No More Learning

But to take up the matter somewhat more in detail. -If the wheat harvest in 1794, excellent in quality, was defective in quantity, the barley harvest was in quality ordinary enough, and in quantity deficient.
This was soon felt in the price of malt.
Another article of produce (beans) was not at all
plentiful. The crop of pease was wholly destroyed,
so that several farmers pretty early gave up all hopes
on that head, and cut the green haulm as fodder for
the cattle, then perishing for want of food in that dry
and burning summer. I myself came off better than
most: I had about the fourth of a crop of pease.
It will be recollected, that, in a manner, all the
bacon and pork consumed in this country (the far
largest consumption of meat out of towns) is, when
growing, fed on grass, and on whey or skimmed
milk, -and when fatting, partly on the latter. This
is the case in the dairy countries, all of them great
breeders and feeders of swine; but for the much
greater part, and in all the corn countries, they are
fattened on beans, barley-meal, and pease. When
the food of the animal is scarce, his flesh must be
dear. This, one would suppose, would require no
great penetration to discover.
This failure of so very large a supply of flesh in one
species naturally throws the whole demand of the
consumer on the diminished supply of all kinds of
flesh, and, indeed, on all the matters of human susVOL. V. 11
? ? ? ? 162 THOUGHTS AND DETAILS ON SCARCITY.
tenance. Nor, in my opinion, are we to expect a
greater cheapness in that article for this year, even
though corn should grow cheaper, as it is to be hoped
it will. The store swine, from the failure of subsistence last year, are now at an extravagant price. Pigs, at our fairs, have sold lately for fifty shillings,
which two years ago would not have brought more
than twenty.
As to sheep, none, I thought, were strangers to the
general failure of the article of turnips last year: the
early having been burned, as they came up, by the
great drought and heat; the late, and those of the
early which had escaped, were destroyed by the chilling frosts of the winter and the wet and severe weather of the spring. In many places a full fourth
of the sheep or the lambs were lost; what remained
of the lambs were poor and ill fed, the ewes having
had no milk. The calves came late, and they were
generally an article the want of which was as much
to be dreaded as any other. So that article of food,
formerly so abundant in the early part of the summer, particularly in London, and which in a great part supplied the place of mutton for near two
months, did little less than totally fail.
All the productions of the earth link in with each
other. All the sources of plenty, in all and every
article, were dried or frozen up. The scarcity was
not, as gentlemen seem to suppose, in wheat only.
Another cause, and that not of inconsiderable operation, tended to produce a scarcity in flesh provision. It is one that on many accounts cannot be too much regretted, and the rather, as it was the sole
cause of a scarcity in that article which arose from
the proceedings of 1ino- themselves: I mean the stop
put to the distillery.
? ? ? ? THOUGHTS AND DETAILS ON SCARCITY. 163
The hogs (and that would be sufficient) which
were fed with the waste wash of that produce did
not demand the fourth part of the corn used by farmers in fattening them. The spirit was nearly so much clear gain to the nation. It is an odd way of
making flesh cheap, to stop or check the distillery.
The distillery in itself produces an immense article of trade almost all over the world, -- to Africa,
to North America, and to various parts of Europe.
It is of great use, next to food itself, to our fisheries
and to our whole navigation. A great part of the
distillery was carried on by damaged corn, unfit for
bread, and by barley and malt of the lowest quality.
These things could not be more unexceptionably employed. The domestic consumption of spirits produced, without complaints, a very great revenue, applicable, if we pleased, in bounties, to the bringing
corn from other places, far beyond the value of that
consumed in making it, or to the encouragement of
its increased production at home.
As to what is said, in a physical and moral view,
against the home consumption of spirits, experience
has long since taught me very little to respect the
declamations on that subject. Whether the thunder
of the laws or the thunder of eloquence " is hurled
on gin," always I am thunder-proof. The alembic,
in my mind, has furnished to the world a far greater
benefit and blessing than if the opus maximum had
been really found by chemistry, and, like Midas, we
could turn everything into gold.
