It is a matter of curiosity to observe the operation
of this encouragement to disorder.
of this encouragement to disorder.
Edmund Burke
It has been done to show that
the British nation was then a great people, --to
point out how and by what means they came to be
exalted above the vulgar level, and to take that
lead which they assumed among mankind. To qualify us for that preeminence, we had then an high mind and a constancy unconquerable; we were thei
inspired with no flashy passions, but such as were
durable as well as warm, such as corresponded to
the great interests we had at stake. This force of
character was inspired, as all such spirit must ever
be, from above. Government gave the impulse. As
well may we fancy that of itself the sea will swell,
and that without winds the billows will insult the
adverse shore, as that the gross mass of the people
will be moved, and elevated, and continue by a
steady and permanent direction to bear upon one
point, without the influence of superior authority or
superior mind.
This impulse ought, in my opinion, to have been
given in this war; and it ought to have been continued to it at every instant. It is made, if ever war
was made, to touch all the great springs of action in
the human breast. It ought not to have been a war
of apology. The minister had, in this conflict, wherewithal to glory in success, to be consoled in adversity,
? ? ? ? LETTER I. 303
to hold high his principle in all fortunes. If it were
not given him to support the falling edifice, he ought
to bury himself under the ruins of the civilized
world. All the art of Greece and all the pride
and power of Eastern monarchs never heaped upon
their ashes so grand a monument.
There were days when his great mind was up to
the crisis of the world he is called to act in. * His
manly eloquence was equal to the elevated wisdom
of such sentiments. But the little have triumphed
over the great: an unnatural, (as it should seem,)
not an unusual victory. I am sure you cannot forget with how much uneasiness we heard, in conversation, the language of more than one gentleman at the opening of this contest,- " that he was willing to
try the war for a year or two, and, if it did not succeed, then to vote for peace. " As if war was a matter of experiment! As if you could take it up or lay
it down as an idle frolic! As if the dire goddess that
presides over it, with her murderous spear in her
hand and her Gorgon at her breast, was a coquette
to be flirted with! We ought with reverence to
approach that tremendous divinity, that loves courage, but commands counsel. War never leaves where
it found a nation. It is never to be entered into
without a mature deliberation, - not a deliberation
lengthened out into a perplexing indecision, but a
deliberation leading to a sure and fixed judgment.
When so taken up, it is not to be abandoned without
reason as valid, as fully and as extensively considered. Peace may be made as unadvisedly as war.
Nothing is so rash as fear; and the counsels of pusillanimity very rarely put off, whilst they are always
* See the Declaration.
? ? ? ? 304 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
sure to aggravate, the evils from which they would
fly.
In that great war carried on against Louis the Fourteenth for near eighteen years, government spared no pains to satisfy the nation, that, though they were
to be animated by a desire of glory, glory was not
their ultimate object; but that everything dear to
them, in religion, in law, in liberty, everything which
as freemen, as Englishmen, and as citizens of the
great commonwealth of Christendom, they had at
heart, was then at stake. This was to know the
true art of gaining the affections and confidence of
an high-minded people; this was to understand human nature. A danger to avert a danger, a present inconvenience and suffering to prevent a foreseen
future and a worse calamity, - these are the motives
that belong to an animal who in his constitution is
at once adventurous and provident, circumspect and
daring, - whom his Creator has made, as the poet
says, " of large discourse, looking before and after. "
But never can a vehement and sustained spirit of
fortitude be kindled in a people by a war of calculation. It has nothing that can keep the mind erect under the gusts of adversity. Even where men are
willing, as sometimes they are, to barter their blood
for lucre, to hazard their safety for the gratification
of their avarice, the passion which animates them to
that sort of conflict, like all the shortsighted passions,
must see its objects distinct and near at hand. The
passions of the lower order are hungry and impatient. Speculative plunder, - contingent spoil, - future, long adjourned, uncertain booty, - pillage
which must enrich a late posterity, and which possibly may not reach to posterity at all, - these, for
? ? ? ? LETTER I. 305
any length of time, will never support a mercenary
war. The people are in the right. The calculation
of profit in all such wars is false. On balancing the
account of such wars, ten thousand hogsheads of
sugar are purchased at ten thousand times their
price. The blood of man should never be shed but
to redeem the blood of man. It is well shed for our
family, for our friends, for our God, for our country,
for our kind. The rest is vanity; the rest is crime.
In the war of the Grand Alliance most of these
considerations voluntarily and naturally had their
part. Some were pressed into the service. The political interest easily went in the track of the natural sentiment. In the reverse course the carriage does not follow freely. I am sure the natural feeling,
as I have just said, is a far more predominant ingredient in this war than in that of any other that ever
was waged by this kingdom.
If the war made to prevent the union of two,
crowns upon one head was a just war, this, which is
made to prevent the tearing all crowns from all heads
which ought to wear them, and with the crowns to
smite off the sacred heads themselves, this is a just,
war.
If a war to prevent Louis the Fourteenth from imposing his religion was just, a war to prevent the
murderers of Louis the Sixteenth from imposing their
irreligion upon us is just: a war to prevent the, operation of a system which makes life without dignity
and death without hope is a just war.
If to preserve political independence and civil freedom to nations was a just ground of war, a war to
preserve national independence, property, liberty, life,
and honor from certain universal havoc is a war just,
VOL. V. 20
? ? ? ? 206 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
necessary, manly, pious; and we are bound to persevere in it by every principle, divine and human, as long as the system which menaces them all, and all
equally, has an existence in the world.
You, who have looked at this matter with as fair
and impartial an eye as can be united with a feeling
heart, you will not think it an hardy assertion, when
I affirm that it were far better to be conquered by
any other nation than to have this faction for a neighbor. Before I felt myself authorized to say this, I considered the state of all the countries in Europe
for these last three hundred years, which have been
obliged to submit to a foreign law. In most of those
I found the condition of the annexed countries even
better, certainly not worse, than the lot of those which
were the patrimony of the conqueror. They wanted
some blessings, but they were free from many very
great evils. They were rich and tranquil. Such was
Artois, Flanders, Lorraine, Alsatia, under the old
government of France. Such was Silesia under the
King of Prussia. They who are to live in the vicinity of this new fabric are to prepare to live in perpetual conspiracies and seditions, and to end at last in being
conquered, if not to her dominion, to her resemblance.
But when we talk of conquest by other nations, it is
only to put a case. This is the only power in Europe
by which it is possible we should be conquered. To
live under the continual dread of such immeasurable
evils is itself a grievous calamity. To live without
the dread of them is to turn the danger into the disaster. The influence' of such a France is equal to a war, its example more wasting than an hostile irruption. The hostility with any other power is separable and accidental: this power, by the very condition of
? ? ? ? LETTER I. 307
its existence, by its very essential constitution, is in a
state of hostility with us, and with all civilized people. *
A government of the nature of that set up at our
very door has never been hitherto seen or even imagined in Europe. ~ What our relation to it will be
cannot be judged by other relations. It is a serious
thing to have a connection with a people who live only
under positive, arbitrary, and changeable institutions,
- and those not perfected nor supplied nor explained
by any common, acknowledged rule of moral science.
I remember, that, in one of my last conversations
with the late Lord Camden, we were struck much in
the same manner with the abolition in France of the
law as a science of methodized and artificial equity.
France, since her Revolution, is under the sway of a
sect whose leaders have deliberately, at one stroke,
demolished the whole body of that jurisprudence
which France had pretty nearly in common with other civilized countries. In that jurisprudence were
contained the elements and principles of the law of
nations, the great ligament of mankind. With the
law they have of course destroyed all seminaries in
which jurisprudence was taught, as well as all the
corporations established for its conservation. I have
not heard of any country, whether in Europe or Asia,
or even in Africa on this side of Mount Atlas, which
is wholly without some such colleges and such corporations, except France. No man, in a public or private concern, can divine by what rule or principle her judgments are to be directed: nor is there to be
found a professor in any university, or a practitioner
in any court, who will hazard an opinion of what is
* See Declaration, Whitehall, October 29, 1793.
? ? ? ? 308 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
or is not law in France, in any case whatever. They
have not only annulled all their old treaties, but they
have renounced the law of nations, from whence
treaties have their force. With a fixed design they
have outlawed themselves, and to their power outlawed all other nations.
