Is it for him to
question
the dispensation of the royal favor?
Edmund Burke
?
ON THE ATTACKS UPON HIS PENSION.
189
to change the authority under which any officer of the
crown acted, who was suffered at all to exist. Crown,
lords, commons, judicial system, system of administration, existed as they had existed before, and in the
mode and manner in which they had always existed.
My measures were, what I then truly stated them to
the House to be, in their intent, healing and mediatorial. A complaint was made of too much influence in the House of Commons: I reduced it in both Houses; and I gave my reasons, article by article, for
every reduction, and showed why I thought it safe
for the service of the state. I heaved the lead every
inch of way I made. A disposition to expense was
complained of: to that I opposed, not mere retrenchment, but a system of economy, which would make a
random expense, without plan or foresight, in future,
not easily practicable. I proceeded upon principles
of research to put me in possession of my matter, on
principles of method to regulate it, and on principles
in the human mind and in civil affairs to secure and
perpetuate the operation. I conceived nothing arbitrarily, nor proposed anything to be done by the will
and pleasure of others or my own, - but by reason,
and by reason only. I have ever abhorred, since the
first dawn of my understanding to this its obscure
twilight, all the operations of opinion, fancy, inclination, and will, in the affairs of government, where
only a sovereign reason, paramount to all forms of
legislation and administration, should dictate. Government is made for the very purpose of opposing that
reason to will and to caprice, in the reformers or in
the reformed, in the governors or in the governed,
in kings, in senates, or in people.
On a careful review, therefore, and analysis of all
? ? ? ? 190 LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD
the component parts of the civil list, and on weighing them against each other, in order to make as
much as possible all of them a subject of estimate,
(the foundation and corner-stone of all regular, provident economy,) it appeared to me evident that this
was impracticable, whilst that part called the pension
list was totally discretionary in its amount. For this
reason, and for this only, I proposed to reduce it,
both in its gross quantity and in its larger individual
proportions, to a certainty; lest, if it were left without a general limit, it might eat up the civil list service, -if suffered to be granted in portions too great for the fund, it might defeat its own end, and, by unlimited allowances to some, it might disable the crown
in. means of providing for others. The pension list
was to be kept as a sacred fund; but it could not be
kept as a constant, open fund, sufficient for growing
demands, if some demands would wholly devour it.
The tenor of the act will show that it regarded the
civil list only, the reduction of which to some sort of
estimate was my great object.
No other of the cr6wn funds did I meddle with,
because they had not the same relations. This of
the four and a half per cents does his Grace imagine
had escaped me, or had escaped all the men of business who acted with me in those regulations? I
knew that such a fund existed, and that pensions
had been always granted on it, before his Grace was
born. This fund was full in my eye. It was full in
the eyes of those who worked with me. It was left
on principle. On principle I did what was then done;
and on principle what was left undone was omitted.
I did not dare to rob the nation of all funds to reward merit. If I pressed this point too close, I acted
? ? ? ? ON THE ATTACKS UPON HIS PENSION. 191
contrary to the avowed principles on which I went.
Gentlemen are very fond of quoting me; but if any
one thinks it worth his while to know the rules that
guided me ill my plan of reform, he will read my
printed speech on that subject, at least what is contained from page 230 to page 241 in the second volume of the collection * which a friend has given himself the trouble to make of my publications. Be
this as it may, these two bills (though achieved with
the greatest labor, and management of every sort,
both within and without the House) were only a
part, and but a small part, of a very large system,
comprehending all the objects I stated in opening
my proposition, and, indeed, many more, which I
just hinted at in my speech to the electors of Bristol, when I was put out of that representation. All
these, in some state or other of forwardness, I have
long had by me.
But do I justify his Majesty's grace on these
grounds? I think them the least of my services.
The time gave them an occasional value. What I
have done in the way of political economy was far
from confined to this body of measures. I did not
come into Parliament to con my lesson. I had earned
my pension before I set my foot in St. Stephen's
Chapel. I was prepared and disciplined to this political warfare. The first session I sat in Parliament, I
found it necessary to analyze the whole commercial,
financial, constitutional, and foreign interests of Great
Britain and its empire. A great deal was then done;
and more, far more, would have been done, if mole
had been permitted by events. Then, in the vigor of
my manhood, my constitution sunk under my labor.
* London, J. Dodsley, 1792, 3 vols. 4to. - Vol. II. pp. 324 - 336,
in the present edition.
? ? ? ? 192 LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD
Had I then died, (and I seemed to myself very near
death,) I had then earned for those who belonged to
me more than the Duke of Bedford's ideas of service
are of power to estimate. But, in truth, these services I am called to account for are not those on which
I value myself the most. If I were to call for a reward, (which I have never done,) it should be for
those in which for fourteen years without intermission
I showed the most industry and had the least success:
I mean in the affairs of India. They are those on
which I value myself the most: most for the importance, most for the labor, most for the judgment,
most for constancy and perseverance in the pursuit.
Others may value them most for the intention. In
that, surely, they are not mistaken.
Does his Grace think that they who advised the
crown to make my retreat easy considered me only
as an economist? That, well understood, however,
is a good deal. If I had not deemed it of some value, I should not have made political economy an object of my humble studies from my very early youth to near the end of my service in Parliament, even
before (at least to any knowledge of mine) it had
employed the thoughts of speculative men in other
parts of Europe. At that time it was still in its
infancy in England, where, in the last century, it
had its origin. Great and learned men thought my
studies were not wholly thrown away, and deigned
to communicate with me now and then on some particulars of their immortal works. Something of these
studies may appear incidentally in some of the earliest things I published. The House has been witness to their effect, and has profited of them, more
or less, for above eight-and-twenty years.
? ? ? ? ON THE ATTACKS UPON HIS PENSION. 193
To their estimate I leave the matter. I was not,
like his Grace of Bedford, swaddled and rocked and
dandled into a legislator: "1Nitor in adversum" is
the motto for a man like me. I possessed not one
of the qualities nor cultivated one of the arts that
recommend men to the favor and protection of the
great. I was not made for a minion or a tool. As
little did I follow the trade of winning the hearts by
imposing on the understandings of the people. At
every step of my progress in life, (for in every step
was I traversed and opposed,) and at every turnpike
I met, I was obliged to show my passport, and again
and again to prove my sole title to the honor of being useful to my country, by a proof that I was not
wholly unacquainted with its laws and the whole system of its interests both abroad and at home. Otherwise, no rank, no toleration even, for me. I had no arts but manly arts. On them I have stood, and,
please God, in spite of the Duke of Bedford and the
Earl of Lauderdale, to the last gasp will I stand.
Had his Grace condescended to inquire concerning the person whom he has not thought it below
him to reproach, he might have found, that, in the
whole course of my life, I have never, on any pretence of economy, or on any other pretence, so much
as in a single instance, stood between any man and
his reward of service or his encouragement in useful
talent and pursuit, from the highest of those services
and pursuits to the lowest. On the contrary, I have
on an hundred occasions exerted myself with singular zeal to forward every man's even tolerable pretensions. I have more than once had good-natured reprehensions from my friends for carrying the matter to something bordering on abuse. This line of
VOL v. 13
? ? ? ? 194 LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD
conduct, whatever its merits might be, was partly
owing to natural disposition, but I think full as much
to reason and principle. I looked on the consideration of public service or public ornament to be real
and very justice; and I ever held a scanty and penurious justice to partake of the nature of a wrong.
I held it to be, in its consequences, the worst economy in the world. In saving money I soon can count
up all the good I do; but when by a cold penury I
blast the abilities of a nation, and stunt the growth of
its active energies, the ill I may do is beyond all calculation. Whether it be too much or too little, whatever I have done has been general and systematic. I have never entered into those triflinug vexations and
oppressive details that have been falsely and most
ridiculously laid to my charge.
Did I blame the pensions given to Mr. Barre and
Mr. Dunning between the proposition and execution
of my plan? No! surely, no! Those pensions were
within my principles. I assert it, those gentlemen
deserved their pensions, their titles, - all they had;
and if more they had, I should have been but
pleased the more. They were men of talents; they
were men of service. I put the profession of the law
out of the question in one of them. It is a service
that rewards itself. But their public service, though
from their abilities unquestionably of more value than
mine, in its quantity and in its duration was not to be
mentioned with it. But I never could drive a hard
bargain in my life, concerning any matter whatever;
and least of all do I know how to haggle and huckster with merit. Pension for myself I obtained none;
nor did I solicit any. Yet I was loaded with hatred
for everything that was withheld, and with obloquy
? ? ? ? ON THE ATTACKS UPON HIS PENSION. 195
for everything that was given. I was thus left to
support the grants of a name ever dear to me and
ever venerable to the world in favor of those who
were no friends of mine or of his, against the rude
attacks of those who were at that time friends to the
grantees and their own zealous partisans. I have
never heard the Earl of Lauderdale complain of these
pensions. He finds nothing wrong till he comes to
me. This is impartiality, in the true, modern, revolutionary style.
