The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke Volume V Part 14

Would this be the England that you and I, and even strangers, admired, honored, loved, and cherished? Would not the exiles of England alone be my government and my fellow-citizens? Would not their places of refuge be my temporary country? Would not all my duties and all my affections be there, and there only? Should I consider myself as a traitor to my country, and deserving of death, if I knocked at the door and heart of every potentate in Christendom to succor my friends, and to avenge them on their enemies? Could I in any way show myself more a patriot? What should I think of those potentates who insulted their suffering brethren,--who treated them as vagrants, or at least as mendicants,--and could find no allies, no friends, but in regicide murderers and robbers?

What ought I to think and feel, if, being geographers instead of kings, they recognized the desolated cities, the wasted fields, and the rivers polluted with blood, of this geometrical measurement, as the honorable member of Europe called England? In that condition, what should we think of Sweden, Denmark, or Holland, or whatever power afforded us a churlish and treacherous hospitality, if they should invite us to join the standard of our king, our laws, and our religion,--if they should give us a direct promise of protection,--if, after all this, taking advantage of our deplorable situation, which left us no choice, they were to treat us as the lowest and vilest of all mercenaries,--if they were to send us far from the aid of our king and our suffering country, to squander us away in the most pestilential climates for a venal enlargement of their own territories, for the purpose of trucking them, when obtained, with those very robbers and murderers they had called upon us to oppose with our blood? What would be our sentiments, if in that miserable service we were not to be considered either as English, or as Swedes, Dutch, Danes, but as outcasts of the human race? Whilst we were fighting those battles of their interest and as their soldiers, how should we feel, if we were to be excluded from all their cartels? How must we feel, if the pride and flower of the English n.o.bility and gentry, who might escape the pestilential clime and the devouring sword, should, if taken prisoners, be delivered over as rebel subjects, to be condemned as rebels, as traitors, as the vilest of all criminals, by tribunals formed of Maroon negro slaves, covered over with the blood of their masters, who were made free and organized into judges for their robberies and murders?

What should we feel under this inhuman, insulting, and barbarous protection of Muscovites, Swedes, or Hollanders? Should we not obtest Heaven, and whatever justice there is yet on earth? Oppression makes wise men mad; but the distemper is still the madness of the wise, which is better than the sobriety of fools. Their cry is the voice of sacred misery, exalted, not into wild raving, but into the sanctified frenzy of prophecy and inspiration. In that bitterness of soul, in that indignation of suffering virtue, in that exaltation of despair, would not persecuted English loyalty cry out with an awful warning voice, and denounce the destruction that waits on monarchs who consider fidelity to them as the most degrading of all vices, who suffer it to be punished as the most abominable of all crimes, and who have no respect but for rebels, traitors, regicides, and furious negro slaves, whose crimes have broke their chains? Would not this warm language of high indignation have more of sound reason in it, more of real affection, more of true attachment, than all the lullabies of flatterers who would hush monarchs to sleep in the arms of death? Let them be well convinced, that, if ever this example should prevail in its whole extent, it will have its full operation. Whilst kings stand firm on their base, though under that base there is a sure-wrought mine, there will not be wanting to their levees a single person of those who are attached to their fortune, and not to their persons or cause; but hereafter none will support a tottering throne. Some will fly for fear of being crushed under the ruin; some will join in making it. They will seek, in the destruction of royalty, fame and power and wealth and the homage of kings, with Reubell, with Carnot, with Revelliere, and with the Merlins and the Talliens, rather than suffer exile and beggary with the Condes, or the Broglies, the Castries, the D'Avarays, the Serents, the Cazales, and the long line of loyal, suffering, patriot n.o.bility, or to be butchered with the oracles and the victims of the laws, the D'Ormessons, the D'Espremesnils, and the Malesherbes. This example we shall give, if, instead of adhering to our fellows in a cause which is an honor to us all, we abandon the lawful government and lawful corporate body of France, to hunt for a shameful and ruinous fraternity with this odious usurpation that disgraces civilized society and the human race.

And is, then, example nothing? It is everything. Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other. This war is a war against that example. It is not a war for Louis the Eighteenth, or even for the property, virtue, fidelity of France. It is a war for George the Third, for Francis the Second, and for all the dignity, property, honor, virtue, and religion of England, of Germany, and of all nations.

