He is an ill-furnished undertaker who has no
machinery
but his own hands to work with.
Edmund Burke
I have to thank the Bedfords
and the Lauderdales for having so faithfully and so
filly acquitted towards me whatever arrear of debt
? ? ? ? 17. :1 LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD
was left undischarged by the Priestleys and the
Paines.
Some, perhaps, may think them executors in their
own wrong: I at least have nothing to complain
of. They have gone beyond the demands of justice.
They have been (a little, perhaps, beyond their intention) favorable to me. They have been the means
of bringing out by their invectives the handsome
things which Lord Grenville has had the goodness
and condescension to say in my behalf. Retired as
I am from the world, and from all its affairs and all
its pleasures, I confess it does kindle in my nearly
extinguished feelings a very vivid satisfaction to be
so attacked and so commended. It is soothing to
my wounded mind to be commended by an able,
vigorous, and well-informed statesman, and at the
very moment when he stands forth, with a manliness and resolution worthy of himself and of his
cause, for the preservation of the person and government of our sovereign, and therein for the security of the laws, the liberties, the morals, and the lives of his people. To be in any fair way connected with
such things is indeed a distinction. No philosophy
can make me above it: no melancholy can depress
me so low as to make me wholly insensible to such
an honor.
Why will they not let me remain in obscurity and
inaction? Are they apprehensive, that, if an atom
of me remains, the sect has something to fear? Must
I be annihilated, lest, like old John Zisca's, my skin
might be made into a drum, to animate Europe to
eternal battle against a tyranny that threatens to
overwhelm all Europe and all the human race?
My Lord, it is a subject of awful meditation. Be
? ? ? ? ON THE ATTACKS UPON HIS PENSION. 175
fore this of France, the annals of all time have not
furnished an instance of a complete revolution. That
revolution seems to have extended even to the constitution of the mind of man. It has this of wonderful in it, that it resembles what Lord Verulam says of the operations of Nature: It was perfect, not only
in its elements and principles, but in all its members
and its organs, from the very beginning. The moral scheme of France furnishes the only pattern ever
known which they who admire will instantly resemble. It is, indeed, an inexhaustible repertory of one
kind of examples. In my wretched condition, though
hardly to be classed with the living, I am not safe
from them. They have tigers to fall upon animated
strength; they have hyenas to prey upon carcasses.
The national menagerie is collected by the first physiologists of the time; and it is defective in no description of savage nature. They pursue even such as me into the obscurest retreats, and haul them
before their revolutionary tribunals. Neither sex,
nor age, nor the sanctuary of the tomb, is sacred to
them. They have so determined a hatred to all privileged orders,-that they deny even to the departed
the sad immunities of the grave. They are not wholly without an object. Their turpitude purveys to
their malice; and they unplumb the dead for bullets to assassinate the living. If all revolutionists
were not proof against all caution, I should recommend it to their consideration, that no persons were
ever known in history, either sacred or profane, to
vex the sepulchre, and by their sorceries to call up
the prophetic dead, with any other event than the
prediction of their own disastrous fate. --" Leave
1me, oh, leave me to repose! "
? ? ? ? 176 LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD
In one thing I can excuse the Duke of Bedford for
his attack upon me and my mortuary pension: He
cannot readily comprehend the transaction he condemns. What I have obtained was the fruit of no
bargain, the production of no intrigue, the result of
no compromise, the effect of no solicitation. The
first suggestion of it never came from me, mediately
or immediately, to his Majesty or any of his ministers. It was long known that the instant my engagements would permit it, and before the heaviest of all calamities had forever condemned me to obscurity
and sorrow, I had resolved on a total retreat. I had
executed that design. I was entirely out of the way
of serving or of hurting any statesman or any party,
when the ministers so generously and so nobly carried into effect the spontaneous bounty of the crown.
Both descriptions have acted as became them. When
I could no longer serve them, the ministers have considered my situation. When I could no longer hurt
them, the revolutionists have trampled on my infirmity. My gratitude, I trust, is equal to the manner
in which the benefit was conferred. It came to me,
indeed, at a time of life, and in a state of mind and
body, in which no circumstance of fortune could afford me any real pleasure. But this was no fault
ill the royal donor, or in his ministers, who were
pleased, in acknowledging the merits of an invalid
servant of the public, to assuage the sorrows of a
desolate old man.
It would ill become me to boast of anything. It
would as ill become me, thus called upon, to depreciate the value of a long life spent with unexampled
toil in the service of my country. Since the total
body of my services, on account of the industry
? ? ? ? ON THE ATTACKS UPON HIS PENSION. 177
which was shown in them, and the fairness of my
intentions, have obtained the acceptance of my sovereign, it would be absurd in me to range myself on
the side of the Duke of Bedford and the Corresponding Society, or, as far as in me lies, to permit a dispute on the rate at which the authority appointed by our Constitution to estimate such things has been
pleased to set them.
Loose libels ought to be passed by in silence and
contempt. By me they have been so always. I
knew, that, as long as I remained in public, I should
live down the calumnies of malice and the judgments
of ignorance. If I happened to be now and then in
the wrong, (as who is not? ) like all other men, I
must bear the consequence of my faults and my mistakes. The libels of the present day are just of the
same stuff as the libels of the past. But they derive
an importance from the rank of the persons they
come from, and the gravity of the place where they
were uttered. In some way or other I ought to take
some notice of them. To assert myself thus traduced
is not vanity or arrogance. It is a demand of justice; it is a demonstration of gratitude. If I am
unworthy, the ministers are worse than prodigal.
On that hypothesis, I perfectly agree with the Duke
of Bedford.
For whatever I have been (I am now no more) I
put myself on my country. I ought to be allowed a
reasonable freedom, because I stand upon my deliverance; and no culprit ought to plead in irons.
Even in the utmost latitude of defensive liberty, I
wish to preserve all possible decorum. Whatever
it may be in the eyes of these noble persons themselves, to me their situation calls for the most proVOL. V. 12
? ? ? ? 178 LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD
found respect. If I should happen to trespass a
little, which I trust I shall not, let it always be
supposed that a confusion of characters may produce
mistakes, --that, in the masquerades of the grand
carnival of our age, whimsical adventures happen,
odd things are said and pass off. If I should fail a
single point in the high respect I owe to those illustrious persons, I cannot be supposed to mean the
Duke of Bedford and the Earl of Lauderdale of the
House of Peers, but the Duke of Bedford and the
Earl of Lauderdale of Palace Yard, - the Dukes and
Earls of Brentford. There they are on the pavement; there they seem to come nearer to my humble level, and, virtually at least, to have waived their high privilege.
Making this protestation, I refuse all revolutionary
tribunals, where men have been put to death for no
other reason than that they had obtained favors from
the crown. I claim, not the letter, but the spirit
of the old English law, - that is, to be tried by my
peers. I decline his Grace's jurisdiction as a judge.
I challenge the Duke of Bedford as a juror to pass
upon the value of my services. Whatever his natural parts may be, I cannot recognize in his few and
idle years the competence to judge of my long and
laborious life. If I can help it, he shall not be on
the inquest of my quantum meruit. Poor rich man!
he can hardly know anything of public industry in
its exertions, or can estimate its compensations when
its work is done. I have no doubt of his Grace's
readiness in all the calculations of vulgar arithmetic; but I shrewdly suspect that he is little studied
in the theory of moral proportions, and has never
learned the rule of three in the arithmetic of policy
and state.
