EDMUND BURKE.

EDMUND
BURKE
SELECTIONS FROM HIS
POLITICAL WRITINGS
AND SPEECHES

T. Nelson & Sons

INTRODUCTION.
career is unique in the history both of
English literature and of English politics. H e
was never in a Cabinet, and the highest office he
ever held was the modest one of PaymasterGeneral. H e developed early, publishing his
Vindication of Natural Society at the age of twentysix, butv he did not enter Parliament till he was
thirty-five, a late age in those days for one who
hoped for a political career. H e was admitted to
be the most eloquent speaker of his time, but he
was certainly not the most effective, and his
speeches were prone to empty the House. AH
his life he stood a little apart from his contemporaries, and his detachment gave him a curious
distinction. H e was never quite Whig and never
quite Tory, but a kind of impersonal magazine of
universal truths. H e had none of the ordinary
political aims, and in a generation of place-hunters
scarcely deigned to think of the rewards of office.
This detachment gave him immense force as an
elevated and infallible mentor, but it made him impossible as a party leader or even as an ordinary
politician. His mind and temperament were ftot
quite human. It was as if all-his emotions had
been universalized, and the whole world viewed
c
sub specie aeternitatis.' H e hated abstractions
BURKE'S

INTRODUCTION.
and appealed to present realities. € I summon you
to speak of Things/ he might have said with
Cromwell.
But the realities were always magnitudes—a constitution, a war, a nation's destiny
-—never the state of Mr. A.'s purse or the variability
of Lord B.'s political conscience.
H e was not, it should be remembered, a political
philosopher in the sense in which Plato and
Aristotle, Hobbes and Locke, Hegel and T. H .
Green deserve the name. His aim is not to inquire into the genesis and first principles of human
society, or even of civilization, though incidentally
he has left many acute suggestions on these
matters. His business was to deal with what he
found existing—Britain, the British Empire, the
British Constitution ; to discover what were for
them the laws of success and failure ; and to apply
these laws to the problems which confronted his
country in his lifetime. In reality he was a philosophic historian—the first of the school—who was
able to draw a practical moral.
The philosophy of Burke is, therefore, only at
odd moments universal truth, valid for all times
and circumstances. Most of it is valid only under
conditions which Burke very clearly. indicates.
Take, for example, the famous doctrine of representation enshrined in the speech to the electors
of Bristol in 1780. That doctrine is true for a
country possessing the two-party system (both
parties being more or less agreed on fundamentals)
and a strict and clear division of classes. It is
very doubtful if it is true or valuable under any

INTRODUCTION.
k.
other conditions. It is not true, for example, in a
pure democracy, and the notion of a pure democracy was regarded by Burke with little favour, as
we may read in his Appeal from the New to the Old
Whigs. H e hated anything plebiscitary in government, anything which tended to break down the
sacred walls of party, property, and the constitution.
There was only one English democrat in the
eighteenth century, the elder Pitt. Burke in temperament was the true Whig, detesting absolutism on
the one side and popular anarchy on the other. Bift,
while believing in party, he was not partisan, and in
time his works became the Bible of both Whigs and
Tories.
H e was a Whig in his aversion to any breaking
down of the class system. To him a discreet
monarch, a peerage of public-spirited landowners,
and a carefully selected Commons were the preconditions of civilized government—at least for
Englishmen. Of the new Whigs of the Charles
James Fox and Sheridan school he had a profound
distrust. They seemed to him doctrinaires trying
to settle the devious problems of human conduct by
a thin reason. H e was in no sense, perhaps, a Tory ;
but he founded Conservatism by his insistence upon
the historical method of treating state policy, and by
his distinction between reform and innovation. c A
state,' he wrote, 'without the means of change is
without the means of its conservation.' All human
institutions, he argued, must have flaws; but he
refused to tamper with them if on the whole they
worked well. On Irish and Indian questions, and

INTRODUCTION,
on questions of public economy he was a keen
reformer ; but on matters touching the constitution
he saw no reason for change merely because a
system was indefensible on grounds of pure reason.
6
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, indeed, it may come down upon our heads
altogether in much uniformity of ruin, and great
will be the fall thereof.'
In the details of his political teaching Burke was
not always consistent In 1770 liberty seemed to
him to be the vital conception; in 1790 he was
more enamoured of discipline and order. In his
early works he is, in phraseology at least, more
democratic. H e declared that the House of Lords
was a form of popular representation, while later
he talked about its original and indefeasible rights.
It is possible to harmonize these discrepancies, for
they are often different facets of one truth ; but
undoubtedly, under the influence of the French
Revolution, his mind took on a more conservative
colour. It is the later teaching which is his real
contribution to the world's thought, for now he
is addressing, not an English party, but the whole
thinking world. His earlier precepts, admirable as
they may be, are too often local and temporal in
their application, and to get at their value we must
be very clear about his presuppositions. But his
later doctrines are less an exposition of a party
creed than of an eternal attitude of the human
mind. Liberty without content is a barren dogma ;

INTRODUCTION.
v
it must be a c manly, moral, and regulated liberty.'
It is order and discipline that bind a state together. Civilization is no gift of Nature to man ;
it is man's creation, and if the cohesive powers of
Law be weakened, little will remain for Right. In
politics we must look at facts and their historical
relations, not at vague rules of reason or the speculations of theorists. Whatever is, has the presumption of right in its favour ; and before we alter it, let
us be careful that we are altering in accordance
with the organic conception of the state. Such, in
a few sentences, is the gist of Burke's philosophy ;
but never was a doctrine dressed in more imperial
robes. H e is the most eloquent of English prose
writers ; for not only has each sentence its perfect
rhythm, but the great argument rolls in a noble
cadence to its climax. His wealth of fancy, his
learning, his command of splendid and apposite
images are inexhaustible. H e is the c fullest ' of
thinkers, not only in thought and knowledge, but
in mastery of golden and melodious words.
Long ago Burke lost all party character. Even
before his death he was regarded as an armoury
from which both sides could draw their shafts.
Erskine, who differed violently from him on the
subject of Irish policy, could declare that he viewed
Burke c as upon an eminence too high to be approached.' Canning owed to him nearly all the
philosophical equipment which was at once his
power and his weakness. Disraeli is, at his best,
simply Burke with a more modern accent, and his
extravagances^ like his speech at Oxford in 1864,

INTRODUCTION.
vi
are often singularly like the extravagances of his
master. But, indeed, the thought of Burke is so
woven into all English creeds that it is hard to
say where his influence begins or ends. Gladstone,
whose standpoint was ethical rather than historical,
and who in many ways is Burke's antithesis, has a
hundred passages of which the spirit and even the
phrasing are due to this immense and enduring
inspiration.
It is specially difficult to select from Burke,
for, as Hazlitt said truly, the only selections are
all he wrote. It is hoped that the present volume
will give the reader some idea of Burke's political
teaching on the three subjects with which he was
mainly concerned—the British Constitution, the
British Empire (in the controversy with America),
and the true relation of theory to practice in
statesmanship, as exemplified in his Reflections on
the French Revolution. This work has been included in preference to the Letters on a Regicide
Peace, for though the latter is in many ways the more
mature and reasoned argument, it is concerned
with a particular policy, whereas the former deals
with the fundamental antagonism.
J. B.
N O T E . — T h e fullest selection from Burke is that published in the World's Classics
(Frowde) in 6 vols. (is. net each). For the student, the three volumes of Burke's
Select Works (Oxford : Clarendon Press) may be recommended. T h e introductions
by the Editor, Mr. E . J . Payne, contain an admirable exposition of Burke's thought
and influence.
For the general history of the time, the works of Lord Stanhope
and Lecky are useful, and Macaulay's Essays.
The standard biographies are by
Sir J . Prior (Bohn, 3s. 6d.), and T . Macknight (3 vols., Chapman and Hall, 50s.).
For a criticism of Burke's constitutional doctrines see Professor M'llwain's The
High Court of Parliament
(1910, Frowde). Good general criticisms will be found
in Lord Morley's Burke (Macmillan, 4s ), and very notably in Hazlitt's
Political
Essays.
A complete edition of Burke's works is published in Bohn's Library of
Standard Authors (6 vols., 3s. 6d. each).

CONTENTS.
I . — T H E GOVERNANCE OF BRITAIN.

1. The True Democracy

.

.

.

2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.

The Ethics of Party
The Value of Party
The Cure for Party
«
.
.
.
The Position of a Member of Parliament
Democracy and Independence
Constitutional Reform .
The Grounds for Interference with Standing Rights
9. The Limits of State Interference
.
.
10. False Sentiment and Social Policies
.

11
12

17
26
28
31

34
45
46
49

IL—AMERICA AND THE COLONIES.

1. Representation of the Colonies in the
British Parliament .
.
.
2. Speech on American Taxation \
.
3. Speech on Conciliation with America\ .
4. Address to the British Colonists in North
America .
.
.
.
.
III.—THE

53
57
120
189

FRENCH REVOLUTION.

1. Reflections on the Revolution in France .

203

BOOK I.
T H E GOVERNANCE OF BRITAIN.

I.
T H E TRUE DEMOCRACY.
[From Thoughts on the Causes of the Present Discontents
(1770.)]
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. But with the governing part of the state, it is
far otherwise. They certainly may act ill by design,
as well as by mistake. ' Les revolutions qui arrivent
dans les grands états ne sont point un effect du hazard, ni
du caprice des peuples. Rien ne révolte les grands d'un
royaume comme un gouvernement foible et dérangé.
Pour la populace, ce n'est jamais par envie d'attaquer
qu'elle se soulève, mais par impatience de souffrir.' *
These are the words of a great man ; of a minister of
state ; and a zealous assertor of monarchy. They are
applied to the system of favouritism which was adopted
by Henry III. of France, and to the dreadful con* Mém. de Sully, torn. i. p. 133.

EDMUND BURKE.
sequences it produced. What he says of revolutions, is
equally true of all great disturbances. If this presumption in favour of the subjects against the trustees of
power be not the more probable, I am sure it is the
more comfortable speculation ; because it is more easy
to change an administration, than to reform a people.
12

II.
THE ETHICS OF PARTY.
[From Observations on œ late publication intituled ' The
Present State of the Nation' (1769). The pamphlet was
by George Grenville.]
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 connections,
which they had formed on a judgment, early perhaps
but sufficiently mature, and wholly unbiassed. They
do not quit them upon any ground of complaint, for
grounds of just complaint may exist, but upon the
flattering and most dangerous of all principles, that of
mending what is well. Gradually they are habituated

SELECTIONS.
13
to other company ; and a change in their habitudes soon
makes a way for a change in their opinions. Certain
persons are no longer so very frightful when they come
to be known and to be serviceable. As to their old
friends, the transition is easy ; from friendship to
civility, from civility to enmity : few are the steps from
dereliction to persecution.
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. AH 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,
Growing every day more formed to affairs, and better
knit in their limbs, when the occasion (now the only
rule) requires it, they become capable of sacrificing
those very persons to whom they had before sacrificed
their original friends. It is now only in the ordinary
course of business to alter an opinion, or to betray a
connection. Frequently relinquishing one set of men
and adopting another, they grow into a total indifference to human feeling, as they had before to moral

14
EDMUND BURKE.
obligation, until at length no one original impression
remains upon their minds ; every principle is obliterated,
every sentiment effaced.
In the meantime 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 rind 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 fierier unt
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. Thus they finish their course.
Had it been possible that the whole, or even a great
part of these effects on their minds, 1 say nothing of
the effect upon their fortunes, could have appeared to

SELECTIONS.
15
them in their first departure from the right line, it is
certain they would have rejected every temptation
with horror. The principle of these remarks, like
every good principle in morality, is trite ; but its
frequent application is not the less necessary.
As to others, who are plain, practical men, they have
been guiltless at all times of all public pretence.
Neither the author nor any one else has reason to be
angry with them. They belonged to his friend for
their interest ; for their interest they quitted him g
and when it is their interest, he may depend upon it,
they will return to their former connection. Such
people subsist at all times, and, though the nuisance of
all, are at no time a worthy subject of discussion. It
is false virtue and plausible error that do the mischief.
If men come to government with right dispositions,
they have not that unfavourable subject which this
author represents to work upon. 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 rnay 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 3
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

i6
EDMUND BURKE.
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. All
who join in them are liable to their consequences. All
men, who, under whatever pretext, take a part in the
formation or the support of systems constructed in such
a manner] as must, in their nature, disable them from
the execution of their duty, have made themselves
guilty of all the present distraction, and of the future
ruin, which they may bring upon their country.
It is a serious affair, this studied disunion in government. In cases where uniQn is most consulted in the
constitution of a Ministry, and where persons are best
disposed to promote it, differences, from the various
ideas of men, will arise * and, from their passions, will
often ferment into violent heats, so as greatly to disorder
all public business. What must be the consequence
when the very distemper is made the basis of the constitution ; and the original weakness of human nature
is still further enfeebled by art and contrivance ? It
must subvert government from the very foundation.
It turns our public councils into the most mischievous
cabals ; where the consideration is, not how the nation's
business shall be carried on, but how those who ought to
carry it on shall circumvent each other. In such a state
of things, no order, uniformity, dignity, or effect, can
appear in our proceedings, either at home or abroad.
Nor will it make much difference, whether some of the
constituent parts of such an administration are men of
virtue or ability, or not ; supposing it possible that
such men, with their eyes open, should choose to make
a part in such a body.
The effects of all human contrivances are in the
hand of Providence. I do not like to answer, as our
author so readily does, for the event of any speculation.
But sure the nature of our disorders, if anything, must
indicate the proper remedy. Men who act steadily on

SELECTIONS.
17
the principles I have stated may, in all events, be very
serviceable to their country ; in one case, by furnishing
(if their Sovereign should be so advised) an administration formed upon ideas very different from those which
have for some time been unfortunately fashionable.
But, if this should not be the case, they may be still
serviceable ; for the example of a large body of men,
steadily sacrificing ambition to principle, can never be
without use. It will certainly be prolific, and draws
others to an imitation. Vera gloria radices agit, at que
efiam propagatur.

111.
T H E VALUE OF PARTY.
[From Thoughts on the Causes'of the Present Discontents
(x779)-]
I DO not wonder that the behaviour of many parties
should have made persons of tender and scrupulous
virtue somewhat out of humour with all sorts of connexion in politics. I admit that people frequently
acquire in such confederacies a narrow, bigoted, and
proscriptive spirit ; that they are apt to sink the idea
of the general good in this circumscribed and partial
interest. But, where duty renders a critical situation
a necessary one, it is our business to keep free from
the evils attendant upon it ; and not to fly from the
situation itself. If a fortress is seated in an unwholesome air, an officer of the garrison is obliged to be attentive to his health, but he must not desert his station.
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 connexions in politics ; essen-

EDMUND BURKE.
18
tially 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 connexions. Idem sentire de republica,
was with them a principal ground of friendship and
attachment ; nor do I know any other capable of forming firmer, dearer, more pleasing, more honourable,
and more virtuous habitudes. The Romans carried
this principle a great way. Even the holding of offices
together, the disposition of which arose from chance,
not selection, gave rise to a relation which continued
for life. It was called necessitudo sortis ; and it was
looked upon with a sacred reverence. Breaches of any
of these kinds of civil relation were considered as acts
of the most distinguished turpitude. The whole people
was distributed into political societies, in which they
acted in support of such interests in the state as they
severally affected. For it was then thought no crime
to endeavour by every honest means to advance to
superiority and power those of your own sentiments and
opinions. This wise people was far from imagining that
those connexions had no tie and obliged to no duty J
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. Never may we become

SELECTIONS.
19
plus sages que les sages, as the French comedian has
happily expressed it, wiser than all the wise and good
men who had lived before us. It was their wish, to
see public and private virtues, not dissonant and jarring
and mutually destructive, but harmoniously combined,
growing out of one another in a noble and orderly gradation, reciprocally supporting and supported. In one of
the most fortunate periods of our history this country
was governed by a connexion ; I mean the great connexion of Whigs in the reign of Queen Anne. They
were complimented upon the principle of this connexion
by a poet who was in high esteem with them. Addison,
who knew their sentiments, could not praise them for
what they considered as no proper subject of commendation. As a poet who knew his business, he could
not applaud them for a thing which in general estimation
was not highly reputable. Addressing himself to Britain,
Thy favourites grow not up by fortune's sport,
Or from the crimes or follies of a court.
On the firm basis of desert they rise,
From long-tried faith, and friendship's holy ties.

The Whigs of those days believed that the only proper
method of rising into power was through hard essays
of practised friendship and experimented fidelity. At
that time it was not imagined, that patriotism was
a bloody idol, which required the sacrifice of children
and parents, or dearest connexions in private life, and
of all the virtues that rise from those relations. They
were not of that ingenious paradoxical morality, to
imagine that a spirit of moderation was properly shown
in patiently bearing the sufferings of your friends, or
that disinterestedness was clearly manifested at the
expense of other people's fortune. They believed that
no man could act with effect, who did not act in concert 3
that no man could act in concert, who did not act with
confidence 5 that no men could act with confidence,
who were not bound together by common opinions,
common affections, and common interests.

20

EDMUND BURKE.

These wise men, for such I must call Lord Sunderland,
Lord Godolphin, Lord Somers, and Lord Marlborough,
were too well principled in these maxims upon which
the whole fabric of public strength is built, to be blown
off their ground by the breath of every childish talker.
They were not afraid that they should be called an
ambitious junto ; or that their resolution to stand or
fall together should, by placemen, be interpreted into
a scuffle for places.
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 connexion 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 connexion 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

SELECTIONS.
21
style of such persdhs will serve to discriminate them
from those numberless impostors, who have deluded
the ignorant with professions incompatible with human
practice, and have afterwards incensed them by practices below the level of vulgar rectitude.
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

EDMUND BURKE.
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.
I believe the reader would wish to find no substance
in a doctrine which has a tendency to destroy all test
of character as deduced from conduct. He will therefore excuse my adding something more, towards the
further clearing up a point, which the great convenience
of obscurity to dishonesty has been able to cover with
some degree of darkness and doubt.
In order to throw an odium on political connexion
these politicians suppose it a necessary incident to it
that you are blindly to follow the opinions of your
party, when in direct opposition to your own clear
ideas ; a degree of servitude that no worthy man could
bear the thought of submitting to ; and such as, I
believe, no connexions (except some court factions)
ever could be so senselessly tyrannical as to impose.
Men thinking freely will, in particular instances, think
differently. But still as the greater part of the measures
which arise in the course of public business are related to,
or dependent on, some great, leading general principles
in government, a man must be peculiarly unfortunate in
thé choice of his political company, if he does not agree
with them at least nine times in ten. If he does not
concur in these general principles upon which the party
is founded, and which necessarily draw on a concurrence
in their application, he ought from the beginning to

22

SELECTIONS.
23
have chosen some other, more conformable to his opinions.
When the question is in its nature doubtful, or not
very material, the modesty which becomes an individual,
and (in spite of our court moralists) that partiality
which becomes a well-chosen friendship, will frequently
bring on an acquiescence in the general sentiment,
Thus the disagreement will naturally be rare ; it will
be only enough to indulge freedom, without violating
concord, or disturbing arrangement. And this is all
that ever was required for a character of the greatest
uniformity and steadiness in connexion. How men can
proceed without any connexion at all, is to me utterly
incomprehensible. Of what sort of materials must that
man be made, how must he be tempered and put together,
who can sit whole years in parliament, with five hundred
and fifty of his fellow-citizens, amidst the storm of such
tempestuous passions, in the sharp conflict of so many
wits and tempers and characters, in the agitation of
such mighty questions, in the discussion of such vast
and ponderous interests, without seeing any one sort
of men, whose character, conduct, or disposition, would
lead him to associate himself with them, to aid and be
aided, in any one system of public utility ?
I remember an old scholastic aphorism, which says,
' that the man who lives wholly detached from others
must be either an angel or a devil.'jpWhen I see in
any of these detached gentlemen of our times the angelic
purity, power, and beneficence, J shall admit them to
be angels. In the meantime we are born only to be
men. We shall do enough if we form ourselves to be
good ones. It is therefore our business carefully to
cultivate in our minds, to rear to the most perfect vigour
and maturity, every sort of generous and honest feeling
that belongs to our nature. To bring the dispositions
that are lovely in private life into the service and conduct of the commonwealth ; so to be patriots, as not
to forget we are gentlemen. To cultivate friendships,
and to incur enmities. To have both strong, but both
selected ; in the one, to be placable ; in the other im-

24
EDMUND BURKE.
movable. To model our principles to our duties and
our situation. To be fully persuaded that all virtue
which is impracticable is spurious ; and rather to run
the risk of falling into faults in a course which leads
us to act with effect and energy, than to loiter out our
days without blame and without use. Public life is
a situation of power and energy ; he trespasses against
his duty who sleeps upon his watch, as well as he that
goes over to the enemy.
There is, however, a time for all things. It is not
every conjuncture which calls with equal force upon
the activity of honest men ; but critical exigencies now
and then arise ; and I am mistaken, if this be not one
of them. Men will see the necessity of honest combination ; but they may see it when it is too late. They
may embody, when it will be ruinous to themselves,
and of no advantage to the country ; when, for want
of such a timely union as may enable them to oppose
in favour of the laws, with the laws on their side, they
may at length find themselves under the necessity of
conspiring, instead of consulting. The law, for which
they stand, may become a weapon in the hands of its
bitterest enemies ; and they will be cast, at length,
into that miserable alternative between slavery and
civil confusion, which no good man can look upon
without horror ; an alternative in which it is impossible
he should take either part, with a conscience perfectly
at repose. To keep that situation of guilt and remorse
at the utmost distance is, therefore, our first obligation.
Early activity may prevent late and fruitless violence.
As yet we work in the light. The scheme of the enemies
of ' public tranquillity has disarranged, it has not destroyed us.
If the reader believes that there really exists such
a faction as I have described ; a faction ruling by the
private inclinations of a court, against the general
sense of the people ; and that this faction,; whilst it
pursues a scheme for undermining all the foundations
of our freedom, weakens (for the present at least) all the

SELECTIONS.
25
powers of executory government, rendering us abroad
contemptible, and at home distracted ; he will believe
also that nothing but a firm combination of public
men against this body, and that, too, supported by the
hearty concurrence of the people at large, can possibly
get the better of it. The people will see the necessity
of restoring public men to an attention to the public
opinion, and of restoring the constitution to its original
principles. Above all, they will endeavour to keep the
House of Commons from assuming a character which
does not belong to it. They will endeavour to keep
that House, for its existence, for its powers, and its
privileges, as independent of every other, and as dependent upon themselves, as possible. This servitude
is to a House of Commons (like obedience to the divine
law) ' perfect freedom/ For if they once quit this
natural, rational, and liberal obedience, having deserted
the only proper foundation of their power, they must
seek a support in an abject and unnatural dependence
somewhere else. When, through the medium of this
just connexion with their constituents, the genuine
dignity of the House of Commons is restored, it will
begin to think of casting from it, with scorn, as badges
of servility, all the false ornaments of illegal power,
with which it has been, for some time, disgraced. It
will begin to think of its old office of CONTROL. It will
not surfer that last of evils to predominate in the country : men without popular confidence, public opinion,
natural connexion, or mutual trust, invested with all
the powers of government. \
When they have learned this lesson themselves, they
will be willing and able to teach the court that it is
the true interest of the prince to have but one administration ; and that one composed of those who recommend
themselves to their sovereign through the opinion of
their country, and not by their obsequiousness to a
favourite. Such men will serve their sovereign with
affection and fidelity ; because his choice of them,
upon such principles, is a compliment to their virtue.

EDMUND BURKE.
26
They will be able to serve him effectually ; because
they will add the weight of the country to the force of
the executory power. They will be able to serve their
king with dignity ; because they will never abuse his
name to the gratification of their private spleen or
avarice. This, with allowances for human frailty, may
probably be the general character of a ministry, which
thinks itself accountable to the House of Commons ;
when the House of Commons thinks itself accountable
to its constituents. If other ideas should prevail,
things must remain in their present confusion, until
they are hurried into all the rage of civil violence or
until they sink into the dead repose of despotism.

IV.
T H E CURE FOR PARTY.
[From Thoughts on the Causes of the Present Discontents
(1770).]
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.
These are my sentiments, weak perhaps, but honest
and unbiassed ; and submitted entirely to the opinion
of grave men, well-affected to the constitution of their

SELECTIONS.
27
country, and of experience in what may best promote
or hurt it.
Indeed, in the situation in which we stand, with an
immense revenue, an enormous debt, mighty establishments, government itself a great banker and a great
merchant, I see no other way for the preservation of
a decent attention to public interest in the representatives, but the interposition of the body of the people itself,
whenever it shall appear, by some flagrant and notorious
act, by some capital innovation, that these representatives are going to overleap the fences of the law, and
to introduce an arbitrary power. This interposition
is a most unpleasant remedy. But, if it be a legal
remedy, it is intended on some occasion to be used ;
to be used then only, when it is evident that nothing
else can hold the constitution to its true principles.
The distempers of monarchy were the great subjects
of apprehension and redress, in the last century ; in
this, the distempers of parliament. It is not in parliament alone that the remedy for parliamentary disorders can be completed; hardly indeed can it begin
there. Until a confidence in government is re-established, the people ought to be excited to a more strict
and detailed attention to the conduct of their representatives. Standards for judging more systematically
upon their conduct ought to be settled in the meetings
of counties and corporations. Frequent and correct
lists of the voters in all important questions ought to
be procured.
By such means something may be done. By such
means it may appear who those are that, by an indiscriminate support of all administrations, have totally
banished all integrity and confidence out of public
proceedings ; have confounded the best men with the
worst ; and weakened and dissolved, instead of strengthening and compacting, the general frame of government.
If any person is more concerned for government and
order, than for the liberties of his country • even he
is equally concerned to put an end to this course of

EDMUND BURKE.
indiscriminate support. It is this blind and undistinguishing support that feeds the spring of those very
disorders, by which he is frightened into the arms of
the faction which contains in itself the source of all
disorders, by enfeebling all the visible and regular
authority of the state. The distemper is increased
by his injudicious and preposterous endeavours, or
pretences, for the cure of it.
28

V.
THE POSITION OF A MEMBER
OF PARLIAMENT.
[From Burke's Speech to the Electors of Bristol after
the poll on November 3, 1774. This passage contains
his famous doctrine of the nature of a representative,
and his repudiation, of any ' mandate ' theory.]
I A sorry I cannot conclude without saying a word
M
on a topic touched upon by my worthy colleague. I
wish that topic had been passed by at a time when I
have so little leisure to discuss it. But since he has
thought proper to throw it out, I owe you a clear explanation of my poor sentiments on that subject.
He tells you that ' the topic of instructions has occasioned much altercation and uneasiness in this city ' ;
and he expresses himself (if I understand him rightly)
in favour of the coercive authority of such instructions.
Certainly, gentlemen, 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 atten-

SELECTIONS.
29
tion. 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.
My worthy colleague says, his will ought to be subservient to yours. If that be all, the thing is innocent. 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 ?
To deliver an opinion is the right of all men ; that
of constituents is a weighty and respectable opinion,
which a representative ought always to rejoice to hear ;
and which he ought always most seriously to consider.
But authoritative instructions, mandates issued, which the
member is bound blindly and implicitly to obey, to vote,
and to argue for, though contrary to the clearest conviction of his judgment and conscience,—these are
things utterly unknown to the laws of this land, and
which arise from a fundamental mistake of the whole
order and tenor of our constitution.
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

30
EDMUND BURKE.
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.
If the local constituent should have an interest, or
should form an hasty opinion, evidently opposite to
the real good of the rest of the community, the member
for that place ought to be as far, as any other, from
any endeavour to give it effect. I beg pardon for saying so much on this subject. I have been unwillingly
drawn into it \ but 1 shall ever use a respectful frankness of communication with you. Your faithful friend,
your devoted servant, 1 shall be to the end of my life :
a flatterer you do not wish for. On this point of instructions, however, I think it scarcely possible we
ever can have any sort of difference. Perhaps I may
give you too much, rather than too little trouble.
From the first hour I was encouraged to court your
favour, to this happy day of obtaining it, I have never
promised you anything but humble and persevering
endeavours to do my duty. The weight of that duty,
I confess, makes me tremble ; and whoever well considers what it is, of all things in the world, will fly from
what has the least likeness to a positive and precipitate
engagement. 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 widespread interests must
be considered ; must be compared ; must be reconciled

SELECTIONS.
31
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 thé keystone that binds together the noble and well-constructed
arch of our empire and our constitution. A constitution
made up of balanced powers must ever be a critical thing.
As such I mean to touch that part of it which comes
within my reach. I know my inability, and I wish for
support from every quarter. In particular I shall aim
at the friendship, and shall cultivate the best correspondence, of the worthy colleague you have given me.
I trouble you no farther than once more to thank
y^vi all \ you, gentlemen, for your favours ; the candidates, for their temperate and polite behaviour \ and
the sheriffs, for a conduct which may give a model
for all who are in public stations.

VI.
DEMOCRACY AND INDEPENDENCE,
[The peroration of Burke's speech at Bristol in 1780,
When he said farewell to his old constituents, with whom
he had differed on questions like Irish Trade and the
relief for Roman Catholics.]
W E knew beforehand, or we were poorly instructed,
that toleration is odious to the intolerant 5 freedom to
oppressors ; property to robbers ; and all kinds and
degrees of prosperity to the envious. We knew that
all these kinds of men would gladly gratify their evil
dispositions under the sanction of law and religion,

32

EDMUND BURKE.
if they could : if they could not, yet, to make way to
their objects, they would do their utmost to subvert all
religion and all law. This we certainly knew. But
knowing this, is there any reason, because thieves break
in and steal, and thus bring detriment to you, and draw
ruin on themselves, that I am to be sorry that you are
in possession of shops, and of warehouses, and of wholesome laws to protect them ? Are you to build no houses,
because desperate men may pull them down upon their
own heads? Or, if a malignant wretch will cut his
own throat because he sees you give alms to the necessitous and deserving ; shall his destruction be attributed to
your charity, and not to his own deplorable madness ?
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 benefice®e
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 forward 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.
As to the opinion of the people, which some think, in
such cases, is to be implicitly obeyed ; nearly two years*
tranquillity, which followed the, act, and its instant
imitation in Ireland, proved abundantly, that the late
horrible spirit was, in a great measure, the effect of
insidious art, and perverse industry, and gross misrepresentation. But suppose that the dislike had been
much more deliberate, and much more general than I
am persuaded it was—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

SELECTIONS.
33
I, am, that such things, as they and I, are possessed of
no such power. No man carries farther 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.
* But if I profess all this impolitic stubbornness, I
may chance never to be elected into parliament.' 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
~3

34
EDMUND BURKE.
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, 1 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.

VII.
CONSTITUTIONAL REFORM.
[Speech on a motion in the House of Commons, the
7th of May, 1782, for a committee to inquire into the
state of the representation of the Commons in, Parliament,]
W E have now discovered, at the close of the eighteenth
century, that the constitution of England, which for
a series of ages had been the proud distinction of this
country, always the admiration, and sometimes the envy
of the wise and learned in every other nation, we have
discovered that this boasted constitution, in the most
boasted part of it, is a gross imposition upon the understanding of mankind, an insult to their feelings, and
acting by contrivances destructive to the best and
most valuable interests of the people. Our political
architects have taken a survey of the fabric of the
British constitution. It is singular that they report
nothing against the crown, nothing against the lords 1
but in the House of Commons every thing is unsound ; it
is ruinous in every part. It is infested by the dry rot,
and ready to tumble about our ears without their immediate help. You know by the faults they find what
are' their ideas of the alteration. As all government
stands upon opinion, they know that the way utterly
to destroy it is to remove that opinion, to take away
all reverence, all confidence from it ; and then, at the
first blast of public discontent and popular tumult, it
tumbles to the ground.

SELECTIONS.
35
In considering this question they who oppose it oppose
it on different grounds ; one is, in the nature of a previous question ; that some alterations may be expedient,
but that this is not the time for making them. The
other is, that no essential alterations are at all wanting : and that neither now, nor at any time, is it prudent
or safe to be meddling with the fundamental principles,
and ancient tried usages of our constitution—that our
representation is as nearly perfect as the necessary
imperfection of human affairs and of human creatures
wiU surfer it to be ; and that it is a subject of prudent
and honest use and thankful enjoyment, and not of captious criticism and rash experiment.
On the other side there are two parties, who proceedon two grounds, in my opinion, as they state them,
utterly irreconcilable. The one is juridical, the other
political. The one is in the nature of a claim of right
on the supposed rights of man as man ; this party
desire the decision of a suit. The other ground, as far
as I can divine what it directly means, is, that the
representation is not so politically framed as to answer
the theory of its institution. As to the claim of right
the meanest petitioner, the most gross and ignorant,
is as good as the best ; in some respects his claim is
more favourable on account of his ignorance ; his weakness, his poverty, and distress, only add to his titles )
he sues in forma pauperis ; he ought to be a favourite
of the court. But when the other ground is taken, when
the question is political, when a new constitution is to
be made on a sound theory of government, then the
presumptuous pride of didactic ignorance is to be excluded from the counsel in this high and arduous matter,
which often bids defiance to the experience of the wisest.
The first claims a personal representation, the latter
rejects it with scorn and fervour. The language of the
first party is plain and intelligible ; they who plead
an absolute right cannot be satisfied with any thing
short of personal representation, because all natural
rights must be the rights of individuals ; as by nature

36

EDMUND BURKE.
there is no such thing as politic or corporate personality ;
all these ideas are mere fictions of law, they are
creatures of voluntary institution ; men as men are
individuals, and nothing else. They, therefore, who reject the principle of natural and personal representation,
are essentially and eternally at variance with those who
claim it. As to the first sort of reformers, it is ridiculous to talk to them of the British constitution upon
any or upon all of its bases ; for they lay it down that
every man ought to govern himself, and that where he
cannot go himself, he must send his representative ;
that all other government is usurpation, and is so far
from having a claim to our obedience, it is not only our
right but our duty to resist it. Nine-tenths of the
reformers argue thus, that is, on the natural right. It is
impossible not to make some reflection on the nature
of this claim, or avoid a comparison between the extent
of the principle and the present object of the demand.
If this claim be founded, it is clear to what it goes.
The House of Commons, in that light, undoubtedly is
no representative of the people, as a collection of individuals. Nobody pretends it, nobody can justify such
an assertion. When you come to examine into this
claim of right, founded on the right of self-government
in each individual, you find the thing demanded infinitively short of the principle of the demand. What !
one-third only of the legislature, and of the government
no share at all ? What sort of treaty of partition is
this for those who have an inherent right to the whole ?
Give them all they ask, and your grant is still a cheat ;
for how comes only a third to be their younger children's
fortune in this settlement ? How came they neither to
have the choice of kings, or lords, or judges, or generals,
or admirals, or bishops, or priests, or ministers, or justices of peace ? Why, what have you to answer in
favour of the prior rights of the crown and peerage
but this—our constitution is a prescriptive constitution ; it is a constitution whose sole authority is, that
it has existed time out of mind. It is settled in these

SELECTIONS.
37
two portions against one, legislatively ; and in the whole
of the judicature, the whole of the federal capacity, of
the executive, the prudential and the financial administration, in one alone. Nor was your House of Lords
and the prerogatives of the crown settled on any adjudication in favour of natural rights, for they could never be
so partitioned. Your king, your lords, your judges, your
juries, grand and little, are all prescriptive ; and what
proves it, is, the disputes not yet concluded, and never
near becoming so, when any of them first originated.
Prescription is the most solid of all titles, not only to
property, but, which is to secure that property, to government. They harmonize with each other, and give
mutual aid to one another. It is accompanied with
another ground of authority in the constitution of the
human mind, presumption. It is a presumption in
favour of any settled scheme of government against
any untried project, that a nation has long existed and
flourished under it. It is a better presumption even
"of the choice of a nation, far better than any sudden
and temporary arrangement by actual election. Because a nation is not an idea only of local extent
and individual momentary aggregation, but it is an
idea of continuity which extends in time as well as in
numbers and in space. And this is a choice not of
one day, or one set of people, not a tumultuary and
giddy choice ; it is a deliberate election of ages and of
generations \ it is a constitution made by what is ten
thousand times better than choice, it is made by the
peculiar circumstances, occasions, tempers, dispositions,
and moral, civil, and social habitudes of the people,
which disclose themselves only in a long space of time.
It is a vestment which accommodates itself to the body.
Nor is prescription of government formed upon blind
unmeaning prejudices—for man is a most unwise and a
most wise being. The individual is foolish. The multitude, for the moment, is foolish when they act without
deliberation ; but the species is wise, and when time
is given to it, as a species, it almost always acts right.

38
EDMUND BURKE.
The reason for the crown as it is, for the lords as they
are, is my reason for the commons as they are, the
electors as they are. Now if the crown, and the lords,
and the judicatures, are all prescriptive^ so is the House
of Commons of the very same origin, and of no other.
We and our electors have their powers and privileges both
made and circumscribed by prescription, as much to the
full as the other parts ; and as such we have always
claimed them, and on no other title. The House of
Commons is a legislative body corporate by prescription, not made upon any given theory, but existing
prescriptively—just like the rest. This prescription has
made it essentially what it is, an aggregate collection of
three parts, knights, citizens, burgesses. The question
is, whether this has been always so, since the House of
Commons has taken its present shape and circumstances, and has been an essential operative part of the
constitution; which, 1 take it, it has been for at least
five hundred years.
This I resolve to myself in the affirmative : and then
another question arises, whether this House stands firm
upon its ancient foundations, and is not, by time and
accidents, so declined from its perpendicular, as to want
the hand of the wise and experienced architects of the
day to set it upright again, and to prop and buttress
it up for duration ;—whether it continues true to the
principles upon which it has hitherto stood ;—whether
this be de facto the constitution of the House of Commons, as it has been since the time that the House of
Commons has, without dispute, become a necessary and
an efficient part of the British constitution ? To ask
whether a thing which has always been the same stands
to its usual principle, seems to me to be perfectly absurd ; for how do you know the principles but from the
construction ? and if that remains the same, the principles remain the same. It is true that to say your
constitution is what it has been, is no sufficient defence
for those who say it is a bad constitution. It is an
answer to those who say that it is a degenerate constitu-

SELECTIONS.
39
tion. To those who say it is a bad one, I answer, look
to its effects. In all moral machinery, the moral results
are its test.
On what grounds do we go to restore our constitution
to what it has been at some given period, or to reform
and re-construct it upon principles more conformable
to a sound theory of government ? A prescriptive government, such as ours, never was the work of any legislator, never was made upon any foregone theory. It
seems to me a preposterous way of reasoning, and a
perfect confusion of ideas, to take the theories which
learned and speculative men have made from that government, and then supposing it made on those theories
which were made from it, to accuse the government as
not corresponding with them. I do not vilify theory
and speculation—no, because that would be to vilify
reason itself. Neque decipitur ratio, neque decipit unquam. No ; whenever I speak against theory, I mean
always a weak, erroneous, fallacious, unfounded, or imperfect theory ; and one of the ways of discovering that
it is a false theory, is by comparing it with practice.
This is the true touchstone of all theories which regard
man and the affairs of men—does it suit his nature in
general ;—does it suit his nature as modified by his
habits ?
The more frequently this affair is discussed, the
stronger the case appears to the sense and the feelings
of mankind. I have no more doubt than I entertain of
my existence that this very thing, which is stated as
a horrible thing, is the means of the preservation of our
constitution whilst it lasts 5 of curing it of many of the
disorders which, attending every species of institution,
would attend the principle of an exact local representation, or a representation on the principle of numbers.
If you reject personal representation, you are pushed
upon expedience ; and then what they wish us to do is,
to prefer their speculations on that subject to the happy
experience of this country of a growing liberty and a
growing prosperity for five hundred years. Whatever

40
EDMUND BURKE.
respect I have for their talents, this, for one, I will not
do. Then what is the standard of expedience ? Expedience is that which is good for the community, and
good for every individual in it. Now this expedience
is the desideratum, to be sought either without the
experience of means, or with that experience. If without, as in case of the fabrication of a new commonwealth, I will hear the learned arguing what promises
to be expedient ; but if we are to judge of a commonwealth actually existing, the first thing I inquire is,
what has been found expedient or inexpedient ? And
I will not take their promise rather than the performance
of the constitution.
* * * But no, this was not the cause of the discontents. I went through most of the northern parts,
—the Yorkshire election was then raging ; the year
before, through most of the western counties—Bath,
Bristol, Gloucester,—not one word, either in the towns
or country, on the subject of representation ; much on
the receipt tax, something on Mr. Fox's ambition ; much
greater apprehension of danger from thence than from
want of representation. One would think that the ballast of thé ship was shifted with us, and that our constitution had thé gunnel under water. But can you
fairly and distinctly point out what one evil or grievance has happened, which you can refer to the representative not following the opinion of his constituents ?
What one symptom do we find of this inequality ? But
it is not an arithmetical inequality with which we ought
to trouble ourselves. If there be a moral, a political
equality, this is the desideratum in our constitution, and
in every constitution in the world. Moral inequality is
as between places and between classes. Now, I ask,
what advantage do you find that the places, which
abound in representation, possess over others in which
it is more scanty, in security for freedom, in security
for justice, or in any one of those means of procuring
temporal prosperity and eternal happiness, the ends for
which society was formed ? Axe the local interests of

SELECTIONS.
41
Cornwall and Wiltshire, for instance, their roads, canals,
their prisons, their police, better than Yorkshire, Warwickshire, or Staffordshire ? Warwick has members ; is Warwick or Stafford more opulent, happy, or free, than Newcastle, or than Birmingham ? Is Wiltshire the pampered
favourite, whilst Yorkshire, like the child of the bondwoman, is turned out to the desert ? This is like the
unhappy persons who live, if they can be said to live, in
the statical chair ; who are ever feeling their pulse, and
who do not judge of health by the aptitude of the body
to perform its functions, but by their ideas of what
ought to be the true balance between the several secretions ? Is a committee of Cornwall, etc., thronged,
and the others deserted ? No. You have an equal
representation, because you have men equally interested in the prosperity of the whole, who are involved
in the general interest and the general sympathy ; and,
perhaps, these places, furnishing a superfluity of public
agents and administrators, (whether in strictness they
are representatives or not, I do not mean to inquire,
but they are agents and administrators,) will stand
clearer of local interests, passions, prejudices, and cabals,
than the others, and therefore preserve the balance of
the parts, and with a more general view, and a more
steady hand, than the rest.
*
*
*
*
*
In every political proposal we must not leave out of
the question the political views and object of the proposer ; and these we discover, not by what he says, but
by the principles he lays down. I mean, says he, a
moderate and temperate reform ; that is, I mean to do
as little good as possible. If the constitution be what
you represent it, and there be no danger in the change,
you do wrong not to make the reform commensurate
to the abuse. Fine reformer indeed ! generous donor !
What is the cause of this parsimony of the liberty which
you dole out to the people ? Why all this limitation
in giving blessings and benefits to mankind? You
admit that there is an extreme in liberty, which may
be infinitely noxious to those who are to receive it,

42
EDMUND BURKE.
and which in the end will leave them no liberty at all.
I think so too ; they know it, and "they feel it. The
question is then what is the standard of that extreme ?
What that gentleman, and the associations, or some
parts of their phalanxes, think proper ? Then our
liberties are in their pleasure ; it depends on their
arbitrary will how far I shall be free. 1 will have none
of that freedom. If, therefore, the standard of moderation be sought for, I will seek for it. Where ? Not in
their fancies, nor in my own ; I will seek for it where
I know it is to be found, in the constitution 1 actually
enjoy. Here it says to an encroaching prerogative,—
your sceptre has its length, you cannot add a hair to
your head, or a gem to your crown, but what an eternal
law has given to it. Here it says to an overweening
peerage,—your pride finds banks that it cannot overflow : here to a tumultuous and giddy people,—there
is a bound to the raging of the sea. Our constitution
is like our island, which uses and restrains its subject
sea ; in vain the waves roar. In that constitution I
know, and exultingly 1 feel, both that I am free, and
that I am not free dangerously to myself or to others. I
know that no power on earth, acting as I ought to do,
can touch my life, my liberty, or my property. I have
that inward and dignified consciousness of my own
security and independence, which constitutes, and is
the only thing which does constitute, the proud and
comfortable sentiment of freedom in the human breast.
T know too, and I bless God for, my safe mediocrity 5
1 know that, if 1 possessed all the talents of the gentlemen on the side of the House 1 sit, and on the other,
Ï cannot by royal favour, or by popular delusion, or
by oligarchical cabal, elevate myself above a certain very
limited point, so as to endanger my own fall, or the ruin
of my country. I know there is an order that keeps
things fast in their place 5 it is made to us, and we are
made to it. Wrhy not ask another wife, other children,
another body, another mind ?
The great object of most of these reformers is to -ore-

SELECTIONS.
43
pare the destruction of the constitution, by disgracing
and discrediting the House of Commons. For they
think, prudently, in my opinion, that if they can persuade the nation that the House of Commons is so
constituted as not to secure the public liberty ; not to
have a proper connexion with the public interests ; so
constituted, as not either actually or virtually to be the
representative of the people, it will be easy to prove that
a government composed of a monarchy, an oligarchy
chosen by the crown, and such a House of Commons,
whatever good can be in such a system, can by no
means be a system of free government.
The constitution of England is never to have a quietus;
it is to be continually vilified, attacked, reproached,
resisted ; instead of being the hope and sure anchor in
all storms, instead of being the means of redress to all
grievances, itself is the grand grievance of the nation,
our shame instead of our glory. If the only specific
plan proposed, individual personal representation, is
directly rejected by the person who is looked on as the
great support of this business, then the only way of
considering it is a question of convenience. An honourable gentleman prefers the individual to the present.
He therefore himself sees no middle term whatsoever,
and therefore prefers of what he sees the individual : this
is the only thing distinct and sensible that has been
advocated. He has then a scheme, which is the individual representation ; he is not at a loss, not inconsistent—-which scheme the other right honourable gentleman reprobates. Now what does this go to, but to lead
directly to anarchy ? For to discredit the only government, which he either possesses or can project, what
is this but to destroy all government ; and this is anarchy. My right honourable friend, in supporting this
motion, disgraces his friends and justifies his enemies, in
order to blacken the constitution of his country, even
of that House of Commons which supported him. There
is a difference between a moral or political exposure of
a public evil relative to the administration of govern-

44
EDMUND BURKE.
ment, whether in men or systems, and a declaration of
defects, real or supposed, in the fundamental constitution of your country. The first may be cured in the individual by the motives of religion, virtue, honour, fear,
shame, or interest. Men may be made to abandon also
false systems, by exposing their absurdity or mischievous
tendency to their own better thoughts or to the contempt or indignation of the public; and after all, if they
should exist, and exist uncorrected, they only disgrace
individuals as fugitive opinions. But it is quite otherwise with the frame and constitution of the state ; if
that is disgraced, patriotism is destroyed in its very
source. No man has ever willingly obeyed, much less
was desirous of defending with his blood, a mischievous
and absurd scheme of government. Our first, our dearest, most comprehensive relation, our country, is gone.
It suggests melancholy reflections, in consequence of
the strange course we have long held, that we are now
no longer quarrelling about the character, or about the
conduct of men, or the tenor of measures ; but we are
grown out of humour with the English constitution
itself ; this is become the object of the animosity of
Englishmen. This constitution in former days used to
be the admiration and the envy of the world ; it was
the pattern for politicians ; the theme of the eloquent ;
the meditation of the philosopher in every part of the
world. As to Englishmen, it was their pride, their consolation. By it they lived, for it they wTere ready to
die. Its defects, if it had any, were partly covered by
partiality, and partly borne by prudence. Now all its
excellences are forgot, its faults are now forcibly dragged
into day, exaggerated by every artifice of representation. It is despised and rejected of men; and every
device and invention of ingenuity, or idleness, set up
in opposition or in preference to it. It is to this humour,
and it is to the measures growing out of it, that I set
myself (I hope not alone) in the most determined opposition. Never before did we at any time in this country
meet upon the theory of our frame of government, to

SELECTIONS.
45
sit in judgment on the constitution of our country,
to call it as a delinquent before us, and to accuse it of
every defect and every vice ; to see whether it, an
object of our veneration, even our adoration, did or did
not accord with a preconceived scheme in the minds of
certain gentlemen. Cast your eyes on the journals of
parliament. It is for fear of losing the inestimable
treasure we have, that I do not venture to game it out
of my hands for the vain hope of improving it. I look
with filial reverence on the constitution of my country
and never will cut it in pieces, and put it into the kettle
of any magician, in order to boil it, with the puddle of
their compounds, into youth and vigour. On the contrary, I will drive away such pretenders ; I will nurse
its venerable age, and with lenient arts extend a parent's
breath.

VIII.
THE GROUNDS FOR INTERFERENCE
WITH STANDING RIGHTS.
[From the speech on Fox's East India bill, December 1,
1783.]
To justify us in taking the administration of their
affairs out of the hands of the East India Company, on
my principles, I must see several conditions. 1st. The
object affected by the abuse should be great and important. 2nd. The abuse affecting this great object ought
to be a great abuse. 3rd. It ought to be habitual, and
not accidental. 4th. It ought to be utterly incurable
in the body as it now stands constituted. All this ought
to be made as visible to me as the light of the sun before I should strike off an atom of their charter. A

46
EDMUND BURKE.
right honourable gentleman, * has said, and said I think
but once, and that very slightly (whatever his original
demand for a plan might seem to require), that € there
are abuses in the company's government. ' If that were
all, the scheme of the mover of this bill, the scheme of
his learned friend, and his own scheme of reformation
(if he has any), are all equally needless. There are, and
must be, abuses in all governments. It amounts to no
more than a nugatory proposition.

IX.
T H E LIMITS OF STATE
INTERFERENCE.
[From Thoughts and Details on Scarcity (1795), a letter
addressed to the Prime Minister (Pitt). Burke intended
to enlarge it into a work on rural economics, to be
addressed to Arthur Young, but the project was never
realized.]
IT is one of the finest problems in legislation, and what
has often engaged my thoughts whilst I followed that
profession, ' what the state ought to take upon itself
to direct by the public wisdom, and what it ought to
leave, with as little interference as possible, to individual discretion.' Nothing, certainly, can be laid down
on the subject that will not admit of exceptions, many
permanent, some occasional. But the clearest line of
distinction which I could draw, whilst I had my chalk
to draw any line, was this : that the state ought to
confine itself to what regards the state, or the creatures
of the state, namely, the exterior establishment of its religion ; its magistracy ; its revenue ; its military force
by sea and land ; the corporations that owe their ex* Mr. Pitt.

SELECTIONS.
47
istence to its fiat ; in a word, to everything that is
truly and properly public, to the public peace, to the
public safety, to the public order, to the public prosperity. In its preventive police it ought to be sparing
of its efforts, and to employ means, rather few, unfrequent, and strong, than many, and frequent, and, of
course, as they multiply their puny politic race, and
dwindle, small and feeble. Statesmen who know themselves will, with the dignity which belongs to wisdom,
proceed only in this the superior orb, and first mover
of their duty steadily, vigilantly, severely, courageously :
whatever remains will, in a manner, provide for itself.
But as they descend from the state to a province, from
a province to a parish, and from a parish to a private
house, they go on accelerated in their fall. They cannot do the lower duty ; and, in propbrtion as they try
it, they will certainly fail in the higher. They ought to
know the different departments of things 3 what belongsto laws, and what manners alone can regulate. To
these, great politicians may give a leaning, but they
cannot give a law.
Our legislature has fallen into this fault as well as
other governments ; all have fallen into it more or less.
The once mighty state, which was nearest to us locally,
nearest to us in every way, and whose ruins threaten to
fall upon our heads, is a strong instance of this error.
I can never quote France without a foreboding sigh—
E2ETAI 'HMAP ! Scipio said it to his recording Greek
friend amidst the flames of the great rival of his
country. That state has fallen by the hands of the
parricides of their country, called the revolutionists, and
constitutionalists, of France ; a species of traitors, of
whose fury and atrocious wickedness nothing in the annals
of the frenzy and depravation of mankind had before
furnished an example, and of whom I can never think
or speak without a mixed sensation of disgust, of horror,
and of detestation, not easy to be expressed. These
nefarious monsters destroyed their country for what
was good in it : for much good there was in the con-

4S
EDMUND BURKE.
stitution of that noble monarchy, which, in all kinds,
formed and nourished great men, and great patterns of
virtue to the world. But though its enemies were not
enemies to its faults, its faults furnished them with
means for its destruction. My dear departed friend,
whose loss is even greater to the public than to me,
had often remarked that the leading vice of the French
monarchy (which he had well studied) was in good intention ill-directed, and a restless desire of governing
too much. The hand of authority was seen in everything, and in every place. All, therefore, that happened amiss in the course even of domestic affairs, was
attributed to the government ; and as it always happens
in this kind of officious universal interference, what
began in odious power ended always, I may say without
an exception, in contemptible imbecility. For this reason, as far as I can approve of any novelty, I thought
well of the provincial administrations. Those, if the
superior power had been severe, and vigilant, and vigorous, might have been of much use politically in removing
government from many invidious details. But as everything is good or bad, as it is related or combined, government being relaxed above as it was relaxed below,
and the brains of the people growing more and more
addle with every sort of visionary speculation, the
shiftings of the scene in the provincial theatres became
only preparatives to a revolution in the kingdom, and
the popular actings there only the rehearsals of the
terrible drama of the republic.
Tyranny and cruelty may make men justly wish the
downfall of abused powers, but I believe that no government ever yet perished from any other direct cause
than its own weakness. My opinion is against an overdoing of any sort of administration, and more especially
against this most momentous of all meddling on the part
of authority : the meddling with the subsistence of the
people.

SELECTIONS.

49

X.
FALSE SENTIMENT AND SOCIAL
POLICIES.
[From Letters on a Regicide Peace, No. III., (1797).]
AN untimely shower, or an unseasonable drought ; a
frost too long continued, or too suddenly broken up,
with rain and tempest ; the blight of the spring, or the
smut of the harvest ; will do more to cause the distress
of the belly, than all the contrivances of all statesmen
can do to relieve it. Let government protect and
encourage industry, secure property, repress violence,
and discountenance fraud, it is all that they have to
do. In other respects, the less they meddle in these
affairs the better ; the rest is in the hands of our Master
and theirs. We are in a constitution of things wherein—' Modo sol nimiuSy 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 innocept 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 decrepid 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

50
EDMUND BURKE.
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,

BOOK II.
AMERICA AND T H E COLONIES.

I.
REPRESENTATION OF T H E COLONIES
IN T H E BRITISH PARLIAMENT.
[From Observations on a late Publication entitled
The Present State of the Nation' (1769). The 'publication' was written by George Grenville, and directed
especially against the Rockingham Whigs, to which
Burke belonged.]
1

Now comes his American representation. Here too,
as usual, he takes no notice of any difficulty, nor says
anything to obviate those objections that must naturally
arise in the minds of his readers. He throws you his
politics as he does his revenue ; do you make something of them if you can. Is not the reader a little
astonished at the proposal of an American representation from that quarter ? It is proposed merely as a
project of speculative improvement ; not from the
necessity in the case, not to add anything to the authority of Parliament, but that we may afford a greater
attention to the concerns of the Americans, and give
them a better opportunity of stating their grievances,
and of obtaining redress. I am glad to find the author
has at length discovered that we have not given a sufficient attention to their concerns, or a proper redress
to their grievances. His great friend would once have
been exceedingly displeased with any person who should
tell him that he did not attend sufficiently to those
concerns. He thought he did so, when he regulated
the colonies over and over again : he thought he did so,
when he formed two general systems of revenue ; one

54
EDMUND BURKE.
of port duties, and the other of internal taxation. These
systems supposed, or ought to suppose, the greatest
attention to, and the most detailed information of,
all their affairs. However, by contending for the
American representation, he seems at last driven virtually to admit, that great caution ought to be used
in the exercise of all our legislative rights over an'object
so remote from our eye, and so little connected with
our immediate feelings ; that in prudence we ought
not to be quite so ready with our taxes, until we can
secure the 4esired representation in Parliament. Perhaps it may be some time before this hopeful scheme
can be brought to perfect maturity, although the author
seems to be nowise aware of any obstructions that lie
in the way of it. He talks of his union, just as he does
of his taxes and his savings, with as much sang froid
and ease as if his wish and the enjoyment were exactly
the same thing. He appears not to have troubled his
head with the infinite difficulty of settling that representation on a fair balance of wealth and numbers
throughout the several provinces of America and the
West Indies, under such an infinite variety of circumstances. It costs him nothing to fight with nature, and
to conquer the order of Providence, which manifestly
opposes itself to the possibility of such a Parliamentary
union.
But let us, to indulge his passion for projects and
power, suppose the happy time arrived when the author
comes into the ministry, and is to realize his speculations. The writs are issued for electing members for
America and the West Indies. Some provinces receive them in six weeks, some in ten, some in twenty.
A vessel may be lost, and then some provinces may
not receive them at all. But let it be that they all
receive them at once, and in the shortest time. A
proper space must be given for proclamation and for
the election ; some weeks at least. But the members
are chosen ; and, if ships are ready to sail, in about
six more they arrive in London. In the meantime

SELECTIONS.
55
the Parliament has sat and business far advanced without American representatives. Nay, by this time it
may happen that the Parliament is dissolved ; and
then the members ship themselves again, to be again
elected. The writs may arrive in America before the
poor members of a Parliament in which they never sat
can arrive at their several provinces. A new interest
is formed, and they find other members are chosen
whilst they are on the high seas. But, if the writs
and members arrive together, here is at best a new
trial of skill amongst the candidates, after one set of
them have well aired themselves with their two voyages
of 6000 miles.
However, in order to facilitate everything to the
author, we will suppose them all once more elected,
and steering again to Old England, with a good heart,
and a fair westerly wind in their stern. On their
arrival, they find all in a hurry and bustle ; in and
out ; condolence and congratulation ; the Crown is
demised. Another Parliament is to be called. Away
back to America again on a fourth voyage and to a
third election. Does the author mean to make our
kings as immortal in their personal as in their politic
character ? or, whilst he bountifully adds to their life,
will he take from them their prerogative of dissolving
Parliaments, in favour of the American union ? or are
Jhe American representatives to be perpetual, and to
fêel neiLiier demises of the crown, nor dissolutions of
Parliament ?
But these things may be granted to him, without
bringing him much nearer to his goint. What does he
think of re-election ? is the American member the
only one who is not to take a place, or the only one to
be exempted from the ceremony of re-election ? How
will this great politician preserve the rights of electors,
the fairness of returns, and the privilege of the House
of Commons, as the sole judge of such contests ? It
would undoubtedly be a glorious sight to have eight or
ten petitions, or double returns, from Boston and Bar-

56
EDMUND BURKE.
badoes, from Philadelphia and Jamaica, the members
returned, and the petitioners, with all their train of attorneys, solicitors, mayors, select men, provost-marshals,
and above five hundred or a thousand witnesses, come
to the bar of the House of Commons. Possibly we
might be interrupted in the enjoyment of this pleasing
spectacle if a war should break out, and our constitutional fleet, loaded with members of Parliament, returning officers, petitions, and witnesses, the electors and
elected, should become a prize to the French or Spaniards,
and be conveyed to Carthagena or to La Vera Cruz, and
from thence perhaps to Mexico or Lima, there to remain
until a cartel for members of Parliament can be settled,
or until the war is ended.
In truth, the author has little studied this business ;
or he might have known that some of the most considerable provinces of America, such for instance as
Connecticut and Massachusetts Bay, have not in each
of them two men who can afford, at a distance from
their estates, to spend a thousand pounds a year. Bo^v
can these provinces be represented at Westminster ?
If their province pays them, they are American agents,
with salaries, and not independent members of Parliament. It is true, that formerly in England members
had salaries from their constituents ; but they all had
salaries, and were all, in this Way, upon a par. If
these American representatives have no salaries; then
they must add to the list of our pensioners and dependants at Court, or they must starve. There is no
alternative.
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. Governor Pownal has handled
the same subject. To do him justice, he treats it upon

SELECTIONS,
57
far more rational principles of speculation ; and much
more like a man of business. He thinks (erroneously,
I conceive ; but he does think) that onv legislative
rights are incomplete without such a representation.
It is no wonder, therefore, that he endeavours by every
means to obtain it. Not like our author, who is always
on velvet, he is aware of some difficulties ; and he proposes some solutions. But nature is too hard for both
these authors ; and^merica is, and ever will befwithout
actual representatio5,in the House,_of Commons;^ nor
will any minister be wild ^enough _even to propose such
a...representation jn Parliament ; however, he may
choose to throw out that project, together with others
equally far from his real opinions and remote from his
designs, merely to fall in with the different views, and
captivate the affections, of different sorts of men.

II.
SPEECH ON AMERICAN TAXATION.
[Delivered and issued as a pamphlet, 1774.]
the last session of the last parliament, on April
19, 1774, Mr. Rose Fuller, member for Rye, made the
following motion : That an act made in the seventh year
of the reign of his present majesty, intituled, ' An act
for granting certain duties in the British colonies and
plantations in America ; for allowing a drawback of the
duties of customs upon the exportation from this kingdom of coffee and cocoa nuts, of the produce of the said
colonies or plantations ; for discontinuing the drawbacks
payable on china earthenware exported to America ; and
for more effectually preventing the clandestine running
of goods in the said colonies and plantations/ might
be read.

DURING

58
EDMUND BURKE.
And the same being read accordingly ; lié iijoved
That this House will, upon this day sevennight, resolve
itself into a committee of the whole House, to take into
consideration the duty of 3^. per pound weight upon
tea, payable in all his majesty's dominions in America,
imposed by the said act ; and also the appropriation of
the said duty/
On this latter motion a warm and interesting debate
arose, in which Mr, Burke spoke as follows :
SIR,

I agree with the honourable gentleman * who spoke last
that this subject is not new in this House. Very disagreeably to this House, very unfortunately to this
nation, and to the peace and prosperity of this whole
empire, no topic has been more familiar to us. For nine
long years, session after session, we have been lashed
round and round this miserable circle of occasional arguments and temporary expedients. I am sure our heads
must turn, and our stomachs nauseate with them. We
have had them in every shape ; we have looked at them
in every point of view. Invention is exhausted ; reason,
is fatigued ; experience has given, judgment ; but obstinacy is not yet conquered.
The honourable gentleman has made one endeavour
more to diversify the form of this disgusting argument.
He has thrown, out a speech composed almost entirely
of challenges. Challenges are serious things ; and as he
is a man of prudence as well as resolution, I dare say
he has very well weighed those challenges before he
delivered them. I had long the happiness to sit at the
same side of the House, and to agree with the honourable gentleman on all the American questions. My sentiments, I am sure, are well known to him ;. and I thought
I had been perfectly acquainted with his. Though I find
myself mistaken, he will still permit me to use the privilege of an old friendship ; he will permit me to apply
* Charles Wolfran Cornwall, Esq., lately appointed one of the lords
of the treasury,

SELECTIONS.
59
myself to the House under the sanction of his authority ;
and, on the various grounds he has measured out, to
submit to you the poor opinions which I have formed
upon a matter of importance enough to demand the
fullest consideration I could bestow upon it.
He has stated to the House two grounds of deliberation ; one narrow and simple, and merely confined to
the question on, your paper ; the other more large and
more complicated ; comprehending the whole series of
the parliamentary proceedings with regard to America,
their causes, and their consequences. With regard to the
latter ground, he states it as useless, and thinks it may
be evert dangerous, to enter into so extensive a field of
inquiry» Yet, to my surprise, he had hardly laid down
this restrictive proposition, to which his authority would
have given so much weight, when directly, and with the
same authority, he condemns it ; and declares it absolutely necessary to enter into the most ample historical
detail, His zeal has thrown him a little out of his usual
accuracy. In this perplexity what shall we do, sir, who
are willing to submit to the law he gives us ? He has
reprobated in one part of his speech the rule he has laid
down for debate in the other ; and, after narrowing
the ground for all those who are to speak after him, he
takes an excursion himself, as unbounded as the subject
and the extent of his great abilities.
Sir, when I cannot obey all his laws, I will do the
best I can. I will endeavour to obey such of them as
have the sanction of his example ; and to stick to that
rule, which, though not consistent with the other, is
the most rational. He was certainly in the right when
he took the matter largely. I cannot prevail on myself
to agree with him in his censure of his own conduct. It
is not, he will give me leave to say, either useless or
dangerous. He asserts that retrospect is not wise ; and
the proper, the only proper, subject of inquiry, is ' not
how we got into this difficulty, but how we are to get
out of it/ In other words, we are, according to him,
to consult our invention,, and to reject our experience.

EDMUND BURKE.
66
The mode of deliberation he recommends is diametrically
opposite to every rule of reason, and every principle of
good sense established amongst mankind. For that sense
and that reason, I have always understood, absolutely
to prescribe, whenever we are involved in difficulties
from the measures we have pursued, that we should
take a strict review of those measures, in order to correct
our errors, if they should be corrigible ; or at least to
avoid a dull uniformity in mischief, and the unpitied
calamity of being repeatedly caught in the same snare.
Sir, I will freely follow the honourable gentleman in
his historical discussion, without the least management
for men or measures, further than as they shall seem to
me to deserve it. But before I go into that large consideration, because I would omit nothing that can give
the House satisfaction, I wish to tread the narrow
ground to which alone the honourable gentleman, in
one part of his speech, has so strictly confined us.
He desires to know, whether, if we were to repeal
this tax, agreeably to the proposition of the honourable
gentleman who made the motion, the Americans would
not take post on this concession, in order to make a
new attack on the next body of taxes ; and whether
they would not call for a repeal of the duty on wine as
loudly as they do now for the repeal of the duty on
tea ? Sir, I can give no security on this subject. But
I will do all that I can, and all that can be fairly demanded. To the experience which the honourable
gentleman reprobates in one instant and reverts to in
the next ; to that experience, without the least wavering or hesitation on my part, I steadily appeal ; and
would to God there was no other arbiter to decide
on the vote with which the House is to conclude this
day!
When parliament repealed the Stamp Act in the year
1766, I affirm, first, that the Americans did not in consequence of this measure call upon you to give up the
former parliamentary revenue which subsisted in that
country ; or even any one of the articles which compose

61
SELECTIONS.
it. I affirm also that when, departing from the maxims
of that repeal, you revived the scheme of taxation, and
thereby filled the minds of the colonists with new jealousy
and all sorts of apprehensions, then it was that they
quarrelled with the old taxes, as well as the new ; then
it was, and not till then, that they questioned all the
parts of your legislative power ; and, by the battery of
such questions, have shaken the solid structure of this
empire to its deepest foundations.
Of those two propositions I shall, before I have done,
give such convincing, such damning proof that, however
the contrary may be whispered in circles, or bawled in
newspapers, they never more will dare to raise their
voices in this House. I speak with great confidence. I
have reasons for it. The ministers are with me. They
at least are convinced that the repeal of the Stamp Act
had not, and that no repeal can have, the consequences
which the honourable gentleman who defends their
measures is so much alarmed at. To their conduct, I
refer him for a conclusive answer to this objection. I
carry my proof irresistibly into the very body of both
ministry and parliament ; not on any general reasoning
growing out of collateral matter, but on the conduct of
the honourable gentleman's ministerial friends on the
new revenue itself.
The act of 1767, which grants this tea-duty, sets forth
in its preamble, that it was expedient to raise a revenue
in America, for the support of the civil government
there, as well as for purposes still more extensive. To
this support the act assigns six branches of duties.
About two years after this act passed, the ministry, I
mean the present ministry, thought it expedient to repeal
five of the duties, and to leave (for reasons best known
to themselves) only the sixth standing. Suppose any
person, at the time of that repeal, had thus addressed
the minister,* ' Condemning, as you do, the repeal of
the Stamp Act, why do you venture to repeal the duties
upon glass, paper, and painters' colours ? Let your
* Lord North, then chancellor of the excheouer.

62
EDMUND BURKE.
pretence for the repeal be what it will, are you not
thoroughly convinced that your concessions will produce, not satisfaction, but insolence in the Americans ;
and that the giving up these taxes will necessitate the
giving up of all the rest ? ' This objection was as palpable then as it is now ; and it was as good for preserving the five duties as for retaining the sixth. Besides,
the minister will recollect, that the repeal of the Stamp
Act had but just preceded his repeal ; and the ill policy
of that measure (had it been so impolitic as it has been
represented), and the mischiefs it produced, were quite
recent. Upon the principles therefore of the honourable
gentleman, upon the principles of the minister himself,
the minister has nothing at all to answer. He stands
condemned by himself, and by all his associates old and
new, as a destroyer, in the first trust of finance, of the
revenues : and in the first rank of honour, as a betrayer
of the dignity of his country.
Most men, especially great men, do not. always know
their well-wishers. I come to rescue that noble lord
out of the hands of those he calls his friends ; and even
out of his own. I will do him the justice he is denied
at home. He has not been this wicked or imprudent
man. He knew that a repeal had no tendency to produce the mischiefs which give so much alarm to his
honourable friend. His work was not bad in its principle, but imperfect in its execution ; and the motion
on your paper presses him only to complete a proper
plan, which, by some unfortunate and unaccountable
error, he had left unfinished.
I hope, sir, the honourable gentleman who spoke last,
is thoroughly satisfied, and satisfied out of the proceedings of ministry on their own favourite act, that his
fears from a repeal are groundless. If he is not, I leave
him, and the noble lord who sits by him, to settle the
matter, as well as they can, together ; for if the repeal
of American taxes destroys all our government in America
—He is the man Ηand he is the worst of all the repealers,
because he is the last.

SELECTIONS.
63
But I hear it rung continually in my ears, now and
formerly,—' the preamble ! what will become of the preamble, if you repeal this tax ? '—I am sorry to be compelled so often to expose the calamities and disgraces of
parliament. The preamble of this law, standing as it
now stands, has the lie direct given to it by the provisionary part of the act ; if that can be called provisionary which makes no provision. I should be afraid
to express myself in this manner, especially in the face
of such a formidable array of ability as is now drawn
up before me, composed of the ancient household troops
of that side of the House, and the new recruits from
this, if the matter were not clear and indisputable.
Nothing but truth could give me this firmness ; but
plain truth and clear evidence can be beat down by
the act, and to read this favourite preamble :
Whereas^ it is expedient that a revenue should be raised
in your majesty's dominions in America, for making a
more certain and adequate provision for defraying the
charge of the administration of justice, and support of
civil government, in such provinces where it shall be
found necessary / and towards further defraying the expenses of defending, protecting, and securing the said
dominions.
You have heard this pompous performance. Now
where is this revenue which is to do all these mighty
things ? Five-sixths repealed—abandoned—sunk—gone
—lost for ever. Does the poor solitary tea-duty support the purposes of this preamble ? Is not the supply
there stated as effectually abandoned as if the tea-duty
had perished in the general wreck ? Here, Mr. Speaker,
is a precious mockery—a preamble without an act—
taxes granted in order to be repealed—and the reasons
of the grant still carefully kept up ! This is raising a
revenue in America ! This is preserving dignity in England ! If you repeal this tax in compliance with the
motion, I readily admit that you lose this fair preamble.
Estimate your loss in it. The object of the act is gone
already ; and all you suffer is the purging the statute-

64
EDMUND BURKE.
book of the opprobrium of an empty, absurd, and false
recital.
It has been said again and again that the five taxes
were repealed on commercial principles. It is so said
in the paper in my hand ; * a paper which I constantly
carry about ; which I have often used, and shall often
use again. What is got by this paltry pretence of commercial principles I know not ; for, if your government
in America is destroyed by the repeal of taxes, it is of
no consequence upon what ideas the repeal is grounded.
Repeal this tax too upon commercial principles if you
please. These principles will serve as well now as they
did'formerly. But you know that, either your objection
to a repeal from these supposed consequences has no
validity, or that this pretence never could remove it.
This commercial motive never was believed by any man,
either in America, which this letter is meant to soothe,
or in England, which it is meant to deceive. It was
impossible it should. Because every man, in the least
acquainted with the detail of commerce, must know
that several of the articles, on which the tax was repealed,
were fitter objects of duties than almost any other articles
that could possibly be chosen ; without comparison more
so than the tea that was left taxed ; as infinitely less
liable to be eluded by contraband. The tax upon red
and white lead was of this nature. You have> in this
kingdom, an advantage in lead that amounts to a
monopoly. When you find yourself in this situation
of advantage, you sometimes venture to tax even your
own export. You did so, soon after the last war ;
when, upon this principle, you ventured to impose a
duty on coals. In all the articles of American contraband trade, who ever heard of the smuggling of red
lead, and white lead ? You might, therefore, well enough,
without danger of contraband, and without injury to
commerce (if this were the whole consideration) have
taxed these commodities. The same may be said of
* Lord Hillsborough's circular letter to the governors of the colonies,
concerning the repeal of some of the duties laid in the act of 1767.

SELECTIONS.
65
glass. Besides, some of the things taxed were so trivial
that the loss of the objects themselves, and their utter
annihilation out of American commerce, would have
been comparatively as nothing. But is the article of
tea such an object in the, trade of England, as not to be
felt, or felt but slightly, like white lead and red lead,
and painters' colours ? Tea is an object of far other
importance. Tea is perhaps the most important object,
taking it with its necessary connexions, of any in the
mighty circle of our commerce. If commercial principles
had been the true motives of the repeal, or had they been
at all attended to, tea would have been the last article
we should have left taxed for a subject of controversy.
Sir, it is not a pleasant consideration ; but nothing
in the world can read so awful and so instructive a
lesson, as the conduct of ministry in this business, upon
the mischief of not having large and liberal ideas in the
management of great affairs. Never have the servants
of the state looked at the whole of your complicated
interests in one connected view. They have taken things
by bits and scraps, some at one time and one pretence,
and some at another, just as they pressed, without any
sort of regard to their relation, or dependencies. They
never had any kind of system, right or wrong ; but
only invented occasionally some miserable tale for the
day, in order meanly to sneak out of difficulties, into
which they had proudly strutted. And they were put
to all these shifts and devices, full of meanness and full
of mischief, in order to pilfer piecemeal a repeal of an
act, which they had not the generous courage, when they
found and felt their error, honourably and fairly to disclaim. By such management, by the irresistible operation of feeble councils, so paltry a sum as three-pence
in the eyes of a financier, so insignificant an article as tea
in the eyes of a philosopher, have shaken the pillars
of a commercial empire that circled the whole globe.
Do you forget that, in the very last year, you stood
on the precipice of general bankruptcy ? Your danger
was indeed great. You were distressed in the affairs of

EDMUND BURKE.
66
the East India Company ; and you well know what
sort of things are involved in the comprehensive energy
of that significant appellation. I am not called upon
to enlarge to you on that danger, which you thought
proper yourselves to aggravate, and to display to the
world with all the parade of indiscreet declamation.
The monopoly of the most lucrative trades, and the
possession of imperial revenues, had brought you to the
verge of beggary and ruin. Such was your representation—-such, in some measure, was your case. The vent
of ten millions of this commodity, now locked up by the
operation of pounds of an injudicious tax, and rotting
in the warehouses of the company, would have prevented
all this distress, and all that series of desperate measures
which you thought yourselves obliged to take in consequence of it. America would have furnished that
vent, which no other part of the world can furnish but
America ; where tea is next to a necessary of life ;
and where the demand grows upon the supply. I hope
our dear-bought East India committees have done us
at least so much good, as to let us know, that, without
a more extensive sale of that article, our East India
revenues and acquisitions can have no certain connexion
with this country. It is through the American trade
of tea that your East India conquests are to be prevented from crushing you with their burden. They are
ponderous indeed ; and they must have that great
country to lean upon, or they tumble upon your head.
It is the same folly that has lost you at once the benefit
of the west and of the east. This folly has thrown open
folding-doors to contraband ; and will be the means of
giving the profits of the trade of your colonies to every
nation but yourselves. Never did a people suffer so
much for the empty words of a preamble. It must be
given up. For on what principle does it stand ? This
famous revenue stands, at this hour, on all the debate,
as a description of revenue not as yet known in all the
comprehensive (but too comprehensive) vocabulary of
finance—a ftreambulary tax. It is indeed a tax of soph-

SELECTIONS.
67
istry, a tax of pedantry, a tax of disputation, a tax of
war and rebellion, a tax for anything but benefit to the
imposers, or satisfaction to the subject.
Well ! but whatever it is, gentlemen will force the
colonists to take the teas. You will force them ? Has
seven years' struggle been yet able to force them ?
Oh, but it seems ' we are in the right.—The tax is trifling
—in effect it is rather an exoneration than an imposition ; three-fourths of the duty formerly payable on
teas exported to America is taken off ; the place of
collection is only shifted ; instead of the retention of
a shilling from the drawback here, it is three-pence
custom paid in America/ All this, sir, is very true.
But this is the very folly and mischief of the act. Incredible as it may seem, you know that you have deliberately thrown away a large duty which you held
secure and quiet in your hands, for the vain hope of
getting one three-fourths less, through every hazard,
through certain litigation, and possibly through war.
The manner of proceeding in the duties on paper and
glass, imposed by the same act, was exactly in the
same spirit. There are heavy excises on those articles
when used in England. On export, these excises are
drawn back. But instead of withholding the drawback,
which might have been done with ease, without charge,
without possibility of smuggling ; and instead of applying the money (money already in your hands) according
to your pleasure, you began your operations in finance
by flinging away your revenue ; you allowed the whole
drawback on export, and then you charged the duty
(which you had before discharged) payable in the colonies ;
where it was certain the collection would devour it to
the bone ; if any revenue were ever suffered to be collected at all. One spirit pervades and animates the
whole mass.
Could anything be a subject of more just alarm to
America, than to see you go out of the plain high road
of finance and give up your most certain revenues and
yc;mr clearest interest, merely for the sake of insulting

68
EDMUND BURKE.
your colonies ? No man ever doubted that the commodity
of tea could bear an imposition of three-pence. But
no commodity will bear three-pence, or will bear à
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. It is the weight of that preamble,
of which you are so fond, and not the weight of the
duty, that the Americans are unable and unwilling to
bear.
It is then, sir, upon the principle of this measure,
and nothing else, that we are at issue. It is a principle
of political expediency. Your act of 1767 asserts that
it is expedient to raise a revenue in America ; your act
of 1769, which takes away that revenue, contradicts
the act of 1767 ; and, by something much stronger
than words, asserts that it is not expedient. It is a
reflection upon your wisdom to persist in a solemn
parliamentary declaration of the expediency of any
object, for which, at the same time, you make no sort
of provision. And pray, sir, let not this circumstance
escape you ; it is very material ; that the preamble of
this act, which we wish to repeal, is not declaratory of
rightx as some gentlemen seem to argue it ; it is only
a recital of the expediency of a certain exercise of a
right supposed already to have been asserted ; an exercise you are now contending for by ways and means,
which you confess, though they were obeyed, to be
utterly insufficient for their purpose. You are therefore at this moment in the awkward situation of fighting for a phantom ; a quiddity ; a thing that wants,
not only a substance, but even a name ; for a thing,
which is neither abstract right, nor profitable enjoyment.
They tell you, sir, that your dignity is tied to it.

