by Edmund Burke
Forgive this length. My pen has insensibly run on. You are yourself to blame, if you are much fatigued. I congratulate you on the auspicious opening of your session. Surely Great Britain and Ireland ought to join in wreathing a never-fading garland for the head of Grattan. Adieu, my dear Sir. Good nights to you! — I never can have any.
Yours always most sincerely,
EDMUND BURKE.
Jan. 29th, 1795. Twelve at night.
SECOND LETTER TO SIR HERCULES LANGRISHE ON THE CATHOLIC QUESTION. MAY 26, 1795.
My Dear Sir, — If I am not as early as I ought to be in my acknowledgments for your very kind letter, pray do me the justice to attribute my failure to its natural and but too real cause, a want of the most ordinary power of exertion, owing to the impressions made upon an old and infirm constitution by private misfortune and by public calamity. It is true, I make occasional efforts to rouse myself to something better, — but I soon relapse into that state of languor which must be the habit of my body and understanding to the end of my short and cheerless existence in this world.
I am sincerely grateful for your kindness in connecting the interest you take in the sentiments of an old friend with the able part you take in the service of your country. It is an instance, among many, of that happy temper which has always given a character of amenity to your virtues and a good-natured direction to your talents.
Your speech on the Catholic question I read with much satisfaction. It is solid; it is convincing; it is eloquent; and it ought, on the spot, to have produced that effect which its reason, and that contained in the other excellent speeches on the same side of the question, cannot possibly fail (though with less pleasant consequences) to produce hereafter. What a sad thing it is, that the grand instructor, Time, has not yet been able to teach the grand lesson of his own value, and that, in every question of moral and political prudence, it is the choice of the moment which renders the measure serviceable or useless, noxious or salutary!
In the Catholic question I considered only one point: Was it, at the time, and in the circumstances, a measure which tended to promote the concord of the citizens? I have no difficulty in saying it was, — and as little in saying that the present concord of the citizens was worth buying, at a critical season, by granting a few capacities, which probably no one man now living is likely to be served or hurt by. When any man tells you and me, that, if these places were left in the discretion of a Protestant crown, and these memberships in the discretion of Protestant electors or patrons, we should have a Popish official system, and a Popish representation, capable of overturning the Establishment, he only insults our understandings. When any man tells this to Catholics, he insults their understandings, and he galls their feelings. It is not the question of the places and seats, it is the real hostile disposition and the pretended fears, that leave stings in the minds of the people. I really thought that in the total of the late circumstances, with regard to persons, to things, to principles, and to measures, was to be found a conjuncture favorable to the introduction and to the perpetuation of a general harmony, producing a general strength, which to that hour Ireland was never so happy as to enjoy. My sanguine hopes are blasted, and I must consign my feelings on that terrible disappointment to the same patience in which I have been obliged to bury the vexation I suffered on the defeat of the other great, just, and honorable causes in which I have had some share, and which have given more of dignity than of peace and advantage to a long, laborious life. Though, perhaps, a want of success might be urged as a reason for making me doubt of the justice of the part I have taken, yet, until I have other lights than one side of the debate has furnished me, I must see things, and feel them too, as I see and feel them. I think I can hardly overrate the malignity of the principles of Protestant ascendency, as they affect Ireland, — or of Indianism, as they affect these countries, and as they affect Asia, — or of Jacobinism, as they affect all Europe and the state of human society itself. The last is the greatest evil. But it readily combines with the others, and flows from them. Whatever breeds discontent at this time will produce that great master-mischief most infallibly. Whatever tends to persuade the people that the few, called by whatever name you please, religious or political, are of opinion that their interest is not compatible with that of the many, is a great point gained to Jacobinism. Whatever tends to irritate the talents of a country, which have at all times, and at these particularly, a mighty influence on the public mind, is of infinite service to that formidable cause. Unless where Heaven has mingled uncommon ingredients of virtue in the composition, — quos