make this
Saturnalian
amusement general in the fam:
ily, you sent it down stairs, that judges and juries
might partake of the entertainment.
ily, you sent it down stairs, that judges and juries
might partake of the entertainment.
Edmund Burke
However, for that desperate case he has
an easy remedy; but, surely, in his whole shop there
? ? ? ? 84 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
is nothing so extraordinary. It is, that we three,
France, Spain, and England, (there are no other of
any moment,) should adopt some " analogy in the
interior systems of government in the several islands
which we may respectively retain after the closing of
the war. " This plainly can be done only by a convention between the parties; and I believe it would
be the first war ever made to terminate in an analogy of the interior government of any country, or
any parts of such countries. Such a partnership in
domestic. government is, I think, carrying fraternity
as far as it will go.
It will be an affront to your sagacity to pursue
this matter into all its details: suffice it to say, that,
if this convention for analogous domestic government
is made, it immediately gives a right for the residence of a consul (in all likelihood some negro or
man of color) in every one of your islands; a Regicide ambassador in London will be at all your meetings of West India merchants and planters, and, in effect, in all our colonial councils. Not one order
of Council can hereafter be made, or any one act of
Parliament relative to the West India colonies even
be agitated, which will not always afford reasons for
protests and perpetual interference; the Regicide Republic will become an integral part of the colonial
legislature, and, so far as the colonies are concerned,
of the British too. But it will be still worse: as all
our domestic affairs are interlaced more or less intimately with our external, this intermeddling must
everywhere insinuate itself into all other interior
transactions, and produce a copartnership in our domestic concerns of every description.
Suclh are the plain, inevitable consequences of this
? ? ? ? LETTER IV. 85
arrangement of a system of analogous interior government. On the other hand, without it, the author assures us, and in this I heartily agree with him,
"'that the correspondence and communications between the neighboring colonies will be great, that the disagreements will be incessant, and that causes
even of national quarrels will arisefrom day to day. "
Most true. But, for the reasons I have given, the
case, if possible, will be worse by the proposed remedy, by the triple fraternal interior analogy, -- an analogy itself most fruitful, and more foodful than
the old Ephesian statue with the three tier of breasts.
Your Lordship must also observe how infinitely this
business must be complicated by our interference in
the slow-paced Saturnian movements of Spain and
the rapid parabolic flights of Franlce. But such is
the disease, -such is the cure, -such is, and must
be, the effect of Regicide vicinity.
But what astonishes me is, that the negotiator,
who has certainly an exercised understanding, did
not see that every person habituated to such meditations must necessarily pursue the train of thought further than he has carried it, and must ask himself
whether what he states so truly of the necessity of
our arranging an analogous interior government, in
consequence of the vicinity of our possessions, in the
West Indies, does not as extensively apply, and much
more forcibly, to the circumstance of our much nearer
vicinity with the parent and author of this mischief.
I defy even his acuteness and ingenuity to show me
any one point in which the cases differ, except that
it is plainly more necessary in Europe than in America. Indeed, the further we trace the details of the proposed peace, the more your Lordship will be satis
? ? ? ? 86 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
fled that I have not been guilty of any abuse of terms,
when I use indiscriminately (as I always do, in speaking of arrangements with Regicide) the words peace
and fraternity. An analogy between our interior governments must be the consequence. The noble negotiator sees it as well as I do. I deprecate this Jacobin interior analogy. But hereafter, perhaps, I may say a good deal more upon this part of the subject.
The noble lord insists on very little more than on
the excellence of their Constitution, the hope of their
dwindling into little republics, and this close copartnership in government. I hear of others, indeed,
that offer by other arguments to reconcile us to this
peace and fraternity. The Regicides, they say, have
renounced the creed of the Rights of Man, and declared equality a chimera. This is still more strange
than all the rest. They have apostatized from their
apostasy. They are renegadoes from that impious
faith for which they subverted the ancient government, murdered their king, and imprisoned, butch
ered, confiscated, and banished their fellow-subjects,
and to which they forced every man to swear at the
peril of his life. And now, to reconcile themselves
to the world, they declare this creed; bought by so
much blood, to be an imposture and a chimera. I
have no doubt that they always thought it to be so,
when they were destroying everything at home and
abroad for its establishment. It is no strange thing,
to those who look into the nature of corrupted man,
to find a violent persecutor a perfect unbeliever of his
own creed. But this is the very first time that any
man or set of men were hardy enough to attempt to
lay the ground of confidence in them by an acknowledgment of their own falsehood, fraud, hypocrisy,
? ? ? ? LETTER IV. 87
treachery, heterodox doctrine, persecution, and cruelty. Everything we hear from them is new, and,
to use a phrase of their own, revolutionary; everything supposes a total revolution in all the principles of reason, prudence, and moral feeling. If possible, this their recantation of the chief parts in the canon of the Rights of Man is more infamous and
causes greater horror than their originally promulgating and forcing down the throats of mankind
that symbol of all evil. It is raking too much into
the dirt and ordure of human nature to say more
of it.
I hear it said, too, that they have lately declared
in favor of property. This is exactly of the same sort
with the former. What need had they to make this
declaration, if they did not know that by their doctrines and practices they had totally subverted all
property? What government of Europe, either in
its origin or its continuance, has thought it necessary to declare itself in favor of property? The more
recent ones were formed for its protection against
former violations; the old consider the inviolability of property and their own existence as one and
the same thing, and that a proclamation for its safety
would be sounding an alarm on its danger. But the
Regicide banditti knew that this was not the first
time they have been obliged to give such assurances, and had as often falsified them. They knew,
that, after butchering hundreds of men, women,
and children, for no other cause than to lay hold
on their property, such a declaration might have a
chance of encouraging other nations to run the risk
of establishing a commercial house amongst them.
It is notorious, that these very Jacobins, upon an
? ? ? ? 88 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
alarm of the shopkeeper of Paris, made this declaration in favor of property. These brave fellows
received the apprehensions expressed on that head
with indignation, and said that property could be
in no danger, because all the world knew it was
under the protection of the sans-culottes. At what
period did they not give this assurance? Did they
not give it, when they fabricated their first Constitution? Did they not then solemnly declare it one
of the rights of a citizen (a right, of course, only declared, and not then fabricated) to depart from his
country, and choose another domicilium, without detriment to his property? Did they not declare that
no property should be confiscated from the children
for the crime of the parent? Can they now declare
more fully their respect for property than they did
at that time? And yet was there ever known such
horrid violences and confiscations as instantly followed under the very persons now in power, many
of them leading members of that Assembly, and all
of them violators of that engagement which was the
very basis of their republic, - confiscations in which
hundreds of men, women, and children, not guilty
of one act of duty in resisting their usurpation, were
involved? This keeping of their old is, then, to give
us a confidence in their new engagements. But examine the matter, and you will see that the prevaricating sons of violence give no relief at all, where at all it can be wanted. They renew their old fraudulent declaration against confiscations, and then they
expressly exclude all adherents to their ancient lawful government from any benefit of it: that is to say,
they promise that they will secure all their brother
plunderers in their share of the common plunder.
? ? ? ? LETTER IV. 89
The fear of being robbed by every new succession
of robbers, who do not keep even the faith of that
kind of society, absolutely required that they should
give security to the dividends of spoil, else they could
not exist a moment. But it was necessary, in giving
security to robbers, that honest men should be deprived of all hope of restitution; and thus their interests were made utterly and eternally incompatible. So that it appears that this boasted security of property is nothing more than a seal put upon its destruction; this ceasing of confiscation is to secure the confiscators against the innocent proprietors. That
very thing which is held out to you as your cure is
that which makes your malady, and renders it, if
once it happens, utterly incurable. You, my Lord,
who possess a considerable, though not an invidious
estate, may be well assured, that, if, by being engaged, as you assuredly would be, in the defenice
of your religion, your king, your order, your laws,
and liberties, that estate should be put under confiscation, the property would be secured, but in the
same manner, at your expense.
