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Edmund Burke 
 Orations and Essays 
 
 The World’s Great Books 
 
 Committee of Selection 
 
 Thomas B. Reed William R. Harper 
 
 Speaker of the House President of the | 
 of Representatives University of Chicago 
 
 Edward Everett Hale Ainsworth R. Spofford 
 
 Author of The Man Of the Congressional 
 Without a Country Library 
 
 Rossiter Johnson 
 Editor of Little Classics and Editor-in-Chief of this Series 
 
 Aldine Edition 
 
A fad - 
 | te 
 
 ie, ee a 
 pete le fi 
 
Copyright,1899 by D, Appleton & Co. 
 
EDMUND. BURKE. 
 
 Photogravure from the painting by Joshua Reynolds in the 
 National Gallery, London. 
 
Orations and Essays 
 
 By 
 
 Edmund Burke 
 
 With a Critical and Biographical Introduction 
 by Edwin Lawrence Godkin 
 
 Illustrated 
 
 New York 
 D. Appleton and Company 
 
 1900 
 
vey 
 
 i 
 At 
 
 By D. APPLET 
 
 DT ae Oe 
 
EDMUND BURKE 
 
 MoNTESQUIEU and Burke were the two great political 
 philosophers of the eighteenth century. The light had 
 dawned on Locke, but he spent too much of his treatise 
 on government in demonstrating that “ Adam had _ not, 
 either by natural right of fatherhood or by positive dona- 
 tion from God, any such authority over his children, or 
 dominion over the world, as is pretended.” It may be 
 said, however, that Locke was the first serious guide in 
 modern politics. He was the first to preach that the 
 origin of human society was to be found in the “ tacit 
 consent” of those who formed it. But his influence was 
 small, and the readers of his book on civil government 
 were largely confined to the literary class. I think I 
 may safely say that to Montesquieu and to Burke we owe 
 what I may call the dawn of political consciousness. 
 There is a sentence in Sainte-Beuve on Montesquieu 
 which exactly describes the state of mind in which Burke, 
 as well as Montesquieu, entered on the work of political 
 speculation: “He felt more and more the greatness of 
 the social invention, and desired more and more the ele- 
 vation of the human race.” This is in reality the secret 
 of Burke’s writings on politics, and especially of his wor-- 
 ship of prescription. Human society was to him the 
 most glorious product of human reason, and he could not 
 bear to see the slightest amendment effected in it, except 
 for overwhelming reason. 
 
 lll 
 
ie EDMUND BURKE 
 
 Burke, born in Dublin in 1729, began life in London at 
 a period when Irishmen, though subject to the Crown, 
 were apt, like Scotchmen, to be looked on in some sense as 
 foreigners, but he had the tie of English race and, what 
 was of more consequence, the tie of religion, when Prot- 
 estantism was a sort of caste. He had hardly become 
 known as a young literary man in the London coffee- 
 houses when his extraordinary capacity was perceived. 
 The most remorseless and prejudiced critic of that day, 
 Dr. Johnson, was no sooner brought in contact with him 
 than he felt that to meet Burke, even in a coffee-house 
 discussion, called for “all his powers,” and that to fall in 
 with him, even under a gateway during a shower, one 
 must feel that he was a remarkable man. 
 
 London was then a comparatively small place. The 
 political circle was narrow, composed principally of a few 
 rich families, who divided the government between them 
 and the king. They had this peculiarity, however, which 
 has been preserved by the Tories nearly to our day, of 
 keeping a sharp lookout for talent among men of a lower 
 social grade. Disraeli and Chamberlain were not the 
 first to be picked up, and made to do the work of political 
 drudgery by what was called their “betters.” But in 
 those days such men had not to be rewarded with peer- 
 ages, garters, or seats in the Cabinet. They were very 
 well content to place their powers at the service of 
 the state, under what Napier calls the “cold shade of 
 aristocracy.” It was not long before Burke’s talents 
 came to the notice of one of the great men of the day, 
 afterward known as “Single-speech” Hamilton, and 
 were turned remorselessly to account for his patron’s 
 credit. From that time his rise was rapid, and he be- 
 came, during the course of the American war and the 
 troubles between the king and the Parliament, the great- 
 est elucidator that ever has appeared in the field of gov- 
 ernment. I say this because most of his political utter- 
 ances, though containing novelties when he produced 
 
EDMUND BURKE Vv 
 
 them, have had their greatness diminished solely by the 
 fact that they have been so cherished and diffused as to 
 have become the commonplaces of modern politics. 
 
 Like Napoleon, Burke owed a great deal to circum. 
 stances. The war with the American colonies and the 
 rise of the Indian empire were occasions happily fitted to 
 call forth his acumen. The modern world had just begun 
 to come into existence. The old medizval world was 
 just ready to perish amid the flames of the French Revo- 
 lution. There was needed a philosopher who could 
 gather and turn to account the lessons of these great con- 
 vulsions. It is safe to say that without these events the 
 “ Observations on a late Publication entitled the Present 
 State of the Nation,” the “ Thoughts on the Present Dis- 
 contents,” the ‘“ Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs,” 
 the speech on “ Conciliation with America,” the “ Letters 
 on a Regicide Peace,” and the “ Reflections on the Revo- 
 lution in France” never would have been written; and 
 had they never been written, the modern world would 
 have lost one of its great sources of doctrine, of reproof, 
 and of instruction in politics. A good deal of fault has 
 been found with the gaudiness of Burke’s rhetoric, with 
 the violence of his invective, and with the strength of his 
 prejudices; but, making allowance for all this, making 
 allowance for even total dissent from him on the French 
 question, it is impossible to read any of the essays we 
 have mentioned without being struck with the depth of 
 his insight, with the breadth of his forecast, and with the 
 extraordinary skill with which he had rolled words of 
 wisdom into telling aphorisms which everybody could 
 carry about with him without reference to the general 
 argument. It is difficult to find a recent political essay, 
 or newspaper article, in which there are not traces of 
 indebtedness to him. A very large number of maxims 
 and assertions with which he startled the Tories of 1780 
 are to-day the inspiration of every stump orator or 
 speaker at a town meeting. A young man who has mas- 
 
vi EDMUND BURKE 
 
 tered the productions we have mentioned is really armed 
 against all opponents of free government, as well as 
 against all promoters of unbridled democracy. 
 
 How it happened that a man of such remarkable pow- 
 ers, who rose so high in the councils of the state, did not 
 reach the highest honour, that of a seat in the Cabinet, has 
 furnished much food for discussion among Burke’s biog- 
 raphers, as well as among those who have commented 
 upon the history of his times. There could hardly bea 
 higher tribute to a man’s greatness than the fact that such 
 an incident in his career should have been the topic of 
 so much speculation. Among all the conflicting theories 
 that have been advanced on the subject, the most prob- 
 able one seems to be, that he did not belong to the gov- 
 erning caste, which was then, as we have said, a small 
 one, and kept all the places of honour and emolument 
 to itself, while accepting very freely the services of those 
 who were content to work for less. The theory that he 
 had vulgar relations may have something in it, but its 
 support is slender and puerile. Burke always suffered, 
 as only in England a man can suffer, from impecuniosity. 
 He had to use even his great powers for the defence of 
 his pension, in an age when pensions were freely lavished 
 on corrupt politicians and unscrupulous legislators. The 
 “Letter to a Noble Lord” is fine, but it is melancholy 
 to reflect, as one reads it, that such a man should have 
 had to write an essay on such a topic. 
 
 The flaws in Burke’s career are his’ course on the In- 
 dian question and on the French Revolution. With re- 
 gard to India, it had just become, in his time, the posses- 
 sion of a band of English traders whom the fall of the 
 Mogul Empire had converted into conquerors. They 
 made no profession of any higher motives than mercan- 
 tile greed, and the return of their enriched agents to 
 England, as what were called “ Nabobs,” had a visibly 
 unfortunate effect on the conflict that was going on be- 
 tween the king and the friends of free government. 
 
EDMUND BURKE Vii | 
 
 In fact, there was just misrule enough and corruption 
 enough in the growth of the English empire to rouse 
 -Burke’s hatred of oppression and of disorder, which was 
 the strongest passion of his nature, to a boiling-point. 
 He therefore threw himself into the prosecution of War- 
 ren Hastings with a fervour and earnestness the continu- 
 ance of which during a long trial deprived him finally of 
 public interest and support. He is not the first man who 
 has found that this interest and support can hardly be 
 depended on for long contests. 
 
 In the case of the French Revolution he was face to 
 face with another order of considerations. He wrote a 
 pamphlet on it which convulsed England, and in which, 
 it has been justly said, he all but completely overlooked 
 the wrongs of the wretched peasants which had had so. 
 much to do with bringing it about. The only recent 
 parallels that I can find for the effect of this pamphlet on 
 English opinion are Mr. Gladstone’s pamphlet on the 
 Government of Naples and his speeches on what were 
 called “the Bulgarian Atrocities.” These are the only 
 two writers who have been able to rouse Englishmen to 
 a passionate interest in foreign events. There is little 
 doubt that Burke’s “ Reflections on the Revolution in 
 France” had much to do with precipitating the twenty- 
 years’ war on which Pitt entered, and which so fatally 
 retarded the progress of freedom and reform at home, 
 besides covering the Continent with blood and flame. 
 
 But the cause of his abhorrence of the French Revolu- 
 tion was substantially the same as that of his abhorrence 
 of the conquests of the East India Company. In both 
 cases he was defending what was old, what was estab- 
 lished, and what had once been great and powerful. In 
 the prosecution of Warren Hastings he had been defend- 
 ing princes and potentates whose origin was lost in the 
 night of time, and whose ancestors had once been strong 
 in war and wise in council. In attacking the French 
 Revolution also, he defended an ancient monarchy, and a 
 
viii EDMUND BURKE 
 
 church and nobility, which, whatever their faults, were 
 almost coeval with Christianity itself. It was the defence 
 of his idol, prescription, which drew from him the superb 
 burst of rhetoric on Windsor Castle. 
 
 We must not forget, however, in reading modern com- 
 ments on these lapses and short-comings of a great man 
 that we stand very far outside the age and the atmos- 
 phere in which Burke raved and thundered. We have 
 no idea whatever in our day of the effect produced on 
 the men of Burke’s time by the predominance in English 
 society of the “ Nabobs,” or we only get an idea of it 
 from the more recent memory of the effect which the 
 West-Indian planters produced a generation later on those 
 who were agitating the emancipation of the negroes. We 
 can easily imagine also the effect of the French Revo- 
 lution on a world in England in which authority still 
 ‘reigned, in which the constitution in church and state 
 was still an object of adoration, of the news that every- 
 thing sacred and everything venerable in a neighbour- 
 ing state had been suddenly destroyed at the hands of a 
 howling mob. The probable effects of this on the pub- 
 lic mind we can only compare to the effect of the Indian 
 mutiny and the massacre of Cawnpore on a later gener- 
 ation, or of the news of the firing on Fort Sumter on the 
 Northern public in America. We who live in calmer 
 times, with riper experience and with fuller knowledge, 
 find it easy enough to point out the defects of Burke’s 
 argumentation, and to prune his exuberance; but we 
 must remember that every man, even the greatest, not 
 only has the defects of his qualities, but partakes of the 
 passions of his time. On all other topics it is difficult to 
 say too much of Burke’s farsightedness and judicial- 
 mindedness. He was born and brought up an Irishman 
 and a Protestant, in the days when the unhappy Catholics 
 of his country still lived under the Penal Laws, and the 
 only duty the Protestant thought he owed them was 
 hatred. Burke’s devotion to their cause never wavered. 
 
EDMUND BURKE | ix 
 
 His perception of the impolicy as well as the iniquity of 
 their wrongs never ceased to be acute. Though trans- 
 ported to England in early life, and honoured and re- 
 warded, as only few Englishmen are, he did not, as 
 too many Irishmen have done, merge himself in the con- 
 quering race, and, in sharing in their glory, forget his 
 own unhappy country. 
 
 The subjects of his earlier efforts before his appear- 
 ance in the political arena—the “ Vindication of Natural 
 Society,” directed against Lord Bolingbroke, and the 
 “Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and 
 Beautiful ’—are mainly interesting for their style. They 
 belonged to the age of pamphlets on all sorts of subjects, 
 in which men delighted before the age of monthly 
 magazines and newspapers. But his essay on “The 
 Present Discontents” showed that he was very far 
 from being a mere rhetorician, even in his literary begin- 
 nings. His capacity for dealing with dry details, and 
 with the marshalling of statistics, was there fully revealed, 
 and the Tories were made aware that there was no field 
 in which both his pen and his tongue were not to be 
 dreaded. “The Vindication of Natural Society” is an 
 attempt to refute by irony Lord Bolingbroke’s views of 
 religion, and is more of a jeu d’esprit than anything else 
 he wrote; but the essay on the “Origin of our Ideas of 
 the Sublime and Beautiful” is an analysis of the human 
 faculties which create what we call art, and had the good 
 fortune to secure the strong approbation of Lessing. 
 
 In summing up all that is to be said about Burke’s 
 career as a whole, it may be safely alleged that both his 
 defects and his virtues are to be ascribed, in the last 
 analysis, to his reverence for prescription in the sense of 
 rights derived from immemorial usage. As I said in the 
 beginning of this article, Burke’s respect for human 
 society was very great. For a society which had been 
 long established and successfully carried on it was over- 
 whelming. It was the secret of his detestation of the 
 
xX EDMUND BURKE 
 
 king’s attempt to subject the English colonies to arbitrary 
 rule, as well as of. his horror over the overthrow of the 
 French monarchy. Stare super antiquas vias was the 
 motto of his political philosophy. Had he lived to see 
 the difficulty-the French have had in reconstituting their 
 society after the ancient traditions had been cast aside 
 he would be more than ever confirmed in the belief that 
 in politics whatever is is not exactly right, but has the 
 strongest presumptions in its favour. 
 
 Toward the end of his life he was seized with the Eng- 
 lishman’s usual desire for a place in the country, and 
 bought a small estate at Beaconsfield, in Buckingham- 
 shire, where he amused himself in his last years with 
 farming and gardening. But those closing years were 
 sadly embittered by the early death of an only son, of 
 whom he had great hopes, but whose abilities, according 
 to the testimony of contemporaries, he greatly overrated. 
 One of the somewhat ridiculous discussions in which his 
 biographers have indulged—one of the usual penalties of | 
 greatness—is how he procured the means of purchasing 
 the Beaconsfield place. This, like the reason why he did 
 not obtain a place in the Cabinet, must now remain for- 
 ever one of the mysteries of his existence. He never re- 
 covered from the death of his son, and died July 9, 1797. © 
 His ‘Letter to a Noble Lord” contains a touching ac- 
 count of the desolation in which it left him. One of the 
 closing scenes in the old man’s life, described by a con- 
 temporary, was his weeping in the paddock over the neck 
 of his son’s favourite horse. 
 
 EDWIN LAWRENCE GODKIN. 
 
 Note.—The best edition of Burke’s works is that issued in Boston, 
 Mass., which was perfected by the scholarship and editorial skill of Mr. 
 George Nichols, who detected and corrected thousands of errors in the 
 English editions. The contents of this volume are taken from that edi- 
 tion, by the courtesy of the publishers, Messrs. Little, Brown & Co. 
 
FAMOUS AND UNIQUE MANUSCRIPT AND 
 BOOK ILLUSTRATIONS. : 
 
 A series of fac-similes, showing the development of manuscript and 
 book illustrating during four thousand years. 
 
 “SIR JOHN MANDEVILLE. 
 
 Fac-simile oF a soloured wood-engraving from a French edition of the 
 | traveller’s works, printed at Lyons, 1485 .a. p. 
 
Yh Gia 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 SPEECHES 
 On American Taxation 
 To the Electors of Bristol 
 
 Resolutions for Conciliation with the American Colonies 
 
 On his Parliamentary Conduct. 
 tion : : : 
 
 Bristol—Declining the Poll . 
 
 On Warren Hastings . 
 
 ESSAYS 
 On the Sublime and Beautiful 
 
 Bristo!—previous to the Elec- 
 
 Reflections on the Revolution in France 
 
 A Letter to a noble Lord 
 
 xi 
 
 I4I 
 667 
 193 
 
 351 
 619 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 ” FACING PAGE 
 
 EDMUND BURKE . . ; ° . . . Frontispiece 
 
 Photogravure from the painting by Joshua Reynolds in the 
 National Gallery, London 
 
 SIR JOHN MANDEVILLE 
 
 Fac-simile of a coloured wood-engraving from a French edition 
 of the traveller’s works, printed at Lyons, 1485 A. D. 
 
 THE BOSTON TEA-PARTY 
 
 Photogravure from a drawing made for this work 
 
 OLD BRISTOL. 
 
 Photogravure from a drawing after a print of the eighteenth 
 century 
 
 THE LAST DAY OF THE MONTAGNARDS ., ‘ 
 
 Photogravure from a painting by Georges Cain 
 
 CHARLOTTE CORDAY ., : : ; : ; 5, , 
 
 Photogravure from a painting by Jules Aviat 
 COVENT GARDEN . i P : : : ; 
 Photogravure from a painting by B. Nebot 
 
 Xili 
 
 146 
 422 
 554 
 
 658 
 
7 
 
 ats ern habe etal? Shea 
 i ad ‘ be fs iy Sea Portis ath, oe ta 2 iy 
 
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 * 
 
 [hey gi 
 
SP eeOUhS AND ESSAYS 
 
 ON AMERICAN TAXATION 
 
 On the toth of April, 1774, Mr. Rose Fuller, member of 
 Parliament for Rye, made the following motion :— 
 
 “ That an act made in the seventh year of the reign of his present Majesty 
 intituled, ‘ An act for granting certain duties in the British colonies and planta- 
 tions in America; for allowing a drawback of the duties of customs upon the 
 exportation from this kingdom of coffee and cocoa-nuts, of the produce of the 
 said colonies or plantations ; for discontinuing the drawbacks payable on china 
 earthenware exported to America; and for more effectually preventing the 
 clandestine running of goodsin the said colonies and plantations,’ might be 
 read.” 
 
 The act was read accordingly,and Mr. Fuller then moved,— 
 
 “That this House will, upon this day sevennight, resolve itself into a com- 
 mittee of the whole House, to take into consideration the duty of three-pence 
 per pound weight upon tea, payable in all his Majesty’s dominions in America, 
 imposed by the said act ; and also the appropriation of the said duty.” 
 
 On this latter motion a warm and interesting debate arose, in which Mr. 
 Burke spoke as follows : 
 
 IR,—I agree with the honourable gentleman ! who spoke 
 last, that this subject is not new in this House. Very 
 disagreeably to this House, very unfortunately to this nation, 
 and to the peace and prosperity of this whole empire, no 
 topic has been more familiar to us. For nine long years, 
 session after session, we have been lashed round and round 
 this miserable circle of occasional arguments and temporary 
 expedients. I am sure our heads must turn and our stom- 
 
 achs nauseate with them. We have had them in every shape ; 
 I I 
 
2 BURKE 
 
 we have looked at them in every point of view. In- 
 vention is exhausted ; reason is fatigued ; experience has 
 given judgment ; but obstinacy is not yet conquered. 
 
 The honourable gentleman has made one endeavour more 
 to diversify the form of this disgusting argument. He has 
 thrown out a speech composed almost entirely of challenges. 
 Challenges are serious things; and ashe is a man of prudence 
 as well as resolution, I dare say he has very well weighed 
 those challenges before he delivered them. I had long the 
 happiness to sit at the same side of the House, and to agree 
 with the honourable gentleman on all the American questions. 
 My sentiments, I am sure, are well known to him; and I 
 thought I had been perfectly acquainted with his. Though 
 I find myself mistaken, he will still permit me to use the 
 privilege of an old friendship; he will permit me to apply 
 myself to the House under the sanction of his authority, and 
 on the various grounds he has measured out, to submit to 
 you the poor opinions which I have formed upon a matter 
 of importance enough to demand the fullest consideration I 
 could bestow upon it. 
 
 He has stated to the House two grounds of deliberation : 
 one narrow and simple, and merely confined to the question 
 on your paper; the other more large and more complicated, 
 —comprehending the whole series of the Parliamentary 
 proceedings with regard to America, their causes, and their 
 consequences. With regard to the latter ground, he states it 
 as useless, and thinks it may be even dangerous, to enter 
 into so extensive a field of inquiry. Yet, to my surprise, he 
 had hardly laid down this restrictive proposition, to which 
 his authority would have given so much weight, when directly, 
 and with the same authority, he condemns it, and declares 
 it absolutely necessary to enter into the most ample histor- 
 ical detail. His zeal has thrown hima little out of his usual 
 accuracy. In this perplexity, what shall we do, Sir, who are 
 willing to submit tothe lawhe gives us? He has reprobated 
 in one part of his speech the rule he had laid down for de- 
 bate in the other, and, after narrowing the ground for all those 
 
AMERICAN TAXATION 3 
 
 who are to speak after him, he takes an excursion, himself, 
 as unbounded as the subject and the extent of his great 
 abilities. 
 
 Sir, when I can not obey all his laws, I will do the best I 
 can. Iwill endeavour to obey such of them as have the sanc- 
 tion of his example, and to stick to that rule which, though 
 not consistent with the other, is the most rational. He was 
 certainly in the right, when he took the matter largely. I 
 can not prevailon myself to agree with him in his censure of 
 hisown conduct. It isnot, he will give me leave to say, either 
 useless or dangerous. He asserts, that retrospect is not 
 wise ; and the proper, the only proper, subject of inquiry, is 
 “not how we got into this difficulty, but how we are to get out 
 of it.” In other words, we are, according to him, to consult 
 our invention, and to reject our experience. The mode of 
 deliberation he recommends is diametrically opposite to 
 every rule of reason and every principle of good sense estab- 
 lished amongst mankind. For that sense and that reason I 
 have always understood absolutely to prescribe, whenever we 
 are involved in difficulties from the measures we have pur- 
 sued, that we should take a strict review of those measures, 
 in order to correct our errors, if they should be corrigible,— 
 or at least to avoid adull uniformity in mischief, and the un- 
 pitied calamity of being repeatedly caught in the same snare. 
 
 Sir, I will freely follow the honourable gentleman in his 
 historical discussion, without the least management for men 
 or measures, further than as they shall seem to me to deserve 
 it. But before I go into that large consideration, because I 
 would omit nothing that can give the House satisfaction, I 
 wish to tread the narrow ground to which alone the honour- 
 able gentleman, in one part of his speech, has so strictly con- 
 fined us. 
 
 He desires to know, whether, if we were to repeal this tax, 
 agreeably to the proposition of the honourable gentleman 
 who made the motion, the Americans would not take post 
 on this concession, in order to make a new attack on the next 
 body of taxes; and whether they would not call for a repeal 
 
4 BURKE 
 
 of the duty on wine as loudly as they do now for the repeal 
 of the duty on tea. Sir, I can give no security on this sub- 
 ject. But I will do all that I can, and all that can be fairly 
 demanded. To the experience which the honourable gentle- 
 man reprobates in one instant and reverts to in the next, to 
 that experience, without the least wavering or hesitation on 
 my part, I steadily appeal : and would to God there was no 
 other arbiter to decide on the vote with which the House is 
 to conclude this day ! 
 
 When Parliament repealed the Stamp Act in the year 
 1766, I affirm, first, that the Americans did not in conse- 
 quence of this measure call upon you to give up the former 
 Parliamentary revenue which subsisted in that country, or 
 even any one of the articles which compose it. I affirm also, 
 that, when, departing from the maxims of that repeal, you 
 revived the scheme of taxation, and thereby filled the minds 
 of the colonists with new jealousy and all sorts of apprehen- 
 sions, then it was that they quarreled with the old taxes as 
 well as the new; then it was, and not till then, that they 
 questioned all the parts of your legislative power, and by the 
 battery of such questions have shaken the solid structure of 
 this empire to its deepest foundations. 
 
 Of those two propositions I shall, before I have done, 
 give such convincing, such damning proof, that, however the 
 contrary may be whispered in circles or bawled in news- 
 papers, they never more will dare to raise their voices in this 
 House. I speak with great confidence. I have reason for 
 it. The ministers are with me. They at least are convinced 
 that the repeal of the Stamp Act had not, and that no repeal 
 can have, the consequences which the honourable gentleman 
 who defends their measures is so much alarmed at. To 
 their conduct I refer him for a conclusive answer to his 
 objection. I carry my proof irresistibly into the very body 
 of both Ministry and Parliament: not on any general reason- 
 ing growing out of collateral matter, but on the conduct of 
 the honourable gentleman’s ministerial friends on the new 
 revenue itself. 
 
AMERICAN TAXATION 5 
 
 The act of 1767, which grants this tea-duty, sets forth in 
 its preamble, that it was expedient to raise a revenue in 
 America for the support of the civil government there, as well 
 as for purposes still more extensive. To this support the act 
 assigns six branches of duties. About two years after this 
 act passed, the ministry, I mean the present ministry, thought 
 it expedient to repeal five of the duties, and to leave (for 
 reasons best known to themselves) only the sixth standing. 
 Suppose any person, at the time of that repeal, had thus ad- 
 dressed the minister: ? “‘ Condemning, as you do, the repeal 
 of the Stamp Act, why do you venture to repeal the duties 
 upon glass, paper, and painters’ colours? Let your pretense 
 for the repeal be what it will, are you not thoroughly con- 
 vinced that your concessions will produce, not satisfaction, 
 but insolence in the Americans, and that the giving up these 
 taxes will necessitate the giving up of all the rest?” This 
 objection was as palpable then as it is now; and it was as 
 good for preserving the five duties as for retaining the sixth. 
 Besides, the minister will recollect that the repeal of the 
 Stamp Act had but just preceded his repeal; and the ill 
 policy of that measure, (had it been so impolitic as it has 
 been represented,) and the mischiefs it produced, were quite 
 recent. Upon the principles, therefore, of the honourable 
 gentleman, upon the principles of the minister himself, the 
 minister has nothing at all to answer. He stands con- 
 demned by himself, and by all his associates old and new, as 
 a destroyer, in the first trust of finance, of the revenues,— 
 and in the first rank of honour, as a betrayer of the dignity 
 of his country. 
 
 Most men, especially great men, do not always know 
 their well-wishers. I come to rescue that noble lord out of 
 the hands of those he calls his friends and even out of his 
 own. I will do him the justice he is denied at home. He 
 has not been this wicked or imprudent man. He knew 
 that a repeal had no tendency to produce the mischiefs 
 which give so much alarm to hishonourable friend. His 
 work was not bad in its principle, but imperfect in its 
 
6 BURKE 
 
 execution; and the motion on your paper presses him only 
 to complete a proper plan, which, by some unfortunate and 
 unaccountable error, he had left unfinished. 
 
 I hope, Sir, the honourable gentleman who spoke last is 
 thoroughly satisfied, and satisfied out of the proceedings of 
 ministry on their own favourite act, that his fears from a repeal 
 are groundless. If he is not, I leave him, and the noble lord 
 who sits by him, to settle the matter as well as they can to- 
 gether ; for, if the repeal of American taxes destroys all our 
 government in America,—he is the man!—and he is the 
 worst of all the repealers, because he is the last. 
 
 But I hear it rung continually in my ears, now and for- 
 merly,—“ The preamble! what will become of the pre- 
 amble, if you repeal this tax ?””—I am sorry to be compelled 
 so often to expose the calamities and disgraces of Parlia- 
 ment. The preamble of this law, standing as it now stands, 
 has the lie direct given to it by the provisionary part of the 
 act: if that can be called provisionary which makes no pro- 
 vision. I should be afraid to express myself in this manner, 
 especially in the face of such a formidable array of ability as 
 is now drawn up before me, composed of the ancient house- 
 hold troops of that side of the House and the new recruits 
 from this, if the matter were not clear and indisputable. 
 Nothing but truth could give me this firmness; but plain 
 truth and clear evidence can be beat down by no ability. 
 The clerk will be so good as to turn to the act, and to read 
 this favourite preamble. 
 
 “Whereas it is expedient that a revenue should be raised 
 in your Majesty’s dominions in America, for making a more 
 certain and adequate provision for defraying the charge of 
 the administration of justice and support of civil government 
 in such provinces where it shall be found necessary, and 
 towards further defraying the expenses of defending, pro- 
 tecting, and securing the said dominions.” 
 
 You have heard this pompous performance. Now where 
 is the revenue which is to do all these mighty things? Five 
 sixths repealed,—abandoned,—sunk,—gone,—lost forever. 
 
AMERICAN TAXATION 7 
 
 Does the poor solitary tea-duty support the purposes of this 
 preamble? Is not the supply there stated as effectually 
 abandoned as if the tea-duty had perished in the general 
 wreck? Here, Mr. Speaker, is a precious mockery :—a pre- 
 amble without an act,—taxes granted in order to be re- 
 pealed,—and the reasons of the grant still carefully kept up! 
 This is raising a revenue in America! This is preserving 
 dignity in England! If you repeal this tax, in compliance 
 with the motion, I readily admit that you lose this fair pre- 
 amble. Estimate your lossin it. The object of the act is 
 gone already ; and all you suffer is the purging the statute- 
 book of the opprobrium of an empty, absurd, and false 
 recital. 
 
 It has been said again and again, that the five taxes were 
 repealed on commercial principles. It is so said in the paper 
 in my hand: a paper which I constantly carry about; 
 which I have often used, and shall often use again. What 
 is got by this paltry pretense of commercial principles I 
 know not; for, if your government in America is destroyed 
 by the repeal of taxes, it is of no consequence upon what 
 ideas the repeal is grounded. Repeal this tax, too, upon 
 commercial principles, if you please. These principles will 
 serve as well now as they did formerly. But you know 
 that either your objection to a repeal from these supposed 
 consequences has no validity, or that this pretense never 
 could remove it. This commercial motive never was be- 
 lieved by any man, either in America, which this letter is 
 meant to soothe, or in England, which it is meant to deceive, 
 It was impossible it should: because every man, in the least 
 acquainted with the detail of commerce, must know that 
 several of the articles on which the tax was repealed were 
 fitter objects of duties than almost any other articles that 
 could possibly be chosen,—without comparison more so 
 than the tea that was left taxed, as infinitely less liable to 
 be eluded by:contraband. The tax upon red and white lead 
 was of this nature. You have in this kingdom an advantage 
 in lead that amounts toamonopoly. When you find your- 
 
8 BURKE 
 
 self in this situation of advantage, you sometimes venture 
 to tax even your own export. You did so soon after the 
 last war, when, upon this principle, you ventured to impose 
 a duty on coals. In all the articles of American contraband 
 trade, who ever heard of the smuggling of red lead and white 
 lead? You might, therefore, well enough, without danger 
 of contraband, and without injury to commerce, (if this 
 were the whole consideration,) have taxed these commodi- 
 ties. The same may be said of glass. Besides, some of the 
 things taxed were so trivial, that the loss of the objects 
 themselves, and their utter annihilation out of American com- 
 merce, would have been comparatively as nothing. But is 
 the article of tea such an object in the trade of England, as 
 not to be felt, or felt but slightly, like white lead, and red 
 lead, and painters’ colours? Tea is an object of far other 
 importance. Tea is perhaps the most important object, 
 taking it with its necessary connections, of any in the 
 mighty circle of our commerce. If commercial principles 
 had been the true motives to the repeal, or had they been 
 at all attended to, tea would have been the last article we 
 should have left taxed for a subject of controversy. 
 
 Sir, it is not a pleasant consideration, but nothing in the 
 world can read so awful and so instructive a lesson as the 
 conduct of ministry in this business, upon the mischief of 
 not having large and liberal ideas in the management of 
 great affairs. Never have the servants of the state looked 
 at the whole of your complicated interests in one connected 
 view. They have taken things by bits and scraps, some at 
 one time and one pretense, and some at another, just as 
 they pressed, without any sort of regard to their relations or 
 dependencies. They never had any kind of system, right 
 or wrong; but only invented occasionally some miserable 
 tale for the day, in order meanly to sneak out of difficulties 
 into which they had proudly strutted. And they were put 
 to all these shifts and devices, full of meanness and full of 
 mischief, in order to pilfer piecemeal a repeal of an act which 
 they had not the generous courage, when they found and 
 
AMERICAN TAXATION 9 
 
 felt their error, honourably and fairly to disclaim. By such 
 management, by the irresistible operation of feeble councils, 
 so paltry a sum as three-pence in the eyes of a financier, so 
 insignificant an article as tea in the eyes of a philosopher, 
 have shaken the pillars of a commercial empire that circled 
 the whole globe. 
 
 Do you forget that in the very last year you stood on the 
 precipice of general bankruptcy? Your danger was indeed 
 great. You were distressed in the affairs of the East India 
 Company; and you well know what sort of things are in- 
 volved in the comprehensive energy of that significant ap- 
 pellation. I am not called upon to enlarge to you on that 
 danger, which you thought proper yourselves to aggravate, 
 and to display to the world with all the parade of indiscreet 
 declamation. The monopoly of the most lucrative trades 
 and the possession of imperial revenues had brought you to 
 the verge of beggary and ruin. Such was your represen- 
 tation; such, in some measure, was your case. The vent of 
 ten millions of pounds of this commodity, now locked up by 
 the operation of an injudicious tax, and rotting in the ware- 
 houses of the Company, would have prevented all this dis- 
 tress, and all that series of desperate measures which you 
 thought yourselves obliged to take in consequence of it. 
 America would have furnished that vent, which no other 
 part of the world can furnish but America, where tea is next 
 to a necessary of life, and where the demand grows upon 
 the supply. I hope our dear-bought East India Committees 
 have done us at least so much good, asto let us know, that, 
 without a more extensive sale of that article, our East India 
 revenues and acquisitions can have no certain connection 
 with this country. It is through the American trade of tea 
 that your East India conquests are to be prevented from 
 crushing you with their burden. They are ponderous 
 indeed; and they must have that great country to lean 
 upon, or they tumble upon your head. It is the same folly 
 that has lost you at once the benefit of the West and of 
 the East. This folly has thrown open folding-doors to 
 
10 BURKE 
 
 contraband, and will be the means of giving the profits of 
 the trade of your colonies to every nation but yourselves. 
 Never did a people suffer so much for the empty words ofa 
 preamble. It must be given up. For on what principle 
 does it stand? This famous revenue stands, at this hour, 
 on all the debate, as a description of revenue not as yet 
 known in all the comprehensive (but too comprehensive! ) 
 vocabulary of finance,—a preambulary tax. It is, indeed, a 
 tax of sophistry, a tax of pedantry, a tax of disputation, a 
 tax of war and rebellion, a tax for anything but benefit to 
 the imposers or satisfaction to the subject. 
 
 Well! but whatever it is, gentlemen will force the colonists 
 to take the teas. You willforce them? Has seven years’ 
 struggle been yet able to force them? Oh, but it seems 
 “we are in the right. The tax is trifling,—in effect it is 
 rather an exoneration than an imposition; three fourths of 
 the duty formerly payable on teas exported to America is 
 taken off,—the place of collection is only shifted; instead 
 of the retention of a shilling from the drawback here, it is 
 three-pence custom paid in America.” All this, Sir, is very 
 true. But this is the very folly and mischief of the act. 
 Incredible as it may seem, you know that you have de- 
 liberately thrown away a large duty, which you held secure 
 and quiet in your hands, for the vain hope of getting one 
 three fourths less, through every hazard, through certain 
 litigation, and possibly through war. 
 
 The manner of proceeding in the duties on paper and 
 glass, imposed by the same act, was exactly in the same 
 spirit. There are heavy excises on those articles, when 
 used in England. On export, these excises are drawn 
 back. But instead of withholding the drawback, which might 
 have been done, with ease, without charge, without possi- 
 bility of smuggling, and instead of applying the money 
 (money already in your hands) according to your pleasure, 
 you began your operations in finance by flinging away your 
 revenue; you allowed the whole drawback on export, and 
 then you charged the duty, (which you had before discharged,) 
 
AMERICAN TAXATION at 
 
 payable in the colonies, where it was certain the collection 
 would devour it to the bone,—if any revenue were ever suf- 
 fered to be collected at all. One spirit pervades and ani- 
 mates the whole mass. 
 
 Could anything bea subject of more just alarm to America 
 than to see you go out of the plain highroad of finance, and 
 give up your most certain revenues and your clearest in- 
 terest, merely for the sake of insulting your colonies? No 
 man ever doubted that the commodity of tea could bear an 
 imposition of three-pence. But no commodity will bear 
 three-pence, or will bear a penny, when the general feelings 
 of men are irritated, and two millions of people are resolved 
 not to pay. The feelings of the colonies were formerly the 
 feelings of Great Britain. Theirs were formerly the feelings 
 of Mr. Hampden, when called upon for the payment of 
 twenty shillings. Would twenty shillings have ruined Mr. 
 Hampden’s fortune? No! but the payment of half twenty 
 shillings, on the principle it was demanded, would have 
 made him a slave. It is the weight of that preamble, of 
 which you are so fond, and not the weight of the duty, that 
 the Americans are unable and unwilling to bear. 
 
 It is, then, Sir, upon the principle of this measure, and 
 nothing else, that we are at issue. It is a principle of politi- 
 cal expediency. Your act of 1767 asserts that it is expedient 
 to raise a revenue in America; your act of 1769, which takes 
 away that revenue, contradicts the act of 1767, and, by some- 
 thing much stronger than words, asserts that it is not expe- 
 dient. It isa reflection upon your wisdom to persist in a solemn 
 Parliamentary declaration of the expediency of any object, for 
 which, at the same time, you make no sort of provision. 
 And pray, sir, let not this circumstance escape you,—it is 
 very material,—that the preamble of this act which we wish 
 to repeal is not declaratory of a right, as some gentlemen 
 seem to argue it: itis only a recital of the expediency of a 
 certain exercise of a right supposed already to have been 
 asserted ; an exercise you are now contending for by ways 
 and means which you confess, though they were obeyed, to 
 
12 BURKE 
 
 be utterly insufficient for their purpose. You are therefore 
 at this moment in the awkward situation of fighting for a 
 phantom,—a quiddity,—a thing that wants, not only a sub- 
 stance, but even a name,—for a thing which is neither ab- 
 stract right nor profitable enjoyment. 
 
 They tell you, Sir, that your dignity is tied toit. I know 
 not how it happens, but this dignity of yours is a terrible 
 incumbrance to you; for it has of late been ever at war with 
 your interest, your equity, and every idea of your policy. 
 Show the thing you contend for to be reason, show it to be 
 common sense, show it to be the means of attaining some 
 useful end, and then I am content to allow it what dignity 
 you please. But what dignity is derived from the persever- 
 ance in absurdity is more than ever I could discern. The 
 honourable gentleman has said well,—indeed, in most of his 
 general observations I agree with him,—he says, that this 
 subject does not stand as it did formerly. Oh, certainly 
 not! Every hour you continue on this ill-chosen ground, 
 your difficulties thicken on you ; and therefore my conclusion 
 is, remove from a bad position as quickly as you can. The 
 disgrace, and the necessity of yielding, both of them, grow 
 upon you every hour of your delay. 
 
 But will you repeal the act, says the honourable gentle- 
 man, at this instant, when America is in open resistance 
 to your authority, and that you have just revived your sys- 
 tem of taxation? He thinks he has driven us into a 
 corner. But thus pent up, Iam content to meet him; be- 
 cause I enter the lists supported by my old authority, his 
 new friends, the ministers themselves. The honourable gen- 
 tleman remembers that about five years ago as great disturb- 
 ances as the present prevailed in America on account of 
 the new taxes. The ministers represented these disturbances 
 as treasonable; and this House thought proper, on that 
 representation, to make a famous address for a revival and 
 for a new application of a statute of Henry the Eighth. We 
 besought the king, in that well-considered address, to inquire 
 into treasons, and to bring the supposed traitors from Amer- 
 
AMERICAN TAXATION 13 
 
 ica to Great Britain for trial. His Majesty was pleased gra- 
 ciously to promise a compliance with our request. All the 
 attempts from this side of the House to resist these vio- 
 lences, and to bring about a repeal, were treated with the ut- 
 most scorn. An apprehension of the very consequences now ~ 
 stated by the honourable gentleman was then given as a rea- 
 son for shutting the door against all hope of such an alter- 
 ation. And so strong was the spirit for supporting the new 
 taxes, that the session concluded with the following remark- 
 able declaration. After stating the vigorous measures which 
 had been pursued, the speech from the throne proceeds :— 
 
 “You have assured me of your firm support in the prose- 
 cution of them. Nothing, in my opinion, could be more 
 likely to enable the well-disposed among my subjects in that 
 part of the world effectually to discourage and defeat the 
 designs of the factious and seditious than the hearty con- 
 currence of every branch of the legislature in the resolution 
 of maintaining the execution of the laws in every part of my 
 dominions.” 
 
 After this no man dreamt that a repeal under this ministry 
 could possibly take place. The honourable gentleman knows 
 as well as I, that the idea was utterly exploded by those who 
 sway the House. This speech was made on the ninth day 
 of May, 1769. Five days after this speech, that is, on the 
 thirteenth of the same month, the public circular letter, a 
 part of which I am going to read to you, was written by Lord 
 Hillsborough, Secretary of State forthe Colonies. After re- 
 citing the substance of the king’s speech, he goes on thus :— 
 
 “TI can take upon me to assure you, notwithstanding insinua- 
 tions to the contrary from men with factious and seditious 
 views, that his Majesty’s present administration have at no 
 time entertained a design to propose to Parliament to lay any 
 further taxes upon America, for the purpose of raising a re- 
 venue; and that it is at present their intention to propose, the 
 next session of Parliament, to take off the duties upon glass, 
 paper, and colours, upon consideration of such duties having 
 been laid contrary to the true principles of commerce. 
 
14 BURKE 
 
 ‘These have always been, and still are, the sentiments of 
 his Majesty’s present servants, and by which their conduct 
 in respect to America has been governed. And his Majesty 
 relies upon your prudence and fidelity for such an explana- 
 tion of his measures as may tend to remove the prejudices 
 which have been excited by the misrepresentations of those 
 who are enemies to the peace and prosperity of Great 
 Britain and her colonies, and to reéstablish that mutual con- 
 fidence and affection upon which the glory and safety of the 
 British empire depend.” 
 
 Here, Sir, is a canonical book of ministerial scripture : 
 the general epistle to the Americans. What does the gen- 
 tleman say to it? Here a repeal is promised,—promised 
 without condition,—and while your authority was actually 
 resisted. I pass by the public promise of a peer relative to 
 the repeal of taxes by this House. I pass by the use of the 
 king’s name in a matter of supply, that sacred and reserved 
 right of the Commons. I conceal the ridiculous figure of 
 Parliament hurling its thunders at the gigantic rebellion of 
 America, and then, five days after, prostrate at the feet of 
 those assemblies we affected to despise,—begging them, by 
 the intervention of our ministerial sureties, to receive our 
 submission, and heartily promising amendment. These 
 might have been serious matters formerly; but we are 
 grown wiser than our fathers. Passing, therefore, from the 
 Constitutional consideration to the mere policy, does not 
 this letter imply that the idea of taxing America for the pur- 
 pose of revenue is an abominable project, when the ministry 
 suppose none but factious men, and with seditious views, 
 could charge them with it ? does not this letter adopt and sanc- 
 tify the American distinction of taxing for a revenue? does 
 it not formally reject all future taxation on that principle ? 
 does it not state the ministerial rejection of such principle of 
 taxation, not as the occasional, but the constant opinion of 
 the king’s servants? does it not say, (I care not how con- 
 sistently,) but does it not say, that their conduct with regard 
 to America has been always governed by this policy? It 
 
AMERICAN TAXATION 15 
 
 goes a great deal further. These excellent and trusty serv- 
 ants of the king, justly fearful lest they themselves should 
 have lost all credit with the world, bring out the image of 
 their gracious sovereign from the inmost and most sacred 
 shrine, and they pawn him as a security for their promises : 
 “ His Majesty relies on your prudence and fidelity for such an 
 explanation of his measures.” These sentiments of the min- 
 ister and these measures of his Majesty can only relate to the 
 principle and practise of taxing fora revenue; and accord- 
 ingly Lord Botetourt, stating it as such, did, with great pro- 
 priety, and in the exact spirit of his instructions, endeavour to 
 remove the fears of the Virginian assembly lest the senti- 
 ments which it seems (unknown to the world) had always 
 been those of the ministers, and by which their conduct in 
 respect to America had been governed, should by some pos- 
 sible revolution, favourable to wicked American taxers, be 
 hereafter counteracted. He addresses them in this manner :-— 
 
 “It may possibly be objected, that, as his Majesty’s pres- 
 ent administration are not immortal, their successors may be 
 inclined to attempt to undo what the present ministers shall 
 have attempted to perform; and tothat objection I can give 
 but this answer: that it is my firm opinion, that the plan I 
 have stated to you will certainly take place, and that it will 
 never be departed from; and so determined am I forever to 
 abide by it, that I will be content to be declared infamous, if 
 I do not, to the last hour of my life, at all times, in all places, 
 and upon all occasions, exert every power with which I either 
 am or ever shall be legally invested, in order to obtain and 
 maintain for the continent of America that satisfaction which 
 I have been authorized to promise this day by the confiden- 
 tial servants of our gracious sovereign, who to my certain 
 knowledge rates his honour so high that he would rather 
 part with his crown than preserve it by deceit.” 4 
 
 A glorious and true character! which (since we suffer his 
 ministers with impunity to answer for his ideas of taxation ) 
 we ought to make it our business to enable his Majesty to 
 preserve in allitsluster. Let him have character, since ours 
 
16 BURKE 
 
 is no more! Let some part of government be kept in 
 respect ! 3 
 
 This epistle was not the letter of Lord Hillsborough 
 solely, though he held the official pen. It was the letter of 
 the noble lord upon the floor,’ and of all the king’s then min- 
 isters, who ( with, I think, the exception of two only ) are 
 his ministers at this hour. Thevery first news that a British 
 Parliament heard of what it was to do with the duties which 
 it had given and granted to the king was by the publication 
 of the votes of American assemblies. It was in America 
 that your resolutions were pre-declared. It was from thence 
 that we knew to a certainty how much exactly, and nota 
 scruple more nor less, we were to repeal. We were unwor- 
 thy to be let into the secret of our own conduct. The 
 assemblies had confidential communications from his Maj- 
 esty’s confidential servants. We were nothing but instru- 
 ments. Do you, after this, wonder that you have no weight 
 and no respect in the colonies? After this are you surprised 
 that Parliament is every day and everywhere losing (I feel it 
 with sorrow, I utter it with reluctance) that reverential af- 
 fection which so endearing a name of authority ought ever 
 to carry with it? that you are obeyed solely from respect to 
 the bayonet? and that this House, the ground and pillar 
 of freedom, is itself held up only by the treacherous under- 
 pinning and clumsy buttresses of arbitrary power ? 
 
 If this dignity, which isto stand in the place of just policy 
 and common sense, had been consulted, there was a time for 
 preserving it, and for reconciling it with any concession. If 
 in the session of 1768, that session of idle terror and empty 
 menaces, you had, as you were often pressed to do, repealed 
 these taxes, then your strong operations would have come 
 justified and enforced, in case your concessions had been re- 
 turned by outrages. But, preposterously, you began with 
 violence ; and before terrors could have any effect, either good 
 or bad, your ministers immediately begged pardon, and 
 promised that repeal to the obstinate Americans which they 
 had refused in an easy, good-natured, complying British Par- 
 
AMERICAN TAXATION 17 
 
 liament. The assemblies, which had been publicly and 
 avowedly dissolved for their contumacy, are called together 
 to receive your submission. Your ministerial directors 
 blustered like tragic tyrants here; and then went mumping 
 with a sore leg in America, canting, and whining, and com- 
 plaining of faction, which represented them as friends to a 
 revenue from the colonies. I hope nobody in this House 
 will hereafter have the impudence to defend American taxes 
 inthe name of ministry. The moment they do, with this 
 letter of attorney in my hand, I will tell them, in the au- 
 thorized terms, they are wretches “with factious and se- 
 ditious views,” “ enemies to the peace and prosperity of the 
 mother country and the colonies,’ and subverters ‘‘ of the 
 mutual affection and confidence on which the glory and 
 safety of the British empire depend.” 
 
 After this letter, the question is no more on propriety or 
 dignity. They are gone already. The faith of your sov- 
 ereign is pledged for the political principle. The general 
 declaration in the letter goes to the whole of it. You must 
 ‘therefore either abandon the scheme of taxing, or you must 
 send the ministers tarred and feathered to America, who 
 dared to hold out the royal faith for a renunciation of all 
 taxes forrevenue. Them you must punish, or this faith you 
 must preserve. The preservation of this faith is of more 
 consequence than the duties on red lead, or white lead, or 
 on broken glass, or atlas-ordinary, or demy-fine, or blue-royal, 
 or bastard, or foolscap, which you have given up, or the 
 three-pence on tea which you retained. The letter went 
 stamped with the public authority of this kingdom. The 
 instructions for the colony government go under no other 
 sanction; and America can not believe, and will not obey 
 you, if you do not preserve this channel of communication 
 sacred. You are now punishing the colonies for acting on 
 distinctions held out by that very ministry which is here 
 shining in riches,in favourand in powerand urging the pun- 
 ishment of the very offense to which they had themselves been 
 
 the tempters. 
 2 
 
18 BURKE 
 
 Sir, if reasons respecting simply your own commerce, 
 which is your own convenience, were the sole grounds of the 
 repeal of the five duties, why does Lord Hillsborough, in 
 disclaiming in the name of the king and ministry their ever 
 having had an intent to tax for revenue, mention it as the 
 means “ of reéstablishing the confidence and affection of the 
 colonies?’’ Is it a way of soothing others, to assure them 
 that you will take good care of yourself? The medium, the 
 only medium, for regaining their affection and confidence is 
 that you willtake off something oppressive to their minds. 
 Sir, the letter strongly enforces that idea: for though the re- 
 peal of the taxes is promised on commercial principles, yet 
 the means of counteracting the “ insinuations of men with fac- 
 tious and seditious views” is by a disclaimer of the intention 
 of taxing for revenue, as a constant, invariable sentiment 
 and rule of conduct in the government of America. 
 
 I remember that the noble lord on the floor, not in a for- 
 mer debate to be sure, (it would be disorderly to refer to it, I 
 suppose I read it somewhere,) but the noble lord was pleased 
 to say, that he did not conceive how it could enter into the 
 head of man to impose such taxes as those of 1767: I mean 
 those taxes which he voted for imposing, and voted for re- 
 pealing,—as being taxes, contrary to all the principles of 
 commerce, laid on British manufactures. 
 
 I dare say the noble lord is perfectly well read, because 
 the duty of his particular office requires he should be so, in 
 all our revenue laws, and in the policy which is to be col- 
 lected out of them. Now, Sir, when he had read this act 
 of American revenue, and a little recovered from his aston- 
 ishment, I suppose he made one step retrograde (it is but 
 one) and looked at the act which stands just before in 
 the statute-book. The American revenue act is the forty- 
 fifth chapter; the one to which I refer is the forty-fourth of 
 the same session. These two acts are both to the same 
 purpose: both revenue acts; both taxing out of the king- 
 dom; and both taxing British manufactures exported. As 
 the forty-fifth is an act for raising a revenue in America, the 
 
AMERICAN TAXATION 19 
 
 forty-fourth is an act for raising a revenue in the Isle of 
 Man. The two acts perfectly agree in all respects, except 
 one. In the act for taxing the Isle of Man the noble lord 
 will find, not, asin the American act, four or five articles, 
 but almost the whole body of British manufactures, taxed 
 from two and ahalf to fifteen per cent, and some articles, 
 such as that of spirits, a great deal higher. You did not 
 think it uncommercial to tax the whole mass of your manu- 
 factures, and, let me add, your agriculture too; for, I now 
 recollect, British corn is there also taxed up to ten per cent, 
 and this too in the very headquarters, the very citadel of 
 smuggling, the Isle of Man. Now will the noble lord con- 
 descend to tell me why he repealed the taxes on your manu- 
 factures sent out to America, and not the taxes on the 
 manufactures exported to the Isle of Man? The principle 
 was exactly the same, the objects charged infinitely more 
 extensive, the duties without comparison higher. Why? 
 Why, notwithstanding all his childish pretexts, because the 
 taxes were quietly submitted to in the Isle of Man, and 
 because they raised a flame in America. Your reasons were 
 political, not commercial. The repeal was made, as Lord 
 Hillsborough’s letter well expresses it, to regain “ the con- 
 fidence and affection of the colonies, on which the glory and 
 safety of the British empire depend.” A wise and just 
 motive, surely, if ever there was such. But the mischief and 
 dishonour, is that you have not done what you had given the 
 colonies just cause to expect, when your ministers disclaimed 
 the idea of taxes for a revenue. There is nothing simple, 
 nothing manly, nothing ingenuous, open, decisive, or steady, 
 in the proceeding, with regard either to the continuance or 
 the repeal of the taxes. The whole has an air of littleness 
 and fraud. The article of tea is slurred over in the circular 
 letter, as it were by accident : nothing is said of a resolution 
 either to keep that tax or to give it up. There is no fair 
 dealing in any part of the transaction. 
 
 If you mean to follow your true motive and your public 
 faith, give up your tax on tea for raising a revenue, the 
 
20 BURKE 
 
 principle of which has, in effect, been disclaimed in your 
 name, and which produces you no advantage,—no, not a 
 penny. Or, if you choose to go on with a poor pretense 
 instead of a solid reason, and will still adhere to your cant 
 of commerce, you have ten thousand times more strong 
 commercial reasons for giving up this duty on tea than for 
 abandoning the five others that you have already renounced. 
 
 The American consumption of teas is annually, I believe, 
 worth 300,000/. at the least farthing. If you urge the 
 American violence as a justification of your perseverance in 
 enforcing this tax, you know that you can never answer this 
 plain question,—Why did you repeal the others given in 
 the same act, whilst the very same violence subsisted r— 
 But you did not find the violence cease upon that conces- 
 sion—No! because the concession was far short of satisfying 
 the principle which Lord Hillsborough had abjured, or even 
 the pretense on which the repeal of the other taxes was 
 announced ; and because, by enabling the East India Com- 
 pany to open a shop for defeating the American resolution 
 not to pay that specific tax, you manifestly showed a han- 
 kering after the principle of the act which you formerly had 
 renounced. Whatever road you take leads to a compliance 
 with this motion. It opens to you at the end of every vista. 
 Your commerce, your policy, your promises, your reasons, 
 your pretenses, your consistency, your inconsistency,—all 
 jointly oblige you to this repeal. 
 
 But still it sticks in our throats, if we go so far, the 
 Americans will go farther—We do not know that. We 
 ought, from experience, rather to presume the contrary. Do 
 we not know for certain, that the Americans are going on as 
 fast as possible, whilst we refuse to gratify them? Can they 
 do more, or can they do worse, if we yield this point? I 
 think this concession will rather fix a turnpike to prevent 
 their further progress. It is impossible to answer for 
 bodies of men. But I am sure the natural effect of fidelity, 
 clemency, kindness in governors is peace, good-will, order, 
 and esteem, on the part of the governed. I would certainly, 
 
AMERICAN TAXATION 21 
 
 at least, give these fair principles a fair trial; which, since 
 the making of this act to this hour, they never have had. 
 
 Sir, the honourable gentleman having spoken what he 
 thought necessary upon the narrow part of the subject, I 
 have given him, I hope, a satisfactory answer. He next 
 presses me, by a variety of direct challenges and oblique 
 reflections, to say something on the historical part. I shall 
 therefore, Sir, open myself fully on that important and 
 delicate subject: not for the sake of telling you a long story, 
 (which, I know, Mr. Speaker, you are not particularly fond 
 of,) but for the sake of the weighty instruction that, I flatter 
 myself, will necessarily result from it. It shall not be 
 longer, if I can help it, than so serious a matter requires. 
 
 Permit me then, Sir, to lead your attention very far back, 
 —back to the Act of Navigation, the cornerstone of the 
 policy of this country with regard to its colonies. Sir, that 
 policy was, from the beginning, purely commercial ; and the 
 commercial system was wholly restrictive. It was the system 
 ofamonopoly. No trade was let loose from that constraint, 
 but merely to enable the colonists to dispose of what, in the 
 course of your trade, you could not take,—or to enable 
 them to dispose of such articles as we forced upon them, 
 and for which, without some degree of liberty, they could 
 not pay. Henceall your specific and detailed enumerations ; 
 hence the innumerable checks and counterchecks ; hence that 
 infinite variety of paper chains by which you bind together 
 this complicated system of the colonies. This principle of 
 commercial monopoly runs through no less than twenty-nine 
 acts of Parliament, from the year 1660 to the unfortunate 
 period of 1764. 
 
 In all those acts the system of commerce is established as 
 that from whence alone you proposed to make the colonies 
 contribute (I mean directly and by the operation of your 
 superintending legislative power) to the strength of the 
 empire. I venture to say, that, during that whole period, 
 a Parliamentary revenue from thence was never once in con- 
 templation. Accordingly, in all the number of laws passed 
 
22 BURKE 
 
 with regard to the plantations, the words which distinguish 
 revenue laws specifically as such were, I think, premeditately 
 avoided, I do not say, Sir, that a form of words alters the 
 nature of the law, or abridges the power of the lawgiver. 
 It certainly does not. However, titles and formal pream- 
 bles are not always idle words; and the lawyers frequently 
 argue from them. I state these facts to show, not what was 
 your right, but what has been your settled policy. Our 
 revenue laws have usually a title, purporting their being 
 grants; and the words “ give and grant” usually precede 
 the enacting parts. Although duties were imposed on 
 America in acts of King Charles the Second, and in acts of 
 King William, no one title of giving “an aid to his Majesty,” 
 or any other of the usual titles to revenue acts, was to be 
 found in any of them till 1764; nor were the words “give 
 and grant”? in any preamble until the sixth of George the 
 Second. However, the title of this act of George the Second, 
 notwithstanding the words of donation, considers it merely 
 as a regulation of trade: ‘‘ An act for the better securing 
 of the trade of his Majesty’s sugar colonies in America.” 
 This act was made on a compromise of all, and at the ex- 
 press desire of a part, of the colonies themselves. It was 
 therefore in some measure with their consent ; and having a 
 title directly purporting only a commercial regulation, and 
 being in truth nothing more, the words were passed by, ata 
 time when no jealousy was entertained, and things were 
 little scrutinized. Even Governor Bernard, in his second 
 printed letter, dated in 1763, gives it as his opinion, that 
 “it was an act of prohibition, not of revenue.” This is 
 certainly true, that no act avowedly for the purpose of 
 revenue, and with the ordinary title and recital taken to- 
 gether, is found in the statute-book until the year I have 
 mentioned: that is, the year 1764. All before this period 
 stood on commercial regulation and restraint. The scheme 
 of a colony revenue by British authority appeared, therefore, 
 to the Americans in the light of a great innovation. The 
 words of Governor Bernard’s ninth letter, written in No- 
 
AMERICAN TAXATION 23 
 
 vember, 1765, state this idea very strongly. ‘“ It must,” says 
 he, ‘‘have been supposed such an innovation as a Parlia- 
 mentary taxation would cause a great alarm, and meet with 
 much opposition in most parts of America; it was quitenew 
 to the people, and had no visible bounds set to it.” After 
 stating the weakness of government there, he says, “ Was 
 this a time to introduce so great a novelty as a Parliamentary 
 inland taxation in America?” Whatever the right might 
 have been, this mode of using it was absolutely new in 
 policy and practise. 
 
 Sir, they who are friends to the schemes of American rev- 
 enue say, that the commercial restraint is full as hard a law 
 for America to live under. I think so, too. I think it, if 
 uncompensated, to bea condition of as rigorous servitude 
 as men can be subject to. But America bore it from the 
 fundamental Act of Navigation until1764. Why? Because 
 men do bear the inevitable constitution of their original 
 nature with all its infirmities. The Act of Navigation at- 
 tended the colonies from their infancy, grew with their 
 growth, and strengthened with their strength. They were 
 confirmed in obedience to it even more by usage than by 
 law. They scarcely had remembered a time when they 
 were not subject to such restraint. Besides, they were 
 indemnified for it by a pecuniary compensation. Their 
 monopolist happened to be one of the richest men in the 
 world. By his immense capital (primarily employed, not 
 for their benefit, but his own) they were enabled to proceed 
 with their fisheries, their agriculture, their shipbuilding, (and 
 their trade, too, within the limits, ) in such a manner as got 
 far the start of the slow, languid operations of unassisted 
 Nature. This capital was a hot-bed to them. Nothing in 
 the history of mankind is like their progress. For my part, 
 I never cast an eye on their flourishing commerce, and their 
 cultivated and commodious life, but they seem to me rather 
 ancient nations grown to perfection through a long series 
 of fortunate events, and a train of successful industry, ac- 
 cumulating wealth in many centuries, than the colonies of 
 
24 BURKE 
 
 yesterday,—than a set of miserable outcasts a few years ago, 
 not so much sent as thrown out on the bleak and barren 
 shore of a desolate wilderness three thousand miles from all 
 civilized intercourse. 
 
 All this was done by England whilst England pursued 
 trade and forgot revenue. You not only acquired commerce, 
 but you actually created the very objects of trade in America; 
 and by that creation you raised the trade of this kingdom 
 at least four-fold. America had the compensation of your 
 capital, which made her bear her servitude. She had another 
 compensation, which you are now going to take away from 
 her. She had, except the commercial restraint, every 
 characteristic mark of a free people in all her internal con- 
 cerns. She had the image of the British Constitution. She 
 had the substance. She was taxed by her own representa- 
 tives. She chose most of her own magistrates. She paid 
 them all. She had in effect the sole disposal of her own 
 internal government. This whole state of commercial 
 servitude and civil liberty, taken together, is certainly 
 not perfect freedom; but comparing it with the ordinary 
 circumstances of human nature, it was an happy and a 
 liberal condition. 
 
 I know, Sir, that great and not unsuccessful pains have 
 been taken to inflame our minds by an outcry, in this House, 
 and out of it, that in America the Act of Navigation neither 
 is or never was obeyed. But if you take the colonies 
 through, I affirm that its authority never was disputed,— 
 that it was nowhere disputed for any length of time,—and, 
 on the whole, that it-was well observed. Wherever the act 
 pressed hard, many individuals, indeed, evaded it. This is 
 nothing. These scattered individuals never denied the law, 
 and never obeyed it. Just as it happens, whenever the 
 laws of trade, whenever the laws of revenue, press hard upon 
 the people in England: in that case all your shores are full 
 of contraband. Your right to give a monopoly to the East 
 India Company, your right to lay immense duties on French 
 brandy, are not disputed in England. You do not make 
 
AMERICAN TAXATION 25 
 
 this charge on any man. But you know that there is not 
 a creek from Pentland Frith to the Isle of Wight in which 
 they do not smuggle immense quantities of teas, East India 
 goods, and brandies. I takeit for granted that the authority 
 of Governor Bernard in this point is indisputable. Speak- 
 ing of these laws, as they regarded that part of America 
 now in so unhappy a condition, he says, “1 believe they 
 are nowhere better supported than in this province: I do 
 not pretend that itis entirely free from a breach of these 
 laws, but that such a breach, if discovered, is justly punished.” 
 What more can you say of the obedience to any laws in any 
 country? An obedience to these laws formed the ac- 
 knowledgment, instituted by yourselves, for your superior- 
 ity, and was the payment you originally imposed for your 
 protection. 
 
 Whether you were right or wrong in establishing the colo- 
 nies on the principles of commercial monopoly, rather than on 
 that of revenue, is at this day a problem of mere speculation, 
 You can not have both by the same authority. To join to- 
 gether the restraints of an universal internal and external 
 monopoly with an universal internal and external taxation 
 is an unnatural union,—perfect, uncompensated slavery. 
 You have long since decided for yourself and them; and 
 you and they have prospered exceedingly under that 
 decision. 
 
 This nation, Sir, never thought of departing from that 
 choice until the period immediately on the close of the last 
 war. Then ascheme of government, new in many things, 
 seemed to have been adopted. I saw, or thought I saw, 
 several symptoms of a great change, whilst I sat in your 
 gallery, a good while before I had the honour of aseat in this 
 House. At that period the necessity was established of 
 keeping up no less than twenty new regiments, with twenty 
 colonels capable of seats in this House. This scheme was 
 adopted with very general applause from all sides, at the 
 very time that, by your conquests in America, your danger 
 from foreign attempts in that part of the world was much 
 
26 BURKE 
 
 lessened, or indeed rather quite over. When this huge in- 
 crease of military establishment was resolved on, a revenue 
 was to be found to support so great a burden. Country 
 gentlemen, the great patrons of economy, and the great 
 resisters of a standing armed force, would not have entered 
 with much alacrity into the vote for so large and so expensive 
 an army, if they had been very sure that they were to con- 
 tinue to pay for it. But hopes of another kind were held 
 out to them; and in particular, I well remember that Mr. 
 Townshend, in a brilliant harangue on this subject, did 
 dazzle them by playing before their eyes the image ofa 
 revenue to be raised in America. 
 
 Here began to dawn the first glimmerings of this new 
 colony system. It appeared more distinctly afterwards, 
 when it was devolved upon a person to whom, on other 
 accounts, this country owes very great obligations. I do 
 believe that he had a very serious desire to benefit the pub- 
 lic. But with no small study of the detail, he did not seem 
 to have his view, at least equally, carried to the total circuit 
 of our affairs. He generally considered his objects in lights 
 that were rather too detached. Whether the business of an 
 American revenue was imposed upon him altogether,— 
 whether it was entirely the result of his own speculation, or, 
 what is more probable, that his own ideas rather coincided 
 with the instructions he had received,—certain it is, that, with 
 the best intentions in the world, he first brought this fatal 
 scheme into form, and established it by Act of Parliament. 
 
 No man can believe, that, at this time of day, 1 mean to 
 lean on the venerable memory of a great man, whose loss we 
 deplore in common. Our little party differences have been 
 long ago composed: and I have acted more with him, and cer- 
 tainly with more pleasure with him, than ever I acted against 
 him. Undoubtedly Mr. Grenville was a first-rate figure in this 
 country. With a masculine understanding, and a stout and 
 resolute heart, he had an application undissipated and un- 
 wearied. He took public business not as a duty which he 
 was to fulfil, but as a pleasure he was to enjoy; and he 
 
AMERICAN TAXATION 27 
 
 seemed to have no delight out of this House, except in such 
 things as some way related to the business that was to be 
 done within it. If he was ambitious, I will say this for him, his 
 ambition was of anoble and generous strain. It was to raise 
 himself, not by the low, pimping politics of a court, but to 
 win his way to power through the laborious gradations of 
 public service, and to secure himself a well-earned rank in 
 Parliament by a thorough knowledge of its constitution and 
 a perfect practise in all its business. 
 
 Sir, if such a man fell into errors, it must be from defects 
 not intrinsical; they must be rather sought in the particular 
 habits of his life, which, though they do not alter the ground- 
 work of character, yet tinge it with their own hue. He was 
 bred in a profession. He was bred to the law, which is, in 
 my opinion, one of the first and noblest of human sciences,— 
 a science which does more to quicken and invigorate the 
 understanding than all the other kinds of learning put to- 
 gether ; but it is not apt, except in persons very happily born, 
 to open and to liberalize the mind exactly in the same propor- 
 tion. Passing from that study, he did not go very largely 
 into the world, but plunged into business,—I mean into the 
 business of office, and the limited and fixed methods and 
 forms established there. Much knowledge is to be had, un- 
 doubtedly, in that line; and there is no knowledge which is 
 not valuable. But it may be truly said, that men too much 
 conversant in office are rarely minds of remarkable enlarge- 
 ment. Their habits of office are apt to give them a turn to 
 think the substance of business not to be much more impor- 
 tant than the forms in which it is conducted. These forms 
 are adapted to ordinary occasions; and therefore persons 
 who are nurtured in office do admirably well as long as 
 _ things go on in their common order; but when the high- 
 roads are broken up, and the waters out, when a new and 
 troubled scene is opened; and the file affords no precedent, 
 then it is that a greater knowledge of mankind, and a far 
 more extensive comprehension of things is requisite, than 
 ever office gave, or than office can ever give. Mr. Grenville 
 
28 BURKE 
 
 thought better of the wisdom and power of human legisla- 
 tion than in truth it deserves. He conceived, and many 
 conceived along with him, that the flourishing trade of this 
 country was greatly owing to law and institution, and not 
 quite so much to liberty; for but too many are apt to 
 believe regulation to be commerce, and taxes to be revenue. 
 Among regulations, that which stood first in reputation was 
 his idol: I mean the Act of Navigation. He has often pro- 
 fessed it to be so. The policy of that act is, I readily admit, 
 in many respects well understood. But I do say, that, if the 
 act be suffered to run the full length of its principle, and is 
 not changed and modified according to the change of times 
 and the fluctuation of circumstances, it must do great mis- 
 chief, and frequently even defeat its own purpose. 
 
 After the war, and in the last years of it, the trade of 
 America had increased far beyond the speculations of the 
 most sanguine imaginations. It swelled out on every side. 
 It filled all its proper channels to the brim. It overflowed 
 with a rich redundance, and breaking its banks on the right 
 and on the left, it spread out upon some places where it was 
 indeed improper, upon others where it was only irregular. 
 It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact ; and great 
 trade will always be attended with considerable abuses. 
 The contraband will always keep pace in some measure with 
 the fair trade. It should stand as a fundamental maxim, 
 that no vulgar precaution ought to be employed in the cure 
 of evils which are closely connected with the cause of our 
 prosperity. Perhaps this great person turned his eyes some- 
 what less than was just towards the incredible increase of 
 the fair trade, and looked with something of too exquisite 
 a jealousy towards the contraband. He certainly felt a sin- 
 gular degree of anxiety on the subject, and even began to 
 act from that passion earlier than is commonly imagined. 
 For whilst he was First Lord of the Admiralty, though not 
 strictly called upon in his official line, he presented a very 
 strong memorial to the Lords of the Treasury, (my Lord 
 Bute was then at the head of the board,) heavily complain- 
 
AMERICAN TAXATION 29 
 
 ing of the growth of the illicit commerce in America. 
 Some mischief happened even at that time from this over- 
 earnest zeal. Much greater happened afterwards, when it 
 operated with greater power in the highest department of 
 the finances. The bonds of the Act of Navigation were 
 straitened so much that America was on the point of having 
 no trade, either contraband or legitimate. They found, 
 under the construction and execution then used, the act no 
 longer tying, but actually strangling them. All this coming 
 with new enumerations of commodities, with regulations 
 which in a manner put a stop to the mutual coasting inter- 
 course of the colonies, with the appointment of courts of 
 admiralty under various improper circumstances, with a 
 sudden extinction of the paper currencies, with a compulsory 
 provision for the quartering of soldiers——the people of 
 America thought themselves proceeded against as delin- 
 quents, or, at best, as people under suspicion of delinquency, 
 and in such a manner as they imagined their recent services 
 in the war did not-at all merit. Any of these innumerable 
 regulations, perhaps, would not have alarmed alone; some 
 might be thought reasonable; the multitude struck them 
 with terror. | 
 
 But the grand maneuver in that business of new regula- 
 ting the colonies was the fifteenth act of the fourth of George 
 the Third, which, besides containing several of the matters 
 to which I have just alluded, opened a new principle. And 
 here properly began the second period of the policy of this 
 country with regard to the colonies, by which the scheme of 
 a regular plantation Parliamentary revenue was adopted in 
 theory and settled in practise: a revenue not substituted in 
 the place of, but superadded to, a monopoly; which mon- 
 opoly was enforced at the same time with additional strict- 
 ness, and the execution put into military hands, 
 
 This act, Sir, had for the first time the title of “ granting 
 duties in the colonies and plantations of America,” and for 
 the first time it was asserted in the preamble “that it was 
 just and necessary that a revenue should be raised there’”’; 
 
30 BURKE 
 
 then came the technical words of “giving and granting.” 
 And thus a complete American revenue act was made in all 
 the forms, and with a full avowal of the right, equity, policy, 
 and even necessity, of taxing the colonies, without any 
 formal consent of theirs. There are contained also in the 
 preamble to that act these very remarkable words,—the 
 Commons, etc., “ being desirous to make some provision in 
 the present session of Parliament towards raising the said 
 revenue.” By these words it appeared to the colonies that 
 this act was but a beginning of sorrows,—that every session 
 was to produce something of the same kind,—that we were 
 to go on, from day to day, in charging them with such taxes 
 as we pleased, for such a military force as we should think 
 proper. Had this plan been pursued, it was evident that 
 the provincial assemblies, in which the Americans felt all 
 their portion of importance, and beheld their sole image of 
 freedom, were ipso facto annihilated. This ill prospect 
 before them seemed to be boundless in extent and endless 
 in duration. Sir, they were not mistaken. The ministry 
 valued themselves when this act passed, and when they gave 
 notice of the Stamp Act, that both of the duties came very 
 short of their ideas of American taxation. Great was the 
 applause of this measure here. In England we cried out for 
 new taxes on America, whilst they cried out that they were 
 nearly crushed with those which the war and their own 
 grants had brought upon them. 
 
 Sir, it has been said in the debate, that, when the first 
 American revenue act (the act in 1764, imposing the port- 
 duties) passed, the Americans did not object to the principle. 
 It is true they touched it but very tenderly. It was nota 
 direct attack. They were, it is true, as yet novices,—as yet 
 unaccustomed to direct attacks upon any of the rights of 
 Parliament. The duties were port-duties, like those they 
 had been accustomed to bear,—with this difference, that the 
 title was not the same, the preamble not the same, and the 
 spirit altogether unlike. But of what service is this obser- 
 vation to the cause of those that make it? It is a full 
 
AMERICAN TAXATION 31 
 
 refutation of the pretense for their present cruelty to 
 America ; for it shows, out of their own mouths, that our 
 colonies were backward to enter into the present vexatious 
 and ruinous controversy. 
 
 There is also another circulation abroad, (spread with a 
 malignant intention, which I can not attribute to those who 
 say the same thing in this House,) that Mr. Grenville gave 
 the colony agents an option for their assemblies to tax them- 
 selves, which they had refused. I find that much stress is 
 laid on this, as a fact. However, it happens neither to be 
 true nor possible. I will observe, first, that Mr. Grenville 
 never thought fit to make this apology for himself in the in- 
 numerable debates that were had upon the subject. He 
 might have proposed to the colony agents, that they should 
 agree in some mode of taxation as the ground of an act of 
 Parliament. But he never could have proposed that they 
 should tax themselves on requisition, which is the assertion 
 of the day. Indeed, Mr. Grenville well knew that the 
 colony agents could have no general powers to consent to 
 it; and they had no time to consult their assemblies for 
 particular powers, before he passed his first revenue act. If 
 you compare dates, you will find it impossible. Burdened 
 as the agents knew the colonies were at that time, they 
 could not give the least hope of such grants. His own 
 favourite governor was of opinion that the Americans were 
 not then taxable objects. 
 
 “ Nor was the time less favourable to the equity of such a 
 taxation. I don’t mean to dispute the reasonableness of 
 America contributing to the charges of Great Britain, when 
 she is able; nor, I believe, would the Americans themselves 
 have disputed it at a proper time and season. But it should 
 be considered, that the American governments themselves 
 have, in the prosecution of the late war, contracted very 
 large debts, which it will take some years to pay off, and in 
 the mean time occasion very burdensome taxes for that pur- 
 pose only. Forinstance, this government, which is as much 
 beforehand as any, raises every year, 37,500/, sterling for 
 
32 BURKE 
 
 sinking their debt, and must continue it for four years longer 
 at least before it will be clear,” 
 
 These are the words of Governor Bernard’s letter to a mem- 
 ber of the old ministry, and which he has since printed. 
 
 Mr. Grenville could not have made this proposition to 
 the agents for another reason. He was of opinion, which he 
 has declared in this House an hundred times, that the 
 colonies could not legally grant any revenue to the crown, 
 and that infinite mischiefs would be the consequence of such 
 a power. When Mr. Grenville had passed the first revenue 
 act, and in the same session had made this House come to a 
 resolution for laying a stamp-duty on America, between that 
 time and the passing the Stamp Act into a law he told a 
 considerable and most respectable merchant, a member of 
 this House, whom I am truly sorry I do not now see in his 
 place, when he represented against this proceeding, that, if the 
 stamp-duty was disliked, he was willing to exchange it for 
 any other equally productive,—but that, if he objected to 
 the Americans being taxed by Parliament, he might save 
 himself the trouble of the discussion, as he was determined 
 on the measure. This is the fact, and, if you please, I will 
 mention a very unquestionable authority for it. 
 
 Thus, Sir, ] have disposed of this falsehood. But false- 
 hood has a perennial spring. It is said that no conjecture 
 could be made of the dislike of the colonies to the principle. 
 This is as untrue as the other. After the resolution of the 
 House, and before the passing of the Stamp Act, the colonies 
 of Massachusetts Bay and New York did send remonstrances 
 objecting tothis mode of Parliamentary taxation. What was 
 the consequence? They were suppressed, they were put 
 under the table, notwithstanding an order of Council to the 
 contrary,by the ministry which composed the very Council that 
 had made the order ; and thus the House proceeded to its busi- 
 ness of taxing without the least regular knowlege of the 
 objections which were made to it. But to give that House 
 its due, it was not over-desirous to receive information or 
 to hear remonstrance. On the 15th of February, 1765, 
 
AMERICAN TAXATION 33 
 
 whilst the Stamp Act was under deliberation they refused 
 with scorn even so much as to receive four petitions pre- 
 sented from so respectable colonies as Connecticut, Rhode 
 Island, Virginia, and Carolina, besides one from the traders 
 of Jamaica. As to the colonies, they had no alternative 
 left to them but to disobey, or to pay the taxes imposed 
 by that Parliament, which was not suffered, or did not suffer 
 itself, even to hear them remonstrate upon the subject. 
 
 This was the state of the colonies before his Majesty 
 thought fit to change his ministers. It stands upon no 
 authority of mine. It is proved by uncontrovertible records, 
 The honourable gentleman has desired some of us to lay our 
 hands upon our hearts and answer to his queries upon the 
 historical part of this consideration, and by his manner (as 
 well as my eyes could discern it) he seemed to address him- 
 self to me. 
 
 Sir, I will answer him as clearly as I am able, and with 
 great openness: I have nothing to conceal. In the year 
 sixty-five, being in a very private station, far enough from 
 any line of business, and not having the honour of a seat in 
 this House, it was my fortune, unknowing and unknown to 
 the then ministry, by the intervention of a common friend, 
 to become connected with a very noble person, and at the 
 head of the Treasury Department. It was, indeed, in a 
 situation of little rank and no consequence, suitable to the 
 mediocrity of my talents and pretensions,—but a situation 
 near enough to enable me to see, as well as others, what was 
 going on; and I did see in that noble person such sound 
 principles, such an enlargement of mind, such clear and 
 sagacious sense, and such unshaken fortitude, as have bound 
 me, as well as others much better than me, by an inviolable 
 attachment to him from that time forward. | Sir, Lord 
 Rockingham very early in that summer received a strong 
 representation from many weighty English merchants and 
 manufacturers, from governors of provinces and commanders 
 of men-of-war, against almost the whole of the American 
 commercial regulations,—and particularly with regard to the 
 
 3 
 
34 BURKE 
 
 total ruin which was threatened to the Spanish trade. I 
 believe, Sir, the noble lord soon saw his way in this business. 
 But he did not rashly determine against acts which it might 
 be supposed were the result of much deliberation. How- 
 ever, Sir, he scarcely began to open the ground, when the 
 whole veteran body of office took the alarm. A violent out- 
 cry of all (except those who knew and felt the mischief) 
 was raised against any alteration. On one hand, his attempt 
 was a direct violation of treaties and public law; on the 
 other, the Act of Navigation and all the corps of trade-laws 
 were drawn up in array against it. 
 
 The first step the noble lord took was, to have the opinion 
 of his excellent, learned, and ever-lamented friend, the late 
 Mr. Yorke, then Attorney-General, on the point of law. 
 When he knew that formally and officially which in sub- 
 stance he had known before, he immediately despatched 
 orders to redress the grievance. But I will say it for the 
 then minister, he is of that constitution of mind, that I 
 know he would have issued, on the same critical occasion, 
 the very same orders, if the acts of trade had been, as they 
 were not, directly against him and would have cheerfully 
 submitted to the equity of Parliament for his indemnity. 
 
 On the conclusion of this business of the Spanish trade, 
 the news of the troubles on account of the Stamp Act 
 arrived in England. It was not until the end of October 
 that these accounts were received. Nosooner had the sound 
 of that mighty tempest reached us in England, than the 
 whole of the then opposition, instead of feeling humbled by 
 the unhappy issue of their measures, seemed to be infinitely 
 elated, and cried out, that the ministry, from envy to the 
 glory of their predecessors, were prepared to repeal the 
 Stamp Act. Near nine yearsafter, the honourable gentleman 
 takes quite opposite ground, and now challenges me to put 
 my hand to my heart and say whether the ministry had re- 
 solved on the repeal till a considerable time after the meet- 
 ing of Parliament. Though I do not very well know what 
 thehonourablegentleman wishes to infer from the admission 
 
AMERICAN TAXATION 35 
 
 or from the denial of this fact on which he so earnestly ad- 
 jures me, I do put my hand on my heart and assure him 
 that they did not come to a resolution directly to repeal. 
 They weighed this matter as its difficulty and importance 
 required. They considered maturely among themselves. 
 They consulted with all who could give advice or informa- 
 tion. It was not determined until a little before the meet- 
 ing of Parliament; but it was determined, and the main 
 lines of their own plan marked out, before that meeting. 
 Two questions arose. I hope I am not going into a narrative 
 troublesome to the House. [A cry of ‘‘Go on, go on!”’] 
 
 The first of the two considerations was, whether the re- 
 peal should be total, or whether only partial,—taking out 
 everything burdensome and productive, and reserving only 
 an empty acknowledgment, such as a stamp on cards or 
 dice. The other question was, on what principle the act 
 should be repealed. On this head also two principles were 
 started. One, that the legislative rights of this country with 
 regard to America were not entire, but had certain restric- 
 tionsand limitations. The other principle was, that taxes of 
 this kind were contrary to the fundamental principles of 
 commerce on which the colonies were founded, and contrary 
 to every idea of political equity,—by which equity we are 
 bound as much as possible to extend the spirit and benefit 
 of the British Constitution to every part of the British do- 
 minions. The option, both of the measure and of the princi- 
 ple of repeal, was made before the session; and I wonder 
 how any one can read the king’s speech at the opening of 
 that session, without seeing in that speech both the repeal 
 and the Declaratory Act very sufficiently crayoned out. 
 Those who can not see this can see nothing. 
 
 Surely the honourable gentleman will not think that a great 
 deal less time than was then employed ought to have been 
 spent in deliberation, when he considers that the news of 
 the troubles did not arrive till towards the end of October. 
 The Parliament sat to fill the vacancies on the 14th day of 
 December, and on business the 14th of the following January. 
 
36 BURKE 
 
 Sir, a partial repeal, or, as the bon-ton of the court then 
 was, a modification, would have satisfied a timid, unsystem- 
 atic, procrastinating ministry, as such a measure has since 
 done sucha ministry. A modification is the constant re- 
 source of weak, undeciding minds. To repeal by a denial of 
 our right to tax in the preamble (and this, too, did not want 
 advisers) would have cut, in the heroic style, the Gordian 
 knot with a sword. Either measure would have cost no 
 more than a day’s debate. But when the total repeal was 
 adopted, and adopted on principles of policy, of equity, and 
 of commerce, this plan made it necessary to enter into many 
 and difficult measures. It became necessary to open a very 
 large field of evidence commensurate to these extensive 
 views. But thenthislabour did knights’ service. It opened 
 the eyes of several to the true state of the American affairs ; 
 it enlarged their ideas ; it removed prejudices; and it con- 
 ciliated the opinions and affections of men. The noble lord 
 who then took the lead in administration, my honourable 
 friend ® under me, and a right honourable gentleman’ (if he 
 will not reject his share, and it was a large one, of this busi- 
 ness) exerted the most laudable industry in bringing before 
 you the fullest, most impartial, and least garbled body of 
 evidence that ever was produced to this House. I think the 
 inquiry lasted in the committee for six weeks; and at its 
 conclusion, this House, by an independent, noble, spirited, 
 and unexpected majority, by a majority that will redeem all 
 the acts ever done by majorities in Parliament, in the teeth 
 of all the old mercenary Swiss of state, in despite of all the 
 speculators and augurs of political events, in defiance of the 
 whole embattled legion of veteran pensioners and practised 
 instruments of a court, gave a total repeal to the Stamp Act, 
 and (if it had been so permitted) a lasting peace to this whole 
 empire. 
 
 I state, Sir, these particulars, because this act of spirit and 
 fortitude has lately been, in the circulation of the season, 
 and in some hazarded declamations in this House, attributed 
 to: timidity. If, Sir, the conduct of ministry, in proposing 
 
AMERICAN TAXATION 37 
 
 the repeal, had arisen from timidity with regard to them- 
 selves, it would have been greatly to be condemned. _Inter- 
 ested timidity disgraces as much in the cabinet as personal 
 timidity does in the field. But timidity with regard to the 
 well-being of our country is heroic virtue. The noble lord 
 who then conducted affairs, and his worthy colleagues, whilst 
 they trembled at the prospect of such distresses as you have 
 since brought upon yourselves, were not afraid steadily to 
 look in the face that glaring and dazzling influence at which 
 the eyes of eagles have blenched. He looked in the face 
 one of the ablest, and, let me say, not the most scrupulous 
 oppositions, that perhaps ever was in this House; and with- 
 stood it, unaided by even one of the usual supports of ad-. 
 ministration. He did this, when he repealed the Stamp 
 Act. He looked in the face a person he had long respected 
 and regarded, and whose aid was then particularly wanting : 
 I mean Lord Chatham. He did this when he passed the 
 Declaratory Act. 
 
 It is now given out, for the usual purposes, by the usual 
 emissaries, that Lord Rockingham did not consent to the 
 repeal of this act until he was bullied into it by Lord Chat- 
 ham; and the reporters have gone so far as publicly to 
 assert, in an hundred companies, that the honourable gentle- 
 man under the gallery,’ who proposed the repeal in the 
 American committee, had another set of resolutions in his 
 pocket, directly the reverse of those he moved. These arti- 
 fices of a desperate cause are at this time spread abroad 
 with incredible care, in every part of the town, from the 
 highest to the lowest companies; as if the industry of the 
 circulation were to make amends for the absurdity of the 
 report. 
 
 Sir, whether the noble lord is of a complexion to be bul- 
 lied by Lord Chatham, or by any man, I must submit to 
 those who know him. I confess, when I look back to that 
 time, I consider him as placed in one of the most trying 
 situations in which, perhaps, any man ever stood. In the 
 House of Peers there were very few of the ministry, out of 
 
38 BURKE 
 
 the noble lord’s own particular connection, (except Lord Eg- 
 mont, who acted, as far as I could discern, an honourable and 
 manly part,) that did not look to some other future arrange- 
 ment, which warped his politics. There were in both Houses 
 new and menacing appearances, that might very naturally 
 drive any other than a most resolute minister from his meas- 
 ure or from his station. The household troops openly re- 
 volted. The allies of ministry (those, I mean, who sup- 
 ported some of their measures, but refused responsibility 
 for any) endeavoured to undermine their credit, and to take 
 ground that must be fatal to the success of the very cause 
 which they would be thought to countenance. The ques- 
 tion of the repeal was brought on by ministry in the com- 
 mittee of this House in the very instant when it was known 
 that more than one court negotiation was carrying on with 
 the heads of the opposition. Everything, upon every side, 
 was full of traps and mines. Earth below shook; heaven 
 above menaced; all the elements of ministerial safety were 
 dissolved. It was in the midst of this chaos of plots and 
 counterplots, it was in the midst of this complicated war- 
 fare against public opposition and private treachery, that 
 the firmness of that noble person was put to the proof. He 
 never stirred from his ground: no, not an inch. He re- 
 mained fixed and determined, in principle, in measure, and 
 in conduct. He practised no managements. Hesecured no 
 retreat. He sought no apology. 
 
 I will likewise do justice—I ought to do it—to the honour- 
 able gentleman who led us in this House.® Far from the 
 duplicity wickedly charged on him, he acted his part with 
 alacrity and resolution. We all felt inspired by the example 
 he gave us, down even to myself, the weakest in that pha- 
 lanx. I declare for one, I knew well enough (it could not 
 be concealed from anybody) the true state of things; but, in 
 my life, I never came with so much spirits into this House. 
 It was a time for a man to act in. We had powerful 
 enemies; but we had faithful and determined friends, and 
 a glorious cause. We had a great battle to fight ; but we 
 
AMERICAN TAXATION 39 
 
 had the means of fighting: not as now, when our arms 
 are tied behind us. We did fight that day, and con- 
 quer. , | 
 
 I remember, Sir, with a melancholy pleasure, the situation 
 of the honourable gentleman? who made the motion for the 
 repeal: in that crisis, when the whole trading interest of this 
 empire, crammed into your lobbies, with a trembling and 
 anxious expectation, waited, almost to a winter’s return of 
 light, their fate from your resolutions. When at length you 
 had determined in their favour, and your doors thrown open 
 showed them the figure of their deliverer in the well-earned 
 triumph of his important victory, from the whole of that 
 grave multitude there arose an involuntary burst of gratitude 
 and transport. They jumped upon him like children on a 
 long absent father. They clung about him as captives about 
 their redeemer. All England, all America, joined in his ap- 
 plause. Nor did he seem insensible to the best of all earthly 
 rewards, the love and admiration of his fellow-citizens. 
 Hope elevated and joy brightened his crest. I stood near 
 him; and his face, to use the expression of the Scripture of 
 the first martyr, “his face was as if it had been the face of 
 an angel.” I do not know how others feel; but if I had 
 stood in that situation, I never would have exchanged it for 
 all that kings in their profusion could bestow. I did hope 
 that that day’s danger and honour would have been a bond 
 to hold us all together forever. But, alas! that, with other 
 pleasing visions, is long since vanished. 
 
 Sir, this act of supreme magnanimity has been represented 
 as if it had been a measure of an administration that, having 
 no scheme of their own, took a middle line, pilfered a bit 
 from one side and a bit from the other. Sir, they took no 
 middle lines. They differed fundamentally from the schemes 
 of both parties; but they preserved the objects of both. 
 They preserved the authority of Great Britain; they pre- 
 served the equity of Great Britain. They made the Declar- 
 atory Act; they repealed the Stamp Act. They did both 
 fully: because the Declaratory Act was without qualifica- 
 
40 BURKE 
 
 tion; and the repeal of the Stamp Act total. This they did 
 in the situation I have described. 
 
 Now, Sir, what will the adversary say to both these acts? 
 If the principle of the Declaratory Act was not good, the 
 principle we are contending for this day is monstrous. If 
 the principle of the repeal was not good, why are we not at 
 war fora real, substantial, effective revenue? If both were 
 bad, why has this ministry incurred all the inconveniences 
 of both and of all schemes ? why have they enacted, repealed, 
 enforced, yielded, and now attempt to enforce again ? 
 
 Sir, I think I may as well now as at any other time speak 
 to a certain matter of fact not wholly unrelated to the ques- 
 tion under your consideration. We, who would persuade 
 you to revert to the ancient policy of this kingdom, labour 
 under the effect of this short current phrase, which the court 
 leaders have given out to all their corps, in order to take 
 away the credit of those who would prevent you from that 
 frantic war you are going to wage upon your colonies. 
 Their cant is this: “ All the disturbances in America have 
 been created by the repeal of the Stamp Act.” I suppress 
 for a moment my indignation at the falsehood, baseness, and 
 absurdity of this most audacious assertion. Instead of re- 
 marking on the motives and character of those who have 
 issued it for circulation, I will clearly lay before you the state 
 of America, antecedently to that repeal, after the repeal, and 
 since the renewal of the schemes of American taxation. 
 
 It is said, that the disturbances, if there were any before 
 the repeal, were slight, and without difficulty or inconven- 
 ience might have been suppressed. For an answer to this 
 assertion I will send you to the great author and patron of 
 the Stamp Act, who, certainly meaning well to the author- 
 ity of this country, and fully apprised of the state of that, 
 made, before a repeal was so much as agitated in this House, 
 the motion which is on your journals, and which, to save the 
 clerk the trouble of turning to it, I will now read to you. 
 It was for an amendment to the address of the 17th of De- 
 cember, 1765. 
 
AMERICAN TAXATION 4!I 
 
 ‘“To express our just resentment and indignation at the 
 outrageous tumults and insurrections which have been ex- 
 cited and carried on in North America, and at the resistance 
 given, by open and rebellious force, to the execution of the 
 laws in that part of his Majesty’s dominions; to assure his 
 Majesty, that his faithful Commons, animated with the 
 warmest duty and attachment to his royal person and gov- 
 ernment, . . . will firmly and effectually support his Majesty 
 in all such measures as shall be necessary for preserving and 
 securing the legal dependence of the colonies upon this their 
 mother country,” etc., etc. 
 
 Here was certainly a disturbance preceding the repeal,— 
 such a disturbance as Mr. Grenville thought necessary to 
 qualify by the name of an insurrection, and the epithet of a 
 rebellious force: terms much stronger than any by which 
 those who then supported his motion have ever since thought 
 proper to distinguish the subsequent disturbances in Amer- 
 ica. They were disturbances which seemed to him and his 
 friends to justify as strong a promise of support as hath 
 been usual to give in the beginning of a war with the most 
 powerful and declared enemies. When the accounts of the 
 American governors came before the House, they appeared 
 stronger even than the warmth of public imagination had 
 painted them : so much stronger, that the papers on your table 
 bear me out in saying that all the late disturbances, which 
 have been at one time the minister’s motives forthe repeal of 
 five out of six of the new court taxes, and are now his pre- 
 tenses for refusing to repeal that sixth, did not amount—why 
 do I compare them ?—no, not to a tenth part of the tumults 
 and violence which prevailed long before the repeal of that act. 
 
 Ministry can not refuse the authority of the commander- 
 in-chief, General Gage, who, in his letter of the 4th of No- 
 vember, from New York, thus represents the state of 
 things :— 
 
 “Tt is difficult to say, from the highest to the lowest, who 
 has not been accessory to this insurrection, either by writ- 
 ing, or mutual agreements to oppose the act, by what they 
 
42 BURKE 
 
 are pleased to term all legal opposition to it.. Nothing effect- 
 ual has been proposed, either to prevent or quell the tu- 
 mult. The rest of the provinces are in the same situation, 
 as to a positive refusal to take the stamps, and threatening 
 those who shall take them to plunder and murder them; 
 and this affair stands in all the provinces, that, unless the 
 act from its own nature enforce itself, nothing but a very 
 considerable military force can do it.” 
 
 It is remarkable, Sir, that the persons who formerly trum- 
 peted forth the most loudly the violent resolutions of 
 assemblies, the universal insurrections, the seizing and burn- 
 ing the stamped papers, the forcing stamp officers to resign 
 their commissions under the gallows, the rifling and pulling 
 down of the houses of magistrates, and the expulsion from 
 their country of all who dared to write or speak a single word 
 in defense of the powers of Parliament,—these very trumpet- 
 ers are now the men that represent the whole asa mere trifle, 
 and choose to date all the disturbances from the repeal of the 
 Stamp Act, which put an end to them. Hear your officers 
 abroad, and let them refute this shameless falsehood, who, 
 in all their correspondence, state the disturbances as owing 
 to their true causes, the discontent of the people from the 
 taxes. You have this evidence in your own archives; and 
 it will give you complete satisfaction, if you are not so far 
 lost to all Parliamentary ideas of information as rather to 
 credit the lie of the day than the records of your own 
 House. 
 
 Sir, this vermin of court reporters, when they are forced 
 into day upon one point, are sure to burrow in another: but 
 they shall have no refuge; I will make them bolt out of all 
 their holes. Conscious that they must be baffled, when they 
 attribute a precedent disturbance to a subsequent measure, 
 they take other ground, almost as absurd, but very common 
 in modern practice, and very wicked ; which is, to attribute 
 the ill effect of ill-judged conduct to the arguments which 
 had been used to dissuade us from it. They say, that the 
 opposition made in Parliament to the Stamp Act, at the 
 
AMERICAN TAXATION 43 
 
 time of its passing, encouraged the Americans to their resis- 
 tance. This has even formally appeared in print in a regu- 
 lar volume from an advocate of that faction,—a Dr. Tucker. 
 This Dr. Tucker is already a dean,and his earnest labours in this 
 vineyard will,I suppose,raise him to a bishopric. But this asser- 
 tion, too, just like the rest, is false. In all the papers which 
 have loaded your table, in all the vast crowd of verbal wit- 
 nesses that appeared at your bar, witnesses which were indis- 
 criminately produced from both sides of the House, not the 
 least hint of such a cause of disturbance has ever appeared. 
 As to the fact of a strenuous opposition to the Stamp Act, I 
 sat as a stranger in your gallery when the act was under con- 
 sideration. Far from anything inflammatory, I never heard 
 a more languid debate in this House. Nomore than two or 
 three gentlemen, as I remember, spoke against the act, and 
 that with great reserve and remarkable temper. There was 
 but one division in the whole progress of the bill; and the 
 minority did not reach to more than 39 or 40. Inthe House 
 of Lords I do not recollect that there was any debate or 
 division at all. I am sure there was no protest. In fact, 
 the affair passed with so very, very little noise, that in town 
 they scarcely knew the nature of what you were doing. The 
 opposition to the bill in England never could have done 
 this mischief, because there scarcely ever was less of opposi- 
 tion to a bill of consequence. 
 
 Sir, the agents and distributors of falsehoods have, with 
 their usual industry, circulated another lie, of the same 
 nature with the former. It is this: that the disturbances 
 arose from the account which had been received in America 
 of the changeinthe ministry. No longer awed, it seems, with 
 the spirit of the former rulers, they thought themselves a 
 match for what our calumniators choose to qualify by the 
 name of so feeble a ministry as succeeded. Feeble in one 
 sense these men certainly may be called: for, with all their 
 efforts, and they have made many, they have not been able 
 to resist the distempered vigour and insane alacrity with 
 which you are rushing to your ruin. But it does so happen, 
 
A4 BURKE. 
 
 that the falsity of this circulation is (like the rest) demon- 
 strated by indisputable dates and records. 
 
 So little was the change known in America, that the let- 
 ters of your governors, giving an account of these disturb- 
 ances long after they had arrived at their highest pitch, were 
 all directed to the old ministry, and particularly to the Earl 
 of Halifax, the Secretary of State corresponding with the 
 colonies, without once in the smallest degree intimating the 
 slightest suspicion of any ministerial revolution whatsoever. 
 The ministry was not changed in England untilthe 1oth day 
 of July, 1765. On the 14th of the preceding June, Gov- 
 ernor Fauquier, from Virginia, writes thus,—and writes thus 
 to the Earl of Halifax :—‘‘ Government is set at defiance, 
 not having strength enough in her hands to enforce obedience 
 to the laws of the community.—The private distress, which 
 every man feels, increases the general dissatisfaction at the 
 duties laid by the Stamp Act, which breaks out and shows 
 itself upon every trifling occasion.” The general dissatis- 
 faction had produced some time before, that is, on the 29th 
 of May, several strong public resolves against the Stamp 
 Act; and those resolves are assigned by Governor Bernard as 
 the cause of the insurrections in Massachusetts Bay, in his 
 letter of the 15th of August, still addressed to the Earl of 
 Halifax; and he continued to address such accounts to 
 that minister quite to the 7th of September of the same 
 year. Similar accounts, and of as late a date, were sent from 
 other governors, and all directed to Lord Halifax. Not one of 
 these letters indicates the slightest idea of a change, either 
 known or even apprehended. 
 
 Thus are blown away the insect race of courtly falsehoods ! 
 Thus perish the miserable inventions of the wretched run- 
 ners for a wretched cause, which they have fly-blown into 
 every weak and rotten part of the country, in vain hopes, 
 that, when their maggots had taken wing, their importunate 
 buzzing might sound something like the public voice! 
 
 Sir, I have troubled you sufficiently with the state of 
 America before the repeal. Now I turn to the honourable 
 
AMERICAN TAXATION 45 
 
 gentleman who sostoutly challenges us to tell whether, after 
 the repeal, the provinces were quiet. This is coming home 
 to the point. Here I meet him directly, and answer most 
 readily, They were quiet. And I, in my turn, challenge 
 him to prove when, and where, and by whom, and in what 
 numbers, and with what violence, the other laws of trade, as 
 gentlemen assert, were violated in consequence of your con- 
 cession, or that even your other revenue laws were attacked. 
 But I quit the vantage-ground on which I stand, and where 
 I might leave the burden of the proof upon him: I walk 
 down upon the open plain, and undertake to show that they 
 were not only quiet, but showed many unequivocal marks 
 of acknowledgment and gratitude. And to give him every 
 advantage, I select the obnoxious colony of Massachusetts 
 Bay, which at this time (but without hearing her) is so 
 heavily a culprit before Parliament: I will select their pro- 
 ceedings even under circumstances of no small irritation. 
 For, a little imprudently, I must say, Governor Bernard 
 mixed in the administration of the lenitive of the repeal no 
 small acrimony arising from matters of a separate nature. 
 Yet see, Sir, the effect of that lenitive, though mixed with 
 these bitter ingredients,—and how this rugged people can 
 express themselves on a measure of concession. 
 
 “Tf it is not now in our power,” (say they, in their address 
 to Governor Bernard,) “sin so full a manner as will be ex- 
 pected, to show our respectful gratitude to the mother 
 country, or to make a dutiful, affectionate return to the in- 
 dulgence of the King and Parliament, it shall be no fault of 
 ours ; for this we intend, and hope shall be able fully to 
 enéct.”’ 
 
 Would to God that this temper had been cultivated, 
 managed, and set in action! Other effects than those which 
 we have since felt would have resulted from it. On the re- 
 quisition for compensation to those who had suffered from 
 the violence of the populace, in the same address they say, 
 —‘The recommendation enjoined by Mr. Secretary Con- 
 way’s letter, and in consequence thereof made to us, we shall 
 
46 BURKE 
 
 embrace the first convenient opportunity to consider and 
 act upon.” They did consider; they did act upon it. 
 They obeyed the requisition. I know the mode has been 
 chicaned upon ; but it was substantially obeyed, and much 
 better obeyed than I fear the Parliamentary requisition of 
 this session will be, though enforced by all your rigour and 
 backed with all your power. In a word, the damages of 
 popular fury were compensated by legislative gravity. Al- 
 most every other part of America in various ways demon- 
 strated their gratitude. Iam bold to say, that so sudden a 
 calm recovered after so violent a storm is without parallel 
 in history. To say that no other disturbance should hap- 
 pen from any other cause is folly. But as far as appearances 
 went, by the judicious sacrifice of one law you procured an 
 acquiescence in all that remained. After this experience, 
 nobody shall persuade me, when an whole people are con- 
 cerned, that acts of lenity are not means of conciliation. 
 
 I hope the honourable gentleman has received a fair and 
 full answer to his question. 
 
 I have done with the third period of your policy,—that 
 of your repeal, and the return of your ancient system, and 
 your ancient tranquillity and concord. Sir, this period was 
 not as long as it was happy. Another scene was opened, 
 and other actors appeared on the stage. The state, in the 
 condition I have described it, was delivered into the hands 
 of Lord Chatham, a great and celebrated name,—a name 
 that keeps the name of this country respectable in every 
 other on the globe. It may be truly called 
 
 “ Clarum et venerabile nomen 
 Gentibus, et multum nostrze quod proderat urbi.” 
 
 Sir, the venerable age of this great man, his merited rank, 
 his superior eloquence, his splendid qualities, his eminent serv- 
 ices, the vast space he fills in the eye of mankind, and, 
 more than all the rest, his fall from power, which, like death, 
 canonizes and sanctifies a great character, will not suffer me 
 to censure any part of his conduct. lam afraid to flatter 
 
AMERICAN TAXATION 47 
 
 him ; I am sure I am not disposed to blame him. Let 
 those who have betrayed him by their adulation insult him 
 with their malevolence. But what I do not presume to cen- 
 sure I may have leave to lament. For a wise man, he 
 seemed to me at that time to be governed too much by 
 general maxims. I speak with the freedom of history, and 
 I hope without offense. One or two of these maxims, 
 flowing from an opinion not the most indulgent to our un- 
 happy species, and surely a little too general, led him into 
 measures that were greatly mischievous to himself, and for 
 that reason, among others, perhaps fatal to his country,— 
 measures, the effects of which, I am afraid, are forever incur- 
 able. He made an administration so checkered and speck- 
 led, he put together a piece of joinery so crossly indented 
 and whimsically dovetailed, a cabinet so variously inlaid, 
 such a piece of diversified mosaic, such a tessellated pave- 
 ment without cement,—here a bit of black stone and there 
 a bit of white, patriots and courtiers, king’s friends and re- 
 publicans, Whigs and Tories, treacherous friends and open 
 enemies,—that it was, indeed, a very curious show, but ut- 
 terly unsafe to touch and unsure to stand on. The col- 
 leagues whom he had assorted at the same boards stared 
 at each other, and were obliged to ask,—“ Sir, your name?” 
 —‘ Sir, you have the advantage of me.” —‘“ Mr. Such-a-one.” 
 ——“I beg a thousand pardons.’’—I venture to say, it did so 
 happen that persons had a single office divided between 
 them, who had never spoke to each other in their lives, un- 
 til they found themselves, they knew not how, pigging to- 
 gether, heads and points, in the same truckle-bed.! 
 
 Sir, in consequence of this arrangement, having put so 
 much the larger part of his enemies and opposers into 
 power, the confusion was such that his own principles could 
 not possibly have any effect or influence in the conduct of 
 affairs. If ever he fell into a fit of the gout, or if any other 
 cause withdrew him from public cares, principles directly 
 the contrary were sure to predominate. When he had 
 executed his plan, he had not an inch of ground to stand 
 
48 BURKE 
 
 upon. When he had accomplished his scheme of adminis- 
 tration, he was no longer a minister. 
 
 When his face was hid but for a moment, his whole 
 system was on a wide sea without chart or compass. The 
 gentlemen, his particular friends, who, with the names of 
 various departments of ministry, were admitted to seem as 
 if they acted a part under him, with a modesty that becomes 
 all men, and with a confidence in him which was justified 
 even in its extravagance by his superior abilities, had never 
 in any instance presumed upon any opinion of their own, 
 Deprived of his guiding influence, they were whirled about, 
 the sport of every gust, and easily driven into any port; 
 and as those who joined with them in manning the vessel 
 were the most directly opposite to his opinions, measures, 
 and character, and far the most artful and most powerful of 
 the set, they easily prevailed, so as to seize upon the vacant, 
 unoccupied, and derelict minds of ‘his friends, and instantly 
 they turned the vessel wholly out of the course of his 
 policy. As if it were to insult as well as to betray him, 
 even long before the close of the first session of his admin- 
 istration, when everything was publicly transacted, and with 
 great parade, in his name, they made an act declaring it 
 highly just and expedient to raise a revenue in America. 
 For even then, Sir, even before this splendid orb was entirely 
 set, and while the western horizon was in a blaze with his 
 descending glory, on the opposite quarter of the heavens 
 arose another luminary, and for his hour became lord of the 
 ascendant. 
 
 This light, too, is passed and set forever. You under- 
 stand, to be sure, that I speak of Charles Townshend, offi- 
 cially the reproducer of this fatal scheme, whom I can not 
 even now remember without some degree of sensibility. In 
 truth, Sir, he was the delight and ornament of this House, 
 and the charm of every private society which he honoured 
 with his presence. Perhaps there never arose in this country, 
 nor in any country, a man of a more pointed and finished 
 wit, and (where his passions were not concerned) of a more 
 
AMERICAN TAXATION 49 
 
 refined, exquisite, and penetrating judgment. If he had not 
 so great a stock as some have had, who flourished formerly, 
 of knowledge long treasured up, he knew, better by far 
 than any man I ever was acquainted with, how to bring 
 together within a short time all that was necessary to 
 establish, to illustrate, and to decorate that side of the 
 question he supported. He stated his matter skilfully and 
 powerfully. He particularly excelled. in a most luminous 
 explanation and display of his subject. His style of argu- 
 ment was neither trite and vulgar, nor subtle and abstruse. 
 He hit the House just between wind and water. And not 
 being troubled with too anxious a zeal for any matter in 
 question, he was never more tedious or more earnest than 
 the preconceived opinions and present temper of his hearers 
 required, to whom he was always in perfect unison. He 
 conformed exactly to the temper of the House; and he 
 seemed to guide, because he was always sure to follow it. 
 
 I beg pardon, Sir, if when I speak of this and of other 
 great men, I appear to digress in saying something of their 
 characters. In this eventful history of the revolutions of 
 America, the characters of such men are of much importance. 
 Great men are the guideposts and landmarks inthe state. The 
 credit of such men at court or in the nation is the sole cause 
 of all the public measures. It would be an invidious thing 
 (most foreign, I trust, to what you think my disposition) to 
 remark the errors into which the authority of great names 
 has brought the nation, without doing justice at the same 
 time to the great qualities whence that authority arose. 
 The subject is instructive to those who wish to form them- 
 selves on whatever of excellence has gone before them. 
 There are many young members in the House (such of late 
 has been the rapid succession of public men) who never saw 
 that prodigy, Charles Townshend, nor of course know what 
 a ferment he was able to excite in everything by the violent 
 ebullition of his mixed virtues and failings. For failings he 
 had undoubtedly,—many of us remember them; we are 
 
 this day considering the effect of them, But he had no fail- 
 4 
 
50 BURKE 
 
 ings which were not owing to a noble cause,—to an ardent, 
 generous, perhaps an immoderate passion for fame: a pas- 
 sion which is the instinct of all great souls. He worshiped 
 that goddess, wheresoever she appeared; but he paid his 
 particular devotions to her in her favourite habitation, in her 
 chosen temple, the House of Commons. Besides the charac- 
 ters of the individuals that compose our body, it is impos- 
 sible, Mr. Speaker, not to observe that this House has a col- 
 lective character of its own. That character, too, however 
 imperfect, is not unamiable. Like all great public collec- 
 tions of men, you possess a marked love of virtue and an 
 abhorrence of vice. But among vices there is none which 
 the House abhors in the same degree with obstinacy. Ob- 
 stinacy, Sir, is certainly a great vice; and in the changeful 
 state of political affairs it is frequently the cause of great 
 mischief. It happens, however, very unfortunately, that al- 
 most the whole line of the great and masculine virtues, con- 
 stancy, gravity, magnanimity, fortitude, fidelity, and firm- 
 ness, are closely allied to this disagreeable quality, of which 
 you have so just an abhorrence; and, in their excess, all these 
 virtues very easily fallinto it. He who paid such a punc- 
 tilious attention to all your feelings certainly took care not to 
 shock them by that vice which is the most disgustful to you. 
 
 That fear of displeasing those who ought most to be 
 pleased betrayed him sometimes into the other extreme. 
 He had voted, and, in the year 1765, had been an advocate for 
 the Stamp Act. Things and the disposition of men’s minds 
 were changed. In short, the Stamp Act began tobe no 
 favourite inthis House. He therefore attended at the pri- 
 vate meeting in which the resolutions moved by a right hon- 
 ourable gentleman were settled : resolutions leading to the 
 repeal. The next day he voted for that repeal; and he 
 would have spoken for it, too, if an illness (not, as was then 
 given out, a political, but, to my knowledge, a very real 
 illness) had not prevented it. 
 
 The very next session, as the fashion of this world passeth 
 away, the repeal began to be in as bad an odour in this House 
 
AMERICAN TAXATION 5I 
 
 as the Stamp Act had been in the session before. To con- 
 form to the temper which began to prevail, and to prevail 
 mostly amongst those most in power, he declared, very early 
 in the winter, that a revenue must be had out of America. 
 Instantly he was tied down to his engagements by some, 
 who had no objection to such experiments, when made at 
 the cost of persons for whom they had no particular regard. 
 The whole body of courtiers drove him onward. They 
 always talked as if the king stood in a sort of humiliated 
 state, until something of the kind should be done. 
 
 Here this extraordinary man, then Chancellor of the Ex- 
 chequer, found himself in great straits. To please univers- 
 ally was the object of his life; but to tax and to please, no 
 more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men. 
 However, he attempted it. To render the tax palatable to 
 the partisans of American revenue, he made a preamble 
 stating the necessity of such a revenue. To close with the 
 American distinction, this revenue was external or port- 
 duty; but, again, to soften it to the other party, it was a 
 duty of supply. To gratify the colonists, it was laid on 
 British manufactures; to satisfy the merchants of Britain, 
 the duty was trivial, and (except that on tea, which touched 
 only the devoted East India Company) on none of the grand 
 objects of commerce. To counterwork the American con- 
 traband, the duty on tea was reduced from a shilling to 
 three-pence; but to secure the favour of those who would tax 
 America, the scene of collection was changed, and, with the 
 rest, it was levied in the colonies. What need I say more? 
 This fine-spun scheme had the usual fate of all exquisite 
 policy. But the original plan of the duties, and the mode 
 of executing that plan, both arose singly and solely from a 
 love of our applause. He was truly the child of the House. 
 He never thought, did, or said anything, but with a view to 
 you. He every day adapted himself to your disposition, 
 and adjusted himself before it as at a looking-glass. 
 
 He had observed (indeed, it could not escape him) that 
 several persons, infinitely his inferiors in all respects, had 
 
52 BURKE 
 
 formerly rendered themselves considerable in this House by 
 one method alone. They were a race of men (I hope in 
 God the species is extinct) who, when they rose in their 
 place, no man living could divine, from any known adher- 
 ence to parties, to opinions, or to principles, from any order 
 or system in their politics, or from any sequel or connection 
 in their ideas, what part they were going to take in any de- 
 bate. It is astonishing how much this uncertainty, especially 
 at critical times, called the attention of all parties on such 
 men. All eyes were fixed on them, all ears open to hear 
 them; each party gaped, and looked alternately for their 
 vote, almost to the end of their speeches. While the House 
 hung in this uncertainty, now the hear-hims rose from this 
 side, now they rebellowed from the other; and that party 
 to whom they fell at length from their tremulous and danc- 
 ing balance always received them in a tempest of applause. 
 The fortune of such men was a temptation too great to be 
 resisted by one to whom a single whiff of incense withheld 
 gave much greater pain than he received delight in the 
 clouds of it which daily rose about him from the prodigal 
 superstition of innumerable admirers. He was a candidate 
 for contradictory honours; and his great aim was, to make 
 those agree in admiration of him who never agreed in any- 
 thing else. 
 
 Hence arose this unfortunate act, the subject of this day’s 
 debate: from a disposition which, after making an American 
 revenue to please one, repealed it to please others, and 
 again revived it in hopes of pleasing a third, and of catching 
 something in the ideas of all. 
 
 This revenue act of 1767 formed the fourth period of 
 American policy. How we have fared since then: what 
 woful variety of schemes have been adopted; what enforc- 
 ing, and what repealing; what bullying, and what submit- 
 ting; what doing, and undoing; what straining, and what 
 relaxing; what assemblies dissolved for not obeying, and 
 called again without obedience; what troops sent out to 
 quell resistance, and, on meeting that resistance, recalled ; 
 
+ 
 ot 
 Bs" 
 
 nt 
 he 
 
 ay 
 
AMERICAN TAXATION 53 
 
 what shiftings, and changes, and jumblings of all kinds of 
 men at home, which left no possibility of order, consistency, 
 vigour, orevenso much asa decent unity of colour, in any 
 one public measure It is a tedious, irksome task. My 
 duty may call me to open it out some other time; on a 
 former occasion # I tried your temper on a part of ith for 
 the present I shall forbear. 
 
 After all these changes and agitations, your immediate 
 situation upon the question on your paper is at length 
 brought to this. You have an act of Parliament stating 
 that “‘ it is expedient to raise a revenue in America.” Bya 
 partial repeal you annihilated the greatest part of that rev- 
 enue which this preamble declares to be so expedient. 
 You have substituted no other in the place of it. <A 
 Secretary of State has disclaimed, in the king’s name, all 
 thoughts of such a substitution in future. The principle of 
 this disclaimer goes to what has been left, as well as what 
 has been repealed. The tax which lingers after its com- 
 panions (under a preamble declaring an American revenue 
 expedient, and for the sole purpose of supporting the theory 
 of that preamble) militates with the assurance authentically 
 conveyed to the colonies, and is an exhaustless source of 
 jealousy and animosity. On this state, which I take to bea 
 fair one,—not being able to discern any grounds of honour, 
 advantage, peace, or power, for adhering, either to the act 
 or to the preamble, I shall vote for the question which leads 
 to the repeal of both. 
 
 If you do not fall in with this motion, then secure some- 
 thing to fight for, consistent in theory and valuable in 
 practise. If you must employ your strength, employ it 
 to uphold you in some honourable right or some profitable 
 wrong. If you are apprehensive that the concession rec- 
 ommended to you, though proper, should be a means of 
 drawing on you further, but unreasonable claims,—why, 
 then employ your force in supporting that reasonable con- 
 cession against those unreasonable demands. You will em- 
 ploy it with more grace, with bettereffect,and with great 
 
54 BURKE 
 
 probable concurrence of all the quiet and rational people in 
 the provinces, who are now united with and hurried away 
 by the violent,—having, indeed, different dispositions, but a 
 common interest. If you apprehend that ona concession 
 you shall be pushed by metaphysical process to the extreme 
 lines, and argued out of your whole authority, my advice is 
 this: when you have recovered your old, your strong, your 
 tenable position, then face about,—stop short,—do nothing 
 more,—reason not at all,—oppose the ancient policy and 
 practise of the empire as a rampart against the speculations 
 of innovators on both sides of the question,—and you will 
 stand on great, manly, and sure ground. On this solid basis 
 fix your machines, and they will draw worlds towards you. 
 
 Your ministers, in their own and his Majesty’s name, have 
 already adopted the American distinction of internal and 
 external duties. It is a distinction, whatever merit it may 
 have, that was originally moved by the Americans them- 
 selves; and I think they will acquiesce in it, if they are not 
 pushed with too much logic and too little sense, in all the 
 consequences: that is, if external taxation be understood, as 
 they and you understand it, when you please, to be nota 
 distinction of geography, but of policy; that it isa power 
 for regulating trade, and not for supporting establishments. 
 The distinction, which is as nothing with regard to right, is 
 of most weighty consideration in practise. Recover your 
 old ground, and your old tranquillity; try it; I am per- 
 suaded the Americans will compromise with you. When 
 confidence is once restored, the odious and suspicious 
 summum jus will perish of course. The spirit of practica- 
 bility, of moderation, and mutual convenience will never call 
 in geometrical exactness as the arbitrator of an amicable 
 settlement. Consult and follow your experience. Let not 
 the long story with which I have exercised your patience 
 prove fruitless to your interests. 
 
 For my part, I should choose (if I could have my wish) 
 that the proposition of the honourable gentleman * for the 
 repeal could go to America without the attendance of the 
 
AMERICAN TAXATION 55 
 
 penal bills. Alone I could almost answer for its success. 
 I can not be certain of its reception in the bad company it 
 may keep. In such heterogeneous assortments, the most 
 innocent person will lose the effect of his innocency. 
 Though you should send out this angel of peace, yet you 
 are sending out a destroying angel too; and what would be 
 the effect of the conflict of these two adverse spirits, or 
 which would predominate in the end, is what I dare not 
 say: whether the lenient measures would cause American 
 passion to subside, or the severe would increase its fury,— 
 all this is in the hand of Providence. Yet now, even now, I 
 should confide in the prevailing virtue and efficacious oper- 
 ation of lenity, though working in darkness and in chaos, in 
 the midst of all this unnatural and turbid combination: I 
 should hope it might produce order and beauty in the end. 
 Let us, Sir, embrace some system or other before we end 
 this session. Do you mean to tax America, and to draw 
 a productive revenue from thence? If you do, speak out: 
 name, fix, ascertain this revenue; settle its quantity; de- 
 fine its objects; provide for its collection; and then fight, 
 when you have something to fight for. If you murder, 
 rob; if you kill, take possession; and do not appear in the 
 character of madmen as well as assassins, violent, vindictive, 
 bloody, and tyrannical, without an object. But may better 
 counsels guide you! . 
 Again and again, revert to your old  principles,—seek 
 peace and ensue it,--leave America, if she has taxable 
 matter in her, to tax herself. I am not here going into 
 the distinctions of rights, nor attempting to mark their 
 boundaries. I do not enter into these metaphysical dis- 
 tinctions. I hate the very sound of them. Leave the 
 Americans as they anciently stood, and these distinctions, 
 born of our unhappy contest, will die along with it. They 
 and we, and their and our ancestors, have been happy 
 under that system. Let the memory of all actions in con- 
 tradiction to that good old mode, on both sides, be extin- 
 guished forever. Be content to bind America by laws of 
 
56 BURKE 
 
 trade: you have always done it. Let this be your reason 
 for binding their trade. Do not burden them. by taxes: 
 you were not used to do so from the beginning. Let this 
 be your reason for not taxing. These are the arguments 
 of states and kingdoms. Leave the rest to the schools; for 
 there only they may be discussed with safety. But if, in- 
 temperately, unwisely, fatally, you sophisticate and poison 
 the very source of government, by urging subtle deductions, 
 and consequences odious to those you govern, from the un- 
 limited and illimitable nature of supreme sovereignty, you 
 will teach them by these means to call that sovereignty 
 itself in question. When you drive him hard, the boar will 
 surely turn upon the hunters. If that sovereignty and their 
 freedom cannot be reconciled, which will they take? They 
 will cast your sovereignty in your face. Nobody will be 
 argued into slavery. Sir, let the gentlemen on the other 
 side call forth all their ability; let the best of them get up 
 and tell me what one character of liberty the Americans 
 have, and what one brand of slavery they are free from, if 
 they are bound in their property and industry by all the 
 restraints you can imagine on commerce, and at the same 
 time are made pack-horses of every tax you choose to 
 impose, without the least share in granting them. When 
 they bear the burdens of unlimited monopoly, will you 
 bring them to bear the burdens of unlimited revenue too ? 
 The Englishman in America will feel that this is slavery: 
 that it is legal slavery will be no compensation either to his 
 feelings or his understanding. 
 
 A noble lord,!* who spoke some time ago, is full of the fire 
 of ingenuous youth; and when he has modeled the ideas of 
 a lively imagination by further experience, he will be an or- 
 nament to his country in either House. He has said that 
 the Americans are our children, and how can they revolt 
 against their parent? He says, that, if they are not free in 
 their present state, England is not free; because Manchester, 
 and other considerable places, are not represented. So, then, 
 because some towns in England are not represented, America 
 
AMERICAN TAXATION 57 
 
 is to have no representative at all. They are “ our chil- 
 dren’’; but when children ask for bread, we are not to give 
 astone. Is it because the natural resistance of things, and 
 the various mutations of time, hinders our government, or 
 any scheme of government, from being any more than a sort 
 of approximation to the right, is it therefore that the colonies 
 are to recede from it infinitely? When this child of ours 
 wishes to assimilate to its parent, and to reflect with a true 
 filial resemblance the beauteous countenance of British 
 liberty, are we to turn to them the shameful parts of our 
 constitution? are we to give them our weakness for their 
 strength, our opprobrium for their glory, and the slough of 
 slavery, which we are not able to work off, to serve them for 
 their freedom? 
 
 If this be the case, ask yourselves this question: Will 
 they be content in such a state of slavery? If not, look to 
 the consequences. Reflect how you are to govern a people 
 who think they ought to be free, and think they are not. 
 Your scheme yields no revenue ; it yields nothing but dis- 
 content, disorder, disobedience: and such is the state of 
 America, that, after wading up to your eyes in blood, you 
 could only end just where you begun,—that is, to tax where 
 
 no revenue is to be found, to——My voice fails me: my in- 
 clination, indeed, carries me no further; all is confusion 
 beyond it. 
 
 Well, Sir, I have recovered a little, and before I sit down 
 I must say something to another point with which gentle- 
 men urge us. What is to become of the Declaratory Act, 
 asserting the entireness of British legislative authority, if we 
 abandon the practise of taxation ? 
 
 For my part, I look upon the rights stated in that act ex- 
 actly in the manner in which I viewed them on its very first 
 proposition, and which I have often taken the liberty, with 
 great humility, to lay before you. I look, I say, on the im- 
 perial rights of Great Britain, and the privileges which the 
 colonists ought to enjoy under these rights, to be just the 
 most reconcilable things in the world. The Parliament of 
 
58 BURKE 
 
 Great Britain sits at the head of her extensive empire in two 
 capacities. Oneas the local legislature of this island, provid- 
 ing for all things at home, immediately, and by no other in- 
 strument than the executive power. The other, and I think 
 her nobler capacity, is what I call her imperial character ; in 
 which, as fromthe throne of heaven, she superintends all the 
 several inferior legislatures, and guides and controls them all 
 without annihilating any. As allthese provincial legislatures 
 are only coédrdinate toeach other, they ought all to be sub- 
 ordinate to her; else they can neither preserve mutual 
 peace, nor hope for mutual justice, nor effectually afford 
 mutual assistance. It is necessary to coerce the negligent, 
 to restrain the violent, and to aid the weak and deficient, 
 by the overruling plenitude of her power. She is never 
 to intrude into the place of the others, whilst they are 
 equal to the common ends of their institution. But in order 
 to enable Parliament to answer all these ends of provident 
 and beneficent superintendence, her powers must be bound- 
 less. The gentlemen who think the powers of Parliament 
 limited may please themselves to talk of requisitions. But 
 suppose the requisitions are not obeyed? What! shall 
 there be no reserved power in the empire, to supply a defi- 
 ciency which may weaken, divide, and dissipate the whole? 
 We are engaged in war,—the Secretary of State calls upon the 
 colonies to contribute,—some would do it, I think most 
 would cheerfully furnish whatever is demanded,—one or two, 
 suppose, hang back, and, easing themselves, let the stress of 
 the draft lie on the others,—surely it is proper that some 
 authority might legally say, “Tax yourselves for the common 
 supply, or Parliament will doit for you.” This backwardness 
 was, as I am told, actually the case of Pennsylvania for some 
 short time towards the beginning of the last war, owing to 
 some internal dissensions in the colony. But whether the 
 fact were so or otherwise, the case is equally to be provided 
 for by a competent sovereign power. But then this ought 
 to be no ordinary power, nor ever used in the first instance. 
 This is what I meant, when I have said, at various times, 
 
AMERICAN TAXATION 59 
 
 that I consider the power of taxing in Parliament as an in- 
 strument of empire, and not as a means of supply. 
 
 Such, Sir, is my idea of the Constitution of the British 
 Empire, as distinguished from the Constitution of Britain ; 
 and on these grounds I think subordination and liberty may 
 be sufficiently reconciled through the whole,—whether to 
 serve a refining speculatist or a factious demagogue I know 
 not, but enough surely for the ease and happiness of man. 
 
 Sir, whilst we held this happy course, we drew more from 
 the colonies than all the impotent violence of despotism 
 ever could extort from them. We did this abundantly in 
 the last war; it has never been once denied; and what 
 reason have we to imagine that the colonies would'not have 
 proceeded in supplying government as liberally, if you had 
 not stepped in and hindered them from contributing, by 
 interrupting the channel in which their liberality flowed with 
 so strong a course,—by attempting to take, instead of being 
 satisfied to receive? Sir William Temple says, that Holland 
 has loaded itself with ten times the impositions which it 
 revolted from Spain rather than submit to. He says true. 
 Tyranny is a poor provider. It knows neither how to ac- 
 cumulate nor how to extract. 
 
 I charge, therefore, to this new and unfortunate system 
 the loss not only of peace, of union, and of commerce, but 
 even of revenue, which its friends are contending for. It is 
 morally certain that we have lost at least a million of free 
 grants since the peace. I think we have lost a great deal 
 more ; and that those who look for a revenue from the prov- 
 inces never could have pursued, even in that light, a course 
 more directly repugnant to their purposes. 
 
 Now, Sir, I trust I have shown, first on that narrow 
 ground which the honourabe gentleman measured, that you 
 are like to lose nothing by complying with the motion, ex- 
 cept what you have lost already. I have shown afterwards, 
 that in time of peace you flourished in commerce, and, when 
 war required it, had sufficient aid from the colonies, while 
 you pursued your ancient policy ; that you threw everything 
 
60 BURKE 
 
 into confusion, when you made the Stamp Act; and that 
 you restored everything to peace and order, when you re- 
 pealed it. I have shown that the revival of the system of 
 taxation has produced the very worst effects; and that the 
 partial repeal has produced, not partial good, but universal 
 evil. Let these considerations, founded on facts, not one of 
 which can be denied, bring us back to our reason by the road 
 of our experience. 
 
 I can not, as I have said, answer for mixed measures: but 
 surely this mixture of lenity would give the whole a better 
 chance of success. When you once regain confidence, the 
 way will be clear before you. Then you may enforce the 
 Act of Navigation, when it ought to be enforced. You will 
 yourselves open it, where it ought still further to be opened. 
 Proceed in what you do, whatever you do, from policy, and not 
 fromrancour. Letusact like men, let usact like statesmen. 
 Let us hold some sort of consistent conduct. It is agreed 
 that a revenue is not to be had in America. If we lose the 
 profit, let us get rid of the odium. 
 
 On this business of America, I confess I am serious, even 
 to sadness. JI have had but one opinion concerning it, since 
 I sat, and before I sat, in Parliament. The noble lord ® 
 will, as usual, probably, attribute the part taken by me and 
 my friends in this business to a desire of getting his places. 
 Let him enjoy this happy and originalidea. If I deprived him 
 of it, I should take away most of his wit, and all his argu- 
 ment. But I had rather bear the brunt of all his wit, and 
 indeed blows much heavier, than stand answerable to God 
 for embracing a system that tends to the destruction of some 
 of the very best and fairest of His works. But I know the 
 map of England as well as the noble lord, or as any other 
 person; and I know that the way I take is not the road to 
 preferment. My excellent and honourable friend under me on 
 the floor #* has trod that road with great toil for upwards of 
 twenty years together. He is not yet arrived at the noble 
 lord’s destination. However, the tracks of my worthy 
 friend are those I have ever wished to follow; because I 
 
AMERICAN TAXATION robe 
 
 know they lead to honour. Long may we tread the same 
 road together, whoever may accompany us, or whoever may 
 laugh at us on our journey! I honestly and solemnly de- 
 clare I have in all seasons adhered to the system of 1766 for 
 no other reason than that I think it laid deep in your truest 
 interests,—and that, by limiting the exercise, it fixes on the 
 firmest foundations a real, consistent, well-grounded author- 
 ity in Parliament. Until you come back to that system, 
 there will be no peace for England. 
 
 NOTES 
 
 1. Charles Wolfran Cornwall, Esq. 
 
 2. Lord North, then Chancellor of the Exchequer. 
 
 3. Lord Hillsborough’s Circular Letter to the Governors of the Colonies, con- 
 cerning the repeal of some of the duties laid in the Act of 1767. 
 
 4. A material point is omitted by Mr. Burke in this speech, viz., the manner in 
 which the continent received this royal assurance. The assembly of Virginia, 
 in their address in answer to Lord Botetourt’s speech, express themselves thus : 
 —“ We will not suffer our present hopes, arising from the pleasing prospect 
 your Lordship hath so kindly opened and displayed to us, to be dashed by the 
 bitter reflection that any future administration will entertain a wish to depart 
 from that plan which affords the surest and most permanent foundation of pub- 
 lic tranquillity and happiness. No, my Lord, we are sure our most gracious 
 sovereign, under whatever changes may happen in his confidential servants, 
 will remain immutable in the ways of truth and justice, and that heis incapable 
 of deceiving his faithful subjects ; and we esteem your Lordship’s information 
 not only as warranted, but even sanctified by the royal word.” 
 
 5. Lord North. 
 
 6. Mr. Dowdeswell. 
 
 7,8, 9, 10, General Conway. 
 
 11. Supposed to allude to the Right Honourable Lord North, and George 
 Cooke, Esq., who were made joint paymasters in the summer of 1766, on the 
 removal of the Rockingham administration. 
 
 12. Resolutions in May, 1770. 
 
 ‘13. Mr. Fuller. 
 
 14. Lord Carmarthen. 
 
 15. Lord North. 
 
 16. Mr. Dowdeswell. 
 
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TO THE ELECTORS OF BRISTOL, ON BEING 
 ELECTED A REPRESENTATIVE IN 
 PARLIAMENT FOR THAT CITY 
 
 (Delivered on Thursday, November 3, 1774.) 
 
 ENTLEMEN,—I can not avoid sympathizing strongly 
 
 with the feelings of the gentleman who has received 
 the same honour that you have conferredon me. If he, who 
 was bred and passed his whole life amongst you,—if he, who, 
 through the easy gradations of acquaintance, friendship, and 
 esteem, has obtained the honour which seems of itself, natu- 
 rally and almost insensibly, to meet with those who, by the 
 even tenor of pleasing manners and social virtues, slide into 
 the love and confidence of their fellow-citizens,—if he can 
 not speak but with great emotion on this subject, surrounded 
 as he is on all sides with his old friends,—you will have 
 the goodness to excuse me, if my real, unaffected embarrass- 
 ment prevents me from expressing my gratitude to you as I 
 ought. 
 
 I was brought hither under the disadvantage of being un- 
 known, even by sight, to any of you. No previous canvass 
 was made for me. I was put in nomination after the poll 
 was opened. I did not appear until it was far advanced. 
 If, under all these accumulated disadvantages, your good 
 opinion has carried me to this happy point of success, you 
 will pardon me, if I can only say to you collectively, as I 
 said to you individually, simply and plainly, I thank you,— 
 I am obliged to you,—I am not insensible of your kindness, 
 
 This is all that I am able to say for the inestimable favour 
 you have conferred upon me. ButI can not be satisfied with- 
 out saying a little more in ries of the right you have 
 
 3 
 
64 BURKE 
 
 to confer such a favour. The person that appeared here as 
 counsel for the candidate who so long and so earnestly solic- 
 ited your votes thinks proper to deny that a very great part 
 of you have any votes to give. He fixes a standard period 
 of time in his own imagination, (not what the law defines, 
 but merely what the convenience of his client suggests,) by 
 which he would cut off at one stroke all those freedoms 
 which are the dearest privileges of your corporation,—which 
 the Common Law authorizes,—which your magistrates are 
 compelled to grant,—which come duly authenticated into 
 this court,—and are saved in the clearest words, and with 
 the most religious care and tenderness, in that very act of 
 Parliament which was made to regulate the elections by 
 freemen, and to prevent all possible abuses in making them. 
 
 I do not intend to argue the matter here. My learned 
 counsel has supported your cause with his usual ability ; the 
 worthy sheriffs have acted with their usual equity; and I 
 have no doubt that the same equity which dictates the re- 
 turn will guide the final determination. Ihad the honour, in 
 conjunction with many far wiser men, to contribute a very 
 small assistance, but, however, some assistance, to the form- 
 ing the judicature which is to try such questions, It would 
 be unnatural in me to doubt the justice of that court, in 
 the trial of my own cause, to which I have been so active to 
 give jurisdiction over every other. 
 
 I assure the worthy freemen, and this corporation, that, if 
 the gentleman perseveres in the intentions which his present 
 warmth dictates to him, I will attend their cause with dili- 
 gence, and I hope with effect. For, if I know anything of 
 myself, it is not my own interest in it, but my full convic- 
 tion, that induces me to tell you, I think there is not a 
 shadow of doubt in the case. 
 
 I do not imagine that you find me rash in declaring my- 
 self, or very forward in troubling you. From the beginning 
 to the end of the election, 1 have kept silence in all matters 
 of discussion. I have never asked a question of a voter on 
 the other side, or supported a doubtful vote on my own. I| 
 
TO THE ELECTORS OF BRISTOL 65 
 
 respected the abilities of my managers; I relied on the 
 candour of the court. I think the worthy sheriffs will bear 
 me witness that I have never once made an attempt to im- 
 pose upon their reason, to surprise their justice, or to ruffle 
 their temper.’ I stood on the hustings (except when I gave 
 my thanks to those who favoured me with their votes) less 
 like a candidate than an unconcerned spectator of a public 
 proceeding. But here the face of things is altered. Here is 
 an attempt for a general massacre of suffrages,—an attempt, 
 by a promiscuous carnage of friends and foes, to extermi- 
 nate above two thousand votes, including seven hundred 
 polled for the gentleman himself who now complains, and 
 who would destroy the friends whom he has obtained, only 
 because hecannot obtain as many of them as he wishes. 
 
 How he will be permitted, in another place, to stultify and 
 disable himself, and to plead against his own acts, is another 
 question. The law will decide it. I shall only speak of it 
 as it concerns the propriety of public conduct in this city, 
 I do not pretend to lay down rules of decorum for other 
 gentlemen. They are best judges of the mode of proceed- 
 ing that will recommend them to the favour of their fellow- 
 citizens. But I confess I should look rather awkward, if I 
 had been the very first to produce the new copies of free- 
 dom,—if I had persisted in producing them to the last,—if I 
 had ransacked, with the most unremitting industry and the 
 most penetrating research, the remotest corners of the king- 
 dom to discover them,—if I were then, all at once, to turn 
 short, and declare that I had been sporting all this while 
 with the right of election, and that I had been drawing out 
 a poll, upon no sort of rational grounds, which disturbed the 
 peace of my fellow-citizens for a month together ;—I really, 
 for my part, should appear awkward under such circum- 
 stances. 
 
 It would be still more awkward in me, if I were gravely to 
 look the sheriffs in the face, and to tell them they were not 
 to determine my cause on my own principles, nor to make 
 
 the return upon those votes upon which I had rested my 
 5 
 
66 BURKE 
 
 election. Such would be my appearance to the court and 
 magistrates. Sey, 
 
 But how should I appear to the voters themselves? If I 
 had gone round to the citizens entitled to freedom, and 
 squeezed them by the hand,—“ Sir, 1 humbly beg your vote, 
 —TI shall be eternally thankful,—may I hope for the honour 
 of your support ? —Well !—come,—we shall see you at 
 the Council-House.”—If I were then to deliver them to my 
 managers, pack them into tallies, vote them off in court, and 
 when I heard from the bar,—“ Such a one only! and such 
 a one forever !—he’s my man !””—“ Thank you, good Sir,— 
 Hah! my worthy friend! thank you kindly,—that’s an 
 honest fellow,—how is your good family ?’’—Whilst these 
 words were hardly out of my mouth, if I should have 
 wheeled round at once, and told them,—‘‘ Get you gone, 
 you pack of worthless fellows! you have no votes,—you are 
 usurpers! you are intruders on the rights of real freemen! 
 I will have nothing to do with you! you ought never to 
 have been produced at this election, and the sheriffs ought 
 not to have admitted you to poll!”’ 
 
 Gentlemen, I should make a strange figure, if my conduct 
 had been of this sort. I am not so old an acquaintance of 
 yours as the worthy gentleman. Indeed, I could not have 
 ventured on such kind of freedoms with you. But I am 
 bound, and I will endeavour, to have justice done to the 
 rights of freemen,—even though I should at the same time 
 be obliged to vindicate the former! part of my antagonist’s 
 conduct against his own present inclinations. 
 
 I owe myself, in all things, to all the freemen of this city. 
 My particular friends have a demand on me that I should 
 not deceive their expectations. Never was cause or man 
 supported with more constancy, more activity, more spirit. 
 I have been supported with a zeal, indeed, and heartiness in 
 my friends, which (if their object had been at all propor- 
 tioned to their endeavours) could never be sufficiently com- 
 mended. They supported me upon the most liberal princi- 
 ples. They wished that the members for Bristol should be 
 
TO THE ELECTORS OF BRISTOL 67 
 
 chosen for the city, and for their country at large, and not 
 for themselves. 
 
 So far they are not disappointed. If I possess nothing 
 else, I am sure I possess the temper that is fit for your serv- 
 ice. I know nothing of Bristol, but by the favours I have 
 received, and the virtues I have seen exerted in it. 
 
 I shall ever retain, what I now feel, the most perfect and 
 grateful attachment to my friends,—and I have no enmities, 
 no resentments. I never can consider fidelity to engage- 
 ments and constancy in friendships but with the highest ap- 
 probation, even when those noble qualities are employed 
 against my own pretensions. The gentleman who is not so 
 fortunate as I have been in this contest enjoys, in this res- 
 pect, a consolation full of honour both to himself and to 
 his friends. They have certainly left nothing undone for his 
 service. : 
 
 As for the trifling petulance which the rage of party stirs 
 up in little minds, though it should show itself even in 
 this court, it has not made the slightest impression on me. 
 The highest flight of such clamorous birds is winged in an 
 inferior region of the air. We hear them, and we look upon 
 them, just as you, Gentlemen, when you enjoy the serene 
 air on your lofty rocks, look down upon the gulls that skim 
 the mud of your river, when it is exhausted of its tide. 
 
 I am sorry I can not conclude without saying a word ona 
 topic touched upon by my worthy colleague. I wish that 
 topic had been passed by ata time when I have so little 
 leisure to discuss it. But since he has thought proper to 
 throw it out, I owe you a clear explanation of my poor 
 sentiments on that subject. 
 
 He tells you that “the topic of instructions has occa- 
 sioned much altercation and uneasiness in this city”’; and 
 he expresses himself (if I understand him rightly) in favour 
 of the coercive authority of such instructions. 
 
 Certainly, Gentlemen, it ought to be the happiness and 
 glory of a representative to live in the strictest union, the 
 closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communi- 
 
68 BURKE 
 
 cation with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have 
 great weight with him; their opinions high respect; their 
 business unremitted attention. Itis his duty to sacrifice his 
 repose, his pleasure, his satisfactions, to theirs,—and above 
 all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own. 
 
 But his unbiased opinion, his mature judgment, his en- 
 lightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to 
 any man, or to any set of men living. These he does not 
 derive from your pleasure,—no, nor from the law and the 
 Constitution. They are a trust from Providence, for the 
 abuse of which he is deeply answerable. Your representa- 
 tive owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and 
 he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your 
 opinion. 
 
 My worthy colleague says, his will ought to be subservient 
 to yours. If that be all, the thing is innocent. If govern- 
 ment were a matter of will upon any side, yours, without 
 question, ought to be superior. But government and legis- 
 lation are matters of reason and judgment, and not of 
 inclination ; and what sort of reason is that in which the 
 determination precedes the discussion, in which one set of 
 men deliberate and another decide, and where those who 
 form the conclusion are perhaps three hundred miles distant 
 from those who hear the arguments? 
 
 To deliver an opinion is the right of all men; that of con- 
 stituents is a weighty and respectable opinion, which a repre- 
 sentative ought always to rejoice to hear, and which he 
 ought always most seriously to consider. But authoritative 
 instructions, mandates issued, which the member is bound 
 blindly and implicitly to obey, to vote, and to argue for, 
 though contrary to the clearest conviction of his judgment 
 and conscience,—these are things utterly unknown to the 
 laws of this land, and which arise from a fundamental mis- 
 take of the whole order and tenor of our Constitution. 
 
 Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from differ- 
 ent and hostile interests, which interests each must main- 
 tain, as an agent and advocate, against other agents and 
 
TO THE ELECTORS OF BRISTOL 69 
 
 advocates ; but Parliament is a deliberative assembly of one 
 nation, with one interest, that of the whole—where not local 
 purposes, not local prejudices, ought to guide, but the gen- 
 eral good, resulting from the general reason of the whole. 
 You choose a member, indeed; but when you have chosen 
 him, he is not member of Bristol, but he is a member of 
 Parliament. If the local constituent should have an interest 
 or should form an hasty opinion evidently opposite to the 
 real good of the rest of the community, the member for that 
 place ought to be as far as any other from any endeavour to 
 give it effect.- I beg pardon for saying so much on this sub- 
 ject; I have been unwillingly drawn into it; but I shall ever 
 use a respectful frankness of communication with you. 
 Your faithful friend, your devoted servant, I shall be to the 
 end of my life: a flatterer you do not wish for. On this 
 point of instructions, however, I think it scarcely possible 
 we ever can have any sort of difference. Perhaps I may 
 give you too much, rather than too little, trouble. 
 
 From the first hour I was encouraged to court your favour, 
 to this happy day of obtaining it, I have never promised 
 you anything but humble and persevering endeavourstodo my 
 duty. The weight of that duty, I confess, makes me tremble; 
 and whoever well considers what it is, of all things in the 
 world, will fly from what has the least likeness to a positive 
 and precipitate engagement. To be a good member of 
 Parliament is, let me tell you, no easy task,—especially at 
 this time, when there is so strong a disposition to run into 
 the perilous extremes of servile compliance or wild popu- 
 larity. To unite circumspection with vigour is absolutely 
 necessary, but it is extremely difficult. We are now mem- 
 bers for a rich commercial city ; this city, however, is but a 
 part of a rich commercial nation, the interests of which are 
 various, multiform, and intricate. Weare members for that 
 great nation, which, however, is itself but a part of a great 
 empire, extended by our virtue and our fortune to the 
 farthest limits of the East and of the West. All these wide- 
 spread interests must be considered,—must be compared,— 
 
70 BURKE 
 
 must be reconciled, if possible. We are members for a free 
 country; and surely we all know that the machine of a free 
 constitution is no simple thing, but as intricate and as deli- 
 cate as it is valuable. We are members in a great and 
 ancient monarchy; and we must preserve religiously the 
 true, legal rights of the sovereign, which form the keystone 
 that binds together the noble and well-constructed arch of 
 our empire and our Constitution. A constitution made up 
 of balanced powers must ever be a critical thing. As such I 
 mean to touch that part of it which comes within my reach. 
 I know my inability, and I wish for support from every 
 quarter. In particular I shall aim at the friendship, and 
 shall cultivate the best correspondence, of the worthy col- 
 league you have given me. | 
 
 I trouble you no farther than once more to thank you all: 
 you, Gentlemen, for your favours; the candidates, for their 
 temperate and polite behaviour; and the sheriffs, for a con- 
 duct which may give a model for all who are in public sta- 
 
 tions. 
 NOTE 
 
 1, Mr. Brickdale opened his poll, it seems, with a tally of those very kind of 
 freemen, and voted many hundreds of them. 
 
RESOLUTIONS FOR CONCILIATION WITH 
 THE AMERICAN COLONIES 
 
 (Delivered in the House of Commons, March 22, 1775.) 
 
 HOPE, Sir, that notwithstanding the austerity of the 
 Chair, your good-nature will incline you to some degree 
 of indulgence towards human frailty. You will not think it 
 unnatural, that those who have an object depending, which 
 strongly engages their hopes and fears, should be somewhat 
 inclined to superstition. As I came into the house, full of 
 anxiety about the event of my motion, I found, to my in- 
 finite surprise, that the grand penal bill by which we had 
 passed sentence on the trade and sustenance of America is 
 to be returned to us from the other House.! I do confess, 
 I could not help looking on this event as a fortunate omen. 
 I look upon it as a-sort of Providential favour, by which we 
 are put once more in possession of our deliberative capacity, 
 upon a business so very questionable in its nature, so very 
 uncertain in its issue. By the return of this bill, which 
 seemed to have taken its flight forever, we are at this very 
 instant nearly as free to choose a plan for our American 
 government as we were on the first day of the session. If, 
 Sir, we incline to the side of conciliation, we are not at all 
 embarrassed (unless we please to make ourselves so) by any 
 incongruous mixture of coercion and restraint. We are 
 therefore called upon, as it were by a superior warning 
 voice, again to attend to America,—to attend to the whole of 
 it together,—and to review the subject with an unusual 
 degree of care and calmness. 
 Surely it is an awful subject,—or there is none so on this 
 
 side of the grave. When I first had the honour of aseat in 
 71 
 
72 BURKE 
 
 this House, the affairs of that continent pressed themselves 
 upon us as the most important and most delicate object of 
 Parliamentary attention. My little share in this great delib- 
 beration oppressed me. I found myself a partaker in a very 
 high trust; and having no sort of reason to rely on the 
 strength of my natural abilities for the proper execution of 
 that trust, I was obliged to take more than common pains 
 to instruct myself in everything which relates to our colonies. 
 I was not less under the necessity of forming some fixed 
 ideas concerning the general policy of the British empire. 
 Something of this sort seemed to be indispensable, in order, 
 amidst so vast a fluctuation of passions and opinions, to con- 
 center my thoughts, to ballast my conduct, to preserve me 
 from being blown about by every wind of fashionable doc- 
 trine. I really did not think it safe or manly to have fresh 
 principles to seek upon every fresh mail which should arrive 
 from America. } 
 
 At that period I had the fortune to find myself in perfect 
 concurrence with a large majority in this House. Bowing 
 under that high authority, and penetrated with the sharpness 
 and strength of that early impression, I have continued ever 
 since, without the least deviation, in my original sentiments. 
 Whether this be owing to an obstinate perseverance in error, 
 or to a religious adherence to what appears to me truth and 
 reason, it is in your equity to judge. 
 
 Sir, Parliament, having an enlarged view of objects, made, 
 during this interval, more frequent changes in their senti- 
 ments and their conduct than could be justified in a particular 
 person upon the contracted scale of private information. 
 But though I do not hazard anything approaching to a cen- 
 sure on the motives of former Parliaments to all those alter- 
 ations, one fact is undoubted,—that under them the state of 
 America has been kept in continual agitation. Everything 
 administered as remedy to the public complaint, if it did not 
 produce, was at least followed by, an heightening of the dis- 
 temper, until, by a variety of experiments, that important 
 country has been brought into her present situation,— 
 
CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA 73 
 
 a situation which I will not miscall, which I dare not name, 
 which I scarcely know how to comprehend in the terms of 
 any description. 
 
 In this posture, Sir, things stood at the beginning of the 
 session, About that time, a worthy member,? of great 
 Parliamentary experience, who in the year 1766 filled the 
 chair of the American Committee with much ability, took 
 me aside, and, lamenting the present aspect of our politics, 
 told me things were come to such a pass that our former 
 methods of proceeding in the House would be no longer 
 tolerated,—that the public tribunal (never too indulgent to 
 a long and unsuccessful opposition) would now scrutinize 
 our conduct with unusual severity,—that the very vicissitudes 
 and shiftings of ministerial measures, instead of convict- 
 ing their authors of inconstancy and want of system, would 
 be taken as an occasion of charging us with a predetermined 
 discontent which nothing could satisfy, whilst we accused 
 every measure of vigour ascruel and every proposal of lenity 
 as weak and irresolute. The public, he said, would not have 
 patience to see us play the game out with our adversaries ; 
 we must produce our hand : it would be expected that those. 
 who for many years had been active in such affairs should 
 show that they had formed some clear and decided idea of 
 the principles of colony government, and were capable of 
 drawing out something like a platform of the ground which 
 might be laid for future and permanent tranquillity. 
 
 I felt the truth of what my honourable friend represented ; 
 but I felt my situation, too. His application might have 
 been made with far greater propriety to many other gentle- 
 men. Noman was, indeed, ever better disposed, or worse 
 qualified, for such an undertaking, than myself. Though I 
 gave so far into his opinion, that I immediately threw my 
 thoughts into a sort of Parliamentary form, I was by no 
 means equally ready to produce them. It generally argues 
 some degree of natural impotence of mind, or some want of 
 knowledge of the world, to hazard plans of government, ex- 
 cept from a seat of authority. Propositions are made, not 
 
74 BURKE 
 
 only ineffectually, but somewhat disreputably, when the 
 minds of men are not properly disposed for their reception ; 
 and for my part, lam not ambitious of ridicule, not abso- 
 lutely a candidate for disgrace.: | 
 
 Besides, Sir, to speak the plain truth, I have in general no 
 very exalted opinion of the virtue of paper government, nor 
 of any politics in which the plan is to be wholly separated 
 from the execution. But when I saw that anger and vio- 
 lence prevailed every day more and more, and that things 
 were hastening towards an incurable alienation of our col- 
 onies, I confess my caution gave way. I felt this as one of 
 those few moments in which decorum yields to a higher 
 duty. Public calamity is a mighty leveler ; and there are 
 occasions when any, even the slightest, chance of doing 
 good must be laid hold on, even by the most inconsiderable 
 person. 
 