Whatever I did at that time, so far as it regarded
order and economy, is stable and eternal, as all principles'must be. A particular order of things may
be altered: order itself cannot lose its value. As to
other particulars, they are variable by time and by
circumstances. Laws of regulation are not fundamental laws. The public exigencies are the masters
of all such laws. They rule the laws, and are not to
be ruled by them. They who exercise the legislative
power at the time must judge.
It may be new to his Grace, but I beg leave to tell
him that mere parsimony is not economy. It is
separable in theory from it; and in fact it may or it
may not be a part of economy, according to circumstances. Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy. If parsimony were to be considered as one of the kinds of that virtue, there
is, however, another and an higher economy. Economy is a distributive virtue, and consists, not in saving,
but in selection. Parsimony requires no providence,
no sagacity, no powers of combination, no comparison,
no judgment. Mere instinct, and that not an instinct
of the noblest kind, may produce this false economy
in perfection. The other economy has larger views.
? ? ? ? 196 LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD
It demands a discriminating judgment, and a firm,
sagacious mind. It shuts one door to impudent im
portunity, only to open another, and a wider, to unpresuming merit. If none but meritorious service or
real talent were to be rewarded, this nation has not
wanted, and this nation will not want, the means of
rewarding all the service it ever will receive, and
encouraging all the merit it ever will produce. No
state, since the foundation of society, has been impoverished by that species of profusion. Had the economy of selection and proportion been at all times observed, we should not now have had an overgrown
Duke of Bedford, to oppress the industry of humble
men, and to limit, by the standard of his own conceptions, the justice, the bounty, or, if he pleases, the
charity of the crown.
His Grace may think as meanly as he will of my
deserts in the far greater part of my conduct in life.
It is free for him to do so. There will always be
some difference of opinion in the value of political
services. But there is one merit of mine which he,
of all men living, ought to be the last to call in question. I have supported with very great zeal, and I
am told with some degree of success, those opinions,
or, if his Grace likes another expression better, those
old prejudices, which buoy up the ponderous mass
of his nobility, wealth, and titles. I have omitted
no exertion to prevent him and them from sinking
to that level to which the meretricious French faction his Grace at least coquets with omit no exertion
to reduce both. I have done all I could to-discoulltenance their inquiries into the fortunes of those who
hold large portions of wealth without any apparent
merit of their own. I have strained every nerve to
? ? ? ? ON THE ATTACKS UPON HIS PENSION. 197
keep the Duke of Bedford in that situation which
alone makes him my superior. Your Lordship has
been a witness of the use he makes of that preeminence.
But be it that this is virtue; be it that there is virtue in this well-selected rigor: yet all virtues are not equally becoming to all men and at all times. There
are crimes, undoubtedly there are crimes, which in all
seasons of our existence ought to put a generous antipathy in action, - crimes that provoke an indignant justice, and call forth a warm and animated pursuit.
But all things that concern what I may call the preventive police of morality, all things merely rigid, harsh, and censorial, the antiquated moralists at whose
feet I was brought up would not have thought these
the fittest matter to form the favorite virtues of young
men of rank. What might have been well enough,
and have been received with a veneration mixed with
awe and terror, from an old, severe, crabbed Cato,
would have wanted something of propriety in the
young Scipios, the ornament of the Roman nobility,
in the flower of their life. But the times, the morals,
the masters, the scholars, have all undergone a thorough revolution. It is a vile, illiberal school, this new French academy of the sans-culottes. There is
nothing in it that is fit for a gentleman to learn.
Whatever its vogue may be, I still flatter myself
that the parents of the growing generation will be
satisfied with what is to be taught to their children in
Westminster, in Eton, or in Winchester; I still indulge the hope that no grown gentleman or nobleman
of our time will think of finishing at Mr. Thelwall's
lecture whatever may have been left incomplete at the
old universities of his country. I would give to Lord
? ? ? ? 1. 98 LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD
Grenville and Mr. Pitt for a motto what was said of a
Roman censor or prwetor (or what was he? ) who in
virtue of a Senatusconsultum shut up certain academies,-" Cludere ludum impudentiee jussit. " Every honest father of a family in the kingdom will rejoice
at the breaking-up for the holidays, and will pray that
there may be a very long vacation, in all such schools.
The awful state of the time, and not myself, or my
own justification, is my true object in what I now
write, or in what I shall ever write or say. It little
signifies to the world what becomes of such things as
me, or even as the Duke of Bedford. What I say
about either of us is nothing more than a vehicle, as
you, my Lord, will easily perceive, to convey my sentiments on matters far more worthy of your attention. It is when I stick to my apparent first subject that
I ought to apologize, not when I depart from it. I
therefore must beg your Lordship's pardon for again
resuming it after this very short digression, - assuring you that I shall never altogether lose sight of
such matter as persons abler than I am may turn
to some profit.
The Duke of Bedford conceives that he is obliged
to call the attention of the House of Peers to his
Majesty's grant to me, which he considers as excessive and out of all bounds.
I know not how it has happened, but it really
seems, that, whilst his Grace was meditating his wellconsidered censure upon me, he fell into a sort of sleep. Homer nods, and the Duke of Bedford may
dream; and as dreams (even his golden dreams)
are apt to be ill-pieced and incongruously put together, his Grace preserved his idea of reproach
to me, but took the subject-matter from the crown
? ? ? ? ON THE ATTACKS UPON HIS PENSION. 199
grants to his own family. This is "the stuff of
which his dreams are made. " In that way of putting things together his Grace is perfectly in the right. The grants to the House of Russell were so
enormous as not only to outrage economy, but even
to stagger credibility. The Duke of Bedford is the
leviathan among all the creatures of the crown. He
tumbles about his unwieldy bulk, he plays and frolics in the ocean of the royal bounty. Huge as he is, and whilst " he lies floating many a rood," he is still
a creature. His ribs, his fins, his whalebone, his
blubber, the very spiracles through which he spouts
a torrent of brine against his origin, and covers
me all over with the spray, everything of him and
about him is from the throne.
Is it for him to question the dispensation of the royal favor?
I really am at a loss to draw any sort of parallel
between the public merits of his Grace, by which he
justifies the grants he holds, and these services of
mine, on the favorable construction of which I have
obtained what his Grace so much disapproves. In
private life I have not at all the honor of acquaintance with the noble Duke; but I ought to presume, and it costs me nothing to do so, that he abundantly
deserves the esteem and love of all who live with
him. But as to public service, why, truly, it would
not be more ridiculous for me to compare myself,
in rank, in fortune, in splendid descent, in youth,
strength, or figure, with the Duke of Bedford, than
to make a parallel between his services and my attempts to be useful to my country. It would not
be gross adulation, but uncivil irony, to say that
he has any public merit of his own to keep alive
the idea of the services by which his vast landed
? ? ? ? 200 LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD
pensions were obtained. My merits, whatever they
are, are original and personal: his are derivative.
It is his ancestor, the original pensioner, that has
laid up this inexhaustible fund of merit which makes
his Grace so very delicate and exceptious about the
merit of all other grantees of the crown. Had he
permitted me to remain in quiet, I should have said,
"'T is his estate: that's enough. It is his by law:
what have I to do with it or its history? " He would
naturally have said, on his side, "'Tis this man's fortune. He is as good now as my ancestor was two hundred and fifty years ago. I am a young man
with very old pensions; he is an old man with very
young pensions: that's all. "
Why will his Grace, by attacking me, force me
reluctantly to compare my little merit with that
which obtained from the crown those prodigies of
profuse donation by which he tramples on the mediocrity of humble and laborious individuals? I would willingly leave him to the Herald's College, which
the philosophy of the sans-culottes (prouder by far
than all the Garters, and Norroys, and Clarencieux,
and Rouge-Dragons that ever pranced in a procession
of what his friends call aristocrats and despots) will
abolish with contumely and scorn. These historians,
recorders, and blazoners of virtues and arms differ
wholly from that other description of historians who
never assign any act of politicians to a good motive.
