by Edmund Burke
“upon the true alternative, either to make the Colonies submit, or totally to abandon them, and then treat with them for peace, as an independent country.”
I should hardly have imagined, that a man of Lord Mansfield’s real accuracy and penetration, could have been so wonderfully struck with this state of the important question, which now engages the attention of the world. The alternative proposed by the Doctor, under favour, seems not to be a true state of the question; for besides absolute submission, and total separation there, is in all internal disputes evidently a third method, I mean that of reconciliation and compromise. This is a method which, though it seems now out of fashion, has formerly been sometimes mentioned, when nations were involved in a Civil War.
Lord Mansfield in this fine speech, for such it was, strongly recommended a coalition of parties. The design is certainly laudable. But so long as he adheres to this favourite alternative, the execution, it should seem, cannot be without great difficulty. Whatever may become of this design, surely a great statesman ought to have larger views. Would it not be altogether as worthy of this great person’s conciliatory and lenient talents, to bring about a coalition in empire, as in party? His Lordship valued himself on having brought about the famous coalition of parties in 1757, and he spoke with much complacency of his share in that memorable transaction. He then made his early essays of negotiation, in reconciling the old to the young politicians of that day; will he now stand forth, in the full maturiry of his wisdom, and reconcile the Mother Country to her Colonies? I imagine the difficulties in his way will not be greater, though the end will be still more glorious. He will not find England more fond of power than the late Duke of Newcastle — He will not find America more disposed to independence than Mr. Pitt; nor her spirit more lofty; nor her temper more punctilious. Lord Mansfield then brought England to unite against her natural enemies; let him now prevail on her to agree with her natural friends. He then brought the Tories to be good servants to a Whig government; let him now persuade them to become moderate masters to a Whig people.
If he can do these things, he may be assured that when he is
“no more than Tully or than Hyde,”
the English on both sides of the great Ocean, pacified by his virtues, will to the latest posterity vie with each other in honours to his name. While the pealing organ, and the pausing choir accord with the lawn-rob’d Prelate who will mix the ashes of the patriot with the dust of Kings, America, who boasts no cathedrals, and has seen as yet no Kings, will, in her plain churches, erect Cenotaphs to his memory; and surely his indulgent shade, then purged from the dregs of all party sourness, will not disdain the simple hymns of a less ostentatious worship; but will look down with a gracious and benignant smile on the annual gratitude of an unpolished people, and the homely commemoration of an independent preacher.
The name of Murray, the pride of every alumnus of Westminster, has led me into this fanciful excursion among the tombs. But to return to the Lord Mansfield,
“so known, so honoured in the House of Lords,”
— and to Doctor Tucker. — The learned Lord, as well as I can discern, seems altogether to agree with the learned Divine, in his state of the case; and he no where contradicts his general theory. But their consequent plan differs as widely as pole from pole. The Divine is of opinion, that the possession of America is of no advantage to us, and therefore with a spirit becoming a Minister of the Gospel, as well as a good politician, he is for giving the Colonists (though not with the best grace in the world) that independency, which, according to him, they so much desire to obtain, and which, as he thinks, it will cost us little or nothing to bestow. His ground appears to me to be exceedingly bad; but if he can once establish it, he is far from reasoning ill. His conclusion flows directly and irresistibly from his premises.
The Bon Mot of the Bishop of Gloucester, concerning two Divines, is now rather trite. One of them, whom I shall not name, he said, made his religion a trade; the other, Dr. Tucker, (much to his credit in a commercial country) made trade his religion. Without venturing on so much freedom with the Dean, as his Bishop may be allowed to use, it is certain that next to religion he has applied to this subject with the most diligence, and with very great success. He would have applied with very little diligence to it, and with no success at all, if he did not know that first elemental principle in the criss cross row of commerce, which is — the imprudence of throwing good money after bad, and expending a capital without expectation of return.
Lord Mansfield did not, on that day, explain how it happens, that seeming at least entirely to agree with Dr. Tucker concerning the commercial importance of America, he is willing to exhaust mines of treasure, and to spill seas of blood, to reduce the Colonies to what he calls submission, and they term slavery.
“To compel them to submit”
are words of no precise meaning. To what is it the Americans are to submit? To regulations of trade? If Lord Mansfield agrees with the Dean of Gloucester, these regulations, so far from being valuable, are in reality rather mischievous to ourselves. A war to compel such submission, may well be called unnatural. Is it to taxation they are to submit? If so, the end and the sole end of taxation being revenue, that is to say, profit, it is, like all other profit, a matter of calculation. If our present proceedings promise at any time to produce a profit commensurate to the blood, expence, and risque, or any profit at all, we then have an object. Whether we are likely to succeed in it, by the means we use, is another question; but ministry acting wisely or unwisely, do, in that case, pursue something.