SELECTIONS.
%
I know not how it happens, but this dignity of yours
is a terrible incumbrance to you ; for it has of late
been ever at war with your interest, your equity, and
every idea of your policy. Show the thing you contend
for to be reason ; show it to be common sense ; show
it to be the means of attaining some useful end ; and
then I am content to allow it what dignity you please.
But what dignity is derived from the perseverance in
absurdity, is more than I ever could discern. The
honourable gentleman has said well—indeed, in most of
his general observations I agree with him—he says,
that this subject does not stand as it did formerly.
Oh, certainly not ! Every hour you continue on this
ill-chosen ground, your difficulties thicken on you ; and
therefore my conclusion is, remove from a bad position
as quickly as you can. The disgrace, and the necessity
of yielding, both of them, grow upon you every hour of
your delay.
But will you repeal the act, says the honourable
gentleman, at this instant when America is in open
resistance to your authority, and that you have just
revived your system of taxation ? He thinks he has
driven, us into a corner. But thus pent up, I am content to meet him ; because I enter the lists supported
by my old authority, his new friends, the ministers
themselves. The honourable gentleman remembers, that
about five years ago as great disturbances as the present
prevailed in, America on account of the new taxes. The
ministers represented these disturbances as treasonable ;
and this House thought proper, on that representation,
to make a famous address for a revival, and for a new
application of a statute of Henry VIII. We besought
the king, in that well-considered address, to inquire into
treasons, and to bring the supposed traitors from America
to Great Britain for trial. His majesty was pleased
graciously to promise a compliance with our request.
All the attempts from this side of the House to resist
these violences, and to bring about a repeal, were treated
with the utmost scorn. An apprehension of the very

70
EDMUND BURKE.
consequences now stated by the honourable gentleman,
was then given as a reason for shutting the door against
all hope of such an alteration. And so strong was the
spirit for supporting the new taxes that the session concluded with the following remarkable declaration. After
stating the vigorous measures which had been pursued,
the speech from the throne proceeds :
You have assured me of your firm support in the prosecution of them. Nothing, in my opinion, could be more
likely to enable the well-disposed among my subjects in
that part of the world, effectually to discourage and defeat
the designs of the factious and seditious, than the hearty
concurrence of every branch of the legislature, in maintaining the execution of the laws in every part of my
dominions.
After this, no man dreamt that a repeal under this
ministry could possibly take place. The honourable
gentleman knows as well as I, that the idea was utterly
exploded by those who sway the House. This speech
was made on the ninth day of May, 1769. Five days
after this speech, that is, on the thirteenth of the same
month, the public circular letter, a part of which I am
going to read to you, was written by Lord Hillsborough,
secretary of state for the colonies. After reciting the
substance of the king's speech, he goes on thus :
' / can take upon me to assure you, notwithstanding
insinuations to the contrary, from men with factious and
seditious views, that his majesty's present administration have at no time entertained a design to propose
to parliament to lay any further taxes upon America,
for the purpose of RAISING A REVENUE ; and that
it is at present theif intention to propose, the next session
of parliament, to take off the duties upon glass, paper,
and colours, upon consideration of such duties having
been laid contrary to the true principles of commerce.
' These have always been, and still are, the sentiments
of his majesty's present servants ; and by which their
conduct in respect to America has been governed. And
his majesty relies upon your prudence and fidelity for

SELECTIONS.
71
such an explanation of his measures, as may tend to remove
the prejudices which have been excited by the misrepresentations of those who are enemies to the peace and prosperity
of Great Britain and her colonies ; and to re-establish
that mutual confidence and affection, upon which the
glory and safety of the British empire depend'
Here, sir, is a canonical book of ministerial scripture ;
the general epistle to the Americans. What does the
gentleman say to it ? Here a repeal is promised ; promised without condition ; and while your authority was
actually resisted. I pass by the public promise of a
peer relative to the repeal of taxes by this House. I
pass by the use of the king's name in a matter of supply,
that sacred and reserved right of the Commons. I conceal the ridiculous figure of parliament, hurling its
thunders at the gigantic rebellion of America ; and then
five days after, prostrate at the feet of those assemblies
we affected to despise ; begging them, by the intervention of our ministerial sureties, to receive our submission, and heartily promising amendment. These
might have been serious matters formerly ; but we are
grown wiser than our fathers. Passing, therefore, from
the constitutional consideration to the mere policy, does
not this letter imply that the idea of taxing America
for the purpose of revenue is an abominable project ;
when the ministry suppose that none but factious men,
and with seditious views, could charge them with it ?
does not this letter adopt and sanctify the American
distinction of taxing for a revenue ? does it not formally
reject all future taxation on that principle ? does it
not state the ministerial rejection of such principle of
taxation, not as the occasional, but the constant opinion
of the king's servants ? does it not say (I care not how
consistently), but does it not say, that their conduct
with regard to America has been always governed by
this policy ? It goes a great deal further. These excellent and trusty servants of the king, justly fearful
lest they themselves should have lost all credit with the
world, bring out the image of their gracious sovereign

72

EDMUND BURKE.
from the inmost and most sacred shrine, and they pawn
him as a security for their promises.—' His majesty relies
on your prudence and fidelity for such an explanation
of his measures/ These sentiments of the minister, and
these measures of his majesty, can only relate to the
principle and practice of taxing for a revenue ; and
accordingly Lord Botetourt, stating it as such, did, with
great propriety, and in the exact spirit of his instructions, endeavour to remove the fears of the Virginian
assembly, lest the sentiments which it seems (unknown
to the world) had always been those of the ministers,
and by which their conduct in respect to America had
been governed, should by some possible revolution, favourable to wicked American taxes, be hereafter counteracted. He addresses them in this manner :
It may possibly be objected, that as his majesty s present
administration are not immortal, their successors may be
inclined to attempt to undo what the present ministers shall
have attempted to perform ; and to that objection I can
give but this answer ; that it is my firm opinion, that
the plan I have stated to you will certainly take place,
and that it will never be departed from ;• and so determined
am I for ever to abide by it, that I will be content to be
declared infamous, if I do not, to the last hour of my life,
at all times, in all places, and upon all occasions, exert
every power with which I either am, or ever shall be legally
invested, in order to obtain and maintain for the continent
of America that satisfaction which I have been authorised
to promise this day, by the confidential servants of our
gracious sovereign, who to my certain knowledge rates his
honour so high, that he would rather part with his crown,
than, preserve it by deceit.*
* A material point is omitted by Mr. Burke in this speech, viz., the
manner in which the continent received this royal assurance. The assembly of Virginia, in their address in answer to Lord Botetourt's
speech, express themselves thus : ' We will not suffer our present
hopes, arising from the pleasing prospect your lordship hath so kindly
opened and displayed to us, to be dashed by the bitter reflection that
any future administration will entertain a wish to depart from that
plan^ which affords the surest and most permanent foundation of
public tranquillity and happiness. No, my lord, we are sure our most

SELECTION^.
73
A glorious and true character ! which (since we suffer
his ministers with impunity to answer for his ideas of
taxation) we ought to make it our business to enable his
majesty to preserve in all its lustre. Let him have
character, since ours is no more ! Let some part of
government be kept in respect !
This epistle was not the letter of Lord Hillsborough
solely ; though he held the official pen. It was the
letter of the noble lord upon the floor,* and of all the
king's then ministers, who (with I think the exception
of two only) are his ministers at this hour. The very
first news that a British government heard of what it
was to do with the duties which it had given and granted
to the king was by the publication of the votes of American assemblies. It was in America that your resolutions were pre-declared. It was from thence that we
knew to a certainty, how much exactly, and not a scruple
more or less, we Were to repeal. We were unworthy to
be let into the secret of our own conduct. The assemblies
had confidential communication from his majesty's confidential servants. We were nothing but instruments.
Do you, after this, wonder, that you have no weight
and no respect in the colonies ? After this, are you
surprised, that parliament is every day and everywhere
losing (I feel it with sorrow, I utter it with reluctance)
that reverential affection, which so endearing a name
of authority ought ever to carry with it ; that you are
obeyed solely from respect to the bayonet ; and that
this House, the ground and pillar of freedom, is itself
held up only by the treacherous under-pinning and
clumsy buttresses of arbitrary power ?
If this dignity, which is to stand in the place of just
policy and common sense, had been consulted, there
was a time for preserving it and for reconciling it with
gracious sovereign, under whatever changes may happen in his confidential servants, will remain immutable in the ways of truth and
justice, and that he is incapable of deceiving his faithful subjects ; and
we esteem your lordship's information not only as warranted, but even
sanctified by the royal word.''
* Lord North.

74
EDMUND BURKE.
any concession. If in the session of 1768, that session
of idle terror and empty menaces, you had, as you were
often pressed to do, repealed these taxes ; then your
strong operations would have come justified and enforced,
in case your concessions had been returned by outrages.
But, preposterously, you began with violence ; and
before terrors could have any effect, either good or bad,
your ministers immediately begged pardon, and promised
that repeal to the obstinate Americans, which they had
refused in an easy, good-natured, complying British
parliament. The assemblies, which had been publicly
and avowedly dissolved for their contumacy, are called
together to receive your submission. Your ministerial
directors blustered like tragic tyrants here ; and then
went mumping with a sore leg in America, canting and
whining and complaining of faction, which represented
them as friends to a revenue from the colonies. I hope
nobody in this House will hereafter have the impudence
to defend American taxes in the name of ministry. The
moment they do, with this letter of attorney in my
hand, I will tell them, in the authorized terms, they are
wretches, ' with factious and seditious views ; enemies
to the peace and prosperity of the mother country and
the colonies/ and subverters ' of the mutual affection
and confidence on which the glory and safety of the
British empire depend/
After this letter, the question is no more on propriety
or dignity. They are gone already. The faith of your
sovereign is pledged for the political principle. The
general declaration in the letter goes to the whole of it.
You must therefore either abandon the scheme of taxing ; or you must send the ministers tarred and feathered
to America, who dared to hold out the royal faith for a
renunciation for all taxes for revenue. Them you must
punish, or this faith you must preserve. The preservation of this faith is of more consequence than the duties
on red lead, or white lead, or on broken glass, or atlasordinary, or demy-fine, or blue-royal, or bastard, or foolscap, which you have given up ; or the three-pence on

SELECTIONS.
75
tea which you retained. The letter went stamped with
the public authority of this kingdom. The instructions
for the colony government go under no other sanction ;
and America cannot believe, and will not obey you, if
you do not preserve this channel of communication
sacred. You are now punishing the colonies for acting
on distinctions, held out by that very ministry which
is here shining in riches, in favour, and in power ; and
urging the punishment of the very offence to which they
had themselves been the tempters.
Sir, if reasons respecting simply your own commerce,
which is your own convenience, were the sole ground
of the repeal of the five duties ; why does Lord Hillsborough, in disclaiming in the name of the king and
ministry their ever having had an intent to tax for
revenue, mention it as the means ' of re-establishing the
confidence and affection of the colonies ? ' Is it a way
of soothing others, to assure them that you will take
good care of yourself ? The medium, the only medium,
for regaining their affection and confidence, is, that you
will take off something oppressive to their minds. Sir,
the letter strongly enforces that idea : for though the
repeal of the taxes is promised on commercial principles,
yet the means of counteracting ' the insinuations of men
with factious and seditious views/ is, by a disclaimer
of the intention of taxing for revenue, as a constant
invariable sentiment and rule of conduct in the government of America.
I remember that the noble lord on the floor, not in
a former debate to be sure (it would be disorderly to
refer to it, I suppose I read it somewhere), but the
noble lord was pleased to say, that he did not conceive
how it could enter into the head of man to impose such
taxes as those of 1767 ; I mean those taxes which he
voted for imposing, and voted for repealing ; as being
taxes contrary to all the principles of commerce, laid
on British manufactures.
I dare say the noble lord is perfectly well read, because
the duty of his particular office requires he should be

76
EDMUND BURKE.
so, in all our revenue laws ; and in the policy which
is to be collected out of them. Now, sir, when he had
read this act of American revenue, and a little recovered
from his astonishment, I suppose he made one step
retrograde (it is but one) and looked at the act which
stands just before in the statute-book. The American
revenue act is the forty-fifth chapter ; the other to
which I refer is the forty-fourth of the same session.
These two acts are both to the same purpose ; both
revenue acts ; both taxing out of the kingdom ; and
both taxing English manufactures exported. As the
forty-fifth is an act for raising a revenue in America,
the forty-fourth is an act for raising a revenue in the
Isle of Man. The two acts perfectly agree in all respects,
except one. In the act for taxing the Isle of Man, the
noble lord will find (not, as in the American act, four or
ûve articles) but almost the whole body of British manufactures, taxed from two and a half to fifteen per cent.,
and some articles, such as that of spirits, a great deal
higher. You did not think it uncommercial to tax the
whole mass of your manufactures, and, let me add, your
agriculture too ; for, I now recollect, British corn is
there also taxed up to ten per cent., and this too in the
very headquarters, the very citadel of smuggling, the
Isle of Man. Now will the noble lord condescend to
tell me why he repealed the taxes on your manufactures
sent out to America, and not the taxes on the manufactures exported to the Isle of Man ? The principle
was exactly the same, the objects charged infinitely more
extensive, the duties, without comparison, higher. Why ?
Why, notwithstanding all his childish pretexts, because
the taxes were quietly submitted to in the Isle of Man ;
and because they raised a flame in America. Your
reasons were political, not commercial. The repeal was
made, as Lord Hillsborough's letter well expresses it,
to regain ' the confidence and affection of the colonies,
on which the glory and safety of the British Empire depend/ A wise and just motive surely, if ever there was
such. But the mischief and dishonour is that you have

SELECTIONS.
77
not done what you had given the colonies just cause
to expect, when your ministers disclaimed the idea of
taxes for a revenue. There is nothing simple, nothing
manly, nothing ingenuous, open, decisive, or steady, in
the proceeding, with regard either to the continuance
or the repeal of the taxes. The whole has an air of
littleness and fraud. The article of tea is slurred over
in the circular letter, as it were by accident—nothing
is said of a resolution either to keep that tax, or to
give it up. There is no fair dealing in any part of the
transaction.
If you mean to follow your true motive and your
public faith, give up your tax on tea for raising a
revenue, the principle of which has, in effect, been
disclaimed in your name ; and which produces you
no advantage ; no, not a penny. Or, if you choose
to go on with a poor pretence instead of a solid reason,
and will still adhere to your cant of commerce, you
have ten thousand times more strong commercial reasons
for giving Up this duty on tea, than for abandoning the
five others that you have already renounced.
The American consumption of teas is annually,
I believe, worth £300,000 at the least farthing. If
you urge the American violence as a justification of
your perseverance in enforcing this tax, you know that
you can, never answer this plain question—Why did
you repeal the others given in the same act, whilst the
very same violence subsisted ?—But you did not find
the violence cease upon that concession.—No ! because
the concession was far short of satisfying the principle
which Lord Hillsborough had abjured ! or even the
pretence on which the repeal of the other taxes was
announced ; and because, by enabling the East India
Company to open a shop for defeating the American
resolution not to pay that specific tax, you manifestly
showed a hankering after the principle of the act which
you formerly had renounced. Whatever road you take
leads to a compliance with this motion. It opens to
you at the end of every vista. Your commerce, your

EDMUND BURKE.
78
policy, your promises, your reasons, your pretences,
your consistency, your inconsistency—all jointly oblige
you to this repeal.
But still it sticks in our throats, if we go so far, the
Americans will go farther,—We do not know that. We
ought, from experience, rather to presume the contrary.
Do we not know for certain that the Americans are
going on as fast as possible, whilst we refuse to gratify
them ? Can they do more, or can they do worse, if we
yield this point ? I think this concession will rather fix
a turnpike to prevent a further progress. It is impossible to answer for bodies of men. But I am sure the
natural effect of fidelity, clemency, kindness in governors is peace, good-will, order, and esteem, on the part
of the governed. I would certainly, at least, give these
fair principles a fair trial ; which, since the making of
this act to this hour, they never have had.
Sir, the honourable gentleman having spoken what
he thought necessary upon the narrow part of the
subject, I have given him, I hope, a satisfactory
answer. He next presses me by a variety of direct
challenges and oblique reflections to say something on
the historical part. I shall, therefore, sir, open myself
fully on that important and delicate subject ; not for
the sake of telling you a long story (which, I know,
Mr. Speaker, you are not particularly fond of), but for
the sake of the weighty instruction that, I flatter myself,
will necessarily result from it. It shall not be longer,
if I can help it, than so serious a matter requires.
Permit me then, sir, to lead your attention very far
back ; back to the act of navigation ; the corner-stone
of the policy of this country with regard to its colonies.
Sir, that policy was, from the beginning, purely commercial and the commercial was wholly restrictive.
It was the system of a monopoly, No trade was
let loose from that restraint, but merely to enable
the colonists to dispose of what, in the course of your
trade, you could not take ; or to enable them to dispose
of such articles as we forced upon them, and for which,

SELECTIONS.
79
without some degree of liberty, they could not pay.
Hence all your specific and detailed enumerations :
hence the innumerable checks and counterchecks :
hence that infinite variety of paper chains by which
you bind together this complicated system of the
colonies. This principle of commercial monopoly runs
through no less than twenty-nine acts of parliament,
from the year 1660 to the unfortunate period of 1764.
In all those acts the system of commerce is established, as that, from whence alone you proposed to
make the colonies contribute (I mean directly and by
the operation of your superintending legislative power)
to the strength of the empire. I venture to say, that
during that whole period a parliamentary revenue from
thence was never once in contemplation. Accordingly,
in all the number of laws passed with regard to the
plantations, the words which distinguish revenue
laws, specifically as such, were, I think, premeditately
avoided. I do not say, sir, that a form of words alters
the nature of the law, or abridges the power of the lawgiver. It certainly does not. However, titles and formal preambles are not always idle words ; and the
lawyers frequently argue from them. I state these
facts to show, not what was your right, but what has
been your settled policy. Our revenue laws have
usually a title, purporting their being grants ; and the
words give and grant usually precede the enacting parts.
Although duties were imposed on America in acts of
King Charles II, and in acts of King William, no one of
title of giving ' an aid to his majesty,' or any other of
the usual titles to revenue acts, was to be found in
any of them till 1764 ; nor were the words ' give and
grant J in any preamble until the sixth of George II.
However the title of this act of George II, notwithstanding the words of donation, considers it merely as a
regulation of trade, 'An Act for the better securing
of the trade of his majesty's sugar colonies in America.'
This act was made on a compromise of all, and at the
express desire of a part, of the colonies themselves.

EDMUND BURKE.
8o
It was therefore in some measure with their consent :
and having a title directly purporting only a commercial
regulation, and being in truth nothing more, the words
were passed by, at a time when no jealousy was
entertained, and things were little scrutinized. Even
Governor Bernard, in his second printed letter, dated
in 1763, gives it as his opinion, that ' it was an act of
prohibition} not of revenue/ This is certainly true,
that no act avowedly for the purpose of revenue, and
with the ordinary title and recital taken together, is
found in the statute book until the year I have mentioned ; that is the year 1764. All before this period
stood on commercial regulation and restraint. The
scheme of a colony revenue by British authority appeared therefore to the Americans in the light of
a great innovation ; the words of Governor Bernard's
ninth letter, written in November, 1765, state this idea
very strongly : ' It must/ says he, * have been supposed, such an innovation as a parliamentary taxation
Would cause a great alarm, and meet with much opposition in most parts of America ; it was quite new
to the people, and had no visible bounds set to it/
After stating the weakness of government there, he
says, ' Was this a time to introduce so great a novelty
as a parliamentary inland taxation in America ? '
Whatever the right might have been, this mode of
using it was absolutely new in policy and practice.
Sir, they who are friends to the schemes of American
revenue say, that the commercial restraint is full as
hard a law for America to live under. I think so too.
I think it, if uncompensated, to be a condition of as
rigorous servitude as men can be subject to. Bat
America bore it from the fundamental act of navigation until 1764.—Why ? because men do bear the
inevitable constitution of their original nature with
all its infirmities. The act of navigation attended
the colonies from their infancy, grew with their growth,
and strengthened with their strength, They were confirmed in obedience to it, even more by usage than by

SELECTIONS.
•8ï
law. They scarcely had remembered a time when
they were not subject to such restraint. Besides, they
were indemnified for it by a pecuniary compensation.
Their monopolist happened to be one of the richest men
in the world. By his immense capital (primarily
employed, not for their benefit, but his own) they were
enabled to proceed with their fisheries, their agriculture,
their shipbuilding (and their trade too within the
limits), in such a manner as got far the start of the
slow, languid operations of unassisted nature. This
capital was a hot-bed to them. 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 mu-Ji sent as thrown
out, on the bleak and barren shore of a desolate wilderness, three thousand miles from all .civilized intercourse.
All this was done by England, whilst England pursued trade, and forgot revenue. You not only acquired
commerce, but you actually created the very objects
of trade in America ; and by that creation you raised
the trade of this kingdom at least fourfold. America
had the compensation of your capital, which made
her bear her servitude. She had another compensation,
which you are now going to take away from her. She
had, except the commercial restraint, every characteristic mark of a free people in all her internal concerns. She had the image of the British constitution.
She had the substance. She was taxed by her own
representatives. She chose most of her own magistrates. She paid them all. She had in effect the sole
disposal of her own internal government. This whole
state of commercial servitude and civil liberty, taken
together, is certainly not perfect freedom ; but com-

82

EDMUND BURKE.
paring it with the ordinary circumstances of h aman
nature, it was a happy and a liberal condition.
I know, sir, that great and not unsuccessful pains
have been taken to inflame our minds by an outcry, in
this House, and out of it, that in America the act of
navigation neither is, or never was, obeyed. But if
you take the colonies through, I affirm, that its authority never was disputed ; that it was nowhere disputed
for any length of time ; and, on the whole, that it was
well observed. Wherever the act pressed hard, many
individuals indeed evaded it. This is nothing. These
scattered individuals never denied the law, and never
obeyed it. Just as it happens whenever the laws of
trade, whenever the laws of revenue, press hard upon
the people of England ; in that case all your shores
are full of contraband. Your right to give a monopoly
to the East India Company, your right to lay immense
duties on French brandy, are not disputed in England.
You do not make this charge on any man. But you
know that there is not a creek from Pentland Frith to
the Isle of Wight, in which they do not smuggle immense
quantities of teas, East India goods, and brandies.
I take it for granted, that the authority of Governor
Bernard in this point is indisputable. Speaking of
these laws as they regarded that part of America now
in so unhappy a condition, he says, ' I believe they
are nowhere better supported than in this province ;
I do not pretend that it is entirely free from a breach
of these laws ; but that such a breach, if discovered, is
justly punished/ What more can you say of the
obedience to any laws in any country ? An obedience
to these laws formed the acknowledgment, instituted
by yourselves, for your superiority ; and was the payment you originally imposed for your protection.
Whether you were right or wrong in establishing the
colonies on the principles of commercial monopoly,
rather than on that of revenue, is at this day a problem
of mere speculation. You cannot have both by the
same authority. To join together the restraints of

SELECTIONS.
83
an universal internal and external monopoly, with an
universal internal and external taxation, is an unnatural union ; perfect, uncompensated slavery. You
have long since decided for yourself and them ; and you
and they have prospered exceedingly under that decision.
This nation, sir, never thought of departing from
that choice until the period immediately on the close
of the last war. Then a scheme of government new
in many things seemed to have been adopted. I saw,
or thought I saw, several symptoms of a great change,
whilst I sat in your gallery, a good while before I had
the honour of a seat in this House. At that period the
necessity was established of keeping up no less than
twenty new regiments, with twenty colonels capable of
seats in this house. This scheme was adopted with
very general applause from all sides, at the very time
that, by your conquests in America, your danger from
foreign attempts in that part of the world was much
lessened, or indeed rather quite over. When this huge
increase of military establishment was resolved on,
a revenue was to be found to support so great a burden.
Country gentlemen, the great patrons of economy, and
the great resisters of a standing armed force, would not
have entered with much alacrity into ' the vote for so
large and so expensive an army, if they had been very
sure that they were to continue to pay for it. But
hopes of another kind were held out to them ; and in
particular, I well remember, that Mr. Townshend, in
a brilliant harangue on this subject, did dazzle them
by playing before their eyes the image of a revenue to
be raised in America.
Here began to dawn the first glimmerings of this new
colony system. It appeared more distinctly afterwards,
when it was devolved upon a person to whom, on other
accounts, this country owes very great obligations. 1
do believe that he had a very serious desire to benefit
the public. But with no small study of the detail, he
did not seem to have his view, at least equally, carried
to the total circuit of our affairs. He generally con-

§4
EDMUND BURKE,
sidered his objects in lights that were rather too detached.
Whether the business of an American revenue was
imposed upon him altogether ; whether it was entirely
the result of his own speculation ; or, what is more probable, that his own ideas rather coincided with the
instructions he had received ; certain it is, that with the
best intentions in the world, he first brought this fatal
scheme into form, and established it by act of parliament.
No man can believe that at this time of day I mean
to lean on the venerable memory of a great man, whose
loss we deplore in common. Our little party differences have been long ago composed ; and I have acted
more with him, and certainly with more pleasure with
him, than ever I acted against him. Undoubtedly
Mr. Grenville was a first-rate figure in this country.
With a masculine understanding, and a stout and
resolute heart, he had an application undissipated and
unwearied. He took public business not as a duty
which he was to fulfil, but as a pleasure he was to enjoy ;
and he seemed to have no delight out of this House,
except in such things as some way related to the business
that was to be done within it. If he was ambitious, I
will say this for him, his ambition was of a noble and
generous strain. It was to raise himself, not by the low,
pimping politics of a court, but to win his way to power,
through the laborious gradations of public service ;
and to secure 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 groundwork 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

SELECTIONS.
85
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 far more
extensive comprehension of things is requisite, than ever
office gave, or than office can ever give. Mr. Grenville
thought better of the wisdom and power of human
legislation than in truth it deserves. He conceived, and
many conceived along with him, that the flourishing
trade of this country was greatly owing to law and institution, and not quite so much to liberty ; for but too
many are apt to believe regulation to be commerce, and
taxes to be revenue. Among regulations, that which
stood first in reputation was his idol. 1 mean the act of
navigation. He has often professed it to be so. The
policy of that act is, I readily admit, in many respects
well understood. But I do say that, if the act be suffered
to run the full length of its principle, and is not changed
and modified according to the change of times and the
fluctuation of circumstances, it must do great mischief,
and frequently even defeat its own purpose.
After the war, and in the last years of it, the trade of
America had increased far beyond the speculations of
the most sanguine imaginations. It swelled out on

86
EDMUND BURKE.
every side. It filled all its proper channels to the brim.
It overflowed with a rich redundance and, breaking its
banks on the right and on the left, it spread out upon
some places, where it was indeed improper, upon others
where it was only irregular. It is the nature of all
greatness not to be exact, and great trade will always
be attended with considerable abuses. The contraband
will always keep pace in some measure with the fair
trade. It should stand as a fundamental maxim, that
no vulgar precaution ought to be employed in the cure
of evils, which are closely connected with the cause of
our prosperity. Perhaps this great person turned his
eyes somewhat less than was just, towards the incredible
increase of the fair trade ; and looked with something
of too exquisite a jealousy towards the contraband.
He certainly felt a singular degree of anxiety on the
subject ; and even began to act from that passion
earlier than is commonly imagined. For whilst he
was first lord of the admiralty, though not strictly
called upon in his official line, he presented a very strong
memorial to the lords of the treasury (my Lord Bute
was then at the head of the board) heavily complaining
of the growth of the illicit commerce in America. Some
mischief happened even at that time from this overearnest zeal. Much greater happened afterwards, when
it operated with greater power in the highest department of the finances. The bonds of the act of navigation were straitened so much, that America was on the
point of having no trade, either contraband or legitimate. They found, under the construction and execution then used, the act no longer tying but actually
strangling them. All this coming with new enumerations
of commodities ; with regulations which in a manner
put a stop to the mutual coasting intercourse of the
colonies ; with the appointment of courts of admiralty
under various improper circumstances ; with a sudden
extinction of the paper currencies ; with a compulsory
provision for the quartering of soldiers ; the people of
America thought themselves proceeded against as

SELECTIONS.
87
delinquents, or, at best, as people under suspicion of
delinquency ; and in such a manner, as they imagined,
their recent services in the war did not at all merit.
Any of these innumerable regulations, perhaps, would
not have alarmed alone ; some might be thought reasonable ; the multitude struck them with terror.
But the grand manoeuvre in that business of new
regulating the colonies, was the 15th act of the fourth
of George III ; which, besides containing several of
the matters to which I have just alluded, opened a new
principle : and here properly began the second period
of the policy of this country with regard to the colonies ;
by which the scheme of a regular plantation parliamentary revenue was adopted in theory, and settled
in practice. A revenue not substituted in the place
of, but superadded to, a monopoly : which monopoly
was enforced at the same time with additional strictness,
and the execution put into military hands.
This act, sir, had for the first time the title of ' granting duties in the colonies and plantations of America ' ;
and for the first time it was asserted in the preamble,
' that it was just and necessary that a revenue should
be raised there/ Then came the technical words of
' giving and granting/ and thus a complete American
revenue act was made in all the forms, and with a full
avowal of the right, equity, policy, and even necessity
of taxing the colonies, without any formal consent of
theirs. There are contained also in the preamble to
that act these very remarkable words—the commons,
&c,—' being desirous to make some provision in the
present session of parliament towards raising the said
revenue/ By these words it appeared to the colonies
that this act was but a beginning of sorrows ; that
every session was to produce something of the same kind ;
that we were to go on, from day to day, in charging
them with such taxes as we pleased, for such a military
force as we should think proper. Had this plan been
pursued, it was evident that the provincial assemblies,
in which the Americans felt all their portion of im-

EDMUND BURKE.
88
portance and beheld their sole image of freedom, were
ipso facto annihilated. This ill prospect before them
seemed to be boundless in extent, and endless in duration. Sir, they were not mistaken. The ministry
valued themselves when this act passed, and when
they gave notice of the Stamp Act, that both of the
duties came very short of their ideas of American taxation. Great was the applause of this measure here.
In England we cried out for new taxes on America,
whilst they cried out that they were nearly crushed
with those which the war and their own grants had
brought upon them.
Sir, it has been said in the debate that, when the first
American revenue act (the act in 1764, imposing the
port-duties, passed, the Americans did not object to the
principle. It is true they touched it but very tenderly.
It was not a direct attack. They were, it is true, as
yet novices ; as yet unaccustomed to direct attacks
upon any of the rights of parliament. The duties were
port-duties, like those they had been accustomed to
bear ; with this difference, that the title was not the
same, the preamble not the same, and the spirit altogether unlike. But of what service is this observation
to the cause of those that make it ? It is a full refutation of the pretence for their present cruelty to America ;
for it shows, out of their own mouths, that our colonies
were backward to enter into the present vexatious and
ruinous controversy.
There is also another circulation abroad (spread with
a malignant intention, which I cannot attribute to
those who say the same thing in this House), that
Mr. Grenville gave the colony agents an option for
their assemblies to tax themselves, which they had
refused. I find that much stress is laid on this, as
a fact. However, it happens neither to be true nor
possible. I will observe first, that Mr. Grenville never
thought fit to make this apology for himself in the
innumerable debates that were had upon the subject.
He might have proposed to the colony agents, that

SELECTIONS.
89
they should agree in some mode of taxation as the
ground of an act of parliament. But he never could
have proposed that they should tax themselves on
requisition, which is the assertion of the day. Indeed
Mr. Grenville well knew, that the colony agents could
have no general powers to consent to it ; and they had
no time to consult their assemblies for particular powers,
before he passed his first revenue act. If you compare dates, you will find it impossible. Burdened as the
agents knew the colonies were at that time, they could
not give the least hope of such grants. His own favourite
governor was of opinion that the Americans were not
then taxable objects :
' Nor was the time less favourable to the equity of such
a taxation. I don't mean to dispute the reasonableness of
America contributing to the charges of Great Britain when
she is able ; nor, I believe, would the Americans themselves have disputed it, at a proper time and season.
But it should be considered, that the American governments themselves have, in the prosecution of the late war,
contracted very large debts ; which it will take some years
to pay off, and in the meantime occasion very burdensome taxes for that purpose only. For instance, this
government, which is as much beforehand as any, raises
every year £37,500 sterling for sinking their debt, and
must continue it for four years longer at least before it
will be clear.'
These are the words of Governor Bernard's letter to
a member of the old ministry, and which he has since
printed. Mr. Grenville could not have made this proposition to the agents, for another reason. He was of
opinion, as he has declared in this House an hundred
times, that the colonies could not legally grant any
revenue to the crown ; and that infinite mischiefs would
be the consequence of such a power. When Mr. Grenville had passed the first revenue act, and,in.the same
session had made this House come to a resolution for
laying a stamp-duty on America, between that time
and the passing the Stamp Act into a law, he told a

go
EDMUND BURKE.
considerable and most respectable merchant, a member
of this House, whom I am truly sorry I do not now see
in his place, when he represented against this proceeding,
that if the stamp-duty was disliked, he was willing
to exchange it for any other equally productive ; but
that, if he objected to the Americans being taxed by
parliament, he might save himself the trouble of the
discussion, as'he was determined on the measure. This
is the fact', and, if you please, I will mention a very unquestionable authority for it.
Thus, sir, I have disposed of this falsehood. But
falsehood has a perennial spring. It is said, that no
conjecture could be made of the dislike of the colonies
to the principle. This is as untrue as the other. After
the resolution of the House, and before the passing
of the Stamp Act, the colonies of Massachusetts Bay
and New York did send remonstrances, objecting to
this mode of parliamentary taxation. What was the
consequence ? They were suppressed ; they were put
under the table, notwithstanding an order of council
to the contrary, by the ministry which composed the
very council that had made the order : and thus the
House proceeded to its business of taxing without the
least regular knowledge of the objections which were
made to it. But to give that House its due, it was not
over-desirous to receive information, or to hear remonstrance. On the fifteenth of February, 1765, whilst
the Stamp Act was under deliberation, they refused
with scorn even so much as to receive four petitions
presented from so respectable colonies as Connecticut,
Rhode Island, Virginia, and Carolina ; besides one from
the traders of Jamaica. As to the colonies, they had
no alternative left to them, but to disobey ; or to
pay the taxes imposed by that parliament which was
not suffered, or did not surfer itself, even to hear them
remonstrate upon the subject.
This was the state of the colonies before his majesty
thought fit to change his ministers. It stands upon
no authority of mine* It is proved by uncontrover-

SELECTIONS.
91
tible records.
The honourable gentleman has
desired some of us to lay our hands upon our hearts,
and answer to his queries upon the historical part
of this consideration ; and by his manner (as well
as my eyes could discern it) he seemed to address
himself to me.
Sir, I will answer him as clearly as I am able, and
with great openness ; I have nothing to conceal. In
the year 'sixty-five, being in a very private station,
far enough from any line of business, and not having
the honour of a seat in this House, it was my fortune,
unknowing and unknown to the then ministry, by the
intervention of a common friend, to become connected
with a very noble person, and at the head of the treasury
department. It was indeed in a situation of little
rank and no consequence, suitable to the mediocrity
of my talents and pretensions. But a situation near
enough to enable me to see, as well as others, what was
going on ; and I did see in that noble person such sound
principles, such an enlargement of mind, such clear
and sagacious sense, and such unshaken fortitude,
as have bound me, as well as others much better than
me, by an inviolable attachment to him from that time
forward. Sir, Lord Rockingham very early in that
summer received a strong representation from many
weighty English merchants and manufacturers, from
governors of provinces and commanders of men-ofwar, against almost the whole of the American commercial regulations : and particularly with regard to
the total ruin which was threatened to the Spanish trade.
I believe, sir, the noble lord soon saw his way in this
business. But he did not rashly determine against
acts which it might be supposed were the result of
much deliberation. However, sir, he scarcely began
to open the ground, when the whole veteran body of
office took the alarm. A violent outcry of all (except
those who knew and felt the mischief) was raised
against any alteration. On one hand, his attempt was
a direct violation of treaties and public law ; on the

92
EDMUND BURKE.
other, the act of navigation and all the corps of trade
laws were drawn up in array against it.
The first step the noble lord took, was to have the
opinion of his excellent, learned, and ever-lamented
friend the late Mr. Yorke, then attorney-general, on the
point of law. When he knew that formally and
officially, which in substance he had known before, he
immediately dispatched orders to redress the grievance.
But I will say it for the then minister, he is of that
constitution of mind, that I know he would have issued,
on the same critical occasion, the very same orders, if
the acts of trade had been, as they were not, directly
against him ; and would have cheerfully submitted to
the equity of parliament for his indemnity.
On the conclusion of this business of the Spanish trade,
the news of the troubles, on account of the Stamp
Act, arrived in England. It was not until the end of
October that these accounts were received. No sooner
had the sound of that mighty tempest reached us in
England, than the whole of the then opposition, instead
of feeling humbled by the unhappy issue of their
measures, seemed to be infinitely elated, and cried out
that the ministry, from envy to the glory of their predecessors, were prepared to repeal the Stamp Act.
Near nine years after, the honourable gentleman takes
quite opposite ground, and now challenges me to put
my hand to my heart and say whether the ministry
had resolved on the repeal till a considerable time after
the meeting of parliament. Though I do not very
well know what the honourable gentleman wishes to
infer from the admission, or from the denial, of this fact,
on which he so earnestly adjures me ; I do put my
hand on my heart and assure him that they did not
come to a resolution directly to repeal. They weighed
this matter as its difficulty and importance required.
They considered maturely among themselves. They
consulted with all who could give advice or information. It was not determined until a little before the
meeting of parliament ; but it was determined, and

SELECTIONS.
93
the main lines of their own plan marked out, before that
meeting. Two questions arose (I hope I am not going
into a narrative troublesome to the House),
[A cry of ' Go on, go on.'J
The first of the two considerations was, whether the
repeal should be total, or whether only partial ; taking
out everything burthensome and productive, and reserving only an empty acknowledgment, such as a
stamp on cards or dice. The other question was, on
what principle the act should be repealed ? On this
head also two principles were started. One, that the
legislative rights of this country, with regard to America,
were not entire, but had certain restrictions and limitations. The other principle was, that taxes of this kind
were contrary to the fundamental principles of commerce on which the colonies were founded ; and contrary to every idea of political equity ; by which equity
we are bound, as much as possible, to extend the
spirit and benefit of the British constitution to every
part of the British dominions. The option, both of
the measure, and of the principle of repeal, was made
before the session ; and I wonder how any one can read
the king's speech at the opening of that session, without seeing in that speech both the repeal and the declaratory act very sufficiently crayoned out. Those who
cannot see this can see nothing.
Surely the honourable gentleman .will not think that
a great deal less time than was then employed ought to
have been spent in deliberation, when he considers that
the news of the troubles did not arrive till towards the
end of October. The parliament sat to fill the vacancies
on the fourteenth day of December and on business the
fourteenth of the following January.
Sir, a partial repeal, or, as the bon ton of the court
then was, a modification, would have satisfied a timid, unsystematic, procrastinating ministry, as such a measure has since done such a ministry. A modification
is the constant resource of weak, undeciding minds.
To repeal by a denial of our right to tax in the preamble

94
EDMUND BURKE.
(and this too did not want advisers), would have cut,
in the heroic st}4e, the Gordian knot with a sword.
Either measure would have cost no more than, a day's
debate. But when the total repeal was adopted ; and
adopted on principles of policy, of equity, and of commerce ; this plan made it necessary to enter into many
and difficult measures. It became necessary to open
a very large field of evidence commensurate to these
extensive views. But then this labour did knights'
service. It opened the eyes of several to the true state
of the American affairs ; it enlarged their ideas ; it
removed prejudices ; and it conciliated the opinions
and affections of men. The noble lord, who then took
the lead in administration, my honourable friend*
under me, and a right honourable gentleman f if (he
will not reject his share, and it was a large one, of this
business), exerted the most laudable industry in bringing before you the fullest, most impartial, and leastgarbled body of evidence that ever was produced to
this House. I think the inquiry lasted in the committee for six weeks ; and, at its conclusion, this House,
by an independent, noble, spirited, and unexpected
majority ; by a majority that will redeem all the acts
ever done by majorities in parliament ; in the teeth of
all the old mercenary Swiss of state, in despite of all the
speculators and augurs of political events, in defiance
of the whole embattled legion of veteran pensioners and
practised instruments of a court, gave a total repeal
to the Stamp Act, and (if it had been so permitted)
a lasting peace to this whole empire.
I state, sir, these particulars, because this act of
spirit and fortitude has lately been, in the circulation
of the season, and in some hazarded declamations in
this House, attributed to timidity. If, sir, the conduct of ministry, in proposing the repeal, had arisen
from timidity with regard to themselves, it would have
been greatly to be condemned. Interested timidity
disgraces as much in the cabinet, as personal timidity
* Mr» Dowdeswell.

f General Conway.

SELECTIONS.
95
does in the field. But timidity, with regard to the
well-being of our country, is heroic virtue. The noble
lord who then conducted affairs and his worthy colleagues, whilst they trembled at the prospect of such
distresses as you have since brought upon yourselves,
were not afraid steadily to look in the face that glaring
and dazzling influence at which the eyes of eagles have
blenched. He looked in the face one of the ablest,
and, let me say, not the most scrupulous oppositions,
that perhaps ever was in this House ; and withstood
it, unaided by even one of the usual supports of administration,.
He did this when, he repealed the
Stamp Act. He looked in, the face a person he had
long respected and regarded, and whose aid was then
particularly wanting ; I mean Lord Chatham. He did
this when he passed the Declaratory Act.
It is now given out for the usual purposes, by the
usual emissaries, that Lord Rockingham did not consent to the repeal of this act until he was bullied into
it by Lord Chatham ; and the reporters have gone so
far as publicly to assert, in a hundred companies, that
the honourable gentleman under the gallery,* who proposed the repeal in the American committee, had
another set of resolutions in his pocket directly the
reverse of those he moved. These artifices of a desperate cause are at this time spread abroad, with incredible care, in every part of the town, from the
highest to the lowest companies; as if the industry of
the circulation were to make amends for the absurdity
of the report.
Sir, whether the noble lord is of a complexion to be
bullied by Lord Chatham, or by any man, I must submit to those who know him. I confess, when I look
back to that time, I consider him as placed in one of
the most trying situations in which, perhaps, any man
ever stood, In the House of Peers there were very
few of the ministry, out of the noble lord's own particular connexion (except Lord Egmont, who acted,
* General Conway.

g6
EDMUND BURKE.
as far as I could discern, an honourable and manly part),
that did not look to some other future arrangement,
which warped his politics. There were in both Houses
new and menacing appearances, that might very
naturally drive any other, than a most resolute minister,
from his measure or from his station. The household
troops openly revolted. The allies of ministry (those,
I mean, who supported some of their measures, but
refused responsibility for any) endeavoured to undermine their credit, and to take ground that must be
fatal to the success of the very cause which they would
be thought to countenance. The question of the repeal
was brought on by ministry in the committee of this
House, in the very instant when it was known that
more than one court negotiation was carrying on with
the heads of the opposition. Everything, upon every
side, was full of traps and mines. Earth below shook ;
heaven above menaced ; all the elements of ministerial
safety were dissolved. It was in the midst of this
chaos of plots and counterplots ; it was in the midst
of this complicated warfare against public opposition
and private treachery, that the firmness of that noble
person was put to the proof. He never stirred from
his ground ; no, not an inch. He remained fixed and
determined, in principle, in measure, and in conduct.
He practised no managements. He secured no retreat.
He sought no apology.
I will likewise do justice, I ought to do it, to the
honourable gentleman who led us in this House.* Far
from the duplicity wickedly charged on him, he acted
his part with alacrity and resolution. We all felt
inspired by the example he gave us, down even to
myself, the weakest in that phalanx. I declare for
one, I knew well enough (it could not be concealed
from anybody) the true state of things ; but, in my life,
I never came with so much spirits into this House.
It was a time for a man to act in. We had powerful
enemies ; but we had faithful and determined friends ;
* General Conway.

SELECTIONS.
97
and a glorious cause. We had a great battle to fight »
but we had the means of fighting ; not as now, when
our arms are tied behind us. We did fight that day
and conquer.
I remember, sir, with a melancholy pleasure, the
situation of the honourable gentleman * who made the
motion for the repeal ; in that crisis, when the whole
trading interest of this empire, crammed into your
lobbies, with a trembling and anxious expectation,
waited, almost to a winter's return of light, their fate
from your resolutions. When, at length, you had
determined in their favour, and your doors, thrown
open, showed them the figure of their deliverer in the
well-earned triumph of his important victory, from the
whole of that grave multitude there arose an involuntary burst of gratitude and transport. They jumped
upon him like children on a long absent father. They
clung about him as captives about their redeemer. All
England, all America, joined to his applause. Nor did
he seem insensible to the best of all earthly rewards,
the love and admiration of his fellow-citizens. Hope
elevated and joy brightened his crest. I stood near him ;
and his face, to use the expression of the Scripture of the
first martyr, ' his face was as if it had been the face of an
angel/ I do not know how others feel ; but if I had
stood in that situation, I never would have exchanged
it for all that kings in their profusion could bestow. I
did hope that that day's danger and honour would have
been a bond to hold us all together for ever. But, alas !
that, with other pleasing visions, is long since vanished.
Sir, this act of supreme magnanimity has been represented, as if it had been a measure of an administration,
that having no scheme of their own, took a middle line,
pilfered a bit from one side and a bit from the other.
Sir, they took no middle lines. They differed fundamentally from the schemes of both parties ; but they
preserved the ^ objects of both. They preserved the
authority of Great Britain. They preserved the equity
* General Conway.

4

g8
EDMUND BURKE.
of Great Britain. They made the Declaratory Act ;
they repealed the Stamp Act. They did both fully ;
because the Declaratory Act was without qualification ; and the repeal of the Stamp Act total. This they
did in the situation I have described.
Now, sir, what will the adversary say to both these
acts ? If the principle of the Declaratory Act was not
good, the principle we are contending for this day is
monstrous. If the principle of the repeal was not good,
why are we not at war for a real, substantial, effective
revenue ? If both were bad, why has this ministry
incurred all the inconveniences of both and of all
schemes ? Why have they enacted, repealed, enforced,
yielded, and now attempt to enforce again ?
Sir, I think I may as well now, as at any other time,
speak to a certain matter of fact, not wholly unrelated
to the question under your consideration. We, who
would persuade you to revert to the ancient policy of
this kingdom, labour under the effect of this short
current phrase, which the court leaders have given out
to all their corps, in order to take away the credit of
those who would prevent you from that frantic war
you are going to wage upon your colonies. Their cant
is this : ' All the disturbances in America have been
created by the repeal of the Stamp Act/ I suppress
for a moment my indignation at the falsehood, baseness, and absurdity of this most audacious assertion.
Instead of remarking on the motives and character of
those who have issued it for circulation, I will clearly
lay before you the state of America, antecedently to that
repeal ; after the repeal ; and since the renewal of the
schemes of American taxation.
It is said, that the disturbances, if there were any
before the repeal, were slight ; and without difficulty
or inconvenience might have been suppressed. For an
answer to this assertion I will send you to the great
author and patron of the Stamp Act, who certainly
meaning well to the authority of this country, and fully
apprised of the state of that, made, before a repeal

SELECTIONS.
99
was so much as agitated in this House, the motion
which is on your journals ; and which, to save the
clerk the trouble of turning to it, I will now read to
you. It was for an amendment to the address of the
17th of December, 1765 :
' To express our just resentment and indignation at the
outrageous tumults and insurrections which have' been
excited and carried on in North America ; and at the
resistance given, by open and rebellious force, to the
execution of the laws in that part of his majesty's dominions. And to assure his majesty, that his faithful
commons, animated with the warmest duty and attachment to his royal person and government, will firmly and
effectually support his majesty in all such measures as
shall be necessary for preserving and supporting the legal
dependence of the colonies on the mother country, &c, &c.'
Here was certainly a disturbance preceding the
repeal ; such a disturbance as Mr, Grenville thought
necessary to qualify by the name of an insurrection, and
the epithet of a rebellious force : terms much stronger
than any by which those, who then supported his
motion, have ever since thought proper to distinguish
the subsequent disturbances in America. They were
disturbances which seemed to him and his friends to
justify as strong a promise of support, as hath been
usual to give in the beginning of a war with the most
powerful and declared enemies. When the accounts
of the American governors came before the House,
they appeared stronger even than the warmth of public
imagination had painted them ; so much stronger,
that the papers on your table bear me out in saying,
that all the late disturbances, which have been at one
time the minister's motives for the repeal of five out
of six of the new court taxes, and are now his pretences
for refusing to repeal that sixth, did not amount—why
do I compare them ?—no, not to a tenth part of the
tumults and violence which prevailed long before the
repeal of that act.
Ministry cannot refuse the authority of the com-

EDMUND BURKE.
ïoo
mander-in-chief, General Gage, who, in his letter of
the 4th of November from New York, thus represents
the state of things :—
' It is difficult to say, from the highest to the lowest,
who has not been accessory to this insurrection, either by
writing or mutual agreements to oppose the act, by what
they are pleased to term all legal opposition to it. Nothing
effectual has been proposed, either to prevent or quell the
tumult.' The rest of the provinces are in the same
situation as to a positive refusal to take the stamps ; and
threatening those who shall take them, to plunder and
murder them ; and this affair stands in all the provinces,
that unless the act, from its own nature, enforce itself,
nothing but a very considerable military force can do it J
It is remarkable, sir, that the persons who formerly
trumpeted forth the most loudly the violent resolutions of assemblies ; the universal insurrections ; the
seizing and burning the stamped papers ; the forcing
stamp officers to resign their commissions under the
gallows ; the rifling and pulling down of the houses
of magistrates ; and the expulsion from their country
of all who dared to write and speak a single word in
defence of the powers of parliament ; these very
trumpeters are now the men that represent the whole
as a mere trifle, and choose to date all the disturbances
from the repeal of the Stamp Act, which put an end to
them. Hear your officers abroad, and let them refute
this shameless falsehood, who, in all their correspondence, state the disturbances as owing to their true
causes, the discontent of the people, from the taxes. You
have this evidence in your own archives, and it will give
you complete satisfaction, if you are not so far lost to all
parliamentary ideas of information, as rather to credit
the lie of the day, than the records of your own House.
Sir, this vermin of court reporters, when they are
forced into day upon one point, are sure to burrow in
another ; but they shall have no refuge ; I will make
them bolt out of all their holes. Conscious that they
must be baffled, when they attribute a precedent dis-

SELECTIONS.
xoi
turbance to a subsequent measure, they take other
ground, almost as absurd, but very common in modern
practice, and very wicked ; which is, to attribute the
ill-effect of ill-judged conduct to the arguments which
had been used to dissuade us from it. They say, that
the opposition made in parliament to the Stamp Act at
the time of its passing, encouraged the Americans to
their resistance. This has even formally appeared in
print in a regular volume from an advocate of that
faction, a Dr. Tucker. This Dr. Tucker is already a
dean, and his earnest labours in this vineyard, will,
I suppose, raise him to a bishopric. But this assertion,
too, just like the rest, is false. In all the papers which
have loaded your table ; in all the vast crowd of verbal
witnesses that appeared at your bar, witnesses which
were indiscriminately produced from both sides of the
House ; not the least hint of such a cause of disturbance
has ever appeared. As to the fact of a strenuous opposition to the Stamp Act, I sat as a stranger in your gallery
when the act was under consideration. Far from anything inflammatory, I never heard a more languid debate
in this House. No more than two or three gentlemen, as
I remember, spoke against the act, and that with great
reserve, and remarkable temper. There was but one
division in the whole progress of the bill ; and the
minority did not reach to more than thirty-nine or
forty. In the House of Lords I do not recollect that
there was any debate or division at all. I am sure
there was no protest. In fact, the affair passed with
so very, very little noise, that in town they scarcely
knew the nature of what they were doing. The opposition to the bill in England never could have done this
mischief, because there scarcely ever was less of opposition to a bill of consequence.
Sir, the agents and distributors of falsehoods have,
with their usual industry, circulated another lie of the
same nature with the former. It is this, that the disturbances arose from the account which had been
received in America of the change in the ministry.

EDMUND BURKE.
102
No longer awed, it seems, with the spirit of the former
rulers, they thought themselves a match for what our
calumniators choose to qualify by the name of so feeble
a ministry as succeeded. Feeble in one sense these
men certainly may be called ; for, with all their efforts,
and they have made many, they have not been able
to resist the distempered vigour, and insane alacrity,
with which you are rushing to your ruin. But it does
so happen, that the falsity of this circulation is (like the
rest) demonstrated by indisputable dates and records.
So little was the change known in America, that the
letters of your governors, giving an account of these
disturbances long after they had arrived at their highest
pitch, were all directed to the old ministry, and particularly to the Earl of Halifax, the secretary of state
corresponding with the colonies, without once in the
smallest degree intimating the slightest suspicion of any
ministerial revolution whatsoever. The ministry was not
changed in England until the ioth day of July, 1765. On
the fourteenth of the preceding June, Governor Fauquier
from Virginia, writes thus ; and writes thus to the
Earl of Halifax : ' Government is set at defiance, not
having strength enough in her hands to enforce obedience
to the laws of the community. The private distress, which
every man feels, increases the general dissatisfaction at
the duties laid by the Stamp Act, which breaks out, and
shows itself upon every trifling occasion.' The general
dissatisfaction had produced some time before, that is,
on the 29th of May, several strong public resolves
against the Stamp Act ; and these resolves are assigned
by Governor Bernard as the cause of the insurrections
in Massachusetts Bay, in his letter of the 15th of
August, still addressed to the Earl of Halifax ; and he
continued to address such accounts to that minister
quite to the 7th of September of the same year. Similar accounts, and of as late a date, were sent from
other governors, and all directed to Lord Halifax. Not
one of these letters indicates the slightest idea of a
change, either known or even apprehended.

SELECTIONS.
103
Thus are blown away the insect race of courtly falsehoods! Thus perish the miserable inventions of the
wretched runners for a wretched cause, which they have
fly-blown into every weak and rotten part of the country
in vain hopes that when their maggots had taken wing
their importunate buzzing might sound something like
the public voice !
Sir, I have troubled you sufficiently with the state of
America before the repeal. Now I turn to the honourable
gentleman who so stoutly challenges us to tell whether,
after the repeal, the provinces were quiet. This is
coming home to the point. Here I meet him directly ;
and answer most readily, They were quiet. And I, in
my turn, challenge him to prove when, and where, and
by whom, and in what numbers, and with what violence,
the other laws of trade, as gentlemen assert, were
violated in consequence of your concession ? or that
even your other revenue laws were attacked ? But
I quit the vantage ground on which I stand, and where
I might leave the burden of the proof upon him : I
walk down upon the open plain, and undertake to
show that they were not only quiet, but showed many
unequivocal marks of acknowledgment and gratitude.
And to give him every advantage, I select the obnoxious
colony of Massachusetts Bay, which at this time (but
without hearing her) is so heavily a culprit before parliament ; I will select their proceedings even under
circumstances of no small irritation. For, a little
imprudently, I must say, Governor Bernard mixed in
the administration of the lenitive of the repeal no small
acrimony arising from matters of a separate nature.
Yet see, sir, the effect of that lenitive, though mixed
with these bitter ingredients ; and how this rugged
people can express themselves on a measure of concession.
' If it is not in our power ' (say they in their address
to Governor Bernard), ' in so full a manner as will he
expected, to show our respectful gratitude to the mother
country, or to make a dutiful and affectionate return to

104
EDMUND BURKE.
the indulgence of the king and parliament, it shall he no
fault of ours ; for this we intend, and hope we shall he
able fully to effect'
Would to God that this temper had been cultivated,
managed, and set in action ! Other effects than those
which we have since felt would have resulted from it.
On the requisition for compensation to those who had
suffered from the violence of the populace, in the same
address they say, ' The recommendation enjoined by
Mr. Secretary Conway's letter, and in consequence thereof
made to us, we will embrace the first convenient opportunity to consider and act upon' They did consider ;
they did act upon it. They obeyed the requisition.
I know the mode has been chicaned upon ; but it was
substantially obeyed, and much better obeyed than
I fear the parliamentary requisitior of this session will
be, though enforced by all your rigour and backed with
all your power. In a word, the damages of popular
fury were compensated by legislative gravity. Almost
every other part of America in various ways demonstrated their gratitude. I am bold to say, that so
sudden a calm recovered after so violent a storm is
without parallel in history. To say that no other disturbance should happen from any other cause, is folly.
But as far as appearances went, by the judicious
sacrifice of one law, you procured an acquiescence in
all that remained. After this experience, nobody shall
persuade me, when a whole people are concerned, that
acts of lenity are not means of conciliation.
I hope the honourable genteman has received a fair
and full answer to his question.
I have done with the third period of your policy :
that of your repeal ; and the return of your ancient
system, and your ancient tranquillity and concord.
Sir, this period was not as long as it was happy. 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

SELECTIONS.
105
this country respectable in every other on the globe.
It may be truly called,
Clarum et venerabile nomen
Gentibus, et multum nostraa 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 generally mischievous
to himself, and for that reason, among others, perhaps
fatal to this country ;—measures, the effect 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

EDMUND BURKE.
io6
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 department 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 bis 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
* Supposed to allude to the Right Honourable Lord North, and
George Cooke, Esq., who were made joint paymasters in the summer
of 1766, on the removal of the Rockingham administration.

SELECTIONS.
107
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.
This light, too, is passed and set for ever. You
understand, to be sure, that 1 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 nor 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 preconceived 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.
I beg pardon, sir, if when I speak of this and of
other great men, I appear to digress in saying something
of their characters. In this eventful history of the

io8
EDMUND BURKE.
revolutions of America, the characters of such men are
of much importance. Great men are the guide-posts
and landmarks 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.
He worshipped that goddess wheresoever she appeared ;
but he paid his particular devotions to her in her
favourite habitation, in her chosen temple, the House
of Commons. Besides the characters of the individuals
that compose our body, it is impossible, Mr. Speaker,
not to observe, that this House has a collective character of its own. That character too, however imperfect,
is not unamiable. Like all great public collections of
men, you possess a marked love of virtue, and an
abhorrence of vice. But among vices there is none,
which the House abhors in the same degree with
obstinacy. Obstinacy, sir, is certainly a great vice ;
and in the changeful state of political affairs it is
ferquently the cause of great mischief. It happens,
however, very unfortunately, that almost the whole
line of the great and masculine virtues, constancy,
gravity, magnanimity, fortitude, fidelity, and firmness,

SELECTIONS.
109
are closely allied to this disagreeable quality, of which
you have so just an abhorrence ; and, in their excess,
all these virtues very easily fall into it. He, who paid
such a punctilious attention to all your feelings certainly
took care not to shock them by that vice which is the
most disgustful to you.
That fear of displeasing those who ought most to
be pleased betrayed him sometimes into the other
extreme. He had voted, and, in the year 1765, had
been an advocate for the Stamp Act. Things and the
disposition of men's minds were changed. In short,
the Stamp Act began to be no favourite in this House.
He therefore attended at the private meeting, in which
the resolutions moved by a right honourable gentleman
were settled ; -resolutions leading to the repeal. The
next day he voted for that repeal ; and he would have
spoken for it too, if an illness (not as was then given
out, a political, but to my knowledge, a very real illness)
had not prevented it.
The very next session, as the fashion of this world
passeth away, the repeal began to be in as bad an odour
in this House as the Stamp Act had been in the session
before. To conform to the temper which began to
prevail, and to prevail mostly amongst those most in
power, he declared, very early in the winter, that
a revenue must be had out of America. Instantly he
was tied down to his engagements by some, who had
no objection to such experiments, when made at the
cost of persons for whom they had no particular
regard. The whole body of courtiers drove him
onward. They always talked as if the king stood in
a sort of humiliated state, until something of the kind
should be done.
Here this extraordinary man, then chancellor of the
exchequer, found himself in great straits. To please
universally was the object of his life ; but to tax and
to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not
given to men. However he attempted it. To render
the tax palatable to the partisans of American revenue,

EDMUND BURKE.
no
he made a preamble stating the necessity of such a
revenue. To close with the American distinction, this
revenue was external or port-duty ; but again, to soften
it to the other party, it was a duty of supply. To gratify
the colonists, it was laid on British manufactures ; to
satisfy the merchants of Britain, the duty was trivial,
and (except that on tea, which touched only the devoted
East India Company) on none of the grand objects of
commerce. To counterwork the American contraband,
the duty on tea was reduced from a shilling to threepence. But to secure the favour of those who would tax
America, the scene of collection was changed, and, with
the rest, it was levied in the colonies. What need I say
more ? This fine-spun scheme had the usual fate of all
exquisite policy. But the original plan of the duties,
and the mode of executing that plan, both arose singly
and solely from a love of our applause. He was truly the
child of the House. He never thought, did, or said
anything, but with a view to you. He every day
adapted himself to your disposition ; and adjusted
himself before it as at a looking-glass.
He had observed (indeed k could not escape him)
that several persons, infinitely his inferiors in all respects, had formerly rendered themselves considerable
in this House by one method alone. They were a race
of men (I hope in God the species is extinct) who,
when' they rose in their place, no man living could
divine, from any known adherence to parties, to
opinions, or to principles, from any order or system in
their politics, or from any sequel or connexion in their
ideas, what part they were going to take in any debate.
It is astonishing how much this uncertainty, especially
at critical times, called the attention of all parties on
such men. All eyes were fixed on them, all ears open
to hear them ; each party gaped and looked alternately
for their vote, almost to the end of their speeches. While
the House hung in this uncertainty, now the hear hims
rose from this side—now they rebellowed from the
other ; and that party, to whom they fell at length

SELECTIONS.
n i
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.
Hence arose this unfortunate act, the subject of this
day's debate ; from a disposition which, after making
an American revenue to please one, repealed it to please
others, and again revived it in hopes of pleasing a third,
and of catching something in the ideas of all.
This revenue act of 1767 formed the fourth period of
American policy. How we have fared since then—•
what woeful variety of schemes have been adopted ;
what enforcing, and what repealing ; what bullying,
and what submitting ; what doing, and undoing ; what
straining and what relaxing ; what assemblies dissolved for not obeying, and called again without obedience;
what troops sent out to quell resistance, and, on meeting
that resistance, recalled ; what shiftings, and changes,
and jumblings of all kinds of men at home, which left
no possibility of order, consistency, vigour, or even so
much as a decent unity of colour in any one public
measure. It is a tedious, irksome task. My duty may
call me to open it out some other time ; * on a former
occasion I tried your temper on a part of it ; for the
present I shall forbear.
After all these changes and agitations, your immediate
situation upon the question on your paper is at length
brought to this. You have an act of parliament, stating,
that ' it is expedient to raise a revenue in America/ By
a partial repeal you annihilated the greatest part of
that revenue, which this preamble declares to be so expedient. You have substituted no other in the place
* Resolutions in May, 1770*

EDMUND BURKE.
of it. A secretary of state has disclaimed, in the king's
name, all thoughts of such a substitution in future. The
principle of this disclaimer goes to what has been left, as
well as what has been repealed. The tax which lingers
after its companions (under a preamble declaring an
American revenue expedient, and for the sole purpose
of supporting the theory of that preamble) militates
with the assurance authentically conveyed to the colonies;
and is an exhaustless source of jealousy and animosity.
On this state, which I take to be a fair one ; not being
able to discern any grounds of honour, advantage, peace
or power, for adhering, either to the act or to the preamble, I shall vote for the question which leads to the
repeal of both.
If you do not fall in with this motion, then secure something to fight for, consistent in theory and valuable in
practice. If you must employ your strength, employ
it to uphold you in some honourable right, or some profitable wrong. If you are apprehensive that the concession
recommended to you, though proper, should be a means
of drawing on you further but unreasonable claims—
why then employ your force in supporting that reasonable
concession against those unreasonable demands. You
will employ it with more grace ; with better effect ; and
with great probable concurrence of all the quiet and
rational people in the provinces ; who are now united
with, and hurried away by the violent ; having indeed
different dispositions, but a common interest. If you
apprehend that on a concession you shall be pushed by
metaphysical process to the extreme lines, and argued
out of your whole authority, my advice is this ; when
you have recovered your old, your strong, your tenable
position, then face about—stop short—do nothing more
—reason not at all—oppose the ancient policy and practice
of the empire as ramparts against the speculations of
innovators on both sides of the question ; and you will
stand on great, manly, and sure ground. On this solid
basis fix your machines, and they will draw worlds
112

towards you.

SELECTIONS.
'"S
Your ministers, in their own and his majesty's namel
have already adopted the American distinction of interna,
and external duties. It is a distinction, whatever merit
it may have, that was originally moved by the Americans
themselves ; and I think they will acquiesce in it, if they
are not pushed with too much logic and too little sense,
in all the consequences. That is, if external taxation be
understood, as they and you understand it, when you
please, to be not a distinction of geography, but of policy ;
that it is a power for regulating trade, and not for supporting establishments. The distinction, which is as nothing
with regard to right, is of most weighty consideration in
practice. Recover your old ground, and your old tranquillity—try it—I am persuaded the Americans will compromise with you. When confidence is once restored, the
odious and suspicious summum jus will perish of course.
The spirit of practicability, of moderation, and mutual
convenience, will never call in geometrical exactness as
the arbitrator of an amicable settlement. Consult and
follow your experience. Let not the long story, with
which I have exercised your patience, prove fruitless to
your interests.
For my part, I should choose (if I could have my wish)
that the proposition of the honourable gentleman * for
the repeal could go to America without the attendance
of the penal bills. Alone I could almost answer for its
success. I cannot be certain of its reception in the bad
company it may keep. In such heterogeneous assortments, the most innocent person will lose the effect of
his innocency. Though you should send out this angel
of peace, yet you are sending out a destroying angel too ;
and what would be the effect of the conflict of these two
adverse spirits, or which would predominate in the end,
is. what I dare not say : whether the lenient measures
would cause American passion to subside, or the severe
would increase its fury—all this is in the hand of providence. Yet now, even now, I should confide in the
prevailing virtue, and efficacious operation of lenity,
* Mr. Fuller,

ii4
EDMUND BURKE.
though working in darkness, and in chaos, in the midst
of all this unnatural and turbid combination : I should
hope it might produce order and beauty in the end.
Let us, sir, embrace some system or other before we
end this session. Do you mean to tax America, and to
draw a productive revenue from thence ? If you do,
speak out ; name, fix, ascertain, this revenue ; settle
its quantity ; define its objects ; provide for its collection ; and then fight when you have something to fight
for. If you murder—rob ; if you kill, take possession ;
and do not appear in the character of madmen, as well
as assassins, violent, vindictive, bloody, and tyrannical
without an object. But may better counsels guide you I
Again, and again, revert to your old principles—seek
peace and ensue it—leave America, if she has taxable
matter in her, to tax herself. I am not here going into
the distinctions of rights, not attempting to mark their
boundaries. I do not enter into these metaphysical
distinctions ; I hate the very sound of them. Leave
the Americans as they anciently stood, and these distinctions, born of our unhappy contest, will die along with it.
They and we, and their and our ancestors, have been
happy under that system. Let the memory of all actions,
in contradiction to that good old mode, on both sides,
be extinguished for ever. Be content to bind America
by laws of trade ; you have always done it. Let this
be your reason for binding their trade. Do not burden
them by taxes ; you were not used to do so from the
beginning. Let this be your reason for not taxing.
These are the arguments of states and kingdoms. Leave
the rest to the schools ; for there only they may be
discussed with safety. But if, intemperately, unwisely,
fatally, you sophisticate and poison the very source of
government, by urging subtle deductions, and consequences odious to those who govern, from the unlimited
and illimitable nature of supreme sovereignty you will
teach them by these means to call that sovereignty itself
in question. When you drive him hard, the boar will
surely turn upon the hunters. If that sovereignty and

SELECTIONS.
115
their freedom cannot be reconciled, which will they
take ? They will cast your sovereignty in your face.
Nobody will be argued into slavery. Sir, let the gentlemen on the other side call forth all their ability ; let the
best of them get up, and tell me, what one character of
liberty the Americans have, and what one brand of
'slavery they are free from, if they are bound in their
poverty and industry, by all the restraints you can
imagine on commerce, and at the same time are made
pack-horses of every tax you choose to impose, without
the least share in granting them. When they bear the
burdens of unlimited monopoly, will you bring them to
bear the burdens of unlimited revenue too ? The
Englishman in America will feel that this is slavery—
that it is legal slavery will be no compensation, either to
his feelings or his understanding.
A noble lord,* who spoke some time ago, is full of the
fire of ingenious youth ; and when he has modelled the
ideas of a lively imagination by further experience, he
will be an ornament to his country in either House. He
has said that the Americans are our children, and how
can they revolt against their parent ? He says, that if
they are not free in their present state, England is not
free $ because Manchester, and other considerable places,
are not represented. So then, because some towns in
England are not represented, America is to have no
representative at all. 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
* Lord Carmarthen.

EDMUND BURKE.
for their glory ; and the slough of slavery, which we are
not able to work off, to serve them for their freedom ?
If this be the case, ask yourselves this question, will
they be content in such a state of slavery ? If not, look
to the consequences. Reflect how you are to govern a
people, who think they ought to be free and think they
are not. Your scheme yields no revenue ; it yields
nothing but discontent, disorder, disobedience ; and such
is the state of America, that after wading up to your eyes
in blood,' you could only end just where you begun ; that
is, to tax where no revenue is to be found, to—my voice
fails me; my inclination indeed carries me no farther
—all is confusion beyond it.
Well, sir, I have recovered a little, and before I sit
down I must say something to another point with which
gentlemen urge us. What is to become of the Declaratory
Act asserting the entireness of British legislative authority,
if we abandon the practice of taxation ?
For my part I look upon the rights stated in that act,
exactly in the manner in which I viewed them on its
very first proposition, and which I have often taken the
liberty, with great humility, to lay before you. I look,
I say, on the imperial rights of Great Britain, and the
privileges which the colonists ought to enjoy under these
rights, to be just the most reconcilable things in the
world. The parliament of Great Britain sits at the head
of her extensive empire in two capacities : one as the
local legislature of this island, providing for all things at
home, immediately, and by no other instrument than the
executive power. The other, and I think her nobler
capacity, is what I call her imperial character ; in which,
as from the throne of heaven, she superintends all the
several inferior legislatures, and guides and controls
them all, without annihilating any. As all these provincial legislatures are only co-ordinate with each other,
they ought all to be subordinate to her ; else they can
neither preserve mutual peace, nor hope for mutual
justice, nor effectually afford mutual assistance. It is
necessary to coerce the negligent, to restrain the violent,
II6

SELECTIONS.
117
and to aid the weak and deficient, by the overruling
plenitude of her power. She is never to intrude into
the place of the others, whilst they are equal to the
common ends of their institution. But in order to enable
parliament to answer all these ends of provident and
beneficent superintendence, her powers must be boundless. The gentlemen who think the powers of parliament limited, may please themselves to talk of requisitions. But suppose the requisitions are not obeyed ?
What ! Shall there be no reserved power in the empire,
to supply a deficiency which may weaken, divide, and
dissipate the whole? We are engaged on war — the
secretary of state calls upon the colonies to contributesome would do it, I think most would cheerfully furnish
whatever is demanded—one or two, suppose, hang back,
and, easing themselves, let the stress of the draft lie on
the others—surely it is proper that some authority
might legally say—' Tax yourselves for the common
supply, or parliament will do it for you/ This backwardness was, as I am told, the case of Pennsylvania for
Some short time towards the beginning of the last war,
owing to some internal dissensions in the colony. But
whether the fact were so or otherwise, the case is equally
to be provided for by a competent sovereign power.
But then this ought to be no ordinary power ; nor ever
used in the first instance. This is what I meant, when
I have said at various times, that I consider the power
of taxing in parliament as an instrument of empire, and
not as a means of supply.
Such, sir, is my idea of the constitution of the British
empire, as distinguished from the constitution of Britain ;
and on these grounds I think subordination and liberty
may be sufficiently reconciled through the whole ;
whether to serve a refining speculatist, or a factious
demagogue, I know not ; but enough surely for the ease
and happiness of man.
Sir, whilst we held this happy course, we drew more
from the colonies than all the impotent violence of
despotism ever could extort from them. We did this

n8
EDMUND BURKE.
abundantly in the last war. It has never been once
denied—and what reason have we to imagine that the
colonies would not have proceeded in supplying government as liberally, if you had not stepped in and hindered
them from contributing, by interrupting the channel in
which their liberality flowed with so strong a course ;
by attempting to take, instead of being satisfied to
receive ? Sir William Temple says that Holland has
loaded itself with ten times the impositions which it
revolted from Spain rather than submit to. He says
true. Tyranny is a poor provider. It knows neither
how to accumulate, nor how to extract.
I charge therefore to this new and unfortunate system
the loss not only of peace, of union, and of commerce,
but even of revenue, which its friends are contending for.
It is morally certain, that we have lost at least a million
of free grants since the peace. I think we have lost a
great deal more ; and that those, who look for a revenue
from the provinces, never could have pursued, even in that
light, a course more directly repugnant to their^purposes.
Now, sir, I trust I have shown, first on that narrow
ground which the honourable gentleman measured, that
you are likely to lose nothing by complying with the
motion, except what you have lost already. I have
shown afterwards that in time of peace you flourished
in commerce and, when war required it, had sufficient
aid from the colonies, while you pursued your ancient
policy ; that you threw everything into confusion when
you made the Stamp Act ; and that you restored everything to peace and order when you repealed it. I have
shown that the revival of the system of taxation has
produced the very worst effects ; and that the partial
repeal has produced, not partial good, but universal
evil. Let these considerations, founded on facts, not
one of which can be denied, bring us back to our reason
by the road of our experience.
I cannot, as I have said, answer for mixed measures :
but surely this mixture of lenity would give the whole
a better chance of success. When you once regain con-

SELECTIONS.
119
fidence, the way will be clear before you. Then you
may enforce the act of navigation when it ought to be
enforced. You will yourselves open it where it ought
still further to be opened. Proceed in what you do,
whatever you do, from policy, and not from rancour.
Let us act like men, let us act like statesmen. Let us
hold some sort of consistent conduct.—It is agreed that
a revenue is not to be had in America. If we lose the
profit, let us get rid of the odium.
On this business of America, I confess I am serious,
even to sadness. I have had but one opinion concerning it since I sat, and before I sat, in parliament. The
noble lord* will, as usual, probably, attribute the part
taken by me and my friends in this business to a desire
of getting his places. Let him enjoy this happy and
original idea. If I deprived him of it, I should take
away most of his wit and all his argument. But I had
rather bear the brunt of all his wit, and indeed blows
much heavier, than stand answerable to God for embracing a system that tends to the destructiom of some
of the very best and fairest of his works. But I know
the map of England, as well as the noble lord, or as any
other person ; and I know that the way I take is not
the road to preferment. My excellent and honourable
friend under me on the floor f has trod that road with
great toil for upwards of twenty years together. He is
not yet arrived at the noble lord's destination. However,
the tracks of my worthy friend are those I have ever
wished to follow ; because I know they lead to honour.
Long may we tread the same road together ; whoever
may accompany us, or whoever may laugh at us on our
journey ! I honestly and solemnly declare, I have in all
seasons adhered to the system of 1766, for no other
reason, than that I think it laid deep in your truest
interests—and that, by limiting the exercise, it fixes, on
the firmest foundations, a real, consistent well-grounded
authority in parliament. Until you come back to that
system, there will be no peace for England.
* Lord North.

f Mr. Dowdeswell.

120

EDMUND BURKE.

III.
SPEECH ON CONCILIATION WITH
AMERICA.
[March 22, 1775. Of this speech Fox said, twenty
years after, ' Let gentlemen read this speech by day, and
meditate upon it by night ; let them peruse it again and
again, study it, imprint it upon their minds, impress it
upon their hearts.']
I HOPE, sir, that notwithstanding the austerity of the
Chair, your good-nature will incline you to some degree
of indulgence towards human frailty. You will not
think it unnatural that those who have an object depending, which strongly engages their hopes and fears, should
be somewhat inclined to superstition. As I came into
the House full of anxiety about the event of my motion,
I found to my infinite surprise, that the grand penal
bill, by which we had passed sentence on the trade and
sustenance of America, is to be returned to us from the
other House.* I do confess, I could not help looking
on this event as a fortunate omen. I look upon it as a
sort of providential favour, by which we are put once
more in possession of our deliberative capacity, upon a
business so very questionable in its nature, so very
uncertain in its issue. By the return of this bill, which
seemed to have taken its flight for ever, we are at this
very instant nearly as free to choose a plan for our
American government as we were on the first day of the
session. If, sir, we incline to the side of conciliation, we
* T h e act to restrain the trade and commerce of t h e provinces of
Massachusett's-Bay and New Hampshire, and colonies of Connecticut
and Rhode Island, and Providence Plantation, in North America, t o
Great Britain, Ireland, and the British Islands in the West Indies ; and
t o prohibit such provinces and colonies from carrying on a n y fishery on
the b a n k s of Newfoundland, and other places therein mentioned, under
certain conditions and limitations.

121
SELECTIONS.
are not at all embarrassed (unless we please to make
ourselves so) by any incongruous mixture of coercion
and restraint. We are therefore called upon, as it
were by a superior warning voice, again to attend to
America ; to attend to the whole of it together ; and to
review the subject with an unusual degree of care and
calmness.
Surely it is an awful subject ; or there is none so
on this side of the grave. When I first had the honour
of a seat in this House, the affairs of that continent
pressed themselves upon us as the most important and
most delicate object of parliamentary attention.
My little share in this great deliberation oppressed
me. I found myself a partaker in a very high trust ;
and, having no sort of reason to rely on the strength of
my natural abilities for the proper execution of that
trust, I was obliged to take more than common pains
to instruct myself in everything which relates to our
colonies. I was not less under the necessity of forming
some fixed ideas concerning the general policy of the
British empire. Something of this sort seemed to be
indispensable ; in order, amidst so vast a fluctuation
of passions and opinions, to concentre my thoughts ;
to ballast my conduct ; to preserve me from being
blown about by every wind of fashionable doctrine. I
really did not think it safe, or manly, to have fresh
principles to seek upon every fresh mail which should
arrive from America.
At that period I had the fortune to find myself in
perfect concurrence with a large majority in this House.
Bowing under that high authority, and penetrated with
the sharpness and strength of that early impression, I have
continued ever since, without the least deviation, in my
original sentiments. Whether this be owing to an obstinate perseverance in error, or to a religious adherence
to what appears to me truth and reason, it is in your
equity to judge.
Sir, parliament having an enlarged view of objects,
made, during this interval, more frequent changes in

EDMUND BURKE.
122
their sentiments and their conduct, than could be
justified in a particular person upon the contracted
scale of private information. But though I do not
hazard anything approaching to a censure on the motive
of former parliaments to all those alterations, one fact
is undoubted,—that under them the state of America
has been kept in continual agitation. Everything
administered as remedy to the public complaint, if it
did not produce, was at least followed by, an heightening of the distemper ; until, by a variety of experiments, that important country has been brought into
her present situation ;—a situation which I will not
miscall, which 1 dare not name ; which I scarcely know
how to comprehend in the terms of any description.
In this posture, sir, things stood at the beginning of
the session. About that time, a worthy member* of
great parliamentary experience who, in the year 1766,
filled the chair of the American committee with much
ability, took me aside ; and, lamenting the present
aspect of our politics, told me, things were come to such
a pass that our former methods of proceeding in the
House would be no longer tolerated. That the public
tribunal (never too indulgent to a long and unsuccessful
opposition) would now scrutinize our conduct with unusual severity. That the very vicissitudes and shirtings
of ministerial measures, instead of convicting their
authors of inconstancy and want of system, would be
taken as an occasion of charging us with a predetermined discontent, which nothing could satisfy ; whilst
we accused every measure of vigour as cruel and every
proposal of lenity as weak and irresolute. The public,
he said, would not have patience to see us play the game
out with our adversaries : we must produce our hand.
It would be expected that those who for many years
had been active in such affairs should show that they
had formed some clear and decided idea of the principles of colony government 5 and were capable of
drawing out something like a platform of the ground
* Mr. Rose Fuller.

SELECTIONS.
123
which might be laid for future and permanent tranquillity.
T felt the truth of what my hon. friend represented ;
but I felt my situation too. His application might
have been made with far greater propriety to many
other gentlemen. No man was indeed ever better
disposed, or worse qualified, for such an undertaking,
than myself. 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.
Besides, sir, to speak the plain truth, I have in general
no very exalted opinion of the virtue of paper government ; nor of any politics in which the plan is to be
wholly separated from the execution. But when I saw
that anger and violence prevailed every day more and
more ; and that things were hastening towards an
incurable alienation of our colonies ; I confess my
caution gave way. I felt this, as one of those few
moments in which decorum yields to a higher duty.
Public calamity is a mighty leveller ; and there are
occasions when any, even the slightest, chance of doing
good must be laid hold on, even by the most inconsiderable person.
To restore order and repose to an empire so great
and so distracted as ours is, merely in the attempt, an
undertaking that would ennoble the flights of the highest
genius, and obtain pardon for the efforts of the meanest
understanding. Struggling a good while with these
thoughts, by degrees I felt myself more firm. I derived,
at length, some confidence from what in other circumstances usually produces timidity. I grew less anxious,

124
EDMUND BURKE.
even from the idea of my own insignificance. For, judging
of what you are, by what you ought to be, I persuaded
myself that you would not reject a reasonable proposition because it had nothing but its reason to recommend
it. On the other hand, being totally destitute of all
shadow of influence, natural or adventitious, I was
very sure that, if my proposition were futile or dangerous,—if it were weakly conceived, or improperly timed,
there was nothing exterior to it, of power to awe, dazzle,
or delude you. You will see it just as it is ; and you
will treat it just as it deserves.
The proposition is peace. Not peace through the
medium of war ; not peace to be hunted through the
labyrinth of intricate and endless negotiations ; not
peace to arise out of universal discord, fomented from
principle, in all parts of the empire ; not peace to depend
on the juridical determination of perplexing questions ;
or the precise marking the shadowy boundaries of a
complex government. It is simple peace ; sought in its
natural course, and in its ordinary haunts.—It is peace
sought in the spirit of peace ; and laid in principles purely
pacific. I propose, by removing the ground of the difference, and by restoring the former unsuspecting confidence of the colonies in the mother country, to give permanent satisfaction to your people ; and (far from a scheme
of ruling by discord) to reconcile them to each other in
the same act, and by the bond of the very same interest,
which reconciles them to British government.
My idea is nothing more. 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,an 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

SELECTIONS.
125
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 the 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 equalise and settle.
The plan, which I shall presume to suggest, derives,
however, one great advantage from the proposition
and registry of that noble lord's project. The idea of
conciliation is admissible. First, the House, in accepting the resolution moved by the noble lord, has admitted,
notwithstanding the menacing front of our address,
notwithstanding our heavy bill of pains and penalties—
that we do not think ourselves precluded from all ideas
of free grace and bounty.
The House has gone farther ; it has declared conciliation admissible, previous to any submission on the
part of America. It has even shot a good deal beyond
that mark, and has admitted, that the complaints of
our former mode of exerting the right of taxation, were
* 'That when the governor, council, or assembly, or general court,
of any of his majesty's provinces or colonies in America, shall propose
to make provision, according to the condition, circumstances and situation,
of such province or colony, for contributing their proportion to the
common defence (such proportion to be raised under the authority of
the general court, or general assembly, of such province or colony, and
disposable by parliament), and shall engage to make provision also for
the support of the civil government, and the administration of justice,
in such province or colony, it will be proper, if such proposal shall be
approved by his majesty, and the two Houses of Parliament, and for so
long as such provision shall be made accordingly, to forbear, in respect
of such province or colony, to levy any duty, tax, or assessment, or to
impose any farther duty, tax, or assessment, except such duties as it
may be expedient to continue to levy or impose, for the regulation, of
commerce ; the net produce of the duties last mentioned to be carried
to the account of such province or colony respectively.'—Resolution
moved by Lord North in the committee ; and agreed to by the House,
27th Feb. 1775»

126
EDMUND BURKE.
not wholly unfounded. That right thus exerted is
allowed to have had something reprehensible in it ;
something unwise, or something grievous ; since, in
the midst of our heat and resentment, we, of ourselves,
have proposed a capital alteration ; and, in order to
get rid of what seemed so very exceptionable, have
instituted a mode that is altogether new ; one that is,
indeed, wholly alien from all the ancient methods and
forms of parliament.
The principle of this proceeding is large enough for
my purpose. The means proposed by the noble lord
for carrying his ideas into execution, I think, indeed,
are very indifferently suited to the end ; and this I
shall endeavour to show you before I sit down. But,
for the present, 1 take my ground on the admitted
principle. I mean to give peace. 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.
The capital leading questions on which you must
this day decide, are these two : First, whether you
ought to concede ; and, secondly, what your concession ought to be. On the first of these questions we
have gained (as I have just taken the liberty of observing to you) some ground. But I am sensible that a
good deal more is still to be done. Indeed, sir, to enable us to determine both on the one and the other

SELECTIONS.
127
of these great questions with a firm and precise judgment, I think it may be necessary to consider distinctly the true nature and the peculiar circumstances
of the object which we have before us. Because after
all our struggle, whether we will or not, we must govern
America according to that nature and to those circumstances ; and not according to our own imaginations ;
not according to abstract ideas of right ; by no means
according to mere general theories of government, the
resort to which appears to me, in our present situation,
no better than arrant trifling. 1 shall therefore endeavour, with your leave, to lay before you some of the
most material of these circumstances in as full and as
clear a manner as I am able to state them.
The first thing that we have to consider with regard
to the nature of the object is—the number of people
in the colonies. I have taken for some years a good
deal of pains on that point. I can by no calculation
justify myself in placing the number below two millions
of inhabitants of our own European blood and colour ;
besides at least 500,000 others, who form no inconsiderable part of the strength and opulence of the whole.
This, sir, is, I believe, about the true number. There
is no occasion to exaggerate, where plain truth is of so
much weight and importance. But whether I put the
present numbers too high or too low is a matter of
little moment. Such is the strength with which population shoots in that part of the world that, state the
numbers as high as we will, whilst the dispute continues,
the exaggeration ends. Whilst we are discussing any
given magnitude, they are grown to it. Whilst we
spend our time in deliberating on the mode of governing two millions, we shall find we have millions more
to manage. Your children do not grow faster from
infancy to manhood, than they spread from families to
communities, and from villages to nations.
1 put this consideration of the present and the growing numbers in the front of our deliberation, because,
sir, this consideration will make it evident to a blunter

EDMUND BURKE.
128
discernment than yours, that no partial, narrow, contracted, pinched, occasional system will be at all suitable to such an object. It will show you that it is not
to be considered as one of those minima which are out
of the eye and consideration of the law ; not a paltry
excrescence of the state * not a mean dependent, who
may be neglected with little damage, and provoked
with little danger. It will prove that some degree of
care and caution is required in the handling such an
object ; it will show that you ought not, in reason,
to trifle with so large a mass of the interests and feelings
of the human race. You could at no time do so without guilt ; and be assured you will not be able to do it
long with impunity.
But the population of this country, the great and
growing population, though a very important consideration, will lose much of its weight, if not combined
with other circumstances. The commerce of your
colonies is out of all proportion beyond the numbers of
the people. This ground of their commerce indeed has
been trod some days ago, and with great ability, by
a distinguished person,* at your bar. This gentleman,
after thirty-five years—it is so long since he first appeared at the same place to plead for the commerce of
Great Britain—has come again before you to plead the
same cause, without any other effect of time, than, that
to the fire of imagination and extent of erudition, which
even then marked him as one of the first literary characters of his age, he has added a consummate knowledge
in the commercial interest of his country, formed by a
long course of enlightened and discriminating experience.
Sir, I should be inexcusable in coming after such
a person with any detail ; if a great part of the members who now fill the House had not the misfortune to
be absent when he appeared at your bar. Besides, sir,
I propose to take the matter at periods of time somewhat different from his. There is, if I mistake not,
a point of view, from, whence if you will look at this
* Mr. Glover.

