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(1729-1797)
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Editor/Trans.
E. J. Payne, ed.
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First Pub. Date
1790
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Publisher/Edition
Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, Inc.
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Pub. Date
1990
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Comments
Foreword and notes by Francis Canavan.
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1. Page 85. The Revolution in France. The term "Revolution," from its application to the events of 1688, had acquired in England a sense exclusively favourable. "Revolution principles" meant the principles of English constitutional liberty. The Tories who supported the Hanoverian succession, while opposing the rest of the policy of the Whigs, called themselves "Revolution Tories." Hence the name "Revolution Society" meant much the same as "Constitutional Society." This use of the term in bonam partem, which was still in vogue, though in its decline, at the time of the French Revolution, from that time disappears from the English language. Burke was at first unwilling to apply the term to a series of events which in his opinion amounted to the total subversion of the framework of a national society, and was based on what he called "spurious Revolution principles," p. 103, l. 26: but custom soon sanctioned its use in England. In France it had been in common use for forty years, and had passed from a favourable sense to one almost legendary and heroic. Thus, on the use of it made by Barbier in 1751, M. Aubertin writes; "Voilà donc ce mot de 'révolution' qui abonde sous la plume des contemporains, et pour un temps illimité prend possession de notre histoire. Désormais, l'idée sinistre d'une catastrophe nécessaire, d'une péripétie tragique, obsède les imaginations françaises; la vie politique de notre pays sort des conditions d'un développement normal pour entrer dans les brusques mouvements et dans l'horreur mystérieuse d'un drame." L'Esprit Public au XVIIIe Siècle, p. 282. On the use of the word shortly before the event, see Mercier, New Picture of Paris, ch. 3: "Every book that bore the title of Revolution was bought up and carried away.... We were always hearing the words, 'Give me the Roman Revolutions—the Revolutions of Sweden—of Italy'; and booksellers, in order to sell their old books, printed false titles, and took the purchase on the credit merely of the label."
2. IBID. Eleventh Edition, 1791. Within a few months after its first publication, the work had reached this, its permanent form. Burke made some alterations in the text as it appears in the first edition, which will be noticed so far as they are material. A few short annotations, which appear in editions subsequent to the one adopted as the text, are printed with it (see note to
3. IBID. Argument. Burke says (p. 95, l. 24) that he writes with very little attention to formal method. This distribution of the work into sections is only approximative, and intended to assist the reader in marking the salient points, and thus more readily seizing the drift of the work. The brief headings given in this "Argument" only indicate the thread of the thought, by no means include all that hangs upon it. Those who desire a minute analysis can consult the translations of Gentz and Dupont: but such an analysis tends to impair the effect of the work, which is essentially discursive and informal.
4. P. 87, L. 24. a very young gentleman at Paris. M. Dupont, who afterwards translated the work into French. He became acquainted with Burke in London, and visited him at Beaconsfield.
5. L. 27. an answer was written, &c. See Burke's Corr. vol. iii. p. 102. This letter will be found valuable as a means of acquiring a first and general idea of Burke's views. It bears evidence of great pains taken in the composition. Sir Philip Francis, whose taste was so much offended by the "Reflections," thought this letter "in point of writing, much less exceptionable."
6. P. 88, L. 1. upon prudential considerations—i. e. for fear of the letter being opened, and the receiver endangered by the opinions contained in it. Cp. p. 88, l. 26.
7. L. 4. assigned in a short letter—which was then sent in its stead. They appear to have been afterwards incorporated in the letter itself (Corr. vol. iii. pp. 103, 104).
8. L. 8. early in the last spring. The "Substance of Mr. Burke's Speech in the Debate on the Army Estimates, Feb. 9, 1790," published very soon after, in which his views on French events were freely stated, was followed by Lord Stanhope's Letter in answer to it, dated Feb. 24, in which he says, "From the title of another pamphlet, which an advertisement in the papers has announced is speedily to be expected from you, it is conjectured that the Revolution Society in London was in your contemplation when you made that Speech," p. 20. Lord Stanhope was chairman of that society. The advertisement was in the London Chronicle for Feb. 16, 1790, and runs as follows: "In the Press, and will speedily be published, Reflections on certain
9. P. 88, L. 29. neither for nor from any description of men. Thus far the publication bears a different character to those of the Constitutional and Revolution Societies. Burke, however, claims throughout the first part of the work to be expressing the opinions of all true Englishmen (p. 179).
10. P. 89, L. 3. spirit of rational liberty, &c. Cp. the Letter to Depont, Corr. vol. iii. p. 105: "You hope that I think the French deserving liberty. I certainly do. I certainly think that all men who desire it, deserve it. It is not the reward of our merit, or the acquisition of our industry. It is our inheritance. It is the birthright of our species. We cannot forfeit our right to it, but by what forfeits our title to the privileges of our kind—I mean, the abuse, or oblivion of our rational faculties, and a ferocious indocility which makes us prompt to wrong and violence, destroys our social nature, and transforms us into something little better than the description of wild beasts."
11. L. 4. a permanent body, &c. See the same Letter, pp. 107-113.
12. L. 13. more clubs than one. The allusion is especially to the Whig club "Brooks's," of which Burke became a member in 1783.
13. L. 33. the Constitutional Society—seven or eight years' standing. Really somewhat more, having been founded by Major Cartwright in the spring of 1780, "after whole months of strenuous exertion." It numbered among its members the Dukes of Norfolk and Richmond, the Earls of Derby, Effingham, and Selkirk, together with many other persons of rank and members of Parliament.
14. P. 90, L. 2. circulation of many books, &c. An apologist for the Society says that portions of the works of the old Whig authors, such as Sidney, Locke, Trenchard, Lord Somers, &c., were distributed gratis by the Society. But the chief object of the Society was to circulate the writings of Cartwright, Capel Lofft, Jebb, Northcote, Sharp, and other pamphleteers of the day. It is to these that Burke alludes l. 15, in deprecating "the greater part of the publications circulated by that Society."
15. L. 5. booksellers = publishers.
16. L. 7. —The word is repeated, by the figure called traductio, in a contemptuous way. Burke hints that the books were not worth reading, and were in fact not read.
17. L. 10. much talk of the lights, &c. Cp. the French Correspondent of the St. James's Chronicle, Dec. 15, 1789: "It is you, O ye noble inhabitants of
18. L. 12. meliorated. Burke always uses this (the correct form) instead of the modern "ameliorate."
19. P. 91, L. 3. a club of Dissenters. Dr. Kippis and Dr. Rees were distinguished members. The Society was established by dissenters, but for some years then past it had numbered among its adherents many members of the Church of England. Lord Surrey, and the Dukes of Norfolk, Leeds, Richmond, and Manchester, sometimes attended their meetings, together with many members of the House of Commons.
20. L. 3. of what denomination, &c. In the time of Burke the lines which separated dissenting denominations from each other and from the Church were less sharply defined than now. The Unitarians were recognised by other denominations, and allowed to preach in their meeting-houses. Dr. Price was nominally an "Independent," though his doctrines were Unitarian.
21. L. 16. new members may have entered. It is stated by Lord Stanhope in his Life of Pitt, that this society had then been lately "new-modelled," with a view to co-operating with the French revolutionists. In this way it came to be a "Society for Revolutions," as Burke calls it at p. 110, l. 4.
22. P. 92, L. 24. who they are—personal abilities, &c. We trace here Burke's inflexible practice of connecting measures and opinions with the persons who support them. Cp. the Letter to Depont, p. 115: "Never wholly separate in your mind the merits of any political question from the men who are concerned in it."
23. P. 93, L. 8. nakedness and solitude of metaphysical abstraction. Perhaps an echo of Butler:
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He took her (viz. matter) naked, all alone,
Before one rag of form was on.
—Hudibras, Part i. Canto i. l. 561.
24. L. 9. circumstances, &c. One of the so-called truisms often insisted on by Aristotle.
25. L. 14. government, as well as liberty. Cp. note to vol. i. p. 70, l. 22. By "government," Burke means here, as often elsewhere, a state or habit of political regulation. Burke ends as well as begins the book with the distinction between true and false liberty. See p. 361.
26. L. 15. ten years ago. After the fall of Turgot, when the French government was at its worst.
27. L. 26. the scene of the criminals. See Don Quixote, Part i. ch. 22. This masterpiece seems to have been a favourite with Burke. "Blessings on his soul, that first invented sleep, said Don Sancho Panza the wise! All those blessings, and ten thousand times more, on him who found out abstraction, personification, and impersonals." Fourth Letter on Regicide Peace.