But, after all, for what purpose are we told of this
reformation in their principles, and what is the policy of all this softening in ours, which is to be produced by their example? It is not to soften us to suffering innocence and virtue, but to mollify us to
the crimes and to the society of robbers and ruffians.
But I trust that our countrymen will not be softened to that kind of crimes and criminals; for, if we
should, our hearts will be hardened to everything
which has a claim on our benevolence. A kind
Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the
unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve our
? ? ? ? 90 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
selves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear
cruelty are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancor produces
an indifference which is half an approbation. They
never will love where they ought to love, who do not
hate where they ought to hate.
There is another piece of policy, not more laudable
than this, in reading these moral lectures, which lessens our hatred to criminals and our pity to sufferers
by insinuating that it has been owing to their fault
or folly that the latter have become the prey of the
former. By flattering us that we are not subject to
the same vices and follies, it induces a confidence
that we shall not suffer the same evils by a contact
with the infamous gang of robbers who have thus
robbed and butchered our neighbors before our faces.
We must not be flattered to our ruin. Our vices
are the same as theirs, neither more nor less. If
any faults we had, which wanted this French example to call us to a " softening of character, and a review of our social relations and duties," there is yet
no sign that we have commenced our reformation.
We seem, by the best accounts I have from the world,
to go on just as formerly, " some to undo, and some
to be undone. " There is no change at all: and if
we are not bettered by the sufferings of war, this
peace, which, for reasons to himself best known, the
author fixes as the period of our reformation, must
have something very extraordinary in it; because
hitherto ease, opulence, and their concomitant pleasure have never greatly disposed mankind to that serious reflection and review which the author supposes to be the result of the approaching peace with vice
and crime. I believe he forms a right estimate of
? ? ? ? LETTER IV. 91
the nature of this peace, and that it will want many
of those circumstances which formerly characterized
that state of things.
If I am right in my ideas of this new republic, the
different states of peace and war will make no difference in her pursuits. It is not an enemy of accident
that we have to deal with. Enmity to us, and to all
civilized nations, is wrought into the very stamina of
its Constitution. It was made to pursue the purposes of that fundamental enmity. The design will
go on regularly in every position and in every relation. Their hostility is to break us to their dominion; their amity is to debauch us to their principles. In the former, we are to contend with their force; in
the latter, with their intrigues. But we stand in a
very different posture of defence in the two situations. In war, so long as government is supported,
we fight with the whole united force of the kingdom.
When under the name of peace the war of intrigue
begins, we do not contend against our enemies with
the whole force of the kingdom. No, - we shall
have to fight, (if it should be a fight at all, and not
an ignominious surrender of everything which has
made our country venerable in our eyes and dear
to our hearts,) we shall have to fight with but a
portion of our strength against the whole of theirs.
Gentlemen who not long since thought with us, but
who now recommend a Jacobin peace, were at that
time sufficiently aware of the existence of a dangerous Jacobin faction within this kingdom. Awhile
ago they seemed to be tremblingly alive to the number of those who composed it, to their dark subtlety,
to their fierce audacity, to their admiration of everything that passes in France, to their eager desire of a
? ? ? ? 92 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
close communication with the mother faction there.
At this moment, when the question is upon the opening of that communication, not a word of our English Jacobins. That faction is put out of sight and out
of thought. "It vanished at the crowing of the
cock. " Scarcely had the Gallic harbinger of peace
and light begun to utter his lively notes, than all the
cackling of us poor Tory geese to alarm the garrison
of the Capitol was forgot. * There was enough of
indemnity before. Now a complete act of oblivion
is passed about the Jacobins of England, though one
would naturally imagine it would make a principal
object in all fair deliberation upon the merits of a
project of amity with the Jacobins of France. But
however others may choose to forget the faction, the
faction does not choose to forget itself, nor, however
gentlemen may choose to flatter themselves, it does
not forget them.
Never, in any civil contest, has a part been taken
with more of the warmth, or carried on with more of
the arts of a party. The Jacobins are worse than lost
to their country. Their hearts are abroad. Their
sympathy with the Regicides of France is complete.
Just as in a civil contest, they exult in all their victories, they are dejected and mortified in all their defeats. Nothing that the Regicides can do (and
they have labored hard for the purpose) can alienate
them from their cause. You and I, my dear Lord,
have often observed on the spirit of their conduct.
When the Jacobins of France, by their studied, deliberated, catalogued files of murders with the poniard, the sabre, and the tribunal, have shocked whatever
Hic auratis volitans argenteus anser
Porticibus GALLOS in limine adesse canebat.
? ? ? ? LETTER IV. 93
remained of human sensibility in our breasts, then it
was they distinguished the resources of party policy.
They did not venture directly to confront the public
sentiment; for a very short time they seemed to partake of it. They began with a' reluctant and sorrowful confession; they deplored the stains which tarnished the lustre of a good cause. After keeping
a decent time of retirement, in a few days crept out
an apology for the excesses of men cruelly irritated
by the attacks of unjust power. Grown bolder, as
the first feeling of mankind decayed and the color
of these horrors began to fade upon the imagination,
they proceeded from apology to defence. They urged,
but still deplored, the absolute necessity of such a
proceeding. Then they made a bolder stride, and
marched from defence to recrimination. They attempted to assassinate the memory of those whose
bodies their friends had massacred, and to consider
their murder as a less formal act of justice. They
endeavored even to debauch our pity, and to suborn
it in favor of cruelty. They wept over the lot of
those who were driven by the crimes of aristocrats to
republican vengeance. Every pause of their cruelty
they considered as a return of their natural sentiments of benignity and justice. Then they had recourse to history, and found out all the recorded cruelties that deform the annals of the world, in order that the massacres of the Regicides might pass
for a common event, and even that the most merciful of princes, who suffered by their hands, should
bear the iniquity of all the tyrants who have at any
time infested the earth. In order to reconcile us the
better to this republican tyranny, they confounded
the bloodshed of war with the murders of peace;
? ? ? ? 94 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
and they computed how much greater prodigality of
blood was exhibited in battles and in the storm of
cities than in the frugal, well-ordered massacres of the
revolutionary tribunals of France.
As to foreign powers, so long as they were conjoined with Great Britain in this contest, so long
they were treated as the most abandoned tyrants,
and, indeed, the basest of the human race. The moment any of them quits the cause of this government, and of all governments, he is rehabilitated, his honor is restored, all attainders are purged. The
friends of Jacobins are no longer despots; the betrayers of the common cause are no longer traitors.
That you may not doubt that they look oil this war
as a civil war, and the Jacobins of France as of their
party, and that they look upon us, though locally
their countrymen, in reality as enemies, they have
never failed to run a parallel between our late civil
war and this war with the Jacobins of France. They
justify their partiality to those Jacobins by the partiality which was shown by several here to the Colonies, and they sanction their cry for peace with the Regicides of France by some of our propositions for
peace with the English in America.
This I do not mention as entering into the controversy how far they are right or wrong in this parallel, but to show that they do make it, and that they
do consider themselves as of a party with the Jacobins
of France. You cannot forget their constant correspondence with the Jacobins, whilst it was in their
power to carry it on. When the communication is
again opened, the interrupted correspondence will
commence. We cannot be blind to the advantage
which such a party affords to Regicide France in all
? ? ? ? LETTER IV. 95
her views, - and, on the other hand, what an advantage Regicide France holds out to the views of the
republican party in England. Slightly as they have
considered their subject, I think this can hardly have
escaped the writers of political ephemerides for any
month or year. They have told us much of the
amendment of the Regicides of Frallce, and of their
returning honor and generosity. Have they told
anything of the reformation and of the returning
loyalty of the Jacobins of England? Have they told
us of their gradual softening towards royalty? Have
they told us what measures they are taking for " putting the crown in commission," and what approximations of any kind they are making towards the old Constitution of their country? Nothing of this. The
silence of these writers is dreadfully expressive. They
dare not touch the subject. But it is not annihilated by their silence, nor by our indifference. It is
but too plain that our Constitution cannot exist with
such a communication. Our humanity, our manners,
our morals, our religion, cannot stand with such a
communication. The Constitution is made by those
things, and for those things: without them it cannot
exist; and without them it is no matter whether it
exists or not.
