THE BEAUTIES OF THE LATE
Right Hon. EDMUND BURKE.
THE BEAUTIES OF THE LATE
Right Hon. EDMUND BURKE,
SELECTED FROM THE WRITINGS, &c. OF THAT EXTRAORDINARY MAN, ALPHABETICALLY ARRANGED.
Including the following celebrated Political Characters, drawn by himself:
Antoinette, late Queen of France
Comte D'Artois
M. Brissot
Richard Burke,
Esq
Late Earl of Chatham
M. Condorcet
Prince de Conti
Right Hon. Henry Dundaa
Hon. C. J. Fox
George III.
Lord Grenville
Late Mr. Grenville
Warren Hastings,
Esq
Late Lord Keppel
Sir Hercules Langrishe
Louis XVI.
Louis XVIII.
Lord North
Right Honourable William Pitt
Marquis of Rockingham
Charles Townsend
Esq
John Wilkes,
Esq
&c. &c.
TO WHICH IS PREFIXED, A SKETCH OF THE LIFE, WITH SOME ORIGINAL ANECDOTES OF Mr. BURKE.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. II.
London:
PRINTED BY J. W. MYERS, And sold by W. WEST, No. 1, Queen's-head Passage, Paternoster-row. 1798.
THE BEAUTIES OF BURKE.
LAW—As a Science of methodized and artificial Equity, abolished in France.
A Government of the nature of that set up at our very door (France) has never been hitherto seen or even imagined in Europe. What our relation to it will be cannot be judged by other relations. It is a serious thing to have a connection with a people who live only under positive, arbitrary, and changeable institutions; and those not perfected nor supplied, nor explained by any common acknowledged rule of moral science. I remember that in one of my last conversations with the late Lord Camden, we were struck much in the same manner with the abolition in France of the law, as a science of methodized and artificial equity. France, since her revolution, is under the sway of a sect, whose leaders have deliberately, at one stroke, demolished the whole body of that jurisprudence which France had pretty nearly in common with other civilized countries. In that jurisprudence were contained the elements and principles of the law of nations, the great ligament of mankind. With the law they have of course destroyed all seminaries in which jurisprudence was taught, as well as all the corporations established for its conservation. I have not heard of any country, whether in Europe or Asia, or even in Africa, on this side of Mount Atlas, which is wholly without some such colleges and such corporations, except France. No man, in a public or private concern, can divine by what rule or principle her judgments are to be directed; nor is there to be found a Professor in any University, or a Practitioner in any Court, who will hazard an opinion of what is or is not law in France, in any case whatever. They have not only annulled all their old treaties, but they have renounced the law of nations, from whence treaties have their force. With a fixed design they have outlawed themselves, and to their power outlawed all other nations. Instead of the religion and the law by which they were in a great and 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.—
Regicide Peace.
LAW OF CHANGE.
WE must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature, and the means perhaps of its conservation. All we can do, and that human wisdom can do, is to provide that the change shall proceed by insensible degrees. This has all the benefits which may be in change, without any of the inconveniencies of mutation. Every thing is provided for as it arrives. This mode will, on the one hand, prevent the
unfixing old interests at once;
a thing which is apt to breed a black and sullen discontent in those who are at once dispossessed of all their influence and consideration. This gradual course, on the other side, will prevent men, long under depression, from being intoxicated with a large draught of new power, which they always abuse with a licentious insolence. But wishing, as I do, the change to be gradual and cautious, I would, in my first steps, lean rather to the side of enlargement than restriction.—
Letter to Sir H. Langrishe, M. P.
LAWS (BAD.)
BAD laws are the worst sort of tyranny. In such a country as this, they are of all bad things the worst, worse by far than any where else; and they derive a particular malignity even from the wisdom and soundness of the rest of our institutions. For very obvious reasons you cannot trust the Crown with a dispensing power over any of your laws—
Speech previous to the Election at Bristol.
LAWGIVER. Character of a true Lawgiver.
BUT it seems as if it were the prevalent opinion in Paris, that an unfeeling heart, and an undoubting confidence, are the sole qualifications for a perfect legislator. Far different are my ideas of that high office. The true lawgiver ought to have an heart full of sensibility. He ought to love and respect his kind, and to fear himself. It may be allowed to his temperament to catch his ultimate object with an intuitive glance; but his movements towards it ought to be deliberate. Political arrangement, as it is a work for social ends, is to be only wrought by social means. There mind must conspire with mind. Time is required to produce that union of minds which alone can produce all the good we aim at. Our patience will atchieve more than our force. If I might venture to appeal to what is so much out of fashion in Paris, I mean to experience, I should tell you, that in my course I have known, and, according to my measure, have co-operated with great men, and I have never yet seen any plan which has not been mended by the observations of those who were much inferior in understanding to the person who took the lead in the business. By a slow but well-sustained progress, the effect of each step is watched; the good or ill success of the first, gives light to us in the second; and so, from light to light, we are conducted with safety through the whole series. We see, that the parts of the system do not clash. The evils latent in the most promising contrivances are provided for as they arise. One advantage is as little as possible sacrificed to another. We compensate, we reconcile, we balance. We are enabled to unite into a consistent whole the various anomalies and contending principles that are found in the minds and affairs of men. From hence arises, not an excellence in simplicity, but one far superior, an excellence in composition. Where the great interests of mankind are concerned through a long succession of generation, that succession ought to be admitted into some share in the councils which are so deeply to affect them. If justice requires this, the work itself requires the aid of more minds than one age can furnish. It is from this view of things that the best legislators have been often satisfied with the establishment of some sure, solid, and ruling principle in government; a power like that which some of the philosophers have called a plastic nature; and having fixed the principle, they have lest it afterwards to its own operation.—
Reflections on the Revolution in France.
LEGISLATOR AND POPULAR GOVERNMENTS.
NO legislator, at any period of the world, has willingly pla
d the seat of active power in the hands of the multitude: because there it admits of no control, no regulation, no steady direction whatsoever. The people are the natural control on authority; but to exercise and to control together is contradictory and impossible.
As the exorbitant exercise of power cannot, under popular sway, be effectually restrained, the other great object of political arrangement, the means of abating an excessive desire of it, is in such a state still worse provided for. The democratic commonwealth is the foodful nurse of ambition. Under the other forms it meets with many restraints. Whenever, in states which have had a democratic basis, the legislators have endeavoured to put restraints upon ambition, their methods were as violent, as in the end they were ineffectual; as violent indeed as any the most jealous despotism could invent. The ostracism could not very long save itself, and much less the state which it was meant to guard, from the attempts of ambition, one of the natural inbred incurable distempers of a powerful democracy.—
Appeal from the new to the old Whigs.
LEGISLATORS (FRENCH.)
WHILST they
(French Legislators)
are possessed by these notions,
(theoretical)
it is vain to talk to them of the practice of their ancestors, the fundamental laws of their country, the fixed form of a constitution, whose merits are confirmed by the solid test of long experience, and an increasing public strength and national prosperity. They despise experience as the wisdom of unlettered men; and as for the rest, they have wrought under ground a mine that will blow up at one grand explosion all examples of antiquity, all precedents, charters, and acts of parliament. They have
"The Rights of Men."
Against these there can be no prescription; against these no agreement is binding: these admit no temperament, and no compromise: any thing withheld from their full demand is so much of fraud and injustice. Against these their rights of men let no government look for security in the length of its continuance, or in the justice and lenity of its administration. The objections of these speculatists, if its forms do not quadrate with their theories, are as valid against such an old and beneficent government as against the most violent tyranny, or the greenest usurpation. They are always at issue with governments, not on a question of abuse, but a question of competency, and a question of title. I have nothing to say to the clumsy subtilty of their political metaphysics. Let them be their amusement in the schools.
—"Illâ
se jaclet in auld—Aeolus, et clauso ventorum carcere regnet.
"—
But let them not break prison to burst like a
Levanter,
to sweep the earth with their hurricane, and to break up the fountains of the great deep to overwhelm us.—
Reflections on the Revolution in France.
LIBERTY. (SEE FREEDOM.)
LIBERTY, if I understand it at all, is a
general
principle, and the clear right of all the subjects within the realm, or of none. Partial freedom seem to me a most invidious mode of slavery; but unfortunately, it is the kind of slavery the most easily admitted in times of civil discord.—
Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol.
LIBERTY. Genuine Love of Liberty.
IT is but too true, that the love, and even the very idea, of genuine liberty, is extremely rare. It is but too true, that there are many, whose whole scheme of freedom is made up of pride, perverseness, and insolence. They feel themselves in a state of thraldom; they imagine that their souls are cooped and cabined in, unless they have some man, or some body of men, dependent on their mercy. This desire of having some one below them, descends to those who are the very lowest of all; and a Protestant cobler, debased by his poverty, but exalted by his share of the ruling church, feels a pride in knowing it is by his generosity alone, that the peer, whose footman's instep he measures, is able to keep his chaplain from a jail. This disposition is the true source of the passion which many men in very humble life have taken to the American war.
Our
subjects in America;
our
colonies;
our
dependants. This lust of party power, is the liberty they hunger and thirst for; and this Syren song of ambition, has charmed ears, that one would have thought were never organized to that sort of music.—
Ibid.
LIBERTY.
THE true danger is, when liberty is nibbled away, for expedients, and by parts.—
Ibid.
LIBERTY, Without Wisdom and Virtue, the greatest of Evils.
THE effects of the incapacity shewn by the popular leaders in all the great members of the commonwealth are to be covered with the
"
all-atoning name
"
of liberty. In some people I see great liberty indeed; in many, if not in the most, an oppressive degrading servitude. But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint. Those who know what virtuous liberty is, cannot bear to see it disgraced by incapable heads, on account of their having high-sounding words in their mouths. Grand, swelling sentiments of liberty, I am sure I do not despise. They warm the heart; they enlarge and liberalize our minds; they animate our courage in a time of conflict.—
Reflections on the French Revolution.
LIBERTY AND PEACE.
LIBERTY is a good to be improved, and not an evil to be lessened. It is not only a private blessing of the first order, but the vital spring and energy of the state itself, which has just so much life and vigour as there is liberty in it. But whether liberty be advantageous or not, (for I know it is a fashion to decry the very principle) none will dispute that peace is a blessing; and peace must in the course of human affairs be frequently bought by some indulgence and toleration at least to liberty.—
Speech on Conciliation with America.
LIBERTY AND SERVITUDE.
A brave people will certainly prefer liberty, accompanied with a virtuous poverty, to a depraved and wealthy servitude. But before the price of comfort and opulence is paid, one ought to be pretty sure it is real liberty which is purchased, and that she is to be purchased at no other price. I shall always, however, consider that liberty is very equivocal in her appearance, which has not wisdom and justice for her companions; and does not lead prosperity and plenty in her train.—
Reflections on the Revolution in France.
LIFE.
TAKING in the whole view of life, it is more safe to live under the jurisdiction of severe but steady reason, than under the empire of indulgent, but capricious passion.—
Appeal from the new to the old Whigs.
LEARNING. (SEE NOBILITY AND PRIESTHOOD.)
WE are but too apt to consider things in the state in which we find them, without sufficiently adverting to the causes by which they have been produced, and possibly may be upheld. Nothing is more certain, than that our manners, our civilization, and all the good things which are connected with manners, and with civilization, have, in this European world of ours, depended for ages upon two principles; and were indeed the result of both combined; I mean the spirit of a gentleman, and the spirit of religion. The nobility and the clergy, the one by profession, the other by patronage, kept learning in existence, even in the midst of arms and confusions, and whilst governments were rather in their causes than formed. Learning paid back what it received to nobility and to priesthood; and paid it with usury, by enlarging their ideas, and by furnishing their minds. Happy if they had all continued to know their indissoluble union, and their proper place! Happy if learning, not debauched by ambition, had been satisfied to continue the instructor, and not aspired to be the master! Along with its natural protectors and guardians, learning will be cast into the mire, and trodden down under the hoofs of a swinish multitude.—
Reflections on the Revolution in France.
LOVE. The physical Cause of Love.
WHEN we have before us such objects as excite love and complacency, the body is affected, so far as I could observe, much in the following manner: The head reclines something on one side; the eyelids are more closed than usual, and the eyes roll gently with an inclination to the object; the mouth is a little opened, and the breath drawn slowly, with now and then a low sigh; the whole body is composed, and the hands fall idly to the sides. All this is accompanied with an inward sense of melting and languor. These appearances are always proportioned to the degree of beauty in the object, and of sensibility in the observer. And this gradation from the highest pitch of beauty and sensibility, even to the lowest of mediocrity and indifference, and their correspondent effects, ought to be kept in view, else this description will seem exaggerated, which it certainly is not. But from this description it is almost impossible not to conclude, that beauty acts by relaxing the solids of the whole system. There are all the appearances of such a relaxation; and a relaxation somewhat below the natural tone seems to me to be the cause of all positive pleasure. Who is a stranger to that manner of expression so common in all times and in all countries, of being softened, relaxed, enervated, dissolved, melted away by pleasure? The universal voice of mankind, faithful to their feelings, concurs in affirming this uniform and general effect: and although some odd and particular instance may perhaps be found, wherein there appears a considerable degree of positive pleasure, without all the characters of relaxation, we must not therefore reject the conclusion we had drawn from a concurrence of many experiments; but we must still retain it, subjoining the exceptions which may occur according to the judicious rule laid down by Sir Isaac Newton in the third book of his Optics. Our position will, I conceive, appear confirmed beyond any reasonable doubt, if we can shew that such things as we have already observed to be the genuine constituents of beauty, have each of them, separately taken, a natural tendency to relax the fibres. And if it must be allowed us, that the appearance of the human body, when all these constituents are united together before the sensory, fur ther favours this opinion, we may venture, I believe, to conclude, that the passion called love is produced by this relaxation. By the same method of reasoning which we have used in the enquiry into the causes of the sublime, we may likewise conclude, that as a beautiful object presented to the sense, by causing a relaxation in the body, produces the passion of love in the mind; so if by any means the passion should first have its origin in the mind, a relaxation of the outward organs will as certainly ensue in a degree proportioned to the cause.—
Sublime and Beautiful.
LOVE (NOT ARISING FROM LUST.)
I likewise distinguish love, by which I mean that satisfaction which arises to the mind upon contemplating any thing beautiful, of whatsoever nature it may be, from desire or lust; which is an energy of the mind, that hurries us on to the possession of certain objects, that do not affect us as they are beautiful, but by means altogether different. We shall have a strong desire for a woman of no remarkable beauty; whilst the greatest beauty in men, or in other animals, though it causes love, yet excites nothing at all of desire. Which shews that beauty, and the passion caused by beauty, which I call love, is different from desire, though desire may sometimes operate along with it; but it is to this latter that we must attribute those violent and tempestuous passions, and the consequent emotions of the body which attend what is called love in some of its ordinary acceptations, and not to the effects of beauty merely as it is such.—
Ibid.
LOVE AND ADMIRATION.
THERE is a wide difference between admiration and love. The sublime, which is the cause of the former, always dwells on great objects, and terrible; the latter on small ones, and pleasing; we submit to what we admire, but we love what submits to us; in one case we are forced, in the other we are flattered, into compliance.—
Ibid.
LOVER (FORSAKEN.)
IF you listen to the complaints of a forsaken lover, you observe that he insists largely on the pleasures which he enjoyed or hoped to enjoy, and on the perfection of the object of his desires; it is the
loss
which is always uppermost in his mind. The violent effects produced by love, which has sometimes been even wrought up to madness, is no objection to the rule which we seek to establish. When men have suffered their imaginations to be long affected with any idea, it so wholly engrosses them as to shut out by degrees almost every other, and to break down every partition of the mind which would confine it. Any idea is sufficient for the purpose, as is evident from the infinite variety of causes, which give rise to madness; but this at most can only prove that the passion of love is capable of producing very extraordinary effects, not that its extraordinary emotions have any connection with positive pain.—
Ibid.
LANGUAGE. Effects of outrageous Language. (See AMERICA.)
THIS outrageous language,
(relative to America)
which has been encouraged and kept alive by every art, has already done incredible mischief. For a long time, even amidst the desolations of war, and the insults of hostile laws daily accumulated on one another; the American leaders seem to have had the greatest difficulty in bringing up their people to a declaration of total independence. But the Court Gazette accomplished what the abettors of independence had attempted in vain. When that disingenuous compilation, and strange medley of railing and flattery, was adduced, as a proof of the united sentiments of the people of Great Britain, there was a great change throughout all America. The tide of popular affection, which had still set towards the parent country, began immediately to turn; and to slow with great rapidity in a contrary course. Far from concealing these wild declarations of enmity, the author of the celebrated pamphlet which prepared the minds of the people for independence, insists largely on the multitude and the spirit of these addresses; and he draws an argument from them, which (if the fact were as he supposes) must be irresistible. For I never knew a writer on the theory of government so partial to authority, as not to allow, that the hostile mind of the rulers to their people, did fully justify a change of government; nor can any reason whatever be given, why one people should voluntarily yield any degree of pre-eminence to another, but on a supposition of great affection and benevolence towards them. Unfortunately your ruler, trusting to other things, took no notice of this great principle of connexion. From the beginning of this affair, they have done all they could to alienate your minds from your own kindred; and if they could excite hatred enough in one of the parties towards the other, they seemed to be of opinion that they had gone half the way towards reconciling the quarrel.—
Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol.
LOYALTY (TRUE)
CAN it be true loyalty to any government, or true patriotism towards any country, to degrade their solemn councils into servile drawing-rooms, to flatter their pride and passions, rather than to enlighten their reason, and to prevent them from being cautioned against violence lest others should be encouraged to resistance? By such acquiescence great kings and mighty nations have been undone; and if any are at this day in a perilous situation from rejecting truth, and listening to flattery, it would rather become them to reform the errors under which they suffer, than to reproach those who forewarned them of their danger.—
Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol.
LEVELLERS.
THOSE who attempt to level, never equalize. In all societies, consisting of various descriptions of citizens, some description must be uppermost. The levellers therefore only change and pervert the natural order of things; they load the edifice of society, by setting up in the air what the solidity of the structure requires to be on the ground. The associations of taylors and carpenters, of which the republic (of Paris, for instance) is composed, cannot be equal to the situation, into which, by the worst of usurpations, an usurpation on the prerogatives of nature, you attempt to force them.—
Reflections on the Revolution in France.
LANDED PROPERTY. Laudable course of its Surplus.
WHY should the expenditure of a great landed property, which is a dispersion of the surplus product of the soil, appear intolerable to you or to me, when it takes its course through the accumulation of vast libraries, which are the history of the force and weakness of the human mind; through great collections of ancient records, medals, and coins, which attest and explain laws and customs; through paintings and statues, that, by imitating nature, seem to extend the limits of creation; through grand monuments of the dead, which continue the regards and connexions of life beyond the grave; through collections of the specimens of nature, which become a representative assembly of all the classes and families of the world, that by disposition facilitate, and, by exciting curiosity, open the avenues to science? If, by great permanent establishments, all these objects of expence are better secured from the inconstant sport of personal caprice and personal extravagance, are they worse than if the same tastes prevailed in scattered individuals? Does not the sweat of the mason and carpenter, who toil in order to partake the sweat of the peasant, flow as pleasantly and as salubriously, in the construction and repair of the majestic edifices of religion, as in the painted booths and sordid sties of vice and luxury—
Reflections on the Revolution in France.
LANDED PROPERTY. Always dissolving into Individuality.
THE very nature of a country life, the very nature of landed property, in all the occupations, and all the pleasures they afford, render combination and arrangement (the sole way of procuring and exerting influence) in a manner impossible amongst country people. Combine them by all the art you can, and all the industry, they are always dissolving into individuality. Any thing in the nature of incorporation is almost impracticable amongst them. Hope, fear, alarm, jealousy, the ephemerous tale that does its business and dies in a day; all these things, which are the reins and spurs by which leaders check or urge the minds of followers, are not easily employed, or hardly at all, amongst scattered people. They assemble, they arm, they act with the utmost difficulty, and at the greatest charge. Their efforts, if ever they can be commenced, cannot be sustained. They cannot proceed systematically. If the country gentlemen attempt an influence through the mere income of their property, what is it to that of those who have ten times their income to sell, and who can ruin their property by bringing their plunder to meet it at market. If the landed man wishes to mortgage, he falls the value of his land, and raises the value of assignats. He augments the power of his enemy by the very means he must take to contend with him. The country gentleman therefore, the officer by sea and land, the man of liberal views and habits, attached to no profession, will be as completely excluded from the government of his country as if he were legislatively proscribed. It is obvious, that in the towns, all the things which conspire against the country gentleman, combine in favour of the money manager and director. In towns combination is natural. The habits of burghers, their occupations, their diversion, their business, their idleness, continually bring them into mutual contact. Their virtues and their vices are sociable; they are always in garrison; and they come embodied and half disciplined into the hands of those who mean to form them for civil or for military action.—
Ibid.
MINISTERS (FAVOURITES.) Effects of the Court System (Favouritism) on our foreign Affairs, on the Policy of our Government with regard to our Dependencies, and on the anterior Oeconomy of the Commonwealth, with some Observations on the grand Principle which first recommended this System at Court. (See KING'S MEN, CABINET (DOUBLE), POLICY.
A PLAN of favouritism for our executory government is essentially at variance with the plan of our legislature. One great end, undoubtedly, of a mixed government like ours, composed of monarchy, and of controuls, on the part of the higher people and the lower, is that the prince shall not be able to violate the laws. This is useful, indeed, and fundamental; but this, even at first view, is no more than a negative advantage; an armour merely defensive. It is therefore next in order, and equal in importance,
that the discretionary powers which are necessarily
vested in the monarch, whether for the execution of the
, or for the nomination to magistracy and office, or for
ing the affairs of peace and war, or for ordering the revenue, should all be exercised upon public principles and national grounds, and not on the likings or prejudices, the intrigues or policies, of a court.
—This, I said, is equal in importance to the securing a government according to law. The laws reach but a very little way.
Constitute government how you please, infinitely the greater part of it must depend upon the exercise of the powers which are left at large to the prudence and uprightness of ministers of state. Even all the use and potency of the laws depends upon them. Without them, your commonwealth is no better than a scheme upon paper; and not a living, acting, effective constitution. It is possible, that through negligence, or ignorance, or design artfully conducted, ministers may suffer one part of government to languish, another to be perverted from its purposes, and every valuable interest of the country to fall into ruin and decay, without possibility of fixing any single act on which a criminal prosecution can be justly grounded. The due arrangement of men in the active part of the state, far from being foreign to the purposes of a wise government, ought to be among its very first and dearest objects. When, therefore, the abettors of the new system tell us, that between them and their opposers there is nothing but a struggle for power, and that therefore we are no ways concerned in it; we must tell those who have the impudence to insult us in this manner, that of all things we ought to be the most concerned, who and what sort of men they are, that hold the trust of every thing that is dear to us. Nothing can render this a point of indifference to the nation, but what must either render us totally desperate, or soothe us into the security of ideots. We must soften into a credulity below the milkiness of infancy, to think all men virtuous. We must be tainted with a malignity truly diabolical, to believe all the world to be equally wicked and corrupt. Men are in public life as in private, some good, some evil. The elevation of the one, and the depression of the other, are the first objects of all true policy. But that form of government, which, neither in its direct institutions, nor in their immediate tendency, has contrived to throw its affairs into the most trust worthy hands, but has left its whole executory system to be disposed of agreeably to the uncontrouled pleasure of any one man, however excellent or virtuous, is a plan of polity defective not only in that member, but consequentially erroneous in every part of it.
In arbitrary governments, the constitution of the ministry follows the constitution of the legislature. Both the law and the magistrate are the creatures of will. It must be so. Nothing, indeed, will appear more certain, on any tolerable consideration of this matter, than that
every sort of government ought to have its administration correspondent to its legislature.
If it should be otherwise, things must fall into an hideous disorder. The people of a free commonwealth, who have taken such care that their laws should be the result of general consent, cannot be so senseless as to suffer their executory system to be composed of persons on whom they have no dependance, and whom no proofs of the public love and confidence have recommended to those powers, upon the use of which the very being of the state depends.
The popular election of magistrates, and popular disposition of rewards and honours, is one of the first advantages of a free state. Without it, or something equivalent to it, perhaps the people cannot long enjoy the substance of freedom; certainly none of the vivifying energy of good government. The frame of our commonwealth did not admit of such an actual election: but it provided as well, and (while the spirit of the constitution is preserved) better for all the effects of it than by the method of suffrage in any democratic state whatsoever. It had always, until of late, been held the first duty of Parliament,
to refuse to support Government, until power was in the hands of persons who were acceptable to the people, or while factions predominated in the Court in which the nation had no confidence.
Thus all the good effects of popular election were supposed to be secured to us, without the mischiefs attending on perpetual intrigue, and a distinct canvass for every particular office throughout the body of the people. This was the most noble and refined part of our constitution. The people, by their representatives and grandees, were intrusted with a deliberative power in making laws; the king with the controul of his negative. The king was intrusted with the deliberative choice and the election to office; the people had the negative in a parliamentary refusal to support. Formerly this power of controul was what kept ministers in awe of parliaments, and parliaments in reverence with the people. If the use of this power of controul on the system and persons of administration is gone, every thing is lost, parliament and all. We may assure ourselves, that if parliament will tamely see evil men take possession of all the strong holds of their country, and allow them time and means to fortify themselves, under a pretence of giving them a fair trial, and upon a hope of discovering, whether they will not be reformed by power, and whether their measures will not be better than their morals; such a parliament will give countenance to their measures also, whatever that parliament may pretend, and whatever those measures may be.
Every good political institution must have a preventive operation as well as a remedial. It ought to have a natural tendency to exclude bad men from government, and not to trust for the safety of the state to subsequent punishment alone: punishment, which has ever been tardy and uncertain; and which, when power is suffered in bad hands, may chance to fall rather on the injured than the criminal.
Before men are put forward into the great trusts of the state, they ought by their conduct to have obtained such a degree of estimation in their country, as may be some sort of pledge and security to the public, that they will not abuse those trusts. It is no mean security for a proper use of power, that a man has shewn by the general tenor of his actions, that the affection, the good opinion, the confidence, of his fellow citizens have been among the principal objects of his life; and that he has owed none of the gradations of his power or fortune to a settled contempt, or occasional forfeiture of their esteem.
That man who before he comes into power has no friends, or who coming into power is obliged to desert his friends, or who losing it has no friends to sympathize with him; he who has no sway among any part of the landed or commercial interest, but whose whole importance has begun with his office, and is sure to end with it; is a person who ought never to be suffered by a controuling parliament to continue in any of those situations which confer the lead and direction of all our public affairs; because such a man
has no connexion with the interest of the people.
Those knots or cabals of men who have got together, avowedly without any public principle, in order to sell their conjunct iniquity at the higher rate, and are therefore universally odious, ought never to be suffered to domineer in the state; because they have
no connexion with the sentiments and opinions of the people.
These are considerations which in my opinion enforce the necessity of having some better reason, in a free country, and a free parliament, for supporting the ministers of the crown, than that short one,
That the king has thought proper to appoint them.
There is something very courtly in this. But it is a principle pregnant with all sorts of mischief, in a constitution like ours, to turn the views of active men from the country to the court. Whatever be the road to power, that is the road which will be trod. If the opinion of the country be of no use as a means of power or consideration, the qualities which usually procure that opinion will be no longer cultivated. And whether it will be right, in a state so popular in its constitution as ours, to leave ambition without popular motives, and to trust all to the operation of pure virtue in the minds of kings and ministers, and public men, must be submitted to the judgment and good sense of the people of England.
Cunning men are here apt to break in, and, without directly controverting the principle, to raise objections from the difficulty under which the sovereign labours to distinguish the genuine voice and sentiments of his people, from the clamour of a faction, by which it is so easily counterfeited. The nation, they say, is generally divided into parties, with views and passions utterly irreconcileable. If the king should put his affairs into the hands of any one of them, he is sure to disgust the rest; if he select particular men from among them all, it is an hazard that he disgusts them all. Those who are left out, however divided before, will soon run into a body of opposition; which, being a collection of many discontents into one focus, will without doubt be hot and violent enough. Faction will make its cries resound through the nation, as if the whole were in an uproar, when by far the majority, and much the better part, will seem for a while as it were annihilated by the quiet in which their virtue and moderation incline them to enjoy the blessings of government. Besides that the opinion of the mere vulgar is a miserable rule even with regard to themselves, on account of their violence and instability. So that if you were to gratify them in their humour today, that very gratification would be a ground of their dissatisfaction on the next. Now as all these rules of public opinion are to be collected with great difficulty, and to be applied with equal uncertainty as to the effect, what better can a king of England do, than to employ such men as he finds to have views and inclinations most conformable to his own; who are least infected with pride and self will, and who are least moved by such popular humours as are perpetually traversing his designs, and disturbing his service; trusting that, when he means no ill to his people, he will be supported in his appointments, whether he chooses to keep or to change, as his private judgment or his pleasure leads him? He will find a sure resource in the real weight and influence of the crown, when it is not suffered to become an instrument in the hands of a faction.
I will not pretend to say that there is nothing at all in this mode of reasoning; because I will not assert that there is no difficulty in the art of government. Undoubtedly the very best administration must encounter a great deal of opposition; and the very worst will find more support than it deserves. Sufficient appearances will never be wanting to those who have a mind to deceive themselves. It is a fallacy in constant use with those who would level all things, and confound right with wrong, to insist upon the inconveniencies which are attached to every choice, without taking into consideration the different weight and consequence of those inconveniencies. The question is not concerning
absolute
discontent or
perfect
satisfaction in government; neither of which can be pure and unmixed at any time, or upon any system. The controversy is about that degree of good humour in the people, which may possibly be attained, and ought certainly to be looked for. While some politicians may be waiting to know whether the sense of every individual be against them, accurately distinguishing the vulgar from the better sort, drawing lines between the enterprizes of a faction and the efforts of a people, they may chance to see the government, which they are so nicely weighing and dividing, and distinguishing, tumble to the ground in the midst of their wise deliberation. Prudent men, when so great an object as the security of government, or even its peace, is at stake, will not run the risk of a decision which may be fatal to it. They who can read the political sky will see an hurricane in a cloud no bigger than an hand at the very edge of the horizon, and will run into the first harbour. No lines can be laid down for civil or political wisdom. They are a matter incapable of exact definition. But, though no man can draw a stroke between the confines of day and night, yet light and darkness are upon the whole tolerably distinguishable. Nor will it be impossible for a prince to find out such a mode of government, and such persons to administer it, as will give a great degree of content to his people; without any curious and anxious research for that abstract, universal, perfect harmony, which while he is seeking, he abandons those means of ordinary tranquillity which are in his power without any research at all.
It is not more the duty than it is the interest of a prince, to aim at giving tranquillity to his government. But those who advise him may have an interest in disorder and confusion. If the opinion of the people is against them, they will naturally wish that it should have no prevalence. Here it is that the people must on their part shew themselves sensible of their own value. Their whole importance, in the first instance, and afterwards their whole freedom, is at stake. Their freedom cannot long survive their importance. Here it is that the natural strength of the kingdom, the great peers, the leading landed gentlemen, the opulent merchants and manufacturers, the substantial yeomanry, must interpose, to rescue their prince, themselves, and their posterity.—
Ibid.
MINISTERS. Character of the interior Ministry, (See CABINET (DOUBLE.)
THE interior ministry are sensible, that war is a situation which sets in its full light the value of the hearts of a people; and they well know, that the beginning of the importance of the people must be the end of theirs. For this reason they discover upon all occasions the utmost fear of every thing, which by possibility may lead to such an event. I do not mean that they manifest any of that pious fear which is backward to commit the safety of the country to the dubious experiment of war. Such a fear, being the tender sensation of virtue, excited, as it is regulated, by reason, frequently shews itself in a seasonable boldness, which keeps danger at a distance, by seeming to despise it. Their fear betrays to the first glance of the eye, its true cause, and its real object. Foreign powers, confident in the knowledge of their character, have not scrupled to violate the most solemn treaties; and, in defiance of them, to make conquests in the midst of a general peace, and in the heart of Europe. Such was the conquest of Corsica, by the professed enemies of the freedom of mankind, in defiance of those who were formerly its professed defenders. We have had just claims upon the same powers; rights which ought to have been sacred to them as well as to us, as they had their origin in our lenity and generosity towards France and Spain in the day of their great humiliation. Such I call the ransom of Manilla, and the demand on France for the East India prisoners. But these powers put a just confidence in their resource of the
double cabinet.
These demands (one of them at least) are hastening fast towards an acquittal by prescription. Oblivion begins to spread her cobwebs over all our spirited remonstrances. Some of the most valuable branches of our trade are also on the point of perishing from the same cause. I do not mean those branches which bear without the hand of the vine-dresser; I mean those which the policy of treaties had formerly secured to us; I mean to mark and distinguish the trade of Portugal, the loss of which, and the power of the cabal, have one and the same aera.
If, by any chance, the ministers who stand before the curtain possess or affect any spirit, it makes little or no impression. Foreign courts and ministers, who were among the first to discover and to profit by this invention of the
double cabinet,
attend very little to their remonstrances. They know that those shadows of ministers have nothing to do in the ultimate disposal of things. Jealousies and animosities are sedulously nourished in the outward administration, and have been even considered as a
causa sine qua non
in its constitution: thence foreign courts have a certainty, that nothing can be done by common counsel in this nation. If one of those ministers officially takes up a business with spirit, it serves only the better to signalize the meanness of the rest, and the discord of them all. His colleagues in office are in haste to shake him off, and to disclaim the whole of his proceedings. Of this nature was that astonishing transaction, in which Lord Rochford, our ambassador at Paris, remonstrated against the attempt upon Corsica, in consequence of a direct authority from Lord Shelburne. This remonstrance the French minister treated with the contempt that was natural; as he was assured, from the ambassador of his court to ours, that these orders of Lord Shelburne were not supported by the rest of the (I had like to have said British) administration. Lord Rochford, a man of spirit, could not endure this situation. The consequences were, however, curious. He returns from Paris, and comes home full of anger. Lord Shelburne, who gave the orders, is obliged to give up the seals. Lord Rochford, who obeyed these orders, receives them. He goes, however, into another department of the same office, that he might not be obliged officially to acquiesce in one situation under what he had officially remonstrated against in another. At Paris, the Duke of Choiscul considered this office arrangement as a compliment to him: here it was spoke of as an attention to the delicacy of Lord Rochford. But whether the compliment was to one or both, to this nation it was the same. By this transaction the condition of our court lay exposed in all its nakedness. Our office correspondence has lost all pretence to authenticity; British policy is brought into derision in those nations, that a while ago trembled at the power of our arms, whilst they looked up with confidence to the equity, firmness, and candour, which shone in all our negotiations. I represent this matter exactly in the light in which it has been universally received.
Such has been the aspect of our foreign politics, under the influence of a
double cabinet.
With such an arrangement at court, it is impossible it should have been otherwise. Nor is it possible that this scheme should have a better effect upon the government of our dependencies, the first, the dearest, and most delicate objects, of the interior policy of this empire. The colonies know, that administration is separated from the court, divided within itself, and detested by the nation. The
double cabinet
has, in both the parts of it, shewn the most malignant dispositions towards them, without being able to do them the smallest mischief.
They are convinced, by sufficient experience, that no plan, either of lenity or rigour, can be pursued with uniformity and perseverance. Therefore they turn their eyes entirely from Great Britain, where they have neither dependence on friendship, nor apprehension from enmity. They look to themselves, and their own arrangements. They grow every day into alienation from this country; and whilst they are becoming disconnected with our government, we have not the consolation to find, that they are even friendly in their new independence. Nothing can equal the futility, the weakness, the rashness, the timidity, the perpetual contradiction, in the management of our affairs in that part of the world. A volume might be written on this melancholy subject; but it were better to leave it entirely to the reflexions of the reader himself than not to treat it in the extent it deserves.
In what manner our domestic oeconomy is affected by this system, it is needless to explain. It is the perpetual subject of their own complaints.
The court party resolve the whole into faction. Having said something before upon this subject, I shall only observe here, that when they give this account of the prevalence of faction, they present no very favourable aspect of the confidence of the people in their own government. They may be assured, that however they amuse themselves with a variety of projects for substituting something else in the place of that great and only foundation of government, the confidence of the people, every attempt will but make their condition worse. When men imagine that their food is only a cover for poison, and when they neither love nor trust the hand that serves it, it is not the name of the roast beef of Old England, that will persuade them to sit down to the table that is spread for them. When the people conceive that laws, and tribunals, and even popular assemblies, are perverted from the ends of their institution, they find in those names of degenerated establishments only new motives to discontent. Those bodies, which, when full of life and beauty, lay in their arms, and were their joy and comfort, when dead and putrid, become but the more loathsome from remembrance of former endearments. A sullen gloom, and furious disorder, prevail by fits; the nation loses its relish for peace and prosperity, as it did in that season of fullness which opened our troubles in the time of Charles the First. A species of men to whom a state of order would become a sentence of obscurity, are nourished into a dangerous magnitude by the heat of intestine disturbances; and it is no wonder that, by a sort of sinister piety, they cherish, in their turn, the disorders which are the parents of all their consequence. Superficial observers consider such persons as the cause of the public uneasiness, when, in truth, they are nothing more than the effect of it. Good men look upon this distracted scene with sorrow and indignation. Their hands are tied behind them. They are despoiled of all the power which might enable them to reconcile the strength of government with the rights of the people. They stand in a most distressing alternative. But in the election among evils they hope better things from temporary confusion, than from established servitude. In the mean time, the voice of law is not to be heard. Fierce licentiousness begets violent restraints. The military arm is the sole reliance; and then, call your constitution what you please, it is the sword that governs. The civil power, like every other that calls in the aid of an ally stronger than itself, perishes by the assistance it recieves. But the contrivers of this scheme of government will not trust solely to the military power; because they are cunning men. Their restless and crooked spirit drives them to rake in the dirt of every kind of expedient. Unable to rule the multitude, they endeavour to raise divisions amongst them. One mob is hired to destroy another; a procedure which at once encourages the boldness of the populace, and justly increases their discontent. Men become pensioners of state on account of their abilities in the array of riot, and the discipline of confusion. Government is put under the disgraceful necessity of protecting from the severity of the laws that very licentiousness, which the laws had been before violated to repress. Every thing partakes of the original disorder. Anarchy predominates without freedom, and servitude without submission or subordination. These are the consequences inevitable to our public peace, from the scheme of rendering the executory government at once odious and feeble; of freeing administration from the constitutional and salutary controul of parliament, and inventing for it a
new controul,
unknown to the constitution, an
interior cabinet;
which brings the whole body of government into confusion and contempt.
After having stated, as shortly as I am able, the effects of this system on our foreign affairs, on the policy of our government with regard to our dependencies, and on the interior oeconomy of the commonwealth; there remains only, in this part of my design, to say something of the grand principle which first recommended this system at court. The pretence was, to prevent the king from being enslaved by a faction, and made a prisoner in his closet. This scheme might have been expected to answer at least its own end, and to indemnify the king, in his personal capacity, for all the confusion into which it has thrown his government. But has it in reality answered this purpose? I am sure, if it had, every affectionate subject would have one motive for enduring with patience all the evils which attend it.
In order to come at the truth in this matter, it may not be amiss to consider it somewhat in detail. I speak here of the king, and not of the crown; the interests of which we have already touched. Independent of that greatness which a king possesses merely by being a representative of the national dignity, the things in which he may have an individual interest seem to be these: wealth accumulated; wealth spent in magnificence, pleasure, or beneficence; personal respect and attention; and above all, private ease and repose of mind. These compose the inventory of prosperous circumstances, whether they regard a prince or a subject; their enjoyments differing only in the scales upon which they are formed.
Suppose then we were to ask, whether the king has been richer than his predecessors in accumulated wealth, since the establishment of the plan of favouritism? I believe it will be found that the picture of royal indigence which our court has presented until this year, has been truly humiliating. Nor has it been relieved from this unseemly distress, but by means which have hazarded the affection of the people, and shaken their confidence in parliament. If the public treasures had been exhausted in magnificence and splendour, this distress would have been accounted for, and in some measure justified. Nothing would be more unworthy of this nation, than with a mean and mechanical rule, to mete out the splendour of the crown. Indeed I have found very few persons disposed to so ungenerous a procedure. But the generality of people, it must be confessed, do feel a good deal mortified, when they compare the wants of the court with its expences. They do not behold the cause of this distress in any part of the apparatus of royal magnificence. In all this, they see nothing but the operations of parsimony, attended with all the consequences of profusion. Nothing expended, nothing saved. Their wonder is encreased by their knowledge, that besides the revenue settled on his majesty's civil list to the amount of 800,000
l.
a year, he has a farther aid, from a large pension list, near 90,000
l.
a year, in Ireland; from the produce of the dutchy of Lancaster (which we are told has been greatly improved); from the revenue of the dutchy of Cornwall; from the American quit-rents; from the four and a half
per cent.
duty in the Leeward Islands; this last worth to be sure considerably more than 40,000
l.
a year. The whole is certainly not much short of a million annually.
These are revenues within the knowledge and cognizance of our national councils. We have no direct right to examine into the receipts from his majesty's German dominions, and the bishopric of Osnabrug. This is unquestionably true. But that which is not within the province of parliament, is yet within the sphere of every man's own reflexion. If a foreign prince resided amongst us, the state of his revenues could not fail of becoming the subject of our speculation. Filled with an anxious concern for whatever regards the welfare of our sovereign, it is impossible, in considering the miserable circumstances into which he has been brought, that this obvious topic should be entirely passed over. There is an opinion universal, that these revenues produce something not inconsiderable, clear of all charges and establishments. This produce the people do not believe to be hoarded, nor perceive to be spent. It is accounted for in the only manner it can, by supposing that it is drawn away, for the support of that court faction, which, whilst it distresses the nation, impoverishes the prince in every one of his resources. I once more caution the reader, that I do not urge this consideration concerning the foreign revenue, as if I supposed we had a direct right to examine into the expenditure of any part of it; but solely for the purpose of shewing how little this system of favouritism has been advantageous to the monarch himself; which, without magnificence, has sunk him into a state of unnatural poverty; at the same time that he possessed every means of affluence, from ample revenues, both in this country, and in other parts of his dominions.
Has this system provided better for the treatment becoming his high and sacred character, and secured the king from those disgusts attached to the necessity of employing men who are not personally agreeable? This is a topic upon which for many reasons I could wish to be silent; but the pretence of securing against such causes of uneasiness, is the corner-stone of the court party. It has, however, so happened, that if I were to fix upon any one point, in which this system has been more particularly and shamefully blameable, the effects which it has produced would justify me in choosing for that point its tendency to degrade the personal dignity of the sovereign, and to expose him to a thousand contradictions and mortifications. It is but too evident in what manner these projectors of royal greatness have fulfilled all their magnificent promises. Without recapitulating all the circumstances of the reign, every one of which is more or less a melancholy proof of the truth of what I have advanced, let us consider the language of the court but a few years ago, concerning most of the persons now in the external administration: let me ask, whether any enemy to the personal feelings of the sovereign, could possibly contrive a keener instrument of mortification, and degradation of all dignity, than almost every part and member of the present arrangement? nor, in the whole course of our history, has any compliance with the will of the people ever been known to extort from any prince a greater contradiction to all his own declared affections and dislikes than that which is now adopted, in direct opposition to every thing the people approve and desire.
An opinion prevails, that greatness has been more than once advised to submit to certain condescensions towards individuals, which have been denied to the entreaties of a nation. For the meanest and most dependent instrument of this system knows, that there are hours when its existence may depend upon his adherence to it; and he takes his advantage accordingly. Indeed it is a law of nature, that whoever is necessary to what we have made our object, is sure, in some way, or in some time or other, to become our master. All this, however, is submitted to, in order to avoid that monstrous evil of governing in concurrence with the opinion of the people. For it seems to be laid down as a maxim, that a king has some sort of interest in giving uneasiness to his subjects: that all who are pleasing to them, are to be of course disagreeable to him: that as soon as the persons who are odious at court are known to be odious to the people, it is snatched at as a lucky occasion of showering down upon them all kinds of emoluments and honours. None are considered as well-wishers to the crown, but those who advise to some unpopular course of action; none capable of serving it, but those who are obliged to call at every instant upon all its power for the safety of their lives. None are supposed to be fit priests in the temple of government, but the persons who are compelled to fly into it for sanctuary. Such is the effect of this refined project; such is ever the result of all the contrivances which are used to free men from the servitude of their reason, and from the necessity of ordering their affairs according to their evident interests. These contrivances oblige them to run into a real and ruinous servitude, in order to avoid a supposed restraint that might be attended with advantage.
If, therefore, this system has so ill answered its own grand pretence of saving the king from the necessity of employing persons disagreeable to him, has it given more peace and tranquillity to his majesty's private hours? No, most certainly. The father of his people cannot possibly enjoy repose, while his family is in such a state of distraction. Then what has the crown or the king profitted by all this fine-wrought scheme? Is he more rich, or more splendid, or more powerful, or more at his ease, by so many labours and contrivances? Have they not beggared his exchequer, tarnished the splendour of his court, sunk his dignity, galled his feelings, discomposed the whole order and happiness of his private life.—
Thoughts on the Cause of the present Discontents.
MATERNAL INDULGENCE.
THE authority of a father, so useful to our well-being, and so justly venerable upon all accounts, hinders us from having that entire love for him that we have for our mothers, where the parental authority is almost melted down into the mother's fondness and indulgence. But we generally have a great love for our grandfathers, in whom this authority is removed a degree from us, and where the weakness of age mellows it into something of a feminine partiality.—
Sublime and Beautiful.
MUSIC.
THE beautiful in music will not bear that loudness and strength of sounds, which may be used to raise other passions; nor notes, which are shrill or harsh, or deep; it agrees best with such as are clear, even, smooth, and weak. The second is, that great variety and quick transitions from one measure or tone to another, are contrary to the genius of the beautiful in music. Such
I ne'er am merry, when I hear sweet music.
SHAKESPEARE.
transitions often excite mirth, or other sudden and tumultuous passions; but not that sinking, that melting, that languor, which is the characteristical effect of the beautiful as it regards every sense. The passion excited by beauty, is, in fact, nearer to a species of a melancholy, than to jollity and mirth. I do not here mean to confine music to any one species of notes, or tones, neither is it an art in which I can say I have any great skill. My sole design in this remark is, to settle a consistent idea of beauty. The infinite variety of the affections of the soul will suggest to a good head, and skilful ear, a variety of such sounds as are fitted to raise them.—
Ibid.
MANNERS.
MANNERS are of more importance than laws. In a great measure the laws depend upon them. The law touches us but here and there, and now and then. Manners are what vex or sooth, 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 colour 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, and, at the same time, the most coarse, rude, savage, and serocious. 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 was the result of design; all was matter of institution. No mechanical means could be devised in favour of this incredible system of wickedness and vice, that has not been employed. The noblest passions, the love of glory, the love of country, were debauched into means of it's preservation and it's propagation. All sorts of shews 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 constitutionals. 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 shew 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 founded 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 a frighted nature recoils, are their chosen, and almost sole examples for the instruction of their youth.—
Regicide Peace.
MANNERS (MODERN.)
THE royal household has been carried away by the resistless tide of manners: but with this very material difference; private men have got rid of the establishments along with the reasons of them; whereas the royal household has lost all that was stately and venerable in the antique manners, without retrenching any thing of the cumbrous charge of a Gothic establishment. It is shrunk into the polished littleness of modern elegance and personal accommodation; it has evaporated from the gross concrete, into an essence and rectified spirit of expence, where you have tuns of antient pomp in a vial of modern luxury.—
Oecon. Reform.
MARRIAGE.
OTHER Legislators, knowing that marriage is the origin of all relations, and consequently the first element of all duties, have endeavoured, 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 was taken in the Synagogue of Antichrist, I mean in that forge and manufactory of all evil, the sect which predominated in the Constituent Assembly of 1789. Those monsters employed the same, or greater industry, to desecrate and degrade that State, which other Legislators have used to render it holy and honourable. By a strange, uncalled for declaration, they pronounced, that marriage was no better than a common, civil contract. It was one of their ordinary tricks, to put their sentiments into the mouths of certain personated characters, which they theatrically exhibited at the bar of what ought to be a serious Assembly. One of these was brought out in the figure of a prostitute, whom they called by the affected name of
"a mother without being a wife."
This creature they made to call for a repeal of the incapacities, which in civilized States are put upon bastards. The prostitutes of the Assembly gave to this their puppet, the sanction of their greater impudence. In consequence of the principles laid down, and the manners authorised, 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, they went the full length of the principle, and gave a licence to divorce at the mere pleasure of either party, and at four day's notice. With them the matrimonial connexion was brought into so degrading 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 thus 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.—
Regicide Peace.
MONASTIC INSTITUTIONS.
THERE are moments in the fortune of states when particular men are called to make improvements by great mental exertion. In those moments, even when they seem to enjoy the confidence of their prince and country, and to be invested with full authority, they have not always apt instruments. A politician, to do great things, looks for a
power,
what our workmen call a
purchase;
and if he finds that power, in politics as in mechanics, he cannot be at a loss to apply it. In the monastic institutions, in my opinion, was found a great
power
for the mechanism of politic benevolence. There were revenues with a public direction; there were men wholly set apart and dedicated to public purposes, without any other than public ties and public principles; men without the possibility of converting the estate of the community into a private fortune; men denied to self-interests, whose avarice is for some community; men to whom personal poverty is honour, and implicit obedience stands in the place of freedom. In vain shall a man look to the possibility of making such things when he wants them. The winds blow as they list. These institutions are the products of enthusiasm; they are the instruments of wisdom. Wisdom cannot create materials; they are the gifts of nature or of chance; her pride is in the use. The perennial existence of bodies corporate and their fortunes, are things particularly suited to a man who has long views; who meditates designs that require time in fashioning; and which propose duration when they are accomplished. He is not deserving to rank high, or even to be mentioned in the order of great statesmen, who, having obtained the command and direction of such a power as existed in the wealth, the discipline, and the habits of such corporations, as those which you have rashly destroyed, cannot find any way of converting it to the great and lasting benefit of his country. On the view of this subject a thousand uses suggest themselves to a contriving mind. To destroy any power, growing wild from the rank productive force of the human mind, is almost tantamount, in the moral world, to the destruction of the apparently active properties of bodies in the material. It would be like the attempt to destroy (if it were in our competence to destroy) the expansive force of fixed air in nitre, or the power of steam, or of electricity, or of magnetism. These energies always existed in nature, and they were always discernible. They seemed, some of them unserviceable, some noxious, some no better than a sport to children; until contemplative ability, combining with practic skill, tamed their wild nature, subdued them to use, and rendered them at once the most powerful and the most tractable agents, in subservience to the great views and designs of men. Did fifty thousand persons, whose mental and whose bodily labour you might direct, and so many hundred thousand a year of a revenue, which was neither lazy nor superstitious, appear too big for your abilities to wield? Had you no way of using the men but by converting monks into pensioners? Had you no way of turning the revenue to account, but through the improvident resource of a spendthrift sale? If you were thus destitute of mental funds, the proceeding is in its natural course. Your politicians do not understand their trade; and therefore they sell their tools.
But the institutions favour of superstition in their very principle; and they nourish it by a permanent and standing influence. This I do not mean to dispute; but this ought not to hinder you from deriving from superstition itself any resources which may thence be furnished for the public advantage. You derive benefits from many dispositions and many passions of the human mind, which are of as doubtful a colour in the moral eye, as superstition itself. It was your business to correct and mitigate every thing which was noxious in this passion, as in all the passions. But is superstition the greatest of all possible vices? In its possible excess I think it becomes a very great evil. It is, however, a moral subject; and, of course, admits of all degrees and all modifications. Superstition is the religion of feeble minds; and they must be tolerated in an intermixture of it, in some trifling or some enthusiastic shape or other, else you will deprive weak minds of a resource found necessary to the strongest. The body of all true religion consists, to be sure, in obedience to the will of the sovereign of the world; in a confidence in his declarations; and an imitation of his perfections. The rest is our own. It may be prejudicial to the great end; it may be auxiliary. Wise men, who as such, are not
admirers
(not admirers at least of the
Manera Terrae
) are not violently attached to these things, nor do they violently hate them. Wisdom is not the most severe corrector of folly. They are the rival follies, which mutually wage so unrelenting a war; and which make so cruel a use of their advantages, as they can happen to engage the immoderate vulgar on the one side or the other in their quarrels. Prudence would be neuter; but if, in the contention between fond attachment and fierce antipathy concerning things in their nature not made to produce such heats, a prudent man were obliged to make a choice of what errors and excesses of enthusiasm he would condemn or bear, perhaps he would think the superstition which builds, to be more tolerable than that which demolishes—that which adorns a country, than that which deforms it—that which endows, than that which plunders— that which disposes to mistaken beneficence, than that which stimulates to real injustice—that which leads a man to refuse to himself lawful pleasures, than that which snatches from others the scanty subsistence of their self-denial. Such, I think, is very nearly the state of the question between the antient founders of monkish superstition, and the superstition of the pretended philosophers of the hour.—
Reflections on the Revolution in France.
MISFORTUNE.
MISFORTUNE is not crime, nor is indiscretion always the greatest guilt.—
Ibid.
MAGNA CHARTA. (SEE PETITION OF RIGHTS, DECLARATION OF RIGHTS.
OUR oldest reformation is that of Magna Charta. Sir Edward Coke, that great oracle of our law, and, indeed, all the great men who follow him, to Blackstone, are industrious to prove the pedigree of our liberties. They endeavour to prove, that the ancient charter, the Magna Charta of King John, was connected with another positive charter from Henry the First, and that both the one and the other were nothing more than a re-affirmative of the still more ancient standing law of the kingdom. In the matter of fact, for the quarter part, these authors appear to be in the right, perhaps not always; but if the lawyers mistaste in some particulars, it proves my position still the more strongly; because it demonstrates the powerful prepossession towards antiquity, with which the minds of all our lawyers, and legislators, and of all the people, when they wish to influence, have been always filled; and the stationary policy of this kingdom in considering their most sacred rights and franchises as an
inheritance.
—
Ibid.
MONARCHY ABSOLUTE.
NONE of us love absolute and uncontroled monarchy; but we could not rejoice at the sufferings of a Marcus Aurelius, or a Trajan, who were absolute monarchs, as we do when Nero is condemned by the senate to be punished
more majorum:
Nor when that monster was obliged to fly with his wife Sporus, and to drink puddle, were men affected in the same manner, as when the venerable Galba, with all his faults and errors, was murdered by a revolted mercenary soldiery. With such things before our eyes, our feelings contradict our theories; and when this is the case, the feelings are true, and the theory is false. What I contend for is, that in commending the destruction of an absolute monarchy,
all the circumstances
ought not to be wholly overlooked, as considerations fit only for shallow and superficial minds.—
Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs.
MORALITY.
THE lines of morality are not like the ideal lines of mathematics. They are broad and deep as well as long. They admit of exceptions; they demand modifications.—
Ibid.
METAPHYSICS.
METAPHYSICS cannot live without definition.—
Ibid.
MANNERS AND POLITICS Applicable to every Age.
EVERY age has its own manners, and its politics dependent upon them; and the same attempts will not be made against a constitution fully formed and matured, that were used to destroy it in the cradle, or to resist its growth during its infancy.—
Thoughts on the Cause of the present Discontents.
