Complete Works of Edmund Burke

by Edmund Burke

  I don’t find it denied, that when a treaty is entered into for peace, a demand will be made on the Regicides to surrender their conquests on the Continent. Will they, in the present state of the war, make that surrender without an equivalent? This continental cession must be made in favour of that party in the alliance, that has suffered losses. That party has nothing to furnish towards an equivalent. What equivalent, for instance, has Holland to offer, who has lost her all? What equivalent can come from the Emperor, every part of whose territories contiguous to France, is already within the pale of the Regicide dominion? What equivalent has Sardinia to offer for Savoy and for Nice? What has she taken from the faction of France? She has lost much; and she has gained nothing. What equivalent has Spain to give? Alas! she has already paid for her own ransom the fund of equivalent, and a dreadful equivalent it is, to England and to herself. But I put Spain out of the question. She is a province of the Jacobin Empire. She is in a shocking dilemma. In effect and substance, her Crown is a fief of Regicide — Whence then can the compensation be demanded, but from that power which alone has made some conquests? That power is England. Will the Allies then give away their ancient patrimony, that England may keep Islands in the West Indies? They can never protract the war in good earnest for that object. Nor can they act in concert with us, in our refusal to grant any thing towards their redemption. In that case we are thus situated — Either we must give Europe, bound hand and foot to France; or we must quit the West Indies without any one object, great or small, towards indemnity and security. If we look to the East, our most decided conquests (some of them the most important) are there. I look at the taking possession of the Cape of Good Hope to be the securing a post of great moment: it is a measure which does infinite honour to those who planned it, and to those who executed that enterprize. I speak of it always as comparatively good; as good as any thing in this scheme of war, which repels us from an, and employs all our forces, where nothing can be finally decisive. It is evident, that if we keep our eastern conquests, we keep them at the expence of Holland, our ally; the immediate cause of the war, the nation whom we had undertaken to protect, and not of the Republic which it was our business to destroy. If we return the African and the Afiatic conquests, we put them into the hands of a nominal State, (to that Holland is reduced) unable to retain them; and which will virtually leave them under the direction of France. If we withhold them, Holland declines still more as a State: and she loses that carriage and that means of keeping up the small degree of naval power she holds; for which policy, and not for any commerical gain, she maintains the Cape, or any settlement beyond it. It that case, resentment, faction, and even necessity will throw her more and more into the power of the new mischievous Republic. But on the probable state of Holland, I shall say more, when I come to talk over with you the state in which any sort of Jacobin peace will leave all Europe.

  So far as to the East-Indies.

  As to the West-Indies, indeed as to either, if we look for matter of exchange in order to ransome Europe, it is easy to shew that we have taken a terrible round-about road. I cannot conceive, even if, for the sake of holding conquests there, we should refuse to redeem Holland, and the Austrian Netherlands, and the hither Germany, that Spain, merely as she is Spain, (and forgetting that the Regicide Ambassador governs at Madrid) will see with perfect satisfaction, Great Britain sole mistress of the Isles. In truth it appears to me, that, when we come to balance our account, we shall find in the proposed peace only the pure, simple, and unendowed charms of Jacobin amity. We shall have the satisfaction of knowing, that no blood or treasure has been spared by the allies for support of the Regicide system. They will reflect at leisure on one great truth, that it was ten times more easy totally to destroy the system itself, than when established, it would be to reduce its power — and that this Republic, most formidable abroad, was, of all things, the weakest at home. That her frontier was terrible — her interior feeble — that it was matter of choice to attack her where she is invincible; and to spare her where she was ready to dissolve by her own internal disorders. They will reflect, that their plan was good neither for offence nor defence.

  My dear Friend, I hold it impossible that these considerations should have escaped the Statesman on both sides of the water, and on both sides of the House of Commons. How a question of peace can be discussed without having them in view, I cannot imagine. If you or others see a way out of these difficulties I am happy. I see indeed a fund from whence equivalents will be proposed. I see it. But I cannot just now touch it. It is a question of high moment. It opens another Iliad of woes to Europe.

  Such is the time proposed for making a common political peace, to which no one circumstance is propitious. As to the grand principle of the peace, it is left, as if by common consent, wholly out of the question.

  It seems to me, as if the two parties, who have long divided and distracted this kingdom, without abandoning their animosities, had come to an agreement in their sentiments. It looks as if they concurred in the establishment of Jacobinism in France, and in the necessity, if not in the advantage, of admitting it as a sociable and natural member in the republic of Christendom. So far, and no farther, they are agreed amongst themselves. Our domestic peace remains where it was; and we seek to make amends for this domestic distraction, by giving (as far as it is in our power to give it) peace and establishment to our enemies. In this peace to our foe, we are taught to look, it seems, for the term of all our own evils.