28. L. 27. the metaphysic knight. Burke uses with but little discrimination the forms metaphysic, metaphysical; ecclesiastic, ecclesiastical; theatric,
29. L. 29. spirit of liberty.... wild gas, &c. Crabbe is frequently indebted for a hint to Burke, his early patron;
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I for that freedom make, said he, my prayer,
That suits with all, like atmospheric air;
............. .
The lighter gas, that taken in the frame
The spirit heats, and sets the blood on flame,—
Such is the freedom which when men approve,
They know not what a dangerous thing they love.
—Crabbe, Tales of the Hall.
30. L. 31. the fixed air. Then the scientific term for carbonic acid gas. The gas was discovered by Van Helmont. This name was given to it by Dr. Black, in 1755, on account of its property, discovered by him, of readily losing its elasticity, and fixing itself in many bodies, particularly those of a calcareous kind.
31. L. 32. the first effervescence. Cp. infra p. 263, l. 7. "Fixed air" is contained in great quantity in fermented liquors, to which it gives their briskness.
32. P. 94, L. 2. Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver. The idea is adapted from Shakespeare:
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.... It is twice blessed:
It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes.
—Merch. of Ven., Act iv. sc. 1.
33. IBID. Flattery; adulation. Intended to express a difference between this vice as a private and as a public practice.
34. L. 5. how it had been combined with government, &c. The Second Part (p. 269 to end) is here anticipated.
35. L. 9. Solidity = stability.
36. L. 13. do what they please. "Mais la liberté politique ne consiste point à faire ce que l'on veut.... La liberté ne peut consister qu'à pouvoir faire ce que l'on doit vouloir." De l'Esprit des Lois, Liv. xi. ch. 3.
37. L. 17. liberty... is power. "On a confondu le pouvoir du peuple avec la liberté du peuple." Id. ch. 2. In France, says M. Mignet candidly, the love of liberty is equivalent to the love of power.
38. L. 22. those who appear the most stirring, &c. It was believed that the Duke of Orleans was the prime mover, although he did not take the most active part in the scene.
39. L. 28. on my coming to town—for the winter season of 1789-90.
40. IBID. an account of these proceedings. "A Discourse on the Love of our Country, delivered on Nov. 4, 1789, at the Meeting House in the Old Jewry to the Society for commemorating the Revolution in Great Britain. With an Appendix containing the Report of the Committee of the Society; an
41. P. 95, L. 8. prudence of an higher order. Burke always recognizes a good and bad form of moral habits and feelings, without much reference to their names and common acceptations. Hence such striking expressions as "false, reptile prudence," "fortitude of rational fear," &c., abound in his writings.
42. L. 10. feeble enough—infancy still more feeble. Burke was too much disposed to refer the Revolution to the spirit of contemporary Jacobinism as a prime cause. Such a spirit may help, but it can never originate, much less carry into effect, similar convulsions, which always have powerful material causes. There was much Jacobinism in England; more than we can now understand. One fifth of the active political forces of this country were classed by Burke as Jacobin; but there was no such irresistible series of material causes as, in the face of material resistance, produced the explosion of 1789.
43. L. 12. heap mountains on mountains. Cp. Waller, On the Head of a Stag:
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Heav'n with these Engines had been scal'd,
When mountains heap'd on mountains fail'd.
The allusion is to the Titans. See Virg. Georg. i. 281.
44. L. 13. our neighbour's house on fire, &c.
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Nam tua res agitur, paries quum proximus ardet.
—Hor. Ep. Lib. i. xviii. 84.
See the idea developed in Burke's justification of interference in the affairs of France, grounded on the "law of civil vicinity," in the First Letter on a Regicide Peace—"Vicini vicinorum facta praesumuntur scire—this principle, which, like the rest, is as true of nations as of individual men, has bestowed on the grand vicinage of Europe a right to know, and a right to prevent, any capital innovation which may amount to the erection of a dangerous nuisance." The politicians of France had denied such a right, on the abstract principle that to every nation belongs the unmolested regulation of its domestic affairs.
45. L. 22. freedom of epistolary intercourse; little attention to formal method. "The arrangement of his work is as singular as the matter. Availing himself of all the privileges of epistolary effusion, in their utmost latitude and
46. L. 28. perhaps of more than Europe. The designs of Bonaparte, and actual events in Egypt, Syria, India, and the West Indies, justify this forecast. The Revolution forced on the independence of Spanish and Portuguese America.
47. L. 32. by means the most absurd, &c. Balzac (the earlier), "Aristippe": "Les grands événements ne sont pas toujours produits par de grandes causes. Les ressorts sont cachés, et les machines paraissent; et quand on vient à découvrir ces ressorts, on s'étonne de les voir et si faibles et si petits. On a honte de l'opinion qu'on en avait eue." Cp. in the beginning of the First Letter on a Regicide Peace; "It is often impossible, in these political enquiries, to find any proportion between the apparent force of any moral causes we may assign, and their known operation.... A common soldier, a child, a girl at the door of an inn, have changed the face of fortune, and almost of nature." In that place, as here, he is considering the fact that "in that its acmé of human prosperity and greatness, in the high and palmy state of the monarchy of France, it fell to the ground without a struggle." So Dr. Johnson: "Politicians have long observed, that the greatest events may be often traced back to slender causes. Petty competition, or casual friendship, the prudence of a slave, or the garrulity of a woman, have hindered or promoted the most important schemes, and hastened or retarded the revolutions of Empire." The Rambler, No. 141.
48. P. 96, L. 12. Machiavelian. The old adjective, from the French form "Machiavel," then in use in England. The ch is pronounced soft. We now say "Machiavelli" and "Machiavellian," pronouncing the ch hard.
49. L. 15. Dr. Richard Price... minister of eminence. Now an old man and in failing health. He was a political economist of some repute, cp. p. 228, l. 31. His writings procured him the friendship of Lord Rockingham's Whig rival, Lord Shelburne, who wished him to become his private secretary, on his accession to office in 1782. By Burke and his party Lord Shelburne was bitterly detested. Shelburne's party, minus their leader, were now in power under Pitt: and hence there might be presumed by foreigners some connexion between Price and the English government. Political disappointment thus contributes to the virulence with which Burke attacks
50. L. 21. ingredient in the cauldron. Alluding to Macbeth, Act iv. sc. 1.
51. P. 97, L. 2. oracle—philippizes. The celebrated expression of Demosthenes. Aesch. in Ctes. p. 72.
52. L. 8. Applied derisively. "Reverend" as a title dates from some time after Peters.
53. L. 15. your league in France. The Holy League of the Catholics. Burke may have had in mind Grey's note on Hudibras, Part i. Canto ii. l. 651.
54. L. 19. politics and the pulpit, &c. The common cry of professional politicians. Silence with regard to public matters neither can nor ought to be kept in the pulpits of a free nation in stirring times. "I abhorred making the pulpit a scene for the venting of passion, or the serving of interests." Burnet, Own Times, Ann. 1684. The practice was by no means confined to the Revolutionists. On the 30th of January, 1790, the Bishop of Chester had preached before the House of Peers a political diatribe full of violent invective against the French nation and the National Assembly. The House voted him thanks, and ordered the sermon to be printed. As to the introduction of politics in the pulpit, Fox agrees with Burke: "Dr. Price, in his sermon on the anniversary of the English Revolution, delivered many noble sentiments, worthy of an enlightened philosopher.... But, though I approve of his general principles, I consider his arguments as unfit for the pulpit. The clergy, in their sermons, ought no more to handle political affairs, than this House ought to discuss subjects of morality and religion." Speech on the Test Act, 1790.
55. L. 28. Inexperienced in all its affairs, on which they pronounce with so much confidence. "Try experiments, as sound philosophers have done, and on them raise a legislative system!" This is a specimen of the wisdom of the Rev. Robert Robinson, another of these political divines; once famous as a Baptist minister at Cambridge.
56. P. 98, L. 3. The hint given to a noble and reverend lay-divine. The Duke of Grafton, whom Junius and Burke had united in attacking twenty years before. He had lately written a pamphlet on the subject of the Liturgy and Subscription, entitled "Hints &c., submitted to the serious attention of the Clergy, Nobility, and Gentry, newly assembled." Price calls it "a pamphlet ascribed to a great name, and which would dignify any name." It is chiefly remarkable as having called forth Bishop Horsley's Apology for the Liturgy and Clergy of the Church of England. Mathias alludes to "the pious Grafton," and his hostility to the Church, in his "Pursuits of Literature," Dialogue iv. l. 191, where he adds a note, "See the Duke's Hints—rather broad." Again at l. 299:
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With Symonds, and with Grafton's Duke would vie,
A Dilettante in Divinity.
57. P. 98, L. 4. lay-divine. The Duke held Unitarian opinions. Besides some writings of his own, he had done service to religious enquiry by printing for popular circulation the celebrated recension of the New Testament by Griesbach.