meliore luto finxit præcordia Titan, — talents naturally gravitate to Jacobinism. Whatever ill-humors are afloat in the state, they will be sure to discharge themselves in a mingled torrent in the Cloaca Maxima of Jacobinism. Therefore people ought well to look about them. First, the physicians are to take care that they do nothing to irritate this epidemical distemper. It is a foolish thing to have the better of the patient in a dispute. The complaint or its cause ought to be removed, and wise and lenient arts ought to precede the measures of vigor. They ought to be the ultima, not the prima, not the tota ratio of a wise government. God forbid, that, on a worthy occasion, authority should want the means of force, or the disposition to use it! But where a prudent and enlarged policy does not precede it, and attend it too, where the hearts of the better sort of people do not go with the hands of the soldiery, you may call your Constitution what you will, in effect it will consist of three parts, (orders, if you please,) cavalry, infantry, and artillery, — and of nothing else or better. I agree with you in your dislike of the discourses in Francis Street: but I like as little some of those in College Green. I am even less pleased with the temper that predominated in the latter, as better things might have been expected in the regular family mansion of public discretion than, in a new and hasty assembly of unexperienced men, congregated under circumstances of no small irritation. After people have taken your tests, prescribed by yourselves as proofs of their allegiance, to be marked as enemies, traitors, or at best as suspected and dangerous persons, and that they are not to be believed on their oaths, we are not to be surprised, if they fall into a passion, and talk as men in a passion do, intemperately and idly.
The worst of the matter is this: you are partly leading, partly driving into Jacobinism that description of your people whose religious principles, church polity, and habitual discipline might make them an invincible dike against that inundation. This you have a thousand mattocks and pickaxes lifted up to demolish. You make a sad story of the Pope. O seri studiorum! It will not be difficult to get many called Catholics to laugh at this fundamental part of their religion. Never doubt it. You have succeeded in part, and you may succeed completely. But in the present state of men’s minds and affairs, do not flatter yourselves that they will piously look to the head of our Church in the place of that Pope whom you make them forswear, and out of all reverence to whom you bully and rail and buffoon them. Perhaps you may succeed in the same manner with all the other tenets of doctrine and usages of discipline amongst the Catholics; but what security have you, that, in the temper and on the principles on which they have made this change, they will stop at the exact sticking-places you have marked in your articles? You have no security for anything, but that they will become what are called Franco-Jacobins, and reject the whole together. No converts now will be made in a considerable number from one of our sects to the other upon a really religious principle. Controversy moves in another direction.
Next to religion, property is the great point of Jacobin attack. Here many of the debaters in your majority, and their writers, have given the Jacobins all the assistance their hearts can wish. When the Catholics desire places and seats, you tell them that this is only a pretext, (though Protestants might suppose it just possible for men to like good places and snug boroughs for their own merits,) but that their real view is, to strip Protestants of their property To my certain knowledge, till those Jacobin lectures were opened in the Ho
use of Commons, they never dreamt of any such thing; but now the great professors may stimulate them to inquire (on the new principles) into the foundation of that property, and of all property. If you treat men as robbers, why, robbers, sooner or later, they will become.
A third point of Jacobin attack is on old traditionary constitutions. You are apprehensive for yours, which leans from its perpendicular, and does not stand firm on its theory. I like Parliamentary reforms as little as any man who has boroughs to sell for money, or for peerages in Ireland. But it passes my comprehension, in what manner it is that men can be reconciled to the practical merits of a constitution, the theory of which is in litigation, by being practically excluded from any of its advantages. Let us put ourselves in the place of these people, and try an experiment of the effects of such a procedure on our own minds. Unquestionably, we should be perfectly satisfied, when we were told that Houses of Parliament, instead of being places of refuge for popular liberty, were citadels for keeping us in order as a conquered people. These things play the Jacobin game to a nicety.
