No More Learning

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? Can I be blamed for pointing out to him
in what manner he is like to be affected, if the sect
of the cannibal philosophers of France should proselytize any considerable part of this people, and, by their joint proselytizing arms, should conquer that
government to which his Grace does not seem to me
to give all the support his own security demands?
Surely it is proper that he, and that others like him,
should know the true genius of this sect, -- what
their opinions are, - what they have done, and to
whom, - and what (if a prognostic is to be formed
from the dispositions and actions of men) it is certain they will do hereafter. He ought to know that they have sworn assistance, the only engagement
they ever will keep, to all in this country who bear a
resemblance to themselves, and who think, as such,
? ? ? ? ON THE ATTACKS UPON HIS PENSION. 213
that the whole duty of man consists in destruction.
They are a misallied and disparaged branch of the
House of Nimrod. They are the Duke of Bedford's
natural hunters; and he is their natural game. Because he is not very profoundly reflecting, he sleeps
in profound security: they, on the contrary, are
always vigilant, active, enterprising, and, though far
removed from any knowledge which makes men
estimable or useful, in all the instruments and resources of evil their leaders are not meanly instructed or insufficiently furnished. In the French Revolution everything is new, and, from want of preparation to meet so unlooked-for an evil, everything is dan-'gerous. Never before this time was a set of literary
men converted into a gang of robbers and assassins;
never before did a dell of bravoes and banditti assume the garb and tone of an academy of philosopliers.
Let me tell his Grace, that an union of such characters. monstrous as it seems, is not made for producing despicable enemies. But if they are formidable as foes, as friends they are dreadful indeed. The men of property in France, confiding in a force
which seemed to be irresistible because it had never
been tried, neglected to prepare for a conflict with
their enemies at their own weapons. They were
found in such a situation as the Mexicans were,
when they were attacked by the dogs, the cavalry,
the iron, and the gunpowder of an handful of bearded
men, whom they did not know to exist in Nature.
This is a comparison that some, I think, have made;
and it is just. In France they had their enemies
within their houses. They were even in the bosoms
of many of them. But they had not sagacity to dis
? ? ? ? 214 LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD
cern their savage character. They seemed tame,
and even caressing. They had nothing but douce
humanite in their mouth. They could not bear the
punishment of the mildest laws on the greatest criminals. The slightest severity of justice made their flesh creep. The very idea that war existed in the
world disturbed their repose. Military glory was no
more, with them, than a splendid infamy. Hardly
would they hear of self-defence, which they reduced
within such bounds as to leave it no defence at all.
All this while they meditated the confiscations and
massacres we have seen. Had any one told these
unfortunate noblemen and gentlemen how and by
whom the grand fabric of the French monarchy
under which they flourished would be subverted,
they would not have pitied him as a visionary, but
would have turned from him as what they call a mauvais plaisant. Yet we have seen what has happened. The persons who have sufferMd from the cannibal
philosophy of France are so like the Duke of Bedford, that nothing but his Grace's probably not
speaking quite so good French could enable us to
find out any difference. A great many of them had
as pompous titles as he, and were of full as illustrious
a race; some few of them had fortunes as ample;
several of them, without meaning the least disparagement to the Duke of Bedford, were as wise, and as virtuous, and as valiant, and as well educated, and
as complete in all the lineaments of men of honor, as
he is; and to all this they had added the powerful
outguard of a military profession, which, in its nature, renders men somewhat more cautious than
those who have nothing to attend to but the lazy
enjoyment of undisturbed possessions. But security
? ? ? ? ON THE ATTACKS UPON HIS PENSION. 215
was their ruin. They are dashed to pieces in the
storm, and our shores are covered with the wrecks.
If they had been aware that such a thing might happen, such a thing never could have happened.
