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<pre>

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.net


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 Bibliotheque nationale de France
(BnF/Gallica) at http://gallica.bnf.fr






</pre>

<p><a name="Page_-3" id="Page_-3" /></p>

<hr style="width: 65%;" />

<h2>THE WORKS
<br /><br />
<span style="font-size: 71%">OF</span>
<br /><br />
THE RIGHT HONOURABLE<br />

<br />
<span style="font-size: 200%">EDMUND BURKE</span></h2>

<h3>IN TWELVE VOLUMES<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: smaller">VOLUME THE FIFTH</span></h3>
<p />
<div style="text-align: center">
<img src="images/001.png" alt="BURKE COAT OF ARMS." title="BURKE COAT OF ARMS" />
</div>
<p />
<p style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0"><b>London</b><br />
<br />

JOHN C. NIMMO<br />
<br />
14, KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND, W.C.<br />

MDCCCLXXXVII<br /></p>



<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<h2><a name="CONTENTS_OF_VOL_V" id="CONTENTS_OF_VOL_V" />CONTENTS OF VOL. V.</h2>
<p><a name="Page_-2" id="Page_-2"></a><a name="Page_-1" id="Page_-1"></a></p>


<ul  class="TOC"><li><a href="#OBSERVATIONS">OBSERVATIONS ON THE CONDUCT OF THE MINORITY, PARTICULARLY IN THE
LAST SESSION OF PARLIAMENT, 1793</a>                                       <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></span></li>

<li><a href="#PREFACE_TO_BRISSOTS_ADDRESS">PREFACE TO THE ADDRESS OF M. BRISSOT TO HIS CONSTITUENTS;
  WITH AN APPENDIX</a>                                                    <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_65">65</a></span></li>

<li><a href="#WILLIAM_ELLIOT_ESQ">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</a>                                               <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_107">107</a></span></li>

<li><a href="#THOUGHTS_AND_DETAILS">THOUGHTS AND DETAILS ON SCARCITY</a>                                     <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_131">131</a></span></li>

<li><a href="#ATTACKS_MADE_UPON_MR_BURKE">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, 1790</a>                                             <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_171">171</a></span></li>

<li><a href="#THREE_LETTERS">THREE LETTERS TO A MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT ON THE PROPOSALS FOR
PEACE WITH THE REGICIDE DIRECTORY OF FRANCE.</a></li>

    <li><ul class="TOCSub"><li><a href="#LETTER_I">LETTER I. ON THE OVERTURES OF PEACE</a>                              <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_233">233</a></span></li>

    <li><a href="#LETTER_II">LETTER II. ON THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF THE FRENCH
    REVOLUTION AS IT REGARDS OTHER NATIONS</a>                           <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_342">342</a></span></li>

    <li><a href="#LETTER_III">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</a>                                       <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_384">384</a></span></li></ul></li></ul>

<p><a name="Page_0" id="Page_0" title="0"></a><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1" title="1" class="pagenum"></a></p>


<p><a name="OBSERVATIONS" id="OBSERVATIONS" /></p>
<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<h2>OBSERVATIONS<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 60%;">ON THE</span><br />
<br />
CONDUCT OF THE MINORITY<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 60%;">PARTICULARLY IN THE</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 80%;">LAST SESSION OF PARLIAMENT.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 60%;">ADDRESSED TO</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 80%;">THE DUKE OF PORTLAND AND
LORD FITZWILLIAM.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 60%;">1793.</span></h2>
<p><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2" title="2" class="pagenum"></a></p>
<p><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3" title="3" class="pagenum"></a></p>



<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<h2>LETTER<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 60%;">TO</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 90%;">HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF PORTLAND.</span></h2>


<p>My dear Lord,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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 <i>abroad</i><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4" title="4" class="pagenum"></a>
is not so much mended as to make me, for one, full
of confidence. At <i>home</i>, 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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_5" id="Page_5" title="5" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_6" id="Page_6" title="6" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

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

<p>Your Grace's most faithful friend,</p>

<p>And most obedient humble servant,</p>

<p>EDMUND BURKE.</p>

<p>BEACONSFIELD, Sept. 29, 1793.<a name="Page_7" id="Page_7" title="7" class="pagenum"></a></p>



<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<h2>OBSERVATIONS.</h2>


<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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 name="Page_8" id="Page_8" title="8" class="pagenum"></a>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 <i>could</i> 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.</p>

<p>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:&mdash;&quot;That
their confidence in Mr. Fox is confirmed,
strengthened, and increased by the calumnies against
him.&quot;</p>

<p>To that resolution my two noble friends, the Duke
of Portland and Lord Fitzwilliam, have given their
concurrence.<a name="Page_9" id="Page_9" title="9" class="pagenum"></a></p>

<p>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 <i>calumnies</i>, but founded on truth,&mdash;that
they are not <i>few</i>, but many,&mdash;and that they are not
<i>light and trivial</i>, but, in a very high degree, serious
and important.</p>

<p>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, <i>according to our ancient domestic and
appropriated mode of holding them</i>.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_10" id="Page_10" title="10" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>To come to particulars.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>This proceeding of Mr. Fox does not (as I conceive)
amount to absolute high treason,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>The legitimate and sure mode of communication
between this nation and foreign powers is rendered
uncertain, precarious, and treacherous, by being di<a name="Page_11" id="Page_11" title="11" class="pagenum"></a>vided
into two channels,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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,&mdash;an evil from which, before this time,
England was more free than any other nation. Nothing
can preserve us from that evil&mdash;which connects
cabinet factions abroad with popular factions here&mdash;but
the keeping sacred the crown as the only channel
of communication with every other nation.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.<a name="Page_12" id="Page_12" title="12" class="pagenum"></a></p>

<p>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 &quot;<i>The Friends of
the People</i>.&quot; 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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_13" id="Page_13" title="13" class="pagenum"></a>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,&mdash;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,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_14" id="Page_14" title="14" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>5. Not having consulted any of the Duke of Portland's
party in the House of Commons,&mdash;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,&mdash;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
<i>abroad</i>, 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,&mdash;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
<a name="Page_15" id="Page_15" title="15" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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 <i>that part which related to
the cabals and conspiracies of the French faction in England</i>,
although their practices and correspondences
were of public notoriety. Mr. Cooper and Mr. Watt
<a name="Page_16" id="Page_16" title="16" class="pagenum"></a>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 <i>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</i>; 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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_17" id="Page_17" title="17" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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 <i>second</i> time.</p>

<p>10. Although the House does not usually sit on
Saturday, he a <i>third</i> 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.<a name="Page_18" id="Page_18" title="18" class="pagenum"></a></p>

<p>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,&mdash;describing
it to be, as that was, a contrivance of knaves,
and believed only by well-meaning dupes and madmen.</p>

<p>12. The Monday following (the 17th of December)
he pursued the same conduct. The means used
in England to co&ouml;perate 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
<a name="Page_19" id="Page_19" title="19" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>13. Mr. Fox's whole conduct, on this occasion,
was without example. The very morning after these
<a name="Page_20" id="Page_20" title="20" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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
<i>The Friends of the Liberty of the Press</i>. 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 <i>The Friends
of the People</i>, 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) <i>made use of his
name and authority in favor of its formation and purposes</i>.
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
<a name="Page_21" id="Page_21" title="21" class="pagenum"></a>deserved such marked applauses for acting merely as
a lawyer for his fee, in the ordinary course of his profession.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>17. In the same manner, and with the same heat,
<a name="Page_22" id="Page_22" title="22" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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,&mdash;declaring that he
hoped no alliance with those powers was made, or
was in a train of being made.<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor" title=" 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.">[1]</a> He always expressed
himself with the utmost horror concerning such alli<a name="Page_23" id="Page_23" title="23" class="pagenum"></a>ances.
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.</p>

<p>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)
<i>with a declaration against intermeddling in the interior
concerns of France</i>. 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, <i>even when there
is no war</i>. 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.<a name="Page_24" id="Page_24" title="24" class="pagenum"></a></p>

<p>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 <i>separate</i> 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.</p>

<p>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 in<a name="Page_25" id="Page_25" title="25" class="pagenum"></a>terposed
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 co&ouml;peration
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
<a name="Page_26" id="Page_26" title="26" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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:&mdash;&quot;Everything
which we could reasonably hope from war would be
obtained from treaty.&quot; 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 recogni<a name="Page_27" id="Page_27" title="27" class="pagenum"></a>tion
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, <i>on
principle, not on temporary convenience</i>, 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,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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,
<a name="Page_28" id="Page_28" title="28" class="pagenum"></a>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,&mdash;&quot;<i>That every state, in the conclusion of a war,
has a right to avail itself of its conquests towards an
indemnification</i>.&quot; 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 <i>own</i> 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
<a name="Page_29" id="Page_29" title="29" class="pagenum"></a>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 <i>the people</i> 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 <i>must</i>
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 <i>sans-culottes</i>, (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,&mdash;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,
<a name="Page_30" id="Page_30" title="30" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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 <i>in the
same conduct</i> which had procured to him so honorable
a mark of the public approbation. He was as good
as his word.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_31" id="Page_31" title="31" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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, <i>that they should
move the people without doors to petition against the
war</i>. 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 co&ouml;perate with the handbill in
bringing forward matter calculated to inflame the
manufacturers throughout the kingdom.</p>

<p>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
<i>moral</i> forum some of these powers certainly deserve
all the ill he said of them; but the <i>political</i> 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 to<a name="Page_32" id="Page_32" title="32" class="pagenum"></a>gether.
In consequence of his knowledge that we
<i>could</i> not effectually do <i>without</i> them, and his resolution
that we <i>should</i> not act <i>with</i> them, he proposed,
that, having, as he asserted, &quot;obtained the only
avowed object of the war (the evacuation of Holland)
we ought to conclude an instant peace.&quot;</p>

<p>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 <i>immediate</i> 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,&mdash;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
<a name="Page_33" id="Page_33" title="33" class="pagenum"></a>of the members of the Convention, who spoke with
their vote, (without a disavowal from any,) to be perpetrated
as an example to <i>all</i> kings and a precedent
for <i>all</i> 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,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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<a name="Page_34" id="Page_34" title="34" class="pagenum"></a>
Holland itself. For suppose France, encouraged and
strengthened as she must have been by our treacherous
desertion,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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 <i>other</i> nations. They had not,
however, been so to <i>us</i> 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
<a name="Page_35" id="Page_35" title="35" class="pagenum"></a>circumstance which made an essential difference between
them and France. I need not, therefore, be at
the trouble of contesting this point,&mdash;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,
<i>if they please</i>, 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,&mdash;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 <i>Brissotins</i>,
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,&mdash;or rather, (as it
seemed to me,) to surrender at discretion.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_36" id="Page_36" title="36" class="pagenum"></a>was not willing to contest that point with them, but
plainly and explicitly (as I understood him) proposed
to let them keep it,&mdash;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 <i>casus f&#339;deris</i>. 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,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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 <i>that the people of England raise a clamor
against the war before terms are so much as proposed
on any side</i>. 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
<a name="Page_37" id="Page_37" title="37" class="pagenum"></a>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,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>33. It is impossible not to connect the arguments
and proceedings of a party with that of its leader,&mdash;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 com<a name="Page_38" id="Page_38" title="38" class="pagenum"></a>bination
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.</p>

<p>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 <i>causes</i> 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 circumstan<a name="Page_39" id="Page_39" title="39" class="pagenum"></a>ces
which <i>they</i> 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 <i>one side</i> of the
question. It is at least as unjustifiable to inflame
the passions of such judges against <i>that side</i> 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.</p>

<p>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 <i>Propagandists</i>, 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
<a name="Page_40" id="Page_40" title="40" class="pagenum"></a>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,&mdash;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 <i>them</i>; it is easy to persuade
them, that, for their part, <i>they</i> have nothing
to lose,&mdash;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
<a name="Page_41" id="Page_41" title="41" class="pagenum"></a>readily become not an indifferent spectator of the
war, but would be ready to enlist in the faction of
the enemy,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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, &quot;Peace and alliance with France, and war with
the rest of the world.&quot;</p>

<p>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;&mdash;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
<a name="Page_42" id="Page_42" title="42" class="pagenum"></a>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
<a name="Page_43" id="Page_43" title="43" class="pagenum"></a>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,&mdash;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 P&eacute;tion
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<a name="Page_44" id="Page_44" title="44" class="pagenum"></a>
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.</p>

<p>38. So far as to the French practices with regard
to France and the other powers of Europe. As to
<a name="Page_45" id="Page_45" title="45" class="pagenum"></a>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 &quot;in every country the people is the legitimate
sovereign&quot;: exactly conformable to the declaration
of the French clubs and legislators:&mdash;&quot;La
souverainet&eacute; est <i>une, indivisible, inalienable, et imprescriptible</i>;
elle appartient &agrave; la nation; aucune <i>section</i>
du peuple ni aucun <i>individu</i> ne peut s'en attribuer
l'exercise.&quot; 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.</p>

<p>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,
<a name="Page_46" id="Page_46" title="46" class="pagenum"></a>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,&mdash;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
<i>elective</i>,&mdash;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,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>40. Not the least alarming of the proceedings of
Mr. Fox and his friends in this session, especially
<a name="Page_47" id="Page_47" title="47" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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) <i>coming
from a club or association, signed by individuals, denoting
neither local residence nor corporate capacity</i>. 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<a name="Page_48" id="Page_48" title="48" class="pagenum"></a>
Convention. The audacious remonstrance, I observe,
is signed by all of that association (the Friends of the
People) <i>who are not in Parliament</i>, and it was supported
most strenuously by all the associators <i>who are
members</i>, 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.</p>

<p>42. This charge the party of Mr. Fox maintained
article by article, beginning with the first,&mdash;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
<a name="Page_49" id="Page_49" title="49" class="pagenum"></a>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) <i>with the mass of the people</i>, 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 <i>French</i> democracy or arbitrary monarchy can
possibly exist.</p>

<p>43. Some of these gentlemen who have attacked
the House of Commons lean to a representation of the
people by the head,&mdash;that is, to <i>individual representation</i>.
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, <i>that this individual representation
is the only plan of their reform which has been
explicitly proposed</i>. In the mean time, the conduct
<a name="Page_50" id="Page_50" title="50" class="pagenum"></a>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 <i>as it stands</i>, 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.</p>

<p>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,&mdash;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<a name="Page_51" id="Page_51" title="51" class="pagenum"></a>
Commons which does not speak the sense of the
people.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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 re<a name="Page_52" id="Page_52" title="52" class="pagenum"></a>form,
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,&mdash;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 <i>impossible</i> 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 <i>compound Constitution</i> of ours
is subverted, either in favor of unlimited monarchy
or of wild democracy, that ruin will <i>most certainly</i> 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
<a name="Page_53" id="Page_53" title="53" class="pagenum"></a>think he is to be indulged in these perilous amusements.</p>

<p>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,&mdash;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
<a name="Page_54" id="Page_54" title="54" class="pagenum"></a>dangerously; for it shows these good intentions are
not under the direction of safe maxims and principles.</p>

<p>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;&mdash;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,<a name="Page_55" id="Page_55" title="55" class="pagenum"></a>
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,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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, &quot;that their confidence in and attachment
to Mr. Fox has lately been confirmed, strengthened,
and increased by the calumnies&quot; (as they are called)
&quot;against him.&quot; 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,
<a name="Page_56" id="Page_56" title="56" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_57" id="Page_57" title="57" class="pagenum"></a>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 <i>controlled</i>, 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.</p>

<p>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 weak<a name="Page_58" id="Page_58" title="58" class="pagenum"></a>ening
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,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>52. Whatever might have been in our power at
an early period, at this day I see no remedy for what
<a name="Page_59" id="Page_59" title="59" class="pagenum"></a>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 <i>of the House of Commons</i>,
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 <i>indirectly</i>, when you cannot <i>directly
punish</i> 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,
<a name="Page_60" id="Page_60" title="60" class="pagenum"></a>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
<i>in this session</i> 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,&mdash;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
<a name="Page_61" id="Page_61" title="61" class="pagenum"></a>any one political conjecture can be more certain
than this.</p>

<p>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 <i>this</i> very time, and
in <i>this</i> 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,&mdash;and
that, if it is suffered to exist in France, we must
in England, and speedily too, fall into that calamity.</p>

<p>54. I figure to myself the purpose of these gentlemen
accomplished, and this ministry destroyed. I
<a name="Page_62" id="Page_62" title="62" class="pagenum"></a>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,&mdash;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
<a name="Page_63" id="Page_63" title="63" class="pagenum"></a>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,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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.<a name="Page_64" id="Page_64" title="64" class="pagenum"></a></p>

<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> 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.</p></div>
</div>
<p><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65" title="65" class="pagenum"></a></p>

<p><a name="PREFACE_TO_BRISSOTS_ADDRESS" id="PREFACE_TO_BRISSOTS_ADDRESS" /></p>
<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<h2>PREFACE<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 60%;">TO THE</span><br />
<br />
ADDRESS OF M. BRISSOT<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 80%;">TO HIS CONSTITUENTS.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 60%;">TRANSLATED BY</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 80%;">THE LATE WILLIAM BURKE, ESQ.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 60%;">1794.</span></h2>

<p><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66" title="66" class="pagenum"></a></p>
<p><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67" title="67" class="pagenum"></a></p>



<hr style="width: 65%;" />

<p>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.</p>

<p>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,)&mdash;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
<a name="Page_68" id="Page_68" title="68" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_69" id="Page_69" title="69" class="pagenum"></a>most serious apprehensions for the common liberty
and safety.</p>

<p>A question will very naturally be asked,&mdash;What
could induce Brissot to draw such a picture? He
must have been sensible it was his own. The answer
is,&mdash;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,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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, mo<a name="Page_70" id="Page_70" title="70" class="pagenum"></a>rality,
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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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 <i>Cato</i> of the republican party,
which did not abound in such characters.</p>

<p>This man, like most of the chiefs, was the manager
of a newspaper, in which he promoted the in<a name="Page_71" id="Page_71" title="71" class="pagenum"></a>terest
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 Clavi&egrave;re 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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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,<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor" title=" Presented to the king June 13; delivered to him the preceding
Monday.&mdash;TRANSLATOR.">[2]</a> 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
<a name="Page_72" id="Page_72" title="72" class="pagenum"></a>whole mass of the republicans in every part of
France.</p>

<p>Under the thin veil of <i>prediction</i>, he strongly <i>recommends</i>
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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_73" id="Page_73" title="73" class="pagenum"></a>reward of his treason to his old master, Roland was
by his new masters named Minister of the Home Department.</p>

<p>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;&mdash;he had for his colleague the bloody
Danton, who was Minister of Justice; the insidious
P&eacute;tion 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 inter<a name="Page_74" id="Page_74" title="74" class="pagenum"></a>cession
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.</p>

<p>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,<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor" title=" Letter to the National Assembly, signed, _The Minister of the
Interior_, ROLAND; dated Paris, Sept. 3rd, _4th year of Liberty_.">[3]</a>) he writes a long,
elaborate, verbose epistle to the Assembly, in which,
after magnifying, according to the <i>bon-ton</i> 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,&mdash;who was universally
known to carry his dread of shedding the blood of
his most guilty subjects to an excess.</p>

<p>&quot;Without the day of the 10th,&quot; says he, &quot;it is evident
that we should have been lost. The court, pre<a name="Page_75" id="Page_75" title="75" class="pagenum"></a>pared
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, (<i>le sentiment</i>,) always just and
ready when their opinion is not corrupted, foresaw
the epoch marked for their destruction, and rendered
it fatal to the conspirators.&quot; 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:&mdash;&quot;It is in the nature of things,&quot; continues
he, &quot;and in that of the human heart, that victory
should bring with it <i>some</i> excess. The sea, agitated
by a violent storm, roars <i>long</i> after the tempest; but
<i>everything has bounds</i>, which ought <i>at length</i> to be observed.&quot;</p>

<p>In this memorable epistle, he considers such <i>excesses</i>
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 <i>long</i>.
But he would have things to cease <i>at length</i>. But
when? and where?&mdash;When they may approach his
own person.</p>

<p>&quot;<i>Yesterday</i>,&quot; says he, &quot;the ministers <i>were denounced:
vaguely</i>, indeed, as to the <i>matter</i>, 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.
<i>Yesterday, again</i>, in an assembly of the presidents
of all the sections, convoked by the ministers, with
the view of conciliating all minds, and of mutual
<a name="Page_76" id="Page_76" title="76" class="pagenum"></a>explanation, I perceived <i>that distrust which suspects,
interrogates, and fetters operations</i>.&quot;</p>

<p>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
&quot;that their hidden enemies may make use of this
<i>agitation</i>&quot; (the tender appellation which he gives to
horrid massacre) &quot;to hurt <i>their best friends and their
most able defenders. Already the example begins</i>: let
it restrain and arrest a <i>just</i> rage. Indignation carried
to its height commences proscriptions which fall
only on the <i>guilty</i>, but in which error and particular
passions may shortly involve the <i>honest man</i>.&quot;</p>

<p>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 <i>one</i> alarm that was
serious. This letter of Roland, in every part of it,
lets out the secret of all the parties in this Revolution.
<i>Plena rimarum est; hoc atque illac perfluit</i>. We see
that none of them condemn the occasional practice of
murder,&mdash;provided it is properly applied,&mdash;provided
it is kept within the bounds which each of those parties
think proper to prescribe. In this case Roland
<a name="Page_77" id="Page_77" title="77" class="pagenum"></a>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 P&eacute;tions, and to himself. Under this apprehension
there is no doubt that his humane feelings were
altogether unaffected.</p>

<p>His observations on the massacre of the preceding
day are such as cannot be passed over. &quot;Yesterday,&quot;
said he, &quot;was a day upon the events of which
it is perhaps necessary to leave a <i>veil</i>. I know that
the people with their vengeance <i>mingled a sort of justice</i>:
they did not take for victims <i>all</i> who presented
themselves to their fury; they directed it to <i>them who
had for a long time been spared by the sword of the
law</i>, and who they <i>believed</i>, from the peril of circumstances,
should be sacrificed without delay. But I
know that it is easy to <i>villains and traitors</i> to misrepresent
this <i>effervescence</i>, and that it must be checked;
I know that we owe to all France the declaration, that
the <i>executive power</i> 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.&quot;</p>