SELECTIONS.
129
subject, it is impossible that it should not make an
impression upon you.
1 have in my hand two accounts ; one a comparative
state of the export trade of England to its colonies, as
it stood in the year 1704, and as it stood in the year
1772. The other a state of the export trade of this
country to its colonies alone, as it stood in 1772, compared with the whole trade of England to all parts of
the world (the colonies included) in the year 1704.
They are from good vouchers ; the latter period from
the accounts on your table, the earlier from an original
manuscript of Davenant, who first established the
inspector-general's office, which has been ever since
his time so abundant a source of parliamentary information.
The export trade to the colonies consists of three
great branches. The African which, terminating almost
wholly in the colonies, must be put to the account of
their commerce ; the West Indian ; and the North
American. All these are so interwoven, that the attempt to separate them would tear to pieces the contexture of the whole ; and, if not entirely destroy,
would very much depreciate the value of all the parts.
I therefore consider these three denominations to be,
what in effect they are, one trade.
The trade to the colonies, taken on the export side,
at the beginning of this century, that is, in the year
1704, stood thus :
Exports to North America, and the West
Indies . . . .
To Africa • „ D „ « B . . . . „

£483,265
86,665
£569,930

In the year 1772, which I take as a middle year, between the highest and lowest of those lately laid on
your table, the account was as follows :
5

i3o
EDMUND BURKE.
To North America and the West Indies . £4,791,734
To Africa
. . . . .
866,398
To which if you add the export trade
from Scotland, which had in 1704 no
existence . . . . . . . . . . .
364,000
£6,022,132

From five hundred and odd thousand, it has grown
to six millions. It has increased no less than twelvefold. This is the state of the colony trade, as compared
with itself at these two periods, within this country ;—
and this is matter for meditation. But this is not all.
Examine my second account. See how the export
trade to the colonies alone in 1772 stood in the other
point of view, that is, as compared to the whole trade
of England in 1704,
The whole export trade of England, including that to the colonies, in 1704 , £6,509,000
Export to the colonies alone, in 1772 . 6,024,000
Difference

.

„ .

.

£485,000

The trade with America alone is now within less
than £500,000 of being equal to what this great commercial nation, England, carried on at the beginning
of this century with the whole world ! If I had taken
the largest year of those on your table, it would rather
have exceeded. But, it will be said, is not this American
trade an unnatural protuberance, that has drawn the
juices from the rest of the body ? The reverse. It is
the very food that has nourished every other part into
its present magnitude» Our general trade has been
greatly augmented ; and augmented more or less in
almost every part to which it ever extended ; but with
this material difference ; that of the six millions which
in the beginning of the century constituted the whole

SELECTIONS.
131
mass of our export commerce, the colony trade was but
one-twelfth part * it is now (as a part of sixteen millions)
considerably more than a third of the whole. This is
the relative proportion of the importance of the colonies at these two periods : and all reasoning concerning our mode of treating them must have this proportion as its basis, or it is a reasoning weak, rotten,\ and
sophistical.
Mr. Speaker, Ï cannot prevail on myself to hurry
over this great consideration. It is good for us to be
here, We stand where we have an immense view àt
what is and what is past. Clouds indeed, and darkness, rest upon the future. Let us, however, before
we 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 légère, et quae sit
potent cognosce?e 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 an 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

132
EDMUND BURKE.
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 !
Excuse me, sir, if, turning from such thoughts,
I resume this comparative view once more. You have
seen it on a large scale ; look at it on a small one.
I will point out to your attention a particular instance
of it in the single province of Pennsylvania. In the
year 1704, that province called for £11,459 in value of
your commodities, native and foreign. This was the
whole. What did it demand in 1772 ? Why, nearly
fifty times as much ; for in that year the export to
Pennsylvania was £507,909, nearly equal to the export
to all the colonies together in the first period.
I choose, sir, to enter into these minute and particular details ; because generalities, which, in all other
cases are apt to heighten and raise the subject, have
here a tendency to sink it. When we speak of the
commerce with our colonies, fiction lags after truth ;
invention is unfruitful, and imagination cold and barren.
So far, sir, as to the importance of the object in the
view of its commerce, as concerned in the exports from

SELECTIONS.
133
England. If I were to detail the imports, I could show
how many enjoyments they procure, which deceive the
burden of life ; how many materials which invigorate
the springs of national industry, and extend and
animate every part of our foreign and domestic commerce. This would be a curious subject indeed—but
I must prescribe bounds to myself in a matter so vast
and various.
I pass therefore to the colonies in another point of
view, their agriculture. This they have prosecuted^
with such a spirit, that, besides feeding plentifully their
own growing multitude, their annual export of grain,
comprehending rice, has some years ago exceeded
a million in value. Of their late harvest, I am persuaded, they will export much more. At the beginning
of the century some of those colonies imported corn
from the mother country. For some time past, the old
world has been fed from the new. The scarcity which
you have felt would have been a desolating famine, if
this child of your old age, with a true filial piety, with
a Roman charity, had not put the full breast of its
youthful exuberance to the mouth of its exhausted
parent.
As to the wealth which the colonies have drawn
from the sea by your 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

134
EDMUND BURKE.
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. When I contemplate these things ; when
I know that the colonies in general owe little or nothing
to any care of ours, and that they are not squeezed into
this happy form by the constraints of watchful and
suspicious government, but that, through a- wise and
salutary neglect, a generous nature has been suffered
to take her own way to perfection ; when I reflect upon
these effects, when I see how profitable they have been
to us, 1 feel all the pride of power sink and all presumption in the wisdom of human contrivances melt
and die away within me. My rigour relents. I pardon
something to the spirit of liberty.
I am sensible, sir, that all which I have asserted in
my detail is admitted in the gross ;, but that quite
a different conclusion is drawn from it. America,
gentlemen say, is a noble object. It is an object well
worth fighting for. Certainly it is, if fighting a people
be the best way of gaining them. Gentlemen in this
respect will be led to their choice of means by their
complexions and their habits. Those who understand
the military art will of course have some predilection

SELECTIONS.
135
for it. Those who wield the thunder of the state may
have more confidence in the efficacy of arms. But
I confess, possibly for want of this knowledge, my
opinion is much more in favour of prudent management, than of force ; considering force not as an
odious, but a feeble instrument for preserving a people
so numerous, so active, so growing, so spirited as this,
in a profitable and subordinate connexion with us.
First, sir, permit me to observe that the use of force
alone is but • temporary. It may subdue for a moment ;
but it does not remove the necessity of subduing again :
and a nation is not governed, which is perpetually to be
conquered.
My next objection is its uncertainty. Terror is not
always the effect of force ; and an armament is not
a victory. If you do not succeed, you are without
resource ; for, conciliation failing, force remains ; but,
force failing, no further hope of reconciliation is left.
Power and authority are sometimes bought by kindness ;
but they can never be begged as alms by an impoverished
and defeated violence.
A further objection to force is, that you impair the
object by your very endeavours to preserve it. The
thing you fought for is not the thing which you recover ;
but depreciated, sunk, wasted, and consumed in the
contest. Nothing less will content me, than whole
America. I do not choose to consume its strength
along with our own ; because in all parts it is the
British strength that I consume. I do not choose to
be caught by a foreign enemy at the end of this exhausting conflict ; and still less in the midst of it.
I may escape ; but I can make n,o insurance against
such an event. Let me add that I do not choose wholly
to break the American spirit ; because it is the spirit
that has made the country.
Lastly, we have no sort of experience in favour of
force as an instrument in the rule of our colonies.
Their growth and their utility has been, owing to method
altogether different. Our ancient indulgence has beer

136
EDMUND BURKE.
said to be pursued to a fault. It may be so. But
we know, if feeling is evidence, that our fault was more
tolerable than our attempt to mend it ; and our sin
far more salutary than our penitence.
These, sir, are my reasons for not entertaining that
high opinion of untried force, by which many gentlemen, for whose sentiments in other particulars I have
great respect, seem to be so greatly captivated. But
there is still behind a third consideration concerning
this object, which serves to determine my opinion on
the sort of policy which ought to be pursued in the
management of America, even more than its population
and its commerce, I mean its temper and character.
In this character of the Americans, a love of freedom
is the predominating feature which marks and distinguishes the whole : and as an ardent is always a jealous
affection, your colonies become suspicious, restive, and
untractable, whenever they see the least attempt to
wrest from them by force, or shuffle from them by
chicane, what they think the only advantage worth
living for. This fierce spirit of liberty is stronger in
the English colonies probably than in any other
people of the earth ; and this from a great variety
of powerful causes ; which, to understand the true
temper of their minds, and the direction which this
spirit takes, it will not be amiss to lay open somewhat
more largely.
First, the people of the colonies are descendants of
Englishmen. England, sir, is a nation, which still I
hope respects, and formerly adored, her freedom. The
colonists emigrated from you when this part of your
character was most predominant; and they took this
bias and direction the moment they parted from your
hands. They are therefore not only devoted to liberty,
but to liberty according to English ideas, and on English
principles. Abstract liberty, like other mere abstractions, is not to be found. Liberty inheres in some
sensible object ; and every nation has formed to itself
:>ome favourite point, which by way of eminence be-

SELECTIONS.
137
comes the criterion of their happiness. It happened,
you know, sir, that the great contests for freedom in
this country were from the earliest times chiefly upon
the question of taxing. Most of the contests in the
ancient commonwealths turned primarily on the right
of election of magistrates ; or on the balance among
the several orders of the state. The question of money
was not with them so immediate. But in England it
was otherwise. On this point of taxes the ablest pens,
and most eloquent tongues, have been exercised ; the
greatest spirits have acted and suffered. In order to
give the fullest satisfaction concerning the importance
of this point, it Was not only necessary for those who
in argument defended the excellence of the English
constitution, to insist on this privilege of granting
money as a dry point of fact, and to prove that the
right had been acknowledged in ancient parchments,
and blind usages, to reside in a certain body called
a House of Commons. They went much farther ;
they attempted to prove, and they succeeded, that in
theory it ought to be so, from the particular nature of
a House of Commons, as an immediate representative
of the people ; whether the old records had delivered
this oracle or not. They took infinite pains to inculcate, as a fundamental principle, that in all monarchies the people must in effect themselves, mediately
or immediately, possess the power of granting their
own money, or no shadow of liberty could subsist.
The colonies draw from you, as with their life-blood,
these ideas and principles. Their love of liberty, as
with you, fixed and attached on this specific point of
taxing. Liberty might be safe, or might be endangered
in twenty other particulars, without their being much
pleased or alarmed. Here they felt its pulse ; and as
they found that beat, they thought themselves sick
or sound. I do not say whether they were right or
wrong in applying your general arguments to their own
case. It is not easy indeed to make a monopoly of
theorems and corollaries. The fact is, that they did

138
EDMUND BURKE.
thus apply those general arguments ; and your mode
of governing them, whether through lenity or indolence,
through wisdom or mistake, confirmed them in the
imagination, that they, as well as you, had an interest
in these common principles.
They were further confirmed in this pleasing error
by the form of their provincial legislative assemblies.
Their governments are popular in an high degree :
some are merely popular ; in all, the popular representative is the most weighty ; and this share of the
people in their ordinary government never fails to
inspire them with lofty sentiments, and with a strong
aversion from whatever tends to deprive them of their
chief importance.
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.
Everyone 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

SELECTIONS.
139
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. This religion, under a variety of
denominations agreeing in nothing but in the communion of the spirit of liberty, is predominant in most
of the northern provinces, where the Church of England, notwithstanding its legal rights, is in reality no
more than a sort of private sect, not composing, most
probably, the tenth of the people. The colonists left
England when this spirit was high, and in the emigrants
was the highest of all ; and even that stream of
foreigners which has been constantly flowing into these
colonies, has, for the greatest part, been composed of
dissenters from the establishments of their several
countries, and have brought with them a temper and
character far from alien to that of the people with whom
they mixed.
Sir, I can perceive, by their manner, that some gentlemen object to the latitude of this description, because in
the southern colonies the Church of England forms a large
body, and has a regular establishment. It is certainly
true. There is, however, a circumstance attending these
colonies, which, in my opinion, fully counterbalances this
difference, and makes the spirit of liberty still more high
and haughty than in those to the northward. It is, that
in Virginia and the Carolinas they have a vast multitude
of slaves. Where this is the case in any part of the world,
those who, are free are by far the most proud and jealous of
their freedom. Freedom to them is not only an enjoyment, but a kind of rank and privilege. Not seeing there
that freedom as in countries where it is a common blessing,
and as broad and general as the air, may be united
with much object toil, with great misery, with all the
exterior of servitude, liberty looks, amongst them, like
something that is more noble and liberal. I do not
mean, sir, to commend the superior morality of this sentiment, which has at least as much pride as virtue in it;

140
EDMUND BURKE.
but I cannot alter the nature of man. The fact is so ;
and these people of the southern colonies are much more
strongly, and with an higher and more stubborn spirit,
attached to libei ty, than those to the northward. Such
were all the ancient commonwealths ; such were our
Gothic ancestors ; such in our days were the Poles ; and
such will be all masters of slaves, who are not slaves themselves. In such a people, the haughtiness of domination
combines with the spirit of freedom, fortifies it, and
renders it invincible.
Permit me, sir, to add another circumstance in our
colonies, which contributes no mean part toward the
growth and effect of this untractable spirit. I mean
their education. In no country perhaps in the world
is the law so general a study. The profession itself is
numerous and powerful, and in most provinces it takes
the lead. The greater number of the deputies sent to
the congress were lawyers. But all who read, and most
do read, endeavour to obtain some smattering in that
science. I have been told by an eminent bookseller,
that in no branch of his business, after tracts of popular
devotion, were so many books as those on the law
exported to the plantations. The colonists have now
fallen into the way of printing them for their own use.
I hear that they have sold nearly as many of ' Blackstone's Commentaries ' in America as in England.
General Gage marks out this disposition very particularly in a letter on your table. He states, that all
the people in his government are lawyers, or smatterers
in law ; and that in Boston they have been enabled, by
successful chicane, wholly to evade many parts of one
of your capital penal constitutions. The smartness of
debate will say, that this knowledge ought to teach
them more clearly the rights of legislature, their obligations to obedience, and the penalties of rebellion. All
this is mighty well. But my honourable and learned
friend * on the floor, who condescends to mark out what
I say for animadversion, will disdain that ground, He
* The Attorney-general.

SELECTIONS.
141
has heard, as well as I, that when great honours and
great emoluments do not win over this knowledge to
the service of the state, it is a formidable adversary to
government. If the spirit be not tamed and broken
by these happy methods, it is stubborn and litigious.
Abeunt studia in mores. This study renders men acute,
inquisitive, dexterous, prompt in attack, ready in
defence, full of resources.
In other countries, the
people, more simple, and of a less mercurial cast, judge
of an ill principle in government only by an actual
grievance ; here they anticipate the evil, and judge of
the pressure of the grievance by the badness of the
principle. They augur misgovernment at a distance,
and snuff the approach of tyranny in every tainted
breeze.
The last cause of this disobedient spirit in the colonies
is hardly less powerful than the rest, as it is not merely
moral, but laid deep in the natural constitution of
things. Three thousand miles of ocean lie between
you and them. No contrivance can prevent the effect
of this distance in weakening government. Seas roll,
and months pass, between the order and the execution ;
and the want of a speedy explanation of a single point
is enough to defeat a whole system. You have, indeed,
winged ministers of vengeance, who carry your bolts
in their pounces to the remotest verge of the sea : but
there a power steps in, that limits the arrogance of
raging passions and furious elements, and says, ' So far
shalt thou go, and no farther.' Who are you, that
should fret and rage and bite the chains of nature ?
Nothing worse happens to you than does to all nations
who have extensive empire, and it happens in all the
forms into which empire can be thrown. In large
bodies, the circulation of power must be less vigorous
at the extremities. Nature has said it. The Turk
cannot govern Egypt, and Arabia, and Curdistan, as
lie governs Thrace ; nor has he the same dominion in
Crimea and Algiers, which he has at Brusa and Smyrna.
Despotism itself is obliged to truck and huckster. The

142
EDMUND BURKE.
Sultan gets such obedience as he can. He governs with
a loose rein, that he may govern at all ; and the whole
of the force and vigour of his authority in his centre
is derived from a prudent relaxation in all his borders.
Spain, in her provinces, is perhaps not so well obeyed
as you are in yours. She complies too : she submits \
she watches times. This is the immutable condition, the
eternal law, of extensive and detached empire.
Then, sir, from these six capital sources \ of descent ;
of form of government ; of religion in the northern
provinces ; of manners in the southern ; of education ;
of the remoteness of situation from the first mover of
government ; from all these causes a fierce spirit of
liberty has grown up. It has grown with the growth
of the people in your colonies, and increased with the
increase of their wealth ; a spirit that, unhappily meeting
with an exercise of power in England, which, however
lawful, is not reconcilable to any ideas of liberty, much
less with theirs, has kindled this flame that is ready
to consume us.
I do not mean to commend either the spirit in this
excess, or the moral causes which produce it. Perhaps
a more smooth and accommodating spirit of freedom
in them would be more acceptable to us. Perhaps
ideas of liberty might be desired, more reconcilable
with an arbitrary and boundless authority. Perhaps
we might wish the colonists to be persuaded that their
liberty is more secure when held in trust for them by us
(as their guardians during a perpetual minority) than
with any part of it in their own hands. The question
is, not whether their spirit deserves praise or blame,
but,—what, in the name of God, shall we do with it ?
You have before you the object ; such as it is, with
all its glories, with all its imperfections on its head.
You see the magnitude ; the importance ; the temper ;
the habits ; the disorders. By all these considerations
we are strongly urged to determine something concerning it. We are called upon to fix some rule and line
for our future conduct, which may give a little stability

SELECTIONS,
143
to our politics, and prevent the return of such unhappy
deliberations as the present. Every such return will
bring the matter before us in a still more untr act able
form. For what astonishing and incredible things
have we not seen already ! What monsters have not
been generated from this unnatural contention ! Whilst
every principle of authority and resistance has been
pushed, upon both sides, as far as it would go, there is
nothing so solid and certain, either in reasoning or in
practice, that has not been shaken. Until very lately,
all authority in America seemed to be nothing but an
emanation from yours. Even the popular part of the
colony constitution derived all its activity, and its
first vital movement, from the pleasure of the crown.
We thought, sir, that the utmost which the discontented colonists could do, was to disturb authority ;
we never dreamt they could of themselves supply it ;
knowing in general what an operose business it is to
establish a government absolutely new. But having,
for our purposes in this contention, resolved, that none
but an obedient assembly should sit ; the humours of
the people there, finding all passage through the legal
channel stopped, with great violence broke out another
way. Some provinces have tried their experiment, as
we have tried ours ; and theirs has succeeded. They
have formed a government sufficient for its purposes,
without the bustle of a revolution, or the troublesome
formality of an election. Evident necessity, and tacit
consent, have done the business in an instant. So well
they have done it, that Lord Dunmore (the account is
among the fragments on your table,) tells you, that the
new institution is infinitely better obeyed than the
ancient government ever was in its most fortunate
periods. Obedience is what makes government, and
not the names by which it is called ; not the name of
governor, as formerly, or committee, as at present. This
new government has originated directly from the people ;
and was not transmitted through any of the ordinary
artificial media of a positive constitution. It was not

144
EDMUND BURKE.
a manufacture ready formed, and transmitted to them
in that condition from England. The evil arising from
hence is this ; that the colonists having once found
the possibility of enjoying the advantages of order in
the midst of a struggle for liberty, such struggles will
not henceforward seem so terrible to the settled and
sober part oj: mankind as they had appeared before
the trial.
Pursuing the same plan of punishing by the denial
of the exercise of government to still greater lengths,
we wholly abrogated the ancient government of Massachusett. We were confident that the first feeling, if
not the very prospect of anarchy, would instantly
enforce a complete submission. The experiment was
tried. A new, strange, unexpected face of things appeared. Anarchy is found tolerable. A vast province
has now subsisted, and subsisted in a considerable
degree of health and vigour, for near a twelvemonth, without governor, without public council, without judges,
wishout executive magistrates. How long it will continue in this state, or what may arise out of this unheardof situation, how can the wisest of us conjecture ? Our
late experience has taught us that many of those fundamental principles, formerly believed infallible, are
either not of the importance they were imagined to be ;
or that we have not at all adverted to some other far
more important, and far more powerful principles,
which entirely overrule those we had considered as
omnipotent. I am much against any further experiments which tend to put to the proof any more of these
allowed opinions, which contribute so much to the
public tranquillity. In effect, we suffer as much at
home by this loosening of all ties, and this concussion
of all established opinions, as we do abroad. For,
in order to prove that the Americans have no right to
their liberties, we are every day endeavouring to subvert the maxims which preserve the whole spirit of
our own. To prove that the Americans ought not to
be free, we are obliged to depreciate the value of freedom

SELECTIONS.
145
itself ; and we never seem to gain a paltry advantage
over them in debate, without attacking some of those
principles, or deriding some of those feelings, for which
our ancestors have shed their blood.
But, sir, in wishing to put an end to pernicious experiments, I do not mean to preclude the fullest inquiry.
Far from it. Far from deciding on a sudden or partial
view, I would patiently go round and round the subject,
and survey it minutely in every possible aspect. Sir,
if I were capable of engaging you to an equal attention,
I would state that, as far as I am capable of discerning,
there are but three ways of proceeding relative to this
stubborn spirit, which prevails in your colonies, and
disturbs your government. These are—to change that
spirit, as inconvenient, by removing the causes. To
prosecute it as criminal. Or, to comply with it as
necessary. 1 would not be guilty of an imperfect
enumeration ; 1 can think of but these three. Another
has indeed been started, that of giving up the colonies ;
but it met so slight a reception, that I do not think
myself obliged to dwell a great while upon it. It is
nothing but a little sally of anger, like the frowardness
of peevish children ; who, when they cannot get all
they would have, aire resolved to take nothing.
The first of these plans, to change the spirit as inconvenient, by removing the causes, I think is the most
systematic proceeding. It is radical in its principle f
but it is attended with great difficulties ; some of them
little short, as I conceive, of impossibilities. This will
appear by examining into the plans which have been
proposed.
As the growing population of the colonies is evidently
one cause of their resistance, it was last session mentioned in both Houses, by men of weight, and received
not without applause, that, in order to check this evil,
it would be proper for the crown to make no further
grants of land. But to this scheme there are two
objections. The first, that there is already so much
unsettled land in private hands, as to afford room for

146
EDMUND BURKE.
an immense future population, although the crown not
only withheld its grants, but annihilated its soil. If
this be the case, then the only effect of this avarice
of desolation, this hoarding of a royal wilderness,
would be to raise the value of the possessions in the
hands of the great private monopolists, without any
adequate check to the growing and alarming mischief
of population.
But if you stopped your grants, what would be
the consequence ? The people would occupy without
grants. They have already so occupied in many places.
You cannot station garrisons in every part of these
deserts. If you drive the people from one place, they
will' carry on their annual tillage, and remove with
their flocks and herds to another. Many of the people
in the back settlements are already little attached to
particular situations. Already they have topped the
Apalachian mountains. From thence they behold
before them an immense plain, one vast, rich, level
meadow : a square of five hundred miles. Over this
they would wander without a possibility of restraint *
they would change their manners with the habits of
their life ; would soon forget a government by which
they were disowned ; would become hordes of English
Tartars ; and, pouring down upon your unfortified
frontiers a fierce and irresistible cavalry, become masters
of your governors and your counsellors, your collectors
and comptrollers, and of all the slaves that adhered to
them. Such would, and, in no long time, must be, the
effect of attempting to forbid as a crime, and to suppress
as an evil, the command and blessing of Providence,
' Increase and multiply/ Such would be the happy
result of an endeavour to keep as a lair of wild beasts,
that earth, which God, by an express charter, has given
to the children of men. Far different, and surely much
wiser, has been our policy hitherto. Hitherto we have
invited our people, by every kind of bounty, to fixed
establishments. We have invited the husbandman to
look to authority for his title. We have taught him

SELECTIONS.
147
piously to believe in the mysterious virtue of wax
and parchment. We have thrown each tract of land,
as it was peopled, into districts : that the ruling power
should never be wholly out of sight. We have settled
all we could ; and we have carefully attended every
settlement with government.
Adhering, sir, as 1 do, to this policy, as well as for
the reasons I have just given, I think this new project
of hedging-in population to be neither prudent nor
practicable.
To impoverish the colonies in general, and in particular to arrest the noble course of their marine enterprises, would be a more easy task. I freely confess it.
We have shown a disposition to a system of this kind ;
a disposition even to continue the restraint after the
offence ; looking on ourselves as rivals to our colonies,
and persuaded that of course we must gain all that
they shall lose. Much mischief we may certainly do.
The power inadequate to all other things is often more
than sufficient for this. I do not look on the direct
and immediate power of the colonies to resist our
violence as very formidable. In this, however, I may
be mistaken. But when I consider, that we have
colonies for no purpose but to be serviceable to us,
it seems to my poor understanding, a little preposterous, to make them unserviceable, in order to keep
them obedient. It is, in truth, nothing more than
the old, and, as I thought, exploded problem of tyranny,
which proposes to beggar its subjects into submission.
But remember, when you have completed your system
of impoverishment, that nature still proceeds in her
ordinary course ; that discontent will increase with
misery ; and that there are critical moments in the
fortune of all states, when they who are too weak to
contribute to your prosperity, may be strong enough
to complete your ruin. Spoliatis arma super sunt.
The temper and character which prevail in our colonies
are, I am afraid, unalterable by any human art. We
cannot, I fear, falsify the pedigree of this fierce people,

148
EDMUND BURKE.
and persuade them that they are not sprung from a
nation in whose veins the blood of freedom circulates.
The language in which they would hear you tell them
this tale would detect the imposition ; your speech would
betray you. An Englishman is the unfittest person on
earth to argue another Englishman into slavery.
I think it is nearly as little in our power to change
their republican religion, as their free descent ; or to
substitute the Roman Catholic, as a penalty ; or the
Church of England, as an improvement. The mode of
inquisition and dragooning is going out of fashion in
the old world ; and I should not confide much to their
efficacy in the new. The education of the Americans
is also on the same unalterable bottom with their religion. You cannot persuade them to burn their books
of curious science ; to banish their lawyers from the
courts of law ; or to quench the lights of their assemblies, by refusing to choose those persons who are best
read in their privileges. It would be no less impracticable to think of wholly annihilating the popular assemblies, in which these lawyers sit. The army, by which
we must govern in their place, would be far more chargeable to us ; not quite so effectual ; and perhaps, in
the end, full as difficult to be kept in obedience.
With regard to the high aristocratic spirit of Virginia
and the southern colonies, it has been proposed, I know,
to reduce it, by declaring a general enfranchisement of
their slaves. This project has had its advocates and
panegyrists ; yet I never could argue myself into any
opinion of it. Slaves are often much attached to their
masters. A general wild offer of liberty would not
always be accepted. History furnishes few instances
of it. It is sometimes as hard to persuade slaves to be
free, as it is to compel freemen to be slaves ; and in
this auspicious scheme, we should have both these
pleasing tasks on our hands at once. But when we talk
of enfranchisement, do we not perceive that the American
master may enfranchise too, and arm servile hands in
defence of freedom ? A measure to which other people

SELECTIONS.
149
have had recourse more than once, and not without
success, in a desperate situation of their affairs.
Slaves as these unfortunate black people are, and
dull as all men are from slavery, must they not a little
suspect the offer of freedom from that very nation which
has sold them to their present masters ? From that
nation, one of whose causes of quarrel with those masters
is their refusal to deal any more in that inhuman traffic ?
An offer of freedom from England would come rather
oddly shipped to them in an African vessel, which is
refused an entry into the ports of Virginia or Carolina,
with a cargo of three hundred Angola negroes. It
would be curious to see the Guinea captain attempting at the same instant to publish his proclamation of
liberty, and to advertise his sale of slaves.
But let us suppose all these moral difficulties got over.
The ocean remains. You cannot pump this dry ; and
as long as it continues in its present bed, so long all the
causes which weaken authority by distance will continue.
' Ye gods, annihilate but space and time, and make
two lovers happy ! '—was a pious and passionate prayer ;
—but just as reasonable as many of the serious wishes
of very grave and solemn politicians.
If then, sir, it seems almost desperate to think of
any alternative course, for changing the moral causes
(and not quite easy to remove the natural) which produce prejudices irreconcilable to the late exercise of
our authority ; but that the spirit infallibly will continue ; and, continuing, will produce such effects, as
now embarrass us ; the second mode under consideration is, to prosecute that spirit in its overt acts, as
criminal.
At this proposition I must pause a moment. The
thing seems a great deal too big for my ideas of jurisprudence. It should seem, to my way of conceiving
such matters, that there is a very wide difference in
reason and policy, between the mode of proceeding on
the irregular conduct of scattered individuals, or even
of bands of men, who disturb order within the state,

150
EDMUND BURKE.
and the civil dissensions which may, from time to time,
on great questions, agitate the several communities
which compose a great empire. It looks to me to be
narrow and pedantic, to apply the ordinary ideas of
criminal justice to this great public contest. I do not
know the method of drawing up an indictment against
an whole people. I cannot insult and ridicule the
feelings of millions of my fellow-creatures, as Sir Edward
Coke insulted one excellent individual (Sir Walter
Raleigh) at the bar, I am not ripe to pass sentence on
the gravest public bodies, entrusted with magistracies
of great authority and dignity, and charged with the
safety of their fellow-citizens, upon the very same title
that I am. I really think, that for wise men this is not
judicious ; for sober men, not decent ; for minds tinctured with humanity, not mild and merciful.
Perhaps, sir, I am mistaken in my idea of an empire,
as distinguished from a single state or kingdom. But
my idea of it is this ; that an empire is the aggregate
of many states under one common head ; whether this
head be a monarch, or a presiding republic. It does,
in such constitutions, frequently happen (and nothing
but the dismal, cold, dead uniformity of servitude can
prevent its happening) that the subordinate parts have
many local privileges and immunities. Between these
privileges and the supreme common authority the line
may be extremely nice. Of course disputes, often too,
very bitter disputes, and much ill blood, will arise.
But though every privilege is an exemption (in the
case) from the ordinary exercise of the supreme authority,
it is no denial of it. The claim of a privilege seems
rather, ex vi termini, to imply a superior power. For
to talk of the privileges of a state, or of a person, who
has no superior, is |hardly any better than speaking
nonsense. Now, in such unfortunate quarrels among
the component parts of a great political union of communities, I can scarcely conceive anything more completely imprudent, than for the head of the empire to
insist that, if any privilege is pleaded against his will,

SELECTIONS.
151
or his acts, his whole authority is denied ; instantly
to proclaim rebellion, to beat to arms, and to put the
offending provinces under the ban. Will not this, sir,
very soon teach the provinces to make no distinctions
on their part ? Will it not teach them that the government, against which a claim of liberty is tantamount to
high treason, is a government to which submission is
equivalent to slavery ? It may not always be quite
convenient to impress dependent communities with
such an idea.
We are, indeed, in all disputes with the colonies, by
the necessity of things, the judge. It is true, sir. But
I confess, that the character of judge in my own cause
is a thing that frightens me. Instead of filling me with
pride, I am exceedingly humbled by it. I cannot proceed with a stern, assured, judicial confidence, until I
find myself in something more like a judicial character.
I must have these hesitations as long as I am compelled
to recollect, that, in my little reading upon such contests as these, the sense of mankind has, at least, as
often decided against the superior as the subordinate
power. Sir, let me add too, that the opinion of my
having some abstract right in my favour would not put
me much at my ease in passing sentence ; unless I could
be sure, that there were no rights which, in their exercise under certain circumstances, were not the most
odious of all wrongs, and the most vexatious of all
injustice. Sir, these considerations have great weight
with me, when I find things so circumstanced, that
I see the same party, at once a civil litigant against
me in point of right, and a culprit before me ; while
I sit as criminal judge, on acts of his, whose moral
quality is to be decided upon thé merits of that very
litigation. Men are every now and then put, by the
complexity of human affairs, into strange situations ;
but justice is the same, let the judge be in what situation he will.
There is, sir, also a circumstance which convinces me
that this mode of criminal proceeding is not (at least

152
EDMUND" BURKE.
in the present stage of our contest) altogether expedient ; which is nothing less than the conduct of those
very persons who have seemed to adopt that mode,
by lately declaring a rebellion in Massachusetts Bay,
as they had formerly addressed to have traitors brought
hither, under an act of Henry VIII, for trial. For
though rebellion is declared, it is not proceeded against
as such ; nor have any steps been taken towards the
apprehension or conviction of any individual offender,
either on our late or our former address ; but modes of
public coercion have been adopted, and such as have
much more resemblance to a sort of qualified hostility
towards an independent power than the punishment
of rebellious subjects. All this seems rather inconsistent ; but it shows how difficult it is to apply these
judicial ideas to our present case.
In this situation, let us seriously and coolly ponder.
What is it we have got by all our menaces, which have
been many and ferocious ? What advantage have we
derived from the penal laws we have passed, and which,
for the time, have been severe and numerous ? What
advances have we made towards our object, by the sending of a force, which, by land and sea, is no contemptible strength ? Has the disorder abated ? Nothing
less.—When I see things in this situation, after such
confident hopes, bold promises, and active exertions,
I cannot, for my life, avoid a suspicion, that the plan
itself is not correctly right.
If then the removal of the causes of this spirit of
American liberty be, for the greater part, or rather
entirely, impracticable ; if the ideas of criminal process
be inapplicable, or if applicable, are in the highest
degree inexpedient ; what way yet remains ? No way
is open, but the third and last—to comply with the
American spirit as necessary ; or, if you please, to
submit to it as a necessary evil.
If we adopt this mode ; if we mean to conciliate and
concede ; let us see of what nature the concession
ought to be : to ascertain the nature of our concession,

SELECTIONS.
153
we must look at their complaint. The colonies complain, that they have not the characteristic mark and
seal of British freedom. They complain, that they are
taxed in a parliament in which they are not represented. If you mean to satisfy them at all, you must
satisfy them with regard to this complaint. If you
mean to please any people, you must give them the
boon which they ask ; not what you may think better
for them, but of a kind totally different.
Such an act
may be a wise regulation, but it is no concession ;
whereas our present theme is the mode of giving
satisfaction.
Sir, I think you must perceive, that 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

154
EDMUND BURKE.
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 ?
Such is steadfastly my opinion, of the absolute necessity of keeping up the concord of this empire by a unity
of spirit, though in a diversity of operations, that, if I
were sure the colonists had, at their leaving this country,
sealed a regular compact of servitude ; that they had
solemnly abjured all the rights of citizens ; that they had
made a vow to renounce all ideas of libeity for them
and their posterity, to all generations ; yet I should
hold myself obliged to conform to the temper I found
universally prevalent in my own day, and to govern,
two millions of men, impatient of servitude, on the
principles of freedom. I am not determining a point of
law ; I am restoring tranquillity ; and the general character and situation of a people must determine what sort
of government is fitted for them. That point nothing
else can or ought to determine.
My idea, therefore, without considering whether we
yield as matter of right, or grant as matter of favour,
is to admit the people of our colonies into an interest in
the constitution; and, by recording that admission in
the journals of parliament, to give them as strong an
assurance as the nature of the thing will admit, that
we mean for ever to adhere to that solemn declaration
of systematic indulgence.
Some years ago, the repeal of a revenue act, upon

SELECTIONS.
155
its understood principle, might have served to show
that we intended an unconditional abatement of the
exercise of a taxing power. Such a measure was then
sufficient to remove all suspicion, and to give perfect
content. But unfortunate events, since that time,
may make something further necessary ; and not more
necessary for the satisfaction of the colonies, than for
the dignity and consistency of our own future proceedings.
Ï have taken a very incorrect measure of the disposition of the House, if this proposal in itself would
be received with dislike. I think, sir, we have few
American financiers. But our misfortune is, we are
too acute ; we are too exquisite in our conjectures of
the future, for men oppressed with such great and
present evils. The more moderate among the opposers
of parliamentary concession freely confess that they
hope no good from taxation ; but they apprehend the
colonists have further views ; and if this point were
conceded, they would instantly attack the trade laws.
These gentlemen are convinced that this was the intention from the beginning ; and the quarrel of the Americans
with taxation was no more than a cloak and cover to
this design. Such has been the language even of a
gentleman * of real moderation and of a natural temper
so well adjusted to fair and equal government. I am,
however, sir, not a little surprised at this kind of discourse, whenever I hear it ; and I am the more surprised,
on account of the arguments which I constantly find in
company with it and which are often urged from the
same mouths, and on the same day.
For instance, when we allege that it is against reason
to tax a people under so many restraints in trade as the
Americans, the noble lord f in the blue riband shall tell
you, that the restraints on trade are futile and useless ;
of no advantage to us, and of no burden to those ori
whom they are imposed ; that the trade to America
is not secured by the acts of navigation, but by the
* Mr. Rice.

f Lord North.

156
EDMUND BURKE.
natural and irresistible advantage of a commercial
preference.
Such is the merit of the trade laws in this posture of
the debate. But when strong internal circumstances
are urged against the taxes ; when the scheme is dissected ; when experience and the nature of things are
brought to prove, and do prove, the utter impossibility
of obtaining an effective revenue from the colonies ;
when these things are pressed, or rather press themselves, so as to drive the advocates of colony taxes to
a clear admission of the futility of the scheme ; then,
sir, the sleeping trade laws revive from their trance ;
and this useless taxation is to be kept sacred, not for
its own sake, but as a counter-guard and security of
the laws of trade.
Then, sir, you keep up revenue laws which are
mischievous, in order to preserve trade laws that are
useless. Such is the wisdom of our plan in both its
members. They are separately given up as of no
value ; and yet one is always to be defended for the
sake of the other. But I cannot agree with the noble
lord, nor with the pamphlet from whence he seems to
have borrowed these ideas, concerning the inutility of
the trade laws. For, without idolizing them, I am sure
they are still, in many ways, of great use to us ; and
in former times, they have been of the greatest. They
do confine, and they do greatly narrow, the market
for the Americans. But my perfect conviction of this
does not help me in the least to discern how the revenue
laws form any security whatsoever to the commercial
regulations ; or that these commercial regulations are
the true ground of the quarrel ; or that the giving way,
in any one instance of authority, is to lose all that may
remain unconceded.
One fact is clear and indisputable. The public and
|vowed origin of this quarrel was on taxation. This
quarrel has indeed brought on new disputes on new
questions ; but certainly the least bitter, and the fewest
of all, on the trade laws. .To judge which of the two

SELECTIONS.
157
be the real, radical cause of quarrel, We have to see
whether the commercial dispute did, in order of time,
precede the dispute on taxation ? There is not a
shadow of evidence for it. Next, to enable us to
judge whether at this moment a dislike to the trade
laws be the real cause of quarrel, it is absolutely necessary to put the taxes out of the question by a repeal.
See how the Americans act in this position, and then
you will be able to discern correctly what is the true
object of the controversy, or whether any controversy
at all will remain. Unless you consent to remove this
cause of difference, it is impossible, with decency, to
assert that the dispute is not upon what it is avowed
to be. And I would, sir, recommend to your serious
consideration, whether it be prudent to form a rule
for punishing people, not on their own acts, but on
your conjectures. Surely it is preposterous at the very
best. It is not justifying your anger, by their misconduct ; but it is converting your ill-will into their
delinquency.
But the colonies will go further.—Alas ! alas ! when
will this speculating against fact and reason end ?—
What will quiet these panic fears which we entertain
of the hostile effect of a conciliatory conduct ? Is it
true that no case can exist, in which it is proper for
the sovereign to accede to the desires of his discontented
subjects ? Is there anything peculiar in this case, to
make a rule for itself ? Is all authority of course lost,
when it is not pushed to the extreme ? Is it a certain
maxim, that, the fewer causes of dissatisfaction are
left by government, the more the subject will be inclined
to resist and rebel ?
All these objections being in fact no more than
suspicions, conjectures, divinations, formed in defiance
of fact and experience ; they did not, sir, discourage
me from entertaining the idea of a conciliatory concession, founded on the principles which I have just
stated.
In forming a plan for this purpose, I endeavoured to

158
EDMUND BURKE.
put myself in that frame of mind which was the most
natural, and the most reasonable ; and which was
certainly the most probable means of securing me from
all error. I set out with a perfect distrust of my own
abilities ; a total renunciation of every speculation of
my own ; and with a profound reverence for the wisdom
of our ancestors, who have left us the inheritance of so
happy a constitution, and so flourishing an empire, and
what is a thousand times more valuable, the treasury
of the maxims and principles which formed the one,
and obtained the other.
During the reigns of the kings of Spain of the Austrian family, whenever they were at a loss in the Spanish
councils, it was common for their statesmen to say,
that they ought to consult the genius of Philip II. The
genius of Philip II might mislead them ; and the issue
of their affairs showed, that they had not chosen the
most perfect standard. But, sir, I am sure that I
shall not be misled, when, in a case of constitutional
difficulty, I consult the genius of the English constitution. Consulting at that oracle (it was with all due
humility and piety) I found four capital examples in
a similar case before me ; those of Ireland, Wales,
Chester, and Durham.
Ireland, before the English conquest, though never
governed by a despotic power, had no parliament. How
far the English parliament itself was at that time
modelled according to the present form, is disputed
among antiquaries. But we have all the reason in
the world to be assured, that a form of parlement,
such as England then enjoyed, she instantly communicated to Ireland ; and we are equally sure that almost
every successive improvement in constitutional liberty,
as fast as it was made here, was transmitted thither.
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

SELECTIONS.
159
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 before 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. This has made Ireland the
great and flourishing kingdom that it is ; and from
a disgrace and a burden intolerable to this nation,
has rendered her a principal part of our strength and
ornament. This country cannot be said to have ever
formally taxed her. The irregular things done in the
confusion of mighty troubles, and on, the hinge of
great revolutions, even if all were done that is said to
have been done, form no example. If they have any
effect in argument, they make an exception to prove the
rule. None of your own liberties could stand a moment
if the casual deviations from them, at such times, were

i6o
EDMUND BURKE.
suffered to be used as proofs of their nullity. By the
lucrative amount of such casual breaches in, the constitution, judge what the stated and fixed rule of supply
has been, in that kingdom. Your Irish pensioners
would starve if they had no other fund to live on than
taxes granted by English authority. Turn your eyes
to those popular grants from whence all your great
supplies are come ; and learn to respect that only
source of public wealth in the British empire.
My next example is Wales. This country was said
to be reduced by Henry III. It was said more truly
to be so by Edward I. But though then, conquered, it
was not looked upon as any part of the realm of England. Its old constitution, whatever that might have
been, was destroyed ; and no good one was substituted
in its place. The care of that tract was put into the
hands of lords marchers—a form of government of a
very singular kind ; a strange heterogeneous monster,
something between, hostility and government ; perhaps
it has a sort of resemblance, according to the modes of
those times, to that of commander-in-chief at present,
to whom all civil power is granted as secondary. The
manners of the Welsh nation followed the genius of
the government ; the people were ferocious, restive,
savage, and uncultivated ; sometimes composed, never
pacified. Wales, within itself, was in perpetual disorder ; and it kept the frontier of England in perpetual
alarm. Benefits from it to the state there were none.
Wales was only known, to England by incursion and
invasion.
Sir, during that state of things, parliament was not
idle. They attempted to subdue the fierce spirit of
the Welsh by all sorts of rigorous laws. They prohibited by statute the sending all sorts of arms into
Wales, as you prohibit by proclamation (with something more of doubt on the legality) the sending arms
to America. They disarmed the Welsh by statute, as you
attempted (but still with more question on the legality)
to disarm New England by an instruction,. They made

SELECTIONS.
161
an act to drag offenders from Wales into England for
trial, as you have done (but with more hardship) with
regard to America. By another act, where one of the
parties was an Englishman, they ordained, that his
trial should be always by English, They made acts
to restrain trade, as you do ; and they prevented the
Welsh from the use of fairs and markets, as you do the
Americans from fisheries and foreign ports. In short,
when the statute-book was not quite so much swelled
as it is now, you find no less than fifteen acts of penal
regulation on the subject of Wales.
Here we rub our hands—A fine body of precedents
for the authority of Parliament and the use of it ! I
admit it fully ; and pray add likewise to those precedents that all the while, Wales rid this kingdom like
an incubus / that it was an unprofitable and oppressive burden ; and that an Englishman travelling in
that country could not go six yards from the high road
without being murdered.
The march of the human mind is slow. Sir, it was
not until after two hundred years discovered, that, by
an eternal law, Providence had decreed vexation to
violence ; and poverty to rapine. Your ancestors did,
however, at length open their eyes to the ill-husbandry
of injustice. They found that the tyranny of a free
people could of all tyrannies the least be endured;
and that laws made against a whole nation were not
the most effectual methods for securing its obedience.
Accordingly, in the twenty-seventh year of Henry VIII
the course was entirely altered. With a preamble stating the entire and perfect rights of the crown of England,
it gave to the Welsh all the rights and privileges of
English subjects. A political order was established ;
the military power gave way to the civil ; the marches
were turned into counties. But that a nation should
have a right to English liberties, and yet no share at
all in the fundamental security of these liberties—
the grant of their own property—seemed a thing so
incongruous that, eight years after, that is, in the thirty6

EDMUND BURKE.
fifth of that reign, a complete and not ill-proportioned
representation by counties and boroughs was bestowed
upon Wales, by act of parliament. From that moment,
as by a charm, the tumults subsided ; obedience was
restored ; peace, order, and civilization followed in the
train of liberty. When the day-star of the English constitution, had arisen in their hearts, all was harmony
within and without—
IÔ2

. . . . . Simul alba nantis
Stella refulsit,
Defluit saxis agitatus humor ;
Concidunt venti, fugiuntque nubes,
Et minax (quôd sic voluere) ponto
Unda recumbit.

The very same year the county palatine of Chester
received the same relief from its oppressions, and the
same remedy to its disorders. Before this time Chester
was little less distempered than, Wales. The inhabitants, without rights themselves, were the fittest to
destroy the rights of others ; and from thence Richard II
drew the standing army of archers with which for a
time he oppressed England. The people of Chester
applied to parliament in a petition penned as I shall
read to you :
' To the king our sovereign lord, in most humble
wise shown unto your excellent majesty, the inhabitants
of your grace's county palatine of Chester ; That where
the said county palatine of Chester is and hath been
always hitherto exempt, excluded and separated out
and from your high court of parliament, to have any
knights and burgesses within the said court ; by reason
whereof the said inhabitants have hitherto sustained
manifold disherisons, losses, and damages, as well in
their lands, goods, and bodies, as in the good, civil,
and politic governance and maintenance of the commonwealth of their said country : (2) And forasmuch as
the said inhabitants have always hitherto been bound
by the acts and statutes made and ordained by your
said highness, and your most noble progenitors, by

SELECTIONS.
163
authority of the said court, as far forth as other counties, cities, and boroughs have been, that have had
their knights and burgesses within your said court of
parliament, and yet have had neither knight ne burgess
there for the said county palatine ; the said inhabitants,
for lack thereof, have been oftentimes touched and
grieved with acts and statutes made within the said
court, as well derogatory unto the most ancient jurisdictions, liberties and privileges of your said county
palatine, as prejudicial unto the commonwealth, quietness, rest, and peace of your grace's most bounden
subjects inhabiting within the same.'
What did parliament with this audacious address ?—
Reject it as a libel ? Treat it as an affront to government ? Spurn it as a derogation from the rights of
legislature ? Did they toss it over the table ? Did
they burn it by the hands of the common hangman ?—
They took the petition of grievance, all rugged as it
was, without softening or temperament, unpurged of
the original bitterness and indignation of complaint ;
they made it the very preamble to their act of redress ;
and consecrated its principle to all ages in the sanctuary
of legislation.
Here is my third example. It was attended with the
success of the two former. Chester, civilized as well
as Wales, has demonstrated that freedom and not
servitude is the cure of anarchy ; as religion, and not
atheism, is the true remedy for superstition. Sir, this
pattern of Chester was followed in the reign of Charles II.
with regard to the county palatine of Durham, which
is my fourth example. This county had long lain out
of the pale of free legislation. So scrupulously was
the example of Chester followed, that the style of the
preamble is nearly the same with that of the Chester
act ; and, without affecting the abstract extent of the
authority of parliament, it recognizes the equity of not
suffering any considerable district, in which the British
subjects may act as a body, to be taxed without their
own voice in the grant»

i64
EDMUND BURKE.
Now if the doctrines of policy contained in these
preambles, and the force of these examples in the acts
of parliaments, avail anything, what can be said against
applying them with regard to America ? Are not
the people of America as much Englishmen as the
Welsh ? The preamble of the act of Henry VIII says
the Welsh speak a language no way resembling that of
his majesty's English subjects. Are the Americans not
as numerous ? If we may trust the learned and accurate Judge Barrington's account of North Wales,
and take that as a standard to measure the rest, there
is no comparison. The people cannot amount to above
200,000 ; not a tenth part of the number in the colonies.
Is America in rebellion ? Wales was hardly ever free
from it. Have you attempted to govern America by
penal statutes ? You made fifteen for Wales. But
your legislative authority is perfect with regard to
America ; was it less perfect in Wales, Chester, and
Durham ? But America is virtually represented,
What ! does the electric force of virtual representation
more easily pass over the Atlantic, than pervade Wales,
which lies in your neighbourhood ; or than Chester and
Durham, surrounded by abundance of representation,
that is actual and palpable ? But, sir, your ancestors
thought this sort of virtual representation, however
ample, to be totally insufficient for the freedom of the
inhabitants of territories that are so near, and comparatively so inconsiderable. How then can I think
it sufficient for those which are infinitely greater, and
infinitely more remote ?
You will now, sir, perhaps imagine, that I am on the
point of proposing to you a scheme for a representation
of the colonies in parliament. Perhaps I might be
inclined to entertain some such thought ; but a great
flood stops me on my course. Opftosuit natura—I
cannot remove the eternal barriers of the creation.
The thing, in that mode, I do not know to be possible. As I meddle with no theory, I do not absolutely
assert the impracticability of such a representation.

SELECTIONS.
165
But I do not see my way to it ; and those who
have been more confident have not been more successful. However, the arm of public benevolence is
not shortened ; and there are often several means
to the same end. What nature has disjoined in one
way, wisdom may unite in another. When we cannot give the benefit as we would wish, let us not
refuse it altogether. If we cannot give the principal,
let us find a substitute. But how ? Where ? What
substitute ?
*
Fortunately I am not obliged for the ways and means
of this substitute to tax my own unproductive invention. I am not even obliged to go to the rich treasury
of the fertile framers of imaginary commonwealths ;
not to the Republic of Plato, not to the Utopia of More ;
not to the Oceana of Harrington. It is before me—
it is at my feet, and the rude swain treads daily on it
with his clouted shoon. I only wish you to recognize,
for the theory, the ancient constitutional policy of
this kingdom with regard to representation, as that
policy has been declared in acts of parliament ; and,
as to the practice, to return to that mode which an
uniform experience has marked out to you, as best ;
and in which you walked with security, advantage, and
honour, until the year 1763.
My resolutions therefore mean to establish the equity
and justice of a taxation of America, by grant, and not
by imposition. To mark the legal competency of the
colony assemblies for the support of their government
in peace, and for public aids in time of war. To acknowledge that this legal competency has had a dutiful
and beneficial exercise ; and that experience has shown
the benefit of their grants, and the futility of parliamentary
taxation as a method of supply.
These solid truths compose six fundamental propositions. There are three more resolutions corollary
to these. If you admit the first set, you can hardly
reject the others. But if you admit the first, I shall
be far from solicitous whether you accept or refuse the

EDMUND BURKE.
i66
last. I think these six massive pillars will be of strength
sufficient to support the temple of British concord.
I have no more doubt than I entertain of my existence
that, if you admitted these, you would command an
immediate peace ; and with but tolerable future management, a lasting obedience in America. I am not
arrogant in this confident assurance. The propositions
are all mere matters of fact ; and if they are such facts
as draw irresistible conclusions even in the stating, this
is the power of truth and not any management of
mine.
Sir, I shall open the whole plan to you together,
with such observations on the motions as may tend to
illustrate them where they may want explanation.
The first is a resolution—•' That the colonies and plantations of Great Britain in North America, consisting
of fourteen separate governments, and containing two
millions and upwards of free inhabitants, have not
had the liberty and privilege of electing and sending
any knights and burgesses, or others, to represent
them in the high court of parliament/ This is a plain
matter of fact, necessary to be laid down, and (excepting
the description) it is laid down in the language of the
constitution ; it is taken nearly verbatim from acts of
parliament.
The second is like unto the first—' That the said
colonies and plantations have been liable to, and bounded
by, several subsidies, payments* rates, and taxes, given
and granted by parliament, though the said colonies
and plantations have not their knights and burgesses
in the said high court of parliament, of their own election, to represent the condition of their country ; by
lack whereof they have been oftentimes touched and
grieved by subsidies given, granted, and assented
to, in the said court, m, a manner prejudicial to the
commonwealth, quietness, rest, and peace of the subjects inhabiting within the same.'5
Is this description too hot, or too cold, too strong, or
too weak ? Does it arrogate too much to the supreme

SELECTIONS.
167
legislature ? Does it lean too much to the claims of
the people ? If it runs into any of these errors, the
fault is not mine. It is the language of your own
ancient acts of parliament.
Non meus hic sermo, sed quae praecepit Ofellus,
Rusticus, abnormis sapiens.

It is the genuine produce of the ancient, rustic, manly,
home-bred sense of this country. I did not dare to
rub off a particle of the venerable rust that rather
adorns and preserves, than destroys, the metaL It
would be a profanation to touch with a tool the stones
which construct the sacred altar of peace. I would not
violate with modern polish the ingenuous and noble
roughness of these truly constitutional materials. Above
all things, I was resolved not to be guilty of tampering :
the odious vice of restless and unstable minds. I put
my foot in the tracks of our forefathers ; where I can
neither wander nor stumble. Determining to fix articles
of peace, I was resolved not to be wise beyond what
was written ; I was resolved to use nothing else than
the form of sound words ; to let others abound in their
own sense ; and carefully to abstain from all expressions of my own. What the Jaw has said, I say. In
all things else I am silent. I have no organ but for
her words. This, if it be not ingenious, I am sure is
safe.
There are indeed words expressive of grievance in
this second resolution, which those who are resolved
always to be in the right v/iil deny to contain matter
of fact, as applied to the present case ; although parliament thought them true, with regard to the counties of
Chester and Durham. They will deny that the Americans were ever ' touched and grieved ' with the taxes.
If they consider nothing in taxes but their weight as
pecuniary impositions, there might be some pretence
for this denial. But men may be sorely touched and
deeply grieved in their privileges, as well as in their
purses. Men may lose little in property by the act

EDMUND BURKE.
i68
which takes away their freedom. When a man is
robbed of a trifle on the highway, it is not the twopence lost that constitutes the capital outrage. This is
not confined to privileges. Even ancient indulgences
withdrawn, without offence on the part of those who
enjoyed such favours, operate as grievances. But were
the Americans then not touched and grieved by the
taxes, in some measure, merely as taxes ? If so, why
were they almost all either wholly repealed or exceedingly reduced ? Were they not touched and grieved
even by the regulating duties of the sixth of George II ?
Else why were the duties first reduced to one-third in
1764, and afterwards to a third of that third in the
year 1766 ? Were they not touched and grieved by
the Stamp Act ? I shall say they were, until that tax
is revived. Were they not touched and grieved by the
duties of 1767, which were likewise repealed, and which
Lord Hillsborough tells you (for the ministry) were laid
contrary to the true principle of commerce ? Is not
the assurance given by that noble person to the colonies
of a resolution to lay no more taxes on them, an admission that taxes would touch and grieve them ? Is not
the resolution of the noble lord in the blue riband, now
standing on your journals, the strongest of all proofs
that parliamentary subsidies really touched and grieved
them ? Else why all these changes, modifications,
repeals, assurances, and resolutions ?
The next proposition is—' That, from the distance
of the said colonies, and from other circumstances, no
method hath hitherto been devised for procuring a
representation in parliament for the said colonies/ This
is an assertion of a fact. I go no further on the paper ;
though, in my private judgment, an useful representation is impossible ; I am sure it is not desired by them ;
nor ought it perhaps by us ; but I abstain from
opinions.
The fourth resolution is—' That each of the said
colonies hath within itself a body, chosen in part, or
in the whole, by the freemen, freeholders, or other free

SELECTIONS.
169
inhabitants thereof, commonly called the general
assembly or general court ; with powers legally to
raise, levy, and assess, according to the several usage
of such colonies, duties and taxes towards defraying all
sorts of public services/
This competence in the colony assemblies is certain.
It is proved by the whole tenor of their acts of supply
in all the assemblies, in which the constant style of
granting is, ' an aid to his majesty ' ; and acts granting
to the crown have regularly for near a century passed
the public offices without dispute. Those who have
been pleased paradoxically to deny this right, holding
that none but the British parliament can grant to the
crown, are wished to look to what is done, not only
in the colonies, but in Ireland, in one uniform unbroken
tenor every session. Sir, I am surprised that this
doctrine should come from some of the law servants of
the crown. I say, that if the crown could be responsible, his majesty—but certainly the ministers, and
even these law officers themselves, through whose hands
the acts pass biennially in Ireland, or annually in the
colonies, are in an habitual course of committing
impeachable offences. What habitual offenders have
been all presidents of the council, all secretaries of
state, all first lords of trade, all attornies and all
solicitors general ! However, they are safe ; as no
one impeaches them ; and there is no ground of
charge against them, except in their own unfounded
theories.
The fifth resolution is also a resolution of fact—' That
the said general assemblies, general courts, or other
bodies legally qualified as aforesaid, have at sundry
times freely granted several large subsidies and public
aids for his majesty's service, according to their
abilities, when required thereto by letter from one of his
majesty's principal secretaries of state ; and that their
right to grant the same, and their cheerfulness and
sufficiency in the said grants, have been at sundry
times acknowledged by parliament/ To say nothing.

170
EDMUND BURKE.
of their great expenses in the Indian wars ; and not
to take their exertion in foreign ones, so high as the
supplies in the year 1695 ; not to go back to their
public contributions in the year 1710 ; I shall begin
to travel only where the journals give me light ; resolving to deal in nothing but fact, authenticated by
parliamentary record ; and to build myself wholly on
that solid basis.
On the ^jth of April, 1748,* a committee of this
House came to the following resolution :
' Resolved,
' That it is the opinion of this committee, That it is
just and reasonable that the several provinces and
colonies of Massachusetts Bay, New Hampshire,
Connecticut, and Rhode Island, be reimbursed the
expenses they have been at in taking and securing to
the crown of Great Britain the island of Cape Breton
and its dependencies.'
These expenses were immense for such colonies.
They were above £200,000 sterling ; money first raised
and advanced on their public credit.
On the 28th of January, 1756,1a message from the
king came to us, to this effect—' His majesty, being
sensible of the zeal and vigour with which his faithful
subjects of certain colonies in North America have
exerted themselves in defence of his majesty's just
rights and possessions, recommends it to this House
to take the same into their consideration, and to enable
his majesty to give them such assistance as may be
a proper reward and encouragement.'
On the 3rd of February, 17564 the House came to
a suitable resolution, expressed in words nearly the
same as those of the message ; but with the further
addition, that the money then voted was as an encouragement to the colonies to exert themselves , with
vigour. It will not be necessary to go through all the
testimonies which your own records have given to the
* Journals of the House, vol xxv.
f Ibid, vol, xxYii.
$ Ibid.

SELECTIONS.
171
truth of my resolutions, I will only refer you to the
places in the journals :-—
Vol. xxvii.— 16th and 19th May, 1757.
Vol. xxviii.—June 1st, 1758—April 26th and 30th,
1759—March 26th and 31st, and April
28th, 1760—Jan. 9th and 20th, 1761.
Vol. xxix.—Jan. 22nd and 26th, 1762—March 14th
and 17th, 1763.
Sir, here is the repeated acknowledgment of parliament, that the colonies not only gave, but gave to
satiety. This nation has formally acknowledged two
things ; first, that the colonies had gone beyond their
abilities, parliament having thought it necessary to
reimburse them ; secondly, that they had acted legally
and laudably in their grants of money, and their maintenance of troops, since the compensation is expressly
given as reward and encouragement. Reward is not
bestowed for acts that are unlawful ; and encouragement is not held out to things that deserve reprehension. My resolution therefore does nothing more than
collect into one proposition, what is scattered through
your journals. I give you nothing but your own ; and
you cannot refuse in the gross what you have so often
acknowledged in detail. The admission of this, which
will be so honourable to them and to you, will, indeed,
be mortal to all the miserable stories, by which the
passions of the misguided people have been engaged
in an unhappy system. The people heard, indeed,
from the beginning of these disputes, one thing continually dinned in their ears, that reason and justice
demanded, that the Americans, who paid no taxes,
should be compelled to contribute. How did that fact,
of their paying nothing, stand, when the taxing system
began ? When Mr. Grenville began to form his system
of American revenue, he stated in this House, that the
colonies were then in debt two million six hundred
thousand pounds sterling money ; and was of opinion

172
EDMUND BURKE.
they would discharge that debt in four years. On this
state, those untaxed people were actually subject to the
payment of taxes to the amount of six hundred and
fifty thousand a year. In fact, however, Mr. Grenville
was mistaken. The funds given for sinking the debt
did not prove quite so ample as both the colonies and
he expected. The calculation was too sanguine : the
reduction was not completed till some years after, and
at different times in different colonies. However, the
taxes after the war continued too great to bear any
addition, with prudence or propriety ; and when the
burdens imposed in consequence of former requisitions
were discharged, our tone became too high to resort
again to requisition. No colony, since that time, ever
has had any requisition whatsoever made to it.
We see the sense of the crown, and the sense of
parliament, on the productive nature of a revenue by
grant. Now search the same journals for the produce
of the revenue by imposition—Where is it ?—let us
know the volume and the page—what is the gross,
what is the net produce ?—to what service is it applied ?
—how have you appropriated its surplus?—What, can
none of the many skilful index-makers, that we are
now employing, find any trace of it ?—Well, let them
and that rest together.—But are the journals, which
say nothing of the revenue, as silent on the discontent ?
—Oh, no ! a child may find it. It is the melancholy
burden and blot of every page.
I think, then, I am, from those journals, justified in
the sixth and last resolution, which is—' That it hath
been found by experience, that the manner of granting
the said supplies and aids, by the said general assemblies, hath been more agreeable to the said colonies, and
more beneficial, and conducive to the public service,
than the mode of giving and granting aids in parliament, to be raised and paid in the said colonies.' This
makes the whole of the fundamental part of the plan.
The conclusion is irresistible. You cannot say, that
you were driven by any necessity to an exercise of th e

SELECTIONS.
173
utmost rights of legislature. You cannot assert, that
you took on yourselves the task of imposing colony
taxes, from the want of another legal body, that is
competent to the purpose of supplying the exigencies
of the state without wounding the prejudices of the
people. Neither is it true that the body so qualified,
and having that competence, had neglected the duty.
The question now, on all this accumulated matter,
is ;—whether you will choose to abide by a profitable
experience, or a mischievous theory ? whether you
choose to build on imagination or fact ? whether you
prefer enjoyment or hope? satisfaction in your subjects, or discontent ?
If these propositions are accepted, everything which
has been made to enforce a contrary system, must,
I take it for granted, fall along with it. On that
ground, I have drawn the following resolution, which,
when it comes to be moved, will naturally be divided
in a proper manner : ' That it may be proper to repeal
an act, made in the seventh year of the reign of his
present majesty, intituled, An act for granting certain
duties in the British colonies and plantations in
America ; for allowing a drawback of the duties of
customs upon the exportation from this kingdom of
coffee and cocoa-nuts of the produce of the said colonies
or plantations ; for discontinuing the drawbacks payable on China eathenware exported to America ; and
for more effectually preventing the clandestine running
of goods in the said colonies and plantations.—And
that it may be proper to repeal an act, made in the
fourteenth year of the reign of his present majesty,
intituled, An act to discontinue, in such manner, and
for such time, as are therein mentioned, the landing
and discharging, lading or shipping, of goods, wares,
and merchandise, at the town and within the harbour
of Boston, in the province of Massachusetts Bay, in
North America.—And that it may be proper to repeal
an act, made in the fourteenth year of the reign of his
present majesty, intituled, An act for the impartial

174
EDMUND BURKE.
administration of justice, in the cases of persons
questioned for any acts done by them, in the execution
of the law, or for the suppression of riots and tumults,
in the province of Massachusett's Bay, in New England.
—And that it may be proper to repeal an act, made in
the fourteenth year of the reign of his present majesty,
intituled, An act for the better regulating the government of the province of Massachusett's Bay, in New
England.—-And, also, that it may be proper to explain
and amend an act, made in the thirty-fifth year of the
reign of King Henry VIII, intituled, An act for the
trial of treasons committed out of the king's dominions/
I wish, sic* to repeal the Boston Port Bill, because
(independently of the dangerous precedent of suspending the rights of the subject during the king's pleasure)
it was passed, as I apprehend, with less regularity, and
on more partial principles, than it ought. The corporation of Boston was not heard before it was condemned. Other towns, full as guilty as she was, have
not had their ports blocked up. Even the restraining
bill of the present session does not go to the length of
the Boston Port Act. The same ideas of prudence,
which induced you not to extend equal punishment to
equal guilt, even when you were punishing, induce me,
who mean not to chastise, but to reconcile, to be
satisfied with the punishment already partially inflicted.
Ideas of prudence and accommodation to circumstances prevent you from taking away the charters of
Connecticut and Rhode Island, as you have taken away
that of Massachusett's colony, though the crown has
far less power in the two former provinces than it
enjoyed in the latter ; and though the abuses have been
full as great, and as flagrant, in the exempted as in the
punished. The same reasons of prudence and accommodation have weight with me in restoring the charter
of Massachusett's Bay. Besides, sir, the act which
changes the charter of Massachusett's is in many particulars so exceptionable, that if I did not wish abso-

SELECTIONS.
175
lutely to repeal, I would by all means desire to alter it ;
as several of its provisions tend to the subversion of all
public and private justice. Such, among others, is
the power in the governor to change the sheriff at his
pleasure ; and to make a new returning officer for every
special cause. It is shameful to behold such a regulation standing among English laws.
The act for bringing persons accused of committing
murder under the orders of government to England for
trial is but temporary. That act has calculated the
probable duration of our quarrel with the colonies ;
and is accommodated to that supposed duration. I
would hasten the happy moment of reconciliation ; and
therefore must, on my principle, get rid of that most
justly obnoxious act.
The act of Henry VIII, for the trial of treasons,
I do not mean to take away, but to confine it to its
proper bounds and original intention ; to make it
expressly for trial of treasons (and the greatest treasons
may be committed) in places where the jurisdiction of
the crown does not extend.
Having guarded the privileges of local legislature,
I would next secure to the colonies a fair and unbiassed
judicature ; for which purpose, sir, I propose the
following resolution : ' That, from the time when the
general assembly or general court of any colony or
plantation in North America, shall have appointed by
act of assembly, duly confirmed, a settled salary to
the offices of the chief justice and other judges of the
superior court, it may be proper that the said chief
justice and other judges of the superior courts of such
colony, shall hold his and their office and offices during
their good behaviour ; and shall not be removed therefrom, but when the said removal shall be adjudged by
his majesty in council, upon a hearing on complaint
from the general assembly, or on a complaint from the
governor, or council, or the house of representation
severally, of the colony in which the said chief justice
and other judges have exercised the said offices.'

176
EDMUND BURKE.
The next resolution relates to the courts of admiralty.
It is this :—' That it may be proper to regulate the
courts of admiralty, or vice admiralty, authorized by
the 15th chap, of the 4th of George III, in such a
manner as to make the same more commodious to
those who sue, or are sued, in the said courts, and to
provide for the more decent maintenance of the judges
in the same.'
These courts I do not wish to take away ; they are
in themselves proper establishments. This court is one
of the capital securities of the act of navigation. The
extent of its jurisdiction, indeed, has been increased ;
but this is altogether as proper, and is, indeed, on
many accounts, more eligible, where new powers were
wanted, than a court absolutely new. But courts
incommodiously situated, in effect, deny justice ; and
a court, partaking in the fruits of its own condemnation, is a robber. The congress complain, and complain
justly, of this grievance.*
These are the three consequential propositions. I
have thought of two or three more ; but they came
rather too near detail, and to the province of executive
government ; which I wish parliament always to
superintend, never to assume. If the first six are
granted, congruity will carry the latter three. If not,
the .things that remain unrepealed, will be, I hope,
rather unseemly incumbrances on the building than
very materially detrimental to its strength and stability.
Here, sir, I should close ; but that I plainly perceive
some objections remain, which I ought, if possible, to
remove. The first will be, that, in resorting to the
doctrine of our ancestors, as contained in the preamble
to the Chester act, I prove too much ; that the grievance from a want of representation stated in that preamble goes to the whole of legislation as well as to
* The solicitor-general informed Mr. B. when the resolutions were
separately moved, that the grievance of the judges partaking of the
profits of the seizure had been redressed by office ; accordingly the
resolution was amended.

SELECTIONS.
177
taxation. And that the colonies, grounding themselves
upon that doctrine, will apply it to all parts of legislative authority.
To this objection, with all possible deference and
humility, and wishing as little as any man living to
impair the smallest particle of our supreme authority,
I answer, that the words are the words of parliament, and
not mine ; and that all false and inconclusive inferences
drawn from them, are not mine ; for 1 heartily disclaim
any such inference. I have chosen the words of an act
of parliament, which Mr. Grenville, surely a tolerably
zealous and very judicious advocate for the sovereignty
of parliament, formerly moved to have read at your
table in confirmation of his tenets. It is true, that
Lord Chatham considered these preambles as declaring
strongly in favour of his opinions. He was a no less
powerful advocate for the privileges of the Americans.
Ought I not from hence to presume, that these preambles are as favourable as possible to both, when
properly understood ; favourable both to the rights of
parliament, and to the privileges of the dependencies
of this crown ? But, sir, the object of grievance in
my resolution I have not taken from the Chester, but
from the Durham act, which confines the hardship of
want of representation to the case of subsidies; and
which therefore falls in exactly with the case of the
colonies. But whether the unrepresented counties
were de jure, or de facto, bound, the preambles do not
accurately distinguish ; nor indeed was it necessary ;
for, whether de jure, or de facto, the legislature thought
the exercise of the power of taxing, as of right, or as of
fact without right, equally a grievance, and equally
oppressive.
I do not know that the colonies have, in any general
way, or in any cool hour, gone much beyond the
demand of immunity in relation to taxes. It is not
fair to judge of the temper or dispositions of any man,
or any set of men, when they are composed and at rest,
from their conduct, or their expressions, in a state of

178
EDMUND BURKE.
disturbance and irritation. It is besides a very great
mistake to imagine, that mankind follow up practically
any speculative principle, either of government or of
freedom, as far as it will go in argument and logical
illation. We Englishmen stop very short of the principles upon which we support any given part of our
constitution ; or even the whole of it together. I could
easily, if I had not already tired you, give you very
striking and convincing instances of-it. This is nothing
but what is natural and proper. All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue,
and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and
barter. We balance inconveniences ; we give and
take ; we remit some rights, that we may enjoy others ;
and we choose rather to be happy citizens, than subtle
disputants. As we must give, away some natural
liberty, to enjoy civil advantages ; so we must sacrifice
some civil liberties, for the advantages to be derived
from the communion and fellowship of a great empire.
But, in all fair dealings, the thing bought must bear
some proportion to the purchase paid. None will
barter away the immediate jewel of his soul. Though
a great house is apt to make slaves haughty, yet it is
purchasing a part of the artificial importance of a great
empire too dear to pay for it all essential rights and all
the intrinsic dignity of human nature. None of us
who would not risk his life rather than fall under a
government purely arbitrary. But although there are
some amongst us who think our constitution wants
many improvements, to make it a complete system of
liberty ; perhaps none who are of that opinion would
think it right to aim at such improvement, by disturbing
his country, and risking everything that is dear to
him. In every arduous enterprise, we consider what
we are to lose, as well as what we are to gain ; and
the more and better stake of liberty every people possess, the less they will hazard in a vain attempt to make
it more. These are the cords of man. Man acts from
adequate motives relative to his interest ; and not on

SELECTIONS,
179
metaphysical speculations. Aristotle, the great master
of reasoning, cautions us, and with great weight and
propriety, against this species of delusive geometrical
accuracy in moral arguments, as the most fallacious
of all sophistry.
The Americans will have no interest contrary to the
grandeur and glory of England, when they are not
oppressed by the weight of it ; and they will rather be
inclined to respect the acts of a superintending legislature, when they see them the acts of that power,
which is itself the security, not the rival, of their secondary importance. In this assurance, my mind most
perfectly acquiesces, and I confess, I feel not the least
alarm from the discontents which are to arise from
putting people at their ease ; nor do I apprehend the
destruction of this empire, from giving, by an act of
free grace and indulgence, to two millions of my fellowcitizens some share of those rights, upon which I have
always been taught to value myself.
It is said, indeed, that this power of granting, vested
in American assemblies, would dissolve the unity of the
empire ; which was preserved, entire, although Wales,
and Chester, and Durham, were added to it. Truly,
Mr, Speaker, I do not know what this unity means ;
nor has it ever been heard of, that I know, in the constitutional policy of this country. The very idea of
subordination of parts, excludes this notion of simple
and undivided unity. England is the head ; but she
is not the head and the members too. Ireland has ever
had from the beginning a separate, but not an independent, legislature ; which, far from' distracting, promoted the union of the whole. Everything was sweetly
and harmoniously disposed through both islands for the
conservation of English dominion, and the communication of English liberties. I do not see that the same
principles might not be carried into twenty islands, and
with the same good effect, This is my model with
regard to America, as far as the internal circumstances
of the two countries are the same. I know no other

i8o
EDMUND BURKE.
unity of this empire, than I can draw from its example
during these periods, when it seemed to my poor understanding more united than it is now, or than it is likely
to be by the present methods.
But since I speak of these methods, I recollect, Mr.
Speaker, almost too late, that I promised, before I
finished, to say something of the proposition of the
noble lord * on the floor, which has been so lately received, and stands on your journals. I must be deeply
concerned, whenever it is my misfortune to continue
a difference with the majority of this House. But,
as the reasons for that difference are my apology for
thus troubling you, suffer me to state them in a very
few words. I shall compress them into as small a body
as I possibly can, having already debated that matter
at large, when the question was before the committee.
First, then, I cannot admit that proposition of a
ransom by auction ;—because it is a mere project.
It is a thing new; unheard of; supported by no experience ; justified by no analogy ; without example
of our ancestors, or root in the constitution.
It is neither regular parliamentary taxation, nor
colony grant. Experimentum in corpore vili, is a good
rule, which will ever make me adverse to any trial of
experiments on what is certainly the most valuable of
all subjects ; the peace of this empire.
Secondly, it is an experiment which must be fatal
in the end to our constitution. For what is it but
a scheme for taxing the colonies in the ante-chamber
of the noble lord and his successors ? To settle the
quotas and proportions in this House, is clearly impossible. You, sir, may flatter yourself, you shall sit
a state auctioneer, with your hammer in your hand,
and knock down to each colony as it bids. But to
settle (on the plan laid down by the noble lord) the
true proportional payment for four or five and twenty
governments, according to the absolute and the relative
wealth of each, and according to the British proportion
* Lord North.

SELECTIONS.
181
of wealth and burden, is a wild and chimerical notion.
This new taxation must therefore come in by the backdoor of the constitution. Each quota must be brought
to this House ready formed ; you can neither add nor
alter. You must register it. You can do nothing
further. For on what grounds can you deliberate
either before or after the proposition? You cannot
hear the counsel for all these provinces, quarrelling
each on its own quantity of payment, and its proportion to others. If you should attempt it, the committee of provincial ways and means, or by whatever
other name it will delight to be called, must swallow
up all the time of parliament.
Thirdly, it does not give satisfaction to the complaint
of the colonies. They complain that they are taxed
without their consent ; you answer that you will fix the
sum at which they shall be taxed. That is, you give
them the very grievance for the remedy. You tell
them indeed, that you will leave the mode to themselves. I really beg pardon : it gives me pain to mention
it • but you must be sensible that you will not perform
this part of the compact. For, suppose the colonies
were to lay the duties, which furnished their contingent,
upon the importation of your manufactures ; you. know
you would never surfer such a tax to be laid. You
know too, that you would not suffer many other modes
of taxation. So that, when you come to explain yourself, it will be found, that you will neither leave to
themselves the quantum nor the mode ; nor indeed
anything. The whole is delusion from one end to the
other.
Fourthly, this method of ransom by auction, unless it
be universally accepted, will plunge you into great and
inextricable difficulties. In what year of our Lord are
the proportions of payments to be settled ? To say
nothing of the impossibility that colony agents should
have general powers of taxing the colonies at their
discretion ; consider, I implore you, that the communication by special messages, and orders between these

EDMUND BURKE.
agents and their constituents on each variation of the
case, when the parties come to contend together, and to
dispute on their relative proportions, will be a matter
of delay, perplexity, and confusion that never can have
an end.
If all the colonies do not appear at the outcry, what
is the condition of those assemblies, who offer by themselves or their agents, to tax themselves up to your
ideas of their proportion ? The refractory colonies, who
refuse all composition, will remain taxed only to your old
impositions which, however grievous in principle, are
trifling as to production. The obedient colonies in this
scheme are heavily taxed ; the refractory remain unburdened. What will you do ? Will you lay new and
heavier taxes by parliament on the disobedient ? Pray
consider in what way you can do it. You are perfectly
convinced, that, in the way of taxing, you can do nothing
but at the ports. Now suppose it is Virginia that
refuses to appear at your auction, while Maryland and
North Carolina bid handsomely for their ransom, and
are taxed to your quota, how will you put these colonies
on a par ? Will you tax the tobacco of Virginia ? If
you do, you give its death-wound to your English revenue
at home, and to one of the very greatest articles of your
own foreign trade. If you tax the import of that rebellious colony, what do you tax but your own manufactures, or the goods of some other obedient, and already
well-taxed colony ? Who has said one word on this
labyrinth of detail, which bewilders you more and more
as you enter into it ? Who has presented, who can
present you with a clue, to lead you out of it ? I think,
sir, it is impossible that you should not recollect that
the colony bounds are so implicated in one another (you
know it by your other experiments in the bill for prohibiting the New-England fishery) that you can lay no
possible restraint on almost any of them which may not
be presently eluded, if you do not confound the innocent
with the guilty, and burden those whom, upon every
principle, you ought to exonerate. He must be grossly
182

SELECTIONS.
183
ignorant of America, who thinks that, without falling
into this confusion of all rules of equity and policy, you
can restrain any single colony, especially Virginia and
Maryland, the central, the most important of them all.
Let it also be considered, that, either in the present
confusion you settle a permanent contingent, which will
and must be trifling ; and then you have no effectual
revenue : or you change the quota at every exigency ;
and then on every new repartition you' will have a new
quarrel.
Reflect besides that, when you have fixed a quota for
every colony, you have not provided for prompt and
punctual payment. Suppose one, two, five, ten years'
arrears. You cannot issue a treasury extent against the
failing colony. You must make new Boston port bills,
new restraining laws, new acts for dragging men to
England for trial. You must send out new fleets, new
armies. All is to begin again. From this day forward
the empire is never to know an hour's tranquillity. An
intestine fire will be kept alive in the bowels of the'
colonies, which one time or other must consume this
whole empire. 1 allow indeed that the empire of Germany raises her revenue and her troops by quotas and
contingents ; but the revenue of the empire, and the
army of,the empire, is the worst revenue, and the worst
army in the world.
Instead of a standing revenue, you will therefore have
a perpetual quarrel. Indeed the noble lord, who proposed this project of a ransom by auction, seemed
himself to be of that opinion. His project was rather
designed for breaking the union of the colonies than for
establishing a revenue. He confessed he apprehended
that his proposal would not be to their taste. I say this
scheme of disunion seems to be at the bottom of the
project ; for I will not suspect that the noble lord meant
nothing but merely to delude the nation by an airy
phantom which he never intended to realize. But
whatever his views may be ; as I propose the peace and
union of the colonies as the very foundation of my plan,

184
EDMUND BURKE.
it cannot accord with one whose foundation is perpetual
discord.
Compare the two. This I offer to give you is plain and
simple. The other full of perplexed and intricate mazes.
This is mild : that harsh. This is found by experience
effectual for its purposes ; the other is a new project.
This is universal ; the other calculated for certain
colonies only. This is immediate in its conciliatory
operation ; the other remote, contingent, full of hazard.
Mine is what becomes the dignity of a ruling people ;
gratuitous, unconditional, and not held out as a matter
of bargain and sale. I have done my duty in proposing
it to you. I have indeed tired you by a long discourse ;
but this is the misfortune of those to whose influence
nothing will be conceded, and who must win every inch
of their ground by argument. You have heard me with
goodness. May you decide with wisdom ! For my part,
I feel my mind greatly disburdened by what I have done
to-day. I have been the less fearful of trying your
patience, because on this subject I mean to spare it
altogether in future. I have this comfort, that in
every stage of the American affairs, I have steadily
opposed the measures that have produced the confusion,
and may bring on the destruction, of this empire. I
now go so far as to risk a proposal of my own. If
I cannot give peace to my country, I give it to my
conscience.
But 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 : 11 : 2f ths, 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

SELECTIONS.
185
luditur area. 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.
Next we know, that parties must ever exist in a free
country. We know, too> that the emulations of such
parties, their contradictions, their reciprocal necessities,
their hopes, and their fears, must send them all in their
turns to him that holds the balance of the state. The
parties are the gamesters ; but government keeps the
table, and is sure to be the winner in the end. When
this game is played, I really think it is more to be feared
that the people will be exhausted than that government
will not be supplied. Whereas, whatever is got by acts
of absolute power ill obeyed, because odious, or by contracts ill kept, because constrained: will be narrow,
feeble, uncertain, and precarious. ' Ease would retract
vows made in pain, as violent and void'

i86
EDMUND BURKE.
I, for one, protest against compounding our demands :
I declare against compounding for a poor limited sum,
the immense, ever growing, eternal debt, which is due
to generous government from protected freedom. And
so may I speed in the great object I propose to you, as
I think it would not only be an act of injustice, but
would be the worst economy in the world, to compel the
colonies to a sum certain, either in the way of ransom,
or in the way of compulsory compact.
But to clear up my ideas on this subject—a revenue
from America transmitted hither—do not delude yourselves—you never can receive it—No, not a shilling.
We have experience that from remote countries it is not
to be expected. If, when you attempted to extract
revenue from Bengal, you were obliged to return in loan
what you had taken in imposition, what can you expect
from North America ? For certainly, if ever there was
a country qualified to produce wealth, it is India ; or
an institution fit for the transmission, it is the East India
Company. America has none of these amplitudes. If
America gives you taxable objects, on which you lay
your duties here, and gives you, at the same time, a surplus by a foreign sale of her commodities to pay the
duties on these objects, which you tax at home, she has
performed her part to the British revenue. But with
regard to her own internal establishments ; she may, I
doubt not she will, contribute in moderation. I say in
moderation^ for she ought not to be permitted to exhaust herself. She ought to be reserved to a war ; the
weight of which, with the enemies that we are most
likely to have, muet be considerable in her quarter of
the globe. There she may serve you and serve you
essentially.
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

SELECTIONS.
187
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 would 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 cohésion 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, ôf 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

EDMUND BURKE.
ï88
constitution, which, infused through the mighty mass,
pervades, feeds, unites, invigorates, vivifies every part
of the empire, even down to the minutest member.
Is it not the same virtue which does everything for
us here in England ? Do you imagine, then, that it is
the land tax act 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 not ! 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
in 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

SELECTIONS.
i89
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 Amencan empire. English privileges have made it all that it is ; English
privileges alone will make it all it can be.
In full confidence of this unalterable truth, I now
(quod felix faustumque sit)—lay the first stone of the
temple of peace ; and I move you,
/ T h a t the colonies and plantations of Great Britain
in North America, consisting of fourteen separate governments, and containing two millions and upwards of
free inhabitants, have not had the liberty and privilege of electing and sending any knights and burgesses,
or others, to represent them in the high court of parliament.'
Upon this resolution, the previous question was put
and carried ; for the previous question 270, against
it 78.

