Complete Works of Edmund Burke

by Edmund Burke

  For the present I submit these few observations to those gentlemen, who some time ago made war with so much eagerness to compel the Colonies to contribute to the support of empire. They were then at war for taxes never to be obtained; let them take care that they are not now at war against an independency that never has been attempted. They are on a business of blood; — let them be sure that the evidence is sufficient. They shall hear again upon this subject, which I take to be material to the public.

  VALENS.

  LETTER X. IRISH INDEPENDENCE.

  Tuesday, Sept. 6.

  MR. MILLER,

  LORD Mansfield has been lately left alone in the House of Lords.

  “All the obliged have deserted, and all the vain.”

  He, who but a few days before, and with such decided authority, had passed a bloody sentence upon whole nations, has not been able to regulate the trial of one old woman. His judicial conflict was with a boy; and he was baffled. These indications of some odd change, though they appear in slight matters, are warnings which a wise man will not disdain to take. They ought, in some measure, to abate the pride of power, and the confidence in favour. They ought to supple the heart, and to make it susceptible of the soft contagion of our nature. They ought to dispose it towards a favourable hearing of millions of people, lately flourishing, opulent, peaceful, and happy, but now doomed to be the harrassed and persecuted object of eternal piracy, rapine, and devastation.

  If Lord Mansfield should be found thus softened towards an unfortunate, rejected branch of the English race, perhaps in some moments of humiliation so favourable to clemency, he might turn his eyes on the English stock itself. He might begin to suspect, that the sufferings of war cannot be confined to one side only; and that our own share of these calamities may be worthy of some consideration. He might feel the glory of burning the petty fishing town, Falmouth in New-England, balanced by the taking of St. John’s; he might think the stealing by Lord Dunmore, of a dozen or two of little, honey-combed, iron ship guns from a deserted wharf in Virginia, of not quite so much importance as the loss of Canada. Though it is undoubtedly some comfort to insult the few Provincial Officers we take, by throwing them with common men into a gaol; and some triumph to hold the bold adventurer, Ethan Allen, in irons in a dungeon, in Cornwall; yet it may be thought not quite so pleasant on the other had, to have the corps of English Fuzileers prisoners of war by capitulation, in Connecticut, though under the tenderest treatment from a mild, humane, and generous conqueror. The famine of Boston (which will vie in history with that of Perusia,) the waste of camp distempers, the slaughter at Bunker’s-Hill, the dispersion of transports, the ocean covered with wrecks, our Hanoverian allies perishing on the coast of France, before the eyes of those whom they had lately helpt to defeat; the miserable ruin of the finances of this kingdom, and that backsliding, which after twelve years peace, has let us down into that condition of debt, in which we were left at the end of a war with half Europe — All these considerations may, at a calm hour, rise in an awful series before Lord Mansfield; and, forcing one natural sigh for the distresses of humanity, may dispose him to listen to an humble plea for peace. They may, perhaps, incline his ear to sober enquiry, whether even an imperfect authority is not more eligible than a compleat war? and whether, all things considered, the spoils of America will be, in reality, so much a better thing than its commerce?

  Lord Mansfield’s argument against the present Colonies, from the votes of one of them in time past, was examined in my last letter.

  I shall now take this business in another point of view. For a while I will go along with his Lordship. He shall have granted to him not only all, but much more than he assumes. I will allow that the Journals, not of one, but of all the assemblies, are full of factious resolutions. Having for argument admitted this, I must beg leave to accompany my concession with a matter of fact; which, though it will not at all excuse such contumacy in the Americans, it may abate some degree of that astonishment and indignation, which it seems to excite in a veteran politician, who has breathed the air of seventy winters in our climate, of clear and unclouded virtue.

