital grows instead of diminishing,--on what ground
are we authorized to say that a nation gambolling in an ocean of
superfluity is undone by want? With what face can we pretend that they
who have not denied any one gratification to any one appetite have a
right to plead poverty in order to famish their virtues and to put their
duties on short allowance? that they are to take the law from an
imperious enemy, and can contribute no longer to the honor of their
king, to the support of the independence of their country, to the
salvation of that Europe which, if it falls, must crush them with its
gigantic ruins? How can they affect to sweat and stagger and groan under
their burdens, to whom the mines of Newfoundland, richer than those of
Mexico and Peru, are now thrown in as a make-weight in the scale of
their exorbitant opulence? What excuse can they have to faint, and
creep, and cringe, and prostrate themselves at the footstool of ambition
and crime, who, during a short, though violent struggle, which they have
never supported with the energy of men, have amassed more to their
annual accumulation than all the well-husbanded capital that enabled
their ancestors, by long and doubtful and obstinate conflicts, to
defend and liberate and vindicate the civilized world? But I do not
accuse the people of England. As to the great majority of the nation,
they have done whatever, in their several ranks and conditions and
descriptions, was required of them by their relative situations in
society: and from those the great mass of mankind cannot depart, without
the subversion of all public order. They look up to that government
which they obey that they may be protected. They ask to be led and
directed by those rulers whom Providence and the laws of their country
have set over them, and under their guidance to walk in the ways of
safety and honor. They have again delegated the greatest trust which
they have to bestow to those faithful representatives who made their
true voice heard against the disturbers and destroyers of Europe. They
suffered, with unapproving acquiescence, solicitations, which they had
in no shape desired, to an unjust and usurping power, whom they had
never provoked, and whose hostile menaces they did not dread. When the
exigencies of the public service could only be met by their voluntary
zeal, they started forth with an ardor which outstripped the wishes of
those who had injured them by doubting whether it might not be necessary
to have recourse to compulsion. They have in all things reposed an
enduring, but not an unreflecting confidence. That confidence demands a
full return, and fixes a responsibility on the ministers entire and
undivided. The people stands acquitted, if the war is not carried on in
a manner suited to its objects. If the public honor is tarnished, if the
public safety suffers any detriment, the ministers, not the people, are
to answer it, and they alone. Its armies, its navies, are given to them
without stint or restriction. Its treasures are poured out at their
feet. Its constancy is ready to second all their efforts. They are not
to fear a responsibility for acts of manly adventure. The responsibility
which they are to dread is lest they should show themselves unequal to
the expectation of a brave people. The more doubtful may be the
constitutional and economical questions upon which they have received so
marked a support, the more loudly they are called upon to support this
great war, for the success of which their country is willing to
supersede considerations of no slight importance. Where I speak of
responsibility, I do not mean to exclude that species of it which the
legal powers of the country have a right finally to exact from those who
abuse a public trust: but high as this is, there is a responsibility
which attaches on them from which the whole legitimate power of the
kingdom cannot absolve them; there is a responsibility to conscience and
to glory, a responsibility to the existing world, and to that posterity
which men of their eminence cannot avoid for glory or for shame,--a
responsibility to a tribunal at which not only ministers, but kings and
parliaments, but even nations themselves, must one day answer.

FOOTNOTES:

[37] The Archduke Charles of Austria.

[38] Dec 27, 1790.

[39] Observations on a Late State of the Nation.

[40] This and the following tables on the same construction are compiled
from the Reports of the Finance Committee in 1791 and 1797, with the
addition of the separate paper laid before the House of Commons, and
ordered to be printed, on the 7th of February, 1792.

                BRICKS AND TILES.
Years of Peace.    £    | Years of War.    £
1787            94,521  | 1793          122,975
1788            96,278  | 1794          106,811
1789            91,773  | 1795           83,804
1790           104,409  | 1796           94,668
               -------  |               -------   Increase to 1790
              £386,981  |              £408,258         £21,277.
                                                  Increase to 1791
1791          £115,382 4 Years to 1791 £407,842         £416.