Instead of the religion and the law by which they
were in a great'politic communion with the Christian
world, they have constructed their republic on three
bases, all fundamentally opposite to those on which
the communities of Europe are built. Its foundation
is laid in Regicide, in Jacobinism, and in Atheism;
and it has joined to those principles a body of systematic manners which secures their operation.
If I am asked how I would be understood in the
use of these terms, Regicide, Jacobinism, Atheism,
and a system of correspondent manners, and their
establishment, I will tell you.
I call a commonwealth Regicide which lays it
down as a fixed law of Nature and a fundamental
right of man, that all government, not being a democracy, is an usurpation,* - that all kings, as such,
are usurpers, and, for being kings, may and ought to
be put to death, with their wives, families, and adherents. The commonwealth' which acts uniformly
upon those principles, and which, after abolishing
* Nothing could be more solemn than their promulgation of this
principle, as a preamble to the destructive code of their famous articles for the decomposition of society, into whatever country they should enter. ('La Convention Nationale, apres avoir entendu le
rapport de ses comites de finances, de la guerre, et diplomatiques
reunis, fidble au principe de souverainete de peuples, qui ne lui permet pas
de reconnoitre aucune institution qui y porte atteinte," &c. , &c. --Decret
sur le Rapport de Cambon, Dec. 18, 1792. And see the subsequent
proclamation.
? ? ? ? LETTER I. 309
every festival of religion, chooses the most flagrant
act of a murderous regicide treason for a feast of
eternal commemoration, and which forces all her
people to observe it, --this. I call Regicide by Establishment.
Jacobinism is the revolt of the enterprising talents
of a country against its property. When private men
form themselves into associations for the purpose of
destroying the preexisting laws and institutions of
their country, -- when they secure to themselves an
army by dividing amongst the people of no property
the estates of the ancient and lawful proprietors,when a state recognizes those acts, -- when it does
not make confiscations for crimes, but makes crimes
for confiscations, - when it has its principal strength
and all its resources in such a violation of property,
- when it stands chiefly upon such a violation, massacring by judgments, or otherwise, those who make
any struggle for their old legal government, and their
legal, hereditary, or acquired possessions, -- I call
this Jacobinism by Establishment.
I call it Atheism by Establishment, when any state,
as such, shall not acknowledge the existence of God
as a moral governor of the world, -when it shall
offer to Him no religious or moral worship, - when
it shall abolish the Christian religion by a regular
decree, -when it shall persecute, with a cold, unrelenting, steady cruelty, by every mode of confiscation, imprisonment, exile, and death, all its ministers, - when it shall generally shut up or pull down churches, -- when the few buildings which remain
of this kind shall be opened only for the purpose of
making a profane apotheosis of monsters whose vices
and crimes have no parallel amongst men, and whom
? ? ? ? 310 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
all other men consider as objects of general detestation and the severest animadversion of law. When,
in the place of that religion of social benevolence and
of individual self-denial, in mockery of all religion,
they institute impious, blasphemous, indecent theatric rites, in honor of their vitiated, perverted reason,
and erect altars to the personification of their own
corrupted and bloody republic, -when schools and
seminaries are founded at public expense to poison
mankind, from generation to generation, with the
horrible maxims of this impiety, -- when, wearied out
with incessant martyrdom, and the cries of a people
hungering and thirsting for religion, they permit it
only as a tolerated evil, - I call this Atheism by Establishment.
When to these establishments of Regicide, of Jacobinism, and of Atheism, you add the correspondent
system of manners, no doubt can be left on the mind
of a thinking man concerning their determined hostility to the human race. Manners are of more importance than laws. Upon them, in a great measure,
the laws depend. Tile law touches us but lere and
tllere, and now and theCl. MIanners are what vex or
soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize
or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe in.
They give their whole form and color to our lives.
According to their quality, they aid morals, they
supply them, or they totally destroy them. Of this
the new French legislators were aware; therefore,
with the same method, and under the same authority, they settled a system of manners, the most licentious, prostitute, and abandoned that ever has been known, and at the same time the most coarse, rude,
? ? ? ? LETTER I. 311
savage, and ferocious. Nothing in the Revolution,
no, not to a phrase or a gesture, not to the fashion
of a hat or a shoe, was left to accident. All has been
the result of design; all has been matter of institution. No mechanical means could be devised in favor of this incredible system of wickedness and vice, that has not been employed. The noblest passions,
the love of glory, the love of country, have been
debauched into means of its preservation and its
propagation. All sorts of shows and exhibitions,
calculated to inflame and vitiate the imagination and
pervert the moral sense, have been contrived. They
have sometimes brought forth five or six hundred
drunken women calling at the bar of the Assembly for
the blood of their own children, as being Royalists or
Constitutionalists. Sometimes they have got a body
of wretches, calling themselves fathers, to demand
the murder of their sons, boasting that Rome had
but one Brutus, but that they could show five hundred. There were instances in which they inverted
and retaliated the impiety, and produced sons who
called for the execution of their parents. The foundation of their republic is laid in moral paradoxes.
Their patriotism is always prodigy. All those instances to be found in history, whether real or fabulous, of a doubtful public spirit, at which morality
is perplexed, reason is staggered, and from which
aftrighted Nature recoils, are their chosen and almost
sole examples for the instruction of their youth.
The whole drift of their institution is contrary to
that of the wise legislators of all countries, who aimed
at improving instincts into morals, and at grafting the
virtues on the stock of the natural affections. They,
on the contrary, have omitted no pains to eradicate
? ? ? ? 312 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
every benevolent and noble propensity in the mind
of men. In their culture it is a rule always to graft
virtues on vices. They think everything unworthy
of the name of public virtue, unless it indicates violence on the private. All their new institutions (and
with them everything is new) strike at the root of
our social nature. Other legislators, knowing that
marriage is the origin of all relations, and consequently the first element of all duties, have endeavored by every art to make it sacred. The Christian religion, by confining it to the pairs, and by rendering that relation indissoluble, has by these two things
done more towards the peace, happiness, settlement,
and civilization of the world than by any other part
in this whole scheme of Divine wisdom. The direct
contrary course has been taken in the synagogue of
Antichrist, - I mean in that forge and manufactory
of all evil, the sect which predominated in the Constituent Assembly of 1789. Those monsters employed
the same or greater industry to desecrate and degrade that state, which other legislators have used
to render it holy and honorable. By a strange, uncalled-for declaration, they pronounced that marriage
was no better than a common civil contract. It was
one of their ordinary tricks, to put their sentiments
into the mouths of certain personated characters,
which they theatrically exhibited at the bar of what
ought to be a serious assembly. One of these was
brought out in the figure of a prostitute, whom they
called by the affected name of " a mother without
being a wife. " This creature they made to call for
a repeal of the incapacities which in civilized states
are put upon bastards. The prostitutes of the Assembly gave to this their puppet the sanction of their
? ? ? ? LETTER I. 313
greater impudence. In consequence of the principles laid down, and the manners authorized, bastards
were not long after put on the footing of the issue of
lawful unions. Proceeding in the spirit of the first
authors of. their Constitution, succeeding Assemblies
went the full length of the principle, and gave a license to divorce at the mere pleasure of either party,
and at a month's notice. With them the matrimonial connection is brought into so degraded a state of
concubinage, that I believe none of the wretches in
London who keep warehouses of infamy would give
out one of their victims to private custody on so short
and insolent a tenure. There was, indeed, a kind of
profligate equity in giving to women the same licentious power. The reason they assigned was as infamous as the act: declaring that women had been too long under the tyranny of parents and of husbands.
It is not necessary to observe upon the horrible consequences of taking one half of the species wholly out
of the guardianship and protection of the other.
