3.1.66

affect to consider that part of us in any other light, insult while they cajole us; they do not want us for counsellors in deliberation, but to list us as soldiers for battle.[50]muster of our strength. I have often endeavoured to compute and to class those who, in any political view, are to be called the people. Without doing something of this sort we must proceed absurdly. We should not be much wiser, if we pretended to very great accuracy in our estimate. But I think, in the calculation I have made, the error cannot be very material. In England and Scotland, I compute that those of adult age, not declining in life, of tolerable leisure for such discussions, and of some means of information, more or less, and who are above menial dependence, (or what virtually is such) may amount to about four hundred thousand. There is such a thing as a natural representative of the people. This body is that representative; and on this body, more than on the legal constituent, the artificial representative depends. This is the British publick; and it is a publick very numerous. The rest, when feeble, are the objects of protection; when strong, the means of force. They who
*100It cannot be concealed—we are a divided people. But in divisions, where a part is to be taken, we are to make a
Of these four hundred thousand political citizens, I look upon one fifth, or about eighty thousand, to be pure Jacobins; utterly incapable of amendment; objects of eternal vigilance; and when they break out, of legal constraint. On these, no reason, no argument, no example, no venerable authority, can have the slightest influence. They desire a change; and they will have it if they can. If they cannot have it by English cabal, they will make no sort of scruple of having it by the cabal of France, into which already they are virtually incorporated. It is only their assured and confident expectation of the advantages of French fraternity and the approaching blessings of Regicide intercourse, that skins over their mischievous dispositions with a momentary quiet.

This minority is great and formidable. I do not know whether if I aimed at the total overthrow of a kingdom I should wish to be encumbered with a larger body of partizans. They are more easily disciplined and directed than if the number were greater. These, by their spirit of intrigue, and by their restless agitating activity, are of a force far superior to their numbers; and if times grew the least critical, have the means of debauching or intimidating many of those who are now sound, as well as of adding to their force large bodies of the more passive part of the nation. This minority is numerous enough to make a mighty cry for peace, or for war, or for any object they are led vehemently to desire.
*101By passing from place to place with a velocity incredible, and diversifying their character and description, they are capable of mimicking the general voice. We must not always judge of the generality of the opinion by the noise of the acclamation.

[51]The majority, the other four fifths, is perfectly sound; and of the best possible disposition to religion, to government, to the true and undivided interest of their country. Such men are
*102naturally disposed to peace. They who are in possession of all they wish are
*103languid and improvident. With this fault, (and I admit it’s existence in all it’s extent) they would not endure to hear of a peace that led to the ruin of every thing for which peace is dear to them. However, the desire of peace is essentially the weak side of that kind of men. All men that are ruined, are ruined on the side of their natural propensities. There they are unguarded. Above all, good men do not suspect that their destruction is attempted through their virtues. This their enemies are perfectly aware of: and accordingly, they, the most turbulent of mankind, who never made a scruple to shake the tranquillity of their country to its center, raise a continual cry for peace with France. Peace with Regicide, and war with the rest of the world, is their motto. From the beginning, and even whilst the French gave the blows, and we hardly opposed the
vis inertiae to their efforts—from that day to this hour, like importunate Guinea-fowls crying one note day and night, they have called for peace.In this they are, as I confess in all things they are, perfectly consistent. They who wish to unite themselves to your enemies, naturally desire, that you should disarm yourself by a peace with these enemies. But it passes my conception, how they, who wish well to their country on its antient system of laws and manners, come not to be doubly alarmed, when they find nothing but a clamor for peace, in the mouths of the men on earth the least disposed to it in their natural or in their habitual character.I have a good opinion of the general abilities of the Jacobins: not that I suppose them better born than others;
*104but strong passions awaken the faculties. They suffer not a [52] particle of the man to be lost. The spirit of enterprise gives to this description the full use of all their native energies. If I have reason to conceive that my enemy, who, as such, must have an interest in my destruction, is also a person of discernment and sagacity, then I must be quite sure that, in a contest, the object he violently pursues is the very thing by which my ruin is likely to be the most perfectly accomplished. Why do the Jacobins cry for peace? Because they know, that this point gained, the rest will follow of course. On our part, why are all the rules of prudence, as sure as the laws of material nature, to be at this time reversed? How comes it, that now for the first time, men think it right to be governed by the counsels of their enemies? Ought they not rather to tremble, when they are persuaded to travel on the same road, and to tend to the same place of rest?The minority I speak of is not susceptible of an impression from the topics of argument to be used to the larger part of the community. I therefore do not address to them any part of what I have to say. The more forcibly I drive my arguments against their system, so as to make an impression where I wish to make it, the more strongly I rivet them in their sentiments. As for us, who compose the far larger, and what I call the far better part of the people, let me say, that we have not been quite fairly dealt with when called to this deliberation. The Jacobin minority have been abundantly supplied with stores and provisions of all kinds towards their warfare. No sort of argumentative materials, suited to their purposes, have been withheld. False they are, unsound, sophistical; but they are regular in their direction. They all bear one way; and they all go to the support of the substantial merits of their cause. The others have not had the question so much as fairly stated to them.