 To restore order and repose to an empire so great and so 
 distracted as ours is, merely in the attempt, an undertaking 
 that would ennoble the flights of the highest genius, and 
 obtain pardon for the efforts of the meanest understanding. 
 Struggling a good while with these thoughts, by degrees I 
 felt myself more firm. I derived, at length, some confi- 
 dence from what in other circumstances usually produces 
 timidity. I grew less anxious, even from the idea of my 
 own insignificance. For, judging of what you are by what 
 you ought to be, I persuaded myself that you would not re- 
 ject a reasonable proposition because it had nothing but its 
 reason to recommend it. On the other hand, being totally 
 destitute of all shadow of influence, natural or adventitious, 
 I was very sure, that, if my proposition were futile or dan- 
 gerous, if it were weakly conceived or improperly timed, 
 there was nothing exterior to it of power to awe, dazzle, or 
 delude you. You will see it just as it is, and you will treat 
 it just as it deserves. 
 
 The proposition is peace. Not peace through the medium 
 of war; not peace to be hunted through the labyrinth of in- 
 tricate and endless negotiations; not peace to arise out of 
 
CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA 75 
 
 universal discord, fomented from principle, in all parts of 
 the empire; not peace to depend on the juridical determina- 
 tion of perplexing questions, or the precise marking the 
 shadowy boundaries of a complex government. It is simple 
 peace, sought in its natural course and in its ordinary haunts. - 
 It is peace sought in the spirit of peace, and laid in principles 
 purely pacific. I propose, by removing the ground of the 
 difference and by restoring the former unsuspecting confi- 
 dence of the colonies in the mother country, to give perma- 
 nent satisfaction to your people,—and (far from a scheme of 
 ruling by discord) to reconcile them to each other in the 
 same act and by the bond of the very same interest which 
 reconciles them to British government. 
 
 My idea is nothing more. Refined policy ever has been 
 the parent of confusion,—and ever will be so, as long as the 
 world endures. Plain good intention, which is as easily dis- 
 covered at the first view as fraud is surely detected at last, 
 is, let me say, of no mean force in the government of man- 
 kind. Genuine simplicity of heart is a healing and cement- 
 ing principle. My plan, therefore, being formed upon the 
 most simple grounds imaginable, may disappoint some 
 people, when they hear it. It has nothing to recommend it 
 to the pruriency of curious ears. There is nothing at all 
 new and captivating in it. It has nothing of the splendour 
 of the project which has been lately laid upon your table by 
 the noble lord in the blue ribbon. It does not propose to 
 fill your lobby with squabbling colony agents, who will re- 
 quire the interposition of your mace at every instant to keep 
 the peace amongst them. It does not institute a magnifi- 
 cent auction of finance, where captivated provinces come to 
 general ransom by bidding against each other, until you 
 knock down the hammer, and determine a proportion of 
 payments beyond all the powers of algebra to equalize and 
 settle. 7 
 
 The plan which I shall presume to suggest derives, how- 
 ever, one great advantage from the proposition and registry 
 of that noble lord’s project. The idea of conciliation is 
 
76 BURKE 
 
 admissible. First, the House, in accepting the resolution 
 moved by the noble lord, has admitted, notwithstanding 
 the menacing front of our address, notwithstanding our heavy 
 bill of pains and penalties, that we do not think ourselves 
 precluded from all ideas of free grace and bounty. | 
 
 The House has gone farther: it has declared conciliation 
 admissible previous to any submission on the part of America. 
 It has even shot a good deal beyond that mark, and has ad- 
 mitted that the complaints of our former mode of exerting the 
 right of taxation were not wholly unfounded. That right thus 
 exerted is allowed to have had something reprehensible in 
 it,—something unwise, or something grievous; since, in the 
 midst of our heat and resentment, we, of ourselves, have 
 proposed a capital alteration, and, in order to get rid of 
 what seemed so very exceptionable, have instituted a mode 
 that is altogether new,—one that is, indeed, wholly alien 
 from all the ancient methods and forms of Parliament. 
 
 The principle of this proceeding is large enough for my 
 purpose. The means proposed by the noble lord for carry- 
 ing his ideas into execution, I think, indeed, are very in- 
 differently suited to the end; and this I shall endeavour to 
 show you before I sit down. But, for the present, I take my 
 ground on the admitted principle. I mean to give peace. 
 Peace implies reconciliation; and where there has been a 
 material dispute, reconciliation does in a manner always im- 
 ply concession on the one part or on the other. In this 
 state of things I make no difficulty in affirming that the pro- 
 posal ought to originate from us. Great and acknowledged 
 force is not impaired, either in effect or in opinion, by an 
 unwillingness to exert itself. The superior power may offer 
 peace with honour and with safety. Such an offer from such 
 a power will be attributed to magnanimity. But the con- 
 cessions of the weak are the concessions of fear. When sucha 
 one is disarmed, he is wholly at the mercy of his superior; 
 and he loses forever that time and those chances which, as 
 they happen to all men, are the strength and resources ofall 
 inferior power. 
 
CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA 77 
 
 The capital leading questions on which you must this day 
 decide are these two: First, whether you ought to concede; 
 and secondly, what your concession ought to be. On the 
 first of these questions we have gained (as I have just taken 
 the liberty of observing to you) some ground. But I am 
 sensible that a good deal more is still to be done. Indeed, 
 Sir, to enable us to determine both on the one and the other 
 of these great questions with a firm and precise judgment, I 
 think'it may be necessary to consider distinctly the true na- 
 ture and the peculiar circumstances of the object which we 
 have before us: because, after all our struggle, whether we will 
 or not, we must govern America according to that nature 
 and to those circumstances, and not according to our own 
 imaginations, not according to abstract ideas of right, by no 
 means according to mere general theories of government, 
 the resort to which appears to me, in our present situation, 
 no betterthan arrant trifling. I shall therefore endeavour, with 
 your leave, to lay before you some of the most material of 
 these circumstances in as full and as clear a manner as lam 
 able to state them. 
 
 The first thing that we have to consider with regard to 
 the nature of the object is the number of people in the 
 colonies. I have taken for some years a good deal of pains 
 on that point. I can by no calculation justify myself in 
 placing the number below two millions of inhabitants of our 
 own European blood and colour,—besides at least 500,000 
 others, who form no inconsiderable part of the strength and 
 opulence of the whole. This, Sir, is, I believe, about the true 
 number. There is no occasion to exaggerate, where plain 
 . truth is of so much weight and importance. But whether I 
 put the present numbers too high or too low isa matter of 
 little moment. Such is the strength with which population 
 shoots in that part of the world, that, state the numbers as 
 high as we will, whilst the dispute continues, the exagger- 
 ation ends. Whilst we are discussing any given magnitude, 
 they are grown to it. Whilst we spend our time in deliber- 
 ating on the mode of governing two millions, we shall find 
 
78 BURKE 
 
 we have millions more to manage. Your children do nof 
 grow faster from infancy to manhood than they spread from 
 families to communities, and from villages to nations. 
 
 I put this consideration of the present and the growing 
 numbers in the front of our deliberation, because, Sir, this 
 consideration will make it evident to a blunter discernment 
 than yours, that no partial, narrow, contracted, pinched, 
 occasional system will be at all suitable to such an object. 
 It will show you that it is not to be considered as one of 
 those minima which are out of the eye and consideration of 
 the law,—not a paltry excrescence of the state,—not a mean 
 dependant, who may be neglected with little damage and 
 provoked with little danger. It will prove that some degree 
 of care and caution is required in the handling of such an 
 object ; it will show that you ought not, in reason, to trifle 
 with so large a mass of the interests and feelings of the 
 human race. You could at no time do so without guilt; and 
 be assured you will not be able to do it long with impunity. 
 
 But the population of this country, the great and growing 
 population, though a very important consideration, will lose 
 much of its weight, if not combined with other circum- 
 stances. The commerce of your colonies is out of all pro- 
 portion beyond the numbers of the people. This ground 
 of their commerce, indeed, has been trod some days ago, 
 and with great ability, by a distinguished person, * at your 
 bar. This gentleman, after thirty-five years,—it is so long 
 since he first appeared at the same place to plead for the 
 commerce of Great Britain,—has come again before you to 
 plead the same cause, without any other effect of time than 
 that to the fire of imagination and extent of erudition, which 
 even then marked him as one of the first literary characters: 
 of his age, he has added a consummate knowledge in the 
 commercial interest of his country, formed by a long course 
 of enlightened and discriminating experience. 
 
 Sir, I should be inexcusable in coming after such a person 
 with any detail, if a great part of the members who now fill 
 the House had not the misfortune to be absent when he 
 
CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA 79. 
 
 appeared at your bar. Besides, Sir, I propose to take the 
 matter at periods of time somewhat different from his. There 
 is, if I mistake not, a point of view from whence, if you will 
 look at this subject, it is impossible that it should not make 
 an impression upon you. 
 
 I have in my hand two accounts: one a comparative state 
 of the export trade of England to its colonies, as it stood in 
 the year 1704, and as it stood in the year 1772 ; the othera state 
 of the export trade of this country to its colonies alone, as it 
 stood in 1772, compared with the whole trade of England 
 to all parts of the world (the colonies included) in the year 
 1704. They are from good vouchers: the latter period from 
 the accounts on your table; the earlier from an original 
 manuscript of Davenant, who first established the Inspector- 
 General’s office, which has been ever since his time so abun- 
 _ dant a source of Parliamentary information. 
 
 The export trade to the colonies consists of three great 
 branches: the African, which, terminating almost wholly in 
 the colonies, must be put to the account of their commerce; 
 the West Indian; and the North American. All these are 
 so interwoven, that the attempt to separate them would tear 
 to pieces the contexture of the whole, and, if not entirely 
 destroy, would very much depreciate, the value of all the 
 parts. I therefore consider these three denominations to be, 
 what in effect they are, one trade. 
 
 The trade to the colonies, taken on the export side, at the 
 beginning of this century, that is, in the year 1704, stood 
 thus :— 
 
 Exports to North America and the West 
 
 ee reg ee le hig aa Ay Aa aCe 
 sh" Ce a ec ne a IS ie 86,665 
 & 569,930 
 
 In the year 1772, which I take as a ‘middle year between 
 the highest and lowest of those lately laid on your table, 
 the account was as follows :— 
 
80 BURKE 
 
 To North America and the West Indies... . £ 4,791,734 
 To Africa vik Hn Ry Srabietiteas, wiki eds ayn 866,398 
 To which if you add the export trade from 
 
 Scotland, which had in 1704 no existence . . 364,000 
 
 & 6,024,171 
 
 From five hundred and odd thousand, it has grown to six 
 millions. It has increased no less than twelvefold. This is 
 the state of the colony trade, as compared with itself at these 
 two periods, within this century ;—and this is matter for 
 meditation. But this is not all. Examine my second ac- 
 count. See how the export trade to the colonies alone in 
 1772 stood in the other point of view, that is, as compared 
 to the whole trade of England in 1704. 
 
 The whole export trade of England in- 
 
 cluding that to the colonies, in 1704 % 6,509,000 
 Export to the colonies alone, in 1772. 6,024,000 
 Difference) Foy 4 485,000 
 
 The trade with America alone is now within less than 
 500,000/. of being equal to what this great commercial 
 nation, England, carried on at the beginning of this century 
 with the whole world! If I had taken the largest year of 
 those on your table, it would rather have exceeded. But, ‘dt 
 will be said, is not this American trade an unnatural protu- 
 berance, that has drawn the juices from the rest of the body? 
 The reverse. It is the very food that has nourished every 
 other part into its present magnitude. Our general trade 
 has been greatly augmented, and augmented more or less in 
 almost every part to which it ever extended, but with this 
 material difference : that of the six millions which in the 
 beginning of the century constituted the whole mass of our 
 export commerce the colony trade was but one twelfth part ; 
 it is now (as a part of sixteen millions) considerably more 
 than a third of the whole. This is the relative proportion 
 
CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA Sf 
 
 ’ of the importance of the colonies at these two periods: and 
 all reasoning concerning our mode of treating them must 
 have this proportion as its basis, or it is a reasoning weak, 
 rotten, and sophistical. 
 
 Mr. Speaker, I can not prevail on myself to hurry over 
 this great consideration. It is good for us to be here. We 
 stand where we have an immense view of what is, and what 
 is past. Clouds indeed, and darkness, rest upon the future. 
 Let us, however, before we descend from this noble emi- 
 nence, reflect that this growth of our national prosperity has 
 happened within the short period of the life of man. It 
 has happened within sixty-eight years. There are those 
 alive whose memory might touch the two extremities. For 
 instance, my Lord Bathurst might remember all the stages 
 of the progress. He was in 1704 of an age at least to be 
 made to comprehend such things. He was then old enough 
 acta parentum jam legere, et que sit poterit cognoscere 
 virtus. Suppose, Sir, that the angel of this auspicious youth, 
 foreseeing the many virtues which made him one of the 
 most amiable, as he is one of the most fortunate men of his 
 age, had opened to him in vision, that, when, in the fourth 
 generation, the third prince of the House of Brunswick had 
 sat twelve years on the throne of that nation which (by the - 
 happy issue of moderate and healing councils) was to be 
 made Great Britain, he should see his son, Lord Chancellor 
 of England, turn back the current of hereditary dignity to 
 its fountain, and raise him to an higher rank of peerage, 
 whilst he enriched the family with a new one,—if, amidst 
 these bright and happy scenes of domestic honour and pros- 
 perity, that angel should have drawn up the curtain, and 
 unfolded the rising glories of his country, and whilst he was 
 gazing with admiration on the then commercial grandeur 
 of England, the genius should point out to him a little 
 speck, scarce visible in the mass of the national interest, 
 a small seminal principle rather than a formed body, and 
 should tell him,—‘‘ Young man, there is America,—which 
 at 7 day serves for little more than to amuse you with 
 
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 stories of savage men and uncouth manners, yet shall, before 
 you taste of death, show itself equal to the whole of that 
 commerce which now attracts the envy of the world. What- 
 ever England has been growing to by a progressive in- 
 crease of improvement, brought in by varieties of people, by 
 succession of civilizing conquests and civilizing settlements 
 in a series of seventeen hundred years, you shall see as much 
 added to her by America in the course of a single life!” 
 If this state of his country had been foretold to him, would 
 it not require all the sanguine credulity of youth, and all 
 the fervid glow of enthusiasm, to make him believe it? For- 
 tunate man, he has lived to see it! Fortunate indeed, if he 
 lives to see nothing that shall vary the prospect, and cloud 
 the setting of his day! 
 
 Excuse me, Sir, if, turning. from such thoughts, I resume 
 this comparative view once more. You have seen it on a 
 large scale ; look at it ona small one. I will point out to 
 your attention a particular instance of it in the single prov- 
 ince of Pennsylvania. In the year 1704 that province 
 called for 11,459/. in value of your commodities, native and 
 foreign. Thiswas the whole. What did it demand in 1772? 
 Why, nearly fifty times as much; for in that year the export 
 to Pennsylvania was 507,900/., ably equal to the cmon to 
 all the colonies together in the first period. 
 
 I choose, Sir, to enter into these minute and particular 
 details ; because generalities, which in all other cases are apt to 
 heighten and raise the subject, have here a tendency to sink 
 it. When we speak of the commerce with our colonies, 
 fiction lags after truth, invention is unfruitful, and imagina- 
 tion cold and barren. 
 
 So far, Sir, as to the importance of the object in the view 
 _ of its commerce, as concerned in the exports from England. 
 If I were to detail the imports, I could show how many 
 enjoyments they procure which deceive the burden of life, 
 how many materials which invigorate the springs of national 
 industry and extend and animate every part of our foreign 
 and domestic commerce. This would be a curious subject 
 
CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA $3 
 
 indeed,—but I must prescribe bounds to myself in a matter 
 so vast and various. | | 
 
 I pass, therefore, to the colonies in another point of view 
 —their agriculture. This they have prosecuted with sucha 
 spirit, that, besides feeding plentifully their own growing 
 multitude, their annual export of grain, comprehending rice, 
 has some years ago exceeded a million in value. Of their 
 last harvest I am persuaded, they will export much more. 
 At the beginning of the century some of these colonies im- 
 ported corn from the mother country. For some time past 
 the Old World has been fed from the New. The scarcity 
 which you have felt would have been a desolating famine, if 
 this child of your old age, with a true filial piety, with a 
 Roman charity, had not put the full breast of its youthful 
 exuberance to the mouth of its exhausted parent. 
 
 As to the wealth which the colonies have drawn from the 
 sea by their fisheries, you had all that matter fully opened at 
 yourbar. You surely thought those acquisitions of value, for 
 they seemed even to excite your envy; and yet the spirit , 
 by which that enterprising employment has been exercised 
 ought rather, in my opinion, to have raised your esteem and 
 admiration. And pray, Sir, what in the world is equal to it ? 
 Pass by the other parts, and look at the manner in which the 
 people of New England have of late carried on the whale- 
 fishery. Whilst we follow them among the tumbling 
 _ mountains of ice,and behold them penetrating into the deepest 
 _ frozen recesses of Hudson’s Bay and Davis’s Straits, whilst 
 we are looking for them beneath the arctic circle, we hear 
 that they have pierced into the opposite region of polar 
 cold, that they are at the antipodes, and engaged under the 
 frozenserpent of the South. Falkland Island, which seemed 
 too remote and romantic an object for the grasp of national 
 ambition, is but a stage and resting-place in the progress of 
 their victorious industry. Nor is the equinoctial heat more 
 discouraging to them than the accumulated winter of both 
 the poles. We know, that, whilst some of them draw the line 
 and strike the harpoon on the coast of Africa, others run the 
 
84 BURKE 
 
 longitude, and pursue their gigantic game along the coast’ of 
 Brazil. No sea but what is vexed by their fisheries. No 
 climate that is not witness to their toils. Neither the per- 
 severance of Holland, nor the activity of France, nor the 
 dexterous and firm sagacity of English enterprise ever car- 
 ried this most perilous mode of hardy industry to the ex- 
 tent to which it has been pushed by this recent people,—a 
 people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not 
 yet hardened into the bone of manhood. When I contem- 
 plate these things,—when I know that the colonies in general 
 owe little or nothing to any care of ours, and that they are 
 ‘not squeezed into this happy form by the constraints of 
 watchful and suspicious government, but that, through a 
 wise and salutary neglect, a generous nature has been suf- 
 fered to take her own way to perfection,—when I reflect up- 
 on these effects, when I see how profitable they have been 
 to us, I feel all the pride of power sink, and all presumption 
 in the wisdom of human contrivances melt and die away 
 within me,—my rigour relents,—I pardon something to the 
 Spirit of liberty. | 
 
 I am sensible, Sir, that all which I have asserted in my 
 detail is admitted in the gross, but that quite a different 
 conclusion is drawn from it. America, gentlemen say, is a 
 noble object,—it is an object well worth fighting for. 
 Certainly it is, if fighting a people be the best way of gain- 
 ing them. Gentlemen in this respect will be led to their 
 choice of means by their complexions and their habits. 
 Those who understand the military art will of course have 
 some predilection for it. Those who wield the thunder of 
 the state may have more confidence in the efficacy of arms. 
 But I confess, possibly for want of this knowledge, my opin- 
 ion is much more in favour of prudent management than of 
 force,—considering force not as an odious, but a feeble in- 
 strument, for preserving a people so numerous, so active, so 
 growing, so spirited as this, in a profitable and subordinate 
 connection with us. 
 
 First, Sir, permit me to observe, that the use of force alone 
 
CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA 85 
 
 is but temporary. It may subdue for a moment; but it 
 does not remove the necessity of subduing again: and a 
 nation is not governed which is perpetually to be con- 
 quered. | 
 
 My next objection is its uncertainty. Terror is not al- 
 ways the effect of force, and an armament is not a victory. 
 If you do not succeed, you are without resource: for, cons 
 ciliation failing, force remains; but, force failing, no further 
 hope of reconciliation is left. Power and authority are 
 sometimes bought by kindness; but they can never be 
 begged as alms by an impoverished and defeated violence. | 
 
 A further objection to force is, that you impair the object 
 by your very endeavours to preserve it. The thing you 
 fought for is not the thing which you recover, but depreciated, 
 sunk, wasted, and consumed in the contest. Nothing less 
 will content me than whole America. I do not choose to 
 consume its strength along with our own; because in all parts 
 it is the British strength that I consume. I do not choose 
 to be caught by aforeign enemy at the end of this exhausting 
 conflict, and still less in the midst of it. I may escape, but 
 I can make no insurance against suchanevent. Let meadd, 
 that I do not choose wholly to break the American spirit; 
 because it is the spirit that has made the country. 
 
 Lastly, we have no sort of experience in favour of force as 
 an instrument in the rule of our colonies. Their growth and 
 their utility has been owing to methods altogether different. 
 Our ancient indulgence has been said to be pursued toa 
 fault. It may beso; but we know, if feeling is evidence, 
 that our fault was more tolerable than our attempt to mend 
 it, and our sin far more salutary than our penitence. 
 
 These, Sir, are my reasons for not entertaining that high 
 opinion of untried force by which many gentlemen, for 
 whose sentiments in other particulars I have great respect, 
 seem to be so greatly captivated. But there is still behind 
 a third consideration concerning this object, which serves to 
 determine my opinion on the sort of policy which ought -to 
 be pursued in the management of America, even more than 
 
86 BURKE 
 
 its population and its commerce: I mean its temper and 
 character. 
 
 In this character of the Americans a love of freedom is 
 the predominating feature which marks and distinguishes 
 the whole: and as an ardent is always a jealous affection, 
 your colonies become suspicious, restive, and untractable, 
 whenever they see the least attempt to wrest from them by 
 force, or shuffle from them by chicane, what they think the 
 only advantage worth living for. This fierce spirit of liberty 
 is stronger in the English colonies, probably, than in any 
 other people of the earth, and this from a great variety of 
 powerful causes; which, to understand the true temper 
 of their minds, and the direction which this spirit takes, 
 it will not be amiss to lay open somewhat more largely. 
 
 First, the people of the colonies are descendants of English- 
 men. England, Sir, is a nation which still, I hope, respects, 
 and formerly adored, her freedom. The colonists emigrated 
 from you when this part of your character was most pre- 
 dominant; and they took this bias and direction the mo- 
 ment they parted from your hands. They are therefore not 
 only devoted to liberty, but to liberty according to English 
 ideas and on English principles. Abstract liberty, like 
 other mere abstractions, is not to be found. Liberty inheres 
 in some sensible object; and every nation has formed to 
 itself some favourite point, which by way of eminence be- 
 comes the criterion of their happiness. It happened, you 
 know, Sir, that the great contests for freedom in this coun- 
 try were from the earliest times chiefly upon the question 
 of taxing. Most of the contests in the ancient common- 
 wealths turned primarily on the right of election of magis- 
 trates, or on the balance among the several orders of the 
 state. The question of money was not with them so imme- 
 diate. But in England it was otherwise. On this point of 
 taxes the ablest pens and most eloquent tongues have been 
 exercised, the greatest spirits have acted and suffered. In 
 order to give the fullest satisfaction concerning the impor- 
 tance of this point, it was not only necessary for those who 
 
CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA 87 
 
 in argument defended the excellence of the English Consti- 
 tution to insist on this privilege of granting money as a dry 
 point of fact, and to prove that the right had been acknowl- 
 edged in ancient parchments and blind usages to reside in a 
 certain body called an House of Commons: they went much 
 further: they attempted to prove, and they succeeded, that 
 in theory it ought to be so, from the particular nature of a 
 House of Commons, as an immediate representative of the 
 people, whether the old records had delivered this oracle or 
 not. They took infinite pains to inculcate, as a fundamen- 
 tal principle, that in all monarchies the people must in 
 effect themselves, mediately,or immediately, possess the power 
 of granting their own money, or no shadow of liberty could 
 subsist. The colonies draw from you, as with their life-blood, 
 these ideasand principles. Their love of liberty, as with you, 
 fixed and attached on this specific point of taxing. Liberty 
 might be safe or might be endangered in twenty other par- 
 ticulars without their being much pleased or alarmed. 
 Here they felt its pulse; and as they found that beat, they 
 thought themselves sick or sound. I do not say whether 
 they were right or wrong in applying your general argu- 
 ments to their own case. It is not easy, indeed, to make a 
 monopoly of theorems and corollaries, The fact, is that they 
 did thus apply those general arguments; and your mode of 
 governing them, whether through lenity or indolence, 
 through wisdom or mistake, confirmed them in the imagi- 
 nation, that they, as well as you, had an interest in these 
 common principles. 
 
 They were further confirmed in this pleasing error by the 
 form of their provincial legislative assemblies. Their govern- 
 ments. are popular in an high degree: some are merely 
 popular; in all, the popular representative is the most 
 weighty; and this share of the people in their ordinary 
 government never fails to inspire them with lofty senti- 
 ments, and with a strong aversion from whatever tends to 
 deprive them of their chief importance. 
 
 If anything were wanting to this necessary operation of 
 
88 | | BURKE 
 
 the form of government, religion would have given it a com- 
 plete effect. Religion, always a principle of energy, in this 
 new people is no way worn out or impaired ; and their mode 
 of professing it is also one main cause of this free spirit. 
 The people are Protestants, and of that kind which is the 
 most adverse to all implicit submission of mind and opinion. 
 This is a persuasion not only favourable to liberty, but built 
 upon it. Ido not think, Sir, that the reason of this averse- 
 ness in the dissenting churches from all that looks like ab- 
 solute government is so much to be sought in their religious 
 tenets as in their history. Every one knows that the Roman 
 Catholic religion is at least coeval with most of the govern- 
 ments where it. prevails, that it has generally gone hand in 
 hand with them, and received great favour and every kind of 
 support from authority. The Church of England, too, was 
 formed from her cradle under the nursing care of regular 
 government. But the dissenting interests have sprung up 
 in direct opposition to all the ordinary powers of the world, 
 and could justify that opposition only on a strong claim to 
 natural liberty. Their very existence depended on the 
 powerful and unremitted assertion of that claim. All Protes- 
 tantism, even the most cold and passive, is a sort of dissent. 
 But the religion most prevalent in our northern colonies is 
 a refinement on the principle of resistance: it is the dissi- 
 dence of dissent, and the protestantism of the Protestant 
 religion. This religion, under a variety of denominations 
 agreeing in nothing but in the communion of the spirit of 
 liberty, is predominant in most of the northern provinces, 
 where the Church of England, notwithstanding its legal 
 rights, is in reality no more than a sort of private sect, not 
 composing, most probably, the tenth of the people. The 
 colonists left England when this spirit was high, and in the 
 emigrants was the highest of all; and even that stream 
 of foreigners which has been constantly flowing into 
 these colonies has, for the greatest part, been composed 
 of dissenters from. the establishments of their several 
 countries, and have brought with them a temper and 
 
CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA 89 
 
 character far from alien to that of the people with whom 
 they mixed. | : 
 Sir,I can perceive, by their manner, that some gentlemen 
 object to the latitude of this description, because in the 
 southern colonies the Church of England forms a large body, 
 and has a regular establishment. It is certainly true. There 
 is, however, a circumstance attending these colonies, which, 
 in my opinion, fully counterbalances this difference, and 
 makes the spirit of liberty still more high and haughty than 
 in those to the northward. It is, that in Virginia and the 
 Carolinas they have a vast multitude of slaves. Where this 
 is the case in any part of the world, those who are free are 
 by far the most proud and jealous of their freedom.  Free- 
 dom is to them not only an enjoyment, but a kind of rank 
 and privilege. Not seeing there, that freedom, as in countries 
 where it is a common blessing, and as broad and general as 
 the air, may be united with much abject toil, with great 
 misery, with all the exterior of servitude, liberty looks, 
 amongst them, like something that is more noble and liberal. 
 I do not mean, Sir, to commend the superior morality of 
 this sentiment, which has at least as much pride as virtue in 
 it; but I can notalter the nature of man. The fact is so; 
 and these people of the southern colonies are much more 
 strongly, and with an higher and more stubborn spirit, 
 attached to liberty, than those to the northward. Such 
 were all the ancient commonwealths; such were our Gothic 
 ancestors; such in our days were the Poles; and such will 
 be all masters of slaves, who are not slaves themselves. In 
 such a people, the haughtiness of domination combines with 
 the spirit of freedom, fortifies it, and renders it invincible. 
 Permit me, Sir, to add another circumstance in our col- 
 onies, which contributes no mean part towards the growth 
 and effect of this untractable spirit: I mean their education. 
 In no country, perhaps, in the world is the law so general a 
 study. The profession itself is numerous and powerful, and 
 in most provinces it takes the lead. The greater number of 
 the deputies sent to the Congress were lawyers, But all 
 
90 BURKE 
 
 who read, and most do read, endeavour to obtain some 
 smattering in that science. I have been told by an eminent 
 bookseller, that in no branch of his business, after tracts of 
 popular devotion, were so many books as those on the law 
 exported to the plantations. The colonists have now fallen 
 into the way of printing them for their own use. I hear 
 that they have sold nearly as many of Blackstone’s “ Com- 
 mentaries’”’ in America as in England. General Gage marks 
 out this disposition very particularly in a letter on your 
 table. He states, that all the people in his government are 
 lawyers, or smatterers in law,—and that in Boston they have 
 been enabled, by successful chicane, wholly to evade many 
 parts of one of your capital penal constitutions. The smart- 
 ness of debate will say, that this knowledge ought to teach 
 them more clearly the rights of legislature, their obligations 
 to obedience, and the penalties of rebellion. All this is 
 mighty well. But my honourable and learned friend ® on the 
 floor, who condescends to mark what I say for animadver- 
 sion, will disdain that ground. He has heard, as well as I, 
 that, when great honours and great emoluments do not win 
 over this knowledge to the service of the state, it is a for- 
 midable adversary to government. If the spirit be not tamed 
 and broken by these happy methods, it is stubborn and liti- 
 gious. Abeunt studia in mores. This study renders men 
 acute, inquisitive, dexterous, prompt in attack, ready in 
 defense, full of resources. In other countries, the people, 
 more simple, and of a less mercurial cast, judge of an ill 
 principle in government only by an actual grievance; here 
 they anticipate the evil, and judge of the pressure of the 
 grievance by the badness of the principle. They augur mis- 
 government at a distance, and snuff the approach of tyranny 
 in every tainted breeze. 
 The last cause of this disobedient spirit in the colonies is 
 hardly less powerful than the rest, as it»is not merely moral, 
 but laid deep in the natural constitution of things. Three 
 thousand miles of ocean lie between you andthem. No con- 
 trivance can prevent the effect of this distance in weakening 
 
CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA ene 
 
 government. Seas roll, and months pass, between the 
 order and the execution; and the want of a speedy explan- 
 ation of a single point is enough to defeat an whole system. 
 You have, indeed, winged ministers of vengeance, who 
 carry your bolts in their pounces to the remotest verge of 
 the sea: but there a power stepsin, that limits the arrogance 
 of raging passions and furious elements, and says, ‘‘So far 
 shalt thou go, and no farther.” Who are you, that should 
 fret and rage, and bite the chains of Nature? Nothing 
 worse happens to you than does to all nations who have ex- 
 tensive empire ; and it happens in all the forms into which 
 empire can be thrown. Im large bodies, the circulation of 
 power must be less vigorous at the extremities. Nature has 
 said it. The Turk can not govern Egypt, and Arabia, and 
 Kurdistan, as he governs Thrace; nor has he the same 
 dominion in Crimea and Algiers which he has at Brusa and 
 Smyrna. Despotism itself is obliged to truck and huckster. 
 The Sultan gets such obedience as he can. He governs 
 with a loose rein, that he may govern at all ; and the whole 
 of the force and vigour of his authority in his center is derived 
 from a prudent relaxation in all his borders. Spain, in her 
 provinces, is perhaps not so well obeyed as you are in yours, 
 She complies, too; she submits; she watchestimes. This 
 is the immutable condition, the eternal law, of extensive and 
 detached empire. 
 
 Then, Sir, from these six capital sources, of descent, of 
 form of government, of religion in the northern provinces, 
 of manners in the southern, of education, of the remoteness 
 of situation from the first mover of government,—from all 
 these causes a fierce spirit of liberty has grown up. It has 
 grown with the growth of the people in your colonies, and 
 increased with the increase of their wealth: a spirit, that, 
 unhappily meeting with an exercise of power in England, 
 which, however lawful, is not reconcilable to any ideas of 
 liberty, much less with theirs, has kindled this flame that is 
 ready to consume us. 
 
 I do not mean to commend either the spirit in this excess, 
 
92 BURKE 
 
 or the moral causes which produce it. Perhaps a more 
 smooth and accommodating spirit of freedom in them would 
 be more acceptableto us. Perhaps ideas of liberty might be 
 desired more reconcilable with an arbitrary and boundless 
 authority. Perhaps we might wish the colonists to be per- 
 suaded that their liberty is more secure when held in trust 
 for them by us (as their guardians during a perpetual 
 minority) than with any part of it in their own hands. But 
 the question is not, whether their spirit deserves praise or 
 blame,—what, in the name of God, shall we do with it? 
 You have before you the object, such as it is,—with all its 
 glories, with all its imperfections on its head. You see the 
 magnitude, the importance, the temper, the habits, the dis- 
 orders. By all these considerations we are strongly urged 
 to determine something concerning it. We are called upon 
 to fix some rule and line for our future conduct, which 
 may give a little stability to our politics, and prevent the 
 return of such unhappy deliberations as the present. Every 
 such return will bring the matter before us in a still more - 
 untractable form. For what astonishing and incredible things 
 have we not seen already! What monsters have not been 
 generated from this unnatural contention! Whilst every prin- 
 ciple of authority and resistance has been pushed, upon both 
 sides, as far as it would go, there is nothing so solid and cer- 
 tain, either in reasoning or in practise, that has not been 
 shaken. Until very lately, all authority in America seemed 
 to be nothing but an emanation from yours. Even the pop- 
 ular part of the colony constitution derived all its activity, 
 and its first vital movement, from the pleasure of the crown. 
 We thought Sir, that the utmost which the discontented col- 
 onists could do was to disturb authority; we never dreamt 
 they could of themselves supply it, knowing in general what an 
 operose business it is to establish a government absolutely 
 new. But having, for our purposes in this contention, re- 
 solved that none but an obedient assembly should sit, the 
 humors of the people there, finding all passage through the 
 legal channel stopped, with great violence broke out another 
 
CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA 93 
 
 way. Some provinces have tried their experiment, as we have 
 tried ours; and theirs has succeeded. They have formed a 
 government sufficient for its purposes, without the bustle ofa 
 revolution, or the troublesome formality of an election. Evi- 
 dent necessity and tacit consent have done the business in an 
 instant. So well they have done it, that Lord Dunmore 
 (the account is among the fragments on your table) tells 
 you that the new institution is infinitely better obeyed 
 than the ancient government ever was in its most fortunate 
 periods. Obedience is what makes government and not the 
 names by which it is called: not the name of Governor, as 
 formerly, or Committee, as at present. This new govern- 
 ment has originated directly from the people, and was not 
 transmitted through any of the ordinary artificial media of a 
 positive constitution. It was not a manufacture ready formed 
 and transmitted to them in that condition from England. 
 The evil arising from hence is this: that the colonists hav- 
 ing once found the possibility of enjoying the advantages of 
 order in the midst of a struggle for liberty, such struggles 
 will not henceforward seem so terrible to the settled and 
 sober part of mankind as they had appeared before the 
 trial. 
 
 Pursuing the same plan of punishing by the denial of the 
 exercise of government to still greater lengths, we wholly 
 abrogated the ancient government of Massachusetts. We 
 were confident that the first feeling, if not the very prospect 
 of anarchy, would instantly enforce a complete submission. 
 The experiment was tried. A new, strange, unexpected 
 face of things appeared. Anarchy is found tolerable. A 
 vast province has -now subsisted, and subsisted ina consider- 
 able degree of health and vigour, for near a twelvemonth, 
 without governor, without public council, without judges, 
 without executive magistrates. How long it will continue 
 in this state, or what may arise out of this unheard-of situa- 
 tion, how can the wisest of us conjecture? Our late experi- 
 ence has taught us that many of those fundamental princi- 
 ples formerly believed infallible are either not of the impor- 
 
94 BURKE 
 
 tance they were imagined to be, or that we have not at all ad- 
 verted to some other far more important and far more pow- 
 erful principles which entirely overrule those we had con- 
 sidered as omnipotent. I am much against any further 
 experiments which tend to put to the proof any more of 
 these allowed opinions which contribute so much to the pub- 
 lic tranquillity. In effect, we suffer as much at home by 
 this loosening of all ties, and this concussion of all estab- 
 lished opinions, as we do abroad. For, in order to prove 
 that the Americans have no right to their liberties, we are 
 every day endeavouring to subvert the maxims which preserve 
 the whole spirit of our own. To prove that the Americans 
 ought not to be free, we are obliged to depreciate the value 
 of freedom itself; and we never seem to gain a paltry ad- 
 vantage over them in debate, without attacking some of 
 those principles, or deriding some of those feelings, for which 
 our ancestors have shed their blood. 
 
 But, Sir, in wishing to put an end to pernicious experi- 
 ments, I do not mean to preclude the fullest inquiry. Far 
 from it. Far from deciding on a sudden or partial view, I 
 would patiently go round and round the subject, and survey it 
 minutely in every possible aspect. Sir, if I were capable of en- 
 gaging you toan equal attention, I would state, that, as far as 
 I am capable of discerning, there are but three ways of pro- 
 ceeding relative to this stubborn spirit which prevails in your 
 colonies and disturbs your government. These are,—to 
 change that spirit, as inconvenient, by removing the causes,— 
 to prosecute it, as criminal,—or to comply with it, as necessary. 
 I would not be guilty of an imperfect enumeration; I can 
 think of but these three. Another has, indeed, been started, 
 —that of giving up the colonies; but it met so slight a re- 
 ception that I do not think myself obliged to dwell a great 
 while uponit. It isnothing but alittle sally of anger, like the 
 frowardness of peevish children, who, when they can not get 
 all they would have, are resolved to take nothing. 
 
 The first of these plans—to change the spirit, as inconve- 
 nient, by removing the causes—I think is the most like a 
 
CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA 95 
 
 systematic proceeding. It isradicalinits principle; but it is 
 attended with great difficulties: some of them little short, as 
 I conceive, of impossibilities. This will appear by examining 
 into the plans which have been proposed. 
 
 As the growing population of the colonies is evidently 
 one cause of their resistance, it was last session mentioned in 
 both Houses, by men of weight, and received not without 
 applause, that, in order to check this evil, it would be proper 
 for the crown to make no further grants of land. But to 
 this scheme there are two objections. The first, that there 
 is already so much unsettled land in private hands as to 
 afford room for an immense future population, although the 
 crown not only withheld its grants, but annihilated its soil. 
 If this be the case, then the only effect of this avarice of 
 desolation, this hoarding of a royal wilderness, would be to 
 raise the value of the possessions in the hands of the great 
 private monopolists, without any adequate check to the 
 growing and alarming mischief of population. 
 
 But if you stopped your grants, what would be the con- 
 sequences? The people would occupy without grants. 
 They have already so occupied in many places. Youcannot 
 station garrisons in every part of these deserts. If you 
 drive the people from one place, they will carry on their 
 annual tillage, and remove with their flocks and herds to an- 
 other. Many of the people in the back settlements are 
 already little attached to particular situations. Already they 
 have topped the Appalachian mountains. From thence they 
 behold before them an immense plain, one vast, rich, level 
 meadow: a square of five hundred miles. Over this they | 
 would wander without a possibility of restraint ; they would 
 change their manners with the habits of their life; would 
 soon forget a government by which they were disowned ; 
 would become hordes of English Tartars, and, pouring down 
 upon your unfortified frontiers a fierce and irresistible cavalry, 
 become masters of your governors and your counsellors, 
 your collectors and comptrollers, and of all the slaves that 
 adhered to them. Such would, and, in no long time, must 
 
 es 
 
96 BURKE 
 
 be, the effect of attempting to forbid as a crime, and to sup- 
 press as an evil, the command and blessing of Providence, 
 “ Increase and multiply.” Such would be the happy result 
 of an endeavour to keepas a lair of wild beasts that earth 
 which God by an express charter has given to the children 
 of men. Far different, and surely much wiser, has been our 
 policy hitherto. Hitherto we have invited our people, by 
 every kind of bounty, to fixed establishments. We have in-. 
 vited the husbandman to look to authority for histitle. We 
 have taught him piously to believe in the mysterious virtue 
 of wax and parchment. We have thrown each tract of land, 
 as it was peopled, into districts, that the ruling power should 
 never be wholly out of sight. We have settled all we could; 
 and we have carefully attended every settlement with 
 government. 
 
 Adhering, Sir, as I do, to this policy, as well as for the rea- 
 sons I have just given, I think this new project of hedging 
 in population to be neither prudent nor practicable. 
 
 To impoverish the colonies in general, and in particular.to 
 arrest the noble course of their marine enterprises, would be 
 amore easy task. I freely confess it. We have shown a 
 disposition to a system of this kind,—a disposition even to 
 continue the restraint after the offense,—looking on our- 
 selves as rivals to our colonies, and persuaded that of course 
 we must gain all that they shall lose. Much mischief we 
 may certainly do. The power inadequate to all other things 
 is often more than sufficient for this. I do not look on the 
 direct and immediate power of the colonies to resist our vio- 
 lence as very formidable. In this, however, I may be mis- 
 taken. But when I consider that we have colonies for no 
 purpose but tobe serviceable to us, it seems to my poor 
 understanding a little preposterous to make them unservice- 
 able, in order to keep them obedient. It is, in truth, noth- 
 ing more than the old, and, as I thought, exploded problem 
 of tyranny, which proposes to beggar its subjects into sub- 
 mission. But remember, when you have completed your 
 system of impoverishment, that Nature still proceeds in her 
 
CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA 07 
 
 ordinary course ; that discontent will increase with misery ; 
 and that there are critical moments in the fortune of all 
 states, when they who are too weak to contribute to your 
 prosperity may be strong enough to complete your ruin. 
 Spoliatis arma supersunt. 
 
 The temper and character which prevail in our colonies 
 are, I am afraid, unalterable by any human art. Wecan not, 
 I fear, falsify the pedigree of this fierce people, and persuade 
 them that they are not sprung from a nation in whose veins 
 the blood of freedom circulates. The language in which 
 they would hear you tell them this tale would detect the 
 imposition ; your speech would betray you. An English- 
 man is the unfittest person on earth to argue another Eng- 
 lishman into slavery. 
 
 I think it is nearly as little in our power to change their 
 republican religion as their free descent, or to substitute the 
 Roman Catholic as a penalty, or the Church of England as 
 an improvement. The mode of inquisition and dragooning 
 is going out of fashion in the Old World, and I should not 
 confide much to their efficacy in the New. The education 
 of the Americans is also on the same unalterable bottom 
 with their religion. Youcan not persuade them to burn their 
 books of curious science, to banish their lawyers from their 
 courts of law, or to quench the lights of their assemblies by 
 refusing to choose those persons who are best read in their 
 _ privileges. It would be no less impracticable to think of 
 wholly annihilating the popular assemblies in which these 
 lawyers sit. The army, by which we must govern in their 
 place, would be far more chargeable to us, not quite so ef- 
 fectual, and perhaps, in the end, full as difficult to be kept in 
 obedience. 
 
 With regard to the high aristocratic spirit of Virginia and 
 the southern colonies, it has been proposed, I know, to re- 
 duce it by declaring a general enfranchisement of their slaves. 
 This project has had its advocates and panegyrists; yet I 
 never could argue myself into any opinion of it. Slaves are 
 
 often much attached to their masters. A general wild offer 
 7 
 
98 BURKE 
 
 of liberty would not always be accepted. History furnishes 
 few instances of it. It is sometimes as hard to persuade 
 slaves to be free as it is to compel freemen to be slaves; 
 and in this auspicious scheme we should have both these 
 pleasing tasks on our hands at once. But when we talk of 
 enfranchisement, do we not perceive that the American 
 master may enfranchise, too, and arm servile hands in 
 defense of freedom ?—a measure to which other people have 
 had recourse more than once, and not without success, in a 
 desperate situation of their affairs. 
 
 Slaves as these unfortunate black people are, and dull as 
 all men are from slavery, must they not a little suspect the 
 offer of freedom from that very nation which has sold them 
 to their present masters,—from that nation, one of whose 
 causes of quarrel with those masters is their refusal to deal any 
 more in that inhuman traffic? An offer of freedom from 
 England would come rather oddly, shipped to them in an 
 African vessel, which is refused an entry into the ports of 
 Virginia or Carolina, with a cargo of three hundred Angola 
 negroes. It would be curious to see the Guinea captain at- 
 tempting at the same instant to publish his proclamation 
 of liberty and to advertise his sale of slaves. 
 
 But let us suppose all these moral difficulties got over. 
 The ocean remains, You can not pump this dry; and as 
 long as it continues in its present bed so long all the causes 
 which weaken authority by distance will continue. 
 
 “ Ye Gods ! annihilate but space and time, 
 And make two lovers happy.” 
 
 was a pious and passionate prayer,—but just as reasonable as 
 many of the serious wishes of very grave and solemn poli- 
 ticians. 
 
 If, then, Sir, it seems almost desperate to think of any al- 
 terative course for changing the moral causes (and not 
 quite easy to remove the natural) which produce prejudices 
 irreconcilable to the late exercise of our authority, but that 
 the spirit infallibly will continue, and continuing, will produce 
 
CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA 99 
 
 such effects as now embarrass us,—the second mode under 
 consideration is, to prosecute that spirit in its overt acts, 
 as criminal. 
 
 At this proposition, I must pause a moment. The thing 
 seems a great deal too big for my ideas of jurisprudence. It 
 should seem, to my way of conceiving such matters, that 
 there is a very wide difference, in reason and policy, between 
 the mode of proceeding on the irregular conduct of scat- 
 tered individuals, or even of bands of men, who disturb 
 order within the state, and the civil dissensions which may, 
 from time to time, on great questions, agitate the several 
 communities which compose a great empire. It looks to 
 me to be narrow and pedantic to apply the ordinary ideas 
 of criminal justice to this great public contest. I do not 
 know the method of drawing up an indictment against an 
 whole people. I can not insult and ridicule the feelings of 
 millions of my fellow-creatures as Sir Edward Coke in- 
 sulted one excellent individual (Sir Walter Raleigh) at the 
 bar. I am not ripe to pass sentence on the gravest public 
 bodies, intrusted with magistracies of great authority and 
 dignity, and charged with the safety of their fellow-citizens, 
 upon the very same title that I am. I really think that for 
 wise men this is not judicious, for sober men not decent, for 
 minds tinctured with humanity not mild and merciful. 
 
 Perhaps, Sir, I am mistaken in my idea of an empire. 
 as distinguished from a single state or kingdom. But my 
 idea of it is this: that an empire is the aggregate of many 
 states under one common head, whether this head be a 
 monarch or a presiding republic. It does, in such constitu- 
 tions, frequently happen (and nothing but the dismal, cold, 
 dead uniformity of servitude can prevent its happening) 
 that the subordinate parts have many local privileges and im- 
 munities. Between these privileges and the supreme common 
 authority the line may be extremely nice. Of course dis- 
 putes, often, too, very bitter disputes, and much ill blood, will 
 arise. But though every privilege is an exemption (in the 
 case) from the ordinary exercise of the supreme authority, it 
 
100 BURKE 
 
 isno denial of it. The claim of a privilege seems rather, ex 
 vi termini, to imply asuperior power: for to talk of the priv- 
 ileges of a state or of a person who has no superior is hardly 
 any better than speaking nonsense. Now in such unfortu- 
 nate quarrels among the component parts of a great political 
 union of communities, I can scarcely conceive anything more 
 completely imprudent than for the head of the empire to insist 
 that if any privilege is pleaded against his will or his acts, 
 that his whole authority is denied,—instantly to proclaim 
 rebellion, to beat to arms, and to put the offending provinces 
 under the ban. Will not this, Sir, very soon teach the 
 provinces to make no distinctions on their part? Will it not 
 teach them that the government against which a claim of 
 liberty is tantamount to high treason is a government to 
 which submission is equivalent to slavery? It may not al- 
 ways be quite convenient to impress dependent communities 
 with such an idea. 
 
 We are, indeed, in all disputes with the colonies, by the 
 necessity of things, the judge. It is true, Sir. But I con- 
 fess that the character of judge in my own cause is a thing 
 that frightens me. Instead of filling me with pride, I am 
 exceedingly humbled by it. Icannot proceed with a stern, 
 assured judicial confidence, until I find myself in something 
 more like a judicial character. I must have these hesitations 
 as long as I am compelled to recollect, that, in my little 
 reading upon such contests as these, the sense of mankind 
 has at least as often decided against the superior as the sub- 
 ordinate power. Sir, let me add, too, that the opinion of 
 my having some abstract right in my favour would not put 
 me much at my ease in passing sentence, unless I could be 
 sure that there were no rights which, in their exercise under 
 certain circumstances, were not the most odious of all wrongs 
 and the most vexatious of all injustice. Sir, these consider- 
 ations have great weight with me, when I find things so 
 circumstanced that I see the same party at once a civil liti- 
 gant against me in a point of right and a culprit before me, 
 while I sit as criminal judge on acts of his whose moral 
 
CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA IOL 
 
 quality is to be decided upon the merits of that very litiga- 
 tion. Men are every now and then put, by the complexity 
 of human affairs, into strange situations; but justice is the 
 same, let the judge be in what situation he will. 
 
 There is, Sir, also a circumstance which convinces me that 
 this mode of criminal proceeding is not (at least in the pres- 
 ent stage of our contest) altogether expedient,—which is 
 nothing less than the conduct of those very persons who 
 have seemed to adopt that mode, by lately declaring a re- 
 bellion in Massachusetts Bay, as they had formerly addressed 
 to have traitors brought hither, under an act of Henry the 
 Eighth, for trial. For, though rebellion is declared, it is not 
 proceeded against as such; nor have any steps been taken 
 towards the apprehension or conviction of any individual 
 offender, either on our late or our former address; but 
 modes of public coercion have been adopted, and such as 
 have much more resemblance to a sort of qualified hostility 
 towards an independent power than the punishment of re- 
 bellious subjects. All this seems rather inconsistent ; but it 
 shows how difficult it is to apply these juridical ideas to our 
 present case. 
 
 In this situation, let us seriously and coolly ponder. 
 What is it we have got by all our menaces, which have been 
 many and ferocious? What advantage have we derived 
 from the penal laws we have passed, and which, for the time, 
 _ have been severe and numerous? What advances have we 
 made towards our object, by the sending of a force, which, 
 by land and sea, is no contemptible strength? Has the 
 disorder abated? Nothing less—When I see things in this 
 situation, after such confident hopes, bold promises, and 
 active exertions, I can not, for my life, avoid a suspicion that 
 the plan itself is not correctly right. 
 
 If, then, the removal of the causes of this spirit of Ameri- 
 can liberty be, for the greater part, or rather entirely, im- 
 practicable,—if the ideas of criminal process be inapplicable, 
 or, if applicable, are in the highest degree inexpedient, what 
 way yet remains? No way is open, but the third and last,— 
 
102 BURKE 
 
 to comply with the American spirit as necessary, or, if you 
 please, to submit to it as a necessary evil. 
 
 If we adopt this mode, if we mean to conciliate and con- 
 cede, let us see of what nature the concession ought to be. 
 To ascertain the nature of our concession, we must look at 
 their complaint. The colonies complain that they have not 
 the characteristic mark and seal of British freedom. They 
 complain that they are taxed in a Parliament in which they 
 are not represented. If you mean to satisfy them at all, you 
 must satisfy them with regard to this complaint. If you 
 mean to please any people, you must give them the boon 
 which they ask,—not what you may think better for them, 
 but of a kind totally different. Such an act may be a wise 
 regulation, but it is no concession; whereas our present 
 theme is the mode of giving satisfaction. 
 
 Sir, I think you must perceive that I am resolved this day 
 to have nothing at all to do with the question of the right of 
 taxation. Some gentlemen startle,—but it is true: I put it 
 totally out of the question. It is less than nothing in my 
 consideration. I do not indeed wonder, nor will you, Sir, 
 that gentlemen of profound learning are fond of displaying 
 it on this profound subject. But my consideration is narrow, 
 confined, and wholly limited to the policy of the question. 
 I do not examine whether the giving away a man’s money be 
 a power excepted and reserved out of the general trust of 
 government, and how far all mankind, in all forms of polity, 
 are entitled to an exercise of that right by the charter of 
 Nature,—or whether, on the contrary, a right of taxation is 
 necessarily involved in the general principle of legislation, 
 and inseparable from the ordinary supreme power. These 
 are deep questions, where great names militate against each 
 other, where reason is perplexed, and an appeal to authori- 
 ties only thickens the confusion: for high and reverend au- 
 thorities lift up their heads on both sides, and there is no 
 sure footing inthe middle. This point isthe great Serbonian 
 bog, betwixt Damiata and Mount Casius old, where armies 
 whole have sunk. Ido not intend to be overwhelmed in that 
 
CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA 103 
 
 bog, though in such respectable company. The question with 
 me is, not whether you have a right to render your people 
 miserable, but whether it is not your interest to make them 
 happy. Itis not what a lawyer tells me I may do, but what 
 humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do. Isa 
 politic act the worse for being a generous one? Is no con- 
 cession proper, but that which is made from your want of 
 right to keep what you grant? Or does it lessen the grace 
 or dignity of relaxing in the exercise of an odious claim, be- 
 cause you have your evidence-room full of titles, and your 
 magazines stuffed with arms to enforce them? What sig- 
 nify all those titles and all those arms? Of what avail are 
 they, when the reason of the thing tells me that the asser- 
 tion of my title is the loss of my suit, and that I could do 
 nothing but wound myself by the use of my own weapons? 
 
 Such is steadfastly my opinion of the absolute necessity of 
 keeping up the concord of this empire by a unity of spirit, 
 though in a diversity of operations, that, if I were sure the 
 colonists had, at their leaving this country, sealed a regular 
 compact of servitude, that they had solemnly abjured all the 
 rights of citizens, that they had made a vow to renounce all 
 ideas of liberty for them and their posterity to all genera- 
 tions, yet I should hold myself obliged to conform to the 
 temper I found universally prevalent in my own day, and to 
 govern two millions of men, impatient of servitude, on the 
 principles of freedom. I am not determining a point of law; 
 I am restoring tranquillity; and the general character and 
 situation of a people must determine what sort of govern- 
 ment is fitted for them. That point nothing else can or 
 ought to determine. 
 
 My idea, therefore, without considering whether we yield 
 as matter of right or grant as matter of favour, is, to admit 
 the people of our colonies into an interest in the Constitu- 
 tion, and, by recording that admission in the journals of 
 Parliament, to give them as strong an assurance as the 
 nature of the thing will admit that we mean forever to ad- 
 here to that solemn declaration of systematic indulgence. 
 
104. BURKE 
 
 Some years ago, the repeal of a revenue act, upon its 
 understood principle, might have served to show that we 
 intended an unconditional abatement of the exercise of a 
 taxing power. Such a measure was then sufficient to remove 
 all suspicion and to give perfect content. But unfortunate 
 events since that time may make something further neces- 
 sary,—and not more necessary for the satisfaction of the 
 colonies than for the dignity and consistency of our own 
 future proceedings. 
 
 I have taken a very incorrect measure of the disposition 
 of the House, if this proposal in itself would be received 
 with dislike. I think, Sir, we have few American financiers. 
 But our misfortune is, we are too acute, we are too exquisite 
 in our conjectures of the future, for men oppressed with 
 such great and present evils. The more moderate among 
 the opposers of Parliamentary concession freely confess that 
 they hope no good from taxation; but they apprehend the 
 colonists have further views, and if this point were conceded, 
 they would instantly attack the trade laws. These gentle- 
 men are convinced that this was the intention from the 
 beginning, and the quarrel of the Americans with taxation 
 was no more than a cloak and cover to this design. Such 
 has been the language even of a gentleman ® of real modera- 
 tion, and of a natural temper well adjusted to fair and equal 
 government. 1 am, however, Sir, not a little surprised at 
 this kind of discourse, whenever I hear it; and I am the 
 more surprised on account of the arguments which I con- 
 stantly find in company with it, and which are often urged 
 from the same mouths and on the same day. 
 
 For instance, when we allege that it is against reason to 
 tax a people under so many restraints in trade as the Ameri- 
 cans, the noble lord 7 in the blue ribbon shall tell you that 
 the restraints on trade are futile and useless, of no advantage 
 to us, and of no burden to those on whom they are im- 
 posed,—that the trade to America is not secured by the 
 Acts of Navigation, but by the natural and irresistible ad- 
 vantage of a commercial preference. 
 
CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA 105 
 
 Such is the merit of the trade laws in this posture of the 
 debate. But when strong internal circumstances are urged 
 against the taxes,—when the scheme is dissected,—when 
 experience and the nature of things are brought to prove, 
 and do prove, the utter impossibility of obtaining an effective 
 revenue from the colonies,—when these things are pressed, 
 or rather press themselves, so as to drive the advocates of 
 colony taxes to a clear admission of the futility of the 
 scheme,—then, Sir, the sleeping trade laws revive from their 
 trance, and this useless taxation is to be kept sacred, not for 
 its own sake, but as a counter-guard and security of the laws 
 of trade. 
 
 Then, Sir, you keep up revenue laws which are mischiev- 
 ous in order to preserve trade laws that are useless. Such 
 is the wisdom of our plan in both its members. They are 
 separately given up as of no value; and yet one is always to 
 be defended for the sake of the other. But Ican not agree 
 with the noble lord, nor with the pamphlet from whence he 
 seems to have borrowed these ideas concerning the inutility 
 of the trade laws. For, without idolizing them, I am sure 
 they are still, in many ways, of great use to us; and in former 
 times they have been of the greatest. They do confine, and 
 they do greatly narrow, the market for the Americans. But 
 my perfect conviction of this does not help me in the least 
 to discern how the revenue laws form any security whatso- 
 ever to the commercial regulations,— or that these commer- 
 cial regulations are the true ground of the quarrel,—or that 
 the giving way, in any one instance, of authority is to lose 
 all that may remain unconceded. 
 
 One fact is clear and indisputable: the public and avowed 
 origin of this quarrel was on taxation. This quarrel has, 
 indeed, brought on new disputes on new questions, but cer- 
 tainly the least bitter, and the fewest of all, on the trade 
 laws. To judge which of the two be the real, radical cause 
 of quarrel, we have to see whether the commercial dispute 
 did, in order of time, precede the dispute on taxation. 
 There is not a shadow of evidence for it. Next, to enable 
 
106 BURKE 
 
 us to judge whether at this moment a dislike to the trade 
 laws be the real cause of quarrel, it is absolutely necessary 
 to put the taxes out of the question by a repeal. See how 
 the Americans act in this position, and then you will be 
 able to discern correctly what is the true object of the con- 
 troversy, or whether any controversy at all will remain. 
 Unless you consent to remove this cause of difference, it is 
 impossible, with decency, to assert that the dispute is not 
 upon what it is avowed to be. And I would, Sir, recom- 
 mend to your serious consideration, whether it be prudent 
 to form a rule for punishing people, not on their own acts, 
 but on your conjectures. Surely it is preposterous, at the 
 very best. It is not justifying your anger by their miscon- 
 duct, but it is converting your ill-will into their delinquency. 
 
 But the colonies will go further.—Alas! alas! when 
 will this speculating against fact and reason end? What 
 will quiet these panic fears which we entertain of the hostile 
 effect of a conciliatory conduct? Is it true that no case can 
 exist in which it is proper for the sovereign to accede to the 
 desires of his discontented subjects? Is there anything pe- 
 culiar in this case, to make a rule for itself? Is all authority 
 of course lost, when it is not pushed to the extreme? Is it 
 a certain maxim, that, the fewer causes of dissatisfaction are 
 left by government, the more the subject will be inclined to 
 resist and rebel ? 
 
 All these objections being in fact no more than suspicions, 
 conjectures, divinations, formed in defiance of fact and ex- 
 perience, they did not, Sir, discourage me from entertain- 
 ing the idea of a conciliatory concession, founded on the 
 principles which I have just stated. 
 
 In forming a plan for this purpose, I endeavoured to put 
 myself in that frame of mind which was the most natural and 
 the most reasonable, and which was certainly the most prob- 
 able means of securing me from all error. I set out witha 
 perfect distrust of my own abilities, a total renunciation of 
 every speculation of my own, and with a profound reverence 
 for the wisdom of our ancestors, who have left us the inheri- 
 
CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA 107 
 
 tance of so happy a Constitution and so flourishing an em- 
 pire, and, what is a thousand times more valuable, the treas- 
 ury of the maxims and principles which formed the one and 
 obtained the other. 
 
 During the reigns of the kings of Spain of the Austrian 
 family, whenever they were at a loss in the Spanish coun- 
 cils, it was common for their statesmen to say that they 
 ought to consult the genius of Philip the Second. The 
 genius of Philip the Second might mislead them; and the 
 issue of their affairs showed that they had not chosen the 
 most perfect standard. But, Sir, Iam sure that I shall not 
 be misled, when, in a case of constitutional difficulty, I 
 consult the genius of the English Constitution. Consulting 
 at that oracle, (it was with all due humility and piety), I 
 found four capital examples in a similar case before me: 
 those of Ireland, Wales, Chester, and Durham. 
 
 Ireland, before the English conquest, though never gov- 
 erned by a despotic power, had no Parliament. How far 
 the English Parliament itself was at that time modeled ac- 
 cording to the present form is disputed among antiquarians, 
 But we have all the reason in the world to be assured, that 
 a form of Parliament, such as England then enjoyed, she in- 
 stantly communicated to Ireland; and we are equally sure 
 that almost every successive improvement in constitutional 
 liberty, as fast as it was made here, was transmitted thither. 
 The feudal baronage, and the feudal knighthood, the roots 
 of our primitive Constitution, were early transplanted into 
 that soil, and grew and flourished there. Magna Charta, if 
 it did not give us originally the House of Commons, gave us 
 at least an House of Commons of weight and consequence. 
 But your ancestors did not churlishly sit down alone to the 
 feast of Magna Charta. Ireland was made immediately a 
 partaker. This benefit of English laws and liberties, I con- 
 fess, was not at first extended to all Ireland. Mark the con- 
 sequence. English authority and English liberty had ex- 
 actly the same boundaries. Your standard could never be 
 advanced an inch before your privileges. Sir John Davies 
 
108 BURKE 
 
 shows beyond a doubt, that the refusal of a general commu- 
 nication of these rights was the true cause why Ireland was 
 five hundred years in subduing; and after the vain projects 
 of a military government, attempted in the reign of Queen 
 Elizabeth, it was soon discovered that nothing could make 
 that country English, in civility and allegiance, but your 
 laws and your forms of legislature. It was not English 
 arms, but the English Constitution, that conquered Ireland. 
 From that time, Ireland has ever had a general Parliament, 
 as she had before a partial Parliament. You changed the 
 people, you altered the religion, but you never touched the 
 form or the vital substance of free government in that king- 
 dom. You deposed kings; you restored them ; you altered 
 the succession to theirs, as well as to yourown crown; but 
 you never altered their Constitution, the principle of which 
 was respected by usurpation, restored with the restoration 
 of monarchy, and established, I trust, forever by the glori- 
 ous Revolution. This has made Ireland the great and 
 flourishing kingdom that it is, and, from a disgrace anda 
 burden intolerable to this nation, has rendered her a prin- 
 cipal part of our strength and ornament. This country 
 can not be said to have ever formally taxed her. The irreg- 
 ular things done in the confusion of mighty troubles, and on 
 the hinge of great revolutions, even if all were done that is 
 said to have been done, form no example. If they have any 
 effect in argument, they make an exception to prove the 
 rule. None of your own liberties could stand a moment, if 
 the casual deviations from them, at such times, were suffered 
 to be used as proofs of their nullity. By the lucrative 
 amount of such casual breaches in the Constitution, judge 
 what the stated and fixed rule of supply has been in that 
 kingdom. Your Irish pensioners would starve, if they had 
 no other fund to live on than taxes granted by English au- 
 thority. Turn your eyes to those popular grants from 
 whence all your great supplies are come, and learn to respect 
 that only source of public wealth in the British empire. 
 
 My next example is Wales. This country was said to 
 
CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA 109 
 
 be reduced by Henry the Third. It was said more truly to 
 be so by Edward the First. But though then conquered, it 
 was not looked upon as any part of the realm of England: 
 Its old Constitution, whatever that might have been, was 
 destroyed; and no good one was substituted in its place. 
 The care of that tract was put into the hands of Lords 
 Marchers: a form of government of a very singular kind; a 
 strange, heterogeneous monster, something between hostil- 
 ity and government: perhaps it has a sort of resemblance, 
 according to the modes of those times, to that of com- 
 mander-in-chief at present, to whom all civil power is granted 
 as secondary. The manners of the Welsh nation followed 
 the genius of the government; the people were ferocious, res- 
 tive, savage, and uncultivated ; sometimes composed, never 
 pacified. Wales, within itself, was in perpetual disorder; 
 and it kept the frontier of England in perpetual alarm. 
 Benefits from it to the state there were none. Wales was 
 only known to England by incursion and invasion. 
 
 Sir, during that state of things, Parliament was not idle. 
 They attempted to subdue the fierce spirit of the Welsh by 
 all sorts of rigorous laws. They prohibited by statute the 
 sending all sorts of arms into Wales, as you prohibit by pro- 
 clamation (with something more of doubt on the legality) 
 the sending arms to America. They disarmed the Welsh 
 by statute, as you attempted (but still with more question 
 on the legality) to disarm New England by an instruction. 
 They made an act to drag offenders from Wales into Eng- 
 land for trial, as you have done (but with more hardship) 
 with regard to America. By another act, where one of the 
 parties was an Englishman, they ordained that his trial 
 should be always by English. They made acts to restrain 
 trade, as you do; and they prevented the Welsh from the 
 use of fairs and markets, as you do the Americans from fish- 
 eries and foreign ports. In short, when the statute-book 
 was not quite so much swelled as it is now, you find no less 
 than fifteen acts of penal regulation on the subject of Wales. 
 
 Here we rub our hands,—a fine body of precedents for 
 
IIo BURKE 
 
 the authority of Parliament and the use of it !—I admit it 
 fully; and pray add likewise to these precedents, that all 
 the while Wales rid this kingdom like an incubus; that it 
 was an unprofitable and oppressive burden; and that an 
 Englishman traveling in that country could not go six yards 
 from the high-road without being murdered. 
 
 The march of the human mind is slow. Sir, it was not 
 until after two hundred years discovered, that, by an eternal 
 law, Providence had decreed vexation to violence, and 
 poverty to rapine. Your ancestors did, however, at length 
 open their eyes to the ill husbandry of injustice. They 
 found that the tyranny of a free people could of all tyrannies 
 the least be endured, and that laws made against an whole 
 nation were not the most effectual methods for securing its 
 obedience. Accordingly, in the twenty-seventh year of 
 Henry the Eighth the course was entirely altered. Witha 
 preamble stating the entire and perfect rights of the crown 
 of England, it gave to the Welsh all the rights and privileges 
 of English subjects. A political order was established; the 
 military power gave way to the civil; the marches were 
 turned into counties. But that a nation should have a right 
 to English liberties, and yet no share at all in the funda- 
 mental security of these liberties,—the grant of their own 
 property,—seemed a thing so incongruous, that eight years 
 after, that is, in the thirty-fifth of that reign, a complete and 
 not ill-proportioned representation by counties and boroughs 
 was bestowed upon Wales by act of Parliament. From 
 that moment, as by acharm, the tumults subsided ; obedience 
 was restored; peace, order, and civilization followed in the 
 train of liberty. When the day-star of the English Consti- 
 tution had arisen in their hearts, all was harmony within and 
 without :— 
 
 “ Simul alba nautis 
 Stella refulsit 
 Defluit saxis agitatus humor, 
 Concidunt venti, fugiuntque nubes, 
 
 Et minax (quod sic voluere) ponto 
 Unda recumbit.” 
 
CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA II!I 
 
 The very same year the County Palatine of Chester 
 received the same relief from its oppressions, and the same 
 remedy to its disorders. Before this time Chester was little 
 less distempered than Wales. The inhabitants, without 
 rights themselves, were the fittest to destroy the rights of 
 others; and from thence Richard the Second drew the stand- 
 ing army of archers with which for a time he oppressed 
 England. The people of Chester applied to Parliament in 
 a petition penned as I shall read to you. 
 
 “To the king our sovereign lord, in most humble wise 
 shown unto your most excellent Majesty, the inhabitants of 
 your Grace’s County Palatine of Chester: That where the 
 said County Palatine of Chester is and hath been alway 
 hitherto exempt, excluded, and separated out and from your 
 high court of Parliament, to have any knights and burgesses 
 within the said court; by reason whereof the said inhabi- 
 tants have hitherto sustained manifold disherisons, losses, and 
 damages, as well in their lands, goods and bodies, as in the 
 good, civil, and politic governance and maintenance of the 
 common wealth of their said country: And forasmuch as 
 the said inhabitants have always hitherto been bound by the 
 acts and statutes made and ordained by your said Highness, 
 and your most noble progenitors, by authority of the said 
 court, as far forth as other counties, cities, and boroughs 
 have been, that have had their knights and burgesses within 
 your said court of Parliament, and yet have had neither 
 knight ne burgess there for the said County Palatine ; the 
 said inhabitants, for lack thereof, have been oftentimes 
 touched and grieved with acts and statutes made within 
 the said court, as well derogatory unto the most ancient 
 jurisdictions, liberties, and privileges of your said County 
 Palatine, as prejudicial unto the common wealth, quietness, 
 rest, and peace of your Grace’s most bounden subjects in- 
 habiting within the same.” 
 
 What did Parliament with this audacious address ?—Re- 
 ject it as a libel? Treat it as an affront to government ? 
 Spurn it as aderogation from the rights of legislature? Did 
 
112 BURKE 
 
 they toss it over the table? Did they burn it by the hands 
 of the common hangman ?—They took the petition of griev- 
 ance, all rugged as it was, without softening or tempera- 
 ment, unpurged of the original bitterness and indignation 
 of complaint; they made it the very preamble to their act 
 of redress, and consecrated its principle to all ages in the 
 sanctuary of legislation. 
 
 Here is my third example. It was attended with the suc- 
 cess of the two former. Chester, civilized as well as Wales, 
 has demonstrated that freedom, and not servitude, is the 
 cure of anarchy; as religion, and not atheism, is the true 
 remedy for superstition. Sir, this pattern of Chester was 
 followed,in the reign of Charles the Second with regard to the 
 County Palatine of Durham, which is my fourth example. 
 This county had long lain out of the pale of free legislation. 
 So scrupulously was the example of Chester followed, that 
 the style of the preamble is nearly the same with that of the 
 Chester act; and, without affecting the abstract extent of 
 the authority of Parliament, it recognizes the equity of not 
 suffering any considerable district, in which the British sub- 
 jects may act as a body, to be taxed without their own voice 
 in the grant. 
 
 Now if the doctrines of policy contained in these preambles 
 and the force of these examples in the acts of Parliament, 
 avail anything, what can be said against applying them with 
 regard to America? Arenotthe people of America as much 
 Englishmen as the Welsh ? The preamble of the act of Henry 
 the Eighth says, the Welsh speak alanguage no way resembl- 
 ing that of his Majesty’s English subjects. Are the Americans 
 not as numerous? If we may trust the learned and accurate 
 Judge Barrington’s account of North Wales, and take that as 
 a standard to measure the rest, there is no comparison. The 
 people cannot amount to above 200,000: not a tenth part of 
 the numberinthe colonies. Is Americain rebellion? Wales 
 was hardly ever free from it. Have you attempted to govern 
 America by penal statutes? You made fifteen for Wales. 
 But your legislative authority is perfect with regard to 
 
CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA I13 
 
 America: was it less perfect in Wales, Chester, and Durham ? 
 But America is virtually represented. What! does the 
 electric force of virtual representation more easily pass over 
 the Atlantic than pervade Wales, which lies in your neigh- 
 bourhood ? or than Chesterand Durham, surrounded by abun- 
 dance of representation that is actual and palpable? But, Sir, 
 your ancestors thought this sort of virtual representation, 
 however ample, to be totally insufficient for the freedom of 
 the inhabitants of territories that are so near, and compara- 
 tively soinconsiderable. How, then, can I think it sufficient 
 for those which are infinitely greater, and infinitely more 
 remote ? 
 
 You will now, Sir, perhaps imagine that I am on the point 
 of proposing to you a scheme for a representation of the 
 colonies in Parliament. Perhaps I might be inclined to 
 entertain some such thought; but a great flood stops me in 
 my course. Opposuit Natura. Ican not remove the eternal 
 barriers of the creation. The thing, in that mode, I do not 
 know to be possible. As I meddle with no theory, I do not 
 absolutely assert the impracticability of such a representa- 
 tion; but I do not see my way to it; and those who have 
 been more confident have not been more successful. How- 
 ever, the arm of public benevolence is not shortened; and 
 there are often several means to the same end. What 
 Nature has disjoined in one way wisdom may unite in an- 
 other. When we can not give the benefit as we would wish, 
 let us not refuse it altogether. If wecan not give the prin- 
 cipal, let us find a substitute. But how? where? what 
 substitute ? 
 
 Fortunately, I am not obliged, for the ways and means of 
 this substitute, to tax my own unproductive invention. lI 
 am not even obliged to go to the rich treasury of the fertile 
 framers of imaginary commonwealths: not to the Republic 
 of Plato, not to the Utopia of More, not to the Oceana of 
 Harrington. It is before me,—it is at my feet,— 
 
 “ And the rude swain 
 Treads daily on it with his clouted shoon.” 
 
114 BURKE 
 
 I only wish you to recognize, for the theory, the ancient 
 constitutional policy of this kingdom with regard to repre- 
 sentation, as that policy has been declared in acts of Parlia- 
 ment,—and as to the practise, to return to that mode which 
 an uniform experience has marked out to you as best, and 
 in which you walked with security, advantage, and honour, 
 until the year 1763. 
 
 My resolutions, therefore, mean to establish the ents 
 and justice of a taxation of America by grant, and not by 
 imposition; to mark the legal competency of the colony 
 assemblies for the support of their government in peace, and 
 for public aids in time of war; to acknowledge that this 
 legal competency has had a dutiful and beneficial exercise, 
 and that experience has shown the benefit of their grants, 
 and the futility of Parliamentary taxation, as a method of 
 supply. 
 
 These solid truths compose six fundamental propositions. 
 There are three more resolutions corollary to these. If you 
 admit the first set, you can hardly reject the others. But if 
 you admit the first, I shall be far from solicitous whether 
 you accept or refuse the last. I think these six massive 
 pillars will be of strength sufficient to support the temple of 
 British concord. I have no more doubt than I entertain of 
 my existence, that, if you admitted these, you would com- 
 mand an immediate peace, and, with but tolerable future 
 management, a lasting obedience in America, I am not 
 arrogant in this confident assurance. The propositions are 
 all mere matters of fact; and if they are such facts as draw 
 irresistible conclusions even in the stating, this is the power 
 of truth, and not any management of mine. 
 
 Sir, I shall open the whole plan to you, together with such 
 observations on the motions as may tend to illustrate them, 
 where they may want explanation. 
 
 The first is a resolution,—“ That the colonies and planta- 
 tions of Great Britain in North America, consisting of four- 
 teen separate governments, and containing two millions and 
 upwards of free inhabitants, have not had the liberty and 
 
 « 
 
CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA Il5 
 
 privilege of electing and sending any knights and bur- 
 gesses, or others, to represent them in the high court of 
 Parliament.” 
 
 This is a plain matter of fact, necessary to be laid down, 
 and (excepting the description) it is laid down in the lan- 
 guage of the Constitution ; it is taken nearly verbatim from . 
 acts of Parliament. 
 
 The second is like unto the first,—“ That the said colonies 
 and plantations have been made liable to, and bounden by, 
 several subsidies, payments, rates, and taxes, given and 
 granted by Parliament, though the said colonies and planta- 
 tions have not their knights and burgesses in the said high 
 court of Parliament, of their own election, to represent the con- 
 dition of their country ; by lack whereof they have been often 
 times touched and grieved by subsidies, given, granted, and 
 assented to, in the said court, ina manner prejudicial to the 
 common wealth, quietness, rest, and peace of the subjects 
 inhabiting within the same.” 
 
 Is this description too hot or too cold, too strong or too 
 weak? Does it arrogate too much to the supreme legis- 
 lature? Does it lean too much to the claims of the people ? 
 If it runs into any of these errors, the fault is not mine. It 
 is the language of your own ancient acts of Parliament. 
 
 ‘** Non meus hic sermo, sed que precepit Ofellus 
 Rusticus, abnormis sapiens.”’ 
 
 It is the genuine produce of the ancient, rustic, manly, 
 home-bred sense of this country. I did not dare to rub off 
 a particle of the venerable rust that rather adorns and pre- 
 serves than destroys the metal. It would be a profanation 
 to touch with a tool the stones which construct the sacred 
 altar of peace. I would not violate with modern polish the 
 ingenuous and noble roughness of these truly constitutional 
 materials. Above all things, I was resolved not to be 
 guilty of tampering,—the odious vice of restless and unstable 
 minds. I put my foot in the tracks of our forefathers, where 
 I can neither wander nor stumble. Determining to fix arti- 
 
116 BURKE 
 
 cles of peace, I was resolved not to be wise beyond what was 
 written; I was resolved to use nothing else than the form of 
 sound words, to let others abound in their own sense, and 
 carefully to abstain from all expressions of my own. What 
 the law has said, I say. In all things else Iam silent. I 
 have no organ but for her words. This, if it be not ingeni- 
 ous, I am sure is safe. 
 
 There are, indeed, words expressive of grievance in this 
 second resolution, which those who are resolved always to be 
 in the right will deny to contain matter of fact, as applied to 
 the present case; although Parliament thought them true 
 with regard to the Counties of Chester and Durham. They 
 will deny that the Americans were ever “touched and 
 grieved” with the taxes. _ If they consider nothing in taxes 
 but their weight as pecuniary impositions, there might be 
 some pretence for this denial. But men may be sorely 
 touched and deeply grieved in their privileges, as well as in 
 their purses. Men may lose little in property by the act 
 which takes away all their freedom. When a man is robbed 
 of a trifle on the highway, it is not the twopence lost that 
 constitutes the capital outrage. This is not confined to 
 privileges. Even ancient indulgences withdrawn, without 
 offense on the part of those who enjoyed such favours, oper- 
 ate as grievances. But were the Americans, then, not 
 touched and grieved by the taxes, in some measure, merely 
 as taxes? If so, why were they almost all either wholly re- 
 pealed or exceedingly reduced? Were they not touched and 
 grieved even by the regulating duties of the sixth of George 
 the Second? Else why were the duties first reduced to one 
 third in 1764, and afterwards to a third of that third in the 
 year 1766? Were they not touched and grieved by the 
 Stamp Act? I shall say they were, until that tax is re- 
 vived. Were they not touched and grieved by the duties 
 of 1767, which were likewise repealed, and which Lord 
 Hillsborough tells you (for the ministry) were laid contrary 
 to the true principle of commerce? Is not the assurance 
 given by that noble person to the colonies of a resolution to 
 
CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA 117 
 
 lay no more taxes on them an admission that taxes would 
 touch and grieve them? Is not the resolution of the noble 
 lord in the blue ribbon, now standing on your journals, the 
 strongest of all proofs that Parliamentary subsidies really 
 touched and grieved them? Else why all these changes, 
 modifications, repeals, assurances, and resolutions ? 
 
 The next proposition is,—‘ That, from the distance of the 
 said colonies, and from other circumstances, no method hath 
 hitherto been devised for procuring a representation in Par- 
 liament for the said colonies.” 
 
 This is an assertion of a fact. I go no further on the 
 paper; though, in my private judgment, an useful represen- 
 tation is impossible; Iam sure it is not desired by them, 
 nor ought it, perhaps, by us: but I abstain from opinions. 
 
 The fourth resolution is,—‘‘ That each of the said colonies 
 hath within itself a body, chosen, in part or in the whole, by 
 the freemen, freeholders, or other free inhabitants thereof, 
 commonly called the General Assembly, or General Court, 
 with powers legally to raise, levy, and assess, according to 
 the several usages of such colonies, duties and taxes towards 
 defraying all sorts of public services.” 
 
 This competence in the colony assemblies is certain. It 
 is proved by the whole tenor of their acts of supply in all 
 the assemblies, in which the constant style of granting is, 
 “An aid to his Majesty”; and acts granting to the crown 
 have regularly, for near a century, passed the public offices 
 without dispute. Those who have been pleased paradoxi- 
 cally to deny this right, holding that none but the British 
 Parliament can grant to the crown, are wished to look to 
 what is done, not only in the colonies, but in Ireland, in one 
 uniform, unbroken tenor, every session. Sir, I am surprised 
 that this doctrine should come from some of the law servants 
 of the crown. I say, that, if the crown could be responsible, 
 his Majesty,—but certainly the ministers,and even these 
 law officers themselves, through whose hands the acts pass 
 biennially in Ireland, or annually in the colonies, are in an 
 habitual course of committing impeachable offenses. What 
 
118 BURKE 
 
 habitual offenders have been all Presidents of the Council, 
 all Secretaries of State, all First Lords of Trade, all Attor- 
 neys and all Solicitors General! However, they are safe, as 
 no one impeaches them; and there is no ground of charge 
 against them, except in their own unfounded theories. 
 
 The fifth resolution is also a resolution of fact,—“ That 
 the said general assemblies, general courts, or other bodies 
 legally qualified as aforesaid, have at sundry times freely 
 granted several large subsidies and public aids for his 
 Majesty’s service, according to their abilities, when required 
 thereto by letter from one of his Majesty’s principal Secre- 
 taries of State ; and that their right to grant the same, and 
 their cheerfulness and sufficiency in the said grants, have 
 been at sundry times acknowledged by Parliament.” 
 
 To say nothing of their great expenses in the Indian wars, 
 and not to take their exertion in foreign ones, so high as the 
 supplies in the year 1695, not to go back to their public con- 
 tributions in the year 1710, I shall begin to travel only where 
 the journals give me light,—resolving to deal in nothing but 
 fact authenticated by Parliamentary record, and to build 
 myself wholly on that solid basis. 
 
 On the 4th of April, 1748,8 a committee of this House 
 came to the following resolution :— 
 
 “ Resolved, That it is the opinion of this committee, that 
 it is just and reasonable, that the several provinces and colo- 
 nies of Massachusetts Bay, New Hampshire, Connecticut, 
 and Rhode Island be reimbursed the expenses they have 
 been at in taking and securing to the crown of Great Britain 
 the island of Cape Breton and its dependencies.” 
 
 These expenses were immense for such colonies. They 
 were above 200,000/. sterling: money first raised and ad- 
 vanced on their public credit. 
 
 On the 28th of January, 1756°a message from the king 
 came to us, to this effect :—‘“‘ His Majesty, being sensible of 
 the zeal and vigour with which his faithful subjects of cer- 
 tain colonies in North America have exerted themselves in 
 defense of his Majesty’s just rights and possessions, recom- 
 
CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA IIg 
 
 mends it to this House to take the same into their consider- 
 ation, and to enable his Majesty to give them such assistance 
 as may be a proper reward and encouragement. 
 On the 3d of February, 1756 1 the House came to a suit- 
 able resolution, expressed in words nearly the same as those 
 of the message; but with the further addition, that the 
 money then voted was as an encouragement to the colonies 
 to exert themselves with vigour. It will not be necessary to 
 go through all the testimonies which your own records have 
 given to the truth of my resolutions. I will only refer you 
 to the places in the journals :-— 
 Vol. XXVII.—16th and I9th May, 1757. 
 Vol. XXVIII.—June Ist, 1758,—April 26th and 30th, 
 1759,—March 26th and 31st, and April 28th, 1760, 
 —Jan. oth and 2oth, 1761. 
 
 Vol. XXIX.—Jan. 22d and 26th, 1762,—March 14th and 
 Path} 1763: 
 
 Sir, here is the repeated acknowledgment of Parliament, 
 that the colonies not only gave, but gave to satiety. This 
 nation has formally acknowledged two things : first, that the 
 colonies had gone beyond their abilities, Parliament having 
 thought it necessary to reimburse them; secondly, that they 
 had acted legally and laudably in their grants of money, and 
 their maintenance of troops, since the compensation is ex- 
 pressly given as reward and encouragement. Reward is not 
 bestowed for acts that are unlawful; and encouragement is 
 not held out to things that deserve reprehension. My reso- 
 lution, therefore, does nothing more than collect into one 
 proposition what is scattered through your journals. I give 
 you nothing but your own; and you cannot refuse in the 
 gross what you have so often acknowledged in detail. The 
 admission of this, which will be so honourable to them and to 
 _ you, will, indeed, be mortal to all the miserable stories 
 by which the passions of the misguided people have been 
 engaged in an unhappy system. The people heard, indeed, 
 from the beginning of these disputes, one thing continually 
 dinned in their ears: that reason and justice demanded, that 
 
120 BURKE 
 
 the Americans, who paid no taxes, should be compelled to 
 contribute. How did that fact, of their paying nothing, 
 stand, when the taxing system began? When Mr. Gren- 
 ville began to form his system of American revenue, he 
 stated in this House that the colonies were then in debt two 
 million six hundred thousand pounds sterling money, and 
 was of opinion they would discharge that debt in four years. 
 On this state, those untaxed people were actually subject to 
 the payment’of taxes to the amount of six hundred and fifty 
 thousand a year. In fact, however, Mr. Grenville was mis- 
 taken. The funds given for sinking the debt did not prove 
 quite so ample as both the colonies and he expected. The 
 calculation was too sanguine: the reduction was not com- 
 pleted till some years after, and at different times in differ- 
 ent colonies. However, the taxes after the war continued 
 too great to bear any addition, with prudence or propriety ; 
 and when the burdens imposed in consequence of former re- 
 quisitions were discharged, our tone became too high to 
 resort again to requisition. Nocolony, since that time, ever 
 has had any requisition whatsoever made to it. 
 
 We see the sense of the crown, and the sense of Parlia- 
 ment, on the productive nature of arevenue by grant. Now 
 search the same journals for the produce of the revenue by 
 imposition. Where is it ?>—let us know the volume and the 
 page. What is the gross, what is the net produce? To 
 what service is it applied ? How have you appropriated its 
 surplus ?>—What ! can none of the many skilful index-makers 
 that we are now employing find any trace of it >—Well, let 
 them and that rest together.—But are the journals, which 
 say nothing of the revenue, as silent on the discontent P— 
 Oh, no! a child may find it. It isthe melancholy burden 
 and blot of every page. 
 
 I think, then, I am, from those journals, justified in the 
 sixth and last resolution, which is,—‘“‘ That it hath been 
 found by experience, that the manner of granting the said 
 supplies and aids by the said general assemblies hath been 
 more agreeable to the inhabitants of the said colonies, and 
 
CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA 121 
 
 more beneficial and conducive to the publicservice, than the 
 mode of giving and granting aids and subsidies in Parliament, 
 to be raised and paid in the said colonies.” 
 
 This makes the whole of the fundamental part of the plan. 
 The conclusion is irresistible. You can notsay that you were 
 driven by any necessity to an exercise of the utmost rights 
 of legislature. You cannot assert that you took on your- 
 selves the task of imposing colony taxes, from the want of 
 another legal body that is competent to the purpose of sup- 
 plying the exigencies of the state without wounding the 
 prejudices of the people. Neither is it true that the body so 
 qualified, and having that competence, had neglected the 
 duty. 
 
 The question now, on all this accumulated matter is,— 
 Whether you will choose to abide by a profitable experience 
 or a mischievous theory ? Whether you choose to build on 
 imagination or fact? whether you prefer enjoyment or 
 hope ? satisfaction in your subjects, or discontent ? 
 
 If these propositions are accepted, everything which has 
 been made to enforce a contrary system must, I take it for 
 sranted, fall along with it. On that ground, I have drawn 
 the following resolution, which, when it comes to be moved, 
 will naturally be divided in a proper manner :—“ That it may 
 be proper to repeal an act, made in the seventh year of the 
 reign of his present Majesty, intituled, ‘An act for granting 
 certain duties in the British colonies and plantations in 
 America; for allowing a drawback of the duties of customs, 
 upon the exportation from this kingdom, of coffee and cocoa- 
 nuts, of the produce of the said colonies or plantations ; for 
 discontinuing the drawbacks payable on China earthenware 
 exported to America; and for more effectually preventing 
 the clandestine running of goods in the said colonies and 
 plantations..—And also, that it may be proper to repeal an 
 act, made in the fourteenth year of the reign of his present 
 Majesty, intituled, ‘ An act to discontinue, in such manner 
 and for such time as are therein mentioned, the landing and 
 discharging, lading or shipping, of goods, wares, and merchan- 
 
122 BURKE 
 
 dise, at the town and within the harbor of Boston, in the 
 province of Massachusetts Bay, in North America.’.—And 
 also, that it may be proper to repeal an act made in the 
 fourteenth year of the reign of his present Majesty, intituled, 
 ‘An act for the impartial administration of justice, in the 
 cases of persons questioned for any acts done by them, in 
 the execution of the law, or for the suppression of riots and 
 tumults, in the province of the Massachusetts Bay, in New 
 England.’—And also, that it may be proper to repeal an act, 
 made in the fourteenth year of the reign of his present 
 Majesty, intituled, ‘An act for the better regulating the 
 government of the province of the Massachusetts Bay, in 
 New England.’—And also, that it may be proper to explain 
 and amend an act, made in the thirty-fifth year of the reign 
 of King Henry the Eighth, intituled, ‘ An act for the trial 
 of treasons committed out of the king’s dominions.’ ” 
 
 I wish, Sir, to repeal the Boston Port Bill, because (in- 
 dependently of the dangerous precedent of suspending the 
 rights of the subject during the king’s pleasure) it was 
 passed, as I apprehend, with less regularity, and on more par- 
 tial principles, than it ought. The corporation of Boston 
 was not heard before it was condemned. Other towns, full 
 as guilty as she was, have not had their ports blocked up. 
 Even the Restraining Bill of the present session does not go 
 to the length of the Boston Port Act. The same ideas of 
 prudence, which induced you not to extend equal punish- 
 ment to equal guilt, even when you were punishing, induce 
 me, who mean not to chastise, but to reconcile, to be satis- 
 fied with the punishment already partially inflicted. 
 
 Ideas of prudence and accommodation to circumstances 
 prevent you from taking away the charters of Connecticut 
 and Rhode Island, as you have taken away that of Massa- 
 chusetts Colony, though the crown has far less power in 
 the two former provinces than it enjoyed in the latter, and 
 though the abuses have been full as great and as flagrant in 
 the exempted as in the punished. The same reasons of 
 prudence and accommodation have weight with me in restor- 
 
CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA 123 
 
 ing the charter of Massachusetts Bay. Besides, Sir, the act 
 which changes the charter of Massachusetts is in many par- 
 ticulars so exceptionable, that if I did not wish absolutely 
 to repeal, I would by all means desire to alter it; as several 
 of its provisions tend to the subversion of all public and 
 private justice. Such, among others, is the power in the 
 governor to change the sheriff at his pleasure, and to make a 
 new returning officer for every special cause. It is shameful 
 to behold such a regulation standing among English laws, 
 
 The act for bringing persons accused of committing mur- 
 der under the orders of government to England for trial is 
 but temporary. That act has calculated the probable dura- 
 tion of our quarrel with the colonies, and is accommodated 
 to that supposed duration. I would hasten the happy 
 moment of reconciliation, and therefore must, on my princi- 
 ple, get rid of that most justly obnoxious act. 
 
 The act of Henry the Eighth for the trial of treasons I do 
 not mean to take away, but to confine it to its proper bounds 
 and original intention: to make it expressly for trial of 
 treasons (and the greatest treasons may be committed) 
 in places where the jurisdiction of the crown does not 
 extend. 
 
 Having guarded the privileges of local legislature, I would 
 next secure to the colonies a fair and unbiased judicature ; 
 for which purpose, Sir, 1 propose the following resolution: 
 —‘ That, from the time when the general assembly, or gen- 
 eral court, of any colony or plantation in North America 
 shall have appointed, by act of assembly duly confirmed, a 
 settled salary to the offices of the chief justice and other 
 judges of the superior courts, it may be proper that the said 
 chief justice and other judges of the superior courts of such 
 colony shall hold his and their office and offices during their 
 good behaviour, and shall not be removed therefrom, but 
 when the said removal shall be adjudged by his Majesty in 
 council, upon a hearing on complaint from the general 
 assembly, or on a complaint from the governor, or the coun- 
 cil, or the house of representatives, severally, of the colony 
 
124 BURKE 
 
 in which the said chief justice and other judges have exer- 
 cised the said offices.” 
 
 The next resolution relates to the courts of admiralty. 
 It is this:—‘‘ That it may be proper to regulate the courts 
 of admiralty or vice-admiralty, authorized by the 15th chapter 
 of the 4th George the Third, in such a manner as to make 
 the same more commodious to those who sue or are sued in 
 the said courts, and to provide for the more decent mainten- 
 ance of the judges of the same.” 
 
 These courts I do not wish to take away: they are in 
 themselves proper establishments. This court is one of the 
 capital securities of the Act of Navigation. The extent of 
 its jurisdiction, indeed, has been increased; but this is al- 
 together as proper, and is, indeed, on many accounts, more 
 eligible, where new powers were wanted, than a court abso- 
 lutely new. But courts incommodiously situated, in effect, 
 deny justice; and a court partaking in the fruits of its own 
 condemnation is a robber. The Congress complain, and 
 complain justly, of this grievance. 4 
 
 These are the three consequential propositions. I have 
 thought of two or three more; but they come rather too 
 near detail, and to the province of executive government, 
 which I wish Parliament always to superintend, never to 
 assume. If the first six are granted, congruity will carry the 
 latter three. If not, the things that remain unrepealed will 
 be, I hope, rather unseemly incumbrances on the building 
 than very materially detrimental to its strength and 
 stability. 
 
 Here, Sir, I should close, but that I plainly perceive some 
 objections remain, which I ought, if possible, to remove. 
 The first will be, that, in resorting to the doctrine of our an- 
 cestors, as contained in the preamble to the Chester act, I 
 prove too much: that the grievance from a want of repre- 
 sentation, stated in that preamble, goes to the whole of 
 legislation as well as to taxation: and that the colonies, 
 erounding themselves upon that doctrine, will apply it to 
 all parts of legislative authority. 
 
CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA 125 
 
 To this objection, with all possible deference and humility, 
 and wishing as little as any man living to impair the small- 
 est particle of our supreme authority, I answer, that the 
 words are the words of Parliament, and not mine; and that 
 all false and inconclusive inferences drawn from them are 
 not mine; for I heartily disclaim any such inference. I 
 have chosen the words of an act of Parliament, which Mr. 
 Grenville, surely a tolerably zealous and very judicious advo- 
 cate for the sovereignty of Parliament, formerly moved to 
 have read at your table in confirmation of his tenets. It is 
 true that Lord Chatham considered these preambles as de- 
 claring strongly in favourof his opinions. He was a no less 
 powerful advocate for the privileges of the Americans. 
 Ought I not from hence to presume that these preambles 
 are as favourable as possible to both, when properly under- 
 stood: favourable both to the rights of Parliament, and to 
 the privilege of the dependencies of this crown? But, Sir, 
 the object of grievance in my resolution I have not taken from 
 the Chester, but from the Durham act, which confines the 
 hardship of want of representation to the case of subsidies, 
 and which therefore falls in exactly with the case of the colo- 
 nies, But whether the unrepresented counties were de jure or 
 de facto bound the preambles do not accurately distinguish ; 
 nor, indeed, was it necessary: for, whether de jure or de facto, 
 the legislature thought the exercise of the power of taxing, 
 as of right, or as of fact without right, equally a grievance, 
 and equally oppressive. 
 
 I do not know that the colonies have, in any general way, 
 or in any cool hour, gone much beyond ‘the demand of im- 
 munity in relation to taxes. It is not fair to judge of the 
 temper or dispositions of any man or any set of men, when 
 they are composed and at rest, from their conduct or their 
 expressions in a state of disturbance and irritation. It is, 
 besides, a very great mistake to imagine that mankind follow 
 up practically any speculative principle, either of government 
 or of freedom, as far as it will go in argument and logical 
 illation. We Englishmen stop very short of the principles 
 
126 BURKE 
 
 upon which we support any given part of our Constitution 
 or even the whole of it together. I could easily, if I had 
 not already tired you, give you very striking and convincing 
 instances of it. This is nothing but what is natural and 
 proper. All government, indeed every human benefit and 
 enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act, is founded 
 on compromise and barter. We balance inconveniences; 
 we give and take; we remit some rights, that we may enjoy 
 others; and we choose rather to be happy citizens than 
 subtle disputants. As we must give away some natural 
 liberty, to enjoy civil advantages, so we must sacrifice some 
 civil liberties, for the advantages to be derived from the com- 
 munion and fellowship of a great empire. But, in all fair 
 dealings, the thing bought must bear some proportion tothe 
 purchase paid. None will barter away the immediate jewel 
 of his soul. Thougha great house is apt to make slaves 
 haughty, yet it is purchasing a part of the artificial impor- 
 tance of a great empire too dear, to pay for it all essential 
 rights, and all the intrinsic dignity of human nature. None 
 of us who would not risk his life rather than fall under a 
 government purely arbitrary. But although there are some 
 amongst us who think our Constitution wants many improve- 
 ments to make it a complete system of liberty, perhaps none 
 who are of that opinion would think it right to aim at such 
 improvement by disturbing his country and risking every- 
 thing that is dear to him. In every arduous enterprise we 
 consider what we are to lose, as well as what we are to gain; 
 and the more and better stake of liberty every people possess, 
 the less they will hazard in a vain attempt to make it more. 
 These are the cords of man. Man acts from adequate mo- 
 tives relative to his interest, and not on metaphysical specu- 
 lations. Aristotle, the great master of reasoning, cautions 
 us, and with great weight and propriety, against this spe- 
 cies of delusive geometrical accuracy in moral arguments, 
 as the most fallacious of all sophistry. 
 
 The Americans will have no interest contrary to the 
 grandeur and glory of England, when they are not oppressed 
 
CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA 127 
 
 by the weight of it; and they will rather be inclined to 
 respect the acts of a superintending legislature, when they 
 see them the acts of that power which is itself the security, 
 not the rival, of their secondary importance. In this assurance 
 my mind most perfectly acquiesces,and I confess I feel not the 
 least alarm from the discontents which are to arise from 
 putting people at their ease; nor do I apprehend the de- 
 struction of this empire from giving, by an act of free grace » 
 and indulgence, to two millions of my fellow-citizens some 
 share of those rights upon which I have always been taught 
 to value myself. 
 
 It is said, indeed, that this power of granting, vested in 
 American assemblies, would dissolve the unity of the empire, 
 —which was preserved entire, although Wales, and Chester, 
 and Durham were added to it. Truly, Mr. Speaker, I do 
 not know what this unity means; nor has it ever been heard 
 of, that I know, in the constitutional policy of this country. 
 The very idea of subordination of parts excludes this notion 
 of simple and undivided unity. England is the head; but 
 she is not the head and the members too. Ireland has ever 
 had from the beginning a separate, but not an independent 
 legislature, which, far from distracting, promoted the union 
 of thewhole. Everything was sweetly and harmoniously 
 disposed through both islands for the conservation of Eng- 
 lish dominion and the communication of English liberties. 
 I do not see that the same principles might not be carried 
 into twenty islands, and with the same good effect. This is 
 my model with regard to America, as far as the internal cir- 
 cumstances of the two countries are the same. I know no 
 other unity of this empire than I can draw from its example 
 during these periods, when it seemed to my poor understand- 
 ing more united than it is now, or than it is likely to be by 
 the present methods. 
 
 But since I speak of these methods, I recollect, Mr. 
 Speaker, almost too late, that 1 promised before I finished 
 to say something of the proposition of the noble lord ® on 
 the floor, which has been so lately received, and stands on 
 
128 BURKE 
 
 your journals. I must be deeply concerned, whenever it is 
 my misfortune tocontinue a difference with the majority of 
 this House. But as the reasons for that difference are my 
 apology for thus troubling you, suffer me to state them ina 
 very few words. I shall compress them into as small a body 
 as I possibly can, having already debated that matter at large, 
 when the question was before the committee. 
 
 First, then, I can not admit that proposition of a ransom 
 by auction,—because it isa mere project. It is a thing new, 
 unheard of, supported by no experience, justified by no anal- 
 ogy, without example of our ancestors, or root in the Con- 
 stitution. It is neither regular Parliamentary taxation nor 
 colony grant. Experimentum in corpore vili is a good rule, 
 which will ever make me adverse to any trial of experiments 
 on what is certainly the most valuable of all subjects, the 
 peace of this empire. 7 
 
 Secondly, it is an experiment which must be fatal in 
 the end to our Constitution. For what is it but a scheme 
 for taxing the colonies in the antechamber of the noble lord 
 and his successors? To settle the quotas and proportions 
 in this House is clearly impossible. You, Sir, may flatter 
 yourself you shall sit 4 state auctioneer, with your hammer 
 in your hand, and knock down to each colony as it bids. 
 But to settle (on the plan laid down by the noble lord) the 
 true proportional payment for four or five and twenty gov- 
 ernments, according to the absolute and the relative wealth of 
 each, and according to the British proportion of wealth and 
 burden, is a wild and chimerical notion. This new taxation 
 must therefore come in by the back door of the Constitution. 
 Each quota must be brought to this House ready formed. 
 You can neither add nor alter. You must register it. You 
 can do nothing further. For on what grounds can you de- 
 liberate either before or after the proposition? You 
 cannot hear the council for all these provinces, quarreling 
 each on its own quantity of payment, and its proportion 
 to others. If you should attempt it, the Committee of 
 Provincial Ways and Means, or by whatever other name 
 
CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA 129 
 
 it will delight to be called, must swallow up all the time of 
 Parliament. 
 
 Thirdly, it does not give satisfaction to the complaint of 
 the colonies. They complain that they are taxed without 
 their consent. You answer, that you will fix the sum at 
 which they shall be taxed. That is, you give them the very 
 grievance for the remedy. You tell them, indeed, that you 
 will leave the mode to themselves. I really beg pardon; it 
 gives me pain to mention it ; but you must be sensible that 
 you will not perform this part of the compact. For suppose 
 the colonies were to lay the duties which furnished their 
 contingent upon the importation of your manufactures ; you 
 know you would never suffer such a tax to be laid. You know, 
 too, that you would not suffer many other modes of taxation. 
 So that, when you come to explain yourself, it will be found 
 that you will neither leave to themselves the quantum nor the 
 mode, nor indeed anything. The whole is delusion, from 
 one end to the other. | 
 
 Fourthly, this method of ransom by auction, unless it be 
 universally accepted, will plunge you into great and inextric- 
 able difficulties. In what year of our Lord are the propor- 
 tions of payments to be settled? To say nothing of the 
 impossibility that colony agents should have general powers 
 of taxing the colonies at their discretion, consider, I implore 
 you, that the communication by special messages and orders 
 between these agents and their constituents on each varia- 
 tion of the case, when the parties come to contend together, 
 and to dispute on their relative proportions, will be a 
 matter of delay, perplexity, and confusion, that never can 
 have an end. 
 
 If all the colonies do not appear at the outcry, what is 
 the condition of those assemblies who offer, by themselves 
 or their agents, to tax themselves up to your ideas of their 
 proportion? The refractory colonies, who refuse all com- 
 position, will remain taxed only to your old impositions, 
 which, however grievous in principle, are trifling as to pro- 
 duction. The obedient colonies in this scheme are heavily 
 
 2 
 
130 BURKE 
 
 taxed; the refractory remain unburdened. What will you 
 do? Will you lay new and heavier taxes by Parliament on 
 the disobedient ? Pray consider in what way you can do 
 it. You are perfectly convinced, that, in the way of taxing, 
 you can do nothing but at the ports. Now suppose it is 
 Virginia that refuses to appear at your auction, while Mary- 
 land and North Carolina bid handsomely for their ransom, 
 and are taxed to your quota, how will you put these col- 
 onies on a par? Will you tax the tobacco of Virginia? 
 If you do, you give its death-wound to your English revenue 
 at home, and to one of the very greatest articles of your 
 own foreign trade. If you tax the import of that rebellious 
 colony, what do you tax but your own manufactures, or the 
 goods of some other obedient and already well-taxed colony ? 
 Who has said one word on this labyrinth of detail, which 
 bewilders you more and more as you enter into it? Who 
 has presented, who can present, you with a clew to lead you 
 out of it? I think, Sir, it is impossible that you should not 
 recollect that the colony bounds are so implicated in one 
 another (you know it by your other experiments in the bill 
 for prohibiting the New England fishery) that you can lay 
 no possible restraints on almost any of them which may not 
 be presently eluded, if you do not confound the innocent 
 with the guilty, and burden those whom upon every prin- 
 ciple you ought to exonerate. He must be grossly ignorant 
 of America, who thinks that, without falling into this con- 
 fusion of all rules of equity and policy, you can restrain any 
 single colony, especially Virginia and Maryland, the central, 
 and most important of them all. 
 
 Let it also be considered, that either in the present con- . 
 fusion you settle a permanent contingent, which will and - 
 must be trifling, and then you have no effectual revenue,— 
 or you change the quota at every exigency, and then on every 
 new repartition you will have a new quarrel. 
 
 Reflect, besides, that, when you have fixed a quota for 
 every colony, you have not provided for prompt and punc- 
 tual payment. Suppose one, two, five, ten years’ arrears. 
 
CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA 131 
 
 You cannot issue a Treasury extent against the failing 
 colony. You must make new Boston port bills, new re- 
 straining laws, new acts for dragging men to England for 
 trial. You must send out new fleets, new armies. All is to 
 begin again. From this day forward the empire is never to 
 know an hour’s tranquillity. An intestine fire will be kept 
 alive in the bowels of the colonies, which one time or other 
 must consume this whole empire. I allow, indeed, that the 
 Empire of Germany raises her revenue and her troops by 
 quotas and contingents; but the revenue of the Empire and 
 the army of the Empire is the worst revenue and the worst 
 army in the world. 
 
 Instead of a standing revenue, you will therefore have a 
 perpetual quarrel. Indeed, the noble lord who proposed 
 this project of a ransom by auction seemed himself to be of 
 that opinion. His project was rather designed for breaking 
 the union of the colonies than for establishing a revenue. 
 He confessed he apprehended that his proposal would not 
 be to theirtaste. I say, this scheme of disunion seems to be 
 at the bottom of the project; for I will not suspect that the 
 noble lord meant nothing but merely to delude the nation 
 by an airy phantom which he never intended to realize. 
 But whatever his views may be, as I propose the peace and 
 union of the colonies as the very foundation of my plan, 
 it can not accord with one whose foundation is perpetual 
 discord. 
 
 Compare the two. This I offer to give you is plain and 
 simple: the other full of perplexed and intricate mazes. This 
 is mild: that harsh. This is found by experience effectual 
 for its purposes: the other is a new project. This is univer- 
 sal: the other calculated for certain colonies only. This is 
 immediate in its conciliatory operation: the other remote, 
 contingent, full of hazard. Mine is what becomes the dignity 
 of aruling people: gratuitous, unconditional, and not held 
 out as matter of bargain and sale. I have done my duty in 
 proposing it to you. Ihave, indeed, tired you by a long dis- 
 course; but this is the misfortune of those to whose influence 
 
132 BURKE 
 
 nothing will be conceded, and who must win every inch of 
 their ground by argument. You have heard me with good- 
 ness. May you decide with wisdom! For my part, I feel 
 my mind greatly disburdened by what I have done to-day. 
 I have been the less fearful of trying your patience, because 
 on this subject I mean to spare it altogether in future. I 
 have this comfort,—that, in every stage of the American 
 affairs, I have steadily opposed the measures that have pro- 
 duced the confusion, and may bring on the destruction, of 
 this empire. I now go so far as to risk a proposal of my 
 own. If Icannot give peace to my country, I give it to my 
 conscience. 
 
 But what (says the financier) is peace to us without 
 money? Your plan gives us no revenue.—No! But it 
 does: for it secures to the subject the power of refusal,— 
 the first of all revenues. Experience is a cheat, and fact a 
 liar, if this power in the subject, of proportioning his grant, 
 or of not granting at all, has not been found the richest mine 
 of revenue ever discovered by the skill or by the fortune of 
 man. It does not, indeed, vote you £152,750: I1: 2%ths, 
 nor any other paltry limited sum; but it gives the strong- 
 box itself, the fund, the bank, from whence only revenues 
 can arise amongst a people sensible of freedom: Posita ludi- 
 tur arca. Cannot you in England, can not you at this time 
 of day, can not you, an House of Commons, trust to the 
 principle which has raised so mighty a revenue, and accu- 
 mulated a debt of near 140 millions in this country? Is this 
 principle to be true in England and false everywhere else? 
 Is it not true in Ireland? Has it not hitherto been true in 
 the colonies? Why should you presume, that, in any 
 country, a body duly constituted for any function will neg- 
 lect to perform its duty, and abdicate its trust? Such a 
 presumption would go against all government in all modes. 
 But, in truth, this dread of penury of supply from a free 
 assembly has no foundation in Nature. For first observe, 
 that besides the desire which all men have naturally of sup- 
 porting the honourof their own government, that sense of 
 
CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA 133 
 
 dignity, and that security to property, which ever attends 
 freedom, has a tendency to increase the stock of the free 
 community. Most may be taken where most is accumu- 
 lated. And what is the soil or climate where experience has 
 not uniformly proved that the voluntary flow of heaped-up 
 plenty, bursting from the weight of its own rich luxuriance, 
 has ever run with a more copious stream of revenue than 
 could be squeezed from the dry husks of oppressed indigence 
 by the straining of all the politic machinery in the world ? 
 
 Next, we know that parties must ever exist in a free 
 country. Weknow, too, that the emulations of such parties, 
 their contradictions, their reciprocal necessities, their hopes, 
 and their fears, must send them all in their turns to him that 
 holds the balance of the state. The parties are the game- 
 sters; but government keeps the table, and is sure to be the 
 winner intheend. When this game is played, I really think 
 it is more to be feared that the people will be exhausted 
 than that government will not be supplied. Whereas what- 
 ever is got by acts of absolute power ill obeyed because 
 odious, or by contracts ill kept because constrained, will be 
 narrow, feeble, uncertain, and precarious. 
 
 “ Kase would retract 
 Vows made in pain, as violent and void.” 
 
 I, for one, protest against compounding our demands: I 
 declare against compounding, for a poor limited sum, the 
 immense, ever-growing, eternal debt which is due to gener- 
 ous government from protected freedom. And so may I 
 speed in the great object I propose to you, as I think it 
 would not only be an act of injustice, but would be the 
 worst economy in the world, to compel the colonies to a sum 
 certain, either in the way of ransom, or in the way of com- 
 pulsory compact. 
 
 But to clear up my ideas on this subject,—a revenue from 
 America transmitted hither. Do not delude yourselves: 
 you can never receive it,—no, not a shilling. We have ex- 
 perience that from remote countries it is not to be expected. 
 
134 BURKE 
 
 If, when you attempted to extract revenue from Bengal, you 
 were obliged to return in loan what you had taken in im- 
 position, what can you expect from North America? For, 
 certainly, if ever there was.a country qualified to produce 
 wealth, it is India; or an institution fit for the transmission, 
 it is the East India Company. America has none of these 
 aptitudes. If America gives you taxable objects on which 
 you lay your duties here, and gives you at the same time a 
 surplus by a foreign sale of her commodities to pay the 
 duties on these objects which you tax at home, she has per- 
 formed her part to the British revenue. But with regard to 
 her own internal establishments, she may, I doubt not she 
 will, contribute in moderation. J say in moderation; for she 
 ought not to be permitted to exhaust herself. She ought 
 to be reserved to awar; the weight of which, with the enemies 
 that we are most likely to have, must be considerable in her 
 quarter of the globe. There she may serve you, and serve 
 you essentially. 
 
 For that service, for all service, whether of revenue, trade, 
 or empire, my trust is in her interest in the British Consti- 
 tution. My hold of the colonies is in the close affection 
 which grows from common names, from kindred blood, from 
 similar privileges, and equal protection. These are ties 
 which, though light as air, are as strong as links of iron. 
 Let the colonies always keep the idea of their civil rights as- 
 sociated with your government,—they will cling and grapple 
 to you, and no force under heaven will be of power to tear 
 them from their allegiance. But let it be once understood 
 that your government may be one thing and their privileges 
 another, that these two things may exist without any mutual 
 relation,—the cement is gone, the cohesion is loosened, and 
 everything hastens to decay and dissolution. As long as 
 you have the wisdom to keep the sovereign authority of this 
 country as the sanctuary of liberty, the sacred temple conse- 
 crated to our common faith, wherever the chosen race and 
 sons of England worship freedom, they will turn their faces 
 towards you. The more they multiply, the more friends 
 
CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA 135 
 
 you will have; the more ardently they love liberty, the more 
 perfect will be their obedience. Slavery they can have any- 
 where. It is a weed that grows in every soil. They may 
 have it from Spain, they may have it from Prussia. But un- 
 til you become lost to all feeling of your true interest and 
 your natural dignity, freedom they can have from none but 
 you. This is the commodity of price, of which you have 
 the monopoly. This is the true Act of Navigation, which 
 binds to you the commerce of the colonies, and through 
 them secures to you the wealth of the world. Deny them 
 this participation of freedom and you break that sole bond 
 which originally made, and must still preserve, the unity of 
 the empire. Do not entertain so weak an imagination as 
 that your registers and your bonds, your affidavits and 
 your sufferances, your cockets and your clearances, are 
 what form the great securities of your commerce. Do not 
 dream that your letters of office, and your instructions, 
 and your suspending clauses are the things that hold to- 
 gether the great contexture of this mysterious whole. 
 These things do not make your government. Dead instru- 
 ments, passive tools as they are, it is the spirit of the 
 English communion that gives all their life and efficacy to 
 them. It is the spirit of the English Constitution, which, 
 infused through the mighty mass, pervades, feeds, unites, 
 invigorates, vivifies every part of the empire, even down to 
 the minutest member. 
 
 Is it not the same virtue which does everything for us here 
 in England? Do you imagine, then, that it is the Land-tax 
 Act which raises your revenue? that it isthe annual vote in 
 the Committee of Supply which gives you your army ? or 
 that it is the Mutiny Bill which inspires it with bravery and 
 discipline? No! surely, no! It is the love of the people; 
 it is their attachment to their government, from the sense of 
 the deep stake they have in such a glorious institution, 
 which gives you your army and your navy, and infuses into 
 both that liberal obedience without which your army would 
 bea base rabble and your navy nothing but rotten timber. 
 
136 | BURKE 
 
 All this, I know well enough, will sound wild and chimer- 
 ical to the profane herd of those vulgar and mechanical poli- 
 ticians who have no place among us; a sort of people who 
 think that nothing exists but what is gross and material,— 
 and who, therefore, far from being qualified to be directors 
 of the great movement of empire, are not fit to turn a wheel 
 in the machine. But to men truly initiated and rightly 
 taught, these ruling and master principles, which in the opin- 
 ion of such men as I have mentioned have no substantial 
 existence, are in truth everything, and all inall. Magnanimity 
 in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom ; and a great em- 
 pire and little minds go ill together. If we are conscious of 
 our situation, and glow with zeal to fill our place as be- 
 comes our station and ourselves, we ought to auspicate all 
 our public proceedings on America with the old warning of 
 the Church, “Sursumcorda!’’ We ought to elevate our minds 
 to the greatness of that trust to which the order of 
 Providence has called us. By adverting to the dignity of 
 this high calling our ancestors have turned a savage wilder- 
 ness into a glorious empire, and have made the most exten- 
 sive and the only honourable conquests, not by destroying, 
 but by promoting the wealth, the number, the happiness of 
 the human race. Let us get an American revenue as we 
 have got an American empire. English privileges have 
 made it all that it is; English privileges alone will make it 
 all it can be. 
 
 In full confidence of this unalterable truth, I now (quod 
 felix faustumque sit!) lay the first stone of the Temple of 
 Peace; and I move you,— 
 
 “That the colonies and plantations of Great Britain in 
 North America, consisting of fourteen separate govern- 
 ments, and containing two millions and upwards of free in- 
 habitants, have not had the liberty and privilege of electing 
 and sending any knights and burgesses, or others, to repre- 
 sent them in the high court of Parliament.” 
 
 “That the said colonies and plantations have been made 
 liable to, and bounden by, several subsidies, payments, rates, 
 
CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA 137 
 
 and taxes; given and granted by Parliament, though the 
 said colonies and plantations have not their knights and bur- 
 gesses in the said high court of Parliament, of their own 
 election, to represent the condition of their country ; dy lack 
 whereof they have been oftentimes touched and grieved by 
 subsidies, given, granted, and assented to, in the said court, in 
 a manner prejudicial to the commonwealth, quietness, rest, 
 and peace of the subjects inhabiting within the same.” 
 
 “That, from the distance of the said colonies, and from 
 other circumstances, no method hath hitherto been devised 
 for procuring a representation in Parliament for the said 
 colonies.” 
 
 “ That each of the said colonies hath within itself a body, 
 chosen, in part or in the whole, by the freemen, freeholders, 
 or other free inhabitants thereof, commonly called the Gen- 
 eral Assembly, or General Court, with powers legally to 
 raise, levy, and assess, according to the several usages of 
 such colonies, duties and taxes towards defraying all sorts of 
 public services.” #8 
 
 ‘“‘ That the said general assemblies, general courts, or other 
 bodies legally qualified as aforesaid, have at sundry times 
 freely granted several large subsidies and public aids for his 
 Majesty’s service, according to their abilities, when required 
 thereto by letter from one of his Majesty’s principal Secre- 
 taries of State; and that their right to grant the same, and 
 their cheerfulness and sufficiency in the said grants, have 
 been at sundry times acknowledged by Parliament.” 
 
 “That it hath been found by experience, that the manner 
 of granting the said supplies and aids by the said general 
 assemblies hath been more agreeable to the inhabitants of 
 the said colonies, and more beneficial and conducive to the 
 public service, than the mode of giving and granting aids 
 and subsidies in Parliament, to be raised and paid in the 
 said colonies.”’ 
 
 “That it may be proper to repeal an act, made in the 
 seventh year of the reign of his present Majesty, intituled, 
 ‘An act for granting certain duties in the British colonies 
 
138 BURKE 
 
 and plantations in America; for allowing a drawback of the 
 duties of customs, upon the exportation from this kingdom, 
 of coffee and cocoa-nuts, of the produce of the said colonies 
 or plantations; for discontinuing the drawbacks payable 
 on China earthenware exported to America; and for more 
 effectually preventing the clandestine running of goods in 
 the said colonies and plantations.’ ” 
 
 “ That it may be proper to repeal an act, made in the 
 fourteenth year of the reign of his present Majesty, intituled, 
 ‘An act to discontinue, in such manner and for such time as 
 are therein mentioned, the landing and discharging, lading 
 or shipping, of goods, wares, and merchandise, at the town 
 and within the harbour of Boston, in the province of Massa- 
 chusetts Bay, in North America.’” 
 
 “ That it may be proper to repeal an act, made in the four- 
 teenth year of the reign of his present Majesty, intituled, 
 ‘An act for the impartial administration of justice, in the 
 cases of persons questioned for any acts done by them, in 
 the execution of the law, or for the suppression of riots and 
 tumults, in the province of the Massachusetts Bay, in New 
 England.’ ”’ ? 
 
 “That it may be proper to repeal an act, made in the 
 fourteenth year of the reign of his present Majesty, intituled, 
 ‘An act for the better regulating the government of the prov- 
 ince of the Massachusetts Bay, in New England.’ ” 
 
 “That it may be proper to explain and amend an act, 
 made in the thirty-fifth year of the reign of King Henry the 
 Eighth, intituled, ‘An act forthe trial of treasons committed 
 out of the king’s dominions.’ ” 
 
 “That, from the time when the general assembly, or gen- 
 eral court, of any colony or plantation in North America, 
 shall have appointed, by act of assembly duly confirmed, a 
 settled salary to the offices of the chief justice and other 
 judges of the superior courts, it may be proper that the said 
 chief justice and other judges of the superior courts of such 
 colony shall hold his and their office and offices during their 
 good behaviour, and shall not be removed therefrom, but when 
 
CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA 139 
 
 the said removal shall be adjudged by his Majesty in coun- 
 cil, upon a hearing on complaint from the general assembly, 
 or on acomplaint from the governor, or the council, or the 
 house of representatives, severally, of the colony in which 
 the said chief justice and other judges have exercised the 
 said offices.” 
 
 “That it may be proper to regulate the courts of ‘admiralty 
 or vice-admiralty, authorized by the 15th chapter of the 4th 
 George the Third, in such a manner as to make the same 
 more commodious to those who sue or are sued in the said 
 courts; and to provide for the more decent maintenance of 
 the judges of the same.” 
 
 NOTES 
 
 I, The act to restrain the trade and commerce of the provinces of Massachu- 
 setts Bay and New Hampshire, and colonies of Connecticut and Rhode Island 
 and Providence Plantation, in North America, to Great Britain, Ireland, and the 
 British Islands in the West Indies: and to prohibit such provinces and colonies 
 from carrying on any fishery on the banks of Newfoundland, and other places 
 therein mentioned under certain conditions and limitations. 
 
 2. Mr. Rose Fuller. 
 
 3. “ That when the governor, council, and assembly, or general court, of any 
 of his Majesty’s provinces or colonies in America shall propose to make pro- 
 vision, according to the condition, circumstances, and situation of such 
 province or colony, for contributing their proportion to the common defense, 
 (such proportion to be raised under the authority of the general court or gen- 
 eral assembly of such province or colony, and disposable by Parliament), and 
 shall engage to make provision also for the support of the civil government 
 and the administration of justice in such province or colony, it will be proper, 
 if such proposal shall be approved by his Majesty and the two Houses of Par- 
 liament, and for so long as such provision shall be made accordingly, to for- 
 bear, in respect of such province or colony, to levy any duty, tax, or assess- 
 ment, or to impose any farther duty, tax, or assessment, except only such 
 duties as it may be expedient to continue to levy or to impose for the regu- 
 lation of commerce: the net produce of the duties last mentioned to be 
 carried to the account of such province or colony respectively.”—Resolution 
 moved by Lord North in the Committee, and agreed to by the House, 27th 
 February, 1775. 
 
 . Mr. Glover. 
 
 . The Attorney-General. 
 
 . Mr. Rice. 
 
 . Lord North. 
 
 . Journals of the House, Vol. XXV. 
 
 ON An ff 
 
140 BURKE 
 
 9. Journals of the House, Vol. XXVII. 
 
 to. Ibid. 
 11. The Solicitor-General informed Mr. Burke, when the resolutions were sepa- 
 
 rately moved, that the grievance of the judges partaking of the profits of the 
 seizure had been redressed by office; accordingly the resolution was amended. 
 
 12. Lord North. 
 
 13. The first four motions and the last had the previous question put on 
 them. The others were negatived. 
 
 The words in Italics were, by an amendment that was carried, left out of 
 the motion; which will appear in the journals, though it is not the practise to 
 insert such amendments in the votes. 
 
ON CERTAIN POINTS RELATIVE TO HIS 
 PARLIAMENTARY CONDUCT 
 
 Delivered in the Guildhall, Bristol, previous to the election in that city, 
 September 6, 1780. 
 
 R. MAYOR, AND GENTLEMEN,—I am extremely 
 
 pleased at the appearance of this large and respect- 
 
 able meeting. The steps I may be obliged to take will want 
 
 the sanction of a considerable authority ; and in explaining 
 
 anything which may appear doubtful in my public conduct, 
 I must naturally desire a very full audience. 
 
 I have been backward to begin my canvass. The dissolu- 
 tion of the Parliament was uncertain; and it did not become 
 me, by an unseasonable importunity, to appear diffident of 
 the effect of my six years’ endeavours to please you.» I had 
 served the city of Bristol honourably, and the city of Bristol 
 had no reason to think that the means of honourable service 
 to the public were become indifferent to me. 
 
 I found, on my arrival here, that three gentlemen had 
 been long in eager pursuit of an object which but two of us 
 can obtain. I found that they had all met with encourage- 
 ment. A contested election in such a city as this is no light 
 thing. I paused on the brink of the precipice. These three 
 gentlemen, by various merits, and on various titles, I made 
 no doubt were worthy of your favour. I shall never attempt 
 to raise myself by depreciating the merits of my competi- 
 tors. In the complexity and confusion of these cross pur- 
 
 suits, I wished to take the authentic public sense of my 
 141 
 
142 BURKE 
 
 friends upon a business of so much delicacy. I wished to 
 take your opinion along with me, that, if I should give up 
 the contest at the very beginning, my surrender of my post 
 may not seem the effect of inconstancy, or timidity, or anger, 
 or disgust, or indolence, or any other temper unbecoming a 
 man who has engaged in the public service. If, on the con- 
 trary, I should undertake the election, and fail of success, I 
 was full as anxious that it should be manifest to the whole 
 world that the peace of the city had not been broken by my 
 rashness, presumption, or fond conceit of my own merit. 
 
 I am not come, by a false and counterfeit show of defer- 
 ence to your judgment, to seduce it in my favour. I ask it 
 seriously and unaffectedly. If you wish that I should retire, 
 I shall not consider that advice as a censure upon my con- 
 duct, or an alteration in your sentiments, but as a rational 
 submission to the circumstances of affairs. If, on the con- 
 trary, you should think it proper for me to proceed on my 
 canvass, if you will risk the trouble on your part, I will risk 
 it on mine. My pretensions are such as you can not be 
 ashamed of, whether they succeed or fail. 
 
 If you call upon me, I shall solicit the favour of the city 
 upon manly ground. I come before you with the plain con- 
 fidence of an honest servant in the equity of a candid and 
 discerning master. I come to claim your approbation, not 
 to amuse you with vain apologies, or with professions still 
 more vain and senseless. I have lived too long to be served 
 by apologies, or to stand in need of them. The part I have 
 acted has been in open day; and to hold out to a conduct 
 which stands in that clear and steady light for all its good 
 and all its evil, to hold out to that conduct the paltry wink- 
 ing tapers of excuses and promises,—I never will do it. 
 They may obscure it with their smoke, but they never can 
 illumine sunshine by such a flame as theirs. 
 
 I am sensible that no endeavours have been left untried to 
 injure mein your opinion. But the use of character is to © 
 be a shield against calumny. I could wish, undoubtedly, (if 
 idle wishes were not the most idle of all things), to make every 
 
PARLIAMENTARY CONDUCT 143 
 
 part of my conduct agreeable to every one of my constit- 
 uents; but in so great a city, and so greatly divided as this, 
 it is weak to expect it. 
 
 In such a discordancy of sentiments it is better to look to 
 the nature of things than to the humours of men. The very at- 
 tempt towards pleasing everybody discovers a temper always 
 flashy, and often false and insincere. Therefore, as I have 
 proceeded straight onward in my conduct, so I will proceed 
 in my account of those parts of it which have been most ex- 
 cepted to. But I must first beg leave just to hint to you 
 that we may suffer very great detriment by being open to every 
 talker. It is not to be imagined how much of service is lost 
 from spirits full of activity and full of energy, who are press- 
 ing, who are rushing forward, to great and capital objects, 
 when you oblige them to be continually looking back. 
 Whilst they are defending one service, they defraud you of 
 an hundred. Applaud us when we run, console us when we 
 fall, cheer us when we recover; but let us pass on,—for 
 God’s sake, let us pass on! 
 
 Do you think, Gentlemen, that every public act in the six 
 years since I stood in this place before you,that all the arduous 
 things which have been done in this eventful period which 
 has crowded into a few years’ space the revolutions of an 
 age, can be opened to you on their fair grounds in half an 
 hour’s conversation ? 
 
 But it is no reason, because there is a bad mode of in- 
 quiry, that there should be no examination at all. Most 
 certainly it is our duty to examine; it is our interest, too: 
 but it must be with discretion, with an attention to all the 
 circumstances and to all the motives; like sound judges, and 
 not like cavilling pettifoggers and quibbling pleaders, prying 
 into flaws and hunting for exceptions. Look, Gentlemen, 
 to the whole tenor of your member’sconduct. Try whether 
 his ambition or his avarice have justled him out of the 
 . straight line of duty,—or whether that grand foe of the 
 offices of active life, that master vice in men of business, a 
 degenerate and inglorious sloth, has made him flag and lan- 
 
144 BURKE 
 
 guish in his course. This is the object of our inquiry. If 
 our member’s conduct can bear this touch, mark it for ster- 
 ling. He may have fallen into errors, he must have faults; 
 but our error is greater, and our fault is radically ruinous to 
 ourselves, if we do not bear, if we do not even applaud, 
 the whole compound and mixed mass of such a character. 
 Not to act thus is folly; I had almost said it is impiety. 
 He censures God who quarrels with the imperfections of 
 man. 
 
 Gentlemen, we must not be peevish with those who serve 
 the people; for none will serve us, whilst there is a court 
 to serve, but those who are of a nice and jealous honour. 
 They who think everything, in comparison of that honour, to 
 be dust and ashes, will not bear to have it soiled and im- 
 paired by those for whose sake they make a thousand sacrifices 
 to preserve it immaculateand whole. We shall either drive 
 such men from the public stage, or we shall send them to the 
 court for protection, where, if they must sacrifice their rep- 
 utation, they will at least secure their interest. Depend 
 upon it, that the lovers of freedom will be free. None will 
 violate their conscience to please us, in order afterwards to 
 discharge that conscience, which they have violated, by do- 
 ing us faithful and affectionate service. If we degrade and 
 deprave their minds by servility, it will be absurd to expect 
 that they who are creeping and abject towards us will ever 
 be bold and incorruptible assertors of our freedom against 
 the most seducing and the most formidable of all powers. 
 No! human nature is not so formed; nor shall we improve 
 the faculties or better the morals of public men by our pos- 
 session of the most infallible receipt in the world for making 
 cheats and hypocrites. 
 
 Let me say, with plainness, I who am no longer in a pub- 
 lic character, that, if, by a fair, by an indulgent, by a gentle- 
 manly behaviour, to our representatives, we do not give con- 
 fidence to their minds and a liberal scope to their under- 
 standings, if we do not permit our members to act upon a 
 very enlarged view of things, we shall at length infallibly 
 
PARLIAMENTARY CONDUCT 145 
 
 degrade our national representation into a confused and 
 scuffling bustle of local agency. When the popular member 
 is narrowed in his ideas and rendered timid in his proceed- 
 ings, the service of the crown will be the sole nursery of 
 statesmen. Among the frolics of the court, it may at length 
 take that of attending to its business. Then the monopoly 
 of mental power will be added to the power of all other kinds 
 it possesses. On the side of the people there will be nothing 
 but impotence: for ignorance is impotence; narrowness of 
 mind is impotence; timidity is itself impotence, and makes 
 all other qualities that go along with it impotent and useless, 
 
 At present it is the plan of the court to make its servants 
 insignificant. Ifthe people should fall into the same humour, 
 and should choose their servants on the same principles of 
 mere obsequiousness and flexibility and total vacancy or in- 
 difference of opinion in all public matters, then no part of 
 the state will be sound, and it will be in vain to think of 
 saving it. 
 
 I thought it very expedient at this time to give you this 
 candid counsel; and with this counsel I would. willingly 
 close, if the matters which at various times have been ob- 
 jected to me in this city concerned only myself and my own 
 election. These charges, I think, are four in number: my 
 neglect of a due attention to my constituents, the not paying 
 more frequent visits here; my conduct on the affairs of the 
 first Irish Trade Acts; my opinion and mode of proceeding | 
 on Lord Beauchamp’s Debtors’ Bills; and my votes on the 
 late affairs of the Roman Catholics. All of these (except 
 perhaps the first) relate to matters of very considerable public 
 concern ; and it is not lest you should censure me improp- 
 erly, but lest you should form improper opinions on matters 
 of some moment to you, that I trouble you at all upon the 
 subject. My conduct is of small importance. 
 
 With regard to the first charge, my friends have spoken to 
 me of it in the style of amicable expostulation,—not so much 
 blaming the thing as lamenting the effects. Others, less 
 
 partial to me, were less kind in assigning the motives. I 
 10 
 
146 BURKE 
 
 admit, there is a decorum and propriety in a member of Par- 
 liament’s paying a respectful court to his constituents. If I 
 were conscious to myself that pleasure, or dissipation, or 
 low, unworthy occupations had detained me from personal 
 attendance on you, I would readily admit my fault, and quietly 
 submit to the penalty. But, Gentlemen, I live at an hundred 
 miles’ distance from Bristol; and at the end of a session I 
 come to my own house, fatigued in body and in mind, toa 
 little repose, and to a very little attention to my family and 
 my private concerns. A visit to Bristol is always a sort of 
 canvass, else it will do more harm than good. To pass from 
 the toils of a session to the toils of a canvass is the furthest 
 thing in the world from repose. I could hardly serve you as 
 I have done, and court you too. Most of you have heard 
 that I do not very remarkably spare myself in public business ; 
 and in the private business of my constituents I have done 
 very near as much as those who have nothing else to do. 
 My canvass of you was not on the ’change, nor in the county 
 meetings, nor in the clubs of this city: it was in the House 
 of Commons; it was at the Custom-House; it was at the 
 Council; it was at the Treasury; it was at the Admiralty. 
 I canvassed you through your affairs, and not your persons. 
 I was not only your representative as a body; I was the 
 agent, the solicitor of individuals ; I ran about wherever your 
 affairs could call me; and inacting for you, I often appeared 
 rather as a ship-broker than as a member of Parliament. 
 There was nothing too laborious or too low for me to under- 
 take. The meanness of the business was raised by the dig- 
 nity of the object. If some lesser matters have slipped 
 through my fingers, it was because I filled my hands too full, 
 and, in my eagerness to serve you, took in more than any 
 hands could grasp. Several gentlemen stand round me whoare 
 my willing witnesses ; and there are others who, if they were 
 here, would be still better, because they would be unwilling 
 witnesses to the same truth. It was in the middle of a sum- 
 mer residence in London, and in the middle of a negotiation 
 at the Admiralty for your trade, that I was called to Bristol ; 
 
a 
 
 PANTRY 
 
~ 
 
PARLIAMENTARY CONDUCT 147 
 
 and this late visit, at this late day, has been possibly in pre- 
 judice to your affairs. 
 
 Since I have touched upon this matter, let me say, Gentle- 
 men, that, if I had a disposition or a right to complain, I 
 have some cause of complaint on my side. Witha petition 
 of this city in my hand, passed through the corporation 
 without a dissenting voice, a petition in unison with almost 
 the whole voice of the kingdom, (with whose formal thanks 
 I was covered over), whilst I laboured on no less than five 
 bills for a public reform, and fought, against the opposition 
 of great abilities and of the greatest power, every clause and 
 every word of the largest of those bills, almost to the very 
 last day of a very long session,—all this time a canvass in 
 Bristol was as calmly carried on as if I were dead. I was 
 considered as a man wholly out of the question. Whilst I 
 watched and fasted and sweated in the House of Commons, 
 by the most easy and ordinary arts of election, by dinners 
 and visits, by ‘“ How do you dos,” and “ My worthy friends,” 
 I was to be quietly moved out of my seat,—and promises 
 were made, and engagements entered into, without any ex- 
 ception or reserve, as if my laborious zeal in my duty had 
 been a regular abdication of my trust. 
 
 To open my whole heart to you on this subject, I do con- 
 fess, however, that there were other times, besides the two 
 years in which I did visit you, when I was not wholly with- 
 out leisure for repeating that mark of my respect. But I 
 could not bring my mind to see you. You remember that 
 in the beginning of this American war (that era of calamity, 
 disgrace, and downfall, an era which no feeling mind will 
 ever mention without a tear for England) you were greatly 
 divided,—and a very strong body, if not the strongest, op- 
 posed itself to the madness which every art and every power 
 were employed to render popular, in order that the errors of 
 the rulers might be lost in the general blindness of the na- 
 tion. This opposition continued until after our great, but © 
 most unfortunate victory at Long Island. Then all the 
 mounds and banks of our constancy were borne down at 
 
148 - BURKE 
 
 once, and the frenzy of the American war broke in upon us 
 like a deluge. This victory, which seemed to put an im- 
 mediate end to all difficulties, perfected us in that spirit of 
 domination which our unparalleled prosperity had but too 
 long nurtured. We had been so very powerful, and so very 
 prosperous, that even the humblest of us were degraded 
 into the vices and follies of kings. We lost all measure be-- 
 tween means and ends; and our headlong desires became 
 our politics and our morals. Allmen who wished for peace, 
 or retained any sentiments of moderation, were overborne 
 or silenced; and this city was led by every artifice (and 
 probably with the more management because I was one of 
 your members) to distinguish itself by its zeal for that fatal 
 cause. In this temper of yours and of my mind, I should 
 sooner have fled to the extremities of the earth than have 
 shown myself here. I, who saw in every American victory © 
 (for you have had a long series of these misfortunes) the 
 germ and seed of the naval power of France and Spain, 
 which all our heat and warmth against America was only 
 hatching into life,—I should not have been a welcome visi- 
 tant, with the brow and the language of such feelings. 
 When afterwards the other face of your calamity was turned 
 upon you, and showed itself in defeat and distress, I shunned 
 you full as much. I felt sorely this variety in our wretched- 
 ness; and I did not wish to have the least appearance of in- 
 sulting you with that show of superiority, which, though it 
 may not be assumed, is generally suspected, in a time of 
 calamity, from those whose previous warnings have been 
 despised. Icould not bear to show you a representative 
 whose face did not reflect that of his constituents,—a face 
 that could not joy in, your joys, and sorrow in your sorrows, 
 But time at length has made us all of one opinion, and we 
 have all opened our eyes on the true nature of the American 
 war,—to the true nature of all its successes and all its 
 failures. 
 
 In that public storm, too, I had my private feelings. I 
 had seen blown down and prostrate on the ground several of 
 
PARLIAMENTARY CONDUCT 149 
 
 those houses to whom I was chiefly indebted for the honour 
 this city has done me. I confess, that, whilst the wounds 
 of those I loved were yet green, I could not bear to show 
 myself in pride and triumph in that place into which their 
 partiality had brought me, and to appear at feasts and re- 
 joicings in the midst of the grief and calamity of my warm 
 friends, my zealous supporters, my generous benefactors. 
 This is a true, unvarnished, undisguised state of the affair. 
 You will judge of it. 
 
 This is the only one of the charges in which I am_person- 
 ally concerned. Asto the other matters objected against 
 me, which in their turn I shall mention to you, remember 
 once more 1 do not mean to extenuate or excuse. Why 
 should I, when the things charged are among those upon 
 which I found all my reputation? What would be left to 
 me, if I myself was the man who softened and blended and 
 diluted and weakened all the distinguishing colours of my 
 life, so as to leave nothing distinct and determinate in my 
 whole conduct? 
 
 It has been said, and it is the second charge, that in the 
 questions of the Irish trade I did not consult the interest of 
 my constituents,—or, to speak out strongly, that I rather 
 acted as a native of Ireland than as an English member of 
 Parliament. 
 
 I certainly have very warm good wishes for the place of 
 my birth. But the sphere of my duties is my true country. 
 It was as a man attached to your interests, and zealous for the 
 conservation of your power and dignity, that I acted on 
 that occasion, and on all occasions. You were involved in 
 the American war. A new world of policy was opened, to 
 which it was necessary we should conform, whether we 
 would or not; and my only thought was how to conform to 
 our situation in such a manner as to unite to this kingdom, 
 in prosperity and in affection, whatever remained of the em- 
 pire. I was true to my old, standing, invariable principle, 
 that all things which came from Great Britain should issue 
 as a gift of her bounty and beneficence, rather than as claims 
 
150 BURKE 
 
 recovered against a struggling litigant,—or at least, that, 
 if your beneficence obtained no credit in your concessions, 
 yet that they should appear the salutary provisions of your 
 wisdom and foresight, not as things wrung from you with 
 your blood by the cruel gripe of a rigid necessity. The 
 first concessions, by being (much against my will) mangled 
 and stripped of the parts which were necessary to make out 
 their just correspondence and connection in trade, were of . 
 no use. The next year a feeble attempt was made to bring 
 the thing into better shape. This attempt (countenanced 
 by the minister), on the very first appearance of some popu- 
 lar uneasiness, was, after a considerable progress through the 
 House, thrown out by him. 
 
 What was the consequence? The whole kingdom of 
 Ireland was instantly in a flame. Threatened by foreigners, 
 and, as they thought, insulted by England, they resolved at 
 once to resist the power of France and to cast off yours. 
 As for us, we were able neither to protect nor to restrain 
 them. Forty thousand men were raised and disciplined 
 without commission from the crown. Two illegal armies 
 were seen with banners displayed at the same time and in 
 the same country. No executive magistrate, no judicature, 
 in Ireland, would acknowledge the legality of the army 
 which bore the king’s commission ; and no law, or appearance 
 of law, authorized the army commissioned by itself. In this 
 unexampled state of things, which the least error, the least 
 trespass on the right or left, would have hurried down the 
 
 precipice into an abyss of blood and confusion, the people ~ 
 
 of Ireland demand a freedom of trade with arms in their 
 hands. They interdict all commerce between the two na- 
 tions. They deny all new supply in the House of Com- 
 mons, although in time of war. They stint the trust of the 
 old revenue, given for two years to all the king’s predeces- 
 sors, to six months. The British Parliament, in a former 
 session, frightened into a limited concession by the menaces 
 of Ireland, frightened out of it by the menaces of England, 
 was now frightened back again, and made an universal sur- 
 
PARLIAMENTARY CONDUCT 151 
 
 render of all that had been thought the peculiar, reserved, 
 uncommunicable rights of England: the exclusive commerce. 
 of America, of Africa, of the West Indies,—all the enumera- 
 tions of the Acts of Navigation,—all the manufactures,— 
 iron, glass, even the last pledge of jealousy and pride, the 
 interest hid in the secret of our hearts, the inveterate preju- 
 dice molded into the constitution of our frame, even the 
 sacred fleece itself, all went together. No reserve, no ex- 
 ception; no debate, no discussion. A sudden light broke 
 in upon us all. It broke in, not through well-contrived and. 
 well-disposed windows, but through flaws and breaches,— 
 through the yawning chasms of our ruin. We were taught 
 wisdom by humiliation. No town in England presumed to 
 have a prejudice, or dared to mutter a petition. What was 
 worse, the whole Parliament of England, which retained au- 
 thority for nothing but surrenders, was despoiled of every 
 shadow ofits superintendence. It was, without any qualifica- 
 tion, denied in theory, as it had been trampled upon in prac- 
 tise. This scene of shame and disgrace has, in a manner, 
 whilst I am speaking, ended by the perpetual establishment 
 of a military power in the dominions of this crown, without 
 consent of the British legislature,! contrary to the policy of 
 the Constitution, contrary to the Declaration of Right; and 
 by this your liberties are swept away along with your su- 
 preme authority,—and both, linked together from the begin- 
 ning, have, I am afraid, both together perished forever. 
 What! Gentlemen, was I not to foresee, or foreseeing, 
 
 was I not to endeavour to save you from all these multiplied 
 mischiefs and disgraces? Would the little, silly, canvass 
 prattle of obeying instructions, and having no opinions but 
 yours, and such idle, senseless tales, which amuse the vacant 
 ears of unthinking men, have saved you from “the pelting 
 of that pitiless storm,” to which the loose improvidence, the 
 cowardly rashness, of those who dare not look danger in the 
 face so as to provide against it in time, and therefore throw 
 themselves headlong into the midst of it, have exposed this 
 degraded nation, beat down and prostrate on the earth, un- 
 
152 | ' BURKE 
 
 -sheltered, unarmed, unresisting ? Was I an Irishman on that 
 day that I boldly withstood our pride? or on the day that 
 I hung down my head, and wept in shame and silence over 
 the humiliation of Great Britain? I became unpopular in 
 England for the one, and in Ireland for the other. What 
 then? What obligation lay on me to be popular? Iwas 
 bound to serve both kingdoms. To be pleased with my 
 service was their affair, not mine. 
 
 I was an Irishman in the Irish business, just as much as I 
 was an American, when, on the same principles, I wished 
 you to concede to America at a time when she prayed con- 
 cession at our feet. Just as much was I an American, when 
 I wished Parliament to offer terms in victory, and not to 
 wait the well-chosen hour of defeat, for making good by 
 weakness and by supplication a claim of prerogative, pre- 
 eminence, and authority. 
 
 Instead of requiring it from me, asa point of duty, to 
 kindle with your passions, had you all been as cool as I was, | 
 you would have been saved disgraces and distresses that are 
 unutterable. Do you remember our commission? We sent 
 out a solemn embassy across the Atlantic Ocean, to lay the 
 crown, the peerage, the commons of Great Britain at the 
 feet of the American Congress. That our disgrace might 
 want no sort of brightening and burnishing, observe who 
 they were that composed this famous embassy. My Lord 
 Carlisle is among the first ranks of our nobility. He is the 
 identical man who, but two years before, had been put for- 
 ward, at the opening of a session, in the House of Lords, as 
 the mover of an haughty and rigorous address against 
 America. He was put in the front of the embassy of sub- 
 mission. Mr. Eden was taken from the office of Lord Suf- 
 folk, to whom he was then Under-Secretary of State,—from 
 the office of that Lord Suffolk who but a few weeks before, 
 in his place in Parliament, did not deign to inquire where a 
 congress of vagrants was to be found. This Lord Suffolk 
 sent Mr. Eden to find these vagrants, without knowing where 
 his king’s generals were to be found who were joined in the 
 
PARLIAMENTARY CONDUCT 153 
 
 same commission of supplicating those whom they were sent 
 to subdue. They enter the capital of America only to 
 abandon it; and these assertors and representatives of the 
 dignity of England, at the tail of a flying army, let fly their 
 Parthian shafts of memorials and remonstrances at random 
 behind them. Their promises and their offers, their flatteries 
 and their menaces, were all despised ; and we were saved the 
 disgrace of their formal reception only because the Congress 
 scorned to receive them; whilst the state-house of independ- 
 ent Philadelphia opened her doors to the public entry of the 
 ambassador of France. From war and blood we went to 
 submission, and from submission plunged back again to war 
 and blood, to desolate and be desolated, without measure, 
 hope, orend. I ama Royalist: I blushed for this degrada- 
 tion of the crown. I ama Whig; I blushed for the dis- 
 honour of Parliament. I amatrue Englishman: I felt to 
 the quick for the disgrace of England. I ama man: J felt 
 for the melancholy reverse of human affairs in the fall of the 
 first power in the world. 
 
 To read what was approaching in Ireland, in the black and 
 bloody characters of the American war, was a painful, but it 
 was a necessary part of my public duty. For, Gentlemen, 
 it is not your fond desires or mine that can alter the nature 
 of things; by contending against which, what have we got, 
 or shall ever get, but defeat and shame? I did not obey 
 your instructions. No. I conformed to the instructions of 
 truth and Nature, and maintained your interest, against your 
 opinions, with a constancy that became me. A representa- 
 tive worthy of you ought to be a person of stability. I am 
 to look, indeed, to your opinions,—but to such opinions as 
 you and I must have five years hence. I was not to look to 
 the flash of the day. I knew that you chose me, in my 
 place, along with others, to bea pillar of the state, and not 
 a weathercock on the top of the edifice, exalted for my levity 
 and versatility, and of no use but to indicate the shiftings of 
 ‘every fashionable gale. Would to God the value of my 
 sentiments on Ireland and on America had been at this day 
 
eee BURKE 
 
 a subject of doubt and discussion! No matter what my suf- 
 ferings had been, so that this kingdom had kept the au- 
 thority I wished it to maintain, by a grave foresight, and by 
 an equitable temperance in the use of its power. 
 
 The next article of charge on my public conduct, and that 
 which I find rather the most prevalent of all, is Lord Beau- 
 champ’s bill: I mean his bill of last session, for reforming 
 the law-process concerning imprisonment. It is said, to ag- 
 gravate the offense, that I treated the petition of this city 
 with contempt even in presenting it to the House, and ex- 
 pressed myself in terms of marked disrespect. Had this 
 latter part of the charge been true, no merits on the side of 
 the question which I took could possibly excuse me. But 
 I am incapable of treating this city with disrespect. Very 
 fortunately, at this minute (if my bad eyesight does not de- 
 ceive me), the worthy gentleman? deputed on this business 
 stands directly before me. To him I appeal, whether I did 
 not, though it militated with my oldest and my most recent 
 public opinions, deliver the petition with a strong and more 
 than usual recommendation to the consideration of the 
 House, on account of the character and consequence of those 
 who signed it. I believe the worthy gentleman will tell 
 you, that, the very day I received it, I applied to the Solic- | 
 itor, now the Attorney General, to give it an immediate 
 consideration; and he most obligingly and instantly con- 
 sented to employ a great deal of his very valuable time to 
 write an explanation of the bill. I attended the committee 
 with all possible care and diligence, in order that every ob- 
 jection of yours might meet with a solution, or produce an 
 alteration. I entreated your learned recorder (always ready 
 in business in which you take a concern) to attend. But 
 what will you say to those who blame me for supporting 
 Lord Beauchamp’s bill, as a disrespectful treatment of your 
 petition, when you hear, that, out of respect to you, I myself 
 was the cause of the loss of that very bill? For the noble 
 lord who brought it in, and who, I must say, has much merit - 
 for this and some other measures, at my request consented 
 
PARLIAMENTARY CONDUCT 155 
 
 to put it off for a week, which the Speaker’s illness length- 
 ened to a fortnight; and then the frantic tumult about 
 Popery drove that and every rational business from the 
 House. So that, if I chose to make a defense of myself, on 
 the little principles of a culprit, pleading in his exculpation, 
 I might not only secure my acquittal, but make merit with 
 the opposers of the bill. But I shall do no such thing. 
 The truth is, that I did occasion the loss of the bill, and by 
 a delay caused by my respect to you. But such an event 
 was never in my contemplation. And I am so far from tak- 
 ing credit for the defeat of that measure, that I can not suf- 
 ficiently lament my misfortune, if but one man, who ought 
 to be at large, has passed a year in prison by my means. I 
 am.a debtor to the debtors. I confess judgment. I owe 
 what, if ever it be in my power I shall most certainly pay,— 
 ample atonement and usurious amends to liberty and hu- 
 manity for my unhappy lapse. For, Gentlemen, Lord 
 Beauchamp’s bill was a law of justice and policy, as far as it 
 went: I say, as far as it went; for its fault was its being in 
 the remedial part miserably defective. 
 
 There are two capital faults in our law with relation to 
 civil debts. One is, that every man is presumed solvent: 
 a presumption, in innumerable cases, directly against truth. 
 Therefore the debtor is ordered, on a supposition of ability 
 and fraud, to be coerced his liberty until he makes payment. 
 By this means, in all cases of civil insolvency, without a par- 
 don from his creditor, he is to be imprisoned for life; and 
 thus a miserable mistaken invention of artificial science 
 operates to change a civil into a criminal judgment, and to 
 scourge misfortune or indiscretion with a punishment which 
 the law does not inflict on the greatest crimes. | 
 
 The next fault is, that the inflicting of that punishment 
 is not on the opinion of an equal and public judge, but is 
 referred to the arbitrary discretion of a private, nay, inter- 
 ested, and irritated, individual. He, who formally is, and 
 substantially ought to be, the judge, is in reality no more 
 than ministerial, a mere executive instrument of a private 
 
156 BURKE 
 
 man, who is at once judge and party. Every idea of judi. 
 cial order is subverted by this procedure. If the insolvency 
 be no crime, why is it punished with arbitrary imprison- 
 ment? If it be a crime, why is it delivered into private 
 hands to pardon without discretion, or to punish without 
 mercy and without measure? 
 
