Complete Works of Edmund Burke

by Edmund Burke

  APPENDIX.

  [The Address of M. Brissot to his Constituents being now almost forgotten, it has been thought right to add, as an Appendix, that part of it to which Mr. Burke points our particular attention and upon which he so forcibly comments in his Preface.]

  Three sorts of anarchy have ruined our affairs in Belgium.

  The anarchy of the administration of Pache, which has completely disorganized the supply of our armies; which by that disorganization reduced the army of Dumouriez to stop in the middle of its conquests; which struck it motionless through the months of November and December; which hindered it from joining Beurnonville and Custine, and from forcing the Prussians and Austrians to repass the Rhine, and afterwards from putting themselves in a condition to invade Holland sooner than they did.

  To this state of ministerial anarchy it is necessary to join that other anarchy which disorganized the troops, and occasioned their habits of pillage; and lastly, that anarchy which created the revolutionary power, and forced the union to France of the countries we had invaded, before things were ripe for such a measure.

  Who could, however, doubt the frightful evils that were occasioned in our armies by that doctrine of anarchy which, under the shadow of equality of right, would establish equality of fact? This is universal equality, the scourge of society, as the other is the support of society: an anarchical doctrine which would level all things, talents and ignorance, virtues and vices, places, usages, and services; a doctrine which begot that fatal project of organizing the army, presented by Dubois de Crancé, to which it will be indebted for a complete disorganization.

  Mark the date of the presentation of the system of this equality of fact, entire equality. It had been projected and decreed even at the very opening of the Dutch campaign. If any project could encourage the want of discipline in the soldiers, any scheme could disgust and banish good officers, and throw all things into confusion at the moment when order alone could give victory, it is this project, in truth, so stubbornly defended by the anarchists, and transplanted into their ordinary tactic.

  How could they expect that there should exist any discipline, any subordination, when even in the camp they permit motions, censures, and denunciations of officers and of generals? Does not such a disorder destroy all the respect that is due to superiors, and all the mutual confidence without which success cannot be hoped for? For the spirit of distrust makes the soldier suspicious, and intimidates the general. The first discerns treason in every danger; the second, always placed between the necessity of conquest and the image of the scaffold, dares not raise himself to bold conception, and those heights of courage which electrify an army and insure victory. Turenne, in our time, would have carried his head to the scaffold; for he was sometimes beat: but the reason why he more frequently conquered was, that his discipline was severe; it was, that his soldiers, confiding in his talents, never muttered discontent instead of fighting. Without reciprocal confidence between the soldier and the general, there can be no army, no victory, especially in a free government.

  Is it not to the same system of anarchy, of equalization, and want of subordination, which has been recommended in some clubs and defended even in the Convention, that we owe the pillages, the murders, the enormities of all kinds, which it was difficult for the officers to put a stop to, from the general spirit of insubordination, — excesses which have rendered the French name odious to the Belgians? Again, is it not to this system of anarchy, and of robbery, that we are indebted for the revolutionary power, which has so justly aggravated the hatred of the Belgians against France?

  What did enlightened republicans think before the 10th of August, men who wished for liberty, not only for their own country, but for all Europe? They believed that they could generally establish it by exciting the governed against the governors, in letting the people see the facility and the advantages of such insurrections.

  But how can the people be led to that point? By the example of good government established among us; by the example of order; by the care of spreading nothing but moral ideas among them: to respect their properties and their rights; to respect their prejudices, even when we combat them: by disinterestedness in defending the people; by a zeal to extend the spirit of liberty amongst them.

  This system was at first followed. Excellent pamphlets from the pen of Condorcet prepared the people for liberty; the 10th of August, the republican decrees, the battle of Valmy, the retreat of the Prussians, the victory of Jemappes, all spoke in favor of France: all was rapidly destroyed by the revolutionary power. Without doubt, good intentions made the majority of the Assembly adopt it; they would plant the tree of liberty in a foreign soil, under the shade of a people already free. To the eyes of the people of Belgium it seemed but the mask of a new foreign tyranny. This opinion was erroneous; I will suppose it so for a moment; but still this opinion of Belgium deserved to be considered. In general, we have always considered our own opinions and our own intentions rather than the people whose cause we defend. We have given those people a will: that is to say, we have more than ever alienated them from liberty.

  How could the Belgic people believe themselves free, since we exercise for them, and over them, the rights of sovereignty, — when, without consulting them, we suppress, all in a mass, their ancient usages, their abuses, their prejudices, those classes of society which without doubt are contrary to the spirit of liberty, but the utility of whose destruction was not as yet proved to them? How could they believe themselves free and sovereign, when we made them take such an oath as we thought fit, as a test to give them the right of voting? How could they believe themselves free, when openly despising their religious worship, which religious worship that superstitious people valued beyond their liberty, beyond even their life; when we proscribed their priests; when we banished them from their assemblies, where they were in the practice of seeing them govern; when we seized their revenues, their domains, and riches, to the profit of the nation; when we carried to the very censer those hands which they regarded as profane? Doubtless these operations were founded on principles; but those principles ought to have had the consent of the Belgians, before they were carried into practice; otherwise they necessarily became our most cruel enemies.