I know that all I have said of the systematic unsociability of this new-invented species of republic, and the impossibility of preserving peace, is answered by a.s.serting that the scheme of manners, morals, and even of maxims and principles of state, is of no weight in a question of peace or war between communities. This doctrine is supported by example.

The case of Algiers is cited, with an hint, as if it were the stronger case. I should take no notice of this sort of inducement, if I had found it only where first it was. I do not want respect for those from whom I first heard it; but, having no controversy at present with them, I only think it not amiss to rest on it a little, as I find it adopted, with much more of the same kind, by several of those on whom such reasoning had formerly made no apparent impression. If it had no force to prevent us from submitting to this necessary war, it furnishes no better ground for our making an unnecessary and ruinous peace.

This a.n.a.logical argument drawn from the case of Algiers would lead us a good way. The fact is, we ourselves with a little cover, others more directly, pay a _tribute_ to the Republic of Algiers. Is it meant to reconcile us to the payment of a _tribute_ to the French Republic? That this, with other things more ruinous, will be demanded, hereafter, I little doubt; but for the present this will not be avowed,--though our minds are to be gradually prepared for it. In truth, the arguments from this case are worth little, even to those who approve the buying an Algerine forbearance of piracy. There are many things which men do not approve, that they must do to avoid a greater evil. To argue from thence that they are to act in the same manner in all cases is turning necessity into a law. Upon what is matter of prudence, the argument concludes the contrary way. Because we have done one humiliating act, we ought with infinite caution to admit more acts of the same nature, lest humiliation should become our habitual state. Matters of prudence are under the dominion of circ.u.mstances, and not of logical a.n.a.logies. It is absurd to take it otherwise.

I, for one, do more than doubt the policy of this kind of convention with Algiers. On those who think as I do the argument _ad hominem_ can make no sort of impression. I know something of the const.i.tution and composition of this very extraordinary republic. It has a const.i.tution, I admit, similar to the present tumultuous military tyranny of France, by which an handful of obscure ruffians domineer over a fertile country and a brave people. For the composition, too, I admit the Algerine community resembles that of France,--being formed out of the very sc.u.m, scandal, disgrace, and pest of the Turkish Asia. The Grand Seignior, to disburden the country, suffers the Dey to recruit in his dominions the corps of janizaries, or asaphs, which form the Directory and Council of Elders of the African Republic one and indivisible. But notwithstanding this resemblance, which I allow, I never shall so far injure the Janizarian Republic of Algiers as to put it in comparison, for every sort of crime, turpitude, and oppression, with the Jacobin Republic of Paris. There is no question with me to which of the two I should choose to be a neighbor or a subject. But. situated as I am, I am in no danger of becoming to Algiers either the one or the other. It is not so in my relation to the atheistical fanatics of France. I _am_ their neighbor; I _may_ become their subject. Have the gentlemen who borrowed this happy parallel no idea of the different conduct to be held with regard to the very same evil at an immense distance and when it is at your door? when its power is enormous, as when it is comparatively as feeble as its distance is remote? when there is a barrier of language and usages, which prevents corruption through certain old correspondences and habitudes, from the contagion of the horrible novelties that are introduced into everything else? I can contemplate without dread a royal or a national tiger on the borders of Pegu. I can look at him with an easy curiosity, as prisoner within bars in the menagerie of the Tower.

But if, by _Habeas Corpus_, or otherwise, he was to come into the lobby of the House of Commons whilst your door was open, any of you would be more stout than wise who would not gladly make your escape out of the back windows. I certainly should dread more from a wild-cat in my bedchamber than from all the lions that roar in the deserts behind Algiers. But in this parallel it is the cat that is at a distance, and the lions and tigers that are in our antechambers and our lobbies.

Algiers is not near; Algiers is not powerful; Algiers is not our neighbor; Algiers is not infectious. Algiers, whatever it may be, is an old creation; and we have good data to calculate all the mischief to be apprehended from it. When I find Algiers transferred to Calais, I will tell you what I think of that point. In the mean time, the case quoted from the Algerine Reports will not apply as authority. We shall put it out of court; and so far as that goes, let the counsel for the Jacobin peace take nothing by their motion.