IV.
ADDRESS TO T H E BRITISH
COLONISTS IN NORTH AMERICA.
[Dated 1777, the year of the defeats at Brandywine
and Germanstown, when the American prospects were
at their darkest. Lord Acton has described this address
as ' the grandest of state papers.']
THE very dangerous crisis into which the British empire
is brought, as it accounts for, so it justifies, the unusual
step we take in addressing ourselves to you.
The distempers of the state are grown to such a degree
of violence and malignity as to render all ordinary
remedies vain and frivolous. In such a deplorable
situation, an adherence to the common forms of business

190
EDMUND BURKE.
appears to us rather as an apology to cover a supine
neglect of duty,, than the means of performing it in
a manner adequate to the exigency that presses upon
us. The common means we have already tried, and
tried to no purpose. As our last resource, we turn ourselves to you. We address you merely in our private
capacity ; vested with no other authority than what
will naturally attend those, in whose declarations of
benevolence you have no reason to apprehend any
mixture of dissimulation or design.
We have this title to your attention : we call upon
it in a moment of the utmost importance to us all.
We find with infinite concern, that arguments are used
to persuade you of the necessity of separating yourselves from your ancient connexion with your parent
country, grounded on a supposition that a general
principle of alienation and enmity to you had pervaded
the whole of this kingdom ; and that there does no
longer subsist between you and us any common and
kindred principles, upon which we can possibly unite,
consistently with those ideas of liberty in which you
have justly placed your whole happiness.
If this fact were true, the inference drawn from it
would be irresistible. But nothing is less founded. We
admit, indeed, that violent addresses have been procured with uncommon pains by wicked and designing
men, purporting to be the genuine voice of the whole
people of England ; that they have been published by
authority here ; and made known to you by proclamations ; in order, by despair and resentment, incurably
to poison your minds against the origin of your race,
and to render all cordial reconciliation between us
utterly impracticable. The same wicked men, for the
same bad purposes, have so far surprised the justice
of parliament, as to cut off all communication betwixt
us, except what is to go in their own fallacious and
hostile channel.
But we conjure you by the invaluable pledges, which
have hitherto united, and which we trust will hereafter

SELECTIONS.
191
lastingly unite us, that you do not suffer yourselves to
be persuaded or provoked into an opinion that you are
at war with this nation. Do not think that the whole,
or even the uninfluenced majority of Englishmen in this
island are enemies to their own blood on the American
continent. Much delusion has been practised ; much
corrupt influence treacherously employed. But still a
large, and we trust the largest and soundest, part of
this kingdom perseveres in the most perfect unity of
sentiments, principles, and affections with you. It
spreads out a large and liberal platform of common
liberty, upon which we may all unite for ever. It abhors
the hostilities which have been carried on against you,
as much as you who feel the cruel effect of them. It
has disclaimed, in the most solemn manner, at the foot
of the throne itself, the addresses which tended to
irritate your sovereign against his colonies. We are
persuaded that even many of those, who unadvisedly
have put their hands to such intemperate and inflammatory addresses, have not at all apprehended to what
such proceedings naturally lead ; and would sooner die
than afford them the least countenance, if they were
sensible of their fatal effects on the union and liberty
of the empirefl
For ourselves, we faithfully assure you, that we have
ever considered you as rational creatures ; as free
agents ; as men willing to pursue, and able to discern,
your own true interest. We have wished to continue
united with you, in order that a people of one origin
and one character should be directed to the rational
objects of government by joint counsels, and protected
in them by a common force. Other subordination in
you we require none. We have never pressed that
argument of general union to the extinction of your
local, natural, and just privileges. Sensible of what is
due both to the dignity and weakness of man, we have
never wished to place over you any government, over
which, in great fundamental points, you should have
no sort of check or control in your own hands ; or which

192
EDMUND BURKE.
should be repugnant to your situation, principles, and
v
character.
No circumstances of fortune, you may be assured,
will ever induce us to form or tolerate any such design.
If the disposition of Providence (which we deprecate)
should even prostrate you at our feet, broken in power
and in spirit, it would be our duty and inclination to
revive, by every practicable means, that free energy
of mind which a fortune unsuitable to your virtue had
damped and dejected ; and to put you voluntarily in
possession of those very privileges, which you had in
vain attempted to assert by arms. For we solemnly
declare, that although we should look upon a separation
from you as a heavy calamity (and the heavier, because
we know you must have your full share in it), yet we
had much rather see you totally independent of this
crown and kingdom, than joined to it by as unnatural
a conjunction as that of freedom and servitude :—
a conjunction, which, if it were at all practicable, could
not fail, in the end, of being more mischievous to the
peace, prosperity, greatness, and power of this nation,
than beneficial by any enlargement of the bounds of
nominal empire.
But because, brethren, these professions are general,
and such as even enemies may make, when they reserve
to themselves the construction of what servitude and
what liberty are, we inform you that we adopt your own
standard of the blessing of free government. We are
of opinion, that you ought to enjoy the sole and exclusive right of freely granting, and applying to the support
of your administration, what God has freely granted as
a reward to your industry. And we do not confine this
immunity from exterior coercion, in this great point,
solely to what regards your local establishment, but
also to what may be thought proper for the maintenance
of the whole empire. In this resource we cheerfully
trust and acquiesce : satisfied by evident reason, that
no other expectation of revenue can possibly be given
by freemen ; and knowing from an experience, uniform

SELECTIONS.
193
both on yours and on our side of the ocean, that such
an expectation has never yet been disappointed. We
know of no road to your coffers but through your
affections.
To manifest our sentiments the more clearly to you
and to the world on this subject ; we declare our opinion,
that if no revenue at all, which, however, we are far
from supposing, were to be obtained from you to this
kingdom, yet as long as it is our happiness to be joined
with you in the bonds of fraternal charity and freedom,
with an open and flowing commerce between us, one
principle of enmity and friendship pervading, and
one right of war and peace directing, the strength of
the whole empire, we are likely to be at least as powerful as any nation, or as any combination of nations,
which in the course of human events may be formed
against us. We are sensible, that a very large proportion of the wealth and power of every empire must
necessarily be thrown upon the presiding state. We
are sensible that such a state ever has borne, and ever
must bear the greatest part, and sometimes the whole
of the public expenses : and we think her well
indemnified for that (rather apparent than real)
inequality of charge, in the dignity and pre-eminence
she enjoys, and in the superior opulence, which, after
all charges defrayed, must necessarily remain at the
centre of affairs. Of this principle we are not without
evidence in our remembrance (not yet effaced) of the
glorious and happy days of this empire. We are, therefore, incapable of that prevaricating style, by which,
when taxes without your consent are to be extorted
from you, this nation is represented as in the lowest
state of impoverishment and public distress ; but when
we are called upon to oppress you by force of arms, it
is painted as scarcely feeling its impositions, abounding
with wealth, and inexhaustible in its resources.
We also reason and feel, as you do, on the invasion of
your charters. Because the charters comprehend the
essential forms by which you enjoy your liberties, we
7

194
EDMUND BURKE,
regard them as most sacred, and by no means to be
taken away or altered without process, without examination, and without hearing, as they have lately been.
We even think, that they ought by no means to be
altered at all, but at the desire of the greater part of the
people who live under them. We cannot look upon men
as delinquents in the mass ; much less are we desirous
of lording over our brethren, insulting their honest pride,
and wantonly overturning establishments, judged to be
just and convenient by the public wisdom of this nation
at their institution ; and which long and inveterate use
has taught you to look up to with affection and reverence.
As we disapproved of the proceedings with regard to the
forms of your constitution, so we are equally tender of
every leading principle of free government. We never
could think with approbation of putting the military
power out of the coercion of the civil justice in the country
where it acts.
We disclaim also any sort of share in that other
measure, which has been used to alienate your affections
from this country, namely, the introduction of foreign
mercenaries. We saw their employment with shame
and regret, especially in numbers so far exceeding the
English forces, as in effect to constitute vassals, who
have no sense of freedom, and strangers, who have no
common interest or feelings, as the arbiters of our unhappy domestic quarrel.
We likewise saw with shame the African slaves, who
had been sold to you on public faith, and under the
sanction of acts of parliament, to be your servants and
your guards, employed to cut .the throats of their masters.
You will not, we trust, believe, that born in a civilized
country, formed to gentle manners, trained in a merciful
religion, and living in enlightened and polished times,
where even foreign hostility is softened from its original
sternness, we could have thought of letting loose upon
you, our late beloved brethren, these fierce tribes of
savages and cannibals, in whom the traces of human
nature are effaced by ignorance and barbarity. We

SELECTIONS.
195
rather wished to have joined with you in bringing gradually that unhappy part of mankind into civility, order,
piety, and virtuous discipline, than to have confirmed
their evil habits, and increased their natural ferocity, by
fleshing them in the slaughter of you, whom our wiser
and better ancestors had sent into the wilderness, with
the express view of introducing, along with our holy
religion, its humane and charitable manners. We do
not hold, that all things are lawful in war.. We should
think, that every barbarity, in fire, in wasting, in murders,
in tortures, and other cruelties, too horrible and too full
of turpitude for Christian mouths to utter, or ears to
hear, if done at our instigation by those, who, we know,
will make war thus if they make it at all, to be, to all
intents and purposes, as if done by ourselves. We clear
ourselves to you our brethren, to the present age, and to
future generations, to our king and our country, and to
Europe, which, as a spectator, beholds this tragic scene,
of every part or share in adding this last and worst of
evils to the inevitable mischiefs of a civil war.
We do not call you rebels and traitors. We do not
call for the vengeance of the crown against you. We
do not know how to qualify millions of our countrymen,
contending with one heart for an admission to privileges
which we have ever thought our own happiness and
honour, by odious and unworthy names. On the contrary, we highly revere the principles on which you act,
though we lament some of their effects. Armed as you
are, we embrace you as our friends and as our brethren
by the best and dearest ties of relation.
We view the establishment of the English colonies on
principles of liberty, as that which is to render this
kingdom venerable to future ages. In comparison of
this, we regard all the victories and conquests of our
warlike ancestors, or of our own times, as barbarous,
vulgar distinctions, in which many nations, whom we
look upon with little respect or value, have equalled, if
not far exceeded us. This is the peculiar and appropriated glory of England. Those who have and who

196
EDMUND BURKE.
hold to that foundation of common liberty, whether on
this or on your side of the ocean, we consider as the true,
and the only true, Englishmen. Those who depart from
it, whether there or here, are attainted, corrupted in
blood, and wholly fallen from their original rank and
value. They are the real rebels to the fair constitution
and just supremacy of England.
We exhort you, therefore, to cleave for ever to those
principles, as being the true bond of union in this empire ;
and to show by a manly perseverance, that the sentiments of honour, and the rights of mankind, are not
held by the uncertain events of war, as you have hitherto
shown a glorious and affecting example to the world,
that they are not dependent on the ordinary conveniences
and satisfactions of life.
Knowing no other arguments to be used to men of
liberal minds, it is upon these very principles, and these
alone, we hope and trust, that no nattering and no alarming circumstances shall permit you to listen to the seductions of those who would alienate you from your dependence on the crown and parliament of this kingdom.
That very liberty which you so justly prize above all
things originated here ; and it may be very doubtful
whether, without being constantly fed from the original
fountain, it can be at all perpetuated or preserved in
its native purity and perfection. Untried forms of
government may, to unstable minds, recommend themselves even by their novelty. But you will do well to
remember, that England has been great and happy under
the present limited monarchy (subsisting in more or less
vigour and purity) for several hundred years. None
but England can communicate to you the benefits of
such a constitution. We apprehend you are not now,
nor for ages are likely to be, capable of that form of
constitution in an independent state. Besides, let us
suggest to you our apprehensions, that your present
union (in which we rejoice, and which we wish long to
subsist) cannot always subsist without the authority and
weight of this great and long respected body, to equipoise,

SELECTIONS.
197
and to preserve you amongst yourselves in a just and fair
equality. It may not even be impossible, that a long
course of war with the administration of this country
may be but a prelude to a series of wars and contentions
among yourselves, to end at length (as such scenes have
too often ended), in a species of humiliating repose,
which nothing but the preceding calamities would
reconcile to the dispirited few who survived them. We
allow that even this evil is worth the risk to men of
honour, when rational liberty is at stake, as in the
present case we confess and lament that it is. But if
ever a real security, by parliament, is given against the
terror or the abuse of unlimited power, and after such
security given you should persevere in resistance, we leave
you to consider, whether the risk is not incurred without
an object, or incurred for an object infinitely diminished,
by such concessions, in its importance and value.
As to other points of discussion, when these grand
fundamentals of your grants and charters are once
settled and ratified by clear parliamentary authority,
as the ground for peace and forgiveness on our side, and
for a manly and liberal obedience on yours, treaty, and
a spirit of reconciliation, will easily and securely adjust
whatever may remain. Of this we give you our word,
that so far as we are at present concerned, and if by any
event we should become more concerned hereafter, you
may rest assured, upon the pledges of honour not forfeited, faith not violated, and uniformity of character
and profession not yet broken, we, at least on these
grounds, will never fail you.
Respecting your wisdom, and valuing your safety,
we do not call upon you to trust your existence to your
enemies. We do not advise you to an unconditional
submission. With satisfaction we assure you, that
almost all in both Houses (however unhappily they have
been deluded, so as not to give any immediate effect to
their opinion) disclaim that idea. You can have no
friends in whom you cannot rationally confide. But
parliament is your friend from the moment in which,

198
EDMUND BURKE.
removing its confidence from those who have constantly
deceived its good intentions, it adopts the sentiments
of those who have made sacrifices (inferior indeed to
yours), but have, however, sacrificed enough to demonstrate the sincerity of their regard and value for your
liberty and prosperity.
Arguments may be used to weaken your confidence
in that public security \ because, from some unpleasant
appearances, there is a suspicion that parliament itself
is somewhat fallen from its independent spirit. How
far this supposition may be founded in fact we are unwilling to determine. But we are well assured from
experience, that even if it all were true that is contended
for, and in the extent too in which it is argued, yet as long
as the solid and well-disposed forms of this constitution
remain, there ever is within parliament itself a power
of renovating its principles, and effecting a self-reformation, which no other plan of government has ever
contained. This constitution has therefore admitted
innumerable improvements, either for the correction of
the original scheme, or for removing corruptions, or
for bringing its principles better to suit those changes
which have successively happened in the circumstances
of the nation, or in the manners of the people.
We feel, that the growth of the colonies is such a
change of circumstances ; and that our present dispute
is an exigency as pressing as any which ever demanded
a revision of our government. Public troubles have
often called upon this country to look into its constitution.
It has ever been bettered by such a revision. If our
happy and luxuriant increase of dominion, and our
diffused population, have outgrown the limits of a constitution made for a contracted object, we ought to bless
God, who has furnished us with this noble occasion for
displaying our skill and beneficence in enlarging the scale
of rational happiness, and of making the politic generosity
of this kingdom as extensive as its fortune. If we set
about this great work, on both sides, with the same conciliatory turn of mind, we may now, as in former times,

SELECTIONS.
199
owe even to our mutual mistakes, contentions, and
animosities, the lasting concord, freedom, happiness,
and glory of this empire.
Gentlemen, the distance between us, with other obstructions, has caused much misrepresentation of our
mutual sentiments. We, therefore, to obviate them as
well as we are able, take this method of assuring you
of our thorough detestation of the whole war ; and
particularly the mercenary and savage war, carried on
or attempted against you: our thorough abhorrence of
all addresses adverse to you, whether public or private ;
our assurances of an invariable affection towards you ;
our constant regard to your privileges and liberties ; and
our opinion of the solid security you ought to enjoy for
them, under the paternal care and nurture of a protecting
parliament.
Though many of us have earnestly wished that the
authority of that august and venerable body, so necessary
in many respects to the union of the whole, should be
rather limited by its own equity and discretion, than by
any bounds described by positive laws and public compacts ; and though we felt the extreme difficulty, by
any theoretical limitations, of qualifying that authority,
so as to preserve one part and deny another ; and though
you (as we gratefully acknowledge) had acquiesced most
cheerfully under that prudent reserve of the constitution
at that happy moment when neither you nor we apprehended a further return of the exercise of invidious
powers, we are now as fully persuaded as you can be, by
the malice, inconstancy, and perverse inquietude of many
men, and by the incessant endeavours of an arbitrary
faction, now too powerful, that our common necessities
do require a full explanation and ratified security for
your liberties and our quiet.
Although his majesty's condescension in committing
the direction of his affairs into the hands of the known
friends of his family and of the liberties of all his people,
would, we admit, be a great means of giving repose to
your minds, as it must give infinite facility to recon-

200
EDMUND BURKE.
ciliation, yet we assure you that we think, with such a
security as we recommend, adopted from necessity and
not choice, even by the unhappy authors and instruments
of the public misfortunes, that the terms of reconciliation,
if once accepted by parliament, would not be broken.
We also pledge ourselves to you, that we should give,
even to those unhappy persons, a hearty support in
effectuating the peace of the empire ; and every opposition in an attempt to cast it again into disorder.
When that happy hour shall arrive, let us in all affection
recommend to you the wisdom of continuing, as in former
times, or even in a more ample measure, the support of
your government, and even to give to your administration
some degree of reciprocal interest in your freedom. We
earnestly wish you not to furnish your enemies, here or
elsewhere, with any sort of pretexts for reviving quarrels
by too reserved and severe or penurious an exercise of
those sacred rights, which no pretended abuse in the
exercise ought to impair, nor, by overstraining the
principles of freedom, to make them less compatible
with those haughty sentiments in others, which the
very same principles may be apt to breed in minds not
tempered with the utmost equity and justice.
The well-wishers of the liberty and union of this empire
salute you, and recommend you most heartily to the
Divine protection.

BOOK I I
I.
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

I.
REFLECTIONS ON T H E REVOLUTION
IN FRANCE.
[A letter ' intended to have been sent to a gentleman
in Paris/ 1790. It should be remembered that this is
written at the very outset of the Revolution. The Bastille
had been stormed on July 14, 1789, but no other revolutionary events had happened. Mirabeau did not die
till April 1791, and Danton and, Robespierre were still
unheard of.]
DEAR SIR,

You are pleased to call again, and with some earnestness, for my thoughts on the late proceedings in France.
I will not give you reason to imagine that I think my
sentiments of such value as to wish myself to be solicited
about them. They are of too little consequence to be
very anxiously either communicated or withheld. It
was from attention to you, and to you only, that I
hesitated at the time when you first desired to receive
them. In the first letter I had the honour to write to
you, and which at length I send, I wrote neither for, nor
from, any description of men ; nor shall I in this. My
errors, if any, are my own. My reputation alone is to
answer for them.
You see, sir, by the long letter I have transmitted to
you, that though I do most heartily wish that France
may be animated by a spirit of rational liberty, and that
I think you bound, in all honest policy, to provide a
permanent body in which that spirit may reside, and

204
EDMUND B U R K E .
an effectual organ by which it m a y act, it is m y misfortune to entertain great doubts concerning several
material points in your late transactions.
You imagined, when you wrote last, t h a t I might
possibly be reckoned among the approvers of certain
proceedings in France, from the solemn public seal of
sanction they have received from two clubs of gentlemen in London, called the Constitutional Society, and
the Revolution Society.
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 m y zeal for maintaining t h a t constitution
and those principles in their utmost purity and vigour.
It is because I do so t h a t I think it necessary for me t h a t
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 b u t
cautious and deliberate spirit which produced the one,
and which presides in the other. Before I proceed to
answer the more material particulars in your letter, I
shall beg leave to give you such information as I have
been able to obtain of the two clubs which have thought
proper, as bodies, to interfere in the concerns of France ;
first assuring you, t h a t I am not, and t h a t I have never
been, a member of either of those societies.
The first, calling itself the Constitutional Society, or
Society for Constitutional Information, or by some such
title, is, I believe, of seven or eight years' standing. The
institution of this society appears to be of a charitable,
and so far of a laudable nature : it was intended for the
circulation, at the expense of the members, of m a n y
books, which few others would be at the expense ot
buying ; and which might lie on the hands of the book-

SELECTIONS.
205
sellers, to the great loss of an useful body of men.
Whether the books, so charitably circulated, were ever
as charitably read, is more than I know. Possiblyseveral of them have been exported to France ; and,
like goods not in request here, may with you have found
a market. I have heard much talk of the lights to be
drawn from books that are sent from hence. What
improvements they have had in their passage (as it is
said some liquors are meliorated by crossing the sea)
I cannot tell : but I never heard a man of common judgment, or the last degree of information, speak a word in
praise of the greater part of the publications circulated
by that society ; nor have their proceedings been accounted, except by some of themselves, as of any serious
consequence.
Your National Assembly seems to entertain much
the same opinion that I do of this poor charitable club.
As a nation, you reserved the whole stock of your
eloquent acknowledgments for the Revolution Society ;
when their fellows in the Constitutional were, in equity,
entitled to some share. Since you have selected the
Revolution Society as the great object of your national
thanks and praises, you will think me excusable in
making its late conduct the subject of my observations.
The National Assembly of France has given importance
to these gentlemen by adopting them : and they return
the favour, by acting as a committee in England for
extending the principles of the National Assembly.
Henceforward we must consider them as a kind of
privileged persons ; as no inconsiderable members in
the diplomatic body. This is one among the revolutions which have given splendour to obscurity, and
distinction to undiscerned merit. Until very lately
I do not recollect to have heard of this club. I
am quite sure that it never occupied a moment of
my thoughts : nor, I believe, those of any person out
of their own set. I find, upon inquiry, that on the
anniversary of the Revolution in 1688, a club of dissenters, but of what denomination I know not, have

EDMUND BURKE.
long had the custom of hearing a sermon in one of their
churches ; and that afterwards they spent the day
cheerfully, as other clubs do, at the tavern. But I
never heard that any public measure, or political system,
much less that the merits of the constitution of any
foreign nation, had been the subject of a formal proceeding at their festivals ; until, to my inexpressible
surprise, I found them in a sort of public capacity, by
a congratulatory address, giving an authoritative sanction to the proceedings of the National Assembly in
France.
In the ancient principles and conduct of the club,
so far at least as they were declared, I see nothing to
which I could take exception. I think it very probable
that, for some purpose, new members may have entered
among them ; and that some truly Christian politicians, who love to dispense benefits, but are careful to
conceal the hand which distributes the dole, may have
made them the instruments of their pious designs.
Whatever I may have reason to suspect concerning
private management, I shall speak of nothing as of a
certainty but what is public.
For one, I should be sorry to be thought, directly or
indirectly, concerned in their proceedings. I certainly
take my full share, along with the rest of the world, in
my individual and private capacity, in speculating on
what has been done, or is doing, on the public stage, in
any place ancient or modern ; in the republic of Rome,
or the republic of Paris ; but having no general apostolical mission, being a citizen of a particular state, and
being bound up, in a considerable degree, by its public
will, I should think it at least improper and irregular
for me to open a formal public correspondence with the
actual government of a foreign nation, without the express authority of the government under which I live.
I should be still more unwilling to enter into that
correspondence under anything like an equivocal description which to many, unacquainted with our usages,
might make the address, in which I joined, appear as
206

SELECTIONS.
207
the act of persons in some sort of corporate capacity,
acknowledged by the laws of this kingdom, and authorized
to speak the sense of some part of it. On account
of the ambiguity and uncertainty of unauthorized general
descriptions, and of the deceit which may be practised
under them, and not from mere formality, the House of
Commons would reject the most sneaking petition for
the most trifling object, under that mode of signature to
which you have thrown open the folding doors of your
presence chamber, and have ushered into your National
Assembly with as much ceremony and parade, and with
as great a bustle of applause, as if you had been visited by
the whole representative majesty of the whole English
nation. If what this society has thought proper to send
forth had been a piece of argument, it would have signified
little whose argument it was. It would be neither the
more nor the less convincing on account of the party it
came from. But this is only a vote and resolution. It
stands solely on authority ; and in this case it is the mere
authority of individuals, few of whom appear. Their
signatures ought, in my opinion, to have been annexed
to their instrument. The world would then have the
means of knowing how many they are ; who they are ;
and of what value their opinions may be, from their personal abilities, from their knowledge, their experience, or
their lead and authority in this state. To me, who am
but a plain man, the proceeding looks a little too refined, and too ingenious ; it has too much the air of a
political stratagem, adopted for the sake of giving,
under a high-sounding name, an importance to the
public declarations of this club, which, when the matter
came to be closely inspected, they did not altogether
so well deserve. It is a policy that has very much the
complexion of a fraud.
I flatter myself that 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

EDMUND BURKE.
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 broke prison, upon the recovery of his natural
rights? This would be to act over again the scene of
the criminals condemned to the gallows, and their
heroic deliverer, the metaphysic knight of the soirowful
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
208

SELECTIONS.
209
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 con-*
gratulations, 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.
All these considerations, however, were below the
transcendental dignity of the Revolution Society.
Whilst I continued in £he country, from whence I had
the honour of writing to you, I had but an imperfect
idea of their transactions. On my coming to town,
I sent for an account of their proceedings, which had
been published by their authority, containing a sermon
of Dr. Price, with the Duke de Rochefoucauld s and
the Archbishop of Aix's letterfand several other documents annexed. The whole of that publication, with
the manifest design of connecting the affairs of France
with those of England, by drawing us into an imitation
of the conduct of the National Assembfy, gave me a considerable degree of uneasiness. The effect of that conduct upon the power, credit, prosperity, and tranquillity
of France, became every day more evident. The form

EDMUND BURKE.
of constitution to be settled, for its future polity,
became more clear. We are now in a condition to discern, with tolerable exactness, the true nature of the
object held up to our imitation. If the prudence of
reserve and decorum dictates silence in some circumstances, in others prudence of a higher order may
justify us in speaking our thoughts. The beginnings
of confusion with us in England are at present feeble
enough; but, with you, we have seen an infancy, still
more feeble, growing by moments into a strength to
heap mountains upon mountains, and to wage war
with heaven itself. Whenever our neighbour's house
i§ on fire, it cannot be amiss for the engines to play
a little on our own. Better to be despised for too
anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident
a security.
Solicitous chiefly for the peace of my own country,
but by no means unconcerned for yours, I wish to communicate more largely what was at first intended only
for your private satisfaction. I shall still keep your
affairs in my eye, and continue to address myself to
you. Indulging myself in the freedom of epistolary
intercourse, I beg leave to throw out my thoughts, and
express my feelings, just as they arise in my mind, with
very little attention to formal method. I ,set out with
the proceedings of the Revolution Society ; but I shall
not confine myself to them. Is it possible I should ?
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
210

211
SELECTIONS.
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.
It cannot, however, be denied, that to some this
strange scene appeared in quite another point of view.
Into them it inspired no other sentiments than those
of exultation and rapture. They saw nothing in what
has been done in France, but a firm and temperate
exertion of freedom ; so consistent, on the whole, with
morals and piety, as to make it deserving not only of
the secular applause of dashing Machiavelian politicians, but to render it a fit theme for all the devout
effusions of sacred eloquence.
On the forenoon of the 4th of November last, Doctor
Richard Price, a non-conforming minister of eminence,
preached at the dissenting meeting-house of the Old
Jewry, to his club or society, a very extraordinary
miscellaneous sermon, in which there are some good
moral and religious sentiments, and not ill expressed,
mixed up with a sort of porridge of various political
opinions and reflections : but the Revolution in France
is the grand ingredient in the cauldron. I consider
the address transmitted by the Revolution Society
to the National Assembly, through Earl Stanhope, as
originating in the principles of the sermon, and as
a corollary from them. It was moved by the preacher
of that discourse. It was passed by those who came
reeking from the effect of the sermon, without any
censure or qualification, expressed or implied. If, however, any of the gentlemen concerned shall wish to
separate the sermon from the resolution, they know
how to acknowledge the one, and to disavow the other.
They may do it : I cannot.
For my part I looked on that sermon as the public
declaration of a man much connected with literary
caballers, and intriguing philosophers ; with political
theologians, and theological politicians, both at home
and abroad.
I know they set him up as a sort of

EDMUND BURKE.
212
oracle ; because, with the best intentions in the world,
he naturally philippizes, and chants his prophetic song
in exact unison with their designs.
That sermon is in a strain which I believe has not
been heard in this kingdom, in any of the pulpits which
are tolerated or encouraged in it, since the year 1648 ;
when a predecessor of Dr. Price, the Reverend Hugh
Peters, made the vault of the king's own chapel at
St. James's ring with the honour and privilege of the
saints, who, with the ' high praises of God in their
mouths, and a ^o-edged sword in their hands, were to
execute judgment on the heathen, and punishments
upon the people; to bind their kings with chains, and
their nobles with fetters of iron/ * Few harangues
from the pulpit, except in, the days of your league in
France, or in the days of our solemn league and covenant in England, have ever breathed less of the spirit
of moderation than this lecture in the Old Jewry.
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 charily. 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.
This pulpit style, revived after so long a discontinuance, had to me the air of novelty, and of a novelty not
wholly without danger. I do not charge this danger
* Ps, cxlix.

SELECTIONS.
213
equally to every part of the discourse. The hint given
to a noble and reverend lay-divine, who is supposed
high in office in one of our universities,* and other laydivines ' of rank and -literature/ may be proper and
seasonable, though somewhat new.
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, f 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
* 'Discourse on the Love of our Country,' Nov. 4, 1789, b y Dr.
Richard Price, 3rd edition, pp. 17 and 18.
f ' Those who dislike t h a t mode of worship which is prescribed b y
public authority, ought, if t h e y can find no worship out of the church
which they approve, to set up a separate worship for themselves ; and b y
doing this, and giving an example of a rational and manly worship,
men of weight from their rank and literature m a y do the greatest service
to society and t h e world.'—P. 18, Dr. Price's Sermon.

214
EDMUND BURKE.
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.
But I may say of our preacher, ' utinam nugis tola
ilia dedisset tempora scevitice!—All things in this his
fulminating bull are not of so innoxious a tendency.
His doctrines affect our constitution in its vital parts.
He tells the Revolution Society, in this fpolitical
sermon, that his majesty, ' is almost the only lawful
king in the world, because the only one who owes his
crown to the choice of his people.' As to the kings of
the world, all of whom (except one) this arch pontiff of
the rights of men, with all the plenitude, and with more
than the boldness of the papal deposing power in its
meridian fervour of the twelfth century, puts into one
sweeping clause of ban and anathema, and proclaims
usurpers by circles of longitude and latitude, over the
whole globe, it behoves them to consider how they
admit into their territories these apostolic missionaries,
who are to tell their subjects they are not lawful kings.
That is their concern. It is ours, as a domestic interest
of some moment, seriously to consider the solidity of the
only principle upon which these gentlemen acknowledge
a king of Great Britain to be entitled to their allegiance.
This doctrine, as applied to the prince now on the
British throne, either is nonsense, and therefore neither
true nor false, or it affirms a most unfounded, dangerous,

SELECTIONS.
215
illegal, and unconstitutional position. 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 or 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 meantime 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 oompono quce 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 constructions 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.

EDMUND BURKE.
2l6
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 fixeçl
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

SELECTIONS.
217
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.
These gentlemen of ihe Old Jewry, in all their reasonings on the Revolution of 1688, have a revolution
which happened in England about forty years before,
and the late French Revolution, so much before their
eyes, and in their hearts, that they are constantly confounding all the three together. It is necessary that
we should separate what they confound. We must
recall their erring fancies to the acts of the Revolution
which we revere, for the discovery of its true principles.
If the principles of the Revolution of 1688 are anywhere to be found, it is in the statute called the Declaration of Right. In that most wise, sober, and considerate
declaration, drawn up by great lawyers and great statesmen, and not by warm and inexperienced enthusiasts, not
one word is said, nor one suggestion made, of a general
right to choose our own governors ; to cashier them for
misconduct ; and to form a government for ourselves.'
* P. 34, 'Discourse on the Love of our Country,'gb y Dr. Price.

EDMUND BURKE.
This declaration of right (the act of the 1st of William
and Mary, sess. 2, ch. 2), is the corner-stone of our
constitution, as reinforced, explained, improved, and
in its fundamental principles for ever settled. ït is
called ' An Act for declaring the rights and liberties of
the subject, and for settling the succession of the crown.'
You will observe, that these rights and this succession
are declared in one body, and bound indissolubly
together.
À few years after this period, a second opportunity
offered for asserting a right of election to the crown.
Gn the prospect of a total failure of issue from King
William, and from the princess, afterwards Queen
Anne, the consideration of the settlement of the crown,
and of a further security for the liberties of the people,
again came before the legislature. Did they this second
time make any provision for legalizing the crown on
the spurious revolution principles of the Old Jewry.
No. They followed the principles which prevailed in
the Declaration of Right ; indicating with more precision the persons who were to inherit in the Protestant
line. This act also incorporated, by the same policy,
our liberties, and an hereditary succession in the same
act. Instead of a right to choose our own governors
they declared that the succession in that line (the
Protestant line drawn from James I) was absolutely
necessary ' for the peace, quiet, and security of the
realm/ and that it was equally urgent on them f to
maintain a certainty in the succession thereof, to which
the subjects may safely have recourse for their protection.' But these acts, in which are heard the unerring, unambiguous, oracles of revolution policy,
instead of countenancing the delusive, gipsy, predictions of a ' right to choose our governors/ prove to a
demonstration how totally adverse the wisdom of the
nation was from turning a case of necessity into a rule
of law.
Unquestionably there was at the Revolution, in the
person of King William, a small and a temporary devia218

SELECTIONS.
219
tion 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 necessityy in
the strictest moral sense in which necessity can be taken.
In the very act, in which for a time, and in a single
case, parliament departed from the strict order of inheritance, in favour of a prince, who, though not next,
was, however, very near in the line of succession, it is
curious to observe how Lord Somers, who drew the
bill called the Declaration of Right, has comported
himself on that delicate occasion. It is curious to observe with what address this temporary solution of
continuity is kept from the eye ; whilst all that could
be found in this act of necessity to countenance the
idea of an hereditary succession is brought forward,
and fostered, and made the most of, by this great man,
and by the legislature who followed him. Quitting the

EDMUND BURKE.
220
dry, imperative style of an act of parliament, he makes
the lords and commons fall to a pious, legislative ejaculation, and declare, that they consider it ' as a marvellous providence, and merciful goodness of God to this
nation, to preserve their said majesties royal persons,
most happily to reign over us on the throne of their
ancestors, for which, from the bottom of their hearts,
they return their humblest thanks 'and praises/—The
legislature plainly had in view the act of recognition of
the first of Queen Elizabeth, chap. 3rd, and of that of
James I, chap. 1st, both acts strongly declaratory of
the inheritable nature of the crown, and in many parts
they follow, with a nearly literal precision, the words
and even the form of thanksgiving, which is found in1
these old declaratory statutes.
The two Houses, in the act of King William, did not
thank God that they had found a fair opportunity to
assert a right to choose their own governors, much less
to make an election the only lawful title to the crown.
Their having been in condition to avoid the very appearance of it, as much as 'possible, was by them considered
as a providential escape. They threw a politic, wellwrought veil over every circumstance tending to weaken
the rights, which in the meliorated order of succession
they meant to perpetuate ; or which might furnish
a precedent for any future departure from what they
had then settled for ever. Accordingly, that they
might not relax the nerves of their monarchy, and that
they might preserve a close conformity to the practice
of their ancestors, as it appeared in the declaratory
statutes of Queen Mary* and Queen Elizabeth, in
the next clause they vest, by recognition, in their
majesties, all the legal prerogatives of the crown, declaring, ' that in them they are most fully, rightfully, and
entirely, invested, incorporated, united, and annexed.'
In the clause which follows, for preventing questions,
by reason of any pretended titles to the crown, they
declare (observing also in this the traditionary lan* 1st Mary, sess. 3, ch. 1.

SELECTIONS.
221
guage, along with the traditionary policy of the nation,
and repeating as from a rubric the language of the
preceding acts of Elizabeth and James) that on the
preserving ' a certainty in the SUCCESSION thereof, the
unity, peace, and tranquillity of this nation, doth,
under God, wholly depend/
They knew that a doubtful title of succession would
but too much resemble an election ; and that an election
would be utterly destructive of the ' unity, peace, and
tranquillity of this nation/ which they thought to be
considerations of some moment. To provide for these
objects, and therefore to exclude for ever the Old Jewry
doctrine of <a right to choose our own governors/ they
follow with a clause, containing a most solemn pledge,
taken from the preceding act of Queen Elizabeth, as
solemn a pledge as ever was or can be given in favour of
an hereditary succession, and as solemn a renunciation
as could be made of the principles by this Society imputed to them. ' The lords spiritual and temporal,
and commons, do, in the name of all the people aforesaid, most humbly and • faithfully submit themselves,
their heirs, and posterities for ever ; and do faithfully
promise, that they will stand to, maintain, and defend
their said majesties, and also the limitation of the crown,
herein specified and contained, to the utmost of their
powers/ &c. &c.
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.

EDMUND BURKE.
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
222

SELECTIONS.
223
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 reipublicœ, and as such are equally binding on
king and people too, as long as the terms are observed,
and they continue the same body politic.
It is far from impossible to reconcile, if we do not
suffer ourselves to be entangled in the mazes of metaphysic sophistry, the use both of a fixed rule and an
occasional deviation ; the sacredness of an hereditary
principle of succession in our government, with a power
of change in its application in cases of extreme emergency. Even in that extremity (if we take the measure
of our rights by our exercise of them at the Revolution)
the change is to be confined to the peccant part only ;
to the part which produced the necessary deviation ;
and even then it is to be effected without a decomposition of the whole civil and political mass, for the purpose of originating a new civil order out of the first
elements of society.
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 moleculce of a disbanded people. At no time,
perhaps, did the sovereign legislature manifest a more

224
EDMUND BURKE.
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.
On this principle, the law of inheritance had admitted
some amendment in the old time, and long before the
era of the Revolution. Some time after the conquest
great questions arose upon the legal principles of
hereditary descent. It became a matter of doubt,
whether the heir per capita or the heir per stirpes was
to succeed ; but whether the heir per capita gave way
when the heirdom per stirpes took place, or the Catholic
heir when the Protestant was preferred, the inheritable
principle survived with a sort of immortality through
all transmigrations—multosque per annos stat fortuna
domus et avi numerantur avorum. This is the spirit of
our constitution, not only in its settled course, but in
all its revolutions. Whoever came in, or however he
came in, whether he obtained the crown by law, or by
force, the hereditary succession was either continued
or adopted.
The gentlemen of the Society for Revolutions see
nothing in that of 1688 but the deviation from the constitution ; and they take the deviation from the principle for the principle. They have little regard to the
obvious consequences of their doctrine, though they
may see that it leaves positive authority in very few
of the positive institutions of this country. When
such an unwarrantable maxim is once established, that
no throne is lawful but the elective, no one act of the
princes who preceded this era of fictitious election can
be valid. Do these theorists mean to imitate some of

SELECTIONS.
225
their predecessors, who dragged the bodies of our ancient
sovereigns out of the quiet of their tombs ? Do they
mean to attaint and disable backwards all the kings
that have reigned before the Revolution, and consequently to stain the throne of England with the blot of
a continual usurpation? Do they mean to invalidate,
annul, or to call into question, together with the titles
of the whole line of our kings, that great body of our
statute law which passed under those whom they treat
as usurpers ? to annul laws of inestimable value to
our liberties—of as great value at least as any which
have passed at or since the period of the Revolution ?
If kings, who did not owe their crown to the choice of
their people, had no title to make laws, what will become of the statute de tallagio non concedendo ? of
the petition of right ? of the act of habeas corpus ? Do
these new doctors of the rights of men presume to
assert that King James the Second, who came to the
crown as next of blood, according to the rules of a then
unqualified succession, was not to all intents and purposes a lawful king of England, before he had done any
of those acts which were justly construed into an abdication of his crown ? If he was not, much trouble
in parliament might have been saved at the period
these gentlemen commemorate. But King James was
a bad king with a good title, and not an usurper. The
princes who succeeded according to the act of parliament
which settled the crown on the Electress Sophia and
on her descendants, being Protestants, came in as much
by a title of inheritance as King James did. He came
in according to the law, as it stood at his accession to
the crown ; and the princes of the house of Brunswick
came to the inheritance of the crown, not by election,
but by the law, as it stood at their several accessions, of
Protestant descent and inheritance, as I hope I have
shown sufficiently.
The law, by which this royal family is specifically
destined to the succession, is the act of the 12th and
13th of King William. The terms of this act bind ' us
8

EDMUND BURKE.
and our heirs, and our posterity, to ^them, their heirs,
and their posterity/ being Protestants, to the end of
time, in the same words as the Declaration of Right
had bound us to the heirs of King William and Queen
Mary. It therefore secures both an hereditary crown
and an hereditary allegiance. On what ground, except
the constitutional policy of forming an establishment
to secure that kind of succession which is to preclude
a choice of the people for ever, could the legislature have
fastidiously rejected the fair and abundant choice
which our own country presented to them, and searched
in strange lands for a foreign princess, from whose
womb the line of our future rulers were to derive their
title to govern millions of men through a series of ages ?
The Princess Sophia was named in the act of settlement of the 12th and 13th of King William, for a stock
and root of inheritance to our kings, and not for her
merits as a temporary administratrix of a power, which
she might not, and in fact did not, herself ever exercise.
She was adopted for one reason, and for one only,
because, says the act, ' the most excellent Princess
Sophia, Electress and Duchess Dowager of Hanover, is
daughter of the most excellent Princess Elizabeth, late
Queen of Bohemia, daughter of our late sovereign lord
King James the First, of happy memory, and is hereby
declared to be the next in succession in the Protestant
line/ &c. &c. ; ' and the crown shall continue to the
heirs of her body, being Protestants/ This limitation
was made by parliament, that through the Princess
Sophia an inheritable line not only was to be continued
in future, but (what they thought very material) that
through her it was to be connected with the old stock
of inheritance in King James the First * in order that
the monarchy might preserve an unbroken unity through
all ages, and might be preserved (with safety to our
religion) in the old approved mode by descent, in which,
if our liberties had been once endangered, they had
often, through all storms and struggles of prerogative and privilege, been preserved. They did well,
226

SELECTIONS.
227
No experience has taught us, that in any other course or
method than that of an hereditary crown our liberties
can be regularly perpetuated and preserved sacred as
our hereditary right. An irregular, convulsive movement may be necessary to throw off an irregular, convulsive disease. But the course of succession is the
healthy habit of the British constitution. Was it that
the legislature wanted, at the act for the limitation of
the crown in the Hanoverian line, drawn through the
female descendants of James the First, a due sense of
the inconveniences of having two or three, or possibly
more foreigners in succession to the British throne ?
No !—they had a due sense of the evils which might
happen from such foreign rule, and more than a due
sense of them. But a more decisive proof cannot be
given of the full conviction of the British nation that
the principles of the Revolution did not authorize them
to elect kings at their pleasure, and without any attention to the ancient fundamental principles of our government, than their continuing to adopt a plan of hereditary Protestant succession, in the old lin,e, with all the
dangers and all the inconveniences of its being a foreign
line full before their eyes, and operating with the utmost
force upon, their minds.
A few years ago I should be ashamed to overload a matter, so capable of supporting itself, by the
then urmecessary support of any argument ; but this
seditious, unconstitutional doctrine is now publicly
taught, avowed, and printed. The dislike I feel to
revolutions, the signals for which have so often been
given from pulpits ; the spirit of change that is gone
abroad ; the total contempt which prevails with you,
and may come to prevail with us of all ancient institutions, when, set in opposition to a present sense of convenience, or to the bent of a present inclination : all
these considerations make it not unadvisable, in, my
opinio]i, to call back our attention to the true principles
of our own domestic laws ; that you, my French friend,
should begin to know, and that We should continue to

228
EDMUND BURKE.
cherish them. We ought not, on either side of the
water, to suffer ourselves to be imposed upon by the
Counterfeit wares which some persons, by a double
fraud, export to you in illicit bottoms, as raw commodities of British growth, though wholly alien to our
soil, in order afterwards to smuggle them back again
into this country, manufactured after the newest Paris
fashion of an improved liberty.
The people of England will not ape the fashions they
have never tried, nor go back to those which they have
found mischievous on trial. They look upon the legal
hereditary succession of their crown as ,among their
rights, not as among their wrongs ; as a benefit, not
as a grievance; as a security for their liberty, not
as a badge of servitude. They look on the frame of
their commonwealth, such as it stands, to be of inestimable value ; and they conceive the undisturbed succession of the crown to be a pledge of the stability and
perpetuity of all the other members of our constitution.
I shall beg leave, before I go any further, to take
notice of some paltry artifices, which the abettors of
election, as the only lawful title to the crown, are ready
to employ, in order to render the support of the just
principles of our constitution a task somewhat invidious
These sophisters substitute a fictitious cause, and feigned
personages, in whose favour they suppose you engaged,
whenever you defend the inheritable nature of the
crown. It is common with them to dispute as if they
were in a conflict with some of those exploded fanatics
of slavery, who formerly maintained, what I believe
no creature now maintains, ' that the crown is held by
divine, hereditary, and indefeasible right.'—These old
fanatics of single arbitrary power dogmatized as if
hereditary royalty was the only lawful government in
the world, just as our new fanatics of popular arbitrary
power maintain that a popular election is the sole lawful
source of authority. The old prerogative enthusiasts,
it is true, did speculate foolishly, and perhaps impiously,
too, as if monarchy had more of a divine sanction than

SELECTIONS.
229
any other mode of government ; and as if a right to
govern by inheritance were in strictness indefeasible
in every person who should be found in the succession
to a throne, and under every circumstance, which no
civil or political right can be. But an absurd opinion
concerning the king's hereditary right to the crown
does not prejudice one that is rational, and bottomed
upon solid principles of law and policy. If all the
. absurd theories of lawyers and divines were to vitiate
the objects in which they are conversant, we should
have no law, and no religion, left in the world. But
an absurd theory on one side of a question forms no
justification for alleging a false fact, or promulgating
mischievous maxims, on the other.
The second claim of the Revolution Society is ' a
right of cashiering their governors for misconduct!
Perhaps the apprehensions our ancestors entertained
of forming such a precedent as that ' of cashiering for
misconduct/ was the cause that the declaration of the
act, which implied the abdication of King James, was,
if it had any fault, rather too guarded, and too circumstantial.* But all this guard, and all this accumulation of circumstances, serve to show the spirit of caution
which predominated in the national councils, in a situatior in which men, irritated by oppression arid elevated
by a triumph over it, are apt to abandon themselves
to violent and extreme courses : it shows the anxiety
of the great men who influenced the conduct of affairs
at that great event, to make the Revolution a parent
of settlement, and not a nursery of future revolutions.
No government could stand a moment, if it could
be blown down with any thing so loose and indefinite
as an opinion of ' misconduct/ They who led at the
Revolution grounded their virtual abdication of King
* ' T h a t King J a m e s I I , having endeavoured to subvert the constitution
of t h e kingdom, b y breaking the original contract between king and
people, and, b y the advice of Jesuits, and other wicked persons, having
violated the fundamental laws, and having withdrawn himself out of the
kingdom, h a t h abdicated the government, and the throne is thereby
vacant.'

230
EDMUND BURKE.
James upon no such light and uncertain principle. They
charged him with nothing less than a design, confirmed
by a multitude of illegal overt acts, to subvert the Protestant church and state, and their fundamental, unquestionable laws and liberties : they charged him with
having broken the original contract between king and
people. This was more than misconduct* A grave and
overruling necessity obliged them to take the step they
took, and took with infinite reluctance, as under that
most rigorous of all laws. Their trust for the future
preservation, of the constitution was not in future revolutions. The grand policy of all their regulations was to
render it almost impracticable for any future sovereign
to compel the states of the kingdom to have again
recourse to those violent remedies. They left the
crown what, in the eye and estimation of law, it had
ever been, perfectly irresponsible. In order to lighten
the crown still further, they aggravated responsibility
on ministers of state. By the statute of the first of
King William, sess. 2nd, called ' the act for declaring
the rights and liberties of the subject, and for settling the
succession of the crown,' they enacted, that the ministers
should serve the crown on the terms of that declaration They secured soon after the frequent meetings
of parliament, by which the whole government would
be under the constant inspection and active control
of the popular representative and of the magnates
of the kingdom. In the next great constitutional act,
that of the 12th and 13th of King William, for the
further limitation of the crown, and better securing the
rights and liberties of the subject, they provided, ' that
no pardon under the great seal of England should be
pleadable to an impeachment by the Commons in parliament/ The rule laid down for government in the
Declaration of Right, the constant inspection of parliament, the practical claim of impeachment, they thought
infinitely a better security not only for their constitutional liberty, but against the vices of administration,
than the reservation of a right so difficult in the practice,

SELECTIONS.
231
so uncertain in the issue, and often, so mischievous in
the consequences, as that of ' cashiering their governors. *
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, ' Hcec commemoratio est quasi exprobratio.3 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 amended by it, I cannot imagine.
I have seen very assuming letters, signed, Your most
obedient, humble servant. The proudest domination
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 consti* P s 32-24.

232
EDMUND BURKE.
tution, 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 natter 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.
As he is not to obey us, but we are to obey the law in
him, our constitution has made no sort of provision
towards rendering him, as a servant, in any degree
responsible. Our constitution knows nothing of a
magistrate like the Justicia of Arragon ; nor of any
court legally appointed, nor of any process legally
settled for submitting the king to the responsibility
belonging to all servants. In this he is not distinguished
from the commons and the lords ; who, in their several
public capacities, can never be called to an account for
their conduct ; although the Revolution Society chooses
to assert, in direct opposition to one of the wisest and
most beautiful parts of our constitution, that ' a king
is no more than the first servant of the public, created
by it, and responsible to it'
111 would our ancestors at the Revolution have deserved their fame for wisdom, if they had found no
security for their freedom, but in rendering their government feeble in its operations and precarious in its tenure ;
if they had been able to contrive no better remedy
against arbitrary power than civil confusion. Let
these gentlemen state who that representative public
is to whom they will affirm the king, as a servant, to
be responsible. It will be then time enough for me to
produce to them the positive statute law which affirms
that he is not.
The ceremony of cashiering kings, of which these

SELECTIONS.
233
gentlemen talk so much at their ease, can rarely, if
ever, be performed without force. It then becomes a
case of war, and not of constitution. Laws are commanded to hold their tongues amongst arms ; and
tribunals fall to the ground with the peace they are
no longer able to uphold. The Revolution of 1688
was obtained by a just war, in the only case in which
any war, and much more a civil war, can be just. ' Just a
bella quibus necessariaJ The question of dethroning,
or, if these gentlemen like the phrase better, ' cashiering
kings/ will always be, as it has always been, an extraordinary question of state, and wholly out of the law ;
a question (like all other questions of state) of dispositions, and of means, and of probable consequences,
rather than of positive rights. As it was not made
for common abuses, so it is not to be agitated by common minds. The speculative line of demarcation, where
obedience ought to end, and resistance must begin,
is faint, obscure, and not easily definable. It is not
a single act, or a single event, which determines it.
Governments must be abused and deranged indeed,
before it can be thought of; and the prospect of the
future must be as bad as the experience of the past.
When things are in that lamentable condition, the nature
of the disease is to indicate the remedy to those whom
nature has qualified to administer in extremities this
critical, ambiguous, bitter potion to a distempered
state. Times, and occasions, and provocations, will
teach their own lessons. The wise will determine
from the gravity of the case ; the irritable from sensibility to oppression • the high-minded from disdain
and indignation at abusive power in unworthy hands ;
the brave and bold from the love of honourable danger
in a generous cause : but, with or without right, a
revolution will be the very last resource of the thinking
and the good.
The third head of right, asserted by the pulpit of the
Old Jewry, namely, the ' right to form a government
for ourselves/ has, at least, as little countenance from

234
EDMUND BURKE.
anything done at the Revolution, either in precedent
or principle, as the two first of their claims. The Revolution was made to preserve our ancient, indisputable
laws and liberties, and that ancient constitution of
government which is our only security for lav/ and
liberty. If you are desirous of knowing the spirit of
our constitution, and the policy which pre<" minated
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 afterdinner 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 reference to antiquity; and Ï 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 rearhrmance 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 §
* See Blackstone's * Magna Charta/ printed at Oxford, 1759.

SELECTIONS.
235
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 which 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 oî
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 least9 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 Abbé Sieves. 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 their4 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
v

* 1 W. and M.

236
EDMUND BURKE.
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 Mnd singular the rights and liberties asserted and
drJar\ed are the true ancient and indubitable rights and
Jibertrps of the people of this kingdom/
You; will observe, that from Magna Charta to the
Peclar/ation 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 ieference whatever to any other more general
or prior right. By this means our constitution preserves
an 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.
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 ôf
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 inheritances 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 Providence3

SELECTIONS.
237
are handed down to 11s, 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 Lthe varied tenor
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*

238
EDMUND BURKE.
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.
You might, if you pleased, have profited of bur ex»
ample, and have given to your recovered freedom a
correspondent dignity. Your privileges,, though discontinued, were not lost to memory. Your constitution, it is true, whilst you were out of possession, suffered waste and dilapidation ; but you possessed in
some parts the walls, and, in all, the foundations, of a
noble and venerable castle. You might have repaired
those walls ; you might have built on those old foundations. Your constitution was suspended before it was
perfected ; but you had the elements of a constitution
very nearly as good as could be wished. In your old
states you possessed that variety of parts corresponding
with the various descriptions of which your community
was happily composed ; you had all that combination,
and all that opposition of interests, you had that action
and counteraction which, in the natural and in the
political world, from the reciprocal struggle of discordant powers, draws out the harmony of the universe,
These opposed and conflicting interests, which you considered as so great a blemish in your old and in our
present constitution, interpose a salutary check to all
precipitate resolutions. They render deliberation a
matter not oi choice, but of necessity ; they make all
change a subject of compromise, which naturally begels

SELECTIONS.
239
moderation ; they produce temperaments, preventing
the sore evil of harsh, crude, unqualified reformations ;
and rendering all the headlong exertions of arbitrary
power, in the few or in the many, for ever impracticable.
Through that diversity of members and interests,
general liberty had as many securities as there were
separate views in the several orders ; whilst by pressing
down the whole by the weight of a real monarchy, the
separate parts would have been prevented from warping,
and starting from their allotted places.
You had all these advantages in your ancient states ;
but you chose to act as if you had never been moulded
into civil society, and had everything to begin anew.
You began ill, because you began by despising everything
that belonged to you. You set up your trade without
a capital. If the last generations of your country
appeared without much lustre in your eyes, you might
have passed them by, and derived your claims from
a more early race of ancestors. Under a pious predilection for those ancestors, your imaginations would have
realized in them a standard of virtue and wisdom,
beyond the vulgar practice of the hour : and you would
have risen with the example to whose imitation you
aspired. Respecting your forefathers, you would have
been taught to respect yourselves. You would not
have chosen to consider the French as a people of yesterday, as a nation of low-born, servile wretches until the
emancipating year of 1789. In order to furnish, at the
expense of your honour, an excuse to your apologists
here for several enormities of yours, you would not
have been content to be represented as a gang of
Maroon slaves, suddenly broke loose from the house of
bondage, and therefore to be pardoned for your abuse
of the liberty to which you were not accustomed, and
were ill fitted. Would it not, my worthy friend, have
been wiser to have you thought, what I, for one, always
thought you, a generous and gallant nation, long misled
to your disadvantage, by your high and romantic sentiments of fidelity, honour, and loyalty ; that events

240
EDMUND BURKE.
had been unfavourable to you, but that you were not
enslaved through any illiberal or servile disposition ;
that in your most devoted submission, you were actuated by a principle of public spirit, and that it was
your country you worshipped, in the person of your
king ? Had you made it to be understood, that in
the delusion of this amiable error you had gone further
than your wise ancestors ; that you were resolved to
resume your ancient privileges, whilst you preserved
the spirit of your ancient and your recent loyalty and
honour ; or if, diffident of yourselves, and not clearly
discerning the almost obliterated constitution of your
ancestors, you had looked to your neighbours in this
land, who had kept alive the ancient principles and
models of the old common law of Europe, meliorated
and adapted to its present state—by following wise
examples you would have given new examples of wisdom
to the world. You would have rendered the cause of
liberty venerable in the eyes of every worthy mind in
every nation. You would have shamed despotism
from the earth, by showing that freedom was not only
reconcilable, but, as when well disciplined it is, auxiliary
to law. You would have had an unoppressive but
a productive revenue. You would have had a flourishing commerce to feed it. You would have had a free
constitution ; a potent monarchy ; a disciplined army ;
a reformed and venerated clergy ; a mitigated but
spirited nobility, to lead your virtue, not to overlay
it ; you would have had a liberal order of commons, to
emulate and to recruit that nobility ; you would have
had a protected, satisfied, laborious, and obedient
people, taught to seek and to recognize the happiness
that is to be found by virtue in all conditions ; in which
consists the true moral equality of mankind, and not in
that monstrous fiction, which, by inspiring false ideas
and vain expectations into men destined to travol in
the obscure walk of laborious life, serves only to
aggravate and embitter that real inequality, which it
never can remove : and which the order of civil life

SELECTIONS.
241
establishes as much for the benefit of those whom it
must leave in an humble state, as those whom it is able
to exalt tq a condition more splendid, but not more
happy. You had a smooth and easy career of felicity
and glory laid open to you, beyond anything recorded
in the history of the world ; but you have shown that
difficulty is good for man.
^
Compute your gains ; see what is got by those extravagant and presumptuous speculations which have
taught your leaders to despise all their predecessors,
and all their contemporaries, and even to despise themselves, until the moment in which they became truly
despicable. By following those false lights, France has
bought undisguised calamities at a higher price than
any nation has purchased the most unequivocal blessings ! France has bought poverty by crime ! France
has not sacrificed her virtue to her interest ; but she
has abandoned her interest, that she might prostitute
her virtue. AH other nations have begun the fabric of
a new government, or the reformation of an old, by
establishing originally, or by enforcing with greater
exactness, some rites or other of religion. All other
people have laid the foundations of civil freedom in
severer manners and a system of a more austere and
masculine morality. France, when she let loose the
reins of regal authority, doubled the licence of a ferocious dissoluteness in manners, and of an insolent irreligion in , opinions and practices ; and has extended
through all ranks of life, as if she were communicating
some privilege, or laying open some secluded benefit,
all the unhappy corruptions that usually were the
disease of wealth and power. This is one of the new
principles of equality in France.
France, by the perfidy of her leaders, has utterly
disgraced the tone of lenient counsel in the cabinets of
princes, and disarmed it of its most potent topics. She
has sanctified the dark, suspicious maxims of tyrannous
distrust ; and taught kings to tremble at (what will
hereafter be called) the delusive plausibilities of moral

242
EDMUND BURKE.
politicians. Sovereigns will consider those, who advise
them to place an unlimited confidence in their people,
as subverters of their thrones ; as traitors who aim at
their destruction, by leading their easy good-nature,
under specious pretences, to admit combinations of
bold and faithless men into a participation of their
power. This alone (if there were nothing else) is an
irreparable calamity to you and to mankind. Remember
that your parliament of Paris told your king, that, in
calling the states together, he had nothing to fear but
the prodigal excess of their zeal in providing for the
support of the throne. It is right that these men
should hide their heads. It is right that they should
bear their part in the ruin which their counsel has
brought on their sovereign and their country. Such
sanguine declarations tend to lull authority asleep ; to
encourage it rashly to engage in perilous adventures of
untried policy ; to neglect those provisions, preparations and precautions, which distinguish benevolence
from imbecility ; and without which no man can answer for the salutary effect of any abstract plan of
government or of freedom. For want of these, they
have seen the medicine of the state corrupted into its
poison. They have seen the French rebel against a
mild and lawful monarch, with more fury, outrage, and
insult, than ever any people has been known to rise
against the most illegal usurper, or the most sanguinary
tyrant. Their resistance was made to concession ;
their revolt was from protection ; their blow was aimed
at a hand holding out graces, favours, and immunities.
This was unnatural. The rest is in order. They
have found their punishment in their success. Laws
overturned ; tribunals subverted ; industry without
vigour ; commerce expiring ; the revenue unpaid, yet
the people impoverished ; a church pillaged, and a state
not relieved ; civil and military anarchy made the
constitution of the kingdom ; everything human and
divine sacrificed to the idol of public credit, and national
bankruptcy the consequence ; and, to crown all, the

SELECTIONS.
243
paper securities of new, precarious, tottering power,
the discredited paper securities of impoverished fraud,
and beggared rapine, held out as a currency for the
support of the empire, in lieu of the two great recognized
species that represent the lasting, conventional credit
of mankind, which disappeared and hid themselves in
the earth from whence they came, when the principle
of property, whose creatures and representatives they
are, was systematically subverted.
Were all these dreadful things necessary ? Were
they the inevitable results of the desperate struggle of
determined patriots, compelled to wade through blood
and tumult, to the quiet shore of a tranquil and prosperous liberty ? No ! nothing like it. The fresh ruins
of France, which shock our feelings wherever we can
turn our eyes, are not the devastation of civil war ;
they are the sad but instructive monuments of rash
and ignorant counsel in time of profound peace. They
are the display of inconsiderate and presumptuous,
because unresisted and irresistible authority. The persons who have thus squandered away the precious
treasure of their crimes, the persons who have made
this prodigal and wild waste of public evils (the last
stake reserved for the ultimate ransom of the state)
have met in their progress with little, or rather with no
opposition at all. Their whole march was more like
a triumphal procession, than the progress of a war.
Their pioneers have gone before them, and demolished
and laid everything level at their feet. Not one drop
of their blood have they shed in the cause of the country
they have ruined. They have made no sacrifices to
their projects of greater consequence than their shoebuckles, whilst they were imprisoning their king, murdering their fellow-citizens, and bathing in tears, and
plunging in poverty and distress, thousands of worthy
men and worthy families. Their cruelty has not even
been the base result of fear. It has been the effect
of their sense of perfect safety, in authorizing treasons,
robberies, rapes, assassinations, slaughters, and burn-

244
EDMUND BURKE.
ings, throughout their harassed land. But the cause
of all was plain from the beginning.
This unforced choice, this fond election of evil, would
appear perfectly unaccountable, if we did not consider
the composition of the National Assembly ; I do not
mean its formal constitution, which, as it now stands,
is exceptionable enough, but the materials of which, in
a great measure, it is composed, which is of ten thousand
times greater consequence than all the formalities in
the world. 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 blâmable, 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 powers.
After I had read over the list of the persons and
descriptions elected into the Tiers Etat, nothing which
they afterwards did could appear astonishing. Among
them, indeed, I saw some of known rank ; some of
shining talents ; but of any practical experience in the
state, not one man was to be found. The best were
only men of theory. But whatever the distinguished
few may have been, it is the substance and mass of the
body which constitutes its character, and must finally
determine its direction. In all bodies, those who will
lead, must also, in a considerable degree, follow. They

SELECTIONS.
245
must conform their propositions to the taste, talent,
and disposition, of those whom they wish to conduct :
therefore, if an assembly is viciously or feebly composed
in a very great part of it, nothing but such a supreme
degree of virtue as very rarely appears in the world,
and for that reason cannot enter into calculation, will
prevent the men of talents disseminated through it
from becoming only the expert instruments of absurd
projects ! If, what is the more likely event, instead of
that unusual degree of virtue, they should be actuated
by sinister ambition, and a lust of meretricious glory,
then the feeble part of the assembly, to whom at first
they conform, becomes in its turn the dupe and instrument of their designs. In this political traffic, the
leaders will be obliged to bow to the ignorance of their
followers, and the followers to become subservient to
the worst designs of their leaders.
To secure any degree of sobriety in the propositions
made by the leaders in any public assembly, they ought
to respect, in some degree perhaps to fear, those whom
they conduct. To be led any otherwise than blindly,
the followers must be qualified, if not for actors, at
least for judges ; they must also be judges of natural
weight and authority. Nothing can secure a steady
and moderate conduct in such assemblies, but that the
body of them should be respectably composed, in point
of condition in life, of permanent property, of education,
and of such habits as enlarge and liberalize the understanding.
In the calling of the states-general of France, the
first thing that struck me, was a great departure from
the ancient course. I found the representation for the
third estate composed of six hundred persons. They
were equal in number to the representatives of both
the other orders. If the orders were to act separately,
the number would not, beyond the consideration of the
expense, be of much moment. But when it became
apparent that the orders were to be melted down into
one, the policy and necessary effect of this numerous

246
EDMUND BURKE.
representation became obvious. A very small desertion from either of the two other orders must throw the
power of both into the hands of the third. In fact, the
whole power of the state was soon resolved into that
body. Its due composition became therefore of infinitely the greater importance.
Judge, sir, of my surprise, when I found that a very
great proportion of the assembly (a majority, I believe,
of the members who attended) was composed of practitioners in the law. It wasv composed, not of distinguished magistrates, who had given pledges to their
country of their science, prudence, and integrity ; not
of leading advocates, the glory of the bar ; not of renowned professors in universities ;—but for the far
greater part, as it must in such a number, of the inferior,
unlearned, mechanical, merely instrumental members of
the profession. There were distinguished exceptions ;
but the general composition was of obscure provincial
advocates, of stewards of petty local jurisdictions,
country attorneys, notaries, and the whole train of the
ministers of municipal litigation, the fomenters and
conductors of the petty war of village vexation. From
the moment I read the list, I saw distinctly, and very
nearly as it has happened, all that was to follow.
The degree of estimation in which any profession is
held becomes the standard of the estimation in which
the professors hold themselves. Whatever the personal
merits of many individual lawyers might have been,
and in many it was undoubtedly very considerable,
in that military kingdom no part of the profession had
been much regarded, except the highest of all, who
often united to their professional offices great family
splendour, and were invested with great power and
authority. These certainly were highly respected, and
even with no small degree of awe. The next rank was
not much esteemed ; the mechanical part Was in a very
low degree of repute.
Whenever the supreme authority is vested in a body
so composed, it must evidently produce the consequence

SELECTIONS.
247
of supreme authority -placed in the hands of men not
taught habitually to respect themselves ; who had no
previous fortune in character at stake ; who could not
be expected to bear with moderation, or to conduct
with discretion, a power, which they themselves, more
than any others, must be surprised to find in their hands.
Who could flatter himself that these men, suddenly,
and, as it were, by enchantment, snatched from the
humblest rank of subordination, would not be intoxicated with their unprepared greatness ?j Who could
conceive that men, who are habitually meddling,"daring,
subtle, active, of litigious dispositions, and unquiet
minds, would easily fall back into their old condition
of obscure contention, and laborious, low, and' unprofitable chicane ? Who could doubt but that, at any
expense to the state, of which they understood nothing,
they must pursue their private interests, which they
understood but too well ? It was not an event depending on chance or contingency. It was inevitable ; it
was necessary ; it was planted in the nature of things.
They must join (if their capacity did not permit them
to lead) in any project which could procure to them a
litigious constitution / which could lay ope a to them
those innumerable lucrative jobs, which follow in the
train of all great convulsions and revolutions in the
state, and particularly in all great and violent pei mutations of property. Was it to be expected that they
would attend to the stability of property, whose existence had always depended upon whatever rendered
property questionable, ambiguous, and insecure ? Their
objects would be enlarged with their elevation, but their
disposition and habits, and mode of accomplishing their
designs, must remain the same.
$
Well ! but these men were to be tempered and restrained by other descriptions, of more sober minds,
and more enlarged understandings. Were they then
to be awed by the super-eminent authority and awful
dignity of a handful of country clowns, who have seats
in that assembly, some of whom are said not to be able

248
EDMUND BURKE.
to read and write ? and by not a greater number of
traders, who, though somewhat more instructed, and
more conspicuous in the order of society, had never
known anything beyond their counting-house ? No !
both these descriptions were more formed to be overborne and swayed by the intrigues and artifices of
lawyers, than to become their counterpoise. With
such a dangerous disproportion, the whole must needs
be governed by them. To the faculty of law was joined
a pretty considerable proportion of the faculty of medicine. This faculty had not, any more than that of the
law, possessed in France its just estimation. Its professors, therefore, must have the qualities of men not
habituated to sentiments of dignity. But supposing
they had ranked as they ought to do, and as with us
they do actually, the sides of sick-beds are not the
academies for forming statesmen and legislators. Then
came the dealers in stocks and funds, who must be eager,
at any expense, to change their ideal paper wealth for
the more solid substance of land. To these were joined
men of other descriptions, from -whom as little knowledge of, or attention to, the interests of a great state
was to be expected, and as little regard to the stability
•of any institution ; men formed to be instruments, not
controls. Such in general was the composition of the
Tiers Etat in the National Assembly ; in which was
scarcely to be perceived the slightest traces of what
we call the natural landed interest of the country.
We know that 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

SELECTIONS.
249
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 employ
ment 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 an
wholly professional and faculty composition, what is
the power of the House of Commons, circumscribed
and shut in by the immovable 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 lawln 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,
np respected usage to restrain it. Instead of finding
themselves obliged to conform to a fixed constitution;

250
EDMUND BURKE.
they have a power to make a constitution' which shal^
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 in 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 undehnable 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.
Having considered the composition of the third estate
as it stood in its original frame, I took a view of the
representatives of the clergy. There too it appeared
that full as little regard was had to the general security
of property, or to the aptitude of the deputies for their
public purposes, in the principles of their election. That
election was so contrived as to send a very large proportion of mere country curates to the great and arduous
work of new-modelling a state ; men who had never
seen the state so much as in a picture ; men who knew
nothing of the world beyond the bounds of an obscure
village ; who, immersed in hopeless poverty, could
regard all property, whether secular or ecclesiastical,
with no other eye than that of envy ; among whom
must be many, who, for the smallest hope of the meanest
dividend in plunder, would readily join in any attempts
upon a body of wealth, in which "they could hardly
look to have any share, except in a general scramble.
Instead of balancing the power of the active chicaners
in the other assembly, these curates must necessarily
become the active coadjutors, or at best,the passive instruments, of those by whom they had been habitually
guided in their petty village concerns. They too could
hardly be the most conscientious of their kind who,
presuming upon their incompetent understanding, could

SELECTIONS.
251
intrigue for a trust which led them from their natural
relation to their flocks, and their natural spheres of
action, to undertake the regeneration of kingdoms.
This preponderating weight, being added to the force
of the body of chicane in the Tiers Etat, completed that
momentum of ignorance, rashness, presumption, and
lust of plunder, which nothing has been able to resist.
To observing men it must have appeared from the
beginning that the majority of the third estate, in conjunction with such a deputation. from the clergy, as
I have described, whilst it pursued the destruction of
the nobility, would inevitably become subservient to
the worst designs of individuals in that class., In the
spoil and humiliation of their own order these individuals- would possess a sure fund for the pay of their
new followers. To squander away the objects which
made the happiness of their fellows, Would be to them
no sacrifice at all. Turbulent, discontented men of
quality, in proportion as they are puffed up with personal pride and arrogance, generally despise their own
order. One of the first symptoms they discover of
a selfish and mischievous ambition, is a profligate disregard of a dignity which they partake with others.
To be attached to the subdivision, to love the little
platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle
(the germ as it were) of public affections. It is the first
link in the series by which] we£pfÔÇged towards a love
to our country, and to mankind, fHe* interest of that
portion of social arrangement i s a tîust>W the hands of
all those who compose it ; and as ^one but bad men
would justify it in abuse ^ none but traitors would barter
it away for their own personal advantage.
There were, in the time of our civil troubles in England
(I do not know whether you have any such in your
assembly in France), several persons, like the then Earl
of Holland, who by themselves or their families had
brought an odium on the throne, by the prodigal dispensation of its bounties towards them, who afterwards
joined in the rebellions arising from the discontents of

252
EDMUND BURKE.
which they were themselves the cause ; men who helped
to subvert that throne to which they owed, some of
them, their existence, others all that power which they
employed to ruin their benefactor. If any bounds are
set to the rapacious demands of that sort of people, or
that others are permitted to partake in the objects they
would engross, revenge and envy soon fill up the craving
void that is left in their avarice. Confounded by the
complication of distempered passions, their reason is
disturbed ; their views become vast and perplexed ;
to others inexplicable ; to themselves uncertain. They
find, on all sides, bounds to their unprincipled ambition
in any fixed order of things. But in the fog and haze of
confusion all is enlarged, and appears without any limit.
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-£he /dignity of the people whose
peace they trou^ef. 0 Thepy had long views. They
aimed at the rfi&Cnot at thei destruction of their country.
They were men 6f g*eat civ;il, and great military talents,
and, if the terror, tào e m i n e n t 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 :

SELECTIONS.

2-53

* 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, Condés,
and Colignis, Such the Richelieus, who in more quiet
times acted ir the spirit of a civil war. Such, as better
men, and in a less dubious cause, were your Henry IV
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 inflamed. 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

254
EDMUND BURKE.
Jews, who will be always their fellows, sometimes their
masters. Believe me, sir, those, who attempt to level,
never equalize. In all societies, consisting of various
descriptions of citizens, some description must be uppermost. The levellers therefore only change and pervert
the natural order of things ; they load the edifice of
society, by setting up in the air what the solidity of the
structure requires to be on the ground. The associations of 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, an
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/>ccupations
were honourable. If he meant only tbzt no honest
employment was disgraceful, he would Slot 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 tallowchandler, 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.*
* Ecclesiasticus, chap, xxxviii. vers. 24, 25. ' T h e wisdom of a
learned m a n cometh by o p p o r t u n i t y of leisure : and he t h a t h a t h little
business shall become w i s e . ' — ' H o w can he get wisdom t h a t holdeth
the plough, and t h a t glorieth in t h e goad ; t h a t driveth oxen ; and is
occupied in their labours ; and whose talk is of bullocks ? '
Ver. 27. * So every carpenter and work-master t h a t laboureth
night and day,' &c.
Ver. 33. ' T h e y shall n o t be sought for in public counsel, nor sit
high in the congregation : t h e y shall not sit on the judge's seat, nor
understand the sentence of j u d g m e n t : they cannot declare justice
and judgment, and they shall not be found where parables are spoken.'
Ver. 34. * But they will m a i n t a i n the state of the world.'
I do not determine whether this book be canonical, as the Gallican
Church (till lately) h a s considered it, or apocryphal, as here it is taken.
I am sure it contains a great deal of sense and t r u t h .

