The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke Volume II Part 17

[36] Vide Lord Talbot's speech in Almon's Parliamentary Register. Vol VII. p. 79, of the Proceedings of the Lords.

[37] More exactly, 378,616_l._ 10 _s._ 1-3/4 _d._

[38] Et quaunt viscount ou baillif eit comence de acompter, nul autre ne seit resceu de aconter tanque le primer qe soit a.s.sis eit peraccompte, et qe la somme soit resceu.--Stat. 5. Ann Dom. 1266.

[39] Summum jus summa injuria.

[40] It was supposed by the Lord Advocate, in a subsequent debate, that Mr. Burke, because he objected to an inquiry into the pension list for the purpose of economy and relief of the public, would have it withheld from the judgment of Parliament for all purposes whatsoever. This learned gentleman certainly misunderstood him. His plan shows that he wished the whole list to be easily accessible; and he knows that the public eye is of itself a great guard against abuse.

[41] Before the statute of Queen Anne, which limited the alienation of land.

[42] Duke of Newcastle, whose dining-room is under the House of Commons.

[43] Letters between Dr. Addington and Sir James Wright.

[44] t.i.tles of the bills read.

[45] W. Dowdeswell, Esq., Chancellor of the Exchequer, 1765.

[46] Rejection of Lord Shelburne's motion in the House of Lords.

[47] The motion was seconded by Mr. Fox.

SPEECH

AT THE

GUILDHALL IN BRISTOL, PREVIOUS TO THE LATE ELECTION IN THAT CITY,

UPON

CERTAIN POINTS RELATIVE TO HIS PARLIAMENTARY CONDUCT.

1780.

Mr. Mayor, and Gentlemen,--I am extremely pleased at the appearance of this large and respectable meeting. The steps I may be obliged to take will want the sanction of a considerable authority; and in explaining anything which may appear doubtful in my public conduct, I must naturally desire a very full audience.

I have been backward to begin my canva.s.s. The dissolution of the Parliament was uncertain; and it did not become me, by an unseasonable importunity, to appear diffident of the effect of my six years'

endeavors to please you. I had served the city of Bristol honorably, and the city of Bristol had no reason to think that the means of honorable service to the public were become indifferent to me.

I found, on my arrival here, that three gentlemen had been long in eager pursuit of an object which but two of us can obtain. I found that they had all met with encouragement. A contested election in such a city as this is no light thing. I paused on the brink of the precipice. These three gentlemen, by various merits, and on various t.i.tles, I made no doubt were worthy of your favor. I shall never attempt to raise myself by depreciating the merits of my compet.i.tors. In the complexity and confusion of these cross pursuits, I wished to take the authentic public sense of my friends upon a business of so much delicacy. I wished to take your opinion along with me, that, if I should give up the contest at the very beginning, my surrender of my post may not seem the effect of inconstancy, or timidity, or anger, or disgust, or indolence, or any other temper unbecoming a man who has engaged in the public service. If, on the contrary, I should undertake the election, and fail of success, I was full as anxious that it should be manifest to the whole world that the peace of the city had not been broken by my rashness, presumption, or fond conceit of my own merit.

I am not come, by a false and counterfeit show of deference to your judgment, to seduce it in my favor. I ask it seriously and unaffectedly.

If you wish that I should retire, I shall not consider that advice as a censure upon my conduct, or an alteration in your sentiments, but as a rational submission to the circ.u.mstances of affairs. If, on the contrary, you should think it proper for me to proceed on my canva.s.s, if you will risk the trouble on your part, I will risk it on mine. My pretensions are such as you cannot be ashamed of, whether they succeed or fail.

If you call upon me, I shall solicit the favor of the city upon manly ground. I come before you with the plain confidence of an honest servant in the equity of a candid and discerning master. I come to claim your approbation, not to amuse you with vain apologies, or with professions still more vain and senseless. I have lived too long to be served by apologies, or to stand in need of them. The part I have acted has been in open day; and to hold out to a conduct which stands in that clear and steady light for all its good and all its evil, to hold out to that conduct the paltry winking tapers of excuses and promises,--I never will do it. They may obscure it with their smoke, but they never can illumine sunshine by such a flame as theirs.

