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Title: Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke

Author: Edmund Burke

Release date: June 1, 2002 [eBook #3286]
Most recently updated: July 10, 2013

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SELECTIONS
FROM THE SPEECHES AND WRITINGS OF EDMUND BURKE ***

SELECTIONS FROM THE
SPEECHES AND WRITINGS OF
EDMUND BURKE.

By Edmund Burke

CONTENTS
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.
APPENDIX.

SELECTIONS FROM THE SPEECHES AND WRITINGS
OF EDMUND BURKE.
NATURE AND FUNCTIONS OF THE HOUSE OF
COMMONS.
RETROSPECT AND RESIGNATION.
MODESTY OF MIND.
NEWTON AND NATURE.
THEORY AND PRACTICE.
INDUCTION AND COMPARISON.
DIVINE POWER ON THE HUMAN IDEA.
UNION OF LOVE AND DREAD IN RELIGION.
OFFICE OF SYMPATHY.
WORDS.
NATURE ANTICIPATES MAN.

SELF-INSPECTION.
POWER OF THE OBSCURE.
FEMALE BEAUTY.
NOVELTY AND CURIOSITY.
PLEASURES OF ANALOGY.
AMBITION.
EXTENSIONS OF SYMPATHY.
PHILOSOPHY OF TASTE.
CLEARNESS AND STRENGTH IN STYLE.
UNITY OF IMAGINATION.
EFFECT OF WORDS.
INVESTIGATION.
SUBLIME.
OBSCURITY.
PRINCIPLES OF TASTE.
THE BEAUTIFUL.
THE REAL AND THE IDEAL.
JUDGMENT IN ART.
MORAL EFFECTS OF LANGUAGE.
SECURITY OF TRUTH.
IMITATION AN INSTINCTIVE LAW.
STANDARD OF REASON AND TASTE.
USE OF THEORY.

POLITICAL OUTCASTS.
INJUSTICE TO OUR OWN AGE.
FALSE COALITIONS.
POLITICAL EMPIRICISM.
A VISIONARY.
PARTY DIVISIONS.
DECORUM IN PARTY.
NOT SO BAD AS WE SEEM.
POLITICS WITHOUT PRINCIPLE.
MORAL DEBASEMENT PROGRESSIVE.
DESPOTISM.
JUDGMENT AND POLICY.
POPULAR DISCONTENT.
THE PEOPLE AND THEIR RULERS.
GOVERNMENT FAVOURITISM.
ADMINISTRATION AND LEGISLATION.
INFLUENCE OF THE CROWN.
VOICE OF THE PEOPLE.
FALLACY OF EXTREMES.
PRIVATE CHARACTER A BASIS FOR PUBLIC
CONFIDENCE.
PREVENTION.
CONFIDENCE IN THE PEOPLE.

FALSE MAXIMS ASSUMED AS FIRST PRINCIPLES.
LORD CHATHAM.
GRENVILLE.
CHARLES TOWNSHEND.
PARTY AND PLACE.
POLITICAL CONNECTIONS.
NEUTRALITY.
WEAKNESS IN GOVERNMENT.
AMERICAN PROGRESS.
COMBINATION, NOT FACTION.
GREAT MEN.
POWER OF CONSTITUENTS.
INFLUENCE OF PLACE IN GOVERNMENT.
TAXATION INVOLVES PRINCIPLE.
GOOD MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT.
FISHERIES OF NEW ENGLAND.
PREPARATION FOR PARLIAMENT.
BATHURST AND AMERICA'S FUTURE.
CANDID POLICY.
WISDOM OF CONCESSION.
MAGNANIMITY.
DUTY OF REPRESENTATIVES.
PRUDENTIAL SILENCE.

COLONIAL TIES.
GOVERNMENT AND LEGISLATION.
PARLIAMENT.
MORAL LEVELLERS.
PUBLIC SALARY AND PATRIOTIC SERVICE.
RATIONAL LIBERTY.
IRELAND AND MAGNA CHARTA.
COLONIES AND BRITISH CONSTITUTION.
RECIPROCAL CONFIDENCE.
PENSIONS AND THE CROWN.
COLONIAL PROGRESS.
FEUDAL PRINCIPLES AND MODERN TIMES.
RESTRICTIVE VIRTUES.
LIBELLERS OF HUMAN NATURE.
REFUSAL A REVENUE.
A PARTY MAN.
PATRIOTISM AND PUBLIC INCOME.
AMERICAN PROTESTANTISM.
RIGHT OF TAXATION.
CONTRACTED VIEWS.
ASSIMILATING POWER OF CONTACT.
PRUDENCE OF TIMELY REFORM.
DIFFICULTIES OF REFORMERS.

PHILOSOPHY OF COMMERCE.
THEORIZING POLITICIANS.
ECONOMY AND PUBLIC SPIRIT.
REFORM OUGHT TO BE PROGRESSIVE.
CIVIL FREEDOM.
TENDENCIES OF POWER.
INDIVIDUAL GOOD AND PUBLIC BENEFIT.
PUBLIC CORRUPTION.
CRUELTY AND COWARDICE.
BAD LAWS PRODUCE BASE SUBSERVIENCY.
FALSE REGRET.
BRITISH DOMINION IN EAST INDIA.
POLITICAL CHARITY.
EVILS OF DISTRACTION.
CHARLES FOX.
THE IMPRACTICABLE UNDESIRABLE.
CONSTITUTION OF THE COMMONS.
EMOLUMENTS OF OFFICE.
MORAL DISTINCTIONS.
ELECTORS AND REPRESENTATIVES.
POPULAR OPINION A FALLACIOUS STANDARD.
ENGLISH REFORMATION.
PROSCRIPTION.

JUST FREEDOM.
ENGLAND'S EMBASSY TO AMERICA.
HOWARD, THE PHILANTHROPIST.
PARLIAMENTARY RETROSPECT.
PEOPLE AND PARLIAMENT.
REFORMED CIVIL LIST.
FRENCH AND ENGLISH REVOLUTION.
ARMED DISCIPLINE.
GILDED DESPOTISM.
OUR FRENCH DANGERS.
SIR GEORGE SAVILLE.
CORRUPTION NOT SELF-REFORMED.
THE BRIBED AND THE BRIBERS.
HYDER ALI.
REFORMATION AND ANARCHY CONTRASTED AND
COMPARED.
CONFIDENCE AND JEALOUSY.
ECONOMY OF INJUSTICE.
SUBSISTENCE AND REVENUE.
AUTHORITY AND VENALITY.
PREROGATIVE OF THE CROWN AND PRIVILEGE OF
PARLIAMENT.
BURKE AND FOX.

PEERS AND COMMONS.
NATURAL SELF-DESTRUCTION.
THE CARNATIC.
ABSTRACT THEORY OF HUMAN LIBERTY.
POLITICS AND THE PULPIT.
IDEA OF FRENCH REVOLUTION.
PATRIOTIC DISTINCTION.
KINGLY POWER NOT BASED ON POPULAR CHOICE.
PREACHING DEMOCRACY OF DISSENT.
JARGON OF REPUBLICANISM.
CONSERVATIVE PROGRESS OF INHERITED FREEDOM.
CONSERVATION AND CORRECTION.
HEREDITARY SUCCESSION OF ENGLISH CROWN.
LIMITS OF LEGISLATIVE CAPACITY.
OUR CONSTITUTION, NOT FABRICATED, BUT
INHERITED.
LOW AIMS AND LOW INSTRUMENTS.
HOUSE OF COMMONS CONTRASTED WITH NATIONAL
ASSEMBLY.
PROPERTY, MORE THAN ABILITY, REPRESENTED IN
PARLIAMENT.
VIRTUE AND WISDOM QUALIFY FOR GOVERNMENT.
NATURAL AND CIVIL RIGHTS.
MARIE ANTOINETTE.

SPIRIT OF A GENTLEMAN AND THE SPIRIT OF RELIGION.
POWER SURVIVES OPINION.
CHIVALRY A MORALIZING CHARM.
SACREDNESS OF MORAL INSTINCTS.
PARENTAL EXPERIENCE.
REVOLUTIONARY SCENE.
ECONOMY ON STATE PRINCIPLES.
PHILOSOPHICAL VANITY; ITS MAXIMS, AND EFFECTS.
UNITY BETWEEN CHURCH AND STATE.
TRIPLE BASIS OF FRENCH REVOLUTION.
CORRESPONDENT SYSTEM OF MANNERS AND MORALS.
FEROCITY OF JACOBINISM.
VOICE OF OPPRESSION.
BRITAIN VINDICATED IN HER WAR WITH FRANCE.
POLISH AND FRENCH REVOLUTION.
EUROPE IN 1789.
ATHEISM CANNOT REPENT.
OUTWARD DIGNITY OF THE CHURCH DEFENDED.
DANGER OF ABSTRACT VIEWS.
APPEAL TO IMPARTIALITY.
HISTORICAL ESTIMATE OF LOUIS XVI.
NEGATIVE RELIGION A NULLITY.
ANTECHAMBER OF REGICIDE.

TREMENDOUSNESS OF WAR.
ENGLISH OFFICERS.
DIPLOMACY OF HUMILIATION.
RELATION OF WEALTH TO NATIONAL DIGNITY.
AMBASSADORS OF INFAMY.
DIFFICULTY THE PATH TO GLORY.
ROBESPIERRE AND HIS COUNTERPARTS.
ACCUMULATION, A STATE PRINCIPLE.
WARNING FOR A NATION.
SANTERRE AND TALLIEN.
SIR SYDNEY SMITH.
A MORAL DISTINCTION.
INFIDELS AND THEIR POLICY.
WHAT A MINISTER SHOULD ATTEMPT.
LAW OF VICINITY.
EUROPEAN COMMUNITY.
PERILS OF JACOBIN PEACE.
PARLIAMENTARY AND REGAL PREROGATIVE.
BURKE'S DESIGN IN HIS GREATEST WORK.
LORD KEPPEL.
"LABOURING POOR."
STATE CONSECRATED BY THE CHURCH.
FATE OF LOUIS XVIII.

NOBILITY.
LEGISLATION AND REPUBLICANS.
PRINCIPLE OF STATE-CONSECRATION.
BRITISH STABILITY.
LITERARY ATHEISTS.
CITY OF PARIS.
PRINCIPLE OF CHURCH PROPERTY.
PARSIMONY NOT ECONOMY.
MAJESTY OF THE BRITISH CONSTITUTION.
DUTY NOT BASED ON WILL.
ECCLESIASTICAL CONFISCATION.
MORAL OF HISTORY.
USE OF DEFECTS IN HISTORY.
SOCIAL CONTRACT.
PRESCRIPTIVE RIGHTS.
MADNESS OF INNOVATION.
THE STATE, ITS OWN REVENUE.
METAPHYSICAL DEPRAVITY.
PERSONAL AND ANCESTRAL CLAIMS.
MONASTIC AND PHILOSOPHIC SUPERSTITION.
DIFFICULTY AND WISDOM OF CORPORATE REFORM.
DISTINCTIVE CHARACTER OF ENGLISH
PROTESTANTISM.

FICTITIOUS LIBERTY.
FRENCH IGNORANCE OF ENGLISH CHARACTER.
THE "PEOPLE," AND "OMNIPOTENCE" OF PARLIAMENT.
MAGNANIMITY OF ENGLISH PEOPLE.
TRUE BASIS OF CIVIL SOCIETY.
ROUSSEAU.
MORAL HEROES.
KINGDOM OF FRANCE.
GRIEVANCE AND OPINION.
PERPLEXITY AND POLICY.
HISTORICAL INSTRUCTION.
MONTESQUIEU.
ARTICLES, AND SCRIPTURE.
PROBLEM OF LEGISLATION.
ORDER, LABOUR, AND PROPERTY.
REGICIDAL LEGISLATURE.
GOVERNMENT NOT TO BE RASHLY CENSURED.
ETIQUETTE.
ANCIENT ESTABLISHMENTS.
SENTIMENT AND POLICY.
PATRIOTISM.
NECESSITY, A RELATIVE TERM.
KING JOHN AND THE POPE.

CONSUMPTION AND PRODUCE.
"PRIESTS OF THE RIGHTS OF MAN."
"HIS GRACE."
SPECULATION AND HISTORY.
LABOUR AND WAGES.
A COMPLETE REVOLUTION.
BRITISH GOVERNMENT IN INDIA.
MONEY AND SCIENCE.
POLITICAL AXIOMS.
DISAPPOINTED AMBITION.
DIFFICULTY AN INSTRUCTOR.
SOVEREIGN JURISDICTIONS.
PRUDERY OF FALSE REFORM.
EXAGGERATION.
TACTICS OF CABAL.
GOVERNMENT, RELATIVE, NOT ABSOLUTE.
GENERAL VIEWS.
MAGNITUDE IN BUILDING.
SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE.
EAST-INDIA BILL AND COMPANY.
PARLIAMENTS AND ELECTIONS.
RELIGION AND MAGISTRACY.
PERSECUTION, FALSE IN THEORY.

IRISH LEGISLATION.
HENRY OF NAVARRE.
TEST ACTS.
WHAT FACTION OUGHT TO TEACH.
GRIEVANCES BY LAW.
REVOLUTIONARY POLITICS.
TOLERATION BECOME INTOLERANT.
WILKES AND RIGHT OF ELECTION.
ROCKINGHAM AND CONWAY.
POLITICS IN THE PULPIT.
WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR.
KING ALFRED.
DRUIDS.
SAXON CONQUEST AND CONVERSION.
MINISTERIAL RESPONSIBILITY.
MONASTIC INSTITUTIONS AND THEIR RESULTS.
COMMON LAW AND MAGNA CHARTA.
EUROPE AND THE NORMAN INVASION.
ANCIENT INHABITANTS OF BRITAIN.
PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS.
TRUE NATURE OF A JACOBIN WAR.
NATIONAL DIGNITY.

PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNMENT NOT ABSOLUTE, BUT
RELATIVE.
DECLARATION OF 1793.
MORAL DIET.
KING WILLIAM'S POLICY.
DISTEMPER OF REMEDY.
WAR AND WILL OF THE PEOPLE.
FALSE POLICY IN OUR FRENCH WAR.
MORAL ESSENCE MAKES A NATION.
PUBLIC SPIRIT.
PROGRESSIVE GROWTH OF CHRISTIAN STATES.
PETTY INTERESTS.
PIUS VII.
EXTINCTION OF LOCAL PATRIOTISM.
WALPOLE AND HIS POLICY.
POLITICAL PEACE.
PUBLIC LOANS.
HISTORICAL STRICTURES.
CONSTITUTION NOT THE PEOPLE'S SLAVE.
MODERN "LIGHTS."
REPUBLICS IN THE ABSTRACT.
AN ENGLISH MONARCH.
PHYSIOGNOMY.

THE EYE.
ABOLITION AND USE OF PARLIAMENTS.
CROMWELL AND HIS CONTRASTS.
DELICACY.
CONFISCATION AND CURRENCY.
"OMNIPOTENCE OF CHURCH PLUNDER."
UGLINESS.
GRACE.
ELEGANCE AND SPECIOUSNESS.
THE BEAUTIFUL IN FEELING.
THE BEAUTIFUL IN SOUNDS.
BRITISH CHURCH.

INDEX.

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.
...

"Id dico, eum qui sit orator, virum bonum esse oportere. In omnibus quae
dicit tanta auctoritas inest, ut dissentire pudeat; nec advocati studium, sed
testis aut judicis afferat fidem."—Quintilianus.
"Democracy is the most monstrous of all governments, because it is
impossible at once to act and control; and, consequently, the Sovereign
Power is then left without any restraint whatever. That form of government
is the best which places the efficient direction in the hands of the
aristocracy, subjecting them in its exercise to the control of the people at
large."—Sir James Mackintosh.

...

The intellectual homage of more than half a century has assigned to
Edmund Burke a lofty pre-eminence in the aristocracy of mind, and we may
justly assume succeeding ages will confirm the judgment which the Past has
thus pronounced. His biographical history is so popularly known, that it is
almost superfluous to record it in this brief introduction. It may, however,
be summed up in a few sentences. He was born at Dublin in 1730. His
father was an attorney in extensive practice, and his mother's maiden name
was Nogle, whose family was respectable, and resided near Castletown,
Roche, where Burke himself received five years of boyish education under
the guidance of a rustic schoolmaster. He was entered at Trinity College,
Dublin, in 1746, but only remained there until 1749. In 1753 he became a
member of the Middle Temple, and maintained himself chiefly by literary
toil. Bristol did itself the honour to elect him for her representative in 1774,
and after years of splendid usefulness and mental triumph, as an orator,
statesman, and patriot, he retired to his favourite retreat, Beaconsfield, in
Buckinghamshire, where he died on July 9th, 1797. He was buried here;
and the pilgrim who visits the grave of this illustrious man, when he gazes
on the simple tomb which marks the earthly resting place of himself,

brother, son, and widow, may feelingly recall his own pathetic wish uttered
some forty years before, in London:—"I would rather sleep in the southern
corner of a little country churchyard, than in the tomb of the Capulets. I
should like, however, that my dust should mingle with kindred dust. The
good old expression, 'family burying-ground,' has something pleasing in it,
at least to me." Alluding to his approaching dissolution, he thus speaks, in a
letter addressed to a relative of his earliest schoolmaster:—"I have been at
Bath these four months for no purpose, and am therefore to be removed to
my own house at Beaconsfield to-morrow, to be nearer a habitation more
permanent, humbly and fearfully hoping that my better part may find a
better mansion." It is a source of deep thankfulness for those who reverence
the genius and eloquence of this great man, to state, that Burke's religion
was that of the Cross, and to find him speaking of the "Intercession" of our
Redeeming Lord, as "what he had long sought with unfeigned anxiety, and
to which he looked with trembling hope." The commencing paragraph in
his Will also authenticates the genuine character of his personal
Christianity. "According to the ancient, good, and laudable custom, of
which my heart and understanding recognise the propriety, I BEQUEATH
MY SOUL TO GOD, HOPING FOR HIS MERCY ONLY THROUGH
THE MERITS OF OUR LORD AND SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST. My
body I desire to be buried in the church of Beaconsfield, near to the bodies
of my dearest brother, and my dearest son, in all humility praying, that as
we have lived in perfect unity together, we may together have part in the
resurrection of the just." (In the "Epistolary Correspondence of the Right
Hon. Edmund Burke and Dr. French Laurence", Rivingtons, London, 1827),
are several touching allusions to that master-grief which threw a mournful
shadow over the closing period of Burke's life. In one letter the anxious
father says, "The fever continues much as it was. He sleeps in a very uneasy
way from time to time?-but his strength decays visibly, and his voice is, in a
manner, gone. But God is all-sufficient—and surely His goodness and his
mother's prayers may do much" (page 30). Again, in another
communication addressed to his revered correspondent, we find a beautiful
allusion to his departed son, which involves his belief in that most soothing
doctrine of the Church,—a recognition of souls in the kingdom of the
Beatified. "Here I am in the last retreat of hunted infirmity; I am indeed 'aux
abois.' But, as through the whole of a various and long life I have been more
indebted than thankful to Providence, so I am now singularly so, in being

dismissed, as hitherto I appear to be, so gently from life, AND SENT TO
FOLLOW THOSE WHO IN COURSE OUGHT TO HAVE FOLLOWED
ME, WHOM, I TRUST, I SHALL YET, IN SOME INCONCEIVABLE
MANNER, SEE AND KNOW; AND BY WHOM I SHALL BE SEEN
AND KNOWN" (pages 53, 54).
In reference to the intellectual grandeur, the eloquent genius, and
prophetic wisdom of Burke, which have caused his writings to become
oracles for future statesmen to consult, it is quite unnecessary for
contemporary criticism to speak. By the concurring judgment, both of
political friends and foes, as well as by the highest arbiters of taste
throughout the civilized world, Burke has been pronounced, not only
"primus inter pares," but "facile omnium princeps." At the termination of
these introductory remarks, the reader will be presented with critical
portraitures of Burke from the writings and speeches of men, who, while
opposed to him in their principles of legislative policy, with all the chivalry
and candour of genius paid a noble homage to the vastness and variety of
his unrivalled powers. Meanwhile, it may not be presumptuous for a writer,
on an occasion like the present, to contemplate this great man under certain
aspects, which, perhaps, are not sufficiently regarded in their
DISTINCTIVE bearings on the worth and wisdom of his character and
writings. We say "distinctive," because the eloquence of Burke, beyond that
of all other orators and statesmen which Great Britain has produced, is
featured with expressions, and characterised by qualities, as peculiar as they
are immortal. So far as invention, imagination, moral fervour, and
metaphorical richness of illustration, combined with that intense "pathos
and ethos," which the Roman critic describes ("Huc igitur incumbat orator:
hoc opus ejus, hic labor est; sine quo caetera nuda, jejuna, infirma, ingrata
sunt: adeo velut spiritus operis hujus atque animus est IN AFFECTIBUS.
Horum autem, sicut antiquitus traditum accepimus, duae sunt species:
alteram Graeci pathos vocant, quem nos vertentes recte ac proprie
AFFECTUM dicimus; alteram ethos, cujus nomine (ut ego quidem sentio)
caret sermo Romanus, mores appellantur."—Quintilian, "Instit. Orat." lib.
vi. cap. 2.) as essential to the true orator, are concerned, the author of
"Reflections on the French Revolution," and "Letters on a Regicide Peace,"
is justly admired and appreciated. Moreover, if what we understand by the
"sublime" in eloquence has ever been embodied, the speeches and writings
of Burke appear to have been drawn from those five sources ("pegai") to

which Longinus alludes. In the 8th chapter of his fragment "On the
Sublime," he observes, that if we assume an ability for speaking well, as a
common basis, there are five copious fountains from whence sublimity in
eloquence may be said to flow; viz.
1. Boldness and grandeur of thought.
2. The pathetic, or the power of exciting the passions into an enthusiastic
reach and noble degree.
3. A skilful application of figures, both from sentiment and language.
4. A graceful, finished, and ornate style, embellished by tropes and
metaphors.
5. Lastly, as that which completes all the rest,—the structure of periods,
in dignity and grandeur.
These five sources of the sublime, the same philosophical critic
distinguishes into two classes; the first two he asserts to be gifts of nature,
and the remaining three are considered to depend, in a great measure, upon
literature and art. Again, if we may linger for a moment in the attractive
region of classical authorship, how justly applicable are the words of Cicero
in his "De Oratore," to the vastness and variety of Burke's attainments! "Ac
mea quidem sententia, nemo poterit esse omni laude cumulatus orator, nisi
erit OMNIUM RERUM MAGNARUM ATQUE ARTIUM SCIENTIAM
CONSECUTUS."—Cic. "De Orat." lib. i. cap. 6. Equally descriptive of
Burke's power in raising the dormant sensibilities of our moral nature by his
intuitive perception of what that nature really and fundamentally is, are the
following expressions of the same great authority:—"Quis enim nescit,
maximam vim existere oratoris, in hominum mentibus vel ad iram aut ad
odium, aut dolorem incitandis, vel, ab hisce, iisdem permonitionibus, ad
lenitatem misericordiamque revocandis? Quare, NISI QUI NATURAS
HOMINUM, VIMQUE OMNEM HUMANITATIS, CAUSASQUE EAS
QUIBUS MENTES AUT EXCITANTUR, AUT REFLECTUNTUR,
PENITUS PERSPEXERIT, DICENDO, QUOD VOLET, PERFICERE
NON POTERIT."—Cic. "De Orat." lib. i. cap. 12.
But to return. If a critical analysis of Burke, as an exhibition of genius, be
attempted, his characteristic endowments may, probably, be not incorrectly
represented by the following succinct statement.
1. Endless variety in connection with exhaustless vigour of mind.

2. A lofty power of generalisation, both in speculative views and in his
argumentative process.
3. Vivid intensity of conception, which caused abstractions to stand out
with almost living force and visible feature, in his impassioned moments.
4. An imagination of oriental luxuriance, whose incessant play in tropes,
metaphors, and analogies, frequently causes his speeches to gleam on the
intellectual eye, as Aeschylus says the ocean does, when the Sun irradiates
its bosom with the "anerithmon gelasma" of countless beams. 5. His
positive acquirements in all the varied realms of art, science, and literature,
endowed him with such vast funds of knowledge (In the wealth of his
multitudinous acquirements, Burke seems to realise Cicero's ideal of what a
perfect orator should know:—"Equidem omnia, quae pertinent ad usum
civium, morem hominum, quae versantur in consuetudine vitae, in ratione
reipublicae, in hac societate civili, in sensu hominum communi, in natura,
in moribus, co hendenda esse oratori puto."—Cicero "De Orat." lib. ii. cap.
16.), that Johnson declared of Burke—"Enter upon what subject you will,
and Burke is ready to meet you."
6. In addition to these high gifts, may be added, an ability to wield the
weapons of sarcasm and irony, with a keenness of application and effect
rarely equalled. But, in all candour, it may be added, that just as a profusion
of figures and metaphors sometimes tempted this great orator into
incongruous images and coarse analogies, so his passion for irony was
occasionally too intense. Hence, there are occasions where his pungency is
embittered into acrimony, strength degenerates into vulgarism, and the
vehemence of satire is infuriated with the fierceness of invective.
7. With regard to language and style, it may be truly said, they were the
absolute vassals of his Genius, and did homage to its command in every
possible mode by which it chose to employ them. Thus, in his "Letters on a
Regicide Peace," and above all, in "French Revolutions," the reader will
find almost every conceivable manner of style and mode of expression the
English language can develop; and what is more,—together with classical
richness, there are also the pointed seriousness and persuasive simplicity of
our own vernacular Saxon, which increase the attractions of Burke's style to
a wonderful extent. But, beyond controversy, among these great
endowments, the imaginative faculty is that which appears to be the most
transcendent in the mental constitution of Burke. And so truly is this the

case, that both among his contemporaries, as well as among his successors,
this predominance of imagination has caused his just claims as a
philosophic thinker and statesman to be partially overlooked. The union of
ideal theory and practical realisation, of imaginative creation with logical
induction, is indeed so rare, we cannot be surprised at the injustice which
the genius of Burke has had to endure in this respect. And yet, in the nature
of our faculties themselves, there exists no necessity why a vivid power to
conceive ideas, should NOT be combined with a dialectic skill in
expressing them. Degerando, an admirable French writer, in one of his
Treatises, has some profound observations on this subject; and does not
hesitate to define poetry itself as a species of "logique cachee."
But when we assert that these excellencies, which have thus been
succinctly exhibited, characterise the mental constitution of Burke, we do
not mean that others have not, in their degree, possessed similar
endowments. Such an inference would be an absurd extravagance. But what
we mean to affirm is—the qualifications enumerated have never been
combined into co-operative harmony, and developed in proportionable
effect, as they appear in the speeches and writings of this wonderful man.
But after all, we have not reached what may be considered a peerless
excellence, the peculiar gift,—the one great and glorious distinction, which
separates Burke's oratory from that of all others, and which has caused his
speeches to be blended with political History, and to incorporate themselves
with the moral destiny of Europe,—namely, HIS INTUITIVE
PERCEPTION OF UNIVERSAL PRINCIPLES. The truth of this statement
may be verified, by comparing the eloquence of Burke with specimens of
departed orators; or by a reference to existing standards in the parliamentary
debates. Compared, then, either with the speeches of Chatham, Holland,
Pitt, Fox, etc. etc., we perceive at once the grand distinction to which we
refer. These illustrious men were effective debaters, and, in various senses,
orators of surpassing excellency. But how is it, that with all their allowed
grandeur of intellect and political eminence, they have ceased to operate
upon the hearts and minds of the present Age, either as teachers of political
Truth, or oracles of legislative Wisdom? Simply, BECAUSE they were too
popular in temporary effect, ever to become influential by permanent
inspiration. In their highest moods, and amid their noblest hours of triumph,
they were "of the earth earthy." Party; personality; crushing rejoinders, or
satirical attacks; a felicitous exposure of inconsistency, or a triumphant self-

vindication; brilliant repartees, and logical gladiatorship,—such are among
the prominent characteristics which caused parliamentary debates in
Burke's day to be so animating and interesting to those who heard, or
perused them, amid the excitements of the hour. It is not to be denied that
commanding eloquence, vast genius, political ardour, intellectual
enthusiasm, together with indignant denunciation and argumentative
subtlety, were thus summoned into exercise by the perils of the Nation, and
the contentions of Party. Nevertheless, the local, the temporal, the
conventional, and the individual, in all which relates to the science of
politics or the tactics of partisanship,—are sufficient to excite and employ
the energies and qualities which made the general parliamentary debates of
Burke's period so captivating. But when we revert to his own speeches and
writings, we at once perceive WHY, as long as the mind can comprehend
what is true, the heart appreciate what is pure, or the conscience
authenticate the sanction of heaven and the distinctions between right and
wrong,—Edmund Burke will continue to be admired, revered, and
consulted, not only as the greatest of English orators, but as the profoundest
teacher of political Science. It was not that he despised the arrangement of
facts, or overlooked the minutiae of detail; on the contrary, as may be
proved by his speeches on "economical reform," and Warren Hastings; in
these respects his research was boundless, and his industry inexhaustible.
Moreover, he was quite alive to the claims of a crisis, and with the coolness
and calm of a practical statesman, knew how to confront a sudden
emergency, and to contend with a gigantic difficulty. Yet all these
qualifications recede before Burke's amazing power of expanding
particulars into universals, and of associating the accidents of a transient
discussion with the essential properties of some permanent Law in policy,
or abstract Truth in morals. His genius looked through the local to the
universal; in the temporal perceived the eternal; and while facing the
features of the Individual, was enabled to contemplate the attributes of a
Race. (Cicero, in many respects a counterpart of Burke, both in
statesmanship and oratory, appears to recognise what is here expressed
when he says:—"Plerique duo genera ad dicendum dederunt; UNUM DE
CERTA DEFINITAQUE CAUSA, quales sunt quae in litibus, quae in
deliberationibus versantur;—alterum, quod appellant omnes fere scriptores,
explicat nemo, INFINITAM GENERIS SINE TEMPORE, ET SINE
PERSONA quaestionem."—"De Orat." lib. ii. cap. 15.) Hence his speeches

are virtual prophecies; and his writings a storehouse of pregnant axioms and
predictive enunciations, as limitless in their range as they are undying in
duration. In one word, no speeches delivered in the English Parliament, are
so likely to be eternalized as Burke's, because he has combined with his
treatment of some especial case or contingency before him, the assertion of
immutable Principles, which can be detached from what is local and
national, and thus made to stand forth alone in all the naked grandeur of
their truth and their tendency. Let us be permitted to investigate this topic a
little further. If, then, what Quintilian asserted of the Roman orator may be
applied to our own British Cicero,—"Ille se profecisse sciat, cui Cicero
valde placebit;" and if, moreover, this pre-eminence be chiefly discovered
in Burke's instinctive grasp of that moral essence which is incorporated with
all questions of political Science, and social Ethics—from WHENCE came
this diviner energy of his Genius? No believer in Christian revelation will
hesitate to appropriate, even to this subject, the apostolic axiom, "EVERY
good gift, and EVERY perfect gift is from above." But while we subscribe
with reverential sincerity to this announcement, it is equally true, that the
Infinite Inspirer of all good adjusts His secret energies by certain laws, and
condescends to work by analogous means. Bearing this in mind, we venture
to think Burke's gift of almost prescient insight into the recesses of our
common nature, and his consummate faculty of instructing the Future
through the medium of the Present,—were partly derived from the elevation
of his sentiments, and the purity of his private life. (The action and reaction
maintained between our moral and intellectual elements is but remotely
discussed by Quintilian in his "Institutes." But still, in more than one
passage, he most impressively declares, that mental proficiency is greatly
retarded by perversity of heart and will. For instance, on one occasion we
find him speaking thus:—"Nihil enim est tam occupatum, tam multiforme,
tot ac tam variis affectibus concisum, atque laceratum, quam mala ac
improba mens. Quis inter haec, literis, aut ulli bonae arti, locus? Non hercle
magis quam frugibus, in terra sentibus ac rubis occupata."—"Nothing is so
flurried and agitated, so self-contradictory, or so violently rent and shattered
by conflicting passions, as a bad heart. In the distractions which it produces,
what room is there for the cultivation of letters, or the pursuits of any
honourable art? Assuredly, no more than there is for the growth of corn in a
field overrun with thorns and brambles.") It would be unwise to draw
invidious comparisons, but no student of the period in which Burke was in

Parliament, can deny that, compared with SOME of his illustrious
contemporaries, he was indeed a model of what reason and conscience alike
approve in all the relative duties and personal conduct of a man, when
beheld in his domestic career. It is, indeed, a source of deep thankfulness,
the admirer of Burke's genius in public, has no reason to blush for his
character in private; and that when we have listened to his matchless
oratory upon the arena of the House of Commons, we have not to mourn
over dissipation, impurity, and depravity amid the circles of private history.
Our theory, then, is, that beyond what his distinctive genius inspired,
Burke's wondrous power of enunciating everlasting principles and of
associating the loftiest abstractions of wisdom with the commonest themes
of the hour,—was sustained and strengthened by the purity of his heart, and
the subjection of passion to the law of conscience. And if the worshippers
of mere intellect, apart from, or as opposed to, moral elevation, are inclined
to ridicule this view of Burke's genius, we beg to remind them, that "One
greater than the Temple" of mortal Wisdom, and all the idols enshrined
therein, has asserted a positive connection to exist between mental insight
and moral purity. We allude to the Redeemer's words, when He declares,
—"If any man WILLS to do His will, he shall KNOW of the doctrine."
HOW the passions act upon our perceptions, and by what process the
motions of the Will elevate or depress the forces of the Intellect, is beyond
our metaphysics to analyse. But that there exists a real, active, and
influential connection between our moral and mental life, is undeniable: and
since Burke's power of seizing the essential Idea, or fundamental Principle
of every complex detail which came before him, was pre-eminently his gift,
—the intellectual insight such gift developed, was not only an expression of
senatorial wisdom, but also a witness for the elevation of his moral
character. We must now allude to the public conduct of Burke, as a
Statesman and Politician, and only regret the limited range of a popular
essay confines us to one view, namely, his alleged inconsistency. There
WAS a period when charges of apostasy were brought against him with
reckless audacity: but Time, the instructor of ignorance, and the subduer of
prejudice, is now beginning to place the conduct of Burke in its true light.
The facts of the case are briefly these. Up to the period of 1791, Fox and
Burke fought in the same rank of opposition, and stood together upon a
basis of complete identity in principle and sentiment. But even before the
celebrated disruption of 1791, the progress of Republicanism in America,

and the approaching separation of the colonies from their parent state,
Burke's views of political liberty had received extensive modifications; and
the ardour of his confidence in the so-called friends of freedom had been
greatly cooled. But in 1791, the disruption between Burke and Fox became
open, absolute, and final, when the latter statesman uttered, in the hearing
of his friend, this fearful eulogium on the French Revolution:—"The new
constitution of France is the most stupendous and glorious edifice of liberty
which had been erected on the foundation of human integrity in any age or
country!" (That ancient Sage unto whose political wisdom frequent
reference has been made in this essay, thus speaks on the reverence due
unto an existing government, even when contemplated from its weakest
side:—"Formidable as these arguments seem, they may be opposed by
others of not less weight; arguments which prove that even the rust of
government is to be respected, and that its fabric is never to be touched but
with a fearful and trembling hand. When the evil of persevering in
hereditary institutions is small, it ought always to be endured, because the
evil of departing from them is certainly very great. Slight imperfections,
therefore, whether in the laws themselves, or in those who administer and
execute the laws, ought always to be overlooked, because they cannot be
corrected without occasioning a much greater mischief, and tending to
weaken that reverence which the safety of all governments requires that the
citizens at large should entertain, cultivate, and cherish for the hereditary
institutions of their country. The comparison drawn from the improvement
of arts does not apply to the amendment of laws. To change or improve an
art, and to alter or amend a law, are things as dissimilar in their operation as
different in their tendency; for laws operate as practical principles of moral
action; and, like all the rules of morality, derive their force and efficacy, as
even the name imports, from the customary repetition of habitual acts, and
the slow operation of time. Every alteration of the laws, therefore, tends to
subvert that authority on which the persuasive agency of all laws is
founded, and to abridge, weaken, and destroy the power of the law
itself."—Aristotle's "Politics.") The reply of Burke to this burst of
Jacobinism, with all its consequences in the political history of Europe, is
far too well known to be quoted here. But, since it was at this point in the
career of Burke the charge of apostasy was commenced, and which has
never quite died away, even in existing times, we may be permitted, first, to
cite a noble passage from Burke's self-vindication; and secondly, to adduce

a still more impressive evidence of his political rectitude and wisdom,
derived from the admission of those who were once his uncompromising
opponents. In relation to the attacks of Fox upon his supposed
inconsistency, Mr. Burke thus replies:—
"I pass to the next head of charge,—Mr. Burke's inconsistency. It is
certainly a great aggravation of his fault in embracing false opinions, that in
doing so he is not supposed to fill up a void, but that he is guilty of a
dereliction of opinions that are true and laudable. This is the great gist of
the charge against him. It is not so much that he is wrong in his book (that
however is alleged also), as that he has therein belied his whole life. I
believe, if he could venture to value himself upon anything, it is on the
virtue of consistency that he would value himself the most. Strip him of
this, and you leave him naked indeed.
"In the case of any man who had written something, and spoken a great
deal, upon very multifarious matter, during upwards of twenty-five years'
public service, and in as great a variety of important events as perhaps have
ever happened in the same number of years, it would appear a little hard, in
order to charge such a man with inconsistency, to see collected by his
friend, a sort of digest of his sayings, even to such as were merely sportive
and jocular. This digest, however, has been made, with equal pains and
partiality, and without bringing out those passages of his writings which
might tend to show with what restrictions any expressions, quoted from
him, ought to have been understood. From a great statesman he did not
quite expect this mode of inquisition. If it only appeared in the works of
common pamphleteers, Mr. Burke might safely trust to his reputation.
When thus urged, he ought, perhaps, to do a little more. It shall be as little
as possible, for I hope not much is wanting. To be totally silent on his
charges would not be respectful to Mr. Fox. Accusations sometimes derive a
weight from the persons who make them, to which they are not entitled for
their matter. "A man who, among various objects of his equal regard, is
secure of some, and full of anxiety for the fate of others, is apt to go to
much greater lengths in his preference of the objects of his immediate
solicitude than Mr. Burke has ever done. A man so circumstanced often
seems to undervalue, to vilify, almost to reprobate and disown, those that
are out of danger. This is the voice of nature and truth, and not of
inconsistency and false pretence. The danger of anything very dear to us
removes, for the moment, every other affection from the mind. When Priam

had his whole thoughts employed on the body of his Hector, he repels with
indignation, and drives from him with a thousand reproaches, his surviving
sons, who with an officious piety crowded about him to offer their
assistance. A good critic (there is no better than Mr. Fox) would say, that
this is a master-stroke, and marks a deep understanding of nature in the
father of poetry. He would despise a Zoilus, who would conclude from this
passage that Homer meant to represent this man of affliction as hating, or
being indifferent and cold in his affections to the poor relics of his house, or
that he preferred a dead carcass to his living children.
"Mr. Burke does not stand in need of an allowance of this kind, which, if
he did, by candid critics ought to be granted to him. If the principles of a
mixed constitution be admitted, he wants no more to justify to consistency
everything he has said and done during the course of a political life just
touching to its close. I believe that gentleman has kept himself more clear
of running into the fashion of wild, visionary theories, or of seeking
popularity through every means, than any man perhaps ever did in the same
situation.
"He was the first man who, on the hustings, at a popular election, rejected
the authority of instructions from constituents; or who, in any place, has
argued so fully against it. Perhaps the discredit into which that doctrine of
compulsive instructions under our constitution is since fallen, may be due,
in a great degree, to his opposing himself to it in that manner, and on that
occasion.
"The reformers in representation, and the Bills for shortening the
duration of Parliaments, he uniformly and steadily opposed for many years
together, in contradiction to many of his best friends. These friends,
however, in his better days, when they had more to hope from his service
and more to fear from his loss than now they have, never chose to find any
inconsistency between his acts and expressions in favour of liberty, and his
votes on those questions. But there is a time for all things." We need not,
however, confine our vindication of Burke to his own eloquence, but invite
the especial attention of his accusers and defamers unto two forgotten facts:
1st. A few weeks before Fox died, he dictated a despatch to Lord Yarmouth,
which confirmed all the policy for which Pitt for fifteen years had
contended: moreover, in a debate on Wyndham's "Military System," 1806,
Fox thus delivered his own recantation:—"Indeed, by the circumstances of