[53] There has not been, in this century, any foreign peace or war, in it’s origin the fruit of popular desire, except the war that was made with Spain in 1739. Sir Robert Walpole was forced into the war by the people, who were inflamed to this measure by the most leading politicians, by the first orators, and the greatest poets of the time. For that war,
*105Pope sung his dying notes. For that war,
*106Johnson, in more energetic strains, employed the voice of his early genius. For that war,
*107Glover distinguished himself in the way in which his muse was the most natural and happy. The crowd readily followed the politicians in the cry for a war which threatened little bloodshed, and which promised victories that were attended with something more solid than glory. A war with Spain was a war of plunder. In the present conflict with Regicide, Mr. Pitt has not hitherto had, nor will perhaps for a few days have, many prizes to hold out in the lottery of war, to tempt the lower part of our character. He can only maintain it by an appeal to the higher; and to those, in whom that higher part is the most predominant, he must look the most for his support. Whilst he holds out no inducements to the wise, nor bribes to the avaricious, he may be forced by a vulgar cry into a peace ten times more ruinous than the most disastrous war. The weaker he is in the fund of motives which apply to our avarice, to our laziness, and to our lassitude, if he means to carry the war to any end at all, the stronger he ought to be in his addresses to our magnanimity and to our reason.In stating that Walpole was
*108driven by a popular clamour into a measure not to be justified, I do not mean wholly to excuse his conduct. My time of observation did not exactly coincide with that event; but I read much of the controversies then carried on. Several years after the contests of parties had ceased, the people were amused, and [54] in a degree warmed with them. The events of that aera seemed then of magnitude, which the revolutions of our time have reduced to parochial importance; and the debates, which then shook the nation, now appear of no higher moment than a discussion in a vestry. When I was very young, a general fashion told me I was to admire some of the writings against that Minister; a little more maturity taught me as much to despise them. I observed one fault in his general proceeding. He never manfully put forward the entire strength of his cause. He temporized; he managed; and, adopting very nearly the sentiments of his adversaries, he opposed their inferences. This, for a political commander, is the choice of a weak post. His adversaries had the better of the argument, as he handled it; not as the reason and justice of his cause enabled him to manage it. I say this, after having seen, and with some care examined, the original documents concerning certain important transactions of those times. They perfectly satisfied me of the extreme injustice of that war, and of the falsehood of the colours, which to his own ruin, and guided by a mistaken policy, he suffered to be daubed over that measure. Some years after, it was my fortune to converse with many of the principal actors against that Minister, and with those who principally excited that clamour. None of them, no not one, did in the least defend the measure, or attempt to justify their conduct. They condemned it as freely as they would have done in commenting upon any proceeding in history, in which they were totally unconcerned. Thus it will be. They who stir up the people to improper desires, whether of peace or war, will be condemned by themselves. They who weakly yield to them will be condemned by history.In my opinion, the present Ministry are as far from doing full justice to their cause in this war, as Walpole was from [55] doing justice to the peace which at that time he was willing to preserve. They throw the light on one side only of their case; though it is impossible they should not observe, that the other side which is kept in the shade has it’s importance too. They must know that France is formidable not only as she is France, but as she is Jacobin France. They knew from the beginning that the Jacobin party was not confined to that country. They knew, they felt, the strong disposition of the same faction in both countries to communicate and to co-operate. For some time past, these two points have been kept, and even industriously kept, out of sight. France is considered as merely a foreign Power; and the seditious English only as a domestic faction. The merits of the war with the former have been argued solely on political grounds. To prevent the mischievous doctrines of the latter from corrupting our minds, matter and argument have been supplied abundantly, and even to surfeit, on the excellency of our own government. But nothing has been done to make us feel in what manner the safety of that Government is connected with the principle and with the issue of this war. For any thing which in the late discussion has appeared, the war is entirely collateral to the state of Jacobinism; as truly a foreign war to us and to all our home concerns, as the war with Spain in 1739, about
*109Guarda-Costas, the
*110Madrid Convention, and the fable of
*111Captain
Jenkins’s ears.