I assure his Grace, that, if I state to him the designs of his enemies in a manner which may appear
to him ludicrous and impossible, I tell him nothing
that has not exactly happened, point by point, but
twenty-four miles from our own shore. I assure
him that the Frenchified faction, more encouraged
than others are warned by what has happened in
France, look at him and his landed possessions as
an object at once of curiosity and rapacity. He is
made for them in every part of their double character. As robbers, to them he is a noble booty; as
speculatists, he is a glorious subject for their experimental philosophy. He affords matter for an extensive analysis in all the branches of their science, geometrical, physical, civil, and political. These philosophers are fanatics: independent of any interest, which, if it operated alone, would make them much
more tractable, they are carried with such an headlong rage towards every desperate trial that they
would sacrifice the whole human race to the slightest of their experiments. I am better able to enter
into the character of this description of men than the
noble Duke can be. I have lived long and variously
in the world. Without any considerable pretensions
to literature in myself, I have aspired to the love of
letters. I have lived for a great many years in habitudes with those who professed them. I can form a
tolerable estimate of what is likely to happen from a
character chiefly dependent for fame and fortune on
knowledge and talent, as well in its morbid and per
? ? ? ? 216 LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD
verted state as in that which is sound and natural.
Naturally, men so formed and finished are the first
gifts of Providence to the world. But when they
have once thrown off the fear of God, which was in
all ages too often the case, and the fear of man,
which is now the case, and when in that state they
come to understand one another, and to act in corps,
a more dreadful calamity cannot arise out of hell to
scourge mankind. Nothing can be conceived more
hard than the heart of a thorough-bred metaphysician. It comes nearer to the cold malignity of a
wicked spirit than to the frailty and passion of a
man. It is like that of the Principle of Evil himself, incorporeal, pure, unmixed, dephleginated, defecated evil. It is no easy operation to eradicate humanity from the human breast. What Shakspeare calls the " compunctious Tisitings of Nature" will
sometimes knock at their hearts, and protest against
their murderous speculations. But they have a
means of compounding with their nature. Their humanity is not dissolved; they only give it a long prorogation. They are ready to declare that they do not
think two thousand years too long a period for the
good that they pursue. It is remarkable that they
never see any way to their projected good but by the
road of some evil. Their imagination is not fatigued
with the contemplation of human suffering through
the wild waste of centuries added to centuries of
misery and desolation. Their humanity is at their
horizon, - and, like the horizon, it always flies before them. The geometricians and the chemists
bring, the one from the dry bones of their diagrams,
and the other from the soot of their furnaces, dispositions that make them worse than indifferent about
? ? ? ? ON THE ATTACKS UPON HIS PENSION. 217
those feelings and habitudes which are the supports
of the moral world. Ambition is come upon them
suddenly; they are intoxicated with it, and it has
rendered them fearless of the danger which may
from thence arise to others or to themselves. These
philosophers consider men in their experiments no
more than they do mice in an air-pump or in a recipient of mephitic gas. Whatever his Grace may think
of himself, they look upon him, and everything that
belongs to him, with no more regard than they do
upon the whiskers of that little long-tailed animal
that has been long the game of the grave, demure,
insidious, spring-nailed, velvet-pawed, green-eyed philosophers, whether going upon two legs or upon four.
His Grace's landed possessions are irresistibly inviting to an agrarian experiment. They are a downright insult upon the rights of man. They are more extensive than the territory of many of the Grecian
republics; and they are without comparison more
fertile than most of them. There are now republics
in Italy, in Germany, and in Switzerland, which do
not possess anything like so fair and ample a domain.
There is scope for seven philosophers to proceed in
their analytical experiments upon Harrington's seven
different forms of republics, in the acres of this one
Duke. Hitherto they have been wholly unproductive to speculation, - fitted for nothing but to fatten
bullocks, and to produce grain for beer, still more
to stupefy the dull English understanding. Abbe
Sieyes has whole nests of pigeon-holes full of constitutions ready-made, ticketed, sorted, and numbered, suited to every season and every fancy: some with the top of the pattern at the bottom, and some
with the bottom at the top; some plain, some flow
? ? ? ? 218 LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD
ered; some distinguished for their simplicity, others
for their complexity; some of blood color, some of
boue de' Paris; some with directories, others without a direction; some with councils of elders and
councils of youngsters, some without any council at
all; some where the electors choose the representatives, others where the representatives choose the electors; some in long coats, and some in short cloaks; some with pantaloons, some without breeches; some
with five-shilling qualifications, some totally unqualified. So that no constitution-fancier may go unsuited from his shop, provided he loves a pattern
of pillage, oppression, arbitrary imprisonment, confiscation, exile, revolutionary judgment, and legalized
premeditated murder, in any shapes into which they
can be put. What a pity it is that the progress of
experimental philosophy should be checked by his
Grace's monopoly! Such are their sentiments, I
assure him; such is their language, when they dare
to speak; and such are their proceedings, when they
have the means to act.
