Letter IV

To the Earl Fitzwilliam

[Christmas, 1795. First printed by Bishop King, from Burke's Manuscript, in vol. v. of the 4to ed. of Burke's Works, 1812.]

My dear Lord,

I am not sure, that the best way of discussing any subject, except those that concern the abstracted sciences, is not somewhat in the way of dialogue. To this mode, however, there are two objections. The first, that it happens, as in the puppet-show, one man speaks for all the personages. An unnatural uniformity of tone is in a manner unavoidable. The other, and more serious objection is, that as the author (if not an absolute sceptick) must have some opinion of his own to enforce, he will be continually tempted to enervate the arguments he puts into the mouth of his adversary, or to place them in a point of view most commodious for their refutation. There is, however, a sort of dialogue not quite so liable to these objections, because it approaches more nearly to truth and nature: it is called CONTROVERSY. Here the parties speak for themselves. If the writer, who attacks another's notions, does not deal fairly with his adversary, the diligent reader has it always in his power, by resorting to the work examined, to do justice to the original author and to himself. For this reason you will not blame me, if, in my discussion of the merits of a Regicide Peace, I do [261] not choose to trust to my own statements, but to bring forward along with them the arguments of the advocates for that measure. If I choose puny adversaries, writers of no estimation or authority, then you will justly blame me. I might as well bring in at once a fictitious speaker, and thus fall into all the inconveniences of an imaginary dialogue. This I shall avoid; and I shall take no notice of any author, who, my friends in town do not tell me, is in estimation with those whose opinions he supports.

A piece has been sent to me, called "Remarks on the apparent Circumstances of the War in the fourth week of October, 1795," with a French motto, Que faire encore une fois dans une telle nuit?—Attendre le jour. The very title seemed to me striking and peculiar, and to announce something uncommon. In the time I have lived to, I always seem to walk on enchanted ground. Every thing is new, and according to the fashionable phrase, revolutionary. In former days, authors valued themselves upon the maturity and fulness of their deliberations. Accordingly they predicted (perhaps with more arrogance than reason) an ^*1eternal duration to their works. Quite the contrary is our present fashion. Writers value themselves now on the instability of their opinions, and the transitory life of their productions. On this kind of credit the modern institutors open their schools. They write for youth; and it is sufficient if the instruction lasts as long as a present love, or as the painted silks and cottons of the season.

The doctrines in this work are applied, for their standard, with great exactness, to the shortest possible periods both of conception and duration. The title is "Some Remarks on the Apparent circumstances of the War in the fourth week of October, 1795." The time is critically chosen. A month or so earlier would have made it the anniversary of a bloody ^*2Parisian September, when the French massacre one another. [262] A day or two later would have carried it into a London November, the gloomy month in which it is said by a ^*3pleasant author that Englishmen hang and drown themselves. In truth, this work has a tendency to alarm us with symptoms of publick suicide. However, there is one comfort to be taken even from the gloomy time of year. It is a rotting season. If what is brought to market is not good, it is not likely to keep long. Even buildings run up in haste with untempered mortar in that humid weather, if they are ill-contrived tenements, do not threaten long to encumber the earth. The Author tells us (and I believe he is the very first Author that ever told such a thing to his readers) "that the entire fabrick of his speculations might be overset by unforeseen vicissitudes"; and what is far more extraordinary, "that even the whole consideration might be varied whilst he was writing those pages." Truly, in my poor judgement, this circumstance formed a very substantial motive for his not publishing those ill-considered considerations at all. He ought to have followed the good advice of his motto; Que faire encore dans une telle nuit? Attendre le jour. He ought to have waited till he had got a little more day-light on this subject. Night itself is hardly darker than the fogs of that time.

Finding the last week in October so particularly referred to, and not perceiving any particular event relative to the War, which happened on any of the days in that week, I thought it possible that they were marked by some astrological superstition, to which the greatest politicians have been subject. I therefore had recourse to my ^*4Rider's Almanack. There I found indeed something that characterized the work, and that gave directions concerning the sudden political and natural variations, and for eschewing the maladies that are most prevalent in that aguish intermittent season, "the last week of October." On that week the sagacious astrologer, [263] Rider, in his note on the third column of the calendar side, teaches us to expect "variable and cold weather"; but instead of encouraging us to trust ourselves to the haze and mist and doubtful lights of that changeable week, on the answerable part of the opposite page, he gives us a salutary caution, (indeed it is very nearly in the words of the author's motto): "Avoid (says he) being out late at night, and in foggy weather, for a cold now caught may last the whole winter."^*55 This ingenious author, who disdained the prudence of the almanack, walked out in the very fog he complains of, and has led us to a very unseasonable airing at that time. Whilst this noble writer, by the vigour of an excellent constitution, formed for the violent changes he prognosticates, may shake off the importunate rheum and malignant influenza of this disagreeable week, a whole Parliament may go on spitting and snivelling, and wheezing and coughing, during a whole session. All this from listening to variable, hebdomadal politicians, who run away from their opinions without giving us a month's warning; and for not listening to the wise and friendly admonitions of Dr. Cardanus Rider, who never apprehends he may change his opinions before his pen is out of his hand, but always enables us to lay in, at least, a year's stock of useful information.

At first I took comfort. I said to myself, that if I should, as I fear I must, oppose the doctrines of the last week of October, it is probable that, by this time, they are no longer those of the eminent writer, to whom they are attributed. He gives us hopes that long before this he may have embraced the direct contrary sentiments. If I am found [264] in a conflict with those of the last week of October, I may be in full agreement with those of the last week in December, or the first week in January 1796. But a ^*5second edition, and a French translation (for the benefit, I must suppose, of the new Regicide Directory) have let down a little of these flattering hopes. We and the Directory know, that the author, whatever changes his works seemed made to indicate, like a weather-cock grown rusty, remains just where he was in the last week of last October. It is true, that his protest against binding him to his opinions, and his reservation of a right to whatever opinions he pleases, remain in their full force. This variability is pleasant, and shews a fertility of fancy;

^*6Qualis in aethereo felix Vertumnus Olympo
Mille habet ornatus, mille decenter habet.

Yet, doing all justice to the sportive variability of these weekly, daily, or hourly speculators, shall I be pardoned, if I attempt a word on the part of us ^*7simple country folk? It is not good for us, however it may be so for great statesmen, that we should be treated with variable politicks. I consider different relations as prescribing a different conduct. I allow, that in transactions with an enemy, a Minister may, and often must, vary his demands with the day, possibly with the hour. With an enemy, a fixed plan, variable arrangements. This is the rule the nature of the transaction prescribes. But all this belongs to treaty. All these shiftings and changes are a sort of secret amongst the parties, till a definite settlement is brought about. Such is the spirit of the proceedings in the doubtful and transitory state of things between enmity and friendship. In this change the subjects of the transformation are by nature carefully wrapt up in their cocoons. The gay ornament of summer is not seemly in his aurelia state. This mutability is allowed to [265] a foreign negociator. But when a great politician condescends publickly to instruct his own countrymen on a matter, which may fix their fate for ever, his opinions ought not to be diurnal, or even weekly. These ephemerides of politicks are not made for our slow and coarse understandings. Our appetite demands a piece of resistance. We require some food that will stick to the ribs. We call for sentiments, to which we can attach ourselves; sentiments, in which we can take an interest; sentiments, on which we can warm, on which we can ground some confidence in ourselves or in others. We do not want a largess of inconstancy. Poor souls, we have enough of that sort of poverty at home. There is a difference too between deliberation and doctrine: a man ought to be decided in his opinions before he attempts to teach. His fugitive lights may serve himself in some unknown region, but they can not free us from the effects of the error, into which we have been betrayed. His active Will-o'-the-Whisp may be gone nobody can guess where, whilst he leaves us bemired and benighted in the bog.

Having premised these few reflections upon this new mode of teaching a lesson, which whilst the scholar is getting by heart the master forgets, I come to the lesson itself. On the fullest consideration of it, I am utterly incapable of saying with any great certainty what it is, in the detail, that the author means to affirm or deny, to dissuade or recommend. His march is mostly oblique, and his doctrine rather in the way of insinuation than a dogmatick assertion. It is not only fugitive in its duration, but is slippery, in the extreme, whilst it lasts. Examining it part by part, it seems almost every where to contradict itself; and the author, who claims the privilege of varying his opinions, has exercised this privilege in every section of his remarks. For this reason, amongst others, I follow the advice which the able [266] writer gives in his last page, which is "to consider the impression of what he has urged, taken from the whole, and not from detached paragraphs." That caution was not absolutely necessary. I should think it unfair to the author and to myself, to have proceeded otherwise. The author's whole, however, like every other whole, can not be so well comprehended without some reference to the parts; but they shall be again referred to the whole. Without this latter attention, several of the passages would certainly remain covered with an impenetrable and truly oracular obscurity.

^*8The great general pervading purpose of the whole pamphlet is to reconcile us to peace with the present usurpation in France. In this general drift of the author I can hardly be mistaken. The other purposes, less general, and subservient to the preceding scheme, are to show, first, that the time of the remarks was the favourable time for making that peace upon our side; secondly, that on the enemy's side their disposition towards the acceptance of such terms as he is pleased to offer, was rationally to be expected; the third purpose was to make some sort of disclosure of the terms, which, if the Regicides are pleased to grant them, this nation ought to be contented to accept: these form the basis of the negociation, which the author, whoever he is, proposes to open.