The practice of divorce, though in some countries
permitted, has been discouraged in all. In the East,
polygamy and divorce are in discredit; and the manners correct the laws. In Rome, whilst Rome was
in its integrity, the few causes allowed for divorce
amounted in effect to a prohibition. They were only
three. The arbitrary was totally excluded; and accordingly some hundreds of years passed without a
single example of that kind. When manners were
corrupted, the laws were relaxed; as the latter always follow the former, when they are not able to
regulate them or to vanquish them. Of this circumstance the legislators of vice and crime were pleased
to take notice, as an inducement to adopt their regu
? ? ? ? 314 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
lation: holding out an hope that the permission would
as rarely be made use of. They knew the contrary
to be true; and they had taken good care that the
laws should be well seconded by the manners. Their
law of divorce, like all their laws, had not for its object the relief of domestic uneasiness, but the total
corruption of all morals, the total disconnection of
social life.
It is a matter of curiosity to observe the operation
of this encouragement to disorder. I have before me
the Paris paper correspondent to the usual register
of births, marriages, and deaths. Divorce, happily, is
no regular head of registry amongst civilized nations.
With the Jacobins it is remarkable that divorce is
not only a regular head, but it has the post of honor.
It occupies the first place in the list. In the three
first months of the year 1793 the number of divorces
in that city amounted to 562; the marriages were
1785: so that the proportion of divorces to marriages
was not much less than one to three: a thing unexampled, I believe, among mankind. I caused anll inquiry to be made at Doctors' Commons concerning the number of divorces, and found that all the divorces (which, except by special. act of Parliament, are
separations, and not proper divorces) did not amount
in all those courts, and in an hundred years, to much
more than one fifth of those that passed in the single
city of Paris in three months. I followed up the inquiry relative to that city through several of the subsequent months, until I was tired, and found the proportions still the same. Since then I have heard
that they have declared for a revisal of these laws:
but I know of nothing done. It appears as if the
contract that renovates the world was under no law
? ? ? ? LETTER I. 315
at all. From this we may take our estimate of the
havoc that has been made through all the relations
of life. With the Jacobins of France, vague intercourse is without reproach; marriage is reduced to
the vilest concubinage; children are encouraged to
cut the throats of their parents; mothers are taught
that tenderness is no part of their character, and, to
demonstrate their attachment to their party, that they
ought to make no scruple to rake with their bloody
hands in the bowels of those who came from their
own.
To all this let us join the practice of cannibalism,
with which, in the proper terms, and with the greatest truth, their several factions accuse each other.
By cannibalism I mean their devouring, as a nutriment of their ferocity, some part of the bodies of
those they have murdered, their drinking the blood
of their victims, and forcing the victims themselves
to drink the blood of their kindred slaughtered before
their faces. By cannibalism I mean also to signify
all their nameless, unmanly, and abominable insults
on the bodies of those they slaughter.
As to those whom they suffer to die a natural
death, they do not permit them to enjoy the last
consolations of mankind, or those rights of sepulture
which indicate hope, and. which mere Nature has
taught to mankind, in all countries, to soothe the
afflictions and to cover the infirmity of mortal condition. They disgrace men in the entry into life, they vitiate and enslave them through the whole course
of it, and they deprive them of all comfort at the coInclusion of their dishonored and depraved existence. Endeavoring to persuade the people that they are no
better than beasts, the whole body of their institution
? ? ? ? 316 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
tends to make them beasts of prey, furious and savage. For this purpose the active part of them is disciplined into a ferocity which has no parallel. To this ferocity there is joined not one of the rude, unfashioned virtues which accompany the vices, where
the whole are left to grow up together in the rankness of uncultivated Nature. But nothing is left to
Nature in their systems.
The same discipline which hardens their hearts
relaxes their morals. Whilst courts of justice were
thrust out by revolutionary tribunals, and silent
churches were only the funeral monuments of departed religion, there were no fewer than nineteen
or twenty theatres, great and small, most of them
kept open at the public expense, and all of them
crowded every night. Among the gaunt, haggard
forms of famine and nakedness, amidst the yells of
murder, the tears of affliction, and the cries of despair, the song, the dance, the mimic scene, the buffoon laughter, went on as regularly as in the gay hour of festive peace. I have it from good authority, that under the scaffold of judicial murder, and
the gaping planks that poured down blood on the
spectators, the space was hired out for a show of
dancing dogs. I think, without concert, we have
made the very same remark, on reading some of their
pieces, which, being written for other purposes, let us
into a view of their social life. It struck us that the
habits of Paris had no resemblance to the finished
virtues, or to the polished vice, and elegant, though
not blameless luxury, of the capital of a great em
pire. Their society was more like that of a den of
outlaws upon a doubtful frontier, - of a lewd tavern
for the revels and debauches of banditti, assassins,
? ? ? ? LETTER I. 317
bravoes, smugglers, and their more desperate paramours, mixed with bombastic players, the refilse and rejected offal of strolling theatres, puffing out ill-sorted
verses about virtue, mixed with the licentious and
blasphemous songs proper to the brutal and hardened
course of life belonging to that sort of wretches. This
system of manners in itself is at war with all orderly
and moral society, and is in its neighborhood unsafe.
If great bodies of that kind were anywhere established
in a bordering territory, we should have a right to
demand of their governments the suppression of such
a nuisance. What are we to do, if the government
and the whole community is of the same description?
Yet that government has thought proper to invite
ours to lay by its unjust hatred, and to listen to the
voice of humanity as taught by their example.
The operation of dangerous and delusive first principles obliges us to have recourse to the true ones.
In the intercourse between nations, we are apt to rely too much on the instrumental part. We lay too much weight upon the formality of treaties and compacts. We do not act much more wisely, when we trust to the interests of men as guaranties of their
engagements. The interests frequently tear to pieces the engagements, and the passions trample upon both. Entirely to trust to either is to disregard our
own safety, or not to know mankind. Men are not
tied to one another by papers and seals. They are
led to associate by resemblances, by conformities, by
sympathies. It is with nations as with individuals.
Nothing is so strong a tie of amity between nation
and nation as correspondence in laws, customs, manners, and habits of life. They have more than the force of treaties in themselves. They are obligations
? ? ? ? 318 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
written in the heart. They approximate men to men
without their knowledge, and sometimes against their
intentions. The secret, unseen, but irrefragable bond
of habitual intercourse holds them together, even
when their perverse and litigious nature sets them to
equivocate, scuffle, and fight about the terms of their
written obligations.
As to war, if it be the means of wrong and violence,
it is the sole means of justice amongst nations. Nothing can banish it from the world. They who say otherwise, intending to impose upon us, do not impose upon themselves. But it is one of the greatest objects of human wisdom to mitigate those evils which
we are unable to remove. The conformity and analogy of which I speak, incapable, like everything else,
of preserving perfect trust and tranquillity among
men, has a strong tendency to facilitate accommodation, and to produce a generous oblivion of the rancor of their quarrels. With this similitude, peace is more of peace, and war is less of war. I will go further. There have been periods of time in which communities apparently in peace with each other have been more perfectly separated than in later times
many nations in Europe have been in the course of
long and bloody wars. The cause must be sought in
the similitude throughout Europe of religion, laws,
and manners. At bottom, these are all the same.
The writers on public law have often called this aggregate of nations a commonwealth. They had reason. It is virtually one great state, having the same basis of general law, with some diversity of provincial
customs and local establishments. The nations of
Europe have had the very same Christian religion,
agreeing in the fundamental parts, varying a little
? ? ? ? LETTER I. 319
in the ceremonies and in the subordinate doctrines.
The whole of the polity and economy of every country in Europe has been derived from the same sources.
It was drawn from the old Germanic or Gothic Custumary, - from the feudal institutions, which must
be considered as an emanation from that Custumary;
and the whole has been improved and digested into
system and discipline by the Roman law. From
hence arose the several orders, with or without a
monarch, (which are called States,) in every Euro.
pean country; the strong traces of which, where
monarchy predominated, were never wholly extinguished or merged in despotism. In the few places
where monarchy was cast off, the spirit of European
monarchy was still left. Those countries still continued countries of States, - that is, of classes, orders, and distinctions, such as had before subsisted, or nearly so. Indeed, the force and form of the institution called States continued in greater perfection
in those republican communities than under monarchies. From all those sources arose a system of
manners and of education which was nearly similar
in all this quarter of the globe, - and which softened,
blended, and harmonized the colors of the whole.