Undoubtedly there may be a dangerous abuse in
the excess of spirits; and at one time I am ready to
believe the abuse was great. When spirits are cheap,
the business of drunkenness is achieved with little
? ? ? ? 164 THOUGHTS AND DETAILS ON SCARCITY.
time or labor; but that evil I consider to be wholly
done away. Observation for the last forty years, and
very particularly for the last thirty, has furnished me
with ten instances of drunkenness from other causes
for one from this. Ardent spirit is a great medicine,
often to remove distempers, much more frequently
to prevent them, or to chase them away in their beginnings. It is not nutritive in any great degree.
But if not food, it greatly alleviates the want of it.
It invigorates the stomach for the digestion of poor,
meagre diet, not easily alliable to the human constitution. Wine the poor cannot touch. Beer, as applied to many occasions, (as among seamen and fishermen, for instance,) will by no means do the business. Let me add, what wits inspired with champagne and
claret will turn into ridicule, --it is a medicine for
the mind. Under the pressure of the cares and sorrows of our mortal condition, men have at all times
and in all countries called in some physical aid to
their moral consolations, -- wine, beer, opium, brandy, or tobacco.
I consider, therefore, the stopping of the distillery,
economically, financially, commercially, medicinally,
and in some degree morally too, as a measure rather
well meant than well considered. It is too precious
a sacrifice to prejudice.
Gentlemen well know whether there be a scarcity
of partridges, and whether that be an effect of hoarding and combination. All the tame race of birds live
and die as the wild do.
As to the lesser articles, they are like the greater.
They have followed the fortune of the season. Why
are fowls dear? Was not this the farmer's or jobber's
fault? I sold from my yard to a jobber six young
? ? ? ? THOUGHTS AND DETAILS ON SCARCITY. 165
and lean fowls for four-and-twenty shillings, -- fowls
for which two years ago the same man would not
have given a shilling apiece. He sold them afterwards at Uxbridge, and they were taken to London
to receive the last hand.
As to the operation of the war in causing the
scarcity of provisions, I understand that Mr. Pitt has
given a particular answer to it; but I do not think
it worth powder and shot.
I do not wonder the papers are so full of this sort
of matter, but I am a little surprised it should be
mentioned in Parliament. Like all great state questions, peace and war may be discussed, and different opinions fairly formed, on political grounds; but on
a question of the present price of provisions, when
peace with the Regicides is always uppermost, I can
only say that great is the love of it.
After all, have we not reason to be thankful to the
Giver of all Good? In our history, and when'" the
laborer of England is said to have been once happy,"
we find constantly, after certain intervals, a period
of real famine, by which a melancholy havoc was
made among the human race. The price of provisions fluctuated dreadfully, demonstrating a deficiency very different from the worst failures of the present
moment. Never, since I have known England, have I
known more than a comparative scarcity. The price
of wheat, taking a number of years together, has had
no very considerable fluctuation; nor has it risen
exceedingly until within this twelvemonth. Even
now, I do not know of one main, woman, or child
that has perished from famine: fewer, if any, I
believe, than in years of plenty, when such a thing
may happen by accident. This is owing to a care
? ? ? ? 166 THOUGHTS AND DETAILS ON SCARCITY.
and superintendence of the poor, far greater than
any I remember.
The consideration of this ought to bind us all, rich
and poor together, against those wicked writers of
the newspapers who would inflame the poor against
their friends, guardians, patrons, and protectors. Not
only very few (I have observed that I know of none,
though I live in a place as poor as most) have actually died of want, but we have seen no traces of those dreadful exterminating epidemics which, in consequence of scanty and unwholesome food, in former times not unfrequently wasted whole nations. Let
us be saved from too much wisdom of our own, and
we shall do tolerably well.
It is one of the finest problems in legislation, and
what has often engaged my thoughts whilst I followed that profession, - What the state ought to take upon itself to direct by the public wisdom, and what
it ought to leave, with as little interference as possible, to individual discretion. Nothing, certainly,
can be laid down on the subject that will not admit
of exceptions, - many permanent, some occasional.
