Complete Works of Edmund Burke

by Edmund Burke

  The great business of this time is the business of us all; ministers allow not only our concern in the question, but our competency to judge of it. By courting our favour, they have confessed our importance. Never was the public approbation of official measures solicited with such an importunate assiduity. Not satisfied with the labours of the press, the pulpit is taken into the service. We see the spirit of pride, ambition, and despotism domineering in the sanctuary of humility, long-suffering, and self-denial. War and blood come recommended from the oracles of peace and forgiveness. As our ministry equally employ the regular and the savage to fight their battles, so they use indiscriminately the orthodox divine, and the field preacher, to animate the unthinking multitude to their new Western crusade — a crusade far more wild than any of those fanatick expeditions, which in the gloom of obscure ages, were preached by monastick enthusiasm to Gothick ignorance — a crusade more adverse to the just rights, and far more repugnant to all the honest feelings of human nature.

  These instruments of mischief, of all sorts and colours, have been employed not only to stimulate our worst passions, but by a perversion of those passions to increase their natural blackness and malignity. We are taught cruelty and arrogance towards our countrymen, meanness and submission to foreign nations. In this glorious work they are all employed, from the rich contractor, who consumes the public revenue, down to the poor exciseman who collects it. The influence of the crown, considerable in peace, in war is boundless. There is hardly any denomination of men who do not find some immediate advantage in war; all this advantage is dealt out by ministry, and is dealt out not as it may best serve the purposes of their war, but of their faction. The expence of every military corps they raise, is the means of retaining a large body of venal, and therefore most zealous, advocates in their cause. Their grand aim in all this circulation, is to persuade us that our sufferings are the result of our own desires, and not of their mismanagements.

  Availing themselves of the hired loquacity of their agents, they assert, that the voice of the people is with them. Thus every Englishman seems called upon to admit or deny the fact, to confess or disclaim his being a party to the public ruin. How extensively this delusion and corruption may operate, I cannot determine; I trust that they have not yet prevailed over the major part of the kingdom. There are still ears not absolutely closed to all enquiry into our real situation, and the merits of that conduct which has plunged us into it. We are still in temper enough to examine, whether the policy which has alienated three millions of people, has been well calculated to conciliate the affections of men? whether the measures that have lost an empire, have been well adapted to enforce universal obedience?

  The following letters agitate these questions. It seems to me to be a subject that cannot appear too often, or in too great a variety of shapes before the public tribunal. English good sense may be misled from passion, it may be surprised from inattention; but I hope this nation is not yet capable of deliberate nonsense, and cool absurdity.

  The weak and violent measures that have been adopted, have, as we foresaw and foretold, induced all the English of America to cast off entirely the government of this country. The ministers have declared that it was always the intention of America to do so; and they have certainly taken care that they should want no sort of provocation to justify the carrying that intention into act. They have called for “unconditioned submission,” and they have been answered by “total independence.”

  How far good management may remedy the effects of bad, it is impossible to divine; but by a war to force unconditioned submission, no good can result to the English nation on either side of the water.

  Whatever we may think of it, this war will decide on our own liberties, as well as on those of America.

  If America be reduced to slavery by force of arms, the freedom of the conqueror will not long survive the liberty of the vanquished. It is not safe for a state which values itself upon its privileges, to contain within itself a large body of people, who have no privileges of their own to lose. They will always act with that politician who aims at introducing a scheme of equality. This equality will be much more easily compassed, as it will be much more naturally desired by the undertaker, by pulling down those above the level, than by raising those who are below it. When a Prince shall come, who wishes to have his subjects slaves, he will most certainly have all the slaves in his dominions of his Party. When the Roman empire was turned into a monarchy, the subject provinces which had been stripped of all their rights by the pride of Rome, were unanimously desirous of a Revolution, which sunk all distinction in a common servitude, nec earum rerum statum, provinciae abnuerant, suspecto senatus populique imperio.

  The ministerial writers and addressers have indeed lately hit upon a curious topic of declamation, which has furnished abundant matter of invective against their opponents, and of compliment (as they pretend) to the King. The King (say these gentlemen) with an unparalleled magnanimity of spirit, and an unequalled regard for the constitution,

  “Above all Greek, above all Roman fame,”

  Refuses the astonishing offer which the Colonies make him of becoming an absolute monarch, free from the controul of Parliament, over that extensive and growing part of the empire. According to these writers their very natural contest is thus circumstanced: We behold a Prince exhausting his Exchequer, spilling the blood of his best troops, and by his requisitions, fatiguing every ally he can purchase — and all, to prevent an unheard of sort of rape from his own subjects, who would compel him against his will, to accept an arbitrary authority over them. In this representation we see all the subjects in one part of his dominions united with a very large portion of them in another part, by every method of violence, of faction, of sedition, and of open rebellion, struggling to invest him with a boundless dominion over their lives, liberties, and fortunes! This is what the ministers are not ashamed to assert — and they have even been at the foolish pains and expence of circulating pamphlets to prove it.