When we voted, as you and I did, with many more whom you and I respect and love, to resist this enemy, we were providing for dangers that were direct, home, pressing, and not remote, contingent, uncertain, and formed upon loose a.n.a.logies. We judged of the danger with which we were menaced by Jacobin France from the whole tenor of her conduct, not from one or two doubtful or detached acts or expressions. I not only concurred in the idea of combining with Europe in this war, but to the best of my power even stimulated ministers to that conjunction of interests and of efforts. I joined them with all my soul, on the principles contained in that manly and masterly state-paper which I have two or three times referred to,[33] and may still more frequently hereafter. The diplomatic collection never was more enriched than with this piece. The historic facts justify every stroke of the master. "Thus painters write their names at Co."

Various persons may concur in the same measure on various grounds. They may be various, without being contrary to or exclusive of each other. I thought the insolent, unprovoked aggression of the Regicide upon our ally of Holland a good ground of war. I think his manifest attempt to overturn the balance of Europe a good ground of war. As a good ground of war I consider his declaration of war on his Majesty and his kingdom.

But though I have taken all these to my aid, I consider them as nothing more than as a sort of evidence to indicate the treasonable mind within.

Long before their acts of aggression and their declaration of war, the faction in France had a.s.sumed a form, had adopted a body of principles and maxims, and had regularly and systematically acted on them, by which she virtually had put herself in a posture which was in itself a declaration of war against mankind.

It is said by the Directory, in their several manifestoes, that we of the people are tumultuous for peace, and that ministers pretend negotiation to amuse us. This they have learned from the language of many amongst ourselves, whose conversations have been one main cause of whatever extent the opinion for peace with Regicide may be. But I, who think the ministers unfortunately to be but too serious in their proceedings, find myself obliged to say a little more on this subject of the popular opinion.

Before our opinions are quoted against ourselves, it is proper, that, from our serious deliberation, they may be worth quoting. It is without reason we praise the wisdom of our Const.i.tution in putting under the discretion of the crown the awful trust of war and peace, if the ministers of the crown virtually return it again into our hands. The trust was placed there as a sacred deposit, to secure us against popular rashness in plunging into wars, and against the effects of popular dismay, disgust, or la.s.situde, in getting out of them as imprudently as we might first engage in them. To have no other measure in judging of those great objects than our momentary opinions and desires is to throw us back upon that very democracy which, in this part, our Const.i.tution was formed to avoid.

It is no excuse at all for a minister who at our desire takes a measure contrary to our safety, that it is our own act. He who does not stay the hand of suicide is guilty of murder. On our part, I say, that to be instructed is not to be degraded or enslaved. Information is an advantage to us; and we have a right to demand it. He that is bound to act in the dark cannot be said to act freely. When it appears evident to our governors that our desires and our interests are at variance, they ought not to gratify the former at the expense of the latter. Statesmen are placed on an eminence, that they may have a larger horizon than we can possibly command. They have a whole before them, which we can contemplate only in the parts, and often without the necessary relations. Ministers are not only our natural rulers, but our natural guides. Reason, clearly and manfully delivered, has in itself a mighty force; but reason in the mouth of legal authority is, I may fairly say, irresistible.

I admit that reason of state will not, in many circ.u.mstances, permit the disclosure of the true ground of a public proceeding. In that case silence is manly, and it is wise. It is fair to call for trust, when the principle of reason itself suspends its public use. I take the distinction to be this: the ground of a particular measure making a part of a plan it is rarely proper to divulge; all the broader grounds of policy, on which the general plan is to be adopted, ought as rarely to be concealed. They who have not the whole cause before them, call them politicians, call them people, call them what you will, are no judges.

The difficulties of the case, as well as its fair side, ought to be presented. This ought to be done; and it is all that can be done. When we have our true situation distinctly presented to us, if then we resolve, with a blind and headlong violence, to resist the admonitions of our friends, and to cast ourselves into the hands of our potent and irreconcilable foes, then, and not till then, the ministers stand acquitted before G.o.d and man for whatever may come.