  The Twelve United Colonies have twelve popular assemblies. The number of Members they contain may be as large, within a trifle, as the Parliament of Great Britain. They are probable about five hundred persons. Will his Lordship ask, what douceurs are distributed among the whole body of these Representatives; I do assure him, on the strictest enquiry, I do not find that the twelve American Parliaments, and the whole five hundred men who compose them, receive among them all one fifth part of the value of what is held by one single gentleman, whom I could name, in the House of Commons.

  It is not that the soil of the plantations does not yield the constitutional staple of lucrative employments. But these employments are almost all, with much more propriety, bestowed in aid of a contracted English civil list, and as a support and security to the independence of a British Parliament. They are certainly better bestowed; for I have constantly observed, that all those gentlemen who hold American employments, have been the most zealous of all others against the insolent claims of the Colonists, and the most determined resisters of that factious and interested spirit, which dares unnaturally to insult so gracious and beneficent a government.

  If we did not know to a certainty, that not a shilling is spent in England upon elections; and that the emoluments, so liberally distributed in Parliament, have no share in producing any part of that complaisance to government, which distinguishes our age, and puts to shame the stubborn spirit of our ancestors, we might, instead of being astonished at such instances of opposition, be rather surprised, how it has happened, that in popular assemblies so little managed, the opposition to government has not been greater, more frequent, more fierce, and more extensive. So much rich compost is laid upon the highly dressed, and productive soil of a British Parliament, and such attention is bestowed on its thorough cultivation, that these remote parts have been neglected, and suffered to shoot out all the wild weeds of a vigorous, but uncultivated nature. Except insulting reproaches, angry prorogations, sudden dissolutions, rejected petitions, with now and then a challenge to dispute on the origin of government, I can find nothing that has been practised to

  “tame the genius of the stubborn plain,”

  or to mollify the hereditary spirit of independency, that is charged upon the American Assemblies. Under such indolent neglect, and such churlish attentions, I could not positively answer for the mellowness and tractability even of a civilized British Parliament. I should not however conclude, from some sour humours in our Houses of Parliament, that a barren independence was the object of their wishes; but that, like pevish virgins, they longed for something else.

  Opposition to the authority of acts of Parliament is not a thing new in the dependencies of this empire, nor confined to America. A denial of that authority in much greater extent, had once been very popular in Ireland. Molineux, one of their most celebrated authors, (a great natural philosopher like Doctor Franklin) a friend and a correspodent of Locke, wrote a book which is still in request. The object of this book is to prove, that England had no power to make any laws whatever to bind Ireland. The assertion is not limited to taxes; it is as broad and general as legislature itself on the largest plan. That book indeed was burnt by the hands of the common hangman here; but the doctrines gained so much ground there, that the Judges who admitted appeals to England were persecuted by the Irish Houses of Lords and Commons with the greatest rigour and asperity, and obliged to fly in a body to England.

  In consequence of this a declaratory act was passed, asserting the supreme legislative authority of Great Britain. Nothing further was done. No troops were sent, or employed to enforce obedience. Time was given for the public ferment to subside. The appeal to the House of Lords in England, was left to find its own way by its own utility; and utility effected that which force could not have effected. The Irish suitors found an advantage in a judicature removed from local affectio
ns and local prejudices. At the same time the Irish Parliament was soothed, instead of being bullied. The leading interests were gained. The stubborn were softened, and the angry pacified. By degrees, as it was natural, the storm was blown over. The Irish Parliament kept its resolutions. England received its appeals. No harsh laws were passed for the purpose of a test. No tax was imposed for a trial of obedience. The question of the right remains to this day open for the declamation of any gentleman in the Irish or English Parliament, and is frequently used with great innocence, as the interest or whim of the orator on either side directs him.

  In Ireland it was not only in votes and resolutions of Parliament, that the authority of Great Britain has met with opposition. The resistance to the trade laws by tumultuous violence, has been frequent and often successful. Wool was and is carried off in great quantities; and great mobs have frequently destroyed imported goods in one of the principal cities of that kingdom; while other mobs intimidated officers from preventing an export of prohibited manufactures in the other. It is not long since the exportation of live cattle to England was prevented by violence; a violence at which the Magistrates of Ireland thought proper to wink. Parliament thought proper to wink, in its turn, at that violence and that neglect.