There was little difference in the form of the universities for the education of their youth, whether with
regard to faculties, to sciences, or to the more liberal
and elegant kinds of erudition. From this resemblance in the modes of intercourse, and in the whole
form and fashion of life, no citizen of Europe could
be altogether an exile in any part of it. There was
nothing more than a pleasing variety to recreate and
instruct the mind, to enrich the imagination, and
to meliorate the heart. When a man travelled or
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resided, for health, pleasure, business, or necessity,
from his own country, he never felt himself quite
abroad.
The whole body of this new scheme of manners,
in support of the new scheme of politics, I consider
as a strong and decisive proof of determined ambition
and systematic hostility. I defy the most refining
ingenuity to invent any other cause for the total departure of the Jacobin Republic from every one of
the ideas and usages, religious, legal, moral, or social,
of this civilized world, and for her tearing herself
from its communion with such studied violence, but
from a formed resolution of keeping no terms with
that world. It has not been, as has been falsely and
insidiously represented, that these miscreants had
only broke with their old government. They made
a schism with the whole universe, and that schism
extended to almost everything, great and small. For
one, I wish, since it is gone thus far, that the breach
had been so complete as to make all intercourse impracticable: but, partly by accident, partly by design, partly from the resistance of the matter, enough is
left to preserve intercourse, whilst amity is destroyed
or corrupted in its principle.
This violent breach of the community of Europe we
must conclude to have been made (even if they had
not expressly declared it over and over again) either
to force mankind into anl adoption of their system
or to live in perpetual enmity with a community the
most potent we have ever known. Can any person
imagine, that, in offering to mankind this desperate
alternative, there is no indication of a hostile mind,
because men in possession of the ruling authority are
supposed to have a right to act without coercion in
? ? ? ? LETTER I. 321
their own territories? As to the right of men to
act anywhere according to their pleasure, without
any moral tie, no such right exists. Men are never
in a state of total independence of each other. It is
not the condition of our nature: nor is it conceivable
how any man can pursue a considerable course of action without its having some effect upon others, or, of
course, without producing some degree of responsibility for his conduct. The situations in which men relatively stand produce the rules and principles of that responsibility, and afford directions to prudence in exacting it.
Distance of place does not extinguish the duties,
or the rights of men; but it often renders their exercise impracticable. The same circumstance of dis --
tance renders the noxious effects of an evil system
in any community less pernicious. But there are
situations where this difficulty does not occur, and
in which, therefore, these duties are obligatory and
these rights are to be asserted. It has ever been the
method of public jurists to draw a great part of the
analogies on which they form the law of nations from
the principles of law which prevail in civil community. Civil laws are not all of them merely positive.
Those which are rather conclusions of legal reason:
than matters of statutable provision belong to universal equity, and are universally applicable. Almost the whole praetorian law is such. There is a
law of neighborhood which does not leave a man perfect master on his own ground. When a neighbor
sees a new erection, in the nature of a nuisance, set
up at his door, he has a right to represent it to the
judge, who, on his part, has a right to order the work
to be stayed, or, if established, to be removed. On
VOL. V. 21
? ? ? ? 322 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
this head the parent law is express and clear, and
has made many wise provisions, which, without destroying, regulate and restrain the right of ownership
by the right of vicinage. No innovation is permitted
that may redound, even secondarily, to the prejudice
of a neighbor. The whole doctrine of that important
head of prxetorian law, "De novi operis nunciatione,"
is founded on the principle, that no new use should
be made of a man's private liberty of operating upon
his private property, from whence a detriment may
be justly apprehended by his neighbor. This law of
denunciation is prospective. It is to anticipate what
is called damnurn inrfectum or damnum nondum factum,
that is, a damage justly apprehended, but not actually done. Even before it is clearly known whether
the innovation be damageable or not, the judge is
competent to issue'a prohibition to innovate until
the point can be determined. This prompt interference is grounded on principles favorable to both
parties. It is preventive of mischief difficult to be
repaired, and of ill blood difficult to be softened.
The rule of law, therefore, which comes before the
evil is amongst the very best parts of equity, and
justifies the promptness of the remedy; because, as it
is well observed, " Res damni infecti celeritatem desiderat, et periculosa est dilatio. " This right of denunciation does not hold, when things continue, however inconveniently to the neighborhood, according to the
ancient mode. For there is a sort of presumption
against novelty, drawn out of a deep consideration
of human nature and human affairs; and the maxim
of jurisprudence is well laid down, " Vetustas pro lege
semper habetur. "
Such is the law of civil vicinity. Now where there
? ? ? ? LETTER I. 323
is no constituted judge, as between independent states
there is not, the vicinage itself is the natural judge.
It is, preventively, the assertor of its own rights, or,
remedially, their avenger. Neighbors are presumed
to take cognizance of each other's acts. " Vicini vicinorum facta prcesumuntur scire. " This principle,
which, like the rest, is as true of nations as of individual men, has bestowed on the grand vicinage
of Europe a duty to know and a right to prevent
any capital innovation which may amount to the
erection of a dangerous nuisance. * Of the importance of that innovation, and the mischief of that
nuisance, they are, to be sure, bound to judge not
litigiously: but it is in their competence to judge.
They have uniformly acted on this right. What in
civil society is a ground of action in politic society
is a ground of war. But the exercise of that competent jurisdiction is a matter of moral prudence.
As suits in civil society, so war in the political, must
ever be a matter of great deliberation. It is not this
or that particular proceeding, picked out here and
there, as a subject of quarrel, that will do. There
must be an aggregate of mischief. There must be
marks of deliberation; there must be traces of design; there must be indications of malice; there
must be tokens of ambition. There must be force
in the body where they exist; there must be energy
in the mind. When all these circumstances combine,
or the important parts of them, the duty of the vicin* " This state of things cannot exist in France, without involving all the surrounding powers in one common danger,- without giving
them the right, without imposing it upon them as a duty, to stop the
progress of an evil which. . . . attacks the fundamental principles
by which mankind is united in the bonds of civil society. " - Declaration, 29th Oct. , 1793.
? ? ? ? 324 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
ity calls for the exercise of its competence: and the
rules of prudence do not restrain, but demand it.
In describing the nuisance erected by so pestilential a manufactory, by the construction of so infamous a brothel, by digging a night-cellar for such thieves, murderers, and house-breakers as never infested the world, I am so far from aggravating, that
I have fallen infinitely short of the evil. No man
who has attended to the particulars of what has been
done in France, and combined them with the principles there asserted, can possibly doubt it. When
I compare with this great cause of nations the trifling
points of honor, the still more contemptible points of
interest, the light ceremonies, the undefinable punctilios, the disputes about precedency, the lowering or
the hoisting of a sail, the dealing in a hundred or
two of wildcat-skins on the other side of the globe,
which have often kindled up the flames of war between nations, I stand astonished at those persons
who do not feel a resentment, not more natural than
politic, at the atrocious insults that this monstrous
compound offers to the dignity of every nation, and
who are not alarmed with what it threatens to their
safety.
I have therefore been decidedly of opinion, with
our declaration at Whitehall in the beginning of this
war, that the vicinage of Europe had not only a
right, but an indispensable duty and an exigent
interest, to denunciate this new work, before it had
produced the danger we have so sorely felt, and
which we shall long feel. The example of what is
done by France is too important not to have a vast
and extensive influence; and that example, backed
with its power, must bear with great force on those
? ? ? ? LETTER I. 325
who are near it, especially on those who shall recognize the pretended republic on the principle upon which it now stands. It is not an old structure,
which you have found as it is, and are not to dispute
of the original end and design with which it had been
so fashioned. It is a recent wrong, and can plead no
prescription. It violates the rights upon which not
only the community of France, but those on which
all communities are founded. The principles on
which they proceed are general principles, and are
as true in England as in any other country. They
who (though with the purest intentions) recognize
the authority of these regicides and robbers upon
principle justify their acts, and establish them as
precedents. It is a question not between France
and England; it is a question between property and
force. The property claims; and its claim has been
allowed. The property of the nation is the nation.