58. IBID. high in office in one of our Universities. Cp. Junius, Letter xv. The Duke was Chancellor of the University of Cambridge. Gray's Ode on his installation is well known. The text hints at the impropriety of such an office being held by a frequenter of the Unitarian meeting-house of Dr. Disney in Essex Street.
59. L. 5. to other lay-divines of rank. The allusion is to the friend and patron of Price and Priestly, the Marquis of Lansdowne (Earl of Shelburne), who also held Unitarian opinions.
60. L. 7. Seekers. The Seekers were a Puritan sect who professed no determinate form of religion. Sir Harry Vane was at their head.
61. L. 8. old staple—as in Shakespeare, = material, especially used of woollen tissues. "Spun into the primitive staple of their frame," Fourth Letter on Regicide Peace. Cp. infra p. 302, l. 26.
62. L. 10. to improve upon non-conformity. Cp. note vol. i. p. 240, l. 1.
63. L. 22. calculating divine. Alluding to Price's labours as a political arithmetician.
64. L. 23. great preachers. Ps. xlviii. v. 11. The repetition of great is ironical, alluding to the rank of these lay-divines.
65. L. 26. hortus siccus. A collection of dried plants.
66. P. 99, L. 1. baron bold. Milton, L'Allegro, l. 119.
67. L. 3. this town. The work was written in Burke's house in Gerrard Street, Soho.
68. IBID. uniform round of its vapid dissipations. Alluding to the London season, which at this date began late in the autumn, and terminated late in the spring. Cp. Johnson's homily on the Close of the Season, Rambler No. 124 (May 25, 1751).
69. L. 5. Mess-Johns = Parsons, in the familiar sense. "Mess" is an archaic corruption of Magister. The term is of Scottish origin. Cp. Fergusson (the precursor of Burns), Hollow-fair;
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See there is Bill-Jock and auld Hawkie,
And yonder's Mess-John and auld Nick.
70. L. 18. Utinam nugis, &c. Juv. Sat. iv. 150.
71. L. 22. is almost the only lawful king, &c. From the insolent form of words in which Price says he would have congratulated the king on his recovery, "in a style very different from that of most of the addresses." (p. 25), alluded to infra, p. 116.
72.
73. IBID. twelfth century. Burke alludes to the pontificate of Innocent III, 1198-1216. Cp. the Abridgment of Eng. Hist. Book iii. chap. 8. "At length the sentence of excommunication was fulminated against the king (John). In the same year the same sentence was pronounced upon the Emperor Otho; and this daring pope was not afraid at once to drive to extremities the two greatest princes in Europe.... Having first released the English subjects from their oath of allegiance, by an unheard-of presumption he formally deposed John from his throne and dignity; he invited the king of France to take possession of the forfeited crown," &c.
74. P. 100, L. 23. gradually habituated to it. Cp. infra p. 157, l. 2.
75. L. 26. condo et compono, &c. Hor. Epist. I. 1. 12.
76. P. 101, L. 17. at a remote period, elective. "Reges ex nobilitate... sumunt," Tacitus, Germ. c. 7. Bolingbroke, N. Bacon, &c., make much of the fact as applied to the Saxon kings, and to Stephen and John after the Conquest.
77. L. 23. and whilst the legal conditions, &c. Cp. infra p. 108, l. 16.
78. L. 29. electoral college. The collective style of the nine Electors to the Empire. "College" (collegium) is used in its technical sense in Roman law.
79. P. 102, L. 20. lives and fortunes. A very ancient formula, the original words of which survive in the German "Mit Gut und Blut." So the 8th section of the Bill of Rights: "That they will stand to, maintain, and defend their said Majesties.... with their lives and estates, against all persons whatsoever," &c. This will explain the reference in the next sentence. The expression recalls the once common "life and property addresses" from public bodies to the crown.
80. L. 26. Revolution of 1688. It must be confessed that the argument which Burke here begins, and sustains with much force and ingenuity through twenty pages, is a complete failure. Mr. Hallam has refuted it at almost every point. It must be remembered that Burke is writing not as a judge, or a philosophical historian, but as an advocate. He conceived that the constitution would be endangered by the tenets of the Society, if they came into general credit, and made up his mind to lend the whole weight of his authority and his skill as a debater to support the opposite views (cp. the concluding paragraph of the work).
81. L. 29. confounding all the three together. Burke, using the expression of Sir Joseph Jekyl, says, that the Revolution of 1688 "was, in truth and in substance, a revolution not made, but prevented." In the Revolution of "forty years before," which good sense and good faith on the part of one man might have prevented, the letter of our liberties was insisted on quite as strictly as by the Old Whigs, or by Burke.
82. P. 103, L. 11. Declaration of Right. Commonly called the Bill of Rights. It is printed in the Appendix to Professor Stubbs's Select Charters, p. 505.
83.
84. L. 19. A few years after this period. 12 & 13 Will. III. cap. 2. By this Act the Crown was settled, after the death of William III and Anne without issue, upon the Princess Sophia, youngest daughter of Elizabeth Queen of Bohemia (daughter of James I.), and the heirs of her body, being protestants. Burke does not mention the Act 6 Anne, cap. 7, which asserts the right of the legislature to regulate the descent of the Crown, and makes it treasonable to maintain the contrary.
85. P. 104, L. 5. gypsey predictions—i. e. ignorant, random utterances. Burke called the republican nomenclature of the months "gipsey jargon."
86. L. 6. the wisdom of the nation—i. e. the collected opinion of wise politicians.
87. L. 7. case of necessity—rule of law. Cp. in the Fragment of Speech on the Acts of Uniformity; "When tyranny is extreme, and abuses of government intolerable, men resort to the rights of nature to shake it off. When they have done so, the very same principle of necessity of human affairs, to establish some other authority, which shall preserve the order of this new institution, must be obeyed, until they grow intolerable; and you shall not be suffered to plead original liberty against such an institution. See Holland, Switzerland."
88. L. 10. a small and temporary deviation—regular hereditary succession. This is hardly worthy of Burke. Hallam most truly says: "Our new line of sovereigns scarcely ventured to hear of their hereditary right.... This was the greatest change that affected our monarchy by the fall of the House of Stuart. The laws were not so materially altered as the spirit and sentiments of the people. Hence those who look only at the former have been prone to underrate the magnitude of this revolution. The fundamental maxims of the constitution, both as they regard the king and the subject, may seem nearly the same; but the disposition with which they were received and interpreted was entirely different." The truth of this last statement is undeniable.
89. L. 14. Privilegium non transit in exemplum. A maxim of the Civil law. "Privilegium" is used in the technical sense of an enactment that has for its object particular persons, as distinguished from a public measure. "C'est un grand mal," says Pascal, "de suivre l'exception au lieu de la règle. Il faut être sévère et contraire à l'exception."
90. L. 17. its not being done at that time, &c. "The Commons," says Hallam, "did not deny that the case was one of election, though they refused to allow that the monarchy was thus rendered perpetually elective."
91. L. 24. on that of his wife. By which, as Bentinck said, the prince would have become "his wife's gentleman-usher."
92. IBID. eldest born of the issue.... acknowledged as undoubtedly his. The allusion is to the reported spuriousness of the prince born in 1688. Until that unfortunate event, which precipitated the Revolution, the Princess was heir presumptive to the crown. In acquiescing in the Revolution, the
93. L. 29. choice... act of necessity. If this were really said in seriousness, it is a sophism which could scarcely mystify an intelligent schoolboy. Two very different things are indicated by the term "choice."
94. P. 105, L. 15. to reign over us, &c. The best comment on this is, that it required a distinct Act of Parliament (2 W. and M. ch. 6) to enable the queen to exercise the regal power during the king's absence from England.
95. P. 106, L. 10. repeating as from a rubric. A process which always commanded Burke's respect, in matters of the constitution. Cp. vol. i. p. 267, l. 26, &c.
96. L. 31. limitation of the crown. In the technical sense, alluding to the succession being made conditional on the profession of Protestantism (see § 9 of the Declaration).
97. P. 107, L. 3. for themselves and for all their posterity for ever. It is impossible to defend Burke in this literal reading of the Declaration, in which he follows the genuine Tory Swift (Examiner, No. 16). This paper of Swift's will illustrate the difference between real Toryism and the Whig-Toryism of Bolingbroke. The words "for ever," copied from the Act of 1st Elizabeth, are mere surplusage, as in the expression "heirs for ever," in relation to private property. The right of Parliament to regulate the succession to the crown was too well established to make it worth while to have recourse to this verbal quibble. "The Parliament," says Sir Thomas Smith (Secretary of State temp. Elizabeth), "giveth form of succession to the Crown. To be short, all that ever the people of Rome might do either in centuriatis comitiis or tribunitiis, the same may be done by the Parliament of England." Commonwealth of England, p. 77, Ed. 1633. Priestley remarked that Burke had rendered himself, by denying this competency in Parliament, liable to the charge of high treason under an act framed by his own idol, Lord Somers: and Lord Stanhope declared his intention of impeaching him for it. The right of binding posterity was denied, on general grounds, by Locke, Treatise Concerning Government, Book ii. ch. viii. 116, to whom Swift alludes in the Examiner: "Lawyers may explain this, or call them words of form, as they please; and reasoners may argue that such an obligation is against the nature of government: but a plain reader, &c."