It was an ingenious Parliamentary Christmas play,
by which, in both Houses, you anticipated the holidays; it was a relaxation from your graver employment; it was a pleasant discussion you had, which part of the family of the Constitution was the elder
branch, - whether one part did not exist prior to the
others, and whether it might exist and flourish, if
"the others were cast into the fire. "* In order to
* See debates in Parliament upon motions made in both Houses
? ? ? ? 96 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
make this Saturnalian amusement general in the fam:
ily, you sent it down stairs, that judges and juries
might partake of the entertainment. The unfortunate antiquary and augur who is the butt of all this sport may suffer in the roistering horse-play and practical jokes of the servants' hall. But whatever may become of him, the discussion itself, and the timing it,
put me in mind of what I have read. (where I do not
recollect,) that the subtle nation of the Greeks were
busily employed, in the Church of Santa Sophia, in
a dispute of mixed natural philosophy, metaphysics,
and theology, whether the light on Mount Tabor was
created or uncreated, and were ready to massacre
the holders of the unfashionable opinion, at the very
moment when the ferocious enemy of all philosophy
and religion, Mahomet the Second, entered through
a breach into the capital of the Christian world. I
may possibly suffer much more than Mr. Reeves (I
shall certainly give much more general offence) for
breaking in upon this constitutional amusement concerning the created or uncreated nature of the two Houses of Parliament, and by calling their attention
to a problem which may entertain them less, but
which concerns them a great deal more, - that is,
whether, with this Gallic Jacobin fraternity, which
they are desired by some writers to court, all the
parts of the government, about whose combustible
or incombustible qualities they are contending, may
" not be cast into the fire " together. He is a strange
visionary (but he is nothing worse) who fancies that
any one part of our Constitution, whatever right of
primogeniture it may claim, or whatever astrologers
for prosecuting Mr. Reeves for a libel upon the Constitution, Dec. ,
1795.
? ? ? ? LETTER IV. 97
may divine from its horoscope, can possibly survive
the others. As they have lived, so they will die, together. I must do justice to the impartiality of the Jacobins. I have not observed amongst them the least
predilection for any of those parts. If there has been
any difference in their malice, I think they have
shown a worse disposition to the House of Commons
than to the crown. As to the House of Lords, they
do not speculate at all about it, and for reasons that
are too obvious to detail.
The question will be concerning the effect of this
French fraternity on the whole mass. Have we anything to apprehend from Jacobin communication, or have we not? If we have not, is it by our experience before the war that we are to presume that after the war no dangerous communion can exist between
those who are well affected to the new Constitution
of France and ill affected to the old Constitution
here?
In conversation I have not yet found nor heard of
any persons, except those who undertake to instruct
the public, so unconscious of the actual state of things,
or so little prescient of the future, who do not shudder all over and feel a secret horror at the approach of this communication. I' do not except from this
observation those who are willing, more than I find
myself disposed, to submit to this fraternity. Never
has it been mentioned in my hearing, or from what I
can learn in my inquiry, without the suggestion of
an Alien Bill, or some other measures of the same
nature, as a defence against its manifest mischief.
Who does not see the utter insufficiency of such a
remedy, if such a remedy could be at all adopted?
We expel suspected foreigners from hence; and we
VOL. VI. 7
? ? ? ? 98 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
suffer every Englishman to pass over into France to
be initiated in all the infernal discipline of the place,
to cabal and to be corrupted by every means of cabal
and of corruption, and then to return to England,
charged with their worst dispositions and designs.
In France he is out of the reach of your police; and
when he returns to England, one such English emissary is worse than a legion of French, who are either tongue-tied, or whose speech betrays them. But the
worst aliens are the ambassador and his train. These
you cannot expel without a proof (always difficult)
of direct practice against the state. A French ambassador, at the head of a French party, is an evil which we have never experienced. The mischief is
by far more visible than the remedy. But, after all,
every such measure as an Alien Bill is a measure of
hostility, a preparation for it, or a cause of dispute
that shall bring it on. In effect, it is fundamentally
contrary to a relation of amity, whose essence is a
perfectly free communication. Everything done to
prevent it will provoke a foreign war. Everything,
when we let it proceed, will produce domestic distraction. We shall be in a perpetual dilemma. But
it is easy to see which side of the dilemma will be
taken. The same temper which brings us to solicit
a Jacobin peace will induce us to temporize with all
the evils of it. By degrees our minds will be made
to our circumstances. The novelty of such things,
which produces half the horror and all the disgust,
will be worn off. Our ruin will be disguised in profit, and the sale of a few wretched baubles will bribe
a degenerate people to barter away the most precious
jewel of their souls. Our Constitution is not made
for this kind of warfare. It provides greatly for our
? ? ? ? LETTER IV. 99
happiness, it furnishes few means for our defence.
It is formed, in a great measure, upon the principle
of jealousy of the crown, - and as things stood, when
it took that turn, with very great reason. I go farther: it must keep alive some part of that fire of jealousy eternally and chastely burning, or it cannot be
the British Constitution. At various periods we have
had tyranny in this country, more than enough. We
have had rebellions with more or less justification.
Some of our kings have made adulterous connections
abroad, and trucked away for foreign gold the interests and glory of their crown. But, before this time,
our liberty has never been corrupted. I mean to say,
that it has never been debauched from its domestic
relations. To this time it has been English liberty,
and English liberty only. Our love of liberty and
our love of our country were not distinct things.
Liberty is now, it seems, put upon a larger and more
liberal bottom. We are men, --and as menl, undoubtedly, nothing human is foreign to us. We cannot be too liberal in our general wishes for the happiness of'our kind. But in all questions on the mode of procuring it for any particular community,
we ought to be fearful of admitting those who have
no interest in it, or who have, perhaps, an interest
against it, into the consultation. Above all, we cannot be too cautious in our communication with those
who seek their happiness by other roads than those
of humanity, morals, and religion, and whose liberty
consists, and consists alone, in being free from those
restraints which are imposed by the virtues upon the
passions.
When we invite danger from a confidence in defensive measures, we ought, first of all, to be sure that
? ? ? ? 100 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
it is a species of danger against which any defensive measures that can be adopted will be sufficient. Next, we ought to know that the spirit of our laws,
or that our own dispositions, which are stronger than
laws, are susceptible of all those defensive measures
which the occasion may require. A third consideration is, whether these measures will not bring more odium than strength to government; and the last,
whether the authority that makes them, in a general corruption of manners and principles, can insure their execution. Let no one argue, from the state
of things, as he sees them at present, concerning what
will be the means and capacities of government, when
the time arrives which shall call for remedies commensurate to enormous evils.
It is an obvious truth, that no constitution can defend itself: it must be defended by the wisdom and fortitude of men. These are what no constitution
can give: they are the gifts of God; and He alone
knows whether we shall possess such gifts at the time
we stand in need of them. Constitutions furnish
the civil means of getting at the natural: it is all
that in this case they can do. But our Constitution
has more impediments than helps. Its excellencies,
when they come to be put to this sort of proof, may
be found among its defects.
Nothing looks more awful and imposing than an
ancient fortification. Its lofty, embattled walls, its
bold, projecting, rounded towers, that pierce the sky,
strike the imagination and promise inexpugnable
strength. But they are the very things that make
its weakness. You may as well think of opposing
one of these old fortresses to the mass (of artillery
brought by a French irruption into the field as to
? ? ? ? LETTER IV. 101
think of resisting by your old laws and your old
forms the new destruction which the corps of Jacobin
engineers of to-day prepare for all such forms and all
such laws. Besides the debility and false principle of
their construction to resist the present modes of attack, the fortress itself is in ruinous repair, and there is a practicable breach in every part of it.
