No More Learning

Boston : Little, Brown, and company, 1869.
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? ? ? THE
WO RKS
OF
THE RIGHT HONORABLE
ED MU ND BURKE.
THIRD EDITION.
VOL. VII.
BOSTON:
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COM PANY. I869.
? ? ? ? CONTENTS OF VOL. VII.
PAGN
FRAGMENTS AND NOTES OF SPEECHES IN PARLIAMENT.
SPEECH ON THE ACTS OF UNIFORMITY, February 6, 1772 3
SPEECH ON A BILL FOR THE RELIEF OF PROTESTANT
DISSENTERS, March 17, 1773. . . . . 21
SPEECH ON A MOTION FOR LEAVE TO BRING IN A BILT
TO REPEAL AND ALTER CERTAIN ACTS RESPECTING
RELIGIOUS OPINIONS, UPON THE OCCASION OF A PETITION OF THE UNITARIAN SOCIETY, May 11, 1792. 39 SPEECH RELATIVE TO THE MIDDLESEX ELECTION, February 7, 1771. . .
SPEECH ON A BILL FOR SHORTENING THE DURATION OF
PARLIAMENTS, May 8, 1780. 69
SPEECH ON A MOTION FOR A COMMITTEE TO INQUIRE
INTO THE STATE OF THE REPRESENTATION OF THE
COMMONS IN PARLIAMENT, May 7, 1782. . 89
SPEECH ON A MOTION FOR LEAVE TO BRING IN A BILL
FOR EXPLAINING THE POWERS OF JURIES IN PROSECUTIONS FOR LIBELS, March 7, 1771. TOGETHER WITH a LETTER IN VINDICATION OF THAT MEASURE, AND A
COPY OF THE PROPOSED BILL 105
SPEECH ON A BILL FOR THE REPEAL OF THE MARRIAGE
ACT, June 15, 1781 129
SPEECH ON A MOTION FOR LEAVE TO BRING IN A BILL
TO QUIET THE POSSESSIONS OF THE SUBJECT AGAINST
DORMANT CLAIMS OF THE CHURCH, February 17, 1772 137
? ? ? ? iv CONTENTS.
PAGE
HINTS FOR AN ESSAY ON THE DRAMA. . . . 143
AN ESSAY TOWARDS AN ABRIDGMENT OF THE ENGLISH
HISTORY. IN THREE BOOKS.
BOOK I.
CHAP. I. Causes of the Connection between the Romans and
Britons. - Cesar's two Invasions of Britain. 159
II. Some Account of the Ancient Inhabitants of Britain 170
III. The Reduction of Britain by the Romans. . 189
IV. The Fall of the Roman Power in Britain. . 214
BOOK II.
CJhAP. I. The Entry and Settlement of the Saxons, and their
Conversion to. Christianity. . 227
II. Establishment of Christianity -of Monastic Institutions - and of their Effects. 240
III. Series of Anglo-Saxon Kings from Ethelbert to Alfred: with the Invasion of the Danes. 255 IV. Reign of King Alfred. . . . . . 261
V. Succession of Kings from Alfred to Harold. 269
VI. Harold II. - Invasion of the Normans. - Account of
that People, and of the State of England at the
Time of the Invasion. 280
VII. Of the Laws and Institutions of the Saxons. 291
BOOK III.
CHAP. I. View of the State of Europe at the Time of the
Norman Invasion. . 327
II. Reign of William the Conqueror. .
III. Reign of William the Second, surnamed'Rufus. . 364
IV. Reign of Henry I. . . . 375
V. Reign of Stephen. . 386
VI. Reign of Henry II. . . . . . 394
VII. Reign of Richard I. . . 425
VIII. Reign of John. . . . . . 437
IX. Fragment. -An Essay towards an History of the
Laws of England. . . . . 475
? 335
? ? ? FRAGMENTS. AND NOTES. OF S PE E. CHE. S.
VOL. VII. 1
? ? ? ? *** DURING the period of Mr. Burke's Parliamentary labors,
some alterations in the Acts of Uniformity, and the repeal of
the. Test and Corporation Acts, were agitated at various times
in the House of Commons. It appears from the state of his
manuscript papers, that he had designed to publish some of the
Speeches which he delivered in those discussions, and with that
view had preserved the following Fragments and detached
Notes, which are now given to the public with as much order
and connection as their imperfect condition renders them capable of receiving. The Speeches on the Middlesex Election, on shortening the Duration of Parliaments, on the Reform of the
Representation in Parliament, on the Bill for explaining the Power of Juries in Prosecutions for Libels, and on the Repeal of the Marriage Act, were found in the same imperfect state.
? ? ? ? S P'E E C H
ON
THE ACTS OF UNIFORMITY. FEBRUARY 6, 1772.