MERCHANTS. Properties of Merchants applied to the East-India Company.
THE principle of buying cheap and selling dear is the first, the great foundation of mercantile dealing.
A great deal of strictness in driving bargains for whatever we contract, is another of the principles of mercantile policy. Try the company by that test! Look at the contracts that are made for them. Is the company so much as a good commissary to their own armies? I engage to select for you, out of the innumerable mass of their dealings, all conducted very nearly alike, one contract only, the excessive profits on which during a short term would pay the whole of their year's dividend. I shall undertake to shew, that upon two others, that the inordinate profits given, with the losses incurred in order to secure those profits, would pay a year's dividend more.
It is a third property of trading men, to see that their clerks do not divert the dealings of the master to their own benefit. It was the other day only, when their governor and council taxed the company's investment with a sum of fifty thousand pounds, as an inducement to persuade only seven members of their board of trade to give their
honour
that they would abstain from such profits upon that investment as they must have violated their
oaths
if they had made at all.
It is a fourth quality of a merchant to be exact in his accounts. What will be thought, when you have fully before you the mode of accounting made use of in the treasury of Bengal?—I hope you will have it soon. With regard to one of their agencies, when it came to the material part, the prime cost of the goods on which a commission of fifteen
per cent.
was allowed, to the astonishment of the factory to whom the commodities were sent, the accountant-general reports that he did not think himself authorized to call for
vouchers
relative to this and other particulars—because the agent was upon his
honour
with regard to them. A new principle of account upon honour seems to be regularly established in their dealings and their treasury, which in reality amounts to an entire annihilation of the principle of all accounts.
It is a fifth property of a merchant, who does not meditate a fraudulent bankruptcy, to calculate his probable profits upon the money he takes up to vest in business. Did the company, when they bought goods on bonds bearing 8
per cent.
interest, at 10, and even 20
per cent.
discount, even ask themselves a question concerning the possibility of advantage from dealing on these terms?
The last quality of a merchant I shall advert to, is the taking care to be properly prepared, in cash or goods, in the ordinary course of sale, for the bills which are drawn on them. Now I ask, whether they have ever calculated the clear produce of any given sales, to make them tally with the four million of bills which are come and coming upon them, so as at the proper periods to enable the one to liquidate the other? No, they have not. They are now obliged to borrow money of their own servants to purchase their investment. The servants stipulate five
per cent.
on the capital they advance, if their bills should not be paid at the time when they become due; and the value of the rupee on which they charge this interest is taken at two shillings and a penny. Has the company ever troubled themselves to enquire whether their sales can bear the payment of that interest, and at that rate of exchange? Have they once considered the dilemma in which they are placed—the ruin of their credit in the East Indies, if they refuse the bills—the ruin of their credit and existence in England, if they accept them? Indeed no trace of equitable government is found in their politics; not one trace of commercial principle in their mercantile dealing; and hence is the deepest and matruest wisdom of parliament demanded, and the best resources of this kingdom must be strained, to restore them; that is, to restore the countries destroyed by the misconduct of the company, and to restore the company itself, ruined by the consequences of their plans for destroying what they were bound to preserve.—
Speech on Mr. Fox's East-India Bill.
MIDDLESEX ELECTION. Contest (how to be considered.)
WE must purposely shut our eyes, if we consider this matter (the incapacitation of Mr. Wilkes) merely as a contest between the House of Commons and the electors. The true contest is between the electors of the kingdom and the crown; the crown acting by an instrumental House of Commons. It is precisely the same, whether the ministers of the crown can disqualify by a dependent House of Commons, or by a dependent court of
star-chamber,
or by a dependent court of King's Bench. If once members of parliament can be practically convinced, that they do not depend on the affection or opinion of the people for their political being, they will give themselves over, without even an appearance of reserve, to the influence of the court. Indeed, a parliament unconnected with the people, is essential to a ministry unconnected with the people; and therefore those who saw through what mighty difficulties the interior ministry waded, and the exterior were dragged, in this business, will conceive of what prodigious importance, the new corps of
king's men
held this principle of occasional and personal incapacitation, to the whole body of their design.—
Thoughts on the Cause of the present Discontents.
MINISTERS, Our natural Rulers.
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 say, irresistible.—
Regicide Peace.
MEANS (EXTRAORDINARY.)
WE may rest assured, that when the maxims of any government establish among its resources extraordinary means, and those exerted with a strong hand, that strong hand will provide those extraordinary means for
itself.
—
Thoughts on the Cause of the present Discontents.
THE MINT.
THE
Mint,
though not a department of the household, has the same vices. It is a great expence to the nation, chiefly for the sake of members of parliament. It has its officers of parade and dignity. It has its treasury too. It is a sort of corporate body; and formerly was a body of great importance; as much so on the then scale of things, and the then order of business, as the bank is at this day. It was the great center of money transactions and remittances for our own, and for other nations; until king Charles the first, among other arbitrary projects, dictated by despostic necessity, made him withhold the money that lay there for remittance. That blow (and happily too) the mint never recovered. Now it is no bank; no remittance-shop. The mint, Sir, is a
manufacture,
and it is nothing else; and it ought to be undertaken upon the principles of a manufacture; that is, for the best and cheapest execution, by a contract, upon proper securities, and under proper regulations.—
Oecon. Reform.
MONEY. Want of Money how supplied.
THEY (the French) are embarrassed indeed in the highest degree, but not wholly resourceless. They are without the species of money. Circulation of money is a great convenience, but a substitute for it may be found. Whilst the great objects of production and consumption, corn, cattle, wine, and the like, exist in a country, the means of giving them circulation with more or less convenience, cannot be
wholly
wanting. The great confiscation of the church and of the crown lands, and of the appenages of the princes, for the purchase of all which their paper is always received at par, gives means of continually destroying and continually creating, and this perpetual destruction and renovation feeds the speculative market, and prevents, and will prevent, till that fund of confiscation begins to fail, a
total
depreciation.—
Memorial on the Affairs of France in
1791.
MONIED INTEREST.
THE monied interest is, in its nature, more ready for any adventure; and its possessors more disposed to new enterprizes of any kind. Being of a recent acquisition, it falls in more naturally with any novelties. It is therefore the kind of wealth which will be resorted to by all who wish for change.—
Reflections on the Revolution in France.
MONIED INTEREST Not necessary to the French.
BUT all consideration of public credit in France is of little avail at present. The action, indeed, of the monied interest, was of absolute necessity at the beginning of this Revolution; but the French republics can stand without any assistance from that description of men, which, as things are now circumstanced, rather stands in need of assistance itself from the power which alone substantially exists in France; I mean the several districts and municipal republics, and the several clubs which direct all their affairs and appoint all their magistrates. This is the power now paramount to every thing, even to the Assembly itself called National, and that to which tribunals, priesthood, laws, finances, and both descriptions of military power, are wholly subservient, so far as the military power of either description yields obedience to any name of authority.—
Memomorial on the Affairs of France in
1791.
MARSEILLES.
MARSEILLES, the hottest focus of sedition in France.—
Ibid.
MUNICIPALITIES.
IN my opinion there never was seen so strong a government internally as that of the French Municipalities. If ever any rebellion can arise against the present system, it must begin where the Revolution which gave birth to it did, at the capital. Paris is the only place in which there is the least freedom of intercourse. But even there, so many servants as any man has, so many spies, and irreconcileable domestic enemies.—
Ibid.
MEDITERRANEAN.
THE great object for which we preserved Minorca, whilst we could keep it, and for which we still retain Gibraltar, both at a great expence, was, and is, to prevent the predominance of France over the Mediterranean.—
Ibid.
MARINE (FRENCH.)
THE French marine resembles not a little the old armaments of the Flibustriers, which about a century back, in conjunction with pirates of our nation, brought such calamities upon the Spanish colonies. They differ only in this, that the present piratical force is, out of all measure and comparison, greater; one hundred and fifty ships of the line, and frigates being ready built, most of them in a manner new, and all applicable in different ways to that service. Privateers and Moorish corsairs possess not the best seamanship, and very little discipline, and, indeed, can make no figure in regular service, but in desperate adventures, and animated with a lust of plunder, they are truly formidable.—
Ibid.
NEWSPAPERS. (See REVOLUTION (FRENCH.) The Progress of the French Revolution indebted to Newspapers.
WHAT direction the French spirit of proselytism is likely to take, and in what order it is likely to prevail in the several parts of Europe, it is not easy to determine. The seeds are sown almost every where, chiefly by newspaper circulations, infinitely more efficacious and extensive than ever they were. And they are a more important instrument than generally is imagined. They are a part of the reading of all, they are the whole of the reading of the far greater number. There are thirty of them in Paris alone. The language diffuses them more widely than the English, though the English too are much read. The writers of these papers, indeed, for the greater part, are either unknown, or in contempt, but they are like a battery, in which the stroke of any one ball produces no great effect, but the amount of continual repetition is decisive. Let us only suffer any person to tell us his story, morning and evening, but for one twelve months, and he will become our master.—
Ibid.
NEUTRALITY IN PARTIES, A Crime against the State.
SOME legislators went so far as to make neutrality in party a crime against the state. I do not know whether this might not have been rather to overstrain the principle. Certain it is, the best patriots in the greatest commonwealths have always commended and promoted such connexions.
Idem sentire de republica,
was with them a principal ground of friendship and attachment; nor do I know any other capable of forming firmer, dearer, more pleasing, more honourable, and more virtuous habitudes. The Romans carried this principle a great way. Even the holding of offices together, the disposition of which arose from chance not selection, gave rise to a relation which continued for life. It was called
necessitudo sortis;
and it was looked upon with a sacred reverence. Breaches of any of these kinds of civil relation were considered as acts of the most distinguished turpitude. The whole people was distributed into political societies, in which they acted in support of such interests in the state as they severally affected. For it was then thought no crime to endeavour, by every honest means, to advance to superiority and power those of your own sentiments and opinions. This wise people was far from imagining that those connexions had no tie, and obliged to no duty; but that men might quit them without shame, upon every call of interest. They believed private honour to be the great foundation of public trust; that friendship was no mean step towards patriotism; that he who, in the common intercourse of life, shewed he regarded somebody besides himself, when he came to act in a public situation, might probably consult some other interest than his own. Never may we become
plus sages que les sages,
as the French comedian has happily expressed it, wiser than all the wise and good men who have lived before us. It was their wish to see public and private virtues not dissolute and jarring, and mutually destructive, but harmoniously combined, growing out of one another in a noble and orderly gradation, reciprocally supporting and supported.—
Thoughts on the Cause of the present Discontents.
NOBILITY.(SEE KING, VENICE, &c.)
ALL this violent cry against the nobility I take to be a mere work of art. To be honoured and even privileged by the laws, opinions, and inveterate usages of our country, growing out of the prejudice of ages, has nothing to provoke horror and indignation in any man. Even to be too tenacious of those privileges, is not absolutely a crime. The strong struggle in every individual to preserve possession of what he has found to belong to him and to distinguish him, is one of the securities against injustice and despotism, implanted in our nature. It operates as an instinct to secure property, and to preserve communities in a settled state. What is there to shock in this? Nobility is a graceful ornament to the civil order. It is the Corinthian capital of polished society.
Omnes boni nobilitati semper favemus,
was the saying of a wise and good man. It is, indeed, one sign of a liberal and benevolent mind to incline to it with some sort of partial propensity. He feels no ennobling principle in his own heart who wishes to level all the artificial institutions which have been adopted for giving a body to opinion, and permanence to fugitive esteem. It is a sour, malignant, envious disposition, without taste for the reality, or for any image or representation of virtue, that sees with joy the unmerited fall of what had long flourished in splendour and in honour. I do not like to see any thing destroyed; any void produced in society; any ruin on the face of the land. It was therefore with no disappointment or dissatisfaction that my enquiries and observation did not present to me any incorrigible vices in the
noblesse
of France, or any abuse which could not be removed by a reform very short of abolition. Your
noblesse
did not deserve punishment; but to degrade is to punish.—
Reflections on the Revolution in France.
NETHERLANDS.
THE Emperor's own politics with regard to the Netherlands seem to me to be exactly calculated to answer the purpose of the French Revolutionists. He endeavours to crush the Aristocratic party, and to nourish one in avowed connexion with the most furious Democratists in France.
These provinces in which the French game is so well played, they consider as part of the Old French Empire: certainly they were amongst the oldest parts of it. These they think very well situated, as their party is well disposed to a re-union. As to the greater nations, they do not aim at making a direct conquest of them, but by disturbing them through a propagation of their principles, they hope to weaken, as they will weaken them, and to keep them in perpetual alarm and agitation, and thus render all their efforts against them utterly impracticable, whilst they extend the dominion of their sovereign anarchy on all sides.—
Memorial on the Affairs of France in
1791.
NATIONAL TIES.
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 interest of men as guarantees of their engagements. The interests frequently tear to pieces the engagements; and the passions trample upon both. Entirely to trust to either is to disregard our own safety, or not to know mankind. Men are not tied to one another by papers and seals. They are led to associate by resemblances, by conformities, by sympathies. It is with nations as with individuals. Nothing is so strong a tie of amity between nation and nation as correspondence in laws, customs, manners, and habits of life. They have more than the force of treaties in themselves. They are obligations written in the heart. They approximate men to men, without their knowledge, and sometimes against their intentions. The secret, unseen, but irrefragable bond of habitual intercourse, holds them together, even when their perverse and litigious nature sets them to equivocate, scuffle, and sight about the terms of their written obligations.
As to war, if it be the means of wrong and violence, it is the sole means of justice amongst nations. Nothing can banish it from the world. They who say otherwise, intending to impose upon us, do not impose upon themselves. But it is one of the greatest objects of human wisdom to mitigate those evils which we cannot remove. The conformity and analogy of which I speak, incapable, like every thing else, of preserving perfect trust and tranquillity among men, has a strong tendency to facilitate accommodation, and to produce a generous oblivion of the rancour 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 in Europe of religion, laws, and manners. At bottom, these are all the same. The writers on public law have often called this
aggregate
of nations a Commonwealth. They had reason. It is virtually one great state having the same basis of general law; with some diversity of provincial customs and local establishments. The nations of Europe have had the very same Christian religion, agreeing in the fundamental parts, varying a little in the ceremonies and in the subordinate doctrines.—
Regicide Peace.
NOVELTY.
SOME degree of novelty must be one of the materials in every instrument which works upon the mind; and curiosity blends itself more or less with all our passions.—
Sublime and Beautiful.
NAMES.
GREAT names have great prevalence.—
Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs.
NAPLES. (See SICILY.)
NAPLES has an old inveterate disposition to Republicanism, and (however for some time past quiet) is as liable to explosion as its own Vesuvius.—
Memorial on the Affairs of France in
1791.
OECONOMY. It is not a predilection to mean, sordid, home-bred cares, that will avert the Consequences of a false Estimation of our Interest, or prevent the shameful Dilapidation into which a great Empire must fall, by mean Reparations upon mighty Ruins.
I CONFESS I feel a degree of disgust, almost leading to despair, at the manner in which we are acting in the great exigencies of our country. There is now a bill in this house, appointing a rigid inquisition into the minutest detail of our offices at home. The collection of sixteen millions annually; a collection on which the public greatness, safety, and credit have their reliance; the whole order of criminal jurisprudence, which holds together society itself, have at no time obliged us to call forth such powers; no, nor any thing like them. There is not a principle of the law and constitution of this country that is not subverted to favour the execution of that project
Appendix, No. 1.
. And for what is all this apparatus of bustle and terror? Is it because any thing substantial is expected from it? No. The stir and bustle itself is the end proposed. The eye-servants of a short-fighted master will employ themselves, not on what is most essential to his affairs, but on what his nearest to his ken. Great difficulties have given a just value to oeconomy; and our minister of the day must be an oeconomist, whatever it may cost us. But where is he to exert his talents? At home, to be sure; for where else can he obtain a profitable credit for their exertion? It is nothing to him, whether the object on which he works under our eye be promising or not. If he does not obtain any public benefit, he may make regulations without end. Those are sure to pay in present expectation, whilst the effect is at a distance, and may be the concern of other times, and other men. On these principles he chooses to suppose (for he does not pretend more than to suppose) a naked possibility, that he shall draw some resource out of crumbs dropped from the trenchers of penury; that something shall be laid in store from the short allowance of revenue officers, overloaded with duty, and famished for want of bread; by a reduction from officers who are at this very hour ready to batter the treasury with what breaks through stone walls, for an increase of their appointments. From the marrowless bones of these skeleton establishments, by the use of every sort of cutting, and of every sort of fretting tool, he flatters himself that he may chip and rasp an empirical alimentary powder, to diet into some similitude of health and substance the languishing chimeras of fraudulent reformation.
Whilst he is thus employed according to his policy and to his taste, he has not leisure to enquire into those abuses in India that are drawing off money by millions from the treasures of this country, which are exhausting the vital juices from members of to state, where the public inanition is far more sorely felt than in the local exchequer of England. Not content with winking at these abuses, whilst he attempts to squeeze the laborious ill-paid drudges of English revenue, he lavishes in one act of corrupt prodigality, upon those who never served the public in any honest occupation at all, an annual income equal to two thirds of the whole collection of the revenues of this kingdom.—
Speech on the Nabob of Arcot's Debts.
OECONOMIST.
IT is impossible for a man to be an oeconomist, who is not able to take a comparative view of his means, and of his expences, for the year which lies before him; it is impossible for a man to be an oeconomist, under whom various officers in their several departments may spend,—even just what they please,—and often with an emulation of expence, as contributing to the importance, if not profit, of their several departments.—
Oecon. Reform.
OPPRESSION, AND OPPRESSED.
WHAT I have always thought of the matter is this—that the most poor, illiterate, and uninformed creatures upon earth, are judges of a
practical
oppression. It is a matter of feeling; and as such persons generally have felt most of it, and are not of an over-lively sensibility, they are the best judges of it. But for the
real cause,
or the
appropriate remedy,
they ought never to be called into council about the one or the other. They ought to be totally shut out; because their reason is weak; because when once roused, their passions are ungoverned; because they want information; because the smallness of the property which individually they possess, renders them less attentive to the consequence of the measures they adopt in affairs of moment.—
Letter to Sir H. Langrishe, M. P.
OPPRESSION, (EFFECTS OF.)
MAN irritated by oppression, and elevated by a triumph over it, are apt to abandon themselves to violent and extreme courses.—
Ibid.
OPINION.
BUT, say some, you force opinion. You can never extirpate opinion without extirpating a whole nation. Nay, by pursuing it, you only increase its partizans. Opinions are things out of human jurisdiction. I have formerly heard this from the mouths of great men, with more surprize than satisfaction. They alledged as a proof of their doctrine, the wars of Charles the Fifth, and some of his successors, against the reformation.
It is so common, though so unreasonable, it is hardly worth remarking, that no persons pursue more fiercely with criminal process, and with every kind of coercion, the publication of opinions contrary to their own, than those do, who claim in this respect the most unbounded latitude to themselves. If it were not for this inconsistency, then war against opinions might be justified as all others, more or less, according to the reason of the case: for the case judged on by moral prudence, and not by any universal abstract principle of right, is to guide government in this delicate point.
As to the mere matter of extirpation of all kinds of opinions, whether right or wrong, without the extirpation of a people, it is a thing so very common, that would be clouded and obscured rather than illustrated by examples. Every revolution in the predominant opinion made by the force of domestic legal government, by the force of any usurpation, by the force of any conquest, is a proof to the contrary;—and there is no nation which has not experienced those changes. Instances enough may be furnished of people who have enthusiastically, and with force, propagated those opinions, which some time before they resisted with their blood. Rarely have ever great changes in opinion taken place without the application of force, more or less. Like every thing else in human life and human affairs, it is not universally true, that a persecution of opinions lessens or increases the number of their votaries. In finding where it may or may not have gathered these effects, the sagacity of government shines or is disgraced, as well as in the time, the manner, the choice of the opinions on which it ought to use or forbear the sword of domestic or of foreign justice. But it is a false maxim, that opinions ought to be indifferent to us, either as men or as a state. Opinion is the rudder of human action; and as the opinion is wise or foolish, vicious or moral, the cause of action is noxious or salutary. It has even been the great primary object of speculative and doctrinal philosophy to regulate opinion. It is the great object of political philosophy to promote that which is found; and to extirpate what is mischievous, and which directly tends to render men bad citizens in the community, and mischievous neighbours out of it. Opinions are of infinite consequence. They make the manners—in fact, they make the laws: they make the legislator. They are, therefore, of all things, those to which provident government ought to look most to in their beginnings. After a time they may look to them in vain. When, therefore, I am told that a war is a war of opinions, I am told that it is the most important of all wars.
Here I must not be told that this would lead to eternal war and persecution. It would certainly, if we argued like metaphysicians run mad, who do not correct prudence, the queen of virtues, to be any virtue at all,—and would either throw the bridle on the neck of headlong nature, or tie it up for ever to the post. No sophistry—no chicane here. Government is not to refine men out of innocent and moral liberty by forced inferences, drawn by a torturing logic; or to suffer them to go down hill the highway that leads directly to every crime and every vice.—
Regicide Peace.
ORDER.
A particular order of things may be altered; order itself cannot lose its value.—
Letter to a Noble Lord.
OBSCURITY.
TO make any thing very terrible, obscurity seems in general to be necessary. When we know the full extent of any danger, when we can accustom our eyes to it, a great deal of the apprehension vanishes. Every one will be sensible of this, who considers how greatly night adds to our dread, in all cases of danger, and how much the notions of ghosts and goblins, of which none can form clear ideas, affect minds which give credit to the popular tales concerning such sorts of beings. Those despotic governments, which are founded on the passions of men, and principally upon the passion of fear, keep their chief as much as may be from the public eye. The policy has been the same in many cases of religion. Almost all the heathen temples were dark. Even in the barbarous temples of the Americans at this day, they keep their idol in a dark part of the hut, which is consecrated to his worship. For this purpose too the Druids performed all their ceremonies in the bosom of the darkest woods, and in the shade of the oldest and most spreading oak. No person seems better to have understood the secret of heightening, or of setting terrible things, if I may use the expression, in their strongest light, by the force of a judicious obscurity, than Milton. His description of death in the second book is admirably studied; it is astonishing with what a gloomy pomp, with what a significant and expressive uncertainty of strokes and colouring, he has finished the portrait of the king of terrors:
The other shape,
If shape it might be call'd that shape had none
Distinguishable, in member, joint, or limb;
Or substance might be call'd that shadow seem'd,
For each seem'd either; black he stood as night;
Fierce as ten furies; terrible as hell;
And shook a deadly dart. What seem'd his head
The likeness of a kingly crown had on.
In this description all is dark, uncertain, confused, terrible, and sublime to the last degree.—
Sublime and Beautiful.
PROPORTION AND BEAUTY.
LET us see whether proportion can in any sense be considered as the cause of beauty, as hath been so generally, and by some so confidently affirmed. If proportion be one of the constituents of beauty, it must derive that power either from some natural properties inherent in certain measures, which operate mechanically; from the operation of custom; or from the fitness which some measures have to answer some particular ends of conveniency. Our business therefore is to enquire, whether the parts of those objects, which are found beautiful in the vegetable or animal kingdoms, are constantly so formed according to such certain measures, as may serve to satisfy us that their beauty results from those measures on the principle of a natural mechanical cause; or from custom; or, in fine, from their fitness for any determinate purposes. I intend to examine this point under each of these heads in their order. But before I proceed further, I hope it will not be thought amiss, if I lay down the rules which governed me in this enquiry, and which have missed me in it, if I have gone astray. 1. If two bodies produce the same or a similar effect on the mind, and on examination they are found to agree in some of their properties, and to differ in others; the common effect is to be attributed to the properties in which they agree, and not to those in which they differ. 2. Not to account for the effect of a natural object from the effect of an artificial object. 3. Not to account for the effect of any natural object from a conclusion of our reason concerning its uses, if a natural cause may be assigned. 4. Not to admit any determinate quantity, or any relation of quantity, as the cause of a certain effect, if the effect is produced by different or opposite measures and relations; or if these measures and relations may exist, and yet the effect may not be produced. These are the rules which I have chiefly followed, whilst I examined into the power of proportion considered as a natural cause; and these, if he thinks them just, I request the reader to carry with him throughout the following discussion; whilst we enquire in the first place, in what things we find this quality of beauty; next, to see whether in these we can find any assignable proportions, in such a manner as ought to convince us that our idea of beauty results from them. We shall consider this pleasing power, as it appears in vegetables, in the inferior animals, and in man. Turning our eyes to the vegetable creation, we find nothing there so beautiful as flowers; but flowers are almost of every sort of shape, and of every sort of disposition; they are turned and fashioned into an infinite variety of forms; and from these forms botanists have given them their names, which are almost as various. What proportion do we discover between the stalks and the leaves of flowers, or between the leaves and the pistils? How does the slender stalk of the rose agree with the bulky head under which it bends? but the rose is a beautiful flower; and can we undertake to say that it does not owe a great deal of its beauty even to that disproportion? the rose is a large flower, yet it grows upon a small shrub; the flower of the apple is very small, and grows upon a large tree, yet the rose and the apple blossom are both beautiful, and the plants that bear them are most engagingly attired, notwithstanding this disproportion. What by general consent is allowed to be a more beautiful object than an orange tree, flourishing at once with its leaves, its blossoms, and its fruit? but it is in vain that we search here for any propor
ion between the height, the breadth, or any thing else concerning the dimensions of the whole, or concerning the relation of the particular part, to each other. I grant that we may observe in many flo
ers,
ething of a regular figure, and of a methodical disposit
on of the leaves. The rose has such a figure and such a disposition of its petals; but in an oblique view, when this figure is in a good measure lost, and the order of the leaves confounded, it yet retains its beauty, the rose is even more beautiful before it is full blown; and the bud, before this exact figure
s for
d; and this is not the on
y instan
wherein method and exactness, the soul of proportion, are found rather prejudicial than serviceable to the cause of beauty.—
Sublime and Beautiful.
PARLIAMENT, (SEE VOTE.) Qualities, favourable and unfavourable to obtain a Seat in Parliament in popular Elections.
A STRENUOUS resistance to every appearance of lawless power; a spirit of independ
nce
ed to some degree of enthusiasm; an
character to discover, and a bold one to
, every corruption and every error of government, th
e are the qualities which recommend a
a seat in the house of commons, in open and
popular elections. An indolent and sub
ve disposition; a disposition to think charitably of all the actions of men in power, and to live in a mutual intercourse of favours with them; an inclination rather to countenance a strong use of authority, than to bear any sort of licentiousness on the part of the people; these are unfavourable qualities in an open election for members of parliament.
The instinct which carries the people towards the choice of the former, is justified by reason; because a man of such a character, even in its exorbitancies, does not directly contradict the purposes of a trust, the end of which is a controul on power. The latter character, even when it is not in its extreme, will execute this trust but very imperfectly; and, if deviating to the least excess, will certainly frustrate instead of forwarding the purposes of a controul on government. But when the house of commons was to be new modelled, this principle was not only to be changed but reversed. Whilst any errors committed in support of power were left to the law, with every advantage of favourable construction, of mitigation, and finally of pardon; all excesses on the side of liberty, or in pursuit of popular favour, or in defence of popular rights and privileges, were not only to be punished by the rigour of the known law, but by a
discretionary
proceeding which brought on
the loss of the popular object itself.
Popularity was to be rendered, if not directly penal, at least highly dangerous. The favour of the people might lead even to a disqualification of representing them. Their odium might become strained through the medium of two or three constructions, the means of sitting as the trustee of all that was dear to them. This is punishing the offence in the offending part. Until this time, the opinion of the people, through the power of an assembly, still in some sort popular, led to the greatest honours and emoluments in the gift of the crown. Now the principle is reversed; and the favour of the court is the only sure way of obtaining and holding those honours which ought to be in the disposal of the people.
It signifies very little how this matter may be quibbled away. Example, the only argument of effect in civil life, demonstrates the truth of my proposition. Nothing can alter my opinion concerning the pernicious tendency of this example, until I see some man for his indiscretion in the support of power, for his violent and intemperate servility, rendered incapable of sitting in parliament. For as it now stands, the fault of overstraining popular qualities, and, irregularly if you please, asserting popular privileges, has led to disqualification; the opposite fault never has produced the slightest punishment. Resistance to power, has shut the door of the house of commons to one man; obsequiousness and servility to none.—
Thoughts on the Cause of the present Discontents.
PARLIAMENT AND PREROGATIVE (SEE MINISTER'S, FAVOURITE, REVOLUTION.)
I WOULD not increase an evil, because I was not able to remove it; and because it was not in my power to keep the house of commons religiously true to its first principles, I would not argue for carrying it to a total oblivion of them. This has been the great scheme of power in our time. They who will not conform their conduct to the public good, and cannot support it by the prerogative of the crown, have adopted a new plan. They have totally abandoned the shattered and old-fashioned fortress of prerogative, and made a lodgement in the strong hold of parliament itself. If they have any evil design to which there is no ordinary legal power commensurate, they bring it into parliament. In parliament the whole is executed from the beginning to the end. In parliament the power of obtaining their object is absolute; and the safety in the proceeding perfect; no rules to confine, no after-reckonings to terrify. Parliament cannot with any great propriety punish others, for things in which they themselves have been accomplices. Thus the controul of parliament upon the executory power is lost; because parliament is made to partake in every considerable act of government.
Impeachment, that great guardian of the purity of the constitution, is in danger of being lost, even to the idea of it.
By this plan several important ends are answered to the Cabal. If the authority of parliament supports itself, the credit of every act of government which they contrive, is saved; but if the act be so very odious that the whole strength of parliament is insufficient to recommend it, then parliament is itself discredited; and this discredit increases more and more that indifference to the constitution, which it is the constant aim of its enemies, by their abuse of parliamentary powers, to render general among the people. Whenever parliament is persuaded to assume the offices of executive government, it will lose all the confidence, love, and veneration, which it has ever enjoyed whilst it was supposed the
corrective and controul
of the acting powers of the state.—
Ibid.
PARLIAMENT (SEPTENNIAL.)
I know, that since the revolution, along with many dangerous, many useful powers of government have been weakened. It is absolutely necessary to have frequent recourse to the legislature. Parliaments must therefore sit every year, and for great part of the year. The dreadful disorders of frequent elections have also necessitated a septennial instead of a triennial duration. These circumstances, I mean the constant habit of authority, and the unfrequency of elections, have tended very much to draw the house of commons towards the character of a standing senate. It is a disorder which has arisen from the cure of greater disorders; it has arisen from the extreme difficulty of reconciling liberty under a monarchical government, with external strength and with internal tranquillity.—
Ibid.
PARLIAMENT AND PEOPLE.
ALL the people have a deep interest in the dignity of parliament.—
Letter to Sir H. Langrishe, M. P.
PARLIAMENT (TRIENNIAL AND PLACE BILL.) A triennial Parliament, or a Place Bill, not competent to effect the Ends proposed by them.
THE first ideas which generally suggest themselves, for the cure of parliamentary disorders, are, to shorten the duration of parliaments; and to disqualify all, or a great number of placemen, from a seat in the House of Commons. Whatever efficacy there may be in those remedies, I am sure, in the present state of things, it is impossible to apply them. A restoration of the right of free election is a preliminary indispensable to every other reformation. What alterations ought afterwards to be made in the constitution, is a matter of deep and difficult research.
If I wrote merely to please the popular palate, it would indeed be as little troublesome to me as to another, to extol these remedies, so famous in speculation, but to which their greatest admirers have never attempted seriously to resort in practice.
I confess that I have no sort of reliance upon either a triennial Parliament, or a Place Bill. With regard to the former, perhaps it might rather serve to counteract than to promote the ends that are proposed by it. To say nothing of the horrible disorders among the people attending frequent elections, I should be fearful of committing, every three years, the independent gentlemen of the country into a contest with the Treasury. It is easy to see which of the contending parties would be ruined first. Whoever has taken a
ul view of public proceedings, so as to endeavour to ground his speculations on his experience, must have observed how prodigiously greater the power of Ministry is in the first and last session of a parliament, than it is in the intermediate period, when members sit a little firm on their seats. The persons of the greatest parliamentary experience, with whom I have conversed, did constantly, in canvassing the sate of questions, allow something to the Court side, upon account of the elections depending or imminent. The evil complained of, if it exists in the present state of things, would hardly be removed by a triennial parliament; for, unless the influence of Government in elections can be entirely taken away, the more frequently they return, the more they will harrass private independence; the more generally men will be compelled to sly to the settled systematic interest of Government, and to the resources of a boundless civil list. Certainly something may be done, and ought to be done, towards lessening that influence in elections; and this will be necessary upon a plan either of longer or shorter duration of parliament. But nothing can so perfectly remove the evil, as not to render such contentions, too frequently repeated, utterly ruinous, first to independence of fortune, and then to independence of spirit.
As I am only giving an opinion on this point, and not at all debating it in adverse line, I hope I may be excused in another observation. With great truth I may aver, that I never remember to have talked on this subject with any man much conversant with public business, who considered short parliaments as a real improvement of the constitution. Gentlemen, warm in a popular cause, are ready enough to attribute all the declarations of such persons to corrupt motives. But the habit of affairs, if, on one hand, it tends to corrupt the mind, furnishes it, on the other, with the means of better information. The authority of such persons will always have some weight. It may stand upon a
par
with the speculations of those who are less practised in business; and who, with perhaps purer intentions, have not so effectual means of judging. It is, besides, an effect of vulgar and puerile malignity to imagine, that every statesman is of course corrupt, and that his opinion, upon every constitutional point, is solely formed upon some sinister interest.
The next favourite remedy is a place-bill. The same principle guides in both; I mean, the opinion which is entertained by many, of the infallibility of laws and regulations, in the cure of public distempers. Without being as unreasonably doubtful as many are unwisely confident, I will only say, that this also is a matter very well worthy of serious and mature reflection. It is not easy to foresee what the effect would be of disconnecting with parliament, the greatest part of those who hold civil employments, and of such mighty and important bodies as the military and naval establishments. It were better, perhaps, that they should have a corrupt interest in the forms of the constitution, than that they should have none at all. This is a question altogether different from the disqualification of a particular description of revenue officers from seats in parliament; or, perhaps, of all the lower sorts of them from votes in elections. In the former case, only the few are affected; in the latter, only the inconsiderable. But a great official, a great professional, a great military and naval interest, all necessarily comprehending many people of the first weight, ability, wealth, and spirit, has been gradually formed in the kingdom. These new interests must be let into a share of representation, else possibly they may be inclined to destroy those institutions of which they are not permitted to partake. This is not a thing to be trifled with; nor is it every well-meaning man, that is fit to put his hands to it.—
Thoughts on the Cause of the present Discontents.
PARLIAMENT. Character of Parliament at the Commencement of the French Revolution.
UPON a view indeed of the composition of all parties, he (Mr. Burke) finds great satisfaction. It is, that in leaving the service of his country, he leaves parliament without all comparison richer in abilities than he found it. Very solid and very brilliant talents distinguish the ministerial benches. The opposite rows are a sort of seminary of genius, and have brought forth such and so great talents as never before (amongst us at least) have appeared together. If their owners are disposed to serve their country, (he trusts they are) they are in a condition to render it services of the highest importance. If, through mistake or passion, they are led to contribute to its ruin, we shall at least have a consolation denied to the ruined country that adjoins us—we shall not be destroyed by men of mean or secondary capacities.—
Appeal from the New to the Old Wigs.
PARLIAMENT, (MEMBERS OF.)
TO be a good member of parliament is, let me tell you, no easy task; especially at this time, when there is so strong a disposition to run into the perilous extremes of
servile
compliance,
or wild popularity.
To unite circumspection with vigour, is absolutely necessary; but it is extremely difficult. We are now members for a rich commercial
city,
(Bristol) this city, however, is but a part of a rich commercial
nation,
the interests of which are
various, multiform, and intricate.
We are members for that great
nation
which, however, is itself but part of a great
empire,
extended by our virtue and our fortune to the farthest limits of the east and of the west.
All
these wide-spread interests must be
considered;
must be
compared;
must be
reconciled,
if possible. We are members for a
free
country; and surely we all know that the machine of a free constitution is no
simple
thing; but as
intricate
and as
delicate,
as it is valuable. We are members in a
great and antient
MONARCHY;
and we must preserve religiously the true legal rights of the sovereign, which form the key-stone that binds together the noble and well-constructed arch of our empire and our constitution.
A constitution made up of
balanced powers,
must ever be a critical thing. As such I mean to touch that part of it which comes within my reach."—
Speech at the close of the poll at Bristol.
POLITY OF THE SEVERAL COUNTRIES OF EUROPE.
THE whole of the polity and oeconomy of every country in Europe have been derived from the same sources. They were drawn from the old Germanic or Gothic custumary; from the feudal institutions which must be considered as an emanation from those customs; 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 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 contiued countries of States, that is, of classes, orders and distinctions, such as had before subsisted, or nearly so. Indeed the force and form of the institution called States, continued in greater perfection in those republican countries than under Monarchies. From all those sources arose a system of manners and of education which was nearly similar in all countries, and which softened, blended, and harmonized the colours of the whole. There was little difference in the form of their Universities for the education of their youth, whether with regard to faculties, to sciences, or to that erudition which is used to impart, with liberal morals, a kind of elegance to the mind. 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 nothing more than a pleasing variety to recreate and instruct the mind; to enrich the imagination; and to meliorate the heart. When a man travelled or resided for health, pleasure, business or necessity, from his own country, he never felt himself quite abroad. My friend, Mr. Wyld, the late professor of law in Edinburgh, a young man of infinite promise, and whose loss at this time is inestimable, has beautifully applied two lines of Ovid to this unity and diversity in Europe, before the curse of the French Revolution had fallen upon us all.
—Facies non omnibus una;
Nec diversa tamen; qualem decet esse sororum.
Regicide Peace.
PRINCIPLES.
GENERAL principles cannot be debauched or corrupted by interest or caprice.—
Oecon. Reform.
PRINCIPLES (PROPAGATION OF.)
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.—
Regicide Peace.
PALACES.
OUR palaces are vast inhospitable halls. There the bleak winds, there
"Boreas, and Eurus, and Caurus, and Argestes loud,"
howling through the vacant lobbies, and clattering the doors of deserted guard rooms, appal the imagination, and conjure up the grim spectres of departed tyrants—the Saxon, the Norman, and the Dane; the stern Edwards and fierce Henries—who stalk from desolation to desolation, through the dreary vacuity, and melancholy succession of chill and comfortless chambers. When this tumult subsides, a dead, and still more frightful silence would reign in this desert, if every now and then the tacking of hammers did not announce, that those constant attendants upon all courts in all ages, Jobs, were still alive; for whose sake alone it is, that any trace of ancient grandeur is suffered to remain. These palaces are a true emblem of some governments; the inhabitants are decayed, but the governors and magistrates still flourish. They put me in mind of
Old Sarum,
where the representatives, more in number than the constituents, only serve to inform us, that this was once a place of trade, and founding with
"the busy hum of men,"
though now you can only trace the streets by the colour of the corn; and its sole manufacture is in members of parliament.—
Oecon. Reform.
PENSIONS.
INDEED no man knows, when he cuts off the incitements to a virtuous ambition, and the just rewards of public service, what infinite mischief he may do his country, through all generations. Such saving to the public may prove the worst mode of robbing it. The crown, which has in its hands the trust of the daily pay for national service, ought to have in its hands also the means for the repose of public labour, and the fixed settlement of acknowledged merit. There is a time, when the weather-beaten vessels of the state ought to come into harbour. They must at length have a retreat from the malice of rivals, from the perfidy of political friends, and the inconstancy of the people. Many of the persons, who in all times have filled the great offices of state, have been younger brothers, who had originally little, if any fortune. These offices do not furnish the means of amassing wealth. There ought to be some power in the crown of granting pensions out of the reach of its own caprices. An intail of dependence is a bad reward of merit.
I would, therefore, leave to the crown the possibility of conferring some favours, which, whilst they are received as a reward, do not operate as corruption. When men receive obligations from the crown through the pious hands of fathers, or of connexions as venerable as the paternal, the dependences which arise from thence, are the obligations of gratitude, and not the fetters of servility. Such ties originate in virtue, and they promote it. They continue men in those habitudes of friendship, those political connexions, and those political principles in which they began life. They are antidotes against a corrupt levity, instead of causes of it. What an unseemly spectacle would it afford, what a disgrace would it be to the commonwealth that suffered such things, to see the hopeful son of a meritorious minister begging his bread at the door of that treasury, from whence his father dispensed the oeconomy of an empire, and promoted the happiness and glory of his country? Why should he be obliged to prostrate his honour, and to submit his principles at the levee of some proud favourite, shouldered and thrust aside by every impudent pretender, on the very spot where a few days before he saw himself adored?—obliged to cringe to the author of the calamities of his house, and to kiss the hands that are red with his father's blood?—No, Sir, these things are unfit—They are intolerable.
Sir, I shall be asked, why I do not chuse to destroy those offices which are pensions, and appoint pensions under the direct title in their stead? I allow, that in some cases it leads to abuse; to have things appointed for one purpose, and applied to another. I have no great objection to such a change: but I do not think it quite prudent for me to propose it. If I should take away the present establishment, the burthen of proof rests upon me, that so many pensions, and no more, and to such an amount each, and no more, are necessary for the public service. This is what I can never prove; for it is a thing incapable of definition. I do not like to take away an object that I think answers my purpose, in hopes of getting it back again in a better shape. People will bear an old establishment when its excess is corrected, who will revolt at a new one. I do not think these office-pensions to be more in number than sufficient: but on that point the house will exercise its discretion. As to abuse, I am convinced, that very few trusts in the ordinary course of administration, have admitted less abuse than this. Efficient ministers have been their own paymasters. It is true. But their very partiality has operated as a kind of justice; and still it was service that was paid. When we look over this exchequer list, we find it filled with the descendants of the Walpoles, of the Pelhams, of the Townshends; names to whom this country owes its liberties; and to whom his majesty owes his crown. It was in one of these lines, that the immense and envied employment he now holds, came to a certain duke
Duke of Newcastle, whose dining room is under the house of commons.
, who is now probably sitting quietly at a very good dinner directly under us; and acting
high life below stairs,
whilst we, his masters, are filling our mouths with unsubstantial sounds, and talking of hungry oeconomy over his head. But he is the elder branch of an ancient and decayed house, joined to, and repaired by the reward of services done by another. I respect the original title, and the first purchase of merited wealth and honour through all its d
cents, through all its transfers, and all its assignments. May such fountains never be dried up! May they ever flow with their original purity, and refresh and fructify the commonwealth for ages!—
Oecon. Reform.
PUNISHMENTS (PARTICULAR).
PARTICULAR punishments are the cure for accidental distempers in the state; they inflame rather than allay those heats which arise from the settled mismanagement of the government, or from a natural ill disposition in the people. It is of the utmost moment not to make mistakes in the use of strong measures; and firmness is then only a virtue, when it accompanies the most perfect wisdom. In truth, inconstancy is a sort of natural corrective of folly and ignorance.—
Thoughts on the Cause of the present Discontents.
PROTECTION. The Influence of Protection destroyed by Mr. Fox's India Bill.
BUT, Sir, there is one kind of influence far greater than that of the nomination to office. This, gentlemen in opposition have totally overlooked, although it now exists in its full vigour; and it will do so, upon their scheme, in at least as much force as it does now. That influence this bill cuts up by the roots; I mean the
influence of protection.
I shall explain myself:—The office given to a young man going to India is of trifling consequence. But he that goes out an insignificant boy, in a few years returns a great Nabob. Mr. Hastings says he has two hundred and fifty of that kind of raw materials, who expect to be speedily manufactured into the merchantable quality I mention. One of these gentlemen, suppose, returns hither, loaded with odium and with riches. When he comes to England, he comes as to a prison or as to a sanctuary; and either are ready for him, according to his demeanor. What is the influence in the grant of any place in India, to that which is acquired by the protection or compromise with such guilt, and with the command of such riches, under the dominion of the hopes and fears which power is able to hold out to every man in that condition? That man's whole fortune, half a million perhaps, becomes an instrument of influence, without a shilling of charge to the civil list; and the inslux of fortunes which stand in need of this protection is continual. It works both ways; it influences the delinquent, and it may corrupt the minister. Compare the influence acquired by appointing, for instance, even a Governor General, and that obtained by protecting him. I shall push this no further. But I wish gentlemen to roll it a little in their own minds.
The bill before you cuts off this source of influence. Its design and main scope is to regulate the administration of India upon the principles of a Court of Judicature; and to exclude, as far as human prudence can exclude, all possibility of a corrupt partiality, in appointing to office, or supporting in office, or covering from enquiry and punishment, any person who has abused, or shall abuse his authority. At the Board, as appointed and regulated by this bill, reward and punishment cannot be shifted and reversed by a whisper. That commission becomes fatal to cabal, to intrigue, and to secret representation, those instruments of the ruin of India. He that cuts off the means of premature fortune, and the power of protecting it when acquired, strikes a deadly blow at the great fund, the bank, the capital stock of Indian influence, which cannot be vested any where, or in any hands, without most dangerous consequences to the public.—
Speech on Mr. Fox's East-India Bill.
PRINCES. (SEE KINGS, &c.)
THEIR (princes) power is therefore by no means compleat; nor are they safe in extreme abuse. Such persons, however elevated by flattery, arrogance, and self-opinion, must be sensible that, whether covered or not by positive law, in some way or other they are accountable even here for the abuse of their trust. If they are not cut off by a rebellion of their people, they may be strangled by the very Janissaries kept for their security.—
Reflections on the Revolution in France.
PATRIOT.
A MAN full of warm speculative benevolence may wish his society otherwise constituted than he finds it; but a good patriot, and a true politician, always considers how he shall make the most of the existing materials of his country.—
Ibid.
PATRIOTISM.
TO be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ as it were) of public affections. It is the first link in the series by which we proceed towards a love to our country and to mankind. The interests of that portion of social arrangement is a trust in the hands of all those who compose it; and as none but bad men would justify it in abuse, none but traitors would barter it away for their own personal advantage.—
Ibid.
PAIN. Violent Pain described.
A man who suffers under violent bodily pain, (I suppose the most violent, because the effect may be the more obvious;) I say a man in great pain has his teeth set, his eye-brows are violently contracted, his forehead is wrinkled, his eyes are dragged inwards, and rolled with great vehemence, his hair stands an end, the voice is forced out in short shrieks and groans, and the whole fabric totters.—
Sublime and Beautiful.
PROBERT. The famous History of the Revenue Adventures of the bold Baron North and the good Knight Probert, upon the Mountains of Venodotia.
AN attempt was lately made to improve this branch of local influence, (Principality of Wales) and to transfer it to the fund of general corruption. I have on the seat behind me, the constitution of Mr. John Probert, a knight errant, dubbed by the noble lord in the blue ribbon
Lord North.
, and sent to search for revenues and adventures upon the mountains of Wales. The commission is remarkable; and the event not less so. The commission sets forth, that
"Upon a report of the
deputy auditor
(for there is a deputy auditor) of the principality of Wales,) it appeared, that his Majesty's land revenues in the said principality,
are greatly diminished
;"
and
"that upon a
report
of the
surveyor general
of his Majesty's land revenues, upon a
memorial
of the auditor of his Majesty's revenues
within the said principality,
that his mines and forests have produced very
little profit either to the public revenue or to individuals;
"
and therefore they appoint Mr. Probert, with a pension of three hundred pounds a year from the said principality, to try whether he can make any thing more of that very
little
which is stated to be so
greatly
diminished.
"
A beggarly account of empty boxes.
"
And yet, Sir, you will remark, that this diminution from littleness (which serves only to prove the infinite divisibility of matter) was not for want of the tender and officious care (as we see) of surveyors general, and surveyors particular; of auditors and deputy-auditors; not for want of memorials, and remonstrances, and reports, and commissions, and constitutions, and inquisitions, and pensions.
Probert, thus armed, and accoutred, and paid, proceeded on his adventure; but he was no sooner arrived on the confines of Wales, than all Wales was in arms to meet him. That nation is brave, and full of spirit. Since the invasion of King Edward, and the massacre of the bards, there never was such a tumult, and alarm, and uproar, through the region of
Presta
ya. Snowden
shook to its base;
Cader Edris
was loosened from its foundations. The fury of litigious was blew her horn on the mountains. The rocks poured down their goatherds, and the deep caverns vomited out their miners. Every thing above ground, and every thing under ground, was in arms. In short, Sir, to alight from my Welsh Pegasus, and to come to level ground; the
preux Chevalier
Probert went to look for revenue, like his masters upon other occasions, and like his masters, he found rebellion. But we were grown cautious by experience. A civil war of paper might end in a more serious war; for now remonstrance met remonstrance, and memorial was opposed to memorial. The wise Britons thought it more reasonable, that the poor, wasted, decrepit revenue of the principality, should die a natural than a violent death. In truth, Sir, the attempt was no less an affront upon the understanding of that respectable people, than it was an attack on their property. They chose that their ancient moss-grown castles should moulder into decay, under the silent touches of time, and the slow formality of an oblivious and drowsy Exchequer, than that they should be battered down all at once by the lively efforts of a pensioned engineer. As it is the fortune of the noble lord to whom the auspices of this campaign belonged, frequently to provoke resistance, so it is his rule and nature to yield to that resistance
in all cases whatsoever.
He was true to himself on this occasion. He submitted with spirit to the spirited remonstrances of the Welch. Mr. Probert gave up his adventure, and keeps his pension; and so ends
"the famous history of the revenue and adventures of the bold Baron North, and the good Knight Probert, upon the mountains of Venodotia."—
Oeconomical Reform.
PARTY DEFINED.
PARTY is a body of men united for promoting, by their joint endeavours, the national interest, upon some particular principle in which they are all agreed.—
Thoughts on the Cause of the present Discontents.
POETRY. Its Powers and Province.
SO little does poetry depend for its effect on the power of raising sensible images, that I am convinced it would lose a very considerable part of its energy if this were the necessary result of all description. Because that union of affecting words, which is the most powerful of all poetical instruments, would frequently lose its force along with its propriety and consistency, if the sensible images were always excited. There is not perhaps in the whole Aeneid a more grand and laboured passage than the description of Vulcan's cavern in Aetna, and the works that are there carried on. Virgil dwells particularly on the formation of the thunder, which he describes unfinished under the hammers of the Cyclops. But what are the principles of this extraordinary composition?
Tres imbris torti radios, tres nubis aquosoe
Addiderant; rutili tres ignis et alitis austri;
Fulgores nunc terrificos, sonitumque, metumque
Miscebant operi, flammisque sequacibus iras.
This seems to me admirably sublime; yet if we attend coolly to the kind of sensible images which a combination of ideas of this sort must form, the chimeras of madmen cannot appear more wild and absurd than such a picture.
"
Three rays of twisted showers, three of watery clouds, three of fire, and three of the winged south wind; then mixed they in the work terrific lightnings, and sound, and fear, and anger, with pursuing flames.
"
This strange composition is formed into a gross body; it is hammered by the Cyclops, it is in part polished, and partly continues rough. The truth is, if poetry gives us a noble assemblage of words, corresponding to many noble ideas, which are connected by circumstances of time or place, or related to each other as cause and effect, or associated in any natural way, they may be moulded together in any form, and perfectly answer their end. The picturesque connexion is not demanded; because no real picture is formed; nor is the effect of the description at all the less upon this account. What is said of Helen by Priam and the old men of his council, is generally thought to give us the highest possible idea of that fatal beauty.
They cry'd, no wonder such celestial charms
For nine long years have set the world in arms;
What winning graces! what majestic mien!
She moves a goddess, and she looks a queen.
POPE.
Here is not one word said of the particulars of her beauty; nothing which can in the least help us to any precise idea of her person; but yet we are much more touched by this manner of mentioning her than by those long and laboured descriptions of Helen, whether handed down by tradition, or formed by fancy, which are to be met with in some authors. I am sure it affects me much more than the minute description which Spencer has given of Belphebe; though I own that there are parts in that description, as there are in all the descriptions of that excellent writer, extremely fine and poetical. The terrible picture which Lucretius has drawn of religion, in order to display the magnanimity of his philosophical hero in opposing her, is thought to be designed with great boldness and spirit;
Humana ante oculos foedè cum vita jaceret,
In terris, oppressa gravi sub religione,
Que caput e coeli regionibus ostendebat
Horribili desuper visu mortalibus instans;
Primus Graius homo mortales tollere contra
Est oculos ausus.—
What idea do you derive from so excellent a picture? None at all, most certainly; neither has the poet said a single word which might in the least serve to mark a single limb or feature of the phantom, which he intended to represent in all the horrors imagination can conceive. In reality poetry and rhetoric do not succeed in exact description so well as painting does; their business is, to affect rather by sympathy than imitation; to display rather the effect of things on the mind of the speaker, or of others, than to present a clear idea of the things themselves. This is their most extensive province, and that in which they succeed the best.—
Sublime and Beautiful.
POETRY, Not strictly an imitative Art.
HENCE we may observe that poetry, taken in its most general sense, cannot with strict propriety be called an art of imitation. It is indeed an imitation so far as it describes the manners and passions of men which their words can express; where
animi motus effert interprete lingua.
There it is strictly imitation; and all merely
dramatic
poetry is of this sort. But
descriptive
poetry operates chiefly by
substitution
; by the means of sounds, which by custom have the effect of realities. Nothing is an imitation further than as it resembles some other thing; and words undoubtedly have no sort of resemblance to the ideas for which they stand—
Ibid.
PROGNOSTICS.
VAIN are all the prognostics taken from ideas and passions, which survive the state of things which gave rise to them.—
Letter to Sir H. Langrishe, M. P.
PROSCRIPTION.
IF a state should be so unhappy as to think it cannot subsist without a barbarous proscription, the persons so proscribed ought to be indemnified by the remission of a large part of their taxes, by an immunity from the offices of public burden, and by an exemption from being pressed into any military or naval service.—
Letter to an Irish Peer on the Penal Laws.
PEASANTS, (FRENCH.)
THE rich peasants are bribed with church lands; and the poorer of that description are, and can be, counted for nothing. They may rise in ferocious, ill directed tumults—but they can only disgrace themselves and signalize the triumph of their adversaries.—
Memorial on the Affairs of France in
1791.
PROFESSION.
THE degree of estimation in which any profession is held becomes the standard of the estimation in which the professors hold themselves.—
Reflections on the Revolution in France.
PASSIONS. The Rationale of our Passions very necessary.
THE more accurately we search into the human mind, the stronger traces we every where find of his wisdom who made it. If a discourse on the use of the parts of the body may be considered as an hymn to the Creator; the use of the passions, which are the organs of the mind, cannot be barren of praise to him, nor unproductive to ourselves of that noble and uncommon union of science and admiration, which a contemplation of the works of infinite wisdom alone can afford to a rational mind; whilst, referring to him whatever we find of right or good or fair in ourselves, discovering his strength and wisdom even in our own weakness and imperfection, honouring them where we discover them clearly, and adoring their profundity where we are lost in our search, we may be inquisitive without impertinence, and elevated without pride; we may be admitted, if I may dare to say so, into the counsels of the Almighty by a consideration of his works. The elevation of the mind ought to be the principal end of all our studies, which if they do not in some measure effect, they are of very little service to us. But, besides this great purpose, a consideration of the rationale of our passions seems to me very necessary for all who would affect them upon solid and sure principles. It is not enough to know them in general: to affect them after a delicate manner, or to judge properly of any work designed to affect them, we should know the exact boundaries of their several jurisdictions; we should pursue them through all their variety of operations, and pierce into the inmost, and what might appear inaccessible parts of our nature,
Quod latet arcanâ non enarrabile fibrâ.