Their geographers and geometricians have been
some time out of practice. It is some time since they
have divided their own country into squares. That
figure has lost the charms of its novelty. They want
new lands for new trials. It is not only the geometricians of the Republic that find him a good subject:
the chemists have bespoke him, after the geometricians have done with him. As the first set have an
eye on his Grace's lands, the chemists are not less
taken with his buildings. They consider mortar as a
very anti-revolutionary invention, in its present state,
but, properly employed, an admirable material for
overturning all establishments. They have found that
? ? ? ? ON THE ATTACKS UPON HIS PENSION. 219
the gunpowder of ruins is far the fittest for making
other ruins, and so ad infinitum. They have calculated what quantity of matter convertible into nitre
is to be found in Bedford House, in Woburn Abbey,
and in what his Grace and his trustees have still
suffered to stand of that foolish royalist, Inigo Jones,
in Covent Garden. Churches, play-houses, coffeehouses, all alike, are destined to be mingled, and
equalized, and blended into one common rubbish, --
and, well sifted, and lixiviated, to crystallize into true,
democratic, explosive, insurrectionary nitre. Their
Academy del Cimento, (per antiphrasin,) with Morveau and Hassenfratz at its head, have computed that
the brave sans-culottes may make war on all the aristocracy of Europe for a twelvemonth out of the rubbish of the Duke of Bedford's buildings. *
* There is nothing on which the leaders of the Republic one and
indivisible value themselves more than on the chemical operations by
which, through science, they convert the pride of aristocracy to an instrument of its own destruction, - on the operations by which they reduce the magnificent ancient country-seats of the nobility, decorated with the feudal titles of Duke, Marquis, or Earl, into magazines of
what they call revolutionary gunpowder. They tell us, that hitherto
things "had not yet been properly and in a revolutionary manner explored. " -- " The strong chateaus, those feudal fortresses, that were ordered to be demolished, attracted next the attention of your committcc. Nature there had secretly regained her rights, and had produced sal. petre, for the purpose, as it should seem, offacilitating the execution o/
your decree by preparing the means of destruction. From these ruins, which
still frown on the liberties of the Republic, we have extracted the means
of producing good; and those piles which have hitherto glutted the
pride of despots, and covered the plots of La Vendde, will soon furnish
wherewithal to tame the traitors and to overwhelm the disaffected. "
-- " The rebellious cities, also, have afforded a large quantity of saltpetre. Gonmmune Affranchie " (that is, the noble city of Lyons, reduced
in many' parts to an heap of ruins) A" and Toulon will pay a second
tribute to our artillery. " -Report, 1st February, 1794.
? ? ? ? 200 LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD
While the Morveaux and Priestleys are proceediig
with these experiments upon the Duke of Bedford's
houses, the Sieyes, and the rest of the analytical legislators and constitution-venders, are quite as busy in
their trade of decomposing organization, in forming
his Grace's vassals into primary assemblies, national
guards, first, second, and third requisitioners, committees of research, conductors of the travelling guillotine, judges of revolutionary tribunals, legislative hangmen, supervisors of domiciliary visitation, exactors of forced loans, and assessors of the maximum.
The dill of all this smithery may some time or other
possibly wake this noble Duke, and push him to an
endeavor to save some little matter from their experimental philosophy. If he pleads his grants from the
crown, he is ruined at the outset. If he pleads he has
received them from the pillage of superstitious corporations, this indeed will stagger them a little, because
they are enemies to all corporations and to all religion.