But the clearest line of distinction which I could
draw, whilst I had my chalk to draw any line, was
this: that the state ought to confine itself to what
regards the state or the creatures of the state: namely, the exterior establishment of its religion; its magistracy; its revenue; its military force by sea
and land; the corporations that owe their existence
to its fiat; in a word, to everything that is truly and
properly public, -to the public peace, to the public
safety, to the public order, to the public prosperity.
In its preventive police it ought to be sparing of its
efforts, and to employ means, rather few, unfrequent,
? ? ? ? THOUGHTS AND DETAILS ON SCARCITY. 167
and strong, than many, and frequent, and, of course,
as they multiply their puny politic race, and dwindle,
small and feeble. Statesmen who know themselves
will, with the dignity which belongs to wisdom, proceed only in this the superior orb and first mover
of their duty, steadily, vigilantly, severely, courageously: whatever remains will, in a manner, provide for itself. But as they descend from the state to a province, from a province to a parish, and from a parish to a private house, they go on accelerated in their
fall. They cannot do the lower duty; and in proportion as they try it, they will certainly fail in the
higher. They ought to know the different departments of things, - what belongs to laws, and what manners alone can regulate. To these great politicians may give a leaning, but they cannot give a
law.
Our legislature has fallen into this fault, as well
as other governments: all have fallen into it more
or less. The once mighty state which was nearest
to us locally, nearest to us in every way, and whose
ruins threaten to fall upon our heads, is a strong
instance of this error. I can never quote France
without a foreboding sigh,- E. XETAI'HMAP!
Scipio said it to his recording Greek friend amidst
the flames of the great rival of his country. That
state has fallen by the hands of the parricides of their
country, called the Revolutionists and Constitutionalists of France: a species of traitors, of whose fury and atrocious wickedness nothing in the annals of
the frenzy and depravation of mankind had before
furnished an example, and of whom I can never
think or speak without a mixed sensation of disgust,
of horror, and of detestation, not easy to be expressed.
? ? ? ? 168 THOUGHTS AND DETAILS ON SCARCITY.
These nefarious monsters destroyed their country for
what was good in it: for much good there was in the
Constitution of that noble monarchy, which, in all
kinds, formed and nourished great men, and great
patterns of virtue to the world. But though its enemies were not enemies to its faults, its faults furnished them with means for, its destruction. My dear departed friend, whose loss is even greater to the public than to me, had often remarked, that the leading
vice of the French monarchy (which he had well
studied) was in good intention ill-directed, and a
restless desire of governing too much. The hand
of authority was seen in everything and in every
place. All, therefore, that happened amiss, in the
course even of domestic affairs, was attributed to
the government; and as it always happens in this
kind of officious universal interference, what began
in odious power ended always, I may say without
an exception, in contemptible imbecility. For this
reason, as far as I can approve of any novelty,
I thought well of the provincial administrations.
Those, if the superior power had been severe and
vigilant and vigorous, might have been of much
use politically in removing government from many
invidious details. But as everything is good or bad
as it is related or combined, government being relaxed above as it was relaxed below, and the brains
of the people growing more and more addle with
every sort of visionary speculation, the shiftings of
-the scene in the provincial theatres became only preparatives to a revolution in the kingdom, and the popular actings there only the rehearsals of the
terrible drama of the Republic.
Tyranny and cruelty may make men justly wish
? ? ? ? THOUGHTS AND DETAILS ON SCARCITY. 169
the downfall of abused powers, but I believe that
no government ever yet perished from any other direct cause than its own weakness. My opinion is against an overdoing of any sort of administration,
and more especially against this most momentous
of all meddling on the part of authority, - the meddling with the subsistence of the people.
? ? ? ? A
LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD
ON
THE ATTACKS MADE UPON MR. BURKE AND HIS PENSION, IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS,
BY
THE DUKE OF BEDFORD AND THE
EARL OF LAUDERDALE,
EARLY IN THE PRESENT SESSION OF PARLIAMENT. 1796.