Without all this it is possible for a man, after a confused manner, sometimes to satisfy his own mind of the truth of his work; but he can never have a certain determinate rule to go by, not can he ever make his propositions sufficiently clear to others. Poets, and orators, and painters, and those who cultivate other branches of the liberal arts, have without this critical knowledge succeeded well in their several provinces, and will succeed; as among artificers there are many machines made, and even invented without any exact knowledge of the principles they are governed by. It is, I own, not uncommon to be wrong in theory, and right in practice; and we are happy that it is so. Men often act right from their feelings, who afterwards reason but ill on them from principle; but as it is impossible to avoid an attempt at such reasoning, and equally impossible to prevent its having some influence on our practice, surely it is worth taking some pains to have it just, and founded on the basis of sure experience. We might expect that the artists themselves would have been our surest guides; but the artists have been too much occupied in the practice: the philosophers have done little; and what they have done, was mostly with a view to their own schemes and systems: and as for those called critics, they have generally sought the rule of the arts in the wrong place; they sought it among poems, pictures, engravings, statues, and buildings. But art can never give the rules that make an art. This is, I believe, the reason why artists in general, and poets principally, have been confined in so narrow a circle; they have been rather imitators of one another than of nature; and this with so faithful an uniformity, and to so remote an antiquity, that it is h
d to say who gave the first model. Critics follow them, and therefore can do little as guides. I can judge but poorly of any thing, whilst I measure it by no other standard than itself. The true standard of the arts is in every man's power; and an easy observation of the most common, sometimes of the meanest things in nature, will give the truest lights, where the greatest sagacity and industry that slights such observation, must leave us in the dark, or, what is worse, amuse and mislead us by false lights. In an enquiry it is almost every thing to be once in a right road. I am satisfied I have done but little by these observations considered in themselves; and I never should have taken the pains to digest them, much less should I have ever ventured to publish them, if I was not convinced that nothing tends more to the corruption of science than to suffer it to slagnate. These waters must be troubled before they can exert their virtues. A man who works beyond the surface of things, though he may be wrong himself, yet he clears the way for others, and may chance to make even his errors subservient to the cause of truth.—
Sublime and Beautiful.
PAPER CURRENCY.
SO soon as a nation compels a creditor to take paper currency in discharge of his debt, there is a bankruptcy. Whilst paper is taken, paper will be issued.—
Memorial on the Affairs of France in
1791.
PERSECUTION.
IT is injustice, and not a mistaken conscience that has been the principle of persecution, at least as far as it has fallen under my observation.—
Letter to an Irish Peer on the penal Laws.
PRUDENCE.
PRUDENCE is the queen of virtues.—
Regicide Peace.
PRUDENCE.
PRUDENCE is not only the first in rank of the virtues political and moral, but she is the director, the regulator, the standard of them all.—
Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs.
PRUDENCE.
PRUDENCE in new cases can do nothing on grounds of retrospect.—
Memorial on the Affairs of France in
1791.
PROPERTY AND FRANCHISE.
IF property be artificially separated from franchise, the franchise must in some way or other, and in some proportion, naturally attract property to it.—
Letter to Sir H. Langrishe, M. P.
PROPERTY (TRANSFER OF.)
A great object is always answered, whenever any property is transferr'd from hands that are not fit for that property, to those that are.—
Oecon. Reform.
PROPERTY, Ought to be, out of all Proportion, predominant in the Representation.
NOTHING is a due and adequate representation of a state, that does not represent its ability, as well as its property. But as ability is a vigorous and active principle, and as property is sluggish, inert, and timid, it never can be safe from the invasions of ability, unless it be, out of all proportion, predominant in the representation. It must be represented too in great masses of accumulation, or it is not rightly protected. The characteristic essence of property, formed out of the combined principles of its acquisition and conservation, is to be
unequal.
The great masses, therefore, which excite envy, and tempt rapacity, must be put out of the possibility of danger. Then they form a natural rampart about the lesser properties in all their gradations. The same quantity of property, which is by the natural course of things divided among many, has not the same operation. Its defensive power is weakened as it is diffused. In this diffusion each man's portion is less than what, in the eagerness of his desires, he may flatter himself to obtain by dissipating the accumulations of others.—The plunder of the few would indeed give but a share inconceivably small in the distribution to the many. But the many are not capable of making this calculation; and those who lead them to rapine, never intend this distribution.
The power of perpetuating our property in our families, is one of the most valuable and interesting circumstances belonging to it, and that which tends the most to the perpetuation of society itself. It makes our weakness subservient to our virtue; it grafts benevolence even upon avarice. The possessors of family wealth, and of the distinction which attends hereditary possession, (as most concerned in it) are the natural securities for this transmission.—With us, the House of Peers is formed upon this principle. It is wholly composed of hereditary property and hereditary distinction; and made therefore the third of the Legislature; and in the last event, the sole judge of all property in all its subdivisions. The House of Commons too, though not necessarily, yet in fact is always so composed in the far greater part. Let those large proprietors be what they will, and they have their chance of being among the best, they are at the very worst, the ballast in the vessel of the commonwealth. For though hereditary wealth, and the rank which goes with it, are too much idolized by creeping sycophants, and the blind abject admirers of power, they are too rashly slighted in shallow speculations of the petulant, assuming, short-sighted coxcombs of philosophy. Some decent regulated preeminence, some preference (not exclusive appropriation) given to birth, is neither unnatural, nor unjust, nor impolitic.—
Reflections on the Revolution in France.
POLISH REVOLUTION.
THE state of Poland was such, that there could scarcely exist two opinions, but that a reformation of its constitution, even at some expence of blood, might be seen without much disapprobation. No confusion could be seared in such an enterprize; because the establishment to be reformed was itself a state of confusion. A king without authority; nobles without union or subordination; a people without arts, industry, commerce, or liberty; no order within;
ence without; no effective public force, but a foreign force, which entered a naked country at will, and disposed of every thing at pleasure.—Here was a state of things which seemed to invite, and might perhaps justify, bold enterprize and desperate experiment. But in what manner was this chaos brought into order? The means were as striking to the imagination, as satisfactory to the reason, and soothing to the moral sentiments. In contemplating that change, humanity has every thing to rejoice and to glory in; nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to suffer. So far as it has gone, it probably is the most pure and defecated public good which has ever been conferred on mankind. We have seen anarchy and servitude at once removed; a throne strengthened for the protection of the people, without trenching on their liberties; all foreign cabal banished, by changing the crown from elective to hereditary; and what was a matter of pleasing wonder, we have seen a reigning king, from an heroic love to his country, exerting himself with all the toil, the dexterity, the management, the intrigue, in favour of a family of strangers, with which ambitious men labour for the aggrandisement of their own. Ten millions of men in a way of being freed gradually, and therefore safely to themselves and the state, not from civil or political chains, which, bad as they were, could not bind the mind, but from substantial personal bondage. Inhabitants of cities, before without privileges, placed in the consideration which belongs to that improved and connecting situation of social life. One of the most proud, numerous, and fierce bodies of nobility and gentry ever known in the world, arranged only in the foremost rank of free and generous citizens. Not one man incurred loss, or suffered degradation. All, from the king to the day labourer, were improved in their condition. Every thing was kept in its place and order; but in that place and order every thing was bettered. To add to this happy wonder, this unheard of conjunction of wisdom and fortune, not one drop of blood was spilled; no treachery; no outrage; no system of slander, more cruel than the sword; no studied insults on religion, morals, or manners; no spoil; no confiscation; no citizen beggared; none imprisoned; none exiled: the whole was effected with a policy, a discretion, an unanimity and secresy, such as have never been before known on any occasion; but such wonderful conduct was reserved for this glorious conspiracy in favour of the true and genuine rights and interests of men. Happy people, if they know to proceed as they have begun! Happy prince, worthy to begin with splendor, or to close with glory, a race of patriots and of kings; and to leave
A name, which every wind to heav'n would bear,
Which men to speak, and angels joy to hear.
To finish all—this great good, as in the instant it is, contains in it the seeds of all further improvement, and may be considered as in a regular progress, because founded on similar principles, towards the stable excellence of a British constitution.
Here was a matter for congratulation and for festive remembrance through ages. Here moralists and divines might indeed relax in their temperance to exhilarate their humanity.—
Appeal from the new to the old Whigs.
POLISH AND FRENCH REVOLUTION COMPARED.
THEY (the French faction) cannot pretend that France had stood so much in need of a change as Poland. They cannot pretend that Poland has not obtained a better system of liberty or of government than it enjoyed before. They cannot assert, that the Polish revolution cost more dearly than that of France to the interests and feelings of multitudes of men. But the cold and subordinate light in which they look upon the one, and the pains they take to preach up the other of these revolutions, leave us no choice in fixing on their motives. Both revolutions profess liberty as their object; but in obtaining this object the one proceeds from anarchy to order: the other from order to anarchy. The first secures its liberty by establishing its throne; the other builds its freedom on the subversion of its monarchy. In the one their means are unstained by crimes, and their settlement favours morality. In the other, vice and confusion are in the very essence of their pursuit and of their enjoyment. The circumstances in which these two events differ, must cause the difference we make in their comparative estimation. These turn the scale with the societies in favour of France.
Ferrum est quod amant.
The frauds, the violences, the sacrileges, the havock and ruin of families, the dispersion and exile of the pride and flower of a great country, the disorder, the confusion, the anarchy, the violation of property, the cruel murders, the inhuman confiscations, and in the end the insolent domination of bloody, ferocious, and senseless clubs. These are the things which they love and admire. What men admire and love, they would surely act. Let us see what is done in France; and then let us undervalue any the slightest danger of falling into the hands of such a merciless and savage faction!—
Regicide Peace.
POLAND. (SEE SAXONY.)
POLAND, from one cause or other, is always unquiet. The new constitution only serves to supply that restless people with new means, at least new modes, of cherishing their turbulent disposition. The bottom of the character is the same.—
Memorial on the Affairs of France in
1791.
POWER. Always accompanied by Terror.
I KNOW some people are of opinion, that no awe, no degree of terror, accompanies the idea of power; and have hazarded to affirm, that we can contemplate the idea of God himself, without any such emotion. I purposely avoided, when I first considered this subject, to introduce the idea of that great and tremendous Being, as an example in an argument so light as this; though it frequently occurred to me, not as an objection to, but as a strong confirmation of, my notions in this matter. I hope, in what I am going to say, I shall avoid presumption, where it is almost impossible for any mortal to speak with strict propriety. I say then, that whilst we consider the Godhead merely as he is an object of the understanding, which forms a complex idea of power, wisdom, justice, goodness, all stretched to a degree far exceeding the bounds of our comprehension, whilst we consider the Divinity in this refined and abstracted light, the imagination and passions are little or nothing affected. But because we are bound, by the condition of our nature, to ascend to these pure and intellectual ideas, through the medium of sensible images, and to judge of these divine qualities by their evident acts and exertions, it becomes extremely hard to disentangle our idea of the cause from the effect by which we are led to know it. Thus when we contemplate the Deity, his attributes and their operation coming united on the mind, form a sort of sensible image, and as such are capable of affecting the imagination. Now, though in a just idea of the Deity, perhaps none of his attributes are predominant, yet to our imagination, his power is by far the most striking. Some reflection, some comparing, is necessary to satisfy us of his wisdom, his justice, and his goodness. To be struck with his power, it is only necessary that we should open our eyes. But whilst we contemplate so vast an object, under the arm, as it were, of almighty power, and invested upon every side with omnipresence, we shrink into the minuteness of our own nature, and are, in a manner, annihilated before him. And though a consideration of his other attributes may relieve in some measure our apprehensions; yet no conviction of the justice with which it is exercised, nor the mercy with which it is tempered, can wholly remove the terror that naturally arises from a force which nothing can withstand. If we rejoice, we rejoice with trembling; and even whilst we are receiving benefits, we cannot but shudder at a power which can confer benefits of such mighty importance.—When the prophet David contemplated the wonders of wisdom and power which are displayed in the oeconomy of man, he seems to be struck with a sort of divine horror, and cries out,
Fearfully and wonderfully am I made!
An heathen poet has a sentiment of a similar nature; Horace looks upon it as the last effort of philosophical fortitude, to behold without terror and amazement, this immense and glorious fabric of the universe:
Hunc solem, et stellas, et decedentia certis
Tempora momentis, sunt qui sormidine nulla
Imbuti spectant.
Lucretius is a poet not to be suspected of giving way to superstitious terrors; yet when he supposes the whole mechanism of nature laid open by the master of his philosophy, his transport on this magnificent view, which he has represented in the colours of such bold and lively poetry, is overcast with a shade of secret dread and horror:
His tibi me rebus quoedam divina voluptas
Percipit, atque horror, quod sic Natura tua vi
Tam manisesla palet ex omni parte retecta.
But the scripture alone can supply ideas answerable to the majesty of this subject. In the scripture, wherever God is represented as appearing or speaking, every thing terrible in nature is called up to heighten the awe and solemnity of the divine presence. The psalms, and the prophetical books, are crowded with instances of this kind.
The earth shook
(says the psalmist),
the heavens also dropped at the presence of the Lord.
And what is remarkable, the painting preserves the same character, not only when he is supposed descending to take vengeance upon the wicked, but even when he exerts the like plenitude of power in acts of beneficence to mankind.
Tremble thou earth! at the presence of the Lord; at the presence of the God of Jacob; which turned the rock into standing water, the slint vnto a fountain of waters!
It were endless to enumerate all the passages, both in the sacred and profane writers, which establish the general sentiment of mankind, concerning the inseparable union of a sacred and reverential awe, with our ideas of the divinity. Hence the common maxim,
Primos in orbe deos fecit timor.
This maxim may be, as I believe it is, false with regard to the origin of religion. The maker of the maxim saw how inseparable these ideas were, without considering that the notion of some great power must be always precedent to our dread of it. But this dread must necessarily follow the idea of such a power, when it is once excited in the mind. It is on this principle that true religion has, and must have, so large a mixture of salutary fear; and that false religions have generally nothing else but fear to support them. Before the christian religion had, as it were, humanized the idea of the Divinity, and brought it somewhat nearer to us, there was very little said of the love of God. The followers of Plato have something of it, and only something; the other writers of pagan antiquity, whether poets or philosophers, nothing at all. And they who consider with what infinite attention, by what a disregard of every perishable object, through what long habits of piety and contemplation it is, any man is able to attain an entire love and devotion to the Deity, will easily perceive, that it is not the first, the most natural, and the most striking effect which proceeds from that idea. Thus we have traced power through its several gradations unto the highest of all, where our imagination is finally lost; and we find terror, quite throughout the progress, its inseparable companion, and growing along with it, as far as we can possibly trace them. Now, as power is undoubtedly a capital source of the sublime, this will point out evidently from whence its energy is derived, and to what class of ideas we ought to unite it.—
Sublime and Beautiful.
POWER AND PROPERTY.
THAT power goes with property is not universally true, and the idea that the operation of it is certain and invariable, may mislead us very fatally.—
Memorial on the Affairs of France in
1791.
POWER (DISCRETION OF.)
If the discretion of power is once let loose upon property, we can be at no loss to determine whose power, and what discretion it is that will prevail at last.—
Oecon. Reform.
POWERS. Conduct of the Coalesced Powers in the War against France.
WITHOUT their principles, perhaps without any principles at all, they played the game of the Jacobins. 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) as an happy occasion for the pillaging the goods, and for carrying off the materials of their neighbour's house. Their provident fears were changed into avaricious hopes. They carried on their new designs without seeming to abandon the principles of their old policy. They pretended to seek, or they flattered themselves that they sought, in the accession of new fortresses, and new territories, a
defensive
security. But the security wanted was against a kind of power, which was not dangerous in its fortresses nor in it's territories, but in it's spirit and it's principles. They aimed, or pretended to aim, at
desending
themselves against a danger, from which there can be no security in any
defensive
plan. If armies and fortresses were a defence against Jacobinism, Louis the Sixteenth would this day reign a powerful monarch over an happy people.
This error obliged them, even in their offensive operations, to adopt a plan of war against the success of which there was something little short of mathematical demonstration. They refused to take any step which might strike at the heart of affairs. They seemed unwilling to wound the enemy in any vital part. They acted through the whole, as if they really wished the conservation of the Jacobin power; as what might be more favourable 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 as their sphere of action. The plan they pursued, in it's nature, demanded great length of time. In it's execution they who went the nearest way to work were obliged to cover an incredible extent of country. It lest to the enemy every means of destroying this extended line of weakness. Ill success in any part was sure to defeat the effect of the whole. This is true of Austria. It is still more true of England. On this false plan, even good fortune, by further weakening the victor, put him but the further off from his object.
As long as there was any appearance of success, the spirit of aggrandizement, and consequently the spirit of mutual jealousy seized upon all the coaleseed Powers. Some sought an accession of territory at the expence of France, some at the expence of each other, some at the expence of third parties; and when the vicissitude of disaster took it's turn, they found common distress a treacherous bond of faith and friendship.—
Regicide Peace.
PEOPLE.
AMONGST these nice, and therefore dangerous points of casuistry, may be reckoned the question so much agitated in the present hour—Whether, after the people have discharged themselves of their original power by an habitual delegation, no occasion can possibly occur which may justify their resumption of it? This question, in this latitude, is very hard to affirm or deny: but I am satisfied that no occasion can justify such a resumption, which would not equally authorize a dispensation with any other moral duty, perhaps with all of them together. However, if in general it be not easy to determine concerning the lawfulness of such devious proceedings, which must be ever on the edge of crimes, it is far from difficult to foresee the perilous consequences of the resuscitation of such a power in the people. The practical consequences of any political tenet go a great way in deciding upon its value. Political problems do not primarily concern truth or falsehood. They relate to good or evil. What in the result is likely to produce evil, is politically false: that which is productive of good, politically is true.
Believing it therefore a question at least arduous in the theory, and in the practice very critical, it would become us to ascertain, as well as we can, what form it is that our incantations are about to call up from darkness and the sleep of ages. When the supreme authority of the people is in question, before we attempt to extend or to confine it, we ought to fix in our minds, with some degree of distinctness, an idea of what it is we mean when we say the PEOPLE.
In a state of
rude
nature there is no such thing as a people. A number of men in themselves have no collective capacity. The idea of a people is the idea of a corporation. It is wholly artificial; and made like all other legal fictions by common agreement. What the particular nature of that agreement was, is collected from the form into which the particular society has been cast. Any other is not
their
covenant. When men, therefore, break up the original compact or agreement which gives its corporate form and capacity to a state, they are no longer a people; they have no longer a corporate existence; they have no longer a legal coactive force to bind within, nor a claim to be recognized abroad. They are a number of vague loose individuals, and nothing more. With them all is to begin again. Alas! they little know how many a weary step is to be taken before they can form themselves into a mass, which has a true politic personality.
We hear much from men, who have not acquired their hardiness of assertion from the prosundity of their thinking, about the omnipotence of a
majority,
in such a dissolution of an antient society as hath taken place in France. But amongst men so disbanded, there can be no such thing as majority or minority; or power in any one person to bind another. The power of acting by a majority, which the gentlemen theorists seem to assume so readily, after they have violated the contract out of which it has arisen, (if at all it existed) must be grounded on two assumptions; first, that of an incorporation produced by unanimity; and secondly, an unanimous agreement, that the act of a mere majority (say of one) shall pass with them and with others as the act of the whole.
We are so little affected by things which are habitual, that we consider this idea of the decision of a
majority
as if it were a law of our original nature: but such constructive whole, residing in a part only, is one of the most violent fictions of positive law, that ever has been or can be made on the principles of artificial incorporation. Out of civil society nature knows nothing of it; nor are men, even when arranged according to civil order, otherwise than by very long training, brought at all to submit to it. The mind is brought far more easily to acquiesce in the proceedings of one man, or a few, who act under a general procuration for the state, than in the vote of a victorious majority in councils in which every man has his share in the deliberation. For there the beaten party are exasperated and soured by the previous contention, and mortified by the conclusive defeat. This mode of decision, where wills may be so nearly equal, where, according to circumstances, the smaller number may be the stronger force, and where apparent reason may be all upon one side, and on the other little else than impetuous appetite; all this must be the result of a very particular and special convention, confirmed afterwards by long habits of obedience, by a sort of discipline in society, and by a strong hand, vested with stationary permanent power, to enforce this sort of constructive general will. What organ it is that shall declare the corporate mind is so much a matter of positive arrangement, that several states, for the validity of several of their acts, have required a proportion of voices much greater than that of a mere majority.—These proportions are so entirely governed by convention, that in some cases the minority decides. The laws in many countries to
condemn
require more than a mere majority; less than an equal number to
acquit.
In our judicial trials we require unanimity either to condemn or to absolve. In some incorporations one man speaks for the whole; in others, a few. Until the other day, in the constitution of Poland, unanimity was required to give validity to any act of their great national council or diet. This approaches much more nearly to rude nature than the institutions of any other country. Such, indeed, every commonwealth must be, without a positive law to recognize in a certain number the will of the entire body.
If men dissolve their ancient incorporation, in order to regenerate their community, in that state of things each man has a right, if he pleases, to remain an individual. Any number of individuals, who can agree upon it, have an undoubted right to form themselves into a state apart and wholly independent. If any of these is forced into the fellowship of another, this is conquest and not compact. On every principle, which supposes society to be in virtue of a free covenant, this compulsive incorporation must be null and void.
As a people can have no right to a corporate capacity without universal consent, so neither have they a right to hold exclusively any lands in the name and title of a corporation. On the scheme of the present rulers in our neighbouring country, regenerated as they are, they have no more right to the territory called France than I have. I have a right to pitch my tent in any unoccupied place I can find for it; and I may apply to my own maintenance any part of their unoccupied soil. I may purchase the house or vineyard of any individual proprietor who refuses his consent (and most proprietors have, as far as they dared, refused it) to the new incorporation. I stand in his independent place. Who are these insolent men calling themselves the French nation, that would monopolize this fair domain of nature? Is it because they speak a certain jargon? Is it their mode of chattering, to me unintelligible, that forms their title to my land? Who are they who claim by prescription and descent from certain gangs of banditti called Franks, and Burgundians, and Visigoths, of whom I may have never heard, and ninety-nine out of an hundred of themselves certainly never have heard; whilst at the very time they tell me, that prescription and long possession form no title to property? Who are they that presume to assert that the land which I purchased of the individual, a natural person, and not a f
tion of state, belongs to them, who in the very capacity in which they make their claim can exist only a
an imaginary being, and in virtue of the very prescription which they reject and disown? This mode of arguing might be pushed into all the detail, so as to leave no sort of doubt, that on their principles, and on the sort of footing on which they have thought proper to place themselves, the crowd of men, on the other side of the channel, who have the impudence to call themselves a people, can never be the lawful exclusive possessors of the soil. By what they call reasoning without prejudice, they leave not one stone upon another in the fabric of human society. They subvert all the authority which they hold, as well as all that which they have destroyed.—
Appeal from the new to the old Whigs.
PEOPLE. Prosperity of the People.
NO government ought to own that it exists for the purpose of checking the prosperity of its people, or that there is such a principle involved in its policy.—
Two Letters to Gentlemen in Bristol.
PEOPLE AND GOVERNORS.
THE people have no interest in disorder. When they do wrong, it is their error, and not their crime. But with the governing part of the state it is far otherwise. They certainly may act ill by design, as well as by mistake.—
Thoughts on the Cause of the present Discontents.
PEOPLE.
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.—
Regicide Peace.
PEOPLE. Their Interest and Humours ought to be consulted.
I would not only consult the interest of the people, but I would chearfully gratify their humours. We are all a sort of children, that must be soothed and managed. I think I am not austere or formal in my nature. I would bear, I would even myself play my part in, any innocent buffooneries to divert them. But I never will act the tyrant for their amusement. If they will mix malice in their sports, I shall never consent to throw them any living, sentient, creature whatsoever, no not so much as a kitling, to torment.—
Speech previous to the Election at Bristol.
PEOPLE (PRIVILEGED.)
MANY are the collateral disadvantages, amongst a
privileged
people, which must attend on those who have
no
privileges.—
Letter to Sir H. Langrishe, M. P.
POPULAR SPIRIT.
BUT whatever may be represented concerning the meanness of the popular spirit, I, (Burke) for one, do not think so desperately of the British nation. Our minds are light, but they are not evil. We are dreadfully open to delusion and to dejection, but we are capable of being animated and undeceived.—
Regicide Peace.
PUBLIC MAN, HIS DUTY.
WHEN the public man omits to put himself in a situation of doing his duty with effect, it is an omission that frustrates the purposes of his trust, almost as much as if he had formally destroyed it. It is surely no very rational account of a man's life, that he has always acted right, but has taken special care to act in such a manner that his endeavours could not possibly be productive of any consequence.—
Thoughts on the Cause of the present Discontents.
PUBLIC ESTATES.
ALL public estates which are more subservient to the purposes of vexing, overawing, and influencing those who hold under them, and to the expence of perception and management, than of benefit to the revenue, ought, upon every principle, both of revenue and of freedom, to be disposed of.—
Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs.
PUBLIC.
I PERFECTLY agree with you, that times and circumstances, considered with reference to the public, ought very much to govern our conduct; though I am far from slighting, when applied with discretion to those circumstances, general principles and maxims of policy.—
Letter to Sir H. Langrishe, M. P.
PUBLIC OFFICES.
ALL offices which bring more charge than proportional advantage to the state; all offices which may be engrasted on others, uniting and simplifying their duties, ought, in the first case, to be taken away; and in the second, to be consolidated.
All such offices ought to be abolished as obstruct the prospect of the general superintendant of finance; which destroy his superintendancy, which disable him from foreseeing and providing for charges as they may occur; from preventing expence in its origin, checking it in its progress, or securing its application to its proper purposes. A minister under whom expences can be made without his knowledge, can never say what it is that he can spend, or what it is that he can save.—
Oecon. Reform.
POLITICIANS (VULGAR.)
THE condition of princes, and sometimes of ministers too, is to be pitied. The creatures of the desk, and the creatures of favour had no relish for the principles of the manifestoes of the combined powers against France. 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 recommended it for the wanderings of a disordered imagination. The calculators compute them out of their senses. The jesters and bussoons shame them out of every thing 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.—
Regicide Peace.
POLITICAL REASON DEFINED.
POLITICAL reason is a computing principle; adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing, morally and not metaphysically, true moral denominations.—
Reflections on the Revolution in France.
POLITICAL ARRANGEMENTS.
IN their political arrangements, men have no right to put the well-being of the present generation wholly out of the question. Perhaps the only moral trust with any certainty in our hands, is the care of our own time. With regard to futurity, we are to treat it like a ward. We are not so to attempt an improvement of his fortune, as to put the capital of his estate to any hazard.—
Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs.
POLITICS (NEW SYSTEM.) (SEE RELIGION.)
THESE principles of internal, as well as external division and coalition, are but just now extinguished. But they who will examine into the true character and genius of some late events, must be satisfied that other sources of faction, combining parties among the inhabitants of different countries into one connexion, are opened, and that from these sources are likely to arise effects full as important as those which had formerly arisen from the jarring interests of the religious sects. The intention of the several actors in the change in France, is not a matter of doubt. It is very openly professed.
In the modern world, before this time, there has been no instance of this spirit of general political faction, separated from religion, pervading several countries, and forming a principle of union between the partizans in each. But the thing is not less in human nature. The ancient world has furnished a strong and striking instance of such a ground for faction, full as powerful, and full as mischievous as our spirit of religious system had ever been, exciting in all the states of Greece (European and Asiatic) the most violent animosities, and the most cruel and bloody persecutions and proscriptions. These ancient factions in each commonwealth of Greece, connected themselves with those of the same description in some other States; and secret cabals and public alliances were carried on and made, not upon a conformity of general political interests, but for the support and aggrandizement of the two leading states which headed the aristocratic and democratic factions. For, as in later times, the King of Spain was at the head of a catholic, and the King of Sweden of a protestant interest, France, (though catholic, acting subordinately to the latter,) in the like manner the Lacedemonians were every where at the head of the aristocratic interests, and the Athenians of the democratic. The two leading powers kept alive a constant cabal and conspiracy in every state, and the political dogmas concerning the constitution of a republic, were the great instruments by which these leading States chose to aggrandize themselves. Their choice was not unwise; because the interest in opinions (merely as opinions, and without any experimental reference to their effects) when once they take strong hold of the mind, become the most operative of all interests, and indeed very often supercede every other.
I might further exemplify the possibility of a political sentiment running through various states and combining factions in them, from the history of the middle ages in the Guelfs and Ghibellines. These were political factions originally in favour of the Emperor and the Pope, with no mixture of religious doginas; or if any thing religiously doctrinal they had in them originally, it very soon disappeared; as their first political objects disappeared also, though the spirit remained. They became no more than names to distinguish factions; but they were not the less powerful in their operation, when they had no direct point of doctrine, either religious or civil, to assert. For a long time, however, those factions gave no small degree of influence to the foreign chiefs in every commonwealth in which they existed. I do not mean to pursue further the track of these parties. I allude to this part of history only, as it furnishes an instance of that species of faction which broke the locality of public affections, and united descriptions of citizens more with strangers than with their countrymen of different opinions.—
Memorial on tho Affairs of France in
1791.
PROTESTANT RELIGION.
WE know, and what is better, we feel inwardly, that religion is the basis of civil society, and the source of all good and of all comfort
Sit igitur hoc ab initio persuasum civibus, dominos esse omnium
erum ac moderatores, deos; eaque, quae gerantur, eorum geri vi, ditione, ac numine; eosdemque optime de genere hominum mereri; et qualis quisque sit, quid agat, quid in se admittat, qua mente, qua pietate colat religiones intueri: piorum et impiorum habere rationem. His enim rebus imbutae mentes haud sane abhorrebunt ab utili et a vera sententia.
Cic. de Legibus, l. 2.
. In England we are so convinced of this, that there is no rust of superstition, with which the accumulated absurdity of the human mind might have crusted it over in the course of ages, that ninety-nine in an hundred of the people of England would not prefer to impiety. We shall never be such fools as to call in an enemy to the substance of any system to remove its corruptions, to supply its defects, or to perfect its construction. If our religious tenets should ever want a further elucidation, we shall not call on atheism to explain them. We shall not light up our temple from that unhallowed fire. It will be illuminated with other lights. It will be perfumed with other incense, than the infectious stuff which is imported by the smugglers of adulterated metaphysics. If our ecclesiastical establishment should want a revision, it is not avarice or rapacity, public or private, that we shall employ for the audit, or receipt, or application of its consecrated revenue.—Violently condemning neither the Greek nor the Armenian, nor, since heats are subsided, the Roman system of religion, we prefer the Protestant; not because we think it has less of the Christian religion in it, but because, in our judgment, it has more. We are protestants, not from indifference but from zeal.—
Reflections on the Revolution in France.
POPISH CLERGY.
A POPISH clergy, who are not restrained by the most austere subordination, will become a nuisance, a real public grievance of the heaviest kind, in any country that entertains them.—
Letter to a Peer of Ireland on the Penal Laws.
PARSIMONY. Mere Parsimony not Oeconomy.
MERE parsimony is not oeconomy. It is separable in theory from it; and in fact it may, or it may not, be a
part
of oeconomy, according to circumstances. Expence, and great expence, may be an essential part in true oeconomy. If parsimony were to be considered as one of the kinds of that virtue, there is, however, another and an higher oeconomy Oeconomy 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. Meer instinct, and that not an instinct of the noblest kind, may produce this false oeconomy in perfection. The other oeconomy has larger views. It demands a discriminating judgment, and a firm sagacious mind. It shuts one door to impudent importunity, only to open another, and a wider, to unpresuming merit. If none but meritorious service or real talent were to be rewarded, this nation has not wanted, and this nation will not want, the means of rewarding all the service it ever will receive, and encouraging all the merit it ever will produce. No state, since the foundation of society, has been impoverished by that species of profusion.—
Letter to a Noble Lord.
PROFESSORS OF ARTIFICIAL LAW. (SEE LAW.)
THE professors of artificial law have always walked hand in hand with the professors of artificial theology. As their end, in confounding the reason of man, and abridging his natural freedom, is exactly the same, they have adjusted the means to that end in a way entirely similar. The divine thunders out his
anathemas
with more noise and terror against the breach of one of his positive institutions, or the neglect of some of his trivial forms, than against the neglect or breach of those duties and commandments of natural religion, which by these forms and institutions he pretends to enforce. The lawyer has his forms, and his positive institutions too, and he adheres to them with a veneration altogether as religious. The worst cause cannot be so prejudicial to the litigant, as his advocate's or attorney's ignorance or neglect of these forms. A law-suit is like an ill-managed dispute, in which the first object is soon out of sight, and the parties end upon a matter wholly foreign to that on which they began. In a law-suit the question is, who has a right to a certain house or farm? And this question is daily determined, not upon the evidences of the right, but upon the observance or neglect of some forms of words in use with the gentlemen of the robe, about which there is even amongst themselves such a disagreement, that the most experienced veterans in the profession can never be positively assured that they are not mistaken.
Let us expostulate with these learned sages, these priests of the sacred temple of justice. Are we judges of our own property? By no means. You then, who are initiated into the mysteries of the blindfold goddess, inform me whether I have a right to eat the bread I have earned by the hazard of my life, or the sweat of my brow? The grave doctor answers me in the affirmative. The reverend serjeant replies in the negative; the learned barrister reasons upon one side and upon the other, and concludes nothing. What shall I do? An antagonist starts up and presses me hard. I enter the field, and retain these three persons to defend my cause. My cause, which two farmers from the plough could have decided in half an hour, takes the court twenty years. I am, however, at the end of my labour, and have, in reward for all my toil and vexation, a judgment in my favour. But hold—a sagacious commander, in the adversary's army has found a slaw in the proceeding. My triumph is turned into mourning. I have used
or
instead of
and,
or some mistake, small in appearance, but dreadful in its consequences, and have the whole of my success quashed in a writ of error. I remove my suit; I shift from court to court; I fly from equity to law, and from law to equity; equal uncertainty attends me every where: and a mistake in which I had no share, decides at once upon my liberty and property, sending me from the court to a prison, and adjudging my family to beggary and famine. I am innocent, gentlemen, of the darkness and uncertainty of your science. I never darkened it with absurd and contradictory notions, nor confounded it with chicane and sophistry. You have excluded me from my having any share in the conduct of my own cause; the science was too deep for me; I acknowledged it; but it was too deep even for yourselves; you have made the way so intricate, that you are yourselves lost in it. You err, and you punish me for your errors.—
Vindication of Natural Society.
PRUSSIA AND THE EMPEROR.
IF the two great leading Powers of Germany do not regard this danger
French Revolution.
, (as apparently they do not) in the light in which it presents itself so naturally, it is because they are powers too great to have a social interest. That sort of interest belongs only to those, whose state of weakness or mediocrity is such, as to give them greater cause of apprehension from what may destroy them, than of hope from any thing by which they may be aggrandized.
As long as those two Princes are at variance, so long the liberties of Germany are safe. But if ever they should so far understand one another as to be persuaded that they have a more direct and more certainly defined interest in a proportioned mutual aggrandizement than in a reciprocal reduction, that is, if they come to think that they are more likely to be enriched by a division of spoil, than to be rendered secure by keeping to the old policy of preventing others from being spoiled by either of them, from that moment the liberties of Germany are no more.
That a junction of two in such a scheme is neither impossible nor improbable, is evident from the partition of Poland in 1773, which was effected by such a junction as made the interposition of other nations to prevent it, not easy. Their circumstances, at that time, hindered any other three states, or indeed any two, from taking measures in common to prevent it, though France was at that time an existing power, and had not yet learned to act upon a system of politics of her own invention. The geographical position of Poland was a great obstacle to any movements of France in opposition to this, at that time unparalleled league. To my certain knowledge, if Great Britain had, at that time, been willing to concur in preventing the execution of a project so dangerous in the example, even exhausted as France then was by the preceding war, and under a lazy and unenterprising Prince, she would have at every risque taken an active part in this business. But a languor with regard to so remote an interest, and the principles and passions which were then strongly at work at home, were the causes why Great Britain would not give France any encouragement in such an enterprize. At that time, however, and with regard to that object, in my opinion, Great Britain and France had a common interest.
But the position of Germany is not like that of Poland, with regard to France, either for good or for evil. If a conjunction between Prussia and the Emperor should be formed for the purpose of secularising and rendering hereditary the Ecclesiastical Electorates and the Bishopric of Munster, for settling two of them on the children of the Emperor, and uniting Cologne and Munster to the dominions of the King of Prussia on the Rhine; or if any other project of mutual aggrandizement should be in prospect, and that to facilitate such a scheme, the modern French should be permitted and encouraged to shake the internal and external security of these Ecclesiastical Electorates, Great Britain is so situated that she could not, with any effect, set herself in opposition to such a design. Her principal arm, her marine, could here be of no sort of use.—
Memorial on the Affairs of France in
1791.
PITY.
PITY is a passion founded on love.—
Sublime and Beautiful.
PRECEDENTS.
I shall never quit precedents where I find them applicable.—
Oecon. Reform.
PRESCRIPTION (THE SACRED RULES OF).
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 engrafted 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
Sir George Saville's Act, called the
Nullum Tempus
Act.
. The Duke of Bedford will stand as long as prescriptive law endures; as long as the great stable laws of property, common to us with all civilized nations, are kept in their integrity, and without the smallest intermixture of the laws, maxims, principles, or precedents of the grand revolution. They are secure against all changes but one. The whole revolutionary system, institutes, digest, code, novels, text, gloss, comment, are not only not the same, but they are the very reverse, and the reverse fundamentally, of all the laws on which civil life has hitherto been upheld in all the governments of the world. The learned professors of the Rights of Man regard prescription, not as a title to bar all claim, set up against old possession, but they look on prescription as itself a bar against the possessor and proprietor. They hold an immemorial possession to be no more than a long continued, and therefore an aggravated injustice.
Such are
their
ideas; such
their
religion, and such
their
law. But as to
our
country and
our
race, as long as the well-compacted structure of our church and state, the sanctuary, the holy of holies of that ancient law, defended by reverence, defended by power, a fortress at once and a temple
Templum in modum arcis.
Tacitus of the Temple of the Jerusalem.
, shall stand inviolate on the brow of the British Sion, as long as the British Monarchy, not more limited than fenced by the orders of the State, shall, like the proud Keep of Windsor, rising in the majesty of proportion, and girt with the double belt of its kindred and coeval towers, as long as this awful structure shall oversee and guard the subjected land, so long the mounds and dykes of the low, fat, Bedford level will have nothing to fear from all the pickaxes of all the levellers of France. As long as our sovereign Lord the King, and his faithful subjects, the Lords and Commons of this realm, the triple cord, which no man can break; the solemn, sworn, constitutional frank-pledge of this nation; the firm guarantees of each others being, and each others rights; the joint and several securities, each in its place and order, for every kind and every quality, of property and of dignity; as long as these endure, so long the Duke of Bedford is safe; and we are all safe together; the high from the blights of envy and the spoliations of rapacity; the low from the iron hand of oppression and the insolent spurn of contempt. Amen! and so be it: and so it will be,
Dum domus Aeneae Capitoli immobile axum
Accolet; imperiumque paler Romanus habebit.
But if the rude inroad of Gallic tumult, with its sophistical Rights of Man, to falsify the account, and its sword as a makeweight 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.—
Letter to a noble Lord.
PARTY, (FRENCH) HOW COMPOSED.
IN the mean time a system of French conspiracy is gaining ground in every country. This system happening to be founded on principles the most delusive indeed, but the most flattering to the natural propensities of the unthinking multitude, and to the speculations of all those who think, without thinking very profoundly, must daily extend it's influence. A predominant inclination towards it appears in all those who have no religion, when otherwise their disposition leads them to be advocates even for despotism. Hence Hume, though I cannot say that he does not throw out some expressions of disapprobation on the proceedings of the levellers in the reign of Richard the Second, yet affirms that the doctrines of
John Ball
were
"conformable to the primitive ideas of primitive equality, which
are engraven on the hearts of all men.
"—
Memorial on the Affairs of France in
1791.
PEACE. Not to be too eagerly sought.
A peace too eagerly sought, is not always the sooner obtained; and when obtained, it never can be every thing we wish. 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 negociation as well as to operations of the field. A negociator must seem willing to hazard all, if he wishes to secure any material point.—
Regicide Peace.
PRESERVATION (SELF.)
THE passions belonging to self-preservation, are the strongest of all the passions.—
Ibid.
PRACTICABILITY.
THOSE things which are not practicable, are not desirable. There is nothing in the world really beneficial, that does not lie within the reach of an informed understanding, and a well-directed pursuit. There is nothing that God has judged good for us, that he has not given us the means to accomplish, both in the natural and the moral world. If we cry, like children for the moon, like children we must cry on.—
Oecon. Reform.
PHYSICAL CAUSES. (SEE TASTE.)
BY looking into physical causes, our minds are opened and enlarged; and in this pursuit, whether we take or whether we lose our game, the chace is certainly of service. Cicero, true as he was to the academic philosophy, and consequently led to reject the certainty of physical, as of every other kind of knowledge, yet freely confesses its great importance to the human understanding;
"
Est animorum ingeniorumque nostrorum naturale quoddam quasi pabulum consideratio contemplatioque naturae.
"
If we can direct the lights we derive from such exalted speculations, upon the humbler field of the imagination, whilst we investigate the springs, and trace the courses of our passions, we may not only communicate to the taste a sort of philosophical solidity, but we may reflect back on the severer sciences some of the graces and elegances of taste, without which the greatest proficiency in those sciences will always have the appearance of something illiberal.—
Sublime and Beautiful.
PARALLELOGRAM.
THE form of a cross used in some churches seems to me not so eligible as the parallelogram of the antients; at least, I imagine it is not so proper for the outside.—
Ibid.
QUALIFICATIONS FOR GOVERNMENT.
THERE is no qualification for Government, but virtue and wisdom, actual or presumptive; wherever they are actually found, they have, in whatever state, condition, profession, or trade, the passport of Heaven to human place and honour.—
Reflections on the Revolution in France.
REVOLUTION (FRENCH.) State of France in 1793.
THE State of France is perfectly simple. It consists of but two descriptions—the Oppressors and the Oppressed.
The first have the whole authority of the State in their hands, all the arms, all the revenues of the public, all the confiscations of individuals and corporations. They have taken the lower sort from their occupations, and have put them into pay, that they may form them into a body of Janisaries to overrule and awe property. The heads of these wretches they never suffer to cool. They supply them with a food for fury varied by the day—besides the sensual state of intoxication from which they are rarely free. They have made the priests and people formally abjure the divinity: they have estranged them from every civil, moral, and social, or even natural and instinctive sentiment, habit, and practice, and have rendered them systematically savages, to make it impossible for them to be the instruments of any sober and virtuous arrangement, or to be reconciled to any state of order, under any name whatsoever.
The other description,
the Oppressed
—are people of some property; they are the small reliques of the persecuted Landed Interest; they are the burghers and the farmers. By the very circumstance of their being of some property, though numerous in some points of view, they cannot be very considerable as a
number.
In cities the nature of their occupations renders them domestic and feeble; in the country it confines them to their farm for subsistence. The National Guards are all changed and reformed. Every thing suspicious in the description of which they were composed, is rigourously disarmed. Committees, called of Vigilance and Safety, are every where formed; a most severe and scrutinizing inquisition, far more rigid than any thing ever known or imagined. Two persons cannot meet and confer without hazard to their liberty, and even to their lives. Numbers scarcely credible have been executed, and their property confiscated. At Paris, and in most other towns, the bread they buy is a daily dole—which they cannot obtain without a daily ticket delivered to them by their Masters. Multitudes of all ages and sexes are actually imprisoned. I have reason to believe, that in France there are not, for various state crimes, so few as twenty thousand
Some accounts make them five times as many.
actually in jail—a large portion of people of property in any State. If a father of a family should shew any dispositions to resist, or to withdraw himself from their power, his wife and children are cruelly to answer for it. It is by means of these hostages, that they keep the troops, which they force by masses (as they call it) into the field—true to their colours.
Another of their resources is not to be forgotten.—They have lately found a way of giving a sort of ubiquity to the supreme Sovereign Authority, which no Monarch has been able yet to give to any representation of his.
The Commissioners of the National Convention, who are the Members of the Convention itself, and really exercise all its powers, make continual circuits through every province, and visits to every army. There they supersede all the ordinary authorities, civil and military, and change and alter every thing at their pleasure. So that in effect, no deliberative capacity exists in any portion of the inhabitants.—
Memorial on the Affairs of France in
1793.
REVOLUTION (FRENCH). Oppressive, but spirited and daring.
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. Every thing is referred to the production of force; afterwards every thing is trusted to the use of it. It is military in its principle, in its maxims, in its spirit, and in all its movements. The state has dominion and conquest for its sole objects; dominion over minds by proselytism, over bodies by arms.
Thus constituted with an immense body of natural means, which are lessened in their amount only to be increased in their effect, France has since the accomplishment of the revolution, a complete unity in its direction. It has destroyed every resource of the state, which depends upon opinion and the good will of individuals. The riches of convention disappear. The advantages of nature in some considerable measure remain; the command over them is complete and absolute. We go about asking when assignats will expire, and laugh at the last price of them: but what signifies the fate of these 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 artificial society. They seize upon the fruit of the labour; they seize upon the labourer himself. The natural means of France are still great. They are very materially lessened, I admit; but the power over them is increased. Were France but half 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 Jinghiz Khan, 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 Indus to the Pyrennees.
Material resources never have supplied, nor ever can supply the want of unity in design and constancy in pursuit. But unity in design, and perseverance, and boldness in pursuit, have never wanted resources, and never will. We have not considered as we ought the dreadful energy of a State, in which the property has nothing to do with the Government. Reflect, my dear Sir, reflect again and again on a Government, in which the property is in subjection, and where nothing rules but the minds 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 every thing 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 those, who, from the miserable servitude of the desk have been raised to empire, again submit to the bondage of a starving bureau, or the profit of copying music, or writing plaidoyers by the sheet. It has made me often smile in bitterness, when I heard talk of an indemnity to such men, provided they returned to their allegiance.
From all this, what is my inference? It is, that this new system of robbery in France cannot be rendered safe by any art, or any means. That it
must
be destroyed, or that it will destroy all Europe. That by some means or other the force opposed to her should be made to bear, in a contrary direction, some analogy and resemblance to the force and spirit she employs.—
Regicide Peace.
REVOLUTION (FRENCH.) Difference between this Revolution and others.
THERE have been many internal revolutions in the government of countries, both as to persons and forms, in which the neighbouring states have had little or no concern. Whatever the government might be, with respect to these persons and these forms, the stationary interests of the nation concerned have most commonly influenced the new governments in the same manner in which they influenced the old; and the revolution turning on matter of local grievance or of local accommodation, did not extend beyond its territory.
The present revolution in France seems to me to be quite of another character and description; and to bear little resemblance or analogy to any of those which have been brought about in Europe upon principles merely political.
It is a revolution of doctrine
theoretic dogma.
It has a much greater resemblance to those changes which have been made upon religious grounds, in which a spirit of proselytism makes an essential part.—
Memorial on the Affairs of France in
1791.
REVOLUTION (FRENCH). France not to be encountered as a State, but as a Faction.
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 th
se things are, they are not what make the faction formidable. It is the faction that makes them truly dreadful. That faction is the evil spirit that possesses the body of France; that informs it as a soul; that stamps upon its ambition, and upon all its pursuits, a characteristic mark, which strongly distinguishes them from the same general passions, and the same general views, in other men and in other communities. It is that spirit which inspires into them a new, a pernicious, a desolating activity. Constituted as France was ten years ago, it was not in that France to shake, to shatter, and to overwhelm Europe in the manner that we behold. A sure destruction impends over those infatuated princes, who, in the conflict with this new and unheard-of power, proceeds 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.—
Regicide Peace.
REVOLUTION (FRENCH) THE OBJECT OF.
THE revolution in France had the relation of France to other nations as one of its principal objects. The changes made by that revolution were not the better to accommodate her to the old and usual relations, but to produce new ones. The revolution was made, not to make France free, but to make her formidable; not to make her a neighbour, but a mistress; not to make her more observant of laws, but to put her in a condition to impose them. To make France truly formidable, it was necessary that France should be new modelled. They who have not followed the train of the late proceedings, have been led by deceitful representations (which deceit made a part in the plan) to conceive that this totally new model of a state, in which nothing escaped a change, was made with a view to its internal relations only.—
Regicide Peace.
REVOLUTION (FRENCH) Contrast between the Revolution in England in 1688, and that in France 1789.
IN truth, the circumstances of our revolution (as it is called) and that of France are just the reverse of each other in almost every particular, and in the whole spirit of the transaction. With us it was the case of a legal monarch attempting arbitrary power—in France it is the case of an arbitrary monarch, beginning, from whatever cause, to legalize his authority. The one was to be resisted, the other was to be managed and directed; but in neither case was the order of the
to be changed, lest government might be ruined, which ought only to be corrected and legalized. With us we got rid of the man, and preserved the constituent parts of the state. There they get rid of the constituent parts of the state, and keep
man. What we did was in truth and substance, and in a constitutional light, a revolution, not made, but prevented. We took solid securities; we settled doubtful questions; we corrected anomalies in
ur law. In the stable fundamental parts of our con
ution we made no revolution; no, nor any alteration at all. We did not impair the monarchy. Perhaps it might be shewn that we strengthened it very considerably. The nation kept the same ranks, the same orders, the same privileges, the same franchises, the same rules for property, the same subordinations, the same order in the law, in the revenue, and in the magistracy; the same lords, the same commons, the same corporations, the same electors.
The church was not impaired. Her estates, her majesty, her splendor, her orders and gradations continued the same. She was preserved in her full efficiency, and cleared only of a certain intolerance, which was her weakness and disgrace. The church and the state were the same after the revolution that they were before, but better secured in every part.
Was little done because a revolution was not made in the constitution? No! Every thing was done; because we commenced with reparation not with ruin. Accordingly the state flourished. Instead of lying as dead, in a sort of trance, or exposed as some others, in an epileptic sit, to the pity or derision of the world, for her wild, ridiculous, convulsive movements, impotent to every purpose but that of dashing out her brains against the pavement, Great Britain rose above the standard, even of her former self. An aera of a more improved domestic prosperity then commenced, and still continues, not only unimpaired, but growing, under the wasting hand of time. All the energies of the country were awakened. England never presented a firmer countenance, or a more vigorous arm, to all her enemies, and to all her rivals. Europe under her respired and revived. Every where she appeared as the protector, assertor, or avenger, of liberty. A war was made and supported against fortune itself. The treaty of Ryswick, which first limited the power of France, was soon after made: the grand alliance very shortly followed, which shook to the foundations the dreadful power which menaced the independence of mankind. The states of Europe lay happy under the shade of a great and free monarchy, which knew how to be great without endangering its own peace at home, or the internal or external peace of any of its neighbours.—
Speech on the Army Estimates in
1790.
REVOLUTION, (FRENCH.) Partizans of the French System.
THIS system, (the French) as it has been first realized, dogmatically, as well as practically, in France, makes France the natural head of all factious formed on a similar principle, whenever they may prevail, as much as Athens was the head and settled ally of all democratic factions, wherever they existed. The other system has no head.
This system has very many partizans in every country in Europe, but particularly in England, where they are already formed into a body, comprehending most of the dissenters of the three leading denominations; to these are readily aggregated all who are dissenters in character, temper, and disposition, though not belonging to any of their congregations—that is, all the restless people who resemble them, of all ranks and all parties—whigs, and even tories—the whole race of half bred speculators;—all the atheists, deists, and socinians;—all those who hate the clergy, and envy the nobility;—a good many among the monied people;—the East Indians almost to a man, who cannot bear to find that their present importance does not bear a proportion to their wealth. These latter have united themselves into one great, and in my opinion, formidable club
Originally called the Bengal club, but since opened to persons from the other presidencies, for the purpose of consolidating the whole Indian interest.
, which, though now quiet, may be brought into action with considerable unanimity and force.
Formerly few, except the ambitious great, or the desperate and indigent, were to be feared as instruments in revolutions. What has happened in France teaches us, with many other things, that there are more causes than have commonly been taken into our consideration, by which government may be subverted. The monied men, merchants, principal tradesmen, and men of letters (hitherto generally thought the peaceable and even timid part of society) are the chief actors in the French Revolution. But the fact is, that as money increases and circulates, and as the circulation of news, in politics and letters, becomes more and more diffused, the persons who diffuse this money, and this intelligence, become more and more important. This was not long undiscovered. Views of
ambition
were in France, for the first time, presented to these classes of men. Objects in the state, in the army, in the system of civil offices of every kind. Their eyes were dazzled with this new prospect. They were, as it were, electrified and made to lose the natural spirit of their situation. A bribe, great without example in the history of the world, was held out to them—the whole government of a very large kingdom.
There are several who are persuaded that the same thing cannot happen in England, because here, (they say) the occupations of merchants, tradesmen, and manufacturers, are not held as degrading situations. I once thought that the low estimation in which commerce was held in France, might be reckoned among the causes of the late revolution; and I am still of opinion, that the exclusive spirit of the French nobility, did irritate the wealthy of other classes. But I found long since, that persons in trade and business were by no means despised in France in the manner I had been taught to believe. As to men of letters, they were so far from being despised or neglected, that there was no country perhaps in the universe, in which they were so highly esteemed, courted, caressed, and even feared; tradesmen naturally were not so much sought in society (as not furnishing so largely to the fund of conversation as they do to the revenues of the state) but the latter description got forward every day. M. Bailly, who made himself the popular mayor on the rebellion of the Bastile, and is a pricipal actor in the revolt, before the change possessed a pension or office under the crown, of six hundred pound English, a year, for that country, no contemptible provision: And this he obtained solely as a man of letters, and on no other title. As to the monied men—whilst the monarchy continued, there is no doubt, that merely as such, they did not enjoy the
privileges
of nobility, but nobility was of so easy an acquisition, that it was the fault or neglect of all of that description, who did not obtain its privileges, for their lives at least in virtue of office. It attached under the royal government to an innumerable multitude of places, real and nominal, that were vendible; and such nobility were as capable of every thing as their degree of influence or interest could make them, that is, as nobility of no considerable rank or consequence. M. Neckar, so far from being a French gentleman, was not so much as a Frenchman born, and yet we all know the rank in which he stood on the day of the meeting of the states.