 To these faults, gross and cruel faults in our law, the ex- 
 cellent principle of Lord Beauchamp’s bill applied some sort 
 of remedy. I know that credit must be preserved: but 
 equity must be preserved, too; and it is impossible that 
 anything should be necessary to commerce which is incon- 
 sistent with justice. The principle of credit was not weak- 
 ened by that bill. God forbid! The enforcement of that 
 credit was only put into the same public judicial hands on 
 which we depend for our lives and all that makes life dear 
 to us. But, indeed, this business was taken up too warmly, 
 both here and elsewhere. The bill was extremely mistaken. 
 It was supposed to enact what it never enacted; and com- 
 plaints were made of clauses in it, as novelties, which existed 
 before the noble lord that brought in the bill was born. 
 There was a fallacy that ran through the whole of the objec- 
 tions. The gentlemen who opposed the bill always argued 
 as if the option lay between that bill and the ancient law. 
 But this is a grand mistake. For, practically, the option is 
 between not that bill and the old law, but between that bill. 
 and those occasional laws called acts of grace. For the 
 operation of the old law is so savage, and so inconvenient 
 to society, that for along time past, once in every Parliament, — 
 and lately twice, the legislature has been obliged to make a ~ 
 general arbitrary jail-delivery, and at once to set open, by 
 its sovereign authority, all the prisons in England. 
 
 Gentlemen, I never relished acts of grace, nor ever sub- 
 mitted to them but from despair of better. They are a dis- 
 honourable invention, by which, not from humanity, not from 
 policy, but merely because we have not room enough to 
 hold these victims of the absurdity of our laws, we turn 
 loose upon the public three or four thousand naked wretches, 
 
PARLIAMENTARY CONDUCT 157 
 
 corrupted by the habits, debased by the ignominy of a 
 prison. If the creditor had a right to those carcasses as a 
 natural security for his property, I am sure we have no right 
 to deprive him of that security. But if the few pounds of 
 flesh were not necessary to his security, we had not a right 
 to detain the unfortunate debtor, without any benefit at all 
 to the person who confined him. Take it as you will, we 
 commit injustice. Now Lord Beauchamp’s bill intended to 
 do deliberately, and with great caution and circumspection, 
 upon each several case, and with all attention to the just 
 claimant, what acts of grace do in a much greater measure, 
 and with very little care, caution, or deliberation. 
 
 I suspect that here, too, if we contrive to oppose this bill, 
 we shall be found in a struggle against the nature of things. 
 For, as we grow enlightened, the public will not bear, for 
 any length of time, to pay for the maintenance of whole 
 armies of prisoners, nor, at their own expense, submit to 
 keep jails as a sort of garrisons, merely to fortify the absurd 
 principle of making men judges in their own cause. For 
 credit has little or no concern in this cruelty. I speak ina 
 commercial assembly. You know that credit is given be- 
 cause capital must be employed; that men calculate the 
 chances of insolvency ; and they either withhold the credit, 
 or make the debtor pay the risk in the price. The counting- 
 house has no alliance with the jail. Holland understands 
 trade as well as we, and she has done much more than this 
 obnoxious bill intended to do. There was not, when Mr. 
 Howard visited Holland, more than one prisoner for debt 
 in the great city of Rotterdam. Although Lord Beau- 
 champ’s act (which was previous to this bill, and intended 
 to feel the way for it) has already preserved liberty to thou- 
 sands, and though it is not three years since the last act of 
 grace passed, yet, by Mr. Howard’s last account, there were 
 near three thousand again in jail. JI can not name this gen- 
 tleman without remarking that his labours and writings have 
 done much to open the eyes and hearts of mankind. He 
 has visited all Europe,—not to survey the sumptuousness of 
 
158 BURKE 
 
 palaces or the stateliness of temples, not to make accurate 
 measurements of the remains of ancient grandeur nor to 
 form a scale of the curiosity of modern art, not to collect 
 medals or collate manuscripts,—but to dive into the depths 
 of dungeons, to plunge into the infection of hospitals, to 
 survey the mansions of sorrow and pain, to take the gauge 
 and dimensions of misery, depression, and contempt, to re- 
 member the forgotten, to attend to the neglected, to visit 
 the forsaken, and to compare and collate the distresses of 
 all men in all countries. His plan is original; and it is as 
 full of genius as it is of humanity. It was a voyage of dis- 
 covery, a circumnavigation of charity. Already the benefit 
 of his labour is felt more or less in every country; I hope he 
 _ will anticipate his final reward by seeing all its effects fully 
 realized in his own. He will receive, not by retail, but in 
 gross, the reward of those who visit the prisoner; and he has 
 so forestalled and monopolized this branch of charity, that 
 there will be, I trust, little room to merit by such acts of 
 benevolence hereafter. 
 
 Nothing now remains to trouble you with but the fourth 
 charge against me,—the business of the Roman Catholics. 
 It is a business closely connected with the rest. They are 
 all on one and thesame principle. My little scheme of con- 
 duct, such as it is, is all arranged. I could do nothing but 
 what I have done on this subject, without confounding the 
 whole train of my ideas and disturbing the whole order of 
 my life. Gentlemen, I ought to apologize to you for seem- 
 ing to think anything at all necessary to be said upon this 
 matter. The calumny is fitter to be scrawled with the mid- 
 night chalk of incendiaries, with ‘‘ No Popery,” on walls and 
 doors of devoted houses, than to be mentioned in any civil- 
 ized company. I had heard that the spirit of discontent on 
 that subject was very prevalent here. With pleasure I find 
 that I have been grossly misinformed. If it exists at all in 
 this city, the laws have crushed its exertions, and our mor 
 als have shamed its appearance in daylight. I have pursued 
 this spirit wherever I could trace it; but it still fled from 
 
PARLIAMENTARY CONDUCT 159 
 
 me. It wasa ghost which all had heard of, but none had 
 seen. None would acknowledge that he thought the public 
 proceeding with regard to our Catholic dissenters to be 
 blamable ; but several were sorry it had made an ill impres- 
 sion upon others, and that my interest was hurt by my share 
 in the business. I find with satisfaction and pride, that not 
 above four or five in this city (and I dare say these misled 
 by some gross misrepresentation) have signed that symbol 
 of delusion and bond of sedition, that libel on the national 
 religion and English character, the Protestant Association. 
 ‘It is, therefore, Gentlemen, not by way of cure, but of pre- 
 vention, and lest the arts of wicked men may prevail over 
 the integrity of any one amongst us, that I think it neces- 
 sary to open to you the merits of this transaction pretty 
 much at large; and I beg your patience upon it: for, al- 
 though the reasonings that have been used to depreciate the 
 act are of little force, and though the authority of the men 
 concerned in this ill design is not very imposing, yet the 
 audaciousness of these conspirators against the national hon- 
 our, and the extensive wickedness of their attempts, have 
 raised persons of little importance to a degree of evil emi- 
 nence, and imparted a sort of sinister dignity to proceedings 
 that had their origin in only the meanest and blindest malice. 
 
 In explaining to you the proceedings of Parliament which 
 have been complained of, I will state to you,—first, the 
 thing that was done,—next, the persons who did it,—and 
 lastly, the grounds and reasons upon which the legislature 
 proceeded in this deliberate act of public justice and public 
 prudence. 
 
 Gentlemen, the condition of our nature is such that we 
 buy our blessings at a price. The Reformation, one of the 
 greatest periods of human improvement, was a time of trou- 
 ble and confusion. The vast structure of superstition and 
 tyranny which had been for ages in rearing, and which was 
 combined with the interest of the great and of the many, 
 which was moulded into the laws, the manners, and civil in- 
 stitutions of nations, and blended with the frame and policy 
 
160 BURKE - 
 
 of states, could not be brought to the ground without a fear- 
 ful struggle ; nor could it fall without a violent concussion 
 of itself and all about it. When this great revolution was 
 attempted in a more regular mode by government, it was op- 
 posed by plots and seditions of the people ; when by popu- 
 lar efforts, it was repressed as rebellion by the hand of pow- 
 er ; and bloody executions (often bloodily returned) marked 
 the whole of its progress through all its stages. The affairs . 
 of religion, which are no longer heard of inthe tumult of 
 
 our present contentions, made a principal ingredient in the 
 
 wars and politics of that time: the enthusiasm of religion 
 
 threw a gloom over the politics ; and political interests poi- 
 
 soned and perverted the spirit of religion upon all sides. 
 
 The Protestant religion, in that violent struggle, infected, as 
 
 the Popish had been before, by worldly interests and worldly 
 
 passions, became a persecutor in its turn, sometimes of the 
 new sects, which carried their own principles further than it 
 
 was convenient to the original reformers, and always of the 
 
 body from whom they parted: and this persecuting spirit 
 arose, not only from the bitterness of retaliation, but from 
 
 the merciless policy of fear. 
 
 It was long before the spirit of true piety and true 
 wisdom, involved in the principles of the Reformation, 
 could be depurated from the dregs and feculence of the 
 contention with which it was carried through. However, 
 until this be done, the Reformation is not complete ; and 
 those who think themselves good Protestants, from their 
 animosity to others, are in that respect no Protestants at all. 
 It was at first thought necessary, perhaps, to oppose to Popery 
 another Popery, to get the better of it. Whatever was the 
 cause, laws were made in many countries, and in this kingdom 
 in particular, against Papists, which are as bloody as any of 
 those which had been enacted by the Popish princes and> 
 states : and where those laws were not bloody, in my opin- 
 ion, they were worse ; as they were slow, cruel outrages on™ 
 our nature, and kept men alive only to insult in their per- 
 sons every one of the rights and feelings of humanity. I 
 
PARLIAMENTARY CONDUCT 161 
 
 pass those statutes, because I would spare your pious ears 
 the repetition of such shocking things ; and I come to that 
 particular law the repeal of which has produced so many 
 unnatural and unexpected consequences. 
 
 A statute was fabricated in the year 1699 by which the 
 saying mass (a church service in the Latin tongue, not 
 exactly the same as our liturgy, but very near it, and con- 
 taining no offence whatsoever against the laws, or against 
 good morals) was forged into a crime, punishable with per- 
 petual imprisonment. The teaching school, an useful and 
 virtuous occupation, even the teaching in a private family, 
 was in every Catholic subjected to the same unproportioned 
 punishment. Your industry, and the bread of your children, 
 was taxed for a pecuniary reward to stimulate avarice to do 
 what Nature refused, to inform and prosecute on this law. 
 Every Roman Catholic was, under the same act, to forfeit his 
 estate to his nearest Protestant relation, until, through a 
 profession of what he did not believe, he redeemed by his 
 hypocrisy what the law had transferred to the kinsman as 
 the recompense of his profligacy. When thus turned out of 
 doors from his paternal estate, he was disabled from acquir- 
 ing any other by any industry, donation, or charity ; but 
 was rendered a foreigner in his native land, only because he 
 retained the religion, along with the property, handed down 
 to him from those who had been the old inhabitants of that 
 land before him. 
 
 Does any one who hears me approve this scheme of things, 
 or think there is common justice, common sense, or common 
 honesty in any partof it? If any does, let him say it, and I 
 am ready to discuss the point with temper and candor. But 
 instead of approving, I perceive a virtuous indignation be- 
 ginning to rise in your minds on the mere cold stating of 
 the statute. 
 
 But what will you feel, when you know from history how 
 this statute passed, and what were the motives, and what 
 the mode of making it? A party in this nation, enemies to 
 
 the system of the Revolution, were in opposition to the 
 If 
 
162 BURKE 
 
 government of King William. They knew that our glorious 
 deliverer was an enemy to all persecution. They knew that 
 he came to free us from slavery and Popery, out of a country 
 where a third of the people are contented Catholics under a 
 Protestant government. He came with a part of his army 
 composed of those very Catholics, to overset the power of a 
 Popish prince. Such is the effect of a tolerating spirit; and 
 so much is liberty served in every way, and by all persons, 
 by a manly adherenceto its own principles. Whilst freedom 
 is true to itself, everything becomes subject to it, and its very 
 adversaries are an instrument in its hands. 
 
 The party I speak of (like some amongst us who would dis- 
 parage the best friends of their country) resolved to make 
 the king either violate his principles of toleration or incur 
 the odium of protecting Papists. They therefore brought 
 in this bill, and made it purposely wicked and absurd that it 
 might be rejected. Thethen court party, discovering their 
 game, turned the tables on them, and returned their bill to 
 them stuffed with still greater absurdities, that its loss might 
 lie upon its original authors. They, finding their own ball 
 thrown back to them, kicked it back again to their adver- 
 saries. And thus this act, loaded with the double injustice 
 of two parties, neither of whom intended to pass what they 
 hoped the other would be persuaded to reject, went through 
 the legislature, contrary to the real wish of all parts of it, 
 and of all the parties that composed it. In this manner 
 these insolent and profligate factions, as if they were play- 
 ing with balls and counters, made a sport of the fortunes 
 and the liberties of their fellow-creatures. Other acts of 
 persecution have been acts of malice. This was a subversion 
 of justice from wantonness and petulance. Lookinto the his- 
 tory of Bishop Burnet. He is a witness without exception. 
 
 The effects of the act have been as mischievous as its 
 origin was ludicrous and shameful. From that time, every 
 person of that communion, lay and ecclesiastic, has been 
 obliged to fly from the face of day. The clergy, concealed 
 in garrets of private houses, or obliged to take a shelter 
 
PARLIAMENTARY CONDUCT 163 
 
 (hardly safe to themselves, but infinitely dangerous to their 
 country) under the privileges of foreign ministers, officiated 
 as their servants and under their protection. The whole 
 body of the Catholics, condemned to beggary and to igno- 
 rance in their native land, have been obliged to learn the 
 principles of letters, at the hazard of all their other princi- 
 ples, from the charity of your enemies. They have been 
 taxed to their ruin at the pleasure of necessitous and profli- 
 gate relations, and according to the measure of their neces- 
 sity and profligacy. Examples of this are many and affect- 
 ing. Some of them are known by a friend who stands near 
 me inthis hall. It is but six or seven years since a clergy- 
 man, of the name of Malony, a man of morals, neither 
 guilty nor accused of anything noxious to the state, was 
 condemned to perpetual imprisonment for exercising the 
 functions of his religion; and after lying in jail two or three 
 years, was relieved by the mercy of government from per- 
 petual imprisonment, on condition of perpetual banishment. 
 A brother of the Earl of Shrewsbury, a Talbot, a name 
 respectable in this country whilst its glory is any part of its 
 concern, was hauled to the bar of the Old Bailey, among 
 common felons, and only escaped the same doom, either by 
 some error in the process, or that the wretch who brought 
 him there could not correctly describe his person,—I now 
 forget which. In short, the persecution would never have 
 relented for a moment, if the judges, superseding (though 
 with an ambiguous example) the strict rule of their artificial 
 duty by the higher obligation of their conscience, did not 
 constantly throw every difficulty in the way of such infor- 
 mers. But so ineffectual is the power of legal evasion 
 against legal iniquity, that it was but the other day that a 
 lady of condition, beyond the middle of life, was on the point 
 of being stripped of her whole fortune by a near relation to 
 whom she had been a friend and benefactor; and she must 
 have been totally ruined, without a power of redress or 
 mitigation from the courts of law, had not the legislature 
 itself rushed in, and by a special act of Parliament rescued 
 
164 BURKE 
 
 her from the injustice of its own statutes. One of the acts 
 authorizing such things was that which we in part repealed, 
 knowing what our duty was, and doing that duty as men of 
 honour and virtue, as good Protestants, and as good citizens. 
 Let him stand forth that disapproves what we have done ! 
 
 Gentlemen, bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny. In 
 such a country as this they are of all bad things the worst,— 
 worse by far than anywhere else; and they derive a particu- 
 lar malignity even from the wisdom and soundness of the 
 rest of our institutions. For very obvious reasons you can 
 not trust the crown with a dispensing power over any of 
 your laws. However, a government, be it as bad as it may, 
 will, in the exercise of a discretionary power, discriminate 
 times and persons, and will not ordinarily pursue any man, 
 when its own safety is not concerned. A mercenary informer 
 knows no distinction. Under such a system, the obnoxious 
 people are slaves not only to the government, but they live 
 at the mercy of every individual; they are at once the 
 slaves of the whole community and of every part of it; and 
 the worst and most unmerciful men are those on whose 
 goodness they most depend. 
 
 In this situation, men not only shrink from the frowns of 
 a stern magistrate, but they are obliged to fly from their very 
 species. The seeds of destruction are sown in civil inter- 
 course, in social habitudes. The blood of wholesome kindred 
 is infected. Their tables and beds are surrounded with 
 snares. All the means given by Providence to make life 
 safe and comfortable are perverted into instruments of terror 
 and torment. This species of universal subserviency, that 
 makes the very servant who waits behind your chair the 
 arbiter of your life and fortune, has such a tendency to de- 
 grade and abase mankind, and to deprive them of that 
 assured and liberal state of mind which alone can make us 
 what we ought to be, that I vow to God I would sooner 
 bring myself to put a man to immediate death for opinions 
 I disliked, and so to get rid of the man and his opinions at 
 once, than to fret him with a feverish being, tainted with 
 
PARLIAMENTARY CONDUCT 165 
 
 the jail-distemper of a contagious servitude, to keep him 
 above ground an animated mass of putrefaction, corrupted 
 himself, and corrupting all about him. 
 
 The act repealed was of this direct tendency; and it was 
 made in the manner which I have related to you. I will 
 now tell you by whom the bill of repeal was brought into 
 Parliament. I find it has been industriously given out in 
 this city (from kindness to me, unquestionably) that I was the 
 mover or the seconder. The fact is, I did not once open 
 my lips on the subject during the whole progress of the bill. 
 I do not say this as disclaiming my share in that measure. 
 Very far from it. I inform you of this fact, lest I should 
 seem to arrogate to myself the merits which belong to others. 
 To have been the man chosen out to redeem our fellow- 
 citizens from slavery, to purify our laws from absurdity and 
 injustice, and to cleanse our religion from the blot and stain 
 of persecution, would bean honour and happiness to which 
 my wishes would undoubtedly aspire, but to which nothing 
 but my wishes could possibly have entitled me. That great 
 work was in hands in every respect far better qualified than 
 mine. The mover of the bill was Sir George Savile. 
 
 When an act of great and signal humanity was to be done, 
 and done with all the weight and authority that belonged to 
 it, the world could cast its eyes upon none but him. I hope 
 that few things which have a tendency to bless or to adorn 
 life have wholly escaped my observation in my passage 
 through it. I have sought the acquaintance of that gentle- 
 man, and have seen him in all situations. He its a true 
 genius; with an understanding vigorous, and acute, and re- 
 fined, and distinguishing even to excess; and illuminated 
 with a most unbounded, peculiar, and original cast of imagina- 
 tion. With these he possesses many external and instru- 
 mental advantages; and he makes use of them all. His 
 fortune is among the largest,—a fortune which, wholly un- 
 incumbered as it is with one single charge from luxury, 
 vanity, or excess, sinks under the benevolence of its dis- 
 penser. This private benevolence, expanding itself into 
 
166 BURKE 
 
 patriotism, renders his whole being the estate of the public, 
 in which he has not reserved a peculium for himself of profit, 
 diversion, or relaxation. During the session the first in and 
 the last out of the House of Commons, he passes from the 
 senate to the camp; and seldom seeing the seat of his an- 
 cestors, he is always in Parliament to serve his country or in 
 the field to defend it. But in all well-wrought compositions 
 some particulars stand out more eminently than the rest ; and 
 the things which will carry his name to posterity are his two 
 bills: I mean that for a limitation of the claims of the crown 
 upon landed estates, and this for the relief of the Roman 
 Catholics. By the former he has emancipated property; by 
 the latter he has quieted conscience; and by both he has 
 taught that grand lesson to government and subject,—no 
 longer to regard each other as adverse parties. 
 
 Such was the mover of the act that is complained of by 
 men who are not quite so good as he is,—an act most assur- 
 edly not brought in by him from any partiality to that sect 
 which is the object of it. For among his faults I really 
 can not help reckoning a greater degree of prejudice against 
 that people than becomes so wise a man. I know that he | 
 inclines to a sort of disgust, mixed with a considerable 
 degree of asperity, to the system; and he has few, or rather 
 no habits with any of its professors. What he has done was 
 on quite other motives. The motives were these, which he 
 declared in his excellent speech on his motion for the bill: 
 namely, his extreme zeal to the Protestant religion, which 
 he thought utterly disgraced by the act of 1699; and his 
 rooted hatred to all kind of oppression, under any colour, or 
 upon any pretence whatsoever. 
 
 The seconder was worthy of the mover and the motion. I 
 was not the seconder; it was Mr. Dunning, recorder of this 
 city. I shall say the less of him because his near relation to 
 you makes you more particularly acquainted with his merits, 
 But I should appear little acquainted with them, or little 
 sensible of them, if I could utter his name on this occasion 
 without expressing my esteem for his character. I am not 
 
PARLIAMENTARY CONDUCT 167 
 
 afraid of offending a most learned body, and most jealous of 
 its reputation for that learning, when I say he is the first of 
 his profession. It is a point settled by those who settle 
 everything else; and I must add (what I am enabled to say 
 from my own long and close observation) that there is not a 
 man, of any profession, or in any situation, of a more erect 
 ~ and independent spirit, of a more proud honour, a more manly 
 mind, a more firm and determined integrity. Assure your- 
 selves, that the names of two such men will bear a great load 
 of prejudice in the other scale before they can be entirely 
 outweighed. 
 
 With this mover and this seconder agreed the whole House 
 of Commons, the whole House of Lords, the whole Bench of 
 Bishops, the king, the ministry, the opposition, all the dis- 
 tinguished clergy of the Establishment, all the eminent 
 lights (for they were consulted) of the dissenting churches. 
 This according voice of national wisdom ought to be listened 
 to with reverence. To say that all these descriptions of 
 Englishmen unanimously concurred in a scheme for 
 introducing the Catholic religion, or that none of them 
 understood the nature and effects of what they were doing so 
 well as a few obscure clubs of people whose names you never 
 heard of, is shamelessly absurd. Surely it is paying a miser- 
 able compliment to the religion we profess, to suggest that 
 everything eminent in the kingdom 1s indifferent or even ad- 
 verse to that religion, and that its security is wholly aban- 
 doned to the zeal of those who have nothing but their zeal 
 to distinguish them. In weighing this unanimous concur- 
 rence of whatever the nation has to boast of, I hope you 
 will recollect that all these concurring parties do by no 
 means love one another enough to agree in any point which 
 was not both evidently and importantly right. 
 
 To prove this, to prove that the measure was both clearly 
 and materially proper, I will next lay before you (as I 
 promised) the political grounds and reasons for the repeal of 
 that penal statute, and the motives to its repeal at that par- 
 ticular time. 
 
168 BURKE 
 
 Gentlemen, America——When the English nation seemed 
 to be dangerously, if not irrecoverably divided,—when one, 
 and that the most growing branch, was torn from the parent 
 stock, and ingrafted on the power of France,a great terror 
 fell upon this kingdom. On a sudden we awakened from 
 our dreams of conquest, and saw ourselves threatened with 
 an immediate invasion, which we were at that time very ill 
 prepared to resist. You remember the cloud that gloomed 
 over usall. In that hour of our dismay, from the bottom 
 of the hiding-places into which the indiscriminate rigour of 
 our statutes had driven them, came out the body of the 
 Roman Catholics. They appeared before the steps of a 
 tottering throne, with one of the most sober, measured, 
 steady, and dutiful addresses that was ever presented to the 
 crown. It wasno holiday ceremony, no anniversary compli- 
 ment of parade and show. It was signed by almost every 
 gentleman of that persuasion, of note or property, in Eng- 
 land. At such a crisis, nothing but a decided resolution to 
 stand or fall with their country could have dictated such 
 an address, the direct tendency of which was to cut off all 
 retreat, and to render them peculiarly obnoxious to an in- 
 vader of their own communion. The address showed what 
 I long languished to see, that all the subjects of England had 
 cast off all foreign views and connections, and that every, 
 man looked for his relief from every grievance at the hands 
 only of his own natural government. 
 
 It was necessary, on our part, that the natural government 
 should show itself worthy of that name. It was necessary, 
 at the crisis I speak of, that the supreme power of the state 
 should meet the conciliatory dispositions of the subject. Tode- 
 lay protection would be to reject allegiance. And why should 
 it be rejected, or even coldly and suspiciously received? If 
 any independent Catholic state should choose to take part 
 with this kingdom in a war with France and Spain, that bigot 
 (if such a bigot could be found) would be heard with little 
 respect, who could dream of objecting his religion to an ally 
 whom the nation would not only receive with its freest 
 
PARLIAMENTARY CONDUCT 169 
 
 thanks, but purchase with the last remains of its exhausted 
 treasure. To such an ally we should not dare to whisper a 
 single syllable of those base and invidious topics upon which 
 some unhappy men would persuade the state to reject the 
 duty and allegiance of its own members. Is it, then, because 
 foreigners are in a condition to set our malice at defiance, 
 ‘that with them we are willing to contract engagements of 
 friendship, and to keep them with fidelity and honour, but 
 that, because we conceive some descriptions of our country- 
 men are not powerful enough to punish our malignity, we 
 will not permit them to support our common interest ? Is 
 it on that ground that our anger is to-be kindled by their 
 offered kindness? Is it on that ground that they are to be 
 subjected to penalties, because they are willing by actual 
 merit to purge themselves from imputed crimes? Lest by 
 an adherence to the cause of their country they should acquire 
 a title to fair and equitable treatment, are we resolved to 
 furnish them with causes of eternal enmity, and rather supply 
 them with just and founded motives to disaffection than not 
 to have that disaffection in existence to justify an oppression 
 which, not from policy, but disposition, we have predeter- 
 mined to exercise? 
 What shadow of reason could be assigned, why, at a time 
 ‘when the most Protestant part of this Protestant empire 
 found it for its advantage to unite with the two principal 
 Popish states, to unite itself in the closest bonds with France 
 and Spain, for our destruction, that we should refuse to unite 
 with our own Catholic countrymen for our own preservation ? 
 Ought we, like madmen, to tear off the plasters that the 
 lenient hand of prudence had spread over the wounds and 
 gashes which in our delirium of ambition we had given to 
 our own body? No person ever reprobated the American 
 war more than I did, and do, and ever shall. But I never 
 will consent that we should lay additional, voluntary penal- 
 ties on ourselves, for a fault which carries but too much of 
 its own punishment in its own nature. For one, I was de- 
 lighted with the proposal of internal peace. I accepted the 
 
170 BURKE 
 
 blessing with thankfulness and transport. I was truly happy 
 to find one good effect of our civil distractions: that they 
 had put an end to all religious strife and heart-burning in 
 our own bowels. What must be the sentiments of a man 
 who would wish to perpetuate domestic hostility when the 
 causes of dispute are at an end, and who, crying out for 
 peace with one part of the nation on the most humiliating 
 terms, should deny it to those who offer friendship without 
 any terms at all? 
 
 But if I was unable to reconcile such a denial to the con- 
 tracted principles of local duty, what answer could I give to 
 the broad claims of general humanity? I confess to you 
 freely, that the sufferings and distresses of the people of 
 America in this cruel war have at times affected me more 
 deeply than I can express. I felt every gazette of triumph 
 as a blow upon my heart, which has an hundred times sunk 
 and fainted within me at all the mischiefs brought upon 
 those who bear the whole brunt of war in the heart of their 
 country. Yet the Americans are utter strangers to me; a 
 nation among whom I am not sure that I have a single ac- 
 quaintance. Was I to suffer my mind to be so unaccount- 
 ably warped, was I to keep such iniquitous weights and 
 measures of temper and of reason, as to sympathize with | 
 those who are in open rebellion against an authority which 
 I respect, at war with a country which by every title ought 
 to be, and is, most dear to me,—and yet to have no feeling 
 at all for the hardships and indignities suffered by men who 
 by their very vicinity are bound upina nearer relation to us, 
 who contribute their share, and more than their share, to 
 the common prosperity, who perform the common offices of 
 social life, and who obey the laws, to the full as well as I do? 
 Gentlemen, the danger to the state being out of the ques- 
 tion (of which, let me tell you, statesmen themselves are 
 apt to have but too exquisite a sense), I could assign no one 
 reason of justice, policy, or feeling, for not concurring most 
 cordially, as most cordially I did concur, in softening some 
 
 ” 
 
PARLIAMENTARY CONDUCT 17! 
 
 part of that shameful servitude under which several of my 
 worthy fellow-citizens were groaning. 
 
 Important effects followed this act of wisdom. They ap- 
 peared at home and abroad, to the great benefit of this king- 
 dom, and, let me hope, to the advantage of mankind at large. 
 It betokened union among ourselves. It showed soundness, 
 even on the part of the persecuted, which generally is the 
 weak side of every community. But its most essential 
 operation was not in England. The act was immediately, 
 though very imperfectly, copied in Ireland; and this imper- 
 fect transcript of an imperfect act, this first faint sketch of 
 toleration, which did little more than disclose a principle and 
 mark out a disposition, completed in a most wonderful manner 
 the reunion to the state of all the Catholics of that country. 
 It made us what we ought alwaysto have been, one family, 
 one body, one heart and soul, against the family combina- 
 tion and all other combinations of our enemies. We have, 
 indeed, obligations to that people, who received such small 
 benefits with so much gratitude, and for which gratitude 
 and attachment to us Iam afraid they have suffered not a 
 little in other places. 
 
 I dare say you have all heard of the privileges indulged to 
 the Irish Catholics residing in Spain. You have likewise 
 heard with what circumstances of severity they have been 
 lately expelled from the seaports of that kingdom, driven 
 into the inland cities, and there detained as a sort of pris- 
 oners of state. I have good reason to believe that it was 
 the zeal to our government and our cause (somewhat indis- 
 creetly expressed in one of the addresses of the Catholics of 
 Ireland) which has thus drawn down on their heads the in- 
 dignation of the court of Madrid, to the inexpressible loss 
 of several individuals, and, in future, perhaps. to the great 
 detriment of the whole of their body. Now that our people 
 should be persecuted in Spain for their attachment to this 
 country, and persecuted in this country for their supposed 
 enmity to us, is such a jarring reconciliation of contradic- 
 tory distresses, is a thing at once so dreadful and ridiculous, 
 
172 BURKE 
 
 that no malice short of diabolical would wish to continue 
 any human creatures in such a situation. But honest men 
 will not forget either their merit or their sufferings. There 
 are men (and many, I trust, there are) who, out of love to 
 their country and their kind, would torture their invention 
 to find excuses for the mistakes of their brethren, and who, 
 to stifle dissension, would construe even doubtful appear. 
 ances with the utmost favour: such men will never persuade 
 themselves to be ingenious and refined in discovering dis-.. 
 affection and treason in the manifest, palpable signs of 
 suffering loyalty. Persecution is so unnatural to them, that 
 they gladly snatch the very first opportunity of laying aside 
 all the tricks and devices of penal politics, and of returning 
 home, after all their irksome and vexatious wanderings, to 
 our natural family mansion, to the grand social principle 
 that unites all men, in all descriptions, under the shadow of 
 an equal and impartial justice. 
 
 Men of another sort, I mean the bigoted enemies to 
 liberty, may, perhaps, in their politics, make no account of 
 the good or ill affection of the Catholics of England, who 
 are but an handful of people (enough to torment, but not 
 enough to fear), perhaps not so many, of both sexes and of 
 all ages, as fifty thousand. But, Gentlemen, it is possible 
 you may not know that the people of that persuasion in 
 Ireland amount at least to sixteen or seventeen hundred 
 thousand souls. I do not at all exaggerate the number. A 
 nation to be persecuted! Whilst we were masters of the sea, 
 embodied with America, and in alliance with half the powers 
 of the Continent, we might, perhaps, in that remote corner’ 
 of Europe, afford to tyrannize with impunity. But there is 
 a revolution in our affairs, which makes it prudent to be just. 
 In our late awkward contest with Ireland about trade, had 
 religion been thrown in, to ferment and embitter the mass 
 of discontents, the consequences might have been truly 
 dreadful. But, very happily, that cause of quarrel was 
 previously quieted by the wisdom of the acts I am com- 
 mending. 
 
PARLIAMENTARY CONDUCT 173 
 
 Even in England, where I admit the danger from the dis- 
 content of that persuasion to be less than in Ireland, yet 
 even here, had we listened to the counsels of fanaticism and 
 folly, we might have wounded ourselves very deeply, and 
 wounded ourselves in a very tender part. You are apprised 
 that the Catholics of England consist mostly of our best 
 manufacturers. Had the legislature chosen, instead of re- 
 turning their declarations of duty with correspondent good- 
 will, to drive them to despair, there isa country at their very 
 door to which they would be invited,—a country in all re- 
 spects as good as ours, and with the finest cities in the world 
 ready built to receive them. And thus the bigotry of a free 
 country, and in an enlightened age, would have repeopled 
 the cities of Flanders, which, in the darkness of two hundred 
 years ago, had been desolated: by the superstition of a cruel 
 tyrant. Our manufactures were the growth of the persecu- 
 tions in the Low Countries. What a spectacle would it be 
 to Europe, to see us at this time of day balancing the account 
 of tyranny with those very countries, and by our persecu- 
 tions driving back trade and manufacture, as a sort of vaga- 
 bonds, to their original settlement! But I trust we shall be 
 saved this last of disgraces. 
 
 So far as to the effect of the act on the interests of this 
 nation. With regard to the interests of mankind at large, I 
 am sure the benefit was very considerable. Long before this 
 act, indeed, the spirit of toleration began to gain ground in 
 Europe. In Holland the third part of the people are Cath- 
 olics; they live at ease, and are a sound part of the state. 
 In many parts of Germany, Protestants and Papists partake 
 the same cities, the same councils, and even the same chur- 
 ches. The unbounded liberality of the king of Prussia’s 
 conduct on this occasion is known to all the world; and it is 
 of a piece with the other grand maxims of his reign. The 
 magnanimity of the Imperial court, breaking through the 
 narrow principles of its predecessors, has indulged its Pro- 
 testant subjects, not only with property, with worship, with 
 liberal education, but with honours and trusts, both civil and 
 
174 BURKE 
 
 military. A worthy Protestant gentleman of this country 
 now fills, and fills with credit, an high office in the Austrian 
 Netherlands. Even the Lutheran obstinacy of Sweden has 
 thawed at length, and opened a toleration to all religions. 
 I know, myself, that in France the Protestants begin to be 
 at rest. The army, which in that country is everything, is 
 open to them; and some of the military rewards and deco- 
 rations which the laws deny are supplied by others, to make 
 the service acceptable and honourable. The first minister of 
 finance in that country is a Protestant. Two years’ war 
 without a tax is among the first fruits of their liberality. 
 Tarnished as the glory of this nation is, and far as it has 
 waded into the shades of an eclipse, some beams of its former 
 illumination still play upon its surface; and what is done in 
 England is still looked to, as argument, and as example. 
 It is certainly true, that no law of this country ever met 
 with such universal applause abroad, or was so likely to 
 produce the perfection of that tolerating spirit which, as I 
 observed, has been long gaining ground in Europe: for 
 abroad it was universally thought that we had done what I 
 am sorry to say we had not; they thought we had granted 
 a full toleration. That opinion was, however, so far from 
 hurting the Protestant cause, that I declare, with the most 
 serious solemnity, my firm belief that-no one thing done for 
 these fifty years past was so likely to prove deeply beneficial 
 to our religion at large as. Sir George Savile’s act. In its 
 effects it was “‘an act for tolerating and protecting Protestan- 
 tism throughout Europe’’; and I hope that those who were 
 taking steps for the quiet and settlement of our Protestant 
 brethren in other countries will, even yet, rather consider the 
 steady equity of the greater and better part of the people of 
 Great Britain than the vanity and violence of a few. 
 
 I perceive, Gentlemen, by the manner of all about me, 
 that you look with horror on the wicked clamor which has 
 been raised on this subject, and that, instead of an apology 
 for what was done, you rather demand from me an account, 
 why the execution of the scheme of toleration was not made 
 
PARLIAMENTARY CONDUCT 175 
 
 more answerable to the large and liberal grounds on which 
 it was taken up. The question is natural and proper; and 
 I remember that a great and learned magistrate,? distin- 
 guished for his strong and systematic understanding, and 
 who at that time was a member of the House of Commons, 
 made the same objection to the proceeding. The statutes, 
 as they now stand, are, without doubt, perfectly absurd. 
 But I beg leave to explain the cause of this gross imperfec- 
 tion in the tolerating plan, as well and as shortly as I am 
 able. It was universally thought that the session ought not 
 to pass over without doing something in this business. To 
 revise the whole body of the penal statutes was conceived 
 to be an object too big for the time. The penal statute, 
 therefore, which was chosen for repeal (chosen to show our 
 disposition to conciliate, not to perfect a toleration) was 
 this act of ludicrous cruelty of which I have just given you 
 the history. It is an act which, though not by a great deal 
 so fierce and bloody as some of the rest, was infinitely more 
 ready in the execution. It was the act which gave the 
 greatest encouragement to those pests of society, mercenary 
 informers and interested disturbers of household peace; and 
 it was observed with truth, that the prosecutions, either 
 carried to conviction or compounded, for many years, had 
 been all commenced upon that act. It was said, that, whilst 
 we were deliberating on a more perfect scheme, the spirit of 
 the age would never come up to the execution of the statutes 
 which remained, especially as more steps, and a co-operation 
 of more minds and powers, were required towards a mis- 
 chievous use of them, than for the execution of the act to be 
 repealed: that it was better to unravel this texture from 
 below than from above, beginning with the latest, which, in 
 general practise, is the severest evil. It was alleged, that 
 this slow proceeding would be attended with the advantage 
 of a progressive experience,—and that the people would 
 grow reconciled to toleration, when they should find, by the 
 effects, that justice was not so irreconcilable an enemy to 
 convenience as they had imagined. 
 
176 BURKE 
 
 These, Gentlemen, were the reasons why we left this good 
 work in the rude, unfinished state in which good works are 
 commonly left, through the tame circumspection with which 
 a timid prudence so frequently enervates beneficence. In 
 doing good, we are generally cold, and languid, and sluggish, 
 and of all things afraid of being too much in the right. But 
 the works of malice and injustice are quite in another style. 
 They are finished with a bold, masterly hand, touched as 
 they are with the spirit of those vehement passions that 
 call forth all our energies, whenever we oppress and persecute. 
 
 Thus this matter was left for the time, with a full deter- 
 mination in Parliament not to suffer other and worse statutes 
 to remain for the purpose of counteracting the benefits pro- 
 posed by the repeal of one penal law: for nobody then 
 dreamed of defending what was done as a benefit, on the 
 eround of its being no benefit at all. We were not then ripe 
 for so mean a subterfuge. 
 
 I do not wish to go over the horrid scene that was after- 
 wards acted. Would to God it could be expunged forever 
 from the annals of this country! But since it must subsist 
 for our shame, let it subsist for our instruction. In the year 
 1780 there were found in this nation men deluded enough, 
 (for I give the whole to their delusion,) on pretenses of zeal 
 and piety, without any sort of provocation whatsoever, real 
 or pretended, to make a desperate attempt, which would 
 have consumed all the glory and power of this country in 
 the flames of London, and buried all law, order, and religion 
 under the ruins of the metropolis of the Protestant world. 
 Whether all this mischief done, or in the direct train of 
 doing, was in their original scheme, I cannot say; I hope it 
 was not: but this would have been the unavoidable conse- 
 quence of their proceedings, had not the flames they had 
 lighted up in their fury been extinguished in their blood. 
 
 All the time that this horrid scene was acting, or aveng- 
 ing, as well as for some time before, and ever since, the 
 wicked instigators of this unhappy multitude, guilty, with 
 every aggravation, of all their crimes, and screened in a cow- 
 
PARLIAMENTARY CONDUCT 177 
 
 ardly darkness from their punishment, continued, without 
 interruption, pity, or remorse, to blow up the blind rage of 
 the populace with a continued blast of pestilential libels, 
 which infected and poisoned the very air we breathed in. 
 The main drift of all the libels and all the riots was, to 
 force Parliament (to persuade us was hopeless) into an act of 
 national perfidy which has no example. For, Gentlemen, it 
 is proper you should all know what infamy we escaped by 
 refusing that repeal, for a refusal of which, it seems, I, among 
 others, stand somewhere or other accused. When we took 
 away, on the motives which I had the honour of stating to 
 you, a few of the innumerable penalties upon an oppressed 
 and injured people, the relief was not absolute, but given on 
 a stipulation and compact between them and us: for we 
 bound down the Roman Catholics with the most solemn 
 oaths to bear true allegiance to this government, to abjure all 
 sort of temporal power in any other, and to renounce, under 
 the same solemn obligations, the doctrines of systematic per- 
 - fidy with which they stood (I conceive very unjustly) charged. 
 Now our modest petitioners came up to us, most humbly 
 praying nothing more than that we should break our faith, 
 without any one cause whatsoever of forfeiture assigned; 
 and when the subjects of this kingdom had, on their part, 
 fully performed their engagement, we should refuse, on our 
 part, the benefit we had stipulated on the performance of 
 those very conditions that were prescribed by our own 
 authority, and taken on the sanction of our public faith: 
 that is to say, when we had inveigled them with fair prom- 
 ises within our door, we were to shut it on them, and, 
 adding mockery to outrage, to tell them,—“ Now we have 
 got you fast: your consciences are bound toa power resolved 
 on your destruction. We have made you swear that your © 
 religion obliges you to keep your faith: fools as you are! 
 _we will now let you see that our religion enjoins us to keep 
 no faith with you.” They who would advisedly call upon us 
 to do such things must certainly have thought us not only a. 
 
 convention of treacherous tyrants, but a gang of the lowest 
 12 
 
178 - BURKE 
 
 and dirtiest wretches that ever disgraced humanity. Had we 
 done this, we should have indeed proved that there were some 
 in the world whom no faith could bind; and we should have 
 convicted ourselves of that odious principle of which Papists 
 stood accused by those very savages who wished us, on that 
 accusation, to deliver them over to their fury. 
 
 In this audacious tumult, when our very name and char- 
 acter as gentlemen was to be cancelled forever, along with 
 the faith and honour of the nation, I, who had exerted my- 
 self very little on the quiet passing of the bill, thought it 
 necessary then to come forward. I was not alone; but 
 though some distinguished members on all sides, and par- 
 ticularly on ours, added much to their high reputation by 
 the part they took on that day (a part which will be remem- 
 bered as long ashonour, spirit, and eloquence have estima- 
 tion in the world), I may and will value myself so far, that 
 yielding in abilities to many, I yielded in zeal to none. 
 With warmth and with vigour, and animated with a just and 
 natural indignation, I called forth every faculty that I pos- 
 sessed, and I directed it in every way in which I could pos- 
 sibly employ it. I laboured night and day. I laboured in 
 Parliament ; [laboured out of Parliament. If, therefore, the 
 resolution of the House of Commons, refusing to commit 
 this act of unmatched turpitude, be a crime, I am guilty 
 among the foremost. But, indeed, whatever the faults of 
 that House may have been, no one member was found hardy 
 enough to propose so infamous a thing; and on full debate 
 we passed the resolution against the petitions with as much 
 unanimity as we had formerly passed the law of which these 
 petitions demanded the repeal. 
 
 There was a circumstance (justice will not suffer me to pass 
 it over) which, if anything could enforce the reasons I 
 have given, would fully justify the act of relief, and render a 
 repeal, or anything like a repeal, unnatural, impossible. It 
 was the behaviour of the persecuted Roman Catholics under 
 the acts of violence and brutal insolence which they suffered. 
 I suppose there are not in London less than four or five thou- 
 
PARLIAMENTARY CONDUCT 179 
 
 sand of that persuasion from mycountry, who do a great 
 deal of the most laborious works in the metropolis; and 
 they chiefly inhabit those quarters which were the principal 
 theater of the fury of the bigoted multitude. They are 
 known to be men of strong arms and quick feelings, and more 
 remarkable for a determined resolution than clear ideas or 
 much foresight. But, though provoked by everything that 
 can stir the blood of men, their houses and chapels in flames, 
 and with the most atrocious profanations of everything which 
 they hold sacred before their eyes, not a hand was moved to 
 retaliate, or even to defend. Had aconflict once begun, the 
 rage of their persecutors would have redoubled. Thus fury 
 increasing by the reverberation of outrages, house being 
 fired for house, and church for chapel, Iam convinced that no 
 power under heaven could have prevented a general con- 
 flagration, and at this day London would have been a tale. 
 But I am well informed, and the thing speaks it, that 
 their clergy exerted their whole influence to keep their 
 people in such a state of forbearance and quiet, as, when I 
 look back, fills me with astonishment,—but not with as- 
 tonishment only. Their merits on that occasion ought not 
 to be forgotten; nor will they, when Englishmen come to 
 recollect themselves. I am sure it were far more proper 
 to have called them forth, and given them the thanks of 
 both Houses of Parliament, than to have suffered those 
 _ worthy clergymen and excellent citizens to be hunted into 
 holes and corners, whilst we are making low-minded inquisi- 
 tions into the number of their people; as if a tolerating 
 principle was never to prevail, unless we were very sure that 
 only a few could possibly take advantage of it. But, indeed, 
 we are not yet well recovered of our fright. Our reason, I 
 trust, will return with our security, and this unfortunate 
 temper will pass over like a cloud. 
 
 Gentlemen, I have now laid before you a few of the 
 reasons for taking away the penalties of the act of 1699, and 
 for refusing to establish them on the riotous requisition of 
 1780. Because I would not suffer anything which may be 
 
180 | BURKE 
 
 for your satisfaction to escape, permit me just to touch on 
 the objections urged against our act and our resolves, and 
 intended as a justification of the violence offered to both 
 Houses. “ Parliament,” they assert, “ was too hasty, and 
 they ought, in so essential and alarming a change, to have 
 proceeded with a far greater degree of deliberation.” The 
 direct contrary. Parliament wastoo slow. They took four- 
 score years to deliberate on the repeal of an act which ought 
 not to have survived a second session. When at length, 
 after a procrastination of near a century, the business was 
 taken up, it proceeded in the most public manner, by the 
 ordinary stages, and as slowly as a law so evidently right as 
 to be resisted by none would naturally advance. Had it 
 been read three times in one day, we should have shown 
 only a becoming readiness to recognize, by protection, the 
 undoubted dutiful behaviour of those whom we had but too 
 long punished for offences of presumption or conjecture. 
 But for what end was that billto linger beyond the usual 
 period of an unopposed measure? Was it to be delayed 
 until a rabble in Edinburgh should dictate to the Church of 
 England what measure of persecution was fitting for her 
 safety? Was it to be adjourned until a fanatical force could 
 be collected in London, sufficient to frighten us out of all 
 our ideas of policy and justice? Were we to wait for the 
 profound lectures on the reason of state, ecclesiastical and 
 political, which the Protestant Association have since con- 
 descended to read to us? Or were we, seven hundred peers 
 and commoners, the only persons ignorant of the ribald in- 
 vectives which occupy the place of argument in those remon- 
 strances, which every man of common observation had heard 
 a thousand times over, and a thousand times over had de- 
 spised? All men had before heard what they have to say, 
 and all men at this day know what they dare to do; and I 
 trust all honest men are equally influenced by the one and 
 by the other. 
 
 But they tell us, that those our fellow-citizens whose 
 chains we have a little relaxed are enemies to liberty and 
 
PARLIAMENTARY CONDUCT 181 
 
 our free Constitution.—Not enemies, I presume, to their 
 own liberty. And as to the Constitution, until we give 
 them some share in it, I do not know on what pretense we 
 can examine into their opinions about a business in which 
 they have no interest or concern. But, after all, are we 
 equally sure that they are adverse to our Constitution as 
 that our statutes are hostile and destructive to them? For 
 my part, I have reason to believe their opinions and inclina- 
 tions in that respect are various, exactly like those of other 
 men ; and if they lean more to the crown than I and than 
 many of you think we ought, we must remember that he 
 who aims at another’s life is not to be surprised, if he flies 
 into any sanctuary that will receive him. The tenderness of 
 the executive power is the natural asylum of those upon 
 whom the laws have declared war; and to complain that 
 men are inclined to favour the means of their own safety is 
 so absurd, that one forgets the injustice in the ridicule. 
 
 I must fairly tell you, that so far as my principles are con- 
 cerned (principles that I hope will only depart with my last 
 breath,) that I have no idea of a liberty unconnected with 
 honesty and justice. Nor do I believe that any good con- 
 stitutions of government, or of freedom, can find it necessary 
 for their security to doom any part of the people to a per- 
 manent slavery.’ Such a constitution of freedom, if such can 
 be, is in effect no more than another name for the tyranny 
 of thestrongest faction; and factions in republics have been, 
 and are, full as capable as monarchs of the most cruel oppres- 
 sion and injustice. It is but too true, that the love, and even 
 the very idea, of genuine liberty is extremely rare. It is but 
 too true that there are many whose whole scheme of freedom 
 is made up of pride, perverseness, and insolence. They feel 
 themselves in a state of thraldom, they imagine that their 
 souls are cooped and cabined in, unless they have some man 
 ‘or some body of men dependent on their mercy. This de- 
 sire of having some one below them descends to those who are 
 the very lowest of all ; and a Protestant cobbler, debased by 
 his poverty, but exalted by his share of the ruling church, 
 
182 BURKE 
 
 feels a pride in knowing it is by his generosity alone that 
 the peer whose footman’s instep he measures is able to 
 keep his chaplain from a jail. This disposition is the true 
 source of the passion which many men in very humble life 
 have taken to the American war. Our subjects in America ; 
 our colonies ; our dependants. This lust of party power is 
 the liberty they hunger and thirst for; and this Siren song 
 of ambition has charmed ears that one would have thought 
 were never organized to that sort of music. 
 
 This way of proscribing the citizens by denominations and 
 general descriptions, dignified by the name of reason of 
 state, and security for constitutions and commonwealths, is 
 nothing better at bottom than the miserable invention of an 
 ungenerous ambition which would fain hold the sacred trust 
 of power, without any of the virtues or any of the energies 
 that give a title to it,—a receipt of policy, made up of a de- 
 testable compound of malice, cowardice, and sloth. They 
 would govern men against their will ; but in that govern- 
 ment they would be discharged from the exercise of vigilance, 
 providence, and fortitude ; and therefore, that they may 
 sleep on their watch, they consent to take some one division 
 of the society into partnership of the tyranny over the rest. 
 But let government, in what form it may be, comprehend 
 the whole in its justice, and restrain the suspicious-by its 
 vigilance,—let it keep watch and ward,—let it discover by its 
 sagacity, and punish by its firmness, all delinquency against 
 its power, whenever delinquency exists in the overt acts, 
 —and then it will be as safe as ever God and Nature intended 
 it should be. Crimes are the acts of individuals, and not of 
 denominations: and therefore arbitrarily to class men 
 under general descriptions, in order to proscribe and punish 
 them in the lump for a presumed delinquency, of which per- 
 haps but a part, perhaps none at all, are guilty, is indeed a 
 compendious method, and saves a world of trouble about 
 proof; but such a method, instead of being law, is an act 
 of unnatural rebellion against the legal dominion of reason 
 and justice; and this vice, in any constitution that en- 
 
PARLIAMENTARY CONDUCT 183 
 
 tertains it, at one time or other will certainly bring on its 
 ruin. 
 
 We are told that this is not a religious persecution ; and 
 its abettors are loud in disclaiming all severities on account 
 of conscience. Very fine indeed! Then let it be so: they 
 are not persecutors ; they are only tyrants. With all my 
 heart. Iam perfectly indifferent concerning the pretexts 
 upon which we torment one another,—or.whether it be for 
 the constitution of the Church of England, or for the con- 
 stitution of the State of England, that people choose 
 to make their fellow-creatures wretched. When we 
 were sent into a place of authority, you that sent us had 
 yourselves but one commission to give. You could give us 
 none to wrong or oppress, or even to suffer any kind of op- 
 pression or wrong, on any grounds whatsoever : not on po- 
 litical, as in the affairs of America; not on commercial, as in 
 those of Ireland ; not in civil, as in the laws for debt ; not 
 in religious, as in the statutes against Protestant or Catholic 
 . dissenters. The diversified, but connected, fabric of uni- 
 versal justice is well cramped and bolted together in all its 
 parts ; and depend upon it, 1 never have employed, and I 
 never shall employ, any engine of power which may come 
 into my hands to wrench it asunder. All shall stand, if I can 
 help it, and all shall stand connected. After all, to complete 
 this work, much remains to be done: much in the East, 
 much in the West. But, great as the work is, if our will be 
 ready, our powers are not deficient. 
 
 Since you have suffered me to trouble you so much on 
 this subject, permit me, Gentlemen, to detain you a little 
 longer. I am, indeed, most solicitous to give you perfect 
 satisfaction. I find there are some of a better and softer 
 nature than the persons with whom I have supposed myself 
 in debate, who neither think ill of the act of relief, nor by 
 any means desire the repeal,—yet who, not accusing, but 
 lamenting, what was done, on account of the consequences, 
 have frequently expressed their wish that the late act had 
 never been made. Some of this description, and persons of 
 
184 BURKE 
 
 _ worth, I have met with in this city. They conceive that the 
 prejudices, whatever they might be, of a large part of the 
 people, ought not to have been shocked,—that their opin- 
 ions ought to have been previously taken, and much 
 attended to,—and that thereby the late horrid scenes 
 might have been prevented. 
 
 I confess, my notions are widely different ; and I never 
 was less sorry for any action of my life. I like the bill the 
 better on account of the events of all kinds that followed it. 
 It relieved the real sufferers; it strengthened the state; and, 
 by the disorders that ensued, we had clear evidence that 
 there lurked a temper somewhere which ought not to be 
 fostered by the laws. No ill consequences whatever could 
 be attributed to the act itself. We knew beforehand, or we 
 were poorly instructed, that toleration is odious to the in- 
 tolerant, freedom to oppressors, property to robbers, and all 
 kinds and degrees of prosperity to the envious. We knew 
 that all these kinds of men would gladly gratify their evil 
 dispositions under the sanction of law and religion, if they 
 could: if they could not, yet, to make way to their objects, 
 they would do their utmost to subvert all religion and all 
 law. This we certainly knew. But, knowing this, is there 
 any reason, because thieves break in and steal, and thus 
 bring detriment to you, and draw ruin on themselves, that I 
 am to be sorry that you are in possession of shops, and of 
 warehouses, and of wholesome laws to protect them? Are 
 you to build no houses, because desperate men may pull 
 them down upon their own heads? Or, if a malignant 
 wretch will cut his own throat, because he sees you give 
 alms to the necessitous and deserving, shall his destruction 
 be attributed to your charity, and not to his own deplorable 
 madness? If we repent of our good actions, what, I pray 
 you, is left for our faults and follies? It is not the benefi- 
 cence of the laws, it is the unnatural temper which benefi- 
 cence can fret and sour, that is to be lamented. It is this 
 temper which, by all rational means, ought to be sweetened 
 and corrected. If froward men should refuse this cure, can 
 
PARLIAMENTARY CONDUCT 185 
 
 they vitiate anything but themselves? Does evil so react 
 upon good, as not only to retard its motion, but to change 
 its nature? If it can so operate, then good men will always 
 be in the power of the bad,—and virtue, by a dreadful re- 
 verse of order, must lie under perpetual subjection and 
 bondage to vice. 
 
 As tothe opinion of the people, which some think, in such 
 cases, is to be implicitly obeyed,—near two years’ tranquillity, 
 which followed the act, and its instant imitation in Ireland, 
 proved abundantly that the late horrible spirit was in a great 
 measure the effect of insidious art, and perverse industry, 
 and gross misrepresentation. But suppose that the dislike 
 had been much more deliberate and much more general than 
 I am persuaded it was,—when we know that the opinions of 
 even the greatest multitudes are the standard of rectitude, I 
 shall think myself obliged to make those opinions the masters 
 of my conscience. But if it may be doubted whether Om- 
 nipotence itself is competent to alter the essential constitu- 
 tion of right and wrong, sure I am that such things as they 
 and I are possessed of no such power. Noman carries further 
 than I do the policy of making government pleasing to the 
 people. But the widest range of this politic complaisance is 
 confined within the limits of justice. I would not only con- 
 sult the interest of the people, but I would cheerfully 
 gratify their humours. We are all a sort of children that 
 must be soothed and managed. I think I'am not austere or 
 formal in my nature. I would bear, I would even myself 
 play my part in, any innocent buffooneries, to divert them. 
 But I never will act the tyrant for their amusement. If 
 they will mix malice in their sports, I shall never consent to 
 throw them any living, sentient creature whatsoever, no, not 
 so much as a kitling, to torment. 
 
 “ But if I profess all this impolitic stubbornness, I may 
 chance never to be elected into Parliament.’’—It is certainly 
 not pleasing to be put out of the public service. But I wish 
 to be a member of Parliament to have my share of doing 
 good and resisting evil. It would therefore be absurd to re 
 
186 BURKE 
 
 nounce my objects in order to obtain my seat. I deceive 
 myself, indeed, most grossly, if I had not much rather pass 
 the remainder of my life hidden in the recesses of the deep- 
 est obscurity, feeding my mind even with the visions and 
 imaginations of such things, than to be placed on the most 
 splendid throne of the universe, tantalized with a denial of 
 the practice of all which can make the greatest situation any 
 other than the greatest curse. Gentlemen, I have had my 
 day. I can never sufficiently express my gratitude to you 
 for having set me in a place wherein I could lend the slight- 
 est help to great and laudable designs. If I have had my 
 share in any measure giving quiet to private property and 
 private conscience,—if by my vote I have aided in secur- 
 ing to families the best possession, peace,—if I have joined 
 in reconciling kings to their subjects, and subjects to their 
 prince,—if I have assisted to loosen the foreign holdings of 
 the citizen, and taught him to look for his protection to the 
 laws of his country, and for his comfort to the good-will of 
 his countrymen,—if I have thus taken my part with the best 
 of men in the best of their actions, I can shut the book: I 
 might wish to read a page or two more, but this is enough 
 for my measure. I have not lived in vain. 
 
 And now, Gentlemen, on this serious day, when I come, 
 as it were, to make up my accounts with you, let me take to 
 myself some degree of honest pride on the nature of the 
 charges that are against me. I do not here stand before you 
 accused of venality, or of neglect of duty. It is not said, 
 that, in the long period of my service, I have, in a single in- 
 stance, sacrificed the slightest of your interests to my ambi- 
 tion or to my fortune. It is not alleged, that, to gratify any 
 anger or revenge of my own, or of my party, I have had 
 a share in wronging or oppressing any description of men, 
 or any one man in any description. No! the charges 
 against me are all of one kind: that I have pushed the prin- 
 ciples of general justice and benevolence too far,—further 
 than a cautious policy would warrant, and further than the 
 Opinions of many would go along with me. In every acci- 
 
PARLIAMENTARY CONDUCT 187 
 
 dent which may happen through life, in pain, in sorrow, in 
 depression, and distress, I will call to mind this accusation, 
 and be comforted. | 
 
 Gentlemen, I submit the whole to your judgment. Mr. 
 Mayor, I thank you for the trouble you have taken on this 
 occasion: in your state of health it is particularly obliging. 
 If this company should think it advisable for me to with- 
 draw, I shall respectfully retire; if you think otherwise, I 
 shall go directly to the Council-House and to the ’Change, 
 and without a moment's delay begin my canvass. 
 
 NOTES, 
 
 1. Irish Perpetual Mutiny Act. 
 2. Mr. Williams. 
 3. The Chancellor. 
 
a 
 
 ua eae ie , 
 
ON DECLINING THE POLL 
 
 (Delivered in Bristol, Saturday, September 9, 1780.) 
 
 THIS morning the sheriff and candidates assembled as usual at the 
 Council-House, and from thence proceeded to Guildhall. Proclamation 
 being made for the electors to appear and give their votes, Mr. Burke 
 stood forward on the hustings, surrounded by a great number of the cor- 
 poration and other principal citizens, and addressed himself to the whole 
 assembly as follows : 
 
 ENTLEMEN,—I decline the election. It has ever 
 been my rule through life to observe a proportion 
 between my efforts and my objects. I have never been re- 
 markable for a bold, active, and sanguine pursuit of advan- 
 tages that are personal to myself. 
 
 I have not canvassed the whole of this city in form, but I 
 have taken such a view of it as satishles my own mind that 
 your choice will not ultimately fall upon me. Your city, 
 Gentlemen, is in a state of miserable distraction, and I am 
 resolved to withdraw whatever share my pretensions may 
 
 have had in its unhappy divisions. I have not been in haste; 
 
 I have tried all prudent means. I have waited for the effect 
 of all contingencies. If I were fond of a contest, by the 
 partiality of my numerous friends (whom you know to be 
 among the most weighty and respectable people of the city) 
 I have the means of a sharp one inmy hands. But I thought 
 it far better, with my strength unspent and my reputation 
 unimpaired, to do, early and from foresight, that which I 
 might be obliged to do from necessity at last. 
 
 I am not in the least surprised nor in the least angry at 
 
 this view of things. I have read the book of life for a long 
 189 
 
190 BURKE 
 
 time, and I have read other books a little. Nothing has 
 happened to me, but what has happened to men much better 
 than me, and in times and in nations full as good as the age 
 and country that we live in. To say that I am no way con- 
 cerned would be neither decent nor true. The representa- 
 tion of Bristol was an object on many accounts dear to me; 
 and I certainly should very far prefer it to any other in the 
 kingdom. My habits are made to it; and it is in general 
 more unpleasant to be rejected after iene trial than not to 
 be chosen at all. 
 
 But, Gentlemen, I will see noenite except your former 
 kindness, and I will give way to no other sentiments than 
 those of gratitude. From the bottom of my heart I thank 
 you for what you have done for me. You have given mea 
 long term, which is now expired. I have performed the 
 conditions, and enjoyed all the profits to the full; and I now 
 surrender your estate into your hands, without being in a 
 single tile or a single stone impaired or wasted by my use. 
 I have served the public for fifteen years. I have served you 
 in particular for six. What is past is well stored ; it is safe, 
 and out of the power of fortune. What is to come is in wiser 
 hands than ours; and He in whose hands it is best knows 
 whether it is best for you and me that I should be in Parlia- 
 ment, or even in the world. : 
 
 Gentlemen, the melancholy event of yesterday reads to us 
 an awful lesson against being too much troubled about any 
 of the objects of ordinary ambition. The worthy gentle- 
 man! who has been snatched from us at the moment of the: 
 election, and in the middle of the contest, whilst his desires: 
 were as warm and his hopes as eager as ours, has feelingly 
 told us what shadows we are and what shadows we pursue. 
 
 It has been usual for a candidate who declines to take his 
 leave by a letter to the sheriffs: but I received your trust in 
 the face of day, and in the face of day I accept your dismis- 
 sion. I am not—TI am not at all ashamed to look upon you; 
 nor can my presence discompose the order of business here. 
 I humbly and respectfully take my leave of the sheriffs, the 
 
ON DECLINING THE POLL IOI 
 
 candidates, and the electors, wishing heartily that the choice 
 may be for the best, at a time which calls, if ever time did 
 call, for service that is not nominal. It is no plaything you 
 are about. I tremble, when I consider the trust I have pre- 
 sumed to ask. I confided, perhaps, too much in my inten- 
 tions. They were really fair and upright; and I am bold to 
 say that I ask no ill thing for you, when, on parting from 
 this place, I pray, that, whomever you choose to succeed me, 
 he may resemble me exactly in all things, except in my abili- 
 ties to serve, and my fortune to please you.’ 
 
 NOTE 
 
 1. Mr. Coombe. 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 
 
 THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE 
 
 I HAVE endeavoured to make this edition something more full and satisfac- 
 
 tory than the first. I have sought with the utmost care, and read with 
 equal attention, everything which has appeared in public against my opinions ; 
 I have taken advantage of the candid liberty of my friends; and if by these 
 means I have been better enabled to discover the imperfections of the work, 
 the indulgence it has received, imperfect as it was, furnished me with a new 
 motive to spare no reasonable pains for its improvement. Though I have not 
 found sufficient reason, or what appeared to me sufficient, for making any 
 material change in my theory, I have found it necessary in many places to 
 explain, illustrate, and enforce it. I have prefixed an introductory discourse 
 concerning Taste; it is a matter curious in itself; and it leads naturally 
 enough to the principal inquiry. This, with the other explanations, has made 
 the work considerably larger; and by increasing its bulk has, I am afraid, 
 added to its faults; so that notwithstanding all my attention, it may stand 
 in need of a yet greater share of indulgence than it required at its first 
 appearance. 
 
 They who are accustomed to studies of this nature will expect, and they will 
 allow too for many faults. They know that many of the objects of our in- 
 quiry are in themselves obscure and intricate; and that many others have 
 been rendered so by affected refinements, or false learning; they know that 
 there are many impediments in the subject, in the prejudices of others, and 
 even in our own, that render it a matter of no small difficulty to showina 
 clear light the genuine face of nature. They know that whilst the mind is in- 
 tent on the general scheme of things, some particular parts must be neglected ; 
 that we must often submit the style to the matter, and frequently give up the 
 praise of elegance, satisfied with being clear. 
 
 The characters of nature are legible, it is true; but they are not plain enough 
 to enable those who run, to read them. We must make use of a cautious, I 
 had almost said, a timorous method of proceeding. We must not attempt to 
 fly, when we can scarcely pretend to creep. In considering any complex 
 matter, we ought to examine every distinct ingredient in the composition, one 
 by one; and reduce everything to the utmost simplicity ; since the condition of 
 our nature binds us to a strict law and very narrow limits. We ought after- 
 
 195 
 
196 BURKE 
 
 wards to re-examine the principles by the effect of the composition, as well as 
 the composition by that of the principles. We ought to compare our subject 
 with things of a similar nature, and even with things of a contrary nature; for 
 discoveries may be, and often are made by the contrast, which would escape 
 us on the single view. The greater number of the comparisons we make, the 
 more general and the more certain our knowledge is likely to prove, as built 
 upon a more extensive and perfect induction. 
 
 If an inquiry thus carefully conducted should fail at last of discovering the 
 truth, it may answer an end perhaps as useful, in discovering to us the weak- 
 ness of our own understanding. If it does not make us knowing, it may make 
 us modest. If it does not preserve us from error, it may at least from the 
 spirit of error; and may make us cautious of pronouncing with positiveness or 
 with haste, when so much labour may end in so much uncertainty. 
 
 I could wish that, in examining this theory, the same method were pursued 
 which I endeavoured to observe in forming it. The objections, in my opinion, 
 ought to be proposed, either to the several principles as they are distinctly 
 considered, or to the justness of the conclusion which is drawn from them. 
 But it is common to pass over both the premises and conclusion in silence, and 
 to produce, as an objection, some poetical passage which does not seem easily 
 accounted for upon the principles I endeavour to establish. This manner of 
 proceeding I should think very improper. The task would be infinite, if we 
 could establish no principle until we had previously unraveled the complex 
 texture of every image or description to be found in poets and orators. And 
 though we should never be able to reconcile the effect of such images to our 
 principles, this can never overturn the theory itself, whilst it is founded on 
 certain and indisputable facts. A theory founded on experiment, and not 
 assumed, is always good for so much as it explains. Our inability to push it 
 indefinitely is no argument at all against it. This inability may be owing to our 
 ignorance of some necessary mediums; to a want of proper application; to 
 many other causes besides a defect in the principles we employ. In reality, 
 the subject requires a much closer attention than we dare claim from our 
 manner of treating it. 
 
 If it should not appear on the face of the work, I must caution the reader 
 against imagining that I intended a full dissertation on the Sublime and Beau- 
 tiful. My inquiry went no farther than to the origin of these ideas. If the 
 qualities which I have ranged under the head of the Sublime be all found con- 
 sistent with each other, and all different from those which I place under the 
 head of Beauty; and if those which compose the class of the Beautiful have 
 the same consistency with themselves, and the same opposition to those 
 which are classed under the denomination of Sublime, I am in little pain 
 whether anybody chooses to follow the name I give them or not, provided he 
 allows that what I dispose under different heads are in reality different things 
 in nature. The use I make of the words may be blamed, as too confined or 
 too extended; my meaning can not well be misunderstood. 
 
 To conclude: whatever progress may be made towards the discovery of 
 truth in this matter, I do not repent the pains I have taken in it. The use of 
 such inquiries may be very considerable. Whatever turns the soul inward on 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 197 
 
 itself, tends to concentre its forces, and to fit it for greater and stronger flights 
 of science. By looking into physical causes our minds are opened and en- 
 larged; and in this pursuit, whether we take or whether we lose our game, 
 the chase is certainly of service. Cicero, true as he was to the academic phi- 
 losophy and consequently led to reject the certainty of physical, as of every 
 other kind of knowledge, yet freely confesses its great importance to the human 
 understanding: “ Est animorum ingeniorumque nostrorum naturale quoddam 
 quasi pabulum consideratio contemplatioque nature.” If we can direct the 
 lights we derive from such exalted speculations upon the humbler field of the 
 imagination, whilst we investigate the springs, and trace the courses of our 
 passions, we may not only communicate to the taste a sort of philosophical 
 solidity, but we may reflect back on the severer sciences some of the graces and 
 elegancies of taste, without which the greatest proficiency in those sciences 
 will always have the appearance of something illiberal. 
 
t 
 
 yee ne eb ile oe at’, 
 
 Whur’ im vet ity ro... 
 asia 
 
 pHrsvaise' 
 
 “ON Se ea Cate ee rehis Hhe eD aae e agat : 
 , "i , oe eee, ie hah 
 ; 7 " + w d ae 
 i si, dan seated: anon Sa ~~ eee a EP LAR ah Geet at arrd Vow 
 ¥ ¢ Ke rt i ee De % , : 
 u dy 2 fF O54 ick re es + 
 eda OF ano A ADE 4 
 ‘ ” ‘ I Vite 
 ’ ete ah. Ga tie Ln 
 i , . . 
 | Lai Y oritubreiinuy abe tae LRTI 2 
 4 rh 
 2 ¥ q . tie f ra a 
 ¢ , sab. , eh) | | ; ; 
 ROY fly q 
 ; Wit Oe Downe: es nbn 
 y 
 ] ties Se at ae ' 
 far . 
 i 
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 “I 
 f 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 TASTE 
 
 N a superficial view we may seem to differ very widely 
 from each other in our reasonings, and no less in 
 
 our pleasures: but, notwithstanding this difference, which 
 I think to be rather apparent than real, it is probable that 
 the standard both of reason and taste is the same in all 
 human creatures. For if there were not some principles of 
 judgment as well as of sentiment common to all mankind, 
 no hold could possibly be taken either on their reason or 
 their passions, sufficient to maintain the ordinary corre- 
 spondence of life. It appears, indeed, to be generally ac- 
 knowledged, that with regard to truth and falsehood there 
 is something fixed. We find people in their disputes con- 
 tinually appealing to certain tests and standards, which are 
 allowed on all sides, and are supposed to be established in our 
 common nature. But there is not the same obvious concur- 
 rence in any uniform or settled principles which relate to 
 taste. It is even commonly supposed that this delicate and 
 aerial faculty, which seems too volatile to endure even the 
 chains of a definition, can not be properly tried by any test, 
 nor regulated by any standard. There is so continual a call 
 for the exercise of the reasoning faculty ; and it is so much 
 strengthened by perpetual contention, that certain maxims 
 of right reason seem to be tacitly settled amongst the most 
 ignorant. The learned have improved on this rude science, 
 and reduced those maxims into a system. If taste has not 
 been so happily cultivated, it was not that the subject was 
 
 199 
 
200 BURKE 
 
 barren, but that the labourers were few or negligent ; for, to 
 say the truth, there are not the same interesting motives to 
 impel us to fix the one, which urge us to ascertain the other. 
 And, after all, if men differ in their opinion concerning such 
 matters, their difference is not attended with the same im- 
 portant consequences; else I make no doubt but that the 
 logic of taste, if I may be allowed the expression, might very 
 possibly be as well digested, and we might come to discuss 
 matters of this nature with as much certainty, as those which 
 seem more immediately within the province of mere reason. 
 And, indeed, it is very necessary, at the entrance into such 
 an inquiry as our present, to make this point as clear as pos- 
 sible; for if taste has no fixed principles, if the imagination 
 is not affected according to some invariable and certain laws, 
 our labour is likely to be employed to very little purpose; as 
 it must be judged an useless, if not an absurd undertaking, 
 to lay down rules for caprice, and to set up for a legislator 
 of whims and fancies. 
 
 The term taste, like all other figurative terms, is not ex- 
 tremely accurate; the thing which we understand by it is far 
 from a simple and determinate idea in the minds of most 
 men, and it is therefore liable to uncertainty and confusion. 
 I have no great opinion of adefinition, the celebrated remedy 
 for the cure of this disorder. For, when we define, we 
 seem in danger of circumscribing nature within the bounds 
 of our own notions, which we often take up by hazard or 
 embrace on trust, or form out of a limited and partial con- 
 sideration of the object before us; instead of extending our 
 ideas to take in all that nature comprehends, according to 
 her manner of combining. We are limited in our inquiry 
 by the strict laws to which we have submitted at our setting 
 
 out. 
 
 Circa vilem patulumque morabimur orbem, 
 Unde pudor proferre pedem vetat aut operis lex. 
 
 A. definition may be very exact, and yet go but a very 
 little way towards informing us of the nature of the thing 
 defined; but let the virtue of a definition be what it will, in 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 201 
 
 the order of things, it seems rather to follow than to precede 
 our inquiry, of which it ought to be considered as the result. 
 It must be acknowledged that the methods of disquisition 
 and teaching may be sometimes different, and on very good 
 reason undoubtedly ; but, for my part, I am convinced that 
 the method of teaching which approaches most nearly to 
 the method of investigation is incomparably the best; since, 
 not content with serving up a few barren and lifeless truths, 
 it leads to the stock on which they grew; it tends to set the 
 reader himself in the track of invention, and to direct him 
 into those paths in which the author has made his own dis- 
 coveries, if he should be so happy as to have made any that 
 are valuable. 
 
 But to cut off all pretense for caviling, I mean by the 
 word taste, no more than that faculty or those faculties of 
 the mind, which are affected with, or which form a judgment 
 of, the works of imagination and the elegant arts. This is, 
 I think, the most general idea of that word, and what is the 
 least connected with any particular theory. And my point 
 in this inquiry is, to find whether there are any principles, 
 on which the imagination is affected, so common to all, so 
 grounded and certain, as to supply the means of reasoning 
 satisfactorily about them. And such principles of taste I 
 fancy there are; however paradoxical it may’ seem to those, 
 who on a superficial view imagine that there is so great a 
 diversity of tastes, both in kind and degree, that nothing 
 can be more indeterminate. 
 
 All the natural powers in man, which I know, that are 
 conversant about external objects, are the senses; the imagi- 
 nation; and the judgment. And first with regard to the 
 senses. We do and we must suppose, that as the conforma- 
 tion of their organs are nearly or altogether the same in all 
 men, so the manner of perceiving external objects is in all 
 men the same, or with little difference. We are satisfied 
 that what appears to be light to one eye, appears light to 
 another; that what seems sweet to one palate, is sweet to 
 another; that what is dark and bitter to this man, is likewise 
 
202 BURKE 
 
 dark and bitter to that ; and we conclude in the same man- 
 ner of great and little, hard and soft, hot and cold, rough and 
 smooth ; and indeed of all the natural qualities and affec- 
 tions of bodies. If we suffer ourselves to imagine, that their 
 senses present to different men different images of things, 
 this sceptical proceeding will make every sort of reasoning 
 on every subject vain and frivolous, even that sceptical 
 reasoning itself which had persuaded us to entertain a doubt 
 concerning the agreement of our perceptions. But as there 
 will be little doubt that bodies present similar images to the 
 whole species, it must necessarily be allowed, that the pleas- 
 
 ures and the pains which every object excites in one man, — 
 it must raise in all mankind, whilst it operates naturally, 
 simply, and by its proper powers only: for if we deny this, 
 we must imagine that the same cause, operating in the same 
 manner, and on subjects of the same kind, will produce 
 different effects; which would be highly absurd. Let us 
 first consider this point in the sense of taste, and the rather 
 as the faculty in question has taken its name from that sense. 
 All men are agreed to call vinegar sour, honey sweet, and 
 aloes bitter; and as they are all agreed in finding these quali- 
 ties in those objects, they do not in the least differ concern- 
 ing their effects with regard to pleasure and pain. They all 
 concur in calling sweetness pleasant, and sourness and bitter- 
 ness unpleasant. Here there is no diversity in their senti- _ 
 ments; and that there is not, appears fully from the consent 
 of all men in the metaphors which are taken from the sense — 
 of taste. A sour temper, bitter expressions, bitter curses, a 
 bitter fate, are terms well and strongly understood by all. 
 And we are altogether as well understood when we say, a 
 sweet disposition, a sweet person, a sweet condition and the 
 like. It is confessed, that custom and some other causes 
 have made many deviations from the natural pleasures or 
 pains which belong to these several tastes; but then the 
 power of distinguishing between the natural and the acquired 
 relish remains to the very last. A man frequently comes to 
 prefer the taste of tobacco to that of sugar, and the flavour of 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 203 
 
 vinegar to that of milk; but this makes no confusion in 
 tastes, whilst he is sensible that the tobacco and vinegar are 
 not sweet, and whilst he knows that habit alone has recon- 
 ciled his palate to these alien pleasures. Even with sucha 
 person we may speak, and with sufficient precision, concern- 
 ing tastes. But should any man be found who declares, 
 that to him tobacco has a taste like sugar, and that he can 
 not distinguish between milk and vinegar ; or that tobacco 
 and vinegar are sweet, milk bitter, and sugar sour; we im- 
 mediately conclude that the organs of this man are out of 
 order, and that his palate is utterly vitiated. We are as far 
 from conferring with such a person upon tastes, as from 
 reasoning concerning the relations of quantity with one who 
 should deny that all the parts together were equal to the 
 whole. We do not call a man of this kind wrong in his 
 notions, but absolutely mad. Exceptions of this sort, in 
 either way, do not at all impeach our general rule, nor make 
 us conclude that men have various principles concerning the 
 relations of quantity or the taste of things. So that when 
 it is said, taste can not be disputed, it can’ only mean, that 
 no one can strictly answer what pleasure or pain some par- 
 ticular man may find from the taste of some particular thing. 
 This indeed can not be disputed; but we may dispute, and 
 with sufficient clearness too, concerning the things which are 
 naturally pleasing or disagreeable to the sense. But when 
 we talk of any particular or acquired relish, then we must 
 know the habits, the prejudices, or the distempers of this 
 particular man, and we must draw our conclusion from those. 
 
 This agreement of mankind is not confined to the taste 
 solely. The principle of pleasure derived from sight is the 
 same in all, Light is more pleasing than darkness. Sum- 
 mer, when the earth is clad in green, when the heavens are 
 serene and bright, is more agreeable than winter, when every- 
 thing makes a different appearance. I never remember that 
 anything beautiful, whether a man, a beast, a bird, ora plant, 
 was ever shown, though it were to a hundred people, that 
 they did not all immediately agree that it was beautiful, 
 
204 BURKE 
 
 though some might have thought that it fell short of their 
 expectation, or that other things werestillfiner. I believeno 
 man thinks a goose to be more beautiful than a swan, or 
 imagines that what they call a Friesland hen excels a pea- 
 cock. It must be observed too, that the pleasures of the 
 sight are not near so complicated, and confused, and altered 
 by unnatural habits and associations, as the pleasures of the 
 taste are; because the pleasures of the sight more commonly 
 acquiesce in themselves; and are not so often altered by 
 considerations which are independent of the sight itself. 
 But things do not spontaneously present themselves to the 
 palate as they do to the sight; they are generally applied to 
 it, either as food or as medicine; and from the qualities 
 which they possess for nutritive or medicinal purposes they 
 often form the palate by degrees, and by force of these 
 associations. Thus opium is pleasing to Turks, on account 
 of the agreeable delirium it produces. ‘Tobacco is the delight 
 of Dutchmen, as it diffuses a torpor and pleasing stupefac- 
 tion. Fermented spirits please our common people, because 
 they banish care, and all consideration of future or present 
 evils. All of these would lie absolutely neglected if their 
 properties had originally gone no further than the taste; 
 but all these, together with tea and coffee, and some other 
 things, have passed from the apothecary’s shop to our tables, 
 and were taken for health long before they were thought of 
 for pleasure. The effect of the drug has made us use it 
 frequently; and frequent use, combined with the agreeable 
 effect, has made the taste itself at last agreeable. But this 
 does not in the least perplex our reasoning; because we dis- 
 tinguish to the last the acquired from the natural relish. In 
 describing the taste of an unknown fruit, you would scarcely 
 say that it had a sweet and pleasant flavour like tobacco, 
 opium, or garlic, although you spoke to those who were in 
 the constant use of these drugs, and had great pleasure in 
 them. There is in all men a sufficient remembrance of the 
 original natural causes of pleasure, to enable them to bring 
 all things offered to their senses to that standard, and to 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 205 
 
 regulate their feelings and opinions by it. Suppose one who 
 had so vitiated his palate as to take more pleasure in the 
 taste of opium than in that of butter or honey, to be pre- 
 sented with a bolus of squills: there is hardly any doubt 
 but that he would prefer the butter or honey to this nau- 
 seous morsel, orto any other bitter drug to which he had not 
 been accustomed ; which proves that his palate was naturally 
 like that of other men in all things, that it is still like the 
 palate of other men in many things, and only vitiated in 
 some particular points. For in judging of any new thing, 
 even of a taste similar to that which he has been formed by 
 habit to like, he finds his palate affected in the natural man- 
 ner, and on the common principles. Thus the pleasure of 
 all the senses, of the sight, and even of the taste, that most 
 ambiguous of the senses, is the same in all, high and low, 
 learned and unlearned. 
 
 Besides the ideas, with their annexed pains and pleasures, 
 which are presented by the sense; the mind of man pos- 
 sesses a sort of creative power of its own; either in represent- 
 ing at pleasure the images of things in the order and manner in 
 which they were received by the senses, or in combining 
 those images in a new manner, and according to a different 
 order. This power is called imagination; and to this be- 
 longs whatever is called wit, fancy, invention, and the like. 
 But it must be observed, that this power of the imagination 
 is incapable of producing anything absolutely new; it can 
 only vary the disposition of those ideas which it has re- 
 ceived from the senses. Now the imagination is the most 
 extensive province of pleasure and pain, as it is the region 
 of our fears and our hopes, and of all our passions that are 
 connected with them; and whatever is calculated to affect 
 the imagination with these commanding ideas, by force of 
 any original natural impression, must have the same power 
 pretty equally over all men. For since the imagination is 
 only the representation of the senses, it can only be pleased 
 or displeased with the images, from the same principle on 
 which the sense is pleased or displeased with the realities; 
 
206 BURKE 
 
 and consequently there must be just as close an agreement 
 in the imaginations as in the senses of men. A little at- 
 tention will convince us that this must of necessity be the 
 case. 
 
 But in the imagination, besides the pain or pleasure arising 
 from the properties of the natural object, a pleasure is per- 
 ceived from the resemblance which the imitation has to 
 the original: the imagination, I conceive, can have no pleas- 
 ure but what results from one or other of these causes. 
 And these causes operate pretty uniformly upon all men, be- 
 cause they operate by principles in nature, and which are not 
 derived from any particular habits or advantages. Mr. 
 Locke very justly and finely observes of wit, that it is chiefly 
 conversant in tracing resemblances; he remarks, at the same 
 time, that the business of judgment is rather in finding dif- 
 ferences. It may perhaps appear, on this supposition, that 
 there is no material distinction between the wit and the 
 judgment, as they both seem to result from different opera- 
 tions of the same faculty of comparing. But in reality, 
 whether they are or are not dependent on the same power 
 of the mind, they differ so very materially in many respects, 
 that a perfect union of wit and judgment is one of the rarest 
 things in the world. When two distinct objects are unlike 
 to each other, it is only what we expect; things are in their 
 common way; and therefore they make no impression on 
 the imagination: but when two distinct objects have a re- 
 semblance, we are struck, we attend to them, and we are 
 pleased. The mind of man has naturally a far greater alac- 
 rity and satisfaction in tracing resemblances than in search- 
 ing for differences: because by making resemblances we pro- 
 duce new images; we unite, we create, we enlarge our stock; 
 but in making distinctions we offer no food at all to the im- 
 agination; the task itself is more severe and irksome, and 
 what pleasure we derive from it is something of a negative 
 and indirect nature. A piece of news is told me in the 
 morning; this, merely as a piece of news, as a fact added to 
 my stock, gives me some pleasure. In the evening I find 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 207 
 
 there was nothing in it. What do I gain by this, but the 
 dissatisfaction to find that I had been imposed upon? 
 Hence it is that men are much more naturally inclined to 
 belief than to incredulity. And it is upon this principle, 
 that the most ignorant and barbarous nations have frequently 
 excelled in similitudes, comparisons, metaphors, and alle- 
 gories, who have been weak and backward in distinguishing 
 and sorting their ideas. And it is for a reason of this kind, 
 that Homer and the oriental writers, though very fond of 
 similitudes, and though they often strike out such as are 
 truly admirable, seldom take care to have them exact; that 
 is, they are taken with the general resemblance, they paint 
 it strongly, and they take no notice of the difference which 
 may be found between the things compared. 
 
 Now as the pleasure of resemblance is that which princi- 
 pally flatters the imagination, all men are nearly equal in 
 this point, as far as their knowledge of the things represented 
 or compared extends. The principle of this knowledge is 
 very much accidental, as it depends upon experience and 
 observation, and not on the strength or weakness of any 
 natural faculty ; and it is from this difference in knowledge, 
 that what we commonly, though with no great exactness, 
 call a difference in taste proceeds. A man to whom sculp- 
 ture is new, sees a barber’s block, or some ordinary piece of 
 statuary ; he is immediately struck and pleased, because he 
 sees something like a human figure; and, entirely taken up 
 with this likeness, he does not at all attend to its defects. 
 No person, I believe, at the first time of seeing a piece of 
 imitation ever did. Some time after, we suppose that this 
 novice lights upon a more artificial work of the same nature; 
 he now begins to look with contempt on what he admired 
 at first; not that he admired it even then for its unlikeness 
 to a man, but for that general though inaccurate resemblance 
 which it bore to the human figure. What he admired at 
 different times in these so different figures, is strictly the 
 same; and though his knowledge is improved, his taste 
 is not altered. Hitherto his mistake was from a want of 
 
208 BURKE 
 
 knowledge in art, and this arose from his inexperience; but 
 he may be still deficient from a want of knowledge in nature. 
 For it is possible that the man in question may stop here, 
 and that the masterpiece of a great hand may please him 
 no more than the middling performance of a vulgar artist; 
 and this not for want of better or higher relish, but because 
 all men do not observe with sufficient accuracy on the human 
 figure to enable them to judge properly of an imitation of 
 it. And that the critical taste does not depend upon a 
 superior principle in men, but upon superior knowledge, 
 may appear from several instances. The story of the an- 
 cient painter and the shoemaker is very well known. The 
 shoemaker set the painter right with regard to some mis- 
 takes he had made in the shoe of one of his figures, which 
 the painter, who had not made such accurate observations 
 on shoes, and was content with a general resemblance, had 
 never observed. But this was no impeachment to the taste 
 of the painter; it only showed some want of knowledge in 
 the art of making shoes. Let us imagine, that an anatomist 
 had come into the painter’s working-room. His piece is in 
 general well done, the figure in question in a good attitude,. 
 and the parts well adjusted to their various movements; yet 
 the anatomist, critical in his art, may observe the swell of 
 some muscle not quite just in the peculiar action of the 
 figure. Here the anatomist observes what the painter had 
 not observed; and he passes by what the shoemaker had 
 remarked. But a want of the last critical knowledge in 
 anatomy no more reflected on the natural good taste of the 
 painter, or of any common observer of his piece, than the 
 want of an exact knowledge in the formation of ashoe. A 
 fine piece of a decollated head of St. John the Baptist was 
 shown toa Turkish emperor: he praised many things, but he 
 observed one defect: he observed that the skin did not 
 shrink from the wounded part of the neck. The sultan on 
 this occasion, though his observation was very just, discov- 
 ered no more natural taste than the painter who executed 
 this piece, or than a thousand European connoisseurs, who 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 209 
 
 probably never would have made the same observation. His 
 Turkish majesty had indeed been well acquainted with that 
 terrible spectacle, which the others could only have repre- 
 sented in their imagination. On the subject of their dislike 
 there is a difference between all these people, arising from 
 the different kinds and degrees of their knowledge; but 
 there is something in common to the painter, the shoe- 
 maker, the anatomist, and the Turkish emperor, the pleasure 
 arising from a natural object, so far as each perceives it 
 justly imitated; the satisfaction in seeing an agreeable 
 figure; the sympathy proceeding from a striking and affect- 
 ing incident. So far as taste is natural, it is nearly common 
 to all. 
 
 In poetry, and other pieces of imagination, the same parity 
 may be observed. It is true, that one man is charmed with 
 Don Bellianis, and reads Virgil coldly; whilst another is 
 transported with the “ AZneid,’ and leaves Don Bellianis to 
 children. These two men seem to have a taste very differ- 
 ent from each other; but in fact they differ very little. In 
 both these pieces, which inspire such opposite sentiments, a 
 tale exciting admiration is told; both are full of action, both 
 are passionate; in both are voyages, battles, triumphs, and 
 continual changes of fortune. The admirer of Don Bellianis 
 perhaps does not understand the refined language of the 
 « ZEneid,” who, if it was degraded into the style of the 
 _ “Pilgrim’s Progress,” might feel it in all its energy, on the 
 same principle which made him an admirer of Don Bellianis. 
 
 In his favourite author he is not shocked with the continual 
 breaches of probability, the confusion of times, the offenses 
 against manners, the trampling upon geography; for he 
 knows nothing of geography and chronology, and he has 
 never examined the grounds of probability. He perhaps 
 reads of a shipwreck on the coast of Bohemia: wholly taken 
 up with so interesting an event, and only solicitous for the 
 fate of his hero, he is not in the least troubled at this ex- 
 travagant blunder. For why should he be shocked at a ship- 
 
 wreck on the coast of Bohemia, who does not know but 
 14 
 
210 BURKE 
 
 that Bohemia may be an island in the Atlantic ocean? and 
 after all, what reflection is this on the natural good taste of 
 the person here supposed ? 
 
 So far then as taste belongs to the imagination, its princi- 
 ple is the same in all men; there is no difference in the man- 
 ner of their being affected, nor in the causes of the affection ; 
 but in the degree there is a difference, which arises from two 
 causes principally; either from a greater degree of natural 
 sensibility, or from a closer and longer attention to the ob- 
 ject. To illustrate this by the procedure of the senses, in 
 which the same difference is found, let us suppose a very — 
 smooth marble table to be set before two men; they both 
 perceive it to be smooth, and they are both pleased with it 
 because of this quality. So far they agree. But suppose 
 another, and after that another table, the latter still smoother 
 than the former, to be set before them. It is now very 
 probable that these men, who are so agreed upon what is 
 smooth, and in the pleasure from thence, will disagree when — 
 they come to settle which table has the advantage in point 
 of polish. Here is indeed the great difference between tastes, 
 when men come to compare the excess or diminution of 
 things which are judged by degree and not by measure, 
 Nor is it easy, when such a difference arises, to settle the 
 point, if the excess or diminution be not glaring. If we 
 differ in opinion about two quantities, we can have recourse 
 to a common measure, which may decide the question with 
 the utmost exactness; and this, I take it, is what gives 
 mathematical knowledge a greater certainty than any other. 
 But in things whose excess is not judged by greater or 
 smaller, as smoothness and roughness, hardness and softness, 
 darkness and light, the shades of colours, all these are very 
 easily distinguished when the difference is any way consid- 
 erable, but not when it is minute, for want of some common 
 measures, which perhaps may never come to be discovered. 
 In these nice cases, supposing the acuteness of the sense 
 equal, the greater attention and habit in such things will 
 have the advantage. In the question about the tables, the 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 211 
 
 marble-polisher will unquestionably determine the most 
 accurately. But notwithstanding this want of a common 
 measure for settling many disputes relative to the senses, 
 and their representative the imagination, we find that the 
 principles are the same in all, and that there is no disagree- 
 ment until we come to examine into the pre-eminence or 
 difference of things, which brings us within the province of 
 the judgment. 
 
 So long as we are conversant with the sensible qualities of 
 things, hardly any more than the imagination seems con- 
 cerned; little more also than the imagination seems con- 
 cerned when the passions are represented, because by the 
 force of natural sympathy they are felt in all men without 
 any recourse to reasoning, and their justness recognized in 
 every breast. Love, grief, fear, anger, Joy, all these passions 
 have, in their turns, affected every mind; and they do not 
 affect it in an arbitrary or casual manner, but upon certain, 
 natural, and uniform principles. But as many of the works 
 of imagination are not confined to the representation of 
 sensible objects, nor to effects upon the passions, but extend 
 themselves to the manners, the characters, the actions, and 
 designs of men, their relations, their virtues and vices, they 
 come within the province of the judgment, which is im- 
 proved by attention, and by the habit of reasoning. All 
 these make avery considerable part of what are considered 
 as the objects of taste; and Horace sends us to the schools 
 of philosophy and the world for our instruction in them. 
 Whatever certainty is to be acquired in morality and the 
 science of life; just the same degree of certainty have we 
 in what relates to them in works of imitation. Indeed it is 
 for the most part in our skill in manners, and in the observ- 
 ances of time and place, and of decency in general, which is 
 only to be learned in those schools to which Horace recom- 
 mends us, that what is called taste, by way of distinction, 
 consists: and which is in reality no other than a more refined 
 judgment. On the whole, it appears to me, that what is 
 called taste, in its most general acceptation, is not a simple 
 
212 BURKE 
 
 idea, but is partly made up of a perception of the primary 
 pleasures of sense, of the secondary pleasures of the imagi- 
 nation, and of the conclusions of the reasoning faculty, 
 concerning the various relations of these, and concerning 
 the human passions, manners, and actions. All this is 
 requisite to form taste, and the groundwork of all these 
 is the same in the human mind; for as the senses are 
 the great originals of all our ideas, and consequently of all 
 our pleasures, if they are not uncertain and arbitrary, the 
 whole groundwork of taste is common to all, and therefore 
 there is a sufficient foundation fora conclusive reasoning on 
 these matters. 
 
 Whilst we consider taste merely according to its nature 
 and species, we shall find its principles entirely uniform ; but 
 the degree in which these principles prevail, in the several 
 individuals of mankind, is altogether as different as the 
 principles themselves are similar. For sensibility and judg- 
 ment, which are the qualities that compose what we com- 
 monly call a taste, vary exceedingly in various people. 
 From a defect in the former of these qualities arises a want 
 of taste; a weakness in the latter constitutes a wrong ora 
 bad one. There are some men formed with feelings so blunt, 
 with tempers so cold and phlegmatic, that they can hardly 
 be saidto be awake during the whole course of their lives. 
 Upon such persons the most striking objects make but a 
 faint and obscure impression. There are others so continu- 
 ally in the agitation of gross and merely sensual pleasures, 
 or so occupied in the low drudgery of avarice, or so heated 
 in the chase of honours and distinction, that their minds, 
 which had been used continually to the storms of these 
 violent and tempestuous passions, can hardly be put in 
 motion by the delicate and refined play of the imagination. 
 These men, though from a different cause, become as stupid 
 and insensible as the former; but whenever either of these 
 happen to be struck with any natural elegance or greatness, 
 or with these qualities in any work of art, they are moved 
 upon the same principle. 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 213 
 
 The cause of a wrong taste is a defect of judgment. And 
 this may arise from a natural weakness of understanding (in 
 whatever the strength of that faculty may consist), or, which 
 is much more commonly the case, it may arise from a want 
 of a proper and well-directed exercise, which alone can make 
 it strong and ready. Besides, that ignorance, inattention, 
 prejudice, rashness, levity, obstinacy, in short, all those pas- 
 sions, and all those vices, which pervert the judgment in 
 other matters, prejudice it no less in this its more refined 
 and elegant province. These causes produce different opin- 
 ions upon everything which is an object of the understand- 
 ing, without inducing us to suppose that there are no settled 
 principles of reason. And indeed, on the whole, one may 
 observe, that there is rather less difference upon matters of 
 taste among mankind, than upon most of those which de- 
 pend upon the naked reason; and that men are far better 
 agreed on the excellence of a description in Virgil, than on 
 the truth or falsehood of a theory of Aristotle. 
 
 A rectitude of judgment in the arts, which may be called 
 a good taste, does in a great measure depend upon sensi- — 
 bility ; because if the mind has no bent to the pleasures of 
 the imagination, it will never apply itself sufficiently to 
 works of that species to acquire a competent knowledge in 
 them. But though a degree of sensibility is requisite to 
 form a good judgment, yet a good judgment does not 
 necessarily arise from a quick sensibility of pleasure ; it fre- 
 quently happens that a very poor judge, merely by force of 
 a greater complexional sensibility, is more affected by avery 
 poor piece, than the best judge by the most perfect; for as 
 everything new, extraordinary, grand, or passionate, is well 
 calculated to affect such a person, and that the faults do not 
 affect him, his pleasure is more pure and unmixed; and as it 
 is merely a pleasure of the imagination, it is much higher 
 than any which is derived from a rectitude of the judgment ; 
 the judgment is for the greater part employed in throwing 
 stumbling-blocks in the way of the imagination, in dissipat- 
 ing the scenes of its enchantment, and in tying us down to 
 
214 BURKE 
 
 the disagreeable yoke of our reason: for almost the only 
 pleasure that men have in judging better than others, con- 
 sists in a sort of conscious pride and superiority, which arises 
 from thinking rightly; but then this is an indirect pleasure, 
 a pleasure which does not immediately result from the object 
 which is under contemplation. In the morning of our days, 
 when the senses are unworn and tender, when the whole 
 man is awake in every part, and the gloss of novelty fresh 
 upon all the objects that surround us, how lively at that 
 time are our sensations, but how false and inaccurate the 
 judgments we form of things! I despair of ever receiving 
 the same degree of pleasure from the most excellent perform- 
 ances of genius, which I felt at that age from pieces which 
 my present judgment regards as trifling and contemptible. 
 Every trivial cause of pleasure is apt to affect the man of 
 too sanguinea complexion: his appetite is too keen to suffer 
 his taste to be delicate; and he is in all respects what Ovid 
 says of himself in love, 
 
 Molle meum levibus cor est violabile telis, 
 Et semper causa est, cur ego semper amem. 
 
 One of this character can never bea refined judge; never 
 what the comic poet calls “elegans formarum spectator.” 
 ’ The: excellence and force of a composition must always be 
 imperfectly estimated from its effect on the minds of any, 
 except we know the temper and character of those minds. 
 The most powerful effects of poetry and music have been 
 displayed, and perhaps are still displayed, where these arts 
 are but in a very low and imperfect state. The rude hearer 
 is affected by the principles which operate in these arts even 
 in their rudest condition; and he is not skilful-enough to 
 perceive the defects. But as the arts advance towards their 
 perfection, the science of criticism advances with equal pace, 
 and the pleasure of judges is frequently interrupted by the 
 faults which are discovered in the most finished com- 
 positions. 
 
 Before I leave this subject, I cannot help taking notice of 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 215 
 
 an opinion which many persons entertain, as if the taste 
 were a separate faculty of the mind, and distinct from the 
 judgment and imagination ; a species of instinct, by which 
 we are struck naturally, and at the first glance, without any 
 previous reasoning, with the excellences or defects of a 
 composition. So faras the imagination and the passions are 
 concerned, I believe it true that the reason is little con- » 
 sulted ; but where disposition, where decorum, where con- - 
 gruity are concerned, in short, wherever the best taste dif.- 
 fers from the worst, I am convinced that the understanding 
 operates, and nothing else; and its operation is in reality 
 far from being always sudden, or, when it is sudden, it is 
 often far from being right. Men of the best taste by con- 
 sideration come frequently to change these early and pre- 
 cipitate judgments, which the mind, from its aversion to neu- 
 trality and doubt, loves to form on the spot. It is known 
 that the taste (whatever it is) is improved exactly as we im- 
 prove our judgment, by extending our knowledge, by a 
 steady attention to our object, and by frequent exercise. 
 They who have not taken these methods, if their taste de- 
 cides quickly, it is always uncertainly; and their quickness 
 is owing to their presumption and rashness, and not to any 
 sudden irradiation, that in a moment dispels all darkness 
 from their minds. But they who have cultivated that spe- 
 cies of knowledge which makes the object of taste, by de- 
 grees and habitually attain not only a soundness but a readi- 
 ness of judgment, as men do by the same methods on all 
 other occasions. At first they are obliged to spell, but at 
 last they read with ease and with celerity; but this celerity 
 of its operation is no proof that the taste is a distinct fac- 
 ulty. Nobody, I believe, has attended the course of a dis- 
 cussion which turned upon matters within the sphere of 
 mere naked reason, but must have observed the extreme 
 readiness with which the whole process of the argument is 
 carried on, the grounds discovered, the objections raised and 
 answered, and the conclusions drawn from premises, with a 
 quickness altogether as great as the taste can be supposed 
 
216 BURKE 
 
 to work with; and yet where nothing but plain reason either 
 is or can be suspected to operate. To multiply principles 
 for every different appearance is useless, and unphilosophical 
 too in a high degree. 
 
 This matter might be pursued much farther; but it is not 
 the extent of the subject which must prescribe our bounds, 
 for what subject does not branch out to infinity? It is the 
 nature of our particular scheme, and the single point of view 
 in which we consider it, which ought to put a stop to our 
 researches, 
 
PARSER SL 
 
 SECTION I 
 
 NOVELTY 
 
 HE first and the simplest emotion which we discover 
 
 in the human mind is curiosity. By curiosity 1 mean 
 whatever desire we have for, or whatever pleasure we take 
 in, novelty. We see children perpetually running from 
 place to place, to hunt out something new: they catch with 
 great eagerness, and with very little choice, at whatever 
 comes before them; their attention is engaged by every- 
 thing, because everything has, in that stage of life, the charm 
 of novelty to recommend it. But as those things, which 
 engage us merely by their novelty, can not attach us for any 
 length of time, curiosity is the most superficial of all the 
 affections ; it changes its object perpetually ; it has an 
 appetite which is very sharp, but very easily satisfied; and 
 it has always an appearance of giddiness, restlessness, and 
 anxiety. Curiosity, from its nature, isa very active princi- 
 ple; it quickly runs over the greatest part of its objects, 
 and soon exhausts the variety which is commonly to be met 
 with in nature; the same things make frequent returns, and 
 they return with less and less of any agreeable effect. In 
 short, the occurrences of life, by the time we come to know 
 it a little, would be incapable of affecting the mind with any 
 other sensations than those of loathing and weariness, if 
 many things were not adapted to affect the mind by means 
 of other powers besides novelty in them, and of other pas- 
 sions besides curiosity in ourselves. These powers and pas- 
 sions shall be considered in their place. But, whatever these 
 
 217 
 
218 BURKE 
 
 powers are, or upon what principle soever they affect the 
 mind, it is absolutely necessary that they should not be 
 exerted in those things which a daily and vulgar use have 
 brought into a stale unaffecting familiarity. Some degree 
 of novelty must be one of the materials in every instrument 
 which works upon the mind; and curiosity blends itself 
 more or less with all our passions. | 
 
 SEGTLONIIT 
 
 PAIN AND PLEASURE 
 
 IT seems, then, necessary towards moving the passions of 
 people advanced in life to any considerable degree, that the 
 objects designed for that purpose, besides their being in 
 some measure new, should be capable of exciting pain or 
 pleasure from other causes. Pain and pleasure are simple 
 ideas, incapable of definition. People are not liable to be 
 mistaken in their feelings, but they are very frequently 
 wrong in the names they give them, and in their reasonings 
 about them. Many are of opinion, that pain arises neces- 
 sarily from the removal of some pleasure; as they think 
 pleasure does from the ceasing or diminution of some pain. 
 For my part, I am rather inclined to imagine, that pain and 
 pleasure, in their most simple and natural manner of affect- 
 ing, are each of a positive nature, and by no means neces- 
 sarily dependent on each other for their existence. The 
 human mind is often, and I think it is for the most part, in 
 a state neither of pain nor pleasure, which I call a state of 
 indifference. WhenI am carried from this state into a state 
 of actual pleasure, it does not appear necessary that I should 
 pass through the medium of any sort of pain. If in sucha 
 state of indifference, or ease, or tranquillity, or call it what 
 you please, you were to be suddenly entertained with a con- 
 cert of music; or suppose some object of a fine shape, and 
 bright, lively colours, to be presented before you; or imagine 
 your smell is gratified with the fragrance of arose; or if, with- 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 219 
 
 out any previous thirst, you were to drink of some pleasant 
 kind of wine, or to taste of some sweetmeat without being 
 hungry; in all the several senses, of hearing, smelling, and 
 tasting, you undoubtedly find a pleasure; yet, if I inquire 
 into the state of your mind previous to these gratifications, 
 you will hardly tell me that they found you in any kind of 
 pain; or, having satisfied these several senses with their 
 several pleasures, will you say that any pain has succeeded, 
 though the pleasure is absolutely over? Suppose, on the 
 other hand, a man in the same state of indifference to receive 
 a violent blow, or to drink of some bitter potion, or to have 
 his ears wounded with some harsh and grating sound; here 
 isno removal of pleasure; and yet here is felt, in every sense 
 which is affected, a pain very distinguishable. It may be 
 said, perhaps, that the pain in these cases had its rise from 
 the removal of the pleasure which the man enjoyed before, 
 though that pleasure was of so low a degree as to be per- 
 ceived only by the removal. But this seems to me a sub- 
 tilty that is not discoverable in nature. For if, previous to 
 the pain, I do not feel any actual pleasure, I have no reason 
 to judge that any such thing exists; since pleasure is only 
 pleasure as it is felt. The same may be said of pain, and 
 with equal reason. I can never persuade myself that pleas- 
 ure and pain are mere relations, which can only exist as they 
 are contrasted; but I think I can discern clearly that there 
 are positive pains and pleasures, which do not at all depend 
 upon each other. Nothing is more certain to my own feel- 
 ings than this. There is nothing which I can distinguish in 
 my mind with more clearness than the three states, of indif- 
 ference, of pleasure, and of pain. Every one of these I can 
 perceive without any sort of idea of its relation to anything 
 else. Caius is afflicted with a fit of the colic; this man is 
 actually in pain; stretch Caius upon the rack, he will feela 
 much greater pain: but does this pain of the rack arise from 
 the removal of any pleasure? or is the fit of the colic a 
 pleasure or a pain just as we are pleased to consider it? 
 
220 BURKE 
 
 SECTION III 
 
 _ THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE REMOVAL OF PAIN AND 
 POSITIVE PLEASURE 
 
 WE shall carry this proposition yet a step further. We 
 shall venture to propose, that pain and pleasure are not only 
 not necessarily dependent for their existence on their mutual 
 diminution or removal, but that, in reality, the diminution 
 or ceasing of pleasure does not operate like positive pain ; 
 and that the removal or diminution of pain, in its effect, has 
 very little resemblance to positive pleasure. The former 
 of these propositions will, I believe, be much more readily 
 allowed than-the latter; because it is very evident that pleas- 
 ure, when it has run its career, sets us down very nearly 
 where it found us. Pleasure of every kind quickly satisfies; 
 and, when it is over, we relapse into indifference, or, rather, 
 we fall into a soft tranquillity which is tinged with the agree- 
 able colour of the former sensation. I own it is not at first 
 view so apparent that the removal of a great pain does not 
 resemble positive pleasure: but let us recollect in what state 
 we have found our minds upon escaping some imminent 
 danger, or on being released from the severity of some cruel 
 pain. We have on such occasions found, if I am not much 
 mistaken, the temper of our minds in a tenor very remote 
 from that which attends the presence of positive pleasure; 
 we have found them in a state of much sobriety, impressed 
 with a sense of awe, in a sort of tranquillity shadowed with 
 horror. The fashion of the countenance and the gesture of 
 the body on such occasions is so correspondent to this state 
 of mind, that any person, a stranger to the cause of the ap- 
 pearance, would rather judge us under some consternation, 
 than in the enjoyment of anything like positive pleasure. 
 
 ‘Q¢ 0 brav avdp’ ary mwuKivy AGB, bor’ evi waTpy 
 bora kataxteivac, dAAwy ékixeto Sjpov, 
 "Avdpoc é¢ agverod, OauBoc 0 Eee eioopdwrrac. 
 
 Tliad. Q. 480. 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 221 
 
 * As when a wretch, who, conscious of his crime, 
 Pursued for murder from his native clime, 
 Just gains some frontier, breathless, pale, amazed 
 All gaze, all wonder!” 
 
 This striking appearance of the man whom Homer supposes 
 to have just escaped an imminent danger, the sort of mixed 
 passion of terror and surprise, with which he affects the 
 spectators, paints very strongly the manner in which we find 
 ourselves affected upon occasions any way similar. For 
 when we have suffered from any violent emotion, the mind 
 naturally continues in something like the same condition, 
 after the cause which first produced it has ceased to operate. 
 The tossing of the sea remains after the storm ; and when this 
 remain of horror has entirely subsided, all the passion which 
 the accident raised subsides along with it; and the mind 
 returns to its usual state of indifference. In short, pleasure 
 (I mean anything either in the inward sensation, or in the 
 outward appearance, like pleasure from a positive cause) 
 has never, I imagine, its origin from the removal of pain or 
 danger. 
 NOTE 
 
 1 Mr. Locke [Essay on Human Understanding, 1. ii. c. 20, sect. 16,] thinks 
 
 that the removal or lessening of a pain is considered and operates as a pleasure, 
 
 and the loss or diminishing of pleasure as a pain. It is this opinion which we 
 consider here. 
 
 SECTION IV 
 OF DELIGHT AND PLEASURE AS OPPOSED TO EACH OTHER 
 
 BUT shall we therefore say, that the removal of pain or its 
 diminution is always simply painful? or affirm that the 
 cessation or the lessening of pleasure is always attended 
 itself with a pleasure? By no means. What I advance is 
 no more than this; first, that there are pleasures and pains 
 of a positive and independent nature; and, secondly, that 
 the feeling which results from the ceasing or diminution of 
 
222 BURKE 
 
 pain does not bear a sufficient resemblance to positive 
 pleasure, to have it considered as of the same nature, or to 
 entitle itto be known by the same name; and thirdly, that 
 upon the same principle the removal or qualification of 
 pleasure has no resemblance to positive pain. It is certain 
 that the former feeling (the removal or moderation of pain) 
 has something in it farfrom distressing, or disagreeable in 
 its nature. This feeling, in many cases so agreeable, but in 
 all so different from positive pleasure, has no name which I 
 know; but that hinders not its being avery real one, and very 
 different fromallothers. It is most certain, that every species 
 of satisfaction or pleasure, how different soever in its manner 
 of affecting, is of a positive nature in the mind of him who 
 feels it. The affection is undoubtedly positive; but the 
 cause may be, as in this case it certainly is, a sort of priva- 
 tion. And it is very reasonable that we should distinguish 
 by some term two things so distinct in nature, as a pleasure 
 that is such simply, and without any relation, from that 
 pleasure which can not exist without a relation, and that, too, 
 a relation to pain. Very extraordinary it would be, if these 
 affections, so distinguishable in their causes, so different in 
 their effects, should be confounded with each other, because 
 vulgar use has ranged them under the same general title. 
 Whenever I have occasion to speak of this species of 
 relative pleasure, I call it delight ; and I shall take the best 
 care I can to use that word in no other sense. I am satisfied 
 the word is not commonly used in this appropriated significa- 
 tion; but I thought it better to take up a word already 
 known, and to limit itssignification, than to introduce a new 
 one, which would not perhaps incorporate so well with the 
 language. I should never have presumed the least altera- 
 tion in our words, if the nature of the language, framed for 
 the purposes of business rather than those of philosophy, 
 and the nature of my subject, that leads me out of the com- 
 mon track of discourse, did not in a manner necessitate me 
 to it. I shall make use of this liberty with all possible cau- 
 tion. AsI make use of the word delight to express the 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 223 
 
 sensation which accompanies the removal of pain or danger, 
 so, when I speak of positive pleasure, I shall for the most 
 part call it simply pleasure. 
 
 SECTION, 
 JOY AND GRIEF 
 
 IT must be observed, that the cessation of pleasure affects 
 the mind three ways. If it simply ceases after having con- 
 tinued a proper time, the effect is indifference; if it be 
 abruptly broken off, there ensues an uneasy sense called dis- 
 appointment ; if the object be so totally lost that there is no 
 chance of enjoying it again, a passion arises in the mind 
 which is called grief. Now there is none of these, not even 
 grief, which is the most violent, that I think has any re- 
 semblance to positive pain. The person who grieves suffers 
 his passion to grow upon him; he indulges it, he loves it: 
 but this never happens in the case of actual pain, which no 
 man ever willingly endured for any considerable time. That 
 grief should be willingly endured, though far from a simply 
 pleasing sensation, is not so difficult to be understood. It 
 is the nature of grief to keepits object perpetually in its eye, 
 to present it in its most pleasurable views, to repeat all the 
 circumstances that attend it, even to the last minuteness; to 
 go back to every particular enjoyment, to dwell upon each, 
 and to find a thousand new perfections in all, that were not 
 sufficiently understood before; in grief, the pleasure is still 
 uppermost; and the affliction we suffer has no resemblance 
 to absolute pain, which is always odious, and which we en- 
 deavour to shake off as soonas possible. The ‘ Odyssey” of 
 Homer, which abounds with so many natural and affecting 
 images, has none more striking than those which Menelaus 
 raises of the calamitous fate of his friends, and his own 
 manner of feeling it. He owns, indeed, that he often gives 
 himself some intermission from such melancholy reflections ; 
 
224 BURKE 
 
 but he observes, too, that, melancholy as they are, they give 
 him pleasure. 
 "AAW Eurcne mavrac ev Odupdpevoc Kal ayebwr, 
 TloAAdnug év peydporor xabjuevoc juetépocory, 
 "Addote pév te you dpéva téprropa,aAdore 0 atte 
 Tlatowar aiynpo¢ dé Képog Kpvepoio yéor0, 
 Hom. Od. A. Ioo. 
 
 “ Still in short intervals of pleasing woe, 
 Regardful of the friendly dues I owe, 
 I to the glorious dead, forever dear, 
 Indulge the tribute of a grateful tear.” 
 
 On the other hand, when we recover our health, when we 
 escape an imminent danger, is it with joy that we are affected ? 
 The sense on these occasions is far from that smooth and 
 voluptuous satisfaction which the assured prospect of pleas- 
 ure bestows. The delight which arises from the modifica- 
 tions of pain confesses the stock from whence it sprung, in 
 its solid, strong, and severe nature. 
 
 SECTION VL 
 OF THE PASSIONS WHICII BELONG TO SELF-PRESERVATION 
 
 Most of the ideas which are capable of making a power- 
 ful impression on the mind, whether simply of pain or 
 pleasure, or of the modifications of those, may be reduced 
 very nearly to these'two heads, self-preservation, and society ; 
 to the ends of one or the other of which all our passions 
 are calculated to answer. The passions which concern self- 
 preservation, turn mostly on pain or danger. The ideas 
 of pain, sickness, and death, fill the mind with strong emo- 
 tions of horror; but life and health, though they put usina 
 capacity of being affected with pleasure, make no such im- 
 pression by the simple enjoyment. The passions therefore 
 which are conversant about the preservation of the individual 
 turn chiefly on pain and danger, and they are the most 
 powerful of all the passions. 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 225 
 
 SECTION VII 
 
 OF THE SUBLIME 
 
 WHATEVER is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of 
 pain and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort ter- 
 rible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a 
 manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime; that 
 is, it is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is 
 capable of feeling. Isay the strongest emotion, because I am 
 satisfied the ideas of pain are much more powerful than those 
 which enter on the part of pleasure. Without all doubt, the 
 torments which we may be made to suffer are much greater in 
 their effect on the body and mind, than any pleasures which 
 the most learned voluptuary could suggest, or than the liveli- 
 est imagination, and the most sound and exquisitely sensible 
 body, could enjoy. Nay, Iam in great doubt whether any 
 man could be found, who would earn a life of the most per- 
 fect satisfaction at the price of ending it in the torments, 
 which justice inflicted in a few hours on the late unfortunate 
 regicide in France. But as pain is stronger in its operation 
 than pleasure, so death is in general a much more affecting 
 idea than pain; because there are very few pains, however 
 exquisite, which are not preferred to death: nay, what 
 generally makes pain itself, if I may say so, more painful, is, 
 that it is considered as an emissary of this king of terrors. 
 When danger or pain press too nearly, they are incapable of 
 giving any delight, and are simply terrible; but at certain 
 distances, and with certain modifications, they may be, and 
 they are, delightful, as we every day experience. The 
 
 cause of this I shall endeavour to investigate hereafter. 
 a5 
 
226 BURKE 
 SECTION VIII 
 
 OF THE PASSIONS WHICH BELONG TO SOCIETY 
 
 THE other head under which I class our passions, is that 
 of society, which may be divided into two sorts. First, the 
 society of the sexes, which answers the purpose of propaga- 
 tion ; and next, that more general society, which we have 
 with men and with other animals, and which we may in some 
 sort be said to have even with the inanimate world. The 
 passions belonging to the preservation of the individual turn 
 wholly on pain and danger : those which belong to genera- 
 tion have their origin in gratifications and pleasures ; the 
 pleasure most directly belonging to this purpose is of a 
 lively character, rapturous and violent, and confessedly the 
 highest pleasure of sense ; yet the absence of this so great 
 an enjoyment scarce amounts to an uneasiness ; and, except 
 at particular times, I do not think it affects at all. When 
 men describe in what manner they are affected by pain and 
 danger, they do not dwell on the pleasure of health.and the 
 comfort of security, and then lament the loss of these satis- 
 factions : the whole turns upon the actual pains and horrors 
 which they endure. But if you listento the complaints of a 
 forsaken lover, you observe that he insists largely on the 
 pleasures which he enjoyed, or hoped to enjoy, and on the 
 perfection of the object of his desires ; it is the loss which is 
 always uppermost in his mind. The violent effects produced 
 by love, which has sometimes been even wrought up to 
 madness, is no objection to the rule which we seek to estab- 
 lish. When men have suffered their imaginations to be long 
 affected with any idea, it so wholly engrosses them as to shut 
 out by degrees almost every other, and to break down every 
 partition of the mind which would confine it. Any idea is 
 sufficient for the purpose, as is evident from the infinite 
 variety of causes, which give rise to madness: but this at 
 most can only prove, that the passion of love is capable of 
 producing very extraordinary effects, not that its extraor- 
 dinary emotions have any connection with positive pain. 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 227 
 
 SECTION IX 
 
 THE FINAL CAUSE OF THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE 
 PASSIONS BELONGING TO SELF-PRESERVATION AND THOSE 
 WHICH REGARD THE SOCIETY OF THE SEXES 
 
 THE final cause of the difference in character between 
 the passions which regard self-preservation, and those which 
 are directed to the multiplication of the species, will illus- 
 trate the foregoing remarks yet further ; and it is, I imagine, 
 worthy of observation even upon its own account. As the 
 performance of our duties of every kind depends upon life, 
 and the performing them with vigour and efficacy depends 
 upon health, we are very strongly affected with whatever 
 threatens the destruction of either : but as we were not made 
 to acquiesce in life and health, the simple enjoyment of 
 them is not attended with any real pleasure, lest, satisfied 
 with that, we should give ourselves over to indolence and 
 inaction. On the other hand, the generation of mankind is 
 a great purpose, and it is requisite that men should be 
 animated to the pursuit of it by some great incentive. It is 
 therefore attended with a very high pleasure; but as it is by 
 no means designed to be our constant business, it is not fit 
 that the absence of this pleasure should be attended with 
 any considerable pain. The difference between men and 
 brutes, in this point, seems to be remarkable. Men are at 
 all times pretty equally disposed to the pleasures of love, 
 because they are to be guided by reason in the time and 
 manner of indulgingthem. Had any great pain arisen from 
 the want of this satisfaction, reason, I am afraid, would find 
 great difficulties in the performance of its office. But brutes 
 that obey laws, in the execution of which their own reason 
 has but little share, have their stated seasons; at such times 
 it is notimprobable that the sensation from the want is very 
 troublesome, because the end must be then answered, or be 
 missed in many, perhaps forever; as the inclination returns 
 only with its season. 
 
228 BURKE 
 
 SECTION X 
 OF BEAUTY 
 
 THE passion which belongs to generation, merely as such, 
 is lust only. This is evident in brutes, whose passions are 
 more unmixed, and which pursue their purposes more di- 
 rectly than ours. The only distinction they observe with 
 regard to their mates, is that of sex. It is true, that they 
 stick severally to their own species in preference to all 
 others. But this preference, I imagine, does not arise from 
 any sense of beauty which they find in their species, as Mr. 
 Addison supposes, but from a law of some other kind, to 
 which they are subject; and this we may fairly conclude, 
 from their apparent want of choice amongst those objects to 
 which the barriers of their species have confined them. But 
 man, who is a creature adapted toa greater variety and in- 
 tricacy of relation, connects with the general passion the 
 idea of some social qualities, which direct and heighten the 
 
 appetite which he has in common with all other animals; 
 and as he is not designed like them to live at large, it is fit 
 that he should have something to create a preference, and 
 fix his choice; and this in general should be some sensible 
 quality ; as no other can so quickly, so powerfully, or so 
 surely produce its effect. The object therefore of this mixed 
 passion, which we call love, is the beauty of the sex. Men 
 are carried to the sex in general, as it is the sex, and by the 
 common law of nature; but they are attached to particulars 
 by personal beauty. I call beauty a social quality; for 
 where women and men, and not only they, but when other 
 animals give us a sense of joy and pleasure in beholding 
 them (and there are many that do so), they inspire us with 
 sentiments of tenderness and affection towards their persons ; 
 we like to have them near us, and we enter willingly into a 
 kind of relation with them, unless we should have strong 
 reasons to the contrary. But to what end, in many cases, 
 this was designed, I am unable to discover; for I see no 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 229 
 
 greater reason fora connection between man and several 
 animals who are attired in so engaging a manner, than be- 
 tween him and some others who entirely want this attraction, 
 or possess it in a far weaker degree. But it is probable that 
 Providence did not make even this distinction, but with a 
 view to some great end; though we can not perceive dis- 
 tinctly what it is, as his wisdom is not our wisdom, nor our 
 ways his ways. 
 
 SECTION XI 
 SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE 
 
 THE second branch of the social passions is that which 
 administers to society in general. With regard to this, I 
 observe, that society, merely as society, without any partic- 
 ular heightenings, gives us no positive pleasure in the en- 
 joyment ; but absolute and entire solitude, that is, the total 
 and perpetual exclusion from all society, isas great a positive 
 pain as can almost be conceived. Therefore in the balance 
 between the pleasure of general society, and the pain of 
 absolute solitude, pain is the predominant idea. But the 
 pleasure of any particular social enjoyment outweighs very 
 considerably the uneasiness caused by the want of that 
 particular enjoyment; so that the strongest sensations rel- 
 ative to the habitudes of particular society are sensations of 
 pleasure. Good company, lively conversations, and the 
 endearments of friendship, fill the mind with great pleasure ; 
 a temporary solitude, on the other hand, is itself agreeable. 
 This may perhaps prove that we are creatures designed for 
 contemplation as well as action; since solitude as well as 
 society has its pleasures; as from the former observation we 
 may discern, that an entire life of solitude contradicts the 
 purposes of our being, since death itself is scarcely an idea 
 of more terror. 
 
230 BURKE 
 
 SECTION, XII 
 SYMPATHY, IMITATION, AND AMBITION 
 
 UNDER this denomination of society, the passions are of a 
 complicated kind, and branch out into a variety of forms, 
 agreeably to that variety of ends they are to serve in the 
 great chain of society. The three principal links in this 
 chain are sympathy, imitation, and ambition. 
 
 SECTION XIIT 
 SYMPATHY 
 
 IT is by the first of these passions that we enter into the 
 concerns of others; that we are moved as they are moved, 
 and are never suffered to be indifferent spectators of almost 
 anything which men can do or suffer. For sympathy must 
 be considered as a sort of substitution, by which we are put 
 into the place of another man, and affected in many respects 
 as he is affected: so that this passion may either partake of 
 the nature of those which regard self-preservation, and turn- 
 ing upon pain may bea source of the sublime; or it may 
 turn upon ideas of pleasure; and then whatever has been 
 said of the social affections, whether they regard society in 
 general, or only some particular modes of it, may be appli- 
 cable here. It is by this principle chiefly that poetry, paint- 
 ing, and other affecting arts, transfuse their passions from 
 one breast to another, and are often capable of grafting a 
 delight on wretchedness, misery, and death itself. It is a 
 common observation, that objects which in the reality would 
 shock, are in tragical, and such like representations, the 
 source of a very high species of pleasure. This, taken asa 
 fact, has been the cause of much reasoning. The satisfac- 
 tion has been commonly attributed, first, to the comfort we 
 receive in considering that so melancholy a story is no more 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 231 
 
 than a fiction; and, next, to the contemplation of our own 
 freedom from the evils which we see represented. I am 
 afraid it is a practise much too common in inquiries of this 
 nature, to attribute the cause of feelings which merely arise 
 from the mechanical structure of our bodies, or from the 
 natural frame and constitution of our minds, to certain con- 
 clusions of the reasoning faculty on the objects presented to 
 us; for I should imagine, that the influence of reason in pro- 
 ducing our passions is nothing near so extensive as it is 
 commonly believed. 
 
 SECTION XIV 
 
 THE EFFECTS OF SYMPATHY IN THE DISTRESSES OF 
 OTHERS 
 
 TO examine this point concerning the effect of tragedy in 
 a proper manner, we must previously consider how we are 
 affected by the feelings of our fellow-creatures in circum- 
 stances of real distress. I am convinced we have a degree 
 of delight, and that no small one, in the real misfortunes and 
 pains of others; for let the affection be what it will in ap- 
 pearance, if it does not make us shun such objects, if on the 
 contrary it induces us to approach them, if it makes us dwell 
 upon them, in this case I conceive we must have a delight 
 or pleasure of some species or other in contemplating ob- 
 jects of this kind. Do we not read the authentic histories 
 of scenes of this nature with as much pleasure as romances 
 or poems, where the incidents are fictitious? The pros- 
 perity of no empire, nor the grandeur of no king, can so 
 agreeably affect in the reading, as the ruin of the state of 
 Macedon, and the distress of its unhappy prince. Such a 
 catastrophe touches us in history as much as the destruction 
 of Troy does in fable. Our delight, in cases of this kind, 
 is very greatly heightened, if the sufferer be some excellent 
 person who sinks under an unworthy fortune. Scipio and 
 
232 BURKE 
 
 Cato are both virtuous characters; but we are more deeply 
 affected by the violent death of the one, and the ruin of the 
 great cause he adhered to, than with the deserved triumphs 
 and uninterrupted prosperity of the other: for terror is a 
 passion which always produces delight when it does not 
 press too closely; and pity is a passion accompanied with 
 pleasure, because it arises from love and social affection. 
 Whenever we are formed by nature to any active purpose, 
 the passion which animates us to it is attended with delight, 
 or a pleasure of some kind, let the subject-matter be what it 
 will; and as our Creator has designed that we should be 
 united by the bond of sympathy, he has strengthened that 
 bond by a proportionable delight ; and there most where our 
 sympathy is most wanted,—in the distresses of others. If 
 this passion was simply painful, we would shun with the 
 greatest care all persons and places that could excite such a 
 passion; as some, who are so far gone in indolence as not to 
 endure any strong impression, actually do. But the case is 
 widely different with the greater part of mankind; there is 
 no spectacle we so eagerly pursue, as that of some uncom- 
 mon and grievous calamity ; so that whether the misfortune 
 is before our eyes, or whether they are turned back to it in 
 history, it always touches with delight. This is not an un- 
 mixed delight, but blended with no small uneasiness, The 
 delight we have in such things hinders us from shunning 
 scenes of misery; and the pain we feel prompts us to relieve 
 ourselves in relieving those who suffer; and all this antece- 
 dent to any reasoning, by an instinct that works us to its own 
 purposes without our concurrence. | 
 
 SECTION XV 
 OF THE EFFECTS OF TRAGEDY 
 
 IT is thus in real calamities. In imitated distresses the 
 only difference is the pleasure resulting from the effects of 
 imitation; for it is never so perfect, but we can perceive it is 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 233 
 
 imitation, and on that principle are somewhat pleased with 
 it. And indeed in some cases we derive as much or more 
 pleasure from that source than from the thing itself. But 
 then I imagine we shall be much mistaken if we attribute 
 any considerable part of our satisfaction in tragedy to the 
 consideration that tragedy is a deceit, and its representations 
 no realities. The nearer it approaches the reality, and the 
 further it removes us from all idea of fiction, the more per- 
 fect is its power. But be its power of what kind it will, it 
 never approaches to what it represents. Choose a day on 
 which to represent the most sublime and affecting tragedy 
 we have; appoint the most favourite actors; spare no cost 
 upon the scenes and decorations; unite the greatest efforts 
 of poetry, painting, and music; and when you have collected 
 your audience, just at the moment when their minds are 
 erect with expectation, let it be reported that a state criminal 
 of high rank is on the point of being executed in the adjoin- 
 ing square; in a moment the emptiness of the theatre would 
 demonstrate the comparative weakness of the imitative arts, 
 and proclaim the triumph of the real sympathy. I believe 
 that this notion of our having a simple pain in the reality, 
 yet a delight in the representation, arises from hence, that 
 we do not sufficiently distinguish what we would by no means 
 choose to do, from what we should be eager enough to see 
 if it was once done. We delight in seeing things, which so 
 far from doing, our heartiest wishes would be to see redressed. 
 This noble capital, the pride of England and of Europe, I 
 believe no man is so strangely wicked as to desire to see 
 destroyed by aconflagration or an earthquake, though he 
 should be removed himself to the greatest distance from the 
 danger. But suppose such a fatal accident to have happened, 
 what numbers from all parts would crowd to behold the 
 ruins, and amongst them many who would have been con- 
 tent never to have seen London in its glory! Nor is it, 
 either in real or fictitious distresses, our immunity from them 
 which produces our delight; in my own mind I can discover 
 nothing like it. I apprehend that this mistake is owing to a 
 
234 BURKE 
 
 sort of sophism, by which we are frequently imposed upon; 
 it arises from our not distinguishing between what is indeed 
 a necessary condition to our doing or suffering anything in 
 general, and what is the cause of some particular act. Ifa 
 man kills me with a sword, it is a necessary condition to this 
 that we should have been both of us alive before the fact; 
 and yet it would be absurd to say that our being both living 
 creatures was the cause of his crime and of my death. So it 
 is certain that it is absolutely necessary my life should be 
 out of any imminent hazard, before I can take a delight in 
 the sufferings of others, real or imaginary, or indeed in any- 
 thing else from any cause whatsoever. But then it is a soph- 
 ism to argue from thence that this immunity is the cause of 
 my delight either on these or on any occasions. No onecan 
 distinguish such a cause of satisfaction in his own mind, I 
 believe ; nay, when we do not suffer any very acute pain, 
 nor are exposed to any imminent danger of our lives, we can 
 feel for others, whilst we suffer ourselves; and often then 
 most when we are softened by affliction; we see with pity 
 even distresses which we would accept in the place of our 
 own, 
 
 ee 
 
 SECTION XVI 
 IMITATION 
 
 THE second passion belonging to society is imitation, or, 
 if you will, a desire of imitating, and consequently a pleasure 
 in it. This passion arises from much the same cause with 
 sympathy. For as sympathy makes us take a concern in 
 whatever men feel, so this affection prompts us to copy what- 
 ever they do; and consequently we have a pleasure in imitat- 
 ing, and in whatever belongs to imitation merely as it is such 
 without any intervention of the reasoning faculty, but solely 
 from our natural constitution, which Providence has framed 
 in such a manner as to find either pleasure or delight, accord- 
 ing to the nature of the object, in whatever regards the pur- 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 235 
 
 poses of our being. Itis by imitation far more than by pre- 
 cept, that we learn everything; and what we learn thus, we 
 acquire not only more effectually, but more pleasantly. This 
 forms our manners, our opinions, our lives. It is one of the 
 strongest links of society ; it is a species of mutual compli- 
 ance, which all men yield to each other, without constraint to 
 themselves, and which is extremely flattering to all. Here- 
 in it is that painting and many other agreeable arts have laid 
 - one of the principal foundations of their power. And since, 
 by its influence on our manners and our passions, it is of such 
 great consequence, I shall here venture to lay down a rule, 
 which may inform us with a good degree of certainty when 
 we are to attribute the power of the arts to imitation, or to 
 our pleasure in the skill of the imitator merely, and when to 
 sympathy, or some other cause in conjunction withit. When 
 the object represented in poetry or in painting is such as we 
 could have no desire of seeing in the reality, then I may be 
 sure that its power in poetry or painting is owing to the 
 power of imitation, and to no cause operating in the thing 
 itself. So it is with most of the pieces which the painters 
 call still-life. In these a cottage, a dunghill, the meanest 
 and most ordinary utensils of. the kitchen, are capable of 
 giving us pleasure. But when the object of the painting or 
 poem is such as we should run to see if real, let it affect us 
 with what odd sort of sense it will, we may rely upon it that 
 the power of the poem or picture is more owing to the nature 
 of the thing itself than to the mere effect of imitation, or to 
 a consideration of the skill of the imitator, however excellent. 
 Aristotle has spoken so much and so solidly upon the force 
 of imitation in his Poetics, that it makes any further dis- 
 course upon this subject the less necessary. 
 
236 BURKE 
 
 SECTION XVII 
 AMBITION 
 
 ALTHOUGH imitation is one of the great instruments used 
 by Providence in bringing our nature towards its perfection, 
 yet if men gave themselves up to imitation entirely, and each 
 followed the other, and so on in an eternal circle, it is easy 
 to see that there never could be any improvement amongst ° 
 them. Men must remain as brutes do, the same at the end 
 that they are at this day, and that they were in the begin- 
 ning of the world. To prevent this, God has planted in man 
 a sense of ambition, and a satisfaction arising from the con- 
 templation of his excelling his fellows in something deemed 
 valuable amongst them. It is this passion that drives men 
 to all the ways we see in use of signalizing themselves, and 
 that tends to make whatever excites in a man the idea of 
 this distinction so very pleasant. It has been so strong as 
 to make very miserable men take comfort, that they were 
 supreme in misery; and certain it is that, where we can not 
 distinguish ourselves by something excellent, we begin to 
 take a complacency in some singular infirmities, follies, or 
 defects of one kind or other. It is on this principle that. 
 flattery is so prevalent ; for flattery is no more than what 
 raises in a man’s mind an idea of a preference which he has 
 not. Now, whatever, either on good or upon bad grounds, 
 tends to raise a man in his own opinion, produces a sort of 
 swelling and triumph, that is extremely grateful to the 
 human mind; and this swelling is never more perceived, nor 
 operates with more force, than when without danger we are 
 conversant with terrible objects ; the mind always claiming 
 to itself some part of the dignity and importance of the 
 things which it contemplates. Hence proceeds what Lon- 
 ginus has observed of that glorying and sense of inward 
 greatness, that always fills the reader of such passages in 
 poets and orators as are sublime : it is what every man must 
 have felt in himself upon such occasions. 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 237 
 
 SECTION XVIII 
 THE RECAPITULATION 
 
 To draw the whole of what has been said into a few dis- 
 tinct points :—The passions which belong to self-preserva- 
 tion turn on pain and danger ; they are simply painful when 
 their causes immediately affect us; they are delightful when 
 we have an idea of pain and danger, without being actually 
 _ in such circumstances ; this delight I have not called pleas- 
 sure, because it turns on pain, and because it is different 
 enough from any idea of positive pleasure. Whatever 
 excites this delight, I call sublime. The passions belonging 
 to self-preservation are the strongest of all the passions, 
 
 The second head to which the passions are referred with 
 relation to their final cause, issociety. There are two sorts of 
 societies. The first is, the society of sex. The passion be- 
 longing to this is called love, and it contains a mixture of 
 lust ; its object is the beauty of women. The other is the 
 great society with man and all other animals. The passion 
 subservient to this is called likewise love, but it has no mix- 
 ture of lust, and its object is beauty ; which is aname I shall 
 apply to all such qualities in things as induce in usa sense 
 of affection and tenderness, or some other passion the most 
 nearly resembling these. The passion of love has its rise in 
 positive pleasure ; it is, like all things which grow out of 
 pleasure, capable of being mixed with a mode of uneasiness, 
 that is, when an idea of its object is excited in the mind with 
 an idea at the same time of having irretrievably lost it. This 
 mixed sense of pleasure I have not called pain, because it 
 turns upon actual pleasure, and because it is, both in its 
 cause and in most of its effects, of a nature altogether dif- 
 ferent. 
 
 Next to the general passion we have for society, toa 
 choice in which we are directed by the pleasure we have in 
 the object, the particular passion under this head called sym- 
 
238 BURKE 
 
 pathy has the greatest extent. The nature of this passion 
 is, to put us in the place of another in whatever circumstance 
 he is in, and to affect us in a like manner ; so that this pas- 
 sion may, as the occasion requires, turn either on pain or 
 pleasure ; but with the modifications mentioned in some 
 cases in Section 11. Astoimitation and preference, nothing 
 more need be said. 
 
 SECTION XIX 
 THE CONCLUSION 
 
 I BELIEVED that an attempt to range and methodize some 
 of our most leading passions would be a good preparative to 
 such an inquiry as we are going to make in the ensuing dis- 
 course. The passions I have mentioned are almost the only 
 ones which it can be necessary to consider in our present 
 design; though the variety of the passions is great, and 
 worthy, in every branch of that variety, of an attentive 
 investigation. The more accurately we search into the 
 human mind, the stronger traces we everywhere find of His 
 wisdom who made it. Ifa discourse on the use of the parts 
 of the body may be considered as a hymn to the Creator; 
 the use of the passions, which are the organs of the mind, 
 can not be barren of praise to him, nor unproductive to our- 
 selves of that noble and uncommon union of science and 
 admiration, which a contemplation of the works of infinite 
 wisdom alone can afford toarational mind; whilst, referring 
 to him whatever we find of right or good or fair in our- 
 selves, discovering his strength and wisdom even in our own 
 weakness and imperfection, honouring them where we dis- 
 cover them clearly, and adoring their profundity where we 
 are lost in our search, we may be inquisitive without im- 
 pertinence, and elevated without pride; we may be ad- 
 mitted, if I may dare to say so, into the counsels of the 
 Almighty by a consideration of His works. The elevation 
 of the mind ought to be the principal end of all our studies; 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 239 
 
 which, if they do not in some measure effect, they are of 
 very little service to us. But, besides this great purpose, a 
 consideration of the rationale of our passions seems to me 
 very necessary for all who would affect them upon solid and 
 sure principles. It is not enough to know them in general; 
 to affect them after a delicate manner, or to judge properly 
 of any work designed to affect them, we should know the 
 exact boundaries of their several jurisdictions; we should 
 pursue them through all their variety of operations, and 
 pierce into the inmost, and what might appear inaccessible 
 parts of our nature, 
 
 Quod latet arcana non enarrabile fibra. 
 
 Without all this it is possible for a man, after a confused 
 manner sometimes to satisfy his own mind of the truth of 
 his work; but he can never have a certain determinate rule 
 to go by, nor can he ever make his propositions sufficiently 
 clear to others. Poets, and orators, and painters, and those 
 who cultivate other branches of the liberal arts, have, with- 
 out this critical knowledge, succeeded well in their several 
 provinces, and will succeed: as among artificers there are 
 many machines made and even invented without any exact 
 knowledge of the principles they are governed by. It is, I 
 own, not uncommon to be wrong in theory, and right in 
 practise: and we are happy that it is so. Men often act 
 right from their feelings, who afterwards reason but ill on 
 them from principle; but as it is impossible to avoid an at- 
 tempt at such reasoning, and equally impossible to prevent 
 its having some influence on our practise, surely it is worth 
 taking some pains to have it just, and founded on the basis 
 of sure experience. We might expect that the artists them- 
 selves would have been our surest guides; but the artists 
 have been too much occupied in the practise: the philoso- 
 phers have done little; and what they have done, was mostly 
 with aview to their own schemes and systems; and as for 
 those called critics, they have generally sought the rule of 
 the arts in the wrong place; they sought it among poems, 
 
240 BURKE 
 
 pictures, engravings, statues, and buildings. But art can 
 never give the rules that make an art. This is, I believe, the 
 reason why artists in general, and poets, principally, have 
 been confined in so narrow a circle: they have been rather 
 imitators of one another than of nature; and this with so 
 faithful an uniformity, and to so remote an antiquity, that 
 itis hard to say who gave the first model. Critics follow 
 them, and therefore can do little as guides. I can judge but 
 poorly of anything, whilst I measure it by no other standard 
 than itself. The true standard of the arts is in every man’s 
 power; and an easy observation of the most common, some- 
 times of the meanest things in nature, will give the truest 
 lights, where the greatest sagacity and industry, that slights 
 such observation, must leave us in the dark, or, what is worse, 
 amuse and mislead us by false lights. In an inquiry it is 
 almost everything to be oncein aright road. Iam satisfied 
 I have done but little by these observations considered in 
 themselves ; and I never should have taken the pains to digest 
 them, much less should I have ever ventured to publish them 
 if I was not convinced that nothing tends more to the corrup- 
 tion of science than to suffer it tostagnate. These waters must 
 be troubled, before they can exert their virtues. A man 
 who works beyond the surface of things, though he may be 
 wrong himself, yet he clears the way for others, and may 
 chance to make even his errors subservient to the cause of 
 truth. Inthe following parts I shall inquire what things 
 they are that cause in us the affections of the sublime and 
 beautiful, as in this I have considered the affections them- 
 selves. I only desire one favour,—that no part of this dis- 
 course may be judged of by itself, and independently of the 
 rest ; for I am sensible I have not disposed my materials to 
 abide the test of a captious controversy, but of a sober and 
 even forgiving examination; that they are not armed at all 
 points for battle, but dressed to visit those who are willing 
 to give a peaceful entrance to truth. 
 
PART SECOND 
 
 SECTION I 
 OF THE PASSION CAUSED BY THE SUBLIME 
 
 HE passion caused by the great and sublime in nature, 
 
 when those causes operate most powerfully, is astonish- 
 ment :and astonishment is that state of the soul in which all its 
 motions are suspended, with somedegree of horror! In this 
 case the mind is so entirely filled with its object, that it can 
 not entertain any other, nor by consequence reason on that 
 object which employs it. Hence arises the great power of 
 the sublime, that, far from being produced by them, it an- 
 ticipates our reasonings, and hurries us on by an irresistible 
 force. Astonishment, as I have said, is the effect of the 
 sublime in its highest degree; the inferior effects are admi- 
 ration, reverence, and respect. 
 
 NOTE 
 tale, SECL.. 3.4, 7. 
 
 no 
 
 SECTION II 
 TERROR 
 
 No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers 
 of acting and reasoning as fear.1 For fear, being an ap- 
 prehension of pain or death, it operates in a manner that 
 resembles actual pain. Whatever therefore is terrible, with 
 regard to sight, is sublime too, whether this cause of terror 
 
 be endued with greatness of dimensions or not; for it is 
 16 241 
 
242 | BURKE 
 
 impossible to look on anything as trifling, or contemptible, 
 that may be dangerous. There are many animals, who, 
 though far from being large, are yet capable of raising ideas 
 of the sublime, because they are considered as objects of 
 terror. As serpents and poisonous animals of almost all 
 kinds. And to things of great dimensions, if we annex an 
 adventitious idea of terror, they become without comparison 
 greater. <A level plain of a vast extent on land, is certainly 
 no mean idea; the prospect of sucha plain may be as ex- 
 tensive as a prospect of the ocean; but can it ever fill the 
 mind with anything so great as the ocean itself? This 
 is owing to several causes; but it is owing to none more 
 than this, that the ocean is an object of no smallterror. In- 
 deed terror is in all cases whatsoever, either more openly or 
 latently, the ruling principle of the sublime. Several lan- 
 guages bear a strong testimony to the affinity of these ideas. 
 They frequently use the same word to signify indifferently 
 the modes of astonishment or admiration and those of 
 terror. O@dpfos isin Greek either fear or wonder ;; detvog is 
 terrible or respectable ; a/d¢w, to reverence ortofear. Vereor 
 in Latin is what a/déw is in Greek. The Romans used the 
 verb stupeo, a term which strongly marks the state of an 
 astonished mind, to express the effect either of simple fear, 
 or of astonishment; the word attonitus (thunderstruck) is 
 equally expressive of the alliance of these ideas; and do 
 not the French étonnement, and the English astonishment 
 and amazement, point out as clearly the kindred emotions 
 which attend fear and wonder? They who have a more 
 general knowledge of languages, could produce, I make no 
 doubt, many other and equally striking examples. 
 
 NOTE 
 I. Part IV. sect. 3, 4, 5. 6. 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 243 
 
 SECTION III 
 OBSCURITY 
 
 To make anything very terrible, obscurity } seems in gen- 
 eral to be necessary. When we know the full extent of any. 
 danger, when we can accustom our eyes to it, a great deal of 
 the apprehension vanishes. Every one will be sensible of 
 this, who considers how greatly night adds to our dread, in 
 all cases of danger, and how much the notions of ghosts and 
 goblins, of which none can form clear ideas, affect minds 
 which give credit to the popular tales concerning such sorts 
 of beings. Those despotic governments which are founded 
 on the passions of men, and principally upon the passion of 
 fear, keep their chief as much as may be from the public 
 eye. The policy has been the same in many cases of re- 
 ligion. Almost all the heathen temples were dark. Even 
 _in the barbarous temples of the Americans at this day, they 
 keep their idol in a dark part of the hut, which is consecrated 
 to this worship. For this purpose too the Druids per- 
 formed all their ceremonies in the bosom of the darkest 
 woods, and in the shade of the oldest and most spreading 
 oaks. No person seems better to have understood the secret 
 of heightening, or of setting terrible things, if I may use the 
 expression, in their strongest light, by the force of a judi- 
 cious obscurity than Milton. His description of deathin the 
 second book is admirably studied; it is astonishing with 
 what a gloomy pomp, with what a significant and expressive 
 uncertainty of strokes and colouring, he has finished the 
 portrait of the king of terrors: 
 
 “ The other shape, 
 If shape it might be called that shape had none 
 Distinguishable, in member, joint, or limb ; 
 Or substance might be called that shadow seemed; 
 For each seemed either; black he stood as night; 
 Fierce as ten furies; terrible as hell; 
 
 And shook a deadly dart. What seemed his head 
 The likeness of a kingly crown had on.” 
 
244 - | BURKE 
 
 In this description all is dark, uncertain, confused, terrible, 
 and sublime to the last degree. 
 
 NOTE 
 
 I. Part IV. sect. 14, 15, 16. 
 
 SECTION IV 
 
 OF THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CLEARNESS AND OBSCURITY 
 WITH REGARD TO THE PASSIONS 
 
 IT is one thing to make an idea clear, and another to make 
 it affecting to the imagination. If I make a drawing of a 
 palace, or a temple, or a landscape, I present a very clear 
 idea of those objects; but then (allowing for the effect of 
 imitation which is something) my picture can at most affect 
 only as the palace, temple, or landscape, would have affected 
 in the reality. On the other hand, the most lively and 
 spirited verbal description I can give raises a very obscure 
 and imperfect idea of such objects; but then it is in my 
 power to raise a stronger emotion by the description than I 
 could do by the best painting. This experience constantly 
 evinces. The proper manner of conveying the affections of 
 the mind from one to another is by words; there is a great 
 insufficiency in all other methods of communication; and 
 so far is a clearness of imagery from being absolutely neces- 
 sary to an influence upon the passions, that they may be 
 considerably operated upon, without presenting any image 
 at all, by certain sounds adapted to that purpose; of which 
 we have a sufficient proof in the acknowledged and powerful 
 effects of instrumental music. In reality, a great clearness 
 helps but little towards affecting the passions, as it is in 
 some sort an enemy to all enthusiasms whatsoever. 
 
 There are two verses in Horace’s “ Art of poetry ” that seem 
 to contradict this opinion; for which reason I shall take a 
 little more pains in clearing it up. The verses are, 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 245 
 
 Segnius irritant animos demissa per aures, 
 Quam quz sunt oculis subjecta fidelibus. 
 
 On this the Abbé du Bos founds a criticism, wherein he 
 gives painting the preference to poetry in the article of 
 moving the passions; principally on account of the greater 
 clearness of the ideas it represents. I believe this excellent 
 judge was led into this mistake (if it be a mistake) by his 
 system; to which he found it more conformable than I 
 imagine it will be found to experience. I know several who 
 admire and love painting, and yet who regard the objects of 
 their admiration in that art with coolness enough in com. 
 parison of that warmth with which they are animated by 
 affecting pieces of poetry or rhetoric. Among the common 
 sort of people, I never could perceive that painting had 
 much influence on their passions. It is true that the best 
 sorts of painting, as well as the best sorts of poetry, are not 
 much understood in that sphere. But it is most certain that 
 their passions are very strongly roused by a fanatic preacher, 
 or by the ballads of ‘Chevy Chase,” or the “ Children in the 
 Wood,” and by other little popular poems and tales that are 
 current in that rank of life. I do not know of any paintings, 
 bad or good, that produce the same effect. So that poetry, 
 with all its obscurity, has a more general, as well as a more 
 powerful dominion over the passions, than the other art. 
 And I think there are reasons in nature, why the obscure 
 idea, when properly conveyed, should be more affecting than 
 the clear. It is our ignorance of things that causes all our 
 admiration, and chiefly excites our passions. Knowledge 
 and acquaintance make the most striking causes affect but 
 little. It is thus with the vulgar; and all men are as the 
 vulgar in what they do not understand. The ideas of eter- 
 nity, and infinity, are among the most affecting we have: 
 and yet perhaps there is nothing of which we really under- 
 stand so little, as of infinity and eternity. We do not any- 
 where meet a more sublime description than this justly- 
 celebrated one of Milton, wherein he gives the portrait of 
 Satan with a dignity so suitable to the subject : 
 
246 BURKE 
 
 “ He above the rest 
 In shape and gesture proudly eminent 
 Stood like a tower; his form had yet not lost 
 All her original brightness, nor appeared 
 Less than archangel ruined, and th’ excess 
 Of glory obscured: as when the sun new risen 
 Looks through the horizontal misty air 
 Shorn of his beams; or from behind the moon 
 In dim eclipse disastrous twilight sheds 
 On half the nations; and with fear of change 
 Perplexes monarchs.” 
 
 Here is a very noble picture; and in what does this poetical 
 picture consist? In images of a tower, an archangel, the 
 sun rising through mists, or in an eclipse, the ruin of mon- 
 archs and the revolutions of kingdoms. The mind is hur- 
 ried out of itself, by a crowd of great and confused images ; 
 which affect because they are crowded and confused. For 
 separate them, and you lose much of the greatness ; and join 
 them, and you infallibly lose the clearness. The images raised 
 by poetry are always of this obscure kind; though in general 
 the effects of poetry are by no means to be attributed to the 
 images it raises; which point we shall examine more at large 
 hereafter! But painting, when we have allowed for the 
 pleasure of imitation, can only affect simply by the images 
 it presents; and even in painting, a judicious obscurity in 
 some things contributes to the effect of the picture; because 
 the images in painting are exactly similar to those in nature ; 
 and in nature, dark, confused, uncertain images have a greater 
 power on the fancy to form the grander passions, than those 
 have which are more clear anddeterminate. But where and. 
 when this observation may be applied to practise, and how 
 far it shall be extended, will be better deduced from the 
 nature of the subject, and from the occasion, than from any 
 rules that can be given. 
 
