by Edmund Burke
The means by which all this was done leaves an example in Europe never to be effaced, and which no thinking man, I imagine, can present to his mind without consternation;—that is, the bribing of an immense body of soldiers, taken from the lowest of the people, to an universal revolt against their officers, who were the whole body of the country gentlemen, and the landed interest of the nation, to set themselves up as a kind of democratic military, governed and directed by their own clubs and committees!
When I saw all this mingled scene of crime, of vice, of disorder, of folly, and of madness, received by very many here, not with the horror and disgust which it ought to have produced, but with rapture and exultation, as some almost supernatural benefit showered down upon the race of mankind; and when I saw that arrangements were publicly made for communicating to these islands their full share of these blessings, I thought myself bound to stand out, and by every means in my power to distinguish the ideas of a sober and virtuous liberty, (such as I thought our party had ever cultivated,) from that profligate, immoral, impious, and rebellious licence, which, through the medium of every sort of disorder and calamity, conducts to some kind or other of tyrannic domination.
At first I had no idea that this base contagion had gained any considerable ground in the party. Those who were the first and most active in spreading it, were their mortal and declared enemies; I mean the leading dissenters. They had long shown themselves wholly adverse to, and unalliable with, the party. They had shown it, as you know, signally, in 1784. At the time of the regency, (which, when Price’s sermon appeared, was still green and raw,) they had seized the opportunity of divisions amongst the great, to bring forward their democratic notions; and the object against which they chiefly directed their seditious doctrines, and the passions of the vulgar, was your party; and I confess they were in the right in their choice; for they knew very well, that, as long as you were true to your principles, no considerable innovations could be made in the country; and that this independent embodied aristocracy would form an impenetrable fence against all their attempts to break into the constitution. When I came to town, though I had heard of Dr. Price’s sermon, I had not read it. I dined the day of my arrival with our friend Dr. Walker King; and there, in a large and mixed company, partly composed of dissenters, one of that description, a most worthy man, of learning, sense, and ingenuity, one of the oldest and best friends I had in the world, and no way indisposed to us, lamented that the dissenters never could be reconciled to us, or confide in us, or hear of our being possessed of the government of the country, as long as we were led by Fox;—this was far from his own opinion; but he declared that it was very general in that body, who regarded him, and spoke of him on all occasions, in a manner that one would not speak of some better sort of highwaymen. Of the rest of the party they had a good opinion; but thought them weak men, and dupes, and the mere instruments of the person of whom they had conceived such unfounded ideas. I was warmed; and continued, with vehemence, in a conversation which lasted some hours, to do justice to Mr. Fox; and in as ample and strenuous a manner as I thought the duties of friendship, and a matter that touched the public interest, required. It is unnecessary to enter into further details on the subject. I went home, and, late as it was, before I went to bed, I read Dr. Price’s sermon; and in that very sermon (in which were all the shocking sentiments and seditious principles which I have endeavoured to expose) the leading feature was a personal invective against Mr. Fox,—very much in the style and manner (a trifle, indeed, less coarse,) in which my worthy friend had represented the general conversation of the dissenters, when Mr. Fox was the subject.
It was, I think, but a day or two after that conversation and reading, that I met Mr. Sheridan at Lord North’s. He was just come to town; and, of himself, he spoke with great resentment of the dissenters for their treatment of Mr. Fox in other parts of the kingdom; which from him I learned was as bad, particularly at Birmingham, as in London. Concerning the French revolution not a word passed between us. I felt as Mr. Sheridan did, and it does not rest on my single assertion. It is known to others, that some part of the asperity with which I expressed myself against these gentlemen, arose from my resentment for their incurable, and, as I thought, treacherous animosity to Mr. Fox; particularly when I knew that, during the whole of the preceding summer, they were soliciting his friendship and connexion. However, they knew Mr. Fox better than I did. The several shots they fired to bring him to, produced their effect. I take it for granted that public principles, connected with magnanimity of sentiment, made him equally regardless of their enmity and of my friendship;—regardless of my friendship, who was weak enough to adopt his cause with a warmth which his wisdom and temper condemned.
