The majority, the other four fifths, is perfectly
sound, and of the best possible disposition to religion,
to government, to the true and undivided interest of
their country.
sound, and of the best possible disposition to religion,
to government, to the true and undivided interest of
their country.
Edmund Burke
274 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
question is not, how we are to be affected with it in
regard to our dignity. That is gone. I shall say
no more about it. Light lie the earth on the ashes
of English pride! I shall only observe upon it politically, and as furnishing a direction for our own conduct in this low business.
The very idea of a negotiation for peace, whatever
the inward sentiments of the parties may be, implies
some confidence in their faith, some degree of belief
in the professions which are made concerning it. A
temporary and occasional credit, at least, is granted.
Otherwise men stumble on the very threshold. I
therefore wish to ask what hope we can have of their
good faith, who, as the very basis of the negotiation,
assume the ill faith and treachery of those they have
to deal with? The terms, as against us, must be
such as imply a full security against a treacherous
conduct, - that is, such terms as this Directory stated in its first declaration, to place us " in an utter
impossibility of executing our wretched projects. "
This is the omen, and the sole omen, under which
we have consented to open our treaty.
The second observation I have to make upon it
(much connected, undoubtedly, with the first) is,
that they have informed you of the result they propose from the kind of peace they mean to grant you,
-- that is to say, the union they propose among nations with the view of rivalling our trade and destroying our naval power; and this they suppose (and with good reason, too) must be the inevitable
effect of their peace. It forms one of their principal
grounds for suspecting our ministers could not be
in good earnest in their proposition. They make no
scruple beforehand to tell you the whole of what
? ? ? ? LETTER I. 275.
they intend; and this is what we call, in the modern style, the acceptance of a proposition for peace! In old language it would be called a most hhughty,
offensive, and insolent rejection of all treaty.
Thirdly, they tell you what they conceive to be the
perfidious policy which dictates your delusive offer:
that is, the design of cheating not only them, but the
people of England, against whose interest and inclination this war is supposed to be carried on.
If we proceed in this business, under this preliminary declaration, it seems to me that we admit,
(now for the third time,) by something a great deal
stronger than words, the truth of the charges of
every kind which they make upon the British ministry, and the grounds of those foul imputations.
The language used by us, which in other circumstances would not be exceptionable, in this case tends very strongly to confirm and realize the suspicion
of our enemy: I mean the declaration, that, if we
do not obtain such terms of peace as suits our
opinion of what our interests require, then, and in
that case, we shall continue the war with vigor. This
offer, so reasoned, plainly implies, that, without it,
our leaders themselves entertain great doubts of the
opinion and good affections of the British people;
otherwise there does not appear any cause why we
should proceed, under the scandalous construction
of our enemy, upon the former offer made by Mr.
Wickham, and on the new offer made directly at
Paris. It is not, therefore, from a sense of dignity,
but from the danger of radicating that false sentiment in the breasts of the enemy, that I think, under the auspices of this declaration, we cannot, with the
least hope of a good event, or, indeed, with any
? ? ? ? 276 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
regard to the common safety, proceed in the train
of this negotiation. I wish ministry would seriously
consider the importance of their seeming to confirm
the enemy in an opinion that his frequent use of
appeals to the people against their government has
not been without its effect. If it puts an end to
this war, it will render another impracticable.
Whoever goes to the Directorial presence under
this passport, with this offensive comment and foul
explanation, goes, in the avowed sense of the court
to which he is sent, as the instrument of a government dissociated from the interests and wishes of the nation, for the purpose of cheating both the people
of France and the people of England. He goes out
the declared emissary of a faithless ministry. He
has perfidy for his credentials. He has national
weakness for his full powers. I yet doubt whether
any one can be found to invest himself with that
character. If there should, it would be pleasant' to
read his instructions on the answer which he is to
give to the Directory, in case they should repeat to
him the substance of the manifesto which he carries
with him in his portfolio.
So much for the first manifesto of the Regicide
Court which went along with the passport. Lest this
declaration should seem the effect of haste, or a mere
sudden effusion of pride and insolence, on full deliberation, about a week after comes out a second. This manifesto is dated the 5th of October, one day
before the speech from the throne, on the vigil of the
festive day of cordial unanimity so happily celebrated by all parties in the British Parliament. In this piece the Regicides, our worthy friends, (I call them
by advance and by courtesy what by law I shall be
? ? ? ? LETTER I. 277
obliged to call them hereafter,) our worthy friends,
I say, renew and enforce the former declaration concerning our faith and sincerity, which they pinned
to our passport. On three other points, which run
through all their declarations, they are more explicit
than ever.
First, they more directly undertake to be the real
representatives of the people of this kingdom: and
on a supposition, in which they agree with our Parliamentary reformers, that the House of Commons is
not that representative, the function being vacant,
they, as our true constitutional organ, inform his
Majesty and the world of the sense of the nation.
They tell us that " the English people see with regret
his Majesty's government squandering away the funds
which had been granted to him. " This astonishing
assumption of the public voice of England is but a
slight foretaste of the usurpation which, on a peace,
we may be assured they will make of all the powers
in all the parts of our vassal Constitution. " If they
do these things in the green tree, what shall be done
in the dry? "
Next they tell us, as a condition to our treaty, that
" this government must abjure the unjust hatred it
bears to them, and at last open its ears to the voice
of humanity. " Truly, this is, even from them, an
extraordinary demand. Hitherto, it seems, we have
put wax into our ears, to shut them up against the
tender, soothing strains, in the affettuoso of humanity, warbled from the throats of Reubell, Carnot, Tallien, and the whole chorus of confiscators, domiciliary visitors, committee-men of research, jurors and presidents of revolutionary tribunals, regicides, assassins, massacrers, and Septembrisers. It is not difficult
? ? ? ? 278 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
to discern what sort of humanity our government is
to learn from these Siren singers. Our government
also, I admit, with some reason, as a step towards
the proposed fraternity, is required to abjure the
unjust hatred which it bears to this body of honor
and virtue. I thank God I am neither a minister
nor a leader of opposition. I protest I cannot do
what they desire. I could not do it, if I were under
the guillotine, -- or, as they ingeniously and pleasantly express it, "looking out of the little national
window. " Even at that opening I could receive
none of their light. I am fortified against all such
affections by the declaration of the government,
which I must yet consider as lawful, made on the
29th of October, 1793,* and still ringing in my ears.
* "In their place has succeeded a system destructive of all public
order, maintained by proscriptions, exiles, and confiscations without
number, - by arbitrary imprisonments, - by massacres which cannot
be remembered without horror, -and at length by the execrable
murder of a just and beneficent sovereign, and of the illustrious
princess, who with an unshaken firmness has shared all the misfortunes of her royal consort, his protracted sufferings, his cruel captivity, his ignominious death. " -- They [the Allies] have had to encounter acts of aggression without pretext, open violations of all
treaties, unprovoked declarations of war, -in a word, whatever corruption, intrigue, or violence could effect, for the purpose, so openly
avowed, of subverting all the institutions of society, and of extending
over all the nations of Europe that confusion which has produced the
misery of France. 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 exists only by the successive violation of all law and all property, and which attacks the fundamental principles by which mankind is united in the bonds of civil society. " -- "The king would propose none other than equitable and
moderate conditions: not such as the expenses, the risks, and the
sacrifices of the war might justify, but such as his Majesty thinks
? ? ? ? LETTER I. 279
This Declaration was transmitted not only to all our
commanders by sea and land, but to our ministers
in every court of Europe. It is the most eloquent
and highly finished in the style, the most judicious
in the choice of topics, the most orderly in the
arrangement, and the most rich in the coloring,
without employing the smallest degree of exaggera
tion, of any state-paper that has ever yet appeared.