However, they will soon recover themselves, and will
tell his Grace, or his learned council, that all such
property belongs to the nation, -and that it would
be more wise for him, if he wishes to live the natural
term of a citizen, (that is, according to Condorcet's
calculation, six months on an average,) not to pass
for an usurper upon the national property. This is
what the serjeants-at-law of the rights of man will say
to the puny applrentices of the common law of England.
Is the genius of philosophy not yet known? You
may as well think the garden of the Tuileries was
well protected with the cords of ribbon insultingly
stretched by the National Assembly to keep tle sovceigwgun canaille from intruding on the retirement of
? ? ? ? ON THE ATTACKS UPON HIS PENSION. 221
the poor King of the French as that such flimsy cobwebs will stand between the savages of the Revolution
and their natural prey. Deep philosophers are no
triflers; brave sans-culottes are no formalists. They
will no more regard a Marquis of Tavistock than an
Abbot of Tavistock; the Lord of Woburn will not be
more respectable in their eyes than the Prior of Woburn; they will make no difference between the superior of a Covent Garden of nuns and of a Covent Garden of another description. They will not care a
rush whether his coat is long or short, - whether the
color be purple, or blue and buff. They will not
trouble their heads with what part of his head his hair
is cut from; and they will look with equal respect on
a tonsure and a crop. Their only question will be
that of their Legendre, or some other of their legislative butchers: How he cuts up; how he tallows in
the caul or on the kidneys.
Is it not a singular phenomenon, that, whilst the
sans-culotte carcass-butchers and the philosophers of
the shambles are pricking their dotted lines upon his
hide, and, like the print of the poor ox that we see
in the shop-windows at Charing Cross, alive as he
is, and thinking no harm in the world, he is divided
into rumps, and sirloins, and briskets, and into all
sorts of pieces for roasting, boiling, and stewing, that,
all the while they are measuring him, his Grace is
measuring me, - is invidiously comparing the bounty
of the crown with the deserts of the defender of his
order, and in the same moment fawning on those
who have the knife half out of the sheath? Poor
innocent! , Pleased to the last, he crops the flowery food,
And licks the hand just raised to shed his blood. '
? ? ? ? 2 22 2 LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD
No man lives too long who lives to do with spirit
and suffer with resignation what Providence pleases
to command or inflict; but, indeed, they are sharp
incomumodities which beset old age. It was but the
other day, that, on putting in order some things
which had been brought here, on my taking leave
of London forever, I looked over a number of fine
portraits, most of them of persons now dead, but
whose society, in my better days, made this a proud
and happy place. Amongst these was the picture of
Lord Keppel. It was painted by an artist worthy of
the subject, the excellent friend of that excellent man
from their earliest youth, and a common friend of us
both, with whom we lived for many years without a
moment of coldness, of peevishness, of jealousy, or of
jar, to the day of our final separation.
I ever looked on Lord Keppel as one of the greatest and best men of his age, and I loved and cultivated him accordingly. He was much in my heart, and I believe I was in his to the very last beat. It
was after his trial at Portsmouth that he gave me
this picture. With what zeal and anxious affection
I attended him through that his agony of glory,what part my son, in the early flush and enthusiasm of his virtue, and the pious passion with which he attached himself to all my connections, - with
what prodigality we both squandered ourselves in
courting almost every sort of enmity for his sake, I
believe he felt, just as I should have felt such friendship on such an occasion. I partook, indeed, of this
honor with several of the first and best and ablest
in the kingdom, but I was behindhand with none of
them; and I am sure, that, if, to the eternal disgrace
of this nation, and fo the total annihilation of every
? ? ? ? ON THE ATTACKS UPON HIS PENSION. 223
trace of honor and virtue ill it, things had taken a
different turn from what they did, I should have attended him to the quarter-deck with no less good-will
and more pride, though with far other feelings, than
I partook of the general flow of national joy that
attended the justice that was done to his virtue.