Before I consider these Remarks along with the other reasonings which I hear on the same subject, I beg leave to recal to your mind the observation I made early in our correspondence, and which ought to attend us quite through the discussion of this proposed peace, amity, or fraternity, or whatever you may call it; that is, the real quality and character of the party you have to deal with. This, I find, as a thing of no importance, has every where escaped the author of the October Remarks. That hostile power to the [267] period of the fourth week in that month has been ever called and considered as an usurpation. In that week, for the first time, it changed its name of an usurped power, and took the simple name of France. The word France is slipped in just as if the government stood exactly as before that revolution which has astonished, terrified, and almost overpowered Europe. "France," says the author, "will do this"; "it is the interest of France"; "the returning honour and generosity of France," &c. &c. Always merely France; just as if we were in a common political war with an old recognized member of the commonwealth of Christian Europe; and as if our dispute had turned upon a mere matter of territorial or commercial controversy, which a peace might settle by the imposition or the taking off a duty, with the gain or the loss of a remote island or a frontier town or two, on the one side or the other. This shifting of persons could not be done without the hocus-pocus of abstraction. We have been in a grievous error. We thought that we had been at war with rebels against the lawful government, but that we were friends and allies of what is properly France; friends and allies to the legal body politick of France. But by sleight of hand the Jacobins are clean vanished, and it is France we have got under our cup. 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! In certain cases they are the first of all soporificks. Terribly alarmed we should be if things were proposed to us in the concrete; and if fraternity was held out to us with the individuals, who compose this France, by their proper names and descriptions: if we were told that it was very proper to enter into the closest bonds of amity and good correspondence with the devout, pacifick, and tender-hearted Syeyes, with the all-accomplished Rewbel, with the humane [268] guillotinists of Bourdeaux, Tallien and Isabeau; with the meek butcher Legendre, and with "the returned humanity and generosity" (that had been only on a visit abroad) of the virtuous regicide brewer Santerre. This would seem at the outset a very strange scheme of amity and concord; nay, though we had held out to us, as an additional douceur, an assurance of the cordial fraternal embrace of our pious and patriotic countryman Thomas Paine. But plain truth would here be shocking and absurd; therefore comes in abstraction and personification. "Make your Peace with France." That word France sounds quite as well as any other, and it conveys no idea but that of a very pleasant country and very hospitable inhabitants. Nothing absurd and shocking in amity and good correspondence with France. Permit me to say, that I am not yet well acquainted with this new-coined France, and, without a careful assay, I am not willing to receive it in currency in place of the old Louis d'or.

Having therefore slipped the persons, with whom we are to treat, out of view, we are next to be satisfied, that the French Revolution, which this peace is to fix and consolidate, ought to give us no just cause of apprehension. Though the Author labours this point, yet he confesses a fact, (indeed he could not conceal it) which renders all his labours utterly fruitless. He confesses, that the Regicide means to dictate a pacification, and that this pacification, according to their decree passed but a very few days before his publication appeared, is to "unite to their Empire, either in possession or dependence, new barriers, many frontier places of strength, a large sea-coast, and many sea-ports." He ought to have stated it, that they would annex to their territory a country about a third as large as France, and much more than half as rich; and in a situation the most important, for command, that it would be possible for her any where to possess.

[269] To remove this terror, (if the Regicides should carry their point) and to give us perfect repose with regard to their Empire, whatever they may acquire, or whomsoever they might destroy, he raises a doubt "whether France will not be ruined by retaining these conquests, and whether she will not wholly lose that preponderance, which she has held in the scale of European powers, and will not eventually be destroyed by the effect of her present successes; or, at least, whether, so far as the political interests of England are concerned, she [France] will remain an object of as much jealousy and alarm, as she was under the reign of a Monarch." Here, indeed, is a paragraph full of meaning! It gives matter for meditation almost in every word of it. The secret of the pacifick politicians is out. This Republick, at all hazards, is to be maintained. It is to be confined within some bounds, if we can; if not, with every possible acquisition of power, it is still to be cherished and supported. It is the return of the Monarchy we are to dread, and therefore we ought to pray for the permanence of the Regicide authority. ^*9Esto perpetua is the devout ejaculation of our Fra Paolo for the Republick one and indivisible! It was the Monarchy that rendered France dangerous; Regicide neutralizes all the acrimony of that power and renders it safe and social. The October speculator is of opinion, that Monarchy is of so poisonous a quality, that a moderate territorial power is far more dangerous to its neighbours under that abominable regimen, than the greatest Empire in the hands of a Republick. This is Jacobinism sublimed and exalted into most pure and perfect essence. It is a doctrine, I admit, made to allure and captivate, if any thing in the world can, the Jacobin directory, to mollify the ferocity of Regicide, and to persuade those patriotick Hangmen, after their reiterated oaths for our extirpation, to admit this well humbled nation to the fraternal embrace. I do not wonder that this tub of [270] October has been racked off into a French cask. It must make its fortune at Paris. That translation seems the language the most suited to these sentiments. Our author tells the French Jacobins that the political interests of Great Britain are in perfect unison with the principles of their government; that they may take and keep the keys of the civilized world, for they are safe in their unambitious and faithful custody. We say to them, "We may, indeed, wish you to be a little less murderous, wicked and atheistical, for the sake of morals: we may think it were better you were less new-fangled in your speech, for the sake of grammar: but, as politicians, provided you keep clear of Monarchy, all our fears, alarms and jealousies are at an end: at least they sink into nothing in comparison with our dread of your detestable Royalty." A flatterer of Cardinal Mazarin said, when that Minister had just settled the match between the young Louis the 14th and a daughter of Spain, that this alliance had the effect of Faith, and removed Mountains—that the Pyrenees were levelled by that marriage. You may now compliment Rewbel in the same spirit on the miracles of Regicide, and tell him, that the guillotine of Louis the 16th had consummated a marriage between Great Britain and France, which dried up the Channel, and ^*10restored the two countries to the unity, which, it is said, they had before the unnatural rage of seas and earthquakes had broke off their happy junction. It will be a fine subject for the Poets, who are to prophecy the blessings of this peace.

I am now convinced, that the Remarks of the last week of October cannot come from the author, to whom they are given; they are such a direct contradiction to the style of manly indignation, with which he spoke of those miscreants and murderers in his excellent Memorial to the States of Holland—to that very State, which the Author, who presumes to personate him, does not find it contrary to the [271] political interests of England to leave in the hands of these very miscreants, against whom on the part of England he took so much pains to animate their Republick. This cannot be; and, if this argument wanted any thing to give it new force, it is strengthened by an additional reason that is irresistible. Knowing that Noble person, as well as myself, to be under very great obligations to the Crown, I am confident he would not so very directly contradict, even in the paroxysm of zeal against monarchy, the declarations made in the name and with the fullest approbation of our Sovereign, his Master, and our common benefactor. In those declarations you will see, that the King, instead of being sensible of greater alarm and jealousy from a neighbouring crowned head, than from these Regicides, attributes all the dangers of Europe to the latter. Let this writer hear the description given in the Royal Declaration of the scheme of power of these Miscreants, as "a system destructive of all publick order; maintained by proscriptions, exiles, and confiscations without number; by arbitrary imprisonments; by massacres which cannot be remembered without horrour; and at length by the execrable murder of a just and beneficent Sovereign, and of the illustrious princess, who with an unshaken firmness has shared all the misfortunes of her Royal consort, his protracted sufferings, his cruel captivity, and his ignominious death." After thus describing, with an eloquence and energy equalled only by its truth, the means, by which this usurped power had been acquired and maintained, that government is characterized with equal force. His Majesty, far from thinking Monarchy in France to be a greater object of jealousy, than the Regicide usurpation, calls upon the French to re-establish "a monarchical government" for the purpose of shaking off "the yoke of a sanguinary anarchy; of that anarchy, which has broken the most sacred bonds of Society, dissolved all the relations of civil life, violated every right, confounded [272] every duty; which uses the name of liberty to exercise the most cruel tyranny, to annihilate all property, to seize on all possessions; which founds its power on the pretended consent of the people, and itself carries fire and sword through extensive provinces for having demanded their laws, their religion and their rightful Sovereign."

^*11"That strain I heard was of an higher mood." That declaration of our Sovereign was worthy of his throne. It is in ^*12a style, which neither the pen of the writer of October, nor such a poor crow-quill as mine can ever hope to equal. I am happy to enrich my letter with this fragment of nervous and manly eloquence, which if it had not emanated from the awful authority of a throne, if it were not recorded amongst the most valuable monuments of history, and consecrated in the archives of States, would be worthy as a private composition to live for ever in the memory of men.