? ? ? ? LETTER.
M Y LORD, --I could hardly flatter myself with
the hope that so very early in the season I
should have to acknowledge obligations to the Duke
of Bedford and to the Earl of Lauderdale. These
noble persons have lost no time in conferring upon
me that sort of honor which it is alone within their
competence, and which it is certainly most congenial
to their nature and their manners, to bestow.
To be ill spoken of, in whatever language they
speak, by the zealots of the new sect in philosophy
and politics, of which these noble persons think so
charitably, and of which others think so justly, to me
is no matter of uneasiness or surprise. To have incurred the displeasure of the Duke of Orleans or the Duke of Bedford, to fall under the censure of Citizen
Brissot or of his friend the Earl of Lauderdale, I
ought to consider as proofs, not the least satisfactory,
that I have produced some part of the effect I proposed by my endeavors. I have labored hard to earn what the noble Lords are generous enough to
pay. Personal offence I have given them none. The
part they take against me is from zeal to the cause.
It is well, - it is perfectly well. I have to do homage to their justice. I have to thank the Bedfords
and the Lauderdales for having so faithfully and so
filly acquitted towards me whatever arrear of debt
? ? ? ? 17. :1 LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD
was left undischarged by the Priestleys and the
Paines.
Some, perhaps, may think them executors in their
own wrong: I at least have nothing to complain
of. They have gone beyond the demands of justice.
They have been (a little, perhaps, beyond their intention) favorable to me. They have been the means
of bringing out by their invectives the handsome
things which Lord Grenville has had the goodness
and condescension to say in my behalf. Retired as
I am from the world, and from all its affairs and all
its pleasures, I confess it does kindle in my nearly
extinguished feelings a very vivid satisfaction to be
so attacked and so commended. It is soothing to
my wounded mind to be commended by an able,
vigorous, and well-informed statesman, and at the
very moment when he stands forth, with a manliness and resolution worthy of himself and of his
cause, for the preservation of the person and government of our sovereign, and therein for the security of the laws, the liberties, the morals, and the lives of his people. To be in any fair way connected with
such things is indeed a distinction. No philosophy
can make me above it: no melancholy can depress
me so low as to make me wholly insensible to such
an honor.
Why will they not let me remain in obscurity and
inaction? Are they apprehensive, that, if an atom
of me remains, the sect has something to fear? Must
I be annihilated, lest, like old John Zisca's, my skin
might be made into a drum, to animate Europe to
eternal battle against a tyranny that threatens to
overwhelm all Europe and all the human race?
My Lord, it is a subject of awful meditation. Be
? ? ? ? ON THE ATTACKS UPON HIS PENSION. 175
fore this of France, the annals of all time have not
furnished an instance of a complete revolution. That
revolution seems to have extended even to the constitution of the mind of man. It has this of wonderful in it, that it resembles what Lord Verulam says of the operations of Nature: It was perfect, not only
in its elements and principles, but in all its members
and its organs, from the very beginning. The moral scheme of France furnishes the only pattern ever
known which they who admire will instantly resemble. It is, indeed, an inexhaustible repertory of one
kind of examples. In my wretched condition, though
hardly to be classed with the living, I am not safe
from them. They have tigers to fall upon animated
strength; they have hyenas to prey upon carcasses.
The national menagerie is collected by the first physiologists of the time; and it is defective in no description of savage nature. They pursue even such as me into the obscurest retreats, and haul them
before their revolutionary tribunals. Neither sex,
nor age, nor the sanctuary of the tomb, is sacred to
them. They have so determined a hatred to all privileged orders,-that they deny even to the departed
the sad immunities of the grave. They are not wholly without an object. Their turpitude purveys to
their malice; and they unplumb the dead for bullets to assassinate the living. If all revolutionists
were not proof against all caution, I should recommend it to their consideration, that no persons were
ever known in history, either sacred or profane, to
vex the sepulchre, and by their sorceries to call up
the prophetic dead, with any other event than the
prediction of their own disastrous fate. --" Leave
1me, oh, leave me to repose! "
? ? ? ? 176 LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD
In one thing I can excuse the Duke of Bedford for
his attack upon me and my mortuary pension: He
cannot readily comprehend the transaction he condemns.