Pardon, my Lord, the feeble garrulity of age,
which loves to diffuse itself in discourse of the departed great. At my years we live in retrospect
alone; and, wholly unfitted for the society of vigorous life, we enjoy, the best balm to all wounds,
the consolation of friendship, in those only whom
we have lost forever. Feeling the loss of Lord
Keppel at all times, at no time did I feel it so
much as on the first day when I was attacked in
the House of Lords.
Had he lived, that reverend form would have risen
in its place, and, with a mild, parental reprehension
to his nephew, the Duke of Bedford, he would have
told him that the favor of that gracious prince who
had honored his virtues with the government of the
navy of Great Britain, and with a seat in the hereditary great council of his kingdom, was not undeservedly shown to the friend of the best portion of his life, and his faithful companion and counsellor under
his rudest trials. He would have told him, that, to
whomever else these reproaches might be becoming,
they were not decorous in his near kindred. He
would have told him, that, when men in that rank
lose decorum, they lose everything.
On that day I had a loss in Lord Keppel. But the
public loss of him in this awful crisis! --I speak
from much knowledge of the person: he never woul(l
lhave listened to any compromise *vith the rabble rot
? ? ? ? 224 LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD
of this sans-culotterie of France. His goodness of
heart, his reason, his taste, his public duty, his
principles, his prejudices, would have repelled him
forever from all connection with that horrid medley
of madness, vice, impiety, and crime.
Lord Keppel had two countries: one of descent,
and one of birth. Their interest and their glory are
the same; and his mind was capacious of both. His
family was noble, and it was Dutch: that is, he was
of the oldest and purest nobility that Europe can
boast, among a people renowned above all others
for love of their native land. Though it was never
shown in insult to any human being, Lord Keppel
was something high. It was a wild stock of pride,
on which the tenderest of all hearts had grafted the
milder virtues. He valued ancient nobility; and he
was not disinclined to augment it with new honors.
He valued the old nobility and the new, not as an excuse for inglorious sloth, but as an incitement to virtuous activity. He considered it as a sort of cure for selfishness and a narrow mind, - conceiving that a
man born in an elevated place in himself was nothing,
but everything in what went before and what was to
come after him. Without much speculation, but by
the sure instinct of ingenuous feelings, and by the
dictates of plain, unsophisticated, natural understanding, he felt that no great commonwealth could by any
possibility long subsist without a body of some kind
or other of nobility decorated with honor and fortified by privilege. This nobility forms the chain that
connects the ages of a nation, which otherwise (with
Mr. Paine) would soon be taught that no one generation can bind another. He felt that no political fabric could be well made, without some such order of
? ? ? ? ON THE ATTACKS UPON HIS PENSION. 225
things as might, through a series of time, afford a
rational hope of securing unity, coherence, consistency, and stability to the state. He felt that nothing
else can protect it against the levity of courts and the
greater levity of the multitude; that to talk of hereditary monarchy, without anything else of hereditary
reverence in the commonwealth, was a low-minded
absurdity, fit only for those detestable " fools aspiring
to be knaves" who began to forge in 1789 the false
money of the French Constitution; that it is one fatal
objection to all new fancied and new fabricated republics, (among a people who, once possessing such an.
advantage, have wickedly and insolently rejected it,)
that the prejudice of an old nobility is a thing that
cannot be made. It may be improved, it may be corrected, it may be replenished; men may be taken
from it or aggregated to it; but the thing itself is matter of inveterate opinion, and therefore cannot be matter of mere positive institution. He felt that this nobility, in fact, does not exist in wrong of other orders of the state, but by them, and for them.