As to the mere matter of estimation of the mercantile or any other class, this is regulated by opinion and prejudice. In England a security against the envy of men in these classes, is not so very complete as we may imagine. We must not impose upon ourselves. What institutions and manners together had done in France, manners alone do here. It is the natural operation of things where there exists a crown, a court, splendid orders of knighthood, and an hereditary nobility;—where there exists a fixed, permanent, landed gentry, continued in greatness and opulence by the law of primogeniture, and by a protection given to family settlements; where there exists a standing army and navy;—where there exists a church establishment, which bestows on learning and parts an interest combined with that of religion and the state;—in a country where such things exist, wealth, new in it's acquisition, and precarious in it's duration, can never rank first, or even near the first; though wealth has it's natural weight, further, than as it is balanced and even preponderated amongst us as amongst other nations, by artificial institutions and opinions growing out of them. At no period in the history of England have so few peers been taken out of trade or from families newly created by commerce. In no period has so small a number of noble families entered into the counting-house. I can call to mind but one in all England, and his is of near fifty years standing. Be that as it may, it appears plain to me from my best observation, that envy and ambition may by art, management and disposition, be as much excited amongst these descriptions of men in England, as in any other country; and that they are just as capable of acting a part in any great change.—
Memorial on the Affairs of France in
1791.
REVOLUTION. Policy at the Revolution, different System pursued for some Years past. (See KING'S MEN, CABINET (DOUBLE.)
AT the revolution, the crown, deprived, for the ends of the revolution itself, of many prerogatives, was found too weak to struggle against all the difficulties which pressed so new and unsettled a government. The court was obliged therefore to delegate a part of its powers to men of such interest as could support, and of such fidelity as would adhere to, its establishment. Such men were able to draw in a greater number to a concurrence in the common defence. This connection, necessary at first, continued long after convenient; and properly conducted might indeed, in all situations, be an useful instrument of government. At the same time, through the intervention of men of popular weight and character, the people possessed a security for their just portion of importance in the state. But as the title to the crown grew stronger by long possession, and by the constant increase of its influence, these helps have of late seemed to certain persons no better than incumbrances. The powerful managers for government were not sufficiently submissive to the pleasure of the possessors of immediate and personal favour, sometimes from a confidence in their own strength, natural and acquired; sometimes from a fear of offending their friends, and weakening that lead in the country, which gave them a consideration independent of the court. Men acted as if the court could receive, as well as confer, an obligation. The influence of government, thus divided in appearance between the court and the leaders of parties, became in many cases an accession rather to the popular than to the royal scale; and some part of that influence which would otherwise have been possessed as in a sort of mortmain and unalienable domain, returned again to the great ocean from whence it arose, and circulated among the people. This method, therefore, of governing, by men of great natural interest, or great acquired consideration, was viewed in a very invidious light by the true lovers of absolute monarchy. It is the nature of despotism to abhor power held by any means but its own momentary pleasure; and to annihilate all intermediate situations between boundless strength on its own part, and total debility on the part of the people.
To get rid of all this intermediate and independant importance, and
to secure to the court the unlimited and uncontrouled use of its own vast influence, under the sole direction of its own private favour,
has for some years past been the great object of policy. If this were compassed, the influence of the crown must, of course, produce all the effects which the most sanguine partizans of the court could possibly desire. Government might then be carried on without any concurrence on the part of the peeple; without any attention to the dignity of the greater, or to the affections of the lower sorts. A new project was therefore devised, by a certain set of intriguing men, totally different from the system of administration which had prevailed since the accession of the House of Brunswick. This project, I have heard, was first conceived by some persons in the court of Frederick Prince of Wales.
The earliest attempt in the execution of this design was to set up for minister, a person, in rank indeed respectable, and very ample in fortune; but who, to the moment of this vast and sudden elevation, was little known or considered in the kingdom. To him the whole nation was to yield an immediate and implicit submission. But whether it was for want of firmness to bear up against the first opposition; or that things were not yet fully ripened, or that this method was not found the most eligible; that idea was soon abandoned. The instrumental part of the project was a little altered, to accommodate it to the time, and to bring things more gradually and more surely to the one great end proposed.
The first part of the reformed plan was to draw
a line which should separate the court from the ministry.
Hitherto these names had been looked upon as synonymous; but for the future, court and administration were to be considered as things totally distinct. By this operation, two systems of administration were to be formed; one which should be in the real secret and confidence; the other merely ostensible, to perform the official and executory duties of government. The latter were alone to be responsible; whilst the real advisers, who enjoyed all the power, were effectually removed from all the danger.
Secondly,
A party under these leaders was to be formed in favour of the court against the ministry:
this party was to have a large share in the emoluments of government, and to hold it totally separate from, and independent of, ostensible administration.
The third point, and that on which the success of the whole scheme ultimately depended, was
to bring parliament to an acquiescence in this project.
Parliament was therefore to be taught, by degrees, a total indifference to the persons, rank, influence, abilities, connexions, and character, of the ministers of the crown. By means of a discipline, on which I shall say more hereafter, that body was to be habituated to the most opposite interests, and the most discordant politics. All connexions and dependencies among subjects were to be entirely dissolved. As hitherto business had gone through the hands of leaders of Whigs or Tories, men of talents to conciliate the people, and engage to their confidence, now the method was to be altered; and the lead was to be given to men of no sort of consideration or credit in the country. This want of natural importance was to be their very title to delegated power. Members of parliament were to be hardened into an insensibility to pride as well as to duty. Those high and haughty sentiments, which are the great support of independence, were to be let down gradually. Point of honour and precedence were no more to be regarded in parliamentary decorum, than in a Turkish army. It was to be avowed as a constitutional maxim, that the king might appoint one of his footmen, or one of your footmen, for minister; and that he ought to be, and that he would be, as well followed as the first name for rank or wisdom in the nation. Thus parliament was to look on, as if perfectly unconcerned, while a cabal of the closet and back-stairs was substituted in the place of a national administration.
With such a degree of acquiescence, any measure of any court might well be deemed thoroughly secure. The capital objects, and by much the most flattering characteristics of arbitrary power, would be obtained. Every thing would be drawn from its holdings in the country to the personal favour and inclination of the prince. This favour would be the sole introduction to power, and the only tenure by which it was to be held: so that no person looking towards another, and all looking towards the court, it was impossible but that the motive which solely influenced every man's hopes must come in time to govern every man's conduct; till at last the servility became universal, in spite of the dead letter of any laws or institutions whatsoever.
How it should happen that any man could be tempted to venture upon such a project of government, may, at first view, appear surprising. But the fact is, that opportunities very inviting to such an attempt have offered; and the scheme itself was not des
ute of some arguments not wholly unplausible to recommend it.—
Thoughts on the Cause of the present Discontents.
REVOLUTION, (JACOBIN.)
IN all that we do, whether in the struggle or after it, it is necessary that we should constantly have in our eye, the nature and character of the enemy we have to contend with. The Jacobin revolution is carried on by men of no rank, of no consideration, of wild savage minds, full of levity, arrogance and presumption, without morals, without probity, without prudence. What have they then to supply their innumerable defects, and to make them terrible even to the firmest minds?
One
thing, and
one
thing only—but that one thing is worth a thousand—they have
energy.
In France, all things being put into an universal ferment, in the decomposition of society, no man comes forward but by his spirit of enterprize and the vigour of his mind. If we meet this dreadful and potentous energy, restrained by no consideration of God or man, that is always vigilant, always on the attack, that allows itself no repose, and suffers none to rest an hour with impunity; if we meet this energy with poor common place proceeding, with trivial maxims, paltry old saws, with doubts, fears and suspicions, with a languid, uncertain hesitation, with a formal, official spirit, which is turned aside by every obstacle from it's purpose, and which never sees a difficulty but to yield to it, or at best to evade it; down we go to the bottom of the abyss—and nothing short of Omnipotence can save us. We must meet a vicious and distempered energy with a manly and rational vigour
As virtue is limited in its resources—we are doubly bound to use all that, in the circle drawn about us by our morals, we are able to command.—
Memorial on the Affairs of France in
1791.
REPUBLIC, (FRENCH.) Impracticability of Resistance to it.
IT is true, amidst all these turbulent means of security to their system, very great discontents every where prevail. But they only produce misery to those who nurse them at home, or exile beggary, and in the end, confiscation, to those who are so impatient as to remove from them. Each municipal republic has a committee, or something in the nature of a
Committee of Research.
In these petty republics the tyranny is so near it's object, that it becomes instantly acquainted with every act of every man. It stifles conspiracy in its very first movements. Their power is absolute and uncontroulable. No stand can be made against it. These republics are besides so disconnected, that very little intelligence of what happens in them is to be obtained, beyond their own bounds, except by the means of their clubs, who keep up a constant correspondence, and who give what colour they please to such facts as they choose to communicate out of the track of their correspondence. They all have some sort of communication, just as much or as little as they please, with the center. By this confinement of all communication to the ruling faction, any combination grounded on the abuses and discontents in one, scarcely can reach the other. There is not one man, in any one place, to head them. The old government had so much abstracted the nobility from the cultivation of provincial interest, that no man in France exists, whose power, credit, or consequence extends to two districts, or who is capable of uniting them in any design, even if any man could assemble ten men together, without being sure of a speedy lodging in a prison. One must not judge of the state of France by what has been observed elsewhere. It does not in the least resemble any other country. Analogical reasoning from history or from recent experience in other places is wholly delusive.—
Ibid.
REPUBLICS (ANCIENT.) The old Republican Legislators followed, with a solicitous accuracy, the moral Conditions and Properties of Men.
THE legislators who framed the antient republics knew that their business was too arduous to be accomplished with no better apparatus than the metaphysics of an under-graduate, and the mathematics and arithmetic of an exciseman. They had to do with men, and they were obliged to study human nature. They had to do with citizens, and they were obliged to study the effects of those habits which are communicated by the circumstances of civil life. They were sensible that the operation of this second nature on the first produced a new combination; and thence arose many diversities amongst men, according to their birth, their education, their professions, the periods of their lives, their residence in towns or in the country, their several ways of acquiring and of fixing property, and according to the quality of the property itself, all which rendered them as it were so many different species of animals. From hence they thought themselves obliged to dispose their citizens into such classes, and to place them in such situations in the state as their peculiar habits might qualify them to fill, and to allot to them such appropriated privileges as might secure to them what their specific occasions required, and which might furnish to each description such force as might protect it in the conflict caused by the diversity of interests, that must exist, and must contend in all complex society: for the legislator would have been ashamed, that the coarse husbandman should well know how to assort and to use his sheep, horses, and oxen, and should have enough of common sense not to abstract and equalize them all into animals, without providing for each kind an appropriate food, care, and employment; whilst he, the oeconomist, disposer, and shepherd of his own kindred, subliming himself into an airy metaphysician, was resolved to know nothing of his flocks but as men in general. It is for this reason that Montesquien observed very justly, that in their classification of the citizens, the great legislators of antiquity made the greatest display of their powers, and even soared above themselves. It is here that your modern legislators have gone deep into the negative series, and sunk even below their own nothing. As the first sort of legislators attended to the different kinds of citizens, and combined them into one commonwealth, the others, the metaphysical and alchemistical legislators, (French) have taken the direct contrary course. They have attempted to confound all sorts of citizens, as well as they could, into one homogeneous mass; and then they divided th
their amalgama into a number of incoherent republics. They reduce men to loose counters merely for the sake of simple telling, and not to figures whose power is to arise from their place in the table. The elements of their own metaphysics might have taught them better lessons. The troll of their categorical table might have informed them that there was something else in the intellectual world besides
substance
and
quantity.
They might learn from the catechism of metaphysics that there were eight heads more
Qualitas, Relatio, Actio, Passio, Ubi, Quando, Situs, Habitus.
, in every complex deliberation, which they have never thought of, though these, of all the
, are the subject on which the skill of man can operate any thing at all.
So far from this able disposition of some of the old republican legislators, which follows with a solicitous accuracy, the moral conditions and propensities of men, they have levelled and crushed together all the orders which they found, even under the coarse unartificial arrangement of the monarchy, in which mode of government the classing of the citizens is not of so much importance as in a republic. It is true, however, that every such classification, if properly ordered, is good in all forms of government; and composes a strong barrier against the excesses of despotism, as well as it is the necessary means of giving effect and permanence to a republic. For want of something of this kind, if the present project of a republic should fail, all securities to a moderated freedom fail along with it; all the indirect restraints which mitigate despotism are removed; insomuch that if monarchy should ever again obtain an entire ascendancy in France, under this or under any other dynasty, it will probably be, if not voluntarily tempered at letting out, by the wise and virtuous counsels of the prince, the most completely arbitrary power that has ever appeared on earth. This is to play a most desperate game.
The confusion, which attends on all such proceedings, they even declare to be one of their objects, and they hope to secure their constitution by a terror of a return of those evils which attended their making it.
"By this,"
say they,
"its destruction will become difficult to authority, which cannot break it up without the entire disorganization of the whole state."
They presume, that if this authority should ever come to the same degree of power that they have acquired, it would make a more moderate and chastised use of it, and would piously tremble entirely to disorganize the state in the savage manner that they have done. They expect, from the virtues of returning despotism, the security which is to be enjoyed by the offspring of their popular vices.—
Reflexions on the Revolution in France.
ROME AND ATHENS, Analogy between.
ROME has a more venerable aspect than Athens; and she conducted her affairs, so far as related to the ruin and oppression of the greatest part of the world, with greater wisdom, and more uniformity. But the domestic oeconomy of these two states was nearly or altogether the same. An internal dissention constantly tore to pieces the bowels of the Roman commonwealth. You find the same confusion, the same factions which subsisted at Athens, the same tumults, the same revolutions, and in fine, the same slavery. If perhaps their former condition did not deserve that name altogether as well. All other republics were of the same character. Florence was a transcript of Athens. And the modern republics, as they approach more or less to the democratic form, partake more or less of the nature of those which I have described.—
Vindication of Natural Society.
ROME (CHURCH OF.)
IF mere dissent from the Church of Rome be a merit, he that dissents the most perfectly is the most meritorious. In many points we hold strongly with that Church. He that dissents throughout with that Church (Rome) will dissent with the Church of England, and then it will be a part of his merit that he dissents with ourselves:—a whimsical species of merit for any set of men to establish. We quarrel to extremity with those, who we know agree with us in many things, but we are to be so malicious even in the principle of our friendships, that we are to cherish in our bosom those who accord with us in nothing, because whilst they despise ourselves, they abhor even more than we do, those with whom we have some disagreement.—
Letter to Sir H. Langrishe, M. P.
RIGOUR (EXTREME.)
An extreme rigour is sure to arm every thing against it, and at length to relax into a supine neglect.—
Oecon. Reform.
REFORM. Timely Reform recommended. (See GRIEVANCES.)
Instead of a public officer in an abusive department, whose province is an object to be regulated, he becomes a criminal who is to be punished. I do most seriously put it to administration, to consider the wisdom of a timely reform. Early reformations are amicable arrangements with a friend in power; late reformations are terms imposed upon a conquered enemy; early reformations are made in cool blood; late reformations are made under a state of inflammation. In that state of things the people behold in government nothing that is respectable. They see the abuse, and they will see nothing else—They fall into the temper of a furious populace provoked at the disorder of a house of ill fame; they never attempt to correct or regulate; they go to work by the shortest way—They abate the nuisance, they pull down the house.
This is my opinion with regard to the true interest of government. But as it is the interest of government that reformation should be early, it is the interest of the people that it should be temperate. It is their interest, because a temperate reform is permanent; and because it has a principle of growth. Whenever we improve, it is right to leave room for a further improvement. It is right to consider, to look about us, to examine the effect of what we have done.—Then we can proceed with confidence, because we can proceed with intelligence. Whereas in hot reformations, in what men, more zealous than considerate,
call making clear work,
the whole is generally so crude, so harsh, so indigested; mixed with so much imprudence, and so much injustice; so contrary to the whole course of human nature, and human institutions, that the very people who are most eager for it, are among the first to grow disgusted at what they have done. Then some part of the abdicated grievance is recalled from its exile in order to become a corrective of the correction. Then the abuse assumes all the credit and popularity of a reform. The very idea of purity and disinterestedness in politics falls into disrepute, and is considered as a vision of hot and inexperienced men; and thus disorders become incurable, not by the virulence of their own quality, but by the unapt and violent nature of the remedies. A great part therefore, of my idea of reform, is meant to operate gradually; some benefits will come at a nearer, some at a more remote period. We must no more make haste to be rich by parsimony, than by intemperate acquisition.—
Oecon. Reform.
REFORM. To innovate is not to reform.
REFORM is, not a change in the substance, or in the primary modification of the object, but a direct application of a remedy to the grievance complained of. So far as that is removed, all is sure. It stops there; and if it fails, the substance which underwent the operation, at the very worst, is but where it was.
All this, in effect, I think, but am not sure, I have said elsewhere. It cannot at this time be too often repeated; line upon line, precept upon precept, until it comes into the currency of a proverb,
To innovate is not to reform.
The French revolutionists complained of every thing; they refused to reform any thing; and they left nothing, no, nothing at all
unchanged.
The consequences are
before
us—not in remote history; not in future prognostication: they are about us; they are upon us. They shake the public security; they menace private enjoyment. They dwarf the growth of the young; they break the quiet of the old. If we travel, they stop our way. They infest us in town; they pursue us to the country. Our business is interrupted; our repose is troubled; our pleasures are saddened; our very studies are poisoned and perverted, and knowledge is rendered worse than ignorance, by the enormous evils of this dreadful innovation. The revolution harpies of France, sprung from night and hell, or from that chaotic anarchy, which generates equivocally
"all monstrous, all prodigious things,"
cuckoo-like, adulterously lay their eggs, and brood over, and hatch them in the nest of every neighbouring 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
Tristius haud illis monstrum, nec saevior ulla
Pestis, & ira Deûm Stygiis sese extulit undis.
Virginii volucrum vultus; faedissima ventris
Proluvies; uncaeque manus; & 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.
.
If his Grace (Bedford) can contemplate the result of this compleat innovation, or, as some friends of his will call it
reform,
in the whole body of its solidity and compound mass, at which, as Hamlet says, the face of Heaven glows with horror and indignation, and which, in truth, makes every reflecting mind, and every feeling heart, perfectly thought-sick, without a thorough abhorrence of every thing they say, and every thing they do, I am amazed at the morbid strength, or the natural infirmity of his mind.—
Letter to a noble Lord.
REFORM, (PARLIAMENTARY.)
HAPPILY, France was not then jacobinized, (1780.) Her hostility was at a good distance. We had a limb cut off; but we reserved 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, that might not count upon numbers to support his principles and execute his designs.
Many of the changes, by a great misnomer called parliamentary reforms, went, not in the intention of all the professors and supporters of them, undoubtedly, but went in their certain, and, in my opinion, not very remote effect, home to the utter destruction of the constitution of this kingdom. Had they taken place, not France, but England, would have had the honour of leading up the death-dance of democratic revolution. Other projects, exactly coincident in time with those, struck at the very existence of the kingdom under any constitution. There are, who remember the blind fury of some, and the lamentable helplessness of others; here, a torpid confusion, from a panic fear of the danger; there, the same inaction from a stupid insensibility to it; here, well-wishers to the mischief; there, indifferent lookers-on. At the same time, a sort of National Convention, dubious in its nature, and perilous in its example, nosed parliament in the very seat of its authority; sat with a sort of superintendance over it; and little less than dictated to it, not only laws, but the very form and essence of legislature itself. In Ireland things ran in a still more eccentric course. Government was unnerved, confounded, and in a manner suspended. It's 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 honour 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, loured over the whole region. For a little time the helm appeared abandoned—
Ipse diem noctemque negat discernere coelo
Nec meminisse viae mediâ Palinurus in undâ.
Letter to a noble Lord.
REFORMATION.
REFORMATION is one of those pieces which must be put at some distance in order to please. Its greatest favourers love it better in the abstract than in the substance. When any old prejudice of their own, or any interest that they value, is touched, they become scrupulous, they become captious, and every man has his separate exception. Some pluck out the black hairs, some the grey; one point must be given up to one; another point must be yielded to another; nothing is suffered to prevail upon its own principles: the whole is so frittered down, and disjointed, that scarcely a trace of the original scheme remains! Thus, between the resistance of power, and the unsystematical process of popularity, the undertaker and the undertaking are both exposed, and the poor reformer is hissed off the stage, both by friends and foes.—
Oecon Reform.
REFORMATION.
A SPIRIT of reformation is never more consistent with itself, than when it refuses to be rendered the means of destruction.—
Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs.
REFORMATION. Its Effects. (See REVOLUTION (FRENCH) RELIGION, POLITICS, NEW SYSTEM.)
THE last revolution of doctrine and theory which has happened in Europe, is the Reformation. It is not for my purpose to take any notice here of the merits of that Revolution, but to state one only of it's effects.
That effect was
to introduce other interests into all countries, than those which arose from their locality and natural circumstances.
The principle of the Reformation was such, as by it's essence, could not be local or confined to the country in which it had it's origin. For instance, the doctrine of
"Justification by Faith or by Works,"
which was the original basis of the Reformation, could not have one of it's alternatives true as to Germany, and false as to every other country. Neither are questions of true and theoretic falsehood, governed by circumstances, any more than by places. On that occasion, therefore, the spirit of proselytism expanded itself with great elasticity upon all sides, and great divisions were every where the result.
These divisions, however, in appearance merely dogmatic, soon became mixed with political; and their effects were rendered much more intense from this combination. Europe was, for a long time, divided into two great factions, under the name of Catholic and Protestant, which not only often alienated state from state, but also divided almost every state within itself. The warm parties in each state were more affectionately attached to those of their own doctrinal interest in some other country than to their fellow-citizens, or to their natural government, when they, or either of them, happened to be of a different persuasion. These factions, whenever they prevailed, if they did not absolutely destroy, at least weakened and distracted the locality of patriotism, the public affections came to have other motives and other ties.
Although the principles to which it gave rise, did not operate with a perfect regularity and constancy, they never wholly ceased to operate. Few wars were made, and few treaties were entered into in which they did not come in for some part. They gave a colour, a character, and direction to all the politics of Europe.—
Memorial on the Affairs of France in
1791.
REASON AND AUTHORITY.
TO reason is not to revolt against authority. Reason and authority do not move in the same parallel. That reason is an
amicus curioe
who speaks
de plano,
not
pro tribunali
; who makes an useful suggestion to the Court, without questioning its jurisdiction.—Whilst he acknowledges its competence, he promotes its efficiency.—
Regicide Peace.
REPRESENTATION (VIRTUAL.) (SEE IRISH CATHOLICS.)
VIRTUAL representation is that in which there is a communion of interests, and a sympathy in feelings and desires between those who act in the name of any description of people, and the people in whose name they act, though the trustees are not actually chosen by them. This is virtual representation. Such a representation I think to be, in many cases, even better than the actual: it possesses most of its advantages, and is free from many of its inconveniences; it corrects the irregularities in the literal representation, when the shifting current of human affairs, or the acting of public interests in different ways, carry it obliquely from its first line of direction. The people may err in their choice; but common interest and common sentiment are rarely mistaken. But this sort of virtual representation cannot have a long or sure existence, if it has not a substratum in the actual. The member must have some relation to the constituent.—
Letter to Sir H. Langrishe, M. P.
REPRESENTATIVE, HIS DUTY.
IN my opinion, it is our duty when we have the desires of the people before us, to pursue them, not in the spirit of literal obedience, which may militate with their very principle, much less to treat them with a peevish and contentious litigation, as if we were adverse parties in a suit. It would, Sir, be most dishonourable for a faithful representative of the commons, to take advantage of any inartificial expression of the people's wishes, in order to frustrate their attainment of what they have an undoubted right to expect. We are under infinite obligations to our constituents, who have raised us to so distinguished a trust, and have imparted such a degree of sanctity to common characters. We ought to walk before them with purity, plainness, and integrity of heart; with filial love, and not with slavish fear, which is always a low and tricking thing.—
Ibid.
REST AND LABOUR.
PROVIDENCE has so ordered it, that a state of rest and inaction, however it may flatter our indolence, should be productive of many inconveniencies; that it should generate such disorders, as may force us to have recourse to some labour, as a thing absolutely requisite to make us pass our lives with tolerable satisfaction; for the nature of rest is to suffer all the parts of our bodies to fall into a relaxation, that not only disables the members from performing their functions, but takes away the vigorous tone of fibre which is requisite for carrying on the natural and necessary secretions. At the same time, that in this languid inactive state, the nerves are more liable to the most horrid convulsions, than when they are sufficiently braced and strengthened. Melancholy, dejection, despair, and often self-murder, is the consequence of the gloomy view we take of things in this relaxed state of body. The best remedy for all these evils is exercise or
labour;
and labour is a surmounting of
difficulties,
an exertion of the contracting power of the muscles; and as such resembles pain, which consists in tension or contraction, in every thing but degree. Labour is not only requisite to preserve the coarser organs in a state fit for their functions; but it is equally necessary to these finer and more delicate organs, on which, and by which, the imagination, and perhaps the other mental powers, act. Since it is probable, that not only the inferior parts of the soul, as the passions are called, but the understanding itself makes use of some fine corporeal instruments in it's operation; though what they are, and where they are, may be somewhat hard to settle: but that it does make use of such, appears from hence; that a long exercise of the mental powers induces a remarkable lassitude of the whole body; and on the other hand, that great bodily labour, or pain, weakens and sometimes actually destroys the mental faculties. Now, as a due exercise is essential to the coarse muscular parts of the constitution, and that without this rousing they would become languid and diseased, the very same rule holds with regard to those finer parts we have mentioned; to have them in proper order, they must be shaken and worked to a proper degree.—
Sublime and Beautiful.
ROYALISTS (FRENCH.) (SEE NOBILITY.)
WHEN I speak of Royalists, I wish to be understood of those who were always such from principle. Every arm lifted up for Royalty from the beginning, was the arm of a man so principled. I do not think there are ten exceptions.
The principled Royalists are certainly not of force to effect these objects by themselves. If they were, the operations of the present great combination would be wholly unnecessary. What I contend for is, that they should be consulted with, treated with, and employed; and that no foreigners whatsoever are either in interest so engaged, or in judgment and local knowledge so competent, to answer all these purposes as the natural proprietors of the country.
Their number for an exiled party is also considerable. Almost the whole body of the landed proprietors of France, ecclesiastical and civil, have been steadily devoted to the monarchy. This body does not amount to less than seventy thousand—a very great number in the composition of the respectable classes in any society. I am sure, that if half that number of the same description were taken out of this country, it would leave hardly any thing that I should call the people of England. On the faith of the Emperor and the King of Prussia, a body of ten thousand nobility on horseback, with the King's two brothers at their head, served with the King of Prussia in the campaign of 1792, and equipped themselves with the last shilling of their ruined fortunes and exhausted credit
Before the Revolution the French noblesse were so reduced in numbers, that they did not much exceed twenty thousand, at least of full grown men. As they have been very cruelly formed into entire corps of soldiers, it is estimated, that by the sword, and distempers in the field, they have not lost less than five thousand men; and if this course is pursued, it is to be feared, that the whole body of the French nobility may be extinguished. Several hundreds have also perished by famine and various accidents.
. It is not now the question how that great force came to be rendered useless and totally dissipated. I state it now, only to remark, that a great part of the same force exists; and would act if it were enabled. I am sure every thing has shewn us that in this war with France, one Frenchman is worth twenty foreigners. La Vendée is a proof of this.—
Memorial on the Affairs of France in
1793.
REPUBLICANS (HIGH-BRED.)
ALMOST all the high-bred republicans of my time have, after a short space, become the most decided, thorough paced courtiers; they soon left the business of a tedious, moderate, but practical resistance to those of us whom, in the pride and intoxication of their theories, they have slighted, as not much better than tories.—
Reflections on the Revolution in France.
RANCOUR.
PROCEED in what you do, whatever you do, from policy, and not from rancour.—
Speech on American Taxation.
RICH (THE). (SEE SOCIETY.) The Rich thrown into two Classes, viz. Statesmen and Men of Pleasure—Description of both.
THE rich in all societies may be thrown into two classes. The first is of those who are powerful as well as rich, and conduct the operations of the vast political machine. The other is of those who employ their riches wholly in the acquisition of pleasure. As to the first, sort, their continual care and anxiety, their toilsome days, and sleepless nights, are next to proverbial. These circumstances are sufficient almost to level their condition to that of the unhappy majority; but there are other circumstances which place them in a far lower condition. Not only their understandings labour continually, which is the severest labour, but their hearts are torn by the worst, most troublesome, and insatiable of all passions, by avarice, by ambition, by fear, and jealousy. No part of the mind has rest. Power gradually extirpates from the mind every humane and gentle virtue. Pity, benevolence, friendship, are things almost unknown in high stations.
Veroe amicitioe rarissime inveniuntur in iis qui i
honoribus reque publica versantur,
says Cicero. And indeed, courts are the schools where cruelty, pride, dissimulation and treachery are studied and taught in the most vicious perfection. This is a point so clear and acknowledged, that if it did not make a necessary part of my subject, I should pass it by entirely. And this has hindered me from drawing at full length, and in the most striking colours, this shocking picture of the degeneracy and wretchedness of human nature, in that part which is vulgarly thought its happiest and most amiable state.—You know from what originals I could copy such pictures. Happy are they who know enough of them to know the little value of the possessors of such things, and of all that they possess; and happy they who have been snatched from that post of danger which they occupy, with the remains of their virtue; loss of honours, wealth, titles, and even the loss of one's country, is nothing in balance with so great an advantage.
Let us now view the other species of the rich, those who devote their time and fortunes to idleness and pleasure. How much happier are they? The pleasures which are agreeable to nature are within the reach of all, and therefore can form no distinction in favour of the rich. The pleasures which art forces up are seldom sincere, and never satisfying. What is worse, this constant application to pleasure takes away from the enjoyment, or rather turns it into the nature of a very burthensome and laborious business. It has consequences much more fatal. It produces a weak valetudinary state of body, attended by all those horrid disorders, and yet more horrid methods of cure, which are the result of luxury on one hand, and the weak and ridiculous efforts of human art on the other. The pleasures of such men are scarcely felt as pleasures; at the same time that they bring on pains and diseases, which are felt but too severely. The mind has its share of the misfortune; it grows lazy and enervate, unwilling and unable to search for truth, and utterly uncapable of knowing, much less of relishing real happiness. The poor by their excessive labour, and the rich by their enormous luxury, are set upon a level, and rendered equally ignorant of any knowledge which might conduce to their happiness. A dismal view of the interior of all civil society. The lower part broken and ground down by the most cruel oppression; and the rich by their artificial method of life bringing worse evils on themselves, than their tyranny could possibly inflict on those below them. Very different is the prospect of the natural state. Here there are no wants which nature gives, and in this state men can be sensible of no other wants, which are not to be supplied by a very moderate degree of labour; therefore there is no slavery. Neither is there any luxury, because no single man can supply the materials of it. Life is simple, and therefore it is happy.—
Vindication of Natural Society.
RELIGION. Consolution in Religion.
THE English people are satisfied, that to the great the consolations of religion are as necessary as its instructions. They too are among the unhappy. They feel personal pain and domestic sorrow. In these they have no privilege, but are subject to pay their full contingent to the contributions levied on mortality. They want this sovereign balm under their gnawing cares and anxieties, which being less conversant about the limited wants of animal life, range without limit, and are diversified by infinite combinations in the wild and unbounded regions of imagination. Some charitable dole is wanting to these, our often very unhappy brethren, to fill the gloomy void that reigns in minds which have nothing on earth to hope or fear; something to relieve in the killing languor and over-laboured lassitude of those who have nothing to do; something to excite an appetite to existence in the p
lled satiety which attends on all pleasures which may be bought, where nature is not left to her own process, where even desire is anticipated, and therefore fruition defeated by meditated schemes and contrivances of delight; and no interval, no obstacle, is interposed between the wish and the accomplishment.—
Reflections on the Revolution in France.
RELIGION. (SEE ATHEISM.)
RELIGION is among the most powerful causes of enthusiasm. When any thing concerning it becomes an object of much meditation, it cannot be indifferent to the mind. They who do not love religion, hate it. The rebels to God perfectly abhor the author of their being. They hate him
"with all their heart, with all their mind, with all their soul, and with all their strength."
He never presents himself to their thoughts, but to menace and alarm them. They cannot strike the Sun out of Heaven, but they are able to raise as mouldering 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.—
Regicide Peace.
RUSSIA. (SEE REVOLUTION (FRENCH.)
THE Russian government is of all others the most liable to be subverted by military sedition, by court conspiracies, and sometimes by head-long rebellious people, such as the turbinating movement of Pugatchef. It is not quite so probable, that in any of these changes the spirit of system may mingle in the manner it has done in France. The Muscovites are no great speculators; but I should not much rely on their uninquisitive disposition, if any of their ordinary motives to sedition should arise. The little catechism of the Rights of Man is soon learned, and the references are in the passions.—
Memorial on the Affairs of France in
1791.
RIGHTS. Natural and Chartered.
THE rights of
men,
that is to say, the natural rights of mankind, are indeed sacred things; and if any public measure is proved mischievously to aff
ct them, the objection ought to be fatal to that measure, even if no charter at all could be set up against it. If these natural rights are further affirmed and declared by express covenants, if they are clearly defined and secured against chicane, against power, and authority, by written instruments and positive engagements, they are still in a better condition: they partake not only of the sanctity of the object so secured, but of that solemn public faith itself, which secures an object of such importance. Indeed this formal recognition, by the sovereign power, of an original right in the subject, can never be subverted, but by rooting up the holding radical principles of Government, and even of society itself. The charters, which we call by distinction
great,
are public instruments of this nature; I mean the charters of King John and King Henry the Third. The things secured by these instruments may, without any deceitful ambiguity, be very fitly called the
chartered rights of men.
These charters have made the very name of a charter dear to the heart of every Englishman. But, Sir, there may be, and there are charters, not only different in
ature, but formed on principles the
very reverse
of those of the great charter. Of this kind is the charter of the East-India Company.
Magna charta
is a charter to restrain power, and to destroy monopoly. The East-India charter is a charter to establish monopoly, and to create power. Political power and commercial monopoly are
not
the rights of men; and the rights to them derived from charters, it is fallacious and sophistical to call
"
the chartered rights of men.
"
These chartered rights, (to speak of such charters and of their effects in terms of the greatest possible moderation) do at least suspend the natural rights of mankind at large; and in their very frame and constitution are liable to fall into a direct violation of them.—
Speech on Mr. Fox's East-India Bill.
RIGHTS OF MAN.
THEY (the French) made and recorded a sort of
institute
and digest of anarchy, called the Rights of Man, in such a pedantic abuse of elementary principles, as would have disgraced boys at school; but this declaration of rights was worse than trifling and pedantic in them; as by their name and authority they systematically destroyed every hold of authority by opinion, religious or civil, on the minds of the people. By this mad declaration, they subverted the state; and brought on such calamities as no country, without a long war, has ever been known to suffer.—
Speeeh on the Army Estimates.
RIGHTS OF MAN (FRENCH.) Compared to a portentous Comet.
ASTRONOMERS have supposed, that if a certain comet, whose path intersected the ecliptic, had met the earth in some (I forget what) sign, it would have whirled us along with it, in its eccentric course, into God knows what regions of heat and cold. Had the portentous comet of the Rights of Man, (which
"from its horrid hair shakes pestilence, and war,"
and
"with fear of change perplexes Monarchs,")
had that comet crossed upon us in that internal state of England, in 1780, 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.—
Letter to a noble Lord.
RIGHTS OF MAN (REAL).
FAR am I from denying in theory, full as far is my heart from withholding in practice, (if I were of power to give or to withhold) the
real
rights of men. In denying their false claims of right, I do not mean to injure those which are real, and are such as their pretended rights would totally destroy. If civil society be made for the advantage of man, all the advantages for which it is made become his right. It is an institution of beneficence; and law itself is only beneficence acting by a rule. Men have a right to live by that rule; they have a right to justice; as between their fellows, whether their fellows are in politic function or in ordinary occupation. They have a right to the fruits of their industry; and to the means of making their industry fruitful. They have a right to the acquisitions of their parents; to the nourishment and improvement of their offspring; to instruction in life, and to consolation in death. Whatever each man can separately do, without trespassing upon others, he has a right to do for himself; and he has a right to a fair portion of all which society, with all its combinations of skill and force, can do in his favour. In this partnership all men have equal rights; but not to equal things. He that has but five shillings in the partnership, has as good a right to it, as he that has five hundred pounds has to his larger proportion. But he has not a right to an equal dividend in the product of the joint stock; and as to the share of power, authority, and direction which each individual ought to have in the management of the state, that I must deny to be amongst the direct original rights of man in civil society; for I have in my contemplation the civil social man, and no other. It is a thing to be settled by convention.—
Reflections on the Revolution in France.
RIGHTS OF MAN, (THE OBJECT OF.)
THE political dogma, which upon the new French system, is to unite the factions of different nations, turns on this,
"That the majority told, by the head, of the taxable people in every country, is the perpetual, natural, unceasing, indefeasible sovereign; that this majority is perfectly master of the form, as well as the administration of the state, and that the magistrates, under whatever names they are called, are only functionaries to obey the orders, (general as laws or particular as decrees) which that majority may make; that this is the only natural government; that all others are tyranny and usurpation."
In order to reduce this dogma into practice, the republicans in France, and their associates in other countries, make it always their business, and often their public profession, to destroy all traces of antient establishments, and to form a new commonwealth in each country, upon the basis of the French
Rights of Men.
On the principle of these rights, they mean to institute in every country, and as it were, the germ of the whole, parochial governments, for the purpose of what they call equal representation. From them is to grow, by some media, a general council and representative of all the parochial governments. In that representative is to be vested the whole national power; totally abolishing hereditary name and office, levelling all conditions of men, (except where money
must
make a difference) breaking all connexion between territory and dignity, and abolishing every species of nobility, gentry, and church establishments; all their priests, and all their magistrates being only creatures of election, and pensioners at will.
Knowing how opposite a permanent landed interest is to that scheme, they have resolved, and it is the great drift of all their regulations, to reduce that description of men to a mere peasantry, for the sustenance of the towns, and to place the true effective government in cities, among the tradesmen, bankers, and voluntary clubs of bold, presuming young persons;—advocates, attornies, notaries, managers of newspapers, and those cabals of literary men, called academies. Their republic is to have a first functionary, (as they call him) under the name of king, or not, as they think fit. This officer, when such an officer is permitted, is however, neither in fact nor name, to be considered as sovereign, nor the people as his subjects. The very use of these appellations is offensive to their ears.—
Memorial on the Affairs of France in
1791.
RIGHTS OF MAN.
HER (France) good and ill dispositions are shewn by the same means.
To communicate peaceably
the rights of men is the true mode of her shewing her
friendship;
; to force Sovereigns to
submit
to those rights is her mode of
hostility.
So that either as friend or foe, her whole scheme has been and is, to throw the Empire (Germany) into confusion.—
Ibid.
RIGHTS OF MAN. This Doctrine has pervaded Germany.
IN short, the Germanic body is a vast mass of heterogeneous States, held together by that heterogeneous body of old principles which formed the public law positive and doctrinal. The modern laws and liberties which the new power in France proposes to introduce into Germany, and to support with all its force, of intrigue and of arms, is of a very different nature, utterly irreconcileable with the first, and, indeed, fundamentally the reverse of it: I mean the
Rights and Liberties of the Man,
the
Droit de l' Homme.
That this doctrine has made an amazing progress in Germany, there cannot be a shadow of doubt. They are infected by it along the whole course of the Rhine, the Maese, the Moselle, and in the greater part of Suabia and Franconia. It is particularly prevalent amongst all the lower people, churchmen and laity, in the dominions of the Ecclesiastical Electors. It is not easy to find or to conceive Governments more mild and indulgent than these Church Sovereignties; but good government is as nothing when the Rights of Man take possession of the mind. Indeed the loose rein held over the people in these provinces, must be considered as one cause of the facility with which they lend themselves to any schemes of innovation, by inducing them to think lightly of their governments, and to judge of grievances not by feeling, but by imagination.—
Ibid.
RIGHTS OF MEN.
THE rights of men in governments are their advantages; and these are often in balances between the differences of good; in compromises sometimes between good and evil.—
Reflections on the Revolution in France.
RIGHTS OF MEN.
THE moment you abate any thing from the full rights of men, each to govern himself, and suffer any artificial positive limitation upon those rights, from that moment the whole organization of government becomes a consideration of convenience. This it is which makes the constitution of a state, and the due distribution of its powers, a matter of the most delicate and complicated skill. It requires a deep knowledge of human nature and human necessities, and of the things which facilitate or obstruct the various ends which are to be pursued by the mechanism of civil institutions. The state is to have recruits to its strength, and remedies to its distempers. What is the use of discussing a man's abstract right to food or to medicine? The question is upon the method of procuring and administering them. In that deliberation I shall always advise to call in the aid of the farmer and the physician, rather than the professor of metaphysics.—
Ibid.
RIGHTS OF MEN. Men have no Right to what is not reasonable.
MEN have no right to what is not reasonable, and to what is not for their benefit; for though a pleasant writer said,
Liceat perire poetis,
when one of them in cold blood is said to have leaped into the flames of a Volcanic revolution,
Ardentem frigidus Aetnam insiluit;
I consider such a frolic rather as an unjustifiable poetic licence, than as one of the franchises of Parnassus; and whether he was poet or divine, or politician, that chose to exercise this kind of right, I think that more wise, because more charitable thoughts would urge me rather to save the man, than to preserve his brazen slippers as the monuments of his folly.—
Ibid.
RIGHTS OF MAN.
THE peasants, in all probability, are the descendants of these antient proprietors, Romans or Gauls. But if they fail, in any degree, in the titles which they make on the principles of antiquaries and lawyers, they retreat into the citadel of the rights of men. There they find that men are equal; and the earth, the kind and equal mother of all, ought not to be monopolized to foster the pride and luxury of any men, who by nature are no better than themselves, and who, if they do not labour for their bread, are worse. They find, that by the laws of nature the occupant and subduer of the soil is the true proprietor; that there is no prescription against nature; and that the agreements (where any there are) which have been made with their landlords, during the time of slavery, are only the effect of duresse and force; and that when the people re-entered into the rights of men, those agreements were made as void as every thing else which had been settled under the prevalence of the old feudal and aristocratic tyranny. They will tell you that they see no difference between an idler with a hat and a national cockade, and an idler in a cowl or in a rochet. If you ground the title to rents on succession and prescription, they tell you, from the speech of Mr.
Camus,
published by the national assembly for their information, that things ill begun cannot avail themselves of prescription; that the title of these lords was vicious in its origin; and that force is at least as bad as fraud. As to the title by succession, they will tell you, that the succession of those who have cultivated the soil is the true pedigree of property, and not rotten parchments and silly substitutions; that the lords have enjoyed their usurpation too long; and that if they allow to these lay monks any charitable pension, they ought to be thankful to the bounty of the true proprietor, who is so generous towards a false claimant to his goods.
When the peasants give you back that coin of sophistic reason, on which you have set your image and superscription, you cry it down as base money, and tell them you will pay for the future with French guards, and dragoons, and hussars. You hold up, to chastise them, the second-hand authority of a king, who is only the instrument of destroying, without any power of protecting either the people or his own person. Through him it seems you will make yourselves obeyed. They answer, you have taught us that there are no gentlemen; and which of your principles teach us to bow to kings whom we have not elected? We know, without your teaching, that lands were given for the support of feudal dignities, feudal titles, and feudal offices. When you took down the cause as a grievance, why should the more grievous effect remain? As there are now no hereditary honours, and no distinguished families, why are we taxed to maintain what you tell us ought not to exist? You have sent down our old aristocratic landlords in no other character, and with no other title, but that of exactors under your authority. Have you endeavoured to make these your rent-gatherers respectable to us? No. You have sent them to us with their arms reversed, their shields broken, their impresses defaced; and so displumed, degraded, and metamorphosed, such unfeathered two-legged things, that we no longer know them. They are strangers to us. They do not even go by the names of our antient lords. Physically they may be the same men; though we are not quite sure of that, on your new philosophic doctrines of personal identity. In all other respects they are totally changed. We do not see why we have not as good a right to refuse them their rents, as you have to abrogate all their honours, titles, and distinctions. This we have never commissioned you to do; and it is one instance, among many indeed, of your assumption of undelegated power. We see the burghers of Paris, through their clubs, their mobs, and their national guards, directing you at their pleasure, and giving that as law to you, which, under your authority, is transmitted as law to us. Through you, these burghers dispose of the lives and fortunes of us all. Why should not you attend us as much to the desires of the laborious husbandman with regard to our rent, by which we are affected in the most serious manner, as you do to the demands of these insolent burghers relative to distinctions and titles of honour, by which neither they nor we are affected at all? But we find you pay more regard to their fancies than to our necessities. Is it among the rights of man to pay tribute to his equals? Before this measure of yours, we might have thought we were not perfectly equal. We might have entertained some old, habitual, unmeaning prepossession in favour of those landlords; but we cannot conceive with what other view than that of destroying all respect to them, you could have made the law that degrades them. You have forbidden us to treat them with any of the old formalities of respect, and now you send troops to sabre and to bayonet us into a submission to fear and force, which you did not suffer us to yield to the mild authority of opinion.
The ground of some of these arguments is horrid and ridiculous to all rational ears; but to the politicians of metaphysics who have opened schools for sophistry, and made establishments for anarchy, it is solid and conclusive. It is obvious, that on a mere consideration of the right, the leaders in the assembly would not in the least have scrupled to abrogate the rents along with the titles and family ensigns. It would be only to follow up the principle of their reasonings, and to complete the analogy of their conduct. But they had newly possessed themselves of a great body of landed property by confiscation. They had this commodity at market; and the market would have been wholly destroyed, if they were to permit the husbandman to riot in the speculations with which they so freely intoxicated themselves. The only security which property enjoys in any one of its descriptions, is from the interests of their rapacity with regard to some other. They have left nothing but their own arbitrary pleasure to determine what property is to be protected and what subverted.—
Reflections on the Revolution in France.
RIGHTS (METAPHYSIC.)
THESE metaphysic rights entering into common life, like rays of light which pierce into a dense medium, are, by the laws of nature, refracted from their straight line. Indeed in the gross and complicated mass of human passions and concerns, the primitive rights of men undergo such a variety of refractions and reflections, that it becomes absurd to talk of them as if they continued in the simplicity of their original direction. The nature of man is intricate; the objects of society are of the greatest possible complexity; and therefore no simple disposition or direction of power can be suitable either to man's nature, or to the quality of his affairs. When I hear the simplicity of contrivance aimed at and boasted of in any new political constitutions, I am at no loss to decide that the artificers are grossly ignorant of their trade, or totally negligent of their duty. The simple governments are fundamentally defective, to say no worse of them. If you were to comtemplate society in but one point of view, all these simple modes of polity are infinitely captivating. In effect each would answer its single end much more perfectly than the more complex is able to attain all its complex purposes. But it is better that the whole should be imperfectly and anomalously answered, than that, while some parts are provided for with great exactness, others might be totally neglected, or, perhaps, materially injured, by the over-care of a favourite member.—
Ibid.
RIGHTS (PETITION AND DECLARATION OF.)
IN the famous law of the 3d of Charles I. called the
Petition of Rights,
the parliament says to the king,
"Your subjects have
inherited
this freedom,"
claiming their franchises not on abstract principles
"as the rights of men,"
but as the rights of Englishmen, and as a patrimony derived from their forefathers. Selden, and the other profoundly learned men, who drew this petition of right, were as well acquainted, at least, with all the general theories concerning the
"rights of men,"
as any of the discoursers in our pulpits, or on your tribune; full as well as Dr. Price, or as the Abbè Sieyes. But, for reasons worthy of that practical wisdom which superseded their theoretic science, they preferred this positive, recorded,
hereditary
title to all which can be dear to the man and the citizen, to that vague speculative right, which exposed their sure inheritance to be scrambled for and torn to pieces by every wild litigious spirit.
The same policy pervades all the laws which have since been made for the preservation of our liberties. In the 1st of William and Mary, in the famous statute, called the Declaration of Right, the two houses utter not a syllable of
"a right to frame a government for themselves."
You will see, that their whole care was to secure the religion, laws, and liberties, that had been long possessed, and had been lately endangered.
"Taking
1 W. & M.
into their most serious consideration the
best
means for making such an establishment, that their religion, laws, and liberties, might not be in danger of being again subverted,"
they auspicate all their proceedings, by stating as some of those
best
means,
"in the
first place
"
to do
"as their
ancestors in like cases have usually
done for vindicating their
antient
rights and liberties, to
declare;
"—
and then they pray the king and queen,
"that it may be
declared
and enacted, that
all and singular
the rights and liberties
asserted and declared
are the true
antient
and indubitable rights and liberties of the people of this kingdom."
You will observe, that from Magna Charta to the declaration of right, it has been the uniform policy of our constitution to claim and assert our liberties, as an
entailed inheritance
derived to us from our forefathers, and to be transmitted to our posterity.—
Ibid.
REGICIDE PEACE.
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 parties, or any inquiry into the terms, it is all over with us. It is strange, but it may be true, that as the danger from advances to jacobinism is increased in my eyes and in yours, the fear of it is lessened in theirs. It seems they act under the impression of other sort of terrors, which frighten them out of their first apprehensions: but it is fit 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. 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 guarantee 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 we cannot long retain, the name of a nation.—
Regicide Peace.
REGICIDE PEACE.
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 private virtues of our sovereign, should call him from the calamitous spectacle 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.—
Ibid.
REGICIDE AND REBELS (FRENCH.) (See HISTORY.) Indemnity and Punishment.
F these princes had shewn a tyrannic disposition, it would be much to be lamented. We have no others to govern France. If we sereened the body of murderers from their justice, we should only leave the innocent in future to the mercy of men of fierce and sanguinary dispositions, of which in spite of all our intermeddling in their constitution, we could not prevent the effects. But as we have much more reason to fear their seeble lenity than any blameable rigour, we ought, in my opinion, to leave the matter to themselves.
If, however, I were asked to give an advice merely as such—here are my ideas. I am not for a total indemnity, nor a general punishment. And first, the body and mass of the people never ought to be treated as criminal. They may become an object of more or less constant watchfulness and suspicion, as their preservation may best require, but they can never become an object of punishment. This is one of the few fundamental and unalterable principles of politics.
To punish them capitally would be to make massacres. Massacres only increase the ferocity of men, and teach them to regard their own lives and those of others as of little value; whereas the great policy of government is to teach the people to think both of great importance in the eyes of God and the State, and never to be sacrificed or even hazarded to gratify their passions, or for any thing but the duties prescribed by the rules of morality, and under the direction of public law and public authority. To punish them with lesser penalties would be to debilitate the commonwealth, and make the nation miserable, which it is the business of government to render happy and flourishing.
As to crimes too, I would draw a strong line of limitation. For no one offence,
politically an offence of rebellion,
by council, contrivance, persuasion, or compulsion, for none properly a
military offence of rebellion,
or any thing done by open hostility in the field, should any man at all be called in question; because such seems to be the proper and natural death of civil dissentions. The offences of war are obliterated by peace.
Another class will of course be included in the indemnity, namely, all those who by their activity in restoring lawful Government shall obliterate their offences. The offence previously known, the acceptance of service is a pardon for crimes. I fear that this class of men will not be very numerous.
So far as to indemnity. But where are the objects of justice, and of example, and of future security to the public peace? They are naturally pointed out, not by their having outraged political and civil laws, nor their having rebelled against the state, as a State, but by their having rebelled against the law of nature, and outraged man, as man. In this list, all the regicides in general, all those who laid sacrilegious hands on the King, who, without any thing in their own rebellious mission to the convention to justify them, brought him to his trial, and unanimously voted him guilty; all those who had a share in the cruel murder of the Queen, and the detestable proceedings with regard to the young King, and the unhappy Princesses; all those who committed cold-blooded murder any where, and particularly in their revolutionary tribunals, where every idea of natural justice and of their own declared Rights of Man, have been trod under foot with the most insolent mockery; all men concerned in the burning and demolition of houses or churches, with audacious and marked acts of sacrilege and scorns offered to religion; in general, all the leaders of Jacobin clubs; not one of these should escape a punishment suitable to the nature, quality, and degree of their offence, by a steady but a measured justice.
In the first place, no man ought to be subject to any penalty, from the highest to the lowest, but by a trial according to the course of law, carried on with all that caution and deliberation which has been used in the best times and precedents of the French jurisprudence, the criminal law of which country, faulty to be sure in some particulars, was highly laudable and tender of the lives of men. In restoring order and justice, every thing like retaliation ought to be religiously avoided; and an example ought to be set of a total alienation from the Jacobin proceedings in their accursed revolutionary tribunals. Every thing like lumping men in masses, and of forming tables of proscription ought to be avoided.
In all these punishments, any thing which can be alledged in mitigation of the offence should be fully considered. Mercy is not a thing opposed to justice. It is an essential part of it; as necessary in criminal cases, as in civil affairs equity is to law. It is only for the Jacobins never to pardon. They have not done it in a single instance. A council of mercy ought therefore to be appointed, with powers to report on each case, to soften the penalty, or entirely to remit it, according to circumstances.
With these precautions, the very first foundation of settlement must be to call to a strict account those bloody and merciless offenders. Without it government cannot stand a year. People little consider the utter impossibility of getting those who having emerged from very low, some from the lowest classes of society, have exercised a power so high, and with such unrelenting and bloody a rage, quietly to fall back into their old ranks, and become humble, peaceable, laborious, and useful members of society. It never can be. On the other hand, is it to be believed, that any worthy and virtuous subject, restored to the ruins of his house, will, with patience, see the cold-blooded murderer of his father, mother, wife, or children, or, perhaps, all of these relations (such things have been) nose him in his own village, and insult him with the riches acquired from the plunder of his goods, ready again to head a Jacobin faction to attack his life? He is unworthy of the name of man who would suffer it. It is unworthy of the name of a government, which taking justice out of the private hand, will not exercise it for the injured by the public arm.
I know it sounds plausible, and is readily adopted by those who have little sympathy with the sufferings of others, who wish to jumble the innocent and guilty into one mass, by a general indemnity. This cruel indifference dignifies itself with the name of humanity.
It is extraordinary that as the wicked arts of this regicide and tyrannous faction increase in number, variety, and atrocity, the desire of punishing them becomes more and more faint, and the talk of an indemnity towards them, every day stronger and stronger. Our ideas of justice appear to be fairly conquered and overpowered by guilt when it is grown gigantic. It is not the point of view in which we are in the habit of viewing guilt. The crimes we every day punish, are really below the penalties we inflict. The criminals are obscure and feeble. This is the view in which we see ordinary crimes and criminals. But when guilt is seen, though but for a time, to be furnished with the arms, and to be invested with the robes of power, it seems to assume another nature, and to get, as it were, out of our jurisdiction. This I fear is the case with many. But there is another cause full as powerful towards this security to enormous guilt, the desire which possesses people who have once obtained power, to enjoy it at their case. It is not humanity, but laziness and inertness of mind which produces the desire of this kind of indemnities. This description of men, love general and short methods. If they punish, they make a promiscuous massacre; if they spare, they make a general act of oblivion. This is a want of disposition to proceed laboriously according to the cases, and according to the rules and principles of justice on each case; a want of disposition to assort criminals, to discriminate the degrees and modes of guilt, to separate accomplices from principals, leaders from followers, seducers from the seduced, and then by following the same principles in the same detail, to class punishments, and to sit them to the nature and kind of the delinquency. If that were once attempted, we should soon see that the task was neither infinite, nor the execution cruel. There would be deaths, but for the number of criminals, and the extent of France, not many. There would be cases of transportation; cases of labour to restore what has been wickedly destroyed; cases of imprisonment, and cases of mere exile. But be this as it may, I am sure that if justice is not done there, there can be neither peace or justice there, nor in any part of Europe.