Such is the work. But miserable works have been
defended by the constancy of the garrison. Weatherbeaten ships have been brought safe to port by the spirit and alertness of the crew. But it is here that
we shall eminently fail. The day that, by their consent, the seat of Regicide has its place among the thrones of Europe, there is no longer a motive for
zeal in their favor; it will at best be cold, unimpassioned, dejected, melancholy duty. The glory will seem all on the other side. The friends of the crown
will appear, not as champions, but as victims; discountenanced, mortified, lowered, defeated. they will fall into listlessness and indifference. They will leave
things to take their course, enjoy the present hour,
and submit to the common fate.
Is it only an oppressive nightmare with which we
have been loaded? is it, then, all a frightful dream,
and are there no regicides in the world? Have we
not heard of that prodigy of a ruffian who would not
suffer his benignant sovereign, with his hands tied
behind him, and stripped for execution, to say one
parting word to his deluded people, - of Santerre,
who commanded the drums and trumpets to strike
up to stifle his voice, and dragged him backward to
the machine of murder? This nefarious villain (for
a few days I may call him so) stands high in France,
as in a republic of robbers and murderers he ought.
? ? ? ? 102 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
What hinders this monster from being sent as ambassador to convey to his Majesty the first compliments of his brethren, the Regicide Directory? They have none that can represent them more properly. I
anticipate the day of his arrival. He will make his
public entry into London on one of the pale horses
of his brewery. As he knows that we are pleased
with the Paris taste for the orders of knighthood,*
he will fling a bloody sash across his shoulders, with
the order of the holy guillotine surmounting the
crown appendant to the riband. Thus adorned, he
will proceed from Whitechapel to the further end of
Pall Mall, all the music of London playing the Marseillaise Hymn before him, and escorted by a chosen
detachment of the Legion de l'. Echafaud. It were
only to be wished that no ill-fated loyalist, for the
imprudence of his zeal, may stand in the pillory at
Charing Cross, under the statue of King Charles the
First, at the time of this grand procession, lest some
of the rotten eggs which the Constitutional Society
shall let fly at his indiscreet head may hit the virtuous murderer of his king. They might soil the
state dress which the ministers of so many crowned
heads have admired, and in which Sir Clement Cotterel is to introduce him at St. James's.
If Santerre cannot be spared from the constitutional butcheries at home, Tallien may supply his
place, and, in point of figure, with advantage. He
has been habituated to commissions; and he is as
well qualified as Santerre for this. Nero wished
* " In the costume assumed by the members of the legislative body
we almost behold the revival of the extinguished insignia of knighthood," &c. , &c. - See A View of the Relative State of Great Britain and
France at the Commencement of the Year 1796.
? ? ? ? LETTER IV. 103
the Roman people had but one neck. The wish of
the more exalted Tallien, when he sat in judgment,
was, that his sovereign had eighty-three heads, that
he might send one to every one of the Departments.
Tallien will make an excellent figure at Guildhall
at the next Sheriff's feast. He may open the ball
with my Lady Mayoress. But this will be after
lie has retired from the public table, and gone into
the private room for the enjoyment of more social
and unreserved conversation with the ministers of
state and the judges of the bench. There these ministers and magistrates will hear him entertain the worthy aldermen with an instructing and pleasing
narrative of the manner in which he made the rich
citizens of Bordeaux squeak, and gently led them
by the public credit of the guillotine to disgorge
their anti-revolutionary pelf.
All this will be the display, and the town-talk,
when our regicide is on a visit of ceremony. At
home nothing will equal the pomp and splendor of
the Hotel de la Republique. There another scene of
gaudy grandeur will be opened. When his Citizen
Excellency keeps the festival, which every citizen is
ordered to observe, for the glorious execution of
Louis the Sixteenth, and renews his oath of detestation of kings, a grand ball of course will be given on the occasion. Then what a hurly-burly! what
a crowding! what a glare of a thousand flambeaux
in the square! what a clamor of footmen contending at the door! what a rattling of a thousand coaches of duchesses, countesses, and Lady Marys,
choking the way, and overturning each other, in a
struggle who should be first to pay her court to the
Citoyenne, the spouse of the twenty-first husband, he
? ? ? ? 104 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
the husband of the thirty-first wife, and to hail her
in the rank of honorable matrons before the four
days' duration of marriage is expired i- Morals, as
they were, decorum, the great outguard of the sex,
and the proud sentiment of honor, which makes virtue more respectable, where it is, and conceals human frailty, where virtue may not be, will be banished
from this land of propriety, modesty, and reserve.
We had before an ambassador from the most Christian King. We shall have then one, perhaps two, as lately, from the most Anti-Christian Republic. His
chapel will be great and splendid, formed on the
model of the Temple of Reason at Paris; while the
famous ode of the infamous Chenier will be sung,
and a prostitute of the street adored as a goddess.
We shall then have a French ambassador without
a suspicion of Popery. One good it will have: it
will go some way in quieting the minds of that
synod of zealous Protestant lay elders who govern
Ireland on the pacific principles of polemic theology,
and who now, from dread of the Pope, cannot take
a cool bottle of claret, or enjoy an innocent Parliamentary job, with any tolerable quiet.
So far as to the French communication here:
what will be the effect of our communication there?
We know that our new brethren, whilst they everywhere shut up the churches, increased in Paris, at
one time at least fourfold, the opera-houses, the playhouses, the public shows of all kinds; and even in their state of indigence and distress, no expense was
spared for their equipment and decoration. They
were made an affair of state. There is no invention
of seduction, never wholly wanting in that place,
that has not been increased, - brothels, gaming.
? ? ? ? LETTER IV. 105
houses, everything. And there is no doubt, but,
when they are settled in a triumphant peace, they
will carry all these arts to their utmost perfection,
and cover them with every species of imposing magnificence. They have all along avowed them as a
part of their policy; and whilst they corrupt youlg
minds through pleasure, they form them to crimes.
Every idea of corporal gratification is carried to the
highest excess, and wooed with all the elegance that
belongs to the senses. All elegance of mind and mallners is banished. A theatrical, bombastic, windy
phraseology of heroic virtue, blended and mingled
up with a worse dissoluteness, and joined to a murderous and savage ferocity, forms the tone and idiom of their language and their manners. Any one, who attends to all their own descriptions, narratives, and dissertations, will find in that whole place
more of the air of a body of assassins, banditti, housebreakers, and outlawed smugglers, joined to that of
a gang of strolling players expelled from and exploded orderly theatres, with their prostitutes in a
brothel, at their debauches and bacchanals, than anything of the refined and perfected virtues, or the polished, mitigated vices of a great capital.
Is it for this benefit we open " the usual relations
of peace and amity "? Is it for this our youth of
both sexes are to form themselves by travel? Is it
for this that with expense and pains we form their
lisping infant accents to the language of France? I
shall be told that this abominable medley is made
rather to revolt young and ingenuous minds. So it is
in the description. So perhaps it may in reality to a
chosen few. So it may be, when the magistrate, the
law, and the church frown on such manners, and the
? ? ? ? 106 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
wretches to whom they belong, -when they are
chased from the eye of day, and the society of civil
life, into night-cellars and caves and woods. But when
these men themselves are the magistrates, --when all
the consequence, weight, and authority of a great nation adopt them, - when we see them conjoined with
victory, glory, power, and dominion, and homage paid
to them by every government, - it is not possible that
the downhill should not be slid into, recommended
by everything which has opposed it. Let it be remembered that no young man can go to any part of
Europe without taking this place of pestilential contagion in his way; and whilst the less active part
of the community will be debauched by this travel,
whilst children are poisoned at these schools, our
trade will put the finishing hand to our ruin. No
factory will be settled in France, that will not become
a club of complete French Jacobins. The minds of
young men of that description will receive a taint in
their religion, their morals, and their politics, which
they will in a short time communicate to the whole
kingdom.
Whilst everything prepares the body to debauch
and the mind to crime, a regular church of avowed
atheism, established by law, with a direct and sanguinary persecution of Christianity, is formed to prevent all amendment and remorse. Conscience is formally deposed fiom its dominion over the mind.