 I am sensible that this idea has met with opposition, and 
 is likely still to be rejected by several. But let it be con- 
 sidered that hardly anything can strike the mind with its 
 greatness, which does not make some sort of approach 
 towards infinity ; which nothing can do whilst weare able to 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 247 
 
 perceive its bounds; but to see an object distinctly, and to 
 perceive its bounds, is oneand the same thing. A clear idea 
 is therefore another name for a little idea. There is a pas- 
 sage in the book of Job amazingly sublime, and this sub- 
 limity is principally due to the terrible uncertainty of the 
 thing described: “In thoughts from the visions of the night, 
 when deep sleep falleth upon men, fear came upon me and 
 trembling, which made all my bones toshake. Then a spirit 
 passed before my face. The hair of my flesh stood up. It 
 stood still, but I could not discern the form thereof; an 
 image was before mine eyes; there was silence; and I heard 
 a voice,—Shall mortal man be more just than God?” We 
 are first prepared with the utmost solemnity for the vision; 
 we are first terrified, before we are let even into the obscure 
 cause of our emotion: but when this grand cause of terror 
 makes its appearance, what is it? Is it not wrapt up in the 
 shades of its own incomprehensible darkness, more awful, 
 more striking, more terrible, than the liveliest description, 
 than the clearest painting, could possibly represent it? When 
 painters have attempted to give us clear representations of 
 these very fanciful and terrible ideas, they have, I think, 
 almost always failed; insomuch that I have been at a loss, 
 in all the pictures I have seen of hell, to determine whether 
 the painter did not intend something ludicrous. Several 
 painters have handled a subject of this kind, with a view of 
 assembling as many horrid phantoms as their imagination 
 could suggest; but all the designs I have chanced to meet 
 of the temptations of St. Anthony were rather a sort of 
 odd, wild grotesques, than anything capable of producing a 
 serious passion. In all these subjects poetry is very happy. 
 Its apparitions, its chimeras, its harpies, its allegorical figures, 
 are grand and affecting; and though Virgil’s Fame and 
 Homer’s Discord are obscure, they are magnificent figures. 
 These figures in painting would be clear enough, but I fear 
 they might become ridiculous. 
 
 NOTE 
 Tr. Party. 
 
248 BURKE 
 
 SECTION V 
 POWER 
 
 BESIDES those things which directly suggest the idea of 
 danger, and those which produce a similar effect from a 
 mechanical cause, I know of nothing sublime, which is not 
 some modification of power. And this branch rises, as nat- 
 urally as the other two branches, from terror, the common 
 stock of everything that is sublime. The idea of power, at 
 first view, seems of the class of those indifferent ones, which 
 may equally belong to pain or to pleasure. But ‘in reality, 
 the affection arising from the idea of vast power is extremely 
 remote from that neutral character. For first, we must re- 
 member? that the idea of pain, in its highest degree, is much 
 stronger than the highest degree of pleasure; and that it 
 preserves the same superiority through all the subordinate 
 gradations. From hence it is, that where the chances for 
 equal degrees of suffering or enjoyment are in any sort equal, 
 the idea of the suffering must always be prevalent. And 
 indeed the ideas of pain, and, above all, of death, are so very 
 affecting, that whilst we remain in the presence of whatever 
 is supposed to have the power of inflicting either, it is 
 impossible to be perfectly free from terror. Again, we 
 know by experience, that, for the enjoyment of pleasure, 
 no great efforts of power are at all necessary; nay, we 
 know that such efforts would go a great way towards de- 
 stroying our satisfaction: for pleasure must be stolen, and 
 not forced upon us; pleasure follows the will ; and therefore 
 we are generally affected with it by many things of a force 
 greatly inferior to our own. But pain is always inflicted by 
 a power in some way superior, because we never submit to 
 pain willingly. So that strength, violence, pain, and terror, 
 are ideas that rush in upon the mind together. Look at a 
 man, or any other animal of prodigious strength, and what 
 is your idea before reflection? Is it that this strength will 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 249 
 
 be subservient to you, to your ease, to your pleasure, to 
 your interest in any sense? No; the emotion you feel is, 
 lest this enormous strength should be employed to the pur- 
 poses of rapine and destruction.2— That power derives all its 
 sublimity from the terror with which it is generally accom- 
 panied, will appear evidently from its effect in the very few 
 cases, in which it may be possible to strip a considerable 
 degree of strength of its ability tohurt. When you do this, 
 you spoil it of everything sublime, and it immediately be- 
 comes contemptible. An ox isacreature of vast strength; 
 but he is an innocent creature, extremely serviceable, and 
 not at all dangerous; for which reason the idea of an ox is 
 by no means grand. A bull is strong too; but his strength 
 is of another kind; often very destructive, seldom (at least 
 amongst us) of any use in our business; the idea of a bull 
 is therefore great, and it has frequently a place in sublime 
 descriptions, and elevating comparisons. Let us look at an- 
 other strong animal, in the two distinct lights in which we 
 may consider him. The horse in the light of an useful beast, 
 fit for the plough, the road, the draft ; in every social useful 
 light, the horse has nothing sublime; but is it thus that we 
 are affected with him, “ whose neck is clothed with thunder, 
 the glory of whose nostrils is terrible, who swalloweth the 
 ground with fierceness and rage, neither believeth that it is 
 the sound of the trumpet?” In this description, the useful 
 character of the horse entirely disappears, and the terrible 
 and sublime blaze out together. We have continually about 
 us animals of a strength that is considerable, but not perni- 
 cious. Amongst these we never look for the sublime; it 
 comes upon us in the gloomy forest, and in the howling 
 wilderness, in the form of the lion, the tiger, the panther, or 
 rhinoceros. Whenever strength is only useful, and em- 
 ployed for our benefit or our pleasure, then it is never sub- 
 lime; for nothing can act agreeably to us, that does not act 
 in conformity to our will; but to act agreeably to our will, 
 it must be subject to us, and therefore can never be the cause 
 of a grand and commanding conception. The description 
 
260 BURKE 
 
 of the wild ass, in Job, is worked up into no small sublimity, 
 merely by insisting on his freedom, and his setting mankind 
 at defiance; otherwise the description of such an animal 
 could have had nothing noble in it. “Who hath loosed,” 
 says he, “the bands of the wild ass? whose house I have 
 made the wilderness and the barren land his dwellings. He 
 scorneth the multitude of the city, neither regardeth he-the 
 voice of the driver. The range of the mountains is his pas- 
 ture.’ The magnificent description of the unicorn and of 
 leviathan, in the same book is full of the same heightening 
 circumstances: ‘‘ Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee? 
 canst thou bind the unicorn with his band in the furrow ? 
 wilt thou trust him because his strength is great P—Canst 
 thou draw out leviathan with an hook? will he make a cove- 
 nant with thee? wilt thou take him for a servant forever ? 
 shall not one be cast down even at the sight of him?” In 
 short, wheresoever we find strength, and in what light soever 
 we look upon power, we shall all along observe the sublime 
 the concomitant of terror, and contempt the attendant on a 
 strength that is subservient and innoxious. The race of 
 dogs, in many of their kinds, have generally a competent 
 degree of strength and swiftness; and they exert these and 
 other valuable qualities which they possess, greatly to our 
 convenience and pleasure. Dogs are indeed the most social, 
 affectionate, and amiable animals of the whole brute crea- 
 tion; but love approaches much nearer to contempt than is 
 commonly imagined; and accordingly, though we caress 
 dogs, we borrow from them an appellation of the most des- 
 picable kind, when we employ terms of reproach; and this 
 appellation is the common mark of the last vileness and con- 
 tempt in every language. Wolves have not more strength 
 than several species of dogs; but, on account of their unman- 
 ageable fierceness, the idea of a wolf is not despicable; it is 
 not excluded from grand descriptions and similitudes. Thus 
 we are affected by strength, which is natural power. The 
 power which arises from institution in kings and commanders, 
 has the same connection with terror. Sovereigns are fre- 
 
‘ ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 251 
 
 quently addressed with the title of dread majesty. And it 
 may be observed, that young persons, little acquainted with 
 the world, and who have not been used to approach men in 
 power, are commonly struck with an awe which takes away 
 the free use of their faculties. ‘When I prepared my seat 
 in the street,” says Job, ‘the young men saw me, and hid 
 themselves.” Indeed so natural is this timidity with regard 
 to power, and so strongly does it inhere in our constitution, 
 that very few are able to conquer it, but by mixing much in 
 the business of the great world, or by using no small vio- 
 lence to their natural dispositions. I know some people are 
 of opinion, that no awe, no degree of terror, accompanies the 
 idea of power; and have hazarded to affirm, that we can con- 
 template the idea of God himself without any such emotion. 
 I purposely avoided, when I first considered this subject, 
 to introduce the idea of that great and tremendous Being, 
 as an example in an argument so light as this; though 
 it frequently occurred to me, not as an objection to, but as 
 a strong confirmation of, my notions in this matter. I hope, 
 in what I am going to say, I shall avoid presumption, where 
 it is almost impossible for any mortal to speak with strict 
 propriety. I say then, that whilst we consider the Godhead 
 merely as he is an object of the understanding, which forms 
 a complex idea of power, wisdom, justice, goodness, all 
 stretched to a degree far exceeding the bounds of our com- 
 prehension, whilst we consider the divinity in this refined 
 and abstracted light, the imagination and passions are little 
 or nothing affected. But because we are bound, by the con- 
 dition of our nature, to ascend to these pure and intellectual 
 ideas, through the medium of sensible images, and to judge 
 of these divine qualities by their evident acts and exertions, 
 it becomes extremely hard to disentangle our idea of the 
 cause from the effect by which we are led to knowit. Thus, 
 when we contemplate the Deity, his attributes and their 
 operation, coming united on the mind, form a sort of sensi- 
 ble image, and as such are capable of affecting the imagina- 
 tion. Now, though in a just idea of the Deity, perhaps 
 
252 BURKE 
 
 none of his attributes are predominant, yet, to our imagina- 
 tion, his power is by far the most striking. Some reflection, 
 some comparing, is necessary to satisfy us of his wisdom, his 
 justice,and his goodness. To be struck with his power, it is 
 only necessary that we should open oureyes. But whilst we 
 contemplate so vast an object, under the arm, as it were, of 
 almighty power, and invested upon every side with omni- 
 presence, we shrink into the minuteness of our own nature, 
 and are, in a manner, annihilated before him. And though 
 a consideration of his other attributes may relieve, in some 
 measure, our apprehensions ; yet no conviction of the justice 
 with which it is exercised, nor the mercy with which it is tem- 
 pered, can wholly remove the terror that naturally arises from 
 a force which nothing can withstand. If we rejoice, we re- 
 joice with trembling; and even whilst we are receiving bene- 
 fits, we can not but shudder at a power which can confer 
 benefits of such mighty importance. When the prophet 
 David contemplated the wonders of wisdom and power 
 which are displayed in the economy of man, he seems to be 
 struck with a sort of divine horror, and cries out, “ fearfully 
 and wonderfully am I made!” An heathen poet has a sen- 
 timent of a similar nature; Horace looks upon it as the last 
 effort of philosophical fortitude, to behold without terror 
 and amazement, this immense and glorious fabric of the 
 universe : 
 
 Hunc solem, et stellas, et decedentia certis 
 Tempora momentis, sunt qui formidine nulla 
 Imbuti spectent. 
 
 Lucretius is a poet not to be suspected of giving way to 
 superstitious terrors ; yet, when he supposes the whole 
 mechanism of nature laid open by the master of his philos- 
 ophy, his transport on this magnificent view, which he has 
 represented in the colours of such bold and lively poetry, is 
 overcast with a shade of secret dread and horror : 
 
 His ibi me rebus quaedam divina voluptas 
 Percipit, atque horror; quod sic natura, tua vi 
 Tam manifesta patens, ex omni parte retecta est. 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 253 
 
 But the Scripture alone can supply ideas answerable to 
 the majesty of this subject. In the Scripture, wherever God 
 is represented as appearing or speaking, everything terrible 
 in nature is called up to heighten the awe and solemnity of 
 the Divine presence. The Psalms, and the _ prophetical 
 books, are crowded with instances of this kind. ‘‘ The earth 
 shook,” says the Psalmist, ‘‘the heavens also dropped at the 
 presence of the Lord.” And what is remarkable, the paint- 
 ing preserves the same character, not only when he is sup- 
 posed descending to take vengeance upon the wicked, but 
 even when he exerts the like plenitude of power in acts of 
 beneficenceto mankind. ‘Tremble, thou earth! at the pres- 
 ence of the Lord ; at the presence of the God of Jacob; 
 which turned the rock into standing water, the flint into a 
 fountain of waters!” It were endless to enumerate all the 
 passages, both in the sacred and profane writers, which 
 establish the general sentiment of mankind, concerning the 
 inseparable union of a sacred and reverential awe, with our 
 ideas of the divinity. Hence the common maxim, Primusin 
 orbe deos fecit timor. This maxim may be, as I believe it is, 
 false with regard to the origin of religion. The maker of the 
 maxim saw how inseparable these ideas were, without con- 
 sidering that the notion of some great power must be always 
 precedent to our dread of it. But this dread must neces- 
 sarily follow the idea of such a power, when it is once 
 excited in the mind. It is on this principle that true religion 
 has, and must have, so large a mixture of salutary fear; and 
 that false religions have generally nothing else but fear to 
 support them. Before the Christian religion had, as it were, 
 humanized the idea of the Divinity, and brought it some- 
 what nearer to us, there was very little said of the love of 
 God. The followers of Plato have something of it, and only 
 something; the other writers of pagan antiquity, whether 
 poets or philosophers, nothing at all. And they who con- 
 sider with what infinite attention, by what a disregard of 
 every perishable object, through what long habits of piety 
 and contemplation it is that any man is able to attain an 
 
254 BURKE 
 
 entire love and devotion to the Deity, will easily perceive that 
 it is not the first, the most natural, and the most striking 
 effect which proceeds from that idea. Thus we have traced 
 power through its several gradations unto the highest of all, 
 where our imagination is finally lost ; and we find terror, 
 quite throughout the progress, its inseparable companion, 
 _and growing along with it, as far as we can possibly trace 
 them. Now, as power is undoubtedly a capital source of 
 the sublime, this will point out evidently from whence its 
 energy is derived, and to what class of ideas we ought to 
 unite it. 
 NorTeEs 
 1. Part I. sect. 7. 2. Vide Part III. sect. 21. 
 
 SECTION MI 
 PRIVATION 
 
 ALL general privations are great, because they are all terri- 
 ble ; vacuity, darkness, solitude, and silence. With what a 
 fire of imagination, yet with what severity of judgment, has 
 Virgil amassed all these circumstances, where he knows that 
 all the images of a tremendous dignity ought to be united at 
 the mouth of hell! Where, before he unlocks the secrets 
 of the great deep, he seems to be seized with a religious 
 horror, and to retire astonished at the boldness of his own 
 
 design : 
 
 Dii, quibus imperium est animarum, umbraeque sz/ezzis [ 
 Et Chaos, et Phlegethon! loca xocte silentia late | 
 
 Sit mihi fas audita loqui! sit numine vestro 
 
 Pandere res alta terra et caligine mersas! 
 
 Ibant obscuri, sola sub nocte, per umbram, 
 
 Perque domos Ditis vacuas, et inania regna. 
 
 “Ye subterraneous gods! whose awful sway 
 The gliding ghosts, and s/ez¢t shades obey : 
 O Chaos hoar! and Phlegethon profound ! 
 Whose solemn empire stretches wide around ; 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 255 
 
 Give me, ye great, tremendous powers, to tell 
 Of scenes and wonders in the depth of hell ; 
 Give me your mighty secrets to display 
 From those é/ack realms of darkness to the day.” 
 PITT. 
 
 “ Obscure they went through dreary shades that led 
 Along the waste dominions of the dead.’’ 
 DRYDEN. 
 
 SECTION VII 
 
 VASTNESS 
 
 GREATNESS! of dimension is a powerful cause of the sub- 
 lime. This is too evident, and the observation too common, 
 to need any illustration ; it is not so common to consider 
 in what ways greatness of dimension, vastness of extent or 
 quantity, has the most striking effect. For, certainly, there 
 are ways and modes wherein the same quantity of extension 
 shall produce greater effects than it is found to do in others. 
 Extension is either in length, height, or depth. Of these the 
 length strikes least ; a hundred yards of even ground will 
 never work such an effect as a tower a hundred yards high, 
 or a rock or mountain of that altitude. I am apt to imagine, 
 likewise, that height is less grand than depth ; and that we 
 are more struck at looking down from a precipice, than look- 
 ing up at an object of equal height ; but of that Iam not 
 very positive. A perpendicular has more force in forming 
 the sublime, than an inclined plane, and the effects of a rug- 
 ged and broken surface seem stronger than where it is 
 smooth and polished. It would carry us out of our way to 
 enter in this place into the cause of these appearances, but 
 certain it is they afford a large and fruitful field of specula- 
 tion. However, it may not be amiss to add to these remarks 
 upon magnitude, that as the great extreme of dimension is 
 sublime, so the last extreme of littleness is in some measure 
 sublime likewise ; when we attend to the infinite divisibility 
 of matter, when we pursue animal life into these excessively 
 small, and yet organized beings, that escape the nicest in- 
 
256 BURKE 
 
 quisition of the sense ; when we push our discoveries yet 
 downward, and consider those creatures so many degrees yet 
 smaller, and the still diminishing scale of existence, in trac- - 
 ing which the imagination is lost as well as the sense ; we 
 become amazed and confounded at the wonders of minute- 
 ness ; nor can we distinguish in its effect this extreme of 
 littleness from the vast itself. For division must be infinite 
 as well as addition ; because the idea of a perfect unity can 
 no more be arrived at, than that of a complete whole, to 
 which nothing may be added. 
 
 NOTES 
 
 1, Part IV. sect. 9. 
 
 ne) dt Ghd 
 INFINITY 
 
 ANOTHER source of the sublime is infinity ; if it does not 
 rather belong to the last. Infinity has a tendency to fill the 
 mind with that sort of delightful horror, which is the most 
 genuine effect, and truest test of the sublime. There are 
 scarce any things which can become the objects of our senses, 
 that are really and in their own nature infinite. But the eye 
 not being able to perceive the bounds of many things, they 
 seem to be infinite, and they produce the same effects as if 
 they were really so. We are deceived in the like manner, if the 
 parts of some large object are so continued to any indefinite 
 number, that the imagination meets no check which may 
 hinder its extending them at pleasure. 
 
 Whenever we repeat any idea frequently, the iti bya 
 
 sort of mechanism, repeats it long after the first cause has 
 ceased to operate.) After whirling about when we sit down, 
 the objects about us still seem to whirl. After a long suc- 
 cession of noises, as the fall of waters, or the beating of forge- 
 hammers, the hammers beat and the waters roar in the 
 imagination long after the first sounds have ceased to affect 
 it ; and they die away at last by gradations which are scarcely 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 257 
 
 perceptible. If you hold up a straight pole, with your eye 
 to one end, it will seem extended to a length almost incredi- 
 ble2 Place a number of uniform and equidistant marks 
 on this pole, they will cause the same deception, and seem 
 multiplied without end. The senses, strongly affected in 
 some one manner, can not quickly change their tenor, or 
 adapt themselves to other things ; but they continue in their 
 old channel until the strength of the first mover decays. 
 This is the reason of an appearance very frequent in mad- 
 men ; that they remain whole days and nights, sometimes 
 whole years, in the constant repetition of some remark, some 
 complaint, or song; which having struck powerfully on 
 their disordered imagination in the beginning of their frenzy, 
 every repetition reinforces it with new strength, and the 
 hurry of their spirits, unrestrained by the curb of reason, 
 continues it to the end of their lives. 
 
 NOTES 
 1. Part IV. sect. 11. 2.,Part IV. sect.:13. 
 
 SECTION IX 
 SUCCESSION AND UNIFORMITY 
 
 SUCCESSION and uniformity of parts are what constitute 
 the artificial infinite.’ 1. Succession ; which is requisite that 
 the parts may be continued so long and in such a direction, 
 as by their frequent impulses on the sense to impress the 
 imagination with an idea of their progress beyond their 
 actual limits. 2. Uniformity ; because, if the figures of the 
 parts should be changed, the imagination at every change 
 finds a check; you are presented at every alteration with 
 the termination of one idea, and the beginning of another; 
 by which means it becomes impossible to continue that unin- 
 terrupted progression, which alone can stamp on bounded 
 objects the character of infinity. It is in this kind of arti- 
 ficial infinity, I believe, we ought to look for the cause why 
 a rotund has such a noble effect.! For in a rotund, whether 
 
 it be a building or a plantation, you can nowhere fixa bound- 
 17 
 
258 BURKE 
 
 ary; turn which way you will, the same object still seems to 
 continue, and the imagination has no rest. But the parts 
 must be uniform, as well as circularly disposed, to give this 
 figure its full force; because any difference, whether it be in 
 the disposition, or in the figure, or even in the colour of the 
 parts, is highly prejudicial to the idea of infinity, which every 
 change must check and interrupt, at every alteration com- 
 mencing a new series. On the same principles of succession 
 and uniformity, the grand appearance of the ancient heathen 
 temples, which were generally oblong forms, with a range of 
 uniform pillars on every side, will be easily accounted for. 
 From the same cause also may be derived the grand effect 
 of the aisles in many of our own old cathedrals. Theform ofa 
 cross used in some churches seems to me not so eligible as 
 the parallelogram of the ancients; at least, I imagine it is 
 not so proper for the outside. For, supposing the arms of 
 the cross every way equal, if you standin a direction parallel 
 to any of the side walls, or colonnades, instead of a decep- 
 tion that makes the building more extended than it is, you 
 are cut off from a considerable part (two thirds) of its actual 
 length; and, to prevent all possibility of progression, the 
 arms of the cross taking a new direction, make a right angle 
 with the beam, and thereby wholly turn the imagination 
 from the repetition of the former idea. Or supposing the 
 spectator placed where he may take a direct view of sucha 
 building, what will be the consequence? the necessary con- 
 sequence will be, that a good part of the basis of each angle 
 formed by the intersection of the arms of the cross, must be 
 inevitably lost ; the whole must of course assume a broken, 
 unconnected figure ; the lights must be unequal, here strong, 
 and there weak; without that noble gradation which the 
 perspective always effects on parts disposed uninterruptedly 
 in a right line. Some or all of these objections will lie 
 against every figure of a cross, in whatever view you take it. 
 I exemplified them in the Greek cross, in which these faults 
 appear the most strongly ; but they appear in some degree 
 in all sorts of crosses. Indeed, there is nothing more pre- 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 259 
 
 judicial to the grandeur of buildings than to abound in 
 angles ; a fault obvious in many; and owing to an inordinate 
 thirst for variety, which, whenever it prevails, is sure to leave 
 very little true taste. 
 
 NOTE 
 
 1. Mr. Addison, in the Spectators concerning the pleasures of the imagination, 
 thinks it is because in the rotund at one glance you see half the building. This 
 I do not imagine to be the real cause. 
 
 ref LOAN ROM, 19,6 
 MAGNITUDE IN BUILDING 
 
 To the sublime in building, greatness of dimension seems 
 requisite ; for on a few parts, and those small, the imagina- 
 tion can not arise to any idea of infinity. No greatness in 
 the manner can effectually compensate for the want of 
 proper dimensions. There is no danger of drawing men into 
 extravagant designs by this rule; it carries its own caution 
 along with it. Because too great a length in buildings 
 destroys the purpose of greatness, which it was intended to 
 promote; the perspective will lessen it in height as it gains 
 in length; and will bring it at last to a point ; turning the 
 whole figure into a sort of a triangle, the poorest in its effect 
 of almost any figure that can be presented to the eye. I 
 have ever observed, that colonnades and avenues of trees of 
 a moderate length were, without comparison, far grander 
 than when they were suffered to run to immense distances. 
 A true artist should put a generous deceit on the spectators, 
 and effect the noblest designs by easy methods. Designs that 
 are vast only by their dimensions are always the sign of a com- 
 mon and lowimagination. No work of art can be great, but 
 as it deceives ; to be otherwise is the prerogative of nature 
 only. A good eye will fix the medium betwixt an excessive 
 length or height (for the same objection lies against both), 
 and a short or broken quantity: and perhaps it might be 
 ascertained to a tolerable degree of exactness, if it was my 
 purpose to descend far into the particulars of any art. 
 
260 BURKE 
 
 SECTION XI 
 INFINITY IN PLEASING OBJECTS 
 
 INFINITY, though of another kind, causes much of our 
 pleasure in agreeable, as well as of our delight in sublime 
 images. The spring is the pleasantest of the seasons ; and 
 the young of most animals, though far from being completely 
 fashioned, afford a more agreeable sensation than the full- 
 grown; because the imagination is entertained with the 
 promise of something more, and does not acquiesce in the 
 present object of the sense. In unfinished sketches of 
 drawing, I have often seen something which pleased me be- 
 yond the best finishing ; and this I believe proceeds from 
 the cause I have just now assigned. 
 
 SECTION, XU 
 DIFFICULTY 
 
 ANOTHER source of greatness is difficulty.1 When any 
 work seems to have required immense force and labour to 
 effect it, the idea is grand. Stonehenge, neither for disposi- 
 tion nor ornament, has anything admirable ; but those huge 
 rude masses of stone, set on end, and piled each on other, turn 
 the mind on the immense force necessary for such a work. 
 Nay, the rudeness of the work increases this cause of 
 grandeur, as it excludes the idea of art and contrivance; for 
 dexterity produces another sort of effect, which is different 
 
 enough from this. 
 NoTE 
 
 1. Part IV. sect. 4, 5, 6. 
 
 SECTION? XT 
 MAGNIFICENCE 
 
 MAGNIFICENCE is likewise a source of the sublime. A 
 great profusion of things, which are splendid or valuable in 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 201 
 
 themselves, is magnificent. The starry heaven, though it oc- 
 curs so very frequently to our view, never fails to excite an 
 idea of grandeur. This can not be owing to the stars them- 
 selves, separately considered. The number is certainly the 
 cause. The apparent disorder augments the grandeur, for 
 the appearance of care is highly contrary to our ideas of 
 magnificence. Besides, the stars lie in such apparent confu- 
 sion, as makes it impossible on ordinary occasions to reckon 
 them. This gives them the advantage of a sort of infinity. 
 In works of art, this kind of grandeur which consists in 
 multitude, is to be very cautiously admitted ; because a pro- 
 fusion of excellent things is not to be attained, or with too 
 much difficulty ; and because in many cases this splendid 
 confusion would destroy all use, which should be attended 
 to in most of the works of art with the greatest care; besides, 
 it is to be considered, that unless you can produce an ap- 
 pearance of infinity by your disorder, you will have disorder 
 only without magnificence. There are, however, a sort of 
 fireworks, and some other things, that in this way succeed 
 well, and are truly grand. There are also many descriptions 
 in the poets and orators, which owe their sublimity to a 
 richness and profusion of images, in which the mind is so 
 dazzled as to make it impossible to attend to that exact 
 coherence and agreement of the allusions, which we should 
 require on every other occasion. I do not now remember a 
 more striking example of this, than the description which is 
 given of the king’s army in the play of Henry IV :— 
 
 “ All furnished, all in arms, 
 All plumed like ostriches that with the wind 
 Baited like eagles having lately bathed : 
 As full of spirit as the month of May, 
 And gorgeous as the sun in midsummer, 
 Wanton as youthful goats, wild as young bulls. 
 I saw young Harry with his beaver on 
 Rise from the ground like feathered Mercury ; 
 And vaulted with such ease into his seat, 
 As if an angel dropped down from the clouds 
 To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus.” 
 
262 BURKE 
 
 In that excellent book, so remarkable for the vivacity 
 of its descriptions, as well as the solidity and penetration of 
 its sentences, the Wisdom of the Son of Sirach, there is a 
 noble panegyric on the high-priest Simon the son of Onias ; 
 and it is a very fine example of the point before us :— 
 
 ‘“ How was he honoured in the midst of the people, in his 
 coming out of the sanctuary! He was as the morning star 
 in the midst of acloud, and as the moon at the full; as the 
 sun shining upon the temple of the Most High, and as the 
 rainbow giving light in the bright clouds: and as the bower 
 of roses in the spring of the year, as lilies by the rivers of 
 waters, and as the frankincense-tree in summer; as fire and 
 incense in the censer, and as a vessel of gold set with pre- 
 cious stones; as a fair olive-tree budding forth fruit, and as 
 a cypress which groweth upto the clouds. When he put on 
 the robe of honour, and was clothed with the perfection of 
 glory, when he went up tothe holy altar, he made the gar- 
 ment of holiness honourable. He himself stood by the hearth 
 of the altar, compassed with his brethren round about; asa 
 young cedar in Libanus, and as palm-trees compassed they 
 him about. So were all the sons of Aaron in their glory, 
 and the oblations of the Lord in their hands, etc.” 
 
 SECTION XIV 
 LIGHT 
 
 HAVING considered extension, so far as it is capable of 
 raising ideas of greatness ; colour comes next under considera- 
 tion. All colours depend on light. Light therefore ought 
 previously to be examined ; and with it its opposite, dark- 
 ness. With regard to light, to make it a cause capable of 
 producing the sublime, it must be attended with some cir- 
 cumstances, besides its bare faculty of showing other objects. 
 Mere light is too common a thing to make a strong im- 
 pression on the mind, and without a strong impression noth- 
 ing can be sublime. But such a light as that of the sun, im- 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 263 
 
 mediately exerted on the eye, as it overpowers the sense, is 
 avery great idea. Light of an inferior strength to this, if 
 it moves with great celerity, has the same power ; for light- 
 ning is certainly productive of grandeur, which it owes chiefly 
 to the extreme velocity of its motion. A quick transition 
 from light to darkness, or from darkness to light, has yet a 
 greater effect. But darkness is more productive of sublime 
 ideas than light. Our great poet was convinced of this; 
 and indeed so full was he of this idea, so entirely possessed 
 with the power of a well-managed darkness, that in describ- 
 ing the appearance of the Deity, amidst that profusion of 
 magnificent images, which the grandeur of his subject pro- 
 vokes him to pour out upon every side, he is far from for- 
 getting the obscurity which surrounds the most incompre- 
 hensible of all beings, but 
 
 “With majesty of darkness round 
 Circles his throne.” 
 
 And what is no less remarkable, our author had the secret 
 of preserving this idea, even when he seemed to depart the 
 farthest from it, when he describes the light and glory which 
 flows from the Divine presence; a light which by its very 
 excess is converted into a species of darkness :— 
 
 “ Dark with excessive /ight thy skirts appear.” 
 
 Here is an idea not only poetical in a high degree, but 
 strictly and philosophically just. Extreme light, by over- — 
 coming the organs of sight, obliterates all objects, so as in 
 its effect exactly to resemble darkness. After looking for 
 some time at the sun, two black spots, the impression which 
 it leaves, seem to dance before our eyes. Thus are two ideas 
 as opposite as can be imagined reconciled in the extremes of 
 both; and both, in spite of their opposite nature, brought 
 to concur in producing the sublime. And this is not the 
 only instance wherein the opposite extremes operate equally 
 in favour of the sublime, which in all things abhors medi- 
 ocrity. 
 
264 | BURKE 
 
 SECTION XV 
 LIGHT IN BUILDING 
 
 As the management of light is a matter of importance in 
 architecture, it is worth inquiring, how far this remark is ap- 
 plicable to building. I think, then, that all edifices calcu- 
 lated to produce an idea of the sublime, ought rather to be 
 dark and gloomy, and this for two reasons ; the first is, that 
 darkness itself on other occasions is known by experience to 
 have a greater effect on the passions than light. The second 
 is, that to make an object very striking, we should make it 
 as different as possible from the objects with which we have 
 been immediately conversant; when therefore you enter a 
 building, you can not pass into a greater light than you had 
 in the open air; to go into one some few degrees less lumi- 
 nous, can make only a trifling change; but to make the transi- 
 tion thoroughly striking, you ought to pass from the greatest 
 light, to as much darkness as is consistent with the uses of 
 architecture. At night the contrary rule will hold, but for 
 the very same reason; and the more highly a room is then 
 illuminated, the grander will the passion be. 
 
 SECTION XVI 
 
 COLOUR CONSIDERED AS PRODUCTIVE OF THE SUBLIME 
 
 AMONG colours, such as are soft or cheerful (except per- 
 haps a strong red, which is cheerful) are unfit to produce 
 grand images. An immense mountain covered with a shin- 
 ing green turf, is nothing, in this respect, to one dark and 
 gloomy ; the cloudy sky is more grand than the blue; and 
 night more sublime and solemn than day. Therefore in 
 historical painting, a gay or gaudy drapery can never have 
 a happy effect: and in buildings, when the highest degree 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 265 
 
 of the sublime is intended, the materials and ornaments 
 ought neither to be white, nor green, nor yellow, nor blue, 
 nor of a pale red, nor violet, nor spotted, but of sad or fus- 
 cous colours, as black, or brown, or deep purple, and the like. 
 Much of gilding, mosaics, painting, or statues, contribute but 
 little to the sublime. This rule need not be put in practise, 
 except where an uniform degree of the most striking sub- 
 limity is to be produced, and that in every particular; for it 
 ought to be observed, that this melancholy kind of great- 
 ness, though it be certainly the highest, ought not to be 
 studied in all sorts of edifices, where yet grandeur must be 
 studied; in such cases the sublimity must be drawn from 
 the other sources; with a strict caution however against 
 anything light and riant ; as nothing so effectually deadens 
 the whole taste of the sublime. 
 
 SECTION XVII 
 
 SOUND AND LOUDNESS 
 
 THE eye is not the only organ of sensation by which a 
 sublime passion may be produced. Sounds have a great 
 power in these as in most other passions. I do not mean 
 words, because words do not affect simply by their sounds, 
 but by means altogether different. Excessive loudness alone 
 is sufficient to overpower the soul, to suspend its action, 
 and to fill it with terror. The noise of vast cataracts, rag- 
 ing storms, thunder, or artillery, awakes a great and awful 
 sensation in the mind, though we can observe no nicety or 
 artifice in those sorts of music. The shouting of multitudes 
 has a similar effect; and by the sole strength of the sound, 
 so amazes and confounds the imagination, that, in this 
 staggering and hurry of the mind, the best established 
 tempers can scarcely forbear being borne down, and 
 joining in the common cry, and common resolution of the 
 crowd. 
 
266 BURKE 
 
 SECTION XVIII 
 SUDDENNESS 
 
 A SUDDEN beginning, or sudden cessation of sound of 
 any considerable force, has the same power. The attention 
 is aroused by this; and the faculties driven forward, as it 
 were, on their guard. Whatever, either in sights or sounds, 
 makes the transition from one extreme to the other easy, 
 causes no terror, and consequently can be no cause of great- 
 ness. In everything sudden and unexpected, we are apt to 
 start; that is, we have a perception of danger, and our na- 
 ture rouses us to guard against it. It may be observed that 
 a single sound of some strength, though but of short dura- 
 tion, if repeated after intervals, has a grand effect. Few 
 things are more awful than the striking of a great clock, 
 when the silence of the night prevents the attention from 
 being too much dissipated. The same may be said of 
 a single stroke on a drum, repeated with pauses; and 
 of the successive firing of cannon at a distance. All the 
 effects mentioned in this section have causes very nearly 
 alike. 
 
 SECTION XIX 
 INTERMITTING 
 
 A LOW, tremulous, intermitting sound, though it seems, 
 in some respects, opposite to that just mentioned, is pro- 
 ductive of the sublime. It is worth while to examine this a 
 little. The fact itself must be determined by every man’s 
 own experience and reflection. I have already observed, 
 that night ! increases our terror, more perhaps than anything 
 else ; it is our nature, when we do not know what may hap- 
 pen to us, to fear the worst that can happen: and hence it 
 is that uncertainty is so terrible, that we often seek to be rid 
 of it, at the hazard of a certain mischief. Now some low, 
 confused, uncertain sounds, leave usin the same fearful anx- 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 267 
 
 iety concerning their causes, that no light, or an uncertain 
 light, does concerning the objects that surround us. 
 
 Quale per incertam lunam sub luce maligna 
 Est iter in sylvis. 
 
 “ A faint shadow of uncertain light, 
 Like as a lamp, whose life doth fade away; 
 Or as the moon clothed with cloudy night 
 Doth show to him who walks in fear and great affright.” 
 SPENSER. 
 
 But light now appearing, and now leaving us, and so off 
 and on, is even more terrible than total darkness; and a sort 
 of uncertain sounds are, when the necessary dispositions con- 
 cur, more alarming than a total silence. 
 
 NOTE 
 1., Sect. ,3. 
 
 SECTION XX 
 THE CRIES OF ANIMALS 
 
 SUCH sounds as imitate the natural inarticulate voices of 
 men, or any animals in pain or danger, are capable of con- 
 veying great ideas; unless it be the well-known voice of 
 some creature, on which we are used to look with contempt. 
 The angry tones of wild beasts are equally capable of caus- 
 ing a great and awful sensation. 
 
 Hinc exaudiri gemitus, ireeque leonum 
 
 Vincla recusantum, et sera sub nocte rudentum; 
 
 Setigerique sues, atque in przsepibus ursi 
 
 Sevire; et formz magnorum ululare luporum. 
 It might seem that these modulations of sounds carry some 
 connection with the nature of the things they represent, 
 and are not merely arbitrary ; because the natural cries of all 
 animals, even of those animals with whom we have not been 
 acquainted, never fail to make themselves sufficiently under- 
 stood; this can not be said of language. The modifications 
 of sound, which may be productive of the sublime, are almost 
 infinite. Those I have mentioned are only a few instances 
 to show on what principles they are all built. 
 
268 BURKE 
 
 SECTION XXI 
 
 SMELL AND TASTE-—BITTERS AND STENCHES 
 
 SMELLS and tastes have some share too in ideas of great- 
 ness; but it is a small one, weak in its nature, and confined 
 in its operations. I shall only observe that no smells or 
 tastes can produce a grand sensation, except excessive bitters, 
 and intolerable stenches. It is true that these affections of 
 the smell and taste, when they are in their full force, and 
 lean directly upon the sensory, are simply painful, and ac- 
 companied with no sort of delight; but when they are mod- 
 erated, as in a description or narrative, they become sources 
 of the sublime, as genuine as any other, and upon the very 
 same principle ofa moderated pain. “A cup of bitterness” ; 
 “to drain the bitter cup of fortune’’; “the bitter apples of 
 Sodom”’; these are all ideas suitable to a sublime description. 
 Nor is this passage of Virgil without sublimity, where the 
 stench of the vapour in Albunea conspires so happily with 
 the sacred horror and gloominess of that prophetic forest: 
 
 ’ 
 
 At rex sollicitus monstris oracula Fauni 
 Fatidici genitoris adit, lucosque sub alta 
 Consulit Albunea, memorum quz maxima sacro 
 Fonte sonat ; sevamgque exhalat opaca Mephitim. 
 
 In the sixth book, and in a very sublime description, the 
 poisonous exhaltation of Acheron is not forgotten, nor does 
 it at all disagree with the other images amongst which it is 
 introduced : 
 
 Spelunca a/ta fuit vastogue tmmanis hiatu 
 Scrupea, tuta /acu nigro, nemorumque éenebris ; 
 Quam super haud ullz poterant impune volantes 
 Tendere iter pennis: ¢alis sese halitus atris 
 Faucibus effundens supera ad convexa ferebat. 
 
 I have added these examples, because some friends for whose 
 judgment I have great deference, were of opinion that if 
 the sentiment stood nakedly by itself, it would be subject, 
 at first view, to burlesque and ridicule; but this I imagine 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 269 
 
 would principally arise from considering the bitterness and 
 stench in company with mean and contemptible ideas, with 
 which it must be owned they are often united; such an 
 union degrades the sublime in all other instances as well as 
 inthose. But it is one of the tests by which the sublimity of 
 an image is to be tried, not whether it becomes mean when 
 associated with mean ideas; but whether, when united 
 with images of an allowed grandeur, the whole composition 
 is supported with dignity. Things which are terrible are 
 always great; but when things possess disagreeable qualities, 
 or such as have indeed some degree of danger, but ofa 
 danger easily overcome, they are merely odzous ; as toads 
 and spiders. 
 
 SECTION XXII 
 FEELING—PAIN 
 
 OF feeling little more can be said than that the idea of 
 bodily pain, in all the modes and degrees of labour, pain, an- 
 guish, torment, is productive of the sublime; and nothing 
 else in this sense can produce it. I need not give here any 
 fresh instances, as those given in the former sections abun- 
 dantly illustrate a remark that, in reality, wants only an 
 attention to nature, to be made by everybody. 
 
 Having thus run through the causes of the sublime with 
 reference to all the senses, my first observation (Sect. 7) will 
 be found very nearly true; that the sublime is an idea be- 
 longing to self-preservation ; that it is, therefore, one of the 
 most affecting we have; that its strongest emotion is an 
 emotion of distress: and that no pleasure} from a positive 
 cause belongs to it. Numberless examples, besides those 
 mentioned, might be brought in support of these truths, 
 and many perhaps useful consequences drawn from them— 
 
 Sed fugit interea, fugit irrevocabile tempus, 
 Singula dum capti circumvectamur amore. 
 NOTE 
 1. Vide Part I. sect. 6. 
 
PART THIRD 
 
 SECTION I 
 OF BEAUTY 
 
 |b is my design to consider beauty as distinguished from 
 the sublime; and, in the course of the inquiry, to examine 
 how far it is consistent with it. But previous to this, we 
 must take a short review of the opinions already entertained 
 of this quality ; which I think are hardly to be reduced to 
 any fixed principles; because men are used to talk of beauty 
 in a figurative manner, that is to say, in a manner extremely 
 uncertain, and indeterminate. By beauty, I mean that 
 quality, or those qualities in bodies, by which they cause 
 love, or some passion similar to it. I confine this definition 
 to the merely sensible qualities of things, for the sake of pre- 
 serving the utmost simplicity in a subject, which must always 
 distract us whenever we take in those various causes of sym- 
 pathy which attach us to any persons or things from second- 
 ary considerations, and not from the direct force which they 
 have merely on being viewed. I likewise distinguish love 
 (by which I mean that satisfaction which arises to the mind 
 upon contemplating anything beautiful, of whatsoever nature 
 it may be), from desire or lust; which is an energy of the 
 mind, that hurries us on to the possession of certain objects, 
 that do not affect us as they are beautiful, but by means alto- 
 gether different. We shall have a strong desire for a woman 
 of no remarkable beauty ; whilst the greatest beauty in men, 
 or in other animals, though it causes love, yet excites nothing 
 at all of desire. Which shows that beauty, and the passion 
 
 caused by beauty, which I call love, is different from desire, 
 270 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 271 
 
 though desire may sometimes operate along with it; but it 
 is to this latter that we must attribute these violent and tem- 
 pestuous passions, and the consequent emotions of the body 
 which attend what is called love in some of its ordinary 
 acceptations, and not to the effects of beauty merely as it is 
 such. 
 
 SECTION II 
 PROPORTION NOT THE CAUSE OF BEAUTY IN VEGETABLES 
 
 BEAUTY hath usually been said to consist in certain pro- 
 portions of parts. On considering the matter, I have great 
 reason to doubt, whether beauty be at all an idea belonging 
 to proportion. Proportion relates almost wholly to conveni- 
 ence, as every idea of order seems to do; and it must there- 
 fore be considered as a creature of the understanding, rather 
 than a primary cause acting on the senses and imagination. 
 It is not by the force of long attention and inquiry that we 
 find any object to be beautiful ; beauty demands no assistance 
 from our reasoning; even the will is unconcerned; the ap- 
 pearance of beauty as effectually causes some degree of love 
 in us, as the application of ice or fire produces the ideas of 
 heat orcold. To gain something like a satisfactory conclu- 
 sion in this point, it were well to examine what proportion 
 is; since several who make use of that word do not always 
 seem to understand very clearly the force of the term, nor 
 to have very distinct ideas concerning the thing itself. Pro- 
 portion is the measure of relative quantity. Since all 
 quantity is divisible, it is evident that every distinct part into 
 which any quantity is divided must bear some relation to 
 the other parts, or to the whole. These relations give an 
 origin to the idea of proportion. They are discovered by 
 mensuration, and they are the objects of mathematical in- 
 quiry. But whether any part of any determinate quantity 
 be a fourth, or a fifth, or a sixth, or a moiety of the whole; 
 or whether it be of equal length with any other part, or 
 
272 BURKE 
 
 double its length, or but one half, is a matter merely indif- 
 ferent to the mind; it stands neuter in the question: and it 
 is from this absolute indifference and tranquillity of the 
 mind, that mathematical speculations derive some of their 
 most considerable advantages; because there is nothing to 
 interest the imagination ; because the judgment sits free and 
 unbiassed to examine the point. All proportions, every 
 arrangement of quantity, is alike to the understanding, be- 
 cause the same truths result to it from all; from greater, 
 from lesser, from equality and inequality. But surely beauty 
 is no idea belonging to mensuration; nor has it anything to 
 do with calculation and geometry. If it had, we might then 
 point out some certain measures which we could demonstrate 
 to be beautiful, either as simply considered, or as related to 
 others; and wecould call in those natural objects, for whose 
 beauty we have no voucher but the sense, to this happy 
 standard, and confirm the voice of our passions by the de- 
 termination of ourreason. But since we have not this help, 
 let us see whether proportion can in any sense be considered 
 as the cause of beauty, as hath been so generally, and, by 
 some, so confidently affirmed. If proportion be one of the 
 constituents of beauty, it must derive that power either from 
 some natural properties inherent in certain measures, which 
 operate mechanically; from the operation of custom; or 
 from the fitness which some measures have to answer some 
 particular ends of conveniency. Our business therefore is 
 to inquire, whether the parts of those objects, which are 
 found beautiful in the vegetable or animal kingdoms, are con- 
 stantly so formed according to such certain measures, as 
 may serve to satisfy us that their beauty results from those 
 measures, on the principle of a natural mechanical cause; or 
 from custom; or, in fine, from their fitness for any determinate 
 purposes. I intend to examine this point under each of these 
 heads in theirorder. But before I proceed further, I hope it 
 will not be thought amiss, if I lay down the rules which gov- 
 erned me in this inquiry, and which have misled me in it, if I 
 have gone astray. 1. If two bodies produce the same ora 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 273 
 
 similar effect on the mind, and on examination they are found 
 to agree in some of their properties, and to differ in others ; 
 the common effect is to be attributed to the properties 
 in which they agree, and not to those in which they differ. 
 2. Not to account for the effect of a natural object from 
 the effect of an artificial object. 3. Not to account for 
 the effect of any natural object from a conclusion of our 
 reason concerning its uses, if a natural cause may be assigned. 
 4. Not to admit any determinate quantity, or any relation of 
 quantity, as the cause of a certain effect, if the effect is pro- 
 duced by different or opposite measures and relations; or if 
 these measures and relations may exist, and yet the effect 
 may not be produced. These are the rules which I have 
 chiefly followed, whilst I examined into the power of pro- 
 portion considered as a natural cause ; and these, if he thinks 
 them just, I request the reader to carry with him through- 
 out the following discussion; whilst we inquire, in the first 
 place, in what things we find this quality of beauty; next, 
 to see whether in these we can find any assignable propor- 
 tions in such amanner as ought to convince us that our idea 
 of beauty results from them. We shall consider this pleas- 
 ing power as it appears in vegetables, in the inferior animals, 
 and in man. Turning our eyes to the vegetable creation, 
 we find nothing there so beautiful as flowers; but flowers 
 are almost of every sort of shape, and of every sort of dis- 
 position; they are turned and fashioned into an infinite 
 variety of forms; and from these forms botanists have given 
 them their names, which are almost as various. What pro- 
 portion do we discover between the stalks and the leaves of 
 flowers, or between the leaves and the pistils? How does 
 the slender stalk of the rose agree with the bulky head under 
 which it bends? but the rose is a beautiful flower; and can 
 we undertake to say that it does not owe a great deal of its 
 beauty even to that disproportion; the rose is a large 
 flower, yet it grows upon a small shrub; the flower of the 
 apple is very small, and grows upon a large tree; yet the 
 
 rose and the apple blossom are both beautiful, and the plants 
 18 
 
274 BURKE 
 
 that bear them are most engagingly attired, notwithstanding 
 this disproportion. What by general consent is allowed to 
 be a more beautiful object than an orange-tree, flourishing 
 at once with its leaves, its blossoms, and its fruit ? but it is 
 in vain that we search here for any proportion between the 
 height, the breadth, or anything else concerning the dimen- 
 sions of the whole, or concerning the relation of the par- 
 ticular parts to each other. I grant that we may observe in 
 many flowers something ofa regular figure, and of a me- 
 thodical disposition of the leaves. The rose has such a 
 figure and such a disposition of its petals; but in an oblique 
 view, when this figure is ina good measure lost, and the 
 order of the leaves confounded, it yet retains its beauty ; the 
 rose is even more beautiful before it is full blown; in the 
 bud; before this exact figure is formed; and this is not the 
 only instance wherein method and exactness, the soul of 
 proportion, are found rather prejudicial than serviceable to 
 the cause of beauty. 
 
 SECTION III 
 PROPORTION NOT THE CAUSE OF BEAUTY IN ANIMALS 
 
 THAT proportion has but a small share in the formation 
 of beauty is full as evident among animals. Here the great- 
 est variety of shapes and dispositions of parts are well fitted 
 to excite this idea. The swan, confessedly a beautiful bird, 
 has a neck longer than the rest of his body, and but a very 
 short tail: is this a beautiful proportion? We must allow 
 that it is. But then what shall we say to the peacock, who 
 has comparatively but a short neck, with a tail longer than 
 the neck and the rest of the body taken together? How 
 many birds are there that vary infinitely from each of these 
 standards, and from: every other which you can fix; with 
 proportions different, and often directly opposite to each 
 other! and yet many of these birds are extremely beautiful ; 
 when upon considering them we find nothing in any one 
 
/ 
 
 ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 275 
 
 part that might determine us, 4 priori, to say what the 
 others ought to be, nor indeed to guess anything about 
 them, but what experience might show to be full of disap- 
 pointment and mistake. And with regard to the colours 
 either of birds or flowers, for there is something similar in 
 the colouring of both, whether they are considered in their 
 extension or gradation, there is nothing of proportion to be 
 observed. Some are of but one single colour; others have 
 all the colours of the rainbow, some are of the primary colours, 
 others are of the mixed ; in short, an attentive observer may 
 soon conclude that there is as little of proportion in the 
 colouring as in the shapes of these objects. Turn next to 
 beasts; examine the head of a beautiful horse; find what 
 proportion that bears to his body, and to his limbs, and 
 what relation these have to each other; and when you have 
 settled these proportions as a standard of beauty, then take a 
 dog or cat, or any other animal, and examine how far the 
 same proportions between their heads and their necks, be- 
 tween those and the body, and so on, are found to hold; I 
 think we may safely say, that they differ in every species, 
 yet that there are individuals, found in a great many species 
 so differing, that have a very striking beauty. Now, if it be 
 allowed that very different, and even contrary forms and 
 dispositions are consistent with beauty, it amounts I believe 
 to a concession, that no certain measures, operating froma 
 natural principle, are necessary to produce it; at least so 
 far as the brute species is concerned. 
 
 SEC FLON) EV 
 
 PROPORTION NOT THE CAUSE OF BEAUTY IN THE HUMAN 
 SPECIES 
 
 THERE are some parts of the human body that are observed 
 to hold certain proportions to each other ; but before it can be 
 proved that the efficient cause of beauty lies in these, it must 
 be shown that, wherever these are found exact, the person to 
 
276 - BURKE 
 
 whom they belong is beautiful: I mean in the effect produced 
 on the view, either of any member distinctly considered, or 
 of the whole body together. It must be likewise shown, 
 that these parts stand in such a relation to each other, that 
 the comparison between them may be easily made, and that 
 the affection of the mind may naturally result from it. For 
 my part, I have at several times very carefully examined 
 many of those proportions, and found them hold very nearly, 
 or altogether alike in many subjects, which were not only 
 very different from one another, but where one has been 
 very beautiful, and the other very remote from beauty. 
 With regard to the parts which are found so proportioned, 
 they are often so remote from each other, in situation, nature, 
 and office, that I can not see how they admit of any compari- 
 son, nor consequently how any effect owing to proportion 
 can result from them. The neck, say they, in beautiful 
 bodies, should measure with the calf of the leg; it should 
 likewise be twice the circumference of the wrist. And an 
 infinity of observations of this kind are to be found in the 
 writings and conversations of many. But what relation has 
 the calf of the leg to the neck; or either of these parts to 
 the wrist? These proportions are certainly to be found in 
 handsome bodies. They are as certainly in ugly ones; as 
 any who will take the pains to try may find. Nay, I do not 
 know but they be least perfect in some of the most beauti- 
 ful. You may assign any proportions you please to every 
 part of the human body; and I undertake that a painter shall 
 religiously observe them all, and notwithstanding produce, 
 if he pleases, a very ugly figure. The same painter shall 
 considerably deviate from these proportions, and produce a 
 very beautiful one. And, indeed, it may be observed in the 
 masterpieces of the ancient and modern statuary, that several 
 of them differ very widely from the proportions of others, in 
 parts very conspicuous and of great consideration ; and that 
 they differ no less from the proportions we find in living men, 
 of forms extremely striking and agreeable. And after all, 
 how are the partisans of proportional beauty agreed amongst 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 277 
 
 themselves about the proportions of the human body? 
 Some hold it to be seven heads; some make it eight ; whilst 
 others extend it even to ten: a vast difference in such a small 
 number of divisions! Others take other methods of estimat- 
 ing the proportions, and all with equal success. But are 
 these proportions exactly the same in all handsome men? or 
 are they at all the proportions found in beautiful women? 
 Nobody will say that they are; yet both sexes are undoubt- 
 edly capable of beauty, and the female of the greatest ; which 
 advantage I believe will hardly be attributed to the superior 
 exactness of proportion in the fair sex. Let us rest a 
 moment on this point; and consider how much difference 
 there is between the measures that prevail in many similar 
 parts of the body, in the two sexes of this single species only. 
 If you assign any determinate proportions to the limbs of a 
 man, and if you limit human beauty to these proportions, 
 when you find a woman who differs in the make and meas- 
 ures of almost every part, you must conclude her not to be 
 beautiful, in spite of the suggestions of your imagination; 
 or, in obedience to your imagination, you must renounce 
 your rules; you must lay by the scale and compass, and look 
 out for some other cause of beauty. For if beauty be at- 
 tached to certain measures which operate from a principle 
 in nature, why should similar parts with different measures 
 of proportion be found to have beauty, and this too in the 
 very same species? But to open our view alittle, it is worth 
 observing, that almost all animals have parts of very much 
 the same nature, and destined nearly to the same purposes; 
 a head, neck, body, feet, eyes, ears, nose, and mouth; yet 
 Providence, to provide in the best manner for their several 
 wants, and to display the riches of his wisdom and goodness 
 in his creation, has worked out of these few and similar 
 organs, and members, a diversity hardly short of infinite in 
 their disposition, measures and relation. But, as we have 
 before observed, amidst this infinite diversity, one particular 
 is common to many species: several of the individuals which 
 compose them are capable of affecting us with a sense of 
 
278 BURKE 
 
 loveliness: and whilst they agree in producing this effect, 
 they differ extremely in the relative measures of those parts 
 which have produced it. These considerations were suffi- 
 cient to induce me to reject the notion of any particular 
 proportions that operated by nature to produce a pleasing 
 effect; but those who will agree with me with regard to a 
 particular proportion, are strongly prepossessed in favour of 
 one more indefinite. They imagine, that although beauty 
 in general is annexed to no certain measures common to the 
 several kinds of pleasing plants and animals; yet that there 
 is a certain proportion in each species absolutely essential to 
 the beauty of that particular kind. If we consider the ani- 
 mal world in general, we find beauty confined to no certain 
 measures; but as some peculiar measure and relation of 
 parts is what distinguishes each peculiar class of animals, it 
 must of necessity be, that the beautiful in each kind will be 
 found in the measures and proportions of that kind; for 
 otherwise it would deviate from its proper species, and be- 
 come in some sort monstrous: however, no species is so 
 strictly confined to any certain proportions, that there is not 
 a considerable variation amongst the individuals; and as it 
 has been shown of the human, so it may be shown of the 
 brute kinds, that beauty is found indifferently in all the pro- 
 portions which each kind can admit, without quitting its 
 common form: and it is this idea of acommon form that 
 makes the proportion of parts at all regarded, and not the 
 operation of any natural cause: indeed a little consideration 
 will make it appear, that it is not measure, but manner, that 
 creates all the beauty which belongs to shape. What light 
 do we borrow from these boasted proportions, when we study 
 ornamental design? It seems amazing to me, that artists, if 
 they were as well convinced as they pretend to be, that pro- 
 portion is a principal cause of beauty, have not by them 
 at all times accurate measurements of all sorts of beautiful 
 animals to help them to proper proportions, when they 
 would contrive anything elegant; especially as they fre- 
 quently assert that it is from an observation of the beauti- 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 279 
 
 ful in nature they direct their practise. I know that it has 
 been said long since, and echoed backward and forward from 
 one writer to another a thousand times, that the proportions 
 of building have been taken from those of the human 
 body. To make this forced analogy complete, they repre- 
 sent a man with his arms raised and extended at full length, 
 and then describe a sort of square, asit is formed by passing 
 lines along the extremities of this strange figure. But it ap- 
 pears very clearly to me that the human figure never supplied 
 the architect with any of his ideas. For, in the first place, 
 men are very rarely seen in this strained posture; it is not 
 natural to them; neither is it at all becoming. Secondly, 
 the view of the human figure so disposed, does not naturally 
 suggest the idea of a square, but rather of a cross; as that 
 large space between the arms and the ground must be filled 
 with something before it can make anybody think of a square. 
 Thirdly, several buildings are by no means of the form of 
 that particular square, which are notwithstanding planned by 
 the best architects, and produce an effect altogether as good, 
 and perhaps a better. And certainly nothing could be more 
 unaccountably whimsical, than for an architect to model his 
 performance by the human figure, since no two things can 
 have less resemblance or analogy, than a man, and a house 
 or temple: do we need to observe that their purposes are 
 entirely different? What I am apt to suspect is this: that 
 these analogies were devised to give credit to the works of 
 art, by showing a conformity between them and the noblest 
 works in nature; not that the latter served at all to supply 
 hints for the perfection of the former. And I am the more 
 fully convinced, that the patrons of proportion have trans- 
 ferred their artificial ideas to nature, and not borrowed from 
 thence the proportions they use in works of art ; because in 
 any discussion of this subject they always quit as soon as 
 possible the open field of natural beauties, the animal and 
 vegetable kingdoms, and fortify themselves within the artifi- 
 cial lines and angles of architecture. For there is in man- 
 kind an unfortunate propensity to make themselves, their 
 
280 BURKE 
 
 views, and their works, the measure of excellence in every- 
 thing whatsoever. Therefore having observed that their 
 dwellings were most commodious and firm when they were 
 thrown into regular figures, with parts answerable to each 
 other; they transferred these ideas to their gardens; they 
 turned their trees into pillars, pyramids, and obelisks; they 
 formed their hedges into so many green walls, and fashioned 
 their walks into squares, triangles, and other mathematical 
 figures, with exactness and symmetry; and they thought, if 
 they were not imitating, they were at least improving nature, 
 and teaching her to know her business. But nature has at last 
 escaped from their discipline and their fetters; and our gar- 
 dens, if nothing else, declare, we begin to feel that mathemati- 
 cal ideas are not the true measures of beauty. And surely they 
 are fullas little soin the animal as the vegetable world. For 
 is it not extraordinary, that in these fine descriptive pieces, 
 these innumerable odes and elegies which are in the mouths 
 of allthe world, and many of which have been the entertain- 
 ment of ages, that in these pieces which describe love with such 
 a passionate energy, and represent its object in such an infinite 
 variety of lights, not one word is said of proportion, if it be, 
 what some insist it is, the principal component of beauty; 
 whilst, at the same time, several other qualities are very fre- 
 quently and warmly mentioned? But if proportion has not 
 this power, it may appear odd how men came originally to be 
 so prepossessed in its favour. It arose, I imagine, from the 
 fondness I have just mentioned, which men bear so remark- 
 ably to their own works and notions; it arose from false 
 reasonings on the effects of the customary figure of animals; 
 it arose from the Platonic theory of fitness and aptitude. 
 For which reason, in the next section, I shall consider the 
 effects of custom in the figure of animals; and afterwards 
 the idea of fitness: since if proportion does not operate by 
 a natural power attending some measures, it must be either 
 by custom, or the idea of utility ; there is no other way. 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 281 
 
 SECTION, V 
 PROPORTION FURTHER CONSIDERED 
 
 Ir I am not mistaken, a great deal of the prejudice in 
 favour of proportion has arisen, not so much from the obser- 
 vation of any certain measures found in beautiful bodies, as 
 from a wrong idea of the relation which deformity bears to 
 beauty, to which it has been considered as the opposite; on 
 this principle it was concluded that where the causes of 
 deformity were removed, beauty must naturally and neces- 
 sarily be introduced. This I believe is a mistake. For 
 deformity is opposed not to beauty, but to the complete 
 common form. If one of the legs of a man be found shorter 
 than the other, the man is deformed; because there is some- 
 thing wanting to complete the whole idea we form of a man; 
 and this has the same effect in natural faults, as maiming 
 and mutilation produce from accidents. So if the back be 
 humped, the man is deformed; because his back has an un- 
 usual figure, and what carries with it the idea of some dis- 
 ease or misfortune ; so if a man’s neck be considerably longer 
 or shorter than usual, we say he is deformed in that part, 
 because men are not commonly made in that manner. But 
 surely every hour’s experience may convince us that a man 
 may have his legs of an equal length, and resembling each 
 other in all respects, and his neck of a just size, and his back 
 quite straight, without having at the same time the least 
 perceivable beauty. Indeed beauty is so far from belonging 
 to the idea of custom, that in reality what affects us in that 
 manner is extremely rare and uncommon. The beautiful 
 strikes us as much by its novelty as the deformed itself. It 
 is thus in those species of animals with which we are ac- 
 quainted; and if one of a new species were represented, we 
 should by no means wait until custom had settled an idea 
 of proportion, before we decided concerning its beauty or 
 ugliness: which shows that the general idea of beauty can 
 be no more owing to customary than to natural proportion. 
 
282 BURKE 
 
 Deformity arises from the want of the common proportions; 
 but the necessary result of their existence in any object is 
 not beauty. If we suppose proportion in natural things to 
 be relative to custom and use, the nature of use and custom 
 will show that beauty, which is a positive and powerful 
 quality, can not result from it. We are so wonderfully 
 formed, that, whilst we are creatures vehemently desirous of 
 novelty, we are as strongly attached to habit and custom. 
 But it is the nature of things which hold us by custom, to 
 affect us very little whilst we are in possession of them, but 
 strongly when they are absent. JI remember to have fre- 
 quented a certain place, every day for a long time together; 
 and I may truly say that, so far from finding pleasure in it, I 
 was affected with a sort of weariness and disgust; I came, 
 I went, I returned, without pleasure; yet if by any means I 
 passed by the usual time of my going thither, I was remark- 
 ably uneasy, and was not quiet till I had got into my old 
 track. They who use snuff, take it almost without being 
 sensible that they take it, and the acute sense of smell is 
 deadened, so as to feel hardly anything from so sharp a 
 stimulus; yet deprive the snuff-taker of his box, and he is 
 the most uneasy mortal in the world. Indeed so far are use 
 and habit from being causes of pleasure merely as such, that 
 the effect of constant use is to make all things of whatever 
 kind entirely unaffecting. For as use at last takes off the 
 painful effect of many things, it reduces the pleasurable 
 effect in others in the same manner, and brings both toa 
 sort of mediocrity and indifference. Very justly is use 
 called a second nature; and our natural and common state 
 is one of absolute indifference, equally prepared for pain or 
 pleasure. But when we are thrown out of this state, or de- 
 prived of anything requisite to maintain us in it; when this 
 chance does not happen by pleasure from some mechanical 
 cause, we are always hurt. It is so with the second nature, 
 custom, in all things which relate to it. Thus the want of 
 the usual proportions in men and other animals is sure to 
 disgust, though their presence is by no means any cause of 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 283 
 
 real pleasure. It is true that the proportions laid down as 
 causes of beauty in the human body, are frequently found in 
 beautiful ones, because they are generally found in all man- 
 kind ; but if it can be shown too that they are found with- 
 out beauty, and that beauty frequently exists without them, 
 and that this beauty, where it exists, always can be assigned 
 to other less equivocal causes, it will naturally lead us to 
 conclude that proportion and beauty are not ideas of the 
 same nature. The true opposite to beauty is not dispropor- 
 tion or deformity, but ugliness: and as it proceeds from 
 causes opposite to those of positive beauty, we can not con- 
 sider it until we come to treat of that. Between beauty and 
 ugliness there is a sort of mediocrity, in which the assigned 
 proportions are most commonly found; but this has no 
 effect upon the passions. 
 
 SECTION: VI 
 FITNESS NOT THE CAUSE OF BEAUTY 
 
 IT is said that the idea of utility, or of a part’s being well 
 adapted to answer its end, is the cause of beauty, or indeed 
 beauty itself. If it were not for this opinion, it had been 
 impossible for the doctrine of proportion to have held its 
 ground very long; the world would be soon weary of hearing 
 of measures which related to nothing, either of a natural 
 principle, or of a fitness to answer some end; the idea 
 which mankind most commonly conceive of proportion, is 
 the suitableness of means to certain ends, and, where this is 
 not the question, very seldom trouble themselves about the 
 effect of different measures of things. Therefore it was 
 necessary for this theory to insist that not only artificial, but 
 natural, objects, took their beauty from the fitness of the 
 parts for their several purposes. But in framing this theory, 
 Iam apprehensive that experience was not sufficiently con- 
 sulted. For, on that principle, the wedge-like snout of a swine, 
 with its tough cartilage at the end, the little sunk eyes, and 
 
284 BURKE 
 
 the whole make of the head, so well adapted to its offices of 
 digging and rooting, would be extremely beautiful. The 
 great bag hanging tothe bill of a pelican, a thing highly use- 
 ful to this animal, would be likewise as beautiful in our eyes. 
 The hedge-hog, so well secured against all assaults by his 
 prickly hide, and the porcupine with his missile quills, would 
 be then considered as creatures of no small elegance. There 
 are few animals whose parts are better contrived than those 
 of a monkey: he has the hands of a man, joined to the 
 springy limbs of a beast; he is admirably calculated for run- 
 ning, leaping, grappling and climbing; and yet there are 
 few animals which seem to have less beautyin the eyes of 
 all mankind. I need say little on the trunk of the elephant, of 
 such various usefulness, and which is so far from contributing 
 to his beauty. How well-fitted is the wolf for running and 
 leaping! how admirably is the lion armed for battle! but 
 will any one therefore call the elephant, the wolf, and the 
 lion, beautiful animals? I believe nobody will think the 
 form of a man’s leg so well adapted to running, as those of 
 a horse, a dog, a deer, and several other creatures; at least 
 they have not that appearance : yet, I believe, a well-fashioned 
 human leg will be allowed to far exceed all these in beauty. 
 If the fitness of parts was what constituted the loveliness of 
 their form, the actual employment of them would, un- 
 doubtedly much augment it; but this, though it is some- 
 times so upon another principle, is far from being always the 
 case. A bird on the wing is not so beautiful as when it is 
 perched ; nay, there are several of the domestic fowls which 
 are seldom seen to fly, and which are nothing the less beautiful 
 on that account; yet birdsare so extremely different in their 
 form from the beast and human kinds, that you can not, on the 
 principle of fitness, allow them anything agreeable, but in con- 
 sideration of their parts being designed for quite other pur- 
 poses. I never in my life chanced to see a peacock fly ; and 
 yet before, very long before I considered any aptitude in his 
 form for the aérial life, I was struck with the extreme beauty 
 which raises that bird above many of the best flying fowls in 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 285 
 
 the world; though, for anything I saw, his way of living was 
 much like that of the swine, which fed in the farm-yard along 
 with him. The same may be said of cocks, hens, and the like ; 
 they are of the flying kind in figure; in their manner of 
 moving not very different from men and beasts. To leave 
 these foreign examples; if beauty in our own species was 
 annexed to use, men would be much more lovely than 
 women; and strength and agility would be considered as the 
 only beauties. But to call strength by the name of beauty, to 
 have but one denomination for the qualities of a Venus and 
 Hercules, so totally different in almost all respects, is surely 
 a strange confusion of ideas, or abuse of words. The cause 
 of this confusion, I imagine, proceeds from our frequently 
 perceiving the parts of the human and other animal bodies 
 to be at once very beautiful, and very well adapted to their 
 purposes ; and we are deceived by a sophism, which makes 
 us take that for a cause which is only a concomitant: this 
 is the sophism of the fly; who imagined he raised a great 
 dust, because he stood upon the chariot that really raised it. 
 The stomach, the lungs, the liver, as well as other parts, are 
 incomparably well adapted to their purposes; yet they are 
 far from having any beauty. Again, many things are very 
 beautiful, in which it is impossible to discern any idea of 
 use. And I appeal to the first and most natural feelings of 
 mankind, whether on beholding a beautiful eye, or a well- 
 fashioned mouth, or a well-turned leg, any ideas of their 
 being well fitted for seeing, eating, or running, ever present 
 themselves. What idea of use is it that flowers excite, the 
 most beautiful part of the vegetable world? It is true that 
 the infinitely wise and good Creator has, of his bounty, fre- 
 quently joined beauty to those things which he has made 
 useful to us ; but this does not prove that an idea of use and 
 beauty are thesame thing, or that they are any way depend- 
 ent on each other. 
 
286 BURKE 
 
 SECTION; VI! 
 THE REAL EFFECTS OF FITNESS 
 
 WHEN I excluded proportion and fitness from any share 
 in beauty, I did not by any means intend to say that they 
 were of no value, or that they ought to be disregarded in 
 works of art. Works of art are the proper sphere of their 
 power ; and here it is that they have their full effect. When- 
 ever the wisdom of our Creator intended that we should be 
 affected with anything, he did not confide the execution of 
 his design to the languid and precarious operation of our 
 reason; but he endued it with powers and properties that 
 prevent the understanding, and even the will; which, seiz- 
 ing upon the senses and imagination, captivate the soul, 
 before the understanding is ready either to join with them, 
 or to oppose them. It is by a long deduction, and much 
 study, that we discover the adorable wisdom of God in his 
 works: when we discover it the effect is very different, not 
 only in the manner of acquiring it, but in its own nature, 
 from that which strikes us without any preparation from the 
 sublime or the beautiful. How different is the satisfaction 
 of an anatomist, who discovers the use of the muscles and of 
 the skin, the excellent contrivance of the one for the various 
 movements of the body, and the wonderful texture of the 
 other, at once a general covering, and at once a general out- 
 let as well as inlet ; how different is this from the affection 
 which possesses an ordinary man at the sight of a delicate, 
 smooth skin, and all the other parts of beauty, which require 
 no investigation to be perceived! Inthe former case, whilst 
 we look up to the Maker with admiration and praise, the 
 object which causes it may be odious and distasteful ; the 
 latter very often so touches us by its power on the imagina- 
 tion, that we examine but little into the artifice of its con- 
 trivance; and we have need of a strong effort of our reason 
 to disentangle our minds from the allurements of the object, 
 to a consideration of that wisdom which invented so power- 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 287 
 
 fula machine. The effect of proportion and fitness, at least 
 so far as they proceed from a mere consideration of the work 
 itself, produce approbation, the acquiescence of the under- 
 standing, but not love, nor any passion of that species. 
 When we examine the structure of a watch, when we come 
 to know thoroughly the use of every part of it, satisfied as 
 we are with the fitness of the whole, we are far enough from 
 perceiving anything like beauty in the watch-work itself; 
 but let us look on the case, the labour of some curious artist 
 in engraving, with little or no idea of use, we shall have a 
 much livelier idea of beauty than we ever could have had 
 from the watch itself, though the masterpiece of Graham. 
 In beauty, as I said, the effect is previous to any knowledge 
 of the use; but to judge of proportion, we must know the 
 end for which any work is designed. According to the end, 
 the proportion varies. Thus there is one proportion of a 
 tower, another of a house; one proportion of a gallery, 
 another of a hall, another of a chamber. To judge of the 
 proportions of these, you must be first acquainted with the 
 purposes for which they were designed. Good sense and 
 experience acting together, find out what is fit to be done 
 in every work ofart. Wearerational creatures, and inall our 
 works we ought to regard their end and purpose; the grati- 
 fication of any passion, how innocent soever, ought only to 
 be of secondary consideration. Herein is placed the real 
 power of fitness and proportion ; they operate on the under- 
 standing considering them, which approves the work and 
 acquiesces init. The passions, and the imagination which 
 principally raises them, have here very little to do. When 
 a room appears inits original nakedness, bare walls and a 
 plain ceiling: let its proportion be ever so excellent, it 
 pleases very little; a cold approbation is the utmost we can 
 reach; a much worse proportioned room with elegant mould- 
 ings and fine festoons, glasses, and other merely ornamental 
 furniture, will make the imagination revolt against the rea- 
 son; it will please much more than the naked proportion 
 of the first room, which the understanding has so much 
 
288 BURKE 
 
 approved, as admirably fitted for its purposes. What I have 
 here said and before concerning proportion, is by no means 
 to persuade people absurdly to neglect the idea of use in 
 the works of art.. It is only to show that these excellent 
 things, beauty and proportion, are not the same: not that 
 they should either of them be disregarded. 
 
 SEC ULON  VALUL 
 THE RECAPITULATION 
 
 ON the whole; if such parts in human bodies as are found 
 proportioned, were likewise constantly found beautiful, as 
 they certainly are not; or if they were so situated, as that a 
 pleasure might flow from the comparison, which they seldom 
 are; or if any assignable proportions were found, either in 
 plants or animals, which were always attended with beauty, 
 which never was the case; or, if, where parts were well 
 adapted to their purposes, they were constantly beautiful, 
 and when no use appeared, there was no beauty, which is 
 contrary to all experience; we might conclude that beauty 
 consisted in proportion or utility. But since, in all respects, 
 the case is quite otherwise ; we may be satisfied that beauty 
 does not depend on these, let it owe its origin to what else 
 it will. 
 
 SECTION IX 
 PERFECTION NOT THE CAUSE OF BEAUTY 
 
 THERE is another notion current, pretty closely allied 
 to the former; that perfection is the constituent cause of 
 beauty. This opinion has been made to extend much 
 further than to sensible objects. But in these, so far is per- 
 fection, considered as such, from being the cause of beauty ; 
 that this quality, where it is highest, in the female sex, 
 almost always carries with it an idea of weakness and imper- 
 fection. Women are very sensible of this; for which reason 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 289 
 
 they learn to lisp, to totter in their walk, to counterfeit 
 weakness, and even sickness. In all this they are guided by 
 nature. Beauty in distress is much the most affecting beauty. 
 Blushing has little less power; and modesty in general, 
 which is a tacit allowance of imperfection, is itself considered 
 as an amiable quality, and certainly heightens every other 
 that is so. I know it is in everybody’s mouth, that we 
 ought to love perfection. This is to mea sufficient proof, 
 that it is not the proper object of love. Who ever said we 
 ought to love a fine woman, or even any of these beautiful 
 animals which please us? Here to be affected, there is no 
 need of the concurrence of our will. 
 
 SEGHION XxX 
 
 HOW FAR THE IDEA OF BEAUTY MAY BE APPLIED TO THE 
 QUALITIES OF THE MIND 
 
 Nor is this remark in general less applicable to the qual- 
 ities of the mind. Those virtues which cause admiration, 
 and are of the sublimer kind, produce terror rather than 
 love; such as fortitude, justice, wisdom, and the like. Never 
 was any man amiable by force of these qualities. Those 
 which engage our hearts, which impress us with a sense of 
 loveliness, are the softer virtues ; easiness of temper, compas- 
 sion, kindness, and liberality ; though certainly those latter 
 are of less immediate and momentous concern to society, 
 and of less dignity. But it is for that reason that they are 
 so amiable. The great virtues turn principally on dangers, 
 punishments, and troubles, and are exercised, rather in pre- 
 venting the worst mischiefs, than in dispensing favours ; and 
 are therefore not lovely, though highly venerable. The 
 subordinate turn on reliefs, gratifications, and indulgences ; 
 and are therefore more lovely, though inferior in dignity, 
 Those persons who creep into the hearts of most people, 
 who are chosen as the companions of their softer hours, and 
 their reliefs from care and anxiety, are never persons of shin- 
 
 19 
 
290 BURKE 
 
 ing qualities or strong virtues. It is rather the soft green of 
 the soul on which we rest our eyes, that are fatigued with 
 beholding more glaring objects. It is worth observing how 
 we feel ourselves affected in reading the characters of Czsar 
 and Cato, as they are so finely drawn and contrasted in 
 Sallust. In one the ignoscendo largiundo ; in the other, nil 
 largiundo. In one, the miseris perfugium; in the other, 
 malis perniciem. In the latter we have much to admire, 
 much to reverence, and perhaps something to fear; we 
 respect him, but we respect him at a distance. The former 
 makes us familiar with him; we love him, and he leads us 
 whither he pleases. To draw things closer to our first and 
 most natural feelings, I will add a remark made upon read- 
 ing this section by an ingenious friend. The authority 
 of a father, so useful to our well-being, and so justly vener- 
 able upon all accounts, hinders us from having that entire 
 love for him that we have for our mothers, where the paren- 
 tal authority is almost melted down into the mother’s fond- 
 ness and indulgence. But we generally have a great love 
 for our grandfathers, in whom this authority is removed a 
 degree from us, and where the weakness of age mellows it 
 into something of a feminine partiality. 
 
 SECTION XI 
 
 HOW FAR THE IDEA OF BEAUTY MAY BE APPLIED TO 
 VIRTUE 
 
 FROM what has been said in the foregoing section, we may 
 easily see how far the application of beauty to virtue may be 
 made with propriety. The general application of this quality 
 to virtue has a strong tendency to confound our ideas of 
 things, and it has given rise to an infinite deal of whimsical 
 theory ; as the affixing the name of beauty to proportion, 
 congruity, and perfection, as well as to qualities of things yet 
 more remote from our natural ideas of it, and from one an- 
 other, has tended to confound our ideas of beauty, and left 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 291 
 
 us no standard or rule to judge by, that was not even more 
 uncertain and fallacious than our own fancies. This loose 
 and inaccurate manner of speaking has therefore misled us 
 both in the theory of taste and of morals ; and induced us 
 to remove the science of our duties from their proper basis 
 (our reason, our relations, and our necessities), to rest it upon 
 foundations altogether visionary and unsubstantial. 
 
 SECTIONwXIT 
 THE REAL CAUSE OF BEAUTY 
 
 HAVING endeavoured to show what beauty is not, it re- 
 mains that we should examine, at least with equal attention, 
 in what it really consists. Beauty isa thing much too af- 
 fecting not to depend upon some positive qualities, And 
 since it is no creature of our reason, since it strikes us with- 
 out any reference to use, and even where no use at all can 
 be discerned, since the order and method of nature is gen- 
 erally very different from our measures and proportions, we 
 must conclude that beauty is, for the greater part, some 
 quality in bodies acting mechanically upon the human mind 
 by the intervention of the senses. We ought, therefore, to 
 consider attentively in what manner those sensible qualities 
 are disposed, in such things as by experience we find beauti- 
 ful, or which excite in us the passion of love, or some cor- 
 respondent affection. 
 
 SECTION XIII 
 BEAUTIFUL OBJECTS SMALL 
 
 THE most obvious point that presents itself to us in ex- 
 amining any object is its extent or quantity. And what de- 
 gree of extent prevails in bodies that are held beautiful, may 
 be gathered from the usual manner of expression concerning 
 
202 BURKE 
 
 it. Iam told that, in most languages, the objects of love 
 are spoken of under diminutive epithets. It is so in all the 
 languages of which I have any knowledge. In Greek the 
 cov and other diminutive terms are almost always the terms 
 of affection and tenderness. These diminutives were com- 
 monly added by the Greeks to the names of persons with 
 whom they conversed on terms of friendship and familiarity. 
 Though the Romans were a people of less quick and del- 
 icate feelings, yet they naturally slid into the lessening ter- 
 mination upon the same occasions. Anciently, in the Eng- 
 lish language, the diminishing ling was added to the names of 
 persons and things that were the objects of love. Some we 
 retain still, as darling (or little dear), and a few others. But 
 to this day, in ordinary conversation, it is usual to add the 
 endearing name of little to everything we love ; the French 
 and Italians make use of these affectionate diminutives even 
 more than we. In the animal creation, out of our own spe- 
 cies, it is the small we are inclined to be fond of ; little birds, 
 and some of the smaller kinds of beasts. A great beautiful 
 thing is a manner of expression scarcely ever used ; but that 
 of a great ugly thing is very common. There is a wide dif- 
 ference between admiration and love. The sublime, which 
 is the cause of the former, always dwells on great objects, 
 and terrible ; the latter on small ones, and pleasing; we 
 submit to what we admire, but we love what submits to us ; 
 in one case we are forced, in the other we are flattered, into 
 compliance. In short, the ideas of the sublime and the 
 beautiful stand on foundations so different, that it is hard, I 
 had almost said impossible, to think of reconciling them in 
 the same subject, without considerably lessening the effect 
 of the one or the other upon the passions. So that, attend- 
 ing to their quantity, beautiful objects are comparatively 
 small. 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 293 
 
 SECTION XIV 
 SMOOTHNESS 
 
 THE next property constantly observable in such objects 
 is smoothness ;/ a quality so essential to beauty, that I do 
 not now recollect anything beautiful that isnot smooth. In 
 trees and flowers, smooth leaves are beautiful; smooth 
 slopes of earth in gardens ; smooth streams in the landscape; 
 smooth coats of birds and beasts in animal beauties; in fine 
 women, smooth skins; and in several sorts of ornamental 
 furniture, smooth and polished surfaces. A very consider- 
 able part of the effect of beauty is owing to this quality ; 
 indeed the most considerable. For, take any beautiful 
 object, and give it a broken and rugged surface; and, how- 
 ever well formed it may be in other respects, it pleases no 
 longer. Whereas, let it want ever so many of the other con- 
 stituents, if it wants not this, it becomes more pleasing than 
 almost all the others without it. This seems to me so evi- 
 dent, that Iam a good deal surprised that none who have 
 handled the subject have made any mention of the quality 
 of smoothness in the enumeration of those that go to the 
 forming of beauty. For, indeed, any ruggedness, any sud- 
 den projection, any sharp angle, is in the highest degree 
 contrary to that idea. 
 
 NOTE 
 
 1. Part IV. sect. 20. 
 
 SECTION XV 
 GRADUAL VARIATION 
 
 BuT as perfectly beautiful bodies are not composed of 
 angular parts, so their parts never continue long in the same 
 right line.) They vary their direction every moment, and 
 they change under the eye by a deviation continually carry- 
 ing on, but for whose beginning or end you will find it 
 
204 BURKE 
 
 difficult to ascertain a point. The view of a beautiful bird 
 will illustrate this observation. Here we see the head in- 
 creasing insensibly to the middle, from whence it lessens 
 gradually until it mixes with the neck; the neck loses it- 
 self in a larger swell, which continues to the middle of the 
 body, when the whole decreases again to the tail; the tail 
 takes a new direction, but it soon varies its new course, 
 it blends again with the other parts, and the line is per- 
 petually changing, above, below, upon every side. In this 
 description I have before me the idea of a dove; it agrees 
 very well with most of the conditions of beauty. It is 
 smooth and downy; its parts are (to use that expression) 
 melted into one another; you are presented with no sudden 
 protuberance through the whole, and yet the whole is con- 
 tinually changing. Observe that part of a beautiful woman 
 where she is perhaps the most beautiful, about the neck and 
 breasts ; the smoothness, the softness, the easy and insen- 
 sible swell; the variety of the surface, which is never for the 
 smallest space the same; the deceitful maze through which 
 the unsteady eye slides giddily, without knowing where to 
 fix, or whither it is carried. Is not this a demonstration of 
 that change of surface, continual, and yet hardly perceptible 
 at any point, which forms one of the great constituents of 
 beauty? It gives meno small pleasure to find that I can 
 strengthen my theory in this point by the opinion of the 
 very ingenious Mr. Hogarth, whose idea of the line of beauty 
 I take in general to be extremely just. But the idea of varia- 
 tion, without attending so accurately to the manner of the 
 variation, has led him to consider angular figures as beauti- 
 ful; these figures, it is true, vary greatly, yet they vary ina 
 sudden and broken manner, and I do not find any natural 
 object which is angular, and at the same time beautiful. In- 
 deed, few natural objects are entirely angular. But I think 
 those which approach the most nearly to it are the ugliest. 
 I must add, too, that so far as I could observe of nature, 
 though the varied line is that alone in which complete 
 beauty is found, yet there is no particular line which is 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 2905 
 
 always found in the most completely beautiful, and which is 
 therefore beautiful in preference to all other lines, At least 
 
 I never could observe it. 
 NOTE 
 I. Part IV. sect. 23 
 
 SECTION XVI 
 DELICACY 
 
 AN air of robustness and strength is very prejudicial to 
 beauty. An appearance of delicacy, and even of fragility, 
 is almost essential to it. Whoever examines the vegetable 
 or animal creation will find this observation to be founded 
 in nature. It is not the oak, the ash, or the elm, or any of 
 the robust trees of the forest which we consider as beautiful ; 
 they are awful and majestic, they inspire a sort of reverence. 
 It is the delicate myrtle, it is the orange, it is the almond, it 
 is the jasmine, it is the vine which we look on as vegetable 
 beauties. It is the flowery species, so remarkable for its 
 weakness and momentary duration, that gives us the live- 
 liest idea of beauty and elegance. Among animals, the 
 greyhound is more beautiful than the mastiff, and the deli- 
 cacy of a jennet, a barb, or an Arabian horse, is much more 
 amiable than the strength and stability of some horses of 
 war or carriage. I need here say little of the fair sex, where 
 I believe the point will be easily allowed me. The beauty 
 of women is considerably owing to their weakness or delicacy, 
 and is even enhanced by their timidity, a quality of mind 
 analogous to it. I would not here be understood to say, 
 that weakness betraying very bad health has any share in 
 beauty; but the ill effect of this is not because it is weak- 
 ness, but because the ill state of health, which produces such 
 weakness, alters the other conditions of beauty ; the partsin 
 such a case collapse, the bright colour, the lumen purpureum 
 juventz is gone, and the fine variation is lost in wrinkles, 
 sudden breaks, and right lines. 
 
296 BURKE 
 
 SECTION XVII 
 BEAUTY IN COLOUR 
 
 As to the colours usually found in beautiful bodies, it may 
 be somewhat difficult to ascertain them, because, in the 
 several parts of nature, there is an infinite variety. How- 
 ever, even in this variety, we may mark out something on 
 which to settle. First, the colours of beautiful bodies must 
 not be dusky or muddy, but clean and fair. Secondly, they 
 must not be of the strongest kind. Those which seem most 
 appropriated to beauty, are the milder of every sort; light 
 greens; soft blues; weak whites; pink reds; and violets. 
 Thirdly, if the colours be strong and vivid, they are always 
 diversified, and the object is never of one strong colour ; there 
 are almost always such a number of them (as in variegated 
 flowers) that the strength and glare of each is considerably 
 abated. In afine complexion there is not only some variety 
 in the colouring, but the colours : neither the red nor the white 
 are strong and glaring. Besides, they are mixed in sucha 
 manner, and with such gradations, that it is impossible to fix 
 the bounds. Onthe same principle it is that the dubious 
 colour in the necks and tails of peacocks, and about the 
 heads of drakes, is so very agreeable. In reality, the beauty 
 both of shape and colouring are as nearly related as we can 
 well suppose it possible for things of such different natures 
 to be. 
 
 —_———— 
 
 EC CO Nad 
 
 RECAPITULATION 
 
 On the whole, the qualities of beauty, as they are merely 
 sensible qualities, are the following: First, to be compari- 
 tively small. Secondly, to be smooth. Thirdly, to have a 
 variety in the direction of the parts; but, fourthly, to have 
 those parts not angular, but melted, as it were, into each 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 297 
 
 other. Fifthly, to be of a delicate frame, without any re- 
 markable appearance of strength. Sixthly, to have its colours 
 clear and bright, but not very strong and glaring. Seventhly, 
 or if it should have any glaring colour, to have it diversified 
 with others. These are, I believe, the properties on which 
 beauty depends; properties that operate by nature, and are 
 less liable to be altered by caprice, or confounded by a di- 
 versity of tastes, than any other. 
 
 SECTION XIX 
 THE PHYSIOGNOMY 
 
 THE physiognomy has a considerable share in beauty, 
 especially in that of our own species. The manners give a 
 certain determination to the countenance; which, being ob- 
 served to correspond pretty regularly with them, is capable 
 of joining the effect of certain agreeable qualities of the mind 
 to those of the body. So that to form a finished human 
 beauty, and to give it its full influence, the face must be ex- 
 pressive of such gentle and amiable qualities, as correspond 
 with the softness, smoothness, and delicacy of the outward 
 form. 
 
 oo 
 
 SECTION XX 
 THE EYE 
 
 I HAVE hitherto purposely omitted to speak of the eye, 
 which has so great a share in the beauty of the animal crea- 
 tion, as it did not fall so easily under the foregoing heads, 
 though in fact it is reducible to the same principles, I think, 
 then, that the beauty of the eye consists, first, in its clear- 
 ness; what coloured eye shall please most, depends a good 
 deal on particular fancies; but none are pleased with 
 an eye whose water (to use that term) is dull and muddy.! 
 
298 BURKE 
 
 We are pleased with the eye in this view, on the principle upon 
 which we like diamonds, clear water, glass, and such like trans- 
 parent substances. Secondly, the motion of the eye contrib- 
 utes to its beauty, by continually shifting its direction; but a 
 slow and languid motion is more beautiful than a brisk one; 
 the latter is enlivening; the former lovely. Thirdly, with 
 regard to the union of the eye with the neighbouring parts, 
 it is to hold the same rule that is given of other beautiful 
 ones; it is not to make a strong deviation from the line of 
 the neighbouring parts; nor to verge into any exact geomet- 
 rical figure. Besides all this, the eye affects, as it is ex- 
 pressive of some qualities of the mind, and its principal 
 power generally arises from this; so that what we have just 
 said of the physiognomy is applicable here. 
 
 NOTE 
 
 I. Part IV. sect. 25. 
 
 SECTION xXxI 
 UGLINESS 
 
 IT may perhaps appear like a sort of repetition of what we 
 have before said, to insist here upon the nature of ugliness ; 
 as I imagine it to be in all respects the opposite to those 
 qualities which we have laid down for the constituents of 
 beauty. But though ugliness be the opposite to beauty, it 
 is not the opposite to proportion and fitness. For it is pos- 
 sible that a thing may be very ugly with any proportions, 
 and with a perfect fitness to any uses. Ugliness I imagine 
 likewise to be consistent enough with an idea of the sub- 
 lime. But I would by no means insinuate that ugliness of 
 itself is a sublime idea, unless united with such qualities as 
 excite a strong terror. 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 299 
 
 SECTION XXII 
 GRACE 
 
 GRACEFULNESS is an idea not very different from beauty ; 
 it consists in much thesame things. Gracefulness is an idea 
 belonging to posture and motion. In both these, to be 
 graceful, it is requisite that there be no appearance of diffi- 
 culty ; there is required a small inflection of the body ; and 
 a composure of the parts in such a manner, as not to incum- 
 ber each other, not to appear divided by sharp and sudden 
 angles. In this case, this roundness, this delicacy of attitude 
 and motion, it is that all the magic of grace consists, and 
 what is called its je ne sgai quoi ; as will be obvious to any 
 observer, who considers attentively the Venus de Medicis, 
 the Antinous or any statue generally allowed to be graceful 
 in a high degree. 
 
 LOIN AO LL 
 ELEGANCE AND SPECIOUSNESS 
 
 WHEN any body is composed of parts smooth and pol- 
 ished, without pressing upon each other, without showing 
 any ruggedness or confusion, and at the same time affecting 
 some regular shape, I call it elegant. It is closely allied to 
 the beautiful, differing from it only in this regularity ; which, 
 however, as it makes a very material difference in the 
 affection produced, may very well constitute another species. 
 Under this head I rank those delicate and regular works of 
 art, that imitate no determinate object in nature, as elegant 
 buildings, and pieces of furniture. When any object par- 
 takes of the above-mentioned qualities, or of those of beauti- 
 ful bodies, and is withal of great dimensions, it is full as 
 remote from the idea of mere beauty; I call it fine or 
 specious. 
 
300 BURKE 
 
 SECTION XXIV 
 THE BEAUTIFUL IN FEELING 
 
 THE foregoing description of beauty, so far as it is taken 
 in by the eye, may be greatly illustrated by describing the 
 nature of objects, which produce asimilar effect through the 
 touch. This I call the beautiful in feeling. It corresponds 
 wonderfully with what causes the same species of pleasure 
 to the sight. There is a chain in all our sensations; they 
 are all but different sorts of feelings calculated to be affected 
 by various sorts of objects, but all to be affected after the 
 same manner. All bodies that are pleasant to the touch, are 
 so by the slightness of the resistance they make. Resistance 
 is either to motion along the surface, or to the pressure of 
 the parts on one another: if the former be slight, we call the 
 body smooth; if the latter, soft. The chief pleasure we re- 
 ceive by feeling, is in the one or the other of these qualities ; 
 and if there be a combination of both, our pleasure is greatly 
 increased. This is so plain, that it is rather more fit to 
 illustrate other things, than to be illustrated itself by an 
 example. The next source of pleasure in this sense, as in 
 every other, is the continually presenting somewhat new; 
 and we find that bodies which continually vary their surface, 
 are much the most pleasant or beautiful to the feeling, as 
 any one that pleases may experience. The third property 
 in such objects is, that though the surface continually varies 
 its direction, it never varies it suddenly. The application 
 of anything sudden, even though the impression itself have 
 little or nothing of violence, is disagreeable. The quick 
 application of a finger a little warmer or colder than usual, 
 without notice, makes us start; a slight tap on the shoulder, 
 not expected, has the same effect. Hence it is that angular 
 bodies, bodies that suddenly vary the direction of the outline, 
 affofd so little pleasure to the feeling. Every such change is 
 a sort of climbing or falling in miniature; so that squares, 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 301 
 
 triangles, and other angular figures are neither beautiful to the 
 sight nor feeling. Whoever compares his state of mind, on 
 feeling soft, smooth, variated, unangular bodies, with that in 
 which he finds himself, on the view of a beautiful object, will 
 perceive a very striking analogy in the effects of both; and 
 which may go a good way towards discovering their common 
 cause. Feeling and sight, in this respect, differ in but a few 
 points. The touch takes in the pleasure of softness, which 
 is not primarily an object of sight; the sight, on the other 
 hand, comprehends colour, which can hardly be made per- 
 ceptible to the touch: the touch, again, has the advantage 
 in a new idea of pleasure resulting from a moderate degree 
 of warmth; but the eye triumphs in the infinite extent and 
 multiplicity of its objects. But there is such a similitude in 
 the pleasures of these senses, that I am apt to fancy, if it 
 were possible that one might discern colour by feeling (as it 
 is said some blind men have done) that the same colours, 
 and the same disposition of colouring, which are found 
 beautiful to the sight, would be found likewise most grate- 
 ful to the touch. But, setting aside conjectures, let us pass 
 to the other sense; of hearing. 
 
 SECTION XXV 
 THE BEAUTIFUL IN SOUNDS 
 
 IN this sense we find an equal aptitude to be affected in a 
 soft and delicate manner; and how far sweet or beautiful 
 sounds agree with our descriptions of beauty in other senses, 
 the experience of every one must decide. Milton has de 
 scribed this species of music in one of his juvenile poems.} 
 I need not say that Milton was perfectly well versed in that 
 art; and that no man had a finer ear, with a happier manner 
 of expressing the affections of one sense by metaphors taken 
 from another. The description is as follows :— 
 
302 BURKE 
 
 ““ And ever against eating cares, 
 Lap me in soft Lydian airs ; 
 In notes with many a winding bout 
 Of linked sweetness long drawn out; 
 With wanton heed, and giddy cunning, 
 The melting voice through mazes running; 
 Untwisting all the chains that tie 
 The hidden soul of harmony.” 
 
 Let us parallel this with the softness, the winding surface, 
 the unbroken continuance, the easy gradation of the beauti- 
 ful in other things; and all the diversities of the several 
 senses, with all their several affections, will rather help to 
 throw lights from one another to finish one clear, consistent 
 idea of the whole, than to obscure it by their intricacy and 
 variety. 
 
 To the above-mentioned description I shall add one or 
 two remarks. The first is: that the beautiful in music will 
 not bear that loudness and strength of sounds, which may be 
 used to raise other passions; nor notes which are shrill, or 
 harsh, or deep; it agrees best with such as are clear, even, 
 smooth, and weak. The second is; that great variety, and 
 quick transitions from one measure or tone to another, are 
 contrary to the genius of the beautiful in music. Such? 
 transitions often excite mirth, or other sudden or tumultu- 
 ous passions; but not that sinking, that melting, that lan- 
 guor, which is the characteristical effect of the beautiful as it 
 regardsevery sense. The passion excited by beauty is in fact 
 nearer to a species of melancholy, than to jollity and mirth. 
 I do not here mean to confine music to any one species of 
 notes, or tones, neither is it an art in which I can say I have 
 any great skill. My sole design in this remark is to settle a 
 consistent idea of beauty. The infinite variety of the affec- 
 tions of the soul will suggest to a good head, and skilful ear, 
 a variety of such sounds as are fitted to raise them. It can 
 be no prejudice to this, to clear and distinguish some few 
 particulars that belong to the same class, and are consistent 
 with each other, from the immense crowd of different and 
 sometimes contradictory ideas, that rank vulgarly under the 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 303 
 
 standard of beauty. And of these it is my intention to mark 
 such only of the leading points as show the conformity of 
 the sense of hearing with all the other senses, in the article 
 of their pleasures. 
 
 NOTES 
 
 1. L’ Allegro. 
 2. “I ne’er am merry, when I hear sweet music.” 
 SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 SECTION XXVI 
 TASTE AND SMELL 
 
 THIS general agreement of the senses is yet more evident 
 on minutely considering those of taste and smell. We met- 
 aphorically apply the idea of sweetness to sights and sounds ; 
 but as the qualities of bodies by which they are fitted to ex- 
 cite either pleasure or pain in these senses are not so obvious 
 as they are in the others, we shall refer an explanation of 
 their analogy, which is a very close one, to that part wherein 
 we come to consider the common efficient cause of beauty, 
 as it regards all the senses. I do not think anything better 
 fitted to establish a clear and settled idea of visual beauty 
 than this way of examining the similar pleasures of other 
 senses ; for one part is sometimes clear in one of the senses 
 that is more obscure in another; and where there is a clear 
 concurrence of all, we may with more certainty speak of any 
 one of them. By this means, they bear witness to each 
 other; nature is, as it were, scrutinized ; and we report noth- 
 ing of her but what we receive from her own information. 
 
 SECTION XXVII 
 THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL COMPARED 
 
 ON closing this general view of beauty, it naturally occurs 
 that we should compare it with the sublime; and in this 
 comparison there appears a remarkable contrast. For 
 
304 BURKE 
 
 sublime objects are vast in their dimensions, beautiful ones 
 comparatively small ; beauty should be smooth and polished ; 
 the great, rugged and negligent: beauty should shun the 
 right line, yet deviate from it insensibly ; the great in many 
 cases loves the right line; and when it deviates, it often 
 makes a strong deviation: beauty should not be obscure; the 
 great ought to be dark and gloomy: beauty should be light 
 and delicate; the great ought to be solid, and even massive. 
 They are indeed ideas of a very different nature, one being 
 founded on pain, the other on pleasure ; and, however they 
 may vary afterwards from the direct nature of their causes, 
 yet these causes keep up an eternal distinction between 
 them, a distinction never to be forgotten by any whose busi- 
 ness it is to affect the passions. In the infinite variety of 
 natural combinations, we must expect to find the qualities of 
 things the most remote imaginable from each other united 
 in the same object. We must expect also to find combina- 
 tions of the same kind in the works of art. But when we 
 consider the power of an object upon our passions, we must 
 know that when anything is intended to affect the mind by 
 the force of some predominant property, the affection pro- 
 duced is like to be the more uniform and perfect, if all the 
 other properties or qualities of the object be of the same 
 nature, and tending to the same design as the principal. 
 
 “Tf black and white blend, soften, and unite 
 A thousand ways, are there no black and white ?” 
 
 If the qualities of the sublime and beautiful are sometimes 
 found united, does this prove that they are the same; does 
 it prove that they are any way allied; does it prove even 
 that they are not opposite and contradictory? Black and 
 white may soften, may blend; but they are not therefore 
 the same. Nor, when they are so softened and blended 
 with each other, or with different colours, is the power of black 
 as black, or of white as white, so strong as when each 
 stands uniform and distinguished. 
 
PART FOURTH 
 
 SECTION I 
 
 OF THE EFFICIENT CAUSE OF THE SUBLIME AND BEAU- 
 TIFUL 
 
 HEN I say, I intend to inquire into the efficient 
 
 cause of sublimity and beauty, I would not be 
 understood to say, that I can come to the ultimate cause. 
 I do not pretend that I shall ever be able to explain why 
 certain affections of the body produce such a distinct emotion 
 of mind, and no other; or why the body is at all affected 
 by the mind, or the mind by the body. A little thought 
 will show thisto be impossible. But I conceive, if we 
 can discover what affections of the mind produce cer- 
 tain emotions of the body; and what distinct feelings 
 and qualities of body shall produce certain determinate pas- 
 sions in the mind, and no others, I fancy a great deal will be 
 done; something not unuseful towards a distinct knowledge 
 of our passions, so far at least as we have them at present 
 under our consideration. This is all, I believe, we can do. 
 If we could advance a step farther, difficulties would still 
 remain, as we should be still equally distant from the first 
 cause. When Newton first discovered the property of at- 
 traction, and settled its laws, he found it served very well to 
 explain several of the most remarkable phenomena in nat- 
 ure; but yet, with reference to the general system of things, 
 he could consider attraction but as an effect, whose cause at 
 that time he did not attempt to trace. But when he after- 
 wards began to account for it by a subtle elastic ether, this 
 great man (if in so great a man it be not impious to discover 
 
 anything like a blemish) seemed to have quitted his usual 
 20 305 
 
306 BURKE 
 
 cautious manner of philosophizing; since, perhaps, allowing 
 all that has been advanced on this subject to be sufficiently 
 proved, I think it leaves us with as many difficulties as it 
 found us. That great chain of causes, which, linking one to 
 another, even to the throne of God himself, can never be 
 unravelled by any industry of ours. When we go but one 
 step beyond the immediate sensible qualities of things, we 
 go out of our depth. All we do after is but a faint struggle, 
 that shows we are in an element which does not belong to 
 us. So that when I speak of cause, and efficient cause, I 
 only mean certain affections of the mind, that cause certain 
 changes in the body; or certain powers and properties in 
 bodies, that work a change in the mind. As, if I were to 
 explain the motion of a body falling to the ground, I would 
 say it was caused by gravity: and I would endeavour to show 
 after what manner this power operated, without attempting 
 to show why it operated in this manner: or, if I were to ex- 
 plain the effects of bodies striking one another by the com- 
 mon laws of percussion, I should not endeavour to explain 
 how motion itself is communicated. 
 
 SECTION: It 
 ASSOCIATION 
 
 IT is no small bar in the way of our inquiry into the cause 
 of our passions, that the occasions of many of them are 
 given, and that their governing motions are communicated 
 at a time when we have not capacity to reflect on them; at 
 a time of which all sort of memory is worn out of our minds. 
 For besides such things as affect us in various manners, ac- 
 cording to their natural powers, there are associations made 
 at that early season, which we find it very hard afterwards to 
 distinguish from natural effects. Not to mention the un- 
 accountable antipathies which we find in many persons, we 
 all find it impossible to remember when a steep became 
 more terrible than a plain; or fire or water more terrible 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 307 
 
 than a clod of earth; though all these are very probably 
 either conclusions from experience, or arising from the pre- 
 monitions of others; and some of them impressed, in all 
 likelihood, pretty late. But as it must be allowed that 
 many things affect us after a certain manner, not by any 
 natural powers they have for that purpose, but by associa- 
 tion; so it would be absurd, on the other hand, to say that 
 all things affect us by association only; since some things 
 must have been originally and naturally agreeable or dis- 
 agreeable, from which the others derive their associated 
 powers; and it would be, I fancy, to little purpose to look 
 for the cause of our passions in association, until we fail of 
 it in the natural properties of things. 
 
 SECTION III 
 CAUSE OF PAIN AND FEAR 
 
 I HAVE before observed,! that whatever is qualified to 
 cause terror is a foundation capable of the sublime ; to which 
 I add, that not only these, but many things from which we 
 can not probably apprehend any danger, have a similar effect, 
 because they operate in similar manner. I observed, too,” 
 that whatever produces pleasure, positive and original pleas- 
 ure, is fit to have beauty engrafted onit. Therefore, to clear 
 up the nature of these qualities, it may be necessary to ex- 
 plain the nature of pain and pleasure on which they depend. 
 A man who suffers under violent bodily pain (I suppose the 
 most violent, because the effect may be the more obvious,) I 
 say a man in great pain has his teeth set, his eyebrows are 
 violently contracted, his forehead is wrinkled, his eyes are 
 dragged inwards, and rolled with great vehemence, his hair 
 stands on end, the voice is forced out in short shrieks and 
 groans, andthe whole fabric totters. Fear or terror, which is 
 an apprehension of pain or death, exhibits exactly the same 
 effects, approaching in violence to those just mentioned, in 
 proportion to the nearness of the cause, and the weakness of 
 
308 BURKE 
 
 the subject. This is not only so in the human species: but 
 I have more than once observed in dogs, under an apprehen- 
 sion of punishment, that they have writhed their bodies, and 
 yelped, and howled, as if they had actually felt the blows. 
 From hence I conclude, that pain and fear act upon the same 
 parts of the body, and in the same manner, though some- 
 what differing in degree: that pain and fear consist in an 
 unnatural tension of the nerves; that this is sometimes 
 accompanied with an unnatural strength, which sometimes 
 suddenly changes into an extraordinary weakness; that these 
 effects often come on alternately, and are sometimes mixed 
 with each other. This is the nature of all convulsive agita- 
 tions, especially in weaker subjects, which are the most liable 
 to the severest impressions of pain and fear. The only dif- 
 ference between pain and terror is, that things which cause 
 pain operate on the mind by the intervention of the body ; 
 whereas things that cause terror generally affect the bodily 
 organs by the operation of the mind suggesting the danger ; 
 but both agreeing, either primarily or secondarily, in produc- 
 ing a tension, contraction, or violent emotion of the nerves,’ 
 they agree likewise in everything else. For it appears very 
 clearly to me from this, as well as from many other examples, 
 that when the body is disposed, by any means whatsoever, to 
 such emotions as it would acquire by the means of a certain 
 passion ; it will of itself excite something very like that pas- 
 sion in the mind. 
 NOTES 
 
 1. Part, I., secti 7. 
 
 2. Part 1. sect. 10. 
 
 3. I do not here enter into the question debated among physiologists, whether 
 pain be the effect of a contraction, or a tension of the nerves. Either will 
 serve my purpose; for by tension, I mean no more thana violent pulling of the 
 fibres which compose any muscle or membrane, in whatever way this is done. 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 309 
 
 SECTION IV 
 
 CONTINUED 
 
 To this purpose Mr. Spon, in his “ Récherches d’An- 
 tiquité,” gives us a curious story of the celebrated physiog- 
 nomist Campanella. This man, it seems, had not only 
 made very accurate observations on human faces, but was 
 very expert in mimicking such as were any way remark- 
 able. When he had a mind to penetrate into the inclina- 
 tions of those he had to deal with, he composed his face, 
 his gesture, and his whole body, as nearly as he could 
 into the exact similitude of the person he intended to 
 examine; and then carefully observed what turn of mind 
 he seemed to acquire by this change. So that, says my 
 author, he was able to enter into the dispositions and 
 thoughts of people as effectually as if he had been changed 
 into the very men. I have often observed, that on 
 mimicking the looks and gestures of angry, or placid, or 
 frighted, or daring men, I have involuntarily found my mind 
 turned to that passion, whose appearance I endeavoured to 
 imitate; nay, I am convinced it is hard to avoid it, though one 
 strove to separate the passion from its correspondent gestures. 
 Our minds and bodiesare so closely and intimately connected, 
 that one is incapable of pain or pleasure without the other. 
 Campanella, of whom we have been speaking, could so ab- 
 stract his attention from any sufferings of his body, that he 
 was able to endure the rack itself without much pain; and in 
 lesser pains everybody must have observed that, when we can 
 employ our attention on anything else, the pain has been for 
 atime suspended: on the other hand, if by any means the 
 body is indisposed to perform such gestures, or to be stimu- 
 lated into such emotions as any passion usually produces in 
 it, that passion itself never can arise, though its cause should 
 be never so strongly in action; though it should be merely 
 mental, and immediately affecting none of the senses, As 
 
310 | BURKE 
 
 an opiate, or spirituous liquors, shall suspend the operation 
 of grief, or fear, or anger, in spite of all our efforts to the 
 contrary ; andthis by inducing in the body a disposition con- 
 tary to that which it receives from these passions. 
 
 SECTION V 
 HOW THE SUBLIME IS PRODUCED 
 
 HAVING considered terror as producing an unnatural ten- 
 sion and certain violent emotions of the nerves; it easily 
 follows, from what we have just said, that whatever is fitted 
 to produce sucha tension must be productive of a passion 
 similar to terror,! and consequently must be a source of the 
 sublime, though it should have no idea of danger connected 
 with it. So that little remains towards showing the cause 
 of the sublime, but to show that the instances we have given 
 of it in the second part relate to such things, as are fitted by 
 nature to produce this sort of tension, either by the primary 
 operation of the mind or the body. With regard to such 
 things as affect by the associated idea of danger, there can 
 be no doubt but that they produce terror, and act by some 
 modification of that passion; and that terror, when suffi- 
 ciently violent, raises the emotions of the body just men- 
 tioned, can as little be doubted. But if the sublime is built 
 on terror or some passion like it, which has pain for its 
 object, it is previously proper to inquire how any species of 
 delight can be derived from a cause so apparently contrary 
 to it. I say delight, because, as I have often remarked, it is 
 very evidently different in its cause, and in its own nature, 
 from actual and positive pleasure. 
 
 NOTE 
 1. Part II. sect. 2: 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 311 
 
 SECTION VI 
 HOW PAIN CAN BE A CAUSE OF DELIGHT 
 
 PROVIDENCE has so ordered it, that a state of rest and 
 inaction, however it may flatter our indolence, should be 
 productive of many inconveniences; that it should gener- 
 ate such disorders, as may force us to have recourse to 
 some labour, as a thing absolutely requisite to make us pass 
 our lives with tolerable satisfaction; for the nature of rest 
 is to suffer all the parts of our bodies to fall into a relaxation, 
 that not only disables the members from performing their 
 functions, but takes away the vigorous tone of fibre which 
 is requisite for carrying on the natural and necessary secre- 
 tions. At the same time, that in this languid inactive state, 
 the nerves are more liable to the most horrid convulsions, 
 than when they are sufficiently braced and strengthened. 
 Melancholy, dejection, despair, and often self-murder, is the 
 consequence of the gloomy view we take of things in this 
 relaxed state of body. The best remedy for all these evils is 
 exercise or labour; and labour isa surmounting of difficulties, 
 an exertion of the contracting power of the muscles; and as 
 such resembles pain, which consists in tension or contraction, 
 in everything but degree. Labour is not only requisite to 
 preserve the coarser organs, in a state fit for their functions ; 
 but it is equally necessary to these finer and more delicate 
 organs, on which, and by which, the imagination and per- 
 haps the other mental powers act. Since it is probable that 
 not only the inferior parts of the soul, as the passions are 
 called, but the understanding itself makes use of some fine 
 corporeal instruments in its operation; though what they 
 are, and where they are, may be somewhat hard to settle: 
 but that it does make use of such, appears from hence; that 
 a long exercise of the mental powers induces a remarkable 
 lassitude of the whole body; and on the other hand, that 
 great bodily labour, or pain, weakens and sometimes actually 
 destroys the mental faculties. Now, as a due exercise is 
 
312 BURKE 
 
 essential to the coarse muscular parts of the constitution, and 
 that without this rousing they would become languid and 
 diseased, the very same rule holds with regard to those finer 
 parts we have mentioned; to have them in proper order, 
 they must be shaken and worked to a proper degree, 
 
 SECTION VII 
 EXERCISE NECESSARY FOR THE FINER ORGANS 
 
 AS common labour, which is a mode of pain, is the exer- 
 cise of the grosser, a mode of terror is the exercise of the 
 finer parts of the system ; and if a certain mode of pain be 
 of such a nature as to act upon the eye or the ear, as they 
 are the most delicate organs, the affection approaches more 
 nearly to that which has a mental cause. In all these cases, 
 if the pain and terror are so modified as not to be actually 
 noxious ; if the pain is not carried to violence, and the terror 
 is not conversant about the present destruction of the person, 
 as these emotions clear the parts, whether fine or gross, of a 
 dangerous and troublesome incumbrance, they are capable 
 of producing delight ; not pleasure, but a sort of delightful 
 horror, a sort of tranquillity tinged with terror; which, as it 
 belongs to self-preservation, is one of the strongest of all the 
 passions. Its object is the sublime! Its highest degree I 
 call astonishment ; the subordinate degrees are awe, reverence, 
 and respect, which, by the very etymology of the words, 
 show from what source they are derived, and how they stand 
 distinguished from positive pleasure. 
 
 NOTE 
 i.) Parti lsect..4, 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 313 
 
 SECTION VIII 
 
 WHY THINGS NOT DANGEROUS SOMETIMES PRODUCE A 
 PASSION LIKE TERROR 
 
 A MODE of terror or pain is always the cause of the sub- 
 lime! For terror or associated danger, the foregoing explica- 
 tion is, I believe, sufficient. It will require something more 
 trouble to show, that such examples as I have given of the 
 sublime in the second part are capable of producing a mode 
 of pain, and of being thus allied to terror, and to be ac- 
 counted for on the same principles. And first of such 
 objects as are great in their dimensions. I speak of visual 
 
 objects. 
 NOTE 
 
 q.)Part I, sect..7./ » Part-II. sect./2. 
 
 SECTION: EX 
 
 WHY VISUAL OBJECTS OF GREAT DIMENSIONS ARE 
 SUBLIME 
 
 VISION is performed by having a picture, formed by the 
 rays of light which are reflected from the object, painted in 
 one piece, instantaneously, on the retina, or last nervous part 
 ofthe eye. Or, according to others, there is but one point of 
 any object painted on the eye in such a manner as to be per- 
 ceived at once ; but by moving the eye, we gather up, with 
 ereat celerity, the several parts of the object, so as to form 
 one uniform piece. If the former opinion be allowed, it will 
 be considered,! that though all the light reflected from a large 
 body should strike the eye in one instant ; yet we must 
 suppose that the body itself is formed of a vast number of 
 distinct points, every one of which, or the ray from every 
 one, makes an impression on the retina. So that, though 
 the image of one point should cause but a small tension of 
 this membrane, another, and another, and another stroke, 
 
314 BURKE 
 
 must in their progress cause a very great one, until it arrives 
 at last to the highest degree ; and the whole capacity of the 
 eye, vibrating in all its parts, must approach near to the 
 nature of what causes pain, and consequently must produce 
 an idea of the sublime. Again, if we take it, that one point 
 only of an object is distinguishable at once ; the matter will 
 amount nearly to the same thing, or rather it will make the 
 origin of the sublime from greatness of dimension yet clearer. 
 For if but one point is observed at once, the eye must 
 traverse the vast space of such bodies with great quickness, 
 and consequently the fine nerves and muscles destined to 
 the motion of that part must be very much strained ; and 
 their great sensibility must make them highly affected by 
 this straining. Besides, it signifies just nothing to the effect 
 produced, whether a body has its parts connected and makes 
 its impression at once ; or, making but one impression of a 
 point at a time, it causes a succession of the same or others 
 so quickly as to make them seem united ; as is evident from 
 the common effect of whirling about a lighted torch or piece 
 of wood: which, if done with celerity, seems a circle of fire. 
 NOTE 
 1. Part II. sect. 7. 
 
 mit DLO NX 
 UNITY, WHY REQUISITE TO VASTNESS 
 
 IT may be objected to this theory, that the eye generally 
 receives an equal number of rays at all times, and that there- 
 fore a great object can not affect it by the number of rays, 
 more than that variety of objects which the eye must always 
 discern whilst it remains open. But to this I answer, that 
 admitting an equal number of rays, or an equal quantity 
 of luminous particles to strike the eye at all times, yet if 
 these rays frequently vary their nature, now to blue, now to 
 red, and so on, or their manner of termination, as to a num- 
 ber of petty squares, triangles, or the like, at every change, 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 315 
 
 whether of colour or shape, the organ has a sort of relaxation 
 or rest; but this relaxation and labour so often interrupted, 
 is by no means productive of ease; neither has it the effect 
 of vigorous and uniform labour. Whoever has remarked the 
 different effects of some strong exercise, and some little pid- 
 dling action, will understand why a teasing, fretful employ- 
 ment, which at once wearies and weakens the body, should 
 have nothing great; these sorts of impulses, which are 
 rather teasing than painful, by continually and suddenly 
 altering their tenor and direction, prevent that full tension, 
 that species of uniform labour, which is allied to strong pain, 
 and causes the sublime. The sum total of things of various 
 kinds, though it should equal the number of the uniform 
 parts composing some one entire object, is not equal in its 
 effect upon the organs of our bodies. Besides the one 
 already assigned, there is another very strong reason for the 
 difference. The mind in reality hardly ever can attend dili- 
 gently to more than one thing ata time; if this thing be 
 little, the effect is little, and a number of other little objects 
 can not engage the attention; the mind is bounded by the 
 bounds of the object ; and what is not attended to, and what 
 does not exist, are much the same inthe effect ; but the eye 
 or the mind (for in this case there is no difference), in great, 
 uniform objects, does not readily arrive at their bounds; it 
 has no rest, whilst it contemplates them; the image is much 
 the same everywhere. So that everything great by its 
 quantity must necessarily be one, simple and entire. 
 
 SECTION XI 
 THE ARTIFICIAL INFINITE 
 
 WE have observed that a species of greatness arises from 
 the artificial infinite ; and that this infinite consists in an uni- 
 form succession of great parts: we observed too, that the 
 same uniform succession had a like power in sounds. But 
 because the effects of many things are clearer in one of the 
 
316 BURKE 
 
 senses than in another, and that all the senses bear analogy 
 to and illustrate one another, I shall begin with this power in 
 sounds, as the cause of the sublimity from succession is 
 rather more obvious in the sense of hearing, And I shall 
 here, once for all observe, that an investigation of the 
 natural and mechanical causes of our passions, besides the 
 curiosity of the subject, gives, if they are discovered, a 
 double strength and lustre to any rules we deliver on such 
 matters. Whenthe ear receives any simple sound, it is 
 struck by a single pulse of the air which makes the ear-drum 
 and the other membranous parts vibrate according to the 
 nature and species of the stroke. If the stroke be strong, 
 the organ of hearing suffers a considerable degree of tension. 
 If the stroke be repeated pretty soon after, the repetition 
 causes an expectation of another stroke. And it must be 
 observed, that expectation itself causes a tension. This is 
 apparent in many animals, who, when they prepare for hear- 
 ing any sound, rouse themselves, and prick up their ears; so 
 that here the effect of the sounds is considerably augmented 
 by anew auxiliary, the expectation. But though aftera 
 number of strokes, we expect still more, not being able to 
 ascertain the exact time of their arrival, when they arrive, 
 they produce a sort of surprise, which increases this tension 
 yet further. For I have observed, that when at any time I 
 have waited very earnestly for some sound, that returned at 
 intervals, (as the successive firing of cannon,) though I fully 
 expected the return of the sound, when it came it always 
 made me start a little; the ear-drum suffered a convulsion, 
 and the whole body consented with it. The tension of the 
 part thus increasing at every blow, by the united forces of 
 the stroke itself, the expectation and the surprise, it is 
 worked up to such a pitch as to be capable of the sublime ; 
 it is brought just to the verge of pain. Even when the 
 cause has ceased, the organs of hearing being often succes- 
 sively struck in a similar manner, continue to vibrate in that 
 manner for some time longer; this is an additional help to 
 the greatness of the effect. 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 317 
 
 SECTION XII 
 THE VIBRATIONS MUST BE SIMILAR 
 
 But if the vibration be not similar at every impression, it 
 can never be carried beyond the number of actual impres- 
 sions; for, move any body as a pendulum, in one way, and it 
 will continue to oscillate in an arch of the same circle, until 
 the known causes make it rest ; but if, after first putting it 
 in motion in one direction, you push it into another, it can 
 never reassume the first direction; because it can never 
 move itself, and consequently it can have but the effect of 
 that last motion; whereas, if in the same direction you act 
 upon it several times, it will describe a greater arch, and 
 move a longer time. 
 
 SECTION XIII 
 
 THE EFFECTS OF SUCCESSION IN VISUAL OBJECTS 
 EXPLAINED 
 
 IF we can comprehend clearly how things operate upon 
 one of our senses, there can be very little difficulty in con- 
 ceiving in what manner they affect the rest. Tosay a great 
 deal therefore upon the corresponding affections of every 
 sense, would tend rather to fatigue us by an useless repeti- 
 tion, than to throw any new light upon the subject by that 
 ample and diffuse manner of treating it; but as in this dis- 
 course we chiefly attach ourselves to the sublime, as it affects 
 the eye, we shall consider particularly why a successive dis- 
 position of uniform parts in the same right line should be 
 sublime,! and upon what principle this disposition is enabled 
 to make a comparatively small quantity of matter produce a 
 grander effect, than a much larger quantity disposed in an- 
 other manner. To avoid the perplexity of general notions; 
 let us set before our eyes a colonnade of uniform pillars 
 planted in a right line; let us take our stand in such a man- 
 
318 BURKE 
 
 ner, that the eye may shoot along this colonnade, for it has 
 its best effect in this view. In our present situation it is 
 plain, that the rays from the first round pillar will cause in 
 the eye a vibration of that species; an image of the pillar 
 itself. The pillar immediately succeeding increases it; that 
 which follows renews and enforces the impression, each in its 
 order as it succeeds, repeats impulse after impulse, and stroke 
 after stroke, until the eye, long exercised in one particular 
 way,can not lose that object immediately, and, being violently 
 roused by this continued agitation, it presents the mind with 
 a grand or sublime conception. But instead of viewing a 
 rank of uniform pillars, let us suppose that they succeed 
 each other, a round anda square one alternately. In this 
 case the vibration caused by the first round pillar perishes as 
 soon as it is formed; and one of quite another sort (the 
 square) directly occupies its place ; which however it resigns 
 as quickly to the round one; and thus the eye proceeds, al- 
 ternately, taking up one image, and laying down another, as 
 long as the building continues. From whence it is obvious 
 that, at the last pillar, the impression is as far from continu- 
 ing as it was at the very first; because, in fact, the sensory 
 can receive no distinct impression but from the last; and it 
 can never of itself resume a dissimilar impression: besides 
 every variation of the object is a rest and relaxation to the 
 organs of sight; and these reliefs prevent that powerful 
 emotion so necessary to produce the sublime. To produce 
 therefore a perfect grandeur in such things as we have been 
 mentioning, there should be a perfect simplicity, an absolute 
 uniformity in disposition, shape, and colouring. Upon this 
 principle of succession and uniformity it may be asked, why 
 a long bare wall should not be a more sublime object than 
 a colonnade; since the succession is no way interrupted ; 
 since the eye meets no check; since nothing more uniform 
 can be conceived? A long bare wall is certainly not so 
 grand an object as a colonnade of the same length and 
 height. It is not altogether difficult to account for this dif- 
 ference. When we look at a naked wall, for the evenness 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 319 
 
 of the object, the eye runs along its whole space, and arrives 
 quickly at its termination; the eye meets nothing which 
 may interrupt its progress; but then it meets nothing which 
 may detain it a proper time to produce a very great and 
 lasting effect. The view of a bare wall, if it be of a great 
 height and length, is undoubtedly grand; but this is only 
 one idea, and not arepetition of similar ideas: it is there- 
 fore great, not so much upon the principle of infinity, as 
 upon that of vastness. But we are not so powerfully affected 
 with any one impulse, unless it be one of a prodigious force 
 indeed, as we are with a succession of similar impulses ; 
 because the nerves of the sensory do not (if I may use the 
 expression) acquire a habit of repeating the same feeling in 
 such a manner as to continue it longer than its cause is in 
 action; besides, all the effects which I have attributed to 
 expectation and surprise in Section 11, can have no place in a 
 bare wall. 
 NoTE 
 
 I. Part II. sect. Io. 
 
 SieGaL LON. XTV, 
 LOCKE’S OPINION CONCERNING DARKNESS CONSIDERED 
 
 It is Mr. Locke’s opinion, that darkness is not naturally 
 an idea of terror; and that, though an excessive light is 
 painful to the sense, the greatest excess of darkness is no 
 ways troublesome. He observes indeed in another place, 
 that a nurse or an old woman having once associated the 
 ideas of ghosts and goblins with that of darkness, night, ever 
 after, becomes painful and horrible to the imagination. The 
 authority of this great man is doubtless as great as that of 
 any man can be, and it seems to stand in the way of our 
 general principle.1 We have considered darkness as a cause 
 of the sublime; and we have all along considered the sub. 
 lime as depending on some modification of pain or terror ; 
 so that if darkness be no way painful or terrible to any, who 
 
320 BURKE 
 
 have not had their minds early tainted with superstitions, it 
 can be no source of the sublimeto them. But, with all def- 
 erence to such an authority, it seems to me, that an associ- 
 ation of a more general nature, an association which takes in 
 all mankind, may make darkness terrible ; for in utter dark- 
 ness it is impossible to know in what degree of safety we 
 stand ; we are ignorant of the objects that surround us; we 
 may every moment strike against some dangerous obstruc- 
 tion; we may fall down a precipice the first step we take; 
 and if an enemy approach, we know not in what quarter to. 
 defend ourselves; in such a case strength is no sure protec- 
 tion; wisdom can only act by guess; the boldest are stag- 
 gered, and he who would pray for nothing else towards his 
 defence is forced to pray for light. 
 
 Zev warep, GAAG ov pioat bm’ Hépo¢ viac ’A yao 
 
 Tloinoov & aidpnv, dog 0 ofbadpoiory idéobaz* 
 
 "Ep dé pdet kat dAecoov, 
 
 As to the association of ghosts and goblins; surely it is 
 more natural to think that darkness, being originally an idea 
 of terror, was chosen as a fit scene for such terrible represen- 
 tations, than that such representations have made darkness 
 terrible. The mind of man very easily slides into an error 
 of the former sort ; but it is very hard to imagine, that the 
 effect of an idea so universally terrible in all times, and in all 
 countries, as darkness, could possibly have been owing to a 
 set of idle stories, or to any cause of a nature so trivial and 
 of an operation so precarious. 
 
 NoTE 
 1. Part II. sect. 3. 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 32I 
 
 SECTION XV 
 DARKNESS TERRIBLE IN ITS OWN NATURE 
 
 PERHAPS it may appear on inquiry, that blackness and 
 darkness are in some degree painful by their natural oper- 
 ation, independent of any associations whatsoever. I must 
 observe, that the ideas of darkness and blackness are much | 
 the same; and they differ only in this, that blackness is a 
 more confined idea. Mr. Cheselden has given us a very 
 curious story of a boy who had been born blind, and con- 
 tinued so until he was thirteen or fourteen years old; he was 
 then couched for a cataract, by which operation he received 
 his sight. Among many remarkable particulars that attended 
 his first perceptions and judgments on visual objects, Che- 
 selden tells us, that the first time the boy saw a black object 
 it gave him great uneasiness ; and that some time after, upon 
 accidentally seeing anegro woman, he was struck with great 
 horror at the sight. The horror, in this case, can scarcely 
 be supposed to arise from any association. The boy appears 
 by the account to have been particularly observing and sen- 
 sible for one of his age; and therefore it is probable, if the 
 great uneasiness he felt at the first sight of black had 
 arisen from its connection with any other disagreeable ideas 
 he would have observed and mentioned it. Foran idea, 
 disagreeable only by association, has the cause of its ill effect 
 on the passions evident enough at the first impression; in 
 ordinary cases, it is indeed frequently lost; but this is be- 
 cause the original association was made very early, and the 
 consequent impression repeated often. In our instance, 
 there was no time for such a habit; and there is no reason 
 to think that the ill effects of black on his imagination were 
 more owing to its connection with any disagreeable ideas, 
 than that the good effects of more cheerful colours were de- 
 rived from their connection with pleasing ones. They had 
 
 both probably their effects from their natural operation. 
 21 
 
322 | BURKE 
 
 SECTION XVI 
 WHY DARKNESS IS TERRIBLE 
 
 IT may be worth while to examine how darkness can oper- 
 ate in such a manner as to cause pain. It is observable, that 
 still as we recede from the light, nature has so contrived it, that 
 the pupil is enlarged by the retiring of the iris, in proportion 
 to our recess, Now, instead of declining from it but a little, 
 suppose that we withdraw entirely from the light; it is rea- 
 sonable to think that the contraction of the radial fibres of 
 the iris is proportionably greater; and that this part may by 
 great darkness come to be so contracted, as to strain the 
 nerves that compose it beyond their natural tone; and by 
 this means to produce a painful sensation. Such a tension 
 it seems there certainly is, whilst we are involved in dark- 
 ness; for in such a state, whilst the eye remains open, there is 
 a continual nisus to receive light ; this is manifest from the 
 flashes and luminous appearances which often seem in these 
 circumstances to play before it; and which can be nothing 
 but the effect of spasms, produced by its own efforts in pur- 
 suit of its object: several other strong impulses will produce 
 the idea of light in the eye, besides the substance of light 
 itself, as we experience on many occasions. Some, who al- 
 low darkness to be a cause of the sublime, would infer, from 
 the dilatation of the pupil, that a relaxation may be produc- 
 tive of the sublime as well asa convulsion: but they do not, 
 I believe, consider, that although the circular ring of the iris 
 be in some sense a sphincter, which may possibly be dilated 
 by a simple relaxation, yetin one respect it differs from most 
 of the other sphincters of the body, that it is furnished with 
 antagonist muscles, which are the radial fibres of the iris: 
 no sooner does the circular muscle begin to relax, than these 
 fibres, wanting their counterpoise, are forcibly drawn back, 
 and open the pupil to a considerable wideness. But though 
 we were not apprised of this, I believe any one will find, if he 
 opens his eyes and makes an effort to see in a dark place, that 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 323 
 
 a very perceivable pain ensues. And I have heard some 
 ladies remark, that after having worked a long time upon a 
 ground of black, their eyes were so pained and weakened, 
 they could hardly see. It may perhaps be objected to this 
 theory of the mechanical effect of darkness, that the ill effects 
 of darkness or blackness seem rather mental than corporeal: 
 and I own it is true that they do so; and so do all those that 
 depend on the affections of the finer parts of our system. 
 The ill effects of bad weather appear often no otherwise than 
 in a melancholy and dejection of spirits; though without 
 doubt, in this case, the bodily organs suffer first, and the 
 mind through these organs. 
 
 SECTION XVII 
 
 THE EFFECTS OF BLACKNESS 
 
 BLACKNESS is but a partial darkness; and therefore it 
 derives some of its powers from being mixed and surrounded 
 with coloured bodies. In its own nature, it can not be con- 
 sidered as a colour. Black bodies, reflecting none, or but a 
 few rays, with regard to sight, are but as so many vacant 
 spaces, dispersed among the objects we view. When the 
 eye lights on one of these vacuities, after having been kept 
 in some degree of tension by the play of the adjacent colours 
 upon it, it suddenly falls into relaxation; out of which it as 
 suddenly recovers by a convulsive spring. To illustrate 
 this: let us consider that when we intend to sit on a chair, 
 and find it much lower than was expected, the shock is very 
 violent ; much more violent than could be thought from so 
 slight a fall as the difference between one chair and another 
 can possibly make. If, after descending a flight of stairs, 
 we attempt inadvertently to take another step in the man- 
 ner of the former ones, the shock is extremely rude and 
 disagreeable: and by no art can we cause such a shock by 
 the same means when we expect and prepare for it. When 
 I say that this is owing to having the change made contrary 
 to expectation; Ido not mean solely, when the mind ex- 
 
324 BURKE 
 
 pects. I mean likewise, that when any organ of sense is for 
 some time affected in some one manner, if it be suddenly 
 affected otherwise, there ensues a ‘convulsive motion; such 
 a convulsion as is caused when anything happens against 
 the expectance of the mind. And though it may appear 
 strange that such a change as produces a relaxation should 
 immediately produce a sudden convulsion; it is yet most 
 certainly so, and so in all senses. Every one knows that 
 sleep is a relaxation; and that silence, where nothing keeps 
 the organs of hearing in action, is in general fittest to bring 
 on this relaxation; yet when a sort of murmuring sounds 
 dispose a man to sleep, let these sounds cease suddenly, and 
 the person immediately awakes ; that is, the parts are braced 
 up suddenly, and he awakes. This I have often experienced 
 myself, and I have heard the same from observing persons. 
 In like manner, if a person in broad daylight were falling 
 asleep, to introduce a sudden darkness would prevent his 
 sleep for that time, though silence and darkness in them- 
 selves, and not suddenly introduced, are very favourable to 
 it. This I knew only by conjecture on the analogy of the 
 senses when I first digested these observations; but I have 
 since experienced it. And I have often experienced, and so 
 have a thousand others, that on the first inclining towards 
 sleep, we have been suddenly awakened with a most violent 
 start; and that this start was generally preceded by a sort 
 of dream of our falling down aprecipiece: whence does this 
 strange motion arise, but from the too sudden relaxation of 
 the body, which by some mechanism in nature restores it- 
 self by as quick and vigorous an exertion of the contracting 
 power of the muscles? The dream itself is caused by this 
 relaxation ; and it is of too uniform a nature to be attributed 
 to any other cause. The parts relax too suddenly, which is 
 in the nature of falling; and this accident of the body in- 
 duces this image in the mind. When we are in a confirm 
 ed state of health and vigour, as all chnages are then less 
 sudden, and less on the extreme, we can seldom complain of 
 this disagreeable sensation. 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 325 
 
 SECTION XVIII 
 THE EFFECTS OF BLACKNESS MODERATED 
 
 THOUGH the effects of black be painful originally, we 
 must not think they always continue so. Custom reconciles 
 us to everything. After we have been used to the sight of 
 black objects, the terror abates, and the smoothness and 
 glossiness, or some agreeable accident of bodies so coloured, 
 softens in some measure the horror and sternness of their 
 original nature; yet the nature of the original impression still 
 continues. Black willalways have something melancholy in 
 it, because the sensory will always find the change to it from 
 others colours too violent; or if it occupy the whole compass 
 of the sight, it will then be darkness; and what was said of 
 darkness will be applicable here. I do not purpose to go 
 into all that might be said to illustrate this theory of the 
 effects of light and darkness; neither will I examine all the 
 different effects produced by the various modifications and 
 mixtures of these two causes. If the foregoing observa- 
 tions have any foundation in nature, I conceive them very 
 sufficient to account for all the phenomena that can arise 
 from all the combinations of black with other colours. To 
 enter into every particular, or to answer every objection, 
 would bean endless labour. We have only followed the most 
 leading roads; and we shall observe the same conduct in our 
 inquiry into the cause of beauty. 
 
 SECTION XIX 
 THE PHYSICAL CAUSE OF LOVE 
 
 WHEN we have before us such objects as excite love and 
 complacency, the body is affected, so far as I could observe, 
 much in the following manner: the head reclines something 
 on one side; the eyelids are more closed than usual, and the 
 eyes roll gently with an inclination to the object; the mouth 
 
326 BURKE 
 
 is a little opened, and the breath drawn slowly, with now and 
 then a low sigh; the whole body is composed, and the hands 
 fall idly to the sides. All this is accompanied with an in- 
 ward sense of melting and languor. These appearances are 
 always proportioned to the degree of beauty in the object, 
 and of sensibility in the observer.. And this gradation from 
 the highest pitch of beauty and sensibility, even to the 
 lowest of mediocrity and indifference, and their correspond- 
 ent effects, ought to be kept in view, else this description 
 will seem exaggerated, which it certainly is not. But 
 from this description it is almost impossible not to con- 
 clude that beauty acts by relaxing the solids of the whole 
 system. There are all the appearances of such a relaxation ; 
 and a relaxation somewhat below the natural tone seems to 
 me to be the cause of all positive pleasure. Who is a 
 stranger to that manner of expression so common in all 
 times and in all countries, of being softened, relaxed, ener- 
 vated, dissolved, melted away by pleasure? The universal 
 voice of mankind, faithful to their feelings, concurs in affirm- 
 ing this uniform and general effect: and although some odd 
 and particular instance may perhaps be found, wherein there 
 appears a considerable degree of positive pleasure, without 
 all the characters of relaxation, we must not therefore reject 
 the conclusion we had drawn from a concurrence of many 
 experiments; but we must still retain it, subjoining the ex- 
 ceptions which may occur according to the judicious rule 
 laid down by Sir Isaac Newton in the third book of his 
 Optics. Our position will, I conceive, appear confirmed 
 beyond any reasonable doubt, if we can show that such 
 things as we have already observed to be the genuine con- 
 stituents of beauty have each of them, separately taken, a 
 natural tendency to relax the fibres. And if it must be 
 allowed us, that the appearance of the human body, when all 
 these constituents are united together before the sensory, 
 further favours this opinion, we may venture, I believe, to 
 conclude that the passion called love is produced by this re- 
 laxation. By the same method of reasoning which we have 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 327 
 
 used in the inquiry into the causes of the sublime, we may 
 likewise conclude, that asa beautiful object presented to the 
 sense, by causing a relaxation of the body, produces the pas- 
 sion of love in the mind; so if by any means the passion 
 should first have its origin in the mind, a relaxation of the 
 outward organs will as certainly ensue in a degree propor- 
 tioned to the cause. 
 
 SECTION XX 
 WHY SMOOTHNESS IS BEAUTIFUL 
 
 IT is to explain the true cause of visual beauty thatI call 
 in the assistance of the other senses. If it appears that 
 smoothness is a principal cause of pleasure to the touch, 
 taste, smell, and hearing, it will be easily admitted aconstit- 
 uent of visual beauty; especially as we have before shown | 
 that this quality is found almost without exception in all 
 bodies that are by general consent held beautiful. There 
 can be no doubt that bodies which are rough and angular, 
 rouse and vellicate the organs of feeling, causing a sense of 
 pain, which consists in the violent tension or contraction of 
 the muscular fibres. On the contrary, the application of 
 smooth bodies relaxes; gentle stroking witha smooth hand 
 allays violent pains and cramps, and relaxes the suffering 
 parts from their unnatural tension; and it has therefore very 
 often no mean effect in removing swellings and obstructions, 
 The sense of feeling is highly gratified with smooth bodies. 
 A bed smoothly laid, and soft, that is, where the resistance 
 is every way inconsiderable, is a great luxury, disposing to an 
 universal relaxation, and inducing beyond anything else that 
 species of it called sleep. 
 
328 BURKE 
 
 SECTION XXI 
 SWEETNESS, ITS NATURE 
 
 NOR is it only in the touch that smooth bodies cause posi- 
 tive pleasure by relaxation. In the smell and taste, we find 
 all things agreeable to them, and which are commonly called 
 sweet, to be of a smooth nature, and that they all evidently 
 tend to relax their respective sensories. Let us first consider 
 the taste. Since it is most easy to inquire into the property 
 of liquors, and since all things seem to want a fluid vehicle to 
 make them taste at all, I intend rather to consider the liquid 
 than the solid parts of our food. The vehicles of all tastes 
 are water and oil. And what determines its taste is some 
 salt, which affects variously according to its nature, or its 
 manner of being combined with other things. Water and 
 oil, simply considered, are capable of giving some pleasure, to 
 thetaste. Water, when simple, is insipid, inodorous, colour- 
 less, and smooth; it is found, when not cold, to be a great 
 resolver of spasms, and lubricator of the fibres; this power it 
 probably owes to its smoothness. For as fluidity depends, 
 according to the most general opinion, on the roundness, 
 smoothness, and weak cohesion of the component parts of 
 any body, and as water acts merely as a simple fluid, it fol- 
 lows that the cause of its fluidity is likewise the cause of its 
 relaxing quality, namely, the smoothness and slippery text- 
 ure ofitsparts. The other fluid vehicle of tastes is oil. This 
 too, when simple, is insipid, inodorous, colourless, and smooth 
 to the touch and taste. It is smoother than water, and in 
 many cases yet more relaxing. Oil is in some degree pleas- 
 ant to the eye, the touch, and the taste, insipid as it is, 
 Water is not so grateful; which I do not know on what 
 principle to account for, other than that water is not so soft 
 and smooth. Suppose that to this oil or water were added 
 a certain quantity of a specific salt, which had a power of 
 putting the nervous papille of the tongue into a gentle vibra- 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 329 
 
 tory motion; as suppose sugar dissolved in it. The smooth- 
 ness of the oil and the vibratory power of the salt cause the 
 sense we call sweetness. Inall sweet bodies, sugar, or a sub- 
 stance very little different from sugar, is constantly found. 
 Every species of salt, examined by the microscope, has its 
 own distinct, regular, invariable form. That of nitre is a 
 pointed oblong; that of seasalt an exact cube; that of sugar 
 a perfect globe. If you have tried how smooth globular 
 bodies, as the marbles with which boys amuse themselves, 
 have affected the touch when they are rolled backward and 
 forward and over one another, you will easily conceive how 
 sweetness, which consists in a salt of such nature, affects the 
 taste; for a single globe (though somewhat pleasant to the 
 feeling), yet by the regularity of its form, and the somewhat 
 too sudden deviation of its parts from a right line, is nothing 
 near so pleasant to the touch as several globes, where the 
 hand gently rises to oneand falls to another ; and this pleasure 
 is greatly increased if the globes are in motion, and sliding 
 over one another; for this soft variety prevents that weari- 
 ness, which the uniform disposition of the several globes 
 would otherwise produce. Thus in sweet liquors, the parts of 
 the fluid vehicle, though most probably round, are yet so mi- 
 nute, as to conceal the figure of their component parts from 
 the nicest inquisition of the microscope; and consequently, 
 being so excessively minute, they have a sort of flat simplic- 
 ity to the taste, resembling the effects of plain smooth bodies 
 to the touch; for if a body be composed of round parts ex- 
 cessively small, and packed pretty closely together, the sur- 
 face will be both to the sight and touch as if it were nearly 
 plain and smooth. It is clear from their unveiling their figure 
 to the microscope, that the particles of sugar are considerably 
 larger than those of water or oil, and consequently that their 
 effects from their roundness will be more distinct and palpa- 
 ble to the nervous papille of that nice organ the tongue; 
 they will induce that sense called sweetness, which in a weak 
 manner we discover in oil, and in a yet weaker in water; for, 
 insipid as they are, water and oil are in some degree sweet ; 
 
330 BURKE 
 
 and it may be observed, that insipid things of all kinds ap- 
 proach more nearly to the nature of sweetness than to that 
 of any other taste. 
 
 SECTION XXII 
 
 SWEETNESS RELAXING 
 
 IN the other senses we have remarked, that smooth things 
 are relaxing. Now it ought to appear that sweet things, 
 which are the smooth of taste, are relaxing too. It is 
 remarkable, that in some languages soft and sweet have but 
 one name. Doux in French signifies soft as well as sweet. 
 The Latin dulcis, and the Italian dolce, have in many cases " 
 the same double signification. That sweet things are gen- 
 erally relaxing, is evident ; because all such, especially those 
 which are most oily, taken frequently, or in a large quantity, 
 very much enfeeble the tone of the stomach. Sweet smells, 
 which bear a great affinity to sweet tastes, relax very remark- 
 ably. The smell of flowers disposes people to drowsiness ; 
 and this relaxing effect is further apparent from the prejudice 
 which people of weak nerves receive from their use. It were 
 worth while to examine, whether tastes of this kind, sweet 
 ones, tastes that are caused by smooth oils anda relaxing 
 salt, are not the originally pleasant tastes. For many, which 
 use has rendered such, were not at all agreeable at first. The 
 way to examine this is, to try what nature has originally 
 provided for us, which she has undoubtedly made originally 
 pleasant ; and to analyze this provision. Milk is the first 
 support of our childhood. The component parts of this are 
 water, oil, and a sort of a very sweet salt, called the sugar of 
 milk. All these when blended have a great smoothness to 
 the taste, and a relaxing quality to the skin. The next 
 thing children covet is fruit, and of fruits those principally 
 which are sweet ; and every one knows that the sweetness 
 of fruit is caused by a subtle oil, and sucha salt as that 
 mentioned in the last section. Afterwards custom, habit, the 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 331 
 
 desire of novelty, and a thousand other causes, confound, 
 adulterate, and change our palates, so that we can no longer 
 reason with any satisfaction about them. Before we quit 
 this article, we must observe, that as smooth things are, as 
 such, agreeable to the taste, and are found of a relaxing 
 quality ; so on the other hand, things which are found by 
 experience to be of a strengthening quality, and fit to brace 
 the fibres, are almost universally rough and pungent to the 
 taste, and in many cases rough even tothe touch. We often 
 apply the quality of sweetness, metaphorically, to visual 
 objects. For the better carrying on this remarkable analogy 
 of the senses, we may here call sweetness the beautiful of 
 the taste. 
 
 SECTION XXIII 
 
 VARIATION, WHY BEAUTIFUL 
 
 ANOTHER principal property of beautiful objects is, that 
 the line of their parts is continually varying its direction ; 
 but it varies it by a very insensible deviation; it never varies 
 it so quickly as to surprise, or by the sharpness of its angle 
 to cause any twitching or convulsion of the optic nerve. 
 Nothing long continued in the same manner, nothing very 
 suddenly varied, can be beautiful; because both are op- 
 posite to that agreeable relaxation which is the characteristic 
 effect of beauty. It is thus in all the senses. A motion in 
 a right line is that manner of moving, next to a very gentle 
 descent, in which we meet the least resistance; yet it is not 
 that manner of moving, which next to a descent, wearies us 
 the least. Rest certainly tends to relax: yet there is a 
 species of motion which relaxes more than rest ; a gentle 
 oscillatory motion, a rising and falling. Rocking sets chil- 
 dren to sleep better than absolute rest; there is indeed 
 scarcely anything at that age, which gives more pleasure 
 than to be gently lifted up and down; the-manner of play- 
 ing which their nurses use with children, and the weighing 
 
332 BURKE 
 
 and swinging used afterwards by themselves as a favourite 
 amusement, evince this very sufficiently. Most people must 
 have observed the sort of sense they have had on being 
 swiftly drawn in an easy coach on a smooth turf, with grad- 
 ual ascents and declivities. This will give a better idea of 
 the beautiful, and point out its probable cause better, than 
 almost anything else. On the contrary, when one is hurried 
 over a rough, rocky, broken road, the pain felt by these 
 sudden inequalities shows why similar sights, feelings, and 
 sounds, are so contrary to beauty: and with regard to the 
 feeling, it is exactly the same in its effect, or very nearly the 
 same, whether, for instance, I move my hand along the sur- 
 face of a body of a certain shape, or whether such a body is 
 moved along my hand. But to bring this analogy of the 
 senses home to the eye; if a body presented to that sense 
 has such a waving surface, that the rays of light reflected 
 from.it are in a continual insensible deviation from the 
 strongest to the weakest (which is always the case in a sur- 
 face gradually unequal), it must be exactly similar in its 
 effects on the eye and touch; upon the one of which it 
 operates directly, on the other indirectly. And this body 
 will be beautiful if the lines which compose its surface are 
 not continued, even so varied, ina manner that may weary 
 or dissipate the attention. The variation itself must be con- 
 tinually varied. | 
 
 SECTION XXIV: 
 
 CONCERNING SMALLNESS 
 
 To avoid a sameness which may arise from the too fre- 
 quent repetition of the same reasonings, and of illustrations 
 of the same nature, I will not enter very minutely into every 
 particular that regards beauty, as it is founded on the dis- 
 position of its quantity, or its quantity itself. In speaking 
 of the magnitude of bodies there is great uncertainty, be- 
 cause the ideas of great and small are terms almost entirely 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 333 
 
 relative to the species of the objects, which are infinite. It 
 is true, that having once fixed the species of any object, and 
 the dimensions common in the individuals of that species, 
 we may observe some that exceed, and some that fall short 
 of, the ordinary standard: those which greatly exceed are, 
 by that excess, provided the species itself be not very small, 
 rather great and terrible than beautiful ; but as in the animal 
 world, and in a good measure in the vegetable world like- 
 wise, the qualities that constitute beauty may possibly be 
 united to things of greater dimensions; when they are so 
 united, they constitute a species something different both 
 from the sublime and beautiful, which I have before called 
 fine; but this kind, I imagine, has not such a power on the 
 passions, either as vast bodies have which are endued with 
 the correspondent qualities of the sublime; or as the quali- 
 ties of beauty have when united in a small object. The 
 affection produced by large bodies adorned with the spoils 
 of beauty, is a tension continually relieved; which ap- 
 proaches to the nature of mediocrity. But if I were to say 
 how I find myself affected upon such occasions, I should say 
 that the sublime suffers less by being united to some of the 
 qualities of beauty, than beauty does by being joined to 
 greatness of quantity, or any othef properties of the sublime. 
 There is something so overruling in whatever inspires us with 
 awe, in all things which belong ever so remotely to terror, 
 that nothing else can stand in their presence. There lie the 
 qualities of beauty either dead or unoperative; or at most 
 exerted to mollify the rigour and sternness of the terror, 
 which is the natural concomitant of greatness. Besides the 
 extraordinary great in every species, the opposite to this, 
 the dwarfish and diminutive, ought to be considered. Little- 
 ness, merely as such, has nothing contrary to the idea of 
 beauty. The humming-bird, both in shape and colouring, 
 yields to none of the winged species, of which it is the least ; 
 and perhaps his beauty is enhanced by his smallness. But 
 there are animals, which, when they are extremely small, are 
 rarely (if ever) beautiful. There is a dwarfish size of men 
 
334 BURKE 
 
 and women, which is almost constantly so gross and massive 
 in comparison of their height, that they present us with a 
 very disagreeable image. But should a man be found not 
 above two or three feet high, supposing such a person to 
 have all the parts of his body of a delicacy suitable to such 
 a size, and otherwise endued with the common qualities 
 of other beautiful bodies, I am pretty well convinced that a 
 person of such a stature might be considered as beautiful ; 
 might be the object of love; might give us very pleasing 
 ideas on viewing him. The only thing which could possibly 
 interpose to check our pleasure is, that such creatures, how- 
 ever formed, are unusual, and are often therefore considered 
 as something monstrous. The large and gigantic, though 
 very compatible with the sublime, is contrary to the beauti- 
 ful. It is impossible to suppose a giant the object of love. 
 When we let our imagination loose in romance, the ideas we 
 naturally annex to that size are those of tyranny, cruelty, 
 injustice, and everything horrid and abominable. We paint 
 the giant ravaging the country, plundering the innocent 
 traveller, and afterwards gorged with his half-living flesh: 
 such are Polyphemus, Cacus, and others, who make so great 
 a figure in romances and heroic poems. The event we attend 
 to with the greatest satisfaction is their defeat and death. I 
 do not remember, in all that multitude of deaths with which 
 the “ Iliad ”’ is filled, that the fall of any man, remarkable for 
 his great stature and strength, touches us with pity; nor 
 does it appear that the author, so well read in human nature, 
 ever intended it should. It is Simoisius, in the soft bloom 
 of youth, torn from his parents, who tremble for a courage 
 so ill suited to his strength; it is another hurried by war 
 from the new embraces of his bride, young and fair, anda 
 novice to the field, who melts us by his untimely fate. 
 Achilles, in spite of the many qualities of beauty which 
 Homer has bestowed on his outward form, and the many 
 great virtues with which he has adorned his mind, can never 
 make us love him. It may be observed, that Homer has 
 given the Trojans, whose fate he has designed to excite our 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 335 
 
 compassion, infinitely more of the amiable, social virtues than 
 he has distributed among his Greeks. With regard to the 
 Trojans, the passion he chooses to raise is pity; pity is a 
 passion founded on love; and these lesser, and if I may say 
 domestic virtues, are certainly the most amiable. But he has 
 made the Greeks far their superiors in the politic and mili- 
 tary virtues. The councils of Priam are weak; the arms of 
 Hector comparatively feeble; his courage far below that of 
 Achilles. Yet we love Priam more than Agamemnon, and 
 Hector more than his conqueror Achilles. Admiration is 
 the passion which Homer would excite in favour of the 
 Greeks, and he has done it by bestowing on them the virtues 
 which have but little to do with love. This short digres- 
 sion is perhaps not wholly beside our purpose, where our 
 business is to show that objects of great dimensions are in- 
 compatible with beauty, the more incompatible as they are 
 greater; whereas the small, if ever they fail of beauty, this 
 failure is not to be attributed to their size. 
 