History is resorted to for other acts of indemnity in other times. The Princes are desired to look back to Henry the Fourth. We are desired to look to the restoration of king Charles. These things, in my opinion, have no resemblance whatsoever. They were cases of a civil war; in France more ferocious, in England more moderate than common. In neither country were the orders of society subverted; religion and morality destroyed on principle, or property totally annihilated. In England the government of Cromwell was to be sure somewhat rigid, but for a new power, no savage tyranny. The country was nearly as well in his hands as in those of Charles the Second, and in some points much better. The laws in general had their course, and were admirably administered. The king did not in reality grant an act of indemnity; the prevailing power, then in a manner the nation, in effect granted an indemnity to
him.
The idea of a preceding rebellion was not at all admitted in that convention and that parliament. The regicides were a common enemy, and as such given up.
Among the ornaments of their place which eminently distinguish them, few people are better acquainted with the history of their own country than the illustrious Princes now in exile: but I caution them not to be led into error by that which has been supposed to be the guide of life. I would give the same caution to all princes. Not that I derogate from the use of history. It is a great improver of the understanding, by shewing both men and affairs in a great variety of views. From this source much political wisdom may be learned; that is, may be learned as habit, not as precept; and as an exercise to strengthen the mind, as furnishing materials to enlarge and enrich it, not as a repertory of cases and precedents for a lawyer; if it were, a thousand times better would it be that a Statesman had never learned to read—
vellem nescirent literas.
This method turns their understanding from the object before them, and from the present exigencies of the world, to comparisons with former times, of which after all, we can know very little and very imperfectly; and our guides, the historians, who are to give us their true interpretation, are often prejudiced, often ignorant, often fonder of system than of truth. Whereas, if a man with reasonable good parts and natural sagacity, and not in the leading-strings of any master, will look steadily on the business before him, without being diverted by retrospect and comparison, he may be capable of forming a reasonable good judgement of what is to be done. There are some fundamental points in which nature never changes—but they are few and obvious, and belong rather to morals than to politics. But so far as regards political matter, the human mind and human affairs are susceptible of infinite modifications, and of combinations wholly new and unlooked for. Very few, for instance, could have imagined that property, which has been taken for natural dominion, should, through the whole of a vast kingdom, lose all its importance and even its influence. This is what history or books of speculation could hardly have taught us. How many could have thought, that the most complete and formidable revolution in a great empire should be made by men of letters, not as subordinate instruments and trumpeters of sedition, but as the chief contrivers and managers, and in a short time as the open administrators and sovereign rulers? Who could have imagined that atheism could produce one of the most violently operative principles of fanaticism? Who could have imagined, that in a commonwealth in a manner cradled in war, and in an extensive and dreadful war, military commanders should be of little or no account? That the convention should not contain one military man of name? That administrative bodies in a state of the utmost confusion, and of but a momentary duration, and composed of men with not one imposing part of character, should be able to govern the country and its armies, with an authority which the most settled senates, and the most respected monarchs scarcely ever had in the same degree? This, for one, I confess I did not foresee, though all the rest was present to me very early, and not out of my apprehension even for several years.
I believe very few were able to enter into the effects of mere
terror,
as a principle not only for the support of power in given hands or forms, but in those things in which the soundest political speculators were of opinion, that the least appearance of force would be totally destructive, such is the market, whether of money, provision, or commodities of any kind. Yet for four years we have seen loans made, treasuries supplied, and armies levied and maintained, more numerous than France ever shewed in the field, by the
effects of fear alone.
Here is a state of things, of which, in its totality, if history furnishes any examples at all, they are very remote and feeble. I therefore am not so ready as some are, to tax with folly or cowardice, those who were not prepared to meet an evil of this nature. Even now, after the events, all the causes may be somewhat difficult to ascertain. Very many are however traceable. But these things history and books of speculation (as I have already said) did not teach men to foresee, and of course to resist. Now that they are no longer a matter of sagacity, but of experience, of recent experience, of our own experience, it would be unjusti
iable to go back to the records of other times, to instruct us to manage what they never enabled us to foresee.—
Memorial on the Affairs of France in
1793.
REGICIDES (INSOLENCE OF.)
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 every thing. Not so much as a talk of treaty. Laws were laid down with arrogance. The most moderate politician amongst them
Boissy d'Anglas.
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, but 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. 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 in the season of prosperity that men discover their real tempers, principles, and designs. This report, combined with their conduct, forms an infallible criterion of the views of this Republic.—
Regicide Peace.
REASON. It is probable that the Standard of both Reason and Taste is the same in all human Creatures.
ON a superficial view, we may seem to differ very widely from each other in our reasonings, and no less in our pleasures: but notwithstanding this difference, which I think to be rather apparent, than real, it is probable that the standard, both of reason and taste is the same in all human creatures. For if there were not some principles of judgement as well as of sentiment common to all mankind, no hold could possibly be taken either on their reason or their passions, sufficient to maintain the ordinary correspondence of life. It appears indeed to be generally acknowledged, that with regard to truth and falsehood there is something fixed. We find people in their disputes continually appealing to certain tests and standards, which are allowed on all sides, and are supposed to be established in our common nature. But there is not the same obvious concurrence in any uniform or settled principles which relate to taste. It is even commonly supposed that this delicate and aërial faculty, which seems too volatile to endure even the chains of a definition, cannot be properly tried by any test, nor regulated by any standard. There is so continual a call for the exercise of the reasoning faculty, and it is so much strengthened by perpetual contention, that certain maxims of right reason seem to be tacitly settled amongst the most ignorant. The learned have improved on this rude science, and reduced those maxims into a system. If taste has not been so happily cultivated, it was not that the subject was barren, but that the labourers were few or negligent; for to say the truth, there are not the same interesting motives to impel us to fix the one, which urge us to ascertain the other. And after all, if men differ in their opinion concerning such matters, their difference is not attended with the same important consequences; else I make no doubt but that the logic of taste, if I may be allowed the expression, might very possibly be as well digested, and we might come to discuss matters of this nature with as much certainty, as those which seem more immediately within the province of mere reason.—
Sublime and Beautiful.
RELIGION (CHRISTIAN.) The French have brought the Church to a State of Poverty and Persecution, &c.
ONE would think, that after an honest and necessary revolution, (if they had a mind that theirs should pass for such) your masters would have imitated the virtuous policy of those who have been at the head of revolutions of that glorious character. Burnet tells us, that nothing tended to reconcile the English nation to the government of King William so much as the care he took to fill the vacant bishoprics with men who had attracted the public esteem by their learning, eloquence, and piety, and above all, by their known moderation in the state. With you, in your purifying revolution, whom have you chosen to regulate the church? Mr. Mirabeau is a fine speaker—and a fine writer—and a fine—a very fine man; but really nothing gave more surprize to every body here, than to find him the supreme head of your ecclesiastical affairs. The rest is of course. Your assembly addresses a manifesto to France, in which they tell the people, with an insulting irony, that they have brought the church to its primitive condition. In one respect their declaration is undoubtedly true; for they have brought it to a state of poverty and persecution.—What can be hoped for after this? Have not men (if they deserve the name) under this new hope and head of the church, been made bishops, for no other merit than having acted as instruments of atheists; for no other merit than having thrown the children's bread to dogs; and in order to gorge the whole gang of usurers, pedlars, and itinerant Jew discounters at the corners of streets, starved the poor of their Christian flocks, and their own brother pastors? Have not such men been made bishops to administer in temples, in which (if the patriotic donations have not already stripped them of their vessels) the churchwardens ought to take security for the altar plate, and not so much as to trust the chalice in their sacrilegious hands, so long as Jews have assignats on ecclesiastic plunder, to exchange for the silver stolen from churches?
I am told, that the very sons of such Jew-jobbers have been made bishops; persons not to be suspected of any sort of Christian superstition, fit colleagues to the holy prelate of Autun; and bred at the feet of that Gamaliel. We know who it was that drove the money changers out of the temple. We see too who it is that brings them in again. We have in London very respectable persons of the Jewish nation, whom we will keep; but we have of the same tribe others of a very different description,—house-breakers, and receivers of stolen goods, and forgers of paper currency, more than we can conveniently hang. These we can spare to France, to fill the new episcopal thrones: men well versed in swearing; and who will scruple no oath which the fertile genius of any of your reformers can devise.
In matters so ridiculous, it is hard to be grave. On a view of their consequences it is almost inhuman to treat them lightly. To what a state of savage, stupid, servile insensibility must your people be reduced, who can endure such proceedings in their church, their state, and their judicature, even for a moment! But the deluded people of France are like other madmen, who, to a miracle, bear hunger, and thirst, and cold, and confinement, and the chains and lash of their keeper, whilst all the while they support themselves by the imagination that they are generals of armies, prophets, kings, and emperors. As to a change of mind in these men, who consider infamy as honour, degradation as preferment, bondage to low tyrants as liberty, and the practical scorn and contumely of their upstart masters, as marks of respect and homage, I look upon it as absolutely impracticable. These madmen, to be cured, must first, like other madmen, be subdued. The sound part of the community, which I believe to be large, but by no means the largest part, has been taken by surprise, and is disjointed, terrified, and disarmed. That sound part of the community must first be put into a better condition, before it can do any thing in the way of deliberation or of persuasion. This must be an act of power, as well as of wisdom; of power, in the hands of firm, determined patriots, who can distinguish the misled from traitors, who will regulate the state (if such should be their fortune) with a discriminating, manly, and provident mercy; men who are purged of the surfeit and indigestion of systems, if ever they have been admitted into the habits of their minds; men who will lay the foundation of a real reform, in effacing every vestige of that philosophy which pretends to have made discoveries in the
terra australis
of morality; men who will fix the state upon these bases of morals and politics, which are our old, and immemorial, and, I hope, will be our eternal possession.
This power, to such men, must come from
without.
It may be given to you in pity; for surely no nation ever called so pathetically on the compassion of all its neighbours. It may be given by those neighbours on motives of safety to themselves. Never shall I think any country in Europe to be secure, whilst there is established, in the very centre of it, a state (if so it may be called) founded on principles of anarchy, and which is, in reality, a college of armed fanatics, for the propagation of the principles of assassination, robbery, rebellion, fraud, faction, oppression, and impiety. Mahomet, hid, as for a time he was, in the bottom of the sands of Arabia, had his spirit and character been discovered, would have been on object of precaution to provident minds. What if he had erected his frantic standard for the destruction of the Christian religion in
luce Asioe,
in the midst of the then noon-day splendor of the then civilized world? The princes of Europe, in the beginning of this century, did well not to suffer the monarchy of France to swallow up the others. They ought not now, in my opinion, to suffer all the monarchies and commonwealths to be swallowed up in the gulph of this polluted anarchy. They may be tolerably safe at present, because the comparative power of France for the present is little. But times and occasions make dangers. Intestine troubles may arise in other countries. There is a power always on the watch, qualified and disposed to profit of every conjuncture, to establish its own principles and modes of mischief, wherever it can hope for success. What mercy would these usurpers have on other sovereigns, and on other nations, when they treat their own king with such unparalleled indignities, and so cruelly oppress their own countrymen?—
Letter to a Member of the National Assembly.
RECESS (PARLIAMENTARY.)
IN England, we
cannot
work so hard as Frenchmen. Frequent relaxation is necessary to us. You are naturally more intense in your application. I did not know this part of your national character, until I went into France in 1773. At present, this your disposition to labour is rather increased than lessened. In your assembly you do not allow yourselves a recess even on Sundays. We have two days in the week, besides the festivals; and besides five or six months of the summer and autumn. This continued unremitted effort of the members of your assembly, I take to be one among the causes of the mischief they have done. They who always labour, can have no true judgment. You never give yourselves time to cool. You can never survey, from its proper point of sight, the work you have finished, before you decree its final execution. You can never plan the future by the past. You never go into the country, sober and dispassionately to observe the effect of your measures on their objects. You cannot feel distinctly how far the people are rendered better and improved, or more miserable and depraved, by what you have done. You cannot see with your own eyes the sufferings and afflictions you cause. You know them but at a distance, on the statements of those who always flatter the reigning power, and who, amidst their representations of the grievances, inflame your minds against those who are oppressed. These are amongst the effects of unremitted labour, when men exhaust their attention, burn out their candles, and are left in the dark.
Malo meorum negligentiam, quam istorum obscuram diligentiam.
—
Ibid.
RULERS (FRENCH).
YOUR rulers brought forth a set of men, steaming from the sweat and drudgery, and all black with the smoak and soot of the forge of confiscation and robbery—
ardentis massoe fuligine lippos
—a set of men brought forth from the trade of hammering arms of proof, offensive and defensive, in aid of the enterprizes, and for the subsequent protection of housebreakers, murderers, traitors, and malefactors; men who had their minds seasoned with theories perfectly conformable to their practice, and who had always laughed at possession and prescription, and defied all the fundamental maxims of jurisprudence, to the horror and stupefaction of all the honest part of this nation, and indeed of all nations who are spectators, we have seen, on the credit of those very practices and principles, and to carry them further into effect, these very men placed on the sacred seat of justice in the capital city of your late kingdom; we see, that in future, you are to be destroyed with more form and regularity. This is not peace; it is only the introduction of a sort of discipline in their hostility; their tyranny is complete in their justice; and their lanthorn is not half so dreadful as their court.
One would think, that out of common decency, they would have given you men who had not been in the habit of trampling upon law and justice in the Assembly, natural men, or men apparently natural, for Judges, who are to dispose of your lives and fortunes.—
Ibid.
REVENUE (FRENCH.)
I SHALL now say something of the ability shewed by your legislators with regard to the revenue.
In their proceedings relative to this object, if possible, still fewer traces appear of political judgment or financial resource. When the states met, it seemed to be the great object to improve the system of revenue, to enlarge its connexion, to cleanse it of oppression and vexation, and to establish it on the most solid footing. Great were the expectations entertained on that head throughout Europe. It was by this grand arrangement that France was to stand or fall; and this became, in my opinion, very properly, the test by which the skill and patriotism of those who ruled in that assembly would be tried. The revenue of the state is the state. In effect all depends upon it, whether for support or for reformation. The dignity of every occupation wholly depends upon the quantity and the kind of virtue that may be exerted in it. As all great qualities of the mind which operate in public, and are not merely suffering and passive, require force for their display, I had almost said for their unequivocal existence, the revenue, which is the spring of all power, becomes in its administration the sphere of every active virtue. Public virtue, being of a nature magnificent and splendid, instituted for great things, and conversant about great concerns, requires abundant scope and room, and cannot spread and grow under confinement, and in circumstances straitened, narrow, and sordid. Through the revenue alone, the body politic can act in its true genius and character, and therefore it will display just as much of its collective virtue, and as much of that virtue which may characterise those who move it, and are, as it were, its life and guiding principle, as it is possessed of a just revenue. For from hence not only magnanimity, and liberality, and beneficence, and fortitude, and providence, and the tutelary protection of all good arts, derive their food, and the growth of their organs, but continence, and self-denial, and labour, and vigilance, and frugality, and whatever else there is in which the mind shews itself above the appetite, are no where more in their proper element than in the provision and distribution of the public wealth. It is therefore not without reason that the science of speculative and practical finance, which must take to its aid so many auxiliary branches of knowledge, stands high in the estimation not only of the ordinary sort, but of the wisest and best men; and as this science has grown with the progress of its object, the prosperity and improvement of nations has generally encreased with the encrease of their revenues; and they will both continue to grow and flourish, as long as the balance between what is left to strengthen the efforts of individuals, and what is collected for the common efforts of the state, bear to each other a due reciprocal proportion, and are kept in a close correspondence and communication. And perhaps it may be owing to the greatness of revenues, and to the urgency of state necessities, that old abuses in the constitution of finances are discovered, and their true nature and rational theory comes to be more perfectly understood; insomuch, that a smaller revenue might have been more distressing in one period than a far greater is found to be in another; the proportionate wealth even remaining the same.—
Reflections on the Revolution in France.
RUIN (NATIONAL.) The French stiled the ablest Architects of.
THE French have shewn themselves the ablest architects of ruin that have hitherto existed in the world. In that very short space of time they have completely pulled down to the ground, their monarchy; their church; their nobility; their law; their revenue; their army; their navy; their commerce; their arts; and their manufactures. They have done their business for us as rivals, in a way in which twenty Ramilies or Blenheims could never have done it. Were we absolute conquerors, and France to lie prostrate at our feet, we should be ashamed to send a commission to settle their affairs; which could impose so hard a law upon the French, and so destructive of all their consequence as a nation, as that they have imposed upon themselves.—
Speech on the Army Estimates.
RUSSEL (HOUSE OF.) Mr. Burke contrasts his own Merit with that of the Founder of the House of Russel.
THE merit of the origin of his Grace's (Bedford) fortune was in being a favourite and chief adviser to a prince, who left no liberty to their native country. My endeavour 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 feat of empire, but in every nation, in every land, in every climate, language and religion, in the vast domain that still is under the protection, and the larger that was once under the protection, of the British crown.
His founder's merits were, by arts in which he served his master and made his fortune, to bring poverty, wretchedness and depopulation on his country. Mine were under a benevolent prince, in promoting the commerce, manufactures and agriculture of his kingdom; in which his majesty shews an eminent example, who even in his amusements is a patriot, and in hours of leisure an improver of his native soil.
His founder's merit, was the merit of a gentleman raised by the arts of a court, and the protection of a Wolsey, to the eminence of a great and potent lord. His merit in that eminence was by instigating a tyrant to injustice, to provoke a people to rebellion.—My merit was, to awaken the sober part of the country, that they might put themselves on their guard against any one potent lord, or any greater number of potent lords, or any combination of great leading men of any sort, if ever they should attempt to proceed in the same courses, but in the reverse order, that is, by instigating a corrupt populace to rebellion, and, through that rebellion, should introduce a tyranny yet worse than the tyranny which his Grace's ancestor supported, and of which he profited in the manner we behold in the despotism of Henry the Eighth.
The political merit of the first pensioner of his Grace's house, was that of being concerned as a counsellor of state in advising, and in his person executing the conditions of a dishonourable peace with France; the surrendering the fortress of Boulogne, then our out guard 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 it's rule; but in opposing it with the greatest zeal and earnestness, when that rule appeared in the worst form it could assume; the worst indeed which the prime cause and principle of all evil could possibly give it. It was my endeavour by every means to excite a spirit in the house, where I had the honour of a seat, for carrying on with early vigour 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 it's power, and from the more dreadful contagion of its principles; to preserve, while they can be preserved pure and untainted, the ancient, inbred integrity, piety, good nature, and good humour 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 it's most intense malignity.
The labours of his Grace's founder merited the curses, not loud but deep, of the Commons of England, on whom
he
and his master had effected a
complete parliamentary reform,
in 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 laboured in all things to merit their inward approbation, and (along with the assistants of the largest, the greatest, and best of my endeavours) I received their free, unbiassed, public, and solemn thanks.
Thus stands the account of the comparative merits of the crown grants which compose the duke of Bedford's fortune as balanced against mine. In the name of common sense, why should the duke of Bedford think, that none but of the house of Russel are entitled to the favour of the crown? Why should he imagine that no king of England has been capable of judging of merit but king Henry the Eighth? Indeed, he will pardon me; he is a little mistaken; all virtue did not end in the first earl of Bedford. All discernment did not lose its vision when his creator closed his eyes. Let him remit his rigour on the disproportion between merit and reward in others, and they will make no enquiry 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 honour and virtue. Let the duke of Bedford (I am sure he will) reject with scorn and horror, the counsels of the lecturers, those wicked panders to avarice and ambition, who would tempt him in the troubles of his country, to seek another enormous fortune from the forfeitures of another nobility, and the plunder of another church. Let him (and I trust that yet he will) employ all the energy of his youth, and all the resources of his wealth, to crush rebellious principles which have no foundation in morals, and rebellious movements, that have no provocation in tyranny.
Then will be forgot the rebellions, which, by a doubtful priority in crime, his ancestor had provoked and extinguished. On such a conduct in the noble duke, many of his countrymen might, and with some excuse might, give way to the enthusiasm of their gratitude, and in the dashing style of some of the old declaimers, cry out, that if the fates had found no other way in which they could give a
At si non aliam venturo fata Neroni, &c.
duke of Bedford and his opulence as props to a tottering world, then the butchery of the duke of Buckingham might be tolerated; it might be regarded even with complacency, whilst in the heir of confiscation they saw the sympathizing comforter of the martyrs, who suffer under the cruel confiscation of this day; whilst they beheld with admiration his zealous protection of the virtuous and loyal nobility of France, and his manly support of his brethren, the yet standing nobility and gentry of his native land. Then his Grace's merit would be pure and new, and sharp as fresh from the mint of honour. As he pleased he might reflect honour on his predecessors, or throw it forward on those who were to succeed him. He might be the propagater of the stock of honour, or the root of it, as he thought proper.—
Letter to a noble Lord.
REFORMAMION. Short View of the Reformation.
GENTLEMEN, the condition of our nature is such, that we buy our blessings at a price. The Reformation, one of the greatest periods of human improvement, was a time of trouble and confusion. The vast structure of superstition and tyranny, which had been for ages in rearing, and which was combined with the interest of the great and of the many; which was moulded into the laws, the manners, and civil institutions of nations, and blended with the frame and policy of states; could not be brought to the ground without a fearful struggle; nor could it fall without a violent concussion of itself and all about it. When this great revolution was attempted in a more regular mode by government, it was opposed by plots and seditions of the people; when by popular efforts, it was repressed as rebellion by the hand of power; and bloody executions (often bloodily returned) marked the whole of its progress through all its stages. The affairs of religion, which are no longer heard of in the tumult of our present contentions, made a principal ingredient in the wars and politics of that time; the enthusiasm of religion threw a gloom over the politics; and political interests poisoned and perverted the spirit of religion upon all sides. The Protestant religion in that violent struggle, infected, as the Popish had been before, by worldly interests and worldly passions, became a persecutor in its turn, sometimes of the new sects, which carried their own principles further than it was convenient to the original reformers; and always of the body from whom they parted; and this persecuting spirit arose, not only, from the bitterness of retaliation, but from the merciless policy of fear.
It was long before the spirit of true piety and true wisdom, involved in the principles of the Reformation, could be depurated from the dregs and feculence of the contention with which it was carried through. However, until this be done, the Reformation is not complete; and those who think themselves good Protestants, from their animosity to others, are, in that respect, no Protestants at all. It was at first thought necessary, perhaps, to oppose to Popery another Popery, to get the better of it. Whatever was the cause, laws were made in many countries, and in this kingdom in particular, against Papists, which are as bloody as any of those which had been enacted by the popish princes and states; and where those laws were not bloody, in my opinion, they were worse; as they were slow, cruel outrages on our nature, and kept men alive only to insult in their persons, every one of the rights and feelings of humanity. I pass those statutes, because I would spare your pious ears the repetition of such shocking things.—
Speech at Bristol previous to the Election.
ROYAL NEGATIVE.
THE king's negative to bills is one of the most indisputed of the royal prerogatives; and it extends to all cases whatsoever.—
Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol.
SAXONY. French Principles in that Country.
POLAND, with the Elector of Saxony, will contribute most to strengthen the Royal authority of Poland, or to shake the Ducal in Saxony. The Elector is a Catholic; the people of Saxony are, six-sevenths at the very least, Protestants. He
must
continue a Catholic, according to the Polish law, if he accepts that crown. The pride of the Saxons, formerly flattered by having a crown in the House of their Prince, though an honour which cost them dear; the German probity, fidelity, and loyalty; the weight of the constitution of the Empire under the Treaty of Westphalia; the good temper and good nature of the Princes of the House of Saxony; had formerly removed from the people all apprehension with regard to their religion, and kept them perfectly quiet, obedient, and even affectionate. The seven years war made some change in the minds of the Saxons. They did not, I believe, regret the loss of what might be considered almost as the succession to the Crown of Poland, the possession of which, by annexing them to a foreign interest, had often obliged them to act an arduous part, towards the support of which that soreign interest afforded no proportionable strength. In this very delicate situation of their political interests, the speculations of the French and German
Oeconomists,
and the cabals, and the secret as well as public doctrines of the
Illuminatenordens
and
Freemasons,
have made a considerable progress in that country, and a turbulent spirit, under colour of religion, but in reality arising from the French Rights of Man, has already shewn itself, and is ready on every occasion to blaze out.—
Memorial on the Affairs of France in
1791.
SITUATION.
THE situation of man, is the preceptor of his duty.—
Speech on Mr. Fox's East-India Bill.
SALARY. A Security against Avarice and Rapacity.
I WILL even go so far as to affirm, that if men were willing to serve in such situations (offices of state) without salary, they ought not to be permitted to do it. Ordinary service must be secured by the motives to ordinary integrity. I do not hesitate to say that, that state which lays its foundation in rare and heroic virtues, will be sure to have its superstructure in the basest profligacy and corruption. An honourable and fair profit is the best security against avarice and rapacity; as in all things else, a lawful and regulated enjoyment is the best security against debauchery and excess. For as wealth is power, so all power will infallibly draw wealth to itself by some means or other; and when men are le
t no way of ascertaining their profits but by their means of obtaining them, those means will be increased to infinity.—
Oecon. Reform.
SECRETARY OF STATE.
A Secretary of State must not appear sordid in the eyes of the Ministers of other nations.—
Oeconomical Reform.
SOCIETY.
THE retrogate order of society has something flattering to the dispositions of mankind.—
Letter to a Member of the National Assembly.
SOCIETY A Contract.
SOCIETY is indeed a contract. Subordinate contracts for objects of more occasional interest may be deposited at pleasure, but the state ought not to be considered as nothing better than a partnership agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee, calico or tobacco, or some other such low concern, to be taken up for a little temporary interest, and to be dissolved by the fancy of the parties. It is to be looked on with other reverence; because it is not a partnership in things subservient only to the gross animal existence of a temporary and perishable nature. It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born. Each contract of each particular state is but a clause in the great primaeval contract of eternal society, linking the lower with the higher natures, connecting the visible and invisible world, according to a fixed compact sanctioned by the inviolable oath which holds all physical and all moral natures, each in their appointed place. This law is not subject to the will of those, who by an obligation above them, and infinitely superior, are bound to submit their will to that law. The municipal corporations of that universal kingdom are not morally at liberty at their pleasure, and on their speculations of a contingent improvement, wholly to separate and tear asunder the bands of their subordinate community, and to dissolve it into an unsocial, uncivil, unconnected chaos of elementary principles. It is the first and supreme necessity only, a necessity that is not chosen but chooses, a necessity paramount to deliberation, that admits no discussion, and demands no evidence, which alone can justify a resort to anarchy. This necessity is no exception to the rule; because this necessity itself is a part too of that moral and physical disposition of things to which man must be obedient by consent or force; but if that which is only submission to necessity should be made the object of choice, the law is broken, nature is disobeyed, and the rebellious are outlawed, cast forth, and exiled, from this world of reason, and order, and peace, and virtue, and fruitful penitence, into the antagonist world of madness, discord, vice, confusion, and unavailing sorrow.—
Reflections on the Revolution in France.
SOCIETY. Origin of Laws in civil Society, and Difficulties arising thereon.
WE found, or we thought we found, an inconvenience in having every man the judge of his own cause. Therefore judges were set up, at first with discretionary powers. But it was soon found a miserable slavery to have our lives and properties precarious, and hanging upon the arbitrary determination of any one man, or set of men. We slew to laws as a remedy for this evil. By these we persuaded ourselves we might know with some certainty upon what ground we stood. But lo! differences arose upon the sense and interpretation of these laws. Thus we were brought back to our old incertitude. New laws were made to expound the old; and new difficulties arose upon the new laws; as words multiplied, opportunities of cavilling upon them multiplied also. Then recourse was had to notes, comments, glosses, reports,
responsa prudentum,
learned readings: eagle stood against eagle; authority was set up against authority. Some were allured by the modern, others reverenced the ancient. The new were more enlightened, the old were more venerable. Some adopted the comments, others stuck to the text. The confusion encreased, the mist thickened, until it could be discovered no longer what was allowed or forbidden, what things were in property, and what common. In this uncertainty, (uncertain even to the professors, an Aegyptian darkness to the rest of mankind) the contending parties felt themselves more effectually ruined by the delay than they could have been by the injustice of any decision. Our inheritances are become a prize for disputation; and disputes and litigations are become an inheritance.—
Vindication of Natural Society.
SOCIETY. Artificial Division of Mankind into separate Societies a perpetual Source of Hatred.
IT is no less worth observing, that this artificial division of mankind, into separate societies, is a perpetual source in itself of hatred and dissention among them. The names which distinguish them are enough to blow up hatred and rage. Examine history; consult present experience; and you will find, that far the greater part of the quarrels between several nations were different combinations of people, and called by different names;—to an Englishman the name of a Frenchman, a Spaniard, an Italian, much more a Turk, or a Tartar, raise of course ideas of hatred, and contempt. If you would inspire this compatriot of ours with pity or regard, for one of these, would you not hide, that distinction? You would not pray him to compassionate the poor Frenchman, or the unhappy German. Far from it; you would speak of him as a
foreigner,
an accident to which all are liable. You would represent him as a
man;
one partaking with us of the same common nature, and subject to the same law. There is something so averse from our nature in these artificial political distinctions, that we need no other trumpet to kindle us to war and destruction. But there is something so benign and healing in the general voice of humanity, that maugre all our regulations to prevent it, the simple name of man applied properly, never fails to work a salutary effect.—
Ibid.
SOCIETY. The most obvious Division of Society into rich and poor. State of the latter described. (See RICH.)
THE most obvious division of society is into rich and poor; and it is no less obvious, that the number of the former bear a great disproportion to those of the latter. The whole business of the poor is to administer to the idleness, folly, and luxury of the rich; and that of the rich, in return, is to find the best methods of confirming the slavery and increasing the burthens of the poor. In a state of nature, it is an invariable law, that a man's acquisitions are in proportion to his labours. In a state of artificial society, it is a law as constant and as invariable, that those who labour most, enjoy the fewest things; and that those who labour not at all, have the greatest number of enjoyments. A constitution of things this, strange and ridiculous beyond expression. We scarce believe a thing when we are told it, which we actually see before our eyes every day without being in the least surprized. I suppose that there are in Great-Britain upwards of an hundred thousand people employed in lead, tin, iron, copper, and coal mines; these unhappy wretches scarce ever see the light of the sun; they are buried in the bowels of the earth; there they work at a severe and dismal task, without the least prospect of being delivered from it; they subsist upon the coarsest and worst sort of fare; they have their health miserably impaired, and their lives cut short, by being perpetually confined in the close vapour of these malignant minerals. An hundred thousand more at least are tortured without remission by the suffocating smoak, intense fires, and constant drudgery necessary in refining and managing the products of those mines. If any man informed us that two hundred thousand innocent persons were condemned to so intolerable slavery, how should we pity the unhappy sufferers, and how great would be our just indignation against those who inflicted so cruel and ignominious a punishment? This is an instance, I could not wish a stronger, of the numberless things which we pass by in their common dress, yet which shock us when they are nakedly represented. But this number, considerable as it is, and the slavery, with all its baseness and horror, which we have at home, is nothing to what the rest of the world affords of the same nature. Millions daily bathed in the poisonous damps and destructive effluvia of lead, silver, copper, and arsenic. To say nothing of those other employments, those stations of wretchedness and contempt in which civil society has placed the numerous
enfans perdus
of her army.—
Ibid.
SOCIETY. Natural and Artificial Society defined.
IN the state of nature, without question, mankind was subjected to many and great inconveniencies. Want of union, want of mutual assistance, want of a common arbitrator to resort to in their differences. These were evils which they could not but have felt pretty severely on many occasions. The original children of the earth lived with their brethren of the other kinds in much equality. Their diet must have been confined almost wholly to the vegetable kind; and the same tree, which in its flourishing state produced them berries, in its decay gave them an habitation. The mutual desires of the sexes uniting their bodies and affections, and the children, which were the results of these intercourses, introduced first the notion of society, and taught its conveniencies. This society, founded in natural appetites and instincts, and not in any positive institution, I shall call
natural society.
Thus far nature went and succeeded; but man would go farther. The great error of our nature is, not to know where to stop, not to be satisfied with any reasonable acquirement; not to compound with our condition; but to lose all we have gained by an insatiable pursuit after more. Man found a considerable advantage by this union of many persons to form one family; he therefore judged that he would find his account proportionably in an union of many families into one body politic. And as nature has formed no bond of union to hold them together, he supplied this defect by
laws.
This is
political soc
y.
And hence the sources of what are usually called states, civil soci
ties, or governments; into some form of which, more extended or restrained, all mankind have gradually fallen.—
Ibid.
SOCIETY. Requires that the Passions should be subjected.
SOCIETY requires not only that the passions of individuals should be subjected, but that even in the mass and body as well as in the individuals, the inclinations of men should frequently be thwarted, their will controlled, and their passions brought into subjection This can only be done
by a power out of themselves
; and not, in the exercise of its function, subject to that will and to those passions which it is its office to bridle and subdue. In this sense the restraints on men, as well as their liberties, are to be reckoned among their rights. But as the liberties and the restrictions vary with times and circumstances, and admit of infinite modifications, they cannot be settled upon any abstract rule; and nothing is so foolish as to discuss them upon that principle.—
Reflections on the Revolution in France.
SOCIETY, (POLITICAL.) Justly chargeable with much the greatest part of the Destruction of the Species.
TO give the fairest play to every side of the question, I will own that there is a haughtiness, and fierceness in human nature, which will cause innumerable broils, place men in what situation you please; but owning this, I still insist in charging it to political regulations, that these broils are so frequent, so cruel, and attended with consequences so deplorable. In a state of nature, it had been impossible to find a number of men, sufficient for such slaughters, agreed in the same bloody purpose; or allowing that they might have come to such an agreement, (an impossible supposition) yet the means that simple nature has supplied them with, are by no means adequate to such an end; many scratches, many bruises undoubtedly would be received upon all hands; but only a few, a very few deaths. Society, and politics, which have given us these destructive views, have given us also the means of satisfying them. From the earliest dawnings of policy to this day, the invention of men has been sharpening and improving the mystery of murder, from the first rude essays of clubs and stones, to the present perfection of gunnery, cannoneering, bombarding, mining, and all these species of artificial, learned, and refined cruelty, in which we are now so expert, and which make a principal part of what politicians have taught us to believe is our principal glory.
How far mere nature would have carried us, we may judge by the example of those animals, who still follow her laws, and even of those to whom she has given dispositions more fierce, and arms more terrible than ever she intended we should use. It is an incontestible truth, that there is more havock made in one year by men, of men, than has been made by all the lions, tygers, panthers, ounces, leopards, hyenas, rhinoceroses, elephants, bears, and wolves, upon their several species, since the beginning of the world; though these agree ill enough with each other, and have a much greater proportion of rage and fury in their composition than we have. But with respect to you, ye legislators, ye civilizers of mankind! ye Orpheuses, Moseses, Minoses, Solons, Theseuses, Lycurguses, Numas! with respect to you be it spoken, your regulations have done more mischief in cold blood, than all the rage of the fiercest animals in their greatest terrors, or furies, has ever done, or ever could do!—
Vindication of Natural Society.
SOCIETIES (POPULAR.) Remarks on the Constitutional and Revolution Societies.
I certainly have the honour to belong to more clubs than one, in which the constitution of this kingdom, and the principles of the glorious revolution are held in high reverence: and I reckon myself among the most forward in my zeal for maintaining that constitution and those principles in the utmost purity and vigour. It is because I do so, that I think it necessary for me, that there should be no mistake. Those who cultivate the memory of our revolution, and those who are attached to the constitution of this kingdom, will take good care how they are involved with persons who, under the pretext of zeal towards the revolution and constitution, too frequently wander from their true principles; and are ready, on every occasion, to depart from the firm, but cautious and deliberate spirit which produced the one, and which presides in the other. Before I proceed to answer the more material particulars in your letter, I shall beg leave to give you such information as I have been able to obtain of the two clubs which have thought proper, as bodies, to interfere in the concerns of France; first assuring you, that I am not, and that I have never been, a member of either of those societies.
The first, calling itself the Constitutional Society, or Society for Constitutional Information, or by some such title, is, I believe, of seven or eight years standing. The institution of this society appears to be of a charitable, and so far of a laudable, nature: it was intended for the circulation, at the expence of the members, of many books, which few others would be at the expence of buying; and which might lie on the hands of the booksellers, to the great loss of an useful body of men. Whether the books so charitably circulated, were ever as charitably read, is more than I know. Possibly several of them have been exported to France; and, like goods not in request here, may with you have found a market. I have heard much talk of the lights to be drawn from books that are sent from hence. What improvements they have had in their passage (as it is said some liquors are meliorated by crossing the sea) I cannot tell: but I never heard a man of common judgment, or the least degree of information, speak a word in praise of the greater part of the publications circulated by that society; nor have their proceedings been accounted, except by some of themselves, as of any serious consequence.
Your national assembly seems to entertain much the same opinion that I do of this poor charitable club. As a nation, you reserved the whole stock of your eloquent acknowledgments for the Revolution Society; when their fellows in the Constitutional were, in equity, entitled to some share. Since you have selected the Revolution Society as the great object of your national thanks and praises, you will think me excuseable in making its late conduct the subject of my observations. The national assembly of France has given importance to these gentlemen by adopting them; and they return the favour, by acting as a committee in England for extending the principles of the national assembly. Henceforward we must consider them as a kind of privileged persons; as no inconsiderable members in the diplomatic body. This is one among the revolutions which have given splendor to obscurity, and distinction to undiscerned merit. Until very lately I do not recollect to have heard of this club. I am quite sure that it never occupied a moment of my thoughts; nor, I believe, those of any person out of their own set. I find, upon enquiry, that on the anniversary of the revolution in 1688, a club of dissenters, but of what denomination I know not, have long had the custom of hearing a sermon in one of their churches; and that afterwards they spent the day cheerfully, as other clubs do, at the tavern. But I never heard that any public measure, or political system, much less that the merits of the constitution of any foreign nation, had been the subject of a formal proceeding at their festivals; until, to my inexpressible surprize, I found them in a sort of public capacity, by a congratulatory address, giving an authoritative sanction to the proceedings of the national assembly in France.
In the antient principles and conduct of the club, so far at least as they were declared, I see nothing to which I could take exception. I think it very probable, that for some purpose, new members may have entered among them; and that some truly christian politicians, who love to dispense benefits, but are careful to conceal the hand which distributes the dole, may have made them the instruments of their pious designs. Whatever I may have reason to suspect concerning private management, I shall speak of nothing as of a certainty but what is public.
For one, I should be sorry to be thought, directly or indirectly, concerned in their proceedings. I certainly take my full share, along with the rest of the world, in my individual and private capacity, in speculating on what has been done, or is doing, on the public stage; in any place antient or modern; in the republic of Rome, or the republic of Paris: but having no general apostolical mission, being a citizen of a particular state, and being bound up in a considerable degree, by its public will, I should think it at least improper and irregular for me to open a formal public correspondence with the actual government of a foreign nation, without the express authority of the government under which I live.
I should be still more unwilling to enter into that correspondence, under any thing like an equivocal description, which to many, unacquainted with our usages, might make the address, in which I joined, appear as the act of persons in some sort of corporate capacity, acknowledged by the laws of this kingdom, and authorized to speak the sense of some part of it. On account of the ambiguity and uncertainty of unauthorized general descriptions, and of the deceit which may be practised under them, and not from mere formality, the House of Commons would reject the most sneaking petition for the most trifling object, under that mode of signature to which you have thrown open the folding-doors of your presence chamber, and have ushered into your National Assembly, with as much ceremony and parade, and with as great a bustle of applause, as if you had been visited by the whole representave majesty of the whole English nation. If what this society has thought proper to send forth had been a piece of argument, it would have signified little whose argument it was. It would be neither the more nor the less convincing on account of the party it came from. But this is only a vote and resolution. It stands solely on authority; and in this case it is the mere authority of individuals, few of whom appear. Their signatures ought, in my opinion, to have been annexed to their instrument. The world would then have the means of knowing how many they are; who they are; and of what value their opinions may be, from their personal abilities, from their knowledge, their experience, or their lead and authority in this state. To me, who am but a plain man, the proceeding looks a little too refined, and too ingenious; it has too much the air of a political stratagem, adopted for the sake of giving, under an high sounding name, an importance to the public declarations of this club, which, when the matter came to be closely inspected, they did not altogether so well deserve. It is a policy that has very much the complexion of a fraud.—
Reflections on the Revolution in France.
SCHEMES (FRENCH) Have nothing in Experience to prove their Tendency beneficial.
IN obtaining and securing their power, the assembly proceeds upon principles the most opposite from those which appear to direct them in the use of it. An observation on this difference will let us into the true spirit of their conduct. Every thing which they have done, or continue to do, in order to obtain and keep their power, is by the most common arts. They proceed exactly as their ancestors of ambition have done before them. Trace them through all their artifices, frauds, and violences, you can find nothing at all that is new. They follow precedents and examples with the punctilious exactness of a pleader. They never depart an iota from the authentic formulas of tyranny and usurpation. But in all the regulations relative to the public good, the spirit has been the very reverse of this. There they commit the whole to the mercy of untried speculations; they abandon the dearest interests of the public to those loose theories, to which none of them would chuse to trust the slightest of his private concerns. They make this difference, because in their desire of obtaining and securing power they are thoroughly in earnest; there they travel in the beaten road. The public interests, because about them they have no real solicitude, they abandon wholly to chance; I say to chance, because their schemes have nothing in experience to prove their tendency beneficial.—
Ibid.
SENSES To be subject to the Judgment in Politics.
IN our politics as in our common conduct, we shall be worse than infants, if we do not put our senses under the tuition of our judgment, and effectually cure ourselves of that optical illusion which makes a briar at our nose of greater magnitude than an oak at five hundred yards distance.—
Thoughts on the Cause of the present Discontents.
SOLDIERY. Corruption of the Soldiery of Louis XVI. previous to the Revolution.
THE worst effect of all their proceeding was on their military, which was rendered an army for every purpose but that of defence. If the question was, whether soldiers were to forget they were citizens, as an abstract proposition, I could have no difference about it; though, as it is usual, when abstract principles are to be applied, much is to be thought on the manner of uniting the character of citizen and soldier. But as applied to the events which had happened in France, where the abstract principle it cloathed with its circumstances, I think that my friend (Mr. Fox) would agree with me, that what was done there furnished no matter of exultation, either in the act or the example. These soldiers were not citizens; but base hireling mutineers, and mercenary sordid deserters, wholly destitute of any honourable principles. Their conduct was one of the fruits of that anarchic spirit, from the evils of which a democracy itself was to be resorted to by those who were the least disposed to that form as a sort of refuge. It was not an army in corps and with discipline, and embodied under the respectable patriot citizens of the state in resisting tyranny. Nothing like it It was the case of common soldiers deserting from their officers, to join a furious, licentious populace. It was a desertion to a cause, the real object of which was to level all those institutions, and to break all those connections, natural and civil, that regulate and hold together the community by a chain of subordination; to raise soldiers against their officers; servants against their masters; tradesmen against their customers; artificers against their employers; tenants against their landlords; curates against their bishops; and children against their parents. That this cause of theirs was not an enemy to servitude, but to society.—
Speech on the Army Estimates.
SERMONS (ANNIVERSARY.)
THE kind of anniversary sermons, to which a great part of what I write refers, if men are not shamed out of their present course, in commemorating the fact, will cheat many out of the principles, and deprive them of the benefits of the revolution they commemorate. I confess to you, Sir, I never liked this continual talk of resistance and revolution, or the practice of making the extreme medicine of the constitution its daily bread. It renders the habit of society dangerously valetudinary: it is taking periodical doses of mercury sublimate, and swallowing down repeated provocatives of cantharides to our love of liberty.
This distemper of remedy, grown habitual, relaxes and wears out, by a vulgar and prostituted use, the spring of that spirit which is to be exerted on great occasions. It was in the most patient period of Roman servitude that themes of tyrannicide made the ordinary exercise of boys at school—
cum perimit soevos classis numerosa tyrannos.
In the ordinary state of things, it produces in a country like ours the worst effects, even on the cause of that liberty which it abuses with the dissoluteness of an extravagant speculation.—
Reflections on the Revolution in France.
STATE. We have consecrated the State.
TO avoid, therefore, the evils of inconstancy and versatility, ten thousand times worse than those of obstinacy and the blindest prejudice, we have consecrated the State, that no man should approach to look into its defects or corruptions but with due caution; that he should never dream of beginning its reformation by its subversion; that he should approach to the faults of the State as to the wounds of a father, with pious awe and trembling solicitude. By this wise prejudice we are taught to look with horror on those children of their country, who are prompt rashly to hack that aged parent in pieces, and put him into the kettle of magicians, in hopes that by their poisonous weeds, and wild incantations, they may regenerate the paternal constitution, and renovate their father's life.—
Ibid.
STATE, (REASONS OF.)
I ADMIT that reason of state will not, in many circumstances, permit the disclosure of the true ground of a public proceeding. In that case silence is manly and it is wise. It is fair to call for trust when the principle of reason itself suspends its public use. I take the distinction to be this. The ground of a particular measure, making a part of a plan, it is rarely proper to divulge. All the broader grounds of policy on which the general plan is to be adopted, ought as rarely to be concealed. They who have not the whole cause before them, call them politicians, call them people, call them what you will, are no judges. The difficulties of the case as well as its fair side, ought to be presented. This ought to be done: and it is all that can be done. When we have our true situation distinctly presented to us, if 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 irreconcileable foes, then, and not till then, the ministers stand acquitted before God and man, for whatever may come.—
Regicide Peace.
STATES (ECCLESIASTICAL.) Seeds of Revolution not wanting in the Ecclesiastical States.
IN the estates of the church, notwithstanding their strictness in banishing the French out of that country, there are not wanting the seeds of a revolution. The spirit of Nepotism prevails there nearly as strong as ever. Every pope of course is to give origin or restoration to a great family, by the means of large donations. The foreign revenues have long been gradually on the decline, and seem now in a manner dried up. To supply this defect the resource of vexatious and impolitic jobbing at home, if any thing, is rather encreased than lessened. Various, well intended but ill understood practices, some of them existing, in their spirit at least, from the time of the old Roman empire, still prevail; and that government is as blindly attached to old abusive customs, as others are wildly disposed to all sorts of innovations and experiments. These abuses were less felt whilst the pontificate drew riches from abroad, which in some measure counterbalanced the evils of their remiss and jobbish government at home. But now it can subsist only on the resources of domestic management; and abuses in that management of course will be more intimately and more severely felt.
In the midst of the apparently torpid languor of the ecclesiastical state, those who have had opportunity of a near observation, have seen a little rippling in that smooth water, which indicates something alive under it. There is in the ecclesiastical state, a personage who seems capable of acting (but with more force and steadiness) the part of the tribune Rienzi. The people once inflamed will not be destitute of a leader. They have such an one already in the Cardinal or Archbishop
Buon Campagna.
He is, of all men, if I am not ill-informed, the most turbulent, seditious, intriguing, bold, and desperate. He is not at all made for a Roman of the present day. I think he lately held the first office of their state, that of Great Chamberlain, which is equivalent to High Treasurer. At present he is out of employment, and in disgrace. If he should be elected pope, or even come to have any weight with a new pope, he will infallibly conjure up a democratic spirit in that country. He may indeed be able to effect it without these advantages. The next interregnum will probably shew more of him. There may be others of the same character, who have not come to my knowledge. This much is certain, that the Roman people, if once the blind reverence they bear to the sanctity of the pope, which is their only bridle, should relax, are naturally turbulent, ferocious, and headlong, whilst the police is defective, and the government feeble and resourceless beyond all imagination.—
Memorial on the Affairs of France in
1791.
STATE (GREAT.)
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.—
Regicide Peace.
STATESMAN.
A disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman. Every thing else is vulgar in the conception, perilous in the execution.—
Reflections on the Revolution in France.
STATESMAN (UNCONSTITUTIONAL WISH OF.)
IT must be always the wish of an unconstitutional statesman, that an
ouse of commons who are entirely dependent upon him, should have every right of the people entirely dependent upon their pleasure.—
Thoughts on the Cause of the present Discontents.
STATESMEN. Sentiments of the New Statesmen of France.
YOUR literary men, and your politicians, and so do the whole clan of the enlightened among us, essentially differ in these points. They have no respect for the wisdom of others; but they pay it off by a very full measure of confidence in their own. With them it is a sufficient motive to destroy an old scheme of things, because it is an old one. As to the new, they are in no sort of fear with regard to the duration of a building run up in haste; because duration is no object to those who think little or nothing has been done before their time, and who place all their hopes in discovery. They conceive, very systematically, that all things which give perpetuity are mischievous, and therefore they are at inexpiable war with all establishments. They think that government may vary like modes of dress, and with as little ill effect. That there needs no principle of attachment, except a sense of present conveniency, to any constitution of the state. They always speak as if they were of opinion that there is a singular species of compact between them and their magistrates, which binds the magistrate, but which has nothing reciprocal in it, but that the majesty of the people has a right to dissolve it without any reason, but its will. Their attachment to their country itself, is only so far as it agrees with some of their fleeting projects; it begins and ends with that scheme of polity which falls in with their momentary opinion.
These doctrines, or rather sentiments, seem prevalent with your new statesmen. But they are wholly different from those on which we have always acted in this country.—
Reflections on the Revolution in France.
STATESMEN.
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 without the relations.—
Regicide Peace.
STATESMEN. No Habits of Life disqualify for Government.
I HAVE known merchants with the sentiments and the abilities of great statesmen; and I have seen persons in the rank of statesmen, with the conceptions and character of pedlars. Indeed, my observation has furnished me with nothing that is to be found in any habits of life or education, which tends wholly to disqualify men for the functions of government, but that, by which the power of exercising those functions is very frequently obtained, I mean, a spirit and habits of low cabal and intrigue.—
Speech on Mr. Fox's India Bill.
SICILY.
SICILY, I think, has these dispositions (republicanism) in as strong a degree as Naples. In neither of these countries exists any thing which very well deserves the name of government or exact police.—
Memorial on the Affairs of France in
1791.
SCOTLAND.
HOW much have you lost by the participation of Scotland in all your commerce? The external trade of England has more than doubled since that period, and I believe your internal (which is the most advantageous) has been augmented at least fourfold. Such virtue there is in liberality of sentiment, that you have grown richer even by the partnership of poverty.—
Two Letters to Gentlemen in Bristol.
SCOTIA (NOVA) DESCRIBED.
THE province of Nova Scotia was the youngest and the favourite child of the Board (of Trade.) Good God! What sums the nursing of that ill thriven, hard-visaged, and ill-favoured brat, has cost to this wittol nation! Sir, this colony has stood us in a sum of not less than seven hundred thousand pounds. To this day it has made no re-payment; it does not even support those offices of expence, which are miscalled its government; the whole of that job still lies upon the patient, callous shoulders of the people of England.
Sir, I am going to state a fact to you, that will serve to set in full sunshine the real value of formality and official superintendance. There was in the province of Nova Scotia, one little neglected corner; the country of the
neutral French;
which having the good fortune to escape the fostering care both of France and England, and to have been shut out from the protection and regulation of Councils of Commerce, and of Boards of Trade, did, in silence, without notice, and without assistance, increase to a considerable degree. But it seems our nation had more skill and ability in destroying, than in settling a colony. In the last war we did, in my opinion, most inhumanly, and upon pretences that in the eye of an honest man are not worth a farthing, root out this poor innocent deserving people, whom our utter inability to govern, or to reconcile, gave us no sort of right to extirpate. Whatever the merits of that extirpation might have been, it was on the footsteps of a neglected people, it was on the fund of unconstrained poverty, it was on the acquisitions of unregulated industry, that any thing which deserves the name of a colony in that province, has been formed. It has been formed by overflowings from the exuberant population of New England, and by emigration, from other parts of Nova Scotia, of fugitives from the protection of the Board of Trade.—
Oecon. Reform.
SIEYES (ABBE.) Humourous Description of the Abbé's Constitutional Warehouse.
Abbé Sieyes has whole nests of pigeon-holes full of constitutions ready made, ticketed, sorted, and numbered; suited to every season and every fancy; some with the top of the pattern at the bottom, and some with the bottom at the top; some plain, some flowered; some distinguished for their simplicity; others for their complexity; some of blood-colour; some of
boue de Paris
; some with directories, others without a direction; some with councils of elders, and councils of youngsters; some without any council at all. Some where the electors choose the representatives; others where the representatives choose the electors. Some in long coats, and some in short cloaks; some with pantaloons; some without breeches. Some with five-shilling qualifications, some totally unqualified. So that no constitution-fancier may go unsuited from his shop, provided he loves a pattern of pillage, oppression, arbitrary imprisonment, confiscation, exile, revolutionary judgment, and legalized premeditated murder, in any shapes into which they can be put.—
Letter to a noble Lord.
STABLES (ROYAL.)
THERE are, indeed, two offices in his (the king's) stables which are sinecures. By the change of manners, and indeed by the nature of the thing, they must be so; I mean the several keepers of buck-hounds, stag-hounds, fox-hounds, and harriers. They answer no purpose of utility or of splendor. These I propose to abolish. It is not proper that great noblemen should be keepers of dogs, though they were the king's dogs.—
Oecon. Reform.
SOVEREIGN (BRITISH.)
I believe, Sir, that many on the continent altogether mistake the condition of a king of Great Britain. He is a real king, and not an executive officer. If he will not trouble himself with contemptible details, nor wish to degrade himself by becoming a party in little squabbles, I am far from sure, that a king of Great Britain, in whatever concerns him as a king, or indeed as a rational man, who combines his public interest with his personal satisfaction, does not possess a more real, solid, extensive power, than the king of France was possessed of before this miserable revolution. The direct power of the king of England is considerable. His indirect, and far more certain power, is great indeed. He stands in need of nothing towards dignity, of nothing towards splendor; of nothing towards authority; of nothing at all towards consideration abroad. When was it that a king of England wanted wherewithal to make him respected, courted, or perhaps even scared in every state in Europe.—
Letter to a Member of the National Assembly.
SOVEREIGNS. Their Dispositions.
BUT indeed kings are to guard against the sam
sort of dispositions in themselves. They are very easily alienated from all the higher orders of their subjects, whether civil or military, laick or ecclesiastical. It is with persons of condition that Sovereigns chiefly come into contact. It is from them that they generally experience opposition to their will. It is with
their
pride and impracticability, that Princes are most hurt; it is with
their
servility and baseness, that they are most commonly disgusted; it is from their humours and cabals, that they find their affairs most frequently troubled and distracted. But of the common people in pure monarchical governments, Kings know little or nothing; and therefore being unacquainted with their faults (which are as many as those of the great, and much more decisive in their effects when accompanied with power) Kings generally regard them with tenderness and favour, and turn their eyes towards that description of their subjects, particularly when hurt by opposition from the higher orders.—
Memorial on the Affairs of France in
1791.
SOVEREIGN JURISDICTIONS (SEE KING OF GREAT BRITAIN.)