  Viewing things in this light, I have frequently sunk into a degree of despondency and dejection hardly to be described: yet out of the profoundest depths of this despair, an impulse which I have in vain endeavoured to resist, has urged me to raise one feeble cry against this unfortunate coalition which is formed at home, in order to make a coalition with France, subversive of the whole ancient order of the world. No disaster of war, no calamity of season could ever strike me with half the horror which I felt from what is introduced to us by this junction of parties, under the soothing name of peace. We are apt to speak of a low and pufillanimous spirit as the ordinary cause by which dubious wars terminate in humiliating treaties. It is here the direct contrary. I am perfectly astonished at the boldness of character, at the intrepidity of mind, the firmness of nerve, in those who are able with deliberation to face the perils of Jacobin fraternity.

  This fraternity is indeed so terrible in it’s nature, and in it’s manifest consequences, that there is no way of quieting our apprehensions about it, but by totally putting it out of sight, by substituting for it, through a sort of periphrasis, something of an ambiguous quality, and describing such a connection under the terms of

  “the usual relations of peace and amity:”

  By this means the proposed fraternity is hustled in the crowd of those treaties, which imply no change in the public law of Europe, and which do not upon system affect the interior condition of nations. It is confounded with those conventions in which matters of dispute among sovereign powers are compromised, by the taking off a duty more or less, by the surrender of a frontier town, or a disputed district on the one side or the other; by pactions in which the pretensions of families are settled, (as by a conveyancer, making family substitutions and successions) without any alteration in the laws, manners, religion, privileges and customs of the cities or territories which are the subject of such arrangements.

  All this body of old conventions, composing the vast and voluminous collection called the corps diplomatique, forms the code or statute law, as the methodized reasonings of the great publicists and jurists form the digest and jurisprudence of the Christian world. In these treasures are to be found the usual relations of peace and amity in civilized Europe; and there the relations of ancient France were to be found amongst the rest.

  The present system in France is not the ancient France. It is not the ancient France with ordinary ambition and ordinary means. It is not a new power of an old kind. It is a new power of a new species. When such a questiona
ble shape is to be admitted for the first time into the brotherhood of Christendom, it is not a matter of idle curiosity to consider how far it is in it’s nature alliable with the rest, or whether

  “the relations of peace and amity”

  with this new State are likely to be of the same nature with the usual relations of the States of Europe.

  The Revolution in France had the relation of France to other nations as one of it’s principal objects. The changes made by that Revolution were not the better to accommodate her to the old and usual relations, but to produce new ones. The Revolution was made, not to make France free, but to make her formidable; not to make her a neighbour, but a mistress; not to make her more observant of laws, but to put her in a condition to impose them. To make France truly formidable it was necessary that France should be new modelled. They who have not followed the train of the late proceedings, have been led by deceitful representations (which deceit made a part in the plan) to conceive that this totally new model of a state, in which nothing escaped a change, was made with a view to its internal relations only.

  In the Revolution of France two sorts of men were principally concerned in giving a character and determination to its pursuits; the philosophers and the politicians. They took different ways, but they met in the same end. The philosophers had one predominant object, which they pursued with a fanatical fury, that is, the utter extirpation of religion. To that every question of empire was subordinate. They had rather domineer in a parish of Atheists, than rule over a Christian world. Their temporal ambition was wholly subservient to their proselytizing spirit, in which they were not exceeded by Mahomet himself.

  They who have made but superficial studies in the natural history of the human mind, have been taught to look on religious opinions as the only cause of enthusiastic zeal, and sectarian propagation. But there is no doctrine whatever, on which men can warm, that is not capable of the very same effect. The social nature of man impels him to propagate his principles, as much as physical impulses urge him to propagate his kind. The passions give zeal and vehemence. The understanding bestows design and system. The whole man moves under the discipline of his opinions. Religion is among the most powerful causes of enthusiasm. When any thing concerning it becomes an object of much meditation, it cannot be indifferent to the mind. They who do not love religion, hate it. The rebels to God perfectly abhor the Author of their being. They hate him

  “with all their heart, with all their mind, with all their soul, and with all their strength.”