Indeed, my dear Sir, there is not a single particular in the Francis-Street declamations, which has not, to your and to my certain knowledge, been taught by the jealous ascendants, sometimes by doctrine, sometimes by example, always by provocation. Remember the whole of 1781 and 1782, in Parliament and out of Parliament; at this very day, and in the worst acts and designs, observe the tenor of the objections with which the College-Green orators of the ascendency reproach the Catholics. You have observed, no doubt, how much they rely on the affair of Jackson. Is it not pleasant to hear Catholics reproached for a supposed connection — with whom? — with Protestant clergymen! with Protestant gentlemen! with Mr. Jackson! with Mr. Rowan, &c., &c.! But egomet mî ignosco. Conspiracies and treasons are privileged pleasures, not to be profaned by the impure and unhallowed touch of Papists. Indeed, all this will do, perhaps, well enough, with detachments of dismounted cavalry and fencibles from England. But let us not say to Catholics, by way of argument, that they are to be kept in a degraded state, because some of them are no better than many of us Protestants. The thing I most disliked in some of their speeches (those, I mean, of the Catholics) was what is called the spirit of liberality, so much and so diligently taught by the ascendants, by which they are made to abandon their own particular interests, and to merge them in the general discontents of the country. It gave me no pleasure to hear of the dissolution of the committee. There were in it a majority, to my knowledge, of very sober, well-intentioned men; and there were none in it but such who, if not continually goaded and irritated, might be made useful to the tranquillity of the country. It is right always to have a few of every description, through whom you may quietly operate on the many, both for the interests of the description, and for the general interest.
Excuse me, my dear friend, if I have a little tried your patience. You have brought this trouble on yourself, by your thinking of a man forgot, and who has no objection to be forgot, by the world. These things we discussed together four or five and thirty years ago. We were then, and at bottom ever since, of the same opinion on the justice and policy of the whole and of every part of the penal system. You and I, and everybody, must now and then ply and bend to the occasion, and take what can be got. But very sure I am, that, whilst there remains in the law any principle whatever which can furnish to certain politicians an excuse for raising an opinion of their own importance, as necessary to keep their fellow-subjects in order, the obnoxious people will be fretted, harassed, insulted, provoked to discontent and disorder, and practically excluded from the partial advantages from which the letter of the law does not exclude them.
Adieu! my dear Sir,
And believe me very truly yours,
EDMUND BURKE.
BEACONSFIELD, May 26, 1795.
MISCELLANEOUS WORKS
CONTENTS
THE REFORMER
OBSERVATIONS ON THE CONDUCT OF THE MINORITY PARTICULARLY IN THE LAST SESSION OF PARLIAMENT. ADDRESSED TO THE DUKE OF PORTLAND AND LORD FITZWILLIAM. 1793.
PREFACE TO THE ADDRESS OF M. BRISSOT TO HIS CONSTITUENTS. TRANSLATED BY THE LATE WILLIAM BURKE, ESQ. 1794.
ADDRESS TO THE KING.
ADDRESS TO THE BRITISH COLONISTS IN NORTH AMERICA.
SOME THOUGHTS ON THE APPROACHING EXECUTIONS, HUMBLY OFFERED TO CONSIDERATION.
SOME ADDITIONAL REFLECTIONS ON THE EXECUTIONS.
FRAGMENTS OF A TRACT RELATIVE TO THE LAWS AGAINST POPERY IN IRELAND.
LIBEL BILL.
HINTS FOR AN ESSAY ON THE DRAMA.
ARTICLES OF CHARGE OF HIGH CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS AGAINST WARREN HASTINGS, ESQUIRE, LATE GOVERNOR-GENERAL OF BENGAL: PRESENTED TO THE HOUSE OF COMMONS IN APRIL AND MAY, 1786. ARTICLES VII.-XXII.
REPORT FROM THE COMMITTEE OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, APPOINTED TO INSPECT THE LORDS’ JOURNALS IN RELATION TO THEIR PROCEEDINGS ON THE TRIAL OF WARREN HASTINGS, ESQUIRE. WITH AN APPENDIX. ALSO, REMARKS IN VINDICATION OF THE SAME FROM THE ANIMADVERSIONS OF LORD THURLOW. 1794.
REMARKS IN VINDICATION OF THE PRECEDING REPORT.