 SECTION XXV 
 
 OF COLOUR 
 
 WITH regard to colour, the disquisition is almost infinite , 
 but I conceive the principles laid down in the beginning of 
 this part are sufficient to account for the effects of them all, 
 as well as for the agreeable effects of transparent bodies, 
 whether fluid or solid. Suppose Ilookat a bottle of muddy 
 liquor, of a blue or red colour; the blue or red rayscan not 
 pass clearly to the eye, but are suddenly and unequally 
 stopped by the intervention of little opaque bodies, which 
 without preparation change the idea, and change it too into 
 one disagreeable in its own nature, conformably to the prin- 
 ciples laid down in Sect. 24. But when the ray passes with- 
 out such opposition through the glass or liquor, when the 
 glass or liquor is quite transparent, the light is sometimes 
 softened in the passage, which makes it more agreeable even 
 
336 BURKE 
 
 as light; and the liquor reflecting all the rays of its proper 
 colour evenly, it has such an effect on the eye, as smooth 
 opaque bodies have on the eye and touch. So that the 
 pleasure here is compounded of the softness of the trans- 
 mitted, and the evenness of the reflected light. This pleas- 
 ure may be heightened by the common principles in other 
 things, if the shape of the glass which holds the transparent 
 liquor be so judiciously varied, as to present the colour gradu- 
 ally and interchangeably, weakened and strengthened with 
 all the variety which judgment in affairs of this nature shall 
 suggest. On a review ofall that has been said of the effects, . 
 as well as the causes of both, it will appear that the sublime 
 and beautiful are built on principles very different, and that 
 their affections are as different: the great has terror for its 
 basis, which, when it is modified, causes that emotion in the 
 mind, which I have called astonishment; the beautiful is 
 founded on mere positive pleasure, and excites in the soul 
 that feeling which is called love. Their causes have made 
 the subject of this fourth part. 
 
PART FIFTH 
 
 SECTION I 
 OF WORDS 
 
 ATURAL objects affect us by the laws of that connec- 
 tion which Providence has established between certain 
 motions and configurations of bodies, and certain consequent 
 feelings in our mind. Painting affects in the same manner, 
 but with the superadded pleasure of imitation. Architecture 
 affects by the laws of nature and the law of reason; from 
 which latter result the rules of proportion, which make a 
 work to be praised or censured, in the whole or in some 
 part, when the end for which it was. designed is or is not 
 properly answered. But as to words; they seem to me to 
 affect us in a manner very different from that in which we . 
 are affected by natural objects, or by painting or architect- 
 ure; yet words have as considerable a share in exciting ideas 
 of beauty and of the sublime as many of those, and some- 
 times a much greater than any of them; therefore an inquiry 
 into the manner by which they excite such emotions is far 
 from being unnecessary in a discourse of this kind. 
 
 SECTION II 
 
 THE COMMON EFFECTS OF POETRY, NOT BY RAISING IDEAS 
 OF THINGS 
 
 THE common notion of the power of poetry and elo- 
 quence, as well as that of words in ordinary conversation, is, 
 that they affect the mind by raising in it ideas of those 
 things for which custom has appointed them to stand. 
 To examine the truth of this notion, it may be requisite to 
 
 22 337 
 
338 BURKE 
 
 observe that words may be divided into three sorts. The 
 first are such as represent many simple ideas united by nature 
 to form some one determinate composition, as man, horse, 
 tree, castle, etc. These I call aggregate words. The second 
 are they that stand for one simple idea of such compositions, 
 and no more; as red, blue, round, square, and the like. 
 These I call simple abstract words. The third are those 
 which are formed by an union, an arbitrary union of both 
 the others, and of the various relations between them in 
 greater or lesser degrees of complexity; as virtue, honour, 
 persuasion, magistrate, and the like. These I call compound 
 abstract words. Words, I am sensible, are capable of being 
 classed into more curious distinctions; but these seem to 
 be natural, and enough for our purpose; and they are dis- 
 posed in that order in which they are commonly taught, and 
 in which the mind gets the ideas they are substituted for. 
 I shall begin with the third sort of words; compound ab- 
 stracts, such as virtue, honour, persuasion, docility. Of these 
 I.am convinced, that whatever power they may have on the 
 passions, they do not derive it from any representation 
 raised in the mind of the things for which they stand. As 
 compositions, they.are not real essences, and hardly cause, I 
 think, any real ideas. Nobody, I believe, immediately on 
 hearing the sounds, virtue, liberty, or honour, conceives any 
 precise notions of the particular modes of action and think- 
 ing, together with the mixed and simple ideas, and the 
 several relations of them for which these words are sub- 
 stituted; neither has he any general idea compounded of 
 them; for if he had, then some of those particular ones, 
 though indistinct perhaps, and confused, might come soon _~ 
 to be perceived. But this, I take it, is hardly ever the case. 
 For, put yourself upon analyzing one of these words, and 
 you must reduce it from one set of general words to another, 
 and then into the simple abstracts and aggregates, in a 
 much longer series than may be at first imagined, before any 
 real idea emerges to light, before you come to discover any- 
 thing like the first principles of such compositions; and 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 339 
 
 when you have made such a discovery of the original ideas, 
 the effect of the composition is utterly lost. A train of 
 thinking of this sort is much too long to be pursued in the 
 ordinary ways of conversation ; nor is it at all necessary that 
 it should. Such words are in reality but mere sounds; but 
 they are sounds which being used on particular occasions, 
 - wherein we receive some good, or suffer some evil; or see 
 others affected with good or evil; or which we hear applied 
 to other interesting things or events; and being applied in 
 such a variety of cases, that we know readily by habit to what 
 things they belong, they produce in the mind, whenever 
 they are afterwards mentioned, effects similar to those of 
 their occasions. The sounds being often used without ref- 
 erence to any particular occasion, and carrying still their 
 first impressions, they at last utterly lose their connection 
 with the particular occasions that gave rise to them; yet the 
 sound, without any annexed notion, continues to operate a& 
 before. 
 
 SECTION III 
 GENERAL WORDS BEFORE IDEAS 
 
 Mr. LOCKE has somewhere observed, with his usual saga- 
 city, that most general words, those belonging to virtue and 
 vice, good and evil especially, are taught before the particular 
 modes of action to which they belong are presented to the 
 mind; and with them, the love of the one, and the abhor- 
 rence of the other; for the minds of children are so ductile, 
 that a nurse, or any person about achild, by seeming pleased 
 or displeased with anything, or even any word, may give the 
 disposition of the child a similar turn. When, afterwards, 
 the several occurrences in life come to be applied to these 
 words, and that which is pleasant often appears under the 
 name of evil; and what is disagreeable to nature is called 
 good and virtuous; a strange confusion of ideas and affec- 
 tions arises in the minds of many; and an appearance of no 
 small contradiction between their notions and their actions. 
 
340 | BURKE 
 
 There. are many who love virtue and who detest vice, and 
 this not from hypocrisy or affectation, who notwithstand- 
 ing very frequently act ill and wickedly in particulars with- 
 out the least remorse; because these particular occasions 
 never came into view, when the passions on the side of vir- 
 tue were so warmly affected by certain words heated origi- 
 nally by the breath of others ; and for this reason, it is hard ° 
 to repeat certain sets of words, though owned by themselves 
 unoperative, without being in some degree affected; espe- 
 cially if a warm and affecting tone of voice accompanies 
 them, as suppose, 
 
 “ Wise, valiant, generous, good, and great.” 
 
 These words, by having no application, ought to be unoper- 
 ative; but when words commonly sacred to great occasions 
 are used, we areaffected by them even without the occasions. 
 When words which have been generally so applied are put 
 together without any rational view, or in such a manner that 
 they do not rightly agree with each other, the style is called 
 bombast. And it requires in several cases much good sense 
 and experience to be guarded against the force of such 
 language; for when propriety is neglected, a greater number 
 of these affecting words may be taken into the service, and 
 a greater variety may be indulged in combining them, , 
 
 SECTION IV 
 THE EFFECT OF WORDS 
 
 IF words have all their possible extent of power, three 
 effects arise in the mind of the hearer. The first is, the 
 sound; the second, the picture, or representation of the 
 thing signified by the sound; the third is, the affection of 
 the soul produced by one or by both of the foregoing. 
 Compounded abstract words, of which we have been speak- 
 ing (honor, justice, liberty, and the like), produce the first 
 and the last of these effects, but not the second. Simple 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 341 
 
 abstracts are used to signify some one simple idea without 
 much adverting to others which may chance to attend it, as 
 blue, green, hot, cold, and the like; these are capable of 
 affecting all three of the purposes of words; as the aggre- 
 gate words, man, castle, horse, etc., are ina yet higher degree. 
 But I am of opinion, that the most general effect, even of 
 these. words, does not arise from their forming pictures of 
 the several things they would represent in the imagination; 
 because, on a very diligent examination of my own mind, 
 and getting others to consider theirs, I do not find that once 
 in twenty times any such picture is formed, and when it is, 
 there is most commonly a particular effort of the imagin- 
 ation for that purpose. But the aggregate words operate, 
 as I said of the compound-abstracts, not by presenting any 
 image to the mind, but by having from use the same effect 
 on being mentioned, that their original has when it is seen. 
 Suppose we were to read a passage to this effect: ‘‘ The 
 river Danube rises in a moist and mountainous soil in the 
 heart of Germany, where, winding to and fro, it waters sev- 
 eral principalities, until, turning into Austria, and laving 
 the walls of Vienna, it passes into Hungary; there witha 
 vast flood, augmented by the Save and the Drave, it quits 
 Christendom, and rolling through the barbarous countries 
 which border on Tartary, it enters by many mouths in the 
 Black Sea.” In this description many things are mentioned, 
 as mountains, rivers, cities, the sea, etc. But let anybody 
 examine himself, and see whether he has had impressed on 
 his imagination any pictures of a river, mountain, watery 
 soil, Germany, etc. Indeed it is impossible, in the rapidity 
 and quick succession of words in conversation, to have ideas 
 both of the sound of the word, and of the thing represented ; 
 besides, some words, expressing real essences, are so mixed 
 with others of a general and nominal import, that it is im- 
 practicable to jump from sense to thought, from particulars 
 to generals, from things to words, in such a manner as to 
 answer the purposes of life; nor is it necessary that we 
 should. | 
 
342 BURKE 
 
 SECTION V 
 
 EXAMPLES THAT WORDS MAY AFFECT WITHOUT 
 RAISING IMAGES 
 
 I FIND it very hard to persuade several that their passions 
 are affected by words from whence they have no ideas ; and 
 yet harder to convince them that in the ordinary course of 
 conversation we are sufficiently understood without raising 
 any images of the things concerning which we speak. It 
 seems to be an odd subject of dispute with any man, whether 
 he has ideas in his mind or not. Of this, at first view, every 
 man, in his own forum, ought to judge without appeal. 
 But, strange as it may appear, we are often at a loss to know 
 what ideas we have of things, or whether we have any ideas 
 at all upon some subjects. It even requires a good deal of 
 attention to be thoroughly satisfied on this head. Since I 
 wrote these papers, I found two very striking instances of 
 the possibility there is, that a man may hear words without 
 having any idea of the things which they represent, and yet 
 afterwards be capable of returning them to others, combined 
 in a new way, and with great propriety, energy, and instruc- 
 tion. The first instance is that of Mr. Blacklock, a poet 
 blind from his birth. Few men blessed with the most per- 
 fect sight can describe visual objects with more spirit and 
 justness than this blind man ; which can not possibly be 
 attributed to his having aclearer conception of the things 
 he describes than is common to other persons. Mr. Spence, 
 in an elegant preface which he has written to the works of 
 this poet, reasons very ingeniously, and, I imagine, for the 
 most part, very rightly, upon the cause of this extraordinary 
 phenomenon ; but I can not altogether agree with him, that 
 some improprieties in language and thought, which occur in 
 these poems, have arisen from the blind poet’s imperfect 
 conception of visual objects, since such improprieties, and 
 much greater, may be found in writers even of a higher class 
 than Mr. Blacklock, and who, notwithstanding, possessed 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 343 
 
 the faculty of seeing in its full perfection. Here is a poet 
 ' doubtless as much affected by his own descriptions as any 
 that reads them can be; and yet he is affected with this 
 strong enthusiasm by things of which he neither has, nor 
 can possibly have, any idea further than that of a bare 
 sound: and why may not those who read his works be affec- 
 ted in the same manner that he was; with as little of any real 
 ideas of the things described? The second instance is of 
 Mr. Saunderson, professor of mathematics in the University 
 of Cambridge. This learned man had acquired great knowl- 
 edge in natural philosophy, in astronomy, and whatever 
 sciences depend upon mathematical skill, What was the 
 most extraordinary and the most to my purpose, he gave 
 excellent lectures upon light and colours; and this man 
 taught others the theory of those ideas which they had, and 
 which he himself undoubtedly had not. But it is probable 
 that the words red, blue, green, answered to him as well as 
 the ideas of the colours themselves ; for the ideas of greater 
 or lesser degrees of refrangibility being applied to these 
 words, and the blind man being instructed in what other re- 
 spects they were found to agree or to disagree, it was as easy 
 for him to reason upon the words as if he had been fully master 
 of the ideas. Indeed it must be owned he could makeno new 
 discoveries in the way of experiment. He did nothing but 
 what we do every day incommon discourse. When I wrote 
 this last sentence, and used the words every day and com- 
 mon discourse, I had no images in my mind of any succes- 
 sion of time; nor of men in conference with each other; nor 
 do I imagine that the reader will have any such ideas on 
 reading it. Neither when I spoke of red, or blue, and green, 
 as well as refrangibility, had I these several colours, or the 
 rays of light passing into a different medium, and there di- 
 verted from their course, painted before me in the way of 
 images. I know very well that the mind possesses a faculty 
 of raising such images at pleasure ; but then an act of the 
 will is necessary to this ; and in ordinary conversation or 
 reading it is very rarely that any image at all is excited in 
 
2AA BURKE 
 
 the mind. IfI say, “I shall go to Italy next summer,” TI 
 am well understood. Yet I believe nobody has by this 
 painted in his imagination the exact figure of the speaker 
 passing by land or by water, or both ; sometimes on horse- 
 back, sometimes in a carriage: with all the particulars of the 
 journey. Still less has he any idea of Italy, the country to 
 which I proposed to go; or of the greenness of the fields, 
 the ripening of the fruits, and the warmth of the air, with 
 the change to this from a different season, which are the 
 ideas for which the word summer is substituted ; but least 
 of all has he any image from the word next ; for this word 
 stands for the idea of many summers, with the exclusion of 
 all but one: and surely the man who says next summer has 
 no images of such a succession, and such an exclusion. In 
 short, it is not only of those ideas which are commonly 
 called abstract, and of which no image at all can be formed, 
 but even of particular, real beings, that we converse with- 
 out having any idea of them excited in the imagination ; as 
 will certainly appear on a diligent examination of our own 
 minds. Indeed, so little does poetry depend for its effect 
 onthe power of raising sensible images, that I am convinced 
 it would lose a very considerable part of its energy, if this were 
 the necessary result of all description. Because that union 
 of affecting words, which is the most powerful of all poetical 
 instruments, would frequently lose its force along with its 
 propriety and consistency, if the sensible images were always 
 excited. There is not, perhaps,in the whole “AZ neid” amore 
 grand and laboured passage than the description of Vulcan’s 
 cavern in Etna, and the works that are there carried on. 
 Virgil dwells particularly on the formation of the thunder 
 which he describes unfinished under the hammers of the 
 Cyclops. But what are the principles of this extraordinary 
 composition ? 
 
 Tres imbris torti radios, tres nubis aquosz 
 Addiderant; rutili tres ignis, et alitis austri : 
 Fulgores nunc terrificos, sonitumque, metumque 
 Miscebant operi, flammisque sequacibus iras. 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 345 
 
 This seems to me admirably sublime: yet if we attend 
 coolly to the kind of sensible images which a combination 
 of ideas of this sort must form, the chimeras of madmen can 
 not appear more wild and absurd than such a picture. 
 “ Three rays of twisted showers, three of watery clouds, three 
 of fire, and three of the winged south wind; then mixed they 
 in the work terrific lightnings, and sound, and fear, and 
 anger, with pursuing flames.” This strange composition is 
 formed into a gross body; it is hammered by the Cyclops, it 
 is in part polished and partly continues rough. The truth 
 is, if poetry gives us a noble assemblage of words corre- 
 sponding to many noble ideas, which are connected by cir- 
 cumstances of time or place, or related to each other as cause 
 and effect, or associated in any natural way, they may be 
 moulded together in any form, and perfectly answer their 
 end. The picturesque connection is not demanded; be- 
 cause no real picture is formed; nor is the effect of the de- 
 scription at all the less upon this account. What is said of 
 Helen by Priam and the old men of his council, is generally 
 thought to give us the highest possible idea of that fatal 
 beauty. 
 
 Ob véueowc, Tp@ac Kai eixvpuidac ’A yaLod¢ 
 
 To190" agi yuvarki moddv ypdvov adyea racyeww 
 
 Alvég abavaryor Hene ei¢ Ora Eouxev, 
 “ They cried,‘ Nowonder such celestial charms 
 
 For nine long years have set the world in arms ; 
 
 What winning graces! what majestic mien! 
 
 She moves a goddess, and she looks a queen.’” 
 
 POPE, 
 
 Here is not one word said of the particulars of her beauty; 
 nothing which can in the least help us to any precise idea of 
 her person; but yet we are much more touched by this 
 manner of mentioning her, than by those long and laboured 
 descriptions of Helen, whether handed down by tradition, 
 or formed by fancy, which are to be met with in some authors. 
 I am sure it affects me much more than the minute descrip- 
 tion which Spenser has given of Belphebe; though I own 
 
346 BURKE 
 
 that there are parts in that description, as there are in all the 
 descriptions of that excellent writer, extremely fine and 
 poetical. The terrible picture which Lucretius has drawn of 
 religion in order to display the magnanimity of his philo- . 
 sophical hero in opposing her, is thought to be designed 
 with great boldness and spirit :— 
 
 Humana ante oculos feedé cum vita jaceret, 
 In terris, oppressa gravi sub religione, 
 
 Quez caput e ceeli regionibus ostendebat 
 Horribili super aspectu mortalibus instans ; 
 Primus Graius homo mortales tollere contra 
 Est oculos ausus. 
 
 What idea do you derive from so excellent a picture? none 
 at all, most certainly: neither has the poet said a single 
 word which might in the least serve to mark a single limb or 
 feature of the phantom, which he intended to represent in 
 all the horrors imagination can conceive. In reality, poetry 
 and rhetoric do not succeed in exact description so well as 
 painting does; their business is, to affect rather by sympathy 
 than imitation; to display rather the effect of things on the 
 minds of the speaker, or of others, than to present a clear 
 idea of the things themselves. This is their most extensive 
 province, and that in which they succeed the best. 
 
 SECTION VI 
 POETRY NOT STRICTLY AN IMITATIVE ART 
 
 HENCE we may observe that poetry, taken in its most 
 general sense, can not with strict propriety be called an art 
 of imitation. It is indeed an imitation so far as it describes 
 the manners and passions of men which their words can ex- 
 press ; where “ animi motus effert interprete lingua.” There 
 it is strictly imitation ; and all merely dramatic poetry is of 
 this sort. But descriptive poetry operates chiefly by sub- 
 stitution; by the means of sounds, which by custom have’ 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 347 
 
 the effect of realities. “Nothing is an imitation further than 
 as it resembles some other thing; and words undoubtedly 
 have no sort of resemblance to the ideas for which they 
 stand. 
 
 Sepa VL L 
 HOW WORDS INFLUENCE THE PASSIONS 
 
 Now, as words affect, not by any original power, but by 
 representation, it might be supposed, that their influence 
 over the passions should be but light; yet it is quite other- 
 wise; for we find by experience, that eloquence and poetry 
 are as capable, nay indeed much more capable, of making 
 deep and lively impressions than any other arts, and even 
 than nature itself in very many cases. And this arises 
 chiefly from these three causes. First, that we take an ex- 
 traordinary part in the passions of others, and that we are 
 easily affected and brought into sympathy by any tokens 
 which are shown of them; and there are no tokens which 
 can express all the circumstances of most passions so fully 
 as words; so that if a person speaks upon any subject, he 
 can not only convey the subject to you, but likewise the 
 manner in which he is himself affected by it. Certain it is, 
 that the influence of most things on our passions is not so 
 much from the things themselves, as from our opinions con- 
 cerning them; and these again depend very much on the 
 opinions of other men, conveyable for the most part by 
 ‘words only. Secondly, there are many things of a very af- 
 fecting nature, which can seldom occur in the reality, but 
 the words that represent them often do; and thus they have 
 an opportunity of making a deep impression and taking root 
 in the mind, whilst the idea of the reality was transient ; and 
 to some perhaps never really occurred in any shape, to whom 
 it is notwithstanding very affecting, as war, death, famine, © 
 etc. Besides many ideas have never been at all presented to 
 the senses of any men but by words, as God, angels, devils, 
 
348 BURKE 
 
 heaven, and hell, all of which have however a great in- 
 fluence over the passions. Thirdly, by words we have it in 
 our power to make such combinations as we can not possibly 
 do otherwise. By this power of combining we are able, by 
 the addition of well-chosen circumstances, to give a new life 
 and force to the simple object. In painting we may rep- 
 resent any fine figure we please; but we never can give it 
 those enlivening touches which it may receive from words. 
 To represent an angel in a picture, you can only drawa 
 beautiful young man winged: but what painting can furnish 
 out anything so grand as the addition of one word, “the 
 angel of the Lord?” It is true, I have here no clear idea; 
 but these words affect the mind more than the sensible 
 image did; which is all I contend for. A picture of Priam 
 dragged to the altar’s foot, and there murdered, if it were 
 well. executed, would undoubtedly be very moving; but 
 there are very aggravating citchmstanens, which it could 
 never represent: 
 
 Sanguine foedantem guos ifse sacraverat ignes. 
 As a further instance, let us consider those lines of Milton, 
 
 where he describes the travels of the fallen angels through 
 their dismal habitation: 
 
 “ O’er many a dark and dreary vale 
 They passed, and many a region dolorous ; 
 O’er many a frozen, many a fiery Alp; 
 Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death, 
 A universe of death.” 
 
 Here is displayed the force of union in 
 “ Rocks, caves, lakes, dens, bogs, fens, and shades.” 
 
 which yet would lose the greatest part of their effect, if 
 they were not the 
 
 “Rocks, caves, lakes, dens, bogs, fens, and shades—of Death.” 
 
 This idea or this affection caused by a word, which noth- 
 ing but a word could annex to the others, raises a very 
 
ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 349 
 
 great degree of the sublime, and this sublime is raised yet 
 higher by what follows, a “universe of death.” Here are 
 again two ideas not presentable but by language, and an union 
 of them great and amazing beyond conception; if they may 
 properly be called ideas which present no distinct image to 
 the mind; but still it will be difficult to conceive how 
 words can move the passions which belong to real objects 
 without representing these objects clearly. This is difficult 
 to us, because we do not sufficiently distinguish, in our ob- 
 servations upon language, between a clear expression and a 
 strong expression. These are frequently confounded with 
 each other, though they are in reality extremely different. 
 The former regards the understanding, the latter belongs to 
 the passions. The one describesa thing as it is, the latter 
 describes it as it is felt. Now, asthereis a moving tone of 
 voice, an impassioned countenance, an agitated gesture, 
 which affect independently of the things about which they 
 are exerted, so there are words, and certain dispositions of 
 words, which being peculiarly devoted to passionate subjects, 
 and always used by those who are under the influence of any 
 passion, touch and move us more than those which far 
 more clearly and distinctly express the subject-matter. We 
 yield to sympathy what we refuse to description. The 
 truth is, all verbal description, merely as naked description, 
 though never so exact, conveys so poor and insufficient an 
 idea of the thing described, that it could scarcely have the 
 smallest effect, if the speaker did not callin to his aid those 
 modes of speech that mark a strong and lively feeling in 
 himself. Then, by the contagion of our passions, we catch 
 a fire already kindled in another, which probably might 
 never have been struck out by the object described. Words, 
 by strongly conveying the passions by those means which 
 we have already mentioned, fully compensate for their weak- 
 ness in other respects. It may be observed, that very pol- 
 ished languages, and such’as are praised for their superior 
 clearness and perspicuity, are generally deficient in strength, 
 The French language has that perfection and that defect. 
 
350 BURKE 
 
 Whereas the Oriental tongues, and in general the languages 
 of most unpolished people, have a great force and energy of 
 expression, and thisis but natural. Uncultivated people are 
 but ordinary observers of things, and not critical in distin- 
 guishing them; but, for that reason they admire more, and 
 are more affected with what they see, and therefore express 
 themselves in a warmer and more passionate manner. If 
 the affection be well conveyed, it will work its effect without 
 any clear idea, often without any idea at all of the thing which 
 has originally given rise to it. 
 
 It might be expected, from the fertility of the subject, 
 that I should consider poetry, as it regards the sublime and 
 beautiful, more at large; but it must be observed, that in 
 this light it has been often and well handledalready. It was 
 not my design to enter into the criticism of the sublime and 
 beautiful in any art, but to attempt to lay down such prin- 
 ciples as may tend to ascertain, to distinguish, and to form 
 a sort of standard for them; which purposes I thought 
 might be best effected by an inquiry into the properties of 
 such things in nature, as raise love and astonishment in us; 
 and by showing in what, manner they operated to produce 
 these passions. . Words were only so far to be considered as 
 to show upon what principle they were capable of being the 
 representatives of these natural things, and by what powers 
 they were able to affect us often as strongly asthe things they 
 represent, and sometimes much more strongly. 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE REVOLUTION 
 | IN FRANCE 
 
REFLECTIONS 
 
 ON THE 
 
 Mev on OU LON UN ERAN CE 
 
 AND ON 
 
 THE PROCEEDINGS IN CERTAIN SOCIETIES IN LONDON 
 RELATIVE TO THAT EVENT: 
 
 UNG watts bal ake 
 
 INTENDED TO HAVE BEEN SENT TO A GENTLEMAN IN PARIS 
 1790 
 
 lie may not be unnecessary to inform the reader that the following Reflec- 
 tions had their origin in a correspondence between the author and a very 
 young gentleman at Paris, who did him the honour of desiring his opinion 
 upon the important transactions which then, and ever since have, so much occu- 
 pied the attention of all men. An answer was written some time in the month 
 of October, 1789; but it was kept back upon prudential considerations. That 
 letter is alluded to in the beginning of the following sheets. It has been since 
 forwarded to the person to whom it was addressed. The reasons for the delay 
 in sending it were assigned in a short letter to the same gentleman. This pro- 
 duced on his part a newand pressing application for the author’s sentiments. 
 The author began a second and more full discussion on the subject. This he 
 had some thoughts of publishing early in the last spring; but the matter 
 gaining upon him, he found that what he had undertaken not only far ex- 
 ceeded the measure of a letter, but that its importance required rather a more 
 detailed consideration than at that time he had any leisure to bestow upon it. 
 However, having thrown down his first thoughts in the form of a letter, and, 
 indeed, when he sat down to write, having intended it for a private letter, he 
 found it difficult to change the form of address, when his sentiments had grown 
 into a greater extent and had received another direction. A different plan, he 
 is sensible, might be more favourable to a commodious division and distribution 
 of his matter, 
 
 EAR SIR,—You are pleased to call again, and with 
 
 some earnestness, for my thoughts on the late proceed- 
 
 ings in France. I will not give you reason to imagine that 
 
 I think my sentiments of such value as to wish myself to 
 23 one 
 
354 BURKE 
 
 be solicited about them. They are of too little consequence 
 to be very anxiously either communicated or withheld. It 
 was from attention to you, and to you only, that I hesitated 
 at the time when you first desired to receive them. In 
 the first letter I had the honour to write to you, and which 
 at length I send, I wrote neither for nor from any description 
 of men; nor shall I in this. My errors, ifany, are my own. 
 My reputation alone is to answer for them. 
 
 You see, Sir, by the long letter I have transmitted to you, 
 that, though I do most heartily wish that France may be 
 animated by a spirit of rational liberty, and that I think you 
 bound, in all honest policy, to provide a permanent body in 
 which that spirit may reside, and an effectual organ by which 
 it may act, it is my misfortune to entertain great doubts con- 
 cerning several material points in your late transactions. 
 
 You imagined, when you wrote last, that I might possibly 
 be reckoned among the approvers of certain proceedings in 
 France, from the solemn public seal of sanction they have 
 received from two clubs of gentlemen in London, called the 
 Constitutional Society, and the Revolution Society. 
 
 I certainly have the honour to belong to more clubs than 
 one in which the Constitution of this kingdom and the 
 principles of the glorious Revolution are held in high rever- 
 ence; and I reckon myself among the most forward in my 
 zeal for maintaining that Constitution and those principles in 
 their utmost purity and vigour. Itis because I doso that I 
 think it necessary forme that there should be no mistake. 
 Those who cultivate the memory of our Revolution, and those 
 who are attached to the Constitution of this kingdom, will 
 take good care how they are involved with persons who, under 
 the pretext of zeal towards the Revolution and Constitution, 
 too frequently wander from their true principles, and are ready 
 on every occasion to depart from the firm, but cautious and de- 
 liberate, spirit which produced the one and which presides in 
 the other. Before I proceedto answer the more material par- 
 ticulars in your letter, I shall beg leave to give you such infor- 
 mationas I have been able to obtain of the two clubs which 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 355 
 
 have thought proper, as bodies, to interfere in the concerns of 
 France,—first assuring you that Iam not, and that I have 
 never been, a member of either of those societies. 
 
 The first, calling itself the Constitutional Society, or 
 Society for Constitutional Information, or by some such title, 
 is, I believe, of seven or eight years’ standing. The institu- 
 tion of this society appears to be of a charitable, and so far 
 of a laudable nature: it was intended for the circulation, at 
 the expense of the members, of many books which few others 
 would be at the expense of buying, and which might lie on 
 the hands of the booksellers, to the great loss of an useful 
 body of men. Whether the books so charitably circulated 
 were ever as charitably read is more than I know. Possibly 
 several of them have been exported to France, and, like goods 
 not in request here, may with you have found a market. I 
 have heard much talk of the lights to be drawn from books 
 that are sent from hence. What improvements they have had 
 in their passage (as it is said some liquors are meliorated by 
 crossing the sea) I cannot tell; but I never heard a man of 
 common judgment or the least degree of information speak 
 a word in praise of the greater part of the publications cir- 
 culated by that society; nor have their proceedings been 
 accounted, except by some of themselves, as of any serious 
 consequence. 
 
 Your National Assembly seems to entertain much the 
 same opinion that I do of this poor charitable club. Asa 
 nation, you reserved the whole stock of your eloquent ac- 
 knowledgments for the Revolution Society, when their 
 fellows in the Constitutional were in equity entitled to some 
 share. Since you have selected the Revolution Society as 
 the great object of your national thanks and praises, you 
 will think me excusable in making its late conduct the sub- 
 ject of my observations. The National Assembly of France 
 has given importance to these gentlemen by adopting them ; 
 and they return the favour by acting as a committee in Eng- 
 land for extending the principles of the National Assembly. 
 Henceforward we must consider them as a kind of privileged 
 
356 BURKE 
 
 persons, as no inconsiderable members in the diplomatic 
 body. This is one among the revolutions which have given 
 splendour to obscurity and distinction to undiscerned merit. 
 Until very lately Ido not recollect to have heard of this club. 
 Iam quite sure that it never occupied a moment of my 
 thoughts,—nor, I believe, those of any person out of their 
 own set. I find, upon inquiry, that, on the anniversary of 
 the Revolution in 1688, a club of Dissenters, but of what 
 denomination I know not, have long had the custom of hear- 
 ing a sermon in one of their churches, and that afterwards 
 they spent the day cheerfully, as other clubs do, at the 
 tavern. But I never heard that any public measure or poli- 
 tical system, much less that the merits of the constitution of 
 any foreign nation, had been the subject of a formal proceed- 
 ing at their festivals, until,to my inexpressible surprise, I 
 found them in a sort of public capacity, by a congratulatory 
 address, giving an authoritative sanction to the proceedings 
 of the National Assembly in France. 
 
 In the ancient principles and conduct of the club, so far at 
 least as they were declared, I see nothing to which I could 
 take exception. I think it very probable, that, for some 
 purpose, new members may have entered among them,—and 
 that some truly Christian politicians, who love to dispense 
 benefits, but are careful to conceal the hand which distributes 
 the dole, may have made them the instruments of their pious 
 designs. Whatever 1 may have reason to suspect concern- 
 ing private management, I shall speak of nothing as of a cer- 
 tainty but what is public. 
 
 For one, I should be sorry to be thought directly or in- 
 directly concerned in their proceedings. I certainly take 
 my full share, along with the rest of the world, in my indi- 
 vidual and private capacity, in speculating on what has been 
 done, or is doing, on the public stage, in any place, ancient 
 or modern,—in the republic of Rome, or the republic of 
 Paris; but having no general apostolical mission, being a 
 citizen of a particular state, and being bound up, in a con- 
 siderable degree, by its public will, I should think it at least 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 357 
 
 improper and irregular for me to open a formal public cor- 
 respondence with the actual government of a foreign nation, 
 without the express authority of the government under 
 which I live. 
 
 I should be still more unwilling to enter into that corre- 
 spondence under anything like an equivocal description, 
 which to many, unacquainted with our usages, might make 
 the address in which I joined appear as the act of persons in 
 some sort of corporate capacity, acknowledged by the laws 
 of this kingdom, and authorized to speak the sense of some 
 part of it. On account of the ambiguity and uncertainty of 
 unauthorized general descriptions, and of the deceit which 
 may be practised under them, and not from mere formality, 
 the House of Commons would reject the most sneaking peti- 
 tion for the most trifling object, under that mode of signa- 
 ture to which you have thrown open the folding-doors of 
 your presence-chamber, and have ushered into your National 
 Assembly with as much ceremony and parade, and with as 
 great a bustle of applause, as if you had been visited by the 
 whole representative majesty of the whole English nation. If 
 what this society has thought proper to send forth had been 
 a piece of argument, it would have signified little whose 
 argument it was. It would be neither the more nor the less 
 convincing on account of the party it came from. But this 
 is only a vote andresolution. It stands solely on authority ; 
 and in this case it is the mere authority of individuals, few of 
 whom appear. Their signatures ought, in my opinion, to 
 have been annexed to their instrument. The world would 
 then have the means of knowing how many they are, who 
 they are, and of what value their opinions may be, from their 
 personal abilities, from their knowledge, their experience, or 
 their lead and authority in this state. To me, who am but 
 a plain man, the proceeding looks a little too refined and too 
 ingenious; it has too much the air of a political stratagem, 
 adopted for the sake of giving, under a high-sounding name, 
 an importance to the public declarations of this club, which, 
 when the matter came to be closely inspected, they did not 
 
358 BURKE 
 
 altogether so well deserve. It isa policy that has very much 
 the complexion of a fraud. 
 
 I flatter myself that I love a manly, moral, regulated liberty 
 as well as any gentleman of that society, be he who he will; 
 and perhaps I have given as good proofs of my attachment 
 to that cause, in the whole course of my public conduct. I 
 think I envy liberty as little as they do to any other nation. 
 But I can not stand forward, and give praise or blame to any- 
 thing which relates to human actions and human concerns 
 on a simple view of the object, as it stands stripped of every 
 relation, in all the nakedness and solitude of metaphysical 
 abstraction. Circumstances (which with some gentlemen 
 pass for nothing) give in reality to every political principle 
 its distinguishing colour and discriminating effect. The cir- 
 cumstances are what render every civil and political scheme 
 beneficial or noxious to mankind. Abstractedly speaking, 
 government, as well as liberty, is good; yet could I, in com- 
 mon sense, ten years ago, have felicitated France on her 
 enjoyment of a government (for she then had a government), 
 without inquiry what the nature of that government was, or 
 how it was administered? Can I now congratulate the same 
 nation upon its freedom? Is it because liberty in the ab- 
 stract may be classed amongst the blessings of mankind, 
 that I am seriously to felicitate a madman who has escaped 
 from the protecting restraint and wholesome darkness of his 
 cell on his restoration to the enjoyment of light and liberty? 
 Am I to congratulate a highwayman and murderer who has 
 broken prison upon the recovery of his natural rights ? This 
 would be to act over again the scene of the criminals con- 
 demned to the galleys, and their heroic deliverer, the meta- 
 physic Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance. 
 
 When I see the spirit of liberty in action, I see a strong 
 principle at work; and this, for a while, is all I can possibly 
 know of it. The wild gas, the fixed air, is plainly broke 
 loose; but we ought to suspend our judgment until the 
 first effervescence is a little subsided, till the liquor is cleared, 
 and until we see something deeper than the agitation of a 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 359 
 
 troubled and frothy surface. I must be tolerably sure, be- 
 fore I venture publicly to congratulate men upon a blessing, 
 that they have really received one. Flattery corrupts both 
 the receiver and the giver; and adulation is not of more 
 service to the people than to kings. I should therefore 
 suspend my congratulations on the new liberty of France, 
 until I was informed how it had been combined with govern- 
 ment, with public force, with the discipline and obedience of 
 armies, with the collection of an effective and well-distributed 
 revenue, with morality and religion, with solidity and prop- 
 erty, with peace and order, with civil and social manners. 
 All these (in their way) are good things, too; and without 
 them, liberty is not a benefit whilst it lasts, and is not likely 
 to continue long. The effect of liberty to individuals is, that 
 they may do what they please: we ought to see what it will 
 please them to do, before we risk congratulations, which 
 may be soon turned into complaints. Prudence would 
 dictate this in the case of separate, insulated, private men. 
 But liberty, when men act in bodies, is power. Considerate 
 people, before they declare themselves, will observe the use 
 which is made of power,—and particularly of so trying a 
 thing as new power in new persons, of whose principles, 
 tempers, and dispositions, they have little or no experience, 
 and in situations where those who appear the most stirring 
 in the scene may possibly not be the real movers. 
 
 All these considerations, however, were below the tran- 
 scendental dignity of the Revolution Society. Whilst I 
 continued in the country, from whence I had the honour of 
 writing to you, I had but an imperfect idea of their transac- 
 tions. On my coming to town, I sent for an account of 
 their proceedings, which had been published by their au- 
 thority, containing a sermon of Dr. Price, with the Duke de 
 Rochefoucault’s and the Archbishop of Aix’s letter and 
 several other documents annexed. The whole of that pub- 
 lication, with the manifest design of connecting the affairs of 
 France with those of England, by drawing us into an imitation 
 of the conduct of the National Assembly, gave me a consider- 
 
360 _ BURKE 
 
 able degree of uneasiness. The effect of that conduct 
 upon the power, credit, prosperity, and tranquillity of France 
 became every day more evident. The form of constitution 
 to be settled, for its future polity, became more clear. We 
 are now in a condition to discern with tolerable exactness 
 the true nature of the object held upto ourimitation. Ifthe 
 prudence of reserve and decorum dictates silence in some 
 circumstances, in others prudence of a higher order. may 
 justify us in speaking our thoughts. The beginnings of 
 confusion with us in England are at present feeble enough ; 
 but with you we have seen an infancy still more feeble 
 growing by momentsinto a strength to heap mountains upon 
 mountains, and to wage war with Heaven itself. When- 
 ever our neighbour's house is on fire, it can not be amiss for 
 the engines to play a little on ourown. Better to be de- 
 spised for too anxious apprehensions than ruined by too 
 confident a security. 
 
 Solicitous chiefly for the peace of my own country, but 
 by no means unconcerned for yours, I wish to communicate 
 more largely what was at first intended only for your pri- 
 vate satisfaction. I shall still keep your affairs in my eye, and 
 continue to address myself to you. Indulging myself in the 
 freedom of epistolary intercourse, I beg leave to throw out 
 my thoughts and express my feelings just as they arise in 
 my mind, with very little attention to formal method. I set 
 out with the proceedings of the Revolution Society ; but I 
 shall not confine myself to them. Is it possible I should? 
 It looks to me as if I were in a great crisis, not of the affairs 
 of France alone, but of all Europe, perhaps of more than 
 Europe. All circumstances taken together, the French 
 Revolution is the most astonishing that has hitherto hap- 
 pened in the world. The most wonderful things are brought 
 about in many instances by means the most absurd and ridic- 
 ulous, in the most ridiculous modes, and apparently by the 
 most contemptible instruments. Everything seems out of 
 nature in this strange chaos of levity and ferocity, and of all 
 sorts of crimes jumbled together with all sorts of follies. In 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 361 
 
 viewing this monstrous tragi-comic scene, the most opposite 
 passions necessarily succeed and sometimes mix with each 
 other in the mind: alternate contempt and indignation, alter- 
 nate laughter and tears, alternate scorn and horror. 
 
 It cannot, however, be denied that to some this strange 
 scene appeared in quite another point of view. Into them 
 it inspired no other sentiments than those of exultation and 
 rapture. They saw nothing in what has been done in France 
 but a firm and temperate exertion of freedom,—so consis- 
 tent, on the whole, with morals and with piety as to make it 
 deserving not only of the secular applause of dashing Mach- 
 iavelian politicians, but to render it a fit theme for all the 
 devout effusions of sacred eloquence, 
 
 On the forenoon of the fourth of November last, Doctor 
 Richard Price, a Non-Conforming minister of eminence, 
 preached at the Dissenting meeting-house of the Old Jewry, 
 to his club or society, a very extraordinary miscellaneous 
 sermon, in which there are some good moral and religious 
 sentiments, and not ill expressed, mixed up with a sort of 
 porridge of various political opinions and reflections; but 
 the Revolution in France is the grand ingredient in the 
 caldron. I consider the address transmitted by the Revolu- 
 tion Society to the National Assembly, through Earl Stan- 
 hope, as originating in the principles of the sermon, and as 
 a corollary from them. It was moved by the preacher of 
 that discourse. It was passed by those who came reeking 
 from the effect of the sermon, without any censure or quali- 
 fication, expressed or implied. If, however, any of the 
 gentlemen concerned shall wish to separate the sermon from 
 the resolution, they know how to acknowledge the one and 
 to disavow the other. They may doit: I can not. 
 
 For my part, I looked on that sermon as the public dec- 
 laration of a man much connected with literary caballers 
 and intriguing philosophers, with political theologians and 
 theological politicians, both at home and abroad. I know 
 they set him up asa sort of oracle; because, with the best 
 
362 BURKE 
 
 intentions in the world, he naturally philippizes, and chants 
 his prophetic song in exact unison with their designs. 
 
 That sermon is in a strain which I believe has not been 
 heard in this kingdom, in any of the pulpits which are toler- 
 ated or encouraged in it, since the year 1648,—when a pre- 
 decessor of Dr. Price, the Reverend Hugh Peters, made the 
 vault of the king’s own chapel at St. James’s ring with the 
 honour and privilege of the saints, who, with the “ high praises 
 of God in their mouths, and a two-edged sword in their 
 hands, were to execute judgment on the heathen, and punish- 
 ments upon the people; to bind their kings with chains, and 
 their nobles with fetters of iron.’”’} Few harangues from 
 the pulpit, except in the days of your League in France, or 
 in the days of our Solemn League and Covenant in England, 
 have ever breathed less of the spirit of moderation than this 
 lecture in the Old Jewry. Supposing, however, that some- 
 thing like moderation were visible in this political sermon, 
 yet politics and the pulpit are terms that have little agree- 
 ment. No sound ought to be heard in the church but the 
 healing voice of Christian charity. The cause of civil liberty 
 and civil government gains as little as that of religion by 
 this confusion of duties. Those who quit their proper char- 
 acter to assume what does not belong to them are, for the 
 greater part, ignorant both of the character they leave and 
 of the character they assume. Wholly unacquainted with 
 the world, in which they are so fond of meddling, and inex- 
 perienced in all its affairs, on which they pronounce with so 
 ' much confidence, they have nothing of politics but the pas- 
 sions they excite. Surely the church is a place where one 
 day’s truce ought to be allowed to the dissensions and ani- 
 mosities of mankind. 
 
 This pulpit style, revived after so long a discontinuance, 
 had to me the air of novelty, and of a novelty not wholly 
 without danger. I do not charge this danger equally to 
 every part of the discourse. The hint given to a noble and 
 reverend lay-divine, who is supposed high in office in 
 one of our universities,2 and other lay-divines “of rank 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 363 
 
 and literature,” may be proper and seasonable, though 
 somewhat new. If the noble Seekers should find noth- 
 ing to satisfy their pious fancies in the old staple of the 
 national Church, or in all the rich variety to be found in the 
 well-assorted warehouses of the Dissenting congregations, 
 Dr. Price advises them to improve upon Non-Conformity, 
 and to set up, each of them, a separate meeting-house upon 
 his own particular principles.’ It is somewhat remarkable 
 that this reverend divine should be so earnest for setting up 
 new churches, and so perfectly indifferent concerning the 
 doctrine which may be taught in them. His zeal is of a 
 curious character. It is not for the propagation of his own 
 opinions, but of any opinions. It is not for the diffusion of 
 truth, but for the spreading of contradiction. Let the noble 
 teachers but dissent, it is no matter from whom or from what. 
 This great point once secured, it is taken for granted their 
 religion will be rational and manly. I doubt whether relig- 
 ion would reap all the benefits which the calculating divine 
 computes from this ‘great company of great preachers.” 
 It would certainly be a valuable addition of nondescripts to 
 the ample collection of known classes, genera, and species, 
 which at present beautify the hortus siccus of Dissent. A 
 sermon from a noble duke, or a noble marquis, or a noble 
 earl, or baron bold, would certainly increase and diversify 
 the amusements of this town, which begins to grow satiated 
 with the uniform round of its vapid dissipations. I should 
 only stipulate that these new Mess-Johns in robes and cor- 
 onets should keep some sort of bounds in the democratic 
 and levelling principles which are expected from their titled 
 pulpits. The new evangelists will, I dare say, disappoint 
 the hopes that are conceived of them. They will not be- 
 come, literally as well as figuratively, polemic divines,—nor 
 be disposed so to drill their congregations, that they may, 
 as in former blessed times, preach their doctrines to regi- 
 ments of dragoons and corps of infantry and artillery. Such 
 arrangements, however favourable to the cause of compulsory 
 freedom, civil and religious, may not be equally conducive 
 
364 BURKE 
 
 to the national tranquillity. These few restrictions I hope 
 are no great stretches of intolerance, no very violent exer- 
 tions of despotism. 
 
 But I may say of our preacher, ‘“‘ Utinam nugis tota illa 
 dedisset tempora sevitiz.’’ All things in this his fulminating 
 bull are not of so innoxious atendency. His doctrines af- 
 fect our Constitution in its vital parts. He tells the Revolu- 
 tion Society, in this political sermon, that his Majesty “ is 
 almost the only lawful king in the world, because the only 
 one who owes his crown to the choice of his people.” Asto 
 the kings of the world, all of whom (except one) this arch-pon- 
 tiff of the rights of men, with all the plenitude and with 
 more than the boldness of the Papal deposing power in its 
 meridian fervour of the twelfth century, puts into one sweep- 
 ing clause of ban and anathema, and proclaims usurpers by 
 circles of longitude and latitude over the whole globe, it be- 
 hooves them to consider how they admit into their territo- 
 ries these apostolic missionaries, who are to tell their sub- 
 jects they are not lawful kings. That is their concern. It 
 is ours, as a domestic interest of some moment, seriously to 
 consider the solidity of the only principle upon which these 
 gentlemen acknowledge a king of Great Britain to be enti- 
 tled to their allegiance. 
 
 This doctrine, as applied to the prince now on the British 
 throne, either is nonsense, and therefore neither true nor 
 false, or it affirms a most unfounded, dangerous, illegal, and 
 unconstitutional position. According to this spiritual doc- 
 tor of politics, if his Majesty does not owe his crown to the 
 choice of his people, he is no lawful king. Now nothing 
 can be more untrue than that the crown of this kingdom is 
 so held by his Majesty. Therefore, if you follow their rule, 
 the king of Great Britain, who most certainly does not owe 
 his high office to any form of popular election, is in no re- 
 spect better than the rest of the gang of usurpers, who reign, 
 or rather rob, all over the face of this our miserable world, 
 without any sort of right or title to the allegiance of their 
 people. The policy of this general doctrine, so qualified, is 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 365 
 
 evident enough. The propagators of this political gospel 
 are in hopes their abstract principle (their principle that a 
 popular choice is necessary to the legal existence of the 
 sovereign magistracy) would be overlooked, whilst the king 
 of Great Britain was not affected by it.. In the mean time 
 the ears of their congregations would be gradually habitu- 
 ated to it, as if it were a first principle admitted without dis- 
 pute. For the present it would only operate as a theory, 
 pickled in the preserving juices of pulpit eloquence, and 
 laid by for future use. Condo et compono quz mox de- 
 promere possim. By this policy, whilst our government is 
 soothed with a reservation in its favour, to which it has no 
 claim, the security which it has in common with all govern- 
 ments, so far as opinion is security, is taken away. 
 
 Thus these politicians proceed, whilst little notice is taken 
 of their doctrines ; but when they come to be examined 
 upon the plain meaning of their words and the direct ten- 
 dency of their doctrines, then equivocations and slippery 
 constructions come into play. When they say the king 
 owes his crown to the choice of his people, and is therefore 
 the only lawful sovereign in the world, they will perhaps tell 
 us they mean to say no more than that some of the king’s pre- 
 decessors have been called to the throne by some sort of 
 choice, and therefore he owes his crown to the choice of his 
 people. Thus, by a miserable subterfuge, they hope to ren- 
 der their proposition safe by rendering it nugatory. They 
 are welcome to the asylum they seek for their offence, since 
 they take refuge in their folly. For, if you admit this inter- 
 pretation, how does their idea of election differ from our 
 idea of inheritance? And how does the settlement of the 
 crown in the Brunswick line, derived from James the First, 
 come to legalize our monarchy rather than that of any of 
 the neighbouring countries? At some time or other, to be 
 sure, all the beginners of dynasties were chosen by those 
 who called them to govern. There is ground enough for 
 the opinion that all the kingdoms of Europe were at a re- 
 mote period elective, with more or fewer limitations in the 
 
366 BURKE 
 
 objects of choice. But whatever kings might have been here 
 or elsewhere a thousand years ago, or in whatever manner 
 theruling dynasties of England or France may have begun, 
 the king of Great Britain is at this day king by a fixed rule 
 of succession, according to the laws of his country ; and 
 whilst the legal conditions of the compact of sovereignty are 
 performed by him (as they are performed), he holds his 
 crown in contempt of the choice of the Revolution Society, 
 who have not a single vote for a king amongst them, either 
 individually or collectively : though I make no doubt they 
 would soon erect themselves into an electoral college, if 
 things were ripe to give effect totheirclaim. His Majesty’s 
 heirs and successors, each in his time and order, will come to 
 the crown with the same contempt of their choice with which 
 his Majesty has succeeded to that he wears. 
 
 Whatever may be the success of evasion in explaining 
 away the gross error of fact, which supposes that his Majesty 
 (though he holds it in concurrence with the wishes) owes his 
 crown to the choice of his people, yet nothing can evade 
 their full, explicit declaration concerning the principle of a 
 right in the people to choose,—which right is directly main- 
 tained, and tenaciously adhered to. All the oblique insin- 
 uations concerning election bottom in this proposition, and 
 are referable to it. Lest the foundation of the king’s exclu- 
 sive legal title should pass for a mere rant of adulatory free- 
 dom, the political divine proceeds dogmatically to assert,* 
 that, by the principles of the Revolution, the people of Eng- 
 land have acquired three fundamental rights, all of which, 
 with him, compose one system, and lie together in one short 
 sentence: namely, that we have acquired a right 
 
 1. “ To choose our own governors,” 
 
 2. ‘“ To cashier them for misconduct.” 
 
 3. “To frame a government for ourselves.” 
 
 This new and hitherto unheard-of bill of rights, though made 
 in the name of the whole people, belongs to those gentle- 
 men and their faction only. The body of the people of 
 England have no share in it. They utterly disclaim it. 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 367 
 
 They will resist the practical assertion of it with their lives 
 and fortunes. They are bound to do so by the laws of their 
 country, made at the time of that very Revolution which is 
 appealed to in favour of the fictitious rights claimed by the 
 society which abuses its name. 
 
 These gentlemen of the Old Jewry, in all their reasonings 
 on the Revolution of 1688, have a revolution which hap- 
 pened in England about forty years before, and the late 
 French Revolution, so much before their eyes and in their 
 hearts, that they are constantly confounding all the three 
 together. It is necessary that we should separate what they 
 confound. We must recall their erring fancies to the acts 
 of the Revolution which we revere, for the discovery of its 
 true principles. If the principles of the Revolution of 1688 
 are anywhere to be found, it is in the statute called the Dec- 
 laration of Right. In that most wise, sober, and consider- 
 ate declaration, drawn up by great lawyers and great 
 statesmen, and not by warm and inexperienced enthusiasts, 
 not one word is said, nor one suggestion made, of a general 
 right “to choose our own governors, to cashier them for 
 misconduct, and to form a government for ourselves.” 
 
 This Declaration of Right (the act of the 1st of William 
 and Mary, sess. 2, ch. 2) is the corner-stone of our Constitu- 
 tion, as reinforced, explained, improved, and in its funda- 
 mental principles forever settled. It is called “An act for 
 declaring the rights and liberties of the subject, and for set- 
 tling the succession of the crown.” You will observe that 
 these rights and this succession are declared in one body, 
 and bound indissolubly together. 
 
 A few years after this period, a second opportunity offered 
 for asserting a right of election to the crown. On the pros- 
 pect of a total failure of issue from King William, and from 
 the princess, afterwards Queen Anne, the consideration of 
 the settlement of the crown, and of a further security for the 
 liberties of the people, again came before the legislature. 
 Did they this second time make any provision for legalising 
 the crown on the spurious Revolution principles of the Old 
 
368 BURKE 
 
 Jewry ? No. They followed the principles which prevailed 
 in the Declaration of Right; indicating with more precision 
 the persons who were to inherit in the Protestant line. This 
 act also incorporated, by the same policy, our liberties and an 
 hereditary succession in the same act. Instead of a right to 
 choose our own governors, they declared that the succession 
 in that line (the Protestant line drawn from James the First) 
 was absolutely necessary “for the peace, quiet, and security 
 of the realm,” and that it was equally urgent on them “to 
 maintain a certainty in the succession thereof, to which the 
 subjects may safely have recourse for their protection.” 
 Both these acts, in which are heard the unerring, unambig- 
 uous oracles of Revolution policy, instead of countenancing 
 the delusive gypsy predictions of a “right to choose our 
 governors,” prove to a demonstration how totally adverse 
 the wisdom of the nation was from turning a case of ne- 
 cessity into a rule of law. 
 
 Unquestionably there was at the Revolution, in the person 
 of King William, a small and a temporary deviation from 
 the strict order of a regular hereditary succession ; but it is 
 against all genuine principles of jurisprudence to draw a 
 principle from a law made in a special case and regarding an 
 individual person. Privilegium non transit in exemplum. 
 If ever there was a time favourable for establishing the prin- 
 ciple that a king of popular choice was the only legal king, 
 without all doubt it was at the Revolution. Its not being 
 done at that time is a proof that the nation was of opinion it 
 ought not to be done at any time. There is no person so 
 completely ignorant of our history as not to know that the 
 majority in Parliament, of both parties, were so little dis- 
 posed to anything resembling that principle, that at first 
 they were determined to place the vacant crown, not on the 
 head of the Prince of Orange, but on that of his wife, Mary, 
 daughter of King James, the eldest born of the issue of that 
 king, which they acknowledged as undoubtedly his. It 
 would be to repeat a very trite story, to recall to your mem- 
 ory all those circumstances which demonstrated that their 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 369 
 
 accepting King William was not properly a choice; but to 
 all those who did not wish in effect to recall King James, 
 or to deluge their country in blood, and again to bring their 
 religion, laws, and liberties into the peril they had just es- 
 caped, it was an act of necessity, in the strictest moral sense 
 in which necessity can be taken. 
 
 In the very act in which, for a time, and in a single case, 
 Parliament departed from the strict order of inheritance, in 
 favour of a prince who, though not next, was, however, very 
 near in the line of succession, it is curious to observe how 
 Lord Somers, who drew the bill called the Declaration of 
 Right, has comported himself on that delicate occasion. It 
 is curious to observe with what address this temporary solu- 
 tion of continuity is kept from the eye; whilst all that 
 could be found in this act of necessity to countenance the 
 idea of an hereditary succession is brought forward, and 
 fostered, and made the most of, by this great man, and by 
 the legislature who followed him. Quitting the dry, imper- 
 ative style of an act of Parliament, he makes the Lords and 
 Commons fall to a pious legislative ejaculation, and declare 
 that they consider it “as a marvellous providence, and 
 merciful goodness of God to this nation, to preserve their 
 said Majesties’ royal persons most happily to reign over us 
 on the throne of their ancestors, for which, from the bottom 
 of their hearts, they return their humblest thanks and 
 praises.” The legislature plainly had in view the Act of 
 Recognition of the first of Queen Elizabeth, chap. 3d, and 
 of that of James the First, chap. Ist, both acts strongly de- 
 claratory of the inheritable nature of the crown; and in 
 many parts they follow, with a nearly literal precision, the 
 words, and even the form of thanksgiving which is found in 
 these old declaratory statutes. 
 
 The two Houses, in the act of King William, did not 
 thank God that they had found a fair opportunity to assert 
 a right to choose their own governors, much less to make an 
 election the only lawful title to the crown. Their having 
 been in a condition to avoid the very appearance of it, as 
 
 24 
 
370 BURKE 
 
 much as possible, was by them considered as a providential 
 escape. They threw a politic, well-wrought veil over every 
 circumstance tending to weaken the rights which in the 
 meliorated order of succession they meant to perpetuate, or 
 which might furnish a precedent for any future departure 
 from what they had then settled forever. Accordingly, that 
 they might not relax the nerves of their monarchy, and that 
 they might preserve a close conformity to the practice of 
 their ancestors, as it appeared in the declaratory statutes of 
 Queen Mary ® and Queen Elizabeth, in the next clause they 
 vest, by recognition, in their Majesties all the legal prero- 
 gatives of the crown, declaring “that in them they are most 
 fully, rightfully, and entirely invested, incorporated, united, 
 and annexed.” In the clause which follows, for preventing 
 questions, by reason of any pretended titles to the crown, 
 they declare (observing also in this the traditionary language, 
 along with the traditionary policy of the nation, and repeat- 
 ing as from a rubric the language of the preceding acts of 
 Elizabeth and James) that on the preserving “a certainty in 
 the succession thereof the unity, peace, and tranquillity of 
 this nation doth, under God, wholly depend.” 
 
 They knew that a doubtful title of succession would but too 
 much resemble an election, and that an election would be 
 utterly destructive of the “unity, peace, and tranquillity of 
 this nation,’ which they thought to be considerations of 
 some moment. To provide for these objects, and therefore 
 to exclude forever the Old Jewry doctrine of “a right to 
 choose our own governors,” they follow with a clause con- 
 taining a most solemn pledge, taken from the preceding act 
 of Queen Elizabeth,—as solemn a pledge as ever was or can 
 be given in favour of an hereditary succession, and as solemn 
 a renunciation as could be made of the principles by this 
 society imputed to them :—“ The Lords Spiritual and Tem- 
 poral, and Commons, do, in the name of all the people 
 aforesaid, most humbly and faithfully submit themselves, 
 their heirs, and posterities forever; and do faithfully prom- 
 ise that they will stand to, maintain, and defend their said 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 371 
 
 Majesties, and also the limitation of the crown, herein speci- 
 fied and contained, to the utmost of their powers,” etc., etc. 
 
 So faris it from being true that we acquired a right by 
 the Revolution to elect our kings, that, if we had possessed 
 it before, the English nation did at that time most solemnly 
 renounce and abdicate it, for themselves, and for all their 
 posterity forever. These gentlemen may value themselves 
 as much as they please on their Whig principles; but I never 
 desire to be thought a better Whig than Lord Somers, or to 
 understand the principles of the Revolution better than 
 those by whom it was brought about, or to read in the Dec- 
 laration of Right any mysteries: unknown to those whose 
 penetrating style has engraved in our ordinances, and in our 
 hearts, the words and spirit of that immortal law. 
 
 It is true, that, aided with the powers derived from force 
 and opportunity, the nation was at that time, in some sense, 
 free to take what course it pleased for filling the throne,— 
 but only free to do so upon the same grounds on which they 
 might have wholly abolished their monarchy, and every 
 other part of their Constitution. However, they did not 
 think such bold changes within their commission. It is, in- 
 deed, difficult, perhaps impossible, to give limits to the mere 
 abstract competence of the supreme power, such as was exer- 
 cised by Parliament at that time; but the limits of a moral 
 competence, subjecting even in powers more indisputably 
 sovereign, occasional will to permanent reason, and to the 
 steady maxims of faith, justice, and fixed fundamental policy, 
 are perfectly intelligible, and perfectly binding upon those 
 who exercise any authority, under any name, or under any 
 title, in the state. The House of Lords, for instance, is not 
 morally competent to dissolve the House of Commons,—no, 
 nor even to dissolve itself, nor to abdicate, if it would, its 
 portion in the legislature of the kingdom. Though a king 
 may abdicate for his own person, he can not abdicate for the 
 monarchy. By asstrong, or by a stronger reason, the House 
 of Commons can not renounce its share of authority. The 
 engagement and pact of society, which generally goes by the 
 
372 BURKE 
 
 name of the Constitution, forbids such invasion and such 
 surrender. The constituent parts of a state are obliged to 
 hold their public faith with each other, and with all those 
 who derive any serious interest under their engagements, as 
 much as the whole state is bound to keep its faith with 
 separate communities: otherwise, competence and power 
 would soon be confounded, and no law be left but the will 
 of a prevailing force. On this principle, the succession of the 
 crown has always been what it now is, an hereditary succes- 
 sion by law: in the old line it was a succession by the Com- 
 mon Law; in the new by the statute law, operating on the 
 principles of the Common Law, not changing the substance, 
 but regulating the mode and describing the persons. But 
 these descriptions of law are of the same force, and are de- 
 rived from an equal authority, emanating from the common 
 agreement and original compact of the state, communi spon- 
 sione reipublicz, and as such are equally binding on king, 
 and people too, as long as the terms are observed, and they 
 continue the same body politic. 
 
 It is far from impossible to reconcile, if we do not suffer 
 ourselves to be entangled in the mazes of metaphysic sophis- 
 try, the use both of a fixed rule and an occasional deviation, 
 —the sacredness of an hereditary principle of succession in 
 our government with a power of change in its application in 
 cases of extreme emergency. Even inthat extremity, (if we 
 take the measure of our rights by our exercise of them at the 
 Revolution,) the change is to be confined to the peccant part 
 only,—to the part which produced the necessary deviation ; 
 and even then it is to be effected without a decomposition 
 of the whole civil and political mass, for the purpose of 
 originating a new civil order out of the first elements of 
 society. 
 
 A state without the means of some change is without the 
 means of its conservation. Without such means it might 
 even risk the loss of that part of the Constitution which it 
 wished the most religiously to preserve. The two principles 
 of conservation and correction operated strongly at the two 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 373 
 
 critical periods of the Restoration and Revolution, when 
 England found itself without a king. At both those periods 
 the nation had lost the bond of union in their ancient 
 edifice: they did not, however, dissolve the whole fabric. 
 On the contrary, in both cases they regenerated the deficient 
 part of the old Constitution through the parts which were 
 not impaired. They kept these old parts exactly as they 
 were, that the part recovered might be suited to them. 
 They acted by the ancient organized states in the shape of 
 their old organization, and not by the organic molecule of 
 a disbanded people. At no time, perhaps, did the sovereign 
 legislature manifest a more tender regard to that fundamental 
 principle of British constitutional policy than at the time of 
 the Revolution, when it deviated from the direct line of he- 
 reditary succession. The crown was carried somewhat out 
 of the line in which it had before moved; but the new line 
 was derived from the same stock. It was still a line of he- 
 reditary descent; still an hereditary descent in the same 
 blood, though an hereditary descent qualified with Protestant- 
 ism. When the legislature altered the direction, but kept 
 the principle, they showed that they held it inviolable. 
 
 On this principle, the law of inheritance had admitted 
 some amendment in the old time, and long before the era of 
 the Revolution. Some time after the Conquest great 
 questions arose upon the legal principles of hereditary de- 
 scent. It became a matter of doubt whether the heir per 
 capita or the heir per stirpes was to succeed; but whether 
 the heir per capita gave way when the heirdom per stirpes 
 took place, or the Catholic heir when the Protestant was 
 preferred, the inheritable principle survived with a sort of 
 immortality through all transmigrations,— 
 
 Multosque per annos 
 Stat fortuna domus, et avi numerantur avorum. 
 
 This is the spirit of our Constitution, not only in its settled 
 course, but in all its revolutions. Whoever came in, or how- 
 ever he came in, whether he obtained the crown by law or by 
 
374 BURKE 
 
 force, the hereditary succession was either continued or 
 adopted. 
 
 The gentlemen of the Society for Revolutions see nothing 
 in that of 1688 but the deviation from the Constitution ; 
 and they take the deviation from the principle for the prin- 
 ciple. They have little regard to the obvious consequences 
 of their doctrine, though they may see that it leaves positive 
 authority in very few of the positive institutions of this 
 country. When such an unwarrantable maxim is once 
 established, that no throne is lawful but the elective, no one 
 act of the princes who preceded this era of fictitious elec- 
 tion can be valid. Do these theorists mean to imitate some 
 of their predecessors, who dragged the bodies of our ancient 
 sovereigns out of the quiet of their tombs? Do they mean 
 to attaint and disable backwards all the kings that have 
 reigned before the Revolution, and consequently to stain 
 the throne of England with the blot of a continual usurpa- 
 tion? Do they mean to invalidate, annul, or to call into 
 question, together with the titles of the whole line of our 
 kings, that great body of ourstatute law which passed under 
 those whom they treat as usurpers? to annul laws of inesti- 
 mable value to our liberties,—of as great value at least as 
 any which have passed at or since the period of the Revolu- 
 tion? If kings who did not owe their crown to the choice 
 of their people had no title to make laws, what will become 
 of the statute De tallagio non concedendo? of the Petition 
 of Right? of the act of Habeas Corpus? Do these new 
 doctors of the rights of men presume to assert that King 
 James the Second, who came to the crown as next of blood, 
 according to the rules of a then unqualified succession, was 
 not to all intents and purposes a lawful king of England, 
 before he had done any of those acts which were justly con- 
 strued into an abdication of his crown? If he was not, 
 much trouble in Parliament might have been saved at the 
 period these gentlemen commemorate. But King James 
 was a bad king with a good title, and not an usurper. The 
 princes who succeeded according to the act of Parliament 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 375 
 
 which settled the crown on the Electress Sophia and on her 
 descendants, being Protestants, came in as much by a title 
 of inheritance as King James did. He came in according 
 to the law, as it stood at his accession to the crown; and the 
 princes of the House of Brunswick came to the inheritance 
 of the crown, not by election, but by the law, as it stood at 
 their several accessions, of Protestant descent and inheritance, 
 as I hope I have shown sufficiently. 
 
 The law by which this royal family is specifically destined 
 to the succession, is the act of the 12th and 13th of King 
 William. Theterms of this act bind “us, and our heirs, 
 and our posterity, to them, their heirs, and their posterity,” 
 being Protestants, to the end of time, in the same words as 
 the Declaration of Right had bound us to the heirs of King 
 William and Queen Mary. It therefore secures both an 
 hereditary crown and an hereditary allegiance. On what 
 ground, except the constitutional policy of forming an es- 
 tablishment to secure that kind of succession which is to 
 preclude a choice of the people forever, could the legislature 
 have fastidiously rejected the fair and abundant choice which 
 our own country presented to them, and searched in strange 
 lands for a foreign princess, from whose womb the line of 
 our future rulers were to derive their title to govern millions 
 of men through a series of ages? 
 
 The Princess Sophia was named in the act of settlement 
 of the 12th and 13th of King William, for a stock and root 
 of inheritance to our kings, and not for her merits as a tem- 
 porary administratrix of a power which she might not, and 
 in fact did not, herself ever exercise. She was adopted for 
 one reason and for one only,—because, says the act, “the 
 most excellent Princess Sophia, Electress and Duchess 
 Dowager of Hanover, is daughter of the most excellent 
 Princess Elizabeth, late Queen of Bohemia, daughter of our 
 late sovereign lord King James the First, of happy memory, 
 and is hereby declared to be the next in succession in the 
 Protestant line,” etc., etc.; ‘‘and the crown shall continue to 
 the heirs of her body, being Protestants.” This limitation 
 
376 BURKE 
 
 was made by Parliament, that through the Princess Sophia an 
 inheritable line not only was to be continued in future, but 
 (what they thought very material) that through her it was 
 to be connected with the old stock of inheritance in King 
 James the First ; in order that the monarchy might preserve 
 an unbroken unity through all ages, and might be preserved 
 (with safety to our religion) in the old approved mode by 
 descent, in which, if our liberties had been once endangered, 
 they had often, through all storms and struggles of preroga- 
 tive and privilege, been preserved. They did well. No ex- 
 perience has taught us that in any other course or method 
 than that of an hereditary crown our liberties can be re- 
 gularly perpetuated and preserved sacred as our hereditary 
 right. Anirregular, convulsive movement may be necessary 
 to throw off an irregular, convulsive disease. But thecourse 
 of succession is the healthy habit of the British Constitu- 
 tion. Was it that the legislature wanted, at the act for the 
 limitation of the crown in the Hanoverian line, drawn 
 through the female descendants of James the First, a due 
 sense of the inconveniences of having two or three, or pos- 
 sibly more, foreigners in succession to the British throne? 
 No !—they had a due sense of the evils which might happen 
 from such foreign rule, and more than a due sense of them. 
 But a more decisive proof cannot be given of the full con- 
 viction of the British nation that the principles of the Rev- 
 olution did not authorize them to elect kings at their pleas- 
 ure, and without any attention to the ancient fundamental 
 principles of our government, than their continuing to adopt 
 a plan of hereditary Protestant succession in the old line, 
 with all the dangers and all the inconveniences of its being 
 a foreign line full before their eyes, and operating with the 
 utmost force upon their minds. 
 
 A few years ago I should be ashamed to overload a matter 
 so capable of supporting itself by the then unnecessary sup- 
 port of any argument; but this seditious, unconstitutional 
 doctrine is now publicly taught, avowed, and printed. The 
 dislike I feel to revolutions, the signals for which have so 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 377 
 
 often been given from pulpits,—the spirit of change that is 
 gone abroad,—the total contempt which prevails with you, 
 and may come to prevail with us, of all ancient institutions, 
 when set in opposition to a present sense of convenience, or 
 to the bent of a present inclination,—all these considerations 
 make it not unadvisable, in my opinion, to call back our at- 
 tention to the true principles of our own domestic laws, that 
 you, my French friend, should begin to know, and that we 
 should continue to cherish them. We ought not, on either 
 side of the water, to suffer ourselves to be imposed upon by 
 the counterfeit wares which some persons, by a double fraud, 
 export to you in illicit bottoms, as raw commodities of 
 British growth, though wholly alien to our soil, in order 
 afterwards to smuggle them back again into this country, 
 manufactured after the newest Paris fashion of an improved 
 liberty. 
 
 The people of England will not ape the fashions they 
 have never tried, nor go back to those which they have 
 found mischievous on trial. They look upon the legal he- 
 reditary succession of their crown as among their rights, not 
 as among their wrongs,—as a benefit, not as a grievance——as 
 a security for their liberty, not asa badge of servitude. They 
 look on the frame of their commonwealth, such as it stands, 
 to be of inestimable value; and they conceive the undis- 
 turbed succession of the crown to be a pledge of the stability 
 and perpetuity ofall the other members of our Constitution. 
 
 I shall beg leave, before I go any further, to take notice 
 of some paltry artifices which the abettors of election as the 
 only lawful title to the crown are ready to employ, in order 
 to render the support of the just principles of our Constitu- 
 tion a task somewhat invidious. These sophisters substitute 
 a fictitious cause, and feigned personages, in whose favour 
 they suppose you engaged, whenever you defend the in- 
 heritable nature of the crown. It is common with them to 
 dispute as if they were in a conflict with some of those ex- 
 ploded fanatics of slavery who formerly maintained, what I 
 believe no creature now maintains, “ that the crown is held 
 
378 BURKE 
 
 by divine, hereditary, and indefeasible right.” These old 
 fanatics of single arbitrary power dogmatised as if hereditary 
 royalty was the only lawful government in the world,—just 
 as our new fanatics of popular arbitrary power maintain 
 that a popular election is the sole lawful source of authority. 
 The old prerogative enthusiasts, it is true, did speculate 
 foolishly, and perhaps impiously too, as if monarchy had 
 more of a divine sanction than any other mode of govern- 
 ment,—and as if a right to govern by inheritance were in 
 strictness indefeasible in every person who should be found 
 in the succession to a throne, and under every circumstance, 
 which no civil or political right can be. But an absurd opin- 
 ion concerning the king’s hereditary right to the crown does 
 not prejudice one that is rational, and bottomed upon solid 
 principles of law and policy. If all the absurd theories of 
 lawyers and divines were to vitiate the objects in which they 
 are conversant, we should have no law and no religion left 
 in the world. But an absurd theory on one side of a ques- 
 tion forms no justification for alleging a false fact or pro- 
 mulgating mischievous maxims on the other. 
 
 The second claim of the Revolution Society is “a right of 
 cashiering their governors for misconduct.” Perhaps the 
 apprehensions our ancestors entertained of forming such a 
 precedent as that “of cashiering for misconduct” was the 
 cause that the declaration of the act which implied the abdi- 
 cation of King James was, if it had any fault, rather too 
 guarded and too circumstantial.® But all this guard, and all 
 this accumulation of circumstances, serves to show the spirit 
 of caution which predominated in the national councils, in a 
 situation in which men irritated by oppression, and elevated 
 by a triumph over it, are apt to abandon themselves to 
 violent and extreme courses; it shows the anxiety of the 
 great men who influenced the conduct of affairs at that great 
 event to make the Revolution a parent of settlement, and 
 not a nursery of future revolutions. 
 
 No government could stand a moment, if it could be 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 379 
 
 blown down with anything so loose and indefinite as an 
 opinion of “ misconduct.” They who led at the Revolution 
 grounded their virtual abdication of King James upon no 
 such light and uncertain principle. They charged him with 
 nothing less than a design, confirmed by a multitude of 
 illegal overt acts, to subvert the Protestant Church and State, 
 and their fundamental, unquestionable laws and liberties: 
 they charged him with having broken the original contract 
 between king and people. This was more than misconduct. 
 A grave and overruling necessity obliged them to take the 
 step they took, and took with infinite reluctance, as under 
 that most rigorous of alllaws. Their trust for the future 
 preservation of the Constitution was not in future revolu- 
 tions. The grand policy of all their regulations was to render 
 it almost impracticable for any future sovereign to compel 
 the states of the kingdom to have again recourse to those 
 violent remedies. They left the crown, what in the eye and 
 estimation of law it had ever been, perfectly irresponsible. 
 In order to lighten the crown still further, they aggravated 
 responsibility on ministers of state. By the statute of the 
 first of King William, sess. 2d, called ‘‘ the act for declaring 
 the rights and liberties of the subject, and for settling the 
 succession of the crown,” they enacted that the ministers 
 should serve the crown on the terms of that declaration. 
 They secured soon after the frequent meetings of Parlia- 
 ment, by which the whole government would be under the 
 constant inspection and active control of the popular repre- 
 sentative and of the magnates of the kingdom. In the next 
 great constitutional act, that of the 12th and 13th of King 
 William, for the further limitation of the crown, and better 
 securing the rights and liberties of the subject, they provided 
 “that no pardon under the great seal of England should be 
 pleadable to an impeachment by the Commons in Parlia. 
 ment.” The rule laid down for government in the Decla- 
 ration of Right, the constant inspection of Parliament, the 
 practical claim of impeachment, they thought infinitely a 
 better security not only for their constitutional liberty, but 
 
380 BURKE 
 
 against the vices of administration, than the reservation of a 
 right so difficult in the practice, so uncertain in the issue, 
 and often so mischievous in the consequences, as that ‘“ cash- 
 iering their governors.” 
 
 Dr. Price, in this sermon,’ condemns, very properly, the 
 practice of gross adulatory addresses to kings. Instead of 
 this fulsome style, he proposes that his Majesty should be 
 told, on occasions of congratulation, that ‘ he is to consider 
 himself as more properly the servant than the sovereign of 
 his people.” For acompliment, this new form of address 
 does not seem to be very soothing. Those whoare servants 
 in name, as well as in effect, do not like to be told of their 
 situation, their duty, and their obligations. The slave in 
 the old play tells his master, ‘‘ Hac commemoratio est quasi 
 exprobratio.” It is not pleasant as compliment; it is not 
 wholesome as instruction. After all, if the king were to 
 bring himself to echo this new kind of address, to adopt it 
 in terms, and even to take the appellation of Servant of the 
 People as his royal style, how either he or we should be 
 much mended by it I can not imagine. I have seen very 
 assuming letters signed, ‘‘ Your most obedient, humble serv- 
 ant.” The proudest domination that ever was endured on 
 earth took a title of still greater humility than that which 
 is now proposed for sovereigns by the Apostle of Liberty. 
 Kings and nations were trampled upon by the foot of one 
 calling himself ‘“‘ The Servant of Servants” ; and mandates 
 for deposing sovereigns were sealed with the signet of ‘“‘ The 
 Fisherman.” 
 
 I should have considered all this as no more than a sort 
 of flippant, vain discourse, in which, as in an unsavoury fume, 
 several persons suffer the spirit of liberty to evaporate, if it 
 were not plainly in support of the idea, anda part of the 
 scheme, of “ cashiering kings for misconduct.” In that light 
 it is worth some observation. 
 
 Kings, in one sense, are undoubtedly the servants of the 
 people, because their power has no other rational end than 
 that of the general advantage; but it is not true that they 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 381 
 
 are, in the ordinary sense (by our Constitution, at least), 
 anything like servants,—the essence of whose situation is to 
 obey the commands of some other, and to be removable at 
 pleasure. But the king of Great Britain obeys no other 
 person; all other persons are individually, and collectively 
 too, under him, and owe to him a legal obedience. The 
 law, which knows neither to flatter nor to insult, calls this 
 high magistrate, not our servant, as this humble divine 
 calls him, but “ our sovereign lord the king ”’ ; and we, on our 
 parts, have learned to speak only the primitive language of 
 the law, and not the confused jargon of their Babylonian 
 pulpits. 
 
 As he is not to obey us, but we are to obey the law in 
 him, our Constitution has made no sort of provision towards 
 rendering him, as a servant, in any degree responsible. Our 
 Constitution knows nothing of a magistrate like the Justicia 
 of Aragon,—nor of any court legally appointed, nor of any 
 process legally settled, for submitting the king to the respon- 
 sibility belonging to all servants. In this he is not dis- 
 tinguished from the commons and the lords, who, in their 
 several public capacities, can never be called to an account 
 for their conduct: although the Revolution Society chooses 
 to assert, in direct opposition to one of the wisest and most 
 beautiful parts of our Constitution, that “a king is no more 
 than the first servant of the public, created by it, and respon- 
 sible to it.” 
 
 Ill would our ancestors at the Revolution have deserved 
 their fame for wisdom, if they had found no security for 
 their freedom, but in rendering their government feeble in 
 its operations and precarious in its tenure,—if they had been 
 able to contrive no better remedy against arbitrary power 
 than civil confusion. Let these gentlemen state who that 
 representative public is to whom they will affirm the king, 
 as a servant, to be responsible. It will be then time enough 
 for me to produce to them the positive statute law which 
 affirms that he is not. 
 
 The ceremony of cashiering kings, of which these gentle- 
 
382 BURKE 
 
 men talk so much at their ease, can rarely, if ever, be per- 
 formed without force. It then becomes a case of war, and 
 not of constitution. Laws are commanded to hold their 
 tongues amongst arms; and tribunals fall to the ground 
 with the peace they are no longer able to uphold. The 
 Revolution of 1688 was obtained by a just war, in the only 
 case in which any war, and much more a civil war, can be 
 just. “ Jnsta bella quibus NECESSARIA.” The question of 
 dethroning, or, if these gentlemen like the phrase better, 
 “cashiering kings,” will always be, as it has always been, an 
 extraordinary question of state, and wholly out of the law: 
 a question (like all other questions of state) of dispositions, 
 and of means, and of probable consequences, rather than of 
 positive rights. As it was not made for common abuses, so 
 it is not to be agitated by common minds. The speculative 
 line of demarcation, where obedience ought to end and re- 
 sistance must begin, is faint, obscure, and not easily defin- 
 able. It is not a single act ora single event which deter- 
 mines it. Governments must be abused and deranged in- 
 deed, before it can be thought of; and the prospect of the 
 future must be as bad as the experience of the past. When 
 things are in that lamentable condition, the nature of the 
 disease is to indicate the remedy to those whom Nature has 
 qualified to administer in extremities this critical, ambigu- 
 ous, bitter potion to a distempered state. Times and occa- 
 sions and provocations will teach their own lessons. The 
 wise will determine from the gravity of the case; the irri- 
 table, from sensibility to oppression ; the high-minded, from 
 disdain and indignation at abusive power in unworthy hands; 
 the brave and bold, from the love of honourable danger ina 
 generous cause: but, with or without right, a revolution will 
 be the very last resource of the thinking and the good. 
 
 The third head of right asserted by the pulpit of the Old 
 Jewry, namely, the “right to form a government for our- 
 selves,” has, at least, as little countenance from anything 
 done at the Revolution, either in precedent or principle, as 
 the two first of their claims. The Revolution was made to 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 383 
 
 preserve our ancient indisputable laws and liberties, and that 
 ancient constitution of government which is our only secu- 
 rity for law and liberty. If you are desirous of knowing the 
 spirit of our Constitution, and the policy which predomi- 
 nated in that great period which has secured it to this hour, 
 pray look for both in our histories, in our records, in our 
 acts of Parliament and journals of Parliament, and not in 
 the sermons of the Old Jewry, and the after-dinner toasts 
 of the Revolution Society. In the former you will find 
 other ideas and another language. Such a claim is as ill- 
 suited to our temper and wishes as it is unsupported by any 
 appearance of authority. The very idea of the fabrication 
 of anew government is enough to fill us with disgust and 
 horror. We wished at the period of the Revolution, and do 
 now wish, to derive all we possess as an inheritance from our 
 forefathers. Upon that body and stock of inheritance we 
 have taken care not to inoculate any scion alien to the na- 
 ture of the original plant. All the reformations we have 
 hitherto made have proceeded upon the principle of reference 
 to antiquity; and I hope, nay, I am persuaded, that all 
 those which possibly may be made hereafter will be carefully 
 formed upon analogical precedent, authority, and example. 
 
 Our oldest reformation is that of Magna Charta. You will 
 see that Sir Edward Coke, that great oracle of our law, and 
 indeed all the great men who follow him, to Blackstone,® 
 are industrious to prove the pedigree of ourliberties. They 
 endeavour to prove that the ancient charter, the Magna Charta 
 of King John, was connected with another positive charter 
 from Henry the First, and that both the oneand the other 
 were nothing more than a reaffirmance of the still more an- 
 cient standing law of the kingdom. In the matter of fact, 
 for the greater part, these authors appear to be in the right ; 
 perhaps not always: but if the lawyers mistake in some parti- 
 culars, it proves my position still the more strongly ; because 
 it demonstrates the powerful prepossession towards antiquity 
 with which the minds of all our lawyers and legislators, and of 
 all the people whom they wish to influence, have been al- 
 
384 BURKE ’ 
 
 ways filled, and the stationary policy of this kingdom in con- 
 sidering their most sacred rights and franchises as an inheri- 
 tance. 
 
 In the famous law of the 3d of Charles the First, called 
 the Petition of Right, the Parliament says to the king, 
 “ Your subjects have inherited this freedom”: claiming their 
 franchises, not on abstract principles, “as the rights of men,” 
 but as the rights of Englishmen, and as a patrimony derived 
 from their forefathers. Selden, and the other profoundly 
 learned men who drew this Petition of Right, were as well 
 acquainted, at least, with all the general theories concerning 
 the “rights of men” as any of the discoursers in our pulpits 
 or on your tribune: full as well as Dr. Price, or as the Abbé 
 Siéyes. But, for reasons worthy of that practical wisdom 
 which superseded their theoretic science, they preferred this 
 positive, recorded, hereditary title to all which can be dear 
 to the man and the citizen to that vague, speculative right 
 which exposed their sure inheritance to be scrambled for and 
 torn to pieces by every wild, litigious spirit. 
 
 The same policy pervades all the laws which have since 
 been made for the preservation of our liberties. In the Ist 
 of William and Mary, in the famous statute called the Dec- 
 laration of Right, the two Houses utter not a syllable of “a 
 right to frame a government for themselves.” You will see 
 that their whole care was to secure the religion, laws, and 
 liberties that had been long possessed, and had been lately 
 endangered. “ Taking ® into their most serious consideration 
 the best means for making such an establishment that their 
 religion, laws, and liberties might not be in danger of being 
 again subverted,” they auspicate all their proceedings by 
 stating as some of those best means, “in the first place,” to 
 do “as their ancestors in like cases have usually done for 
 vindicating their ancient rights and liberties, to declare” ; — 
 and then they pray the king and queen “that it may be de- 
 clared and enacted that all and singular the rights and liber- 
 ties asserted and declared are the true ancient and indubit- 
 able rights and liberties of the people of this kingdom.” 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 385 
 
 You will observe, that, from Magna Charta to the Declara- 
 tion of Right, it has been the uniform policy of our 
 Constitution to claim and assert our liberties as an entailed in- 
 heritance derived tous from our forefathers, and to be trans- 
 mitted to our posterity,—as an estate specially belonging to 
 the people of this kingdom, without any reference whatever 
 to any other more general or prior right. By this means 
 our Constitution preserves an unity in so great a diversity of 
 its parts. We have an inheritable crown, an inheritable 
 peerage, and a House of Commons and a people inheriting 
 privileges, franchises and liberties from a long line of ancestors. 
 
 This policy appears to me to be the result of profound 
 reflection,—or rather the happy effect of following Nature, 
 which is wisdom without reflection, and above it. A _ spirit 
 of innovation is generally the result of a selfish temper and 
 confined views. People will not look forward to posterity, 
 who never look backward to their ancestors. Besides, the 
 people of England well know that the idea of inheritance 
 furnishes a sure principle of conservation, and a sure prin- 
 ciple of transmission, without at all excluding a principle of 
 improvement. It leaves acquisition free ; but it secures 
 what it acquires. Whatever advantages are obtained by a 
 state proceeding on these maxims are locked fast asin a 
 sort of family settlement, grasped as in a kind of mortmain 
 forever. By a constitutional policy working after the pat- 
 tern of Nature, we receive, we hold, we transmit our govern- 
 ment and our privileges, in the same manner in which we 
 enjoy and transmit our property and our lives. The institu- 
 tions of policy, the goods of fortune, the gifts of Providence, 
 are handed down to us, and from us, in the same course and 
 order. Our political system is placed in a just correspon- 
 dence and symmetry with the order of the world, and with 
 the mode of existence decreed to a permanent body com- 
 posed of transitory parts,—wherein, by the disposition of a 
 stupendous wisdom, moulding together the great mysterious 
 incorporation of the human race, the whole, at one time, is 
 
 never old or middle-aged or young, but, in a condition of 
 25 
 
386 BURKE 
 
 unchangeable constancy, moves on through the varied tenor 
 of perpetual decay, fall, renovation, and progression. Thus, 
 by preserving the method of Nature in the conduct of the 
 state, in what we improve we are never wholly new, in what 
 we retain we are never wholly obsolete. By adhering in this 
 manner and on those principles to our forefathers, we are 
 guided, not by the superstition of antiquaries, but by the 
 spirit of philosophic analogy. In this choice of inheritance 
 we have given to our frame of polity the image of a relation 
 in blood: binding up the Constitution of our country with 
 our dearest domestic ties; adopting our fundamental laws 
 into the bosom of our family affections; keeping inseparable, 
 and cherishing with the warmth of all their combined and 
 mutually reflected charities, our state, our hearths, our sep- 
 ulchres, and our altars. 
 
 Through the same plan of a conformity to Nature in our 
 artificial institutions, and by calling in the aid of her unerring 
 and powerful instincts to fortify the fallible and feeble con- 
 trivances of our reason, we have derived several other, and 
 those no small benefits, from considering our liberties in the 
 light of an inheritance. Always acting as if in the presence 
 of canonized forefathers, the spirit of freedom, leading in it- 
 self to misrule and excess, is tempered with an awful gravity. 
 This idea of a liberal descent inspires us with a sense of ha- 
 bitual native dignity, which prevents that upstart insolence 
 almost inevitably adhering to and disgracing those who are 
 the first acquirers of any distinction. By this. means our 
 liberty becomes a noble freedom. It carries an imposing 
 and majestic aspect. It has a pedigree and illustrating an- 
 cestors. It has its bearings and its ensigns armorial. It 
 has its gallery of portraits, its monumental inscriptions, its 
 records, evidences, and titles. We procure reverence to our 
 civil institutions on the principle upon which Nature teaches 
 us to revere individual men: on account of their age, and on 
 account of those from whom they are descended. All your 
 sophisters can not produce anything better adapted to pre- 
 serve a rational and manly freedom than the course that we 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 387 
 
 have pursued, who have chosen our nature rather than 
 our speculations, our breasts rather than our inventions, for 
 the great conservatories and magazines of our rights and 
 privileges. 
 
 You might, if you pleased, have profited of our example, 
 and have given to your recovered freedom a correspondent 
 dignity. Your privileges, though discontinued, were not lost 
 to memory. Your Constitution, it is true, whilst you were 
 out of possession, suffered waste and dilapidation; but you 
 possessed in some parts the walls, and in all the foundations, 
 of a noble and venerable castle. You might have repaired 
 those walls; you might have built on those old foundations. 
 Your Constitution was suspended before it was perfected; 
 but you had the elements of a Constitution very nearly as 
 good as could be wished. In your old states you possessed 
 that variety of parts corresponding with the various descrip- 
 tions of which your community was happily composed; you 
 had all that combination and all that opposition of interests, 
 you had that action and counteraction, which, in the natural 
 and in the political world, from the reciprocal struggle of 
 discordant powers draws out the harmony of the universe. 
 These opposed and conflicting interests, which you con- 
 sidered as so great a blemish in your old and in our present 
 Constitution, interpose a salutary check to all precipitate 
 resolutions. They render deliberation a matter, not of 
 choice, but of necessity; they make all change a subject of 
 compromise, which naturally begets moderation; they pro- 
 duce temperaments, preventing the sore evil of harsh, crude, 
 unqualified reformations, and rendering all the headlong 
 exertions of arbitrary power, in the few or in the many, for- 
 ever impracticable. Through that diversity of members and 
 interests, general liberty had as many securities as there 
 were separate views in the several orders; whilst by press- 
 ing down the whole by the weight of a real monarchy, the 
 separate parts would have been prevented from warping and 
 starting from their allotted places. 
 
388 BURKE 
 
 You had all these advantages in your ancient states; but 
 you chose to act as if you had never been moulded into civil 
 society, and had everything to begin anew. You began ill, 
 because you began by despising everything that belonged to 
 you. You set up your trade without a capital. If the last 
 generations of your country appeared without much lustre 
 in your eyes, you might have passed them by, and derived 
 your claims from a more early race of ancestors. Undera 
 pious predilection for those ancestors, your imaginations 
 would have realized in them a standard of virtue and wisdom 
 beyond the vulgar practice of the hour; and you would 
 have risen with the example to whose imitation you aspired. 
 Respecting your forefathers, you would have been taught to 
 respect yourselves. You would not have chosen to consider 
 the French as a people of yesterday, as a nation of low-born, 
 servile wretches until the emancipating year of 1789. In 
 order to furnish, at the expense of your honour, an excuse 
 to your apologists here for several enormities of yours, you 
 would not have been content to be represented as a gang of 
 Maroon slaves, suddenly broke loose from the house of bon- 
 dage, and therefore to be pardoned for your abuse of the 
 liberty to which you were not accustomed, and were ill fitted. 
 Would it not, my worthy friend, have been wiser to have 
 you thought, what I for one always thought you, a gener- 
 ous and gallant nation, long misled to your disadvantage by 
 your high and romantic sentiments of fidelity, honour, and 
 loyalty ; that events had been unfavourable to you, but that 
 you were not enslaved through any illiberal or servile dis- 
 position; that, in your most devoted submission, you were 
 actuated by a principle of public spirit; and that it was your 
 country you worshipped, in the person of your king? Had 
 you made it to be understood, that, in the delusion of this 
 amiable error, you have gone further than your wise ances- 
 tors,—that you were resolved to resume your ancient privi- 
 leges, whilst you preserved the spirit of your ancient and 
 your recent loyalty and honour; or if, diffident of ourselves, 
 and not clearly discerning the almost obliterated Constitu- 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 389 
 
 tion of your ancestors, you had looked to your neighbours 
 in this land, who had kept alive the ancient principles and 
 models of the old common law of Europe, meliorated and 
 adapted to its present state,—by following wise examples 
 you would have given new examples of wisdom to the world. 
 You would have rendered the cause of liberty venerable in 
 the eyes of every worthy mind in every nation. You would 
 have shamed despotism from the earth, by showing that 
 freedom was not only reconcilable, but, as when well dis- 
 ciplined, it is, auxiliary to law. You would have had an un- 
 oppressive, but a productive revenue. You would have had 
 a flourishing commerce to feed it. You would have had a 
 free Constitution, a potent monarchy, a disciplined army, a 
 reformed and venerated clergy,—a mitigated, but spirited 
 nobility, to lead your virtue, not to overlay it; you would 
 have had a liberal order of commons, to emulate and to 
 recruit that nobility ; you would have had a protected, satis- 
 fied, laborious, and obedient people, taught to seek and 
 to recognize the happiness that is to be found by virtue in 
 all conditions,—in which consists the true moral equality 
 of mankind, and not in that monstrous fiction which, by in- 
 spiring false ideas and vain expectations into men destined 
 to travel in the obscure walk of laborious life, serves only to 
 aggravate and embitter that real inequality which it never 
 can remove, and which the order of civil life establishes as 
 much for the benefit of those whom it must leave in an 
 humble state as those whom it is able to exalt to a condition 
 more splendid, but not more happy. You had a smooth and 
 easy career of felicity and glory laid open to you, beyond 
 anything recorded in the history of the world; but you 
 have shown that difficulty is good for man. 
 
 Compute your gains ; see what is got by those extravagant 
 and presumptuous speculations which have taught your 
 leaders to despise all their predecessors, and all their con- 
 temporaries, and even to despise themselves, until the mo- 
 ment in which they became truly despicable. By following 
 those false lights, France has bought undisguised calamities 
 
390 BURKE 
 
 at a higher price than any nation has purchased the most 
 unequivocal blessings. France has bought poverty by crime. 
 France has not sacrificed her virtue to her interest ; but she 
 has abandoned her interest, that she might prostitute her 
 virtue. All other nations have begun the fabric of a new 
 government, or the reformation of an old, by establishing 
 originally, or by enforcing with greater exactness, some rites 
 or other of religion. All other people have laid the founda- 
 tions of civil freedom in severer manners, and a system of a 
 more austere and masculine morality. France, when she let 
 loose the reins of regal authority, doubled the license of a 
 ferocious dissoluteness in manners, and of an insolent irre- 
 ligion in opinions and practices,—and has extended through 
 all ranks of life, as if she were communicating some privilege, 
 or laying open some secluded benefit, all the unhappy cor- 
 ruptions that usually were the disease of wealth and power. 
 This is one of the new principles of equality in France. 
 France, by the perfidy of her leaders, has utterly disgraced 
 the tone of lenient council in the cabinets of princes, and 
 disarmed it of its most potent topics. She has sanctified the 
 dark, suspicious maxims of tyrannous distrust, and taught 
 kings to tremble at (what will hereafter be called) the delu- 
 sive plausibilities of moral politicians. Sovereigns will 
 consider those who advise them to place an unlimited confi- 
 dence in their people as subverters of their thrones,—as 
 traitors who aim at their destruction, by leading their easy 
 good-nature, under specious pretences, to admit combinations 
 of bold and faithless men into a participation of their power. 
 This alone (if there were nothing else) is an irreparable 
 calamity to you and to mankind. Remember that your 
 Parliament of Paris told your king, that, in calling the states 
 together, he had nothing to fear but the prodigal excess of 
 their zeal in providing for the support of the throne. It is 
 right that these men should hide their heads. It is right 
 that they should bear their part in the ruin which their 
 counsel has brought on their sovereign and their country. 
 Such sanguine declarations tend to lull authority asleep,—to 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 301 
 
 encourage it rashly to engage in perilous adventures of un- 
 tried policy,—to neglect those provisions, preparations, and 
 precautions which distinguish benevolence from imbecility, 
 and without which no man can answer for the salutary ef- 
 fect of any abstract plan of government or of freedom. For 
 want of these, they have seen the medicine of the state cor- 
 rupted into its poison. They have seen the French rebel 
 against a mild and lawful monarch, with more fury, outrage 
 and insult than ever any people has been known to rise 
 against the most illegal usurper or the most sanguinary ty- 
 rant. Their resistance was made to concession ; their revolt 
 was from protection; their blow was aimed at a hand hold- 
 ing out graces, favours and immunities. 
 
 This was unnatural. The rest is in order. They have 
 found their punishment in their success. Laws overturned; 
 tribunals subverted ; industry without vigour; commerce ex- 
 piring ; the revenue unpaid, yet the people impoverished ; 
 a church pillaged, and a state not relieved ; civil and military 
 anarchy made the constitution of the kingdom ; everything 
 human and divine sacrificed to the idol of public credit, and 
 national bankruptcy the consequence; and, to crown all, the 
 paper securities of new, precarious, tottering power, the dis- 
 credited paper securities of impoverished fraud and beggared 
 rapine, held out as a currency for the support of an empire, 
 in lieu of the two great recognized species that represent the 
 lasting, conventional credit of mankind, which disappeared 
 and hid themselves in the earth from whence they came, 
 when the principle of property, whose creatures and repre- 
 sentatives they are, was systematically subverted. 
 
 Were all these dreadful things necessary? Were they the 
 inevitable results of the desperate struggle of determined 
 patriots, compelled to wade through blood and tumult to 
 the quiet shore of a tranquil and prosperous liberty? No! 
 nothing like it. The fresh ruins of France, which shock our 
 feelings wherever we can turn oureyes, are not the devasta- 
 tion of civil war: they are the sad, but instructive monu- 
 ments of rash and ignorant counsel in time of profound peace, 
 
392 BURKE 
 
 They are the display of inconsiderate and presumptuous, be- 
 cause unresisted and irresistible authority. The persons 
 who have thus squandered away the precious treasure of 
 their crimes, the persons who have made this prodigal and 
 wild waste of public evils (the last stake reserved for the 
 ultimate ransom of the state), have met in their progress with 
 little, or rather with no opposition at all. Their whole march 
 was more like a triumphal procession than the progress of a 
 war. Their pioneers have gone before them, and demolished 
 and laid everything level at their feet. Not one drop of 
 their blood have they shed in the cause of the country they 
 have ruined. They have made no sacrifices to their projects 
 of greater consequence than their shoe-buckles, whilst they 
 were imprisoning their king, murdering their fellow-citizens, 
 and bathing in tears and plunging in poverty and distress 
 thousands of worthy men and worthy families. Their 
 cruelty has not even been the base result of fear. It has 
 been the effect of their sense of perfect safety, in authorizing 
 treasons, robberies, rapes, assassinations, slaughters, and burn- 
 ings, throughout their harassed land. But the cause of all 
 was plain from the beginning. 
 
 This unforced choice, this fond election of evil, would ap- 
 pear perfectly unaccountable, if we did not consider the 
 composition of the National Assembly: I do not mean its 
 formal constitution, which, as it now stands, is exceptionable 
 enough, but the materials of which in a great measure it is 
 composed, which is of ten thousand times greater consequence 
 than all the formalities in the world. If we were to know 
 nothing of this assembly but by its title and function, no 
 colours could paint to the imagination anything more vener- 
 able. In that light, the mind of an inquirer, subdued by 
 such an awful image as that of the virtue and wisdom ofa 
 whole people collected into one focus, would pause and 
 hesitate in condemning things even of the very worst aspect. 
 Instead of blamable, they would appear only mysterious. 
 But no name, no power, no function, no artificial institution 
 whatsoever, can make the men, of whom any system of 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 393 
 
 authority is composed, any other than God, and Nature, 
 and education, and their habits of life have made them. 
 Capacities beyond these the people have not to give. Virtue 
 and wisdom may be the objects of their choice; but their 
 choice confers neither the one nor the other on those upon 
 whom they lay their ordaining hands. They have not the 
 engagement of Nature, they have not the promise of Revela- 
 tion for any such powers. 
 
 After I had read over the list of the persons and descrip- 
 tions elected into the Tiers Etat, nothing which they after- 
 wards did could appear astonishing. Among them, indeed, 
 Isaw some of known rank, some of shining talents; but of 
 any practical experience in the state not one man was to be 
 found. The best were only men of theory. But whatever 
 the distinguished few may have been, it is the substance and 
 mass of the body which constitutes its character, and must 
 finally determine its direction. In all bodies, those who will 
 lead must also, in a considerable degree, follow. They must 
 conform their propositions to the taste, talent, and disposi- 
 tion of those whom they wish to conduct: therefore, if an 
 assembly is viciously or feebly composed in a very great part 
 of it, nothing but such a supreme degree of virtue as very 
 rarely appears in the world, and for that reason can not enter 
 into calculation, will prevent the men of talents disseminated 
 through it from becoming only the expert instruments of 
 absurd projects. If, what is the more likely event, instead 
 of that unusual degree of virtue, they should be actuated by 
 sinister ambition and a lust of meretricious glory, then 
 the feeble part of the assembly, to whom at first they con- 
 form, becomes, in its turn, the dupe and instrument of 
 their designs. In this political traffic, the leaders will be 
 obliged to bow to the ignorance of their followers, and the 
 followers to become subservient to the worst designs of their 
 leaders. 
 
 To secure any degree of sobriety in the propositions made 
 by the leaders in any public assembly, they ought to respect, 
 in some degree perhaps to fear, those whom they conduct. 
 
304 BURKE 
 
 To be led any otherwise than blindly, the followers must be 
 qualified, if not for actors, at least for judges; they must 
 also be judges of natural weight and authority. Nothing 
 can secure a steady and moderate conduct in such assem- 
 blies, but that the body of them should be respectably com- 
 posed, in point of condition in life, of permanent property, 
 of education, and of such habits as enlarge and liberalize the 
 understanding. 
 
 In the calling of the States-General of France, the first 
 thing that struck me was a great departure from the ancient 
 course. I found the representation for the third estate com- 
 posed of six hundred persons. They were equal in number 
 to the representatives of both the other orders. If the 
 orders were to act separately, the number would not, beyond 
 the consideration of the expense, be of much moment. But 
 when it became apparent that the three orders were to be 
 melted down into one, the policy and necessary effect of 
 this numerous representation became obvious. A very small 
 desertion from either of the other two orders must throw 
 the power of both into the hands of the third. In fact, the 
 whole power of the state was soon resolved into that body. 
 Its due composition became, therefore, of infinitely the 
 greater importance. 
 
 Judge, Sir, of my surprise, when I found that a very great 
 proportion of the Assembly (a majority, I believe, of the 
 members who attended) was composed of practitioners in the 
 law. It was composed, not of distinguished magistrates, 
 who had given pledges to their country of their science, 
 prudence, and integrity,—not of leading advocates, the glory 
 of the bar,—not of renowned professors in universities,—but 
 for the far greater part, as it must in such a number, of the 
 inferior, unlearned, mechanical, merely instrumental members 
 of the profession. There were distinguished exceptions; 
 but the general composition was of obscure provincial advo- 
 cates, of stewards of petty local jurisdictions, country at- 
 torneys, notaries, and the whole train of the ministers of 
 municipal litigation, the fomenters and conductors of the 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 395 
 
 petty war of village vexation. From the moment I read the 
 list, 1 saw distinctly, and very nearly as it has happened, all 
 that was to follow. 
 
 The degree of estimation in which any profession is held 
 becomes the standard of the estimation in which the pro- 
 fessors hold themselves. Whatever the personal merits of 
 many individual lawyers might have been (and in many it 
 was undoubtedly very considerable), in that military king- 
 dom no part of the profession had been much regarded, 
 except the highest of all, who often united to their profes- 
 sional offices great family splendour, and were invested with 
 great power and authority. These certainly were highly 
 respected, and even with no small degree of awe. The next 
 rank was not much esteemed; the mechanical part was in a 
 very low degree of repute. 
 
 Whenever the supreme authority is vested in a body so 
 composed, it must evidently produce the consequences of 
 supreme authority placed in the hands of men not taught 
 habitually to respect themselves,—who had no previous for- 
 tune in character at stake,—who could not be expected 
 to bear with moderation or to conduct with discretion a 
 power which they themselves, more than any others, must 
 be surprised to find in their hands. Who could flatter him- 
 self that these men, suddenly, and as it were by enchantment, 
 snatched from the humblest rank of subordination, would 
 not be intoxicated with their unprepared greatness? Who 
 could conceive that men who are habitually meddling, dar- 
 ing, subtle, active, of litigious dispositions and unquiet 
 minds, would easily fall back into their old condition of ob- 
 scure contention, and laborious, low, and unprofitable chi- 
 cane? Who could doubt but that, at any expense to the 
 state, of which they understood nothing, they must pursue 
 their private interests, which they understood but too well ? 
 It was not an event depending on chance or contingency. 
 It was inevitable; it was necessary; it was planted in the 
 nature of things. They must join (if their capacity did not 
 permit them to lead) in any project which could procure to 
 
306 BURKE 
 
 them a litigious constitution,—which could lay open to them 
 those innumerable lucrative jobs which follow in the train 
 of all great convulsions and revolutions in the state, and par- 
 ticularly in all great and violent permutations of property. 
 Was it to be expected that they would attend to the sta- 
 bility of property, whose existence had always depended 
 upon whatever rendered property questionable, ambiguous, 
 and insecure? Their objects would be enlarged with their 
 elevation ; but their disposition, and habits, and mode of 
 accomplishing their designs must remain the same. 
 
 Well! but these men were to be tempered and restrained 
 by other descriptions, of more sober minds and more en- 
 larged understandings. Were they, then, to be awed by the 
 supereminent authority and awful dignity of a handful of 
 country clowns, who have seats in that assembly, some of 
 whom are said not to be able to read and write,—and by not 
 a greater number of traders, who, though somewhat more 
 instructed, and more conspicuous in the order of society, 
 had never known anything beyond their counting-house? 
 No! both these descriptions were more formed to be over- 
 borne and swayed by the intrigues and artifices of lawyers 
 than to become their counterpoise. With such a dangerous 
 disproportion, the whole must needs be governed by them. 
 
 To the faculty of law was joined a pretty considerable pro- 
 portion of the faculty of medicine. This faculty had not, any 
 more than that of the law, possessed in France its just estima- 
 tion. Its professors, therefore, must have the qualities of 
 men not habituated to sentiments of dignity. But supposing 
 they had ranked as they ought to do, and as with us they do 
 actually, the sides of sick-beds are not the academies for 
 forming statesmen and legislators. Then came the dealers 
 in stocks and funds, who must be eager, at any expense, to 
 change their ideal paper wealth for the more solid substance 
 of land. To these were joined men of other descriptions, 
 from whom as little knowledge of or attention to the in- 
 terests of a great state was to be expected, and as little re- 
 gard to the stability of any institution,—men formed to be 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 397 
 
 instruments, not controls.—Such, in general, was the com- 
 position of the Tiers Etat in the National Assembly ; in 
 which was scarcely to be perceived the slightest traces of 
 what we call the natural landed interest of the country. 
 
 We know that the British House of Commons, without 
 shutting its doors to any merit in any class, is, by the sure 
 operation of adequate causes, filled with everything illus- 
 trious in rank, in descent, in hereditary and in acquired opu- 
 lence, in cultivated talents, in military, civil, naval, and 
 politic distinction, that the country can afford. But suppos- 
 ing, what hardly can be supposed as a case, that the House 
 of Commons should be composed in the same manner with 
 the Tiers Etat in France,—would this dominion of chicane 
 be borne with patience, or even conceived without horror ? 
 God forbid I should insinuate anything derogatory to that 
 profession which is another priesthood, administering the 
 rights of sacred justice! But whilst I revere men in the 
 functions which belong to them, and would do as much as one 
 man can do to prevent their exclusion from any, I can not, to 
 flatter them, give the lieto Nature. They are good and use- 
 ful in the composition ; they must be mischievous, if they 
 preponderate so as virtually to become the whole. Their 
 very excellence in their peculiar functions may be far from 
 a qualification for others. It can not escape observation, 
 that, when men are too much confined to professional and 
 faculty habits, and, as it were, inveterate in the recurrent em- 
 ployment of that narrow circle, they are rather disabled than 
 qualified for whatever depends on the knowledge of man- 
 kind, on experience in mixed affairs, on a comprehensive, 
 connected view of the various, complicated, external, and in- 
 ternal interests which go to the formation of that multifarious 
 thing called a State. 
 
 After all, if the House of Commons were to have an 
 wholly professional and faculty composition, what is the 
 power of the House of Commons, circumscribed and shut in 
 by the immovable barriers of laws, usages, positive rules of 
 doctrine and practice, counterpoised by the House of Lords, 
 
398 BURKE 
 
 and every moment of its existence at the discretion of the 
 crown to continue, prorogue, or dissolve us? The power of 
 the House of Commons, direct or indirect, is, indeed, great : 
 and long may it be able to preserve its greatness, and the 
 spirit belonging to true greatness, at the full !—and it will do 
 so, as long as it can keep the breakers of lawin India from 
 becoming the makers of law for England. The power, how- 
 ever, of the House of Commons, when least diminished, is as 
 a drop of water in the ocean, compared to that residing in a 
 settled majority of your National Assembly. That assembly, 
 since the destruction of the orders, has no fundamental law, 
 no strict convention, no respected usage to restrain it. In- 
 stead of finding themselves obliged to conform to a fixed 
 constitution, they have a power to make a constitution which 
 shall conform to their designs. Nothing in heaven or upon 
 earth can serve as acontrol on them. What ought to be the 
 heads, the hearts, the dispositions, that are qualified, or that 
 dare, not only to make laws under a fixed constitution, but at 
 one heat to strike out a totally new constitution for a great 
 kingdom, and in every part of it, from the monarch on the 
 throne tothe vestry of a parish? But 
 
 “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.” 
 
 In such a state of unbounded power, for undefined and 
 undefinable purposes, the evil of a moral and almost physical 
 inaptitude of the man to the function must be the greatest 
 we can conceive to happen in the management of human 
 affairs. 
 
 Having considered the composition of the third estate, as 
 it stood in its original frame, I took a view of the representa- 
 tives of the clergy. There, too, it appeared that full as little 
 regard was had to the general security of property, or to the 
 aptitude of the deputies for their public purposes, in the 
 principles of their election. That election was so contrived 
 as to send a very large proportion of mere country curates 
 to the great and arduous work of new-modelling a state; 
 men who never had seen the state so much as ina picture; 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 399 
 
 men who knew nothing of the world beyond the bounds of 
 an obscure village; who, immersed in hopeless poverty, 
 could regard all property, whether secular or ecclesiastical, 
 with no other eye than that of envy; among whom must be 
 many who, for the smallest hope of the meanest dividend in 
 plunder, would readily join in any attempts upon a body of 
 wealth in which they could hardly look to have any share, 
 except in a general scramble. Instead of balancing the 
 power of the active chicaners in the other assembly, these 
 curates must necessarily become the active coadjutors, or at 
 best the passive instruments, of those by whom they had 
 been habitually guided in their petty village concerns. 
 They, too, could hardly be the most conscientious of their 
 kind, who, presuming upon their incompetent understand- 
 ing, could intrigue for a trust which led them from their 
 natural relation to their flocks, and their natural spheres of 
 action, to undertake the regeneration of kingdoms. This 
 preponderating weight, being added to the force of the body 
 of chicane in the Tiers Etat, completed that momentum of 
 ignorance, rashness, presumption, and lust of plunder, which 
 nothing has been able to resist. 
 
 To observing men it must have appeared from the begin- 
 ning, that the majority of the third estate, in conjunction 
 with such a deputation from the clergy as I have described, 
 whilst it pursued the destruction of the nobility, would inev- 
 itably become subservient to the worst designs of individ- 
 uals in that class. In the spoil and humiliation of their own 
 order these individuals would possess a sure fund for the 
 pay of their new followers. To squander away the objects 
 which made the happiness of their fellows would be to them 
 no sacrifice at all. Turbulent, discontented men of quality, 
 in proportion as they are puffed up with personal pride and 
 arrogance, generally despise their own order. One of the 
 first symptoms they discover of a selfish and mischievous 
 ambition is a profligate disregard of a dignity which they 
 partake with others. To be attached to the subdivision, to 
 love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first 
 
400 BURKE 
 
 principle (the germ, as it were) of public affections. It is 
 the first link in the series by which we proceed towards a 
 love to our country and to mankind. The interest of that 
 portion of social arrangement is a trust in the hands of all 
 those who compose it; and as none but bad men would 
 justify it in abuse, none but traitors would barter it away for 
 their own personal advantage. 
 
 There were, in the time of our civil troubles in England, 
 (I do not know whether you have any such in your Assem- 
 bly in France,) several persons, like the then Earl of Hol- 
 land, who by themselves or their families had brought an 
 odium on the throne by the prodigal dispensation of its 
 bounties towards them, who afterwards joined in the rebel- 
 lions arising from the discontents of which they were them- 
 selves the cause: men who helped to subvert that throne to 
 which they owed, some of them, their existence, others all 
 that power which they employed to ruin their benefactor. 
 If any bounds are set to the rapacious demands of that sort 
 of people, or that others are permitted to partake in the ob- 
 jects they would engross, revenge and envy soon fill up the 
 craving void that is left in their avarice. Confounded by the 
 complication of distempered passions, their reason is dis- 
 turbed ; their views become vast and perplexed,—to others 
 inexplicable, to themselves uncertain. They find, on all 
 sides, bounds to their unprincipled ambition in any fixed 
 order of things; but in the fog and haze of confusion all is 
 enlarged, and appears without any limit. 
 
 When men of rank sacrifice all ideas of dignity to an am- 
 bition without a distinct object, and work with low instru- 
 ments and for low ends, the whole composition becomes low 
 and base. Does not something like this now appear in 
 France? Does it not produce something ignoble and in- 
 glorious: a kind of meanness in all the prevalent policy; a 
 tendency in all that is done to lower along with individuals 
 all the dignity and importance of the state? Other revolu- 
 tions have been conducted by persons who, whilst they at- 
 tempted or affected changes in the commonwealth, sanctified 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 401 
 
 their ambition by advancing the dignity of the people whose 
 peace they troubled. They had long views. They aimed 
 at the rule, not at the destruction of their country. They 
 were men of great civil and great military talents, and if the 
 terror, the ornament of their age. They were not like Jew 
 brokers contending with each other who could best remedy 
 with fraudulent circulation and depreciated paper the wretch- 
 edness and ruin brought on their country by their degen- 
 erate councils. The compliment made to one of the great 
 bad men of the old stamp (Cromwell) by his kinsman, a 
 favourite poet of that time, shows what it was he proposed, 
 and what indeed to a great degree he accomplished in the 
 success of his ambition :— 
 
 “Still as you rise, the state, exalted too, 
 Finds no distemper whilst ’t is changed by you: 
 Changed like the world’s great scene, when without noise 
 The rising sun night’s valeur lights destroys.” 
 
 These disturbers were not so much like men usurping 
 power as asserting their natural place in society. Their 
 rising was to illuminate and beautify the world. Their con- 
 quest over their competitors was by outshining them. The 
 hand, that, like a destroying angel, smote the country, com- 
 municated to it the force and energy under which it suffered. 
 I do not say, (God forbid !) I do not say that the virtues of 
 such men were to be taken as a balance to their crimes; but 
 they were some corrective to their effects. Such was, as I 
 said, our Cromwell. Such were your whole race of Guises, 
 Condés, and Colignys. Such the Richelieus, who in more 
 quiet times acted in the spirit of a civil war. Such, as bet- 
 ter men, and in aless dubious cause, were your Henry the 
 Fourth, and your Sully, though nursed in civil confusions, 
 and not wholly without some of their taint. It is a thing to 
 be wondered at, to see how very soon France, when she had 
 a moment to respire, recovered and emerged from the longest 
 and most dreadful civil war that ever was known in any na- 
 tion. Why? Because, among all their massacres, they had 
 
 not slain the mind in their country. A conscious dignity, a 
 26 
 
402 | BURKE 
 
 noble pride, a generous sense of glory and emulation, was 
 not extinguished. On the contrary, it was kindled and in- 
 flamed. The organs also of the state, however shattered, 
 existed. All the prizes of honour and virtue, all the rewards, 
 all the distinctions, remained. But your present confusion, 
 like a palsy, has attacked the fountain of life itself. Every 
 person in your country, in a situation to be actuated bya 
 principle of honour, is disgraced and degraded, and can en- 
 tertain no sensation of life, except in a mortified and humi- 
 liated indignation. But this generation will quickly pass 
 away. The next generation of the nobility will resemble 
 the artificers and clowns, and money-jobbers, usurers, and 
 Jews, who will be always their fellows, sometimes their 
 masters. Believe me, Sir, those who attempt to level never 
 equalize. In all societies consisting of various descriptions 
 of citizens, some description must be uppermost. The 
 levellers, therefore, only change and pervert the natural or- 
 der of things: they load the edifice of society by setting up 
 in the air what the solidity of the structure requires to be 
 on the ground. The associations of tailors and carpenters, 
 of which the republic (of Paris, for instance) is composed, 
 can not be equal to the situation into which, by the worst of 
 usurpations, an usurpation on the prerogatives of Nature, 
 you attempt to force them. 
 
 The Chancellor of France, at the opening of the States, 
 said, in a tone of oratorial flourish, that all occupations were 
 honourable. If he meant only that no honest employment 
 was disgraceful, he would not have gone beyond the truth. 
 But in asserting that anything is honourable, we imply some 
 distinction in its favour. The occupation of a hair-dresser, or 
 of a working tallow-chandler, can not be a matter of honour 
 to any person,—to say nothing of a number of other more 
 servile employments. Such descriptions of men ought not 
 to suffer oppression from the state; but the state suffers op- 
 pression, if such as they, either individually or collectively, 
 are permitted to rule. In this you think you are combat- 
 ing prejudice, but you are at war with Nature.) 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 403 
 
 I do not, my dear Sir, conceive you to be of that sophistical, 
 captious spirit, or of that uncandid dulness, as to require, for 
 every general observation or sentiment, an explicit detail of 
 the correctives and exceptions which reason will presume to 
 be included in all the general propositions which come from 
 reasonable men. You do not imagine that I wish to con- 
 fine power, authority, and distinction to blood and names 
 and titles. No, Sir. There is no qualification for govern- 
 ment but virtue and wisdom, actual or presumptive. 
 Wherever they are actually found, they have, in whatever 
 state, condition, profession, or trade, the passport of Heaven 
 to human place and honour. Woetothe country which 
 would madly and impiously reject the service of the talents 
 and virtues, civil, military, or religious, that are given to 
 grace and to serve it; and would condemn to obscurity 
 everything formed to diffuse lustre and glory around a state! 
 Woe to that country, too, that, passing into the opposite 
 extreme, considers a low education, a mean, contracted view 
 of things, a sordid, mercenary occupation, as a preferable 
 title to command! Everything ought to be open,—but not 
 indifferently to everyman. No rotation, no appointment by 
 lot, no mode of election operating in the spirit of sortition or 
 rotation, can be generally good in a government conversant 
 in extensive objects; because they have no tendency, direct 
 or indirect, to select the man with a view to the duty, or to 
 accommodate the one to the other. I do not hesitate to 
 say that the road to eminence and power, from obscure 
 condition, ought not to be made too easy, nor a thing too 
 much of course. If rare merit be the rarest of all rare 
 things, it ought to pass through some sort of probation. 
 The temple of honour ought to be seated on an eminence. 
 If it be opened through virtue, let it be remembered, too, 
 that virtue is never tried but by some difficulty and some 
 struggle. 
 
 Nothing is a due and adequate representation of a state, 
 that does not represent its ability, as well as its property. 
 But as ability is a vigorous and active principle, and as prop- 
 
AO4. BURKE 
 
 erty is sluggish, inert, and timid, it never can be safe from 
 the invasions of ability, unless it be, out of all proportion, 
 predominant in the representation. It must be represented, 
 too, in great masses of accumulation, or it is not rightly pro- 
 tected. The characteristic essence of property, formed out 
 of the combined principles of its acquisition and conserva- 
 tion, is to be unequal. The great masses, therefore, which 
 excite envy, and tempt rapacity, must be put out of the pos- 
 sibility of danger. Then they form a natural rampart about 
 the lesser properties in all their gradations. The same 
 quantity of property which is by the natural course of things 
 divided among many has not the same operation. Its de- 
 fensive power is weakened as it is diffused. In this diffusion 
 each man’s portion is less than what, in the eagerness of his 
 desires, he may flatter himself to obtain by dissipating the 
 accumulations of others. The plunder of the few would, 
 indeed, give but a share inconceivably small in the distribu- 
 tion to the many. But the many are not capable of making 
 this calculation; and those who lead them to rapine never 
 intend this distribution. 
 
 The power of perpetuating our property in our families is 
 one of the most valuable and interesting circumstances be- 
 longing to it, and that which tends the most to the perpetua- 
 tion of society itself. It makes our weakness subservient 
 to our virtue; it grafts benevolence even upon avarice. 
 The possessors of family wealth, and of the distinction 
 which attends hereditary possession, (as most concerned in 
 in it,) are the natural securities for this transmission. With 
 us the House of Peers is formed upon this principle. It is 
 wholly composed of hereditary property and hereditary dis- 
 tinction, and made, therefore, the third of the legislature, 
 and, in the last event, the sole judge of all property in all its 
 subdivisions. The House of Commons, too, though not 
 necessarily, yet in fact, is always so composed, in the far 
 greater part. Let those large proprietors be what they will, 
 (and they have their chance of being amongst the best,) they 
 are, at the very worst, the ballast in the vessel of the com- 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 405 
 
 monwealth. For though hereditary wealth, and the rank 
 which goes with it, are too much idolised by creeping 
 sycophants, and the blind, abject admirers of power, they 
 are too rashly slighted in shallow speculations of the petu- 
 lant, assuming, short-sighted coxcombs of philosophy. Some 
 decent, regulated preéminence, some preference (not exclusive 
 appropriation) given to birth, is neither unnatural, nor un- 
 just, nor impolitic. 
 
 It is said that twenty-four millions ought to prevail over 
 two hundred thousand. True; if the constitution of a king- 
 dom be a problem of arithmetic. This sort of discourse does 
 well enough with the lamp-post for its second: to men who 
 may reason calmly it is ridiculous. The will of the many, 
 and their interest, must very often differ; and great will be 
 the difference when they make an evil choice. A govern- 
 ment of five hundred country attorneys and obscure curates 
 is not good for twenty-four millions of men, though it were 
 chosen by eight-and-forty millions; nor is it the better for 
 being guided by a dozen of persons of quality who have be- 
 trayed their trust in order to obtain that power. At present, 
 you seem in everything to have strayed out of the high road 
 of Nature. The property of France does not govern it. Of 
 course property is destroyed, and rational liberty has no 
 existence. All you have got for the present is a paper cir- 
 culation, and a stock-jobbing constitution: and as to the 
 future, do you seriously think that the territory of France, 
 upon the republican system of eighty-three independent 
 municipalities, (to say nothing of the parts that compose 
 them,) can ever be governed as one body, or can ever be set 
 in motion by the impulse ofone mind? When the National 
 Assembly has completed its work, it will have accomplished 
 its ruin. These commonwealths will not long bear a state 
 of subjection to the republic of Paris. They will not bear 
 that this one body should monopolise the captivity of the 
 king, and the dominion over the assembly calling itself 
 national. Each will keep its own portion of the spoil 
 of the Church to itself; and it will not suffer either 
 
406 BURKE 
 
 that spoil, or the more just fruits of their industry, or the 
 natural produce of their soil, to be sent to swell the insolence 
 or pamper the luxury of the mechanics of Paris. In this 
 they will see none of the equality, under the pretence of 
 which they have been tempted to throw off their allegiance 
 to their sovereign, as wellas the ancient constitution of their 
 country. There can be no capital city in such a constitution 
 as they have lately made. They have forgot, that, when they 
 framed democratic governments, they had virtually dismem- 
 bered their country. The person whom they persevere in 
 calling king has not power left to him by the hundredth part 
 sufficient to hold together this collection of republics. The 
 republic of Paris will endeavour, indeed, to complete the de- 
 bauchery of the army, and illegally to perpetuate the Assem- 
 bly, without resort to its constituents, as the means of © 
 continuing its despotism. It will make efforts, by becoming 
 the heart of aboundless paper circulation, to draw everything 
 to itself: but in vain. All this policy in the end will appear 
 as feeble as it is now violent. 
 
 If this be your actual situation, compared to the situation 
 to which you were called, as it were by the voice of God 
 and man, Ican not find it in my heart to congratulate you 
 on the choice you have made, or the success which has at- 
 tended your endeavours. I can as little recommend to any 
 other nation a conduct grounded on such principles and pro- 
 ductive of such effects. That I must leave to those who can 
 see further into your affairs than I am able to do, and who 
 best know how far your actions are favourable to their de- 
 sions. The gentlemen of the Revolution Society, who were 
 so early in their congratulations, appear to be strongly of 
 opinion that there is some scheme of politics relative to this 
 country, in which your proceedings may in some way be 
 useful. For your Dr, Price, who seems to have speculated 
 himself into no small degree of feavour upon this subject, ad- 
 dresses his auditors in the following very remarkable words: 
 —“ I can not conclude without recalling particularly to your 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 407 
 
 recollection a consideration which I have more than once 
 alluded to, and which probably your thoughts have been all 
 along anticipating ; a consideration with which my mind is 
 impressed more than I can express: I mean the considera- 
 tion of the favourableness of the present times to all exertions 
 in the cause of liberty.” | 
 
 It is plain that the mind of this political preacher was at 
 the time big with some extraordinary design ; and it is very 
 probable that the thoughts of his audience, who understood 
 him better than I do, did all along run before him in his re- 
 flection, and in the whole train of consequences to which it 
 led. 
 
 Before I read that sermon, I really thought I had lived in 
 a free country; and it was an error I cherished, because it 
 gave me a greater liking to the country I lived in. I was, 
 indeed, aware that a jealous, ever-waking vigilance, to guard 
 the treasure of our liberty, not only from invasion, but from 
 decay, and corruption, was our best wisdom and our first 
 duty. However, I considered that treasure rather as a pos- 
 session to be secured than as a prize to be contended for. 
 I did not discern how the present time came to be so very 
 favourable to all exertions in the cause of freedom. The 
 present time differs from any other only by the circumstance 
 of what is doing in France. If the example of that nation 
 is to have an influence on this, I can easily conceive why 
 some of their proceedings which have an unpleasant aspect, 
 and are not quite reconcilableto humanity, generosity, good 
 faith, and justice, are palliated with so much milky good- 
 nature towards the actors, and borne with so much heroic 
 fortitude towards the sufferers. It is certainly not prudent 
 to discredit the authority of an example we mean to follow. 
 But allowing this, we are led to a very natural question :— 
 What is that cause of liberty, and what are those exertions 
 in its favour, to which the example of France is so singularly 
 auspicious? Is our monarchy to be annihilated, with all the 
 laws, all the tribunals, and all the ancient corporations of the 
 kingdomr Isevery landmark of the country to bedone away 
 
408 BURKE 
 
 in favour ofa geometrical and arithmetical constitution? Isthe 
 House of Lords to be voted useless ? Is Episcopacy to be 
 abolished ? Are the Church lands to be sold to Jews and 
 jobbers, or given to bribe new-invented municipal republics 
 into a participation in sacrilege? Are all the taxes to be 
 voted grievances, and the revenue reduced to a patriotic con- 
 tribution or patriotic presents? Are silver shoe-buckles to 
 be substituted in the place of the land-tax and the malt-tax, 
 for the support of the naval strength of this kingdom? Are 
 all orders, ranks, and distinctions to be confounded, that out 
 of universal anarchy, joined to national bankruptcy, three or 
 four thousand democracies should be formed into eighty- 
 three, and that they may all, by some sort of unknown at- 
 tractive power, be organized into one? For this great end 
 is the army to be seduced from its discipline and its fidelity, 
 first by every kind of debauchery, and then by the terrible 
 precedent of a donative in the increase of pay? Are the 
 curates to be seduced from their bishops by holding out to 
 them the delusive hope of a dole out of the spoils of their 
 own order? Are the citizens of London to be drawn from 
 their allegiance by feeding them at the expense of their 
 fellow-subjects? Is a compulsory paper currency to be 
 substituted in the place of the legal coin of this kingdom ? 
 Is what remains of the plundered stock of public revenue to 
 be employed in the wild project of maintaining two armies to 
 watch over and to fight with each other? If these are the ends 
 and means of the Revolution Society, I admit they are well 
 assorted ; and France may furnish them for both with pre- 
 cedents in point. 
 
 I see that your example is held out to shame us. I know 
 that we are supposed a dull, sluggish race, rendered passive 
 by finding our situation tolerable, and prevented by a me- 
 diocrity of freedom from ever attaining to its full perfection. 
 Your leaders in France began by affecting to admire, almost 
 to adore, the British Constitution; but as they advanced, 
 they came to look upon it with a sovereign contempt. The 
 friends of your National Assembly amongst us have full as 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 409 
 
 mean an opinion of what was formerly thought the glory of 
 their country. The Revolution Society has discovered that 
 the English nation is not free. They are convinced that the 
 inequality in our representation is a “‘ defect in our Consti- 
 tution so gross and palpable as to make it excellent chiefly 
 in form and theory ;”’ 4—that a representation in the legis- 
 lature of a kingdom is not only the basis of all constitutional 
 liberty in it, but of “all legitimate government; that with- 
 out ita government is nothing but an usurpation ;”’—that, 
 ‘‘ when the representation is partial, the kingdom possesses 
 liberty only partially; and if extremely partial, it gives 
 only asemblance; and if not only extremely partial, but cor- 
 ruptly chosen, it becomes a nuisance.’”’ Dr. Price considers 
 this inadequacy of representation as our fundamental griev- 
 ance; and though, as to the corruption of this semblance of 
 representation, he hopes it is not yet arrived to its full per- 
 fection of depravity, he fears that ‘nothing will be done to- 
 wards gaining for us this essential blessing, until some great 
 abuse of power again provokes our resentment, or some 
 great calamity again alarms our fears, or perhaps till the ac- 
 quisition of a pure and equal representation by other coun- 
 tries, whilst we are mocked with the shadow, kindles our 
 shame.” To thishe subjoins a note in these words:—“ A 
 representation chosen chiefly by the Treasury, and a few 
 thousands of the dregs of the people, who are generally paid 
 for their votes.” 
 
 You will smile here at the consistency of those democrat- 
 ists, who, when they are not on their guard, treat the 
 humbler part of the community with the greatest contempt, 
 whilst, at the same time, they pretend to make them the 
 depositories of all power. It would require a long discourse 
 to point out to you the many fallacies that lurk in the gen- 
 erality and equivocal nature of the terms “inadequate rep- 
 resentation.”” I shall only say here, in justice to that old- 
 fashioned Constitutioi: under which we have long prospered, 
 that our representation has been found perfectly adequate to 
 all the purposes for which a representation of the people can 
 
AIO BURKE 
 
 be desired or devised. I defy the enemies of our Constitution 
 to show the contrary. To detail the particulars in which it 
 is found so well to promote its ends would demand a treatise 
 on our practical Constitution. I state here the doctrine of 
 the revolutionists, only that you and others may see what 
 an opinion these gentlemen entertain of the Constitution of 
 their country, and why they seem to think that some great 
 abuse of power, or some great calamity, as giving a chance 
 for the blessing of a Constitution according to their ideas, 
 would be much palliated to their feelings; you see why they 
 are somuch enamoured of your fair and equal representa- 
 tion, which being once obtained, the same effects might 
 follow. You see they consider our House of Commons as 
 only “a semblance,” “a form,” ‘‘a theory,” “a shadow,” 
 “a mockery,” perhaps “a nuisance.” 
 
 These gentlemen value themselves on being systematic, 
 and not without reason. They must therefore look on this 
 gross and palpable defect of representation, this fundamental 
 grievance (so they call it), as a thing not only vicious in 
 itself, but as rendering our whole government absolutely 
 illegitimate, and not at all better than a downright usurpation. 
 Another revolution, to get rid of this illegitimate and usurped 
 government, would of course be perfectly justifiable, if not 
 absolutely necessary. Indeed, their principle, if you observe 
 it with any attention, goes much further than to an altera- 
 tion in the election of the House of Commons; for, if pop- 
 ular representation, or choice, is necessary to the legitimacy 
 of all government, the House of Lords is, at one stroke, bas- 
 tardised and corrupted in blood. That House is no repre- 
 sentative of the people at all, even in “semblance” or “in 
 form.” The case of the crown is altogether as bad. In vain 
 the crown may endeavour to screen itself against these 
 gentlemen by the authority of the establishment made on 
 the Revolution. The Revolution, which is resorted to fora 
 title, on their system, wants a title itself. The Revolution 
 is built, according to their theory, upon a basis not more 
 solid than our present formalities, as it was made bya House 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 4IiI 
 
 of Lords not representing any one but themselves, and by a 
 House of Commons exactly such as the present, that is, as 
 they term it, by a mere “shadow and mockery” of repre- 
 sentation. 
 
 Something they must destroy, or they seem to themselves 
 to exist for no purpose. One set is for destroying the civil 
 power through the ecclesiastical ; another for demolishing the 
 ecclesiastic through the civil. They are aware that the worst 
 consequences might happen to the public in accomplishing 
 this double ruin of Church and State; but they are so heated 
 with their theories, that they give more than hints that this 
 ruin, with all the mischiefs that must lead to it and attend it, 
 and which to themselves appear quite certain, would not be 
 unacceptable to them, or very remote from their wishes. A 
 man amongst them of great authority, and certainly of great 
 talents, speaking of a supposed alliance between Church and 
 State, says, “ Perhaps we must wait for the fall of the civil 
 powers, before this most unnatural alliance be broken. 
 Calamitous, no doubt, will that time be. But what convul- 
 sion in the political world ought to be a subject of lamenta- 
 tion, if it be attended with so desirable an effect?” You 
 see with what a steady eye these gentlemen are prepared to 
 view the greatest calamities which can befall their country! 
 
 It is no wonder, therefore, that, with these ideas of every- 
 thing in their Constitution and government at home, either 
 in Church or State, as illegitimate and usurped, or at best as 
 a vain mockery, they look abroad with an eager and passion- 
 ate enthusiasm. Whilst they are possessed by these notions, 
 it is vain to talk to them of the practice of their ancestors, 
 the fundamental laws of their country, the fixed form of a 
 Constitution whose merits are confirmed by the solid test of 
 long experience and an increasing public strength and na- 
 tional prosperity. They despise experience as the wisdom of 
 unlettered men ; and as for the rest, they have wrought un- 
 der ground amine that will blow up, at one grand explosion, 
 all examples of antiquity, all precedents, charters, and acts 
 of Parliament. They have “the rights of men.” Against 
 
AI2 BURKE 
 
 these there can be no prescription ; against these no argu- 
 ment is binding : these admit no temperament and no com- 
 promise : anything withheld from their full demand is so 
 much of fraud and injustice. Against these their rights of 
 men let no government look for security in the length of its 
 continuance, or in the justice and lenity of its administration. 
 The objections of these speculatists, if its forms do not quad- 
 rate with their theories, are as valid against such an old and 
 beneficent government as against the most violent tyranny 
 or the greenest usurpation. They are always at issue with 
 governments, not on a question of abuse, but a question of 
 competency and a question of title. I have nothing to say 
 to the clumsy subtilty of their political metaphysics. Let 
 them be their amusement in the schools. 
 
 Illa se jactet in aula 
 fEolus, et clauso ventorum carcere regnet. 
 
 But let them not break prison to burst like a Levanter, to 
 sweep the earth with their hurricane, and to break up the 
 fountains of the great deep to overwhelm us! 
 
 Far am I from denying in theory, full as far is my heart 
 from withholding in practise (if I were of power to give or 
 to withhold), the real rights of men. In denying their false 
 claims of right, I do not mean to injure those which are real, 
 and are such as their pretended rights would totally destroy. 
 If civil society be made for the advantage of man, all the 
 advantages for which it is made become his right. It is an 
 institution of beneficence ; and law itself is only beneficence 
 acting by arule. Men have a right to live by that rule ; 
 they have a right to justice, as between their fellows, wheth- 
 er their fellows are in politic function orin ordinary occupa- 
 tion. They have a right to the fruits of their industry, and 
 to the means of making their industry fruitful. They have 
 a right to the acquisitions of their parents, to the nourish- 
 ment and improvement of their offspring, to instruction in 
 life and to consolation in death. Whatever each man can sep- 
 arately do, without trespassing upon others, he hasa right to 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 413 
 
 do for himself ; and he has a right to a fair portion of all 
 which society, with all its combinations of skilland force, can 
 doin his favour. In this partnership all men have equal 
 rights ; but not to equal things. He that has but five shil- 
 lings in the partnership has as good a right to it as he that 
 has five hundred pounds has to his larger proportion ; but he 
 has not a right to an equal dividend in the product of the joint 
 stock. And astothe share of power, authority, and direction 
 which eachindividual ought to have in the management of 
 the state, that I must deny to be amongst the direct original 
 rights of manin civil society; for I have in my contempla- 
 tion the civil social man, and no other. It is a thing to be 
 settled by convention. 
 
 If civil society be the offspring of convention, that con- 
 vention must be its law. That convention must limit and 
 modify all the descriptions of constitution which are formed 
 under it. Every sort of legislative, judicial, or executory 
 power are its creatures. They can have no being in any 
 other state of things; and how can any man claim, under 
 the conventions of civil society, rights which do not so much 
 as suppose its existence,—rights which are absolutely repug- 
 nant to it? One of the first motives to civil society, and 
 which becomes one of its fundamental rules, is, that no man 
 should be judge in his own cause. By this each person has 
 at once divested himself of the first fundamental right of un- 
 covenanted man, that is, to judge for himself, and to assert 
 his own cause. He abdicates all right to be his own gover- 
 nor. He inclusively, in a great measure, abandons the right 
 of self-defense, the first law of Nature. Men can not enjoy 
 the rights of an uncivil and of a civil state together. That 
 he may obtain justice, he gives up his right of determining 
 what it is in points the most essential to him. That he may 
 secure some liberty, he makes a surrender in trust of the 
 whole of it. 
 
 Government is not made in virtue of natural rights, which 
 may and do exist in total independence of it, —and exist in 
 much greater clearness, and in a much greater degree of 
 
AI4 BURKE 
 
 abstract perfection : but their abstract perfection is their prac- 
 tical defect. By having a right to everything they want 
 everything. Government isa contrivance of human wisdom 
 to provide for human wants. Men have a right that these 
 wants should be provided for by this wisdom. Among these 
 wants is to be reckoned the want, out of civil society, of a 
 sufficient restraint upon their passions. Society requires not 
 only that the passions of individuals should be subjected, 
 but that even in the mass and body, as well as in the individ- 
 uals, the inclinations of men should frequently be thwarted, 
 their will controlled, and their passions brought into subjec- 
 tion. This can only be done by a power out of themselves, 
 and not, in the exercise of its function, subject to that will 
 and to those passions which it is its office to bridle and sub- 
 due. In this sense the restraints on men, as well as their 
 liberties, are to be reckoned among their rights. But as the 
 liberties and the restrictions vary with times and circum- 
 stances, and admit of infinite modifications, they can not be 
 settled upon any abstract rule ; and nothing is so foolish as 
 to discuss them upon that principle. 
 
 The moment you abate anything from the full rights of 
 men each to govern himself, and suffer any artificial, posi- 
 tive limitation upon those rights, from that moment the 
 whole organization of government becomes a consideration 
 of convenience. This it is which makes the constitution of 
 a state, and the due distribution of its powers, a matter of 
 the most delicate and complicated skill. It requires a deep 
 knowledge of human nature and human necessities, and of 
 the things which facilitate or obstruct the various ends which 
 are to be pursued by the mechanism of civil institutions. 
 The state is to have recruits to its strength and remedies to 
 its distempers. What is the use of discussing a man’s 
 abstract right to food or medicine? The question is upon 
 the method of procuring and administering them. In that 
 deliberation I shall always advise to call in the aid of the 
 farmer and the physician, rather than the professor of 
 metaphysics. 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 4T5 
 
 The science of constructing a commonwealth, or renovat- 
 ing it, or reforming it, is, like every other experimental 
 science, not to be taught a priori. Nor is it a short expe 
 rience that can instruct us in that practical science; because 
 the real effects of moral causes are not always immediate, 
 but that which in the first instance is prejudicial may be ex- 
 cellent in its remoter operation, and its excellence may arise 
 even from the ill effects it produces in the beginning. The 
 reverse also happens; and very plausible schemes, with very 
 pleasing commencements, have often shameful and lamen- 
 table conclusions. In states there are often some obscure 
 and almost latent causes, things which appear at first view of 
 little moment, on which a very great part of its prosperity or 
 adversity may most essentially depend. The science of 
 government being, therefore, so practical in itself, and in- 
 tended for such practical purposes, a matter which requires 
 experience, and even more experience than any person can 
 gain in his whole life, however sagacious and observing he 
 may be, it is with infinite caution that any man ought to 
 venture upon pulling down an edifice which has answered in 
 any tolerable degree forages the common purposes of society, 
 or on building it up again without having models and 
 patterns of approved utility before his eyes. 
 
 These metaphysic rights entering into common life, like 
 rays of light which pierce into a dense medium, are, by the 
 laws of Nature, refracted from their straight line. Indeed, 
 in the gross and complicated mass of human passions and 
 concerns, the primitive rights of men undergo such a variety 
 of refractions and reflections that it becomes absurd to talk 
 of them as if they continued in the simplicity of their original 
 direction. The nature of man is intricate; the objects of 
 society are of the greatest possible complexity: and there- 
 fore no simple disposition or direction of power can be suit- 
 able either to man’s nature or to the quality of his affairs. 
 when I hear the simplicity of contrivance aimed at and 
 boasted of in any new political constitutions, I am at no loss 
 to decide that the artificers are grossly ignorant of their trade 
 
416 BURKE 
 
 or totally negligent of their duty. The simple governments 
 are fundamentally defective, to say no worse of them. If 
 you were to contemplate society in but one point of view, 
 all these simple modes of polity are infinitely captivating. 
 In effect each would answer its single end much more per- 
 fectly than the most complex is able to attain all its com- 
 plex purposes. But it is better that the whole should be 
 imperfectly and anomalously answered than that while some 
 parts are provided for with great exactness, others might be 
 totally neglected, or perhaps materially injured, by the over- 
 care of a favourite member. 
 
 The pretended rights of these theorists are all extremes; 
 and in proportion as they are metaphysically true, they are 
 morally and politically false. The rights of men are in a 
 sort of middle, incapable of definition, but not impossible to 
 be discerned. The rights of men in governments are their 
 advantages ; and these are often in balances between differ- 
 ences of good,—in compromises sometimes between good and 
 evil, and sometimes between evil and evil. Political reason 
 is a computing principle: adding, subtracting, multiplying, 
 and dividing, morally, and not metaphysically, or mathe- 
 matically, true moral denominations, 
 
 By these theorists the right of the people is almost always 
 sophistically confounded with their power. The body of 
 the community, whenever it can come to act, can meet with 
 no effectual resistance ; but till power and right are the same, 
 the whole body of them has no right inconsistent with 
 virtue, and the first of all virtues, prudence. Men have no 
 right to what is not reasonable, and to what is not for their 
 benefit; for though a pleasant writer said, “ Liceat perire 
 poetis,” when one of them, in cold blood, is said to have 
 leaped into the flames of a volcanic revolution, “‘ardentem 
 frigidus A£tnam insiluit,’’ I consider such a frolic rather as an 
 unjustifiable poetic license than as one of the franchises of 
 Parnassus; and whether he were poet, or divine, or politi- 
 cian, that chose to exercise this kind of right, I think that 
 more wise, because more charitable, thoughts would urge me 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 417 
 
 rather to save the man than to preserve his brazen slippers 
 as the monuments of his folly. 
 
 The kind of anniversary sermons to which a great part of 
 what I write refers, if men are not shamed out of their 
 present course, in commemorating the fact, will cheat many 
 out of the principles and deprive them of the benefits of the 
 Revolution they commemorate. I confess to you, Sir, I 
 never liked this continual talk of resistance and revolution, 
 or the practice of making the extreme medicine of the Con- 
 stitution its daily bread. It renders the habit of society 
 dangerously valetudinary ; it is taking periodical doses of 
 mercury sublimate, and swallowing down repeated provoca- 
 tives of cantharides to our love of liberty. 
 
 This distemper of remedy, grown habitual, relaxes and 
 wears out, by a vulgar and prostituted use, the spring of that 
 spirit, which is to be exerted on great occasions. It was in 
 the most patient period of Roman servitude that themes of 
 tyrannicide made the ordinary exercise of boys at school,— 
 cum perimit szevos classis numerosa tyrannos. In the ordi- 
 nary state of things, it produces in a country like ours the 
 worst effects, even on the cause of that liberty which it 
 abuses with the dissoluteness of an extravagant speculation. 
 Almost all the high-bred republicans of my time have, after 
 a short space, become the most decided, thorough-paced 
 courtiers ; they soon left the business of a tedious, moderate, 
 but practical resistance, to those of us whom, in the pride 
 and intoxication of their theories, they have slighted as not 
 much better than Tories. Hypocrisy, of course, delights in 
 the most sublime speculations; for, never intending to go 
 beyond speculation, it costs nothing to have it magnificent. 
 But even in cases where rather levity than fraud was to be 
 suspected in these ranting speculations, the issue has been 
 much the same. These professors, finding their extreme 
 principles not applicable to cases which call only for a quali- 
 fied, or, as I may say, civil and legal resistance, in such cases 
 
 employ no resistance at all. It is with them a war or a 
 27 
 
418 BURKE 
 
 revolution, oritisnothing. Finding their schemes of politics 
 not adapted to the state of the world in which they live, they 
 often come to think lightly of all public principle, and are 
 ready, on their part, to abandon for a very trivial interest 
 what they find of very trivial value. Some, indeed, are of 
 more steady and persevering natures; but these are eager 
 politicians out of Parliament, who have little totempt them 
 to abandon their favourite projects. They have some change 
 in the Church or State, or both, constantly in their view. 
 When that is the case, they are always bad citizens, and per- 
 fectly unsure connections. For, considering their specula- 
 tive designs as of infinite value, and the actual arrangement 
 of the state as of no estimation, they are, at best, indifferent 
 about it. They see no merit in the good, and no fault in 
 the vicious management of public affairs ; they rather rejoice 
 in the latter, as more propitious to revolution. They see no 
 merit or demerit in any man, or any action, or any political 
 principle, any further than as they may forward or retard 
 their design of change ; they therefore take up, one day, the 
 most violent and stretched prerogative, and another time the 
 wildest democratic ideas of freedom, and pass from the one 
 to the other without any sort of regard to cause, to person, 
 or to party. 
 
 In France you are now in the crisis of a revolution, and 
 in the transit from one form of government to another: you 
 can not see that character of men exactly in the same situa- 
 tion in which we see it in this country. With us it is mili- 
 tant, with you it is triumphant; and you know how it can 
 act, when its power is commensurate to its will. I would 
 not be supposed to confine those observations to any descrip- 
 tion of men, or to comprehend all men of any description 
 within them,—no, far from it! I am as incapable of that 
 injustice as I am of keeping terms with those who profess 
 principles of extremes, and who, under the name of religion, 
 teach little else than wild and dangerous politics. The worst 
 of these politics of revolution isthis: they temper and harden 
 the breast, in order to prepare it for the desperate strokes 
 
me 
 
 REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 419 
 
 which are sometimes used in extreme occasions. But as 
 these occasions may never arrive, the mind receives a gratui- 
 tous taint ; and the moral sentiments suffer not a little, when 
 no political purpose is served by the depravation. This sort 
 of people are so taken up with their theories about the rights 
 of man, that they have totally forgot his nature. Without 
 opening one new avenue to the understanding, they have 
 succeeded in stopping up those that lead to the heart. They 
 have perverted in themselves, and in those that attend 
 to them, all the well-placed sympathies of the human 
 breast. 
 
 This famous sermon of the Old Jewry breathes nothing 
 but this spirit through all the political part. Plots, massa- 
 cres, assassinations, seem to some people a trivial price for 
 obtaining a revolution. A cheap, bloodless reformation, a 
 guiltless liberty, appear flat and vapid to their taste. There 
 must be a great change of scene; there must be a magnificent 
 stage effect; there must be a grand spectacle to rouse the 
 imagination, grown torpid with the lazy enjoyment of sixty 
 years’ security, and the still unanimating repose of public 
 prosperity. The preacher found them all in the French 
 Revolution. This inspires a juvenile warmth through his 
 whole frame. His enthusiasm kindles as he advances; and 
 when he arrives at his peroration, it is in a full blaze. Then 
 viewing, from the Pisgah of his pulpit, the free, moral, 
 happy, flourishing, and glorious state of France, as in a bird- 
 eye landscape of a promised land, he breaks out into the 
 following rapture :— 
 
 “ What an eventful period is this! I am thankful that I 
 have lived to it; I could almost say, ‘ Lord, now lettest thou 
 thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy 
 salvation.’—I have lived to see a diffusion of knowledge which 
 has undermined superstition and error.—I have lived to see 
 the rights of men better understood than ever, and nations 
 panting for liberty which seemed to have lost the idea of it — 
 I have lived to see thirty millions of people, indignant and 
 resolute, spurning at slavery, and demanding liberty with an 
 
420 BURKE 
 
 irresistible voice ; their king led in triumph, and an arbitrary 
 monarch surrendering himself to his subjects.” # 
 
 Before I proceed further, I have to remark that Dr. Price 
 seems rather to overvalue the great acquisitions of light 
 which he has obtained and diffused in this age. The last 
 century appears to me to have been quite as much enlight- 
 ened. It had, though in a different place, a triumph as 
 memorable as that of Dr. Price; and some of the great 
 preachers of that period partook of it as eagerly as he has 
 done in the triumph of France. On the trial of the Reverend 
 Hugh Peters for high treason, it was deposed, that, when 
 King Charles was brought to London for his trial, the Apostle 
 of Liberty in that day conducted the triumph. “I saw,” 
 says the witness, “‘ his Majesty in the coach with six horses, 
 and Peters riding before the king triumphing.” Dr. Price, 
 when he talks as if he had made a discovery, only follows a 
 precedent; for, after the commencement of the king’s trial, 
 this precursor, the same Dr. Peters, concluding a long prayer 
 at the royal chapel at Whitehall, (he had very triumphantly 
 chosen his place,) said, ‘“I have prayed and preached these 
 twenty years; and now I may say with old Simeon, ‘ Lord, 
 now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes 
 have seen thy salvation.’’8 Peters had not the fruits of his 
 prayer; for he neither departed so soon as he wished, nor 
 in peace. He became (what I heartily hope none of his 
 followers may be in this country) himself a sacrifice to the 
 triumph which he led as pontiff. They dealt at the Restora- 
 tion, perhaps, too hardly with this poor good man. But we 
 owe it to hismemory and his sufferings, that he had as much 
 illumination and as much zeal, and had as effectually under- 
 mined all the superstition and error which might impede the 
 great business he was engaged in, as any who follow and 
 repeat after him in this age, which would assume to itself an 
 exclusive title to the knowledge of the rights of men, and all 
 the glorious consequences of that knowledge. 
 