Europe, I AM READY TO CONFESS I HAVE BEEN WEANED FROM
THE OPINIONS I FORMERLY HELD WITH RESPECT TO THE FORCE
WHICH MIGHT SUFFICE IN TIME OF PEACE: nor do I consider this
any inconsistency, because I see no rational prospect of any peace, which
would exempt us from the necessity of watchful preparation and powerful
establishment." But the change of Fox's opinions, and their similarity to
those maintained by Pitt, with reference to our war with France, are by no
means ALL which history can produce in justification of Burke's political
wisdom and consistency. The whole civilized world has read the
"Reflections on the French Revolution," whose sale, in one year, achieved
the enormous number of 30,000 copies, in connection with medals or marks
of honour from almost every Court in Europe. Now, of all the replies made
to this masterpiece of reasoning and reflection, Mackintosh's "Vindiciae
Gallicae" was incontestably the ablest and profoundest. And yet, the
greatest of all his intellectual opponents thus addresses Burke, as appears
from "Memoirs" of Mackintosh, volume i. page 87:—"The enthusiasm with
which I once embraced the instruction conveyed in your writings is now
ripened into solid conviction by the experience and conviction of more
mature age. For a time, SEDUCED BY THE LOVE OF WHAT I
THOUGHT LIBERTY, I ventured to oppose, without ceasing to venerate,
that writer who had nourished my understanding with the most wholesome
principles of political wisdom...Since that time, A MELANCHOLY
EXPERIENCE HAS UNDECEIVED ME ON MANY SUBJECTS, IN
WHICH I WAS THE DUPE OF MY OWN ENTHUSIASM." Let us part
from this branch of our subject by quoting Burke's own words, uttered, as it
were, on the very brink of eternity. They attest, to the latest moment of his
life, with what a sacred intensity and unflinching sincerity he clung to his
original sentiments touching the French Revolution. Nor let the present
writer shrink from adding, they constitute but one of the many specimens of
that instinctive prescience, whereby this profoundest of philosophical
statesmen was enabled to herald from afar the final triumphs of courage,
patriotism, and truth. The passage occurs towards the conclusion of his
"Letters on a Regicide Peace," and is as follows:—"Never succumb. It is a
struggle for your existence as a nation. If you must die, die with the sword
in your hand. But I have no fear whatever for the result. There is a salient
living principle of energy in the public mind of England, which only

requires proper direction to enable her to withstand this, or any other
ferocious foe. Persevere, therefore, till this tyranny be over-past."
If from the glare of public history, we follow this great man into the
shades of domestic seclusion, or watch the features of his social character
unfolding themselves in the varied circle which he graced by his presence,
or dignified by his worth,—he is alike the object of respectful esteem and
love. Warmth of heart, chivalry of sentiment, and that true high-breeding
which springs from the soul rather than a pedigree, eminently characterise
the history of Burke in private life. Above all, a sympathising tendency for
the children of Genius, and a catholic largeness of view in all which relates
unto mental effort, combined with the utmost charity for human failings and
infirmities,—cannot but endear him to our deepest affections, while his
unrivalled endowments command our highest admiration. To illustrate what
is here alluded to, let the reader recall Burke's noble generosity towards that
erratic victim of genius and grief,—the painter Barry; or his instantaneous
sympathy in behalf of Crabbe the poet, when almost a foodless wanderer in
our vast metropolis; and our estimate of Burke's excellencies as a man, will
not be deemed overdrawn.
It now remains for the selector of the following pages to offer a few
remarks on their nature, and design. Accustomed, from the earliest period of
his mental life to read and study the writings of Edmund Burke, he has long
wished that such a selection as now appears, should be published. The
works of Burke extend through a vast range of large volumes; and it is
feared thousands have been deterred from holding communion with a
master-spirit of British literature, by the magnitude of his labours. Hence, a
concentrated specimen of his intellect may not only tempt the "reading
public" (Coleridge's horror, yet an author's friend!) to study some of Burke's
noblest passages, but even ultimately to introduce them into a full
acquaintance with his entire products. Let it be distinctly understood, the
selection now published, is not a second-hand one, grafted on some pre-
existing volume; but the result of a diligent, careful, and analytical perusal
of Burke's writings. In attempting such a work, there was one difficulty,
which none but those who have intimately studied this great orator can
appreciate,—we allude to the giving general titles, or descriptive headings,
to passages selected for quotation. There is a mental fulness, a moral
variety, and such a rapid transition of idea, in most of Burke's speeches, that
it almost baffles ability to abbreviate the spirit of his paragraphs, so as to

exhibit under some general head the bearing of the whole. The selector, in
this respect, can only say, he has done his best; and those who are most
competent to appreciate difficulty, will be least inclined to criticise failure.
Finally, as to the leading design of this volume, its title, "First
Principles," is sufficiently descriptive to save much explanation. Burke
represents an unrivalled combination of patriot, senator, and orator; and as
such, the moral and intellectual nature of the Age will be purified and
expanded, when brought into contact with the attributes of his character,
and the productions of his mind. Nor can the meditative statesman, whose
party is his country, and whose political creed is based upon a true
philosophy of human nature, forget,—that while the French revolution, as
involving FACTS, belongs to History, as enclosing PRINCIPLES, it
appertains to Humanity: and hence, the abiding application of Burke's
profound views, not only to France and England, but to the world. Of
course, those who reverence the majesty of eloquence, and are fascinated by
a florid richness of style, boundless imagination, inexhaustible metaphor,
and all the attending graces of consummate rhetoric, will also be charmed
by the appropriate supply these pages afford. But, without seeking to be
homiletical, let the writer be permitted to add, a far higher purpose than
mere literary amusement, or the gratification of taste, is designed by the
present volume. It is the selector's most earnest hope, that the "First
Principles" these pages so eloquently inculcate, may be transcribed in all
their purity, loftiness, and truth, into the Reason and Conscience of his
countrymen. And among these, for whose especial guidance he ventures to
think the profound wisdom of these pages to be invaluable, are the rising
statesmen and senators of the day, who are either being trained in our Public
Schools, at the Universities, or about to enter upon the difficult but inspiring
arena of the House of Commons. In reference to this sphere of legislative
action, with all reverence to its claims and character, let it be said,—
material ends (a boundless passion for physical good, whether indulged in
by a nation, or professed by an individual, is rebuked with solemn wisdom
in the following passage from Aristotle:—"The external advantages of
power and fortune are acquired and maintained by virtue, but virtue is not
acquired and maintained by them; and whether we consider the virtuous
energies themselves, or the fruits which they unceasingly produce, THE
SOVEREIGN GOOD OF LIFE MUST EVIDENTLY BE FOUND IN
MORAL AND INTELLECTUAL EXCELLENCE, MODERATELY

SUPPLIED WITH EXTERNAL ACCOMMODATIONS, RATHER THAN
IN THE GREATEST ACCUMULATION OF EXTERNAL
ADVANTAGES, UNIMPROVED AND UNADORNED BY VIRTUE.
External prosperity is, indeed, instrumental in producing happiness, and,
therefore, like every other instrument, must have its assigned limits, beyond
which it is inconvenient or hurtful. But to mental excellence no limit can be
assigned; the further it extends the more USEFUL it becomes, if the epithet
of 'USEFUL' need ever be added to that of HONOURABLE. Besides this,
the relative importance of qualities is best estimated by that of their
respective subjects. But the mind, both in itself and in reference to man, is
far better than the body, or than property. The excellencies of the mind,
therefore, are in the same proportion to be preferred to the highest
perfection of the body, and the best disposition of external circumstances.
The two last are of a far inferior, and merely subservient nature; since no
man of sense covets or pursues them, but for the sake of the mind, with a
view to promote its genuine improvement and augment its native joys. Let
this great truth then be acknowledged,—A TRUTH EVINCED BY THE
DEITY HIMSELF, WHO IS HAPPY, NOT FROM ANY EXTERNAL
CAUSE, BUT THROUGH THE INHERENT ATTRIBUTES OF HIS
DIVINE NATURE."—"Politics," lib. iv.), commercial objects, and secular
aggrandizement, are now receiving an idolatrous homage and passionate
regard, which no Christian patriot can contemplate without anxiety. The
ideal, the imaginative, and the religious element, is almost sneered out of
the House of Commons at the existing moment; and any glowing exhibition
of oratory, or splendid manifestation of intellect, is derided, as being
"unpractical" and ill-adapted to the sobriety of the English Senate! Against
this heartless materialism and unholy mammon-worship, Burke's pages are
a magnificent protest; and are admirably suited to protect the political youth
and dawning statesmen of our country, from the blight and the blast of
doctrines which decry Enthusiasm as folly, and condemn the Beautiful as
worthless and untrue. Ships, colonies, and commerce; exports and imports;
taxes and imposts; charters and civic arrangements,—none but a madman
will depreciate what such themes involve, of duty, energy, and zeal, in
political life. Still, let it be fearlessly maintained, neither wealth, nor
commerce, IN THEMSELVES, can constitute the real greatness of an
empire; it is only because they stand in relation to the higher destinies and
holier responsibilities of an Empire, that a true statesman will regard them

as vitally wound up with the vigour and prosperity of national development.
Such, at least, is the philosophy of Politics, breathed from the undying
pages of Edmund Burke. He who studies this great writer, will, more and
more, sympathise with what Hooker taught, and Bishop Sanderson
inculcates. In one word, he will learn to venerate with increasing reverence
THE BRITISH CONSTITUTION, as

"That peerless growth of patriotic mind,
The great eternal Wonder of mankind!"

Burke traced the ultimate origin of civil government to the Divine Will,
both as declared in Revelation, and imaged forth by the moral Constitution
of man. In this respect, it is well-known how fundamentally he differs from
the theories of Hobbes, Mandeville, Shaftesbury, and Hutcheson. Not less
also, is he opposed to Locke, who tells us,—"The original compact which
begins and ACTUALLY CONSTITUTES ANY POLITICAL SOCIETY, IS
NOTHING BUT THE CONSENT OF ANY NUMBER OF FREEMEN
CAPABLE OF A MAJORITY, TO UNITE AND INCORPORATE INTO
SUCH A SOCIETY. AND THIS IS THAT, AND THAT ONLY, WHICH
COULD GIVE BEGINNING TO ANY LAWFUL GOVERNMENT IN
THE WORLD." In one word, Locke declares that civil government is not
from God in the way of principle, but from man in the way of fact; and
thus, being a mere contingency, or moral accident in the history of human
development, self-government is the essential prerogative of our nature. In
accordance with this irrational and unscriptural hypothesis, we find Price
and Priestly expanding Locke's views at the period of Burke; while in the
writings of that apostle of political Antinomianism, Rousseau, and his
English counterpart Tom Paine,—the principles of the ASSUMED
"CONTRAT SOCIAL" display their utmost virulence. This is not the place
to discuss the origin of Civil Government; but the classical reader, who has
been taught to revere the political wisdom of those ancient Teachers, whose
insight was almost prophetical in abstract science, will thank us for an
extract from Aristotle's "Politics," which bears upon this subject. It presents
a most striking coincidence of sentiment between two master-spirits on the
philosophy of government; and will at once remind the reader of Burke's
memorable passage, beginning with, "Society is a partnership," etc. etc. The
passage to which we allude in Aristotle's "Politics," begins thus: "Ote men
oun e polis phusei proteron e ekastos," k.t.l. The whole passage may be thus

freely translated. "A participation in rights and advantages forms the bond
of political society; AN INSTITUTION PRIOR, IN THE INTENTION OF
NATURE, TO THE FAMILIES AND INDIVIDUALS FROM WHOM IT
IS CONSTITUTED. What members are to the body, that citizens are to a
commonwealth. The hands or foot, when separated from the body, retains
its name, but totally changes its nature, because it is completely divested of
its uses and powers. In the same manner a citizen is a constituent part of a
whole system, which invests him with powers and qualifies him for
functions for which, in his individual capacity, he is totally unfit; and
independently of such system, he might subsist indeed as a lonely savage,
but could never attain that improved and happy state to which his
progressive nature invariably tends. Perfected by the offices and duties of
social life, man is the best; but, rude and undisciplined, he is the very worst,
of animals. For nothing is more detestable than armed improbity; and man
is armed with craft and courage, which, uncontrolled by justice, he will
most wickedly pervert, and become at once the most impious and fiercest of
monsters, the most abominable in gluttony, and shameless in personality.
But justice is the fundamental virtue of political society, since the order of
Society cannot be maintained without law, and laws are constituted to
proclaim what is just." Let us add to this noble passage, Aristotle remarks in
his "Ethics" (lib. x. c. 8), that a higher destination than political virtue is the
true end of man. In this respect, he concurs with Plato; who teaches us in
his "Theaetetus," the main object of human pursuit ought to be "omoiosis to
theo kata to dunaton," etc. etc.; i.e. "A similitude unto God as far as
possible; which similitude consists in an imitation of His justice, holiness,
and wisdom." To conclude: the noblest end of all Policy on earth, is to
educate Human Nature for that august "politeuma" (Phil. iii. v. 20), that
Eternal Commonwealth which awaits perfected Spirits above, when,
through infinite grace, they are finally admitted into a "CITY which hath
foundations, whose builder and maker is God." (Heb. xi. 10.) (The dim
approximations of Platonic philosophy to certain discoveries in Divine
Revelation, have rightly challenged the attention of theological enquirers.
The above quotation from St. Paul suggests a reference to one of these,
which occurs towards the termination of Plato's ninth book of "The
Republic." He is uttering a protest against our concluding, that because
degeneracy appears to be the invariable law or destiny of all human
commonwealths, THEREFORE, no Archetypal Model exists of any perfect

state, or polity: and then, in opposition to this political scepticism, Plato
adds these remarkable words:—"en ourano isos paradeigma anakeitai to
boulomeno oran kai oronti eauton katoikizein," etc. etc.—"The state we
have here established, which exists only in our reasoning, but it seems to
me, HAS NO EXISTENCE ON EARTH. BUT IN HEAVEN, PROBABLY,
I REPLIED, THERE IS A MODEL OF IT FOR ANY ONE INCLINED TO
CONTEMPLATE THE SAME, AND BY SO CONTEMPLATING IT, TO
REGULATE HIMSELF ACCORDINGLY.")

APPENDIX.
The following are the critical sketches of Burke's character, alluded to in
the commencement of this Essay. They are from the pens of his most
distinguished contemporaries, WHO WERE OPPOSED TO HIM in their
political views and public career.
(From SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH.)
"There can be no hesitation in according to him a station among the most
extraordinary men that ever appeared; and we think there is now but little
diversity of opinion as to the kind of place which it is fit to assign him. He
was a writer of the first class, and excelled in almost every kind of
composition. Possessed of most extensive knowledge, and of the most
various description; acquainted alike with what different classes of men
knew, each in his own province, and with much that hardly any one ever
thought of learning; he could either bring his masses of information to bear
directly upon the subjects to which they severally belonged,—or he could
avail himself of them generally to strengthen his faculties, and enlarge his
views,—or he could turn any of them to account for the purpose of
illustrating his theme, or enriching his diction. Hence, when he is handling
any one matter, we perceive that we are conversing with a reasoner or a
teacher, to whom almost every other branch of knowledge is familiar: his
views range over all the cognate objects; his reasonings are derived from
principles applicable to other themes, as well as the one in hand; arguments
pour in from all sides, as well as those which start up under our feet,—the
natural growth of the path he is leading us over; while to throw light round
our steps, and either explore its darkest places, or serve for our recreation;
illustrations are fetched from a thousand quarters, and an imagination
marvellously quick to descry unthought of resemblances, points to our use
the stores, which a love yet more marvellously has gathered from all ages
and nations, and arts and tongues. We are, in respect of the argument,
reminded of Bacon's multifarious knowledge, and the exuberance of his
learned fancy; whilst the many-lettered diction recalls to mind the first of
English poets, and his immortal verse, rich with the spoils of all sciences
and all times.

...

"He produced but one philosophical treatise; but no man lays down
abstract principles more soundly, or better traces their application. All his
works, indeed, even his controversial, are so infused with general reflection,
so variegated with speculative discussion, that they wear the air of the
Lyceum, as well as the Academy."
(From LORD ERSKINE.)
"I shall take care to put Burke's work on the French Revolution into the
hands of those whose principles are left to my protection. I shall take care
that they have the advantage of doing, in the regular progression of youthful
studies, what I have done even in the short intervals of laborious life; that
they shall transcribe with their own hands from all the works of this most
extraordinary person, and from this last, among the rest, the soundest truths
of religion, the justest principles of morals, inculcated and rendered
delightful by the most sublime eloquence; the highest reach of philosophy
brought down to the level of common minds by the most captivating taste;
the most enlightened observations on history, and the most copious
collection of useful maxims for the experience of common life."
(From KING, Bishop of Rochester.) "In the mind of Mr. Burke political
principles were not objects of barren speculation. Wisdom in him was
always practical. Whatever his understanding adopted as truth, made its
way to his heart, and sank deep into it; and his ardent and generous feelings
seized with promptitude every occasion of applying it to mankind. Where
shall we find recorded exertions of active benevolence at once so numerous,
so varied, and so important, made by one man? Among those, the redress of
wrongs, and the protection of weakness from the oppression of power, were
most conspicuous.

...

The assumption of arbitrary power, in whatever shape it appeared,
whether under the veil of legitimacy, or skulking in the disguise of State
necessity, or presenting the shameless front of usurpation—whether the
prescriptive claim of ascendancy, or the career of official authority, or the

newly-acquired dominion of a mob,—was the pure object of his detestation
and hostility; and this is not a fanciful enumeration of possible cases," etc.

SELECTIONS FROM THE SPEECHES AND
WRITINGS OF EDMUND BURKE.

NATURE AND FUNCTIONS OF THE HOUSE
OF COMMONS.
Whatever alterations time and the necessary accommodation of business
may have introduced, this character can never be sustained, unless the
House of Commons shall be made to bear some stamp of the actual
disposition of the people at large. It would (among public misfortunes) be
an evil more natural and tolerable, that the House of Commons should be
infected with every epidemical frenzy of the people, as this would indicate
some consanguinity, some sympathy of nature with their constituents, than
that they should in all cases be wholly untouched by the opinions and
feelings of the people out of doors. By this want of sympathy they would
cease to be a house of commons. For it is not the derivation of the power of
that house from the people, which makes it in a distinct sense their
representative. The king is the representative of the people; so are the lords,
so are the judges. They all are trustees for the people, as well as the
commons; because no power is given for the sole sake of the holder; and
although government certainly is an institution of Divine authority, yet its
forms, and the persons who administer it, all originate from the people.
A popular origin cannot therefore be the characteristical distinction of a
popular representative. This belongs equally to all parts of government, and
in all forms. The virtue, spirit, and essence of a house of commons consists
in its being the express image of the feelings of the nation. It was not
instituted to be a control UPON the people, as of late it has been taught, by
a doctrine of the most pernicious tendency. It was designed as a control
FOR the people. Other institutions have been formed for the purpose of
checking popular excesses; and they are, I apprehend, fully adequate to
their object. If not, they ought to be made so. The House of Commons, as it
was never intended for the support of peace and subordination, is miserably
appointed for that service; having no stronger weapon than its mace, and no
better officer than its serjeant-at-arms, which it can command of its own
proper authority. A vigilant and jealous eye over executory and judicial
magistracy; an anxious care of public money; an openness, approaching
towards facility, to public complaint; these seem to be the true

characteristics of a house of commons. But an addressing house of
commons, and a petitioning nation; a house of commons full of confidence,
when the nation is plunged in despair; in the utmost harmony with
ministers, whom the people regard with the utmost abhorrence; who vote
thanks, when the public opinion calls upon them for impeachments; who
are eager to grant, when the general voice demands account; who, in all
disputes between the people and administration, presume against the
people; who punish their disorders, but refuse even to inquire into the
provocations to them; this is an unnatural, a monstrous state of things in this
constitution. Such an assembly may be a great, wise, awful senate; but it is
not, to any popular purpose, a house of commons. This change from an
immediate state of procuration and delegation to a course of acting as from
original power, is the way in which all the popular magistracies in the world
have been perverted from their purposes. It is indeed their greatest and
sometimes their incurable corruption. For there is a material distinction
between that corruption by which particular points are carried against
reason (this is a thing which cannot be prevented by human wisdom, and is
of less consequence), and the corruption of the principle itself. For then the
evil is not accidental, but settled. The distemper becomes the natural habit.

RETROSPECT AND RESIGNATION.
You are but just entering into the world; I am going out of it. I have
played long enough to be heartily tired of the drama. Whether I have acted
my part in it well or ill, posterity will judge with more candour than I, or
than the present age, with our present passions, can possibly pretend to. For
my part, I quit it without a sigh, and submit to the sovereign order without
murmuring. The nearer we approach to the goal of life, the better we begin
to understand the true value of our existence, and the real weight of our
opinions. We set out much in love with both: but we leave much behind us
as we advance. We first throw away the tales along with the rattles of our
nurses; those of the priest keep their hold a little longer; those of our
governors the longest of all. But the passions which prop these opinions are
withdrawn one after another; and the cool light of reason, at the setting of
our life, shows us what a false splendour played upon these objects during
our more sanguine seasons.

MODESTY OF MIND.
If any inquiry thus carefully conducted should fail at last of discovering
the truth, it may answer an end perhaps as useful, in discovering to us the
weakness of our own understanding. If it does not make us knowing, it may
make us modest. If it does not preserve us from error, it may at least from
the spirit of error; and may make us cautious of pronouncing with
positiveness or with haste, when so much labour may end in so much
uncertainty.

NEWTON AND NATURE.
When Newton first discovered the property of attraction, and settled its
laws, he found it served very well to explain several of the most remarkable
phenomena in nature; but yet with reference to the general system of things,
he could consider attraction but as an effect, whose cause at that time he did
not attempt to trace. But when he afterwards began to account for it by a
subtle elastic aether, this great man (if in so great a man it be not impious to
discover anything like a blemish) seemed to have quitted his usual cautious
manner of philosophising: since, perhaps, allowing all that has been
advanced on this subject to be sufficiently proved, I think it leaves us with
as many difficulties as it found us. That great chain of causes, which linking
one to another even to the throne of God himself, can never be unravelled
by any industry of ours. When we go but one step beyond the immediate
sensible qualities of things, we go out of our depth. All we do after is but a
faint struggle, that shows we are in an element which does not belong to us.

THEORY AND PRACTICE.
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.

INDUCTION AND COMPARISON.
We must not attempt to fly, when we can scarcely pretend to creep. In
considering any complex matter, we ought to examine every distinct
ingredient in the composition, one by one; and reduce everything to the
utmost simplicity; since the condition of our nature binds us to a strict law
and vary narrow limits. We ought afterwards to re-examine the principles
by the effect of the composition, as well as the composition by that of the
principles. We ought to compare our subject with things of a similar nature,
and even with things of a contrary nature; for discoveries may be, and often
are, made by the contrast, which would escape us on the single view. The
greater number of the comparisons we make, the more general and the more
certain our knowledge is likely to prove, as built upon a more extensive and
perfect induction.

DIVINE POWER ON THE HUMAN IDEA.
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, 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.

UNION OF LOVE AND DREAD IN RELIGION.
True religion has, and must have, a large mixture of salutary fear; and
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 that 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.

OFFICE OF SYMPATHY.
Whenever we are formed by nature to any active purpose, the passion
which animates us to it is attended with delight, or a pleasure of some kind,
let the subject-matter be what it will; and as our Creator had designed that
we should be united by the bond of sympathy, he has strengthened that
bond by a proportionable delight; and there most where our sympathy is
most wanted,—in the distresses of others.

WORDS.
Natural objects affect us, by the laws of that connexion which Providence
has established between certain motions and configurations of bodies, and
certain consequent feelings in our mind. Painting affects in the same
manner, but with the superadded pleasure of imitation. Architecture affects
by the laws of nature, and the law of reason; from which latter result the
rules of proportion, which make a work to be praised or censured, in the
whole or in some part, when the end for which it was designed is or is not
properly answered. But as to words; they seem to me to affect us in a
manner very different from that in which we are affected by natural objects,
or by painting or architecture; yet words have as considerable a share in
exciting ideas of beauty and of the sublime as many of those, and
sometimes a much greater than any of them.

NATURE ANTICIPATES MAN.
Whenever the wisdom of our Creator intended that we should be affected
with anything, he did not confide the execution of his design to the languid
and precarious operation of our reason; but he endued it with powers and
properties that prevent the understanding, and even the will; which, seizing
upon the senses and imagination, captivate the soul before the
understanding is ready either to join with them, or to oppose them. It is by a
long deduction, and much study, that we discover the adorable wisdom of
God in his works: when we discover it, the effect is very different, not only
in the manner of acquiring it, but in its own nature, from that which strikes
us without any preparation from the sublime or the beautiful.

SELF-INSPECTION.
Whatever turns the soul inward on itself, tends to concentre its forces,
and to fit it for greater and stronger flights of science. 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 chase is certainly of
service.

POWER OF THE OBSCURE.
Poetry, with all its obscurity, has a more general, as well as a more
powerful, dominion over the passions, than the other art. And I think there
are reasons in nature, why the obscure idea, when properly conveyed,
should be more affecting than the clear. It is our ignorance of things that
causes all our admiration, and chiefly excites our passions. Knowledge and
acquaintance make the most striking causes affect but little. It is thus with
the vulgar; and all men are as the vulgar in what they do not understand.
The ideas of eternity and infinity, are among the most affecting we have:
and yet perhaps there is nothing of which we really understand so little, as
of infinity and eternity.

FEMALE BEAUTY.
The object therefore of this mixed passion, which we call love, is the
BEAUTY of the SEX. Men are carried to the sex in general, as it is the sex,
and by the common law of nature; but they are attached to particulars by
personal BEAUTY. I call beauty a social quality; for where women and
men, and not only they, but when other animals give us a sense of joy and
pleasure in beholding them (and there are many that do so), they inspire us
with sentiments of tenderness and affection towards their persons; we like
to have them near us, and we enter willingly into a kind of relation with
them, unless we should have strong reasons to the contrary.

NOVELTY AND CURIOSITY.
Curiosity is the most superficial of all the affections; it changes its object
perpetually, it has an appetite which is very sharp, but very easily satisfied;
and it has always an appearance of giddiness, restlessness, and anxiety.
Curiosity, from its nature, is a very active principle; it quickly runs over the
greatest part of its objects, and soon exhausts the variety which is
commonly to be met with in nature; the same things make frequent returns,
and they return with less and less of any agreeable effect. In short, the
occurrences of life, by the time we come to know it a little, would be
incapable of affecting the mind with any other sensations than those of
loathing and weariness, if many things were not adapted to affect the mind
by means of other powers besides novelty in them, and of other passions
besides curiosity in ourselves.

PLEASURES OF ANALOGY.
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.

AMBITION.
God has planted in man a sense of ambition, and a satisfaction arising
from the contemplation of his excelling his fellows in something deemed
valuable amongst them. It is this passion that drives men to all the ways we
see in use of signalizing themselves, and that tends to make whatever
excites in a man the idea of this distinction so very pleasant. It has been so
strong as to make very miserable men take comfort, that they were supreme
in misery; and certain it is, that, where we cannot distinguish ourselves by
something excellent, we begin to take a complacency in some singular
infirmities, follies, or defects of one kind or other. It is on this principle that
flattery is so prevalent; for flattery is no more than what raises in a man's
mind an idea of a preference which he has not.

EXTENSIONS OF SYMPATHY.
For sympathy must be considered as a sort of substitution, by which we
are put into the place of another man, and affected in many respects as he is
affected; so that this passion may either partake of the nature of those which
regard self-preservation, and turning upon pain may be a source of the
sublime; or it may turn upon ideas of pleasure; and then whatever has been
said of the social affections, whether they regard society in general, or only
some particular modes of it, may be applicable here. It is by this principle
chiefly that poetry, painting, and other affecting arts, transfuse their
passions from one breast to another, and are often capable of grafting a
delight on wretchedness, misery, and death itself.

PHILOSOPHY OF TASTE.
So far, then, as taste belongs to the imagination, its principle is the same
in all men; there is no different in the manner of their being affected, nor in
the causes of the affection; but in the DEGREE there is a difference, which
arises from two causes principally; either from a greater degree of natural
sensibility, or from a closer and longer attention to the object.

CLEARNESS AND STRENGTH IN STYLE.
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 latter 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.

UNITY OF IMAGINATION.
Since the imagination is only the representation of the senses, it can only
be pleased or displeased with the images, from the same principle on which
the sense is pleased or displeased with the realities; and consequently there
must be just as close an agreement in the imaginations as in the senses of
men. A little attention will convince us that this must of necessity be the
case.

EFFECT OF WORDS.
If words have all their possible extent of power, three effects arise in the
mind of the hearer. The first is, the SOUND; the second, the PICTURE, or
representation of the thing signified by the sound; the third is, the
AFFECTION of the soul produced by one or by both of the foregoing.
COMPOUNDED ABSTRACT words, of which we have been speaking
(honour, justice, liberty, and the like), produce the first and the last of these
effects, but not the second. SIMPLE ABSTRACTS, are used to signify
some one simple idea without much adverting to others which may chance
to attend it, as blue, green, hot, cold, and the like; these are capable of
effecting all three of the purposes of words; as the AGGREGATE words,
man, castle, horse, etc. are in a yet higher degree. But I am of opinion, that
the most general effect, even of these words, does not arise from their
forming pictures of the several things they would represent in the
imagination; because, on a very diligent examination of my own mind, and
getting others to consider theirs, I do not find that once in twenty times any
such picture is formed, and, when it is, there is most commonly a particular
effort of the imagination for that purpose. But the aggregate words operate,
as I said of the compound-abstracts, not by presenting any image to the
mind, but by having from use the same effect on being mentioned, that their
original has when it is seen.

INVESTIGATION.
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.

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.

OBSCURITY.
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 oaks. 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.

PRINCIPLES OF TASTE.
Whatever certainty is to be acquired in morality and the science of life;
just the same degree of certainty have we in what relates to them in works
of imitation. Indeed, it is for the most part in our skill in manners, and in the
observances of time and place, and of decency in general, which is only to
be learned in those schools to which Horace recommends us, that what is
called taste, by way of distinction, consists; and which is in reality no other
than a more refined judgment. On the whole it appears to me, that what is
called taste, in its most general acceptation, is not a simple idea, but is
partly made up of a perception of the primary pleasures of sense, of the
secondary pleasures of the imagination, and of the conclusions of the
reasoning faculty, concerning the various relations of these, and concerning
the human passions, manners, and actions. All this is requisite to form taste,
and the ground-work of all these is the same in the human mind; for as the
senses are the great originals of all our ideas, and consequently of all our
pleasures, if they are not uncertain and arbitrary, the whole ground-work of
taste is common to all, and therefore there is a sufficient foundation for a
conclusive reasoning on these matters.

THE BEAUTIFUL.
Beauty is a thing much too affecting not to depend upon some positive
qualities. And, since it is no creature of our reason, since it strikes us
without any reference to use, and even where no use at all can be discerned,
since the order and method of nature is generally very different from our
measures and proportions, we must conclude that beauty is, for the greater
part, some quality in bodies acting mechanically upon the human mind by
the intervention of the senses.

THE REAL AND THE IDEAL.
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!

JUDGMENT IN ART.
A rectitude of judgment in the arts, which may be called a good taste,
does in a great measure depend upon sensibility; because, if the mind has
no bent to the pleasures of the imagination, it will never apply itself
sufficiently to works of that species to acquire a competent knowledge in
them. But, though a degree of sensibility is requisite to form a good
judgment, yet a good judgment does not necessarily arise from a quick
sensibility of pleasure.

MORAL EFFECTS OF LANGUAGE.
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 shown 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 that 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, etc. 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 anything so grand as the addition of one word, "the angel of the
LORD?"

SECURITY OF TRUTH.
I then thought, and am still of the same opinion, that error, and not truth
of any kind, is dangerous; that ill conclusions can only flow from false
propositions; and that, to know whether any proposition be true or false, it
is a preposterous method to examine it by its apparent consequences.

IMITATION AN INSTINCTIVE LAW.
For as sympathy makes us take a concern in whatever men feel, so this
affection prompts us to copy whatever they do; and consequently we have a
pleasure in imitating, and in whatever belongs to imitation merely as it is
such, without any intervention of the reasoning faculty, but solely from our
natural constitution, which Providence has framed in such a manner as to
find either pleasure or delight, according to the nature of the object, in
whatever regards the purposes of our being. It is by imitation far more than
by precept, that we learn everything; and what we learn thus, we acquire not
only more effectually, but more pleasantly. This forms our manners, our
opinions, our lives. It is one of the strongest links of society; it is a species
of mutual compliance, which all men yield to each other, without constraint
to themselves, and which is extremely flattering to all.

STANDARD OF REASON AND TASTE.
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 judgment 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.

USE OF 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.

POLITICAL OUTCASTS.
In the mean time, that power, which all these changes aimed at securing,
remains still as tottering and as uncertain as ever. They are delivered up into
the hands of those who feel neither respect for their persons, nor gratitude
for their favours; who are put about them in appearance to serve, in reality
to govern them; and, when the signal is given, to abandon and destroy them,
in order to set up some new dupe of ambition, who in his turn is to be
abandoned and destroyed. Thus, living in a state of continual uneasiness
and ferment, softened only by the miserable consolation of giving now and
then preferments to those for whom they have no value; they are unhappy in
their situation, yet find it impossible to resign. Until, at length, soured in
temper, and disappointed by the very attainment of their ends, in some
angry, in some haughty, or some negligent moment, they incur the
displeasure of those upon whom they have rendered their very being
dependent. Then perierunt tempora longi servitii; they are cast off with
scorn; they are turned out, emptied of all natural character, of all intrinsic
worth, of all essential dignity, and deprived of every consolation of
friendship. Having rendered all retreat to old principles ridiculous, and to
old regards impracticable, not being able to counterfeit pleasure, or to
discharge discontent, nothing being sincere or right, or balanced in their
minds, it is more than a chance, that, in the delirium of the last stage of their
distempered power, they make an insane political testament, by which they
throw all their remaining weight and consequence into the scale of their
declared enemies, and the avowed authors of their destruction.

INJUSTICE TO OUR OWN AGE.
If these evil dispositions should spread much farther they must end in our
destruction; for nothing can save a people destitute of public and private
faith. However, the author, for the present state of things, has extended the
charge by much too widely; as men are but too apt to take the measure of all
mankind from their own particular acquaintance. Barren as this age may be
in the growth of honour and virtue, the country does not want, at this
moment, as strong, and those not a few, examples as were ever known, of
an unshaken adherence to principle, and attachment to connexion, against
every allurement of interest. Those examples are not furnished by the great
alone; nor by those, whose activity in public affairs may render it suspected
that they make such a character one of the rounds in their ladder of
ambition; but by men more quiet, and more in the shade, on whom an
unmixed sense of honour alone could operate.

FALSE COALITIONS.
No system of that kind can be formed, which will not leave room fully
sufficient for healing coalitions: but no coalition which, under the specious
name of independency, carries in its bosom the unreconciled principles of
the original discord of parties, ever was, or will be, an healing coalition.
Nor will the mind of our sovereign ever know repose, his kingdom
settlement, or his business order, in efficiency or grace with his people, until
things are established upon the basis of some set of men, who are trusted by
the public, and who can trust one another.

POLITICAL EMPIRICISM.
Men of sense, when new projects come before them, always think a
discourse proving the mere right or mere power of acting in the manner
proposed, to be no more than a very unpleasant way of mispending time.
They must see the object to be of proper magnitude to engage them; they
must see the means of compassing it to be next to certain: the mischiefs not
to counterbalance the profit; they will examine how a proposed imposition
or regulation agrees with the opinion of those who are likely to be affected
by it; they will not despise the consideration even of their habitudes and
prejudices. They wish to know how it accords or disagrees with the true
spirit of prior establishments, whether of government or of finance; because
they well know, that in the complicated economy of great kingdoms, and
immense revenues, which in a length of time, and by a variety of accidents,
have coalesced into a sort of body, an attempt towards a compulsory
equality in all circumstances, and an exact practical definition of the
supreme rights in every case, is the most dangerous and chimerical of all
enterprises. The old building stands well enough, though part Gothic, part
Grecian, and part Chinese, until an attempt is made to square it into
uniformity. Then it may come down upon our heads altogether, in much
uniformity of ruin; and great will be the fall thereof.

A VISIONARY.
Enough of this visionary union; in which much extravagance appears
without any fancy, and the judgment is shocked without anything to refresh
the imagination. It looks as if the author had dropped down from the moon,
without any knowledge of the general nature of this globe, of the general
nature of its inhabitants, without the least acquaintance with the affairs of
this country.

PARTY DIVISIONS.
Party divisions, whether on the whole operating for good or evil, are
things inseparable from free government. This is a truth which, I believe,
admits little dispute, having been established by the uniform experience of
all ages. The part a good citizen ought to take in these divisions has been a
matter of much deeper controversy. But God forbid that any controversy
relating to our essential morals should admit of no decision. It appears to
me, that this question, like most of the others which regard our duties in
life, is to be determined by our station in it. Private men may be wholly
neutral, and entirely innocent; but they who are legally invested with public
trust, or stand on the high ground of rank and dignity, which is trust
implied, can hardly in any case remain indifferent, without the certainty of
sinking into insignificance; and thereby in effect deserting that post in
which, with the fullest authority, and for the wisest purposes, the laws and
institutions of their country have fixed them. However, if it be the office of
those who are thus circumstanced, to take a decided part, it is no less their
duty that it should be a sober one.

DECORUM IN PARTY.
It ought to be circumscribed by the same laws of decorum, and balanced
by the same temper, which bound and regulate all the virtues. In a word, we
ought to act in party with all the moderation which does not absolutely
enervate that vigour, and quench that fervency of spirit, without which the
best wishes for the public good must evaporate in empty speculation.

