The Portable Edmund Burke (Portable Library)

by Edmund Burke

  Their geographers and geometricians have been some time out of practice. 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 bespoken him after the geometricians have done 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 establishments. 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 Hassenfrats at its head, have computed that the brave sans culottes may make war on all the aristocracy of Europe for a twelve-month, 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 Sieyes, and the rest of the analytical legislators, and constitution-venders, are quite as busy in their trade of decomposing 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, legislative 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 possibly 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 property 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 Tuilleries 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 Revolution and their natural prey. Deep philosophers are no triflers; brave sans-culottes are no formalists. They will no more regard a Marquis of Tavistock than an Abbot of Tavistock; the Lord of Woburn will not be more respectable in their eyes than the Prior of Woburn; they will make no difference 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 a crop. 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 cawl, 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 ox that we see in the shop-windows at Charing 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, and in the same moment fawning on those who have the knife half out of the sheath—poor innocent!

  PART III

  AMERICA AND REVOLUTION

  An Account of the European Settlements in America

  In the late 1750s and early 1760s Burke worked on a detailed history of the colonization of America, probably with the assistance of his cousin William Burke. In it one sees early on Burke’s knowledge of and interest in America. These excerpts are from Burke’s discussion of West Indian slavery and of the origins of Puritan New England.

  SINCE I HAVE INDULGED MYSELF so long in a speculation which appears to me very material to the welfare of these colonies, I shall venture to say something further concerning another part of the inhabitants, though it may perhaps meet no warm reception from those who are the most nearly concerned.

  The negroes in our colonies endure a slavery more complete, and attended with far worse circumstances, than what any people in their condition suffer in any other part of the world, or have suffered in any other period of time. Proofs of this are not wanting. The prodigious waste which we experience in this unhappy part of our species, is a full and melancholy evidence of this truth. The island of Barbadoes (the negroes upon which do not amount to eighty thousand) notwithstanding all the means which they use to increase them by propagation, notwithstanding that the climate is in every respect, except that of being more wholesome, exactly resembling the climate from whence they come; notwithstanding all this, Barbadoes lives under a necessity of an annual recruit of five thousand slaves to keep up the stock at the number I have mentioned. This prodigious failure, which is at least in the same proportion in all our islands, shows demonstratively that some uncommon and insupportable hardship lies upon the negroes, which wears them down in such a surprising manner; and this, I imagine, is principally the excessive labor which they undergo. For previously, I suppose, that none of the inhabitants of the countries between the tropics are capable, even in their own climates, of near so much labor, without great prejudice to them, as our people are in ours. But in our plantations the blacks work severely for five days, without any relaxation or intermission, for the benefit of the master, and the other two days they are obliged to labor for their own subsistence, during the rest of the week; and this, I imagine, with the other circumstances of great severity which depress their spirits, naturally cuts off great numbers, as well as disqualifies those who remain from supplying this waste by natural propagation.

  The planter will say, that, if he is to allow his negroes more recreation and to indulge them in more hours of absence from their work, he can never reimburse himself for the charge he has been at in the purchase of the slave, nor make the profits which induced him to go to that expense. But this, though it appears plausible enough at first, because the slaves are very dear, and because they do not yield above ten or twelve pounds a head annually clear profit by their labor, is notwithstanding very fallacious. For let it be considered, that, out of their stock of eighty thousand in Barbadoes, there die every year five thousand negroes more than are born in that island: in effect, this people is under a necessity of being entirely renewed every sixteen years; and what must we think of the management of a people, who, far from increasing greatly, as those who have no loss by wars ought to do, must, in so short a space of time as sixteen years, without foreign recruits, be entirely consumed to a man? Let us suppose that these slaves stand the Barbadians in no more than twenty pounds a head out of the ship; whereas, in reality, they cost a great deal more; this makes one hundred thousand pounds every year, and in sixteen years, one million six hundred thousand pounds. A sum really astonishing, and amounting to a fourth of the value of every thing they export.

