by Edmund Burke
The province of Massachusets bay, which is partly a government of this popular kind, but tempered with something more of the royal authority, seems to be on still a worse footing, through the one error of having no established provision for the governor; this one mischief is productive of a thousand others, because the governor in a manner is obliged to keep intrigues and devices on foot, to reconcile the various parts which he must act, and is necessitated to govern by faction and cabal. Hence it is that the charges of this one government are greater than those not only of the other provinces of New England taken together, but of those of Pensylvania and New York added to them; they are deeply in debt, they are every day plunging deeper, their taxes increase, and their trade declines.
It has been an old complaint, that it is not easy to bring American governors to justice for mismanagements in their province, or to make them refund to the injured people the wealth raised by their extortions. Against such governors at present there are three kinds of remedy; the privy council, the king’s bench, and the parliament. The council on just cause of complaint may remove the governor; the power of the council seems to extend no further. The king’s bench may punish the governors for their offences committed in America, as if done in England. The power of parliament is unlimited in the ways of enquiry into the crime, or of punishing it. The first of these remedies can never be sufficient to terrify a governor grown rich by iniquity, and willing to retire quietly, though dishonourably, to enjoy the fruits of it. The king’s bench, or any other merely law court, seems equally insufficient for this purpose, because offences in government, though very grievous, can hardly ever be so accurately defined as to be a proper object of any court of justice, bound up by forms and the rigid letter of the law. The parliament is equal to every thing, but whether party, and other bars to a quick and effectual proceeding, may not here leave the provinces as much unredressed as in the other courts, I shall not take upon me to determine.
The law in all our provinces, besides those acts which from time to time they have made for themselves, is the common law of England, the old statute law, and a great part of the new, which in looking over their laws I find many of our settlements have adopted, with very little choice or discretion. And indeed the laws of England, if in the long period of their duration they have had many improvements, so they have grown more tedious, perplexed, and intricate, by the heaping up many abuses in one age, and the attempts to remove them in another. These infant settlements surely demanded a more simple, clear, and determinate legislation, though it were of somewhat an homelier kind; laws suited to the time, to their country, and the nature of their new way of life. Many things still subsist in the law of England, which are built upon causes and reasons that have long ago ceased; many things are in those laws suitable to England only. But the whole weight of this ill agreeing mass, which neither we nor our fathers were hardly able to bear, is laid upon the shoulders of these colonies, by which a spirit of contention is raised, and arms offensive and defensive supplied to keep up and exercise this spirit, by the intricacy and unsuitableness of the laws to their object. And thus in many of our settlements the lawyers have gathered to themselves the greatest part of the wealth of the country; men of less use in such establishments than in more settled countries, where the number of people naturally sets many apart from the occupations of husbandry, arts, or commerce. Certainly our American brethren might well have carried with them the privileges which make the glory and happiness of Englishmen, without taking them encumbered with all that load of matter, perhaps so useless at home, certainly so extremely prejudicial in the colonies.
Laws themselves are hardly more the cement of societies than money; and societies flourish or decay according to the condition of either of these. It may be easily judged, that as the ballance of trade with Great Britain is very much against the colonies, that therefore whatever gold or silver they may receive from the other branches of their commerce, makes but a short stay in America. This consideration at first view would lead one to conclude, that in a little time money for their ordinary circulation would be wanting; and this is apparently confirmed by experience. Very little money is seen amongst them, notwithstanding the vast increase of their trade. This deficiency is supplied, or more properly speaking, it is caused by the use of money of credit, which they commonly call paper currency. This money is not created for the conveniency of traffic, but by the exigencies of the government, and often by the frauds and artifices of private men for their particular profit. Before this invention money was indeed scarce enough in America, but they raised it’s value, and it served their purpose tolerably. I shall forbear entering into the causes that increased the charges of government so greatly in all our American provinces. But the execution of projects too vast for their strength, made large sums necessary. The feeble state of a colony which had hardly taken root in the country, could not bear them; and to raise sudden and heavy taxes, would destroy the province without answering their purpose. Credit then came in aid of money, and the government issued bills to the amount of what they wanted, to pass current in all payments; and they commonly laid a tax, or found some persons willing to engage their lands as security for the gradual sinking this debt, and calling in these bills. But before the time arrived at which these taxes were to answer their end, new exigencies made new emissions of paper currency necessary; and thus things went from debt to debt, until it became very visible that no taxes which could be imposed could discharge them; and that the landed securities given were often fraudulent, and almost always insufficient. Then the paper currency became no longer to be weighed against the credit of the government, which depended upon it’s visible revenue. It was compared to the trade, to which it was found so disproportionate, that the bills fell ten, twenty, fifty, and eighty per cent in some places. It was to no purpose that the government used every method to keep up their credit, and even to compel the receiving these bills at the value for which they were emitted, and to give no preference over them to gold and silver; they were more and more depreciated every day; whilst the government every day emitted more paper, and grew less sollicitous about their old bills, being entirely exhausted to find means of giving credit to the new.