                      PLATE.
Years of Peace.    £    | Years of War.    £
1787            22,707  | 1793           25,920
1788            23,295  | 1794           23,637
1789            22,453  | 1795           25,607
1790            18,433  | 1796           28,513
               -------  |               -------   Increase to 1790
               £86,888  |              £103,677         £16,789.
                                                  Increase to 1791
1791           £31,528 4 Years to 1791  £95,704          £7,973.

                   GLASS PLATES.
Years of Peace.    £    | Years of War.    £
1787              ----  | 1793            5,655
1788             5,496  | 1794            5,456
1789             4,686  | 1795            5,839
1790             6,008  | 1796            8,871
               -------  |               -------
               £16,190  |               £25,821
                                                  Increase to 1791
1791            £7,880  4 Years to 1791 £24,070          £1,751.



[41]

                     GROCERIES.
Years of Peace.    £    | Years of War.    £
1787           167,389  | 1793          124,655
1788           133,191  | 1794          195,840
1789           142,871  | 1795          208,242
1790           156,311  | 1796          159,826
               -------  |               -------   Increase to 1790
              £599,762  |              £688,563         £88,081.
                                                  Increase to 1791
1791          £236,727 4 Years to 1791 £669,100         £19,463.

                       TEA.
Years of Peace.    £    | Years of War.    £
1787           424,144  | 1793          477,644
1788           426,660  | 1794          467,132
1789           539,575  | 1795          507,518
1790           417,736  | 1796          526,307
               -------  |               -------   Increase to 1790
            £1,808,115  |            £1,978,601        £170,486.
                                                  Increase to 1791
1791          £448,709  4 Years to 1791 £1,832,680     £145,921.

The additional duty imposed in 1795 produced in that year 137,656_l._,
and in 1796, 200,107_l._

                  COFFEE AND COCOA-NUTS.
Years of Peace.    £    | Years of War.    £
1787            17,006  | 1793           36,846
1788            30,217  | 1794           49,177
1789            34,784  | 1795           27,913
1790            38,647  | 1796           19,711
               -------  |               -------   Increase to 1790
              £120,654  |              £133,647        £12,993.
                                                  Decrease to 1791
1791           £41,194  4 Years to 1791 £144,842       £11,195.

The additional duty of 1795 in that year gave 16,775_l._, and in 1796,
15,319_l._

[42]

                      SUGAR.
Years of Peace.    £    | Years of War.     £
1787         1,065,109  | 1793           1,473,139
1788         1,184,458  | 1794           1,392,965
1789         1,905,106  | 1795           1,338,246
1790         1,069,108  | 1796           1,474,899
             ---------  |                ---------   Increase to 1790
            £4,413,781  |               £5,679,249    £1,265,468.
                                                     Increase to 1791
1791        £1,044,781  4 Years to 1791 £4,392,725    £1,286,524.

There was a new duty on sugar in 1791, which produced in 1794
234,292_l._, in 1795, 206,932_l._, and in 1796, 245,024_l._ It is not
clear from the report of the committee, whether the additional duty is
included in the account given above.

[43]

                     BEER, &c.
Years of Peace.    £    | Years of War.      £
1787         1,761,429  | 1793           2,043,902
1788         1,705,199  | 1794           2,082,053
1789         1,742,514  | 1795           1,931,101
1790         1,858,043  | 1796           2,294,377
             ---------  |                ---------   Increase to 1790
            £7,067,185  |               £8,351,433    £1,284,248.
                                                     Increase to 1791
1791        £1,880,478  4 Years to 1791 £7,186,234    £1,165,199.

                        WINE.
Years of Peace.    £    | Years of War.      £
1787           219,934  |      1793        222,887
1788           215,578  |      1794        283,644
1789           252,649  |      1795        317,072
1790           308,624  |      1796        187,818
               -------  |                  -------   Increase to 1790
              £996,785  |               £1,011,421      £14,636.
                                                     Decrease to 1791
1791          £336,549  4 Years to 1791 £1,113,400      £101,979.