? ? ? ? NOTE.
THE following Speech was occasioned by a petition to the
House of Commons from certain clergymen of the Church of
England, and certain of the two professions of Civil Law and
Physic, and others, praying to be relieved from subscription to
the Thirty-Nine Articles, as required by the Acts of Uniformity.
The persons associated for this purpose were distinguished at the
time by the name of "The Feathers Tavern Association," from
the place wherne their meetings were usually held. Their petiti. on was presented on the 6th of February, 1772; and on a motion that it should be brought up, the same was negatived on
a division, in which Mr. Burke voted in the majority, by 217
against 71.
? ? ? ? SPEECH.
MR. SPEAKER,-I should not trouble the House,upon, this question:, if I:could at all acquiesce
in. many: of the:arguments, or justify the vote I shall
give uppon several' of the reasons. which, have:been
urged in favor of it. I should, indeed, be very much
concerned, if -I were thought to be influenced to
that vote by' those arguments.
HIn particular, I do: most; exceedingly condemn all
such arguments as involve any kind of reflection on
the' personals cha;racter -of the gentlemen who have
brought in a petition so decent in the style: of it, and
so:. constitutional in the- mode. Besides the, unimpeachable integrity. and piety-of many: of the promoters;off:this petition, which render ithose aspersions as idle; as. they. are unjust, such a way: of:treating the
subject - can have- no other effect than to turn the
attention. of the House from the merits of the petition, the- only: thing properly;before us, and which
we are sufficiently competent to decide upon, to the
motives of the petitioners, which belong exclusively
to the, Great:Searcher of Hearts.
We:all'know that those who;loll at their ease in
high dignities,. whether,of the Church or of the State,
are. :commonly averse to all reformation. It is hard
to persuade them that there can be: anything amiss in
establishments which by feeling experience they find
to. be'so very comfortable. . - It is; as true', that, from
? ? ? ? 6 SPEECIH ON THE ACTS OF UNIFORMITY.
the same selfish motives, those who are struggling upwards are apt to find everything wrong and out of
order. These are truths upon one side and on the
other; and neither on the one side or the other in
argument are they worth a single farthing. I wish,
therefore, so much had not been said upon these illchosen, and worse than ill-chosen, these very invidious topics.
I wish still more that the dissensions and animosities which had slept for a century had not been just
now most unseasonably revived. But if we must be
driven, whether we will or not, to recollect these
unhappy transactions, let our memory be complete
and equitable, let us recollect the whole of them together. If the Dissenters, as an honorable gentleman has described them, have formerly risen from a "whining, canting, snivelling generation," to be a
body dreadful and ruinous to all our establishments,
let him call to mind the follies, the violences, the
outrages, and persecutions, that conjured up, very
blamably, but very naturally, that same spirit of retaliation. Let him recollect, along with the injuries, the
services which Dissenters have done to our Church
and to our State. If they have once destroyed, more
than once they have saved them. This is but common justice, which they and all mankind have a right
to.
There are, Mr. Speaker, besides these prejudices
and animosities, which I would have wholly removed
from the debate, things more regularly and argumentatively urged against the petition, which, however, do not at all appear-to me conclusive.
First, two honorable gentlemen, one near me, the
other, I think, on the other side of the House, assert,
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE ACTS OF UNIFORMITY. 7
that, if you alter her symbols, you destroy the being
of the Church of England. This, for the sake of the
liberty of that Church, I must absolutely deny. The
Church, like every body corporate, may alter her
laws without changing her identity. As an independent church, professing fallibility, she has claimed
a right of acting without the consent of any other;
as a church, she claims, and has always exercised, a
right of reforming whatever appeared amiss in her
doctrine, her discipline, or her rites. She did so,
when she shook off the Papal supremacy in the reign
of Henry the Eighth, which was an act of the body
of the English Church, as well as of the State (I
don't inquire how obtained). She did so, when she
twice changed the Liturgy in the reign of King Edward, when she then established Articles, which were
themselves a variation from former professions. She
did so, when she cut off three articles from her original forty-two, and reduced them to the present thirtynine; and she certainly would not lose her corporate identity, nor subvert her fundamental principles, though she were to leave ten of the thirty-nine which
remain out of any future confession of her faith. She
would limit her corporate powers, on the contrary,
and she would oppose her fundamental principles, if
she were to deny herself ihe prudential exercise of
such capacity of reformation. This, therefore, can be
no objection to your receiving the petition.
In the next place, Sir, I am clear, that the Act of
Union, reciting and ratifying one Scotch and one English act of Parliament, has not rendered any change
whatsoever in our Church impossible, but by a dissolution of the union between the two kingdoms.