I am sensible that no endeavors have been left untried to injure me in your opinion. But the use of character is to be a shield against calumny. I could wish, undoubtedly, (if idle wishes were not the most idle of all things,) to make every part of my conduct agreeable to every one of my const.i.tuents; but in so great a city, and so greatly divided as this, it is weak to expect it.

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

Do you think, Gentlemen, that every public act in the six years since I stood in this place before you, that all the arduous things which have been done in this eventful period which has crowded into a few years'

s.p.a.ce the revolutions of an age, can be opened to you on their fair grounds in half an hour's conversation?

But it is no reason, because there is a bad mode of inquiry, that there should be no examination at all. Most certainly it is our duty to examine; it is our interest, too: but it must be with discretion, with an attention to all the circ.u.mstances and to all the motives; like sound judges, and not like cavilling pettifoggers and quibbling pleaders, prying into flaws and hunting for exceptions. Look, Gentlemen, to the _whole tenor_ of your member's conduct. Try whether his ambition or his avarice have justled him out of the straight line of duty,--or whether that grand foe of the offices of active life, that master vice in men of business, a degenerate and inglorious sloth, has made him flag and languish in his course. This is the object of our inquiry. If our member's conduct can bear this touch, mark it for sterling. He may have fallen into errors, he must have faults; but our error is greater, and our fault is radically ruinous to ourselves, if we do not bear, if we do not even applaud, the whole compound and mixed ma.s.s of such a character.

Not to act thus is folly; I had almost said it is impiety. He censures G.o.d who quarrels with the imperfections of man.

Gentlemen, we must not be peevish with those who serve the people; for none will serve us, whilst there is a court to serve, but those who are of a nice and jealous honor. They who think everything, in comparison of that honor, to be dust and ashes, will not bear to have it soiled and impaired by those for whose sake they make a thousand sacrifices to preserve it immaculate and whole. We shall either drive such men from the public stage, or we shall send them to the court for protection, where, if they must sacrifice their reputation, they will at least secure their interest. Depend upon it, that the lovers of freedom will be free. None will violate their conscience to please us, in order afterwards to discharge that conscience, which they have violated, by doing us faithful and affectionate service. If we degrade and deprave their minds by servility, it will be absurd to expect that they who are creeping and abject towards us will ever be bold and incorruptible a.s.sertors of our freedom against the most seducing and the most formidable of all powers. No! human nature is not so formed: nor shall we improve the faculties or better the morals of public men by our possession of the most infallible receipt in the world for making cheats and hypocrites.

Let me say, with plainness, I who am no longer in a public character, that, if, by a fair, by an indulgent, by a gentlemanly behavior to our representatives, we do not give confidence to their minds and a liberal scope to their understandings, if we do not permit our members to act upon a _very_ enlarged view of things, we shall at length infallibly degrade our national representation into a confused and scuffling bustle of local agency. When the popular member is narrowed in his ideas and rendered timid in his proceedings, the service of the crown will be the sole nursery of statesmen. Among the frolics of the court, it may at length take that of attending to its business. Then the monopoly of mental power will be added to the power of all other kinds it possesses.

On the side of the people there will be nothing but impotence: for ignorance is impotence; narrowness of mind is impotence; timidity is itself impotence, and makes all other qualities that go along with it impotent and useless.

At present it is the plan of the court to make its servants insignificant. If the people should fall into the same humor, and should choose their servants on the same principles of mere obsequiousness and flexibility and total vacancy or indifference of opinion in all public matters, then no part of the state will be sound, and it will be in vain to think of saving it.

I thought it very expedient at this time to give you this candid counsel; and with this counsel I would willingly close, if the matters which at various times have been objected to me in this city concerned only myself and my own election. These charges, I think, are four in number: my neglect of a due attention to my const.i.tuents, the not paying more frequent visits here; my conduct on the affairs of the first Irish Trade Acts; my opinion and mode of proceeding on Lord Beauchamp's Debtors' Bills; and my votes on the late affairs of the Roman Catholics.

All of these (except perhaps the first) relate to matters of very considerable public concern; and it is not lest you should censure me improperly, but lest you should form improper opinions on matters of some moment to you, that I trouble you at all upon the subject. My conduct is of small importance.