It is easy to perceive how much the intercourse of business must suffer by this uncertainty in the value of money, when a man receives that in payment this day for ten shillings, which to-morrow he will not find received from him for five, or perhaps for three. Real money can hardly ever multiply too much in any country, because it will always as it increases be the certain sign of the increase of trade, of which it is the measure, and consequently of the soundness and vigour of the whole body. But this paper money may, and does increase, without any increase of trade, nay often when it greatly declines; for it is not the measure of the trade of the nation, but of the necessity of it’s government; and it is absurd, and must be ruinous, that the same cause which naturally exhausts the wealth of a nation, should likewise be the only productive cause of money.
The currency of our plantations must not be set upon a level with the funds in England. For besides that the currency carries no interest to make some amends for the badness of the security; the security itself is so rotten, that no art can give it any lasting credit; as there are parts of New England wherein, if the whole stock and the people along with it were sold, they would not bring money enough to take in all the bills which have been emitted.
I hope it is not too late to contrive some remedy for this evil, as those at the head of affairs here are undoubtedly very sollicitous about so material a grievance. I should imagine that one current coin for the whole continent might be struck here, or there, with such an allay as might at once leave it of some real value, and yet so debased as to prevent it’s currency elsewhere, and so to keep it within themselves. This expedient has been practised, and with success, in several parts of Europe; but particularly in Holland, a country which undoubtedly is perfectly acquainted with it’s commercial interest.
> AN ESSAY TOWARDS AN ABRIDGEMENT OF THE ENGLISH HISTORY
CONTENTS
BOOK I.
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
BOOK II
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
BOOK III.
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER IX.
BOOK I.
CHAPTER I.
CAUSES OF THE CONNECTION BETWEEN THE ROMANS AND BRITONS. — CAESAR’S TWO INVASIONS OF BRITAIN.
In order to obtain a clear notion of the state of Europe before the universal prevalence of the Roman power, the whole region is to be divided into two principal parts, which we shall call Northern and Southern Europe. The northern part is everywhere separated from the southern by immense and continued chains of mountains. From Greece it is divided by Mount Hæmus; from Spain by the Pyrenees; from Italy by the Alps. This division is not made by an arbitrary or casual distribution of countries. The limits are marked out by Nature, and in these early ages were yet further distinguished by a considerable difference in the manners and usages of the nations they divided.
If we turn our eyes to the northward of these boundaries, a vast mass of solid continent lies before us, stretched out from the remotest shore of Tartary quite to the Atlantic Ocean. A line drawn through this extent, from east to west, would pass over the greatest body of unbroken land that is anywhere known upon the globe. This tract, in a course of some degrees to the northward, is not interrupted by any sea; neither are the mountains so disposed as to form any considerable obstacle to hostile incursions. Originally it was all inhabited but by one sort of people, known by one common denomination of Scythians. As the several tribes of this comprehensive name lay in many parts greatly exposed, and as by their situation and customs they were much inclined to attack, and by both ill qualified for defence, throughout the whole of that immense region there was for many ages a perpetual flux and reflux of barbarous nations. None of their commonwealths continued long enough established on any particular spot to settle and to subside into a regular order, one tribe continually overpowering or thrusting out another. But as these were only the mixtures of Scythians with Scythians, the triumphs of barbarians over barbarians, there were revolutions in empire, but none in manners. The Northern Europe, until some parts of it were subdued by the progress of the Roman arms, remained almost equally covered with all the ruggedness of primitive barbarism.