NOT SO BAD AS WE SEEM.
Our circumstances are indeed critical; but then they are the critical
circumstances of a strong and mighty nation. If corruption and meanness
are greatly spread, they are not spread universally. Many public men are
hitherto examples of public spirit and integrity. Whole parties, as far as
large bodies can be uniform, have preserved character. However they may
be deceived in some particulars, I know of no set of men amongst us which
does not contain persons on whom the nation, in a difficult exigence, may
well value itself. Private life, which is the nursery of the commonwealth, is
yet in general pure, and on the whole disposed to virtue; and the people at
large want neither generosity nor spirit. No small part of that very luxury,
which is so much the subject of the author's declamation, but which, in
most parts of life, by being well balanced and diffused, is only decency and
convenience, has perhaps as many or more good than evil consequences
attending it. It certainly excites industry, nourishes emulation, and inspires
some sense of personal value into all ranks of people. What we want is to
establish more fully an opinion of uniformity, and consistency of character,
in the leading men of the state; such as will restore some confidence to
profession and appearance, such as will fix subordination upon esteem.
Without this all schemes are begun at the wrong end.

POLITICS WITHOUT PRINCIPLE.
People not very well grounded in the principles of public morality find a
set of maxims in office ready made for them, which they assume as
naturally and inevitably, as any of the insignia or instruments of the
situation. A certain tone of the solid and practical is immediately acquired.
Every former profession of public spirit is to be considered as a debauch of
youth, or, at best, as a visionary scheme of unattainable perfection. The very
idea of consistency is exploded. The convenience of the business of the day
is to furnish the principle for doing it. Then the whole ministerial cant is
quickly got by heart. The prevalence of faction is to be lamented. All
opposition is to be regarded as the effect of envy and disappointed
ambition. All administrations are declared to be alike. The same necessity
justifies all their measures. It is no longer a matter of discussion, who or
what administration is; but that administration is to be supported, is a
general maxim. Flattering themselves that their power is become necessary
to the support of all order and government, everything which tends to the
support of that power is sanctified, and becomes a part of the public
interest.

MORAL DEBASEMENT PROGRESSIVE.
I believe the instances are exceedingly rare of men immediately passing
over a clear, marked line of virtue into declared vice and corruption. There
are a sort of middle tints and shades between the two extremes; there is
something uncertain on the confines of the two empires which they first
pass through, and which renders the change easy and imperceptible. There
are even a sort of splendid impositions so well contrived, that, at the very
time the path of rectitude is quitted for ever, men seem to be advancing into
some higher and nobler road of public conduct. Not that such impositions
are strong enough in themselves; but a powerful interest, often concealed
from those whom it affects, works at the bottom, and secures the operation.
Men are thus debauched away from those legitimate connexions, which
they had formed on a judgment, early perhaps but sufficiently mature, and
wholly unbiassed.

DESPOTISM.
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.

JUDGMENT AND POLICY.
Nothing can render this a point of indifference to the nation, but what
must either render us totally desperate, or sooth us into the security of
idiots. 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
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
trustworthy hands, but has left its whole executory system to be disposed of
agreeably to the uncontrolled pleasures 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.

POPULAR DISCONTENT.
To complain of the age we live in, to murmur at the present possessors of
power, to lament the past, to conceive extravagant hopes of the future, are
the common dispositions of the greatest part of mankind; indeed, the
necessary effects of the ignorance and levity of the vulgar. Such complaints
and humours have existed in all times; yet as all times have NOT been
alike, true political sagacity manifests itself in distinguishing that complaint
which only characterises the general infirmity of human nature, from those
which are symptoms of the particular distemperature of our own air and
season.

THE PEOPLE AND THEIR RULERS.
I am not one of those who think that the people are never in the wrong.
They have been so, frequently and outrageously, both in other countries and
in this. But I do say, that in all disputes between them and their rulers, the
presumption is at least upon a par in favour of the people. Experience may
perhaps justify me in going farther. When popular discontents have been
very prevalent, it may well be affirmed and supported, that there has been
generally something found amiss in the constitution, or in the conduct of
government. The people have no interest in disorder. When they do wrong,
it is their error, and not their crime.

GOVERNMENT FAVOURITISM.
It is this unnatural infusion of a government which in a great part of its
constitution is popular, that has raised the present ferment in the nation. The
people, without entering deeply into its principles, could plainly perceive its
effects, in much violence, in a great spirit of innovation, and a general
disorder in all the functions of government. I keep my eye solely on this
system; if I speak of those measures which have arisen from it, it will be so
far only as they illustrate the general scheme. This is the fountain of all
those bitter waters, of which, through an hundred different conduits, we
have drunk until we are ready to burst. The discretionary power of the
Crown in the formation of ministry, abused by bad or weak men, has given
rise to a system which, without directly violating the letter of any law,
operates against the spirit of the whole constitution.
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 controls, 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, in 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 LAWS,
OR FOR THE NOMINATION TO MAGISTRACY AND OFFICE, OR
FOR CONDUCTING 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.

ADMINISTRATION AND LEGISLATION.
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 a 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 dependence, 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.

INFLUENCE OF THE CROWN.
The power of the Crown, almost dead and rotten as Prerogative, has
grown up anew, with much more strength, and far less odium, under the
name of Influence. An influence, which operated without noise and without
violence; an influence which converted the very antagonist into the
instrument of power; which contained in itself a perpetual principle of
growth and renovation; and which the distresses and the prosperity of the
country equally tend to augment, was an admirable substitute for a
prerogative, that, being only the offspring of antiquated prejudices, had
moulded into its original stamina irresistible principles of decay and
dissolution. The ignorance of the people is a bottom but for a temporary
system; the interest of active men in the state is a foundation perpetual and
infallible.

VOICE OF THE PEOPLE.
Government is deeply interested in everything which, even through the
medium of some temporary uneasiness, may tend finally to compose the
minds of the subjects, and to conciliate their affections. I have nothing to do
here with the abstract value of the voice of the people. But as long as
reputation, the most precious possession of every individual, and as long as
opinion, the great support of the state, depend entirely upon that voice, it
can never be considered as a thing of little consequence either to individuals
or to governments. Nations are not primarily ruled by laws; less by
violence. Whatever original energy may be supposed either in force or
regulation, the operation of both is, in truth, merely instrumental. Nations
are governed by the same methods, and on the same principles, by which an
individual without authority is often able to govern those who are his equals
or his superiors—by a knowledge of their temper, and by a judicious
management of it; I mean, when public affairs are steadily and quietly
conducted; and when government is nothing but a continued scuffle
between the magistrate and the multitude; in which sometimes the one and
sometimes the other is uppermost; in which they alternately yield and
prevail, in a series of contemptible victories, and scandalous submissions.
The temper of the people amongst whom he presides ought therefore to be
the first study of a statesman. And the knowledge of this temper it is by no
means impossible for him to attain, if he has not an interest in being
ignorant of what it is his duty to learn.

FALLACY OF EXTREMES.
It is a fallacy in constant use with those who would level all things, and
confound right with wrong, to insist upon the inconveniences which are
attached to every choice, without taking into consideration the different
weight and consequence of those inconveniences. 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 enterprises 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 a hurricane in a cloud no bigger than a 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.

PRIVATE CHARACTER A BASIS FOR PUBLIC
CONFIDENCE.
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 shown 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
degradations 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 sympathise 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 controlling 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 CONNECTION 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 CONNECTION WITH THE
SENTIMENTS AND OPINIONS OF THE PEOPLE.

PREVENTION.
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.

CONFIDENCE IN THE PEOPLE.
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 fulness 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.

FALSE MAXIMS ASSUMED AS FIRST
PRINCIPLES.
It is an advantage to all narrow wisdom and narrow morals, that their
maxims have a plausible air; and, on a cursory view, appear equal to first
principles. They are light and portable. They are as current as copper coin;
and about as valuable. They serve equally the first capacities and the
lowest; and they are, at least, as useful to the worst men as to the best. Of
this stamp is the cant of NOT MEN, BUT MEASURES; a sort of charm by
which many people get loose from every honourable engagement. When I
see a man acting this desultory and disconnected part, with as much
detriment to his own fortune as prejudice to the cause of any party, I am not
persuaded that he is right; but I am ready to believe he is in earnest. I
respect virtue in all its situations; even when it is found in the unsuitable
company of weakness. I lament to see qualities rare and valuable,
squandered away without any public utility. But when a gentleman with
great visible emoluments abandons the party in which he has long acted,
and tells you, it is because he proceeds upon his own judgment; that he acts
on the merits of the several measures as they arise; and that he is obliged to
follow his own conscience, and not that of others; he gives reasons which it
is impossible to controvert, and discovers a character which it is impossible
to mistake. What shall we think of him who never differed from a certain
set of men until the moment they lost their power, and who never agreed
with them in a single instance afterwards? Would not such a coincidence of
interest and opinion be rather fortunate? Would it not be an extraordinary
cast upon the dice, that a man's connexions should degenerate into faction,
precisely at the critical moment when they lose their power, or he accepts a
place? When people desert their connexions, the desertion is a manifest
FACT, upon which a direct simple issue lies, triable by plain men. Whether
a MEASURE of government be right or wrong, IS NO MATTER OF
FACT, but a mere affair of opinion, on which men may, as they do, dispute
and wrangle without end. But whether the individual THINKS the measure
right or wrong, is a point at still a greater distance from the reach of all
human decision. It is therefore very convenient to politicians, not to put the

judgment of their conduct on overt acts, cognizable in any ordinary court,
but upon such matter as can be triable only in that secret tribunal, where
they are sure of being heard with favour, or where at worst the sentence will
be only private whipping.

LORD CHATHAM.
Another scene was opened, and other actors appeared on the stage. The
State, in the condition I have described it, was delivered into the hands 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 nomen
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 dove-tailed;
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 spoken to each other in their lives, until they found themselves, they
knew not how, pigging together, heads and points, in the same truckle-bed.
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
everything 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.

GRENVILLE.
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
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.

CHARLES TOWNSHEND.
This light too is passed and set for ever. You understand, to be sure, that I
speak of Charles Townshend, officially the reproducer of this fatal scheme;
whom I cannot even now remember without some degree of sensibility. In
truth, Sir, he was the delight and ornament of this house, and the charm of
every private society which he honoured with his presence. Perhaps there
never arose in this country, nor in any country, a man of a more pointed and
finished wit; and (where his passions were not concerned) of a more
refined, exquisite, and penetrating judgment. If he had not so great a stock,
as some have had who flourished formerly, of knowledge long treasured up,
he knew better by far, than any man I ever was acquainted with, how to
bring together within a short time, all that was necessary to establish, to
illustrate, and to decorate that side of the question he supported. He stated
his matter skilfully and powerfully. He particularly excelled in a most
luminous explanation and display of his subject. His style of argument was
neither trite and vulgar, nor subtle and abstruse. He hit the house just
between wind and water. And not being troubled with too anxious a zeal for
any matter in question, he was never more tedious, or more earnest, than the
pre-conceived opinions and present temper of his hearers required; to whom
he was always in perfect unison. He conformed exactly to the temper of the
house; and he seemed to guide, because he was always sure to follow it.

PARTY AND PLACE.
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. For my part, I find it impossible to conceive that any one believes in
his own politics, or thinks them to be of any weight, who refuses to adopt
the means of having them reduced into practice. It is the business of the
speculative philosopher to mark the proper ends of government. It is the
business of the politician, who is the philosopher in action, to find out
proper means towards those ends, and to employ them with effect.
Therefore every honourable connection will avow it is their first purpose to
pursue every just method to put the men who hold their opinions into such a
condition as may enable them to carry their common plans into execution,
with all the power and authority of the state. As this power is attached to
certain situations, it is their duty to contend for these situations. Without a
proscription of others, they are bound to give to their own party the
preference in all things; and by no means, for private considerations, to
accept any offers of power in which the whole body is not included; nor to
suffer themselves to be led, or to be controlled, or to be overbalanced, in
office or in council, by those who contradict the very fundamental
principles on which their party is formed, and even those upon which every
fair connection must stand. Such a generous contention for power, on such
manly and honourable maxims, will easily be distinguished from the mean
and interested struggle for place and emolument. The very style of such
persons will serve to discriminate them from those numberless imposters
who have deluded the ignorant with professions incompatible with human
practice, and have afterwards incensed them by practices below the level of
vulgar rectitude.

POLITICAL CONNECTIONS.
Every profession, not excepting the glorious one of a soldier, or the
sacred one of a priest, is liable to its own particular vices, which, however,
form no argument against those ways of life; nor are the vices themselves
inevitable to every individual in those professions. Of such a nature are
connections in politics; essentially necessary for the full performance of our
public duty, accidentally liable to degenerate into faction. Commonwealths
are made of families, free commonwealths of parties also; and we may as
well affirm, that our natural regards and ties of blood tend inevitably to
make men bad citizens, as that the bonds of our party weaken those by
which we are held to our country.
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 connections.
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 connections 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, showed he

regarded somebody besides himself, when he came to act in a public
situation, might probably consult some other interest than his own.

NEUTRALITY.
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 connection 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 on 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 anything
else.

WEAKNESS IN GOVERNMENT.
Let us learn from our experience. It is not support that is wanting to
government, but reformation. When ministry rests upon public opinion, it is
not indeed built upon a rock of adamant; it has, however, some stability. But
when it stands upon private humour, its structure is of stubble, and its
foundation is on quicksand. I repeat it again—He that supports every
administration subverts all government. The reason is this: The whole
business in which a court usually takes an interest goes on at present
equally well, in whatever hands, whether high or low, wise or foolish,
scandalous or reputable; there is nothing, therefore, to hold it firm to any
one body of men, or to any one consistent scheme of politics. Nothing
interposes to prevent the full operation of all the caprices and all the
passions of a court upon the servants of the public. The system of
administration is open to continual shocks and changes, upon the principles
of the meanest cabal, and the most contemptible intrigue. Nothing can be
solid and permanent. All good men at length fly with horror from such a
service. Men of rank and ability, with the spirit which ought to animate such
men in a free state, while they decline the jurisdiction of dark cabal on their
actions and their fortunes, will, for both, cheerfully put themselves upon
their country. They will trust an inquisitive and distinguishing parliament;
because it does inquire, and does distinguish. If they act well, they know
that, in such a parliament, they will be supported against any intrigue; if
they act ill, they know that no intrigue can protect them. This situation,
however awful, is honourable. But in one hour, and in the self-same
assembly, without any assigned or assignable cause, to be precipitated from
the highest authority to the most marked neglect, possibly into the greatest
peril of life and reputation, is a situation full of danger, and destitute of
honour. It will be shunned equally by every man of prudence, and every
man of spirit.

AMERICAN PROGRESS.
Nothing in the history of mankind is like their progress. For my part, I
never cast an eye on their flourishing commerce, and their cultivated and
commodious life, but they seem to me rather ancient nations grown to
perfection through a long series of fortunate events, and a train of
successful industry, accumulating wealth in many centuries, than the
colonies of yesterday; than a set of miserable outcasts, a few years ago, not
so much sent as thrown out, on the bleak and barren shore of a desolate
wilderness, three thousand miles from all civilized intercourse.

COMBINATION, NOT FACTION.
That connection and faction are equivalent terms, is an opinion which has
been carefully inculcated at all times by unconstitutional statesmen. The
reason is evident. Whilst men are linked together, they easily and speedily
communicate the alarm of any evil design. They are enabled to fathom it
with common counsel, and to oppose it with united strength. Whereas,
when they lie dispersed, without concert, order, or discipline,
communication is uncertain, counsel difficult, and resistance impracticable.
Where men are not acquainted with each other's principles, nor experienced
in each other's talents, nor at all practised in their mutual habitudes and
dispositions by joint efforts in business; no personal confidence, no
friendship, no common interest, subsisting among them; it is evidently
impossible that they can act a public part with uniformity, perseverance, or
efficacy. In a connection, the most inconsiderable man, by adding to the
weight of the whole, has his value, and his use; out of it, the greatest talents
are wholly unserviceable to the public. No man, who is not inflamed by
vain-glory into enthusiasm, can flatter himself that his single, unsupported,
desultory, unsystematic endeavours, are of power to defeat the subtle
designs and united cabals of ambitious citizens. When bad men combine,
the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice
in a contemptible struggle.

GREAT MEN.
Great men are the guide-posts and land-marks in the state. The credit of
such men at court, or in the nation, is the sole cause of all the public
measures. It would be an invidious thing (most foreign, I trust, to what you
think my disposition) to remark the errors into which the authority of great
names has brought the nation, without doing justice at the same time to the
great qualities whence that authority arose. The subject is instructive to
those who wish to form themselves on whatever of excellence has gone
before them. 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 everything 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.

POWER OF CONSTITUENTS.
The power of the people, within the laws, must show itself sufficient to
protect every representative in the animated performance of his duty, or that
duty cannot be performed. The House of Commons can never be a control
on other parts of government, unless they are controlled themselves by their
constituents; and unless these constituents possess some right in the choice
of that house, which it is not in the power of that house to take away. If they
suffer this power of arbitrary incapacitation to stand, they have utterly
perverted every other power of the House of Commons. The late proceeding
I will not say IS contrary to law, it MUST be so; for the power which is
claimed cannot, by any possibility, be a legal power in any limited member
of government.

INFLUENCE OF PLACE IN GOVERNMENT.
It is no inconsiderable part of wisdom, to know how much of an evil
ought to be tolerated; lest, by attempting a degree of purity impracticable in
degenerate times and manners, instead of cutting off the subsisting ill
practices, new corruptions might be produced for the concealment and
security of the old. It were better, undoubtedly, that no influence at all could
affect the mind of a member of Parliament. But of all modes of influence, in
my opinion, a place under the government is the least disgraceful to the
man who holds it, and by far the most safe to the country. I would not shut
out that sort of influence which is open and visible, which is connected with
the dignity and the service of the state, when it is not in my power to
prevent the influence of contracts, of subscriptions, of direct bribery, and
those innumerable methods of clandestine corruption, which are abundantly
in the hands of the court, and which will be applied as long as these means
of corruption, and the disposition to be corrupted, have existence among us.
Our constitution stands on a nice equipoise, with steep precipices and deep
waters upon all sides of it. In removing it from a dangerous leaning towards
one side, there may be a risk of oversetting it on the other. Every project of
a material change in a government so complicated as ours, combined at the
same time with external circumstances, still more complicated, is a matter
full of difficulties: in which a considerate man will not be too ready to
decide; a prudent man too ready to undertake; or an honest man too ready to
promise. They do not respect the public nor themselves, who engage for
more than they are sure that they ought to attempt, or that they are able to
perform.

TAXATION INVOLVES PRINCIPLE.
No man ever doubted that the commodity of tea could bear an imposition
of threepence. But no commodity will bear threepence, or will bear a penny,
when the general feelings of men are irritated, and two millions of people
are resolved not to pay. The feelings of the colonies were formerly the
feelings of Great Britain. Theirs were formerly the feelings of Mr. Hampden
when called upon for the payment of twenty shillings. Would twenty
shillings have ruined Mr. Hampden's fortune? No! but the payment of half
twenty shillings, on the principle it was demanded, would have made him a
slave.

GOOD MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT.
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; 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
ancient 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.

FISHERIES OF NEW ENGLAND.
As to the wealth which the colonies have drawn from the sea by their
fisheries, you had all that matter fully opened at your bar. You surely
thought those acquisitions of value, for they seemed even to excite your
envy; and yet the spirit by which that enterprising employment has been
exercised ought rather, in my opinion, to have raised your esteem and
admiration. And pray, Sir, what in the world is equal to it! Pass by the other
parts, and look at the manner in which the people of New England have of
late carried on the whale fishery. Whilst we follow them among the
tumbling mountains of ice, and behold them penetrating into the deepest
frozen recesses of Hudson's Bay and Davis's Straits, whilst we are looking
for them beneath the arctic circle, we hear that they have pierced into the
opposite region of polar cold, that they are at the antipodes, and engaged
under the frozen serpent of the south. Falkland Island, which seemed too
remote and romantic an object for the grasp of national ambition, is but a
stage and resting-place in the progress of their victorious industry. Nor is
the equinoctial heat more discouraging to them, than the accumulated
winter of both the poles. We know that whilst some of them draw the line
and strike the harpoon on the coast of Africa, others run the longitude, and
pursue their gigantic game along the coast of Brazil. No sea but what is
vexed by their fisheries. No climate that is not witness to their toils. Neither
the perseverance of Holland, nor the activity of France, nor the dexterous
and firm sagacity of English enterprise, ever carried this most perilous
mode of hard industry to the extent to which it has been pushed by this
recent people; a people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not
yet hardened into the bone of manhood.

PREPARATION FOR PARLIAMENT.
When I first devoted myself to the public service, I considered how I
should render myself fit for it; and this I did by endeavouring to discover
what it was that gave this country the rank it holds in the world. I found that
our prosperity and dignity arose principally, if not solely, from two sources;
—our constitution and commerce. Both these I have spared no study to
understand, and no endeavour to support.
The distinguishing part of our constitution is its liberty. To preserve that
liberty inviolate, seems the particular duty and proper trust of a member of
the House of Commons. But the liberty, the only liberty I mean, is a liberty
connected with order; that not only exists along with order and virtue, but
which cannot exist at all without them. It inheres in good and steady
government, as in its substance and vital principle.
The other source of our power is commerce, of which you are so large a
part, and which cannot exist, no more than your liberty, without a
connection with many virtues. It has ever been a very particular and a very
favourite object of my study, in its principles, and in its details. I think
many here are acquainted with the truth of what I say. This I know, that I
have ever had my house open, and my poor services ready, for traders and
manufacturers of every denomination. My favourite ambition is to have
those services acknowledged. I now appear before you to make trial,
whether my earnest endeavours have been so wholly oppressed by the
weakness of my abilities as to be rendered insignificant in the eyes of a
great trading city; or whether you choose to give a weight to humble
abilities, for the sake of the honest exertions with which they are
accompanied. This is my trial to-day. My industry is not on trial. Of my
industry I am sure, as far as my constitution of mind and body admitted.

BATHURST AND AMERICA'S FUTURE.
Let us, however, before with descend from this noble eminence, reflect
that this growth of our national prosperity has happened within the short
period of the life of man. It has happened within sixty-eight years. There are
those alive whose memory might touch the two extremities. For instance,
my Lord Bathurst might remember all the stages of the progress. He was, in
1704, of an age at least to be made to comprehend such things. He was then
old enough "acta parentum jam legere, et quae sit poterit cognoscere
virtus." Suppose, Sir, that the angel of this auspicious youth, foreseeing the
many virtues which made him one of the most amiable, as he is one of the
most fortunate, men of his age, had opened to him in vision, that when, in
the fourth generation, the third prince of the house of Brunswick had sat
twelve years on the throne of that nation, which (by the happy issue of
moderate and healing councils) was to be made Great Britain, he should see
his son, lord chancellor of England, turn back the current of hereditary
dignity to its fountain, and raise him to a higher rank of peerage, whilst he
enriched the family with a new one. If amidst these bright and happy scenes
of domestic honour and prosperity, that angel should have drawn up the
curtain, and unfolded the rising glories of his country, and whilst he was
gazing with admiration on the then commercial grandeur of England, the
genius should point out to him a little speck, scarce visible in the mass of
the national interest, a small seminal principle, rather than a formed body,
and should tell him—"Young man, there is America—which at this day
serves for little more than to amuse you with stories of savage men, and
uncouth manners; yet shall, before you taste of death, show itself equal to
the whole of that commerce which now attracts the envy of the world.
Whatever England has been growing to by a progressive increase of
improvement, brought in by varieties of people, by succession of civilizing
conquests and civilizing settlements in a series of seventeen hundred years,
you shall see as much added to her by America in the course of a single
life!" If this state of his country had been foretold to him, would it not
require all the sanguine credulity of youth, and all the fervid glow of
enthusiasm, to make him believe it? Fortunate man, he has lived to see it!

Fortunate, indeed, if he lives to see nothing that shall vary the prospect, and
cloud the setting of his day!

CANDID POLICY.
Refined policy ever has been the parent of confusion; and ever will be so,
as long as the world endures. Plain good intention, which is as easily
discovered at the first view, as fraud is surely detected at last, is, let me say,
of no mean force in the government of mankind. Genuine simplicity of
heart is a healing and cementing principle. My plan, therefore, being
formed upon the most simple grounds imaginable, may disappoint some
people, when they hear it. It has nothing to recommend it to the pruriency
of curious ears. There is nothing at all new and captivating in it. It has
nothing of the splendour of the project which has been lately laid upon your
table by the noble lord in the blue riband. It does not propose to fill your
lobby with squabbling colony agents, who will require the interposition of
your mace, at every instant, to keep the peace amongst them. It does not
institute a magnificent auction of finance, where captivated provinces come
to general ransom by bidding against each other, until you knock down the
hammer, and determine a proportion of payments beyond all the powers of
algebra to equalize and settle.

WISDOM OF CONCESSION.
Peace implies reconciliation; and where there has been a material dispute,
reconciliation does in a manner always imply concession on the one part or
the other. In this state of things I make no difficulty in affirming that the
proposal ought to originate from us. Great and acknowledged force is not
impaired, either in effect or in opinion, by an unwillingness to exert itself.
The superior power may offer peace with honour and with safety. Such an
offer from such a power will be attributed to magnanimity. But the
concessions of the weak are the concessions of fear. When such a one is
disarmed, he is wholly at the mercy of his superior; and he loses for ever
that time and those chances which, as they happen to all men, are the
strength and resources of all inferior power.

MAGNANIMITY.
As for the trifling petulance which the rage of party stirs up in little
minds, though it should show itself even in this court, it has not made the
slightest impression on me. The highest flight of such clamorous birds is
winged in an inferior region of the air. We hear them, and we look upon
them, just as you, gentlemen, when you enjoy the serene air on your lofty
rocks, look down upon the gulls that skim the mud of your river, when it is
exhausted of its tide.

DUTY OF REPRESENTATIVES.
It ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the
strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved
communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great
weight with him; their opinion high respect; their business unremitted
attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his
satisfactions, to theirs; and above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their
interest to his own. But, his unbiassed opinion, his mature judgment, his
enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to
any set of men living. These he does not derive from your pleasure; no, nor
from the law and the constitution. They are a trust from Providence, for the
abuse of which he is deeply answerable. Your representative owes you, not
his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you,
if he sacrifices it to your opinion.

PRUDENTIAL SILENCE.
Though I gave so far into his opinion, that I immediately threw my
thoughts into a sort of parliamentary form, I was by no means equally ready
to produce them. It generally argues some degree of natural impotence of
mind, or some want of knowledge of the world, to hazard plans of
government except from a seat of authority. Propositions are made, not only
ineffectually, but somewhat disreputably, when the minds of men are not
properly disposed for their reception: and for my part, I am not ambitious of
ridicule; not absolutely a candidate for disgrace.

COLONIAL TIES.
They are "our children;" but when children ask for bread, we are not to
give a stone. Is it because the natural resistance of things, and the various
mutations of time, hinders our government, or any scheme of government,
from being any more than a sort of approximation to the right, is it therefore
that the colonies are to recede from it infinitely? When this child of ours
wishes to assimilate to its parent, and to reflect with a true filial
resemblance the beauteous countenance of British liberty, are we to turn to
them the shameful parts of our constitution? are we to give them our
weakness for their strength? our opprobrium for their glory? and the slough
of slavery, which we are not able to work off, to serve them for their
freedom?

GOVERNMENT AND LEGISLATION.
If government were a matter of will upon any side, yours, without
question, ought to be superior. But government and legislation are matters
of reason and judgment, and not of inclination; and what sort of reason is
that, in which the determination precedes the discussion; in which one set of
men deliberate, and another decide; and where those who form the
conclusion are perhaps three hundred miles distant from those who hear the
arguments?

PARLIAMENT.
Parliament is not a CONGRESS of ambassadors from different and
hostile interests, which interests each must maintain, as an agent and
advocate, against other agents and advocates; but parliament is a
DELIBERATIVE assembly of ONE nation, with ONE interest, that of the
whole; where, not local purposes, not local prejudices, ought to guide, but
the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole. You
choose a member indeed; but when you have chosen him, he is not member
of Bristol, but he is a member of PARLIAMENT.

MORAL LEVELLERS.
This moral levelling is a SERVILE PRINCIPLE. It leads to practical
passive obedience far better than all the doctrines which the pliant
accommodation of theology to power has ever produced. It cuts up by the
roots, not only all idea of forcible resistance, but even of civil opposition. It
disposes men to an abject submission, not by opinion, which may be shaken
by argument or altered by passion, but by the strong ties of public and
private interest. For if all men who act in a public situation are equally
selfish, corrupt, and venal, what reason can be given for desiring any sort of
change, which, besides the evils which must attend all changes, can be
productive of no possible advantage? The active men in the state are true
samples of the mass. If they are universally depraved, the commonwealth
itself is not sound. We may amuse ourselves with talking as much as we
please of the virtue of middle or humble life; that is, we may place our
confidence in the virtue of those who have never been tried. But if the
persons who are continually emerging out of that sphere be no better than
those whom birth has placed above it, what hopes are there in the remainder
of the body, which is to furnish the perpetual succession of the state? All
who have ever written on government are unanimous, that among a people
generally corrupt, liberty cannot long exist. And indeed how is it possible?
when those who are to make the laws, to guard, to enforce, or to obey them,
are, by a tacit confederacy of manners, indisposed to the spirit of all
generous and noble institutions.

PUBLIC SALARY AND PATRIOTIC SERVICE.
I am not possessed of an exact common measure between real service
and its reward. I am very sure that states do sometimes receive services
which it is hardly in their power to reward according to their worth. If I
were to give my judgment with regard to this country, I do not think the
great efficient offices of the state to be overpaid. The service of the public is
a thing which cannot be put to auction, and struck down to those who will
agree to execute it the cheapest. When the proportion between reward and
service is our object, we must always consider of what nature the service is,
and what sort of men they are that must perform it. What is just payment for
one kind of labour, and full encouragement for one kind of talents, is fraud
and discouragement to others. Many of the great offices have much duty to
do, and much expense of representation to maintain. A secretary of state, for
instance, must not appear sordid in the eyes of the ministers of other
nations; neither ought our ministers abroad to appear contemptible in the
courts where they reside. In all offices of duty, there is, almost necessarily, a
great neglect of all domestic affairs. A person in high office can rarely take
a view of his family house. If he sees that the state takes no detriment, the
state must see that his affairs should take as little. I will even go so far as to
affirm, that if men were willing to serve in such situations 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 foundations 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 left no
way of ascertaining their profits but by their means of obtaining them, those
means will be increased to infinity. This is true in all the parts of
administration, as well as in the whole. If any individual were to decline his
appointments, it might give an unfair advantage to ostentatious ambition
over unpretending service; it might breed invidious comparisons; it might

tend to destroy whatever little unity and agreement may be found among
ministers. And, after all, when an ambitious man had run down his
competitors by a fallacious show of disinterestedness, and fixed himself in
power by that means, what security is there that he would not change his
course, and claim as an indemnity ten times more than he has given up?

RATIONAL LIBERTY.
Liberty, too, must be limited in order to be possessed. The degree of
restraint it is impossible in any case to settle precisely. But it ought to be the
constant aim of every wise public council to find out by cautious
experiments, and rational, cool endeavours, with how little, not how much,
of this restraint the community can subsist. For 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. For as the sabbath (though of Divine institution) was made
for man, not man for the sabbath, government, which can claim no higher
origin or authority, in its exercise at least, ought to conform to the
exigencies of the time, and the temper and character of the people with
whom it is concerned; and not always to attempt violently to bend the
people to their theories of subjection. The bulk of mankind on their part are
not excessively curious concerning any theories whilst they are really
happy; and one sure symptom of an ill-conducted state is the propensity of
the people to resort to them.

IRELAND AND MAGNA CHARTA.
The feudal baronage and the feudal knighthood, the roots of our primitive
constitution, were early transplanted into that soil, and grew and flourished
there. Magna Charta, if it did not give us originally the House of Commons,
gave us at least a house of commons of weight and consequence. But your
ancestors did not churlishly sit down alone to the feast of Magna Charta.
Ireland was made immediately a partaker. This benefit of English laws and
liberties, I confess, was not at first extended to ALL Ireland. Mark the
consequence. English authority and English liberty had exactly the same
boundaries. Your standard could never be advanced an inch beyond your
privileges. Sir John Davis shows, beyond a doubt, that the refusal of a
general communication of these rights was the true cause why Ireland was
five hundred years in subduing; and after the vain projects of a military
government, attempted in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, it was soon
discovered that nothing could make that country English, in civility and
allegiance, but your laws and your forms of legislature. It was not English
arms, but the English constitution, that conquered Ireland. From that time
Ireland has ever had a general parliament, as she had before a partial
parliament. You changed the people; you altered the religion; but you never
touched the form or the vital substance of free government in that kingdom.
You deposed kings; you restored them; you altered the succession to theirs,
as well as to your own crown; but you never altered their constitution; the
principle of which was respected by usurpation; restored with the
restoration of monarchy, and established, I trust, for ever, by the glorious
Revolution.

COLONIES AND BRITISH CONSTITUTION.
For that service, for all service, whether of revenue, trade, or empire, my
trust is in her interest in the British constitution. My hold of the colonies is
in the close affection which grows from common names, from kindred
blood, from similar privileges, and equal protection. These are ties, which,
though light as air, are as strong as links of iron. Let the colonies always
keep the idea of their civil rights associated with your government;—they
will cling and grapple to you; and no force under heaven will be of power to
tear them from their allegiance. But let it be once understood that your
government may be one thing, and their privileges another; that these two
things may exist without any mutual relation; the cement is gone; the
cohesion is loosened; and everything hastens to decay and dissolution. As
long as you have the wisdom to keep the sovereign authority of this country
as the sanctuary of liberty, the sacred temple consecrated to our common
faith, wherever the chosen race and sons of England worship freedom, they
will turn their faces towards you. The more they multiply, the more friends
you will have; the more ardently they love liberty, the more perfect will be
their obedience. Slavery they can have anywhere. It is a weed that grows in
every soil. They may have it from Spain, they may have it from Prussia.
But, until you become lost to all feeling of your true interest and your
natural dignity, freedom they can have from none but you. This is the
commodity of price, of which you have the monopoly. This is the true act of
navigation, which binds to you the commerce of the colonies, and through
them secures to you the wealth of the world. Deny them this participation of
freedom, and you break that sole bond, which originally made, and must
still preserve, the unity of the empire. Do not entertain so weak an
imagination, as that your registers and your bonds, your affidavits and your
sufferances, your cockets and your clearances, are what form the great
securities of your commerce. Do not dream that your letters of office, and
your instructions, and your suspending clauses, are the things that hold
together the great contexture of this mysterious whole. These things do not
make your government. Dead instruments, passive tools as they are, it is the
spirit of the English communion that gives all their life and efficacy to

them. It is the spirit of the English constitution, which, infused through the
mighty mass, pervades, feeds, unites, invigorates, vivifies every part of the
empire, even down to the minutest member.

RECIPROCAL CONFIDENCE.
At the first fatal opening of this contest, the wisest course seemed to be to
put an end as soon as possible to the immediate causes of the dispute; and to
quiet a discussion, not easily settled upon clear principles, and arising from
claims, which pride would permit neither party to abandon, by resorting as
nearly as possible to the old, successful course. A mere repeal of the
obnoxious tax, with a declaration of the legislative authority of this
kingdom, was then fully sufficient to procure peace to BOTH SIDES. Man
is a creature of habit, and, the first breach being of very short continuance,
the colonies fell back exactly into their ancient state. The congress has used
an expression with regard to this pacification, which appears to me truly
significant. After the repeal of the Stamp Act, "the colonies fell," says this
assembly, "into their ancient state of UNSUSPECTING CONFIDENCE IN
THE MOTHER COUNTRY." This unsuspecting confidence is the true
centre of gravity amongst mankind, about which all the parts are at rest. It is
this UNSUSPECTING CONFIDENCE that removes all difficulties, and
reconciles all the contradictions which occur in the complexity of all
ancient, puzzled, political establishments. Happy are the rulers which have
the secret of preserving it!

PENSIONS AND THE CROWN.
When men receive obligations from the Crown, through the pious hands
of fathers, or of connections as venerable as the paternal, the dependencies
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 economy 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.

COLONIAL PROGRESS.
But nothing in progression can rest on its original plan. We may as well
think of rocking a grown man in the cradle of an infant. Therefore as the
colonies prospered and increased to a numerous and mighty people,
spreading over a very great tract of the globe; it was natural that they should
attribute to assemblies, so respectable in their formal constitution, some part
of the dignity of the great nations which they represented. No longer tied to
by-laws, these assemblies made acts of all sorts and in all cases whatsoever.
They levied money, not for parochial purposes, but upon regular grants to
the Crown, following all the rules and principles of a parliament to which
they approached every day more and more nearly. Those who think
themselves wiser than Providence, and stronger than the course of nature,
may complain of all this variation, on the one side or the other, as their
several humours and prejudices may lead them. But things could not be
otherwise; and English colonies must be had on these terms, or not had at
all.

FEUDAL PRINCIPLES AND MODERN TIMES.
In the first place, it is formed, in many respects, upon FEUDAL
PRINCIPLES. In the feudal times, it was not uncommon, even among
subjects, for the lowest offices to be held by considerable persons; persons
as unfit by their incapacity, as improper from their rank, to occupy such
employments. They were held by patent, sometimes for life, and sometimes
by inheritance. If my memory does not deceive me, a person of no slight
consideration held the office of patent hereditary cook to an earl of
Warwick. The earl of Warwick's soups, I fear, were not the better for the
dignity of his kitchen. I think it was an earl of Gloucester, who officiated as
steward of the household to the archbishops of Canterbury. Instances of the
same kind may in some degree be found in the Northumberland house-
book, and other family records. There was some reason in ancient
necessities, for these ancient customs. Protection was wanted; and the
domestic tie, thought not the highest, was the closest. The king's household
has not only several strong traces of this FEUDALITY, but it is formed also
upon the principles of a BODY CORPORATE; it has its own magistrates,
courts, and by-laws. This might be necessary in the ancient times, in order
to have a government within itself, capable of regulating the vast and often
unruly multitude which composed and attended it. This was the origin of
the ancient court called the GREEN CLOTH—composed of the marshal,
treasurer, and other great officers of the household, with certain clerks. The
rich subjects of the kingdom who had formerly the same establishments
(only on a reduced scale) have since altered their economy; and turned the
course of their expense from the maintenance of vast establishments within
their walls, to the employment of a great variety of independent trades
abroad. Their influence is lessened; but a mode of accommodation, and a
style of splendour, suited to the manners of the times, has been increased.
Royalty itself has insensibly followed; and 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 anything 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
expense, where you have tuns of ancient pomp in a vial of modern luxury.

RESTRICTIVE VIRTUES.
I know, that all parsimony is of a quality approaching to unkindness; and
that (on some person or other) every reform must operate as a sort of
punishment. Indeed, the whole class of the severe and restrictive virtues are
at a market almost too high for humanity. What is worse, there are very few
of those virtues which are not capable of being imitated, and even outdone,
in many of their most striking effects, by the worst of vices. Malignity and
envy will carve much more deeply, and finish much more sharply, in the
work of retrenchment, than frugality and providence. I do not, therefore,
wonder that gentlemen have kept away from such a task, as well from
good-nature as from prudence. Private feeling might, indeed, be overborne
by legislative reason; and a man of a longd-sighted and a strong-nerved
humanity might bring himself, not so much to consider from whom he takes
a superfluous enjoyment, as for whom in the end he may preserve the
absolute necessaries of life.