THE REFORMER
In the first month of Burke’s eighteenth year, he began his public literary career. On 28 January 1747, the first number of The Reformer was published. It was a little Miscellany issued every Thursday until 21 April, 1748, thirteen numbers in all. The pamphlet was managed, edited, and almost entirely written by Burke. The Reformer was printed for and sold by J. Cotter under Dick’s Coffee House, Skinner’s Row, Dublin.
It was a daring production, hinting at the great statesman Burke was to become. The articles demonstrate the author’s loftiness of aim with which, already conscious of inborn genius, he is confident in his critical judgment and sound perception. Jealous for what is noble, and detesting what is base, Burke infuses these pieces with patriotism, glowing with zeal to fulfil his high ambitions.
The original publication of the first number of ‘The Reformer’
CONTENTS
THE REFORMER No. 1
THE REFORMER No. 2
THE REFORMER No. 3
THE REFORMER No. 4
THE REFORMER No. 5
THE REFORMER No. 6
THE REFORMER No. 7
THE REFORMER No. 8
THE REFORMER No. 10
THE REFORMER No. 11
THE REFORMER No. 12
THE REFORMER No. 13
THE REFORMER No. 1
THURSDAY the 28th of January, 1747-8.
Provok’d too long we resolutely must,
To those few Virtues that we have be just.
Roscommon.
THERE is a certain Period when Dulness being arrived to its full Growth, and spreading over a Nation becomes so insolent that it forces men of Genius and Spirit to rise up, in Spite of their natural Modesty, and work that Destruction it is ripe for. If we may judge of the Empire of Dulness by other great ones, whose Unwieldiness brought on their Ruin, this is certainly its Time: for the Depravation of Taste is as great as that of Morals, and tho’ the correcting the latter may seem a more laudable Design, and more consistent with public-spirit; yet there is so strong a Connection between them, and the morals of a Nation have so great Dependance on their taste and Writings, that the fixing the latter, seems the first and surest Method of establishing the former.
The Design therefore of these Papers is carefully and impartially to examine, not only those Writings which may be produced among ourselves, or imported from abroad, but also our Theatrical Amusements.
PLAYS are the favourite Diversion of People of Fashion, and every one is sensible how much they influence their Taste and Manners; if the Source then be corrupted, what a Depravation must we expect of both: The People copy from the Gentry, and bad Authors from the People: Thus Vice and Folly, like Milton’s SIN and DEATH go round the Nation hand in hand, and doubtless will continue to do so, unless some People are found public-spirited enough to oppose them: for these Reasons we shall have a watchful Eye over the Theatre, to prevent, if pos
sible, such Prodigies of Dulness and Immorality as we have been entertained with this Winter; or, to put them in their proper Light, when represented.
Our Countrymen are esteemed in a neighbouring Isle the dullest of Mankind, and there is scarce a Scribbler among them who has any other Name for this Nation than BOEOTIA: I don’t know for what we deserve the Appellation more than the senseless Encouragement we give their wretched Productions; so plentifully do they supply, and so greedily do we swallow that Tide of fulsom Plays, Novels, and Poems which they pour on us, that they seem to make Stupidity their Science, and to have associated for the Destruction of Wit and Sense, and that we were bound to support them, while they despised us in return.
It is not more our Intention to expose Dulness, than to relieve from the vitiated Relish of pert and ignorant Coxcombs, such Productions of our own as promise a Genius. Merit in perfection may be easily seen, but it will require a Taste and Penetration extraordinary to discover it in the Bud — and how worthy a Labour this is, may appear by the Number of excellent Men this Nation has from time to time produced, and who the Moment their Parts began to ripen, were forced to leave it for more indulgent Regions; depriving us at once of the Benefit and Ornament we should have from their residing amongst us.
Where Science flourishes, Vice flies before it; who then is so audacious as to affirm Knowledge begets Vice? what opinion can be more senseless? if so, its Opposite Quality, Ignorance should be the Parent of Virtue. But so false is this Assertion, that we may venture to say, where Ignorance sways, there can scarce be any true Virtue. But Men who look with an envious Eye on Talents they can never hope to equal, are willing to bring every thing to their own Level; and thus many decry the Arts, not that they think them hurtful, but that they despair of ever coming to any excellence in them.