Whenever the adverse party has raised a cry for peace with the Regicide, the answer has been little more than this, “that the Administration wished for such a peace, full as much as the Opposition; but that the time was not convenient for making it.” Whatever else has been said was much in the same spirit. Reasons of this kind never touched the substantial merits of the war. They were in [56] the nature of
*112dilatory pleas, exceptions of form, previous questions. Accordingly all the arguments against a compliance with what was represented as the popular desire, (urged on with all possible vehemence and earnestness by the Jacobins) have appeared flat and languid, feeble and evasive. They appeared to aim only at gaining time. They never entered into the peculiar and distinctive character of the war. They spoke neither to the understanding nor to the heart. Cold as ice themselves, they never could kindle in our breasts a spark of that zeal, which is necessary to a conflict with an adverse zeal; much less were they made to infuse into our minds that stubborn persevering spirit, which alone is capable of bearing up against those vicissitudes of fortune which will probably occur, and those burthens which must be inevitably borne in a long war. I speak it emphatically, and with a desire that it should be marked, in a
long war; because, without such a war, no experience has yet told us, that a dangerous power has ever been reduced to measure or to reason. I do not throw back my view to the Peloponnesian war of twenty-seven years; nor to two of the Punic wars, the first of twenty-four, the second of eighteen; nor to the more recent war concluded by the treaty of Westphalia, which continued, I think, for thirty. I go to what is but just fallen behind living memory, and immediately touches our own country. Let the portion of our history from the year 1689 to 1713 be brought before us. We shall find, that in all that period of twenty-four years, there were hardly five that could be called a season of peace; and the interval between the two wars was in reality, nothing more than a very active preparation for renovated hostility. During that period, every one of the propositions of peace came from the enemy: the first, when they were accepted, at the peace of Ryswick; the second, when they were [57] rejected, at the congress at Gertruydenburgh; the last, when the war ended by the treaty of Utrecht. Even then, a very great part of the nation, and that which contained by far the most intelligent statesmen, was against the conclusion of the war. I do not enter into the merits of that question as between the parties. I only state the existence of that opinion as a fact, from whence you may draw such an inference as you think properly arises from it.

It is for us at present to recollect what we have been; and to consider what, if we please, we may be still. At the period of those wars, our principal strength was found in the resolution of the people; and that in the resolution of a part only of the then whole, which bore no proportion to our existing magnitude. England and Scotland were not united at the beginning of that mighty struggle. When, in the course of the contest they were conjoined, it was in a raw, an ill-cemented, an unproductive union. For the whole duration of the war, and long after, the names, and other outward and visible signs of approximation, rather augmented than diminished our insular feuds. They were rather the causes of new discontents and new troubles, than promoters of cordiality and affection. The now single and potent Great Britain was then not only two countries, but, from the party heats in both, and the divisions formed in each of them, each of the old kingdoms within itself in effect was made up of two hostile nations. Ireland, now so large a source of the common opulence and power, which wisely managed might be made much more beneficial and much more effective, was then the heaviest of the burthens. An army not much less than forty thousand men was drawn from the general effort, to keep that kingdom in a poor, unfruitful, and resourceless subjection.

[58] Such was the state of the empire. The state of our finances was worse, if possible. Every branch of the revenue became less productive after the Revolution. Silver, not as now a sort of counter, but the body of the current coin, was reduced so low as not to have above three parts in four of the value in the shilling. It required a dead expence of three millions sterling to renew the coinage. Publick credit, that great but ambiguous principle, which has so often been predicted as the cause of our certain ruin, but which for a century has been the constant companion, and often the means, of our prosperity and greatness, had it’s origin, and was cradled, I may say, in bankruptcy and beggary. At this day we have seen parties
*113contending to be admitted, at a moderate premium, to advance eighteen millions to the Exchequer. For infinitely smaller loans, the Chancellor of the Exchequer of that day, Montagu, the father of publick credit, counter-securing the State by the appearance of the city, with the Lord-Mayor of London at his side, was obliged, like an agent at an election, to go cap in hand from shop to shop, to borrow an hundred pound and even smaller sums. When made up in driblets as they could, their best securities were at an interest of 12 per cent. Even the paper of the Bank (now at par with cash, and even sometimes preferred to it) was often at a discount of twenty per cent. By this the state of the rest may be judged.