  The situation on the side of the subject is certainly new! the distress on the part of the Prince truly affecting! — It is by some such misrepresentation, undoubtedly, that the ministers delude and betray their Sovereign. This consideration entirely takes off all real blame from the sacred person to whom no blame can be imputed constitutionally. But whatever success they may meet in their deception, I am afraid that the gentlemen concerned in making this representation, are themselves perfectly well apprised of its fallacy. They will one day tell the King what Lord Sandwich publicly told the Duke of Grafton, that they deceived him on purpose to lead him on in their measures. For they must be tolerably sensible how ridiculous it is to suppose, that the Americans, whom they are so violently accusing of republicanism, should be shedding their best blood to establish an absolute monarchy. That they, who are charged with having always affected an entire independence of this crown, mean to give the King an unqualified authority over them, is surely rather a little paradoxical.

  The reality of the fears of our Ministers, “least the King should obtain a revenue independent of Parliament,” appears from their continual complaint that the Colony assemblies make so very poor and precarious a provision for civil Government. It is in truth the frugality of these assemblies, which the Ministers hate, and not their prodigality, that they stand in dread of. They find it much more constitutional to deal with one compliant, than with twenty refractory assemblies.

  They are in the right, it is a course infinitely more pleasant to those who govern. Parliament will, they know, be sufficiently liberal of money which is not theirs, since they find them so very moderate in its oeconomy of what is properly their own.

  This serious ministerial dread of the King’s enjoying a vast revenue independent of Parliament, appears also by their perfect composure in a danger of the same kind, but far more pressing, by being so much nearer home. Ireland has a pension list of 90,000l. a year, intirely at his Majesty’s disposal; there are also offices there, intirely in his
gift, to as large an amount; besides the extensive disposition of near a million of revenue wholly out of the inspection of the British Parliament.

  It is surprising with what composure the ministerial magnanimity enables them to sleep with such a mine of power and influence under their pillow, and without the least controul. This revenue is already much larger than the most sanguine speculation could promise from American assemblies in an hundred years.

  But the truth is this; leaving to the Americans the disposition of their own property can answer no ministerial purposes whatever, whether these assemblies make a more liberal, or a more reserved use of this power. For if the American assemblies should continue in their original uncivilized, churlish, savage purity, they will certainly grant no more of the substance of their constituents, than they are sure will be for the advantage of those who trust them with the disposal of it. In this case, there will be no additional pensions from America for Mr. Jenkinson, Lord Clare, or Mr. Ellis, and a long et caetera of Parliamentary and ministerial worthies. This is a serious loss, and a real subject of alarm to Ministers ruling on the principles that now actuate our public councils.

  If on the contrary, the Crown should, by degrees, and by good management obtain an influence which might excite the American assemblies to greater generosity, the effect would be too remote, for the present possessors of power and favour to hope any sort of advantage from it. Corruption is not very long sighted. Selfishness does not consult succession. The interested of today, will not provide at their own expence for the profit of the self interested of future times. Such posterity, they know, have a comfortable inheritance in their own care of themselves; and the present generation will not forestall their industry. Besides the ministers may be rather apprehensive, considering the growing number of the American Representatives, that the labourers may devour the whole harvest, and leave little or no rent to be returned to the lawful Lords Paramount of Sine-cure and pension, in Great Britain.

  These I imagine are the real apprehensions which arise from the idea of permitting the Americans to continue in the old practice of granting their own money; since this is the single instance in which we find our politicians under such panic and superstitious fears of the effect of Crown influence. In all other respects, they are true free thinkers; genuine, unaffected esprits forts.

  Whatever their fears or hopes may be, they have got us into a war, for the charges of which in any event, their gain or their loss, the good or the ill success of their arms, will afford to poor England a very poor indemnity.

  The ministers have indeed gone such lengths, that they think it impossible for us to look back. They say that we must now, without reflecting on the past, endeavour to give all manner of effect to the measures that are on trial. If any thing rational were on trial, it would indeed be wrong not to let it have a fair one; but the execution of an ill-concerted plan, is the very mischief of it; it turns speculative absurdity into practical; and beginning in ridicule, ends in misery. Every day that we postpone our remedy, it undoubtedly grows the more difficult; and the terms of peace will become less honourable.