They who massacre, plunder, and expel the body
of the proprietary are murderers and robbers. The
state, in its essence, must be moral and just: and it
may be so, though a tyrant or usurper should be
accidentally at the head' of it. This is a thing to be
lamented: but this notwithstanding, the body of the
commonwealth may remain in all its integrity and be
perfectly sound in its composition.
the British nation was then a great people, --to
point out how and by what means they came to be
exalted above the vulgar level, and to take that
lead which they assumed among mankind. To qualify us for that preeminence, we had then an high mind and a constancy unconquerable; we were thei
inspired with no flashy passions, but such as were
durable as well as warm, such as corresponded to
the great interests we had at stake. This force of
character was inspired, as all such spirit must ever
be, from above. Government gave the impulse. As
well may we fancy that of itself the sea will swell,
and that without winds the billows will insult the
adverse shore, as that the gross mass of the people
will be moved, and elevated, and continue by a
steady and permanent direction to bear upon one
point, without the influence of superior authority or
superior mind.
This impulse ought, in my opinion, to have been
given in this war; and it ought to have been continued to it at every instant. It is made, if ever war
was made, to touch all the great springs of action in
the human breast. It ought not to have been a war
of apology. The minister had, in this conflict, wherewithal to glory in success, to be consoled in adversity,
? ? ? ? LETTER I. 303
to hold high his principle in all fortunes. If it were
not given him to support the falling edifice, he ought
to bury himself under the ruins of the civilized
world. All the art of Greece and all the pride
and power of Eastern monarchs never heaped upon
their ashes so grand a monument.
There were days when his great mind was up to
the crisis of the world he is called to act in. * His
manly eloquence was equal to the elevated wisdom
of such sentiments. But the little have triumphed
over the great: an unnatural, (as it should seem,)
not an unusual victory. I am sure you cannot forget with how much uneasiness we heard, in conversation, the language of more than one gentleman at the opening of this contest,- " that he was willing to
try the war for a year or two, and, if it did not succeed, then to vote for peace. " As if war was a matter of experiment! As if you could take it up or lay
it down as an idle frolic! As if the dire goddess that
presides over it, with her murderous spear in her
hand and her Gorgon at her breast, was a coquette
to be flirted with! We ought with reverence to
approach that tremendous divinity, that loves courage, but commands counsel. War never leaves where
it found a nation. It is never to be entered into
without a mature deliberation, - not a deliberation
lengthened out into a perplexing indecision, but a
deliberation leading to a sure and fixed judgment.
When so taken up, it is not to be abandoned without
reason as valid, as fully and as extensively considered. Peace may be made as unadvisedly as war.
Nothing is so rash as fear; and the counsels of pusillanimity very rarely put off, whilst they are always
* See the Declaration.
? ? ? ? 304 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
sure to aggravate, the evils from which they would
fly.
In that great war carried on against Louis the Fourteenth for near eighteen years, government spared no pains to satisfy the nation, that, though they were
to be animated by a desire of glory, glory was not
their ultimate object; but that everything dear to
them, in religion, in law, in liberty, everything which
as freemen, as Englishmen, and as citizens of the
great commonwealth of Christendom, they had at
heart, was then at stake. This was to know the
true art of gaining the affections and confidence of
an high-minded people; this was to understand human nature. A danger to avert a danger, a present inconvenience and suffering to prevent a foreseen
future and a worse calamity, - these are the motives
that belong to an animal who in his constitution is
at once adventurous and provident, circumspect and
daring, - whom his Creator has made, as the poet
says, " of large discourse, looking before and after. "
But never can a vehement and sustained spirit of
fortitude be kindled in a people by a war of calculation. It has nothing that can keep the mind erect under the gusts of adversity. Even where men are
willing, as sometimes they are, to barter their blood
for lucre, to hazard their safety for the gratification
of their avarice, the passion which animates them to
that sort of conflict, like all the shortsighted passions,
must see its objects distinct and near at hand. The
passions of the lower order are hungry and impatient. Speculative plunder, - contingent spoil, - future, long adjourned, uncertain booty, - pillage
which must enrich a late posterity, and which possibly may not reach to posterity at all, - these, for
? ? ? ? LETTER I. 305
any length of time, will never support a mercenary
war. The people are in the right. The calculation
of profit in all such wars is false. On balancing the
account of such wars, ten thousand hogsheads of
sugar are purchased at ten thousand times their
price. The blood of man should never be shed but
to redeem the blood of man. It is well shed for our
family, for our friends, for our God, for our country,
for our kind. The rest is vanity; the rest is crime.
In the war of the Grand Alliance most of these
considerations voluntarily and naturally had their
part. Some were pressed into the service. The political interest easily went in the track of the natural sentiment. In the reverse course the carriage does not follow freely. I am sure the natural feeling,
as I have just said, is a far more predominant ingredient in this war than in that of any other that ever
was waged by this kingdom.
If the war made to prevent the union of two,
crowns upon one head was a just war, this, which is
made to prevent the tearing all crowns from all heads
which ought to wear them, and with the crowns to
smite off the sacred heads themselves, this is a just,
war.
If a war to prevent Louis the Fourteenth from imposing his religion was just, a war to prevent the
murderers of Louis the Sixteenth from imposing their
irreligion upon us is just: a war to prevent the, operation of a system which makes life without dignity
and death without hope is a just war.
If to preserve political independence and civil freedom to nations was a just ground of war, a war to
preserve national independence, property, liberty, life,
and honor from certain universal havoc is a war just,
VOL. V. 20
? ? ? ? 206 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
necessary, manly, pious; and we are bound to persevere in it by every principle, divine and human, as long as the system which menaces them all, and all
equally, has an existence in the world.
You, who have looked at this matter with as fair
and impartial an eye as can be united with a feeling
heart, you will not think it an hardy assertion, when
I affirm that it were far better to be conquered by
any other nation than to have this faction for a neighbor. Before I felt myself authorized to say this, I considered the state of all the countries in Europe
for these last three hundred years, which have been
obliged to submit to a foreign law. In most of those
I found the condition of the annexed countries even
better, certainly not worse, than the lot of those which
were the patrimony of the conqueror. They wanted
some blessings, but they were free from many very
great evils. They were rich and tranquil. Such was
Artois, Flanders, Lorraine, Alsatia, under the old
government of France. Such was Silesia under the
King of Prussia. They who are to live in the vicinity of this new fabric are to prepare to live in perpetual conspiracies and seditions, and to end at last in being
conquered, if not to her dominion, to her resemblance.
But when we talk of conquest by other nations, it is
only to put a case. This is the only power in Europe
by which it is possible we should be conquered. To
live under the continual dread of such immeasurable
evils is itself a grievous calamity. To live without
the dread of them is to turn the danger into the disaster. The influence' of such a France is equal to a war, its example more wasting than an hostile irruption. The hostility with any other power is separable and accidental: this power, by the very condition of
? ? ? ? LETTER I. 307
its existence, by its very essential constitution, is in a
state of hostility with us, and with all civilized people. *
A government of the nature of that set up at our
very door has never been hitherto seen or even imagined in Europe. ~ What our relation to it will be
cannot be judged by other relations. It is a serious
thing to have a connection with a people who live only
under positive, arbitrary, and changeable institutions,
- and those not perfected nor supplied nor explained
by any common, acknowledged rule of moral science.
I remember, that, in one of my last conversations
with the late Lord Camden, we were struck much in
the same manner with the abolition in France of the
law as a science of methodized and artificial equity.
France, since her Revolution, is under the sway of a
sect whose leaders have deliberately, at one stroke,
demolished the whole body of that jurisprudence
which France had pretty nearly in common with other civilized countries. In that jurisprudence were
contained the elements and principles of the law of
nations, the great ligament of mankind. With the
law they have of course destroyed all seminaries in
which jurisprudence was taught, as well as all the
corporations established for its conservation. I have
not heard of any country, whether in Europe or Asia,
or even in Africa on this side of Mount Atlas, which
is wholly without some such colleges and such corporations, except France. No man, in a public or private concern, can divine by what rule or principle her judgments are to be directed: nor is there to be
found a professor in any university, or a practitioner
in any court, who will hazard an opinion of what is
* See Declaration, Whitehall, October 29, 1793.
? ? ? ? 308 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
or is not law in France, in any case whatever. They
have not only annulled all their old treaties, but they
have renounced the law of nations, from whence
treaties have their force. With a fixed design they
have outlawed themselves, and to their power outlawed all other nations.
