by Edmund Burke
Is it to the Cispadane or to the Transpadane republics, which have been forced to bow under the galling yoke of French liberty, that we address all these pledges of our sincerity and love of peace with their unnatural parents?
Are we by this Declaration to satisfy the King of Naples, whom we have left to struggle as he can, after our abdication of Corsica, and the flight of the whole naval force of England out of the whole circuit of the Mediterranean, abandoning our allies, our commerce, and the honor of a nation once the protectress of all other nations, because strengthened by the independence and enriched by the commerce of them all? By the express provisions of a recent treaty, we had engaged with the King of Naples to keep a naval force in the Mediterranean. But, good God! was a treaty at all necessary for this? The uniform policy of this kingdom as a state, and eminently so as a commercial state, has at all times led us to keep a powerful squadron and a commodious naval station in that central sea, which borders upon and which connects a far greater number and variety of states, European, Asiatic, and African, than any other. Without such a naval force, France must become despotic mistress of that sea, and of all the countries whose shores it washes. Our commerce must become vassal to her and dependent on her will. Since we are come no longer to trust to our force in arms, but to our dexterity in negotiation, and begin to pay a desperate court to a proud and coy usurpation, and have finally sent an ambassador to the Bourbon Regicides at Paris, the King of Naples, who saw that no reliance was to be placed on our engagements, or on any pledge of our adherence to our nearest and dearest interests, has been obliged to send his ambassador also to join the rest of the squalid tribe of the representatives of degraded kings. This monarch, surely, does not want any proof of the sincerity of our amicable dispositions to that amicable republic, into whose arms he has been given by our desertion of him.
To look to the powers of the North. — It is not to the Danish ambassador, insolently treated in his own character and in ours, that we are to give proofs of the Regicide arrogance, and of our disposition to submit to it.
With regard to Sweden I cannot say much. The French influence is struggling with her independence; and they who consider the manner in which the ambassador of that power was treated not long since at Paris, and the manner in which the father of the present King of Sweden (himself the victim of regicide principles and passions) would have looked on the present assassins of France, will not be very prompt to believe that the young King of Sweden has made this kind of requisition to the King of Great Britain, and has given this kind of auspice of his new government.
I speak last of the most important of all. It certainly was not the late Empress of Russia at whose instance we have given this pledge. It is not the new Emperor, the inheritor of so much glory, and placed in a situation of so much delicacy and difficulty for the preservation of that inheritance, who calls on England, the natural ally of his dominions, to deprive herself of her power of action, and to bind herself to France. France at no time, and in none of its fashions, least of all in its last, has been ever looked upon as the friend either of Russia or of Great Britain. Everything good, I trust, is to be expected from this prince, — whatever may be without authority given out of an influence over his mind possessed by that only potentate from whom he has anything to apprehend or with whom he has much even to discuss.
This sovereign knows, I have no doubt, and feels, on what sort of bottom is to be laid the foundation of a Russian throne. He knows what a rock of native granite is to form the pedestal of his statue who is to emulate Peter the Great. His renown will be in continuing with ease and safety what his predecessor was obliged to achieve through mighty struggles. He is sensible that his business is not to innovate, out to secure and to establish, — that reformations at this day are attempts at best of ambiguous utility. He will revere his father with the piety of a son, but in his government he will imitate the policy of his mother. His father, with many excellent qualities, had a short reign, — because, being a native Russian, he was unfortunately advised to act in the spirit of a foreigner. His mother reigned over Russia three-and-thirty years with the greatest glory, — because, with the disadvantage of being a foreigner born, she made herself a Russian. A wise prince like the present will improve his country; but it will be cautiously and progressively, upon its own native groundwork of religion, manners, habitudes, and alliances. If I prognosticate right, it is not the Emperor of Russia that ever will call for extravagant proofs of our desire to reconcile ourselves to the irreconcilable enemy of all thrones.
I do not know why I should not include America among the European powers, — because she is of European origin, and has not yet, like France, destroyed all traces of manners, laws, opinions, and usages which she drew from Europe. As long as that Europe shall have any possessions either in the southern or the northern parts of that America, even separated as it is by the ocean, it must be considered as a part of the European system. It is not America, menaced with internal ruin from the attempts to plant Jacobinism instead of liberty in that country, — it is not America, whose independence is directly attacked by the French, the enemies of the independence of all nations, that calls upon us to give security by disarming ourselves in a treacherous peace. By such a peace, we shall deliver the Americans, their liberty, and their order, without resource, to the mercy of their imperious allies, who will have peace or neutrality with no state which is not ready to join her in war against England.
