Complete Works of Edmund Burke

by Edmund Burke

  Commons abhor whatever shakes the submission of posterity to the settlement of the crown.”The Commons must always resent, with the utmost detestation and abhorrence, every position that may shake the authority of that act of Parliament whereby the crown is settled upon her Majesty, and whereby the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons do, in the name of all the people of England, most humbly and faithfully submit themselves, their heirs and posterities, to her Majesty, which this general principle of absolute non-resistance must certainly shake.

  “For, if the resistance at the Revolution was illegal, the Revolution settled in usurpation, and this act can have no greater force and authority than an act passed under a usurper.

  “And the Commons take leave to observe, that the authority of this Parliamentary settlement is a matter of the greatest consequence to maintain, in a case where the hereditary right to the crown is contested.”

  “It appears by the several instances mentioned in the act declaring the rights and liberties of the subject and settling the succession of the crown, that at the time of the Revolution there was a total subversion of the constitution of government both in Church and State, which is a case that the laws of England could never suppose, provide for, or have in view.”

  Sir Joseph Jekyl, so often quoted, considered the preservation of the monarchy, and of the rights and prerogatives of the crown, as essential objects with all sound Whigs, and that they were bound not only to maintain them, when injured or invaded, but to exert themselves as much for their reëstablishment, if they should happen to be overthrown by popular fury, as any of their own more immediate and popular rights and privileges, if the latter should be at any time subverted by the crown. For this reason he puts the cases of the Revolution, and the Restoration exactly upon the same footing. He plainly marks, that it was the object of all honest men not to sacrifice one part of the Constitution to another, and much more, not to sacrifice any of them to visionary theories of the rights of man, but to preserve our whole inheritance in the Constitution, in all its members and all its relations, entire and unimpaired, from generation to generation. In this Mr. Burke exactly agrees with him.

  Sir Joseph Jekyl.

  What are the rights of the people.

  Restoration and Revolution.

  People have an equal interest in the legal rights of the crown and of their own.”Nothing is plainer than that the people have a right to the laws and the Constitution. This right the nation hath asserted, and recovered out of the hands of those who had dispossessed them of it at several times. There are of this two famous instances in the knowledge of the present age: I mean that of the Restoration, and that of the Revolution: in both these great events were the regal power and the rights of the people recovered. And it is hard to say in which the people have the greatest interest; for the Commons are sensible that there it not one legal power belonging to the crown, but they have an interest in it; and I doubt not but they will always be as careful to support the rights of the crown as their own privileges.”

  The other Whig managers regarded (as he did) the overturning of the monarchy by a republican faction with the very same horror and detestation with which they regarded the destruction of the privileges of the people by an arbitrary monarch.

  Mr. Lechmere,

  Constitution recovered at the Restoration and Revolution.Speaking of our Constitution, states it as “a Constitution which happily recovered itself, at the Restoration, from the confusions and disorders which the horrid and detestable proceedings of faction and usurpation had thrown it into, and which after many convulsions and struggles was providentially saved at the late happy Revolution, and by the many good laws passed since that time stands now upon a firmer foundation, together with the most comfortable prospect of security to all posterity by the settlement of the crown in the Protestant line.”

  I mean now to show that the Whigs (if Sir Joseph Jekyl was one, and if he spoke in conformity to the sense of the Whig House of Commons, and the Whig ministry who employed him) did carefully guard against any presumption that might arise from the repeal of the non-resistance oath of Charles the Second, as if at the Revolution the ancient principles of our government were at all changed, or that republican doctrines were countenanced, or any sanction given to seditious proceedings upon general undefined ideas of misconduct, or for changing the form of government, or for resistance upon any other ground than the necessity so often mentioned for the purpose of self-preservation. It will show still more clearly the equal care of the then Whigs to prevent either the regal power from being swallowed up on pretence of popular rights, or the popular rights from being destroyed on pretence of regal prerogatives.

  Sir Joseph Jekyl.

  Mischief of broaching antimonarchical principles.

  Two cases of resistance: one to preserve the crown, the other the rights of the subject.”Further, I desire it may be considered, these legislators” (the legislators who framed the non-resistance oath of Charles the Second) “were guarding against the consequences of those pernicious and antimonarchical principles which had been broached a little before in this nation, and those large declarations in favor of non-resistance were made to encounter or obviate the mischief of those principles, — as appears by the preamble to the fullest of those acts, which is the Militia Act, in the 13th and 14th of King Charles the Second. The words of that act are these: And during the late usurped governments, many evil and rebellious principles have been instilled into the minds of the people of this kingdom, which may break forth, unless prevented, to the disturbance of the peace and quiet thereof: Be it therefore enacted, &c. Here your Lordships may see the reason that inclined those legislators to express themselves in such a manner against resistance. They had seen the regal rights swallowed up under the pretence of popular ones: and it is no imputation on them, that they did not then foresee a quite different case, as was that of the Revolution, where, under the pretence of regal authority, a total subversion of the rights of the subject was advanced, and in a manner effected. And this may serve to show that it was not the design of those legislators to condemn resistance, in a case of absolute necessity, for preserving the Constitution, when they were guarding against principles which had so lately destroyed it.”