 After this sally of the preacher of the Old Jewry, which 
 differs only in place and time, but agrees perfectly with the 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION A421 
 
 spirit and letter of the rapture of 1648, the Revolution So- 
 ciety, the fabricators of governments, the heroic band of 
 
 cashierers of monarchs, electors of sovereigns, and leaders of - 
 
 kings in triumph, strutting with a proud,consciousness of 
 the diffusion of knowledge, of which every member had ob- 
 tained so large a share in the donative, were in haste to make 
 a generous diffusion of the knowledge they had thus gratui- 
 tously received. To make this bountiful communication, 
 they adjourned from the church in the Old Jewry to the 
 London Tavern, where the same Dr. Price, in whom the 
 fumes of his oracular tripod were not entirely evaporated, 
 moved and carried the resolution, or address of congratula- 
 tion, transmitted by Lord Stanhope to the National Assem- 
 bly of France. o 
 
 I find a preacher of the Gospel profaning the beautiful and 
 prophetic ejaculation, commonly called “ Nunc dimittis,” 
 made on the first presentation of our Saviour in the temple, 
 and applying it, with an inhuman and unnatural rapture, to 
 the most horrid, atrocious, and afflicting spectacle that per- 
 haps ever was exhibited to the pity and indignation of man- 
 kind. This“ leading in triumph,” a thing in its best form 
 unmanly and irreligious, which fills our preacher with such 
 unhallowed transports, must shock, I believe, the moral 
 taste of every well-born mind. Several English were the 
 stupefied and indignant spectators of that triumph. It was 
 (unless we have been strangely deceived) a spectacle more 
 resembling a procession of American savages entering into 
 Onondaga after some of their murders called victories, and 
 leading into hovels hung round with scalps their captives 
 overpowered with the scoffs and buffets of women as fero- 
 
 cious as themselves, much more than it resembled the, 
 
 triumphal pomp of a civilized martial nation ;—if a civilized 
 nation, or any men who had a sense of generosity, were ca- 
 pable of a personal triumph over the fallen and afflicted. 
 This, my dear Sir, was not the triumph of France. I must 
 believe, that, as a nation, it overwhelmed you with shame 
 and horror. I must believe that the National Assembly find 
 
A422 BURKE 
 
 themselves in a state of the greatest humiliation in not 
 being able to punish the authors of thistriumph or the actors 
 in it, and that they are in a situation in which any inquiry 
 they may make upon the subject must be destitute even of 
 the appearance of liberty or impartiality. The apology of 
 that assembly is found in their situation; but when we ap- 
 prove what they must bear, it is in us the degenerate choice 
 of a vitiated mind. 
 
 With a compelled appearance of deliberation, they vote 
 under the dominion of a stern necessity. They sit in the 
 heart, as it were, of a foreign republic: they have their resi- 
 dence ina city whose constitution has emanated neither from 
 the charter of their king nor from their legislative power. 
 There they are surrounded by an army not raised either by 
 the authority of their crown or by their command, and which, 
 if they should order to dissolve itself, would instantly dis- 
 solve them. There they sit, after a gang of assassins had 
 driven away some hundreds of the members; whilst those 
 who held the same moderate principles, with more patience 
 or better hope, continued every day exposed to outrageous 
 insults and murderous threats. There a majority, some- 
 times real, sometimes pretended, captive itself, compels a 
 captive king to issue as royal edicts, at a third hand, the pol- 
 luted nonsense of their most licentious and giddy coffee- 
 houses. It is notorious that all their measures are decided 
 before they are debated. It is beyond doubt, that, under 
 the terror of the bayonet, and the lamp-post, and the 
 torch to their houses, they are obliged to adopt all the crude 
 and desperate measures suggested by clubs composed of a 
 monstrous medley of all conditions, tongues, and nations. 
 Among these are found persons in comparison of whom 
 Catiline would be thought scrupulous, and Cethegus a man of 
 sobriety and moderation. Nor is it inthese clubs alone that 
 the public measures are deformed into monsters. They un- 
 dergo a previous distortion in academies, intended as so many 
 seminaries for these clubs, which are set up in all the places 
 of public resort. In these meetings of all sorts, every coun- 
 
1899 by D.Appleton &Co- 
 
 C opyright 
 
 , 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 423 
 
 sel, in proportion as it is daring and violent and perfidious, 
 is taken for the mark of superior genius. Humanity and 
 compassion are ridiculed as the fruits of superstition and 
 ignorance. Tenderness to individuals is considered as treason 
 to the public. Liberty is always to be estimated perfect as 
 property is rendered insecure. Amidst assassination, mas- 
 sacre and confiscation, perpetrated or meditated, they are 
 forming plans for the good order of future society. Em- 
 bracing in their arms the carcasses of base criminals, and 
 promoting their relations on the title of their offences, they 
 drive hundreds of virtuous persons to the same end, by 
 forcing them to subsist by beggary or by crime. 
 
 The Assembly, their organ, acts before them the farce of 
 deliberation with as little decency asliberty. They act like 
 the comedians of a fair, before a riotous audience ; they act 
 amidst the tumultuous cries of a mixed mob of ferocious 
 men, and of women lost to shame, who, according to their 
 insolent fancies, direct, control, applaud, explode them, and 
 sometimes mix and take their seats amongst them,—domi- 
 neering over them with a strange mixture of servile petu- 
 lance and proud, presumptuous authority. Asthey have in- 
 verted order in all things, the gallery is in the place of the 
 house. This assembly, which overthrows kings and king- 
 doms, has not even the physiognomy and aspect of a grave 
 legislative body,—‘‘nec color imperii, nec frons erat ulla 
 senatis.” They havea power given to them, like that of the 
 Evil Principle, to subvert and destroy,—but none to con- 
 struct, except such machines as may be fitted for further 
 subversion and further destruction. 
 
 Who is it that admires, and from the heart is attached to 
 national representative assemblies, but must turn with horror 
 and disgust from such a profane burlesque and abominable 
 perversion of that sacred institute? Lovers of monarchy, 
 lovers of republics, must alike abhor it. The members of 
 your Assembly must themselves groan under the tyranny of 
 which they have all the shame, none of the direction, and 
 little of the profit. I am sure many of the members who 
 
A424 BURKE 
 
 compose even the majority of that body must feel as I do, 
 notwithstanding the applauses of the Revolution Society. 
 Miserable king! miserable assembly! How must that as- 
 sembly be silently scandalized with those of their members 
 who could call a day which seemed to blot the sun out of 
 heaven “un beau jour!’44 How must they be inwardly in- 
 dignant at hearing others who thought fit to declare to them, 
 “that the vessel of the state would fly forward in her course 
 towards regeneration with more speed than ever,’ from the 
 stiff gale of treason and murder which preceded our preacher's 
 triumph! What must they have felt, whilst, with outward pa- 
 tience and inward indignation, they heard of the slaughter of 
 innocent gentlemen in their houses, that “the blood spilled 
 was not the most pure’?! What must they have felt, when 
 they were besieged by complaints of disorders which shook 
 their country to its foundations, at being compelled coolly 
 to tell the complainants that they were under the protection 
 of the law, and that they would address the king (the captive 
 king) to cause the laws to be enforced for their protection, 
 when the enslaved ministers of that captive king had for- 
 mally notified to them that there were neither law nor au- 
 thority nor power left to protect! What must they have 
 felt at being obliged, as a felicitation on the present new 
 year, to request their captive king to forget the stormy 
 period of the last, on account of the great good which he 
 was likely to produce to his people,—to the complete attain- 
 ment of which good they adjourned the practical demon- 
 strations of their loyalty, assuring him of their obedience 
 when he should no longer possess any authority to command ! 
 
 This address was made with much good-nature and affec- 
 tion, to be sure. But among the revolutions in France must 
 be reckoned a considerable revolution in their ideas of polite- 
 ness. In England we are said to learn manners at second- 
 hand from your side of the water, and that we dress our be- 
 haviour in the frippery of France. If so, we are still in the 
 old cut, and have not so far conformed to the new Parisian 
 mode of good breeding as to think it quite in the most 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 425 
 
 refined strain of delicate compliment (whether in condolence 
 or congratulation) to say, to the most humiliated creature 
 that crawls upon the earth, that great public benefits are 
 derived from the murder of his servants, the attempted 
 assassination of himself and of his wife, and the mortifica- 
 tion, disgrace, and degradation that he has personally suf- 
 fered. It isa topic of consolation which our ordinary of 
 Newgate would be too humane to use to a criminal at the 
 foot of the gallows. I should have thought that the hang- 
 man of Paris, now that he is liberalized by the vote of the 
 National Assembly, and is allowed his rank and arms in the 
 Herald’s College of the rights of men, would be too gener- 
 ous, too gallant a man, too full of the sense of his new 
 dignity, to employ that cutting consolation to any of the 
 persons whom the léze-nation might bring under the admin- 
 istration of his executive powers. 
 
 A man is fallen indeed, when he is thus flattered. The 
 anodyne draught of oblivion, thus drugged, is well calculated 
 to preserve a galling wakefulness, and to feed the living 
 ulcer of a corroding memory. Thus to administer the opiate 
 potion of amnesty, powdered with all the ingredients of 
 scorn and contempt, is to hold to his lips, instead of “the 
 balm of hurt minds,” the cup of human misery full to the 
 brim, and to force him to drink it to the dregs. 
 
 Yielding to reasons at least as forcible as those which were 
 so delicately urged in the compliment on the new year, the 
 king of France will probably endeavour to forget these events 
 and that compliment. But History, who keeps a durable 
 record of all our acts, and exercises her awful censure over 
 the proceedings of all sorts of sovereigns, will not forget 
 either those events, or the era of this liberal refinement in 
 the intercourse of mankind. History will record, that, on 
 the morning of the sixth of October, 1789, the king and 
 queen of France, after a day of confusion, alarm, dismay, 
 and slaughter, lay down, under the pledged security of public 
 faith, to indulge nature in a few hours of respite, and 
 troubled, melancholy repose. From this sleep the queen 
 
426 BURKE 
 
 was first startled by the voice of the sentinel at her door, 
 who cried out to her to save herself by flight,—that this was 
 the last proof of fidelity he could give,—that they were upon 
 him, and he was dead. Instantly he was cut down. A 
 band of cruel ruffians and assassins, reeking with his blood, 
 rushed into the chamber of the queen, and pierced witha 
 hundred strokes of bayonets and poniards the bed, from 
 whence this persecuted woman had but just time to fly 
 almost naked, and, through ways unknown to the murderers, 
 had escaped to seek refuge at the feet of a king and husband» 
 not secure of his own life for a moment. 
 
 This king, to say no more of him, and this queen, and 
 their infant children, (who once would have been the pride 
 and hope of a great and generous people), were then forced 
 to abandon the sanctuary of the most splendid palace in the 
 world, which they left swimming in blood, polluted by mas- 
 sacre, and strewed with scattered limbs and mutilated car- 
 casses. Thence they were conducted into the capital of 
 their kingdom. Two had been selected from the unprovoked, 
 unresisted, promiscuous slaughter which was made of the 
 gentlemen of birth and family who composed the king’s body- 
 guard. These two gentlemen, with all the parade of an execu- 
 tion of justice, were cruelly and publicly dragged to the block, 
 and beheaded in the great court of the palace. Their heads 
 were stuck uponspears, and led the procession; whilst the 
 royal captives who followed in the train were slowly moved 
 along, amidst the horrid yells, and shrilling screams, and fran- 
 tic dances, and infamous contumelies, and all the unutterable 
 abominations of the furies of hell, in the abused shape of the 
 vilest of women. After they had been made to taste, drop 
 by drop, more than the bitterness of death, in the slow torture 
 of a journey of twelve miles, protracted to six hours, they 
 were, under a guard composed of those very soldiers who 
 had thus conducted them through this famous triumph, lodged 
 in one of the old palaces of Paris, now converted into a 
 Bastile for kings. 
 
 Is this a triumph to be consecrated at altars, to be com- 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 427 
 
 memorated with grateful thanksgiving, to be offered to the 
 Divine Humanity with fervent prayer and enthusiastic 
 ejaculation ?>—These Theban and Thracian orgies, acted in 
 France, and applauded only in the Old Jewry, I assure you, 
 kindle prophetic enthusiasm in the minds but of very few 
 people in this kingdom; although a saint and apostle, who 
 may have revelations of his own, and who has so completely 
 vanquished all the mean superstitions of the heart, may 
 incline to think it pious and decorous to compare it with the 
 entrance into the world of the Prince of Peace, proclaimed 
 in an holy temple by a venerable sage, and not long before 
 not worse announced by the voice of angels to the quiet 
 innocence of shepherds. 
 
 At first I was at a loss to account for this fit of unguarded 
 transport. I knew, indeed, that the sufferings of monarchs 
 make a delicious repast to some sort of palates. There were 
 reflections which might serve to keep this appetite within 
 some bounds of temperance. But when I took one circum- 
 stance into my consideration, I was obliged to confess that 
 much allowance ought to be made for the society, and that 
 the temptation was too strong for common discretion: I 
 mean, the circumstance of the Io Pzan of the triumph, the 
 animating cry which called for “all the bishops to be hanged 
 on the lamp-posts,”” might well have brought forth a burst 
 of enthusiasm on the foreseen consequences of this happy 
 day. Iallow to so much enthusiasm some little deviation 
 from prudence. I allow this prophet to break forth into 
 hymns of joy and thanksgiving on an event which appears 
 like the precursor of the Millennium, and the projected Fifth 
 Monarchy, in the destruction of all Church establishments, 
 There was, however, (as in all human affairs there is,) in the 
 midst of this joy, something to exercise the patience of these 
 worthy gentlemen, and to try the long-suffering of their faith. 
 The actual murder of the king and queen, and their child, 
 was wanting to the other auspicious circumstances of this 
 “beautiful day.” The actual murder of the bishops, though 
 called for by so many holy ejaculations, was also wanting. 
 
428 BURKE 
 
 A group of regicide and sacrilegious slaughter was, indeed, 
 boldly sketched, but it was only sketched. It unhappily 
 was left unfinished, in this great history-piece of the mas- 
 sacre of innocents. What hardy pencil of a great master, 
 from the school of the rights of men, will finish it, is to be 
 seen hereafter. The age has not yet the complete benefit 
 of that diffusion of knowledge that has undermined super- 
 stition and error; and the king of France wants another 
 object or two to consign to oblivion, in consideration of all 
 the good which is to arise from his own sufferings, and the 
 patriotic crimes of an enlightened age.'® 
 
 Although this work of our new light and knowledge did 
 not go to the length that in all probability it was intended it 
 should be carried, yet I must think that such treatment of 
 any human creatures must be shocking to any but those 
 who are made for accomplishing revolutions. But Ican not 
 stop here. Influenced by the inborn feelings of my nature, 
 and not being illuminated by a single ray of this new-sprung 
 modern light, I confess to you, Sir, that the exalted rank of 
 the persons suffering, and particularly the sex, the beauty, 
 and the amiable qualities of the descendant of so many 
 kings and emperors, with the tender age of royal infants, 
 insensible only through infancy and innocence of the cruel 
 outrages to which their parents were exposed, instead of 
 being a subject of exultation, adds not ia little to my sensi- 
 bility on that most melancholy occasion. 
 
 I hear that the august person who was the principal object 
 of our preacher’s triumph, though he supported himself, felt 
 much on that shameful occasion. As aman, it became him 
 to feel for his wife and his children, and the faithful guards 
 of his person that were massacred in cold blood about him ; 
 as a prince, it became him to feel for the strange and fright- 
 ful transformation of his civilized subjects, and to be more 
 grieved for them than solicitous for himself. It derogates 
 little from his fortitude, while it adds infinitely to the honour 
 of his humanity. Iam very sorry to say it, very sorry 
 indeed, that such personages are in a situation in which 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 429 
 
 it is not unbecoming in us to praise the virtues of the 
 great. 
 
 I hear, and I rejoice to hear, that the great lady, the other 
 object of the triumph, has borne that day, (one is interested 
 that beings made for suffering should suffer well,) and that 
 she bears all the succeeding days, that she bears the imprison- 
 ment of her husband, and her own captivity, and the exile 
 of her friends, and the insulting adulation of addresses, and 
 the whole weight of her accumulated wrongs, with a serene 
 patience, in a manner suited to her rank and race, and be- 
 coming the offspring of a sovereign distinguished for her piety 
 and her courage; that, like her, she has lofty sentiments; 
 that she feels with the dignity of a Roman matron; that in 
 the last extremity she will save herself from the last dis- 
 grace; and that, if she must fall, she will fall by no ignoble 
 hand. 
 
 It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen 
 of France, then the Dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely 
 never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, 
 a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, 
 decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began 
 to move in,—glittering like the morning-star, full of life and 
 splendour and joy. Oh! whata revolution! and what an 
 heart must I have, to contemplate without emotion that 
 elevation and that fall!- Little did I dream, when she added 
 titles of veneration to those of enthusiastic, distant, respect- 
 ful love, that she should ever be obliged to carry the sharp 
 antidote against disgrace concealed in that bosom! little did 
 I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen 
 upon her ina nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of 
 honour, and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords 
 must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look 
 that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is 
 gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has 
 succeeded; and the glory of Europe in extinguished forever. 
 Never, never more, shall we behold that generous loyalty 
 to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified 
 
430 BURKE 
 
 obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, 
 even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom! 
 The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, 
 the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise, is gone! 
 It is gone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honour, 
 which felt a stain like a wound, which inspired courage 
 whilst it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it 
 touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil by 
 losing all its grossness ! 
 
 This mixed system of opinion and sentiment had its origin 
 in the ancient chivalry; and the principle, though varied in 
 its appearance by the varying state of human affairs, sub- 
 sisted and influenced through a long succession of generations, 
 even to the time we live in. If it should ever be totally 
 extinguished, the loss, I fear, will be great. It is this which 
 has given its character to modern Europe. It is this which 
 has distinguished it under all its forms of government, and 
 distinguished it to its advantage, from the states of Asia, and 
 possibly from those states which flourished in the most 
 brilliant periods of the antique world. It was this, which, 
 without confounding ranks, had produced a noble equality, 
 and handed it down through all the gradations of social 
 life. It was this opinion which mitigated kings into com- 
 panions, and raised private men to be fellows with kings. 
 Without force or opposition, it subdued the fierceness 
 of pride and power; it obliged sovereigns to submit to the 
 soft collar of social esteem, compelled stern authority to 
 submit to elegance, and gave a domination, vanquisher of 
 laws, to be subdued by manners. 
 
 But now all is to be changed. All the pleasing illusions 
 which made power gentle and obedience liberal, which 
 harmonized the different shades of life,and which bya bland 
 assimilation incorporated into politics the sentiments which 
 beautify and soften private society, are to be dissolved by > 
 this new conquering empire of light and reason. All the 
 decent drapery of life is to be rudely torn off. All the 
 superadded ideas, furnished from the wardrobe of a moral 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 431 
 
 imagination, which the heart owns and the understanding 
 ratifies, as necessary to cover the defects of our naked, 
 shivering nature, and to raise it to dignity in our own esti- 
 mation, are to be exploded, as a ridiculous, absurd, and 
 antiquated fashion. 
 
 On this scheme of things, a king is but a man, a queen is 
 but a woman, a woman is but an animal,—and an animal not 
 of the highest order. All homage paid to the sex in general 
 as such, and without distinct views, is to be regarded as ro- 
 mance and folly. Regicide, and parricide, and sacrilege, 
 are but fictions of superstition, corrupting jurisprudence by 
 destroying its simplicity. The murder of aking, or a queen, 
 or a bishop, or a father, are only common homicide,—and 
 if the people are by any chance or in any way gainers by it, 
 a sort of homicide much the most pardonable, and into 
 which we ought not to make too severe a scrutiny. 
 
 On the scheme of this barbarous philosophy, which is the 
 offspring of cold hearts and muddy understandings, and 
 which is as void of solid wisdom as it is destitute of all taste 
 and elegance, laws are to be supported only by their own 
 terrors, and by the concern which each individual may find 
 in them from his own private speculations, or can spare to 
 them from his own private interests. In the groves of their 
 academy, at the end of every visto, you see nothing but the 
 gallows. Nothing is left which engages the affections on 
 the part of the commonwealth. On the principles of this 
 mechanic philosophy, our institutions can never be embod- 
 ied, if I may use the expression, in persons,—so as to create 
 in us love, veneration, admiration, or attachment. But that 
 sort of reason which banishes the affections is incapable of 
 filling their place. These public affections, combined with 
 manners, are required sometimes as supplements, sometimes 
 as correctives, always as aids to law. The precept given by 
 a wise man, as well as a great critic, for the construction of 
 poems, is equally true as to states :—“ Non satis est pulchra 
 esse poemata, dulcia sunto.” There ought to be a system 
 of manners in every nation which a well-formed mind would 
 
A32 BURKE 
 
 be disposed to relish. To make us love our country, our 
 country ought to be lovely. 
 
 But power, of some kind or other, will survive the shock 
 in which manners and opinions perish; and it will find other 
 and worse means for its support. The usurpation, which, 
 in order to subvert ancient institutions, has destroyed an- 
 cient principles, will hold power by arts similar to those by 
 which it has acquired it. When the old feudal and chival- 
 rous spirit of fealty, which, by freeing kings from fear, 
 freed both kings and subjects from the precautions of 
 tyranny, shall be extinct in the minds of men, plots and as- 
 sassinations will be anticipated by preventive murder and 
 preventive confiscation, and that long roll of grim and bloody 
 maxims which form the political code of all power not stand- 
 ing on its own honour and the honour of those who are to 
 obey it. Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects 
 are rebels from principle. 
 
 When ancient opinions and rules of life are taken away, 
 the loss can not possibly be estimated. From that moment 
 we have no compass to govern us, nor can we know distinctly 
 to what port we steer. Europe, undoubtedly, taken ina 
 mass, was in a flourishing condition the day on which your 
 Revolution was completed. How much of that prosperous 
 state was owing to the spirit of our old manners and opinions 
 is not easy to say ; but as such causes can not be indifferent 
 in their operation, we must presume, that, on the whole, 
 their operation was beneficial. 
 
 We are but too apt to consider things in the state in 
 which we find them, without sufficiently adverting to the 
 causes by which they have been produced, and possibly may 
 be upheld. Nothing is more certain than that our manners, 
 our civilization, and all the good things which are connected 
 with manners and with civilization, have, in this European 
 world of ours, depended for ages upon two principles, and 
 were, indeed, the result of both combined: I mean the spirit 
 of a gentleman, and the spirit of religion. The nobility 
 and the clergy, the one by profession, and the other by 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 433 
 
 patronage, kept learning in existence, even in the midst of 
 arms and confusions, and whilst governments were rather in 
 their causes than formed. Learning paid back what it re- 
 ceived to nobility and to priesthood, and paid it with usury, 
 by enlarging their ideas, and by furnishing their minds. 
 Happy, if they had all continued to know their indissoluble 
 union, and their proper place! Happy, if learning, not de- 
 bauched by ambition, had been satisfied to continue the in- 
 structor, and not aspired to be the master! Along with its 
 natural protectors and guardians, learning will be cast into 
 the mire and trodden down under the hoofs of a swinish 
 multitude.” 
 
 If, as I suspect, modern letters owe more than they are 
 always willing to own to ancient manners, so do other in- 
 terests which we value full as much asthey are worth. Even 
 commerce, and trade, and manufacture, the gods of our 
 economical politicians, are themselves perhaps but creatures, 
 are themselves but effects, which, as first causes, we choose 
 to worship. They certainly grew under the same shade in 
 which learning flourished. They, too, may decay with their 
 natural protecting principles. With you, for the present at 
 least, they all threaten to disappear together. Where trade 
 and manufactures are wanting to a people, and the spirit of 
 nobility and religion remains, sentiment supplies, and not 
 always ill supplies, their place; but if commerce and the 
 arts should be lost in an experiment to try how well a state 
 may stand without these old fundamental principles, what 
 sort of a thing must bea nation of gross, stupid, ferocious, 
 and at the same time poor and sordid barbarians, destitute 
 of religion, honour, or manly pride, possessing nothing at 
 present, and hoping for nothing hereafter ? 
 
 I wish you may not be going fast, and by the shortest cut, 
 to that horrible and disgustful situation. Already there 
 appears a poverty of conception, a coarseness and vulgarity, 
 in all the proceedings of the Assembly and of all their in- 
 structors. Their liberty is not liberal. Their science is pre- 
 
 sumptuous ignorance. Their humanity is savage and brutal. 
 28 
 
A34 BURKE 
 
 It is not clear whether in England we learned those grand 
 and decorous principles and manners, of which considerable 
 traces yet remain, from you, or whether you took them from 
 us. But to you, I think, we trace them best. You seem to 
 me to be gentisincunabula nostre. France has always more 
 or less influenced manners in England; and when your 
 fountain is choked up and polluted, the stream will not run 
 long or not run clear with us, or perhaps with any nation. 
 This gives all Europe, in my opinion, but too close and con- 
 nected a concern in what is done in France. Excuse me, 
 therefore, if I have dwelt too longon the atrocious spectacle 
 of the sixth of October, 1789, or have given too much scope 
 to the reflections which have arisen in my mind on occasion 
 of the most important of all revolutions, which may be dated 
 from that day: I mean a revolution in sentiments, manners, 
 and moral opinions. As things now stand, with everything 
 respectable destroyed without us, and an attempt to destroy 
 within us every principle of respect, one is almost forced to 
 apologize for harbouring the common feelings of men. 
 
 ' Why dol feel so differently from the Reverend Dr. Price, 
 and those of his lay flock who will choose to adopt the sen- 
 timents of his discourse >—For this plain reason : Because it 
 is natural I should ; because we are so made as to be affect- 
 ed at such spectacles with melancholy sentiments upon the 
 unstable condition of mortal prosperity, and the tremendous 
 uncertainty of human greatness ; because in those natural 
 feelings we learn great lessons ; because in events like these 
 our passions instruct our reason ; because, when kings are 
 hurled from their thrones by the Supreme Director of this 
 great drama, and become the objects of insult to the base 
 and of pity to the good, we behold such disasters in the 
 moral as we should behold a miracle in the physical order 
 of things. We are alarmed into reflection ; our minds (as 
 it has long since been observed) are purified by terror and 
 pity ; our weak, unthinking pride is humbled under the dis- 
 pensations of a mysterious wisdom. Some tears might be 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 435 
 
 drawn from me, if such a spectacle were exhibited on the 
 stage. I should be truly ashamed of finding in myself that 
 superficial, theatric sense of painted distress, whilst I could 
 exult over it in real life. With such a perverted mind, I 
 could never venture to show my face ata tragedy. People 
 would think the tears that Garrick formerly, or that Siddons 
 not long since, have extorted from me, were the tears of 
 hypocrisy ; I should know them to be the tears of folly. 
 Indeed, the theatre is a better school of moral sentiments 
 than churches where the feelings of humanity are thus out- 
 raged. Poets who have to deal with an audience not yet 
 graduated in the school of the rights of men, and who must 
 apply themselves to the moral constitution of the heart, 
 would not dare to produce such atriumph as a matter of 
 exultation. There, where men follow their natural impulses, 
 they would not bear the odious maxims of a Machiavelian 
 policy, whether applied to the attainment of monarchical or 
 democratic tyranny. They would reject them on the mod- 
 ern, as they once did on the ancient stage, where they could 
 not bear even the hypothetical proposition of such wicked- 
 ness in the mouth of a personated tyrant, though suitable to 
 the character he sustained. No theatric audience in Athens 
 would bear what has been borne in the midst of the real 
 tragedy of this triumphal day: a principal actor weighing, as 
 it were in scales hung in a shop of horrors, so much actual 
 crime against so much contingent advantages,—and after put- 
 ting in and out weights, declaring that the balance was on 
 the side of the advantages. They would not bear to see the 
 crimes of new democracy posted as ina ledger against the 
 crimes of old despotism, and the book-keepers of politics 
 finding democracy still in debt, but by no means unable or 
 unwilling to pay the balance. In the theatre, the first in- 
 tuitive glance, without any elaborate process of reasoning, 
 would show that this method of political computation would 
 justify every extent ofcrime. They would see, that on these 
 principles, even where the very worst acts were not perpe- 
 trated, it was owing rather to the fortune of the conspirators 
 
436 BURKE 
 
 than to their parsimony in the expenditure of treachery and 
 blood. They would soon see that criminal means, once tol- 
 erated, are soon preferred. They present a shorter cut to the 
 object than through the highway ofthe moral virtues. Justi- 
 fying perfidy and murder for public benefit, public benefit 
 would soon become the pretext, and perfidy and murder the 
 end,—until rapacity, malice, revenge, and fear more dreadful 
 than revenge, could satiate their insatiable appetites. Such 
 must be the consequences of losing, in the splendour of these 
 triumphs of the rights of men, all natural sense of wrong and 
 right. 
 
 But the reverend pastor exults in this “leading in 
 triumph,” because, truly, Louis the Sixteenth was “ an arbi- 
 trary monarch”: that is, in other words, neither more nor 
 less than because he was Louis the Sixteenth, and because 
 he had the misfortune to be born king of France, with the 
 prerogatives of which a long line of ancestors, and a long 
 acquiescence of the people, without any act of his, had put 
 him in possession. A misfortune it has indeed turned out to 
 him, that he was born king of France. But misfortune is 
 not crime, nor is indiscretion always the greatest guilt. I 
 shall never think that a prince, the acts of whose whole reign 
 were a series of concessions to his subjects, who was willing 
 to relax his authority, to remit his prerogatives, to call his 
 people toa share of freedom not known, perhaps not desired, 
 by their ancestors,—such a prince, though he should be sub- 
 ject to the common frailties attached to men and to princes, 
 though he should have once thought it necessary to provide 
 force against the desperate designs manifestly carrying on 
 against his person and the remnants of his authority,— 
 though all this should be taken into consideration, I shall 
 be led with great difficulty to think he deserves the cruel and 
 insulting triumph of Paris, and of Dr. Price. I tremble for 
 the cause of liberty, from such an example to kings. I trem- 
 ble for the cause of humanity, inthe unpunished outrages of 
 the most wicked of mankind. But there are some people of 
 that low and degenerate fashion of mind that they look up 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 437 
 
 with a sort of complacent awe and admiration to kings who 
 know to keep firm in their seat, to hold a strict hand over 
 their subjects, to assert their prerogative, and, by the awak- 
 ened vigilance of a severe despotism, to guard against the 
 very first approaches of freedom. Against such as these ~ 
 they never elevate their voice. Deserters from principle, 
 listed with fortune, they never see any good in suffering 
 virtue, nor any crime in prosperous usurpation. 
 
 If it could have been made clear to me that the king and 
 queen of France (those, I mean, who were such before the 
 triumph) were inexorable and cruel tyrants, that they had 
 formed a deliberate scheme for massacring the National As- 
 sembly, (I think I have seen something like the latter insin- 
 uated in certain publications,) I should think their captivity 
 just. If this be true, much more ought to have been done, 
 butdone, in my opinion, in another manner. The punish- 
 ment of real tyrants is a noble and awful act of justice ; and 
 it has with truth been said to be consolatory to the human 
 mind. Butif I were to punish a wicked king, I should regard 
 the dignity in avenging the crime. Justice is grave and de- 
 corous, and in its punishments rather seems to submit toa 
 necessity than to make a choice. Had Nero, or Agrippina, 
 or Louis the Eleventh, or Charles the Ninth been the sub- 
 ject,—if Charles the Twelfth of Sweden, after the murder of 
 Patkul, or his predecessor, Christina, after the murder of 
 Monaldeschi, had fallen into your hands, Sir, or into mine, I 
 am sure our conduct would have been different. 
 
 If the French king, or king of the French, (or by what- 
 ever name he is known in the new vocabulary of your 
 Constitution,) has in his own person and that of his queen 
 really deserved these unavowed, but unavenged, murderous 
 attempts, and those frequent indignities more cruel than 
 murder, such a person would ill-deserve even that subordi- 
 nate executory trust which I understand is to be placed in 
 him; nor is he fit to be called chief in a nation which he has 
 outraged and oppressed. A worse choice for such an office 
 in a new commonwealth than that of a deposed tyrant could 
 
438 BURKE 
 
 not possibly be made. But to degrade and insult a man as 
 the worst of criminals, and afterwards to trust him in your 
 highest concerns, as a faithful, honest, and zealous servant, is 
 not consistent in reasoning, nor prudent in policy, nor safe 
 in practice. Those who could make such an appointment 
 must be guilty of a more flagrant breach of trust than any 
 they have yet committed against the people. As this is the 
 only crime in which your leading politicians could have 
 acted inconsistently, I conclude that there is no sort of 
 sround for these horrid insinuations. I think no better of 
 all the other calumnies. 
 
 In England, we give no credit to them. We are generous 
 enemies; we are faithful allies. We spurn from us with 
 disgust and indignation the slanders of those who bring us 
 their anecdotes with the attestation of the flower-de-luce on 
 their shoulder. We have Lord George Gordon fast in New- 
 gate; and neither his being a public proselyte to Judaism, 
 nor his having, in his zeal against Catholic priests and all 
 sorts of ecclesiastics, raised a mob (excuse the term, it is still 
 in use here) which pulled down all our prisons, have pre- 
 served to him a liberty of which he did not render himself 
 worthy by a virtuous use of it. We have rebuilt Newgate, 
 and tenanted the mansion. We have prisons almost as 
 strong as the Bastile, for those who dare to libel the queens 
 of France. In this spiritual retreat let the noble libeller 
 remain. Let him there meditate on his Talmud, until he 
 learns a conduct more becoming his birth and parts, and not 
 so disgraceful to the ancient religion to which he has become 
 a proselyte,—or until some persons from your side of the 
 water, to please your new Hebrew brethren, shall ransom 
 him. He may then be enabled to purchase, with the old 
 hoards of the synagogue, and a very small poundage on the 
 long compound interest of the thirty pieces of silver, (Dr. 
 Price has shown us what miracles compound interest will 
 perform in 1790 years,) the lands which are lately discovered 
 to have been usurped by the Gallican Church. Send us your 
 Popish Archbishop of Paris, and we will send you our Prot- 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 439 
 
 estant Rabbin. We shall treat the person you send us in 
 exchange like a gentleman and an honest man, as he is: but 
 pray let him bring with him the fund of his hospitality, 
 bounty, and charity ; and, depend upon it, we shall never con- 
 fiscate a shilling of that honourable and pious fund, nor think 
 of enriching the Treasury with the spoils of the poor-box. 
 To tell you the truth, my dear Sir, I think the honour of 
 our nation to be somewhat concerned in the disclaimer of 
 the proceedings of this society of the Old Jewry and the 
 London Tavern. I have no man’s proxy. I speak only 
 from myself, when I disclaim, as I do with all possible ear- 
 nestness, all communion with the actors in that triumph, or 
 with the admirers of it. When I assert anything else, as 
 concerning the people of England, I speak from observa- 
 tion, not from authority ; but I speak from the experience 
 I have had in a pretty extensive and mixed communication 
 with the inhabitants of this kingdom, of all descriptions and 
 ranks, and after a course of attentive observation, begun in 
 early life, and continued for near forty years. I have often 
 been astonished, considering that we are divided from you 
 but by a slender dike of about twenty-four miles, and that 
 the mutual intercourse between the two countries has lately 
 been very great, to find how little you seem to know of us. 
 I suspect that this is owing to your forming a judgment of 
 _ this nation from certain publications, which do, very errone- 
 ously, if they do at all, represent the opinions and disposi- 
 tions generally prevalent in England. The vanity, restless- 
 ness, petulance, and spirit of intrigue of several petty cabals, 
 who attempt to hide their total want of consequence in 
 bustle and noise, and puffing and mutual quotation of each 
 other, makes you imagine that our contemptuous neglect of 
 their abilities is a general mark of acquiescence in their opin- 
 ions. No such thing, I assure you. Because half a dozen 
 grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their 
 importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle reposed 
 beneath the shadow of the British oak chew the cud and are 
 silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise 
 
440 BURKE 
 
 are the only inhabitants of the field,—that, of course, they 
 are many in number,—or that, after all, they are other than 
 the little, shrivelled, meagre, hopping, though loud and 
 troublesome insects of the hour. 
 
 I almost venture to affirm that not one in a hundred 
 amongst us participates in the “triumph” of the Revolu- 
 tion Society. If the king and queen of France and their 
 children were to fall into our hands by the chance of war, in 
 the most acrimonious of all hostilities, (I deprecate such an 
 event, I deprecate such hostility,) they would be treated 
 with another sort of triumphal entry into London. We 
 formerly have had a king of France in that situation: you 
 have read how he was treated by the victor in the field, and 
 in what manner he was afterwards received in England. 
 Four hundred years have gone over us; but I believe we 
 are not materially changed since that period. Thanks to 
 our sullen resistance to innovation, thanks to the cold slug- 
 gishness of our national character, we still bear the stamp 
 of our forefathers. We have not (as I conceive) lost the 
 generosity and dignity of thinking of the fourteenth cen- 
 tury; nor as yet have we subtilised ourselves into savages. 
 We are not the converts of Rousseau; we are not the disci- 
 ples of Voltaire; Helvetius has made no progress amongst 
 us. Atheists are not our preachers; madmen are not our 
 lawgivers. We know that we have made no discoveries, 
 and we think that no discoveries are to be made, in moral- 
 ity,—nor many in the great principles of government, nor in 
 the ideas of liberty, which were understood long before we 
 were born altogether as well as they will be after the grave 
 has heaped its mould upon our presumption, and the silent 
 tomb shall have imposed its law on our pert loquacity. In 
 England we have not yet been completely embowelled of 
 our natural entrails: we still feel within us, and we cherish 
 and cultivate, those inbred sentiments which are the faithful 
 guardians, the active monitors of our duty, the true support- 
 ers of all liberal and manly morals. We have not been 
 drawn and trussed, in order that we may be filled, like stuffed 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 441 
 
 birds in a museum, with chaff and rags, and paltry, blurred 
 shreds of paper about the rights of man. We preserve the 
 whole of our feelings still native and entire, unsophisticated 
 by pedantry and infidelity. We have real hearts of flesh 
 and blood beating in our bosoms. We fear God; we look 
 up with awe to kings, with affection to Parliaments, with 
 duty to magistrates, with reverence to priests, and with re- 
 spect to nobility.1% Why? Because, when such ideas are 
 brought before our minds, it is natural to be so affected ; 
 because all other feelings are false and spurious, and tend to 
 corrupt our minds, to vitiate our primary morals, to render 
 us unfit for rational liberty, and, by teaching us a servile, 
 licentious, and abandoned insolence, to be our low sport for 
 a few holidays, to make us perfectly fit for and justly deserv- 
 ing of slavery through the whole course of our lives. 
 
 You see, Sir, that in this enlightened age I am bold enough 
 to confess that we are generally men of untaught feelings: 
 that, instead of casting away all our old prejudices, we 
 cherish them to a very considerable degree; and, to take 
 more shame to ourselves, we cherish them because they are 
 prejudices; and the longer they have lasted, and the more 
 generally they have prevailed, the more we cherish them. 
 We are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his own 
 private stock of reason; because we suspect that the stock 
 in each man is small, and that the individuals would do 
 better to avail themselves of the general bank and capital of 
 nations and of ages. Many of our men of speculation, in- 
 stead of exploding general prejudices, employ their sagacity 
 to discover the latent wisdom which prevails in them. If 
 they find what they seek (and they seldom fail), they think 
 it more wise to continue the prejudice, with the reason in- 
 volved, than to cast away the coat of prejudice, and to leave 
 nothing but the naked reason; because prejudice, with its 
 reason, has a motive to give action to that reason, and an af- 
 fection which will give it permanence. Prejudice is of ready 
 application in the emergency; it previously engages the 
 mind in a steady course of wisdom and virtue, and does not 
 
A42 BURKE 
 
 leave the man hesitating in the moment of decision, skep- 
 tical, puzzled, and unresolved. Prejudice renders a man’s 
 virtue his habit, and not a series of unconnected acts. 
 Through just prejudice, his duty becomes a part of his 
 nature. 
 
 Your literary men, and your politicians, and so do the 
 whole clan of the enlightened among us, essentially differ 
 in these points. They have no respect for the wisdom of 
 others; but they pay it off by a very full measure of con- 
 fidence in theirown. With them it is a sufficient motive to 
 destroy an old scheme of things, because it is an old one. 
 As to the new, they are in no sort of fear with regard to the 
 duration of a building run up in haste; because duration is 
 no object to those who think little or nothing has been done 
 before their time, and who place all their hopes in discovery. 
 They conceive, very systematically, that all things which 
 give perpetuity are mischievous, and therefore they are at 
 inexpiable war with all establishments. They think that 
 government may vary like modes of dress, and with as little 
 ill effect ; that there needs no principle of attachment, except 
 a sense of present conveniency, to any constitution of the 
 state. They always speak as if they were of opinion that 
 there is a singular species of compact between them and 
 their magistrates, which binds the magistrate, but which has 
 nothing reciprocal in it, but that the majesty of the people 
 has a right to dissolve it without any reason but its will. 
 Their attachment to their country itself is only so far as it 
 agrees with some of their fleeting projects: it begins and 
 ends with that scheme of polity which falls in with their 
 momentary opinion. 
 
 These doctrines, or rather sentiments, seem prevalent with 
 your new statesmen. But they are wholly different from 
 those on which we have always acted in this country. 
 
 I hear it is sometimes given out in France, that what is 
 doing among you is after the example of England. I beg 
 leave to affirm that scarcely anything done with you has 
 originated from the practice or the prevalent opinions of 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 443 
 
 this people, either in the act or in the spirit of the proceed- 
 ing. Let me add, that we are as unwilling to learn these 
 lessons from France as we are sure that we never taught 
 them to that nation. The cabals here who take a sort of 
 share in your transactions as yet consist of but a handful of 
 people. If, unfortunately, by their intrigues, their sermons, 
 their publications, and by a confidence derived from an ex- 
 pected union with the counsels and forces of the French 
 nation, they should draw considerable numbers into their 
 faction, and in consequence should seriously attempt any- 
 thing here in imitation of what has been done with you, the 
 event, I dare venture to prophesy, will be, that, with some 
 trouble to their country, they will soon accomplish their own 
 destruction. This people refused to change their law in 
 remote ages from respect to the infallibility of Popes, and 
 they will not now alter it from a pious implicit. faith in the 
 dogmatism of philosophers,—though the former was armed 
 with the anathema and crusade, and though the latter should 
 act with the libel and the lamp-iron. 
 
 Formerly your affairs were your own concern only. We 
 felt for them as men; but we keep aloof from them, because 
 we were not citizens of France. But when we see the model 
 held up to ourselves, we must feel as Englishmen, and, feel- 
 ing, we must provide as Englishmen. Your affairs, in spite 
 of us, are made a part of our interest,—so far at least as to 
 keep at a distance your panacea or your plague. If it bea 
 panacea, we do not want it: we know the consequences of 
 unnecessary physic. If it be a plague, it is such a plague 
 that the precautions of the most severe quarantine ought to 
 be established against it. 
 
 I hear on all hands, that a cabal, calling itself philosophic, 
 receives the glory of many of the late proceedings, and that 
 their opinions and systems are the true actuating spirit of 
 the whole of them. I have heard of no party in England, 
 literary or political, at any time, known by such a descrip- 
 tion. It is not with you composed of those men, is it? 
 whom the vulgar, in their blunt, homely style, commonly 
 
444 BURKE 
 
 call Atheists and Infidels? If it be, I admit that we, too, 
 have had writers of that description, who made some noise 
 in their day. At present they repose in lasting oblivion. 
 Who, born within the last forty years, has read one word of 
 Collins, and Toland, and Tindal, and Chubb, and Morgan, 
 and that whole race who called themselves Freethinkers ? 
 Who now reads Bolingbroke ? Who ever read him through? 
 Ask the booksellers of London what is become of all these 
 lights of the world. In as few years their few successors 
 will go to the family vault of “all the Capulets.” But 
 whatever they were, or are, with us they were and are wholly 
 unconnected individuals. With us they kept the common 
 nature of their kind, and were not gregarious. They never 
 acted in corps, nor were known as a faction in the state, nor 
 presumed to influence in that name or character, or for the 
 purposes of such a faction, on any of our public concerns. 
 Whether they ought so to exist, and so be permitted to act, 
 is another question. As such cabals have not existed in 
 England, so neither has the spirit of them had any influence 
 in establishing the original frame of our Constitution, or in 
 any one of the several reparations and improvements it has 
 undergone. The whole has been done under the auspices, 
 and is confirmed by the sanctions, of religion and piety. 
 The whole has emanated from the simplicity of our national 
 character, and from a sort of native plainness and directness 
 of understanding, which for a long time characterized those 
 men who have successively obtained authority among us. 
 This disposition still remains,—at least in the great body of 
 the people. 
 
 We know, and, what is better, we feel inwardly, that re- 
 ligion is the basis of civil society, and the source of all 
 good, and of all comfort. In England we are so convinced 
 of this, that there is no rust of superstition, with which the 
 accumulated absurdity of the human mind might have crusted 
 it over in the course of ages, that ninety-nine in a hundred of 
 the people of England would not prefer to impiety. We 
 shall never be such fools as to call in an enemy to the sub- 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 445 
 
 stance of any system to remove its corruptions, to supply its 
 defects, or to perfect its construction. If our religious tenets 
 should ever want a further elucidation, we shall not call on 
 Atheism to explainthem. We shall not light up our temple 
 from that unhallowed fire. It will be illuminated with other 
 lights. It will be perfumed with other incense than the 
 infectious stuff which is imported by the smugglers of adul- 
 terated metaphysics. If our ecclesiastical establishment 
 should want a revision, it is not avarice or rapacity, public 
 or private, that we shall employ for the audit or receipt or 
 application of its consecrated revenue. Violently condemn- 
 ing neither the Greek nor the Armenian, nor, since heats are 
 subsided, the Roman system of religion, we prefer the Prot- 
 estant: not because we think it has less of the Christian 
 religion in it, but because, in our judgment, it has more. 
 Weare Protestants, not from indifference, but from zeal. 
 
 We know, and it is our pride to know, that man is by his 
 constitution a religious animal; that atheism is against, not 
 only our reason, but our instincts ; and that it can not prevail 
 long. But if, in the moment of riot, and in a drunken delir- 
 ium from the hot spirit drawn out of the alembic of hell, 
 which in France is now so furiously boiling, we should 
 uncover our nakedness, by throwing off that Christian relig- 
 ion which has hitherto been our boast and comfort, and one 
 great source of civilization amongst us, and among many 
 other nations, we are apprehensive (being well aware that 
 the mind will not endure a void) that some uncouth, perni- 
 cious, and degrading superstition might take place of it. 
 
 For that reason, before we take from our establishment 
 the natural, human means of estimation, and give it up to 
 contempt, as you have done, and in doing it have incurred 
 the penalties you well deserve to suffer, we desire that some 
 other may be presented to us in the place of it. We shall 
 then form our judgment. 
 
 On these ideas, instead of quarrelling with establishments, 
 as some do, who have made a philosophy and a religion of 
 their hostility to such institutions, we cleave closely to them, 
 
446 BURKE 
 
 Weare resolved to keep an established church, an established 
 monarchy, an established aristocracy, and an established de- 
 mocracy, each in the degree it exists, and in no greater. lI 
 shall show you presently how much of each of these we 
 possess. 
 
 It has been the misfortune (not, as these gentlemen think 
 it, the glory) of this age, that everything is to be discussed, 
 as if the Constitution of our country were to be always a 
 subject rather of altercation than enjoyment. For this rea- 
 son, as well as for the satisfaction of those among you (if 
 any such you have among you) who may wish to profit of 
 examples, I venture to trouble you with a few thoughts upon 
 each of these establishments. I do not think they were un- 
 wise in ancient Rome, who, when they wished to new-model 
 their laws, sent commissioners to examine the best-con- 
 stituted republics within their reach. 
 
 First I beg leave to speak of our Church Establishment, 
 which is the first of our prejudices,—not a prejudice destitute 
 of reason, but involving in it profound and extensive wisdom. 
 I speak of it first. It is first, and last, and midst in our minds. 
 For, taking ground on that religious system of which we are 
 now in possession, we continue to act on the early received 
 and uniformly continued sense of mankind. That sense not 
 only, like a wise architect, hath built up the august fabric of 
 states, but, like a provident proprietor, to preserve the struc- 
 ture from profanation and ruin, as a sacred temple, purged 
 from all the impurities of fraud and violence and injustice 
 and tyranny, hath solemnly and forever consecrated the com- 
 monwealth, and all that officiate in it. This consecration is 
 made, that all who administer in the government of men, in 
 which they stand in the person of God Himself, should have 
 high and worthy notions of their function and destination ; 
 that their hope should be full of immortality; that they 
 should not look to the paltry pelf of the moment, nor to the 
 temporary and transient praise of the vulgar, but to a solid, 
 permanent existence, in the permanent part of their nature, 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 447 
 
 and to a permanent fame and glory, in the example they 
 leave as a rich inheritance to the world. 
 
 Such sublime principles ought to be infused into per- 
 sons of exalted situations, and religious establishments 
 provided that may continully revive and enforce them. 
 Every sort of moral, every sort of civil, every sort of politic 
 institution, aiding the rational and natural ties that connect 
 the human understanding and affections to the divine, are 
 not more than necessary, in order to build up that wonder- 
 ful structure, Man,— whose prerogative it is, to be in a great 
 degree a creature of his own making, and who, when made 
 as he ought to be made, is destined to hold no trivial place 
 in the creation. But whenever man is put over men, as the 
 better nature ought ever to preside, in that case more partic- 
 ularly he should as nearly as possible be approximated to 
 his perfection. 
 
 The consecration of the state by a state religious establish- 
 ment is necessary also to operate with a wholesome awe 
 upon free citizens; because, in order to secure their freedom, 
 they must enjoy some determinate portionof power. To 
 them, therefore, a religion connected with the state, and 
 with their duty towards it, becomes even more necessary 
 than in such societies where the people, by the terms of their 
 subjection, are confined to private sentiments, and the man- 
 agement of their own family concerns. All persons possess- 
 ing any portion of power ought to be strongly and awfully im- 
 pressed with an idea that they act in trust, and that they are 
 to account for their conduct in that trust to the one great 
 Master, Author, and Founder of society. 
 
 This principle ought even to be more strongly impressed 
 upon the minds of those who compose the collective sover- 
 eignty than upon those of single princes. Without instru- 
 ments, these princes can do nothing. Whoever uses instru- 
 ments, in finding helps, finds also impediments. Their 
 power is therefore by no means complete ; norare they safe 
 in extreme abuse. Such persons, however elevated by 
 flattery, arrogance, and self-opinion, must be sensible, that, 
 
448 BURKE 
 
 whether covered or not by positive law, in some way or other 
 they are accountable even here for the abuse of their trust. 
 If they are not cut off by a rebellion of their people, they 
 may be strangled by the very janissaries kept for their 
 security against all other rebellion. Thus we have seen the 
 king of France sold by his soldiers for an increase of pay. 
 But where popular authority is absolute and unrestrained, 
 the people have an infinitely greater, because a far better 
 founded, confidence in their own power. They are them- 
 selves in a great measure their own instruments. They are 
 nearer to their objects. Besides, they are less under re- 
 sponsibility to one of the greatest controlling powers on 
 earth, the sense of fame and estimation. The share of in- 
 famy that is likely to fall to the lot of each individual in 
 public acts is small indeed: the operation of opinion being in 
 the inverse ratio to the number of those who abuse power. 
 Their own approbation of their own acts has to them the 
 appearance of a public judgment in their favour. A perfect 
 democracy is therefore the most shameless thing in the 
 world. As it is the most shameless, it is also the most fear- 
 less. No man apprehends in his person that he can be 
 made subject to punishment. Certainly the people at large 
 never ought: for, as all punishments are for example towards 
 the conservation of the people at large, the people at large 
 can never become the subject of punishment by any human 
 hand. It is therefore of infinite importance that they 
 should not be suffered to imagine that their will, any more 
 than that of kings, is the standard of right and wrong. 
 They ought to be persuaded that they are full as little en- 
 titled, and far less qualified, with safety to themselves, to 
 use any arbitrary power whatsoever; that therefore they are 
 not, under a false show of liberty, but in truth to exercise 
 an unnatural, inverted domination, tyrannically to exact 
 from those who officiate in the state, not an entire devotion 
 to their interest, which is their right, but an abject submis- 
 sion to their occasional will: extinguishing thereby, in all 
 those who serve them, all moral principle, all sense of dignity, 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 449 
 
 all use of judgment, and all consistency of character; whilst 
 by the very same process they give themselves up a proper, 
 a suitable, but a most contemptible prey to the servile ambi- 
 tion of popular sycophants or courtly flatterers. 
 
 When the people have emptied themselves of all the lust 
 of selfish will, which without religion it is utterly impossible 
 they ever should,—when they are conscious that they exer- 
 cise, and exercise perhaps ina higher link of the order of 
 delegation, the power which to be legitimate must be accord- 
 ing to that eternal, immutable law in which will and reason 
 are the same,—they will be more careful how they place 
 power in base and incapable hands. In their nomination to 
 office, they will not appoint to the exercise of authority as 
 to a pitiful job, but as to a holy function; not according to 
 their sordid, selfish interest, nor to their wanton caprice, nor 
 to their arbitrary will; but they will confer that power 
 (which any man may well tremble to give or to receive) on 
 those only in whom they may discern that predominant pro- 
 portion of active virtue and wisdom, taken together and 
 fitted to the charge, such as in the great and inevitable 
 mixed mass of human imperfections and infirmities is to be 
 found. | 
 
 When they are habitually convinced that no evil can be 
 acceptable, either in the act or the permission, to Him whose 
 essence is good, they will be better able to extirpate out of 
 the minds of all magistrates, civil, ecclesiastical, or military, 
 anything that bears the least resemblance to a proud and 
 lawless domination. 
 
 But one of the first and most leading principles on which 
 the commonwealth and the laws are consecrated is lest the 
 temporary possessors and life-renters in it, unmindful of 
 what they have received from their ancestors, or of what is 
 due to their posterity, should act as if they were the entire 
 masters ; that they should not think it amongst their rights 
 to cut off the entail or commit waste on the inheritance, by 
 destroying at their pleasure the whole original fabric of their 
 society : hazarding to leave to those who come after them a 
 
 29 
 
450 BURKE 
 
 ruin instead of an habitation,—and teaching these successors 
 as little to respect their contrivances as they had themselves 
 respected the institutions of their forefathers. By this un- 
 principled facility of changing the state as often and as much 
 and in as many ways as there are floating fancies or fashions, 
 the whole chain and continuity of the commonwealth would 
 be broken; no one generation could link with the other; 
 men would become little better than the flies of a summer. 
 And first of all, the science of jurisprudence, the pride of 
 the human intellect, which, with all its defects, redundancies, 
 and errors, is the collected reason of ages, combining the 
 principles of original justice with the infinite variety of 
 human concerns, as a heap of old exploded errors, would be 
 no longer studied. Personal self-sufficiency and arrogance 
 (the certain attendants upon all those who have never ex- 
 perienced a wisdom greater than their own) would usurp 
 the tribunal. Of course no certain laws, establishing invari- 
 able grounds of hope and fear, would keep the actions of 
 men in a certain course, or direct them to a certain end. 
 Nothing stable in the modes of holding property or exercis- 
 ing function could form asolid ground on which any parent 
 could speculate in the education of his offspring, or in a 
 choice for their future establishment in the world. No 
 principles would be early worked into the habits. As soon 
 as the most able instructor had completed his laborious 
 course of institution, instead of sending forth his pupil ac- 
 complished in a virtuous discipline fitted to procure him at- 
 tention and respect in his place in society, he would find 
 everything altered, and that he had turned out a poor 
 creature to the contempt and derision of the world, ignorant 
 of the true grounds of estimation. Who would insure a 
 tender and delicate sense of honour to beat almost with the 
 first pulses of the heart, when no man could know what 
 would be the test of honourin a nation continually varying the 
 standard of its coin? No part of life wold retain its acquisi- 
 tions. Barbarism with regard to science and literature, unskil- 
 fulness with regard to arts and manufactures, would infallibly 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 451 
 
 succeed to the want of a steady education and settled 
 principle ; and thus the commonwealth itself would in a few 
 generations crumble away, be disconnected into the dust and 
 powder of individuality, and at length dispersed to all the 
 winds of heaven. 
 
 To avoid, therefore, the evils of inconstancy and versatility, 
 ten thousand times worse than those of obstinacy and the 
 blindest prejudice, we have consecrated the state, that no 
 man should approach to look into its defects or corruptions 
 but with due caution; that he should never dream of begin- 
 ning its reformation by its subversion; that he should 
 approach to the faults of the state as to the wounds of a 
 father, with pious awe and trembling solicitude. By this wise 
 prejudice we are taught to look with horror on those children 
 of their country who are prompt rashly to hack that aged 
 parent in pieces and put him into the kettle of magicians, in 
 hopes that by their poisonous weeds and wild incantations 
 they may regenerate the paternal constitution and renovate 
 their father’s life. 
 
 Society is, indeed, a contract. Subordinate contracts for 
 objects of mere occasional interest may be dissolved at 
 pleasure ; but the state ought not to be considered as noth- 
 ing better than a partnership agreement in a tradeof pep- 
 per and coffee, calico or tobacco, or some other such low 
 concern, to be taken up fora little temporary interest, and 
 to be dissolved by the fancy of the parties. It is to be 
 looked on with other reverence; because it is not a partner- 
 ship in things subservient only to the gross animal existence 
 of atemporary and perishable nature. It is a partnership in 
 all science, a partnershipin all art, a partnership in every 
 virtue and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partner- 
 ship cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a 
 partnership not only between those who are living, but be- 
 tween those who are living, those who are dead, and those who 
 aretobe born. Each contract of each particular state is buta 
 clause in the great primeval contract of eternal society, link- 
 ing the lower with the higher natures, connecting the visible 
 
A452 BURKE 
 
 and invisible world, according to a fixed compact sanctioned 
 by the inviolable oath which holds all physical and all moral 
 natures each in their appointed place. This law is not 
 subject to the will of those who, by an obligation above 
 them, and infinitely superior, are bound to submit their will 
 to that law. The municipal corporations of that universal 
 kingdom are not morally at liberty, at their pleasure, and 
 on their speculations of a contingent improvement, wholly 
 to separate and tear asunder the bands of their subordinate 
 community, and to dissolve it into an unsocial, uncivil, un- 
 connected chaos of elementary principles. It is the first 
 and supreme necessity only, a necessity that is not chosen, 
 but chooses, a necessity paramount to deliberation, that 
 admits no discussion and demands no evidence, which 
 alone can justify a resort to anarchy. This necessity is no 
 exception to the rule ; because this necessity itself is a part, 
 too, of that moral and physical disposition of things to 
 which man must be obedient by consent or force: but if 
 that which is only submission to necessity should be made 
 the object of choice, the law is broken, Nature is disobeyed, 
 and the rebellious are outlawed, cast forth, and exiled, from 
 this world of reason, and order, and peace, and virtue, and 
 fruitful penitence, into the antagonist world of madness, dis- 
 cord, vice, confusion, and unavailing sorrow. 
 
 These, my dear Sir, are, were, and, I think, long will be, 
 the sentiments of not the least learned and reflecting part of 
 this kingdom. They who are included in this description 
 form their opinions on such grounds as such persons ought 
 to form them. The less inquiring receive them from an 
 authority which those whom Providence dooms to live on 
 trust need not be ashamed to rely on. These two sorts of 
 men move in the same direction, though in a different place. 
 They both move with the order of the universe. They all 
 know or feel this great ancient truth :—“ Quod illi principi et 
 prepotenti Deo qui omnem hunc mundum regit nihil eorum 
 quz quidem fiant in terris acceptius quam concilia et cztus 
 hominum jure sociati que civitates appellantur.” They take 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 453 
 
 this tenet of the head and heart, not from the great name which 
 it immediately bears, nor from the greater from whence it is 
 derived, but from that which alone can give true weight and 
 sanction to any learned opinion, the common nature and com- 
 mon relation of men. Persuaded that allthings ought to be 
 done with reference, and referring all to the point of reference 
 to which all should be directed, they think themselves bound, 
 not only as individuals in the sanctuary of the heart, or as 
 congregated in that personal capacity, to renew the memory 
 of their high origin and cast, but also in their corporate 
 character to perform their national homage to the Institutor 
 and Author and Protector of civil society, without which 
 civil society man could not by any possibility arrive at the 
 perfection of which nature is capable, nor even make a 
 remote and faint approach to it. They conceive that He 
 who gave our nature to be perfected by our virtue willed al- 
 so the necessary means of its perfection: He willed there- 
 fore, the state: He willed its connection with the source 
 and original archetype of all perfection. They who are 
 convinced of this His will, which is the law of laws and the 
 sovereign of sovereigns, can not think it reprehensible that 
 this our corporate fealty and homage, that this our recogni- 
 tion of a signiory paramount, I had almost said this oblation 
 of the state itself, as a worthy offering on the high altar of 
 universal praise, should be performed, as all public, solemn 
 acts are performed, in buildings, in music, in decoration, in 
 speech, in the dignity of persons according to the customs of 
 mankind, taught by their nature,—that is, with modest 
 splendour, with unassuming state, with mild majesty and 
 sober pomp. For those purposes they think some part of the 
 wealth of thecountry is as usefully employed as it can be in 
 fomenting the luxury of individuals. It is the public orna- 
 ment. It is the public consolation. It nourishes the public 
 hope. The poorest man finds his own importance and dignity 
 in it, whilst the wealth and pride of individuals at every 
 moment makes the man of humble rank and fortune sensible 
 of his inferiority, and degrades and vilifies hiscondition. It 
 
AS4 BURKE 
 
 is for the man in humble life, and to raise his nature, and to 
 put him in mind of a state in which the privileges of opulence 
 will cease, when he will be equal by nature, and may be 
 more than equal by virtue, that this portion of the general 
 wealth of his country is employed and sanctified. 
 
 I assure you I do not aim at singularity. I give you op- 
 inions which have been accepted amongst us, from very 
 early times to this moment, with a continued and general ap- 
 probation, and which, indeed, are so worked into my mind 
 that I am unable to distinguish what I have learned from 
 others from the results of my own meditation. 
 
 It is on some such principles that the majority of the 
 people of England, far from thinking a religious national 
 establishment unlawful, hardly think it lawful to be without 
 one. In France you are wholly mistaken, if you do not be- 
 lieve us above all other things attached to it, and beyond 
 all other nations ; and when this people has acted unwisely 
 and unjustifiably in its favour, (as in some instances they have 
 done, most certainly), in their very errors you will at least 
 discover their zeal. 
 
 This principle runs through the whole system of their pol- 
 ity. They do not consider their Church establishment as 
 convenient, but as essential to their state: not asa thing 
 heterogeneous and separable,—something added for accom- 
 modation,—what they may either keep up or lay aside, ac- 
 cording to their temporary ideas of convenience. They 
 consider it as the foundation of their whole Constitution, 
 with which, and with every part of which, it holds an indis- 
 soluble union. Church and State are ideas inseparable in 
 their minds, and scarcely is the one ever mentioned without 
 mentioning the other. 
 
 Our education is so formed as to confirm and fix this im- 
 pression. Our education is in amanner wholly in the hands 
 of ecclesiastics, and in all stages from infancy to manhood. 
 Even when our youth, leaving schools and universities, enter 
 that most important period of life which begins to link ex- 
 perience and study together, and when with that view they 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 455 
 
 visit other countries, instead of old domestics whom we have 
 seen as governors to principal men from other parts, three- 
 fourths of those who go abroad with our young nobility and 
 gentlemen are ecclesiastics : not as austere masters, nor as 
 mere followers ; but as friends and companions of a graver 
 character, and not seldom persons as well born as themselves. 
 With them, as relations, they most commonly keep upa 
 close connection through life. By this connection we con- 
 ceive that we attach our gentlemen to the Church ; and we 
 liberalize the Church by an intercourse with the leading 
 characters of the country. 
 
 So tenacious are we of the old ecclesiastical modes and 
 fashions of institution, that very little alteration has been 
 made in them since the fourteenth or fifteenth century : 
 adhering in this particular, as in all things else, to our old 
 settled maxim, never entirely nor at once to depart from an- 
 tiquity. We found these old institutions, on the whole, 
 favourable to morality and discipline ; and we thought they 
 were susceptible of amendment, without altering the 
 ground. Wethought that they were capable of receiving 
 and meliorating,and above all of preserving, the accessions 
 of science and literature, as the order of Providence should 
 successively produce them. And after all, with this Gothic 
 and monkish education, (for such itis in the groundwork), 
 we may put in our claim to as ample and as early a share in 
 all the improvements in science, in arts, and in literature, 
 which have illuminated and adorned the modern world, as 
 any other nation in Europe: we think one main cause of 
 this improvement was our not despising the patrimony of 
 knowledge which was left us by our forefathers. 
 
 It is from our attachment to a Church establishment, that 
 the English nation did not think it wise to intrust that great 
 fundamental interest of the whole to what they trust no part 
 of their civil or military public service,—that is, to the un- 
 steady and precarious contribution of individuals. They go 
 further. They certainly never have suffered, and never will 
 suffer, the fixed estate of the Church to be converted into a 
 
456 BURKE 
 
 pension, to depend on the Treasury, and to be delayed, 
 withheld, or perhaps to be extinguished by fiscal difficulties : 
 which difficulties may sometimes be pretended for political 
 purposes, and are in fact often brought on by the extravag- 
 ance, negligence, and rapacity of politicians. The people of 
 England think that they have constitutional motives, as 
 well as religious, against any project of turning their indep- 
 endent clergy into ecclesiastical pensioners of state. They 
 tremble for their liberty, from the influence of a clergy depen- 
 dent on the crown; they tremble for the public tranquillity 
 from the disorders of a factious clergy, if it were made to 
 depend upon any other than the crown. They therefore 
 made their Church, like their king and their nobility, inde- 
 pendent. 
 
 From the united considerations of religion and constitu- 
 tional policy, from their opinion of a duty to make a sure 
 provision for the consolation of the feeble and the instruc- 
 tion of the ignorant, they have incorporated and identified 
 the estate of the Church with the mass of private property, 
 of which the state is not the proprietor, either for use or 
 dominion, but the guardian only and the regulator. They 
 have ordained that the provision of this establishment might 
 be as stable as the earth on which it stands, and should not 
 fluctuate with the Euripus of funds and actions. 
 
 The men of England, the men, I mean, of light and lead- 
 ing in England, whose wisdom (if they have any) is open 
 and direct, would be ashamed, as of a silly, deceitful trick, 
 to profess any religion in name, which by their proceedings 
 they appear to contemn. If by their conduct (the only 
 language that rarely lies) they seemed to regard the great 
 ruling principle of the moral and the natural world as a 
 mere invention to keep the vulgar in obedience, they ap- 
 prehend that by such a conduct they would defeat the 
 politic purpose they have in view. They would find it dif- 
 ficult to make others believe in a system to which they man- 
 ifestly gave no credit themselves. The Christian statesmen 
 of this land would, indeed, first provide for the multitude, 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 457 
 
 because it is the multitude, and is therefore, as such, the 
 first object in the ecclesiastical institution, and in all institu- 
 tions. They have been taught that the circumstance of the 
 Gospel’s being preached to the poor was one of the great 
 tests of its true mission. They think, therefore, that those 
 do not believe it who donot take care it should be preached 
 to the poor. But as they know that charity is not confined 
 to any one description, but ought to apply itself to all men 
 who have wants, they are not deprived of a due and anxious 
 sensation of pity to the distresses of the miserable great. 
 They are not repelled, through a fastidious delicacy, at the 
 stench of their arrogance and presumption, from a medicinal 
 attention to their mental blotches and running sores. They 
 are sensible that religious instruction is of more consequence 
 to them than to any others: from the greatness of the temp- 
 tation to which they are exposed; from the important 
 consequences that attend their faults; from the contagion 
 of their ill example; from the necessity of bowing down the 
 stubborn neck of their pride and ambition to the yoke of 
 moderation and virtue; froma consideration of the fat stupid- 
 ity and gross ignorance concerning what imports men most 
 to know, which prevails at courts, and at the head of armies, 
 and in senates, as much as at the loom and in the field. 
 
 The English people are satisfied, that to the great the con- 
 solations of religion are as necessary as its instructions. 
 They, too, are among the unhappy. They feel personal 
 pain and domestic sorrow. In these they have no privilege, 
 but are subject to pay their full contingent to the contribu- 
 tions levied on mortality. They want this sovereign balm 
 under their gnawing cares and anxieties, which, being less 
 conversant about the limited wants of animal life, range 
 without limit, and are diversified by infinite combinations in 
 the wild and unbounded regions of imagination. Some 
 charitable dole is wanting to these, our often very unhappy 
 brethren, to fill the gloomy void that reigns in minds which 
 have nothing on earth to hope or fear; something to relieve 
 in the killing languor and over-laboured lassitude of those 
 
458 BURKE 
 
 who have nothing to do; something to excite an appetite to 
 existence in the palled satiety which attends on all pleasures 
 which may be bought, where Nature is not left to her own 
 process, where even desire is anticipated, and therefore 
 fruition defeated by meditated schemes and contrivances of 
 delight, and no interval, no obstacle, is interposed between 
 the wish and the accomplishment. 
 
 The people of England know how little influence the 
 teachers of religion are likely to have with the wealthy and 
 powerful of long standing, and how much less with the 
 newly fortunate, if they appear in a manner no way assorted 
 to those with whom they must associate, and over whom 
 they must even exercise, in some cases, something like an 
 authority. What must they think of that body of teachers, 
 if they see it in no part above the establishment of their 
 domestic servants? If the poverty were voluntary, there 
 might be some difference. Strong instances of self-denial 
 operate powerfully on our minds; and a man who has no 
 wants has obtained great freedom and firmness, and even 
 dignity. But as the mass of any description of men are but 
 men, and their poverty can not be voluntary, that disrespect 
 which attends upon all lay poverty will not depart from the 
 ecclesiastical. Our provident Constitution has therefore 
 taken care that those who are to instruct presumptuous 
 ignorance, those who are to be censors over insolent vice, 
 should neither incur their contempt nor live upon their 
 alms; nor will it tempt the rich to a neglect of the true 
 medicine of their minds. For these reasons, whilst we pro- 
 vide first for the poor, and with a parental solicitude, we 
 have not relegated religion (like something we were ashamed 
 to show) to obscure municipalities or rustic villages. No! 
 we will have her to exalt her mitred front in courts and par- 
 liaments. We will have her mixed throughout the whole 
 mass of life, and blended with all the classes of society. The 
 people of England will show to the haughty potentates of 
 the world, and to their talking sophisters, that a free, a 
 generous, an informed nation honours the high magistrates 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 459 
 
 of its Church; that it will not suffer the insolence of wealth 
 and titles, or any other species of proud pretension, to look 
 down with scorn upon what they look up to with reverence, 
 nor presume to trample on that acquired personal nobility 
 which they intend always to be, and which often is, the 
 fruit, not the reward, (for what can be the reward ?) of learn- 
 ing, piety, and virtue. They can see, without pain or grudg- 
 ing, an archbishop precede a duke. They can see a bishop 
 of Durham ora bishop of Winchester in possession of ten 
 thousand pounds a year, and can not conceive why it is in 
 worse hands than estates to the like amount in the hands of 
 this earl or that squire; although it may be true that so 
 many dogs and horses arenot kept by the former, and fed 
 with the victuals which ought to nourish the children of the 
 people. It is true, the whole Church revenue is not always 
 employed, and to every shilling, in charity; nor perhaps 
 ought it; but something is generally so employed. It is 
 better to cherish virtue and humanity, by leaving much to 
 free will, even with some loss to the object, than to attempt 
 to make men mere machines and instruments of a political 
 benevolence. The world onthe whole will gain by a liberty 
 without which virtue can not exist. 
 
 When once the commonwealth has established the estates 
 of the Church as property, it can consistently hear nothing 
 of the more or the less. Too much and too little are treason 
 against property. What evil can arise from the quantity in 
 any hand, whilst the supreme authority has the full, sovereign 
 superintendence over this, as over any property, to prevent 
 every species of abuse,—and whenever it notably deviates, 
 to give to it a direction agreeable to the purposes of its 
 institution ? 
 
 In England most of us conceive that it is envy and malig- 
 nity towards those who are often the beginners of their own 
 fortune, and not a love of the self-denial and mortification of 
 the ancient Church, that makes some look askance at the 
 distinctions and honours and revenues which, taken from no 
 person, are set apart for virtue. The ears of the people of 
 
460 BURKE 
 
 England are distinguishing. They hear these men speak 
 broad. Their tongue betrays them. Their language is in 
 the patois of fraud, in the cant and gibberish of hypocrisy. 
 The people of England must think so, when these praters 
 affect to carry back the clergy to that primitive evangelic 
 poverty which in the spirit ought always to exist in them, 
 (and in us, too, however we may like it,) but in the thing 
 must be varied, when the relation of that body to the state 
 is altered,— when manners, when modes of life, when indeed 
 the whole order of human affairs, has undergone a total 
 revolution. We shall believe those reformers to be then 
 honest enthusiasts, not, as now we think them, cheats and 
 deceivers, when we see them throwing their own goods into 
 common, and submitting their own persons to the austere 
 discipline of the early Church. 
 
 With these ideas rooted in their minds, the Commons of 
 Great Britain, in the national emergencies, will never seek 
 their resource from the confiscation of the estates of the 
 Church and poor. Sacrilege and proscription are not among 
 the ways and means of our Committee of Supply. The Jews 
 in Change Alley have not yet dared to hint their hopes of a 
 mortgage on the revenues belonging to the see of Canter- 
 bury. I am not afraid that I shall be disavowed, when I 
 assure you that there is not one public man in this kingdom, 
 whom you wish to quote,—no, not one, of any party or 
 description,—who does not reprobate the dishonest, perfid- 
 ious and cruel confiscation which the National Assembly has 
 been compelled to make of that property which it was their 
 first duty to protect. 
 
 It is with the exultation of a little national pride I tell you 
 that those amongst us who have wished to pledge the socie- 
 ties of Paris in the cup of their abominations have been dis- 
 appointed. The robbery of your Church has proved a secu- 
 rity to the possessions of ours. It has roused the people. 
 They see with horror and alarm that enormous and shame- 
 less act of proscription. It has opened, and will more and 
 more open, their eyes upon the selfish enlargement of mind 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 461 
 
 and the narrow liberality of sentiment of insidious men, 
 which, commencing in close hypocrisy and fraud, have ended 
 in open violence and rapine. At home we behold similar 
 beginnings, We are on our guard against similar conclu- 
 sions. 
 
 I hope we shall never be so totally lost to all sense of the 
 duties imposed upon us by the law of social union, as, upon 
 any pretext of public service, to confiscate the goods of a 
 single unoffending citizen. Who but a tyrant (a name ex- 
 pressive of everything which can vitiate and degrade human 
 nature) could think of seizing on the property of men, unac- 
 cused, unheard, untried, by whole descriptions, by hundreds 
 and thousands together? Who that had not lost every trace 
 of humanity could think of casting down men of exalted 
 rank and sacred function, some of them of an age to call at 
 once for reverence and compassion,—of casting them down 
 from the highest situation in the commonwealth, wherein 
 they were maintained by their own landed property, to a 
 state of indigence, depression, and contempt ? 
 
 The confiscators truly have made some allowance to their 
 victims from the scraps and fragments of their own tables, 
 from which they have been so harshly driven, and which 
 have been so bountifully spread for a feast to the harpies of 
 usury. But to drive men from independence to live on 
 alms is itself great cruelty. That which might be a tolerable 
 condition to men in one state of life, and not habituated to 
 other things, may, when all these circumstances are altered, 
 be a dreadful revolution, and one to which a virtuous mind 
 would feel pain in condemning any guilt, except that which 
 would demand the life of the offender. But to many minds 
 this punishment of degradation and infamy is worse than 
 death. Undoubtedly it is an infinite aggravation of this 
 cruel suffering, that the persons who were taught a double 
 prejudice in favour of religion, by education, and by the place 
 they held in the administration of its functions, are to receive 
 the remnants of their property as alms from the profane and 
 impious hands of those who had plundered them of all the 
 
462 BURKE 
 
 rest,—to receive (if they are at all to receive) not from the 
 charitable contributions of the faithful, but from the insolent 
 tenderness of known and avowed atheism, the maintenance 
 of religion, measured out to them on the standard of the 
 contempt in which it is held, and for the purpose of render- 
 ing those who receive the allowance vile and of no estima- 
 tion in the eyes of mankind. 
 
 But this act of seizure of property, it seems, is a judgment 
 in law, and not a confiscation. They have, it seems, found 
 out in the academies of the Palais Royal and the Jacobins, 
 that certain men had no right to the possessions which they 
 held under law, usage, the decisions of courts, and the accumu- 
 lated prescription of a thousand years, They say that eccle- 
 siastics are fictitious persons, creatures of the state, whom at 
 pleasure they may destroy, and of course limit and modify 
 in every particular; that the goods they possess are not prop- 
 erly theirs, but belong to the state which created the fiction ; 
 and we are therefore not to trouble ourselves with what they 
 may suffer in their natural feelings and natural persons on 
 account of what is done towards them in this their construc- 
 tive character. Of what import is it, under what names you 
 injure men, and deprive them of the just emoluments of a 
 profession in which they were not only permitted, but en- 
 couraged by the state to engage, and upon the supposed cer- 
 tainty of which emoluments they had formed the plan of their 
 lives, contracted debts, and led multitudes to an entire de- 
 pendence upon them ? 
 
 You do not imagine, Sir, that I am going to compliment 
 this miserable distinction of persons with any long discus- 
 sion. The arguments of tyranny are as contemptible as its 
 force is dreadful. Had not your confiscators by their early 
 crimes obtained a power which secures indemnity to all the 
 crimes of which they have since been guilty, or that they can 
 commit, it is not the syllogism of the logician, but the lash 
 of the executioner, that would have refuted a sophistry 
 which becomes an accomplice of theft and murder. The so- 
 phistic tyrants of Paris are loud in their declamations against 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 463 
 
 the departed regal tyrants who in former ages have vexed 
 the world. They are thus bold, because they are safe from 
 the dungeons and iron cages of their old masters. Shall we 
 be more tender of the tyrants of our own time, when we see 
 them acting worse tragedies under our eyes? Shall we not 
 use the same liberty that they do, when we can use it with 
 the same safety, when to speak honest truth only requires a 
 contempt of the opinions of those whose actions we abhor? 
 
 This outrage on all the rights of property was at first cov- 
 ered with what, on the system of their conduct, was the most 
 astonishing of all pretexts,—a regard to national faith. The 
 enemies to property at first pretended a most tender, deli- 
 cate, and scrupulous anxiety for keeping the king’s engage- 
 ments with the public creditor. These professors of the rights 
 of men are so busy in teaching others, that they have not 
 leisure to learn anything themselves ; otherwise they would 
 have known that it is to the property of the citizen, and not 
 to the demands of the creditor of the state, that the first and 
 original faith of civil society is pledged. The claim of the 
 citizen is prior in time, paramount in title, superior in equity. 
 The fortunes of individuals, whether possessed by acquisi- 
 tion, or by descent, or in virtue of a participation in the 
 goods of some community, were no part of the creditor’s 
 security, expressed orimplied. They never so much as en- 
 tered into his head, when he made his bargain. He well 
 knew that the public, whether represented by a monarch or 
 by asenate, can pledge nothing but the public estate ; and 
 it can have no public estate, except in what it derives from 
 a just and proportioned imposition upon the citizens at large. 
 This was engaged, and nothing else could be engaged, to the 
 public creditor. No man can mortgage his injustice as a 
 pawn for his fidelity. 
 
 It is impossible to avoid some observation on the con- 
 tradictions caused by the extreme rigor and the extreme 
 laxity of this new public faith, which influenced in this trans- 
 action, and which influenced not according to the nature of 
 the obligation, but to the description of the persons to whom 
 
464 BURKE 
 
 it was engaged. No acts of the old government of the kings 
 of France are held valid in the National Assembly, except 
 its pecuniary engagements: acts of all others of the most 
 ambiguous legality. The rest of the acts of that royal gov- 
 ernment are considered in so odious a light that to have a 
 claim under its authority is looked on as a sort of crime. A 
 pension, given as a reward for service to the state, is surely 
 as good a ground of property as any security for money ad- 
 vanced to the state. It is a better ; for money is paid, and 
 well paid, to obtain that service. We have, however, seen 
 multitudes of people under this description in France, who 
 never had been deprived of their allowances by the most ar- 
 bitrary ministers in the most arbitrary times, by this assem- 
 bly of the rights of men robbed without mercy. They were 
 told, inanswer to their claim to the bread earned with their 
 blood, that their services had not been rendered to the coun- 
 try that now exists. 
 
 This laxity of public faith is not confined to those unfor- 
 tunate persons. The Assembly, with perfect consistency, it 
 must be owned, is engaged in a respectable deliberation how 
 far it is bound by the treaties made with other nations un- 
 der the former government; and their committee is to report 
 which of them they ought to ratify, and which not. By this 
 means they have put the external fidelity of this virgin state 
 on a par with its internal. 
 
 It is not easy to conceive upon what rational principle the 
 royal governments should not, of the two, rather have pos- 
 sessed the power of rewarding service and making treaties, 
 in virtue of its prerogative, than that of pledging to creditors 
 the revenue of the state, actual and possible. The treasure 
 of the nation, of all things, has been the least allowed to the 
 prerogative of the king of France, or to the prerogative of 
 any king in Europe. To mortgage the public revenue im- 
 plies the sovereign dominion, in the fullest sense, over the pub- 
 lic purse. It goes far beyond the trust even of a temporary 
 and occasional taxation. The acts, however, of that danger- 
 ous power (the distinctive mark of a boundless despotism) 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 465 
 
 have been alone held sacred. Whence arose this preference 
 given by a democratic assembly to a body of property deriv- 
 ing its title from the most critical and obnoxious of all the 
 exertions of monarchical authority? Reason can furnish 
 nothing to reconcile inconsistency ; nor can partial favour be 
 acounted for upon equitable principles. But the contradiction 
 and partiality whichadmit no justification are not the less 
 without an adequate cause ; and that cause I do not think 
 it difficult to discover. 
 
 By the vast debt of France a great moneyed interest has 
 insensibly grown up, and with it a great power. By the an- 
 cient usages which prevailed in that kingdom, the general 
 circulation of property, and in particular the mutual converti- 
 bility of land into money and of money into land, had al- 
 ways beena matter of difficulty. Family settlements, rather 
 more general and more strict than they are in England, the 
 jus retractis, the great mass of landed property held by the 
 crown, and, by a maxim of the French law, held unalienably, 
 the vast estates of the ecclesiastic corporations,—all these 
 had kept the landed and moneyed interests more separated 
 in France, less miscible, and the owners of the two distinct 
 species of property not so well disposed to each other as 
 they are in this country. 
 
 The moneyed property was long looked on with rather an 
 evil eye by the people. They saw it connected with their 
 distresses, and aggravating them. It was no less envied by 
 the old landed interests,—partly for the same reasons that 
 rendered it obnoxious to the people, but much more so as it 
 eclipsed, by the splendour of an ostentatious luxury, the un- 
 endowed pedigrees and naked titles of several among the no- 
 bility. Even when the nobility, which represented the more 
 permanent landed interest, united themselves by marriage 
 (which sometimes was the case) with the other description, 
 the wealth which saved the family from ruin was supposed to 
 contaminate and degrade it. Thus the enmities and heart- 
 burnings of these parties were increased even by the usual 
 means by which discord is made to cease and quarrels are 
 
 30 
 
466 BURKE 
 
 turned into friendship. In the meantime, the pride of the 
 wealthy men, not noble, or newly noble, increased with its 
 cause. They felt with resentment an inferiority the grounds 
 of which they did not acknowledge. There was no measure 
 to which they were not willing to lend themselves, in order to 
 be revenged of the outrages of this rival pride, and to exalt 
 their wealth to what they considered as its natural rank and es- 
 timation. They struck at the nobility through the crown and 
 the Church. They attacked them particularly on the side on 
 which they thought them the most vulnerable,—that is, the 
 possessions of the Church, which, through the patronage of 
 the crown, generally devolved upon the nobility. The bish- 
 oprics and the great commendatory abbeys were, with few 
 exceptions, held by that order. 
 
 In this state of real, though not always perceived, warfare 
 between the noble ancient landed interest and the new mon- 
 eyed interest, the greatest, because the most applicable, 
 strength was in the hands of the latter. The moneyed in- 
 terest is in its nature more ready for any adventure, and its 
 possessors more disposed to new enterprises of any kind. 
 Being of a recent acquisition, it falls in more naturally with 
 any novelties. It is therefore the kind of wealth which will 
 be resorted to by all who wish for change. 
 
 Along with the moneyed interest, a new description of 
 men had grown up, with whom that interest soon formed a 
 close and marked union; I mean the political men of letters. 
 Men of letters, fond of distinguishing themselves, are rarely 
 averse toinnovation. Since the decline of the life and great- 
 ness of Louis the Fourteenth, they were not so much culti- 
 vated either by him, or by the Regent, or the successors to 
 the crown; nor were they engaged to the court by favours 
 and emoluments so systematically as during the splendid 
 period of that ostentatious and not impolitic reign. What 
 they lost in the old court protection they endeavoured 
 to make up by joining in a sort of incorporation of their 
 own; to which the two academies of France, and after- 
 wards the vast undertaking of the Encyclopedia, carried 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 467 
 
 on by a society of these gentlemen, did not a little con- 
 tribute. 
 
 The literary cabal had some years ago formed something 
 like a regular plan for the destruction of the Christian relig- 
 ion. This object they pursued with a degree of zeal which 
 hitherto had been discovered only in the propagators of some 
 system of piety. They were possessed with a spirit of pros- 
 elytism in the most fanatical degree,—and from thence, by 
 an easy progress, with the spirit of persecution according to 
 their means.24_ What was not to be done towards their great 
 end by any direct or immediate act might be wrought by a 
 longer process through the medium of opinion. To com- 
 mand that opinion, the first step is to establish a dominion 
 over those who direct it. They contrived to possess them- 
 selves, with great method and perseverance, of all the avenues 
 to literary fame. Many of them, indeed, stood high in the 
 ranks of literature and science. The world had done them 
 justice, and in favour of general talents forgave the evil ten- 
 dency of their peculiar principles. This was true liberality ; 
 which they returned by endeavouring to confine the reputa- 
 tion of sense, learning, and taste to themselves or their 
 followers. I will venture to say that this narrow, exclusive 
 spirit has not been less prejudicial to literature and to taste 
 than to morals and true philosophy. These atheistical 
 fathers have a bigotry of their own; and they have learnt to 
 talk against monks with the spirit of amonk. But in some 
 things they are men of the world. Theresources of intrigue 
 are called in to supply the defects of argument and wit. 
 To this system of literary monopoly was joined an unremit- 
 ting industry to blacken and discredit in every way, and by 
 every means, all those who did not hold to their faction. 
 To those who have observed the spirit of their conduct it has 
 long been clear that nothing was wanted but the power of 
 carrying the intolerance of the tongue and of the pen into 
 a persecution which would strike at property, liberty, and 
 life. 
 
 The desultory and faint persecution carried on against 
 
468 BURKE 
 
 them, more from compliance with form and decency than 
 with serious resentment, neither weakened their strength nor 
 relaxed their efforts. Theissue of the whole was, that, what 
 with opposition, and what with success, a violent and malig- 
 nant zeal, of a kind hitherto unknown in the world, had 
 taken an entire possession of their minds, and rendered their 
 whole conversation, which otherwise would have been pleas- 
 ing and instructive, perfectly disgusting. A spirit of cabal, 
 intrigue, and proselytism pervaded all their thoughts, words, 
 and actions. And as controversial zeal soon turns its 
 thoughts on force, they began to insinuate themselves into a 
 correspondence with foreign princes,—in hopes, through 
 their authority, which at first they flattered, they might bring 
 about the changes they had in view. To them it was indif- 
 ferent whether these changes were to be accomplished by 
 the thunderbolt of despotism or by the earthquake of popular 
 commotion. Thecorrespondence between this cabal and the 
 late king of Prussia will throw no small light upon the spirit 
 of all their proceedings. For the same purpose for which 
 they intrigued with princes, they cultivated, in a distin- 
 guished manner, the moneyed interest of France; and 
 partly through the means furnished by those whose pecul- 
 iar offices gave them the most extensive and certain means 
 of communication, they carefully occupied all the avenues to 
 opinion. 
 
 Writers, especially when they act in a body and with one 
 direction, have great influence on the public mind; the 
 alliance, therefore, of these writers with the moneyed in- 
 terest 23 had no small effect in removing the popular odium 
 and envy which attended that species of wealth. These 
 writers, like the propagators of all novelties, pretended to a 
 great zeal for the poor and the lower orders, whilst in their 
 satires they rendered hateful, by every exaggeration, the 
 faults of courts, of nobility, and of priesthood. They be- 
 came a sort of demagogues. They served as a link to unite, 
 in favour of one object, obnoxious wealth to restless and des- 
 perate poverty. 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 469 
 
 As these two kinds of men appear principal leaders in all 
 the late transactions, their junction and politics will serve 
 to account, not upon any principles of law or of policy, but as 
 a cause, for the general fury with which all the landed 
 property of ecclesiastical corporations has been attacked, and 
 the great care which, contrary to their pretended principles, 
 has been taken of a moneyed interest originating from the 
 authority of the crown. All the envy against wealth and 
 power was artificially directed against other descriptions of 
 riches. On what other principle than that which I have 
 stated can we account for an appearance so extraordinary 
 and unnatural as that of the ecclesiastical possessions, which 
 had stood so many successions of ages and shocks of civil 
 violences, and were guarded at once by justice and by prej- 
 udice, being applied to the payment of debts comparatively 
 recent, invidious, and contracted by a decried and subverted 
 government. 
 
 Was the public estate a sufficient stake for the public 
 debts? Assume that it was not, and that a loss must be 
 incurred somewhere. When the only estate lawfully pos- 
 sessed, and which the contracting parties had in contempla- 
 tion at the time in which their bargain was made, happens 
 to fail, who, according to the principles of natural and legal 
 equity, ought to be the sufferer? Certainly it ought to be 
 either the party who trusted, or the party who persuaded 
 him to trust, or both; and not third parties who had no 
 concern with the transaction. Upon any insolvency, they 
 ought to suffer who were weak enough to lend upon bad 
 security, or they who fraudulently held out a security that 
 was not valid. Laws are acquainted with no other rules of 
 decision. But by the newinstitute of the rights of men, the 
 only persons who in equity ought to suffer are the only per- 
 sons who are to be saved harmless: those are to answer the 
 debt who neither were lenders nor borrowers, mortgagers nor 
 mortgagees. 
 
 What had the clergy to do with these transactions? 
 What had they to do with any public engagement further 
 
470 BURKE 
 
 than the extent of their own debt? To that, to be sure, 
 their estates were bound to the last acre. Nothing can lead 
 more to the true spirit of the Assembly, which sits for public 
 confiscation with its new equity and its new morality, than an 
 attention to their proceeding with regard to this debt of the 
 clergy. The body of confiscators, true to that moneyed in- 
 terest for which they were false to every other, have found 
 the clergy competent to incur a legal debt. Of course they 
 declared them legally entitled to the property which their 
 power of incurring the debt and mortgaging the estate im- 
 plied: recognizing the rights of those persecuted citizens in 
 the very act in which they were thus grossly violated. 
 
 If, as I said, any persons are to make good deficiencies to 
 the public creditor, besides the public at large, they must be 
 those who managed the agreement. Why, therefore, are not 
 the estates of all the comptrollers-general confiscated ?*4 
 Why not those of the long succession of ministers, finan- 
 ciers, and bankers who have been enriched whilst the nation 
 was impoverished by their dealings and their counsels? 
 Why is not the estate of M. Laborde declared forfeited 
 rather than of the Archbishop of Paris, who has had nothing 
 to do in the creation or in the jobbing of the public funds? 
 Or, if you must confiscate old landed estates in favour of the 
 money jobbers, why is the penalty confined to one descrip- 
 tion? J do not know whether the expenses of the Duke de 
 Choiseul have left anything of the infinite sums which he 
 had derived from the bounty of his master, during the tran- 
 sactions of a reign which contributed largely, by every species 
 of prodigality in war and peace, to the present debt of 
 France. If any such remains, why is not this confiscated ? 
 I remember to have been in Paris during the time of the old 
 government. I was there just after the Duke d’Aiguillon 
 had been snatched (as it was generally thought) from the 
 block by the hand of a protecting despotism. He was a 
 minister, and had some concern in the affairs of that prodi- 
 gal period. Why do I not see his estate delivered up to the 
 municipalities in which it is situated? The noble family of 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 471 
 
 Noailles have long been servants (meritorious servants I ad- 
 mit) to the crown of France, and have had of course some 
 share in its bounties. Why do I hear nothing of the appli- 
 cation of their estate to the public debt ? Why is the estate 
 of the Duke de Rochefoucault more sacred than that of the 
 Cardinal de Rochefoucault? The former is, I doubt not, a 
 worthy person; and (if it were not a sort of profaneness to 
 talk of the use, as affecting the title to property) he makes a 
 good use of his revenues; but it is no disrespect to him to 
 say, what authentic information well warrants me in saying, 
 that the use made of a property equally valid, by his 
 brother,® the Cardinal Archbishop of Rouen, was far more 
 laudable and far more public-spirited. Can one hear of the 
 proscription of such persons, and the confiscation of their 
 effects, without indignation and horror? He is not a man 
 who does not feel such emotions on such occasions. He 
 does not deserve the name of a free man who will not ex- 
 press them. 
 
 Few barbarous conquerors have ever made so terrible a 
 revolution in property. None of the heads of the Roman 
 factions, when they established crudelem illam hastam in all 
 their auctions of rapine, have ever set up to sale the goods 
 of the conquered citizen to such an enormous amount. It 
 must be allowed in favour of those tyrants of antiquity, that 
 what was done by them could hardly be said to be done in 
 cold blood. Their passions were inflamed, their tempers 
 soured, their understandings confused, with the spirit of 
 revenge, with the innumerable reciprocated and recent inflic- 
 tions and retaliations of blood andrapine. They were driven 
 beyond all bounds of moderation by the apprehension of the 
 return of power with the return of property to the families 
 of those they had injured beyond all hope of forgiveness. 
 
 These Roman confiscators, who were yet only in the ele- 
 ments of tyranny, and were not instructed in the rights of 
 men to exercise all sorts of cruelties on each other without 
 provocation, thought it necessary to spread a sort of colour 
 over their injustice. They considered the vanquished party 
 
A72 BURKE 
 
 as composed of traitors, who had borne arms, or otherwise 
 had acted with hostility, against the commonwealth. They 
 regarded them as persons who had forfeited their property 
 by their crimes. With you, in your improved state of the 
 human mind, there was no such formality. You seized upon 
 five millions sterling of annual rent, and turned forty or fifty 
 thousand human creatures out of their houses, because 
 “such was your pleasure.” The tyrant Harry the Eighth 
 of England, as he was not better enlightened than the 
 Roman Mariuses and Syllas, and had not studied in your 
 new schools, did not know what an effectual instrument of 
 despotism was to be found in that grand magazine of offen- 
 sive weapons, the rights of men. When he resolved to rob 
 the abbeys, as the club of the Jacobins have robbed all the 
 ecclesiastics, he began by setting on foot a commission to 
 examine into the crimes and abuses which prevailed in those 
 communities. As it might be expected, his commission re- 
 ported truths, exaggerations, and falsehoods. But truly or 
 falsely, it reported abuses and offenses. However, as abuses 
 might be corrected, as every crime of persons does not infer 
 a forfeiture with regard to communities, and as property, in 
 that dark age, was not discovered to bea creature of pre- 
 judice, all those abuses (and there were enough of them) 
 were hardly thought sufficient ground for such a confiscation 
 as it was for his purposes to make. He therefore procured 
 the formal surrender of these estates. All these operose 
 proceedings were adopted by one of the most decided 
 tyrants in the rolls of history, as necessary preliminaries, be- 
 fore he could venture, by bribing the members of his two 
 servile Houses with a share of the spoil, and holding out to 
 them an eternal immunity from taxation, to demand a con- 
 firmation of his iniquitous proceedings by an act of Parlia- 
 ment. Had fate reserved him to our times, four technical 
 terms would have done his business, and saved him all this 
 trouble; he needed nothing more than one short form of in- 
 cantation :—‘ Philosophy, Light, Liberality, the Rights of 
 Men.” 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 473 
 
 I can say nothing in praise of those acts of tyranny, which 
 no voice has hitherto ever commended under any of their false 
 colours; yet in these false colours an homage was paid by 
 despotism to justice. The power which was above all fear 
 and all remorse was not set above allshame. Whilst shame 
 keeps its watch, virtue is not wholly extinguished in the 
 heart, nor will moderation be utterly exiled from the minds 
 of tyrants. 
 
 I believe every honest man sympathizes in his reflections 
 with our political poet on that occasion, and will pray to 
 avert the omen, whenever these acts of rapacious despotism 
 present themselves to his view or his imagination :— 
 
 “ May no such storm 
 Fall on our times, where ruin must reform! 
 Tell me, my Muse, what monstrous, dire offence. 
 What crime could any Christian king incense 
 To such a rage? Was’t luxury, or lust? 
 Was he so temperate, so chaste, so just ? 
 Were these their crimes? They were his own much more: 
 But wealth is crime enough to him that’s poor.,’”%6 
 
 This same wealth, which is at all times treason and léze- 
 nation to indigent and rapacious despotism, under all modes 
 of polity, was your temptation to violate property, law, and 
 religion, united in one object. But was the state of France 
 so wretched and undone, that no other resource but rapine 
 remained to preserve itsexistence? On this point I wish to 
 receive some information. When the States met, was the 
 condition of the finances of France such, that, after economiz- 
 ing, on principles of justice and mercy, through all depart- 
 ments, no fair repartition of burdens upon all the orders could 
 possibly restore them? If such an equal imposition would 
 have been sufficient, you well know it might easily have 
 been made. M. Necker, in the budget which he laid before 
 the orders assembled at Versailles, made a detailed exposi- 
 tion of the state of the French nation.” 
 
 If we give credit to him, it was not necessary to have re- 
 course to any new impositions whatsoever, to put the receipts 
 of France on a balance with its expenses. He stated the 
 
A74 BURKE 
 
 permanent charges of all descriptions, including the interest 
 of a new loan of four hundred millions, at 531,444,000 livres ; 
 the fixed revenue at 475,294,000: making the deficiency 
 56,150,000, or short of 2,200,000/. sterling. But to balance 
 it, he brought forward savings and improvements of revenue 
 (considered as entirely certain) to rather more than the 
 amount of that deficiency ; and he concludes with these em- 
 phatical words (p. 39) :—‘‘ Quel pays, Messieurs, que celui, 
 ou, sans impdts et avec de simples objets inapergus, on peut 
 faire disparoitre un déficit quia fait tant de bruit en Europe!” 
 As to the reimbursement, the sinking of debt, and the other 
 great objects of public credit and political arrangement in- 
 dicated in Monsieur Necker’s speech, no doubt could be 
 entertained but that a very moderate and proportioned as- 
 sessment on the citizens without distinction would have pro- 
 vided for all of them to the fullest extent of their demand. 
 
 If this representation of M. Necker was false, then the As- 
 sembly are in the highest degree culpable for having 
 forced the king to accept as his minister, and, since the 
 king’s deposition, for having employed as their minister, 
 a man who had been capable of abusing so notoriously the 
 confidence of his master and their own: in a matter, too, of 
 the highest moment, and directly appertaining to his par- 
 ticular office. But ifthe representation was exact, (as, having 
 always, along with you, conceived a high degree of respect for 
 M. Necker, I make no doubt it was,) then what can be said 
 in favour of those who, instead of moderate, reasonable, and 
 general contribution, have in cold blood, and impelled 
 by no necessity, had recourse to a partial and cruel con- 
 fiscation ? 
 
 Was that contribution refused on a pretext of privilege, 
 either on the part of the clergy, or on that of the nobility ? 
 No, certainly. As to the clergy, they even ran before the 
 wishes of the third order. Previous to the meeting of the 
 States, they had in all their instructions expressly directed 
 their deputies to renounce every immunity which put them 
 upon a footing distinct from the condition of their fellow- 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 475 
 
 subjects. In this renunciation the clergy were even more ex- 
 plicit than the nobility. 
 
 But let us suppose that the deficiency had remained at the 
 fifty-six millions, (or 2,200,000/. sterling,) as at first stated by 
 M. Necker. Let us allow that all the resources he opposed 
 to that deficiency were impudent and groundless fictions, and 
 that the Assembly (or their lords of articles*® at the Jaco- 
 bins) were from thence justified in laying the whole burden 
 of that deficiency on the clergy,—yet allowing all this, a 
 necessity of 2,200,000/. sterling will not support a confisca- 
 tion to the amount of five millions. The imposition of 
 2,200,000/. on the clergy, as partial, would have been oppres- 
 sive and unjust, but it would not have been altogether ruin- 
 ous to those on whom it was imposed ; and therefore it would 
 not have answered the real purpose of the managers. 
 
 Perhaps persons unacquainted with the state of France, on 
 hearing the clergy and the noblesse were privileged in point 
 of taxation, may be led to imagine, that, previous to the 
 Revolution, these bodies had contributed nothing to the 
 state. This is a great mistake. They certainly did not con- 
 tribute equally with each other, nor either of them equally 
 with the commons, They both, however, contributed largely. 
 Neither nobility nor clergy enjoyed any exemption from the 
 excise on consumable commodities, from duties of custom, or 
 from any of the other numerous indirect impositions, which 
 in France, as well as here, make so very large a proportion 
 of all payments to the public. The noblesse paid the capita- 
 tion. They paid also a land-tax, called the twentieth penny, 
 to the height sometimes of three, sometimes of four shillings 
 in the pound: both of them direct impositions, of no light 
 nature, and no trivial produce. The clergy of the provinces 
 annexed by conquest to France (which in extent make about 
 an eighth part of the whole, but in wealth a much larger pro- 
 portion) paid likewise to the capitation and the twentieth 
 penny, at the rate paid by the nobility. The clergy in the 
 old provinces did not pay the capitation; but they had 
 redeemed themselves at the expense of about twenty-four 
 
476 BURKE 
 
 millions, or a little more than a million sterling. They were 
 exempted from the twentieths: but then they made free 
 gifts; they contracted debts for the state; and they were 
 subject to some other charges, the whole computed at about 
 a thirteenth part of their clear income. They ought to have 
 paid annually about forty thousand pounds more, to put 
 them on a par with the contribution of the nobility. 
 
 When the terrors of this tremendous proscription hung 
 over the clergy, they made an offer of a contribution, through 
 the Archbishop of Aix, which, for its extravagance, ought 
 not to have been accepted. But it was evidently and ob- 
 viously more advantageous to the public creditor than any- 
 thing which could rationally be promised by the confiscation. 
 Why was it not accepted? The reason is plain :—There 
 was no desire that the Church should be brought to serve 
 the State. The service of the State was made a pretext to 
 destroy the Church. In their way to the destruction of the 
 Church they would not scruple to destroy their country: 
 and they have destroyed it. One great end in the project 
 would have been defeated, if the plan of extortion had been 
 adopted in lieu of the scheme of confiscation. The new landed 
 interest connected with the new republic, and connected with 
 it for its very being, could not have been created. This was 
 among the reasons why that extravagant ransom was not 
 accepted. 
 
 The madness of the project of confiscation, on the plan 
 that was first pretended, soon became apparent. To bring 
 this unwieldy mass of landed property, enlarged by the con- 
 fiscation of all the vast landed domain of the crown, at once 
 into market was obviously to defeat the profits proposed by 
 the confiscation, by depreciating the value of those lands, 
 and indeed of all the landed estates throughout France. 
 Such a sudden diversion of all its circulating money from 
 trade to land must be an additional mischief. What step 
 was taken? Did the Assembly, on becoming sensible of the 
 inevitable ill effects of their projected sale, revert to the offers 
 of the clergy? No distress could oblige them to travel in a 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 477 
 
 course which was disgraced by any appearance of justice. 
 Giving over all hopes from a general immediate sale, another 
 project seems to have succeeded. They proposed to take 
 stock in exchange for the Church lands. In that project 
 great difficulties arose in equalizing the objects to be ex- 
 changed. Other obstacles also presented themselves, which 
 threw them back again upon some project of sale. The 
 municipalities had taken an alarm. They would not hear of 
 transferring the whole plunder of the kingdom to the stock- 
 holders in Paris. Many of those municipalities had been 
 (upon system) reduced to the most deplorable indigence. 
 Money was nowhere to be seen. They were therefore led 
 to the point that was so ardently desired. They panted for 
 a currency of any kind which might revive their perishing 
 industry. The municipalities were, then, to be admitted to 
 a share in the spoil, which evidently rendered the first scheme 
 (if ever it had been seriously entertained) altogether impracti- 
 cable. Public exigencies pressed upon all sides. The Minis- 
 ter of Finance reiterated his call for supply with a most urgent, 
 anxious, and boding voice. Thus pressed on all sides, instead 
 of the first plan of converting their bankers into bishops and 
 abbots, instead of paying the old debt, they contracted a 
 new debt, at three per cent, creating a new paper currency, 
 founded on an eventual sale of the Church lands. They 
 issued this paper currency to satisfy in the first instance 
 chiefly the demands made upon them by the bank of dis- 
 count, the great machine or paper-mill of their fictitious 
 wealth. 
 
 The spoil of the Church was now become the only resource 
 of all their operations in finance, the vital principle of all their 
 politics, the sole security for the existence of their power. 
 It was necessary, by all, even the most violent means, to put 
 every individual on the same bottom, and to bind the nation 
 in one guilty interest to uphold this act, and the authority 
 of those by whom it was done. In order to force the most 
 reluctant into a participation of their pillage, they rendered 
 their paper circulation compulsory in all payments. Those 
 
A78 BURKE 
 
 who consider the general tendency of their schemes to this 
 one object as acentre, and a centre from which afterwards 
 all their measures radiate, will not think that I dwell too 
 long upon this part of the proceedings of the National 
 Assembly. 
 
 To cut off all appearance of connection between the crown 
 and public justice, and to bring the whole under implicit 
 obedience to the dictators in Paris, the old independent judi- 
 cature of the Parliaments, with all its merits and all its 
 faults, was wholly abolished. Whilst the Parliaments ex- 
 isted, it was evident that the people might some time or 
 other come to resort to them, and rally under the standard 
 of their ancient laws. It became, however, a matter of con- 
 sideration, that the magistrates and officers in the courts now 
 abolished had purchased their places at avery high rate, for 
 which, as wellas forthe duty they performed, they received 
 but a very low return of interest. Simple confiscation is a 
 boon only for the clergy : to the lawyers some appearances 
 of equity are to be observed ; and they are to receive com- 
 pensation to an immense amount. Their compensation be- 
 comes part of the national debt, for the liquidation of which 
 there isthe one exhaustlessfund. The lawyers are to obtain 
 their compensation in the new Church paper, which is to 
 march with the new principles of judicature and legislature. 
 The dismissed magistrates are to take their share of martyr- 
 dom with the ecclesiastics, or to receive their own property 
 from such a fund and insuch a manner as all those who have 
 been seasoned with the ancient principles of jurisprudence, 
 and had been the sworn guardians of property, must look 
 upon withhorror. Even the clergy are to receive their miser- 
 able allowance out of the depreciated paper, which is stamped 
 with the indelible character of sacrilege, and with the sym- 
 bols of their own ruin, or they must starve. So violent an 
 outrage upon credit, property, and liberty, as this compulsory 
 paper currency, has seldom been exhibited by the alliance 
 of bankruptcy and tyranny, at any time, or in any nation. 
 
 In the course of all these operations, at length comes out 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 479 
 
 the grand arcanum,—that in reality, and in a fair sense, the 
 lands of the Church (so far as anything certain can be gath- 
 ered from their proceedings) are not to be sold at all. By 
 the late resolutions of the National Assembly, they are, in- 
 deed, to be delivered to the highest bidder. But it is to be 
 observed, that a certain portion only of the purchase money 
 is to be laid down. A period of twelve years is to be given 
 forthe payment ofthe rest. The philosophic purchasers are 
 therefore, on payment of a sort of fine, to be put instantly 
 into possession of the estate. It becomesin some respectsa 
 sort of gift to them,—to be held on the feudal tenure of zeal 
 to the new establishment. This project is evidently to let 
 in a body of purchasers without money. The consequence 
 will be, that these purchasers, or rather grantees, will pay, 
 not only from the rents as they accrue, which might as well 
 ‘be received by the state, but from the spoil of the materials 
 of buildings, from waste in woods, and from whatever money, 
 by hands habituated to the gripings of usury, they can wring 
 from the miserable peasant. He is to be delivered over to 
 the mercenary and arbitrary discretion of men who will be 
 stimulated to every species of extortion by the growing 
 demands on the growing profits of an estate held under the 
 precarious settlement of a new political system. 
 
 When all the frauds, impostures, violences, rapines, burn- 
 ings, murders, confiscations, compulsory paper currencies, 
 and every description of tyranny and cruelty employed to 
 bring about and to uphold this Revolution have their natural 
 effect, that is, to shock the moral sentiments of all virtuous 
 and sober minds, the abettors of this philosophic system im- 
 mediately strain their throats in a declamation against the 
 old monarchical government of France. When they have 
 rendered that deposed power sufficiently black, they then 
 proceed in argument, as if all those who disapprove of their 
 new abuses must of course be partisans of the old,—that 
 those who reprobate their crude and violent schemes of 
 liberty ought to be treated as advocates for servitude. I 
 admit that their necessities do compel them to this base and 
 
480 BURKE 
 
 contemptible fraud. Nothing can reconcile men to their 
 proceedings and projects but the supposition that there is 
 no third option between them and some tyranny as odious 
 as can be furnished by the records of history or by the in- 
 vention of poets. This prattling of theirs hardly deserves 
 the name of sophistry. It is nothing but plain impudence. 
 Have these gentlemen never heard, in the whole circle of the 
 worlds of theory and practice, of anything between the des- 
 potism of the monarch and the despotism of the multitude ? 
 Have they never heard of a monarchy directed by laws, 
 controlled and balanced by the great hereditary wealth and 
 hereditary dignity of a nation, and both again controlled by 
 a judicious check from the reason and feeling of the people 
 at large, acting bya suitable and permanent organ? Is it, 
 then, impossible that a man may be found who, without 
 criminal ill intention or pitiable absurdity, shall prefer such 
 a mixed and tempered government to either of the extremes, 
 —-and who may repute that nation to be destitute of all wis- 
 dom and of all virtue, which, having in its choice to obtain 
 such a government with ease, or rather to confirm it when 
 actually possessed, thought proper to commit a thousand 
 crimes, and to subject their country to a thousand evils, in 
 order to avoid it? Is it, then, atruth so universally acknowl- 
 edged, that a pure democracy is the only tolerable form into 
 which human society can be thrown, that a man is not per- 
 mitted to hesitate about its merits, without the suspicion of 
 being a friend to tyranny, that is, of being a foe to man- 
 kind ? 
 
 I do not know under what description to class the present 
 ruling authority in France. It affects to be a pure democ- 
 racy, though I think it in a direct train of becoming shortly 
 a mischievous and ignoble oligarchy. But for the present 
 I admit it to be a contrivance of the nature and effect of 
 what it pretends to. I reprobate no form of government 
 merely upon abstract principles. There may be situations 
 in which the purely democratic form will become necessary. 
 There may be some(very few, and very particularly circum- 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 481 
 
 stanced) where it would be clearly desirable. This I do not 
 take to be the case of France, or of any other great country. 
 Until now, we have seen no examples of considerable de- 
 mocracies. The ancients were better acquainted with them. 
 Not being wholly unread in the authors who had seen the 
 most of those constitutions, and who best understood them, 
 I can not help concurring with their opinion, that an absolute 
 democracy no more than absolute monarchy is to be reck- 
 oned among the legitimate forms of government. They 
 think it rather the corruption and degeneracy than the sound 
 constitution of arepublic. IfI recollect rightly, Aristotle 
 observes, that a democracy has many striking points of re- 
 semblance with a tyranny.” Of this I am certain, that in a 
 democracy the majority of the citizens is capable of exercis- 
 ing the most cruel oppressions upon the minority, whenever 
 strong divisions prevail in that kind of polity, as they often 
 must,—and that oppression of the minority will extend to 
 far greater numbers, and will be carried on with much greater 
 fury, than can almost ever be apprehended from the do- 
 minion of a single sceptre. In such a popular persecution, 
 individual sufferers are in a much more deplorable condi- 
 tion than in any other. Under acruel prince they have 
 the balmy compassion of mankind to assuage the smart 
 of their wounds, they have the plaudits of the people to an- 
 imate their generous constancy under their sufferings : but 
 those who are subjected to wrong under multitudes are de- 
 prived of all external consolation ; they seem deserted by 
 mankind, overpowered by a conspiracy of their whole species. 
 
 But admitting democracy not to have that inevitable 
 tendency to party tyranny which I suppose it to have, and 
 admitting it to possess as much good in it when unmixed as 
 I am sure it possesses when compounded with other forms; 
 does monarchy, on its part, contain nothing at all to recom- 
 mend it? Ido not often quote Bolingbroke, nor have his 
 works in general left any permanent impression on my mind. 
 He is a presumptuous and a superficial writer. But he has 
 one observation which in my opinion is not without depth 
 
 31 
 
482 | BURKE 
 
 and solidity. He says that he prefers a monarchy to other 
 governments, because you can better ingraft any description 
 of republic on a monarchy than anything of monarchy upon 
 the republican forms. I think him perfectly in the right. 
 The fact is so historically, and it agrees well with the 
 speculation. 
 
 I know how easy a topic it is to dwell on the faults of 
 departed greatness. By a revolution in the state, the fawn- 
 ing sycophant of yesterday is converted into the austere 
 critic of the present hour. But steady, independent minds, 
 when they have an object of so serious a concern to man- 
 kind as government under their contemplation, will disdain 
 to assume the part of satirists and declaimers. They will 
 judge of human institutions as they do of human characters. 
 They will sort out the good from the evil, whee is mixed in 
 mortal institutions as it is in mortal men. 
 
 Your government in France, though usually, and I think 
 justly, reputed the best of the unqualified or ill-qualified 
 monarchies, was still full of abuses. These abuses accumu- 
 lated in a length of time, as they must accumulate in every 
 monarchy not under the constant inspection of a popular 
 representative. I am no stranger to the faults and defects 
 of the subverted government of France; and I think I am 
 not inclined by nature or policy to make a panegyric upon 
 anything which is a just and natural object of censure. 
 But the question is not now of the vices of that monarchy, 
 but of its existence. Is it, then, true, that the French 
 government was such as to be incapable or undeserving of 
 reform, so that it was of absolute necessity the whole fabric 
 should be at once pulled down, and the area cleared for the 
 erection of a theoretic, experimental edifice in its place? 
 All France was of a different opinion in the beginning of 
 the year 1789. The instructions to the representatives to 
 the States-General, from every district in that kingdom, were 
 filled with projects for the reformation of that government, 
 without the remotest suggestion of a design to destroy it. 
 Had such a design been then even insinuated, I believe there 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 483 
 
 would have been but one voice, and that voice for rejecting 
 it with scorn and horror. Men have been sometimes led by 
 degrees, sometimes hurried, into things of which, if they 
 could have seen the whole together, they never would have 
 permitted the most remote approach. When those instruc- 
 tions were given, there was no question but that abuses 
 existed, and that they demanded a reform: nor is there now. 
 In the interval between the instructions and the Revolution 
 things changed their shape; and in consequence of that 
 change, the true question at present is, whether those who 
 would have reformed or those who have destroyed are in the 
 right. 
 
 To hear some men speak of the late monarchy of France, 
 you would imagine that they were talking of Persia bleeding 
 under the ferocious sword of Thamas Kouli Khan,—or at 
 least describing the barbarous anarchic despotism of Turkey, 
 where the finest countries in the most genial climates in the 
 world are wasted by peace more than any countries have 
 been worried by war, where arts are unknown, where manu- 
 factures languish, where science is extinguished, where agri- 
 culture decays, where the human race itself melts away and 
 perishes under the eye of the observer. Was this the case 
 of France? I have no way of determining the question but 
 by a reference to facts. Facts do not support this resem- 
 blance. Along with much evil, there is some good in mon- 
 archy itself; and some corrective to its evil from religion, 
 from laws, from manners, from opinions, the French mon- 
 archy must have received, which rendered it (though by no 
 means a free, and therefore by no means a good constitution) 
 a despotism rather in appearance than in reality. 
 
 Among the standards upon which the effects of govern- 
 ment on any country are to be estimated, I must consider 
 the state of its population as not the least certain. No 
 country in which population flourishes, and is in progressive 
 improvement, can be under a very mischievous government. 
 About sixty years ago, the Intendants of the Generalities of 
 France made, with other matters, a report of the population 
 
484 BURKE 
 
 of their several districts. I have not the books, which are 
 very voluminous, by me, nor do I know where to procure 
 them, (I am obliged to speak by memory, and therefore the 
 less positively,) but I think the population of France was by 
 them, even at that period, estimated at twenty-two millions 
 of souls. At the end of the last century it had been gener- 
 ally calculated at eighteen. On either of these estimations, 
 France was not ill-peopled. M. Necker, who is an authority 
 for his own time at least equal to the Intendants for theirs, 
 reckons, and upon apparently sure principles, the people of 
 France, in the year 1780, at twenty-four millions six hundred 
 and seventy thousand. But was this the probable ultimate 
 term under the old establishment? Dr. Price is of opinion 
 that the growth of population in France was by no means 
 at its acme in that year. I certainly defer to Dr. Price’s 
 authority a good deal more in these speculations than I do 
 in his general politics. This gentleman, taking ground on 
 M. Necker’s data, is very confident that since the period of 
 that minister’s calculation the French population has in- 
 creased rapidly,—so rapidly, that in the year 1789 he will 
 not consent to rate the people of that kingdom at a lower 
 number than thirty millions. Afterabating much (and much 
 I think ought to be abated) from the sanguine calculation 
 of Dr. Price, I have no doubt that the population of France 
 did increase considerably during this latter period: but 
 supposing that it increased to nothing more than will be 
 sufficient to complete the twenty-four millions six hundred 
 and seventy thousand to twenty-five millions, still a popula- 
 tion of twenty-five millions, and that in an increasing prog- 
 ress, on a space of about twenty-seven thousand square 
 leagues, is immense. It is, for instance, a good deal more 
 than the proportionable population of this island, or even 
 than that of England, the best peopled part of the United 
 Kingdom. 
 
 It is not universally true that France is a fertile country. 
 Considerable tracts of it are barren, and labour under other 
 natural disadvantages. In the portions of that territory 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 485 
 
 where things are more favourable, as far as I am able to dis- 
 cover, the numbers of the people correspond to the indul- 
 gence of Nature? The Generality of Lisle, (this I admit is 
 the strongest example,) upon an extent of four hundred and 
 four leagues and a half, about ten years ago contained seven 
 hundred and thirty-four thousand six hundred souls, which 
 is one thousand seven hundred and seventy-two inhabitants 
 to each square league. The middle term for the rest of 
 France is about nine hundred inhabitants to the same 
 admeasurement. 
 
 I do not attribute this population to the deposed govern- 
 ment; because I do not like tocompliment the contrivances 
 of men with what is due ina great degree to the bounty of. 
 Providence. But that decried government could not have 
 obstructed, most probably it favoured, the operation of those 
 causes, (whatever they were,) whether of Nature in the soil, 
 or habits of industry among the people, which has produced 
 so large a number of the species throughout that whole 
 kingdom, and exhibited in some particular places such prod- 
 _ igies of population. I never will suppose that fabric ofa 
 state to be the worst of all political institutions which by 
 experience is found to contain a principle favourable (how 
 ever latent it may be) to the increase of mankind. 
 
 The wealth of a country is another, and no contemptible 
 standard, by which we may judge whether, on the whole, a 
 government be protecting or destructive. France far exceeds 
 England in the multitude of her people; but I apprehend 
 that her comparative wealth is much inferior to ours,—that 
 it is not so equal in the distribution, nor so ready in the 
 circulation. I believe the difference in the form of the two 
 governments to be amongst the causes of this advantage-on 
 _ the side of England: I speak of England, not of the whole 
 British dominions,—which, if compared with those of France, 
 will in some degree weaken the comparative rate of wealth 
 upon our side. But that wealth, which will not endure a 
 comparison with the riches of England, may constitute a 
 very respectable degree of opulence. M. Necker’s book, 
 
486 BURKE 
 
 published in 1785,3! contains an accurate and interesting 
 collection of facts relative to public economy and to political 
 arithmetic ; and his speculations on the subject are in general 
 wise and liberal. In that work he gives an idea of the state 
 of France, very remote from the portrait of acountry whose 
 government was a perfect grievance, an absolute evil, admit- 
 ting no cure but through the violent and uncertain remedy 
 of a total-revolution. He affirms, that from the year 1726 
 to the year 1784 there was coined at the mint of France, in 
 the species of gold and silver, to the amount of about one 
 hundred millions of pounds sterling. 
 
 It is imposible that M. Necker should be mistaken in the 
 amount of the bullion which has been coined in the mint. 
 It is a matter of officialrecord. The reasonings of this able 
 financier concerning the quantity of gold and silver which 
 remained for circulation, when he wrote in 1785, that is, about 
 four years before the deposition and imprisonment of the 
 French king, are not of equal certainty; but they are laid 
 on grounds so apparently solid, that it is not easy to refuse 
 a considerable degree of assent to his calculation. He cal- 
 culates the numéraire, or what we call specie, then actually 
 existing in France, at about eighty-eight millions of the 
 same English money. A great accumulation of wealth for 
 one country, largeas that country is! M. Necker was so far 
 from considering this influx of wealth as likely to cease, 
 when he wrote in 1785, that he presumes upon a future an- 
 nual increase of two per cent upon the money brought into 
 France during the periods from which he computed. 
 
 Some adequate cause must have originally introduced all 
 the money coined at its mint into that kingdom ; and some 
 cause as operative must have kept at home, or returned into 
 its bosom, such a vast flood of treasure as M. Necker calcu- 
 lates to remain for domestic circulation. Suppose any 
 reasonable deductions from M. Necker’s computation, the 
 remainder must still amount to an immense sum. Causes 
 thus powerful to acquire and to retain can not be found in 
 discouraged industry, insecure property, and a positively 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 487 
 
 destructive government. Indeed, when I consider the face 
 of the kingdom of France, the multitude and opulence of her 
 cities, the useful magnificence of her spacious high-roads and 
 bridges, the opportunity of her artificial canals and naviga- 
 tions opening the conveniences of maritime communication 
 through a solid continent of so immense an extent,— 
 when I turn my eyes to the stupendous works of her ports and 
 harbours and to her whole naval apparatus, whether for war 
 or trade,—when I bring before my view the number of her 
 fortifications, constructed with so bold and masterly a skill, 
 and made and maintained at so prodigiousa charge, present- 
 ing an armed front and impenetrable barrier to her enemies 
 upon every side,—when I recollect how very small a part of 
 that extensive region is without cultivation, and to what com- 
 plete perfection the culture of many of the best productions 
 of the earth have been brought in France,—when I reflect on 
 the excellence of her manufactures and fabrics, second to 
 none but ours, and in some particulars not second,—when I 
 contemplate the grand foundations of charity, public and 
 private,—when I survey the state of all the arts that beautify 
 and polish life,—when I reckon the men she has bred for ex- 
 tending her fame in war, her able statesmen, the multitude of 
 her profound lawyers and theologians, her philosophers, her 
 critics, her historians and antiquaries, her poets and her 
 orators, sacred and profane,—I behold in all this something 
 which awes and commands the imagination, which checks 
 the mind on the brink of precipitate and indiscriminate 
 censure, and which demands that we should very seriously 
 examine what and how great are the latent vices that could 
 authorize us at once to level so spacious a fabric with the 
 ground. I do not recognize in this view of things the des- 
 potism of Turkey. Nor do I discern the character of a 
 government that has been on the whole so oppressive, or so 
 corrupt, or so negligent, as to be utterly unfit for all refor- 
 mation. I must think such a government well deserved to 
 have its excellences heightened, its faults corrected, and its 
 capacities improved into a British Constitution. 
 
488 BURKE 
 
 Whoever has examined into the proceedings of that de- 
 posed government for several years back can not fail to have 
 observed, amidst the inconstancy and fluctuation natural to 
 courts, and earnest endeavour towards the prosperity and im- 
 provement of the country; he must admit that it had long 
 been employed, in some instances wholly to remove, in 
 many considerably to correct, the abusive practices and 
 usages that had prevailed in the state,—and that even the 
 unlimited power of the sovereign over the persons of his 
 subjects, inconsistent, as undoubtedly it was, with law and 
 liberty, had yet been every day growing more mitigated in 
 the exercise. So far from refusing itself to reformation, that 
 government was open, with acensurable degree of facility, 
 to all sorts of projectsand projectors on the subject. Rather 
 too much countenance was given to the spirit of innovation, 
 which soon was turned against those who fostered it, and 
 ended in their ruin. It is but cold, and no very flattering 
 justice to that fallen monarchy, to say, that, for many years, 
 it trespassed more by levity and want of judgment in several 
 of its schemes than from any defect in diligence or in public 
 spirit. To compare the government of France for the last 
 fifteen or sixteen years with wise and well-constituted estab- 
 lishments during that, or during any period, is not to act 
 with fairness. But if in point of prodigality in the expen- 
 diture of money, or in point of rigour in the exercise of 
 power, it be compared with any of the former reigns, I be- 
 lieve candid judges will give little credit to the good in- 
 tentions of those who dwell perpetually on the donations to 
 favourites, or on the expenses of the court, or on the horrors 
 of the Bastile, in the reign of Louis the Sixteenth. 
 
 Whether the system, if it deserves such a name, now built 
 on the ruins of that ancient monarchy, will be able to give a 
 better account of the population and wealth of the country 
 which it has taken under its care, is a matter very doubtful. 
 Instead of improving by the change, I apprehend that a long 
 series of years must be told, before it can recover in any 
 degree the effects of this philosophic Revolution, and before 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 489 
 
 the nation can be replaced on its former footing. If Dr. 
 Price should think fit, a few years hence, to favour us with 
 an estimate of the population of France, he will hardly be 
 able to make up his tale of thirty millions of souls, as com- 
 puted in 1789, or the Assembly’s computation of twenty-six 
 millions of that year, or even M. Necker’s twenty-five mil- 
 lions in 1780. I hear that there are considerable emigrations 
 from France,—and that many, quitting that voluptuous 
 climate, and that seductive Circean liberty, have taken 
 refuge.in the frozen regions and under the British despotism 
 of Canada. 
 
 In the present disappearance of coin, no person could 
 think it the same country in which the present minister of 
 the finances has been able to discover fourscore millions 
 sterling in specie. From its general aspect one would con- 
 ' clude that it had been for some time past under the special 
 direction of the learned academicians of Laputa and Balni- 
 barbi3* Already the population of Paris has so declined 
 that M. Necker stated to the National Assembly the pro- 
 vision to be made for its subsistence at a fifth less than what 
 had formerly been found requisite. It is said (and I have 
 never heard it contradicted) that ahundred thousand people 
 are out of employment in that city, though it is become the 
 seat of the imprisoned court and National Assembly. Noth- 
 ing, I am credibly informed, can exceed the shocking and 
 disgusting spectacle of mendicancy displayed in that capital. 
 Indeed, the votes of the National Assembly leave no doubt 
 of the fact. They have lately appointed a standing commit- 
 tee of mendicancy. They are contriving at once a vigorous 
 police on this subject, and, for the first time, the imposition 
 of a tax to maintain the poor, for whose present relief great 
 sums appear on the face of the public accounts of the year. 
 In the mean time the leaders of the legislative clubs and 
 coffee-houses are intoxicated with admiration at their own 
 wisdom and ability. They speak with the most sovereign 
 contempt of the rest of the world. They tell the people, to 
 comfort them inthe rags with which they have clothed them, 
 
490 BURKE 
 
 that they are a nation of philosophers ; and sometimes, by 
 all the arts of quackish parade, by show, tumult, and bustle, | 
 sometimes by the alarms of plots and invasions, they at- 
 tempt to drown the cries of indigence, and to divert the eyes 
 of the observer from the ruin and wretchedness of the state. 
 A brave people will certainly prefer liberty accompanied 
 with a virtuous poverty to a depraved and wealthy servitude. 
 But before the price of comfort and opulence is paid, one 
 ought to be pretty sure it is real liberty which is purchased, 
 and that she is to be purchased at no other price. I shall 
 always, however, consider that liberty as very equivocal in 
 her appearance, which has not wisdom and justice for her 
 companions, and does not lead prosperity and plenty in her 
 train. 
 
 The advocates for this Revolution, not satisfied with ex- 
 aggerating the vices of their ancient government, strike at 
 the fame of their country itself, by painting almost all that 
 could have attracted the attention of strangers, I mean their 
 nobility and their clergy, as objects of horror. If this were 
 only a libel, there had not been much in it. But it has prac- 
 tical consequences. Had your nobility and gentry, who 
 formed the great body of your landed men and the whole of 
 your military officers, resembled those of Germany, at the 
 period when the Hanse towns were necessitated to confed- 
 erate against the nobles in defense of their property,—had 
 they been like the Orsini and Vitelli in Italy, who used to 
 sally from their fortified dens to rob the trader and traveler, 
 —had they been such as the Mamelukes in Egypt, or the 
 Nayres on the coast of Malabar,—I do admit that too 
 critical an inquiry might not be advisable into the means of 
 freeing the world from such a nuisance. The statues of 
 Equity and Mercy might be veiled for a moment. The 
 tenderest minds, confounded with the dreadful exigence in 
 which morality submits to the suspension of its own rules in 
 favour of its own principles, might turn aside whilst fraud and 
 violence were accomplishing the destruction of a pretended 
 nobility, which disgraced, whilst it persecuted, human nature. 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 491 
 
 The persons most abhorrent from blood and treason and 
 arbitrary confiscation might remain silent spectators of this 
 civil war between the vices. 
 
 But did the privileged nobility who met under the king’s 
 precept at Versailles in 1789, or their constituents, deserve 
 to be looked on as the Nayres or Mamelukes of this age, or 
 as the Orsini and Vitelli of ancient times? If I had been 
 asked the question, I should have passed for a madman. 
 What have they since done, that they were to be driven into 
 exile, that their persons should be hunted about, mangled, 
 and tortured, their families dispersed, their houses laid in 
 ashes, and that their order should be abolished, and the 
 memory of it, if possible, extinguished, by ordaining them 
 to change the very names by which they were usually known? 
 Read their instructions to their representatives. They 
 breathe the spirit of liberty as warmly, and they recommend 
 reformation as strongly, asany otherorder. ‘Their privileges 
 relative to contribution were voluntarily surrendered ; as the 
 king, from the beginning, surrendered all pretense to a right 
 of taxation. Upon a free constitution there was but one 
 opinion in France. The absolute monarchy was at an end. 
 It breathed its last without a groan, without struggle, with- 
 out convulsion. All the struggle, all the dissension, arose 
 afterwards, upon the preference of a despotic democracy to 
 a government of reciprocal control. The triumph of the 
 victorious party was over the principles of a British Con- 
 stitution. 
 
 I have observed the affectation which for many years past 
 has prevailed in Paris, even to a degree perfectly childish, of 
 idolizing the memory of your Henry the Fourth. If any- 
 thing could put any one out of humour with that ornament 
 to the kingly character, it would be this overdone style of 
 insidious panegyric. The persons who have worked this 
 engine the most busily are those who have ended their pane- 
 gyrics in dethroning his successor and descendant: a man as 
 good-natured, at the least, as Henry the Fourth; altogether 
 as fond of his people; and who has done infinitely more to 
 
492 BURKE 
 
 correct the ancient vices of the state than that great monarch 
 did, or we are sure he ever meant to do. Well it is for his 
 panegyrists that they have not him to deal with! For Henry 
 of Navarre was a resolute, active, and politic prince. He 
 possessed, indeed, great humanity and mildness, but an 
 humanity and mildness that never stood in the way of his 
 interests. He never sought to be loved without putting 
 himself first in a condition to be feared. He used soft lan- 
 guage with determined conduct. He asserted and main- 
 tained his authority in the gross, and distributed his acts of 
 concession only in the detail. He spent the income of his 
 prerogative nobly, but he took care not to break in upon the 
 capital,—never abandoning for a moment any of the claims 
 which he made under the fundamental laws, nor sparing to 
 shed the blood of those who opposed him, often in the field, 
 sometimes upon the scaffold. Because he knew how to make 
 his virtues respected by the ungrateful, he has merited the 
 praises of those whom, if they had lived in his time, he would 
 have shut up in the Bastile, and brought to punishment along 
 with the regicides whom he hanged after he had famished 
 Paris into a surrender. 
 
 If these panegyrists are in earnest in their admiration of 
 Henry the Fourth, they must remember that they can not 
 think more highly of him than he did of the noblesse of 
 France,—whose virtue, honour, courage, patriotism, and 
 loyalty, were his constant theme. 
 
 But the nobility of France are degenerated since the days 
 of Henry the Fourth.—This is possible; but it is more than 
 I can believe to be true in any great degree. I do not pre- 
 tend to know France as correctly as some others; but I have 
 endeavoured through my whole life to make myself ac- 
 quainted with human nature,—otherwise I should be unfit 
 to take even my humble part in the service of mankind. In 
 that study I could not pass by a vast portion of our nature 
 as it appeared modified in a country but twenty-four miles 
 from the shores of this island. On my best observation, - 
 compared with my best inquiries, I found your nobility for 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 4093 
 
 the greater part composed of men of a high spirit, and ofa 
 delicate sense of honour, both with regard to themselves in- 
 dividually, and with regard to their whole corps, over whom 
 they kept, beyond what is common in other countries, a cen- 
 sorial eye. They were tolerably well bred; very officious, 
 humane, and hospitable; in their conversation frank and 
 open; with a good military tone; and reasonably tinctured 
 with literature, particularly of the authors in their own lan- 
 guage. Many had pretensions far above this description. I 
 speak of those who were generally met with. 
 
 As to their behaviour to the inferior classes, they appeared 
 to me to comport themselves towards them with good-nature, 
 and with something more nearly approaching to familiarity 
 than is generally practised with us in the intercourse between 
 the higher and lower ranks of life. To strike any person, 
 even in the most abject condition, was a thing in a manner 
 unknown, and would be highly disgraceful. Instances of 
 other ill-treatment of the humble part of the community 
 were rare; and as to attacks made upon the property, or the 
 personal liberty of the commons, I never heard of any what- 
 soever from them,—nor, whilst the laws were in vigour under 
 the ancient government, would such tyranny in subjects 
 have been permitted. As men of landed estates, I had no 
 fault to find with their conduct, though much to reprehend, 
 and much to wish changed, in many of the old tenures. 
 Where the letting of their land was by rent, I could not dis- 
 cover that their agreements with their farmers were oppres- 
 sive ; nor when they were in partnership with the farmer, as 
 often was the case, have I heard that they had taken the 
 lion’s share. The proportions seemed not inequitable. 
 There might be exceptions; but certainly they were excep- 
 tions only. I have no reason to believe that in these re- 
 spects the landed noblesse of France were worse than the 
 landed gentry of this country,—certainly in no respect more 
 vexatious than the landowners, not noble, of their own 
 nation. In cities the nobility had no manner of power; in 
 the country very little. You know, Sir, that much of the 
 
AQ4 BURKE 
 
 civil government, and the police in the most essential parts, 
 was not in the hands of that nobility which presents itself 
 first to our consideration. The revenue, the system and col- 
 lection of which were the most grievous parts of the French 
 government, was not administered by the men of the sword; 
 nor were they answerable for the vices of its principle, or the 
 vexations, where any such existed, in its management. 
 
 Denying, as I am well warranted to do, that the nobility 
 had any considerable share in the oppression of the people, 
 in cases in which real oppression existed, I am ready to 
 admit that they were not without considerable faults and 
 errors. A foolish imitation of the worst part of the manners 
 of England, which impaired their natural character, without 
 substituting in its place what perhaps they meant to copy, 
 has certainly rendered them worse than formerly they were. 
 Habitual dissoluteness of manners, continued beyond the 
 pardonable period of life, was more common amongst them 
 than it is with us; and it reigned with the less hope of 
 remedy, though possibly with something of less mischief, 
 by being covered with more exterior decorum. They 
 countenanced too much that licentious philosophy which 
 has helped to bring on their ruin. There was another error 
 amongst them more fatal. Those of the commons who 
 approached to or exceeded many of the nobility in point of 
 wealth were not fully admitted to the rank and estimation 
 which wealth, in reason and good policy, ought to bestow in 
 every country,—though I think not equally with that of 
 other nobility. The two kinds of aristocracy were too punc- 
 tiliously kept asunder: less so, however, than in Germany 
 and some other nations. 
 
 This separation, as I have already taken the liberty of 
 suggesting to you, I conceive to be one principal cause of 
 the destruction of the old nobility. The military, particu- 
 larly, was too exclusively reserved for men of family. But, 
 after all, this was an error of opinion, which a conflicting 
 opinion would have rectified. A permanent Assembly, in 
 which the commons had their share of power, would soon 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION = 495 
 
 abolish whatever was too invidious and insulting in these 
 distinctions ; and even the faults in the morals of the nobility 
 would have been probably corrected, by the greater varieties 
 of occupation and pursuit to which a constitution by orders 
 would have given rise. 
 
 All this violent cry against the nobility I take to be a 
 mere work of art. To be honoured and even privileged by 
 the laws, opinions, and inveterate usages of our country, 
 growing out of the prejudices of ages, has nothing to pro- 
 voke horror and indignation in any man. Even to be too 
 tenacious of those privileges is not absolutely a crime. The 
 strong struggle in every individual to preserve possession of 
 what he has found to belong to him, and to distinguish him, 
 is one of the securities against injustice and despotism im- 
 planted in our nature. It operates as an instinct to secure 
 property, and to preserve communities in a settled state. 
 What is there to shock in this? Nobility is a graceful orna- 
 ment to the civil order. It is the Corinthian capital of 
 polished society. ‘‘ Omnes boni nobilitati semper favemus,”’ 
 was the saying of a wise and good man. It is, indeed, one 
 side of a liberal and benevolent mind to incline to it with 
 some sort of partial propensity. He feels no ennobling 
 principle in his own heart, who wishes to level all the arti- 
 ficial institutions which have been adopted for giving a body 
 to opinion and permanence to future esteem. It is a sour, 
 malignant, envious disposition, without taste for the reality, 
 or for any image or representation of virtue, that sees with 
 joy the unmerited fall of what had long flourished in splendour 
 andinhonour. I donot like to see anything destroyed, any 
 void produced in society, any ruin on the face of the land. 
 It was therefore with no disappointment or dissatisfaction 
 that my inquiries and observations did not present to me 
 any incorrigible vices in the noblesse of France, or any abuse 
 which could not be removed by a reform very short of 
 abolition. Your noblesse did not deserve punishment; but 
 to degrade is to punish. 
 
 It was with the same satisfaction I found that the result 
 
496 BURKE 
 
 of my inquiry concerning your clergy was not dissimilar. It 
 is no soothing news to my ears, that great bodies of men are 
 incurably corrupt. It is not with much credulity I listen to 
 any, when they speak evil of those whom they are going to 
 plunder. I rather suspect that vices are feigned or exagger- 
 ated, when profit is looked for in their punishment. An 
 enemy is a bad witness; a robber is a worse. Vices and 
 abuses were undoubtedly in that order, and must be. It 
 was an old establishment, and not frequently revised. But I 
 saw no crimes in the individuals that merited confiscation of 
 their substance, nor those cruel insults and degradations, 
 and that unnatural persecution, which have been substituted 
 in the place of meliorating regulation. 
 
 If there had been any just cause for this new religious per- 
 secution, the atheistic libellers, who act as trumpeters to ani- 
 mate the populace to plunder, do not love anybody so much 
 as not to dwell with complacence on the vices of the exist- 
 ing clergy. This they have notdone. They find themselves 
 obliged to rake into the histories of former ages (which they 
 have ransacked with a maligant and profligate industry) for 
 every instance of oppression and persecution which has been 
 made by that body or in its favour, in order to justify, upon 
 very iniquitous because very illogical principles of retaliation, 
 their own persecutions and their own cruelties. After de- 
 stroying all other genealogies and family distinctions, they | 
 invent asort of pedigree of crimes. It is not very just to 
 chastise men for the offenses of their natural ancestors ; but 
 to take the fiction of ancestry in a corporate succession, as 
 a ground for punishing men who have no relation to guilty 
 acts, except in names and general descriptions, is a sort of 
 refinement in injustice belonging to the philosophy of this 
 enlightened age. The Assembly punishes men, many, if not 
 most, of whom abhor the violent conduct of ecclesiastics in 
 former times as much as their present persecutors can do, 
 and who would beas loud and as strong in the expression of 
 that sense, if they were not well aware of the purposes for 
 which all this declamation is employed. 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 497 
 
 Corporate bodies are immortal for the good of the mem- 
 bers, but not for their punishment. Nations themselves are 
 such corporations. As well might we in England think of 
 waging inexpiable war upon all Frenchmen for the evils 
 which they have brought upon us in the several periods of 
 our mutual hostilities. You might, on your part, think your- 
 selves justified in falling upon all Englishmen on account of 
 the unparalleled calamities brought upon the people of France 
 by the unjust invasions of our Henrys and our Edwards. 
 Indeed, we should be mutually justified in this extermina- 
 tory war upon each other, full as much as you are in the 
 unprovoked persecution of your present countrymen, on 
 account of the conduct of men of the same name in other 
 times. 
 
 We do not draw the moral lessons we might from history. 
 On the contrary, without care it may be used to vitiate our 
 minds and to destroy our happiness. In history a great 
 volume is unrolled for ourinstruction, drawing the materials 
 of future wisdom from the past errors and infirmities of man- 
 kind. It may, in the perversion, serve for a magazine, fur- 
 nishing offensive and defensive weapons for parties in Church 
 and State, and supplying the means of keeping alive or re- 
 viving dissensions and animosities, and adding fuel to civil 
 fury. History consists, for the greater part, of the miseries 
 brought upon the world by pride, ambition, avarice, revenge, 
 lust, sedition, hypocrisy, ungoverned zeal, and all the train 
 of disorderly appetites, which shake the public with the same 
 
 “troublous storms that toss 
 The private state, and render life unsweet.” 
 
 These vices are the causes of those storms. Religion, morals, 
 laws, prerogatives, privileges, liberties, rights of men, are 
 the pretexts. The pretexts are always found in some specious 
 appearance ofa real good. You would not secure men from 
 tyranny and sedition by rooting out of the mind the princi- 
 ples to which these fraudulent pretexts apply ? If you did, 
 you would root out everything that is valuable in the human 
 32 
 
498 BURKE 
 
 breast. As these are the pretexts, so the ordinary actorsand 
 instruments in great public evils are kings, priests, magis- 
 trates, senates, parliaments, national assemblies, judges, and 
 captains. You would not cure the evil by resolving that there 
 should be no more monarchs, nor ministers of state, nor of 
 the Gospel,—no interpreters of law, no general officers, no 
 public councils. You might change the names: the things. 
 in some shape must remain. A certain quantum of power 
 must always exist in the community, in some hands, and 
 under some appellation. Wise men will apply their remedies 
 to vices, not to names,—to the causes of evil, which are per- 
 manent, not to the occasional organs by which they act, and 
 the transitory modes in which they appear. Otherwise you 
 will be wise historically, a foolin practise. Seldom have two 
 ages the same fashion in their pretext, and the same modes of 
 mischief. Wickedness is a little more inventive. Whilst 
 you are discussing fashion, the fashion is gone by. The 
 very same vice assumes a new body. The spirit transmi- 
 grates ; and, far from losing its principle of life by the change 
 of its appearance, it is renovated in its new organs with the 
 fresh vigour of a juvenile activity. It walks abroad, it con- 
 tinues its ravages, whilst you are gibbeting the carcass or de- 
 molishing the tomb. You are terrifying yourselves with 
 ghosts and apparitions, whilst your house is the haunt of 
 robbers. It is thus with all those who, attending only to 
 the shell and husk of history, think they are waging war with 
 intolerance, pride, and cruelty, whilst, under colour of abhor- 
 ring the ill principles of antiquated parties, they are authoriz- 
 ing and feeding the same odious vices in different factions, 
 and perhaps in worse. 
 
 Your citizens of Paris formerly had lent themselves as the 
 ready instruments to slaughter the followers of Calvin, at 
 the infamous massacre of St. Bartholomew. What should 
 we say to those who could think of retaliating on the Paris- 
 ians of this day the abominations and horrors of that time? 
 They are, indeed, brought to abhor that massacre. Fero- 
 cious as they are, it isnot difficult to make them dislike it, be- 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 499 
 
 cause the politicians and fashionable teachers have no inter- 
 est in giving their passions exactly the same direction. Still, 
 however, they find it their interest to keep the same savage dis- 
 positionalive. It was but the other day that they caused this 
 very massacre to be acted on the stage for the diversion of the 
 descendants of those whocommittedit. Inthis tragic farce 
 they produced.the Cardinal of Lorraine in his robes of function, 
 ordering general slaughter. Was this spectacle intended to 
 make the Parisians abhor persecution and loathe the effusion 
 of blood? No: it was to teach them to persecute their own 
 pastors ; it was to excite them, by raising a disgust and hor- 
 ror of their clergy, to an alacrity in hunting down to destruc- 
 tion an order which, if it ought to exist at all, ought to ex- 
 ist not only in safety, but in reverence. It was to stimulate 
 their cannibal appetites (which one would think had been 
 gorged sufficiently) by variety and seasoning,—and to quick- 
 en them to an alertness in new murders and massacres, if it 
 should suit the purpose of the Guises of the day. An assembly 
 in which sat a multitude of priests and prelates was obliged 
 to suffer this indignity at its door. The author was not sent 
 to the galleys, nor the players to the house of correction. 
 Not long after this exhibition, those players came forward to 
 the Assembly to claim the rites of that very religion which 
 they had dared to expose, and to show their prostituted 
 faces in the senate, whilst the Archbishop of Paris, whose 
 function was known to his people only by his prayers and 
 benedictions, and his wealth only by alms, is forced to aban- 
 don his house, and to fly from his flock, (as from ravenous 
 wolves,) because, truly, in the sixteenth century, the Cardi- 
 nal of Lorraine was a rebel and a murderer. * 
 
 Such is the effect of the perversion of history by those 
 who, for the same nefarious purposes, have perverted every 
 other part of learning. But those who will stand upon that 
 elevation of reason which places centuries under our eye 
 and brings things to the true point of comparison, which 
 obscures little names and effaces the colours of little parties, 
 and to which nothing can ascend but the spirit and moral 
 
500 BURKE 
 
 quality of human actions, will say to the teachers of the 
 Palais Royal,—The Cardinal of Lorraine was the murderer 
 of the sixteenth century; you have the glory of being the 
 murderers in the eighteenth ; and this is the only difference 
 between you. But history in the nineteenth century, better 
 understood and better employed, will, I trust, teach a civil- 
 ized posterity to abhor the misdeeds of both these barbarous 
 ages. It will teach future priests and magistrates not to 
 retaliate upon the speculative and inactive atheists of future 
 times the enormities committed by the present practical 
 zealots and furious fanatics of that wretched error, which, in 
 its quiescent state, is more than punished, whenever it is 
 embraced. It will teach posterity not to make war upon 
 either religion or philosophy for the abuse which the hypo- 
 crites of both have made of the two most valuable blessings 
 conferred upon us by the bounty of the universal Patron, 
 who in all things eminently favours and protects the race of 
 man. 
 
 If your clergy, or any clergy, should show themselves 
 vicious beyond the fair bounds allowed to human infirmity 
 and to those professional faults which can hardly be sep- 
 arated from professional virtues, though their vices never 
 can countenance the exercise of oppression, I do admit that 
 they would naturally have the effect of abating very much 
 of our indignation against the tyrants who exceed measure 
 and justice in their punishment. I can allow in clergymen, 
 through all their divisions, some tenaciousness of their own 
 opinion, some overflowings of zeal for its propagation, some 
 predilection to their own state and office, some attachment 
 to the interest of their own corps, some preference to those 
 who listen with docility to their doctrines beyond those who 
 scorn and deride them. I allow all this, because I am a man 
 who have to deal with men, and who would not, through a 
 violence of toleration, run into the greatest of all intolerance. 
 I must bear with infirmities, until they fester into crimes. 
 
 Undoubtedly, the natural progress of the passions, from 
 frailty to vice, ought to be prevented by a watchful eye and 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION Sol 
 
 afirm hand. But is it true that the body of your clergy 
 had passed those limits of a just allowance? From the 
 general style of your late publications of all sorts, one would 
 be led to believe that your clergy in France were a sort of 
 monsters: an horrible composition of superstition, igno- 
 rance, sloth, fraud, avarice, and tyranny. But is this true? 
 Is it true that the lapse of time, the cessation of conflicting 
 interests, the woeful experience of the evils resulting from 
 party rage, have had no sort of influence gradually to meli- 
 orate their minds! Is it true that they were daily renewing 
 invasions on the civil power, troubling the domestic quiet of 
 their country, and rendering the operations of its govern- 
 ment feeble and precarious? Is it true that the clergy of 
 our times have pressed down the laity with an iron hand, 
 and were in all places lighting up the fires of a savage per- 
 secution? Did they by every fraud endeavour to increase 
 their estates? Did they use to exceed the due demands on 
 estates that were their own? Or, rigidly screwing up right 
 into wrong, did they convert a legal claim into a vexatious 
 extortion? When not possessed of power, were they filled 
 with the vices of those who envy it? Were they inflamed 
 with a violent, litigious spirit of controversy? Goaded on 
 with the ambition of intellectual sovereignty, were they 
 ready to fly in the face of all magistracy, to fire churches, to 
 massacre the priests of other descriptions, to pull down 
 altars, and to make their way over the ruins of subverted 
 governments to an empire of doctrine, sometimes flattering, 
 sometimes forcing, the consciences of men from the jurisdic- 
 tion of public institutions into a submission to their personal 
 authority, beginning with a claim of liberty and ending with 
 an abuse of power? 
 