Having run round the whole circle of the European system, wherever it acts, I must affirm that all the foreign powers who are not leagued with France for the utter destruction of all balance through Europe and throughout the world demand other assurances from this kingdom than are given in that Declaration. They require assurances, not of the sincerity of our good dispositions towards the usurpation in France, but of our affection towards the college of the ancient states of Europe, and pledges of our constancy, our fidelity, and of our fortitude in resisting to the last the power that menaces them all. The apprehension from which they wish to be delivered cannot be from anything they dread in the ambition of England. Our power must be their strength. They hope more from us than they fear. I am sure the only ground of their hope, and of our hope, is in the greatness of mind hitherto shown by the people of this nation, and its adherence to the unalterable principles of its ancient policy, whatever government may finally prevail in France. I have entered into this detail of the wishes and expectations of the European powers, in order to point out more clearly not so much what their disposition as (a consideration of far greater importance) what their situation demands, according as that situation is related to the Regicide Republic and to this kingdom.
Then, if it is not to satisfy the foreign powers we make this assurance, to what power at home is it that we pay all this humiliating court? Not to the old Whigs or to the ancient Tories of this kingdom, — if any memory of such ancient divisions still exists amongst us. To which of the principles of these parties is this assurance agreeable? Is it to the Whigs we are to recommend the aggrandizement of France, and the subversion of the balance of power? Is it to the Tories we are to recommend our eagerness to cement ourselves with the enemies of royalty and religion? But if these parties, which by their dissensions have so often distracted the kingdom, which by their union have once saved it, and which by their collision and mutual resistance have preserved the variety of this Constitution in its unity, be (as I believe they are) nearly extinct by the growth of new ones, which have their roots in the present circumstances of the times, I wish to know to which of these new descriptions this Declaration is addressed. It can hardly be to those persons who, in the new distribution of parties, consider the conservation in England of the ancient order of things as necessary to preserve order everywhere else, and who regard the general conservation of order in other countries as reciprocally necessary to preserve the same state of things in these islands. That party never can wish to see Great Britain pledge herself to give the lead a
nd the ground of advantage and superiority to the France of to-day, in any treaty which is to settle Europe. I insist upon it, that, so far from expecting such an engagement, they are generally stupefied and confounded with it. That the other party, which demands great changes here, and is so pleased to see them everywhere else, which party I call Jacobin, that this faction does, from the bottom of its heart, approve the Declaration, and does erect its crest upon the engagement, there can be little doubt. To them it may be addressed with propriety, for it answers their purposes in every point.
The party in opposition within the House of Lords and Commons it is irreverent, and half a breach of privilege, (far from my thoughts,) to consider as Jacobin. This party has always denied the existence of such a faction, and has treated the machinations of those whom you and I call Jacobins as so many forgeries and fictions of the minister and his adherents, to find a pretext for destroying freedom and setting up an arbitrary power in this kingdom. However, whether this minority has a leaning towards the French system or only a charitable toleration of those who lean that way, it is certain that they have always attacked the sincerity of the minister in the same modes, and on the very same grounds, and nearly in the same terms, with the Directory. It must therefore be at the tribunal of the minority (from the whole tenor of the speech) that the minister appeared to consider himself obliged to purge himself of duplicity. It was at their bar that he held up his hand; it was on their sellette that he seemed to answer interrogatories; it was on their principles that he defended his whole conduct. They certainly take what the French call the haut du pavé. They have loudly called for the negotiation. It was accorded to them. They engaged their support of the war with vigor, in case peace was not granted on honorable terms. Peace was not granted on any terms, honorable or shameful. Whether these judges, few in number, but powerful in jurisdiction, are satisfied, — whether they to whom this new pledge is hypothecated have redeemed their own, — whether they have given one particle more of their support to ministry, or even, favored them with their good opinion or their candid construction, I leave it to those who recollect that memorable debate to determine.
The fact is, that neither this Declaration, nor the negotiation which is its subject, could serve any one good purpose, foreign or domestic; it could conduce to no end, either with regard to allies or neutrals. It tends neither to bring back the misled, nor to give courage to the fearful, nor to animate and confirm those who are hearty and zealous in the cause.
I hear it has been said (though I can scarcely believe it) by a distinguished person, in an assembly where, if there be less of the torrent and tempest of eloquence, more guarded expression is to be expected, that, indeed, there was no just ground of hope in this business from the beginning.
It is plain that this noble person, however conversant in negotiation, having been employed in no less than four embassies, and in two hemispheres, and in one of those negotiations having fully experienced what it was to proceed to treaty without previous encouragement, was not at all consulted in this experiment. For his Majesty’s principal minister declared, on the very same day, in another House, “his Majesty’s deep and sincere regret at its unfortunate and abrupt termination, so different from the wishes and hopes that were entertained,” — and in other parts of the speech speaks of this abrupt termination as a great disappointment, and as a fall from sincere endeavors and sanguine expectation. Here are, indeed, sentiments diametrically opposite, as to the hopes with which the negotiation was commenced and carried on; and what is curious is, the grounds of the hopes on the one side and the despair on the other are exactly the same. The logical conclusion from the common premises is, indeed, in favor of the noble lord; for they are agreed that the enemy was far from giving the least degree of countenance to any such hopes, and that they proceeded in spite of every discouragement which the enemy had thrown in their way. But there is another material point in which they do not seem to differ: that is to say, the result of the desperate experiment of the noble lord, and of the promising attempt of the great minister, in satisfying the people of England, and in causing discontent to the people of France, — or, as the minister expresses it, “in uniting England and in dividing France.”