>   Now suppose, that, by allowing a more moderate labor and some other indulgences, a great number of these deaths might be prevented (and many I think it is probable would so be prevented,) and that they could keep up within a thousand of their stock (and why they could not entirely keep it up by such means, I cannot possibly guess) they would save in this way eighty thousand pounds every year. But from thence we must deduct the time in which these slaves have been unemployed. I suppose that all reasonable indulgences might be given of every sort for the difference of forty thousand pounds, which is the labor of four thousand slaves. This will be far from a small allowance, especially as in this way less time will be lost by sickness, and the surgeon will have less employment. Then, after all deductions, by behaving like good men, good masters, and good Christians, the inhabitants of this one island would save forty thousand pounds a year; which if, instead of being saved, it were lost by such a proceeding, it ought to be considered as a necessary loss, and borne accordingly.

  This matter, though not, I think, before shown in this same light, seems in itself extremely clear; but if it were yet clearer, there are several gentlemen of the West Indies who could not comprehend it; though a wagoner in England will comprehend very clearly, that, if he works his horse but moderately and feeds him well, he will draw more profit from him in the end, than if he never gave him an hour’s respite in the day from his work, and at night turned him upon the common for his subsistence. I am far from contending in favor of an effeminate indulgence to these people. I know that they are stubborn and intractable for the most part, and that they must be ruled with the rod of iron. I would have them ruled, but not crushed with it. I would have a humanity exercised which is consistent with steadiness. And I think it clear from the whole course of history, that those nations which have behaved with the greatest humanity to their slaves were always best served, and ran the least hazard from their rebellions. And I am the more convinced of the necessity of these indulgencies, as slaves certainly cannot go through so much work as freemen. The mind goes a great way in every thing; and when a man knows that his labor is for himself, and that the more he labors, the more he is to acquire, this consciousness carries him through, and supports him beneath fatigues, under which he otherwise would have sunk.

  The prejudice this saving would be to the African trade is, I know, an objection which to some would appear very plausible. But surely, one cannot hear without horror of a trade which must depend for its support upon the annual murder of several thousands of innocent men; and indeed nothing could excuse the slave trade at all, but the necessity we are under of peopling our colonies, and the consideration that the slaves we buy were in the same condition in Africa, either hereditary or taken in war. But, in fact, if the waste of these men should become less, the price would fall; then, if a due order were taken, the same demand might be kept, by extending our colonies, which is now produced by the havoc made of the people. This is the case on the continent, where, though the slaves increase, there is an annual call for seven thousand at least.

  The principal time I would have reserved for the indulgence I propose to be granted to the slaves is Sunday, or the Lord’s day; a day which is profaned in a manner altogether scandalous in our colonies. On this day, I would have them regularly attend at church; I would have them, particularly the children, carefully (full as carefully as any others) instructed in the principles of religion and virtue, and especially in the humility, submission, and honesty, which become their condition. The rest of the day might be devoted to innocent recreation; to these days of relaxation, and with the same exercises, should be added some days in the grand festivals of Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide, and perhaps, four or five days in the year besides. Such methods would by degrees habituate their masters, not to think them a sort of beasts, and without souls, as some of them do at present, who treat them accordingly; and the slaves would of course grow more honest, tractable, and less of eye-servants; unless the sanctions of religion, the precepts of morality, and all the habits of an early institution, be of no advantage to mankind. Indeed I have before me an author, if he may be so called, who treats the notion of bringing the negroes to Christianity with contempt, and talks of it at the best, as a thing of indifference. But, besides that, he appears to me a writer of very little judgment, I cannot conceive with what face any body, who pretends to inform the public, can set up as an advocate for irreligion, barbarism, and gross ignorance....