LIBELLERS OF HUMAN NATURE.
I hope there are none of you corrupted with the doctrine taught by wicked
men for the worst purposes, and received by the malignant credulity of envy
and ignorance, which is, that the men who act upon the public stage are all
alike; all equally corrupt; all influenced by no other views than the sordid
lure of salary and pension. The thing I know by experience to be false.
Never expecting to find perfection in men, and not looking for divine
attributes in created beings, in my commerce with my contemporaries, I
have found much human virtue. I have seen not a little public spirit; a real
subordination of interest to duty; and a decent and regulated sensibility to
honest fame and reputation. The age unquestionably produces (whether in a
greater or less number than former times, I know not) daring profligates,
and insidious hypocrites. What then? Am I not to avail myself of whatever
good is to be found in the world, because of the mixture of evil that will
always be in it? The smallness of the quantity in currency only heightens
the value. They who raise suspicions on the good on account of the
behaviour of ill men, are of the party of the latter. The common cant is no
justification for taking this party. I have been deceived, say they, by Titius
and Maevius; I have been the dupe of this pretender or of that mountebank;
and I can trust appearances no longer. But my credulity and want of
discernment cannot, as I conceive, amount to a fair presumption against any
man's integrity. A conscientious person would rather doubt his own
judgment, than condemn his species. He would say, I have observed
without attention, or judged upon erroneous maxims; I trusted to profession,
when I ought to have attended to conduct. Such a man will grow wise, not
malignant, by his acquaintance with the world. But he that accuses all
mankind of corruption, ought to remember that he is sure to convict only
one. In truth I should much rather admit those, whom at any time I have
disrelished the most, to be patterns of perfection, than seek a consolation to
my own unworthiness, in a general communion of depravity with all about
me.

REFUSAL A REVENUE.
What (says the financier) is peace to us without money? Your plan gives
us no revenue. No! But it does—for it secures to the subject the power of
REFUSAL; the first of all revenues. Experience is a cheat, and fact a liar, if
this power in the subject of proportioning his grant, or of not granting at all,
has not been found the richest mine of revenue ever discovered by the skill
or by the fortune of man. It does not indeed vote you 152,752 pounds : 11 :
2 3/4ths, nor any other paltry limited sum. But it gives the strong box itself,
the fund, the bank, from whence only revenues can arise amongst a people
sensible of freedom: Posita luditur arca. Cannot you in England; cannot you
at this time of day; cannot you, a House of Commons, trust to the principle
which has raised so mighty a revenue, and accumulated a debt of near 140
millions in this country? Is this principle to be true in England, and false
everywhere else? Is it not true in Ireland? Has it not hitherto been true in the
colonies? Why should you presume, that, in any country, a body duly
constituted for any function, will neglect to perform its duty, and abdicate
its trust? Such a presumption would go against all governments in all
modes. But, in truth, this dread of penury of supply, from a free assembly,
has no foundation in nature. For first observe, that besides the desire which
all men have naturally of supporting the honour of their own government,
that sense of dignity, and that security to property, which ever attend
freedom, have a tendency to increase the stock of the free community. Most
may be taken where most is accumulated. And what is the soil or climate
where experience has not uniformly proved, that the voluntary flow of
heaped-up plenty, bursting from the weight of its own rich luxuriance, has
ever run with a more copious stream of revenue, than could be squeezed
from the dry husks of oppressed indigence, by the straining of all the politic
machinery in the world.

A PARTY MAN.
The only method which has ever been found effectual to preserve any
man against the corruption of nature and example, is a habit of life and
communication of counsels with the most virtuous and public-spirited men
of the age you live in. Such a society cannot be kept without advantage or
deserted without shame. For this rule of conduct I may be called in reproach
a PARTY MAN; but I am little affected with such aspersions. In the way
which they call party, I worship the constitution of your fathers; and I shall
never blush for my political company. All reverence to honour, all idea of
what it is, will be lost out of the world, before it can be imputed as a fault to
any man, that he has been closely connected with those incomparable
persons, living and dead, with whom for eleven years I have constantly
thought and acted. If I have wandered out of the paths of rectitude into
those of interested faction, it was in company with the Saviles, the
Dowdeswells, the Wentworths, the Bentincks; with the Lenoxes, the
Manchesters, the Keppels, the Saunderses; with the temperate, permanent,
hereditary virtue of the whole house of Cavendish; names, among which,
some have extended your fame and empire in arms, and all have fought the
battle of your liberties in fields not less glorious. These, and many more like
these, grafting public principles on private honour, have redeemed the
present age, and would have adorned the most splendid period in your
history.

PATRIOTISM AND PUBLIC INCOME.
Is it not the same virtue which does everything for us here in England?
Do you imagine, then, that it is the land-tax which raises your revenue? that
it is the annual vote in the committee of supply, which gives you your
army? or that it is the Mutiny Bill, which inspires it with bravery and
discipline? No! surely no! It is the love of the people; it is their attachment
to their government, from the sense of the deep stake they have in such a
glorious institution, which gives you your army and your navy, and infuses
into both that liberal obedience, without which your army would be a base
rabble, and your navy nothing but rotten timber.
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 everything, 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 places 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.

AMERICAN PROTESTANTISM.
If anything were wanting to this necessary operation of the form of
government, religion would have given it a complete effect. Religion,
always a principle of energy, in this new people is no way worn out or
impaired; and their mode of professing it is also one main cause of this free
spirit. The people are Protestants; and of that kind which is the most adverse
to all implicit submission of mind and opinion. This is a persuasion not only
favourable to liberty, but built upon it. I do not think, Sir, that the reason of
this averseness in the dissenting churches, from all that looks like absolute
government, is so much to be sought in their religious tenets, as in their
history. Every one knows that the Roman Catholic religion is at least coeval
with most of the governments where it prevails; that it has generally gone
hand in hand with them, and received great favour and every kind of
support from authority. The Church of England, too, was formed from her
cradle, under the nursing care of regular government. But the dissenting
interests have sprung up in direct opposition to all the ordinary powers of
the world; and could justify that opposition only on a strong claim to natural
liberty. Their very existence depended on the powerful and unremitted
assertion of that claim. All Protestantism, even the most cold and passive, is
a sort of dissent. But the religion most prevalent in our northern colonies is
a refinement on the principle of resistance; it is the dissidence of dissent,
and the Protestantism of the Protestant religion.

RIGHT OF TAXATION.
I am resolved this day to have nothing at all to do with the question of the
right of taxation. Some gentlemen startle, but it is true; I put it totally out of
the question. It is less than nothing in my consideration. I do not indeed
wonder, nor will you, Sir, that gentlemen of profound learning are fond of
displaying it on this profound subject. But my consideration is narrow,
confined, and wholly limited to the policy of the question. I do not examine
whether the giving away a man's money be a power excepted and reserved
out of the general trust of government; and how far all mankind, in all
forms of polity, are entitled to an exercise of that right by the charter of
nature. Or whether, on the contrary, a right of taxation is necessarily
involved in the general principle of legislation, and inseparable from the
ordinary supreme power. These are deep questions, where great names
militate against each other; where reason is perplexed; and an appeal to
authorities only thickens the confusion. For high and reverend authorities
lift up their heads on both sides; and there is no sure footing in the middle.
This point is the GREAT SERBONIAN BOG, BETWIXT DAMIATA AND
MOUNT CASIUS OLD, WHERE ARMIES WHOLE HAVE SUNK. I do
not intend to be overwhelmed in that bog, though in such respectable
company. The question with me is, not whether you have a right to render
your people miserable; but whether it is not your interest to make them
happy. It is not what a lawyer tells me I MAY do; but what humanity,
reason, and justice tell me I ought to do. Is a politic act the worse for being
a generous one? Is no concession proper, but that which is made from your
want of right to keep what you grant? Or does it lessen the grace or dignity
of relaxing in the exercise of an odious claim, because you have your
evidence-room full of titles, and your magazines stuffed with arms to
enforce them? What signify all those titles, and all those arms? Of what
avail are they, when the reason of the thing tells me, that the assertion of my
title is the loss of my suit; and that I could do nothing but wound myself by
the use of my own weapons?

CONTRACTED VIEWS.
It is exceedingly common for men to contract their love to their country
into an attachment to its petty subdivisions; and they sometimes even cling
to their provincial abuses, as if they were franchises and local privileges.
Accordingly, in places where there is much of this kind of estate, persons
will be always found who would rather trust to their talents in
recommending themselves to power for the renewal of their interests, than
to incumber their purses, though never so lightly, in order to transmit
independence to their posterity. It is a great mistake, that the desire of
securing property is universal among mankind. Gaming is a principle
inherent in human nature. It belongs to us all. I would therefore break those
tables; I would furnish no evil occupation for that spirit. I would make
every man look everywhere, except to the intrigue of a court, for the
improvement of his circumstances, or the security of his fortune.

ASSIMILATING POWER OF CONTACT.
I am sure that the only means of checking precipitate degeneracy is
heartily to concur with whatever is the best in our time; and to have some
more correct standard of judging what that best is, than the transient and
uncertain favour of a court. If once we are able to find, and can prevail on
ourselves to strengthen, a union of such men, whatever accidentally
becomes indisposed to ill-exercised power, even by the ordinary operation
of human passions, must join with that society, and cannot long be joined
without in some degree assimilating to it. Virtue will catch as well as vice
by contact; and the public stock of honest, manly principle will daily
accumulate. We are not too nicely to scrutinize motives as long as action is
irreproachable. It is enough (and for a worthy man perhaps too much) to
deal out its infamy to convicted guilt and declared apostacy.

PRUDENCE OF TIMELY REFORM.
But there is a time when men will not suffer bad things because their
ancestors have suffered worse. There is a time when the hoary head of
inveterate abuse will neither draw reverence nor obtain protection. If the
noble lord in the blue riband pleads "not guilty" to the charges brought
against the present system of public economy, it is not possible to give a fair
verdict by which he will not stand acquitted. But pleading is not our present
business. His plea or his traverse may be allowed as an answer to a charge,
when a charge is made. But if he puts himself in the way to obstruct
reformation, then the faults of his office instantly become his own. 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 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.

DIFFICULTIES OF REFORMERS.
Nothing, you know, is more common than for men to wish, and call
loudly, too, for a reformation, who, when it arrives, do by no means like the
severity of its aspect. 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 gray; one point must be given up to one; another point
must be yielded to another; nothing is suffered to prevail upon its own
principle; 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.

PHILOSOPHY OF COMMERCE.
If honesty be true policy with regard to the transient interest of
individuals, it is much more certainly so with regard to the permanent
interests of communities. I know, that it is but too natural for us to see our
own CERTAIN ruin in the POSSIBLE prosperity of other people. It is hard
to persuade us, that everything which is GOT by another is not TAKEN
from ourselves. But it is fit that we should get the better of these
suggestions, which come from what is not the best and soundest part of our
nature, and that we should form to ourselves a way of thinking, more
rational, more just, and more religious. 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.

THEORIZING POLITICIANS.
There are people who have split and anatomised the doctrine of free
government, as if it were an abstract question concerning metaphysical
liberty and necessity; and not a matter of moral prudence and natural
feeling. They have disputed, whether liberty be a positive or a negative
idea; whether it does not consist in being governed by laws, without
considering what are the laws, or who are the makers; whether man has any
rights by nature; and whether all the property he enjoys be not the alms of
his government, and his life itself their favour and indulgence. Others
corrupting religion, as these have perverted philosophy, contend, that
Christians are redeemed into captivity; and the blood of the Saviour of
mankind has been shed to make them the slaves of a few proud and insolent
sinners. These shocking extremes provoking to extremes of another kind,
speculations are let loose as destructive to all authority, as the former are to
all freedom; and every government is called tyranny and usurpation which
is not formed on their fancies. In this manner the stirrers-up of this
contention, not satisfied with distracting our dependencies and filling them
with blood and slaughter, are corrupting our understandings; they are
endeavouring to tear up, along with practical liberty, all the foundations of
human society, all equity and justice, religion and order.

ECONOMY AND PUBLIC SPIRIT.
Economy and public spirit have made a beneficent and an honest spoil;
they have plundered from extravagance and luxury, for the use of
substantial service, a revenue of near four hundred thousand pounds. The
reform of the finances, joined to this reform of the court, gives to the public
nine hundred thousand pounds a year and upwards.
The minister who does these things is a great man—but the king who
desires that they should be done is a far greater. We must do justice to our
enemies—these are the acts of a patriot king. I am not in dread of the vast
armies of France; I am not in dread of the gallant spirit of its brave and
numerous nobility; I am not alarmed even at the great navy which has been
so miraculously created. All these things Louis the Fourteenth had before.
With all these things, the French monarchy has more than once fallen
prostrate at the feet of the public faith of Great Britain. It was the want of
public credit which disabled France from recovering after her defeats, or
recovering even from her victories and triumphs. It was a prodigal court, it
was an ill-ordered revenue, that sapped the foundations of all her greatness.
Credit cannot exist under the arm of necessity. Necessity strikes at credit, I
allow, with a heavier and quicker blow under an arbitrary monarchy, than
under a limited and balanced government; but still necessity and credit are
natural enemies, and cannot be long reconciled in any situation. From
necessity and corruption, a free state may lose the spirit of that complex
constitution which is the foundation of confidence.

REFORM OUGHT TO BE PROGRESSIVE.
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.

CIVIL FREEDOM.
Civil freedom, gentlemen, is not, as many have endeavoured to persuade
you, a thing that lies hid in the depth of abstruse science. It is a blessing and
a benefit, not an abstract speculation; and all the just reasoning that can be
upon it is of so coarse a texture, as perfectly to suit the ordinary capacities
of those who are to enjoy, and of those who are to defend it. Far from any
resemblance to those propositions in geometry and metaphysics, which
admit no medium, but must be true or false in all their latitude; social and
civil freedom, like all other things in common life, are variously mixed and
modified, enjoyed in very different degrees, and shaped into an infinite
diversity of forms, according to the temper and circumstances of every
community. The EXTREME of liberty (which is its abstract perfection, but
its real fault) obtains nowhere, nor ought to obtain anywhere. Because
extremes, as we all know, in every point which relates either to our duties or
satisfactions in life, are destructive both to virtue and enjoyment.

TENDENCIES OF POWER.
When any community is subordinately connected with another, the great
danger of the connection is the extreme pride and self-complacency of the
superior, which in all matters of controversy will probably decide in its own
favour. It is a powerful corrective to such a very rational cause of fear if the
inferior body can be made to believe that the party inclination, or political
views, of several in the principal state will induce them in some degree to
counteract this blind and tyrannical partiality. There is no danger that any
one acquiring consideration or power in the presiding state should carry this
leaning to the inferior too far. The fault of human nature is not of that sort.
Power, in whatever hands, is rarely guilty of too strict limitations on itself.
But one great advantage to the support of authority attends such an
amicable and protecting connection, that those who have conferred favours
obtain influence; and from the foresight of future events can persuade men
who have received obligations, sometimes to return them. Thus, by the
mediation of those healing principles (call them good or evil), troublesome
discussions are brought to some sort of adjustment, and every hot
controversy is not a civil war.

INDIVIDUAL GOOD AND PUBLIC BENEFIT.
The individual good felt in a public benefit is comparatively so small,
comes round through such an involved labyrinth of intricate and tedious
revolutions; whilst a present, personal detriment is so heavy where it falls,
and so instant in its operation, that the cold commendation of a public
advantage never was, and never will be a match for the quick sensibility of
a private loss: and you may depend upon it, sir, that when many people
have an interest in railing, sooner or later, they will bring a considerable
degree of unpopularity upon any measure, So that, for the present at least,
the reformation will operate against the reformers, and revenge (as against
them at the least) will produce all the effects of corruption.

PUBLIC CORRUPTION.
Nor is it the worst effect of this unnatural contention, that our LAWS are
corrupted. Whilst MANNERS remain entire, they will correct the vices of
law, and soften it at length to their own temper. But we have to lament, that
in most of the late proceedings we see very few traces of that generosity,
humanity, and dignity of mind which formerly characterized this nation.
War suspends the rules of moral obligation, and what is long suspended is
in danger of being totally abrogated. Civil wars strike deepest of all into the
manners of the people. They vitiate their politics; they corrupt their morals;
they pervert even the natural taste and relish of equity and justice. By
teaching us to consider our fellow-citizens in a hostile light, the whole body
of our nation becomes gradually less dear to us. The very names of
affection and kindred, which were the bond of charity whilst we agreed,
become new incentives to hatred and rage when the communion of our
country is dissolved. We may flatter ourselves that we shall not fall into this
misfortune. But we have no charter of exemption, that I know of, from the
ordinary frailties of our nature.

CRUELTY AND COWARDICE.
A conscientious man would be cautious how he dealt in blood. He would
feel some apprehension at being called to a tremendous account for
engaging in so deep a play, without any sort of knowledge of the game. It is
no excuse for presumptuous ignorance, that it is directed by insolent
passion. The poorest being that crawls on earth, contending to save itself
from injustice and oppression, is an object respectable in the eyes of God
and man. But I cannot conceive any existence under heaven (which, in the
depths of its wisdom, tolerates all sorts of things) that is more truly odious
and disgusting, than an impotent helpless creature, without civil wisdom or
military skill, without a consciousness of any other qualification for power
but his servility to it, bloated with pride and arrogance, calling for battles
which he is not to fight, contending for a violent dominion which he can
never exercise, and satisfied to be himself mean and miserable, in order to
render others contemptible and wretched.

BAD LAWS PRODUCE BASE SUBSERVIENCY.
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 anywhere 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. However, a government, be it as
bad as it may, will, in the exercise of a discretionary power, discriminate
times and persons; and will not ordinarily pursue any man when its own
safety is not concerned. A mercenary informer knows no distinction. Under
such a system, the obnoxious people are slaves, not only to the government,
but they live at the mercy of every individual; they are at once the slaves of
the whole community, and of every part of it; and the worst and most
unmerciful men are those on whose goodness they most depend.
In this situation men not only shrink from the frowns of a stern
magistrate, but they are obliged to fly from their very species. The seeds of
destruction are sown in civil intercourse, in social habitudes. The blood of
wholesome kindred is infected. Their tables and beds are surrounded with
snares. All the means given by Providence to make life safe and
comfortable are perverted into instruments of terror and torment. This
species of universal subserviency, that makes the very servant who waits
behind your chair the arbiter of your life and fortune, has such a tendency to
degrade and abase mankind, and to deprive them of that assured and liberal
state of mind which alone can make us what we ought to be, that I vow to
God I would sooner bring myself to put a man to immediate death for
opinions I disliked, and so to get rid of the man and his opinions at once,
than to fret him with a feverish being, tainted with the jail-distemper of a
contagious servitude, to keep him above ground an animated mass of
putrefaction, corrupted himself, and corrupting all about him.

FALSE REGRET.
If we repent of our good actions, what, I pray you, is left for our faults
and follies? It is not the beneficence of the laws, it is the unnatural temper
which beneficence can fret and sour that is to be lamented. It is this temper
which, by all rational means, ought to be sweetened and corrected. If
froward men should refuse this cure, can they vitiate anything but
themselves? Does evil so react upon good, as not only to retard its motion,
but to change its nature? If it can so operate, then good men will always be
in the power of the bad; and virtue, by a dreadful reverse of order, must lie
under perpetual subjection and bondage to vice.

BRITISH DOMINION IN EAST INDIA.
With very few, and those inconsiderable, intervals, the British dominion,
either in the Company's name, or in the names of princes absolutely
dependent upon the Company, extends from the mountains that separate
India from Tartary to Cape Comorin,—that is, one-and-twenty degrees of
latitude!
In the northern parts it is a solid mass of land, about eight hundred miles
in length, and four or five hundred broad. As you go southward, it becomes
narrower for a space. It afterwards dilates; but, narrower or broader, you
possess the whole eastern and north-eastern coast of that vast country, quite
from the borders of Pegu. Bengal, Bahar, and Orissa, with Benares (now
unfortunately in our immediate possession), measure 161,978 square
English miles; a territory considerably larger than the whole kingdom of
France. Oude, with its dependent provinces, is 53,286 square miles, not a
great deal less than England. The Carnatic, with Tanjore and the Circars, is
65,948 square miles, very considerably larger than England; and the whole
of the Company's dominions, comprehending Bombay and Salsette,
amounts to 281,412 square miles; which forms a territory larger than any
European dominion, Russia and Turkey excepted. Through all that vast
extent of country there is not a man who eats a mouthful of rice but by
permission of the East-India Company.
So far with regard to the extent. The population of this great empire is not
easily to be calculated. When the countries, of which it is composed, came
into our possession, they were all eminently peopled, and eminently
productive; though at that time considerably declined from their ancient
prosperity. But, since they are come into our hands!—! However, if we
make the period of our estimate immediately before the utter desolation of
the Carnatic, and if we allow for the havoc which our government had even
then made in these regions, we cannot, in my opinion, rate the population at
much less than thirty millions of souls,—more than four times the number
of persons in the Island of Great Britain.
My next inquiry to that of the number, is the quality and description of
the inhabitants. This multitude of men does not consist of an abject and

barbarous populace; much less of gangs of savages, like the Guaranies and
Chiquitos, who wander on the waste borders of the river of Amazons, or the
Plate; but a people for ages civilized and cultivated; cultivated by all the
arts of polished life, whilst we were yet in the woods. There have been (and
still the skeletons remain) princes once of great dignity, authority, and
opulence. There are to be found the chiefs of tribes and nations. There is to
be found an ancient and venerable priesthood, the depository of their laws,
learning, and history, the guides of the people whilst living, and their
consolation in death; a nobility of great antiquity and renown; a multitude
of cities, not exceeded in population and trade by those of the first class in
Europe; merchants and bankers, individual houses of whom have once vied
in capital with the Bank of England; whose credit had often supported a
tottering state, and preserved their governments in the midst of war and
desolation; millions of ingenious manufacturers and mechanics; millions of
the most diligent, and not the least intelligent, tillers of the earth. There are
to be found almost all the religions professed by men,—the Brahminical,
the Mussulman, the Eastern and the Western Christian.
If I were to take the whole aggregate of our possessions there, I should
compare it, as the nearest parallel I can find, with the empire of Germany.
Our immediate possessions I should compare with the Austrian dominions,
—and they would not suffer in the comparison. The nabob of Oude might
stand for the king of Prussia; the nabob of Arcot I would compare, as
superior in territory and equal in revenue, to the elector of Saxony. Cheyt
Sing, the rajah of Benares, might well rank with the prince of Hesse, at
least; and the rajah of Tanjore (though hardly equal in extent of dominion,
superior in revenue), to the elector of Bavaria. The Polygars and the
northern Zemindars, and other great chiefs, might well class with the rest of
the princes, dukes, counts, marquises, and bishops, in the empire; all of
whom I mention to honour, and surely without disparagement to any or all
of those most respectable princes and grandees. All this vast mass,
composed of so many orders and classes of men, is again infinitely
advocated by manners, by religion, by hereditary employment, through all
their possible combinations. This renders the handling of India a matter in a
high degree critical and delicate. But oh! it has been handled rudely indeed.
Even some of the reformers seem to have forgot that they had anything to
do but to regulate the tenants of a manor, or the shopkeepers of the next
county town.

It is an empire of this extent, of this complicated nature, of this dignity
and importance, that I have compared to Germany, and the German
government; not for an exact resemblance, but as a sort of a middle term, by
which India might be approximated to our understandings, and if possible
to our feelings; in order to awaken something of sympathy for the
unfortunate natives, of which I am afraid we are not perfectly susceptible,
whilst we look at this very remote object through a false and cloudy
medium.

POLITICAL CHARITY.
Honest men will not forget either their merit or their sufferings. There are
men (and many, I trust, there are) who, out of love to their country and their
kind, would torture their invention to find excuses for the mistakes of their
brethren; and who, to stifle dissension, would construe even doubtful
appearances with the utmost favour: such men will never persuade
themselves to be ingenious and refined in discovering disaffection and
treason in the manifest, palpable signs of suffering loyalty. Persecution is so
unnatural to them, that they gladly snatch the very first opportunity of
laying aside all the tricks and devices of penal politics; and of returning
home, after all their irksome and vexatious wanderings, to our natural
family mansion, to the grand social principle, that unites all men, in all
descriptions, under the shadow of an equal and impartial justice.

EVILS OF DISTRACTION.
The very attempt towards pleasing everybody discovers a temper always
flashy, and often false and insincere. Therefore as I have proceeded straight
onward in my conduct, so I will proceed in my account of those parts of it
which have been most excepted to. But I must first beg leave just to hint to
you, that we may suffer very great detriment by being open to every talker.
It is not to be imagined how much of service is lost from spirits full of
activity and full of energy, who are pressing, who are rushing forward, to
great and capital objects, when you oblige them to be continually looking
back. Whilst they are defending one service, they defraud you of an
hundred. Applaud us when we run; console us when we fall; cheer us when
we recover; but let us pass on—for God's sake let us pass on.

CHARLES FOX.
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 in 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.

THE IMPRACTICABLE UNDESIRABLE.
I know it is common for men to say, that such and such things are
perfectly right—very desirable; but that, unfortunately, they are not
practicable. Oh! no, sir, no. 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.

CONSTITUTION OF THE COMMONS.
The late House of Commons has been punished for its independence.
That example is made. Have we an example on record of a House of
Commons punished for its servility? The rewards of a senate so disposed
are manifest to the world. Several gentlemen are very desirous of altering
the constitution of the House of Commons; but they must alter the frame
and constitution of human nature itself before they can so fashion it by any
mode of election that its conduct will not be influenced by reward and
punishment, by fame, and by disgrace. If these examples take root in the
minds of men, what members hereafter will be bold enough not to be
corrupt? Especially as the king's highway of obsequiousness is so very
broad and easy. To make a passive member of parliament, no dignity of
mind, no principles of honour, no resolution, no ability, no industry, no
learning, no experience, are in the least degree necessary. To defend a post
of importance against a powerful enemy, requires an Elliot; a drunken
invalid is qualified to hoist a white flag, or to deliver up the keys of the
fortress on his knees.

EMOLUMENTS OF OFFICE.
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 entail of dependence is a bad reward of merit.

MORAL DISTINCTIONS.
Those who are least anxious about your conduct are not those that love
you most. Moderate affection and satiated enjoyment are cold and
respectful; but an ardent and injured passion is tempered up with wrath, and
grief, and shame, and conscious worth, and the maddening sense of violated
right. A jealous love lights his torch from the firebrands of the furies. They
who call upon you to belong WHOLLY to the people, are those who wish
you to return to your PROPER home; to the sphere of your duty, to the post
of your honour, to the mansion-house of all genuine, serene, and solid
satisfaction.

ELECTORS AND REPRESENTATIVES.
Look, gentlemen, to the WHOLE TENOUR of your member's conduct.
Try whether his ambition or his avarice have jostled him out of the straight
line of duty; or whether that grand foe of the offices of active life, that
master vice in men of business, a degenerate and inglorious sloth—has
made him flag and languish in his course. This is the object of our inquiry.
If our member's conduct can bear this touch, mark it for sterling. He may
have fallen into errors; he must have faults; but our error is greater, and our
fault is radically ruinous to ourselves, if we do not bear, if we do not even
applaud, the whole compound and mixed mass of such a character. Not to
act thus is folly; I had almost said it is impiety. He censures God, who
quarrels with the imperfections of man.
Gentlemen, we must not be peevish with those who serve the people. For
none will serve us whilst there is a court to serve but those who are of a nice
and jealous honour. They who think everything, in comparison of that
honour, to be dust and ashes, will not bear to have it soiled and impaired by
those for whose sake they make a thousand sacrifices to preserve it
immaculate and whole. We shall either drive such men from the public
stage, or we shall send them to the court for protection; where, if they must
sacrifice their reputation, they will at least secure their interest. Depend
upon it, that the lovers of freedom will be free. None will violate their
conscience to please us, in order afterwards to discharge that conscience,
which they have violated, by doing us faithful and affectionate service. If
we degrade and deprave their minds by servility, it will be absurd to expect,
that they who are creeping and abject towards us, will ever be bold and
incorruptible assertors of our freedom, against the most seducing and the
most formidable of all powers. No! human nature is not so formed; nor
shall we improve the faculties or better the morals of public men, by our
possession of the most infallible receipt in the world for making cheats and
hypocrites.
Let me say with plainness, I who am no longer in a public character, that
if by a fair, by an indulgent, by a gentlemanly behaviour to our
representatives, we do not give confidence to their minds, and a liberal

scope to their understandings; if we do not permit our members to act upon
a VERY enlarged view of things; we shall at length infallibly degrade our
national representation into a confused and scuffling bustle of local agency.
When the popular member is narrowed in his ideas, and rendered timid in
his proceedings, the service of the crown will be the sole nursery of
statesmen. Among the frolics of the court, it may at length take that of
attending to its business. Then the monopoly of mental power will be added
to the power of all other kinds it possesses. On the side of the people there
will be nothing but impotence: for ignorance is impotence; narrowness of
mind is impotence; timidity is itself impotence, and makes all other
qualities that go along with it, impotent and useless.

POPULAR OPINION A FALLACIOUS
STANDARD.
When we know, that the opinions of even the greatest multitudes are the
standard of rectitude, I shall think myself obliged to make those opinions
the masters of my conscience. But if it may be doubted whether
Omnipotence itself is competent to alter the essential constitution of right
and wrong, sure I am that such THINGS, as they and I, are possessed of no
such power. No man carries further than I do the policy of making
government pleasing to the people. But the widest range of this politic
complaisance is confined within the limits of justice. I would not only
consult the interest of the people, but I would cheerfully 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.

ENGLISH REFORMATION.
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 a 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.

PROSCRIPTION.
This way of PROSCRIBING THE CITIZENS BY DENOMINATIONS
AND GENERAL DESCRIPTIONS, dignified by the name of reason of
state, and security for constitutions and commonwealths, is nothing better at
bottom, than the miserable invention of an ungenerous ambition, which
would fain hold the sacred trust of power, without any of the virtues or any
of the energies that give a title to it: a receipt of policy, made up of a
detestable compound of malice, cowardice, and sloth. They would govern
men against their will; but in that government they would be discharged
from the exercise of vigilance, providence, and fortitude; and therefore, that
they may sleep on their watch, they consent to take some one division of the
society into partnership of the tyranny over the rest. But let government, in
what form it may be, comprehend the whole in its justice, and restrain the
suspicious by its vigilance; let it keep watch and ward; let it discover by its
sagacity, and punish by its firmness, all delinquency against its power,
whenever delinquency exists in the overt acts; and then it will be as safe as
ever God and nature intended it should be. Crimes are the acts of
individuals, and not of denominations; and therefore arbitrarily to class men
under general descriptions, in order to proscribe and punish them in the
lump for a presumed delinquency, of which perhaps but a part, perhaps
none at all, are guilty, is indeed a compendious method, and saves a world
of trouble about proof; but such a method, instead of being law, is an act of
unnatural rebellion against the legal dominion of reason and justice; and
this vice, in any constitution that entertains it, at one time or other will
certainly bring on its ruin.

JUST FREEDOM.
I must fairly tell you, that so far as my principles are concerned,
(principles that I hope will only depart with my last breath), I have no idea
of a liberty unconnected with honesty and justice. Nor do I believe that any
good constitutions of government, or of freedom, can find it necessary for
their security to doom any part of the people to a permanent slavery. Such a
constitution of freedom, if such can be, is in effect no more than another
name for the tyranny of the strongest faction; and factions in republics have
been, and are, full as capable as monarchs of the most cruel oppression and
injustice. 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. The desire of having some one below them
descends to those who are the very lowest of all,—and a Protestant cobbler,
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 gaol.

ENGLAND'S EMBASSY TO AMERICA.
They enter the capital of America only to abandon it; and these assertors
and representatives of the dignity of England, at the tail of a flying army, let
fly their Parthian shafts of memorials and remonstrances at random behind
them. Their promises and their offers, their flatteries and their menaces,
were all despised; and we were saved from the disgrace of their formal
reception, only because the congress scorned to receive them; whilst the
state-house of independent Philadelphia opened her doors to the public
entry of the ambassador of France. From war and blood we went to
submission; and from submission plunged back again to war and blood; to
desolate and be desolated, without measure, hope, or end. I am a Royalist, I
blushed for this degradation of the crown. I am a Whig, I blushed for the
dishonour of parliament. I am a true Englishman, I felt to the quick for the
disgrace of England. I am a man, I felt for the melancholy reverse of human
affairs in the fall of the first power in the world.

HOWARD, THE PHILANTHROPIST.
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
ancient grandeur, nor to form a scale of the curiosity of modern art; not to
collect medals, or collate manuscripts:—but to dive into the depths of
dungeons; to plunge into the infection of hospitals; to survey the mansions
of sorrow and pain; to take the gauge 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 is as full of genius as it is of humanity. It
was a voyage of discovery; a circumnavigation 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 fully realized in his own.
He will receive, not by detail, 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.

PARLIAMENTARY RETROSPECT.
It is certainly not pleasing to be put out of the public service. But I wish
to be a member of parliament, to have my share of doing good and resisting
evil. It would therefore be absurd to renounce my objects in order to obtain
my seat. I deceive myself indeed most grossly if I had not much rather pass
the remainder of my life hidden in the recesses of the deepest obscurity,
feeding my mind even with the visions and imaginations of such things,
than to be placed on the most splendid throne of the universe, tantalized
with a denial of the practice of all which can make the greatest situation any
other than the greatest curse. Gentlemen, I have had my day. I can never
sufficiently express my gratitude to you for having set me in a place
wherein I could lend the slightest help to great and laudable designs. If I
have had my share in any measure giving quiet to private property, and
private conscience; if by my vote I have aided in securing to families the
best possession, peace; if I have joined in reconciling kings to their
subjects, and subjects to their prince; if I have assisted to loosen the foreign
holdings of the citizen, and taught him to look for his protection to the laws
of his country, and for his comfort to the goodwill of his countrymen—if I
have thus taken my part with the best of men in the best of their actions, I
can shut the book;—I might wish to read a page or two more—but this is
enough for my measure,—I have not lived in vain.

PEOPLE AND PARLIAMENT.
Let the commons in parliament assembled be one and the same thing
with the commons at large. The distinctions that are made to separate us are
unnatural and wicked contrivances. Let us identify, let us incorporate,
ourselves with the people. Let us cut all the cables and snap the chains
which tie us to an unfaithful shore, and enter the friendly harbour that
shoots far out into the main its moles and jettees to receive us.—"War with
the world, and peace with our constituents." Be this our motto, and our
principle. Then, indeed, we shall be truly great. Respecting ourselves, we
shall be respected by the world. At present all is troubled, and cloudy, and
distracted, and full of anger and turbulence, both abroad and at home; but
the air may be cleared by this storm, and light and fertility may follow it.
Let us give a faithful pledge to the people, that we honour indeed the
crown, but that we BELONG to them; that we are their auxiliaries, and not
their task-masters,—the fellow-labourers in the same vineyard,—not
lording over their rights, but helpers of their joy: that to tax them is a
grievance to ourselves; but to cut off from our enjoyments to forward theirs,
is the highest gratification we are capable of receiving.

REFORMED CIVIL LIST.
As things now stand, every man, in proportion to his consequence at
court, tends to add to the expense of the civil list, by all manner of jobs, if
not for himself, yet for his dependents. When the new plan is established,
those who are now suitors for jobs will become the most strenuous opposers
of them. They will have a common interest with the minister in public
economy. Every class, as it stands low, will become security for the
payment of the preceding class; and, thus, the persons whose insignificant
services defraud those that are useful, would then become interested in their
payment. Then the powerful, instead of oppressing, would be obliged to
support the weak; and idleness would become concerned in the reward of
industry. The whole fabric of the civil economy would become compact and
connected in all its parts; it would be formed into a well-organized body,
where every member contributes to the support of the whole; and where
even the lazy stomach secures the vigour of the active arm.

FRENCH AND ENGLISH REVOLUTION.
He felt some concern that this strange thing, called a Revolution in
France, should be compared with the glorious event commonly called the
Revolution in England; and the conduct of the soldiery, on that occasion,
compared with the behaviour of some of the troops of France in the present
instance. At that period the prince of Orange, a prince of the blood-royal in
England, was called in by the flower of the English aristocracy to defend its
ancient constitution, and not to level all distinctions. To this prince, so
invited, the aristocratic leaders who commanded the troops went over with
their several corps, in bodies, to the deliverer of their country. Aristocratic
leaders brought up the corps of citizens who newly enlisted in this cause.
Military obedience changed its object; but military discipline was not for a
moment interrupted in its principle. The troops were ready for war, but
indisposed to mutiny. But as the conduct of the English armies was
different, so was that of the whole English nation at that time. 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 state 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 the 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 our law. In the stable, fundamental parts of our
constitution we made no revolution; no, nor any alteration at all. We did not
impair the monarchy. Perhaps it might be shown 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 splendour, 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! Everything was done; because we commenced with reparation, not
with ruin. Accordingly the state flourished. Instead of laying as dead, in a
sort of trance, or exposed, as some others, in an epileptic fit, 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
era 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
preserved a firmer countenance, nor a more vigorous arm, to all her
enemies, and to all her rivals. Europe under her respired and revived.
Everywhere 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.

ARMED DISCIPLINE.
He knew too well, and he felt as much as any man, how difficult it was to
accommodate a standing army to a free constitution, or to any constitution.
An armed, disciplined, body is, in its essence, dangerous to liberty;
undisciplined, it is ruinous to society. Its component parts are, in the latter
case, neither good citizens nor good soldiers. What have they thought of in
France, under such a difficulty as almost puts the human faculties to a
stand? They have put their army under such a variety of principles of duty,
that it is more likely to breed litigants, pettifoggers, and mutineers, than
soldiers. They have set up, to balance their crown army, another army,
deriving under another authority, called a municipal army—a balance of
armies, not of orders. These latter they have destroyed with every mark of
insult and oppression. States may, and they will best, exist with a partition
of civil powers. Armies cannot exist under a divided command. This state of
things he thought, in effect, a state of war, or, at best, but a truce instead of
peace, in the country.

GILDED DESPOTISM.
In the last century, Louis the Fourteenth had established a greater and
better disciplined military force than ever had been before seen in Europe,
and with it a perfect despotism. Though that despotism was proudly arrayed
in manners, gallantry, splendour, magnificence, and even covered over with
the imposing robes of science, literature, and arts, it was, in government,
nothing better than a painted and gilded tyranny; in religion, a hard, stern
intolerance, the fit companion and auxiliary to the despotic tyranny which
prevailed in its government. The same character of despotism insinuated
itself into every court of Europe, the same spirit of disproportioned
magnificence—the same love of standing armies, above the ability of the
people. In particular, our then sovereigns, King Charles and King James,
fell in love with the government of their neighbour, so flattering to the pride
of kings. A similarity of sentiments brought on connections equally
dangerous to the interests and liberties of their country. It were well that the
infection had gone no farther than the throne. The admiration of a
government flourishing and successful, unchecked in its operations, and
seeming therefore to compass its objects more speedily and effectually,
gained something upon all ranks of people. The good patriots of that day,
however, struggled against it. They sought nothing more anxiously than to
break off all communication with France, and to be get a total alienation
from its councils and its example; which, by the animosity prevalent
between the abettors of their religious system and the assertors of ours, was
in some degree effected.