With regard to the first charge, my friends have spoken to ms of it in the style of amicable expostulation,--not so much blaming the thing as lamenting the effects. Others, less partial to me, were less kind in a.s.signing the motives. I admit, there is a decorum and propriety in a member of Parliament's paying a respectful court to his const.i.tuents. If I were conscious to myself that pleasure, or dissipation, or low, unworthy occupations had detained me from personal attendance on you, I would readily admit my fault, and quietly submit to the penalty. But, Gentlemen, I live at an hundred miles' distance from Bristol; and at the end of a session I come to my own house, fatigued in body and in mind, to a little repose, and to a very little attention to my family and my private concerns. A visit to Bristol is always a sort of canva.s.s, else it will do more harm than good. To pa.s.s from the toils of a session to the toils of a canva.s.s is the furthest thing in the world from repose. I could hardly serve you _as I have done_, and court you too. Most of you have heard that I do not very remarkably spare myself in _public_ business; and in the _private_ business of my const.i.tuents I have done very near as much as those who have nothing else to do. My canva.s.s of you was not on the 'change, nor in the county meetings, nor in the clubs of this city: it was in the House of Commons; it was at the Custom-House; it was at the Council; it was at the Treasury; it was at the Admiralty. I canva.s.sed you through your affairs, and not your persons. I was not only your representative as a body; I was the agent, the solicitor of individuals; I ran about wherever your affairs could call me; and in acting for you, I often appeared rather as a ship-broker than as a member of Parliament. There was nothing too laborious or too low for me to undertake. The meanness of the business was raised by the dignity of the object. If some lesser matters have slipped through my fingers, it was because I filled my hands too full, and, in my eagerness to serve you, took in more than any hands could grasp. Several gentlemen stand round me who are my willing witnesses; and there are others who, if they were here, would be still better, because they would be unwilling witnesses to the same truth. It was in the middle of a summer residence in London, and in the middle of a negotiation at the Admiralty for your trade, that I was called to Bristol; and this late visit, at this late day, has been possibly in prejudice to your affairs.

Since I have touched upon this matter, let me say, Gentlemen, that, if I had a disposition or a right to complain, I have some cause of complaint on my side. With a pet.i.tion of this city in my hand, pa.s.sed through the corporation without a dissenting voice, a pet.i.tion in unison with almost the whole voice of the kingdom, (with whose formal thanks I was covered over,) whilst I labored on no less than five bills for a public reform, and fought, against the opposition of great abilities and of the greatest power, every clause and every word of the largest of those bills, almost to the very last day of a very long session,--all this time a canva.s.s in Bristol was as calmly carried on as if I were dead. I was considered as a man wholly out of the question. Whilst I watched and fasted and sweated in the House of Commons, by the most easy and ordinary arts of election, by dinners and visits, by "How do you dos,"

and "My worthy friends," I was to be quietly moved out of my seat,--and promises were made, and engagements entered into, without any exception or reserve, as if my laborious zeal in my duty had been a regular abdication of my trust.

To open my whole heart to you on this subject, I do confess, however, that there were other times, besides the two years in which I did visit you, when I was not wholly without leisure for repeating that mark of my respect. But I could not bring my mind to see you. You remember that in the beginning of this American war (that era of calamity, disgrace, and downfall, an era which no feeling mind will ever mention without a tear for England) you were greatly divided,--and a very strong body, if not the strongest, opposed itself to the madness which every art and every power were employed to render popular, in order that the errors of the rulers might be lost in the general blindness of the nation. This opposition continued until after our great, but most unfortunate victory at Long Island. Then all the mounds and banks of our constancy were borne down, at once, and the frenzy of the American war broke in upon us like a deluge. This victory, which seemed to put an immediate end to all difficulties, perfected us in that spirit of domination which our unparalleled prosperity had but too long nurtured. We had been so very powerful, and so very prosperous, that even the humblest of us were degraded into the vices and follies of kings. We lost all measure between means and ends; and our headlong desires became our politics and our morals. All men who wished for peace, or retained any sentiments of moderation, were overborne or silenced; and this city was led by every artifice (and probably with the more management because I was one of your members) to distinguish itself by its zeal for that fatal cause. In this temper of yours and of my mind, I should sooner have fled to the extremities of the earth than hate shown myself here. I, who saw in every American victory (for you have had a long series of these misfortunes) the germ and seed of the naval power of France and Spain, which all our heat and warmth against America was only hatching into life,--I should not have been a welcome visitant, with the brow and the language of such feelings. When afterwards the other face of your calamity was turned upon you, and showed itself in defeat and distress, I shunned you full as much. I felt sorely this variety in our wretchedness; and I did not wish to have the least appearance of insulting you with that show of superiority, which, though it may not be a.s.sumed, is generally suspected, in a time of calamity, from those whose previous warnings have been despised. I could not bear to show you a representative whose face did not reflect that of his const.i.tuents,--a face that could not joy in your joys, and sorrow in your sorrows. But time at length has made us all of one opinion, and we have all opened our eyes on the true nature of the American war,--to the true nature of all its successes and all its failures.