In those admirable pieces, does his Majesty discover this new opinion of his political security in having the chair of the Scorner, that is, the discipline of Atheism and the block of Regicide, set up by his side, elevated on the same platform, and shouldering, with the vile image of their grim and bloody idol, the inviolable majesty of his throne? The sentiments of these declarations are the very reverse: they could not be other. Speaking of the spirit of that usurpation the Royal manifesto describes with perfect truth its internal tyranny to have been established as the very means of shaking the security of all other States; as "disposing arbitrarily of the property and blood of the inhabitants of France, in order to disturb the tranquillity of other nations, and to render all Europe the theatre of the same crimes and the same misfortunes." It was but a natural inference from this fact, that the Royal manifesto does not at all rest the justification of this war on common principles: "that it was not only to defend his own rights, and those of his Allies," but "that [273] all the dearest interests of his people imposed upon him a Duty still more important—that of exerting his efforts for the preservation of civil society itself, as happily established among the nations of Europe." On that ground the protection offered is to those, who by "declaring for a Monarchical government shall shake off the yoke of a sanguinary Anarchy." It is for that purpose the Declaration calls on them to join the standard of an "hereditary Monarchy"; and declaring, that the safety and peace of this Kingdom and the powers of Europe "materially depend upon the re-establishment of order in France," his Majesty does not hesitate to declare, that "the re-establishment of Monarchy in the person of Louis the 17th and the lawful heirs of his crown appears to him [his Majesty] the best mode of accomplishing these just and salutary views."

This is what his Majesty does not hesitate to declare relative to the political safety and peace of his Kingdom and of Europe, and with regard to France under her ancient hereditary Monarchy in the course and order of legal succession. But in comes a gentleman in the fag end of October, dripping with the fogs of that humid and uncertain season, and does not hesitate in Diameter to contradict this wise and just Royal declaration; and stoutly, on his part, to make a counter-declaration, that France, so far as the political interests of England are concerned, will not remain, under the despotism of Regicide and with the better part of Europe in her hands, so much an object of jealousy and alarm, as she was under the reign of a Monarch. When I hear the Master and reason on one side, and the Servant and his single and unsupported assertion on the other, my part is taken.

This is what the Octobrist says of the political interests of England, which it looks as if he completely disconnected with those of all other nations. But not quite so; he just allows it possible (with an "at least") that the other powers [274] may not find it quite their interest, that their Territories should be conquered and their Subjects tyrannized over by the Regicides. No fewer than ten Sovereign Princes had, some the whole, all a very considerable part, of their Dominions, under the yoke of that dreadful faction. Amongst these was to be reckoned the ^*13first Republick in the World, and the closest Ally of this Kingdom, which, under the insulting name of an independency, is under her iron yoke; and, as long as a faction averse to the old government is suffered there to domineer, cannot be otherwise. I say nothing of the Austrian Netherlands, countries of a vast extent, and amongst the most fertile and populous of Europe; and with regard to us most critically situated. The rest will readily occur to you.

But if there are yet existing any people, like me, old fashioned enough to consider, that we have an important part of our very existence beyond our limits, and who therefore stretch their thoughts beyond the ^*14Pomoerium of England, for them too he has a comfort, which will remove all their jealousies and alarms about the extent of the Empire of Regicide. "These conquests eventually will be the cause of her destruction." So that they, who hate the cause of usurpation and dread the power of France under any form, are to wish her to be a conqueror, in order to accelerate her ruin. A little more conquest would be still better. Will he tell us what dose of Dominion is to be the quantum sufficit for her destruction, for she seems very voracious of the food of her distemper? To be sure she is ready to perish with repletion; she has a ^*15Boulimia, and hardly has bolted down one State, than she calls for two or three more. There is a good deal of wit in all this; but it seems to me (with all respect to the Author) to be carrying the joke a great deal too far. I cannot yet think, that the Armies of the Allies were of this way of thinking; and that, when they evacuated [275] all these countries, it was a stratagem of war to decoy France into ruin; or that, if in a Treaty we should surrender them for ever into the hands of the usurpation (the lease, the author supposes) it is a master-stroke of policy to effect the destruction of a formidable rival, and to render her no longer an object of jealousy and alarm. This, I assure the Author, will infinitely facilitate the Treaty. The usurpers will catch at this bait, without minding the hook, which this crafty angler for the Jacobin gudgeons of the New Directory has so dexterously placed under it.

Every symptom of the exacerbation of the publick malady is with him (as with the ^*16Doctor in Molière) a happy prognostick of recovery. Flanders gone!—tant mieux. Holland subdued!—charming! Spain beaten, and all the hither Germany conquered!—Bravo! Better and better still! But they will retain all their conquests on a Treaty! Best of all! What a delightful thing it is to have a gay physician who sees all things, as the French express it, couleur de rose! What an escape we have had, that we and our Allies were not the Conquerors! By these conquests, previous to her utter destruction, she is "wholly to lose that preponderance, which she held in the scale of the European Powers." Bless me! This new system of France, after changing all other laws, reverses the law of gravitation. By throwing in weight after weight her scale rises, and will by and by kick the beam! Certainly there is one sense in which she loses her preponderance: that is she is no longer preponderant against the Countries she has conquered. They are part of herself. But I beg the Author to keep his eyes fixed on the scales for a moment longer, and then to tell me in downright earnest, whether he sees hitherto any signs of her losing preponderance by an augmentation of weight and power. Has she lost her preponderance over Spain, by her influence in Spain? Are there any signs, that the conquest [276] of Savoy and Nice begins to lessen her preponderance over Switzerland and the Italian States—or that the Canton of Berne, Genoa and Tuscany, for example, have taken arms against her, or, that Sardinia is more adverse than ever to a treacherous pacification? Was it in the last week of October, that the German States shewed that Jacobin France was losing her preponderance? Did the King of Prussia, when he delivered into her safe custody his territories on this side of the Rhine, manifest any tokens of his opinion of her loss of preponderance? Look on Sweden and on Denmark: is her preponderance less visible there?

It is true, that in a course of ages Empires have fallen, and, in the ^*17opinion of some, not in mine, by their own weight. Sometimes they have been unquestionably embarrassed in their movements by the dissociated situation of their Dominions. Such was the case of the empire of Charles the Fifth and of his successor. It might be so of others. But so compact a body of empire; so fitted in all the parts for mutual support; with a Frontier by nature and art so impenetrable; with such facility of breaking out with irresistible force, from every quarter, was never seen in such an extent of territory from the beginning of time, as in that empire, which the Jacobins possessed in October 1795, and which Boissy d'Anglas, in his Report, settled as the Law for Europe, and the Dominion assigned by Nature for the Republick of Regicide. But this Empire is to be her ruin, and to take away all alarm and jealousy on the part of England, and to destroy her preponderance over the miserable remains of Europe!

These are choice speculations, with which the Author amuses himself, and tries to divert us, in the blackest hours of the dismay, defeat and calamity of all civilized nations. They have but one fault, that they are directly contrary to the common sense and common feeling of mankind. If I [277] had but one hour to live, I would employ it in decrying this wretched system, and die with my pen in my hand to mark out the dreadful consequences of receiving an arrangement of Empire dictated by the despotism of Regicide to my own Country, and to the lawful Sovereigns of the Christian World.

I trust I shall hardly be told, in palliation of this shameful system of politicks, that the Author expresses his sentiments only as doubts. In such things it may be truly said that ^*18"once to doubt is once to be resolved." It would be a strange reason for wasting the treasures and shedding the blood of our country to prevent arrangements on the part of another power, of which we were doubtful, whether they might not be even to our advantage and render our neighbour less than before the object of our jealousy and alarm. In this doubt there is much decision. No nation would consent to carry on a war of scepticism. But the fact is, this expression of doubt is only a mode of putting an opinion when it is not the drift of the Author to overturn the doubt. Otherwise, the doubt is never stated as the Author's own, nor left, as here it is, unanswered. Indeed, the mode of stating the most decided opinions in the form of questions is so little uncommon, particularly since the excellent queries of the ^*19excellent Berkeley, that it became for a good while a fashionable mode of composition.

Here then the Author of the fourth week of October is ready for the worst, and would strike the bargain of peace on these conditions. I must leave it to you and to every considerate man to reflect upon the effect of this on any Continental alliances present or future, and whether it would be possible (if this book was thought of the least authority) that its maxims with regard to our political interest must not naturally push them to be beforehand with us in the fraternity with Regicide, and thus not only strip us of any [278] steady alliance at present, but leave us without any of that communion of interest which could produce alliances in future. Indeed, with these maxims, we should be well divided from the World.

Notwithstanding this new kind of barrier and security that is found against her ambition in her conquests, yet in the very same paragraph he admits that "for the present at least it is subversive of the balance of power." This, I confess, is not a direct contradiction, because the benefits which he promises himself from it, according to his hypothesis are future and more remote.

So disposed is this Author to peace, that, having laid a comfortable foundation of our security in the greatness of her Empire, he has another in reserve if that should fail, upon quite a contrary ground; that is, a speculation of her crumbling to pieces and being thrown into a number of little separate Republicks. After paying the tribute of humanity to those who will be ruined by all these changes, on the whole he is of opinion that "the change might be compatible with general tranquillity, and with the establishment of a peaceful and prosperous commerce among nations." Whether France be great or small, firm and entire, or dissipated and divided, all is well; provided we can have peace with her.