  But ill as our condition is, something yet remains to be done. We have lost authority by injudiciously attempting to obtain a great enlargement of it. We may try whether it may not still be possible to recover some substitute, at least in friendship and mutual interest, for what we have lost in power. But a protracted war will destroy even to the seeds of future friendship. I am sensible that much is expected from the vast army which German penury and English prodigality has enabled the ministry to employ. They who think that slaughtering, burning, and plundering, are the means of reconciling the minds of the people to our government, have but very poor ideas of any government at all. Although these cruel injuries may compel submission, they are not of power to cancel memory. The effect of terror is not lasting, but the impressions of hate and resentment are deeply inlaid in the hearts of men. The day may come when the affections of America will be looked for as something of value, and they are even now worth purchasing even though Hesse and Brunswick were to be defrauded of the largest part of the bloody glories they are to purchase by the slaughter of Englishmen — although fewer English scalps were to decorate the martial dwellings of the savage allies of our humane ministry.

  If the following papers can tend ever so little to bring us to a knowledge of our true friends and true enemies, the sole end of the Author, who is no actor in this scene, on one side or the other, is fully answered.

  VALENS.

  LETTER I. TRIUMPHS.

  Saturday, September 23.

  Mr. MILLER,

  THE ministerial writers, in one of those paragraphs with which they enrich the public papers are pleased, for the special entertainment of the good people of England, to tell them a curious piece of news. This intelligence is the more valuable, because according to Lord Bacon’s expression, it comes home to our own business and bosoms.

  These gentlemen kindly inform us,

  “that in the annals of the world, there is not to be found so extraordinary a nation as our’s.”

  “We place (it seems,) our chief pleasure in discontent, and by a retrograde propensity of thinking, are never compleatly happy, without being compleatly miserable.”

  The Ministers have made a valuable discovery in the national character. It must be admitted to their honour, that none have ever more perfectly profited of their knowledge of mankind, or have laboured more successfully to give entire satisfaction to their country. By continuing the same benevolent efforts a little longer, there is no doubt but that they will perfectly attain their end. The people of England are at length in a fair way of being compleatly happy, and happy in their own mode.

  Observers have been for some time at a loss to account for the conduct of Ministry. They were not able to enter into the causes of their supine neglects and untimely endeavours. They could not penetrate into the motives for their violent denunciations, and their feeble efforts; for their disinclination to peace, and their inability for war; for their irritating America to resistance, by the austerity of their laws; and encouraging that resistance, by the weakness of their military arangements. The whole is now explained. They were seeking for popularity; they were conforming themselves to our retrograde propensities; they were generously labouring for the felicity of a nation, which, as they have sagaciously discovered, “can never be compleatly happy, till they are rendered compleatly miserable.”

  The benevolence of these good men even extends to their worst enemies. They tell us in the same paragraph, “that the modern Patriots shudder at the probability of success in the management of public affairs, and brood with a savage delight over the hopes of a national calamity.”

  The modern Patriots are in truth as unreasonable as they are represented to be factious, if they do not gratefully acknowledge the incredible pains that Ministry has taken to please them. They have engaged us in a war, after such a Patriot’s own heart. Envy and malignity would have bespoke it. In this war the object, the conduct, the probability of success, are all exactly alike.

  We are struggling, it seems, to obtain a revenue by force, which that very force must for ever disable the Colonies from yielding. At the same time we are incurring expences, that no wealth in the subjugated Provinces, and no chearfulness in granting it, can ever defray.

  The scene of the war is on the other side of the Atlantic ocean. There, we have no assistance, no alliance, not a single friend. Thither we are to transport the flower of the English youth, consigned to slaughter, disease, and famine. Every thing necessary to the support of war, or to the sustenance of life, even to the minutest articles of both, must be conveyed to the British troops from hence, at the expence of millions, and at the mercy of winds and seas. The supply of great armies, even in the midst of the most plentiful countries, and in the most commodious situations, is chargeable, difficult, and sometimes precarious. What a work then must the subsistance of an army be, (I mean an army sufficient to produce a
ny effect,) in a country three thousand miles distant from home? In a country where the provision for a single day cannot be purchased? Every sinister incident, every unfavourable event, must be repaired, if it can at all be repaired, from the distance of 70 degrees of longitude; and the least delay or misfortune attending the supply, puts an end to the operations of an whole campaign.

  Whilst the Ministerial operations are clogged with these difficulties, the Americans are training and hardening themselves to war. The continuance of the quarrel inures them to the state of things into which they are fallen. They are in the midst of their resources. With whatever vain hopes Ministers may flatter themselves or attempt to delude their country, we may be assured, that where recruits, provisions, wood and iron, are furnished by the country, the rest of the instruments of war are easily procured. No seaman will assert, that powder cannot be conveyed to the Colonies from abroad. No naturalist will affirm, that it cannot be made by them at home.

  This is the true state of our affairs; this is the probability of success, which it seems is to glorify administration, and to make patriots shudder.

  Provided that no misfortune happens to the army in America; provided no foreign power interferes to assist the Provincials; provided that the foreign powers in whom we trust will certainly assist us: — With all these provisos, it is possible, that this nation may, for one season more, — just one more, — continue the expences of this desperate and ruinous contest.