98. L. 4. The question as to a power of a people to bind their posterity is argued and settled according to Burke's opinion in a well-known passage in Absalom and Achitophel.
99. L. 6. better Whig than Lord Somers, &c. Note, vol. i. p. 148, l. 34. See Burke's panegyric upon the "Old Whigs"; "They were not umbratiles doctores, men who had studied a free constitution only in its anatomy, and upon dead systems. They knew it alive, and in action." Burke really
100. L. 12. aided with the powers. Burke generally uses with to express the instrument. We now say "by the powers." Cp. p. 115, l. 10, &c.
101. L. 18. difficult... to give limits to the mere abstract competence of the supreme power. The distinction between abstract and moral competence had an important place in Burke's reasoning on the American question. Perimus licitis. Cp. vol. i. p. 254, and see note.
102. L. 27. house of lords—not morally competent, &c. "The legislative can have no power to transfer their authority of making laws, and place it in other hands."—"The house of lords is not morally competent to dissolve itself, nor to abdicate, if it would, its portion in the legislature of the kingdom." These passages are quoted, the former from Locke, the latter from Bushel, by Grattan, in his Speech against the Union, Feb. 8, 1810. The argument is merely an idle non possumus; and on Grattan's deduction from it, the verdict of succeeding generations has been against it.
103. L. 34. constitution—constituent parts. The old "constitutional" doctrine is here very clearly stated. Had Burke lived a century later, he would have seen that it completely failed when it came to be generally applied. No principle is now better established than the unity and indivisibility of national sovereignty.
104. P. 108, L. 10. not changing the substance—describing the persons—same force—equal authority. Burke does not add force to his subtleties by this parody of the Athanasian Creed. Yet he cautions his readers, a few lines further, against getting "entangled in the mazes of metaphysic sophistry"!
105. L. 14. communi sponsione reipublicae. The Editor does not call to mind the phrase as a quotation. It was possibly invented by Burke, to express his meaning with the more weight.
106. L. 19. mazes of metaphysic sophistry. See note to vol. i. p. 215, l. 11. The outcry against "metaphysic sophistry" was no invention of Burke's. It is a favourite topic with Bolingbroke and other politicians who opposed the philosophical Whiggism of the School of Locke.
107. L. 23. extreme emergency. Mr. Hallam says most truly that this view, which "imagines some extreme cases of intolerable tyranny, some, as it were, lunacy of despotism, as the only plea and palliation of resistance," is merely a "pretended modification of the slavish principles of absolute obedience."
108. P. 109, L. 10. states. i. e. the Lords and Commons; the English Parliament in its original form being an imitation of the States-General of France. Our Liturgy until lately spoke of "the Three Estates of the Realm of
The bold design
Pleas'd highly those infernal States, and joy
Sparkl'd in all their eyes.
—Par. Lost, ii. 386.
109. L. 11. organic moleculae of a disbanded people. The idea is fully explained in the First Letter on Regicide Peace; "The body politic of France existed in the majesty of its throne, in the dignity of its nobility, in the honour of its gentry, in the sanctity of its clergy, in the reverence of its magistracy, in the weight and consideration due to its landed property in the several bailliages, in the respect due to its moveable substance represented by the corporations of the kingdom. All these particular moleculae united form the great mass of what is truly the body politic in all countries."
110. L. 25. Some time after the conquest, &c. "Five kings out of the seven that followed William the Conqueror were usurpers, according at least to modern notions" (Hallam). The facts seem to be as follows. Even in private succession, the descent of an inheritance as between the brother and the son of the owner was settled by no certain rule of law in the time of Glanvil. The system of Tanistry, which prevailed in Ireland down to the time of James I., and under which the land descended to the "eldest and most worthy" of the same blood, who was commonly ascertained by election, was thus partially in force. No better mode, says Mr. Hallam, could have been devised for securing a perpetual supply of civil quarrels. The principle of inheritance per stirpem which sound policy gradually established in private possessions, was extended by the lawyers about the middle of the 13th century to the Crown. Edward I. was proclaimed immediately upon his father's death, though absent in Sicily. Something however of the old principle may be traced in this proclamation, issued in his name by the guardians of the realm, where he asserts the Crown of England "to have devolved upon him by hereditary succession and the will of his nobles." These last words were omitted in the proclamation of Edward II.; since whose time the Crown has been absolutely hereditary. The question was thus settled at the period when the English constitution, according to Professor Stubbs, took its definite and permanent form. For illustrations of the question from ancient history see Grotius de Jure Bell. et Pac., Lib. ii. ch. 7, § 24.
111. L. 27. the heir per capita—the heir per stirpes. The distinction is produced by taking two different points of view; the one regarding the crown as the right of the reigning family, the other as the right of the reigning person. In the first case, when the reigning member of the family died, the whole of the members of the family (capita) re-entered into the family rights, and the crown fell to the "eldest and most worthy." In the second case, the crown descended to the legal heir or representative of the reigning person (per stirpem). By the heir per capita, Burke means the "eldest and most worthy" of the same blood. Elsewhere, following the
112. L. 30. the inheritable principle survived, &c. Burke says of the kings before the Conquest, "Very frequent examples occur where the son of a deceased king, if under age, was entirely passed over, and his uncle or some remoter relation raised to the Crown; but there is not a single instance where the election has carried it out of the blood" (Abr. Eng. Hist., Bk. ii. ch. 7).
113. L. 32. multosque per annos, &c. Virg. Georg. iv. 208. The quotation had been used as a motto to No. 72 of the Spectator, and in the Dedication to Bolingbroke's Dissertation on Parties.
114. P. 110, L. 6. take the deviation... for the principle. It was not in Burke's plan here to argue against the elective principle; but in the Annual Register for 1763, on the occasion of the then impending elections of a King of Poland and a King of the Romans, he says; "Those two elective sovereignties not only occasion many mischiefs to those who live under them, but have frequently involved a great part of Europe in blood and confusion. Indeed, these existing examples prove, beyond all speculation, the infinite superiority, in every respect, of hereditary monarchy; since it is evident, that the method of election constantly produces all those intestine divisions, to which, by its nature, it appears so liable, and also fails in that which is one of its principal objects, and which might be expected from it, the securing government for many successions in the hands of persons of extraordinary merit and uncommon capacity. We find by experience, that those kingdoms, where the throne is an inheritance, have had, in their series of succession, full as many able princes to govern them, as either Poland or Germany, which are elective."
115. L. 14. dragged the bodies of our antient sovereigns out of the quiet of their tombs. The allusion is to the outrages committed by the Roundhead troopers in Winchester Cathedral. There may also be an allusion to the plundering of the Abbey of Faversham, at the dissolution of monasteries, when the remains of King Stephen were disinterred and thrown into the Swale, for the sake of the leaden coffin. Cp. in the Draft of Letter to Markham (1770); "My passions are not to be roused, either on the side of partiality, or on that of hatred, by those who lie in their cold lead, quiet and innoxious, in the chapel of Henry, or the churches of Windsor Castle or La Trappe—quorum Flaminia tegitur cinis atque Latina."
116.
117. L. 26. Statute de tallagio non concedendo—(Anno 1297). Not originally a statute, though referred to as such in the preamble to the Petition of Right, and decided by the judges in 1637 to be a Statute. See Stubbs' Select Charters, p. 487. Cp. vol. i. p. 237, l. 33.
118. L. 27. Petition of Right. See Stubbs' Select Charters, p. 505.
119. P. 111, L. 5. The law, &c. Burke, as we might expect, turns to the Act of Settlement without saying a word of the cause which led to its being passed, namely, the failure of issue, not of Queen Mary, but of William himself. The final limitation of the Bill of Rights was to William's own heirs: so that if after Mary's death he had married some one else, and had a son, the crown would have passed completely out of the English royal family.
120. L. 27. Stock and root of inheritance—temporary administratrix of a power. This shifts the argument to a different position. The doctrines of the Revolution Society obviously referred to the latter ground of choice. But Burke would scarcely have maintained that the merit of William as an administrator did not weigh with the English nation, when they associated him with Mary on the throne.
