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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund
+Burke, Vol. V. (of 12), by Edmund Burke
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12)
+
+Author: Edmund Burke
+
+Release Date: April 24, 2005 [EBook #15701]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: Unicode UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BURKE VOL 5 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Paul Murray, Susan Skinner and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team from images generously made
+available by the Bibliothèque nationale de France
+(BnF/Gallica) at http://gallica.bnf.fr
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Works of the Right Honourable
+Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12), by Edmund Burke
+
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