What I had thrown down on the first reading of Price’s Declaration and Correspondence with France, was only in a few notes, (though intended for publication,) when Mr. Fox, to my great astonishment and sorrow, chose for his theme of panegyric on the French revolution, the behaviour of the French Guards. I said what occurred to me on that occasion. The day ended with sentiments not very widely divided, and with unbroken friendship. I do not think that at any period of my life I have given stronger proofs of my attachment to that gentleman and to his party, than I had done after that explanation, during the whole of that session and the next both within and without doors.
In the mean time the opinions, principles, and practices, which I thought so very mischievous, were gaining ground, particularly in our party. The festival of the fourteenth of July was celebrated with great splendour for the first time. There Mr. Sheridan made a strong declaration of his sentiments, which was printed. All that could be got together of the party were convened at the Shakespeare the night before; that, as the expression was, they might go in force to that anniversary. Applications were made to some of the Prince of Wales’s people, that it might appear to have his royal highness’s countenance. These things, and many more, convinced me, that the best service which could be done to the party, and to the prince, was to strike a strong blow at those opinions and practices which were carrying on for their common destruction.
As to the prince, I thought him deeply concerned that the ideas of an elective crown should not prevail. He had experienced, and you had all of you fully experienced, the peril of these doctrines on the question of the Regency. You know that I endeavoured, as well as I could, to supply the absence of Mr. Fox during that great controversy. You cannot forget that I supported the prince’s title to the regency upon the principle of his hereditary right to the crown; and I endeavoured to explode the false notions, drawn from what had been stated as the revolution maxims, by much the same arguments which I afterwards used in my printed reflections. I endeavoured to show, that the hereditary succession could not be supported, whilst a person who had the chief interest in it was, during a virtual interregnum, excluded from the government; and that the direct tendency of the measure, as well as the grounds upon which it was argued, went to make the crown itself elective, contrary (as I contended) to the fundamental settlement made after the revolution. I meant to do service to the prince when I took this ground on the regency; I meant to do him service when I took the same ground in my publication.
Here the conduct of the party towards themselves, towards the prince, and (if with these names I could mix myself,) towards me, has been such as to have no parallel. The prince has been persuaded not only to look with all possible coldness on myself, but to lose no opportunity of publicly declaring his disapprobation of a book written to prove that the crown, to which (I hope) he is to succeed, is not elective. For this I am in disgrace at Carlton House. The prince, I am told, has expressed his displeasure that I have not mentioned in that book his right to the regency; I never was so astonished as when I heard this. In the first place, the persons against whom I maintained that controversy had said nothing at all upon the subject of the regency. They went much deeper. I was weak enough to think that the succession to the crown was a matter of other importance to his royal high
ness than his right to the regency. At a time when the king was in perfect health, and no question existing of arrangements to be made, on a supposition of his falling into his former, or any other grievous malady, it would have been an imprudence of the first magnitude, and such as would have hurt the prince most essentially, if it were to be supposed he had given me the smallest encouragement to have wantonly brought on that most critical discussion. Not one of the friends whom his royal highness “delighteth to honour,” have thought proper to say one word upon the subject, in parliament or out of parliament. But the silence which in them is respectful and prudent, in me is disaffection. I shall say no more on this matter. The prince must have been strangely deceived. He is much more personally concerned, in all questions of succession, than the king, who is in possession. Yet his majesty has received, with every mark of a gracious protection, my intended service to his family. The prince has been made to believe it to be some sort of injury to himself. Those, the most in his favour and confidence, are avowed admirers of the French democracy. Even his attorney and his solicitor-general, who, by their legal knowledge and their eloquence as advocates, ought to be the pillars of his succession, are enthusiasts, public and declared, for the French revolution and its principles. These, my dear sir, are strange symptoms about a future court; and they make no small part of that fear of impending mischief to this constitution, which grows upon me every hour. A Prince of Wales with democratic law-servants, with democratic political friends, with democratic personal favourites! If this be not ominous to the crown, I know not what is.