What I have obtained was the fruit of no
bargain, the production of no intrigue, the result of
no compromise, the effect of no solicitation. The
first suggestion of it never came from me, mediately
or immediately, to his Majesty or any of his ministers. It was long known that the instant my engagements would permit it, and before the heaviest of all calamities had forever condemned me to obscurity
and sorrow, I had resolved on a total retreat. I had
executed that design. I was entirely out of the way
of serving or of hurting any statesman or any party,
when the ministers so generously and so nobly carried into effect the spontaneous bounty of the crown.
Both descriptions have acted as became them. When
I could no longer serve them, the ministers have considered my situation. When I could no longer hurt
them, the revolutionists have trampled on my infirmity. My gratitude, I trust, is equal to the manner
in which the benefit was conferred. It came to me,
indeed, at a time of life, and in a state of mind and
body, in which no circumstance of fortune could afford me any real pleasure. But this was no fault
ill the royal donor, or in his ministers, who were
pleased, in acknowledging the merits of an invalid
servant of the public, to assuage the sorrows of a
desolate old man.
It would ill become me to boast of anything. It
would as ill become me, thus called upon, to depreciate the value of a long life spent with unexampled
toil in the service of my country. Since the total
body of my services, on account of the industry
? ? ? ? ON THE ATTACKS UPON HIS PENSION. 177
which was shown in them, and the fairness of my
intentions, have obtained the acceptance of my sovereign, it would be absurd in me to range myself on
the side of the Duke of Bedford and the Corresponding Society, or, as far as in me lies, to permit a dispute on the rate at which the authority appointed by our Constitution to estimate such things has been
pleased to set them.
Loose libels ought to be passed by in silence and
contempt. By me they have been so always. I
knew, that, as long as I remained in public, I should
live down the calumnies of malice and the judgments
of ignorance. If I happened to be now and then in
the wrong, (as who is not? ) like all other men, I
must bear the consequence of my faults and my mistakes. The libels of the present day are just of the
same stuff as the libels of the past. But they derive
an importance from the rank of the persons they
come from, and the gravity of the place where they
were uttered. In some way or other I ought to take
some notice of them. To assert myself thus traduced
is not vanity or arrogance. It is a demand of justice; it is a demonstration of gratitude. If I am
unworthy, the ministers are worse than prodigal.
On that hypothesis, I perfectly agree with the Duke
of Bedford.
For whatever I have been (I am now no more) I
put myself on my country. I ought to be allowed a
reasonable freedom, because I stand upon my deliverance; and no culprit ought to plead in irons.
Even in the utmost latitude of defensive liberty, I
wish to preserve all possible decorum. Whatever
it may be in the eyes of these noble persons themselves, to me their situation calls for the most proVOL. V. 12
? ? ? ? 178 LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD
found respect. If I should happen to trespass a
little, which I trust I shall not, let it always be
supposed that a confusion of characters may produce
mistakes, --that, in the masquerades of the grand
carnival of our age, whimsical adventures happen,
odd things are said and pass off. If I should fail a
single point in the high respect I owe to those illustrious persons, I cannot be supposed to mean the
Duke of Bedford and the Earl of Lauderdale of the
House of Peers, but the Duke of Bedford and the
Earl of Lauderdale of Palace Yard, - the Dukes and
Earls of Brentford. There they are on the pavement; there they seem to come nearer to my humble level, and, virtually at least, to have waived their high privilege.
Making this protestation, I refuse all revolutionary
tribunals, where men have been put to death for no
other reason than that they had obtained favors from
the crown. I claim, not the letter, but the spirit
of the old English law, - that is, to be tried by my
peers. I decline his Grace's jurisdiction as a judge.