I attended with all the diligence due to his great abilities, to Lord Mansfield on that his great day, and I must confess I received no more satisfaction from him on the probability of this revenue, than I had received from the House of Commons, whilst that House permitted their constituents to hear the reasons they assign for the burthens they impose.
The nation is not kindly treated. It is docile enough, but the masters refuse to teach. To make a war for taxation, without an estimate of revenue, is not rational. I say no worse of it. Lord Mansfield should have given this estimate. He has been Chancellor of the Exchequer, or a picture I have somewhere seen belies him. The present Chancellor of the Exchequer, in his business at least, does not seem to be more than a picture; a very faint representation of a great financier. With submission, an estimate of this sort would be of something more importance, and a little more to the point, than this learned Lord’s History of American hereditary disaffection. The original sin of the Colonies, independence, which, however entertaining, (and every thing from him must be entertaining) was little to the purpose of that argument. But as he chose to dwell upon it, I am sure it answered some purpose; and therefore it derserves a great deal of consideration.
I propose to examine it carefully, if an obscure writer in a news-paper may venture to criticise on the elaborate performance of a person of so much dignity.
VALENS.
LETTER IX. AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE.
Saturday, December 9.
MR. MILLER,
OUR unhappy civil contest, notwithstanding the innumerable evils which it has produced, is attended with some advantage. The state of the provinces, lately our’s, is come to be understood, even by Ministers. The utter impracticability of drawing a revenue from America is universally acknowledged. The point of taxation has been over and over again abandoned. It is, however, thought necessary to lengthen the duration, and to augment the rigours of a war begun upon the sole principle of taxation. Having first made war for that object, and that object being found impracticable, we must now provide an object for the war. Here is a demand for ingenuity, and Lord Mansfield steps forward.
The aim of the Colonies at absolute independency, is now made the ground of war; and lest the conduct of the present inhabitants should not furnish proof enough for the purpose, they are to be visited with the sins of their forefathers, from the third and fourth generation; and ancient history is to be suborned
as the evidence of recent guilt. I really do not relish this method of digging up the bones of departed error, in order to render the fire of persecution more intense against present heterodoxy. I know and confess, that the people of New England were early in their resistance to King James. I do not pretend to defend them in that act of rebellion; or in that fondness for innovation, which, for any proof I can bring to the contrary, was their true motive for submission to the government of King William. That they did so resist and so submit, is a matter of fact indisputable. But whether the one is, or the other, or both equally are, to be alledged as valid proof of their former desire of independence, is more than I can presume to determine.
But something I will beg leave to say upon the whole of this method of historically criminating our provinces. I am very certain Lord Mansfield would not so much as hear of it in his judicial capacity; and on this subject, I must appeal from the politician to the magistrate.
In the first place, his Lordship would hardly think it fair to ransack the history of one, or at the utmost two provinces, and the Journals of one or two assemblies; and on account of every mutinous act, or peevish vote to be found in them, to conclude twelve more to be guilty, without citing one single act or vote of any of the twelve to prove the common charge in which they are all involved. But, according to the modern mode of proceeding, in the evidence we find Massachusetts Bay, in the sentence we find the colonies. This little s, slipped in as if by accident, forms the small, but venomed sting in the tail, that is to be mortal to two million of people. Such a loose method of crimination would do well enough in a news-paper paragraph of a ministerial writer, or in a dutiful and loyal address from a fifth part of a Scotch borough; but it was hardly to be expected from the accuracy and precision of a great reasoner, or from the equity and impartiality of a conscientious Judge.
The colonies have been (until our late proceedings united them) unconnected and independent of each other. If the history of Massachusetts Bay, or Rhode Island, had been a tissue of rebellions, without one moment’s peace or obedience, how are Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland, the two Jerseys, the two Carolinas, or even Connecticut, or New Hampshire, answerable? It was enough to make these Colonies responsible for the acts of their own forefathers in a right line, and not to charge them with collateral delinquency, for the offences of the political progenitors of other people.
I am obliged, in the next place, to lament seriously, that Lord Mansfield, in reading the history of even one, (the worst if he please) of the colonies, in order from thence to infer the guilt of the whole, should not have been able to perceive any thing in all that history besides acts of resistance and revolt. I shall beg leave to remind his Lordship, that until this unfortunate period, that colony (Massachusetts Bay) certainly never did take up arms against the Crown. It certainly did make some provision for the support of his Majesty’s government. It certainly did raise sums of money, and very large sums too, at several times, for the public service. It certainly did spill a great deal of such blood as it had to spill, in the quarrels of this country. The wealth of the colony was not equal to ours, nor their blood as noble as Lord Mansfield’s. But there is an eye in which the widow’s mite is not altogether disregarded, and in which the blood of the yeoman is not without an account.