? ? ? ? ON THE ATTACKS UPON HIS PENSION. 179
His Grace thinks I have obtained too nmuch. I
answer, that my exertions, whatever they have been,
were such as no hopes of pecuniary reward could
possibly excite; and no pecuniary compensation can
possibly reward them. Between money and such
services, if done by abler men than I am, there is no
common principle of comparison: they are quantities
incommensurable. Money is made for the comfort
and convenience of animal life. It cannot be a reward for what mere animal life must, indeed, sustain, but never can inspire. With submission to his Grace,
I have not had more than sufficient. As to any noble
use, I trust I know how to employ as well as he a
much greater fortune than he possesses. In a more
confined application, I certainly stand in need of -every kind of relief and easement much more than he does. When I say I have not received more than I
deserve, is this the language I hold to Majesty? No!
Far, very far, from it! Before that presence I claim
no merit at all. Everything towards me is favor
and bounty. One style to a gracious benefactor;
another to a proud and insulting foe.
His Grace is pleased to aggravate my guilt by
charging my acceptance of his Majesty's grant as a
departure from my ideas and the spirit of my conduct with regard to economy. If it be, my ideas
of economy were false and ill-founded. But they
are the Duke of Bedford's ideas of economy I have
contradicted, and not my own. If he means so allude to certain bills brought in by me on a message from the throne in 1782, I tell him that there is
nothing in my conduct that can contradict either
the letter or the spirit of those acts. Does he mean
the Pay-Office Act? I take it for granted he does
? ? ? ? 180 LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD
not. The act to which he alludes is, I suppose, the
Establishment Act. I greatly doubt whether his
Grace has ever read the one or the other. The first
of these systems cost me, with every assistance which
my then situation gave me, pains incredible. I found
an opinion common through all the offices, and general in the public at large, that it would prove impossible to reform and methodize the office of paymaster-general. I undertook it, however; and I succeeded in my undertaking. Whether the military service, or whether the general economy of our
finances have profited by that act, I leave to those
who are acquainted with the army and with the
treasury to judge.
An opinion full as general prevailed also, at the
same time, that nothing could be done for the regulation of the civil list establishment. The very attempt to introduce method into it, and any limitations
to its services, was held absurd. I had not seen the
man who so much as suggested one economical principle or an economical expedient upon that subject.
Nothing but coarse amputation or coarser taxation
were then talked of, both of them without design,
combination, or the least shadow of principle. Blind
and headlong zeal or factious fury were the whole
contribution brought by the most noisy, on that occasion, towards the satisfaction of the public or the
relief of the crown.
Let me tell my youthful censor, that the necessities of that time required something very different
from what others then suggested or what his Grace
now conceives. Let me inform him, that it was one
of the most critical periods in our annals.
Astronomers have supposed, that, if a certain comet,
? ? ? ? ON THE ATTACKS UPON HIS PENSION. 181
whose path intersected the ecliptic, had met the earth
in some (I forget what) sign, it would have whirled
us along with it, in its eccentric course, into God
knows what regions of heat and cold. Had the portentous comet of the Rights of Man, (which "from
its horrid hair shakes pestilence and war," and "with
fear of change perplexes monarchs,") had that comet
crossed upon us in that internal state of England,
nothing human could have prevented our being irresistibly hurried out of the highway of heaven into
all the vices, crimes, horrors, and miseries of the
French Revolution.
Happily, France was not then Jacobinized. Her
hostility was at a good distance. We had a limb
cut off, but we preserved the body: we lost our colonies, but we kept our Constitution. There was, indeed, much intestine heat; there was a dreadful fermentation. Wild and savage insurrection quitted the woods, and prowled about our streets in the name
of Reform. Such was the distemper of the public
mind, that there was no madman, in his maddest
ideas and maddest projects, who might not count
upon numbers to support his principles and execute
his designs.
Many of the changes, by a great misnomer called
Parliamentary Reforms, went, not in the intention of
all the professors and supporters of them, undoubtedly, but went in their certain, and, ill my opinion,
not very remote effect, home to the utter destruction
of the Constitution of this kingdom. Had they taken
place, not France, but England, would have had the
honor of leading up the death-dance of democratic
revolution. Other projects, exactly coincident in
time with those, struck at the very existence of the
? ? ? ? 182) LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD
kingdom under any Constitution. There are who
remember the blind fury of some and the lamentable
helplessness of others; here, a torpid confusion, from
a panic fear of the danger, - there, the same inaction, from a stupid insensibility to it; here, well-wishers to the mischief, -- there, indifferent lookers-on. At the same time, a sort of National Convention,
dubious in its nature and perilous in its example,
nosed Parliament in the very seat of its authority,
sat with a sort of superintendence over it, - and little less than dictated to it, not only laws, but the
very form and essence of legislature itself. In Ireland things ran in a still more eccentric course.
Government was unnerved, confounded, and in a
manner suspended. Its equipoise was totally gone.
I do not mean to speak disrespectfully of Lord North.
He was a man of admirable parts, of general knowledge, of a versatile understanding fitted for every sort
of business, of infinite wit and pleasantry, of a delightful temper, and with a mind most perfectly disinterested. But it would be only to degrade myself by a weak adulation, and not to honor the memory
of a great man, to deny that he wanted something
of the vigilance and spirit of command that the time
required. Indeed, a darkness next to the fog of this
awful day lowered over the whole region. For a littie time the helm appeared abandoned.
Ipse diern noctemque negat discernere coelo,
Nec meminisse vime media Palinurus in unda.
At that time I was connected with men of high
place in the community. They loved liberty as much
as the Duke of Bedford Man do; and they understood it at least as well. Perhaps their politics,
as usual, took a tincture from their character, and
? ? ? ? ON- THE ATTACKS UPON HIS PENSION. 183
they cultivated what they loved. The liberty they
pursued was a liberty inseparable from order, from
virtue, from morals, and from religion, --and was
neither hypocritically nor fanatically followed. They
did not wish that liberty, in itself one of the first of
blessings, should in its perversion become the greatest curse which could fall upon mankind. To preserve the Constitution entire, and practically equal to all the great ends of its formation, not in one single part, but in all its parts, was to them the first
object. Popularity and power they regarded alike.
These were with them only different means of obtaining that object, and had no preference over each other
in their minds, but as one or the other might afford
a surer or a less certain prospect of arriving at that
end. It is some consolation to me, in the cheerless
gloom which darkens the evening of my life, that
with them I commenced my political career, and never for a moment, in reality nor in appearance, for
any length of time, was separated from their good
wishes and good opinion.
By what accident it matters not, nor upon what
desert, but just then, and in the midst of that hunt
of obloquy which ever has pursued me with a full cry
through life, I had obtained a very considerable degree of public confidence. I know well enough how
equivocal a test this kind of popular opinion forms of
the merit that obtained it. I am no stranger to the
insecurity of its tenure. I do not boast of it. It is
mentioned to show, not how highly I prize the thing,
but my right to value the use I made of it. I endeavored to turn that short-lived advantage to myself
into a permanent benefit to my country. Far am I
from detracting from the merit of some gentlemen,
? ? ? ? 184 LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD
out of office or in it, on that occasion. No! It is
not my way to refuse a full and heaped measure of
justice to the aids that I receive. I have through life
been willing to give everything to others, - and to reserve nothing for myself, but the inward conscience that I had omitted no pains to discover, to animate,
to discipline, to direct the abilities of the country for
its service, and to place them in the best light to
improve their age, or to adorn it. This conscience
I have. I have never suppressed any man, never
checked him for a moment in his course, by any jealousy, or by any policy. I was always ready, to the height of my means, (and they were always infinitely
below my desires,) to forward those abilities which
overpowered my own.