Lamenting, as I do, that the matter has not had so full and free a discussion as it requires, I mean to omit none of the points which seem to me necessary for consideration, previous to an arrangement which is forever to decide the form and the fate of Europe. In the course, therefore, of what I shall have the honor to address to you, I propose the following questions to your serious thoughts.--1. Whether the present system, which stands for a government, in France, be such as in peace and war affects the neighboring states in a manner different from the internal government that formerly prevailed in that country?--2.

Whether that system, supposing its views hostile to other nations, possesses any means of being hurtful to them peculiar to itself?--3.

Whether there has been lately such a change in France as to alter the nature of its system, or its effect upon other powers?--4. Whether any public declarations or engagements exist, on the part of the allied powers, which stand in the way of a treaty of peace which supposes the right and confirms the power of the Regicide faction in France?--5. What the state of the other powers of Europe will be with respect to each other and their colonies, on the conclusion of a Regicide peace?--6.

Whether we are driven to the absolute necessity of making that kind of peace?

These heads of inquiry will enable us to make the application of the several matters of fact and topics of argument, that occur in this vast discussion, to certain fixed principles. I do not mean to confine myself to the order in which they stand. I shall discuss them in such a manner as shall appear to me the best adapted for showing their mutual bearings and relations. Here, then, I close the public matter of my letter; but before I have done, let me say one word in apology for myself.

In wishing this nominal peace not to be precipitated, I am sure no man living is less disposed to blame the present ministry than I am. Some of my oldest friends (and I wish I could say it of more of them) make a part in that ministry. There are some, indeed, "whom my dim eyes in vain explore." In my mind, a greater calamity could not have fallen on the public than the exclusion of one of them. But I drive away that, with other melancholy thoughts. A great deal ought to be said upon that subject, or nothing. As to the distinguished persons to whom my friends who remain are joined, if benefits n.o.bly and generously conferred ought to procure good wishes, they are ent.i.tled to my best vows; and they have them all. They have administered to me the only consolation I am capable of receiving, which is, to know that no individual will suffer by my thirty years' service to the public. If things should give us the comparative happiness of a struggle, I shall be found, I was going to say fighting, (that would be foolish,) but dying, by the side of Mr.

Pitt. I must add, that, if anything defensive in our domestic system can possibly save us from the disasters of a Regicide peace, he is the man to save us. If the finances in such a case can be repaired, he is the man to repair them. If I should lament any of his acts, it is only when they appear to me to have no resemblance to acts of his. But let him not have a confidence in himself which no human abilities can warrant. His abilities are fully equal (and that is to say much for any man) to those which are opposed to him. But if we look to him as our security against the consequences of a Regicide peace, let us be a.s.sured that a Regicide peace and a const.i.tutional ministry are terms that will not agree. With a Regicide peace the king cannot long have a minister to serve him, nor the minister a king to serve. If the Great Disposer, in reward of the royal and the private virtues of our sovereign, should call him from the calamitous spectacles which will attend a state of amity with Regicide, his successor will surely see them, unless the same Providence greatly antic.i.p.ates the course of Nature. Thinking thus, (and not, as I conceive, on light grounds,) I dare not flatter the reigning sovereign, nor any minister he has or can have, nor his successor apparent, nor any of those who may be called to serve him, with what appears to me a false state of their situation. We cannot have them and that peace together.

I do not forget that there had been a considerable difference between several of our friends (with my insignificant self) and the great man at the head of ministry, in an early stage of these discussions. But I am sure there was a period in which we agreed better in the danger of a Jacobin existence in France. At one time he and all Europe seemed to feel it. But why am not I converted with so many great powers and so many great ministers? It is because I am old and slow. I am in this year, 1796, only where all the powers of Europe were in 1793. I cannot move with this precession of the equinoxes, which is preparing for us the return of some very old, I am afraid no golden era, or the commencement of some new era that must be denominated from some new metal. In this crisis I must hold my tongue or I must speak with freedom. Falsehood and delusion are allowed in no case whatever: but, as in the exercise of all the virtues, there is an economy of truth. It is a sort of temperance, by which a man speaks truth with measure, that he may speak it the longer. But as the same rules do not hold in all cases, what would be right for you, who may presume on a series of years before you, would have no sense for me, who cannot, without absurdity, calculate on six months of life. What I say I _must_ say at once.