As to the party and its interests, in endeavouring to support the legal hereditary succession of the Prince of Wales, I consider their power as included in the assertion of his right. I could not say positively how soon the ideas they entertained might have recommended them to the favour of the reigning king. I did not, however, conceive that, whatever their notions might be, the probability of their being called to the helm was quite so great under his present majesty as under a successor; and that, therefore, the maintenance of the right of that successor, against those who at once attacked the settlement of the crown, and were the known, declared enemies of the party, was, in a political light, the greatest service I could do to that party, and more particularly to Mr. Fox; infinitely more so than to the Duke of Portland, or Lord Fitzwilliam; because, for many reasons, I am satisfied that these two noble persons are not so ill at St. James’s as he is; and that they (or one of them at least) are not near so well at Carlton House as Mr. Fox and Mr. Sheridan.
According to the common principles of vulgar politics, this would be thought a service, not ill intended, and aimed at its mark with tolerable discretion and judgment. For this, the gentlemen have thought proper to render me obnoxious to the party, odious to the prince, (from whose future prerogative alone my family can hope for any thing,) and at least suspected by the body of my country. That is, they have endeavoured completely and fundamentally to ruin me and mine, in all the ways in which it is in the power of man to destroy the interests and objects of man, whether in his friendship, his fortunes, or his reputation.
But I thought there was another, and a more important point in view, in which what I had done for the public might eminently serve the party, and in concerns of infinitely more importance to those who compose the major part of the body, than any share of power they might obtain. I considered the party as the particular mark of that anarchical faction; and that the principle of the French revolution which they preached up, would have them for its first and most grateful victims. It is against them, as a part of an aristocracy, that the nefarious principles of that grovelling rebellion and tyranny strike; and not at monarchy, further than as it is supposed to be built upon an aristocratic basis. They, who would cheat the nobility and gentry of this nation to their ruin, talk of that monster of turpitude as nothing but the subversion of monarchy. Far from it. The French pride themselves on the idea, however absurd, that theirs is a democracie royale. The name of the monarchy, and of the hereditary monarchy too, they preserve in France; and they feed the person whom they call “king,” with such a revenue, given to mere luxury and extravagance totally separated from all provision for the state, as I believe no people ever before dreamed of granting for such purposes. But against the nobility and gentry they have waged inexpiable war. There are, at this day, no fewer than ten thousand heads of respectable families driven out of France; and those who remain at home, remain in depression, penury, and continued alarm for their lives. You and I know that (in order, as I conceive, still to blind and delude the gentlemen of England,) the French faction here pretended that the persecution of the gentlemen of France could not last;—that at the next election they would recover the consideration which belonged to them, and that we should see that country represented by its best blood, and by all its considerable property. They knew at the time that they were setting forward an imposture. The present assembly, the first born, the child of the strength of their constitution, demonstrates the value of their prediction. At the very instant in which they were making it, they knew, or they knew nothing, that the two hundred and fifty clubs which govern that country had settled their lists. They must have known that the gentlemen of France were not degraded and branded in order to exalt them to greater consequence than ever they possessed. Such they would have had, if they were to compose the whole, or even the major part, of an assembly which rules, in every thing legislative and executive, without any sort of balance or control. No such thing:—the assembly has not fifty men in it (I believe I am at the outside of the number) who are possessed of a hundred pounds a year, in any description of property whatsoever. About six individuals of enormous wealth, and thereby sworn enemies to the prejudice which affixes a dignity to virtuous well-born poverty, are in the number of the fifty. The rest are, what might be supposed, men whose names never were before heard of beyond their market-town. About four hundred of the seven are country practitioners of the law; several of them the stewards and men of business who managed the affairs of gentlemen, bishops, or convents; who, for their merits towards their former employers, are now made the disposers of their lives and fortunes. The rest no one can give an account of, except of those