This total omission of every act of duty, fidelity, or affection, in settling the account even of this colony, is so far from being judicially fair, that in the light of mere history, it must be blamed as defective. If I had observed that extraordinary omission any where but in a speech of Lord Mansfield, I should have taken it for one of the worst kinds of falshood,
“a suppression of truth.”
But that omission being his, I am persuaded it arises from any thing sooner than an intention to deceive. I have heard that his Lordship, like other great lawyers in great practice, has frequently employed a brother of less fame, and less occupation at the Bar, in the capacity of, what the cant of Westminster-Hall calls,
“a Case Hunter,”
or Searcher for Precedents. This more laborious than intelligent instrument, mistaking Lord Mansfield’s directions, and forgetting that his Lordship was a great parliamentary Judge, and not a retained advocate in a party cause, produced all the precedents which could be useful towards establishing the charge against the colonies, and according to his low idea of prudence, suppressed every thing which might make in their favour. I should recommend to his Lordship instantly to dismiss his present Case Hunter, and to take some other into his service who may be more capable of entering into his real views, and of sustaining the true dignity of his character.
In this plan of substituting hereditary disaffection as a ground for a war, in the room of taxation the original object of it, but now abandoned, I have mentioned two capital errors. The one, that the charge is general, and the proof partial. The other, that the evil actions are stated, and the good omitted. I must beg leave to add a third, of perhaps as much moment as the other two. — That these things are charged as peculiar crimes to the colonies; which if they are faults, are faults of human nature in their circumstances; and which, if we go on to consider as crimes, and as grounds of war or of punishment, we cannot possibly enjoy any peace now or hereafter. I will endeavour to explain myself. In countries pretending to any degree of freedom, struggles against exertions of power are not uncommon nor unnatural; and even claims of right on the part of the subject, sometimes better, sometimes worse grounded, are not to surprize us. I suppose our whole civil history is made up of such disputes. If men of a certain description were to be the judges, the people of England would be called to a severe account. Mr. Hume has passed judgement upon many of these claims, even those claims which are now sanctified by (what some statesmen think) the best of all arguments, Success. That great author considers what we now deem the rights of the people, to have been formerly invasions on the rights of the Sovereign; and the struggles relative to them, he pronounces to have been contests, in which the Crown acted only on the defensive.
It is no miracle if a colony, at such an immense distance, with ill defined rights, and under no trifling commercial restraints, should, at one time or other, pass some votes derogatory to the power of Parliament. Did Parliament itself at no time pass votes derogatory even to its own rights? Did Parliament never compliment the Crown with the most sacred rights of the people? On the other hand, did Parliament at no time shew a violent, disorderly, and factious spirit in any of her proceedings?
I believe, if Lord Mansfield sends his Precedent Hunter to the Journals of either, or both Houses, to select from such votes matter to ground an attack on the rights of the people of England, as having at some period factiously abused, or servilely betrayed them, he will be supplied with far more abundant, and far less questionable matter for the purpose, than in the Journals, not simply of the Massachusetts Assembly, but in all the Journals of that whole Continent. Yet if Parliament should by any accident happen to come to a dispute with the Crown, or (what is quite impossible) with the people, would it be fair to prove from these resolutions, a long premeditated scheme in that body, either to rob the Crown of its rights, or to establish an arbitrary power in the King?
This learned Lord will consider, on a re-hearing of this cause, that these assemblies are not permanent bodies. That for the greater part they have but a year’s duration. That an Assembly in ill-humour with their Governor, will pass an angry resolution, which one in a better temper totally disregards; which is, in some time, entirely forgot; which is never acted upon, and never thought of by themselves, or by any body else; until some ingenious persons, being left destitute of any other pretext, choose to put together all these unconnected scraps, in order to make them an excuse for desolating the finest countries, and ruining the most flourishing commerce, by the cruel turpitude, and unprincipled vengeance of a piratical war.
That these kind of votes do not serve as regular principles to influence the conduct of men, we know by our examples at home. Several dormant v
otes and resolutions, which Lord Mansfield will neither act upon nor expunge, still remain on the Journals of that very House where he so justly sways with an unbounded authority. The Commons have deemed some of them highly derogatory to their rights. The Lords held them necessary to the rights of the subject, and to the preservation of the law of the land. I speak here of the resolutions in the case of Ashby and White on occasion of the Aylesbury election; yet though these votes still remain on the Journals of the House of Lords, who can accuse the House of Lords, at this day, of any attempt to support the rights of the subject, or to assert the law of the land — against the pretensions of the House of Commons? Chief Justice Holt sat on the very seat which Lord Mansfield now fills with so much more prudence. Holt countenanced those proceedings of the House of Lords; and indeed it was his irregular zeal for the law that first gave rise to them. But is it fair, from thence to suppose Lord Mansfield chargeable with these or any other irregular or blameable proceedings, or with the intemperate zeal of Chief Justice Holt?