  He never presents himself to their thoughts, but to menace and alarm them. They cannot strike the Sun out of Heaven, but they are able to raise as mouldering smoke that obscures him from their own eyes. Not being able to revenge themselves on God, they have a delight in vicariously defacing, degrading, torturing, and tearing in pieces his image in man. Let no one judge of them by what he has conceived of them, when they were not incorporated, and had no lead. They were then only passengers in a common vehicle. They were then carried along with the general motion of religion in the community, and without being aware of it, partook of its influence. In that situation, at worst their nature was left free to counterwork their principles. They despaired of giving any very general currency to their opinions. They consideder them as a reserved privilege for the chosen few. But when the possibility of dominion; lead, and propagation presented themselves, and that the ambition, which before had so often made them hypocrites, might rather gain than lose by a daring avowal of their sentiments, then the nature of this infernal spirit, which has

  “evil for its good,”

  appeared in its full perfection. Nothing, indeed, but the possession of some power can, with any certainty, discover what at the bottom is the true character of any man. Without reading the speeches of Verginaux, Français of Nantz, Isnard, and some others of that sort, it would not be easy to conceive the passion, rancour, and malice of their tongues and hearts. They worked themselves up to a perfect phrenzy against religion and all its professors. They tore the deputation of the Clergy to pieces by their infuriated declamations and invectives, before they lacerated their bodies by their massacres. This fanatical atheism left out, we omit the principal feature in the French Revolution, and a principal consideration with regard to the effects to be expected from a peace with it.

  The other sort of men were the politicians. To them who had little or not at all reflected on the subject, religion was in itself no object of love or hatred. They disbelieved it, and that was all. Neutral with regard to that object, they took the side which, in the present state of things, might best answer their purposes. They soon found that they could not do without the philosophers; and the philosophers soon made them sensible, that the destruction of religion was to supply them with means of conquest first at home, and then abroad. The philosophers were the active internal agitators, and supplied the spirit and principles: the second gave the general direction. Sometimes the one predominated in the composition, sometimes the other. The only difference between them was in the necessity of concealing the general design for a time, and in dealing with foreign nations; the fanaticks going straight forward and openly, the politicians by the surer mode of zig-zag. In the course of events, this, among other causes, produced fierce and bloody contentions between them. But at the bottom they thoroughly agreed in all the objects of ambition and irreligion, and substantially in all the means of promoting these ends.

  Without question, to bring about the unexampled event of the French Revolution, the concurrence of a very great number of views and passions was necessary. In that stupendous work, no one principle by which the human mind may have it’s faculties at once invigorated and depraved, was left unemployed: but I can speak it to a certainty, and support it by undoubted proofs, that the ruling principle of those who acted in the Revolution as statesmen, had the exterior aggrandizement of France as their ultimate end in the most minute part of the interior changes that were made. We, who of late years, have been drawn from an attention to foreign affairs by the importance of our domestic discussions, cannot easily form a conception of the general eagerness of the French nation, previous to it’s revolution, upon that subject. I am convinced that the foreign speculators in France, under the old Government, were twenty to one of the same description in England; and few of that description there were, who did not emulously set forward the Revolution. The whole official system, particularly in the diplomatic part, the regulars, the irregulars, down to the clerks in office (a corps, without all comparison, more numerous than the same description amongst us) co-operated in it. All the intriguers in foreign politicks, all the spies, all the intelligencers, actually or late in function, all the candidates for that sort of employment, acted solely upon that principle.

  On that system of aggrandizement there was but one mind: but two violent factions arose about the means. The first wished France, diverted from the politicks of the Continent, to attend solely to her marine, to feed it by an encrease of commerce, and thereby to overpower England on her own element. They contended, that if England were disabled, the Powers on the Continent would fall into their proper subordination; that it was England which deranged the whole continental system of Europe. The others, who were by far the more numerous, though not the most outwardly prevalent at Court, considered this plan as contrary to her genius, her situation, and her natural means. They agreed as to the ultimate object, the reduction of the British power; but they considered an ascendancy on the Continent as a necessary preliminary to that undertaking. They argued, that the proceedings of England herself had proved the soundness of this policy. That her greatest and ablest Statesmen had not considered the support of a continental balance against France as a deviation from the principle of her naval power, but as one of the most effectual modes of carrying it into effect. That such had been her policy since the Revolution; during which period the naval strength of Great Britain had gone on encreasing in the direct ratio of her interference in the politicks of the cont
inent. With much stronger reason ought the politicks of France to take the same direction: as well for pursuing objects which her situation would dictate to her, if England had no existence, as for counteracting the politicks of that nation; to France continental politicks are primary; they are only of secondary consideration to England.

  What is truly astonishing, the partizans of those two opposite systems were at once prevalent, and at once employed, and in the very same transactions, the one ostensibly, the other secretly, during the latter part of the reign of Lewis XV. Nor was there one Court in which an Ambassador resided on the part of the Ministers, in which another as a spy on him did not also reside on the part of the King. They who pursued the scheme for keeping peace on the continent, and particularly with Austria, acting officially and publickly, the other faction counteracting and opposing them. These private agents were continually going from their function to the Bastille, from the Bastille to employment, and to interest or favour again. An inextricable cabal was formed, some of persons of rank, others of subordinates. But by this means the corps of politicians was augmented in number, and the whole formed a body of active, adventuring, ambitious, discontented people, despising the regular Ministry, despising the Courts at which they were employed, despising the Courts which employed them.