WITH regard to the sovereign jurisdictions, I must observe, Sir, that whoever takes a view of this kingdom in a cursory manner, will imagine, that he beholds a solid, compacted, uniform system of monarchy; in which all inferior jurisdictions are but as rays diverging from one center. But on examining it more nearly, you find much eccentricity and confusion. It is not a monarchy in strictness. But, as in the Saxon times this country was an heptarchy, it is now a strange sort of
pentarchy.
It is divided into five several distinct principalities, besides the supreme. There is indeed this difference from the Saxon times, that as in the itinerant exhibitions of the stage, for want of a complete company, they are obliged to throw a variety of parts on their chief performer; so our sovereign condescends himself to act, not only the principal but all the subordinate parts in the play. He condescends to dissipate the royal character, and to trifle with those light subordinate lacquered sceptres in those hands that sustain the ball, representing the world, or which wield the trident that commands the ocean. Cross a brook, and you lose the king of England; but you have some comfort in coming again under his majesty, though
"shorn of his beams,"
and no more than prince of Wales. Go to the north, and you find him dwindled to a duke of Lancaster; turn to the west of that north, and he pops upon you in the humble character of Earl of Chester. Travel a few miles on, the earl of Chester disappears; and the king surprises you again as count palatine of Lancaster. If you travel beyond Mount Edgecombe, you find him once more in his incognito, and he is duke of Cornwall. So that, quite fatigued and satiated with this dull variety, you are infinitely refreshed when you return to the sphere of his proper splendor, and behold your amiable sovereign in his true, simple, undisguised, native character of majesty.—
Oecon Reform.
SPAIN. Present State of that Country.
AS to Spain, it is a nerveless country. It does not possess the use, it only suffers the abuse of a nobility. For some time, and even before the settlement of the Bourbon dynasty, that body has been systematically lowered, and rendered incapable by exclusion, and for incapacity excluded from affairs. In this circle the body is in a manner annihilated—and so little means have they of any weighty exertion either to controul or to support the crown, that if they at all interfere, it is only by abetting desperate and mobbish insurrections, like that at Madrid which drove Squillace from his place. Florida Blanca is a creature of office, and has little connexion, and no sympathy with that body.
As to the clergy, they are the only thing in Spain that looks like an independent order, and they are kept in some respect by the inquisition, the sole but unhappy resource of public tranquillity and order now remaining in Spain. As in Venice, it is become mostly an engine of state, which indeed to a degree it has always been in Spain. It wars no longer with Jews and Heretics: It has no such war to carry on. It's great object is to keep atheistic and republican doctrines from making their way in that kingdom. No French book upon any subject can enter there which does not contain such matter. In Spain the clergy are of moment from their influence, but at the same time with the envy and jealousy that attend great riches and power. Though the crown has by management with the Pope got a very great share of the ecclesiastical revenues into it's own hands, much still remains to them. There will always be about that court those who look out to a farther division of the church property as a resource, and to be obtained by shorter methods than those of negotiations with the clergy and their chief. But at present I think it likely that they will stop, lest the business should be taken out of their hands; and lest that body in which remains the only life that exists in Spain, and is not a fever, may with their property lose all the influence necessary to preserve the monarchy, or being poor and desperate, may employ whatever influence remains to them as active agents in it's destruction.
The Castilians have still remaining a good deal of their old character, their
Gravidad, Lealdad,
and
il Timor de Dios;
but that character neither is, or ever was exactly true, except of the Castilians only. The several kingdoms which compose Spain, have perhaps some features which run through the whole; but they are in many particulars as different as nations who go by different names; the Catalans, for instance, and the Arragonians too, in a good measure have the spirit of the Miquelets, and much more of republicanism than of an attachment to royalty. They are more in the way of trade and intercourse with France; and upon the least internal movement, will disclose and probably let loose a spirit that may throw the whole Spanish monarchy into convulsions.
It is a melancholy reflection that the spirit of melioration which has been going on in that part of Europe, more or less during this century, and the various schemes very lately on foot for further advancement are all put a stop to at once. Reformation certainly is nearly connected with innovation—and where that latter comes in for too large a share, those who undertake to improve their country may risque their own safety. In times where the correction, which includes the confession of an abuse, is turned to criminate the authority which has long suffered it, rather than to honour those who would amend it (which is the spirit of this malignant French distemper) every step out of the common course becomes critical, and renders it a task full of peril for princes of moderate talents to engage in great undertakings. At present the only safety of Spain is the old national hatred to the French. How far that can be depended upon, if any great ferments should be excited, it is impossible to say.—
Memorial on the Affairs of France in
1791.
SUBLIME. The Sublime and Beautiful compared.
ON closing this general view of beauty, it naturally occurs, that we should compare it with the sublime; and in this comparison there appears a remarkable contrast. For sublime objects are vast in their dimensions, beautiful ones comparatively small: beauty should be smooth and polished; the great, rugged and negligent; beauty should shun the right line, yet deviate from it insensibly; the great, in many cases, loves the right line; and when it deviates, it often makes a strong deviation: beauty should not be obscure; the great ought to be dark and gloomy: beauty should be light and delicate; the great ought to be solid, and even massive. They are, indeed, ideas of a very different nature, one being founded on pain, the other on pleasure; and however they may vary afterwards from the direct nature of their causes, yet these causes keep up an eternal distinction between them, a distinction never to be forgotten by any whose business it is to affect the passions. In the infinite variety of natural combinations, we must expect to find the qualities of things the most remote imaginable from each other united in the same object. We must expect also to find combinations of the same kind in the works of art. But when we consider the power of an object upon our passions, we must know that when any thing is intended to affect the mind by the force of some predominant property, the affection produced is like to be the more uniform and perfect, if all the other properties or qualities of the object be of the same nature, and tending to the same design as the principal;
If black and white blend, soften, and unite,
A thousand ways, are there no black and white?
If the qualities of the sublime and beautiful are sometimes found united, does this prove that they are the same; does it prove that they are any way allied; does it prove even that they are not opposite and contradictory? Black and white may soften, may blend; but they are not therefore the same. Nor, when they are so softened and blended with each other, or with different colours, is the power of black as black, or of white as white, so strong as when each stands uniform and distinguished.—
Sublime and Beautiful.
SUBLIME. Of the Passion caused by the Sublime.
THE passion caused by the great and sublime in
nature,
when those causes operate most powerfully, is astonishment; and astonishment is that state of the so
which all its motions are suspended, with
of horror. In this case the mind is so
with its object, that it cannot entertain
by consequence reason on that object w
ploys it. Hence arises the great power of the
, that, far from being produced by them, it
reasonings, and hurries us on by an irresistible force. Astonishment, as I have said, i
the effect of the sublime in its highest degree; the inferior eff
cts are admiration, reverence, and respect.—
Ibid.
SUBLIME. Source of the Sublime.
WHATEVER is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the
sublime
; that is, it is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling.—
Ibid.
SUBLIME DESCRIPTION.
WE do not any where meet a more sublime description than this justly-celebrated one of Milton, wherein he gives the portrait of Satan with a dignity so suitable to the subject:
He above the rest
In shape and gesture proudly eminent
Stood like a tower; his form had yet not lost
All her original brightness, nor appear'd
Less thou archangel ruin'd, and th' excess
Of glory obscur'd: as when the sun new ris'n
Looks through the horizontal misty air
Shorn of his beams; or from behind the moon
In dim eclipse disastrous twilight sheds
On half the nations; and with fear of change
Perplexes monarchs.
Here is a very noble picture; and in what does this poetical picture consist? in images of a tower, an archangel, the sun rising through mists, or in an eclipse, the ruin of monarchs, and the revolutions of kingdoms. The mind is hurried out of itself, by a crowd of great and confused images; which affect because they are crowded and confused. For separate them, and you lose much of the greatness; and join them, and you infallibly lose the clearness. The images raised by poetry are always of this obscure kind; though in general the effects of poetry are by no means to be attributed to the images it raises. But painting, when we have allowed for the pleasure of imitation, can only affect simply by the images it presents; and even in painting, a judicious obscurity in some things contributes to the effect of the picture; because the images in painting are exactly similar to those in nature; and in nature dark, confused, uncertain images have a greater power on the fancy to form the grander passions, than those have which are more clear and determinate. But where and when this observation may be applied to practice, and how far it shall be extended, will be better deduced from the nature of the subject, and from the occasion, than from any rules that can be given.
I am sensible that this idea has met with opposition, and is likely still to be rejected by several. But let it be considered, that hardly any thing can strike the mind with its greatness, which does not make some sort of approach towards infinity; which nothing can do whilst we are able to perceive its bounds; but to fee an object distinctly, and to perceive its bounds, is one and the same thing. A clear idea is therefore another name for a-little idea. There is a passage in the book of Job amazingly sublime, and this sublimity is principally due to the terrible uncertainty of the thing described:
In thoughts from the visions of the night, when deep sleep salleth upon men, fear came upon me and trembling, which made all my bones to
shake. Then a spirit passed before my face. The hair of my flesh stood up. It stood still,
but I could not discern the form thereof;
an image was before mine eyes; there was silence; and I heard a voice,—Shall mortal man be more just than God?
We are first prepared with the utmost solemnity for the vision; we are first terrified, before we are let even into the obscure cause of our emotion: but when this grand cause of terror makes its appearance, what is it? is it not wrapt up in the shades of its own incomprehensible darkness, more aweful, more striking, more terrible, than the liveliest description, than the clearest painting, could possibly represent it? When painters have attempted to give us clear representations of these very fanciful and terrible ideas, they have, I think, almost always failed; insomuch that I have been at a loss, in all the pictures I have seen of hell, whether the painter did not intend something ludicrous. Several painters have handled a subject of this kind with a view of assembling as many horrid phantoms as their imaginations could suggest; but all the designs I have chanced to meet of the temptations of St. Anthony, were rather a sort of odd wild grotesques, than any thing capable of producing a serious passion. In all these subjects poetry is very happy. Its apparitions, its chimeras, its harpies, its allegorical figures, are grand and affecting; and though Virgil's Fame, and Homer's Discord, are obscure, they are magnificent figures. These figures in painting would be clear enough, but I fear they might become ridiculous.—
Sublime and Beautiful.
SUPPLY.
THE sacred and reserved right of the Commons.—
Speech on American Taxation.
SWITZERLAND.
As to Switzerland, it is a country whose long union, rather than its possible division, is the matter of wonder. Here I know they entertain very sanguine hopes. The aggregation to France of the democratic Swiss republics appears to them to be a work half done by their very form; and it might seem to them rather an encrease of importance to these little commonwealths, than a derogation from their independency, or a change in the manner of their government. Upon any quarrel amongst the cantons nothing is more likely than such an event. As to the aristocratic republics, the general clamour and hatred which the French excite against the very name, (and with more facility and success than against monarchs) and the utter impossibility of their government making any sort of resistance against an insurrection, where they have no troops, and the people are all armed and trained, render their hopes in that quarter, far indeed from unfounded. It is certain that the republic of Berne thinks itself obliged to a vigilance next to hostile, and to imprison or expel all the French whom they find in their territories. But indeed those aristocracies which comprehend whatever is considerable, wealthy, and valuable in Switzerland, do now so wholly depend upon opinion, and the humour of their multitude, that the lightest puff of wind is sufficient to blow them down. If France, under its ancient regimen, and upon the ancient principles of policy, was the support of the Germanic constitution, it was much more so of that of Switzerland, which almost from the very origin of that confederacy rested upon the closeness of its connection with France, on which the Swiss cantons wholly reposed themselves for the preservation of the parts of their body in their respective rights and permanent forms, as well as for the maintenance of all in their general independency.
Switzerland and Germany are the first objects of the new French politicians. When I contemplate what they have done at home, which is in effect little less than an amazing conquest wrought by a change of opinion, in a great part (to be sure far from altogether) very sudden, I cannot help letting my thoughts run along with their designs, and without attending to geographical order, to consider the other states of Europe so far as they may be any way affected by this astonishing revolution. If early steps are not taken in some way or other to prevent the spreading of this influence, I scarcely think any of them perfectly secure.—
Memorial on the Affairs of France in
1791.
SECT. (FRENCH ATHEISTS.)
I MUST declare, that the doctrine and discipline of this sect is one of the most alarming circumstances relating to it, and the attempt to compare them with the opinions of school theologicians, is a thing in itself highly alarming. I know that when men possess the best principles, the passions lead them to act in opposition to them. But when the moral principles are formed systematically to play into the hand of the passions; when that which is to correct vice and to restrain violence, is by an infernal doctrine, daringly avowed, carefully propagated, enthusiastically held, and practically followed, I shall think myself treated like a child, when I hear this compared to a controversy in the schools. When I see a great country, with all its resources, possessed by this sect, and turned to its purposes, I must be worse than a child to conceive it a thing indifferent to me. When this great country is so near me, and otherwise so situated, that except through its territory, I can hardly have a communication with any other, the state of moral and political opinion, and moral and political discipline in that country, becomes of still greater importance to me. When robbers, assassins, and rebels, are not only debauched, but endoctrinated regularly, by a course of inverted education, into murder, insurrection, and the violation of all property, I hold, that this, instead of excusing, or palliating their offences, inspires a peculiar venom into every evil act they do; and that all such universities of crimes, and all such pro
essors of robbery, are in a perpetual state of hostility with mankind.—
Regicide Peace.
SUMMUM JUS.
WHEN confidence is once restored, the odious and suspicious
summum jus
will perish of course.—
Speech on American Taxation.
TASTE. General Idea of Taste.
But to cut off all pretence for cavilling, I mean by the word Taste, no more than that faculty or those faculties of the mind, which are affected with, or which form a judgment of, the works of imagination and the elegant arts. This is, I think, the most general idea of that word, and what is the least connected with any particular theory. And my point in this inquiry is, to find whether there are any principles, on which the imagination is affected, so common to all, so grounded and certain, as to supply the means of reasoning satisfactorily about them. And such principles of taste I fancy there are; however paradoxical it may seem to those who, on a superficial view, imagine that there is so great a diversity of tastes, both in kind and degree, that nothing can be more determinate.
All the natural powers in man, which I know, that are conversant about external objects, are the senses; the imagination; and the judgment. And first with regard to the senses. We do and we must suppose, that as the conformation of their organs are nearly or altogether the same in all men, so the manner of perceiving external objects is in all men the same, or with little difference. We are satisfied that what appears to be light to one eye, appears light to another; that what seems sweet to one palate, is sweet to another; that what is dark and bitter to this man, is likewise dark and bitter to that; and we conclude in the same manner of great and little, hard and soft, hot and cold, rough and smooth; and indeed of all the natural qualities and affections of bodies. If we suffer ourselves to imagine, that their senses present to different men different images of things, this sceptical proceeding will make every sort of reasoning on every subject vain and frivolous, even that sceptical reasoning itself which had persuaded us to entertain a doubt concerning the agreement of our perceptions. But as there will be little doubt that bodies present similar images to the whole species, it must necessarily be allowed, that the pleasures and the pains which every object excites in one man, it must raise in all mankind, whilst it operates naturally, simply, and by its proper powers only; for if we deny this, we must imagine that the same cause operating in the same manner, and on subjects of the same kind, will produce different effects, which would be highly absurd. Let us first consider this point in the sense of taste, and the rather as the faculty in question has taken its name from that sense. All men are agreed to call vinegar sour, honey sweet, and aloes bitter; and as they are all agreed in finding these qualities in those objects, they do not in the least differ concerning their effects with regard to pleasure and pain. They all concur in calling sweetness pleasant, and sourness and bitterness unpleasant. Here there is no diversity in their sentiments; and that there is not, appears fully from the consent of all men in the metaphors which are taken from the sense of taste. A sour temper, bitter expressions, bitter curses, a bitter fate, are terms well and strongly understood by all. And we are altogether as well understood when we say a sweet disposition, a sweet person, a sweet condition, and the like. It is confessed, that custom, and some other causes, have made many deviations from the natural pleasures or pains which belong to these several tastes; but then the power of distinguishing between the natural and the acquired relish remains to the very last. A man frequently comes to prefer the taste of tobacco to that of sugar, and the flavour of vinegar to that of milk; but this makes no confusion in tastes, whilst he is sensible that the tobacco and vinegar are not sweet, and whilst he knows that habit alone has reconciled his palate to these alien pleasures. Even with such a person we may speak, and with sufficient precision, concerning tastes. But should any man be found who declares, that to him tobacco has a taste like sugar, and that he cannot distinguish between milk and vinegar; or that tobacco and vinegar are sweet, milk bitter, and sugar sour; we immediately conclude that the organs of this man are out of order, and that his palate is utterly vitiated. We are as far from conferring with such a person upon tastes, as from reasoning concerning the relations of quantity, with one who should deny that all the parts together were equal to the whole. We do not call a man of this kind wrong in his notions, but absolutely mad. Exceptions of this sort, in either way, do not at all impeach our general rule, nor make us conclude that men have various principles concerning the relations of quantity, or the taste of things. So that when it is said, taste cannot be disputed, it can only mean, that no one can strictly answer what pleasure or pain some particular man may find from the taste of some particular th
ng. This indeed cannot be disputed; but we may dispute, and with sufficient clearness too, concerning the things which are naturally pleasing or disagree able to the sense. But when we talk of any peculiar or acquired relish, then we must know the habits, the prejudices, or the distempers of this particular man, and we must draw our conclusion from those.
This agreement of mankind is not confined to the taste solely. The principle of pleasure derived from sight is the same in all. Light is more pleasing than darkness. Summer, when the earth is clad in green, when the heavens are serene and bright, is more agreeable than winter, when every thing makes a different appearance. I never remember that any thing beautiful, whether a man, a beast, a bird, or a plant, was ever shewn, though it were to an hundred people, that they did not all immediately agree that it was beautiful, though some might have thought that it fell short of their expectation, or that other things were still finer.—
Sublime and Beautiful.
TASTE. Progress of Taste.
A man to whom sculpture is new sees a barber's block, or some ordinary piece of statuary, he is immediately struck and pleased, because he sees something like a human figure; and, entirely taken up with this likeness, he does not at all attend to its defects. No person, I believe, at the first time of seeing a piece of imitation ever did. Some time after, we suppose that this novice lights upon a more artificial work of the same nature. He now begins to look with contempt on what he admired at first; not that he admired it even then for its unlikeness to a man, but for that general though inaccurate resemblance which it bore to the human figure. What he admired at different times in these so different figures, is strictly the same; and though his knowledge is improved, his taste is not altered. Hitherto his mistake was from a want of knowledge in art, and this arose from his inexperience; but he may be still deficient from a want of knowledge in nature. For it is possible that the man in question may stop here, and that the master-piece of a great hand may please him no more than the middling performance of a vulgar artist; and this not for want of better or higher relish, but because all men do not observe with sufficient accuracy on the human figure to enable them to judge properly of an imitation of it. And that the critical taste does not depend upon a superior principle in men, but upon superior knowledge, may appear from several instances. The story of the antient painter and the shoemaker is very well known. The shoemaker set the painter right with regard to some mistakes he had made in the shoe of one of his figures, and which the painter, who had not made such accurate observations on shoes, and was content with a general resemblance, had never observed. But this was no impeachment to the taste of the painter; it only shewed some want of knowledge in the art of making shoes. Let us imagine, that an anatomist had come into the painter's working room. His piece is in general well done, the figure in question in a good attitude, and the parts well adjusted to their various movements; yet the anatomist, critical in his art, may observe the swell of some muscle not quite just in the peculiar action of the figure. Here the anatomist observes what the painter had not observed; and he passes by what the shoemaker had remarked. But a want of the last critical knowledge in anatomy no more reflected on the natural good taste of the painter, or of any common observer of his piece, than the want of an exact knowledge in the formation of a shoe. A fine piece of a decollated head of St. John the Baptist was shewn to a Turkish emperor; he praised many things, but he observed one defect; he observed that the skin did not shrink from the wounded part of the neck. The sultan on this occasion, though his observation was very just, discovered no more natural taste than the painter who executed this piece, or than a thousand European connoisseurs, who probably never would have made the same observation. His Turkish majesty had indeed been well acquainted with that terrible spectacle, which the others could only have represented in their imagination. On the subject of their dislike there is a difference between all these people, arising from the different kinds and degrees of their knowledge; but there is something in common to the painter, the shoemaker, the anatomist, and the Turkish emperor, the pleasure arising from a natural object, so far as each perceives it justly imitated; the satisfaction in seeing an agreeable figure; the sympathy proceeding from a striking and affecting incident. So far as taste is natural, it is nearly common to all.—
Ibid.
TAXATION. An easy Business.
TAXING is an easy business. Any projector can contrive new impositions; any bungler can add to the old. But is it altogether wise to have no other bounds to your impositions, than the patience of those who are to bear them?—
Oecon. Reform.
TEACHERS (NEW).
IF we do not take to our aid the foregone studies of men reputed intelligent and learned, we shall be always beginners. But in effect, men must learn somewhere; and the new teachers mean no more than what they effect, that is, to deprive men of the benefit of the collected wisdom of mankind, and to make them blind disciples of their own particular presumption. Talk to these deluded creatures, all the disciples and most of the masters, who are taught to think themselves so newly fitted up and furnished, and you will find nothing in their houses but the refuse of
Knaves-Acre
; nothing but the rotten stuff, worn out in the service of delusion and sedition in all ages, and which being newly furbished up, patched, and varnished, serves well enough for those who being unacquainted with the conflict which has always been maintained between the sense and nonsense of mankind, know nothing of the former existence and the ancient refutation of the same follies. It is near two thousand years since it has been observed, that these devices of ambition, avarice, and turbulence, were antiquated. They are, indeed, the most ancient of all common places; common places, sometimes of good and necessary causes; more frequently of the worst, but which decide upon neither.
—Eadem semper causa, libido et avaritia, et mutandarum rerum amor.—Coeterum libertas et speciosa nomina pretexuntur; nec quisquam alienum servitium, et dominationem sibi concupivit, ut non eadem ista vocabula usurparet.—
Appeal from the New to the old Whigs.
TEACHING. The best Method of Teaching.
I AM convinced that the method of teaching which approaches most nearly to the method of investigation, is incomparably the best; since not content with serving up a few barren and lifeless truths, it leads to the stock on which they grew; it tends to set the reader himself in the track of invention, and to direct him into those paths in which the author has made his own discoveries, if he should be so happy as to have made any that are valuable.—
Sublime and Beautiful.
THEORY.
A THEORY founded on experiment, and not assumed, is always good for so much as it explains. Our inability to push it indefinitely is no argument at all against it. This inability may be owing to our ignorance of some necessary
mediums
; to a want of proper application to many other causes besides a defect in the principles we employ.—
Ibid.
TRANQUILLITY.
A SORT of delightful horror, a sort of tranquillity tinged with terror; which, as it belongs to self preservation, is one of the strongest of all the passions.—
Ibid.
TREASON.
FELLOWSHIP in treason is a bad ground of considence.—
Memorial on the Affairs of France in
1792.
TRIANGLE. Poor in its Effects.
BECAUSE too great a length in buildings destroys the purpose of greatness, which it was intended to promote; the perspective will lessen it in height as it gains in length; and will bring it at last to a point; turning the whole figure into a sort of triangle, the poorest in its effect of almost any figure that can be presented to the eye.—
Sublime and Beautiful.
TERROR.
THE only difference between pain and terror is, that things which cause pain operate on the mind, by the intervention of the body; whereas things that cause terror, generally affect the bodily organs by the operation of the mind suggesting the danger; but both agreeing, either primarily, or secondarily, in producing a tension, contraction, or violent emotion of the nerves, they agree likewise in every thing else. For it appears very clearly to me, from this, as well as from many other examples, that when the body is disposed by any means whatsoever to such emotions as it would acquire by the means of a certain passion, it will of itself excite something very like the passion in the mind.—
Ibid.
TIMIDITY.
INTERESTED timidity disgraces as much in the cabinet, as personal timidity does in the field. But timidity, with regard to the well-being of our country, is heroic virtue.—
Speech on American Taxation.
TOLERATION.
WE all know, that toleration is odious to the intolerant; freedom to oppressors; property to robbers; and all kinds and degrees of prosperity to the envious.—
Speech at Bristol previous to the Election.
TOLERATION (RELIGIOUS.)
IN many parts of Germany, Protestants and Papists partake the same cities, the same councils, and even the same churches. The unbounded liberality of the King of Prussia's
Frederick the Great.
conduct on this occasion, is known to all the world; and it is of a piece with the other grand maxims of his reign. The magnanimity of the imperial court, breaking through the narrow principles of its predecessors, has indulged its protestant subjects, not only with property, with worship, with liberal education, but with honours and trusts, both civil and military. A worthy protestant gentleman of this country now fills, and fills with credit, an high office in the Austrian Netherlands. Even the Lutheran obstinacy of Sweden has thawed at length, and opened a toleration to all religions. I know myself, that in France the Protestants begin to be at rest. The army, which in that country is every thing, is open to them; and some of the military rewards and decorations which the laws deny, are supplied by others, to make the service acceptable and honourable. The first Minister of Finance in that country is a Protestant. Two years war without a tax, is among the first fruits of their liberality.—
Ibid.
TRADE (DEFINED.)
TRADE is not a limited thing; as if the objects of mutual demand and consumption could not stretch beyond the bounds of our jealousies. God has given the earth to the children of men, and he has undoubtedly, in giving it to them, given them what is abundantly sufficient for all their exigencies; not a scanty, but a most liberal provision for them all. The author of our nature has written it strongly in that nature, and has promulgated the same law in his written word, that man shall eat his bread by his labour; and I am persuaded, that no man, and no combination of men, for their own ideas of their particular profit, can, without great impiety, undertake to say, that he
shall not
do so; that they have no sort of right, either to prevent the labour, or to withhold the bread. Ireland having received no
compensation,
directly or indirectly, for any restraints on their trade, ought not, in justice or common honesty, be made subject to such restraints.—
Two Letters to Gentlemen in Bristol.
TRAGEDY. The Effects of Tragedy.
IT is thus in real calamities. In imitated distresses the only difference is the pleasure resulting from the effects of imitation; for it is never so perfect, but we can perceive it is imitation, and on that principle are somewhat pleased with it. And indeed in some cases we derive as much or more pleasure from that source than from the thing itself. But then I imagine we shall be much mistaken if we attribute any considerable part of our satisfaction in tragedy to the consideration that tragedy is a deceit, and its representation, no realities. The nearer it approaches the reality, and the further it removes us from all idea of fiction, the more perfect is its power. But be its power of what kind it will, it never approaches to what it represents. Choose a day on which to represent the most sublime and affecting tragedy we have; appoint the most favourite actors; spare no cost upon the scenes and decorations; unite the greatest efforts of poetry, painting, and music; and when you have collected your audience, just at the moment when their minds are erect with expectation, let it be reported that a state criminal of high rank is on the point of being executed in the adjoining square; in a moment the emptiness of the theatre would demonstrate the comparative weakness of the imitative arts, and proclaim the triumph of the real sympathy. I believe that this notion of our having a simple pain in the reality, yet a delight in the representation, arises from hence, that we do not sufficiently distinguish what we would by no means choose to do, from what we should be eager enough to see if it was once done. We delight in seeing things, which so far from doing, our heartiest wishes would be to see redressed. This noble capital, the pride of England and of Europe, I believe no man is so strangely wicked as to desire to see destroyed by a conflagration or an earthquake, though he should be removed himself to the greatest distance from the danger. But suppose such a fatal accident to have happened, what numbers from all parts would crowd to behold the ruins, and amongst them many who would have been content never to have seen London in its glory! Nor is it, either in real or fictitious distresses, our immunity from them which produces our delight; in my own mind I can discover nothing like it. I apprehend that this mistake is owing to a sort of sophism, by which we are frequently imposed upon; it arises from our not distinguishing between what is indeed a necessary condition to our doing or suffering any thing in general, and what is the
cause
of some particular act. If a man kills me with a sword, it is a necessary condition to this that we should have been both of us alive before the fact; and yet it would be absurd to say, that our being both living creatures was the cause of his crime and of my death. So it is certain, that it is absolutely necessary my life should be out of any imminent hazard, before I can take a delight in the sufferings of others, real or imaginary, or indeed in any thing else from any cause whatsoever. But then it is a sophism to argue from thence, that this immunity is the cause of my delight either on these or on any occasions. No one can distinguish such a cause of satisfaction in his own mind, I believe; nay, when we do not suffer any very acute pain, nor are exposed to any imminent danger of our lives, we can feel for others, whilst we suffer ourselves; and often then most when we are softened by affliction; we see with pity even distresses which we would accept in the place of our own.—
Sublime and Beautiful.
TRANSACTIONS OF PAST AGES.
WE are very uncorrupt and tolerably enlightened judges of the transactions of past ages; where no passions deceive, and where the whole train of circumstances, from the trifling cause to the tragical event, is set in an orderly series before us.—
Thoughts on the Cause of the present Discontents.
TYRANT AND HIS FAVOURITE, OR TYRANNY DOUBLED.
THERE is hardly any prince without a favourite, by whom he is governed in as arbitrary a manner as he governs the wretches subjected to him. Here the tyranny is doubled. There are two courts, and two interests; both very different from the interests of the people. The favourite knows that the regard of a tyrant is as unconstant and capricious as that of a woman; and concluding his time to be short, he makes haste to fill up the measure of his iniquity, in rapine, in luxury, and in revenge. Every avenue to the throne is shut up. He oppresses, and ruins the people, whilst he persuades the prince, that those murmurs raised by his own oppression are the effects of disaffection to the prince's government. Then is the natural violence of despotism inflamed, and aggravated by hatred and revenge. To deserve well of the state is a crime against the prince. To be popular, and to be a traitor, are considered as synonymous terms. Even virtue is dangerous, as an aspiring quality, that claims an esteem by itself, and independent of the countenance of the court. What has been said of the chief, is true of the inferior officers of this species of government; each in his province exercising the same tyranny, and grinding the people by an oppression, the more severely felt, as it is near them, and exercised by base and subordinate persons. For the gross of the people, they are considered as a mere herd of cattle; and really in a little time become no better; all principle of honest pride, all sense of the dignity of their nature, is lost in their slavery. The day, says Homer, which makes a man a slave, takes away half his worth; and in fact, he loses every impulse to action, but that low and base one of fear.—In this kind of government human nature is not only abused, and insulted, but it is actually degraded and sunk into a species of brutality.—
Vindication of natural Society.
TYRANTS.
THE punishment of real tyrants is a noble and awful act of justice; and it has with truth been said to be consolatory to the human mind.—
Thoughts on the Cause of the present Discontents.
TYRANNY.
FEW are the partizans of departed tyranny.—
Ibid.
TYRANNY.
TYRANNY is a poor provider. It neither knows how to accumulate, nor how to extract.—
Speech on American Taxation.
TYRANNY.
THE arguments of tyranny are as contemptible as its force is dreadful.—
Reflections on the Revolutions in France.
TYRANNY.
NOTHING aggravates tyranny so much as contumely.
Quicquid superbia in contumeliis
was charged by a great man of antiquity, as a principal head of offence against the governor general of that day.—
Speech on Mr. Fox's East-India Bill.
TYRANNY (ANCIENT.)
A GREAT deal of the furniture of ancient tyranny is torn to rags; the rest is entirely out of fashion.—
Thoughts on the Cause of the present Discontents.
TOULON.
I HAVE Toulon in my eye. It was with infinite sorrow I heard, that in taking the king of France's fleet in trust, we instantly unrigged and dismasted the ships, instead of keeping them in a condition to escape in case of disaster, and in order to fulfil our trust, that is, to hold them for the use of the owner, and, in the mean time, to employ them for our common service. These ships are now so circumstanced, that if we are forced to evacuate Toulon, they must fall into the hands of the enemy, or be burnt by ourselves. I know this is by some considered as a fine thing for us. But the Athenians ought not to be better than the English, or Mr. Pitt less virtuous than Aristides.
Are we then so poor in resources that we can do no better with eighteen or twenty ships of the line than to burn them? Had we sent for French Royalist naval officers, of which some hundreds are to be had, and made them select such seamen as they could trust, and filled the rest with our own and Mediterranean seamen, which are all over Italy, to be had by thousands, and put them under judicious English commanders in chief, and with a judicious mixture of our own subordinates, the West Indies would at this day have been ours. It may be said that these French officers would take them for the King of France, and that they would not be in our power. Be it so. The islands would not be ours, but they would not be jacobinized. This is however a thing impossible. They must in effect and substance be ours. But all is upon that false principle of distrust, which, not confiding in strength, can never have the full use of it. They that pay, and feed, and equip, must direct. But I must speak plain upon this subject. The French islands, if they were all our own, ought not to be all kept. A fair partition only ought to be made of those territories. This is a subject of policy very serious, which has many relations and aspects. Just here I only hint at it as answering an objection, whilst I state the mischievous consequences which suffer us to be surprized into a virtual breach of faith, by confounding our ally with our enemy, because they both belong to the same geographical territory.
My clear opinion is, that Toulon ought to be made, what we set out with, a royal French city. By the necessity of the case, it must be under the influence, civil and military, of the allies. But the only way of keeping that jealous and discordant mass from tearing its component parts to pieces, and hazarding the loss of the whole, is to put the place into the nominal government of the Regent, his officers being approved by us. This, I say, is absolutely necessary for a poise amongst ourselves. Otherwise is it to be believed that the Spaniards, who hold that place with us in a sort of partnership contrary to our mutual interest, will see us absolute masters of the Mediterranean, with Gibraltar on one side, and Toulon on the other, with a quiet and composed mind, whilst we do little less than declare that we are to take the whole West Indies into our hands, leaving the vast, unwieldy, and feeble body of the Spanish dominions in that part of the world absolutely at our mercy, without any power to balance us in the smallest degree.
Nothing is so fatal to a nation as an extreme of self-partiality, and the total want of consideration of what others will naturally hope or fear. Spain must think she sees, that we are taking advantage of the confusions which reign in France, to disable that country, and, of course, every country from affording her protection, and in the end, to turn the Spanish monarchy into a province. If she saw things in a proper point of light, to be sure, she would not consider any other plan of politics as of the least moment in comparison of the extinction of jacobinism. But her ministers (to say the best of them) are vulgar politicians. It is no wonder that they should postpone this great point, or balance it, by considerations of the common politics, that is, the questions of power between
state and state.
If we manifestly endeavour to destroy the balance, especially the maritime and commercial balance, both in Europe and the West Indies (the latter their sore and vulnerable part) from fear of what France may do for Spain hereafter, is it to be wondered, that Spain, infinitely weaker than we are (weaker, indeed, than such a mass of empire ever was) should feel the same fears from our uncontrouled power, that we give way to ourselves from a supposed resurrection of the ancient power of France under a monarchy? It signifies nothing whether we are wrong or right in the abstract; but in respect to our relation to Spain, with such principles followed up in practice, it is absolutely impossible that any cordial alliance can subsist between the two nations. If Spain goes, Naples will speedily follow. Prussia is quite certain, and thinks of nothing but making a market of the present confusions. Italy is broken and divided; Switzerland is jacobinized, I am afraid, completely. I have long seen with pain the progress of French principles in that country. Things cannot go on upon the present bottom. The possession of Toulon, which, well managed, might be of the greatest advantage, will be the greatest misfortune that ever happened to this nation. The more we multiply troops there, the more we shall multiply causes and means of quarrel amongst ourselves. I know but one way of avoiding it, which is to give a greater degree of simplicity to our politics. Our situation does necessarily render them a good deal involved. And, to this evil, instead of increasing it, we ought to apply all the remedies in our power.
See what is, in that place, the consequence (to say nothing of every other) of this complexity. Toulon has, as it were, two gates, an English and a Spanish. The English gate is, by our policy, fast barred against the entrance of any Royalists. The Spaniards open theirs, I fear, upon no fixed principle, and with very little judgment. By means, however, of this foolish, mean, and jealous policy on our side, all the Royalists whom the English might select as most practicable, and most subservient to honest views, are totally excluded. Of those admitted, the Spaniards are masters. As to the inhabitants they are a nest of Jacobins which is delivered into our hands, not from principle, but from fear. The inhabitants of Toulon may be described in few words. It is
differtum naulis, cauponibus atque malignis.
The rest of the seaports are of the same description.
Another thing which I cannot account for is, the sending for the bishop of Toulon, and afterwards forbidding his entrance. This is as directly contrary to the declaration, as it is to the practice of the allied powers. The king of Prussia did better. When he took Verdun, he actually re-instated the bishop and his chapter. When he thought he should be the master of Chalons, he called the bishop from Flanders, to put him into possession. The Austrians have restored the clergy wherever they obtained possession. We have proposed to restore religion as well as monarchy; and in Toulon we have restored neither the one nor the other. It is very likely that the Jacobin Sans-Culottes, or some of them, objected to this measure, who rather chuse to have the atheistic bussoons of clergy they have got to sport with, till they are ready to come forward, with the rest of their worthy brethren, in Paris and other places, to declare that they are a set of impostors, that they never believed in God, and never will preach any sort of religion. If we give way to our Jacobins in this point, it is fully and fairly putting the government, civil and ecclesiastical, not in the king of France, to whom, as the protector and governor, and in substance the head of the Gallican church, the nomination to the bishoprics belonged, and who made the bishop of Toulon; it does not leave it with him, or even in the hands of the king of England, or the king of Spain; but in the basest Jacobins of a low sea-port, to exercise,
pro tempore,
the sovereignty. If this point of religion is thus given up, the grand instrument for reclaiming France is abandoned.—
Memorial on the Affairs of France in
1792.
TURKEY.
WHERE the finest countries in the most genial climates in the world are wasted by peace more than any countries have been worried by war; where arts are unknown, where manufactures languish, where science is extinguished, where agriculture decays, where the human race itself melts away and perishes under the eye of the observer.—
Reflections on the Revolution in France.
VARIATION, WHY BEAUTIFUL.
ANOTHER principal property of beautiful objects is, that the line of their parts is continually varying its direction; but it varies it by a very insensible deviation; it never varies it so quickly as to surprize, or by the sharpness of its angle to cause any twitching or convulsion of the optic nerve. Nothing long continued in the same manner, nothing very suddenly varied, can be beautiful; because both are opposite to that agreeable relaxation which is the characteristic effect of beauty. It is thus in all the senses. A motion in a right line, is that manner of moving next to a very gentle descent, in which we meet the least resistance; yet it is not that manner of moving, which, next to a descent, wearies us the least. Rest certainly tends to relax: yet there is a species of motion which relaxes more than rest; a gentle oscillatory motion, arising and falling. Rocking sets children to sleep better than absolute rest; there is, indeed, scarce any thing at that age, which gives more pleasure than to be gently lifted up and down; the manner of playing which their nurses use with children, and the weighing and swinging used afterwards by themselves as a favourite amusement, evince this very sufficiently. Most people must have observed the sort of sense they have had, on being swiftly drawn in an easy coach on a smooth turf, with gradual ascents and declivities. This will give a better idea of the beautiful, and point out its probable cause better, than almost any thing else. On the contrary, when one is hurried over a rough, rocky, broken road, the pain felt by these sudden inequalities shews why similar sights, feelings, and sounds, are so contrary to beauty: and with regard to the feeling, it is exactly the same in its effect, or very nearly the same, whether, for instance, I move my hand along the surface of a body of a certain shape, or whether such a body is moved along my hand. But to bring this analogy of the senses home to the eye: if a body presented to that sense has such a waving surface, that the rays of light reflected from it are in a continual insensible deviation from the strongest to the weakest (which is always the case in a surface gradually unequal) it must be exactly similar in its effect on the eye and touch; upon the one of which it operates directly, on the other indirectly. And this body will be beautiful if the lines which compose its surface are not continued, even so varied, in a manner that may weary or dissipate the attention. The variation itself must be continually varied.—
Sublime and Beautiful.
VICTORY.
THE season of victory is the time for treating with honor and advantage.—
Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol.
VICTORS (BARBAROUS.) Their Policy.
THE policy of barbarous victors, who contemn a subdued people, and insult their feelings, has ever been, as much as in them lay, to destroy all vestiges of the ancient country, in religion, in polity, &c.—
Reflections on the Revolution in France.
VOTE. (SEE PARLIAMENT.)
THE taking away of a vote is the taking away the shield which the subject has, not only against the oppression of power, but that worst of all oppressions, the persecution of private society, and private manners. No candidate for parliamentary influence is obliged to the least attention towards them, either in cities or counties.—
Letter on the Penal Laws against Irish Catholics.
VICINITY (CIVIL.) The Law of Civil Vicinity.
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, these duties are obligatory, and these rights are to be asserted. It has ever been the method of public jurists to draw 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 praetorian law is such. There is a
Law of Neighbourhood
which does not leave a man perfect master on his own ground. When a neighbour sees a
new erection,
in the nature of a nuisance, set up at his door, he has a right to represent it to the Judge; who, on his part, has a right to order the work to be staid; or if established, to be removed. On this head, the parent law is express and clear; and has made many wise provisions, which, without destroying, regulate and restrain the right of
ownership
by the right of
vicinage.
No
innovation
is permitted that may redound, even secondarily, to the prejudice of a neighbour. The whole doctrine of that important head of praetorian law,
"
De novi operis nunciatione,
"
is founded on the principle, that no
new
use should be made of a man's private liberty of operating upon his private property, from whence a detriment may be justly apprehended by his neighbour. This law of denunciation is prospective. It is to anticipate what is called
damnum infectum,
or
damnum nondum factum,
that is a damage justly apprehended but not actually done. Even before it is clearly known whether the innovation be damageable or not, the Judge is competent to issue a prohibition to innovate, until the point can be determined. This prompt interference is grounded on principles favourable to both parties. It is preventive of mischief difficult to be repaired, and of ill blood difficult to be softened.—The rule of law, therefore, which comes before the evil, is amongst the very best parts of equity, and justifies the promptness of the remedy; because, as it is well observed,
Res damni infecti celeritatem desiderat, & periculosa est dilatio.
This right of denunciation does not hold, when things continue, however inconveniently to the neighbourhood, according to the
ancient
mode. For there is a sort of presumption against novelty, drawn out of a deep consideration of human nature and human affairs; and the maxim of jurisprudence is well laid down,
Velustas pro lege semper habetur.
Such is the law of civil vicinity. Now where there is no constituted Judge, as between independent states there is not, the vicinage itself is the natural judge. It is, preventively, the assertor of its own rights, or remedially, their avenger. Neighbours are presumed to take cognizance of each other's acts.
"
Vicini, vicinorum sacta presumuntur scire.
"
This principle, which, like the rest, is as true of nations as of 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. 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. 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, is ever 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.—
Regicide Peace.
VULGAR AND MECHANICAL POLITICIANS. (SEE AMERICA.)
ALL this, I know well enough, will sound wild and chimerical to the profane herd of those vulgar and mechanical politicians, who have no place among us; a sort of people who think that nothing exists but what is gross and material; and who therefore, far from being qualified to be directors of the great movement of empire, are not fit to turn a wheel in the machine. But to men truly initiated and rightly taught, these ruling and master principles, which, in the opinion of such men as I have mentioned, have no substantial existence, are in truth every thing, and all in all. Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together. If we are conscious of our situation, and glow with zeal to fill our place as becomes our station and ourselves, we ought to auspicate all our public proceedings on America, with the old warning of the church,
Sursum corda!
We ought to elevate our minds to the greatness of that trust to which the order of Providence has called us. By adverting to the dignity of this high calling, our ancestors have turned a savage wilderness into a glorious empire; and have made the most extensive, and the only honourable conquests; not by destroying, but by promoting, the wealth, the number, the happiness, of the human race. Let us get an American revenue as we have got an American empire. English privileges have made it all that it is; English privileges alone will make it all it can be.—
Speech on Conciliation with American.
UGLINESS.
THE true opposite to beauty is not disproportion or deformity, but
ugliness;
and as it proceeds from causes opposite to those of positive beauty, we cannot consider it until we come to treat of that. Between beauty and ugliness there is a sort of mediocrity, in which the assigned proportions are most commonly found; but this has no effect upon the passions.—
Sublime and Beautiful.
WAR. Ground of War with France.
VARIOUS persons may concur in the same measure on various grounds. They may be various, without being contrary to, or exclusive of, each other. I thought the insolent, unprovoked aggression of the Regicide upon our ally of Holland, a good ground of war; I think his manifest attempt to overturn the balance of Europe a good ground of war; as a good ground of war I consider his declaration of war on his Majesty and his kingdom. But though I have taken all these to my aid, I consider them as nothing more than as a sort of evidence to indicate the treasonable mind within. It was not for their former declaration of war, nor for any specific act of hostility that I primarily wished to resist them, or to persevere in my resistance. It was because 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.—
Regicide Peace.
WAR. View of War that 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 not above six that could be called an interval of peace; and this interval was in reality nothing more than a very active preparation for war. 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 Gertrudenburgh. The last, when the war ended by the treaty of Utrecht. Even then, a very great part of the nation, and that which contained by far the most intelligent statesmen, was against the conclusion of the war. I do not enter into the merits of that question as between the parties. I only state the existence of that opinion as a fact. I mention the length of the war as a proof, that though the countries which now compose the kingdom, for a part of the time were not united, and through all the time continued with a raw and ill cemented union, and though they were further split into parties as vehement, and more equally divided than now they are, and that we were possessed of far less abundant resources in all kinds than we now enjoy.—I mean to mark, that under all these disadvantages the English nation was then a great people; that we had then an high mind, and a constancy unconquerable; that we were then inspired with no flushy 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 without winds the billows will insult the adverse shore, as that the gross mass of the people will be moved and elevated without the influence of superior authority, or superior mind.
This impulse ought, in my opinion, to have been given in this war; and it ought to have been continued to it at every instant. It is made, if ever war was made, to touch all the great springs of action in the human breasts. It ought not to have been a war of apology. The minister had, in this conflict, wherewithal to glory in success; to be consoled in adversity; to hold high his principle in all fortunes. If it were not given him to support the falling edifice, he ought to bury himself under the ruins of the civilized world. All the art of Greece, and all the pride and power of eastern monarchs, never heaped upon their ashes so grand a monument.
There were days when his great mind was up to the crisis of the world he is called to act in. His manly eloquence was equal to the elevated wisdom of such sentiments. But the little have triumphed over the great; and unnatural, not an unusual victory. I am sure you cannot forget with how much uneasiness we heard in conversation, the language of more than one gentleman at the opening of this contest,
"that he was willing to try the war for a year or two, and if it did not succeed, then to vote for peace."
As if war was a matter of experiment! As if you could take it up or lay it down as an idle frolic! As if the dire goddess that presides over it, with her murderous spear in her hand, and her gorgon at her breast, was a coquette to be flirted with! We ought with reverence to approach that tremendous divinity, that loves courage, but commands counsel. War never leaves a nation where it was found. The interval between that and peace is, indeed,
"a very hideous dream, in which the genius and the mortal instruments are seriously at work."
It is never to be entered into without a mature deliberation; not a deliberation lengthened out into a perplexing indecision, but a deliberation leading to a sure and fixed judgment. When so taken up, it is not to be abandoned without reason as valid, as fully, and as extensively considered; for peace may be made as unadvisedly as war. Nothing is so rash as fear; and the counsels of pusillanimity very rarely put off, whilst they are always sure to aggravate the evils they would fly from.
In that great war carried on against Louis the XIVth, for near eighteen years, Government spared no pains to satisfy the people, that though they were to be animated by a desire of glory, glory was not their ultimate object: but that every thing dear to them, in religion, in law, in liberty, every thing which as freemen, as Englishmen, and as citizens of the great commonwealth of Christendom, they had at heart, was then at stake. Whether they did not exaggerate the danger I will not dispute. A danger, and no small danger, unquestionably there was; and that long and arduous war was pursued, upon at least as solid and manly grounds, as the peace was made which put an end to it. A danger to avert a danger—a present inconvenience and suffering to prevent a foreseen future, and a worse calamity—these are the motives that belong to an animal, who, in his constitution, is at once adventurous and provident; circumspect, and daring; whom his Creator has made, as the Poet says,
"of large discourse, looking before and after."
But never can a vehement and sustained spirit of fortitude be kindled in a people by a war of calculation. It has nothing that can keep the mind erect under the gusts of adversity. Even where men are willing, as sometimes they are, to barter their blood for lucre, to hazard their safety to gratify their avarice, that passion, like all the passions, must see it's objects distinct and near at hand.
The passions are hungry and impatient. Speculative plunder; contingent spoil; future long adjourned uncertain booty; pillage which must enrich a late posterity, and which possibly may not reach to posterity at all; these, for any length of time, will never support a mercenary war. The people are in the right. The calculation of profit in all such wars is false. On balancing the account of such wars, ten thousand hogsheads of sugar are purchased at ten thousand times their price. The blood of man should never be shed but to redeem the blood of man. It is well shed for our family, for our friends, for our God, for our country, for our kind. The rest is vanity; the rest is crime.
In the war of the Grand Alliance, most of these considerations voluntarily and naturally had their part. Some were pressed into the service. The political interest easily went in the track of the natural sentiment. In the reverse course the carriage does not follow freely. I am sure the natural feeling, as I have just said, is a far more predominant ingredient in this war, than in that of any other that ever was waged by this kingdom.
If the war made to prevent the union of two crowns upon one head was a just war, this, which is made to prevent the tearing all crowns from all heads which ought to wear them, and with the crowns to smite off the sacred heads themselves, this is a just war.
If a war to prevent Louis the Fourteenth from imposing his religion was just, a war to prevent the murderers of Louis the Sixteenth from imposing their irreligion upon us is just; a war to prevent the operation of a system, which makes life without dignity, and death without hope, is a just war.
If to preserve political independence and civil freedom to nations, was a just ground of war; a war to preserve national independence, property, liberty, life, and honour, from certain universal havock, is a war just, necessary, manly, pious; and we are bound to persevere in it by every principle, divine and human, as long as the system which menaces them all, and all equally, has an existence in the world.—
Ibid.
WAR. The present a religious War.
WE cannot, if we would, delude ourselves about the true state of this dreadful contest. It is a religious war. It includes in its object undoubtedly every other interest of society as well as this; but this is the principal and leading feature. It is through this destruction of religion that our enemies propose the accomplishment of all their other views. The French revolution, impious at once and fanatical, had no other plan for domestic power and foreign empire. Look at all the proceedings of the National Assembly, from the first day of declaring itself such in the year 1789, to this very hour, and you will find full half of their business to be directly on this subject. In fact it is the spirit of the whole. The religious system, called the constitutional church, was on the face of the whole proceeding set up only as a mere temporary amusement to the people, and so constantly stated in all their conversations, till the time should come, when they might with safety cast off the very appearance of all religion whatsoever, and persecute christianity throughout Europe with fire and sword. The constitutional clergy are not the ministers of any religion: they are the agents and instruments of this horrible conspiracy against all morals. It was from a sense of this, that in the English addition to the articles proposed at St. Domingo, tolerating all religions, we very wisely refused to suffer that kind of traitors and buffoons.
This religious war is not a controversy between sect and sect as formerly, but a war against all sects and all religions. The question is not whether you are to overturn the catholic, to set up the protestant. Such an idea in the present state of the world is too contemptible. Our business is to leave to the schools the discussion of the controverted points, abating as much as we can the acrimony of disputants on all sides. It is for christian statesmen, as the world is now circumstanced, to secure their common basis, and not to risque the subversion of the whole fabric by pursuing these distinctions with an ill-timed zeal. We have in the present grand alliance, all modes of government as well as all modes of religion. In government, we mean to restore that which, notwithstanding our diversity of forms we are all agreed in, as fundamental in government. The same principle ought to guide us in the religious part; conforming the mode, not to our particular ideas (for in that point we have no ideas in common) but to what will best promote the great general ends of the alliance. As statesmen we are to see which of those modes best suits with the interests of such a commonwealth as we wish to secure and promote. There can be no doubt, but that the catholic religion, which is fundamentally the religion of France, must go with the Monarchy of France; we know that the Monarchy did not survive the Hierarchy, no not even in appearance, for many months; in substance, not for a single hour. As little can it exist in future, if that pillar is taken away; or even shattered and impaired.—
Memorial on the Affairs of France in
1792.
WALES. Sketch of Welch History.
MY next example is Wales. This country was said to be reduced by Henry the Third. It was said more truly to be so by Edward the First. But though then conquered, it was not looked upon as any part of the realm of England. Its old constitution, whatever that might have been, was destroyed; and no good one was substituted in its place. The care of that tract was put into the hands of lords marchers—a form of government of a very singular kind; a strange heterogeneous monster, something between hostility and government; perhaps it has a sort of resemblance, according to the modes of those times, to that of commander in chief at present, to whom all civil power is granted as secondary. The manners of the Welsh nation followed the genius of the government: the people were ferocious, restive, savage, and uncultivated; sometimes composed, never pacified. Wales within itself, was in perpetual disorder; and it kept the frontier of England in perpetual alarm. Benefits from it to the state, there were none. Wales was only known to England, by incursion and invasion.
Sir, during that state of things, parliament was not idle. They attempted to subdue the fierce spirit of the Welch by all sorts of rigorous laws. They prohibited by statute the sending all sorts of arms into Wales, as you prohibit by proclamation (with something more of doubt on the legality) the sending arms to America. They disarmed the Welsh by statute, as you attempted (but still with more question on the legality) to disarm New England by an instruction. They made an act to drag offenders from Wales into England for trial, as you have done (but with more hardship) with regard to America. By another act, where one of the parties was an Englishman, they ordained, that his trial should be always by English. They made acts to restrain trade, as you do; and they prevented the Welsh from the use of fairs and markets, as you do the Americans from fisheries and foreign ports. In short, when the statute-book was not quite so much swelled as it is now, you find no less than fifteen acts of penal regulation on the subject of Wales.
Here we rub our hands—A fine body of precedents for the authority of parliament and the use of it!—I admit it fully; and pray add likewise to these precedents, that all the while, Wales rid this kingdom like an
incubus;
that it was an unprofitable and oppressive burthen; and that an Englishman travelling in that country could not go six yards from the high road without being murdered.
The march of the human mind is slow. Sir, it was not, until after two hundred years, discovered, that by an eternal law, providence had decreed vexation to violence; and poverty to rapine. Your ancestors did however at length open their eyes to the ill husbandry of injustice. They found that the tyranny of a free people could of all tyrannies the least be endured; and that laws made against an whole nation were not the most effectual methods for securing its obedience. Accordingly, in the twenty-seventh year of Henry VIII. the course was entirely altered. With a preamble stating the entire and perfect rights of the crown of England, it gave to the Welsh all the rights and privileges of English subjects. A political order was established; the military power gave way to the civil; the marches were turned into counties. But that a nation should have a right to English liberties, and yet no share at all in the fundamental security of these liberties, the grant of their own property, seemed a thing so incongruous, that eight years after, that is, in the thirty-fifth of that reign, a complete and not ill-proportioned representation by counties and boroughs was bestowed upon Wales, by act of parliament. From that moment, as by a charm, the tumults subsided; obedience was restored; peace, order, and civilization, followed in the train of liberty.—When the day-star of the English constitution had arisen in their hearts, all was harmony within and without—
Simul alba nautis
Stella refulsit,
Defluit saxis agitatus humor:
Concidunt venti, fugiúntque nubes:
Et minax (quòd sic voluere) ponto
Unda recumbit.
Speech on Conciliation with America.
WEALTH.
IT is the intent of the commercial world that wealth should be found every where.—
Two Letters to Gentlemen in Bristol.
WEALTH OF FRANCE IN 1785.