An ancient writer (Plutarch, I think it is) quotes
some verses on the eloquence of Pericles, who is
called " the only orator that left stings in the minds
of his hearers. " Like his, the eloquence of the
Declaration, not contradicting, but enforcing, sentihimself under the indispensable necessity of requiring, with a view to
these considerations, and still more to that of his own security and of
the future tranquillity of Europe. His Majesty desires nothing more
sincerely than thus to terminate a war which he in vain endeavored
to avoid, and all the calamities of which, as now experienced by
France, are to be attributed only to the ambition, the perfidy, and the
violence of those whose crimes have involved their own country in
misery and disgraced all civilized nations. " --" The king promises
on his part the suspension of hostilities, friendship, and (as far as
the course of events will allow, of which the will of man cannot dispose) security and protection to all those who, by declaring for a monarchical government, shall shake off the yoke of a sanguinary
anarchy: of that anarchy which has broken all the most sacred
bonds of society, dissolved all the relations of civil life, violated every
right, confounded every duty; which uses the name of liberty to exercise the most cruel tyranny, to annihilate all property, to seize on all possessions; which founds its power on the pretended consent of the
people, and itself carries fire and sword through extensive provinces
for having demanded their laws, their religion, and their lawful
sovereign. "
Declaration sent by his Majesty's command to the commanders
of his Majesty's fleets and armies employed against France,
and to his Majesty's ministers employed at foreign courts.
Whitehall, Oct. 29, 1793.
? ? ? ? 280 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
ments of the truest humanity, has left stings that
have penetrated more than skin-deep into my mind:
and never can they be extracted by all the surgery
of murder; never can the throbbings they have created be assuaged by all the emollient cataplasms of robbery and confiscation. I cannot love the Republic.
The third point, which they have more clearly expressed than ever, is of equal importance with the rest, and with them furnishes a complete view of the
Regicide system. For they demand as a condition,
without which our ambassador of obedience cannot
be received with any hope of success, that he shall be
"provided with full powers to negotiate a peace between the French Republic and Great Britain, and
to conclude it definitively between the TWO powers. "
With their spear they draw a circle about us. They
will hear nothing of a joint treaty. We must make
a peace separately from our allies. We must, as
the very first and preliminary step, be guilty of that
perfidy towards our friends and associates with which
they reproach us in our transactions with them, our
enemies. We are called upon scandalously to betray
the fundamental securities to ourselves and to all nations. In my opinion, (it is perhaps but a poor one,) if we are meanly bold enough to send an ambassador
such as this official note of the enemy requires, we
cannot even dispatch our emissary without danger of
being charged with a breach of our alliance. Government now understands the full meaning of the passport.
Strange revolutions have happened in the ways of
thinking and in the feelings of men; but it is a very
extraordinary coalition of parties indeed, and a kind
of unheard-of unanimity in public councils, which can
? ? ? ? LETTER I. 281
impose this new-discovered system of negotiation, as
sound national policy, on the understanding of a
spectator of this wonderful scene, who judges on the
principles of anything he ever before saw, read, or
heard of, and, above all, on the understanding of a
person who has in his eye the transactions of the last
seven years.
I know it is supposed, that, if good terms of capitulation are not granted, after we have thus so repeatedly hung out the white flag, the national spirit will revive with tenfold ardor. This is an experiment
cautiously to be made. Reculer pour mieux sauter,
according to the French byword, cannot be trusted
to as a general rule of conduct. To diet a man into weakness and languor, afterwards to give him the
greater strength, has more of the empiric than the rational physician. It is true that some persons have
been kicked into courage, - and this is no bad hint
to give to those who are too forward and liberal in
bestowing insults and outrages on their passive companions; but such a course does not at first view
appear a well-chosen discipline to form men to a nice
sense of honor or a quick resentment of injuries. A
long habit of humiliation does not seem a very good
preparative to manly and vigorous sentiment. It may
not leave, perhaps, enough of energy in the mind fairly to discern what are good terms or what are not.
Men low and dispirited may regard those terms as not
at all amiss which in another state of mind they would
think intolerable: if they grow peevish in this state
of mind, they may be roused, not against the enemy
whom they have been taught to fear, but against the
ministry,* who are more within their reach, and who
* "Ut lethargicus hic, cum fit pugil, et medicum urget. " - HOR.
? ? ? ? 282 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
have refused conditions that are not unreasonable,
from power that they have been taught to consider
as irresistible.
If all that for some months I have heard have the
least foundation, (I hope it has not,) the ministers
are, perhaps, not quite so much to be blamed as their
condition is to be lamented. I have been given to
understand that these proceedings are not in their origin properly theirs. It is said that there is a secret in the House of Commons. It is said that ministers act,
not according to the votes, but according to the dispositions, of the majority. I hear that the minority
has long since spoken the general sense of the nation;
and that to prevent those who compose it from having
the open and avowed lead in that House, or perhaps
in both Houses, it was necessary to preoccupy their
ground, and to take their propositions out of their
mouths, even with the hazard of being afterwards reproached with a compliance which it was foreseen would be fruitless.
If the general disposition of the people be, as I hear
it is, for an immediate peace with Regicide, without
so much as considering our public and solemn engagements to the party in France whose cause we
had espoused, or the engagements expressed in our
general alliances, not only without an inquiry into
the terms, but with a certain knowledge that none
but the worst terms will be offered, it is all over with
us. It is strange, but it may be true, that, as the
danger from Jacobinism is increased in my eyes
and in yours, the fear of it is lessened in the eyes of
many people who formerly regarded it with horror.
It seems, they act under the impression of terrors of
another sort, which have frightened them out of their
? ? ? ? LETTER I. 283
first apprehensions. But let their fears, or their
hopes, or their desires, be what they will, they should
recollect that they who would make peace without a
previous knowledge of the terms make a surrender.
They are conquered. They do not treat; they receive
the law. Is this the disposition of the people of England? Then the people of England are contented to seek in the kindness of a foreign, systematic enemy,
combined with a dangerous faction at home, a security which they cannot find in their own patriotism and their own courage. They are willing to trust to the
sympathy of regicides the guaranty of the British
monarchy. They are content to rest their religion
on the piety of atheists by establishment. They are
satisfied to seek in the clemency of practised murderers the security of their lives. They are pleased to confide their property to the safeguard of those who
are robbers by inclination, interest, habit, and system.
If this be our deliberate mind, truly we deserve to
lose, what it is impossible we should long retain, the
name of a nation.
In matters of state, a constitutional competence to
act is in many cases the smallest part of the question.
Without disputing (God forbid I should dispute! )
the sole competence of the king and the Parliament,
each in its province, to decide on war and peace, I
venture to say no war can be long carried on against
the will of the people. This war, in particular, cannot be carried on, unless they are enthusiastically in favor of it. Acquiescence will not do. There must
be zeal. Universal zeal in such a cause, and at such
a time as this is, cannot be looked for; neither is it
necessary. Zeal in the larger part carries the force
of the whole. Without this, no government, cer
? ? ? ? 284 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
tainly not our government, is capable of a great war.
None of the ancient, regular governments have wherewithal to fight abroad with a foreign foe, and at home
to overcome repining, reluctance, and chicane. It
must be some portentous thing, like Regicide France,
that can exhibit such a prodigy. Yet even she, the
mother of monsters, more prolific than the country
of old called ferax monstrorum, shows symptoms of
being almost effete already; and she will be so, unless the fallow of a peace comes to recruit her fertility. But whatever may be represented concerning the meanness of the popular spirit, I, for one, do not
think so desperately of the British nation. Our
minds, as I said, are light, but they are not depraved. We are dreadfully open to delusion and
to dejection; but we are capable of being animated
and undeceived.
It cannot be concealed: we are a divided people.
But in divisions, where a part is to be taken, we are
to make a muster of our strength. I have often endeavored to compute and to class those who, in any
political view, are to be called the people. Without
doing something of this sort, we must proceed absurdly. We should not be much wiser, if we pretended to very great accuracy in our estimate; but I think, in the calculation I have made, the error cannot be very material. In England and Scotland, I
compute that those of adult age, not declining in life,
of tolerable leisure for such discussions, and of some
means of information, more or less, and who are
above menial dependence, (or what virtually is such,)
may amount to about four hundred thousand. There
is such a thing as a natural representative of the people. This body is that representative; and on this
? ? ? ? LETTER I. 285
body, more than on the legal constituent, the artificial representative depends. This is the British public; and it is a public very numerous. The rest,
when feeble, are the objects of protection, - when
strong, the means of force. They who affect to
consider that part of us in any other light insult
while they cajole us; they do not want us for counsellors in deliberation, but to list us as soldiers for battle.
Of these four hundred thousand political citizens,
I look upon one fifth, or about eighty thousand, to be
pure Jacobins, utterly incapable of amendment, objects of eternal vigilance, and, when they break out, of legal constraint. On these, no reason, no argument, no example, no venerable authority, can have the slightest influence. They desire a change; and
they will have it, if they can. If they cannot have it
by English cabal, they will make no sort of scruple
of having it by the cabal of France, into which already
they are virtually incorporated. It is only their assured and confident expectation of the advantages of French fraternity, and the approaching blessings of
Regicide intercourse, that skins over their mischievous dispositions with a momentary quiet.