As to our commerce, the imports and exports of the nation, now six and forty million, did not then amount to ten. The inland trade, which is commonly passed by in this sort of estimates, but which, in part growing out of the foreign and connected with it, is more advantageous, and more substantially nutritive to the State, is not only grown in a proportion of near five to one as the foreign, but has been augmented, at least, in a tenfold proportion.
*114When I came [59] to England, I remember but one river navigation, the rate of carriage on which was limited by an Act of Parliament. It was made in the reign of William the Third; I mean that of the
*115Aire and Calder. The rate was settled at thirteen pence. So high a price demonstrated the feebleness of these beginnings of our inland intercourse. In my time, one of the longest and sharpest contests I remember in your House, and which rather resembled a violent contention amongst national parties than a local dispute, was, as well as I can recollect, to hold the price up to threepence. Even this, which a very scanty justice to the proprietors required, was done with infinite difficulty. As to private credit, there were not, as I best remember, twelve Banker’s shops at that time out of London. In this their number, when I first saw the country, I cannot be quite exact; but certainly those machines of domestick credit were then very few indeed. They are now in almost every market town: and this circumstance (whether the thing be carried to an excess or not) demonstrates the astonishing encrease of private confidence, of general circulation, and of internal commerce; an encrease out of all proportion to the growth of the foreign trade. Our naval strength in the time of King William’s war was nearly matched by that of France; and though conjoined with Holland, then a maritime Power hardly inferior to our own, even with that force we were not always victorious. Though finally superior, the allied fleets experienced many unpleasant reverses on their own element. In two years three thousand vessels were taken from the English trade. On the continent we lost almost every battle we fought.In 1697, it is not quite an hundred years ago, in that state of things, amidst the general debasement of the coin, the fall of the ordinary revenue, the failure of all the extraordinary supplies, the ruin of commerce and the almost total extinction [60] of an infant credit, the Chancellor of the Exchequer himself, whom we have just seen begging from door to door, came forward to move a resolution, full of vigour, in which, far from being discouraged by the generally adverse fortune, and the long continuance of the war, the Commons agreed to address the Crown in the following manly, spirited, and truly animating style.

This is the EIGHTH year in which your Majesty’s most dutiful and loyal subjects the Commons in Parliament assembled, have assisted your Majesty with large supplies for carrying on a just and necessary war, in defence of our religion, and preservation of our laws, and vindication of the rights and liberties of the people of England.

Afterwards they proceed in this manner:

To shew to your Majesty and all Christendom, that the Commons of England will not be
amused or diverted from their firm resolutions of obtaining by WAR, a safe and honourable peace, we do, in the name of those we represent, renew our assurances to support your Majesty and your Government against all your enemies at home and abroad; and that we will effectually assist you in carrying on the war against France.

The amusement and diversion they speak of, was the suggestion of a treaty
proposed by the enemy, and announced from the Throne. Thus the people of England felt in the
eighth, not in the
fourth year of the war. No sighing or panting after negociation; no motions from the Opposition to force the Ministry into a peace; no messages from Ministers to palsy and deaden the resolution of Parliament or the spirit of the nation. They did not so much as advise the King to listen to the propositions of the enemy, nor to seek for peace but through the mediation of a vigorous war. This address was moved in an hot, a divided, a factious, and in a great part, disaffected House of Commons, and it was carried
nemine contradicente.