Instead of the religion and the law by which they
were in a great'politic communion with the Christian
world, they have constructed their republic on three
bases, all fundamentally opposite to those on which
the communities of Europe are built. Its foundation
is laid in Regicide, in Jacobinism, and in Atheism;
and it has joined to those principles a body of systematic manners which secures their operation.
If I am asked how I would be understood in the
use of these terms, Regicide, Jacobinism, Atheism,
and a system of correspondent manners, and their
establishment, I will tell you.
I call a commonwealth Regicide which lays it
down as a fixed law of Nature and a fundamental
right of man, that all government, not being a democracy, is an usurpation,* - that all kings, as such,
are usurpers, and, for being kings, may and ought to
be put to death, with their wives, families, and adherents. The commonwealth' which acts uniformly
upon those principles, and which, after abolishing
* Nothing could be more solemn than their promulgation of this
principle, as a preamble to the destructive code of their famous articles for the decomposition of society, into whatever country they should enter. ('La Convention Nationale, apres avoir entendu le
rapport de ses comites de finances, de la guerre, et diplomatiques
reunis, fidble au principe de souverainete de peuples, qui ne lui permet pas
de reconnoitre aucune institution qui y porte atteinte," &c. , &c. --Decret
sur le Rapport de Cambon, Dec. 18, 1792. And see the subsequent
proclamation.
? ? ? ? LETTER I. 309
every festival of religion, chooses the most flagrant
act of a murderous regicide treason for a feast of
eternal commemoration, and which forces all her
people to observe it, --this. I call Regicide by Establishment.
Jacobinism is the revolt of the enterprising talents
of a country against its property. When private men
form themselves into associations for the purpose of
destroying the preexisting laws and institutions of
their country, -- when they secure to themselves an
army by dividing amongst the people of no property
the estates of the ancient and lawful proprietors,when a state recognizes those acts, -- when it does
not make confiscations for crimes, but makes crimes
for confiscations, - when it has its principal strength
and all its resources in such a violation of property,
- when it stands chiefly upon such a violation, massacring by judgments, or otherwise, those who make
any struggle for their old legal government, and their
legal, hereditary, or acquired possessions, -- I call
this Jacobinism by Establishment.
I call it Atheism by Establishment, when any state,
as such, shall not acknowledge the existence of God
as a moral governor of the world, -when it shall
offer to Him no religious or moral worship, - when
it shall abolish the Christian religion by a regular
decree, -when it shall persecute, with a cold, unrelenting, steady cruelty, by every mode of confiscation, imprisonment, exile, and death, all its ministers, - when it shall generally shut up or pull down churches, -- when the few buildings which remain
of this kind shall be opened only for the purpose of
making a profane apotheosis of monsters whose vices
and crimes have no parallel amongst men, and whom
? ? ? ? 310 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
all other men consider as objects of general detestation and the severest animadversion of law. When,
in the place of that religion of social benevolence and
of individual self-denial, in mockery of all religion,
they institute impious, blasphemous, indecent theatric rites, in honor of their vitiated, perverted reason,
and erect altars to the personification of their own
corrupted and bloody republic, -when schools and
seminaries are founded at public expense to poison
mankind, from generation to generation, with the
horrible maxims of this impiety, -- when, wearied out
with incessant martyrdom, and the cries of a people
hungering and thirsting for religion, they permit it
only as a tolerated evil, - I call this Atheism by Establishment.
When to these establishments of Regicide, of Jacobinism, and of Atheism, you add the correspondent
system of manners, no doubt can be left on the mind
of a thinking man concerning their determined hostility to the human race. Manners are of more importance than laws. Upon them, in a great measure,
the laws depend. Tile law touches us but lere and
tllere, and now and theCl. MIanners are what vex or
soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize
or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe in.
They give their whole form and color to our lives.
According to their quality, they aid morals, they
supply them, or they totally destroy them. Of this
the new French legislators were aware; therefore,
with the same method, and under the same authority, they settled a system of manners, the most licentious, prostitute, and abandoned that ever has been known, and at the same time the most coarse, rude,
? ? ? ? LETTER I. 311
savage, and ferocious. Nothing in the Revolution,
no, not to a phrase or a gesture, not to the fashion
of a hat or a shoe, was left to accident. All has been
the result of design; all has been matter of institution. No mechanical means could be devised in favor of this incredible system of wickedness and vice, that has not been employed. The noblest passions,
the love of glory, the love of country, have been
debauched into means of its preservation and its
propagation. All sorts of shows and exhibitions,
calculated to inflame and vitiate the imagination and
pervert the moral sense, have been contrived. They
have sometimes brought forth five or six hundred
drunken women calling at the bar of the Assembly for
the blood of their own children, as being Royalists or
Constitutionalists. Sometimes they have got a body
of wretches, calling themselves fathers, to demand
the murder of their sons, boasting that Rome had
but one Brutus, but that they could show five hundred. There were instances in which they inverted
and retaliated the impiety, and produced sons who
called for the execution of their parents. The foundation of their republic is laid in moral paradoxes.
Their patriotism is always prodigy. All those instances to be found in history, whether real or fabulous, of a doubtful public spirit, at which morality
is perplexed, reason is staggered, and from which
aftrighted Nature recoils, are their chosen and almost
sole examples for the instruction of their youth.
The whole drift of their institution is contrary to
that of the wise legislators of all countries, who aimed
at improving instincts into morals, and at grafting the
virtues on the stock of the natural affections. They,
on the contrary, have omitted no pains to eradicate
? ? ? ? 312 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
every benevolent and noble propensity in the mind
of men. In their culture it is a rule always to graft
virtues on vices. They think everything unworthy
of the name of public virtue, unless it indicates violence on the private. All their new institutions (and
with them everything is new) strike at the root of
our social nature. Other legislators, knowing that
marriage is the origin of all relations, and consequently the first element of all duties, have endeavored by every art to make it sacred. The Christian religion, by confining it to the pairs, and by rendering that relation indissoluble, has by these two things
done more towards the peace, happiness, settlement,
and civilization of the world than by any other part
in this whole scheme of Divine wisdom. The direct
contrary course has been taken in the synagogue of
Antichrist, - I mean in that forge and manufactory
of all evil, the sect which predominated in the Constituent Assembly of 1789. Those monsters employed
the same or greater industry to desecrate and degrade that state, which other legislators have used
to render it holy and honorable. By a strange, uncalled-for declaration, they pronounced that marriage
was no better than a common civil contract. It was
one of their ordinary tricks, to put their sentiments
into the mouths of certain personated characters,
which they theatrically exhibited at the bar of what
ought to be a serious assembly. One of these was
brought out in the figure of a prostitute, whom they
called by the affected name of " a mother without
being a wife. " This creature they made to call for
a repeal of the incapacities which in civilized states
are put upon bastards. The prostitutes of the Assembly gave to this their puppet the sanction of their
? ? ? ? LETTER I. 313
greater impudence. In consequence of the principles laid down, and the manners authorized, bastards
were not long after put on the footing of the issue of
lawful unions. Proceeding in the spirit of the first
authors of. their Constitution, succeeding Assemblies
went the full length of the principle, and gave a license to divorce at the mere pleasure of either party,
and at a month's notice. With them the matrimonial connection is brought into so degraded a state of
concubinage, that I believe none of the wretches in
London who keep warehouses of infamy would give
out one of their victims to private custody on so short
and insolent a tenure. There was, indeed, a kind of
profligate equity in giving to women the same licentious power. The reason they assigned was as infamous as the act: declaring that women had been too long under the tyranny of parents and of husbands.
It is not necessary to observe upon the horrible consequences of taking one half of the species wholly out
of the guardianship and protection of the other.
The practice of divorce, though in some countries
permitted, has been discouraged in all. In the East,
polygamy and divorce are in discredit; and the manners correct the laws. In Rome, whilst Rome was
in its integrity, the few causes allowed for divorce
amounted in effect to a prohibition. They were only
three. The arbitrary was totally excluded; and accordingly some hundreds of years passed without a
single example of that kind. When manners were
corrupted, the laws were relaxed; as the latter always follow the former, when they are not able to
regulate them or to vanquish them. Of this circumstance the legislators of vice and crime were pleased
to take notice, as an inducement to adopt their regu
? ? ? ? 314 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
lation: holding out an hope that the permission would
as rarely be made use of. They knew the contrary
to be true; and they had taken good care that the
laws should be well seconded by the manners. Their
law of divorce, like all their laws, had not for its object the relief of domestic uneasiness, but the total
corruption of all morals, the total disconnection of
social life.