In that public storm, too, I had my private feelings. I had seen blown down and prostrate on the ground several of those houses to whom I was chiefly indebted for the honor this city has done me. I confess, that, whilst the wounds of those I loved were yet green, I could not bear to show myself in pride and triumph in that place into which their partiality had brought me, and to appear at feasts and rejoicings in the midst of the grief and calamity of my warm friends, my zealous supporters, my generous benefactors. This is a true, unvarnished, undisguised state of the affair. You will judge of it.

This is the only one of the charges in which I am personally concerned.

As to the other matters objected against me, which in their turn I shall mention to you, remember once more I do not mean to extenuate or excuse.

Why should I, when the things charged are among those upon which I found all my reputation? What would be left to me, if I myself was the man who softened and blended and diluted and weakened all the distinguishing colors of my life, so as to leave nothing distinct and determinate in my whole conduct?

It has been said, and it is the second charge, that in the questions of the Irish trade I did not consult the interest of my const.i.tuents,--or, to speak out strongly, that I rather acted as a native of Ireland than as an English member of Parliament.

I certainly have very warm good wishes for the place of my birth. But the sphere of my duties is my true country. It was as a man attached to your interests, and zealous for the conservation of your power and dignity, that I acted on that occasion, and on all occasions. You were involved in the American war. A new world of policy was opened, to which it was necessary we should conform, whether we would or not; and my only thought was how to conform to our situation in such a manner as to unite to this kingdom, in prosperity and in affection, whatever remained of the empire. I was true to my old, standing, invariable principle, that all things which came from Great Britain should issue as a gift of her bounty and beneficence, rather than as claims recovered against a struggling litigant,--or at least, that, if your beneficence obtained no credit in your concessions, yet that they should appear the salutary provisions of your wisdom and foresight, not as things wrung from you with your blood by the cruel gripe of a rigid necessity. The first concessions, by being (much against my will) mangled and stripped of the parts which were necessary to make out their just correspondence and connection in trade, were of no use. The next year a feeble attempt was made to bring the thing into better shape. This attempt, (countenanced by the minister,) on the very first appearance of some popular uneasiness, was, after a considerable progress through the House, thrown out by _him_.

What was the consequence? The whole kingdom of Ireland was instantly in a flame. Threatened by foreigners, and, as they thought, insulted by England, they resolved at once to resist the power of France and to cast off yours. As for us, we were able neither to protect nor to restrain them. Forty thousand men were raised and disciplined without commission from the crown. Two illegal armies were seen with banners displayed at the same time and in the same country. No executive magistrate, no judicature, in Ireland, would acknowledge the legality of the army which bore the king's commission; and no law, or appearance of law, authorized the army commissioned by itself. In this unexampled state of things, which the least error, the least trespa.s.s on the right or left, would have hurried down the precipice into an abyss of blood and confusion, the people of Ireland demand a freedom of trade with arms in their hands. They interdict all commerce between the two nations. They deny all new supply in the House of Commons, although in time of war. They stint the trust of the old revenue, given for two years to all the king's predecessors, to six months. The British Parliament, in a former session, frightened into a limited concession by the menaces of Ireland, frightened out of it by the menaces of England, was now frightened back again, and made an universal surrender of all that had been thought the peculiar, reserved, uncommunicable rights of England: the exclusive commerce of America, of Africa, of the West Indies,--all the enumerations of the Acts of Navigation,--all the manufactures,--iron, gla.s.s, even the last pledge of jealousy and pride, the interest hid in the secret of our hearts, the inveterate prejudice moulded into the const.i.tution of our frame, even the sacred fleece itself, all went together. No reserve, no exception; no debate, no discussion. A sudden light broke in upon us all. It broke in, not through well-contrived and well-disposed windows, but through flaws and breaches,--through the yawning chasms of our ruin. We were taught wisdom by humiliation. No town in England presumed to have a prejudice, or dared to mutter a pet.i.tion. What was worse, the whole Parliament of England, which retained authority for nothing but surrenders, was despoiled of every shadow of its superintendence. It was, without any qualification, denied in theory, as it had been trampled upon in practice. This scene of shame and disgrace has, in a manner, whilst I am speaking, ended by the perpetual establishment of a military power in the dominions of this crown, without consent of the British legislature,[48] contrary to the policy of the Const.i.tution, contrary to the Declaration of Right; and by this your liberties are swept away along with your supreme authority,--and both, linked together from the beginning, have, I am afraid, both together perished forever.