THE wealth of a country is another, and no contemptible standard, by which me may judge whether, on the whole, a government be protecting or destructive. France far exceeds England in the multitude of her people; but I apprehend that her comparative wealth is much inferior to ours; that it is not so equal in the distribution, nor so ready in the circulation. I believe the difference in the form of the two governments to be amongst the causes of this advantage on the side of England. I speak of England, not of the whole British dominions; which, if compared with those of France, will, in some degree, weaken the comparative rate of wealth upon our side. But that wealth, which will not endure a comparison with the riches of England, may constitute a very respectable degree of opulence. Mr. Necker's book published in 1785, contains an accurate and interesting collection of facts relative to public oeconomy and to political arithmetic; and his speculations on the subject are in general wise and liberal. In that work he gives an idea of the state of France, very remote from the portrait of a country whose government was a perfect grievance, an absolute evil, admitting no cure but through the violent and uncertain remedy of a total revolution. He affirms, that from the year 1726 to the year 1784, there was coined at the mint of France, in the species of gold and silver, to the amount of about one hundred millions of pounds sterling.
It is impossible that Mr. Necker should be mistaken in the amount of the bullion which has been coined in the mint. It is a matter of official record. The reasonings of this able financier, concerning the quantity of gold and silver which remained for circulation, when he wrote in 1785, that is about four years before the deposition and imprisonment of the French king, are not of equal certainty; but they are laid on grounds so apparently solid, that it is not easy to refuse a considerable degree of assent to his calculation. He calculates the
numeraire,
or what we call
specie,
then actually existing in France, at about eighty-eight millions of the same English money. A great accumulation of wealth for one country, large as that country is? Mr. Neckar was so far from considering this influx of wealth as likely to cease, when he wrote in 1785, that he presumes upon a future annual increase of two per cent. upon the money brought into France during the periods from which he computed.—
Reflections on the Revolution in France.
WORDS. How Words influence the Passions.
NOW, as words affect, not by any original power, but by representation, it might be supposed that their influence over the passions should be but light; yet it is quite otherwise; for we find by experience that eloquence and poetry are as capable, nay indeed much more capable, of making deep and lively impressions than any other arts, and even than nature itself, in very many cases. And this arises chiefly from these three causes. First, that we take an extraordinary part in the passions of others, and that we are easily affected and brought into sympathy by any tokens which are shewn of them; and there are no tokens which can express all the circumstances of most passions so fully as words; so that if a person speaks upon any subject, he can not only convey the subject to you, but likewise the manner in which he is himself affected by it. Certain it is, that the influence of most things on our passions, is not so much from the things themselves, as from our opinions concerning them; and these again depend very much on the opinions of other men, conveyable for the most part by words only. Secondly, there are many things of a very affecting nature, which can seldom occur in the reality, but the words which represent them often do; and thus they have an opportunity of making a deep impression, and taking root in the mind, whilst the idea of the reality was transient; and to some perhaps never really occurred in any shape, to whom it is, notwithstanding, very affecting, as war, death, famine, &c. Besides, many ideas have never been at all presented to the senses of any men but by words, as God, angels, devils, heaven, and hell, all of which have however a great influence over the passions. Thirdly, by words we have it in our power to make such
combinations
as we cannot possibly do otherwise. By this power of combining we are able, by the addition of well-chosen circumstances, to give a new life and force to the simple object. In painting we may represent any fine figure we please; but we never can give it those enlivening touches which it may receive from words. To represent an angel in a picture, you can only draw a beautiful young man winged; but what painting can furnish out any thing so grand as the addition of one word,
"the angel of the
Lord
?"
It is true, I have here no clear idea; but these words affect the mind more than the sensible image did, which is all I contend for. A picture of Priam dragged to the altar's foot, and there murdered, if it were well executed, would undoubtedly be very moving; but there are very aggravating circumstances, which it could never represent:
Sanguine foedantem
quos ipse sacraverat
ignes.
As a further instance, let us consider those lines of Milton, where he describes the travels of the fallen angels through their dismal habitation;
—O'er many a dark and dreary vale
They pass'd, and many a region dolorous;
O'er many a frozen, many a fiery Alp;
Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death,
A universe of death.
Here is displayed the force of union in
Rocks, caves, lakes, dens, bogs, fens, and shades;
which yet would lose the greatest part of the effect, if they were not the
Rocks, caves, lakes, dens, bogs, fens, and shades—
—of
Death.
This idea, or this affection caused by a word, which nothing but a word could annex to the others, raises a very great degree of the sublime; and this sublime is raised yet higher by what follows, a
"
universe of Death.
"
Here are again two ideas not presentable but by language; and an union of them great and amazing beyond conception; if they may properly be called ideas which present no distinct image to the mind;—but still it will be difficult to conceive how words can move the passions which belong to real objects, without representing these objects clearly. This is difficult to us, because we do not sufficiently distinguish, in our observations upon language, between a clear expression, and a strong expression. These are frequently confounded with each other, though they are in reality extremely different. The former regards the understanding; the latter belongs to the passions. The one describes a thing as it is; the other describes it as it is felt. Now, as there is a moving tone of voice, an impassioned countenance, an agitated gesture, which affect independently of the things about which they are exerted, so there are words, and certain dispositions of words, which being peculiarly devoted to passionate subjects, and always used by those who are under the influence of any passion, touch and move us more than those which far more clearly and distinctly express the subject matter. We yield to sympathy what we refuse to description. The truth is, all verbal description, merely as naked description, though never so exact, conveys so poor and insufficient an idea of the thing described, that it could scarcely have the smallest effect, if the speaker did not call in to his aid those modes of speech that mark a strong and lively feeling in himself. Then, by the contagion of our passions, we catch a fire already kindled in another, which probably might never have been struck out by the object described. Words, by strongly conveying the passions, by those means which we have already mentioned, fully compensate for their weakness in other respects. It may be observed, that very polished languages, and such as are praised for their superior clearness and perspicuity, are generally deficient in strength. The French language has that perfection and that defect. Whereas the oriental tongues, and in general the languages of most unpolished people, have a great force and energy of expression; and this is but natural. Uncultivated people are but ordinary observers of things, and not critical in distinguishing them; but, for that reason, they admire more, and are more affected with what they see, and therefore express themselves in a warmer and more passionate manner. If the affection be well conveyed, it will work its effect without any clear idea; often without any idea at all of the thing which has originally given rise to it.
It might be expected from the fertility of the subject, that I should consider poetry as it regards the sublime and beautiful more at large; but it must be observed that in this light it has been often and well handled already. It was not my design to enter into the criticism of the sublime and beautiful in any art, but to attempt to lay down such principles as may tend to ascertain, to distinguish and to form a sort of standard for them; which purposes I thought might be best effected by an enquiry into the porperties of such things in nature, as raise love and astonishment in us; and by shewing in what manner they operated to produce these passions. Words were only so far to be considered, as to shew upon what principle they were capable of being the representatives of these natural things, and by what powers they were able to affect us often as strongly as the things they represent, and sometimes much more strongly.—
Sublime and Beautiful.
WHIGS (NEW AND ANCIENT.)
THESE new Whigs hold, that the sovereignty, whether exercised by one or many, did not only originate
from
the people (a position not denied, nor worth denying or assenting to) but that, in the people the same sovereignty constantly and unalienably resides; that the people may lawfully depose kings, not only for misconduct, but without any misconduct at all; that they may set up any new fashion of government for themselves, or continue without any government at their pleasure; that the people are essentially their own rule, and their will the measure of their conduct; that the tenure of magistracy is not a proper subject of contract; because magistrates have duties, but no rights: and that if a contract
de facto
is made with them in one age, allowing that it binds at all, it only binds those who were immediately concerned in it, but does not pass to posterity. These doctrines concerning the
people
(a term which they are far from accurately defining, but by which, from many circumstances, it is plain enough they mean their own faction, if they should grow by early arming, by treachery, or violence, into the prevailing force) tend, in my opinion, to the utter subversion, not only of all government, in all modes, and to all stable securities to rational freedom, but to all the rules and principles of morality itself.
I assert, that the ancient whigs held doctrines, totally different from those I have last mentioned. I assert, that the foundations laid down by the Commons, on the trial of Doctor Sacheverel, for justifying the revolution of 1688, are the very same laid down in Mr. Burke's Reflections; that is to say,—a breach of the
original contract,
implied and expressed in the constitution of this country, as a scheme of government fundamentally and inviolably fixed in King, Lords, and Commons.—That the fundamental subversion of this antient constitution, by one of its parts, having been attempted, and in effect accomplished, justified the revolution. That it was justified
only
upon the
necessity
of the case; as the
only
means left for the recovery of that
antient
constitution, formed by the
original contract
of the British state; as well as for the future preservation of the
same
government.
These societies of modern Whigs push their insolence as far as it can go. In order to prepare the minds of the people for treason and rebellion, they represent the king as tainted with principles of despotism, from the circumstance of his having dominions in Germany. In direct defiance of the most notorious truth, they describe his government there to be a despotism; whereas it is a free constitution, in which the states of the electorate have their part in the government; and this privilege has never been infringed by the king, or, that I have heard of, by any of his predecessors. The constitution of the electoral dominions has indeed a double control, both from the laws of the empire, and from the privileges of the country. Whatever rights the king enjoys as elector, have been always parentally exercised, and the calumnies of these scandalous societies have not been authorized by a single complaint of oppression—
Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs.
WHIGS. Character of the Whigs in the Reign of Queen Anne.
IN one of the most fortunate periods of our history this country was governed by a
connexion;
I mean the great connexion of Whigs in the reign of Queen Anne. They were complimented upon the principle of this connexion by a poet who was in high esteem with them. Addison, who knew their sentiments, could not praise them for what they considered as no proper subject of commendation. As a poet who knew his business, he could not applaud them for a thing which in general estimation was not highly reputable. Addressing himself to Britain,
Thy favourites grow not up by fortune's sport,
Or from the crimes or follies of a court.
On the firm basis of desert they rise,
From long-try'd faith, and friendship's holy ties.
The Whigs of those days believed that the only proper method of rising into power, was through hard essays of practised friendship and experimented fidelity. At that time it was not imagined that patriotism was a bloody idol, which required the sacrifice of children and parents, or dearest connexions in private life, and of all the virtues that rise from those relations. They were not of that ingenious paradoxical morality, to imagine that a spirit of moderation was properly shewn in patiently bearing the sufferings of your friends; or that disinterestedness was clearly manifested at the expence of other people's fortune. They believed that no men could act with effect, who did not act in concert; that no men could act in concert who did not act with confidence; and that no men could act with confidence, who were not bound together by common opinions, common affections, and common interests.
These wise men, for such I must call Lord Sunderland, Lord Godolphin, Lord Sommers, and Lord Marlborough, were too well principled in these maxims upon which the whole fabric of public strength is built, to be blown off their ground by the breath of every childish talker. They were not afraid that they should be called an ambitious junto; or that their resolution to stand or fall together should, by placemen, be interpreted into a scuffle for places.—
Ibid.
WIT AND JUDGMENT.
MR. LOCKE very justly and finely observes of wit, that it is chiefly conversant in tracing resemblances: he remarks at the same time, that the business of judgment is rather in finding differences. It may perhaps appear, on this supposition, that there is no material distinction between the wit and the judgment, as they both seem to result from different operations of the same faculty of
comparing.
But in reality, whether they are or are not dependant on the same power of the mind, they differ so very materially in many respects, that a perfect union of wit and judgment is one of the rarest things in the world. When two distinct objects are unlike to each other, it is only what we expect; things are in their common way; and therefore they make no impression on the imagination: but when two distinct objects have a resemblance, we are struck, we attend to them, and we are pleased. The mind of man has naturally a far greater alacrity and satisfaction in tracing resemblances than in searching for differences; because by making resemblances we produce
new images;
we unite, we create, we enlarge our stock; but in making distinctions, we offer no food at all to the imagination; the task itself is more severe and irksome, and what pleasure we derive from it is something of a negative and indirect nature. A piece of news is told me in the morning; this, merely as a piece of news, as a fact added to my stock, gives me some pleasure. In the evening I find there was nothing in it. What do I gain by this, but the dissatisfaction to find that I had been imposed upon? Hence it is that men are much more naturally inclined to belief than to incredulity. And it is upon this principle, that the most ignorant and barbarous nations have frequently excelled in similitudes, comparisons, metaphors, and allegories, who have been weak and backward in distinguishing and sorting their ideas. And it is for a reason of this kind, that Homer and the Oriental writers, though very fond of similitudes, and though they often strike out such as are truly admirable, they seldom take care to have them exact; that is, they are taken with the general resemblance; they paint it strongly, and they take no notice of the difference which may be found between the things compared.—
Sublime and Beautiful.
WILL AND DUTY. The Author of our Being has disposed us not according to our Will but his own.
I CANNOT too often recommend it to the serious consideration of all men, who think civil society to be within the province of moral jurisdiction, that if we owe to it any duty, it is not subject to our will. Duties are not voluntary. Duty and will are even contradictory terms. Now, though society might be at first a voluntary act (which in many cases it undoubtedly was) it continues under a permanent standing covenant, co-existing with the society; and it attaches upon every individual of that society, without any formal act of his own. This is warranted by the general practice, arising out of the general sense of mankind. Men without their choice derive benefits from that association; without their choice they are subjected to duties in consequence of these benefits; and without their choice they enter into a virtual obligation as binding as any that is actual. Look through the whole of life and the whole system of duties. Much the strongest moral obligations are such as were never the results of our option. I allow, that if no supreme ruler exists, wise to form, and potent to enforce, the moral law, there is no sanction to any contract, virtual or even actual, against the will of prevalent power. On that hypothesis, let any set of men be strong enough to set their duties at defiance, and they cease to be duties any longer. We have but this one appeal against irresistible power—
Si genus humanum et mortalia temnitis arma,
At sperate Deos memores fandi atque nefandi.
Taking it for granted that I do not write to the disciples of the Parisian philosophy, I may assume, that the awful author of our being is the author of our place in the order of existence; and that having disposed and marshalled us by a divine tactic, not according to our will, but according to his, he has, in and by that disposition, virtually subjected us to act the part which belongs to the place assigned us. We have obligations to mankind at large, which are not in consequence of any special voluntary pact. They arise from the relation of man to man, and the relation of man to God, which relations are not matters of choice. On the contrary, the force of all the pacts which we enter into with any particular person amongst them, depends upon those prior obligations. In some cases the subordinate relations are voluntary, in others they are necessary, but the duties are all compulsive. When we marry, the choice is voluntary, but the duties are not matter of choice. They are dictated by the nature of the situation. Dark and inscrutable are the ways by which we come into the world. The instincts which give rise to this mysterious process of nature are not of our making. But out of physical causes, unknown to us, perhaps unknowable, arise moral duties, which, as we are able perfectly to comprehend, we are bound indispensably to perform. Children are not consenting to their relation, but their relation, without their actual consent, binds them to its duties; or rather it implies their consent, because the presumed consent of every rational creature is in unison with the predisposed order of things. Men come in that manner into a community with the social state of their parents, endowed with all the benefits, loaded with all the duties of their situation. If the social ties and ligaments, spun out of those physical relations which are the elements of the commonwealth, in most cases begin, and always continue, independently of our will, so does that relation called our country, which comprehends (as it has been well said)
"all the charities of all,"
bind us without any stipulation on our part. Nor are we left without powerful instincts to make this duty as dear and grateful to us, as it is awful and coercive. Our country is not a thing of mere physical locality. It consists, in a great measure, in the ancient order into which we are born. We may have the same geographical situation, but another country; as we may have the same country in another soil. The place that determines our duty to our country is a social, civil relation.—
Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs.
WRITERS.
WRITERS, especially when they act in a body, and with one direction, have great influence on the public mind.—
Reflections on the Revolution in France.
WRITERS, (FRENCH.)
THESE writers, like the propagators of all novelties, pretended to a great zeal for the poor, and the lower orders, whilst in their satires they rendered hateful, by every exaggeration, the faults of courts, of nobility, and of priesthood. They became a sort of demagogues. They served as a link to unite, in favour of one object, obnoxious wealth to restless and desperate poverty.—
Ibid.
ZEAL.
A ZEAL in the larger part carries the force of the whole.—
Regicide Peace.
CHARACTERS.
ANTOINETTE, LATE QUEEN OF FRANCE.
IT is now (1791) sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then the dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in—glittering like the morning-star, full of life, and splendor, and joy. Oh! what a revolution! and what an heart must I have, to contemplate without emotion that elevation, and that fall! Little did I dream when she added titles of veneration to those of enthusiastic, distant, respectful love, that she should ever be obliged to carry the sharp antidote against disgrace concealed in that bosom; little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honour and of cavaliers. I thought ten thousands swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult.—But the age of chivalry is gone.—That of sophisters, oeconomists, and calculators, has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever. Never, never more, shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom. The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations; the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprize is gone! It is gone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honour, which felt a stain like a wound, which inspired courage whilst it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil, by losing all its grossness.—
Reflections on the Revolution in Frances.
ARTOIS (COMTE DE)
THE Comte d'Artois sustains still better the representation of his place than Monsieur. He is eloquent, lively, engaging in the highest degree, of a decided character, full of energy and activity. In a word, he is a brave, honourable, and accomplished cavalier. Their brethren of royalty, if they were true to their own cause and interest, instead of relegating these illustrious persons to an obscure town, would bring them forward in their courts and camps, and exhibit them to, what they would speedily obtain, the esteem, respect, and affection of mankind.—
Memorial on the Affairs of France in
1793.
BENFIELD (PAUL,
ESQ
)
OUR wonderful minister, as you all know, formed a new plan, a plan
insigne recens alio indictum ore,
a plan for supporting the freedom of our constitution by court intrigues, and for removing its corruptions by Indian delinquency. To carry that bold paradoxical design into execution, sufficient funds and apt instruments became necessary. You are perfectly sensible that a parliamentary reform occupies his thoughts day and night, as an essential member in this extraordinary project. In his anxious researches upon this subject, natural instinct, as well as sound policy, would direct his eyes, and settle his choice on Paul Benfield. Paul Benfield is the grand parliamentary reformer, the reformer to whom the whole choir of reformers bow, and to whom even the right honourable gentleman himself must yield the palm: For what region in the empire, what city, what borough, what county, what tribunal, in this kingdom, is not full of his labours. Others have been only speculators; he is the grand practical reformer; and whilst the chancellor of the exchequer pledges in vain the man and the minister, to increase the provincial members, Mr. Benfield has auspiciously and practically begun it. Leaving far behind him even Lord Camelford's generous design of bestowing Old Sarum on the Bank of England, Mr. Benfield has thrown in the borough of Cricklade to reinforce the county representation. Not content with this, in order to station a steady phalanx for all future reforms, this public-spirited usurer, amidst his charitable toils for the relief of India, did not forget the poor rotten constitution of his native country. For her, he did not disdain to stoop to the trade of a wholesale upholsterer for this house, to furnish it, not with the faded tapestry figures of antiquated merit, such as decorate, and may reproach some other houses, but with real, solid, living patterns of true modern virtue. Paul Benfield made (reckoning himself) no fewer than eight members in the last parliament. What copious streams of pure blood must he not have transfused into the veins of the present!
But what is even more striking than the real services of this new imported patriot, is his modesty. As soon as he had conferred this benefit on the constitution, he withdrew himself from our applause. He conceived that the duties of a member of parliament (which with the elect faithful, the true believers, the
Islam
of parliamentary reform, are of little or no merit, perhaps not much better than specious sins) might be as well attended to in India as in England, and the means of reformation to parliament itself, be far better provided. Mr. Benfield was therefore no sooner elected than he set off for Madras, and defrauded the longing eyes of parliament. We have never enjoyed in this house the luxury of beholding that minion of the human race, and contemplating that visage, which has so long reflected the happiness of nations.
It was therefore not possible for the minister to consult personally with this great man. What then was he do? Through a sagacity that never failed him in these pursuits, he found out in Mr. Benfield's representative, his exact resemblance. A specific attraction by which he gravitates towards all such characters, soon brought our minister into a close connexion with Mr. Benfield's agent and attorney; that is, with the grand contractor (whom I name to honour) Mr. Richard Atkinson; a name that will be well remembered as long as the records of this house, as long as the records of the Birtish treasury, as long as the monumental debt of England shall endure.
This gentleman, Sir, acts as attorney for Mr. Paul Benfield. Every one who hears me, is well acquainted with the sacred friendship, and the steady mutual attachment that subsists between him and the present minister. As many members as chose to attend in the first session of this parliament, can best tell their own feelings at the scenes which were then acted. How much that honourable gentleman was consulted in the original frame and fabric of the bill, commonly called Mr. Pitt's India bill, is matter only of conjecture; though by no means difficult to divine. But the public was an indignant witness of the ostentation with which that measure was made his own, and the authority with which he brought up clause after clause, to stuff and fatten the rankness of that corrupt act. As fast as the clauses were brought up to the table, they were accepted. No hesitation; no discussion. They were received by the new minister, not with approbation, but with implicit submission. The reformation may be estimated, by seeing who was the reformer. Paul Benfield's associate and agent was held up to the world as legislator of Indostan. But it was necessary to authenticate the coalition between the men of intrigue in India, and the minister of intrigue in England, by a studied display of the power of this their connecting link. Every trust, every honour, every distinction, was to be heaped upon him. He was at once made a director of the India company; made an alderman of London; and to be made, if ministry could prevail (and I am sorry to say how near, how very near they were prevailing) representative of the capital of this kingdom. But to secure his services against all risque, he was brought in for a ministerial borough. On his part, he was not wanting in zeal for the common cause. His advertisements shew his motives, and the merits upon which he stood. For your minister, this worn-out veteran submitted to enter into the dusty field of the London contest; and you all remember, that in the same virtuous cause, he submitted to keep a sort of public office or counting-house, where the whole business of the last general election was managed. It was openly managed by the direct agent and attorney of Benfield. It was managed upon Indian principles, and for an Indian interest. This was the golden cup of abominations; this the chalice of the fornifications of rapine, usury, and oppression, which was held out by the gorgeous eastern harlot; which so many of the people, so many of the nobles of this land, had drained to the very dregs. Do you think that no reckoning was to follow this lewd debauch? that no payment was to be demanded for this riot of public drunkenness and national prostitution? Here! you have it here before you. The principal of the grand election manager must be indemnified; accordingly the claims of Benfield and his crew must be put above all enquiry.
For several years, Benfield appeared as the chief proprietor, as well as the chief agent, director, and controller, of this system of debt. The worthy chairman of the company has stated the claims of this single gentleman on the nabob of Arcot, as amounting to five hundred thousand pounds
Mr. Smith's Protest.
. Possibly at the time of the chairman's state, they might have been as high. Eight hundred thousand had been mentioned some time before
Madras correspondence on this subject.
; and according to the practice of shifting the names of creditors in these transactions, and reducing or raising the debt itself at pleasure, I think it not impossible, that at one period, the name of Benfield might have stood before those frightful figures. But my best information goes to fix his share no higher than four hundred thousand pounds. By the scheme of the present ministry for adding to the principal twelve
per cent.
from the year 1777 to the year 1781, four hundred thousand pounds, that smallest of the sums ever mentioned for Mr. Benfield, will form a capital of £592,000, at six
per cent.
Thus, besides the arrears of three years, amounting to £106,500 (which, as fast as received, may be legally lent out at 12
per cent.
) Benfield has received, by the ministerial grant before you, an annuity of £35,520 a year, charged on the public revenues.
Our mirror of ministers of finance, did not think this enough for the services of such a friend as Benfield. He found that Lord Macartney, in order to frighten the court of directors from the project, of obliging the nabob to give soucar security for his debt, assuring them, that if they should take that step, Benfield
Appendix, No. 5, A.
would infallibly be the soucar; and would thereby become the entire master of the Carnatic. What Lord Macartney thought sufficient to deter the very agents and partakers with Benfield in his iniquities, was the inducement to the two right honourable gentlemen to order this very soucar security to be given, and to recall Benfield to the city of Madras, from the sort of decent exile, into which he had been relegated by Lord Macartney. You must therefore consider Benfield, as soucar security for £480,000 a year, which at twenty-four
per cent.
(supposing him contented with that profit) will, with the interest of his old debt, produce an annual income of £149,520 a year.
Here is a specimen of the new and pure aristocracy created by the right honourable gentleman
Right Honourable William Pitt.
, as the support of the crown and constitution, against the old, corrupt, refractory, natural interests of this kingdom; and this is the grand counterpoise against all odious coalitions of these interests. A single Benfield outweighs them all; a criminal, who long since ought to have fattened the region kites with his offal, is, by his majesty's ministers, enthroned in the government of a great kingdom, and enfeoffed with an estate, which in the comparison effaces the splendor of all the nobility of Europe.—
Speech on the Nabob of Arcot's Debts.
BURKE, (RICHARD) ESQ.
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 honour, in generosity, in humanity, in every liberal sentiment, and every liberal accomplishment, would not have shewn 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 re-purchased the bounty of the crown, and ten times more, if ten times more he had received. He was made a public creature; and had no enjoyment whatever, but in the performance of some duty. At this exigent moment, the loss of a finished man is not easily supplied.
But a disposer, whose power we are little able to resist, and whose wisdom it behoves us not at all to dispute, has ordained it in another manner, and (whatever my querulous weakness might suggest) a far better. The storm has gone over me; and I lie like one of those old oaks which the late hurricane has scattered about me. I am stripped of all my honours; 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.—
Letter to a noble Lord.
BRISSOT.
THIS Brissot had been in the lowest and basest employ under the deposed monarchy—a sort of thieftaker or spy of police, in which character he acted after the manner of persons in that description. He had been employed by his master, the Lieutenant de Police, for a considerable time in London, in the same or some such honourable occupation. The revolution, which has brought forward all merit of that kind, raised him, with others of a similar class and disposition, to fame and eminence. On the revolution, he became a publisher of an infamous newspaper, which he still continues. He is charged, and I believe justly, as the first mover of the troubles in Hispaniola. There is no wickedness, if I am rightly informed, in which he is not versed, and of which he is not perfectly capable. His quality of news-writer, now an employment of the first dignity in France, and his practices and principles, procured his election into the assembly, where he is one of the leading members.—
Memorial on the Affairs of France in
1793.
CONDORCET.
CONDORCET (though no marquis, as he styled himself before the revolution) is a man of another sort of birth, fashion, and occupation from Brissot; but in every principle, and in every disposition to the lowest as well as the highest and most determined villainies, fully his equal. He seconds Brissot in the Assembly, and is at once his coadjutor and his rival in a newspaper, which in his own name, and as successor to Mr. Garat, a member also of the assembly, he has just set up in that Empire of Gazettes. Condorcet was chosen to draw the first declaration presented by the Assembly to the King, as a threat to the Elector of Treves, and the other princes on the Rhine. In that piece, in which both Feuillans and Jacobins concurred, they declared publicly, and most proudly and insolently, the principle on which they mean to proceed in their future disputes with any of the Sovereigns in Europe, for they say,
"That it is not with fire and sword they mean to attack their territories, but by what will be
more dreadful
to them, the introduction of liberty."
The late Assembly, after the last captivity of the King, had actually chosen this Condorcet by a majority on the ballot, for Preceptor to the Dauphin, who was to be taken out of the hands and direction of his parents, and to be delivered over to this fanatic Atheist, and furious democratic Republican. His untractability to these leaders, and his figure in the Club of Jacobins, which at that time they wished to bring under, alone prevented that part of the arrangement, and others in the same style, from being carried into execution. Whilst he was candidate for this office, he produced his title to it by promulgating the following ideas of the title of his royal pupil to the crown. In a paper written by him, and published with his name, against the re-establishment, even of the appearance of monarchy under any qualifications, He says,
"Jusqu'a ce moment ils [l'Assemblée Nationale] n'ont rien prejugè encore. En se reservant de nominer un Gouverneur au Dauphin, ils n'ont pas prononcé
que cet ensant dut regner;
mais seulement quil
étoit possible
que la Constitution lui destinát; ils ont voulu que l éducation, effacant tout ce que
les prestiges du Trône
ont pu lui inspirer de préjugés sur les droits prétendus de sa naissance, qu'elle lui fit connoítre de bonne heure, et
l'Egalité naturelle des Hommes, et la Souveraineté du peuple;
qu'elle lui apprit à ne pas oublier que c'est
du peuple
qu'il tiendra le tître de Roi, et que
le peuple n'a pas même le droit de renoncer à celui de l'en depouiller.
"Ils ont voulu que cette éducation le rendit également digne, par ses lumières, et ses vertus, de recevoir
avec resignation,
le fardeaux dangereux d'une couronne, ou de la
déposer avec joie
entre les mains de ces frères, qu'il sentit que le devoir et la gloire du Roi d'un peuple libre, est de hâter le moment de n'être plus qu'un citoyen ordinaire.
"Ils ont voulu que
l'inutilité d'un Roi,
la nécessité de chercher les moyens de remplacer
un pouvoir fondé sur les illusions,
fut une des premières vérités ossertes à sa raison;
l'obligation d'y concourir lui méme un des premières devoirs de sa morale; et le desir, de n'itre plus affranchi du joug de la loi, par une inj
icuse inviolabilité, le premier sentiment de
son coeur.
Ils n'ignorent pas que dans ce moment il s'agit bien moins de former un Roi que de lui apprendre
á savoir, á vouloir ne plus l'être
Until now, they (the National Assembly) have prejudged nothing. Reserving to themselves a right to appoint a Preceptor to the Dauphin, they did not declare that
this child was
to reign; but only that
possibly
the Constitution
might
destine him to it: they willed, that while education should efface from his mind all the prejudices arising from
the delusions of the throne
respecting his pretended birthright, it should teach him not to forget, that it is
from the people
he is to receive the title of King, and that
the people do not even possess the right of giving up their power to take it from him.
They willed that this education should render him worthy by his knowledge and by his virtues, both to receive
with submission
the dangerous burden of a crown, and to
resign
it
with pleasure
into the hands of his brethren; that he should be conscious that the hastening of that moment when he is to be only a common citizen, constitutes the duty and the glory of a King of a free people.
They willed that the
uselessness of a King,
the necessity of seeking means to establish something in lieu of
a power founded on illusions,
should be one of the first truths offered to his reason;
the obligation of conforming himself to this, the first of his moral duties; and the desire of no longer being freed from the yoke of the law, by an injurious inviolability, the first and chief sentiment of his heart.
They are not ignorant that in the present moment the object is less to form a King than to teach him
that he should know how to wish no longer to be such.
."
Such are the sentiments of the man who has occasionally filled the chair of the National Assembly, who is their perpetual secretary, their only standing officer, and the most important by far. He leads them to peace or war. He is the great theme of the Republican faction in England. These ideas of M. Condorcet are the principles of those to whom Kings are to entrust their successors, and the interests of their succession. This man would be ready to plunge the poignard in the heart of his pupil, or to whet the axe for his neck. Of all men, the most dangerous is a warm, hot-headed, zealous Atheist. This sort of man aims at dominion, and his means are, the words he always has in his mouth,
"L'égalité naturelle des Hommes, et la Souverainté du Peuple."—
Ibid.
CONTI (PRINCE DE)
LOOKING over all the names I have heard of in this great revolution, in all human affairs, I find no man of any distinction who has remained in that more than stoical apathy, but the Prince de Conti. This mean, stupid, selfish, swinish, and cowardly animal, universally known and despised as such, has, indeed, except in one abortive attempt to elope, been perfectly neutral. However his neutrality, which it seems would qualify him for trust, and, on a competition, must set aside the Prince de Condé, can be of no sort of service. His moderation has not been able to keep him from a jail. The al
ed powers must draw him from that jail, before they can have the full advantage of the exertions of this great neutralist.—
Memorial on the Affairs of France in
1793.
CHATHAM (EARL OF.)
LORD CHATHAM—a great and celebrated name; a name that keeps the name of this country respectable in every other on the globe. It may be truly called,
Clarum et venerabile nemen
Gentibus, et multum nostrae quod proderat urbi.
Sir, the venerable age of this great man, his merited rank, his superior eloquence, his splendid qualities, his eminent services, the vast space he fills in the eye of mankind; and, more than all the rest, his fall from power, which, like death, canonizes and sanctifies a great character, will not suffer me to censure any part of his conduct. I am afraid to flatter him; I am sure I am not disposed to blame him. Let those who have betrayed him by their adulation, insult him with their malevolence. But what I do not presume to censure, I may have leave to lament. For a wise man, he seemed to me at that time, to be governed too much by general maxims. I speak with the freedom of history, and I hope without offence. One or two of these maxims, flowing from an opinion not the most indulgent to our unhappy species, and surely a little too general, led him into measures that were greatly mischievous to himself; and for that reason, among others, perhaps fatal to his country; measures, the effects of
which, I am afraid, are for ever incurable. He made an administration, so checkered and speckled; he put together a piece of joinery, so crossly indented and whimsically dovetailed; a cabinet so variously inlaid; such a piece of diversified Mosaic: such a tesselated pavement without cement; here a bit of black stone, and there a bit of white; patriots and courtiers, king's friends and republicans; whigs and tories; treacherous friends and open enemies: that it was, indeed, a very curious show; but utterly unsafe to touch, and unsure to stand on. The colleagues whom he had assorted at the same boards, stared at each other, and were obliged to ask,
"Sir, your name?—Sir, you have the advantage of me—Mr. Such a one—I beg a thousand pardons—"
I venture to say, it did so happen, that persons had a single office divided between them, who had never spoke to each other in their lives; until they found themselves, they knew not how, pigging together, heads and points, in the same truckle-bed
Supposed to allude to the Right Hon. Lord North, and George Cooke,
Esq
who were made joint paymasters in the summer of 1766, on the removal of the Rockingham administration.
.
Sir, in consequence of this arrangement, having put so much the larger part of his enemies and opposers into power, the confusion was such, that his own principles could not possibly have any effect or influence in the conduct of affairs. If ever he fell into a fit of the gout, or if any other cause withdrew him from public cares, principles directly the contrary were sure to predominate. When he had executed his plan, he had not an inch of ground to stand upon. When he had accomplished his scheme of administration, he was no longer a minister.
When his face was hid but for a moment, his whole system was on a wide sea, without chart or compass. The gentlemen, his particular friends, who, with the names of various departments of ministry, were admitted, to seem, as if they acted a part under him, with a modesty that becomes all men, and with a confidence in him, which was justified even in its extravagance by his superior abilities, had never, in any instance, presumed upon any opinion of their own. Deprived of his guiding influence, they were whirled about, the sport of every gust, and easily driven into any port; and as those who joined with them in manning the vessel were the most directly opposite to his opinions, measures, and character, and far the most artful and most powerful of the set, they easily prevailed, so as to seize upon the vacant, unoccupied, and derelict minds of his friends; and instantly they turned the vessel wholly out of the course of his policy. As if it were to insult as well as to betray him, even long before the close of the first session of his administration, when every thing was publicly transacted, and with great parade, in his name, they made an act, declaring it highly just and expedient to raise a revenue in America. For even then, Sir, even before this splendid orb was entirely set, and while the western horizon was in a blaze with his descending glory, on the opposite quarter of the heavens arose another luminary, and, for his hour, became lord of the ascendant.—
Speech on American Taxation.
CHARLES II.
THE person given to us by Monk (Charles II.) was a man without any sense of his duty as a prince; without any regard to the dignity of his crown; and without any love to his people; dissolute, false, venal, and destitute of any positive good quality whatsoever, except a pleasant temper, and the manners of a gentleman.—
Letter to a Member of the National Assembly.
CROMWELL, (OLIVER.)
CROMWELL, when he attempted to legalize his power, and to settle his conquered country in a state of order, did not look for dispensers of justice in the instruments of his usurpation. Quite the contrary. He sought out with great solicitude and selection, and even from the party most opposite to his designs, men of weight, and decorum of character; men unstained with the violence of the times, and with hands not fouled with confiscation and sacrilege: for he chose an
Hales
for his chief justice, though he absolutely refused to take his civic oaths, or to make any acknowledgment whatsoever of the legality of his government. Cromwell told this great lawyer, that since he did not approve his title, all he required of him was, to administer, in a manner agreeable to his pure sentiments and unspotted character, that justice without which human society cannot subsist: that it was not his particular government, but civil order itself, which as a judge he wished him to support. Cromwell knew how to separate the institutions expedient to his usurpation from the administration of the public justice of his country. For Cromwell was a man in whom ambition had not wholly suppressed, but only suspended the sentiments of religion, and the love (as far as it could consist with his designs) of fair and honourable reputation.—
Ibid.
CONWAY (GENERAL.)
I REMEMBER with a melancholy pleasure, the situation of the Honourable Gentleman (General Conway) who made the motion for the repeal (of the American Stamp Act) in that crisis, when the whole trading interest of this empire, crammed into your lobbies, with a trembling and anxious expectation, waited, almost to a winter's return of light, their sate from your resolutions. When, at length, you had determined in their favour, and your doors, thrown open, shewed them the figure of their deliverer in the well-earned triumph of his important victory, from the whole of that grave multitude there arose an involuntary burst of gratitude and transport. They jumped upon him like children on a long absent father. They clung about him as captives about their redeemer. All England, all America, joined to his applause. Nor did he seem insensible to the best of all earthly rewards, the love and admiration of his fellow citizens.
Hope elevated, and joy brightened his crest.
I stood near him; and his face, to use the expression of the scripture of the first martyr,
"his face was as if it had been the face of an an
l."
I do not know how others feel; but if I
stood in that situation, I never would have exchanged it for all that kings, in their profusion, could bestow. I did hope, that that day's danger and honour would have been a bond to hold us all together for ever. But, alas! that, with other pleasing visions, is long since vanished.—
Speech on American Taxation.
DUNDAS (RIGHT HON. HENRY.)
HE and delicacy are a rare and singular coalition.—
Speech on the Nabob of Arcot's Debts.
DUNNING, MR.
THE bill (for the relief of the Roman Catholics) was seconded by Mr. Dunning, Recorder of this city (Bristol); I shall say the less of him, because his relation to you makes you more particularly acquainted with his merits. But I should appear little acquainted with them, or little sensible of them, if I could utter his name on this occasion, without expressing my esteem for his character. I am not afraid of offending a most learned body, and most jealous of its reputation for that learning, when I say he is the first of his profession. It is a point settled by those who settle every thing else; and I must add (what I am enabled to say from my own long and close observation) that there is not a man, of any profession, or in any situation, of a more erect and independent spirit, of a more proud honour, a more manly mind, a more firm and determined integrity.—
Speech at Bristol previous to the Election.
FOX, (MR.)
AND now, having done my duty to the bill, let me say a word to the author. I should leave him to his own noble sentiments, if the unworthy and illiberal language with which he has been treated, beyond all example of parliamentary liberty, did not make a few words necessary; not so much in justice to him, as to my own feelings. I must say then, that it will be a distinction honourable to the age, that the rescue of the greatest number of the human race that ever were so grievously oppressed, from the greatest tyranny that was ever exercised, has fallen to the lot of abilities and dispositions equal to the task; that it has fallen to one who has the enlargement to comprehend, the spirit to undertake, and the eloquence to support, so great a measure of hazardous benevolence. His spirit is not owing to his ignorance of the state of men and things; he well knows what snares are spread about his path, from personal animosity, from court intrigues, and possibly from popular delusion. But he has put to hazard his ease, his security, his interest, his power, even his darling popularity, for the benefit of a people whom he has never seen. This is the road that all heroes have trod before him. He is traduced and abused for his supposed motives. He will remember, that obloquy is a necessary ingredient in the composition of all true glory: he will remember, that it was not only in the Roman customs, but it is in the nature and constitution of things, that calumny and abuse are essential parts of triumph. These thoughts will support a mind, which only exists for honour, under the burthen of temporary reproach. He is doing indeed a great good; such as rarely falls to the lot, and almost as rarely coincides with the desires of any man. Let him use his time. Let him give the whole length of the reins to his benevolence. He is now on a great eminence, where the eyes of mankind are turned to him. He may live long, he may do much. But here is the summit. He never can exceed what he does this day.
He has faults; but they are faults that, though they may in a small degree tarnish the lustre, and sometimes impede the march of his abilities, have nothing in them to extinguish the fire of great virtues. In those faults, there is no mixture of deceit, of hypocrisy, of pride, of ferocity, of complexional despotism, or want of feeling for the distresses of mankind. His are faults which might exist in a descendant of Henry the Fourth of France, as they did exist in that father of his country. Henry the Fourth wished that he might live to see a fowl in the pot of every peasant of his kingdom. That sentiment of homely benevolence was worth all the splendid sayings that are recorded of kings. But he wished perhaps for more than could be obtained, and the goodness of the man exceeded the power of the king. But this gentleman, a subject, may this day say this at least, with truth, that he secures the rice in his pot to every man in India. A poet of antiquity thought it one of the first distinctions to a prince whom he meant to celebrate, that through a long succession of generations, he had been the progenitor of an able and virtuous citizen, who by force of the arts of peace, had corrected governments of oppression, and suppressed wars of rapine.
Indole proh quanta juvenis, quantumque daturus
Ausoniae populis, ventura in saecula civem.
Ille super Gangem, super exauditus et Indos,
Implebit terras voce; et furialia bella
Fulmine compescet linguae.—
This was what was said of the predecessor of the only person to whose eloquence it does not wrong that of the mover of this bill to be compared. But the Ganges and the Indus are the patrimony of the fame of my honourable friend, and not of Cicero. I confess, I anticipate with joy the reward of those, whose whole consequence, power, and authority, exist only for the benefit of mankind; and I carry my mind to all the people, and all the names and descriptions, that, relieved by this bill, will bless the labours of this parliament, and the confidence which the best house of commons has given to him who the best deserves it. The little cavils of party will not be heard, where freedom and happiness will be felt. There is not a tongue, a nation, or religion in India, which will not bless the presiding care and manly beneficence of this house, and of him who proposes to you this great work. Your names will never be separated before the throne of the Divine Goodness, in whatever language, or with whatever rites, pardon is asked for sin, and reward for those who imitate the Godhead in his universal bounty to his creatures. These honours you deserve, and they will surely be paid, when all the jargon, of influence, and party, and patronage, are swept into oblivion.—
Speech on Mr. Fox's East India Bill.
FOX, MR.
HE (Mr. Burke) was sorry that his right honourable friend (Mr. Fox) had dropped even a word expressive of exultation on that circumstance; (the assumption of citizenship by the French army, &c.) or that he seemed of opinion that the objection from standing armies was at all lessened by it. He attributed this opinion of Mr. Fox entirely to his known zeal for the best of all causes, Liberty. That it was with a pain inexpressible he was obliged to have even the shadow of a difference with his friend, whose authority would be always great with him, and with all thinking people—
Quae maxima semper consitur nobis, et
rit
quae maxima semper
—His confidence in Mr. Fox was such, and so ample, as to be almost implicit. That he was not ashamed to avow that degree of docility. That when the choice is well made, it strengthens instead of oppressing our intellect. That he who calls in the aid of an equal understanding, doubles his own. He who profits of a superior understanding, raises his powers to a level with the height of the superior understanding he unites with. He had found the benefit of such a junction, and would not lightly depart from it. He wished almost, on all occasions, that his sentiments were understood to be conveyed in Mr. Fox's words; and that he wished, as amongst the greatest benefits he could wish the country, an eminent share of power to that right honourable gentleman; because he knew that, to his great and masterly understanding, he had joined the greatest possible degree of that natural moderation, which is the best corrective of power; that he was of the most artless, candid, open, and benevolent disposition; disinterested in the extreme; of a temper mild and placable, even to a fault; without one drop of gall in his whole constitution.
MR. FOX then rose, and declared, in substance, that so far as regarded the French army, he went no farther than the general principle, by which that army shewed itself indisposed to be an instrument in the servitude of their fellow citizens, but did not enter into the particulars of their conduct. He declared, that he did not affect a democracy. That he always thought any of the simple, unbalanced governments bad; simple monarchy, simple aristocracy, simple democracy; he held them all imperfect or vicious: all were bad by themselves: the composition alone was good. That these had been always his principles, in which he had agreed with his friend Mr. Burke, of whom he said many kind and slattering things, which Mr. Burke, I take it for granted, will know himself too well, to think he merits, from any thing but Mr. Fox's acknowledged good-nature. Mr. Fox thought, however, that, in many cases, Mr. Burke was rather carried too far by his hatred to innovation.—
Speech on the Army Estimates in
1790.
GRENVILLE, MR.
UNDOUBTEDLY Mr. Grenville was a first-rate figure in this country. With a masculine understanding, and a stout and resolute heart, he had an application undissipated and unwearied. He took public business, not as a duty which he was to fulfil, but as a pleasure he was to enjoy; and he seemed to have no delight out of this house, except in such things as some way related to the business that was to be done within it. If he was ambitious, I will say this for him, his ambition was of a noble and generous strain. It was to raise himself, not by the low pimping politics of a court, but to win his way to power, through the laborious gradations of public service; and to secure to himself a well earned rank in parliament, by a thorough knowledge of its constitution, and a perfect practice in all its business.
Sir, if such a man fell into errors, it must be from defects not intrinsical; they must be rather sought in the particular habits of his life; which, though they do not alter the ground-work of character, yet tinge it with their own hue. He was bred in a profession. He was bred to the law, which is, in my opinion, one of the first and noblest of human sciences; a science which does more to quicken and invigorate the understanding, than all the other kinds of learning put together; but it is not apt, except in persons very happily born, to open and to liberalize the mind exactly in the same proportion. Passing from that study he did not go very largely into the world; but plunged into business; I mean into the business of office; and the limited and fixed methods and forms established there. Much knowledge is to be had undoubtedly in that line; and there is no knowledge which is not valuable. But it may be truly said, that men too much conversant in office, are rarely minds of remarkable enlargement. Their habits of office are apt to give them a turn to think the substance of business not to be much more important than the forms in which it is conducted. These forms are adapted to ordinary occasions; and therefore persons who are nurtured in office do admirably well, as long as things go on in their common order; but when the high roads are broken up, and the waters out, when a new and troubled scene is opened, and the file affords no precedent, then it is that a greater knowledge of mankind, and a far more extensive comprehension of things is requisite than ever office gave, or than office can ever give. Mr. Grenville thought better of the wisdom and power of human legislation than in truth it deserves. He conceived, and many conceived along with him, that the flourishing trade of this country was greatly owing to law and institution, and not quite so much to liberty; for but too many are apt to believe regulation to be commerce, and taxes to be revenue. Among regulations, that which stood first in reputation was his idol. I mean the act of navigation. He has often professed it to be so. The policy of that act is, I readily admit, in many respects well understood. But I do say, that if the act be suffered to run the full length of its principle, and be not changed and modified according to the change of times and the fluctuation of circumstances, it must do great mischief, and frequently even defeat its own purpose.—
Speech on American Taxation.
GRENVILLE (LORD.)
AN able, vigorous, and well-informed statesman.—
Letter to a Noble Lord.
GEORGE III.
HIS majesty came to the throne of these kingdoms with more advantages than any of his predecessors since the revolution. Fourth in descent, and third in succession of his royal family, even the zealots of hereditary right, in him, saw something to flatter their favorite prejudices; and to justify a transfer of their attachments, without a change in their principles. The person and cause of the Pretender were become contemptible; his title disowned throughout Europe, his party disbanded in England. His majesty came indeed to the inheritance of a mighty war; but, victorious in every part of the globe, peace was always in his power, not to negociate, but to dictate. No foreign habitudes or attachments withdrew him from the cultivation of his power at home. His revenue for the civil establishment, fixed (as it was then thought) at a large, but definite sum, was ample, without being invidious. His influence, by additions from conquest, by an augmentation of debt, by an increase of military and naval establishment, much strengthened and extended. And coming to the throne in the prime and full vigour of youth, as from affection there was a strong dislike, so from dread there seemed to be a general averseness, from giving any thing like offence to a monarch, against whose resentment opposition could not look for a refuge in any sort of reversionary hope.
The most ardent lover of his country cannot wish or Great Britain an happier fate than to continue as she was then left. A people emulous as we are in affection to our present sovereign, know not how to form a prayer to Heaven for a greater blessing upon his virtues, or an higher state of felicity and glory, than that he should live, and should reign, and, when Providence ordains it, should die, exactly like his illustrious predecessor.—
Thoughts on the Cause of the present Discontents.
HENRY IV. OF FRANCE.
HENRY of Navarre was a resolute, active, and politic prince. He possessed, indeed, great humanity and mildness; but an humanity and mildness that never stood in the way of his interests. He never sought to be loved without putting himself first in a condition to be feared. He used soft language with determined conduct. He asserted and maintained his authority in the gross, and distributed his acts of concession only in the detail. He spent the income of his prerogatives nobly; but he took care not to break in upon the capital; never abandoning for a moment any of the claims which he made under the fundamental laws, nor sparing to shed the blood of those who opposed him, often in the field, sometimes on the scaffold. Because he knew how to make his virtues respected by the ungrateful, he has merited the praises of those whom, if they had lived in his time, he would have shut up in the Bastile, and brought to punishment along with the regicides whom he hanged after he had famished Paris into a surrender.—
Reflections on the Revolution in France.
HERTZBERG (BARON.)
HERTZBERG, the King of Prussia's late Minister, is so much of what is called a philosopher, that he was of a faction with that sort of politicians in every thing, and in every place. Even when he defends himself from the imputation of giving extravagantly into these principles, he still considers the revolution of France as a great public good, by giving credit to their fraudulent declaration of their universal benevolence, and love of peace. Nor are his Prussian Majesty's present Ministers at all disinclined to the same system. Their ostentatious preamble to certain late edicts, demonstrates (if their actions had not been sufficiently explanatory of their cast of mind) that they are deeply infected with the same distemper of dangerous, because plausible, though trivial, and shallow speculation.—
Memorial on the Affairs of France in
1791.
HOWARD, (MR.)
I CANNOT name this gentleman without remarking, that his labours and writings have done much to open the eyes and hearts of mankind. He has visited all Europe,—not to survey the sumptuousness of palaces, or the stateliness of temples; not to make accurate measurements of the remains of antient grandeur, nor to form a scale of the curiosity of modern art; nor to collect medals, or collate manuscripts:—but to dive into the depth of dungeons; to plunge into the infection of hospitals; to survey the mansions of sorrow and pain; to take the gage and dimensions of misery, depression, and contempt; to remember the forgotten, to attend to the neglected, to visit the forsaken, and to compare and collate the distresses of all men in all countries. His plan is original; and it is as full of genius as it is of humanity. It was a voyage of discovery; a circummavigation of charity. Already the benefit of his labour is felt more or less in every country: I hope he will anticipate his final reward, by seeing all its effects
lly realized in his own. He will receive, not by retail but in gross, the reward of those who visit the prisoner; and he has so forestalled and monopolized this branch of charity, that there will be, I trust, little room to merit by such acts of benevolence hereafter.—
Speech at Bristol previous to the Election.
KEPPEL (LORD.)
I EVER looked on Lord Keppel as one of the greatest and best men of his age; and I loved, and cultivated him accordingly. He was much in my heart, and I believe I was in his to the very last beat. It was after his trial at Portsmouth that he gave me this picture. With what zeal and anxious affection I attended him through that his agony of glory; what part my son in the early slush and enthusiasm of his virtue, and the pious passion with which he attached himself to all my connections, with what prodigality we both squandered ourselves in courting almost every sort of enmity for his sake, I believe he felt, just as I should have felt, such friendship on such an occasion. I partook indeed of this honour, with several of the first, and best, and ablest in the kingdom, but I was behind hand with none of them; and I am sure, that if to the eternal disgrace of this nation, and to the total annihilation of every trace of honour and virtue in it, things had taken a different turn from what they did, I should have attended him to the quarter-deck with no less good will and more pride, though with far other feelings, than I partook of the general flow of national joy that attended the justice that was done to his virtue.
Pardon, my Lord, the feeble garrulity of age, which loves to diffuse itself in discourse of the departed great. At my years we live in retrospect alone: and, wholly unfitted for the society of vigorous life, we enjoy, the best balm to all wounds, the consolation of friendship, in those only whom we have lost for ever. Feeling the loss of Lord Keppel at all times, at no time did I feel it so much as on the first day when I was attacked in the House of Lords.
Had he lived, that reverend form would have risen in its place, and with a mild, parental reprehension to his nephew the Duke of Bedford, he would have told him that the favour of that gracious prince, who had honoured 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 shewn 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 them that when men in that rank lose decorum, they lose every thing.
On that day I had a loss in Lord Keppel; but the public loss of him in this aweful crisis—! I speak from much knowledge of the person, he never would have listened to any compromise with the rabble rout of this Sans Culotterie of France. His goodness of heart, his reason, his taste, his public duty, his principles, his prejudices, would have repelled him for ever from all connection with that horrid medley of madness, vice, impiety, and crime.
Lord Keppel had two countries; one of descent and one of birth. Their interests 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 shewn in insult to any human being, Lord Kepple 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 honours. He valued the old nobility and the new, not as an excuse for inglorious sloth, but as an incitement to virtuous activity. He considered it as a sort of cure for selfishness and a narrow mind; conceiving that a man born in an elevated place, in himself was nothing, but every thing 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 honour, and fortified by privilege. This nobility forms the chain that connects the ages of a nation, which otherwise (with Mr. Paine) would soon be taught that no one generation can bind another. He felt that no political fabric could be well made without some such order of things as might, through a series of time, afford a rational hope of securing unity, coherence, consistency, and stability to the state. He felt that nothing else can protect it against the levity of courts, and the greater levity of the multitude. That to talk of hereditary monarchy without any thing else of hereditary reverence in the Commonwealth, was a low-minded absurdity; fit only for those detestable
"fools aspiring to be knaves,"
who began to forge in 1789, the false money of the French Constitution—That it is one fatal objection to all
new
fancied and
new fabricated
Republics (among a people, who, once possessing such an advantage, have wickedly and insolently rejected it) that the
prejudice
of an old nobility is a thing that
cannot
be made. It may be improved, it may be corrected, it may be replenished: men may be taken from it, or aggregated to it, but the
thing itself
is matter of
inveterate
opinion, and therefore
cannot
be matter of mere positive institution. He felt, that this nobility, in fact, does not exist in wrong of other orders of the state, but by them, and for them.
I knew the man I speak of; and, if we can divine the future, out of what we collect from the past, no person living would look with more scorn and horror on the impious parricide committed on all their ancestry, and on the desperate attainder passed on all their posterity, by the Orleans, and the Rochefoucaults, and the Fayettes, and the Viscomtes de Noailles, and the false Perigords, and the long
et coetera
of the perfidious Sans Culottes of the court, who like demoniacs, possessed with a spirit of fallen pride, and inverted ambition, abdicated their dignities, disowned their families, betrayed the most sacred of all trusts, and by breaking to pieces a great link of society, and all the cramps and holdings of the state, brought eternal confusion and desolation on their country. For the fate of the miscreant parricides themselves he would have had no pity. Compassion for the myriads of men, of whom the world was not worthy, who by their means have perished in prisons, or on scaffolds, or are pining in beggary and exile, would leave no room in his, or in any well-formed mind, for any such sensation. We are not made at once to pity the oppressor and the oppressed.