[61] While that first war (which was ill smothered by the treaty of Ryswick) slept in the thin ashes of a seeming peace, a new conflagration was in it’s immediate causes. A fresh and a far greater war was in preparation. A year had hardly elapsed when arrangements were made for renewing the contest with tenfold fury. The steps which were taken, at that time, to compose, to reconcile, to unite, and to discipline all Europe against the growth of France, certainly furnish to a statesman the finest and most interesting part in the history of that great period. It formed the master-piece of King William’s policy, dexterity, and perseverance. Full of the idea of preserving, not only a local civil liberty, united with order, to our country, but to embody it in the political liberty, the order, and the independence of nations united under a natural head, the King called upon his Parliament to put itself into a posture
to preserve to England the weight and influence it at present had on the counsels and affairs ABROAD. “It will be requisite
Europe should see you will not be wanting to yourselves.”Baffled as that Monarch was, and almost heart-broken at the disappointment he met with in the mode he first proposed for that great end, he held on his course. He was faithful to his object; and in councils, as in arms, over and over again repulsed, over and over again he returned to the charge. All the mortifications he had suffered from the last Parliament, and the greater he had to apprehend from that newly chosen, were not capable of relaxing the vigour of his mind. He was in Holland when he combined the vast plan of his foreign negociations. When he came to open his design to his Ministers in England, even the sober firmness of Somers, the undaunted resolution of Shrewsbury, and the adventurous spirit of Montagu and Orford, were staggered. They were not yet mounted to the elevation of the King. The Cabinet met on the subject [62] at Tunbridge Wells the 28th of August, 1698; and there, Lord Somers holding the pen, after expressing doubts on the state of the continent, which they ultimately refer to the King, as best informed, they give him a most discouraging portrait of the spirit of this nation.“So far as relates to England,” say these Ministers,

it would be want of duty not to give your Majesty this clear account, that
there is a
deadness and want of spirit in the nation universally, so as not to be at all disposed to
entering into a new war. That they seem to be
tired out with taxes to a degree beyond what was discerned, till it appeared upon occasion of the
late elections. This is the truth of the fact upon which your Majesty will determine what resolution ought to be taken.

His Majesty did determine; and did take and pursue his resolution. In all the tottering imbecility of a new Government, and with Parliament totally unmanageable, he persevered. He persevered to expel the fears of his people, by his fortitude; to steady their fickleness, by his constancy; to expand their narrow prudence, by his enlarged wisdom; to sink their factious temper in his public spirit. In spite of his people, he resolved to make them great and glorious; to make England, inclined to shrink into her narrow self, the Arbitress of Europe, the tutelary Angel of the human race. In spite of the Ministers, who staggered under the weight that his mind imposed upon theirs, unsupported as they felt themselves by the popular spirit, he infused into them his own soul; he renewed in them their ancient heart; he rallied them in the same cause.It required some time to accomplish this work. The people were first gained; and through them their distracted representatives. Under the influence of King William, Holland had resisted the allurements of every seduction, and the terrors of every menace. With Hannibal at her [63] gates, she had nobly and magnanimously refused all separate treaty, or any thing which might for a moment appear to divide her affection or her interest, or even to distinguish her in identity from England. Having settled the great point of the consolidation (which he hoped would be eternal) of the countries, made for a common interest and common sentiment, the King, in his message to both Houses, calls their attention to the affairs of the
States General. The House of Lords was perfectly sound, and entirely impressed with the wisdom and dignity of the King’s proceedings. In answer to the message, (which you will observe was narrowed to a single point, the danger of the States General) after the usual professions of zeal for his service, the Lords opened themselves at large. They go far beyond the demands of the message. They express themselves as follows:

We take this occasion
further to assure your Majesty, that we are sensible of the
great and imminent danger to which the States General are exposed. And we perfectly agree with them in believing that their safety and ours are so inseparably united, that whatsoever is ruin to the one must be fatal to the other.

We humbly desire your Majesty will be pleased,
not only to make good all the articles of any
former treaties to the States General, but that you will enter into a strict league, offensive and defensive, with them,
for their common preservation: and that you will invite into it all Princes and States who are concerned in the present visible danger, arising from the union of France and Spain.

And we further desire your Majesty, that you will be pleased to enter into such alliances with the
Emperor, as your Majesty shall think fit, pursuant to the ends of the treaty of 1689; towards all which we assure your Majesty of our hearty and sincere assistance; not doubting, but whenever your Majesty shall be obliged to be engaged for the defence of your allies,
and securing the liberty and quiet of Europe, Almighty God will protect your sacred person in so righteous a cause. And that the unanimity, wealth, and [64] courage of your subjects will carry your Majesty with honour and success
through all the difficulties of a JUST WAR.