He is an ill-furnished undertaker who has no machinery but his own hands to work with. Poor in my own faculties, I ever thought
myself rich in theirs. In that period of difficulty and
danger, more especially, I consulted and sincerely
cooperated with men of all parties who seemed disposed to the same ends, or to any main part of them. Nothing to prevent disorder was omitted: when it
appeared, nothing to subdue it was left uncounselled
nor unexecuted, as far as I could prevail. At the
time I speak of, and having a momentary lead, so
aided and so encouraged, and as a feeble instrumnent
in a mighty hand - I do not say I saved my country;
I am sure I did my country important service. There
were few, indeed, that did not at that time acknowledge it, - and that time was thirteen years ago. It was but one voice, that no man in the kingdom better deserved an honorable provision should be made for him.
So much for my general conduct through the whole
? ? ? ? ON THE ATTACKS UPON HIS PENSION. 185
of the portentous crisis from 1780 to 1782, and the
general sense then entertained of that conduct by
my country. But my character as a reformer, in the
particular instances which the Duke of Bedford refers to, is so connected in principle with my opinions
on the hideous changes which have since barbarized
France, and, spreading thence, threaten the political
and moral order of the whole world, that it seems to
demand something of a more detailed discussion.
My economical reforms were not, as his Grace may
think, the suppression of a paltry pension or employment, more or less. Economy in my plans was, as
it ought to be, secondary, subordinate, instrumental.
I acted on state principles. I found a great distemper in the commonwealth, and according to the nature of the evil and of the object I treated it. The malady was deep; it was complicated, in the causes
and in the symptoms. Throughout it was full of
contra-indicants. On one hand, government, daily
growing more invidious from an apparent increase of
the means of strength, was every day growing more
contemptible by real weakness. Nor was this dissolution confined to government commonly so called.
It extended to Parliament, which was losing not a
little in its dignity and estimation by an opinion of its
not acting on worthy motives. On the other hand,
the desires of the people (partly natural and partly
infused into them by art) appeared in so wild and inconsiderate a manner with regard to the economical
object, (for I set aside for a moment the dreadful
tampering with the body of the Constitution itself,)
that, if their petitions had literally been complied
with, the state would have been convulsed, and a
gate would have been opened through which all prop
? ? ? ? 186 LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD
erty might be sacked and ravaged. Nothing could
have saved the public from the mischiefs of the false
reform but its absurdity, which would soon have
brought itself, and with it all real reform, into discredit. This would have left a rankling wound in
the hearts of the people, who would know they had
failed in the accomplishment of their wishes, but who,
like the rest of mankind in all ages, would impute
the blame to anything rather than to their own proceedings. But there were then persons in the world
who nourished complaint, and would have been thoroughly disappointed, if the people were ever satisfied.
I was not of that humor. I wished that they should
be satisfied. It was my aim to give to the people the
substance of what I knew they desired, and what I
thought was right, whether they desired it or not, before it had been modified for them into senseless petitions. I knew that there is a manifest, marked distinction, which ill men with ill designs, or weak
men incapable of any design, will constantly be confounding, - that is, a marked distinction between
change and reformation. ,The former alters the substance of the objects themselves, and gets rid of all
their essential good as well as of all the accidental
evil annexed to them. Change is novelty; and
whether it is to operate any one of the effects of
reformation at all, or whether it may not contradict
the very principle upon which reformation is desired,
cannot be certainly known beforehand. Reform is
not a change in the substance or in the primary modification of the object, but a direct application of a
remedy to the grievance complained of. So far as
that is removed, all is sure. It stops there; and if
it fails, the substance which underwent the operation,
at the very worst, is but where it was.
? ? ? ? ON THE ATTACKS UPON HIS PENSION. 187
All this, in effect, I think, but am not sure, I have
said elsewhere. It cannot at this time be too often
repeated, line upon line, precept upon precept, until
it comes into the currency of a proverb, - To innovate is not to reform. The French revolutionists complained of everything; they refused to reform anything; and they left nothing, no, nothing at all, un changed. The consequences are before us, -- not in
remote history, not in future prognostication: they
are about us; they are upon us. They shake the
public security; they menace private enjoyment.
They dwarf the growth of the young; they break the
quiet of the old. If we travel, they stop our way.
They infest us in town; they pursue us to the country. Our business is interrupted, our repose is troubled, our pleasures are saddened, our very studies are
poisoned and perverted, and knowledge is rendered
worse than ignorance, by the enormous evils of this
dreadful innovation. The Revolution harpies of
France, sprung from Night and Hell, or fiom that
chaotic Anarchy which generates equivocally " all
monstrous, all prodigious things," cuckoo-like, adulterously lay their eggs, and brood over, and hatch
them in the nest of every neighboring state. These
obscene harpies, who deck themselves in I know not
what divine attributes, but who in reality are foul
and ravenous birds of prey, ( both mothers and daughters,) flutter over our heads, and souse down upon
our tables, and leave nothing unrent, unrifled, unravaged, or unpolluted with the slime of their filthy
offal. *
~ Tristius haud illis monstrum, nee soevior ulla
Pestis et ira Deam Stygiis sese extulit undis.
Virginei volucrum vultus, fcedissima ventris
? ? ? ? 188 LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD
If his Grace can contemplate the result of this complete innovation, or, as some friends of his will call
it, reform, in the whole body of its solidity and compound mass, at. which, as Hamlet says, the face of
heaven glows with horror and indignation, and which,
in truth, makes every reflecting mind and every feeling heart perfectly thought-sick, without a thorough
abhorrence of everything they say and everything they
do, I am amazed at the morbid strength or the natural infirmity of his mind.
It was, then, not my love, but my hatred to innovation, that produced my plan of reform. Without
troubling myself with the exactness of the logical
diagram, I considered them as things substantially
opposite. It was to prevent that evil, that I proposed
the measures which his Grace is pleased, and I am
not sorry he is pleased, to recall to my recollection.
I had (what I hope that noble Duke will remember
in all his operations) a state to preserve, as well as
a state to reform. I had a people to gratify, but not
to inflame or to mislead. I do not claim half the
credit for what I did as for what I prevented from
being done. In that situation of the public mind, I
did not undertake, as was then proposed, to new-model the House of Commons or the House of Lords, or
Proluvies, uncaeque manus, et pallida semper
Ora fame.
Here the poet breaks the line, because he (and that he is Virgil) had
not verse or language to describe that monster even as he had conceived her. Had he lived to our time, he would have been more overpowered with the reality than he was with the imagination. Virgil only knew the horror of the times before him. Had he lived to see
the revolutionists and constitutionalists of France, he would have had
more horrid and disgusting features of his harpies to describe, and
more frequent failures in the attempt to describe them.
? ? ? ? ON THE ATTACKS UPON HIS PENSION. 189
to change the authority under which any officer of the
crown acted, who was suffered at all to exist. Crown,
lords, commons, judicial system, system of administration, existed as they had existed before, and in the
mode and manner in which they had always existed.
My measures were, what I then truly stated them to
the House to be, in their intent, healing and mediatorial. A complaint was made of too much influence in the House of Commons: I reduced it in both Houses; and I gave my reasons, article by article, for
every reduction, and showed why I thought it safe
for the service of the state. I heaved the lead every
inch of way I made. A disposition to expense was
complained of: to that I opposed, not mere retrenchment, but a system of economy, which would make a
random expense, without plan or foresight, in future,
not easily practicable. I proceeded upon principles
of research to put me in possession of my matter, on
principles of method to regulate it, and on principles
in the human mind and in civil affairs to secure and
perpetuate the operation. I conceived nothing arbitrarily, nor proposed anything to be done by the will
and pleasure of others or my own, - but by reason,
and by reason only. I have ever abhorred, since the
first dawn of my understanding to this its obscure
twilight, all the operations of opinion, fancy, inclination, and will, in the affairs of government, where
only a sovereign reason, paramount to all forms of
legislation and administration, should dictate. Government is made for the very purpose of opposing that
reason to will and to caprice, in the reformers or in
the reformed, in the governors or in the governed,
in kings, in senates, or in people.