  Non-resistance oath not repealed because (with the restriction of necessity) it was false, but to prevent false interpretations.”As to the truth of the doctrine in this declaration which was repealed, I’ll admit it to be as true as the Doctor’s counsel assert it, — that is, with an exception of cases of necessity: and it was not repealed because it was false, understanding it with that restriction; but it was repealed because it might be interpreted in an unconfined sense, and exclusive of that restriction, and, being so understood, would reflect on the justice of the Revolution: and this the legislature had at heart, and were very jealous of, and by this repeal of that declaration gave a Parliamentary or legislative admonition against asserting this doctrine of non-resistance in an unlimited sense.”

  General doctrine of non-resistance godly and wholesome; not bound to state explicitly the exceptions.”Though the general doctrine of non-resistance, the doctrine of the Church of England, as stated in her Homilies, or elsewhere delivered, by which the general duty of subjects to the higher powers is taught, be owned to be, as unquestionably it is, a godly and wholesome doctrine, — though this general doctrine has been constantly inculcated by the reverend fathers of the Church, dead and living, and preached by them as a preservative against the Popish doctrine of deposing princes, and as the ordinary rule of obedience, — and though the same doctrine has been preached, maintained, and avowed by our most orthodox and able divines from the time of the Reformation, — and how innocent a man soever Dr. Sacheverell had been, if, with an honest and well-meant zeal, he had preached the same doctrine in the same general terms in which he found it delivered by the Apostles of Christ, as taught by the Homilies and the reverend fathers of our Church, and, in imitation of those great examples, had
only pressed the general duty of obedience, and the illegality of resistance, without taking notice of any exception,” &c.

  Another of the managers for the House of Commons, Sir John Holland, was not less careful in guarding against a confusion of the principles of the Revolution with any loose, general doctrines of a right in the individual, or even in the people, to undertake for themselves, on any prevalent, temporary opinions of convenience or improvement, any fundamental change in the Constitution, or to fabricate a new government for themselves, and thereby to disturb the public peace, and to unsettle the ancient Constitution of this kingdom.

  Sir John Holland.

  Submission to the sovereign a conscientious duty, except in cases of necessity.”The Commons would not be understood as if they were pleading for a licentious resistance, as if subjects were left to their good-will and pleasure when they are to obey and when to resist. No, my Lords, they know they are obliged by all the ties of social creatures and Christians, for wrath and conscience’ sake, to submit to their sovereign. The Commons do not abet humorsome, factious arms: they aver them to be rebellions. But yet they maintain that that resistance at the Revolution, which was so necessary, was lawful and just from that necessity.”

  Right of resistance how to be understood.”These general rules of obedience may, upon a real necessity, admit a lawful exception; and such a necessary exception we assert the Revolution to be.

  “’Tis with this view of necessity, only absolute necessity of preserving our laws, liberties, and religion,— ’tis with this limitation, that we desire to be understood, when any of us speak of resistance in general. The necessity of the resistance at the Revolution was at that time obvious to every man.”

  I shall conclude these extracts with a reference to the Prince of Orange’s Declaration, in which he gives the nation the fullest assurance that in his enterprise he was far from the intention of introducing any change whatever in the fundamental law and Constitution of the state. He considered the object of his enterprise not to be a precedent for further revolutions, but that it was the great end of his expedition to make such revolutions, so far as human power and wisdom could provide, unnecessary.

  Extracts from the Prince of Orange’s Declaration.

  “All magistrates, who have been unjustly turned out, shall forthwith resume their former employments; as well as all the boroughs of England shall return again to their ancient prescriptions and charters, and, more particularly, that the ancient charter of the great and famous city of London shall again be in force; and that the writs for the members of Parliament shall be addressed to the proper officers, according to law and custom.”

  “And for the doing of all other things which the two Houses of Parliament shall find necessary for the peace, honor, and safety of the nation, so that there may be no more danger of the nation’s falling, at any time hereafter, under arbitrary government.”

  Extract from the Prince of Oranges Additional Declaration.

  Principal nobility and gentry well affected to the Church and crown, security against the design of innovation.”We are confident that no persons can have such hard thoughts of us as to imagine that we have any other design in this undertaking than to procure a settlement of the religion and of the liberties and properties of the subjects upon so sure a foundation that there may be no danger of the nation’s relapsing into the like miseries at any time hereafter. And as the forces that we have brought along with us are utterly disproportioned to that wicked design of conquering the nation, if we were capable of intending it, so the great numbers of the principal nobility and gentry, that are men of eminent quality and estates, and persons of known integrity and zeal, both for the religion and government of England, many of them, also being distinguished by their constant fidelity to the crown, who do both accompany us in this expedition and have earnestly solicited us to it, will cover us from all such malicious insinuations.”

  In the spirit, and, upon one occasion, in the words, of this Declaration, the statutes passed in that reign made such provisions for preventing these dangers, that scarcely anything short of combination of King, Lords, and Commons, for the destruction of the liberties of the nation, can in any probability make us liable to similar perils. In that dreadful, and, I hope, not to be looked-for case, any opinion of a right to make revolutions, grounded on this precedent, would be but a poor resource. Dreadful, indeed, would be our situation!