What fills the measure of horror is, that schools of
atheism are set up at the public charge in every part
of the country. That some English parents will be
wicked enough to send their children to such schools
there is no doubt. Better this island should be sunk
to the bottom of the sea than that (so far as human
? ? ? ? LETTER IV. 107
infirmity admits) it should not be a country of relig.
ion and morals!
an easy remedy; but, surely, in his whole shop there
? ? ? ? 84 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
is nothing so extraordinary. It is, that we three,
France, Spain, and England, (there are no other of
any moment,) should adopt some " analogy in the
interior systems of government in the several islands
which we may respectively retain after the closing of
the war. " This plainly can be done only by a convention between the parties; and I believe it would
be the first war ever made to terminate in an analogy of the interior government of any country, or
any parts of such countries. Such a partnership in
domestic. government is, I think, carrying fraternity
as far as it will go.
It will be an affront to your sagacity to pursue
this matter into all its details: suffice it to say, that,
if this convention for analogous domestic government
is made, it immediately gives a right for the residence of a consul (in all likelihood some negro or
man of color) in every one of your islands; a Regicide ambassador in London will be at all your meetings of West India merchants and planters, and, in effect, in all our colonial councils. Not one order
of Council can hereafter be made, or any one act of
Parliament relative to the West India colonies even
be agitated, which will not always afford reasons for
protests and perpetual interference; the Regicide Republic will become an integral part of the colonial
legislature, and, so far as the colonies are concerned,
of the British too. But it will be still worse: as all
our domestic affairs are interlaced more or less intimately with our external, this intermeddling must
everywhere insinuate itself into all other interior
transactions, and produce a copartnership in our domestic concerns of every description.
Suclh are the plain, inevitable consequences of this
? ? ? ? LETTER IV. 85
arrangement of a system of analogous interior government. On the other hand, without it, the author assures us, and in this I heartily agree with him,
"'that the correspondence and communications between the neighboring colonies will be great, that the disagreements will be incessant, and that causes
even of national quarrels will arisefrom day to day. "
Most true. But, for the reasons I have given, the
case, if possible, will be worse by the proposed remedy, by the triple fraternal interior analogy, -- an analogy itself most fruitful, and more foodful than
the old Ephesian statue with the three tier of breasts.
Your Lordship must also observe how infinitely this
business must be complicated by our interference in
the slow-paced Saturnian movements of Spain and
the rapid parabolic flights of Franlce. But such is
the disease, -such is the cure, -such is, and must
be, the effect of Regicide vicinity.
But what astonishes me is, that the negotiator,
who has certainly an exercised understanding, did
not see that every person habituated to such meditations must necessarily pursue the train of thought further than he has carried it, and must ask himself
whether what he states so truly of the necessity of
our arranging an analogous interior government, in
consequence of the vicinity of our possessions, in the
West Indies, does not as extensively apply, and much
more forcibly, to the circumstance of our much nearer
vicinity with the parent and author of this mischief.
I defy even his acuteness and ingenuity to show me
any one point in which the cases differ, except that
it is plainly more necessary in Europe than in America. Indeed, the further we trace the details of the proposed peace, the more your Lordship will be satis
? ? ? ? 86 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
fled that I have not been guilty of any abuse of terms,
when I use indiscriminately (as I always do, in speaking of arrangements with Regicide) the words peace
and fraternity. An analogy between our interior governments must be the consequence. The noble negotiator sees it as well as I do. I deprecate this Jacobin interior analogy. But hereafter, perhaps, I may say a good deal more upon this part of the subject.
The noble lord insists on very little more than on
the excellence of their Constitution, the hope of their
dwindling into little republics, and this close copartnership in government. I hear of others, indeed,
that offer by other arguments to reconcile us to this
peace and fraternity. The Regicides, they say, have
renounced the creed of the Rights of Man, and declared equality a chimera. This is still more strange
than all the rest. They have apostatized from their
apostasy. They are renegadoes from that impious
faith for which they subverted the ancient government, murdered their king, and imprisoned, butch
ered, confiscated, and banished their fellow-subjects,
and to which they forced every man to swear at the
peril of his life. And now, to reconcile themselves
to the world, they declare this creed; bought by so
much blood, to be an imposture and a chimera. I
have no doubt that they always thought it to be so,
when they were destroying everything at home and
abroad for its establishment. It is no strange thing,
to those who look into the nature of corrupted man,
to find a violent persecutor a perfect unbeliever of his
own creed. But this is the very first time that any
man or set of men were hardy enough to attempt to
lay the ground of confidence in them by an acknowledgment of their own falsehood, fraud, hypocrisy,
? ? ? ? LETTER IV. 87
treachery, heterodox doctrine, persecution, and cruelty. Everything we hear from them is new, and,
to use a phrase of their own, revolutionary; everything supposes a total revolution in all the principles of reason, prudence, and moral feeling. If possible, this their recantation of the chief parts in the canon of the Rights of Man is more infamous and
causes greater horror than their originally promulgating and forcing down the throats of mankind
that symbol of all evil. It is raking too much into
the dirt and ordure of human nature to say more
of it.
I hear it said, too, that they have lately declared
in favor of property. This is exactly of the same sort
with the former. What need had they to make this
declaration, if they did not know that by their doctrines and practices they had totally subverted all
property? What government of Europe, either in
its origin or its continuance, has thought it necessary to declare itself in favor of property? The more
recent ones were formed for its protection against
former violations; the old consider the inviolability of property and their own existence as one and
the same thing, and that a proclamation for its safety
would be sounding an alarm on its danger. But the
Regicide banditti knew that this was not the first
time they have been obliged to give such assurances, and had as often falsified them. They knew,
that, after butchering hundreds of men, women,
and children, for no other cause than to lay hold
on their property, such a declaration might have a
chance of encouraging other nations to run the risk
of establishing a commercial house amongst them.
It is notorious, that these very Jacobins, upon an
? ? ? ? 88 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
alarm of the shopkeeper of Paris, made this declaration in favor of property. These brave fellows
received the apprehensions expressed on that head
with indignation, and said that property could be
in no danger, because all the world knew it was
under the protection of the sans-culottes. At what
period did they not give this assurance? Did they
not give it, when they fabricated their first Constitution? Did they not then solemnly declare it one
of the rights of a citizen (a right, of course, only declared, and not then fabricated) to depart from his
country, and choose another domicilium, without detriment to his property? Did they not declare that
no property should be confiscated from the children
for the crime of the parent? Can they now declare
more fully their respect for property than they did
at that time? And yet was there ever known such
horrid violences and confiscations as instantly followed under the very persons now in power, many
of them leading members of that Assembly, and all
of them violators of that engagement which was the
very basis of their republic, - confiscations in which
hundreds of men, women, and children, not guilty
of one act of duty in resisting their usurpation, were
involved? This keeping of their old is, then, to give
us a confidence in their new engagements. But examine the matter, and you will see that the prevaricating sons of violence give no relief at all, where at all it can be wanted. They renew their old fraudulent declaration against confiscations, and then they
expressly exclude all adherents to their ancient lawful government from any benefit of it: that is to say,
they promise that they will secure all their brother
plunderers in their share of the common plunder.
? ? ? ? LETTER IV. 89
The fear of being robbed by every new succession
of robbers, who do not keep even the faith of that
kind of society, absolutely required that they should
give security to the dividends of spoil, else they could
not exist a moment. But it was necessary, in giving
security to robbers, that honest men should be deprived of all hope of restitution; and thus their interests were made utterly and eternally incompatible. So that it appears that this boasted security of property is nothing more than a seal put upon its destruction; this ceasing of confiscation is to secure the confiscators against the innocent proprietors. That
very thing which is held out to you as your cure is
that which makes your malady, and renders it, if
once it happens, utterly incurable. You, my Lord,
who possess a considerable, though not an invidious
estate, may be well assured, that, if, by being engaged, as you assuredly would be, in the defenice
of your religion, your king, your order, your laws,
and liberties, that estate should be put under confiscation, the property would be secured, but in the
same manner, at your expense.
But, after all, for what purpose are we told of this
reformation in their principles, and what is the policy of all this softening in ours, which is to be produced by their example? It is not to soften us to suffering innocence and virtue, but to mollify us to
the crimes and to the society of robbers and ruffians.