But, without entering into speculations about her dismemberment whilst she is adding great nations to her empire, is it then quite so certain, that the dissipation of France into such a cluster of petty Republicks would be so very favourable to the true balance of power in Europe, as this Author imagines it would be, and to the commerce of Nations? I greatly differ from him. I perhaps shall prove in a future letter, with the political map of Europe before my eye, that the general liberty and independence of the great Christian commonwealth could not exist with such a dismemberment; [279] unless it were followed (as probably enough it would) by the dismemberment of every other considerable country in Europe: and what convulsions would arise in the constitution of every state in Europe, it is not easy to conjecture in the mode, impossible not to foresee in the mass. Speculate on, good my Lord! provided you ground no part of your politicks on such unsteady speculations. But, as to any practice to ensue, are we not yet cured of the malady of speculating on the circumstances of things totally different from those in which we live and move? Five years has this Monster continued whole and entire in all its members. Far from falling into a division within itself, it is augmented by tremendous additions. We cannot bear to look that frightful form in the face as it is and in its own actual shape. We ^*20dare not be wise. We have not the fortitude of rational fear. We will not provide for our future safety; but we endeavour to hush the cries of present timidity by guesses at what may be hereafter. ^*21"To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow"—is this our style of talk, when "all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death?" Talk not to me of what swarms of Republicks may come from this carcass! It is no carcass. Now, now, whilst we are talking, it is full of life and action. What say you to the Regicide Empire of to-day? Tell me, my friend, do its terrors appal you into an abject submission, or rouse you to a vigorous defence? But do—I no longer prevent it—do go on—look into futurity. Has this Empire nothing to alarm you when all struggle against it is over, when Mankind shall be silent before it, when all nations shall be disarmed, disheartened and truly divided by a treacherous peace? Its malignity towards humankind will subsist with undiminished heat, whilst the means of giving it effect must proceed, and every means of resisting it must inevitably and rapidly decline.

Against alarm on their politick and military empire these [280] are the writer's sedative remedies. But he leaves us sadly in the dark with regard to the moral consequences which he states have threatened to demolish a system of civilization under which his Country enjoys a prosperity unparalleled in the history of Man. We had emerged from our first terrors. But here we sink into them again; however, only to shake them off upon the credit of his being a Man of very sanguine hopes.

Against the moral terrors of this successful empire of barbarism, though he has given us no consolation here, in another place he has formed other securities; securities, indeed, which will make even the enormity of the crimes and atrocities of France a benefit to the world. We are to be cured by her diseases. We are to grow proud of our Constitution upon the distempers of theirs. Governments throughout all Europe are to become much stronger by this event. This too comes in the favourite mode of doubt, and perhaps. "To those," he says, "who meditate on the workings of the human mind, a doubt may perhaps arise, whether the effects, which I have described [namely the change he supposes to be wrought on the publick mind with regard to the French doctrines] "though at present a salutary check to the dangerous spirit of innovation, may not prove favourable to abuses of power, by creating a timidity in the just cause of liberty." Here the current of our apprehensions takes a contrary course. Instead of trembling for the existence of our government from the spirit of licentiousness and anarchy, the author would make us believe we are to tremble for our liberties from the great accession of power which is to accrue to government.

I believe I have read in some author who criticised the productions of ^*22the famous Jurieu, that it is not very wise in people, who dash away in prophecy, to fix the time of accomplishment at too short a period. ^*23Mr. Brothers may [281] meditate upon this at his leisure. He was a melancholy prognosticator, and has had the fate of melancholy men. But they who prophecy pleasant things get great present applause; and in days of calamity people have something else to think of—they lose in their feeling of their distress all memory of those who flattered them in their prosperity. But, merely for the credit of the prediction, nothing could have happened more unluckily for the Noble Lord's sanguine expectations of the amendment of the publick mind and the consequent greater security to government from the examples in France, than what happened in the week after the publication of his hebdomadal system. I am not sure it was not in the very week, one of the most violent and dangerous seditions broke out, that we have seen in several years. This sedition, menacing to the publick security, endangering the sacred person of the King, and violating in the most audacious manner the authority of Parliament, surrounded our sovereign with a murderous yell and war whoop for that peace, which the Noble Lord considers as a cure for all domestick disturbances and dissatisfactions.

So far as to this general cure for popular disorders. As for Government, the two Houses of Parliament, instead of being guided by the speculations of the fourth week in October, and throwing up new barriers against the dangerous power of the crown, which the Noble Lord considered as no unplausible subject of apprehension—the two Houses of Parliament thought fit to pass two Acts for the further strengthening of that very government against a most dangerous and wide spread faction.

Unluckily too for this kind of sanguine speculation, on the very first day of the ever famed "last week of October," a large, daring, and seditious meeting was publickly held, from which meeting this atrocious attempt against the Sovereign publickly originated.

[282] No wonder, that the Author should tell us, that the whole consideration might be varied whilst he was writing those pages. In one, and that the most material, instance, his speculations not only might be, but were at that very time, entirely overset. Their war-cry for peace with France was the same with that of this gentle Author, but in a different note. His is the ^*24gemitus columbae, cooing and wooing fraternity: theirs the funereal screams of birds of night calling for their ill-omened paramours. But they are both songs of courtship. These Regicides considered a regicide peace as a cure for all their evils; and, so far as I can find, they showed nothing at all of the timidity which the Noble Lord apprehends in what they call the "just cause of liberty."

However, it seems, that notwithstanding these awkward appearances with regard to the strength of government, he has still his fears and doubts about our liberties. To a free people this would be a matter of alarm, but this Physician of October has in his shop all sorts of salves for all sorts of sores. It is curious, that they all come from the inexhaustible Drug Shop of the Regicide Dispensary. It costs him nothing to excite terror, because he lays it at his pleasure. He finds a security for this danger to liberty from the wonderful wisdom to be taught to Kings, to Nobility, and even to the lowest of the people, by the late transactions.

I confess I was always blind enough to regard the French Revolution, in the act and much more in the example, as one of the greatest calamities that had ever fallen upon mankind. I now find, that in its effects it is to be the greatest of all blessings. If so, we owe amende honorable to the Jacobins. They, it seems, were right—and if they were right a little earlier than we are, it only shews that they exceeded us in sagacity. If they brought out their [283] right ideas somewhat in a disorderly manner, it must be remembered that great zeal produces some irregularity; but, when greatly in the right, it must be pardoned by those, who are very regularly and temperately in the wrong. The Master Jacobins had told me this a thousand times. I never believed the Masters; nor do I now find myself disposed to give credit to the Disciple. I will not much dispute with our Author, which party has the best of this Revolution—that, which is from thence to learn wisdom, or that, which from the same event has obtained power. The dispute on the preference of strength to wisdom may perhaps be decided as Horace has decided the Controversy between Art and Nature. I do not like to leave all the power to my adversary, and to secure nothing to myself but the ^*25untimely wisdom that is taught by the consequences of folly. I do not like my share in the partition, because to his strength my adversary may possibly add a good deal of cunning, whereas my wisdom may totally fail in producing to me the same degree of strength. But to descend from the Author's generalities a little nearer to meaning, the security given to Liberty is this, "that Governments will have learned not to precipitate themselves into embarrassments by speculative wars. Sovereigns and Princes will not forget that steadiness, moderation and economy are the best supports of the eminence on which they stand. There seems to me a good deal of oblique reflexion in this lesson. As to the lesson itself, it is at all times a good one. One would think however, by this formal introduction of it, as a recommendation of the arrangements proposed by the Author, it had never been taught before, either by precept or by experience; and that these maxims are discoveries reserved for a Regicide peace. But is it permitted to ask, what security it affords to the liberty of the subject, that the Prince is pacifick or frugal? The very contrary has happened in our history. Our best [284] securities for freedom have been obtained from Princes who were either warlike, or prodigal, or both.

Although the amendment of Princes, in these points, can have no effect in quieting our apprehensions for Liberty on account of the strength to be acquired to government by a Regicide peace, I allow, that the avoiding of speculative wars may possibly be an advantage; provided I well understand, what the Author means by a speculative war. I suppose he means a war grounded on speculative advantages, and not wars founded on a just speculation of danger. Does he mean to include this war, which we are now carrying on, amongst those speculative wars, which this Jacobin peace is to teach Sovereigns to avoid hereafter? If so, it is doing the Party an important service. Does he mean that we are to avoid such wars as that of the grand Alliance, made on a speculation of danger to the independence of Europe? I suspect he has a sort of retrospective view to the American war, as a speculative war, carried on by England upon one side, and by Lewis the 16th on the other. As to our share of that war, let reverence to the dead and respect to the living prevent us from reading lessons of this kind at their expence. I don't know how far the Author may find himself at liberty to wanton on that subject, but, for my part, I entered into a coalition, which, when I had no longer a duty relative to that business, made me think myself bound in honour not to call it up without necessity. But if he puts England out of the question and reflects only on Louis the 16th, I have only to say "Dearly has he answered it." I will not defend him. But all those, who pushed on the Revolution, by which he was deposed, were much more in fault, than he was. They have murdered him, and have divided his Kingdom as a spoil; but they, who are the guilty, are not they, who furnish the example. They, who reign through his fault, are not among those Sovereigns, who are [285] likely to be taught to avoid speculative wars by the murder of their master. I think the Author will not be hardy enough to assert, that they have shown less disposition to meddle in the concerns of that very America, than he did, and in a way not less likely to kindle the flame of speculative war. Here is one Sovereign not yet reclaimed by these healing examples. Will he point out the other Sovereigns, who are to be reformed by this peace? Their wars may not be speculative. But the world will not be much mended by turning wars from unprofitable and speculative to practical and lucrative, whether the liberty or the repose of mankind is regarded. If the Author's new Sovereign in France is not reformed by the example of his own Revolution, that Revolution has not added much to the security and repose of Poland, for instance, or taught the three great partitioning powers more moderation in their second, than they had shewn in their first division of that devoted Country. The first division, which preceded these destructive examples, was moderation itself in comparison of what has been done since the period of the Author's amendment.