  But if Parliament, on hearing of these disorders, had directed the offending Irish ports to be blocked up, until the King should think proper to open them: If, on the neglect of Magistrates (full as chargeable on Ireland as America) an Act of Parliament had violently subverted the corporate rights of their cities: If, on the votes of the Irish Parliament, derogatory to the authority of the supreme legislature, they had violently changed the constitution of the secondary Parliament: If they had refused all peace to Ireland, until the banished Judges had re-assumed their function, and until full compensation was made to them for their losses, — there is no doubt that war alone would have settled our controversy with Ireland, as it must, if we persevere in the present measure, settle our controversy with America.

  To this hour the degree of subordination which Ireland owns, is altogether unascertained. Ministers complain that America, in denying our right to tax, has not stated clearly the submission which she admits to be due to the authority of Parliament. But has Ireland ever recognized half so much as America does in her letter to the people of England? Is it true, that in the mean time she is quiet, dutiful, and obedient; and she is so, because this recognition never was required? Her late most extraordinary complaisance to the Clerk of the Pells, and to the Vice Treasurers, those profitable servants of the public, shews that, in spite of her Journals, and the petulance of her progenitors, she can prove as subservient as can be wished to the convenience of administration.

  Ireland gives largely to all public services; and what is infinitely more important, to all private jobbs. — Why? Because it is she that gives, and not we that take.

  Administration has lately furnished a signal proof of their own opinion of the wisdom of enforcing all the rights of the supreme legislature. It was but the other day (the beginning of this session) that government applied to the Irish Parliament for liberal grants, in order to supply very large deficiencies. One would suppose, from the doctrines of Lord Mansfield and his colleagues, concerning America, that the Minister in the Irish House of Commons, in order to succeed, must have opened his Budget by an high assertion of the rights of the English Parliament to tax Ireland; and that he had concluded by desiring them, on the plan of Lord North’s conciliatory motion, to furnish such a contingent to the support of empire as Parliament here should think proper. The proceeding of that successful Minister was the direct reverse. Instead of getting the Irish House of Commons to acknowledge this right, he himself in effect disclaimed it. He even denied, that the English Ministry ever had asserted it; and he described the speeches on that subject in the English House of Commons (though made by men in the greatest offices)

  “as nothing more than the rash language of inconsiderate individuals.”

  Having very wisely disclaimed authority, the Irish Minister succeeded by intreaty. If he had held the language there, which English Ministers held to the English Colonies, the Parliament of that kingdom would hardly have been persuaded to lend their troops in order to subdue Ireland in America. The only dependent part of the empire which is at peace, is at peace by Ministry’s disclaiming, not by enforcing our right. — The only revenue which is obtained, is obtained where the power of imposing is renounced. So different, so very different, is unsubstantial theory from sound practice!

  I flatter myself I have shewn, that the opposition to the extent of parliamentary powers has not been confined to America. I have shewn, that the denial in Ireland was of a larger entent than that in America; and therefore a denial of a less extent (confined to the right to tax) could be no proof of a formed design of independency, on the part of the Colonies, if denial in a larger extent cannot convict Ireland of the same offence. I have shewn that the Parliament of Ireland never made any formal acknowledgement of the power of this legislature to bind that kingdom; that the power of England there arose from our not pushing every point; and that the astonishing obsequiousness of Ireland at this hour, is owing to our not having made use of any one of those methods of asserting authority, which have been recommended and used in America. All this forms at least a presumption against the utility of such methods.