It is a matter of curiosity to observe the operation
of this encouragement to disorder. I have before me
the Paris paper correspondent to the usual register
of births, marriages, and deaths. Divorce, happily, is
no regular head of registry amongst civilized nations.
With the Jacobins it is remarkable that divorce is
not only a regular head, but it has the post of honor.
It occupies the first place in the list. In the three
first months of the year 1793 the number of divorces
in that city amounted to 562; the marriages were
1785: so that the proportion of divorces to marriages
was not much less than one to three: a thing unexampled, I believe, among mankind. I caused anll inquiry to be made at Doctors' Commons concerning the number of divorces, and found that all the divorces (which, except by special. act of Parliament, are
separations, and not proper divorces) did not amount
in all those courts, and in an hundred years, to much
more than one fifth of those that passed in the single
city of Paris in three months. I followed up the inquiry relative to that city through several of the subsequent months, until I was tired, and found the proportions still the same. Since then I have heard
that they have declared for a revisal of these laws:
but I know of nothing done. It appears as if the
contract that renovates the world was under no law
? ? ? ? LETTER I. 315
at all. From this we may take our estimate of the
havoc that has been made through all the relations
of life. With the Jacobins of France, vague intercourse is without reproach; marriage is reduced to
the vilest concubinage; children are encouraged to
cut the throats of their parents; mothers are taught
that tenderness is no part of their character, and, to
demonstrate their attachment to their party, that they
ought to make no scruple to rake with their bloody
hands in the bowels of those who came from their
own.
To all this let us join the practice of cannibalism,
with which, in the proper terms, and with the greatest truth, their several factions accuse each other.
By cannibalism I mean their devouring, as a nutriment of their ferocity, some part of the bodies of
those they have murdered, their drinking the blood
of their victims, and forcing the victims themselves
to drink the blood of their kindred slaughtered before
their faces. By cannibalism I mean also to signify
all their nameless, unmanly, and abominable insults
on the bodies of those they slaughter.
As to those whom they suffer to die a natural
death, they do not permit them to enjoy the last
consolations of mankind, or those rights of sepulture
which indicate hope, and. which mere Nature has
taught to mankind, in all countries, to soothe the
afflictions and to cover the infirmity of mortal condition. They disgrace men in the entry into life, they vitiate and enslave them through the whole course
of it, and they deprive them of all comfort at the coInclusion of their dishonored and depraved existence. Endeavoring to persuade the people that they are no
better than beasts, the whole body of their institution
? ? ? ? 316 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
tends to make them beasts of prey, furious and savage. For this purpose the active part of them is disciplined into a ferocity which has no parallel. To this ferocity there is joined not one of the rude, unfashioned virtues which accompany the vices, where
the whole are left to grow up together in the rankness of uncultivated Nature. But nothing is left to
Nature in their systems.
The same discipline which hardens their hearts
relaxes their morals. Whilst courts of justice were
thrust out by revolutionary tribunals, and silent
churches were only the funeral monuments of departed religion, there were no fewer than nineteen
or twenty theatres, great and small, most of them
kept open at the public expense, and all of them
crowded every night. Among the gaunt, haggard
forms of famine and nakedness, amidst the yells of
murder, the tears of affliction, and the cries of despair, the song, the dance, the mimic scene, the buffoon laughter, went on as regularly as in the gay hour of festive peace. I have it from good authority, that under the scaffold of judicial murder, and
the gaping planks that poured down blood on the
spectators, the space was hired out for a show of
dancing dogs. I think, without concert, we have
made the very same remark, on reading some of their
pieces, which, being written for other purposes, let us
into a view of their social life. It struck us that the
habits of Paris had no resemblance to the finished
virtues, or to the polished vice, and elegant, though
not blameless luxury, of the capital of a great em
pire. Their society was more like that of a den of
outlaws upon a doubtful frontier, - of a lewd tavern
for the revels and debauches of banditti, assassins,
? ? ? ? LETTER I. 317
bravoes, smugglers, and their more desperate paramours, mixed with bombastic players, the refilse and rejected offal of strolling theatres, puffing out ill-sorted
verses about virtue, mixed with the licentious and
blasphemous songs proper to the brutal and hardened
course of life belonging to that sort of wretches. This
system of manners in itself is at war with all orderly
and moral society, and is in its neighborhood unsafe.
If great bodies of that kind were anywhere established
in a bordering territory, we should have a right to
demand of their governments the suppression of such
a nuisance. What are we to do, if the government
and the whole community is of the same description?
Yet that government has thought proper to invite
ours to lay by its unjust hatred, and to listen to the
voice of humanity as taught by their example.
The operation of dangerous and delusive first principles obliges us to have recourse to the true ones.
In the intercourse between nations, we are apt to rely too much on the instrumental part. We lay too much weight upon the formality of treaties and compacts. We do not act much more wisely, when we trust to the interests of men as guaranties of their
engagements. The interests frequently tear to pieces the engagements, and the passions trample upon both. Entirely to trust to either is to disregard our
own safety, or not to know mankind. Men are not
tied to one another by papers and seals. They are
led to associate by resemblances, by conformities, by
sympathies. It is with nations as with individuals.
Nothing is so strong a tie of amity between nation
and nation as correspondence in laws, customs, manners, and habits of life. They have more than the force of treaties in themselves. They are obligations
? ? ? ? 318 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
written in the heart. They approximate men to men
without their knowledge, and sometimes against their
intentions. The secret, unseen, but irrefragable bond
of habitual intercourse holds them together, even
when their perverse and litigious nature sets them to
equivocate, scuffle, and fight about the terms of their
written obligations.
As to war, if it be the means of wrong and violence,
it is the sole means of justice amongst nations. Nothing can banish it from the world. They who say otherwise, intending to impose upon us, do not impose upon themselves. But it is one of the greatest objects of human wisdom to mitigate those evils which
we are unable to remove. The conformity and analogy of which I speak, incapable, like everything else,
of preserving perfect trust and tranquillity among
men, has a strong tendency to facilitate accommodation, and to produce a generous oblivion of the rancor of their quarrels. With this similitude, peace is more of peace, and war is less of war. I will go further. There have been periods of time in which communities apparently in peace with each other have been more perfectly separated than in later times
many nations in Europe have been in the course of
long and bloody wars. The cause must be sought in
the similitude throughout Europe of religion, laws,
and manners. At bottom, these are all the same.
The writers on public law have often called this aggregate of nations a commonwealth. They had reason. It is virtually one great state, having the same basis of general law, with some diversity of provincial
customs and local establishments. The nations of
Europe have had the very same Christian religion,
agreeing in the fundamental parts, varying a little
? ? ? ? LETTER I. 319
in the ceremonies and in the subordinate doctrines.
The whole of the polity and economy of every country in Europe has been derived from the same sources.
It was drawn from the old Germanic or Gothic Custumary, - from the feudal institutions, which must
be considered as an emanation from that Custumary;
and the whole has been improved and digested into
system and discipline by the Roman law. From
hence arose the several orders, with or without a
monarch, (which are called States,) in every Euro.
pean country; the strong traces of which, where
monarchy predominated, were never wholly extinguished or merged in despotism. In the few places
where monarchy was cast off, the spirit of European
monarchy was still left. Those countries still continued countries of States, - that is, of classes, orders, and distinctions, such as had before subsisted, or nearly so. Indeed, the force and form of the institution called States continued in greater perfection
in those republican communities than under monarchies. From all those sources arose a system of
manners and of education which was nearly similar
in all this quarter of the globe, - and which softened,
blended, and harmonized the colors of the whole.