These gentle historians, on the contrary, dip their
pens in nothing but the milk of human kindness.
They seek no further for merit than the preamble
of a patent or the inscription on a tomb. With them
every man created a peer is first an hero ready-made.
They judge of every man's capacity for office by the
? ? ? ? ON THE ATTACKS UPON HIS PENSION. 201
offices he has filled; and the more offices, the more
ability. Every general officer with them is a Marlborough, every statesman a Burleighll, every judge a Murray or a Yorke. They who, alive, were laughed
at or pitied by all their acquaintance make as good
a figure as the best of them in the pages of Guillim,
Edmondson, and Collins.
To these recorders, so full of good-nature to the
great and prosperous, I would willingly leave the
first Baron Russell and Earl of Bedford, and the
merits of his grants. But the aulnager, the weigher,
the meter of grants will not suffer us to acquiesce
in the judgment of the prince reigning at the time
when they were made. They are never good to
those who earn them. Well, then, since the new
grantees have war made on them by the old, and
that the word of the sovereign is not to be taken,
let us turn our eyes to history, in which great men
have always a pleasure in contemplating the heroic
origin of their house.
The first peer of the name, the first purchaser of
the grants, was a Mr. Russell, a person of an ancient
gentleman's family, raised by being a minion of
Henry tile Eighth. As there generally is some resemblance of character to create these relations, the favorite was in all likelihQod much such another as
his master. The first of those immoderate grants
was not taken from the ancient demesne of the
crown, but from the recent confiscation of the alncienlt nobility of the land. The lion, having sucked the blood of his prey, threw the offal carcass to
the jackal in waiting. Having tasted once the food
of confiscation, the favorites became fierce and ravenous. This worthy favorite's first grant was from
? ? ? ? 202 LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD
the lay nobility. The second, infinitely improving
on the enormity of the first, was from the plunder
of the Church. In truth, his Grace is somewhat
excusable for his dislike to a grant like mine, not
only in its quantity, but in its kind, so different
from his own.
Mine was from a mild and benevolent sovereign:
his from Henry the Eighth.
Mine had not its fund in the murder of any innocent person of illustrious rank,* or in the pillage
of any body of unoffending men. His grants were
from the aggregate and consolidated funds of judgments iniquitously legal, and from possessions voluntarily surrendered by the lawful proprietors with the gibbet at their door.
The merit of the grantee whom he derives from
was that of being a prompt and greedy instrument
of a levelling tyrant, who oppressed all descriptions
of his people, but who fell with particular fury on
everything that was great and noble. Mine has been
in endeavoring to screen every man, in every class,
from oppression, and particularly in defending the
high and eminent, who, in the bad times of confiscating princes, confiscating chief governors, or confiscating demagogues, are the most exposed to jealousy, avarice. and envy.
The merit of the original grantee of his Grace's
pensions was in giving his hand to the work, and
partaking the spoil, with a prince who plundered
a part of the national Church of his time and country. Mine was in defending the whole of the national Church of my own time and my own country,
* See the history of the melancholy catastrophe of the Duke of
Buckingham. Temp. Hen. VIII.
? ? ? ? ON THE ATTACKS UPON HIS PENSION. 203
and the whole of the national Churches of all countries, from the principles and the examples which
lead to ecclesiastical pillage, thence to a contempt
of all prescriptive titles, thence to the pillage of all
property, and thence to universal desolation.
The merit of the origin of his Grace's fortune was
in being a favorite and chief adviser to a prince who
left no liberty to their native country. My endeavor
was to obtain liberty for the municipal country in
which I was born, and for all descriptions and denominations in it. Mine was to support with unrelaxing vigilance every right, every privilege, every franchise, in this my adopted, my dearer, and more
comprehensive country; and not only to preserve
those rights in this chief seat of empire, but in every
nation, in every land, in every climate, language, and
religion, in the vast domain that still is under the
protection, and the larger that was once under the
protection, of the British crown.
His founder's merits were, by arts in which he
served his master and made his fortune, to bring
poverty, wretchedness, and depopulation on his country. Mine were under a benevolent prince, in promoting the commerce, mainufactures, and agriculture of his kingdom, - in which his Majesty shows an
eminent example, who even in his amusements is
a patriot, and in hours of leisure an improver of his
native soil.
His founder's merit was the merit of a gentleman
raised by the arts of a court and the protection of
a Wolsey to the eminence of a great and potent
lord. His merit in that eminence was, by instigating a tyrant to injustice, to provoke a people
to rebellion. My merit was, to awaken the sober
? ? ? ? 20 1 LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD
part of the country, that they might put themselves
on their guard against any one potent lord, or any
greater number of potent lords, or ally combination
of great leading men of ally sort, if ever they should
attempt to proceed in the same courses, but in the
reverse order, - that is, by instigating a corrupted
populace to rebellion, and, through that rebellion,
introducing a tyranny yet worse than the tyranny
which his Grace's ancestor supported, and of which
he profited in the manner we behold in the despotism
of Henry the Eighth.
The political merit of the first pensioner of his
Grace's house was that of being concerned as a
counsellor of state in advising, and in his person
executing, the conditions of a dishonorable peace
with France, -the surrendering the fortress of Boulogne, then our outguard on the Continent. By that surrender, Calais, the key of France, and the
bridle in the mouth of that power, was not many
years afterwards finally lost. My merit has been
in resisting the power and pride of France, under
any form of its rule; but in opposing it with the
greatest zeal and earnestness, when that rule appeared in the worst form it could assume, -- the worst, indeed, which the prime cause and principle
of all evil could possibly give it. It was my endeavor by every means to excite a spirit in the House, where I had the honor of a seat, for carrying on with
early vigor and decision the most clearly just and
necessary war that this or any nation ever carried
on, ill order to save my country from the iron yoke
of its power, and from the more dreadful contagion of its principles, - to preserve, while they can be preserved, pure and untainted, the ancient, ini
? ? ? ? ON THE ATTACKS UPON HIS PENSION. 205
bred integrity, piety, good-nature, and good-humor of
the people of England, from the dreadful pestilence
which, beginning in France, threatens to lay waste
the whole moral and in a great degree the whole
physical world, having done both in the focus of its
most intense malignity.
The labors of his Grace's founder merited the
"curses, not loud, but deep," of the Commons of
England, on whom he and his master had effected
a complete Parliamentary Reform, by making them,
in their slavery and humiliation, the true and adequate representatives of a debased, degraded, and
undone people. My merits were in having had an
active, though not always an ostentatious share, in
every one act, without exception, of undisputed constitutional utility in my time, and in having supported, on all occasions, the authority, the efficiency, and the privileges of the Commons of Great Britain.
I ended my services by a recorded and fully reasoned
assertion on their own journals of their constitutional
rights, and a vindication of their constitutional conduct. I labored in all things to merit their inward
approbation, and (along with the assistants of the
largest, the greatest, and best of my endeavors) I received their free, unbiased, public, and solemn thanks.
Thus stands the account of the comparative merits
of the crown grants which compose the Duke of Bedford's fortune as balanced against mine. In the name
of common sense, why should the Duke of Bedford
think that none but of the House of Russell are entitled to the favor of the crown? Why should he
imagine that no king of England has been capable
of judging of merit but King Heilry the Eighth? Indeed, he will pardon me, he is a little mistaken: all
? ? ? ? 200 6 LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD
virtue did not end in the first Earl of Bedford; all
discernment did not lose its vision when his creator
closed his eyes. Let him remit his rigor on the
disproportion between merit and reward in others,
and they will make no inquiry into the origin of his
fortune. They will regard with much more satisfaction, as he will contemplate with infinitely more advantage, whatever in hi; pedigree has been dulcifled by an exposure to the influence of heaven in a long flow of generations from the hard, acidulous,
metallic tincture of the spring. It is little to be
doubted that several of his forefathers in that long
series have degenerated into honor and virtue. Let
the Duke of Bedford (I am sure he will) reject with
scorn and horror the counsels of the lecturers, those
wicked panders to avarice and ambition, who would
tempt him, in the troubles of his country, to seek
another enormous fortune from the forfeitures of
another nobility and the plunder of another Church.
Let him (and I trust that yet he will) employ all the
energy of his youth and all the resources of his
wealth to crush rebellious principles which have no
foundation in morals, and rebellious movements that
have no provocation in tyranny.