<p>In the midst of this carnage he thinks of nothing
but throwing a veil over it,&mdash;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
<a name="Page_78" id="Page_78" title="78" class="pagenum"></a>so much indignation at &quot;vague denunciations,&quot; 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 &quot;<i>vengeance</i> mingled with a <i>sort
of justice</i>&quot;; he observes that they &quot;had been a long
time spared by the sword of the law,&quot; and calls by anticipation
all those who should represent this &quot;<i>effervescence</i>&quot;
in other colors <i>villains and traitors</i>: 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 &quot;<i>villany and
treason</i>&quot;, in the hope of obliterating the memory of
their former real <i>villanies and treasons</i>; 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
&quot;<i>effervescence</i>&quot; as another &quot;<i>St. Bartholomew</i>&quot; and
speak of it as &quot;<i>having made humanity shudder, and
sullied the Revolution forever</i>.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor" title=" See p. 12 and p. 13 of this translation.">[4]</a></p>

<p>It is very remarkable that he takes upon himself
to know the motives of the assassins, their policy, and
even what they &quot;believed.&quot; How could this be, if
he had no connection with them? He praises the
murderers for not having taken as yet <i>all</i> the lives
of those who had, as he calls it, &quot;<i>presented themselves</i>
as victims to their fury.&quot; He paints the miserable
<a name="Page_79" id="Page_79" title="79" class="pagenum"></a>prisoners, who had been forcibly piled upon one
another in the Church of the Carmelites by his faction,
as <i>presenting themselves</i> as victims to their fury,&mdash;as
if death was their choice, or (allowing the
idiom of his language to make this equivocal) as if
they were by some accident <i>presented</i> 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 <i>sort of justice</i> 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,&mdash;for he presented
it to the Assembly on the very next.</p>

<p>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 &quot;<i>vengeance mixed with a
sort of justice</i>,&quot; as an &quot;<i>excess</i> which he could neither
foresee nor prevent.&quot; 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,&mdash;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
<i>must</i> bring with it some <i>excess</i>,&mdash;that &quot;the sea roars
<i>long</i> after the tempest.&quot; So far as to his foresight.
As to his disposition to prevent, if he had foreseen,
<a name="Page_80" id="Page_80" title="80" class="pagenum"></a>the massacres of that day,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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,&mdash;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 &quot;vengeance
mingled with a sort of justice,&quot; was before a grave
assembly, the authors of the massacres proceeded
without interruption in their business for four days
together,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>Through the whole of this long letter of Roland, it
is curious to remark how the nerve and vigor of his
<a name="Page_81" id="Page_81" title="81" class="pagenum"></a>style, which had spoken so potently to his sovereign,
is relaxed when he addresses himself to the <i>sans-culottes,</i>&mdash;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 <i>agitation</i>,
sometimes <i>effervescence</i>, sometimes <i>excess</i>, sometimes
too continued an exercise of a <i>revolutionary
power</i>.</p>

<p>However, after what had passed had been praised,
or excused, or pardoned, he declares loudly against
such proceedings <i>in future</i>. 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.</p>

<p>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,
<a name="Page_82" id="Page_82" title="82" class="pagenum"></a>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 <i>sans-culottes</i>, 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.</p>

<p>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, P&eacute;tion, Vergniaud, Isnard, Condorcet,
&amp;c., &amp;c., &amp;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
<a name="Page_83" id="Page_83" title="83" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>The Parisians, on their part, were not slow in tak<a name="Page_84" id="Page_84" title="84" class="pagenum"></a>ing
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,&mdash;&quot;that in future
times it might be inquired on what part of the Seine
Paris had stood.&quot; 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 <i>the republic one and indivisible</i> (whose unity
they contended could only be preserved by the supremacy
of Paris) into a number of <i>confederate</i> commonwealths.
The Girondin faction on this account
received also the name of <i>Federalists</i>.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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 Jacobini&egrave;re of Paris,
to which they were (to use their own term) <i>affiliated</i>.
No authority of magistracy, judicial or executive,
<a name="Page_85" id="Page_85" title="85" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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 <i>most sacred
of all duties, that of insurrection</i>. Another era of holy
insurrection commenced the 31st of last May. As
the first fruits of that insurrection grafted on in<a name="Page_86" id="Page_86" title="86" class="pagenum"></a>surrection,
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.</p>

<p>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
co&ouml;peration 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.<a name="Page_87" id="Page_87" title="87" class="pagenum"></a></p>

<p>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,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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 As<a name="Page_88" id="Page_88" title="88" class="pagenum"></a>sembly.
He admits that neither he nor they <i>ever
publicly</i> 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.</p>

<p>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; <i>we are principals in the danger, and ought to be
principals in the exertion</i>. 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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_89" id="Page_89" title="89" class="pagenum"></a>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. &quot;We must&quot; (says our philosopher)
&quot;<i>set fire to the four corners of Europe</i>&quot;; in
that alone is our safety. &quot;<i>Dumouriez cannot suit us</i>.
I always distrusted him. Miranda is the general for
us: he understands the <i>revolutionary power</i>; he has
<i>courage, lights</i>,&quot; &amp;c.<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor" title=" See the translation of Mallet Du Pan's work, printed for Owen,
p. 53.">[5]</a> 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 Bris<a name="Page_90" id="Page_90" title="90" class="pagenum"></a>sot.
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
&quot;which he grazed.&quot; In the beginning of his work
he displays &quot;the task of glory,&quot; as he calls it, which
presented itself at the opening of the Convention.
All is summed up in two points: &quot;To create the
French Republic; <i>to disorganize Europe; perhaps to
purge it of its tyrants by the eruption of the volcanic
principles of equality</i>.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor" title=" See the translation of the History of the Brissotins by Camille
Desmoulins, printed for Owen, p. 2.">[6]</a> The coincidence is exact;
the proof is complete and irresistible.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_91" id="Page_91" title="91" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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,&mdash;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 transla<a name="Page_92" id="Page_92" title="92" class="pagenum"></a>tion
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.<a name="Page_93" id="Page_93" title="93" class="pagenum"></a></p>

<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Presented to the king June 13; delivered to him the preceding
Monday.&mdash;TRANSLATOR.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Letter to the National Assembly, signed, <i>The Minister of the
Interior</i>, ROLAND; dated Paris, Sept. 3rd, <i>4th year of Liberty</i>.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> See p. 12 and p. 13 of this translation.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> See the translation of Mallet Du Pan's work, printed for Owen,
p. 53.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> See the translation of the History of the Brissotins by Camille
Desmoulins, printed for Owen, p. 2.</p></div>
</div>


<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<h2>APPENDIX.</h2>

<div class="blockquot"><p>[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.]</p></div>


<p>Three sorts of anarchy have ruined our affairs
in Belgium.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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 <i>right</i>,
would establish equality of fact? This is universal
<a name="Page_94" id="Page_94" title="94" class="pagenum"></a>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 Cranc&eacute;, to which it will be indebted
for a complete disorganization.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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, confid<a name="Page_95" id="Page_95" title="95" class="pagenum"></a>ing
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.</p>

<p>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,&mdash;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 <i>revolutionary power</i>, which
has so justly aggravated the hatred of the Belgians
against France?</p>

<p>What did enlightened republicans think before the
10th of August, men who wished for liberty, <i>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</i>.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>This system was at first followed.<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor" title=" The most seditious libels upon all governments, in order to excite
insurrection in Spain, Holland, and other countries,&mdash;TRANSLATOR.">[7]</a> Excellent pam<a name="Page_96" id="Page_96" title="96" class="pagenum"></a>phlets
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 <i>the revolutionary
power</i>. 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.</p>

<p>How could the Belgic people believe themselves
free, since we exercise for them, and over them, the
rights of sovereignty,&mdash;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
<a name="Page_97" id="Page_97" title="97" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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.<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor" title=" 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.&mdash;TRANSLATOR.">[8]</a><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98" title="98" class="pagenum"></a></p>

<p>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.</p>

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

<p>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 <i>revolutionary
power</i>.</p>

<p>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,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>Do you believe the Belgians have ever been the
<a name="Page_99" id="Page_99" title="99" class="pagenum"></a>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,<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor" title=" See the correspondence of Dumouriez, especially the letter of
the 12th of March.">[9]</a> and fear
forced the remainder? Who, at this time of day,
is unacquainted with the springs and wires of their
miserable puppet-show? <i>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?</i> 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.</p>

<p>If we would attach the Belgians to us, we must at
least enlighten their minds by <i>good writings</i>; we must
send to them <i>missionaries</i>, and not despotic commissioners.<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor" title=" 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.&mdash;TRANSLATOR.">[10]</a>
We ought to give them time to see,&mdash;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
<a name="Page_100" id="Page_100" title="100" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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: &quot;You
have nobles and priests among you: drive them out
without delay, or we will neither be your brethren
nor your patrons.&quot; They answered: &quot;Give us but
time; only leave to us the care of reforming these
institutions.&quot; Our answer to them was: &quot;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.&quot;</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>Have not the strangest artifices been adopted to
<a name="Page_101" id="Page_101" title="101" class="pagenum"></a>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.&mdash;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. <i>The Belgians have seen in this forced
introduction of assignats nothing but a double robbery</i>;
and they have only the more violently hated the
union with France.</p>

<p>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!</p>

<p>Did not this language energetically enough signify
<a name="Page_102" id="Page_102" title="102" class="pagenum"></a>that they looked upon the assignats as a leprosy, and
the union as a deadly contagion?</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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<i>l.</i> sterling)
<i>to make the vagabonds of Brussels drunk, and to
buy proselytes to the union in all the States</i>. But
even these means, it was said, will obtain but a
weak minority in our favor. What does that signify?
<i>Revolutions</i>, said they, <i>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</i>.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_103" id="Page_103" title="103" class="pagenum"></a>the war with Holland, he saw nothing but gold to
seize on, and assignats to sell at par.<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor" title=" 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,&mdash;are they not armed to
defend, in concert with us, their liberty?&mdash;BRISSOT.">[11]</a> &quot;Do not
let us dissemble,&quot; said he one day to the Committee
of General Defence, in presence even of the patriot
deputies of Holland, &quot;you have no ecclesiastical
goods to offer us for our indemnity. IT IS
A REVOLUTION IN THEIR COUNTERS AND
IRON CHESTS<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor" title=" _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.&mdash;TRANSLATOR.">[12]</a> that must be made amongst the
DUTCH.&quot; The word was said, and the bankers Abema
and Van Staphorst understood it.</p>

<p>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?</p>

<p>Do you believe that the patriots of Amsterdam,
when they read the preparatory decree which gave
France an execution on their goods,&mdash;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?<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor" title=" In the original _les reduire &agrave; la sansculotterie_.">[13]</a> Robbery
<a name="Page_104" id="Page_104" title="104" class="pagenum"></a>and anarchy, instead of encouraging, will always stifle
revolutions.</p>

<p>&quot;But why,&quot; they object to me, &quot;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?&quot;</p>

<p>There are two answers to make here,&mdash;one general,
one particular.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

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

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

<p>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.</p>

<p>What has been the tactic displayed during all
these unions? Cambon, incapable of political calculation,
boasting his ignorance in the diplomatic, flat<a name="Page_105" id="Page_105" title="105" class="pagenum"></a>tering
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.<a name="Page_106" id="Page_106" title="106" class="pagenum"></a></p>

<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> The most seditious libels upon all governments, in order to excite
insurrection in Spain, Holland, and other countries,&mdash;TRANSLATOR.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> 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 <i>an herd of slaves</i>. 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.
</p><p>
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 <i>cataract</i>
by which the Netherlands were <i>blinded</i>, 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 <i>present
state of France</i>! The reader will remark, that the only difference
between Brissot and his adversaries is in the <i>mode</i> of bringing other
nations into the pale of the French republic. <i>They</i> 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.&mdash;TRANSLATOR.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> See the correspondence of Dumouriez, especially the letter of
the 12th of March.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> They have not as yet proceeded farther with regard to the English
dominions. Here we only see as yet <i>the good writings</i> of Paine,
and of his learned associates, and the labors of the <i>missionary clubs</i>,
and other zealous instructors.&mdash;TRANSLATOR.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> 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,&mdash;are they not armed to
defend, in concert with us, their liberty?&mdash;BRISSOT.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> <i>Portefeuille</i> 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
<i>Iron Chests</i>, as coming nearest to the idea.&mdash;TRANSLATOR.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> In the original <i>les reduire &agrave; la sansculotterie</i>.</p></div>
</div>
<p><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107" title="107" class="pagenum"></a></p>
<p><a name="WILLIAM_ELLIOT_ESQ" id="WILLIAM_ELLIOT_ESQ" /></p>
<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<h2><span style="font-size: 60%;">A</span><br />
<br />
LETTER<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 60%;">TO</span><br />
<br />
WILLIAM ELLIOT, ESQ.,<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 60%;">OCCASIONED BY</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 80%;">THE ACCOUNT GIVEN IN A NEWSPAPER OF THE
SPEECH MADE IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS
BY THE **** OF *******</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 60%;">IN THE DEBATE</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 75%;">CONCERNING LORD FITZWILLIAM.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 60%;">1795.</span></h2>

<p><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108" title="108" class="pagenum"></a></p>
<p><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109" title="109" class="pagenum"></a></p>



<hr style="width: 65%;" />

<p class="quotdate">BEACONSFIELD, May 28,1795.</p>

<p>My dear sir,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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 &quot;three times three.&quot; 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, &quot;Mr. Burke, and thanks to him
for the discussion he has provoked.&quot;</p>

<p>I found myself elevated with this honor; for, even
by the collision of resistance, to be the means of
<a name="Page_110" id="Page_110" title="110" class="pagenum"></a>striking out sparkles of truth, if not merit, is at least
felicity.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_111" id="Page_111" title="111" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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 &quot;the field
of glory is a field for all.&quot; 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<a name="Page_112" id="Page_112" title="112" class="pagenum"></a>
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,<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor" title=" Mr. Paine is a Norfolk man, from Thetford.">[14]</a> 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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_113" id="Page_113" title="113" class="pagenum"></a>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. &quot;I must let the tree lie as it falls.&quot;
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 con<a name="Page_114" id="Page_114" title="114" class="pagenum"></a>tend
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 &quot;wisdom
is as the gray hair to man, and that learning is like
honorable old age.&quot; 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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_115" id="Page_115" title="115" class="pagenum"></a>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. &quot;With thrice great
Hermes he has outwatched the Bear.&quot; 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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_116" id="Page_116" title="116" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>In that unfortunate book of mine, which is put in
the <i>Index Expurgatorius</i> 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
<a name="Page_117" id="Page_117" title="117" class="pagenum"></a>it, if, with a torch in his hand, and a rope about
his neck, he makes <i>amende honorable</i> to the <i>sans-culotterie</i>
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.</p>

<p>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 <i>Le Droit de
l'Homme</i>, or <i>La Souveraint&eacute; du Peuple</i> 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 <i>r&eacute;giment de l'&eacute;chafaud</i>.
He will employ the illustrious Citizen Santerre, the
general of his new allies, to instruct the dull Germans
how they shall conduct themselves towards
<a name="Page_118" id="Page_118" title="118" class="pagenum"></a>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 <i>d&eacute;cadi</i> 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 <i>festeggianti</i>.
What shades of his armed ancestors of the
House of Brandenburg will the committee of <i>Illumin&eacute;s</i>
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, <i>a parte ante</i>) to appear like Banquo's royal
procession in the tragedy of Macbeth?</p>

<p>How can I prevent all these arts of royal policy,
and all these displays of royal magnificence? How
<a name="Page_119" id="Page_119" title="119" class="pagenum"></a>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 <i>hair-shirt</i>, and exercise on his broad shoulders
the disciplinary scourge of the holy order of the
<i>Sans-Culottes</i>? 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?</p>

<p>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,&mdash;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;
<a name="Page_120" id="Page_120" title="120" class="pagenum"></a>they might still stand, though some of their <i>conclusums</i>
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,&mdash;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,&mdash;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
<a name="Page_121" id="Page_121" title="121" class="pagenum"></a>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,&mdash;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,&mdash;what signify all
her rigging and sails, her flags, her pendants, and
her streamers,&mdash;what signify even her cannon, her
stores, and her provisions, if all her planks and timbers
be unsound and rotten?</p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span>Quamvis Pontica pinus,<br /></span>
<span>Silv&aelig; filia nobilis,<br /></span>
<span>Jactes et genus et nomen inutile.<br /></span>
</div></div>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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 Eu<a name="Page_122" id="Page_122" title="122" class="pagenum"></a>rope
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
<a name="Page_123" id="Page_123" title="123" class="pagenum"></a>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, &quot;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.&quot;</p>

<p>I wished to warn the people against the greatest
of all evils,&mdash;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,&mdash;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
<a name="Page_124" id="Page_124" title="124" class="pagenum"></a>reforms, perhaps the only sure reform,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_125" id="Page_125" title="125" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>Novelty is not the only source of zeal. Why should
not a Maccab&aelig;us 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
<a name="Page_126" id="Page_126" title="126" class="pagenum"></a>once things are gone out of their ordinary course,
it is by acts out of the ordinary course they can alone
be re&euml;stablished. Republican spirit can only be combated
by a spirit of the same nature,&mdash;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
<a name="Page_127" id="Page_127" title="127" class="pagenum"></a>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. <i>D&icirc;s te minorem quod geris, imperas</i>. This is
the feudal tenure which they cannot alter.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_128" id="Page_128" title="128" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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,
<i>quod nequeo monstrare, et sentio tantum</i>, and which
makes them impatient of the present,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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;&mdash;but this is too big for
your modesty. Oh! this modesty, in time and place,
<a name="Page_129" id="Page_129" title="129" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>Adieu. My dreams are finished.<a name="Page_130" id="Page_130" title="130" class="pagenum"></a></p>

<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> Mr. Paine is a Norfolk man, from Thetford.</p></div>
</div>

<p><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131" title="131" class="pagenum"></a></p>
<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<h2><a name="THOUGHTS_AND_DETAILS" id="THOUGHTS_AND_DETAILS" />THOUGHTS AND DETAILS<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 60%;">ON</span><br />
<br />
SCARCITY.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 60%;">ORIGINALLY PRESENTED</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 85%;">TO THE RIGHT HON. WILLIAM PITT,</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 60%;">IN THE MONTH OF NOVEMBER,</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 60%;">1795.</span></h2>

<hr style="width: 65%;" />

<p><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132" title="132" class="pagenum"></a></p>
<p><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133" title="133" class="pagenum"></a></p>


<p>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,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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 <i>information</i>;
the next is timely coercion: the one to guide
our judgment; the other to regulate our tempers.</p>

<p>To provide for us in our necessities is not in the
power of government. It would be a vain presump<a name="Page_134" id="Page_134" title="134" class="pagenum"></a>tion
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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>When I say that we of the people ought to be in<a name="Page_135" id="Page_135" title="135" class="pagenum"></a>formed,
inclusively I say we ought not to be flattered:
flattery is the reverse of instruction. The <i>poor</i>
in that case would be rendered as improvident as the
rich, which would not be at all good for them.</p>

<p>Nothing can be so base and so wicked as the political
canting language, &quot;the laboring <i>poor</i>.&quot; Let compassion
be shown in action,&mdash;the more, the better,&mdash;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 <i>fraud</i>. It is horrible to call them &quot;the
<i>once happy</i> laborer.&quot;</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_136" id="Page_136" title="136" class="pagenum"></a>they have the advantage of their augmented labor:
yet whether that increase of labor be on the whole
a <i>good</i> or an <i>evil</i> 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.</p>

<p>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,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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,&mdash;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 <i>direct</i> 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
<a name="Page_137" id="Page_137" title="137" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>There is an implied contract, much stronger than
any instrument or article of agreement between the
laborer in any occupation and his employer,&mdash;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 <i>tax</i>; and
if the amount of that tax be left to the will and pleasure
of another, it is an <i>arbitrary tax</i>.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_138" id="Page_138" title="138" class="pagenum"></a>the least affair,&mdash;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?</p>

<p>The vulgar error on this subject arises from a total
confusion in the very idea of things widely different
in themselves,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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 <i>enforced</i>,&mdash;provided that it is not contrary
to pre&euml;xisting 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.</p>

<p>What is doing supposes, or pretends, that the
farmer and the laborer have opposite interests,&mdash;that
the farmer oppresses the laborer,&mdash;and that a gentleman,
called a justice of peace, is the protector of the
latter, and a control and restraint on the former;
<a name="Page_139" id="Page_139" title="139" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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,
<a name="Page_140" id="Page_140" title="140" class="pagenum"></a>the labor of man (what the ancient writers have
called the <i>instrumentum vocale</i>) is that on which he
is most to rely for the repayment of his capital.
The other two, the <i>semivocale</i> in the ancient classification,
that is, the working stock of cattle, and the
<i>instrumentum mutum</i>, 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,&mdash;that is, where it is the most subject to an erroneous
judgment.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>It is therefore the first and fundamental interest of
the laborer, that the farmer should have a full incom<a name="Page_141" id="Page_141" title="141" class="pagenum"></a>ing
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.</p>

<p>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.&mdash;But if the farmer is excessively
avaricious?&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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?</p>

<p>On this head I must be allowed to submit what
my opinions have ever been, and somewhat at large.<a name="Page_142" id="Page_142" title="142" class="pagenum"></a></p>

<p>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?</p>

<p>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,&mdash;what is it but to make
an arbitrary division of his property among them?</p>

<p>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 <i>one</i> man pays
to <i>many</i> 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,&mdash;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
<a name="Page_143" id="Page_143" title="143" class="pagenum"></a>what is below; and they depress high and low together
beneath the level of what was originally the
lowest.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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,&mdash;as if labor was but one thing, and of
one value. But this very broad, generic term, <i>labor</i>,
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
<a name="Page_144" id="Page_144" title="144" class="pagenum"></a>to in forming their judgments on this very enlarged
part of economy.</p>

<p>The laborers in husbandry may be divided,&mdash;First,
Into those who are able to perform the full
work of a man,&mdash;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 <i>can</i> 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.</p>