I knew the man I speak of: and if we can divine
the future out of what we collect from the past, no
person living would look with more scorn and horror
on the impious parricide committed on all their ancestry, and on the desperate attainder passed on all
their posterity, by the Orleans, and the Rochefoucaults, and the Fayettes, and the Vicomtes de Noailles, and the false P6rigords, and the long et cetera
of the perfidious sans-culottes of the court, who, like
demoniacs possessed with a spirit of fallen pride and
inverted ambition, abdicated their dignities, disowned
their families, betrayed the most sacred of all trusts,
and, by breaking to pieces a great link of society and
VOL. V. 15
? ? ? ? 226 LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD
all the cramps and holdings of the state, brought eternal confusion and desolation on their country. For
the fate of the miscreant parricides themselves he
would have had no pity. Compassion for the myriads of men, of whom the world was not worthy, who
by their means have perished in prisons or on scaffolds, or are pining in beggary and exile, would
leave no room in his, or in any well-formed mind,
for any such sensation. We are not made at once
to pity the oppressor and the oppressed.
Looking to his Batavian descent, how could he bear
to behold his kindred, the descendants of the brave
nobility of Holland, whose blood, prodigally poured
out, had, more than all the canals, meres, and inundations of their country, protected their independence, to behold them bowed in the basest servitude to the basest and vilest of the human race, - in servitude to those who in no respect were superior in dignity or could aspire to a better place than that of hangmen to the tyrants to whose sceptred pride they
had opposed an elevation of soul that surmounted and
overpowered the loftiness of Castile, the haughtiness
of Austria, and the overbearing arrogance of France?
Could he with patience bear that the children of
that nobility who would have deluged their country
and given it to the sea rather than submit to Louis
the Fourteenth, who was then in his meridian glory,
when his arms were conducted by the Turennes, by
the Luxembourgs, by the Boufflers, when his councils
were directed by the Colberts and the Louvois, when
his tribunals were filled by the Lamoignons and the
D'Aguesseaus, - that these should be given up to the
cruel sport of the Pichegrus, the Jourdans, the Santerres, under the Rolands, and Brissots, and Gorsas,
? ? ? ? ON THE ATTACKS UPON HIS PENSION. 227
and Robespierres, the Reubells, the Carnots, and Talliens, and Dantons, and the whole tribe of regicides,
robbers, and revolutionary judges, that from the rotten carcass of their own murdered country have
poured out innumerable swarms of the lowest and
at once the most destructive of the classes of animated Nature, which like columns of locusts have
laid waste the fairest part of the world?
Would Keppel have borne to see the ruin of the
virtuous patricians, that happy union of the noble
and the burgher, who with signal prudence and integrity had long governed the cities of the confederate republic, the cherishing fathers of their country, who, denying commerce to themselves, made it flourish in a manner unexampled under their protection?
Could Keppel have borne that a vile faction should
totally destroy this harmonious construction, in favor of a robbing democracy founded on the spurious
rights of man?
He was no great clerk, but he was perfectly well
versed in the interests of Europe, and he could not
have heard with patience that the country of Grotius,
the cradle of the law of nations, and one of the richest repositories of all law, should be taught a new
code by the ignorant flippancy of Thomas Paine, the
presumptuous foppery of La Fayette, with his stolen
rights of man in his hand, the wild, profligate intrigue
and turbulency of Marat, and the impious sophistry
of Condorcet, in his insolent addresses to the Batavian Republic.
Could Keppel, who idolized the House of Nassau,
who was himself given to England along with the
blessings of the British and Dutch Revolutions, with
Revolutions of stability, with Revolutions which con
? ? ? ? 228 LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD
solidated and married the liberties and the interests
of the two nations forever, - could he see the fountain of British liberty itself in servitude to France?
Could he see with patience a Prince of Orange expelled, as a sort of diminutive despot, with every kind
of contumely, from the country which that family of
deliverers had so often rescued from slavery, and
obliged to live in exile in another country, which
owes its liberty to his house?
Would Keppel have heard with patience that the
conduct to be held on such occasions was to become
short by the knees to the faction of the homicides, to
entreat them quietly to retire? or, if the fortune of
war should drive them from their first wicked and
unprovoked invasion, that no security should be taken, no arrangement made, no barrier formed, no alliance entered into for the security of that which under a foreign name is the most precious part of England?