Then will be forgot the rebellions which, by a
doubtful priority in crime, his ancestor had provoked
and extinguished. On such a conduct in the noble
Duke, many of his countrymen might, and with some
excuse might, give. way to the enthusiasm of their
gratitude, and, in the dashing style of some of the
old declaimers, cry out, that, if the Fates had found
no other way in which they could give a * Duke of
Bedford and his opulence as props to a tottering
* At si non aliam venturo fata Neroni, etc.
? ? ? ? ON THE ATTACKS UPON HIS PENSION. 207
world, then the butchery of the Duke of Buckingham
might be tolerated; it might be regarded even with
complacency, whilst in the heir of confiscation they
saw the sympathizing comforter of the martyrs who
suffer under the cruel confiscation of this day, whilst
they beheld with admiration his zealous protection
of the virtuous and loyal nobility of France, and his
manly support of his brethren, the yet standing nobility and gentry of his native land. Then his Grace's merit would be pure and new and sharp, as fresh
from the mint of honor. As he pleased, he might
reflect honor on his predecessors, or throw it forward
on those who were to succeed him. He might be
the propagator of the stock of honor, or the root of
it, as he thought proper.
Had it pleased God to continue to me the hopes
of succession, I should have been, according to my
mediocrity and the mediocrity of the age I live in,
a sort of founder of a family: I should have left a
son, who, in all the points in which personal merit
can be viewed, in science, in erudition, in genius, in
taste, in honor, in generosity, in humanity, in every
liberal sentiment and every liberal accomplishment,
would not have shown himself inferior to the Duke
of Bedford, or to any of those whom he traces in his
line. His Grace very soon would have wanted all
plausibility in his attack upon that provision which
belonged more to mine than to me. He would soo5n
have supplied every deficiency, and symmetrized every
disproportion. It would not have been for that successor to resort to any stagnant, wasting reservoir of merit in me, or in any ancestry. He had in himself a
salielt, living spring of generous and manly action.
Eviery day he lived he would have repurchased the
? ? ? ? 208 LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD
bounty of the crown, and ten times more, if ten times
more he had received. He was made a public creature, and had no enjoyment whatever but in the performance of some duty. At this exigent moment the loss of a finished man is not easily supplied.
But a Disposer whose power we are little able to
resist, and whose wisdom it behoves us not at all
to dispute, has ordained it in another manner, and
(whatever my querulous weakness might suggest) a
far better. The storm has gone over me; and I lie
like one of those old oaks which the late hurricane
has scattered about me. I am stripped of all my
honors, I am torn up by the roots, and lie prostrate
on the earth. There, and prostrate there, I most unfeignedly recognize the Divine justice, and in some
degree submit to it. But whilst I humble myself
before God, I do not know that it is forbidden to
repel the attacks of unjust and inconsiderate men.
The patience of Job is proverbial. After some of the
convulsive struggles of our irritable nature, he submitted himself, and repented ill dust and ashes. But
even so, I do not find him blamed for reprehending,
and with a considerable degree of verbal asperity,
those ill-natured neighbors of his who visited his
dunghill to read moral, political, and economical
lectures on his misery. I am alone. I have none
to meet my enemies in the gate. Indeed, my Lord,
I greatly deceive myself, if in this hard season I
would give a peck of refuse wheat for all that is
called fame and honor in the world. This is the
appetite but of a few. It is a luxury, it is a privilege, it is an indulgence for those who are at their
ease. But we are all of us made to shun disgrace,
as we are made to shrink from pain and poverty
? ? ? ? ON THE ATTACKS UPON HIS PENSION. 209
and disease. It is an instinct; and under the direction of reason, instinct is always in the right. I live
in an inverted order. They who ought to have succeeded me are gone before me. They who should
have been to me as posterity are in the place of
ancestors. I owe to the dearest relation (which ever
must subsist in memory) that act of piety which he
would have performed to me: I owe it to him to
show that he was not descended, as the Duke of Bedford would have it, from an unworthy parent.
The crown has considered me after long service:
the crown has paid the Duke of Bedford by advance.
He has had a long credit for any service which he
may perform hereafter. He is secure, and long may
he be secure, in his advance, whether he performs
any services or not. But let him take care how he
endangers the safety of that Constitution which secures his own utility or his own insignificance, or
how he discourages those who take up even puny
arms to defend an order of things which, like the
sun of heaven, shines alike on the useful and the
worthless. His grants are ingrafted on the public
law of Europe, covered with the awful hoar of innumerable ages. They are guarded by the sacred rules
of prescription, found in that full treasury of jurisprudence from which the jejuneness and penury of
our municipal law has by degrees been enriched and
strengthened. This prescription I had my share (a
very full share) in bringing to its perfection. * The
Duke of Bedford will stand as long as prescriptive
law endures,- as long as the great, stable laws of
property, common to us with all civilized nations, are
kept in their integrity, and without the smallest in* Sir George Savile's act, called The Nullum Tempus Act. VOL. v. 14
? ? ? ? 210 LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD
termixture of the laws, maxims, principles, or precedents of the Grand Revolution. They are seceure
against all changes but one. The whole Revolutionary system, institutes, digest, code, novels, text, gloss,
comment, are not only not the same, but they are the
very reverse, and the reverse fundamentally, of all
the laws on which civil life has hitherto been upheld
in all the governments of the world. The learned
professors of the Rights of Man regard prescription
not as a title to bar all claim set up against old possession, but they look on prescription as itself a bar
against the possessor and proprietor. They hold an
immemorial possession to be. no more than a long
continued and therefore an aggravated injustice.
Such are their ideas, such their religion, and such
their law. But as to our country and our race, as
long as the well-compacted structure of our Church
and State, the sanctuary, the holy of holies of that
ancient law, defended by reverence, defended by
power, a fortress at once and a temple,* shall stand
inviolate on the brow of the British Sion, - as long
as' the British monarchy, not more limited than
fenced by the orders of the state, shall, like the
proud Keep of Windsor, rising in the majesty of
proportion, and girt with the double belt of its kindred and coi6val towers, as long as this awful structure shall oversee and guard the subjected land,so long the mounds and dikes of the low, fat, Bedford level will have'nothing to fear from all tile pickaxes of all the levellers of France. As long as our sovereign lord the king, and his faithful subjects, the
lords and commons of this realm, --the triple cord
which no man can break, - the solemn, sworn, con* " Templum in modum arcis. " - TACITUS, of the temple of Jerusalem.
? ? ? ? ON THE ATTACKS UPON HIS PENSION. 211
stitutional frank-pledge of this nation, -the firm
guaranties of each other's being and each other's
rights, -- the joint and several securities, each in
its place and order, for every kind and every quality of property and of dignity, --as long as these endure, so long the Duke of Bedford is safe, and
we are all safe together, - the high from the blights of envy and the spoliations of rapacity, the low from the iron hand of oppression and the insolent spurn of contempt. Amen! and so be it! and so it will
be, -
Dum domus SEnexe Capitoli immobile saxum
Accolet, imperiumque pater Romanus habebit.
But if the rude inroad of Gallic tumult, with its
sophistical rights of mail to falsify the account, and
its sword as a make-weight to throw into the scale,
shall be introduced into our city by a misguided
populace, set on by proud great men, themselves
blinded and intoxicated by a frantic ambition, we
shall all of us perish and be overwhelmed in a common ruin. If a great storm blow on our coast, it
will cast the whales on the strand, as well as the
periwinkles. His Grace will not survive the poor
grantee he despises, -- no, not for a twelvemonth.
If the great look for safety in the services they render to this Gallic cause, it is to be foolish even above the weight of privilege allowed to wealth. If his
Grace be one of these whom they endeavor to proselytize, he ought to be aware of the character of the sect whose doctrines he is invited to embrace. With
them insurrection is the most sacred of revolutionary
duties to the state. Ingratitude to benefactors is the
first of revolutionary virtues. Ingratitude is, indeed,
their four cardinal virtues compacted and anialga
? ? ? ? 212 LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD
mated into one; and he will find it in everything
that has happened since the commencement of the
philosophic Revolution to this hour. If he pleads
the merit of having performed the duty of insurrection against the order he lives in, (God forbid he ever should! ) the merit of others will be to perform the duty of insurrection against him. If he
pleads (again God forbid he should, and I do not
suspect he will) his ingratitude to the crown for
its creation of his family, others will plead their
right and duty to pay him in kind. They will
laugh, indeed they will laugh, at his parchment
and his wax. His deeds will be drawn out with
the rest of the lumber of his evidence-room, and
burnt to the tune of Ca ira in the courts of Bedford (then Equality) House.