who have passed to this temple of honour, through the temple of virtue called the house of correction. When the king asked the president who the gentlemen were who attended him with a message, the president answered, that he did not know one of them even by name. The gentlemen of this faction here, I am well aware, attribute this to the perverseness of the gentlemen themselves, who would not offer themselves as candidates. That they did not offer themselves is very true; because they knew that they could appear at the primary assemblies only to be insulted, at best; perhaps even murdered, as some of them have been; and many more have been threatened with assassination. What are we to think of a constitution, as a pattern, from which the whole gentry of a country, instead of courting a share in it with eagerness and assiduity, fly as from a place of infection? But the gentlemen of France are all base, vicious, servile, &c. &c. &c. Pray, let not the gentlemen of England be flattered to their destruction, by railing at their neighbours. They are as good as we are, to the full. If they were thus base and corrupt in their sentiments, there is nothing they would not submit to in order to have their share in this scramble for wealth and power. But they have declined it, from sentiments of honour and virtue, and the purest patriotism. One turns with pity and indignation from the view of what they suffer for those sentiments; and, I must confess, my animosity is doubled against those amongst us, who, in that situation, can rail at persons who bear such things with fortitude, even supposing that they suffered for principles in which they were mistaken. But neither you, nor I, nor any fair man, can believe, that a whole nation is free from honour and real principle; or that if these things exist in it, they are not to be found in the men the best born, and the best bred, and in those possessed of rank which raises them in their own esteem, and in the esteem of others, and posses
sed of hereditary settlement in the same place, which secures, with an hereditary wealth, an hereditary inspection. That these should be all scoundrels, and that the virtue, honour, and public spirit of a nation should be only found in its attorneys, pettifoggers, stewards of manors, discarded officers of police, shop-boys, clerks of counting-houses, and rustics from the plough, is a paradox, not of false ingenuity, but of envy and malignity. It is an error, not of the head, but of the heart. The whole man is turned upside down before such an inversion of all natural sentiment and all natural reason can take place. I do not wish to you, no, nor to those who applaud such scenes, angry as I am with them, masters of that description.
Visible as it was to the world, that not the despotism of a prince, but the condition of a gentleman, was the grand object of attack; I thought I should do service to a party of gentlemen, to caution the public against giving countenance to a project calculated for the ruin of such a party.
When such an attempt was not excused, even as well-intended, there was but one way of accounting for the conduct of gentlemen towards me; it is, that from my hands they are resolved not to accept any service. Be it so. They are rid of an incumbrance; and I retire to repose of body and mind, with a repose of conscience too; perfect, with regard to the party and the public, however I may feel myself, as I do, faulty and deficient in other respects. The only concern I feel is, that I am obliged to continue an hour longer in parliament. Whilst I am there, except in some deep constitutional question, I shall take no part. Lord Fitzwilliam and the Duke of Portland shall not be seen voting one way in the House of Lords whilst I vote another in the House of Commons; and any vote of mine, by which I may add even my mite of contribution towards supporting the system or advancing the power of the new French whigs, I never will give. That corruption has cast deep roots in that party, and they vegetate in it (however discredited amongst the people in general) every day with greater and greater force. The particular gentlemen who are seized with that malady (such I must consider it), have, to my thinking, so completely changed their minds, that one knows no longer what to depend upon, or upon what ground we stand. Some of them (besides the two leaders) are, indeed, so high in character, and of such great abilities, that their mistake, if such it be, must make a most mischievous impression. I know they say, that they do not want to introduce these things here, &c. &c.,—but this is a poor business, while they propagate all the abstract principles, and exalt to the stars the realization of them at our door. They are sublime metaphysicians; and the horrible consequences produced by their speculations affect them not at all. They only ask whether the proposition be true?—Whether it produces good or evil, is no part of their concern. This long letter, my dear friend, is for you; but so for you, as that you may show it to such of our friends who, though they cannot in prudence support, will not in justice condemn me.