<p>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. <i>Men</i>, 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. <i>Women</i>, whose em<a name="Page_145" id="Page_145" title="145" class="pagenum"></a>ployment
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. <i>Children</i>, 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.</p>

<p>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 <i>tact</i> 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.</p>

<p>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?</p>

<p>In that case, my opinion is this: Whenever it hap<a name="Page_146" id="Page_146" title="146" class="pagenum"></a>pens
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,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>The cry of the people in cities and towns, though
unfortunately (from a fear of their multitude and
combination) the most regarded, ought, in <i>fact</i>, to be
the <i>least</i> 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 <i>fruges consumere
nati</i>. They are to be heard with great respect
and attention upon matters within their province,&mdash;that
is, on trades and manufactures; but on
anything that relates to agriculture they are to be listened
to with the same <i>reverence</i> which we pay to the
dogmas of other ignorant and presumptuous men.<a name="Page_147" id="Page_147" title="147" class="pagenum"></a></p>

<p>If any one were to tell them that they were to give
in an account of all the stock in their shops,&mdash;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,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>It is a perilous thing to try experiments on the
farmer. The farmer's capital (except in a few per<a name="Page_148" id="Page_148" title="148" class="pagenum"></a>sons
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,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_149" id="Page_149" title="149" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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,&mdash;provided that the most accurate
eye, the most vigilant superintendence, the most
<a name="Page_150" id="Page_150" title="150" class="pagenum"></a>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,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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,&mdash;thus compelling
us to diminish the quantity of labor which in the
vulgar course we actually employ.</p>

<p>What is true of the farmer is equally true of the
middle-man,&mdash;whether the middle-man acts as factor,
jobber, salesman, or speculator, in the markets
<a name="Page_151" id="Page_151" title="151" class="pagenum"></a>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,&mdash;though
by the machinations of the old evil
counsellor, <i>Envy</i>, they are hated and maligned by
both parties.</p>

<p>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 <i>profit</i> 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.</p>

<p>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 <i>consumer</i> and <i>producer</i>, 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
<a name="Page_152" id="Page_152" title="152" class="pagenum"></a>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 <i>axe</i> 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.</p>

<p>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 <i>here</i> is not
much to be feared. It goes on a principle directly
opposite to mine: it presumes that the market is no
fair <i>test</i> of plenty or scarcity. It raises a suspicion,
which may affect the tranquillity of the public mind,
&quot;that the farmer keeps back, and takes unfair advantages
by delay&quot;; on the part of the dealer, it gives
rise obviously to a thousand nefarious speculations.</p>

<p>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.<a name="Page_153" id="Page_153" title="153" class="pagenum"></a></p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>So far in a political light.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_154" id="Page_154" title="154" class="pagenum"></a>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 <i>claim</i>.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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 name="Page_155" id="Page_155" title="155" class="pagenum"></a></p>

<p>A little place like Geneva, of not more than from
twenty-five to thirty thousand inhabitants,&mdash;which
has no territory, or next to none,&mdash;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 <i>siege</i>, or in the speculation of it,&mdash;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,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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,
<a name="Page_156" id="Page_156" title="156" class="pagenum"></a>would grow out of such things even under governments
far more potent than the feeble authority of
the Pope.</p>

<p>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 <i>evil</i>, government will redouble
the causes of it; and then it will become inveterate
and incurable.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_157" id="Page_157" title="157" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>So far as to the principles of general policy.</p>

<p>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,&mdash;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,&mdash;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<i>l</i>. 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 <i>total</i> 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 lit<a name="Page_158" id="Page_158" title="158" class="pagenum"></a>tle
in store. At first, this was not felt, because the
harvest came in unusually early,&mdash;earlier than common
by a full month.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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;&mdash;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.</p>

<p>On threshing, I found things as I expected,&mdash;the
ears not filled, some of the capsules quite empty, and
<a name="Page_159" id="Page_159" title="159" class="pagenum"></a>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<i>l</i>. At the same
time I bought my seed wheat (it was excellent) at
23<i>l</i>. Since then the price has risen, and I have sold
about two load of the same sort at 23<i>l</i>. 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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

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

<p>The turnips of this year are generally good.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.<a name="Page_160" id="Page_160" title="160" class="pagenum"></a></p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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<i>s</i>. the bushel.</p>

<p>In the debate on this subject in the House, I am
told that a leading member of great ability, <i>little conversant
in these matters</i>, 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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>The cause is, indeed, so very plain and obvious that
the wonder is the other way. When a properly di<a name="Page_161" id="Page_161" title="161" class="pagenum"></a>rected
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 <i>must</i> be dear.</p>

<p>But to take up the matter somewhat more in detail.&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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 sus<a name="Page_162" id="Page_162" title="162" class="pagenum"></a>tenance.
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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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
<i>cause</i> of a scarcity in that article which arose from
the proceedings of men themselves: I mean the stop
put to the distillery.<a name="Page_163" id="Page_163" title="163" class="pagenum"></a></p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>The distillery in itself produces an immense article
of trade almost all over the world,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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 &quot;is hurled
on <i>gin</i>&quot; always I am thunder-proof. The alembic,
in my mind, has furnished to the world a far greater
benefit and blessing than if the <i>opus maximum</i> had
been really found by chemistry, and, like Midas, we
could turn everything into gold.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_164" id="Page_164" title="164" class="pagenum"></a>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 <i>any great</i> 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,&mdash;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,&mdash;wine, beer, opium, brandy,
or tobacco.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_165" id="Page_165" title="165" class="pagenum"></a>and lean fowls for four-and-twenty shillings,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>After all, have we not reason to be thankful to the
Giver of all Good? In our history, and when &quot;the
laborer of England is said to have been once happy,&quot;
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
<a name="Page_166" id="Page_166" title="166" class="pagenum"></a>and superintendence of the poor, far greater than
any I remember.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>It is one of the finest problems in legislation, and
what has often engaged my thoughts whilst I followed
that profession,&mdash;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,&mdash;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 <i>truly and
properly</i> public,&mdash;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,
<a name="Page_167" id="Page_167" title="167" class="pagenum"></a>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 <i>cannot</i> 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,&mdash;what belongs to laws, and what
manners alone can regulate. To these great politicians
may give a leaning, but they cannot give a
law.</p>

<p>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,&mdash;<span title='[Greek: ESSETAI HMAP]'>&#904;&#931;&#931;&#917;&#932;&#913;&#921; &#905;&#924;&#913;&#929;</span>
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.<a name="Page_168" id="Page_168" title="168" class="pagenum"></a>
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.</p>

<p>Tyranny and cruelty may make men justly wish
<a name="Page_169" id="Page_169" title="169" class="pagenum"></a>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,&mdash;the meddling
with the subsistence of the people.<a name="Page_170" id="Page_170" title="170" class="pagenum"></a></p>
<p><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171" title="171" class="pagenum"></a></p>


<p><a name="ATTACKS_MADE_UPON_MR_BURKE" id="ATTACKS_MADE_UPON_MR_BURKE" /></p>
<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<h2><span style="font-size: 60%;">A</span><br />
<br />
LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 60%;">ON</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 80%;">THE ATTACKS MADE UPON MR. BURKE AND HIS
PENSION, IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS,</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 60%;">BY</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 80%;">THE DUKE OF BEDFORD AND THE
EARL OF LAUDERDALE,</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 60%;">EARLY IN THE PRESENT SESSION OF PARLIAMENT.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 60%;">1796.</span>
</h2>
<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<p><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172" title="172" class="pagenum"></a></p>
<p><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173" title="173" class="pagenum"></a></p>


<p>My lord,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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,&mdash;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
<a name="Page_174" id="Page_174" title="174" class="pagenum"></a>was left undischarged by the Priestleys and the
Paines.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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?</p>

<p>My Lord, it is a subject of awful meditation. Be<a name="Page_175" id="Page_175" title="175" class="pagenum"></a>fore
this of France, the annals of all time have not
furnished an instance of a <i>complete</i> 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 <i>instantly</i> 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.&mdash;&quot;Leave
me, oh, leave me to repose!&quot;<a name="Page_176" id="Page_176" title="176" class="pagenum"></a></p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_177" id="Page_177" title="177" class="pagenum"></a>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 <i>our</i> Constitution to estimate such things has been
pleased to set them.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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 pro<a name="Page_178" id="Page_178" title="178" class="pagenum"></a>found
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,&mdash;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,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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,&mdash;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 <i>quantum meruit</i>. 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.<a name="Page_179" id="Page_179" title="179" class="pagenum"></a></p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_180" id="Page_180" title="180" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>Astronomers have supposed, that, if a certain comet,
<a name="Page_181" id="Page_181" title="181" class="pagenum"></a>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 &quot;from
its horrid hair shakes pestilence and war,&quot; and &quot;with
fear of change perplexes monarchs,&quot;) 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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_182" id="Page_182" title="182" class="pagenum"></a>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,&mdash;there, the same inaction,
from a stupid insensibility to it; here, well-wishers
to the mischief,&mdash;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,&mdash;sat
with a sort of superintendence over it,&mdash;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.</p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span>Ipse diem noctemque negat discernere c&#339;lo,<br /></span>
<span>Nec meminisse vi&aelig; medi&acirc; Palinurus in und&acirc;.<br /></span>
</div></div>

<p>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
<a name="Page_183" id="Page_183" title="183" class="pagenum"></a>they cultivated what they loved. The liberty they
pursued was a liberty inseparable from order, from
virtue, from morals, and from religion,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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,
<a name="Page_184" id="Page_184" title="184" class="pagenum"></a>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,&mdash;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
co&ouml;perated 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&mdash;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,&mdash;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
<a name="Page_185" id="Page_185" title="185" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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 prop<a name="Page_186" id="Page_186" title="186" class="pagenum"></a>erty
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 <i>should</i>
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,&mdash;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.<a name="Page_187" id="Page_187" title="187" class="pagenum"></a></p>

<p>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,&mdash;<i>To innovate
is not to reform</i>. The French revolutionists complained
of everything; they refused to reform anything;
and they left nothing, no, nothing at all, <i>unchanged</i>.
The consequences are <i>before</i> us,&mdash;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 &quot;all
monstrous, all prodigious things,&quot; 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.<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor" title="


Tristius haud illis monstrum, nec s&aelig;vior ulla
Pestis et ira De&ucirc;m Stygiis sese extulit undis.
Virginei volucrum vultus, f&#339;dissima ventris
Proluvies, unc&aelig;que 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.">[15]</a><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188" title="188" class="pagenum"></a></p>

<p>If his Grace can contemplate the result of this complete
innovation, or, as some friends of his will call
it, <i>reform</i>, 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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_189" id="Page_189" title="189" class="pagenum"></a>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,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>On a careful review, therefore, and analysis of all
<a name="Page_190" id="Page_190" title="190" class="pagenum"></a>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 <i>general</i> limit, it might eat up the civil list service,&mdash;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 <i>only</i>, the reduction of which to some sort of
estimate was my great object.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_191" id="Page_191" title="191" class="pagenum"></a>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<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor" title=" London, J. Dodsley, 1792, 3 vols. 4to.&mdash;Vol. II. pp. 324-336,
in the present edition.">[16]</a> 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.</p>

<p>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.<a name="Page_192" id="Page_192" title="192" class="pagenum"></a>
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 <i>intention</i>. In
that, surely, they are not mistaken.</p>

<p>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.<a name="Page_193" id="Page_193" title="193" class="pagenum"></a></p>

<p>To their estimate I leave the matter. I was not,
like his Grace of Bedford, swaddled and rocked and
dandled into a legislator: &quot;<i>Nitor in adversum</i>&quot; 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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_194" id="Page_194" title="194" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>Did I blame the pensions given to Mr. Barr&eacute; 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,&mdash;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 <i>public service</i>, 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
<a name="Page_195" id="Page_195" title="195" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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 <i>part</i> 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.<a name="Page_196" id="Page_196" title="196" class="pagenum"></a>
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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_197" id="Page_197" title="197" class="pagenum"></a>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 pre&euml;minence.</p>

<p>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,&mdash;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 <i>sans-culottes</i>. There is
nothing in it that is fit for a gentleman to learn.</p>

<p>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 <i>grown</i> 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<a name="Page_198" id="Page_198" title="198" class="pagenum"></a>
Grenville and Mr. Pitt for a motto what was said of a
Roman censor or pr&aelig;tor (or what was he?) who in
virtue of a <i>Senatusconsultum</i> shut up certain academies,&mdash;&quot;<i>Cludere
ludum impudenti&aelig; jussit</i>.&quot; 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.</p>

<p>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,&mdash;assuring
you that I shall never altogether lose sight of
such matter as persons abler than I am may turn
to some profit.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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 <i>me</i>, but took the subject-matter from the crown
<a name="Page_199" id="Page_199" title="199" class="pagenum"></a>grants <i>to his own family</i>. This is &quot;the stuff of
which his dreams are made.&quot; 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 &quot;he lies floating many a rood,&quot; 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 <i>him</i> to question
the dispensation of the royal favor?</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_200" id="Page_200" title="200" class="pagenum"></a>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,
&quot;'Tis his estate: that's enough. It is his by law:
what have I to do with it or its history?&quot; He would
naturally have said, on his side, &quot;'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.&quot;</p>

<p>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 <i>sans-culottes</i> (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
<a name="Page_201" id="Page_201" title="201" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_202" id="Page_202" title="202" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>Mine was from a mild and benevolent sovereign:
his from Henry the Eighth.</p>

<p>Mine had not its fund in the murder of any innocent
person of illustrious rank,<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor" title=" See the history of the melancholy catastrophe of the Duke of
Buckingham. Temp. Hen. VIII.">[17]</a> 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.</p>

<p>The merit of the grantee whom he derives from
was that of being a prompt and greedy instrument
of a <i>levelling</i> tyrant, who oppressed all descriptions
of his people, but who fell with particular fury on
everything that was <i>great and noble</i>. 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.</p>

<p>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,
<a name="Page_203" id="Page_203" title="203" class="pagenum"></a>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 <i>all</i> prescriptive titles, thence to the pillage of <i>all</i>
property, and thence to universal desolation.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_204" id="Page_204" title="204" class="pagenum"></a>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,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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,&mdash;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,&mdash;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,&mdash;to preserve, while they can
be preserved, pure and untainted, the ancient, in<a name="Page_205" id="Page_205" title="205" class="pagenum"></a>bred
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.</p>

<p>The labors of his Grace's founder merited the
&quot;curses, not loud, but deep,&quot; of the Commons of
England, on whom <i>he</i> and his master had effected
a <i>complete Parliamentary Reform</i>, 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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_206" id="Page_206" title="206" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor" title=" At si non aliam venturo fata Neroni, etc.">[18]</a> Duke of
Bedford and his opulence as props to a tottering
<a name="Page_207" id="Page_207" title="207" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_208" id="Page_208" title="208" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_209" id="Page_209" title="209" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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.<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor" title=" Sir George Savile's act, called The _Nullum Tempus_ Act.">[19]</a> The
Duke of Bedford will stand as long as prescriptive
law endures,&mdash;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 in<a name="Page_210" id="Page_210" title="210" class="pagenum"></a>termixture
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.</p>

<p>Such are <i>their</i> ideas, such <i>their</i> religion, and such
<i>their</i> law. But as to <i>our</i> country and <i>our</i> 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,<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor" title=" &quot;Templum in modum arcis.&quot;&mdash;TACITUS, of the temple of Jerusalem.">[20]</a> shall stand
inviolate on the brow of the British Sion,&mdash;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 co&euml;val towers, as long as this awful structure
shall oversee and guard the subjected land,&mdash;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,&mdash;the triple cord
which no man can break,&mdash;the solemn, sworn, con<a name="Page_211" id="Page_211" title="211" class="pagenum"></a>stitutional
frank-pledge of this nation,&mdash;the firm
guaranties of each other's being and each other's
rights,&mdash;the joint and several securities, each in
its place and order, for every kind and every quality
of property and of dignity,&mdash;as long as these
ensure, so long the Duke of Bedford is safe, and
we are all safe together,&mdash;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,&mdash;</p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span>Dum domus &AElig;ne&aelig; Capitol&icirc; immobile saxum<br /></span>
<span>Accolet, imperiumque pater Romanus habebit.<br /></span>
</div></div>

<p>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,&mdash;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 amalga<a name="Page_212" id="Page_212" title="212" class="pagenum"></a>mated
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 <i>&Ccedil;a, ira</i> in the courts of Bedford
(then Equality) House.</p>

<p>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,&mdash;what
their opinions are,&mdash;what they have done, and to
whom,&mdash;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,
<a name="Page_213" id="Page_213" title="213" class="pagenum"></a>that <i>the whole duty of man</i> 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.</p>

<p>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 dis<a name="Page_214" id="Page_214" title="214" class="pagenum"></a>cern
their savage character. They seemed tame,
and even caressing. They had nothing but <i>douce
humanit&eacute;</i> 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 <i>mauvais
plaisant</i>. 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
<a name="Page_215" id="Page_215" title="215" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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 per<a name="Page_216" id="Page_216" title="216" class="pagenum"></a>verted
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 &quot;compunctious visitings of Nature&quot; 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,&mdash;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
<a name="Page_217" id="Page_217" title="217" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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,&mdash;fitted for nothing but to fatten
bullocks, and to produce grain for beer, still more
to stupefy the dull English understanding. Abb&eacute;
Siey&egrave;s 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 flow<a name="Page_218" id="Page_218" title="218" class="pagenum"></a>ered;
some distinguished for their simplicity, others
for their complexity; some of blood color, some of
<i>boue de Paris</i>; 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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_219" id="Page_219" title="219" class="pagenum"></a>the gunpowder of <i>ruins</i> is far the fittest for making
other <i>ruins</i>, and so <i>ad infinitum</i>. 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,&mdash;and,
well sifted, and lixiviated, to crystallize into true,
democratic, explosive, insurrectionary nitre. Their
Academy <i>del Cimento</i>, (<i>per antiphrasin</i>,) with Morveau
and Hassenfratz at its head, have computed that
the brave <i>sans-culottes</i> may make war on all the aristocracy
of Europe for a twelvemonth out of the rubbish
of the Duke of Bedford's buildings.<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor" title=" 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,&mdash;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 &quot;had not yet been properly and in a _revolutionary_ manner explored,&quot;&mdash;&quot;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 Vend&eacute;e, will soon furnish
wherewithal to tame the traitors and to overwhelm the disaffected,&quot;&mdash;&quot;The
_rebellious cities_, also, have afforded a large quantity of saltpetre.
_Commune Affranchie_&quot; (that is, the noble city of Lyons, reduced
in many parts to an heap of ruins) &quot;and Toulon will pay a _second_
tribute to our artillery.&quot;&mdash;_Report, 1st February_, 1794.">[21]</a><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220" title="220" class="pagenum"></a></p>

<p>While the Morveaux and Priestleys are proceeding
with these experiments upon the Duke of Bedford's
houses, the Siey&egrave;s, 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.</p>

<p>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 <i>nation</i>,&mdash;and that it would
be more wise for him, if he wishes to live the natural
term of a <i>citizen</i>, (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 <i>serjeants</i>-at-law of the rights of man will say
to the puny <i>apprentices</i> of the common law of England.</p>

<p>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
<i>canaille</i> from intruding on the retirement of
<a name="Page_221" id="Page_221" title="221" class="pagenum"></a>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 <i>sans-culottes</i> 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,&mdash;whether the
color be purple, or blue and buff. They will not
trouble <i>their</i> heads with what part of <i>his</i> 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.</p>

<p>Is it not a singular phenomenon, that, whilst the
<i>sans-culotte</i> 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 <i>him</i>, his Grace is
measuring <i>me</i>,&mdash;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!</p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span style="margin-left: -.5em;">&quot;Pleased to the last, he crops the flowery food,<br /></span>
<span>And licks the hand just raised to shed his blood.&quot;<br /></span>
</div></div><p><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222" title="222" class="pagenum"></a></p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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,&mdash;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,&mdash;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
<a name="Page_223" id="Page_223" title="223" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>On that day I had a loss in Lord Keppel. But the
public loss of him in this awful crisis!&mdash;I speak
from much knowledge of the person: he never would
have listened to any compromise with the rabble rout
<a name="Page_224" id="Page_224" title="224" class="pagenum"></a>of this <i>sans-culotterie</i> 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.</p>

<p>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,&mdash;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
<a name="Page_225" id="Page_225" title="225" class="pagenum"></a>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 &quot;fools aspiring
to be knaves&quot; who began to forge in 1789 the false
money of the French Constitution; that it is one fatal
objection to all <i>new</i> fancied and <i>new fabricated</i> republics,
(among a people who, once possessing such an
advantage, have wickedly and insolently rejected it,)
that the <i>prejudice</i> of an old nobility is a thing that
<i>cannot</i> 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 <i>the thing itself</i> is matter
of <i>inveterate</i> opinion, and therefore <i>cannot</i> 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.</p>

<p>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 Orl&eacute;ans, and the Rochefoucaults,
and the Fayettes, and the Vicomtes de Noailles,
and the false P&eacute;rigords, and the long <i>et cetera</i>
of the perfidious <i>sans-culottes</i> 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
<a name="Page_226" id="Page_226" title="226" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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,&mdash;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?</p>

<p>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,&mdash;that these should be given up to the
cruel sport of the Pichegrus, the Jourdans, the Santerres,
under the Rolands, and Brissots, and Gorsas,
<a name="Page_227" id="Page_227" title="227" class="pagenum"></a>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?</p>

<p>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?</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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 con<a name="Page_228" id="Page_228" title="228" class="pagenum"></a>solidated
and married the liberties and the interests
of the two nations forever,&mdash;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?</p>

<p>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?</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>It would be a most arrogant presumption in me
<a name="Page_229" id="Page_229" title="229" class="pagenum"></a>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.&mdash;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.</p>

<p>I have the honor to be, &amp;c.</p>

<p>EDMUND BURKE.<a name="Page_230" id="Page_230" title="230" class="pagenum"></a></p>