On a careful review, therefore, and analysis of all
? ? ? ? 190 LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD
the component parts of the civil list, and on weighing them against each other, in order to make as
much as possible all of them a subject of estimate,
(the foundation and corner-stone of all regular, provident economy,) it appeared to me evident that this
was impracticable, whilst that part called the pension
list was totally discretionary in its amount. For this
reason, and for this only, I proposed to reduce it,
both in its gross quantity and in its larger individual
proportions, to a certainty; lest, if it were left without a general limit, it might eat up the civil list service, -if suffered to be granted in portions too great for the fund, it might defeat its own end, and, by unlimited allowances to some, it might disable the crown
in. means of providing for others. The pension list
was to be kept as a sacred fund; but it could not be
kept as a constant, open fund, sufficient for growing
demands, if some demands would wholly devour it.
The tenor of the act will show that it regarded the
civil list only, the reduction of which to some sort of
estimate was my great object.
No other of the cr6wn funds did I meddle with,
because they had not the same relations. This of
the four and a half per cents does his Grace imagine
had escaped me, or had escaped all the men of business who acted with me in those regulations? I
knew that such a fund existed, and that pensions
had been always granted on it, before his Grace was
born. This fund was full in my eye. It was full in
the eyes of those who worked with me. It was left
on principle. On principle I did what was then done;
and on principle what was left undone was omitted.
I did not dare to rob the nation of all funds to reward merit. If I pressed this point too close, I acted
? ? ? ? ON THE ATTACKS UPON HIS PENSION. 191
contrary to the avowed principles on which I went.
Gentlemen are very fond of quoting me; but if any
one thinks it worth his while to know the rules that
guided me ill my plan of reform, he will read my
printed speech on that subject, at least what is contained from page 230 to page 241 in the second volume of the collection * which a friend has given himself the trouble to make of my publications. Be
this as it may, these two bills (though achieved with
the greatest labor, and management of every sort,
both within and without the House) were only a
part, and but a small part, of a very large system,
comprehending all the objects I stated in opening
my proposition, and, indeed, many more, which I
just hinted at in my speech to the electors of Bristol, when I was put out of that representation. All
these, in some state or other of forwardness, I have
long had by me.
But do I justify his Majesty's grace on these
grounds? I think them the least of my services.
The time gave them an occasional value. What I
have done in the way of political economy was far
from confined to this body of measures. I did not
come into Parliament to con my lesson. I had earned
my pension before I set my foot in St. Stephen's
Chapel. I was prepared and disciplined to this political warfare. The first session I sat in Parliament, I
found it necessary to analyze the whole commercial,
financial, constitutional, and foreign interests of Great
Britain and its empire. A great deal was then done;
and more, far more, would have been done, if mole
had been permitted by events. Then, in the vigor of
my manhood, my constitution sunk under my labor.
* London, J. Dodsley, 1792, 3 vols. 4to. - Vol. II. pp. 324 - 336,
in the present edition.
? ? ? ? 192 LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD
Had I then died, (and I seemed to myself very near
death,) I had then earned for those who belonged to
me more than the Duke of Bedford's ideas of service
are of power to estimate. But, in truth, these services I am called to account for are not those on which
I value myself the most. If I were to call for a reward, (which I have never done,) it should be for
those in which for fourteen years without intermission
I showed the most industry and had the least success:
I mean in the affairs of India. They are those on
which I value myself the most: most for the importance, most for the labor, most for the judgment,
most for constancy and perseverance in the pursuit.
Others may value them most for the intention. In
that, surely, they are not mistaken.
Does his Grace think that they who advised the
crown to make my retreat easy considered me only
as an economist? That, well understood, however,
is a good deal. If I had not deemed it of some value, I should not have made political economy an object of my humble studies from my very early youth to near the end of my service in Parliament, even
before (at least to any knowledge of mine) it had
employed the thoughts of speculative men in other
parts of Europe. At that time it was still in its
infancy in England, where, in the last century, it
had its origin. Great and learned men thought my
studies were not wholly thrown away, and deigned
to communicate with me now and then on some particulars of their immortal works. Something of these
studies may appear incidentally in some of the earliest things I published. The House has been witness to their effect, and has profited of them, more
or less, for above eight-and-twenty years.
? ? ? ? ON THE ATTACKS UPON HIS PENSION. 193
To their estimate I leave the matter. I was not,
like his Grace of Bedford, swaddled and rocked and
dandled into a legislator: "1Nitor in adversum" is
the motto for a man like me. I possessed not one
of the qualities nor cultivated one of the arts that
recommend men to the favor and protection of the
great. I was not made for a minion or a tool. As
little did I follow the trade of winning the hearts by
imposing on the understandings of the people. At
every step of my progress in life, (for in every step
was I traversed and opposed,) and at every turnpike
I met, I was obliged to show my passport, and again
and again to prove my sole title to the honor of being useful to my country, by a proof that I was not
wholly unacquainted with its laws and the whole system of its interests both abroad and at home. Otherwise, no rank, no toleration even, for me. I had no arts but manly arts. On them I have stood, and,
please God, in spite of the Duke of Bedford and the
Earl of Lauderdale, to the last gasp will I stand.
Had his Grace condescended to inquire concerning the person whom he has not thought it below
him to reproach, he might have found, that, in the
whole course of my life, I have never, on any pretence of economy, or on any other pretence, so much
as in a single instance, stood between any man and
his reward of service or his encouragement in useful
talent and pursuit, from the highest of those services
and pursuits to the lowest. On the contrary, I have
on an hundred occasions exerted myself with singular zeal to forward every man's even tolerable pretensions. I have more than once had good-natured reprehensions from my friends for carrying the matter to something bordering on abuse. This line of
VOL v. 13
? ? ? ? 194 LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD
conduct, whatever its merits might be, was partly
owing to natural disposition, but I think full as much
to reason and principle. I looked on the consideration of public service or public ornament to be real
and very justice; and I ever held a scanty and penurious justice to partake of the nature of a wrong.
I held it to be, in its consequences, the worst economy in the world. In saving money I soon can count
up all the good I do; but when by a cold penury I
blast the abilities of a nation, and stunt the growth of
its active energies, the ill I may do is beyond all calculation. Whether it be too much or too little, whatever I have done has been general and systematic. I have never entered into those triflinug vexations and
oppressive details that have been falsely and most
ridiculously laid to my charge.
Did I blame the pensions given to Mr. Barre and
Mr. Dunning between the proposition and execution
of my plan? No! surely, no! Those pensions were
within my principles. I assert it, those gentlemen
deserved their pensions, their titles, - all they had;
and if more they had, I should have been but
pleased the more. They were men of talents; they
were men of service. I put the profession of the law
out of the question in one of them. It is a service
that rewards itself. But their public service, though
from their abilities unquestionably of more value than
mine, in its quantity and in its duration was not to be
mentioned with it. But I never could drive a hard
bargain in my life, concerning any matter whatever;
and least of all do I know how to haggle and huckster with merit. Pension for myself I obtained none;
nor did I solicit any. Yet I was loaded with hatred
for everything that was withheld, and with obloquy
? ? ? ? ON THE ATTACKS UPON HIS PENSION. 195
for everything that was given. I was thus left to
support the grants of a name ever dear to me and
ever venerable to the world in favor of those who
were no friends of mine or of his, against the rude
attacks of those who were at that time friends to the
grantees and their own zealous partisans. I have
never heard the Earl of Lauderdale complain of these
pensions. He finds nothing wrong till he comes to
me. This is impartiality, in the true, modern, revolutionary style.
and the Lauderdales for having so faithfully and so
filly acquitted towards me whatever arrear of debt
? ? ? ? 17. :1 LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD
was left undischarged by the Priestleys and the
Paines.