The House of Commons was more reserved; the late popular disposition was still in a great degree prevalent in the representative, after it had been made to change in the constituent body. The principle of the Grand Alliance was not directly recognized in the resolution of the Commons, nor the war announced, though they were well aware the alliance was formed for the war. However, compelled by the returning sense of the people, they went so far as to fix the
*116three great immoveable pillars of the safety and greatness of England, as they were then, as they are now, and as they must ever be to the end of time. They asserted in general terms the necessity of supporting Holland; of keeping united with our allies; and maintaining the liberty of Europe; though they restricted their vote to the succours stipulated by actual treaty. But now they were fairly embarked; they were obliged to go with the course of the vessel; and the whole nation, split before into an hundred adverse factions, with a King at it’s head evidently declining to his tomb, the whole nation, Lords, Commons, and People, proceeded as one body, informed by one soul. Under the British union, the union of Europe was consolidated; and it long held together with a degree of cohesion, firmness, and fidelity not known before or since in any political combination of that extent.Just as the last hand was given to this immense and complicated machine, the master workman died. But the work was formed on true mechanical principles; and it was as truly wrought. It went by the impulse it had received from the first mover. The man was dead: but the grand alliance survived, in which King William lived and reigned. That heartless and dispirited people, whom Lord Somers had represented, about two years before, as dead in energy [65] and operation, continued that war to which it was supposed they were unequal in mind, and in means, for near thirteen years.

For what have I entered into all this detail? To what purpose have I recalled your view to the end of the last century? It has been done to shew that the British Nation was then a great people—to point out how and by what means they came to be exalted above the vulgar level, and to take that lead which they assumed among mankind. To qualify us for that pre-eminence, we had then an high mind, and a constancy unconquerable; we were then inspired with no flashy passions; but such as were durable as well as warm; such as corresponded to the great interests we had at stake. This force of character was inspired, as all such spirit must ever be, from above. Government gave the impulse. As well may we fancy that of itself the sea will swell, and that without winds the billows will insult the adverse shore, as that the gross mass of the people will be moved, and elevated, and continue by a steady and permanent direction to bear upon one point, without the influence of superior authority, or superior mind.This impulse ought, in my opinion, to have been given in this war; and it ought to have been continued to it at every instant. It is made, if ever war was made, to touch all the great springs of action in the human breast. It ought not to have been a war of apology. The Minister had, in this conflict, wherewithal to glory in success; to be consoled in adversity; to hold high his principle in all fortunes. If it were not given him to support the falling edifice, he ought to bury himself under the ruins of the civilized world. All the art of Greece, and all the pride and power of eastern Monarchs, never heaped upon their ashes so grand a monument.[66] There were days when his great mind was up to the crisis of the world he is called to act in.
*16 His manly eloquence was equal to the elevated wisdom of such sentiments. But the little have triumphed over the great; an unnatural, (as it should seem) not an unusual victory. I am sure you cannot forget with how much uneasiness we heard in conversation the language of more than one gentleman at the opening of this contest, “that he was willing to try the war for a year or two, and if it did not succeed, then to vote for peace.” As if war was a matter of experiment! As if you could take it up or lay it down as an idle frolick! As if the dire goddess that presides over it, with her murderous spear in her hand, and her gorgon at her breast, was a coquette to be flirted with! We ought with reverence to approach that tremendous divinity, that loves courage, but commands counsel. War never leaves, where it found a nation. It is never to be entered into without a mature deliberation; not a deliberation lengthened out into a perplexing indecision, but a deliberation leading to a sure and fixed judgment. When so taken up, it is not to be abandoned without reason as valid, as fully and as extensively considered. Peace may be made as unadvisedly as war. Nothing is so rash as fear; and the counsels of pusillanimity very rarely put off, whilst they are always sure to aggravate, the evils from which they would fly.In that great war carried on against Louis the Fourteenth, for near eighteen years, Government spared no pains to satisfy the nation that, though they were to be animated by a desire of glory, glory was not their ultimate object; but that every thing dear to them, in religion, in law, in liberty—every thing which as freemen, as Englishmen, and as citizens of the great commonwealth of Christendom, they had at heart, was then at stake. This was to know the true art of [67] gaining the affections and confidence of an high-minded people; this was to understand human nature. A danger to avert a danger; a present inconvenience and suffering to prevent a foreseen future, and a worse calamity; these are the motives that belong to an animal, who, in his constitution, is at once adventurous and provident; circumspect and daring; whom his Creator has made, as the Poet says,
*117“of large discourse, looking before and after.” But never can a vehement and sustained spirit of fortitude be kindled in a people by a war of calculation. It has nothing that can keep the mind erect under the gusts of adversity. Even where men are willing, as sometimes they are, to barter their blood for lucre, to hazard their safety for the gratification of their avarice, the passion which animates them to that sort of conflict, like all the short-sighted passions, must see it’s objects distinct and near at hand. The passions of the lower order are hungry and impatient. Speculative plunder; contingent spoil; future, long adjourned, uncertain booty; pillage which must enrich a late posterity, and which possibly may not reach to posterity at all; these, for any length of time, will never support a mercenary war. The people are in the right. The calculation of profit in all such wars is false. On balancing the account of such wars, ten thousand hogsheads of sugar are purchased at ten thousand times their price. The blood of man should never be shed but to redeem the blood of man. It is well shed for our family, for our friends, for our God, for our country, for our kind. The rest is vanity; the rest is crime.In the war of the Grand Alliance, most of these considerations voluntarily and naturally had their part. Some were pressed into the service. The political interest easily went in the track of the natural sentiment. In the reverse course the carriage does not follow freely. I am sure the natural feeling, as I have just said, is a far more predominant [68] ingredient in this war, than in that of any other that ever was waged by this kingdom.