The southern part was differently circumstanced. Divided, as we have said, from the northern by great mountains, it is further divided within itself by considerable seas. Spain, Greece, and Italy are peninsulas. By these advantages of situation the inhabitants were preserved from those great and sudden revolutions to which the Northern world had been always liable; and being confined within a space comparatively narrow, they were restrained from wandering into a pastoral and unsettled life. It was upon one side only that they could be invaded by land. Whoever made an attempt on any other part must necessarily have arrived in ships of some magnitude, and must therefore have in a degree been cultivated, if not by the liberal, at least by the mechanic arts. In fact, the principal colonies-which we find these countries to have received were sent from Phœnicia, or the Lesser Asia, or Egypt, the great fountains of the ancient civility and learning. And they became more or less, earlier or later, polished, as they were situated nearer to or further from these celebrated sources. Though I am satisfied, from a comparison of the Celtic tongues with the Greek and Roman, that the original inhabitants of Italy and Greece were of the same race with the people of Northern Europe, yet it is certain they profited so much by their guarded situation, by the mildness of their climate favorable to humanity, and by the foreign infusions, that they came greatly to excel the Northern nations in every respect, and particularly in the art and discipline of war. For, not being so strong in their bodies, partly from the temperature of their climate, partly from a degree of softness induced by a more cultivated life, they applied themselves to remove the few inconveniences of a settled society by the advantages which it affords in art, disposition, and obedience; and as they consisted of many small states, their people were well exercised in arms, and sharpened against each other by continual war.
Such was the situation of Greece and Italy from a very remote period. The Gauls and other Northern nations, envious of their wealth, and despising the effeminacy of their manners, often invaded them with, numerous, though ill-formed armies. But their greatest and most frequent attempts were against Italy, their connection with which country alone we shall here consider. In the course of these wars, the superiority of the Roman discipline over the Gallic ferocity was at length demonstrated. The Gauls, notwithstanding the numbers with which their irruptions were made, and the impetuous courage by which that nation was distinguished, had no permanent success. They were altogether unskilful either in improving their victories or repairing their defeats. But the Romans, being governed by a most wise order of men, perfected by a traditionary experience in the policy of conquest, drew some advantage from every turn of fortune, and, victorious or vanquished, persisted in one uniform and comprehensive plan of breaking to pieces everything which endangered their safety or obstructed their greatness. For, after having more than once expelled the Northern invaders out of Italy, they pursued them over the Alps; and carrying the war into the country of their enemy, under several able generals, and at last under Caius Cæsar, they reduced all the Gauls from the Mediterranean Sea to the Rhine and the Ocean. During the progress of this decisive war, some of the maritime nations of Gaul had recourse for assistance to the neighboring island of Britain. Prom thence they received considerable succors; by which means this island first came to be known with any exactness by the Romans, and first drew upon it the attention of that victorious people.
Though Cæsar had reduced Gaul, he perceived clearly that a great deal was still wanting to make his conquest secure and lasting. That extensive country, inhabited by a multitude of populous and fierce nations, had been rather overrun than conquered. The Gauls were not yet broken to the yoke, which they bore with murmuring and discontent. The ruins of their own strength were still considerable; and they had hopes that the Germans, famous for their invincible courage and their ardent love of liberty, would be at hand powerfully to second any endeavors for the recovery of their freedom; they trusted that the Britons, of their own blood, allied in manners and religion, and whose help they had lately experienced, would not then be wanting to the same cause. Cæsar was not ignorant of these dispositions. He therefore judged, that, if he could confine the attention of the Germans and Britons to their own defence, so that the Gauls, on which side soever they turned, should meet nothing but the Roman arms, they must soon be deprived of all hope, and compelled to seek their safety in an entire submission.
These were the public reasons which made the invasion of Britain and Germany an undertaking, at that particular time, not unworthy a wise and able general. But these enterprises, though reasonable in themselves, were only subservient to purposes of more importance, and which he had more at heart. Whatever measures he thought proper to pursue on the side of Germany, or on that of Britain, it was towards Rome that he always looked, and to the furtherance of his interest there that all his motions were really directed. That republic had receded from many of those maxims by which her freedom had been hitherto preserved under the weight of so vast an empire. Rome now contained many citizens of immense wealth, eloquence, and ability. Particular men were more considered than the republic; and the fortune and genius of the Roman people, which formerly had been thought equal to everything, came now
to be less relied upon than the abilities of a few popular men. The war with the Gauls, as the old and most dangerous enemy of Rome, was of the last importance; and Cæsar had the address to obtain the conduct of it for a term of years, contrary to one of the most established principles of their government. But this war was finished before that term was expired, and before the designs which he entertained against the liberty of his country were fully ripened. It was therefore necessary to find some pretext for keeping his army on foot; it was necessary to employ them in some enterprise that might at once raise his character, keep his interest alive at Rome, endear him to his troops, and by that means weaken the ties which held them to their country.