121. L. 32. is daughter, &c. Others however, nearer in blood, but of the Catholic faith, were passed over: especially those of the Palatine family, whose ancestors having been strong assertors of the Protestant religion, it was thought likely that some of them might return to it.
122. P. 112, L. 34. A few years ago, &c. Burke commands more attention when he confesses his reason for all this deliberate mystification. No sophistry was ever too gross for the public ear; but the occasion which turned Burke for the time into a Tory casuist must have appeared to him critical indeed.
123. P. 113, L. 14. export to you in illicit bottoms. The allusion is to the Act of Navigation. See vol. i. p. 179, and note. "Bottom" (Dutch Bodem) is the old technical term for a ship. It is still used in such mercantile phrases as "foreign bottoms," and survives in the term "bottomry," applied to the advance of money on the security of the ship for the purposes of the voyage.
124. L. 27. pledge of the stability and perpetuity, &c. The following passage is proper to be quoted here, as being a complete expression of the idea in the text, and at the same time the one which was selected by De Quincey as the most characteristic passage in the works of Burke, from the literary point of view. It is also a necessary illustration to the argument at p. 141, ll. 23-35.
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Such are their ideas; such their religion; and such their law. But as to our country, and our race, as long as the well-compacted structure of our church and state, the sanctuary, the holy of holies of that ancient law, defended by reverence, defended by power, a fortress at once and a temple, shall stand inviolate on the brow of the British Sion—as long as the British monarchy, not more limited than fenced by the orders of the state, shall, like
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Dum domus Aeneae Capitoli immobile saxum
Accolet; imperiumque pater Romanus habebit.
—Letter to a Noble Lord, p. 53.
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* The allusion is obviously to the striking view of Windsor Castle and the valley of the Thames, from the uplands of Buckinghamshire, in which stood Burke's country-house, where this Letter was written. There is a similar allusion to the imposing effect of an ancient castle in the Fourth Letter on a Regicide Peace.
125. P. 114, L. 1. It is common for them to dispute, &c. But cp. Hallam, Const. Hist. chap. xiv. "Since the extinction of the House of Stuart's pretensions, and other events of the last half century, we have seen those exploded doctrines of indefeasible hereditary right revived under another name, and some have been willing to misrepresent the transactions of the Revolution and the Act of Settlement as if they did not absolutely amount to a deposition of the reigning sovereign, and an election of a new dynasty by the representatives of the nation in parliament." Mr. Hallam wished to be understood as explicitly affirming (in contradiction of Burke) what had been already stated by Paley (see Princ. of Moral and Political Philos. p. 411), that the great advantage of the Revolution was what many regarded as its reproach, and more as its misfortune—that it broke the line of succession. After stating precisely the votes, and pointing out the impossibility of reconciling them with such a construction as Burke's, he goes on to say—"It was only by recurring to a kind of paramount, and what I may call hyper-constitutional law, a mixture of force and regard to the national good, which is the best sanction of what is done in revolutions, that the vote of the Commons could be defended. They proceeded not by the stated rules of the English government, but by the general rights of mankind. They looked not so much to Magna Charta as to the original compact of society; and rejected Coke and Hale for Hooker and Grotius." Hallam in effect subscribes to the criticism contained in the 3rd, 4th, and 5th Letters of Dr. Priestley on this question. Cp. Grotius, Lib. ii. c. 7, § 27.
126.
127. L. 7. new fanatics, &c. Rousseau attacked Grotius quite as unreasonably as Filmer had done. We may exclaim too often with Burke, "One would think that such a thing as a medium had never been heard of in the moral world!"
128. L. 11. more of a divine sanction, &c. It would be superfluous to show the inaccuracy of such a notion.
129. P. 115, L. 17. broken the original contract—more than misconduct. That is, a higher degree of misconduct than Dr. Price meant to be understood by his use of the word. The argument really amounts to no more than a criticism of Dr. Price's English.
130. L. 35. popular representative = the House of Commons. Cp. vol. i. p. 118, l. 17.
131. L. 36. the next great constitutional act—the Act of Settlement, 12 and 13 W. III, cap. 2. "It was determined," says Mr. Hallam, "to accompany this settlement with additional securities for the subject's liberty. The Bill of Rights was reckoned hasty and defective: some matters of great importance had been omitted, and in the twelve years which had since elapsed, new abuses had called for new remedies." One of these abuses was the number of placemen and pensioners in the House (cp. note to vol. i. p. 138, l. 27).
132. P. 116, L. 3. no pardon—pleadable to an impeachment. This question arose upon the plea of pardon put in bar of prosecution by the Earl of Danby in 1679, and resisted with what Mr. Hallam considers culpable violence, by two successive Houses of Commons. It remained undecided until the Act of Settlement. The expressions in the enacting clause of this Act, says Mr. Hallam, "seem tacitly to concede the Crown's right of granting a pardon after sentence; which, though perhaps it could not be well distinguished in point of law from a pardon pleadable in bar, stands on a very different footing with respect to constitutional policy."
133. L. 7. practical claim of impeachment. Always strongly insisted upon by Burke as an important guarantee of constitutional liberty. Cp. vol. i. p. 120, l. 33, and note.
134. L. 17. more properly the servant, &c. The idea that a governing functionary is a servant, and that national sovereignty is inalienable, was strongly insisted on by Rousseau in the "Contrat Social" (Liv. ii. ch. 1. 2). It is an advance on the Whig doctrine, maintained by Burke, that government consists in a compact between the king and people, as equal contracting parties, which neither is at liberty to break so long as its original conditions are fulfilled. Cp. Selden's Table-Talk, head "Contracts." "If our fathers have lost their liberty, why may not we labour to regain it?" Ans. "We must look to the contract; if that be rightly made, we must stand to it: if once we grant we may recede from contracts, upon any inconveniency that
135. L. 22. Haec commemoratio, &c. Ter. And., Act i. sc. 1. l. 17. The steward Sosia, no longer a slave, in these words resents his master's reminding him of the change in his condition. Burke's repartees to Dr. Price, which fill up the rest of the page, are in his most effective parliamentary style.
136. P. 117, L. 7. Kings, in one sense, &c. Cp. vol. i. p. 118, l. 10.
137. L. 18. speak only the primitive language of the law. Cp. vol. i. p. 268, l. 11.
138. L. 24. the Justicia of Arragon. See Hallam's account of Arragon. His functions did not differ in essence from those of the Chief Justice of England, as divided among the judges of the King's Bench, but practically they were much more extensive and important. The office is to be traced to the year 1118, but it was not till the Cortes of 1348 that it was endowed with an authority which "proved eventually a more adequate barrier against oppression than any other country could boast." From that time he held his post for life. It was penal for any one to obtain letters from the king impeding the execution of the justiza's process. See Hallam's account of the successful resistance of the justiza Juan de Cerda to John I.: "an instance of judicial firmness and integrity, to which, in the fourteenth century, no country perhaps in Europe could offer a parallel." Middle Ages, chap. iv.
139. P. 118, L. 3. Let these gentlemen, &c. Selden gives as the original meaning of the maxim that the king can do no wrong, that "no process can be granted against him" (at Common Law).
140. L. 6. positive statute law which affirms that he is not. Burke clearly alludes to a provision in the Act for attainting the Regicides, 12 Car. II. cap. 30, which runs thus: "And be it hereby declared, that by the undoubted and fundamental laws of this kingdom, neither the Peers of this realm, nor the Commons, nor both together in Parliament or out of Parliament, nor the People collectively or representatively, nor any other Persons whatsoever, ever had, have, hath, or ought to have, any coercive power over the persons of the Kings of this realm." We can hardly wonder that Burke did not think fit to indicate precisely this "positive statute law."
141. L. 11. Laws are commanded, &c. The "inter arma leges silent" of Cicero.
142. L. 15. Justa bella quibus necessaria. Burke, as usual, quotes from memory. "Justa piaque sunt arma, quibus necessaria; et necessaria, quibus nulla nisi in armis spes salutis." Livy, Lib. ix. cap. 1. The passage is alluded to by Sidney, and also in the famous pamphlet "Killing no Murder"; "His (Cromwell's) indeed have been pious arms," &c., p. 8.
143. L. 24. faint, obscure, &c. Cp. notes, vol. i. p. 105, l. 13, and p. 225, l. 30.
144.
145. L. 4. The third head, &c. On this Burke does not expend so much useless force. Feeling that after all he had something better to do than to split hairs with Dr. Price, he soon pushes on to the proper business of the book. He avoids actually denying the rights of men, but alleges that Englishmen have not had occasion to insist on them.
146. P. 120, L. 1. They endeavour to prove, &c. Similarly the Americans had based their claims to liberty on law and precedent.