I challenge the Duke of Bedford as a juror to pass
upon the value of my services. Whatever his natural parts may be, I cannot recognize in his few and
idle years the competence to judge of my long and
laborious life. If I can help it, he shall not be on
the inquest of my quantum meruit. Poor rich man!
he can hardly know anything of public industry in
its exertions, or can estimate its compensations when
its work is done. I have no doubt of his Grace's
readiness in all the calculations of vulgar arithmetic; but I shrewdly suspect that he is little studied
in the theory of moral proportions, and has never
learned the rule of three in the arithmetic of policy
and state.
? ? ? ? ON THE ATTACKS UPON HIS PENSION. 179
His Grace thinks I have obtained too nmuch. I
answer, that my exertions, whatever they have been,
were such as no hopes of pecuniary reward could
possibly excite; and no pecuniary compensation can
possibly reward them. Between money and such
services, if done by abler men than I am, there is no
common principle of comparison: they are quantities
incommensurable. Money is made for the comfort
and convenience of animal life. It cannot be a reward for what mere animal life must, indeed, sustain, but never can inspire. With submission to his Grace,
I have not had more than sufficient. As to any noble
use, I trust I know how to employ as well as he a
much greater fortune than he possesses. In a more
confined application, I certainly stand in need of -every kind of relief and easement much more than he does. When I say I have not received more than I
deserve, is this the language I hold to Majesty? No!
Far, very far, from it! Before that presence I claim
no merit at all. Everything towards me is favor
and bounty. One style to a gracious benefactor;
another to a proud and insulting foe.
His Grace is pleased to aggravate my guilt by
charging my acceptance of his Majesty's grant as a
departure from my ideas and the spirit of my conduct with regard to economy. If it be, my ideas
of economy were false and ill-founded. But they
are the Duke of Bedford's ideas of economy I have
contradicted, and not my own. If he means so allude to certain bills brought in by me on a message from the throne in 1782, I tell him that there is
nothing in my conduct that can contradict either
the letter or the spirit of those acts. Does he mean
the Pay-Office Act? I take it for granted he does
? ? ? ? 180 LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD
not. The act to which he alludes is, I suppose, the
Establishment Act. I greatly doubt whether his
Grace has ever read the one or the other. The first
of these systems cost me, with every assistance which
my then situation gave me, pains incredible. I found
an opinion common through all the offices, and general in the public at large, that it would prove impossible to reform and methodize the office of paymaster-general. I undertook it, however; and I succeeded in my undertaking. Whether the military service, or whether the general economy of our
finances have profited by that act, I leave to those
who are acquainted with the army and with the
treasury to judge.
An opinion full as general prevailed also, at the
same time, that nothing could be done for the regulation of the civil list establishment. The very attempt to introduce method into it, and any limitations
to its services, was held absurd. I had not seen the
man who so much as suggested one economical principle or an economical expedient upon that subject.
Nothing but coarse amputation or coarser taxation
were then talked of, both of them without design,
combination, or the least shadow of principle. Blind
and headlong zeal or factious fury were the whole
contribution brought by the most noisy, on that occasion, towards the satisfaction of the public or the
relief of the crown.
Let me tell my youthful censor, that the necessities of that time required something very different
from what others then suggested or what his Grace
now conceives. Let me inform him, that it was one
of the most critical periods in our annals.
Astronomers have supposed, that, if a certain comet,
? ? ? ? ON THE ATTACKS UPON HIS PENSION. 181
whose path intersected the ecliptic, had met the earth
in some (I forget what) sign, it would have whirled
us along with it, in its eccentric course, into God
knows what regions of heat and cold. Had the portentous comet of the Rights of Man, (which "from
its horrid hair shakes pestilence and war," and "with
fear of change perplexes monarchs,") had that comet
crossed upon us in that internal state of England,
nothing human could have prevented our being irresistibly hurried out of the highway of heaven into
all the vices, crimes, horrors, and miseries of the
French Revolution.