  Arrived ourselves at the last bounds of liberty and equality, trampling under our feet all human superstitions, (after, however, a four years’ war with them,) we attempt all at once to raise to the same eminence men, strangers even to the first elementary principles of liberty, and plunged for fifteen hundred years in ignorance and superstition; we wished to force men to see, when a thick cataract covered their eyes, even before we had removed that cataract; we would force men to see, whose dulness of character had raised a mist before their eyes, and before that character was altered.

  Do you believe that the doctrine which now prevails in France would have found many partisans among us in 1789? No: a revolution in ideas and in prejudices is not made with that rapidity; it moves gradually; it does not escalade.

  Philosophy does not inspire by violence, nor by seduction; nor is it the sword that begets love of liberty.

  Joseph the Second also borrowed the language of philosophy, when he wished to suppress the monks in Belgium, and to seize upon their revenues. There was seen on him a mask only of philosophy, covering the hideous countenance of a greedy despot; and the people ran to arms. Nothing better than another kind of despotism has been seen in the revolutionary power.

  We have seen in the commissioners of the National Convention nothing but proconsuls working the mine of Belgium for the profit of the French nation, seeking to conquer it for the sovereign of Paris, — either to aggrandize his empire, or to share the burdens of the debts, and furnish a rich prize to the robbers who domineered in France.

  Do you believe the Belgians have ever been the dupes of those well-rounded periods which they vended in the pulpit in order to familiarize them to the idea of an union with France? Do you believe they were ever imposed upon by those vo
tes and resolutions, made by what is called acclamation, for their union, of which corruption paid one part, and fear forced the remainder? Who, at this time of day, is unacquainted with the springs and wires of their miserable puppet-show? Who does not know the farces of primary assemblies, composed of a president, of a secretary, and of some assistants, whose day’s work was paid for? No: it is not by means which belong only to thieves and despots that the foundations of liberty can be laid in an enslaved country. It is not by those means, that a new-born republic, a people who know not yet the elements of republican governments, can be united to us. Even slaves do not suffer themselves to be seduced by such artifices; and if they have not the strength to resist, they have at least the sense to know how to appreciate the value of such an attempt.

  If we would attach the Belgians to us, we must at least enlighten their minds by good writings; we must send to them missionaries, and not despotic commissioners. We ought to give them time to see, — to perceive by themselves the advantages of liberty, the unhappy effects of superstition, the fatal spirit of priesthood. And whilst we waited for this moral revolution, we should have accepted the offers which they incessantly repeated to join to the French army an army of fifty thousand men, to entertain them at their own expense, and to advance to France the specie of which she stood in need.

  But have we ever seen those fifty thousand soldiers who were to join our army as soon as the standard of liberty should be displayed in Belgium? Have we ever seen those treasures which they were to count into our hands? Can we either accuse the sterility of their country, or the penury of their treasure, or the coldness of their love for liberty? No! despotism and anarchy, these are the benefits which we have transplanted into their soil. We have acted, we have spoken, like masters; and from that time we have found the Flemings nothing but jugglers, who made the grimace of liberty for money, or slaves, who in their hearts cursed their new tyrants. Our commissioners address them in this sort: “You have nobles and priests among you: drive them out without delay, or we will neither be your brethren nor your patrons.” They answered: “Give us but time; only leave to us the care of reforming these institutions.” Our answer to them was: “No! it must be at the moment, it must be on the spot; or we will treat you as enemies, we will abandon you to the resentment of the Austrians.”

  What could the disarmed Belgians object to all this, surrounded as they were by seventy thousand men? They had only to hold their tongues, and to bow down their heads before their masters. They did hold their tongues, and their silence is received as a sincere and free assent.

  Have not the strangest artifices been adopted to prevent that people from retreating, and to constrain them to an union? It was foreseen, that, as long as they were unable to effect an union, the States would preserve the supreme authority amongst themselves. Under pretence, therefore, of relieving the people, and of exercising the sovereignty in their right, at one stroke they abolished all the duties and taxes, they shut up all the treasuries. From that time no more receipts, no more public money, no more means of paying the salaries of any man in office appointed by the States. Thus was anarchy organized amongst the people, that they might be compelled to throw themselves into our arms. It became necessary for those who administered their affairs, under the penalty of being exposed to sedition, and in order to avoid their throats being cut, to have recourse to the treasury of France. What did they find in this treasury? ASSIGNATS. — These assignats were advanced at par to Belgium. By this means, on the one hand, they naturalized this currency in that country, and on the other, they expected to make a good pecuniary transaction. Thus it is that covetousness cut its throat with its own hands. The Belgians have seen in this forced introduction of assignats nothing but a double robbery; and they have only the more violently hated the union with France.

  Recollect the solicitude of the Belgians on that subject. With what earnestness did they conjure you to take off a retroactive effect from these assignats, and to prevent them from being applied to the payment of debts that were contracted anterior to the union!