The honorable gentleman who has last touched
? ? ? ? 8 SPEECH ON- THE ACTS;. OF" UNIFORMITY.
upon that point has- not gone quite so far as the gentlemen who first insisted upon: it. . ;: However, as none
of:them wholly abandon. that post, it will not be safe
toleave it behind. me unattacked. ,I believe no one
will wish their interpretation of that act to be considered: as: authentic. W. . ,,hat shall we think of the
wisdom (to say nothing of the. . competence) of that
legislature which. should ordain to itself such a fundamental law,. at its outset, as to disable itself from executing its. own functions,:- which should prevent it from making any further. laws, however wanted, and
that, too, on the most interesting:subject that belongs
to human society, and where she most frequently
wants its. interposition, - which should fix those fundamental laws that are. forever. to. prevent it from.
adapting itself. to its opinions, however clear, or to
its, own necessities, however urgent? Such. an act,
Mr. Speaker, would forever:put the Church out of its
own power;. it certainly would put it far above the.
State, and erect it into that species of: independency
which it has. been. the great principle of our policy to
prevent.
The act never meant, I am sure,'any such unnatural restraint on the joint. legislature it was then forming. . . History shows us what it meant, and all that it could. mean with any degree of common sense.
In. the. reign of Charles the First. a violent and illconsidered. attempt was made unjustly. to establish
the platform of the government and the rites. of the
Church of England in Scotland, contrary to the. genius and desires of far the majority of that nation.
This u. surpation excited a most mutinous spirit in
that country. It produced that shocking fanatical
Covenant. (I. mean the Covenant: of'36) -forlforcing
? ? ? ? SPEECH. ON THE. ACTS OFG UNIFORMITY. 9
their ideas of religion: on England,- and indeed on all
mankind. ' This. became the occasion, at length, of
other-icovenants, and of a Scotch army marching into
England to:. fulfil them; and the! Parliament of. England (for its: own purposes) adopted their scheme,
took their last covenant, and destroyed the Church of
England. . The Parliament, inl their ordinance of 1643,
expressly assign their desire of conforming to the
Churchl: of Scotland. as a. motive for their alteration. . ITo prevent such violent enterprises on the oine side
or oil the other, since each Church was going to be disarmed of a legislature wholly and peculiarly affected.
to it, and lest this new uniformity in the State shouldl
be urged as- a reason and ground of- ecclesiastical uniformity, the Act of Union provided that:presbyteryshould continue the Scotch,-as episcopacy the English establishment, and that this separate and. mutually'-independent Church-government was to be considered as a part of the Union, without a putting the regulation within each Church out of its
own power, without putting both Churches out of the
power. of the State. , It could -not mean. to forbid us
to set anything ecclesiastical in order, but at the expense! of tearing up: all: foundations, and forfeiting the
inestimable benefits (for inestimable they are) which
we derive from the happy union of the two kingdoms.
To suppose otherwise is to suppose that the act intended we could not meddle at all with the Church,
but we must as a preliminary destroy the State.
Well, then, Sir, this is, I hope, satisfactory. The
Act of Union does not stand in our way. But, Sir,
gentlemen think we are not competent to the reformation desired, chiefly from our want of theological
learning. : If we were the legal: assembly. . .
? ? ? ? 10 SPEECH ON THE ACTS OF UNIFORMITY. . If ever there was anything to which, from reason, nature, habit, and principle, I am totally averse, it is
persecution for conscientious difference in opinion.
If these gentlemen complained justly of any compulsion upon them on that article, I would hardly wait for their petitions; as soon as I knew the evil, I
would haste to the cure; I would even run before
their complaints.
I will not enter into the abstract merits of our Articles and Liturgy. Perhaps there are some things
in them which one would wish had not been there.
They are Vot without the marks and characters of
human frailty.
But it is not human frailty and imperfection, and
even a considerable degree bf them, that becomes a
ground for your alteration; for by no alteration will
you get rid of those errors, however you may delight
yourselves in varying to infinity the fashion of them.
But the ground for a legislative alteration of a legal
establishment is this, and this only, -- that you find
the inclinations of the majority of the people, concurring with your own sense of the intolerable nature of the abuse, are in favor of a change.
If this be the case in the present instance, certainly
you ought to make the alteration that is proposed, to
satisfy your own consciences, and to give content to
your people. But if you have no evidence of this
nature, it ill becomes your gravity, on the petition
of a few gentlemen, to listen to anything that tends
to shake one of the capital pillars of the state, and
alarm the body of your people upon that one ground,
in which every hope and fear, every interest, passion,
prejudice, everything which can affect the human
breast, are all involved together. If you make this
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE ACTS OF UNIFORMITY. 11
a season for religious alterations, depend upon it, you
will soon find it a season of religious tumults and religious wars.