Happily, France was not then Jacobinized. Her
hostility was at a good distance. We had a limb
cut off, but we preserved the body: we lost our colonies, but we kept our Constitution. There was, indeed, much intestine heat; there was a dreadful fermentation. Wild and savage insurrection quitted the woods, and prowled about our streets in the name
of Reform. Such was the distemper of the public
mind, that there was no madman, in his maddest
ideas and maddest projects, who might not count
upon numbers to support his principles and execute
his designs.
Many of the changes, by a great misnomer called
Parliamentary Reforms, went, not in the intention of
all the professors and supporters of them, undoubtedly, but went in their certain, and, ill my opinion,
not very remote effect, home to the utter destruction
of the Constitution of this kingdom. Had they taken
place, not France, but England, would have had the
honor of leading up the death-dance of democratic
revolution. Other projects, exactly coincident in
time with those, struck at the very existence of the
? ? ? ? 182) LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD
kingdom under any Constitution. There are who
remember the blind fury of some and the lamentable
helplessness of others; here, a torpid confusion, from
a panic fear of the danger, - there, the same inaction, from a stupid insensibility to it; here, well-wishers to the mischief, -- there, indifferent lookers-on. At the same time, a sort of National Convention,
dubious in its nature and perilous in its example,
nosed Parliament in the very seat of its authority,
sat with a sort of superintendence over it, - and little less than dictated to it, not only laws, but the
very form and essence of legislature itself. In Ireland things ran in a still more eccentric course.
Government was unnerved, confounded, and in a
manner suspended. Its equipoise was totally gone.
I do not mean to speak disrespectfully of Lord North.
He was a man of admirable parts, of general knowledge, of a versatile understanding fitted for every sort
of business, of infinite wit and pleasantry, of a delightful temper, and with a mind most perfectly disinterested. But it would be only to degrade myself by a weak adulation, and not to honor the memory
of a great man, to deny that he wanted something
of the vigilance and spirit of command that the time
required. Indeed, a darkness next to the fog of this
awful day lowered over the whole region. For a littie time the helm appeared abandoned.
Ipse diern noctemque negat discernere coelo,
Nec meminisse vime media Palinurus in unda.
At that time I was connected with men of high
place in the community. They loved liberty as much
as the Duke of Bedford Man do; and they understood it at least as well. Perhaps their politics,
as usual, took a tincture from their character, and
? ? ? ? ON- THE ATTACKS UPON HIS PENSION. 183
they cultivated what they loved. The liberty they
pursued was a liberty inseparable from order, from
virtue, from morals, and from religion, --and was
neither hypocritically nor fanatically followed. They
did not wish that liberty, in itself one of the first of
blessings, should in its perversion become the greatest curse which could fall upon mankind. To preserve the Constitution entire, and practically equal to all the great ends of its formation, not in one single part, but in all its parts, was to them the first
object. Popularity and power they regarded alike.
These were with them only different means of obtaining that object, and had no preference over each other
in their minds, but as one or the other might afford
a surer or a less certain prospect of arriving at that
end. It is some consolation to me, in the cheerless
gloom which darkens the evening of my life, that
with them I commenced my political career, and never for a moment, in reality nor in appearance, for
any length of time, was separated from their good
wishes and good opinion.