But I trust that our countrymen will not be softened to that kind of crimes and criminals; for, if we
should, our hearts will be hardened to everything
which has a claim on our benevolence. A kind
Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the
unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve our
? ? ? ? 90 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
selves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear
cruelty are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancor produces
an indifference which is half an approbation. They
never will love where they ought to love, who do not
hate where they ought to hate.
There is another piece of policy, not more laudable
than this, in reading these moral lectures, which lessens our hatred to criminals and our pity to sufferers
by insinuating that it has been owing to their fault
or folly that the latter have become the prey of the
former. By flattering us that we are not subject to
the same vices and follies, it induces a confidence
that we shall not suffer the same evils by a contact
with the infamous gang of robbers who have thus
robbed and butchered our neighbors before our faces.
We must not be flattered to our ruin. Our vices
are the same as theirs, neither more nor less. If
any faults we had, which wanted this French example to call us to a " softening of character, and a review of our social relations and duties," there is yet
no sign that we have commenced our reformation.
We seem, by the best accounts I have from the world,
to go on just as formerly, " some to undo, and some
to be undone. " There is no change at all: and if
we are not bettered by the sufferings of war, this
peace, which, for reasons to himself best known, the
author fixes as the period of our reformation, must
have something very extraordinary in it; because
hitherto ease, opulence, and their concomitant pleasure have never greatly disposed mankind to that serious reflection and review which the author supposes to be the result of the approaching peace with vice
and crime. I believe he forms a right estimate of
? ? ? ? LETTER IV. 91
the nature of this peace, and that it will want many
of those circumstances which formerly characterized
that state of things.
If I am right in my ideas of this new republic, the
different states of peace and war will make no difference in her pursuits. It is not an enemy of accident
that we have to deal with. Enmity to us, and to all
civilized nations, is wrought into the very stamina of
its Constitution. It was made to pursue the purposes of that fundamental enmity. The design will
go on regularly in every position and in every relation. Their hostility is to break us to their dominion; their amity is to debauch us to their principles. In the former, we are to contend with their force; in
the latter, with their intrigues. But we stand in a
very different posture of defence in the two situations. In war, so long as government is supported,
we fight with the whole united force of the kingdom.
When under the name of peace the war of intrigue
begins, we do not contend against our enemies with
the whole force of the kingdom. No, - we shall
have to fight, (if it should be a fight at all, and not
an ignominious surrender of everything which has
made our country venerable in our eyes and dear
to our hearts,) we shall have to fight with but a
portion of our strength against the whole of theirs.
Gentlemen who not long since thought with us, but
who now recommend a Jacobin peace, were at that
time sufficiently aware of the existence of a dangerous Jacobin faction within this kingdom. Awhile
ago they seemed to be tremblingly alive to the number of those who composed it, to their dark subtlety,
to their fierce audacity, to their admiration of everything that passes in France, to their eager desire of a
? ? ? ? 92 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
close communication with the mother faction there.
At this moment, when the question is upon the opening of that communication, not a word of our English Jacobins. That faction is put out of sight and out
of thought. "It vanished at the crowing of the
cock. " Scarcely had the Gallic harbinger of peace
and light begun to utter his lively notes, than all the
cackling of us poor Tory geese to alarm the garrison
of the Capitol was forgot. * There was enough of
indemnity before. Now a complete act of oblivion
is passed about the Jacobins of England, though one
would naturally imagine it would make a principal
object in all fair deliberation upon the merits of a
project of amity with the Jacobins of France. But
however others may choose to forget the faction, the
faction does not choose to forget itself, nor, however
gentlemen may choose to flatter themselves, it does
not forget them.
Never, in any civil contest, has a part been taken
with more of the warmth, or carried on with more of
the arts of a party. The Jacobins are worse than lost
to their country. Their hearts are abroad. Their
sympathy with the Regicides of France is complete.
Just as in a civil contest, they exult in all their victories, they are dejected and mortified in all their defeats. Nothing that the Regicides can do (and
they have labored hard for the purpose) can alienate
them from their cause. You and I, my dear Lord,
have often observed on the spirit of their conduct.
When the Jacobins of France, by their studied, deliberated, catalogued files of murders with the poniard, the sabre, and the tribunal, have shocked whatever
Hic auratis volitans argenteus anser
Porticibus GALLOS in limine adesse canebat.
? ? ? ? LETTER IV. 93
remained of human sensibility in our breasts, then it
was they distinguished the resources of party policy.
They did not venture directly to confront the public
sentiment; for a very short time they seemed to partake of it. They began with a' reluctant and sorrowful confession; they deplored the stains which tarnished the lustre of a good cause. After keeping
a decent time of retirement, in a few days crept out
an apology for the excesses of men cruelly irritated
by the attacks of unjust power. Grown bolder, as
the first feeling of mankind decayed and the color
of these horrors began to fade upon the imagination,
they proceeded from apology to defence. They urged,
but still deplored, the absolute necessity of such a
proceeding. Then they made a bolder stride, and
marched from defence to recrimination. They attempted to assassinate the memory of those whose
bodies their friends had massacred, and to consider
their murder as a less formal act of justice. They
endeavored even to debauch our pity, and to suborn
it in favor of cruelty. They wept over the lot of
those who were driven by the crimes of aristocrats to
republican vengeance. Every pause of their cruelty
they considered as a return of their natural sentiments of benignity and justice. Then they had recourse to history, and found out all the recorded cruelties that deform the annals of the world, in order that the massacres of the Regicides might pass
for a common event, and even that the most merciful of princes, who suffered by their hands, should
bear the iniquity of all the tyrants who have at any
time infested the earth. In order to reconcile us the
better to this republican tyranny, they confounded
the bloodshed of war with the murders of peace;
? ? ? ? 94 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
and they computed how much greater prodigality of
blood was exhibited in battles and in the storm of
cities than in the frugal, well-ordered massacres of the
revolutionary tribunals of France.
As to foreign powers, so long as they were conjoined with Great Britain in this contest, so long
they were treated as the most abandoned tyrants,
and, indeed, the basest of the human race. The moment any of them quits the cause of this government, and of all governments, he is rehabilitated, his honor is restored, all attainders are purged. The
friends of Jacobins are no longer despots; the betrayers of the common cause are no longer traitors.
That you may not doubt that they look oil this war
as a civil war, and the Jacobins of France as of their
party, and that they look upon us, though locally
their countrymen, in reality as enemies, they have
never failed to run a parallel between our late civil
war and this war with the Jacobins of France. They
justify their partiality to those Jacobins by the partiality which was shown by several here to the Colonies, and they sanction their cry for peace with the Regicides of France by some of our propositions for
peace with the English in America.
This I do not mention as entering into the controversy how far they are right or wrong in this parallel, but to show that they do make it, and that they
do consider themselves as of a party with the Jacobins
of France. You cannot forget their constant correspondence with the Jacobins, whilst it was in their
power to carry it on. When the communication is
again opened, the interrupted correspondence will
commence. We cannot be blind to the advantage
which such a party affords to Regicide France in all
? ? ? ? LETTER IV. 95
her views, - and, on the other hand, what an advantage Regicide France holds out to the views of the
republican party in England. Slightly as they have
considered their subject, I think this can hardly have
escaped the writers of political ephemerides for any
month or year. They have told us much of the
amendment of the Regicides of Frallce, and of their
returning honor and generosity. Have they told
anything of the reformation and of the returning
loyalty of the Jacobins of England? Have they told
us of their gradual softening towards royalty? Have
they told us what measures they are taking for " putting the crown in commission," and what approximations of any kind they are making towards the old Constitution of their country? Nothing of this. The
silence of these writers is dreadfully expressive. They
dare not touch the subject. But it is not annihilated by their silence, nor by our indifference. It is
but too plain that our Constitution cannot exist with
such a communication. Our humanity, our manners,
our morals, our religion, cannot stand with such a
communication. The Constitution is made by those
things, and for those things: without them it cannot
exist; and without them it is no matter whether it
exists or not.