Am I to blame, if I attempt to pay his Grace's
hostile reproaches to me with a friendly admonition
to himself?
to change the authority under which any officer of the
crown acted, who was suffered at all to exist. Crown,
lords, commons, judicial system, system of administration, existed as they had existed before, and in the
mode and manner in which they had always existed.
My measures were, what I then truly stated them to
the House to be, in their intent, healing and mediatorial. A complaint was made of too much influence in the House of Commons: I reduced it in both Houses; and I gave my reasons, article by article, for
every reduction, and showed why I thought it safe
for the service of the state. I heaved the lead every
inch of way I made. A disposition to expense was
complained of: to that I opposed, not mere retrenchment, but a system of economy, which would make a
random expense, without plan or foresight, in future,
not easily practicable. I proceeded upon principles
of research to put me in possession of my matter, on
principles of method to regulate it, and on principles
in the human mind and in civil affairs to secure and
perpetuate the operation. I conceived nothing arbitrarily, nor proposed anything to be done by the will
and pleasure of others or my own, - but by reason,
and by reason only. I have ever abhorred, since the
first dawn of my understanding to this its obscure
twilight, all the operations of opinion, fancy, inclination, and will, in the affairs of government, where
only a sovereign reason, paramount to all forms of
legislation and administration, should dictate. Government is made for the very purpose of opposing that
reason to will and to caprice, in the reformers or in
the reformed, in the governors or in the governed,
in kings, in senates, or in people.
On a careful review, therefore, and analysis of all
? ? ? ? 190 LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD
the component parts of the civil list, and on weighing them against each other, in order to make as
much as possible all of them a subject of estimate,
(the foundation and corner-stone of all regular, provident economy,) it appeared to me evident that this
was impracticable, whilst that part called the pension
list was totally discretionary in its amount. For this
reason, and for this only, I proposed to reduce it,
both in its gross quantity and in its larger individual
proportions, to a certainty; lest, if it were left without a general limit, it might eat up the civil list service, -if suffered to be granted in portions too great for the fund, it might defeat its own end, and, by unlimited allowances to some, it might disable the crown
in. means of providing for others. The pension list
was to be kept as a sacred fund; but it could not be
kept as a constant, open fund, sufficient for growing
demands, if some demands would wholly devour it.
The tenor of the act will show that it regarded the
civil list only, the reduction of which to some sort of
estimate was my great object.
No other of the cr6wn funds did I meddle with,
because they had not the same relations. This of
the four and a half per cents does his Grace imagine
had escaped me, or had escaped all the men of business who acted with me in those regulations? I
knew that such a fund existed, and that pensions
had been always granted on it, before his Grace was
born. This fund was full in my eye. It was full in
the eyes of those who worked with me. It was left
on principle. On principle I did what was then done;
and on principle what was left undone was omitted.
I did not dare to rob the nation of all funds to reward merit. If I pressed this point too close, I acted
? ? ? ? ON THE ATTACKS UPON HIS PENSION. 191
contrary to the avowed principles on which I went.
Gentlemen are very fond of quoting me; but if any
one thinks it worth his while to know the rules that
guided me ill my plan of reform, he will read my
printed speech on that subject, at least what is contained from page 230 to page 241 in the second volume of the collection * which a friend has given himself the trouble to make of my publications. Be
this as it may, these two bills (though achieved with
the greatest labor, and management of every sort,
both within and without the House) were only a
part, and but a small part, of a very large system,
comprehending all the objects I stated in opening
my proposition, and, indeed, many more, which I
just hinted at in my speech to the electors of Bristol, when I was put out of that representation. All
these, in some state or other of forwardness, I have
long had by me.
But do I justify his Majesty's grace on these
grounds? I think them the least of my services.
The time gave them an occasional value. What I
have done in the way of political economy was far
from confined to this body of measures. I did not
come into Parliament to con my lesson. I had earned
my pension before I set my foot in St. Stephen's
Chapel. I was prepared and disciplined to this political warfare. The first session I sat in Parliament, I
found it necessary to analyze the whole commercial,
financial, constitutional, and foreign interests of Great
Britain and its empire. A great deal was then done;
and more, far more, would have been done, if mole
had been permitted by events. Then, in the vigor of
my manhood, my constitution sunk under my labor.
* London, J. Dodsley, 1792, 3 vols. 4to. - Vol. II. pp. 324 - 336,
in the present edition.
? ? ? ? 192 LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD
Had I then died, (and I seemed to myself very near
death,) I had then earned for those who belonged to
me more than the Duke of Bedford's ideas of service
are of power to estimate. But, in truth, these services I am called to account for are not those on which
I value myself the most. If I were to call for a reward, (which I have never done,) it should be for
those in which for fourteen years without intermission
I showed the most industry and had the least success:
I mean in the affairs of India. They are those on
which I value myself the most: most for the importance, most for the labor, most for the judgment,
most for constancy and perseverance in the pursuit.
Others may value them most for the intention. In
that, surely, they are not mistaken.
Does his Grace think that they who advised the
crown to make my retreat easy considered me only
as an economist? That, well understood, however,
is a good deal. If I had not deemed it of some value, I should not have made political economy an object of my humble studies from my very early youth to near the end of my service in Parliament, even
before (at least to any knowledge of mine) it had
employed the thoughts of speculative men in other
parts of Europe. At that time it was still in its
infancy in England, where, in the last century, it
had its origin. Great and learned men thought my
studies were not wholly thrown away, and deigned
to communicate with me now and then on some particulars of their immortal works. Something of these
studies may appear incidentally in some of the earliest things I published. The House has been witness to their effect, and has profited of them, more
or less, for above eight-and-twenty years.
? ? ? ? ON THE ATTACKS UPON HIS PENSION. 193
To their estimate I leave the matter. I was not,
like his Grace of Bedford, swaddled and rocked and
dandled into a legislator: "1Nitor in adversum" is
the motto for a man like me. I possessed not one
of the qualities nor cultivated one of the arts that
recommend men to the favor and protection of the
great. I was not made for a minion or a tool. As
little did I follow the trade of winning the hearts by
imposing on the understandings of the people. At
every step of my progress in life, (for in every step
was I traversed and opposed,) and at every turnpike
I met, I was obliged to show my passport, and again
and again to prove my sole title to the honor of being useful to my country, by a proof that I was not
wholly unacquainted with its laws and the whole system of its interests both abroad and at home. Otherwise, no rank, no toleration even, for me. I had no arts but manly arts. On them I have stood, and,
please God, in spite of the Duke of Bedford and the
Earl of Lauderdale, to the last gasp will I stand.
Had his Grace condescended to inquire concerning the person whom he has not thought it below
him to reproach, he might have found, that, in the
whole course of my life, I have never, on any pretence of economy, or on any other pretence, so much
as in a single instance, stood between any man and
his reward of service or his encouragement in useful
talent and pursuit, from the highest of those services
and pursuits to the lowest. On the contrary, I have
on an hundred occasions exerted myself with singular zeal to forward every man's even tolerable pretensions. I have more than once had good-natured reprehensions from my friends for carrying the matter to something bordering on abuse. This line of
VOL v. 13
? ? ? ? 194 LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD
conduct, whatever its merits might be, was partly
owing to natural disposition, but I think full as much
to reason and principle. I looked on the consideration of public service or public ornament to be real
and very justice; and I ever held a scanty and penurious justice to partake of the nature of a wrong.
I held it to be, in its consequences, the worst economy in the world. In saving money I soon can count
up all the good I do; but when by a cold penury I
blast the abilities of a nation, and stunt the growth of
its active energies, the ill I may do is beyond all calculation. Whether it be too much or too little, whatever I have done has been general and systematic. I have never entered into those triflinug vexations and
oppressive details that have been falsely and most
ridiculously laid to my charge.
Did I blame the pensions given to Mr. Barre and
Mr. Dunning between the proposition and execution
of my plan? No! surely, no! Those pensions were
within my principles. I assert it, those gentlemen
deserved their pensions, their titles, - all they had;
and if more they had, I should have been but
pleased the more. They were men of talents; they
were men of service. I put the profession of the law
out of the question in one of them. It is a service
that rewards itself. But their public service, though
from their abilities unquestionably of more value than
mine, in its quantity and in its duration was not to be
mentioned with it. But I never could drive a hard
bargain in my life, concerning any matter whatever;
and least of all do I know how to haggle and huckster with merit. Pension for myself I obtained none;
nor did I solicit any. Yet I was loaded with hatred
for everything that was withheld, and with obloquy
? ? ? ? ON THE ATTACKS UPON HIS PENSION. 195
for everything that was given. I was thus left to
support the grants of a name ever dear to me and
ever venerable to the world in favor of those who
were no friends of mine or of his, against the rude
attacks of those who were at that time friends to the
grantees and their own zealous partisans. I have
never heard the Earl of Lauderdale complain of these
pensions. He finds nothing wrong till he comes to
me. This is impartiality, in the true, modern, revolutionary style.