This Paragraph is written with something of a studied obscurity. If it means any thing, it seems to hint as if Sovereigns were to learn moderation, and an attention to the Liberties of their people, from the fate of the Sovereigns who have suffered in this war, and eminently of Louis the XVIth.

Will he say, whether the King of Sardinia's horrible tyranny was the cause of the loss of Savoy and of Nice? What lesson of moderation does it teach the Pope? I desire to know, whether his Holiness is to learn not to massacre his subjects, nor to waste and destroy such beautiful countries, as that of Avignon, lest he should call to their assistance that great deliverer of nations, ^*26Jourdan Coupe-tête? What lesson does it give of moderation to the Emperor, ^*27whose [286] Predecessor never put one man to death after a general rebellion of the Low Countries, that the Regicides never spared man, woman, or child, whom they but suspected of dislike to their usurpations? What, then, are all these lessons about the softening the character of Sovereigns by this Regicide peace? On reading this section one would imagine, that the poor tame Sovereigns of Europe had been a sort of furious wild beasts, that stood in need of some uncommonly rough discipline to subdue the ferocity of their savage nature!

As to the example to be learnt from the murder of Louis the 16th, if a lesson to Kings is not derived from his fate, I do not know whence it can come. The Author, however, ought not to have left us in the dark upon that subject, to break our shins over hints and insinuations. Is it, then, true, that this unfortunate monarch drew his punishment upon himself by his want of moderation, and his oppressing the liberties, of which he had found his people in possession? Is not the direct contrary the fact? And is not the example of this Revolution the very reverse of any thing, which can lead to that softening of character in Princes, which the Author supposes as a security to the people, and has brought forward as a recommendation to fraternity with those, who have administered that happy emollient in the murder of their King and the slavery and desolation of their Country?

But the Author does not confine the benefit of the Regicide lesson to Kings alone. He has a diffusive bounty. Nobles, and men of property will likewise be greatly reformed. They too will be led to a review of their social situation and duties, "and will reflect, that their large allotment of worldly advantages is for the aid and benefit of the whole." Is it then from the fate of ^*28Juignie, Archbishop of Paris, or of the Cardinal de Rochefoucault, and of so many [287] others, who gave their fortunes, and, I may say, ^*29their very beings to the poor, that the rich are to learn, that their "fortunes are for the aid and benefit of the whole?" I say nothing of the liberal persons of great rank and property, lay and ecclesiastick, men and women, to whom we have had the honour and happiness of affording an asylum—I pass by these, lest I should never have done, or lest I should omit some as deserving as any I might mention. Why will the Author then suppose, that the Nobles and men of property in France have been banished, confiscated and murdered, on account of the savageness and ferocity of their character, and their being tainted with vices beyond those of the same order and description in other countries? No Judge of a Revolutionary tribunal, with his hands dipped in their blood, and his maw gorged with their property, has yet dared to assert what this Author has been pleased, by way of a moral lesson, to insinuate.

Their Nobility and their men of property, in a mass, had the very same virtues and the very same vices, and in the very same proportions, with the same description of men in this and in other nations. I must do justice to suffering honour, generosity, and integrity. I do not know that any time or any country has furnished more splendid examples of every virtue, domestick and publick. I do not enter into the councils of Providence: but humanly speaking, many of these Nobles and men of property, from whose disastrous fate we are, it seems, to learn a general softening of character, and a revision of our social situations and duties, appear to me full as little deserving of that fate, as the Author, whoever he is, can be. Many of them, I am sure, were such as I should be proud indeed to be able to compare myself with, in knowledge, in integrity, and in every other virtue. My feeble nature might shrink, though theirs did not, from the proof; but my reason and my ambition tell me, that it [288] would be a good bargain to purchase their merits with their fate.

For which of his vices did that great magistrate, ^*30D'Espremenil, lose his fortune and his head? What were the abominations of ^*31Malesherbes, that other excellent magistrate, whose sixty years of uniform virtue was acknowledged, in the very act of his murder, by the judicial butchers who condemned him? On account of what misdemeanours was he robbed of his property, and slaughtered with two generations of his offspring; and the remains of the third race, with a refinement of cruelty, and lest they should appear to reclaim the property forfeited by the virtues of their ancestor, confounded in an Hospital with the thousands of those unhappy foundling infants, who are abandoned, without relation and without name, by the wretchedness or by the profligacy of their parents?

Is the fate of the Queen of France to produce this softening of character? Was she a person so very ferocious and cruel as, by the example of her death, to frighten us into common humanity? Is there no way to teach the Emperor a softening of character and a review of his social situation and duty, but his consent, by an infamous accord with regicide, to drive a second coach with the Austrian Arms through the streets of Paris, along which, after a series of preparatory horrors exceeding the atrocities of the bloody execution itself, the glory of the Imperial Race had been carried to an ignominious death? Is this a lesson of moderation to a descendant of Maria Theresa, drawn from the fate of the daughter of that incomparable woman and sovereign? If he learns this lesson from such an object and from such teachers, the man may remain, but the King is deposed. If he does not carry quite another memory of that transaction in the inmost recesses of his heart, he is unworthy to reign; he is unworthy to live. In the chronicle [289] of disgrace he will have but this short tale told of him, "he was the first Emperor, of his house, that embraced a regicide: He was the ^*32last, that wore the imperial purple." Far am I from thinking so ill of this august Sovereign, who is at the head of the Monarchies of Europe, and who is the trustee of their dignities and his own.

What ferocity of character drew on the fate of Elizabeth, the sister of King Lewis the 16th? For which of the vices of that pattern of benevolence, of piety, and of all the virtues, did they put her to death? For which of her vices did they put to death the mildest of all human creatures, the Duchess of Biron? What were the crimes of those crowds of Matrons and Virgins of condition, whom they massacred, with their juries of blood, in prisons and on scaffolds? What were the enormities of the Infant King, whom they caused by lingering tortures to perish in their dungeon, and whom if at last they despatched by poison, it was in that detestable crime the only act of mercy they have ever shewn?

What softening of character is to be had, what review of their social situations and duties is to be taught by these examples, to Kings, to Nobles, to Men of Property, to Women, and to Infants? The Royal Family perished, because it was royal. The Nobles perished, because they were noble. The Men, Women and Children, who had property, because they had property to be robbed of. The Priests were punished, after they had been robbed of their all, not for their vices, but for their virtues and their piety, which made them an honour to their sacred profession, and to that nature, of which we ought to be proud, since they belong to it. My Lord, nothing can be learned from such examples, except the danger of being Kings, Queens, Nobles, Priests, and Children to be butchered on account of their inheritance. These are things, at which not Vice, not Crime, not Folly, but Wisdom, Goodness, Learning, [290] Justice, Probity, Beneficence stand aghast. By these examples our reason and our moral sense are not enlightened, but confounded; and there is no refuge for astonished and affrighted virtue, but being annihilated in ^*33humility and submission, sinking into a silent adoration of the inscrutable dispensations of Providence, and flying with trembling wings from this world of daring crimes, and feeble, pusillanimous, half-bred, bastard Justice, to the asylum of another order of things, in an unknown form, but in a better life.

Whatever the Politician or Preacher of September or of October may think of the matter, it is a most comfortless, disheartening, desolating example. Dreadful is the example of ruined innocence and virtue, and the compleatest triumph of the compleatest villainy, that ever vexed and disgraced mankind! The example is ruinous in every point of view, religious, moral, civil, political. It establishes that dreadful maxim of Machiavel, that in great affairs men are not to be wicked by halves. This maxim is not made for a middle sort of beings, who, because they cannot be Angels, ought to thwart their ambition and not endeavour to become infernal spirits. It is too well exemplified in the present time, where the faults and errours of humanity, checked by the imperfect timorous virtues, have been overpowered by those, who have stopped at no crime. It is a dreadful part of the example, that infernal malevolence has had pious apologists, who read their lectures on frailties in favour of crimes; who abandoned the weak, and court the friendship of the wicked. To root out these maxims, and the examples that support them, is a wise object of years of war. This is that war. This is that moral war. It was said by ^*34old Trivulzio, that the ^*35battle of Marignan was the battle of the Giants, that all the rest of the many he had seen were those of the Cranes and Pygmies. This is true of the objects, at least, of the contest. For the greater part of those, which we have [291] hitherto contended for, in comparison, were the toys of children.

The October Politician is so full of charity and good nature, that he supposes, that these very robbers and murderers themselves are in a course of amelioration; on what ground I cannot conceive, except on the long practice of every crime, and by its complete success. He is an ^*36Origenist, and believes in the conversion of the Devil. All that runs in the place of blood in his veins, is nothing but the milk of human kindness. He is as soft as a curd, though, as a politician, he might be supposed to be made of sterner stuff. He supposes (to use his own expression) "that the salutary truths which he inculcates, are making their way into their bosoms." Their bosom is a rock of granite, on which falsehood has long since built her strong hold. Poor Truth has had a hard work of it with her little pickaxe. Nothing but gunpowder will do.