  I hope indulgence a little longer in this humble plea to Lord Mansfield, on the trial of America, for misprision of independence. If in the end (what I will not imagine) the Judge should give a harsh charge, the Jury of the public may possibly prove as refractory to the authority of Lord Mansfield, as the House of Peers has been on a late occasion; and though he directs them to convict, they may still with some remains of English firmness, bring in the prisoner Not Guilty.

  VALENS.

  LETTER XI. CRIMINAL INTENTIONS.

  Thursday, Nov. 2.

  MR. MILLER,

  IT seems to be in the natural course of things, that men are very rarely brought to a sense of guilt or folly, but through the medium of suffering. We are obliged to the Ministry for having placed us in this school of wholesome discipline.

  The misconduct of the present war will by degrees lead the nation into a disposition to enquire into the justice of it. Never was a war more open to an impartial examination of its merits. No Glare of false glory in the execution of our American measures, has hidden the defects, or gilded over the errors of the original plan. We have only to pray, that our instruction may not come too late for our amendment.

  I cannot easily quit the opinion, that however bitterly we may quarrel, there is still such a bottom of good nature, generosity, and good sense, both in the European and American part of the English nation, as will at length incline the one to hold out unequivocal, solid, honest terms of accommodation, and induce the other to meet those terms (though late and ungracious in the offer) with a cordial and dutiful acquiescence.

  “The Americans are at war,” (says Lord Mansfield, the great assertor of the plan of hostility) “they are acting on the offensive — whether we were right or wrong, we must proceed — we must add violence to violence, rigour to rigour — we are not to discriminate the innocent from the guilty — if we do not kill them, they will kill us.”

  It is really singular that a man in the cool decline of life, bred through the whole course of it in a profession of peace, a Civil Magistrate, a Judge, covered to the chin with judicial purple, and bloodless unspotted ermins, should be distinguished above all others, for a character of hazard and desperateness in his counsels. Lord Mansfield’s politics always stand upon a precipice. When he acted with others, in advising the late coercive measures, he alone was under no delusion. His eyes were broad open to the consequences. Knowing that those measures led inevitably to Civil War, he used the fatal expression and auspice of Caesar, when he stood on the execrated brink of that stream, the crossing of which brought ruin on his country. He told the House of Lords in plain words, that

/>   “they had now passed the Rubicon.”

  This Year he exhorts them to push on that Civil War, in a manner scarcely different from the precedent of Caesar’s speech before the battle of Pharsalia. But we are not yet hardened by this inflammatory eloquence into such black and decided enmity, as to unfit us for a temperate examination of his cause and arguments.

  “Kill them, or they will kill us!”

  — Alas! my good Lord, Englishmen cannot chearfully accept this alternative, which you are so good to offer, until we are thoroughly convinced, that to kill them is not mortally to wound ourselves.

  This military adage,

  “Kill them, or they will kill us,”

  is as proper in the field of battle, as it is misplaced and dangerous in council. When men have the bayonet to each other’s breast, there is no time for reasoning. But men deliberating at their ease, are not in that desperate situation. It is not therefore necessary that they should be animated with these desperate sentiments. The business of the Statesman, and that of the General, ought never to be confounded. It is the Province of the latter to consider only how War is to be made. It is the duty of the former sometimes to consider how war is to be ended. Reconciliation, treaty, negociation, and concession enter into the plan of the Statesman, though not in the operations of the General. If Lord Mansfield’s sentiments should prevail as maxims of policy, it would follow, that when men, upon whatever grounds, are driven to draw their swords, there must be no peace until one party or the other is exterminated.

  That learned Lord rests much on the offensive war undertaken by the Americans, in (what is called) the Invasion of Canada. This he adduces as a proof of their design of independency. If war had been as much Lord Mansfield’s study, as it seems to be his inclination, he must have perceived, that it never was, nor ever could be confined to strict defence. The very idea is full of absurdity. When war is once begun, the manner of conducting it, will be such as bids the fairest for success. It concludes nothing concerning the original motive for hostility, nor concerning the propriety or impropriety of making peace.