 These, or some of these, were the vices objected, and not 
 wholly without foundation, to several of the churchmen of 
 former times, who belonged to the two great parties which 
 then divided and distracted Europe. 
 
 If there was in France, as in other countries there visibly 
 ‘is, a great abatement, rather than any increase of these vices, 
 
502 BURKE 
 
 instead of loading the present clergy with the crimes of 
 other men and the odious character of other times, in com- 
 mon equity they ought to be praised, encouraged, and 
 supported, in their departure from a spirit which disgraced 
 their predecessors, and for having assumed a temper of mind 
 and manners more suitable to their sacred function. 
 
 When my occasions took me into France, towards the close 
 of the late reign, the clergy, under all their forms, engaged a 
 considerable part of my curiosity. So far from finding 
 (except from one set of men, not then very numerous, though 
 very active) the complaints and discontents against that body 
 which some publications had given me reason to expect, I 
 perceived little or no public or private uneasiness on their 
 account. On further examination, I found the clergy, in 
 general, persons of moderate minds and decorous manners: 
 I include the seculars, and the regulars of both sexes. I 
 had not the good fortune to know a great many of the par- 
 ochial clergy: but in general I received a perfectly good 
 account of their morals, and of their attention to their duties. 
 With some of the higher clergy I had a personal acquaint- 
 ance, and of the rest in that class a very good means of 
 information. They were almost all of them persons of noble 
 birth. They resembled others of their own rank: and where 
 there was any difference, it was in their favour. They were 
 more fully educated than the military noblesse,—so as by no 
 means to disgrace their profession by ignorance, or by want 
 of fitness for the exercise of their authority. They seemed 
 to me, beyond the clerical character, liberal and open, with 
 the hearts of gentlemen and men of honour, neither insolent 
 nor servile in their manners and conduct. They seemed to 
 me rather a superior class,—a set of men amongst whom you 
 would not be surprised to find a Fénelon. I saw among 
 the clergy in Paris (many of the description are not to be 
 met with anywhere) men of great learning and candour; and 
 I had reason to believe that this description was not confined 
 to Paris. What I found in other places I know was acci- 
 dental, and therefore to be presumed a fair sample. I spent 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 503 
 
 a few days ina provincial town, where, in the absence of 
 the bishop, I passed my evenings with three clergymen, his 
 vicars-general, persons who would have done honour to any 
 church. They were all well-informed ; two of them of deep, 
 general, and extensive erudition, ancient and modern, Orien- 
 tal and Western,—particularly in their own profession. 
 They had a more extensive knowledge of our English divines 
 than I expected ; and they entered into the genius of those 
 writers with a critical accuracy. One of these gentlemen is 
 since dead: the Abbé Morangis. I pay this tribute without 
 reluctance to the memory of that noble, reverend, learned, 
 and excellent person; and I should do the same with equal 
 cheerfulness to the merits of the others, who I believe are 
 still living, if I did not fear to hurt those whom I am unable 
 to serve. 
 
 Some of these ecclesiastics of rank are, by all titles, per- 
 sons deserving of general respect. They are deserving of 
 gratitude from me, and from many English. If this letter 
 should ever come into their hands, I hope they will believe 
 there are those of our nation who feel for their unmerited 
 fall, and for the cruel confiscation of their fortunes, with no 
 common sensibility. What I say of them is a testimony, as 
 far as one feeble voice can go, which I owe totruth. When- 
 ever the question of this unnatural persecution is concerned, 
 I will pay it. No one shall prevent me from being just and 
 grateful. The time is fitted for the duty; and it is particu- 
 larly becoming to show our justice and gratitude, when those 
 who have deserved well of us and of mankind are labouring 
 under popular obloquy and the persecutions of oppressive 
 power. 
 
 You had before your Revolution about a hundred and 
 twenty bishops. A few of them were men of eminent sanc- 
 tity, and charity without limit. When we talk of the heroic, 
 of course we talk of rare virtue. I believe the instances of 
 eminent depravity may be as rare amongst them as those of 
 transcendent goodness. Examples of avarice and of licen- 
 tiousness may be picked out, I do not question it, by those 
 
504 BURKE 
 
 who delight in the investigation which leads to such discov- 
 eries. A man as old as I am will not be astonished that 
 several, in every description, do not lead that perfect life of 
 self-denial, with regard to wealth or to pleasure, which is 
 wished for by all, by some expected, but by none exacted 
 with more rigour than by those who are the most attentive to 
 their own interests or the most indulgent to their own pas- 
 sions. When I was in France, I am certain that the number 
 of vicious prelates was not great. Certain individuals among 
 them, not distinguishable for the regularity of their lives, 
 made some amends for their want of the severe virtues in 
 their possession of the liberal, and were endowed with quali- 
 ties which made them useful in the Church and State. Iam 
 told, that, with few exceptions, Louis the Sixteenth had been 
 more attentive to character, in his promotions to that rank, 
 than his immediate predecessor; and I believe (as some spirit 
 of reform has prevailed through the whole reign) that it may 
 betrue. But the present ruling power has shown a disposition 
 to only plunder the Church. It has punished all prelates: 
 which is to favour the vicious, at least in point of reputation. 
 It has made a degrading pensionary establishment, to which 
 no man of liberal ideas or liberal condition will destine his 
 children. It must settle into the lowest classes of the peo- 
 ple. As with you the inferior clergy are not numerous 
 enough for their duties, as these duties are beyond measure 
 minute and toilsome, as you have left no middle classes of 
 clergy at their ease, in future nothing of science or erudition 
 can exist in the Gallican Church. To complete the project, 
 without the least attention to the rights of patrons, the As- 
 sembly has provided in future an elective clergy : an arrange- 
 _- ment which will drive out of the clerical profession all men 
 of sobriety, all who can pretend to independence in their 
 function or their conduct,—and which will throw the whole 
 direction of the public mind into the hands of a set of licen- 
 tious, bold, crafty, factious, flattering wretches, of such con- 
 dition and such habits of life as will make their contemptible 
 pensions (in comparison of which the stipend of an exciseman 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 505 
 
 is lucrative and honourable) an object of low and illiberal in- 
 trigue. Those officers whom they still call bishops are to be 
 elected to a provision comparatively mean, through the same 
 arts, (that is, electioneering arts,) by men of all religious 
 tenets that are known or can be invented. The new law- 
 givers have not ascertained anything whatsoever concerning 
 their qualifications, relative either to doctrine or to morals, 
 no more than they have done with regard to the subordinate 
 clergy ; nor does it appear but that both the higher and the 
 lower may, at their discretion, practise or preach any mode 
 of religion or irreligion that they please. I do not yet see 
 what the jurisdiction of bishops over their subordinates is to 
 be, or whether they are to have any jurisdiction at all. 
 
 In short, Sir, it seems to me that this new ecclesiastical 
 establishment is intended only to be temporary, and prepar- 
 atory to the utter abolition, under any of its forms, of the 
 Christian religion, whenever the minds of men are prepared 
 for this last stroke against it by the accomplishment of the 
 plan for bringing its ministers into universal contempt. They 
 who will not believe that the philosophical fanatics who 
 guide in these matters have long entertained such a design 
 are utterly ignorant of their character and proceedings. 
 These enthusiasts do not scruple to avow their opinion, that 
 a state can subsist without any religion better than with one, 
 and that they are able to supply the place of any good which 
 may be in it by a project of their own,—namely, by a sort of 
 education they have imagined, founded in a knowledge of the 
 physical wants of men, progressively carried to an enlight- 
 ened self-interest, which, when well understood, they tell us, 
 will identify with an interest more enlarged and public. The 
 scheme of this education has been long known. Of late they 
 distinguish it (as they have got an entirely new nomencla- 
 ture of technical terms) by the name of a Civic Education. 
 
 I hope their partisans in England (to whom I rather 
 attribute very inconsiderate conduct than the ultimate object 
 in this detestable design) will succeed neither in the pillage of 
 the ecclesiastics nor in the introduction of a principle of 
 
506 BURKE 
 
 popular election to our bishoprics and parochial cures. This, 
 inthe present condition of the world, would be the last 
 corruption of the Church, the utter ruin of the clerical char- 
 acter, the most dangerous shock that the state ever received 
 through a misunderstood arrangement of religion. I know 
 well enough that the bishoprics and cures, under kingly and 
 seigniorial patronage, as now they are in England, and as 
 they have been lately in France, are sometimes acquired by 
 unworthy methods; but the other mode of ecclesiastical can- 
 vass subjects them infinitely more surely and more generally 
 to all the evil arts of low ambition, which, operating on and 
 through greater numbers, will produce mischief in proportion. 
 
 Those of you who have robbed the clergy think that they 
 shall easily reconcile their conduct to all Protestant nations, 
 because the clergy whom they have thus plundered, degraded, 
 and given over to mockery and scorn, are of the Roman 
 Catholic, that is, of their own pretended persuasion. I have 
 no doubt that some miserable bigots will be found here as 
 well as elsewhere, who hate sects and parties different from 
 their own more than they love the substance of religion, and 
 who are more angry with those who differ from them in their 
 particular plans and systems than displeased with those who 
 attack the foundation of ourcommon hope. These men will 
 write and speak on the subject in the manner that is to be 
 expected from their temperand character. Burnet says, that, | 
 when he was in France, in the year 1683, “ the method 
 which carried over the men of the finest parts to Popery 
 was this: they brought themselves to doubt of the whole 
 Christian religion: when that was once done, it seemed a 
 more indifferent thing of what side or form they continued 
 outwardly.” If this was then the ecclesiastic policy of 
 France, it is what they have since but too much reason to 
 repent of. They preferred atheism to a form of religion not 
 agreeable to their ideas. They succeeded in destroying that 
 form; and atheism has succeeded in destroying them. Ican 
 readily give credit to Burnet’s story; because I have ob- 
 served too much of a similar spirit (fora little of it is “ much 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 507 
 
 too much ’’) amongst ourselves. The humour, however, is 
 not general. 
 
 The teachers who reformed our religion in England bore 
 no sort of resemblance to your present reforming doctors in 
 Paris. Perhaps they were (like those whom they opposed) 
 rather more than could be wished under the influence of a 
 party spirit; but they were most sincere believers; men of 
 the most fervent and exalted piety ; ready to die (as some 
 of them did die) like true heroes in defense of their particu- 
 lar ideas of Christianity,—as they would with equal fortitude, 
 and more cheerfully, for that stock of general truth for the 
 branches of which they contended with their blood. These 
 men would have disavowed with horror those wretches who 
 claimed a fellowship with them upon no other titles than 
 those of their having pillaged the persons with whom they 
 maintained controversies, and their having despised the 
 common religion, for the purity of which they exerted them- 
 selves with a zeal which unequivocally bespoke their highest 
 reverence for the substance of that system which they 
 wished to reform. Many of their descendants have retained 
 the same zeal, but (as less engaged in conflict) with more 
 moderation. They do not forget that justice and mercy 
 are substantial parts of religion. Impious men do not 
 recommend themselves to their communion by iniquity and 
 cruelty towards any description of their fellow-creatures. 
 
 We hear these new teachers continually boasting of their 
 spirit of toleration. That those persons should tolerate all 
 opinions, who think none to be of estimation, is a matter of 
 small merit. Equal neglect is not impartial kindness. The 
 species of benevolence which arises from contempt is no 
 true charity. There are in England abundance of men who 
 tolerate in the true spirit of toleration. They think the 
 dogmas of religion, though in different degrees, are all of 
 moment, and that amongst them there is, as amongst all 
 things of value, a just ground of preference. They favour, 
 therefore, and they tolerate. They tolerate, not because 
 they despise opinions, but because they respect justice. 
 
508 BURKE 
 
 They would reverently and affectionately protect all religions, 
 because they love and venerate the great principle upon 
 which they all agree, and the great object to which they 
 are all directed. They begin more and more plainly to dis- 
 cern that we have all a common cause, as against a common 
 enemy. They will not be so misled by the spirit of faction 
 as not to distinguish what is done in favour of their subdivi- 
 sion from those acts of hostility which, through some par- 
 ticular description, are aimed at the whole corps in which 
 they themselves, under another denomination, are included. 
 It is impossible for me to say what may be the character of 
 every description of men amongst us. But I speak for the 
 greater part; and forthem, I must tell you, that sacrilege is 
 nopart of their doctrine of good works; that, so far from 
 calling you into their fellowship on such title, if your pro- 
 fessors are admitted to their communion, they must care- 
 fully conceal their doctrine of the lawfulness of the proscription 
 of innocent men, and that they must make restitution of 
 all stolen goods whatsoever. Till then they are none of 
 ours. 
 
 You may suppose that we do not approve your confisca- 
 tion of the revenues of bishops, and deans, and chapters, and 
 parochial clergy possessing independent estates arising from 
 land, because we have the same sort of establishment in 
 England. That objection, you will say, can not hold astothe 
 confiscation of the goods of monks and nuns, and the aboli- 
 tion of their order. It is true that this particular part of 
 your general confiscation does not affect England, as a pre- 
 cedent in point; but the reason applies, and it goes a great 
 way. The Long Parliament confiscated the lands of deans 
 and chaptersin England on the same ideas upon which your 
 Assembly set to sale the lands of the monastic orders. But 
 it is in the principle of injustice that the danger lies, and not 
 in the description of persons on whom it is first exercised. 
 I see, in a country very near us, a course of policy pursued, 
 which sets justice,the common concern of mankind,at defiance. 
 With the National Assembly of France possession is nothing, 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 509 
 
 law and usage are nothing. I see the National Assembly 
 openly reprobate the doctrine of prescription, which one of 
 the greatest of their own lawyers * tells us, with great truth, 
 is a part of the law of Nature. He tells us that the positive 
 ascertainment of its limits, and its security from invasion, 
 were among the causes for which civil society itself has been 
 instituted. If prescription be once shaken, no species of 
 property is secure, when it once becomes an object large 
 enough to tempt the cupidity of indigent power. I see a 
 practise perfectly correspondent to their contempt of this 
 great fundamental part of natural law. I see the confisca- 
 tors begin with bishops, and chapters, and monasteries; but 
 I do not see themend there. I see the princes of the blood, 
 who, by the oldest usages of that kingdom, held large 
 landed estates, (hardly with the compliment of a debate,) 
 deprived of their possessions, and, in lieu of their stable, in- 
 dependent property, reduced to the hope of some precarious 
 charitable pension at the pleasure of an Assembly, which of 
 course will pay little regard to the rights of pensioners at 
 pleasure, when it despises those of legal proprietors. Flushed 
 with the insolence of their first inglorious victories, and 
 pressed by the distresses caused by their lust of unhallowed 
 lucre, disappointed, but not discouraged, they have at length 
 ventured completely to subvert all property of all descrip- 
 tions throughout the extent of agreatkingdom. They have 
 compelled all men, in all transactions of commerce, in the 
 disposal of lands, in civil dealing, and through the whole 
 communion of life, to accept, as perfect payment and good 
 and lawful tender, the symbols of their speculations on a 
 projected sale of their plunder. What vestiges of liberty or 
 property have they left? The tenant-right of a cabbage-gar- 
 den, a year’s interest in a hovel, the good-will of an ale-house 
 or a baker’s shop, the very shadow ofa constructive property, 
 are more ceremoniously treated in our Parliament than with 
 you the oldest and most valuable landed possessions, in the 
 hands of the most respectable personages, or than the whole 
 body of the moneyed and commercial interest of your 
 
510 BURKE 
 
 country. We entertain a high opinion of the legislative au- 
 thority ; but we have never dreamt that Parliaments had any 
 right whatever to violate property, to overrule prescription, 
 or to force a currency of their own fiction in the place of that 
 which is real, and recognized by the law of nations. But 
 you, who began with refusing to submit to the most mod- 
 erate restraints, have ended by establishing an unheard-of 
 despotism. I find the ground upon which your confiscators 
 go is this: that, indeed, their proceedings could not be 
 supported in a court of justice, but that the rules of prescrip- 
 tion cannot bind a legislative assembly. So that this 
 legislative assembly of a free nation sits, not for the security, 
 but for the destruction of property,—and not of property 
 only, but of every rule and maxim which can give it stability, 
 and of those instruments which can alone give it circulation. 
 
 When the Anabaptists of Miinster, in the sixteenth cen- 
 tury, had filled Germany with confusion, by their system of 
 leveling, and their wild opinions concerning property, to 
 what country in Europe did not the progress of their fury 
 furnish just cause of alarm? Of all things, wisdom is the 
 most terrified with epidemical fanaticism, because of all 
 enemies it is that against which she is the least able to fur- 
 nish any kind of resource. We can not be ignorant of the 
 spirit of atheistical fanaticism, that is inspired by a multitude 
 of writings dispersed with incredible assiduity and expense, 
 and by sermons delivered in all the streets and places of 
 public resort in Paris. These writings and sermons have 
 filled the populace with a black and savage atrocity of mind, 
 which supersedes in them the common feelings of Nature, 
 as well as all sentiments of morality and religion ; insomuch 
 that these wretches are induced to bear with a sullen patience 
 the intolerable distresses brought upon them by the violent 
 convulsions and permutations that have been made in prop- 
 erty.” The spirit of proselytism attends this spirit of fanati- 
 cism. They have societies to cabal and correspond at home 
 and abroad for the propagation of their tenets. The republic 
 of Berne, one of the happiest, the most prosperous, and the 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION ee 
 
 best-governed countries upon earth, is one of the great objects 
 at the destruction of which they aim. Iam told they have © 
 in some measure succeeded in sowing there the seeds of dis- 
 content. They are busy throughout Germany. Spain and 
 Italy have not been untried. England is not left out of the 
 comprehensive scheme of their malignant charity: and in 
 England we find those who stretch out their arms to them, 
 who recommend their example from more than one pulpit, 
 and who choose, in more than one periodical meeting, pub- 
 licly to correspond with them, to applaud them, and to hold 
 them up as objects for imitation; who receive from them 
 tokens of confraternity, and standards consecrated amidst 
 their rites and mysteries; #4 who suggest to them leagues of 
 perpetual amity, at the very time when the power to which 
 our Constitution has exclusively delegated the federative 
 capacity of this kingdom may find it expedient to make war 
 upon them. 
 
 It is not the confiscation of our Church property from this 
 example in France that I dread, though I think this would 
 be no trifling evil. The great source of my solicitude is, lest 
 it should ever be considered in England as the policy ofa 
 state to seek a resource in confiscations of any kind, or that 
 any one description of citizens should be brought to regard 
 any of the others as their proper prey.*? Nations are wading 
 deeper and deeper into an ocean of boundless debt. Public 
 debts, which at first were a security to governments, by inter- 
 esting many in the public tranquillity, are likely in their 
 excess to become the means of their subversion. If govern- 
 ments provide for these debts by heavy impositions, they 
 perish by becoming odious to the people. If they do not 
 provide for them, they will be undone by the efforts of the 
 most: dangerous of all parties: I mean an extensive, discon- 
 tented moneyed interest, injured and not destroyed. The 
 men who compose this interest look for their security, in the 
 first instance, to the fidelity of government; in the second, 
 to its power. If they find the old governments effete, worn 
 out, and with their springs relaxed, so as not to be of sufficient 
 
512 BURKE 
 
 vigour for their purposes, they may seek new ones that shall 
 be possessed of more energy ; and this energy will be derived, 
 not from an acquisition of resources, but from a contempt 
 of justice. Revolutions are favourable to confiscation ; and 
 it is impossible to know under what obnoxious names the 
 next confiscations will be authorized. I am sure that the 
 principles predominant in France extend to very many per- 
 sons, and descriptions of persons, in all countries, who think 
 their innoxious indolence their security. This kind of inno- 
 cence in proprietors may be argued into inutility ; and inutility 
 into an unfitness for their estates. Many parts of Europeare 
 in open disorder. In many others there is a hollow murmur- 
 ing under ground ; a confused movement is felt, that threatens 
 a general earthquake in the political world. Already con- 
 federacies and correspondences of the most extraordinary 
 nature are forming in several countries.* In such a state of 
 things we ought to hold ourselves upon our guard. In all 
 mutations (if mutations must be) the circumstance which 
 will serve most to blunt the edge of their mischief, and to 
 promote what good may be in them, is, that they should 
 find us with our minds tenacious of justice and tender of 
 property. 
 
 But it will be argued, that this confiscation in France ought 
 not to alarm other nations. They say it is not made from 
 wanton rapacity ; that it isa great measure of national policy, 
 adopted to remove an extensive, inveterate, superstitious 
 mischief.—It is with the greatest difficulty that I am able to 
 separate policy from justice. Justice is itself the great stand- 
 ing policy of civil society ; and any eminent departure from 
 it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being 
 no policy at all. 
 
 When men are encouraged to go into a certain mode of 
 life by the existing laws, and protected in that mode as ina 
 lawful occupation,—when they have accommodated all their 
 ideas and all their habits to it,—when the law had long made 
 their adherence to its rules a ground of reputation, and their 
 departure from them a ground of disgrace and even of pen- 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 513 
 
 alty,—I am sure it is unjust in legislature, by an arbitrary 
 act, to offer a sudden violence to their minds and their feel- 
 ings, forcibly to degrade them from their state and condition, 
 and to stigmatize with shame and infamy that character and 
 those customs which before had been made the measure of 
 their happiness and honour. If to this be added an expul- 
 sion from their habitations and a confiscation of all their 
 goods, I am not sagacious enough to discover how this des- 
 potic sport made of the feelings, consciences, prejudices, and 
 properties of men can be discriminated from the rankest 
 tyranny. 
 
 If the injustice of the course pursued in France be clear, 
 the policy of the measure, that is, the public benefit to be 
 expected from it, ought to be at least as evident, and at 
 least as important. To aman who acts under the influence 
 of no passion, who has nothing in view in his projects but 
 the public good, a great difference will immediately strike 
 him, between what policy would dictate on the original in- 
 troduction of such institutions, and ona question of their 
 total abolition, where they have cast their roots wide and 
 deep, and where, by long habit, things more valuable than 
 themselves are so adapted to them, and in a manner inter- 
 woven with them, that the one can not be destroyed without 
 notably impairing the other. He might be embarrassed, if 
 the case were really such as sophisters represent it in their 
 paltry style of debating. But in this, as in most questions 
 of state, there is a middle. There is something else than the 
 mere alternative of absolute destruction or unreformed ex- 
 istence. Spartam nactus es; hanc exorna. This is, in my 
 opinion, a rule of profound sense, and ought never to depart 
 from the mind of an honest reformer. I can not conceive 
 how any man can have brought himself to that pitch of pre- 
 sumption, to consider his country as nothing but carte blanche, 
 upon which he may scribble whatever he pleases. A man 
 full of warm, speculative benevolence may wish his society 
 otherwise constituted than he finds it; but a good patriot, 
 and a true politician, always considers how he shall make the 
 
 33 
 
514 BURKE 
 
 most of the existing materials of his country. <A disposition 
 to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would 
 be my standard of a statesman. Everything else is vulgar 
 in the conception, perilous in the execution. 
 
 There are moments in the fortune of states, when particu- 
 lar men are called to make improvements by great mental 
 exertion. In those moments, even when they seem to enjoy 
 the confidence of their prince and country, and to be invested 
 with full authority, they have not always apt instruments. 
 A politician, to do great things, looks for a power, what our 
 workmen call a purchase; and if he finds that power, in poli- 
 tics as in mechanics, he can not be at a loss to apply it. In 
 the monastic institutions, in my opinion, was found a great 
 power for the mechanism of politic benevolence. There were 
 revenues with a public direction; there were men wholly set 
 apart and dedicated to public purposes, without any other 
 than public ties and public principles,—men without the 
 possibility of converting the estate of the community into a 
 private fortune,—men denied to self-interests, whose avarice 
 is for some community,—men to whom personal poverty is 
 honour, and implicit obedience stands in the place of freedom. 
 In vain shall a man look to the possibility of making such 
 things when he wants them. The winds blow as they list. 
 These institutions are the products of enthusiasm ; they are 
 the instruments of wisdom. Wisdomcan not create materials; 
 they are the gifts of Nature or of chance; her pride is in the 
 use. The perennial existence of bodies corporate and their 
 fortunes are things particularly suited to a man who has long 
 views,—who meditates designs that require time in fashion- 
 ing, and which propose duration when they are accomplished. 
 He is not deserving to rank high, or even to be mentioned 
 in the order of great statesmen, who, having obtained the 
 command and direction of such a power as existed in the 
 wealth, the discipline, and the habits of such corporations as 
 those which you have rashly destroyed, can not find any way 
 of converting it to the great and lasting benefit of his country. 
 On the view of this subject, a thousand uses suggest them- 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 515 
 
 selves to a contriving mind. To destroy any power growing 
 wild from the rank productive force of the human mind is 
 almost tantamount, in the moral world, to the destruction 
 of the apparently active properties of bodies in the material. 
 It would be like the attempt to destroy (if it were in our 
 competence to destroy) the expansive force of fixed air in 
 nitre, or the power of steam, or of electricity, or of magnet- 
 ism. These energies always existed in Nature, and they 
 were always discernible. They seemed, some of them un- 
 serviceable, some noxious, some no better than a sport to 
 children,—until contemplative ability, combining with prac- 
 tic skill, tamed their wild nature, subdued them to use, and 
 rendered them at once the most powerful and the most tract- 
 able agents, in subservience to the great views and designs 
 of men. Did fifty thousand persons, whose mental and 
 whose bodily labour you might direct, and so many hundred 
 thousand a year of a revenue, which was neither lazy nor 
 superstitious, appear too big for your abilities to wield ? Had 
 you no way of using the men, but by converting monks into 
 pensioners? Had you no way of turning the revenue to ac- 
 count, but through the improvident resource of a spendthrift 
 sale? If you were thus destitute of mental funds, the pro- 
 ceeding is in its natural course. Your politicians do not 
 understand their trade ; and therefore they sell their tools. 
 But the institutions savour of superstition in their very 
 principle, and they nourish it by a permanent and standing 
 influence.—This I do not mean to dispute; but this ought 
 not to hinder you from deriving from superstition itself any 
 resources which may thence be furnished for the public ad- 
 vantage. You derive benefits from many dispositions and 
 many passions of the human mind which are of as doubtful 
 a colour, in the moral eye, as superstition itself. It was your 
 business to correct and mitigate everything which was nox- 
 ious in this passion, as in all the passions. But is supersti- 
 tion the greatest of all possible vices? In its possible excess 
 I think it becomes a very great evil. It is, however, a moral 
 subject, and of course admits of all degrees and all modifica- 
 
516 BURKE 
 
 tions. Superstition is the religion of feeble minds; and they 
 must be tolerated in an intermixture of it, in some trifling 
 or some enthusiastic shape or other, else you will deprive 
 weak minds of a resource found necessary to the strongest. 
 The body of all true religion consists, to be sure, in obed- 
 ience to the will of the Sovereign of the world, in a 
 confidence in His declarations, and in imitation of His per- 
 fections. The rest is our own. It may be prejudicial to the 
 great end,—it may be auxiliary. Wise men, who, as such, 
 are not admirers, (not admirers at least of the munera terre,) 
 are not violently attached to these things, nor do they 
 violently hate them. Wisdom is not the most severe cor- 
 rector of folly. They are the rival follies which mutually 
 wage so unrelenting a war, and which make so cruel a use 
 of their advantages, as they can happen to engage the im- 
 moderate vulgar, on the one side or the other, in their 
 quarrels.—Prudence would be neuter; but if, in the conten- 
 tion between fond attachment and fierce antipathy concern- 
 ing things in their nature not made to produce such heats, a 
 prudent man were obliged to make a choice of what errors 
 and excesses of enthusiasm he would condemn or bear, per- 
 haps he would think the superstition which builds to be 
 more tolerable than that which demolishes,—that which 
 adorns a country, than that which deforms it,—that which 
 endows, than that which plunders,—that which disposes to 
 mistaken beneficence, than that which stimulates to real in- 
 justice,—that which leads a man to refuse to himself lawful 
 pleasures, than that which snatches from others the scanty 
 subsistence of their self-denial. Such, I think, is very nearly 
 the state of the question between the ancient founders of 
 monkish superstition and the superstition of the pretended 
 philosophers of the hour. 
 
 For the present I postpone all consideration of the sup- 
 posed public profit of the sale, which, however, I conceive to 
 be perfectly delusive. I shall here only consider it as a 
 transfer of property. On the policy of that transfer I shall 
 trouble you with a few thoughts. 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 517 
 
 In every prosperous community something more is pro- 
 duced than goes to the immediate support of the producer. 
 This surplus forms the income of the landed capitalist. It 
 will be spent by a proprietor who does not labour. But this 
 idleness is itself the spring of labour, this repose the spur to 
 industry. The only concern for the state is, that the capital 
 taken in rent from the land should be returned again to the 
 industry from whence it came, and that its expenditure 
 should be with the least possible detriment to the morals of 
 those who expend it and to those of the people to whom it is 
 returned. 
 
 In all the views of receipt, expenditure, and personal em- 
 ployment, a sober legislator would carefully compare the 
 possessor whom he was recommended to expel with the 
 stranger who was proposed to fill his place. Before the in- 
 conveniences are incurred which must attend all violent revol- 
 utions in property through extensive confiscation, we ought 
 to have some rational assurance that the purchasers of the 
 confiscated property will be ina considerable degree more 
 laborious, more virtuous, more sober, less disposed to extort 
 an unreasonable proportion of the gains of the labourer, or 
 to consume on themselves a larger share than is fit for the 
 measure of an individual,—or that they should be qualified 
 to dispense the surplus in a more steady and equal mode, so 
 as to answer the purposes of a politic expenditure, than the 
 old possessors, call those possessors bishops, or canons, or 
 commendatory abbots, or monks, or what you please. The 
 monks are lazy. Be it so. Suppose them no otherwise 
 employed than by singing in the choir. They areas usefully 
 employed as those who neither sing nor say,—as usefully 
 even as those who sing upon the stage. They are as use- 
 fully employed as if they worked from dawn to dark in the 
 innumerable servile, degrading, unseemly, unmanly, and 
 often most unwholesome and pestiferous occupations to 
 which by the social economy so many wretches are inevi- 
 tably doomed. If it were not generally pernicious to disturb 
 the natural course of things, and to impede in any degree 
 
518 BURKE 
 
 the great wheel of circulation which is turned by the strangely 
 directed labour of these unhappy people, I should be infin- 
 itely more inclined forcibly to rescue them from their mis- 
 erable industry than violently to disturb the tranquil repose 
 of monastic quietude. Humanity, and perhaps policy, might 
 better justify me in the one than in the other. It is a sub- 
 ject on which I have often reflected, and never reflected 
 without feeling from it. I am sure that no consideration, 
 except the necessity of submitting to the yoke of luxury 
 and the despotism of fancy, who in their own imperious way 
 will distribute the surplus product of the soil, can justify the 
 toleration of such trades and employments in a well-regu- 
 lated state. But for this purpose of distribution, it seems 
 to me that the idle expenses of monks are quite as well 
 directed as the idle expenses of us lay loiterers. 
 
 When the advantages of the possession and of the project 
 are on apar, there is nomotive forachange. But inthe pres- 
 ent case, perhaps, they are not upon a par, and the differ- 
 ence is in favourof the possession. It does not appear to 
 me that the expenses of those whom you are going to expel 
 do in fact take a course so directly and so generally leading 
 to vitiate and degrade and render miserable those through 
 whom they pass as the expenses of those favourites whom 
 you are intruding into their houses. Why should the expen- 
 diture of a great landed property, which is a dispersion of 
 the surplus product of the soil, appear intolerable to you or 
 to me, when it takes its course through the accumulation of 
 vast libraries, which are the history of the force and weak- 
 ness of the human mind,—through great collections of an- 
 cient records, medals, and coins, which attest and explain 
 laws and customs,—through paintings and statues, that, by 
 imitating Nature, seem to extend the limits of creation,— 
 through grand monuments of the dead, which continue the 
 regards and connections of life beyond the grave,—through 
 collections of the specimens of Nature, which become a 
 representative assembly of all the classes and families of the 
 world, that by disposition facilitate, and by exciting curi- 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 519 
 
 osity open, the avenues to science? If by great permanent 
 establishments all these objects of expense are better secured 
 from the inconstant sport of personal caprice and personal 
 extravagance, are they worse than ifthe same tastes pre- 
 vailed in scattered individuals? Does not the sweat of the 
 mason and carpenter, who toil in order to partake the sweat 
 of the peasant, flow as pleasantly and as salubriously in the 
 construction and repair of the majestic edifices of religion as 
 in the painted booths and sordid sties of vice and luxury? as 
 honourably and as profitably in repairing those sacred works 
 which grow hoary with innumerable years as on the mo- 
 mentary receptacles of transient voluptuousness,—in opera- 
 houses, and brothels, and gaming-houses, and club-houses, 
 and obelisks in the Champ de Mars? Is the surplus product 
 of the olive and the vine worse employed in the frugal sus- 
 tenance of persons whom the fictions of a pious imagination 
 raise to dignity by construing in the service of God than in 
 pampering the innumerable multitude of those who are de- 
 graded by being made useless domestics, subservient to the 
 pride of man? Are the decorations of temples an expen- 
 diture less worthy a wise man than ribbons, and laces, and 
 national cockades, and petit maisons, and petit soupers, and 
 all the innumerable fopperies and follies in which opulence 
 sports away the burden of its superfluity ? 
 
 We tolerate even these,—not from love of them, but for 
 fear of worse. We tolerate them, because property and lib- 
 erty, to a degree, require that toleration. But why proscribe 
 the other, and surely, in every point of view, the more laud- 
 able use of estates? Why, through the violation of all prop- 
 erty, through an outrage upon every principle of liberty, 
 forcibly carry them from the better to the worse ? 
 
 This comparison between the new individuals and the old 
 corps is made upon a supposition that no reform could be 
 made in the latter. But, in a question of reformation, I 
 always consider corporate bodies,whether sole or consisting of 
 many,to be much more susceptible of a public direction,by the 
 power of the state, in the use of their property, and in the 
 
520 BURKE 
 
 regulation of modes and habits of life in their members, than 
 private citizens ever can be, or perhaps ought to be; and 
 this seems to mea very material consideration for those who 
 undertake anything which merits the name of a politic en- 
 terprise.—So far as to the estates of monasteries. 
 
 With regard to the estates possessed by bishops and can- 
 ons and commendatory abbots, I cannot find out for what 
 reason some landed estates may not be held otherwise than 
 by inheritance. Can any philosophic spoiler undertake to 
 demonstrate the positive or the comparative evil of having 
 acertain, and that, too, a large, portion of landed property 
 passing in succession through persons whose title to it is, 
 always in theory and often in fact, an eminent degree of 
 piety, morals, and learning ; a property which by its destina- 
 tion, in their turn, and on the score of merit, gives to the 
 noblest families renovation and support, to the lowest the 
 means of dignity and elevation ; a property, the tenure of 
 which is the performance of some duty, (whatever value you 
 may choose to set upon that duty,) and the character of 
 whose proprietors demands at least an exterior decorum and 
 gravity of manners,—who are to exercise a generous, but tem- 
 perate hospitality,— part of whose income they are to con- 
 sider as a trust for charity,—and who, even when they fail in 
 their trust, when they slide from their character, and degen- 
 erate into a mere common secular nobleman or gentleman, 
 are in no respect worse than those who may succeed them in 
 their forfeited possessions? Is it better that estates should be 
 held by those who have no duty than by those who have one? 
 by those whose character and destination point to virtues 
 than by those who have no rule and direction in the expen- 
 diture of their estates but their own will and appetite? Nor 
 are these estates held altogether in the character or with the 
 evils supposed inherent in mortmain. They passfrom hand 
 to hand with a more rapid circulation than any other. No 
 excess is good, and therefore too great a proportion of landed 
 property may be held officially for life; but it does not seem 
 to me of material injury to any commonwealth that there 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 521 
 
 should exist some estates that have a chance of being acquired 
 by other means than the previous acquisition of money. 
 
 This letter is grown to a great length, though it is, indeed, 
 short with regard to the infinite extent of the subject. Vari- 
 ous avocations have from time to time called my mind from 
 the subject. I was not sorry to give myself leisure to ob- 
 serve whether in the proceedings of the National Assembly 
 I might not find reasons to change or to qualify some of 
 my first sentiments. Everything has confirmed me more 
 strongly in my first opinions. It was my original purpose 
 to take a view of the principles of the National Assembly 
 with regard to the great and fundamental establishments, 
 and to compare the whole of what you have substituted in 
 the place of what you have destroyed with the several mem- 
 bers of our British Constitution. But this plan is of greater 
 extent than at first I computed, and I find that you have 
 little desire to take the advantage of any examples. At 
 present I must content myself with some remarks upon your 
 establishments, reserving for another time what I proposed 
 to say concerning the spirit of our British monarchy, aristo- 
 cracy, and democracy, as practically they exist. 
 
 I have taken a view of what has been done by the govern- 
 ing powerin France. I have certainly spoken of it with 
 freedom. Those whose principle it is to despise the ancient 
 permanent sense of mankind, and to set up a scheme of 
 society on new principles, must naturally expect that such 
 of us who think better of the judgment of the human race 
 than of theirs should consider both them and their devices 
 as men and schemes upon their trial. They must take it for 
 granted that we attend much to their reason, but not at all 
 to their authority. -They have not one of the great influenc- 
 ing prejudices of mankind in their favour. They avow their 
 hostility to opinion. Of course they must expect no sup- 
 port from that influence, which, with every other authority, 
 they have deposed from the seat of its jurisdiction. 
 
 I can never consider this Assembly as anything else than 
 a voluntary association of men who have availed themselves 
 
522 BURKE 
 
 of circumstances to seize upon the power of the state. They 
 have not the sanction and authority of the character under 
 which they first met. They have assumed another of a very 
 different nature, and have completely altered and inverted 
 all the relations in which they originally stood. They do 
 not hold the authority they exercise under any constitutional 
 law of the state. They have departed from the instructions 
 of the people by whom they were sent; which instructions, 
 as the Assembly did not act in virtue of any ancient usage 
 or settled law, were the sole source of their authority. The 
 most considerable of their acts have not been done by great 
 majorities; and in this sort of near divisions, which carry 
 only the constructive authority of the whole, strangers will 
 consider reasons as well as resolutions. 
 
 If they had set up this new, experimental government as 
 a necessary substitute for an expelled tyranny, mankind 
 would anticipate the time of prescription, which through 
 long usage mellows into legality governments that were vio- 
 lent in their commencement. All those who have affections 
 which lead them to the conservation of civil order would 
 recognize, even in its cradle, the child as legitimate, which 
 has been produced from those principles of cogent expediency 
 to which all just governments owe their birth, and on which 
 they justify theircontinuance. But they will be late and re- 
 luctant in giving any sort of countenance to the operations 
 of a power which has derived its birth from no law and no 
 necessity, but which, on the contrary, has had its origin in 
 those vices and sinister practises by which the social union 
 is often disturbed and sometimes destroyed. This Assembly 
 has hardly a year’s prescription. We have their own word 
 for it that they have made a revolution. To make a revolu- 
 tion is a measure which, prima fronte, requires an apology. 
 To make a revolution is to subvert the ancient state of our 
 country ; and no common reasons are called for to justify so 
 violent a proceeding. The sense of mankind authorizes us 
 to examine into the mode of acquiring new power, and to 
 criticise on the use that is made of it, with less awe and re- 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 523 
 
 verence than that which is usually conceded to a settled and 
 recognized authority. 
 
 In obtaining and securing their power, the Assembly pro- 
 ceeds upon principles the most opposite from those which 
 appear to direct them in the use of it. An observation on 
 this difference will let us into the true spirit of their conduct. 
 Everything which they have done, or continue to do, in 
 order to obtain and keep their power, is by the most com- 
 mon arts. They proceed exactly as their ancestors of ambi- 
 tion have done before them. Trace them through all their 
 artifices, frauds, and violences, you can find nothing at all 
 that isnew. They follow precedents and examples with the 
 punctilious exactness of a pleader. They never depart an iota 
 from the authentic formulas of tyranny and usurpation. But 
 in all the regulations relative to the public good the spirit has 
 been the very reverse ofthis. Therethey commit the wholeto 
 the mercy of untried speculations ; they abandon the dearest 
 interests of the public to those loose theories to which none 
 of them would choose to trust the slightest of his private 
 concerns, They make this difference, because in their desire 
 of obtaining and securing power they are thoroughly in ear- 
 nest; there they travel in the beaten road. The public in- 
 terests, because about them they have no real solicitude, 
 they abandon wholly to chance: I say to chance, because 
 their schemes have nothing in experience to prove their 
 tendency beneficial. 
 
 We must always see with a pity not unmixed with respect 
 the errors of those who are timid and doubtful of themselves 
 with regard to points wherein the happiness of mankind is 
 concerned. But in these gentlemen there is nothing of the 
 tender parental solicitude which fears to cut up the infant 
 for the sake of an experiment. In the vastness of their 
 promises and the confidence of their predictions they far 
 outdo all the boasting of empirics. The arrogance of their 
 pretensions in a manner provokes and challenges us to an 
 inquiry into their foundation. 
 
 I am convinced that there are men of considerable parts 
 
524 BURKE 
 
 among the popular leaders in the National Assembly. Some 
 of them display eloquence in their speeches and their writ- 
 ings. This cannot be without powerful and cultivated 
 talents. But eloquence may exist without a proportion- 
 able degree of wisdom. When I speak of ability, I am 
 obliged to distinguish. What they have done towards 
 the support of their system bespeaks no ordinary men. In 
 the system itself, taken as the scheme of a republic con- 
 structed for procuring the prosperity and security of the 
 citizen, and for promoting the strength and grandeur of the 
 state, I confess myself unable to find out anything which 
 displays, in a single instance, the work of a comprehensive 
 and disposing mind, or even the provisions of a vulgar pru- 
 dence. Their purpose everywhere seems to have been to 
 evade and slip aside from difficulty. This it has been the 
 glory of the great masters in all the arts to confront, and to 
 overcome,—and when they had overcome the first difficulty, 
 to turn it into an instrument for new conquests over new 
 difficulties: thus to enable them to extend the empire of 
 their science, and even to push forward, beyond the reach 
 of their original thoughts, the landmarks of the human un- 
 derstanding itself. Difficulty is a severe instructor, set over 
 us by the supreme ordinance of a parental Guardian and 
 Legislator, who knows us better than we know ourselves, 
 as He loves us better too. ‘‘ Pater ipse colendi haud facilem 
 esse viam voluit.” He that wrestles with us strengthens our 
 nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper. 
 This amicable conflict with difficulty obliges us to an in- 
 timate acquaintance with our object, and compels us to con- 
 sider it in all its relations. It will not suffer us to be super- 
 ficial. It is the want of nerves of understanding for such a 
 task, it is the degenerate fondness for tricking short-cuts and 
 little fallacious facilities, that has in so many parts of the 
 world created governments with arbitrary powers. They 
 have created the late arbitrary monarchy of France. They 
 have created the arbitrary republic of Paris. With them de- 
 fects in wisdom are to be supplied by the plenitude of force. 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 525 
 
 They get nothing by it. Commencing their labours on a 
 principle of sloth, they have the common fortune of slothful 
 men. The difficulties which they rather had eluded than 
 escaped, meet them again in their course ; they multiply and 
 thicken on them ; they are involved, through a labyrinth of 
 confused detail, in an industry without limit and without 
 direction ; and in conclusion, the whole of their work becomes 
 feeble, vicious, and insecure. 
 
 It is this inability to wrestle with difficulty which has 
 obliged the arbitrary Assembly of France to commence their 
 schemes of reform with abolition and total destruction.*# 
 But is it in destroying and pulling down that skill is dis- 
 played? Your mob can do this as well at least as your as- 
 semblies. The shallowest understanding, the rudest hand, 
 is more than equal to that task. Rage and frenzy will pull 
 down more in half an hour than prudence, deliberation, and 
 foresight can build up ina hundred years. The errors and 
 defects of old establishments are visible and palpable. It 
 calls for little ability to point them out ; and where absolute 
 power is given, it requires but a word wholly to abolish the 
 vice and the establishment together. The same lazy, but 
 restless disposition, which loves sloth and hates quiet, directs 
 these politicians, when they come to work for supplying the 
 place of what they have destroyed. To make everything 
 the reverse of what they have seen is quite as easy as to des- 
 troy. No difficulties occur in what has never been tried. 
 Criticism is almost baffled in discovering the defects of what 
 has not existed; and eager enthusiasm and cheating hope 
 have all the wide field of imagination, in which they may 
 expatiate with little or no opposition. 
 
 At once to preserve and to reform is quite another thing. 
 When the useful parts of an old establishment are kept, and 
 what is superadded is to be fitted to what is retained, a vig- 
 orous mind, steady, persevering attention, various powers of 
 comparison and combination, and the resources of an under- 
 standing fruitful in expedients are to be exercised ; they are 
 to be exercised in a continued conflict with the combined 
 
526 BURKE 
 
 force of opposite vices, with the obstinacy that rejects all 
 improvement, and the levity thatis fatigued and disgusted 
 with everything of which it is in possession. But you may 
 object,—“ A process of this kind is slow. It is not fit for an 
 Assembly which glories in performing in a few months the 
 work of ages. Such a mode of reforming, possibly, might 
 take up many years.” Without question it might; and it 
 ought. It is one of the excellences of a method in which 
 time is amongst the assistants, that its operation is slow, and 
 in some cases almost imperceptible. If circumspection and 
 caution are a part of wisdom, when we work only upon in- 
 animate matter, surely they become a part of duty too, when 
 the subject of our demolition and construction is not brick 
 and timber, but sentient beings, by the sudden alteration of 
 whose state, condition, and habits, multitudes may be ren- 
 dered miserable. But it seems as if it were the prevalent 
 opinion in Paris, that an unfeeling heart and an undoubting 
 confidence are the sole qualifications for a perfect legislator. 
 Far different are my ideas of that high office. The true law- 
 giver ought to have a heart full of sensibility. He ought to 
 love and respect his kind, and to fear himself. It may beal- 
 lowed to his temperament to catch his ultimate object with an 
 intuitive glance; but his movements towards it ought to be 
 deliberate. Political arrangement, as it is a work for social 
 ends, isto be only wrought by social means. There mind must 
 conspire with mind. Time is required to produce that union 
 of minds which alone can produce all the good we aim at. 
 Our patience will achieve more than our force. If I might 
 venture to appeal to what is so much out of fashion in Paris, 
 —I mean to experience,—I should tell you, that in my course 
 I have known, and, according to my measure, have co-oper- 
 ated with great men; and I have never yet seen any plan 
 which has not been mended by the observations of those 
 who were much inferior in understanding to the person who 
 took the lead in the business. By a slow, but well-sustained 
 progress, the effect of each step is watched; the good or ill 
 success of the first gives light to us in the second; and so, 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 527 
 
 from light to light, we are conducted with safety through 
 the whole series. We see that the parts of the system do 
 not clash. The evils latent in the most promising contriv- 
 ances are provided for as they arise. One advantage is as 
 little as possible sacrificed to another. We compensate, we 
 reconcile, we balance. We are enabled to unite into a con- 
 sistent whole the various anomalies and contending principles 
 that are found in the minds and affairs of men. From hence 
 arises, not an excellence in simplicity, but one far superior, 
 an excellence in composition. Where the great interests of 
 mankind are concerned through a long succession of genera- 
 tions, that succession ought to be admitted into some share 
 in the councils which are so deeply to affect them. If justice 
 requires this, the work itself requires the aid of more minds 
 than one age can furnish. It is from this view of things that 
 the best legislators have been often satisfied with the estab- 
 lishment of some sure, solid, and ruling principle in govern- 
 ment,—a power like that which some of the philosophers 
 have called a plastic Nature; and having fixed the principle, 
 they have left it afterwards to its own operation. 
 
 To proceed in this manner, that is, to proceed with a pre- 
 siding principle and prolific energy, is with me the criterion 
 of profound wisdom. What your politicians think the marks 
 of a bold, hardy genius are only proofs of a deplorable want 
 of ability. By their violent haste, and their defiance of the 
 process of Nature, they are delivered over blindly to every 
 projector and adventurer, to every alchemist and empiric. 
 They despair of turning to account anything that is common. 
 Diet is nothing in their system of remedy. The worst of it 
 is, that this their despair of curing common distempers by 
 regular methods arises not only from defect of comprehension, 
 but, I fear, from some malignity of disposition. Your legis- 
 lators seem to have taken their opinions of all professions, 
 ranks and offices from the declamations and buffooneries of 
 satirists,—who would themselves be astonished, if they were 
 held to the letter of their own descriptions. By listening only 
 to these, your leaders regard all things only on the side of their 
 
528 BURKE 
 
 vices and faults, and view those vices and faults under every 
 colour of exaggeration. Itisundoubtedly true, though it may 
 seem paradoxical—but, in general, those who are habitually 
 employed in finding and displaying faults are unqualified for 
 the work of reformation ; because their minds are not only un- 
 furnished with patterns of the fair and good, but by habit they 
 come to take no delight in the contemplation of those things. 
 By hating vices too much, they come to love men too little. 
 It is therefore not wonderful that they should be indisposed 
 and unable to serve them. From hence arises the com- 
 plexional disposition of some of your guides to pull every- 
 thing in pieces. At this malicious game they display the 
 whole of their quadrimanous activity. As to the rest, the 
 paradoxes of eloquent writers, brought forth purely as a 
 sport of fancy, to try their talents, to rouse attention, and 
 excite surprise, are taken up by these gentlemen, not in the 
 spirit of the original authors, as means of cultivating their 
 taste and improving their style: these paradoxes become with 
 them serious grounds of action, upon which they proceed in 
 regulating the most important concerns of the state. Cicero 
 ludicrously describes Cato as endeavouring to act in the com- 
 monwealth upon the school paradoxes which exercised the 
 wits of the junior students in the Stoic philosophy. If this 
 was true of Cato, these gentlemen copy after him in the 
 manner of some persons who lived about his time,—pede 
 nudo Catonem. Mr. Hume told me that he had from Rous- 
 seau himself the secret of his principles of composition. 
 That acute, though eccentric observer, had perceived, that, 
 to strike and interest the public, the marvellous must be 
 produced ; that the marvellous of the heathen mythology 
 had long since lost its effects; that giants, magicians, fairies, 
 and heroes of romance, which succeeded, had exhausted the 
 portion of credulity which belonged to their age; that now 
 nothing was left to a writer but that species of the marvel- 
 lous, which might still be produced, and with as great an 
 effect as ever, though in another way,—that is, the marvel- 
 lous in life, in manners, in characters, and in extraordinary 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 529 
 
 situations, giving rise to new and unlooked-for strokes in 
 politics and morals. I believe, that, were Rousseau alive, 
 and in one of his lucid intervals, he would be shocked at the 
 practical frenzy of his scholars, who in their paradoxes are 
 servile imitators, and even in their incredulity discover an 
 implicit faith. 
 
 Men who undertake considerable things, even in a regular 
 way, ought to give us ground to presume ability. But the 
 physician of the state, who, not satisfied with the cure of 
 distempers, undertakes to regenerate constitutions, ought to 
 show uncommon powers. Some very unusual appearances of 
 wisdom ought to display themselves on the face of the de- 
 signs of those who appeal to no practise and who copy after 
 no model. Has any such been manifested? Ishall take a 
 view (it shall for the subject be a very short one) of what the 
 Assembly has done, with regard, first, to the constitution of 
 the legislature; in the next place, to that of the executive 
 power; then to that of the judicature; afterwards to the 
 model of the army; and conclude with the system of finance: 
 to see whether we can discover in any part of their schemes 
 the portentous ability which may justify these bold under- 
 takers in the superiority which they assume over mankind. 
 
 It is in the model of the sovereign and presiding part of 
 this new republic that we should expect their grand display. 
 Here they were to prove their title to their proud demands. 
 For the plan itself at large, and for the reasons on which it 
 is grounded, I refer to the journals of the Assembly of the 
 29th of September, 1789, and to the subsequent proceedings 
 which have made any alterations in the plan. So far as in 
 a matter somewhat confused I can see light, the system 
 remains substantially as it has been originally framed. My 
 few remarks will be such as regard its spirit, its tendency, 
 and its fitness for framing a popular commonwealth, which 
 they profess theirs to be, suited to the ends for which any 
 commonwealth, and particularly such a commonwealth, is 
 made. At the same time I mean to consider its consistency 
 with itself and its own principles. 
 
 34 
 
530 BURKE 
 
 Old establishments are tried by their effects. Ifthe people 
 are happy, united, wealthy, and powerful, we presume the 
 rest. Weconclude that to be good from whence good is 
 derived. In old establishments various correctives have 
 been found for their aberrations from theory. Indeed, they 
 are the results of various necessities and expediences. They 
 are not often constructed after any theory: theories are 
 rather drawn from them. In them we often see the end best 
 obtained, where the means seem not perfectly reconcilable 
 to what we may fancy was the original scheme. The means 
 taught by experience may be better suited to political ends 
 than those contrived in the original project. They again 
 react upon the primitive constitution, and sometimes im- 
 prove the design itself, from which they seem to have de- 
 parted. I think all this might be curiously exemplified in 
 the British Constitution. At worst, the errors and devia- 
 tions of every kind in reckoning are found and computed, 
 and the ship proceeds in her course. This is the case of old 
 establishments; but in a new and merely theoretic system, 
 it is expected that every contrivance shall appear, on the 
 face of it, to answer its ends, especially where the projectors 
 are no way embarrassed with an endeavour to accommodate 
 the new building to an old one, either in the walls or on 
 the foundations. 
 
 The French builders, ees away as mere rubbish what- 
 ever they found, and, like their ornamental gardeners, form- 
 ing everything into an exact level, propose to rest the 
 whole local and general legislature on three bases of three 
 different kinds,—one geometrical, one arithmetical, and the 
 third financial; the first of which they call the basis of terri- 
 tory ; the second, the basis of population; and the third, 
 the basis of contribution. For the accomplishment of the 
 first of these purposes, they divide the area of their country 
 into eighty-three pieces, regularly square, of eighteen leagues 
 by eighteen. These large divisions are called Departments. 
 These they portion, proceeding by square measurement, into 
 seventeen hundred and twenty districts, called Communes. 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 531 
 
 These again they subdivide, still proceeding by square 
 measurement, into smaller districts, called Cantons, making 
 in all 6,400. 
 
 At first view this geometrical basis of theirs presents not 
 much to admire or to blame. It calls for no great legisla- 
 tive talents. Nothing more than an accurate land-surveyor, 
 with his chain, sight, and theodolite, is requisite for such a 
 plan as this. In the old divisions of the country, various 
 accidents at times, and the ebb and flow of various proper- 
 ties and jurisdictions, settled their bounds. These bounds 
 were not made upon any fixed system, undoubtedly. They 
 were subject to some inconveniences; but they were in- 
 conveniences for which use had found remedies, and habit 
 had supplied accommodation and patience. In this new 
 pavement of square within square, and this organization and 
 semi-organization, made on the system of Empedocles and 
 Buffon, and not upon any politic principle, it is impossible 
 that innumerable local inconveniences, to which men are not 
 habituated, must not arise. But these I pass over, because 
 it requires an accurate knowledge of the country, which I do 
 not possess, to specify them. 
 
 When these state surveyors came to take a view of their 
 work of measurement, they soon found that in politics the 
 most fallacious of all things was geometrical demonstration. 
 They had then recourse to another basis (or rather buttress) 
 to support the building, which tottered on that false founda- 
 tion. It was evident that the goodness of the soil, the 
 number of the people, their wealth, and the largeness of their 
 contribution, made such infinite variations between square 
 and square as to render mensuration a ridiculous standard 
 of power in the commonwealth, and equality in geometry 
 the most unequal of all measures in the distribution of men. 
 However, they could not give it up,—but, dividing their 
 political and civil representation into three parts, they allotted 
 one of those parts to the square measurement, without a 
 single fact or calculation to ascertain whether this territorial 
 proportion of representation was fairly assigned, and ought 
 
 & 
 
baa BURKE 
 
 upon any principle really to be a third. Having, however, 
 given to geometry this portion, (of a third for her dower,) 
 out of compliment, I suppose, to that sublime science, they 
 left the other two to be scuffled for between the other as 
 population and contribution. 
 
 When they came to provide for population, they were not 
 able to proceed quite so smoothly as they had done in the 
 field of their geometry. Here their arithmetic came to bear 
 upon their juridical metaphysics. Had they stuck to their 
 metaphysic principles, the arithmetical process would be 
 simple indeed. Men, with them, are strictly equal, and are 
 entitled to equal rights in their own government. Each 
 head, on this system, would have its vote, and every man 
 would vote directly for the person who was to represent him 
 in the legislature. “But soft,—by regular degrees, not yet.” 
 This metaphysic principle, to which law, custom, usage, 
 policy, reason, were to yield, is to yield itself to their pleas- 
 ure. There must be many degrees, and some stages, before 
 the representative can come in contact with his constituent. 
 Indeed, as we shall soon see, these two persons are to have 
 no sort of communion with each other. First, the voters in 
 the Canton, who compose what they call primary assemblies, 
 are to have a qualification. What! a qualification on the 
 indefeasible rights of men? Yes; but it shall be a very 
 small qualification. Our injustice shall be very little oppres- 
 sive: only the local valuation of three days’ labour paid to 
 the public. Why, this is not much, I readily admit, for any- 
 thing but the utter subversion of your equalizing principle. 
 As aqualification it might as well be let alone; for it answers 
 no one purpose for which qualifications are established, and, 
 on your ideas, it excludes from a vote the man of all others 
 whose natural equality stands the most in need of protection 
 and defense: I mean the man who has nothing else but his 
 natural equality to guard him. You order him to buy the 
 right which you before told him Nature had given to him 
 gratuitously at his birth, and of which no authority on earth 
 could lawfully deprive him. With regard to the person who 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 533 
 
 cannot come up to your market, a tyrannous aristocracy, 
 as against him, is established at the very outset, by you who 
 pretend to be its sworn foe. 
 
 The gradation proceeds. These primary assemblies of 
 the Canton elect deputies to the Commune,—one for every 
 two hundred qualified inhabitants. Here is the first medium 
 put between the primary elector and the representative 
 legislator; and here a new turnpike is fixed for taxing the 
 rights of men with a second qualification: for none can be 
 elected into the Commune who does not pay the amount 
 of ten days’ labour. Nor have we yet done. There is still 
 to be another gradation.** These Communes, chosen by the 
 Canton, choose to the Department ; and the deputies of the 
 Department choose their deputies to the National Assembly. 
 Here is a third barrier of a senseless qualification. Every 
 deputy to the National Assembly must pay, in direct contri- 
 bution, to the value of a mark of silver. Of all these quali- 
 fying barriers we must think alike: that they are impotent 
 to secure independence, strong only to destroy the rights of 
 men. 
 
 In all this process, which in its fundamental elements af- 
 fects to consider only population, upon a principle of nat- 
 ural right, there is a manifest attention to property,—which, 
 however just and reasonable on other schemes, is on theirs 
 perfectly unsupportable. 
 
 When they come to their third basis, that of Contribution, 
 we find that they have more completely lost sight of the 
 rights of men. This last basis rests entirely on property. A 
 principle totally different from the equality of men, and ut- 
 terly irreconcilable to it, is thereby admitted : but no sooner 
 is this principle admitted than (as usual) it issubverted ; and 
 it is not subverted (as we shall presently see) to approximate 
 the inequality of riches to the level of Nature. The addi- 
 tional share in the third portion of representation (a portion 
 reserved exclusively for the higher contribution) is made to 
 regard the district only, and not the individuals in it who 
 pay. It is easy to perceive, by the course of their reasonings, 
 
534 BURKE 
 
 how much they were embarrassed by their contradictory 
 ideas of the rights of men and the privileges of riches. The 
 Committee of Constitution do as good as admit that they are 
 wholly irreconcilable. “The relation with regard to the con- 
 tributions is without doubt null, (say they,) when the ques- 
 tion is on the balance of the political rights as between indi- 
 vidual and individual ; without which personal equality would 
 be destroyed, and an aristocracy of the rich would be estab- 
 lished. But this inconvenience entirely disappears, when the 
 proportional relation of the contribution is only considered 
 in the great masses, and is solely between province and prov- 
 ince ; it serves in that case only to form a just reciprocal 
 proportion between the cities, without affecting the personal 
 rights of the citizens.” 
 
 Here the principle of contribution, as taken between man 
 and man, is reprobated as null, and destructive to equality,— 
 and as pernicious, too, because it leads to the establishment 
 of an aristocracy of the rich. However, it must not be aban- 
 doned. And the way of getting rid of the difficulty is to 
 establish the inequality as between department and depart- 
 ment, leaving all the individuals in each department upon an 
 exact par. Observe, that this parity between individuals had 
 been before destroyed, when the qualifications within the de- 
 partments were settled ; nor does it seem a matter of great im- 
 portance whether the equality of men be injured by masses 
 or individually. An individual is not of the same impor- 
 tance in a mass represented bya few as in a mass represented 
 by many. It would be too much to tell a man jealous of 
 his equality, that the elector has the same franchise who 
 votes for three members as he who votes for ten. 
 
 Now take it in the other point of view, and let us suppose 
 their principle of representation according to contribution, 
 that is according to riches, to be well imagined, and to beanec- 
 essary basis for their republic. In this their third basis they 
 assume that riches ought to be respected, and that justice 
 and policy require that they should entitle men, in some 
 mode or other, toa larger share in the administration of pub- 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION = 535 
 
 lic affairs ; it is now to be seen how the Assembly provides 
 for the pre-eminence, or even for the security of the rich, by 
 conferring, in virtue of their opulence, that larger measure of 
 power to their district which is denied to them personally. 
 I readily admit (indeed, I should lay it down asa fundamen- 
 tal principle) that in a republican government, which has a 
 democratic basis, the rich do require an additional security 
 above what is necessary to them in monarchies. They are 
 subject to envy, and through envy to oppression. On the 
 present scheme it is impossible to divine what advantage 
 they derive from the aristocratic preference upon which the 
 unequal representation of the masses is founded. The rich 
 cannot feel it, either asasupport to dignity or as security to 
 fortune: for the aristocratic mass is generated from purely 
 democratic principles; and the prevalence given to it in the 
 general representation has no sort of reference to or connection 
 with the persons upon account of whose property this superi- 
 ority of the mass is established. If the contrivers of this 
 scheme meant any sort of favour to the rich, in consequence 
 of their contribution, they ought to have conferred the privi- 
 lege either on the individual rich, or on some class formed of 
 rich persons (as historians represent Servius Tullius to have 
 done in the early constitution of Rome); because the contest 
 between the rich and the poor is notastruggle between cor- 
 poration and corporation, but a contest between men and 
 men,—a competition, not between districts, but between 
 descriptions. It would answer its purpose better, if the 
 scheme were inverted: that the votes of the masses were 
 rendered equal, and that the votes within each mass were 
 proportioned to property. 
 
 Let ussuppose one man in a district (it is an easy supposi- 
 tion) to contribute as much as a hundred of his neighbours. 
 Against these he has but one vote. If there were but one 
 representative for the mass, his poor neighbours would out- 
 vote him by an hundred to one for that single representative. 
 Bad enough! But amends are to be made him. How? 
 The district, in virtue of his wealth, is to choose, say ten mem- 
 
530 BURKE 
 
 bers instead of one: that is to say, by paying avery large con- 
 tribution he has the happiness of being outvoted, an hun- 
 dred to one, by the poor, for ten representatives, instead of 
 being outvoted exactly in the same proportion for a single 
 member. In truth, instead of benefiting by this superior 
 quantity of representation, the rich man is subjected to an 
 additional hardship. Theincrease of representation within 
 his province sets up nine persons more, and as many more 
 than nine as there may be democratic candidates, to cabal 
 and intrigue and to flatter the people at his expense and to 
 his oppression. An interest is by this means held out to 
 multitudes of the inferior sort, in obtaining a salary of eigh- 
 teen livresa day, (to them a vast object,) besides the pleasure 
 of a residence in Paris, and their share in the government of 
 the kingdom. The more the objects of ambition are multi- 
 plied and become democratic, just in that proportion the 
 rich are endangered. 
 
 Thus it must fare between the poor and the rich in the 
 province deemed aristocratic, which in its internal relation is 
 the very reverse of that character. In its external relation, 
 that is, in its relation to the other provinces, I can not see 
 how the unequal representation which is given to masses on 
 account of wealth becomes the means of preserving the equi- 
 poise and the tranquillity of the commonwealth. For, if it 
 be one of the objects to secure the weak from being crushed 
 by the strong, (as in all society undoubtedly it is,) how are 
 the smaller and poorer of these masses to be saved from the 
 tyranny of the more wealthy? Is it by adding to the wealthy 
 further and more systematical means of oppressing them ? 
 When we come toa balance of representation between cor- 
 porate bodies, provincial interests, emulations, and jealousies 
 are full as likely to arise among them as among individuals ; 
 and their divisions are likely to produce a much hotter spirit 
 of dissension, and something leading much more nearly to 
 a war. 
 
 I see that these aristocratic masses are made upon what is 
 called the principle of direct contribution. Nothing can be 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 537 
 
 a more unequal standard than this. The indirect contribu- 
 tion, that which arises from duties on consumption, is in 
 truth a better standard, and follows and discovers wealth 
 more naturally than this of direct contribution. It is diffi- 
 cult, indeed, to fix a standard of local preference on account 
 of the one, or of the other, or of both, because some prov- 
 inces may pay the more of either or of both on account of 
 causes not intrinsic, but originating from those very districts 
 over whom they have obtained a preference in consequence 
 of their ostensible contribution. If the masses were inde- 
 pendent, sovereign bodies, who were to provide for a federa- 
 tive treasury by distinct contingents, and the revenue 
 had not (as it has) many impositions running through the 
 whole, which affect men individually, and not corporately, 
 and which, by their nature, confound all territorial limits, 
 something might be said for the basis of contribution as 
 founded on masses. But, of all things, this representation, 
 to be measured by contribution, isthe most difficult to settle 
 upon principles of equity in a country which considers its 
 districts as members of awhole. Fora great city, such as 
 Bordeaux or Paris, appears to pay a vast body of duties, 
 almost out of all assignable proportion to other places, and 
 its mass is considered accordingly. But are these cities the 
 true contributors in that proportion? No. The consumers 
 of the commodities imported into Bordeaux, who are scat- 
 tered through all France, pay the import duties of Bordeaux. 
 The produce of the vintage in Guienne and Languedoc give 
 to that city the means of its contribution growing out of an 
 export commerce. The landholders who spend their estates 
 in Paris, and are thereby the creators of that city, contribute 
 for Paris from the provinces out of which their revenues 
 arise. Very nearly the same arguments will apply to the rep- 
 resentative share given on account of direct contribution: 
 because the direct contribution must be assessed on wealth, 
 real or presumed ; and that local wealth will itself arise from 
 causes not local, and which therefore in equity ought not to 
 produce a local preference. 
 
538 | BURKE 
 
 It is very remarkable, that, in this fundamental regulation 
 which settles the representation of the mass upon the direct 
 contribution, they have not yet settled how that direct con- 
 tribution shall be laid, and how apportioned. Perhaps there 
 is some latent policy towards the continuance of the present 
 Assembly in this strange procedure. However, until they 
 do this, they can have no certain constitution. It must de- 
 pend at last upon the system of taxation, and must vary with 
 every variation in that system. As they have contrived 
 matters, their taxation does not so much depend on their 
 constitution as their constitution on their taxation. This 
 must introduce great confusion among the masses; as the 
 variable qualification for votes within the district must, if 
 ever real contested elections take place, cause infinite internal 
 controversies. 
 
 To compare together the three bases, not on their political 
 reason, but on the ideas on which the Assembly 
 works, and to try its consistency with itself, we can not avoid 
 observing that the principle which the committee call the 
 basis of population does not begin to operate from the same 
 point with the two other principles, called the bases of terri- 
 tory and of contribution, which are both of an aristocratic 
 nature. The consequence is, that, where all three begin to 
 operate together, there is the most absurd inequality pro- 
 duced by the operation of the former on the two latter prin- 
 ciples. Every canton contains four square leagues, and is 
 estimated to contain, on the average, 4,000 inhabitants, or 
 680 voters in the primary assemblies, which vary in numbers 
 with the population of the canton, and send one deputy to 
 the commune for every 200 voters. Nine cantons make a 
 commune. 
 
 Now let us take a canton containing a seaport town of 
 trade, or a great manufacturing town. Let us suppose the 
 population of this canton to be 12,700 inhabitants, or 2,193 
 voters, forming three primary assemblies, and sending ten 
 deputies to the commune. 
 
 Oppose to this one canton two others of the remaining 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 539 
 
 eight in the same commune. These we may suppose to 
 have their fair population, of 4,000 inhabitants, and 680 vo- 
 ters each, or 8,000 inhabitants and 1,360 voters both to- 
 gether. These will form only two primary assemblies, and 
 send only six deputies to the commune. 
 
 When the assembly of the commune comes to vote on the 
 basis of territory, which principle is first admitted to operate 
 in that assembly, the single canton, which has half the terri- 
 tory of the other two, will have ten voices to six in the 
 election of three deputies to the assembly of the department, 
 chosen on the express ground of a representation of territory. 
 This inequality, striking as it is, will be yet highly agegra- 
 vated, if we suppose, as we fairly may, the several other 
 cantons of the commune to fall proportionably short of the 
 average population, as much as the principal canton exceeds 
 he 
 
 Now as to the basis of contribution, which also is a prin- 
 ciple admitted first to operate in the assembly of the com- 
 mune. Let us again take one canton, such as is stated above. 
 If the whole of the direct contributions paid by a great trad- 
 ing or manufacturing town be divided equally among the 
 inhabitants, each individual will be found to pay much more 
 than an individual living in the country according to the 
 same average. The whole paid by the inhabitants of the 
 former will be more than the whole paid by the inhabitants 
 of the latter,—we may fairly assume one third more. Then 
 the 12,700 inhabitants, or 2,193 voters of the canton, will 
 pay as much as 19,050 inhabitants, or 3,289 voters of the 
 other cantons, which are nearly the estimated proportion of 
 inhabitants and voters of five other cantons. Nowthe 2,193 
 voters will, as I before said, send only ten deputies to the 
 assembly ; the 3,289 voters will send sixteen. Thus, for an 
 equal share in the contribution of the whole commune, there 
 will be a difference of sixteen voices to ten in voting for de- 
 puties to be chosen on the principle of representing the 
 general contribution of the whole commune. 
 
 By the same mode of computation, we shall find 15,875 
 
540 BURKE 
 
 inhabitants, or 2,741 voters of the other cantons, who pay 
 one-sixth less to the contribution of the whole commune, 
 will have three voices more than the 12,700 inhabitants, or 
 2,193 voters of the one canton. 
 
 Such is the fantastical and unjust inequality between mass 
 and mass, in this curious repartition of the rights of representa- 
 tion arising out of territory and contribution. The quali- 
 fications which these confer are in truth negative qualifica- 
 tions, that give a right in an inverse proportion to the 
 possession of them. 
 
 In this whole contrivance of the three bases, consider it in 
 any light you please, I do not see a variety of objects recon- 
 ciled in one consistent whole, but several contradictory 
 principles reluctantly and irreconcilably brought and held 
 together by your philosophers, like wild beasts shut up in a 
 cage, to claw and bite each other to their mutual destruc- 
 tion. 
 
 I am afraid I have gone too far into their way of consider- 
 ing the formation of a Constitution. They have much, but 
 bad, metaphysics,—much, but bad, geometry,—much, but 
 false, proportionate arithmetic; but if it were all as exact as 
 metaphysics, geometry, and arithmetic ought to be, and if 
 their schemes were perfectly consistent in all their parts, 
 it would make only a more fair and sightly vision. It is re- 
 markable, that, in a great arrangement of mankind, not one 
 reference whatsoever is to be found to anything moral or 
 anything politic.—nothing that relates to the concerns, the 
 actions, the passions, the interests of men. ‘“‘ Hominem non 
 sapiunt.” 
 
 You see I only consider this Constitution as electoral, and 
 leading by steps to the National Assembly. I do not enter 
 into the internal government of the departments, and their 
 genealogy through the communesand cantons. These local 
 governments are, in the original plan, to be as nearly as pos- 
 sible composed in the same manner and on the same principles 
 with the elective assemblies. They are each of them bodies 
 perfectly compact and rounded in themselves, 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 541 
 
 You cannot but perceive in this scheme, that it has a direct 
 and immediate tendency to sever France into a variety of 
 republics, and to render them totally independent of each 
 other, without any direct constitutional means of coherence, 
 connection, or subordination, except what may be derived 
 from their acquiescence in the determinations of the general 
 congress of the ambassadors from each independent republic. 
 Such in reality is the National Assembly ; and such govern- 
 ments, I admit, do exist in the world, though in forms in- 
 finitely more suitable to the local and habitual circumstances 
 of their people. But such associations, rather than bodies 
 politic, have generally been the effect of necessity, not 
 choice; and I believe the present French power is the very 
 first body of citizens who, having obtained full authority to 
 do with their country what they pleased, have chosen to dis- 
 sever it in this barbarous manner. 
 
 It is impossible not to observe, that, in the spirit of this 
 geometrical distribution and arithmetical arrangement, these 
 pretended citizens treat France exactly like a country of con- 
 quest. Acting as conquerors, they have imitated the policy 
 of the harshest of that harsh race. The policy of such bar- 
 barous victors, who contemn a subdued people, and insult 
 their feelings, has ever been, as much as in them lay, to des- 
 troy all vestiges of the ancient country, in religion, in polity, 
 in laws, and in manners; to confound all territorial limits; 
 to produce a general poverty; to put up their properties to 
 auction; to crush their princes, nobles, and pontiffs; to lay 
 low everything which had lifted its head above the level, or 
 which could serve to combine or rally, in their distresses, the 
 disbanded people, under the standard of old opinion. They 
 have made France free in the manner in which those sincere 
 friends to the rights of mankind, the Romans, freed Greece, 
 Macedon, and other nations. They destroyed the bonds of 
 their union, under colour of providing for the independence 
 of each of their cities. 
 
 When the members who compose these new bodies of 
 cantons, communes, and departments, arrangements pur- 
 
542 BURKE 
 
 posely produced through the medium of confusion, begin to 
 act, they will find themselves in a great measure strangers 
 to one another. The electors and elected throughout, es- 
 pecially in the rural cantons, will be frequently without any 
 civil habitudes or connections, or any of that natural dis- 
 cipline which is the soul of atrue republic. Magistrates and 
 collectors of revenue are now no longer acquainted with their 
 districts, bishops with their dioceses, or curates with their 
 parishes. These new colonies of the rights of men bear a 
 strong resemblance to that sort of military colonies which 
 Tacitus has observed upon in the declining policy of Rome. 
 In better and wiser days (whatever course they took with 
 foreign nations) they were careful to make the elements of a 
 methodical subordination and settlement to be coeval, and 
 even to lay the foundations of discipline in the military.” 
 But when all the good arts had fallen into ruin, they pro- 
 ceeded, as your Assembly does, upon the equality of men, 
 and with as little judgment, and as little care for those things 
 which make a republic tolerable or durable. But in this, as 
 well as almost every instance, your new commonwealth is 
 born and bred and fed in those corruptions which mark de- 
 generated and worn-out republics. Your child comes into 
 the world with the symptoms of death; the facies Hippo- 
 cratica forms the character of its physiognomy and the prog- 
 nostic of its fate. 
 
 The legislators who framed the ancient republics knew that 
 their business was too arduous to be accomplished with no 
 better apparatus than the metaphysics of an undergraduate 
 and the mathematics and arithmetic of anexciseman. They 
 had to do with men, and they were obliged to study human 
 nature. They had to do with citizens, and they were obliged 
 to study the effects of those habits which are communicated 
 by the circumstances of civil life. They were sensible that 
 the operation of this second nature on the first produced a 
 new combination,—and thence arose many diversities 
 amongst men, according to their birth, their education, their 
 professions, the periods of their lives, their residence in towns 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 543 
 
 or in the country, their several ways of acquiring and of fix- 
 ing property, and according to the quality of the property 
 itself, all which rendered them, as it were, so many different 
 species of animals. From hence they thought themselves 
 obliged to dispose their citizens into such classes, and to place 
 them in such situations in the state, as their peculiar habits 
 might qualify them to fill, and to allot to them such appro- 
 priated privileges as might secure to them what their specific 
 occasions required, and which might furnish to each descrip- 
 tion such force as might protect it in the conflict caused by 
 the diversity of interests that must exist, and must contend, 
 in all complex society: for the legislator would have been 
 ashamed that the coarse husbandman should well know how 
 to assort and to use his sheep, horses, and oxen, and should 
 have enough of common sense not to abstract and equalize 
 them all into animals, without providing for each kind an 
 appropriate food, care, and employment,—whilst he, the 
 economist, disposer, and shepherd of his own kindred, sub- 
 liming himself into an airy metaphysician, was resolved to 
 know nothing of his flocks but as men in general. It is for 
 this reason that Montesquieu observed, very justly, that, in 
 their classification of the citizens, the great legislators of an- 
 tiquity made the greatest display of their powers, and even 
 soared above themselves. It is here that your modern legis- 
 lators have gone deep into the negative series, and sunk even 
 below their own nothing. As the first sort of legislators at- 
 tended to the different kinds of citizens, and combined them 
 into one commonwealth, the others, the metaphysical and 
 alchemistical legislators, have taken the directly contrary 
 course. They have attempted to confound all sorts of citi- 
 zens, as well as they could, into one homogeneous mass; 
 and then they divided this their amalgama into a number of 
 incoherent republics. They reduce men to loose counters, 
 merely for the sake of simple telling, and not to figures, 
 whose power is to arise from their place in the table. The 
 elements of their own metaphysics might have taught them 
 better lessons. The troll of their categorical table might 
 
544 BURKE 
 
 have informed them that there was something else in the 
 intellectual world besides substance and quantity. They 
 might learn from the catechism of metaphysics that there 
 were eight heads more,*’ in every complex deliberation, 
 which they have never thought of ; though these, of all the 
 ten, are the subject on which the skill of man can operate 
 anything at all. 
 
 So far from this able disposition of some of the old republi- 
 can legislators, which follows with a solicitous accuracy the 
 moral conditions and propensities of men, they have leveled 
 and crushed together all the orders which they found, even 
 under the coarse, unartificial arrangement of the monarchy, 
 in which mode of government the classing of the citizens is 
 not of so much importance as in arepublic. It is true, how- 
 ever, that every such classification, if properly ordered, is 
 good in all forms of government, and composes a strong 
 barrier against the excesses of despotism, as well as it is the 
 necessary means of giving effect and permanence to a 
 republic. For want of something of this kind, ifthe present 
 project of a republic should fail, all securities to a moderated 
 freedom fail along with it, all the indirect restraints which 
 mitigate despotism are removed; insomuch that, if mon- 
 archy should ever again obtain an entire ascendency in 
 France, under this or any other dynasty, it will probably be, 
 if not voluntarily tempered, at setting out, by the wise and 
 virtuous counsels of the prince, the most completely arbi- 
 trary power that has ever appeared on earth. This is to 
 play a most desperate game. 
 
 The confusion which attends on all such proceedings they 
 even declare to be one of their objects, and they hope to 
 secure their Constitution by a terror of a return of those 
 evils which attended their making it. “ By this,” say they, 
 “its destruction will become difficult to authority, which 
 cannot break it up without the entire disorganization of the 
 whole state.’’ They presume, that, if this authority should 
 ‘ ever come to the same degree of power that they have 
 acquired, it would make a more moderate and chastised use of 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 545 
 
 it, and would piously tremble entirely to disorganize the state 
 in the savage manner that they have done. They expect 
 from the virtues of returning despotism the security which is 
 to be enjoyed by the offspring of their popular vices. 
 
 I wish, Sir, that you and my readers would give an atten- 
 tive perusal to the work of M. de Calonne on this subject. 
 It is, indeed, not only an eloquent, but an able and instruc- 
 tive performance. I confine myself to what he says relative 
 to the Constitution of the new state, and to the condition of 
 the revenue. Asto the disputes of this minister with his 
 rivals, I do not wish to pronounce upon them. As little do 
 I mean to hazard any opinion concerning his ways and 
 means, financial or political, for taking his country out of its 
 present disgraceful and deplorable situation of servitude, 
 anarchy, bankruptcy, and beggary. I cannot speculate quite 
 so sanguinely as he does: but he is a Frenchman, and has a 
 closer duty relative to those objects, and better means of 
 judging of them, than I can have. I wish that the formal 
 avowal which he refers to, made by one of the principal 
 leaders in the Assembly, concerning the tendency of their 
 scheme to bring France not only from a monarchy to a re- 
 public, but from a republic to a mere confederacy, may be 
 very particularly attended to. It adds new force to my ob- 
 servations: and, indeed, M. de Calonne’s work supplies my 
 deficiencies by many new and striking arguments on most 
 of the subjects of this letter. 
 
 It is this resolution to break their country into separate 
 republics which has driven them into the greatest number of 
 their difficulties and contradictions. If it were not for this, 
 all the questions of exact equality, and these balances, never 
 to be settled, of individual rights, population, and contribu- 
 tion, would be wholly useless. The representation, though 
 derived from parts, would be a duty which equally regarded 
 the whole. Each deputy to the Assembly would be the 
 representative of France, and of all its descriptions, of the 
 many and of the few, of the rich and of the poor, of the 
 
 great districts and of the small. All these districts would them. 
 35 
 
ma | BURKE 
 
 selves be subordinate to some standing authority, existing in- 
 dependently of them,—an authority in which their representa- 
 tion, and everything that belongs to it, originated, and to 
 which it was pointed. This standing, unalterable, funda- 
 mental government would make, and it is the only thing 
 which could make, that territory truly and properly a whole. 
 With us, when we elect popular representatives, we send 
 them to a council in which each man individually is a subject, 
 and submitted to a government complete in all its ordinary 
 functions. With you the elective Assembly is the sovereign, 
 and the sole sovereign ; all the members are therefore in- 
 tegral parts of this sole sovereignty. But with us it is 
 totally different. With us, the representative, separated 
 from the other parts, can have no action and no existence. 
 The government is the point of reference of the several 
 members and districts of our representation. This is the 
 center of our unity. This government of reference is a 
 trustee for the whole, and not for the parts. So is the 
 other branch of our public council: I mean the House of 
 Lords. With us the King and the Lords are several and 
 joint securities for the equality of each district, each prov- 
 ince, each city. When did you hear in Great Britain of 
 any province suffering from the inequality of its representa- 
 tion ? what district from having no representation at all? 
 Not only our monarchy and our peerage secure the equality 
 on which our unity depends, but it is the spirit of the House 
 of Commons itself. The very inequality of representation, 
 which is so foolishly complained of, is perhaps the very thing 
 which prevents us from thinking or acting as members for | 
 districts. Cornwall elects as many members as all Scotland. 
 But is Cornwall better taken care of than Scotland? Few 
 trouble their heads about any of your bases, out of some 
 giddy clubs. Most of those who wish for any change, upon 
 any plausible grounds, desire it on different ideas. 
 
 Your new Constitution is the very reverse of ours in its 
 principle; and I am astonished how any persons could 
 dream of holding out anything done in it as an example for 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 547 
 
 Great Britain. With you there is little, or rather no, con- 
 nection between the last representative and the first constit- 
 uent. The member who goes to the National Assembly is 
 not chosen by the people, nor accountable to them. There 
 are three elections before he is chosen; two sets of magis- 
 tracy intervene between him and the primary assembly, so 
 as to render him, as I have said, an ambassador of a state, 
 and not the representative of the people within a state. By 
 this the whole spirit of the election is changed; nor can any 
 corrective your Constitution-mongers have devised render 
 him anything else than what he is. The very attempt to do 
 it would inevitably introduce a confusion, if possible, more 
 horrid than the present. There is no way to make a con- 
 nection between the original constituent and the representa- 
 tive, but by the circuitous means which may lead the can- 
 didate to apply in the first instance to the primary electors, 
 in order that by their authoritative instructions (and some- 
 thing more perhaps) these primary electors may force the 
 two succeeding bodies of electors to make a choice agreeable 
 to their wishes. But this would plainly subvert the whole 
 scheme. It would be to plunge them back into that tumult 
 and confusion of popular election, which, by their inter- 
 posed gradation of elections, they mean to avoid, and at 
 length to risk the whole fortune of the state with those who 
 have the least knowledge of it and the least interest in it. 
 This is a perpetual dilemma, into which they are thrown by 
 the vicious, weak, and contradictory principles they have 
 chosen. Unless the people break up and level this grada- 
 tion, it is plain that they do not at all substantially elect to 
 the Assembly ; indeed, they elect as little in appearance as 
 reality. 
 
 What is it we all seek for in an election? To answer its 
 real purposes, you must first possess the means of knowing 
 the fitness of your man; and then you must retain some 
 hold upon him by personal obligation or dependence. 
 For what end are these primary electors complimented, or 
 rather mocked, with a choice? They can never know any- 
 
548 BURKE 
 
 thing of the qualities of him that is to serve them, nor has 
 he any obligation whatsoever to them. Of all the powers 
 unfit to be delegated by those who have any real means 
 of judging, that most peculiarly unfit is what relates toa 
 personal choice. In case of abuse, that body of primary 
 electors never can call the representative to an account for 
 his conduct. He is too far removed from them in the chain 
 of representation. If he acts improperly at the end of his 
 two years’ lease, it does not concern him for two years 
 more. By the new French Constitution the best and the 
 wisest representatives go equally with the worst into this 
 Limbus Patrum. ‘Their bottoms are supposed foul, and they 
 must go into dock to be refitted. Every man who has 
 served in an Assembly is ineligible for two years after. Just 
 as these magistrates begin to learn their trade, like chimney- 
 sweepers, they are disqualified for exercising it. Superficial, 
 new, petulant acquisition, and interrupted, dronish, broken, 
 ill recollection, is to be the destined character of all your 
 future governors. Your Constitution has too much of 
 jealousy to have much of sense in it. You consider the 
 breach of trust in the representative so principally that you 
 do not at all regard the question of his fitness to execute it. 
 
 This purgatory interval is not unfavourable to a faithless 
 representative, who may be as good a canvasser as he was a 
 bad governor. In this time he may cabal himself into a 
 superiority over the wisest and most virtuous. As, in the 
 end, all the members of this elective Constitution are equally 
 fugitive, and exist only for the election, they may be no longer 
 the same persons who had chosen him, to whom he is to be 
 responsible when he solicits fora renewal of his trust. To 
 call all the secondary electors of the commune to account 
 is ridiculous, impracticable, and unjust: they may them- 
 selves have been deceived in their choice, as the third set of 
 electors, those of the department, may be intheirs. In your 
 elections responsibility cannot exist. 
 
 Finding no sort of principle of coherence with each other 
 in the nature and constitution of the several new republics 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 549 
 
 of France, I considered what cement the legislators had 
 provided for them from any extraneous materials. Their 
 confederations, their spectacles, their civic feasts, and their 
 enthusiasm I take no notice of; they are nothing but mere 
 tricks; but tracing their policy through their actions, I think 
 I can distinguish the arrangements by which they propose 
 to hold these republics together. The first is the confiscation, 
 with the compulsory paper currency annexed to it; the 
 second is the supreme power of the city of Paris; the third 
 is the general army of the state. Of this last I shall reserve 
 what I have to say, until I come to consider the army as an 
 head by itself. 
 
 As to the operation of the first (the confiscation and paper 
 currency) merely as a cement, I can not deny that these, the 
 one depending on the other, may for some time compose 
 some sort of cement, if their madness and folly in the man- 
 agement, and in the tempering of the parts together, does 
 not produce a repulsion in the very outset. But allowing to 
 the scheme some coherence and some duration, it appears to 
 me, that, if after a while, the confiscation should not be 
 found sufficient to support the paper coinage (as I am 
 morally certain it will not), then, instead of cementing, it 
 will add infinitely to the dissociation, distraction, and con- 
 fusion of these confederate republics, both with relation to 
 each other and to the several parts within themselves. But 
 if the confiscation should so far succeed as to sink the paper 
 currency, the cement is gone with the circulation. In the 
 meantime its binding force will be very uncertain, and it will 
 straiten or relax with every variation in the credit of the 
 paper. 
 
 One thing only is certain in this scheme, which is an effect 
 seemingly collateral, but direct, 1] have no doubt, in the 
 minds of those who conduct this business: that is, its effect 
 in producing an oligarchy in every one of the republics. A 
 paper circulation, not founded on any real money deposited 
 or engaged for, amounting already to four-and-forty mill- 
 ions of English money, and this currency by force substituted 
 
550 BURKE 
 
 in the place of the coin of the kingdom, becoming thereby 
 the substance of its revenue, as well as the medium of all its 
 commercial and civil intercourse, must put the whole of 
 what power, authority, and influence is left, in any form 
 whatsoever it may assume, into the hands of the managers 
 and conductors of this circulation. 
 
 In England we feel the influence of the Bank, though it 
 is only the center of a voluntary dealing. He knows little, 
 indeed, of the influence of money upon mankind, who does 
 not see the force of the management of a moneyed concern 
 which is so much more extensive, and in its nature so much 
 more depending on the managers, than any of ours. But 
 this is not merely a money concern. There is another mem- 
 ber in the system inseparably connected with this money 
 management. It consists in the means of drawing out at 
 discretion portions of the confiscated lands for sale, and 
 carrying on a process of continual transmutation of paper 
 into land and land into paper. When we follow this process 
 in its effects, we may conceive something of the intensity of 
 the force with which this system must operate. By this 
 means the spirit of money-jobbing and speculation goes into 
 the mass of land itself, and incorporates with it. By this 
 kind of operation, that species of property becomes, as it 
 were, volatilized ; it assumes an unnatural and monstrous 
 activity, and thereby throws into the hands of the several 
 managers, principal and subordinate, Parisian and provincial, 
 all the representative of money, and perhaps a full tenth 
 part of all the land in France, which has now acquired the 
 worst and most pernicious part of the evil of a paper circula- 
 tion, the greatest possible uncertainty in its value. They 
 have reversed the Latonian kindness to the landed property 
 of Delos. They have sent theirs to be blown about, like the 
 light fragments of a wreck, oras et littora circum. 
 
 The new dealers, being all habitually adventurers, and 
 without any fixed habits or local predilections, will purchase 
 to job out again, as the market of paper or of money or of 
 land shall present an advantage. For though a holy bishop 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 551 
 
 thinks that agriculture will derive great advantages from the 
 “enlightened ’”’ usurers who are to purchase the Church con- 
 fiscations, I who am not a good, but an old farmer, with 
 great humility beg leave to tell his late Lordship that usury 
 is not a tutor of agriculture ; and if the word “enlightened” 
 be understood according to the new dictionary, as it always 
 is in your new schools, I can not conceive how a man’s not 
 believing in God can teach him to cultivate the earth with 
 the least of any additional skill or encouragement. “ Diis 
 immortalibus sero,” said an old Roman, when he held one 
 handle of the plow, whilst Death held the other. Though 
 you were to join in the commission all the directors of the 
 two Academies to the directors of the Caisse d’Escompte, 
 an old experienced peasant is worth them all. I have got 
 more information upon a curious and interesting branch of 
 husbandry, in one short conversation with an old Carthusian 
 monk, than I have derived from all the bank directors that 
 I have ever conversed with. However, there is no cause for 
 apprehension from the meddling of money-dealers with rural 
 economy. These gentlemen are too wise in their generation. 
 At first, perhaps, their tender and susceptible imaginations 
 may be captivated with the innocent and unprofitable 
 delights of a pastoral life; but in a little time they will find 
 that agriculture is a trade much more laborious and much 
 less lucrative than that which they had left. After making 
 its panegyric, they will turn their backs on it, like their great 
 precursor and prototype. They may, like him, begin by 
 singing, “ Beatus ille,’—but what will be the end? 
 
 Hec ubi locutus foenerator Alphius, 
 Jam jam futurus rusticus, 
 
 Omnem relegit Idibus pecuniam, 
 Querit Calendis ponere. 
 
 They will cultivate the Caisse d’Eglise, under the sacred 
 auspices of this prelate, with much more profit than its vine- 
 yards and its corn-fields. They will employ their talents 
 according to their habits and their interests. They will not 
 
552 BURKE 
 
 follow the plow, whilst they can direct treasuries and govern 
 provinces. 
 
 Your legislators, in everything new, are the very first who 
 have founded a commonwealth upon gaming, and infused 
 this spirit into it as its vital breath. The great object in 
 these politics is to metamorphose France from a great king- 
 dom into one great play-table,—to turn its inhabitants into 
 a nation of gamesters,—to make speculation as extensive as 
 life,—to mix it with all its concerns,—and to divert the 
 whole of the hopes and fears of the people from their usual 
 channels into the impulses, passions, and superstitions of 
 those who live on chances. They loudly proclaim their 
 opinion, that this their present system of a republic can not 
 possibly exist without this kind of gaming fund, and that 
 the very thread of its life is spun out of the staple of these 
 speculations. The old gaming in funds was mischievous 
 enough, undoubtedly; but it was so only to individuals. 
 Even when it had its greatest extent, in the Mississippi and 
 South Sea, it affected but few, comparatively ; where it 
 extends further, as in lotteries, the spirit has but a single 
 object. But where the law, which in most circumstances 
 forbids, and in none countenances gaming, is itself debauched, 
 so as to reverse its nature and policy, and expressly to force 
 the subject to this destructive table, by bringing the spirit 
 and symbols of gaming into the minutest matters, and 
 - engaging everybody in it, and in everything, a more dreadful 
 epidemic distemper of that kind is spread than yet has ap. 
 peared in the world. With you a man can neither earn nor 
 buy his dinner without a speculation. What he receives in 
 the morning will not have the same value at night. What 
 he is compelled to take as pay for an old debt will not be 
 received as the same, when he comes to pay a debt contracted 
 by himself; nor will it be the same, when by prompt pay- 
 ment he would avoid contracting any debt at all. Industry 
 must wither away. Economy must be driven from your 
 country. Careful provision will have no existence. Who 
 will labour without knowing the amount of his pay? Who 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 553 
 
 will study to increase what none can estimate? Who will 
 accumulate, when he does not know the value of what he 
 saves? If you abstract it from its uses in gaming, to accu- 
 mulate, your paper wealth would be, not the providence of 
 a man, but the distempered instinct of a jackdaw. 
 
 The truly melancholy part of the policy of systematically 
 making a nation of gamesters is this,—that, though all are 
 forced to play, few can understand the game, and fewer still 
 are in a condition to avail themselves of that knowledge. 
 The many must be the dupes of the few who conduct the 
 machine of these speculations. What effect it must have on 
 the country-people is visible. The townsman can calcu- 
 late from day to day ; not so the inhabitant of the country. 
 When the peasant first brings his corn to market, the magis- 
 trate in the towns obliges him to take the assignat at par ; 
 when he goes to the shop with this money, he finds it seven 
 per cent. the worse for crossing the way. This market he 
 will not readily resort to again. The towns-people will be 
 inflamed ; they will force the country-people to bring their 
 corn. Resistance will begin, and the murders of Paris and 
 St. Denis may be renewed through all France. 
 
 What signifies the empty compliment paid to the country, 
 by giving it, perhaps, more than its share in the theory of 
 your representation ? Where have you placed the real power 
 over moneyed and landed circulation? Where have you plac- 
 ed the means of raising and falling the value of every man’s 
 freehold? Those whose operations can take from or add 
 ten per cent. to the possessions of every man in France must 
 be the masters of every man in France. The whole of the 
 power obtained by this Revolution will settle in the towns 
 among the burghers, and the moneyed directors who lead 
 them. The landed gentleman, the yeoman, and the peasant 
 have, none of them, habits or inclinations or experience 
 which can lead them to any share in this the sole source of 
 power and influence nowleft in France. The very nature of 
 a country life, the very nature of landed property, in all the 
 occupations and all the pleasures they afford, render com- 
 
BoA BURKE 
 
 bination and arrangement (the sole way of procuring and ex- 
 erting influence) in a manner impossible amongst country- 
 people. Combine them by all the art you can, and all the 
 industry, they are always dissolving into individuality. Any- 
 thing in the nature of incorporation is almost impracticable 
 amongst them. Hope, fear, alarm, jealousy, the ephemerous 
 tale that does its business and dies in a day, all these things, 
 which are the reins and spurs by which leaders check or urge 
 the minds of followers, are not easily employed,or hardly at all, 
 amongst scattered people. They assemble, they arm, they act, 
 with the utmost difficulty, and atthe greatest charge. Their 
 efforts, ifever they can be commenced, can not be sustained. 
 They can not proceed systematically. If the country-gentle- 
 men attempt an influence through the mere income of their 
 property, what is it to that of those who have ten times their 
 income to sell, and who can ruin their property by bringing 
 their plunder to meet it at market? Ifthe landed man wishes 
 to mortgage, he falls the value of his land and raises the value 
 of assignats. He augments the power of his enemy by the 
 very means he must take to contend with him. The country- 
 gentleman, therefore, the officer by sea and land, the man of 
 liberal views and habits, attached to no profession, will be as 
 completely excluded from the government of his country as 
 if he were legislatively proscribed. It is obvious that, in the 
 towns, all the things which conspire against the country-gen- 
 tleman combine in favour of the money manager and director. 
 In towns combination is natural. The habits of burghers, 
 their occupations, their diversion, their business, their idle- 
 ness, continually bring them into mutual contact. Their 
 virtues and their vices are sociable ; they are always in gar- 
 rison ; and they come embodied and half-disciplined into the 
 hands of those who mean to form them for civil or military 
 action. 
 
 All these considerations leave no doubt on my mind, that, © 
 if this monster of a Constitution can continue, France will 
 be wholly governed by the agitators in corporations, by so- 
 cieties in the towns, formed of directors in assignats, and 
 
rath 
 are! 
 be sy 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 555 
 
 trustees for the sale of Church lands, attorneys, agents, 
 money-jobbers, speculators, and adventurers, composing an 
 ignoble oligarchy, founded on the destruction of the crown, 
 the Church, the nobility, and the people. Here end all the 
 deceitful dreams and visions of the equality and rights of 
 men. In “the Serbonian bog’”’ of this base oligarchy they 
 are all absorbed, sunk, and lost forever. 
 
 Though human eyes can not trace them, one would be 
 tempted to think some great offenses in France must cry to 
 Heaven, which has thought fit to punish it with a subjection 
 to a vile and inglorious domination, in which no comfort or 
 compensation is to be found in any even of those false splen- 
 dours which, playing about other tyrannies, prevent mankind 
 from feeling themselves dishonoured even whilst they are op- 
 pressed. I must confess I am touched with a sorrow mixed 
 with some indignation, at the conduct ofa few men, once of 
 great rank, and still of great character, who, deluded with 
 specious names, have engaged in a business too deep for the 
 line of their understanding to fathom,—who have lent their 
 fair reputation and the authority of their high-sounding 
 names to the designs of men with whom they could not be 
 acquainted, and have thereby made their very virtues operate 
 to the ruin of their country. 
 
 So far as to the first cementing principle. 
 
 The second material of cement for their new republic is 
 the superiority of the city of Paris; and this, I admit, is 
 strongly connected with the other cementing principle of 
 paper circulation and confiscation. It isin this part of the 
 project we must look for the cause of the destruction of all the 
 old bounds of provinces and jurisdictions, ecclesiastical and 
 secular, and the dissolution of all ancient combinations of 
 things, as well as the formation of so many small unconnected 
 republics. The power of the city of Paris is evidently one 
 great spring of all their politics. It is through the power of 
 Paris, now become the center and focus of jobbing, that 
 the leaders of this faction direct, or rather command, the 
 whole legislative and the whole executive government. 
 
556 BURKE 
 
 Everything, therefore, must be done which can confirm the 
 authority of that city over the other republics. Paris is com- 
 pact ; she has an enormous strength, wholly disproportioned 
 to the force of any of the square republics; and this strength 
 is collected and condensed within a narrow compass. Paris 
 has a natural and easy connection of its parts, which will not 
 be affected by any scheme of a geometrical constitution ; 
 nor does it much signify whether its proportion of represen- 
 tation be more or less, since it has the whole draught of 
 fishes in its drag-net. The: other divisions of the kingdom, 
 being hackled and torn to pieces, and separated from all their 
 habitual means and even principles of union, cannot, for 
 some time at least, confederate against her. Nothing was 
 to be left in all the subordinate members, but weakness, dis- 
 connection, and confusion. ‘To confirm this part of the plan, 
 the Assembly has lately come to a resolution that no two of 
 their republics shall have the same commander-in-chief. 
 
 To a person who takes a view of the whole, the strength 
 of Paris, thus formed, will appear a system of general weak- 
 ness. It is boasted that the geometrical policy has been 
 adopted, that all local ideas should be sunk, and that the 
 people should be no longer Gascons, Picards, Bretons, Nor- 
 mans,—but Frenchmen, with one country, one heart, and one 
 Assembly. But, instead of being all Frenchmen, the greater 
 likelihood is that the inhabitants of that region will shortly 
 have no country. No man ever was attached by a sense of 
 pride, partiality, or real affection, to a description of square 
 measurement. He never will glory in belonging to the 
 chequer No. 71, or to any other badge-ticket. We begin our 
 public affections in our families. Nocold relation is a zeal- 
 ous citizen. We pass on to our neighbourhoods, and our 
 habitual provincial connections. These are inns and resting- 
 places. Such divisions of our country as have been formed 
 by habit, and not by a sudden jerk of authority, were so 
 many little images of the great country, in which the heart 
 found something which it could fill, The love to the whole 
 is not extinguished by this subordinate partiality. Perhaps 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 557 
 
 it is a sort of elemental training to those higher and more 
 large regards by which alone men come to be affected, as 
 with their own concern, in the prosperity of a kingdom so 
 extensive as that of France. In that general territory itself, 
 as in the old name of Provinces, the citizens are interested 
 from old prejudices and unreasoned habits, and not on ac- 
 count of the geometric properties of its figure. The power 
 and preeminence of Paris does certainly press down and 
 hold these republics together as long as it lasts: but, for the 
 reasons I have already given you, I think it can not last 
 very long. 
 
 Passing from the civil creating and the civil cementing 
 principles of this Constitution to the National Assembly, 
 which is to appear and act as sovereign, we see a body in its 
 constitution with every possible power and no possible ex- 
 ternal control. We see a body without fundamental laws, 
 without established maxims, without respected rules of pro- 
 ceeding, which nothing can keep firm to any system what- 
 soever. Their idea of their powers is always taken at the 
 utmost stretch of legislative competency, and their ex- 
 amples for common cases from the exceptions of the most 
 urgent necessity. The future is to be in most respects like 
 the present Assembly ; but, by the mode of the new elections 
 and the tendency of the new circulations, it will be purged 
 of the small degree of internal control existing ina minority 
 chosen originally from various interests, and preserving 
 something of their spirit. If possible, the next Assembly 
 must be worse than the present. The present, by destroying 
 and altering everything, will leave to their successors appar- 
 ently nothing popular to do. They will be roused by emu- 
 lation and example to enterprises the boldest and the most 
 absurd. To suppose such an Assembly sitting in perfect 
 quietude is ridiculous. 
 
 Your all-sufficient legislators, in their hurry to do every- 
 thing at once, have forgot one thing that seems essential, 
 and which, I believe, never has been before, in the theory or 
 the practise, omitted by any projector of a republic. They 
 
558 BURKE 
 
 have forgot to constitute a senate, or something of that nature 
 and character. Never, before this time, was heard of a body 
 politic composed of one legislative and active assembly, and 
 its executive officers, without such a council: without some- 
 thing to which foreign states might connect themselves,— 
 something to which, in the ordinary detail of government, 
 the people could look up,—something which might give a 
 bias and steadiness, and preserve something like consistency 
 in the proceedings of state. Such a body kings generally 
 have as a council. A monarchy may exist without it; but 
 it seems to be in the very essence of a republican govern- 
 ment. It holds a sort of middle place between the supreme 
 power exercised by the people, or immediately delegated 
 from them, and the mere executive. Of this there are no 
 traces in your Constitution ; and in providing nothing of this 
 kind, your Solons and Numas have, as much as in anything 
 else, discovered a sovereign incapacity. 
 
 Let us now turn our eyes to what they have done towards 
 the formation of an executive power. For this they have 
 chosen a degraded king. This their first executive officer is 
 to be a machine, without any sort of deliberative discretion 
 in any one act of his function. At best, he is but a channel 
 to convey to the National Assembly such matter as may im- 
 port that body to know. If he had been made the exclusive 
 channel, the power would not have been without its impor- 
 tance, though infinitely perilous to those who would choose 
 to exercise it. But public intelligence and statement of facts 
 may pass to the Assembly with equal authenticity through 
 any other conveyance. As tothe means, therefore, of giving 
 a direction to measures by the statement of an authorized 
 reporter, this office of intelligence is as nothing. 
 
 To consider the French scheme of an executive officer, in 
 its two natural divisions of civil and political—In the first 
 it must be observed, that, according to the new Constitution, 
 the higher parts of judicature, in either of its lines, are not 
 inthe king. The king of France is not the fountain of 
 justice. The judges, neither the original nor the appellate, 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 559 
 
 are of his nomination. He neither proposes the candidates 
 nor has a negative on the choice. He is not even the public 
 prosecutor. He serves only as a notary, to authenticate the 
 choice made of the judges in the several districts. By his 
 officers he is to execute their sentence. When we look into 
 the true nature of his authority, he appears to be nothing 
 more than a chief of bumbailiffs, sergeants-at-mace, catch- 
 poles, jailers, and hangmen. It is impossible to place any- 
 thing called royalty in a more degrading point of view. A 
 thousand times better it had been for the dignity of this un. 
 happy prince, that he had nothing at all to do with the 
 administration of justice, deprived as he is of all that is ven- 
 erable and all that is consolatory in that function, without 
 power of originating any process, without a power of sus- 
 pension, mitigation, or pardon. Everything in justice that 
 is vile and odious is thrown upon him. It was not for noth- 
 ing that the Assembly has been at such pains to remove the 
 stigma from certain offices, when they were resolved to place 
 the person who had lately been their king in a situation but 
 one degree above the executioner, and in an office nearly of 
 the same quality. Itis not in Nature, that, situated as the 
 king of the French now is, he can respect himself or can be 
 respected by others. 
 
 View this new executive officer on the side of his political 
 capacity, as he acts under the orders of the National Assem- 
 bly. To execute laws is a royal office; to execute orders is 
 notto bea king. However, a political executive magistracy, 
 though merely such, isa great trust. It is a trust, indeed, 
 that has much depending upon its faithful and diligent per- 
 formance, both in the person presiding in it and in all its 
 subordinates. Means of performing this duty ought to be 
 given by regulation; and dispositions towards it ought to 
 be infused by the circumstances attendant on the trust. It 
 ought to be environed with dignity, authority, and considera- 
 tion, and it ought to lead to glory. The office of execution 
 is an office of exertion. It isnot from impotence we are to 
 expect the tasks of power. What sort of person is a king to 
 
 « 
 
560 BURKE 
 
 command executory service, who has no means whatsoever to 
 reward it:—not in a permanent office; not in a grant of 
 land; no, not in a pension of fifty pounds a year; not in the 
 vainest and most trivial title? In France the king is no more 
 the fountain of honour than he is the fountain of justice. 
 All rewards, all distinctions, arein other hands. Those who 
 serve the king can be actuated by no natural motive but 
 fear,—by a fear of everything except their master. His 
 functions of internal coercion are as odious as those which 
 he exercises in the department of justice. If relief is to be 
 given to any municipality, the Assembly gives it. If troops 
 are to be sent to reduce them to obedience to the Assembly, 
 the king is to execute the order; and upon every occasion 
 he is to be spattered over with the blood of his people. He 
 has no negative; yet his name and authority is used to en- 
 force every harsh decree. Nay, he must concur in the but- 
 chery of those who shall attempt to free him from his im- 
 prisonment, or show thé slightest attachment to his person 
 or to his ancient authority. 
 
 Executive magistracy ought to be constituted in sucha 
 manner that those who compose it should be disposed to 
 love and to venerate those whom they are bound to obey. 
 A purposed neglect, or, what is worse, a literal, but perverse 
 and malignant obedience, must be the ruin of the wisest 
 counsels. In vain will the law attempt to anticipate or to fol- 
 low such studied neglects and fraudulent attentions. Tomake 
 them act zealously is not in the competence of law. Kings, 
 even such as are truly kings, may and ought to bear the 
 freedom of subjects that are obnoxious to them. They may 
 too, without derogating from themselves, bear even the 
 authority of such persons, if it promotes their service. Louis 
 the Thirteenth mortally hated the Cardinal de Richelieu ; but 
 his support of that minister against his rivals was the source 
 of all the glory of his reign, and the solid foundation of his 
 throne itself. Louis the Fourteenth, when come to the 
 throne, did not love the Cardinal Mazarin; but for his in- 
 terests he preserved him in power. When old, he detested 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 561 
 
 Louvois ; but for years, whilst he faithfully served his great- 
 ness, he endured his person. When George the Second took 
 Mr. Pitt, who certainly was not agreeable to him, into his 
 councils, he did nothing which could humble a wise sove- 
 reign. But these ministers, who were chosen by affairs, not 
 by affections, acted in the name of and in trust for kings, 
 and not as their avowed constitutional and ostensible mas- 
 ters. I think it impossible that any king, when he has re- 
 covered his first terrors, can cordially infuse vivacity and 
 vigour into measures which he knows to be dictated by those 
 who, he must be persuaded, are in the highest degree ill 
 affected to his person. Will any ministers, who serve such 
 a king (or whatever he may be called) with but a decent ap- 
 pearance of respect, cordially obey the orders of those whom 
 but the other day in his name they had committed to the 
 Bastile? will they obey the orders of those whom, whilst 
 they were exercising despotic justice upon them, they con- 
 ceived they were treating with lenity, and for whom in a 
 prison they thought they had provided an asylum? If you 
 expect such obedience, amongst your other innovations and 
 regenerations, you ought to make a revolution in Nature, 
 and provide a new constitution for the human mind: other- 
 wise your supreme government cannot harmonize with its 
 executory system. There are cases in which we can not take 
 up with names and abstractions. You may call half a dozen 
 leading individuals, whom we have reason to fear and hate, 
 the nation. It makes no other difference than to make us 
 fear and hate them the more. If it had been thought justi- 
 fiable and expedient to make such a revolution by such 
 means and through such persons as you have made yours, it 
 would have been more wise to have completed the business 
 of the fifth and sixth of October. Thenew executive officer 
 would then owe his situation to those who are his creators as 
 well as his masters; and he might be bound in interest, in 
 the society of crime, and (if in crimes there could be virtues) 
 in gratitude, to serve those who had promoted him toa place 
 of ene lucre and great sensual indulgence,—and of some- 
 3 
 
562 BURKE 
 
 thing more: for more he must have received from those who 
 certainly would not have limited an aggrandized creature as 
 they have done a submitting antagonist. 
 
 A king circumstanced asthe present, if he is totally stupe- 
 fied by his misfortunes, so as to think it not the necessity, 
 but the premium and privilege of life, to eat and sleep, with- 
 out any regard to glory, can never be fit for the office. 
 If he feels as men commonly feel, he must be sensible that 
 an office so circumstanced is one in which he can obtain no 
 fame or reputation. He has no generous interest that can 
 excite him to action. At best, his conduct will be passive 
 and defensive. To inferior people such an office might be 
 matter of honour. But to be raised to it and to descend to it 
 are different things, and suggest different sentiments. Does 
 he really name the ministers? They will have a sympathy 
 with him. Arethey forced upon him? The whole business 
 between them and the nominal king will be mutual counter- 
 action. In all other countries the office of ministers of state 
 is of the highest dignity. In France it is full of peril, and 
 incapable of glory. Rivals, however, they will have in their 
 nothingness, whilst shallow ambition exists in the world, or 
 the desire of a miserable salary is an incentive to shortsighted 
 avarice. Those competitors of the ministers are enabled by 
 your Constitution to attack them in their vital parts, whilst 
 they have not the means of repelling their charges in any 
 other than the degrading character of culprits. The minis- 
 ters of state in France are the only persons in that country 
 who are incapable of ashare in the national councils. What 
 ministers! What councils! What a nation!—But they are 
 responsible. It is a poor service that is to be had from re- 
 sponsibility. The elevation of mind to be derived from fear 
 will never make a nation glorious. Responsibility prevents 
 crimes. It makes all attempts against the laws dangerous. 
 But for a principle of active and zealous service, none but 
 idiots could think of it. Is the conduct of a war to be trusted 
 to aman who may abhor its principle,—who, in every step 
 he may take to render it successful, confirms the power of 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 563 
 
 those by whom he is oppressed? Will foreign states seri- 
 ously treat with him who has no prerogative of peace or 
 war,—no, not so much as ina single vote by himself or his 
 ministers, or by any one whom he can possibly influence ? 
 A state of contempt is not a state fora prince: better get 
 rid of him at once. 
 
 I know it will be said that these humours in the court and 
 executive government will continue only through this 
 generation, and that the king has been brought to declare 
 the dauphin shall be educated in a conformity to his situa- 
 tion. If he is madeto conform to his situation, he will have 
 no education at all. His training must be worse even than 
 that of an arbitrary monarch. If he reads,—whether he 
 reads or not, some good or evil genius will tell him his an- 
 cestors were kings. Thenceforward his object must be to 
 assert himself and toavenge his parents. This you will say 
 is not his duty. That may be; but it is Nature; and 
 whilst you pique Nature against you, you do unwisely to trust 
 toduty. In this futilescheme of polity, the state nurses in its 
 bosom, for the present, a source of weakness, perplexity, 
 counteraction, inefficiency, and decay ; and it prepares the 
 means of its final ruin. In short, I see nothing in the 
 executive force (I can not call it authority) that has even an 
 appearance of vigour, or that has the smallest degree of just 
 correspondence or symmetry or amicable relation with the 
 supreme power, either as it now exists, or as it is planned for 
 the future government. 
 
 You have settled, by an economy as perverted as the 
 policy, two * establishments of government,—one real, one 
 fictitious: both maintained at a vast expense; but the 
 fictitious at, I think, the greatest. Such a machine as the 
 latter is not worth the grease of its wheels. The expense is 
 exorbitant ; and neither the show nor the use deserve the 
 tenth part of the charge.—Oh! but I don’t do justice to the 
 talents of the legislators: I don’t allow, as I ought to do, for 
 necessity. Their scheme of executive force was not their 
 choice. This pageant must be kept. The people would 
 
564 BURKE 
 
 not consent to part with it.—Right: Iunderstand you. You 
 do, in spite of your grand theories, to which you would 
 have heaven and earth to bend, you do know how to conform 
 yourselves to the nature and circumstances of things. But 
 when you were obliged to conform thus far to circumstances, 
 you ought to have carried your submission farther, and to 
 have made, what you were obliged to take, a proper instru- 
 ment, and useful to its end. That was in your power. For 
 instance, among many others, it was in your power to leave 
 to your king the right of peaceand war.—What ! to leave to . 
 the executive magistrate the most dangerous of all preroga- 
 tives r—-I know none more dangerous ; nor any one more 
 necessary to be so trusted. I do not say that this preroga- 
 tive ought to be trusted to your king, unless he enjoyed other 
 auxiliary trusts along with it, which he does not now hold. 
 But, if he did possess them, hazardous as they are undoubt- 
 edly, advantages would arise from such a Constitution, more 
 than compensating the risk. There is no other way of keep- 
 ing the several potentates of Europe from intriguing dis- 
 tinctly and personally with the members of your Assembly, 
 from intermeddling in all your concerns, and fomenting, in 
 the heart of your country, the most pernicious of all factions, 
 —factions in the interest and under the direction of foreign 
 powers. From that worst of evils, thank God, we are still 
 free. Yourskill, if you had any, would be well employed to 
 find out indirect correctives and controls upon this perilous, 
 trust. If you did not like those whichin England we have 
 chosen, your leaders might have exerted their abilities in 
 contriving better. If it were necessary to exemplify the 
 consequences of such an executive government as yours, 
 in the management of great affairs, ] should refer you to 
 the late reports of M. de Montmorin to the National 
 Assembly, and all the other proceedings relative to the 
 differences between Great Britain and Spain. It would be 
 treating your understanding with disrespect to point them 
 out to you. 
 
 I hear that the persons who are called ministers have sig- 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 565 
 
 nified an intention of resigning their places. I am rather as- 
 tonished that they have not resigned long since. For the 
 universe I would not have stood in the situation in which 
 they have been for this last twelvemonth. They wished 
 well, I take it for granted, to the Revolution. Let this fact 
 be as it may, they could not, placed as they were upon an 
 eminence, though an eminence of humiliation, but be the 
 first to see collectively, and to feel each in his own depart- 
 ment, the evils which have been produced by that Revolution. 
 In every step which they took, or forbore to take, they must 
 have felt the degraded situation of their country, and their 
 utter incapacity of serving it. They are in a species of sub- 
 ordinate servitude in which no men before them were ever 
 seen. Without confidence from their sovereign on whom 
 they were forced, or from the Assembly who forced them upon 
 
 him, all the noble functions of their office are executed by » 
 
 committees of the Assembly, without any regard whatsoever 
 
 J 
 
 to their personal or their official authority. They are to . 
 
 execute, without power; they are to be responsible, with- 
 
 out discretion; they are to deliberate, without choice. In . 
 
 their puzzled situation, under two sovereigns, over neither of 
 whom they have any influence, they must act in such a man- 
 ner as(in effect, whatever they may intend) sometimes to be- 
 tray the one, sometimes the other, and always to betray 
 themselves. Such has been their situation ; such must be 
 the situation of those who succeed them. I have much 
 respect, and many good wishes, for M. Necker. I am 
 obliged to him for attentions. I thought, when his enemies 
 had driven him from Versailles, that his exile was a subject 
 of most serious congratulation. “Sed multe urbes et publica 
 vota vicerunt.” He is now sitting on the ruins of the fi- 
 nances and of the monarchy of France. 
 
 A great deal more might be observed on the strange con- 
 stitution of the executory part of the new government; but 
 fatigue must give bounds to the discussion of subjects which 
 in themselves have hardly any limits. 
 
 As little genius and talent am I able to perceive in the 
 
566 BURKE 
 
 plan of judicature formed by the National Assembly. Ac- 
 cording to their invariable course, the framers of your Con- 
 stitution have begun with the utter abolition of the parlia- 
 ments. These venerable bodies, like the rest of the old 
 government, stood in need of reform, even though there 
 should be no change madeinthe monarchy. ‘They required 
 several more alterations to adapt them to the system ofa 
 free Constitution. But they had particulars in their consti- 
 tution, and those nota few, which deserved approbation from 
 the wise. They possessed one fundamental excellence: they 
 were independent. The most doubtful circumstance attend- 
 ant on their office, that of its being vendible, contributed, 
 however, to this independency of character. They held for 
 life. Indeed, they may be said to have held by inheritance. 
 Appointed by the monarch, they were considered as nearly 
 out of his power. The most determined exertions of that 
 authority against them only showed their radical independ- 
 ence. They composed permanent bodies politic, constituted 
 to resist arbitrary innovation; and from that corporate con- 
 stitution, and from most of their forms, they were well calcu- 
 lated to afford both certainty and stability tothelaws. They 
 had been a safe asylum to secure these laws, in all the revolu- 
 tions of humour and opinion. They had saved that sacred 
 deposit of the country during the reigns of arbitrary princes 
 and the struggles of arbitrary factions. They keptalive the 
 memory and record of the Constitution. They were the 
 great security to private property; which might be said 
 (when personal liberty had no existence) to be, in fact, as 
 well guarded in France as in any other country. Whatever 
 is supreme in a state ought to have, as much as possible, its 
 judicial authority so constituted as not only not to depend 
 upon it, but in some sort to balance it. It ought to givea 
 security to its justice against its power. It ought to make 
 its judicature, as it were, something exterior to the state. 
 These parliaments had furnished, not the best certainly, 
 but some considerable corrective to the excesses and vices 
 of the monarchy. Such an independent judicature was ten 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 567 
 
 times more necessary when ademocracy became the absolute 
 power of the country. In that Constitution, elective, tempo- 
 rary, local judges, such as you have contrived, exercising 
 their dependent functions in a narrow society, must be the 
 worst of all tribunals. In them it will be vain to look for 
 any appearance of justice towards strangers, towards the ob- 
 noxious rich, towards the minority of routed parties, towards 
 all those who in the election have supported unsuccessful 
 candidates. It will be impossible to keep the new tribunals 
 clear of the worst spirit of faction. All contrivances by bal- 
 lot we know experimentally to be vain and childish to pre- 
 vent a discovery of inclinations. Where they may the best 
 answer the purposes of concealment, they answer to produce 
 suspicion, and this is a still more mischievous cause of par- 
 tiality. 
 
 If the parliaments had been preserved, instead of being 
 dissolved at so ruinous a change to the nation, they might 
 have served in this new commonwealth, perhaps not precisely 
 the same, (I donot mean an exact parallel,) but near the same 
 purposes as the court and senate of Areopagus did in Athens: 
 that is, as one of the balances and correctives to the evils of 
 a light and unjust democracy. Every one knows that this 
 tribunal was the great stay of that state; every one knows 
 with what care it was upheld, and with what a religious awe 
 it was consecrated. The parliaments were not wholly free 
 from faction, I admit; but this evil was exterior and ac- 
 cidental, and not so much the vice of their constitution itself 
 as it must be in your new contrivance of sexennial elective 
 judicatories. Several English commend the abolition of the 
 old tribunals, as supposing that they determined everything 
 by bribery and corruption. But they have stood the test of 
 monarchic and republican scrutiny. The court was well dis- 
 posed to prove corruption on those bodies, when they were 
 dissolved in 1771; those who have again dissolved them 
 would have done the same, if they could; but both inquisi- 
 tions having failed, I conclude that gross pecuniary corrup- 
 
 tion must have been rather rare amongst them. 
 
568 BURKE 
 
 It would have been prudent, along with the parliaments, 
 to preserve their ancient power of registering, and of remon- 
 strating at least upon, all the decrees of the National As- 
 sembly, as they did upon those which passed in the time of 
 the monarchy. It would be a means of squaring the occa- 
 sional decrees of a democracy to some principles of general 
 jurisprudence. The vice of the ancient democracies, and one 
 cause of their ruin, was, that they ruled, as you do, by oc- 
 casional decrees, psephismata. This practice soon broke in 
 upon the tenor and consistency of the laws; it abated the 
 respect of the people towards them, and totally destroyed 
 them in the end. 
 
 Your vesting the power of remonstrance, which, in the 
 time of the monarchy, existed in the Parliament of Paris, in 
 your principal executive officer, whom, in spite of common 
 sense, you persevere in calling king, is the height of absurdity. 
 You ought never to suffer remonstrance from him who is to 
 _execute. This is to understand neither council nor execu- 
 tion, neither authority nor obedience. The person whom 
 you call king ought not to have this power, or he ought to 
 have more. 
 
 Your present arrangement is strictly judicial. Instead of 
 imitating your monarchy, and seating your judges on a bench 
 of independence, your object is to reduce them to the most 
 blind obedience. As you have changed all things, you have 
 invented new principles of order. You first appoint judges, 
 who, I suppose, are to determine according to law, and then 
 you let them know, that, at some time or other, you intend 
 to give them some law by which they are to determine. Any 
 studies which they have made (if any they have made) are to 
 be useless to them. But to supply these studies, they are 
 to be sworn to obey all the rules, orders, and instructions 
 which from time to time they are to receive from the Na- 
 tional Assembly. These if they submit to, they leave no 
 ground of law to the subject. They become complete and 
 most dangerous instruments in the hands of the governing 
 power, which, in the midst of a cause, or on the prospect of 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 569 
 
 it, may wholly change the rule of decision. If these orders 
 of the National Assembly come to be contrary to the will of 
 the people who locally choose those judges, such confusion 
 must happen as is terrible to think of. For the judges owe 
 their place to the local authority, and the commands they 
 are sworn to obey come from those who have no share in 
 their appointment. Inthe mean time they have the example 
 of the court of Chatelet to encourage and guide them in the 
 exercise of their functions. That court is to try criminals 
 sent to it by the National Assembly, or brought before it by 
 other courses of delation. They sit under a guard to save 
 their own lives. They know not by what law they judge, 
 nor under what authority they act, nor by what tenure they 
 hold. It is thought that they are sometimes obliged to con- 
 demn at peril of their lives. This is not perhaps certain, 
 nor can it be ascertained ; but when they acquit, we know 
 they have seen the persons whom they discharge, with per- 
 fect impunity to the actors, hanged at the door of their 
 court. 
 
 The Assembly, indeed, promises that they will form a 
 body of law, which shall be short, simple, clear, and so forth. 
 That is, by their short laws, they will leave much to the dis- 
 cretion of the judge, whilst they have exploded the authority 
 of all the learning which could make judicial discretion (a 
 thing perilous at best) deserving the appellation of a sound 
 discretion. 
 
 It is curious to observe, that the administrative bodies are 
 carefully exempted from the jurisdiction of these new tribu- 
 nals. That is, those persons are exempted from the power 
 of the laws who ought to be the most entirely submitted to 
 them. Those who execute public pecuniary trusts ought of 
 all men to be the most strictly held to their duty. One 
 would have thought that it must have been among your ear- 
 liest cares, if you did not mean that those administrative 
 bodies should be real, sovereign, independent states, to form 
 an awful tribunal, like your late parliaments, or like our 
 King’s Bench, where all corporate officers might obtain pro- 
 
570 BURKE 
 
 tection in the legal exercise of their functions, and would 
 find coercion, if they trespassed against their legal duty. 
 But the cause of the exemption is plain. These administra- 
 tive bodies are the great instruments of the present leaders 
 in their progress through democracy to oligarchy. They 
 must therefore be put above the law. It will be said that the 
 legal tribunals which you have made are unfit to coerce them. 
 They are, undoubtedly. They are unfit for any rational 
 purpose. It will be said, too, that the administrative bodies 
 will be accountable to the general Assembly. This, I fear, 
 is talking without much consideration of the nature of that 
 Assembly or of these corporations. However, to be subject 
 to the pleasure of that Assembly is not to be subject to law, 
 either for protection or for constraint. 
 
 This establishment of judges as yet wants something to 
 its completion. It is to be crowned by a new tribunal. 
 This is to be a grand state judicature; and it is to judge of 
 crimes committed against the nation, that is, against the 
 power of the Assembly. It seems as if they had something 
 in their view of the nature of the high court of justice 
 erected in England during the time of the great usurpation. 
 As they have not yet finished this part of the scheme, it is 
 impossible to forma direct judgment upon it. However, if 
 great care is not taken to form it ina spirit very different 
 from that which has guided them in their proceedings rela- 
 tive to state offences, this tribunal, subservient to their in- 
 quisition, the Committee of Research, will extinguish the 
 last sparks of liberty in France, and settle the most dreadful 
 and arbitrary tyranny ever known in any nation. If they 
 wish to give to this tribunal any appearance of liberty and 
 justice, they must not evoke from or send to it the causes 
 relative to their own members, at their pleasure. They must 
 also remove the seat of that tribunal out of the republic of 
 Paris. 
 
 Has more wisdom been displayed in the constitution of 
 your army than what is discoverable in your plan of judica- 
 ture? The able arrangement of this part is the more dif- 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 571 
 
 ficult, and requires the greater skill and attention, not only 
 as a great concern in itself, but as it is the third cementing 
 principle in the new body of republics which you call the 
 French nation. Truly, it is not easy to divine what that 
 army may become at last. You have voted a very large one, 
 and on good appointments, at least fully equal to your ap- 
 parent means of payment. But what is the principle of its 
 discipline ? or whom is it to obey? You have got the wolf 
 by the ears, and I wish you joy of the happy position in 
 which you have chosen to place yourselves, and in which 
 you are well circumstanced for a free deliberation relatively 
 to that army, or to anything else. 
 
 The minister and secretary of state for the War Depart- 
 ment is M.de La Tour du Pin. This gentleman, like his col- 
 leagues in administration, is a most zealous assertor of the 
 Revolution, and a sanguine admirer of the new Constitution 
 which originated in that event. His statement of facts 
 relative to the military of France is important, not only from 
 his official and personal authority, but because it displays 
 very clearly the actual condition of the army in France, and 
 because it throws light on the principles upon which the 
 Assembly proceeds in the administration of this critical 
 object. It may enable us to form some judgment how far 
 it may be expedient in this country to imitate the martial 
 policy of France. 
 
 M. de La Tour du Pin, on the fourth of last June, comes 
 to give an account of the state of his department, as it 
 exists under the auspices of the National Assembly. No 
 man knows it so well: no man can express it better. Ad- 
 dressing himself to the National Assembly, he says,— 
 
 “ His Majesty has this day sent me to apprise you of the 
 multiplied disorders of which every day he receives the 
 most distressing intelligence. The army [le corps militaire] 
 threatens to fall into the most turbulent anarchy. Entire 
 regiments have dared to violate at once the respect due to 
 the laws, to the king, to the order established by your 
 decrees, and to the oaths which they have taken with the 
 
572 BURKE 
 
 most awful solemnity. Compelled by my duty to give you 
 information of these excesses, my heart bleeds, when I con- 
 sider who they are that have committed them. Those 
 against whom it is not in my power to withhold the most 
 grievous complaints are a part of that very soldiery which to 
 this day have been so full of honour and loyalty, and with 
 whom for fifty years I have lived the comrade and the friend. 
 
 ‘‘ What incomprehensible spirit of delirium and delusion 
 has all at once led them astray? Whilst you are indefati- 
 gable in establishing uniformity in the empire and moulding 
 the whole into one coherent and consistent body, whilst the 
 French are taught by you at once the respect which the laws 
 owe to the rights of man and that which the citizens owe to 
 the laws, the administration of the army presents nothing 
 but disturbance and confusion. I seein more than one corps 
 the bounds of discipline relaxed or broken,—the most un- 
 heard-of pretensions avowed directly and without any dis- 
 guise,—the ordinances without force,—the chiefs without 
 authority,—the military chest and the colours carried off,— 
 the authority of the king himself [rism teneatis] proudly de- 
 fied,_—the officers despised, degraded, threatened, driven 
 away, and some of them prisoners in the midst of their corps; 
 dragging ona precarious life in the bosom of disgust and 
 humiliation. To fill upthe measure of all these horrors, the 
 commandants of places have had their throats cut under the 
 eyes and almost in the arms of their own soldiers. 
 
 “ These evils are great ; but they are not the worst conse- 
 quences which may be produced by such military insurrec- 
 tions. Sooner or later they may menace the nation itself. 
 The nature of things requires that the army should never act 
 but as aninstrument. The moment that, erecting itself into 
 a deliberate body, it shall act according to its own resolu- 
 tions, the government, be it what it may, will immediately 
 degenerate into a military democracy : a species of political 
 monster which has always ended by devouring those who have 
 produced it. 
 
 “ After all this, who must not be alarmed at the irregular 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 573 
 
 consultations and turbulent committees formed in some regi- 
 ments by the common soldiers and non-commissioned offi- 
 cers, without the knowledge, or even in contempt of the 
 authority, of their superiors?—although the presence and 
 concurrence of those superiors could give no authority to 
 such monstrous democratic assemblies [comices].” 
 
 It is not necessary to add much to this finished picture,— 
 finished as far as its canvas admits, but, as I apprehend, not 
 taking in the whole of the nature and complexity of the dis- 
 orders of this military democracy, which, the minister at 
 war truly and wisely observes, wherever it exists, must be 
 the true constitution of the state, by whatever formal appella- 
 tion it may pass. For, though he informs the Assembly that 
 the more considerable part of the army have not cast off 
 their obedience, but are still attached to their duty, yet those 
 travelers who have seen the corps whose conduct is the best 
 rather observe in them the absence of mutiny than the exis- 
 tence of discipline. 
 
 I can not help pausing here for a moment, to reflect upon 
 the expressions of surprise which this minister has let fall 
 relative to the excesses he relates. To him the departure of 
 the troops from their ancient principles of loyalty and honour 
 seems quite inconceivable. Surely those to whom he ad- 
 dresses himself know the causes of it but too well. They 
 know the doctrines which they have preached, the decrees 
 which they have passed, the practises which they have coun- 
 tenanced. The soldiers remember the sixth of October. 
 They recollect the French guards. They have not forgot the 
 taking of the king’s castles in Paris and at Marseilles. That 
 the governors in both places were murdered with impunity 
 isa fact that has not passed out of their minds. They 
 do not abandon the principles, laid down so ostentatiously 
 and laboriously, of the equality of men. They can 
 not shut their eyes to the degradation of the whole 
 noblesse of France, and the suppression of the very idea of 
 agentleman. The total abolition of titles and distinctions is 
 not lost upon them. But M. du Pin is astonished at their 
 
574 BURKE 
 
 disloyalty, when the doctors of the Assembly have taught 
 them at thesame time the respect due to laws. It is easy to 
 judge which of the two sorts of lessons men with arms in 
 their hands are likely to learn. As to the authority of the 
 king, we may collect from the minister himself (if any argu- 
 ment on that head were not quite superfluous) that it is not 
 of more consideration with these troops than it is with every- 
 body else. ‘“ The king,” says he, “ has over and over again 
 repeated his orders to put a stop to these excesses ; but in so 
 terrible a crisis, your [the Assembly’s] concurrence is be- 
 come indispensably necessary to prevent the evils which 
 menace the state. You unite to the force of the legislative 
 power that of opinion, still more important.” To be sure, 
 the army can have no opinion of the power or authority of 
 the king. Perhaps the soldier has by this time learned, 
 that the Assembly itself does not enjoy a much greater 
 degree of liberty than that royal figure. 
 
 It is now to be seen what has been proposed in this ex- 
 igency, one of the greatest that can happen ina state. The 
 minister requests the Assembly to array itself in all its ter. 
 rors, and to call forth all its majesty. He desires that the grave 
 and severe principles announced by them may give vigour to 
 the king’s proclamation. After this we should have looked for 
 courts civil and martial, breaking of some corps, decimating of 
 others, and all the terrible means which necessity has em- 
 ployed in such cases to arrest the progress of the most terri- 
 ble of all evils ; particularly, one might expect that a serious 
 inquiry would be made into the murder of commandants in 
 the view of their soldiers. Not one word of all this, or of 
 anything like it. After they had been told that the soldiery 
 trampled upon the decrees of the Assembly promulgated by 
 the king, the Assembly pass new decrees, and they authorize 
 the king to make new proclamations. After the secretary 
 at war had stated that the regiments had paid no regard to 
 oaths, “ prétés avec la plus imposante solennité,” they propose 
 —what? More oaths. They renew decrees and proclama- 
 tions as they experience their insufficiency, and they multi- 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 575 
 
 ply oaths in proportion as they weaken in the minds of men 
 the sanctions of religion. I hope that handy abridgments 
 of the excellent sermons of Voltaire, D’Alembert, Diderot, 
 and Helvétius, on the Immortality of the Soul, on a Partic- 
 ular Superintending Providence, and on a Future State of 
 Rewards and Punishments, are sent down to the soldiers 
 along with their civic oaths. Of this I have no doubt; as I 
 understand that a certain description of reading makes no 
 inconsiderable part of their military exercises, and that they 
 are full as well supplied with the ammunition of pamphlets 
 as of cartridges. 
 
 To prevent the mischiefs arising from conspiracies, irregu- 
 lar consultations, seditious committees, and monstrous demo- 
 cratic assemblies [comitia, comices] of the soldiers, and all 
 the disorders arising from idleness, luxury, dissipation, and 
 insubordination, I believe the most astonishing means have 
 been used that ever occurred to men, even in all the inven- 
 tions of this prolific age. It is no less than this:—The king 
 has promulgated in circular letters to all the regiments his 
 direct authority and encouragement, that the several corps 
 should join themselves with the clubs and confederations in 
 the several municipalities, and mix with them in their feasts 
 and civic entertainments! This jolly discipline, it seems, is 
 to soften the ferocity of their minds, to reconcile them to 
 their bottle companions of other descriptions, and to merge 
 particular conspiracies in more general associations.*! That 
 this remedy would be pleasing to the soldiers, as they are 
 described by M. de La Tour du Pin, I can readily believe,— 
 and that, however mutinous otherwise, they will dutifully 
 submit themselves to these royal proclamations. But I 
 should question whether all this civic swearing, clubbing, 
 and feasting would dispose them, more than at present they 
 are disposed, to an obedience to their officers, or teach them 
 better to submit to the austere rules of military discipline. 
 It will make them admirable citizens after the French mode, 
 but not quite so good soldiers after any mode. A doubt 
 might well arise, whether the conversations at these good 
 
576 BURKE 
 
 tables would fit them a great deal the better for the character 
 of mere instruments, which this veteran officer and statesman 
 justly observes the nature of things always requires an army 
 to be. 
 
 Concerning the likelihood of this improvement in disci- 
 pline by the free conversation of the soldiers with the muni- 
 cipal festive societies, which is thus officially encouraged by 
 royal authority and sanction, we may judge by the state of 
 the municipalities themselves, furnished to us by the war 
 minister in this very speech. He conceives good hopes of 
 the success of his endeavours towards restoring order for the 
 present from the good disposition of certain regiments ; but 
 he finds something cloudy with regard to the future. Asto | 
 preventing the return of confusion, ‘‘ for this the administra- 
 tion” (says he) “ can not be answerable to you, as long as 
 they see the municipalities arrogate to themselves an author- 
 ity over the troops which your institutions have reserved 
 wholly to the monarch. You have fixed the limits of the 
 military authority and the municipal authority. You have 
 bounded the action which you have permitted to the latter 
 over the former to the right of requisition; but never did 
 the letter or the spirit of your decrees authorize the commons 
 in these municipalities to break the officers, to try them, to 
 give orders to the soldiers, to drive them from the posts com- 
 mitted to their guard, to stop them in their marches ordered 
 by the king, or, in aword, to enslave the troops to the caprice 
 of each of the cities or even market-towns through which they 
 are to pass.” 
 
 Such is the character and disposition of the municipal 
 society which is to reclaim the soldiery, to bring them back 
 to the true principles of military subordination, and to ren- 
 der them machines in the hands of the supreme power of the 
 country! Such are the distempers of the French troops! 
 Such is their cure! As the army is, so isthe navy. The 
 municipalities supersede the orders of the Assembly, and the 
 seamen in their turn supersede the orders of the municipali- 
 ties. From my heart I pity the condition of a respectable 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 577 
 
 servant of the public, like this war minister, obliged in his 
 old age to pledge the Assembly in their civic cups, and to 
 enter with a hoary head into all the fantastic vagaries of 
 these juvenile politicians. Such schemes are not like prop- 
 ositions coming from a man of fifty years’ wear and tear 
 amongst mankind. They seem rather such as ought to be 
 expected from those grand compounders in politics who 
 shorten the road to their degrees in the state, and have a 
 certain inward fanatical assurance and illumination upon all 
 subjects,—upon the credit of which, one of their doctors has 
 thought fit, with great applause, and greater success, to cau- 
 tion the Assembly not to attend to old men, or to any per- 
 sons who value themselves upon their experience. I suppose 
 all the ministers of state must qualify, and take this test,— | 
 wholly abjuring the errors and heresies of experience and 
 observation. Every man has his own relish; but I think, if 
 I could not attain to the wisdom, I would at least preserve 
 something of the stiff and peremptory dignity of age. These 
 gentlemen deal in regeneration: but at any price I should 
 hardly yield my rigid fibres to be regenerated by them,— 
 nor begin, in my grand climacteric, to squall in their new 
 accents, or to stammer, in my second cradle, the elemental 
 sounds of their barbarous metaphysics. “Si isti mihi largi- 
 antur ut repuerascam, et in eorum cunis vagiam, valde 
 recusem !” 
 
 The imbecility of any part of the puerile and pedantic 
 system which they call a Constitution can not be laid open 
 without discovering the utter insufficiency and mischief of 
 every other part with which it comes in contact, or that bears 
 any the remotest relation to it. You can not proposea rem- 
 edy for the incompetence of the crown, without displaying 
 the debility of the Assembly. You can not deliberate on the 
 confusion of the army of the state, without disclosing the 
 worse disorders of the armed municipalities. The military 
 lays open the civil, and the civil betrays the military anarchy. 
 I wish everybody carefully to peruse the eloquent speech 
 (such it is) of Mons. de La Tour du Pin. He attributes the 
 
 37 
 
578 BURKE 
 
 salvation of the municipalities to the good behaviour of some 
 of the troops. These troops are to preserve the well-dis- 
 posed part of the municipalities, which is confessed to be 
 the weakest, from the pillage of the worst disposed, which is 
 the strongest. But the municipalities affect a sovereignty, 
 and will command those troops which are necessary for their 
 protection. Indeed, they must command them or court them. 
 The municipalities, by the necessity of their situation, and by 
 the republican powers they have obtained, must, with rela- 
 tion to the military, be the masters, or the servants, or the 
 confederates, or each successively, or they must make a jum- 
 ble of all together, according to circumstances. What govern- 
 ment is there to coerce the army but the municipality, or the 
 municipality but the army? To preserve concord where 
 authority is extinguished, at the hazard of all consequences, 
 the Assembly attempts to cure the distempers by the dis- 
 tempers themselves; and they hope to preserve themselves 
 from a purely military democracy by giving it a debauched 
 interest in the municipality. 
 
 If the soldiers once come to mix for any time in the mu- 
 nicipal clubs, cabals, and confederacies, an elective attraction 
 will draw them to the lowest and most desperate part. 
 With them will be their habits, affections, and sympathies. 
 The military conspiracies which are to be remedied by civic 
 confederacies, the rebellious municipalities which are to be 
 rendered obedient by furnishing them with the means of 
 seducing the very armies of the state that are to keep them 
 in order,—all these chimeras of a monstrous and portentous 
 policy must aggravate the confusion from which they have 
 arisen. There must be blood. The want of common judg- 
 ment manifested in the construction of all their descriptions 
 of forces, and in all their kinds of civil and judicial author- 
 ities, will make it flow. Disorders may be quieted in one 
 time and in one part. They will break out in others; be- 
 cause the evil is radical and intrinsic. All these schemes of 
 mixing mutinous soldiers with seditious citizens must weaken 
 still more and more the military connection of soldiers with 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 579 
 
 their officers, as well as add military and mutinous audacity 
 to turbulent artificers and peasants. To secure a real army 
 the officer should be first and last in the eye of the soldier,— 
 first and last in his attention, observance, and esteem. Of- 
 ficers, it seems, there are to be, whose chief qualification 
 must be temper and patience. They are to manage their 
 troops by electioneering arts. They must bear themselves 
 as candidates, not as commanders. But as by such means 
 power may be occasionally in their hands, the authority 
 by which they are to be nominated becomes of high im- 
 portance. 
 
 What you may do finally does not appear: nor is it of 
 much moment, whilst the strange and contradictory relation 
 between your army and all the parts of your republic, as well 
 as the puzzled relation of those parts to each other and to the 
 whole, remain as they are. You seem to have given the 
 provisional nomination of the officers, in the first instance, to 
 the king, with a reserve of approbation by the National As- 
 sembly. Men who have an interest to pursue are extremely 
 sagacious in discovering the true seat of power. They must 
 soon perceive that those who can negative indefinitely in 
 reality appoint. The officers must therefore look to their 
 intrigues in the Assembly as the sole certain road to promo- 
 tion. Still, however, by your new Constitution, they must 
 begin their solicitation at court. This double negotiation 
 for military rank seems to me a contrivance, as well adapted 
 as if it were studied for no other end, to promote faction in 
 the Assembly itself relative to this vast ‘military patronage, 
 —and then to poison the corps of officers with faction of a 
 nature still more dangerous to the safety of government, 
 upon any bottom on which it can be placed, and destructive 
 in the end to the efficacy of the army itself. Those officers 
 who lose the promotions intended for them by the crown 
 must become ofa faction opposite to that of the Assembly 
 which has rejected their claims, and must nourish discontents 
 in the heart of the army against the ruling powers. Those 
 officers, on the other hand, who, by carrying their point 
 
580 BURKE 
 
 through an interest in the Assembly, feel themselves to be 
 at best only second in the good-will of the crown, though 
 first in that of the Assembly, must slight an authority which 
 would not advance and could not retard their promotion. If, 
 to avoid these evils, you will have no other rule for com- 
 mand or promotion than seniority, you will have an army of 
 formality ; at the same time it will become more independent . 
 and more of a military republic. Not they, but the king is 
 the machine. A king is not to be disposed by halves. If he 
 is not everything in the command of an army, he is nothing. 
 What is the effect of a power placed nominally at the head 
 of the army, who to that army is no object of gratitude or of 
 fear? Such acipher is not fit for the administration of an 
 object of all things the most delicate, the supreme command 
 of military men. They must be constrained (and their in- 
 clinations lead them to what their necessities require) by a 
 real, vigorous, effective, decided, personal authority. The 
 authority of the Assembly itself suffers by passing through 
 such a debilitating channel as they havechosen. The army 
 will not long look to an Assembly acting through the organ 
 of false show and palpable imposition. They will not 
 seriously yield obedience to a prisoner. They will either 
 despise a pageant, or they will pity a captive king. This re- 
 lation of your army to the crown will, if I am not greatly 
 mistaken, become a serious dilemma in your politics. 
 
 It is besides to be considered, whether an Assembly like 
 yours, even supposing that it was in possession of another 
 sort of organ through which its orders were to pass, is fit for 
 promoting the obedience and discipline of an army. It is 
 known that armies have hitherto yielded a very precarious 
 and uncertain obedience to any senate or popular authority ; 
 and they will least of all yield it to an Assembly which is to 
 have only a continuance of two years. The officers must 
 totally lose the characteristic disposition of military men, if 
 they see with perfect submission and due admiration the 
 dominion of pleaders,—especially when they find that they 
 have a new court to pay to an endless succession of those 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 581 
 
 pleaders, whose military policy, and the genius of whose 
 command (if they should have any), must be as uncertain as 
 their duration is transient. In the weakness of one kind of 
 authority, and in the fluctuation of all, the officers of an army 
 will remain for some time mutinous and full of faction, until 
 some popular general, who understands the art of conciliat- 
 ing the soldiery, and who possesses the true spirit of com- 
 mand, shall draw the eyes of all men upon himself. Armies 
 will obey him on his personal account. There is no other 
 way of securing military obedience in this state of things. 
 But the moment in which that event shall happen, the per- 
 son who really commands the army is your master,—the 
 master (that is little) of your king, the master of your As- 
 sembly, the master of your whole republic. 
 
 How came the Assembly by their present power over the 
 army? Chiefly, to be sure, by debauching the soldiers from 
 their officers. They have begun by a most terrible opera- 
 tion. They have touched the central point about which the 
 particles that compose armies are at repose. They have 
 destroyed the principle of obedience in the great, essential, 
 critical link between the officer and the soldier, just where 
 the chain of military subordination commences, and on 
 which the whole of that system depends. The soldier is told 
 he is a citizen, and has the rights of man and citizen. The 
 right of a man, he is told, is, to be his own governor, and to 
 be ruled only by those to whom he delegates that self-govern- 
 ment. It is very natural he should think that he ought 
 most of all to have his choice where he is to yield the great- 
 est degree of obedience. He will therefore, in all probabil- 
 ity, systematically do what he does at present occasionally : 
 that is, he will exercise at least a negative in the choice of 
 his officers. At present the officers are known at best to be 
 only permissive, and on their good behaviour. In fact, there 
 have been many instances in which they have been cashiered 
 by their corps. Here isa second negative on the choice of 
 the king: a negative as effectual, at least, as the other of 
 the Assembly. The soldiers know already that it has been a 
 
582 BURKE 
 
 question, not ill received in the National Assembly, whether 
 they ought not to have the direct choice of their officers, or 
 some proportion of them. When such matters are in delib- 
 eration, it is no extravagant supposition that they will in- 
 cline to the opinion most favourable to their pretensions. 
 They will not bear to be deemed the army of an imprisoned 
 king, whilst another army in the same country, with whom 
 too they are to feast and confederate, is to be considered as 
 the free army of a free Constitution. They will cast their 
 eyes on the other and more permanent army : I mean the 
 municipal. That corps, they well know, does actually elect 
 its own officers. They may not be able to discern the 
 grounds of distinction on which they are not to elect a Mar- 
 quis de La Fayette (or what is his new name ?) of their own. 
 If this election of a commander-in-chief be a part of the 
 rights of men, why not of theirs? They see elective justices 
 of peace, elective judges, elective curates, elective bishops, 
 elective municipalities, and elective commanders of the Par- 
 isian army. Why shouldthey alone be excluded? Are the 
 brave troops of France the only men in that nation who are 
 not the fit judges of military merit, and of the qualifications 
 necessary for a commander-in-chief? Are they paid by the 
 state, and do they therefore lose the rights of men? They 
 are a part of that nation themselves, and contribute to that 
 pay. And is not the king, is not the National Assembly, 
 and are not all who elect the National Assembly, likewise 
 paid? Instead of seeing all these forfeit their rights by their © 
 receiving a salary, they perceive that in all these cases a sal- 
 ary is given for the exercise of those rights. All your resol- 
 utions, all your proceedings, all your debates, all the works 
 of your doctors in religion and politics, have industriously 
 been put into their hands ; and you expect that they will 
 apply to their own case just as much of your doctrines and 
 examples as suits your pleasure. 
 
 Everything depends upon the army in such a government 
 as yours ; for you have industriously destroyed all the opin- 
 ions and prejudices, and, as far.as in you lay, all the instincts 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 583 
 
 which support government. Therefore the moment any dif- 
 ference arises between your National Assembly and any part 
 of the nation, you must have recourse to force. Nothing 
 else is left to you,—or rather, you have left nothing else to 
 yourselves. You see, by the report of your war minister, 
 that the distribution of the army is ina great measure made 
 with a view of internal coercion. You must rule by an 
 army ; and you have infused into that army by which you rule, 
 as well as into the whole body of the nation, principles which 
 after a time must disable you in the use you resolve to make 
 of it. The king is to call out troopsto act against his people, 
 when the world has been told, and the assertion is still ringing 
 in our ears, that troops ought not to fire on citizens. The 
 colonies assert to themselves an independent constitution and 
 a freetrade. They must beconstrained by troops. In what 
 chapter of your code of the rights of men are they able to 
 read that it is a part of the rights of men to have their com- 
 merce monopolized and restrained for the benefit of others ? 
 As the colonists rise on you, the negroes rise on them. 
 Troops again,—massacre, torture, hanging! These are your 
 rights of men! These are the fruits of metaphysic declara- 
 tions wantonly made and shamefully retracted! It was but 
 the other day that the farmers of land in one of your prov- 
 inces refused to pay some sorts of rents to the lord of the 
 soil. In consequence of this,you decree that the country-peo- 
 ple shall pay all rentsand dues, except those which as griev- 
 ances you have abolished ; and if they refuse, then you order 
 the king to march troops against them. You lay down 
 metaphysic propositions which infer universal consequences, 
 and then you attempt to limit logic by despotism. The 
 leaders of the present system tell them of their rights, as 
 men, to take fortresses, to murder guards, to seize on kings 
 without the least appearance of authority even from the As- 
 sembly, whilst, as the sovereign legislative body, that Assem- 
 bly was sitting in the name of the nation ; and yet these 
 leaders presume to order out the troops which have acted in 
 these very disorders, to coerce those who shall judge on the 
 
5384 BURKE 
 
 principles and follow the examples which have been guaran- 
 tied by their own approbation. 
 
 The leaders teach the people to abhor and reject all feo- 
 dality as the barbarism of tyranny ; and they tell them after- 
 wards how much of that barbarous tyranny they are to bear 
 with patience. As they are prodigal of light with regard to 
 grievances, so the people find them sparing in the extreme 
 with regard to redress. They know that not only certain 
 quit-rents and personal duties, which you have permitted 
 them to redeem, (but have furnished no money for the re- 
 demption,) are as nothing to those burdens for which you 
 have made no provision at all; they know that almost the 
 whole system of landed property in its origin is feudal,— 
 that it is the distribution of the possessions of the original 
 proprietors made by a barbarous conqueror to his barbarous 
 instruments,—and that the most grievous effects of the con- 
 quest are the land-rents of every kind, as without question 
 they are. 
 