<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a>
</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span>Tristius haud illis monstrum, nec s&aelig;vior ulla<br /></span>
<span>Pestis et ira De&ucirc;m Stygiis sese extulit undis.<br /></span>
<span>Virginei volucrum vultus, f&#339;dissima ventris<br /></span>
<span>Proluvies, unc&aelig;que manus, et pallida semper<br /></span>
<span>Ora fame.<br /></span>
</div></div>
<p class="noindent">
Here the poet breaks the line, because he (and that <i>he</i> 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.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> London, J. Dodsley, 1792, 3 vols. 4to.&mdash;Vol. II. pp. 324-336,
in the present edition.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> See the history of the melancholy catastrophe of the Duke of
Buckingham. Temp. Hen. VIII.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> At si non aliam venturo fata Neroni, etc.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> Sir George Savile's act, called The <i>Nullum Tempus</i> Act.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> &quot;Templum in modum arcis.&quot;&mdash;TACITUS, of the temple of Jerusalem.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> 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,&mdash;on the operations by which they reduce
the magnificent ancient country-seats of the nobility, decorated
with the <i>feudal</i> titles of Duke, Marquis, or Earl, into magazines of
what they call <i>revolutionary</i> gunpowder. They tell us, that hitherto
things &quot;had not yet been properly and in a <i>revolutionary</i> manner explored,&quot;&mdash;&quot;The
strong <i>chateaus</i>, those <i>feudal</i> fortresses, that <i>were ordered
to be demolished</i> attracted next the attention of your committee.
<i>Nature</i> there had <i>secretly</i> regained her <i>rights</i>, and had produced saltpetre,
for the <i>purpose</i>, as it should seem, <i>of facilitating the execution of
your decree by preparing the means of destruction</i>. From these <i>ruins</i>, which
<i>still frown</i> on the liberties of the Republic, we have extracted the means
of producing good; and those piles which have hitherto glutted the
<i>pride of despots</i>, and covered the plots of La Vend&eacute;e, will soon furnish
wherewithal to tame the traitors and to overwhelm the disaffected,&quot;&mdash;&quot;The
<i>rebellious cities</i>, also, have afforded a large quantity of saltpetre.
<i>Commune Affranchie</i>&quot; (that is, the noble city of Lyons, reduced
in many parts to an heap of ruins) &quot;and Toulon will pay a <i>second</i>
tribute to our artillery.&quot;&mdash;<i>Report, 1st February</i>, 1794.</p></div>
</div>
<p><a name="THREE_LETTERS" id="THREE_LETTERS" /></p>
<p><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231" title="231" class="pagenum"></a></p>
<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<h2>THREE LETTERS<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 60%;">ADDRESSED TO</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 90%;">A MEMBER OF THE PRESENT PARLIAMENT,</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 60%;">ON THE</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 80%;">PROPOSALS FOR PEACE WITH THE REGICIDE
DIRECTORY OF FRANCE.</span><br />
<br />
1796-7.</h2>

<p><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232" title="232" class="pagenum"></a></p>
<p><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233" title="233" class="pagenum"></a></p>



<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<h2><a name="LETTER_I" id="LETTER_I" />LETTER I.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 80%;">ON THE OVERTURES OF PEACE.</span></h2>


<p>My Dear Sir,&mdash;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,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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, per<a name="Page_234" id="Page_234" title="234" class="pagenum"></a>haps,
be far advanced in its aphelion,&mdash;but when
to return?</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_235" id="Page_235" title="235" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_236" id="Page_236" title="236" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_237" id="Page_237" title="237" class="pagenum"></a>with her; and in those who kept the most aloof
there was little appearance of jealousy,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_238" id="Page_238" title="238" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_239" id="Page_239" title="239" class="pagenum"></a>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?</p>

<p>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,
<a name="Page_240" id="Page_240" title="240" class="pagenum"></a>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,&mdash;whilst,
as in the Alps, goitre kept goitre in countenance,&mdash;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,&mdash;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 pre&euml;minence 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.</p>

<p>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 in<a name="Page_241" id="Page_241" title="241" class="pagenum"></a>tricate
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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_242" id="Page_242" title="242" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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 su<a name="Page_243" id="Page_243" title="243" class="pagenum"></a>perior
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
<i>sword</i> 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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>I do not know that such an improvident and stupid
selfishness deserves the discussion which perhaps<a name="Page_244" id="Page_244" title="244" class="pagenum"></a>
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 <i>peculium</i> in the war, we have had
some advantages,&mdash;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,&mdash;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,&mdash;when
he had in a manner overrun Lombardy, and
was thundering at the gates of Turin,&mdash;when he had
mastered almost all Germany on this side the Rhine,&mdash;when
he was on the point of ruining the august
fabric of the Empire,&mdash;when, with the Elector of
Bavaria in his alliance, hardly anything interposed
between him and Vienna,&mdash;when the Turk hung
with a mighty force over the Empire on the other
side,&mdash;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
<a name="Page_245" id="Page_245" title="245" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>Our account of the war, <i>as a war of communion</i>, 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.</p>

<p>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 &quot;pale cast
of thought&quot; sicklied over all their enterprises, and
turned all their politics awry. They could not, or
rather they would not, read, in the most unequivocal
<a name="Page_246" id="Page_246" title="246" class="pagenum"></a>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 <i>direction</i> 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,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_247" id="Page_247" title="247" class="pagenum"></a>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 <i>general</i> 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,&mdash;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,&mdash;ill-supported by any of their
constituent parts,&mdash;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,&mdash;of no use but to improve
the dexterity of criminals in the mystery of evasion,
or to show with what complete impunity men may
<a name="Page_248" id="Page_248" title="248" class="pagenum"></a>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.<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor" title=" &quot;Mussabat tacito medicina timore.&quot;">[22]</a> 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,&mdash;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
<a name="Page_249" id="Page_249" title="249" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_250" id="Page_250" title="250" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>We are in a war of a <i>peculiar</i> nature. It is not
with an ordinary community, which is hostile or
friendly as passion or as interest may veer about,&mdash;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 <i>armed doctrine</i> 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,&mdash;no, not in any part.</p>

<p>It is laid in the unalterable constitution of things,&mdash;None
can aspire to act greatly but those who are
<a name="Page_251" id="Page_251" title="251" class="pagenum"></a>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,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_252" id="Page_252" title="252" class="pagenum"></a>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?</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_253" id="Page_253" title="253" class="pagenum"></a>must often seem willing to hazard the whole issue
of his treaty, if he wishes to secure any one material
point.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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,<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor" title=" Mr. Bird, sent to state the real situation of the Duc de Choiseul.">[23]</a>
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
<a name="Page_254" id="Page_254" title="254" class="pagenum"></a>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.&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>In this intercourse, at least, there was nothing to
promise a great deal of success in our future advan<a name="Page_255" id="Page_255" title="255" class="pagenum"></a>ces.
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<a name="FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor" title=" Boissy d'Anglas.">[24]</a>
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.</p>

<p>In their fortune there has been some fluctuation.<a name="Page_256" id="Page_256" title="256" class="pagenum"></a>
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, <i>is a war of government,
begun and carried on against the sense and interests
of the people</i>,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_257" id="Page_257" title="257" class="pagenum"></a>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,&mdash;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 <i>Pluviose</i>, in return for
our advances, charge us with eluding our declarations
under &quot;evasive formalities and frivolous pretexts.&quot;
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 <i>perfidy</i>;
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 &quot;on conditions
<i>as</i> moderate&quot;&mdash;as what? as reason and as equity require?
No,&mdash;as moderate &quot;as are suitable to their
<i>national dignity</i>.&quot; 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,&mdash;no, never by the most violent of conquerors.
Indemnification is capable of some estimate;
<a name="Page_258" id="Page_258" title="258" class="pagenum"></a>dignity has no standard. It is impossible to guess
what acquisitions pride and ambition may think fit
for their <i>dignity</i>. But lest any doubt should remain
on what they think for their dignity, the Regicides
in the next paragraph tell us &quot;that they will have
no peace with their enemies, until they have reduced
them to a state which will put them under an <i>impossibility</i>
of pursuing their wretched projects,&quot;&mdash;that
is, in plain French or English, until they have accomplished
our utter and irretrievable ruin. This
is their <i>pacific</i> 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.</p>

<p>To this conciliatory and amicable public communication
our sole answer, in effect, is this:&mdash;&quot;Citizen
Regicides! whenever <i>you</i> find yourselves in the humor,
you may have a peace with <i>us</i>. 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.&quot;</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_259" id="Page_259" title="259" class="pagenum"></a>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 be<a name="Page_260" id="Page_260" title="260" class="pagenum"></a>come
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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_261" id="Page_261" title="261" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_262" id="Page_262" title="262" class="pagenum"></a>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
pre&euml;minence of regicide was acknowledged,&mdash;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 pre&euml;minence and honor.</p>

<p>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 Barth&eacute;lemy had been established,
on the part of the new republic, at Basle,&mdash;where,
with his proconsulate of Switzerland and the
<a name="Page_263" id="Page_263" title="263" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>On the 6th of March, 1796, Mr. Wickham, in consequence
of authority, was desired to sound France
on her disposition towards a general pacification,&mdash;to
know whether she would consent to send ministers
to a congress at such a place as might be hereafter
agreed upon,&mdash;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 <i>and his
allies</i>, 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 Barth&eacute;lemy upon these subjects.</p>

<p>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.
&quot;They doubt the sincerity of the pacific intentions
of this court.&quot; She did not begin, say they, yet to
&quot;know her real interests.&quot; &quot;She did not seek peace
<i>with good faith</i>.&quot; This, or something to this effect,
has been the constant preliminary observation (now
<a name="Page_264" id="Page_264" title="264" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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 <i>congress</i> for
the purpose of a general pacification, and this they
said &quot;would render negotiation endless.&quot; 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.</p>

<p>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 regu<a name="Page_265" id="Page_265" title="265" class="pagenum"></a>larity
of system, in this case and in all cases, they
pursue their scheme for the utter destruction of
every independent power,&mdash;especially the smaller,
who cannot find any refuge whatever but in some
common cause.</p>

<p>Renewing their taunts and reflections, they tell
Mr. Wickham, &quot;that <i>their</i> policy has no guides but
openness and good faith, and that their conduct shall
be conformable to these principles.&quot; They say concerning
their government, that, &quot;yielding to the ardent
desire by which it is animated to procure peace
for the French Republic and for all nations, it will not
<i>fear to declare itself openly</i>. Charged by the Constitution
with the execution of the <i>laws</i>, it cannot <i>make</i> or
<i>listen</i> 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.&quot;</p>

<p>&quot;With respect to the countries <i>occupied by the
French armies, and which have not been united to
France</i>, 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.&quot; That &quot;the Directory is ready to receive,
in this respect, any overtures that shall be just,
reasonable, and compatible <i>with the dignity of the Republic</i>.&quot;</p>

<p>On the head of what is <i>not</i> 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 <i>you</i>: and you are to guess
what she shall judge just, reasonable, and, above all,
<i>compatible with her dignity</i>.<a name="Page_266" id="Page_266" title="266" class="pagenum"></a></p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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?<a name="Page_267" id="Page_267" title="267" class="pagenum"></a>
Treaties and conventions of parties? No,&mdash;not a
pretence of the kind. It is a declaration not made
in consequence of any prescription on her side,&mdash;not
on any cession or dereliction, actual or tacit, of other
powers. It is a declaration, <i>pendente lite</i>, 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.</p>

<p>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,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_268" id="Page_268" title="268" class="pagenum"></a>be masters of everything human and divine, here, and
here alone, it seems, they are limited, &quot;cooped and
cabined in,&quot; 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.</p>

<p>Nothing can be more proper or more manly than
the state publication, called a <i>Note</i>, 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,<a name="FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor" title=" &quot;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.

&quot;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.

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

&quot;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 re&euml;stablish 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.

&quot;_Downing Street, April 10th_, 1796.&quot;">[25]</a> 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 occa<a name="Page_269" id="Page_269" title="269" class="pagenum"></a>sions
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, &quot;<i>while these dispositions
shall be persisted in, nothing is left for the
king but to prosecute a war that is just and necessary</i>.&quot;</p>

<p>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,&mdash;the overrunning of Lombardy,&mdash;the
subjugation of Piedmont,&mdash;the possession of its impregnable
fortresses,&mdash;the seizing on all the neutral
states of Italy,&mdash;our expulsion from Leghorn,&mdash;instances
forever renewed for our expulsion from
Genoa,&mdash;Spain rendered subject to them and hostile
to us,&mdash;Portugal bent under the yoke,&mdash;half the<a name="Page_270" id="Page_270" title="270" class="pagenum"></a>
Empire overrun and ravaged,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>Here, therefore, they and we were fixed. Nothing
was left to the British ministry but &quot;to prosecute a
war just and necessary,&quot;&mdash;a war equally just as at
the time of our engaging in it,&mdash;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,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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,&mdash;though I confess I
<a name="Page_271" id="Page_271" title="271" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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.&mdash;Another
repulse. We were desired to apply directly
in our persons. We submitted, and made the
application.<a name="Page_272" id="Page_272" title="272" class="pagenum"></a></p>

<p>It might be thought that here, at length, we had
touched the bottom of humiliation; our lead was
brought up covered with mud. But &quot;in the lowest
deep, a lower deep&quot; 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 <i>Punic</i> 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,<a name="FNanchor_26_26" id="FNanchor_26_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor" title=" _Official Note, extracted from the Journal of the Defenders of the
Country_.

&quot;EXECUTIVE DIRECTORY.

&quot;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.

&quot;All these assertions are equally false.

&quot;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 re&euml;stablish
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_.

&quot;_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_.

&quot;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.&quot;">[26]</a> as a dip<a name="Page_273" id="Page_273" title="273" class="pagenum"></a>lomatic
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. &quot;None
but itself can be its parallel.&quot;</p>

<p>I pass by all the insolence and contumely of the
performance, as it comes from them. The present
<a name="Page_274" id="Page_274" title="274" class="pagenum"></a>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 <i>politically</i>,
and as furnishing a direction for our own conduct
in this low business.</p>

<p>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,&mdash;that is, such terms as this Directory stated
in its first declaration, to place us &quot;in an utter
impossibility of executing our wretched projects.&quot;
This is the omen, and the sole omen, under which
we have consented to open our treaty.</p>

<p>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,
&mdash;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
<a name="Page_275" id="Page_275" title="275" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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, <i>then</i>, and in
<i>that</i> 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
<a name="Page_276" id="Page_276" title="276" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>So much for the <i>first</i> 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
<a name="Page_277" id="Page_277" title="277" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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 &quot;the English people see with regret
his Majesty's government squandering away the funds
which had been granted to him.&quot; 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. &quot;If they
do these things in the green tree, what shall be done
in the dry?&quot;</p>

<p>Next they tell us, as a condition to our treaty, that
&quot;this government must abjure the unjust hatred it
bears to them, and at last open its ears to the voice
of humanity.&quot; 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 <i>affettuoso</i> 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
<a name="Page_278" id="Page_278" title="278" class="pagenum"></a>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,&mdash;or, as they ingeniously and pleasantly
express it, &quot;looking out of the little national
window.&quot; 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,<a name="FNanchor_27_27" id="FNanchor_27_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor" title=" &quot;In their place has succeeded a system destructive of all public
order, maintained by proscriptions, exiles, and confiscations without
number,&mdash;by arbitrary imprisonments,&mdash;by massacres which cannot
be remembered without horror,&mdash;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.&quot;&mdash;&quot;They [the Allies] have had to
encounter acts of aggression without pretext, open violations of all
treaties, unprovoked declarations of war,&mdash;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,&mdash;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.&quot;&mdash;&quot;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.&quot;&mdash;&quot;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_.&quot;

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">[27]</a> and still ringing in my ears.<a name="Page_279" id="Page_279" title="279" class="pagenum"></a>
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 &quot;the only orator that left stings in the minds
of his hearers.&quot; Like his, the eloquence of the
Declaration, not contradicting, but enforcing, senti<a name="Page_280" id="Page_280" title="280" class="pagenum"></a>ments
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 <i>cannot</i> love the Republic.</p>

<p>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
&quot;provided with full powers to negotiate a peace between
the French Republic and Great Britain, and
to conclude it <i>definitively</i> between the TWO powers.&quot;
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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_281" id="Page_281" title="281" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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. <i>Reculer pour mieux sauter</i>,
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,&mdash;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,<a name="FNanchor_28_28" id="FNanchor_28_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28_28" class="fnanchor" title=" &quot;Ut lethargicus hic, cum fit pugil, et medicum urget.&quot;&mdash;HOB.">[28]</a> who are more within their reach, and who
<a name="Page_282" id="Page_282" title="282" class="pagenum"></a>have refused conditions that are not unreasonable,
from power that they have been taught to consider
as irresistible.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_283" id="Page_283" title="283" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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 <i>can</i> 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, cer<a name="Page_284" id="Page_284" title="284" class="pagenum"></a>tainly
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 <i>ferax monstrorum</i>, 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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_285" id="Page_285" title="285" class="pagenum"></a>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,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_286" id="Page_286" title="286" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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. &quot;Peace
with Regicide, and war with the rest of the world,&quot;
is their motto. From the beginning, and even whilst
the French gave the blows, and we hardly opposed
the <i>vis inerti&aelig;</i> to their efforts, from that day to this
hour, like importunate Guinea-fowls, crying one note
day and night, they have called for peace.<a name="Page_287" id="Page_287" title="287" class="pagenum"></a></p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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?</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_288" id="Page_288" title="288" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_289" id="Page_289" title="289" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_290" id="Page_290" title="290" class="pagenum"></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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_291" id="Page_291" title="291" class="pagenum"></a>same faction in both countries to communicate and
to co&ouml;perate. 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,&mdash;as
truly a foreign war to us and to all our home concerns
as the war with Spain in 1739, about <i>Guardacostas</i>,
the Madrid Convention, and the fable of Captain
Jenkins's ears.</p>

<p>Whenever the adverse party has raised a cry for
peace with the Regicide, the answer has been little
more than this: &quot;That the administration wished
for such a peace full as much as the opposition, but
that the time was not convenient for making it.&quot;
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
<a name="Page_292" id="Page_292" title="292" class="pagenum"></a>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,&mdash;in a
<i>long</i> 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
<a name="Page_293" id="Page_293" title="293" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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.<a name="Page_294" id="Page_294" title="294" class="pagenum"></a></p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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,
<a name="Page_295" id="Page_295" title="295" class="pagenum"></a>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,&mdash;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
<a name="Page_296" id="Page_296" title="296" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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:&mdash;</p>

<p>&quot;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.&quot;</p>

<p>Afterwards they proceed in this manner:&mdash;</p>

<p>&quot;And to show to your Majesty and all Christendom
that the Commons of England will not be
<i>amused</i> 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
<a name="Page_297" id="Page_297" title="297" class="pagenum"></a>they will effectually assist you in the prosecution and
carrying on the present war against France.&quot;</p>

<p>The amusement and diversion they speak of was
the suggestion of a treaty <i>proposed by the enemy</i>, and
announced from the throne. Thus the people of
England felt in the <i>eighth</i>, not in the <i>fourth</i> 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, <i>nemine contradicente</i>.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_298" id="Page_298" title="298" class="pagenum"></a>upon his Parliament to put itself into a posture &quot;<i>to
preserve to England the weight and influence it at present
had on the councils and affairs</i> ABROAD. It will be
requisite <i>Europe</i> Should see you will not be wanting
to yourselves.&quot;</p>

<p>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.
&quot;So far as relates to England,&quot; say these ministers,
&quot;it would be want of duty not to give your Majesty
this clear account: that there is <i>a deadness and want
of spirit in the nation universally</i>, so as not at all to
be disposed to <i>the thought of entering into a new war</i>;
and that they seem to be <i>tired out with taxes</i> to a degree
beyond what was discerned, till it appeared upon
<a name="Page_299" id="Page_299" title="299" class="pagenum"></a>the occasion of <i>the late elections</i>. This is the truth
of the fact, upon which your Majesty will determine
what resolutions are proper to be taken.&quot;</p>

<p>His Majesty did determine,&mdash;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,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_300" id="Page_300" title="300" class="pagenum"></a>attention to the affairs of the <i>States General</i>. 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.</p>

<p>&quot;We take this occasion <i>further</i> to assure your Majesty
we are very sensible of <i>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</i>.</p>

<p>&quot;And we humbly desire your Majesty will be
pleased <i>not only</i> to make good all the articles of any
<i>former</i> treaty to the States General, but that you will
enter into a strict league offensive and defensive with
them <i>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</i>.</p>

<p>&quot;And we further desire your Majesty, that you
will be pleased to enter into such alliances with the
<i>Emperor</i> 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, <i>and for securing the liberty and quiet of Europe</i>,
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<a name="Page_301" id="Page_301" title="301" class="pagenum"></a>
Majesty with honor and success <i>through all the difficulties
of a</i> JUST WAR.&quot;</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_302" id="Page_302" title="302" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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,&mdash;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 pre&euml;minence, 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.</p>

<p>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,
<a name="Page_303" id="Page_303" title="303" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>There were days when his great mind was up to
the crisis of the world he is called to act in.<a name="FNanchor_29_29" id="FNanchor_29_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29_29" class="fnanchor" title=" See the Declaration.">[29]</a> 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,&mdash;&quot;that he was willing to
try the war for a year or two, and, if it did not succeed,
then to vote for peace.&quot; 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,&mdash;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
<a name="Page_304" id="Page_304" title="304" class="pagenum"></a>sure to aggravate, the evils from which they would
fly.</p>

<p>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,&mdash;these are the motives
that belong to an animal who in his constitution is
at once adventurous and provident, circumspect and
daring,&mdash;whom his Creator has made, as the poet
says, &quot;of large discourse, looking before and after.&quot;
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,&mdash;contingent spoil,&mdash;future,
long adjourned, uncertain booty,&mdash;pillage
which must enrich a late posterity, and which possibly
may not reach to posterity at all,&mdash;these, for
<a name="Page_305" id="Page_305" title="305" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_306" id="Page_306" title="306" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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 <i>possible</i> 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
<a name="Page_307" id="Page_307" title="307" class="pagenum"></a>its existence, by its very essential constitution, is in a
state of hostility with us, and with all civilized people.<a name="FNanchor_30_30" id="FNanchor_30_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30_30" class="fnanchor" title=" See Declaration, Whitehall, October 29, 1793.">[30]</a></p>