This minority is great and formidable. I do not
know whether, if I aimed at the total overthrow of a
kingdom, I should wish to be incumbered with a
larger body of partisans. They are more easily disciplined and directdi'than if the number were greater. These, by their spirit of intrigue, and by their restless
agitating activity, are of a force far superior to their
numbers, and, if times grew the least critical, have
the means of debauching or intimidating many of
those who are now sound, as well as of adding to
? ? ? ? 286 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
their force large bodies of the more passive part of
the nation. This minority is numerous enough to
make a mighty cry for peace, or for war, or for any
object they are led vehemently to desire. By passing
from place to place with a velocity incredible, and diversifying their character and description, they are
capable of mimicking the general voice. We must
not always judge of the generality of the opinion by
the noise of the acclamation.
The majority, the other four fifths, is perfectly
sound, and of the best possible disposition to religion,
to government, to the true and undivided interest of
their country. Such men are naturally disposed to
peace. They who are in possession of all they wish
are languid and improvident. With this fault, (and
I admit its existence in all its extent,) they would
not endure to hear of a peace that led to the ruin of
everything for which peace is dear to them. However, the desire of peace is essentially the weak side
of that kind of men. All men that are ruined are
ruined on the side of their natural propensities.
There they are unguarded. Above all, good men
do not suspect that their destruction is attempted
through their virtues. This their enemies are perfectly aware of; and accordingly they, the most turbulent of mankind, who never made a scruple to shake the tranquillity of their country to its centre,
raise a continual cry for peace with France. "Peace
with Regicide, and war with the rest of the world,"
is their motto. From the beginning, and even whilst
the French gave the blows, and we hardly opposed
the vis inertice to their efforts, from that day to this
hour, like importunate Guinea-fowls, crying one note
day and night, they have called for peace.
? ? ? ? LETTER I. 287
in this they are, as I confess in all things they are,
perfectly consistent. They who wish to unite themselves to your enemies naturally desire that you should disarm yourself by a peace with these enemies. But it passes my conception how they who
wish well to their country on its ancient system of
laws and manners come not to be doubly alarmed,
when they find nothing but a clamor for peace in the
mouths of the men on earth the least disposed to it
in their natural or in their habitual character.
I have a good opinion of the general abilities of the
Jacobins: not that I suppose them better born than
others; but strong passions awaken the faculties;
they suffer not a particle of the man to be lost. The
spirit of enterprise gives to this description the full
use of all their native energies. If I have reason to
conceive that my enemy, who, as such, must have an
interest in my destruction, is also a person of discernment and sagacity, then I must be quite sure, that, in a contest, the object he violently pursues is the
very thing by which my ruin is likely to be the most
perfectly accomplished. Why do the Jacobins cry
for peace? Because they know, that, this point
gained, the rest will follow of course. On our part,
why are all the rules of prudence, as sure as the laws
of material Nature, to be at this time reversed?
How comes it, that now, for the first time, men think
it right to be governed by the counsels of their enemies? Ought they not rather to tremble, when they are persuaded to travel on the same road and to tend
to the same place of rest?
The minority I speak of is not susceptible of an
impression from the topics of argument to be used to
the larger part of the community. I therefore do not
? ? ? ? 288 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
address to them any part of what I have to say. The
more forcibly I drive my arguments against their system, so as to make an impression where I wish to make it, the more strongly I rivet them in their sentiments. As for us, who compose the far larger, and what I call the far better part of the people, let me
say, that we have not been quite fairly dealt with,
when called to this deliberation. The Jacobin minority have been abundantly supplied with stores and provisions of all kinds towards their warfare. No
sort of argumentative materials, suited to their purposes, have been withheld. False they are, unsound, sophistical; but they are regular in their direction.
They all bear one way, and they all go to the support
of the substantial merits of their cause. The others
have not had the question so much as fairly stated to
them.
There has not been in this century any foreign
peace or war, in its origin the fruit of popular desire, except the war that was made with Spain in
1739. Sir Robert Walpole was forced into the war
by the people, who were inflamed to this measure by
the most leading politicians, by the first orators, and
the greatest poets of the time. For that war Pope
sang his dying notes. For that war Johnson, in
more energetic strains, employed the voice of his
early genius. For that war Glover distinguished
himself in the way in which his muse was the most
natural and happy. The crowd readily followed the
politicians in the cry for a war which threatened little bloodshed, and which promised victories that were attended with something more solid than glory. A
war with Spain was a war of plunder. In the present conflict with Regicide, Mr. Pitt has not hitherto
? ? ? ? LETTER I. 289
had, nor will perhaps for a few days have, many
prizes to hold out in the lottery of war, to tempt
the lower part of our character. He can only maintain it by an appeal to the higher; and to those in whom that higher part is the most predominant he
must look the most for his support. Whilst he holds
out no inducements to the wise nor bribes to the avaricious, he may be forced by a vulgar cry into a peace ten'times more ruinous than the most disastrous war. The weaker he is in the fund of motives which apply to our avarice, to our laziness, and to
our lassitude, if he means to carry the war to any
end at all, the stronger he ought to be in his ad --
dresses to our magnanimity and to our reason.
In stating that Walpole was driven by a popular,
clamor into a measure not to be justified, I do not
mean wholly to excuse his conduct. My time of observation did not exactly coincide with that event; but I read much of the controversies then carried
on. Several years after the contests of parties had
ceased, the people were amused, and in a degree
warmed with them. The events of that era seemed.
then of magnitude, which the revolutions of our time
have reduced to parochial importance; and the debates which then shook the nation now appear of no higher moment than a discussion in a vestry. When
I was very young, a general fashion told me I was to
admire some of the writings against that minister; a
little more maturity taught me as much to despise
them. I observed one fault in his general proceeding. He never manfully put forward the entire strength of his cause. He temporized, he managed,
and, adopting very nearly the sentiments of his adversaries, he opposed their inferences. This, for a VOL. V. 19
? ? ? ? 290 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
political commander, is the choice of a weak post.
His adversaries had the better of the argument as
he handled it, not as the reason and justice of his
cause enabled him to manage it. I say this, after
having seen, and with some care examined, the original documents concerning certain important transactions of those times. They perfectly satisfied me of the extreme injustice of that war, and of the falsehood of the colors which, to his own ruin, and guided by a mistaken policy, he suffered to be daubed
over that measure. Some years after, it was my fortune to converse with many of the principal actors
against that minister, and with those who principally
excited that clamor. None of them, no, not one, did
in the least defend the measure, or attempt to justify
their conduct. They condemned it as freely, as they
would have done in commenting upon any proceeding in history in which they were totally unconcerned.
Thus it will be. They who stir up the people to improper desires, whether of peace or war, will be condemned by themselves. They who weakly yield to
them will be condemned by history.
In my opinion, the present ministry are as far from
doing full justice to their cause in this war as Walpole was from doing justice to the peace which at
that time he was willing to preserve. They throw
the light on one side only of their case; though it is
impossible they should not observe that the other
side, which is kept in the shade, has its importance
too. They must know that France is formidable,
not only as she is France, but as she is Jacobin
France. They knew from the beginning that the
Jacobin party was not confined to that country.
They knew, they felt, the strong disposition of the
? ? ? ? LETTER I. 291
same faction in both countries to communicate and
to cooperate. For some time past, these two points
have been kept, and even industriously kept, out of
sight. France is considered as merely a foreign
power, and the seditious English only as a domestic
faction. The merits of the war with the former have
been argued solely on political grounds. To prevent
the mischievous doctrines of the latter from corrupting our minds, matter and argument have been supplied abundantly, and even to surfeit, on the excellency of our own government. But nothing has been done to make us feel in what manner the safety of that government is connected with thd principle and with the issue of this war. For anything
which in the late discussion has appeared, the war
is entirely collateral to the state of Jacobinism, - as
truly a foreign war to us and to all our home concerns as the war with Spaiil in 1739, about Guardacostas, the Madrid Convention, and the fable of Captain Jenkins's ears.