It was an ingenious Parliamentary Christmas play,
by which, in both Houses, you anticipated the holidays; it was a relaxation from your graver employment; it was a pleasant discussion you had, which part of the family of the Constitution was the elder
branch, - whether one part did not exist prior to the
others, and whether it might exist and flourish, if
"the others were cast into the fire. "* In order to
* See debates in Parliament upon motions made in both Houses
? ? ? ? 96 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
make this Saturnalian amusement general in the fam:
ily, you sent it down stairs, that judges and juries
might partake of the entertainment. The unfortunate antiquary and augur who is the butt of all this sport may suffer in the roistering horse-play and practical jokes of the servants' hall. But whatever may become of him, the discussion itself, and the timing it,
put me in mind of what I have read. (where I do not
recollect,) that the subtle nation of the Greeks were
busily employed, in the Church of Santa Sophia, in
a dispute of mixed natural philosophy, metaphysics,
and theology, whether the light on Mount Tabor was
created or uncreated, and were ready to massacre
the holders of the unfashionable opinion, at the very
moment when the ferocious enemy of all philosophy
and religion, Mahomet the Second, entered through
a breach into the capital of the Christian world. I
may possibly suffer much more than Mr. Reeves (I
shall certainly give much more general offence) for
breaking in upon this constitutional amusement concerning the created or uncreated nature of the two Houses of Parliament, and by calling their attention
to a problem which may entertain them less, but
which concerns them a great deal more, - that is,
whether, with this Gallic Jacobin fraternity, which
they are desired by some writers to court, all the
parts of the government, about whose combustible
or incombustible qualities they are contending, may
" not be cast into the fire " together. He is a strange
visionary (but he is nothing worse) who fancies that
any one part of our Constitution, whatever right of
primogeniture it may claim, or whatever astrologers
for prosecuting Mr. Reeves for a libel upon the Constitution, Dec. ,
1795.
? ? ? ? LETTER IV. 97
may divine from its horoscope, can possibly survive
the others. As they have lived, so they will die, together. I must do justice to the impartiality of the Jacobins. I have not observed amongst them the least
predilection for any of those parts. If there has been
any difference in their malice, I think they have
shown a worse disposition to the House of Commons
than to the crown. As to the House of Lords, they
do not speculate at all about it, and for reasons that
are too obvious to detail.
The question will be concerning the effect of this
French fraternity on the whole mass. Have we anything to apprehend from Jacobin communication, or have we not? If we have not, is it by our experience before the war that we are to presume that after the war no dangerous communion can exist between
those who are well affected to the new Constitution
of France and ill affected to the old Constitution
here?
In conversation I have not yet found nor heard of
any persons, except those who undertake to instruct
the public, so unconscious of the actual state of things,
or so little prescient of the future, who do not shudder all over and feel a secret horror at the approach of this communication. I' do not except from this
observation those who are willing, more than I find
myself disposed, to submit to this fraternity. Never
has it been mentioned in my hearing, or from what I
can learn in my inquiry, without the suggestion of
an Alien Bill, or some other measures of the same
nature, as a defence against its manifest mischief.
Who does not see the utter insufficiency of such a
remedy, if such a remedy could be at all adopted?
We expel suspected foreigners from hence; and we
VOL. VI. 7
? ? ? ? 98 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
suffer every Englishman to pass over into France to
be initiated in all the infernal discipline of the place,
to cabal and to be corrupted by every means of cabal
and of corruption, and then to return to England,
charged with their worst dispositions and designs.
In France he is out of the reach of your police; and
when he returns to England, one such English emissary is worse than a legion of French, who are either tongue-tied, or whose speech betrays them. But the
worst aliens are the ambassador and his train. These
you cannot expel without a proof (always difficult)
of direct practice against the state. A French ambassador, at the head of a French party, is an evil which we have never experienced. The mischief is
by far more visible than the remedy. But, after all,
every such measure as an Alien Bill is a measure of
hostility, a preparation for it, or a cause of dispute
that shall bring it on. In effect, it is fundamentally
contrary to a relation of amity, whose essence is a
perfectly free communication. Everything done to
prevent it will provoke a foreign war. Everything,
when we let it proceed, will produce domestic distraction. We shall be in a perpetual dilemma. But
it is easy to see which side of the dilemma will be
taken. The same temper which brings us to solicit
a Jacobin peace will induce us to temporize with all
the evils of it. By degrees our minds will be made
to our circumstances. The novelty of such things,
which produces half the horror and all the disgust,
will be worn off. Our ruin will be disguised in profit, and the sale of a few wretched baubles will bribe
a degenerate people to barter away the most precious
jewel of their souls. Our Constitution is not made
for this kind of warfare. It provides greatly for our
? ? ? ? LETTER IV. 99
happiness, it furnishes few means for our defence.
It is formed, in a great measure, upon the principle
of jealousy of the crown, - and as things stood, when
it took that turn, with very great reason. I go farther: it must keep alive some part of that fire of jealousy eternally and chastely burning, or it cannot be
the British Constitution. At various periods we have
had tyranny in this country, more than enough. We
have had rebellions with more or less justification.
Some of our kings have made adulterous connections
abroad, and trucked away for foreign gold the interests and glory of their crown. But, before this time,
our liberty has never been corrupted. I mean to say,
that it has never been debauched from its domestic
relations. To this time it has been English liberty,
and English liberty only. Our love of liberty and
our love of our country were not distinct things.
Liberty is now, it seems, put upon a larger and more
liberal bottom. We are men, --and as menl, undoubtedly, nothing human is foreign to us. We cannot be too liberal in our general wishes for the happiness of'our kind. But in all questions on the mode of procuring it for any particular community,
we ought to be fearful of admitting those who have
no interest in it, or who have, perhaps, an interest
against it, into the consultation. Above all, we cannot be too cautious in our communication with those
who seek their happiness by other roads than those
of humanity, morals, and religion, and whose liberty
consists, and consists alone, in being free from those
restraints which are imposed by the virtues upon the
passions.
When we invite danger from a confidence in defensive measures, we ought, first of all, to be sure that
? ? ? ? 100 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
it is a species of danger against which any defensive measures that can be adopted will be sufficient. Next, we ought to know that the spirit of our laws,
or that our own dispositions, which are stronger than
laws, are susceptible of all those defensive measures
which the occasion may require. A third consideration is, whether these measures will not bring more odium than strength to government; and the last,
whether the authority that makes them, in a general corruption of manners and principles, can insure their execution. Let no one argue, from the state
of things, as he sees them at present, concerning what
will be the means and capacities of government, when
the time arrives which shall call for remedies commensurate to enormous evils.
It is an obvious truth, that no constitution can defend itself: it must be defended by the wisdom and fortitude of men. These are what no constitution
can give: they are the gifts of God; and He alone
knows whether we shall possess such gifts at the time
we stand in need of them. Constitutions furnish
the civil means of getting at the natural: it is all
that in this case they can do. But our Constitution
has more impediments than helps. Its excellencies,
when they come to be put to this sort of proof, may
be found among its defects.
Nothing looks more awful and imposing than an
ancient fortification. Its lofty, embattled walls, its
bold, projecting, rounded towers, that pierce the sky,
strike the imagination and promise inexpugnable
strength. But they are the very things that make
its weakness. You may as well think of opposing
one of these old fortresses to the mass (of artillery
brought by a French irruption into the field as to
? ? ? ? LETTER IV. 101
think of resisting by your old laws and your old
forms the new destruction which the corps of Jacobin
engineers of to-day prepare for all such forms and all
such laws. Besides the debility and false principle of
their construction to resist the present modes of attack, the fortress itself is in ruinous repair, and there is a practicable breach in every part of it.
Such is the work. But miserable works have been
defended by the constancy of the garrison. Weatherbeaten ships have been brought safe to port by the spirit and alertness of the crew. But it is here that
we shall eminently fail. The day that, by their consent, the seat of Regicide has its place among the thrones of Europe, there is no longer a motive for
zeal in their favor; it will at best be cold, unimpassioned, dejected, melancholy duty. The glory will seem all on the other side. The friends of the crown
will appear, not as champions, but as victims; discountenanced, mortified, lowered, defeated. they will fall into listlessness and indifference. They will leave
things to take their course, enjoy the present hour,
and submit to the common fate.