<p>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,&mdash;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
<a name="Page_308" id="Page_308" title="308" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>I call a commonwealth <i>Regicide</i> 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,<a name="FNanchor_31_31" id="FNanchor_31_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31_31" class="fnanchor" title=" 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. &quot;La Convention Nationale, apr&egrave;s avoir entendu le
rapport de ses comit&eacute;s de finances, de la guerre, et diplomatiques
r&eacute;unis, fid&egrave;le au _principe de souverainet&eacute; de peuples, qui ne lui permet pas
de reconna&icirc;tre aucune institution qui y porte atteinte_&quot; &amp;c., &amp;c.&mdash;_D&eacute;cree
sur le Rapport de Cambon, Dec. 18, 1702_. And see the subsequent
proclamation.">[31]</a>&mdash;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
<a name="Page_309" id="Page_309" title="309" class="pagenum"></a>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,&mdash;this I call <i>Regicide by Establishment</i>.</p>

<p>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 pre&euml;xisting laws and institutions of
their country,&mdash;when they secure to themselves an
army by dividing amongst the people of no property
the estates of the ancient and lawful proprietors,&mdash;when
a state recognizes those acts,&mdash;when it does
not make confiscations for crimes, but makes crimes
for confiscations,&mdash;when it has its principal strength
and all its resources in such a violation of property,&mdash;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,&mdash;I call
this <i>Jacobinism by Establishment</i>.</p>

<p>I call it <i>Atheism by Establishment</i>, when any state,
as such, shall not acknowledge the existence of God
as a moral governor of the world,&mdash;when it shall
offer to Him no religious or moral worship,&mdash;when
it shall abolish the Christian religion by a regular
decree,&mdash;when it shall persecute, with a cold, unrelenting,
steady cruelty, by every mode of confiscation,
imprisonment, exile, and death, all its ministers,&mdash;when
it shall generally shut up or pull down
churches,&mdash;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
<a name="Page_310" id="Page_310" title="310" class="pagenum"></a>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,&mdash;when schools and
seminaries are founded at public expense to poison
mankind, from generation to generation, with the
horrible maxims of this impiety,&mdash;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,&mdash;I call this <i>Atheism by Establishment</i>.</p>

<p>When to these establishments of Regicide, of Jacobinism,
and of Atheism, you add the <i>correspondent
system of manners</i>, 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,
<a name="Page_311" id="Page_311" title="311" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_312" id="Page_312" title="312" class="pagenum"></a>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,&mdash;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 &quot;a mother without
being a wife.&quot; 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
<a name="Page_313" id="Page_313" title="313" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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 regu<a name="Page_314" id="Page_314" title="314" class="pagenum"></a>lation:
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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_315" id="Page_315" title="315" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>To all this let us join the practice of <i>cannibalism</i>,
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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_316" id="Page_316" title="316" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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,&mdash;of a lewd tavern
for the revels and debauches of banditti, assassins,
<a name="Page_317" id="Page_317" title="317" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_318" id="Page_318" title="318" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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 <i>aggregate</i>
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
<a name="Page_319" id="Page_319" title="319" class="pagenum"></a>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,&mdash;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,&mdash;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,&mdash;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
<a name="Page_320" id="Page_320" title="320" class="pagenum"></a>resided, for health, pleasure, business, or necessity,
from his own country, he never felt himself quite
abroad.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_321" id="Page_321" title="321" class="pagenum"></a>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 <i>total</i> 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 <i>situations</i> in which men relatively
stand produce the rules and principles of that
responsibility, and afford directions to prudence in exacting
it.</p>

<p>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 pr&aelig;torian law is such. There is a
<i>law of neighborhood</i> which does not leave a man perfect
master on his own ground. When a neighbor
sees a <i>new erection</i>, 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
<a name="Page_322" id="Page_322" title="322" class="pagenum"></a>this head the parent law is express and clear, and
has made many wise provisions, which, without destroying,
regulate and restrain the right of <i>ownership</i>
by the right of <i>vicinage</i>. No <i>innovation</i> is permitted
that may redound, even secondarily, to the prejudice
of a neighbor. The whole doctrine of that important
head of pr&aelig;torian law, &quot;<i>De novi operis nunciatione</i>,&quot;
is founded on the principle, that no <i>new</i> 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 <i>damnum infectum</i> or <i>damnum nondum factum</i>,
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, &quot;<i>Res damni infecti celeritatem desiderat,
et periculosa est dilatio</i>.&quot; This right of denunciation
does not hold, when things continue, however
inconveniently to the neighborhood, according to the
<i>ancient</i> 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, &quot;<i>Vetustas pro lege
semper habetur</i>.&quot;</p>

<p>Such is the law of civil vicinity. Now where there
<a name="Page_323" id="Page_323" title="323" class="pagenum"></a>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. &quot;<i>Vicini vicinorum
facta pr&aelig;sumuntur seire</i>.&quot; 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.<a name="FNanchor_32_32" id="FNanchor_32_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32_32" class="fnanchor" title=" &quot;This state of things cannot exist in France, without involving
all the surrounding powers in one common danger,&mdash;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.&quot;&mdash;_Declaration
29th Oct., 1793_.">[32]</a> 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 vicin<a name="Page_324" id="Page_324" title="324" class="pagenum"></a>ity
calls for the exercise of its competence: and the
rules of prudence do not restrain, but demand it.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_325" id="Page_325" title="325" class="pagenum"></a>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 <i>general</i> 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 rob<a name="Page_326" id="Page_326" title="326" class="pagenum"></a>bery,
far from a title to anything, is war with mankind.
To be at peace with robbery is to be an
accomplice with it.</p>

<p>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 <i>molecules</i>
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 &mdash;&mdash; the ancient and
honorable family of &mdash;&mdash;! 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.</p>

<p>To illustrate my opinions on this subject, let us
suppose a case, which, after what has happened, we
<a name="Page_327" id="Page_327" title="327" class="pagenum"></a>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
<a name="Page_328" id="Page_328" title="328" class="pagenum"></a>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,&mdash;who treated them as vagrants,
or at least as mendicants,&mdash;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,&mdash;if they should
give us a direct promise of protection,&mdash;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,&mdash;if they
were to send us far from the aid of our king and
<a name="Page_329" id="Page_329" title="329" class="pagenum"></a>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 fidel<a name="Page_330" id="Page_330" title="330" class="pagenum"></a>ity
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 R&eacute;velli&egrave;re, and with the Merlins and
the Talliens, rather than suffer exile and beggary
with the Cond&eacute;s, or the Broglies, the Castries, the
D'Avarays, the S&eacute;rents, the Cazal&egrave;s, 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'Espr&eacute;mesnils, 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.<a name="Page_331" id="Page_331" title="331" class="pagenum"></a></p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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 <i>tribute</i> to the Republic of Algiers. Is it meant
to reconcile us to the payment of a <i>tribute</i> to the
French Republic? That this, with other things
more ruinous, will be demanded, hereafter, I little
<a name="Page_332" id="Page_332" title="332" class="pagenum"></a>doubt; but for the present this will not be avowed,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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 <i>ad hominem</i> 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,&mdash;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 <a name="Page_333" id="Page_333" title="333" class="pagenum"></a>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 <i>am</i> their neighbor; I
<i>may</i> 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 <i>Habeas Corpus</i>, 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
<a name="Page_334" id="Page_334" title="334" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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,<a name="FNanchor_33_33" id="FNanchor_33_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33_33" class="fnanchor" title=" Declaration, Whitehall, Oct. 29, 1793.">[33]</a> 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. &quot;Thus
painters write their names at Co.&quot;</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_335" id="Page_335" title="335" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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 judg<a name="Page_336" id="Page_336" title="336" class="pagenum"></a>ing
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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_337" id="Page_337" title="337" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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.&mdash;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?&mdash;2.
Whether that system, supposing its views hostile to
other nations, possesses any means of being hurtful to
them peculiar to itself?&mdash;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?&mdash;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?&mdash;5. What the state of the other powers of
Europe will be with respect to each other and their
<a name="Page_338" id="Page_338" title="338" class="pagenum"></a>colonies, on the conclusion of a Regicide peace?&mdash;6.
Whether we are driven to the absolute necessity of
making that kind of peace?</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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,
&quot;whom my dim eyes in vain explore.&quot; 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
<a name="Page_339" id="Page_339" title="339" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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.<a name="Page_340" id="Page_340" title="340" class="pagenum"></a>
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 <i>must</i> 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.</p>

<p>When I seem not to acquiesce in the acts of those<a name="Page_341" id="Page_341" title="341" class="pagenum"></a>
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 <i>amicus curi&aelig;</i> who speaks <i>de plano</i>, not
<i>pro tribunali</i>. 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.</p>

<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> &quot;Mussabat tacito medicina timore.&quot;</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> Mr. Bird, sent to state the real situation of the Duc de Choiseul.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> Boissy d'Anglas.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_25_25" id="Footnote_25_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a> &quot;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.
</p><p>
&quot;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.
</p><p>
&quot;While these dispositions shall be persisted in, nothing is left for
the king but to prosecute a war equally just and necessary.
</p><p>
&quot;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 re&euml;stablish 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.
</p><p>
&quot;<i>Downing Street, April 10th</i>, 1796.&quot;</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> <i>Official Note, extracted from the Journal of the Defenders of the
Country</i>.
</p>
<div class="blockquot"><p>&quot;EXECUTIVE DIRECTORY.</p>
<p>
&quot;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.
</p><p>
&quot;All these assertions are equally false.
</p><p>
&quot;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 <i>insignificance</i>, or rather the <i>subtle
duplicity</i>, the PUNIC <i>style</i> 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 <i>perfidious</i> 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 <i>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</i>. Such was also the aim of Mr. Wickham's
note. <i>Such is still, that of the notices given at this time in the English
papers</i>.
</p><p>
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 <i>snatch from it its maritime preponderancy, would re&euml;stablish
the freedom of the seas, would give a new impulse to the Spanish,
Dutch, and French marines</i>, and would carry to the highest degree of
prosperity the industry and commerce of those nations in, which it
has always found <i>rivals</i>, and which it has considered as <i>enemies</i> of its
commerce, when they were tired of being its <i>dupes</i>.
</p><p>
&quot;<i>But there will no longer he 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</i>.
</p><p>
&quot;They will no longer <i>be credited</i>, finally, when the moment of the
rumor of these overtures being circulated is considered. <i>The English
nation supports impatiently the continuance of the war; a reply must be
made to its complaints, its reproaches</i>: 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 he justified; and to
obtain these results, it is necessary to be enabled to advance, that the
French government refuses every reasonable proposition of peace.&quot;</p></div>
</div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_27_27" id="Footnote_27_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a> &quot;In their place has succeeded a system destructive of all public
order, maintained by proscriptions, exiles, and confiscations without
number,&mdash;by arbitrary imprisonments,&mdash;by massacres which cannot
be remembered without horror,&mdash;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.&quot;&mdash;&quot;They [the Allies] have had to
encounter acts of aggression without pretext, open violations of all
treaties, unprovoked declarations of war,&mdash;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,&mdash;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.&quot;&mdash;&quot;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.&quot;&mdash;&quot;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 <i>lawful
sovereign</i>.&quot;
</p>
<div class="blockquot"><p>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.
<i>Whitehall, Oct</i>. 29, 1793</p></div>
</div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_28_28" id="Footnote_28_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a> &quot;Ut lethargicus hic, cum fit pugil, et medicum urget.&quot;&mdash;HOB.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_29_29" id="Footnote_29_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29_29"><span class="label">[29]</span></a> See the Declaration.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_30_30" id="Footnote_30_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30_30"><span class="label">[30]</span></a> See Declaration, Whitehall, October 29, 1793.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_31_31" id="Footnote_31_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31_31"><span class="label">[31]</span></a> 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. &quot;La Convention Nationale, apr&egrave;s avoir entendu le
rapport de ses comit&eacute;s de finances, de la guerre, et diplomatiques
r&eacute;unis, fid&egrave;le au <i>principe de souverainet&eacute; de peuples, qui ne lui permet pas
de reconna&icirc;tre aucune institution qui y porte atteinte</i>&quot; &amp;c., &amp;c.&mdash;<i>D&eacute;cree
sur le Rapport de Cambon, Dec. 18, 1702</i>. And see the subsequent
proclamation.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_32_32" id="Footnote_32_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32_32"><span class="label">[32]</span></a> &quot;This state of things cannot exist in France, without involving
all the surrounding powers in one common danger,&mdash;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.&quot;&mdash;<i>Declaration
29th Oct., 1793</i>.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_33_33" id="Footnote_33_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33_33"><span class="label">[33]</span></a> Declaration, Whitehall, Oct. 29, 1793.</p></div>
</div>

<p><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342" title="342" class="pagenum"></a></p>
<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<h2><a name="LETTER_II" id="LETTER_II" />LETTER II.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 80%;">ON THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF THE FRENCH
REVOLUTION AS IT REGARDS OTHER NATIONS.</span></h2>


<p>My dear Sir,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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,&mdash;that informs it as a
soul,&mdash;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
<a name="Page_343" id="Page_343" title="343" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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,&mdash;convinced that its existence and
its hostility were the same.</p>

<p>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 mili<a name="Page_344" id="Page_344" title="344" class="pagenum"></a>tant;
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.</p>

<p>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, &quot;to lay
open to the present generation, as well as to posterity,
their motives, their intentions, and the <i>disinterestedness</i>
of their personal views: taking up arms for
the purpose of preserving social and political order
amongst all civilized nations, and to secure to <i>each</i>
state its religion, happiness, independence, territories,
and real constitution.&quot;&mdash;&quot;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.&quot; The whole of that noble
performance ought to be read at the first meeting of
<a name="Page_345" id="Page_345" title="345" class="pagenum"></a>any congress which may assemble for the purpose of
pacification. In that piece &quot;these powers expressly
renounce all views of personal aggrandizement,&quot; 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.<a name="FNanchor_34_34" id="FNanchor_34_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_34_34" class="fnanchor" title=" See Declaration, Whitehall, Oct. 29, 1793.">[34]</a>
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.</p>

<p>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 <i>civil war</i>; 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
<a name="Page_346" id="Page_346" title="346" class="pagenum"></a>the conquest of France. The leaders of that sect secured
<i>the centre of Europe</i>; and that secured, they
knew, that, whatever might be the event of battles
and sieges, their <i>cause</i> 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.</p>

<p>They saw it was <i>a civil war</i>. It was their business
to persuade their adversaries that it ought to be a <i>foreign</i>
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
<a name="Page_347" id="Page_347" title="347" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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 <i>defensive</i> 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 <i>defending</i> themselves against
a danger from which there can be no security in any
<i>defensive</i> plan. If armies and fortresses were a defence
against Jacobinism, Louis the Sixteenth would
this day reign a powerful monarch over an happy
people.<a name="Page_348" id="Page_348" title="348" class="pagenum"></a></p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>The greatest skill, conducting the greatest military
<a name="Page_349" id="Page_349" title="349" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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 <i>honor</i> in a society for pillage. There could be no
tie of a common <i>interest</i>, 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 equiva<a name="Page_350" id="Page_350" title="350" class="pagenum"></a>lents
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
<i>might</i> 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
<a name="Page_351" id="Page_351" title="351" class="pagenum"></a>up any of the objects she sought for, as the means
of an increase to her naval power, to further their
aggrandizement.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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,&mdash;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,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>Whence, then, can the compensation be demanded?<a name="Page_352" id="Page_352" title="352" class="pagenum"></a>
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,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_353" id="Page_353" title="353" class="pagenum"></a>good,&mdash;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:&mdash;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
<i>ally</i>,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>So far as to the East Indies.</p>

<p>As to the West Indies,&mdash;indeed, as to either, if
we look for matter of exchange in order to ransom
Europe,&mdash;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
<a name="Page_354" id="Page_354" title="354" class="pagenum"></a>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,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_355" id="Page_355" title="355" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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 co&ouml;peration, and suffered him
to perish for want of support. On the plan of a war
in France, every advantage that our allies might
<a name="Page_356" id="Page_356" title="356" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>It was delivered into the hands of the barbarians,
<a name="Page_357" id="Page_357" title="357" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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 de<a name="Page_358" id="Page_358" title="358" class="pagenum"></a>posit
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?</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>Such is the time proposed for making <i>a common
political peace</i> 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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_359" id="Page_359" title="359" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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 &quot;<i>the usual relations of peace and amity</i>.&quot;
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,) with<a name="Page_360" id="Page_360" title="360" class="pagenum"></a>out
any alteration in the laws, manners, religion,
privileges, and customs of the cities or territories
which are the subject of such arrangements.</p>

<p>All this body of old conventions, composing the
vast and voluminous collection called the <i>Corps Diplomatique</i>,
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
<i>usual</i> relations of peace and amity in civilized Europe;
and there the relations of ancient France were
to be found amongst the rest.</p>

<p>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 &quot;the relations of peace and amity&quot;
with this new state are likely to be of the same
nature with the <i>usual</i> relations of the states of Europe.</p>

<p>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,&mdash;not to make her a neighbor,
but a mistress,&mdash;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 ne<a name="Page_361" id="Page_361" title="361" class="pagenum"></a>cessary
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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>The philosophers had one predominant object, which
they pursued with a fanatical fury,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_362" id="Page_362" title="362" class="pagenum"></a>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
&quot;with all their heart, with all their mind, with all
their soul, and with all their strength.&quot; 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 &quot;evil for its good,&quot; 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, Fran&ccedil;ais
of Nantes, Isnard, and some others of that sort,
it would not be easy to conceive the passion, ran<a name="Page_363" id="Page_363" title="363" class="pagenum"></a>cor,
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.</p>

<p>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.<a name="Page_364" id="Page_364" title="364" class="pagenum"></a></p>

<p>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 <i>as statesmen</i>, 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,) co&ouml;perated 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.</p>

<p>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 ma<a name="Page_365" id="Page_365" title="365" class="pagenum"></a>rine,
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,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>What is truly astonishing, the partisans of those
two opposite systems were at once prevalent, and at
<a name="Page_366" id="Page_366" title="366" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>The unfortunate Louis the Sixteenth<a name="FNanchor_35_35" id="FNanchor_35_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_35_35" class="fnanchor" title=" 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 raisonn&eacute;es sur la Situation actuelle de la France dans le Syst&egrave;me
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 &quot;a new benefit of the Revolution,&quot; and the advertisement to the
publication ends with the following words: &quot;_Il sera facile de se convaincre_,
QU'Y COMPRIS M&Ecirc;ME LA R&Eacute;VOLUTION, _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, &ecirc;tre bien
au fait des int&eacute;r&ecirc;ts, et m&ecirc;me des vues actuelles des diverses puissances de l'Europe_.&quot;
The book is entitled _Politique de tous les Cabinets de l'Europe
pendant la R&egrave;gnes de Louis XV. et de Louis XVI_. It is altogether
very curious, and worth reading.">[35]</a> was not the
<a name="Page_367" id="Page_367" title="367" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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 <i>Grandeur et
D&eacute;cadence des Romains</i> 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,
<a name="Page_368" id="Page_368" title="368" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_369" id="Page_369" title="369" class="pagenum"></a>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,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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 opportuni<a name="Page_370" id="Page_370" title="370" class="pagenum"></a>ties
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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_371" id="Page_371" title="371" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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.<a name="Page_372" id="Page_372" title="372" class="pagenum"></a></p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_373" id="Page_373" title="373" class="pagenum"></a>objects of ambition that they proposed from that destruction.</p>

<p>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 <i>peculiar</i> 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.<a name="Page_374" id="Page_374" title="374" class="pagenum"></a></p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.<a name="Page_375" id="Page_375" title="375" class="pagenum"></a></p>

<p>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,&mdash;dominion over minds by
proselytism, over bodies by arms.</p>

<p>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 ab<a name="Page_376" id="Page_376" title="376" class="pagenum"></a>solute.
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
Kh&acirc;n, 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?</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_377" id="Page_377" title="377" class="pagenum"></a>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 <i>plaidoyers</i> 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.</p>

<p>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 <i>must</i> 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
<a name="Page_378" id="Page_378" title="378" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_379" id="Page_379" title="379" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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 for<a name="Page_380" id="Page_380" title="380" class="pagenum"></a>merly
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
<a name="Page_381" id="Page_381" title="381" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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,&mdash;a republic
not of simple husbandmen or fishermen, but of
intriguers, and of warriors,&mdash;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?</p>

<p>Such is the republic to which we are going to give
a place in civilized fellowship,&mdash;the republic which,
with joint consent, we are going to establish in the
<a name="Page_382" id="Page_382" title="382" class="pagenum"></a>centre of Europe, in a post that overlooks and commands
every other state, and which eminently confronts
and menaces this kingdom.</p>

<p>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,<a name="FNanchor_36_36" id="FNanchor_36_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_36_36" class="fnanchor" title=" See our Declaration.">[36]</a>&mdash;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.</p>

<p>Here I suffer you to breathe, and leave to your
meditation what has occurred to me on the <i>genius
and character</i> of the French Revolution. From hav<a name="Page_383" id="Page_383" title="383" class="pagenum"></a>ing
this before us, we may be better able to determine
on the first question I proposed,&mdash;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, <i>from
the internal state of other nations, and particularly
of this</i>, 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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_34_34" id="Footnote_34_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34_34"><span class="label">[34]</span></a> See Declaration, Whitehall, Oct. 29, 1793.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_35_35" id="Footnote_35_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35_35"><span class="label">[35]</span></a> 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
<i>Conjectures raisonn&eacute;es sur la Situation actuelle de la France dans le Syst&egrave;me
Politique de l'Europe</i>: 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 &quot;a new benefit of the Revolution,&quot; and the advertisement to the
publication ends with the following words: &quot;<i>Il sera facile de se convaincre</i>,
QU'Y COMPRIS M&Ecirc;ME LA R&Eacute;VOLUTION, <i>en grande partie</i>, ON TROUVE
DANS CES <i>MEMOIRES</i> ET CES <i>CONJECTURES</i> LE GERME DE TOUT CE
QUI ARRIVE AUJOURD'HUI, <i>et qu'on ne peut, sans les avoir lus, &ecirc;tre bien
au fait des int&eacute;r&ecirc;ts, et m&ecirc;me des vues actuelles des diverses puissances de l'Europe</i>.&quot;
The book is entitled <i>Politique de tous les Cabinets de l'Europe
pendant la R&egrave;gnes de Louis XV. et de Louis XVI</i>. It is altogether
very curious, and worth reading.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_36_36" id="Footnote_36_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_36_36"><span class="label">[36]</span></a> See our Declaration.</p></div>
</div>

