by Edmund Burke
It is known, I believe, that the greater as well as the sounder part of our excluded countrymen have not adopted the wild ideas and wilder engagements which have been held out to them, but have rather chosen to hope small and safe concessions from the legal power than boundless objects from trouble and confusion. This mode of action seems to me to mark men of sobriety, and to distinguish them from those who are intemperate, from circumstance or from nature. But why do they not instantly disclaim and disavow those who make such advances to them? In this, too, in my opinion, they show themselves no less sober and circumspect. In the present moment nothing short of insanity could induce them to take such a step. Pray consider the circumstances. Disclaim, says somebody, all union with the Dissenters; — right. — But when this your injunction is obeyed, shall I obtain the object which I solicit from you? — Oh, no, nothing at all like it! — But, in punishing us, by an exclusion from the Constitution through the great gate, for having been invited to enter into it by a postern, will you punish by deprivation of their privileges, or mulet in any other way, those who have tempted us? — Far from it; — we mean to preserve all their liberties and immunities, as our life-blood. We mean to cultivate them, as brethren whom we love and respect; — with you we have no fellowship. We can bear with patience their enmity to ourselves; but their friendship with you we will not endure. But mark it well! All our quarrels with them are always to be revenged upon you. Formerly, it is notorious that we should have resented with the highest indignation your presuming to show any ill-will to them. You must not suffer them, now, to show any good-will to you. Know — and take it once for all — that it is, and ever has been, and ever will be, a fundamental maxim in our politics, that you are not to have any part or shadow or name of interest whatever in our state; that we look upon you as under an irreversible outlawry from our Constitution, — as perpetual and unalliable aliens.
Such, my dear Sir, is the plain nature of the argument drawn from the Revolution maxims, enforced by a supposed disposition in the Catholics to unite with the Dissenters. Such it is, though it were clothed in never such bland and civil forms, and wrapped up, as a poet says, in a thousand “artful folds of sacred lawn.” For my own part, I do not know in what manner to shape such arguments, so as to obtain admission for them into a rational understanding. Everything of this kind is to be reduced at last to threats of power. I cannot say, Væ victis! and then throw the sword into the scale. I have no sword; and if I had, in this case, most certainly, I would not use it as a makeweight in political reasoning.
Observe, on these principles, the difference between the procedure of the Parliament and the Dissenters towards the people in question. One employs courtship, the other force. The Dissenters offer bribes, the Parliament nothing but the front négatif of a stern and forbidding authority. A man may be very wrong in his ideas of what is good for him. But no man affronts me, nor can therefore justify my affronting him, by offering to make me as happy as himself, according to his own ideas of happiness. This the Dissenters do to the Catholics. You are on the different extremes. The Dissenters offer, with regard to constitutional rights and civil advantages of all sorts, everything; you refuse everything. With them, there is boundless, though not very assured hope; with you, a very sure and very unqualified despair. The terms of alliance from the Dissenters offer a representation of the commons, chosen out of the people by the head. This is absurdly and dangerously large, in my opinion; and that scheme of election is known to have been at all times perfectly odious to me. But I cannot think it right of course to punish the Irish Roman Catholics by an universal exclusion, because others, whom you would not punish at all, propose an universal admission. I cannot dissemble to myself, that, in this very kingdom, many persons who are not in the situation of the Irish Catholics, but who, on the contrary, enjoy the full benefit of the Constitution as it stands, and some of whom, from the effect of their fortunes, enjoy it in a large measure, had some years ago associated to procure great and undefined changes (they considered them as reforms) in the popular part of the Constitution. Our friend, the late Mr. Flood, (no slight man,) proposed in his place, and in my hearing, a representation not much less extensive than this, for England, — in which every house was to be inhabited by a voter, in addition to all the actual votes by other titles (some of the corporate) which we know do not require a house or a shed. Can I forget that a person of the very highest rank, of very large fortune, and of the first class of ability, brought a bill into the House of Lords, in the head-quarters of aristocracy, containing identically the same project for the supposed adoption of which by a club or two it is thought right to extinguish all hopes in the Roman Catholics of Ireland? I cannot say it was very eagerly embraced or very warmly pursued. But the Lords neither did disavow the bill, nor treat it with any disregard, nor express any sort of disapprobation of its noble author, who has never lost, with king or people, the least degree of the respect and consideration which so justly belongs to him.
I am not at all enamored, as I have told you, with this plan of representation; as little do I relish any bandings or associations for procuring it. But if the question was to be put to you and me, — Universal popular representation, or none at all for us and ours, — we should find ourselves in a very awkward position. I do not like this kind of dilemmas, especially when they are practical.