147. L. 18. rights of men—rights of Englishmen. "Our ancestors, for the most part, took their stand, not on a general theory, but on the particular constitution of the realm. They asserted the rights, not of men, but of Englishmen." Macaulay, Essay on Mackintosh's History of the Revolution. Burke however himself alludes to the "common rights of men," in distinction from the "disputed rights and privileges of freedom," in the Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol. And every Englishman familiar with the literature of his own time must have known that Burke exaggerated. The "rights of men" were a common Whig topic. Bp. Warburton, for instance, says in one of his Sermons that to call an English king "the Lord's Anointed" is "a violation of the rights of men."
148. L. 20. other profoundly learned men. The allusion is to Coke and Glanvil. Cp. vol. i. p. 238, l. 7.
149. L. 22. general theories. Hooker and Grotius are alluded to. See also Book I. of Selden "De Jure Naturae et Gentium secundum disciplinam Hebraeorum."
150. P. 121, L. 14. you will observe, &c. Burke here terminates his quotations from the archives of the English constitution, and passes on to his "Reflections" on the French Revolution. He effects the transition in three paragraphs, in which he contrives to rise, at once, and without an effort, to the full "height of his great argument." These three paragraphs, evidently composed with great pains, sum up the conclusions of the previous pages as to matter, and as to style are so regulated as to prepare for the gravity and force which characterize the next section of the work.
151. L. 15. uniform policy. Cp. note to vol. i. p. 180, l. 17.
152. L. 16. entailed inheritance. "Major hereditas venit unicuique nostrum a jure et legibus, quam a parentibus," is the well-known motto from Cicero, prefixed to Coke upon Littleton.
153. L. 17. derived to us from our forefathers, to be transmitted to our posterity. The spirited lines of Cato (Act III.) were familiar to Burke:
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Remember, O my friends! the laws, the rights,
The generous plan of pow'r deliver'd down
(So dearly bought, the price of so much blood),
O let it never perish in your hands,
But piously transmit it to your children.
154. L. 21. unity, diversity. Cp. vol. i. p. 255, l. 11.
155. L. 22. an house of commons and a people. Observe the claim here insinuated, suggested by Burke's Whiggish theory of Parliament. It is now understood that the rights of the House of Commons are not distinguishable from, and are immediately resolvable into those of the people.
156. L. 26. following nature, which is wisdom without reflection, &c. Cp. infra p. 174, l. 32, p. 181, l. 27, &c. So in the Third Letter on Regicide Peace; "Never was there a jar or discord between genuine sentiment and sound policy. Never, no, never, did Nature say one thing, and Wisdom say another." A literal translation of Juvenal, Sat. xiv. l. 321;
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Nunquam aliud Natura, aliud Sapientia dixit.
The formula is borrowed from the Stoic philosophy, so popular in Rome. Burke often had in mind the description of his favourite author, Lucan;
Hi mores, haec duri immota Catonis
Secta fuit; servare modum, finemque tenere,
Naturamque sequi, patriaeque impendere vitam;
Non sibi, sed toti genitum se credere mundo.
—Phars. II. 380, &c.
The use Burke makes of the idea is, however, a relic of his study of the Essayists. See the Spectator, No. 404. It occurs more than once in Chesterfield's Essays in the "World." The doctrine is well put by Beccaria; "It is not only in the fine arts that the imitation of nature is the fundamental principle; it is the same in sound policy, which is no other than the art of uniting and directing to the same end the natural and immutable sentiments of mankind."
157. L. 28. A spirit of innovation. Burke does not mean a spirit of Reform. "It cannot, at this time, be too often repeated—line upon line; precept upon precept; until it comes into the currency of a proverb—to innovate is not to reform." Letter to a Noble Lord.
158. IBID. the result of a selfish temper, &c. This might well be illustrated by the attempted innovations on the constitution in the early part of the reign (see vol. i., passim), and by the history of the Stuarts. "Charles II.," says Clarendon, "had in his nature so little reverence and esteem for antiquity, and did in truth so much contemn old orders, forms, and institutions, that the objection of novelty rather advanced than obstructed any proposition."
159. L. 29. People will not look forward, &c. "Vous vivez tout entiers dans le moment présent; vous y êtes consignés par une passion dominante: et tout ce qui ne se rapporte pas à ce moment vous parait antique et suranné. Enfin, vous êtes tellement en votre personne et de coeur et d'esprit, que, croyant former à vous seuls un point historique, les ressemblances éternelles entre le
160. P. 122, L. 3. family settlement—mortmain. By which landed property is secured inalienably (subject to important legal restrictions) in families and corporations (in the legal sense) respectively.
161. L. 4. grasped as in a kind of mortmain (mortua manus, mainmorte). There is an allusion to the fanciful explanation of the term, "that it is called mortmaine by resemblance to the holding of a man's hand that is ready to die, for what he then holdeth he letteth not go till he be dead" (Co. Litt. 2 b). The tenure was really so called because it yielded no service to the superior lord.
162. L. 10. Our political system, &c. Compare with these weighty conclusions the opinion of Bacon; "Those things which have long gone together are, as it were, confederate within themselves.... It were good, therefore, if men, in their innovations, would follow the example of time itself, which indeed innovateth greatly, but quietly, and by degrees scarcely to be perceived." Essay on Innovations. Cp. Hooker, Eccl. Pol., Book i. ch. 10, par. 9, last clause.
163. L. 15. great mysterious incorporation. Cp. vol. i. p. 288, l. 12.
164. L. 20. never wholly new, &c. Cp. Introd. to vol. i. p. 29, l. 20, &c. Cp. also the theory of the true Social Contract, p. 192 infra.
165. L. 30. The germ of the argument is to be found in the 14th of South's Posthumous Sermons: "And herein does the admirable wisdom of God appear, in modelling the great economy of the world, so uniting public and private advantages, that those affections and dispositions of mind, that are most conducible to the safety of government and society, are also most advantageous to man in his personal capacity." The argument is amplified in Dr. Chalmers' Bridgewater Treatise.
166. P. 123, L. 9. a noble freedom. The epithet is not used in the moral sense, but indicates an aristocratic character. The image, however, is not intended to degrade but to elevate the character of popular liberty.
167. L. 15. their age. But see note to vol. i. p. 138, l. 13, and Arist. Pol., Lib. ii. c. 5.
168. L. 27. possessed in some parts, &c. Burke carries on the idea of the last paragraph, likening the mass of the nation to a nobleman succeeding to his paternal estate.
169. L. 31. very nearly as good as could be wished. Was it so? This question was much debated before the meeting of the States-General. The Revolutionists wished for a constitution, to which the privileged classes replied that France already had a very good constitution, to which nothing was wanting but a restoration to its pristine vigour. This paradox is supported by Burke. A statesman so far removed from suspicion of prejudice as J. J. Mounier, is quite of another opinion. Burke likened the States-General
170. L. 32. States, i. e. States-General.
171. P. 124, L. 8. subject of compromise. Cp. vol. i. p. 278, l. 29.
172. L. 9. temperaments. Cp. note to vol. i. p. 124, l. 17.
173. L. 33. low-born servile wretches. Notice the variation from an earlier opinion in vol. i. p. 107, l. 16. The passage of Rousseau quoted in the note to that place may be here appropriately refuted by stating, in the words of Burke, the steady policy of the French monarchy, which had subsisted, and even been strengthened, by the generation or support of republics. The Swiss republics grew under the guardianship of the French monarchy. The Dutch republics were hatched and cherished under the same incubation. A republican constitution was afterwards, under the influence of France, established in the Empire, against the pretensions of its chief; and while the republican protestants were crushed at home (cp. note to p. 97, l. 19, ante) the French monarchs obtained their final establishment in Germany as a law of the Empire, by the treaty of Westphalia. See the Second Letter on Regicide Peace (1796).
174. P. 125, L. 2. Maroon slaves. Maroon (borrowed from the French West Indies, Marron) means a runaway slave.
175. L. 3. house of bondage. Exodus, xx. 2.
176. L. 20. looked to your neighbours in this land. But how impossible it was, very properly insists De Tocqueville, to do as England had done, and gradually to change the spirit of the ancient institutions by practice! By no human device can a year be made to do the work of centuries. The Frenchman felt himself every hour injured in his fortune, his comfort, or his pride, by some old law, some political usage, or some remnant of old power, and saw within his reach no remedy applicable to the particular
177. L. 34. to overlay it = to stifle or smother.
178. P. 126, L. 8. never can remove. Cp. post, pp. 360, 361.
179. L. 11. not more happy. Cp. post, p. 198.
180. L. 12. a smooth and easy career. This is putting far too fair a face on the possibilities of the crisis. Any power capable of effectually controlling the antagonistic interests might have directed such a career; but where was such a power to be found?