*118If the war made to prevent the union of two crowns upon one head was a just war, this, which is made to prevent the tearing all crowns from all heads which ought to wear them, and with the crowns to smite off the sacred heads themselves, this is a just war.

If a war to prevent Louis the Fourteenth from imposing his religion was just, a war to prevent the murderers of Louis the Sixteenth from imposing their irreligion upon us is just; a war to prevent the operation of a system, which makes life without dignity, and death without hope, is a just war.

If to preserve political independence and civil freedom to nations, was a just ground of war; a war to preserve national independence, property, liberty, life, and honour, from certain universal havock, is a war just, necessary, manly, pious; and we are bound to persevere in it by every principle, divine and human, as long as the system which menaces them all, and all equally, has an existence in the world.

You, who have looked at this matter with as fair and impartial an eye as can be united with a feeling heart, you will not think it an hardy assertion, when I affirm, that it were far better to be conquered by any other nation, than to have this faction for a neighbour. Before I felt myself authorised to say this, I considered the state of all the countries in Europe for these last three hundred years, which have been obliged to submit to a foreign law. In most of those I found the condition of the annexed countries even better, certainly not worse, than the lot of those which [69] were the patrimony of the conquerour. They wanted some blessings; but they were free from many very great evils. They were rich and tranquil. Such was Artois, Flanders, Lorrain, Alsatia, under the old Government of France. Such was Silesia under the King of Prussia. They who are to live in the vicinity of this new fabrick, are to prepare to live in perpetual conspiracies and seditions; and to end at last in being conquered, if not to her dominion, to her resemblance. But when we talk of conquest by other nations, it is only to put a case. This is the only power in Europe by which it is
possible we should be conquered. To live under the continual dread of such immeasurable evils is itself a grievous calamity. To live without the dread of them is to turn the danger into the disaster. The influence of such a France is equal to a war; it’s example, more wasting than an hostile irruption. The hostility with any other power is separable and accidental; this power, by the very condition of it’s existence, by it’s very essential constitution, is in a state of hostility with us, and with all civilized people.
*17A Government of the nature of that set up at our very door, has never been hitherto seen, or even imagined, in Europe. What our relation to it will be cannot be judged by other relations. It is a serious thing to have a connexion with a people, who live only under positive, arbitrary, and changeable institutions; and those not perfected nor supplied, nor explained, by any common acknowledged rule of moral science. I remember that in one of my last conversations with the late Lord Camden, we were struck much in the same manner with the
*119abolition in France of the law, as a science of methodized and artificial equity. France, since her Revolution, is under the sway of a sect, whose leaders have deliberately, at one stroke, demolished the [70] whole body of that jurisprudence which France had pretty nearly in common with other civilized countries. In that jurisprudence were contained the elements and principles of the law of nations, the great ligament of mankind. With the law they have of course destroyed all seminaries in which jurisprudence was taught, as well as all the corporations established for it’s conservation. I have not heard of any country, whether in Europe or Asia, or even in Africa on this side of Mount Atlas, which is wholly without some such colleges and such corporations, except France. No man, in a publick or private concern, can divine by what rule or principle her judgments are to be directed; nor is there to be found a professor in any University, or a practitioner in any Court, who will hazard an opinion of what is or is not law in France, in any case whatever. They have not only annulled all their old treaties, but they have renounced the law of nations from whence treaties have their force. With a fixed design, they have outlawed themselves, and, to their power, outlawed all other nations.Instead of the religion and the law by which they were in a great politick communion with the Christian world, they have constructed their Republick on three bases, all fundamentally opposite to those on which the communities of Europe are built. It’s foundation is laid in Regicide; in