SELECTIONS.
235
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 the
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,
it 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.
Nothiiùg is a due and adequate representation of a
state that does not represent its ability, as well as its pro-

256
EDMUND BURKE.
perty. 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 i^ 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 |he 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 j
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 alway^ so composed, in the far greater part. Let those llarge pro-

SELECTIONS.
257
prietors 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, shortsighted 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. A government of
five hundred country attorneys and obscure curates is
not good for twenty-four millions of men, though it
were chosen by eight and forty millions ; nor is it the
better for being guided by a dozen of persons of quality,
who have betrayed their trust in order to obtain that
power. At present, you seem in everything to have
strayed out of the high road of nature. The property
of France does not govern it. Of course property is
destroyed, and rational liberty has no existence. All
you have got for the present is a paper circulation, and
a stock-jobbing constitution : and, as to the future, do
you seriously think that the territory of France, upon
the republican system of eighty-three independent
municipalities (to say nothing of the parts that compose
them), can ever be governed as one body, or can ever be
set in motion by the impulse of one mind ? When the
National Assembly has completed its work, it will have
accomplished its ruin. These commonwealths will not
long bear a state of subjection to the republic of Paris.
They will not bear that this one body should monopolize
9

258
EDMUND BURKE.
the captivity of the king, and the dominion over the
assembly calling itself national. Each will keep its own
portion of the spoil of the church to itself, ; and it will
not suffer either that spoil, or the more just fruits of their
industry, or the natural produce of their soil, to be sent
to swell the insolence, or pamper the luxury of the
mechanics of Paris. In this they will see none of the
equality, under the pretence of which they have been
tempted to throw off their allegiance to their sovereign,
as well as the ancient constitution of their country.
There can be no capital city in such a constitution as
they have lately made. They have forgot that, when
they framed democratic governments, they had virtually
dismembered their country. The person, whom they
persevere in calling king, has not power left to him by
the hundredth part sufficient to hold together this collection of republics. The republic of Paris will endeavour
indeed to complete the debauchery of the army, and
illegally to perpetuate the assembly, without resort to
its constituents, as the means of continuing its despotism.
It will make efforts, by becoming the heart of a boundless
paper circulation, to draw everything to itself ; but in
vain. All this policy in the end will appear as feeble as
it is now violent.
If this be your actual situation, compared to the
situation to which you were called, as it were by the
voice of God and man, I cannot find it in my heart to
congratulate you on the choice you have made, or the
success which has attended your endeavours. I can as
little recommend to any other nation a conduct grounded
on such principles, and productive of such effects. That
I must leave to those who can see further into your
affairs than I am able to do, and who best know how far
your actions are favourable to their designs. The gentlemen of the Revolution Society, who were so early in
their congratulations, appear to be strongly of opinion
that there is some scheme of politics relative to this
country, in- which your proceedings may in some way
be useful. For your Dr. Price, who seems to have

SELECTIONS.
259
speculated himself into no small degree of fervour upon
this subject, addresses his auditors in the following very
remarkable words : ' I cannot conclude without recalling
* particularly to your recollection a consideration which
I have more than once alluded to, and which probably
your thoughts have been all along anticipating ; a consideration with which my mind is impressed more than I
can express. I mean the consideration of the favourableness of the present times to all exertions in the cause of
liberty.1
It is plain that the mind of this political preacher was
at the time big with some extraordinary design ; and
it is very probable that the thoughts of his audience,
who understood him better than I do, did all along run
before him in his reflection, and in the whole train of
consequences to which it led.
Before I read that sermon, I really thought I had lived
in a free country ; and it was an error I cherished,
because it gave me a greater liking to the country I lived
in. I was indeed aware, that a jealous, ever-waking
vigilance, to guard the treasure of our liberty, not only
from invasion, but from decay and corruption, was our
best wisdom and our first duty. However, I considered
that treasure rather as a possession to be secured, than
as a prize to be contended for. I did not discern how
the present time came to be so very favourable to all
exertions in the cause of freedom. The present time
differs from any other only by the circumstance of what
is doing in France. If the example of that nation is to
have an influence on this, I can easily conceive why some
of their proceedings which have an unpleasant aspect,
and are not quite reconcilable to humanity, generosity,
good faith, and justice, are palliated with so much milky
good-nature towards the actors, and borne with so much
heroic fortitude towards the sufferers. It is certainly
not prudent to discredit the authority of an example we
mean to follow. But allowing this, we are led to a very
natural question ;—What is that cause of liberty, and
what are those exertions in its favour, to which the

EDMUND BURKE.
example of France is so singularly auspicious ? Is our
monarchy to be annihilated, with all the laws, all the
tribunals, and all the ancient corporations of the kingdom?
Is every land-mark of the country to be done away i n
favour of a geometrical and arithmetical constitution ?
Is the House of Lords to be voted useless ? Is episcopacy
to be abolished ? Are the church lands to be sold to
Jews and jobbers ; or given to bribe new-invented
municipal republics into a participation in sacrilege ?
Are all the taxes to be voted grievances, and the revenue
reduced to a patriotic contribution, or patriotic presents ?
Are silver shoe buckles to be substituted in the place of
the land-tax and the malt-tax, for the support of the
naval strength of this kingdom ? Are all orders, ranks,
and distinctions to be confounded, that out of universal
anarchy, joined to national bankruptcy, three or four
thousand democracies should be formed into eighty-three,
and that they may all, by some sort of unknown attractive
power, be organized into one ? For this great end is
the army to be seduced from its discipline and its fidelity,
first by every kind of debauchery, and then by the
terrible precedent of a donative in the increase of pay ?
Are the curates to be seduced from their bishops, by
holding out to them the delusive hope of a dole out of
the spoils of their own order ? Are the citizens of London
to be drawn from their allegiance by feeding them at the
expense of their fellow-subjects ? Is a compulsory paper
currency to be substituted in the place of the legal coin
of this kingdom ? Is what remains of the plundered
stock of public revenue to be employed in the wild project
of maintaining two armies to watch over and to fight
with each other ? If these are the ends and means of (
the Revolution Society, I admit they are well assorted ;
and France may furnish them for both with precedents
in point.
I see that your example is held out to shame us. I
know that we are supposed a dull, sluggish raceN rendered
passive by finding our situation tolerable, and prevented
by a mediocrity of freedom from ever attaining to its
2Ô0

SELECTIONS.
261
full perfection. Your leaders in France began by affecting to admire, almost to adore, the British constitution ;
but, as they advanced, they came to look upon it with
a sovereign contempt. The friends of your National
Assembly amongst us have full as mean an opinion of
what was formerly thought the glory of their country.
The Revolution Society has discovered that the English
nation is not free. They are convinced that the inequality
in our representation is a ' defect in our constitution so
gross and palpable, as to make it excellent chiefly in form
and theory.' * That a representation in the legislature of a
kingdom is not only the basis of all constitutional liberty
in it, but of ' all legitimate government ; that without it
a government is nothing but an usurpation ' ;—that
' when the representation is partial, the kingdom possesses
liberty only partially ; and if extremely partial, it gives
only a semblance ; and if not only extremely partial, but
corruptly chosen, it becomes a nuisance* Dr. Price
considers this inadequacy of representation as our fundamental grievance ; and though, as to the corruption of
this semblance of representation, he hopes it is not yet
arrived to its full perfection of depravity, he fears that
' nothing will be done towards gaining for us this essential
blessing, until some great abuse of power again provokes
our resentment, or some great calamity again alarms our
fears, or perhaps till the acquisition of a pure and equal
representation b«' other countries, whilst we are mocked
with the shadow, kindles our shame/ To this he subjoins a note in these words. ' A representation chosen
chiefly by the treasury, and a few thousands of the dregs
of the people, who are generally paid for their votes.'
You will smile here at the consistency of those democratists, who, when they are not on their guard, treat
the humbler part of the community with the greatest
contempt, whilst, at the same time, they pretend to
make them the depositories of all power. It would
require a long discourse to point out to you the many
fallacies that lurk in the generality and equivocal nature
* ' Discourse on the Love of our Country,' 3rd edit. p. 39.

EDMUND BURKE.
of the terms ' inadequate representation/ I shall only
say here, in justice to that old-fashioned constitution,
under which we have long prospered, that our representation has been found perfectly adequate to all the purposes
for which a representation of the people can be desired
or devised. I defy the enemies of our constitution to
show the contrary. To detail the particulars in which
it is found so well to promote its ends, would demand a
treatise on our practical constitution. I state here the
doctrine of the revolutionists, only that you and others
may see, what an opinion these gentlemen entertain of
the constitution of their country, and why they seem to
think that some great abuse of power, or some great
calamity, as giving a chance for the blessing of a constitution according to their ideas, would be much palliated to
their feelings ; you see why they are so much enamoured
of your fair and equal representation, which being once
obtained the same effects might follow. You see they
consider our House of Commons as only ' a semblance/
' a form/ ' a theory/ ' a shadow/ ' a mockery/ perhaps
' a nuisance/
These gentlemen value themselves on being systematic ;
and not without reason. They must therefore look on
this gross and palpable defect of representation, this
fundamental grievance (so they call it) as a thing not
only vicious in itself, but as rendering our whole government absolutely illegitimate, and not at all better than
a downright usurpation. Another revolution, to get rid
of this illegitimate and usurped government, would of
course be perfectly justifiable, if not absolutely necessary.
Indeed their principle, if you observe it with any attention, goes much further than to an alteration in the
election of the House of Commons ; for, if popular
representation, or choice, is necessary to the legitimacy
of all government, the House of Lords is, at one stroke,
bastardized and corrupted in blood. That House is
no representative of the people at all, even in ' semblance
or in form/ The case of the crown is altogether as bad.
In vain the crown may endeavour to screen itself against
2Ô2

SELECTIONS.
263
these gentlemen by the authority of the establishment
made on the Revolution. The Revolution which is
resorted to for a title, on their system, wants a title
itself. The Revolution is built, according to their theory,
upon a basis not more solid than our present formalities,
as it was made by a House of Lords, not representing
anyone but themselves ; and by a House of Commons
exactly such as the present, that is, as they term it, by a
mere ' shadow and mockery of representation/
Something they must destroy, or they seem to themselves to exist for no purpose. One set is for destroying
• the civil power through the ecclesiastical ; another for
demolishing the ecclesiastic through the civil. They
are aware that the worst consequences might happen
to the public in accomplishing this double ruin of church
and state ; but they are so heated with their theories,
that they give more than hints, that this ruin, with all
the mischiefs that must lead to it and attend it, and which
to themselves appear quite certain, would not be unacceptable to them, or very remote from their wishes. A
man amongst them of great authority, and certainly of
great talents, speaking of a supposed alliance between
church and state, says, ' perhaps we must wait for the fall
of the civil powers before this most unnatural alliance be
broken. Calamitous no doubt will that time be. But
what convulsion in the political world ought to be a subject of lamentation, if it be attended with so desirable
an effect ? ' You see with what a steady eye these
gentlemen are prepared- to view the greatest calamities
which can befall their country.
It is no wonder therefore, that with these ideas of
everything in their constitution and government at
home, either in church or state, as illegitimate and
usurped, or, at best as a vain mockery, they look abroad
with an eager and passionate enthusiasm. Whilst they
are possessed by these notions, it is vain to talk to them
of the practice of their ancestors, the fundamental laws
of their country, the fixed form of a constitution, whose
merits are confirmed by the solid test of long experience,

264
EDMUND BURKE.
and an increasing public strength and national prosperity.
They despise experience as the wisdom of unlettered
men ; and as for the rest, they have wrought under
ground a mine that will blow up, at one grand explosion,
all examples of antiquity, all precedents, charters, and
acts of parliament. They have 'the rights of men/
Against these there can be no prescription ; against
these no argument is binding : these admit no temperament, and no compromise : anything withheld from their
full demand is so much of fraud and injustice. Against
these their rights of men let no government look for
security in the length of its continuance, or in the justiceand lenity of its administration. The objections of
these speculatists, if its forms do not quadrate with their
theories, are as valid against such an old and beneficent government, as against the most violent tyranny,
or the greenest usurpation. They are always at issue
with governments, not on a question of abuse, but a question of competency, and a question of title. I have
nothing to say to the clumsy subtlety of their political
metaphysics. Let them be their amusement in the
schools.—' Ilia se jactet in aula—JEolus, et clauso ventorum
car cere regnet!—But let them not break prison to burst
like a Levanter^to sweep the earth with their hurricane,
and to break up the fountains of the great deep to overwhelm us.
Far am I from denying in theory,^ full as far is my
heart from withholding in practice (if I were of power
to give or to withhold) the real rights of men. In denying
their false claims of right, I do not mean to injure those
which are real, and are such as their pretended rights
would totally destroy. If civil society be made for the
advantage of man, all the advantages for which it is
made become his right. It is an institution of beneficence ; and law itself is only beneficence ; acting by a
rule. Men have a right to live by that rule ; they have a
right to 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 ;

SELECTIONS.
265
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 ita 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 unco venanted 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

EDMUND BURKE.
266
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 dis-

SELECTIONS.
267
tempers. What is the use of discussing a man's abstract
right to food or medicine ? The question is upon tlie
method of procuring and administering them* In the/
deliberation I shall always advise to call in the aid oi'
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 à 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 édifice, 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

268
EDMUND BURKE.
mt"tii is intricate ; the objects of society are of the greatest
possible complexity : and therefore no simple disposition
c* 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
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. Men have no right to what is
not reasonable, and to what is not for their benefit , for
*
though a pleasant writer said, Liceat fierire ftoetis, when

SELECTIONS.
269
one of them, in cold blood, is said to have leaped into
the flames of a volcanic revolution, Ardentem frigidus
Etnam insiluit, I consider such a frolic rather as an
unjustifiable poetic licence, than as one of the franchises
of Parnassus ; and, whether he were poet, or divine, or
politician, that chose to exercise this kind of right, I
think that more wise, because more charitable thoughts
would urge me rather to save the man, than to preserve
his brazen slippers as the monuments of his folly.
The kind of anniversary sermons to which a great
part of what I write refers, if men are not shamed out
of their present course, in commemorating the fact,
will cheat many out of the principles, and deprive them
of the benefits of the Revolution they commemorate.
I confess to you, sir, I never liked this continual talk
of resistance, and revolution, or the practice of making
the extreme medicine of the constitution its daily bread.
It renders the habit of society dangerously valetudinary ;
it is taking periodical doses of mercury sublimate, and
swallowing down repeated provocatives of cantharides
to our love of liberty.
This distemper of remedy, grown habitual, relaxes and
wears out, by a vulgar and prostituted use, the spring
of that spirit which is to be exerted on great occasions.
It was in the most patient period of Roman servitude
that themes of tyrannicide made the ordinary exercise
of boys at school—cum ferimit scevos chassis numerosa
tyrannos. In the ordinary state of things, it produces
in a country like ours the worst effects, even on the cause
of that liberty which it abuses with the dissoluteness of
an extravagant speculation. Almost all the high-bred
republicans of my time have, after a short space, become
the most decided, thorough-paced courtiers ; they soon
left the business of a tedious, moderate, but practical
resistance, to those of us whom, in the pride and intoxication of their theories, they have slighted as not
much better than Tories. Hypocrisy, of course, delights
in the most sublime speculations ; for, never intending
to go beyond speculation, it costs nothing to have it

270
EDMUND BURKE.
magnificent. But even in cases where rather levity
than fraud was to be suspected in these ranting speculations, the issue has been much the same. These professors, finding their extreme principles not applicable
to cases which call only for a qualified, or, as I may
say, civil, and legal resistance, in such cases employ
no resistance at all. It is with them a war or s. revolution, or it is nothing. Finding their schemes of politics
not adapted to the state of the world in which they
live, they often come to think lightly of all public principle ; and are ready, on their part, to abandon for a
very trivial interest what they find of very trivial value.
Some, indeed, are of more steady and persevering natures ; • but these are eager politicians out of parliament,
who have little to tempt them to abandon their favourite
projects. They have some change in the church or
state, or both, constantly in their view. When that
is the case, they are always bad citizens, and perfectly
unsure connexions. For, considering their speculative
designs as of infinite value, and the actual arrangement
of the state as of no estimation, they are, at best, indifferent about it. They see no merit in the good, and
no fault in the vicious management of public affairs ;
they rather rejoice in the latter, as more propitious to
revolution. They see no merit or demerit in any man,
or any action, or any political principle, any further
than as they may forward or retard their design of
change ; they therefore take up, one day, the most
violent and stretched prerogative, and another time
the wildest democratic ideas of freedom, and pass from
the one to the other without any sort of regard to cause,
to person, or to party.
In France you are now in the crisis of a revolution,
and in the transit from one form of government to
another-—you cannot see that character of men exactly
in the same situation in which we see it in this country.
With us it is militant ; with you it is triumphant ; and
you know how it can act when its power is commensurate to.its will. I would not be supposed to confine

SELECTIONS.
271
those observations to any description of men, or to
comprehend all men of any description within them—
No ! far from it. I am as incapable of that injustice, as
I am of keeping terms with those who profess principles
of extremes ; and who, under the name of religion,
teach little else than wild and dangerous politics. The
worst of these politics of revolution is this : they temper
and harden the breast, in order to prepare it for the
desperate strokes which are sometimes used in extreme
occasions. But as these occasions may never arrive,
the mind receives a gratuitous taint ; and the moral
sentiments suffer not a little, when no political purpose
is served by the depravation. This sort of people
are so taken up with their theories about the rights
of man, that they have totally forgotten his nature.
Without opening one new avenue to the understanding,
they have succeeded in stopping up those that lead
to the heart. They have perverted in themselves,
and in those that attend to them, all the well-placed
sympathies of the human breast.
This famous sermon of the Old Jewry breathes nothing
but this spirit through all the political part. Plots,
massacres, assassinations, seem to some people a trivial
price for obtaining a revolution. A cheap, bloodless
reformation, a guiltless liberty, appear flat and vapid
to their taste. There must be a great change of scene ;
there must be a magnificent stage effect ; there must
be a grand spectacle to rouse the imagination, grown
torpid with the lazy enjoyment of sixty years' security,
and the still unanimating repose of public prosperity.
The preacher found them all in the French Revolution.
This inspires a juvenile warmth through his whole
frame. His enthusiasm kindles as he advances ; and
when he arrives at his peroration it is in a full blaze.
Then viewing, from the Pisgah of his pulpit, the free,
moral, happy, flourishing, and glorious state of France,
as in a bird-eye landscape of a promised land, he breaks
out into the following rapture :
' What an eventful period is this Î I am thankful that

272
EDMUND BURKE.
I have lived to it ; I could almost say, Lord, now lettest
thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have, seen
thy salvation. I have lived to see a diffusion of knowledge, which has undermined superstition and error.—
I have lived to see the rights of men better understood
than ever ; and nations panting for liberty which seemed
to have lost the idea of it.—I have lived to see thirty
millions of people, indignant and resolute, spurning
at slavery, and demanding liberty with an irresistible
voice. Their king led in triumph, and an arbitrary
monarch surrendering himself to his subjects.3 *
Before I proceed further, I have to remark, that
Dr. Price seems rather to overvalue the great acquisitions of light which he has obtained and diffused in this
age. The last century appears to me to have been
quite as much enlightened. It had, though in a different
place, a triumph as memorable as that of Dr. Price ;
and some of the great preachers of that period partook
of it as eagerly as he has done in the triumph of France.
On the trial of the Rev. Hugh Peters for high treason,
it was deposed, that when King Charles was brought
to London for his trial, the Apostle of Liberty in that
day conducted the triumph. ' I saw/ says the witness,
' his majesty in the coach with six horses, and Peters
riding before the king triumphing.' Dr. Price, when he
talks as if he had made a discovery, only follows a precedent : for, after the commencement of the king's trial,
this precursor, the same Dr. Peters, concluding a long
prayer at the royal chapel at Whitehall (he had very
triumphantly chosen his place), said, ' I have prayed
and preached these twenty years ; and now I may say
with old Simeon, Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart
in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation.'\ Peters
* Another of these reverend gentlemen, who was witness to some
of the spectacles which Paris has lately exhibited, expresses himself
thus :—' A king dragged in submissive triumph by Ms conquering subjects
is one of those appearances of grandeur which seldom rise in the prospect of human affairs, and which, during the remainder of my life, I
shall think of with wonder and gratification.' These gentlemen agree
marvellously in their feelings.
t State Trials, vol. ii. pp. 360, 363.

SELECTIONS.
273
had not the fruits of his prayer ; for he neither departed
so- soon as he wished, nor in peace. He became (what
I heartily hope none of his followers may be in this
country) himself a sacrifice to the triumph which he
led as pontiff. They dealt at the Restoration, perhaps,
too hardly with this poor good man. But we owe it to
his memory, and his sufferings, that he had as much
illumination, and as much zeal, and had as effectually
undermined all the superstition and error which might
impede the great business he was engaged in, as any who
follow and repeat after him in this age, which would
assume to itself an exclusive title to the knowledge of
the rights of men, and all the glorious consequences of
that knowledge.
After this sally of the preacher of the Old Jewry,
which differs only in place and time, but agrees perfectly with the spirit and letter of the rapture of 1648,
the Revolution Society, the fabricators of governments,
the heroic band of cashierers of monarchsy electors of
sovereigns, and leaders of kings in triumph, strutting
with a proud consciousness of the diffusion of knowledge, of which every member had obtained so large a
share in the donative, were in haste to make a generous
diffusion of the knowledge they had thus gratuitously
received. To make this bountiful communication, they
adjourned from the church in the Old Jewry, to the
London Tavern ; where the same Dr. Price, in whom
the fumes of his oracular tripod were not entirely evaporated, moved and carried the resolution, or address
of congratulation, transmitted by Lord Stanhope to the
National Assembly of France.
I find a preacher of the gospel profaning the beautiful and prophetic ejaculation, commonly called 'nunc
dimittis* made on the first presentation of our Saviour
in the temple, and applying it, with an inhuman and
unnatural rapture, to the most horrid, atrocious, and
afflicting spectacle that perhaps ever was exhibited to
the pity and indignation of mankind. This ' leading
in triumph' a thing in its best form unmanly and irre-

274
EDMUND BURKE.
ligious, which fills our preacher with such unhallowed
transports, must shock, I believe, the moral ' taste of
every well-born mind. Several English were the stupefied and indignant spectators of that triumph. It was
(unless we have been strangely deceived) a spectacle
more resembling a procession of American savages,
entering into Onondago, after some of their murders
called victories, and leading into hovels hung round
with scalps, their captives, overpowered with the scoffs
and buffets of women as ferocious as themselves, much
more than it resembled the triumphal pomp of a civilized,
martial nation ;—if a civilized nation, or any men who
had a sense of generosity, were capable of a personal
triumph over the fallen and afflicted.
This, my dear sir, was not the triumph of France.
I must believe that, as a nation, it overwhelmed you
with shame and horror. I must believe that the
National Assembly find themselves in a state of the
greatest humiliation in not being able to punish the
authors of this triumph, or the actors in it; and that
they are in a situation in which any inquiry they may
make upon the subject must be destitute even of the
appearance of liberty or impartiality. The apology
of that assembly is found in their situation ; but when
we approve what they must bear, it is in us the degenerate choice of a vitiated mind.
With a compelled appearance of deliberation, they
vote under the dominion of a stern necessity. They sit
in the heart, as it were, of a foreign republic : they
have their residence in a city whose constitution has
emanated neither from the charter of their king, nor
from their legislative power. There they are surrounded by an army not raised either by the authority
of their crown, or by their command; and which,
if they should order to dissolve itself, would instantly
dissolve them. There they sit,r after a gang of assassins
had driven away some hundreds of the members ;
whilst those who held the same moderate principles,
with more patience or better hope, continued every

SELECTIONS.
275
day exposed to outrageous insults and murderous
threats. There a majority, sometimes real, sometimes
pretended, captive itself, compels a captive king to
issue as royal edicts, at third hand, the polluted nonsense
of their most licentious and giddy coffee-houses. It
is notorious that all their measures are decided before
they are debated. It is beyond doubt that under the
terror of the bayonet, and the lamp-post, and the torch
to their houses, they are obliged to adopt all the crude
and desperate measures suggested by clubs composed
of a monstrous medley of all conditions, tongues, and
nations. Among these are found persons, in comparison of whom Catiline would be thought scrupulous,
and Cethegus a man of sobriety and moderation. Nor
is it in these clubs alone that the public measures are
deformed into monsters. They undergo a previous distortion in academies, intended as so many seminaries for
these clubs, which are set up in all the places of public
resort. In these meetings of all sorts, every counsel,
in proportion as it is daring, and violent, and perfidious,
is taken for the mark of superior genius. Humanity
and compassion are ridiculed as the fruits of superstition and ignorance. Tenderness to individuals is
considered as treason to the public. Liberty is always
to be estimated perfect as property is rendered insecure.
Amidst assassination, massacre, and confiscation, perpetrated or meditated, they are forming plans for the
good order of future society. Embracing in their arms
the carcases of base criminals, and promoting their
relations on the title of their offences, they drive hundreds of virtuous persons to the same end, by forcing
them to subsist by beggary or by crime.
The assembly, their organ, acts before them the farce
of deliberation with as little decency as liberty. They
act like the comedians of a fair, before a riotous audience ;
they act amidst the tumultuous cries of a mixed mob
of ferocious men, and of women lost to shame, who,
according to their insolent fancies, direct, control,
applaud, explode them ; and sometimes mix and take

276
EDMUND BURKE.
their seats amongst them ; domineering over them
with a strange mixture of servile petulance and proud
presumptuous authority. As they have inverted order
in all things, the gallery is in the place of. the house.
This assembly, which overthrows kings and kingdoms,
has not even the physiognomy and aspect of a
grave legislative body — nee color imperii, nee pons
erat ulla senatus. They have a power given to them,
like that of the evil principle, to subvert and destroy; but none to construct, except such machines
as may be fitted for further subversion and further
destruction.
Who is it that admires, and from the heart is attached
to national representative assemblies, but must turn
with horror and disgust from such a profane burlesque,
and abominable perversion of that sacred institute ?
Lovers of monarchy, lovers of republics, must alike
abhor it. The members of your assembly must themselves groan under the tyranny of which they have all
the shame, none of the direction, and little of the profit.
I am sure many of the members who compose even the
majority of that body must feel as I do, notwithstanding
the applauses of the Revolution Society. Miserable
king ! miserable assembly ! How must that assembly
be silently scandalized with those of their members,
who could call a day which seemed to blot the sun out
of heaven, ' un beau jour I ' * How must they be inwardly indignant at hearing others, who thought fit
to declare to them, ' that the vessel of the state would
fly forward in her course towards regeneration with
more speed than ever,' from the stiff gale of treason
and murder, which preceded our preacher's triumph !
What must they have felt, whilst, with outward patience
and inward indignation, they heard of the slaughter
of innocent gentlemen in their houses, that ' the blood
spilled was not the most pure ' ? What must they
have felt, when they were besieged by complaints of
disorders which shook their country to its foundations,
* 6th of October, 1789.

SELECTIONS.
277
at being compelled coolly to tell the complainants,
that they were under the protection of the law, and
that they would address the king (the captive king)
to cause the laws to be enforced for their protection ;
when the enslaved ministers of that captive king had
formally notified to them, that there were neither law,
nor authority, nor power left to protect ? What must
they have felt at being obliged, as a felicitation on the
present new year, to request their captive king to forget
the stormy period of the last, on account of the great
good which he was likely to produce to his people ; to
the complete attainment of which good they adjourned
the practical demonstrations of their loyalty, assuring
him of theiv obedience, when he should no longer possess
any authority to command.
This address was made with much good-nature and
affection, to be sure. But among the revolutions in
France must be reckoned a considerable revolution in
their ideas of politeness. In England we are said to
learn manners at second-hand from your side of the
water, and that we dress our behaviour in the frippery
of France. If so, we are still in the old cut ; and have
not so far conformed to the new Parisian mode of goodbreeding, as to think it quite in the most refined strain
of delicate compliment (whether in condolence or congratulation) to say, to the most humiliated creature
that crawls upon the earth, that great public benefits
are derived from the murder of his servants, the attempted assassination of himself and of his wife, and
the mortification, disgrace, and degradation, that ha
has personally suffered. It is a topic of consolation
which our ordinary of Newgate would be too humane
to use to a criminal at the foot of the gallows. I should
have thought that the hangman of Paris, now that he
is liberalized by the vote of the National Assembly, and
is allowed his rank and arms in the herald's college of
the rights of men, would be too generous, too gallant
a man, too full of the sense of his new dignity, to employ
that cutting consolation to any of the persons whom

278
EDMUND BURKE.
the lèse nation might bring under the administration of
his executive power.
A man is fallen indeed, when he is thus flattered.
The anodyne draught of oblivion, thus drugged^ is well
calculated to preserve a galling wakefulness, and to
feed the living ulcer of a corroding memory. Thus to
administer the opiate potion of amnesty, powdered
with all the ingredients of scorn and contempt, is to
hold to his lips, instead of ' the balm of hurt minds/
the cup of human misery full to the brim, and to force
him to drink it to the dregs.
Yielding to reasons, at least as forcible as those which
were so delicately urged in the compliment on the new
year, the King of France will probably endeavour to
forget these events and that compliment. But 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

SELECTIONS.
279
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 bodyguard. 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
shapes 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,

EDMUND BURKE.
and not long before not worse announced by the voice
of angels to quiet the innocence of shepherds.
At first I was at a loss to account for this fit of unguarded transport. I knew, indeed, that the sufferings
of monarchs make a delicious repast to some sort of
palates. There were reflections which might serve to
keep this appetite within some bounds of temperance.
But when I took one circumstance into my consideration, I was obliged to confess, that much allowance
ought to be made for the society, and that the temptation was too strong for common discretion ; I mean, the
circumstance of the lo Paean of the triumph, the animating cry which called ' for all the BISHOPS to be hanged
on the lamp-posts/ * might well have brought forth
a burst of enthusiasm on the foreseen consequences
of this happy day. I allow to so much enthusiasm
some little deviation from prudence. I allow this
prophet to break forth into hymns of joy and thanksgiving on an event which appears like the precursor
of the Millennium, and the projected fifth monarchy,
in the destruction of all Church establishments. There
was, however, (as in all human affairs there is,) in the
midst of this joy, something to exercise the patience of
these worthy gentlemen, and to try the long-suffering
of their faith. The actual murder of the king and
queen, and their child, was wanting to the other
auspicious circumstances of this ' beautiful day'
The
actual murder of the bishops, though called for by so
many holy ejaculations, was also wanting.
A group
of regicide and sacrilegious slaughter, was indeed boldly
sketched, but it was only sketched. It unhappily was
left unfinished, in this great history-piece of the massacre of innocents. What hardy pencil of a great
master, from this school of the rights of men, will finish
it, is to be seen hereafter. The age has not yet the
complete benefit of that diffusion of knowledge that has
undermined superstition and error ; and the King of
France wants another object or two, to consign to
280

* Tous les Évêques à la lanterne,

.

;

SELECTIONS.
281
oblivion, in consideration of all the good which is to
arise from his own sufferings, and the patriotic crimes
of an enlightened age.*
Although this work of our new light and knowledge
* I t is proper here to refer to a letter written upon this subject b y
an eye-witness. T h a t eye-witness was one of the most honest, intelligent, and eloquent members of the National Assembly, one of t h e
most active and zealous reformers of the state. H e was obliged to secede
from the assembly ; and he afterwards became a voluntary exile, on
account of the horrors of this pious t r i u m p h , and the dispositions of
men, who, profiting of crimes, if not causing them, have taken the lead
in public affairs.
Extract of M. de Lolly TollendaVs Second Letter to a Friend.
' Parlons du p a r t i que j ' a i pris ; il est bien justifié dans m a conscience.—Ni cette ville coupable, ni cette assemblée plus coupable
encore, ne méritoient que me justifie ; mais j ' a i à cœur que vous, et les
personnes qui pensent comme vous, ne me condamnent pas —Ma
santé, je vous jure, m e rendoit mes fonctions impossibles ; mais même
en les m e t t a n t de côté il a été au-dessus de mes forces de supporter plus
longtems l'horreur que m e causoit ce sang,—ces têtes—cette reine
presque égorgée, ce roi-—amené esclave,—entrant
à Paris, au milieu de
ses assassins, et précédé de têtes de ses malheureux gardes—ces perfides
janissaires, ces assassins, ces femmes cannibales, ce cri de TOUS LES
ÉVÊQUES A LA LANTERNE, dans le m o m e n t où le roi entre sa capitale
avec deux évêques de son conseil dans sa voiture—un coup de fusil,
que j ' a i vu tirer dans un des carosses de la reine—M. Bailly appellant
cela un beau jour—l'assemblée
a y a n t déclaré froidement le m a t i n ,
qu'il n'étoit pas de sa dignité d'aller t o u t e entière environner le roi—
M. Mirabeau disant impunément dans cette assemblée que le vaisseau
de l'état, loin d'être arrêté dans sa course, s'élanceroit avec plus de
rapidité que jamais vers sa régénération—M. Barnave, riant avec lui,
q u a n d des flots de sang couloient a u t o u r de nous—le v e r t u e u x Mounier *
échappant par miracle à vingt assassins, qui avoient voulu faire de sa
tête un trophée de plus : Voilà ce qui me fit jurer de ne plus m e t t r e le
pied dans cette caverne d'Antropophages
[the National Assembly] où je
n'avois plus de force d'élever la voix, où depuis six semaines je Vavois
élevée en vain.
' Moi, Mounier, et tous les honnêtes gens, ont pensé que le dernier
effort à faire pour le bien étoit d'en sortir. Aucune idée de crainte
ne s'est approchée de moi. J e rougirois de m ' e n défendre. J'avois
encore reçu sur la route de la p a r t de ce peuple, moins coupable que
ceux qui l'ont enivré de fureur, des acclamations, et des applaudissem e n t s , dont d'autres auroient été flattés, et qui m ' o n t fait frémir.
C'est à l'indignation, c'est à l'horreur, c'est aux convulsions physiques,
que le seul aspect du sang me fait éprouver que j ' a i cédé. On b r a v e
une seule m o r t ; on la brave plusieurs fois, quand elle p e u t être utile.
* N.B.—M. Mounier was then speaker of t h e National Assembly.
H e h a s since been obliged to live in exile, though one of t h e firmest
assertors of liberty.
_ ,.-. . , .
:

EDMUND BURKE.
did not go to the length that in all probability it was
intended it should be carried, yet 1 must think that
such treatment of any human creatures must be shocking to any but those who are made for accomplishing
revolutions. But I cannot stop here. Influenced by
the inborn feelings of my nature, and not being illuminated by a single ray of this new-sprung modern light,
I confess to you, sir, that the exalted rank of the persons
suffering, and particularly the sex, the beauty, and the
amiable qualities of the descendant of so many kings
and emperors, with the tender age of royal infants,
insensible only through infancy and innocence of the
cruel outrages to which their parents were exposed,
instead of being a subject of exultation, adds not a little
to my sensibility on that most melancholy occasion.
I hear that the august person, who was the principal
object of our preacher's triumph, though he supported
himself, felt much on that shameful occasion. As a
man, it became him to feel for his wife and his children,
and the faithful guards of his person, that were massacred in cold blood about him ; as a prince it became
him to feel for the strange and frightful transformation
of his civilized subjects, and to be more grieved for
them, than solicitous for himself. It derogates little
from his fortitude, while it adds infinitely to the honour
of his humanity. I am very sorry to say it, very sorry
indeed, that such personages are in a situation in which it
is not becoming in us to praise the virtues of the great.
I hear, and I rejoice to hear, that the great lady, the
other object of the triumph, has borne that day (one
282

Mais aucune puissance sous le ciel, mais aucune opinion publique ou
privée n'ont le droit de me condamner à souffrir inutilement mille
supplices par minute, et à périr de désespoir, de rage, au milieu des
triomphes, du crime que je n'ai pu arrêter. Ils me proscriront, ils
confisqueront mes biens. Je labourerai la terre, et je ne les verrai plus.
Voilà ma justification. Vous pourrez la lire, la montrer, la laisser copier ;
tant pis pour ceux qui ne la comprendront pas ; ce ne sera alors moi
qui auroit eu tort de leur donner.'
This military man had not so good nerves as the peaceable gentlemen
of the Old Jewry.—See Mons. Mounier's narrative of these transactions ; a man also of honour and virtue, and talents, and therefore a
fugitive.

SELECTIONS.
283
is interested that beings made for suffering should suffer
well), and that she bears all the succeeding days, that
she Dears the imprisonment of her husband, and her
own captivity, and the exile of her friends, and the
insulting adulation of addresses, and the whole weight
of her accumulated wrongs, with a serene patience, in
a manner suited to her rank and race, and becoming the
offspring of a sovereign distinguished for her piety and
her courage = that, like herP she has lofty sentiments ;
that she feels with the dignity of a Roman matron;
that in the last extremity she will save herself from the
last disgrace ; and that, if she must fall, she will fall
by no ignoble hand.
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 Î and what a heart I must
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, re.spectful 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

284
EDMUND BURKE.
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.
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

SELECTIONS.
285
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 visto, 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 fiulchra esse fioemata,
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.

286
EDMUND BURKE.
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
b y 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 b y preventive murder and preventive confiscation, and t h a t 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.
When ancient opinions and rules of life are taken
away the loss cannot possibly be estimated. F r o m
t h a t moment we have no compass to govern us ; nor
can we know distinctly to what port we steer. Europe,
undoubtedly, taken in a mass, was in a flourishing condition the day on which your Revolution was completed. How much of t h a t prosperous state was owing
to the spirit of our old manners and opinions is not easy
to say ; b u t as such cases cannot be indifferent in their
operation, we must presume, t h a t , on the whole, their
operation was beneficial.
We are b u t too apt to consider, things in the state
in which we find them, without sufficiently adverting to
the causes b y which t h e y have been produced, and
possibly m a y be upheld. Nothing is more certain t h a n
t h a t 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 ; a n d 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 b y profession, the other b y
patronage, kept learning in existence, even in the midst

SELECTIONS.
287
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 ?
I wish you may not be going fast, and by the shortest
cut, to that horrible and disgustful situation. Already
there appears a poverty of conception, a coarseness and
vulgarity in all the proceedings of the assembly and of
all their instructors. Their liberty is not liberal. Their
* E,g.t Bailly and Condorcet,

288
EDMUND BURKE.
science is presumptuous ignorance. Their humanity is
savage and brutal.
It is not clear, whether in England we learned those
grand and decorous principles, and manners, of which
considerable traces yet remain, from you, or whether
you took them from us. But to you, I think, we trace
them best. You seem to me to be—gentis incunabula
nostrœ. France has always more or less influenced
manners in England : and when your fountain is choked
up and polluted, the stream will not run long, or not
run clear with us, or perhaps with any nation. This
gives all Europe, in my opinion, but too close and
connected a concern in what is done in France. Excuse
me, therefore, if I have dwelt too long on the atrocious
spectacle of the 6th of October, 1789, or have given
too much scope to the reflections which have arisen in
my mind on occasion of the most important of all revolutions, which may be dated from that day, I mean a
revolution in sentiments, manners, and moral opinions.
As things now stand, with everything respectable destroyed without us, and an attempt to destroy within
us every principle of respect, one is almost forced to
apologize for harbouring the common feelings of men.
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

SELECTIONS.
289
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 bookkeepers 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
10

ago
EDMUND BURKE.
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 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.
But the reverend pastor exults in this ' leading in
triumph/ because truly Louis XVI was ' an arbitrary
monarch ' ; that is, in other words, neither more nor
less than because he was Louis XVI, and because he
had the misfortune to be born king of France, with the
prerogatives of which, a long line of ancestors, and a
long acquiescence of the people, without any act of his,
had put him in possession. A misfortune it has indeed
turned out to him, that he was born king of France,
But misfortune is not crime, nor is indiscretion always
the greatest guilt. I shall never think that a prince,
the acts of whose whole reign were a series of concessions
to his subjects, who was willing to relax his authority,
to remit his prerogatives, to call his people to a share
of freedom, not known, perhaps not desired by their
ancestors ; such a prince, though he should be subjected to the common frailties attached to men and to
princes, though he should have once thought it necessary
to provide force against the desperate designs manifestly carrying on against his person, and the remnants
of his authority ; though all this should be taken into
consideration, I shall be led with great difficulty to
think he deserves the cruel and insulting triumph of

SELECTIONS.
291
Paris, and of Dr. Price. I tremble for the cause of
liberty, from such an example to kings. I tremble for
the cause of humanity, in the unpunished outrages of
the most wicked of mankind. But there are some
people of that low and degenerate fashion; of mind, that
they look up with a sort of complacent awe and admiration to kings who know how to keep firm in their seat,
to hold a strict hand over their subjects, to assert their
prerogative, and, by the awakened vigilance of a severe
despotism, to guard against the very first approaches
of freedom. Against such as these they never elevate
their voice. Deserters from principle, listed with fortune, they never see any good in suffering virtue, nor
any crime in prosperous usurpation.
If it could have been made clear to me that the king
and queen of France (those I mean who were such before
the triumph) were inexorable and cruel tyrants, that
they had formed a deliberate scheme for massacring
the National Assembly (I think I have seen something
like the latter insinuated in certain publications), I
should think their captivity just. If this be true, much
more ought to have been done, but done, in my opinion,
in another manner. The punishment of real tyrants
is a noble and awful act of justice ; and it has with
truth been said to be consolatory to the human mind*
But if I were to punish a wicked king, I should regard
the dignity in avenging the crime. Justice is grave and
decorous, and in its punishments rather seems to submit
to a necessity, than to make a choice. Had Nero, or
Agrippina, or Louis XI, or Charles IX, been the subject ; if Charles XII of Sweden, after the murder of
Patkul, or his predecessor Christina, after the murder
of Monaldeschi, had fallen into your hands, sir, or into
mine, I am sure our conduct would have been different.
If the French king, or king of the French (or by whatever name he is known in the new vocabulary of your
constitution), has in his own person, and that of his
queen, really deserved these unavowed, but unavenged,
murderous attempts, and those frequent indignities

292
EDMUND BURKE.
more cruel than murder, such a person would ill deserve
even that subordinate executory trust, which I understand is to be placed in him ; nor is he fit to be called
chief in a nation which he has outraged and oppressed.
A worse choice for such an office in a new commonwealth, than that of a deposed tyrant, could not possibly be made. But to degrade and insult a man as
the worst of criminals, and afterwards to trust him in
your highest concerns, as a faithful, honest, and zealous
servant, is not consistent in reasoning, nor prudent in
policy, nor safe in practice. Those who could make
such an appointment must be guilty of a more flagrant
breach of trust than any they have yet committed
against the people. As this is the only crime in which
your leading politicians could have acted inconsistently,
I conclude that there is no sort of ground for these
horrid insinuations. I think no better of all the other
calumnies.
In England, we give no credit to them. We are
generous enemies : we are faithful allies. We spurn
from us with disgust and indignation the slanders of
those who bring us their anecdotes with the attestation
of the flower-de-luce on their shoulders. We have
Lord George Gordon fast in Newgate ; and neither his
being a public proselyte to Judaism, nor his having,
in his zeal against Catholic priests and all sorts of
ecclesiastics, raised a mob (excuse the term, it is still
in use here) which pulled down all our prisons, have
preserved to him a liberty, of which he did not render
himself worthy by a virtuous use of it. We have rebuilt
Newgate, and tenanted the mansion. We have prisons
almost as strong as the Bastille for those who dare to
libel the queens of France. In this spiritual retreat,
let the noble libeller remain. Let him there meditate
on his Thalmud, until he learns a conduct more becoming his birth and parts, and not so disgraceful to the
ancient religion to which he has become a proselyte ;
or until some persons from your side of the water, to
please your new Hebrew brethren, shall ransom him.

SELECTIONS.
293
He may then be enabled to purchase, with the old
hoards of the synagogue, and a very small poundage,
on the long compound interest of the thirty pieces of
silver (Dr. Price has shown us what miracles compound
interest will perform in 1790 years), the lands which
are lately discovered to have been usurped by the
Gallican church. Send us your popish archbishop of
Paris, and we will send your our protestant Rabbin.
We shall treat the person you send us in exchange like
a gentleman and an honest man, as he is ; but pray let
him bring with him the fund of his hospitality, bounty,
and charity ; and, depend upon it, we shall never confiscate a shilling of that honourable and pious fund, nor
think of enriching the treasury with the spoils of the
poor-box.
To tell you the truth, my dear sir, I think the honour
of our nation to be somewhat concerned in the disclaimer of the proceedings of this society of the Old
Jewry and the London Tavern. I have no man's proxy.
I speak only for myself, when I disclaim, as I do with
all possible earnestness, all communion with the actors
in that triumph, or with the admirers of it. When
I assert anything else, as concerning the people of
England, I speak from observation, not from authority ;
but I speak from the experience I have had in a pretty
extensive and mixed communication with the inhabitants of this kingdom, of all descriptions and ranks,
and after a course of attentive observation, begun in
early life, and continued for nearly forty years. I have
often been astonished, considering that we are divided
from you but by a slender dyke of about twenty-four
miles, and that the mutual intercourse between the
two countries has lately been very great, to find how
little you seem to know of us. I suspect that this is
owing to your forming a judgment of this nation from
certain publications which do, very erroneously, if
they do at all, represent the opinions and dispositions
generally prevalent in England. The vanity, restlessness, petulance, and spirit of intrigue, of several petty

294
EDMUND BURKE.
cabals, who attempt to hide their total want of consequence in bustle and noise and puffing and mutual
quotation of each other, makes you imagine that our
contemptuous neglect of their abilities is a general
mark of acquiescence in their opinions. No such thing,
I assure you. Because half a dozen grasshoppers under
a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink,
whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the
shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent,
pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are
the only inhabitants of the field ; that of course, they
are many in number ; or that, after all, they are other
than the little, shrivelled, meagre, hopping, though loud
and troublesome insects of the hqur.
I almost venture to affirm that not one in a hundred
amongst us participates in the ' triumph ' of the Revolution Society. If the King and Queen of France, and
their children, were to fall into our hands by the chance
of war, in the most acrimonious of all hostilities (I deprecate such an event, I deprecate such hostility), they
would be treated with another sort of triumphal entry
into London. We formerly have had a king of France
in that situation ; you have read how he was treated
by the victor in the field ; and in what manner he was
afterwards received in England. Four hundred years
have gone over us ; but I believe we are not materially
changed since that period. Thanks to our sullen resistance to innovation, thanks to the cold sluggishness
of our national character, we still bear the stamp of
our forefathers. We have not (as I conceive) lost the
generosity and dignity of thinking of the fourteenth
century ; nor as yet have we subtilized ourselves into
savages. We are not the converts of Rousseau ; we
are not the disciples of Voltaire ; Helvetius has made
no progress amongst us. Atheists are not our preachers ;
madmen are not our lawgivers. We know that we have
made no discoveries ; and we think that no discoveries
are to be made, in morality ; nor many in the great
principles of government, nor in the ideas of liberty,

SELECTIONS.
295
which were understood long before we were born,
altogether as well as they will be after the grave has
heaped its mould upon our presumption, and the silent
tomb shall have imposed its law on our pert loquacity.
In England we have not yet been completely embowelled
of our natural entrails ; we still feel within us, and we
cherish and cultivate, those inbred sentiments which
are the faithful guardians, the active monitors of our
duty, the true supporters of all liberal and manly morals.
We have not been drawn and trussed, in order that we
may be filled, like stuffed birds in a museum, with chaff
and rags and paltry blurred shreds of paper about the
rights of man. We preserve the whole of our feelings
still native and entire, unsophisticated by pedantry and
infidelity. We have real hearts of flesh and blood beating in our bosoms. We fear God ; we look up with
awe to kings ; with affection to parliaments ; with
duty to magistrates ; with reverence to priests ; and
with respect to nobility.* Why ? Because when such
ideas are brought before our minds it is natural to be
so affected ; because all other feelings are false and
spurious, and tend to corrupt our mind, to vitiate our
primary morals, to render us unfit for rational liberty ;
and by teaching us a servile, licentious, and abandoned
insolence, to be our low sport for a few holidays, to
make us perfectly fit for, and justly deserving of, slavery,
through the whole course of our lives.
You see, sir, that in this enlightened age I am bold
enough to confess, that we are generally men of untaught feelings ; that, instead of casting away all our
old prejudices, We cherish them to a very considerable
* The English are, I conceive, misrepresented in a letter published
in one c: the papers, by a gentleman thought to be a dissenting minister.—When writing to Dr. Price of the spirit which prevails at Paris,
he says, 'The spirit of the people in this place has abolished all the
proud distinctions which the king and nobles had usurped in their
minds ; whether they talk of the king, the noble, or the priest, their
whole language is that of the most enlightened and liberal amongst the
English,'' If this gentleman means to confine the terms enlightened
and liberal to one set of men in England, it may be true. It is not
generally so.

296
EDMUND BURKE.
degree, and, to take more shame to ourselves, we cherish
them because they are prejudices ; and the longer
they have lasted and the more generally they have
prevailed, the more we cherish them. We are afraid
to put men to live and trade each on his own private
stock of reason ; because we suspect that the stock
in each man is small, and that the individuals would
do better to avail themselves of the general bank and
capital of nations and of ages. Many of our men of
speculation, instead of exploding general prejudices,
employ their sagacity to discover the latent wisdom
which prevails in them. If they find what they seek,
and they seldom fail, they think it more wise to continue the prejudice, with the reason involved, than to
cast away the coat of prejudice, and to leave nothing
but the naked reason ; because prejudice, with its
reason, has a motive to give action to that reason, and
an affection which will give it permanence. Prejudice
is of ready application in the emergency ; it previously
engages the mind in a steady course of wisdom and
virtue, and does not leave the man hesitating in the
moment of decision, sceptical, puzzled, and unresolved.
Prejudice renders a man's virtue his habit : and not
a series of unconnected acts. Through just prejudice,
his duty becomes a part of his nature.
Your literary men, and your politicians, and so do
the whole clan of the enlightened among us, essentially
differ in these points. They have no respect for the
wisdom of others ; but they pay it off by a very full
measure of confidence in their own. With them it is
a sufficient motive to destroy an old scheme of things,
because it is an old one. As to the new, they are in
no sort of fear with regard to the duration of a building
run up in haste ; because duration is no object to those
who think little or nothing has been done before, their
time, and who place all their hopes in discovery. I They
conceive, very systematically, that all things which give
perpetuity are mischievous, and therefore they are at
inexpiable war with all establishments. They think that

SELECTIONS.
297
government may vary like modes of dress, and with as
little ill effect ; that there needs no principle of attachment, except a sense of present conveniency, to any
constitution of the state. They always speak as if they
were of opinion that there is a singular species of compact between them and their magistrates, which binds
the magistrate, but which has nothing reciprocal in it,
but that the majesty of the people has a right to dissolve
it without any reason but its will. Their attachment to
their country itself is only so far as it agrees with some
of their fleeting projects ; it begins and ends with that
scheme of polity which falls in with their momentary
opinion.
These doctrines, or rather sentiments, seem prevalent
with your new statesmen. But they are wholly different
from those on which we have always acted in this country.
I hear it is sometimes given out in France, that what
is doing among you is after the example of England.
I beg leave to affirm that scarcely anything done with
you has originated from the practice or the prevalent
opinions of this people, either in the act or in the spirit
of the proceeding. Let me add that we are as unwilling
to learn these lessons from France, as we are sure that
we never taught them to that nation. The cabals here,
who take a sort of share in your transactions as yet
consist of but a handful of people. If unfortunately
by their intrigues, their sermons, their publications,
and by a confidence derived from an expected union
with the counsels and forces of the French nation, they
should draw considerable numbers into their faction,
and in consequence should seriously attempt anything
here in imitation of what has been done with you, the
event, I dare venture to prophesy, will be that, with
some trouble to their country, they will soon accomplish
their own destruction. This people refused to change
their law in remote ages from respect to the infallibility of popes ; and they will not now alter it from a
pious implicit faith in the dogmatism of philosophers ;
though the former was armed with the anathema and

298'
EDMUND BURKE.
crusade, and though the latter should act with the
libel and the lamp-iron.
Formerly your affairs were your own concern only.
We felt for them as men ; but we kept aloof from them,
because we were not citizens of France. But when
we see the model held up to ourselves, we must feel as
Englishmen, and feeling, we must provide as Englishmen. Your affairs, in spite of us, are made a part of
our interest ; so far at least as to keep at a distance
your panacea, or your plague. If it be a panacea, we
do not want it. We know the consequences of unnecessary physic. If it be a plague 5 it is such a plague
that the precautions of the most seyere quarantine
ought to be established against it.
I hear on all hands that a cabal, calling itself philosophic, receives the glory of many of the late proceedings ; and that their opinions and systems are the
true actuating spirit of the whole of them. I have
heard of no party in England, literary or political, at
any time known by such a description. It is not with
you composed of those men, is it ? whom the vulgar
in their blunt, homely style, commonly call Atheists
and Infidels ? If it be, I admit that we too have had
writers of that description, who made some noise in
their day. At present they repose in lasting oblivion.
Who, born within the last forty years, has read one
word of Collins, and Toland, and Tindal, and Chubb,
and Morgan, and that whole race who called themselves
Freethinkers ? Who now reads Bolingbroke ? Who
ever read him through ? Ask the booksellers of London what is become of all these lights of the world. In
as few years their few successors will go to the family
vault of ' all the Capulets.' But whatever they were,
or are, with us, they were and are wholly unconnected
individuals. With us they kept the common nature
of their kind, and were not gregarious. They never
acted in corps, or were known as a faction in the state,
nor presumed to influence in that name or character,
or for the purposes of such a faction, any of our public"

SELECTIONS.
299
concerns. Whether they ought so to exist, and so be
permitted to act, is another question. As such cabals
have not existed in England, so neither has the spirit
of them had any influence in establishing the original
frame of our constitution, or in any one of the several
reparations and improvements it has undergone. The
whole has been done under the auspices, and is confirmed
by the sanctions, of religion and piety. The whole
has emanated from the simplicity of our national character, and from a sort of native plainness and directness
of understanding, which for a long time characterized
those men who have successively obtained authority
among us. This disposition still remains ; at least in
the great body of the people.
We know, and, what is better, we feel inwardly, that
religion is the basis of civil society, and the source of
all good, and of all comfort.* In England we are so
convinced of this, that there is no rust of superstition
with which the accumulated absurdity of the human
mind might have crusted if over in the course of ages,
that ninety-nine in a hundred of the people of England
would not prefer to impiety. We shall never be such
fools as to call in an enemy to the substance of any
system to remove its corruptions, to supply its defects,
or to perfect its construction. If our religious tenets
should ever want a further elucidation, we shall not
call on atheism to explain them. We shall not light
up our temple from that unhallowed fire. It will be
illuminated with other lights. It will be perfumed with
other incense, than the infectious stuff which is imported by the smugglers of adulterated metaphysics.
If our ecclesiastical establishment should want a revision, it is not avarice or rapacity, public or private,
* Sit igitur hoc ab initio persuasum civibus, dominos esse omnium
rerum ac moderatores, deos ; eaque, quœ gerantur, eorum geri vi,
ditione, ac numine ; eosdemque optime de génère hominum mereri ;
et qualis quisque sit, quid agat, quid in se admittat, qua mente qua
pietate colat religiones intueri : piorum et impiorum habere rationem.
His enim rebus imbutae mentes haud sane abhorrebunt ab utili et a
vera sentential Gic, de Legibus, 1 2.
»

300
EDMUND BURKE.
that we shall employ for the audit, or receipt, or application of its consecrated revenue. Violently condemning
neither the Greek nor the Armenian, nor, since heats
are subsided, the Roman system of religion, we prefer
the Protestant ; not because we think it has less of the
Christian religion in it, but because, in our judgment,
it has more. We are Protestants, not from indifference,
but from zeal.
We know, and it is our pride to know, that man is
by his constitution a religious animal ; that atheism
is against, not only our reason, but our instincts ; and
that it cannot prevail long. But if, in the moment of
riot, and in a drunken delirium from the hot spirit
drawn out of the alembic of hell, which in France is
now so furiously boiling, we should uncover our nakedness, by throwing off that Christian religion which has
hitherto been our boast and comfort, and one great
source of civilization amongst us, and among many other
nations, we are apprehensive (being well aware that the
mind will not endure a void) that some uncouth, pernicious and degrading superstition might take place of it.
For that reason, before we take from our establishment the natural, human means of estimation, and give
it up to contempt, as you have done, and in doing it
have incurred the penalties you well deserve to surfer,
we desire that some other may be presented to us in
the place of it. We shall then form our judgment.
On these ideas, instead of quarrelling with establishments, as some do, who have made a philosophy and
a religion of their hostility to such institutions, we
cleave closely to them. We are resolved to keep an
established church, and established,monarchy, an established aristocracy, and an established democracy, each
in the degree it exists, and in no greater. I shall show
you presently how much of each of these we possess.
It has been the misfortune (not as these gentlemen
think it, the^glory) of this age, that everything is to be
discussed, as if the constitution of our country were to be
always a subject rather of altercation than enjoyment.

SELECTIONS.
301
For this reason, as well as for the satisfaction of those
among you (if any such you have among you) who may
wish to profit of examples, I venture to trouble you
with a few thoughts upon each of these establishments.
I do not think they were unwise in ancient Rome, who,
when they wished to new-model their laws, set commissioners to examine the best constituted republics
within their reach.
First, 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 tryanny, 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

302
EDMUND BURKE.
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

SELECTIONS.
303
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 io 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 punishments by any
human hand.* 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
theyx 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, tyrannically 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.
* Quicquid multis peccaatiir iaultum.

304
EDMUND BURKE.
When the people have emptied themselves of all the
lust of selfish will, which without religion it is utterly
impossible they ever should, when they are conscious
that they exercise, and exercise perhaps in a higher
link of the order of delegation, the power, which to
be legitimate must be according to that eternal, immutable law, in which will and reason are the same,
they will be more careful how they place power in base
and incapable hands. In their nomination to office,
they will not appoint to the exercise of authority, as
to a pitiful job, but as to a holy function ; not according
to their sordid, selfish interest, nor to their wanton
caprice, nor to their arbitrary will ; but they will confer
that power (which any man may well tremble to give
or to receive) on those only in whom they may discern
that predominant proportion of active virtue and wisdom, taken together and fitted to the charge, such as,
in the great and inevitable mixed mass of human imperfections and infirmities, is to be found.
When they are habitually convinced that no evil can
be acceptable, either in the act or the permission, to
him whose essence is good, they will be better able to
extirpate out of the minds of all magistrates, civil,
ecclesiastical, or military, anything that bears the least
resemblance to a proud and lawless domination.
But one of the first and most leading principles on
which the commonwealth and the laws are consecrated,
is lest the temporary possessors and life-renters in it,
unmindful of what they have received from their ancestors, or of what is due to their posterity, should act
as if they were the entire masters ; that they should not
think it amongst their rights to cut off the entail or
commit waste on the inheritance, by destroying at their
pleasure the whole original fabric of their society ;
hazarding to leave to those who come after them a ruin
instead of a habitation—and teaching these successors
as little to respect their contrivances, as they had themselves respected the institutions of their forefathers. By
this unprincipled facility of changing the state as often,

SELECTIONS.
305
and as much, and in as many ways, as there are floating
fancies or fashions, the whole chain and continuity of
the commonwealth would be broken. No one generation
could link with the other. Men would become little
better than- the flies of a summer.
And first of ah, the science of jurisprudence, the pride
of human intellect, which, with all its defects, redundancies, and errors, is the collected reason of ages, combining the principles of original justice with the infinite
variety of human concerns, as a heap of old exploded
errors, would be no longer studied. Personal selfsufficiency and arrogance (the certain attendants upon
all those who have never experienced a wisdom greater
than their own) would usurp the tribunal. Of course
no certain laws, establishing invariable grounds of hope
and fear, would keep the actions of men in a certain
course, or direct them to a certain end. Nothing stable
in the modes of holding property, or exercising function,
could form a solid ground on which any parent could
speculate in the education of his offspring, or in a choice
for their future establishment in the world. No principles
would be early worked into the habits. As soon as the
most able instructor had completed his laborious course
of institution, instead of sending forth his pupil, accomplished in a virtuous discipline, fitted to procure him
attention and respect, in his place in society, he would
find everything altered ; and that he had turned out a
poor creature to the contempt and derision of the world,
ignorant of the true grounds of estimation. Who would
insure a tender and delicate sense of honour to beat
almost with the first pulses of the heart, when no man
could know what would be the test of honour in a nation,
continually varying the standard of its coin ? No part
of life would retain its acquisitions. Barbarism with
regard to science and literature, unskilfulness with regard
to arts and manufactures, would infallibly succeed to
the want of a steady education and settled principle ;
and thus the commonwealth itself would, in a few generations, crumble away, be disconnected into the dust and

306
EDMUND BURKE.
powder of individuality, and at length dispersed to all
the winds of heaven.
To avoid therefore the evils of inconstancy and
versatility, ten thousand times worse than those of
obstinacy and the blindest prejudice, we have consecrated the state, that no man should approach to look
into its defects or corruptions but with due caution ;
that he should never dream of beginning its reformation
by its subversion ; that he should approach to the faults
of the state as to the wounds of a father, with pious awe,
and trembling solicitude. By this wise prejudice we
are taught to look with horror on those children of their
country, who are prompt rashly to hack that aged parent
in pieces, and put him into the kettle of magicians, in
hopes that by their poisonous weeds, and wild incantations, they may regenerate the paternal constitution,
and renovate their father's life.
Society is indeed a contract. Subordinate contracts
for objects of mere occasional interest may be dissolved
at pleasure—but the state ought not to be considered
nothing better than a partnership agreement in a trade
of pepper and coffee, calico or tobacco, or some other
such low concern, to be taken up for a little temporary
interest, and to be dissolved by the fancy of the parties.
It is to be looked on with other reverence ; because it is
not a partnership in things subservient only to the gross
animal existence of a temporary and perishable nature.
It is a partnership in all science ; a partnership in all art ;
a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As
the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in
many generations, it becomes a partnership not only
between those who are living, but between those who are
living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.
Each contract of each particular state is but a clause in
the great primeval contract of eternal society, linking
the lower with the higher natures, connecting the visible
and invisible world, according to a fixed compact sanctioned by the inviolable oath which holds all physical
and all moral natures, each in their appointed place. This

SELECTIONS.
307
law is not subject to the will of those, who by an obligation
above them, and infinitely superior, are bound to submit
their will to that law. The municipal corporations of
that universal kingdom are not morally at liberty at
their pleasure, and on their speculations of a contingent
improvement wholly to separate and tear asunder the
bands of their subordinate community, and to dissolve
it into an unsocial, uncivil, unconnected chaos#of elementary principles. It is the first and supreme necessity
only, a necessity that is not chosen, but chooses, a
necessity paramount to deliberation, that admits no
discussion, and demands no evidence, which alone can
justify a resort to anarchy. This necessity is no exception to the rule ; because this necessity itself is a
part too of that moral and physical disposition of things,
to which man must be obedient by consent of force :
but if that which is only submission to necessity should be
made the object of choice, the law is broken, nature is
disobeyed, and the rebellious are outlawed, cast forth,
and exiled, from this world of reason, and order, and
peace, and virtue, and fruitful penitence, into the
antagonist world of madness, discord, vice, confusion,
and unavailing sorrow.
These, my dear sir, are, were, and, I think, long will
be, the sentiments of not the least learned and reflecting
part of this kingdom. They, who are included in this
description, form their opinions on such grounds as such
persons ought to form them. The less inquiring receive
them from an, authority, which those whom Providence
dooms to live on trust need not be ashamed to rely on.
These two sorts of men move in, the same direction,
though in a different place. They both move with the
order of the universe. They all know or feel this great
ancient truth, ' Quod illi principi et praepotenti Deo qui
omnem hunc munclum regit, nihil eorum quae quidem
fiant in terris acceptius quam concilia et ccetus hominum
jure sociati quae civitates ap'pellantur/ They take this
tenet of the head and heart, not from the great name
which it immediately bears, nor from the greater from

3ô8
EDMUND BURKE.
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 pergonal capacity, to renew the memory of their
high origin and cast ; 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 connexion
with the source and original archetype of all perfection.^
They who are convinced of this his will, which 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 seigniory 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, with 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

SELECTIONS.
309
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 separable ; 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.
Our education is so formed as to confirm and fix this
impression. Our education is in a manner wholly in the
hands of ecclesiastics, and in all stages from infancy to
manhood. Even when our youth, leaving schools and
universities, enter that most important period of life
which begins to link experience and study together, and
when with that view they visit other countries, instead

3iô
EDMUND BURKE.
of old domestics whom we have seen, as governors to
principal men from other parts, three-fourths of those
who go abroad with our young nobility and gentlemen
are ecclesiastics ; not as austere masters, nor as mere
followers ; but as friends and companions of a graver
character, and not seldom persons as well born as themselves. With them, as relations, they most commonly
keep up a close connexion through life. By this connexion we conceive that we attach our gentlemen to the
church ; and we liberalize the church by an intercourse
with the leading characters of the country.
So tenacious are we of the old ecclesiastical modes
and fashions of institution, that very little alteration
has been, made in them since the fourteenth or fifteenth
century : adhering in this particular, as in all things
else, to our old settled maxims, never entirely nor at
once to depart from antiquity. We found these old
institutions, on the whole, favourable to morality and
discipline ; and we thought they were susceptible of
amendment, without altering the ground. We thought
that they were capable of receiving and meliorating, and
above all of preserving, the accessions of science and
literature, as the order of Providence should successively
produce them. And after all, with this gothic and
monkish education (for such it is in the groundwork)
we may put in our claim to as ample and as early a share
in all the improvements in science, in arts, and in literature, which have illuminated and adorned the modern
world, as any other nation in Europe : we think one
main cause of this improvement was our not despising
the patrimony of knowledge which was left us by our
forefathers.
It is from our attachment to a church establishment,
that the English nation did nol thinl; it wise to entrust
that great, fundamental interest of the whole to what
they trust no part of their civil or military public service,
that is, to the unsteady and precarious contribution of
individuals. They go further. They certainly never
have suffered, and never will suffer, the fixed estate of

SELECTIONS.
311
the church to be converted into a pension, to depend on
the treasury, and to be delayed, withheld, or perhaps
to be extinguished by fiscal difficulties : which difficulties
may sometimes be pretended for political purposes, and
are in fact often brought on by the extravagance, negligence, and rapacity of politicians. The people of England
think that they have constitutional motives, as well as
religious, against any project of turning their independent clergy into ecclesiastical pensioners of state. They
tremble for their liberty, from the influence of a clergy
dependent on the crown ; they tremble for the public
tranquillity from the disorders of a factious clergy, if it
were made to depend upon any other than the crown.
They therefore made their church, like their king and
their nobility, independent.
From the united considerations of religion and constitutional policy, from their opinion of a duty to make
a sure provision for the consolation of the feeble and
the instruction of the ignorant, they have incorporated
and identified the estate of the church with the mass of
private, property, of which the state is not the proprietor,
either for use or dominion, but the guardian only and
the regulator. They have ordained that the provision
of this establishment might be as stable as the earth
on which it stands, and should not fluctuate with the
Euripus of funds and actions.
The men of England, the men, I mean, of light and
leading in England, whose wisdom (if they have any)
is open and direct, would be ashamed, as of a silly, deceitful trick, to profess any religion in name, which, by
their proceedings, they appear to contemn. If by their
conduct (the only language that rarely lies) they seemed
to regard the great ruling principle of the moral and the
natural world, as a mere invention to keep the vulgar in
obedience, they apprehend that by such a conduct they
would defeat the politic purpose they have in view. They
would find it difficult to make others believe in a system
to which they manifestly gave no credit themselves.
The Christian statesmen of this land would indeed first

312
EDMUND BURKE.
provide for the multitude ; because it is the multitude ;
and is therefore, as such, the first object in the ecclesiastical institution, and in all institutions. They have
been taught that the circumstance of the Gospel's being
preached to the poor was one of the great tests of its
true mission. They think, therefore, that those do not
believe it, who do not take care it should be preached to
the poor. But as they know that charity is not confined
to any one description, but ought to apply itself to all
men who have wants, they are not deprived of a due and
anxious sensation of pity to the distresses of the miserable great. They are not repelled through a fastidious
delicacy, at the stench of their arrogance and presumption, from a medicinal attention to their mental blotches,
and running sores. They are sensible that religious instruction is of more consequence to them than to any
others ; from the greatness of the temptation to which
they are exposed ; from the important consequences
that attend their faults ; from the contagion of their
ill example ; from the necessity of bowing down the
stubborn neck of their pride and ambition to the yoke
of moderation and virtue ; from a consideration of the
fat stupidity and gross ignorance concerning what imports
men most to know, which prevails at courts, and at the
head of armies, and in senates, as much as at the loom
and in the field.
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
regioris 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

SELECTIONS.
313
on earth to hope or fear ; something to relieve in the
killing languor and over-laboured lassitude of Othose 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

314
EDMUND BURKE.
of the world, and \o 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

SELECTIONS.
.315
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 person to the austere discipline of the early church.
With these ideas rooted in their minds the commons
of Great Britain, in the national emergencies, will never
seek their resource from the confiscation of the estates
of the church and poor. Sacrilege and proscription are
not among the ways and means of our committee of
supply. The Jews in Change-alley have not yet dared
to hint their hopes of a mortgage on the revenues belonging to the see of Canterbury. I am not afraid that
I shall be disavowed when I assure you, that there is
not one public man in this kingdom whom you would
wish to quote ; no not one, of any party or description,
who does not reprobate the dishonest, perfidious, and
cruel confiscation which the National Assembly has
been compelled to make of that property, which it was
their first duty to protect,
It is with the exultation of a little national pride I
tell you, that those amongst us who have wished to
pledge the societies of Paris in the cup of their abominations have been disappointed. The robbery of your
church has proved a security to the possessions of ours.

3*6
EDMUND BURKE.
I t has roused the people. They see with horror and
alarm that enormous and shameless' act of proscription.
It has opened, and will more and more open, their eyes
upon the selfish enlargement of mind, and the narrow
liberality of sentiment of insidious men, which, commencing in close hypocrisy and fraud, have ended in
open violence and rapine. At home we behold similar
beginnings. We are on our guard against similar
conclusions.
I hope we shall never be so totally lost to all sense of
the duties imposed upon us by the law of social union,
as, upon any pretext of public service, to confiscate the
goods of a single unoffending citizen. Who but a tyrant
(a name expressive of everything which can vitiate and
degrade human nature) could think of seizing on the
property of men, unaccused, unheard, untried, by whole
descriptions, by hundreds and thousands together ?
Who, that had not lost every trace of humanity, could
think of casting down men of exalted rank and sacred
function, some of them of an age to call at once for
reverence and compassion, of casting them down from
the highest situation in the commonwealth, wherein
they were maintained by their own landed property,
to a state of indigence, depression, and contempt ?
The confiscators truly have made some allowance to
their victims from the scraps and fragments of their
own tables, from which they have been so harshly
driven, and which have been so bountifully spread for
a feast to the harpies of usury. But to drive men from
independence to live on alms, is itself great cruelty.
That which might be a tolerable condition to men in
one state of life, and not habituated to other things,
may, when all these circumstances are altered, be a
dreadful revolution ; and one to which a virtuous mind
would feel pain in condemning any guilt, except that
which would demand the life of the offender. But to
many minds this punishment of degradation and infamy
is worse than death. Undoubtedly it is an infinité
aggravation of this cruel suffering, that the persons who

SELECTIONS.
^
were taught a double prejudice in favour of religion, by
education, and by the place they held in the administration, of its functions, are to receive the remnants of the
property as alms from the profane and impious hands
of those who had plundered them of all the rest ; to
receive (if they are at all to receive) not from the charitable contributions of the faithful, but from the insolent
tenderness of known and avowed atheism, the maintenance of religion, measured out to them on the standard
of the contempt in which it is held ; and for the purpose
of rendering those who receive the allowance vile, and
of no estimation, in the eyes of mankind.
But this act of seizure of property, it seems, is a judgment in law, and not a confiscation. They have, it
seems, found out in the academies of the Palais Royal,
and the Jacobins, that certain men had no right to the
possessions which they held under law, usage, the decisions of courts, and the accumulated prescription of a
thousand years. They say that ecclesiastics are fictitious persons, creatures of the state, whom at pleasure
they may destroy, and of course limit and modify in
every particular ; that the goods they possess are not
properly theirs, but belong to the state which created
the fiction ; and we are therefore not to trouble ourselves with what they may suffer in their natural feelings
and natural persons, on account of what is done towards
them in this their constructive character. Of what
import is it, under what names you injure men, and
deprive them of the just emoluments of a profession,
in which they were not only permitted but encouraged
by the state to engage ; and upon the supposed certainty of which emoluments they had formed the plan
of their lives, contracted debts, and led multitudes to
an entire dependence upon them ?
You do not imagine, sir, that 1 am going to compliment this miserable distinction of persons with any long
discussion. The arguments of tyranny are as contemptible as its force is dreadful. Had not your confiscators, by their early crimes, obtained a power which

âl8
EDMUND BURKE.
secures indemnity to all the crimes of which they have
since been guilty, or that they can commit, it is not the
syllogism of the logician, but the lash of the executioner,
that would have refuted a sophistry which becomes an
accomplice of theft and murder. The sophistic tyrants
of Paris are loud in their declamations against the departed regal tyrants, who in former ages have vexed the
world» They are thus bold, because they are safe from
the dungeons and iron cages of their old masters. Shall
we be more tender of the tyrants of our own time, when
we see them acting worse tragedies under our eyes ?
shall we not use the same liberty that they do, when
we can use it with the same safety ? when to speak
honest truth only requires a contempt of the opinion of
those whose actions we abhor ?
This outrage on all the rights of property was at first
covered with what, on the system of their conduct,
was the most astonishing of all pretexts—a regard to
national faith. The enemies to property at first pre*
tended a most tender, delicate, and scrupulous anxiety
for keeping the king's engagements with the public
creditor. These professors of, the rights of men are so
busy in teaching others, that they have not leisure to
learn anything themselves ; otherwise they would have
known that it is to the property of the citizen, and not
to the demands of the creditor of the state, that the
first and original faith of civil society is pledged. The
claim of the citizen is prior in time, paramount in title,
superior in equity. The fortunes of individuals, whether
possessed by acquisition, or by descent, or in virtue of
a participation in the goods of some community, were
no part of the creditor's security, expressed or implied.
They never so much as entered into his head when he
made his bargain. He well knew that the public,
whether represented by a monarch or by a senate, can
pledge nothing but the public estate ; and it can have
no public estate, except in what it derives from a just
and proportioned imposition upon the citizens at large.
This was engaged, and nothing else could be engaged,

SELECTIONS.
319
to the public creditor. No man can mortgage his injustice as a pawn for his fidelity.
It is impossible to avoid some observation on the
contradictions caused by the extreme rigour and the
extreme laxity of this new public faith, which influenced in this transaction, and which influenced not
according to the nature of the obligation, but to the
description of the persons to whom it was engaged. No
acts of the old government of the kings of France are
held valid in the National Assembly, except its pecuniary engagements ; acts of all others of the most ambiguous legality. The rest of the acts of that royal
government are considered in so odious a light, that to
have a claim under its authority is looked on as a sort
of crime. A pension, given as a reward for service to
the state, is surely as good a ground of property as any
security for money advanced to the state. It is a
better ; for money is paid, and well paid, to obtain
that service. We have, however, seen multitudes of
people under this description in France, who had never
been deprived of their allowances by the most arbitrary
ministers, in the most arbitrary times, by this assembly
of the rights of men, robbed without mercy. They
were told, in answer to their claim to the bread earned
with their blood, that their services had not been rendered to the country that now exists.
This laxity of public faith is not confined to those
unfortunate persons. The assembly, with perfect consistency it must be owned, is engaged in a respectable
deliberation how far it is bound by the treaties made
with other nations under the former government, and
their committee is to report which of them they ought
to ratify, and which not. By this means they have
put the external fidelity of this virgin state on a par
with its internal.
It is not easy to conceive upon what rational principle
the royal government should not, of the two, rather
have possessed the power of rewarding service, and
making treaties, in virtue of its prerogative, than that

32o
EDMUND BURKE.
of pledging to creditors the revenue of the state, actual
and possible. The treasure of the nation, of all things,
has been the least allowed to the prerogative of the King
of France, or to the prerogative of any king in Europe.
To mortgage the public revenue implies the sovereign
dominion, in the fullest sense, over the public purse.
It goes far beyond the trust even of a temporary and
occasional taxation. The acts, however, of that dangerous power (the distinctive mark of a boundless despotism) have been alone held sacred. Whence arose
this preference given by a democratic assembly to a
body of property deriving its title from the most critical
and obnoxious of all the exertions of monarchical
authority ? Reason can furnish nothing to reconcile
inconsistency ; nor can partial favour be accounted
for upon equitable principles. But the contradiction
and partiality which admit no justification, are not the
less without an adequate cause ; and that cause I do
not think it difficult to discover.
By the vast debt of France a great monied interest
has insensibly grown up, and with it a great power.
By the ancient usages which prevailed in that kingdom,
the general circulation of property, and in particular
the mutual convertibility of land into money, and of
money into land, had always been a matter of difficulty.
Family settlements, rather more general and more strict
than they are in England, the jus retractus, the great
mass of landed property held by the crown, and, by a
maxim of the French law, held unalienably, the vast
estates of the ecclesiastic corporations,—all the,se had
kept the landed and monied interests more separated
in France, less miscible, and the owners of the two
distinct species of property not so well disposed to each
other as they are in this country.
The monied property was long looked on with rather
an evil eye by the people. They saw it connected with
their distresses, and aggravating them. It was no less
envied by the old landed interests, partly for the same
reasons that rendered it obnoxious to the people, but

SELECTIONS.
321
much more so as it eclipsed, by the splendour of an
ostentatious luxury, the unendowed pedigrees and naked
titles of several among the nobility. Even when the
nobility, which represented the more permanent landed
interest, united themselves by marriage (which sometimes was the case) with the other description, the
wealth, which saved the family from ruin, was supposed
to contaminate and degrade it. Thus the enmities and
heart-burnings of these parties were increased even by
the usual means by which discord is made to cease, and
quarrels are turned into friendship. In the meantime,
the pride of the wealthy men, not noble, or newly
noble, increased with its cause. They felt with resentment an inferiority, the grounds of which they did not
acknowledge. There was no measure to which they
were not willing to lend themselves, in order to be revenged of the outrages of this rival pride, and to exalt
their wealth to what they considered as its natural rank
and estimation. They struck at the nobility through
the crown and the church. They attacked them particularly on the side on which they thought them the
most vulnerable, that is, the possessions of the church,
which, through the patronage of the crown, generally
devolved upon the nobility. The bishoprics, and the
great commendatory abbeys, were, with few exceptions,
held by that order.
In this state of real, though not always perceived,
warfare between the noble ancient landed interest, and
the new monied interest, the greatest, because the most
applicable, strength was in the hands of the latter.
The monied interest is in its nature m^re ready for any
adventure ; and its possessors more disposed to new
enterprises of any kind. Being of a recent acquisition
it falls in more naturally with any novelties. It is
therefore the kind of wealth which will be resorted to
by all who wish for change.
Along with the monied interest, a new description of
men had grown up, with whom that interest soon formed
a close and marked union ; I mean the political men
II

322
EDMUND BURKE.
of letters. Men of letters, fond of distinguishing themselves, are rarely averse to innovation. Since the decline of the life and greatness of Louis XIV, they were
not so much cultivated either by him, or by the regent,
or the successors to the crown ; nor were they engaged
to the courts by favours and emoluments so systematically as during the splendid period of that ostentatious
and not impolitic reign. What they lost in the old
court protection, they endeavoured to make up by joining in a sort of incorporation of their own ; to which
the two academies of France, and afterwards the vast
undertaking of the Encyclopaedia, carried on by a society
of these gentlemen, did not a little contribute.
The literary cabal had some years ago formed something like a regular plan for the destruction of the Christian religion. This object they pursued with a degree
of zeal which hitherto had been discovered only in the
propagators of some system of piety. They were possessed with a spirit of proselytism in the most fanatical
degree ; and from thence, by an easy progress, with the
spirit of persecution according to their means.* What
was not to be done towards their great end by any
direct or immediate act, might be wrought by a longer
process through the medium of opinion. To command
that opinion, the first step is to establish a dominion
over those who direct it. They contrived to possess
themselves, with great method and perseverance, of all
the avenues to literary fame. Many of them indeed
stood high in the ranks of literature and science. The
world had done them justice ; and in favour of general
talents forgave the evil tendency of their peculiar principles. This was true liberality ; which they returned
by endeavouring to confine the reputation of sense,
learning, and taste to themselves or their followers.
I will venture to say that this narrow, exclusive spirit
has not been less prejudicial to literature and to taste,
* This (down to the end of the first sentence in the next paragraph)
and some other parts here and there, were inserted, on his reading the
manuscript* by my lost Son,

SELECTIONS.
323
than to morals and true philosophy. Those atheistical
fathers have a bigotry of their own; and they have
learnt to talk against monks with the spirit of a monk.
But in some things they are men of the world. The
resources of intrigue are called in to supply the defects
of argument and wit. To this system of literary monopoly was joined an unremitting industry to blacken and
discredit in every way, and by every means, all those
who did not hold to their faction. To those who have
observed the spirit of their conduct, it has long been
clear that nothing was wanted but the power of carrying the intolerance of the tongue and of the pen into
a persecution which would strike at property, liberty,
and life.
The desultory and faint persecution carried on against
them, more from compliance with form and decency,
than with serious resentment, neither weakened their
strength, nor relaxed their efforts. The issue of the
whole was, that, what with opposition, and what with
success, a violent and malignant zeal, of a kind hitherto
unknown in the world, had taken an entire possession
of their minds, and rendered their whole conversation,
which otherwise would have been pleasing and instructive, perfectly disgusting. A spirit of cabal, intrigue,
and proselytism, pervaded all their thoughts, words,
and actions. And, as controversial zeal soon turns its
thoughts on force, they began to insinuate themselves
into a correspondence with foreign princes ; in hopes,
through their authority, which at first they flattered,
they might bring about the changes they had in view.
To them it was indifferent whether these changes were
to be accomplished by the thunderbolt of despotism,
or by the earthquake of popular commotion. The
correspondence between this cabal and the late King
of Prussia will throw no small light upon the spirit of
all their proceedings.* For the same purpose for which
they intrigued with princes, they cultivated, in a dis* I do not choose to shock the feeling of the moral reader with any
quotation of their vulgar, base, and profane language.

324
EDMUND BURKE,
tinguished manner, the monied interest of France ; and
partly through the means furnished by those whose
peculiar offices gave them the most extensive and certain means of communication, they carefully occupied
all the avenues to opinion.
Writers, especially when they act in a body, and with
one direction, have great influence on the public mind ;
the alliance, therefore, of these writers with the monied
interest* had no small effect in removing the popular
odium and envy which attended that species of wealth.
These writers, like the propagators of all novelties, pretended to a great zeal for the poor, and the lower orders,
whilst in their satires they rendered hateful, by every
exaggeration, the faults of courts, of nobility, and of
priesthood. They became a sort of demagogues. They
served as a link to unite, in favour of one object, obnoxious wealth to restless and desperate poverty.
As these two kinds of men appear principal leaders in
all the late transactions, their junction and politics will
serve to account, not upon any principles of law or of
policy, but as a cause, for the general fury with which
all the landed property of ecclesiastical corporations has
been attacked ; and the great care which, contrary to
their pretended principles, has been taken, of a monied
interest originating from the authority of the crown.
All the envy against wealth and power was artificially
directed against other descriptions of riches. On what
other principle than that which I have stated can we
account for an appearance so extraordinary and unnatural as that of the ecclesiastical possessions, which
had stood so many succession of ages and shocks of
civil violences, and were guarded at once by justice,
and by prejudice, being applied to the payment of
debts, comparatively recent, invidious, and contracted
by a decried and subverted government ?
Was the public estate a sufficient stake for the public
debts ? Assume that it was not, and that a loss must
* Their connexion with Turgot and almost all the people of the
finance,

SELECTIONS.
325
be incurred somewhere.—When the only estate lawfully possessed, and which the contracting parties had
in contemplation at the time in which their bargain
was made? happens to fail, who, according to the principles of natural and legal equity, ought to be the sufferer ? Certainly it ought to be either the party who
trusted, or the party who persuaded him to trust ; or
both ; and not third parties who had no concern with
the transaction. Upon any insolvency they ought to
suffer who were weak enough to lend upon bad security,
or they who fraudulently held out a security that was
not valid. Laws are acquainted with no other rules of
decision. But by the new institute of the rights of men,
the only persons who in equity ought to suffer, are the
only persons who are to be saved harmless : those are
to answer the debt who neither were lenders nor borrowers, mortgagors nor mortgagees.
What had the clergy to do with these transactions ?
What had they to do with any public engagement
further than the extent of their own debt ? To that,
to be sure, their estates were bound to the last acre.
Nothing can lead more to the true spirit of the assembly, which fits for public confiscation, with its new
equity, and its new morality, than an attention to their
proceeding with regard to this debt of the clergy. The
body of confiscators, true to that monied interest for
which they were false to every other, have found the
clergy competent to incur a legal debt. Of course they
declared them legally entitled to the property which
their power of incurring the debt and mortgaging the
estate implied ; recognizing the rights of those persecuted citizens, in the very act in which they were thus
grossly violated.
If, as I said, any persons are to make good deficiencies
to the public creditor, besides the public at large, they
must be those who managed the agreement. Why,
therefore, are not the estates of all the comptrollersgeneral confiscated ? * Why not those of the long sue* All have been confiscated in theirîturn.