                  QUANTITY IMPORTED.
Years of Peace.  Tuns.  | Years of War.    Tuns.
1787            22,978  |      1793        22,788
1786            26,442  |      1794        27,868
1789            27,414  |      1795        32,033
1790            29,182  |      1796        19,079

The additional duty of 1795 produced that year 736,871_l._, and in 1796,
432,689_l._ A second additional duty, which produced 98,165_l._ was laid
in 1796.

                      SWEETS.
Years of Peace.    £    | Years of War.    £
1787            11,167  |      1793      11,016
1788             7,375  |      1794      10,612
1789             7,202  |      1795      13,321
1790             4,953  |      1796      15,050
                ------  |                ------  Increase to 1790
               £30,697  |               £49,999      £19,302.
                                                 Increase to 1791
1791           £13,282  4 Years to 1791 £32,812      £17,187.

In 1795 an additional duty was laid on this article, which produced that
year 5,679_l._, and in 1796, 9,443_l._; and in 1796 a second, to
commence on the 20th of June: its produce in that year was 2,325_l._

[44]

             MUSLINS AND  CALICOES.
Years of Peace.    £    | Years of War.    £
1787           129,297  | 1793          173,050
1788           138,660  | 1794          104,902
1789           126,267  | 1795          103,857
1790           128,865  | 1796          272,544
               -------  |               -------   Increase to 1790
              £522,589  |              £654,353        £131,764.

This table begins with 1788. The net produce of the preceding year is
not in the report whence the table is taken.

[45]

                  PRINTED GOODS.
Years of Peace.  £          Years of War.  £
1787           142,000  |     1793      191,566
1788           154,486  |     1794      190,554
1789           153,202  |     1795      197,416
1790           157,156  |     1796      230,530
               -------  |               -------  Increase to 1790
              £616,844  |              £810,066     £193,222.
                                                 Increase to 1791
1791         £191,489  4 Years to 1791 £666,333     £143,733.


These duties for 1787 are blended with several others. The proportion of
printed goods to the other articles for four years was found to be one
fourth. That proportion is here taken.

[46]

                     SILK.
Years of Peace.  £         Years of War.    £
1787           166,912  |     1793       209,915
1788           123,998  |     1794       221,306
1789           157,730  |     1795       210,725
1790           212,522  |     1796       221,007
               -------  |                -------  Increase to 1790
              £661,162  |               £862,953     £201,791.
                                                  Increase to 1791
1791          £279,128  4 Years to 1791 £773,378      £89,575.



[47]

                    FURS.
Years of Peace.   £      Years of War.    £
1787             3,464 |  1793           2,829
1788             2,958 |  1794           3,353
1789             1,151 |  1795           3,666
1790             3,328 |  1796           6,138
                ------ |                ------   Increase to 1790
               £10,901 |               £15,986      £5,085.
                                                 Increase to 1791
1791            £5,731  4 Years to 1791 £13,168     £2,815.

The skins here selected from the Custom-House accounts are, _Black Bear,
Ordinary Fox, Marten, Mink, Musquash, Otter, Raccoon_, and _Wolf_.

[48] Report of the Lords' Committee of Secrecy, ordered to be printed
28th April, 1797, Appendix 44.

                  INCLOSURE BILLS.
Years of Peace         | Years of War.
1789             33    |  1793           60
1790             25    |  1794           74
1791             40    |  1795           77
1792             40    |  1796           72
                ---    |                ---
                138    |                283



[49]

            NAVIGATION AND CANAL BILLS.
Years of Peace.        |   Years of War.
1789              3    | 1793              28
1790              8    | 1794              18
1791             10    | 1795              11
1792              9    | 1796              12
                 --    |                   --
                 80    |                   69

Money raised £2,377,200           £ 7,115,100



[50]

               POST-HORSE DUTY.
Years of Peace.   £    | Years of War.     £
1785          169,410  | 1793           191,488
1788          204,659  | 1794           202,884
1789          170,554  | 1795           196,691
1790          181,155  | 1796           204,061
             --------  |               --------   Increase to 1790
             £725,778  |               £795,124      £69,346.
                                                  Increase to 1791
1791         £198,634  4 Years to 1791 £755,002      £40,122.