Whatever I write is in its nature testamentary. It may have the weakness, but it has the sincerity, of a dying declaration. For the few days I have to linger here I am removed completely from the busy scene of the world; but I hold myself to be still responsible for everything that I have done whilst I continued on the place of action. If the rawest tyro in politics has been influenced by the authority of my gray hairs, and led by anything in my speeches or my writings to enter into this war, he has a right to call upon me to know why I have changed my opinions, or why, when those I voted with have adopted better notions, I persevere in exploded error.

When I seem not to acquiesce in the acts of those I respect in every degree short of superst.i.tion, I am obliged to give my reasons fully. I cannot set my authority against their authority. But to exert reason is not to revolt against authority. Reason and authority do not move in the same parallel. That reason is an _amicus curiae_ who speaks _de plano_, not _pro tribunali_. It is a friend who makes an useful suggestion to the court, without questioning its jurisdiction. Whilst he acknowledges its competence, he promotes its efficiency. I shall pursue the plan I have chalked out in my letters that follow this.

FOOTNOTES:

[22] "Mussabat tacito medicina timore."

[23] Mr. Bird, sent to state the real situation of the Duc de Choiseul.

[24] Boissy d'Anglas.

[25] "This Court has seen, with regret, how far the tone and spirit of that answer, the nature and extent of the demands which it contains, and the manner of announcing them, are remote from any disposition for peace.

"The inadmissible pretension is there avowed of appropriating to France all that the laws actually existing there may have comprised under the denomination of French territory. To a demand such as this is added an express declaration that no proposal contrary to it will be made or even listened to: and this, under the pretence of an internal regulation, the provisions of which are wholly foreign to all other nations.

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

"Whenever his enemies shall manifest more pacific sentiments, his Majesty will at all times be eager to concur in them, by lending himself, in concert with his allies, to all such measures as shall be best calculated to reestablish general tranquillity on conditions just, honorable, and permanent: either by the establishment of a congress, which has been so often and so happily the means of restoring peace to Europe; or by a preliminary discussion of the principles which may be proposed, on either side, as a foundation of a general pacification; or, lastly, by an impartial examination of any other way which may be pointed out to him for arriving at the same salutary end.

"_Downing Street, April 10th_, 1796."

[26] _Official Note, extracted from the Journal of the Defenders of the Country_.

"EXECUTIVE DIRECTORY.

"Different journals have advanced that an English plenipotentiary had reached Paris, and had presented himself to the Executive Directory, but that, his propositions not having appeared satisfactory, he had received orders instantly to quit France.

"All these a.s.sertions are equally false.

"The notices given in the English papers of a minister having been sent to Paris, there to treat of peace, bring to recollection the overtures of Mr. Wickham to the amba.s.sador of the Republic at Basle, and the rumors circulated relative to the mission of Mr. Hammond to the Court of Prussia. The _insignificance_, or rather the _subtle duplicity_, the PUNIC _style_ of Mr. Wickham's note, is not forgotten. According to the partisans of the English ministry, it was to Paris that Mr.

Hammond was to come to speak for peace. When his destination became public, and it was known that he went to Prussia, the same writer repeated that it was to accelerate a peace, and not withstanding the object, now well known, of this negotiation was to engage Prussia to break her treaties with the Republic, and to return into the coalition. The Court of Berlin, faithful to its engagements, repulsed these _perfidious_ propositions. But in converting this intrigue into a mission for peace, the English ministry joined to the hope of giving a new enemy to France _that of justifying the continuance of the war in the eyes of the English nation, and of throwing all the odium of it on the French, government_. Such was also the aim of Mr.

Wickham's note. _Such is still, that of the notices given at this time in the English papers_.

This aim will appear evident, if we reflect how difficult it is that the ambitious government of England should sincerely wish for a, peace that would _s.n.a.t.c.h from it its maritime preponderancy, would reestablish the freedom of the seas, would give a new impulse to the Spanish, Dutch, and French marines_, and would carry to the highest degree of prosperity the industry and commerce of those nations in, which it has always found _rivals_, and which it has considered as _enemies_ of its commerce, when they were tired of being its _dupes_.