For my own part, though I perfectly agreed with the noble lord that the attempt was desperate, so desperate, indeed, as to deserve his name of an experiment, yet no fair man can possibly doubt that the minister was perfectly sincere in his proceeding, and that, from his ardent wishes for peace with the Regicides, he was led to conceive hopes which were founded rather in his vehement desires than in any rational ground of political speculation. Convinced as I am of this, it had been better, in my humble opinion, that persons of great name and authority had abstained from those topics which had been used to call the minister’s sincerity into doubt, and had not adopted the sentiments of the Directory upon the subject of all our negotiations: for the noble lord expressly says that the experiment was made for the satisfaction of the country. The Directory says exactly the same thing. Upon granting, in consequence of our supplications, the passport to Lord Malmesbury, in order to remove all sort of hope from its success, they charged all our previous steps, even to that moment of submissive demand to be admitted to their presence, on duplicity and perfidy, and assumed that the object of all the steps we had taken was that “of justifying the continuance of the war in the eyes of the English nation, and of throwing all the odium of it upon the French.” “The English nation” (said they) “supports impatiently the continuance of the war, and a reply must be made to its complaints and its reproaches; the Parliament is about to be opened, and the mouths of the orators who will declaim against the war must be shut; the demands for new taxes must be justified; and to obtain these results, it is necessary to be able to advance that the French government refuses every reasonable proposition for peace.” I am sorry that the language of the friends to ministry and the enemies to mankind should be so much in unison.
As to the fact in which these parties are so well agreed, that the experiment ought to have been made for the satisfaction of this country, (meaning the country of England,) it were well to be wished that persons of eminence would cease to make themselves representatives of the people of England, without a letter of attorney, or any other act of procuration. In legal construction, the sense of the people of England is to be collected from the House of Commons; and though I do not deny the possibility of an abuse of this trust as well as any other, yet I think, without the most weighty reasons and in the most urgent exigencies, it is highly dangerous to suppose that the House speaks anything contrary to the sense of the people, or that the representative is silent, when the sense of the constituent, strongly, decidedly, and upon long deliberation, speaks audibly upon any topic of moment. If there is a doubt whether the House of Commons represents perfectly the whole commons of Great Britain, (I think there is none,) there can be no question but that the Lords and the Commons together represent the sense of the whole people to the crown and to the world. Thus it is, when we speak legally and constitutionally. In a great measure it is equally true, when we speak prudentially. But I do not pretend to assert that there are no other principles to guide discretion than those which are or can be fixed by some law or some constitution: yet before the legally presumed sense of the people should be superseded by a supposition of one more real, (as in all cases where a legal presumption is to be ascertained,) some strong proofs ought to exist of a contrary disposition in the people at large, and some decisive indications of their desire upon this subject. There can be no question, that, previously to a direct message from the crown, neither House of Parliament did indicate anything like a wish for such advances as we have made or such negotiations as we have carried on. The Parliament has assented to ministry; it is not ministry that has obeyed the impulse of Parliament. The people at large have their organs through which they can speak to Parliament and to the crown by a respectful petition, and though not with absolute authority, yet with weight
, they can instruct their representatives. The freeholders and other electors in this kingdom have another and a surer mode of expressing their sentiments concerning the conduct which is held by members of Parliament. In the middle of these transactions this last opportunity has been held out to them. In all these points of view I positively assert that the people have nowhere and in no way expressed their wish of throwing themselves and their sovereign at the feet of a wicked and rancorous foe, to supplicate mercy, which, from the nature of that foe, and from the circumstances of affairs, we had no sort of ground to expect. It is undoubtedly the business of ministers very much to consult the inclinations of the people, but they ought to take great care that they do not receive that inclination from the few persons who may happen to approach them. The petty interests of such gentlemen, their low conceptions of things, their fears arising from the danger to which the very arduous and critical situation of public affairs may expose their places, their apprehensions from the hazards to which the discontents of a few popular men at elections may expose their seats in Parliament, — all these causes trouble and confuse the representations which they make to ministers of the real temper of the nation. If ministers, instead of following the great indications of the Constitution, proceed on such reports, they will take the whispers of a cabal for the voice of the people, and the counsels of imprudent timidity for the wisdom of a nation.