326
EDMUND BURKE.
cession of ministers, financiers, and bankers who have
been enriched whilst the nation was impoverished by
their dealings and their counsels ? Why is not the
estate of Mx- Labor de declared forfeited rather than of
the Archbishop of Paris, who-has had nothing to do. in
the creation or in the jobbing of the public funds ? Qr,
if you must confiscate old landed estates in favour
of the money-jobbers, why is the penalty confined to one
description ? I do not know whether the expenses of
the Duke de Choiseul have left anything of the infinite
sums which he had derived from the bounty of his
master, during the transactions of a reign which contributed largely, by every species of prodigality in war
and peace, to the present debt of France. If any such
remains, why is not this confiscated ? I remember to
have ' been in Paris during the time of the old government. T was there just after the Duke d'Aiguillon had
been snatched (as it was generally thought) from the
block by the hand of a protecting despotism. Hé was
a minister, and had some concern in the affairs of that
prodigal period. Why do I not see his estate delivered
up to the municipalities in which it is situated ? The
noble family of Noailles have long been servants (meritorious servants I admit) to the crown of France, and
have had of course some share in its bounties. Why
do I hear nothing of the application of their estates to
the public debt ? Why is the estate of the Duke de
Rochefoucault more sacred than that of the Cardinal de
Rochefoucault ? The former is, I doubt not, a worthy
person ; and (if it were not a sort of profaneness to talk
of the use, as affecting the title to property) he makes
a good use of his revenues ; but it is no disrespect to
him to say, what authentic information well warrants
me in saying, that the use made of a property equally
valid, by his brother * the Cardinal Archbishop of Rouen
was far more laudable and far more public-spirited.
Can one hear of the proscription of such persons, and
* Not his brother, nor any near relation ; but this mistake does not
affect the argument.

SELECTIONS.
327
the confiscation of their effects, without indignation and
horror ? - He is not a man who does not feel such emotions on such occasions. He does not deserve the
name of a free man who will not express them.
Few barbarous conquerors have ever made so terrible
a revolution in property. None of the heads of the
Roman factions, when they established ' orudelem illam
hastam * in all their auctions of rapine, have ever set
up to sale the goods of the conquered citizen to such an
enormous amount. It must be allowed in favour of
those tyrants of antiquity, that what was done by them
could hardly be said to be done in cold blood. Their
passions were inflamed, their tempers soured, their
understandings confused, with the spirit of revenge,
with the innumerable reciprocated and recent inflictions
and retaliations of blood and rapine. They were driven
beyond all bounds of moderation by the apprehension
of the return of power with the return of property, to
the families of those they had injured beyond all hope
of forgiveness.
These Roman confiscates, who were yet only in the
elements of tyranny, and were not instructed in the
rights of men to exercise all sorts of cruelties on each
other without provocation, thought it necessary to
spread a sort of colour over their injustice. They considered the vanquished party as composed of traitors
who had borne arms, or otherwise had acted with hostility against the commonwealth. They regarded them
as persons who had forfeited their property by their
crimes. With you, in your improved state of the
human mind, there was no such formality. You seized
upon five millions sterling of annual rent, and turned
forty or fifty thousand human creatures out of their
houses, because ' such was your pleasure.' The tyrant
Harry VIII of England, as he was not better enlightened
than the Roman Marius's and Syllas, and had not
studied in your new schools, did not know what an
effectual instrument of despotism was to be found in
that grand magazine of offensive weapons, the rights of

328
EDMUND BURKE.
men. When he resolved to rob the abbeys, as the club
of the Jacobins have robbed all the ecclesiastics, he
began by setting on foot a commission to examine into
the crimes and abuses which prevailed in those communities. As it might be expected, his commission
reported truths, exaggerations, and falsehoods. But
truly or falsely it reported abuses and offences. However, as abuses might be corrected, as every crime of
persons does not infer a forfeiture with regard to communities, and as property, in that dark age, was not
discovered to be a creature of prejudice, all those abuses
(and there were enow of them) were hardly thought
sufficient ground for such a confiscation as it was for
his purpose to make. He therefore procured the formal
surrender of these estates. AH these operose proceedings were adopted by one of the most decided tyrants
in the rolls of history, as necessary preliminaries, before
he could venture, by bribing the members of his two
servile Houses with a share of the spoil, and holding
out to them an eternal immunity from taxation, to
demand a confirmation of his iniquitous proceedings by
an act of parliament. Had fate reserved him to our
times, four technical terms would have done his business, and saved him all this trouble ; he needed nothing
more than one short form of incantation,—' Philosophy,
Lightt Liberality, the Rights of Men.1
I can say nothing in praise of those acts of tyranny,
which no voice has hitherto ever commended under
any of their false colours ; yet in these false colours a
homage was paid by despotism to justice. The power
which was above all fear and all remorse was not set
above all shame. Whilst shame keeps its watch virtue
is not wholly extinguished in the heart ; nor will moderation be utterly exiled from the minds of tyrants.
I believe every honest man sympathizes in his reflections with our political poet on that occasion, and will
pray to avert the omen whenever these acts of rapacious despotism present themselves to his view or his
imagination :

SELECTIONS.

329

. . . . ' May no such storm
Fall on our times, where ruin must reform.
Tell me (my Muse) what monstrous, dire offence,
What crimes could any Christian king incense
To such a rage ? Was't luxury, or lust ?
Was he so temperate, so chaste, so just ?
Were these their crimes ? they were his own much more,
But wealth is crime enough to him that's poor.' *

This same wealth, which is at all times treason and
lèse nation to indigent and rapacious despotism, under
all modes of polity, was your temptation to violate property, law, and religion, united in, one object. But was
the state of France so wretched and undone, that no
* The rest of the passage is this :
' Who having spent the treasures of his crown,
Condemns their luxury to feed his own.
And yet this act, to varnish o'er the shame
Of sacrilege, must bear devotion's name.
No crime so bold, but would be understood
A real, or at least a seeming good ;
Who fears not to do ill, yet fears the name,
And, free from conscience, is a slave to fame.
Thus he the church at once protects, and spoils :
But princes' swords are sharper than their styles.
And thus to th' ages past he makes amends,
Their charity destroys, their faith defends.
Then did religion in a lazy cell,
In empty aëry contemplation dwell ;
And like the block, unmoved lay ; but ours,
As much too active, like the stork devours.
Is there no temp'rate region can be known,
Betwixt their frigid, and our torrid zone !
Could we not wake from that lethargic dream,
But to be restless in a worse extreme ?
And for that lethargy was there no cure,
But to be cast into a calenture ?
Can knowledge have no bound, but must advance
So far, to make us wish for ignorance ?
And rather in the dark to grope our way,
Than, led by a false guide, to err, by day ?
Who sees these dismal heaps, but would demand
What barbarous invader sack'd the land ?
But when he hears, no Goth, no Turk did bring
This desolation, but a Christian king ;
When nothing, but the name of zeal, appears
'Twixt our best actions, and the worst of theirs ;
What does he think our sacrilege would spare,
When such th'effects of our devotion are ? '
COOPER'S HTLL, by Sir JOHN DEMHAM.

330
EDMUND BURKE.
other resource but rapine remained to preserve its
existence ? On this point I wish to receive some information. When the states met, was the condition
of the finances of France such, that, after economizing
on principles of justice and mercy through all departments, no fair repartition of burdens upon all the orders
could possibly restore them ? If such an equal imposition would have been sufficient, you well know it
might easily have been made. Mr. Necker, in the
budget which he laid before the orders assembled at
Versailles, made a detailed exposition of the state of
the French nation.*
If we give credit to him, it was not necessary to have
recourse to any new impositions whatsoever, to put the
receipts of France on a balance with its expenses. He
stated the permanent charges of all descriptions, including the interest of a new loan of four hundred
millions, at 531,444,000 livres ; the fixed revenue at
475,294,000, making the deficiency 56,150,000, or short
of 2,20o,oooZ. sterling. But to balance it, he brought
forward savings and improvements of revenue (considered as entirely certain) to rather more than to the
amount of that deficiency ; and he concludes with
these emphatical words (p. 39), ' Quel pays, Messieurs,
que celui, où, sans impôts et avec de simples objets
inappergus, on peut faire disparoître un déficit qui a fait
tant de bruit en Europe/ As to the reimbursement,
the sinking of debt, and the other great objects of public
credit and political arrangement indicated in Monsieur
Necker's speech, no doubt could be entertained, but
that a very moderate and proportioned assessment on
the citizens without distinction would have provided
for all of them to the fullest extent of their demand.
If this representation of Mons. Necker was false, then
the assembly are in the highest degree culpable for having forced the king to accept as his minister, and since
the king's deposition, for having employed, as their
* Rapport de Mons. îe Directeur-Général des Finances, fait pas
ordre du Roi à Versailles. Mai 5* 1789.

SELECTIONS.
331
minister, a man who had been capable of abusing so
notoriously the confidence of his master and their own ;
in a matter too of the highest moment, and directly
appertaining to his particular office. But if the representation was exact (as having always, along with you,
conceived a high degree of respect for Mr. Necker, I
make no doubt it was), then what can be said in favour
of those, who instead of moderate, reasonable, and
general contribution, have in cold blood, and impelled
by no necessity, had recourse to a partial and cruel
confiscation ?
Was that contribution refused on a pretext of privilege, either on the part of the clergy, or on that of the
nobility ? No certainly. As to the clergy, they even
ran before the wishes of the third order. Previous to
the meeting of the states, they had in all their instructions expressly directed -their deputies to renounce
every immunity, which put them upon a footing distinct from the condition of their fellow-subjects. In
this renunciation the clergy were even more explicit
than the nobility.
But let us suppose that the deficiency had remained
at the fifty-six millions, (or 2,200,000/. sterling), as at
first stated by Mr. Necker. Let us allow that all the
resources he opposed to that deficiency were impudent
and groundless fictions ; and that the assembly (or their
lords of articles * at the Jacobins) were from thence
justified in laying the whole burden of that deficiency
on the clergy,—yet allowing all this, a necessity of
2,200,oooZ. sterling will not support a confiscation
to the amount of five millions. The imposition of
2,200,000/. on the clergy, as partial, would have been
oppressive and unjust, but it would not have been
altogether ruinous to those on whom it was imposed ;
and therefore it would not have answered the real purpose of the managers.
* In the constitution of Scotland, during the Stuart reigns, a committee sat for preparing bills ; and none could pass but those previously
approved by them. This committee was called lords of articles.

332
EDMUND BURKE.
Perhaps persons, unacquainted with the state of
France, on hearing the clergy and the noblesse were
privileged in point of taxation, may be led to imagine
that, previous to the Revolution, these bodies had contributed nothing to the state. This is a great mistake.
They certainly did not contribute equally with each
other, nor either of them equally with the commons.
They both, however, contributed largely. Neither
nobility nor clergy enjoyed any exemption from the
excise on consumable commodities, from duties of
custom, or from any of the other numerous indirect
impositions, which in France, as well as here, make so
very large a proportion of all payments to the public.
The noblesse paid the capitation. They paid also a
land-tax, called the twentieth penny, to the height
sometimes of three, sometimes of four shillings in the
pound ; both of them direct impositions of no light
nature, and no trivial produce,, The clergy of the provinces annexed by conquest to France, (which in extent
make about an eighth part of the whole, but in wealth
a much larger proportion,) paid likewise to the capitation and the twentieth penny, at the rate paid by the
nobility. The clergy in the old provinces did not pay
the capitation ; but they had redeemed themselves
at the expense of about twenty-four millions, or a little
more than a million sterling. They were exempted
from the twentieths : but then they made free gifts ;
they contracted debts for the state ; and they were
subject to some other charges, the whole computed at
about a thirteenth part of their clear income. They
ought to have paid annually about forty thousand
pounds more, to put them on a par with the contribution of the nobility.
When the terrors of this tremendous proscription
hung over the clergy, they made an offer of a contribution, through the Archbishop of Aix, which, for its
extravagance, ought not to have been accepted. But
it was evidently and obviously more advantageous to
the public creditor, than anything which could ration-

SELECTIONS.
333
ally be promised by the confiscation. Why was it not
accepted ? The reason is plain—There was no desire
that the church should be brought to serve the state.
The service of the state was made a pretext to destroy
the church. In their way to the destruction of the
church they would not scruple to destroy their country :
and they have destroyed it. One great end in the project would have been defeated, if the plan of extortion
had been adopted in lieu of the scheme of confiscation.
The new landed interest connected with the new republic, and connected with it for its very being, could
not have been created. This was among the reasons
why that extravagant ransom was not accepted.
The madness of the project of confiscation, on the
plan that was first pretended, soon became apparent.
To bring this unwieldy mass of landed property, enlarged by the confiscation of all the vast landed domain
of the crown, at once into market, was obviously to
defeat the profits proposed by the confiscation, by depreciating the value of those lands, and indeed of all
the landed estates throughout France. Such a sudden
diversion of all its circulating money from trade to
land must be an additional mischief. What step was
taken ? Did the assembly, on becoming sensible of
the inevitable ill effects of their projected sale, revert
to the offers of the clergy ? No distress could oblige
them to travel in a course which was disgraced by any
appearance of justice. Giving over all hopes from a
general immediate sale, another project seems to have
succeeded. They proposed to take stock in exchange
for the church lands. In that project great difficulties
arose in equalizing the objects to be exchanged. Other
obstacles also presented themselves, which threw them
back again upon some project of sale. The municipalities had taken an alarm. They would not hear of
transferring the whole plunder of the kingdom to the
stockholders in Paris. Many of those municipalities
had been (upon system) reduced to the most deplorable
indigence, Money was nowhere to. be seen. They

334
EDMUND BURKE,
were therefore led to the point that was so ardently
desired. They panted for a currency of any kind which
might revive their perishing industry. The municipalities were then to be admitted to a share in the spoil,
which evidently rendered the first scheme (if ever it
had been seriously entertained) altogether impracticable.
Public exigencies pressed upon all sides. The minister
of finance reiterated his call for supply with a most
urgent, anxious, and boding voice. Thus pressed on
all sides, instead of the first plan of converting their
bankers into bishops and abbots, instead of paying the
old debt, they contracted a new debt, at three per cent.,
creating a new paper currency, founded on an eventual
sale of the church lands. They issued this paper currency to satisfy in the first instance chiefly the demands
made upon them by the bank of discount, the great
machine, or paper-mill of their fictitious wealth.
The spoil of the church was now become the only
resource of all their operations in finance, the vital
principle of all their politics, the sole security for the
existence of their power. It was necessary by all, even
the most violent means, to put every individual on the
same bottom, and to bind the nation in one guilty
interest to uphold this act, and the authority, of those
by whom it was done. In order to force the most reluctant into a participation of their pillage, they rendered their paper circulation compulsory in all payments.
Those who consider the general tendency of their schemes
to this one object as a centre, and a centre from which
afterwards all their measures radiate, will not think that
I dwell too long upon this part of the proceedings of
the National Assembly.
To cut off all appearance of connexion between the
crown and public justice, and to bring the whole under
implicit obedience to the dictators in Paris, the old independent judicature of the parliaments, with all its
merits, and all its faults, was wholly abolished. Whilst
the parliaments existed, it was evident that the people
might some time or other come to resort to them, and

SELECTIONS.
335
rally under the standard of their ancient laws. It
became, however, a matter of consideration that the
magistrates and officers, in the courts now abolished,
had purchased their places at a very high rate, for which
as well as for the duty they performed, they received
but a very low return of interest. Simple confiscation
is a boon only for the clergy ;—to the lawyers some
appearances of equity are to be observed ;—and they
are to receive compensation to an immense amount.
Their compensation becomes part of the national debt,
for the liquidation of which there is the one exhaustless
fund. The lawyers are to obtain their compensation
in this new church paper, which is to march with the
new principles of judicature and legislature. The dismissed magistrates are to take their share of martyrdom with the ecclesiastics, or to receive their own property from such a fund, and in such a manner, as all
those, who have been seasoned with the ancient principles of jurisprudence, and had been the sole guardians
of property, must look upon with horror. Even the
clergy are to receive their miserable allowance out of
the depreciated paper, which is stamped with the indelible character of sacrilege, and with the symbols of
their own ruin, or they must starve. So violent an
outrage upon credit, property, and liberty, as this
compulsory paper currency, has seldom been exhibited
by the alliance of bankruptcy and tyranny, at any time,
or in any nation.
In the course of all these operations, at length comes
out the grand arcanum;—that in reality, and in a fair
sense, the lands of the church (so far as anything certain
can be gathered from their proceedings) are not to be
sold at all. By the late resolutions of the National
Assembly, they are indeed to be delivered to the highest
bidder. But it is to be observed, that a certain portion
only of the purchase money is to be laid down, A period
of twelve years is to be given for the payment of the
rest. The philosophic purchasers are therefore, on payment of a sort of fine, to be put instantly into posses-

336
EDMUND BURKE,
sion of the estate. It becomes in some respects a sort
of gift to them ; to be held on the feudal tenure of zeal
to the new establishment. This project is evidently
to let in a body of purchasers without money. The
consequence will be, that these purchasers, or rather
guarantees, will pay, not only from the rents as they
accrue; which might as well be received by the state,
but from the spoil of the materials of buildings, from
waste in woods, and from whatever money, by hands
habituated to the gripings of usury, they can wring
from the miserable peasant. He is to be delivered over
to the mercenary and arbitrary discretion of men, who
will be stimulated to every species of extortion by the
growing demands on the growing profits of an estate
held under the precarious settlement of a new political
system.
When all the frauds, impostures, violences, rapines,
burnings, murders, confiscations, compulsory paper currencies, and every description of tyranny and cruelty
employed to bring about and to uphold this Revolution,
have their natural effect, that is, to shock the moral
sentiments of all virtuous and sober minds, the abettors of this philosophic system immediately strain their
throats in a declamation against the old monarchical
government of France. When they have rendered that
deposed power sufficiently black, they then proceed in
argument, as if all those who disapprove of their new
abuses must of course be partisans of the old; that
those who reprobate their crude and violent schemes
of liberty ought to be treated as advocates for servitude.
I admit that their necessities do compel them to this
base and contemptible fraud. Nothing can reconcile
men to their proceedings and projects but the supposition that there is no third option between them and
some tyranny as odious as can be furnished by the
records of history, or by the invention of poets. This
prattling of theirs hardly deserves the name of sophistry.
It is nothing but plain impudence. Have these gentlemen never heard, in the whole circle of the worlds of

SELECTIONS.
337
theory and practice, of anything between the despotism
of the monarch and the despotism of the multitude ?
Have they never heard of a monarchy directed by laws,
controlled and balanced by the great hereditary wealth
and hereditary dignity of a nation ; and both again
controlled by a judicious check from the reason and
feeling of the people at large, acting by a suitable and
permanent organ ? Is it then impossible that a man
may be found who, without criminal ill intention, or
pitiable absurdity, shall prefer such a mixed and tempered
government to either of the extremes ; and who may
repute that nation to be destitute of all wisdom and of
all virtue, which, having in its choice to obtain such
a government with ease, or rather to confirm it when
actually possessed, thought proper to commit a thousand
crimes, and to subject their country to a thousand evils,
in order to avoid it ? Is it then a truth so universally
acknowledged, that a pure democracy is the only tolerable form into which human society can be thrown,
that a man is not permitted to hesitate about its merits,
without the suspicion of being a friend to tyranny,
that is, of being a foe to mankind ?
I do not know under what description to class the
present ruling authority in France. It affects to be
pure democracy, though I think it in a direct train of
becoming shortly a mischievous and ignoble oligarchy.
But for the present I admit it to be a contrivance of the
nature and effect of what it pretends to. I reprobate
no form of government merely upon abstract principles.
There may be situations in which the purely democratic
form will become necessary. There may be some (very
few, and very particularly circumstanced) where it
would be clearly desirable. This I do not take to be
the case of France, or of any other great country. Until
now, we have seen no examples of considerable democracies. The ancients were better acquainted with
them. Not being wholly unread in the authors, who
had seen the most of those constitutions, and who
best understood them, I cannot help concurring with

338
EDMUND BURKE. their opinion, that an absolute democracy, no more
than absolute monarchy, is to be reckoned among the
legitimate forms of government. They think it rather
the corruption and degeneracy, than the sound constitution of a republic. If I recollect rightly, Aristotle
observes, that a democracy has many striking points
of resemblance with tyranny.* Of this 1 am certain,
that in a democracy, the majority of the citizens is
capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon
the minority, whenever strong divisions prevail in that
kind of polity, as they often must ; and that oppression
of the minority will extend to far greater numbers, and
will be carried on with much greater fury, than can
almost ever be apprehended from the dominion of a
single sceptre. In such a popular persecution, individual sufferers are in a much more deplorable condition than in any other. Under a cruel prince they
have the balmy compassion of mankind to assuage the
smart of their wounds ; they have the plaudits of the
people to animate their generous constancy under their
sufferings ; but those who are subjected to wrong under
multitudes, are deprived of all external consolation.
They seem deserted by mankind, overpowered by a
conspiracy of their whole species.
But admitting democracy not to have that inevitable
* When I wrote this I quoted from memory, after many years had
elapsed from my reading the passage. A learned friend has found it,
and it is as follows :
To tfdos rb aire, Kal &fxcp03 decriroriKa rSv pekTiôvcov, Kal rà ip^cpia-fxara,
ôcnrep èKet rà èTrcrây/xara' Kal o ôrjfiaywyàs Kal o Kà\a%, ol adrol Kal
àvaKoyoi' Kal [xà^Kiara èKârepot. Trap' eKarépots îo~x'bovo~Lvi ol ixkv KÔKaKes
irapà Tvpâvvois, ol Ôè àTjjAaywyol irapà roîs dtfjuois roîs rotoiro^—

' The ethical character is the same : both exercise despotism over
the better class of citizens ; and decrees are in the one, what ordinances
and arrêts are in the other : the demagogue too, and the court favourite,
are not unfrequently the same identical men, and always bear a close
analogy ; and these have the principal power, each in their respective
forms of government, favourites with the absolute monarch, and
demagogues with a people such as I have described.' Arist. Politic,
lib. iv. cap. 4.

SELECTIONS.
339
tendency to party tyranny, which I suppose it to have,
and admitting it to possess as much good in it when
unmixed, as I am sure it possesses when compounded
with other forms ; does monarchy, on its part, contain
nothing at all to recommend it ? I do not often quote
Bolingbroke, nor have his works in general left any
permanent impression on my mind. He is a presumptuous and a superficial writer. But he has one observation, which, in my opinion, is not without depth and
solidity. He says, that he prefers a monarchy to other
governments ; because you can better ingraft any
description of republic on a monarchy, than anything,
of monarchy upon the republican forms. I think him
perfectly in the right. The fact is so historically ; and
it agrees well with the speculation.
I know how easy a topic it is to dwell on the faults of
departed greatness. By a revolution in the state, the
fawning sycophant of yesterday is converted into the
austere critic of the present hour. But steady, independent minds, when they have an object of so serious
a concern to mankind as government under their contemplation, will disdain to assume the part of satirists
and declaimers. They will judge of human institutions
as they do of human characters. They will sort out
the good from the evil, which is mixed in mortal institutions, as it is in mortal men.
Your government in France, though usually, and I
think justly, reputed the best of the unqualified or
ill-qualified monarchies, was still full of abuses. These
abuses accumulated in a length of time, as they must
accumulate in every monarchy not under the constant
inspection of a popular representative. I am no stranger
to the faults and defects of the subverted government
of France ; and I think I am not inclined by nature or
policy to make a panegyric upon anything which is a
just and natural object of censure. But the question
is not now of the vices of that monarchy, but of its
existence. Is it then true, that the French government was such as to be incapable or undeserving of

340
EDMUND BURKE.
reform 5, so that it was of absolute necessity that the
whole fabric should be at once pulled down, and the
area cleared for the erection of a theoretic, experimental
edifice in its place ? AU France was of a different
opinion in the beginning of the year 1789. The instructions to the representatives to the states-general,
from every district in that kingdom, were filled with
projects for the reformation of that government, without
the remotest suggestion of a design to destroy it. Had
such a design been then even insinuated, I believe there
would have been but one voice, and that voice for rejecting it with scorn and horror. Men have been sometimes led by degrees, sometimes hurried, into things of
which, if they could have seen the whole together, they
never would have permitted the most remote approach.
When those instructions were given, there was no question but that abuses existed, and that they demanded
a reform ; nor is there now. In the interval between
the instructions and the revolution, things changed
their shape ; and, in consequence of that change, the
true question at present is, whether those who would
have reformed, or those who have destroyed, are in
the right ?
To hear some men speak of the late monarchy of
France, you would imagine that they were talking of
Persia bleeding under the ferocious sword of Tahmas
Kouli Khân ; or at least describing the barbarous
anarchic despotism of Turkey, where the finest countries in the most genial climates in the world are wasted
by peace more than any countries have been worried
by war ;,, where arts are unknown, where manufactures
languish, where science is extinguished, where agriculture decays, where the human race itself melts away
and perishes under the eye of the observer. Was this
the case of France ? I have no way of determining
the question but by a reference to facts. Facts do not
support this resemblance. Along with much evil, there
is some good in monarchy itself ; and some corrective
to its evil from religion, from laws, from mannars, from

SELECTIONS.
341
opinions, the French monarchy must have received ;
which rendered it (though by no means a free, and
therefore by no means a good constitution) a despotism
rather in appearance than in reality.
Among the standards upon which the effects of government on any country are to be estimated, I must consider the state of its population as not the least certain.
No country in which population flourishes, and is in
progressive improvement, can be under a very mischievous government. About sixty years ago the
Intendants of the generalities of France made, with
other matters, a report of the population of their several
districts. I have not the books, which are very voluminous, by me, nor do I know where to procure them ( I am
obliged to speak by memory and therefore the less
positively), but I think the population of France was
by them, even at that period, estimated at twenty-two
millions of souls. At the end of the last century it had
been generally calculated at eighteen. On either of
these estimations, France was not ill-peopled. Mr.
Necker, who is an authority for his own time at least
equal to the Intendants for theirs, reckons, and upon
apparently sure principles, the people of France, in the
year 1780, at twenty-four millions six hundred and
seventy thousand. But was this the probable ultimate
term under the old establishment ? Dr. Price is of
opinion that the growth of population in France was by
no means at its acme in that year. I certainly defer to
Dr. Price's authority a good deal more in these speculations than I do in his general politics. This gentleman,
taking ground on Mr. Necker's data, is very confident
that since the period of that minister's calculation, the
French population has increased rapidly; so rapidly,
that in the year 1789 he will not consent to rate the
people of that kingdom at a lower number than thirty
millions. After abating much (and much I think
ought to be abated) from the sanguine calculation of
Dr. Price, I have no doubt that the population of France
did increase considerably during this latter period:

342
EDMUND BURKE.
but supposing that it increased to nothing more than
will be sufficient to complete the twenty-four millions
six hundred and seventy thousand to twenty-five millions, still a population of twenty-five millions, and that
in an increasing progress, on a space of about twentyseven thousand square leagues, is immense. It is, for
instance, a good deal more than the proportionable
population of this island, or even than that of England,
the best peopled part of the United Kingdom.
It is not universally true that France is a fertile
country. Considerable tracts of it are barren and
labour under other natural disadvantages. In the
portions of that territory where things are more favourable, as far as I am able to discover, the numbers of
the people correspond to the indulgence of nature.*
The Generality of Lisle (this I admit is the strongest
example) upon an extent of four hundred and four
leagues and a half, about ten years ago, contained seven
hundred and thirty-four thousand six hundred souls,
which is one thousand seven hundred and seventy-two
inhabitants to each square league. The middle term
for the rest of France is about nine hundred inhabitants
to the same admeasurement.
I do not attribute this population to the deposed
government ; because I do not like to compliment the
contrivances of men with what is due in a great degree
to the bounty of Providence. But that decried government could not have obstructed, most probably it
favoured, the operation of those causes, (whatever they
were) whether of nature in the soil, or habits of industry
among the people, which has produced so large a number
of the species throughout that whole kingdom, and
exhibited in some particular places such prodigies of
population. I never will suppose that fabric of a state
to be the worst of all political institutions, which, by
experience, is found to contain a principle favourable
(however latent it may be) to the increase of mankind.
* De l'Administration des Finances de la France, par Mous. Necker,
vol, i. p. 288.

SELECTIONS.
343
The wealth of a country is another, and no contemptible standard, by which we may judge whether,
on the whole, a government be protecting or destructive. France far exceeds England in the multitude of
her people ; but I apprehend that her comparative
wealth is much inferior to ours \ that it is not so equal
in the distribution, nor so ready in the circulation,
I believe the difference in the form of the two governments to be amongst the causes of this advantage on
the side of England. I speak of England, not of the
whole British dominions : which, if compared with
those of France, will, in some degree, weaken the comparative rate of wealth upon our side. But that wealth,
which will not endure a comparison with the riches
of England, may constitute a very respectable degree
of opulence. Mr. Necker's book, published in 1785,*
contains an accurate and interesting collection of facts
relative to public economy and to political arithmetic ;
and his speculations on the subject are in general wise
and liberal. In that work he gives an idea of the state
of France, very remote from the portrait of a country
whose government was a perfect grievance, an absolute
evil admitting no cure but through the violent and uncertain remedy of a total revolution. He affirms, that
from the year 1726 to the year 1784, there was coined
at the mint of France, in the species of gold and silver,
to the amount of about one hundred millions of pounds
sterling, f
It is impossible that Mr. Necker should be mistaken
in the amount of the bullion which has been coined in
the mint. It is a matter of official record. The reasonings of this able financier, concerning the quantity of
gold and silver which remained for circulation, when he
wrote in 1785, that is, about four years before the deposition and imprisonment of the French king, are not
of equal certainty; but they are laid on grounds so
apparently solid, that it is not easy to refuse a consider* De l'Administration des Finances de la France, par Mons. Necker.
f Ibid., vol. iii. chap. 8 and çhap. 9.

344
EDMUND BURKE,
able degree of assent to his calculation. He calculates
the numéraire, or what we call specie, then actually
existing in France, at about eighty-eight millions of the
same English money. A great accumulation of wealth
for one country, large as that country is ! Mr. Necker
was so far from considering this influx of wealth as
likely to cease, when he wrote in 1785, that he presumes
upon a future annual increase of two per cent, upon the
money brought into France during the periods from
which he computed.
Some adequate cause must have originally introduced
all the money coined at its mint into that kingdom ;
and some cause as operative must have kept at home,
or returned into its bosom, such a vast flood of treasure
as Mr. Necker calculates to remain for domestic circulation. Suppose any reasonable deductions from Mr.
Necker's computation, the remainder must still amount
to an immense sum. Causes thus powerful to acquire,
and to retain, cannot be found in discouraged industry,
insecure property, and a positively destructive government. Indeed, when I consider the face of the kingdom
of France ; the multitude and opulence of her cities ;
the useful magnificence of her spacious high roads and
bridges ; the opportunity of her artificial canals and
navigations opening the conveniences of maritime communication through a solid continent of so immense an
extent ; when I turn my eyes to the stupendous works
of her ports and harbours, and to her whole naval
apparatus, whether for war or trade ; when I bring
before my view the number of her fortifications, constructed with so bold and masterly a skill, and made
and maintained at so prodigious a charge, presenting
an armed front and impenetrable barrier to her enemies
upon every side ; when I recollect how very small a
part of that extensive region is without cultivation, and
to what complete perfection the culture of many of the
best productions of the earth have been brought in
France ; when I reflect on the excellence of her manufactures and fabrics, second to none but ours, and

SELECTIONS.
345
in some particulars not second ; when I contemplate
the grand foundations of charity, public and private ;
when I survey the state of all the arts that beautify
and polish life ; when I reckon the men she has bred
for extending her fame in war, her able statesmen, the
multitude of her profound lawyers and theologians, her
philosophers, her critics, her historians and antiquaries,
her poets and her orators, sacred and profane ; I behold
in all this something which awes and commands the
imagination, which checks the mind on the brink of
precipitate and indiscriminate censure, and which demands that we should very seriously examine, what and
how great are the latent vices that could authorize us
at once to level so specious a fabric with the ground.
I do not recognize, in this view of things, the despotism
of Turkey. Nor do I discern the character of a government, that has been, on the whole, so oppressive, or so
corrupt, or so negligent, as to be utterly unfit for all
reformation. I must think such a government well deserved to have its excellences heightened, its faults
corrected, and its capacities improved into a British
constitution.
Whoever has examined into the proceedings of that
deposed government for several years back cannot fail
to have observed, amidst the inconstancy and fluctuation natural to courts, an earnest endeavour towards
the prosperity and improvement of the country ; he
must admit that it had been long employed, in some
instances, wholly to remove, in many considerably to
correct, the abusive practices and usages that had prevailed in the state ; and that even the unlimited power
of the sovereign over the persons of his subjects, inconsistent, as undoubtedly it was, with law and liberty, had
yet been every day growing more mitigated in the
exercise. So far from refusing itself to reformation,
that government was open, with a censurable degree of
facility, to all sorts of projects and projectors on the
subject. Rather too much countenance was given to the
spirit of innovation, which soon was turned against those

346
EDMUND BURKE.
who fostered it, and ended in their ruin. It is but cold,
and no very flattering justice to that fallen monarchy,
to say, that, for many years, it trespassed more by
levity and want of judgment in several of its schemes,
than from any defect in diligence or in public spirit.
To compare the government of France for the last
fifteen or sixteen years with wise and well-constituted
establishments during that, or during any period, is
not to act with fairness. But if in point of prodigality
in the expenditure of money, or in point of rigour in
the exercise of power, it be compared with any of the
former reigns, I believe candid judges will give little
credit to the good intentions of those who dwell perpetually on the donations to favourites, or on the expenses of the court, or on the horrors of the Bastile, in
the reign of Louis the Sixteenth.*
Whether the system, if it deserves such a name, now
built on the ruins of that ancient monarchy, will be
able to give a better account of the population and
wealth of the country, which it has taken under its care,
is a matter very doubtful. Instead of improving by
the change, I apprehend that a long series of years must
be told, before it can recover in any degree the effects
of this philosophic Revolution, and before the nation
can be replaced on its former footing. If Dr. Price
should think fit, a few year? hence, to favour us with an
estimate of the population of France, he will hardly
be able to make up his tale of thirty millions of souls,
as computed in 1789, or the assembly's computation
of twenty-six millions of that year ; or even Mr. Necker's
twenty-five millions in 1780. I hear that there are
considerable emigrations from France ; and that many,
quitting that voluptuous climate, and that seductive
Circean liberty, have taken refuge in the frozen regions,
and under the British despotism of Canada,
* The world is obliged to Mr. de Calonne for the pains he has taken
to refute the scandalous exaggerations relative to some of the royal
expenses, and to detect the fallacious account given of pensions, for
the wicked purpose of provoking the populace to all sorts of crimes.

SELECTIONS.
347
In the present disappearance of coin, no person could
think it the same country, in which the present minister
of the finances has been able to discover fourscore
millions sterling in species. From its general aspect one
would conclude that it had been for some time past
under the special direction of the learned academicians
of Laputa and Balnibarbi,* Already the population
of Paris has so declined, that Mr. Necker stated to the
National Assembly the provision to be made for its
subsistence at a fifth less than what [had formerly been
found requisite.f It is said (and I have never heard
it contradicted) that a hundred thousand people are
out of employment in that city, though it is become the
seat of the imprisoned court and National Assembly,
Nothing, I am credibly informed, can exceed the shocking and disgusting spectacle of mendicancy displayed
in that capital. Indeed the votes of the National
Assembly leave no doubt of the facts. They have
lately appointed a standing committee of mendicancy.
They are contriving at once a vigorous police on this
subject, and, for the first time, the imposition of a tax
to maintain the poor, for whose present relief great
sums appear on the face of the public accounts of the
year. J In the meantime the leaders of the legislative
* See Gulliver's Travels for the idea of countries governed by philosophers.
f Mr. de Calonne states the falling off of the population of Paris
as far more considerable ; and it may be so, since the period of Mr.
Necker's calculation.
$ Travaux de charité pour subvenir
Livres
£
s. d.
au manque de travail à Paris et
dans les provinces . . . . . .
3,866,920
161,121 13 4
Destruction de vagabondage et de la
mendicité
1,671,417
69,642 7 6
Primes pour l'importation de grains
5,671,907 236,329 9 2
Dépenses relatives aux subsistances,
déduction fait des recouvrements
qui ont eu lieu
39,871,790 1,661,324 n 8
Total . . . 51,082,034 £2,128,418

1 8

When I sent this book to the press, I entertained some doubt con»
cerning the nature and extent of the last article in the above accounts,

348
EDMUND BURKE.
clubs and coffee-houses are intoxicated with admiration
at their own wisdom and ability. They speak with the
most sovereign contempt of the rest of the world. They
tell the people, to comfort them in the rags with which
they have clothed them, that they are a nation of philosophers ; and, sometimes, by all the arts of quackish
parade, by show, tumult, and bustle, sometimes by the
alarms of plots and invasions, they attempt to drown
the cries of indigence, and to divert the eyes of the
observer from the ruin and wretchedness of the state.
A brave people will certainly prefer liberty accompanied
with a virtuous poverty to a depraved and wealthy
servitude. But before the price of comfort and opulence is paid, one ought to be pretty sure it is real liberty
which is purchased, and that she is to be purchased at
no other price. I shall, always, however, consider that
liberty as very equivocal in her appearance, which has
not wisdom and justice for her companions ; and does
not lead prosperity and plenty in her train.
The advocates of this Revolution, not satisfied with
exaggerating the vices of their ancient government,
strike at the fame of their country itself, by painting
almost all that could have attracted the attention of
strangers, I mean their nobility and their clergy, as
objects of horror. If this were only a libel, there had
not been much in it. But it has practical consequences.
Had your nobility and gentry, who formed the great
body of your landed men, and the whole of your military
officers, resembled those of Germany, at the period
when the Hanse-towns were necessitated to confederate
which is only under a general head, without any detail. Since then I
have seen Mr. de Calonne's work. I must think it a great loss to me
that I had not that advantage earlier. Mr. de Calonne thinks this
article to be on account of general subsistence ; but as he is not able
to comprehend how so great a loss as upwards of i,66i,oooZ. sterling
could be sustained on the difference between the price and the sale
of grain, he seems to attribute this enormous head of charge to secret
expenses of the Revolution. I cannot say anything positively on
that subject. The reader is capable of judging, by the aggregate of
these immense charges, on the state and condition of France ; and the
system of public economy adopted in that nation. These articles of
account produced no inquiry or discussion in the National Assembly.

SELECTIONS,
349
against the nobles in defence of their property—had
they been like the Orsini and Vitelli in Italy, who used
to sally from their fortified dens to rob the trader and
traveller—had they been such as the Mamelukes in
Egypt, or the Nayres on the coast of Malabar, I do
admit, that too critical an inquiry might not be advisable
into the means of freeing the world from such a nuisance.
The statues' of Equity and Mercy might be veiled for
a moment. The tenderest minds, confounded with the
dreadful exigence in which morality submits to the
suspension of its own rules in favour of its own principles, might turn aside whilst fraud and violence were
accomplishing the destruction of a pretended nobility
which disgraced, whilst it persecuted, human nature.
The persons most abhorrent from blood, and treason,
and arbitrary confiscation, might remain silent spectators of this civil war between the vices.
But did the privileged nobility who met under the
king's precept at Versailles, in 1789, or their constituents, deserve to be looked on as the Nayres or Mamelukes of this age, or as the Orsini and Vitelli of ancient
times ? If I had then asked the question I should
have passed for a madman. What have they done
since that they were to be driven into exile, that their
persons should be hunted about, mangled, and tortured,
their families dispersed, their houses laid in ashes, and
that their order should be abolished, and the memory
of it, if possible, extinguished, by ordaining them to
change the very names by which they were usually
known ? Read their instructions to their representatives. They breathe the spirit of liberty as warmly,
and they recommend reformation as strongly, as any
other order
Their privileges relative to contribution
were voluntarily surrendered ; as the king, from the
beginning, surrendered all pretence to a right of taxation. Upon a free constitution there was but one opinion
in France. The absolute monarchy was at an end.
It breathed its last, without a groan, without struggle,
without convulsion. All the struggle, all the dissension

350
EDMUND BURKE.
arose afterwards upon the preference of a despotic
democracy to a government of reciprocal control. The
triumph of the victorious party was over the principles
of a British constitution.
I have observed the affectation which, for many
years past, has prevailed in Paris, even to a degree
perfectly childish, of idolizing the memory of your
Henry IV. If anything could put any one out of
humour with that ornament to the kingly character,
it would be this overdone style of insidious panegyric.
The persons who have worked this engine the most
busily are those who have ended their panegyrics in
dethroning his successor and descendant ; a man, as
good natured, at the least, as Henry IV ; altogether
as fond of his people ; and who has done infinitely more
to correct the ancient vices of the state, than that great
monarch did, or we are sure he ever meant to do. Well
it is for his panegyrists, that they have not him to deal
with. For Henry of Navarre was a resolute, active, and
politic prince. He possessed, indeed, great humanity
and mildness ; but a humanity and mildness that never
stood in the way of his interests. He never sought to
be loved without putting himself first in a condition to
be feared. He used soft language with determined
conduct. He asserted and maintained his authority in
the gross, and distributed his acts of concession only in
the detail. He spent the income of his prerogative
nobly ; but he took care not to break in upon the
capital ; never abandoning for a moment any of the
claims which he made under the fundamental laws, nor
sparing to shed the blood of those who opposed him,
often in the field, sometimes upon the scaffold. Because he knew how to make his virtues respected by
the ungrateful, he has merited the praises of those,
whom, if they had lived in his time, he would have
shut up in the Bastille, and brought to punishment
along with the regicides whom he hanged after he had
famished Paris into a surrender.
If these panegyrists are in earnest in their admira-

SELECTIONS.
351
tion of Henry IV, they must remember, that they cannot think more highly of him, than he did of the noblesse
of France ; whose virtue, honour, courage, patriotism,
and loyalty were his constant theme.
But the nobility of France are degenerated since the
days of Henry IV. This is possible. But it is more
than I can believe to be true in any great degree, I do
not pretend to know France as correctly as some others ;
but I have endeavoured through my whole life to make
myself acquainted with human nature : otherwise I
should be unfit to take even my humble part in the
service of mankind. In that study I could not pass
by a vast portion of our nature, as it appeared modified
in a country but twenty-four miles from the shore of
this island. On my best observation, compared with
my best inquiries, I found your nobility for the greater
part composed of men of a high spirit, and of a delicate
sense of honour, both with regard to themselves individually, and with regard to their whole corps, over
whom they kept^ beyond what is common in other
countries, a censorial eye. They were tolerably well
bred ; very officious, humane, and hospitable ; in their
conversation frank and open j with a good military
tone ; and reasonably tinctured with literature, particularly of the authors in their own language. Many
had pretensions far above this description. I speak of
those who were generally met with.
As to their behaviour to the inferior classes, they
appeared to me to comport themselves towards them
with good-nature, and with something more nearly
approaching to familiarity, than is generally practised
with us in the intercourse between the higher and lower
ranks of life. To strike any person, even in the most
abject condition, was a thing in a manner unknown,
and would be highly disgraceful. Instances of other
ill-treatment of the humble part of the community were
rare ; and, as to attacks made upon the property or the
personal liberty of the commons, I never heard of any
whatsoever from them; nor, whilst the laws were in

352
EDMUND BURKE.
vigour under the ancient government, would such
tyranny in subjects have been permitted. As men of
landed estates, I had no fault to find with their conduct,
though much to reprehend, and much to wish changed,
in many of the old tenures. Where the letting of their
land was by rent, I could not discover that their agreements with their farmers were oppressive ; nor when
they were in partnership with the farmer, as often was
the case, have I heard that they had taken the lion's
share. The proportions seemed not inequitable. There
might be exceptions ; but certainly they were exceptions only. I have no reason to believe that in these
respects the landed noblesse of France were worse than
the landed gentry of this country ; certainly in no
respect more vexatious than the landholders, not noble,
of their own nation. In cities the nobility had no
manner of power ; in the country very little. You
know, sir, that much of the civil government, and the
police in the most essential parts, was not in the hands
of that nobility which presents itself first to our consideration. The revenue, the system and collection of
which were the most grievous parts of the French government, was not administered by the men of the sword ;
nor were they answerable for the vices of its principle,
or the vexations, where any such existed, in its management.
Denying, as I am well warranted to do, that the
nobility had any considerable share in the oppression
of the people, in cases in which real oppression existed,
I am ready to admit that they were not without considerable faults and errors. A foolish imitation of the
worst part of the manners of England, which impaired
their natural character, without substituting in its
place what perhaps they meant to copy, has certainly
rendered them worse than formerly they were. Habitual
dissoluteness of manners continued beyond the pardonable period of life, was more common amongst them
than it is with us ; and it reigned with the less hope
of remedy, though possibly with something of less

SELECTIONS.
353
mischief, by being covered with more exterior decorum.
They countenanced too much that licentious philosophy
which has helped to bring on their ruin. There was
another error amongst them more fatal. Those of the
commons, who approached to or exceeded many of
the nobility in point of wealth, were not fully admitted
to the rank and estimation which wealth, in reason and
good policy, ought to bestow in every country ; though
I think not equally with that of other nobility. The
two kinds of aristocracy were too punctiliously kept
asunder ; less so, however, than in Germany and some
other nations.
This separation, as I have already taken the liberty
of suggesting to you, I conceive to be one principal cause
of the destruction of the old nobility. The military,
particularly, was too exclusively reserved for men of
family. But, after all, this was an error of opinion,
which a conflicting opinion would have rectified. A
permanent assembly, in which the commons had their
share of power, would soon abolish whatever was too
invidious and insulting in these distinctions ; and
even the faults in the morals of the nobility would have
been probably corrected, by the greater varieties of
occupation and pursuit to which a constitution by
orders would have given rise.
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
12

354
EDMUND BURKE.
society. Omnes boni nohilitaii 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.
It was an old establishment, and not frequently revised.
But I saw no crimes in the individuals that merited
confiscation of their substance, nor those cruel insults
and degradations, and that unnatural persecution,
which have been substituted in the place of meliorating
regulation.
If there had been any just cause for this new religious
persecution, the atheistic libellers, who act as trumpeters
to animate the popula.ce to plunder, do not love any-

SELECTIONS.
355
body so much as not to dwell with complacence on the
vices of the existing clergy. This they have not done.
They find themselves obliged to rake into the histories
of former ages (which they have ransacked with a
malignant and profligate industry) for every instance
of oppression and persecution which has been made by
that body or in its favour, in order to justify, upon
very iniquitous, because very illogical, principles of
retaliation, their own persecutions, and their own
cruelties. After destroying all other genealogies and
family distinctions, they invent a sort of pedigree of
crimes. It is not very just to chastise men for the
offences of their natural ancestors : but to take the
fiction of ancestry in a corporate succession, as a ground
for punishing men who have no relation to guilty acts,
except in names and general descriptions, is a sort of
refinement in injustice belonging to the philosophy of
this enlightened age. The assembly punishes men,
many, if not most, of whom abhor the violent conduct
of ecclesiastics in former times as much as their present
persecutors can do, and who would be as loud and as
strong in the expression of that sense, if they were not
well aware of the purposes for which all this declamation is employed.
Corporate bodies are immortal for the good of the
members, but not for their punishment. Nations themselves are such corporations. As well might we in England think of waging inexpiable war upon all Frenchmen
for the evils which they have brought upon us in the
several periods of our mutual hostilities. You might,
on your part, think yourselves justified in falling upon all
Englishmen on account of the unparalleled calamities
brought upon the people of France by the unjust invasions
of our Henries and our Edwards. Indeed we should be
mutually justified in this exterminatory war upon each
other, full as much as you are in the unprovoked persecution of your present countrymen, on account of the
conduct of men of the same name in other times.
We do not draw the moral lessons we might from

356
EDMUND BURKE.
history. On the contrary, without care it may be used
to vitiate our minds and to destroy our happiness. In
history a great volume is unrolled for our instruction,
drawing the materials of future wisdom from the past
errors and infirmities of mankind. It may, in the perversion, serve for a magazine, furnishing offensive and
defensive weapons for parties in church and state, and
supplying the means of keeping alive or reviving dissensions and animosities, and adding fuel to civil fury.
History consists, for the greater part, of the miseries
brought upon the world by pride, ambition, avarice,
revenge, lust, sedition, hypocrisy, ungoverned zeal, and
all the train of disorderly appetites, which shake the
public with the same
. . . ' troublous storms that toss
The private state, and render life un sweet.'

These vices are the causes of those storms. Religion,
morals, laws, prerogatives, privileges, liberties, rights
of men, are the pretexts. The pretexts are always found
in some specious appearance of a real good. You would
not secure men from tyranny and sedition, by rooting
out of the mind the principles to which these fraudulent
pretexts apply ? If you did, you would root out everything that is valuable in the human breast. As these
are the pretexts, so the ordinary actors and instruments
in great public evils are kings, priests, magistrates,
senates, parliaments, national assemblies, judges, and
captains. You would not cure the evil by resolving,
that there should be no more monarchs, nor ministers
of state, nor of the Gospel ; no interpreters of law ; no
general officers ; no public councils. You might change
the names. The things in some shape must remain. A
certain quantum of power must always exist in the community, in some hands, and under some appellation.
Wise men will apply their remedies to vices, not to
names ; to the causes of evil which are permanent, not
to the occasional organs by which they act, and the
transitory modes in which they appear. Otherwise you

SELECTIONS.
357
will be wise historically, a fool in practice. Seldom have
two ages the same fashion in their pretexts and the same
modes of mischief. Wickedness is a little more inventive.
Whilst you are discussing fashion, the fashion is gone by.
The very same vice assumes a new body. The spirit
transmigrates ; and, far from losing its principle of life
by the change of its appearance, it is renovated in its
new organs with the fresh vigour of a juvenile activity.
It walks abroad, it continues its ravages, whilst you are
gibbeting the carcase, or demolishing the tomb. You are
terrifying yourselves with ghosts and apparitions, whilst
your house is the haunt of robbers. It is thus with all
those who, attending only to the shell and husk of history,
think they are waging war with intolerance, pride, and
cruelty, whilst, under colour of abhorring the ill principles of antiquated parties, they are authorizing and
feeding the same odious vices in different factions, and
perhaps in worse.
Your citizens of Paris formerly had lent themselves
as the ready instruments to slaughter the followers of
Calvin at the infamous massacre of St. Bartholomew.
What should we say to those who could think of retaliating on the Parisians of this day the abominations
and horrors of that time ? They are indeed brought
to abhor that massacre. Ferocious as they are, it is not
difficult to make them dislike it ; because the politicians
and fashionable teachers have no interest in giving their
passions exactly the same direction. Still, however,
they find it their interest to keep the same savage dispositions alive. It was but the other day that they caused
this very massacre to be acted on the stage for the diversion of the descendants of those who committed it. In
this tragic farce they produced the Cardinal of Lorraine
in^his robes of function, ordering general slaughter. Was
this spectacle intended to make the Parisians abhor
persecution, and loathe the effusion of blood ?—No ; it
was to teach them to persecute their own pastors ; it was
to excite them, by raising a disgust and horror of their
clergy, to an alacrity in hunting down to destruction an

358
EDMUND BURKE.
order, which, if it ought to exist at all, ought to exist not
only in safety, but in reverence. It was to stimulate
their cannibal appetites (which one would think had been
gorged sufficiently) by variety and seasoning ; and to
quicken them to an alertness in new murders and
massacres, if it should suit the purpose of the Guises
of the day. An assembly, in which sat a multitude of
priests and prelates, was obliged to suffer this indignity
at its door. The author was not sent to the galleys,
nor the players to the house of correction. Not long
after this exhibition, those players came forward to the
assembly to claim the rites of that very religion which
they had dared to expose, and to show their prostituted
faces in the senate, whilst the Archbishop of Paris, whose
function was known to his people only by his prayers
and benedictions, and his wealth only by alms, is forced
to abandon his house, and to fly from his flock (as
from ravenous wolves) because, truly, in the sixteenth
century, the Cardinal of Lorraine was a rebel and a
murderer.*
Such is the effect of the perversion of history, by those
who, for the same nefarious purposes, have perverted
every other part of learning. But those who will stand
upon that elevation of reason, which places centuries
under our eye, and brings things to the true point of
comparison, which obscures little names, and effaces
the colours of little parties, and to which nothing can
ascend but the spirit and. moral quality of human
actions, will say, to the teachers of the Palais Royal,—the
Cardinal of Lorraine was the murderer of the sixteenth
century, you have the glory of being the murderers in
the eighteenth ; and this is the only difference between
you. But history, in the nineteenth century, better
understood and better employed, will, I trust, teach a
civilized posterity to abhor the misdeeds of both these
barbarous ages. It will teach future priests and magistrates not to retaliate upon the speculative and inactive
* This is on a supposition of the trutrTof this story, but he was not
in France at thejtime. _One name serves as well as another.

SELECTIONS.
359
atheists of future times the enormities committed by the
present practical zealots and furious fanatics of that
wretched error, which, in its quiescent state, is more
than punished, whenever it is embraced. It will teach
posterity not to make war upon either religion or philosophy, for the abuse which the hypocrites of both have
made of the two most valuable blessings conferred upon
us by the bounty of the universal Patron, who in all
things eminently favours and protects the race of man.
* If your clergy, or any clergy, should show themselves
vicious beyond the fair bounds allowed to human infirmity, and to those professional faults which can hardly
be separated from professional virtues, though their
vices never can countenance the exercise of oppression,
I do admit that they would naturally have the effect of
abating very much of our indignation against the tyrants
who exceed measure and justice in their punishment. I
can allow in clergymen, through all their divisions,
some tenaciousness of their own opinion, some overflowings of zeal for its propagation, some predilection to
their own state and office, some attachment to the interest
of their own corps, some preference to those who listen
with docility to their doctrines beyond those who scorn
and deride them. I allow all this, because I am a man
who have to deal with men, and who would not, through
a violence of toleration, run into the greatest of all
intolerance. I must bear with infirmities until they
fester into crimes.
Undoubtedly the natural progress • of the passions,
from frailty to vice, ought to be prevented by a watchful eye and a firm hand. But is it true that the body of
your clergy had passed those limits of a just allowance ?
From the general style of your late publications of all
sorts, one would be led to believe that your clergy in
France were a sort of monsters ; a horrible composition
of superstition, ignorance, sloth, fraud, avarice, and
tyranny. But is this true ? Is it true that the lapse of
time, the cessation of conflicting interests, the woeful
experience of the evils resulting from party rage, have

36o
EDMUND BURKE.
had no sort of influence gradually to meliorate their
minds ? . Is it true that they were daily renewing invasions on, the civil power, troubling the domestic quiet of
their country, and rendering the operations of its government feeble and precarious ? Is it true, that the clergy
of our times have pressed down the laity with an iron
hand, and weie, in all places, lighting up the fires of a
savage persecution ? Did they by every fraud endeavour
to increase their estates ? Did they use to exceed the
due demands on estates that were their own? Or,
rigidly screwing up right into wrong, did they convert
a legal claim into a vexatious extortion ? When not
possessed of power, were they filled with the vices of
those who envy it ? Were they inflamed with a violent,
litigious spirit of controversy ? Goaded on with the
ambition of intellectual sovereignty, were they ready to
fly in the face of all magistracy, to fire churches, to
massacre the priests of other descriptions, to pull down
altars, and to make their way over the ruins of subverted
governments to an empire of doctrine, sometimes flattering, sometimes forcing, the consciences of men from the
jurisdiction of public institutions into a submission to
their personal authority, beginning with a claim of
liberty and ending with an abuse of power ?
These, or some of these, were the vices objected, and
not wholly without foundation, to several of the churchmen of former times, who belonged to the two great
parties which then divided and distracted Europe.
If there was in France, as in other countries there
visibly is, a great abatement, rather than any increase
of these vices, instead of loading the present clergy with
the crimes of other men, and the odious character of
other times, in common equity they ought to be praised,
encouraged, and supported, in their departure from a
spirit which disgraced their predecessors, and for having
assumed a temper of mind and manners more suitable to
their sacred function.
When my occasions took me into France, towards the
close of the late reign, the clergy, under all their forms,

SELECTIONS.
361
engaged a considerable part of my curiositya So far
from finding (except from one set of men, not then very
numerous though very active) the complaints and discontents against that body, which some publications had
given me reason, to expect, I perceived little or no public
or private uneasiness on, their account. On further
examination, I found the clergy, in general, persons of
moderate minds and decorous manners ; I include the
seculars, and the regulars of both sexes. I had not the
good fortune to know a great many of the parochial
clergy ; but in general I received a perfectly good account
of their morals and of their attention to their duties. With
some of the higher clergy I had a personal acquaintance ;
and of the rest in that class, a very good means of informa*
tion. They were, almost all of them, persons of noble
birth. They resembled others of their own rank ; and
where there was any difference, it was in their favour. They
were more fully educated than the military noblesse ; so
as by no means to disgrace their profession by ignorance,
or by want of fitness for the exercise of their authority.
They seemed to me, beyond the clerical character, liberal
and open ; with the hearts of gentlemen and men of
honour; neither insolent nor servile in their manners
and conduct. They seemed to me rather a superior
class ; a set of men amongst whom you would not be
surprised to find a Fenelon. I saw among the clergy in
Paris (many of the description are not to be met with
anywhere) men of great learning and candour ; and I
had reason to believe that this description was not confined to Paris. What I found in other places, I know
was accidental ; and therefore to be presumed a fair
sample. I spent a few days in a provincial town where,
in the absence of the bishop, I passed my evenings with
three clergymen, his vicars-general, persons who would
have done honour to any church. They were all well
informed ; two of them of deep, general, and extensive
erudition, ancient and modern, oriental and western ;
particularly in their own profession. They had a more
extensive knowledge of our English divines than I ex-

362
EDMUND BURKE.
pected ; and they entered into the genius of those writers
with a critical accuracy. One of these gentlemen is since
dead, the Abbé Morangis. I pay this tribute, without
reluctance, to the memory of that noble, reverend,
learned, and excellent person ; and I should do the
same, with equal cheerfulness, to the merits of the others,
who I believe are still living, if I did not fear to hurt those
whom I am unable to serve.
Some of these ecclesiastics of rank, are, by their titles,
persons deserving of general respect. They are deserving
of gratitude from me, and from many English. If this
letter should ever come into their hands, I hope they will
believe there are those of our nation who feel for their
unmerited fall, and for the cruel confiscation of their
fortunes, with no common sensibility. What I say of
them is a testimony, as far as one feeble voice can go,
which I owe to truth. Whenever the question of this
unnatural persecution is concerned, I will pay it. No
one shall prevent me from being just and grateful. The
time is fitted for the duty ; and it is particularly becoming
to show our justice and gratitude, when those, who have
deserved well of us and of mankind, are labouring under
popular obloquy and the persecutions of oppressive
power.
You had before your Revolution about a hundred and
twenty bishops. A few of them were men of eminent
sanctity and charity without limit. When we talk of
the heroic, of course we talk of rare virtue. I believe
the instances of eminent depravity may be as rare amongst
them as those of transcendent goodness. Examples of
avarice and of licentiousness may be picked out, I do
not question it, by those who delight in the investigation
which leads to such discoveries. A man as old as I am
will not be astonished that several, in every description,
do not lead that perfect life of self-denial, with regard
to wealth or to pleasure, which is wished for by all, by
some expected, but by none exacted with more rigour,
than by those who are the most attentive to their own
interests, or the most indulgent "to their own passions.

SELECTIONS.
363
When I was in France, I am certain that the number
of vicious prelates was not great. Certain individuals
among them, not distinguishable for the regularity of
their lives, made some amends for their want of the severe
virtues, in their possession of the liberal ; and were endowed with qualities which made them useful in the
church and state. I am told that, with few exceptions,
Louis XVI had been more attentive to character, in his
promotions to that rank, than his immediate predecessor ;
and I believe (as some spirit of reform has prevailed
through the whole reign) that it may be true. But the
present ruling power has shown a disposition only to
plunder the church. It has punished all prelates ; which
is to favour the vicious, at least in point of reputation.
It has made a degrading pensionary establishment, to
which no man of liberal ideas or liberal condition will
destine his children. It must settle into the lowest
classes of the people. As with you the inferior clergy are
not numerous enough for their duties ; as these duties are,
beyond measure, minute and toilsome, as you have left
no middle classes of clergy at their ease, in future nothing
of science or erudition can exist in the Gallican church.
To complete the project, without the least attention to
the rights of patrons, the assembly has provided in future
an elective clergy ; an arrangement which will drive out
of the clerical profession all men of sobriety ; all who can
pretend to independence in their function or their conduct ; and which will throw the whole direction of the
public mind into the hands of a set of licentious, bold,
crafty, factious, flattering wretches, of such condition
and such habits of life as will make their contemptible
pensions (in comparison of which the stipend of an exciseman is lucrative and honourable) an object of low and
illiberal intrigue. Those officers, whom they still call
bishops, are to be elected to a provision comparatively
mean, through the same arts, (that is, electioneering arts,)
by men of all religious tenets that are known or can be
invented. The new lawgivers have not ascertained
anything whatsoever concerning their qualifications,

364
EDMUND BURKE.
relative either to doctrine or to morals ; no more than
they have done with regard to the subordinate clergy ;
nor does it appear but that both the higher and the lower
may, at their discretion, practise or preach any mode of
religion or irreligion that they please. I do not yet see
what the jurisdiction of bishops over their subordinates
is to be, or whether they are to have any jurisdiction
at all.
In short, sir, it seems to me, that this new ecclesiastical establishment is intended only to be temporary,
and preparatory to the utter abolition, under any of its
forms, of the Christian religion, whenever the minds
of men are prepared for this last stroke against it, by
the accomplishment of the plan for bringing its ministers into universal contempt. They who will not believe
that the philosophical fanatics, who guide in these matters,
have long entertained such a design, are utterly ignorant
of their character and proceedings. These enthusiasts
do not scruple to avow their opinion, that a state can
subsist without any religion better than with one ; and
that they are able to supply the place of any good which
may be in it, by a project of their own—namely, by a
sort of education they have imagined, founded in a knowledge of the physical wants of men ; progressively
carried to an enlightened self-interest, which, when well
understood, they tell us, will identify with an interest
more enlarged and public. The scheme of this education
has been long known. Of late they distinguish it (as
they have got an entirely new nomenclature of technical
terms) by the name of a Civic Education.
I hope their partisans in England (to whom I rather
attribute very inconsiderate conduct than the ultimate
object in this detestable design) will succeed neither in
the pillage of the ecclesiastics, nor in the introduction
of a principle of popular election to our bishoprics and
parochial cures. This, in the present condition of the
world, would be the last corruption of the church \ the
utter ruin of the clerical character ; the most dangerous
shock that the state ever received through a misunder-

SELECTIONS.
365
stood arrangement of religion. I know well enough that
the bishoprics and cures, under kingly and seignorial
patronage, as now they are in England, and as they
have been lately in France, are sometimes acquired by
unworthy methods ; but the other mode of ecclesiastical
canvass subjects them infinitely more surely and more
generally to all the evil arts of low ambition which,
operating on and through greater numbers, will produce
mischief in proportion.
Those of you, who have robbed the clergy, think that
they shall easily reconcile their conduct to all Protestant
nations; because the clergy, whom they have thus
plundered, degraded, and given over to mockery and
scorn, are of the Roman Catholic, that is, of their own
pretended persuasion. I have no doubt that some
miserable bigots will be found here as well as elsewhere,
who hate sects and parties different from their own, more
than they love the substance of religion • and who are
more angry with those who differ from them in their
particular plans and systems than displeased with those
who attack the foundation of our common hope. These
men will write and speak on the subject in the manner
that is to be expected from their temper and character.
Burnet says that, when he was in France, in thé year
1683, ' the method which carried over the men of the
finest parts to popery was this : they brought themselves
to doubt of the whole Christian religion. When that
was once done, it seemed a more indifferent thing of what
side or form they continued outwardly.' If this was then
the ecclesiastic policy of France, it is what they have since
but too much reason to repent of. They preferred
atheism to a form of religion not agreeable to their ideas.
They succeeded in destroying that form ; and atheism
has succeeded in destroying them. I can readily give
credit to Burnet's story ; because I have observed too
much of a similar spirit (for a little of it is ' much too
much ') amongst ourselves. The humour, however, is
not general.
The teachers who reformed our religion in England

366
EDMUND BURKE.
bore no sort of resemblance to your present reforming
doctors in Paris. Perhaps they were (like those whom
they opposed) rather more than could be wished under
the influence of a party spirit ; but they were most
sincere believers ; men of the most fervent and exalted
piety ; ready to die (as some of them did die) like true
heroes in defence of their particular ideas of Christianity ;
as they would with equal fortitude, and more cheerfully,
for that stock of general truth, for the branches of which
they contended with their blood. These men would
have disavowed with horror those wretches who claimed
a fellowship with them upon no other titles than those
of their having pillaged the persons with whom they
maintained controversies, and their having despised the
common religion, for the purity of which they exerted
themselves with a zeal, which unequivocally bespoke
their highest reverence for the substance of that system
which they wished to reform. Many of their descendants
have retained the same zeal, but (as less engaged in conflict) with more moderation. They do not forget that
justice and mercy are substantial parts of religion.
Impious men do not recommend themselves to their
communion by iniquity and cruelty towards any description of their fellow-creatures.
We hear these new teachers continually boasting of
their spirit of toleration. That those persons should
tolerate all opinions, who think none to be of estimation,
is a matter of small merit. Equal neglect is not impartial
kindness. The species of benevolence, which arises from
contempt, is no true charity. There are in England
abundance of men who tolerate in the true spirit of toleration. They think the dogmas of religion, though in
different degrees, are all of moment ; and that amongst
them there is, as amongst all things of value, a just ground
of preference. They favour, therefore, and they tolerate.
They tolerate, not because they despise opinions, but
because they respect justice. They would reverently
and affectionately protect all religions, because they love
and venerate the great principle upon which they all agree,

SELECTIONS.
367
and the great object to which they are all directed. They
begin more and more plainly to discern that we have all
a common cause, as against a common enemy. They
will not be so misled by the spirit of faction, as not to
distinguish what is done in favour of their subdivision,
from those acts of hostility, which, through some particular description, are aimed at the whole corps, in which
they themselves, under another denomination, are included. It is impossible for me to say what may be the
character of every description of men amongst us. But
I speak for the greater part ; and for them, I must tell
you that sacrilege is no part of their doctrine of good
works ; that, so far from calling you into their fellowship
on such title, if your professors are admitted to their
communion, they must carefully conceal their doctrine
of the lawfulness of the proscription of innocent men ;
and that they must make restitution of all stolen goods
whatsoever. Till then they are none of ours.
You may suppose that we do not approve your confiscation of the revenues of bishops, and deans, and
chapters, and parochial clergy possessing independent
estates arising from land, because we have the same sort
of establishment in England. That objection, you will
say, cannot hold as to the confiscation of the goods of
monks and nuns, and the abolition of their order. It is
true that this particular part of your general confiscation
does not affect England, as a precedent in point : but
the reason applies and it goes a great way. The long
parliament confiscated the lands of deans and chapters
in England on the same ideas upon which your assembly
set to sale the lands of the monastic orders. But it is in
the principle of injustice that the danger lies, and not in
the description of persons on whom it is first exercised.
I see, in a country very near us, a course of policy pursued,
which sets justice, the common concern of mankind, at
defiance. With the National Assembly ôf France,
possession is nothing, law and usage are nothing. I see
the National Assembly openly reprobate the doctrine of
prescription, which one of the greatest of their own

368
EDMUND BURKE.
lawyers'* tells us, with great truth, is a part of the law of
nature. He tells us that the positive ascertainment of
its limits, and its security from invasion, were among the
causes for which civil society itself has been instituted.
If prescription be once shaken, no species of property is
secure, when it once becomes an object large enough to
tempt the cupidity of indigent power. I see a practice
perfectly correspondent to their contempt of this great
fundamental part of natural law. I see the confiscators
begin with bishops, and chapters, and monasteries ; but
I do not see them end there. I see the princes of the
blood, who, by the oldest usages of that kingdom held
large landed estates (hardly with the compliment of a
debate), deprived of their possessions, and, in lieu of
their stable, independent property, reduced to the hope
of some precarious, charitable pension, at the pleasure
of an assembly, which of course will pay little regard to
the rights of pensioners at pleasure, when it despises
those of legal proprietors. Flushed with the insolence
of the first inglorious victories, and pressed by the
distresses caused by the lust of unhallowed lucre, disappointed but not discouraged, they have at length ventured
completely to subvert all property of all descriptions
throughout the extent of a great kingdom. They have
compelled all men, in all transactions of commerce, in
the disposal of lands, in civil dealing, and through the
whole communion of life, to accept as perfect payment
and good and lawful tender, the symbols of their speculations on a projected sale of their plunder. What vestiges
of liberty or property have they left ? The tenant-right
of a cabbage-garden, a year's interest in a hovel, the goodwill of an ale-house or a baker's shop, the very shadow of
a constructive property, are more ceremoniously treated
in our parliament, than with you the oldest and most
valuable landed possessions, in the hands of the most
respectable personages, or than the whole body of the
monied and commercial interest of your country. We
entertain a high opinion of the legislative authority ; but
* Domat.

SELECTIONS.
369
we have never dreamt that parliaments had any right
whatever to violate property, to over-rule prescription,
or to force a currency of their own fiction in the place of
that which is real, and recognized by the law of nations.
But you, who began with refusing to submit to the most
moderate restraints, have ended by establishing an
unheard-of despotism. I find the ground upon which
your confiscators go is this : that indeed their proceedings
could not be supported in a court of justice ; but that
the rules of prescription cannot bind a legislative assembly.* So that this legislative assembly of a free nation
sits, not for the security, but for the destruction of
property, and not of property only, but of every rule
and maxim which can give it stability and of those instruments which can alone give it circulation.
When the anabaptists of Munster, in the sixteenth
century, had filled Germany with confusion, by their
system of levelling and their wild opinions concerning
property, to what country in Europe did not the progress
of their fury furnish just cause of alarm ? Of all things,
wisdom is the most terrified with epidemical fanaticism,
because of all enemies it is that against which she is the
least able to furnish any kind of resource. We cannot
be ignorant of the spirit of atheistical fanaticism, that
is inspired by a multitude of, writings, dispersed with
incredible assiduity and expense, and by sermons delivered in all the streets and places of public resort in
Paris. These writings and sermons have filled the populace with a black and savage atrocity of mind, which
supersedes in them the common feelings of nature, as well
as all sentiments of morality and religion ; insomuch
that these wretches are induced to bear with a sullen
patience the intolerable distresses brought upon them
by the violent convulsions and permutations that have
been made in property, f The spirit of proselytism
* Speech of Mr. Camus, published by order of the National Assembly.
f Whether the following description is strictly true I know not ;
but it is what the publishers would have pass for true, in order to
animate others. In a letter from Toul, given in one of their papers, is

370
EDMUND BURKE.
attends this spirit of fanaticism. They have societies
to cabal and correspond at home and abroad for the
propagation of their tenets. The republic of Berne,
one of the happiest, the most prosperous, and the best
governed countries upon earth, is one of the great objects
at the destruction of which they aim. I am told they
have in some measure succeeded in sowing there the
seeds of discontent. They are busy throughout GermanySpain and Italy have not been untried. England is not
left out of the comprehensive scheme of their malignant
charity : and in England we find those who stretch out
their arms to them, who recommend their example from
more than one pulpit, and who choose, in more than one
periodical meeting, publicly to correspond with them, to
applaud them, and to hold them up as objects for imitation ; who receive from them tokens of confraternity,
and standards consecrated amidst their rites and
mysteries ; * who suggest to them leagues of perpetual
amity, at the very time when the power, to which our
constitution has exclusively delegated the federative
capacity of this kingdom, may find it expedient to make
war upon them.
It is not the confiscation of our church property from
this example in France that I dread, though I think this
the following passage concerning the people of that district : * Dans la
Révolution actuelle, ils ont résisté à toutes les séductions du bigotisme,
aux persécutions et aux tracasseries des ennemis de la Révolution. Oubliant leurs plus grands intérêts pour rendre hommage aux vues d'ordre
général qui ont déterminé l'Assemblée Nationale, ils voient, sans se
plaindre, supprimer t cette foule d'établissemens ecclésiastiques par
lesquels ils subsistoient ; et même, en perdant leur siège episcopal
la seule de toutes ses ressources qui pouvoit, ou plutôt qui devoit, en
toute équité, leur être conservée ; condamnés h la plus effrayante misère
sans avoir été ni pu être entendus, ils ne murmurent point, ils restent fidèles
aux principes du plus pur patriotisme ; ils sont encore prêts à verser
leur sang pour le maintien de la constitution, qui Va réduire leur ville
à la plus déplorable nullité' These people are not supposed to have
endured those sufferings and injustices in a struggle for liberty, for the
same account states truly that they had been always free ; their
patience in beggary and ruin, and their suffering, without remonstrance,
the most flagrant injustice, if strictly true, can be nothing but the
effect of this dire fanaticism. A great multitude all over France is in
the same condition and the same temper.

* See the proceedings of the confederation at Nantes,

SELECTIONS.
371
would be no trifling evil. The great source of my solicitude is, lest it should ever be considered in England
as the policy of a state to seek a resource in confiscations
of any kind ; or that any one description of citizens
should be brought to regard any of the others as their
proper prey.* Nations are wading deeper and deeper
into an ocean, of boundless debt. Public debts, which
at first were a security to governments, by interesting
many in the public tranquillity, are likely in their excess
to become the means of their subversion. If governments provide for these debts by heavy impositions, they
perish by becoming odious to the people. If they do not
provide for them, they will be undone by the efforts of
the most dangerous of all parties ; I mean an extensive,
discontented monied interest, injured and not destroyed.
The men who compose this interest look for their security,
in the first instance, to the fidelity of government ; in
the second, to its power. If they find the old governments effete, worn out, and with their springs relaxed,
so as not to be of sufficient vigour for their purposes, they
may seek new ones that shall be possessed of more energy ;
and this energy will be derived, not from an acquisition
of resources, but from a contempt of justice. Revolutions
are favourable to confiscation ; and it is impossible to
know under what obnoxious names the next confiscations
* ' Si plures sunt ii quibus improbe datum est, quam illi quibus injuste ademptum est, idcirco plus etiam valent ? Non enim numéro
hsec judicantur sed pondère. Quam autem habet asquitatem, ut
agrum multis annis, aut etiam sseculs ante possessum, qui nullum
habuit habeat ; qui autem habuit amittat ? Ac, propter hoc injuria
genus. Lacedasmonii Lysandrum Ephorum expulerunt : Agin regem
(quod nunquam antea apud eos acciderat) necaverunt : exque eo
tempore tantae discordias secutas sunt, ut et tyranni existerint, et
optimates exterminarentur, et preclarissime constituta respublica dilaberetur. Nee vero solum ipsa cecidit, sed etiam reliquam Grasciam
evertit contagionibus malorum, quae a Lacedœmoniis profectae manarunt
latius.'—After speaking of the conduct of the model of true patriots,
Aratus of Si'cyon, which was in a very different spirit, he says, ' Sic par
est agere cum civibus ; non ut bis jam vidimus, hastam in foro ponere
et bona civium voci subjicere praeconis. At ille Graecus (id quod fuit
sapientis et praestantis viri) omnibus consulendum esse piitavit : eaque
est surama ratio et sapientia boni civis, commoda civium non divellere,
sed omnes eadem asquitate continere.'—Cic. Off. 1. 2.

372
EDMUND BURKE.
will be authorized. I am sure that the principles predominant in France extend to very many persons, and
descriptions of persons, in all countries, who think their
innoxious indolence their security. This kind of innocence in proprietors may be argued into inutility ; and
inutility into an unfitness for their estates. Many parts
of Europe are in open disorder. In many others there
is a hollow murmuring underground ; a confused movement is felt that threatens a general earthquake in the
political world. Already confederacies and correspondences of the most extraordinary nature are forming, in
several countries.* In such a state of things we ought
to hold ourselves upon our guard. In all mutations (if
mutations must be) the circumstance which will serve
most to blunt the edge of their mischief, and to promote
what good may be in them, is that they should find
us with our minds tenacious of justice, and tender of
property.
But it will be argued that this confiscation in France
ought not to alarm other nations. They say it is not
made from wanton rapacity ; that it is a great measure
of national policy, adopted to remove an extensive, inveterate superstitious mischief. It is with the greatest
difiiculty that I am able to separate policy from justice.
Justice is itself the great standing policy of civil society ;
and any eminent departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy
at all.
When men are encouraged to go into a certain mode
of life by the existing laws, and protected in that mode
as in a lawful occupation—when they have accommodated all their ideas and all their habits to it—^when
the law had long made their adherence to its rules
a ground of reputation, and their departure from them
a ground of disgrace and even of penalty—I am sure
it is unjust in legislature, by an arbitrary act, to offer
* See two books entitled, 'Einige Originalschriften des Illuminate*
nordens.''System und Folgen des Illuminatenordens.'' Miinchen,
1787.

SELECTIONS.
373
a sudden violence to their minds and their feelings;
forcibly to degrade them from their state and condition, and to stigmatize with shame and infamy that
character, and those customs, which before had been
made the measure of their happiness and honour. If
to this be added an expulsion from their habitations,
and a confiscation of all their goods, I am not sagacious
enough to discover how this despotic sport, made of
the feelings, consciences, prejudices, and properties of
men, can be discriminated from the rankest tyranny.
If the injustice of the course pursued in France be
clear, the policy of the measure^ that is the public benefit to be expected from it, ought to be at least as evident,
and at least as important. To a man who acts under
the influence of no passion, who has nothing in view
in his projects but the public good, a great difference
will immediately strike him, between what policy would
dictate on the original introduction of such institutions,
and on a question of their total abolition, where they
have cast their roots wide and deep, and where, by long
habit, things more valuable than themselves are so
adapted to them, and in a manner interwoven with
them, that the one cannot be destroyed without notably
impairing the other. He might be embarrassed if the
case were really such as sophisters represent it in their
paltry style of debating. But in this, as in most questions of state, there is a middle. There is something
else than the mere alternative of absolute destruction,
or unreformed existence. Spartam nactus es / hanc
exorna. This is, in my opinion, a rule of profound
sense, and ought never to depart from the mind of
an honest reformer. I cannot conceive how any man
can have brought himself to that pitch of presumption,
to consider his country as nothing but carte blanche,
upon which he may scribble whatever he pleases. A
man full of warm, speculative benevolence may wish
his society otherwise constituted than he finds it ; but
a good patriot, and a true politician, always considers
how he shall make the most of the existing materials

374
EDMUND BURKE,
of his country, A disposition to preserve, and an ability
to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a
statesman. Everything else is vulgar in the conception,
perilous in the execution.
There are moments in the fortunes of states, when
particular men are called to make improvements by
great mental exertion. In those moments, even when
they seem to enjoy the confidence of their prince and
country, and to be invested with full authority, they
have not always apt instruments. A politician, to do
great things, looks for a power, what our workmen call
a purchase ; and if he finds that power, in politics as in
mechanics, he cannot be at a loss to apply it. In the
monastic institutions, in my opinion, was found a great
power for the mechanism of politic benevolence. There
were revenues with a public direction ; there were men
wholly set apart and dedicated to public purposes,
without any other than public ties and public principles ;
men without the possibility of converting the estate of
the community into a private fortune ; men denied to
self-interests, whose avarice is for some community ;
men to whom personal poverty is honour, and implicit
obedience stands in the place of freedom. In vain
shall a man look to the possibility of making such things
when he wants them. The winds blow as they list.
These institutions are the products of enthusiasm ;
they are the instruments of wisdom. Wisdom cannot
create materials ; they are the gifts of nature or of
chance ; her pride is in the use. The perennial existence of bodies corporate and their fortunes are things
particularly suited to a man who has long views ; who
meditates designs that require time in fashioning, and
which propose duration when they are accomplished.
He is not deserving to rank high, or even to be mentioned in the order of great statesmen, who, having
obtained the command and direction of such a power
as existed in the wealth, the discipline, and the habits
of such corporations, as those which you have rashly
destroyed, cannot find any way of converting it to the

SELECTIONS.
375
great and lasting benefit of his country. On the view
of this subject a thousand usés suggest themselves to
a contriving mind. To destroy any power, growing
wild from the rank productive force of the human
mind, is almost tantamount, in the moral world, to
the destruction of the apparently active properties of
bodies in the material. It would be like the attempt
to destroy (if it were in our competence to destroy)
the expansive force of fixed air in nitre, or the power
of steam, or of electricity, or of magnetism. These
energies always existed in nature, and they were always
discernible. They seemed, some of them unserviceable,
some noxious, some n:> better than a sport to children 3
until contemplative ability, combining with practical
skill, tamed their wild nature, subdued them to use,
and rendered them at once the most powerful and the
most tractable agents, in subservience to the great
views and designs of men. Did fifty thousand persons,
whose mental and whose bodily labour you might direct,
and so many hundred thousand a year of a revenue,
which was neither lazy nor superstitious, appear too
big for your abilities to wield ? Had you no way of
using the men but by converting monks into pensioners ? Had you no way of turning the revenue to
account, but through the improvident resource of a
spendthrift sale ? If you were thus destitute of mental
funds, the proceeding is in its natural course. Your
politicians do not understand their trade 5 and therefore they sell their tools.
But the institutions savour of superstition in their
very principle ; and they nourish it by a permanent
and standing influence. This I do not mean to dispute 1 but this ought not to hinder you from deriving
from superstition itself any resources which may thence
be furnished for the public advantage. You derive
benefits from many dispositions and many passions of
the human mind, which are of as doubtful a colour, in
the moral eye, as superstition itself. It was your business to correct and mitigate everything which was

376
EDMUND BURKE.
noxious in this passion, as in all the passions. But is
superstition the greatest of all possible vices ? In its
possible excess I think it becomes a very great evil.
It is, however, a moral subject ; and of course admits
of all degrees and all modifications. Superstition, is
the religion of feeble minds ; and they must be tolerated
in an, intermixture of it, in, some trifling or some enthusiastic shape or other, else you will deprive weak minds
of a resource found necessary to the strongest. The
body of all true religion consists, to be sure, in obedience
to the will of the Sovereign of the world ; in a confidence
in his declarations ; and in imitation, of his perfections.
The rest is our own. It may be prejudicial to the
great end ; it may be auxiliary. Wise men, who as
such, are not admirers (not admirers at least of the
Munera Terra) are not violently attached to these
things, nor do they violently hate them. Wisdom is
not the most severe corrector of folly. They are the
rival follies, which mutually wage so unrelenting a war ;
and which make so cruel a use of their advantages, as
they can happen to engage the immoderate vulgar, on
the one side or the other, in their quarrels. Prudence
would be neuter ; but if, in the contention between
fond attachment and fierce antipathy concerning things
in their nature not made to produce such heats, a prudent man were obliged to make a choice of what errors
and excesses of enthusiasm he would condemn or bear,
perhaps he would think the superstition which builds,
to be more tolerable than that which demolishes—that
which adorns a country, than that which deforms it—
that which endows, than that which plunders—that
which disposes to mistaken beneficence, than that
which stimulates to real injustice—that which leads
a man, to refuse to himself lawful pleasures, than that
which snatches from others the scanty subsistence of
their self-denial. Such, I think, is very nearly the
state of the question between the ancient founders of
monkish superstition, and the superstition of the pretended philosophers of the hour.