"_But there will no longer be any credit given to the pacific intentions of the English ministry when it is known that its gold and its intrigues, its open practices and its insinuations, besiege more than ever the Cabinet of Vienna, and are one of the princ.i.p.al obstacles to the negotiation which, that Cabinet would of itself be induced to enter on for peace_.

"They will no longer _be credited_, finally, when the moment of the rumor of these overtures being circulated is considered.

_The English nation supports impatiently the continuance of the war; a reply must be made to its complaints, its reproaches_: the Parliament is about to reopen, its sittings; the mouths of the orators who will declaim against the war must be shut, the demand of new taxes must be justified; and to obtain these results, it is necessary to be enabled to advance, that the French government refuses every reasonable proposition of peace."

[27] "In their place has succeeded a system destructive of all public order, maintained by proscriptions, exiles, and confiscations without number,--by arbitrary imprisonments,--by ma.s.sacres which cannot be remembered without horror,--and at length by the execrable murder of a just and beneficent sovereign, and of the ill.u.s.trious princess, who with, an unshaken firmness has shared all the misfortunes of her royal consort, his protracted sufferings, his cruel captivity, his ignominious death."--"They [the Allies] have had to encounter acts of aggression without pretext, open violations of all treaties, unprovoked declarations of war,--in a word, whatever corruption, intrigue, or violence could effect, for the purpose, so openly avowed, of subverting all the inst.i.tutions of society, and of extending' over all the nations of Europe that confusion which has produced the misery of France. This state of things cannot exist in France, without involving all the surrounding powers in one common danger,--without giving them the right, without imposing it upon them as a duty, to stop the progress of an evil which exists only by the successive violation of all law and all property, and which attacks the Fundamental principles by which mankind is united in the bonds of civil society."--"The king would propose none other than equitable and moderate conditions: not such as the expenses, the risks, and the sacrifices of the war might justify, but such as his Majesty thinks himself under the indispensable necessity of requiring, with a view to these considerations, and still more to that of his own security and of the future tranquillity of Europe. His Majesty desires nothing more sincerely than thus to terminate a war which he in vain endeavored to avoid, and all the calamities of which, as now experienced by France, are to be attributed only to the ambition, the perfidy, and the violence of those whose crimes have involved their own country in misery and disgraced all civilized nations."--"The king promises on his part the suspension of hostilities, friendship, and (as far as the course of events will allow, of which the will of man cannot dispose) security and protection to all those who, by declaring for a monarchical government, shall shake off the yoke of a sanguinary anarchy: of that anarchy which, has broken all the most sacred bonds of society, dissolved all the relations of civil life, violated every right, confounded every duty; which uses the name of liberty to exercise the most cruel tyranny, to annihilate all property, to seize on all possessions; which founds its power on the pretended consent of the people, and itself carries fire and sword through extensive provinces for having demanded their laws, their religion, and their _lawful sovereign_."

Declaration sent by his Majesty's command to the commanders of his Majesty's fleets and armies employed against France and to his Majesty's ministers employed at foreign courts. _Whitehall, Oct_. 29, 1793

[28] "Ut lethargicus hic, c.u.m fit pugil, et medic.u.m urget."--HOB.

[29] See the Declaration.

[30] See Declaration, Whitehall, October 29, 1793.

[31] Nothing could be more solemn than their promulgation of this principle, as a preamble to the destructive code of their famous articles for the decomposition of society, into whatever country they should enter. "La Convention Nationale, apres avoir entendu le rapport de ses comites de finances, de la guerre, et diplomatiques reunis, fidele au _principe de souverainete de peuples, qui ne lui permet pas de reconnaitre aucune inst.i.tution qui y porte atteinte_" &c., &c.--_Decree sur le Rapport de Cambon, Dec. 18, 1702_. And see the subsequent proclamation.

[32] "This state of things cannot exist in France, without involving all the surrounding powers in one common danger,--without giving them the right, without imposing it upon them as a duty, to stop the progress of an evil which ... attacks the fundamental principles by which mankind is united in the bonds of civil society."--_Declaration 29th Oct., 1793_.