As a proof, however, of the progress of this sap of Truth, he gives us a confession they had made not long before he wrote. "Their fraternity" (as was lately stated by themselves in a solemn report) "has been the brotherhood of Cain and Abel, and they have organized nothing but Bankruptcy and Famine." A very honest confession truly; and much in the spirit of their oracle, Rousseau. Yet, what is still more marvellous than the confession, this is the very fraternity, to which our author gives us such an obliging invitation to accede. There is, indeed, a vacancy in the fraternal corps; a brother and a partner is wanted. If we please, we may fill up the place of the butchered Abel; and whilst we wait the destiny of the departed brother, we may enjoy the advantages of the partnership, by entering without delay into a shop of ready-made Bankruptcy and Famine. These are the Douceurs, by which we are invited to regicide fraternity and friendship. But still our Author considers the confession as [292] a proof, that "truth is making its way into their bosoms." No! it is not making its way into their bosoms. It has forced its way into their mouths! The evil spirit, by which they are possessed, though essentially a liar, is forced, by the tortures of conscience, to confess the truth; to confess enough for their condemnation, but not for their amendment. Shakespeare very aptly expresses this kind of confession, devoid of repentance, from the mouth of an ^*37usurper, a murderer, and a regicide—

We ourselves compelled
Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults,
To give in evidence.

Whence is their amendment? Why, the Author writes, that on their murderous insurrectionary system their own lives are not sure for an hour; nor has their power a greater stability. True. They are convinced of it, and accordingly the wretches have done all they can to preserve their lives and to secure their power; but not one step have they taken to amend the one, or to make a more just use of the other. Their wicked policy has obliged them to make a pause in the only massacres, in which their treachery and cruelty had operated as a kind of savage justice, that is, the massacre of the accomplices of their crimes. They have ceased to shed the inhuman blood of their fellow murderers; but when they take any of those persons, who contend for their lawful government, their property, and their religion, notwithstanding the truth, which this author says is making its way into their bosoms, it has not taught them the least tincture of mercy. This we plainly see by their ^*38massacre at Quiberon, where they put to death, with every species of contumely, and without any exception, every prisoner of war who did not escape out of their hands. To have had property, to have been robbed of it, and to endeavour to regain it—these are crimes irremissible, to which every man, who regards his [293] property or his life, in every country, ought well to look in all connexion with those, with whom, to have had property was an offence, to endeavour to keep it, a second offence, to attempt to regain it, a crime that puts the offender out of all the laws of peace or war. You cannot see one of those wretches without an alarm for your life as well as your goods. They are like the worst of the French and Italian banditti, who, whenever they robbed, were sure to murder.

Are they not the very same Ruffians, Thieves, Assassins, and Regicides, that they were from the beginning? Have they diversified the scene by the least variety, or produced the face of a single new villainy? ^*39Taedet harum quotidianarum formarum. Oh! but I shall be answered, it is now quite another thing—they are all changed—you have not seen them in their state dresses. This makes an amazing difference. The new Habit of the Directory is so charmingly fancied, that it is impossible not to fall in love with so well-dressed a Constitution. The Costume of the Sansculotte Constitution of 1793 was absolutely insufferable. The Committee for Foreign Affairs were such slovens, and stunk so abominably, that no ^*40Muscadin Ambassador of the smallest degree of delicacy of nerves could come within ten yards of them: but now they are so powdered and perfumed and ribbanded and sashed and plumed, that, though they are grown infinitely more insolent in their fine cloaths, even than they were in their rags (and that was enough), as they now appear, there is something in it more grand and noble, something more suitable to an awful Roman Senate, receiving the homage of dependent ^*41Tetrarchs. Like that Senate (their perpetual model for conduct towards other nations) they permit their vassals, during their good pleasure, to assume the name of Kings, in order to bestow more dignity on the suite and retinue of the Sovereign Republick by the nominal rank of their slaves—Ut habeant instrumenta servitutis [294] et reges. All this is very fine, undoubtedly; and Ambassadors, whose hands are almost out for want of employment, may long to have their part in this august ceremony of the Republick one and indivisible. But, with great deference to the new diplomatic taste, we old people must retain some square-toed predilection for the fashions of our youth. I am afraid you will find me, my Lord, again falling into my usual vanity, in valuing myself on the eminent Men whose society I once enjoyed. I remember in a conversation I once had with my ever dear friend Garrick, who was the first of Actors, because he was the most acute observer of nature I ever knew, I asked him, how it happened that whenever a Senate appeared on the Stage, the Audience seemed always disposed to laughter? He said the reason was plain; the Audience was well acquainted with the faces of most of the Senators. They knew, that they were no other than candle-snuffers, revolutionary scene-shifters, second and third mob, prompters, clerks, executioners, who stand with their axe on their shoulders by the wheel, grinners in the Pantomime, murderers in Tragedies, who make ugly faces under black wigs; in short, the very scum and refuse of the Theatre; and it was of course, that the contrast of the vileness of the Actors with the pomp of their Habits naturally excited ideas of contempt and ridicule.

So it was at Paris on the inaugural day of the Constitution for the present year. The foreign Ministers were ordered to attend at this investiture of the Directory—for so they call the managers of their burlesque Government. The Diplomacy, who were a sort of strangers, were quite awe struck with "the ^*42pride, pomp, and circumstance" of this majestick Senate; whilst the Sansculotte Gallery instantly recognized their old insurrectionary acquaintance, burst out into a horse laugh at their absurd finery, and held them in infinitely greater contempt, than whilst they prowled about [295] the streets in the pantaloons of the last year's Constitution, when their Legislators appeared honestly, with their daggers in their belts and their pistols peeping out of their side pocket holes, like a bold brave Banditti, as they are. The Parisians, (and I am much of their mind) think that a thief with a crape on his visage, is much worse than a bare-faced knave; and that such robbers richly deserve all the penalties of all the Black Acts. In this their thin disguise, their comrades of the late abdicated Sovereign Canaille hooted and hissed them; and from that day have no other name for them, than what is not quite so easy to render into English, impossible to make it very civil English. It belongs indeed to the language of the Halles; but, without being instructed in that dialect, it was the opinion of the polite Lord Chesterfield, that no man could be a compleat master of French. Their Parisian brethren called them Gueux plumés, which, though not elegant, is expressive and characteristic—"feathered scoundrels" I think comes the nearest to it in that kind of English. But we are now to understand, that these Gueux, for no other reason, that I can divine, except their red and white cloaths, form at last a State, with which we may cultivate amity, and have a prospect of the blessings of a secure and permanent peace. In effect then, it was not with the men, or their principles, or their politicks, that we quarrelled. Our sole dislike was to the cut of their cloaths.

But to pass over their dresses—Good God! in what habits did the Representatives of the crowned heads of Europe appear, when they came to swell the pomp of their humiliation, and attended in solemn function this inauguration of Regicide? That would be the curiosity. Under what robes did they cover the disgrace and degradation of the whole College of Kings? What warehouses of masks and dominos furnished a cover to the nakedness of their shame? The [296] shop ought to be known; it will soon have a good trade. Were the dresses of the Ministers of those lately called Potentates, who attended on that occasion, taken from the wardrobe of that property man at the Opera, from whence my old acquaintance ^*43Anacharsis Cloots, some years ago, equipped a body of Ambassadors, whom he conducted, as from all the Nations of the World, to the bar of what was called the Constituent Assembly? Among those mock Ministers, one of the most conspicuous figures was the Representative of the British Nation, who unluckily was wanting at the late ceremony. In the face of all the real Ambassadors of the Sovereigns of Europe was this ludicrous representation of their several Subjects, under the name of oppressed Sovereigns,^*56 exhibited to the Assembly; that Assembly received an harangue in the name of those Sovereigns against their Kings, delivered by this Cloots, actually a subject of Prussia, under the name of Ambassador of the Human Race. At that time there was only a feeble reclamation from one of the Ambassadors of these tyrants and oppressors. A most gracious answer was given to the Ministers of the oppressed Sovereigns; and they went so far on that occasion as to assign them, in that assumed character, a box at one of their festivals.

I was willing to indulge myself in an hope that this second appearance of Ambassadors was only an insolent mummery of the same kind. But alas! Anacharsis himself, all fanatic as he was, could not have imagined, that his Opera procession should have been the prototype of the real appearance of the Representatives of all the Sovereigns of Europe, themselves to make the same prostration that was made by those who dared to represent their people in a complaint against them. But in this the French Republick [297] has followed, as they always affect to do and have hitherto done with success, the example of the ancient Romans, who shook all Governments by listening to the complaints of their subjects, and soon after brought the Kings themselves to answer at their bar. At this last ceremony the Ambassadors had not Cloots for ^*44their Cotterel. Pity that Cloots had not had a reprieve from the Guillotine 'till he had compleated his work! But that engine fell before the curtain had fallen upon all the dignity of the earth.

On this their ^*45gaudy day the new Regicide Directory sent for that diplomatic rabble, as bad as themselves in principle, but infinitely worse in degradation. They called them out by a sort of roll of their Nations, one after another, much in the manner, in which they called wretches out of their prison to the guillotine. When these Ambassadors of Infamy appeared before them, the chief Director, in the name of the rest, treated each of them with a short, affected, pedantic, insolent, theatric laconium; a sort of epigram of contempt. When they had thus insulted them in a style and language which never before was heard, and which no Sovereign would for a moment endure from another, supposing any of them frantic enough to use it, to finish their outrage, they drummed and trumpeted the wretches out of their Hall of Audience.