  It is said, that the law of England is favorable to liberty; and so far this observation is just, that, when we had men in a servile condition amongst us, the law took advantage even of neglects of the masters to enfranchise the villain: and seemed for that purpose even to subtilize a little; because our ancestors judged, that freemen were the real support of the kingdom. What if in our colonies we should go so far as to find out some medium between liberty and absolute slavery, in which we might place all mulattoes after a certain limited servitude to the owner of the mother; and such blacks, who being born in the islands, their masters for their good services should think proper in some degree to enfranchise? These might have land allotted them, or, where that could not be spared, some sort of fixed employment, from either of which they should be obliged to pay a certain moderate rent to the public. Whatever they should acquire above this, to be the reward of their industry. The necessity of paying the rent would keep them from idleness; and when men are once set to work through necessity, they will not stop there; but they will gradually strive for conveniences, and some even for superfluities. All this will add to the demand for our goods, and the colony will be strengthened by the addition of so many men, who will have an interest of their own to fight for.

  There is, amongst others, a very bad custom in our colonies of multiplying their household slaves far beyond reason and necessity. It is not uncommon for families of no very great fortunes, to have twenty-five or thirty in the capacity of menial servants only. These are so many hands taken from planting, to be of no manner of use to the public; but they are infinitely the most dangerous of the slaves; for being at all times about our people, they come to abate of that great reverence which the field negroes have for the whites, without losing any thing of the resentment of their condition, which is common to both. And besides, in any insurrection, they have it more in their power to strike a sudden and fatal blow. Surely a sumptuary law might be contrived to restrain the number of the menial slaves, as there might and ought to be one strictly enjoining all who keep five servants, to have one white man and one white woman amongst them, without any power of being indulged in a contrary practice; as it ought to be a rule never to be broken through, to have not only the overseers, but even all the drivers, white men.

  The alarms we are under at the news of any petty armament in the West Indies is a demonstrative proof of the weakness of our condition there; which is, however, so far from rousing us to seek any proper remedy, that there are not wanting of the people of that country, many who would use a thousand pretences to prevent our taking the only possible means of securing their own possessions from danger; as the majority of men will always be found ready to prefer some present gain to their future and more permanent interests. But the apparent and dangerous progress of the French ought, methinks, to arouse us from our long inaction, and to animate us to enterprise some regulations, in a strain of policy far superior to any thing I have ventured to hint for the interest of the commerce and the honor of the councils of the British nation.

  We derive our rights in America from the discovery of Sebastian Cabot, who first made the northern continent in 1497. The fact is sufficiently certain to establish a right to our settlements in North America: but the particulars are not known distinctly enough to encourage me to enter into a detail of his voyage. The country was in general called Newfoundland, a name which is now appropriated solely to an island upon its coast. It was a long time before we made any attempt to settle this country ; though in this point we were no more backward than our neighbors
, who probably did not abstain so long out of respect to our prior discovery. Sir Walter Raleigh showed the way, by planting a colony in the southern part, which he called Virginia. However, the spirit of colonization was not yet fully raised. Men lived at ease in their own country, and the new settlement of Virginia, though dressed up in all the showy colors which eloquence could bestow upon it, gave adventurers but little encouragement. The affairs of North America were in the hands of an exclusive company, and they prospered accordingly.

  Things remained in this condition until the latter end of the reign of James the First. From the commencement of the Reformation in England, two parties of Protestants subsisted amongst us; the first had chosen gradually and almost imperceptibly to recede from the church of Rome; softening the lines rather than erasing the figure, they made but very little alteration in the appearances of things. And the people, seeing the exterior so little altered, hardly perceived the great changes they had made in the doctrines of their religion. The other party, of a warmer temper, had more zeal and less policy. Several of them had fled from the persecution in Queen Mary’s days; and they returned in those of Queen Elizabeth with minds sufficiently heated by resentment of their sufferings, and by the perpetual disputations which had exercised them all the while they were abroad. Abroad they learned an aversion to the episcopal order, and to religious ceremonies of every sort; they were impregnated with a high spirit of liberty, and had a strong tendency to the republican form of government. Queen Elizabeth had enough of the blood of Harry the Eighth to make her impatient of an opposition to her will, especially in matters of religion, in which she had a high opinion of her own knowledge. She advised with the party but very little in the alterations which she thought proper to make; and, disliking the notions which they seemed to entertain in politics, she kept them down during the whole course of her reign with a uniform and inflexible severity.