Whenever the adverse party has raised a cry for
peace with the Regicide, the answer has been little
more than this: " That the administration wished
for such a peace full as much as the opposition, but
that the time was not convenient for making it. "
Whatever else has been said was much in the same
spirit. Reasons of this kind never touched the substantial merits of the war. They were in the nature
of dilatory pleas, exceptions of form, previous questions. Accordingly, all the arguments against a compliance with what was represented as the popular
desire (urged on with all possible vehemence and
earnestness by the Jacobins) have appeared flat and
languid, feeble and evasive. They appeared to aim
? ? ? ? 292 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
only at gaining time. They never entered into the
peculiar and distinctive character of the war. They
spoke neither to the understanding nor to the heart.
Cold as ice themselves, they never could kindle in
our breasts a spark of that zeal which is necessary to
a conflict with an adverse zeal; much less were they
made to infuse into ovtr minds that stubborn, persevering spirit which alone is capable of bearing up
against those vicissitudes of fortune which will probably occur, and those burdens which must be inevitably borne, in a long war. I speak it emphatically,
and with a desire that it should be marked, -in a
long war; because, without such a war, no experience has yet told us that a dangerous power has
ever been reduced to measure or to reason. I do not
throw back my view to the Peloponnesian War of
twenty-seven years; nor to two of the Punic Wars,
the first of twenty-four, the second of eighteen; nor'
to the more recent war concluded by the Treaty of
Westphalia, which continued, I think, for thirty. I
go to what is but just fallen behind living memory,
and immediately touches our own country. Let the
portion of our history from the year 1689 to 1713 be
brought before us. We shall find that in all that period of twenty-four years there were hardly five that
could be called a season of peace; and the interval
between the two wars was in reality nothing more
than a very active preparation for renovated hostility. During that period, every one of the propositions of peace came from the enemy: the first, when
they were accepted, at the Peace of Ryswick; the second, where they were rejected, at the Congress at Gertruydenberg; the last, when the war ended by the Treaty of Utrecht. Even then, a very great part of
? ? ? ? LETTER I. 293
the nation, and that which contained by far the most
intelligent statesmen, was against the conclusion of
the war. I do not enter into the merits of that question as between the parties. I only state the existence of that opinion as a fact, from whence you may draw such an inference as you think properly arises
from it.
It is for us at present to recollect what we have
been, and to consider what, if we please, we may
be still. At the period of those wars our principal
strength was found in the resolution of the people,
and that in the resolution of a part only of the then
whole, which bore no proportion to our existing magnitude. England and Scotland were not united at
the beginning of that mighty struggle. When, in
the course of the contest, they were conjoined, it
was in a raw, an ill-cemented, an unproductive,
union. For the whole duration of the war, and long
after, the names and other outward and visible signs
of approximation rather augmented than diminished
our insular feuds. They were rather the causes
of new discontents and new troubles than promoters
of cordiality and affection. The now single and potent Great Britain was then not only two countries,
but, from the party heats in both, and the divisions
formed in each of them, each of the old kingdoms
within itself, in effect, was made up of two hostile
nations. Ireland, now so large a source of the common opulence and power, and which, wisely managed,
might be made much more beneficial and much more
effective, was then the heaviest of the burdens. An
army, not much less than forty thousand men, was
drawn from the general effort, to keep that kingdom
in a poor, unfruitful, and resourceless subjection.
? ? ? ? 294 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
Such was the state of the empire. The state of
our finances was worse, if possible. Every branch
of the revenue became less productive after the Revolution. Silver, not as now a sort of counter, but the body of the current coin, was reduced so low as
not to have above three parts in four of the value in
the shilling. In the greater part the value hardly
amounted to a fourth. It required a dead expense
of three millions sterling to renew the coinage. Public credit, that great, but ambiguous principle, which has so often been predicted as the cause of our certain ruin, but which for a century has been the constant companion, and often the means, of our
prosperity and greatness, had its origin, and was
cradled, I may say, in bankruptcy and beggary. At
this day we have seen parties contending to be admitted, at a moderate premium, to advance eighteen millions to the exchequer. For infinitely smaller
loans, the Chancellor of the Ex'chequer of that day,
Montagu, the father of public credit, counter-securing the state by the appearance of the city with the Lord Mayor of London at his side, was obliged, like
a solicitor for an hospital, to go cap in hand from
shop to shop, to borrow an hundred pound, and even
smaller sums. When made up in driblets as they
could, their best securities were at an interest of
twelve per cent. Even the paper of the Bank (now
at par with cash, and generally preferred to it) was
often at a discount of twenty per cent. By this the
state of the rest may be judged.
As to our commerce, the imports and exports of
the nation, now six-and-forty million, did not then
amount to ten. The inland trade, which is commonly passed by in this sort of estimates, but which,
? ? ? ? LETTER I. 29,5
in part growing out of the foreign, and connected
with it, is more advantageous and more substantially
nutritive to the state, is not only grown in a proportion of near five to one as the foreign, but has been
augmented at least in a tenfold proportion. When
I came to England, I remember but one river navigation, the rate of carriage on which was limited by
an act of Parliament. It was made in the reign of
William the Third. I mean that of the Aire and
Calder. The rate was settled at thirteen pence. So
high a price demonstrated the feebleness of these bet
ginnings of our inland intercourse. In my time, one
of the longest and sharpest contests I remember in
your House, and which rather resembled a violent
contention amongst national parties than a local dispute, was, as well as I can recollect, to hold the price
up to threepence. Even this, which a very scanty
justice to the proprietors required, was done with
infinite difficulty. As to private credit, there were
not, as I believe, twelve bankers' shops at that time
out of London. In this their number, when I first
saw the country, I cannot be quite exact; but certainly those machines of domestic credit were then
very few. They are now in almost every markettown: and this circumstance (whether the thing be
carried to an excess or not) demonstrates the astonishing increase of private confidence, of general circulation, and of internal commerce, - an increase out of all proportion to the growth of the foreign
trade. Our naval strength in the time of King William's war was nearly matched by that of France;
and though conjoined with Holland, then a maritime
power hardly inferior to our own, even with that
force we were not always victorious. Though finally
? ? ? ? 296 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
superior, the allied fleets experienced many unpleasant reverses on their own element. In two years
three thousand vessels were taken from the English
trade. On the Continent we lost almost every battle
we fought.
In 1697, (it is not quite an hundred years ago,) in
that state of things, amidst the general debasement
of the coin, the fall of the ordinary revenue, the
failure of all the extraordinary supplies, the ruin
of commerce, and the almost total extinction of an
infant credit, the Chancellor of the Exchequer himself, whom we have just seen begging from door to
door, came forward to move a resolution full of vigor, in which, far from being discouraged by the generally adverse fortune and the long continuance of the war, the Commons agreed to address the crown
in the following manly, spirited, and truly animating
style: -
"' This is the EIGHTH year in which your Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Commons
in Parliament assembled, have assisted your Majesty
with large supplies for carrying on a just and necessary war, in defence of our religion, preservation of
our laws, and vindication of the rights and liberties
of the people of England. "
Afterwards they proceed in this manner: --
" And to show to your Majesty and all Christendom that the Commons of England will not be
amused or diverted from their firm resolutions of
obtaining by WAR a safe and honorable peace, we
do, in the name of all those we represent, renew
our assurances to your Majesty that this House will
support your Majesty and your government against
all your enemies, both at home and abroad, and that
? ? ? ? LETTER I. 297
they will effectually assist you in the prosecution and
carrying on the present war against France. "
The amusement and diversion they speak of was
the suggestion of a treaty proposed by the enemy, and
announced from the throne. Thus the people of
England felt in the eighth, not in the fourth year of
the war. No sighing or panting after negotiation;
no motions from the opposition to force the ministry
into a peace; no messages from ministers to palsy
and deaden the resolution of Parliament or the spirit
of the nation. They did not so much as advise the
king to listen to the propositions of the enemy, nor
to seek for peace, but through the mediation of a
vigorous war. This address was moved in an hot, a
divided, a factious, and, in a great part, disaffected
House of Commons; and it was carried, nemine contradicente.
While that first war (which was ill smothered by
the Treaty of Ryswick) slept in the thin ashes of a
seeming peace, a new conflagration was in its immediate causes. A fresh and a far greater war was
in preparation. A year had hardly elapsed, when
arrangements were made for renewing the contest
with tenfold fury. The steps which were taken, at
that time, to compose, to reconcile, to unite, and to
discipline all Europe against the growth of France,
certainly furnish to a statesman the finest and most
interesting part in the history of that great period.