Some, perhaps, may think them executors in their
own wrong: I at least have nothing to complain
of. They have gone beyond the demands of justice.
They have been (a little, perhaps, beyond their intention) favorable to me. They have been the means
of bringing out by their invectives the handsome
things which Lord Grenville has had the goodness
and condescension to say in my behalf. Retired as
I am from the world, and from all its affairs and all
its pleasures, I confess it does kindle in my nearly
extinguished feelings a very vivid satisfaction to be
so attacked and so commended. It is soothing to
my wounded mind to be commended by an able,
vigorous, and well-informed statesman, and at the
very moment when he stands forth, with a manliness and resolution worthy of himself and of his
cause, for the preservation of the person and government of our sovereign, and therein for the security of the laws, the liberties, the morals, and the lives of his people. To be in any fair way connected with
such things is indeed a distinction. No philosophy
can make me above it: no melancholy can depress
me so low as to make me wholly insensible to such
an honor.
Why will they not let me remain in obscurity and
inaction? Are they apprehensive, that, if an atom
of me remains, the sect has something to fear? Must
I be annihilated, lest, like old John Zisca's, my skin
might be made into a drum, to animate Europe to
eternal battle against a tyranny that threatens to
overwhelm all Europe and all the human race?
My Lord, it is a subject of awful meditation. Be
? ? ? ? ON THE ATTACKS UPON HIS PENSION. 175
fore this of France, the annals of all time have not
furnished an instance of a complete revolution. That
revolution seems to have extended even to the constitution of the mind of man. It has this of wonderful in it, that it resembles what Lord Verulam says of the operations of Nature: It was perfect, not only
in its elements and principles, but in all its members
and its organs, from the very beginning. The moral scheme of France furnishes the only pattern ever
known which they who admire will instantly resemble. It is, indeed, an inexhaustible repertory of one
kind of examples. In my wretched condition, though
hardly to be classed with the living, I am not safe
from them. They have tigers to fall upon animated
strength; they have hyenas to prey upon carcasses.
The national menagerie is collected by the first physiologists of the time; and it is defective in no description of savage nature. They pursue even such as me into the obscurest retreats, and haul them
before their revolutionary tribunals. Neither sex,
nor age, nor the sanctuary of the tomb, is sacred to
them. They have so determined a hatred to all privileged orders,-that they deny even to the departed
the sad immunities of the grave. They are not wholly without an object. Their turpitude purveys to
their malice; and they unplumb the dead for bullets to assassinate the living. If all revolutionists
were not proof against all caution, I should recommend it to their consideration, that no persons were
ever known in history, either sacred or profane, to
vex the sepulchre, and by their sorceries to call up
the prophetic dead, with any other event than the
prediction of their own disastrous fate. --" Leave
1me, oh, leave me to repose! "
? ? ? ? 176 LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD
In one thing I can excuse the Duke of Bedford for
his attack upon me and my mortuary pension: He
cannot readily comprehend the transaction he condemns. What I have obtained was the fruit of no
bargain, the production of no intrigue, the result of
no compromise, the effect of no solicitation. The
first suggestion of it never came from me, mediately
or immediately, to his Majesty or any of his ministers. It was long known that the instant my engagements would permit it, and before the heaviest of all calamities had forever condemned me to obscurity
and sorrow, I had resolved on a total retreat. I had
executed that design. I was entirely out of the way
of serving or of hurting any statesman or any party,
when the ministers so generously and so nobly carried into effect the spontaneous bounty of the crown.
Both descriptions have acted as became them. When
I could no longer serve them, the ministers have considered my situation. When I could no longer hurt
them, the revolutionists have trampled on my infirmity. My gratitude, I trust, is equal to the manner
in which the benefit was conferred. It came to me,
indeed, at a time of life, and in a state of mind and
body, in which no circumstance of fortune could afford me any real pleasure. But this was no fault
ill the royal donor, or in his ministers, who were
pleased, in acknowledging the merits of an invalid
servant of the public, to assuage the sorrows of a
desolate old man.
It would ill become me to boast of anything. It
would as ill become me, thus called upon, to depreciate the value of a long life spent with unexampled
toil in the service of my country. Since the total
body of my services, on account of the industry
? ? ? ? ON THE ATTACKS UPON HIS PENSION. 177
which was shown in them, and the fairness of my
intentions, have obtained the acceptance of my sovereign, it would be absurd in me to range myself on
the side of the Duke of Bedford and the Corresponding Society, or, as far as in me lies, to permit a dispute on the rate at which the authority appointed by our Constitution to estimate such things has been
pleased to set them.
Loose libels ought to be passed by in silence and
contempt. By me they have been so always. I
knew, that, as long as I remained in public, I should
live down the calumnies of malice and the judgments
of ignorance. If I happened to be now and then in
the wrong, (as who is not? ) like all other men, I
must bear the consequence of my faults and my mistakes. The libels of the present day are just of the
same stuff as the libels of the past. But they derive
an importance from the rank of the persons they
come from, and the gravity of the place where they
were uttered. In some way or other I ought to take
some notice of them. To assert myself thus traduced
is not vanity or arrogance. It is a demand of justice; it is a demonstration of gratitude. If I am
unworthy, the ministers are worse than prodigal.
On that hypothesis, I perfectly agree with the Duke
of Bedford.
For whatever I have been (I am now no more) I
put myself on my country. I ought to be allowed a
reasonable freedom, because I stand upon my deliverance; and no culprit ought to plead in irons.
Even in the utmost latitude of defensive liberty, I
wish to preserve all possible decorum. Whatever
it may be in the eyes of these noble persons themselves, to me their situation calls for the most proVOL. V. 12
? ? ? ? 178 LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD
found respect. If I should happen to trespass a
little, which I trust I shall not, let it always be
supposed that a confusion of characters may produce
mistakes, --that, in the masquerades of the grand
carnival of our age, whimsical adventures happen,
odd things are said and pass off. If I should fail a
single point in the high respect I owe to those illustrious persons, I cannot be supposed to mean the
Duke of Bedford and the Earl of Lauderdale of the
House of Peers, but the Duke of Bedford and the
Earl of Lauderdale of Palace Yard, - the Dukes and
Earls of Brentford. There they are on the pavement; there they seem to come nearer to my humble level, and, virtually at least, to have waived their high privilege.
Making this protestation, I refuse all revolutionary
tribunals, where men have been put to death for no
other reason than that they had obtained favors from
the crown. I claim, not the letter, but the spirit
of the old English law, - that is, to be tried by my
peers. I decline his Grace's jurisdiction as a judge.
I challenge the Duke of Bedford as a juror to pass
upon the value of my services. Whatever his natural parts may be, I cannot recognize in his few and
idle years the competence to judge of my long and
laborious life. If I can help it, he shall not be on
the inquest of my quantum meruit. Poor rich man!
he can hardly know anything of public industry in
its exertions, or can estimate its compensations when
its work is done. I have no doubt of his Grace's
readiness in all the calculations of vulgar arithmetic; but I shrewdly suspect that he is little studied
in the theory of moral proportions, and has never
learned the rule of three in the arithmetic of policy
and state.