Among the objects of this insolent buffoonery was a person supposed to represent the King of Prussia. To this worthy Representative they did not so much as condescend to mention his Master; they did not seem to know, that he had one; they addressed themselves solely to Prussia in the abstract, notwithstanding the infinite obligation they owed to their early protector for their first recognition and alliance, and for the part of his territory he gave into their hands for the first-fruits of his homage. None but dead Monarchs are so much as mentioned by them, and those only to insult the [298] living by an invidious comparison. They told the Prussians, they ought to learn, after the example of Frederic the Great, a love for France. What a pity it is, that he, who loved France so well as to chastise it, was not now alive, by an unsparing use of the rod (which indeed he would have spared little) to give them another instance of his paternal affection! But the Directory were mistaken. These are not days in which Monarchs value themselves upon the title of great. They are ^*46grown philosophick: they are satisfied to be good.

Your Lordship will pardon me for this no very long reflexion on the short but excellent speech of the Plumed Director to the Ambassador of ^*47Cappadocia. The Imperial Ambassador was not in waiting, but they found for Austria a good ^*48Judean representation. With great judgement his Highness, the Grand Duke, had sent the most atheistick coxcomb to be found in Florence, to represent, at the bar of impiety, the House of Apostolic Majesty, and the descendants of the pious though high-minded Maria Theresa. He was sent to humble the whole race of Austria before those grim assassins, reeking with the blood of the ^*49Daughter of Maria Theresa, whom they sent half dead in a dung cart to a cruel execution; and this true born son of apostacy and infidelity, this Renegado from the faith and from all honour and all humanity, drove an Austrian coach over the stones which were yet wet with her blood—with that blood, which dropped every step through her tumbrel, all the way she was drawn from the horrid prison, in which they had finished all the cruelty and horrors not executed in the face of the sun! The Hungarian subjects of Maria Theresa, when they drew their swords to defend her rights against France, called her, with correctness of truth, though not with the same correctness, perhaps, of Grammar, a King; ^*50Moriamur pro Rege nostro Maria Theresa. SHE lived and [299] died a King, and others will have Subjects ready to make the same vow, when, in either sex, they shew themselves real Kings.

When the Directory came to this miserable fop, they bestowed a compliment on his matriculation into their Philosophy; but as to his Master, they made to him, as was reasonable, a reprimand, not without a pardon, and an oblique hint at the whole family. What indignities have been offered through this wretch to his Master, and how well borne, it is not necessary that I should dwell on at present. I hope that those who yet wear Royal Imperial and Ducal Crowns, will learn to feel as Men and as Kings; if not, I predict to them, they will not long exist as Kings, or as Men.

Great Britain was not there. Almost in despair, I hope she will never, in any rags and coversluts of Infamy, be seen at such an exhibition. The hour of her final degradation is not yet come; she did not herself appear in the Regicide presence, to be the sport and mockery of those bloody buffoons, who, in the merriment of their pride, were insulting with every species of contumely the fallen dignity of the rest of Europe. But Britain, though not personally appearing to bear her part in this monstrous Tragi-comedy, was very far from being forgotten. The new-robed Regicides found a representative for her. And who was this Representative? Without a previous knowledge any one would have given a thousand guesses, before he could arrive at a tolerable divination of their rancorous insolence. They chose to address what they had to say concerning this Nation to the Ambassador of America. They did not apply to this Ambassador for a Mediation. That, indeed, would have indicated a want of every kind of decency; but it would have indicated nothing more. But, in this their American apostrophe, your Lordship will observe, they did not so [300] much as pretend to hold out to us directly, or through any Mediator, though in the most humiliating manner, any idea whatsoever of Peace, or the smallest desire of reconciliation. To the States of America themselves they paid no compliment. They paid their compliment to Washington solely; and on what ground? This most respectable Commander and Magistrate might deserve commendation on very many of those qualities, which they, who most disapprove some part of his proceedings, not more justly, than freely, attribute to him; but they found nothing to commend in him, "but the hatred he bore to Great Britain." I verily believe that in the whole history of our European wars, there never was such a compliment paid from the Sovereign of one State to a great Chief of another. Not one Ambassador from any one of those Powers, who pretend to live in amity with this Kingdom, took the least notice of that unheard-of declaration; nor will Great Britain, till she is known with certainty to be true to her own dignity, find any one disposed to feel for the indignities that are offered to her. To say the truth, those miserable creatures were all silent under the insults that were offered to themselves. They pocketed their epigrams, as Ambassadors formerly took the gold boxes, and miniature pictures set in diamonds, presented them by Sovereigns, at whose courts they had resided. It is to be presumed that by the next post they faithfully and promptly transmitted to their Masters the honours they had received. I can easily conceive the epigram, which will be presented to ^*51Lord Auckland or to the Duke of Bedford, as hereafter, according to circumstances, they may happen to represent this Kingdom. Few can have so little imagination, as not readily to conceive the nature of the boxes of epigrammatick lozenges, that will be presented to them.

But, hae nugae seria ducunt in mala. The conduct of the Regicide Faction is perfectly systematick in every particular, [301] and it appears absurd only as it is strange and uncouth; not as it has an application to the ends and objects of their Policy. When by insult after insult they have rendered the character of Sovereigns vile in the eyes of their subjects, they know there is but one step more to their utter destruction. All authority, in a great degree, exists in opinion: royal authority most of all. The supreme majesty of a Monarch cannot be allied with contempt. Men would reason not unplausibly, that it would be better to get rid of the Monarchy at once, than to suffer that which was instituted, and well instituted, to support the glory of the Nation, to become the instrument of its degradation and disgrace.

A good many reflexions will arise in your Lordship's mind upon the time and circumstances of that most insulting and atrocious declaration of hostility against this Kingdom. The declaration was made subsequent to the noble Lord's Encomium on the new Regicide Constitution; after the Pamphlet had made something more than advances towards a reconciliation with that ungracious race, and had directly disowned all those who adhered to the original declaration in favour of Monarchy. It was even subsequent to the unfortunate declaration in the Speech from the Throne (which this Pamphlet but too truly announced) of the readiness of our Government to enter into connexions of friendship with that Faction. Here was the answer, from the Throne of Regicide, to the Speech from the Throne of Great Britain. They go out of their way to compliment General Washington on the supposed rancour of his heart towards this Country. It is very remarkable, that they make this compliment of malice to the Chief of the United States, who had first signed a treaty of peace, amity and commerce with this Kingdom. This radical hatred, according to their way of thinking, the most recent, solemn compacts of friendship [302] cannot or ought not to remove. In this malice to England, as in the one great comprehensive virtue, all other merits of this illustrious person are entirely merged. For my part, ^*52I do not believe the fact to be so, as they represent it. Certainly it is not for Mr. Washington's honour as a Gentleman, a Christian, or a President of the United States, after the treaty he has signed, to entertain such sentiments. I have a moral assurance that the representation of the Regicide Directory is absolutely false and groundless. If it be, it is a stronger mark of their audacity and insolence, and still a stronger proof of the support they mean to give to the mischievous faction they are known to nourish there to the ruin of those States, and to the end, that no British affections should ever arise in that important part of the world, which would naturally lead to a cordial, hearty British Alliance upon the bottom of mutual interest and ancient affection. It shews, in what part it is, and with what a weapon, they mean a deadly blow at the heart of Great Britain. One really would have expected, when this new Constitution of theirs, which had been announced as a great reform, and which was to be, more than any of their former experimental schemes, alliable with other Nations, that they would, in their very first publick Act and their declaration to the collected representation of Europe and America, have affected some degree of moderation, or, at least, have observed a guarded silence with regard to their temper and their views. No such thing; they were in haste to declare the principles which are spun into the primitive staple of their frame. They were afraid that a moment's doubt should exist about them. In their very infancy they were in haste to put their hand on their ^*53infernal altar, and to swear the same immortal hatred to England which was sworn in the succession of all the short-lived constitutions that preceded it. With them every thing else perishes, [303] almost as soon as it is formed; this hatred alone is immortal. This is their impure Vestal fire that never is extinguished; and never will it be extinguished whilst the system of Regicide exists in France. What! are we not to believe them? Men are too apt to be deceitful enough in their professions of friendship, and this makes a wise man walk with some caution through life. Such professions, in some cases, may be even a ground of further distrust. But when a man declares himself your unalterable enemy! No man ever declared to another a rancour towards him, which he did not feel. Falsos in amore odia non fingere, said ^*54an Author, who points his observations so as to make them remembered.

Observe, my Lord, that from their invasion of Flanders and Holland to this hour, they have never made the smallest signification of a desire of Peace with this Kingdom, with Austria, or indeed, with any other power, that I know of. As superiours, they expect others to begin. We have complied, as you may see. The hostile insolence, with which they gave such a rebuff to our first overture in the speech from the Throne, did not hinder us from making, from the same Throne, a second advance. The two Houses, a second time, coincided in the same sentiments with a degree of apparent unanimity, (for there was no dissentient voice but yours) with which, when they reflect on it, they will be as much ashamed, as I am. To this our new humiliating overture (such, at whatever hazard, I must call it) what did the regicide Directory answer? Not one publick word of a readiness to treat. No, they feel their proud situation too well. They never declared, whether they would grant peace to you or not. They only signified to you their pleasure, as to the Terms, on which alone they would, in any case, admit you to it. You shewed your general disposition to peace, and, to forward it, you left every thing open to negotiations. [304] As to any terms you can possibly obtain, they shut out all negotiation at the very commencement. They declared, that they never would make a peace, by which any thing, that ever belonged to France, should be ceded. We would not treat with the Monarchy, weakened as it must obviously be in any circumstance of restoration, without a reservation of something for indemnity and security, and that too in words of the largest comprehension. You treat with the Regicides without any reservation at all. On their part, they assure you formally and publickly, that they will give you nothing in the name of indemnity or security, or for any other purpose.