SELECTIONS.
377
For the present I postpone all consideration of the
supposed public profit of the sale which, however,
I conceive to be perfectly delusive. I t shall here
only consider it as a transfer of property. On the
policy of that transfer I shall trouble you with a few
thoughts.
In every prosperous community something more is
produced than goes to the immediate support of the
producer. This surplus forms the income of the landed
capitalist. It will be spent by a proprietor who does
not labour. But this idleness is itself the spring of
labour ; this repose the spur to industry. The only
concern for the state is, that the capital taken in rent
from the land, should be returned again to the industry
from whence it came ; and that its expenditure should
be with the least possible detriment to the morals of
those who expend it, and to those of the people to
whom it is returned.
In all the views of receipt, expenditure, and personal
employment, a sober legislator would carefully compare
the possessor whom he was recommended to expel,
with the stranger who was proposed to fill his place.
Before the inconveniences are incurred which must
attend all violent revolutions in property through
extensive confiscation, we ought to have some rational
assurance that the purchasers of the confiscated property will be in a considerable degree more laborious,
more virtuous, more sober, less disposed to extort an
unreasonable proportion of the gains of the labourer, or
to consume on themselves a larger share than is fit for
the measure of an individual ; or that they should be
qualified to dispense the surplus in a more steady and
equal mode, so as to answer the purposes of a politic
expenditure, than the old possessors, call those possessors bishops, or canons, or commendatory abbots,,
or monks, or what you please. The monks are lazy.
Be it soc Suppose them no otherwise employed than
by singing in the choirD They are as usefully employed
as those who neither sing nor say* As usefully even

378
EDMUND BURKE.
as those who sing upon the stage. They are as usefully
employed as if they worked from dawn to dark in the
innumerable servile, degrading, unseemly, unmanly,
and often most unwholesome and pestiferous occupations, to which by the social economy so many wretches
are inevitably doomed. If it were not generally pernicious to disturb the natural course of things, and to
impede, in any degree, the great wheel of circulation
which is turned by the strangely-directed labour of
these unhappy people, I should be infinitely more
inclined forcibly to rescue them from their miserable
industry, than violently to disturb the tranquil repose
of monastic quietude. Humanity, and perhaps policy,
might better justify me in the one than in the other.
It is a subject on which I have often reflected, and
never reflected without feeling from it. I am sure that
no consideration, except the necessity of submitting to
the yoke of luxury, and the despotism of fancy, who in
their own imperious way will distribute the surplus
product of the soil, can justify the toleration of such
trades and employments in a well-regulated state.
But for this purpose of distribution, it seems to me,
that the idle expenses of monks are quite as well directed
as the idle expenses of us lay-loiterers.
When the advantages of the possession and of the
project are on a par, there is no motive for a change.
But in the present case, perhaps they are not upon
a par, and the difference is in favour of the possession.
It does not appear to me, that the expenses of those
whom you are going to expel do, in fact, take a course
so directly and so generally leading to vitiate, and
degrade, and render miserable those through whom they
pass, as the expenses of those favourites whom you are
intruding into their houses. Why should the expenditure of a great landed property, which is a dispersion
Qf the surplus product of the soil, appear intolerable
to you or to me, when it takes its course through the
accumulation of great libraries, which are the history
of the force and weakness of the human mind ; through

SELECTIONS.
379
great collections of ancient records, medals and coins,
which attest and explain laws and customs ; through
paintings and statues that, by imitating nature, seem
to extend the limits of creation ; through grand monuments of the dead, which continue the regards and
connexions of life beyond the grave ; through collections of the specimens of nature, which become a representative assembly of all the classes and families of the
world, that by disposition facilitate, and, by exciting
curiosity, open the avenues to science ? If, by great
permanent establishments, all these objects of expense
are better secured from the inconstant sport of personal
caprice and personal extravagance, are they worse than
if the same tastes prevailed in scattered individuals ?
Does not the sweat of the mason and carpenter, who
toil in order to partake the sweat of the peasant, flow
as pleasantly and as salubriously, in the construction
and repair of the majestic edifices of religion, as in the
painted booths and sordid sties of vice and luxury ; as
honourably and as profitably in repairing those sacred
works, which grow hoary with innumerable years, as
on the momentary receptacles of transient voluptuousness ; in opera-houses, and brothels, and gaminghouses, and club-houses, and obelisks in the Champ de
Mars ? Is the surplus product of the olive and the vine
worse employed in the frugal sustenance of persons,
whom the fictions of a pious imagination raise to dignity
by construing in the service of God, than in pampering
the innumerable multitude of those who are degraded
by being made useless domestics, subservient to the
pride of man ? Are the decorations of temples an
expenditure less worthy a wise man, than ribbons, and
laces, and national cockades, and petit maisons, and petit
soupers, and all the innumerable fopperies and follies,
in which opulence sports away the burden of its superfluity ?
We tolerate even these ; not from love of them, but
for fear of worse. We tolerate them, because property
and liberty, to a degree, acquire that toleration. But

38o
EDMUND BURKE.
why proscribe the other, and surely, in every point of
view, the more laudable use of estates ? Why, through
the violation of all property, through an outrage of
every principle of liberty, forcibly carry them from the
better to the worse ?
This comparison between the new individuals and the
old corps is made upon a supposition that no reform
could be made in the latter. But, in a question of
reformation, I always consider corporate bodies, whether
sole or consisting of many, to be much more susceptible of a public direction by the power of the state,
in the use of their property, and in the regulation of
modes and habits of life in their members, than private
citizens ever can be, or perhaps ought to be ; and this
seems to me a very material consideration for those
who undertake anything which merits the name of
a politic enterprise.—So far as to the estates of monasteries.
With regard to the estates possessed by bishops, and
canons, and commendatory abbots, I cannot find out
for what reason some landed estates may not be held
otherwise than by inheritance. Can any philosophic
spoiler undertake to demonstrate the positive or the
comparative evil of having a certain, and that too a
large portion of landed property, passing in succession
through persons whose title to it is, always in theory,
and often in fact, an eminent degree of piety, morals,
and learning ; a property, which, by its destination,
in their turn, and on the score of merit, gives to the
noblest families renovation and support, to the lowest
the means of dignity and elevation ; a property, the
tenure of which is the performance of some duty,
(whatever value you may choose to set upon that duty,)
and the character of whose proprietors demands, at
least, an exterior decorum, and gravity of manners ;
who are to exercise a generous but temperate hospitality,
part of whose income they are to consider as a trust for
charity; and who, even when they fail in their trust,
when they slide from their character, and degenerate

SELECTIONS.
381
into a mere common secular nobleman or gentleman,
are in no respect worse than those who may succeed
them in their forfeited possessions ? Is it better that
estates should be held by those who have no duty than
by those who have one ?—by those whose character
and destination point to virtues than by those who
have no rule and direction in the expenditure of their
estates but their own will and appetite ? Nor are
these estates held together in the character or with the
evils supposed inherent in mortmain. They pass from
hand to hand with a more rapid circulation than any
other. No excess is good ; and therefore too great a
proportion of landed property may be held officially
for life : but it does not seem to me of material injury
to any commonwealth, that there should exist some
estates that have a chance of being acquired by other
means than the previous acquisition of money.
This letter is grown to a great length, though it is
indeed short with regard to the infinite extent of the
subject. Various avocations have from time to time
called my mind from the subject. I was not sorry to
give myself leisure to observe whether, in the proceedings of the National Assembly, I might not find reasons
to change or to qualify some of my first sentiments.
Everything has confirmed me more strongly in my first
opinions. It was my original purpose to take a view
of the principles of the National Assembly with regard
to the great and fundamental establishments ; and to
compare the whole of what you have substituted in the
place of what you have destroyed, with the several
members of our British constitution. But this plan is
of greater extent than at first I computed, and I find
that you have little desire to take the advantage of any
examples. At present I must content myself with
some remarks upon your establishments ; reserving
for another time what I proposed to say concerning the
spirit of our British monarchy, aristocracy, and democ^
racy, as practically they exist.
I have taken a view of what has been done by the

382
EDMUND BURKE.
governing power in France. I have certainly spoke of
it with freedom. Those whose principle it is to despise
the ancient, permanent sense of mankind, and to set up
a scheme of society on new principles, must naturally
expect that such of us who think better of the judgment
of the human race than of theirs, should consider both
them and their devices as men and schemes upon their
trial. They must take it for granted that we attend
much to their reason, but not at all to their authority.
They have not one of the great influencing prejudices of mankind in their favour. They avow their
hostility to opinion. Of course they must expect no
support from that influence, which, with every other
authority, they have deposed from the seat of its
jurisdiction.
I can never consider this assembly as anything else
than a voluntary association of men, who have availed
themselves of circumstances to seize upon the power
of the state. They have not the sanction and authority
of the character under which they first met. They have
assumed another of a very different nature ; and have
completely altered and inverted all the relations in
which they originally stood. They do not hold the
authority they exercise under any constitutional law
of the state. They have departed from the instructions
of the people by whom they were sent * which instructions, as the assembly did not act in virtue of any
ancient usage or settled law, were the sole source of
their authority. The most considerable of their acts
have not been done by great majorities ; and in this
sort of near divisions, which carry only the constructive
authority of the whole, strangers will consider reasons
as well as resolutions.
If they had set up this new, experimental government, as a necessary substitute for an expelled tyranny,
mankind would anticipate the time of prescription,
which, through long usage, mellows into legality governments that were violent in their commencement. All
those who have affections which lead them to the

SELECTIONS.
383
conservation of civil order would recognize, even in
its cradle, the child as legitimate, which has been produced from those principles of cogent expediency to
which all just governments owe their birth, and on
which they justify their continuance. But they will
be late and reluctant in giving any sort of countenance
to the operations of a power, which has derived its
birth from no law and no necessity ; but which, on the
contrary, has had its origin in those vices and sinister
practices by which the social union is often disturbed
and sometimes destroyed. This assembly has hardly
a year's prescription. We have their own word for it
that they have made a revolution. To make a revolution is a measure which prima fronte, requires an apology.
To make a revolution is to subvert the ancient state of
our country ; and no common reasons are called for
to justify so violent a proceeding. The sense of mankind authorizes us to examine into the mode of acquiring new power, and to criticise on the use that is made
of it, with less awe and reverence than that which
is usually conceded to a settled and recognized
authority.
In obtaining and securing their power, the assembly
proceeds upon principles the most opposite to those
which appear to direct them in the use of it. An
observation on this difference will let us into the true
spirit of their conduct. Everything which they have
done, or continue to do, in order to obtain and keep
their power, is by the most common arts. They proceed exactly as their ancestors of ambition have done
before them.—Trace them through all their artifices,
frauds, and violences, you can find nothing at all that
is new. They follow precedents and examples with
the punctilious exactness of a pleader. They never
depart an iota from the authentic formulas of tyranny
and usurpation. But in all the regulations relative to
the public good, the spirit has been the very reverse of
this. There they commit the whole to the mercy of
untried speculations ; they abandon the dearest interests

384
EDMUND BURKE.
of the public to those loose theories, to which none of
them would choose to trust the slightest of his private
concerns. They make this difference, because in their
desire of obtaining and securing power they are thoroughly in earnest ; there they travel in the beaten road.
The public interests, because about them they have no
real solicitude, they abandon wholly to chance ; I say
to chance, because their schemes have nothing in experience to prove their tendency beneficial.
We must always see with a pity not unmixed with
respect, the errors of those who are timid and doubtful
of themselves with regard to points wherein the happiness of mankind is concerned. But in these gentlemen
there is nothing of the tender, parental solicitude,
which fears to cut up the infant for the ^ake of an experiment. In the vastness of their promises, and the
confidence of their predictions, they far out-do all the
boasting of empirics. The arrogance of their pretensions,
in a manner provokes and challenges us to an inquiry
into their foundation.
I am convinced that there are men of considerable
parts among the popular leaders in the National Assemoly. Some of them display eloquence in their speeches
and their writings. This cannot be without powerful
and cultivated talents. But eloquence may exist
without a proportionable degree of wisdom. When
I speak of ability, I am obliged to distinguish. What
they have done towards the support of their system
bespeaks no ordinary men. In the system itself, taken
as the scheme of a republic constructed for procuring
the prosperity and security of the citizen, and for promoting the strength and grandeur of the state, I confess myself unable to find out anything which displays,
iii a single instance, the work of a comprehensive and
disposing mind, or even the provisions of a vulgar
prudence. Their purpose everywhere seems to have
been to evade and slip aside from difficulty. This it
has been the glory of the great masters in all the arts
to confront and to overcome ; and when they had over-

SELECTIONS.
385
come the first difficulty, to turn it into an instrument
for new conquests over new difficulties ; thus to enable
them to extend the empire of their science ; and even to
push forward beyond the reach of their original thoughts,
the landmarks of the human understanding itself. Difficulty is a severe instructor, set over us by the supreme
ordinance of a parental guardian and legislator, who
knows us better than we know ourselves, as he loves
us better too. Pater ipse colendi haud facilem esse
viam voluit. He that wrestles with us strengthens
our nerves, and sharpens our skill Our antagonist
is our helper. This amicable conflict with difficulty
obliges us to an intimate acquaintance with our
object, ; and compels us to consider it in all its relations. It will not suffer us to be superficial. It is the
want of nerves of understanding for such a task, it is
the degenerate fondness for tricking short-cuts, and
little fallacious facilities, that has in so many parts of
the world created governments with arbitrary powers.
They have created the late arbitrary monarchy of
France. They have created the arbitrary republic of
Paris. With them defects in wisdom are to be supplied
by the plentitude of force. They get nothing by it.
Commencing their labours on a principle of sloth, they
have the common fortune of slothful men. The difficulties, which they rather had eluded than escaped,
meet them again in their course ; they multiply
and thicken on them ; they are involved, through
a labyrinth of confused detail, in an industry without limit, and without direction ; and, in conclusion,
the whole of their work becomes feeble, vicious, and
insecure.
It is this inability to wrestle with difficulty which
has obliged the arbitrary assembly of France to commence their schemes of reform with abolition and total
destruction.* But is it in destroying and pulling down
* À leading member of the assembly, M. Rabaud de St. Etienne,
has expressed the principle of all their proceedings as clearly as possible
—Nothing can be more simple :-—* Tous les établis semons en France

13

386
EDMUND BURKE.
that skill is displayed ? Your mob can do this as well
at least as your assemblies. The shallowest understanding, the rudest hand, is more than equal to that
task. Rage and frenzy will pull down more in half an
hour than prudence, deliberation, and foresight can
build up in a hundred years. The errors and defects
of old establishments are visible and palpable. It
calls for little ability to point them out ; and, where
absolute power is given, it requires but a word wholly
to abolish the vice and the establishment together.
The same lazy but restless disposition, which loves sloth
and hates quiet, directs these politicians, when they
come to work for supplying the place of what they
have destroyed. To make everything the reverse of
what they have seen is quite as easy as to destroy. No
difficulties occur in what has never been tried. Criticism
is almost baffled in discovering the defects of what has
not existed ; and eager enthusiasm and cheating hope
have all the wide field of imagination, in which they
may expatiate with little or no opposition.
At once to preserve and to reform is quite another
thing. When the useful parts of an old establishment
are kept, and what is superadded is to be fitted to what
is retained, a vigorous mind, steady, persevering attention, various powers of comparison and combination,
and the resources of an understanding fruitful in expedients are to be exercised ; they are to be exercised
in a continued conflict with the combined force of
opposite vices, with the obstinacy that rejects all
improvement, and the levity that is fatigued and disgusted with everything of which it is in possession.
couronnent le malheur du peuple: pour le rendre heureux il faut le renouveler ; changer ses idées ; changer ses loix ; changer ses mœurs ; . . .
changer les hommes ; changer les choses ; changer les mots . . . tout
détruire ; oui, tout détruire ; puisque tout est à recréer.' This gentleman
was chosen president in an assembly not sitting at Quinze-vingt, or the
Petits Maisons ; and composed of persons giving themselves out to
be rational beings ; but neither his ideas, language, or conduct, differ
in the smallest degree from the discourses, opinions, and actions of
those within and without the assembly, who direct the operations of
the machine now at work in France.

SELECTIONS.
387
But you may object—' A process of this kind is slow,
It is not fit for an assembly, which glories in performing
in a few months the work of ages. Such a mode of
reforming, possibly, might take up many years/
Without question it might ; and it ought. It is one
of the excellences of a method in which time is amongst
the assistants, that its operation is slow, and in some
cases almost imperceptible. If circumspection and
caution are a part of wisdom, when we work only upon
inanimate matter, surely they become a part of duty
too, when the subject of our demolition and construction is not brick and timber, but sentient beings, by the
sudden alteration of whose state, condition, and habits,
multitudes may be rendered miserable. But it seems
as if it were the prevalent opinion in Paris that an
unfeeling heart and an undoubting confidence are the
sole qualifications for a perfect legislator. Far different
are my ideas of that high office. The true lawgiver
ought to have a heart full of sensibility. He ought to
love and respect his kind, and to fear'himself. It may
be allowed to his temperament to catch his ultimate
object with an intuitive glance ; but his movements
towards it ought to be deliberate. Political arrangement, as it is a work for social ends, is to be only wrought
by social means. There mind must conspire with mind.
Time is required to produce that union of minds which
alone can produce all the good we aim at. Our patience
will achieve more than our force. If I might venture
to appeal to what is so much out of fashion in Paris,
I mean to experience, I should tell you that in my
course I have known and, according to my measure,
have co-operated with great men ; and I have never
yet seen any plan which has not been mended by the
observations of those who were much inferior in understanding to the person who took the lead in the business. By a slow but well-sustained progress, the effect
of each step is watched ; the good or ill success of the
first gives light to us in the second ; and so, from light
to light, we are conducted with safety through the

388
EDMUND BURKE.
whole series. We see that the parts of the system do
not clash. The evils latent in the most promising
contrivances are provided for as they arise. One advantage is as little as possible sacrificed to another. We
compensate, we reconcile, we balance. We are enabled
to unite into a consistent whole the various anomalies
and contending principles that are found in the minds
and affairs of men. From hence arises, not an excellence in simplicity, but, one far superior, an excellence
in composition. Where the great interests of mankind are concerned through a long succession of generations, that succession ought to be admitted into some
share in the councils which are so deeply to affect them.
If justice requires this, the work itself requires the aid
of more minds than one age can furnish. It is from
this view of things that the best legislators have been
often satisfied with the establishment of some sure,
solid, and ruling principle in government ; a power like
that which some of the philosophers have called a plastic
nature ; and, having fixed the principle, they have left
it afterwards to its own operation.
To proceed in this manner, that is, to proceed with
a presiding principle, and a prolific energy, is with me
the criterion of profound wisdom. What your politicians think the marks of a bold, hardy genius, are
only proofs of a deplorable want of ability. By their
violent haste, and their defiance of the process of nature,
they are delivered over blindly to every projector and
adventurer, to every alchymist and empiric. They despair of turning to account anything that is common.
Diet is nothing in their system of remedy. The worst
of it is that this their despair of curing common distempers by regular methods, arises not only from defect
of comprehension, but, I fear, from some malignity of
disposition. Your legislators seem to have taken their
opinions of all professions, ranks, and offices, from the
declamations and buffooneries of satirists ; who would
themselves be astonished if they were held to the letter
of their own descriptions. By listening only to these,

SELECTIONS.
389
your leaders regard all things only on the side of their
vices and faults, and view those vices and faults under
every colour of exaggeration. It is undoubtedly true,
though it may seem paradoxical ; but in general, those
who are habitually employed in finding and displaying
faults, are unqualified for the work of reformation :
because their minds are not only unfurnished with patterns of the fair and good, but by habit they come to
take no delight in the contemplation of those things.
By hating vices too much, they come to love men too
little. It is therefore not wonderful that they should
be indisposed and unable to serve them. From hence
arises the complexional disposition of some of your
guides to pull everything in pieces. At this malicious
game they display the whole of their quadrimanous
activity. As to the rest, the paradoxes of eloquent
writers, brought forth purely as a sport of fancy; to try
their talents, to rouse attention, and excite surprise,
are taken up by these gentleman, not in the spirit of
the original authors, as means of cultivating their taste
and improving their style. These paradoxes become
with them serious grounds of action, upon which they
proceed in regulating the most important concerns of
the state. Cicero ludicrously describes Cato as endeavouring to act, in the commonwealth, upon the school
paradoxes, which exercised the wits of the junior
students in the Stoic philosophy. If this was true of
Cato, these gentlemen copy after him in the manner of
some persons who lived about his time—pede nudo
Catonem. Mr. Hume told me that he had from Rousseau himself the secret of his principles of composition.
That acute, though eccentric observer, had perceived,
that to strike and interest the public, the marvellous
must be produced ; that the marvellous of the heathen
mythology had long since lost its effects ; that giants,
magicians, fairies, and heroes of romance which succeeded, had exhausted the portion of credulity which
belonged to their age ; that now nothing was left to a
writer but that species of the marvellous, which might

390
EDMUND BURKE.
still be produced, and with as great an effect as ever,
though in another way ; that, is, the marvellous in life,
in manners, in characters, and in extraordinary situations, giving rise to new and unlooked for strokes in
politics and morals. I believe that, were Rousseau
alive and in one of his lucid intervals, he would be
shocked at the practical frenzy of his scholars, who in
their paradoxes are servile imitators ; and even in their
incredulity discover an implicit faith.
Men who undertake considerable things, even in
a regular way, ought to give us ground to presume
ability. But the physician of the state, who, not
satisfied with the cure of distempers, undertakes to
regenerate constitutions, ought to show uncommon
powers. Some very unusual appearances of wisdom
ought to display themselves on the face of the designs
of those, who appeal to no practice and who copy after
no model. Has any such been manifested ? I shall
take a view (it shall for the subject be a very short one)
of what the assembly has done with regard, first, to
the constitution of the legislature; in the next place,
to that of the executive power ; then to that of the
judicature; afterwards to the model of the army; and
conclude with the system of finance ; to see whether
we can discover in any part of their schemes the portentous ability which may justify these bold undertakers in the superiority which they assume over
mankind.
It is in the model of the sovereign and presiding part
of this new republic that we should expect their grand
display. Here they were to prove their title to their
proud demands. For the plan itself at large, and for
the reasons on which it is grounded, I refer to the journals of the assembly of the 29th of September, 1789,
and to the subsequent proceedings which have made
any alterations in the plan. So far as in a matter
somewhat confused I can see light, the system remains
substantially as it has been originally framed. My few
remarks will be such as regard its spirit, its tendency,

SELECTIONS.
391
and its fitness for framing a popular commonwealth,
which they profess theirs to be, suited to the ends for
which any commonwealth and particularly such a
commonwealth, is made. At the same time I mean
to consider its consistency with itself and its own
principles.
Old establishments are tried by their effects. If the
people are happy, united, wealthy, and powerful, we
presume the rest. We conclude that to be good from
whence good is derived. In old establishments various
correctives have been found for their aberrations from
theory. Indeed they are the results of various necessities and expediencies. They are not often constructed
after any theory ; theories are rather drawn from them.
In them we often see the end best obtained where the
means seem not perfectly reconcilable to what we may
fancy was the original scheme. The means taught by
experience may be better suited to political ends than
those contrived in the original project. They again
re-act upon the primitive constitution, and sometimes
improve the design itself, from which they seem to have
departed. I think all this might be curiously exemplified in the British constitution. At worst, the errors
and deviations of every kind in reckoning are found
and computed, and the ship proceeds in her course.
This is the case of old establishments ; but in a new
and merely theoretic system, it is expected that every
contrivance shall appear, on the face of it, to answer
its .ends ; especially where the projectors are no way
embarrassed with an endeavour to accommodate the
new building to an old one, either in the walls or on the
foundations.
The French builders, clearing away as mere rubbish
whatever they found, and, like their ornamental gardeners, forming everything into an exact level, propose
to rest the whole local and general legislature on three
bases of three different kinds ; one geometrical, one
arithmetical, and the third financial ; the first of which
they call the basis of territory; the second, the basis

392
EDMUND BURKE.
of population; and the third, the basis of contribution.
For the accomplishment of the first of these purposes,
they divide the area of their country into eighty-three
pieces, regularly square, of eighteen leagues by eighteen.
These large divisions are called Departments. These
they portion, proceeding by square measurement, into
seventeen hundred and twenty districts, called Communes. These again they subdivide, still proceeding
by square measurement, into smaller districts, called
Cantons, making in all 6,400.
At first view this geometrical basis of theirs presents
not much to admire or to blame. It calls for no great
legislative talents. Nothing more than an accurate
land surveyor, with his chain, sight, and theodolite, is
requisite for such a plan, as this. In, the old divisions
of the country, various accidents at various times, and
the ebb and flow of various properties and jurisdictions,
settled their bounds. These bounds were not made
upon any fixed system undoubtedly. They were subject
to some inconveniences ; but they were inconveniences
for which use had found remedies, and habit had supplied accommodation and patience. In this new pavement of square within square, and this organization,
and semi-organization made on the system of Empedocles and Buffon, and not upon any politic principle,
i;t is impossible that innumerable local inconveniences,
to which men are not habituated, must not arise. But
these I pass over, because it requires an accurate
knowledge of the country, which I do not possess,- to
specify them.
When these state surveyors came to take a view of
their work of measurement, they soon found that in
politics the most fallacious of all things was geometrical
demonstration. They had then recourse to another
basis (or rather buttress) to support the building, which
tottered on that false foundation. It was evident that
the goodness of the soil, the number of the people,
their wealth, and the largeness of their contribution,
made such infinite variations between square and

SELECTIONS.
393
square, as to render mensuration a ridiculous standard
of power in the commonwealth, and equality in geometry the most unequal of all measures in the distribution of men. However, they could not give it up. But
dividing their political and civil representation into
three parts, they allotted one of those parts to the
square measurement, without a single fact or calculation to ascertain whether this territorial proportion of
representation was fairly assigned, and ought upon any
principle really to be a third. Having, however, given
to geometry this portion (of a third for her dower) out
of compliment, I suppose, to that sublime science, they
left the other two to be scuffled for between the other
parts, population and contribution.
When they came to provide for population, they were
not able to proceed quite so smoothly as they had done
in the field of their geometry. Here their arithmetic
came to bear upon their juridical metaphysics. Had
they stuck to their metaphysic principles, the arithmetical process would be simple indeed. Men with
them are strictly equal, and are entitled to equal rights
in their own government. Each head, on this system,
would have its vote, and every man would vote directly
for the person who was to represent him in the legislature. ' But soft—by regular degrees, not yet/ This
metaphysic principle, to which law, custom, usage,
policy, reason, were to yield, is to yield itself to their
pleasure. There must be many degrees, and some
stages, before the representative can come in contact
with his constituent. Indeed, as we shall soon see,
these two persons are to have no sort of communion
with each other. First, the voters in the Canton, who
compose what they call primary assemblies, are to have
a qualification. What ! a qualification on the indefeasible rights of men ? Yes ; but it shall be a very
small qualification. Our injustice shall be very little
oppressive ; only the local valuation of three days'
labour paid to the public. Why, this is not much, I
readily admit, for anything but the utter subversion

394
EDMUND BURKE.
of your equalizing principle. As a qualification it
might as well he let alone ; for it answers no one purpose for which qualifications are established ; and, on
your ideas, it excludes from a vote the man of all others
whose natural equality stands the most in need of protection and defence : I mean the man who has nothing
else but his natural equality to guard him. You order
him to buy the right, which you before told him nature
had given to him gratuitously at his birth, and of which
no authority on earth could lawfully deprive him.
With regard to the person who cannot come up to your
market, a tyrannous aristocracy, as against him, is
established at the very outset, by you who pretend to
be his sworn foe.
The gradation proceeds. These primary assemblies
of the Canton elect deputies to the Commune ; one for
every two hundred qualified inhabitants. Here is the
first medium put between the primary elector and the
representative legislator ; and here a new turnpike is
fixed for taxing the rights of men with a second qualification : for none can be elected into the Commune
who does not pay the amount of ten days' labour. Nor
have we yet done. There is still to be another gradation.* These Communes, chosen by the Canton, choose
to the Department ; and the deputies of the Department
choose their deputies to the National Assembly. Here
is a third barrier of a senseless qualification. Every
deputy to the National Assembly must pay, in direct
contribution, to the value of a mark of silver. Of all
these qualifying barriers We must think alike ; that
they are impotent to secure independence ; strong only
to destroy the rights of men.
* The assembly, in executing the plan of their committee, made
some alterations. They have struck out one stage in these gradations ;
this removes a part of the objection ; but the main objection, namely,
that in their scheme the first constituent voter has no connexion with
the representative legislator, remains in all its force. There are other
alterations, some possibly for the better, some certainly for the worse :
but to the author the merit or demerit of these smaller alterations
appears to be of no moment, where the scheme itself is fundamentally
vicious and absurd,

SELECTIONS.
395
In all this process, which in its fundamental elements
affects to consider only population upon a principle of
natural right, there is a manifest attention to property ;
which, however just and reasonable on other schemes,
is on theirs perfectly unsupportable.
When they come to their third basis, that of Contribution, we find that they have more completely lost
sight of the rights of men. This last basis rests entirely
on property. A principle totally different from the
equality of men, and utterly irreconcilable to it, is
thereby admitted ; but no sooner is this principle
admitted, than (as usual) it is subverted ; and it is not
subverted (as we shall presently see) to approximate
the inequality of riches to the level of nature. The
additional share in the third portion of representation
(a portion reserved exclusively for the higher contribution) is made to regard the district only, and not the
individuals in it who pay. It is easy to perceive, by
the course of their reasonings, how much they were
embarrassed by their contradictory ideas of the rights
of men and the privileges of riches. The committee of
constitution do as good as admit that they are wholly
irreconcilable. ' The relation with regard to -the contributions, is without doubt null (say they) when the
question is on the balance of the political rights as
between individual and individual ; without which
personal equality would be destroyed, and an aristocracy
of the rich would be established. But this inconvenience
entirely disappears when the proportional relation of
the contribution is only considered in the great masses,
and is solely between province and province ; it serves
in that case only to form a just reciprocal proportion
between the cities, without affecting the personal rights
of the citizens/
Here the principle of contribution, as taken between
man and man, is reprobated as null,, and destructive to
equality ; and as pernicious too ; because it leads to
the establishment of an aristocracy of the rich. However, it must not be abandoned. And the way of get-

396
EDMUND BURKE.
ting rid of the difficulty is to establish the inequality
as between department and department, leaving all
the individuals in each department upon an exact par.
Observe that this parity between individuals had been
before destroyed, when the qualifications within the
departments were settled ; nor does it seem a matter
of great importance whether the equality of men be
injured by masses or individually. An individual is
not of the same importance in a mass represented by
a few, as in a mass represented by many. It would
be too much to tell a man, jealous of his equality, that
the elector has the same franchise who votes for three
members as he who votes for ten.
Now take it in the other point of view, and let us
suppose their principle of representation according to
contribution, that is according to riches, to be well
imagined, and to be a necessary basis for their republic.
In this their third basis they assume that riches ought
to be respected, and that justice and policy require that
they should entitle men, in some mode or other, to
a larger share in the administration of public affairs ;
it is now to be seen how the assembly provides for the
pre-eminence, or even for the security of the rich, by
conferring, in virtue of their opulence, that larger measure of power to their district which is denied to them
personally. I readily admit (indeed I should lay it
down as a fundamental principle) that in a republican
government, which has a democratic basis, the rich do
require an additional security above what is necessary
to them in monarchies. They are subject to envy
and through envy to oppression. On the present scheme
it is impossible to divine what advantage they derive
from the aristocratic preference upon which the unequal
representation of the masses is founded.
The rich
cannot feel it, either as a support to dignity, or as
security to fortune : for the aristocratic mass is generated from purely democratic principles ; and the preference given to it in the general representation has no
sort of reference to, or connexion with, the persons,

SELECTIONS.
397
upon account of whose property this superiority of the
mass is established. If the contrivers of this scheme
meant any sort of favour to the rich, in consequence
of their contribution, they ought to have conferred the
privilege either on the individual rich, or on some class
formed of rich persons (as historians represent Servius
Tullius to have done in the early constitution of Rome) •
because the contest between the rich and the poor is
not a struggle between corporation and corporation
but a contest between men and men ; a competition
not between districts, but between descriptions. It
would answer its purpose better if the scheme were
inverted ; that the votes of the masses were rendered
equal ; and that the votes within each mass were proportioned to property.
Let us suppose one man in a district (it is an easy
supposition) to contribute as much as a hundred of his
neighbours. Against these he has but one vote. If
there were but one representative for the mass, his poor
neighbours would outvote him by a hundred to one
for that single representative. Bad enough. But
amends are to be made him. How ? The district, in
virtue of his wealth, is to choose, say ten members
instead of one : that is to say, by paying a very large
contribution he has the happiness of being outvoted,
a hundred to one, by the poor, for ten representatives,
instead of being outvoted exactly in the same proportion for a single member. In truth, instead of benefiting by this superior quantity of representation, the
rich man is subjected to an additional hardship. The
increase of representation within his province sets up
nine persons more, and as many more than nine as
there may be democratic candidates, to cabal and
intrigue, and to flatter the people at his expense and
to his oppression. An interest is by this means held
out to multitudes of the inferior sort, in obtaining
a salary of eighteen livres a day (to them a vast object)
besides the pleasure of a residence in Paris, and their
share in the government of the kingdom. The more the

398
EDMUND BURKE.
objects of ambition are multiplied and become democratic, just in that proportion the rich are endangered.
Thus it must fare between the poor and the rich in
the province deemed aristocratic, which in its internal
relation is the very reverse of that character. In its
external relation, that is, in its relation to the other
provinces, I cannot see how the unequal representation,
which is given to masses on account of wealth, becomes
the means of preserving the equipoise and the tranquillity of the commonwealth. For if it be one of the
objects to secure the weak from being crushed by the
strong (as in all society undoubtedly it is) how are the
smaller and poorer of these masses to be saved from
the tyranny of the more wealthy ? Is it by adding to
the wealthy further and more systematical means of
oppressing them ? When we come to a balance of
representation, between corporate bodies, provincial
interests, emulations, and jealousies are full as likely
to arise among them as among individuals ; and thendivisions are likely to produce a much hotter spirit of
dissension, and something leading much more nearly
to a war.
I see that these aristocratic masses are made upon
what is called the principle of direct contribution.
Nothing can be a more unequal standard than this.
The indirect contribution, that which arises from
duties on consumption, is in truth a better standard,
and follows and discovers wealth more naturally than
this of direct contribution. It is difficult, indeed, to
fix a standard of local preference on account of the
one, or of the other, or of both, because some provinces
may pay the more of either or of both, on account of
causes not intrinsic, but originating from those very
districts over whom they have obtained a preference
in consequence of their ostensible contribution. If
the masses were independent, sovereign bodies, who
were to provide for a federative treasury by distinct
contingents, and that the revenue had not (as it has)
many impositions running through the whole, which

SELECTIONS.
399
affect men individually, and not corporately, and
which, by their nature, confound all territorial limits,
something might be said for the basis of contribution
as founded on masses. But of all things, this representation, to be measured by contribution, is the most
difficult to settle upon principles of equity in the country,which considers its districts as members of a whole.
For a great city, such as Bordeaux, or Paris, appears
to pay a vast body of duties, almost out of all assignable
proportion to other places, and its mass is considered
accordingly. But are these cities the true contributors
in that proportion? No. The consumers of the commodities imported into Bordeaux, who are scattered
through all France, pay the import duties of Bordeaux.
The- produce of the vintage in Guienne and Languedoc
give to that city the means of its contribution growing
out of an export commerce. The landholders who
spend their estates in Paris, and are thereby the creators
of that city, contribute for Paris from the provinces
out of which their revenues arise. Very nearly the
same arguments will apply to the representative share
given on account of direct contribution : because the
direct contribution must be assessed on wealth real or
presumed ; and that local wealth will itself arise from
causes not local and which therefore in equity ought
not to produce a local preference.
It is very remarkable that in this fundamental
regulation which settles the representation of the mass
upon the direct contribution, they have not yet settled
how that direct contribution shall be laid, and how
apportioned. Perhaps there is some latent policy
towards the continuance of the present assembly in
this strange procedure. However, until they do this,
they can have no certain constitution. It must depend
at last upon the system of taxation, and must vary
with every variation in that system. As they have
contrived matters, their taxation does not so much
depend on their constitution, as their constitution on
their taxation. This must introduce great confusion

4oo
EDMUND BURKE.
among the masses ; as the variable qualification for votes
within the district must, if ever real contested elections
take place, cause infinite internal controversies.
To compare together the three bases, not on their
political reason, but on the ideas on which the assembly
works, and to try its consistency with itself, we cannot
avoid observing, that the principle which the committee
call the basis of population, does not begin to operate
from the same point with the two other principles called
the bases of territory and of contribution, which are both
of an aristocratic nature. The consequence is that,
where all three begin to operate together, there is the
most absurd inequality produced by the operation of
the former on the two latter principles. Every canton
contains four square leagues, and is estimated to contain, on the average, 4,000 inhabitants, of 680 voters
in the primary assemblies, which vary in numbers with
the population of the canton, and send one deputy to
the commune for every 200 voters. Nine cantons make
a commune.
Now let us take a canton containing a seaport town
of trade, or a great manufacturing town. Let us suppose
the population of this canton to be 12,700 inhabitants,
or 2,193 voters, forming three primary assemblies, and
sending ten deputies to the commune.
Oppose to this one canton two others of the remaining
eight in the same commune. These we may suppose
to have their fair population of 4,000 inhabitants, and
680 voters each, or 8,000 inhabitants and 1,360 voters,
both together. These will form only two primary
assemblies, and send only six deputies to the commune.
When the assembly of the commune comes to vote
on the basis of territory, which principle is first admitted
to operate in that assembly, the single canton which
has half the territory of the other two, will have ten
voices to six in the election of three deputies to the
assembly of the department, chosen on the express
ground of a representation of territory. This inequality,
striking as it is, will be yet highly aggravated, if we

SELECTIONS.
401
suppose, as we fairly may, the several other cantons of
the commune to fall proportionably short of the average
population; as much as the principal canton exceeds it.
Now as to the basis of contribution, which also is
a principle admitted first to operate in the assembly
of the commune. Let us again take one canton, such
as is stated above. If the whole of the direct contributions paid by a great trading or manufacturing town
be divided equally among the inhabitants, each individual will be found to pay much more than an individual
living in the country according to the same average.
The whole paid by the inhabitants of the former will
be more than the whole paid by the inhabitants of the
latter—we may fairly assume one-third more. Then
the 12,700 inhabitants, or 2,193 voters of the canton
will pay as much as 19,050 inhabitants, or 3,289 voters
of the other cantons, which are nearly the estimated
proportion of inhabitants and voters of five other
cantons. Now the 2,193 votes will, as I before said,
send only ten deputies to the assembly ; the 3,289
voters will send sixteen. Thus, for an equal share in
the contribution of the whole commune, there will be
a difference of sixteen voices to ten in voting for deputies
to be chosen on the principle of representing the general
contribution of the whole commune.
By the same mode of computation we shall find
15,875 inhabitants, or 2,741 voters of the other cantons,
who pay one-sixth LESS to the contribution^of the whole
commune, will have three voices MORE than the 12,700
inhabitants, or 2,193 voters of the one canton,
Such is the fantastical and unjust inequality between
mass and mass, in this curious repartition of the rights
of representation arising out of territory and contribution. The qualifications which these confer are in
truth negative qualifications, [ that give a right in an
inverse proportion to the possession of them.
In this whole contrivance of the three bases, consider
it in any light you please, I do not see a variety of
objects reconciled in one consistent whole, but several

402
EDMUND BURKE,
contradictory principles reluctantly and irreconcilably
brought and held together by your philosophers, like
wild beasts shut up in a cage, to claw and bite each
other to their mutual destruction.
I am afraid I have gone too far into their way of
considering the formation of a constitution. They
have much, but bad, metaphysics ; much, but bad,
geometry ; much, but false, proportionate arithmetic ;
but if it were all as exact as metaphysics, geometry,
and arithmetic ought to be, and if their schemes were
perfectly consistent in all their parts, it would make
only a more fair and sightly vision. Is it remarkable,
that, in a great arrangement of mankind, not one
reference whatsoever is to be found to anything moral
or anything politic ; nothing that relates to the concerns, the actions, the passions, the interests of men.
Hominem non sapiunt.
You see I only consider this constitution as electoral,
and leading by steps to the National Assembly. I do
not enter into the internal government of the departments, and their genealogy through the communes and
cantons. These local governments are, in the original
plan, to be as nearly as possible composed in the same
manner and on the same principles with the elective
assemblies. They are each of them bodies perfectly
compact and rounded in themselves.
You cannot but perceive in this scheme that it has
a direct and immediate tendency to sever France into
a variety of republics, and to render them totally independent of each other, without any direct constitutional
means of coherence, connexion, or subordination, except
what may be derived from their acquiescence in the
determinations of the general congress of the ambassadors from each independent republic. Such in reality
is the National Assembly, and such governments I
admit do exist in the world, though in forms infinitely
more suitable to the local and habitual circumstances
of their people. But such associations, rather than
bodies politic, have generally been the effect of neces-

SELECTIONS.
403
sity, not choice ; and I believe the present French
power is the very first body of citizens who, having
obtained full authority to do with their country what
they pleased, have chosen to dissever it in this barbarous
manner.
It is impossible not to observe that, in the spirit of
this geometrical distribution and arithmetical arrangement, these pretended citizens treat France exactly
like a country of conquest. Acting as conquerors, they
have imitated the policy of the harshest of t h a t harsh
race. The policy of such barbarous victors, who contemn a subdued people and insult their feelings, has
ever been, as much as in them lay, to destroy all
vestiges of the ancient country, in religion, in polity,
in laws and in manners ; to confound all territorial
limits ; to produce a general poverty ; to put up their
properties to auction ; to crush their princes, nobles,
and pontiffs ; to lay low everything which had lifted
its head above the level, or which could serve to combine
or rally, in their distresses, the disbanded people, under
the standard of old opinion. They have made France
free in the manner in which those sincere friends to the
rights of mankind, the Romans, freed Greece, Macedon,
and other nations. They destroyed the bonds of their
union, under colour of providing for the independence
of each of their cities.
When the members who compose these new bodies
of cantons, communes, and departments, arrangements
purposely produced through the medium of confusion,
begin to act, they will find themselves, in a great measure, strangers to one another. The electors and
elected throughout, especially in the rural cantons, will
be frequently without any civil habitudes or connexions,
or any of t h a t natural discipline which is the soul of
a true republic. Magistrates and collectors of revenue
are now no longer acquainted with their districts,
bishops with their dioceses, or curates with their parishes.
These new colonies of the rights of men bear a strong
resemblance to t h a t sort of military colonies which

404
EDMUND BURKE.
Tacitus has observed. upon in the declining policy of
Rome. In better and wiser days (whatever course
they took with foreign nations) they were careful to
make the elements of a methodical subordination and
settlement to be coeval ; and even to lay the foundations of discipline in the military.* But, when all the
good arts had fallen into ruin, they proceeded, as your
assembly does, upon the equality of men, and with as
little judgment and as little care for those things
which make a republic tolerable or durable. But in
this, as well as almost every instance, your new commonwealth is born, and bred, and fed, in those corruptions which mark degenerated and worn-out republics.
Your child comes into the world with the symptoms of
death; the fades Hippocratica forms the character of
its physiognomy, and the prognostic of its fate.
The legislators who framed the ancient republics
knew that their business was too arduous to be accomplished with no better apparatus than the metaphysics
of an, undergraduate, and the mathematics and arithmetic of an exciseman. They had to do with men,
and they were obliged to study human nature. They
had to do with citizens and they were obliged to study
the effects of those habits which are communicated by
the circumstances of civil life. They were sensible that
the operation of this second nature on the first produced
a new combination ; and thence arose many diversities
amongst men, according to their birth, their education,
their professions, the periods of their lives, their residence in towns or in the country, their several ways of
acquiring and of fixing property, and according to the
quality of the property itself, all which rendered them
* Non, ut olim, universae legiones deducebantur cum tribunis, et
centurionibus, et sui cujusque ordinis militibus, ut consensu et caritate
rempublicam afficerent ; sed ignoti inter se, diversis manipulis, sine
rectore, sine affectibus mutuis, quasi ex alio génère nxortalium, repente
in unum collect!, numerus magis quam colonia. Tac. Annal. 1. 14,
sect. 27. All this will be still more applicable to the unconnected,
rotatory, biennial national assemblies, in this absurd and senseless
constitution.

SELECTIONS.
405
as it were so many different species of animals. From
hence they thought thefnselves obliged to dispose their
citizens into such classes, and to place them in such
situations in the state as their peculiar habits might
qualify them to fill, and to allot to them such appropriated privileges as might secure to them what their
specific occasions required, and which might furnish
to each description such force as might protect it in
the conflict caused by the diversity of interests that
must exist, and must contend, in all complex society :
for the legislator would have been ashamed that the
coarse husbandman should well know how to assort
and to use his sheep, horses, and oxen, and should have
enough of common sense not to abstract and equalize
them all into animals, without providing for each kind
an appropriate food, care, and employment ; whilst he,
the economist, disposer, and shepherd of his own kindred, subliming himself into an airy metaphysician,
was resolved to know nothing of his flocks but as men
in general. It is for this reason that Montesquieu
observed very justly that, in their classification of the
citizens, the great legislators of antiquity made the
greatest display of their powers, and even soared above
themselves. It is here that your modern legislators
have gone deep into the negative series and sunk even
below their own nothing. As the first sort of legislators
attended to the different kinds of citizens, and combined
them into one commonwealth, the others, the metaphysical and alchemistical legislators, have taken the
directly contrary course. They have attempted to
confound all sorts of citizens, as well as they could, into
one homogeneous mass ; and then they divided this
their amalgama into a number of incoherent republics.
They reduce men to loose counters, merely for the sake
of simple telling, and not to figures whose power is to
arise from their place in the table. The elements of
their own metaphysics might have taught them better
lessons. The troll of their categorical table might have
informed them that there was something else in the

4o6
EDMUND BURKE.
intellectual world besides substance and quantity. They
might learn from the catechism of metaphysics that
there were eight heads more,* in every complex deliberation, which they have never thought of; though
these, of all the ten, are the subjects on which the skill
of man can operate anything at all.
So far from this able disposition of some of the old
republican legislators, which follows with a solicitous
accuracy the moral conditions and propensities of men,
they have levelled and crushed together all the orders
which they found, even under the coarse unartificial
arrangement of the monarchy, in which mode of
government the classing of the citizens is not of so much
importance as in a republic. It is true, however, that
every such classification, if properly ordered, is good
in all forms of government ; and composes a strong
barrier against the excesses of despotism, as well as
it is the necessary means of giving effect and permanence to the republic. For want of something of this
kind, if the present project of a republic should fail, all
securities to a moderated freedom fail along with it ; all
the indirect restraints which mitigate despotism are
removed ; insomuch that if monarchy should ever again
obtain an entire ascendency in France, under this or
any other dynasty, it will probably be, if not voluntarily tempered, at setting out, by the wise and virtuous
counsels of the prince, the most completely arbitrary
power that has ever appeared on earth. This is to play
a most desperate game.
The confusion which attends on all such proceedings,
they even declare to be one of their objects, and they
hope to secure their constitution by a terror of a return
of those evils which attended their making it. ' By
this/ say they, ' its destruction will become difficult
to authority, which cannot break it up without the
entire disorganization of the whole state/ They presume, that if this authority should ever come to the
same degree of power that they have acquired, it would
* Qualitas, Relatio, Actio, Passio, Ubi, Quando, Situs, Habitus.

SELECTIONS.
407
make a more moderate and chastised use of it, and would
piously tremble entirely to disorganize the .state in the
savage manner that they have done. They expect from
the virtues of returning despotism, the security which
is to be enjoyed by the offspring of their popular vices.
I wish, sir, that you and my readers would give an
attentive perusal to the work of M. de Calonne on this
subject. It is indeed not only an eloquent but an able
and instructive performance. I confine myself to what
he says relative to the constitution ,of the new state
and to the condition of the revenue, As to the disputes
of this minister with his rivals, I do not wish to pronounce upon them. As little do I mean to hazard
any opinion concerning his ways and means, financial
or political, for taking his country out of its present
disgraceful and deplorable situation of servitude,
anarchy, bankruptcy, and beggary. I cannot speculate
quite so sanguinely as he does : but he is a Frenchman,
and has a closer duty relative to those objects, and
better means of judging of them, than I can have.
I wish that the formal avowal which he refers to, made
by one of the principal leaders in the assembly concerning the tendency of their scheme to bring France
not only from a monarchy to a republic, but from a
republic to a mere confederacy, may be very particularly
attended to. It adds new force to my observations ;
and indeed M. de Calonne's work supplies my deficiencies
by many new and striking arguments on most of the
subjects of this letter.*
It is this resolution, to break their country into
separate republics, which has driven them into the
greatest number of their difficulties and contradictions.
If it were not for this, all the questions of exact equality,
and these balances, never to be settled, of individual
rights, population, and contribution, would be wholly
useless. The representation, though derived from
parts, would be a duty which equally regarded the
whole. Each deputy to the assembly would be the
* Soc l ' É t a t de la France, p, 363.

4o8
EDMUND BURKE.
representative of France, and of all its descriptions,
of the many and of the few, of the rich and of the poor,
of the great districts and of the small. All these districts would themselves be subordinate to some standing
authority, existing independently of them, an authority
in which their representation, and everything that
belongs to it, originated, and to which it was pointed.
This standing, unalterable, fundamental government
would make, and it is the only thing which could make,
that territory truly and properly a whole. With us,
when we elect popular representatives, we send them
to a council, in which each man individually is a subject,
and submitted to a government complete in all its
ordinary functions. With you the elective assembly
is the sovereign, and the sole sovereign ; all the members are therefore integral parts of this sole sovereignty.
But with us it is totally different. With us the representative, separated from the other parts, can have no
action and no existence. The government is the point
of reference of the several members and districts of our
representation. This is the centre of our unity. This
government of reference is a trustee for the whole, and
not for the parts. So is the other branch of our public
council, I mean the House of Lords. With us the king
and the lords are several and joint securities for the
equality of each district, each province, each city.
When did you hear in Great Britain of any province
suffering from the inequality of its representation ;
what district from having no representation at all ?
Not only our monarchy and our peerage secure the
equality on which our unity depends, but it is the
spirit of the House of Commons itself. The very
inequality of representation, which is so foolishly complained of, is perhaps the very thing which prevents us
from thinking or acting as members for districts. Cornwall elects as many members as all Scotland. But
is Cornwall better taken care of than Scotland ? Few
trouble their heads about any of your bases, out of
some giddy clubs. Most of those who wish for any

SELECTIONS.
409
change, upon any plausible grounds, desire it on different ideas.
Your new constitution is the very reverse of ours in
its principle ; and I am astonished how any persons
could dream of holding out anything done in it, as an
example for Great Britain. W i t h you there is little,
or rather no connexion between the last representative
and the first constituent.
The member who goes to
the National Assembly is not chosen by the people, nor
accountable to them. There are three elections before
he is chosen ; two sets of magistracy intervene between
him and the primary assembly, so as to render him,
as I have said, an ambassador of a state, and not the
representative of the people within a state. By this
the whole spirit of the election is changed ; nor can
any corrective, which your constitution-mongers have
devised, render him anything else than what he is.
The very attempt to do it would inevitably introduce
a confusion, if possible, more horrid than the present.
There is no way to make a connexion between the
original constituent and the representative, but by the
circuitous means which may lead the candidate to
apply in the first instance to the primary electors, in
order that by their authoritative instructions (and
something more perhaps) these primary electors may
force the two succeeding body of electors to make a
choice agreeable to their wishes. But this would
plainly subvert the whole scheme.
It would be to
plunge them back into t h a t tumult and confusion of
popular election which, by their interposed gradation
of elections, they mean to avoid, and at length to risk
the whole fortune of the state with those who have the
least knowledge of it and the least interest in it. This
is a perpetual dilemma, into which they are thrown by
the vicious, weak, and contradictory principles they
have chosen.
Unless the people break up and level
this gradation, it is plain t h a t they do not at all substantially elect to the assembly ; indeed they elect as
little in appearance as reality.

4io

EDMUND BURKE.
What is it we all seek for in an election ? To answer
its real purposes ; you must first possess the means
of knowing the fitness of your man ; and then you
must retain some hold upon him by personal obligation
or dependence. For what end are these primary
electors complimented, or rather mocked with a choice ?
They can never know anything of the qualities of him
that is to serve them nor has he any obligation whatsoever to them. Of all the powers unfit to be delegated
by those who have any real means of judging, that
most peculiarly unfit is what relates to a personal
choice. In case of abuse that body of primary electors
can never call the representative to an account for
his conduct. He is too far removed from them in the
chain of representation. If he acts improperly at the
end of his two years' lease, it does not concern him
for two years more. By the new French constitution
the best and the wisest representatives go equally with
the worst into this Limbus Patrum. Their bottoms
are supposed foul and they must go into dock to be
refitted. Every man who has served in an assembly
is ineligible for two years after. Just as these magistrates begin to learn their trade, like chimney-sweepers,
they are disqualified for exercising it. Superficial, new,
petulant acquisition, and interrupted, dronish, broken,
ill recollection, is to be the destined character of all
your future governors. Your constitution has too much
of jealousy to have much of sense in it. You consider
the breach of trust in the representative so principally
that you do not at all regard the question of his fitness
to execute it.
This purgatory interval is not unfavourable to a
faithless representative, who may be as good a canvasser as he was a bad governor. In this time he may
cabal himself into a superiority over the wisest and
most virtuous. As, in the end, all the members of this
elective constitution are equally fugitive, and exist only
for the election, they may be no longer the same persons who had chosen him, to whom he is to be respon-

SELECTIONS.
411
sible when he solicits for a renewal of his trust. To
call all the secondary electors of the commune to account,
is ridiculous, impracticable, and unjust ; they may
themselves have been deceived in their choice, as the
third set of electors, those of the department, may
be in theirs. In your elections responsibility cannot
exist.
Finding no sort of principle of coherence with each
other in the nature and constitution of the several new
republics of France, I considered what cement the
legislators had provided for them from any extraneous
materials. Their confederations, their spectacles, their
civic feasts, and their enthusiasm, I take no notice of ;
they are nothing but mere tricks ; but, tracing their
policy through their actions, I think I can distinguish
the arrangements by which they propose to hold these
republics together. The first is the confiscation, with
the compulsory paper currency annexed to it ; the
second is the supreme power of the city of Paris ; the
third, is the general army of the state. Of this last
I shall reserve what I have to say until I come to consider the army as a head by itself.
As to the operation of the first (the confiscation and
paper currency) merely as a cement, I cannot deny
that these, the one depending on the other, may for
some time compose some sort of cement, if their madness and folly in the management, and in the tempering
of the parts together, does not produce a repulsion in
the very outset. But allowing to the scheme some
coherence and some duration, it appears to me that if,
after a while, the confiscation should not be found
sufficient to support the paper coinage (as I am morally
certain it will not), then, instead of cementing, it will
add infinitely to the dissociation, distraction, and confusion of these confederate republics, both with relation
to each other, and to the several parts within themselves.
But if the confiscation should so far succeed as to sink
the paper currency, the cement is gone with the circulation. In the meantime its binding force will be very

412
EDMUND BURKE.
uncertain and it will straighten or relax with every
variation in the credit of the paper
One thing only is certain in this scheme, which is an
effect seemingly collateral, but direct, I have no doubt,
in the minds of those who conduct this business, that
is, its effect in producing an oligarchy in every one of
the republics. A paper circulation, not founded on
any real money deposited or engaged for, amounting
already to four-and-forty millions of English money,
and this currency by force substituted in the place of
the coin of the kingdom, becoming thereby the substance of its revenue, as well as the medium of all its
commercial and civil intercourse, must put the whole
of what power, authority, and influencé is left, in any
form whatsoever it may assume, into the hands of the
managers and conductors of this circulation.
In Lngland we feel the influence of the Bank ; though
it is only the centre of a voluntary dealing. He knows
little indeed of the influence of money upon mankind
who does not see the force of the management of a
monied concern, which is so much more extensive,
and in its nature so much more depending on the
managers than any of ours. But this is not merely
a money concern. There is another member in the
system inseparably connected with this money management. It consists in the means of drawing out at discretion portions of the confiscated lands for sale ; and
carrying on a process of continual transmutation of
paper into land, and of land into paper. When we
follow this process in its effects, we may conceive something of the intensity of the force with which this system
must operate. By this means the spirit of money
jobbing and speculation goes into the mass of land
itself, and incorpoiates with it. By this kind of operation, that species of property becomes (as it were)
volatilized ; it assumes an unnatural and monstrous
activity, and thereby throws into the hands of the
several managers, principal and subordinate, Parisian
and provincial, all the representative of money, and

SELECTIONS.
413
perhaps a full tenth part of all the land in France,
which has now acquired the worst and most pernicious
part of the evil of à paper circulation, the greatest
possible uncertainty in its value. They have, reversed
the Latonian kindness to the landed property of Delos.
They have sent theirs to be blown about, like the light
fragments of a wreck, oras et littora circum.
The new dealers, being all habitually adventurers,
and without any fixed habits or local predilections, will
purchase to job out again, as the market of paper, or
of money, or of land, shall present an advantage. For
though a holy bishop thinks that agriculture will derive
great advantages from the ' enlightened ' usurers who
are to purchase the church confiscations, I, who am
not a good, but an old farmer, with great humility beg
leave to tell his late lordship that usury is not tutor of
agriculture ; and if the word ' enlightened ' be understood according to the new dictionary, as it always is
in your new schools, I cannot conceive how a man's
not believing in God can teach him to cultivate the
earth with the least of any additional skill or encouragement. ' Diis immortalibus sero,' said an old Roman,
when he held one handle of the plough, whilst Death
held the other. Though you were to join in the commission all the directors of the two academies to the
directors of the Caisse d'Escompte, an old experienced
peasant is worth them all. I have got more information upon a curious and interesting branch of husbandry,
in one short conversation with an old Carthusian monk,
than I have derived from all the Bank directors that
I have ever conversed with. However, there is no
cause for apprehension from the meddling of moneydealers with rural economy. These gentlemen are too
wise in their generation. At first, perhaps, their tender
and susceptible imaginations may be captivated with
the innocent and unprofitable delights of a pastoral
life ; but in a little time they will find that agriculture
is a trade much more laborious, and much less lucrative
than that which they had left. After making its pane-

414
EDMUND BURKE.
gyric, they will turn their backs on it like their great precursor and prototype. They may, like him, begin by
singing ' Beatus tile '--but what will be the end ?
Hcec ubi locutus fœnerator Alphius,
J a m j a m futurus rusticus
Omnem relegit idibtis pecuniam ;
Qiuerit calendis ponere.

They will cultivate the Caisse d'Église, under the sacred
auspices of this prelate, with much more profit than its
vineyards and its corn-fields. They will employ their
talents according to their habits and their interests.
They will not follow the plough whilst they can direct
treasuries and govern provinces.
Your legislators, in everything new, are the very
first who have founded a commonwealth upon gaming,
and infused this spirit into it as its vital breath. The
great object in these politics is to metamorphose France,
from a great kingdom into one great play-table ; to
turn its inhabitants into a nation of gamesters ; to
make speculation as extensive as life ; to mix it with
all its concerns ; and to divert the whole of the hopes
and fears of the people from their usual channels into
the impulses, passions, and superstitions of those who
live on chances. They loudly proclaim their opinion
that this their present system of a republic cannot
possibly exist without this kind of gaming fund ; and
that the very thread of its life is spun out of the staple
of these speculations. The old gaming in funds was
mischievous enough undoubtedly ; but it was so only
to individuals. Even when it had its greatest extent,
in the Mississippi and South Sea, it affected but
few, comparatively ; where it extends further, as in
lotteries, the spirit has but a single object. But where
the law, which in most circumstances forbids and in
none countenances gaming, is itself debauched, so as
to reverse its nature and policy, and expressly to force
the subject to this destructive table, by bringing the
spirit and symbols of gaming into the minutest matters,

SELECTIONS,
415
and engaging everybody in it, and in everything, a more
dreadful epidemic distemper of that kind is spread than
yet has appeared in the world. With you a man can
neither earn nor buy his dinner without a speculation.
What he receives in the morning will not have the same
value at night. What he is compelled to take as pay
for an old debt will not be received as the same when
he comes to pay a debt contracted by himself ; nor will
it be the same when by prompt payment he would avoid
contracting any debt at all. Industry must wither
away. Economy must be driven from your country.
Careful provision will have no existence. Who will
labour without knowing the amount of his pay ? Who
will study to increase what none can estimate ? Who
will accumulate when he does not know the value of
what he saves ? If you abstract it from its uses in
gaming, to accumulate your paper wealth, would be
not the providence of a man, but the distempered instinct
of a jackdaw.
The truly melancholy part of the policy of systematically making a nation of gamesters is this, that,
though all are forced to play, few can understand the
game ; and fewer still are in a condition to avail themselves of that knowledge. The many must be the dupes
of the few who conduct the machine of these speculations. What effect it must have on the country people
is visible. The townsman can calculate from day to
day ; not so the inhabitant, of the country. When the
peasant first brings his corn to market, the magistrate
in the town obliges him to take the assignat at par •
when he goes to the shop with this money, he finds it
seven per cent, the worse for crossing the way. This
market he will not readily resort to again. The townspeople will be inflamed ! they will force the countrypeople to bring their corn. Resistance will begin, and
the murders of Paris and St. Denis may be renewed all
through France.
What signifies the empty compliment paid to the
country, by giving it, perhaps, more than its share in

4i6
EDMUND BURKE.
the theory of your representation ? Where have you
placed the real power over monied and landed circulation ? Where have you placed the means of raising
and falling the value of every man's freehold ? Those,
whose operations can take from, or add ten per cent,
to, the possessions of every man in France, must be
the masters of every man in France. The whole of the
power obtained by this revolution will settle in the
towns among the burghers and the monied directors
who lead them. The landed gentleman, the yeoman,
and the peasant have, none of them, habits, or inclinations, or experience, which can lead them to any share
in this the sole source of power and influence now left
in France. The very nature of a country life, the very
nature of landed property, in all the occupations, and
all the pleasures they afford, render combination and
arrangement (the sole way of procuring and exerting
influence) in a manner impossible amongst country
people. Combine them by all the art you can, and all
the industry, they are always dissolving into individuality. Anything in the nature of incorporation is
almost impracticable amongst them. Hope, fear,
alarm, jealousy, the ephemerous tale that does its business, and dies in a day, all these things, which are the
reins and spurs by which leaders check or urge the
minds of followers, are not easily employed, or hardly
at all, amongst scattered people. They assemble, they
arm, they act with the utmost difficulty, and at the
greatest charge. Their efforts, if ever they can be
commenced cannot be sustained. They cannot proceed
systematically. If the country gentlemen attempt an
influence through the mere income of their property, what
is it to that of those who have ten times their income to
sell, and who can ruin their property by bringing their
plunder to meet it at market ? If the landed man wishes
to mortgage, he falls the value of his land and raises the
value of assignats. He augments the power of his enemy
by the very means he must take to contend with him.
The country gentleman therefore, the officer by sea and

SELECTIONS.
417
land, the man of liberal views and habits, attached to no
profession, will be as completely excluded from the
government of his country as if he were legislatively
proscribed. It is obvious that in the towns all the
things which conspire against the country gentlemen
combine in favour of the money manager and director.
In towns combination is natural. The habits of burghers,
their occupations, their diversion, their business, their
idleness, continually bring them into mutual contact.
Their virtues and their vices are sociable ; they are
always in garrison ; and they come embodied and half
disciplined into the hands of those who mean to form
them for civil or military action.
All these considerations leave no doubt on my mind
that, if this monster of a constitution can continue,
France will be wholly governed by the agitators in
corporations, by societies in the towns formed of directors
in assignats, and trustees for the sale of church lands,
attorneys, agents, money jobbers, speculators, and
adventurers, composing an ignoble oligarchy, founded on
the destruction of the crown, the church, the nobility,
and the people. Here end all the deceitful dreams and
visions of the equality and rights of men. In ' the
Serbonian bog' of this base oligarchy they are all absorbed,
sunk, and lost for ever.
Though human eyes cannot trace them, one would be
tempted to think some great offences in France must cry
to heaven, which has thought fit to punish it with a subjection to a vile and inglorious domination, in which
no comfort or compensation is to be found in any even
of those false splendours which, playing about other
tyrannies, prevent mankind from feeling themselves
dishonoured even whilst they are oppressed. I must
confess I am touched with a sorrow, mixed with some
indignation, at the conduct of a few men, once of great
rank, and still of great character, who, deluded with
specious names, have engaged in a business too deep for
the line of their understanding to fathom ; who have
lent their fair reputation, and the authority of their high14

4i8
EDMUND BURKE.
sounding names, to the designs of men with whom they
could not be acquainted ; and have thereby made their
very virtues operate to the ruin of their country.
So far as to the first cementing principle.
The second material of cement for their new republic
is the superiority of the city of Paris : and this I admit
is strongly connected with the other cementing principle
of paper circulation and confiscation. It is in this part
of the project we must look for the cause of the destruction of all the old bounds of provinces and jurisdictions,
ecclesiastical and secular, and the dissolution of all
ancient combinations of things, as well as the formation
of so many small unconnected republics. The power
of the city of Paris is evidently one great spring of all
their politics. It is through the power of Paris, now
become the centre and focus of jobbing, that the leaders
of this faction direct, or rather command, the whole
legislative and the whole executive government. Everything therefore must be done which can confirm the
authority of that city over the other republics. Paris
is compact ; she has an enormous strength, wholly disproportioned to the force of any of the square republics ;
and this strength is collected and condensed within a
very narrow compass. Paris has a natural and easy
connexion of its parts, which will not be affected by any
scheme of a geometrical constitution, nor does it much
signify whether its proportion of representation be more
or less, since it has the whole draft of fishes in its drag-net.
The other divisions of the kingdom being hackled and
torn to pieces, and separated from all their habitual
means and even principles of union, cannot, for some
time at least, confederate against her. Nothing was to
be left in all the subordinate members but weakness,
disconnexion, and confusion. To confirm this part ol
the plan, the assembly has lately come to a resolution
that no two of their republics shall have the same commander-in-chief.
To a person who takes a view of the whole, the strength
of Paris, thus formed, will appear a system of general

SELECTIONS.
419
weakness. It is boasted that the geometrical policy
has been adopted, that all local ideas should be sunk,
and that the people should be no longer Gascons, Picards,
Bretons, Normans ; but Frenchmen, with one country,
one heart, and one assembly. But instead of being all
Frenchmen, the greater likelihood is, that the inhabitants
of that region will shortly have no country. No man
ever was attached by a sense of pride, partiality, or real
affection to a description of square measurements. He
never will glory in belonging to the chequer No. 71, or to
any other badge-ticket. We begin our public affections
in our families. No cold relation is a zealous citizen.
We pass on to our neighbourhoods, and our habitual
provincial connexions. These are inns and resting
places. Such divisions of our country as have been
formed by habit, and not by a sudden jerk of authority,
were so many little images of the great country in which
the heart found something which it could fill. The love
to the whole is not extinguished by this subordinate
partiality. Perhaps it is a sort of elemental training to
those higher and more large regards, by which alone men
come to be affected, as with their own concern, in the
prosperity of a kingdom so extensive as that of France.
In that general territory itself, as in the old name of
provinces, the citizens are interested from old prejudices
and unreasoned habits, and not on account of the geometric properties of its figure. The power and preeminence of Paris, does certainly press down and hold
these republics together as long as it lasts. But, for the
reasons I have already given you, I think it cannot last
very long.
Passing from the civil creating and the civil cementing
principles of this constitution to the National Assembly
which is to appear and act as sovereign, we see a body
in its constitution with every possible power, and no
possible external control. We see a body without fundamental laws, without established maxims, without
respected rules of proceeding, which nothing can keep
firm to any system whatsoever. Their idea of their

420
EDMUND BURKE.
powers is always taken at the utmost stretch of legislative
competency, and their examples for common cases from
the exception of the most urgent necessity. The future
is to be in most respects like the present assembly ; but
by the mode of the new elections and the tendency of the
new circulations, it will be purged of the small degree of
internal control existing in a minority chosen originally
from various interests, and preserving something of their
.spirit. If possible, the next assembly must be worse
than the present. The present, by destroying and
altering everything, will leave to their successors apparently nothing popular to do. They will be roused by
emulation and example to enterprises the boldest and
the most absurd. To suppose such an assembly sitting
in perfect quietude is ridiculous.
Your all-sufficient legislators, in their hurry to do
everything at once, have forgot one thing that seems
essential, and which, I believe, never has been before,
in the theory or the practice, omitted by any projector
of a republic. They have forgot to constitute a senate,
or something of that nature and character. Never,
before this time, was heard of a body politic composed
of one legislative and active assembly, and its executive
officers, without such a council ; without something to
which foreign states might connect themselves ; something to which, in the ordinary detail of government,
the people could look up ; something which might give
a bias and steadiness and preserve something like consistency in the proceedings of state. Such a body kings
generally have as a council. A monarchy may exist
without it : ; but it seems to be in the very essence of a
republican government. It holds a sort of middle place
between the supreme power exercised by the people, or
immediately delegated from them, and the mere executive.
Of this there are no traces in your constitution ; and in
providing nothing of this kind, your Solons and Numas
have, as much as in any thing else, discovered a sovereign
incapacity.
Let us now turn our eyes to what they have done

SELECTIONS.
421
towards the formation of an executive power. For this
they have chosen a degraded king. This their first
executive officer is to be a machine, without any sort
of deliberative discretion in any one act of his function.
At best he is but a channel to convey to the National
Assembly such matter as it may import that body to
know. If he had been made the exclusive channel, the
power would not have been without its importance ;
though infinitely perilous to those who would choose to
exercise it. But public intelligence and statement of
facts may pass to the assembly with equal authenticity,
through any other conveyance. As to the means, therefore, of giving a direction to measures by the statement
of an authorized reporter, this office of intelligence is as
nothing.
To consider the French scheme for an executive officer,
in its two natural divisions of civil and political—in the
first it must be observed that, according to the new constitution, the higher parts of judicature, in either of its
lines, are not in the king. The King of France is not the
fountain of justice. The judges, neither the original nor
the appellate, are of his nomination. He neither proposes the candidates, nor has a negative on the choice.
He is not even the public prosecutor. He serves only as
a notary to authenticate the choice made of the judges in
the several districts. By his officers he is to execute
their sentence. When we look into the true nature of
his authority, he appears to be .nothing more than a chief
of bumbailiffs, serjeants-at-mace, catchpoles, jailers, and
hangmen. It is impossible to place anything called
royalty in a more degrading point of view. A thousand
times better had it been for the dignity of this unhappy
prince, that he had nothing at all to do with the administration of justice, deprived as he is of all that is venerable
and all that is consolatory in that function, without
power of originating any process : without a power of
suspension, mitigation or pardon. Everything in justice
that is vile and odious is thrown upon him. It was not
for nothing that the assembly has been at such pains to

422
EDMUND BURKE.
remove the stigma from certain offices, when they were
resolved to place the person who had lately been their
king in a situation but one degree above the executioner,
and in an office nearly of the same quality. It is not in
nature that, situated as the King of the French now is,
he can respect himself or can be respected by others.
View this new executive officer on the side of his
political capacity, as he acts under the orders of the
National Assembly. To execute laws is a royal office ;
to execute orders is not to be a king. However, a political
executive magistracy, though merely such, is a great
trust. It is a trust, indeed, that has much depending
upon its faithful and diligent performance, both in the
person presiding in it and in all its subordinates. Means
of performing this duty ought to be given by regulation ;
and dispositions towards it ought to be infused by the
circumstances attendant on the trust. It ought to be
environed with dignity, authority, and consideration,
and it ought to lead to glory. The office of execution is
an office of exertion. It is not from impotence we are
to expect the tasks of power. What sort of person is a
king to command executory service, who has no means
whatsoever to reward it ? Not in a permanent office ;
not in a grant of land ; no, not in a pension of fifty pounds
a year ; not in the vainest and most trivial title* In
France the king is no more the fountain of honour than
he is the fountain of justice* All rewards, all distinctions,
are in other hands. Those who serve the king can be
actuated by no natural motive but fear ; by a fear of
everything except their master. His functions of internal
coercion are as odious as those which he exercises in the
department of justice. If relief is to be given to any
municipality, the assembly gives it. If troops are to be
sent to reduce them to obedience to the assembly, the
king is to execute the order ) and upon every occasion
he is to be spattered over with the blood of his people.
He has no negative ; yet his name and authority is used
to enforce every harsh decree. Nay, he must concur in
the butchery of those who shall attempt to free him from

SELECTIONS.
423
his imprisonment, or show the slightest attachment to
his person or to his ancient authority.
Executive magistracy ought to be constituted in such
a manner that those who compose it should be disposed
to love and to venerate those whom they are bound to
obey. A purposed neglect, or, what is worse, a little but
perverse and malignant obedience must be the ruin of the
wisest councils. In vain will the law attempt to anticipate or to follow such studied neglects and fraudulent
attentions. To make them act zealously is not in the
competence of law. Kings, even such as are truly kings,
may and ought to bear the freedom of subjects that are
obnoxious to them. They may too, without derogating
from themselves, bear even the authority of such persons,
if it promotes their service. Louis XIII mortally hated
the Cardinal de Richelieu ; but his support of that
minister against his rivals was the source of all the glory
of his reign and the solid foundation of his throne itself.
Louis XIV, when come to the throne, did not love the
Cardinal Mazarin ; but for his interests he preserved him
in power. When old, he detested Louvois ; but for
years, whilst he faithfully served his greatness, he endured
his person. When George II took Mr. Pitt, who certainly
was not agreeable to him, into his councils, he did nothing which could humble a wise sovereign. But these
ministers who were chosen by affairs, not by affections,
acted in the name of, and in trust for, kings ; and not as
their avowed, constitutional, and ostensible masters. I
think it impossible that any king, when he has recovered
his first terrors, can cordially infuse vivacity and vigour
into measures which he knows to be dictated by those,
who, he must be persuaded, are in the highest degree ill
affected to his person. Will any ministers who serve
such a king (or whatever he may be called) with but a
decent appearance of respect cordially obey the orders
of those whom but the other day in his name they had
committed to the Bastille ? will they obey the orders
of those whom, whilst they were exercising despotic
justice upon them, they conceived they were treating

424
EDMUND BURKE.
with lenity ; and for whom, in a prison, they thought
they had provided an asylum ? If you expect such
obedience, amongst your other innovations and regenerations, you ought to make a revolution in nature and
provide a new constitution for the human mind. Otherwise, your supreme government cannot harmonize with
its executory system. There are cases in which we cannot
take up with names and abstractions. You may call half
a dozen leading individuals, whom we have reason to fear
and hate, the nation. It makes no difference than to
make us fear and hate them the more. If it had been
thought justifiable and expedient to make such a revolution by such means, and through such persons, as you
have made yours, it would have been more wise to have
completed the business of the fifth and sixth of October.
The new executive officer would then owe his situation
to those who are his creators as well as his masters $ and
he might be bound in interest, in the society of crime, and
(if in crimes there could be virtues) in gratitude to serve
those who had promoted him to a place of great lucre and
great sensual indulgence ; and of something more : for
more he must have received from those who certainly
would not have limited an aggrandized creature, as they
have done a submitting antagonist.
A king circumstanced as the present, if he is totally
stupified by his misfortunes, so as to think it not the
necessity, but the premium and privilege of life, to eat
and sleep, without any regard to glory, can never be fit
for the office. If he feels as men commonly feel, he
must be sensible that an office so circumstanced is one
in which he can obtain no fame or reputation. He has
no generous interest that can excite him to action. At
best, his conduct will be passive and defensive. To
inferior people such an office might be matter of honour.
But to be raised to it, and to descend to it, are different
things, and suggest different sentiments. Does he really
name the ministers ? They will have a sympathy with
him. Are they forced upon him ? The whole business
between them and the nominal king will be mutual

SELECTIONS.
425
counteraction. In all other countries the office of
ministers of state is of the highest dignity. In France
it is full of peril, and incapable of glory. Rivals, however,
they will have in their nothingness, whilst shallow ambition exists in the world, or the desire of a miserable
salary is an incentive to short-sighted avarice. Those
competitors of the ministers are enabled by your cpnstitution to attack them in their vital parts, whilst they have
not the means of repelling their charges in any other than
the degrading character of culprits. The ministers of
state in France are the only persons in that country wTho
are incapable of a share in the national councils. What
ministers Î What councils Î What a nation ! But
they are responsible. It is a poor service that is to be
had from responsibility. The elevation of mind to be
derived from fear will never make a nation glorious.
Responsibility prevents crimes. It makes all attempts
against the laws dangerous. But for a principle of active
and zealous service, none but idiots could think of it. Is
the conduct of a war to be trusted to a man who may
abhor its principle ; who, in every step he may take to
render it successful, confirms the power of those by whom
he is oppressed ? Will foreign states seriously treat with
him who has no prerogative of peace or war ; no, not so
much as in a single vote by himself or his ministers, or
by any one whom he can possibly influence ? A state
of contempt is not a state for a prince : better get rid of
him at once.
I know it will be said that these humours in the court
and executive government win continue only through
this generation ; and that the king has been brought to
declare the dauphin shall be educated in a conformity
to his situation. If he is made to conform to his situation, he will have no education at all. His training
must be worse even than that of an arbitrary monarch.
If he reads—whether he reads or not, some good or
evil genius will tell him his ancestors were kings.
Thenceforward his object must be to asseit himself and
to avenge his parents. This you will say is not his duty.

426
EDMUND BURKE.
That may be ; but it is nature ; and whilst you pique
nature against you, you do unwisely to trust to duty.
In this futile scheme of polity the state nurses in its
bosom, for the present, a source of weakness, perplexity, counteraction, inefficiency, and decay ; and
it prepares the means of its final ruin» In short, I see
nothing in the executive force (I cannot call it authority)
that has even an appearance of vigour, or that has the
smallest degree of just correspondence or symmetry,
or amicable relation with the supreme power, either as
it now exists or as it is planned for the future government.
You have settled, by an economy as perverted as
the policy, two * establishments of government ; one
real, one fictitious. Both maintained at a vast expense ; but the fictitious at, I think, the greatest.
Such a machine as the latter is not worth the grease of
its wheels. The expense is exorbitant ; and neither the
show nor the use deserve the tenth part of the charge.
Oh I but I don't do justice to the talents of the legislators : I don't allow, as I ought to do, for necessity.
Their scheme of executive force was not their choice.
This pageant must be kept. The people would not
consent to part with it. Right ; I understand you.
You do, in spite of your grand theories, to which you
would have heaven and earth to bend, you do know
how to conform yourselves to the nature and circumstances of things. But when you were obliged to conform thus far to circumstances, you ought to have
carried your submission farther, and to have made,
what you were obliged to take, a proper instrument
and useful to its end. That was in your power. For
instance, among many others, it was in your power to
leave to your king the right of peace and war. What !
to leave to the executive magistrate the most dangerous
of all prerogatives ? I know none more dangerous
nor any one more necessary to be so trusted. I do
not say that this prerogative ought to be trusted to
* Tu rnalUytiirçc?,to reckon fhc; provincial republican, establishments.

SELECTIONS.
427
your king, unless he enjoyed other auxiliary trusts along
with it, which he does not now hold. But, if he did
possess them, hazardous as they are undoubtedly,
advantages would arise from such a constitution, more
than compensating the risk. There is no other way of
keeping the several potentates of Europe from intriguing
distinctly and personally with the members of your
assembly, from intermeddling in all your concerns, and
fomenting, in the heart of your country, the most pernicious of all factions ; factions in the interest and
under the direction of foreign powers. From that
worst of evils, thank God, we are still free. Your skill,
if you had any, would be well employed to find out
indirect correctives and controls upon this perilous
trust. If you did not like those which in England we
have chosen, your leaders might have exerted their
abilities in contriving better. If it were necessary to
exemplify the consequences of such an executive government as yours, in the ^management of great affairs, I
should refer you' to the late reports of M. de Montmorin
to the National Assembly and all the other proceedings
relative to the differences between Great Britain and
Spain. It would be treating your understanding with
disrespect to point them out to you.
I hear that the persons who are called ministers have
signified an intention of resigning their places. I am
rather astonished that they have not resigned long
since. For the universe I would not have stood in the
situation in which they have been for this last twelvemonth. They wished well, I take it for granted, to the
revolution. Let this fact be as it may, they could not,
placed as they were upon an eminence, though an eminence of humiliation, but be the first to see collectively,
and to feel each in his own department, the evils which
have been produced by that revolution. In every
step which they took, or forbore to take, they must
have felt the degraded situation of their country, and
their utter incapacity of serving it. They are in a
species of subordinate servitude, in which no men

428
EDMUND BURKE.
before them were ever seen. Without confidence from
their sovereign, on whom they were forced, or from the
assembly who forced them upon him, all the noble functions of their office are executed by committees of the
assembly, without any regard whatsoever to their
personal, or their official authority. They are to
execute, without power ; they are to be responsible,
without discretion ; they are to deliberate, without
choice. In their puzzled situation, under two sovereigns,
over neither of whom they have any influence, they
must act in such a manner as (in effect, whatever they
may intend) sometimes to betray the one, sometimes the
other, and always to betray themselves. Such has been
their situation ; such must be the situation of those
who succeed them. I have much respect, and many
good wishes, for Mr. Necker. I am obliged to him for
attentions. I thought, when his enemies had driven
him from Versailles, that his exile was a subject of
most serious congratulation—sed multcB urbes et publica
vota vicerunt. He is now sitting on the ruins of the
finances and of the monarchy of France.
A great deal more might be observed on the strange
constitution of the executory part of the new government ; but fatigue must give bounds to the discussion of
subjects which in themselves have hardly any limits.
As little genius and talent am I able to perceive in
the plan of judicature formed by the National Assembly.
According to their invariable course, the framers of
your constitution have begun with the utter abolition
of the parliaments. These venerable bodies, like the
rest of the old government, stood in need of reform,
even though there should be no change made in the
monarchy. They required several more alterations
to adapt them to the system of a free constitution.
But they had particulars in their constitution, and
those not a few, which deserved approbation from the
wise. They possessed one fundamental excellence ; they
were independent. The most doubtful circumstance
attendant on their office, that of its being vendible,

SELECTIONS.
429
contributed, however, to this independency of character.
They held for life. Indeed, they may be said to have
held by inheritance. Appointed by the monarch, they
were considered as nearly out of his power. The most
determined exertions of that authority against them
only showed their radical independence. They composed permanent bodies politic, constituted to resist
arbitrary innovation ; and from that corporate constitution, and from most of their forms, they were well
calculated to afford both certainty and stability to the
laws. They had been a safe asylum to secure these
laws in all the revolutions of humour and opinion. They
had saved that sacred deposit of the country during
the reigns of arbitrary prices, and the struggles of
arbitrary factions. They kept alive the memory and
record of the constitution. They were the great
security to private property ; which might be said
(when personal liberty had no existence) to be, in
fact, as well guarded in France as in any other country.
Whatever is supreme in a state, ought to have as much
as possible its judicial authority so constituted, as
not only not to depend upon it but in some sort to
balance it. It ought to give a security to its justice
against its power. It ought to make its judicature, as
it were, something exterior to the state.
These parliaments had furnished, not the best
certainly, but some considerable corrective to the excesses and vices of the monarchy. Such an [independent
judicature was ten times more necessary when a democracy became the absolute power of the country. In
that constitution, elective, temporary, local judges,
such as you have contrived, exercising their dependent
functions in a narrow society, must be the worst of all
tribunals. In them it will be vain to look for any reappearance of justice towards strangers, towards the
obnoxious rich, towards the minority of routed parties,
towards all those who in the election have supported
unsuccessful candidates. It will be impossible to keep
the new tribunals clear of the worst spirit of faction.