Looking to his Batavian descent, how could he bear to behold his kindred, the descendants of the brave nobility of Holland, whose blood prodigally poured out, had, more than all the canals, meers, and inundations of their country, protected their independence, to behold them bowed in the basest servitude, to the basest and vilest of the human race; in servitude to those who, in no respect, were superior in dignity, or could aspire to a better place than that of hangmen to the tyrants, to whose sceptered pride they had opposed an elevation of soul, that surmounted, and overpowered the loftiness of Castile, the haughtiness of Austria, and the overbearing arrogance of France?
Could he with patience bear, that the children of that nobility, who would have deluged their country and given it to the sea, rather than submit to Louis XIV. who was then in his meridian glory, when his arms were conducted by the Turennes, by the Luxembourgs, by the Bousslers; when his councils were directed by the Colberts, and the Louvois; when his tribunals were filled by the Lamoignons, and the Daguessaus—that these should be given up to the cruel sport of the Pichegrus, the Jourdans, the Santerres, under the Rollands, and Brissots, and Gorsas, and Robespierres, the Reubels, the Carnots, and Talliens, and Dantons, and the whole tribe of regicides, robbers, and revolutionary judges, that, from the rotten carcase of their own murdered country, have poured out innumerable swarms of the lowest, and at once the most destructive of the classes of animated nature, which like columns of locusts, have laid waste the fairest part of the world?
Would Keppel have borne to see the ruin of the virtuous Patricians, that happy union of the noble and the burgher, who with signal prudence and integrity, had long governed the cities of the confederate Republic, the cherishing fathers of their country, who, denying commerce to themselves, made it flourish in a manner unexampled under their protection? Could Keppel have borne that a vile faction should totally destroy this harmonious construction, in favour of a robbing Democracy, founded on the spurious rights of man?
He was no great clerk, but he was perfectly well versed in the interests of Europe, and he could not have heard with patience that the country of Grotius, the cradle of the Law of Nations, and one of the richest repositories of all law, should be taught a new code by the ignorant slippancy of Thomas Paine, the presumptuous soppery of La Fayette, with his stolen rights of man in his hand, the wild profligate intrigue and turbulency of Marat, and the impious sophistry of Condorcet, in his insolent addresses to the Batavian Republic?
Could Keppel, who idolized the house of Nassau, who was himself given to England, along with the blessings of the British and Dutch revolutions; with revolutions of stability; with revolutions which consolidated and married the liberties and the interests of the two nations for ever, could he see the fountain of British liberty itself in servitude to France? Could he see with patience a Prince of Orange expelled as a sort of diminutive despot, with every kind of contumely, from the country, which that family of deliverers had so often rescued from slavery, and obliged to live in exile in another country, which owes its liberty to his house?
Would Keppel have heard with patience, that the conduct to be held on such occasions was to become short by the knees to the faction of the homicides, to intreat 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.—
Letter to a noble Lord.
KHAN, (FYZOOLAH.)
FYZOOLAH KHAN, though a bad soldier, (that is the true source of his misfortune) has approved himself a good aumil; having, it is supposed, in the course of a few years, at least
doubled
the population, and revenue of his country.—In another part of the correspondence he is charged with making his country an asylum for the oppressed peasants, who fly from the territories of Oude. The improvement of his revenue, arising from this single crime, (which Mr. Hastings considers as tantamount to treason) is stated at an hundred and fifty thousand pounds a year.
Dr. Swift somewhere says, that he who could make two blades of grass grow where but one grew before, was a greater benefactor to the human race than all the politicians that ever existed. This prince, who would have been deified by antiquity, who would have been ranked with Osiris, and Bacchus, and Ceres, and the divinities most propitious to men, was, for those very merits, by name attacked by the company's government, as a cheat, a robber, a traitor. In the same breath in which he was accused as a rebel, he was ordered at once to furnish 5,000 horse. On delay, or (according to the technical phrase, when any remonstrance is made to them)
"
on evasion,
"
he was declared a violator of treaties, and every thing he had was to be taken from him.—Not one word, however, of horse in this treaty.—
Speech on Mr. Fox's India Bill.
LANGRISHE (SIR HERCULES) M. P.
YOU hated the old system (popery laws in Ireland) as early as I did. Your first juvenile lance was broken against that giant. I think you were even the first who attacked the grim phantom. You have an exceeding good understanding, very good humour, and the best heart in the world. The dictates of that temper and that heart, as well as the policy pointed out by that understanding, led you to abhor the old code. You abhorred it, as I did, for its vicious perfection. For I must do it justice: it was a complete system, full of coherence and consistency; well digested and well composed in all its parts. It was a machine of wise and elaborate contrivance; and as well fitted for the oppression, impoverishment, and degradation of a people, and the debasement, in them, of human nature itself, as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man. It is a thing humiliating enough, that we are doubtful of the effect of the medicines we compound. We are sure of our poisons. My opinion ever was (in which I heartily agreed with those that admired the old code) that it was so constructed, that if there was once a breach in any essential part of it; the ruin of the whole, or nearly of the whole, was, at some time or other, a certainty. For that reason I honour, and shall for ever honour and love you, and those who first caused it to stagger, crack, and gape.—Others may finish; the beginners have the glory; and, take what part you please at this hour (I think you will take the best) your first services will never be forgotten by a grateful country.—
Letter to Sir H. Langrishe, M. P.
LOUIS XVI.
THIS unfortunate king (not without a large share of blame to himself) was deluded to his ruin by a desire to humble and reduce his nobility, clergy, and his corporate magistracy; not that I suppose he meant wholly to eradicate these bodies, in the manner since effected by the democratic power: I rather believe that even Necker's designs did not go to that extent. With his own hand, however, Louis the XVIth pulled down the pillars which upheld his throne; and this he did, because he could not bear the inconveniences which are attached to every thing human; because he found himself cooped up, and in durance by those limits which nature prescribes to desire and imagination; and was taught to consider as low and degrading, that mutual dependance which Providence has ordained that all men should have on one another. He is not at this minute, perhaps, cured of the dread of the power and credit like to be acquired by those who would save and rescue him. He leaves those who suffer in his cause to their fate; and hopes, by various mean delusive intrigues, in which I am afraid he is encouraged from abroad, to regain, among traitors and regicides, the power he has joined to take from his own family, whom he quietly sees proscribed before his eyes, and called to answer to the lowest of his rebels, as the vilest of all criminals.—
Memorial on the Affairs of France in
1791.
LOUIS XVI.
THE only offence of this unhappy monarch towards his people, was his attempt, under a monarchy, to give them a free constitution. For this, by an example hitherto unheard of in the world, he has been deposed. It might well disgrace sovereigns to take part with a deposed tyrant. It would suppose in them a vicious sympathy. But not to make a common cause with a just prince, dethroned by traitors and rebels, who proscribe, plunder, confiscate, and in every way cruelly oppress their fellow citizens, in my opinion is to forget what is due to the honour, and to the rights of all virtuous and legal government.—
Letter to a Member of the National Assembly.
LOUIS XVI.
A MISFORTUNE it has indeed turned out to him, that he was born king of France. But misfortune is not crime, nor is indiscretion always the greatest guilt. I shall never think that a prince, the acts of whose whole reign were a series of concessions to his subjects, who was willing to relax his authority, to remit his prerogatives, to call his people to a share of freedom, not known, perhaps not desired by their ancestors; such a prince, though he should be subject to the common frailties attached to men and to princes, though he should have once thought necessary to provide force against the desperate designs manifestly carrying on against his person, and the remnants of his authority; though all this should be taken into consideration, I shall be led with great difficulty to think he deserves the cruel and insulting triumph of Paris, and of Dr. Price. I tremble for the cause of liberty, from such an example to kings. I tremble for the cause of humanity, in the unpunished outrages of the most wicked of mankind. But there are some people of that low and degenerate fashion of mind, that they look up with a sort of complacent awe and admiration to kings, who know to keep firm in their seat, to hold a strict hand over their subjects, to assert their prerogative, and by the awakened vigilance of a severe despotism, to guard against the very first approaches of freedom. Against such as these they never elevate their voice. Deserters from principle, listed with fortune, they never see any good in suffering virtue, nor any crime in prosperous usurpation.
If it could have been made clear to me, that the king and queen of France (those I mean who were such before the triumph) were inexorable and cruel tyrants, that they had formed a deliberate scheme for massacring the National Assembly. (I think I have seen something like the latter insinuated in certain publications) I should think their captivity just. If this be true, much more ought to have been done, but done, in my opinion, in another manner.—
Reflections on the Revolution in France.
LOUIS XVI.
LOUIS the XVIth 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 were adopted. Their causes no longer lurked in the recesses of cabinets, or in the private conspiracies of the factious. They were no longer to be controlled by the force and influence of the grandees, who formerly had been able to stir up troubles by their discontents, and to quiet them by their corruption. The chain of subordination, even in cabal and sedition, was broken in its most important links. It was no longer the great and the populace. Other interests were formed, other dependencies, other connexions, other communications. The middle class had swelled far beyond its former proportions. Like whatever is the most effectively rich and great in society, that 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 monied 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 every where. The press, in reality, has made every government, in its spirit, democratic. Without it the great, the first movements 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 XVIth, under the influence of the enemies to monarchy, meant to found but one republic, he set up two. When he meant to take away half the crown of his neighbour, he lost the whole of his own. Louis the XVIth could not countenance a new republic: yet between that dangerous lodgment for an enemy, which he had erected, and his throne, 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.—
Regicide Peace.
LOUIS XVIII.
AS to the prince who has a just claim to exercise the regency of France, like other men, he is not without his faults and his defects. But faults or defects (always supposing them faults of common human infirmity) are not what in any country destroy a legal title to government. After being well informed, as any man here can be, I do not find, that these blemishes in this eminent person, are at all considerable, or that they at all affect a character, which is full of probity, honour, generosity, and real goodness. In some points he has but too much resemblance to his unfortunate brother; who with all his weaknesses, had a good understanding, and many parts of an excellent man, and a good King. But Monsieur, without supposing the other deficient (as he was not) excels him in general knowledge, and in a sharp and keen observation, with something of a better address, and an happier mode of speaking and of writing. His conversation is open, agreeable and informed, his manners gracious and princely.—
Memorial on the Affairs of France in
1793.
MONK (GENERAL.)
YOU ask me what I think of the conduct of General Monk. How this affects your case, I cannot tell. I doubt whether you possess, in France, any persons of a capacity to serve the French monarchy in the same manner in which Monk served the monarchy of England. The army which Monk commanded had been formed by Cromwell to a perfection of discipline which perhaps has never been exceeded. That army was besides of an excellent composition. The soldiers were men of extraordinary piety after their mode, of the greatest regularity, and even severity of manners; brave in the field, but modest, quiet, and orderly, in their quarters; men who abhorred the idea of assassinating their officers or any other persons; and who (they at least who served in this island) were firmly attached to those generals, by whom they were well treated and ably commanded. Such an army, once gained, might be depended on. I doubt much, if you could now find a Monk, whether a Monk could find in France, such an army.
I certainly agree with you, that in all probability we owe our whole constitution to the restoration of the English monarchy. The state of things from which Monk relieved England, was however by no means, at that time, so deplorable in any sense, as yours is now, and under the present sway is likely to continue. Cromwell had delivered England from anarchy. His government, though military and despotic, had been regular and orderly. Under the iron, and under the yoke, the soil yielded its produce. After his death, the evils of anarchy were rather dreaded than felt. Every man was yet safe in his house and in his property. But it must be admitted, that Monk freed this nation from great and just apprehensions both of future anarchy and of probable tyranny in some form or other.—
Letter to a Member of the National Assembly.
MONTESQUIEU.
PLACE, for instance, before your eyes, such a man as Montesquieu. Think of a genius not born in every country, or every time; a man gifted by nature with a penetrating aquiline eye; with a judgment prepared with the most extensive erudition; with an Herculean robustness of mind, and nerves not to be broken with labour; a man who could spend twenty years in one pursuit. Think of a man, like the universal patriarch in Milton (who had drawn up before him in his prophetic vision the whole series of the generations which were to issue from his loins) a man capable of placing in review, after having brought together, from the east, the west, the north, and the south, from the coarseness of the rudest barbarism to the most refined and subtle civilization, all the schemes of government which had ever prevailed amongst mankind, weighing, measuring, collating, and comparing them all, joining fact with theory, and calling into council, upon all this infinite assemblage of things, all the speculations which have fatigued the understandings of profound reasoners in all times!—Let us then consider, that all these were but so many preparatory steps to qualify a man, and such a man, tinctured with no national prejudice, with no domestic affection, to admire, and to hold out to the admiration of mankind the constitution of England! And shall we Englishmen revoke to such a suit? Shall we, when so much more than he has produced, remains still to be understood and admired, instead of keeping ourselves in the schools of real science, choose for our teachers men incapable of being taught, whose only claim to know is, that they have never doubted; from whom we can learn nothing but their own indocility; who would teach us to scorn what in the silence of our hearts we ought to adore.—
Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs.
NORTH (LORD.)
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 honour 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, loured over the whole region. For a little time the helm appeared abandoned—
Ipse diem noctemque negat discernere coelo
Nec meminisse vioe mediâ Palinurus in undâ.
Letter to a Noble Lord.
PITT, (RIGHT HON. WILLIAM.)
WE hear, as a reason for clinging to Mr. Fox at present, that nine years ago Mr. Pitt got into power by mischievous intrigues with the court, with the dissenters, and with other factious people out of parliament, to the discredit and weakening of the power of the House of Commons. His conduct nine years ago I still hold to be very culpable. There are, however, many things very culpable that I do not know how to punish. My opinion, on such matters, I must submit to the good of the state, as I have done on other occasions; and particularly with regard to the authors and managers of the American war, with whom I have acted, both in office and in opposition, with great confidence and cordiality, though I thought many of their acts criminal and impeachable. Whilst the misconduct of Mr. Pitt and his associates was yet recent, it was not possible to get Mr. Fox of himself to take a single step, or even to countenance others in taking any step upon the ground of that misconduct and false policy, though if the matters had been then taken up and pursued, such a step could not have appeared so evidently desperate as now it is.—So far from pursuing Mr. Pitt, I know that then, and for some time after, some of Mr. Fox's friends were actually, and with no small earnestness, looking out to a coalition with that gentleman. For years I never heard this circumstance of Mr. Pitt's misconduct on that occasion mentioned by Mr. Fox, either in public or in private, as a ground for opposition to that minister. All opposition, from that period to this very session, has proceeded upon the separate measures as they separately arose, without any vindictive retrospect to Mr. Pitt's conduct in 1784. My memory, however, may fail me. I must appeal to the printed debates, which, (so far as Mr. Fox is concerned) are unusually accurate.
Whatever might have been in our power, at an early period, at this day I see no remedy for what was done in 1784. I had no great hopes even at the time, I was therefore very eager to record a remonstrance on the journals of the House of Commons, as a caution against such a popular delusion in times to come; and this I then feared, and now am certain, is all that could be done. I know of no way of animadverting on the crown. I know no mode of calling to account the House of Lords, who threw out the India Bill, in a way not much to their credit. As little, or rather less, am I able to coerce the people at large, who behaved very unwisely and intemperately on that occasion. Mr. Pitt was then accused, by me as well as others, of attempting to be minister, without enjoying the confidence of the House of Commons, though he did enjoy the confidence of the crown. That House of Commons, whose confidence he did not enjoy, unfortunately did not itself enjoy the confidence, (though we well deserved it) either of the crown or of the public. For want of that confidence, the then House of Commons did not survive the contest. Since that period Mr. Pitt has enjoyed the confidence of the Crown, and of the Lords, and
of the House of Commons,
through two successive parliaments; and I suspect that he has ever since, and that he does still, enjoy as large a portion, at least, of the confidence of the people without doors, as his great rival.—
Letter to the Duke of Portland.
ROCKINGHAM (MARQUES OF.)
THE noble Marquis of Rockingham and his worthy colleagues, whilst they trembled at the prospect of such distresses as you have since brought upon yourselves, were not afraid steadily to look in the face that glaring and dazzling influence at which the eyes of eagles have blenched. He looked in the face one of the ablest, and, let me say, not the most scrupulous oppositions, that perhaps ever was in this house, and withstood it, unaided by, even one of, the usual supports of administration. He did this when he repealed the stamp-act. He looked in the face a person he had long respected and regarded, and whose aid was then particularly wanting; I mean Lord Chatham. He did this when he passed the declaratory act.
It is now given out, for the usual purposes, by the usual emissaries, that Lord Rockingham did not consent to the repeal of this act until he was bullied into it by Lord Chatham; and the reporters have gone so far as publicly to assert, in an hundred companies, that the Honourable Gentleman under the gallery
General Conway.
, who proposed the repeal in the American committee, had another set of resolutions in his pocket directly the reverse of those he moved. These artifices of a desperate cause are, at this time, spread abroad, with incredible care, in every part of the town, from the highest to the lowest companies; as if the industry of the circulation were to make amends for the absurdity of the report.
Sir, whether the noble lord is of a complexion to be bullied by Lord Chatham, or by any man, I must submit to those who know him. I confess, when I look back to that time, I consider him as placed in one of the most trying situations in which, perhaps, any man ever stood. In the House of Peers there were very few of the ministry, out of the noble lord's own particular connexion (except Lord Egmont, who acted, as far as I could discern, an honourable and manly part) that did not look to some other future arrangement, which warped his politics. There were in both houses new and menacing appearances, that might very naturally drive any other, than a most resolute minister, from his measure, or from his station. The household troops openly revolted. The allies of ministry (those, I mean, who supported some of their measures, but refused responsibility for any) endeavoured to undermine their credit, and to take ground that must be fatal to the success of the very cause which they would be thought to countenance. The question of the repeal was brought on by ministry in the committee of this House, in the very instant when it was known that more than one court negociation was carrying on with the heads of the opposition. Every thing, upon every side, was full of traps and mines. Earth below shook; heaven above menaced; all the elements of ministerial safety were dissolved. It was in the mindst of this chaos of plots and counter-plots; it was in the midst of this complicated warfare against public opposition and private treachery, that the firmness of that noble person was put to the proof. He never stirred from his ground; no, not an inch. He remained fixed and determined, in principle, in measure, and in conduct. He practised no managements. He secured no retreat. He sought no apology.—
Speech on American Taxation.
ROUSSEAU.
WE have had the great professor and founder of
the phylosophy of vanity
in England. As I had good opportunities of knowing his proceedings almost from day to day, he left no doubt in my mind, that he entertained no principle either to influence his heart, or to guide his understanding, but
vanity.
With this vice he was possessed to a degree little short of madness. It is from the same deranged eccentric vanity, that this, the insane
Socrates
of the National Assembly, was impelled to publish a mad confession of his mad faults, and to attempt a new sort of glory, from bringing hardily to light the obscure and vulgar vices which we know may sometimes be blended with eminent talents. He has not observed on the nature of vanity, who does not know that it is omnivorous; that it has no choice in its food; that it is fond to talk even of its own faults and vices, as what will excite surprize and draw attention, and what will pass at worst for openness and candour. It was this abuse and perversion, which vanity makes even of hypocrisy, which has driven Rousseau to record a life not so much as chequered, or spotted here and there, with virtues, or even distinguished by a single good action. It is such a life he chooses to offer to the attention of mankind. It is such a life, that with a wild defiance, he slings in the face of his Creator, whom he acknowledges only to brave. Your assembly, knowing how much more powerful example is found than precept, has chosen this man (by his own account without a single virtue) for a model. To him they erect their first statue. From him they commence their series of honours and distinctions.
It is that new invented virtue which your masters canonize, that led their moral hero constantly to exhaust the stores of his powerful rhetoric in the expression of universal benevolence; whilst his heart was incapable of harbouring one spark of common parental affection. Benevolence to the whole species, and want of feeling for every individual with whom the professors come in contact, form the character of the new philosophy. Setting up for an unsocial independence, this their hero of vanity refuses the just price of common labour, as well as the tribute which opulence owes to genius, and which, when paid, honours the giver and the receiver; and then he pleads his beggary as an excuse for his crimes. He melts with tenderness for those only who touch him by the remotest relation, and then, without one natural pang, casts away, as a sort of offal and excrement, the spawn of his disgustful amours, and sends his children to the hospital of foundlings. The bear loves, licks, and forms her young; but bears are not philosophers. Vanity, however, finds its account in reversing the train of our natural feelings. Thousands admire the sentimental writer; the affectionate father is hardly known in his parish.
Under this philosophic instructor in the
ethics of vanity,
they have attempted in France a regeneration of the moral constitution of man. Statesmen, like your present rulers, exist by every thing which is spurious, fictitious, and false; by every thing which takes the man from his house, and sets him on a stage, which makes him up an artificial creature, with painted theatric sentiments, fit to be seen by the glare of candle-light, and formed to be contemplated at a due distance. Vanity is too apt to prevail in all of us, and in all countries. To the improvement of Frenchmen it seems not absolutely necessary that it should be taught upon system. But it is plain that the present rebellion was its legitimate offspring, and it is piously fed by that rebellion, with a daily dole.
If the system of institution, recommended by the assembly, is false and theatric, it is because their system of government is of the same character. To that, and to that alone, it is strictly conformable. To understand either, we must connect the morals with the politics of the legislators. Your practical philosophers, systematic in every thing, have wisely began at the source. As the relation between parents and children is the first among the elements of vulgar, natural morality, they erect statues to a wild, ferocious, low-minded, hard-hearted father, of fine general feelings; a lover of his kind, but a hater of his kindred. Your masters reject the duties of this vulgar relation, as contrary to liberty; as not founded in the social compact; and not binding according to the rights of men; because the relation is not, of course, the result of
free election;
never so on the side of the children, not always on the part of the parents.
The next relation which they regenerate by their statues to Rousseau, is that which is next in sanctity to that of a father. They differ from those old-fashioned thinkers, who considered pedagogues as sober and venerable characters, and allied to the parental. The moralists of the dark times,
preceptorem sancti volu
re parentis esse loco.
In this age of light, they teach the people, that preceptors ought to be in the place of gallants. They systematically corrupt a very corruptible race, (for some time a growing nuisance amongst you) a set of pert, petulant, literators, to whom, instead of their proper, but severe, unostentatious duties, they assign the brilliant part of men of wit and pleasure, of gay, young, military sparks, and danglers at toilets. They call on the rising generation in France, to take a sympathy in the adventures and fortunes, and they endeavour to engage their sensibility on the side of pedagogues, who betray the most awful family trusts, and vitiate their female pupils. They teach the people, that the debauchers of virgins, almost in the arms of their parents, may be safe inmates in their house, and even fit guardians of the honour of those husbands who succeed legally to the office which the young literators had pre-occupied, without asking leave of law or conscience.
Thus they dispose of all the family relations of parents and children, husbands and wives. Through this same instructor, by whom they corrupt the morals, they corrupt the taste. Taste and elegance, though they are reckoned only among the smaller and secondary morals, yet are of no mean importance in the regulation of life. A moral taste is not of force to turn vice into virtue; but it recommends virtue with something like the blandishments of pleasure; and it infinitely abates the evils of vice. Rousseau, a writer of great force and vivacity, is totally destitute of taste in any sense of the word. Your masters, who are his scholars, conceive that all refinement has an aristocratic character. The last age had exhausted all its powers in giving a grace and nobleness to our natural appetites, and in raising them into higher class and order than seemed justly to belong to them. Through Rousseau, your masters are resolved to destroy these aristocratic prejudices. The passion called love, has so general and powerful an influence; it makes so much of the entertainment, and indeed so much the occupation of that part of life which decides the character for ever, that the mode and the principles on which it engages the sympathy, and strikes the imagination, become of the utmost importance to the morals and manners of every society. Your rulers were well aware of this; and in their system of changing your manners to accommodate them to their politics, they found nothing so convenient as Rousseau. Through him they teach men to love after the fashion of philosophers; that is, they teach to men, to Frenchmen, a love without gallantry; a love without any thing of that fine flower of youthfulness and gentility, which places it, if not among the virtues, among the ornaments of life. Instead of this passion, naturally allied to grace and manners, they infuse into their youth an unfashioned, indelicate, sour, gloomy, ferocious medley of pedantry and lewdness; of metaphysical speculations, blended with the coarsest sensuality. Such is the general morality of the passions to be found in their famous philosopher, in his famous work of philosophic gallantry, the
Nouvelle Eloise.
When the fence from the gallantry of preceptors is broken down, and your families are no longer protected by decent pride, and salutary domestic prejudice, there is but one step to a frightful corruption. The rulers in the national assembly are in good hopes that the females of the first families in France may become an easy prey to dancing masters, fidlers, pattern-drawers, friseurs, and valets de chambre, and other active citizens of that description, who having the entry into your houses, and being half domesticated by their situation, may be blended with you by regular and irregular relations. By a law, they have made these people your equals. By adopting the sentiments of Rousseau, they have made them your rivals. In this manner, these great legislators complete their plan of levelling, and establish their rights of men on a sure foundation.
I am certain that the writings of Rousseau lead directly to this kind of shameful evil. I have often wondered how he comes to be so much more admired and followed on the continent than he is here. Perhaps a secret charm in the language may have its share in this extraordinary difference.—
Letter to a Member of the National Assembly.
ROUSSEAU.
MR. HUME told me, that he had from Rousseau himself the secret of his principles of composition. That acute, though eccentric, observer had perceived, that to strike and interest the public, the marvellous must be produced; that the marvellous of the heathen mythology had long since lost its effect; that giants, magicians, fairies, and heroes of romance which succeeded, had exhausted the portion of credulity which belonged to their age; that now nothing was left to a writer but that species of the marvellous, which might still be produced, and with as great an effect as ever, though in another way; that is, the marvellous in life, in manners, in characters, and in extraordinary situations, giving rise to new and unlooked-for strokes in politics and morals. I believe, that were Rousseau alive, and in one of his lucid intervals, he would be shocked at the practical phrenzy of his scholars, who in their paradoxes are servile imitators; and even in their incredulity discover an implicit faith.—
Reflections on the Revolution in France.
SAVILLE, (SIR GEORGE.)
WHEN an act of great and signal humanity was to be done, and done with all the weight and authority that belonged to it, the world could cast its eyes upon none but him (Sir George.) I hope that few things, which have a tendency to bless or to adorn life, have wholly escaped my observation in my passage through it. I have sought the acquaintance of that gentleman, and have seen him in all situations. He is a true genius; with an understanding vigorous, and acute, and refined, and distinguishing even to excess; and illuminated with a most undounbed, peculiar, and original cast of imagination. With these he possesses many external and instrumental advantages; and he makes use of them all. His fortune is among the largest; a fortune which, wholly unincumbered, as it is, with one single charge from luxury, vanity, or excess, sinks under the benevolence of its dispenser. This private benevolence, expanding itself into patriotism, renders his whole being the estate of the public, in which he has not reserved a
peculium
for himself of profit, diversion, or relaxation. During the session, the first in, and the last out of the house of commons; he passes from the senate to the camp; and, seldom seeing the seat of his ancestors, he is always in parliament to serve his country, or in the field to defend it. But in all well-wrought compositions, some particulars stand out more eminently than the rest; and the things which will carry his name to posterity, are his two bills; I mean that for a limitation of the claims of the crown upon landed estates; and this for the relief of the Roman Catholics. By the former, he has emancipated property; by the latter, he has quieted conscience; and by both, he has taught that grand lesson to government and subject,—no longer to regard each other as adverse parties.—
Speech at Bristol previous to the Election.
SAXONY (ELECTOR OF.)
THE present Elector is a Prince of a safe and quiet temper, of great prudence and goodness. He knows that in the actual state of things, not the power and respect belonging to Sovereigns, but their very existence depends on a reasonable frugality. It is very certain that not one Sovereign in Europe can either promise for the continuance of his authority in a state of indigence and insolvency, or dares to venture on a new imposition to relieve himself. Without abandoning wholly the ancient magnificence of his Court, the Elector has conducted his affairs with infinitely more oeconomy than any of his predecessors, so as to restore his finances beyond what was thought possible from the state in which the seven years war had left Saxony. Saxony during the whole of that dreadful period having been in the hands of an exasperated enemy, rigorous by resentment, by nature, and by necessity, was obliged to bear, in a manner, the whole burthen of the war; in the intervals, when their allies prevailed, the inhabitants of that country were not better treated.
The moderation and prudence of the present Elector, in my opinion, rather perhaps respites the troubles than secures the peace of the Electorate. The offer of the succession to the Crown of Poland is truly critical, whether he accepts, or whether he declines it. If the States will consent to his acceptance, it will add to the difficulties, already great, of his situation between the King of Prussia and the Emperor. But these thoughts lead me too far, when I mean to speak only of the interior condition of these Princes. It has always, however, some necessary connexion with their foreign politics.—
Memorial on the Affairs of France in
1791.
TACITUS AND MACHIAVEL.
IT has been said (and, with regard to one of them, with truth) that Tacitus and Machiavel, by their cold way of relating enormous crimes, have in some sort appeared not to disapprove them; that they seem a sort of professors of the art of tyranny, and that they corrupt the minds of their readers by not expressing the detestation and horror that naturally belong to horrible and detestable proceedings.—
Speech on Mr. Fox's India Bill.
TOWNSHEND (CHARLES.)
THERE are many young members in the House (such of late has been the rapid succession of public men) who never saw that prodigy Charles Townshend; nor of course know what a ferment he was able to excite in every thing by the violent ebullition of his mixed virtues and failings. For failings he had undoubtedly—many of us remember them; we are this day considering the effect of them. But he had no failings which were not owing to a noble cause; to an ardent, generous, perhaps an immoderate passion for fame; a passion which is the instinct of all great souls. He worshipped that goddess wheresoever she appeared; but he paid his particular devotions to her in her favorite habitation, in her chosen temple, the House of Commons. Besides the characters of the individuals that compose our body, it is impossible, Mr. Speaker, not to observe, that this House has a collective character of its own. That character, too, however imperfect, is not unamiable. Like all great public collections of men, you possess a marked love of virtue, and an abhorrence of vice. But among vices, there is none, which the House abhors in the same degree with
obstinacy.
Obstinacy, Sir, is certainly a great vice; and in the changeful state of political affairs it is frequently the cause of great mischief. It happens, however, very unfortunately, that almost the whole line of the great and masculine virtues, constancy, gravity, magnanimity, fortitude, fidelity, and firmness, are closely allied to this disagreeable quality, of which you have so just an abhorrence; and in their excess, all these virtues very easily fall into it. He, who paid such a punctilious attention to all your feelings, certainly took care not to shock them by that vice which is the most disgustful to you.
That fear of displeasing those who ought most to be pleased, betrayed him sometimes into the other extreme. He had voted, and in the year 1765, had been an advocate for the stamp-act. Things and the disposition of men's minds were changed. In short, the stamp-act began to be no favorite in this House. He therefore attended at the private meeting, in which the resolutions moved by a Right Honourable Gentleman was settled; resolutions leading to the repeal. The next day he voted for that repeal; and he would have spoken for it too, if an illness (not as was then given out a political) but to my knowledge, a very real illness, had not prevented it.
The very next session, as the fashion of this world passeth away, the repeal began to be in as bad an odour in this House as the stamp-act had been in the session before. To conform to the temper which began to prevail, and to prevail mostly amongst those most in power, he declared, very early in the winter, that a revenue must be had out of America. Instantly he was tied down to his engagements by some, who had no objection to such experiments, when made at the cost of persons for whom they had no particular regard. The whole body of courtiers drove him onward. They always talked as if the king stood in a sort of humiliated state, until something of the kind should be done.
Here this extraordinary man, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, found himself in great straits. To please universally was the object of his life; but to tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men. However he attempted it. To render the tax palatable to the partizans of American revenue, he made a preamble, stating the necessity of such a revenue. To close with the American distinction, this revenue was
external,
or port duty; but again, to soften it to the other party, it was a duty of
supply.
To gratify the
colonists,
it was laid on British manufactures; to satisfy the
merchants of Britain,
the duty was trivial, and (except that on tea, which touched only the devoted East India company) on none of the grand objects of commerce. To counterwork the American contraband, the duty on tea was reduced from a shilling to three-pence. But to secure the favour of those who would tax America, the scene of collection was changed, and, with the rest, it was levied in the colonies. What need I say more? This fine-spun scheme had the usual fate of all exquisite policy. But the original plan of the duties, and the mode of executing that plan, both arose, singly and solely, from a love of our applause. He was truly the child of the House. He never thought, did, or said any thing but with a view to you. He every day adapted himself to your disposition; and adjusted himself before it, as at a looking-glass.
He had observed (indeed it could not escape him) that several persons, infinitely his inferiors in all respects, had formerly rendered themselves considerable in this House by one method alone. They were a race of men (I hope in God the species is extinct) who, when they rose in their place, no man living could divine, from any known adherence to parties, to opinions, or to principles; from any order or system in their politics; or from any sequel or connexion in their ideas, what part they were going to take in any debate. It is astonishing how much this uncertainty, especially at critical times, called the attention of all parties on such men. All eyes were fixed on them, all ears open to hear them; each party gaped, and looked alternately for their vote, almost to the end of their speeches. While the House hung in this uncertainty, now the
hear-hims
rose from this side—now they rebellowed from the other; and that party to whom they fell at length from their tremulous and dancing balance, always received them in a tempest of applause. The fortune of such men was a temptation too great to be resisted by one, to whom, a single whiff of incense withheld gave much greater pain, than he received delight, in the clouds of it, which daily rose about him from the prodigal superstition of innumerable admirers. He was a candidate for contradictory honours; and his great aim was to make those agree in admiration of him who never agreed in any thing else.—
Speech on American Taxation.
WALPOLE, (MR.)
IN stating that Walpole was driven by a popular clamour 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 aera 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 temporised; he managed; and adopting very nearly the sentiments of his adversaries; he opposed their inferences.—This, for a political commander, is the choice of a weak post. His adversaries had the better of the argument, as he handled it, not as the reason and justice of his cause enabled him to manage it.—
Regicide Peace.
WARREN HASTINGS, ESQ.
ATTEND, I pray you, to the situation and prosperity of Benfield, Hastings, and others of that sort. The last of these has been treated by the Company with an asperity of reprehension that has no parallel. They lament,
"that the power of disposing of their property for perpetuity, should fall into such hands."
Yet for fourteen years, with little interruption, he has governed all their affairs, of every description, with an absolute sway. He has had himself the means of heaping up immense wealth; and, during that whole period, the fortunes of hundreds have depended on his smiles and frowns. He himself tells you he is incumbered with two hundred and fifty young gentlemen, some of them of the best families in England, all of whom aim at returning with vast fortunes to Europe in the prime of life. He has then two hundred and fifty of your children as his hostages for your good behaviour; and loaded for years, as he has been, with the execrations of the natives, with the censures of the Court of Directors, and struck and blasted with resolutions of this House, he still maintains the most despotic power ever known in India. He domineers with an overbearing sway in the assemblies of his pretended masters; and it is thought in a degree rash to venture to name his offences in this House, even as grounds of a legislative remedy.—
Speech on Mr. Fox's East-India Bill.
WILKES, (JOHN) ESQ.
I WILL not believe, what no other man living believes, that Mr. Wilkes was punished for the indecency of his publications, or the impiety of his ransacked closet. If he had fallen in a common slaughter of libellers and blasphemers, I could well believe that nothing more was meant than was pretended. But when I see that, for years together, full as impious, and perhaps more dangerous writings to religion, and virtue, and order, have not been punished, nor their authors discountenanced; that the most audacious libels on royal majesty have passed without notice; that the most treasonable invectives against the laws, liberties, and constitution of the country, have not met with the slightest animadversion; I must consider this as a shocking and shameless pretence. Never did an envenomed scurrility against every thing sacred and civil, public and private, rage through the kingdom with such a furious and unbridled licence. All this while the peace of the nation must be shaken, to ruin one libeller, and to tear from the populace a single favourite.
Nor is it that vice merely skulks in an obscure and contemptible impunity. Does not the public behold with indignation, persons not only generally scandalous in their lives, but the identical persons who, by their society, their instruction, their example, their encouragement, have drawn this man into the very faults which have furnished the cabal with a pretence for his persecution, loaded with every kind of favour, honour, and distinction, which a court can bestow? Add but the crime of servility (the
foedum crimen servitutis
) to every other crime, and the whole mass is immediately transmuted into virtue, and becomes the just subject of reward and honour. When therefore I reflect upon this method pursued by the cabal in distributing rewards and punishments, I must conclude that Mr. Wilkes is the object of persecution, not on account of what he has done in common with others who are the objects of reward, but for that in which he differs from many of them: that he is pursued for the spirited dispositions which are blended with his vices; for his unconquerable firmness, for his resolute, indefatigable, strenuous resistance against oppression.—
Thoughts on the Cause of the present Discontents.
THE END.
INDEX,
&c.
A.
ABUSE of office 2
— (inveterate) 3
Abuses 38
Accountants (public) observations on 1
Acquisition (of property) 37
Act of Grace, a dishonourable invention 1
Action and motives 36
Addressers (character of) in the American war 3
Administration (consequences of an exterior administration) 36
Age (character of) 35
Agriculture (American) 19
Algerine republic compared with the French republic 97
Ally 35
Ambassadors 3
Ambition (observations on) 4
America (effect of the victory in Long Island 14
— (proposition of peace with) 16
— rapid population of its colonies 18
— strength of its population
Ibid.
— our commerce with 19
— imports from
Ibid.
— (feelings of its colonies) 29
— (false statements concerning) 30
— lenity to 31
— remoteness of its situation from the first mover of government 26
— plan to check the population of its colonies 25
— the ocean a natural difficulty in its subjection 27
American war (effect of) 3
— ministers who conducted it 9
— (partizans of the) 17
— (state of England at its commencement) 11
— its effects on our national character
Ibid.
American cowardice not to be despised 10
American government, highly popular 22
American religion favourable to liberty 22
American education, effects of 24
American stamp-act (conduct of ministers with respect to the repeal of the) 28
American tax on tea
Ibid.
Americans (their love of freedom) 21
Angles (prejudicial to the grandeur of buildings) 34
Animals (cries of) observations concerning 34
Arbitrary power, how it steals upon the people 3
Aristocracy and despotism, differ but in name 5
Art (works of) observations concerning 34
Artist (true) what he ought to do
Ibid.
Assemblies (American) progress of 12
Assignats 38
Athens and Rome, analogy between 313
Athenian degeneracy described 5
Atheism against our reason and instincts 38
B.
Bank payer 43
Beautiful and sublime compared 392
Beauty defined 39
— observations respecting beauty with regard to generation
Ibid.
— (female) 40
— of the sex 41
Bird (description of a beautiful one)
Ibid.
Bishoprics 46
Bishops and canons 44
Board of trade 43
Board of works 45
Bristol, character of the electors of 42
British freedom
Ibid.
— liberty, an entailed inheritance 46
— state 43
C.
Cabinet (the double) its corrupt influence described 65
Carnatic (eastern) history of Hyder Ally's irruption into 57
— description of 60
Causes (physical) search into, opens and enlarges the mind 292
Caution (great) to be used in the consideration of any complex matter 48
Character 72
Charters, when kept, and when violated 71
Christendom. Observations respecting the states of the Christian world 50
Church establishment, involves in it profound and extensive wisdom 52
Church and state (connexion of) justified 54
Clergy (indulgence to be granted to) 52
— (convocation of) 64
Colours most appropriate to beauty 49
Commons of Great Britain (observations on the nature and character of) 55
Connexion and faction 71
Conscience (tribunal of) destroyed by the regicides of France 54
Constitution (spirit of the British) 49
Constitution and commerce 51
Constitutions (voluntary) 68
Crimes 64
Council 45
D.
Debt (civil) 74
Descent (American) 21
Dignity has no standard 74
Directory (French) president of 98
Discontents (national) 75
Dissentions (civil) 51
Difficulty 72
Delusion 73
Death
Ibid.
Darkness
Ibid.
E.
Ecclesiastics 79
Empire defined 75
English youth in India 76
Establishments (old)
Ibid.
Extension defined 77
Eye, in what its beauty consists 78
F.
Fanaticism, observation concerning 102
Firmness, when to be considered a virtue 250
Financier, the principal objects of 101
Fisheries (American) 20
Forefathers (our) their caution to be imitated 101
France (state of) in the year 1780 95
— body politic of 96
— old constitution of, and consequences of the revolution 81
— situation of previous to the revolution 100
Franchise and office (difference between) 103
France, not to be encountered as a state but as a faction 298
French nobility 90
— gentlemen 91
— manners 92
— assembly
Ibid.
— clubs 93
— philosophers 94
— faction
Ibid.
— revolution compared to a nuisance 99
— republic and that of Algiers compared 97
Frenzy 103
Freedom (civil) remarks concerning 102-3
Frugality 103
G.
Good opposed to malice and injustice 104
Government, deeply interested in composing the minds of the subject
Ibid.
— founded in justice 105
Government, founded in compromise and barter 105
Grief (nature of) 107
Grievances, necessity of removing the first cause of them 106
Gaming 104
Grave
Ibid.
H.
History, a great volume for our instruction 108
Household troops (meeting of) 111
Humility, observation concerning
Ibid.
I.
Imagination, described 111
Individuals, compared with a commonwealth 158
Influence (corrupt) its bad effects
Ibid.
Informer, description of 135
Institution (political) 136
India company, conduct of, to the polygars, or native princes of the Carnatic 113
— policy of 125
India, fate of its natives under the India Company 126
— provinces, state of Bengal 116
— Madras 118
India debt and speculators 120
— British dominions in, described 127
Innovation, nor reform 316
Ireland, catholic clergy of 145
— genius and policy of the English government in 146
— English parliament communicated to 154
— (state of) in 1780 156
Irish catholics, conduct of, in London, during the riots 1780, 137
— object and effect of the penal laws enacted against them
Ibid.
— (state of the) 139
— excluded the elective franchise
Ibid.
— possess no virtual representation 141
— repeal of the test act in Ireland, as affecting the Irish catholics 143
J.
Jacobinism, the revolt of enterprising talents against property 130
Jacobins, Mr. Burke's opinion concerning 131
— character of the British
Ibid.
Judgment in the arts depends upon sensibility 133
Judgment and wit, contrasted 439
Jurisdictions 136
Judges, their independence ought to supersede all other considerations
Ibid.
Justice, the standing policy of civil society 137
K.
King (of Great Britain) his crown hereditary 164
Kings, naturally lovers of low company 158
Kings, adulatory addresses to 159
— when tyrants from policy 164
— ought to bear the freedom of subjects that are obnoxious to them 176
King's Men,
(origin of) 162
L.
Landed property, laudable course of its surplus 189
— always dissolving into individuality 190
Language (outrageous) against America, effects of 187
Law, as a science of methodized society and artificial equity, abolished in France 177
— (of change) the most powerful law of nature 178
Lawgiver, character of a true one 179
Laws, observations concerning 176
— (bad) the worst sort of tyranny 178
Learning, by whom supported in the midst of wars, &c. 184
Legislator and popular governments 180
Legislators (French) severe strictures on 181
Levellers, pervert the natural order of things 189
Liberty, a general principle 181
— love of genuine liberty rare 182
— without wisdom and virtue the greatest of evils
Ibid.
— the vital spring of the state 183
— accompanied by a virtuous poverty, to be preferred to a wealthy servitude
Ibid.
Love, the physical cause of 184
— (not arising from lust) is different from desire 186
— difference between love and admiration
Ibid.
Lover (forsaken) how affected 187
Loyalty (true) 188
M.
Magna Charta 216
Manners, of more importance than laws 102
— (modern) 211
Manners and politics, applicable to every age 217
Marine (French, compared to pirates 223
Marriage, the opinion of the Constituent Assembly of 1789 reprobated 213
Means (extraordinary) 221
Mediterranean 223
Merchants (properties of) applied to the East-India Company 217
Metaphysics
Ibid.
Middlesex election, contest how to be considered 220
Ministers (favourites) effects of the court system (favouritism) on our foreign affairs, on the policy of our government with regard to our dependencies, and on the anterior oeconomy of the commonwealth, with some observations on the grand principle which first recommended this system at court 191
Ministry, character of the interior 199
Ministers, our natural rulers 220
Misfortune, not crime 116
Monastic institutions, justified on the score of their being a great
power
for the mechanism of politic benevolence 213
Monied interest, disposed to enterprize 222
— not necessary to the French
Ibid.
Money (want of) how supplied by the French 221
Morality, observations concerning 227
Municipalities (French) 223
Music 209
N.
Names (great) 229
Naples, observation respecting its political disposition
Ibid.
National ties, the strongest consist in correspondence in laws, customs, manners, and habits of life 228
Netherlands, the Emperor's politics concerning, calculated to answer the purpose of the French 227
Newspapers, the progress of the French revolution indebted to them 224
Neutrality (in parties) a crime against the state
Ibid.
Nobility, contains nothing to provoke horror or indignation 226
North (Baron)—See Probert
Novelty and curiosity, observations concerning 229
O.
Obscurity, necessary to make things terrible 23
Oeconomist, who capable to be 23
Oeconomy, is not a prediliction to mean, sordid, home-bred cares, that will avert the consequences of a false estimation of our interest, or prevent the shameful delapidation into which a great empire must fall by mean reparations upon mighty ruins 222
Office and franchise (difference between) 103
Old Sarum, its sole manufacture members of parliament 247
Oppression and oppressed 231
— (effects of) 232
Opinion
Ibid.
Order 234
P.
Pain (violent) described 252
Parallelogram, observation on 292
Parliament, qualities favourable and unfavourable to obtain a seat in parliament in popular elections 237
— and prerogative 239
— septennial, a disorder that has arisen from the cure of greater disorders 240
— and people 241
— triennial, not competent to effect the end proposed by it
Ibid.
Parliament (character of) at the commencement of the French revolution 244
— difficulty in being a good member of
Ibid.
Paper currency, observation concerning 261
Parsimony (mere) not oeconomy 283
Party defined 255
Party (French) how composed 290
Passions, the rationale of our passions very necessary 259
Patriot (good) who is to be considered 252
Patriotism, the first principle of public affections
Ibid.
Peace, not to be too eagerly sought 291
People, political reflections and observations respecting their power, &c. 272
— prosperity of 277
— can have no interest in disorder
Ibid.
— their interest and humours ought to be consulted
Ibid.
— (privileged) 278
Pensions, as incitements to virtuous ambition, ought not to be abolished 247
Pity, a passion founded on love 288
Place Bill, not competent to effect the end proposed by it 241
Poetry, its powers and province 255
— not strictly an imitative art 257
Poland, political observation concerning 267
Polish and French revolution compared 266
Political arrangement, what conduct to be observed in 280
Political reason defined 280
Politicians, vulgar, severe political remarks on 279
Politics and manners applicable to every age 217
— (general remarks on the new system of) in France 280
Polity, of the several countries of Europe 245
Popish clergy, political observation concerning 283
Popular spirit (of the British nation) political observation concerning 278
Power always accompanied by terror 267
Power (discretion of) 270
Powers (coalesced) their conduct in the war against France 271
Practicability, things not practicable not desirable 291
Precedents, when to be adhered to 288
Preservation (self) the passions respecting 291
Prescription, the sacred rules of 288
Princes, observations on 252
Principles (general) observation concerning 246
Principles (propagation of) 244
Palaces, compared to vast inhospitable halls 247
Probert and Baron North, famous History of the Revenue Adventures of the bold Baron North and the good Knight Probert, upon the mountains of Venodotia 253
Profession held in estimation as the professors hold themselves 258
Professors of artificial law and artificial theology, parallel between 284
Property and franchise 262
— (transfer of) its principal object
Ibid.
— ought to be, out of all proportion, predominant in parliamentary representation
Ibid.
— not always accompanied by power 270
Proportion, considered as the cause of beauty 235
Proscription, observation on 258
Peasants (French)
Ibid.
Protection (influence of) destroyed by Mr. Fox's India Bill 250
Protestant religion, why preferred by the people of England 283
Prudence, moral definition of 261
— the standard of all the political virtues
Ibid.
Prussia (king of) and the Emperor, their respective interests and powers 286
Public man, his duty 278
— estates, which ought to be disposed of
Ibid.
— offices, which ought to be abolished 279
Punishments particular, the cure for accidental distempers in the state 250
R.
Rancour, ought not to influence any action 325
Reason and authority, do not move in the same parallel 321
— and taste, probability of the standard of reason and taste being the same in all human creatures 350
Recess (parliamentary) compared with the permanent sittings of the French National Assembly 355
Reform, timely and oeconomical, recommended 315
— (parliamentary) 318
Reformation, loved better in the abstract than in the substance 319
— when consistent with itself 320
— in religion) its effects
Ibid.
— (short view of) 363
Royal negative, the most indisputed prerogative 364
Regicide peace, observation thereon 341-2
Regicides and rebels (French) Mr. Burke's opinion respecting their indemnity and punishment 342
Religion, consolation in 327
— the church brought to a state of poperty and persecution by the French 352
Representation (American) 32
Republic (French) impracticability of resisting it 309
Republics (ancient) the old Roman legislators followed, with a solicitous accuracy, the moral conditions and properties of men 311
Republicans (high bred) their tergiversation described 325
Representation (virtual) definition of, and why in some cases preferable to
actual
321
Representative, his duty 322
Revenue (French) no political judgment shewn by the National Assembly with regard to it 257
Revolution (French) state of France in 1793 293
— oppressive, but spirited and daring 295
— difference between it and other revolutions 297
— the object of 299
— contrast between it in 1789, and the revolution in England in 1688
Ibid.
— its partizans numerous in England, and of whom composed 01
— in 1688, its policy, and the different methods pursued for some years past 305
— Jacobin, character of those by whom carried on, its malignity, and the necessity of meeting it with a manly vigour 309
Rich (the) thrown into two classes, viz. statesmen and men of pleasure, description of both 325
Rights (natural and chartered) observations on 329
—
(of men)
stiled an
institute
and
digest
of anarchy 330
—
(of man)
compared to a portentous comet 331
—
of man,
the doctrine of, has pervaded Germany 334
—
(of men)
the
real
rights ought not to be withheld 331
—
of man
(the object of) 332
— farther observations on 333
—
of men,
in governments, are their advantages 334
—
of men,
men have no right to what is not reasonable 335
— farther observations on the rights of man 336
— (metaphysic
339
— (petition and delaration of) 340
Rest and labour considered 322
Rigour (extreme) its effects 314
Rome and Athens, analogy between 123
Rome (church of) observations respecting mere dissent from 314
Royalists, their landed property, number and respectability 324
— (French) ought to be consulted with in the management of the war
Ibid.
Ruin (national) the French stiled the ablest architects of 359
Rulers (French
356
Russel (house of) Mr. Burke contrasts his own merit with that of the founder of the house of Russel 359
Russia, her government most liable to be subverted by military sedition 329
S.
Salary (in offices of state) a security against avarice and rapacity 366
Schemes (French) have nothing in experience to prove their tendency beneficial 378
Scotia (Nova) described 386
Scotland, observation on our participation of trade with it 385
Secretary of state, must not appear parsimonious to foreign ministers 366
Sect (of French atheists) their doctrines and opinions most alarming 398
Sieyes (Abbé) humourous description of his constitutional warehouse 387
Senses (our) ought to be subject to the judgment in politics 378
Sermons (anniversary) remarks concerning 380
Sicily, its disposition to republicanism 385
Societies (popular) remarks on the constitutional and revolution societies 374
Society, a contract 466
— (civil) origin of laws in, and difficulties arising thereon 368
— artificial division of mankind, a perpetual source of hatred 369
— the most obvious division of society into rich and poor, state of the latter described 370
— natural and artificial society defined 371
— require that the passions should be subjected 372
— justly chargeable with much the greatest part of the destruction of the species
Ibid.
Soldiery of Louis XVI. its corruption previous to the revolution 379
Sovereign (British) a real king, and not an executive officer 388
— jurisdiction 389
Sovereigns, their dispositions 388
Spain, political state of that country 390
Stables (royal) keepers of, &c. 387
State, consecration of by us 380
— reasons of 381
— (a great) ought to regard its ancient maxims 383
States (ecclesiastical) seeds of revolution not wanting in them 382
Statesmen, Mr. Burke's standard of 383
Statesman (unconstitutional) wish of 384
Statesmen (new of France) their sentiments
Ibid.
— political observation on their situation 385
— no habits of life disqualify for government
Ibid.
Sublime and Beautiful compared 392
Sublime, the passion caused by it 393
— source of it 394
— description of Milton, Mr. Burke's criticism thereon
Ibid.
Supply, the sacred right of the commons 396
Switzerland, some observations on its political situation and opinions with respect to France 397
T.
Taste, general idea of 399
— progress of 402
Taxation (American) 31
— an easy business 404
Teachers (new political) character of
Ibid.
Teaching, the best mode of 405
Terror, how it differs from pain 406
Timidity, may be considered a disgrace or a virtue 407
Theory 405
Toleration (religious) 407
Toulon, after its surrender ought to have been made a royal French city 412
Trade, defined 408
Tragedy, the effects of
Ibid.
Transactions, of past ages 410
Tranquillity, observation on 406
Triangle, poor in its effects
Ibid.
Turkey (destructive policy of) described 416
Tyranny (departed) its partizans few 411
— some political observations on 412
Tyrant, and his favourite, or tyranny doubled 410
Tyrants (real) their punishment a noble act of justice 411
U.
Ugliness (true) opposite to beauty 422
V.
Variation, why beautiful 417
Vicinity (civil) law of 419
Victors (barbarous) their policy described 418
Victory, observation on
Ibid.
Vulgar and mechanical politicians 421
W.
Wales, sketch of its history 428
War, ground of with France 422
— view of war that touches our own country 423
— the present a religious war 427
Wealth (of France) in 1785 431
Whigs (new and ancient) their political characters compared 436-8
Wit and judgment, contrasted 439
Will and duty, the author of our being has disposed us not according to our will, but his own 440
Words, how they influence our passions
Writers have great influence on the public mind 442
— (French) their drift
Ibid.
Z.
Zeal, observation on 442
CHARACTERS.
Antoinette, late Queen of France
Page Page
443
Artois, Comte de
Page
444
Benfield, Paul,
Esq
Page
444
Burke, Richard,
Esq
Page
449
Brissot, M.
Page
450
Condorset, M.
Page
451
Chatham, late Earl of
Page
454
Conti, Prince de
Ibid.
Charles II.
Page
456
Conway, General
Page
457
Cromwell, Oliver
Ibid.
Dundas, Right Hon. Henry
Page
458
Dunning, Mr.
Ibid.
Fox, Hon. C. J.
Page
459
Ditto
Page
461
George III.
Page
465
Grenville, Lord
Ibid.
Grenville, Mr.
Page
463
Hastings, Warren,
Esq
Page
497
Henry IV. of France
Page
466
Hertzberg, Baron
Ibid.
Howard, Mr.
Page
467
Keppel, Lord
Page
468
Khan, Fyzoolah
Page
473
Langrishe, Sir Hercules
Page
474
Louis XVI.
Page
475
Ditto
Page
476
Ditto
Page
477
Louis XVIII.
Page
479
Monk, General
Page
480
Montesquieu, M.
Page
481
North, Lord
Page
482
Pitt, Right Hon. William
Ibid.
Rockingham, Marquis of
Page
484
Rousseau, M.
Page
486
Ditto
Page
491
Saville, Sir George
Page
491
Saxony, Elector of
Page
492
Tacitus and Machiavel
Page
493
Townsend, Charles
Ibid.
Walpole, Mr.
Page
497
Wilkes, John,
Esq
Page
498