What would he have said, if it was even proposed
that the Austrian Netherlands (which ought to be a
barrier to Holland, and the tie of an alliance'to protect her against any species of rule that might be
erected or even be restored in France) should be
formed into a republic under her influence and dependent upon her power?
But above all, what would he have said, if he had
heard it made a matter of accusation against me, by
his nephew, the Duke of Bedford, that I was the author of the war? Had I a mind to keep that high
distinction to myself, (as from pride I might, but from
justice I dare not,) he would have snatched his share
of it from my hand, and held it with the grasp of a
dying convulsion to his end.
It would be a most arrogant presumption in me
? ? ? ? ON THE ATTACKS UPON HIS PENSION. 229
to assume to myself the glory of what belongs to his
Majesty, and to his ministers, and to his Parliament,
and to the far greater majority of his faithful people:
but had I stood alone to counsel, and that all were
determined to be guided by my advice, and to follow
it implicitly, then I should have been the sole author
of a war. But it should have been a war on my ideas
and my principles. However, let his Grace think as
he may of my demerits with regard to the war with
Regicide, he will find my guilt confined to that alone.
He never shall, with the smallest color of reason,
accuse me of being the author of a peace with Regicide. - But that is high matter, and ought not to be mixed with anything of so little moment as what
may belong to me, or even to the Duke of Bedford.
I have the honor to be, &c.
EDMUND BURKE.
? ? ? ? THREE LETTERS
ADDRESSED TO
A MEMBER OF THE PRESENT PARLIAMENT, ON THE
PROPOSALS FOR PEACE WITH THE REGICIDE DIRECTORY OF FRANCE.
1796-7.
? ? ? ? LETTER I.
()N THE OVERTURES OF PEACE.
M Y DEAR SIR,- Our last conversation, though
not in the tone of absolute despondency, was
far from cheerful. We could not easily account for
some unpleasant appearances. They were represented to us as indicating the state of the popular mind; and they were not at all what we should have expected from our old ideas even of the faults and vices of the English character. The disastrous events which
have followed one upon another in a long, unbroken,
funereal train, moving in a procession that seemed to
have no end, -- these were not the principal causes
of our dejection. We feared more from what threatened to fail within than what menaced to oppress us from abroad. To a people who have once been proud
and great, and great because they were proud, a
change in the national spirit is the most terrible of
all revolutions.
I shall not live to behold the unravelling of the
intricate plot which saddens and perplexes the awful
drama of Providence now acting on the moral theatre
of the world. Whether for thought or for action,
I am at the end of my career. You are in the middle of yours. In what part of its orbit the nation
with which we are carried along moves at this
instant'it is not easy to conjecture. It may, per
? ? ? ? 234 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
haps, be far advanced in its aphelion, -but when
to return?
Not to lose ourselves in the infinite void of the
conjectural world, our business is with what is likely to be affected, for the better or the worse, by the
wisdom or weakness of our plans. In all speculations upon men and human affairs, it is of no small
moment to distinguish things of accident from permanent causes, and from effects that cannot be altered. It is not every irregularity in our movement that is a total deviation from our course. I am not
quite of the mind of those speculators who seem
assured that necessarily, and by the constitution of
things, all states have the same periods of infancy,
manhood, and decrepitude that are found in the individuals who compose them. Parallels of this sort
rather furnish similitudes to illustrate or to adorn
than supply analogies from whence to reason. The
objects which are attempted to be forced into an
analogy are not found in the same classes of existence. Individuals are physical beings, subject to
laws universal and invariable. The immediate cause
acting in these laws may be obscure: the general
results are subjects of certain calculation. But commonwealths are not physical, but moral essences.