? ? ? ? ON THE ATTACKS UPON HIS PENSION. 179
His Grace thinks I have obtained too nmuch. I
answer, that my exertions, whatever they have been,
were such as no hopes of pecuniary reward could
possibly excite; and no pecuniary compensation can
possibly reward them. Between money and such
services, if done by abler men than I am, there is no
common principle of comparison: they are quantities
incommensurable. Money is made for the comfort
and convenience of animal life. It cannot be a reward for what mere animal life must, indeed, sustain, but never can inspire. With submission to his Grace,
I have not had more than sufficient. As to any noble
use, I trust I know how to employ as well as he a
much greater fortune than he possesses. In a more
confined application, I certainly stand in need of -every kind of relief and easement much more than he does. When I say I have not received more than I
deserve, is this the language I hold to Majesty? No!
Far, very far, from it! Before that presence I claim
no merit at all. Everything towards me is favor
and bounty. One style to a gracious benefactor;
another to a proud and insulting foe.
His Grace is pleased to aggravate my guilt by
charging my acceptance of his Majesty's grant as a
departure from my ideas and the spirit of my conduct with regard to economy. If it be, my ideas
of economy were false and ill-founded. But they
are the Duke of Bedford's ideas of economy I have
contradicted, and not my own. If he means so allude to certain bills brought in by me on a message from the throne in 1782, I tell him that there is
nothing in my conduct that can contradict either
the letter or the spirit of those acts. Does he mean
the Pay-Office Act? I take it for granted he does
? ? ? ? 180 LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD
not. The act to which he alludes is, I suppose, the
Establishment Act. I greatly doubt whether his
Grace has ever read the one or the other. The first
of these systems cost me, with every assistance which
my then situation gave me, pains incredible. I found
an opinion common through all the offices, and general in the public at large, that it would prove impossible to reform and methodize the office of paymaster-general. I undertook it, however; and I succeeded in my undertaking. Whether the military service, or whether the general economy of our
finances have profited by that act, I leave to those
who are acquainted with the army and with the
treasury to judge.
An opinion full as general prevailed also, at the
same time, that nothing could be done for the regulation of the civil list establishment. The very attempt to introduce method into it, and any limitations
to its services, was held absurd. I had not seen the
man who so much as suggested one economical principle or an economical expedient upon that subject.
Nothing but coarse amputation or coarser taxation
were then talked of, both of them without design,
combination, or the least shadow of principle. Blind
and headlong zeal or factious fury were the whole
contribution brought by the most noisy, on that occasion, towards the satisfaction of the public or the
relief of the crown.
Let me tell my youthful censor, that the necessities of that time required something very different
from what others then suggested or what his Grace
now conceives. Let me inform him, that it was one
of the most critical periods in our annals.
Astronomers have supposed, that, if a certain comet,
? ? ? ? ON THE ATTACKS UPON HIS PENSION. 181
whose path intersected the ecliptic, had met the earth
in some (I forget what) sign, it would have whirled
us along with it, in its eccentric course, into God
knows what regions of heat and cold. Had the portentous comet of the Rights of Man, (which "from
its horrid hair shakes pestilence and war," and "with
fear of change perplexes monarchs,") had that comet
crossed upon us in that internal state of England,
nothing human could have prevented our being irresistibly hurried out of the highway of heaven into
all the vices, crimes, horrors, and miseries of the
French Revolution.
Happily, France was not then Jacobinized. Her
hostility was at a good distance. We had a limb
cut off, but we preserved the body: we lost our colonies, but we kept our Constitution. There was, indeed, much intestine heat; there was a dreadful fermentation. Wild and savage insurrection quitted the woods, and prowled about our streets in the name
of Reform. Such was the distemper of the public
mind, that there was no madman, in his maddest
ideas and maddest projects, who might not count
upon numbers to support his principles and execute
his designs.
Many of the changes, by a great misnomer called
Parliamentary Reforms, went, not in the intention of
all the professors and supporters of them, undoubtedly, but went in their certain, and, ill my opinion,
not very remote effect, home to the utter destruction
of the Constitution of this kingdom. Had they taken
place, not France, but England, would have had the
honor of leading up the death-dance of democratic
revolution. Other projects, exactly coincident in
time with those, struck at the very existence of the
? ? ? ? 182) LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD
kingdom under any Constitution. There are who
remember the blind fury of some and the lamentable
helplessness of others; here, a torpid confusion, from
a panic fear of the danger, - there, the same inaction, from a stupid insensibility to it; here, well-wishers to the mischief, -- there, indifferent lookers-on. At the same time, a sort of National Convention,
dubious in its nature and perilous in its example,
nosed Parliament in the very seat of its authority,
sat with a sort of superintendence over it, - and little less than dictated to it, not only laws, but the
very form and essence of legislature itself. In Ireland things ran in a still more eccentric course.
Government was unnerved, confounded, and in a
manner suspended. Its equipoise was totally gone.
I do not mean to speak disrespectfully of Lord North.
He was a man of admirable parts, of general knowledge, of a versatile understanding fitted for every sort
of business, of infinite wit and pleasantry, of a delightful temper, and with a mind most perfectly disinterested. But it would be only to degrade myself by a weak adulation, and not to honor the memory
of a great man, to deny that he wanted something
of the vigilance and spirit of command that the time
required. Indeed, a darkness next to the fog of this
awful day lowered over the whole region. For a littie time the helm appeared abandoned.
Ipse diern noctemque negat discernere coelo,
Nec meminisse vime media Palinurus in unda.
At that time I was connected with men of high
place in the community. They loved liberty as much
as the Duke of Bedford Man do; and they understood it at least as well. Perhaps their politics,
as usual, took a tincture from their character, and
? ? ? ? ON- THE ATTACKS UPON HIS PENSION. 183
they cultivated what they loved. The liberty they
pursued was a liberty inseparable from order, from
virtue, from morals, and from religion, --and was
neither hypocritically nor fanatically followed. They
did not wish that liberty, in itself one of the first of
blessings, should in its perversion become the greatest curse which could fall upon mankind. To preserve the Constitution entire, and practically equal to all the great ends of its formation, not in one single part, but in all its parts, was to them the first
object. Popularity and power they regarded alike.
These were with them only different means of obtaining that object, and had no preference over each other
in their minds, but as one or the other might afford
a surer or a less certain prospect of arriving at that
end. It is some consolation to me, in the cheerless
gloom which darkens the evening of my life, that
with them I commenced my political career, and never for a moment, in reality nor in appearance, for
any length of time, was separated from their good
wishes and good opinion.
By what accident it matters not, nor upon what
desert, but just then, and in the midst of that hunt
of obloquy which ever has pursued me with a full cry
through life, I had obtained a very considerable degree of public confidence. I know well enough how
equivocal a test this kind of popular opinion forms of
the merit that obtained it. I am no stranger to the
insecurity of its tenure. I do not boast of it. It is
mentioned to show, not how highly I prize the thing,
but my right to value the use I made of it. I endeavored to turn that short-lived advantage to myself
into a permanent benefit to my country. Far am I
from detracting from the merit of some gentlemen,
? ? ? ? 184 LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD
out of office or in it, on that occasion. No! It is
not my way to refuse a full and heaped measure of
justice to the aids that I receive. I have through life
been willing to give everything to others, - and to reserve nothing for myself, but the inward conscience that I had omitted no pains to discover, to animate,
to discipline, to direct the abilities of the country for
its service, and to place them in the best light to
improve their age, or to adorn it. This conscience
I have. I have never suppressed any man, never
checked him for a moment in his course, by any jealousy, or by any policy. I was always ready, to the height of my means, (and they were always infinitely
below my desires,) to forward those abilities which
overpowered my own.