Then, since our oldest fundamental laws follow, or rather couple, freehold with franchise, — since no principle of the Revolution shakes these liberties, — since the oldest and one of the best monuments of the Constitution demands for the Irish the privilege which they supplicate, — since the principles of the Revolution coincide with the declarations of the Great Charter, — since the practice of the Revolution, in this point, did not contradict its principles, — since, from that event, twenty-five years had elapsed, before a domineering party, on a party principle, had ventured to disfranchise, without any proof whatsoever of abuse, the greater part of the community, — since the king’s coronation oath does not stand in his way to the performance of his duty to all his subjects, — since you have given to all other Dissenters these privileges without limit which are hitherto withheld without any limitation whatsoever from the Catholics, — since no nation in the world has ever been known to exclude so great a body of men (not born slaves) from the civil state, and all the benefits of its Constitution, — the whole question comes before Parliament as a matter for its prudence. I do not put the thing on a question of right. That discretion, which in judicature is well said by Lord Coke to be a crooked cord, in legislature is a golden rule. Supplicants ought not to appear too much in the character of litigants. If the subject thinks so highly and reverently of the sovereign authority as not to claim anything of right, so that it may seem to be independent of the power and free choice of its government, — and if the sovereign, on his part, considers the advantages of the subjects as their right, and all their reasonable wishes as so many claims, — in the fortunate conjunction of these mutual dispositions are laid the foundations of a happy and prosperous commonwealth. For my own part, desiring of all things that the authority of the legislature under which I was born, and which I cherish, not only with a dutiful awe, but with a partial and cordial affection, to be maintained in the utmost possible respect, I never will suffer myself to suppose that at bottom their discretion will be found to be at variance with their justice.
The whole being at discretion, I beg leave just to suggest some matters for your consideration: — Whether the government in Church or State is likely to be more secure by continuing causes of grounded discontent to a very great number (say two millions) of the subjects? or whether the Constitution, combined and balanced as it is, will be rendered more solid by depriving so large a part of the people of all concern or interest or share in its representation, actual or virtual? I here mean to lay an emphasis on the word virtual. Virtual representation is that in which there is a communion of interests and a sympathy in feelings and desires between those w
ho act in the name of any description of people and the people in whose name they act, though the trustees are not actually chosen by them. This is virtual representation. Such a representation I think to be in many cases even better than the actual. It possesses most of its advantages, and is free from many of its inconveniences; it corrects the irregularities in the literal representation, when the shifting current of human affairs or the acting of public interests in different ways carry it obliquely from its first line of direction. The people may err in their choice; but common interest and common sentiment are rarely mistaken. But this sort of virtual representation cannot have a long or sure existence, if it has not a substratum in the actual. The member must have some relation to the constituent. As things stand, the Catholic, as a Catholic, and belonging to a description, has no virtual relation to the representative, — but the contrary. There is a relation in mutual obligation. Gratitude may not always have a very lasting power; but the frequent recurrence of an application for favors will revive and refresh it, and will necessarily produce some degree of mutual attention. It will produce, at least, acquaintance. The several descriptions of people will not be kept so much apart as they now are, as if they were not only separate nations, but separate species. The stigma and reproach, the hideous mask will be taken off, and men will see each other as they are. Sure I am that there have been thousands in Ireland who have never conversed with a Roman Catholic in their whole lives, unless they happened to talk to their gardener’s workmen, or to ask their way, when they had lost it in their sports, — or, at best, who had known them only as footmen, or other domestics, of the second and third order: and so averse were they, some time ago, to have them near their persons, that they would not employ even those who could never find their way beyond the stable. I well remember a great, and in many respects a good man, who advertised for a blacksmith, but at the same time added, he must be a Protestant. It is impossible that such a state of things, though natural goodness in many persons will undoubtedly make exceptions, must not produce alienation on the one side and pride and insolence on the other.
Reduced to a question of discretion, and that discretion exercised solely upon what will appear best for the conservation of the state on its present basis, I should recommend it to your serious thoughts, whether the narrowing of the foundation is always the best way to secure the building? The body of disfranchised men will not be perfectly satisfied to remain always in that state. If they are not satisfied, you have two millions of subjects in your bosom full of uneasiness: not that they cannot overturn the Act of Settlement, and put themselves and you under an arbitrary master; or that they are not permitted to spawn a hydra of wild republics, on principles of a pretended natural equality in man; but because you will not suffer them to enjoy the ancient, fundamental, tried advantages of a British Constitution, — that you will not permit them to profit of the protection of a common father or the freedom of common citizens, and that the only reason which can be assigned for this disfranchisement has a tendency more deeply to ulcerate their minds than the act of exclusion itself. What the consequence of such feelings must be it is for you to look to. To warn is not to menace.
I am far from asserting that men will not excite disturbances without just cause. I know that such an assertion is not true. But neither is it true that disturbances have never just complaints for their origin. I am sure that it is hardly prudent to furnish them with such causes of complaint as every man who thinks the British Constitution a benefit may think at least colorable and plausible.