  Did not this language energetically enough signify that they looked upon the assignats as a leprosy, and the union as a deadly contagion?

  And yet what regard was paid to so just a demand? It was buried in the Committee of Finance. That committee wanted to make anarchy the means of an union. They only busied themselves in making the Belgic Provinces subservient to their finances.

  Cambon said loftily before the Belgians themselves: The Belgian war costs us hundreds of millions. Their ordinary revenues, and even some extraordinary taxes, will not answer to our reimbursements; and yet we have occasion for them. The mortgage of our assignats draws near its end. What must be done? Sell the Church property of Brabant. There is a mortgage of two thousand millions (eighty millions sterling). How shall we get possession of them? By an immediate union. Instantly they decreed this union. Men’s minds were not disposed to it. What does it signify? Let us make them vote by means of money. Without delay, therefore, they secretly order the Minister of Foreign Affairs to dispose of four or five hundred thousand livres (20,000l. sterling) to make the vagabonds of Brussels drunk, and to buy proselytes to the union in all the States. But even these means, it was said, will obtain but a weak minority in our favor. What does that signify? Revolutions, said they, are made only by minorities. It is the minority which has made the Revolution of France; it is a minority which, has made the people triumph.

  The Belgic Provinces were not sufficient to satisfy the voracious cravings of this financial system. Cambon wanted to unite everything, that he might sell everything. Thus he forced the union of Savoy. In the war with Holland, he saw nothing but gold to seize on, and assignats to sell at par. “Do not let us dissemble,” said he one day to the Committee of General Defence, in presence even of the patriot deputies of Holland, “you have no ecclesiastical goods to offer us for our indemnity. IT IS A REVOLUTION IN THEIR COUNTERS AND IRON CHESTS that must be made amongst the DUTCH.” The word was said, and the bankers Abema and Van Staphorst understood it.

  Do you think that that word has not been worth an army to the Stadtholder? that it has not cooled the ardor of the Dutch patriots? that it has not commanded the vigorous defence of Williamstadt?

  Do you believe that the patriots of Amsterdam, when they read the preparatory decree which gave France an execution on their goods, — do you believe that those patriots would not have liked better to have remained under the government of the Stadtholder, who took from them no more than a fixed portion of their property, than to pass under that of a revolutionary power, which would make a complete revolution in their bureaus and strong-boxes, and reduce them to wretchedness and rags? Robbery and anarchy, instead of encouraging, will always stifle revolutions.

  “But why,” they object to me, “have not you and your friends chosen to expose these measures in the rostrum of the National Convention? Why have you not opposed yourself to all these fatal projects of union?”

  There are two answers to make here, — one general, one particular.

  You complain of the silence of honest men! You quite forget, then, honest men are the objects of your suspicion. Suspicion, if it does not stain the soul of a courageous man, at least arrests his thoughts in their passage to his lips. The suspicions of a good citizen freeze those men whom the calumny of the wicked could not stop in their progress.

  You complain of their silence! You forget, then, that you have often established an insulting equality between them and men covered with crimes and made up of ignominy.

  You forget, then, that you have twenty times left them covered with opprobrium by your galleries.

  You forget, then, that you have not thought yourself sufficiently powerful to impose silence upon these galleries.

  What ought a wise man to do in the midst of these circumstances? He is silent. He waits the moment when the passions give way; he waits till reason shall preside, and till the multitude shall listen to her voice.

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nbsp; What has been the tactic displayed during all these unions? Cambon, incapable of political calculation, boasting his ignorance in the diplomatic, flattering the ignorant multitude, lending his name and popularity to the anarchists, seconded by their vociferations, denounced incessantly, as counter-revolutionists, those intelligent persons who were desirous at least of having things discussed. To oppose the acts of union appeared to Cambon an overt act of treason. The wish so much as to reflect and to deliberate was in his eyes a great crime. He calumniated our intentions. The voice of every deputy, especially my voice, would infallibly have been stifled. There were spies on the very monosyllables that escaped our lips.

  ADDRESS TO THE KING.

  We, your Majesty’s most dutiful and loyal subjects, several of the peers of the realm, and several members of the House of Commons chosen by the people to represent them in Parliament, do in our individual capacity, but with hearts filled with a warm affection to your Majesty, with a strong attachment to your royal house, and with the most unfeigned devotion to your true interest, beg leave, at this crisis of your affairs, in all humility to approach your royal presence.

  Whilst we lament the measures adopted by the public councils of the kingdom, we do not mean to question the legal validity of their proceedings. We do not desire to appeal from them to any person whatsoever. We do not dispute the conclusive authority of the bodies in which we have a place over all their members. We know that it is our ordinary duty to submit ourselves to the determinations of the majority in everything, except what regards the just defence of our honor and reputation. But the situation into which the British empire has been brought, and the conduct to which we are reluctantly driven in that situation, we hold ourselves bound by the relation in which we stand both to the crown and the people clearly to explain to your Majesty and our country.