Whatever I did at that time, so far as it regarded
order and economy, is stable and eternal, as all principles'must be. A particular order of things may
be altered: order itself cannot lose its value. As to
other particulars, they are variable by time and by
circumstances. Laws of regulation are not fundamental laws. The public exigencies are the masters
of all such laws. They rule the laws, and are not to
be ruled by them. They who exercise the legislative
power at the time must judge.
It may be new to his Grace, but I beg leave to tell
him that mere parsimony is not economy. It is
separable in theory from it; and in fact it may or it
may not be a part of economy, according to circumstances. Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy. If parsimony were to be considered as one of the kinds of that virtue, there
is, however, another and an higher economy. Economy is a distributive virtue, and consists, not in saving,
but in selection. Parsimony requires no providence,
no sagacity, no powers of combination, no comparison,
no judgment. Mere instinct, and that not an instinct
of the noblest kind, may produce this false economy
in perfection. The other economy has larger views.
? ? ? ? 196 LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD
It demands a discriminating judgment, and a firm,
sagacious mind. It shuts one door to impudent im
portunity, only to open another, and a wider, to unpresuming merit. If none but meritorious service or
real talent were to be rewarded, this nation has not
wanted, and this nation will not want, the means of
rewarding all the service it ever will receive, and
encouraging all the merit it ever will produce. No
state, since the foundation of society, has been impoverished by that species of profusion. Had the economy of selection and proportion been at all times observed, we should not now have had an overgrown
Duke of Bedford, to oppress the industry of humble
men, and to limit, by the standard of his own conceptions, the justice, the bounty, or, if he pleases, the
charity of the crown.
His Grace may think as meanly as he will of my
deserts in the far greater part of my conduct in life.
It is free for him to do so. There will always be
some difference of opinion in the value of political
services. But there is one merit of mine which he,
of all men living, ought to be the last to call in question. I have supported with very great zeal, and I
am told with some degree of success, those opinions,
or, if his Grace likes another expression better, those
old prejudices, which buoy up the ponderous mass
of his nobility, wealth, and titles. I have omitted
no exertion to prevent him and them from sinking
to that level to which the meretricious French faction his Grace at least coquets with omit no exertion
to reduce both. I have done all I could to-discoulltenance their inquiries into the fortunes of those who
hold large portions of wealth without any apparent
merit of their own. I have strained every nerve to
? ? ? ? ON THE ATTACKS UPON HIS PENSION. 197
keep the Duke of Bedford in that situation which
alone makes him my superior. Your Lordship has
been a witness of the use he makes of that preeminence.
But be it that this is virtue; be it that there is virtue in this well-selected rigor: yet all virtues are not equally becoming to all men and at all times. There
are crimes, undoubtedly there are crimes, which in all
seasons of our existence ought to put a generous antipathy in action, - crimes that provoke an indignant justice, and call forth a warm and animated pursuit.
But all things that concern what I may call the preventive police of morality, all things merely rigid, harsh, and censorial, the antiquated moralists at whose
feet I was brought up would not have thought these
the fittest matter to form the favorite virtues of young
men of rank. What might have been well enough,
and have been received with a veneration mixed with
awe and terror, from an old, severe, crabbed Cato,
would have wanted something of propriety in the
young Scipios, the ornament of the Roman nobility,
in the flower of their life. But the times, the morals,
the masters, the scholars, have all undergone a thorough revolution. It is a vile, illiberal school, this new French academy of the sans-culottes. There is
nothing in it that is fit for a gentleman to learn.
Whatever its vogue may be, I still flatter myself
that the parents of the growing generation will be
satisfied with what is to be taught to their children in
Westminster, in Eton, or in Winchester; I still indulge the hope that no grown gentleman or nobleman
of our time will think of finishing at Mr. Thelwall's
lecture whatever may have been left incomplete at the
old universities of his country. I would give to Lord
? ? ? ? 1. 98 LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD
Grenville and Mr. Pitt for a motto what was said of a
Roman censor or prwetor (or what was he? ) who in
virtue of a Senatusconsultum shut up certain academies,-" Cludere ludum impudentiee jussit. " Every honest father of a family in the kingdom will rejoice
at the breaking-up for the holidays, and will pray that
there may be a very long vacation, in all such schools.
The awful state of the time, and not myself, or my
own justification, is my true object in what I now
write, or in what I shall ever write or say. It little
signifies to the world what becomes of such things as
me, or even as the Duke of Bedford. What I say
about either of us is nothing more than a vehicle, as
you, my Lord, will easily perceive, to convey my sentiments on matters far more worthy of your attention. It is when I stick to my apparent first subject that
I ought to apologize, not when I depart from it. I
therefore must beg your Lordship's pardon for again
resuming it after this very short digression, - assuring you that I shall never altogether lose sight of
such matter as persons abler than I am may turn
to some profit.
The Duke of Bedford conceives that he is obliged
to call the attention of the House of Peers to his
Majesty's grant to me, which he considers as excessive and out of all bounds.
I know not how it has happened, but it really
seems, that, whilst his Grace was meditating his wellconsidered censure upon me, he fell into a sort of sleep. Homer nods, and the Duke of Bedford may
dream; and as dreams (even his golden dreams)
are apt to be ill-pieced and incongruously put together, his Grace preserved his idea of reproach
to me, but took the subject-matter from the crown
? ? ? ? ON THE ATTACKS UPON HIS PENSION. 199
grants to his own family. This is "the stuff of
which his dreams are made. " In that way of putting things together his Grace is perfectly in the right. The grants to the House of Russell were so
enormous as not only to outrage economy, but even
to stagger credibility. The Duke of Bedford is the
leviathan among all the creatures of the crown. He
tumbles about his unwieldy bulk, he plays and frolics in the ocean of the royal bounty. Huge as he is, and whilst " he lies floating many a rood," he is still
a creature. His ribs, his fins, his whalebone, his
blubber, the very spiracles through which he spouts
a torrent of brine against his origin, and covers
me all over with the spray, everything of him and
about him is from the throne.
Is it for him to question the dispensation of the royal favor?
I really am at a loss to draw any sort of parallel
between the public merits of his Grace, by which he
justifies the grants he holds, and these services of
mine, on the favorable construction of which I have
obtained what his Grace so much disapproves. In
private life I have not at all the honor of acquaintance with the noble Duke; but I ought to presume, and it costs me nothing to do so, that he abundantly
deserves the esteem and love of all who live with
him. But as to public service, why, truly, it would
not be more ridiculous for me to compare myself,
in rank, in fortune, in splendid descent, in youth,
strength, or figure, with the Duke of Bedford, than
to make a parallel between his services and my attempts to be useful to my country. It would not
be gross adulation, but uncivil irony, to say that
he has any public merit of his own to keep alive
the idea of the services by which his vast landed
? ? ? ? 200 LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD
pensions were obtained. My merits, whatever they
are, are original and personal: his are derivative.
It is his ancestor, the original pensioner, that has
laid up this inexhaustible fund of merit which makes
his Grace so very delicate and exceptious about the
merit of all other grantees of the crown. Had he
permitted me to remain in quiet, I should have said,
"'T is his estate: that's enough. It is his by law:
what have I to do with it or its history? " He would
naturally have said, on his side, "'Tis this man's fortune. He is as good now as my ancestor was two hundred and fifty years ago. I am a young man
with very old pensions; he is an old man with very
young pensions: that's all. "
Why will his Grace, by attacking me, force me
reluctantly to compare my little merit with that
which obtained from the crown those prodigies of
profuse donation by which he tramples on the mediocrity of humble and laborious individuals? I would willingly leave him to the Herald's College, which
the philosophy of the sans-culottes (prouder by far
than all the Garters, and Norroys, and Clarencieux,
and Rouge-Dragons that ever pranced in a procession
of what his friends call aristocrats and despots) will
abolish with contumely and scorn. These historians,
recorders, and blazoners of virtues and arms differ
wholly from that other description of historians who
never assign any act of politicians to a good motive.
These gentle historians, on the contrary, dip their
pens in nothing but the milk of human kindness.