What! Gentlemen, was I not to foresee, or foreseeing, was I not to endeavor to save you from all these multiplied mischiefs and disgraces?

Would the little, silly, canva.s.s prattle of obeying instructions, and having no opinions but yours, and such idle, senseless tales, which amuse the vacant ears of unthinking men, have saved you from "the pelting of that pitiless storm," to which the loose improvidence, the cowardly rashness, of those who dare not look danger in the face so as to provide against it in time, and therefore throw themselves headlong into the midst of it, have exposed this degraded nation, beat down and prostrate on the earth, unsheltered, unarmed, unresisting? Was I an Irishman on that day that I boldly withstood our pride? or on the day that I hung down my head, and wept in shame and silence over the humiliation of Great Britain? I became unpopular in England for the one, and in Ireland for the other. What then? What obligation lay on me to be popular? I was bound to serve both kingdoms. To be pleased with my service was their affair, not mine.

I was an Irishman in the Irish business, just as much as I was an American, when, on the same principles, I wished you to concede to America at a time when she prayed concession at our feet. Just as much was I an American, when I wished Parliament to offer terms in victory, and not to wait the well-chosen hour of defeat, for making good by weakness and by supplication a claim of prerogative, preeminence, and authority.

Instead of requiring it from me, as a point of duty, to kindle with your pa.s.sions, had you all been as cool as I was, you would have been saved disgraces and distresses that are unutterable. Do you remember our commission? We sent out a solemn emba.s.sy across the Atlantic Ocean, to lay the crown, the peerage, the commons of Great Britain at the feet of the American Congress. That our disgrace might want no sort of brightening and burnishing, observe who they were that composed this famous emba.s.sy. My Lord Carlisle is among the first ranks of our n.o.bility. He is the identical man who, but two years before, had been put forward, at the opening of a session, in the House of Lords, as the mover of an haughty and rigorous address against America. He was put in the front of the emba.s.sy of submission. Mr. Eden was taken from the office of Lord Suffolk, to whom he was then Under-Secretary of State,--from the office of that Lord Suffolk who but a few weeks before, in his place in Parliament, did not deign to inquire where a congress of vagrants was to be found. This Lord Suffolk sent Mr. Eden to find these vagrants, without knowing where his king's generals were to be found who were joined in the same commission of supplicating those whom they were sent to subdue. They enter the capital of America only to abandon it; and these a.s.sertors and representatives of the dignity of England, at the tail of a flying army, let fly their Parthian shafts of memorials and remonstrances at random behind them. Their promises and their offers, their flatteries and their menaces, were all despised; and we were saved the disgrace of their formal reception only because the Congress scorned to receive them; whilst the State-house of independent Philadelphia opened her doors to the public entry of the amba.s.sador of France. From war and blood we went to submission, and from submission plunged back again to war and blood, to desolate and be desolated, without measure, hope, or end. I am a Royalist: I blushed for this degradation of the crown. I am a Whig: I blushed for the dishonor of Parliament. I am a true Englishman: I felt to the quick for the disgrace of England. I am a man: I felt for the melancholy reverse of human affairs in the fall of the first power in the world.