OUR FRENCH DANGERS.
In the last age we were in danger of being entangled by the example of
France in the net of a relentless despotism. It is not necessary to say
anything upon that example. It exists no longer. Our present danger from
the example of a people, whose character knows no medium, is, with regard
to government, a danger from anarchy; a danger of being led through an
admiration of successful fraud and violence, to an imitation of the excesses
of an irrational, unprincipled, proscribing, confiscating, plundering,
ferocious, bloody, and tyrannical democracy. On the side of religion, the
danger of their example is no longer from intolerance, but from atheism; a
foul, unnatural vice, foe to all the dignity and consolation of mankind;
which seems in France, for a long time, to have been embodied into a
faction, accredited, and almost avowed.

SIR GEORGE SAVILLE.
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 would cast its
eyes upon none but him. 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 unbounded, 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 the senate to serve
his country, or in the field to defend it.

CORRUPTION NOT SELF-REFORMED.
Those, who would commit the reformation of India to the destroyers of
it, are the enemies to that reformation. They would make a distinction
between directors and proprietors, which, in the present state of things, does
not, cannot exist. But a right honourable gentleman says, he would keep the
present government of India in the court of directors; and would, to curb
them, provide salutary regulations;—wonderful! That is, he would appoint
the old offenders to correct the old offences; and he would render the
vicious and the foolish wise and virtuous, by salutary regulations. He would
appoint the wolf as guardian of the sheep; but he has invented a curious
muzzle, by which this protecting wolf shall not be able to open his jaws
above an inch or two at the utmost. Thus his work is finished. But I tell the
right honourable gentleman, that controlled depravity is not innocence; and
that it is not the labour of delinquency in chains that will correct abuses.
Will these gentlemen of the direction animadvert on the partners of their
own guilt? Never did a serious plan of amending any old tyrannical
establishment propose the authors and abettors of the abuses as the
reformers of them.

THE BRIBED AND THE BRIBERS.
If I am to speak my private sentiments, I think that in a thousand cases
for one it would be far less mischievous to the public, and full as little
dishonourable to themselves, to be polluted with direct bribery, than thus to
become a standing auxiliary to the oppression, usury, and peculation, of
multitudes, in order to obtain a corrupt support to their power. It is by
bribing, not so often by being bribed, that wicked politicians bring ruin on
mankind. Avarice is a rival to the pursuits of many. It finds a multitude of
checks, and many opposers, in every walk of life. But the objects of
ambition are for the few; and every person who aims at indirect profit, and
therefore wants other protection, than innocence and law, instead of its rival
becomes its instrument. There is a natural allegiance and fealty do you to
this domineering, paramount evil, from all the vassal vices, which
acknowledge its superiority, and readily militate under its banners; and it is
under that discipline alone that avarice is able to spread to any considerable
extent, or to render itself a general, public mischief.

HYDER ALI.
When at length Hyder Ali found that he had to do with men who either
would sign no convention, or whom no treaty and no signature could bind,
and who were the determined enemies of human intercourse itself, he
decreed to make the country possessed by these incorrigible and
predestinated criminals a memorable example to mankind. He resolved, in
the gloomy recesses of a mind capacious of such things, to leave the whole
Carnatic an everlasting monument of vengeance, and to put perpetual
desolation as a barrier between him and those, against whom the faith
which holds the moral elements of the world together, was no protection.
He became at length so confident of his force, so collected in his might, that
he made no secret whatsoever of his dreadful resolution. Having terminated
his disputes with every enemy, and every rival, who buried their mutual
animosities in their common detestation against the creditors of the nabob
of Arcot, he drew from every quarter whatever a savage ferocity could add
to his new rudiments in the arts of destruction; and compounding all the
materials of fury, havoc, and desolation, into one black cloud, he hung for a
while on the declivities of the mountains. Whilst the authors of all these
evils were idly and stupidly gazing on this menacing meteor, which
blackened all their horizon, it suddenly burst, and poured down the whole
of its contents upon the plains of the Carnatic. Then ensued a scene of woe,
the like of which no eye had seen, no heart conceived, and which no tongue
can adequately tell. All the horrors of war before known or heard of, were
mercy to that new havoc. A storm of universal fire blasted every field,
consumed every house, destroyed every temple. The miserable inhabitants
flying from their flaming villages, in part were slaughtered; others, without
regard to sex, to age, to the respect of rank, or sacredness of function,
fathers torn from children, husbands from wives, enveloped in a whirlwind
of cavalry, and amidst the goading spears of drivers, and the trampling of
pursuing horses, were swept into captivity, in an unknown and hostile land.
Those who were able to evade the tempest fled to the walled cities. But
escaping from fire, sword, and exile, they fell into the jaws of famine.

The alms of the settlement in this dreadful exigency, were certainly
liberal; and all was done by charity that private charity could do; but it was
a people in beggary; it was a nation which stretched out its hands for food.
For months together these creatures of sufferance, whose very excess and
luxury in their most plenteous days had fallen short of the allowance of our
austerest fasts, silent, patient, resigned, without sedition or disturbance,
almost without complaint, perished by an hundred a day in the streets of
Madras; every day seventy at least laid their bodies in the streets, or on the
glacis of Tanjore, and expired of famine in the granary of India. I was going
to awake your justice towards this unhappy part of our fellow-citizens, by
bringing before you some of the circumstances of this plague of hunger. Of
all the calamities which beset and waylay the life of man, this comes the
nearest to our heart, and is that wherein the proudest of us all feels himself
to be nothing more than he is: but I find myself unable to manage it with
decorum: these details are of a species of horror so nauseous and
disgusting; they are so degrading to the sufferers and to the hearers; they are
so humiliating to human nature itself, that, on better thoughts, I think it
more advisable to throw a pall over this hideous object, and to leave it to
your general conceptions.

REFORMATION AND ANARCHY
CONTRASTED AND COMPARED.
That the house must perceive, from his coming forward to mark an
expression or two of his best friend, how anxious he was to keep the
distemper of France from the least countenance in England, where he was
sure some wicked persons had shown a strong disposition to recommend an
imitation of the French spirit of reform. He was so strongly opposed to any
the least tendency towards the MEANS of introducing a democracy like
theirs, as well as to the END itself, that much as it would afflict him, if such
a thing could be attempted, and that any friend of his could concur in such
measures (he was far, very far, from believing they could), he would
abandon his best friends, and join with his worst enemies to oppose either
the means or the end; and to resist all violent exertions of the spirit of
innovation, so distant from all principles of true and safe reformation; a
spirit well calculated to overturn states, but perfectly unfit to amend them.
That he was no enemy to reformation. Almost every business in which he
was much concerned, from the first day he sat in that house to that hour,
was a business of reformation; and when he had not been employed in
correcting, he had been employed in resisting, abuses. Some traces of this
spirit in him now stand on their statute-book. In his opinion, anything which
unnecessarily tore to pieces the contexture of the state, not only prevented
all real reformation, but introduced evils which would call, but perhaps call
in vain, for new reformation.
That he thought the French nation very unwise. What they valued
themselves on, was a disgrace to them. They had gloried (and some people
in England had thought fit to take share in that glory) in making a
revolution; as if revolutions were good things in themselves. All the horrors,
and all the crimes of the anarchy which led to their revolution, which attend
its progress, and which may virtually attend it in its establishment, pass for
nothing with the lovers of revolutions. The French have made their way,
through the destruction of their country, to a bad constitution, when they
were absolutely in possession of a good one. They were in possession of it

the day the states met in separate orders. Their business, had they been
either virtuous or wise, or had they been left to their own judgment, was to
secure the stability and independence of the states, according to those
orders, under the monarch on the throne. It was then their duty to redress
grievances.
Instead of redressing grievances, and improving the fabric of their state,
to which they were called by their monarch, and sent by their country, they
were made to take a very different course. They first destroyed all the
balances and counterpoises which serve to fix the state, and to give it a
steady direction, and which furnish sure correctives to any violent spirit
which may prevail in any of the orders. These balances existed in their
oldest constitution; and in the constitution of this country; and in the
constitution of all the countries in Europe. These they rashly destroyed, and
then they melted down the whole into one incongruous, ill-connected mass.
When they had done this, they instantly, and with the most atrocious
perfidy and breach of all faith among men, laid the axe to the root of all
property, and consequently of all national prosperity, by the principles they
established, and the example they set, in confiscating all the possessions of
the church. They 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; and which may in the end produce
such a war, and perhaps many such.
With them the question was not between despotism and liberty. The
sacrifice they made of the peace and power of their country was not made
on the altar of freedom. Freedom, and a better security for freedom than that
they have taken, they might have had without any sacrifice at all. They
brought themselves into all the calamities they suffer, not that through them
they might obtain a British constitution; they plunged themselves headlong
into those calamities to prevent themselves from settling into that
constitution, or into anything resembling it.

CONFIDENCE AND JEALOUSY.
Confidence might become a vice, and jealousy a virtue, according to
circumstances. That confidence, of all public virtues, was the most
dangerous, and jealousy in a house of commons, of all public vices, the
most tolerable; especially where the number and the charge of standing
armies in time of peace was the question.

ECONOMY OF INJUSTICE.
Strange as this scheme of conduct in ministry is, and inconsistent with all
just policy, it is still true to itself, and faithful to its own perverted order.
Those who are bountiful to crimes, will be rigid to merit, and penurious to
service. Their penury is even held out as a blind and cover to their
prodigality. The economy of injustice is, to furnish resources for the fund of
corruption. Then they pay off their protection to great crimes and great
criminals by being inexorable to the paltry frailties of little men; and these
modern flagellants are sure, with a rigid fidelity, to whip their own
enormities on the vicarious back of every small offender.

SUBSISTENCE AND REVENUE.
The benefits of heaven to any community ought never to be connected
with political arrangements, or made to depend on the personal conduct of
princes; in which the mistake, or error, or neglect, or distress, or passion of
a moment on either side, may bring famine on millions, and ruin an
innocent nation perhaps for ages. The means of the subsistence of mankind
should be as immutable as the laws of nature, let power and dominion take
what course they may.

AUTHORITY AND VENALITY.
It is difficult for the most wise and upright government to correct the
abuses of remote, delegated power, productive of unmeasured wealth, and
protected by the boldness and strength of the same ill-got riches. These
abuses, full of their own wild native vigour, will grow and flourish under
mere neglect. But where the supreme authority, not content with winking at
the rapacity of its inferior instruments, is so shameless and corrupt as
openly to give bounties and premiums for disobedience to its laws, when it
will not trust to the activity of avarice in the pursuit of its own gains, when
it secures public robbery by all the careful jealousy and attention with
which it ought to protect property from such violence, the commonwealth
then is become totally perverted from its purposes; neither God nor man
will long endure it; nor will it long endure itself. In that case there is an
unnatural infection, a pestilential taint fermenting in the constitution of
society, which fever and convulsions of some kind or other must throw off;
or in which the vital powers, worsted in an unequal struggle, are pushed
back upon themselves, and, by a reversal of their whole functions, fester to
gangrene, to death; and instead of what was but just now the delight and
boast of the creation, there will be cast out in the face of the sun a bloated,
putrid, noisome carcass, full of stench, and poison, an offence, a horror, a
lesson to the world.

PREROGATIVE OF THE CROWN AND
PRIVILEGE OF PARLIAMENT.
It is the undoubted prerogative of the crown to dissolve parliament; but
we beg leave to lay before his majesty, that it is, of all the trusts vested in
his majesty, the most critical and delicate, and that in which this house has
the most reason to require, not only the good faith, but the favour of the
crown. His commons are not always upon a par with his ministers in an
application to popular judgment: it is not in the power of the members of
this house to go to their election at the moment the most favourable to them.
It is in the power of the crown to choose a time for their dissolution whilst
great and arduous matters of state and legislation are depending, which may
be easily misunderstood, and which cannot be fully explained before that
misunderstanding may prove fatal to the honour that belongs, and to the
consideration that is due, to members of parliament. With his majesty is the
gift of all the rewards, the honours, distinctions, favour, and graces of the
state; with his majesty is the mitigation of all the rigours of the law: and we
rejoice to see the crown possessed of trusts calculated to obtain goodwill,
and charged with duties which are popular and pleasing. Our trusts are of a
different kind. Our duties are harsh and invidious in their nature; and justice
and safety is all we can expect in the exercise of them. We are to offer
salutary, which is not always pleasing, counsel; we are to inquire and to
accuse: and the objects of our inquiry and charge will be for the most part
persons of wealth, power, and extensive connections: we are to make rigid
laws for the preservation of revenue, which of necessity more or less
confine some action, or restrain some function, which before was free: what
is the most critical and invidious of all, the whole body of the public
impositions originate from us, and the hand of the House of Commons is
seen and felt in every burthen that presses on the people. Whilst, ultimately,
we are serving them, and in the first instance whilst we are serving his
majesty, it will be hard, indeed, if we should see a House of Commons the
victim of its zeal and fidelity, sacrificed by his ministers to those very
popular discontents, which shall be excited by our dutiful endeavours for
the security and greatness of his throne. No other consequence can result

from such an example, but that, in future, the House of Commons,
consulting its safety at the expense of its duties, and suffering the whole
energy of the state to be relaxed, will shrink from every service, which,
however necessary, is of a great and arduous nature; or that, willing to
provide for the public necessities, and, at the same time, to secure the
means of performing that task, they will exchange independence for
protection, and will court a subservient existence through the favour of
those ministers of state, or those secret advisers, who ought themselves to
stand in awe of the commons of this realm.
A House of Commons respected by his ministers is essential to his
majesty's service: it is fit that they should yield to parliament, and not that
parliament should be new modelled until it is fitted to their purposes. If our
authority is only to be held up when we coincide in opinion with his
majesty's advisers, but is to be set at nought the moment it differs from
them, the House of Commons will sink into a mere appendage of
administration; and will lose that independent character which, inseparably
connecting the honour and reputation with the acts of this house, enables us
to afford a real, effective, and substantial support to his government. It is
the deference shown to our opinion when we dissent from the servants of
the crown, which alone can give authority to the proceedings of this house
when it concurs with their measures.
That authority once lost, the credit of his majesty's crown will be
impaired in the eyes of all nations. Foreign powers, who may yet wish to
revive a friendly intercourse with this nation, will look in vain for that hold
which gave a connection with Great Britain the preference to an alliance
with any other state. A House of Commons, of which ministers were known
to stand in awe, where everything was necessarily discussed, on principles
fit to be openly and publicly avowed, and which could not be retracted or
varied without danger, furnished a ground of confidence in the public faith,
which the engagement of no state dependent on the fluctuation of personal
favour, and private advice, can ever pretend to. If faith with the House of
Commons, the grand security for the national faith itself, can be broken
with impunity, a wound is given to the political importance of Great Britain,
which will not easily be healed.

BURKE AND FOX.
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 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.

PEERS AND COMMONS.
The commons have the deepest interest in the purity and integrity of the
peerage. The peers dispose of all the property in the kingdom, in the last
resort; and they dispose of it on their honour and not on their oaths, as all
the members of every other tribunal in the kingdom must do; though in
them the proceeding is not conclusive. We have, therefore, a right to
demand that no application shall be made to peers of such a nature as may
give room to call in question, much less to attaint, our sole security for all
that we possess. This corrupt proceeding appeared to the House of
Commons, who are the natural guardians of the purity of parliament, and of
the purity of every branch of judicature, a most reprehensible and
dangerous practice, tending to shake the very foundation of the authority of
the House of Peers: and they branded it as such by their resolution.

NATURAL SELF-DESTRUCTION.
The French had shown themselves the ablest architects of ruin that had
hitherto existed in the world. In that very short space of time they had
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 had 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 had imposed on themselves.

THE CARNATIC.
The Carnatic is a country not much inferior in extent to England. Figure
to yourself, Mr. Speaker, the land in whose representative chair you sit;
figure to yourself the form and fashion of your sweet and cheerful country
from Thames to Trent, north and south, and from the Irish to the German
sea east and west, emptied and embowelled (may God avert the omen of
our crimes!) by so accomplished a desolation. Extend your imagination a
little further, and then suppose your ministers taking a survey of this scene
of waste and desolation; what would be your thoughts if you should be
informed, that they were computing how much had been the amount of the
excises, how much the customs, how much the land and malt-tax, in order
that they should charge (take it in the most favourable light) for public
service, upon the relics of the satiated vengeance of relentless enemies, the
whole of what England had yielded in the most exuberant seasons of peace
and abundance? What would you call it? To call it tyranny sublimed into
madness, would be too faint an image; yet this very madness is the principle
upon which the ministers at your right hand have proceeded in their
estimate of the revenues of the Carnatic, when they were providing, not
supply for the establishments of its protection, but, rewards for the authors
of its ruin.
Every day you are fatigued and disgusted with this cant, "the Carnatic is
a country that will soon recover, and become instantly as prosperous as
ever." They think they are talking to innocents, who will believe that, by
sowing of dragons' teeth, men may come up ready grown and ready armed.
They who will give themselves the trouble of considering (for it requires no
great reach of thought, no very profound knowledge) the manner in which
mankind are increased, and countries cultivated, will regard all this raving
as it ought to be regarded. In order that the people, after a long period of
vexation and plunder, may be in a condition to maintain government,
government must begin by maintaining them. Here the road to economy lies
not through receipt, but through expense; and in that country nature has
given no short cut to your object. Men must propagate like other animals,
by the mouth. Never did oppression light the nuptial torch; never did

extortion and usury spread out the genial bed. Does any one of you think
that England, so wasted, would, under such a nursing attendance, so rapidly
and cheaply recover? But he is meanly acquainted with either England or
India, who does not know that England would a thousand times sooner
resume population, fertility, and what ought to be the ultimate secretion
from both—revenue, than such a country as the Carnatic. The Carnatic is
not by the bounty of nature a fertile soil. The general size of its cattle is
proof enough that it is much otherwise. It is some days since I moved, that a
curious and interesting map, kept in the India house, should be laid before
you. The India House is not yet in readiness to send it; I have therefore
brought down my own copy, and there it lies for the use of any gentleman
who may think such a matter worthy of his attention. It is indeed a noble
map, and of noble things; but it is decisive against the golden dreams and
sanguine speculations of avarice run mad. In addition to what you know
must be the case in every part of the world (the necessity of a previous
provision of habitation, seed, stock, capital), that map will show you, that
the uses of the influences of Heaven itself are in that country a work of art.
The Carnatic is refreshed by few or no living brooks or running streams,
and it has rain only at a season; but its product of rice exacts the use of
water subject to perpetual command. This is the national bank of the
Carnatic, on which it must have a perpetual credit, or it perishes
irretrievably. For that reason, in the happier times of India, a number,
almost incredible, of reservoirs have been made in chosen places
throughout the whole country; they are formed for the greater part of
mounds of earth and stones, with sluices of solid masonry; the whole
constructed with admirable skill and labour, and maintained at a mighty
charge. In the territory contained in that map alone, I have been at the
trouble of reckoning the reservoirs, and they amount to upwards of eleven
hundred, from the extent of two or three acres to five miles in circuit. From
these reservoirs currents are occasionally drawn over the fields, and these
watercourses again call for a considerable expense to keep them properly
scoured and duly leveled. Taking the district in that map as a measure, there
cannot be in the Carnatic and Tanjore fewer than ten thousand of these
reservoirs of the larger and middling dimensions, to say nothing of those for
domestic services, and the uses of religious purification. These are not the
enterprises of your power, nor in a style of magnificence suited to the taste
of your minister. These are the monuments of real kings, who were the

ABSTRACT THEORY OF HUMAN LIBERTY.
I love a manly, moral, regulated liberty as well as any gentleman of that
society, be he who he will: and perhaps I have given as good proofs of my
attachment to that cause in the whole course of my public conduct. I think I
envy liberty as little as they do, to any other nation. But I cannot stand
forward, and give praise or blame to anything which relates to human
actions, and human concerns, on a simple view of the object, as it stands
stripped of every relation, in all the nakedness and solitude of metaphysical
abstraction. Circumstances (which with some gentlemen pass for nothing)
give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing colour and
discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and
political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind. Abstractedly speaking,
government, as well as liberty, is good; yet could I, in common sense, ten
years ago, have felicitated France on her enjoyment of a government (for
she then had a government) without inquiry what the nature of that
government was, or how it was administered? Can I now congratulate the
same nation upon its freedom? Is it because liberty in the abstract may be
classed amongst the blessings of mankind that I am seriously to felicitate a
madman, who has escaped from the protecting restraint and wholesome
darkness of his cell, on his restoration to the enjoyment of light and liberty?
Am I to congratulate a highwayman and murderer, who has broken prison,
upon the recovery of his natural rights? This would be to act over again the
scene of the criminals condemned to the galleys, and their heroic deliverer,
the metaphysic knight of the sorrowful countenance. When I see the spirit
of liberty in action, I see a strong principle at work; and this, for a while, is
all I can possibly know of it. The wild GAS, the fixed air, is plainly broke
loose: but we ought to suspend our judgment until the first effervescence is
a little subsided, till the liquor is cleared, and until we see something deeper
than the agitation of a troubled and frothy surface. I must be tolerably sure,
before I venture publicly to congratulate men upon a blessing, that they
have really received one. Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver;
and adulation is not of more service to the people than to kings. I should
therefore suspend my congratulations on the new liberty of France, until I

was informed how it had been combined with government; with public
force; with the discipline and obedience of armies; with the collection of an
effective and well-distributed revenue; with morality and religion; with
solidity and property; with peace and order; with civil and social manners.
All these (in their way) are good things too; and, without them, liberty is
not a benefit whilst it lasts, and is not likely to continue long. The effect of
liberty to individuals, is, that they may do what they please: we ought to see
what it will please them to do before we risk congratulations, which may be
soon turned into complaints. Prudence would dictate this in the case of
separate, insulated, private men; but liberty, when men act in bodies, is
POWER. Considerate people, before they declare themselves, will observe
the use which is made of POWER; and particularly of so trying a thing as
NEW power in NEW persons, of whose principles, tempers, and
dispositions, they have little or no experience, and in situations where those
who appear the most stirring in the scene may possibly not be the real
movers.

POLITICS AND THE PULPIT.
Supposing, however, that something like moderation were visible in this
political sermon; yet politics and the pulpit are terms that have little
agreement. No sound ought to be heard in the church but the healing voice
of Christian charity. The cause of civil liberty and civil government gains as
little as that of religion by this confusion of duties. Those who quit their
proper character to assume what does not belong to them, are, for the
greater part, ignorant both of the character they leave, and of the character
they assume. Wholly unacquainted with the world in which they are so fond
of meddling, and inexperienced in all its affairs, on which they pronounce
with so much confidence, they have nothing of politics but the passions
they excite. Surely the church is a place where one day's truce ought to be
allowed to the dissensions and animosities of mankind.

IDEA OF FRENCH REVOLUTION.
It appears to me as if I were in a great crisis, not of the affairs of France
alone, but of all Europe, perhaps of more than Europe. All circumstances
taken together, the French revolution is the most astonishing that has
hitherto happened in the world. The most wonderful things are brought
about in many instances by means the most absurd and ridiculous; in the
most ridiculous modes; and, apparently, by the most contemptible
instruments. Everything seems out of nature in this strange chaos of levity
and ferocity, and of all sorts of crimes jumbled together with all sorts of
follies. In viewing this monstrous tragi-comic scene, the most opposite
passions necessarily succeed, and sometimes mix with each other in the
mind; alternate contempt and indignation; alternate laughter and tears;
alternate scorn and horror.

PATRIOTIC DISTINCTION.
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 their
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.

KINGLY POWER NOT BASED ON POPULAR
CHOICE.
According to this spiritual doctor of politics, if his majesty does not owe
his crown to the choice of his people, he is no LAWFUL KING. Now
nothing can be more untrue than that the crown of this kingdom is so held
by his majesty. Therefore, if you follow their rule, the king of Great Britain,
who most certainly does not owe his high office to any form of popular
election, is in no respect better than the rest of the gang of usurpers, who
reign, or rather rob, all over the face of this our miserable world, without
any sort of right or title to the allegiance of their people. The policy of this
general doctrine, so qualified, is evident enough. The propagators of this
political gospel are in hopes that their abstract principle (their principle that
a popular choice is necessary to the legal existence of the sovereign
magistracy) would be overlooked, whilst the king of Great Britain was not
affected by it. In the mean time the ears of their congregations would be
gradually habituated to it, as if it were a first principle admitted without
dispute. For the present it would only operate as a theory, pickled in the
preserving juices of pulpit eloquence, and laid by for future use. Condo et
compono quae mox depromere possim. By this policy, whilst our
government is soothed with a reservation in its favour to which it has no
claim, the security, which it has in common with all governments, so far as
opinion is security, is taken away.
Thus these politicians proceed, whilst little notice is taken of their
doctrines; but when they come to be examined upon the plain meaning of
their words, and the direct tendency of their doctrines, then equivocations
and slippery construction come into play. When they say the king owes his
crown to the choice of his people, and is, therefore, the only lawful
sovereign in the world, they will perhaps tell us they mean to say no more
than that some of the king's predecessors have been called to the throne by
some sort of choice; and therefore he owes his crown to the choice of his
people. Thus, by a miserable subterfuge, they hope to render their
proposition safe by rendering it nugatory. They are welcome to the asylum
they seek for their offence, since they take refuge in their folly. For, if you

admit this interpretation, how does their idea of election differ from our
idea of inheritance? And how does the settlement of the crown in the
Brunswick line derived from James I. come to legalize our monarchy, rather
than that of any of the neighbouring countries? At some time or other, to be
sure, all the beginners of dynasties were chosen by those who called them
to govern. There is ground enough for the opinion that all the kingdoms of
Europe were, at a remote period, elective, with more or fewer limitations in
the objects of choice. But whatever kings might have been here or
elsewhere a thousand years ago, or in whatever manner the ruling dynasties
of England or France may have begun, the king of Great Britain is, at this
day, king by a fixed rule of succession, according to the laws of his country;
and whilst the legal conditions of the compact of sovereignty are performed
by him (as they are performed), he holds his crown in contempt of the
choice of the Revolution Society, who have not a single vote for a king
amongst them, either individually or collectively; though I make no doubt
they would soon erect themselves into an electoral college, if things were
ripe to give effect to their claim. His majesty's heirs and successors, each in
his time and order, will come to the crown with the same contempt of their
choice with which his majesty has succeeded to that he wears.
Whatever may be the success of evasion in explaining away the gross
error of FACT, which supposes that his majesty (though he holds it in
concurrence with the wishes) owes his crown to the choice of his people,
yet nothing can evade their full explicit declaration concerning the principle
of a right in the people to choose; which right is directly maintained, and
tenaciously adhered to. All the oblique insinuations concerning election
bottom in this proposition, and are referable to it. Lest the foundation of the
king's exclusive legal title should pass for a mere rant of adulatory freedom,
the political divine proceeds dogmatically to assert, that, by the principles
of the Revolution, the people of England have acquired three fundamental
rights, all of which, with him, compose one system, and lie together in one
short sentence; namely, that we have acquired a right,
1. "To choose our own governors."
2. "To cashier them for misconduct."
3. "To frame a government for ourselves."
This new, and hitherto unheard of, bill of rights, though made in the
name of the whole people, belongs to those gentlemen and their faction

only. The body of the people of England have no share in it. They utterly
disclaim it. They will resist the practical assertion of it with their lives and
fortunes. They are bound to do so by the laws of their country, made at the
time of that very Revolution which is appealed to in favour of the fictitious
rights claimed by the society which abuses its name.

PREACHING DEMOCRACY OF DISSENT.
If the noble SEEKERS should find nothing to satisfy their pious fancies
in the old staple of the national church, or in all the rich variety to be found
in the well-assorted warehouses of the dissenting congregations, Dr. Price
advises them to improve upon non-conformity; and to set up, each of them,
a separate meeting-house upon his own particular principles. It is somewhat
remarkable that this reverend divine should be so earnest for setting up new
churches, and so perfectly indifferent concerning the doctrine which may be
taught in them. His zeal is of a curious character. It is not for the
propagation of his own opinions, but of any opinions. It is not for the
diffusion of truth, but for the spreading of contradiction. Let the noble
teachers but dissent, it is no matter from whom or from what. This great
point once secured, it is taken for granted their religion will be rational and
manly. I doubt whether religion would reap all the benefits which the
calculating divine computes from this "great company of great preachers."
It would certainly be a valuable addition of nondescripts to the ample
collection of known classes, genera and species, which at present beautify
the hortus siccus of dissent. A sermon from a noble duke, or a noble
marquis, or a noble earl, or baron bold, would certainly increase and
diversify the amusements of this town, which begins to grow satiated with
the uniform round of its vapid dissipations. I should only stipulate that these
new Mess-Johns in robes and coronets should keep some sort of bounds in
the democratic and levelling principles which are expected from their titled
pulpits. The new evangelists will, I dare say, disappoint the hopes that are
conceived of them. They will not become, literally as well as figuratively,
polemic divines, nor be disposed so to drill their congregations, that they
may, as in former blessed times, preach their doctrines to regiments of
dragoons and corps of infantry and artillery. Such arrangements, however
favourable to the cause of compulsory freedom, civil and religious, may not
be equally conducive to the national tranquillity. These few restrictions I
hope are no great stretches of intolerance, no very violent exertions of
despotism.

JARGON OF REPUBLICANISM.
Dr. Price, in this sermon, condemns very properly the practice of gross,
adulatory addresses to kings. Instead of this fulsome style, he proposes that
his majesty should be told, on occasions of congratulation, that "he is to
consider himself as more properly the servant than the sovereign of his
people." For a compliment, this new form of address does not seem to be
very soothing. Those who are servants in name, as well as in effect, do not
like to be told of their situation, their duty and their obligations. The slave,
in the old play, tells his master, "Haec commemoratio est quasi exprobatio."
It is not pleasant as compliment; it is not wholesome as instruction. After
all, if the king were to bring himself to echo this new kind of address, to
adopt it in terms, and even to take the appellation of Servant of the People
as his royal style, how either he or we should be much mended by it, I
cannot imagine. I have seen very assuming letters, signed, Your most
obedient, humble servant. The proudest denomination that ever was
endured on earth took a title of still greater humility than that which is now
proposed for sovereigns by the Apostle of Liberty. Kings and nations were
trampled upon by the foot of one calling himself "the Servant of Servants;"
and mandates for deposing sovereigns were sealed with the signet of "the
Fisherman."
I should have considered all this as no more than a sort of flippant, vain
discourse, in which, as in an unsavoury fume, several persons suffer the
spirit of liberty to evaporate, if it were not plainly in support of the idea, and
a part of the scheme, of "cashiering kings for misconduct." In that light it is
worth some observation.
Kings, in one sense, are undoubtedly the servants of the people, because
their power has no other rational end than that of the general advantage; but
it is not true that they are, in the ordinary sense (by our constitution at
least), anything like servants; the essence of whose situation is to obey the
commands of some other, and to be removable at pleasure. But the king of
Great Britain obeys no other person; all other persons are individually, and
collectively too, under him, and owe to him a legal obedience. The law,
which knows neither to flatter nor to insult, calls this high magistrate, not

our servant, as this humble divine calls him, but "OUR SOVEREIGN
LORD THE KING;" and we, on our parts, have learned to speak only the
primitive language of the law, and not the confused jargon of their
Babylonian pulpits.

CONSERVATIVE PROGRESS OF INHERITED
FREEDOM.
The policy appears to me to be the result of profound reflection; or rather
the happy effect of following nature, which is wisdom without reflection,
and above it. A spirit of innovation is generally the result of a selfish
temper, and confined views. People will not look forward to posterity, who
never look backward to their ancestors. Besides, the people of England well
know that the idea of inheritance furnishes a sure principle of conservation,
and a sure principle of transmission, without at all excluding a principle of
improvement. It leaves acquisition free; but it secures what it acquires.
Whatever advantages are obtained by a state proceeding on these maxims,
are locked fast as in a sort of family settlement; grasped as in a kind of
mortmain for ever. By a constitutional policy working after the pattern of
nature, we receive, we hold, we transmit our government and our privileges,
in the same manner in which we enjoy and transmit our property and our
lives. The institutions of policy, the goods of fortune, the gifts of
Providence, are handed down to us, and from us, in the same course and
order. Our political system is placed in a just correspondence and symmetry
with the order of the world, and with the mode of existence decreed to a
permanent body composed of transitory parts; wherein, by the disposition
of a stupendous wisdom, moulding together the great mysterious
incorporation of the human race, the whole, at one time, is never old, or
middle-aged, or young, but, in a condition of unchangeable constancy,
moves on through the varied tenour of perpetual decay, fall, renovation, and
progression. Thus, by preserving the method of nature in the conduct of the
state, in what we improve, we are never wholly new; in what we retain, we
are never wholly obsolete. By adhering in this manner and on those
principles to our forefathers, we are guided not by the superstition of
antiquarians, but by the spirit of philosophic analogy. In this choice of
inheritance we have given to our frame of polity the image of a relation in
blood; binding up the constitution of our country with our dearest domestic
ties; adopting our fundamental laws into the bosom of our family affections;
keeping inseparable, and cherishing with the warmth of all their combined

and mutually reflected charities, our state, our hearths, our sepulchres, and
our altars.
Through the same plan of a conformity to nature in our artificial
institutions, and by calling in the aid of her unerring and powerful instincts
to fortify the fallible and feeble contrivances of our reason, we have derived
several other, and those no small benefits, from considering our liberties in
the light of an inheritance. Always acting as if in the presence of canonized
forefathers, the spirit of freedom, leading in itself to misrule and excess, is
tempered with an awful gravity. This idea of a liberal descent inspires us
with a sense of habitual native dignity, which prevents that upstart insolence
almost inevitably adhering to and disgracing those who are the first
acquirers of any distinction. By this means our liberty becomes a noble
freedom. It carries an imposing and majestic aspect. It has a pedigree and
illustrating ancestors. It has its bearings and its ensigns armorial. It has its
gallery of portraits; its monumental inscriptions; its records, evidences, and
titles. We procure reverence to our civil institutions on the principle upon
which nature teaches us to revere individual men; on account of their age,
and on account of those from whom they are descended. All your sophisters
cannot produce anything better adapted to preserve a rational and manly
freedom than the course that we have pursued, who have chosen our nature
rather than our speculations, our breasts rather than our inventions, for the
great conservatories and magazines of our rights and privileges.

CONSERVATION AND CORRECTION.
A state without the means of some change is without the means of its
conservation. Without such means it might even risk the loss of that part of
the constitution which it wished the most religiously to preserve. The two
principles of conservation and correction operated strongly at the two
critical periods of the Restoration and Revolution, when England found
itself without a king. At both those periods the nation had lost the bond of
union in their ancient edifice; they did not, however, dissolve the whole
fabric. On the contrary, in both cases they regenerated the deficient part of
the old constitution through the parts which were not impaired. They kept
these old parts exactly as they were, that the part recovered might be suited
to them. They acted by the ancient organized states in the shape of their old
organization, and not by the organic moleculae of a disbanded people. At no
time, perhaps, did the sovereign legislature manifest a more tender regard to
that fundamental principle of British constitutional policy than at the time
of the Revolution, when it deviated from the direct line of hereditary
succession. The crown was carried somewhat out of the line in which it had
before moved; but the new line was derived from the same stock. It was still
a line of hereditary descent; still an hereditary descent in the same blood,
though an hereditary descent qualified with Protestantism. When the
legislature altered the direction, but kept the principle, they showed that
they held it inviolable.

HEREDITARY SUCCESSION OF ENGLISH
CROWN.
Unquestionably there was at the Revolution, in the person of King
William, a small and a temporary deviation from the strict order of a regular
hereditary succession; but it is against all genuine principles of
jurisprudence to draw a principle from a law made in a special case, and
regarding an individual person. Privilegium non transit in exemplum. If
ever there was a time favourable for establishing the principle, that a king
of popular choice was the only legal king, without all doubt it was at the
Revolution. Its not being done at that time is a proof that the nation was of
opinion it ought not to be done at any time. There is no person so
completely ignorant of our history as not to know that the majority in
parliament of both parties were so little disposed to anything resembling
that principle, that at first they were determined to place the vacant crown,
not on the head of the prince of Orange, but on that of his wife Mary,
daughter of King James, the eldest born of the issue of that king, which they
acknowledged as undoubtedly his. It would be to repeat a very trite story, to
recall to your memory all those circumstances which demonstrated that
their accepting King William was not properly a CHOICE; but to all those
who did not wish, in effect, to recall King James, or to deluge their country
in blood, and again to bring their religion, laws, and liberties into the peril
they had just escaped, it was an act of NECESSITY, in the strictest moral
sense in which necessity can be taken.
So far is it from being true, that we acquired a right by the Revolution to
elect our kings, that if we had possessed it before, the English nation did at
that time most solemnly renounce and abdicate it, for themselves, and for
all their posterity for ever. These gentlemen may value themselves as much
as they please on their Whig principles; but I never desire to be thought a
better Whig than Lord Somers; or to understand the principles of the
Revolution better than those by whom it was brought about; or to read in
the Declaration of Right any mysteries unknown to those whose penetrating
style has engraved in our ordinances, and in our hearts, the words and spirit
of that immortal law.

It is true that, aided with the powers derived from force and opportunity,
the nation was at that time, in some sense, free to take what course it
pleased for filling the throne; but only free to do so upon the same grounds
on which they might have wholly abolished their monarchy, and every other
part of their constitution.
However, they did not think such bold changes within their commission.
It is indeed difficult, perhaps impossible, to give limits to the mere
ABSTRACT competence of the supreme power, such as was exercised by
parliament at that time; but the limits of a MORAL competence, subjecting,
even in powers more indisputably sovereign, occasional will to permanent
reason, and to the steady maxims of faith, justice, and fixed fundamental
policy, are perfectly intelligible, and perfectly binding upon those who
exercise any authority, under any name, or under any title, in the state. The
House of Lords, for instance, is not morally competent to dissolve the
House of Commons; no, nor even to dissolve itself, nor to abdicate, if it
would, its portion in the legislature of the kingdom. Though a king may
abdicate for his own person, he cannot abdicate for the monarchy. By as
strong, or by a stronger reason, the House of Commons cannot renounce its
share of authority. The engagement and pact of society, which generally
goes by the name of the constitution, forbids such invasion and such
surrender. The constituent parts of a state are obliged to hold their public
faith with each other, and with all those who derive any serious interest
under their engagements, as much as the whole state is bound to keep its
faith with separate communities. Otherwise competence and power would
soon be confounded, and no law be left but the will of a prevailing force.
On this principle the succession of the crown has always been what it now
is, an hereditary succession by law: in the old line it was a succession by the
common law; in the new by the statute law, operating on the principles of
the common law, not changing the substance, but regulating the mode and
describing the persons. Both these descriptions of law are of the same force,
and are derived from an equal authority, emanating from the common
agreement and original compact of the state, communi sponsione
reipublicae, and as such are equally binding on king people too, as long as
the terms are observed, and they continue the same body politic.

LIMITS OF LEGISLATIVE CAPACITY.
If we were to know nothing of this assembly but by its title and function,
no colours could paint to the imagination anything more venerable. In that
light the mind of an inquirer, subdued by such an awful image as that of the
virtue and wisdom of a whole people collected into one focus, would pause
and hesitate in condemning things even of the very worst aspect. Instead of
blameable, they would appear only mysterious. But no name, no power, no
function, no artificial institution whatsoever, can make the men of whom
any system of authority is composed, any other than God, and nature, and
education, and their habits of life have made them. Capacities beyond these
the people have not to give. Virtue and wisdom may be the objects of their
choice; but their choice confers neither the one nor the other on those upon
whom they lay their ordaining hands. They have not the engagement of
nature, they have not the promise of revelation, for any such power.