He is an ill-furnished undertaker who has no machinery but his own hands to work with. Poor in my own faculties, I ever thought
myself rich in theirs. In that period of difficulty and
danger, more especially, I consulted and sincerely
cooperated with men of all parties who seemed disposed to the same ends, or to any main part of them. Nothing to prevent disorder was omitted: when it
appeared, nothing to subdue it was left uncounselled
nor unexecuted, as far as I could prevail. At the
time I speak of, and having a momentary lead, so
aided and so encouraged, and as a feeble instrumnent
in a mighty hand - I do not say I saved my country;
I am sure I did my country important service. There
were few, indeed, that did not at that time acknowledge it, - and that time was thirteen years ago. It was but one voice, that no man in the kingdom better deserved an honorable provision should be made for him.
So much for my general conduct through the whole
? ? ? ? ON THE ATTACKS UPON HIS PENSION. 185
of the portentous crisis from 1780 to 1782, and the
general sense then entertained of that conduct by
my country. But my character as a reformer, in the
particular instances which the Duke of Bedford refers to, is so connected in principle with my opinions
on the hideous changes which have since barbarized
France, and, spreading thence, threaten the political
and moral order of the whole world, that it seems to
demand something of a more detailed discussion.
My economical reforms were not, as his Grace may
think, the suppression of a paltry pension or employment, more or less. Economy in my plans was, as
it ought to be, secondary, subordinate, instrumental.
I acted on state principles. I found a great distemper in the commonwealth, and according to the nature of the evil and of the object I treated it. The malady was deep; it was complicated, in the causes
and in the symptoms. Throughout it was full of
contra-indicants. On one hand, government, daily
growing more invidious from an apparent increase of
the means of strength, was every day growing more
contemptible by real weakness. Nor was this dissolution confined to government commonly so called.
It extended to Parliament, which was losing not a
little in its dignity and estimation by an opinion of its
not acting on worthy motives. On the other hand,
the desires of the people (partly natural and partly
infused into them by art) appeared in so wild and inconsiderate a manner with regard to the economical
object, (for I set aside for a moment the dreadful
tampering with the body of the Constitution itself,)
that, if their petitions had literally been complied
with, the state would have been convulsed, and a
gate would have been opened through which all prop
? ? ? ? 186 LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD
erty might be sacked and ravaged. Nothing could
have saved the public from the mischiefs of the false
reform but its absurdity, which would soon have
brought itself, and with it all real reform, into discredit. This would have left a rankling wound in
the hearts of the people, who would know they had
failed in the accomplishment of their wishes, but who,
like the rest of mankind in all ages, would impute
the blame to anything rather than to their own proceedings. But there were then persons in the world
who nourished complaint, and would have been thoroughly disappointed, if the people were ever satisfied.
I was not of that humor. I wished that they should
be satisfied. It was my aim to give to the people the
substance of what I knew they desired, and what I
thought was right, whether they desired it or not, before it had been modified for them into senseless petitions. I knew that there is a manifest, marked distinction, which ill men with ill designs, or weak
men incapable of any design, will constantly be confounding, - that is, a marked distinction between
change and reformation. ,The former alters the substance of the objects themselves, and gets rid of all
their essential good as well as of all the accidental
evil annexed to them. Change is novelty; and
whether it is to operate any one of the effects of
reformation at all, or whether it may not contradict
the very principle upon which reformation is desired,
cannot be certainly known beforehand. Reform is
not a change in the substance or in the primary modification of the object, but a direct application of a
remedy to the grievance complained of. So far as
that is removed, all is sure. It stops there; and if
it fails, the substance which underwent the operation,
at the very worst, is but where it was.
? ? ? ? ON THE ATTACKS UPON HIS PENSION. 187
All this, in effect, I think, but am not sure, I have
said elsewhere. It cannot at this time be too often
repeated, line upon line, precept upon precept, until
it comes into the currency of a proverb, - To innovate is not to reform. The French revolutionists complained of everything; they refused to reform anything; and they left nothing, no, nothing at all, un changed. The consequences are before us, -- not in
remote history, not in future prognostication: they
are about us; they are upon us. They shake the
public security; they menace private enjoyment.
They dwarf the growth of the young; they break the
quiet of the old. If we travel, they stop our way.
They infest us in town; they pursue us to the country. Our business is interrupted, our repose is troubled, our pleasures are saddened, our very studies are
poisoned and perverted, and knowledge is rendered
worse than ignorance, by the enormous evils of this
dreadful innovation. The Revolution harpies of
France, sprung from Night and Hell, or fiom that
chaotic Anarchy which generates equivocally " all
monstrous, all prodigious things," cuckoo-like, adulterously lay their eggs, and brood over, and hatch
them in the nest of every neighboring state. These
obscene harpies, who deck themselves in I know not
what divine attributes, but who in reality are foul
and ravenous birds of prey, ( both mothers and daughters,) flutter over our heads, and souse down upon
our tables, and leave nothing unrent, unrifled, unravaged, or unpolluted with the slime of their filthy
offal. *
~ Tristius haud illis monstrum, nee soevior ulla
Pestis et ira Deam Stygiis sese extulit undis.
Virginei volucrum vultus, fcedissima ventris
? ? ? ? 188 LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD
If his Grace can contemplate the result of this complete innovation, or, as some friends of his will call
it, reform, in the whole body of its solidity and compound mass, at. which, as Hamlet says, the face of
heaven glows with horror and indignation, and which,
in truth, makes every reflecting mind and every feeling heart perfectly thought-sick, without a thorough
abhorrence of everything they say and everything they
do, I am amazed at the morbid strength or the natural infirmity of his mind.
It was, then, not my love, but my hatred to innovation, that produced my plan of reform. Without
troubling myself with the exactness of the logical
diagram, I considered them as things substantially
opposite. It was to prevent that evil, that I proposed
the measures which his Grace is pleased, and I am
not sorry he is pleased, to recall to my recollection.
I had (what I hope that noble Duke will remember
in all his operations) a state to preserve, as well as
a state to reform. I had a people to gratify, but not
to inflame or to mislead. I do not claim half the
credit for what I did as for what I prevented from
being done. In that situation of the public mind, I
did not undertake, as was then proposed, to new-model the House of Commons or the House of Lords, or
Proluvies, uncaeque manus, et pallida semper
Ora fame.
Here the poet breaks the line, because he (and that he is Virgil) had
not verse or language to describe that monster even as he had conceived her. Had he lived to our time, he would have been more overpowered with the reality than he was with the imagination. Virgil only knew the horror of the times before him. Had he lived to see
the revolutionists and constitutionalists of France, he would have had
more horrid and disgusting features of his harpies to describe, and
more frequent failures in the attempt to describe them.
? ? ? ? ON THE ATTACKS UPON HIS PENSION. 189
to change the authority under which any officer of the
crown acted, who was suffered at all to exist. Crown,
lords, commons, judicial system, system of administration, existed as they had existed before, and in the
mode and manner in which they had always existed.
My measures were, what I then truly stated them to
the House to be, in their intent, healing and mediatorial. A complaint was made of too much influence in the House of Commons: I reduced it in both Houses; and I gave my reasons, article by article, for
every reduction, and showed why I thought it safe
for the service of the state. I heaved the lead every
inch of way I made. A disposition to expense was
complained of: to that I opposed, not mere retrenchment, but a system of economy, which would make a
random expense, without plan or foresight, in future,
not easily practicable. I proceeded upon principles
of research to put me in possession of my matter, on
principles of method to regulate it, and on principles
in the human mind and in civil affairs to secure and
perpetuate the operation. I conceived nothing arbitrarily, nor proposed anything to be done by the will
and pleasure of others or my own, - but by reason,
and by reason only. I have ever abhorred, since the
first dawn of my understanding to this its obscure
twilight, all the operations of opinion, fancy, inclination, and will, in the affairs of government, where
only a sovereign reason, paramount to all forms of
legislation and administration, should dictate. Government is made for the very purpose of opposing that
reason to will and to caprice, in the reformers or in
the reformed, in the governors or in the governed,
in kings, in senates, or in people.