It is impossible not to pause here for a moment, and to consider the manner in which such declarations would have been taken by your Ancestors from a Monarch distinguished for his arrogance; an arrogance, which, even more than his ambition, incensed and combined all Europe against him. Whatever his inward intentions may have been, did Lewis the 14th ever make a declaration, that the true bounds of France were the Ocean, the Mediterranean and the Rhine? In any overtures for peace, did he ever declare, that he would make no sacrifices to promote it? His declarations were always directly to the contrary; and at the Peace of Ryswick his actions were to the contrary. At the close of the War, almost in every instance victorious, all Europe was astonished, even those who received them were astonished, at his concessions. Let those, who have a mind to see, how little, in comparison, the most powerful and ambitious of all Monarchs is to be dreaded, consult the very judicious, critical observations on the Politicks of that Reign, inserted in the Military Treatise of the ^*55Marquis de Montalembert. Let those, who wish to know what is to be dreaded from an ambitious republick, consult no author no military critick, no historical critick. Let them open [305] their own eyes, which degeneracy and pusillanimity have shut from the light that pains them, and let them not vainly seek their security in a voluntary ignorance of their danger.

To dispose us towards this peace—an attempt, in which our Author has, I do not know whether to call it, the good or ill fortune to agree with whatever is most seditious, factious and treasonable in this country, we are told by many dealers in speculation, but not so distinctly by the Author himself, (too great distinctness of affirmation not being his fault)—but we are told, that the French have lately obtained a very pretty sort of constitution, and that it resembles the British constitution as if they had been twinned together in the womb. ^*56Mire sagaces fallere hospites discrimen obscurum. It may be so; but I confess I am not yet made to it; nor is the Noble Author. He finds the "elements" excellent; but the disposition very inartificial indeed. Contrary to what we might expect at Paris, the meat is good, the cookery abominable. I agree with him fully in the last; and if I were forced to allow the first, I should still think with our ^*57old coarse bye-word, that the same power, which furnished all their former restaurateurs, sent also their present cooks. I have a great opinion of ^*58Thomas Paine, and of all his productions. I remember his having been one of the Committee for forming one of their annual Constitutions, I mean the admirable Constitution of 1793—after having been a Chamber Counsel to the no less admirable Constitution of 1791. This pious patriot has his eyes still directed to his dear native country, notwithstanding her ingratitude to so kind a benefactor. This outlaw of England, and lawgiver to France, is now, in secret probably, trying his hand again; and inviting us to him by making his Constitution such, as may give his disciples in England some plausible pretext for going into the ^*59house that he has opened. We have discovered, it [306] seems, that all, which the boasted wisdom of our ancestors has laboured to bring to perfection for six or seven centuries, is nearly or altogether matched in six or seven days, at the leisure hours and sober intervals of Citizen Thomas Paine.

But though the treacherous tapster Thomas
Hangs a new Angel two doors from us,
As fine as daubers' hands can make it,
In hopes that strangers may mistake it;
We think it both a shame and sin
To quit the good old Angel Inn.

Indeed in this good old House, where every thing, at least, is well aired, I shall be content to put up my fatigued horses, and here take a bed for the long night that begins to darken upon me. Had I, however, the honour (I must now call it so) of being a Member of any of the Constitutional Clubs, I should think I had carried my point most completely. It is clear, by the applauses bestowed on what the Author calls this new Constitution, a mixed Oligarchy, that the difference between the Clubbists and the old adherents to the Monarchy of this country is hardly worth a scuffle. Let it depart in peace, and ^*60light lie the earth on the British Constitution! By this easy manner of treating the most difficult of all subjects, the Constitution for a great Kingdom, and by letting loose an opinion, that they may be made by any adventurers in speculation in a small given time and for any Country, all the ties, which, whether of reason or prejudice, attach mankind to their old, habitual, domestic Governments, are not a little loosened: all communion, which the similarity of the basis has produced between all the Governments that compose what we call the Christian World and the ^*61Republic of Europe, would be dissolved. By these hazarded speculations France is more approximated to us in Constitution than in situation, and in proportion as we recede from the ancient system of Europe, we approach to [307] that connection which alone can remain to us, a close alliance with the new discovered moral and political world in France.

These theories would be of little importance, if we did not, not only know, but, sorely feel, that there is a strong Jacobin faction in this Country, which has long employed itself in speculating upon Constitutions, and to whom the circumstance of their Government being home bred and prescriptive, seems no sort of recommendation. What seemed to us to be the best system of liberty that a nation ever enjoyed, to them seems the yoke of an intolerable slavery. This speculative faction had long been at work. The French Revolution did not cause it: it only discovered it, increased it, and gave fresh vigour to its operations. ^*62I have reason to be persuaded, that it was in this Country, and from English Writers and English Caballers, that France herself was instituted in this revolutionary fury. The communion of these two factions upon any pretended basis of similarity is a matter of very serious consideration. They are always considering the ^*63formal distributions of power in a constitution: the moral basis they consider as nothing. Very different is my opinion: I consider the moral basis as every thing; 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? As a basis for such a connection, as has subsisted between the powers of Europe, we had nothing to fear, but from the lapses and frailties of men, and that was enough; but this new pretended Republic has given us more to apprehend from what they call their virtues, than we had to dread from the vices of other men. Avowedly and systematically they have given the upper hand to all the [308] vicious and degenerate part of human nature. It is from their lapses and deviations from their principle, that alone we have any thing to hope.

I hear another inducement to fraternity with the present Rulers. They have murdered one Robespierre. This Robespierre they tell us was a cruel Tyrant, and now that he is put out of the way, all will go well in France. ^*64Astraea will again return to that earth from which she has been an Emigrant, and all nations will resort to her golden scales. It is very extraordinary, that the very instant the mode of Paris is known here, it becomes all the fashion in London. This is their jargon. It is the old bon ton of robbers, who cast their common crimes on the wickedness of their departed associates. I care little about the memory of this same Robespierre. I am sure he was an execrable villain. I rejoiced at his punishment neither more nor less than I should at the execution of the present Directory or any of its Members. But who gave Robespierre the power of being a Tyrant? and who were the instruments of his tyranny? The present virtuous Constitution-mongers. He was a Tyrant, they were his satellites and his hangmen. Their sole merit is in the murder of their colleague. They have expiated their other murders by a new murder. It has always been the case among this banditti. They have always had the knife at each others' throats, after they had almost blunted it at the throats of every honest man. These people thought, that, in the commerce of murder, he was like to have the better of the bargain, if any time was lost: they therefore took one of their short revolutionary methods, and massacred him in a manner so perfidious and cruel, as would shock all humanity, if the stroke was not struck by the present Rulers on one of their own Associates. But this last act of infidelity and murder is to expiate all the rest, and to qualify them for the amity of an humane and virtuous [309] Sovereign and civilized People. ^*65I have heard that a Tartar believes, when he has killed a Man, that all his estimable qualities pass with his cloaths and arms to the murderer. But I have never heard, that it was the opinion of any savage Scythian, that if he kills a brother villain, he is ipso facto absolved of all his own offences. The Tartarian doctrine is the most tenable opinion. The murderers of Robespierre, besides what they are entitled to by being engaged in the same ^*66tontine of Infamy, are his Representatives; have inherited all his murderous qualities, in addition to their own private stock. But it seems, we are always to be of a party with the last and victorious Assassins. I confess, I am of a different mind; and am, rather inclined, of the two, to think and speak less hardly of a dead ruffian, than to associate with the living. I could better bear the stench of the gibbeted murderer, than the society of the bloody felons who yet annoy the world. Whilst they wait the recompense due to their ancient crimes, they merit new punishment by the new offences they commit. There is a period to the offences of Robespierre. They survive in his Assassins. Better a living dog, says the old proverb, than a dead lion; not so here. ^*67Murderers and hogs never look well till they are hanged. From villainy no good can arise, but in the example of its fate. So I leave them their dead Robespierre, either to gibbet his memory, or to deify him in their ^*68pantheon with their Marat and their Mirabeau.

It is asserted, that this government promises stability. God of his Mercy forbid! If it should, nothing upon earth besides itself can be stable. We declare this stability to be the ground of our making peace with them. Assuming it therefore, that the Men and the System are what I have described, and that they have a determined hostility against this country, an hostility not only of policy but of predilection—then I think that every rational being would go [310] along with me in considering its permanence as the greatest of all possible evils. If, therefore, we are to look for peace with such a thing in any of its monstrous shapes, which I deprecate, it must be in that state of disorder, confusion, discord, anarchy and insurrection, such as might oblige the momentary Rulers to forbear their attempts on neighbouring States, or to render these attempts less operative, if they should kindle new wars. When was it heard before, that the internal repose of a determined and wicked enemy, and the strength of his government, became the wish of his neighbour, and a security against either his malice or his ambition? The direct contrary has always been inferred from that state of things; accordingly, it has ever been the policy of those, who would preserve themselves against the enterprizes of such a malignant and mischievous power, to cut out so much work for him in his own States, as might keep his dangerous activity employed at home.

It is said in vindication of this system, which demands the stability of the regicide power as a ground for peace with them, that when they have obtained, as now it is said, (though not by this noble Author) the