OUR CONSTITUTION, NOT FABRICATED,
BUT INHERITED.
The Revolution was made to preserve our ANCIENT, indisputable laws
and liberties, and that ANCIENT constitution of government which is our
only security for law and liberty. If you are desirous of knowing the spirit of
our constitution, and the policy which predominated in that great period
which has secured it to this hour, pray look for both in our histories, in our
records, in our acts of parliament, and journals of parliament, and not in the
sermons of the Old Jewry, and the after-dinner toasts of the Revolution
Society. In the former you will find other ideas and another language. Such
a claim is as ill suited to our temper and wishes as it is unsupported by any
appearance of authority. The very idea of the fabrication of a new
government is enough to fill us with disgust and horror. We wished at the
period of the Revolution, and do now wish, to derive all we possess as AN
INHERITANCE FROM OUR FOREFATHERS. Upon that body and stock
of inheritance, we have taken care not to inoculate any scion alien to the
nature of the original plant. All the reformations we have hitherto made
have proceeded upon the principle of reverence to antiquity; and I hope,
nay, I am persuaded, that all those which possibly may be made hereafter,
will be carefully formed upon analogical precedent, authority, and example.
Our oldest reformation is that of Magna Charta. You will see that 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 I., and that both the one and the other were nothing more than a re-
affirmance of the still more ancient standing law of the kingdom. In the
matter of fact, for the greater part, these authors appear to be in the right;
perhaps not always; but if the lawyers mistake in some particulars, it proves
my position still the more strongly, because it demonstrates the powerful
prepossession towards antiquity, with much the minds of all our lawyers
and legislators, and of all the people whom 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.
In the famous law of the 3rd of Charles I., called the PETITION OF
RIGHT, 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 Abbe
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 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 ANCIENT 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 ANCIENT 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, as an estate specially
belonging to the people of this kingdom, without any reference whatever to

any other more general or prior right. By this means our constitution
preserves a unity in so great a diversity of its parts. We have an inheritable
crown; an inheritable peerage; and a house of commons and a people
inheriting privileges, franchises, and liberties, from a long line of ancestors.

LOW AIMS AND LOW INSTRUMENTS.
When men of rank sacrifice all ideas of dignity to an ambition without a
distinct object, and work with low instruments and for low ends, the whole
composition becomes low and base. Does not something like this now
appear in France? Does it not produce something ignoble and inglorious? a
kind of meanness in all the prevalent policy? a tendency in all that is done
to lower along with individuals all the dignity and importance of the state?
Other revolutions have been conducted by persons, who, whilst they
attempted or affected changes in the commonwealth, sanctified their
ambition by advancing the dignity of the people whose peace they troubled.
They had long views. They aimed at the rule, not at the destruction, of their
country. They were men of great civil and great military talents, and if the
terror, the ornament of their age. They were not like Jew brokers,
contending with each other who could best remedy with fraudulent
circulation and depreciated paper the wretchedness and ruin brought on
their country by their degenerate councils. The compliment made to one of
the great bad men of the old stamp (Cromwell) by his kinsman, a favourite
poet of that time, shows what it was he proposed, and what indeed to a great
degree he accomplished, in the success of his ambition:—

"Still as YOU rise, the STATE exalted too,
Finds no distemper whilst 'tis changed by YOU:
Changed like the world's great scene, when without noise
The rising sun night's VULGAR lights destroys."

These disturbers were not so much like men usurping power, as asserting
their natural place in society. Their rising was to illuminate and beautify the
world. Their conquest over their competitors was by outshining them. The
hand that, like a destroying angel, smote the country, communicated to it
the force and energy under which it suffered. I do not say (God forbid), I do
not say, that the virtues of such men were to be taken as a balance to their
crimes: but they were some corrective to their effects. Such was, as I said,
our Cromwell. Such were your whole race of Guises, Condes, and Colignis.
Such the Richelieus, who in more quite times acted in the spirit of a civil
war. Such, as better men, and in a less dubious cause, were your Henry the

Fourth and your Sully, though nursed in civil confusions, and not wholly
without some of their taint. It is a thing to be wondered at, to see how very
soon France, when she had a moment to respire, recovered and emerged
from the longest and most dreadful civil war that ever was known in any
nation. Why? Because among all their massacres, they had not slain the
MIND in their country. A conscious dignity, a noble pride, a generous sense
of glory and emulation, was not extinguished. On the contrary, it was
kindled and enflamed. The organs also of the state, however shattered,
existed. All the prizes of honour and virtue, all the rewards, all the
distinctions, remained. But your present confusion, like a palsy, has
attacked the fountain of life itself. Every person in your country, in a
situation to be actuated by a principle of honour, is disgraced and degraded,
and can entertain no sensation of life, except in a mortified and humiliated
indignation. But this generation will quickly pass away. The next generation
of the nobility will resemble the artificers and clowns, and money-jobbers,
usurers, and Jews, who will be always their fellows, sometimes their
masters. Believe me, Sir, those who attempt to level, never equalise. 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 tailors 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, a usurpation on the prerogatives of nature, you
attempt to force them.
The Chancellor of France, at the opening of the states, said, in a tone of
oratorical flourish, that all occupations were honourable. If he meant only,
that no honest employment was disgraceful, he would not have gone
beyond the truth. But in asserting that anything is honourable, we imply
some distinction in its favour. The occupation of a hair-dresser, or of a
working tallow-chandler, cannot be a matter of honour to any person—to
say nothing of a number of other more servile employments. Such
descriptions of men ought not to suffer oppression from the state; but the
state suffers oppression, if such as they, either individually or collectively,
are permitted to rule. In this you think you are combating prejudice, but you
are at war with nature.

HOUSE OF COMMONS CONTRASTED WITH
NATIONAL ASSEMBLY.
The British House of Commons, without shutting its doors to any merit
in any class, is, by the sure operation of adequate causes, filled with
everything illustrious in rank, in descent, in hereditary and in acquired
opulence, in cultivated talents, in military, civil, naval, and politic
distinction, that the country can afford. But supposing, what hardly can be
supposed as a case, that the House of Commons should be composed in the
same manner with the Tiers-Etat in France, would this dominion of chicane
be borne with patience, or even conceived without horror? God forbid I
should insinuate anything derogatory to that profession, which is another
priesthood, administering the rights of sacred justice. But whilst I revere
men in the functions which belong to them, and would do as much as one
man can do to prevent their exclusion from any, I cannot, to flatter them,
give the lie to nature. They are good and useful in the composition; they
must be mischievous if they preponderate so as virtually to become the
whole. Their very excellence in their peculiar functions may be far from a
qualification for others. It cannot escape observation, that when men are too
much confined to professional and faculty habits, and as it were inveterate
in the recurrent employment of that narrow circle, they are rather disabled
than qualified for whatever depends on the knowledge of mankind, on
experience in mixed affairs, on a comprehensive, connected view of the
various, complicated, external, and internal interests, which go to the
formation of that multifarious thing called a state. After all, if the House of
Commons were to have a wholly professional and faculty composition,
what is the power of the House of Commons, circumscribed and shut in by
the immoveable barriers of law, usages, positive rules of doctrine and
practice, counterpoised by the House of Lords, and every moment of its
existence at the discretion of the crown to continue, prorogue, or dissolve
us? The power of the House of Commons, direct or indirect, is indeed great;
and long may it be able to preserve its greatness, and the spirit belonging to
true greatness, at the full; and it will do so, as long as it can keep the
breakers of law in India from becoming the makers of law for England. The

power, however, of the House of Commons, when least diminished, is as a
drop of water in the ocean, compared to that residing in a settled majority of
your National Assembly. That assembly, since the destruction of the orders,
has no fundamental law, no strict convention, no respected usage to restrain
it. Instead of finding themselves obliged to conform to a fixed constitution,
they have a power to make a constitution which shall conform to their
designs. Nothing in heaven or upon earth can serve as a control on them.
What ought to be the heads, the hearts, the dispositions, that are qualified,
or that dare, not only to make laws under a fixed constitution, but at one
heat to strike out a totally new constitution for a great kingdom, and every
part of it, from the monarch on the throne to the vestry of a parish? But
—"fools rush in where angels fear to tread." In such a state of unbounded
power, for undefined and indefinable purposes, the evil of a moral and
almost physical inaptitude of the man to the function, must be the greatest
we can conceive to happen in the management of human affairs.

PROPERTY, MORE THAN ABILITY,
REPRESENTED IN PARLIAMENT.
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 pre-eminence, some preference (not
exclusive appropriation) given to birth, is neither unnatural, nor unjust, nor
impolitic. It is said, that twenty-four millions ought to prevail over two
hundred thousand. True; if the constitution of a kingdom be a problem of
arithmetic. This sort of discourse does well enough with the lamp-post for
its second: to men who MAY reason calmly, it is ridiculous. The will of the
many, and their interest, must very often differ; and great will be the
difference when they make an evil choice.

VIRTUE AND WISDOM QUALIFY FOR
GOVERNMENT.
I do not, my dear sir, conceive you to be of that sophistical, captious
spirit, or of that uncandid dulness, as to require, for every general
observation or sentiment, an explicit detail of the correctives and exceptions
which reason will presume to be included in all the general propositions
which come from reasonable men. You do not imagine that I wish to
confine power, authority, and distinction to blood, and names, and titles.
No, sir. 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. Woe to that country which would madly and
impiously reject the service of the talents and virtues, civil, military, or
religious, that are given to grace and to serve it; and would condemn to
obscurity everything formed to diffuse lustre and glory around a state. Woe
to that country, too, that, passing into the opposite extreme, considers a low
education, a mean, contracted view of things, a sordid, mercenary
occupation, as a preferable title to command. Everything ought to be open;
but not indifferently to every man. No rotation; no appointment by lot; no
mode of election operating in the spirit of sortition, or rotation, can be
generally good in a government conversant in extensive objects. Because
they have no tendency, direct or indirect, to select the man with a view to
the duty, or to accommodate the one to the other. I do not hesitate to say,
that the road to eminence and power, from obscure condition, ought not to
be made too easy, nor a thing too much of course. If rare merit be the rarest
of all rare things, in ought to pass through some sort of probation. The
temple of honour ought to be seated on an eminence. If it be opened
through virtue, let it be remembered, too, that virtue is never tried but by
some difficulty and some struggle.

NATURAL AND CIVIL RIGHTS.
Far am I from denying in theory, full as far as 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 do 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. If civil society
be the offspring of convention, that convention must be its law. That
convention must limit and modify all the descriptions of constitution which
are formed under it. Every sort of legislature, judicial, or executory power,
are its creatures. They can have no being in any other state of things; and
how can any man claim, under the conventions of civil society, rights which
do not so much as suppose its existence? Rights which are absolutely
repugnant to it? One of the first motives to civil society, and which becomes
one of its fundamental rules, is, THAT NO MAN SHOULD BE JUDGE IN

HIS OWN CAUSE. By this each person has at once divested himself of the
first fundamental right of uncovenanted man, that is, to judge for himself,
and to assert his own cause. He abdicates all right to be his own governor.
He inclusively, in a great measure, abandons the right of self-defence, the
first law of nature. Men cannot enjoy the rights of an uncivil and of a civil
state together. That he may obtain justice, he gives up his right of
determining what it is in points the most essential to him. That he may
secure some liberty, he makes a surrender in trust of the whole of it.
Government is not made in virtue of natural rights, which may and do
exist in total independence of it; and exist in much greater clearness, and in
a much greater degree of abstract perfection: but their abstract perfection is
their practical defect. By having a right to everything they want everything.
Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human
WANTS. Men have a right that these wants should be provided for by this
wisdom. Among these wants is to be reckoned the want, out of civil society,
of a sufficient restraint upon their passions. 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.
The moment you abate anything 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 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. The science of
constructing a commonwealth, or renovating it, or reforming it, is, like
every other experimental science, not to be taught a priori. Nor is it a short
experience that can instruct us in that practical science, because the real
effects of moral causes are not always immediate; but that which in the first
instance is prejudicial may be excellent in its remoter operation; and its
excellence may arise even from the ill effects it produces in the beginning.
The reverse also happens; and very plausible schemes, with very pleasing
commencements, have often shameful and lamentable conclusions. In states
there are often some obscure and almost latent causes, things which appear
at first view of little moment, on which a very great part of its prosperity or
adversity may most essentially depend. The science of government being
therefore so practical in itself, and intended for such practical purposes, a
matter which requires experience, and even more experience than any
person can gain in his whole life, however sagacious and observing he may
be, it is with infinite caution that any man ought to venture upon pulling
down an edifice, which has answered in any tolerable degree for ages the
common purposes of society, or on building it up again, without having
models and patterns of approved utility before his eyes.
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 contemplate 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.
The pretended rights of these theorists are all extremes: and in proportion
as they are metaphysically true, they are morally and politically false. The
rights of men are in a sort of MIDDLE, incapable of definition, but not
impossible to be discerned. The rights of men in governments are their
advantages, and these are often in balances between differences of good; in
compromises sometimes between good and evil, and sometimes between
evil and evil. Political reason is a computing principle, adding, subtracting,
multiplying, and dividing, morally and not metaphysically or
mathematically, true moral denominations.
By these theorists the right of the people is almost always sophistically
confounded with their power. The body of the community, whenever it can
come to act, can meet with no effectual resistance; but till power and right
are the same, the whole body of them has no right inconsistent with virtue,
and the first of all virtues—prudence.

MARIE ANTOINETTE.
It is now 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 splendour, and joy. Oh!
what a revolution! and what a 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 thousand 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, economists, 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 enterprise, 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.

SPIRIT OF A GENTLEMAN AND THE SPIRIT
OF RELIGION.
How much of that prosperous state was owing to the spirit of our old
manners and opinions is not easy to say; but as such causes cannot be
indifferent in their operation, we must presume that, on the whole, their
operation was beneficial.
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.
If, as I suspect, modern letters owe more than they are always willing to
own to ancient manners, so do other interests which we value full as much
as they are worth. Even commerce, and trade, and manufacture, the gods of
our economical politicians, are themselves, perhaps, but creatures; are
themselves but effects, which, as first causes, we choose to worship. They
certainly grew under the same shade in which learning flourished. They too
may decay with their natural protecting principles. With you, for the present
at least, they all threaten to disappear together. Where trade and
manufactures are wanting to a people, and the spirit of nobility and religion

remains, sentiment supplies, and not always ill supplies, their place; but if
commerce and the arts should be lost in an experiment to try how well a
state may stand without these old fundamental principles, what sort of a
thing must be a nation of gross, stupid, ferocious, and, at the same time,
poor and sordid barbarians, destitute of religion, honour, or manly pride,
possessing nothing at present, and hoping for nothing hereafter?

POWER SURVIVES OPINION.
But power, of some kind or other, will survive the shock in which
manners and opinions perish! And it will find other and worse means for its
support. The usurpation which, in order to subvert ancient institutions, has
destroyed ancient principles, will hold power by arts similar to those by
which it has acquired it. When the old feudal and chivalrous spirit of
FEALTY, which, by freeing kings from fear, freed both kings and subjects
from the precaution of tyranny, shall be extinct in the minds of men, plots
and assassinations will be anticipated by preventive murder and preventive
confiscation, and that long roll of grim and bloody maxims, which form the
political code of all power, not standing on its own honour, and the honour
of those who are to obey it. Kings will be tyrants from policy, when
subjects are rebels from principle.

CHIVALRY A MORALIZING CHARM.
This mixed system of opinion and sentiment had its origin in the ancient
chivalry; and the principle, though varied in its appearance by the varying
state of human affairs, subsisted and influenced through a long succession
of generations, even to the time we live in. If it should ever be totally
extinguished, the loss I fear will be great. It is this which has given its
character to modern Europe. It is this which has distinguished it under all its
forms of government, and distinguished it, to its advantage, from the states
of Asia, and possibly from those states which flourished in the most brilliant
periods of the antique world. It was this which, without confounding ranks,
had produced a noble equality, and handed it down through all the
gradations of social life. It was this opinion which mitigated kings into
companions, and raised private men to be fellows with kings. Without force
or opposition, it subdued the fierceness of pride and power; it obliged
sovereigns to submit to the soft collar of social esteem, compelled stern
authority to submit to elegance, and gave a dominating vanquisher of laws
to be subdued by manners.
But now all is to be changed. All the pleasing illusions, which made
power gentle, and obedience liberal, which harmonized the different shades
of life, and which, by a bland assimilation, incorporated into politics the
sentiments which beautify and soften private society, are to be dissolved by
this new conquering empire of light and reason. All the decent drapery of
life is to be rudely torn off. All the superadded ideas, furnished from the
wardrobe of a moral imagination, which the heart owns and the
understanding ratifies as necessary to cover the defects of our naked,
shivering nature, and to raise it to dignity in our own estimation, are to be
exploded as a ridiculous, absurd, and antiquated fashion.
On this scheme of things, a king is but a man, a queen is but a woman; a
woman is but an animal,—and an animal not of the highest order. All
homage paid to the sex in general as such, and without distinct views, is to
be regarded as romance and folly. Regicide, and parricide, and sacrilege are
but fictions of superstition, corrupting jurisprudence by destroying its
simplicity. The murder of a king, or a queen, or a bishop, or a father, are

only common homicide; and if the people are by any chance, or in any way,
gainers by it, a sort of homicide much the most pardonable, and into which
we ought not to make too severe a scrutiny.
On the scheme of this barbarous philosophy, which is the offspring of
cold hearts and muddy understandings, and which is as void of solid
wisdom as it is destitute of all taste and elegance, laws are to be supported
only by their own terrors, and by the concern which each individual may
find in them from his own private speculations, or can spare to them from
his own private interests. In the groves of THEIR academy, at the end of
every vista, you see nothing but the gallows. Nothing is left which engages
the affections on the part of the commonwealth. On the principles of this
mechanic philosophy, our institutions can never be embodied, if I may use
the expression, in persons, so as to create in us love, veneration, admiration,
or attachment. But that sort of reason which banishes the affections is
incapable of filling their place. These public affections, combined with
manners, are required sometimes as supplements, sometimes as correctives,
always as aids to law. The precept given by a wise man, as well as a great
critic, for the construction of poems, is equally true as to states:—Non satis
est pulchra esse poemata, dulcia sunto. There ought to be a system of
manners in every nation which a well-formed mind would be disposed to
relish. To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.

SACREDNESS OF MORAL INSTINCTS.
Why do I feel so differently from the Reverend Dr. Price, and those of his
lay flock, who will choose to adopt the sentiments of his discourse? For this
plain reason—because it is NATURAL I should; because we are so made,
as to be affected at such spectacles with melancholy sentiments upon the
unstable condition of mortal prosperity and the tremendous uncertainty of
human greatness; because in those natural feelings we learn great lessons;
because in events like these our passions instruct our reason; because when
kings are hurled from their thrones by the Supreme Director of this great
drama, and become the objects of insult to the base, and of pity to the good,
we behold such disasters in the moral, as we should behold a miracle in the
physical, order of things. We are alarmed into reflection; our minds (as it
has long since been observed) are purified by terror and pity; our weak,
unthinking pride is humbled under the dispensations of a mysterious
wisdom. Some tears might be drawn from me, if such a spectacle were
exhibited on the stage. I should be truly ashamed of finding in myself that
superficial, theatric sense of painted distress, whilst I could exult over it in
real life. With such a perverted mind, I could never venture to show my face
at a tragedy. People would think the tears that Garrick formerly, or that
Siddons not long since, have extorted from me, were the tears of hypocrisy;
I should know them to be the tears of folly.
Indeed the theatre is a better school of moral sentiments than churches,
where the feelings of humanity are thus outraged. Poets who have to deal
with an audience not yet graduated in the school of the rights of men, and
who must apply themselves to the moral constitution of the heart, would not
dare to produce such a triumph as a matter of exultation. There, where men
follow their natural impulses, they would not bear the odious maxims of a
Machiavelian policy, whether applied to the attainment of monarchical or
democratic tyranny. They would reject them on the modern, as they once
did on the ancient stage, where they could not bear even the hypothetical
proposition of such wickedness in the mouth of a personated tyrant, though
suitable to the character he sustained. No theatric audience in Athens would
bear what has been borne, in the midst of the real tragedy of this triumphal

day; a principal actor weighing, as it were in scales hung in a shop of
horrors, so much actual crime against so much contingent advantage, and
after putting in and out weights, declaring that the balance was on the side
of the advantages. They would not bear to see the crimes of new democracy
posted as in a ledger against the crimes of old despotism, and the book-
keepers of politics finding democracy still in debt, but by no means unable
or unwilling to pay the balance. In the theatre, the first intuitive glance,
without any elaborate process of reasoning, will show, that this method of
political computation would justify every extent of crime. They would see,
that on these principles, even where the very worst acts were not
perpetrated, it was owing rather to the fortune of the conspirators, than to
their parsimony in the expenditure of treachery and blood. They would soon
see, that criminal means once tolerated are soon preferred. They present a
shorter cut to the object than through the highway of the moral virtues.
Justifying perfidy and murder for public benefit, public benefit would soon
become the pretext, and perfidy and murder the end; until rapacity, malice,
revenge, and fear more dreadful than revenge, could satiate their insatiable
appetites. Such must be the consequences of losing, in the splendour of
these triumphs of the rights of men, all natural sense of wrong and right.

PARENTAL EXPERIENCE.
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 shown
himself inferior to the duke of Bedford, or to any of those whom he traces
in his line. His grace very soon would have wanted all plausibility in his
attack upon that provision which belonged more to mine than to me. He
would soon have supplied every deficiency, and symmetrized every
disproportion. It would not have been for that successor to resort to any
stagnant wasting reservoir of merit in me, or in any ancestry. He had in
himself a salient, living spring of generous and manly action. Every day he
lived he would have 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 recognise the divine justice, and in some degree
submit to it. But whilst I humble myself before God, I do not know that it is
forbidden to repel the attacks of unjust and inconsiderate men. The patience
of Job is proverbial. After some of the convulsive struggles of our irritable
nature, he submitted himself, and repented in dust and ashes. But even so, I
do not find him blamed for reprehending, and with a considerable degree of
verbal asperity, those ill-natured neighbours of his, who visited his dunghill
to read moral, political, and economical lectures on his misery. I am alone. I
have none to meet my enemies in the gate. Indeed, my Lord, I greatly

deceive myself, if in this hard season I would give a peck of refuse wheat
for all that is called fame and honour in the world. This is the appetite but of
a few. It is a luxury, it is a privilege, it is an indulgence for those who are at
their ease. But we are all of us made to shun disgrace, as we are made to
shrink from pain, and poverty, and disease. It is an instinct; and under the
direction of reason, instinct is always in the right. I live in an inverted order.
They who ought to have succeeded me have gone before me. They who
should have been to me as posterity are in the place of ancestors. I owe to
the dearest relation (which ever must subsist in memory) that act of piety
which he would have performed to me; I owe it to him to show that he was
not descended, as the duke of Bedford would have it, from an unworthy
parent.

REVOLUTIONARY SCENE.
History, who keeps a durable record of all our acts, and exercises her
awful censure over the proceedings of all sorts of sovereigns, will not forget
either those events or the era of this liberal refinement in the intercourse of
mankind. History will record, that on the morning of the 6th of October,
1789, the king and queen of France, after a day of confusion, alarm, dismay,
and slaughter, lay down, under the pledged security of public faith, to
indulge nature in a few hours of respite, and troubled, melancholy repose.
From this sleep the queen was first startled by the voice of the sentinel at
her door, who cried out to her to save herself by flight—that this was the
last proof of fidelity he could give—that they were upon him, and he was
dead. Instantly he was cut down. A band of cruel ruffians and assassins,
reeking with his blood, rushed into the chamber of the queen, and pierced
with a hundred strokes of bayonets and poniards the bed from whence this
persecuted woman had but just time to fly almost naked, and, through ways
unknown to the murderers, had escaped to seek refuge at the feet of a king
and husband, not secure of his own life for a moment. This king, to say no
more of him, and this queen, and their infant children (who once would
have been the pride and hope of a great and generous people), were then
forced to abandon the sanctuary of the most splendid palace in the world,
which they left swimming in blood, polluted by massacre, and strewed with
scattered limbs and mutilated carcases. Thence they were conducted into
the capital of their kingdom. Two had been selected from the unprovoked,
unresisted, promiscuous slaughter, which was made of the gentlemen of
birth and family who composed the king's body-guard. These two
gentlemen, with all the parade of an execution of justice, were cruelly and
publicly dragged to the block, and beheaded in the great court of the palace.
Their heads were stuck upon spears, and led the procession; whilst the royal
captives who followed in the train were slowly moved along, amidst the
horrid yells, and shrilling screams, and frantic dances, and infamous
contumelies, and all the unutterable abominations of the furies of hell, in
the abused shape of the vilest of women. After they had been made to taste,
drop by drop, more than the bitterness of death, in the slow torture of a

journey of twelve miles, protracted to six hours, they were, under a guard
composed of those very soldiers who had thus conducted them through this
famous triumph, lodged in one of the old palaces of Paris, now converted
into a Bastille for kings.
Is this a triumph to be consecrated at altars? to be commemorated with
grateful thanksgiving? to be offered to the divine humanity with fervent
prayer and enthusiastic ejaculation?—These Theban and Thracian orgies,
acted in France, and applauded only in the Old Jewry, I assure you, kindle
prophetic enthusiasm in the minds but of very few people in this kingdom:
although a saint and apostle, who may have revelations of his own, and who
has so completely vanquished all the mean superstitions of the heart, may
incline to think it pious and decorous to compare it with the entrance into
the world of the Prince of Peace, proclaimed in a holy temple by a
venerable sage, and not long before not worse announced by the voice of
angels to quiet the innocence of shepherds.

ECONOMY ON STATE PRINCIPLES.
Economy in my plans was, as it ought to be, secondary, subordinate,
instrumental. I acted on state principles. I found a great distemper in the
commonwealth; and, according to the nature of the evil and of the object, I
treated it. The malady was deep; it was complicated, in the causes and in the
symptoms. Throughout it was full of contra-indicants. On one hand
government, daily growing more invidious from an apparent increase of the
means of strength, was every day growing more contemptible by real
weakness. Nor was this dissolution confined to government commonly so
called. It extended to parliament; which was losing not a little in its dignity
and estimation, by an opinion of its not acting on worthy motives. On the
other hand, the desires of the people (partly natural and partly infused into
them by art) appeared in so wild and inconsiderate a manner, with regard to
the economical object (for I set aside for a moment the dreadful tampering
with the body of the constitution itself), that, if their petitions had literally
been complied with, the state would have been convulsed, and a gate would
have been opened through which all property might be sacked and ravaged.
Nothing could have saved the public from the mischiefs of the false reform
but its absurdity, which would soon have brought itself, and with it all real
reform, into discredit. This would have left a rankling wound in the hearts
of the people, who would know they had failed in the accomplishment of
their wishes, but who, like the rest of mankind in all ages, would impute the
blame to anything rather than to their own proceedings. But there were then
persons in the world who nourished complaint, and would have been
thoroughly disappointed if the people were ever satisfied. I was not of that
humour. I wished that they SHOULD be satisfied. It was my aim to give to
the people the substance of what I knew they desired, and what I thought
was right, whether they desired or not, before it had been modified for them
into senseless petitions. I knew that there is a manifest, marked distinction,
which ill men with ill designs, or weak men incapable of any design, will
constantly be confounding, that is a marked distinction between change and
reformation. The former alters the substance of the objects themselves, and
gets rid of all their essential good, as well as of all the accidental evil,

annexed to them. Change is novelty; and whether it is to operate any one of
the effects of reformation at all, or whether it may not contradict the very
principle upon which reformation is desired, cannot be certainly known
beforehand. Reform is not a change in the substance, or in the primary
modification of the object, but a direct application of a remedy to the
grievance complained of. So far as that is removed, all is sure. It stops
there; and if it fails, the substance which underwent the operation, at the
very worst, is but where it was. All this, in effect, I think, but am not sure, I
have said elsewhere. It cannot at this time be too often repeated; line upon
line; precept upon precept; until it comes into the currency of a proverb, TO
INNOVATE IS NOT TO REFORM. The French revolutionists complained
of everything; they refused to reform anything; and they left nothing, no,
nothing at all, UNCHANGED. The consequences are BEFORE us,—not in
remote history; not in future prognostication: they are about us; they are
upon us. They shake the public security; they menace private enjoyment.
They dwarf the growth of the young; they break the quiet of the old. If we
travel, they stop our way. They infest us in town; they pursue us to the
country. Our business is interrupted; our repose is troubled; our pleasures
are saddened; our very studies are poisoned and perverted, and knowledge
is rendered worse than ignorance by the enormous evils of this dreadful
innovation. The revolution harpies of France, sprung from night and hell, or
from that chaotic anarchy which generates equivocally "all monstrous, all
prodigious things," cuckoo-like, adulterously lay their eggs, and brood over,
and hatch them in the nest of every 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.

PHILOSOPHICAL VANITY; ITS MAXIMS,
AND EFFECTS.
The Assembly recommends to its youth a study of the bold experimenters
in morality. Everybody knows that there is a great dispute amongst their
leaders, which of them is the best resemblance of Rousseau. In truth, they
all resemble him. His blood they transfuse into their minds and into their
manners. Him they study; him they meditate; him they turn over in all the
time they can spare from the laborious mischief of the day, or the debauches
of the night. Rousseau is their canon of holy writ; in his life he is their
canon of Polycletus; he is their standard figure of perfection. To this man
and this writer, as a pattern to authors and to Frenchmen, the foundries of
Paris are now running for statues, with the kettles of their poor and the bells
of their churches. If an author had written like a great genius on geometry,
though its practical and speculative morals were vicious in the extreme, it
might appear, that in voting the statue, they honoured only the
geometrician. But Rousseau is a moralist, or he is nothing. It is impossible,
therefore, putting the circumstances together, to mistake their design in
choosing the author, with whom they have begun to recommend a courses
studies.
Their great problem is to find a substitute for all the principles which
hitherto have been employed to regulate the human will and action. They
find dispositions in the mind of such force and quality as may fit men, far
better than the old morality, for the purposes of such a state as theirs, and
may go much further in supporting their power and destroying their
enemies. They have therefore chosen a selfish, flattering, seductive,
ostentatious vice, in the place of plain duty. True humility, the basis of the
Christian system, is the low, but deep and firm, foundation of all real virtue.
But this, as very painful in the practice, and little imposing in the
appearance, they have totally discarded. Their object is to merge all natural
and all social sentiment in inordinate vanity. In a small degree, and
conversant in little things, vanity is of little moment. When full grown, it is
the worst of vices, and the occasional mimic of them all. It makes the whole
man false. It leaves nothing sincere or trustworthy about him. His best

qualities are poisoned and perverted by it, and operate exactly as the worst.
When your lords had many writers as immoral as the object of their statue
(such as Voltaire and others) they chose Rousseau, because in him that
peculiar vice, which they wished to erect into ruling virtue, was by far the
most conspicuous. We have had the great professor and founder of THE
PHILOSOPHY OF VANITY in England. As I had good opportunities of
knowing his proceedings almost from day to day, he left no doubt on 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 surprise 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,
that 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 flings 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
model 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 everything which is spurious,
fictitious, and false; by everything 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 candlelight, 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 be 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
everything, have wisely begun at the source. As the relation between
parents and children is the first amongst the elements of vulgar, natural
morality (Filiola tua te delectari laetor et probari tibi phusiken esse ten pros
ta tekna: etenim, si haec non est, nulla potest homini esse ad hominem
naturae adjunctio: qua sublata vitae societas tollitur. Valete Patron
(Rousseau) et tui condiscipuli (l'Assemblee National).—Cic. Ep. ad
Atticum.), 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 his 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,
preceptorum sancti voluere 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 the
houses, and even fit guardians of the honour of those husbands who succeed
legally to the office which the young literators had preoccupied, 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 mutual appetites, and in raising them into a
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 of 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 anything 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 medly 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, fiddlers, 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 their 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.
We certainly perceive, and to a degree we feel, in this writer, a style
glowing, animated, enthusiastic; at the same time that we find it lax, diffuse,
and not in the best taste of composition; all the members of the piece being
pretty equally laboured and expanded, without any due selection or
subordination of parts. He is generally too much on the stretch, and his
manner has little variety. We cannot rest upon any of his works, though they
contain observations which occasionally discover a considerable insight
into human nature. But his doctrines, on the whole, are so inapplicable to
real life and manners, that we never dream of drawing from them any rule

for laws or conduct, or for fortifying or illustrating anything by a reference
to his opinions. They have with us the fate of older paradoxes.

"Cum ventum ad VERUM est, SENSUS MORESQUE repugnant,
Atque ipsa utilitas, justi prope mater et aequi."

Perhaps bold speculations are more acceptable because more new to you
than to us, who have been long since satiated with them. We continue, as in
the two last ages, to read, more generally than I believe is now done on the
continent, the authors of sound antiquity. These occupy our minds. They
give us another taste and turn, and will not suffer us to be more than
transiently amused with paradoxical morality. It is not that I consider this
writer as wholly destitute of just notions. Amongst his irregularities, it must
be reckoned that he is sometimes moral, and moral in a very sublime strain.
But the GENERAL SPIRIT AND TENDENCY of his works is
mischievous; and the more mischievous for this mixture: for perfect
depravity of sentiment is not reconcileable with eloquence; and the mind
(though corruptible, not complexionally vicious) would reject, and throw
off with disgust, a lesson of pure and unmixed evil. These writers make
even virtue a pander to vice.
However, I less consider the author than the system of the Assembly in
perverting morality through his means. This I confess makes me nearly
despair of any attempt upon the minds of their followers, through reason,
honour, or conscience. The great object of your tyrants is to destroy the
gentlemen of France; and for that purpose they destroy, to the best of their
power, all the effect of those relations which may render considerable men
powerful or even safe. To destroy that order, they vitiate the whole
community. That no means may exist of confederating against their tyranny,
by the false sympathies of this "Nouvelle Eloise" they endeavour to subvert
those principles of domestic trust and fidelity, which form the discipline of
social life. They propagate principles by which every servant may think it,
if not his duty, at least his privilege, to betray his master. By these
principles, every considerable father of a family loses the sanctuary of his
house. Debet sua cuique domus esse perfugium tutissimum, says the law,
which your legislators have taken so much pains first to decry, then to
repeal. They destroy all the tranquillity and security of domestic life;
turning the asylum of the house into a gloomy prison, where the father of
the family must drag out a miserable existence, endangered in proportion to

the apparent means of his safety; where he is worse than solitary in a crowd
of domestics, and more apprehensive from his servants and inmates, than
from the hired, bloodthirsty mob without doors, who are ready to pull him
to the lanterne. It is thus, and for the same end, that they endeavour to
destroy that tribunal of conscience which exists independently of edicts and
decrees. Your despots govern by terror. They know that he who fears God
fears nothing else: and therefore they eradicate from the mind, through their
Voltaire, their Helvetius, and the rest of that infamous gang, that only sort of
fear which generates true courage. Their object is, that their fellow-citizens
may be under the dominion of no awe, but that of their committee of
research, and of their lanterne.
Having found the advantage of assassination in the formation of their
tyranny, it is the grand resource in which they trust for the support of it.
Whoever opposes any of their proceedings, or is suspected of a design to
oppose them, is to answer it with his life, or the lives of his wife and
children. This infamous, cruel, and cowardly practice of assassination they
have the imprudence to call MERCIFUL. They boast that they operated
their usurpation rather by terror than by force; and that a few seasonable
murders have prevented the bloodshed of many battles. There is no doubt
they will extend these acts of mercy whenever they see an occasion.
Dreadful, however, will be the consequences of their attempt to avoid the
evils of war by the merciful policy of murder. If, by effectual punishment of
the guilty, they do not wholly disavow that practice, and the threat of it too,
as any part of their policy; if ever a foreign prince enters into France, he
must enter it as into a country of assassins. The mode of civilized war will
not be practised; nor are the French who act on the present system entitled
to expect it. They, whose known policy is to assassinate every citizen whom
they suspect to be discontented by their tyranny, and to corrupt the soldiery
of every open enemy, must look for no modified hostility. All war, which is
not battle, will be military execution. This will beget acts of retaliation from
you; and every retaliation will beget a new revenge. The hell-hounds of
war, on all sides, will be uncoupled and unmuzzled. The new school of
murder and barbarism, set up in Paris, having destroyed (so far as in it lies)
all the other manners and principles which have hitherto civilized Europe,
will destroy also the mode of civilized war, which, more than anything else,
has distinguished the Christian world. Such is the approaching golden age,

which the Virgil of your assembly has sung to his Pollios! (Mirabeau's
speech concerning universal peace.)

UNITY BETWEEN CHURCH AND STATE.
They take this tenet of the head and heart, not from the great name which
it immediately bears, nor from the greater from whence it is derived; but
from that which alone can give true weight and sanction to any learned
opinion, the common nature and common relation of men. Persuaded that
all things ought to be done with reference, and referring all to the point of
reference to which all should be directed, they think themselves bound, not
only as individuals in the sanctuary of the heart, or as congregated in that
personal capacity, to renew the memory of their high origin and caste; but
also in their corporate character to perform their national homage to the
institutor, and author, and protector of civil society; without which civil
society man could not by any possibility arrive at the perfection of which
his nature is capable, nor even make a remote and faint approach to it. They
conceive that He who gave our nature to be perfected by our virtue, willed
also the necessary means of its perfection.—He willed therefore the state—
He willed its connection with the source and original archetype of all
perfection. They who are convinced of this his will, what is the law of laws,
and the sovereign of sovereigns, cannot think it reprehensible that this our
corporate fealty and homage, that this our recognition of a signiory
paramount, I had almost said this oblation of the state itself, as a worthy
offering on the high altar of universal praise, should be performed as all
public, solemn acts are performed, in buildings, in music, in decoration, in
speech, in the dignity of persons, according to the customs of mankind,
taught by their nature; that is, with modest splendour and unassuming state,
with mild majesty and sober pomp. For those purposes they think some part
of the wealth of the country is as usefully employed as it can be, in
fomenting the luxury of individuals. It is the public ornament. It is the
public consolation. It nourishes the public hope. The poorest man finds his
own importance and dignity in it, whilst the wealth and pride of individuals
at every moment makes the man of humble rank and fortune sensible of his
inferiority, and degrades and vilifies his condition. It is for the man in
humble life, and to raise his nature, and to put him in mind of a state in
which the privileges of opulence will cease, when he will be equal by

nature, and may be more than equal by virtue, that this portion of the
general wealth of his country is employed and sanctified.
I assure you I do not aim at singularity. I give you opinions which have
been accepted amongst us, from very early times to this moment, with a
continued and general approbation, and which indeed are so worked into
my mind, that I am unable to distinguish what I have learned from others
from the results of my own meditation.
It is on some such principles that the majority of the people of England,
far from thinking a religious national establishment unlawful, hardly think it
lawful to be without one. In France you are wholly mistaken if you do not
believe us above all other things attached to it, and beyond all other nations;
and when this people has acted unwisely and unjustifiably in its favour (as
in some instances they have done most certainly) in their very errors you
will at least discover their zeal.
This principle runs through the whole system of their polity. They do not
consider their church establishment as convenient, but as essential to their
state; not as a thing heterogeneous and inseparable; something added for
accommodation; what they may either keep or lay aside, according to their
temporary ideas of convenience. They consider it as the foundation of their
whole constitution, with which, and with every part of which, it holds an
indissoluble union. Church and state are ideas inseparable in their minds,
and scarcely is the one ever mentioned without mentioning the other.
(In preparing these pages for publication, the selector has discovered how
unconsciously he was indebted to the intellectual inspiration of Burke, in
the following extract:—

"Founded in Christ, and by Apostles form'd,
Glory of England! oh, my Mother Church,
Hoary with time, but all untouched in creed,
Firm to thy Master, by as fond a grasp
Of faith as Luther, with his free-born mind
Clung to Emmanuel,—doth thy soul remain.
But yet around Thee scowls a fierce array
Of Foes and Falsehoods; must'ring each their powers,
Triumphantly. And well may thoughtful Hearts
Heave with foreboding swell and heavy fears,
To mark, how mad opinion doth infect
Thy children; how thine apostolic claims
And love maternal are regarded now,
By creedless Vanity, or careless Vice.
For time there was, when peerless Hooker wrote,
And deep-soul'd Bacon taught the world to think,
When thou wert paramount,—thy cause sublime!