They seek no further for merit than the preamble
of a patent or the inscription on a tomb. With them
every man created a peer is first an hero ready-made.
They judge of every man's capacity for office by the
? ? ? ? ON THE ATTACKS UPON HIS PENSION. 201
offices he has filled; and the more offices, the more
ability. Every general officer with them is a Marlborough, every statesman a Burleighll, every judge a Murray or a Yorke. They who, alive, were laughed
at or pitied by all their acquaintance make as good
a figure as the best of them in the pages of Guillim,
Edmondson, and Collins.
To these recorders, so full of good-nature to the
great and prosperous, I would willingly leave the
first Baron Russell and Earl of Bedford, and the
merits of his grants. But the aulnager, the weigher,
the meter of grants will not suffer us to acquiesce
in the judgment of the prince reigning at the time
when they were made. They are never good to
those who earn them. Well, then, since the new
grantees have war made on them by the old, and
that the word of the sovereign is not to be taken,
let us turn our eyes to history, in which great men
have always a pleasure in contemplating the heroic
origin of their house.
The first peer of the name, the first purchaser of
the grants, was a Mr. Russell, a person of an ancient
gentleman's family, raised by being a minion of
Henry tile Eighth. As there generally is some resemblance of character to create these relations, the favorite was in all likelihQod much such another as
his master. The first of those immoderate grants
was not taken from the ancient demesne of the
crown, but from the recent confiscation of the alncienlt nobility of the land. The lion, having sucked the blood of his prey, threw the offal carcass to
the jackal in waiting. Having tasted once the food
of confiscation, the favorites became fierce and ravenous. This worthy favorite's first grant was from
? ? ? ? 202 LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD
the lay nobility. The second, infinitely improving
on the enormity of the first, was from the plunder
of the Church. In truth, his Grace is somewhat
excusable for his dislike to a grant like mine, not
only in its quantity, but in its kind, so different
from his own.
Mine was from a mild and benevolent sovereign:
his from Henry the Eighth.
Mine had not its fund in the murder of any innocent person of illustrious rank,* or in the pillage
of any body of unoffending men. His grants were
from the aggregate and consolidated funds of judgments iniquitously legal, and from possessions voluntarily surrendered by the lawful proprietors with the gibbet at their door.
The merit of the grantee whom he derives from
was that of being a prompt and greedy instrument
of a levelling tyrant, who oppressed all descriptions
of his people, but who fell with particular fury on
everything that was great and noble. Mine has been
in endeavoring to screen every man, in every class,
from oppression, and particularly in defending the
high and eminent, who, in the bad times of confiscating princes, confiscating chief governors, or confiscating demagogues, are the most exposed to jealousy, avarice. and envy.
The merit of the original grantee of his Grace's
pensions was in giving his hand to the work, and
partaking the spoil, with a prince who plundered
a part of the national Church of his time and country. Mine was in defending the whole of the national Church of my own time and my own country,
* See the history of the melancholy catastrophe of the Duke of
Buckingham. Temp. Hen. VIII.
? ? ? ? ON THE ATTACKS UPON HIS PENSION. 203
and the whole of the national Churches of all countries, from the principles and the examples which
lead to ecclesiastical pillage, thence to a contempt
of all prescriptive titles, thence to the pillage of all
property, and thence to universal desolation.
The merit of the origin of his Grace's fortune was
in being a favorite and chief adviser to a prince who
left no liberty to their native country. My endeavor
was to obtain liberty for the municipal country in
which I was born, and for all descriptions and denominations in it. Mine was to support with unrelaxing vigilance every right, every privilege, every franchise, in this my adopted, my dearer, and more
comprehensive country; and not only to preserve
those rights in this chief seat of empire, but in every
nation, in every land, in every climate, language, and
religion, in the vast domain that still is under the
protection, and the larger that was once under the
protection, of the British crown.
His founder's merits were, by arts in which he
served his master and made his fortune, to bring
poverty, wretchedness, and depopulation on his country. Mine were under a benevolent prince, in promoting the commerce, mainufactures, and agriculture of his kingdom, - in which his Majesty shows an
eminent example, who even in his amusements is
a patriot, and in hours of leisure an improver of his
native soil.
His founder's merit was the merit of a gentleman
raised by the arts of a court and the protection of
a Wolsey to the eminence of a great and potent
lord. His merit in that eminence was, by instigating a tyrant to injustice, to provoke a people
to rebellion. My merit was, to awaken the sober
? ? ? ? 20 1 LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD
part of the country, that they might put themselves
on their guard against any one potent lord, or any
greater number of potent lords, or ally combination
of great leading men of ally sort, if ever they should
attempt to proceed in the same courses, but in the
reverse order, - that is, by instigating a corrupted
populace to rebellion, and, through that rebellion,
introducing a tyranny yet worse than the tyranny
which his Grace's ancestor supported, and of which
he profited in the manner we behold in the despotism
of Henry the Eighth.
The political merit of the first pensioner of his
Grace's house was that of being concerned as a
counsellor of state in advising, and in his person
executing, the conditions of a dishonorable peace
with France, -the surrendering the fortress of Boulogne, then our outguard on the Continent. By that surrender, Calais, the key of France, and the
bridle in the mouth of that power, was not many
years afterwards finally lost. My merit has been
in resisting the power and pride of France, under
any form of its rule; but in opposing it with the
greatest zeal and earnestness, when that rule appeared in the worst form it could assume, -- the worst, indeed, which the prime cause and principle
of all evil could possibly give it. It was my endeavor by every means to excite a spirit in the House, where I had the honor of a seat, for carrying on with
early vigor and decision the most clearly just and
necessary war that this or any nation ever carried
on, ill order to save my country from the iron yoke
of its power, and from the more dreadful contagion of its principles, - to preserve, while they can be preserved, pure and untainted, the ancient, ini
? ? ? ? ON THE ATTACKS UPON HIS PENSION. 205
bred integrity, piety, good-nature, and good-humor of
the people of England, from the dreadful pestilence
which, beginning in France, threatens to lay waste
the whole moral and in a great degree the whole
physical world, having done both in the focus of its
most intense malignity.
The labors of his Grace's founder merited the
"curses, not loud, but deep," of the Commons of
England, on whom he and his master had effected
a complete Parliamentary Reform, by making them,
in their slavery and humiliation, the true and adequate representatives of a debased, degraded, and
undone people. My merits were in having had an
active, though not always an ostentatious share, in
every one act, without exception, of undisputed constitutional utility in my time, and in having supported, on all occasions, the authority, the efficiency, and the privileges of the Commons of Great Britain.
I ended my services by a recorded and fully reasoned
assertion on their own journals of their constitutional
rights, and a vindication of their constitutional conduct. I labored in all things to merit their inward
approbation, and (along with the assistants of the
largest, the greatest, and best of my endeavors) I received their free, unbiased, public, and solemn thanks.
Thus stands the account of the comparative merits
of the crown grants which compose the Duke of Bedford's fortune as balanced against mine. In the name
of common sense, why should the Duke of Bedford
think that none but of the House of Russell are entitled to the favor of the crown? Why should he
imagine that no king of England has been capable
of judging of merit but King Heilry the Eighth? Indeed, he will pardon me, he is a little mistaken: all
? ? ? ? 200 6 LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD
virtue did not end in the first Earl of Bedford; all
discernment did not lose its vision when his creator
closed his eyes. Let him remit his rigor on the
disproportion between merit and reward in others,
and they will make no inquiry into the origin of his
fortune. They will regard with much more satisfaction, as he will contemplate with infinitely more advantage, whatever in hi; pedigree has been dulcifled by an exposure to the influence of heaven in a long flow of generations from the hard, acidulous,
metallic tincture of the spring. It is little to be
doubted that several of his forefathers in that long
series have degenerated into honor and virtue. Let
the Duke of Bedford (I am sure he will) reject with
scorn and horror the counsels of the lecturers, those
wicked panders to avarice and ambition, who would
tempt him, in the troubles of his country, to seek
another enormous fortune from the forfeitures of
another nobility and the plunder of another Church.
Let him (and I trust that yet he will) employ all the
energy of his youth and all the resources of his
wealth to crush rebellious principles which have no
foundation in morals, and rebellious movements that
have no provocation in tyranny.
Then will be forgot the rebellions which, by a
doubtful priority in crime, his ancestor had provoked
and extinguished. On such a conduct in the noble
Duke, many of his countrymen might, and with some
excuse might, give. way to the enthusiasm of their
gratitude, and, in the dashing style of some of the
old declaimers, cry out, that, if the Fates had found
no other way in which they could give a * Duke of
Bedford and his opulence as props to a tottering
* At si non aliam venturo fata Neroni, etc.