<p><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384" title="384" class="pagenum"></a></p>
<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<h2><a name="LETTER_III" id="LETTER_III" />LETTER III.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 80%;">ON THE RUPTURE OF THE NEGOTIATION; THE TERMS
OF PEACE PROPOSED; AND THE RESOURCES OF
THE COUNTRY FOR THE CONTINUANCE OF THE
WAR.</span></h2>


<p>Dear Sir,&mdash;I thank you for the bundle of state-papers
which I received yesterday. I have travelled
through the negotiation,&mdash;and a sad, founderous
road it is. There is a sort of standing jest against
my countrymen,&mdash;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 &quot;paths are not
paths of pleasantness, nor our ways the ways to
peace.&quot; 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,
<a name="Page_385" id="Page_385" title="385" class="pagenum"></a>and inglorious track. Backward and forward,&mdash;oscillation,
space,&mdash;the travels of a postilion, miles enough to
circle the globe in one short stage,&mdash;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!</p>

<p>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,&mdash;a concise, but correct narrative of the
painful steps taken to bring on the essay of a treaty
at Paris,&mdash;a clear exposure of all the rebuffs we received
in the progress of that experiment,&mdash;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,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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 &quot;His Majesty, who had entered into the
negotiation with <i>good faith</i>, who had suffered <i>no</i> im<a name="Page_386" id="Page_386" title="386" class="pagenum"></a>pediment
to prevent his prosecuting it with <i>earnestness
and sincerity</i>, has now <i>only to lament</i> its abrupt
termination, and to renew <i>in the face of all Europe
the solemn declaration</i>, that, whenever his enemies
shall be <i>disposed</i> 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.&quot;</p>

<p>If the disgusting detail of the accumulated insults
we have received, in what we have very properly
called our &quot;solicitation&quot; 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
<a name="Page_387" id="Page_387" title="387" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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, &quot;<i>Garrit aniles ex re
fabellas</i>.&quot; Conversing on this strange subject, he told
me a current story of a simple English country squire,
who was persuaded by certain <i>dilettanti</i> 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
&quot;a malignant and a turbaned Turk&quot; 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
<a name="Page_388" id="Page_388" title="388" class="pagenum"></a>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 &quot;to accept his perfect assurances
of high consideration.&quot; 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. &quot;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.&quot;</p>

<p>In my opinion the squire was in the right. He was
satisfied with his first ramble and his first injuries.<a name="Page_389" id="Page_389" title="389" class="pagenum"></a>
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.</p>

<p>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,&mdash;we waited till the morbid strength of
our <i>boulimia</i> 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 &quot;of shreds and patches,&quot;
with all its mumping cant, from the inhospitable door
of Cannibal Castle,&mdash;</p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span style="margin-left: -.5em;">&quot;Where the gaunt mastiff, growling at the gate,<br /></span>
<span>Affrights the beggar whom he longs to eat,&quot;<br /></span>
</div></div>

<p>I think we might have found, before the rude hand
of insolent office was on our shoulder, and the staff
<a name="Page_390" id="Page_390" title="390" class="pagenum"></a>of usurped authority brandished over our heads, that
contempt of the suppliant is not the best forwarder of
a suit,&mdash;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,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>This speech may stand for a model. Never, for
<a name="Page_391" id="Page_391" title="391" class="pagenum"></a>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,&mdash;</p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i8">utque<br /></span>
<span>Purpurea intexti tollant aul&aelig;a Britanni;<br /></span>
</div></div>

<p class="noindent">or, as Dryden translates it, somewhat paraphrastically,
but not less in the spirit of the prophet than of
the poet,&mdash;</p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span style="margin-left: -.5em;">&quot;Where the proud theatres disclose the scene,<br /></span>
<span>Which interwoven Britons seem to raise,<br /></span>
<span>And show the triumph which their shame displays.&quot;<br /></span>
</div></div>

<p>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.</p>

<p>It is no less striking, that the same obvious re<a name="Page_392" id="Page_392" title="392" class="pagenum"></a>flection
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,&mdash;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,&mdash;that, to pacify the enemy, they had made
every sacrifice of the national dignity,&mdash;and that
they had offered to immolate at the same shrine the
<a name="Page_393" id="Page_393" title="393" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>That day was, I fear, the fatal term of <i>local</i> 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,
<a name="Page_394" id="Page_394" title="394" class="pagenum"></a>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,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_395" id="Page_395" title="395" class="pagenum"></a>are many who think that they have gone much further,&mdash;that
they have always magnified and extolled
the French maxims,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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,&mdash;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
<a name="Page_396" id="Page_396" title="396" class="pagenum"></a>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,&mdash;and philosophy, raying out from Europe,
<a name="Page_397" id="Page_397" title="397" class="pagenum"></a>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,&mdash;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 <i>three hundred thousand</i> at
one time in prison. I go no further. I instance
<a name="Page_398" id="Page_398" title="398" class="pagenum"></a>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,&mdash;whether
to our own community, or to one with which
it is in a state of hostility.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_399" id="Page_399" title="399" class="pagenum"></a>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,&mdash;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,&mdash;not related to any distinguished families
here,&mdash;recommended by no service,&mdash;endeared to
this nation by no act or even expression of kindness,&mdash;comprehended
in no league or common
cause,&mdash;embraced by no laws of public hospitality,&mdash;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,&mdash;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
<a name="Page_400" id="Page_400" title="400" class="pagenum"></a>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,&mdash;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,&mdash;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 Olm&uuml;tz, 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.</p>

<p>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,&mdash;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 <i>mitigations</i>
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 suffer<a name="Page_401" id="Page_401" title="401" class="pagenum"></a>ings
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,&mdash;full of spirit,&mdash;full of resources,&mdash;going
out of the beaten road, but going right, because
his uncommon enterprise was not conducted by a vulgar
judgment,&mdash;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
<a name="Page_402" id="Page_402" title="402" class="pagenum"></a>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,&mdash;the prison of Louis the Seventeenth,&mdash;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,&mdash;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,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_403" id="Page_403" title="403" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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.&mdash;I return to the Declaration,
with which the history of the abortion of a treaty
with the Regicides is closed.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_404" id="Page_404" title="404" class="pagenum"></a>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<a name="FNanchor_37_37" id="FNanchor_37_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_37_37" class="fnanchor" title=" The Archduke Charles of Austria.">[37]</a> 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
<a name="Page_405" id="Page_405" title="405" class="pagenum"></a>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
<a name="Page_406" id="Page_406" title="406" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>Such a conclusion to such a declaration and such
a speech would have been a thing of course,&mdash;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
<a name="Page_407" id="Page_407" title="407" class="pagenum"></a>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
T&eacute;niers. 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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_408" id="Page_408" title="408" class="pagenum"></a>which had stifled in its cradle the negotiation we had
attempted with Barth&eacute;lemy. 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
&quot;<i>nothing was left</i> but to prosecute a war <i>equally just
and necessary</i>.&quot; 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,&mdash;wailing
and lamentation. We cannot even utter
a sentiment of vigor;&mdash;&quot;his Majesty has only to
lament.&quot; 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 <i>consolation</i> 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
<a name="Page_409" id="Page_409" title="409" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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, &quot;that the enemy should
be disposed to enter into the work of general pacification
with the spirit of reconciliation and equity,&quot;
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
<a name="Page_410" id="Page_410" title="410" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>I hope I misunderstand this pledge,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>&quot;Well,&quot; some will say, &quot;in this case we have only
submitted to the nature of things.&quot; The nature of
<a name="Page_411" id="Page_411" title="411" class="pagenum"></a>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 <i>that</i> 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 <i>you</i> should show what
<i>they</i> 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,<a name="FNanchor_38_38" id="FNanchor_38_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_38_38" class="fnanchor" title=" Dec 27, 1790.">[38]</a> in which we assumed
the Directorial government as lawful, and in
which we engaged ourselves to treat with them whenever
they pleased,&mdash;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
<a name="Page_412" id="Page_412" title="412" class="pagenum"></a>propitious spirit of Regicide equity and conciliation,
they answer you with an attack. They turn out
the pacific bearer of your &quot;how do you dos,&quot; Lord
Malmesbury; and they return your visit, and their
&quot;thanks for your obliging inquiries,&quot; by their old
practised assassin, Hoche. They come to attack&mdash;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.</p>

<p>Whilst <i>you</i> are in vain torturing your invention to
assure them of <i>your</i> sincerity and good faith, they
have left no doubt concerning <i>their</i> good faith and
<i>their</i> 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,&mdash;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,
<a name="Page_413" id="Page_413" title="413" class="pagenum"></a>the enemy's conduct cancels such declarations,&mdash;and,
I trust, along with them, cancels everything of
mischief and dishonor that they contain.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_414" id="Page_414" title="414" class="pagenum"></a>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?</p>

<p>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, <i>quando se nimis purgitant</i>; 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
<a name="Page_415" id="Page_415" title="415" class="pagenum"></a>that good faith and public integrity the fame of which
to preserve inviolate is so much the interest and duty
of every nation.</p>

<p>The pledge is an engagement &quot;to all Europe.&quot;
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 &quot;subtle
<i>duplicity</i> and a <i>Punic</i> style&quot; 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;&mdash;for the other great proof, by
battle, we seem to decline.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_416" id="Page_416" title="416" class="pagenum"></a>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,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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 <i>Prince of Peace</i>, 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.<a name="Page_417" id="Page_417" title="417" class="pagenum"></a></p>

<p>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,&mdash;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?</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>Is it to Genoa that we make this kind promise,&mdash;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,&mdash;whose alliance has been
secured by the admission of French garrisons,&mdash;and
whose peace has been forever ratified by a forced declaration
of war against ourselves?</p>

<p>It is not the Grand Duke of Tuscany who claims
this declaration,&mdash;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 &quot;<i>the wisest sovereign in Europe</i>&quot;:
it is not this pacific Solomon, or his philosophic,
cudgelled ministry, cudgelled by English and
by French, whose wisdom and philosophy between
<a name="Page_418" id="Page_418" title="418" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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
&quot;murdering piece&quot; 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 Bar<a name="Page_419" id="Page_419" title="419" class="pagenum"></a>barism?
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,&mdash;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,&mdash;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,&mdash;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
<a name="Page_420" id="Page_420" title="420" class="pagenum"></a>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,&mdash;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?</p>

<p>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?</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_421" id="Page_421" title="421" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>To look to the powers of the North.&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_422" id="Page_422" title="422" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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,&mdash;that reformations
at this day are attempts at best of ambiguous utility.<a name="Page_423" id="Page_423" title="423" class="pagenum"></a>
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,&mdash;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,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>I do not know why I should not include America
among the European powers,&mdash;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,&mdash;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 neu<a name="Page_424" id="Page_424" title="424" class="pagenum"></a>trality
with no state which is not ready to join her
in war against England.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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,&mdash;if
<a name="Page_425" id="Page_425" title="425" class="pagenum"></a>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
<a name="Page_426" id="Page_426" title="426" class="pagenum"></a>little doubt. To them it may be addressed with propriety,
for it answers their purposes in every point.</p>

<p>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 <i>sellette</i> 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 <i>haut du pav&eacute;</i>.
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,&mdash;whether
they to whom this new pledge is
hypothecated have redeemed their own,&mdash;whether
they have given one particle more of their support
<a name="Page_427" id="Page_427" title="427" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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, &quot;his
Majesty's deep and sincere regret at its unfortunate
and abrupt termination, so different from the wishes
and <i>hopes</i> that were entertained,&quot;&mdash;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
<a name="Page_428" id="Page_428" title="428" class="pagenum"></a>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,&mdash;or, as
the minister expresses it, &quot;in uniting England and
in dividing France.&quot;</p>

<p>For my own part, though I perfectly agreed with
the noble lord that the attempt was desperate, so
desperate, indeed, as to deserve <i>his</i> 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 Malmes<a name="Page_429" id="Page_429" title="429" class="pagenum"></a>bury,
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
&quot;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.&quot; &quot;The English nation&quot;
(said they) &quot;supports impatiently the continuance
of the war, and <i>a reply must be made to its complaints
and its reproaches</i>; the Parliament is about to be
opened, <i>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>.&quot; I
am sorry that the language of the friends to ministry
and the enemies to mankind should be so much in
unison.</p>

<p>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,
<a name="Page_430" id="Page_430" title="430" class="pagenum"></a>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
<a name="Page_431" id="Page_431" title="431" class="pagenum"></a>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,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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,
<a name="Page_432" id="Page_432" title="432" class="pagenum"></a>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,&mdash;considering
the final success of their arms
and the triumph of their principles as one and the
same thing.</p>

<p>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, &quot;Some Remarks on the
Apparent Circumstances of the War in the Fourth
Week of October, 1795.&quot;</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_433" id="Page_433" title="433" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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;&mdash;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,&mdash;I mean the <i>leaders</i> of the <i>opposition</i>
in <i>Parliament</i>. 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 re<a name="Page_434" id="Page_434" title="434" class="pagenum"></a>peated,
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.</p>

<p>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, &quot;in spite of the constant opposition
he had met with from Prance.&quot; He admits, &quot;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 <i>admit</i> of a negotiation.&quot; This situation
so described, and so truly described, rendered our solicitation
not only degrading, but from the very outset
evidently hopeless.</p>

<p>I find it asserted, and even a merit taken for it,
&quot;that this country surmounted every difficulty of
form and etiquette which the enemy had thrown in
our way.&quot; 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, &quot;that no consideration
of etiquette should stand in the way of it.&quot;</p>

<p>Etiquette, if I understand rightly the term, which
<a name="Page_435" id="Page_435" title="435" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_436" id="Page_436" title="436" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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,&mdash;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,&mdash;&quot;With regard to the <i>offensive and injurious</i>
insinuations which are contained in that paper, and
which are only calculated to throw new obstacles in
<a name="Page_437" id="Page_437" title="437" class="pagenum"></a>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.&quot;</p>

<p>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,&mdash;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, <i>Non omnibus dormio</i>. 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.<a name="Page_438" id="Page_438" title="438" class="pagenum"></a></p>

<p>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 <i>two confidential communications</i>
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 <i>confidential</i> 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,&mdash;that
of the <i>Grand Alliance</i>. But in the present
case, this unparalleled candor, this unpardonable
want of reserve, produced, what might have been
<a name="Page_439" id="Page_439" title="439" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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,&mdash;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,&mdash;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.<a name="Page_440" id="Page_440" title="440" class="pagenum"></a></p>

<p>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<a name="FNanchor_39_39" id="FNanchor_39_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_39_39" class="fnanchor" title=" Observations on a Late State of the Nation.">[39]</a>
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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>At the preceding Treaty of Paris, I mean that of<a name="Page_441" id="Page_441" title="441" class="pagenum"></a>
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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_442" id="Page_442" title="442" class="pagenum"></a>power to whose custody it was thought it might be
most safely committed.</p>

<p>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:<a name="Page_443" id="Page_443" title="443" class="pagenum"></a>
for they professed a resolution to destroy everything
which can hold states together by the tie of opinion.</p>

<p>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 pre&euml;minence 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
<a name="Page_444" id="Page_444" title="444" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_445" id="Page_445" title="445" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_446" id="Page_446" title="446" class="pagenum"></a>of argument to be proposed and insisted on by an
ambassador of Great Britain! It is directly and
plainly this:&mdash;&quot;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.&quot;</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_447" id="Page_447" title="447" class="pagenum"></a>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,&mdash;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,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>When they had thus drawn from us all that they
could draw out, they expelled Lord Malmesbury, and
<a name="Page_448" id="Page_448" title="448" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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?</p>

<p>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,&mdash;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,
<a name="Page_449" id="Page_449" title="449" class="pagenum"></a>and this sacred regard for the peace and happiness of
all nations?</p>

<p>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,&mdash;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,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>This circumstance assures some degree of perma<a name="Page_450" id="Page_450" title="450" class="pagenum"></a>nence
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.</p>

<p>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. &quot;The slothful man saith,
There is a lion in the way, and I shall be devoured in
the streets.&quot; But when the necessity pleaded is not
in the nature of things, but in the vices of him who
<a name="Page_451" id="Page_451" title="451" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_452" id="Page_452" title="452" class="pagenum"></a>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 <i>Ne te qu&aelig;siveris extra</i> 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.</p>

<p>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,&mdash;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 name="Page_453" id="Page_453" title="453" class="pagenum"></a>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,&mdash;a spirit which will give
no equivocal response, but such as will hearten the
timidity and fix the irresolution of hesitating prudence,&mdash;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,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_454" id="Page_454" title="454" class="pagenum"></a>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,&mdash;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,&mdash;he loses the place of a citizen.</p>

<p>So it is in all <i>taxation</i>. But in a <i>bargain</i>, 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
<a name="Page_455" id="Page_455" title="455" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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,&mdash;it is for the moralist to censure the
vicious,&mdash;it is for the sympathetic heart to reprobate
the hard and cruel,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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-<a name="Page_456" id="Page_456" title="456" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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<i>l.</i>
(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,&mdash;the infallible operation of
which is to lower the value of money, and consequently
to conduce towards the improvement of public
credit.</p>

<p>I take the expenditure of the <i>capitalist</i>, not the
<a name="Page_457" id="Page_457" title="457" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_458" id="Page_458" title="458" class="pagenum"></a>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, &quot;wherever a man's treasure
is, there his heart will be also.&quot; 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
<a name="Page_459" id="Page_459" title="459" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_460" id="Page_460" title="460" class="pagenum"></a>fortunes. From thence it is but one step to the subversion
of all property.</p>

<p>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 founda<a name="Page_461" id="Page_461" title="461" class="pagenum"></a>tion
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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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: &quot;Whether the inability of
the country to prosecute the war did necessitate a
<a name="Page_462" id="Page_462" title="462" class="pagenum"></a>submission to the indignities and the calamities of
a peace with the Regicide power?&quot; But give me
leave to pursue this point a little further.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_463" id="Page_463" title="463" class="pagenum"></a>just, the error is to be corrected, the war is not to be
abandoned.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_464" id="Page_464" title="464" class="pagenum"></a>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,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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.<a name="Page_465" id="Page_465" title="465" class="pagenum"></a>
That class receives two million sterling annually from
the classes above it. It pays to no such amount towards
any public contribution.</p>

<p>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!</p>

<p>An untimely shower or an unseasonable drought,
<a name="Page_466" id="Page_466" title="466" class="pagenum"></a>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 &quot;<i>modo sol nimius, modo corripit imber</i>.&quot;&mdash;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 <i>bon-ton</i> of the humanity
of this day, the name of the &quot;<i>laboring poor</i>.&quot;
We have heard many plans for the relief of the &quot;<i>laboring
poor</i>.&quot; 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,&mdash;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,&mdash;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,
<a name="Page_467" id="Page_467" title="467" class="pagenum"></a>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 <i>labor</i> and one of <i>rest</i>. I do not call a healthy
young man, cheerful in his mind and vigorous in his
arms, I cannot call such a man <i>poor</i>; 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.</p>

<p>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</p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"><a name="Page_468" id="Page_468" title="468" class="pagenum"></a>
<span style="margin-left: -.5em;">&quot;how War may, best upheld,<br /></span>
<span>Move by her two main nerves, iron and gold,<br /></span>
<span>In all her equipage.&quot;<br /></span>
</div></div>

<p class="noindent">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,&mdash;having no connection with
anger,&mdash;tempering honor with prudence,&mdash;incited,
invigorated, and sustained by a generous love of
fame,&mdash;informed, moderated, and directed by an
enlarged knowledge of its own great public ends,&mdash;flowing
in one blended stream from the opposite
sources of the heart and the head,&mdash;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,&mdash;which knows as well to retreat as to advance,&mdash;which
can conquer as well by delay as by
the rapidity of a march or the impetuosity of an attack,&mdash;which
can be, with Fabius, the black cloud
that lowers on the tops of the mountains, or, with
Scipio, the thunderbolt of war,&mdash;which, undismayed
by false shame, can patiently endure the severest
trial that a gallant spirit can undergo, in the taunts
<a name="Page_469" id="Page_469" title="469" class="pagenum"></a>and provocations of the enemy, the suspicions, the
cold respect, and &quot;mouth honor&quot; of those from
whom it should meet a cheerful obedience,&mdash;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 &quot;palmy state&quot; 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
<a name="Page_470" id="Page_470" title="470" class="pagenum"></a>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,&mdash;the
right arm of England, I admit,&mdash;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,&mdash;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,&mdash;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,&mdash;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 recov<a name="Page_471" id="Page_471" title="471" class="pagenum"></a>ered
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,&mdash;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
<a name="Page_472" id="Page_472" title="472" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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,&mdash;penury,
cold, hunger, nakedness,&mdash;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
<a name="Page_473" id="Page_473" title="473" class="pagenum"></a>and dearer life in our progeny, which was bestowed
in the first great command to man from the All-Gracious
Giver of all,&mdash;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 <i>temperance</i>.</p>

<p>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?&mdash;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?</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_474" id="Page_474" title="474" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_475" id="Page_475" title="475" class="pagenum"></a>enough to satisfy me, that, although a comparison
including that year might be less favorable, yet it
would not essentially injure my argument.</p>

<p>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?</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_476" id="Page_476" title="476" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>
1791 ending 5th April 1792  &pound;1,706,334<br />
1792                  1793   1,585,991<br />
1793                  1794   1,597,623<br />
1794                  1795   1,608,196<br />
1795                  1796   1,625,874<br />
<a name="Page_477" id="Page_477" title="477" class="pagenum"></a></p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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<i>l.</i> in the last three years. Yet, notwithstanding
the pressure of this additional weight,<a name="FNanchor_40_40" id="FNanchor_40_40"></a><a href="#Footnote_40_40" class="fnanchor" title=" 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.  &pound;  Years of War.  &pound;
1787  94,521  1793  122,975
1788  96,278  1794  106,811
1789  91,773  1795  83,804
1790  104,409  1796  94,668
  &pound;386,981    &pound;408,258  Increase to 1790 &pound;21,277.
1791 &pound;115,382   4 Years to 1791 &pound;407,842  Increase to 1791   &pound;416.