And in THY life, all Polity and Powers
The throne securing, or in law enshrined,
With all estates our balanced Realm contains,
In thee supreme, a master-virtue own'd
And honour'd. Church and State could then co-work,
Like soul and body in one breathing Form
Distinct, but undivided; each with rule
Essential to the kingdom's healthful frame,
Yet BOTH, in unity august and good
Together, under Christ their living Head,
A hallow'd commonwealth of powers achieved.
But now, in evil times, sectarian Will
Would split the Body, and to sects reduce
Our sainted Mother of th'imperial Isles,
Which have for ages from Her bosom drank
Those truths immortal, Life and Conscience need.
But never may the rude assault of hearts
Self-blinded, or the autocratic pride
Of Reason, by no hallowing faith subdued,

One lock of glory from Her rev'rend head
Succeed in tearing: Love, and Awe, and Truth
Her doctrines preach, with apostolic force:
Her creed is Unity, her head is Christ,
Her Forms primeval, and her Creed divine,
And Catholic, that crowning name she wears."

"Luther," 6th edition 1852.)

TRIPLE BASIS OF FRENCH REVOLUTION.
Instead of the religion and the law by which they were in a great politic
communion with the Christian world, they have constructed their republic
on three bases, all fundamentally opposite to those on which the
communities of Europe are built. Its foundation is laid in regicide, in
jacobinism, and in atheism; and it has joined to those principles a body of
systematic manners, which secures their operation.
If I am asked, how I would be understood in the use of these terms,
regicide, jacobinism, atheism, and a system of corresponding manners, and
their establishment? I will tell you:—

I.—REGICIDE.

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

II.—JACOBINISM.

Jacobinism is the revolt of the enterprising talents of a country against its
property. When private men form themselves into associations for the
purpose of destroying the pre-existing laws and institutions of their country;
when they secure to themselves an army, by dividing amongst the people of
no property the estates of the ancient and lawful proprietors; when a state
recognises those acts; when it does not make confiscations for crimes, but
makes crimes for confiscations; when it has its principal strength, and all its
resources, in such a violation of property; when it stands chiefly upon such

a violation, massacring by judgments, or otherwise, those who make any
struggle for their old legal government, and their legal, hereditary, or
acquired possessions—I call this JACOBINISM BY ESTABLISHMENT.

III.—ATHEISM.

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

CORRESPONDENT SYSTEM OF MANNERS
AND MORALS.
When to these establishments of regicide, of jacobinism, and of atheism,
you add the CORRESPONDENT SYSTEM OF MANNERS, no doubt can
be left on the mind of a thinking man concerning their determined hostility
to the human race. Manners are of more importance than laws. Upon them,
in a great measure, the laws depend. The law touches us but here and there,
and now and then. Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt
or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible
operation, like that of the air we breathe in. They give their whole form and
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
that ever has been known, and at the same time the most coarse, rude,
savage, and ferocious. Nothing in the Revolution, no, not to a phrase or
gesture, not to the fashion of a hat or a shoe, was left to accident. All has
been the result of design; all has been matter of institution. No mechanical
means could be devised in 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, have been debauched into means of its
preservation and its propagation. All sorts of shows and exhibitions,
calculated to inflame and vitiate the imagination, and pervert the moral
sense, have been contrived. They have sometimes brought forth five or six
hundred drunken women, calling at the bar of the Assembly for the blood of
their own children, as being royalists or constitutionalists. Sometimes they
have got a body of wretches, calling themselves fathers, to demand the
murder of their sons, boasting that Rome had but one Brutus, but that they
could show five hundred. There were instances in which they inverted, and
retaliated the impiety, and produced sons, who called for the execution of
their parents. The foundation of their republic is laid in moral paradoxes.
Their patriotism is always prodigy. All those instances to be found in
history, whether real or fabulous, of a doubtful public spirit, at which

morality is perplexed, reason is staggered, and from which affrighted nature
recoils, are their chosen, and almost sole examples for the instruction of
their youth.
The whole drift of their institution is contrary to that of the wise
legislators of all countries, who aimed at improving instincts into morals,
and at grafting the virtues on the stock of the natural affections. They, on
the contrary, have omitted no pains to eradicate every benevolent and noble
propensity in the mind of men. In their culture it is a rule always to graft
virtues on vices. They think everything unworthy of the name of public
virtue, unless it indicates violence on the private. All their new institutions
(and with them everything is new) strike at the root of our social nature.
Other legislators, knowing that marriage is the origin of all relations, and
consequently the first element of all duties, have 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 has been taken in the synagogue of antichrist, I mean in that
forge and manufactury 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.

FEROCITY OF JACOBINISM.
As to those whom they suffer to die a natural death, they do not permit
them to enjoy the last consolations of mankind, or those rights of sepulture,
which indicate hope, and which mere nature has taught to mankind, in all
countries, to soothe the afflictions, and to cover the infirmity, of mortal
condition. They disgrace men in the entry into life, they vitiate and enslave
them through the whole course of it, and they deprive them of all comfort at
the conclusion of their dishonoured and depraved existence. Endeavouring
to persuade the people that they are no better than beasts, the whole body of
their institution tends to make them beasts of prey, furious and savage. For
this purpose the active part of them is disciplined into a ferocity which has
no parallel. To this ferocity there is joined not one of the rude, unfashioned
virtues, which accompany the vices, where the whole are left to grow up
together in the rankness of uncultivated nature. But nothing is left to nature
in their systems.
The same discipline which hardens their hearts relaxes their morals.
Whilst courts of justice were thrust out by revolutionary tribunals, and
silent churches were only the funeral monuments of departed religion, there
were no fewer than nineteen or twenty theatres, great and small, most of
them kept open at the public expense, and all of them crowded every night.
Among the gaunt, haggard forms of famine and nakedness, amidst the yells
of murder, the tears of affliction, and the cries of despair, the song, the
dance, the mimic scene, the buffoon laughter, went on as regularly as in the
gay hour of festive peace. I have it from good authority, that under the
scaffold of judicial murder, and the gaping planks that poured down blood
on the spectators, the space was hired out for a show of dancing dogs. I
think, without concert, we have made the very same remark on reading
some of their pieces, which being written for other purposes, let us into a
view of their social life. It struck us that the habits of Paris had no
resemblance to the finished virtues, or to the polished vice, and elegant,
though not blameless, luxury, of the capital of a great empire. Their society
was more like that of a den of outlaws upon a doubtful frontier; of a lewd
tavern for the revels and debauches of banditti, assassins, bravos,

smugglers, and their more desperate paramours, mixed with bombastic
players, the refuse and rejected offal of strolling theatres, puffing out ill-
sorted verses about virtue, mixed with the licentious and blasphemous
songs, proper to the brutal and hardened course of life belonging to that sort
of wretches. This system of manners in itself is at war with all orderly and
moral society, and is in its neighbourhood unsafe. If great bodies of that
kind were anywhere established in a bordering territory, we should have a
right to demand of their governments the suppression of such a nuisance.

VOICE OF OPPRESSION.
Should we not obtest Heaven, and whatever justice there is yet on earth?
Oppression makes wise men mad; but the distemper is still the madness of
the wise, which is better than the sobriety of fools. The cry is the voice of
sacred misery, exalted not into wild raving, but into the sanctified frenzy of
prophecy and inspiration—in that bitterness of soul, in that indignation of
suffering virtue, in that exaltation of despair, would not persecuted English
loyalty cry out, with an awful warning voice, and denounce the destruction
that waits on monarchs, who consider fidelity to them as the most degrading
of all vices; who suffer it to be punished as the most abominable of all
crimes; and who have no respect but for rebels, traitors, regicides, and
furious negro slaves, whose crimes have broken their chains? Would not
this warm language of high indignation have more of sound reason in it,
more of real affection, more of true attachment, than all the lullabies of
flatterers, who would hush monarchs to sleep in the arms of death.

BRITAIN VINDICATED IN HER WAR WITH
FRANCE.
There is one thing in this business which appears to be wholly
unaccountable, or accountable on a supposition I dare not entertain for a
moment. I cannot help asking, Why all this pains, to clear the British nation
of ambition, perfidy, and the insatiate thirst of war? At what period of time
was it that our country has deserved that load of infamy, of which nothing
but preternatural humiliation in language and conduct can serve to clear us?
If we have deserved this kind of evil fame from anything we have done in a
state of prosperity, I am sure that it is not an abject conduct in adversity
than can clear our reputation. Well is it known that ambition can creep as
well as soar. The pride of no person in a flourishing condition is more justly
to be dreaded, than that of him who is mean and cringing under a doubtful
and unprosperous fortune. But it seems it was thought necessary to give
some out-of-the-way proofs of our sincerity, as well as of our freedom from
ambition. Is then fraud and falsehood become the distinctive character of
Englishmen? Whenever your enemy chooses to accuse you of perfidy and
ill faith, will you put it into his power to throw you into the purgatory of
self-humiliation? Is his charge equal to the finding of the grand jury of
Europe, and sufficient to put you upon your trial? But on that trial I will
defend the English ministry. I am sorry that on some points I have, on the
principles I have always opposed, so good a defence to make. THEY
WERE NOT THE FIRST TO BEGIN THE WAR. THEY DID NOT
EXCITE THE GENERAL CONFEDERACY IN EUROPE, WHICH WAS
SO PROPERLY FORMED ON THE ALARM GIVEN BY THE
JACOBINISM OF FRANCE. THEY DID NOT BEGIN WITH AN
HOSTILE AGGRESSION ON THE REGICIDES, ARE ANY OF THEIR
ALLIES. THESE PARRICIDES OF THEIR OWN COUNTRY,
DISCIPLINING THEMSELVES FOR FOREIGN BY DOMESTIC
VIOLENCE, WERE THE FIRST TO ATTACK A POWER THAT WAS
OUR ALLY BY NATURE, BY HABIT, AND BY THE SANCTION OF
MULTIPLIED TREATIES. (The Editor has ventured to print these lines in
italics, because it appears, while this selection from Burke is preparing for

the press, an inflated demagogue has not only dared to deny the claims of
the duke of Wellington to be the Hero of a nation's heart, but has also
accused the illustrious Burke of misrepresenting historical facts connected
with our war in the French revolution. On which side both the truth and
integrity of history are to be found, may safely be left to the moral decision
of men who do NOT look at History through the exclusive medium of the
market, and in listening to the voice of instruction are, at least, enabled to
distinguish the bray of an ass from the peal of a trumpet.) Is it not true, that
they were the first to declare war upon this kingdom? Is every word in the
declaration from Downing-Street, concerning their conduct, and concerning
ours and that of our allies, so obviously false, that it is necessary to give
some new-invented proofs of our good faith in order to expunge the
memory of all this perfidy?

POLISH AND FRENCH REVOLUTION.
A king without authority; nobles without union or subordination; a
people without arts, industry, commerce, or liberty; no order within, no
defence without; no effective public force, but a foreign force, which
entered a naked country at will, and disposed of everything at pleasure.
Here was a state of things which seemed to invite, and might perhaps
justify, bold enterprise 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 everything 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
ever has 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 aggrandizement 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 are, only fetter 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. Everything was kept in its place and order; but
in that place and order everything was betterd. 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, a unanimity and secrecy, 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 how to
proceed as they have begun! Happy prince, worthy to begin with splendour,
or to close with glory, a race of patriots and of kings: and to leave

"A name, which ev'ry 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
excellency 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. But mark the character of our
faction. All their enthusiasm is kept for the French revolution. They 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 havoc 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!

EUROPE IN 1789.
In the long series of ages which have furnished the matter of history,
never was so beautiful and so august a spectacle presented to the moral eye,
as Europe afforded the day before the revolution in France. I knew indeed
that this prosperity contained in itself the seeds of its own danger. In one
part of the society it caused laxity and debility; in the other it produced bold
spirits and dark designs. A false philosophy passed from academies into
courts; and the great themselves were infected with the theories which
conducted to their ruin. Knowledge, which in the two last centuries either
did not exist at all, or existed solidly on right principles and in chosen
hands, was now diffused, weakened, and perverted. General wealth
loosened morals, relaxed vigilance, and increased presumption. Men of
talent began to compare, in the partition of the common stock of public
prosperity, the proportions of the dividends with the merits of the claimants.
As usual, they found their portion not equal to their estimate (or perhaps to
the public estimate) of their own worth. When it was once discovered by the
revolution in France, that a struggle between establishment and rapacity
could be maintained, though but for one year, and in one place, I was sure
that a practicable breach was made in the whole order of things and in every
country. Religion, that held the materials of the fabric together, was first
systematically loosened. All other opinions, under the name of prejudices,
must fall along with it; and property, left undefended by principles, became
a repository of spoils to tempt cupidity, and not a magazine to furnish arms
for defence. I knew that, attacked on all sides by the infernal energies of
talents set in action by vice and disorder, authority could not stand upon
authority alone. It wanted some other support than the poise of its own
gravity. Situations formerly supported persons. It now became necessary
that personal qualities should support situations. Formerly, where authority
was found, wisdom and virtue were presumed. But now the veil was torn,
and, to keep off sacrilegious intrusion, it was necessary that in the sanctuary
of government something should be disclosed not only venerable, but
dreadful. Government was at once to show itself full of virtue and full of
force. It was to invite partisans, by making it appear to the world that a

generous cause was to be asserted; one fit for a generous people to engage
in. From passive submission was it to expect resolute defence? No! It must
have warm advocates and passionate defenders, which a heavy,
discontented acquiescence never could produce. What a base and foolish
thing is it for any consolidated body of authority to say, or to act as if it
said, "I will put my trust not in my own virtue, but in your patience; I will
indulge in effeminacy, in indolence, in corruption; I will give way to all my
perverse and vicious humours, because you cannot punish me without the
hazard of ruining yourselves?"

ATHEISM CANNOT REPENT.
Disappointment and mortification undoubtedly they feel; but to them,
repentance is a thing impossible. They are atheists. This wretched opinion,
by which they are possessed even to the height of fanaticism, leading them
to exclude from their ideas of a commonwealth the vital principle of the
physical, the moral, and the political world, engages them in a thousand
absurd contrivances to fill up this dreadful void. Incapable of innoxious
repose, or honourable action, or wise speculation, in the lurking-holes of a
foreign land, into which (in a common ruin) they are driven to hide their
heads amongst the innocent victims of their madness, they are at this very
hour as busy in the confection of the dirt-pies of their imaginary
constitutions, as if they had not been quite fresh from destroying, by their
impious and desperate vagaries, the finest country upon earth.

OUTWARD DIGNITY OF THE CHURCH
DEFENDED.
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
palled 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.
The people of England know how little influence the teachers of religion
are likely to have with the wealthy and powerful of long standing, and how
much less with the newly fortunate, if they appear in a manner no way
assorted to those with whom they must associate, and over whom they must
even exercise, in some cases, something like an authority. What must they
think of that body of teachers, if they see it in no part above the
establishment of their domestic servants? If the poverty were voluntary,
there might be some difference. Strong instances of self-denial operate
powerfully on our minds; and a man who has no wants has obtained great
freedom, and firmness, and even dignity. But as the mass of any description
of men are but men, and their poverty cannot be voluntary, that disrespect,
which attends upon all lay property, will not depart from the ecclesiastical.
Our provident constitution has therefore taken care that those who are to
instruct presumptuous ignorance, those who are to be censors over insolent

vice, should neither incur their contempt, nor live upon their alms; nor will
it tempt the rich to a neglect of the true medicine of their minds. For these
reasons, whilst we provide first for the poor, and with a parental solicitude,
we have not relegated religion (like something we were ashamed to show)
to obscure municipalities, or rustic villages. No! We will have her to exalt
her mitred front in courts and parliaments. We will have her mixed
throughout the whole mass of life, and blended with all the classes of
society. The people of England will show to the haughty potentates of the
world, and to their talking sophisters, that a free, a generous, an informed
nation honours the high magistrates of its church; that it will not suffer the
insolence of wealth and titles, or any other species of proud pretension, to
look down with scorn upon what they look up to with reverence; nor
presume to trample on that acquired personal nobility, which they intend
always to be, and which often is, the fruit, not the reward (for what can be
the reward), of learning, piety, and virtue. They can see, without pain or
grudging, an archbishop precede a duke. They can see a bishop of Durham,
or a bishop of Winchester, in possession of ten thousand pounds a year; and
cannot conceive why it is in worse hands than estates to the like amount in
the hands of this earl, or that squire; although it may be true, that so many
dogs and horses are not kept by the former, and fed with the victuals which
ought to nourish the children of the people. It is true, the whole church
revenue is not always employed, and to every shilling, in charity; nor
perhaps ought it; but something is generally so employed. It is better to
cherish virtue and humanity by leaving much to free will, even with some
loss to the object, than to attempt to make men mere machines and
instruments of a political benevolence. The world on the whole will gain by
a liberty, without which virtue cannot exist.
When once the commonwealth has established the estates of the church
as property, it can, consistently, hear nothing of the more or the less. Too
much and too little are treason against property. What evil can arise from
the quantity in any hand, whilst the supreme authority has the full,
sovereign superintendence over this, as over any property, to prevent every
species of abuse; and, whenever it notably deviates, to give to it a direction
agreeable to the purposes of its institution. In England most of us conceive
that it is envy and malignity towards those who are often the beginners of
their own fortune, and not a love of the self-denial and mortification of the
ancient church, that makes some look askance at the distinctions, and

honours, and revenues, which, taken from no person, are set apart for virtue.
The ears of the people of England are distinguishing. They hear these men
speak broad. Their tongue betrays them. Their language is in the patois of
fraud; in the cant and gibberish of hypocrisy. The people of England must
think so, when these praters affect to carry back the clergy to that primitive,
evangelic poverty, which, in the spirit, ought always to exist in them (and in
us too, however we may like it), but in the thing must be varied, when the
relation of that body to the state is altered; when manners, when modes of
life, when indeed the whole order of human affairs, has undergone a total
revolution. We shall believe those reformers then to be honest enthusiasts,
not, as now we think them, cheats and deceivers, when we see them
throwing their own goods into common, and submitting their own persons
to the austere discipline of the early church.

DANGER OF ABSTRACT VIEWS.
It is not worth our while to discuss, like sophisters, whether, in no case,
some evil, for the sake of some benefit, is to be tolerated. Nothing universal
can be rationally affirmed on any moral or any political subject. Pure
metaphysical abstraction does not belong to these matters. The lines of
morality are not like ideal lines of mathematics. They are broad and deep as
well as long. They admit of exceptions; they demand modifications. These
exceptions and modifications are not made by the process of logic, but by
the rules of 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. Metaphysics cannot live without definition; but prudence is
cautious how she defines. Our courts cannot be more fearful in suffering
fictitious cases to be brought before them for eliciting their determination
on a point of law, than prudent moralists are in putting extreme and
hazardous cases of conscience upon emergencies not existing. Without
attempting therefore to define, what never can be defined, the case of a
revolution in government, this, I think, may be safely affirmed, that a sore
and pressing evil is to be removed, and that a good, great in its amount, and
unequivocal in its nature, must be probable almost to certainty, before the
inestimable price of our own morals, and the well-being of a number of our
fellow-citizens, is paid for a revolution. If ever we ought to be economists
even to parsimony, it is in the voluntary production of evil. Every
revolution contains in it something of evil.

APPEAL TO IMPARTIALITY.
The quality of the sentence does not however decide on the justice of it.
Angry friendship is sometimes as bad as calm enmity. For this reason the
cold neutrality of abstract justice is, to a good and clear cause, a more
desirable thing than an affection liable to be any way disturbed. When the
trial is by friends, if the decision should happen to be favourable, the
honour of the acquittal is lessened; if adverse, the condemnation is
exceedingly embittered. It is aggravated by coming from lips professing
friendship, and pronouncing judgment with sorrow and reluctance. 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. It is certainly well for Mr. Burke that there are impartial men in the
world. To them I address myself, pending the appeal which on his part is
made from the living to the dead, from the modern Whigs to the ancient.

HISTORICAL ESTIMATE OF LOUIS XVI.
The unhappy Louis XVI. was a man of the best intentions that probably
ever reigned. He was by no means deficient in talents. He had a most
laudable desire to supply by general reading, and even by the acquisition of
elemental knowledge, an education in all points originally defective; but
nobody told him (and it was no wonder he should not himself divine it) that
the world of which he read, and the world in which he lived, were no longer
the same. Desirous of doing everything for the best, fearful of cabal,
distrusting his own judgment, he sought his ministers of all kinds upon
public testimony. But as courts are the field for caballers, the public is the
theatre for mountebanks and imposters. The cure for both those evils is in
the discernment of the prince. But an accurate and penetrating discernment
is what in a young prince could not be looked for.
His conduct in its principle was not unwise; but, like most other of his
well-meant designs, it failed in his hands. It failed partly from mere ill
fortune, to which speculators are rarely pleased to assign that very large
share to which she is justly entitled in human affairs. The failure, perhaps,
in part was owing to his suffering his system to be vitiated and disturbed by
those intrigues, which it is, humanly speaking, impossible wholly to prevent
in courts, or indeed under any form of government. However, with these
aberrations, he gave himself over to a succession of the statesmen of public
opinion. In other things he thought that he might be a king on the terms of
his predecessors. He was conscious of the purity of his heart, and the
general good tendency of his government. He flattered himself, as most
men in his situation will, that he might consult his ease without danger to
his safety. It is not at all wonderful that both he and his ministers, giving
way abundantly in other respects to innovation, should take up in policy
with the tradition of their monarchy. Under his ancestors the monarchy had
subsisted, and even been strengthened, by the generation or support of
republics. First, the Swiss republics grew under the guardianship of the
French monarchy. The Dutch republics were hatched and cherished under
the same incubation. Afterwards, a republican constitution was, under the
influence of France, established in the empire against the pretensions of its

chief. Even whilst the monarchy of France, by a series of wars and
negociations, and lastly, by the treaties of Westphalia, had obtained the
establishment of the Protestants in Germany as a law of the empire, the
same monarchy under Louis the Thirteenth, had force enough to destroy the
republican system of the Protestants at home. Louis the Sixteenth was a
diligent reader of history. But the very lamp of prudence blinded him. The
guide of human life led him astray. A silent revolution in the moral world
preceded the political, and prepared it. It became of more importance than
ever what examples were given, and what measures 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 connections, other communications.
The middle classes had swelled far beyond their former proportion. Like
whatever is the most effectively rich and great in society, these classes
became the seat of all the active politics; and the preponderating weight to
decide on them. There were all the energies by which fortune is acquired;
there the consequence of their success. There were all the talents which
assert their pretensions, and are impatient of the place which settled society
prescribes to them. These descriptions had got between the great and the
populace; and the influence on the lower classes was with them. The spirit
of ambition had taken possession of this class as violent 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 everywhere. The press
in reality has made every government, in its spirit, almost democratic.
Without it the great, the first movements in this Revolution could not,
perhaps, have been given. But the spirit of ambition, now for the first time
connected with the spirit of speculation, was not to be restrained at will.
There was no longer any means of arresting a principle in its course. When
Louis the Sixteenth, under the influence of the enemies to monarchy, meant
to found but one republic, he set up two. When he meant to take away half
the crown of his neighbour, he lost the whole of his own. Louis the

Sixteenth could not with impunity countenance a new republic: yet between
his throne and that dangerous lodgment for an enemy, which he had erected,
he had the whole Atlantic for a ditch. He had for an outwork the English
nation itself, friendly to liberty, adverse to that mode of it. He was
surrounded by a rampart of monarchies, most of them allied to him, and
generally under his influence. Yet even thus secured, a republic erected
under his auspices, and dependent on his power, became fatal to his throne.
The very money which he had lent to support this republic, by a good faith,
which to him operated as perfidy, was punctually paid to his enemies, and
became a resource in the hands of his assassins.

NEGATIVE RELIGION A NULLITY.
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 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. A man is certainly the
most perfect Protestant who protests against the whole Christian religion.
Whether a person's having no Christian religion be a title to favour, in
exclusion to the largest description of Christians who hold all the doctrines
of Christianity, though holding along with them some errors and some
superfluities, is rather more than any man, who has not become recreant and
apostate from his baptism, will, I believe, choose to affirm. The
countenance given from a spirit of controversy to that negative religion
may, by degrees, encourage light and unthinking people to a total
indifference to everything positive in matters of doctrine; and, in the end, of
practice too. If continued, it would play the game of that sort of active,
proselytizing, and persecuting atheism, which is the disgrace and calamity
of our time, and which we see to be as capable of subverting a government,
as any mode can be of misguided zeal for better things.

ANTECHAMBER OF REGICIDE.
To those who do not love to contemplate the fall of human greatness, I do
not know a more mortifying spectacle, than to see the assembled majesty of
the crowned heads of Europe waiting as patient suitors in the antechamber
of regicide. They wait, it seems, until the sanguinary tyrant Carnot shall
have snorted away the fumes of the indigested blood of his sovereign. Then,
when, sunk on the down of usurped pomp, he shall have sufficiently
indulged his meditations with what monarch he shall next glut his ravening
maw, he may condescend to signify that it is his pleasure to be awake; and
that he is at leisure to receive the proposals of his high and mighty clients
for the terms on which he may respite the execution of the sentence he has
passed upon them. At the opening of those doors, what a sight it must be to
behold the plenipotentiaries of royal impotence, in the precedency which
they will intrigue to obtain, and which will be granted to them according to
the seniority of their degradation, sneaking into the regicide presence, and
with the relics of the smile, which they had dressed up for the levee of their
masters, still flickering on their curled lips, presenting the faded remains of
their courtly graces, to meet the scornful, ferocious, sardonic grin of a
bloody ruffian, who, whilst he is receiving their homage, is measuring them
with his eye, and fitting to their size the slider of his guillotine! These
ambassadors may easily return as good courtiers as they went; but can they
ever return from that degrading residence, loyal and faithful subjects; or
with any true affection to their master, or true attachment to the
constitution, religion, or laws of their country? There is great danger that
they, who enter smiling into this Trophonian cave, will come out of it sad
and serious conspirators; and such will continue as long as they live. They
will become true conductors of contagion to every country which has had
the misfortune to send them to the source of that electricity. At best they
will become totally indifferent to good and evil, to one institution or
another. This species of indifference is but too generally distinguishable in
those who have been much employed in foreign courts; but in the present
case the evil must be aggravated without measure; for they go from their
country, not with the pride of the old character, but in a state of the lowest

degradation, and what must happen in their place of residence can have no
effect in raising them to the level of true dignity, or of chaste self-
estimation, either as men, or as representatives of crowned heads.

TREMENDOUSNESS OF WAR.
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 hand, and her gorgon at her breast, was a coquette to be
flirted with! We ought with reverence to approach that tremendous divinity,
that loves courage, but commands counsel. War never leaves where it found
a nation. It is never to be entered into without mature deliberation; not a
deliberation lengthened out into a perplexing indecision, but a deliberation
leading to a sure and fixed judgment. When so taken up, it is not to be
abandoned without reason as valid, as fully, and as extensively considered.
Peace may be made as unadvisedly as war. Nothing is so rash as fear; and
the councils of pusillanimity very rarely put off, whilst they are always sure
to aggravate, the evils from which they would fly.

ENGLISH OFFICERS.
There is no want of officers, that I have ever understood, for the new
ships which we commission, or the new regiments which we raise. In the
nature of things it is not with their persons, that the higher classes
principally pay their contingent to the demands of war. There is another,
and not less important part, which rests with almost exclusive weight upon
them. They furnish the means,

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

Not that they are exempt from contributing also by their personal service
in the fleets and armies of their country. They do contribute, and in their full
and fair proportion, according to the relative proportion of their numbers in
the community. They contribute all the mind that actuates the whole
machine. The fortitude required of them is very different from the
unthinking alacrity of the common soldier, or common sailor, in the face of
danger and death; it is not a passion, it is not an impulse, it is not a
sentiment; it is a cool, steady, deliberate principle, always present, always
equable; having no connection with anger; tempering honour with
prudence; incited, invigorated, and sustained, by a generous love of fame;
informed, moderated, and directed by an enlarged knowledge of its own
great public ends; flowing in one blended stream from the opposite sources
of the heart and the head; carrying in itself its own commission, and
proving its title to every other command, by the first and most difficult
command, that of the bosom in which it resides: it is a fortitude, which
unites with the courage of the field the more exalted and refined courage of
the council; which knows as well to retreat, as to advance; which can
conquer as well by delay, as by the rapidity of a march, or the impetuosity
of an attack; which can be, with Fabius, the black cloud that lowers on the
tops of the mountains, or with Scipio, the thunderbolt of war; which,
undismayed by false shame, can patiently endure the severest trial that a
gallant spirit can undergo, in the taunts and provocations of the enemy, the
suspicions, the cold respect, and "mouth-honour" of those, from whom it

should meet a cheerful obedience; which, undisturbed by false humanity,
can calmly assume that most awful moral responsibility of deciding, when
victory may be too dearly purchased by the loss of a single life, and when
the safety and glory of their country may demand the certain sacrifice of
thousands. Different stations of command may call for different
modifications of this fortitude; but the character ought to be the same in all.
And never, in the most "palmy state" of our martial renown, did it shine
with brighter lustre than in the present sanguinary and ferocious hostilities,
wherever the British arms have been carried.

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

RELATION OF WEALTH TO NATIONAL
DIGNITY.
We have a vast interest to preserve, and we possess great means of
preserving it: but it is to be remembered that the artificer may be
encumbered by his tools, and that resources may be among impediments. If
wealth is the obedient and laborious slave of virtue and of public honour,
then wealth is in its place, and has its use: but if this order is changed, and
honour is to be sacrificed to the conservation of riches,—riches, which have
neither eyes nor hands, nor anything truly vital in them, cannot long survive
the being of their vivifying powers, their legitimate masters, and their
potent protectors. If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free: if
our wealth command us, we are poor indeed. We are bought by the enemy
with the treasure from our own coffers. Too great a sense of the value of a
subordinate interest may be the very source of its danger, as well as the
certain ruin of interests of a superior order. Often has a man lost his all
because he would not submit to hazard all in defending it. A display of our
wealth before robbers is not the way to restrain their boldness, or to lessen
their rapacity. This display is made, I know, to persuade the people of
England that thereby we shall awe the enemy, and improve the terms of our
capitulation: it is made, not that we should fight with more animation, but
that we should supplicate with better hopes. We are mistaken. We have an
enemy to deal with who never regarded our contest as a measuring and
weighing of purses. He is the Gaul that puts his SWORD into the scale. He
is more tempted with our wealth as booty, than terrified with it as power.
But let us be rich or poor, let us be either in what proportion we may, nature
is false or this is true, that where the essential public force (of which money
is but a part) is in any degree upon a par in a conflict between nations, that
state, which is resolved to hazard its existence rather than to abandon its
objects, must have an infinite advantage over that which is resolved to yield
rather than to carry its resistance beyond a certain point. Humanly speaking,
that people which bounds its efforts only with its being, must give the law
to that nation which will not push its opposition beyond its convenience.

AMBASSADORS OF INFAMY.
On this their gaudy day the new regicide Directory sent for their
diplomatic rabble, as bad as themselves in principle, but infinitely worse in
degradation. They called them out by a sort of roll of their nations, one after
another, much in the manner in which they called wretches out of their
prison to the guillotine. When these ambassadors of infamy appeared before
them, the chief director, in the name of the rest, treated each of them with a
short, affected, pedantic, insolent, theatric laconium: a sort of epigram of
contempt. When they had thus insulted them in a style and language which
never before was heard, and which no sovereign would for a moment
endure from another, supposing any of them frantic enough to use it; to
finish their outrage, they drummed and trumpeted the wretches out of their
hall of audience.
Among the objects of this insolent buffoonery was a person supposed to
represent the king of Prussia. To this worthy representative they did not so
much as condescend to mention his master; they did not seem to know that
he had one; they addressed themselves solely to Prussia in the abstract,
notwithstanding the infinite obligation they owed to their early protector for
their first recognition and alliance, and for the part of his territory he gave
into their hands for the first-fruits of his homage. None but dead monarchs
are so much as mentioned by them, and those only to insult the living by an
invidious comparison. They told the Prussians they ought to learn, after the
example of Frederick the Great, a love for France. What a pity it is, that he,
who loved France so well as to chastise it, was not now alive, by an
unsparing use of the rod (which indeed he would have spared little) to give
them another instance of his paternal affection. But the Directory were
mistaken. These are not days in which monarchs value themselves upon the
title of GREAT: they are grown PHILOSOPHIC: they are satisfied to be
good. Your lordship will pardon me for this no very long reflection on the
short but excellent speech of the plumed director to the ambassador of
Cappadocia. The imperial ambassador was not in waiting, but they found
for Austria a good Judean representation. With great judgment his highness
the Grand Duke had sent the most atheistic coxcomb to be found in

Florence to represent, at the bar of impiety, the house of apostolic majesty,
and the descendants of the pious, though high-minded, Maria Theresa. He
was sent to humble the whole race of Austria before those grim assassins,
reeking with the blood of the daughter of Maria Theresa, whom they sent,
half-dead, in a dung-cart, to a cruel execution; and this true-born son of
apostasy and infidelity, this renegado from the faith, and from all honour
and all humanity, drove an Austrian coach over the stones which were yet
wet with her blood;—with that blood which dropped every step through her
tumbril, all the way she was drawn from the horrid prison, in which they
had finished all the cruelty and horrors, not executed in the face of the sun!
The Hungarian subjects of Maria Theresa, when they drew their swords to
defend her rights against France, called her, with correctness of truth,
though not with the same correctness, perhaps, of grammar, a king:
Moriamur pro rege nostro Maria Theresa.—She lived and died a king, and
others will have subjects ready to make the same vow, when, in either sex,
they show themselves real kings.

DIFFICULTY THE PATH TO GLORY.
When you choose an arduous and slippery path, God forbid that any
weak feelings of my declining age, which calls for soothings and supports,
and which can have none but from you, should make me wish that you
should abandon what you are about, or should trifle with it. In this house we
submit, though with troubled minds, to that order which has connected all
great duties with toils and with perils, which has conducted the road to
glory through the regions of obloquy and reproach, and which will never
suffer the disparaging alliance of spurious, false, and fugitive praise with
genuine and permanent reputation. We know that the Power which has
settled that order, and subjected you to it by placing you in the situation you
are in, is able to bring you out of it with credit and with safety. His will be
done. All must come right. You may open the way with pain, and under
reproach. Others will pursue it with ease and with applause.

ROBESPIERRE AND HIS COUNTERPARTS.
They have murdered one Robespierre. This Robespierre they tell us was a
cruel tyrant, and now that he is put out of the way, all will go well in
France. Astraea will again return to that earth from which she has been an
emigrant, and all nations will resort to her golden scales. It is very
extraordinary, that the very instant the mode of Paris is known here, it
becomes all the fashion in London. This is their jargon. It is the old bon ton
of robbers, who cast their common crimes on the wickedness of their
departed associates. I care little about the memory of this same Robespierre.
I am sure he was an execrable villain. I rejoiced at his punishment neither
more nor less than I should at the execution of the present Directory, or any
of its members. But who gave Robespierre the power of being a tyrant? and
who were the instruments of his tyranny? The present virtuous constitution-
mongers. He was a tyrant, they were his satellites and his hangmen. Their
sole merit is in the murder of their colleague. They have expiated their other
murders by a new murder. It has always been the case among this banditti.
They have always had the knife at each other's throats, after they had almost
blunted it at the throats of every honest man. These people thought that, in
the commerce of murder, he was like to have the better of the bargain if any
time was lost; they therefore took one of their short revolutionary methods,
and massacred him in a manner so perfidious and cruel, as would shock all
humanity, if the stroke was not struck by the present rulers on one of their
own associates. But this last act of infidelity and murder is to expiate all the
rest, and to qualify them for the amity of a humane and virtuous sovereign
and civilized people. I have heard that a Tartar believes, when he has killed
a man, that all his estimable qualities pass with his clothes and arms to the
murderer: but I have never heard that it was the opinion of any savage
Scythian, that, if he kills a brother villain, he is, ipso facto, absolved of all
his own offences. The Tartarian doctrine is the most tenable opinion. The
murderers of Robespierre, besides what they are entitled to by being
engaged in the same tontine of infamy, are his representatives, have
inherited all his murderous qualities in addition to their own private stock.
But it seems we are always to be of a party with the last and victorious

assassins. I confess I am of a different mind, and am rather inclined, of the
two, to think and speak less hardly of a dead ruffian, than to associate with
the living. I could better bear the stench of the gibbeted murderer than the
society of the bloody felons who yet annoy the world. Whilst they wait the
recompense due to their ancient crimes, they merit new punishment by the
new offences they commit. There is a period to the offences of Robespierre.
They survive in his assassins. Better a living dog, says the old proverb, than
a dead lion; not so here. Murderers and hogs never look well till they are
hanged. From villany no good can arise, but in the example of its fate. So I
leave them their dead Robespierre, either to gibbet his memory, or to deify
him in their Pantheon with their Marat and their Mirabeau.