Several are in dread of the manœuvres of certain persons among the Dissenters, who turn this ill humor to their own ill purposes. You know, better than I can, how much these proceedings of certain among the Dissenters are to be feared. You are to weigh, with the temper which is natural to you, whether it may be for the safety of our establishment that the Catholics should be ultimately persuaded that they have no hope to enter into the Constitution but through the Dissenters.
Think whether this be the way to prevent or dissolve factious combinations against the Church or the State. Reflect seriously on the possible consequences of keeping in the heart of your country a bank of discontent, every hour accumulating, upon which every description of seditious men may draw at pleasure. They whose principles of faction will dispose them to the establishment of an arbitrary monarchy will find a nation of men who have no sort of interest in freedom, but who will have an interest in that equality of justice or favor with which a wise despot must view all his subjects who do not attack the foundations of his power. Love of liberty itself may, in such men, become the means of establishing an arbitrary domination. On the other hand, they who wish for a democratic republic will find a set of men who have no choice between civil servitude and the entire ruin of a mixed Constitution.
Suppose the people of Ireland divided into three parts. Of these, (I speak within compass,) two are Catholic; of the remaining third, one half is composed of Dissenters. There is no natural union between those descriptions. It may be produced. If the two parts Catholic be driven into a close confederacy with half the third part of Protestants, with a view to a change in the Constitution in Church or State or both, and you rest the whole of their security on a handful of gentlemen, clergy, and their dependents, — compute the strength you have in Ireland, to oppose to grounded discontent, to capricious innovation, to blind popular fury, and to ambitious, turbulent intrigue.
You mention that the minds of some gentlemen are a good deal heated, and that it is often said, that, rather than submit to such persons, having a share in their franchises, they would throw up their independence, and precipitate an union with Great Britain. I have heard a discussion concerning such an union amongst all sorts of men ever since I remember anything. For my own part, I have never been able to bring my mind to anything clear and decisive upon the subject. There cannot be a more arduous question. As far as I can form an opinion, it would not be for the mutual advantage of the two kingdoms. Persons, however, more able than I am think otherwise. But whatever the merits of this union may be, to make it a menace, it must be shown to be an evil, and an evil more particularly to those who are threatened with it than to those who hold it out as a terror. I really do not see how this threat of an union can operate, or that the Catholics are more likely to be losers by that measure than the churchmen.
The humors of the people, and of politicians too, are so variable in themselves, and are so much under the occasional influence of some leading men, that it is impossible to know what turn the public mind here would take on such an event. There is but one thing certain concerning it. Great divisions and vehement passions would precede this union, both on the measure itself and on its terms; and particularly, this very question of a share in the representation for the Catholics, from whence the project of an union originated, would form a principal part in the discussion; and in the temper in which some gentlemen seem inclined to throw themselves, by a sort of high, indignant passion, into the scheme, those points would not be deliberated with all possible calmness.
From my best observation, I should greatly doubt, whether, in the end, these gentlemen would obtain their object, so as to make the exclusion of two millions of their countrymen a fundamental article in the union. The demand would be of a nature quite unprecedented. You might obtain the union; and yet a gentleman, who, under the new union establishment, would aspire to the honor of representing his county, might possibly be as much obliged, as he may fear to be under the old separate establishment, to the unsupportable mortification of asking his neighbors, who have a different opinion concerning the elements in the sacrament, for their votes.
I believe, nay, I am sure, that the people of Great Britain, with or without an union, might be depended upon, in oases of any real danger, to aid the government of Ireland, with the same cordiality as they would support their own, against any wicked attempts to shake the security of the happy Constitution in Church and State. But before Great Britain engages in a
ny quarrel, the cause of the dispute would certainly be a part of her consideration. If confusions should arise in that kingdom from too steady an attachment to a proscriptive, monopolizing system, and from the resolution of regarding the franchise, and in it the security of the subject, as belonging rather to religious opinions than to civil qualification and civil conduct, I doubt whether you might quite certainly reckon on obtaining an aid of force from hence for the support of that system. We might extend your distractions to this country by taking part in them. England will be indisposed, I suspect, to send an army for the conquest of Ireland. What was done in 1782 is a decisive proof of her sentiments of justice and moderation. She will not be fond of making another American war in Ireland. The principles of such a war would but too much resemble the former one. The well-disposed and the ill-disposed in England would (for different reasons perhaps) be equally averse to such an enterprise. The confiscations, the public auctions, the private grants, the plantations, the transplantations, which formerly animated so many adventurers, even among sober citizens, to such Irish expeditions, and which possibly might have animated some of them to the American, can have no existence in the case that we suppose.