There was little difference in the form of the universities for the education of their youth, whether with
regard to faculties, to sciences, or to the more liberal
and elegant kinds of erudition. From this resemblance in the modes of intercourse, and in the whole
form and fashion of life, no citizen of Europe could
be altogether an exile in any part of it. There was
nothing more than a pleasing variety to recreate and
instruct the mind, to enrich the imagination, and
to meliorate the heart. When a man travelled or
? ? ? ? 320 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
resided, for health, pleasure, business, or necessity,
from his own country, he never felt himself quite
abroad.
The whole body of this new scheme of manners,
in support of the new scheme of politics, I consider
as a strong and decisive proof of determined ambition
and systematic hostility. I defy the most refining
ingenuity to invent any other cause for the total departure of the Jacobin Republic from every one of
the ideas and usages, religious, legal, moral, or social,
of this civilized world, and for her tearing herself
from its communion with such studied violence, but
from a formed resolution of keeping no terms with
that world. It has not been, as has been falsely and
insidiously represented, that these miscreants had
only broke with their old government. They made
a schism with the whole universe, and that schism
extended to almost everything, great and small. For
one, I wish, since it is gone thus far, that the breach
had been so complete as to make all intercourse impracticable: but, partly by accident, partly by design, partly from the resistance of the matter, enough is
left to preserve intercourse, whilst amity is destroyed
or corrupted in its principle.
This violent breach of the community of Europe we
must conclude to have been made (even if they had
not expressly declared it over and over again) either
to force mankind into anl adoption of their system
or to live in perpetual enmity with a community the
most potent we have ever known. Can any person
imagine, that, in offering to mankind this desperate
alternative, there is no indication of a hostile mind,
because men in possession of the ruling authority are
supposed to have a right to act without coercion in
? ? ? ? LETTER I. 321
their own territories? As to the right of men to
act anywhere according to their pleasure, without
any moral tie, no such right exists. Men are never
in a state of total independence of each other. It is
not the condition of our nature: nor is it conceivable
how any man can pursue a considerable course of action without its having some effect upon others, or, of
course, without producing some degree of responsibility for his conduct. The situations in which men relatively stand produce the rules and principles of that responsibility, and afford directions to prudence in exacting it.
Distance of place does not extinguish the duties,
or the rights of men; but it often renders their exercise impracticable. The same circumstance of dis --
tance renders the noxious effects of an evil system
in any community less pernicious. But there are
situations where this difficulty does not occur, and
in which, therefore, these duties are obligatory and
these rights are to be asserted. It has ever been the
method of public jurists to draw a great part of the
analogies on which they form the law of nations from
the principles of law which prevail in civil community. Civil laws are not all of them merely positive.
Those which are rather conclusions of legal reason:
than matters of statutable provision belong to universal equity, and are universally applicable. Almost the whole praetorian law is such. There is a
law of neighborhood which does not leave a man perfect master on his own ground. When a neighbor
sees a new erection, in the nature of a nuisance, set
up at his door, he has a right to represent it to the
judge, who, on his part, has a right to order the work
to be stayed, or, if established, to be removed. On
VOL. V. 21
? ? ? ? 322 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
this head the parent law is express and clear, and
has made many wise provisions, which, without destroying, regulate and restrain the right of ownership
by the right of vicinage. No innovation is permitted
that may redound, even secondarily, to the prejudice
of a neighbor. The whole doctrine of that important
head of prxetorian law, "De novi operis nunciatione,"
is founded on the principle, that no new use should
be made of a man's private liberty of operating upon
his private property, from whence a detriment may
be justly apprehended by his neighbor. This law of
denunciation is prospective. It is to anticipate what
is called damnurn inrfectum or damnum nondum factum,
that is, a damage justly apprehended, but not actually done. Even before it is clearly known whether
the innovation be damageable or not, the judge is
competent to issue'a prohibition to innovate until
the point can be determined. This prompt interference is grounded on principles favorable to both
parties. It is preventive of mischief difficult to be
repaired, and of ill blood difficult to be softened.
The rule of law, therefore, which comes before the
evil is amongst the very best parts of equity, and
justifies the promptness of the remedy; because, as it
is well observed, " Res damni infecti celeritatem desiderat, et periculosa est dilatio. " This right of denunciation does not hold, when things continue, however inconveniently to the neighborhood, according to the
ancient mode. For there is a sort of presumption
against novelty, drawn out of a deep consideration
of human nature and human affairs; and the maxim
of jurisprudence is well laid down, " Vetustas pro lege
semper habetur. "
Such is the law of civil vicinity. Now where there
? ? ? ? LETTER I. 323
is no constituted judge, as between independent states
there is not, the vicinage itself is the natural judge.
It is, preventively, the assertor of its own rights, or,
remedially, their avenger. Neighbors are presumed
to take cognizance of each other's acts. " Vicini vicinorum facta prcesumuntur scire. " This principle,
which, like the rest, is as true of nations as of individual men, has bestowed on the grand vicinage
of Europe a duty to know and a right to prevent
any capital innovation which may amount to the
erection of a dangerous nuisance. * Of the importance of that innovation, and the mischief of that
nuisance, they are, to be sure, bound to judge not
litigiously: but it is in their competence to judge.
They have uniformly acted on this right. What in
civil society is a ground of action in politic society
is a ground of war. But the exercise of that competent jurisdiction is a matter of moral prudence.
As suits in civil society, so war in the political, must
ever be a matter of great deliberation. It is not this
or that particular proceeding, picked out here and
there, as a subject of quarrel, that will do. There
must be an aggregate of mischief. There must be
marks of deliberation; there must be traces of design; there must be indications of malice; there
must be tokens of ambition. There must be force
in the body where they exist; there must be energy
in the mind. When all these circumstances combine,
or the important parts of them, the duty of the vicin* " This state of things cannot exist in France, without involving all the surrounding powers in one common danger,- without giving
them the right, without imposing it upon them as a duty, to stop the
progress of an evil which. . . . attacks the fundamental principles
by which mankind is united in the bonds of civil society. " - Declaration, 29th Oct. , 1793.
? ? ? ? 324 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
ity calls for the exercise of its competence: and the
rules of prudence do not restrain, but demand it.
In describing the nuisance erected by so pestilential a manufactory, by the construction of so infamous a brothel, by digging a night-cellar for such thieves, murderers, and house-breakers as never infested the world, I am so far from aggravating, that
I have fallen infinitely short of the evil. No man
who has attended to the particulars of what has been
done in France, and combined them with the principles there asserted, can possibly doubt it. When
I compare with this great cause of nations the trifling
points of honor, the still more contemptible points of
interest, the light ceremonies, the undefinable punctilios, the disputes about precedency, the lowering or
the hoisting of a sail, the dealing in a hundred or
two of wildcat-skins on the other side of the globe,
which have often kindled up the flames of war between nations, I stand astonished at those persons
who do not feel a resentment, not more natural than
politic, at the atrocious insults that this monstrous
compound offers to the dignity of every nation, and
who are not alarmed with what it threatens to their
safety.
I have therefore been decidedly of opinion, with
our declaration at Whitehall in the beginning of this
war, that the vicinage of Europe had not only a
right, but an indispensable duty and an exigent
interest, to denunciate this new work, before it had
produced the danger we have so sorely felt, and
which we shall long feel. The example of what is
done by France is too important not to have a vast
and extensive influence; and that example, backed
with its power, must bear with great force on those
? ? ? ? LETTER I. 325
who are near it, especially on those who shall recognize the pretended republic on the principle upon which it now stands. It is not an old structure,
which you have found as it is, and are not to dispute
of the original end and design with which it had been
so fashioned. It is a recent wrong, and can plead no
prescription. It violates the rights upon which not
only the community of France, but those on which
all communities are founded. The principles on
which they proceed are general principles, and are
as true in England as in any other country. They
who (though with the purest intentions) recognize
the authority of these regicides and robbers upon
principle justify their acts, and establish them as
precedents. It is a question not between France
and England; it is a question between property and
force. The property claims; and its claim has been
allowed. The property of the nation is the nation.
They who massacre, plunder, and expel the body
of the proprietary are murderers and robbers. The
state, in its essence, must be moral and just: and it
may be so, though a tyrant or usurper should be
accidentally at the head' of it. This is a thing to be
lamented: but this notwithstanding, the body of the
commonwealth may remain in all its integrity and be
perfectly sound in its composition.