181. L. 25. All other nations, &c. Cp. Burnet, History of his own Time, vol. i., on this characteristic in the Bohemian revolution.
182. L. 27. some rites... of religion—severer manners. The allusion seems to be especially to the English Commonwealth.
183. P. 127, L. 3. &c. i. e. thrown into disfavour. Cp. infra, p. 172, l. 12 sqq.
184. L. 5. its most potent topics = the best arguments in its favour.
185. L. 28. medicine of the state. Cp. p. 155, l. 9.
186. IBID. They have seen, &c. Notice the strength of the antitheses. The whole section is a fine example of Burke's most powerful style.
187. P. 128, L. 6. national bankruptcy the consequence. Contentio. See note to vol. i. p. 167, l. 2.
188. L. 11. species = descriptions of money (Fr. espèces), i. e. gold and silver.
189. L. 13. hid themselves in the earth from whence they came. The germ of this dignified figure is from the Parable of the Talents. There is a passage in Swift's Drapier's Letters, writes Arthur Young, which accounts fully for gold and silver so absolutely disappearing in France; I change only Wood's pence for assignats. "For my own part, I am already resolved what to do; I have a pretty good shop of stuffs and silks, and instead of taking assignats, I intend to truck with my neighbours, the butcher and baker, and brewer, and the rest, goods for goods; and the little gold and silver I have, I will keep by me like my heart's blood, till better times; till I am just ready to starve, and then I will buy assignats." Example of France a Warning to Britain, 3rd Edition, p. 127. The louis d'or (20 livres) was at one time worth 1800 livres in assignats! Much gold and silver was at first hoarded in concealment, but during the year 1791 the treasure of France began to be imported into England. The price of 3 per cent. Consols, which during the previous five years had averaged £75, at midsummer in that year stood at £88.
190. L. 20. fresh ruins of France. The rest of Europe was at this time under the extraordinary delusion that France was really ruined; in Burke's words, "not politically existing." This persuasion partly accounts for the terror and astonishment which soon succeeded it.
191. L. 28. the last stake reserved, &c. Cp. ante, p. 119, l. 2, and post, p. 176, l. 12. Burke means that insurrection and bloodshed are the extreme medicine of the state, and only to be used in the last resort, when everything
192. L. 31. their pioneers—the philosophers and economists.
193. P. 129, L. 1. their shoe buckles. Alluding to the "patriotic donations" of silver plate. See p. 345.
194. L. 14. of ten thousand times greater consequence, &c. "They (the Jacobins) are always considering the formal distributions of power in a constitution; the moral basis they consider as nothing. Very different is my opinion; I consider the moral basis as everything; the formal arrangements, further than as they promote the moral principles of government, and the keeping desperately wicked persons as the subjects of laws, and not the makers of them, to be of little importance. What signifies the cutting and shuffling of cards, while the pack still remains the same?" Fourth Letter on Regicide Peace.
195. L. 29. lay their ordaining hands—promise of revelation. The allusion is to the practice of the Church (see Acts ch. viii).
196. P. 130, L. 2. talents—practical experience in the state. "Nous n'avons jamais manqué de philosophes et d'orateurs," says De Sacy, in his critique on Rathery's Histoire des États-Généraux; "nous n'avons eu faute que d'hommes d'état."
197. L. 7. those who will lead, &c. This canon was the result of Burke's observation of the English Parliament. Cp. vol. i. note to p. 208, l. 28. For the parallels in Greek and Roman life, see Plato, Rep., Book vi. p. 493, and Cicero, Rep., Book ii.
198. P. 131, L. 2. six hundred persons. The double representation of the Tiers État, advocated by Sieyès and D'Entragues, had already been admitted in the provincial assemblies. It was now adopted by Necker with the view of overbalancing the influence of the privileged orders, and overcoming their selfish and impolitic resistance to taxation, and their general determination to thwart the royal policy.
199. L. 11. soon resolved into that body. The states met on the 5th of May; and the Third Estate on the 17th of June, upon the motion of Sieyès, constituted itself the National Assembly. "The memorable decree of the 17th of June," says M. Mignet, "contained the germ of the 4th of August."
200. L. 14. a very great proportion, &c. The intervention of the lawyer in so many of the acts of civil life, and the complexity of the different bodies of common law (coûtumes), 300 in number, which prevailed in different parts of the country,* always greatly swelled the numbers of the profession.
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* "Nous avons en France plus de loix que tout le reste du monde ensemble et plus qu'il n'en fauldroit à regler touts les mondes d'Epicurus. Ut olim flagitiis, sic nunc legibus laboramus." Montaigne, Ess., Liv. iii. ch. 13.
201. L. 15. a majority of the members who attended. This cannot be correct. 652 members took their seats: and they were classed as follows:
| 2 | Priests. |
| 12 | Gentlemen. |
| 12 | Mayors or Consuls of Towns. |
| 162 | Magistrates of different tribunals. |
| 272 | Advocates. |
| 16 | Physicians. |
| 176 | Merchants, monied men, and farmers. |
| 652 |
202. L. 16. Cp. note to vol. i. p. 241, l. 10. The remarks of Dr. Ramsay in his History of the American Revolution, on the share of the lawyers in the revolt, are quoted very appositely in Priestley's second Letter to Burke, in answer to these remarks. See also vol. i. p. 249, ll. 8-11.
203. L. 17. not of distinguished magistrates. The magistrates of the supreme courts and bailliages belonged to the order of the Nobility, and were represented in its representation to the number of 28; and even if they had been eligible, the electors of the Third Estate would hardly have entrusted them with their interests. But 162 magistrates of other tribunals were among the representatives of the Third Estate. "La députation des communes," says Mounier, "était à-peu-pres aussi bien composée qu'elle pouvoit l'être, et il est difficile qu'elle le soit mieux, tant qu'on séparera la représentation des plébéiens de celle des gentilshommes." Recherches sur les causes, &c. Vol. i. p. 257.
204. L. 21. inferior... members of the profession. On the complaints against practising lawyers in parliament, and their exclusion in the 46th of Edward III, see Hallam, ch. viii. part 3. Cp. the Parliamentum Indoctorum, or lack-learning Parliament, of Henry IV. In Bacon's Draught for a Proclamation
205. L. 23. distinguished exceptions. There were one or two advocates of profound learning and in large practice, like Camus. There were others, like Mounier and Malouet, distinguished for the wisdom and moderation of their political views.
206. L. 28. saw distinctly—all that was to follow. Compare with the paragraphs which follow, the Thoughts on French Affairs, under the head "Effect of the Rota." Paine denies that these were the views of Burke at the time, and says that it was impossible to make him believe that there would be a revolution in France: his opinion being that the French had neither spirit to undertake it, nor fortitude to support it. This had been the opinion of the best informed statesmen since the failure of Turgot. Cp. note to p. 271, l. 9.
207. P. 132, L. 18. daring, subtle, active, &c. Cp. vol. i. p. 242, l. 3.
208. L. 25. inevitable. See p. 131, l. 28.
209. P. 133, L. 6. Supereminent authority, &c.—Contentio. Cp. note to vol. i. p. 167, l. 2.
210. L. 7. country clowns—traders. The 176 (note to p. 131, l. 15).
211. L. 9. traders—never known anything beyond their counting-house. The Memoirs of the bourgeois Hardy, Barbier, and Marais afford valuable illustrations of the views of affairs taken by peaceable men of useful and uniform lives, and evidence that their ideas were not bounded by their counting-house. There is no reason to think that they were exceptions in their class.
212. L. 16. pretty considerable. This expression has ceased to be classical in England, but survives in America. There were only 16 physicians in the Assembly.
213. L. 17. this faculty had not, &c. The French Ana are full of gibes upon the medical profession. Burke possibly had in mind the constant ridicule of the faculty of medicine by his favourite French author, Molière. Cp. infra, p. 349, l. 25.
214. L. 32. natural landed interest. But how unreasonable to expect it! The natural landed interest was surely sufficiently represented in the nobility.
215. L. 35. sure operation of adequate causes, &c. Burke thought that the House of Commons was and ought to be something very much more than what was implied in the vulgar idea of a "popular representation"; that it contained within itself a much more subtle and artificial combination of parts and powers, than was generally supposed; and that it would task the leisure of a contemplative man to exhibit thoroughly the working of its mechanism. See Letter to a Member of the National Assembly.
216. P. 134, L. 4. = political. See note to p. 93, l. 27, ante.
217.
218. L. 26. After all, &c. The defects of the preceding observations do not impair the justice of the censure contained in the concluding paragraph, which was amply established by events. Burke's glance was often too rapid to be quite exact, but it was unerring in its augury of the essential bearing of a movement.