? ? ? ? ON THE ATTACKS UPON HIS PENSION. 207
world, then the butchery of the Duke of Buckingham
might be tolerated; it might be regarded even with
complacency, whilst in the heir of confiscation they
saw the sympathizing comforter of the martyrs who
suffer under the cruel confiscation of this day, whilst
they beheld with admiration his zealous protection
of the virtuous and loyal nobility of France, and his
manly support of his brethren, the yet standing nobility and gentry of his native land. Then his Grace's merit would be pure and new and sharp, as fresh
from the mint of honor. As he pleased, he might
reflect honor on his predecessors, or throw it forward
on those who were to succeed him. He might be
the propagator of the stock of honor, or the root of
it, as he thought proper.
Had it pleased God to continue to me the hopes
of succession, I should have been, according to my
mediocrity and the mediocrity of the age I live in,
a sort of founder of a family: I should have left a
son, who, in all the points in which personal merit
can be viewed, in science, in erudition, in genius, in
taste, in honor, in generosity, in humanity, in every
liberal sentiment and every liberal accomplishment,
would not have shown himself inferior to the Duke
of Bedford, or to any of those whom he traces in his
line. His Grace very soon would have wanted all
plausibility in his attack upon that provision which
belonged more to mine than to me. He would soo5n
have supplied every deficiency, and symmetrized every
disproportion. It would not have been for that successor to resort to any stagnant, wasting reservoir of merit in me, or in any ancestry. He had in himself a
salielt, living spring of generous and manly action.
Eviery day he lived he would have repurchased the
? ? ? ? 208 LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD
bounty of the crown, and ten times more, if ten times
more he had received. He was made a public creature, and had no enjoyment whatever but in the performance of some duty. At this exigent moment the loss of a finished man is not easily supplied.
But a Disposer whose power we are little able to
resist, and whose wisdom it behoves us not at all
to dispute, has ordained it in another manner, and
(whatever my querulous weakness might suggest) a
far better. The storm has gone over me; and I lie
like one of those old oaks which the late hurricane
has scattered about me. I am stripped of all my
honors, I am torn up by the roots, and lie prostrate
on the earth. There, and prostrate there, I most unfeignedly recognize the Divine justice, and in some
degree submit to it. But whilst I humble myself
before God, I do not know that it is forbidden to
repel the attacks of unjust and inconsiderate men.
The patience of Job is proverbial. After some of the
convulsive struggles of our irritable nature, he submitted himself, and repented ill dust and ashes. But
even so, I do not find him blamed for reprehending,
and with a considerable degree of verbal asperity,
those ill-natured neighbors of his who visited his
dunghill to read moral, political, and economical
lectures on his misery. I am alone. I have none
to meet my enemies in the gate. Indeed, my Lord,
I greatly deceive myself, if in this hard season I
would give a peck of refuse wheat for all that is
called fame and honor in the world. This is the
appetite but of a few. It is a luxury, it is a privilege, it is an indulgence for those who are at their
ease. But we are all of us made to shun disgrace,
as we are made to shrink from pain and poverty
? ? ? ? ON THE ATTACKS UPON HIS PENSION. 209
and disease. It is an instinct; and under the direction of reason, instinct is always in the right. I live
in an inverted order. They who ought to have succeeded me are gone before me. They who should
have been to me as posterity are in the place of
ancestors. I owe to the dearest relation (which ever
must subsist in memory) that act of piety which he
would have performed to me: I owe it to him to
show that he was not descended, as the Duke of Bedford would have it, from an unworthy parent.
The crown has considered me after long service:
the crown has paid the Duke of Bedford by advance.
He has had a long credit for any service which he
may perform hereafter. He is secure, and long may
he be secure, in his advance, whether he performs
any services or not. But let him take care how he
endangers the safety of that Constitution which secures his own utility or his own insignificance, or
how he discourages those who take up even puny
arms to defend an order of things which, like the
sun of heaven, shines alike on the useful and the
worthless. His grants are ingrafted on the public
law of Europe, covered with the awful hoar of innumerable ages. They are guarded by the sacred rules
of prescription, found in that full treasury of jurisprudence from which the jejuneness and penury of
our municipal law has by degrees been enriched and
strengthened. This prescription I had my share (a
very full share) in bringing to its perfection. * The
Duke of Bedford will stand as long as prescriptive
law endures,- as long as the great, stable laws of
property, common to us with all civilized nations, are
kept in their integrity, and without the smallest in* Sir George Savile's act, called The Nullum Tempus Act. VOL. v. 14
? ? ? ? 210 LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD
termixture of the laws, maxims, principles, or precedents of the Grand Revolution. They are seceure
against all changes but one. The whole Revolutionary system, institutes, digest, code, novels, text, gloss,
comment, are not only not the same, but they are the
very reverse, and the reverse fundamentally, of all
the laws on which civil life has hitherto been upheld
in all the governments of the world. The learned
professors of the Rights of Man regard prescription
not as a title to bar all claim set up against old possession, but they look on prescription as itself a bar
against the possessor and proprietor. They hold an
immemorial possession to be. no more than a long
continued and therefore an aggravated injustice.
Such are their ideas, such their religion, and such
their law. But as to our country and our race, as
long as the well-compacted structure of our Church
and State, the sanctuary, the holy of holies of that
ancient law, defended by reverence, defended by
power, a fortress at once and a temple,* shall stand
inviolate on the brow of the British Sion, - as long
as' the British monarchy, not more limited than
fenced by the orders of the state, shall, like the
proud Keep of Windsor, rising in the majesty of
proportion, and girt with the double belt of its kindred and coi6val towers, as long as this awful structure shall oversee and guard the subjected land,so long the mounds and dikes of the low, fat, Bedford level will have'nothing to fear from all tile pickaxes of all the levellers of France. As long as our sovereign lord the king, and his faithful subjects, the
lords and commons of this realm, --the triple cord
which no man can break, - the solemn, sworn, con* " Templum in modum arcis. " - TACITUS, of the temple of Jerusalem.
? ? ? ? ON THE ATTACKS UPON HIS PENSION. 211
stitutional frank-pledge of this nation, -the firm
guaranties of each other's being and each other's
rights, -- the joint and several securities, each in
its place and order, for every kind and every quality of property and of dignity, --as long as these endure, so long the Duke of Bedford is safe, and
we are all safe together, - the high from the blights of envy and the spoliations of rapacity, the low from the iron hand of oppression and the insolent spurn of contempt. Amen! and so be it! and so it will
be, -
Dum domus SEnexe Capitoli immobile saxum
Accolet, imperiumque pater Romanus habebit.
But if the rude inroad of Gallic tumult, with its
sophistical rights of mail to falsify the account, and
its sword as a make-weight to throw into the scale,
shall be introduced into our city by a misguided
populace, set on by proud great men, themselves
blinded and intoxicated by a frantic ambition, we
shall all of us perish and be overwhelmed in a common ruin. If a great storm blow on our coast, it
will cast the whales on the strand, as well as the
periwinkles. His Grace will not survive the poor
grantee he despises, -- no, not for a twelvemonth.
If the great look for safety in the services they render to this Gallic cause, it is to be foolish even above the weight of privilege allowed to wealth. If his
Grace be one of these whom they endeavor to proselytize, he ought to be aware of the character of the sect whose doctrines he is invited to embrace. With
them insurrection is the most sacred of revolutionary
duties to the state. Ingratitude to benefactors is the
first of revolutionary virtues. Ingratitude is, indeed,
their four cardinal virtues compacted and anialga
? ? ? ? 212 LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD
mated into one; and he will find it in everything
that has happened since the commencement of the
philosophic Revolution to this hour. If he pleads
the merit of having performed the duty of insurrection against the order he lives in, (God forbid he ever should! ) the merit of others will be to perform the duty of insurrection against him. If he
pleads (again God forbid he should, and I do not
suspect he will) his ingratitude to the crown for
its creation of his family, others will plead their
right and duty to pay him in kind. They will
laugh, indeed they will laugh, at his parchment
and his wax. His deeds will be drawn out with
the rest of the lumber of his evidence-room, and
burnt to the tune of Ca ira in the courts of Bedford (then Equality) House.
Am I to blame, if I attempt to pay his Grace's
hostile reproaches to me with a friendly admonition
to himself?