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

WARNING FOR A NATION.
With all these causes of corruption, we may well judge what the general
fashion of mind will be through both sexes and all conditions. Such
spectacles and such examples will overbear all the laws that ever blackened
the cumbrous volumes of our statutes. When royalty shall have disavowed
itself; when it shall have relaxed all the principles of its own support; when
it has rendered the system of regicide fashionable, and received it as
triumphant in the very persons who have consolidated that system by the
perpetration of every crime; who have not only massacred the prince, but
the very laws and magistrates which were the support of royalty, and
slaughtered, with an indiscriminate proscription, without regard to either
sex or age, every person that was suspected of an inclination to king, law, or
magistracy,—I say, will any one dare to be loyal? Will any one presume,
against both authority and opinion, to hold up this unfashionable,
antiquated, exploded constitution? The Jacobin faction in England must
grow in strength and audacity; it will be supported by other intrigues, and
supplied by other resources than yet we have seen in action. Confounded at
its growth, the government may fly to parliament for its support. But who
will answer for the temper of a house of commons elected under these
circumstances? Who will answer for the courage of a house of commons to
arm the crown with the extraordinary powers that it may demand? But the
ministers will not venture to ask half of what they know they want. They
will lose half of that half in the contest: and when they have obtained their
nothing, they will be driven by the cries of faction either to demolish the
feeble works they have thrown up in a hurry, or, in effect, to abandon them.
As to the House of Lords, it is not worth mentioning. The peers ought
naturally to be the pillars of the crown; but when their titles are rendered
contemptible, and their property invidious, and a part of their weakness, and
not of their strength, they will be found so many degraded and trembling
individuals, who will seek by evasion to put off the evil day of their ruin.
Both houses will be in perpetual oscillation between abortive attempts at
energy, and still more unsuccessful attempts at compromise. You will be
impatient of your disease, and abhorrent of your remedy. A spirit of

subterfuge and a tone of apology will enter into all your proceedings,
whether of law or legislation. Your judges, who now sustain so masculine
an authority, will appear more on their trial than the culprits they have
before them. The awful frown of criminal justice will be smoothed into the
silly smile of seduction. Judges will think to insinuate and soothe the
accused into conviction and condemnation, and to wheedle to the gallows
the most artful of all delinquents. But they will not be so wheedled. They
will not submit even to the appearance of persons on their trial. Their claim
to this exception will be admitted. The place in which some of the greatest
names which ever distinguished the history of this country have stood, will
appear beneath their dignity. The criminal will climb from the dock to the
side-bar, and take his place and his tea with the counsel. From the bar of the
counsel, by a natural progress, he will ascend to the bench, which long
before had been virtually abandoned. They who escape from justice will not
suffer a question upon reputation. They will take the crown of the
causeway: they will be revered as martyrs; they will triumph as conquerors.
Nobody will dare to censure that popular part of the tribunal, whose only
restraint on misjudgment is the censure of the public. They who find fault
with the decision will be represented as enemies to the institution. Juries
that convict for the crown will be loaded with obloquy. The juries who
acquit will be held up as models of justice. If parliament orders a
prosecution, and fails (as fail it will), it will be treated to its face as guilty of
a conspiracy maliciously to prosecute. Its care in discovering a conspiracy
against the state will be treated as a forged plot to destroy the liberty of the
subject; every such discovery, instead of strengthening government, will
weaken its reputation.
In this state things will be suffered to proceed, lest measures of vigour
should precipitate a crisis. The timid will act thus from character; the wise
from necessity. Our laws had done all that the old condition of things
dictated to render our judges erect and independent; but they will naturally
fail on the side upon which they had taken no precautions. The judicial
magistrates will find themselves safe as against the crown, whose will is not
their tenure; the power of executing their office will be held at the pleasure
of those who deal out fame or abuse as they think fit. They will begin rather
to consult their own repose and their own popularity, than the critical and
perilous trust that is in their hands. They will speculate on consequences
when they see at court an ambassador whose robes are lined with a scarlet

dyed in the blood of judges. It is no wonder, nor are they to blame, when
they are to consider how they shall answer for their conduct to the criminal
of to-day turned into the magistrate of to-morrow.

SANTERRE AND TALLIEN.
Is it only an oppressive nightmare with which we have been loaded? Is it
then all a frightful dream, and are there no regicides in the world? Have we
not heard of that prodigy of a ruffian, who would not suffer his benignant
sovereign, with his hands tied behind him, and stripped for execution, to say
one parting word to his deluded people;—of Santerre, who commanded the
drums and trumpets to strike up to stifle his voice, and dragged him
backward to the machine of murder? This nefarious villain (for a few days I
may call him so) stands high in France, as in a republic of robbers and
murderers he ought. What hinders this monster from being sent as
ambassador to convey to his majesty the first compliments of his brethren,
the regicide Directory? They have none that can represent them more
properly. I anticipate the day of his arrival. He will make his public entry
into London on one of the pale horses of his brewery. As he knows that we
are pleased with the Paris taste for the orders of knighthood, he will fling a
bloody sash across his shoulders with the order of the Holy Guillotine,
surmounting the Crown, appendant to the riband. Thus adorned, he will
proceed from Whitechapel to the further end of Pall Mall, all the music of
London playing the Marseillais hymn before him, and escorted by a chosen
detachment of the Legion de l'Echaffaud. It were only to be wished, that no
ill-fated loyalist for the imprudence of his zeal may stand in the pillory at
Charing Cross, under the statue of King Charles the First, at the time of this
grand procession, lest some of the rotten eggs, which the constitutional
society shall let fly at his indiscreet head, may hit the virtuous murderer of
his king. They might soil the state dress, which the ministers of so many
crowned heads have admired, and in which Sir Clement Cotterel is to
introduce him at St. James's.
If Santerre cannot be spared from the constitutional butcheries at home,
Tallien may supply his place, and, in point of figure, with advantage. He has
been habituated to commissions; and he is as well qualified as Santerre for
this. Nero wished the Roman people had but one neck. The wish of the
more exalted Tallien, when he sat in judgment, was, that his sovereign had
eighty-three heads, that he might send one to every one of the departments.

Tallien will make an excellent figure at Guildhall at the next sheriff's feast.
He may open the ball with my Lady Mayoress. But this will be after he has
retired from the public table, and gone into the private room for the
enjoyment of more social and unreserved conversation with the ministers of
state and the judges of the bench. There these ministers and magistrates will
hear him entertain the worthy aldermen with an instructing and pleasing
narrative of the manner in which he made the rich citizens of Bordeaux
squeak, and gently led them by the public credit of the guillotine to disgorge
their anti-revolutionary pelf.
All this will be the display, and the town-talk, when our regicide is on a
visit of ceremony. At home nothing will equal the pomp and splendour of
the Hotel de la Republique. There another scene of gaudy grandeur will be
opened. When his citizen excellency keeps the festival, which every citizen
is ordered to observe, for the glorious execution of Louis the Sixteenth, and
renews his oath of detestation of kings, a grand ball, of course, will be given
on the occasion. Then what a hurly-burly;—what a crowding;—what a
glare of a thousand flambeaux in the square;—what a clamour of footmen
contending at the door;—what a rattling of a thousand coaches of
duchesses, countesses, and Lady Marys, choking the way, and overturning
each other, in a struggle who should be first to pay her court to the
Citoyenne, the spouse of the twenty-first husband, he the husband of the
thirty-first wife, and to hail her in the rank of honourable matrons, before
the four days' duration of marriage is expired!—Morals, as they were:—
decorum, the great outguard of the sex, and the proud sentiment of honour,
which makes virtue more respectable where it is, and conceals human
frailty where virtue may not be, will be banished from this land of propriety,
modesty, and reserve.

SIR SYDNEY SMITH.
This officer having attempted, with great gallantry, to cut out a vessel
from one of the enemy's harbours, was taken after an obstinate resistance,
such as obtained him the marked respect of those who were witnesses of his
valour, and knew the circumstances in which it was displayed. Upon his
arrival at Paris, he was instantly thrown into prison; where the nature of his
situation will best be understood, by knowing, that amongst its
MITIGATIONS, was the permission to walk occasionally in the court, and
to enjoy the privilege of shaving himself. On the old system of feelings and
principles, his sufferings might have been entitled to consideration, and
even in a comparison with those of citizen La Fayette, to a priority in the
order of compassion. If the ministers had neglected to take any steps in his
favour, a declaration of the sense of the House of Commons would have
stimulated them to their duty. If they had caused a representation to be
made, such a proceeding would have added force to it. If reprisal should be
thought advisable, the address of the House would have given an additional
sanction to a measure which would have been, indeed, justifiable without
any other sanction than its own reason. But, no. Nothing at all like it. In
fact, the merit of Sir Sydney Smith, and his claim on British compassion,
was of a kind altogether different from that which interested so deeply the
authors of the motion in favour of citizen La Fayette. In my humble
opinion, Captain Sir Sydney Smith has another sort of merit with the British
nation, and something of a higher claim on British humanity, than citizen
La Fayette. Faithful, zealous, and ardent, in the service of his king and
country; full of spirit; full of resources; going out of the beaten road, but
going right, because his uncommon enterprise was not conducted by a
vulgar judgment;—in his profession, Sir Sydney Smith might be considered
as a distinguished person, if any person could well be distinguished in a
service in which scarcely a commander can be named without putting you
in mind of some action of intrepidity, skill, and vigilance, that has given
them a fair title to contend with any men, and in any age. But I will say
nothing farther of the merits of Sir Sydney Smith: the mortal animosity of
the regicide enemy supersedes all other panegyric. Their hatred is a

judgment in his favour without appeal. At present he is lodged in the tower
of the Temple, the last prison of Louis the Sixteenth, and the last but one of
Maria Antonietta of Austria; the prison of Louis the Seventeenth; the prison
of Elizabeth of Bourbon. There he lies, unpitied by the grand philanthropy,
to meditate upon the fate of those who are faithful to their king and country.
Whilst this prisoner, secluded from intercourse, was indulging in these
cheering reflections, he might possibly have had the further consolation of
learning (by means of the insolent exultation of his guards), that there was
an English ambassador at Paris; he might have had the proud comfort of
hearing, that this ambassador had the honour of passing his mornings in
respectful attendance at the office of a regicide pettifogger; and that in the
evening he relaxed in the amusements of the opera, and in the spectacle of
an audience totally new; an audience in which he had the pleasure of seeing
about him not a single face that he could formerly have known in Paris; but
in the place of that company, one indeed more than equal to it in display of
gaiety, splendour, and luxury; a set of abandoned wretches, squandering in
insolent riot the spoils of their bleeding country. A subject of profound
reflection both to the prisoner and to the ambassador.

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

INFIDELS AND THEIR POLICY.
In the revolution of France two sorts of men were principally concerned
in giving a character and determination to its pursuits: the philosophers and
the politicians. They took different ways, but they met in the same end. The
philosophers had one predominant object, which they pursued with a
fanatical fury; that is, the utter extirpation of religion. To that every question
of empire was subordinate. They had rather domineer in a parish of atheists
than rule over a Christian world. Their temporal ambition was wholly
subservient to their proselytizing spirit, in which they were not exceeded by
Mahomet himself. They who have made but superficial studies in the
natural history of the human mind, have been taught to look on religious
opinions as the only cause of enthusiastic zeal and sectarian propagation.
But there is no doctrine whatever, on which men can warm, that is not
capable of the very same effect. The social nature of man impels him to
propagate his principles, as much as physical impulses urge him to
propagate his kind. The passions give zeal and vehemence. The
understanding bestows design and system. The whole man moves under the
discipline of his opinions. Religion is among the most powerful causes of
enthusiasm. When anything concerning it becomes an object of much
meditation, it cannot be indifferent to the mind. They who do not love
religion, hate it. The rebels to God perfectly abhor the author of their being.
They hate him "with all their heart, with all their mind, with all their soul,
and with all their strength." He never presents himself to their thoughts, but
to menace and alarm them. They cannot strike the sun out of heaven, but
they are able to raise a smouldering smoke that obscures him from their
own eyes. Not being able to revenge themselves on God, they have a
delight in vicariously defacing, degrading, torturing, and tearing in pieces
his image in man. Let no one judge of them by what he has conceived of
them, when they were not incorporated, and had no lead. They were then
only passengers in a common vehicle. They were then carried along with
the general motion of religion in the community, and, without being aware
of it, partook of its influence. In that situation, at worst, their nature was left
free to counter-work their principles. They despaired of giving any very

general currency to their opinions. They considered them as a reserved
privilege for the chosen few. But when the possibility of dominion, lead,
and propagation, presented itself, and that the ambition, which before had
so often made them hypocrites, might rather gain than lose by a daring
avowal of their sentiments, then the nature of this infernal spirit, which has
"evil for its good," appeared in its full perfection. Nothing indeed but the
possession of some power can with any certainty discover what at the
bottom is the true character of any man. Without reading the speeches of
Vergniaud, Francian of Nantes, Isnard, and some others of that sort, it
would not be easy to conceive the passion, rancour, and malice of their
tongues and hearts. They worked themselves up to a perfect frenzy against
religion and all its professors. They tore the reputation of the clergy to
pieces by their infuriated declamations and invectives, before they lacerated
their bodies by their massacres. This fanatical atheism left out, we omit the
principal feature in the French revolution, and a principal consideration
with regard to the effects to be expected from a peace with it.
The other sort of men were the politicians. To them, who had little or not
at all reflected on the subject, religion was in itself no object of love or
hatred. They disbelieved it, and that was all. Neutral with regard to that
object, they took the side which in the present state of things might best
answer their purposes. They soon found that they could not do without the
philosophers; and the philosophers soon made them sensible that the
destruction of religion was to supply them with means of conquest, first at
home, and then abroad. The philosophers were the active internal agitators,
and supplied the spirit and principles: the second gave the practical
direction. Sometimes the one predominated in the composition, sometimes
the other. The only difference between them was in the necessity of
concealing the general design for a time, and in their dealing with foreign
nations; the fanatics going straightforward and openly, the politicians by the
surer mode of zigzag. In the course of events, this, among other causes,
produced fierce and bloody contentions between them. But at the bottom
they thoroughly agreed in all the objects of ambition and irreligion, and
substantially in all the means of promoting these ends.

WHAT A MINISTER SHOULD ATTEMPT.
After such an elaborate display had been made of the injustice and
insolence of an enemy, who seems to have been irritated by every one of the
means which had been commonly used with effect to soothe the rage of
intemperate power, the natural result would be, that the scabbard, in which
we in vain attempted to plunge our sword, should have been thrown away
with scorn. It would have been natural that, rising in the fulness of their
might, insulted majesty, despised dignity, violated justice, rejected
supplication, patience goaded into fury, would have poured out all the
length of the reins upon all the wrath which they had so long restrained. It
might have been expected that, emulous of the glory of the youthful hero in
alliance with him, touched by the example of what one man, well formed
and well placed, may do in the most desperate state of affairs, convinced
there is a courage of the cabinet full as powerful, and far less vulgar than
that of the field, our minister would have changed the whole line of that
useless, prosperous prudence, which had hitherto produced all the effects of
the blindest temerity. If he found his situation full of danger (and I do not
deny that it is perilous in the extreme), he must feel that it is also full of
glory; and that he is placed on a stage, than which no muse of fire that had
ascended the highest heaven of invention could imagine anything more
awful and august. It was hoped that, in this swelling scene in which he
moved with some of the first potentates of Europe for his fellow-actors, and
with so many of the rest for the anxious spectators of a part, which, as he
plays it, determines for ever their destiny and his own, like Ulysses in the
unravelling point of the epic story, he would have thrown off his patience
and his rags together; and, stripped of unworthy disguises, he would have
stood forth in the form and in the attitude of a hero. On that day it was
thought he would have assumed the port of Mars; that he would bid to be
brought forth from their hideous kennel (where his scrupulous tenderness
had too long immured them) those impatient dogs of war, whose fierce
regards affright even the minister of vengeance that feeds them; that he
would let them loose, in famine, fever, plagues, and death, upon a guilty
race, to whose frame, and to all whose habit, order, peace, religion, and

virtue are alien and abhorrent. It was expected that he would at last have
thought of active and effectual war; that he would no longer amuse the
British lion in the chase of mice and rats; that he would no longer employ
the whole naval power of Great Britain, once the terror of the world, to prey
upon the miserable remains of a peddling commerce, which the enemy did
not regard, and from which none could profit. It was expected that he would
have re-asserted the justice of his cause; that he would have re-animated
whatever remained to him of his allies, and endeavoured to recover those
whom their fears had led astray; that he would have rekindled the martial
ardour of his citizens; that he would have held out to them the example of
their ancestry, the assertor of Europe, and the scourge of French ambition;
that he would have reminded them of a posterity, which, if this nefarious
robbery under the fraudulent name and false colour of a government, should
in full power be seated in the heart of Europe, must for ever be consigned to
vice, impiety, barbarism, and the most ignominious slavery of body and
mind. In so holy a cause it was presumed that he would (as in the beginning
of the war he did) have opened all the temples; and with prayer, with
fasting, and with supplication (better directed than to the grim Moloch of
regicide in France), have called upon us to raise that united cry which has
so often stormed heaven, and with a pious violence forced down blessings
upon a repentant people. It was hoped that when he had invoked upon his
endeavours the favourable regard of the Protector of the human race, it
would be seen that his menaces to the enemy, and his prayers to the
Almighty, were not followed, but accompanied, with correspondent action.
It was hoped that his shrilling trumpet should be heard, not to announce a
show, but to sound a charge.

LAW OF VICINITY.
This violent breach in the community of Europe we must conclude to
have been made (even if they had not expressly declared it over and over
again) either to force mankind into an adoption of their system, or to live in
perpetual enmity with a community the most potent we have ever known.
Can any person imagine, that, in offering to mankind this desperate
alternative, there is no indication of a hostile mind, because men in
possession of the ruling authority are supposed to have a right to act without
coercion in their own territories. As to the right of men to act anywhere
according to their pleasure, without any moral tie, no such right exists. Men
are never in a state of TOTAL independence of each other. It is not the
condition of our nature: nor is it conceivable how any man can pursue a
considerable course of action without its having some effect upon others;
or, of course, without producing some degree of responsibility for his
conduct. The SITUATIONS in which men relatively stand produce the rules
and principles of that responsibility, and afford directions to prudence in
exacting it. Distance of place does not extinguish the duties or the rights of
men; but it often renders their exercise impracticable. The same
circumstance of distance renders the noxious effects of an evil system in
any community less pernicious. But there are situations where this difficulty
does not occur; and in which, therefore, these duties are obligatory, and
these rights are to be asserted. It has ever been the method of public jurists
to draw a great part of the analogies, on which they form the law of nations,
from the principles of law which prevail in civil community. Civil laws are
not all of them merely positive. Those, which are rather conclusions of legal
reason than matters of statutable provision, belong to universal equity, and
are universally applicable. Almost the whole praetorian law is such. There
is a "Law of Neighbourhood" which does not leave a man perfectly 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 stayed; or, if
established, to be removed. On this head the parent law is express and clear,
and has made many wise provisions, which, without destroying, regulate

and restrain the right of OWNERSHIP, by the right of VICINAGE. No
INNOVATION is permitted that may redound, even secondarily, to the
prejudice of a 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, et 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, Vetustas pro lege semper habetur.
Such is the law of civil vicinity. Now where there is no constituted judge,
as between independent states there is not, the vicinage itself is the natural
judge. It is, preventively, the assertor of its own rights, or remedially, their
avenger. Neighbours are presumed to take cognizance of each other's acts.
"Vicini vicinorum facta praesumuntur scire." This principle, which, like the
rest, is as true of nations as of individual men, has bestowed on the grand
vicinage of Europe a duty to know, and a right to prevent, any capital
innovation which may amount to the erection of a dangerous nuisance.

EUROPEAN COMMUNITY.
The operation of dangerous and delusive first principles obliges us to
have recourse to the true ones. In the intercourse between nations, we are
apt to rely too much on the instrumental part. We lay too much weight upon
the formality of treaties and compacts. We do not act much more wisely
when we trust to the interests of men as 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 fight, about the terms of their written obligations.
As to war, if it be the means of wrong and violence, it is the sole means of
justice amongst nations. Nothing can banish it from the world. They who
say otherwise, intending to impose upon us, do not impose upon
themselves. But it is one of the greatest objects of human wisdom to
mitigate those evils which we are unable to remove. The conformity and
analogy of which I speak, incapable, like everything else, of preserving
perfect trust and tranquillity among men, has a strong tendency to facilitate
accommodation, and to produce a generous oblivion of the 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 latter times, many nations in Europe have been in the
course of long and bloody wars. The cause must be sought in the similitude
throughout Europe of religion, laws, and manners. At bottom, these are all
the same. The writers on public law have often called this AGGREGATE of

nations a commonwealth. They had reason. It is virtually one great state
having the same basis of general law, with some diversity of provincial
customs and local establishments. The nations of Europe have had the very
same Christian religion, agreeing in the fundamental parts, varying a little
in the ceremonies and in the subordinate doctrines. The whole of the polity
and economy of every country in Europe has been derived from the same
sources. It was drawn from the old Germanic or Gothic custumary, from the
feudal institutions which must be considered as an emanation from that
custumary; and the whole has been improved and digested into system and
discipline by the Roman law. From hence arose the several orders, with or
without a monarch (which are called states), in every European country; the
strong traces of which, where monarchy predominated, were never wholly
extinguished or merged in despotism. In the few places where monarchy
was cast off, the spirit of European monarchy was still left. Those countries
still continued countries of states; that is, of classes, orders, and distinctions
such as had before subsisted, or nearly so. Indeed, the force and form of the
institution called states continued in greater perfection in those republican
communities than under monarchies. From all those sources arose a system
of manners and of education which was nearly similar in all this quarter of
the globe; and which softened, blended, and harmonized the colours of the
whole.

PERILS OF JACOBIN PEACE.
The same temper which brings us to solicit a Jacobin peace, will induce
us to temporize with all the evils of it. By degrees our minds will be made
to our circumstances. The novelty of such things, which produces half the
horror, and all the disgust, will be worn off. Our ruin will be disguised in
profit, and the sale of a few wretched baubles will bribe a degenerate people
to barter away the most precious jewel of their souls. Our constitution is not
made for this kind of warfare. It provides greatly for our happiness,—it
furnishes few means for our defence. It is formed, in a great measure, upon
the principle of jealousy of the crown; and, as things stood when it took that
turn, with very great reason. I go further; it must keep alive some part of
that fire of jealousy eternally and chastely burning, or it cannot be the
British constitution. At various periods we have had tyranny in this country,
more than enough. We have had rebellions, with more or less justification.
Some of our kings have made adulterous connections abroad, and trucked
away for foreign gold the interests and glory of their crown. But before this
time our liberty has never been corrupted. I mean to say, that it has never
been debauched from its domestic relations. To this time it has been English
liberty, and English liberty only. Our love of liberty and our love of our
country were not distinct things. Liberty is now, it seems, put upon a larger
and more liberal bottom. We are men, and as men, undoubtedly nothing
human is foreign to us. We cannot be too liberal in our general wishes for
the happiness of our kind. But in all questions on the mode of procuring it
for any particular community, we ought to be fearful of admitting those who
have no interest in it, or who have, perhaps, an interest against it, into the
consultation. Above all, we cannot be too cautious in our communication
with those who seek their happiness by other roads than those of humanity,
morals, and religion, and whose liberty consists, and consists alone, in
being free from those restraints which are imposed by the virtues upon the
passions.
When we invite danger from a confidence in defensive measures, we
ought, first of all, to be sure that it is a species of danger against which any
defensive measures that can be adopted will be sufficient. Next we ought to

know that the spirit of our laws, or that our own dispositions, which are
stronger than laws, are susceptible of all those defensive measures which
the occasion may require. A third consideration is, whether these measures
will not bring more odium than strength to government; and the last,
whether the authority that makes them, in a general corruption of manners
and principles, can insure their execution? Let no one argue from the state
of things, as he sees them at present, concerning what will be the means and
capacities of government, when the time arrives, which shall call for
remedies commensurate to enormous evils.
It is an obvious truth that no constitution can defend itself: it must be
defended by the wisdom and fortitude of men. These are what no
constitution can give: they are the gifts of God; and he alone knows whether
we shall possess such gifts at the time when we stand in need of them.
Constitutions furnish the civil means of getting at the natural; it is all that in
this case they can do. But our constitution has more impediments than
helps. Its excellencies, when they come to be put to this sort of proof, may
be found among its defects.
Nothing looks more awful and imposing than an ancient fortification. Its
lofty, embattled walls, its bold, projecting, rounded towers, that pierce the
sky, strike the imagination, and promise inexpugnable strength. But they are
the very things that make its weakness. You may as well think of opposing
one of these old fortresses to the mass of artillery brought by a French
irruption into the field, as to think of resisting, by your old laws, and your
old forms, the new destruction which the corps of Jacobin engineers of to-
day prepare for all such forms and all such laws. Besides the debility and
false principle of their construction to resist the present modes of attack, the
fortress itself is in ruinous repair, and there is a practicable breach in every
part of it.
Such is the work. But miserable works have been defended by the
constancy of the garrison. Weather-beaten ships have been brought safe to
port by the spirit and alertness of the crew. But it is here that we shall
eminently fail. The day that, by their consent, the seat of regicide has its
place among the thrones of Europe, there is no longer a motive for zeal in
their favour; it will at best be cold, unimpassioned, dejected, melancholy
duty. The glory will seem all on the other side. The friends of the crown will
appear, not as champions, but as victims; discountenanced, mortified,

lowered, defeated, they will fall into listlessness and indifference. They will
leave things to take their course; enjoy the present hour, and submit to the
common fate.

PARLIAMENTARY AND REGAL
PREROGATIVE.
Your throne cannot stand secure upon the principles of unconditional
submission and passive obedience; on powers exercised without the
concurrence of the people to be governed; on acts made in defiance of their
prejudices and habits; on acquiescence procured by foreign mercenary
troops, and secured by standing armies. These may possibly be the
foundation of other thrones: they must be the subversion of yours. It was
not to passive principles in our ancestors that we owe the honour of
appearing before a sovereign, who cannot feel that he is a prince, without
knowing that we ought to be free. The revolution is a departure from the
ancient course of the descent of this monarchy. The people at that time re-
entered into their original rights; and it was not because a positive law
authorized what was then done, but because the freedom and safety of the
subject, the origin and cause of all laws, required a proceeding paramount
and superior to them. At that ever-memorable and instructive period, the
letter of the law was superseded in favour of the substance of liberty. To the
free choice, therefore, of the people, without either king or parliament, we
owe that happy establishment, out of which both king and parliament were
regenerated. From that great principle of liberty have originated the statutes,
confirming and ratifying the establishment, from which your majesty
derives your right to rule over us. Those statutes have not given us our
liberties; our liberties have produced them. Every hour of your majesty's
reign your title stands upon the very same foundation on which it was at
first laid; and we do not know a better on which it can possibly be placed.
Convinced, sir, that you cannot have different rights and a different
security in different parts of your dominions, we wish to lay an even
platform for your throne; and to give it an unmovable stability, by laying it
on the general freedom of your people; and by securing to your majesty that
confidence and affection in all parts of your dominions, which makes your
best security and dearest title in this the chief seat of your empire.

Such, sir, being amongst us the foundation of monarchy itself, much
more clearly and much more peculiarly is it the ground of all parliamentary
power. Parliament is a security provided for the protection of freedom, and
not a subtile fiction, contrived to amuse the people in its place. The
authority of both houses can, still less than that of the crown, be supported
upon different principles in different places, so as to be, for one part of your
subjects, a protector of liberty, and for another a fund of despotism, through
which prerogative is extended by occasional powers, whenever an arbitrary
will finds itself straitened by the restrictions of law. Had it seemed good to
parliament to consider itself as the indulgent guardian and strong protector
of the freedom of the subordinate popular assemblies, instead of exercising
its power to their annihilation, there is no doubt that it never could have
been their inclination, because not their interest, to raise questions on the
extent of parliamentary rights, or to enfeeble privileges which were the
security of their own. Powers evident from necessity, and not suspicious
from an alarming mode or purpose in the exertion, would, as formerly they
were, be cheerfully submitted to; and these would have been fully sufficient
for conservation of unity in the empire, and for directing its wealth to one
common centre. Another use has produced other consequences; and a power
which refuses to be limited by moderation must either be lost, or find other
more distinct and satisfactory limitations.

BURKE'S DESIGN IN HIS GREATEST WORK.
He had undertaken to demonstrate by arguments which he thought could
not be refuted, and by documents which he was sure could not be denied,
that no comparison was to be made between the British government and the
French usurpation. That they who endeavoured madly to compare them,
were by no means making the comparison of one good system with another
good system, which varied only in local and circumstantial differences;
much less, that they were holding out to us a superior pattern of legal
liberty, which we might substitute in the place of our old, and, as they
described it, superannuated constitution. He meant to demonstrate that the
French scheme was not a comparative good, but a positive evil. That the
question did not at all turn, as had been stated, on a parallel between a
monarchy and a republic. He denied that the present scheme of things in
France did at all deserve the respectable name of a republic: he had
therefore no comparison between monarchies and republics to make. That
what was done in France was a wild attempt to methodize anarchy; to
perpetuate and fix disorder. That it was a foul, impious, monstrous thing,
wholly out of the course of moral nature. He undertook to prove that it was
generated in treachery, fraud, falsehood, hypocrisy, and unprovoked murder.
He offered to make out that those who had led in that business had
conducted themselves with the utmost perfidy to their colleagues in
function, and with the most flagrant perjury both towards their king and
their constituents; to the one of whom the Assembly had sworn fealty, and
to the other, when under no sort of violence or constraint, they had sworn a
full obedience to instructions.—That, by the terror of assassination, they
had driven away a very great number of the members, so as to produce a
false appearance of a majority.—That this fictitious majority had fabricated
a constitution, which, as now it stands, is a tyranny far beyond any example
that can be found in the civilized European world of our age; that therefore
the lovers of it must be lovers, not of liberty, but if they really understand its
nature, of the lowest and basest of all servitude.
He proposed to prove that the present state of things in France is not a
transient evil, productive, as some have too favourably represented it, of a

lasting good; but that the present evil is only the means of producing future
and (if that were possible) worse evils.—That it is not an undigested,
imperfect, and crude scheme of liberty, which may gradually be mellowed
and ripened into an orderly and social freedom; but that it is so
fundamentally wrong, as to be utterly incapable of correcting itself by any
length of time, or of being formed into any mode of polity of which a
member of the House of Commons could publicly declare his approbation.

LORD KEPPEL.
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 at 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
took in the early flush and enthusiasm of his virtue, and the pious passion
with which he attached himself to all my connections, with what prodigality
we both squandered ourselves in courting almost every sort of enmity for
his sake, I believe he felt, just as I should have felt such friendship on such
an occasion. I partook indeed of this honour with several of the first, and
best, and ablest in the kingdom, but I was behindhand with none of them;
and I am sure, that if to the eternal disgrace of this nation, and to the total
annihilation of every trace of 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 shown to
the friend of the best portion of his life, and his faithful companion and
counsellor under his rudest trials. He would have told him, that to
whomever else these reproaches might be becoming, they were not

decorous in his near kindred. He would have told him that when men in that
rank lose decorum they lose everything. On that day I had a loss in Lord
Keppel; but the public loss of him in this awful crisis—! I speak from much
knowledge of the person, he never would have listened to any compromise
with the rabble rout of this sans-culotterie of France. His goodness of heart,
his reason, his taste, his public duty, his principles, his prejudices, would
have repelled him 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
interest and their glory are the same; and his mind was capacious of both.
His family was noble, and it was Dutch: that is, he was the oldest and purest
nobility that Europe can boast, among a people renowned above all others
for love of their native land. Though it was never shown in insult to any
human being, Lord Keppel was something high. It was a wild stock of
pride, on which the tenderest of all hearts had grafted the milder virtues. He
valued ancient nobility; and he was not disinclined to augment it with new
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 everything in what
went before, and what was to come after him. Without much speculation,
but by the sure instinct of ingenuous feelings, and by the dictates of plain,
unsophisticated, natural understanding, he felt that no great commonwealth
could by any possibility long subsist without a body of some kind or other
of nobility, decorated with 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 anything else
of hereditary reverence in the commonwealth, was a low-minded absurdity,
fit only for those detestable "fools aspiring to be knaves," who began to
forge in 1789 the false money of the French constitution.—That it is one
fatal objection to all NEW fancied and NEW FABRICATED republics
(among a people who, once possessing such an advantage, have wickedly

and insolently rejected it), that the PREJUDICE of an old nobility is a thing
that CANNOT be made. It may be improved, it may be corrected, it may be
replenished: men may be taken from it or aggregated to it, but the THING
ITSELF is matter of INVETERATE opinion, and therefore CANNOT be
matter of mere positive institution. He felt that this nobility in fact does not
exist in wrong of other orders of the state, but by them, and for them.

"LABOURING POOR."
Let government protect and encourage industry, secure property, repress
violence, and discountenance fraud, it is all that they have to do. In other
respects, the less they meddle in these affairs the better; the rest is in the
hands of our Master and theirs. We are in a constitution of things wherein
—"Modo sol nimius, modo corripit imber." But I will push this matter no
further. As I have said a good deal upon it at various times during my public
service, and have lately written something on it which may yet see the light,
I shall content myself now with observing, that the vigorous and laborious
class of life has lately got, from the bon ton of the humanity of this day, the
name of the "labouring poor." We have heard many plans for the relief of
the "labouring poor." This puling jargon is not as innocent as it is foolish. In
meddling with great affairs, weakness is never innoxious. Hitherto the name
of poor (in the sense in which it is used to excite compassion) has not been
used for those who can, but for those who cannot, labour—for the sick and
infirm, for orphan infancy, for languishing and decrepit age: but when we
affect to pity, as poor, those who must labour, or the world cannot exist, we
are trifling with the condition of mankind. It is the common doom of man
that he must eat his bread by the sweat of his brow, that is, by the sweat of
his body, or the sweat of his mind. If this toil was inflicted as a curse, it is,
as might be expected from the curses of the Father of all blessings—it is
tempered with many alleviations, many comforts. Every attempt to fly from
it, and to refuse the very terms of our existence, becomes much more truly a
curse; and heavier pains and penalties fall upon those who would elude the
tasks which are put upon them by the great Master Workman of the world,
who, in his dealings with his creatures, sympathizes with their weakness,
and speaking of a creation wrought by mere will out of nothing, speaks of
six days of LABOUR and one of REST. I do not call a healthy young man,
cheerful in his mind, and vigorous in his arms, I cannot call such a man
POOR; I cannot pity my kind as a kind, merely because they are men. This
affected pity only tends to dissatisfy them with their condition, and to teach
them to seek resources where no resources are to be found, in something
else than their own industry, and frugality, and sobriety. Whatever may be

the intention (which, because I do not know, I cannot dispute) of those who
would discontent mankind by this strange pity, they act towards us, in the
consequences, as if they were our worst enemies.

STATE CONSECRATED BY THE CHURCH.
I beg leave to speak of our church establishment, which is the first of our
prejudices, not a prejudice destitute of reason, but involving in it profound
and extensive wisdom. I speak of it first. It is first, and last, and midst in our
minds. For, taking ground on that religious system, of which we are now in
possession, we continue to act on the early received and uniformly
continued sense of mankind. That sense not only, like a wise architect, hath
built up the august fabric of states, but like a provident proprietor, to
preserve the structure from profanation and ruin, as a sacred temple purged
from all the impurities of fraud, and violence, and injustice, and tyranny,
hath solemnly and for ever consecrated the commonwealth, and all that
officiate in it. This consecration is made, that all who administer in the
government of men, in which they stand in the person of God himself,
should have high and worthy notions of their function and destination; that
their hope should be full of immortality; that they should not look to the
paltry pelf of the moment, nor to the temporary and transient praise of the
vulgar, but to a solid, permanent existence, in the permanent part of their
nature, and to a permanent fame and glory, in the example they leave as a
rich inheritance to the world.
Such sublime principles ought to be infused into persons of exalted
situations; and religious establishments provided, that may continually
revive and enforce them. Every sort of moral, every sort of civil, every sort
of politic institution, aiding the rational and natural ties that connect the
human understanding and affections to the divine, are not more than
necessary, in order to build up that wonderful structure, Man; whose
prerogative it is, to be in a great degree a creature of his own making; and
who, when made as he ought to be made, is destined to hold no trivial place
in the creation. But whenever man is put over men, as the better nature
ought ever to preside, in that case more particularly, he should as nearly as
possible be approximated to his perfection.
The consecration of the state, by a state religious establishment, is
necessary also to operate with a wholesome awe upon free citizens; because
in order to secure their freedom, they must enjoy some determinate portion

of power. To them therefore a religion connected with the state, and with
their duty towards it, becomes even more necessary than in such societies,
where the people, by the terms of their subjection, are confined to private
sentiments, and the management of their own family concerns. All persons
possessing any portion of power ought to be strongly and awfully impressed
with an idea that they act in trust; and that they are to account for their
conduct in that trust to the one great Master, Author, and Founder of society.
This principle ought even to be more strongly impressed upon the minds of
those who compose the collective sovereignty, than upon those of single
princes. Without instruments, these princes can do nothing. Whoever uses
instruments, in finding helps, finds also impediments. Their power is
therefore by no means complete; 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 against all other rebellion. Thus we have
seen the king of France sold by his soldiers for an increase of pay. But
where popular authority is absolute and unrestrained, the people have an
infinitely greater, because a far better founded, confidence in their own
power. They are themselves, in a great measure, their own instruments.
They are nearer to their objects. Besides, they are less under responsibility
to one of the greatest controlling powers on earth, the sense of fame and
estimation. The share of infamy, that is likely to fall to the lot of each
individual in public acts, is small indeed; the operation of opinion being in
the inverse ratio to the number of those who abuse power. Their own
approbation of their own acts has to them the appearance of a public
judgment in their favour. A perfect democracy is therefore the most
shameless thing in the world. As it is the most shameless, it is also the most
fearless. No man apprehends in his person that he can be made subject to
punishment. Certainly the people at large never ought: for as all
punishments are for example towards the conservation of the people at
large, the people at large can never become the subject of punishment by
any human hand. (Quicquid multis peccatur inultum.) It is therefore of
infinite importance that they should not be suffered to imagine that their
will, any more than that of kings, is the standard of right and wrong. They
ought to be persuaded that they are full as little entitled, and far less

qualified, with safety to themselves, to use any arbitrary power whatsoever;
that therefore they are not, under a false show of liberty, but in truth, to
exercise an unnatural, inverted domination, tyranically to exact from those
who officiate in the state, not an entire devotion to their interest, which is
their right, but an abject submission to their occasional will; extinguishing
thereby, in all those who serve them, all moral principle, all sense of
dignity, all use of judgment, and all consistency of character; whilst by the
very same process they give themselves up a proper, a suitable, but a most
contemptible prey to the servile ambition of popular sycophants, or courtly
flatterers.

FATE OF LOUIS XVIII.
Let those who have the trust of political or of natural authority ever keep
watch against the desperate enterprises of innovation: let even their
benevolence be fortified and armed. They have before their eyes the
example of a monarch, insulted, degraded, confined, deposed; his family
dispersed, scattered, imprisoned; his wife insulted to his face like the vilest
of the sex, by the vilest of all populace; himself three times dragged by
these wretches in an infamous triumph; his children torn from him, in
violation of the first right of nature, and given into the tuition of the most
desperate and impious of the leaders of desperate and impious clubs; his
revenues dilapidated and plundered; his magistrates murdered; his clergy
proscribed, persecuted, famished; his nobility degraded in their rank,
undone in their fortunes, fugitives in their persons; his armies corrupted and
ruined; his whole people impoverished, disunited, dissolved; whilst through
the bars of his prison, and amidst the bayonets of his keepers, he hears the
tumult of two conflicting factions, equally wicked and abandoned, who
agree in principles, in dispositions, and in objects, but who tear each other
to pieces about the most effectual means of obtaining their common end;
the one contending to preserve for a while his name, and his person, the
more easily to destroy the royal authority—the other clamouring to cut off
the name, the person, and the monarchy together, by one sacrilegious
execution. All this accumulation of calamity, the greatest that ever fell upon
one man, has fallen upon his head, because he had left his virtues
unguarded by caution; because he was not taught that, where power is
concerned, he who will confer benefits must take security against
ingratitude.

NOBILITY.
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 anything
destroyed; any void produced in society; any ruin on the face of the land. It
was therefore with no disappointment or dissatisfaction that my inquiries
and observations 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.
It was with the same satisfaction I found that the result of my inquiry
concerning your clergy was not dissimilar. It is no soothing news to my
ears, that great bodies of men are incurably corrupt. It is not with much
credulity I listen to any when they speak evil of those whom they are going
to plunder. I rather suspect that vices are feigned or exaggerated when profit
is looked for in their punishment. An enemy is a bad witness; a robber is a
worse. Vices and abuses there were undoubtedly in that order, and must be.