It formed the masterpiece of King William's policy,
dexterity, and perseverance. Full of the idea of
preserving not only a local civil liberty united with
order to our country, but to embody it in the political liberty, the order, and the independence of nations united under a natural head, the king called
? ? ? ?
question is not, how we are to be affected with it in
regard to our dignity. That is gone. I shall say
no more about it. Light lie the earth on the ashes
of English pride! I shall only observe upon it politically, and as furnishing a direction for our own conduct in this low business.
The very idea of a negotiation for peace, whatever
the inward sentiments of the parties may be, implies
some confidence in their faith, some degree of belief
in the professions which are made concerning it. A
temporary and occasional credit, at least, is granted.
Otherwise men stumble on the very threshold. I
therefore wish to ask what hope we can have of their
good faith, who, as the very basis of the negotiation,
assume the ill faith and treachery of those they have
to deal with? The terms, as against us, must be
such as imply a full security against a treacherous
conduct, - that is, such terms as this Directory stated in its first declaration, to place us " in an utter
impossibility of executing our wretched projects. "
This is the omen, and the sole omen, under which
we have consented to open our treaty.
The second observation I have to make upon it
(much connected, undoubtedly, with the first) is,
that they have informed you of the result they propose from the kind of peace they mean to grant you,
-- that is to say, the union they propose among nations with the view of rivalling our trade and destroying our naval power; and this they suppose (and with good reason, too) must be the inevitable
effect of their peace. It forms one of their principal
grounds for suspecting our ministers could not be
in good earnest in their proposition. They make no
scruple beforehand to tell you the whole of what
? ? ? ? LETTER I. 275.
they intend; and this is what we call, in the modern style, the acceptance of a proposition for peace! In old language it would be called a most hhughty,
offensive, and insolent rejection of all treaty.
Thirdly, they tell you what they conceive to be the
perfidious policy which dictates your delusive offer:
that is, the design of cheating not only them, but the
people of England, against whose interest and inclination this war is supposed to be carried on.
If we proceed in this business, under this preliminary declaration, it seems to me that we admit,
(now for the third time,) by something a great deal
stronger than words, the truth of the charges of
every kind which they make upon the British ministry, and the grounds of those foul imputations.
The language used by us, which in other circumstances would not be exceptionable, in this case tends very strongly to confirm and realize the suspicion
of our enemy: I mean the declaration, that, if we
do not obtain such terms of peace as suits our
opinion of what our interests require, then, and in
that case, we shall continue the war with vigor. This
offer, so reasoned, plainly implies, that, without it,
our leaders themselves entertain great doubts of the
opinion and good affections of the British people;
otherwise there does not appear any cause why we
should proceed, under the scandalous construction
of our enemy, upon the former offer made by Mr.
Wickham, and on the new offer made directly at
Paris. It is not, therefore, from a sense of dignity,
but from the danger of radicating that false sentiment in the breasts of the enemy, that I think, under the auspices of this declaration, we cannot, with the
least hope of a good event, or, indeed, with any
? ? ? ? 276 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
regard to the common safety, proceed in the train
of this negotiation. I wish ministry would seriously
consider the importance of their seeming to confirm
the enemy in an opinion that his frequent use of
appeals to the people against their government has
not been without its effect. If it puts an end to
this war, it will render another impracticable.
Whoever goes to the Directorial presence under
this passport, with this offensive comment and foul
explanation, goes, in the avowed sense of the court
to which he is sent, as the instrument of a government dissociated from the interests and wishes of the nation, for the purpose of cheating both the people
of France and the people of England. He goes out
the declared emissary of a faithless ministry. He
has perfidy for his credentials. He has national
weakness for his full powers. I yet doubt whether
any one can be found to invest himself with that
character. If there should, it would be pleasant' to
read his instructions on the answer which he is to
give to the Directory, in case they should repeat to
him the substance of the manifesto which he carries
with him in his portfolio.
So much for the first manifesto of the Regicide
Court which went along with the passport. Lest this
declaration should seem the effect of haste, or a mere
sudden effusion of pride and insolence, on full deliberation, about a week after comes out a second. This manifesto is dated the 5th of October, one day
before the speech from the throne, on the vigil of the
festive day of cordial unanimity so happily celebrated by all parties in the British Parliament. In this piece the Regicides, our worthy friends, (I call them
by advance and by courtesy what by law I shall be
? ? ? ? LETTER I. 277
obliged to call them hereafter,) our worthy friends,
I say, renew and enforce the former declaration concerning our faith and sincerity, which they pinned
to our passport. On three other points, which run
through all their declarations, they are more explicit
than ever.
First, they more directly undertake to be the real
representatives of the people of this kingdom: and
on a supposition, in which they agree with our Parliamentary reformers, that the House of Commons is
not that representative, the function being vacant,
they, as our true constitutional organ, inform his
Majesty and the world of the sense of the nation.
They tell us that " the English people see with regret
his Majesty's government squandering away the funds
which had been granted to him. " This astonishing
assumption of the public voice of England is but a
slight foretaste of the usurpation which, on a peace,
we may be assured they will make of all the powers
in all the parts of our vassal Constitution. " If they
do these things in the green tree, what shall be done
in the dry? "
Next they tell us, as a condition to our treaty, that
" this government must abjure the unjust hatred it
bears to them, and at last open its ears to the voice
of humanity. " Truly, this is, even from them, an
extraordinary demand. Hitherto, it seems, we have
put wax into our ears, to shut them up against the
tender, soothing strains, in the affettuoso of humanity, warbled from the throats of Reubell, Carnot, Tallien, and the whole chorus of confiscators, domiciliary visitors, committee-men of research, jurors and presidents of revolutionary tribunals, regicides, assassins, massacrers, and Septembrisers. It is not difficult
? ? ? ? 278 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
to discern what sort of humanity our government is
to learn from these Siren singers. Our government
also, I admit, with some reason, as a step towards
the proposed fraternity, is required to abjure the
unjust hatred which it bears to this body of honor
and virtue. I thank God I am neither a minister
nor a leader of opposition. I protest I cannot do
what they desire. I could not do it, if I were under
the guillotine, -- or, as they ingeniously and pleasantly express it, "looking out of the little national
window. " Even at that opening I could receive
none of their light. I am fortified against all such
affections by the declaration of the government,
which I must yet consider as lawful, made on the
29th of October, 1793,* and still ringing in my ears.
* "In their place has succeeded a system destructive of all public
order, maintained by proscriptions, exiles, and confiscations without
number, - by arbitrary imprisonments, - by massacres which cannot
be remembered without horror, -and at length by the execrable
murder of a just and beneficent sovereign, and of the illustrious
princess, who with an unshaken firmness has shared all the misfortunes of her royal consort, his protracted sufferings, his cruel captivity, his ignominious death. " -- They [the Allies] have had to encounter acts of aggression without pretext, open violations of all
treaties, unprovoked declarations of war, -in a word, whatever corruption, intrigue, or violence could effect, for the purpose, so openly
avowed, of subverting all the institutions of society, and of extending
over all the nations of Europe that confusion which has produced the
misery of France. 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 exists only by the successive violation of all law and all property, and which attacks the fundamental principles by which mankind is united in the bonds of civil society. " -- "The king would propose none other than equitable and
moderate conditions: not such as the expenses, the risks, and the
sacrifices of the war might justify, but such as his Majesty thinks
? ? ? ? LETTER I. 279
This Declaration was transmitted not only to all our
commanders by sea and land, but to our ministers
in every court of Europe. It is the most eloquent
and highly finished in the style, the most judicious
in the choice of topics, the most orderly in the
arrangement, and the most rich in the coloring,
without employing the smallest degree of exaggera
tion, of any state-paper that has ever yet appeared.
An ancient writer (Plutarch, I think it is) quotes
some verses on the eloquence of Pericles, who is
called " the only orator that left stings in the minds
of his hearers. " Like his, the eloquence of the
Declaration, not contradicting, but enforcing, sentihimself under the indispensable necessity of requiring, with a view to
these considerations, and still more to that of his own security and of
the future tranquillity of Europe. His Majesty desires nothing more
sincerely than thus to terminate a war which he in vain endeavored
to avoid, and all the calamities of which, as now experienced by
France, are to be attributed only to the ambition, the perfidy, and the
violence of those whose crimes have involved their own country in
misery and disgraced all civilized nations. " --" The king promises
on his part the suspension of hostilities, friendship, and (as far as
the course of events will allow, of which the will of man cannot dispose) security and protection to all those who, by declaring for a monarchical government, shall shake off the yoke of a sanguinary
anarchy: of that anarchy which has broken all the most sacred
bonds of society, dissolved all the relations of civil life, violated every
right, confounded every duty; which uses the name of liberty to exercise the most cruel tyranny, to annihilate all property, to seize on all possessions; which founds its power on the pretended consent of the
people, and itself carries fire and sword through extensive provinces
for having demanded their laws, their religion, and their lawful
sovereign. "
Declaration sent by his Majesty's command to the commanders
of his Majesty's fleets and armies employed against France,
and to his Majesty's ministers employed at foreign courts.