                      PLATE.



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




                   GLASS PLATES.



Years of Peace.  &pound;  Years of War.  &pound;
1787  &mdash;&mdash;  1793  5,655
1788  5,496  1794  5,456
1789  4,686  1795  5,839
1790  6,008  1796  8,871
  &pound;16,190    &pound;25,821  Increase to 1791 &pound;1,751.
1791 &pound;7,880  4 Years to 1791 &pound;24,070">[40]</a> there has
been an actual augmentation in the consumption.<a name="Page_478" id="Page_478" title="478" class="pagenum"></a>
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.</p>

<p>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,
<a name="Page_479" id="Page_479" title="479" class="pagenum"></a>in one mode of comparison, upwards of 272,000<i>l.</i>,
and in the other mode upwards of 165,000<i>l.</i>, more
during the war than in peace.<a name="FNanchor_41_41" id="FNanchor_41_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_41_41" class="fnanchor" title="
                     GROCERIES.



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

                         TEA.

Years of Peace.  &pound;  Years of War.  &pound;
1787  424,144  1793  477,644
1788  426,660  1794  467,132
1789  539,575  1795  507,518
1790  417,736  1796  526,307
  &pound;1,808,115    &pound;1,978,601  Increase to 1790 &pound;170,486.
1791 &pound;448,709  4 Years to 1791 &pound;1,832,680  Increase to 1791 &pound;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.  &pound;  Years of War.  &pound;
1787  17,006  1793  36,846
1788  30,217  1794  49,177
1789  34,784  1795  27,913
1790  38,647  1796  19,711
  &pound;120,654    &pound;133,647  Increase to 1790 &pound;12,993.
1791 &pound;41,194  4 Years to 1791 &pound;144,842  Decrease to 1791 &pound;11,195.

The additional duty of 1795 in that year gave 16,775_l._, and in
1796, 15,319_l._">[41]</a> An additional duty
was also laid in 1795 on tea, another on coffee, and
a third on raisins,&mdash;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,
<a name="Page_480" id="Page_480" title="480" class="pagenum"></a>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,<a name="FNanchor_42_42" id="FNanchor_42_42"></a><a href="#Footnote_42_42" class="fnanchor" title="

                          SUGAR.



Years of Peace.  &pound;  Years of War.  &pound;
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
  &pound;4,413,781    &pound;5,679,249  Increase to 1790 &pound;1,265,468.
1791 &pound;1,044,781  4 Years to 1791 &pound;4,392,725  Increase to 1791 &pound;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.">[42]</a> I have
excluded it from the groceries, because the account
of the customs is not a perfect criterion of the consumption,
much having been re&euml;xported 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
re&euml;xportation. The increase on the face of our entries
is immense during the four years of war,&mdash;little
short of thirteen hundred thousand pounds.</p>

<p>The increase of the duties on beer has been regularly
progressive, or nearly so, to a very large
amount.<a name="FNanchor_43_43" id="FNanchor_43_43"></a><a href="#Footnote_43_43" class="fnanchor" title="

                          BEER, &amp;c.

Years of Peace.  &pound;  Years of War.  &pound;
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
  &pound;7,067,185    &pound;8,351,433  Increase to 1790 &pound;1,284,248.
1791 &pound;1,880,478  4 Years to 1791 &pound;7,186,234  Increase to 1791 &pound;1,165,199.

                        WINE.

Years of Peace.  &pound;  Years of War.  &pound;
1787  219,934  1793  222,887
1788  215,578  1794  283,644
1789  252,649  1795  317,072
1790  308,624  1796  187,818
  &pound;996,785    &pound;1,011,421  Increase to 1790 &pound;14,636.
1791 &pound;336,549  4 Years to 1791 &pound;1,113,400  Decrease to 1791 &pound;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.  &pound;  Years of War.  &pound;
1787  11,167  1793  11,016
1788  7,375  1794  10,612
1789  7,202  1795  13,321
1790  4,953  1796  15,050
  &pound;30,697    &pound;49,999  Increase to 1790 &pound;19,302.
1791 &pound;13,282  4 Years to 1791 &pound;32,812  Increase to 1791 &pound;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._">[43]</a> It is a good deal above a million, and is
<a name="Page_481" id="Page_481" title="481" class="pagenum"></a>more than equal to one eighth of the whole produce.
Under this general head some other liquors are included,&mdash;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
<a name="Page_482" id="Page_482" title="482" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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.<a name="FNanchor_44_44" id="FNanchor_44_44"></a><a href="#Footnote_44_44" class="fnanchor" title="
             MUSLINS AND  CALICOES.

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

This table begins with 1788. The net produce of the preceding
year is not in the report whence the table is taken.">[44]</a> 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
<a name="Page_483" id="Page_483" title="483" class="pagenum"></a>extension of our own dexterity and industry; while
the sale of our printed goods,<a name="FNanchor_45_45" id="FNanchor_45_45"></a><a href="#Footnote_45_45" class="fnanchor" title="
                 PRINTED GOODS.

Years of Peace.  &pound;  Years of War.  &pound;
1787  142,000  1793  191,566
1788  154,486  1794  190,554
1789  153,202  1795  197,416
1790  157,156  1796  230,530
  &pound;616,844    &pound;810,066  Increase to 1790 &pound;193,222.
1791 &pound;191,489  4 Years to 1791 &pound;666,333  Increase to 1791 &pound;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.">[45]</a> 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,&mdash;I mean that of silk.<a name="FNanchor_46_46" id="FNanchor_46_46"></a><a href="#Footnote_46_46" class="fnanchor" title="

                      SILK.
Years of Peace.  &pound;  Years of War.  &pound;
1787  166,912  1793  209,915
1788  123,998  1794  221,306
1789  157,730  1795  210,725
1790  212,522  1796  221,007
  &pound;661,162    &pound;862,953  Increase to 1790 &pound;201,791.
1791 &pound;279,128  4 Years to 1791 &pound;773,378  Increase to 1791 &pound;89,575.">[46]</a> The manu<a name="Page_484" id="Page_484" title="484" class="pagenum"></a>factory
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<a name="FNanchor_47_47" id="FNanchor_47_47"></a><a href="#Footnote_47_47" class="fnanchor" title="

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

The skins here selected from the Custom-House accounts are, _Black
Bear, Ordinary Fox, Marten, Mink, Musquash, Otter, Raccoon_, and _Wolf_.">[47]</a> used for muffs, trimmings,
and linings, which, as the chief of the kind, I
shall particularize. You will find them below.</p>

<p>The diversions of the higher classes form another
<a name="Page_485" id="Page_485" title="485" class="pagenum"></a>and the only remaining head of inquiry into their
expenses: I mean those diversions which distinguish
the country and the town life,&mdash;which are visible and
tangible to the statesman,&mdash;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,&mdash;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<i>l.</i>,
which is about 4000<i>l.</i> more than the decrease of the
old tax, in one scheme of comparison, and about
4000<i>l.</i> 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,&mdash;the
amusements of a town life.</p>

<p>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.<a name="Page_486" id="Page_486" title="486" class="pagenum"></a>
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:&mdash;</p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i4">Migravit ab aure voluptas<br /></span>
<span>Omnis ad incertos oculos, et gaudia vana:<br /></span>
<span>Quatuor aut plures aul&aelig;a premuntur in horas,<br /></span>
<span>Dum fugiunt equitum turm&aelig;, peditumque caterv&aelig;;&mdash;<br /></span>
</div></div>

<p class="noindent">I must interrupt the passage, most fervently to deprecate
and abominate the sequel:&mdash;</p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span>Mox trahitur manibus regum fortuna retortis.<br /></span>
</div></div>

<p class="noindent">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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_487" id="Page_487" title="487" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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 oc<a name="Page_488" id="Page_488" title="488" class="pagenum"></a>casion
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 co&ouml;peration. 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:<a name="Page_489" id="Page_489" title="489" class="pagenum"></a>
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.</p>

<p>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<a name="FNanchor_48_48" id="FNanchor_48_48"></a><a href="#Footnote_48_48" class="fnanchor" title=" 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
">[48]</a> larger on the whole by nearly one third!<a name="Page_490" id="Page_490" title="490" class="pagenum"></a>
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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_491" id="Page_491" title="491" class="pagenum"></a>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.<a name="FNanchor_49_49" id="FNanchor_49_49"></a><a href="#Footnote_49_49" class="fnanchor" title="

NAVIGATION AND CANAL BILLS.

Years of Peace.    Years of War.
1789  3  1798  28
1790  8  1794  18
1791  10  1795  11
1792  9  1796  12
  80    69
Money raised &pound; 2,377,200    &pound; 7,115,100">[49]</a> 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.</p>

<p>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,&mdash;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
<a name="Page_492" id="Page_492" title="492" class="pagenum"></a>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,&mdash;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,&mdash;how tardy and unprovided and full
of anguish is their flight, chained down as they are by
<a name="Page_493" id="Page_493" title="493" class="pagenum"></a>every tie to the soil,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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.<a name="FNanchor_50_50" id="FNanchor_50_50"></a><a href="#Footnote_50_50" class="fnanchor" title="

POST-HORSE DUTY.

Years of Peace.  &pound;  Years of War.  &pound;
1785  169,410  1793  191,488
1788  204,659  1794  202,884
1789  170,554  1795  196,691
1790  181,155  1796  204,061
  &pound;725,778    &pound;795,124  Increase to 1790 &pound;69,346.
1791 &pound;198,634  4 Years to 1791 &pound;755,002  Increase to 1791 &pound;40,122.">[50]</a><a name="Page_494" id="Page_494" title="494" class="pagenum"></a>
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<i>l</i>.,
and the year ending at the same quarter in 1796,
750,637<i>l</i>., 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<a name="FNanchor_51_51" id="FNanchor_51_51"></a><a href="#Footnote_51_51" class="fnanchor" title=" 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.

Gross Revenue  &pound;  Number of Letters.
April, 1790-1791  575,079  Inwards.  Outwards.
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.">[51]</a> still continues to be regularly and
largely upon the rise.</p>

<p><a name="Page_495" id="Page_495" title="495" class="pagenum"></a>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,&mdash;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.<a name="FNanchor_52_52" id="FNanchor_52_52"></a><a href="#Footnote_52_52" class="fnanchor" title=" In a debate, 30th December, 1796, on the return of Lord
Malmesbury.&mdash;See Woodfall's Parliamentary Debates, Vol. XIII.
p. 591.">[52]</a> He professed to
speak from the records of Chancery; and he added
another very striking fact,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>But the real situation of our trade, during the
<a name="Page_496" id="Page_496" title="496" class="pagenum"></a>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 &quot;<i>they seemed to be bursting with opulence into the
streets</i>.&quot; 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<a name="FNanchor_53_53" id="FNanchor_53_53"></a><a href="#Footnote_53_53" class="fnanchor" title="
GENERAL LICENSES.
Years of Peace.  &pound;  Years of War.  &pound;
1787  44,030  1793  45,568
1788  40,882  1794  42,129
1789  39,917  1795  43,350
1790  41,970  1796  41,190
  &pound;166,799    &pound;170,237  Increase to 1790 &pound;3,438.
1791 &pound;44,240  4 Years to 1791 &pound;167,009  Increase to 1791 &pound;3,228.">[53]</a> 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 counter<a name="Page_497" id="Page_497" title="497" class="pagenum"></a>vailed
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.<a name="FNanchor_54_54" id="FNanchor_54_54"></a><a href="#Footnote_54_54" class="fnanchor" title="

DEALERS IN TEA.

Years of Peace.  &pound;  Years of War.  &pound;
1787  10,934  1793  13,939
1788  11,949  1794  14,315
1789  12,501  1795  13,956
1790  13,126  1796  14,830
  &pound;48,510    &pound;57,040  Increase to 1790 &pound;8,530.
1791 &pound;13,921  4 Years to 1791 &pound;51,497  Increase to 1791 &pound;5,543.

SELLERS OF PLATE.
Years of Peace.  &pound;  Years of War.  &pound;
1787  6,593  1793  8,178
1788  7,953  1794  8,296
1789  7,348  1795  8,128
1790  7,988  1796  8,835
  &pound;29,832    &pound;33,437  Increase to 1790 &pound;3,555.
1791 &pound;8,327  4 Years to 1791 &pound;31,616  Increase to 1791 &pound;1,821.">[54]</a> 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
<a name="Page_498" id="Page_498" title="498" class="pagenum"></a>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<a name="FNanchor_55_55" id="FNanchor_55_55"></a><a href="#Footnote_55_55" class="fnanchor" title="

AUCTIONS AND AUCTIONEERS.

Years of Peace.  &pound;  Years of War.  &pound;
1787  48,964  1793  70,004
1788  53,993  1794  82,659
1789  52,024  1795  86,890
1790  53,156  1796  109,594
  &pound;208,137    &pound;349,147  Increase to 1790 &pound;141,010.
1791 &pound;70,973  4 Years to 1791 &pound;230,146  Increase to 1791 &pound;119,001.">[55]</a>
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,<a name="FNanchor_56_56" id="FNanchor_56_56"></a><a href="#Footnote_56_56" class="fnanchor" title=" 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.  &pound;  Years of War.  &pound;
1789  6,132  1793  6,042
1790  6,708  1794  6,104
1791  6,482  1795  6,795
1792  6,008  1796  7,882
  &pound;25,330    &pound;26,823

Increase in 4 Years of War            &pound;1,493">[56]</a>
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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_499" id="Page_499" title="499" class="pagenum"></a>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,
<a name="Page_500" id="Page_500" title="500" class="pagenum"></a>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 &quot;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.&quot; But what are the causes to which
they attribute their complaints? The first is, &quot;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.&quot; 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
<a name="Page_501" id="Page_501" title="501" class="pagenum"></a>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 &quot;incommodious, and much too narrow for
the great concourse of carts and other carriages usually
passing and repassing therein.&quot; 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, &quot;bursting with opulence.&quot; 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.</p>

<p>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
<a name="Page_502" id="Page_502" title="502" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>&quot;It appears,&quot; as the committee has very justly and
satisfactorily observed, &quot;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&quot; (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) ...
&quot;was greatly compensated by a very large balance
of commerce in favor of this kingdom,&mdash;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<i>l</i>., 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,
<a name="Page_503" id="Page_503" title="503" class="pagenum"></a>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.&quot; 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,&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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,&mdash;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.<a name="FNanchor_57_57" id="FNanchor_57_57"></a><a href="#Footnote_57_57" class="fnanchor" title=" 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.">[57]</a> On the
<a name="Page_504" id="Page_504" title="504" class="pagenum"></a>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.</p>

<p>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,) &quot;that the true bal<a name="Page_505" id="Page_505" title="505" class="pagenum"></a>ance
of our trade amounted, on a medium of the
four years preceding January, 1796, to upwards of
6,500,00<i>l</i>. per annum, exclusive of the profits arising
from our East and West India trade, which he
estimates at upwards of 4,000,000<i>l</i>. per annum, exclusive
of the profits derived from our fisheries.&quot; 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.</p>

<p>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,)&mdash;if no class is
lessened in its numbers, or in its stock, or in its conveniences,
or even its luxuries,&mdash;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,&mdash;if
they are as numerously attended,&mdash;if their equipages
are as splendid,&mdash;if they regale at table with
as much or more variety of plenty than ever,&mdash;if
they are clad in as expensive and changeful a diver<a name="Page_506" id="Page_506" title="506" class="pagenum"></a>sity,
according to their tastes and modes,&mdash;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,&mdash;if the theatres are
as rich and as well filled, and greater and at a higher
price than ever,&mdash;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,&mdash;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
<a name="Page_507" id="Page_507" title="507" class="pagenum"></a>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
<a name="Page_508" id="Page_508" title="508" class="pagenum"></a>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,&mdash;a responsibility to a tribunal at
which not only ministers, but kings and parliaments,
but even nations themselves, must one day answer.</p>

<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_37_37" id="Footnote_37_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_37_37"><span class="label">[37]</span></a> The Archduke Charles of Austria.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_38_38" id="Footnote_38_38"></a><a href="#FNanchor_38_38"><span class="label">[38]</span></a> Dec 27, 1790.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_39_39" id="Footnote_39_39"></a><a href="#FNanchor_39_39"><span class="label">[39]</span></a> Observations on a Late State of the Nation.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_40_40" id="Footnote_40_40"></a><a href="#FNanchor_40_40"><span class="label">[40]</span></a> 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.
</p>

                <h3>BRICKS AND TILES.</h3>

<div class='ctr'>
<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
<tr><td align='right'>Years of Peace.</td><td align='center'>&pound;</td><td align='right'>Years of War.</td><td align='center'>&pound;</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1787</td><td align='right'>94,521</td><td align='center'>1793</td><td align='right'>122,975</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1788</td><td align='right'>96,278</td><td align='center'>1794</td><td align='right'>106,811</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1789</td><td align='right'>91,773</td><td align='center'>1795</td><td align='right'>83,804</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1790</td><td align='right'>104,409</td><td align='center'>1796</td><td align='right'>94,668</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'></td><td align='right' class="bt">&pound;386,981</td><td align='center'></td><td align='right' class="bt">&pound;408,258</td><td>Increase to 1790 &pound;21,277.</td></tr>
<tr><td align='left' colspan='2'>1791 &pound;115,382</td><td align='left' colspan='2'> 4 Years to 1791 &pound;407,842</td><td>Increase to 1791   &pound;416.</td></tr>
</table></div>


                      <h3>PLATE.</h3>

<div class='ctr'>
<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
<tr><td align='right'>Years of Peace.</td><td align='center'>&pound;</td><td align='right'>Years of War.</td><td align='center'>&pound;</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1787</td><td align='right'>22,707</td><td align='center'>1793</td><td align='right'>25,920</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1788</td><td align='right'>23,295</td><td align='center'>1794</td><td align='right'>23,637</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1789</td><td align='right'>22,453</td><td align='center'>1795</td><td align='right'>25,607</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1790</td><td align='right'>18,433</td><td align='center'>1796</td><td align='right'>28,513</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'></td><td align='right' class='bt'>&pound;86,888</td><td></td><td align='right' class='bt'>&pound;103,677</td><td align='right'>Increase to 1790 &pound;16,789.</td></tr>
<tr><td align='left' colspan='2'>1791 &pound;31,528</td><td  align='left' colspan='2'> 4 Years to 1791 &pound;95,704</td><td align='right'>Increase to 1791 &pound;7,973.</td></tr>
</table></div>



                   <h3>GLASS PLATES.</h3>

<div class='ctr'>
<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
<tr><td align='right'>Years of Peace.</td><td align='center'>&pound;</td><td align='right'>Years of War.</td><td align='center'>&pound;</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1787</td><td align='right'>&mdash;&mdash;</td><td align='center'>1793</td><td align='right'>5,655</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1788</td><td align='right'>5,496</td><td align='center'>1794</td><td align='right'>5,456</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1789</td><td align='right'>4,686</td><td align='center'>1795</td><td align='right'>5,839</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1790</td><td align='right'>6,008</td><td align='center'>1796</td><td align='right'>8,871</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'></td><td align='right' class='bt'>&pound;16,190</td><td></td><td align='right' class='bt'>&pound;25,821</td><td align='right'>Increase to 1791 &pound;1,751.</td></tr>
<tr><td align='left' colspan='2'>1791 &pound;7,880</td><td align='left' colspan='2'>4 Years to 1791 &pound;24,070</td></tr>
</table></div>
</div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_41_41" id="Footnote_41_41"></a><a href="#FNanchor_41_41"><span class="label">[41]</span></a>
</p>

                     <h3>GROCERIES.</h3>

<div class='ctr'>
<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
<tr><td align='right'>Years of Peace.</td><td align='center'>&pound;</td><td align='right'>Years of War.</td><td align='center'>&pound;</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1787</td><td align='right'>167,389</td><td align='center'>1793</td><td align='right'>124,655</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1788</td><td align='right'>133,191</td><td align='center'>1794</td><td align='right'>195,840</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1789</td><td align='right'>142,871</td><td align='center'>1795</td><td align='right'>208,242</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1790</td><td align='right'>156,311</td><td align='center'>1796</td><td align='right'>159,826</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'></td><td align='right' class='bt'>&pound;599,762</td><td></td><td align='right' class='bt'>&pound;688,563</td><td align='right'>Increase to 1790 &pound;88,081.</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'>1791 &pound;236,727</td><td align='right' colspan='2'>4 Years to 1791 &pound;669,100</td><td align='right'>Increase to 1791 &pound;19,463.</td></tr>
</table></div>



                           <h3>TEA.</h3>

<div class='ctr'>
<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
<tr><td align='right'>Years of Peace.</td><td align='center'>&pound;</td><td align='right'>Years of War.</td><td align='center'>&pound;</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1787</td><td align='right'>424,144</td><td align='center'>1793</td><td align='right'>477,644</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1788</td><td align='right'>426,660</td><td align='center'>1794</td><td align='right'>467,132</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1789</td><td align='right'>539,575</td><td align='center'>1795</td><td align='right'>507,518</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1790</td><td align='right'>417,736</td><td align='center'>1796</td><td align='right'>526,307</td></tr>
<tr><td align='right'></td><td align='right' class='bt'>&pound;1,808,115</td><td></td><td align='center' class='bt'>&pound;1,978,601</td><td align='right'>Increase to 1790 &pound;170,486.</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'>1791 &pound;448,709</td><td align='right' colspan='2'>4 Years to 1791 &pound;1,832,680</td><td align='right'>Increase to 1791 &pound;145,921.</td></tr>
</table></div>


<p>The additional duty imposed in 1795 produced in that year
137,656<i>l.</i>, and in 1796, 200,107<i>l.</i></p>