By what accident it matters not, nor upon what
desert, but just then, and in the midst of that hunt
of obloquy which ever has pursued me with a full cry
through life, I had obtained a very considerable degree of public confidence. I know well enough how
equivocal a test this kind of popular opinion forms of
the merit that obtained it. I am no stranger to the
insecurity of its tenure. I do not boast of it. It is
mentioned to show, not how highly I prize the thing,
but my right to value the use I made of it. I endeavored to turn that short-lived advantage to myself
into a permanent benefit to my country. Far am I
from detracting from the merit of some gentlemen,
? ? ? ? 184 LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD
out of office or in it, on that occasion. No! It is
not my way to refuse a full and heaped measure of
justice to the aids that I receive. I have through life
been willing to give everything to others, - and to reserve nothing for myself, but the inward conscience that I had omitted no pains to discover, to animate,
to discipline, to direct the abilities of the country for
its service, and to place them in the best light to
improve their age, or to adorn it. This conscience
I have. I have never suppressed any man, never
checked him for a moment in his course, by any jealousy, or by any policy. I was always ready, to the height of my means, (and they were always infinitely
below my desires,) to forward those abilities which
overpowered my own. He is an ill-furnished undertaker who has no machinery but his own hands to work with. Poor in my own faculties, I ever thought
myself rich in theirs. In that period of difficulty and
danger, more especially, I consulted and sincerely
cooperated with men of all parties who seemed disposed to the same ends, or to any main part of them. Nothing to prevent disorder was omitted: when it
appeared, nothing to subdue it was left uncounselled
nor unexecuted, as far as I could prevail. At the
time I speak of, and having a momentary lead, so
aided and so encouraged, and as a feeble instrumnent
in a mighty hand - I do not say I saved my country;
I am sure I did my country important service. There
were few, indeed, that did not at that time acknowledge it, - and that time was thirteen years ago. It was but one voice, that no man in the kingdom better deserved an honorable provision should be made for him.
So much for my general conduct through the whole
? ? ? ? ON THE ATTACKS UPON HIS PENSION. 185
of the portentous crisis from 1780 to 1782, and the
general sense then entertained of that conduct by
my country. But my character as a reformer, in the
particular instances which the Duke of Bedford refers to, is so connected in principle with my opinions
on the hideous changes which have since barbarized
France, and, spreading thence, threaten the political
and moral order of the whole world, that it seems to
demand something of a more detailed discussion.
My economical reforms were not, as his Grace may
think, the suppression of a paltry pension or employment, more or less. Economy in my plans was, as
it ought to be, secondary, subordinate, instrumental.
I acted on state principles. I found a great distemper in the commonwealth, and according to the nature of the evil and of the object I treated it. The malady was deep; it was complicated, in the causes
and in the symptoms. Throughout it was full of
contra-indicants. On one hand, government, daily
growing more invidious from an apparent increase of
the means of strength, was every day growing more
contemptible by real weakness. Nor was this dissolution confined to government commonly so called.
It extended to Parliament, which was losing not a
little in its dignity and estimation by an opinion of its
not acting on worthy motives. On the other hand,
the desires of the people (partly natural and partly
infused into them by art) appeared in so wild and inconsiderate a manner with regard to the economical
object, (for I set aside for a moment the dreadful
tampering with the body of the Constitution itself,)
that, if their petitions had literally been complied
with, the state would have been convulsed, and a
gate would have been opened through which all prop
? ? ? ? 186 LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD
erty might be sacked and ravaged. Nothing could
have saved the public from the mischiefs of the false
reform but its absurdity, which would soon have
brought itself, and with it all real reform, into discredit. This would have left a rankling wound in
the hearts of the people, who would know they had
failed in the accomplishment of their wishes, but who,
like the rest of mankind in all ages, would impute
the blame to anything rather than to their own proceedings. But there were then persons in the world
who nourished complaint, and would have been thoroughly disappointed, if the people were ever satisfied.
I was not of that humor. I wished that they should
be satisfied. It was my aim to give to the people the
substance of what I knew they desired, and what I
thought was right, whether they desired it or not, before it had been modified for them into senseless petitions. I knew that there is a manifest, marked distinction, which ill men with ill designs, or weak
men incapable of any design, will constantly be confounding, - that is, a marked distinction between
change and reformation. ,The former alters the substance of the objects themselves, and gets rid of all
their essential good as well as of all the accidental
evil annexed to them. Change is novelty; and
whether it is to operate any one of the effects of
reformation at all, or whether it may not contradict
the very principle upon which reformation is desired,
cannot be certainly known beforehand. Reform is
not a change in the substance or in the primary modification of the object, but a direct application of a
remedy to the grievance complained of. So far as
that is removed, all is sure. It stops there; and if
it fails, the substance which underwent the operation,
at the very worst, is but where it was.
? ? ? ?