They are artificial combinations, and, in their proximate efficient cause, the arbitrary productions of the
human mind. We are not yet acquainted with the
laws which necessarily influence the stability of that
kind of work made by that kind of agent. There is
not in the physical order (with which they do not
appear to hold any assignable connection) a distinct
cause by which any of those fabrics must necessarily grow, flourish, or decay; nor, in my opinion, does
? ? ? ? LETTER I. 235
the moral world produce anything more determinate
on that subject than what may serve as an amusement (liberal, indeed, and ingenious, but still only
an amusement) for speculative men. I doubt whether the history of mankind is yet complete enough, if
ever it can be so, to furnish grounds for a sure
theory on the internal causes which necessarily affect
the fortune of a state. I am far from denying the
operation of such causes: but they are infinitely uncertain, and much more obscure, and much more
difficult to trace, than the foreign causes that tend
to raise, to depress, and sometimes to overwhelm a
community.
It is often impossible, in these political inquiries,
to find any proportion between the apparent force
of any moral causes we may assign and their known
operation. We are therefore obliged to deliver up
that operation to mere chance, or, more piously,
(perhaps more rationally,) to the occasional interposition and irresistible hand of the Great Disposer.
We have seen states of considerable duration, which
for ages have remained nearly as they have begun,
and could hardly be said to ebb or flow. Some
appear to have spent their vigor at their commencement. Some have blazed out in their glory a little
before their extinction. The meridian of some has
been the most splendid. Others, and they the greatest number, have fluctuated, and experienced at different periods of their existence a great variety of fortune. At the very moment when some of them
seemed plunged in unfathomable abysses of disgrace
and disaster, they have suddenly emerged. They
have begun a new course and opened a new reckon
ing, and even in the depths of their calamity and on
? ? ? ? 236 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
the very ruins of their country have laid the foundations of a towering and durable greatness. All this
has happened without any apparent previous change
in the general circumstances which had brought on
their distress. The death of a man at a critical
juncture, his disgust, his retreat, his disgrace, have
brought innumerable calamities on a whole nation.
A common soldier, a child, a girl at the door of an
inn, have changed the face of fortune, and almost of
Nature.
Such, and often influenced by such causes, has
commonly been the fate of monarchies of long duration. They have their ebbs and their flows. This
has been eminently the fate of the monarchy of
France. There have been times in which no power
has ever been brought so low. Few have ever flourished in greater glory. By turns elevated and depressed, that power had been, on the whole, rather on the increase; and it continued not only powerful,
but formidable, to the hour of the total ruin of the
monarchy. This fall of the monarchy was far from
being preceded by any exterior symptoms of decline.
The interior were not visible to every eye; and a
thousand accidents might have prevented the operation of what the most clear-sighted were not able to
discern nor the most provident to divine. A very little time before its dreadful catastrophe, there was a
kind of exterior splendor in the situation of the
crown, which usually adds to government strength
and authority at home. The crown seemed then to
have obtained some of the most splendid objects of
state ambition. None of the Continental powers of
Europe were the enemies of France. They were all
either tacitly disposed to her or publicly connected
? ? ? ? LETTER I. 237
with her; and in those who kept the most aloof
there was little appearance of jealousy, - of animosity there was no appearance at all. The British nation, her great preponderating rival, she had humbled, to all appearance she had weakened, certainly had endangered, by cutting off a very large and by
far the most growing part of her empire. In that its
acme of human prosperity and greatness, in the high
and palmy state of. the monarchy of France, it fell to
the ground without a struggle. It fell without any
of those vices in the monarch wlich have sometimes
been the causes of the fall of kingdoms, but which
existed, without any visible effect on the state, in the
highest degree in many other princes, and, far from
destroying their power, had only left some slight
stains on their character. The financial difficulties
were only pretexts and instruments of those who
accomplished the ruin of that monarchy; they were
not the causes of it.
Deprived of the old government, deprived in a
manner of all government, France, fallen as a monarchy, to common speculators might have appeared
more likely to be an object of pity or insult, according to the disposition of the circumjacent powers,
than to be the scourge and terror of them all: but
out of the tomb of the murdered monarchy in France
has arisen a vast, tremendous, unformed spectre, in a
far more terrific guise than any which ever yet have
overpowered the imagination and subdued the fortitude of man. Going straight forward to its end, unappalled by peril, unchecked by remorse, despising
all common maxims and all common means, that
hideous phantom overpowered those who could not
believe it was possible she could at all exist, except
?