On a careful review, therefore, and analysis of all
? ? ? ? 190 LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD
the component parts of the civil list, and on weighing them against each other, in order to make as
much as possible all of them a subject of estimate,
(the foundation and corner-stone of all regular, provident economy,) it appeared to me evident that this
was impracticable, whilst that part called the pension
list was totally discretionary in its amount. For this
reason, and for this only, I proposed to reduce it,
both in its gross quantity and in its larger individual
proportions, to a certainty; lest, if it were left without a general limit, it might eat up the civil list service, -if suffered to be granted in portions too great for the fund, it might defeat its own end, and, by unlimited allowances to some, it might disable the crown
in. means of providing for others. The pension list
was to be kept as a sacred fund; but it could not be
kept as a constant, open fund, sufficient for growing
demands, if some demands would wholly devour it.
The tenor of the act will show that it regarded the
civil list only, the reduction of which to some sort of
estimate was my great object.
No other of the cr6wn funds did I meddle with,
because they had not the same relations. This of
the four and a half per cents does his Grace imagine
had escaped me, or had escaped all the men of business who acted with me in those regulations? I
knew that such a fund existed, and that pensions
had been always granted on it, before his Grace was
born. This fund was full in my eye. It was full in
the eyes of those who worked with me. It was left
on principle. On principle I did what was then done;
and on principle what was left undone was omitted.
I did not dare to rob the nation of all funds to reward merit. If I pressed this point too close, I acted
? ? ? ? ON THE ATTACKS UPON HIS PENSION. 191
contrary to the avowed principles on which I went.
Gentlemen are very fond of quoting me; but if any
one thinks it worth his while to know the rules that
guided me ill my plan of reform, he will read my
printed speech on that subject, at least what is contained from page 230 to page 241 in the second volume of the collection * which a friend has given himself the trouble to make of my publications. Be
this as it may, these two bills (though achieved with
the greatest labor, and management of every sort,
both within and without the House) were only a
part, and but a small part, of a very large system,
comprehending all the objects I stated in opening
my proposition, and, indeed, many more, which I
just hinted at in my speech to the electors of Bristol, when I was put out of that representation. All
these, in some state or other of forwardness, I have
long had by me.
But do I justify his Majesty's grace on these
grounds? I think them the least of my services.
The time gave them an occasional value. What I
have done in the way of political economy was far
from confined to this body of measures. I did not
come into Parliament to con my lesson. I had earned
my pension before I set my foot in St. Stephen's
Chapel. I was prepared and disciplined to this political warfare. The first session I sat in Parliament, I
found it necessary to analyze the whole commercial,
financial, constitutional, and foreign interests of Great
Britain and its empire. A great deal was then done;
and more, far more, would have been done, if mole
had been permitted by events. Then, in the vigor of
my manhood, my constitution sunk under my labor.
* London, J. Dodsley, 1792, 3 vols. 4to. - Vol. II. pp. 324 - 336,
in the present edition.
? ? ? ? 192 LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD
Had I then died, (and I seemed to myself very near
death,) I had then earned for those who belonged to
me more than the Duke of Bedford's ideas of service
are of power to estimate. But, in truth, these services I am called to account for are not those on which
I value myself the most. If I were to call for a reward, (which I have never done,) it should be for
those in which for fourteen years without intermission
I showed the most industry and had the least success:
I mean in the affairs of India. They are those on
which I value myself the most: most for the importance, most for the labor, most for the judgment,
most for constancy and perseverance in the pursuit.
Others may value them most for the intention. In
that, surely, they are not mistaken.
Does his Grace think that they who advised the
crown to make my retreat easy considered me only
as an economist? That, well understood, however,
is a good deal. If I had not deemed it of some value, I should not have made political economy an object of my humble studies from my very early youth to near the end of my service in Parliament, even
before (at least to any knowledge of mine) it had
employed the thoughts of speculative men in other
parts of Europe. At that time it was still in its
infancy in England, where, in the last century, it
had its origin. Great and learned men thought my
studies were not wholly thrown away, and deigned
to communicate with me now and then on some particulars of their immortal works. Something of these
studies may appear incidentally in some of the earliest things I published. The House has been witness to their effect, and has profited of them, more
or less, for above eight-and-twenty years.
? ? ? ? ON THE ATTACKS UPON HIS PENSION. 193
To their estimate I leave the matter. I was not,
like his Grace of Bedford, swaddled and rocked and
dandled into a legislator: "1Nitor in adversum" is
the motto for a man like me. I possessed not one
of the qualities nor cultivated one of the arts that
recommend men to the favor and protection of the
great. I was not made for a minion or a tool. As
little did I follow the trade of winning the hearts by
imposing on the understandings of the people. At
every step of my progress in life, (for in every step
was I traversed and opposed,) and at every turnpike
I met, I was obliged to show my passport, and again
and again to prove my sole title to the honor of being useful to my country, by a proof that I was not
wholly unacquainted with its laws and the whole system of its interests both abroad and at home. Otherwise, no rank, no toleration even, for me. I had no arts but manly arts. On them I have stood, and,
please God, in spite of the Duke of Bedford and the
Earl of Lauderdale, to the last gasp will I stand.
Had his Grace condescended to inquire concerning the person whom he has not thought it below
him to reproach, he might have found, that, in the
whole course of my life, I have never, on any pretence of economy, or on any other pretence, so much
as in a single instance, stood between any man and
his reward of service or his encouragement in useful
talent and pursuit, from the highest of those services
and pursuits to the lowest. On the contrary, I have
on an hundred occasions exerted myself with singular zeal to forward every man's even tolerable pretensions. I have more than once had good-natured reprehensions from my friends for carrying the matter to something bordering on abuse. This line of
VOL v. 13
? ? ? ? 194 LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD
conduct, whatever its merits might be, was partly
owing to natural disposition, but I think full as much
to reason and principle. I looked on the consideration of public service or public ornament to be real
and very justice; and I ever held a scanty and penurious justice to partake of the nature of a wrong.
I held it to be, in its consequences, the worst economy in the world. In saving money I soon can count
up all the good I do; but when by a cold penury I
blast the abilities of a nation, and stunt the growth of
its active energies, the ill I may do is beyond all calculation. Whether it be too much or too little, whatever I have done has been general and systematic. I have never entered into those triflinug vexations and
oppressive details that have been falsely and most
ridiculously laid to my charge.
Did I blame the pensions given to Mr. Barre and
Mr. Dunning between the proposition and execution
of my plan? No! surely, no! Those pensions were
within my principles. I assert it, those gentlemen
deserved their pensions, their titles, - all they had;
and if more they had, I should have been but
pleased the more. They were men of talents; they
were men of service. I put the profession of the law
out of the question in one of them. It is a service
that rewards itself. But their public service, though
from their abilities unquestionably of more value than
mine, in its quantity and in its duration was not to be
mentioned with it. But I never could drive a hard
bargain in my life, concerning any matter whatever;
and least of all do I know how to haggle and huckster with merit. Pension for myself I obtained none;
nor did I solicit any. Yet I was loaded with hatred
for everything that was withheld, and with obloquy
? ? ? ? ON THE ATTACKS UPON HIS PENSION. 195
for everything that was given. I was thus left to
support the grants of a name ever dear to me and
ever venerable to the world in favor of those who
were no friends of mine or of his, against the rude
attacks of those who were at that time friends to the
grantees and their own zealous partisans. I have
never heard the Earl of Lauderdale complain of these
pensions. He finds nothing wrong till he comes to
me. This is impartiality, in the true, modern, revolutionary style.