Whitehall, Oct. 29, 1793.
? ? ? ? 280 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
ments of the truest humanity, has left stings that
have penetrated more than skin-deep into my mind:
and never can they be extracted by all the surgery
of murder; never can the throbbings they have created be assuaged by all the emollient cataplasms of robbery and confiscation. I cannot love the Republic.
The third point, which they have more clearly expressed than ever, is of equal importance with the rest, and with them furnishes a complete view of the
Regicide system. For they demand as a condition,
without which our ambassador of obedience cannot
be received with any hope of success, that he shall be
"provided with full powers to negotiate a peace between the French Republic and Great Britain, and
to conclude it definitively between the TWO powers. "
With their spear they draw a circle about us. They
will hear nothing of a joint treaty. We must make
a peace separately from our allies. We must, as
the very first and preliminary step, be guilty of that
perfidy towards our friends and associates with which
they reproach us in our transactions with them, our
enemies. We are called upon scandalously to betray
the fundamental securities to ourselves and to all nations. In my opinion, (it is perhaps but a poor one,) if we are meanly bold enough to send an ambassador
such as this official note of the enemy requires, we
cannot even dispatch our emissary without danger of
being charged with a breach of our alliance. Government now understands the full meaning of the passport.
Strange revolutions have happened in the ways of
thinking and in the feelings of men; but it is a very
extraordinary coalition of parties indeed, and a kind
of unheard-of unanimity in public councils, which can
? ? ? ? LETTER I. 281
impose this new-discovered system of negotiation, as
sound national policy, on the understanding of a
spectator of this wonderful scene, who judges on the
principles of anything he ever before saw, read, or
heard of, and, above all, on the understanding of a
person who has in his eye the transactions of the last
seven years.
I know it is supposed, that, if good terms of capitulation are not granted, after we have thus so repeatedly hung out the white flag, the national spirit will revive with tenfold ardor. This is an experiment
cautiously to be made. Reculer pour mieux sauter,
according to the French byword, cannot be trusted
to as a general rule of conduct. To diet a man into weakness and languor, afterwards to give him the
greater strength, has more of the empiric than the rational physician. It is true that some persons have
been kicked into courage, - and this is no bad hint
to give to those who are too forward and liberal in
bestowing insults and outrages on their passive companions; but such a course does not at first view
appear a well-chosen discipline to form men to a nice
sense of honor or a quick resentment of injuries. A
long habit of humiliation does not seem a very good
preparative to manly and vigorous sentiment. It may
not leave, perhaps, enough of energy in the mind fairly to discern what are good terms or what are not.
Men low and dispirited may regard those terms as not
at all amiss which in another state of mind they would
think intolerable: if they grow peevish in this state
of mind, they may be roused, not against the enemy
whom they have been taught to fear, but against the
ministry,* who are more within their reach, and who
* "Ut lethargicus hic, cum fit pugil, et medicum urget. " - HOR.
? ? ? ? 282 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
have refused conditions that are not unreasonable,
from power that they have been taught to consider
as irresistible.
If all that for some months I have heard have the
least foundation, (I hope it has not,) the ministers
are, perhaps, not quite so much to be blamed as their
condition is to be lamented. I have been given to
understand that these proceedings are not in their origin properly theirs. It is said that there is a secret in the House of Commons. It is said that ministers act,
not according to the votes, but according to the dispositions, of the majority. I hear that the minority
has long since spoken the general sense of the nation;
and that to prevent those who compose it from having
the open and avowed lead in that House, or perhaps
in both Houses, it was necessary to preoccupy their
ground, and to take their propositions out of their
mouths, even with the hazard of being afterwards reproached with a compliance which it was foreseen would be fruitless.
If the general disposition of the people be, as I hear
it is, for an immediate peace with Regicide, without
so much as considering our public and solemn engagements to the party in France whose cause we
had espoused, or the engagements expressed in our
general alliances, not only without an inquiry into
the terms, but with a certain knowledge that none
but the worst terms will be offered, it is all over with
us. It is strange, but it may be true, that, as the
danger from Jacobinism is increased in my eyes
and in yours, the fear of it is lessened in the eyes of
many people who formerly regarded it with horror.
It seems, they act under the impression of terrors of
another sort, which have frightened them out of their
? ? ? ? LETTER I. 283
first apprehensions. But let their fears, or their
hopes, or their desires, be what they will, they should
recollect that they who would make peace without a
previous knowledge of the terms make a surrender.
They are conquered. They do not treat; they receive
the law. Is this the disposition of the people of England? Then the people of England are contented to seek in the kindness of a foreign, systematic enemy,
combined with a dangerous faction at home, a security which they cannot find in their own patriotism and their own courage. They are willing to trust to the
sympathy of regicides the guaranty of the British
monarchy. They are content to rest their religion
on the piety of atheists by establishment. They are
satisfied to seek in the clemency of practised murderers the security of their lives. They are pleased to confide their property to the safeguard of those who
are robbers by inclination, interest, habit, and system.
If this be our deliberate mind, truly we deserve to
lose, what it is impossible we should long retain, the
name of a nation.
In matters of state, a constitutional competence to
act is in many cases the smallest part of the question.
Without disputing (God forbid I should dispute! )
the sole competence of the king and the Parliament,
each in its province, to decide on war and peace, I
venture to say no war can be long carried on against
the will of the people. This war, in particular, cannot be carried on, unless they are enthusiastically in favor of it. Acquiescence will not do. There must
be zeal. Universal zeal in such a cause, and at such
a time as this is, cannot be looked for; neither is it
necessary. Zeal in the larger part carries the force
of the whole. Without this, no government, cer
? ? ? ? 284 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
tainly not our government, is capable of a great war.
None of the ancient, regular governments have wherewithal to fight abroad with a foreign foe, and at home
to overcome repining, reluctance, and chicane. It
must be some portentous thing, like Regicide France,
that can exhibit such a prodigy. Yet even she, the
mother of monsters, more prolific than the country
of old called ferax monstrorum, shows symptoms of
being almost effete already; and she will be so, unless the fallow of a peace comes to recruit her fertility. But whatever may be represented concerning the meanness of the popular spirit, I, for one, do not
think so desperately of the British nation. Our
minds, as I said, are light, but they are not depraved. We are dreadfully open to delusion and
to dejection; but we are capable of being animated
and undeceived.
It cannot be concealed: we are a divided people.
But in divisions, where a part is to be taken, we are
to make a muster of our strength. I have often endeavored to compute and to class those who, in any
political view, are to be called the people. Without
doing something of this sort, we must proceed absurdly. We should not be much wiser, if we pretended to very great accuracy in our estimate; but I think, in the calculation I have made, the error cannot be very material. In England and Scotland, I
compute that those of adult age, not declining in life,
of tolerable leisure for such discussions, and of some
means of information, more or less, and who are
above menial dependence, (or what virtually is such,)
may amount to about four hundred thousand. There
is such a thing as a natural representative of the people. This body is that representative; and on this
? ? ? ? LETTER I. 285
body, more than on the legal constituent, the artificial representative depends. This is the British public; and it is a public very numerous. The rest,
when feeble, are the objects of protection, - when
strong, the means of force. They who affect to
consider that part of us in any other light insult
while they cajole us; they do not want us for counsellors in deliberation, but to list us as soldiers for battle.
Of these four hundred thousand political citizens,
I look upon one fifth, or about eighty thousand, to be
pure Jacobins, utterly incapable of amendment, objects of eternal vigilance, and, when they break out, of legal constraint. On these, no reason, no argument, no example, no venerable authority, can have the slightest influence. They desire a change; and
they will have it, if they can. If they cannot have it
by English cabal, they will make no sort of scruple
of having it by the cabal of France, into which already
they are virtually incorporated. It is only their assured and confident expectation of the advantages of French fraternity, and the approaching blessings of
Regicide intercourse, that skins over their mischievous dispositions with a momentary quiet.