430
EDMUND BURKE.
All contrivances by ballot we know experimentally to
be vain and childish to prevent a discovery of inclinations. Where they may the best answer the purposes
of concealment, they answer to produce suspicion, and
this is a still more mischievous cause of partiality.
If the parliaments had been preserved, instead of
being dissolved at so ruinous a change to the nation,
they might have served in this new commonwealth,
perhaps not precisely the same (I do not mean an exact
parallel) but nearly the same purposes as the court and
senate of Areopagus did in Athens ; that is, as one of
the balances and correctives to the evils of a light and
unjust democracy. Every one knows that this tribunal
was the great stay of that state ; every one knows with
what care it was upheld, and with what a religious awe
it was consecrated. The parliaments were not wholly
free from faction, I admit ; but this evil was exterior
and accidental, [and not so much the vice of their constitution itself, as it must be in your new contrivance of
sexennial elective judicatories. Several English commend the abolition of the old tribunals, as supposing
that they determined everything by bribery and corruption. But they have stood the test of monarchic
and republican scrutiny. The court was well disposed
to prove corruption on those bodies when they were
dissolved in 1771.—Those who have again dissolved
them would have done the same if they could—but
both inquisitions having failed, I conclude that gross
pecuniary corruption must have been rather rare
amongst them.
It would have been prudent, along with the parliaments, to preserve their ancient power of registering,
and of remonstrating at least, upon all the decrees of the
National Assembly, as they did upon those which passed
in the time of the monarchy. It would be a means of
squaring the occasional decrees of a democracy to some
principles of general jurisprudence. The vice of the
ancient democracies, and one cause of their ruin, was
that they ruled, as you do, by occasional decrees,

SELECTIONS.
431
pscfthismata. This practice soon broke in upon the
tenor and consistency of the laws ; it abated the
respect of the people towards them ; and totally destroyed them in the end.
Your vesting the power of remonstrance which, in
the time of the monarchy, existed in the parliament of
Paris, in your principal executive officer, whom, in spite
of common sense, you persevere in calling king, is the
height of absurdity.
You ought never to suffer
remonstrance from him who is to execute. This is to
understand neither council nor execution ; neither
authority nor obedience. The person whom you call
king, ought not to have this power, or he ought to have
more.
Your present arrangement is strictly judicial. Instead of imitating your monarchy, and seating your
judges on a bench of independence, your object is to
reduce them to the most blind obedience. As you
have changed all things, you have invented new principles of order. You first appoint judges, who, I suppose,
are to determine according to law, and then you let
them know that, at some time or other, you intend to
give them some law by which they are to determine.
Any studies which they have made (if any they have
made) are to be useless to them. But to supply these
studies, they are to be sworn to obey all the rules, orders,
and instructions, which from time to time they are to
receive from the National Assembly. These if they
submit to, they leave no ground of law to the subject.
They become complete and most dangerous instruments
in the hands of the governing power, which, in the
midst of a cause, or on the prospect of it, may wholly
change the rule of decision. If these orders of the
National Assembly come to be contrary to the will of
the people, who locally choose those judges, such confusion must happen as is terrible to think of. For the
judges owe their places to the local authority ; and the
commands they are sworn to obey come from those who
have no share in their appointment. In the meantime

432
EDMUND BURKE.
they have the example of the court of Châtelet to encourage and guide them in the exercise of their functions.
That court is to try criminals sent to it by the National
Assembly, or brought before it by other courses of delation. They sit under a guard to save their own lives.
They know not by what law they judge, nor under what
authority they act, nor by what tenure they hold. It
is thought that they are sometimes obliged to condemn
at the peril of their lives. This is not perhaps certain, nor
can it be ascertained ; but when they acquit, we know
they have seen the persons whom they discharge, with
perfect impunity to the actors, hanged at the door of
their court.
The assembly indeed promise that they will form
a body of law, which shall be short, simple, clear, and
so forth. That is by their short laws, they will leave
much to the discretion of the judge, whilst they have
exploded the authority of all the learning which could
make judicial discretion (a thing perilous at best)
deserving the appellation of a sound discretion.
It is curious to observe, that the administrative bodies
are carefully exempted from the jurisdiction of these
new tribunals. That is, those persons are exempted
from the power of the laws, who ought to be the most
entirely submitted to them. Those who execute public
pecuniary trusts, ought of all men to be the most strictly
held to their duty. One would have thought that it
must,have been among your earliest cares, if you did
not mean that those administrative bodies should be
real, sovereign, independent states, to form an awful
tribunal, like your late parliaments, or like our king's
bench, where all corporate officers might obtain protection in the legal exercise of their functions, and
would find coercion if they trespassed against their
legal duty. But the cause of the exemption is plain.
These administrative bodies are the great instruments
of the present leaders in their progress through democracy to oligarchy. They must therefore be put above
the law. It will be said that the legal tribunals which

SELECTIONS.
433
you have made are unfit to coerce them. They are
undoubtedly. They are unfit for any rational purpose.
It will be said, too, that the administrative bodies will
be accountable to the general assembly. This, I fear,
is talking without much consideration of the nature of
that assembly or of these corporations. However, to
be subject to the pleasure of that assembly, is not to
be subject to law either for protection or for constraint.
This establishment of judges as yet wants something
to its completion. It is to be crowned by a new tribunal.
This is to be a grand state judicature ; and it is to
judge of crimes committed against the nation, that is,
against the power of the assembly. It seems as if they
had something in their view of the nature of the high
court of justice erected in England during the time of
the great usurpation. As they have not yet finished
this part of the scheme, it is impossible to form a direct
judgment upon it. However, if great care is not taken
to form it in a spirit very different from that which has
guided them in their proceedings relative to state
offences, this tribunal, subservient to their inquisition,
the committee of research, will extinguish the last sparks
of liberty in France, and settle the most dreadful and
arbitrary tyranny ever known in any nation. If they
wish to give to this tribunal any appearance of liberty
and justice, they must evoke them, or send to it, the
causes relative to their own members, at their pleasure.
They must also remove the seat of that tribunal out
of the republic of Paris.*
Has more wisdom been displayed in the constitution
of your army than what is discoverable in your plan of
judicature ? The able arrangement of this part is the
more difficult, and requires the greater skill and attention, not only as a great concern in itself, but as it is
the third cementing principle in the new body of
republics, which you call the French nation. Truly it
is not easy to divine what that army may become at
* For further elucidations upon the subject of all these judicatures,
and. of the committee of research, see M. de Calonne's work.

434
EDMUND BURKE.
last. You have voted a very large one, and,on good apr
pointments, at least fully equal to your apparent means
of payment. But what "is the principle of its discipline?
or whom is it to obey ? You have got the wolf by the
ears, and I wish you joy of the happy position in which
you have chosen to place yourselves, and in which you
are well circumstanced for a free deliberation, relatively
to that army, or to anything else.
The minister and secretary of state for the war
department is M. de la Tour du Pin. This gentleman,
like his colleagues in administration, is a most zealous
assertor of the revolution, and a sanguine admirer of
the new constitution, which originated in that event.
His statement of facts, relative to the military of
France, is important, not only from his official and
personal authority, but because it displays very clearly
the actual condition of the army in France, and because
it throws light on the principles upon which the assembly proceeds, in the administration of this critical
object. It may enable us to form some judgment, how
far it may be expedient in this country to imitate the
martial policy of France.
M. de la Tour du Pin, on the 4th of last June, comes
to give an account of the state of his department, as it
exists under the auspices of the National Assembly.
No man knows it so well ; no man can express it
better. Addressing himself to the National Assembly,
he says, * His majesty has this day sent me to apprise
you of the multiplied disorders of which every day he
receives the most distressing intelligence. The army
[le corps militaire] threatens to fall into the most
turbulent anarchy. Entire regiments have dared to
violate at once the respect due to the laws, to the
king, to the order established by your decrees, and
to the oaths which they have taken with the most awful
solemnity. Compelled by my duty to give you information of these excesses, my heart bleeds when I consider who they are that have committed them. Those,
against whom it is not in my power to withhold the

SELECTIONS.
435
most grievous complaints, are a part of that very
soldiery which to this day have been so full of honour
and loyalty, and with whom, for fifty years, I have lived
the comrade and the friend.
' What incomprehensible spirit of delirium and delusion has all at once led them astray ? Whilst you
are indefatigable in establishing uniformity in the empire
and moulding the whole into one coherent and consistent body ; whilst the French are taught by you, at
once the respect which the laws owe to the rights of
man, and that which the citizens owe to the laws, the
administration of the army presents nothing but disturbance and confusion. I see in more than one corps
the bonds of discipline relaxed or broken ; the most
unheard-of pretensions avowed directly and without
any disguise ; the ordinances without force ; the
chiefs without authority ; the military chest and the
colours carried off ; the authority of the king himself
[risum teneatis ?] proudly defied ; the officers despised,
degraded, threatened, driven away, and some of them
prisoners in the midst of their corps, dragging on a
precarious life in the bosom of disgust and humiliation.
To fill up the measure of all these horrors, the commandants of places have had their throats cut, under
the eyes and almost in the arms of their own soldiers.
' These evils are great ; but they are not the worst
consequences which may be produced by such military
insurrections. Sooner or later they may menace the
nation itself. The nature of things requires that the
army should never act but as an instrument. The
moment that, erecting itself into a deliberate body, it
shall act according to its own resolutions, the government, be it what it-may, will immediately degenerate into
a military democracy ; a species of political monster,
which has always ended by devouring those who have
produced it.
' After all this, who must not be alarmed at the irregular consultations, and turbulent committees,^ formed in
some regiments by the common soldiers and non-com-

436
EDMUND BURKE.
missioned officers, without the knowledge, or even in
contempt of the authority of their superiors ; although
the presence and concurrence of those superiors could
give no authority to 1 such monstrous democratic
assemblies [cornices]/
It is not necessary to add much to this finished
picture ; finished as far as its canvas admits ; but as
I apprehend, not taking in the whole of the nature and
complexity of the disorders of this military democracy,
which, the minister at war truly and wisely observes,
wherever it exists, must be the true constitution of
the state, by whatever formal appellation it may pass.
For, though he informs the assembly that the more
considerable part of the army have not cast off their
obedience but are still attached to their duty, yet
those travellers, who have seen the corps whose conduct
is the best, rather observe in them the absence of mutiny
than the existence of discipline.
I cannot help pausing here for a moment, to reflect
upon the expressions of surprise which this minister has
let fall relative to the excesses he relates. To him the
departure of the troops from their ancient principles
of loyalty and honour seems quite inconceivable.
Surely those to whom he addresses himself know the
causes of it but too well. They know the doctrines
which they have preached, the decrees which they have
passed, the practices which they have countenanced.
The soldiers remember the 6th of October. They
recollect the French guards. They have not forgotten
the taking of the king's castles in Paris and at Marseilles. That the governors in both places were murdered with impunity, is a fact that has not passed out
of their minds. They do not abandon the principles
laid down so ostentatiously and laboriously of the
equality of men. They cannot shut their eyes to
the degradation of the whole noblesse of France, and
the suppression of the very idea of a gentleman. The
total abolition of titles and distinctions is not lost
upon them. But M. du Pin is astonished at their

SELECTIONS.
437
disloyalty, when the doctors of the assembly have
taught them at the same time the respect due to laws,
it-is easy to judge which of the two sorts of lessons
men with arms in their hands are likely to learn. As
to the authority of the king, we may collect from the
minister himself (if any argument on that head were
not quite superfluous) that it is not of more consideration with these troops than it is with everybody else.
' The king/ says he, ' has over and over again repeated
his orders to put a stop to these excesses : but in so
terrible a crisis, your [the assembly's] concurrence is
become indispensably necessary to prevent the evils
which menace the state. You unite to the forces of
the legislative power, that of opinion still more important/ To be sure the army can have no opinion of
the power or authority of the king. Perhaps the
soldier has by this time learned, that the assembly itself
does not enjoy a much greater degree of liberty than
that royal figure.
It is now to be seen what has been proposed in this
exigency, one of the greatest that can happen in a state.
The minister requests the assembly to array itself in
all its terrors, and to call forth all its majesty. He
desires that the grave and severe principles announced
by them may give vigour to the king's proclamation.
After this we should have looked for courts civil and
martial ; breaking of some corps, decimating of others,
and all the terrible means which necessity has employed
in such cases to arrest the progress of the most terrible
of all evils ; particularly, one might expect, that a
serious inquiry would be made into the murder of
commandants in the view of their soldiers. Not one
word of all this, or of anything like it. After they had
been told that the soldiery trampled upon the decrees
of the assembly promulgated by the king, the assembly
pass new decrees ; and they authorize the king to make
new proclamations. After the secretary-at-war had
stated that the regiments had paid no regard to oaths
prêtés avec la plus imposante solenmite—they propose—

438
EDMUND BURKE.
what ? More oaths. They renew decrees and proclamations as they experience their insufficiency, and they
multiply oaths in proportion as they weaken, in the
minds of men, the sanctions of religion. I hope that
handy abridgments of the excellent sermons of Voltaire,
d'Alembert, Diderot, and Helvetius, on the Immortality
of the Soul, on a particular superintending Providence,
and on a Future State of Rewards and Punishments,
are sent down to the soldiers along with their civic oaths.
Of this I have no doubt ; as I understand that a certain
description of reading makes no inconsiderable part of
their military exercises, and that they are full as well
supplied with the ammunition of pamphlets as of cartridges.
To prevent the mischiefs arising from conspiracies,
irregular consultations, seditious committees, and monstrous democratic assemblies [ ' comitia, cornices '] of
the soldiers, and all the disorders arising from idleness,
luxury, dissipation, and insubordination, I believe
the most astonishing means have been used that ever
occurred to men, even in all the inventions of this prolific
age. It is no less than this :—The king has promulgated in circular letters to all the regiments his direct
authority and encouragement, that the several corps
should join themselves with the clubs and confederations in the several municipalities, and mix with them
in their feasts and civic entertainments ! This jolly
discipline, it seems, is to soften the ferocity of their
minds ; to reconcile them to their bottle companions
of other descriptions ; and to merge particular conspiracies in more general associations.* That this
remedy would be pleasing to the soldiers, as they are
* Comme sa majesté y a reconnu, non une système d'associations
particulières, mais une réunion de volontés de tous les François pour
la liberté et la prospérité communes, ainsi pour la maintien de l'ordre
publique ; il a pensé qu'il convenoit que chaque régiment prit part à
ces fêtes civiques pour multiplier les rapports, et referrer les liens
d'union entre les citoyens et les troupes.—Lest I should not be credited,
I insert the words, authorizing the troops to feast with the popular
confederacies.

SELECTIONS.
439
described by M. de la Tour du Pin, I can readily believe ;
and that, however mutinous otherwise, they will dutifully submit themselves to these royal proclamations.
But I should question whether all this civic swearing,
clubbing, and feasting, would dispose them more than
at present they are disposed to an obedience to their
officers ; or teach them better to submit to the austere
rules of military discipline. It will make them admirable citizens after the French mode, but not quite so
good soldiers after any mode. A doubt might well
arise, whether the conversations at these good tables
would fit them a great deal the better for the character
of mere instruments, which this veteran officer and
statesman justly observes the nature of things always
requires an army to be.
Concerning the likelihood of this improvement in
discipline, by the free conversation of the soldiers with
the municipal festive societies, which is thus officially
encouraged by royal authority and sanction, we may
judge by the state of the municipalities themselves,
furnished to us by the war minister in this very speech.
He conceives good hopes of the success of his endeavours
towards restoring order for the present from the good
disposition of certain regiments ; but he finds something cloudy with regard to the future. As to preventing the return of confusion, ' for this, the administration (says he) cannot be answerable to you, as long as
they see the municipalities arrogate to themselves an
authority over the troops, which your institutions
have reserved wholly to the monarch. You have fixed
the limits of the military authority and the municipal
authority. You have bounded the action which you
have permitted to the latter over the former, to the
right of requisition ; but never did the letter or the
spirit of your decrees authorize the commons in these
municipalities to break the officers, to try them, to give
orders to the soldiers, to drive them from the posts
committed to their guard, to stop them in their marches
ordered by the king, or, in a word, to enslave the troops

440
EDMUND BURKE.
to the caprice of each of the cities, or even market towns,
through which they are to pass/
Such is the character and disposition of the municipal
society which is to reclaim the soldiery, to bring them
back to the true principles of military subordination,
and to render them machines in the hands of the
supreme power of the country ! Such are the distempers
of the French troops ! Such is their cure ! As the army
is, so is the navy. The municipalities supersede the
orders of the assembly, and the seamen in their turn
supersede the orders of the municipalities. From my
heart I pity the condition of a respectable servant
of the public, like this war minister, obliged in his old
age to pledge the assembly in their civic cups, and to
enter with a hoary head into all the fantastic vagaries
of these juvenile politicians. Such schemes are not like
propositions coming from a man of fifty years' wear
and tear amongst mankind. They seem rather such
as ought to be expected from those grand compounders
in politics who shorten the road to their degrees in the
state ; and have a certain inward fanatical assurance
and illumination upon all subjects ; upon the credit
of which one of their doctors has thought fit, with great
applause, and greater success, to caution the assembly
not to attend to old men, or to any persons who valued
themselves upon their experience. I suppose all the
ministers of state must qualify, and take this test ;
wholly abjuring the errors and heresies of experience
and observation. Every man has his own relish. But
I think if I could not attain to the wisdom, I would at
least preserve something of the stiff and peremptory
dignity of age. These gentlemen deal in regeneration:
but at any price I should hardly vield my rigid fibres
to be regenerated by them ; nor oegin, in my grand
climacteric, to squah in their new accents, or to stammer
in my second cradle, the elemental sounds of their
barbarous metaphysics.* Si isti mihi largiantur ut
replierascam, et in eorum cunis vagiam, valde récusent, !
* The war minister has since quitted the school, and resigned lus office,

SELECTIONS.
441
The imbecility of any part of the puerile and pedantic system, which they call a constitution, cannot be
laiçl open without discovering the utter insufficiency and
mischief of every other part with which it comes in
contact, or that bears any the remotest relation to it.
You cannot propose a remedy for the incompetence of
the crown, without displaying the debility of the
assembly. You cannot deliberate on the confusion of
the army of the state, without disclosing the worse
disorders of the armed municipalities. The military
lays open the civil, and the civil betrays the military
anarchy. I wish ' everybody carefully to peruse the
eloquent speech (such it is) of Mons. de la Tour du Pin.
He attributes the salvation of the municipalities to the
good behaviour of some of the troops. These troops
are to preserve the well-disposed part of the municipalities, which is confessed to be the weakest, from the
pillage of the worst disposed, which is the strongest.
But the municipalities affect a sovereignty, and will
command those troops which are necessary for their
protection. Indeed they must command them or
court them. The municipalities, by the necessity of
their situation, and by the republican powers they
have obtained, must, with relation to the military, be
the masters, or the servants, or the confederates, or
each successively ; or they must make a jumble of all
together, according to circumstances. What government is there to coerce the army but the municipality,
or the municipality but the army ? To preserve concord where authority is extinguished, at the hazard
of all consequences, the assembly attempts to cure
the distempers by the distempers themselves ; and
they hope to preserve themselves from a purely military
democracy by giving it a debauched interest in the
municipal.
If the soldiers once come to mix for any time in the
municipal clubs, cabals, and confederacies, an elective
attraction will draw them to the lowest and most desperate part. With them will be their habits, affections,

442
EDMUND BURKE.
and sympathies. The military conspiracies, which are
to be remedied by civic confederacies ; the rebellious
municipalities, which are to be rendered obedient by
furnishing them with the means of seducing the very
armies of the state that are to keep them in order ;
all these chimeras of a monstrous and portentous policy
must aggravate the confusion from which they have
arisen. There must be blood. The want of common
judgment manifested in the construction of all their
descriptions of forces, and in all their kinds of civil
and judicial authorities, will make it flow. Disorders
may be quieted in one time and in one part. They will
break out in others ; because the evil is radical and
intrinsic. All these schemes of mixing mutinous soldiers with seditious citizens must weaken still more
and more the military connexion of soldiers with their
officers, as well as add military and mutinous audacity
to turbulent artificers and peasants. To secure a real
army, the officer should be first and last in the eye of
the soldier ; first and last in his attention, observance
and esteem. Officers it seems there are to be, whose
chief qualification must be temper and patience. They
are to manage their troops by electioneering arts. They
must bear themselves as candidates, not as commanders.
But as by such means power may be occasionally in
their hands, the authority by which they are to be
nominated becomes of high importance.
What you may do finally does not appear ; nor is it
of much moment, whilst the strange and contradictory
relation between your army and all the parts of your
republic, as well as the puzzled relation of those parts
to each other and to the whole, remain as they are»
You seem to have given the provisional nomination of
the officers, in the first instance, to the king, with a
reserve of approbation by the National Assembly.
Men who have an interest to pursue are extremely
sagacious in discovering the true seat of power. They
must soon perceive that those who can negative indefinitely in reality appoint. The officers must there-

SELECTIONS.
443
fore look to their intrigues in the assembly, as the
sole, certain road to promotion. Still, however, by
your new constitution they must begin their solicitation
at court. This double ' negotiation for military rank
seems to me a contrivance as well adapted, as if it were
studied for no other end, to promote faction in the
assembly itself, relative to this past military patronage ;
and then to poison the corps of officers with factions
of a nature still more dangerous to the safety of government upon any bottom on which it can be placed, and
destructive in the end to the efficacy of the army itself.
Those officers, who lose the promotions intended for
them by the crown, must become of a faction opposite
to that of the assembly which has rejected their claims,
and must nourish discontents in the heart of the army
against the ruling powers. Those officers, on the other
hand, who, by carrying their point through an interest
in the assembly, feel themselves to be at best only
second in the good-will of the crown, though first in that
of the assembly, must slight an authority which would
not advance and could not retard their promotion. If
to avoid these evils you will have no other rule for
command or promotion than seniority, you will have an
army of formality ; at the same time it will become
more independent and more of a military republic.
Not they, but the king is the machine. A king is not
to be deposed by halves. If he is not everything in the
command of an army, he is nothing. What is the
effect of a power placed nominally at the head of the
army, who to that army is no object of gratitude or of
fear ? Such a cipher is not fit for the administration of
an object, of all things the most delicate, the supreme
command of military men. They must be constrained
(and their inclinations lead them to what their necessities
require) by a real, vigorous, effective, decided, personal
authority. The authority of the assembly itself suffers
by passing through such a debilitating channel as they
have chosen, The army will not long look to an
assembly acting through the organ of false show, and

444
EDMUND BURKE,
palpable imposition. They will not seriously yield
obedience to a prisoner. They will either despise a
pageant, or they will pity a captive king. This relation
of your army to the crown will, if I am not greatly mistaken, become a serious dilemma in your politics.
It is besides to be considered, whether an assembly
like yours, even supposing that it was in possession of
another sort of organ through which its orders were to
pass, is fit for promoting the obedience and discipline
of an army. It is known that armies have hitherto
yielded a very precarious and uncertain obedience to
any senate, or popular authority ; and they will least
of all yield it to an assembly which is only to have a
continuance of two years. The officers must totally
lose the characteristic disposition of military men, if
they see with perfect submission and due admiration,
the dominion of pleaders ; especially when they find
that they have a new court to pay to an endless
succession of those pleaders ; whose military policy, and
the genius of whose command (if they should have any),
must be as uncertain as their duration is transient. In
the weakness of one kind of authority, and in the fluctuation of all, the officers of an army will remain for
some time mutinous and full of faction, until some
popular general, who understands the art of conciliating
the soldiery, and who possesses the true spirit of command, shall draw the eyes of all men upon himself.
Armies will obey him on his personal account. There
is no other way of securing military obedience in this
state of things. But the moment in which that event
shall happen, the person who really commands the army
is your master ; the master (that is little) of your king,
the master of your assembly, the master of your whole
republic.
How came the assembly by their present power over
the army ? Chiefly, to be sure, by debauching the
soldiers from their officers. They have begun by a
most terrible operation. They have touched the central
point, about which the particles that compose armies

SELECTIONS.
445
are at repose. They have destroyed the principle
of obedience in the great, essential, critical link between the officer and the soldier, just where the chain
of military subordination commences, and on which
the whole of that system depends. The soldier is told
he is a citizen, and has the rights of man and citizen.
The right of a man, he is told, is to be his own governor,
and to be ruled only by those to whom he delegates
that self-government. It is very natural he should
think that he ought most of all to have his choice where
he is to yield the greatest degree of obedience. He
will therefore, in all probability, systematically do
what he does at present occasionally ; that is, he will
exercise at least a negative in the choice of his officers.
At present the officers are known at best to be only
permissive, and on their good behaviour. In fact,
there have been many instances in which they have
been cashiered by their corps. Here is a second negative
on the choice of the king ; a negative as effectual at
least as the other of the assembly. The soldiers know
already that it has been a question,, not ill received
in the National Assembly, whether they ought not
to have the direct choice of their officers, or some proportion of them ? When such matters are in deliberation it is no extravagant supposition that they will
incline to the opinion most favourable to their pretensions. They will not bear to be deemed the army
of an imprisoned king, whilst another army in the
same country, with whom too they are to feast and
confederate, is to be considered as the free army of a
free constitution. They will cast their eyes on the
other and more permanent army ; I mean the municipal. That corps, they well know, does actually elect
its own officers. They may not be able to discern
the grounds of distinction on which they are not to
elect a Marquis de la Fayette (or what is his new name ?)
of their own. If this election of a commander-in-chief
be a part of the rights of men, why not of theirs ? They
see elective justices of peace, elective judges, elective

446
EDMUND BURKE.
curates, elective bishops, elective municipalities, and
elective commanders of the Parisian army.—Why
should they alone be excluded ? Are the brave troops
of France the only men in that nation who are not
the fit judges of military merit, and of the qualifications
necessary for a commander-in-chief ? Are they paid
by the state, and do they therefore lose the rights of
men ? They are a part of that nation themselves,
and contribute to that pay. And is not the king, is
not the National Assembly, and are not all who elect
the National Assembly, likewise paid ? Instead of
seeing all these forfeit their rights by their receiving
a salary, they perceive that in all these cases a salary
is given for the exercise of those rights. All your resolutions, all your proceedings, all your debates, all the
works of your doctors in religion and politics, have industriously been put into their hands ; and you expect
that they will apply to their own cause just as much
of your doctrines and examples as suits your pleasure.
Everything depends upon the army in such a government as yours ; for you have industriously destroyed
all the opinions and prejudices, and as far as in you lay,
all the instincts which support government. Therefore
the moment any difference arises between your National
Assembly and any part of the nation, you must have
recourse to force. Nothing else is left to you ; or
rather you have left nothing else to yourselves. You
see, by the report of your war minister, that the distribution of the army is in a great measure made with
a view of internal coercion.* You must rule by an
army ; and you have infused into that army by which
you rule, as well as into the whole body of the nation,
principles which after a time must disable you in the
use you resolve to make o£ it. The king is to call out
troops to act against his people, when the world has
been told, and the assertion is still ringing in our ears,
that troops ought not to fire on citizens. The colonies
* Courrier François, sothljuly, 1790. Assemblée Nationale, Numéro
210.

SELECTIONS.
447
assert to themselves an independent constitution and a
free trade. They must be constrained by troops. In
what chapter of your code of the rights of men are they
able to read that it is a part of the rights of men to have
their commerce monopolized and restrained for the
benefit of others ? As the colonists rise on you, the
negroes rise on them. Troops again—massacre, torture, hanging ! These are your rights of men ! These
are the fruits of metaphysic declarations wantonly
made, and shamefully retracted ! It was but the other
day that the farmers of land in one of your provinces
refused to pay some sorts of rents to the lord of the soil.
In consequence of this, you decree, that the country
people shall pay all rents and dues except those which
as grievances you have abolished ; and if they refuse,
then you order the king to march troops against them.
You lay down metaphysic propositions which infer
universal consequences, and then you attempt to limit
logic by despotism. The leaders of the present system
tell them of their rights, as men, to take fortresses, to
murder guards, to seize on kings, without the least
appearance of authority even from the assembly,
whilst, as the sovereign legislative body, that assembly
was sitting in the name of the nation—and yet these
leaders presume to order out the troops which have
acted in these very disorders, to coerce those who shall
judge on the principles, and follow the examples, which
have been guaranteed by their own approbation.
The leaders teach the people to abhor and reject all
feudality as the barbarism of tyranny, and they tell
them afterwards how much of that barbarous tyranny
they are to bear with patience. As they are prodigal of
light with regard to grievances, so the people find them
sparing in the extreme with regard to redress. They
know that not only certain quit-rents and personal
duties, which you have permitted them to redeem (but
have furnished no money for the redemption), are as
nothing to those burdens for which you have made no
provision at all. They know that almost the whole

448
EDMUND BURKE.
system of landed property in its origin is feudal ; that
it is the distribution of the possessions of the original
proprietors, made by a barbarous conqueror to his
barbarous instruments ; and that the most grievous
effects of the conquest are the land rents of every kind,
as without question they are.
The peasants, in all probability, are the descendants
of these ancient proprietors, Romans or Gauls. But if
they fail, in any degree, in the titles which they make
on the principles of antiquaries and lawyers, they retreat
into the citadel of the rights of men. There they
find that men are equal ; and the earth, the kind and
equal mother of all, ought not to be monopolized to
foster the pride and luxury of any men, who by nature
are no better than themselves, and who, if they do not
labour for their bread, are worse. They find that by
the laws of nature the occupant and subduer of the soil
is the true proprietor ; that there is no prescription
against nature ; and that the agreements (where any
there are) which have been made with the landlords,
during the time of slavery, are only the effect of duress
and force ; and that when the people re-entered into
the rights of men, those agreements were made as void
as everything else which had been settled under the
prevalence of the old feudal and aristocratic tyranny.
They will tell you that they see no difference between
an idler with a hat and a national cockade, and an
idler in a cowl, or in a rochet. If you ground the title
to rents on succession and prescription, they tell you
from the speech of Mr. Camus, published by the National
Assembly for their information, that things ill begun
cannot avail themselves of prescription ; that the title
of these lords was vicious in its origin ; and that force
is at least as bad as fraud. As to the title by succession,
they will tell you, that the succession of those who have
cultivated the soil is the true pedigree of property, and
not rotten parchments and silly substitutions ; that the
lords have enjoyed their usurpation too long ; and that
if they allow to these lay monks any charitable pension,

SELECTIONS.
449
they ought to be thankful to the bounty of the true
proprietor, who is so generous towards a false claimant
to his goods.
:
When the peasants give you back that coin of sophistic
reason, on which you have set your image and superscription, you cry it down as base money, and tell them
you will pay for the future with French guards and
dragoons and hussars. You hold up, to chastise them,
the second-hand authority of a king, who is only the
instrument of destroying, without any power of protecting either the people or his own person. Through
him it seems you will make yourselves obeyed. They
answer, you have taught us that there are no gentlemen ;
and which of your principles teach us to bow to kings
whom we have not elected ? We know, without your
teaching, that lands were given for the support of feudal
dignities, feudal titles, and feudal offices. When you
took down the cause as a grievance, why should the
more grievous effect remain ? As there are now no
hereditary honours, and no distinguished families, why
are we taxed to maintain what you tell us ought not to
exist ? You have sent down our old aristocratic landlords in no other character, and with no other title but
that of exactors under your authority. Have you
endeavoured to make these your rent-gatherers respectable to us ? No. You have sent them to us with
their arms reversed, their shields broken, their impresses defaced ; and so displumed, degraded, and
metamorphosed, such unfeathered two-legged things,
that we no longer know them. They are strangers to
us. They do not even go by the names of our ancient
lords. Physically they may be the same men ; though
we are not quite sure of that, on your new philosophic
doctrine of personal identity. In all other respects they
are totally changed. We do not see why we have not
as good a right to refuse them their rents, as you have
to abrogate all their honours, titles, and distinctions.
This we have never commissioned you to do ; and it
is one instance among many, indeed, of your assump*5

45o
EDMUND BURKE.
tion of undelegated power. We see the burghers of
Paris, through their clubs, their mobs, and their national
guards, directing you at their pleasure, and giving that
as law to you, which, under your authority, is transmitted as law to us. Through you, these burghers
dispose of the lives and fortunes of us all. Why should
not you attend as much to the desires of the laborious
husbandman with regard to our rent, by which we are
affected in the most serious manner, as you do to the
demands of these insolent burghers, relative to distinctions and titles of honour, by which neither they nor we
are affected at all ? But we find you pay more regard
to their fancies than to our necessities. Is it among
the rights of man to pay tribute to his equals ? Before
this measure of yours we might have thought we were
not perfectly equal. We might have entertained some
old, habitual, unmeaning prepossession in favour of
those landlords ; but we cannot conceive with what
other view than that of destroying all respect to them,
you could have made the law that degrades them.
You have forbidden us to treat them with any of the
old formalities of respect,; and now you send troops to
sabre and to bayonet us into a submission, to fear and
force, which you did not suffer us to yield to the mild
authority of opinion.
The ground of some of these jjarguments is horrid and
ridiculous to all rational ears ; but to the politicians of
metaphysics who have opened schools for sophistry, and
made establishments for anarchy, it is solid and conclusive. It is obvious that, on a mere consideration of
the right, the leaders in the assembly would not in
the least have scrupled to abrogate the rents along with
the titles and family ensigns. It would be only to
follow up the principle of their reasonings and to complete the analogy of their conduct. But they had
newly possessed themselves of a great body of landed
property by confiscation. They had this commodity
at market ; and the market would have been wholly
destroyed, if they were to permit the husbandmen to

SELECTIONS.
451
riot in the speculations with which they so freely
intoxicated themselves. The only security which property enjoys in any one of its descriptions is from the
interests of their rapacity with regard to some other.
They have left nothing but their own arbitrary pleasure
to determine what property is to be protected and what
subverted.
Neither have they left any principle by which any of
their municipalities can be bound to obedience ; or even
conscientiously obliged not to separate from the whole
to become independent, or to connect itself with some
other state. The people of Lyons, it seems, have refused
lately to pay taxes. Why should they not ? What
lawful authority is there left to exact them ? The king
imposed some of them. The old states, methodized by
orders, settled the more ancient. They may say to the
assembly, Who are you, that are not our kings, nor the
states we have elected, nor sit on the principles on which
we have elected you ? And who are we, that when we
see the gabelles, which you have ordered to be paid,
wholly shaken off, when we see the act of disobedience
afterwards ratified by yourselves, who are we, that we
are not to judge what taxes we ought or ought not to
pay, and are not to avail ourselves of the same powers,
the validity of which you have approved in others ?
To this the answer is, We will send troops. The last
reason of kings is always the first with your assembly.
This military aid may serve for a time, whilst the impression of the increase of pay remains, and the vanity
of being umpires in all disputes is flattered. ,But this
weapon will snap short, unfaithful to the hand that
employs it. The assembly keep a school, where, systematically, and with unremitting perseverance, they
teach principles and form regulations, destructive to
all spirit of subordination, civil and military—and then
they expect that they shall hold in obedience an anarchic
army.
The municipal army which, according to their new
policy, is to balance this national army, if considered in

452
EDMUND BURKE.
itself only, is of a constitution much more simple, and in
every respect less exceptionable. It is a mere democratic body, unconnected with the crown or the kingdom ; armed, and trained, and officered at the pleasure
of the districts to which the corps severally belong ; and
the personal service of the individuals, who compose,
or the fine in lieu of personal service, are directed by
the same authority.* Nothing is more uniform. If,
however, considered in any relation to the crown, to
the National Assembly, to the public tribunals, or to
the other army, or considered in a view to any coherence
or connexion between its parts, it seems a monster, and
can hardly fail to terminate its perplexed movements
in some great national calamity. It is a worse preservative of a general constitution, than the systasis of
Crete, or the confederation of Poland, or any other illdevised corrective which has yet been imagined, in
the necessities produced by an ill-constructed system
of government.
Having concluded my few remarks on the constitution of the supreme power, the executive, the judicature,
the military, and on the reciprocal relation of all these
establishments, I shall say something of the ability
showed by your legislators with regard to the revenue.
In their proceedings relative to this object, if possible,
still fewer traces appear of political judgment or financial
resource. When the states met, it seemed to be the
great object to improve the system of revenue, to enlarge
its collection, to cleanse it of oppression and vexation,
and to establish it on the most solid footing. Great
were the expectations entertained on that head throughout Europe. It was by this grand arrangement that
France was to stand or fall ; and this became, in my
opinion, very properly, the test by which the skill and
* I see by Mr. Necker's account that the national guards of Paris
have received, over and above the money levied within their own
city, about 145,000/. sterling out of the public treasure. Whether
this be an actual payment for the nine months of their existence, or
an estimate of their yearly charge, I do not clearly perceive. It is of
no great importance, as certainly they may take" whatever they please.

SELECTIONS.
453
patriotism of those who ruled in that assembly would
be tried. The revenue of the state is the state. In
effect all depends upon it, whether for support or for
reformation. The dignity of every occupation wholly
depends upon the quantity and the kind of virtue that
may be exerted in it. As all great qualities of the mind
which operate in public, and are not merely suffering
and passive, require force for their display, I had almost
said for their unequivocal existence, the revenue, which
is the spring of all power, becomes in its administration
the sphere of every active virtue. Public virtue, being
of a nature magnificent and splendid, instituted for
great things, and conversant about great concerns,
requires abundant scope and room, and cannot spread
and grow under confinement, and in circumstances
straitened, narrow, and sordid. Through the revenue
alone the body politic can act in its true genius and
character, and therefore it will display just as much of
its collective virtue, and as much of that virtue which
may characterize those who move it, and are, as it were,
its life and guiding principle, as it is possessed of a just
revenue. For fiom hence not only magnanimity, and
liberality, and beneficence, fortitude, and providence,
and the tutelary protection of all good arts, derive their
food, and the growth of their organs, but continence,
and self-denial, and labour, and vigilance, and frugality,
and whatever else there is in which the mind shows
itself above the appetite, are nowhere more in their
proper element than in the provision and distribution
of the public wealth. It is therefore not without reason
that the science of speculative ;; and practical finance,
which must take to its aid so many auxiliary branches
of knowledge, stands high in the estimation not only of
the ordinary sort, but of the wisest and best men ; and
as this science has grown with the progress of its object,
the prosperity and improvement of nations has generally increased with the increase of their revenues ;
and they will both continue to grow and flourish, as
long as the balance between what is left to strengthen

454
EDMUND BURKE.
the efforts of individuals, and what is collected fo r
the common efforts of the state, bear to each other
a due reciprocal proportion, and are kept in a close
correspondence and communication. And perhaps it
may be owing to the greatness of revenues, and to the
urgency of state necessities, that old abuses in the
constitution of finances are discovered, and their true
nature and rational theory comes to be more perfectly
understood; insomuch that a smaller revenue might
have been more distressing in one period than a far
greater is found to be in another; the proportionate
wealth even remaining the same. In this state of
things, the French assembly found something in their
revenues to preserve, to secure, and wisely to administer,
as well as to abrogate and alter. Though their proud
assumption might justify the severest test, yet in trying
their abilities on their financial proceedings, I would
only consider what is the plain, obvious duty of a common
finance minister, and try them upon that and not upon
models of ideal perfection.
The objects of a financier are, then, to secure an
ample revenue ; to impose it with judgment and equality ;
to employ it economically ; and, when necessity obliges
him to make use of credit, to secure its foundations in
that instance, and for ever, by the clearness and candour
of his proceedings, the exactness of his calculations,
and the solidity of his funds. On these heads we
may take a short and distinct view of the merits and
abilities of those in the National Assembly, who have
taken to themselves the management of this arduous
concern. Far from any increase of revenue in their
hands, I find, by a report of M. Vernier, from the committee of finances, of the second of August last, that the
amount of the national revenue, as compared with its
produce before the Revolution, was diminished by the
sum of two hundred millions, or eight millions sterling
of the annual income, considerably more than one third
of the whole.
If this be the result of great ability, never surely was

SELECTIONS.
455
ability displayed in a more distinguished manner, or
with so powerful an effect. No common folly, no vulgar
incapacity, no ordinary official negligence, even no
official crime, no corruption, no peculation, hardly any
direct hostility which we have seen in the modern world,
could in so short a time have made so complete an overthrow of the finances, and with them, of the strength
of a great kingdom.—Cedo qui vestram rempublicam
tantam amisistis tarn cito ?
The sophisters and declaimers, as soon as the assembly
met, began with decrying the ancient constitution of
the revenue in many of its most essential branches, such
as the public monopoly of salt. They charged it, as
truly as unwisely, with being ill-contrived, oppressive,
and partial. This representation they were not satisfied
to make use of in speeches preliminary to some plan of
reform; they declared it in a solemn resolution or
public sentence, as it were judicially, passed upon it ;
and this they dispersed throughout the nation. At the
time they passed the decree, with the same gravity they
ordered the same absurd, oppressive, and partial tax
to be paid, until they could find a revenue to replace it.
The consequence was inevitable. The provinces which
had been always exempted from this salt monopoly,
some of whom were charged with other contributions,
perhaps equivalent, were totally disinclined to bear any
part of the burden, which by an equal distribution was
to redeem the others. As to the assembly, occupied
as it was with the declaration and violation of the rights
of men, and with their arrangements for general confusion, it had neither leisure nor capacity to contrive,
nor authority to enforce, any plan of any kind relative
to the replacing the tax or equalizing it, or compensating
the provinces, or for conducting their minds to any
scheme of accommodation with the other districts which
were to be relieved.
The people of the salt provinces, impatient under
taxes, damned by the authority which had directed
their payment, very soon found their patience exhausted.

456
EDMUND BURKE.
They thought themselves as skilful in demolishing as
the assembly could be. They relieved themselves by
throwing off the whole burden. Animated by this
example, each district, or part of a district, judging of
its own grievance by its own feeling, and of its remedy
by its own opinion, did as it pleased with other taxes.
We are next to see how they have conducted themselves in contriving equal impositions, proportioned to
the means of the citizens, and the least likely to lean
heavy on the active capital employed in the generation
of that private wealth, from whence the public fortune
must be derived. By suffering the several districts,
and several of the individuals in each district, to judge
of what part of the old revenue they might withhold,
instead of better principles of equality, a new inequality
was introduced of the most oppressive kind. Payments were regulated by dispositions. The parts of the
kingdom which were the most submissive, the most
orderly, or the most affectionate to the commonwealth,
bore the whole burden of the state. Nothing turns
out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government. To fill up all the deficiencies in the old impositions, and the new deficiencies of every kind which
were to be expected, what remained to a state without
authority ? The National Assembly called for a voluntary benevolence ;^ for a fourth part of the income of
all the citizens, to be estimated on the honour of those
who were to pay, They obtained something more
than could be rationally calculated, but what was far
indeed from answerable to their real necessities, and
much less to their fond expectations. Rational people
could have hoped for little from this their tax in the
disguise of a benevolence ; a tax weak, ineffective, and
unequal ; a tax by which luxury, avarice, and selfishness were screened, and the load thrown upon productive capital, upon integrity, generosity, and public
spirit—a tax of regulation upon virtue. At length the
mask is thrown off, and they are now trying means (with
little success) of exacting their benevolence by force.

SELECTIONS.
457
This benevolence, the rickety offspring of weakness,
was to be supported by another resource, the twin
brother of the same prolific imbecility. The patriotic
donations were to make good the failure of the patriotic
contribution. John Doe was to become security for
Richard Roe. By this scheme they took things of
much price from the giver, comparatively of small
value to the receiver ; they ruined several trades ; they
pillaged the crown of its ornaments, the churches of
their plate, and the people of their personal decorations.
The invention of these juvenile pretenders to liberty
was in reality nothing more than a servile imitation of
one of the poorest resources of doting despotism. They
took an old huge full-bottomed periwig out of the
wardrobe of the antiquated frippery of Louis XIV, to
cover the premature baldness of the National Assembly.
They produced this old-fashioned formal folly, though
it had been so abundantly exposed in the Memoirs of
the Duke de St. Simon, if to reasonable men it had
wanted any arguments to display its mischief and
insufficiency. A device of the same kind was tried in
my memory by Louis XV, but it answered at no time.
However, the necessities of ruinous wars were some
excuse for desperate projects. The deliberations of
calamity are rarely wise. But here was a season for
disposition and providence. It was in a time of profound peace, then enjoyed for five years, and promising
a much longer continuance, that they had recourse to
this desperate trifling. They were sure to lose more
reputation by sporting, in their serious situation, with
these toys and playthings of finance, which have filled
half their journals, than could possibly be compensated
by the poor temporary supply which they afforded.
It seemed as if those who adopted such projects were
wholly ignorant of their circumstances, or wholly
unequal to their necessities. Whatever virtue may be
in these devices, it is obvious that neither the patriotic
gifts, nor the patriotic contribution, can ever be resorted
to again. The resources of public folly are soon ex-

458
EDMUND BURKE.
hausted. The whole indeed of their scheme of revenue
is to make, by any artifice, an appearance of a full
reservoir for the hour, whilst at the same time they
cut off the springs and living fountains of perennial
supply. The account not long since furnished by
Mr. Necker was meant, without question, to be favourable. He gives a flattering view of the means of getting
through the year ; but he expresses, as it is natural he
should, some apprehension for that which was to succeed. On this last prognostic, instead of entering into
the grounds of this apprehension, in order, by a proper
foresight, to prevent the prognosticated evil, Mr. Necker
receives a sort of friendly reprimand from the president
of the assembly.
As to their other schemes of taxation, it is impossible
to say anything of them with certainty ; because they
have not yet had their operation : but nobody is so
sanguine as to imagine they will fill up any perceptible
part of the wide gaping breach which their incapacity
has made in their revenues. At present the state of
their treasury sinks every day more and more in cash,
and swells more and more in fictitious representation.
When so little within or without is now found but paper,
the representative not of opulence but of want, the
creature not of credit but of power, they imagine that
our flourishing state in England is owing to that bankpaper, and not the bank-paper to the flourishing condition of our commerce, to the solidity of our credit, and
to the total exclusion of all idea of power from any part
of the transaction. They forget that, in England, not
one shilling of paper-money of any description is received
but of choice ; that the whole has had its origin in cash
actually deposited ; and that it is convertible, at pleasure,
in an instant, and without the smallest loss, into cash
again. Our paper is of value in commerce, because in
law it is of none. It is powerful on 'Change, because in
Westminster Hall it is impotent. In payment of a
debt of twenty shillings, a creditor may refuse all the
paper of the Bank of England. Nor is there amongst

SELECTIONS.
459
us a single public security, of any quality or nature
whatsoever, that is enforced by authority. In fact it
might be easily shown that our paper wealth, instead of
lessening the real coin, has a tendency to increase i t ;
instead of being a substitute for money, it only facilitates
its entry, its exit, and its circulation ; that it is the
symbol of prosperity, and not the badge of distress.
Never was a scarcity of cash, and an exuberance of paper,
a subject of complaint in this nation.
Well ! but a lessening of prodigal expenses and the
economy which has been introduced by the virtuous and
sapient assembly make amends for the losses sustained
in the receipt of revenue. In this at least they have
fulfilled the duty of a financier.—Have those who say
so looked at the expenses of the National Assembly
itself? of the municipalities? of the city of Paris? of
the increased pay of the two armies ? of the new police ?
of the new judicatures ? Have they even carefully compared the present pension list with the former ? These
politicians have been cruel, not economical. Comparing
the expenses of the former prodigal government and its
relation to the then revenues with the expenses of this
new system as opposed to the state of its new treasury*
I believe the present will be found beyond all comparison
more chargeable.*
It remains only to consider the proofs of financial
ability, furnished by the present French managers when
* The reader will observe that I have but lightly touched (my plan
demanded nothing more) on the condition of the French finances, as
connected with the demands upon them. If I had intended to do
otherwise, the materials in my hands for such a task are not altogether
perfect. On this subject I refer the reader to M. de Calonne's work ;
and the tremendous display that he has made of the havoc and devastation in the public estate, and in all the affairs of France, caused
by the presumptuous good intentions of ignorance and incapacity.
Such effects those causes will always produce. Looking over that
account with a pretty strict eye, and, with perhaps too much rigour,
deducting everything which may be placed to the account of a financier
out of place, who might be supposed by his enemies desirous of making
the most of his cause, I believe it will be found that a more salutary
lesson of caution against the daring spirit of innovators, than what
has been supplied at the expense of France, never was at any time
furnished to mankind.

460
EDMUND BURKE.
they are to raise supplies on credit. Here I am a little
at a stand ; for credit, properly speaking, they have none.
The credit of the ancient government was not indeed the
best ; but they could always, on some terms, command
money, not only at home, but from most of the countries
of Europe where a surplus capital was accumulated;
and the credit of that government was improving daily.
The establishment of a system of liberty would of course
be supposed to give it new strength : and so it would
actually have done, if a system of liberty had been established. What offers has their government of pretended
liberty had from Holland, from Hamburgh, from Switzerland, from Genoa, from England, for a dealing in their
paper ? Why should these nations of commerce and
economy enter into any pecuniary dealings with a people
who attempt to reverse the very nature of things ;
amongst whom they see the debtor prescribing, at the
point of the bayonet, the medium of his solvency to the
creditor ; discharging one of his engagements with
another ; turning his very penury into his resource ; and
paying his interest with his rags ?
Their fanatical confidence in the omnipotence of
church plunder has induced these philosophers to overlook all care of the public estate, just as the dream of
the philosopher's stone induces dupes, under the more
plausible delusion of the hermetic art, to neglect all
rational means of improving their fortunes. With these
philosophic financiers, this universal medicine made of
church mummy is to cure all the evils of the state. These
gentlemen perhaps do not believe a great deal in the
miracles of piety ; but it cannot be questioned, that they
have an undoubting faith in the prodigies of sacrilege. Is
there a debt which presses them ?—Issue assignats. Are
compensations to be made, or a maintenance decreed to
those whom they have robbed of their freehold in their
office, or expelled from their profession ?—Assignats. Is
a fleet to be fitted out ?—Assignats. If sixteen millions
sterling of these assignats forced on the people, leave the
wants of the state as urgent as ever—issue, says one,

SELECTIONS.
461
thirty millions sterling of assignats—says another, issue
fourscore millions more of assignats. The only difference
among their financial factions is on the greater or the
lesser quantity of assignats to be imposed on the public
sufferance. They are all professors of assignats. Even
those whose natural good sense and knowledge of commerce, not obliterated by philosophy, furnish decisive
arguments against this delusion, conclude their arguments
by proposing the emission of assignats. I suppose they
must talk of assignats, as no other language would be
understood. All experience of their inefiicacy does not
in the least discourage them. 'Are the old assignats
depreciated at market ? What is the remedy ? Issue
new assignats.—Mais si maladia, opiniatria, non vult
se garrire, quid UK facere ? assignare—postea assignare /
ensuite assignare. The word is a trifle altered. The
Latin of your present doctors may be better than that of
your old comedy ; their wisdom and the variety of their
resources are the same. They have not more notes in
their song than the cuckoo ; though, far from the softness of that harbinger of summer and plenty, their voice
is as harsh and as ominous as that of the raven.
" Who but the most desperate adventurers in philosophy and finance could at all have thought of destroying the settled revenue of the state, the sole security
for the public credit, in the hope of rebuilding it with the
materials of confiscated property ? If, however, an
excessive zeal for the state should have led a pious and
venerable prelate (by anticipation a father of the church*)
to pillage his own order and, for the good of the church
and people, to take upon himself the place of grand
financier of confiscation, and comptroller-general of
sacrilege, he and his coadjutors were, in my opinion,
bound to show, by their subsequent conduct, that they
knew something of the office they assumed. When they
had resolved to appropriate to the fisc a certain portion
of the landed property of their conquered country, it
was their business to render their bank a real fund
* La Bruyère of Bossuet.

462
EDMUND BURKE.
of credit ; as far as such a bank was capable of becoming so.
To establish a current circulating credit upon any
land-bank, under any circumstances whatsoever, has
hitherto proved difficult at the very least. The attempt
has commonly ended in bankruptcy. But when the
assembly were led, through a contempt of moral, to a
defiance of economical principles, it might at least have
been expected that nothing would be omitted on their
part to lessen this difficulty, to prevent any aggravation of this bankruptcy. It might be expected, that, to
render your land-bank' tolerable, every means would be
adopted that could display openness and candour in the
statement of the security ; everything which could aid
the recovery of the demand. To take things in their
most favourable point of view, your condition was that
of a man of a large landed estate, which he wished to
dispose of for the discharge of a debt and the supply of
certain services. Not being able instantly to sell, you
wished to mortgage. What would a man of fair intentions, and a commonly clear understanding, do in such
circumstances ? Ought he not first to ascertain the
gross value of the estate ; the charges of its management and disposition ; the incumbrances perpetual and
temporary of all kinds that affect it ; then, striking a net
surplus, to calculate the just value of the security ?
When that surplus (the only security to the creditor)
had been clearly ascertained and properly vested in the
hands of trustees ; then he would indicate the parcels to
be sold and the time and conditions of sale ; after this, he
would admit the public creditor, if he chose it, to subscribe his stock into this new fund ; or he might receive
proposals for an assignat from those who would advance
money to purchase this species of security.
This would be to proceed like men of business, methodically and rationally ; and on the only principles of public
and private credit that have an existence. The dealer
would then know exactly what he purchased ; and the
only doubt which could hang upon his mind would be,

SELECTIONS.
463
the dread of the resumption of the spoil, which one day
might be made (perhaps with an addition of punishment)
from the sacrilegious grip of those execrable wretches
who could become purchasers at the auction of their
innocent fellow-citizens.
An open and exact statement of the clear value of the
property and of the time, the circumstances, the place of
sale, were all necessary, to efface as much as possible the
stigma that has hitherto been branded on every kind of
land-bank. It became necessary on another principle,
that is, on account of a pledge of faith previously given
on that subject, that their future fidelity in a slippery
concern might be established by their adherence to their
first engagement. When they had finally determined on
a state resource from church booty, they came, on the
14th of April, 1790, to a solemn resolution on the subject ;
and pledged themselves to their country, ' that in the
statement of the public charges for each year, there
should be brought to account a sum sufficient for defraying the expenses of the R. C. A. religion, the support of
the ministers at the altars, the relief of the poor, the
pensions to the ecclesiastics, secular as well as regular,
of the one and of the other sex, in order that the estates
and goods which are at the disposal of the nation may be
disengaged of all charges, and employed by the representatives, or the legislative body, to the great and most pressing
exigencies of the state/ They further engaged, on the
same day, that the sum necessary for the year 1791
should be forthwith determined.
In this resolution they admit it their duty to show
distinctly the expense of the above objects, which, by
other resolutions, they had before engaged should be
first in the order of provision. They admit that they
ought to show the estate clear and disengaged of all
charges, and that they should show it immediately.
Have they done this immediately, or at any time ?
Have they ever furnished a rent-roll, of the immovable
estate, or given in an inventory of the movable effects
which they confiscate to their assignats ? In what

464
EDMUND BURKE.
manner they can fulfil their engagements of holding out
to public service ' an estate disengaged of all charges/
without authenticating the value of the estate, or the
quantum of the charges, I leave it to their English admirers to explain. Instantly upon this assurance, and
previously to any one step towards making it good, they
issue, on the credit of so handsome a declaration, sixteen
millions sterling of their paper. This was manly. Who,
after this masterly stroke, can doubt of their abilities in
finance ?—But then, before any other emission of these
financial indulgences, they took care at least to make
good their original promise !—If such estimate, either of
the value of the estate or the amount of the incumbrances,
has been made, it has escaped me. I never heard of it.
At length they have spoken out, and they have made
a full discovery of their abominable fraud, in holding out
the church lands as a security for any debts, or any
service whatsoever. They rob only to enable them to
cheat ; but in a very short time they defeat the ends
both of the robbery and the fraud, by making out
accounts for other purposes, which blow up their whole
apparatus of force and of deception. I am obliged to
M. de Calonne for his reference to the document which
proves this extraordinary fact : it had by some means
escaped me. Indeed it was not necessary to make out
my assertion as to the breach of faith on the declaration
of the 14th of April, 1790. By a report of their committee it now appears, that the charge of keeping up the
reduced ecclesiastical establishments, and other expenses
attendant on religion, and maintaining the religious of
both sexes, retained or pensioned, and the other concomitant expenses of the same nature, which they have
brought upon themselves by this convulsion in property,
exceeds the income of the estates acquired by it in the
enormous sum of two millions sterling annually ; besides
a debt of seven millions and upwards. These are the
calculating powers of imposture ! This is the finance of
philosophy ! This is the result of all the delusions held
out to engage a miserable people in rebellion, murder,

SELECTIONS.
465
and sacrilege, and to make them prompt and zealous
instruments in the ruin of their country ! Never did a
state, in any case, enrich itself by the confiscations of
the citizens. This new experiment has succeeded like
all the rest. Every honest mind, every true lover of
liberty and humanity, must rejoice to find that injustice
is not always good policy, nor rapine the high road to
riches. I subjoin with pleasure, in a note, the able and
spirited observations of M. de Calonne on this subject.*
In order to persuade the world of the bottomless resource of ecclesiastical confiscation, the assembly have
proceeded to other confiscation of estates in offices, which
could not be done with any common colour without being
compensated out of this grand confiscation of landed
property. They have thrown upon this fund which was
to show a surplus, disengaged of all charges, a new charge ;
namely, the compensation to the whole body of the disbanded judicature ; and of all suppressed offices and
estates ; a charge which I cannot ascertain, but which
unquestionably amounts to many French millions. Another of the new charges is an annuity of four hundred
* ' Ce n'est point à l'assemblée entière que je m'adresse ici ; je ne
parle qu'à ceux qui l'égarent, en lui cachant sous des gazes séduisantes
le but où ils l'entraînent. C'est à eux que je dis : votre objet, vous
n'en disconviendrez pas, c'est d'ôter tout espoir au clergé, et de consommer sa ruine; c'est-là, en ne vous soupçonnant d'aucune combinaison de cupidité, d'aucun regard sur le jeu des effets publics, c'est-là
ce qu'on doit croire que vous avez en vue dans la terrible opération que
vous proposez ; c'est ce qui doit en être le fruit. Mais le peuple qui vous
y intéressez, quel avantage peut-il y trouver ? En vous servant sans
cesse de lui, que faites-vous pour lui ? Rien, absolument rien ; et,
au contraire, vous faites ce qui ne conduit qu'à l'accabler de nouvelles
charges. Vous avez rejeté, à son préjudice, une offre de 400 millions,
dont l'acceptation pouvoit devenir un moyen de soulagement en sa
faveur; et à cette ressource, aussi profitable que légitime, vous avez
substitué une injustice ruineuse, qui, de votre propre aveu, charge le
trésor public, et par conséquent le peuple, d'un surcroît de dépense
annuelle de 50 millions au moins, et d'un remboursement de 150 millions.
4
Malheureux peuple ! voilà ce que vous vaut en dernier résultat
l'expropriation d'Église, et la dureté des décrets taxateurs du traitement des ministres d'une religion bienfaisante ; et désormais ils seront
à votre charge : leurs charités soulageoient les pauvres ; et vous allez
être imposés pour subvenir à leur entretien ! '—De VÉtat de la France,
p. 81; See also p. 92, and the following pages.

4 66

EDMUND BURKE.
and eighty thousand pounds sterling, to be paid (if they
choose to keep faith) by daily payments, for the interest
of the first assignats. Have they ever given themselves
the trouble to state fairly the expense of the management of the church lands in the hands of the municipalities,
to whose care, skill, and diligence, and that of their legion
of unknown under-agents, they have chosen to commit
the charge of the forfeited estates, and the consequence
of which had been so ably pointed out by the Bishop of
Nancy ?
But it is unnecessary to dwell on these obvious heads
of incumbrance. Have they made out any clear state
of the grand incumbrance of all, I mean the whole of the
general and municipal establishments of all sorts, and
compared it with the regular income by revenue ? Every
deficiency in these becomes a charge on the confiscated
estate, before the creditor can plant his cabbages on an
acre of church property. There is no other prop than this
confiscation to keep the whole state from tumbling to the
ground. In this situation they have purposely covered
all that they ought industriously to have cleared with a
thick fog ; and then, blindfold themselves, like bulls
that shut their eyes when they push, they drive, by the
point of the bayonets, their slaves, blindfolded indeed no
worse than their lords, to take their fictions for currencies,
and to swallow down paper pills by thirty-four millions
sterling at a dose. Then they proudly lay in their claim
to a future credit, on failure of all their past engagements, and at a time when (if in such a matter anything
can be clear) it is clear that the surplus estates will never
answer even the first of their mortgages, I mean that of
the four hundred millions (or sixteen millions sterling)
of assignats. In all this procedure I can discern neither
the solid sense of plain dealing, nor the subtle dexterity
of ingenious fraud. The objections within the assembly
to pulling up the flood-gates for this inundation of fraud
are unanswered ; but they are thoroughly refuted by a
hundred thousand financiers in the street. These are the
numbers by which the metaphysic arithmeticians com-

SELECTIONS.
467
pute. These are the grand calculations on which a
philosophical public credit is founded in France. They
cannot raise supplies ; but they can raise mobs. Let
them rejoice in the applauses of the club at Dundee, for
their wisdom and patriotism in having thus applied the
plunder of the citizens to the service of the state.' I hear
of no address upon this subject from the directors of the
Bank of England ; though their approbation would be
of a little more weight in the scale of credit than that of
the club at Dundee. But, to do justice to the club, I
believe the gentlemen who compose it to be wiser than
they appear ; that they will be less liberal of their money
than of their addresses ; and that they would not give a
dog's ear of their most rumpled and ragged Scotch paper
for twenty of your fairest assignats.
Early in this year the assembly issued paper to the
amount of sixteen millions sterling : what must have
been the state into which the assembly has brought your
affairs, that the relief afforded by so vast a supply has been
hardly perceptible ? This paper also felt an almost immediate depreciation of five per cent., which in a little
time came to about seven. The effect of these assignats
on the receipt of the revenue is remarkable. Mr. Necker
found that the collectors of the revenue, who received in
coin, paid the treasury in assignats. The collectors made
seven per cent, by thus receiving in money and accounting
in depreciated paper. It is not very difficult to foresee that
this must be inevitable. It was, however, not the less embarrassing. Mr. Necker was obliged (I believe, for a considerable part, in the market of London) to buy gold and
silver for the mint, which amounted to about twelve thousand pounds above the value of the commodity gained.
That minister was of opinion that, whatever their secret
nutritive virtue might be, the state could not live upon
assignats alone ; that some real silver was necessary,
particularly for the satisfaction of those who, having
iron in their hands, were not likely to distinguish themselves for patience, when they should perceive that
whilst an increase of pay was held out to them in real

468
EDMUND BURKE.
money, it was again to be fraudulently drawn back
by depreciated paper. The minister, in this very
natural distress, applied to the assembly, that they
should order the collectors to pay in specie what in specie
they had received. It could not escape him that, if the
treasury paid three per cent, for the use of a currency,
which should be returned seven per cent, worse than
the minister issued it, such a dealing could not very
greatly tend to enrich the public. The assembly took
no notice of his recommendation. They were in this
dilemma—if they continued to receive the assignats,
cash must become an alien to their treasury : if the
treasury should refuse those paper amulets, or should
discountenance them in any degree, they must destroy
the credit of their sole resource. They seem then to
have made their option ; and to have given some sort
of credit to their paper by taking it themselves ; at the
same time in their speeches they made a sort of swaggering declaration, something, I rather think, above
legislative competence ; that is, that there is no difference in value between metallic money and their
assignats. This was a good, stout, proof article of faith,
pronounced under an anathema, by the venerable
fathers of i this philosophic synod. Credat who will-1certainly not Judœus Apella.
A noble indignation rises in the minds of your popular
leaders, on hearing the magic lantern in their show of
finance compared to the fraudulent exhibitions of Mr.
Law. They cannot bear to hear the sands of the Mississippi compared with the rock of the church on which
they build their system. Pray let them suppress this
glorious spirit, until they show to the world what piece
of solid ground there is for their assignats, which they
have not pre-occupied by other charges. They do
injustice to that great, mother fraud, to compare it
with their degenerate imitation. It is not true that
Law built solely on a speculation concerning the Mississippi. He added the East India trade ; he added
the African trade ; he added the farms of all the farmed

SELECTIONS.
469
revenue of France. AU these together unquestionably
could not support the structure which the public enthusiasm, not he, chose to build upon these bases. But
these were, however, in comparison, generous delusions.
They supposed, and they aimed at an increase of the
commerce of France. They opened to it the whole
range of the two hemispheres. They did not think of
feeding France from its own substance. A grand
imagination found in this flight of commerce something to captivate. It was wherewithal to dazzle
the eye of an eagle. It was not made to entice the
smell of a mole ; nuzzling and burying himself in his
mother earth, as yours is. Men were not then quite
shrunk from their natural dimensions by a degrading
and sordid philosophy, and fitted for low and vulgar
deceptions. Above all, remember that, in imposing
on the imagination, the then managers of the system
made a compliment to the freedom of men. In their
fraud there was no mixture of force. This was reserved
to our time, to quench the little glimmerings of reason
which might break in upon the solid darkness of this
enlightened age.
On recollection, I have said nothing of a scheme of
finance which may be urged in favour of the abilities of
these gentlemen, and which has been introduced with
great pomp, though not yet finally adopted in the
National Assembly. It comes with something solid in
aid of the credit of the paper circulation ; and much
has been said of its utility and its elegance. I mean
the project for coining into money the bells of the suppressed churches. This is their alchymy. There are
some follies which baffle argument ; which go beyond
ridicule ; and which excite no feeling in us but disgust ;
and therefore I say no more upon it.
It is as little worth remarking any farther upon all
their drawing and re-drawing, on their circulation for
putting off the evil day, on the play between the treasury
and the Caisse d'Escompte, and on all these old, exploded
contrivances of mercantile fraud, now exalted into policy

470
EDMUND BURKE.
of state. The revenue will not be trifled with. The
prattling about the rights of men will not be accepted
in payment of a biscuit or a pound of gunpowder. Here
then the metaphysicians descend from their airy speculations and faithfully follow examples. What examples ? The examples of bankrupts. But defeated,
baffled, disgraced, when their breath, their strength,
their inventions, their fancies desert them, their confidence still maintains its ground. In the manifest
failure of their abilities, they take credit for their benevolence. When the revenue disappears in their hands,
they have the presumption, in some of their late proceedings, to value themselves on the relief given to the
people. They did not relieve the people. If they
entertained such intentions, why did they order the
obnoxious taxes to be paid ? The people relieved
themselves in spite of the assembly.
But waving all discussion on the parties who may
claim the merit of this fallacious relief, has there been,
in effect, any relief to the people in any form ? Mr.
Bailly, one of the grand agents of paper circulation, lets
you into the nature of this relief. His speech to the
National Assembly contained a high and laboured
panegyric on the inhabitants of Paris, for the constancy
and unbroken resolution with which they have borne
their distress and misery. A fine picture of public
felicity ! What ! great courage and unconquerable
firmness of mind to endure benefits, and sustain redress ?
One would think from the speech of this learned lord
mayor that the Parisians, for this twelvemonth past,
had been suffering the straits of some dreadful blockade ;
that Henry IV had been stopping up the avenues to
their supply, and Sully thundering with his ordnance
at the gates of Paris ; when in reality they are besieged
by no other enemies than their own madness and folly,
their own credulity and perverseness, But Mr. Bailly
will sooner thaw the eternal ice of his atlantic regions,
than restore the central heat to Paris, whilst it remains
'smitten with the cold, dry, pétrifie mace* of a false

SELECTIONS.
471
and unfeeling philosophy. Some time after this speech,
that is, on the 13th of last August, the same magistrate,
giving an account of his government at the bar of the
same assembly, expresses himself as follows : ' In the
month of July 1789 ' [the period of everlasting commemoration], ' the finances of the city of Paris were yet
in good order 5 the expenditure was counterbalanced
by the receipt, and she had at that time a million '
[forty thousand pounds sterling] ' in bank. The expenses
which she has been constrained to incur, subsequent
to the Revolution, amount to 2,500,000 livres. From
these expenses, and the great falling off in the product
of the free gifts, not only a momentary, but a total want
of money has taken place.' This is the Paris, upon
whose nourishment, in the course of the last year, such
immense sums, drawn from the vitals of all France,
have been. expended. As long as Paris stands in the
place of ancient Rome, so long she will be maintained
by the subject provinces. It is an evil inevitably
attendant on the dominion of sovereign democratic
republics. As it happened in Rome, it may survive
that republican domination which gave rise to it. In
that case despotism itself must submit to the vices of
popularity. Rome, under her emperors, united the
evils of both systems ; and this unnatural combination
was one great cause of her ruin.
To tell the people that they are relieved by the dilapidation of their public estate, is a cruel and insolent
imposition. Statesmen, before they valued themselves
on the relief given to the people by the destruction of
their revenue, ought first to have carefully attended
to the solution of this problem :—Whether it be more
advantageous to the people to pay considerably, and
to gain in proportion ; or to gain little or nothing, and
to be disburdened of all contribution ? My mind is
made up to decide in favour of the first proposition.
Experience is with me and, I believe, the best opinions
also. To keep a balance between the power of acquisition on the part of the subject and the demands he is

472
EDMUND BURKE.
to answer on the part of the state, is the fundamental
part of the skill of a true politician. The means of
acquisition are prior in time and in arrangement. Good
order is the foundation of all good things. To be enabled to acquire, the people, without being servile,
must be tractable and obedient. The magistrate must
have his reverence, the laws their authority. The
body of the people must not find the principles of natural subordination by art rooted out of their minds.
They must respect that property of which they cannot
partake. They must labour to obtain what by labour
can be obtained 5 and when they find, as they commonly
do, the success disproportioned to the endeavour, they
must be taught their consolation in the final proportions
of eternal justice. Of this consolation whoever deprives
them deadens their industry, and strikes at the root
of all acquisition as of all conservation. He that does
this is the cruel oppressor, the merciless enemy of the
poor and wretched ; at the same time that by his wicked
speculations he exposes the fruits of successful industry,
and the accumulations of fortune, to the plunder of the
negligent, the disappointed, and the unprosperous.
Too many of the financiers by profession are apt to
see nothing in revenue but banks, and circulations, and
annuities on lives, and tontines, and perpetual rents,
and all the small wares of the shop. In a settled order
of the state, these things are not to be slighted, nor is
the skill in them to be held in trivial estimation. They
are good, but then only good, when they assume the
effects of that settled order, and are built upon it. But
when men think that these beggarly contrivances may
supply a resource for the evils which result from breaking up the foundations of public order, and from causing
or suffering the principles of property to be subverted,
they will, in the ruin of their country, leave a melancholy
and lasting monument of the effect of preposterous
politics, and presumptuous, short-sighted, narrowminded wisdom.
The effects of the incapacity shown by the popular

SELECTIONS.
473
.leaders in all the great members of the commonwealth
aire to be covered with the ' all-atoning name ' of liberty.
In some people I see great liberty indeed ; in many, if
not in the most, an oppressive, degrading servitude.
But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue ?
It is the greatest of all possible evils ; for it is folly,
vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint. Those,
who know what virtuous liberty is, cannot bear to see
it disgraced by incapable heads, on account of their
having high-sounding words hi their mouths. Grand,
swelling sentiments of liberty, I am sure I do not despise.
They warm the heart 3 they enlarge and liberalize our
minds ; they animate our courage in a time of conflict.
Old as I am, I read the fine raptures of Lucan and Corneille with pleasure. Neither do I wholly condemn the
little arts and devices of popularity. They facilitate the
carrying of many points of moment ; they keep the
people together j they refresh the mind in its exertions •
and they diffuse occasional gaiety over the severe brow
of moral freedom. Every politician ought to sacrifice
to the graces ; and to join compliance with reason.
But in such an undertaking as that in France, all these
subsidiary sentiments and artifices are of little avail.
To make a government requires no great prudence.
Settle the seat of power ; teach obedience : and the
work is done. To give freedom is still more easy. It
is not necessary to guide ; it only requires to let go the
rein. But to form a free government ; that is, to temper
together these opposite elements of liberty and restraint
in one consistent work, requires much thought, deep
reflection, a sagacious, powerful, and combining mind.
This I do not find in those who take the lead in the
National Assembly. Perhaps they are not so miserably
deficient as they appear. I rather believe it. It would
put them below the common level of human understanding. But when the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents,
in the construction of the state, will be of no service:
They will become flatterers instead of legislators ; the

474
EDMUND BURKE,
instruments, not the guides of the people. If any of
them should happen to propose a scheme of liberty,
soberly limited, and defined with proper qualifications,
he will be immediately outbid by his competitors, who
will produce something more splendidly popular. Suspicions will be raised of his fidelity to his cause. Moderation will be stigmatized as the virtue of cowards « and
compromise as the prudence of traitors ; until, in
hopes of preserving the credit which may enable him
to temper and moderate, on some occasions, the popular
leader is obliged to become active in propagating doctrines, and establishing powers, that will afterwards
defeat any sober purpose at which he ultimately might
have aimed.
But am 1 so unreasonable as to see nothing at all that
deserves commendation in the indefatigable labours of
this assembly ? 1 do not deny that among an infinite
number of acts of violence and folly, some good may
have been done. They who destroy everything certainly will remove some grievance. They who make
everything new, have a chance that they may establish
something beneficial. To give them credit for what
they have done in virtue of the authority they have
usurped, or to excuse them in the crimes by which that
authority has been acquired, it must appear that the
same things could not have been accomplished without
producing such a revolution. Most assuredly they
might ; because almost every one of the regulations
made by them, which is not very equivocal, was either,
in the cession of the king, voluntarily made at the
meeting of the states, or in the concurrent instructions
to the orders. Some usages have been abolished on
just grounds * but they were such that, if they had
stood as they were to all eternity, they would little
detract from the happiness and prosperity of any state.
The improvements of the National Assembly are superficial, their errors fundamental.
Whatever they are, 1 wish my countrymen rather
to recommend to our neighbours the example of the

SELECTIONS.
475
British constitution, than to take models from them
for the improvement of our own. In the former they
have got an invaluable treasure. They are not, I think,
without some causes of apprehension and complaint ;
but these they do not owe to their constitution, but to
their own conduct. I think our happy situation owing
to our constitution ; but owing to the whole of it, and
not to any part singly ; owing in a great measure to
what we have left standing in our several reviews and
reformations, as well as to what we have altered or
superadded. Our people will find employment enough
for a truly patriotic, free and independent spirit, in
guarding what they possess from violation. I would
not exclude alteration neither | but even when I changed,
it should be to preserve. I should be led to my remedy
by a great grievance. In what I did, I should follow
the example of our ancestors. I would make the reparation as nearly as possible in the style of the building.
A politic caution, a guarded circumspection, a moral
rather than a complexional timidity, were among the
ruling principles of our forefathers in their most decided conduct. Not being illuminated with the light
of which the gentlemen of France tell us they have got
so abundant a share, they acted under a strong impression of the ignorance and fallibility of mankind.
He, that had made them thus fallible, rewarded them
for having in their conduct attended to their nature.
Let us imitate their caution, if we wish to deserve their
fortune, or to retain their bequests. Let us add, if we
please, but let us preserve what they have left ; and,
standing on the firm ground of the British constitution,
let us be satisfied to admire, rather than attempt to
follow in their desperate flights the aeronauts of France.
I have told you candidly my sentiments. I think
they are not likely to alter yours. I do not know that
they ought. You are young ; you cannot guide, but
must follow the fortune of your country. But hereafter
they may be of some use to you, in some future form
which your commonwealth may take. In the present

476
EDMUND BURKE,
it can hardly remain ; but before its final settlement
it may be obliged to pass, as one of our poets says,
' through great varieties of untried being/ and in all
its transmigrations to be purified by fire and blood.
I have little to recommend my opinions but long
observation and much impartiality. They come from
one who has been no tool of power, no flatterer of greatness ; and who in his last acts does not wish to belie the
tenor of his life. They come from one, almost the whole
of whose public exertion has been a struggle for the
liberty of others ; from one in whose breast no anger
durable or vehement has ever been kindled, but by
what he considered as tyranny ; and who snatches
from his share in the endeavours which are used by
good men to discredit opulent oppression, the hours he
has employed on your affairs ; and who in so doing
persuades himself he has not departed from his usual
office : they come from one who desires honours, distinctions, and emoluments, but little ; and who expects
them not at all ; who has no contempt for fame, and
no fear of obloquy ; who shuns contention, though he
will hazard an opinion : from one who wishes to preserve
consistency, but who would preserve consistency by
varying his means to secure the unity of his end ; and,
when the equipoise of the vessel in which he sails
may be endangered by overloading it upon one side, is
desirous of carrying the small weight of his reasons to
that which may preserve its equipoise.

THE END.

ESTABLISHED

1798

T. NELSON
AND SONS
PRINTERS AND
PUBLISHERS

THE

NELSON CLASSICS.
Uniform with this Volume and same Price.
W i n d s o r Castle.

HARRISON AINSWORTH.

The romances of Harrison Ainsworth need no advertisement. In
this, as in his " Tower of London " and " Old St. Paul's," he has taken
one of England's great historical sites, and woven around it an appropriate romance.

Peg

Woffington,

CHARLES READE.

''Peg Woffington" was the first of Charles Reade's romances, and
was founded upon his comedy, " Masks and Faces." The stoiy of the
famous Irish actress who dazzled London in the eighteenth century, and
with whom Garrick was in love, has been made the foundation of a
charming romance.

Parables from Nature.

MRS. GATTY.

This is one of the great children's books of the world. It was a classic
in our grandmothers' time, and possesses that imperishable charm which
makes it as attractive to-day as when it was first written.

T a l e s of M y s t e r y .
The Woman

EDGAR ALLAN POE.

in W h i t e .

The

Laughing

Man.

Les

M i s é r a b l e s — I.

WILKIE COLLINS,
VICTOR HUGO.

VICTOR HUGO.

Les Misérables—IL

VICTOR HUGO.

'Ninety-Three.

VICTOR HUGO.
HI

T H E NELSON CLASSICS.
Uniform with this Volume and same Price.

1
|

1
J

CONDENSED LIST.
I. A Tale of Two Cities.
38. 'Ninety-Three.
2. Tom Brown's Schooldays.
39. Eothen.
3. The Deerslayer.
40. Toilers of the Sea.
4. Henry Esmond.
41. Children of the New Forest.
5. Hypatia.
42. The Laughing Man.
6. The Mill on the Floss.
43. A Book of Golden Deeds.
7. Uncle Tom's Cabin.
44. Great Expectations.
8. The Last of the Mohicans.
45. Guy Mannering.
9. Adam Bede.
46. Modern Painters (Selections)
10. The Old Curiosity Shop.
47. Les Misérables—I.
11. Oliver Twist.
48. Les Misérables—II.
12. Kenilworth.
49. The Monastery.
13. Robinson Crusoe.
50. Romola.
14. The Last Days of Pompeii,
51. The Vicar of Wakefield.
15. Cloister and the Hearth.
52. Emma.
16. Ivanhoe.
53. Lavengro.
17. East Lynne.
54. Emerson's Essays.
18. Cranford.
55. The Bride of Lammermoor.
19. John Halifax, Gentleman.
56. The Abbot.
20. The Pathfinder.
57. Tom Cringle's Log.
21. Westward H o !
58. Lamb's Tales from Shake22. The Three Musketeers.
speare.
23. The Channings.
59. The Scarlet Letter.
24. The Pilgrim's Progress.
60. Old Mortality.
25. Pride and Prejudice.
61. The Romany Rye.
26. Quentin Durward.
62. Hans Andersen.
27. Villette.
63. The Black Tulip.
28. Hard Times.
64. Little Women.
29. Child's History of England.
65. The Talisman.
30. The Bible in Spain.
66. Reminiscences of Scottish
31. Gulliver's Travels.
Life and Character.
32. Sense and Sensibility.
6y. The Woman in White.
33. Kate Coventry.
68. Tales of Mystery.
34. Silas Marner.
69. Fair Maid of Perth.
35. Notre Dame.
70. Parables from Nature.
36. Old St. Paul's.
71. Peg Woffington.
37. Waverley.
72. Windsor Castle.
Other Volumes will Follozv.

THOMAS

NELSON
IV

AND SONS.

|

1
1
1
1
1
1
I
1
1
J
I
1
|
j
1
1
1
1