[51] The above account is taken from a paper which was ordered by the
House of Commons to be printed 8th December, 1796. From the gross
produce of the year ending 5th April, 1796, there has been deducted in
that statement the sum of 36,666_l._, in consequence of the regulation
on franking, which took place on the 5th May, 1795, and was computed at
40,000_l._ per ann. To show an equal number of years, both of peace and
war, the accounts of two preceding years are given in the following
table, from a report made since Mr. Burke's death by a committee of the
House of Commons appointed to consider the claims of Mr. Palmer, the
late Comptroller-General; and for still greater satisfaction, the number
of letters, inwards and outwards, have been added, except for the year
1790-1791. The letter-book for that year is not to be found.



                       POST-OFFICE.
                                       |       Number of Letters.
            Gross Revenue              |--------------------------------
                                £      |    Inwards.    |   Outwards.
April, 1790-1791             575,079   |    --------    |   ---------
       1791-1792             585,432   |   6,391,149    |   5,081,344
       1792-1793             627,592   |   6,584,867    |   5,041,137
       1793-1794             691,268   |   7,094,777    |   6,537,234
       1794-1795             705,319   |   7,071,029    |   7,473,626
       1795-1796             750,637   |   7,641,077    |   8,597,167

From the last-mentioned report it appears that the accounts have not
been completely and authentically made up for the years ending 5th
April, 1796 and 1797; but on the Receiver-General's books there is an
increase of the latter year over the former, equal to something more
than 5 per cent.

[52] In a debate, 30th December, 1796, on the return of Lord
Malmesbury.--See Woodfall's Parliamentary Debates, Vol. XIII. p. 591.

[53]

               GENERAL LICENSES.
Years of Peace.    £   | Years of War.     £
1787            44,030 |  1793          45,568
1788            40,882 |  1794          42,129
1789            39,917 |  1795          43,350
1790            41,970 |  1796          41,190
               ------- |               -------     Increase to 1790
              £166,799 |              £170,237         £3,438.
                                                   Increase to 1791
1791           £44,240 4 Years to 1791   £167,009      £3,228.


[54]

             DEALERS IN TEA.
Years of Peace.  £     | Years of War.    £
1787           10,934  | 1793         13,939
1788           11,949  | 1794         14,315
1789           12,501  | 1795         13,956
1790           13,126  | 1796         14,830
              -------  |             -------     Increase to 1790
              £48,510  |             £57,040        £8,530.
                                                 Increase to 1791
1791        £13,921   4 Years to 1791  £51,497        £5,543.


              SELLERS OF PLATE.
Years of Peace.  £     | Years of War.   £
1787            6,593  | 1793          8,178
1788            7,953  | 1794          8,296
1789            7,348  | 1795          8,128
1790            7,988  | 1796          8,835
              -------  |             -------     Increase to 1790
              £29,832  |             £33,437        £3,555.
                                                 Increase to 1791
1791         £8,327 4 Years to 1791  £31,616      £1,821.



[55]

             AUCTIONS AND AUCTIONEERS.
Years of Peace.  £     | Years of War.  £
1787           48,964  | 1793         70,004
1788           53,993  | 1794         82,659
1789           52,024  | 1795         86,890
1790           53,156  | 1796        109,594
              -------  |             -------     Increase to 1790
             £208,137  |            £349,147        £141,010.
                                                 Increase to 1791
1791        £70,973 4 Years to 1791 £230,146        £119,001.



[56] Since Mr. Burke's death a Fourth Report of the Committee of Finance
has made its appearance. An account is there given from the Stamp-Office
of the gross produce of duties on Hawkers and Peddlers for four years of
peace and four of war. It is therefore added in the manner of the other
tables.

             HAWKERS AND PEDDLERS.
Years of Peace.    £   |Years of War.  £
1789            6,132  | 1793        6,042
1790            6,708  | 1794        6,104
1791            6,482  | 1795        6,795
1792            6,008  | 1796        7,882
              -------  |           -------
              £25,330  |           £26,823

Increase in 4 Years of War          £1,493


[57] This account is extracted from different parts of Mr. Chalmers's
estimate. It is but just to mention, that in Mr. Chalmers's estimate the
sums are uniformly lower than those of the same year in Mr Irving's
account.


END OF VOL. V.





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