 The peasants, in all probability, are the descendants of 
 these ancient proprietors, Romans or Gauls. But if they 
 fail, in any degree, in the titles which they make on the 
 principles of antiquaries and lawyers, they retreat into the 
 citadel of the rights of men. There they find that men are 
 equal; and the earth, the kind and equal mother of all, 
 ought not to be monopolized to foster the pride and luxury 
 of any men, who by nature are no better than themselves, 
 and who, if they do not labour for their bread, are worse. 
 They find, that, by the laws of Nature, the occupant and 
 subduer of the soil is the true proprietor,—that there is no 
 prescription against Nature,—and that the agreements 
 (where any there are) which have been made with the land- 
 lords during the time of slavery are only the effect of duresse 
 and force,—and that, when the people re-entered into the 
 rishts of men, those agreements were made as void as every- 
 thing else which had been settled under the prevalence of the 
 old feudal and aristocratic tyranny. They will tell you that 
 they see no difference between an idler with a hat anda 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 585 
 
 national cockade and an idler in a cowl or inarochet. If 
 you ground the title to rents on succession and prescription, 
 they tell you from the speech of M. Camus, published by 
 the National Assembly for their information, that things ill 
 begun can not avail themselves of prescription,—that the 
 title of these lords was vicious in its origin,—and that force 
 is at least as bad as fraud. As to the title by succession, 
 they will tell you that the succession of those who have 
 cultivated the soil is the true pedigree of property, and not 
 rotten parchments and silly substitutions,—that the lords 
 have enjoyed their usurpation too long,—and that, if they 
 allow to these lay monks any charitable pension, they ought 
 to be thankful to the bounty of the true proprietor, who is 
 so generous towards a false claimant to his goods. 
 
 When the peasants give you back that coin of sophistic 
 reason on which you have set your image and superscrip- 
 tion, you cry it down as base money, and tell them you will 
 pay for the future with French guards and dragoons and 
 hussars. You hold up, to chastise them, the second-hand 
 authority of a king, who is only the instrument of destroy- 
 ing, without any power of protecting either the people or 
 his own person. Through him, it seems, you will make 
 yourselves obeyed. They answer,—‘‘ You have taught us 
 that there are no gentlemen; and which of your principles 
 teach us to bow to kings whom we have not elected? We 
 know, without your teaching, that lands were given for the 
 support of feudal dignities, feudal titles, and feudal offices. 
 When you took down the cause as a grievance, why should 
 the more grievous effect remain? As there are now no 
 hereditary honours and no distinguished families, why are 
 we taxed to maintain what you tell us ought not to exist ? 
 You have sent down our old aristocratic landlords in no 
 other character and with no other title but that of exactors 
 under your authority. Have you endeavoured to make these 
 your rent-gatherers respectable to us? No. You have sent 
 them to us with their arms reversed, their shields broken, 
 their impresses defaced,—and so displumed, degraded, and 
 
586 BURKE 
 
 metamorphosed, such unfeathered two-legged things, that 
 we no longer know them. They are strangers to us. They 
 do not even go by the names of ourancient lords. Physically 
 they may be the same men,—though we are not quite sure 
 of that, on your new philosophic doctrines of personal iden- 
 tity. In all other respects they are totally changed. We 
 do not see why we have not as good a right to refuse them 
 their rents as you have to abrogate all their honours, titles, 
 and distinctions. This we have never commissioned you to 
 do; and it is one instance among many, indeed, of your as- 
 sumption of undelegated power. We see the burghers of 
 Paris, through their clubs, their mobs, and their national 
 guards, directing you at their pleasure, and giving that as 
 law to you, which, under your authority, is transmitted as law 
 to us. Through you, these burghers dispose of the lives and 
 fortunes of us all. Why should not you attend as much to 
 the desires of the laborious husbandman with regard to our 
 rent, by which we are affected in the most serious manner, 
 as you do to the demands of these insolent burghers relative 
 to distinctions and titles of honour, by which neither they 
 nor we are affected at all? But we find you pay more 
 regard to their fancies than to our necessities. Is it among 
 the rights of man to pay tribute to his equals? Before this 
 measure of yours we might have thought we were not per- 
 fectly equal; we might have entertained some old, habitual, 
 unmeaning prepossession in favour of those landlords; but 
 we can not conceive with what other view than that of des- 
 troying all respect to them you could have made the law 
 that degrades them. You have forbidden us to treat them 
 with any of the old formalities of respect; and now you 
 send troops to sabre and to bayonet us into a submission to 
 fear and force which you did not suffer us to yield to the 
 mild authority of opinion.” 
 
 The ground of some of these arguments is horrid and 
 ridiculous to all rational ears; but to the politicians of meta- 
 physics, who have opened schools for sophistry, and made 
 establishments for anarchy, it is solid and conclusive. It 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 587 
 
 is obvious, that, on a mere consideration of the right, the 
 leaders in the Assembly would not in the least have scrupled 
 to abrogate the rents along with the titles and family ensigns. 
 It would be only to follow up the principle of their reason- 
 ings, and to complete the analogy of their conduct. But they 
 had newly possessed themselves of a great body of landed 
 property by confiscation. They had this commodity at 
 market ; and the market would have been wholly destroyed, 
 if they were to permit the husbandmen to riot in the specula- 
 tions with which they so freely intoxicated themselves. The 
 only security which property enjoysin any one of its descrip- 
 tions is from the interests of their rapacity with regard to 
 some other. They have left nothing but their own arbitrary 
 pleasure to determine what property is to be protected and 
 what subverted. 
 
 Neither have they left any principle by which any of their 
 municipalities can be bound to obedience,—or even con- 
 scientiously obliged not to separate from the whole, to be- 
 come independent, or to connect itself with some other state. 
 The people of Lyons, it seems, have refused lately to pay 
 taxes. Why should they not? What lawful authority is 
 there left to exact them? The king imposed some of them. 
 The old States, methodized by orders, settled the more an- 
 cient. They may say to the Assembly,—‘ Who are you, 
 that are not our kings, nor the States we have elected, nor 
 sit on the principles on which we have elected you? And 
 who are we, that, when we see the gabelles which you have 
 ordered to be paid wholly shaken off, when we see the act 
 of disobedience afterwards ratified by yourselves, who are 
 we, that we are not to judge what taxes we ought or ought 
 not to pay, and are not to avail ourselves of the same pow- 
 ers the validity of which you have approved in others?” 
 To this the answer is, ‘We will send troops.” The last 
 reason of kings is always the first with your Assembly. 
 This military aid may serve for a time, whilst the impression 
 of the increase of pay remains, and the vanity of being um- 
 pires in all disputes is flattered. But this weapon will snap 
 
588 BURKE 
 
 short, unfaithful to the hand that employs it. The Assem- 
 bly keep a school, where, systematically, and with unremit- 
 ting perseverance, they teach principles and form regula- 
 tions destructive to all spirit of subordination, civil and 
 military,—and then they expect that they shall hold in obe- 
 dience an anarchic people by an anarchic army. 
 
 The municipal army, which, according to their new policy, 
 is to balance this national army, if considered in itself only, 
 is of a constitution much more simple, and in every respect 
 less exceptionable. It is a mere democratic body, uncon- 
 nected with the crown or the kingdom, armed and trained 
 and officered at the pleasure of the districts to which the 
 corps severally belong; and the personal service of the in- 
 dividuals who compose, or the fine in lieu of personal service, 
 are directed by the same authority.“ Nothing is more uni- 
 form. If, however, considered in any relation to the crown, 
 to the National Assembly, to the public tribunals, or to the 
 other army, or considered in a view to any coherence or con- 
 nection between its parts, it seems a monster, and can hardly 
 fail to terminate its perplexed movements in some great 
 national calamity. It is a worse preservative of a general 
 constitution than the systasis of Crete, or the confederation 
 of Poland, or any other ill-devised corrective which has yet 
 been imagined, in the necessities produced by an ill-con- 
 structed system of government. 
 
 Having concluded my few remarks on the constitution of 
 the supreme power, the executive, the judicature, the mili- 
 tary, and on the reciprocal relation of all these establish- 
 ments, I shall say something of the ability shown by your 
 legislators with regard to the revenue. 
 
 In their proceedings relative to this object, if possible, still 
 fewer traces appear of political judgment or financial resource. 
 When the States met, it seemed to be the great object to im- 
 prove the system of revenue, to enlarge its collection, to cleanse 
 it of oppression and vexation, and to establish it on the most 
 solid footing. Great were the expectations entertained on 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 589 
 
 that head throughout Europe. It was by this grand arrange- 
 ment that France was to stand or fall; and this became, in 
 my opinion very properly, the test by which the skill and 
 patriotism of those who ruled in that Assembly would be 
 tried. The revenue of the state is the state. In effect, all 
 depends upon it, whether for support or for reformation. 
 The dignity of every occupation wholly depends upon the 
 quantity and the kind of virtue that may be exerted in it. 
 As all great qualities of the mind which operate in public, 
 and are not merely suffering and passive, require force for 
 their display, I had almost said for their unequivocal exist- 
 ence, the revenue, which is the spring of all power, becomes 
 in its administration the sphere of every active virtue. Pub- 
 lic virtue, being of a nature magnificent and splendid, insti- 
 tuted for great things, and conversant about great concerns, 
 requires abundant scope and room, and can not spread and 
 grow under confinement, and in circumstances straitened, 
 narrow, and sordid. Through the revenue alone the body 
 politic can act in its true genius and character ; and therefore 
 it will display just as much of its collective virtue, and as 
 much of that virtue which may characterize those who move 
 it, and are, as it were, its life and guiding principle, as it is 
 possessed of a just revenue. For from hence not only mag- 
 nanimity, and liberality, and beneficence, and fortitude, and 
 providence, and the tutelary protection of all good arts derive 
 their food, and the growth of their organs, but continence, and 
 self-denial, and labour, and vigilance, and frugality, and what- 
 ever else there is in which the mind shows itself above the 
 appetite, are nowhere more in their proper element than in 
 the provision and distribution of the public wealth. It is 
 therefore not without reason that the science of speculative 
 and practical finance, which must take to its aid so many 
 auxiliary branches of knowledge, stands high in the estima- 
 tion not only of the ordinary sort, but of the wisest and best 
 men ; and as this science has grown with the progress of its 
 object, the prosperity and improvement of nations has gener- 
 ally increased with the increase of their revenues; and they 
 
590 BURKE 
 
 will both continue to grow and flourish as long as the balance 
 between what is left to strengthen the efforts of individuals 
 and what is collected for the common efforts of the state bear 
 to each other a due reciprocal proportion, and are kept ina 
 close correspondence and communication. And perhaps it 
 may be owing to the greatness of revenues, and to the ur- 
 gency of state necessities, that old abuses in the constitution 
 of finances are discovered, and their true nature and rational » 
 theory comes to be more perfectly understood; insomuch 
 that a smaller revenue might have been more distressing in 
 one period than a far greater is found to be in another, the 
 proportionate wealth even remaining the same. In this state 
 of things, the French Assembly found something in their 
 revenues to preserve, to secure, and wisely to administer, as 
 well as to abrogate and alter. Though their proud assump- 
 tion might justify the severest tests, yet, in trying their abili- 
 ties on their financial proceedings, I would only consider 
 what is the plain, obvious duty of a common finance minister, 
 and try them upon that, and not upon models of ideal per- 
 fection. 
 
 The objects of a financier are, then, to secure an ample 
 revenue; to impose it with judgment and equality; to em- 
 ploy it economically; and when necessity obliges him to 
 make use of credit, to secure its foundations in that instance, 
 and forever, by the clearness and candour of his proceedings, 
 the exactness of his calculations, and the solidity of his funds. 
 On these heads we may take a short and distinct view of the 
 merits and abilities of those in the National Assembly who 
 have taken to themselves the management of this arduous 
 concern. 
 
 Far from any increase of revenue in their hands, I find, by 
 a report of M. Vernier, from the Committee of Finances, of 
 the second of August last, that the amount of the national 
 revenue, as compared with its produce before the Revolution, 
 was diminished by the sum of two hundred millions, or eight 
 millions sterling, of the annual income,—considerably more 
 than one third of the whole. 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 591 
 
 If this be the result of great ability, never surely was 
 ability displayed in a more distinguished manner or with so 
 powerful an effect. Nocommon folly, no vulgar incapacity, 
 no ordinary official negligence, even no official crime, no 
 corruption, no peculation, hardly any direct hostility, which 
 we have seen inthe modern world, could in so short a time 
 have made so complete an overthrow of the finances, and, 
 with them, of the strength of a great kingdom.—Cedo qui 
 vestram rempublicam tantam amisistis tam cito? 
 
 The sophisters and declaimers, as soon as the Assembly 
 met, began with decrying the ancient constitution of the re- 
 venue in many of its most essential branches, such as the 
 public monopoly of salt. They charged it, as truly as un- 
 wisely, with being ill-contrived, oppressive, and partial. This 
 representation they were not satisfied to make use of in 
 speeches preliminary to some plan of reform; they declared 
 it in a solemn resolution or public sentence, as it were judi- 
 cially passed upon it; and this they dispersed throughout 
 the nation. At the time they passed the decree, with the 
 same gravity they ordered the same absurd, oppressive, and 
 partial tax to be paid, until they could find a revenue to re- 
 place it. The consequence was inevitable. The provinces 
 which had been always exempted from this salt monopoly, 
 some of whom were charged with other contributions, per- 
 haps equivalent, were totally disinclined to bear any part of 
 the burden, which by an equal distribution was to redeem 
 the others. As to the Assembly, occupied as it was with 
 the declaration and violation of the rights of men, and with 
 their arrangements for general confusion, it had neither leisure 
 nor capacity to contrive, nor authority to enforce, any plan 
 of any kind relative to the replacing the tax, or equalizing it, 
 or compensating the provinces, or for conducting their minds 
 to any scheme of accommodation with the other districts 
 which were to be relieved. The people of the salt provinces, 
 impatient under taxes damned by the authority which had 
 directed their payment, very soon found their patience ex- 
 hausted. They thought themselves as skilful in demolishing 
 
592 BURKE 
 
 as the Assembly could be. They relieved themselves by 
 throwing off the whole burden. Animated by this example, 
 each district, or part of a district, judging of its own griev- 
 ance by its own feeling, and of its remedy by its own opin- 
 ion, did as it pleased with other taxes. 
 
 We are next to see how they have conducted themselves 
 in contriving equal impositions, proportioned to the means 
 of the citizens, and the least likely to lean heavy on the 
 active capital employed in the generation of that private 
 wealth from whence the public fortune must bederived. By 
 suffering the several districts, and several of the individuals 
 in each district, to judge of what part of the old revenue they 
 might withhold, instead of better principles of equality,a new 
 inequality was introduced of the most oppressive kind. 
 Payments were regulated by dispositions. The parts of the 
 kingdom which were the most submissive, the most orderly, 
 or the most affectionate to the commonwealth, bore the 
 whole burden of the state. Nothing turns out to be so op- 
 pressive and unjust as a feeble government. To fill up all 
 the deficiencies in the old impositions, and the new deficien- 
 cies of every kind which were to be expected, what remained to 
 a state without authority ? The National Assembly called for 
 a voluntary benevolence,—for a fourth part of the income of 
 all the citizens, to be estimated on the honour of those who 
 were to pay. They obtained something more than could be 
 rationally calculated, but what was far indeed from answer- 
 able to their real necessities, and much less to their fond ex- 
 pectations. Rational people could have hoped for little 
 from this their tax in the disguise of a benevolence, —a tax 
 weak, ineffective, and unequal,—a tax by which luxury, 
 avarice, and selfishness were screened, and the load thrown 
 upon productive capital, upon integrity, generosity, and 
 public spirit,—a tax of regulation upon virtue. At length 
 the mask is thrown off, and they are now trying means (with 
 little success) of exacting their benevolence by force. 
 
 This benevolence, the rickety offspring of weakness, was 
 to be supported by another resource, the twin brother of the 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 593 
 
 same prolific imbecility. Th® patriotic donations were to 
 make good the failure of the patriotic contribution, John 
 Doe was to become security for Richard Roe. By this 
 scheme they took things of much price from the giver, com- 
 paratively of small value to the receiver ; they ruined several 
 trades ; they pillaged the crown of its ornaments, the churches 
 of their plate, and the people of their personal decora- 
 tions. The invention of those juvenile pretenders to liberty 
 wasin reality nothing more than a servileimitation of one of 
 the poorest resources of doting despotism. They took an 
 old, huge, full-bottomed periwig out of the wardrobe of the 
 antiquated frippery of Louis the Fourteenth, to cover the 
 premature baldness of the National Assembly. They pro- 
 duced this old-fashioned formal folly, though it had been so 
 abundantly exposed in the Memoirs of the Duke de Saint- 
 Simon,—if to reasonable men it had wanted any arguments 
 to display its mischief and insufficiency. A device of the 
 same kind was tried in my memory by Louis the Fifteenth, 
 but it answered at no time. However, the necessities of 
 ruinous wars were some excuse for desperate projects. The 
 deliberations of calamity are rarely wise. But here was a 
 season for disposition and providence. It was in a time of 
 profound peace, then enjoyed for five years, and promising 
 a much longer continuance, that they had recourse to this 
 desperate trifling. They were sure to lose more reputation 
 by sporting, in their serious situation, with these toys and 
 playthings of finance, which have filled half their journals, 
 than could possibly be compensated by the poor temporary 
 supply which they afforded. It seemed as if those who 
 adopted such projects were wholly ignorant of their circum- 
 stances, or wholly unequal to their necessities. Whatever 
 virtue may be in these devices, it is obvious that neither the 
 patriotic gifts nor the patriotic contribution can ever be 
 resorted to again. The resources of public folly are soon 
 exhausted. The whole, indeed, of their scheme of revenue 
 is to make, by any artifice, an appearance of a full reservoir 
 for Bae hour, whilst at the same time they cut off the 
 3 
 
594 BURKE 
 
 springs and living fountains of perennial supply. The ac- 
 count not long since furnished by M. Necker was meant, 
 without question, to be favourable. He gives a flattering 
 view of the means of getting through the year; but he ex- 
 presses, as it is natural he should, some apprehension for 
 that which was to succeed. On this last prognostic, instead 
 of entering into the grounds of apprehension, in order, by a 
 proper foresight, to prevent the prognosticated evil, M. 
 Necker receives a sort of friendly reprimand from the Pres- 
 ident of the Assembly. 
 
 As to their other schemes of taxation, it is impossible to 
 say anything of them with certainty, because they have not 
 yet had their operation; but nobody is so sanguine as to 
 imagine they will fill up any perceptible part of the wide 
 gaping breach which their incapacity has made in their reve- 
 nues. At present the state of theirtreasury sinks every day 
 more and more in cash, and swells more and more in ficti- 
 tious representation. When so little within or without is 
 now found but paper, the representative not of opulence, 
 but of want, the creature not of credit, but of power, they 
 imagine that our flourishing state in England is owing to 
 that bank-paper, and not the bank-paper to the flourishing 
 condition of our commerce, to the solidity of our credit, and 
 to the total exclusion of all idea of power from any part of 
 the transaction. They forget that in England not one shil- 
 ling of paper money of any description is received but of 
 choice,—that the whole has had its origin in cash actually 
 deposited,—and that it is convertible at pleasure, in an in- 
 stant, and without the smallest loss, into cash again. Our 
 paper is of value in commerce, because in law it is of none. 
 It is powerful on ’Change, because in Westminster Hall it is 
 impotent. In payment of a debt of twenty shillings a 
 creditor may refuse all the paper of the Bank of England. 
 Nor is there amongst us a single public security, of any 
 quality or nature whatsoever, that is enforced by authority. 
 In fact, it might be easily shown that our paper wealth, in- 
 stead of lessening the real coin, has a tendency to increase 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 595 
 
 it,—instead of being a substitute for money, it only facili- 
 tates its entry, its exit, and its circulation,—that it is the 
 symbol of prosperity, and not the badge of distress. Never 
 was a scarcity of cash and an exuberance of paper a subject 
 of complaint in this nation. 
 
 Well! but a lessening of prodigal expenses, and the 
 economy which has been introduced by the virtuous and 
 sapient Assembly, make amends for the losses sustained in 
 the receipt of revenue. In this at least they have fulfilled 
 the duty of a financier.—Have those who say so looked at 
 the expenses of the National Assembly itself? of the muni- 
 cipalities? of the city of Paris? of the increased pay of the 
 two armies? of the new police? of the new judicatures? 
 Have they even carefully compared the present pension-list 
 with the former? These politicians have been cruel, not 
 economical. Comparing the expenses of the former prodi- 
 gal government and its relation to the then revenues with 
 the expenses of this new system as opposed to the state of 
 its new treasury, I believe the present will be found beyond 
 all comparison more chargeable.* 
 
 It remains only to consider the proofs of financial ability 
 furnished by the present French managers when they are to 
 raise supplies on credit. Here I ama little at a stand; for 
 credit, properly speaking, they have none. The credit of 
 the ancient government was not, indeed, the best; but they 
 could always, on some terms, command money, not only at 
 home, but from most of the countries of Europe where a 
 surplus capital was accumulated; and the credit of that 
 government was improving daily. The establishment of a 
 system of liberty would of course be supposed to give it new 
 strength: and so it would actually have done, if a system of 
 liberty had been established. What offers has their govern- 
 ment of pretended liberty had from Holland, from Ham- 
 burg, from Switzerland, from Genoa, from England, for a 
 dealing in their paper? Why should these nations of com- 
 merce and economy enter into any pecuniary dealings with 
 a people who attempt to reverse the very nature of things,— 
 
596 BURKE 
 
 amongst whom they see the debtor prescribing at the point 
 of the bayonet the medium of his solvency to the creditor, 
 discharging one of his engagements with another, turning 
 his very penury into his resource, and paying his interest 
 with his rags ? ) 
 
 Their fanatical confidence in the omnipotence of Church 
 plunder has induced these philosophers to overlook all care 
 of the public estate, just as the dream of the philosopher's 
 stone induces dupes, under the more plausible delusion of 
 the hermetic art, to neglect all rational means of improving 
 their fortunes. With these philosophic financiers, this uni- 
 versal medicine made of Church mummy is to cure all the 
 evils of the state. These gentlemen perhaps do not believe 
 a great deal in the miracles of piety ; but it can not be ques- 
 tioned that they have an undoubting faith in the prodigies 
 of sacrilege. Is there a debt which presses them? Issue as- 
 signats. Are compensations to be made ora maintenance 
 decreed to those whom they have robbed of their freehold in 
 their office or expelled from their profession? Assignats. 
 Is a fleet to be fitted out? Assignats. If sixteen millions 
 sterling of these assignats forced on the people leave the 
 wants of the state as urgent as ever, Issue, says one, thirty 
 millions sterling of assignats,—says another, Issue fourscore 
 millions more of assignats. The only difference among their 
 financial factions is on the greater or the lesser quantity of 
 assignats to be imposed on the public sufferance. They are 
 all professors of assignats. Even those whose natural good 
 sense and knowledge of commerce, not obliterated by philos- 
 ophy, furnish decisive arguments against this delusion, con- 
 clude their arguments by proposing the emission of assignats. 
 I suppose they must talk of assignats, asno other language 
 would be understood. All experience of their inefficacy 
 does not in the least discourage them. Are the old assig- 
 nats depreciated at market? What isthe remedy? Issue 
 new assignats.—Mais si maladia opiniatria non vult se garire, 
 quid illi facere? Assignare; postea assignare; ensuita as- 
 signare. The word isa trifle altered. The Latin of your 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 597 
 
 present doctors may be better than that of your old comedy ; 
 their wisdom and the variety of their resources are the same. 
 They have not more notes in their song than the cuckoo ; 
 though, far from the softness of that harbinger of summer 
 and plenty, their voice is as harsh and as ominous as that of 
 the raven. 
 
 Who but the most desperate adventuress in philosophy and 
 finance could at all have thought of destroying the settled 
 revenue of the state, the sole security for the public credit, 
 in the hope of rebuilding it with the materials of confiscated 
 property? If, however, an excessive zeal for the state should 
 have led a pious and venerable prelate (by anticipation a 
 father of the Church)® to pillage his own order, and, for the 
 good of the Church and people, to take upon himself the 
 place of grand financier of confiscation and comptroller-gen- 
 eral of sacrilege, he and his coadjutors were, in my opinion, 
 bound to show, by their subsequent conduct, that they knew 
 something of the office they assumed. When they had 
 resolved to appropriate to the fisc a certain portion of the 
 landed property of their conquered country, it was their busi- 
 ness to render their bank a real fund of credit,—as far as 
 such a bank was capable of becoming so. 
 
 To establish a current circulating credit upon any land- 
 bank, under any circumstances whatsoever, has hitherto 
 proved difficult at the very least. The attempt has com- 
 monly ended in bankruptcy. But when the Assembly were 
 led, through a contempt of moral, to a defiance of economi- 
 cal principles, it might at least have been expected that 
 nothing would be omitted on their part to lessen this diffi- 
 culty, to prevent any aggravation of this bankruptcy. It 
 might be expected, that, to render your land-bank tolerable, 
 every means would be adopted that could display openness 
 and candour in the statement of the security, everything which 
 could aid the recovery of the demand. To take things in 
 their most favourable point of view, your condition was that 
 of a man of a large landed estate which he wished to dispose 
 of for the discharge of a debt and the supply of certain 
 
598 BURKE 
 
 services. Not being able instantly to sell, you wished to mort- 
 gage. What woulda man of fair intentions and a commonly 
 clear understanding do in such circumstances? Ought he 
 not first to ascertain the gross value of the estate, the charges 
 of its management and disposition, the incumbrances perpet- 
 ual and temporary of all kinds that affect it,--then, striking 
 a net surplus, to calculate the just value of the security ? 
 When that surplus (the only security to the creditor) had 
 been clearly ascertained, and properly vested in the hands 
 of trustees, then he would indicate the parcels to be sold, 
 and the time and conditions of sale; after this he would 
 admit the public creditor, if he chose it, to subscribe his stock 
 into this new fund,—or he might receive proposals for an 
 assignat from those who would advance money to purchase 
 this species of security. This would be to proceed like men 
 of business, methodically and rationally, and on the only 
 principles of public and private credit that have an existence. 
 The dealer would then know exactly what he purchased ; 
 and the only doubt which could hang upon his mind would 
 be the dread of the resumption of the spoil, which one day 
 might be made (perhaps with an addition of punishment) 
 from the sacrilegious gripe of those execrable wretches who 
 could become purchasers at the auction of their innocent 
 fellow-citizens. 
 
 An open and exact statement of the clear value of the 
 property, and of the time, the circumstances, and the place 
 of sale, were all necessary, to efface as much as possible the 
 stigma that has hitherto been branded on every kind of 
 land-bank. It became necessary on another principle,—that 
 is, on account of a pledge of faith previously given on that 
 subject, that their future fidelity in a slippery concern might 
 be established by their adherence to their first engagement. 
 When they had finally determined on a state resource from 
 Church booty, they came, on the fourteenth of April, 1790, 
 to a solemn resolution on the subject, and pledged them- 
 selves to their country, “that, in the statement of the public 
 charges for each year, there should be brought to account a 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 599 
 
 sum sufficient for defraying the expenses of the R.C. A. 
 religion, the support of the ministers at the altars, the relief 
 of the poor, the pensions to the ecclesiastics, secular as well 
 as regular, of the one and of the other sex, in order that the 
 estates and goods which are at the disposal of the nation 
 may be disengaged of all charges, and employed by the 
 representatives, or the legislative body, to the great and most 
 pressing exigencies of the state.’”’ They further engaged, on 
 the same day, that the sum necessary for the year 1791 should 
 be forthwith determined. 
 
 In this resolution they admit it their duty to show dis- 
 tinctly the expense of the above objects, which, by other 
 resolutions, they had before engaged should be first in the 
 order of provision. They admit that they ought to show 
 the estate clear and disengaged of all charges, and that they 
 should show it immediately. Have they done this immedi- 
 ately, or at anytime? Have they ever furnished a rent-roll 
 of the immovable estate, or given in an inventory of the 
 movable effects, which they confiscate to their assignats? In 
 what manner they can fulfil their engagements of holding 
 out to public service ‘an estate disengaged of all charges,” 
 without authenticating the value of the estate or the quan- 
 tum of the charges, I leave it to their English admirers to 
 explain. Instantly upon this assurance, and previously to 
 any one step towards making it good, they issue, on the 
 credit of so handsome a declaration, sixteen millions sterling 
 of their paper. This was manly. Who, after this masterly 
 stroke, can doubt of their abilities in finance ?—But then, 
 before any other emission of these financial indulgences, they 
 took care at least to make good their original promise.—If 
 such estimate, either of the value of the estate or the amount 
 of the incumbrances, has been made, it has escaped me. I 
 never heard of it. 
 
 At length they have spoken out, and they have made a 
 full discovery of their abominable fraud in holding out the 
 Church lands as a security for any debts or any service what- 
 soever. They rob only to enable them to cheat; but in a 
 
600 BURKE 
 
 very short time they defeat the ends both of the robbery and 
 the fraud, by making out accounts for other purposes, which 
 blow up their whole apparatus of force and of deception. I 
 am obliged to M. de Calonne for his reference to the docu- 
 ment which proves this extraordinary fact: it had by some 
 means escaped me. Indeed, it was not necessary to make 
 out my assertion as to the breach of faith on the declaration 
 of the fourteenth of April, 1790. By a report of their com- 
 mittee it now appears that the charge of keeping up the 
 reduced ecclesiastical establishments, and other expenses 
 attendant on religion, and maintaining the religious of both 
 sexes, retained or pensioned, and the other concomitant 
 expenses of the same nature, which they have brought upon 
 themselves by this convulsion in property, exceeds the in- 
 come of the estates acquired by it in the enormous sum of 
 two millions sterling annually,—besides a debt of seven mil- 
 lions and upwards. These are the calculating powers of im- 
 posture! This is the finance of philosophy! This is the 
 result of all the delusions held out to engage a miserable 
 people in rebellion, murder, and sacrilege, and to make them 
 prompt and zealous instruments in the ruin of their country! 
 Never did a state, in any case, enrich itself by the confisca- 
 tions of the citizens. This new experiment has succeeded 
 like all the rest. Every honest mind, every true lover of 
 liberty and humanity, must rejoice to find that injustice is 
 not always good policy, nor rapine the high-road to riches. 
 I subjoin with pleasure, in a note, the able and spirited obser- 
 vations of M. de Calonne on this subject.5” 
 
 In order to persuade the world of the bottomless resource 
 of ecclesiastical confiscation, the Assembly have proceeded 
 to other confiscations of estates in offices, which could not 
 be done with any common colour without being compensated 
 out of this grand confiscation of landed property. They 
 have thrown upon this fund, which was to show a surplus 
 disengaged of all charges, a new charge, namely, the com- 
 pensation to the whole body of the disbanded judicature, 
 and of all suppressed offices and estates: a charge which I 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 601 
 
 can not ascertain, but which unquestionably amounts to 
 many French millions. Another of the new charges is an 
 annuity of four hundred and eighty thousand pounds sterling, 
 to be paid (if they choose to keep faith) by daily payments, 
 for the interest of the first assignats. Have they ever given 
 themselves the trouble to state fairly the expense of the 
 management of the Church lands in the hands of the muni- 
 cipalities, to whose care, skill, and diligence, and that of their 
 legion of unknown under-agents, they have chosen to commit 
 the charge of the forfeited estates, and the consequence of 
 which had been so ably pointed out by the Bishop of Nancy? 
 
 But it is unnecessary to dwell on these obvious heads of 
 incumbrance. Have they made out any clear state of the 
 grand incumbrance of all, I mean the whole of the general 
 and municipal establishments of all sorts, and compared it 
 with the regular income by revenue? Every deficiency in 
 these becomes a charge on the confiscated estate, before the 
 creditor can plant his cabbages on an acre of Church prop- 
 erty. There isno other prop than this confiscation to keep 
 the whole state from tumbling tothe ground. In this 
 situation they have purposely covered all, that they ought 
 industriously to have cleared, with a thick fog; and then, 
 blindfold themselves, like bulls that shut their eyes when 
 they push, they drive, by the point of the bayonets, their 
 slaves, blindfolded indeed no worse than their lords, to take 
 their fictions for currencies, and to swallow down paper pills 
 by thirty-four millions sterling at a dose. Then they 
 proudly lay in their claim to a future credit, on failure of all 
 their past engagements, and at a time when (if in sucha 
 matter anything can be clear) it is clear that the surplus 
 estates will never answer even the first of their mortgages,— 
 I mean that of the four hundred millions (or sixteen millions 
 sterling) of assignats. In all this procedure I can discern 
 neither the solid sense of plain dealing nor the subtle dex- 
 terity of ingenious fraud. The objections within the As- 
 sembly to pulling up the flood-gates for this inundation of 
 fraud are unanswered; but they are thoroughly refuted by 
 
602 BURKE 
 
 an hundred thousand financiers in the street. These are the 
 numbers by which the metaphysic arithmeticians compute. 
 These are the grand calculations on which a philosophical 
 public credit is founded in France. They can not raise 
 supplies; but they can raise mobs. Let them rejoice in the 
 applauses of the club at Dundee for their wisdom and patri- 
 otism in having thus applied the plunder of the citizens to 
 the service of the state. I hear of no address upon this 
 subject from the directors of the Bank of England,—though 
 their approbation would be of a little more weight in the 
 scale of credit than that of the club at Dundee. But to do 
 justice to the club, I believe the gentlemen who compose it 
 to be wiser than they appear,—that they will be less liberal 
 of their money than of their addresses, and that they would 
 not give a dog’s ear of their most rumpled and ragged 
 Scotch paper for twenty of your fairest assignats. 
 
 Early in this year the Assembly issued paper to the 
 amount of sixteen millions sterling. What must have been 
 the state into which the Assembly has brought your affairs, 
 that the relief afforded by so vast a supply has been hardly 
 perceptible? This paper also felt an almost immediate de- 
 preciation of five per cent, which in a little time came to 
 about seven. The effect of these assignats on the receipt 
 of the revenue is remarkable. M. Necker found that the 
 collectors of the revenue, who received in coin, paid the 
 treasury in assignats. The collectors made seven per cent 
 by thus receiving in money, and accounting in depreciated 
 paper. It was not very difficult to foresee that this must be 
 inevitable. It was, however, not the less embarrassing. M. 
 Necker was obliged (I believe, for a considerable part, in the 
 market of London) to buy gold and silver for the mint, 
 which amounted to about twelve thousand pounds above 
 the value of the commodity gained. That minister was of 
 opinion, that, whatever their secret nutritive virtue might be, 
 the state could not live upon assignats alone,—that some real 
 silver was necessary, particularly for the satisfaction of those 
 who, having iron in their hands, were not likely to distinguish 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 603 
 
 themselves for patience, when they should perceive, that, 
 whilst an increase of pay was held out to them in real money, 
 it was again to be fraudulently drawn back by depreciated 
 paper. The minister, in this very natural distress, applied 
 to the Assembly, that they should order the collectors to 
 pay in specie what in specie they had received. It could 
 not escape him, that, if the Treasury paid three per cent for 
 the use of a currency which should be returned seven per 
 cent worse than the minister issued it, such a dealing could 
 not very greatly tend to enrich the public. The Assembly 
 took no notice of his recommendation. They were in this 
 dilemma: If they continued to receive the assignats, cash 
 must become an alien to their Treasury; if the Treasury 
 should refuse those paper amulets, or should discountenance 
 them in any degree, they must destroy the credit of their 
 sole resource. They seem, then, to have made their option, 
 and to have given some sort of credit to their paper by 
 taking it themselves; at the same time, in their speeches, 
 they made a sort of swaggering declaration, something, I 
 rather think, above legislative competence,—that is, that 
 there is no difference in value between metallic money and 
 their assignats. This was a good, stout, proof article of 
 faith, pronounced under an anathema by the venerable 
 fathers of this philosophic synod. Credat who will,—cer- 
 tainly not Judzeus Apella. 
 
 A noble indignation rises in the minds of your popular 
 leaders, on hearing the magic-lantern in their show of finance 
 compared to the fraudulent exhibitions of Mr. Law. They 
 can not bear to hear the sands of his Mississippi compared 
 with the rock of the Church, on which they build their 
 system. Pray let them suppress this glorious spirit, until 
 they show to the world what piece of solid ground there is 
 for their assignats, which they have not preoccupied by 
 other charges. They do injustice to that great mother 
 fraud, to compare it with their degenerate imitation. It is 
 not true that Law built solely on a speculation concerning 
 the Mississippi. He added the East India trade; he added 
 
604 BURKE 
 
 the African trade; he added the farms of all the farmed 
 revenue of France. Allthese together unquestionably could 
 not support the structure which the public enthusiasm, not 
 he, chose to build upon these bases. But these were, how- 
 over, in comparison, generous delusions. They supposed, 
 and they aimed at, an increase of the commerce of France. 
 They opened to it the whole range of the two hemispheres. 
 They did not think of feeding France from its own substance. 
 A grand imagination found in this flight of commerce some- 
 thing to captivate. It was wherewithal to dazzle the eye of 
 an eagle. It was not made to entice the smell of a mole, 
 nuzzling and burying himself in his mother earth, as yours 
 is. Men were not then quite shrunk from their natural dim- 
 ensions by a degrading and sordid philosophy, and fitted for 
 low and vulgar deceptions. Above all, remember, that, in 
 imposing on the imagination, the then managers of the 
 system made acompliment to the freedom of men. In their 
 fraud there was no mixture of force. This was reserved to 
 our time, to quench the little glimmerings of reason which 
 might break in upon the solid darkness of this enlightened 
 age. 
 
 On recollection, I have said nothing of a scheme of finance 
 which may be urged in favour of the abilities of these gentle- 
 men, and which has been introduced with great pomp, though 
 not yet finally adopted in the National Assembly. It comes 
 with something solid in aid of the credit of the paper circula- 
 tion ; andmuch has been said of its utility and its elegance. 
 I mean the project for coining into money the bells of the 
 suppressed churches. This is their alchemy. There are 
 some follies which baffle argument, which go beyond ridi- 
 cule, and which excite no feeling in us but disgust; and 
 therefore I say no more upon it. 
 
 It is as little worth remarking any farther upon all their 
 drawing and re-drawing, on their circulation for putting off 
 the evil day, on the play between the Treasury and the 
 Caisse d’Escompte, and on all these old, exploded con- 
 trivances of mercantile fraud, now exalted into policy of 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 605 
 
 state. The revenue will not be trifled with. The prattling 
 about the rights of men will not be accepted in payment of 
 a biscuit or a pound of gunpowder. Here, then, the meta- 
 physicians descend from their airy speculations, and faith- 
 fully follow examples. What examples? The examples of 
 bankrupts. But defeated, baffled, disgraced, when their 
 breath, their strength, their inventions, their fancies desert 
 them, their confidence still maintains its ground. In the 
 manifest failure of their abilities, they take credit for their 
 benevolence. When the revenue disappears in their hands, 
 they have the presumption, in some of their late proceed- 
 ings, to value themselves on the relief given to the people. 
 They did not relieve the people. If they entertained such 
 intentions, why did they order the obnoxious taxes to be 
 paid? The people relieved themselves, in spite of the 
 Assembly. 
 
 But waiving all discussion on the parties who may claim 
 the merit of this fallacious relief, has there been, in effect, 
 any relief to the people in any form? M. Bailly, one of the 
 grand agents of paper circulation, lets you into the nature of 
 this relief. His speech to the National Assembly contained 
 a high and laboured panegyric on the inhabitants of Paris, 
 for the constancy and unbroken resolution with which they 
 have borne their distress and misery. A fine picture of 
 public felicity! What! great courage and unconquerable 
 firmness of mind to endure benefits and sustain redress ? 
 One would think, from the speech of this learned lord mayor, 
 that the Parisians, for this twelvemonth past, had been suf- 
 fering the straits of some dreadful blockade,—that Henry 
 the Fourth had been stopping up the avenues to their 
 supply, and Sully thundering with his ordnance at the 
 gates of Paris,—when in reality they are besieged by no 
 other enemies than their own madness and folly, their own 
 credulity and perverseness. But M. Bailly will sooner thaw 
 the eternal ice of his Atlantic regions than restore the cen- 
 tral heat to Paris, whilst it remains ‘smitten with the cold, 
 dry, petrific mace” of a false and unfeeling philosophy. 
 
606 BURKE 
 
 Some time after this speech, that is, on the thirteenth of 
 last August, the same magistrate, giving an account of his 
 government at the bar of the same Assembly, expresses him- 
 self as follows :—“ In the month of July, 1789,” (the period 
 of everlasting commemoration,) “ the finances of the city of 
 Paris were yet in good order; the expenditure was counter- 
 balanced by the receipt, and she had at that time a million 
 [forty thousand pounds sterling] in bank. The expenses 
 which she has been constrained to incur, subsequent to the 
 Revolution, amount to 2,500,000 livres. From these ex- 
 penses, and the great falling off in the product of the free 
 gifts, not only a momentary, but a total, want of money has 
 taken place.” This is the Paris upon whose nourishment, 
 in the course of the last year, such immense sums, drawn 
 from the vitals of all France, have been expended. As long 
 as Paris stands in the place of ancient Rome, so long she 
 will be maintained by the subject provinces. It is an evil 
 inevitably attendant on the dominion of sovereign demo- 
 cratic republics. As it happened in Rome, it may survive 
 that republican domination which gave rise to it. In that 
 case despotism itself must submit to the vices of popularity. 
 Rome, under her emperors, united the evils of both systems; 
 and this unnatural combination was one great cause of her 
 ruin. 
 
 To tell the people that they are relieved by the dilapida- 
 tion of their public estate is a cruel and insolent imposition. 
 Statesmen, before they valued themselves on the relief given 
 to the people by the destruction of their revenue, ought first 
 to have carefully attended to the solution of this problem : 
 —Whether it be more advantageous to the people to pay 
 considerably and to gain in proportion, or to gain little or 
 nothing and to be disburdened of all contribution? My 
 mind is made up to decide in favour of the first proposition. 
 Experience is with me, and, I believe, the best opinions also. 
 To keep a balance between the power of acquisition on the 
 part of the subject and the demands he is to answer on the 
 part of the state is the fundamental part of the skill of atrue 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 607 
 
 politician. The means of acquisition are prior in time and in 
 arrangement. Good order is the foundation of all good things. 
 To be enabled to acquire, the people, without being servile, 
 must be tractable and obedient. The magistrate must have 
 his reverence, the laws their authority. The body of the peo- 
 ple must not find the principles of natural subordination by art 
 rooted out of theirminds. They must respect that property 
 of which they can not partake. They must labour to obtain 
 what by labour can be obtained ; and when they find, as they 
 commonly do, the success disproportioned to the endeavour, 
 they must be taught their consolation in the final proportions 
 of eternal justice. Of this consolation whoever deprivesthem 
 deadens their industry, and strikes at the root of all acquisi- 
 tion as of all conservation. He that does this is the cruel 
 oppressor, the merciless enemy of the poor and wretched ; 
 at the same time that by his wicked speculations he exposes 
 the fruits of successful industry and the accumulations of for- 
 tune to the plunder ofthe negligent, the disappointed, and 
 the unprosperous. 
 
 Too many of the financiers by profession are apt to see 
 nothing in revenue but banks, and circulations, and annuities 
 on lives, and tontines, and perpetual rents, and all the small 
 wares of the shop. Ina settled order of the state, these 
 things are not to be slighted, nor is the skill in them to be 
 held of trivial estimation. They are good, but then only 
 good when they assume the effects of that settled order, and 
 are built upon it. But when men think that these beggarly 
 contrivances may supply aresource for the evils which result 
 from breaking up the foundations of public order, and from 
 causing or suffering the principles of property to be subvert- 
 ed, they will, in the. ruin of their country, leave a melancholy 
 and lasting monument of the effect of preposterous politics, 
 and presumptuous, short-sighted, narrow-minded wisdom. 
 
 The effects of the incapacity shown by the popular leaders 
 in all the great members of the commonwealth are to be 
 covered with the “ all-atoning name” of Liberty. In some 
 people I see great liberty, indeed ; in many, if not in the 
 
608 BURKE 
 
 most, an oppressive, degrading servitude. But what is lib- 
 erty without wisdom and without virtue? It is the greatest 
 of all possible evils ; for it isfolly, vice, and madness, without 
 tuition or restraint. Those who know what virtuous liberty 
 iscan not bear to see it disgraced by incapable heads, on 
 account of their having high-sounding words in their mouths. 
 Grand, swelling sentiments of liberty I am sure I do not 
 despise. They warm the heart ; they enlarge and liberalize 
 our minds ; they animate our courage ina time of conflict. 
 Old as I am, I read the fine raptures of Lucan and Corneille 
 with pleasure. Neither do I wholly condemn the little arts 
 and devices of popularity. They facilitate the carrying of 
 many points of moment; they keep the people together ; 
 they refresh the mind in its exertions ; and they diffuse oc- 
 casional gayety over the severe brow of moral freedom. 
 Every politician ought to sacrifice to the Graces, and to join 
 compliance with reason. But in such an undertaking as that 
 in France all these subsidiary sentiments and artifices are of 
 little avail. To make a government requires no great pru- 
 dence. Settle the seat of power, teach obedience, and the 
 work is done. Togive freedom is still more easy. It is not 
 necessary to guide ; it only requires to let go the rein. But 
 to form a free government, that is, to temper together these 
 opposite elements of liberty and restraint in one consistent 
 work, requires much thought, deep reflection, a sagacious, 
 powerful, and combining mind. ThisI do not find in those 
 who take the lead in the National Assembly. Perhaps they 
 are not so miserably deficient as they appear. I rather be- 
 lieve it. It would put them below the common level of 
 human understanding. But when the leaders choose to 
 make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their 
 talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service. 
 They will become flatterers instead of legislators,—the instru- 
 ments, not the guides of the people. If any.of them should 
 happen to propose a scheme of liberty soberly limited, and 
 defined with proper qualifications, he will be immediately 
 outbid by his competitors, who will produce something more 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 609 
 
 splendidly popular. Suspicions will be raised of his fidelity 
 to his cause. Moderation will be stigmatised as the virtue 
 of cowards, and compromise as the prudence of traitors,— 
 until, in hopes of preserving the credit which may enable 
 him to temper and moderate on some occasions, the pop- 
 ular leader is obliged to become active in propagating doc- 
 trines and establishing powers that will afterwards defeat any 
 sober purpose at which he ultimately might have aimed. 
 
 But am I so unreasonable as to see nothing at all that de- 
 serves commendation in the indefatigable labours of this As- 
 sembly ? I donot deny, that, among an infinite number of 
 acts of violence and folly, some good may have been done. 
 They who destroy everything certainly will remove some 
 grievance. They who make everything new have a chance 
 that they may establish something beneficial. To give them 
 credit for what they have done in virtue of the authority they 
 have usurped, or to excuse them in the crimes by which that 
 authority has been acquired, it must appear that the same 
 things could not have been accomplished without producing 
 such a revolution. Most assuredly they might ; because 
 almost every one of the regulations made by them, which is 
 not very equivocal, was either in the cession of the king, 
 voluntarily made at the meeting of the States, or in the con- 
 current instructions to the orders. Some usages have been 
 abolished on just grounds ; but they were such, that, if they 
 had stood as they were to all eternity, they would little de- 
 tract from the happiness and prosperity of any state. The 
 improvements of the National Assembly are superficial, their 
 errors fundamental. 
 
 Whatever they are, I wish my countrymen rather to re- 
 commend to our neighbours the example of the British 
 Constitution than to take models from them for the improve- 
 ment of ourown. Inthe formerthey have got an invaluable 
 treasure. They are not, I think, without some causes of 
 apprehension and complaint ; but these they do not owe to 
 their Constitution, but to their own conduct. I think our 
 
 39 
 
610 BURKE 
 
 happy situation owing to our Constitution,—but owing to 
 the whole of it, and not to any part singly—owing in a great 
 measure to what we have left standing in our several reviews 
 and reformations, as well as to what we have altered or 
 superadded. Our people will find employment enough for 
 a truly patriotic, free, and independent spirit, in guarding 
 what they possess from violation. I would not exclude al- 
 teration neither; but even when I changed, it should be to 
 preserve. I should be led to my remedy by a great griev- 
 ance. In what I did, I should follow the example of our 
 ancestors. I would make the reparation as nearly as possi- 
 ble in the style of the building. A politic caution, aguarded 
 circumspection, a moral rather than a complexional timidity, 
 were among the ruling principles of our forefathers in their 
 most decided conduct. Not being illuminated with the 
 light of which the gentlemen of France tell us they have got 
 so abundant a share, they acted under a strong impression 
 of the ignorance and fallibility of mankind. He that had 
 made them thus fallible rewarded them for having in their 
 conduct attended to their nature. Let us imitate their cau- 
 tion, if we wish to deserve their fortune or to retain their 
 bequests. Let us add, if we please, but let us preserve what 
 they have left; and standing on the firm ground of the 
 British Constitution, let us be satisfied to admire, rather than 
 attempt to follow in their desperate flights, the aéronauts of 
 France. 
 
 I have told you candidly my sentiments. I think they 
 are not likely to alter yours. I do not know that they 
 ought. You are young; you can not guide, but must follow, 
 the fortune of your country. But hereafter they may be of 
 some use to you, in some future form which your common. 
 wealth may take. In the present it can hardly remain; but 
 before its final settlement, it may be obliged to pass, as one 
 of our poets says, “ through great varieties of untried being,” 
 and in all its transmigrations to be purified by fire and blood. 
 
 I have little to recommend my opinions but long observa- 
 tion and much impartiality. They come from one who has 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 611 
 
 been no tool of power, no flatterer of greatness, and who in 
 his last acts does not wish to belie the tenor of his life. 
 They come from one almost the whole of whose public exer- 
 tion has been a struggle for the liberty of others,—from one 
 in whose breast no anger durable or vehement has ever been 
 kindled but by what he considered as tyranny, and who 
 snatches from his share in the endeavours which are used 
 by good men to discredit opulent oppression the hours he 
 has employed on your affairs, and who in so doing persuades 
 himself he has not departed from his usual office. They 
 come from one who desires honours, distinctions, and emolu- 
 ments but little, and who expects them not at all,—who has 
 no contempt for fame, and no fear of obloquy,— who shuns 
 contention, though he will hazard an opinion; from one who 
 wishes to preserve consistency, but who would preserve con- 
 sistency by varying his means to secure the unity of his end, 
 —and, when the equipoise of the vessel in which he 
 sails may beendangered by overloading it upon one side, is 
 desirous of carrying the small weight of his reasons to that 
 which may preserve its equipoise. 
 
 NOTES 
 
 1. Psalm, cxlix. 
 
 2. “ Discourse on the Love of our Country,” Nov. 4, 1789, by Dr. Richard 
 Price, 2d edition, p.17 and 18. 
 
 3. “Those who dislike that mode of worship which is prescribed by public 
 authority ought, if they can find no worship out of the Church which they ap- 
 prove, to set up a separate worship for themselves ; and by doing this, and giv- 
 ing an example of rational and manly worship, men of weight from their rank 
 and literature may do the greatest service to society and the world.”—P. 18, 
 Dr. Price’s Sermon. 
 
 4. P. 34, “ Discourse on the Love of our Country,” by Dr. Price. 
 
 5. Ist Mary, sess. 3, chap. I. 
 
 6. “ That King James the Second, having endeavoured to subvert the Consti- 
 tution of the kingdom, by breaking the original contract between king and 
 people, and, by the advice of Jesuits and other wicked persons, having violated 
 the fundamental laws, and having withdrawn himself out of the kingdom, hath 
 abdicated the government, and the throne is thereby vacant.” 
 
 Fovk 22,y AR, QAG 
 
 8 See Blackstone’s Magna Charta, printed at Oxford, 1759. 
 
612 BURKE 
 
 9. William and Mary. 
 
 10. Ecclesiasticus, chap. xxxviii. ver. 24, 25. ‘“ The wisdom of a learned man 
 cometh by opportunity of leisure: and he that hath little business shall become 
 wise. How can he get wisdom that holdeth the plough, and that glorieth in 
 the goad; that driveth oxen, and is occupied in their labours, and whose talk is 
 of bullocks ?” 
 
 Ver. 27. “So every carpenter and workmaster, that laboureth night and 
 day,” etc. 
 
 Ver. 33. “ They shall not be sought for in public counsel, nor sit high in the 
 congregation ; they shall not sit on the judge’s seat, nor understand the sen- 
 tence of judgment: they can not declare justice and judgment, and they shall 
 not be found where parables are spoken.” 
 
 Ver. 34. “ But they will maintain the state of the world.” 
 
 I do not determine whether this book be canonical, as the Gallican Church 
 (till lately) has considered it, or apocryphal, as here it is taken. I am sure it 
 contains a great deal of sense and truth. 
 
 11, “ Discourse on the Love of our Country,” 3d edit., p. 39. 
 
 12, Another of these reverend gentlemen, who was witness to some of the 
 spectacles which Paris has lately exhibited, expresses himself thus :—“ A king 
 dragged in submissive triumph by his conquering subjects is one of those ap- 
 pearances of grandeur which seldom rise in the prospect of human affairs, and 
 which, during the remainder of my life, I shall think of with wonder and grati- 
 fication.” These gentlemen agree marvellously in their feelings. 
 
 13. State Trials, Vol. II. p. 360, 363. 
 
 14. October 6th, 1789. 15. “ Tous les Evéques a la lanterne! ” 
 
 16, It is proper here to refer to a letter written upon this subject by an eye- 
 witness. That eyewitness was one of the most honest, intelligent, and eloquent 
 members of the National Assembly, one of the most active and zealous refor- 
 mers of the state. He was obliged to secede from the Assembly ; and he after- 
 wards became a voluntary exile, on account of the horrors of this pious triumph, 
 and the dispositions of men, who, profiting of crimes, if not causing them, have 
 taken the lead in public affairs. 
 
 Extract of M. de Lally Tollendal’s Second Letter to a Friend. 
 
 “ Parlons du parti que j’ai pris; il est bien justifié dans ma conscience.—Ni 
 cette ville coupable, ni cette assemblée plus coupable encore, ne méritoient 
 que je me justifie ; mais j’ai 4 coeur que vous, et les personnes qui pensent com- 
 me vous, ne me condamnent pas.—Ma santé, je vous jure, me rendoit mes 
 fonctions impossibles; mais méme en les mettant de cété il a été au-dessus de 
 mes forces de supporter plus longtems l’horreur que me causoit ce sang,—ces 
 tétes,—cette reine presque égorgée,—ce roi, amené esclave, entrant a Paris au 
 milieu de ses assassins, et précédé des tétes de ses malheureux gardes,—ces 
 perfides janissaires, ces assassins, ces femmes cannibales,—-ce cri de TOUS LES 
 EVEQUES A LA LANTERNE, dans le moment ot le roi entre sa capitale avec deux 
 évéques de son conseil dans sa voiture—un coup de fusil, que j’ai vu tirer dans 
 un des carrosses de la reine,—M. Bailly appellant cela un beau jour,—l’assem- 
 blée ayant déclaré froidement le matin, qu’il n’étoit pas de sa dignité d’aller 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 613 
 
 toute entiére environner le roi,—M. Mirabeau disant impunément dans cette 
 assemblée, que le vaisseau de 1’état, loin d’étre arrété dans sa course, s’élanceroit 
 avec plus de rapidité que jamais vers sa régénération,—M. Barnave, riant avec 
 lui, quand des flots de sang couloient autour de nous,—le vertueux Mounier * 
 échappant par miracle 4 vingt assassins, qui avoient voulu faire de sa téte un 
 trophée de plus: Voila ce qui me fit jurer de ne plus mettre le pied dans cette 
 caverne d’Antropophages [the National Assembly], ott je n’avois plus de force 
 d’élever la voix, ot depuis six semaines je l’avois élevée en vain. 
 
 “Moi, Mounier, et tous les honnétes gens, ont pensé que le dernier effort a 
 faire pour le bien étoit d’en sortir. Aucune idée de crainte ne s’est approchée 
 de moi. Je rougirois de m’en défendre. J’avois encore regi sur la route de 
 la part de ce peuple, moins coupable que ceux qui l’ont enivré de fureur des 
 acclamations, et des applaudissements, dont d’autres auroient été flattés, et qui 
 m’ont fait frémir. C’est 4 l’indignation, c’est 4 Vhorreur, c’est aux convulsions 
 physiques, que le seul aspect du sang me fait éprouver que j’aicédé. On brave 
 une seule mort; on la brave plusieurs fois, quand elle peut étre utile. Mais 
 aucune puissance sous le ciel, mais aucune opinion publique ou privée n’ont le 
 droit de me condamner 4 souffrir inutilement mille supplices par minute, et a 
 périr de désespoir, de rage, au milieu des triomphes, du crime que je n’ai pu 
 arréter. Ils me proscriront, ils confisqueront mes biens. Je labourerai la terre, 
 et je ne les verrai plus. Voila ma justification. Vous pourrez la lire, la mon- 
 trer, la laisser copier; tant pis pour ceux qui ne la comprendront pas; ce ne sera 
 alors moi qui auroit eu tort de la leur donner.” 
 
 This military man had not so good nerves as the peaceable gentlemen of the 
 Old Jewry.—See Mons. Mounier’s narrative of these transactions : a man also 
 of honour and virtue and talents, and therefore a fugitive. 
 
 17. See the fate of Bailly and Condorcet, supposed to be here particularly 
 alluded to. Compare the circumstances of the trial and execution of the for- 
 mer with this prediction. 
 
 18. The English are, I conceive, misrepresented in a letter Peel in one of 
 the papers, by a gentlemen thought to be a Dissenting minister. When writ- 
 ing to Dr. Price of the spirit which prevails at Paris, he says,—“ The spirit of 
 the people in this place has abolished all the proud distinctions which the king 
 and nobles had usurped in their minds: whether they talk of the king, the 
 noble, or the priest, their whole language is that of the most enlightened and 
 liberal amongst the English.” If this gentheman means to confine the terms 
 enlightened and liberal to one set of men in England, it may be true. Itis not 
 generally so. 
 
 1g. Sit igitur hoc ab initio persuasum civibus, dominos esse omnium rerum ac 
 moderatores deos; eaque, que gerantur, eorum geri vi, ditione, ac numine; 
 eosdemque optime de genere hominum mereri; et qualis quisque sit, quid 
 agat, quid in se admittat, qua mente, qua pietate colat religiones intueri: pio- 
 rum et impiorum habere rationem. His enim rebus imbutz mentes haud sane 
 abhorrebunt ab utili et a vera sententia.—Cic. de Legibus, 1. 2. 
 
 20. Quicquid multis peccatur inultum. 
 
 * N. B. M. Mounier was then speaker of the National Assembly. He has since been obliged 
 to live in exile, though one of the firmest assertors of liberty. 
 
614 BURKE 
 
 21. This (down to the end of the first sentence in the next paragraph) and some 
 other parts, here and there, were inserted, on his reading the manuscript, by my 
 lost son. 
 
 22. I do not choose to shock the feelings of the moral reader with any quota- 
 tion of their vulgar, base, and profane language. 
 
 23. Their connection with Turgot and almost all the people of the finance. 
 
 24. All have been confiscated in their turn. 
 
 25. Not his brother, nor any near relation; but this mistake does not affect 
 the argument. 
 
 26. The rest of the passage is this :-— 
 
 “ Who, having spent the treasures of his crown, 
 Condemns their luxury to feed his own. 
 And yet this act, to varnish o’er the shame 
 Of sacrilege, must bear Devotion’s name. 
 No crime so bold, but would be understood 
 A real, or at least a seeming good. 
 Who fears not to do ill, yet fears the name, 
 And free from conscience, is a slave to fame. 
 Thus he the Church at once protects and spoils: 
 But princes’ swords are sharper than their styles. 
 And thus to th’ ages past he makes amends, 
 Their charity destroys, their faith defends. 
 Then did Religion in a lazy cell, 
 In empty, airy contemplations, dwell ; 
 And like the block, unmoved lay: but ours; 
 As much too active, like the stork devours. 
 Is there no temperate region can be known 
 Betwixt their frigid and our torrid zone? 
 Could we not wake from that lethargic dream, 
 But to be restless in a worse extreme? 
 And for that lethargy was there no cure, 
 But to be cast into a calenture ? 
 Can knowledge have no bound, but must advance 
 So far, to make us wish for ignorance, 
 And rather in the dark to grope our way, 
 Than, led by a false guide, to err by day? 
 Who sees these dismal heaps, but would demand 
 What barbarous invader sack’d the land ? 
 But when he hears no Goth, no Turk did bring 
 This desolation, but a Christian king, 
 When nothing but the name of zeal appears 
 *Twixt our best actions and the worst of theirs, 
 What does he think our sacrilege would spare, 
 When such th’ effects of our devotions are ?” 
 
 Cooper's Hill, by Sir JOHN DENHAM. 
 
 27. Rapport de Mons. le Directeur-Général des Finances, fait par Ordre du 
 
 Roi 2 Versailles. Mai 5, 1789 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 615 
 
 28. In the Constitution of Scotland, during the Stuart reigns, a committee sat 
 for preparing bills; and none could pass, but those previously approved by 
 them. This committee was called Lords of Articles. 
 
 29. When I wrote this I quoted from memory, after many years had elapsed 
 from my reading the passage. A learned friend has found it and it is as fol- 
 lows :— 
 
 “ The ethical character is the same: both exercise despotism over the bet- 
 ter class of citizens ; and decrees are in the one what ordinance and arréts are 
 in the other : the demagogue, too, and the court favourite, are not unfrequently 
 the same identical men, and always bear a close analogy ; and these have the 
 principal power, each in their respective forms of government, favourites with 
 the absolute monarch, and demagogues with a people such asI have de- 
 scribed.” — Arist. Politic. lib. iv. cap. 4. 
 
 30. “De l’Adminstration des Finances de la France,” par Mons. Necker 
 Vol. I. p. 288 
 
 31. “ De l’Administration des Finances de la France,” par M. Necker. 
 
 32. Vol. III., chap. 8 and chap. 9. 
 
 33- The world is obliged to M. de Calonne for the pains he has taken to refute 
 the scandalous exaggerations relative to some of the royal expenses, and to 
 detect the fallacious account given of pensions for the wicked purpose of pro- 
 voking the populace to all sorts of crimes. 
 
 34. See Gulliver’s Travels for the idea of countries governed by philosophers. 
 
 35. M.de Calonne states the falling off of the population of Paris as far more 
 considerable ; and it may be so, since the period of M. Necker’s calculation. 
 
 36. Travaux de charité pour sub- 
 
 venir au manque de travail a Livres. oe s. ad 
 Paris et dans les provinces . 3,866,920 161,12I 13 4 
 Destruction de vagabondage et de la 
 mendicité . ‘ : ; 2,071,417 60,642 7 6 
 Primes pour l’importation de grains 5,671,907 230,329 9 2 
 
 Dépenses relatives aux subsistances, 
 déduction fait des recouvrements 
 
 qui ont eulieu . ? ; - 39,871,790 1,661,324 11 8 
 Total . R : » 51,082,034 2,128,418 1 8 
 
 When I sent this book to the press, I entertained some doubt concerning 
 the nature and extent of the last article in the above accounts, which is only 
 under a general head, without any detail. Since then I have seen M. de 
 Calonne’s works. I must think it a great loss to me that I had not that advan- 
 tage earlier. M. de Calonne thinks this article to be on account of general sub- 
 sistence ; but as he is not able to comprehend how so great a loss as upwards of 
 1,661,000/. sterling could be sustained on the difference between the price and 
 the sale of grain, he seems to attribute this enormous head of charge to secret 
 expenses of the Revolution. I can not say anything positively on that subject. 
 The reader is capable of judging, by the aggregate of these immense charges, on 
 the state and condition of France, and the system of public economy adopted in 
 
616 BURKE 
 
 that nation. These articles of account produced no inquiry or discussion in 
 the National Assembly. 
 
 37. This is on a supposition of the truth of this story ; but he was not in 
 France at the time. One name serves as well as another. 
 
 38. Domat. 
 
 39. Speech of M. Camus, pnblished by order of the National Assembly. 
 
 — System und Folgen des Illuminatenordens.” Miinchen, 1787. 
 
 40. Whether the following description is strictly true I know not; but it is 
 what the publishers would have pass for true, in order to animate others. In 
 a letter from Toul, given in one of their papers, is the following passage con- 
 cerning the people of that district:—- “ Dans la Révolution actuelle, ils ont 
 résisté a toutes les séductions du bigotisme, aux persécutions et aux tracas- 
 series des ennemis de la Révolution. Oubliant leurs plus grands intéréts pour 
 rendre hommage aux vues d’ordre général qui ont déterminé l’Assemblée Na- 
 tionale, ils voient, sans se plaindre, supprimer cette foule d’établissemens ecclési- 
 astiques par lesquels ils subsistoient ; et méme, en perdant leur siége épiscopal, 
 la seule de toutes ces ressources qui pouvoit, ou plutdt qui devoit, en toute 
 équité, leur étre conservée, condamnés, 4 la plus effrayante misére sans avoir 
 été ni pu étre entendus, ils ne murmurent point, ils restent fideles aux principes 
 du plus pur patriotisme ; ils sont encore préts 4 verser leur sang pour le main- 
 tien de la constitution, qui va réduire leur ville 4 la plus déplorable nullité.”— 
 These people are not supposed to have endured those sufferings and injustices 
 in a struggle for liberty, for the same account states truly that they have been 
 always free; their patience in beggary and ruin, and their suffering, without 
 remonstrance, the most flagrant and confessed injustice, if strictly true, can be 
 nothing but the effect of this dire fanaticism. A great multitude all over 
 France is in the same condition and the same temper. 
 
 41. See the proceedings of the confederation at Nantes. 
 
 42. “ Siplures sunt ii quibus improbe datum est,quam illi quibus injuste ademp- 
 tum est, idcirco plus etiam valent? Non enim numero hec judicantur, sed 
 pondere. Quam autem habet zquitatem, ut agrum multis annis, aut etiam 
 seculis ante possessum, qui nullum habuit habeat, qui autem habuit amittat ? 
 Ac, propter hoc injuriz genus, Lacedaemonii Lysandrum Ephorum expulerunt ; 
 Agin regem (quod nunquam antea apud eos acciderat) necaverunt; exque eo 
 tempore tantz discordiz secutz sunt, ut et tyranni exsisterent, et optimates 
 exterminarentur, et preclarissime constituta respublica dilaberetur. Nec vero 
 solum ipsa cecidit, sed etiam reliquam Greciam evertit contagionibus malorum, 
 que a Lacedzmoniis profectze manarunt latius.”—After speaking of the con- 
 duct of the model of true patriots, Aratus of Sicyon, which was in a very differ- 
 ent spirit, he says,—Sic par est agere cum civibus; non (ut bis jam vidimus) 
 hastam in foro ponere et bona civium voci subjicere przeconis. At ille Grzcus 
 (id quod fuit sapientis et przstantis viri) omnibus consulendum esse putavit : 
 eaque est summa ratio et sapientia boni civis, commoda civium non divellere, 
 sed omnes eadem zquitate continere.”—Cic. Off, 1. 2. 
 
 43. See two books entitled, “ Einige Originalschriften des I]uminatenordens,’ 
 
 44. A leading member of the Assembly, M. Rabaut de St. Etienne, has ex- 
 pressed the principle of all their proceedings as clearly as possible; nothing 
 
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 617 
 
 can be more simple :—“ Tous les établissemens en France couronnent le mal- 
 heur du peuple: pour le rendre heureux, il faut le renouveler, changer ses 
 idées, changer ses loix, changer ses meeurs, . .. . changer les hommes, changer 
 les choses, changer les mots, . . . . toute détruire; oui, tout détruire; puisque 
 tout est 4 récréer.”—This gentleman was chosen president in an assembly not 
 sitting at Quinze-Vingt or the Petites Maisons, and composed of persons giving 
 themselves out to be rational beings ; but neither his ideas, language, or conduct 
 differ in the smallest degree from the discourses, opinions, and actions of those, 
 within and without the Assembly, who direct the operations of the machine 
 now at work in France. 
 
 45. The Assembly, in executing the plan of their committee, made some alter- 
 ations. They have struck out one stage in these gradations; this removes a 
 part of the obejction; but the main objection, namely, that in their scheme the 
 first constituent voter has no connection with the representative legislator, 
 remains in all its force. There are other alterations, some possibly for the 
 better, some certainly for the worse: but to the author the merit or demerit of 
 these smaller alterations appears to be of no moment, where the scheme itself 
 is fundamentally vicious and absurd. 
 
 46. “‘ Non, ut olim, universe legiones deducebantur, cum tribunis, et centuri- 
 onibus, et sui cujusque ordinis militibus, ut consensu et caritate rempublicam 
 efficerent ; sed ignoti inter se, diversis manipulis, sine rectore, sine affectibus 
 mutuis, quasi ex alio genere mortalium repente in unum collecti, numerus magis 
 quam colonia.”——Tac. Annal, lib. 14, sect. 27.—All this will be still more ap- 
 plicable to the unconnected, rotatory, biennial national assemblies, in this absurd 
 and senseless constitution. 
 
 47. Qualitas, Relatio, Actio, Passio, Ubi, Quando, Situs, Habitus. 
 
 48. See l’Etat de la France, p. 363. 
 
 49. In reality three to reckon the provincial republican establishments. 
 
 50. For further elucidations upon the subject of all these judicatures, and of 
 the Committee of Research, see M. de Calonne’s work. 
 
 51. “ Comme sa Majesté y a reconnu, non un systéme d’associations particuli- 
 éres, mais une réunion de volontés de tous les Francois pour la liberté et la 
 prospérité communes, ainsi pour le maintien de l’ordre publique, il a pensé 
 qu’il convenoit que chaque régiment prit part 4 ces fétes civiques pour multi- 
 plier les rapports, et resserrer les liens d’union entre les troupes.”—Lest I should 
 not be credited, I insert the words authorizing the troops to feast with the 
 popular confederacies. 
 
 52. This war minister has since quitted the school and resigned his office. 
 
 53- Courrier Francois, July 30, 1790. Assemblée Nationale, Numero 2r1o. 
 
 54. I see by M. Necker’s account, that the national guards of Paris have re- 
 ceived, over and above the money levied within their own city, about 145,000/. 
 Sterling out of the public treasure. Whether this be an actual payment for 
 the nine months of their existence, or an estimate of their yearly charge, I do 
 not clearly perceive. It is of no great importance, as certainly they may take 
 whatever they please. 
 
 55- The reader will observe that I have but lightly touched (my plan demanded 
 nothing more) on the condition of the French finances as connected with the 
 
618 BURKE 
 
 demands upon them. If I had intended to do otherwise, the materials in my 
 hands for such a task are not altogether perfect. On this subject I refer the 
 reader to M. de Calonne’s work, and the tremendous display that he has made 
 of the havoc and devastation in the public estate, and in all the affairs of 
 France, caused by the presumptuous good intentions of ignorance and incapa- 
 city. Such effects those causes will always produce. Looking over that ac- 
 count with a pretty strict eye, and, with perhaps too much rigour, deducting 
 everything which may be placed to the account of a financier out of place, who 
 might be supposed by his enemies desirous of making the most of his cause, I 
 believe it will be found that a more salutary lesson of caution against the daring 
 spirit of innovators than what has been supplied at the expense of France 
 never was at any time furnished to mankind. 
 
 56. La Bruyere of Bossuet. 
 
 57. “Ce n’est point a l’assemblée entiere que je m’addresse ici; je ne parle 
 qu’a ceux qui l’égarent, en lui cachant sous des gazes séduisantes le but ot ils 
 Ventrainent. C’est 4 eux que je dis: Votre objet, vous n’en disconviendrez 
 pas, c’est d’6ter tout espoir au clergé, et de consommer sa ruine; c’est-la, en 
 ne vous soupconnant d’aucune combinaison de cupidité, d’aucun regard sur le 
 jeu des effets publics, c’est-la ce qu’on doit croire que vous avez en vue dans la 
 terrible opération que vous proposez; c’est ce qui doit en étre le fruit. Mais 
 le peuple qui vous y intéressez, quel avantage peut-il y trouver? En vous ser- 
 vant sans cesse de lui, que faites-vous pour lui? Rien, absolument rien; et, 
 au contraire, vous faites ce qui ne conduit qu’a "laccabler de nouvelles charges, 
 Vous avez rejeté, 4 son préjudice, une offre de 400 millions, dont l’acceptation 
 pouvoit devenir un moyen de soulagement en sa faveur ; et a cette resource, aussi 
 profitable que légitime, vous avez substitué une injustice ruineuse, qui, de votre 
 proper aveu, charge le trésor public, et par conséquent le peuple, d’un surcroit 
 de dépense annuelle de 50 millions au moins, et d’un remboursement de 150 
 millions. 
 
 “ Malheureux peuple! voila ce que vous vaut en dernier résultat l’expropria- 
 tion de l’Eglise, et la dureté des décrets taxateurs du traitement des ministres 
 d’une religion bienfaisante ; et désormais ils seront 4 votre charge: leurs charités 
 soulageoient les pauvres ; et vous allez étre imposés pour subvenir a leur entre- 
 tien! "—De ?’ Etat de la France, p. 81. See also p. 92, and the following pages. 
 
A LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD 
 
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A LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD 
 
 (On the attacks made upon Mr. Burke and his pension, in the House of Lords, 
 by the Duke of Bedford and the Earl of Lauderdale, 1796.) 
 
 Y LORD,—I could hardly flatter myself with the hope 
 
 that so very early in the season I should have to ac- 
 
 knowledge obligations to the Duke of Bedford and to the 
 
 Earl of Lauderdale. These noble persons have lost no time 
 
 in conferring upon me that sort of honour which it is alone 
 
 within their competence, and which it is certainly most con- 
 genial to their nature and their manners, to bestow. 
 
 To be ill spoken of, in whatever language they speak, by 
 the zealots of the new sect in philosophy and politics, of 
 which these noble persons think so charitably, and of which 
 others think so justly, to me is no matter of uneasiness or 
 surprise. To have incurred the displeasure of the Duke of 
 Orleans or the Duke of Bedford, to fall under the censure 
 of Citizen Brissot or of his friend the Earl of Lauderdale, I 
 ought to consider as proofs, not the least satisfactory, that 
 I have produced some part of the effect I proposed by my en- 
 deavours. I have laboured hard to earn what the noble Lords 
 are generous enough to pay. Personal offence I have given 
 them none. The parts they take against me is from zeal to the 
 cause. Itis well,—it is perfectly well. I have to do homage 
 to their justice. I have tothank the Bedfords and the 
 Lauderdales for having so faithfully and so fully acquitted 
 towards me whatever arrear of debt was left undischarged 
 by the Priestleys and the Paines. 
 
 Some, perhaps, may think them executors in their own 
 621 
 
622 BURKE 
 
 wrong: I at least have nothing to complain of. They have 
 gone beyondthe demands of justice. They have been (a 
 little, perhaps, beyond their intention) favourable to me. 
 They have been the means of bringing out by their invec- 
 tives the handsome things which Lord Grenville has had the 
 goodness and condescension to say in my behalf. Retired 
 as lam 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 tomy wounded mind to be com- 
 mended by an able, vigorous, and well-informed states- 
 man, 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 distinc- 
 tion. No philosophy can make me above it: no melancholy 
 can depress me so low as to make me wholly insensible to 
 such an honour. 
 
 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 P 
 
 My Lord, it is a subject of awful meditation. Before 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 mem- 
 bers 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 
 
LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD 623 
 
 an inexhaustible repertory of one kind of examples. In my 
 wretched condition, though hardly to be classed with the 
 living, Iam 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 descrip- 
 tion of savage nature. They pursue even suchas 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. The turpitude purveys to their malice ; 
 and they unplumb the dead for bullets to assassinate the 
 living. If all revolutionists were not proof against all cau- 
 tion, 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 me, oh, leave me to 
 repose!” 
 
 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 so- 
 licitation. 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 en- 
 gagements would permit it, and before the heaviest of all 
 calamities had forever condemned me to obscurity and sor- 
 row, I had resolved on a total retreat. I had executed that 
 design. I was entirely out of the way of serving or of hurt- 
 ing 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 
 
624 BURKE 
 
 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 in 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 meto boast of anything. It would as 
 ill become me, thus called upon, to depreciate the value ofa 
 long life spent with unexampled toil in the service of my 
 country. Since the total body of my services, on account 
 of the industry 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 
 asin 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 con- 
 tempt. 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 ademonstration of gratitude. 
 If Iam unworthy, the ministers are worse than prodigal. 
 On that hypothesis, I perfectly agree with the Duke of 
 Bedford. | 
 
LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD 625 
 
 For whatever I have been(I am now no more) I put my- 
 self on my country. I ought to be allowed a reasonable 
 freedom, because I stand upon my deliverance; and no 
 culprit ought to pleadin 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 them- 
 selves, to me their situation calls for the most profound 
 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 can not be supposed to mean the Duke of Bed- 
 ford 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 favours 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 can not 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. 
 40 
 
626 BURKE 
 
 His Grace thinks I have obtained too much. 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.  Be- 
 tween 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 cer- 
 tainly 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 favour 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 to 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 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 
 
LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD 627 
 
 of paymaster-general. I undertook it, however; and I suc- 
 ceeded 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, combina- 
 tion, 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, 
 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 usin 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 pre- 
 served the body: we lost our colonies, but we kept our Con- 
 stitution. There was, indeed, much intestine heat; there 
 
628 BURKE 
 
 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 Parlia- 
 mentary Reforms, went, not in the intention of all the pro- 
 fessors and supporters of them, undoubtedly, but went in 
 their certain, and, in 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 honour of leading up the death-dance of 
 democratic revolution. Other projects, exactly coincident 
 in time with those, struck at the very existence of the king- 
 dom 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, du- 
 bious in its nature and perilous in its example, nosed Parlia- 
 ment 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 under- 
 standing 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 honour 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 
 
LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD 629 
 
 over the whole region. Fora little time the helm appeared 
 abandoned. 
 
 “ Ipse diem noctemque negat discernere ccelo, 
 Nec meminisse viz 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 can do; and they understood it at least as well. 
 Perhaps their politics, as usual, took a tincture from their 
 character, and 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 hypocriti- 
 cally 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 pre- 
 ference over each other in their minds, but as one or the other 
 might afford asurer ora 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 com- 
 menced my political career, and never for a moment, in 
 reality nor in appearance, for any length of time, was sepa- 
 rated from their good wishes and good opinion. 
 
 But 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 pop- 
 ular opinion forms of the merit that obtained it. I am no 
 stranger to the insecurity of its tenure. Ido 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 en- 
 deavored to turn that short-lived advantage to myself into a 
 
630 BURKE 
 
 permanent benefit to my country. Far am I from detract- 
 ing from the merit of some gentlemen, 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 con- 
 science 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 in- 
 finitely 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 espe- 
 cially, I consulted and sincerely co-operated 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 en- 
 couraged, and as a feeble instrument 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 bet- 
 ter deserved an honourable provision should be made for 
 him. 
 
 So much for my general conduct through the whole 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 
 
LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD 631 
 
 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 accord- 
 ing 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 meansofstrength, 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 property 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 dis- 
 credit. This would have left a rankling wound in the hearts 
 of the people, who would know they had failed in the accom- 
 plishment 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 wereever satisfied. I 
 was not of that humour. I wished that they should be satisfied. 
 It was my aim to give to the people the substance of what I 
 
632 BURKE 
 
 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 isa manifest, marked 
 distinction, which ill men with ill designs, or weak men incap- 
 able 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 acciden- 
 tal 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, can not be certainly known be- 
 forehand. Reform is not a change in the substance or in 
 the primary modification of the object, but a direct applica- - 
 tion 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. 
 
 All this, in effect, I think, but am not sure, I have said 
 elsewhere. It can not at this time be too often repeated, line 
 upon line, precept upon precept, until it comes into the cur- 
 rency 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, 
 unchanged. Theconsequences 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 ourway. ‘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 from that chaotic Anarchy which generates equivocally 
 “ all monstrous, all prodigious things,” cuckoo-like, adulter- 
 
LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD 633 
 
 ously lay their eggs, and brood over, and hatch them in the 
 nest of every neighbouring 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. 
 
 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 my- 
 self 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 re- 
 member in all his operations) a state to preserve, as well as 
 a state to reform. I had a people to gratify, but not to in- 
 flame 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 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 
 
634 BURKE 
 
 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 retrench- 
 ment, but a system of economy, which would make a random 
 expense, without plan or foresight, in future, not easily prac- 
 ticable. 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 noth- 
 ing 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 opera- 
 tions 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 re- 
 formed, in the governors or in the governed, in kings, in 
 senates, or in people. 
 
 On a careful review, therefore, and analysis of all the com- 
 ponent 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 cer- 
 tainty ; lest, if it were left without a general limit, it might 
 eat up the civil list service,—if suffered to be granted in por- 
 tions 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 con- 
 
LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD 635 
 
 stant, 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 crown 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 es- 
 caped all the men of business who acted with me in those 
 regulations? I knew that such a fund existed, and that pen- 
 sions 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 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 in my plan of reform, he will read my printed speech on 
 that subject, at least what is contained from page 230to 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 labour, 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 Ihave done in the way of politi- 
 cal economy was far from confined to this body of measures. 
 I did not comeinto 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 war- 
 
636 BURKE 
 
 fare. The first session I satin 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 more had been permitted by events. Then, in the 
 vigour of my manhood, my constitution sunk under my labour. 
 Had I then died, (and I seemed to myself very near death,) 
 I had then earned for those who belong to me more than the 
 Duke of Bedford’s ideas of service are of power to estimate. 
 But, in truth, these services Iam 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 J 
 showed the most industry and had the least success: I mean 
 in the affairs of India. They are those on which I value my- 
 self the most: most for the importance, most for the labour, 
 most forthe 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, isa 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 em- 
 ployed 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 par- 
 ticulars of their immortal works. Something of these studies 
 may appear incidentally in some of the earliest things I pub- 
 lished. The House has been witness to their effect, and has 
 profited of them, more or less, for above eight-and-twenty 
 years. 
 
 To their estimate I leave the matter. I was not, like his 
 
LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD 637 
 
 Grace of Bedford, swaddled and rocked and dandled into a 
 legislator : “‘ Nitor 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 favour and protection 
 of the great. I was not made fora minionoratool. As little 
 did I follow the trade of winning the hearts by imposing on 
 the understandings of the people. At every step of my prog- 
 ress in life, (for in every step was I traversed and opposed,) 
 and at every turnpike I met, I was obliged to show my pass- 
 port, and again and again to prove my sole title to the honour 
 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 hehas not thought it below him to reproach, 
 he might have found that, in the whole course of my life, I 
 have never, on any pretense of economy, or on any other 
 pretense, so much as in a single instance, stood between any 
 man and his reward of service or his encouragement in use- 
 ful talent and pursuit, from the highest of those services and 
 pursuits, to the lowest. On thecontrary, I have on an hun- 
 dred 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 tosomething bordering on abuse. This 
 line of conduct, whatever its merits might be, was partly ow- 
 ing 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 awrong. 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 Ido; but when by acold penury I 
 
638 BURKE 
 
 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. JI have never entered into 
 those trifling 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 re- 
 wards itself. But their public service, though from their 
 abilities unquestionably of more value than mine, in its quan- 
 tity and in its duration was not to be mentioned with it. 
 But I never could drive ahard bargain in my life, concerning 
 any matter whatever ; and least of all do I know how to hag- 
 gle 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 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 favour 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. 
 
 Whatever I did at that time, so far as it regarded order 
 and economy, is stable and eternal, as all principles must be. 
 A particular order of things may be altered: order itself 
 can not lose its value. As to other particulars, they are 
 variable by time and by circumstances. Laws of regulation 
 are not fundamental laws. The public exigencies are the 
 
LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD 639 
 
 masters of all such laws. They rule the laws, and are not to 
 be ruled by them. They who exercise the legislative power 
 at the time must judge. 
 
 It may be new to his Grace, but I beg leave to tell him 
 that mere parsimony is not economy. It is separable in 
 theory from it; and in fact it may or it may not be a part 
 of economy, according to circumstances. Expense, and 
 great expense, may be an essential part in true economy. 
 If parsimony were to be considered as one of the kinds 
 of that virtue, there is, however, another and an higher 
 economy. Economy is a distributive virtue, and con- 
 sists, not in saving, but in selection. Parsimony requires 
 no providence, no sagacity, no powers of combination, no 
 comparison, no judgment. Mere instinct, and that not an 
 instinct of the noblest kind, may produce this false economy 
 in perfection. The other economy has larger views. It 
 demands a discriminating judgment, and a firm, sagacious 
 mind. It shuts one door to impudent importunity, only to 
 open another, and a wider, to unpresuming merit. If none 
 but meritorious service or real talent were to be rewarded, this 
 nation has not wanted, and this nation will not want, the means 
 of rewarding all the service it ever will receive, and encourag- 
 ing all the merit it ever will produce. No state, since the 
 foundation of society, has been impoverished by that species 
 of profusion. Hadthe economy of selection and proportion 
 been at all times observed, we should not now have had an 
 overgrown Duke of Bedford, to oppress the industry of 
 humble men, and to limit, by the standard of his own con- 
 ceptions, the justice, the bounty, or, if he pleases, the charity 
 of the crown. 
 
 His Grace may think as meanly as he will of my deserts 
 in the far greater part of my conduct in life. It is free for 
 himtodoso. There will always besome difference of opinion 
 in the value of political services. But there is one merit of 
 mine which he, of all men living, ought to be the last to call 
 in question. I have supported with very great zeal, and I 
 am told with some degree of success, those opinions, or, if 
 
640 BURKE 
 
 his Grace likes another expression better, those old pre- 
 judices, which buoy up the ponderous mass of his nobility, 
 wealth, and titles. I have omitted no exertion to prevent 
 him and them from sinking to that level to which the mere- 
 tricious French faction his Grace at least coquets with omit 
 no exertion to reduce both. I have done all I could to dis- 
 countenance their inquiries into the fortunes of those who 
 hold large portions of wealth without any apparent merit of 
 their own. I have strained every nerve to keep the Duke 
 of Bedford in that situation which alone makes him my 
 superior. Your Lordship has been a witness of the use 
 he makes of that preeminence. 
 
 But be it that this is virtue; be it that there is virtue in 
 this well-selected rigour: yet all virtues are not equally be- 
 coming to all men and at all times. There are crimes, 
 undoubtedly there are crimes, which in all seasons of our 
 existence ought to put a generous antipathy in action,— 
 crimes that provoke an indignant justice, and call forth a 
 warm and animated pursuit. But all things that concern 
 what I may call the preventive police of morality, all things 
 merely rigid, harsh, and censorial, the antiquated moralists 
 at whose feet I was brought up would not have thought 
 these the fittest matter to form the favourite virtues of 
 young men of rank. What might have been well enough, 
 and have been received with a veneration mixed with awe 
 and terror, from an old, severe, crabbed Cato, would have 
 wanted something of propriety in the young Scipios, the 
 ornament of the Roman nobility, in the flower of their life. 
 But the times, the morals, the masters, the scholars, have all 
 undergone a thorough revolution. It is a vile, illiberal 
 school, this new French academy of the sans-culottes. There 
 is nothing in it that is fit for a gentleman to learn. 
 
 Whatever its vogue may be, I still flatter myself that the 
 parents of the growing generation will be satisfied with 
 what is to be taught to their children in Westminster, in 
 Eton, or in Winchester; I still indulge the hope that no 
 srown gentleman or nobleman of our time will think of 
 
LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD 641 
 
 finishing at Mr. Thelwall’s lecture whatever may have been 
 left incomplete at the old universities of his country. I 
 would give to Lord Grenville and Mr. Pitt for a motto what 
 was said of a Roman censor or pretor (or what was he ?) 
 who in virtue of a Senatusconsultum shut up certain acade- 
 mies,—‘ Cludere ludum impudentiz jussit.” Every honest 
 father of a family in the kingdom will rejoice at the break- 
 ing-up for the holidays, and will pray that there may bea 
 very long vacation, in all such schools. 
 
 The awful state of the time, and not myself, or my own 
 justification, is my true object in what I now write, or in 
 what I shall ever write or say. It little signifies to the 
 world what becomes of such things as me, or even as the 
 Duke of Bedford. What I say about either of us is nothing 
 more than a vehicle, as you, my Lord, will easily perceive, 
 to convey my sentiments on matters far more worthy of 
 your attention. It is when I stick to my apparent first sub- 
 ject that I ought to apologize, not when I depart from it. 
 I therefore must beg your Lordship’s pardon for again re- 
 suming it after this very short digression,—assuring you 
 that I shall never altogether lose sight of such matter as 
 persons abler than I am may turn to some profit. 
 
 The Duke of Bedford conceives that he is obliged to call 
 the attention of the House of Peers to his Majesty’s grant 
 to me, which he considers as excessive and out of all bounds. 
 
 I know not how it has happened, but it really seems, that, 
 whilst his Grace was meditating his well-considered censure 
 upon me, he fell into a sort of sleep. Homer nods, and the 
 Duke of Bedford may dream; and as dreams (even his 
 golden dreams) are apt to be ill-pieced and incongruously 
 put together, his Grace preserved his idea of reproach to me, 
 but took the subject-matter from the crown grants to his 
 own family. This is “the stuff of which his dreams are 
 made.” In that way of putting things together his Grace is 
 perfectly in the right. The grants to the House of Russell 
 were so enormous as not only to outrage economy, but even 
 
 to stagger credibility. The Duke of Bedford is the levia- 
 41 
 
642 BURKE 
 
 than among all the creatures.of the crown. He tumbles 
 about his unwieldy bulk, he plays and frolics in the ocean of 
 the royal bounty. Huge as he is, and whilst “ he lies float- 
 ing many a rood,” he is still a creature. His ribs, his fins, 
 his whalebone, his blubber, the very spiracles through which 
 he spouts a torrent of brine against his origin, and covers 
 me all over with the spray, everything of him and about 
 him is from the throne. Is it for him to question the dis- 
 pensation of the royal favour? 
 
 I really am at a loss to draw any sort of parallel between 
 the public merits of his Grace, by which he justifies the 
 grants he holds, and these services of mine, on the favourable 
 construction of which I have obtained what his Grace so 
 much disapproves. In private life I have not at all the 
 honour of acquaintance with the noble Duke; but I ought 
 to presume, and it costs me nothing to do so, that he 
 abundantly deservesthe esteem and love of all who live with 
 him. But as to public service, why, truly, it would not be 
 more ridiculous for me to compare myself, in rank, in fortune, 
 in splendid descent, in youth, strength, or figure, with the 
 Duke of Bedford, than to make a parallel between his services 
 and my attempts to be useful to my country. It would not 
 be gross adulation, but uncivil irony, to say that he has 
 any public merit of his own to keep alive the idea of the 
 services by which his vast landed pensions were obtained. 
 My merits, whatever they are, are original and personal : 
 his are derivative. It is his ancestor, the original pensioner, 
 that has laid up this inexhaustible fund of merit which 
 makes his Grace so very delicate and exceptious about the 
 merit of all other grantees of the crown. Had he permitted 
 me to remain in quiet, I should have said, “ ’Tis his estate ; 
 that’s enough. It is his by law: what have I to do with it 
 or its history?” Hewould naturally have said, on his side, 
 “Tis this man’s fortune. He is as good now, as my ances- 
 tor was two hundred and fifty yearsago. I am a young 
 man with very old pensions; he is an old man with very 
 young pensions: that’s all.’ 
 
LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD 643 
 
 Why will his Grace, by attacking me, force me reluctantly 
 to compare my little merit with that which obtained from 
 the crown those prodigies of profuse donation by which he 
 tramples on the mediocrity of humble and laborious indi- 
 viduals? I would willingly leave him to the Herald’s 
 College, which the philosophy of the sans-culottes (prouder 
 by far than all the Garters, and Norroys, and Clarencieux, 
 and Rouge-Dragons that ever pranced into a procession of 
 what his friends call aristocrats and despots) will abolish 
 with contumely and scorn. These historians, recorders, and 
 blazoners of virtues and arms differ wholly from that other 
 description of historians who never assign any act of poli- 
 ticians to a good motive. These gentle historians, on the 
 contrary, dip their pens in nothing but the milk of human 
 kindness. They seek no further for merit than the preamble 
 of a patent or the inscription on atomb. With them every 
 man created a peer is first an hero ready made. They judge 
 of every man’s capacity for office by the offices he has filled ; 
 and the more offices, the more ability. Every general officer 
 with them is a Marlborough, every statesman a Burleigh, 
 every judge a Murray ora Yorke. They who, alive, were 
 laughed at or pitied by all their acquaintance make as good 
 a figure as the best of them in the pages of Guillim, Ed- 
 mondson, and Collins. 
 
 To these recorders, so full of good nature to the great and 
 prosperous, I would willingly leave the first Baron Russell 
 and Earl of Bedford, and the merits of his grants. But the 
 aulnager, the weigher, the meter of grants will not suffer us 
 to acquiesce in the judgment of the prince reigning at the 
 time when they were made. They are never good to those 
 who earn them. Well, then, since the new grantees have 
 war made on them by the old, and that the word of the 
 sovereign is not to be taken, let us turn our eyes to history, 
 in which great men have always a pleasure in contemplating 
 the heroic origin of their house. 
 
 The first peer of the name, the first purchaser of the 
 grants, was a Mr. Russell, a person of an ancient gentleman’s 
 
 * 
 
644 BURKE 
 
 family, raised by being a minion of Henry the Eighth. As 
 there generally is some resemblance of character to create 
 these relations, the favourite was in all likelihood much 
 such another as his master. The first of those immoderate 
 grants was not taken from the ancient demesne of the crown, 
 but from the recent confiscation of the ancient nobility of 
 the land. The lion, having sucked the blood of his prey, 
 threw the offal carcass to the jackal in waiting. Having 
 tasted once the food of confiscation, the favourites became 
 fierce and ravenous. This worthy favourite’s first grant was 
 from the lay nobility. The second, infinitely improving on 
 the enormity of the first, was from the plunder of the 
 Church. In truth, his Grace is somewhat excusable for his 
 dislike to a grant like mine, not only in its quantity, but in 
 its kind, so different from his own. 
 
 Mine was from a mild and benevolent sovereign: his from 
 Henry the Eighth. 
 
 Mine had not its fund in the murder of any innocent per- 
 son of illustrious rank,? or in the pillage of any body of 
 unoffending men. His grants were from the aggregate and 
 consolidated funds of judgments iniquitously legal, and 
 from possessions voluntarily surrendered by the lawful pro- 
 prietors with the gibbet at their door. 
 
 The merit of the grantee whom he derives from was that 
 of being a prompt and greedy instrument of a levelling ty- 
 rant, who oppressed all descriptions of his people, but who 
 fell with particular fury on everything that was great and 
 noble. Mine has been in endeavouring to screen every man, 
 in every class, from oppression, and particularly in defend- 
 ing the high and eminent, who, in the bad times of confiscat- 
 ing princes, confiscating chief governors, or confiscating 
 demagogues, are the most exposed to jealousy, avarice, and 
 envy. 
 
 The merit of the original grantee of his Grace’s pensions 
 was in giving his hand to the work, and partaking the spoil, 
 with a prince who plundered a part of the national Church 
 of his time and country. Mine was in defending the 
 
LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD 645 
 
 whole of the national Church of my own time and my own 
 country, and the whole of the national Churches of all coun- 
 tries, from the principles and the examples which lead to 
 ecclesiastical pillage, thence to a contempt of all prescriptive 
 titles, thence to the pillage of all property, and thence to 
 universal desolation. 
 
 The merit of the origin of his Grace’s fortune was in being 
 a favourite and chief adviser to a prince who left no liberty to 
 their native country. My endeavour was to obtain liberty for 
 the municipal country in which I was born, and for all de- 
 scriptions and denominations in it. Mine was to support 
 with unrelaxing vigilance every right, every privilege, every 
 franchise, in this my adopted, my dearer, and more compre- 
 hensive country ; and not only to preserve those rights in this 
 chief seat of empire, but in every nation, in every land, in 
 every climate, language, and religion, in the vast domain that 
 still is under the protection, and the larger that was once 
 under the protection, of the British crown. 
 
 His founder’s merits were, by arts in which he served his 
 master and made his fortune, to bring poverty, wretchedness, 
 and depopulation on his country. Mine were under a benev- 
 olent prince, in promoting the commerce, manufactures, and 
 agriculture of his kingdom,—in which his Majesty shows an 
 eminent example, who even in his amusements is a patriot, 
 and in hours of leisure an improver of his native soil. 
 
 His founder's merit was the merit of a gentleman raised 
 by the arts of a court and the protection of a Wolsey to the 
 eminence of a great and potent lord. His merit in that em- 
 inence was, by instigating a tyrant to injustice, to provoke a 
 people to rebellion. My merit was, to awaken the sober part 
 of the country, that they might put themselves on their guard 
 against any one potent lord, or any greater number of potent 
 lords, or any combination of great leading men of any sort, 
 if ever they should attempt to proceed in the same courses, 
 but in the reverse order,—that is, by instigating a corrupted 
 populace to rebellion, and, through that rebellion, introduc- 
 ing a tyranny yet worse than the tyranny which his Grace’s 
 
646 BURKE 
 
 ancestor supported, and of which he profited in the manner 
 we behold in the despotism of Henry the Eighth. 
 
 The political merit of the first pensioner of his Grace’s 
 house was that of being concerned as a counsellor of state 
 in advising, and in his person executing, the conditions of a 
 dishonourable peace with France,—the surrendering the fort- 
 ress of Boulogne, then our outguard on the Continent. By 
 that surrender, Calais, the key of France, and the bridle in 
 the mouth of that power, was not many years afterwards 
 finally lost. My merit has been in resisting the power and 
 pride of France, under any form of its rule; but in opposing 
 it with the greatest zeal and earnestness, when that rule ap- 
 peared in the worst form it could assume,—the worst, indeed, 
 which the prime cause and principle of all evil could possibly 
 give it. It was my endeavour by every means to excite a 
 spirit in the House, where I had the honour of a seat, for 
 carrying on with early vigour and decision the most clearly 
 just and necessary war that this or any nation ever carried on, 
 in order to save my country from the iron yoke of its power, 
 and from the more dreadful contagion of its principles,—to 
 preserve, while they can be preserved, pure and untainted, 
 the ancient, inbred integrity, piety, good-nature, and good- 
 humour of the people of England, from the dreadful pestilence 
 which, beginning in France, threatens to lay waste the whole 
 moral and in a great degree the whole physical world, having 
 done both in the focus of its most intense malignity. 
 
 The labours of his Grace’s founder merited the “ curses, not 
 loud, but deep,” of the Commons of England, on whom he 
 and his master had effected a complete Parliamentary Re- 
 form, by making them, in their slavery and humiliation, the 
 true and adequate representatives of a debased, degraded, 
 and undone people. My merits were in having had an active, 
 though not always an ostentatious share, in every one act, 
 without exception, of undisputed constitutional utility in 
 my time, and in having supported, on all occasions, the 
 authority, the efficiency, and the privileges of the Commons 
 of Great Britain. I ended my services by a recorded and 
 
LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD 647 
 
 fully reasoned assertion on their own journals of their con- 
 stitutional rights, and a vindication of their constitutional 
 conduct. I laboured in all things to merit their inward appro- 
 bation, and (along with the assistants of the largest, the 
 greatest, and best of my endeavours) I received their free, 
 unbiased, public, and solemn thanks. 
 
 Thus stands the account of the comparative merits of the 
 crown grants which compose the Duke of Bedford’s fortune 
 as balanced against mine. In the name of common sense, 
 why should the Duke of Bedford think that none but of the 
 House of Russell are entitled to the favour of the crown? 
 Why should he imagine that no king of England has been 
 capable of judging of merit but King Henry the Eighth? 
 Indeed, he will pardon me, he is a little mistaken: all virtue 
 did not end in the first Earl of Bedford; all discernment did 
 not lose its vision when his creator closed his eyes, Let him 
 remit his rigour on the disproportion between merit and re- 
 ward in others, and they will make no inquiry into the origin 
 of his fortune. They will regard with much more satisfaction, 
 as he will contemplate with infinitely more advantage, what- 
 ever in his pedigree has been dulcified by an exposure to the 
 influence of heaven in a long flow of generations from the 
 hard, acidulous, metallic tincture of the spring. It is little 
 to be doubted that several of his forefathers in that long series 
 have degenerated into honour and virtue. Let the Duke of 
 Bedford (I am sure he will) reject with scorn and horror the 
 counsels of the lecturers, those wicked panders to avarice and 
 ambition, who would tempt him, in the troubles of his coun- 
 try, to seek another enormous fortune from the forfeitures of 
 another nobility and the plunder of another Church. Let 
 him (and I trust that yet he will) employ all the energy of 
 his youth and all the resources of his wealth to crush rebel- 
 lious principles which have no foundation in morals, and 
 rebellious movements that have no provocation in tyranny. 
 
 Then will be forgot the rebellions which, by a doubtful 
 priority in crime, his ancestor had provoked and extinguished. 
 On such a conduct in the noble Duke, many of his country- 
 
648 BURKE 
 
 men might, and with some excuse might, give way to the 
 enthusiasm of their gratitude, and, in the dashing style of 
 some of the old declaimers, cry out, that, if the Fates had 
 found no other way in which they could give a* Duke of 
 Bedford and his opulence as props to a tottering world, then 
 the butchery of the Duke of Buckingham might be tolerated ; 
 it might be regarded even with complacency, whilst in the 
 heir of confiscation they saw the sympathizing comforter of 
 the martyrs who suffer under the cruel confiscation of this 
 day, whilst they beheld with admiration his zealous protec- 
 tion of the virtuous and loyal nobility of France, and his 
 manly support of his brethren, the yet standing nobility and 
 gentry of his native land. Then his Grace’s merit would be 
 pure and new and sharp, as fresh from the mint of honour. 
 As he pleased, he might reflect honour on his predecessors, 
 or throw it forward on those who were to succeed him. He 
 might be the propagator of the stock of honour, or the root 
 of it, as he thought proper. 
 
 Had it pleased God to continue to me the hopes of succes- 
 sion, I should have been, according to my mediocrity and 
 the mediocrity of the age I live in, a sort of founder of a 
 family : I should have left a son, who, in all the points in 
 which personal merit can be viewed, in science, in erudition, 
 in genius, in taste, in honour, in generosity, in humanity, in 
 every liberal sentiment and every liberal accomplishment, 
 would not have shown himself inferior to the Duke of Bedford 
 or to any of those whom he traces in his line. His Grace 
 very soon would have wanted all plausibility in his attack 
 upon that provision which belonged more to mine than to me. 
 He would soon have supplied every deficiency, and symme- 
 trized every disproportion. It would not have been for that 
 successor to resort to any stagnant, wasting reservoir of merit 
 in me or inany ancestry. He had in himself a salient, living 
 spring of generous and manly action. Every day he lived he 
 would have repurchased the bounty of the crown, and ten 
 times more, if ten times more he had received. Hewas made 
 a public creature, and had no enjoyment whatever but in the 
 
LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD 649 
 
 performance of some duty. At this exigent moment the 
 loss of a finished man is not easily supplied. 
 
 But a Disposer whose power we are little able to resist, 
 and whose wisdom it behoves us not at all to dispute, has 
 ordained it in another manner, and (whatever my querulous 
 weakness might suggest) a far better. The storm has gone 
 over me; and I lie like one of those old oaks which the late 
 hurricane has scattered about me. I am stripped of all my 
 honours, I am torn up by the roots, and lie prostrate on the 
 earth. There, and prostrate there, I most unfeignedly recog- 
 nize the Divine justice, and in some degree submit to it. 
 But whilst I humble myself before God, I do not know that 
 it is forbidden to repel the attacks of unjust and inconsiderate 
 men. The patience of Job isproverbial. After some ofthe 
 convulsive struggles of our irritable nature, he submitted 
 himself, and repented in dust and ashes. But even so, I do 
 not find him blamed for reprehending, and with a consider- 
 able degree of verbal asperity, those ill-natured neighbours of 
 his who visited his dunghill to read moral, political, and 
 economical lectures on his misery. I am alone. I have 
 none to meet my enemies in the gate. Indeed, my Lord, I 
 greatly deceive myself, if in this hard season I would give a 
 peck of refuse wheat for all that is called fame and honour in 
 the world. Thisis the appetite but ofa few. Itisaluxury, it 
 is a privilege, it is an indulgence for those who are at their 
 ease. But we are all of us made to shun disgrace, as we are 
 made to shrink from pain and poverty and disease. It isan 
 instinct ; and under the direction of reason, instinct is always 
 in the right. I live in an inverted order. They who ought 
 to have succeeded me are gone beforeme. They who should 
 have been to me as posterity are in the place of ancestors. 
 I owe to the dearest relation (which ever must subsist in 
 memory) that act of piety which he would have performed to 
 me: I owe it to him to show that he was not descended, as 
 the Duke of Bedford would have it, from an unworthy 
 parent. 
 
 The crown has considered me after long service ; the crown 
 
650 BURKE 
 
 has paid the Duke of Bedford by advance. He has hada 
 long credit for any service which he may perform hereafter. 
 He is secure, and long may he be secure, in his advance, 
 whether he performs any services or not. But let him take 
 care how he endangers the safety of that Constitution which 
 secures his own utility or his own insignificance, or how he 
 discourages those who take up even puny arms to defend an 
 order of things which, like the sun of heaven, shines alike on 
 the useful and the worthless. His grants are ingrafted on 
 the public law of Europe, covered with the awful hoar of in- 
 numerable ages. They are guarded by the sacred rules of 
 prescription, found in that full treasury of jurisprudence from 
 which the jejuneness and penury of our municipal law has by 
 degrees been enriched and strengthened. This prescription I 
 had my share (a very full share) in bringing to its perfection.® 
 The Duke of Bedford will stand as long as prescriptive law 
 endures,—as long as the great, stable laws of property, com- 
 mon to us with all civilized nations, are kept in their integ- 
 rity, and without the smallest intermixture of the laws, max- 
 ims, principles, or precedents of the Grand Revolution. They 
 are secure against all changes but one. The whole Revolu- 
 tionary system, institutes, digest, code, novels, text, gloss, 
 comment, are not only not the same, but they are the very re- 
 verse, and the reverse fundamentally, of all the laws on which 
 civil life has hitherto been upheld in all the governments of 
 the world. The learned professors of the Rights of Man re- 
 gard prescription not as a title to bar all claim set up against 
 old possession, but they look on prescription as itself a bar 
 against the possessor and proprietor. They hold an imme- 
 morial possession to be no more than a long continued 
 and therefore an aggravated injustice. 
 
 Such are their ideas, such their religion, and such their law. 
 But as to our country and our race, as long as the well-com- 
 pacted structure of our Church and State, the sanctuary, 
 the holy of holies of that ancient law, defended by reverence, 
 defended by power, a fortress at once and a temple,® shall 
 stand inviolate on the brow of the British Sion,—as long as 
 
LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD 65! 
 
 the British monarchy, not more limited than fenced by the 
 orders of the state, shall, like the proud Keep of Windsor, 
 rising in the majesty of proportion, and girt with the double 
 belt of its kindred and coeval towers, as long as this awful 
 structure shall oversee and guard the subjected land,— so 
 long the mounds and dikes of the low, fat, Bedford level will 
 have nothing to fear from all the pickaxes of all the levellers 
 of France. As long as our sovereign lord the king, and his 
 faithful subjects, the lords and commons of this realm,—the 
 triple cord which no man can break,—the solemn, sworn, 
 constitutional frank-pledge of this nation,—the firm guaran- 
 ties of each other’s being and each other’s rights,—the 
 joint and several securities, each in its place and order, for 
 every kind and every quality of property and of dignity,— 
 as long as these endure, so long the Duke of Bedford is safe, 
 and we are all safe together,—the high from the blights of 
 envy and the spoliations of rapacity, the low from the iron 
 hand of oppression and the insolent spurn of contempt. 
 Amen! and so be it! and so it will be,— 
 
 “Dum domus AEnez Capitoli immobile saxum 
 Accolet, imperiumque pater Romanus habebit.” 
 
 But if the rude inroad of Gallic tumult, with its sophis- 
 tical rights of man to falsify the account, and its sword 
 as a make-weight to throw into the scale, shall be introduced 
 into our city by amisguided populace, set on by proud great 
 men, themselves blinded and intoxicated by a frantic ambi- 
 tion, we shall all of us perish and be overwhelmed in a com- 
 monruin. Ifa great storm blow on our coast, it will cast 
 the whales on the strand, as well as the periwinkles. His 
 Grace will not survive the poor grantee he despises—no, not 
 for a twelvemonth. If the great look for safety in the 
 services they render to this Gallic cause, it is to be foolish 
 even above the weight of privilege allowed to wealth. If 
 his Grace be one of these whom they endeavour to proselytize, 
 he ought to be aware of the character of the sect whose doc- 
 trines he is invited to embrace. With them insurrection is 
 
652 BURKE 
 
 the most sacred of revolutionary duties to the state. In- 
 gratitude to benefactors is the first of revolutionary virtues. 
 Ingratitude is, indeed, their four cardinal virtues compacted 
 and amalgamated into one; and he will find it in everything 
 that has happened since the commencement of the philo- 
 sophic Revolution to this hour. If he pleads the merit of 
 having performed the duty of insurrection against the order 
 he lives in, (God forbid he ever should !) the merit of others 
 will be to perform the duty of insurrection against him. If 
 he pleads (again God forbid he should, and I do not 
 suspect he will) his ingratitude to the crown for its creation 
 of his family, others will plead their right and duty to pay 
 him in kind. They will laugh, indeed they will laugh, at 
 his parchment and his wax. His deeds will be drawn out 
 with the rest of the lumber of his evidence-room, and burnt 
 to the tuneof “ca ira” in the courts of Bedford (then Equality) 
 House. 
 
 Am I to blame, if I attempt to pay his Grace’s hostile re- 
 proaches to me with a friendly admonition to himself ? Can 
 I be blamed for pointing out to him in what manner he is 
 like to be affected, if the sect of the cannibal philosophers of 
 France should proselytize any considerable part of this 
 people, and, by their joint proselytizing arms, should con- 
 quer that government to which his Grace does not seem to 
 me to give all the support his own security demands? 
 Surely it is proper that he, and that others like him, should 
 know the true genius of this sect,—what their opinions are, 
 —what they have done, and to whom,—and what (if a prog- 
 nostic isto be formed from the dispositions and actions of 
 men) it is certain they will do hereafter. He ought to know 
 that they have sworn assistance, the only engagement they 
 ever will keep, to all in this country who bear a resemblance 
 to themselves, and who think, as such, that the whole duty 
 of man consists in destruction. They are a misallied and 
 disparaged branch of the House of Nimrod. They are the 
 Duke of Bedford’s natural hunters; and he is their natural 
 game. Because he is not very profoundly reflecting, he 
 
LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD 653 
 
 sleeps in profound security : they, on the contrary, are always 
 vigilant, active, enterprising, and, though far removed from 
 any knowledge which makes men estimable or useful, in all 
 the instruments and resources of evil their leaders are not 
 meanly instructed or insufficiently furnished. Inthe French 
 Revolution everything is new, and, from want of preparation 
 to meet so unlooked-for an evil, everything is dangerous. 
 Never before this time was a set of literary men converted 
 into a gang of robbers and assassins; never before did a den 
 of bravoes and banditti assume the garb and tone of an 
 academy of philosophers. 
 
 Let me tell his Grace, that an union of such characters, 
 monstrous as it seems, is not made for producing despicable 
 enemies. But if they are formidable as foes, as friends they 
 are dreadful indeed. The men of property in France, con- 
 fiding in a force which seemed to be irresistible because it 
 had never been tried, neglected to prepare for a conflict 
 with their enemies at their own weapons. They were found 
 in such a situation as the Mexicans were, when they were 
 attacked by the dogs, the cavalry, the iron, and the gun- 
 powder of an handful of bearded men, whom they did not 
 know to exist in Nature. This isa comparison that some, I 
 think, have made; and it is just. In France they had their 
 enemies within theirhouses. They were even in the bosoms 
 of many of them. But they had not sagacity to discern 
 their savage character. They seemed tame, and even caress- 
 ing. They had nothing but douce humanité in their mouth. 
 They could not bear the punishment of the mildest laws on 
 the greatest criminals. The slightest severity of justice 
 made their flesh creep. The very idea that war existed in 
 the world disturbed their repose. Military glory was no 
 more, with them, than a splendid infamy. Hardly would 
 they hear of self-defense, which they reduced within such 
 bounds as to leave it no defense at all. All this while they 
 meditated the confiscations and massacres we have seen. 
 Had any one told these unfortunate noblemen and gentle- 
 men how and by whom the grand fabric of the French mon- 
 
654 BURKE 
 
 archy under which they flourished would be subverted, they 
 would not have pitied him asa visionary, but would have 
 tnrned from him as what they call a mauvais plaisant. Yet 
 we have seen what has happened. The persons who have 
 suffered from the cannibal philosophy of France are so like 
 the Duke of Bedford, that nothing but his Grace’s probably 
 not speaking quite so good French could enable us to find 
 out any difference. A great many of them had as pom- 
 pous titles as he, and were of full as illustrious a race; some 
 few of them had fortunes as ample; several of them, with- 
 out meaning the least disparagement to the Duke of Bed- 
 ford, were as wise, and as virtuous, and as valiant, and as 
 well educated, and as complete in all the lineaments of men. 
 of honour, as he is; and to all this they had added the power- 
 ful outguard of a military profession, which, in its nature, 
 renders men somewhat more cautious than those who have 
 nothing to attend to but the lazy enjoyment of undisturbed 
 possessions. But security was their ruin. They are dashed 
 to pieces in the storm, and our shores are covered with the 
 wrecks. If they had been aware that sucha thing might 
 happen, such a thing never could have happened. 
 
 I assure his Grace, that, if I state to him the designs of 
 his enemies in a manner which may appear to him ludicrous 
 and impossible, I tell him nothing that has not exactly 
 happened, point by point, but twenty-four miles from our 
 own shore. I assure him that the Frenchified faction, more 
 encouraged than others are warned by what has happened in 
 France, look at him and his landed possessions as an object 
 at once of curiosity and rapacity. He is made for them in 
 every part of their double character. As robbers, to them 
 he is a noble booty; as speculatists, he is a glorious subject 
 for their experimental philosophy. He affords matter for 
 an extensive analysis in all the branches of their science, 
 geometrical, physical, civil, and political. These philoso- 
 phers are fanatics: independent of any interest, which, if it 
 operated alone, would make them much more tractable, they 
 are carried with such an headlong rage towards every des- 
 
LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD 655 
 
 perate trial that they would sacrifice the whole human race 
 to the slightest of their experiments. I am better able to 
 enter into the character of this description of men than the 
 noble Duke can be. I have lived long and variously in the 
 world. Without any considerable pretensions to literature 
 in myself, I have aspired to the love of letters. I have lived 
 for a great many years in habitudes with those who professed 
 them. I can forma tolerable estimate of what is likely to 
 happen from a character chiefly dependent for fame and for- 
 tune on knowledge and talent, as well in its morbid and per- 
 verted state as in that which is sound and natural. Natur- 
 ally, men so formed and finished are the first gifts of Provi- 
 dence to the world. But when they have once thrown off 
 the fear of God, which was in all ages too often the case, 
 and the fear of man, which is now the case, and when in 
 that state they come to understand one another, and to act 
 in corps, a more dreadful calamity cannot arise out of hell 
 to scourge mankind. Nothing can be conceived more hard 
 than the heart of a thorough-bred metaphysician. It comes 
 nearer to the cold malignity of a wicked spirit than to the 
 frailty and passion of aman. It islike that of the Principle 
 of Evil himself, incorporeal, pure, unmixed, dephlegmated, 
 defecated evil. Itisno easy operation to eradicate humanity 
 from the human breast. What Shakspeare calls the “ com- 
 punctious visitings of Nature” will sometimes knock at 
 their hearts, and protest against their murderous specula- 
 tions. But they have a means of compounding with their 
 nature. Their humanity is not dissolved; they only give it 
 a long prorogation. They are ready to declare that they do 
 not think two thousand years too long a period for the good 
 that they pursue. It is remarkable that they never see any 
 way to their projected good but by the road of some evil. 
 Their imagination is not fatigued with the contemplation of 
 human suffering through the wild waste of centuries added 
 to centuries of misery and desolation. Their humanity is at 
 their horizon,—and, like the horizon, it always flies before 
 them. The geometricians and the chemists bring, the one 
 
656 BURKE 
 
 from the dry bones of their diagrams, and the other from the 
 soot of their furnaces, dispositions that make them worse 
 than indifferent about those feelings and habitudes which 
 are the supports of the moral world. Ambition is come upon 
 them suddenly; they are intoxicated with it, and it has 
 rendered them fearless of the danger which may from 
 thence arise to others or to themselves. These philosophers 
 consider men in their experiments no more than they do 
 mice in an air-pump or in a recipient of mephitic gas. 
 Whatever his Grace may think of himself, they look upon 
 him, and everything that belongs to him, with no more 
 regard than they do upon the whiskers of that little long- 
 tailed animal that has been long the game of the grave, 
 demure, insidious, spring-nailed, velvet-pawed, green-eyed 
 philosophers, whether going upon two legs or upon four. 
 His Grace’s landed possessions are irresistibly inviting to 
 an agrarian experiment. They are a downright insult upon 
 the rights of man. They are more extensive than the 
 territory of many of the Grecian republics; and they are 
 without comparison more fertile than most of them. There 
 are now republics in Italy, in Germany, and in Switzerland, 
 which do not possess anything like so fair and ample a 
 domain. There is scope for seven philosophers to proceed 
 in their analytical experiments upon: Harrington’s seven dif- 
 ferent forms of republics, in the acres of this one Duke. 
 Hitherto they have been wholly unproductive to speculation, 
 —fitted for nothing but to fatten bullocks, and to produce 
 grain for beer, still more to stupefy the dull English under- 
 standing. Abbé Sieyés has whole nests of pigeon-holes full 
 of constitutions ready-made, ticketed, sorted, and numbered, 
 suited to every season and every fancy: some with the top 
 of the pattern at the bottom, and some with the bottom at 
 the top; some plain, some flowered; some distinguished 
 for their simplicity, others for their complexity ; some of 
 blood colour, some of boue de Paris; some with directories, 
 others without a direction; some with councils of elders 
 and councils of youngsters, some without any council at all; 
 
LETTER TO. A NOBLE LORD 657 
 
 some where the electors choose the representatives, others 
 where the representatives choose the clectors ; some in long 
 coats, and some in short cloaks; some with pantaloons, some 
 without breeches; some with five-shilling qualifications, 
 some totally unqualified. So that no constitution-fancier 
 may go unsuited from his shop, provided he loves a pattern 
 of pillage, oppression, arbitrary imprisonment, confiscation, 
 exile, revolutionary judgment, and legalized premeditated 
 murder, in any shapes into which they can be put. What 
 a pity it is that the progress of experimental philosophy 
 should be checked by his Grace’s monopoly! Such are 
 their sentiments, I assure him ; such is their language, when 
 they dare to speak; and such are their proceedings, when 
 they have the means to act. 
 
 Their geographers and geometricians have been some 
 time out of practise. It is some time since they have divided 
 their own country into squares. That figure has lost the 
 charms of its novelty. They want new lands for new trials. 
 It is not only the geometricians of the Republic that find 
 him a good subject: the chemists have bespoke him, after 
 the geometricians have doné with him. As the first set have 
 an eye on his Grace’s lands, the chemists are not less taken 
 with his buildings. They consider mortar as a very anti- 
 revolutionary invention, in its present state, but, properly 
 employed, an admirable material for overturning all establish- 
 ments. They have found that the gunpowder of ruins is 
 far the fittest for making other ruins, and so ad infinitum. 
 They have calculated what quantity of matter convertible 
 into nitre is to be found in Bedford House, in Woburn 
 Abbey, and in what his Grace and his trustees have still 
 suffered to stand of that foolish royalist, Inigo Jones, in 
 Covent Garden. Churches, play-houses, coffee-houses, all 
 alike, are destined to be mingled, and equalized,and blended 
 into one common rubbish,—and, well sifted, and lixiviated, 
 to crystallize into true, democratic, explosive, insurrectionary 
 nitre. Their Academy del Cimento, (per antiphrasin,) with 
 
 Morveau and Hassenfratz at its head, have computed that 
 42 | 
 
658 BURKE 
 
 the brave sans-culottes may make war on all the aristocracy 
 of Europe for a twelvemonth out of the rubbish of the Duke 
 of Bedford’s buildings.’ 
 
 While the Morveaux and Priestleys are proceeding with 
 these experiments upon the Duke of Bedford’s houses, the 
 Sieyés, and the rest of the analytical legislators and consti- 
 tution-venders, are quite as busy in their trade of decom- 
 posing organization, in forming his Grace’s vassals into 
 primary assemblies, national guards, first, second, and third 
 requisitioners, committees of research, conductors of the 
 travelling guillotine, judges of revolutionary tribunals, legis- 
 lative hangmen, supervisors of domiciliary visitation, exactors 
 of forced loans, and assessors of the maximum. 
 
 The din of all this smithery may some time or other pos- 
 sibly wake this noble Duke, and push him to an endeavour to 
 save some little matter from their experimental philosophy. 
 If he pleads his grants from the crown, he is ruined at the 
 outset. If he pleads he has received them from the pillage 
 of superstitious corporations, this indeed will stagger them a 
 little, because they are enemies to all corporations and to all 
 religion. However, they will soon recover themselves, and 
 will tell his Grace, or his learned council, that all such prop- 
 erty belongs to the nation,—and that it would be more wise 
 for him, if he wishes to live the natural term of a citizen, 
 (that is, according to Condorcet’s calculation, six months on 
 an average,) not to pass for an usurper upon the national 
 property. This is what the serjeants-at-law of the rights 
 of man will say to the puny apprentices of the common law 
 of England. 
 
 Is the genius of philosophy not yet known? ‘You may as 
 well think the garden of the Tuileries was well protected 
 with the cords of ribbon insultingly stretched by the National 
 Assembly to keep the sovereign canaille from intruding on 
 the retirement of the poor King of the French as that such 
 flimsy cobwebs will stand between the savages of the Revo- 
 lution and their natural prey. Deep philosophers are no 
 triflers ; brave sans-culottes are no formalists. They will no 
 
d 
 
* 
 
 LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD 659 
 
 more regard a Marquis of Tavistock than an Abbot of Tav- 
 istock ; the Lord of Woburn will not be more respectable in 
 their eyes than the Prior of Woburn; they will make no dif- 
 ference between the superior of a Covent Garden of nuns and 
 of a Covent Garden of another description. They will not 
 care a rush whether his coat is long or short,—whether the 
 colour be purple, or blue and buff. They will not trouble 
 their heads with what part of his head his hair is cut from ; 
 and they will look with equal respect on a tonsure and acrop. 
 Their only question will be that of their Legendre, or some 
 other of their legislative butchers : How he cuts up ; how 
 he tallows in the caul or on the kidneys. 
 
 Is it not a singular phenomenon, that, whilst the sans- 
 culotte carcass-butchers and the philosophers of the shambles 
 are pricking their dotted lines upon his hide, and, like the 
 print of the poor oxthat we see in the shop-windows at Char- 
 ing Cross, alive as he is, and thinking no harm in the world, 
 he is divided into rumps, and sirloins, and briskets, and into 
 all sorts of pieces for roasting, boiling, and stewing, that, all 
 the while they are measuring him, his Grace is measuring me, 
 —is invidiously comparing the bounty of the crown with the 
 deserts of the defender of his order, andin the same moment 
 fawning on those who have the knife half out of the sheath ? 
 Poor innocent ! 
 
 “Pleased to the last, he crops the flowery food, 
 And licks the hand just raised to shed his blood.” 
 
 No man lives too long who lives to do with spirit and suf- 
 fer with resignation what Providence pleases to command or 
 inflict ; but, indeed, they aresharp incommodities which beset 
 old age. It was but the other day, that, on putting in order 
 some things which had been brought here, on my taking leave 
 of London forever, I looked over a number of fine portraits, 
 most of them of persons now dead, but whose society, in my 
 better days, made this a proud and happy place. Amongst 
 these was the picture of Lord Keppel. It was painted by an 
 artist worthy of the subject, the excellent friend of that ex- 
 
660 BURKE 
 
 cellent man from their earliest youth, and a common friend 
 of us both, with whom we lived for many years without a 
 moment of coldness, of peevishness, of jealousy, or of jar, to 
 the day of our final separation. 
 
 I ever looked on Lord Keppel as one of the greatest and 
 best men of his age, and I loved and cultivated him accord- 
 ingly. He was much in my heart, and I believe I was in his 
 to the very last beat. It was after his trial at Portsmouth 
 that he gave me this picture. With what zeal and anxious 
 affection I attended him through that his agony of glory,— 
 what part my son, in the early flush and enthusiasm of his 
 virtue, and the pious passion with which he attached himself 
 to all my connections,—with what prodigality we both squan- 
 dered ourselves in courting almost every sort of enmity for 
 his sake, I believe he felt, just as I should have felt such 
 friendship on such an occasion. I partook, indeed, of this 
 honour with several of the first and best and ablest in the 
 kingdom, but I was behind hand with none. of them ; and I 
 am sure, that, if, to the eternal disgrace of this nation, and to 
 the total annihilation of every trace of honour and virtue in 
 it, things had taken a different turn from what they did, I 
 should have attended him to the quarter-deck with no less 
 good-will and more pride, though with far other feelings, than 
 I partook of the general flow of national joy that attended 
 the justice that was done to his virtue. 
 
 Pardon, my Lord, the feeble garrulity of age, which loves to 
 diffuse itself in discourse of the departed great. At my 
 years we live in retrospect alone; and, wholly unfitted for 
 the society of vigorous life, we enjoy, the best balm to all 
 wounds, the consolation of friendship, in those only whom 
 we have lost forever. Feeling the loss of Lord Keppel at 
 all times, at no time did I feel it so much as on the first day 
 when I was attacked in the House of Lords. 
 
 Had he lived, that reverend form would have risen in its 
 place, and, with a mild, parental reprehension to his nephew, 
 the Duke of Bedford, he would have told him that the favour 
 of that gracious prince who had honoured his virtues with the 
 
LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD 661 
 
 government of the navy of Great Britain, and with a seat in. 
 the hereditary great council of his kingdom, was not un- 
 deservedly shown to the friend of the best portion of his 
 life, and his faithful companion and counsellor under his 
 rudest trials. He would have told him, that, to whomever 
 else these reproaches might be becoming, they were not 
 decorous in hisnear kindred. He would have told him, that, 
 when men in that rank lose decorum, they lose everything. 
 On that day I had a loss in Lord Keppel. But the public 
 loss of him in this awful crisis !—I speak from much knowl- 
 edge of the person: he never would have listened to any 
 compromise with the rabble rout of this sans-culotterie of 
 France. His goodness of heart, his reason, his taste, his 
 public duty, his principles, his prejudices, would have re- 
 pelled him forever from all connection with that horrid 
 medley of madness, vice, impiety, and crime. : 
 Lord Keppel had two countries: one of descent, and one . 
 of birth. Their interest and their glory are the same; and 
 his mind was capacious of both. His family was noble, and 
 it was Dutch: that is, he was of the oldest and purest no- 
 bility that Europe can boast, among a people renowned 
 above all others for love of their native land. Though it 
 was never shown in insult to any human being, Lord Keppel 
 was something high. It was a wild stock of pride, on which 
 the tenderest of all hearts had grafted the milder virtues. 
 He valued ancient nobility; and he was not disinclined to 
 augment it with new honours. He valued the old nobility 
 and the new, not as an excuse for inglorious sloth, but as an 
 incitement to virtuous activity. He considered it as a sort 
 of cure for selfishness and a narrow mind,—conceiving that 
 a man born in an elevated place in himself was nothing, but 
 everything in what went before and what was to come after 
 him. Without much speculation, but by the sure instinct 
 of ingenuous feelings, and by the dictates of plain, unso- 
 phisticated, natural understanding, he felt that no great 
 commonwealth could by any possibility long subsist without 
 a body of some kind or other of nobility decorated with 
 
662 BURKE 
 
 honour and fortified by privilege. This nobility forms the 
 chain that connects the ages of a nation, which otherwise 
 (with Mr. Paine) would soon be taught that no one genera- 
 tion can bind another. He felt that no political fabric could 
 be well made, without some such order of things as might, 
 through a series of time, afford a rational hope of securing 
 unity, coherence, consistency, and stability to the state. He 
 felt that nothing else can protect it against the levity of 
 courts and the greater levity of the multitude; that to talk 
 of hereditary monarchy, without anything else of hereditary 
 reverence in the commonwealth, was a low-minded absurdity, 
 fit only for those detestable “ fools aspiring to be knaves” 
 who began to forge in 1789 the false money of the French 
 Constitution; that it isone fatal objection to all new fancied 
 and new fabricated republics, (among a people who, once 
 possessing such an advantage, have wickedly and insolently 
 rejected it,) that the prejudice of an old nobility is a thing 
 that cannot be made. It may be improved, it may be cor- 
 rected, it may be replenished; men may be taken from it or 
 aggregated to it; but the thing itself is matter of inveterate 
 Opinion, and therefore can not be matter of mere positive 
 institution. He felt that this nobility, in fact, does not exist 
 in wrong of other orders of the state, but by them, and for 
 them. | 
 
 I knew the man I speak of: and if we can divine the 
 future out of what we collect from the past, no person living 
 would look with more scorn and horror on the impious par- 
 ricide committed on all their ancestry, and on the desperate 
 attainder passed on all their posterity, by the Orléans, and 
 the Rochefoucaults, and the Fayettes, and the Vicomtes de 
 Noailles, and the false Perigords, and the long et cetera of 
 the perfidious sans-culottes of the court, who, like demoniacs 
 possessed with a spirit of fallen pride and inverted ambition, 
 abdicated their dignities, disowned their families, betrayed 
 the most sacred of all trusts, and, by breaking to piecesa 
 great link of society and all the cramps and holdings of the 
 state, brought eternal confusion and desolation on their 
 
LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD 663 
 
 country. For the fate of the miscreant parricides themselves 
 he would have had no pity. Compassion for the myriads of 
 men, of whom the world was not worthy, who by their 
 means have perished in prisons or on scaffolds, or are pin- 
 ing in beggary and exile, would leave no room in his, or in 
 any well-formed mind, for any such sensation. We are not 
 made at once to pity the oppressor and the oppressed. 
 
 Looking to his Batavian descent, how could he bear to 
 behold his kindred, the descendants of the brave nobility of 
 Holland, whose blood, prodigally poured out, had, more than 
 all the canals, meres, and inundations of their country, pro- 
 tected their independence, to behold them bowed in the 
 basest servitude to the basest and vilest of the human race, 
 —in servitude to those who in no respect were superior in 
 dignity or could aspire to a better place than that of hang- 
 men to the tyrants to whose sceptered pride they had opposed 
 an elevation of soul that surmounted and overpowered the 
 loftiness of Castile, the haughtiness of Austria, and the over- 
 bearing arrogance of France? 
 
 Could he with patience bear that the children of that no- 
 bility who would have deluged their country and given it to 
 the sea rather than submit to Louis the Fourteenth, who 
 was then in his meridian glory, when his arms were con- 
 ducted by the Turennes, by the Luxembourgs, by the Bouf- 
 flers, when his councils were directed by the Colberts and 
 the Louvois, when his tribunals were filled by the Lamoi- 
 gnons and the D’Aguesseaus,—that these should be given up 
 to the cruel sport of the Pichegrus, the Jourdans, the San- 
 terres, under the Rolands, and Brissots, and Gorsas, and 
 Robespierres, the Reubells, the Carnots, and Talliens, and 
 Dantons, and the whole tribe of regicides, robbers, and rev- 
 olutionary judges, that from the rotten carcass of their own 
 murdered country have poured out innumerable swarms of 
 the lowest and at once the most destructive of the classes of 
 animated Nature, which like columns of locusts have laid 
 waste the fairest part of the world? 
 
 Would Keppel have borne to see the ruin of the virtuous 
 
664 BURKE 
 
 patricians, that happy union of the noble and the burgher, 
 who with signal prudence and integrity had long governed 
 the cities of the confederate republic, the cherishing fathers 
 of their country, who, denying commerce to themselves, 
 made it flourish in a manner unexampled under their protec- 
 tion? Could Keppel have borne that a vile faction should 
 totally destroy this harmonious construction, in favour of a 
 robbing democracy founded on the spurious rights of man ? 
 
 He was no great clerk, but he was perfectly well versed in 
 the interests of Europe, and he could not have heard with 
 patience that the country of Grotius, the cradle of the law 
 of nations, and one of the richest repositories of all law, 
 should be taught a new code by the ignorant flippancy of 
 Thomas Paine, the presumptuous foppery of La Fayette, 
 with his stolen rights of man in his hand, the wild, profligate 
 intrigue and turbulency of Marat, and the impious sophistry 
 of Condorcet, in his insolent addresses to the Batavian 
 Republic. 
 
 Could Keppel, who idolized the House of Nassau, who 
 was himself given to England along with the blessings of 
 the British and Dutch Revolutions, with Revolutions of 
 stability, with Revolutions which consolidated and married 
 the liberties and the interests of the two nations forever,— 
 could he see the fountain of British liberty itself in servitude 
 to France? Could he see with patience a Prince of Orange 
 expelled, as a sort of diminutive despot, with every kind of 
 contumely, from the country which that family of deliverers 
 had so often rescued from slavery, and obliged to live in exile 
 in another country, which owes its liberty to his house? 
 
 Would Keppel have heard with patience that the conduct 
 to be held on such occasions was to become short by the 
 knees to the faction of the homicides, to entreat them quietly 
 to retire? or, if the fortune of war should drive them from 
 their first wicked and unprovoked invasion, that no security 
 should be taken, no arrangement made, no barrier formed‘ 
 no alliance entered into for the security of that which under 
 a foreign name is the most precious part of England? What 
 
LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD 665 
 
 would he have said, if it was even proposed that the Austrian 
 Netherlands (which ought to be a barrier to Holland, and the 
 tie of an alliance to protect her against any species of rule 
 that might be erected or even be restored in France) should 
 be formed into a republic under her influence and dependent 
 upon her power? 
 
 But above all, what would he have said, if he had heard it 
 made a matter of accusation against me, by his nephew, the 
 Duke of Bedford, that I was the author of the war? Had I 
 a mind to keep that high distinction to myself, (as from pride 
 I might, but from justice I dare not,) he would have snatched 
 his share of it from my hand, and held it with the grasp of a 
 dying convulsion to his end. | 
 
 It would be a most arrogant presumption in me to assume 
 to myself the glory of what belongs to his Majesty, and to 
 his ministers, and to his Parliament, and to the far greater 
 majority of his faithful people: but had I stood alone to 
 counsel, and that all were determined to be guided by my 
 advice, and to follow it implicitly, then I should have been 
 the sole author of a war. But it should have been a war on 
 my ideas and my principles. However, let his Grace think 
 as he may of my demerits with regard to the war with Regi- 
 cide, he will find my guilt confined to that alone. He never 
 shall, with the smallest colour of reason, accuse me of being 
 the author of a peace with Regicide.—But that is high mat- 
 ter, and ought not to be mixed with anything of so little 
 moment as what may belong to me, or even to the Duke of 
 
 Bedford. 
 
 I have the honour to be, etc. 
 EDMUND BURKE. 
 
 NOTES 
 
 1“ Tristius haud illis monstrum, nec szvior ulla 
 Pestis et ira Detim Stygiis sese extulit undis. 
 Virginei volucrum vultus, foedissima ventris 
 Proluvies, unczeque manus, et pallida semper 
 Ora fame.” 
 
 Here the poet breaks the line, because he (and that he is Virgil) had not verse 
 43 
 
666 BURKE 
 
 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 de- 
 scribe, and more frequent failures in the attempt to describe them. 
 
 2 London, J. Dodsley, 1792, 3 vols. 4to. 
 
 8 See the history of the melancholy catastrophe of the Duke of Buckingham. 
 Temp. Hen. VIII, . 
 
 4 At si non aliam venturo fata Neroni, etc. 
 
 5 Sir George Savile’s act, called The Nullum Tempus Act. 
 
 6 Templum in modum arcis.”—TACITUS, of the temple of Jerusalem. 
 
 7 There is nothing on which the leaders of the Republic one and indivisible 
 value themselves more than on the chemical operations by which, through 
 science, they convert the pride of aristocracy to an instrument of its own de- 
 struction,—on the operations by which they reduce the magnificent ancient 
 country-seats of the nobility, decorated with the feudal titles of Duke, Marquis, 
 or Earl, into magazines of what they call revolutionary gunpowder. They tell 
 us, that hitherto things “had not yet been properly and in a revolutionary 
 manner explored.”—* The strong chateaus, those feudal fortresses, that were 
 ordered to be demolished, attracted next the attention of your committee. 
 Nature there had secretly regained her rights, and had produced saltpetre, 
 for the purpose, as it should seem, of facilitating the execution of your decree 
 by preparing the means of destruction. From these ruins, which still frown 
 on the liberties of the Republic, we have extracted the means of producing 
 good; and those piles which have hitherto glutted the pride of despots, and 
 covered the plots of La Vendée, will soon furnish wherewithal to tame the 
 traitors and to overwhelm the disaffected.” —“ The rebellious cities, also, have 
 afforded a large quantity of saltpetre. Commune Affranchie” (that is, the 
 noble city of Lyons, reduced in many parts to an heap of ruins) “and Toulon 
 will pay a second tribute to our artillery.”—Report, ist February, 1794. 
 
ON WARREN HASTINGS 
 
 [NoTE.—Burke’s opening speech on the impeachment of Warren Hastings 
 occupied four days in delivery. Its great lengthand some other considerations 
 prevent us from including it in this volume. But the universally admired 
 peroration of that famous effort of his last years can not be ignored ; hence 
 we give it here. Epiror.] 
 
 Y LORDS, you have heard the proceedings of the 
 
 court before which Gunga Govind Sing thought pro- 
 
 per to appeal, in consequence of the power and protection of 
 
 Mr. Hastings being understood to exist after he left India, 
 
 and authenticated by his last parting deed. Your Lordships 
 
 will judge by that last act of Mr. Hastings what the rest of 
 his whole life was. 
 
 My Lords, I do not mean now to go further than just to 
 remind your Lordships of this, that Mr. Hastings’ govern- 
 ment was one whole system of oppression, of robbery of in- 
 dividuals, of destruction of the public, and of suppression of 
 the whole system of the English government, in order to 
 vest in the worst of the natives all the powers that could pos- 
 sibly exists in any government,—in order to defeat the ends 
 which all governments ought in common to have in view. 
 Thus, my Lords, I show you at one point of view what you 
 are to expect from him in all the rest. I have, I think, made 
 out as clear as can be to your Lordships, so far as it was nec- 
 essary to go, that his bribery and peculation was not occa- 
 sional, but habitual,—that it was not urged upon him at the 
 moment, but was regular and systematic. I have shown to 
 your Lordships the operation of such a system on the 
 revenues, 
 
 My Lords, Mr. Hastings pleads one constant merit to 
 667 
 
668 BURKE 
 
 justify those acts,—namely, that they produce an increase of 
 the public revenue ; and accordingly he never sells to any of 
 those wicked agents any trusts whatever in the country, that 
 you do not hear that it will considerably tend to the increase 
 of the revenue. Your Lordships will see, when he sold to 
 wicked men the province of Bahar in the same way in which 
 Debi Sing had this province of Dinagepore, that consequences 
 of a horrid and atrocious nature, though not to so great 
 an extent, followed from it. I will just beg leave to state to 
 your Lordships, that the kingdom of Bahar is annexed to 
 the kingdom of Bengal ; that this kingdom was governed by 
 another Provincial Council; that he turned out that Provin- 
 cial Council, and sold that government to two wicked men: 
 one of no fortune, at all, and the other of a very suspicious 
 fortune; onea total bankrupt, the other justly excommuni- 
 cated for his wickedness in his country, and then in prison 
 for misdemeanours in a subordinate situation of government. 
 Mr. Hastings destroyed the Council that imprisoned him ; 
 and, instead of putting one of the best and most reputable 
 of the natives to govern it, he takes out of prison this excom- 
 municated wretch, hated by Godand man,—this bankrupt, 
 this man of evil and desperate character, this mismanager 
 of the public revenue inan inferior station ; and, as he had 
 given Bengal to Gunga Govind Sing, he gave this province to 
 Rajahs Kelleram and Cullian Sing. It was done upon this 
 principle, that they would increase and very much better the 
 revenue. These men seemed to be as strange instruments 
 for improving a revenue as ever were chosen, I suppose, since 
 the world began. Perhaps their merit was giving a bribe of 
 40,0007. to Mr. Hastings. How he disposed of it I don’t 
 know. He says, “ I disposed of it to the public, and it was 
 in a case of emergency.”’ You will see in the course of this 
 business the falsehood of that pretence ; for you will see, 
 though the obligation is given for it as a round sum of 
 money, that the payment was not accomplished till a year 
 after; that therefore it could not answer any immediate 
 exigence of the Company. Did it answer in an increase of 
 
ON WARREN HASTINGS 669 
 
 the revenue? The very reverse. Those persons who had 
 given this bribe of 40,000/. at the end of that year were. 
 found 80,000/. in debt to the Company.. The Company 
 always loses, when Mr. Hastings takes abribe ; and when he 
 proposes an increase of the revenue, the Company loses often 
 double. But I hope and trust your Lordships will consider 
 this idea of a monstrous rise of rent, given by men of desper- 
 ate fortunes and characters, to be one of the grievances in- 
 stead of one of the advantages of this system. 
 
 It has been necessary to lay these facts before you, (and I" 
 have stated them to your Lordships far short of their reality, 
 partly through my infirmity, and partly on account of the 
 odiousness of the task of going through things that disgrace 
 human nature,) that you may be enabled fully to enter into 
 the dreadful consequences which attend a system of bribery 
 and corruption in a Governor-General. On atransient view, 
 bribery is rather a subject of disgust than horror,—the sordid 
 practice of a venal, mean, and abject mind; and the effect 
 of the crime seems to end with the act. It looks to be no 
 more than the corrupt transfer of property from one person 
 to another,—at worst a theft. But it will appear in a very 
 different light, when you regard the consideration for which 
 the bribe is given,—namely, that a Governor-General, claim- 
 ing an arbitrary power in himself, for that consideration de- 
 livers up the properties, the liberties, and the lives of an whole 
 people to the arbitrary discretion of any wicked and rapacious 
 person, who will be sure to make good from their blood the 
 purchase he has paid for his power overthem. It is possible 
 that a man may pay a bribe merely to redeem himself from 
 some evil. It is bad, however, to live under a power whose 
 violence has no restraint except in its avarice. But no man 
 ever paida bribe for a power to charge and tax others, but 
 with a view to oppress them. No man ever paid a bribe for 
 the handling of the public money, but to peculate from it. 
 When once such office becomes thus privately and corruptly 
 venal, the very worst men will be chosen (as Mr. Hastings 
 has in fact constantly chosen the very worst) ; because none 
 
670 BURKE 
 
 but those who do not scruple the use of any means are 
 capable, consistently with profit, to discharge at once the 
 rigid demands of a severe public revenue and the private 
 bribes of a rapacious chief magistrate. Not only the worst 
 men will be thus chosen, but they will be restrained by no 
 dread whatsoever in the execution of their worst oppressions. 
 Their protection is sure. The authority that is to restrain, 
 to control, to punish them is previously engaged ; he has his 
 retaining fee for the support of their crimes. Mr. Hastings 
 never dared, because he could not, arrest oppression in its 
 course, without drying up the source of his own corrupt 
 emolument. Mr. Hastings never dared, after the fact, to 
 punish extortion in others, because he could not, without 
 risking the discovery of bribery in himself. The same cor- 
 ruption, the same oppression, and the same impunity will 
 reign through all the subordinate gradations. 
 
 A fair revenue may be collected without the aid of wicked, 
 violent, and unjust instruments, But when once the line of 
 just and legal demand is transgressed, such instruments are 
 of absolute necessity ; and they comport themselves accord- 
 ingly. When we know that men must be well paid (and 
 they ought to be well paid) for the performance of honourable 
 duty, can we think that men will be found to commit wicked, 
 rapacious, and oppressive acts with fidelity and disinterest- 
 edness for the sole emolument of dishonest employers ? 
 No: they must have their full share of the prey, and the 
 greater share, as they are the nearer and more necessary in- 
 struments of the general extortion. We must not, therefore, 
 flatter ourselves, when Mr. Hastings takes 40,000/. in bribes 
 for Dinagepore and its annexed provinces, that from the 
 people nothing more than 40,000/. is extorted. I speak 
 within compass, four times forty must be levied on the 
 people; and these violent sales, fraudulent purchases, con- 
 fiscations, inhuman and unutterable tortures, imprisonment, 
 irons, whips, fines, general despair, general insurrection, the 
 massacre of the officers of revenue by the people, the mas- 
 sacre of the people by the soldiery, and the total waste and 
 
ON WARREN. HASTINGS 671 
 
 destruction of the finest provinces in India, are things of 
 course,—and all a necessary consequence involved in the very 
 substance of Mr. Hastings’s bribery. 
 
 I therefore charge Mr. Hastings with having destroyed, 
 for private purposes, the whole system of government by the 
 six Provincial Councils, which he had no right to destroy. 
 
 I charge him with having delegated to others that power 
 which the act of Parliament had directed him to preserve 
 unalienably in himself. 
 
 I charge him with having formed a committee to be mere 
 instruments and tools, at the enormous expense of 62,000/. 
 per annum. 
 
 I charge him with having appointed a person their dewan 
 to whom these Englishmen were to be subservient tools,— 
 whose name, to his own knowledge, was, by the general 
 voice of India by the general recorded voice of the Company, 
 by recorded official transactions, by everything that can 
 make a man known, abhorred, and detested, stamped with 
 infamy ; and with giving him the whole power which he 
 had thus separated from the Council-General, and from the 
 Provincial Councils. 
 
 I charge him with taking bribes of Gunga Govind Sing. 
 
 I charge him with not having done that bribe-service 
 which fidelity even in iniquity requires at the hands of the 
 worst of men. 
 
 I charge him with having robbed those people of whom 
 he took the bribes. 
 
 I charge him with having fraudulently alienated the for- 
 tunes of widows. 
 
 I charge him with having, without right, title, or purchase, 
 taken the lands of orphans, and given them to wicked persons 
 under him. 
 
 I charge him with having removed the natural guardians 
 of aminor Rajah, and with having given that trust to a 
 stranger, Debi Sing, whose wickedness was known to him- 
 self and all the world, and by whom the Rajah, his family, 
 and dependants were cruelly oppressed. 
 
672 BURKE 
 
 I charge him with having committed to the management 
 of Debi Sing three great provinces ; and thereby with having 
 wasted the country, ruined the landed interest, cruelly 
 harassed the peasants, burnt their houses, seized their 
 crops, tortured and degraded their persons, and destroyed 
 the honour of the whole female race of that country. 
 
 In the name of the Commons of England, I charge all 
 this villany upon Warren Hastings, in this last moment of 
 my application to you. 
 
 My Lords, what is it that we want here to a great act of 
 national justice? Do we want a cause, my Lords? You 
 have the cause of oppressed princes, of undone women of 
 the first rank, of desolated provinces, and of wasted kingdoms. 
 
 Do you want a criminal, my Lords? When was there so 
 much iniquity ever laid to the charge of any one? No, my 
 Lords, you must not look to punish any other such delin- 
 quent from India. Warren Hastings has not left substance 
 enough in India to nourish such another delinquent. 
 
 My Lords, is it a prosecutor you want? You have before 
 you the Commons of Great Britain as prosecutors; and I 
 believe, my Lords, that the sun, in his beneficent progress 
 round the world, does not behold a more glorious sight than 
 that of men, separated from a remote people by the material 
 bounds and barriers of Nature, united by the bond ofa social 
 and moral community,—all the Commons of England resent- 
 ing, as their own, the indignities and cruelties that are offered 
 to all the people of India. 
 
 Do we want a tribunal? MyLords, no example of anti- 
 quity, nothing in the modern world, nothing in the range of 
 human imagination, can supply us with a tribunal like this. 
 My Lords, here we see virtually, in the mind’s eye, that 
 sacred majesty of the crown, under whose authority you sit, 
 and whose power you exercise. We see in that invisible 
 authority, what we all feel in reality and life, the beneficent 
 powers and protecting justice of his Majesty. We havehere 
 the heir-apparent to the crown, such as the fond wishes of 
 the people of England wish an heir-apparent of the crown to 
 
ON WARREN HASTINGS 673 
 
 be. We have here all the branches of the royal family, in a 
 situation between majesty and subjection, between the sov- 
 ereign and the subject,—offering a pledge in that situation 
 for the support of the rights of the crown and the liberties 
 of the people, both which extremities they touch. My 
 Lords, we have a great hereditary peerage here,—those who 
 have their own honour, the honour of their ancestors and of 
 their posterity to guard, and who will justify, as they have 
 always justified, that provision in the Constitution by which 
 justice is made an hereditary office. My Lords, we have 
 here a new nobility, who have risen and exalted themselves 
 by various merits,—by great military services which have ex- 
 tended the fame of this country from the rising to the setting 
 sun. We have those who, by various civil merits and vari- 
 ous civil talents, have been exalted to a situation which they 
 well deserve, and in which they will justify the favour of their 
 sovereign, and the good opinion of their fellow-subjects, and 
 make them rejoice to see those virtuous characters that were 
 the other day upon a level with them now exalted above 
 them in rank, but feeling with them in sympathy what they 
 felt in common withthem before. Wehave persons exalted 
 from the practice of the law, from the place in which they 
 administered high, though subordinate, justice, to a seat 
 here, to enlighten with their knowledge and to strengthen 
 with their votes those principles which have distinguished 
 the courts in which they have presided. 
 
 My Lords, you have herealso the lights of our religion, you 
 have the bishops of England. My Lords, you have that true 
 image of the primitive Church, in its ancient form, in its 
 ancient ordinances, purified from the superstitions and the 
 vices which a long succession of ages will bring upon the 
 best institutions. You have the representatives of that 
 religion which says that their God is love, that the very vital 
 spirit of their institution is charity,—a religion which so 
 much hates oppression, that, when the God whom we adore 
 appeared in human form, He did not appear in a form of 
 greatness and majesty, but in sympathy with the lowest of 
 
674 BURKE 
 
 the people, and thereby made it a firm and ruling principle 
 that their welfare was the object of all government, since the 
 Person who was the Master of Nature chose to appear Him- 
 self in a subordinate situation. These are the considerations 
 which influence them, which animate them, and will animate 
 them, against all oppression,—knowing that He whois called 
 first among them, and first among us all, both of the flock 
 that is fed and of those who feed it, made Himself “the 
 servant of all.” 
 
 My Lords, these are the securities which we have in all the 
 constituent parts of the body of this House. We know 
 them, we reckon, we rest upon them, and commit safely the 
 interests of India and of humanity into yourhands. There- 
 fore it is with confidence, that, ordered by the Commons, 
 
 I impeach Warren Hastings, Esquire, of high crimes and 
 misdemeanours. 
 
 I impeach him in the name of the Commons of Great 
 Britain in Parliament assembled, whose Parliamentary trust 
 he has betrayed. 
 
 I impeach him in the name of all the Commons of Great 
 Britain, whose national character he has dishonoured. 
 
 I impeach him in the name of the people of India, whose 
 laws, rights, and liberties he has subverted, whose properties 
 he has destroyed, whose country he has laid waste and 
 desolate. 
 
 I impeach him in the name and by virtue of those eternal 
 laws of justice which he has violated. 
 
 I impeach him in the name of human nature itself, which 
 he has cruelly outraged, injured, and oppressed, in both 
 sexes, in every age, rank, situation, and condition of life. 
 
 THE’*END 
 
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