This minority is great and formidable. I do not
know whether, if I aimed at the total overthrow of a
kingdom, I should wish to be incumbered with a
larger body of partisans. They are more easily disciplined and directdi'than if the number were greater. These, by their spirit of intrigue, and by their restless
agitating activity, are of a force far superior to their
numbers, and, if times grew the least critical, have
the means of debauching or intimidating many of
those who are now sound, as well as of adding to
? ? ? ? 286 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
their force large bodies of the more passive part of
the nation. This minority is numerous enough to
make a mighty cry for peace, or for war, or for any
object they are led vehemently to desire. By passing
from place to place with a velocity incredible, and diversifying their character and description, they are
capable of mimicking the general voice. We must
not always judge of the generality of the opinion by
the noise of the acclamation.
The majority, the other four fifths, is perfectly
sound, and of the best possible disposition to religion,
to government, to the true and undivided interest of
their country. Such men are naturally disposed to
peace. They who are in possession of all they wish
are languid and improvident. With this fault, (and
I admit its existence in all its extent,) they would
not endure to hear of a peace that led to the ruin of
everything for which peace is dear to them. However, the desire of peace is essentially the weak side
of that kind of men. All men that are ruined are
ruined on the side of their natural propensities.
There they are unguarded. Above all, good men
do not suspect that their destruction is attempted
through their virtues. This their enemies are perfectly aware of; and accordingly they, the most turbulent of mankind, who never made a scruple to shake the tranquillity of their country to its centre,
raise a continual cry for peace with France. "Peace
with Regicide, and war with the rest of the world,"
is their motto. From the beginning, and even whilst
the French gave the blows, and we hardly opposed
the vis inertice to their efforts, from that day to this
hour, like importunate Guinea-fowls, crying one note
day and night, they have called for peace.
? ? ? ? LETTER I. 287
in this they are, as I confess in all things they are,
perfectly consistent. They who wish to unite themselves to your enemies naturally desire that you should disarm yourself by a peace with these enemies. But it passes my conception how they who
wish well to their country on its ancient system of
laws and manners come not to be doubly alarmed,
when they find nothing but a clamor for peace in the
mouths of the men on earth the least disposed to it
in their natural or in their habitual character.
I have a good opinion of the general abilities of the
Jacobins: not that I suppose them better born than
others; but strong passions awaken the faculties;
they suffer not a particle of the man to be lost. The
spirit of enterprise gives to this description the full
use of all their native energies. If I have reason to
conceive that my enemy, who, as such, must have an
interest in my destruction, is also a person of discernment and sagacity, then I must be quite sure, that, in a contest, the object he violently pursues is the
very thing by which my ruin is likely to be the most
perfectly accomplished. Why do the Jacobins cry
for peace? Because they know, that, this point
gained, the rest will follow of course. On our part,
why are all the rules of prudence, as sure as the laws
of material Nature, to be at this time reversed?
How comes it, that now, for the first time, men think
it right to be governed by the counsels of their enemies? Ought they not rather to tremble, when they are persuaded to travel on the same road and to tend
to the same place of rest?
The minority I speak of is not susceptible of an
impression from the topics of argument to be used to
the larger part of the community. I therefore do not
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address to them any part of what I have to say. The
more forcibly I drive my arguments against their system, so as to make an impression where I wish to make it, the more strongly I rivet them in their sentiments. As for us, who compose the far larger, and what I call the far better part of the people, let me
say, that we have not been quite fairly dealt with,
when called to this deliberation. The Jacobin minority have been abundantly supplied with stores and provisions of all kinds towards their warfare. No
sort of argumentative materials, suited to their purposes, have been withheld. False they are, unsound, sophistical; but they are regular in their direction.
They all bear one way, and they all go to the support
of the substantial merits of their cause. The others
have not had the question so much as fairly stated to
them.
There has not been in this century any foreign
peace or war, in its origin the fruit of popular desire, except the war that was made with Spain in
1739. Sir Robert Walpole was forced into the war
by the people, who were inflamed to this measure by
the most leading politicians, by the first orators, and
the greatest poets of the time. For that war Pope
sang his dying notes. For that war Johnson, in
more energetic strains, employed the voice of his
early genius. For that war Glover distinguished
himself in the way in which his muse was the most
natural and happy. The crowd readily followed the
politicians in the cry for a war which threatened little bloodshed, and which promised victories that were attended with something more solid than glory. A
war with Spain was a war of plunder. In the present conflict with Regicide, Mr. Pitt has not hitherto
? ? ? ? LETTER I. 289
had, nor will perhaps for a few days have, many
prizes to hold out in the lottery of war, to tempt
the lower part of our character. He can only maintain it by an appeal to the higher; and to those in whom that higher part is the most predominant he
must look the most for his support. Whilst he holds
out no inducements to the wise nor bribes to the avaricious, he may be forced by a vulgar cry into a peace ten'times more ruinous than the most disastrous war. The weaker he is in the fund of motives which apply to our avarice, to our laziness, and to
our lassitude, if he means to carry the war to any
end at all, the stronger he ought to be in his ad --
dresses to our magnanimity and to our reason.
In stating that Walpole was driven by a popular,
clamor into a measure not to be justified, I do not
mean wholly to excuse his conduct. My time of observation did not exactly coincide with that event; but I read much of the controversies then carried
on. Several years after the contests of parties had
ceased, the people were amused, and in a degree
warmed with them. The events of that era seemed.
then of magnitude, which the revolutions of our time
have reduced to parochial importance; and the debates which then shook the nation now appear of no higher moment than a discussion in a vestry. When
I was very young, a general fashion told me I was to
admire some of the writings against that minister; a
little more maturity taught me as much to despise
them. I observed one fault in his general proceeding. He never manfully put forward the entire strength of his cause. He temporized, he managed,
and, adopting very nearly the sentiments of his adversaries, he opposed their inferences. This, for a VOL. V. 19
? ? ? ? 290 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
political commander, is the choice of a weak post.
His adversaries had the better of the argument as
he handled it, not as the reason and justice of his
cause enabled him to manage it. I say this, after
having seen, and with some care examined, the original documents concerning certain important transactions of those times. They perfectly satisfied me of the extreme injustice of that war, and of the falsehood of the colors which, to his own ruin, and guided by a mistaken policy, he suffered to be daubed
over that measure. Some years after, it was my fortune to converse with many of the principal actors
against that minister, and with those who principally
excited that clamor. None of them, no, not one, did
in the least defend the measure, or attempt to justify
their conduct. They condemned it as freely, as they
would have done in commenting upon any proceeding in history in which they were totally unconcerned.
Thus it will be. They who stir up the people to improper desires, whether of peace or war, will be condemned by themselves. They who weakly yield to
them will be condemned by history.
In my opinion, the present ministry are as far from
doing full justice to their cause in this war as Walpole was from doing justice to the peace which at
that time he was willing to preserve. They throw
the light on one side only of their case; though it is
impossible they should not observe that the other
side, which is kept in the shade, has its importance
too. They must know that France is formidable,
not only as she is France, but as she is Jacobin
France. They knew from the beginning that the
Jacobin party was not confined to that country.
They knew, they felt, the strong disposition of the
? ? ? ? LETTER I. 291
same faction in both countries to communicate and
to cooperate. For some time past, these two points
have been kept, and even industriously kept, out of
sight. France is considered as merely a foreign
power, and the seditious English only as a domestic
faction. The merits of the war with the former have
been argued solely on political grounds. To prevent
the mischievous doctrines of the latter from corrupting our minds, matter and argument have been supplied abundantly, and even to surfeit, on the excellency of our own government. But nothing has been done to make us feel in what manner the safety of that government is connected with thd principle and with the issue of this war. For anything
which in the late discussion has appeared, the war
is entirely collateral to the state of Jacobinism, - as
truly a foreign war to us and to all our home concerns as the war with Spaiil in 1739, about Guardacostas, the Madrid Convention, and the fable of Captain Jenkins's ears.