219. L. 32. dissolve us. Burke writes as if speaking in the House.
220. P. 135, L. 1. breakers of law in India, &c. See the Speech on the Nabob of Arcot's Debts, in which Paul Benfield, who made (including himself) no fewer than eight members of Parliament, and others, are treated in a rhetorical strain of indignant irony which has no parallel in profane literature.
221. L. 16. fools rush in, &c. Pope, Essay on Criticism, l. 625.
222. L. 27. mere country curates. (Curés.) Not in the modern sense of an assistant, but in the old and proper one of a beneficed clergyman or his substitute (vicaire). Bailey's dictionary has: Curate, a parson or vicar of a parish. The order of the clergy was represented by 48 archbishops and bishops, 35 abbots or canons, and 208 curates or parish priests. The income of a beneficed curé averaged £28 per annum: that of a vicaire, about half that sum.
223. L. 31. hopeless poverty. The Revolution, says Arthur Young, was an undoubted benefit to the lower clergy, who comprised five-sixths of the whole. They were not too numerously represented, if the representation were to mean anything at all.
224. P. 136, L. 6. those by whom, &c. i. e. the lawyers.
225. L. 26. turbulent, discontented men of quality. These remarks, applying to the Duke of Orleans, Mirabeau, Talleyrand, the two Lameths, Duport, d'Aiguillon, de Noailles, &c., were indirectly aimed at contemporary English nobles of the class of the Duke of Bedford, Lord Lansdowne, Lord Stanhope, and Lord Lauderdale, who whilst inflated with exaggerated Whig sentiments of liberty, had long disavowed the Whig principle of acting in connexion, and effectually ruined the political power of the party to which they professed to belong. Cp. vol. i. pp. 150 sqq.
226. L. 31. to be attached, &c. Cp. Pope, Essay on Man, iv. 361 sqq.
227. L. 32. the first principle of public affections. See p. 107, l. 9 sqq. The argument may be traced in Cic. De Officiis, Lib. i. c. 17. Since Burke's time, it has become a trite commonplace. Dr. Blair wrote a whole sermon upon it. So Robert Hall; "The order of nature is ever from particulars to generals. As in the operations of intellect we proceed from the contemplation of individuals to the formation of general abstractions, so in the developement of the passions in like manner we advance from private to public affections; from the love of parents, brothers, and sisters, to those more expanded regards which embrace the immense society of human kind." Sermon on Modern Infidelity. On the other hand, the private
228. L. 33. first link, &c. Cp. note to vol. i. p. 148, l. 1.
229. P. 137, L. 7. the then Earl of Holland. "This (reprieving Lord Goring, and not Lord Holland) may be a caution to us against the affectation of popularity, when you see the issue of it in this noble gentleman, who was as full of generosity and courtship to all sorts of persons, and readiness to help the oppressed, and to stand for the rights of the people, as any person of his quality in this nation. Yet this person was by the representatives of the people given up to execution for treason; and another lord, who never made profession of being a friend to liberty, either civil or spiritual, and exceeded the Earl as much in his crimes as he came short of him in his popularity, the life of this lord was spared by the people." (Whitelock, March 8, 1649.) The bounties prodigally bestowed on him were a reward for his carrying out as chief-justice in eyre the illegal claims made by Charles I., in virtue of the forestal rights (cp. vol. i. p. 77, l. 7). He became one of the leaders of the Parliament party, but deserted them, and paid the penalty with his life. Hallam charges him with ingratitude to both king and queen.
230. L. 24. when men of rank, &c. The allusion is again to those noblemen who patronised the Revolution Society.
231. P. 138, L. 2. if the terror, the ornament of their age. Burke perhaps had in mind the well-known epitaph of Richelieu (cp. l. 25), by Des Bois, in which he is described as "Tam saeculi sui tormentum quam ornamentum."
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Born to subdue insulting tyrants' rage,
The ornament and terror of the age.
—(Halifax, Lines on William III.)
232. L. 7. great bad men. So Pope, Essay on Man, iv. 284;
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Cromwell, damn'd to everlasting fame.
Burke perhaps had in mind Milton, Par. Lost, ii. 5;
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Satan exalted sat, by merit rais'd
To that bad eminence.
233. L. 8. a favourite poet. Waller; "Panegyric to my Lord Protector." After the Restoration, Waller made a panegyric upon Charles; and when the king satirically remarked that that on Cromwell was the better one, replied, with witty servility, that poets succeeded better in dealing with fiction than with truth. Waller was of kin to the Protector through his mother, a sister of John Hampden. Burke was familiar with the domestic history of the Wallers from the circumstance that his estate was in the same parish as theirs (Beaconsfield).
234. L. 19. destroying angel. Cp. vol. i. p. 214, l. 23.
235. IBID. smote the country—communicated to it the force and energy, &c. Similarly Junius, Feb. 6, 1771; "With all his crimes, he (Cromwell) had the spirit of an Englishman. The conduct of such a man must always be an exception to vulgar rules. He had abilities sufficient to reconcile contradictions, and to make a great nation at the same time unhappy and formidable."
236. L. 29. how very soon France, &c. France has always been distinguished for the most elastic internal powers. Burke in after times quoted in illustration of this the lines,
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Per damna, per caedes, ab ipso
Ducit opes animumque ferro.
237. L. 33. not slain the mind in their country. Mackintosh retorts this dignified figure on the ministers whom Burke after the Revolution conceived it to be his duty to support.
238. P. 139, L. 6. palsy. Fr. paralysie, now generally disused, in favour of the original term paralysis.
239. L. 16. levellers. A term applied to the English Jacobins of the period of the Commonwealth.
240. L. 17. = overload. So Oldham, 1st Satire on Jesuits;
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Vassals to every ass that loads a throne.
241. L. 25. The spelling is correct.
242. L. 29. occupation of an hair-dresser, &c. Cp. Arist. Pol., Lib. iii. c. 5.
243. P. 140, L. 4. of that sophistical, &c. Cp. note to vol. i. p. 193, l. 6.
244. L. 15. woe to the country, &c. Burke's support of the Test Act has been adduced to show how little practical meaning there was in this tirade. The question, however, here, is one of political, not religious disability. The term "religious" (l. 17) appears only to allude to the established church.
245. P. 141, L. 3. sortition or rotation. Harrington, the English constitution-monger, made the latter an essential principle in his scheme. Milton, however, wished "that this wheel, or partial wheel in state, if it be possible, might be avoided, as having too much affinity with the wheel of fortune." It will hardly be credited that a practical member of Parliament and shrewd thinker like Soame Jenyns, approved the principle of sortition, and deliberately proposed to have an annual ministry chosen by lot from 30 selected members of the House of Peers, and 100 of the House of Commons! See his "Scheme for the Coalition of Parties," 1782. Well might Burke call that "one of the most critical periods in our annals" (Letter to a Noble Lord). Had the then proposed parliamentary reforms taken place, Burke thought that "not France, but England, would have had the honour of leading up the death-dance of Democratic Revolution. Other projects, exactly coincident in time with those, struck at the very existence of the kingdom under any constitution" (ib.).
246. L. 7. road to eminence and power from obscure condition... not to be made too easy. There is here possibly an allusion to the preceding generation, and the career of men like Lord Melcombe. The road was always easy enough in England, and by this time in most other countries. Struensee had governed Denmark. Writers had busied themselves in vain to discover the
247. L. 13. Virtue... never tried but by some difficulty—per&igrgr; t&ogrgr; xalep&ohacgr;teron a&ipsgr;e&igrgr; ka&igrgr; t&eacgr;xn&eegr; g&iacgr;netai ka&igrgr; &apsgr;ret&eeacgr;. Arist. Eth., Lib. ii. c. 3. Cp. p. 272, l. 29 sqq.
248. L. 15. its ability as well as its property. "Jacobinism," wrote Burke several years afterwards, when the whole civilised world was in affright at the word, without understanding very well what it meant, "is the revolt of the enterprising talents of a country against its property."
249. L. 23. the great masses which excite envy, &c. Cp. the Letter to a Noble Lord, in which the vast property of the Duke of Bedford is used to illustrate this doctrine. The extract given in a previous note (to p. 113, l. 27) contains the substance of its argument.
250. P. 142, L. 1. the power of perpetuating our property in our families, &c. Burke alludes to the practice of family settlements.
251. L. 5. grafts benevolence, &c. Because it encourages a man to other objects than a selfish lavishment of his fortune on his private wishes. The expression is slightly altered from the 1st Edition.
252. L. 12. sole judge of all property, &c. See the motion relative to the Speech from the Throne, 14th June, 1784, in which this fact is used in justification of the disapproval, expressed by the Commons, of the corruption and intimidation employed by the ministers and peers. The judicial power of the Lords is historically traced by Hallam, ch. xiii.
253. L. 26. co