  These are the doctrines held by the Whigs of the Revolution, delivered with as much solemnity, and as authentically at least, as any political dogmas were ever promulgated from the beginning of the world. If there be any difference between their tenets and those of Mr. Burke, it is, that the old Whigs oppose themselves still more strongly than he does against the doctrines which are now propagated with so much industry by those who would be thought their successors.

  It will be said, perhaps, that the old Whigs, in order to guard themselves against popular odium, pretended to assert tenets contrary to those which they secretly held. This, if true, would prove, what Mr. Burke has uniformly asserted, that the extravagant doctrines which he meant to expose were disagreeable to the body of the people, — who, though they perfectly abhor a despotic government, certainly approached more nearly to the love of mitigated monarchy than to anything which bears the appearance even of the best republic. But if these old Whigs deceived the people, their conduct was unaccountable indeed. They exposed their power, as every one conversant in history knows, to the greatest peril, for the propagation of opinions which, on this hypothesis, they did not hold. It is a new kind of martyrdom. This supposition does as little credit to their integrity as their wisdom: it makes them at once hypocrites and fools. I think of those great men very differently. I hold them to have been, what the world thought them, men of deep understanding, open sincerity, and clear honor. However, be that matter as it may, what these old Whigs pretended to be Mr. Burke is. This is enough for him.

  I do, indeed, admit, that, though Mr. Burke has proved that his opinions were those of the old Whig party, solemnly declared by one House, in effect and substance by both Houses of Parliament, this testimony standing by itself will form no proper defence for his opinions, if he and the old Whigs were both of them in the wrong. But it is his present concern, not to vindicate these old Whigs, but to show his agreement with them. He appeals to them as judges: he does not vindicate them as culprits. It is current that these old politicians knew little of the rights of men, — that they lost their way by groping about in the dark, and fumbling among rotten parchments and musty records. Great lights, they say, are lately obtained in the world; and Mr. Burke, instead of shrouding himself in exploded ignorance, ought to have taken advantage of the blaze of illumination which has been spread about him. It may be so. The enthusiasts of this time, it seems, like their predecessors in another faction of fanaticism, deal in lights. Hudibras pleasantly says of them, they

  “Have lights, where better eyes are blind, —

  As pigs are said to see the wind.”

  The author of the Reflections has heard a great deal concerning the modern lights, but he has not yet had the good fortune to see much of them. He has read more than he can justify to anything but the spirit of curiosity, of the works of these illuminators of the world. He has learned nothing from the far greater number of them than a full certainty of their shallowness, levity, pride, petulance, presumption, and ignorance. Where the old authors whom he has read, and the old men whom he has conversed with, have left him in the dark, he is in the dark still. If others, however, have obtained any of this extraordinary light, they will use it to guide them in their researches and their conduct. I have only to wish that the nation may be as happy and as prosperous under the influence of the new light as it has been in the sober shade of the old obscurity. As to the rest, it will be difficult for the author of the Reflections to conform to the principles of the avowed leaders of the party, until they appear otherwise than negatively. All we can gather from them is
this, — that their principles are diametrically opposite to his. This is all that we know from authority. Their negative declaration obliges me to have recourse to the books which contain positive doctrines. They are, indeed, to those Mr. Burke holds diametrically opposite; and if it be true (as the oracles of the party have said, I hope hastily) that their opinions differ so widely, it should seem they are the most likely to form the creed of the modern Whigs.

  I have stated what were the avowed sentiments of the old Whigs, not in the way of argument, but narratively. It is but fair to set before the reader, in the same simple manner, the sentiments of the modern, to which they spare neither pains nor expense to make proselytes. I choose them from the books upon which most of that industry and expenditure in circulation have been employed; I choose them, not from those who speak with a politic obscurity, not from those who only controvert the opinions of the old Whigs, without advancing any of their own, but from those who speak plainly and affirmatively. The Whig reader may make his choice between the two doctrines.

  The doctrine, then, propagated by these societies, which gentlemen think they ought to be very tender in discouraging, as nearly as possible in their own words, is as follows: That in Great Britain we are not only without a good Constitution, but that we have “no Constitution”; — that, “though it is much talked about, no such thing as a Constitution exists or ever did exist, and consequently that the people have a Constitution yet to form; — that since William the Conqueror the country has never yet regenerated itself, and is therefore without a Constitution; — that where it cannot be produced in a visible form there is none; — that a Constitution is a thing antecedent to government; and that the Constitution of a country is not the act of its government, but of a people constituting a government; — that everything in the English government is the reverse of what it ought to be, and what it is said to be in England; — that the right of war and peace resides in a metaphor shown at the Tower for sixpence or a shilling apiece; — that it signifies not where the right resides, whether in the crown or in Parliament; war is the common harvest of those who participate in the division and expenditure of public money; — that the portion of liberty enjoyed in England is just enough to enslave a country more productively than by despotism.”