                  <h3>COFFEE AND COCOA-NUTS.</h3>

<div class='ctr'>
<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
<tr><td align='right'>Years of Peace.</td><td align='center'>&pound;</td><td align='right'>Years of War.</td><td align='center'>&pound;</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1787</td><td align='right'>17,006</td><td align='center'>1793</td><td align='right'>36,846</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1788</td><td align='right'>30,217</td><td align='center'>1794</td><td align='right'>49,177</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1789</td><td align='right'>34,784</td><td align='center'>1795</td><td align='right'>27,913</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1790</td><td align='right'>38,647</td><td align='center'>1796</td><td align='right'>19,711</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'></td><td align='right' class='bt'>&pound;120,654</td><td></td><td align='right' class='bt'>&pound;133,647</td><td align='right'>Increase to 1790 &pound;12,993.</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'>1791 &pound;41,194</td><td align='right' colspan='2'>4 Years to 1791 &pound;144,842</td><td align='right'>Decrease to 1791 &pound;11,195.</td></tr>
</table></div>

<p>
The additional duty of 1795 in that year gave 16,775<i>l.</i>, and in
1796, 15,319<i>l.</i></p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_42_42" id="Footnote_42_42"></a><a href="#FNanchor_42_42"><span class="label">[42]</span></a>
</p>


                          <h3>SUGAR.</h3>

<div class='ctr'>
<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
<tr><td align='right'>Years of Peace.</td><td align='center'>&pound;</td><td align='right'>Years of War.</td><td align='center'>&pound;</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1787</td><td align='right'>1,065,109</td><td align='center'>1793</td><td align='right'>1,473,139</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1788</td><td align='right'>1,184,458</td><td align='center'>1794</td><td align='right'>1,392,965</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1789</td><td align='right'>1,905,106</td><td align='center'>1795</td><td align='right'>1,338,246</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1790</td><td align='right'>1,069,108</td><td align='center'>1796</td><td align='right'>1,474,899</td></tr>
<tr><td align='right'></td><td align='right' class='bt'>&pound;4,413,781</td><td></td><td align='right' class='bt'>&pound;5,679,249</td><td align='right'>Increase to 1790 &pound;1,265,468.</td></tr>
<tr><td align='right' colspan='2'>1791 &pound;1,044,781</td><td align='right' colspan='2'>4 Years to 1791 &pound;4,392,725</td><td align='right'>Increase to 1791 &pound;1,286,524.</td></tr>
</table></div>

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

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_43_43" id="Footnote_43_43"></a><a href="#FNanchor_43_43"><span class="label">[43]</span></a>
</p>


                          <h3>BEER, &amp;c.</h3>

<div class='ctr'>
<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
<tr><td align='right'>Years of Peace.</td><td align='center'>&pound;</td><td align='right'>Years of War.</td><td align='center'>&pound;</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1787</td><td align='right'>1,761,429</td><td align='center'>1793</td><td align='right'>2,043,902</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1788</td><td align='right'>1,705,199</td><td align='center'>1794</td><td align='right'>2,082,053</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1789</td><td align='right'>1,742,514</td><td align='center'>1795</td><td align='right'>1,931,101</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1790</td><td align='right'>1,858,043</td><td align='center'>1796</td><td align='right'>2,294,377</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'></td><td align='right' class='bt'>&pound;7,067,185</td><td></td><td align='right' class='bt'>&pound;8,351,433</td><td align='right'>Increase to 1790 &pound;1,284,248.</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'>1791 &pound;1,880,478</td><td align='right' colspan='2'>4 Years to 1791 &pound;7,186,234</td><td align='right'>Increase to 1791 &pound;1,165,199.</td></tr>
</table></div>



                        <h3>WINE.</h3>

<div class='ctr'>
<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
<tr><td align='right'>Years of Peace.</td><td align='center'>&pound;</td><td align='right'>Years of War.</td><td align='center'>&pound;</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1787</td><td align='right'>219,934</td><td align='center'>1793</td><td align='right'>222,887</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1788</td><td align='right'>215,578</td><td align='center'>1794</td><td align='right'>283,644</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1789</td><td align='right'>252,649</td><td align='center'>1795</td><td align='right'>317,072</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1790</td><td align='right'>308,624</td><td align='center'>1796</td><td align='right'>187,818</td></tr>
<tr><td align='right'></td><td align='right' class='bt'>&pound;996,785</td><td></td><td align='right' class='bt'>&pound;1,011,421</td><td align='right'>Increase to 1790 &pound;14,636.</td></tr>
<tr><td align='right' colspan='2'>1791 &pound;336,549</td><td align='right' colspan='2'>4 Years to 1791 &pound;1,113,400</td><td align='right'>Decrease to 1791 &pound;101,979.</td></tr>
</table></div>


                  <h3>QUANTITY IMPORTED.</h3>

<div class='ctr'>
<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
<tr><td align='center'>Years of Peace.</td><td align='center'>Tuns.</td><td align='center'>Years of War.</td><td align='center'>Tuns.</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1787</td><td align='center'>22,978</td><td align='center'>1793</td><td align='center'>22,788</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1786</td><td align='center'>26,442</td><td align='center'>1794</td><td align='center'>27,868</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1789</td><td align='center'>27,414</td><td align='center'>1795</td><td align='center'>32,033</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1790</td><td align='center'>29,182</td><td align='center'>1796</td><td align='center'>19,079</td></tr>
</table></div>


<p>
The additional duty of 1795 produced that year 736,871<i>l.</i>, and in
1796, 432,689<i>l.</i> A second additional duty, which produced 98,165<i>l.</i>
was laid in 1796.
</p>


                      <h3>SWEETS.</h3>

<div class='ctr'>
<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
<tr><td align='right'>Years of Peace.</td><td align='center'>&pound;</td><td align='right'>Years of War.</td><td align='center'>&pound;</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1787</td><td align='right'>11,167</td><td align='center'>1793</td><td align='right'>11,016</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1788</td><td align='right'>7,375</td><td align='center'>1794</td><td align='right'>10,612</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1789</td><td align='right'>7,202</td><td align='center'>1795</td><td align='right'>13,321</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1790</td><td align='right'>4,953</td><td align='center'>1796</td><td align='right'>15,050</td></tr>
<tr><td align='right'></td><td align='right' class='bt'>&pound;30,697</td><td></td><td align='right' class='bt'>&pound;49,999</td><td align='right'>Increase to 1790 &pound;19,302.</td></tr>
<tr><td align='right' colspan='2'>1791 &pound;13,282</td><td align='right' colspan='2'>4 Years to 1791 &pound;32,812</td><td align='right'>Increase to 1791 &pound;17,187.</td></tr>
</table></div>

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

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_44_44" id="Footnote_44_44"></a><a href="#FNanchor_44_44"><span class="label">[44]</span></a>
</p>

             <h3>MUSLINS AND  CALICOES.</h3>

<div class='ctr'>
<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
<tr><td align='right'>Years of Peace.</td><td align='center'>&pound;</td><td align='right'>Years of War.</td><td align='center'>&pound;</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1787</td><td align='right'>129,297</td><td align='center'>1793</td><td align='right'>173,050</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1788</td><td align='right'>138,660</td><td align='center'>1794</td><td align='right'>104,902</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1789</td><td align='right'>126,267</td><td align='center'>1795</td><td align='right'>103,857</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1790</td><td align='right'>128,865</td><td align='center'>1796</td><td align='right'>272,544</td></tr>
<tr><td align='right'></td><td align='right' class='bt'>&pound;522,589</td><td></td><td align='right' class='bt'>&pound;654,353</td><td align='right'>Increase to 1790</td><td align='right'>&pound;131,764.</td></tr>
</table></div>

<p>
This table begins with 1788. The net produce of the preceding
year is not in the report whence the table is taken.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_45_45" id="Footnote_45_45"></a><a href="#FNanchor_45_45"><span class="label">[45]</span></a>
</p>

                  <h3>PRINTED GOODS.</h3>

<div class='ctr'>
<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
<tr><td align='right'>Years of Peace.</td><td align='center'>&pound;</td><td align='right'>Years of War.</td><td align='center'>&pound;</td></tr>
<tr><td align='right'>1787</td><td align='right'>142,000</td><td align='center'>1793</td><td align='right'>191,566</td></tr>
<tr><td align='right'>1788</td><td align='right'>154,486</td><td align='center'>1794</td><td align='right'>190,554</td></tr>
<tr><td align='right'>1789</td><td align='right'>153,202</td><td align='center'>1795</td><td align='right'>197,416</td></tr>
<tr><td align='right'>1790</td><td align='right'>157,156</td><td align='center'>1796</td><td align='right'>230,530</td></tr>
<tr><td align='right'></td><td align='right' class='bt'>&pound;616,844</td><td></td><td align='right' class='bt'>&pound;810,066</td><td align='right'>Increase to 1790 &pound;193,222.</td></tr>
<tr><td align='right' colspan='2'>1791 &pound;191,489</td><td align='right' colspan='2'>4 Years to 1791 &pound;666,333</td><td align='right'>Increase to 1791 &pound;143,733.</td></tr>
</table></div>


<p>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.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_46_46" id="Footnote_46_46"></a><a href="#FNanchor_46_46"><span class="label">[46]</span></a>
</p>

                       <h3>SILK.</h3>

<div class='ctr'>
<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
<tr><td align='right'>Years of Peace.</td><td align='center'>&pound;</td><td align='right'>Years of War.</td><td align='center'>&pound;</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1787</td><td align='right'>166,912</td><td align='center'>1793</td><td align='right'>209,915</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1788</td><td align='right'>123,998</td><td align='center'>1794</td><td align='right'>221,306</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1789</td><td align='right'>157,730</td><td align='center'>1795</td><td align='right'>210,725</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1790</td><td align='right'>212,522</td><td align='center'>1796</td><td align='right'>221,007</td></tr>
<tr><td align='right'></td><td align='right' class='bt'>&pound;661,162</td><td></td><td align='right' class='bt'>&pound;862,953</td><td align='right'>Increase to 1790 &pound;201,791.</td></tr>
<tr><td align='right' colspan='2'>1791 &pound;279,128</td><td align='right' colspan='2'>4 Years to 1791 &pound;773,378</td><td align='right'>Increase to 1791 &pound;89,575.</td></tr>
</table></div>
</div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_47_47" id="Footnote_47_47"></a><a href="#FNanchor_47_47"><span class="label">[47]</span></a>
</p>

                    <h3>FURS.</h3>

<div class='ctr'>
<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
<tr><td align='right'>Years of Peace.</td><td align='center'>&pound;</td><td align='right'>Years of War.</td><td align='center'>&pound;</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1787</td><td align='right'>3,464</td><td align='center'>1793</td><td align='right'>2,829</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1788</td><td align='right'>2,958</td><td align='center'>1794</td><td align='right'>3,353</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1789</td><td align='right'>1,151</td><td align='center'>1795</td><td align='right'>3,666</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1790</td><td align='right'>3,328</td><td align='center'>1796</td><td align='right'>6,138</td></tr>
<tr><td align='right'></td><td align='right' class='bt'>&pound;10,901</td><td></td><td align='right' class='bt'>&pound;15,986</td><td align='right'>Increase to 1790 &pound;5,085.</td></tr>
<tr><td align='right' colspan='2'>1791 &pound;5,731</td><td align='right' colspan='2'>4 Years to 1791 &pound;13,168</td><td align='right'>Increase to 1791 &pound;2,815.</td></tr>
</table></div>

<p>
The skins here selected from the Custom-House accounts are, <i>Black
Bear, Ordinary Fox, Marten, Mink, Musquash, Otter, Raccoon</i>, and <i>Wolf</i>.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_48_48" id="Footnote_48_48"></a><a href="#FNanchor_48_48"><span class="label">[48]</span></a> Report of the Lords' Committee of Secrecy, ordered to be printed
28th April, 1797, Appendix 44.
</p>

                        <h3>INCLOSURE BILLS.</h3>


<div class='ctr'>
<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
<tr><td align='center'>Years of Peace</td><td></td><td align='center'>Years of War.</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1789</td><td align='center'>33</td><td align='center'>1793</td><td align='center'>60</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1790</td><td align='center'>25</td><td align='center'>1794</td><td align='center'>74</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1791</td><td align='center'>40</td><td align='center'>1795</td><td align='center'>77</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1792</td><td align='center'>40</td><td align='center'>1796</td><td align='center'>72</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'></td><td align='center' class='bt'>138</td><td></td><td align='center'  class='bt'>283</td></tr>
</table></div>

</div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_49_49" id="Footnote_49_49"></a><a href="#FNanchor_49_49"><span class="label">[49]</span></a></p>

<h3>NAVIGATION AND CANAL BILLS.</h3>


<div class='ctr'>
<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
<tr><td align='center'>Years of Peace.</td><td></td><td align='center'>Years of War.</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1789</td><td align='center'>3</td><td align='center'>1798</td><td align='center'>28</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1790</td><td align='center'>8</td><td align='center'>1794</td><td align='center'>18</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1791</td><td align='center'>10</td><td align='center'>1795</td><td align='center'>11</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1792</td><td align='center'>9</td><td align='center'>1796</td><td align='center'>12</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'></td><td align='center' class='bt'>80</td><td></td><td align='center' class='bt'>69</td></tr>
<tr><td align='left' colspan='2'>Money raised &pound; 2,377,200</td><td></td><td align='left' colspan='2'>&pound; 7,115,100</td></tr>
</table></div>



</div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_50_50" id="Footnote_50_50"></a><a href="#FNanchor_50_50"><span class="label">[50]</span></a></p>

<h3>POST-HORSE DUTY.</h3>

<div class='ctr'>
<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
<tr><td align='right'>Years of Peace.</td><td align='center'>&pound;</td><td align='right'>Years of War.</td><td align='center'>&pound;</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1785</td><td align='right'>169,410</td><td align='center'>1793</td><td align='right'>191,488</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1788</td><td align='right'>204,659</td><td align='center'>1794</td><td align='right'>202,884</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1789</td><td align='right'>170,554</td><td align='center'>1795</td><td align='right'>196,691</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1790</td><td align='right'>181,155</td><td align='center'>1796</td><td align='right'>204,061</td></tr>
<tr><td align='right'></td><td align='right' class='bt'>&pound;725,778</td><td></td><td align='right'  class='bt'>&pound;795,124</td><td align='right'>Increase to 1790 &pound;69,346.</td></tr>
<tr><td align='right' colspan='2'>1791 &pound;198,634</td><td align='right' colspan='2'>4 Years to 1791 &pound;755,002</td><td align='right'>Increase to 1791 &pound;40,122.</td></tr>
</table></div>

</div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_51_51" id="Footnote_51_51"></a><a href="#FNanchor_51_51"><span class="label">[51]</span></a> 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<i>l</i>., in consequence of the
regulation on franking, which took place on the 5th May, 1795, and
was computed at 40,000<i>l</i>. 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.
</p>
<h3>POST-OFFICE.</h3>



<div class='ctr'>
<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
<tr><td align='center'>Gross Revenue</td><td align='center'>&pound;</td><td align='right' colspan='2' class='bb'>Number of Letters.</td></tr>
<tr><td align='right'>April, 1790-1791</td><td align='right'>575,079</td><td align='right' class='bb'>Inwards.</td><td align='right' class='bb'>Outwards.</td></tr>
<tr><td align='right'>1791-1792</td><td align='right'>585,432</td><td align='right'>6,391,149</td><td align='right'>5,081,344</td></tr>
<tr><td align='right'>1792-1793</td><td align='right'>627,592</td><td align='right'>6,584,867</td><td align='right'>5,041,137</td></tr>
<tr><td align='right'>1793-1794</td><td align='right'>691,268</td><td align='right'>7,094,777</td><td align='right'>6,537,234</td></tr>
<tr><td align='right'>1794-1795</td><td align='right'>705,319</td><td align='right'>7,071,029</td><td align='right'>7,473,626</td></tr>
<tr><td align='right'>1795-1796</td><td align='right'>750,637</td><td align='right'>7,641,077</td><td align='right'>8,597,167</td></tr>
</table></div>

<p>
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.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_52_52" id="Footnote_52_52"></a><a href="#FNanchor_52_52"><span class="label">[52]</span></a> In a debate, 30th December, 1796, on the return of Lord
Malmesbury.&mdash;See Woodfall's Parliamentary Debates, Vol. XIII.
p. 591.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_53_53" id="Footnote_53_53"></a><a href="#FNanchor_53_53"><span class="label">[53]</span></a></p>
<h3>GENERAL LICENSES.</h3>

<div class='ctr'>
<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
<tr><td align='right'>Years of Peace.</td><td align='center'>&pound;</td><td align='right'>Years of War.</td><td align='right'>&pound;</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1787</td><td align='right'>44,030</td><td align='center'>1793</td><td align='right'>45,568</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1788</td><td align='right'>40,882</td><td align='center'>1794</td><td align='right'>42,129</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1789</td><td align='right'>39,917</td><td align='center'>1795</td><td align='right'>43,350</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1790</td><td align='right'>41,970</td><td align='center'>1796</td><td align='right'>41,190</td></tr>
<tr><td align='right'></td><td align='right' class='bt'>&pound;166,799</td><td></td><td align='right' class='bt'>&pound;170,237</td><td align='right'>Increase to 1790 &pound;3,438.</td></tr>
<tr><td align='right' colspan='2'>1791 &pound;44,240</td><td align='right' colspan='2'>4 Years to 1791 &pound;167,009</td><td align='right'>Increase to 1791 &pound;3,228.</td></tr>
</table></div>

</div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_54_54" id="Footnote_54_54"></a><a href="#FNanchor_54_54"><span class="label">[54]</span></a>
</p>

<h3>DEALERS IN TEA.</h3>


<div class='ctr'>
<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
<tr><td align='right'>Years of Peace.</td><td align='center'>&pound;</td><td align='right'>Years of War.</td><td align='center'>&pound;</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1787</td><td align='right'>10,934</td><td align='center'>1793</td><td align='right'>13,939</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1788</td><td align='right'>11,949</td><td align='center'>1794</td><td align='right'>14,315</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1789</td><td align='right'>12,501</td><td align='center'>1795</td><td align='right'>13,956</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1790</td><td align='right'>13,126</td><td align='center'>1796</td><td align='right'>14,830</td></tr>
<tr><td align='right'></td><td align='right' class='bt'>&pound;48,510</td><td></td><td align='right' class='bt'>&pound;57,040</td><td align='right'>Increase to 1790 &pound;8,530.</td></tr>
<tr><td align='right' colspan='2'>1791 &pound;13,921</td><td align='right' colspan='2'>4 Years to 1791 &pound;51,497</td><td align='right'>Increase to 1791 &pound;5,543.</td></tr>
</table></div>


<h3>SELLERS OF PLATE.</h3>


<div class='ctr'>
<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
<tr><td align='right'>Years of Peace.</td><td align='center'>&pound;</td><td align='right'>Years of War.</td><td align='center'>&pound;</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1787</td><td align='right'>6,593</td><td align='center'>1793</td><td align='right'>8,178</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1788</td><td align='right'>7,953</td><td align='center'>1794</td><td align='right'>8,296</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1789</td><td align='right'>7,348</td><td align='center'>1795</td><td align='right'>8,128</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1790</td><td align='right'>7,988</td><td align='center'>1796</td><td align='right'>8,835</td></tr>
<tr><td></td><td align='right' class='bt'>&pound;29,832</td><td></td><td align='right' class='bt'>&pound;33,437</td><td align='right'>Increase to 1790 &pound;3,555.</td></tr>
<tr><td align='right' colspan='2'>1791 &pound;8,327</td><td align='right' colspan='2'>4 Years to 1791 &pound;31,616</td><td align='right'>Increase to 1791 &pound;1,821.</td></tr>
</table></div>

</div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_55_55" id="Footnote_55_55"></a><a href="#FNanchor_55_55"><span class="label">[55]</span></a>
</p>


<h3>AUCTIONS AND AUCTIONEERS.</h3>


<div class='ctr'>
<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
<tr><td align='right'>Years of Peace.</td><td align='center'>&pound;</td><td align='right'>Years of War.</td><td align='center'>&pound;</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1787</td><td align='right'>48,964</td><td align='center'>1793</td><td align='right'>70,004</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1788</td><td align='right'>53,993</td><td align='center'>1794</td><td align='right'>82,659</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1789</td><td align='right'>52,024</td><td align='center'>1795</td><td align='right'>86,890</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1790</td><td align='right'>53,156</td><td align='center'>1796</td><td align='right'>109,594</td></tr>
<tr><td></td><td align='right' class='bt'>&pound;208,137</td><td></td><td align='right' class='bt'>&pound;349,147</td><td align='right'>Increase to 1790 &pound;141,010.</td></tr>
<tr><td align='right' colspan='2'>1791 &pound;70,973</td><td align='right' colspan='2'>4 Years to 1791 &pound;230,146</td><td align='right'>Increase to 1791 &pound;119,001.</td></tr>
</table></div>


</div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_56_56" id="Footnote_56_56"></a><a href="#FNanchor_56_56"><span class="label">[56]</span></a> 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.
</p>

<h3>HAWKERS AND PEDDLERS.</h3>


<div class='ctr'>
<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
<tr><td align='right'>Years of Peace.</td><td align='center'>&pound;</td><td align='right'>Years of War.</td><td align='center'>&pound;</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1789</td><td align='right'>6,132</td><td align='center'>1793</td><td align='right'>6,042</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1790</td><td align='right'>6,708</td><td align='center'>1794</td><td align='right'>6,104</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1791</td><td align='right'>6,482</td><td align='center'>1795</td><td align='right'>6,795</td></tr>
<tr><td align='center'>1792</td><td align='right'>6,008</td><td align='center'>1796</td><td align='right'>7,882</td></tr>
<tr><td align='right'></td><td align='right' class='bt'>&pound;25,330</td><td></td><td align='right' class='bt'>&pound;26,823</td></tr>
</table></div>

<p>Increase in 4 Years of War            &pound;1,493</p>


</div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_57_57" id="Footnote_57_57"></a><a href="#FNanchor_57_57"><span class="label">[57]</span></a> 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.</p></div>
</div>

<h3>END OF VOL. V.</h3>









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