These gentlemen complain of hardship. No considerable number shows discontent; but, in order to
give ~satisfaction to any number of respectable men,
who come in so decent and constitutional a mode before us, let us. examine a,little what that hardship is.
They want to be preferred clergymen in the Church
of England as by law established; but their consciences will not suffer them to conform to the doctrines and practices of that Church: that is, they want to be teachers in a church to which they do not
belong; and it is an odd sort of hardship. They want
to receive the emoluments appropriated for teaching
one set of doctrines, whilst they are teaching another.
A church, in any legal sense, is only a certain system
of religious doctrines and practices fixed and ascertained by some law,- by the difference of which laws
different churches (as different commonwealths) are
made in various parts of the world; and the establishment is a tax laid by the same sovereign authority for
payment of those who so teach and so practise:. for
no legislature was ever so absurd as to tax its people
to support men for teaching and acting as they please,
but by some prescribed rule.
The hardship amounts to this, - that the people of
lfgland are not taxed two shillings in the pound to
pay them for teaching, as divine truths, their own particular fancies. For the state has so taxed the people; and by way of relieving these gentlemen, it would be a cruel hardship on the people to be compelled to pay, from the sweat of their brow, the most
heavy of all taxes to men, to condemn as heretical
? ? ? ? 12 SPEECH ON THE - ACTS OF' iUNIFORMITY.
the doctrines which they l repute -to. be orthodox, and
to reprobate as superstitious the practices which they
use as pious and holy. If a man leaves by will an
establishment for preaching, such. as Boyle's Lectures,
or for charity sermons, or funeral sermons, shall any
one complain: of an hardship, because he has an excellent sermon- upon matrimony, or on the martyrdoin of. King Charles,, or on:the Restoration, which I,
the;trustee of the- establishment, will not pay him
for preaching? - S. Jenyns, Origin of Evil. - Such is
the hardship which they complain of under the present Church establishment, that they have not the power of taxing the people of England for the mainteiiance of their private. opinions.
The laws of toleration provide for every real grievance that these gentlemen can rationally complain of.
Are they: hindered from professing their belief of what
they think to be truth'? If they do not like the
Establishment,:there are an hundred different, modes
of Dissent in -which, they may teach. But even if
they are so unfortunately circumstanced that of all
that varietynlone will please them, they have free
liberty to assemble:a. congregation of their own; and
if any persons think their fancies (they may be brilliant imaginations) worth paying for, they are at liberty to maintain'them as their clergy: nothing hinders it. - But if they cannot get an hundred people together who will pay for their reading a liturgy after
their form, with what face can they insist upon the
nation's conforming-to their ideas, for no other visibl,e purpose than the enabling them to receive with a
good conscience the tenth part of the produce of your
lands? :Therefore, beforehand) the' Constitution has thought'
? ? ? ? SPEECH. ON. . THE'ACTS OF -UNIFORMITY: 13
proper to take:a security that' the, tax- raised- on;the
people shall be, applied only, to': those who profess such
doctrines and follow such:a mode of worship as:the
legislature, representing the: people, has thought: most
agreeable to their general sense, - binding, as usual,
the minority,, not to: as assent to the doctrines, but to
a payment. of the tax,.
But how do -you ease and relieve? How do:you
know, that, in -making -a:newdoor-into the Church
for these gentlemen, you. do not'drive ten times their
number out of it? . :Supposing the contents and; notcontents'strictly. equal in:. numbers and,consequence, the possession, to avoid disturbance, ought, to carry it.
You displease all:the, clergy. of England now actually
in office, for the chance:of obliging a score or two, perhaps, of gentlemen, who are; or want to be, beneficed clergymen: and do-you. oblige? -Alter your Liturgy,
- will it please all even of those who wish an alteration? . will they agree,:in- what:` ought to be altered?
And after it is altered to the, mind:of. every one, you
are no further' advanced? than if you had not takeh a
single step;;-because- a -large:body of men willthen
say' you ought to have- no liturgy at all: and then
these I men; who now complai-n:- so,:bitterly: that they
are shut out,'will -,themselves:bar the do. or. against
thousands-: of -. others. ; Dissent, not. satisfied. ,with tol
eration,: is. not conscienceo but ambition,:. .
You alteredi the Liturgy. for the Directory. This
was. :settled: by a set of. most- learned:divines and
learned,laymenr:, Selden: sat:. amongst them. :. Did
this please:? :. It was'considered upon:both- sides as
a-most: unlclristia-n; imposition;'~WeIl. ,:at, tlre Resto7
ration-they:rejected;:the Directory,. and reformed the
Common Prayer,-w-h.