Is it only an oppressive nightmare with which we
have been loaded? is it, then, all a frightful dream,
and are there no regicides in the world? Have we
not heard of that prodigy of a ruffian who would not
suffer his benignant sovereign, with his hands tied
behind him, and stripped for execution, to say one
parting word to his deluded people, - of Santerre,
who commanded the drums and trumpets to strike
up to stifle his voice, and dragged him backward to
the machine of murder? This nefarious villain (for
a few days I may call him so) stands high in France,
as in a republic of robbers and murderers he ought.
? ? ? ? 102 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
What hinders this monster from being sent as ambassador to convey to his Majesty the first compliments of his brethren, the Regicide Directory? They have none that can represent them more properly. I
anticipate the day of his arrival. He will make his
public entry into London on one of the pale horses
of his brewery. As he knows that we are pleased
with the Paris taste for the orders of knighthood,*
he will fling a bloody sash across his shoulders, with
the order of the holy guillotine surmounting the
crown appendant to the riband. Thus adorned, he
will proceed from Whitechapel to the further end of
Pall Mall, all the music of London playing the Marseillaise Hymn before him, and escorted by a chosen
detachment of the Legion de l'. Echafaud. It were
only to be wished that no ill-fated loyalist, for the
imprudence of his zeal, may stand in the pillory at
Charing Cross, under the statue of King Charles the
First, at the time of this grand procession, lest some
of the rotten eggs which the Constitutional Society
shall let fly at his indiscreet head may hit the virtuous murderer of his king. They might soil the
state dress which the ministers of so many crowned
heads have admired, and in which Sir Clement Cotterel is to introduce him at St. James's.
If Santerre cannot be spared from the constitutional butcheries at home, Tallien may supply his
place, and, in point of figure, with advantage. He
has been habituated to commissions; and he is as
well qualified as Santerre for this. Nero wished
* " In the costume assumed by the members of the legislative body
we almost behold the revival of the extinguished insignia of knighthood," &c. , &c. - See A View of the Relative State of Great Britain and
France at the Commencement of the Year 1796.
? ? ? ? LETTER IV. 103
the Roman people had but one neck. The wish of
the more exalted Tallien, when he sat in judgment,
was, that his sovereign had eighty-three heads, that
he might send one to every one of the Departments.
Tallien will make an excellent figure at Guildhall
at the next Sheriff's feast. He may open the ball
with my Lady Mayoress. But this will be after
lie has retired from the public table, and gone into
the private room for the enjoyment of more social
and unreserved conversation with the ministers of
state and the judges of the bench. There these ministers and magistrates will hear him entertain the worthy aldermen with an instructing and pleasing
narrative of the manner in which he made the rich
citizens of Bordeaux squeak, and gently led them
by the public credit of the guillotine to disgorge
their anti-revolutionary pelf.
All this will be the display, and the town-talk,
when our regicide is on a visit of ceremony. At
home nothing will equal the pomp and splendor of
the Hotel de la Republique. There another scene of
gaudy grandeur will be opened. When his Citizen
Excellency keeps the festival, which every citizen is
ordered to observe, for the glorious execution of
Louis the Sixteenth, and renews his oath of detestation of kings, a grand ball of course will be given on the occasion. Then what a hurly-burly! what
a crowding! what a glare of a thousand flambeaux
in the square! what a clamor of footmen contending at the door! what a rattling of a thousand coaches of duchesses, countesses, and Lady Marys,
choking the way, and overturning each other, in a
struggle who should be first to pay her court to the
Citoyenne, the spouse of the twenty-first husband, he
? ? ? ? 104 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
the husband of the thirty-first wife, and to hail her
in the rank of honorable matrons before the four
days' duration of marriage is expired i- Morals, as
they were, decorum, the great outguard of the sex,
and the proud sentiment of honor, which makes virtue more respectable, where it is, and conceals human frailty, where virtue may not be, will be banished
from this land of propriety, modesty, and reserve.
We had before an ambassador from the most Christian King. We shall have then one, perhaps two, as lately, from the most Anti-Christian Republic. His
chapel will be great and splendid, formed on the
model of the Temple of Reason at Paris; while the
famous ode of the infamous Chenier will be sung,
and a prostitute of the street adored as a goddess.
We shall then have a French ambassador without
a suspicion of Popery. One good it will have: it
will go some way in quieting the minds of that
synod of zealous Protestant lay elders who govern
Ireland on the pacific principles of polemic theology,
and who now, from dread of the Pope, cannot take
a cool bottle of claret, or enjoy an innocent Parliamentary job, with any tolerable quiet.
So far as to the French communication here:
what will be the effect of our communication there?
We know that our new brethren, whilst they everywhere shut up the churches, increased in Paris, at
one time at least fourfold, the opera-houses, the playhouses, the public shows of all kinds; and even in their state of indigence and distress, no expense was
spared for their equipment and decoration. They
were made an affair of state. There is no invention
of seduction, never wholly wanting in that place,
that has not been increased, - brothels, gaming.
? ? ? ? LETTER IV. 105
houses, everything. And there is no doubt, but,
when they are settled in a triumphant peace, they
will carry all these arts to their utmost perfection,
and cover them with every species of imposing magnificence. They have all along avowed them as a
part of their policy; and whilst they corrupt youlg
minds through pleasure, they form them to crimes.
Every idea of corporal gratification is carried to the
highest excess, and wooed with all the elegance that
belongs to the senses. All elegance of mind and mallners is banished. A theatrical, bombastic, windy
phraseology of heroic virtue, blended and mingled
up with a worse dissoluteness, and joined to a murderous and savage ferocity, forms the tone and idiom of their language and their manners. Any one, who attends to all their own descriptions, narratives, and dissertations, will find in that whole place
more of the air of a body of assassins, banditti, housebreakers, and outlawed smugglers, joined to that of
a gang of strolling players expelled from and exploded orderly theatres, with their prostitutes in a
brothel, at their debauches and bacchanals, than anything of the refined and perfected virtues, or the polished, mitigated vices of a great capital.
Is it for this benefit we open " the usual relations
of peace and amity "? Is it for this our youth of
both sexes are to form themselves by travel? Is it
for this that with expense and pains we form their
lisping infant accents to the language of France? I
shall be told that this abominable medley is made
rather to revolt young and ingenuous minds. So it is
in the description. So perhaps it may in reality to a
chosen few. So it may be, when the magistrate, the
law, and the church frown on such manners, and the
? ? ? ? 106 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
wretches to whom they belong, -when they are
chased from the eye of day, and the society of civil
life, into night-cellars and caves and woods. But when
these men themselves are the magistrates, --when all
the consequence, weight, and authority of a great nation adopt them, - when we see them conjoined with
victory, glory, power, and dominion, and homage paid
to them by every government, - it is not possible that
the downhill should not be slid into, recommended
by everything which has opposed it. Let it be remembered that no young man can go to any part of
Europe without taking this place of pestilential contagion in his way; and whilst the less active part
of the community will be debauched by this travel,
whilst children are poisoned at these schools, our
trade will put the finishing hand to our ruin. No
factory will be settled in France, that will not become
a club of complete French Jacobins. The minds of
young men of that description will receive a taint in
their religion, their morals, and their politics, which
they will in a short time communicate to the whole
kingdom.
Whilst everything prepares the body to debauch
and the mind to crime, a regular church of avowed
atheism, established by law, with a direct and sanguinary persecution of Christianity, is formed to prevent all amendment and remorse. Conscience is formally deposed fiom its dominion over the mind.
What fills the measure of horror is, that schools of
atheism are set up at the public charge in every part
of the country. That some English parents will be
wicked enough to send their children to such schools
there is no doubt. Better this island should be sunk
to the bottom of the sea than that (so far as human
? ? ? ? LETTER IV. 107
infirmity admits) it should not be a country of relig.
ion and morals!