Whenever the adverse party has raised a cry for
peace with the Regicide, the answer has been little
more than this: " That the administration wished
for such a peace full as much as the opposition, but
that the time was not convenient for making it. "
Whatever else has been said was much in the same
spirit. Reasons of this kind never touched the substantial merits of the war. They were in the nature
of dilatory pleas, exceptions of form, previous questions. Accordingly, all the arguments against a compliance with what was represented as the popular
desire (urged on with all possible vehemence and
earnestness by the Jacobins) have appeared flat and
languid, feeble and evasive. They appeared to aim
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only at gaining time. They never entered into the
peculiar and distinctive character of the war. They
spoke neither to the understanding nor to the heart.
Cold as ice themselves, they never could kindle in
our breasts a spark of that zeal which is necessary to
a conflict with an adverse zeal; much less were they
made to infuse into ovtr minds that stubborn, persevering spirit which alone is capable of bearing up
against those vicissitudes of fortune which will probably occur, and those burdens which must be inevitably borne, in a long war. I speak it emphatically,
and with a desire that it should be marked, -in a
long war; because, without such a war, no experience has yet told us that a dangerous power has
ever been reduced to measure or to reason. I do not
throw back my view to the Peloponnesian War of
twenty-seven years; nor to two of the Punic Wars,
the first of twenty-four, the second of eighteen; nor'
to the more recent war concluded by the Treaty of
Westphalia, which continued, I think, for thirty. I
go to what is but just fallen behind living memory,
and immediately touches our own country. Let the
portion of our history from the year 1689 to 1713 be
brought before us. We shall find that in all that period of twenty-four years there were hardly five that
could be called a season of peace; and the interval
between the two wars was in reality nothing more
than a very active preparation for renovated hostility. During that period, every one of the propositions of peace came from the enemy: the first, when
they were accepted, at the Peace of Ryswick; the second, where they were rejected, at the Congress at Gertruydenberg; the last, when the war ended by the Treaty of Utrecht. Even then, a very great part of
? ? ? ? LETTER I. 293
the nation, and that which contained by far the most
intelligent statesmen, was against the conclusion of
the war. I do not enter into the merits of that question as between the parties. I only state the existence of that opinion as a fact, from whence you may draw such an inference as you think properly arises
from it.
It is for us at present to recollect what we have
been, and to consider what, if we please, we may
be still. At the period of those wars our principal
strength was found in the resolution of the people,
and that in the resolution of a part only of the then
whole, which bore no proportion to our existing magnitude. England and Scotland were not united at
the beginning of that mighty struggle. When, in
the course of the contest, they were conjoined, it
was in a raw, an ill-cemented, an unproductive,
union. For the whole duration of the war, and long
after, the names and other outward and visible signs
of approximation rather augmented than diminished
our insular feuds. They were rather the causes
of new discontents and new troubles than promoters
of cordiality and affection. The now single and potent Great Britain was then not only two countries,
but, from the party heats in both, and the divisions
formed in each of them, each of the old kingdoms
within itself, in effect, was made up of two hostile
nations. Ireland, now so large a source of the common opulence and power, and which, wisely managed,
might be made much more beneficial and much more
effective, was then the heaviest of the burdens. An
army, not much less than forty thousand men, was
drawn from the general effort, to keep that kingdom
in a poor, unfruitful, and resourceless subjection.
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Such was the state of the empire. The state of
our finances was worse, if possible. Every branch
of the revenue became less productive after the Revolution. Silver, not as now a sort of counter, but the body of the current coin, was reduced so low as
not to have above three parts in four of the value in
the shilling. In the greater part the value hardly
amounted to a fourth. It required a dead expense
of three millions sterling to renew the coinage. Public credit, that great, but ambiguous principle, which has so often been predicted as the cause of our certain ruin, but which for a century has been the constant companion, and often the means, of our
prosperity and greatness, had its origin, and was
cradled, I may say, in bankruptcy and beggary. At
this day we have seen parties contending to be admitted, at a moderate premium, to advance eighteen millions to the exchequer. For infinitely smaller
loans, the Chancellor of the Ex'chequer of that day,
Montagu, the father of public credit, counter-securing the state by the appearance of the city with the Lord Mayor of London at his side, was obliged, like
a solicitor for an hospital, to go cap in hand from
shop to shop, to borrow an hundred pound, and even
smaller sums. When made up in driblets as they
could, their best securities were at an interest of
twelve per cent. Even the paper of the Bank (now
at par with cash, and generally preferred to it) was
often at a discount of twenty per cent. By this the
state of the rest may be judged.
As to our commerce, the imports and exports of
the nation, now six-and-forty million, did not then
amount to ten. The inland trade, which is commonly passed by in this sort of estimates, but which,
? ? ? ? LETTER I. 29,5
in part growing out of the foreign, and connected
with it, is more advantageous and more substantially
nutritive to the state, is not only grown in a proportion of near five to one as the foreign, but has been
augmented at least in a tenfold proportion. When
I came to England, I remember but one river navigation, the rate of carriage on which was limited by
an act of Parliament. It was made in the reign of
William the Third. I mean that of the Aire and
Calder. The rate was settled at thirteen pence. So
high a price demonstrated the feebleness of these bet
ginnings of our inland intercourse. In my time, one
of the longest and sharpest contests I remember in
your House, and which rather resembled a violent
contention amongst national parties than a local dispute, was, as well as I can recollect, to hold the price
up to threepence. Even this, which a very scanty
justice to the proprietors required, was done with
infinite difficulty. As to private credit, there were
not, as I believe, twelve bankers' shops at that time
out of London. In this their number, when I first
saw the country, I cannot be quite exact; but certainly those machines of domestic credit were then
very few. They are now in almost every markettown: and this circumstance (whether the thing be
carried to an excess or not) demonstrates the astonishing increase of private confidence, of general circulation, and of internal commerce, - an increase out of all proportion to the growth of the foreign
trade. Our naval strength in the time of King William's war was nearly matched by that of France;
and though conjoined with Holland, then a maritime
power hardly inferior to our own, even with that
force we were not always victorious. Though finally
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superior, the allied fleets experienced many unpleasant reverses on their own element. In two years
three thousand vessels were taken from the English
trade. On the Continent we lost almost every battle
we fought.
In 1697, (it is not quite an hundred years ago,) in
that state of things, amidst the general debasement
of the coin, the fall of the ordinary revenue, the
failure of all the extraordinary supplies, the ruin
of commerce, and the almost total extinction of an
infant credit, the Chancellor of the Exchequer himself, whom we have just seen begging from door to
door, came forward to move a resolution full of vigor, in which, far from being discouraged by the generally adverse fortune and the long continuance of the war, the Commons agreed to address the crown
in the following manly, spirited, and truly animating
style: -
"' This is the EIGHTH year in which your Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Commons
in Parliament assembled, have assisted your Majesty
with large supplies for carrying on a just and necessary war, in defence of our religion, preservation of
our laws, and vindication of the rights and liberties
of the people of England. "
Afterwards they proceed in this manner: --
" And to show to your Majesty and all Christendom that the Commons of England will not be
amused or diverted from their firm resolutions of
obtaining by WAR a safe and honorable peace, we
do, in the name of all those we represent, renew
our assurances to your Majesty that this House will
support your Majesty and your government against
all your enemies, both at home and abroad, and that
? ? ? ? LETTER I. 297
they will effectually assist you in the prosecution and
carrying on the present war against France. "
The amusement and diversion they speak of was
the suggestion of a treaty proposed by the enemy, and
announced from the throne. Thus the people of
England felt in the eighth, not in the fourth year of
the war. No sighing or panting after negotiation;
no motions from the opposition to force the ministry
into a peace; no messages from ministers to palsy
and deaden the resolution of Parliament or the spirit
of the nation. They did not so much as advise the
king to listen to the propositions of the enemy, nor
to seek for peace, but through the mediation of a
vigorous war. This address was moved in an hot, a
divided, a factious, and, in a great part, disaffected
House of Commons; and it was carried, nemine contradicente.
While that first war (which was ill smothered by
the Treaty of Ryswick) slept in the thin ashes of a
seeming peace, a new conflagration was in its immediate causes. A fresh and a far greater war was
in preparation. A year had hardly elapsed, when
arrangements were made for renewing the contest
with tenfold fury. The steps which were taken, at
that time, to compose, to reconcile, to unite, and to
discipline all Europe against the growth of France,
certainly furnish to a statesman the finest and most
interesting part in the history of that great period.
It formed the masterpiece of King William's policy,
dexterity, and perseverance. Full of the idea of
preserving not only a local civil liberty united with
order to our country, but to embody it in the political liberty, the order, and the independence of nations united under a natural head, the king called
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