*120Jacobinism; and in Atheism; and it has joined to those principles, a body of systematick manners which secures their operation.If I am asked how I would be understood in the use of these terms, Regicide, Jacobinism, Atheism, and a system of correspondent manners and their establishment, I will tell you.I call a commonwealth
Regicide, which lays it down as a fixed law of nature, and a fundamental right of man, that all government, not being a democracy, is an usurpation;
*18[71] that all Kings, as such, are usurpers, and for being Kings, may and ought to be put to death, with their wives, families, and adherents. The commonwealth which acts uniformly upon those principles; and which after abolishing every festival of religion, chooses the most flagrant act of a murderous Regicide treason for a feast of eternal commemoration, and which forces all her people to observe it—this I call
Regicide by establishment.Jacobinism is the revolt of the enterprising talents of a country against it’s property. When private men form themselves into associations for the purpose of destroying the pre-existing laws and institutions of their country; when they secure to themselves an army by dividing amongst the people of no property, the estates of the ancient and lawful proprietors; when a state recognizes those acts; when it does not make confiscations for crimes, but makes crimes for confiscations; when it has it’s principal strength, and all it’s resources in such a violation of property; when it stands chiefly upon such a violation; massacring by judgments, or otherwise, those who make any struggle for their old legal government, and their legal, hereditary, or acquired possessions—I call this
Jacobinism by Establishment.I call it
Atheism by Establishment, when any State, as such, shall not acknowledge the existence of God as a moral Governor of the World; when it shall offer to Him no religious or moral worship: when it shall abolish the Christian religion by a
*121regular decree; when it shall persecute with a cold, unrelenting, steady cruelty, by every mode of confiscation, imprisonment, exile, and death, all [72] it’s ministers; when it shall generally shut up, or pull down, churches; when the few buildings which remain of this kind shall be opened only for the purpose of making a
*122profane apotheosis of monsters whose vices and crimes have no parallel amongst men, and whom all other men consider as objects of general detestation, and the severest animadversion of law. When, in the place of that religion of social benevolence, and of individual self-denial, in mockery of all religion, they institute impious, blasphemous, indecent theatric
*123rites, in honour of their vitiated, perverted reason, and erect altars to the personification of their own corrupted and bloody Republick; when
*124schools and seminaries are founded at publick expence to poison mankind, from generation to generation, with the horrible maxims of this impiety; when wearied out with incessant martyrdom, and the cries of a people hungering and thirsting for religion, they permit it, only as a tolerated evil—I call this
Atheism by Establishment.When to these establishments of Regicide, of Jacobinism, and of Atheism, you add the
correspondent system of manners, no doubt can be left on the mind of a thinking man, concerning their determined hostility to the human race. Manners are of more importance than laws. Upon them, in a great measure, the laws depend. The law touches us but here and there, and now and then.
*125Manners are what vex or sooth, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe in. They give their whole form and colour to our lives. According to their quality, they aid morals, they supply them, or they totally destroy them. Of this the new French Legislators were aware; therefore, with the same method, and under the same authority, they settled a system of manners, the most licentious, prostitute, and abandoned that ever has [73] been known, and at the same time the most coarse, rude, savage, and ferocious. Nothing in the Revolution, no, not to a phrase or a gesture, not to the fashion of a hat or a shoe, was left to accident. All has been the result of design; all has been matter of institution. No mechanical means could be devised in favour of this incredible system of wickedness and vice, that has not been employed. The noblest passions, the love of glory, the love of country, have been debauched into means of it’s preservation and it’s propagation. All sorts of shews and exhibitions calculated to inflame and vitiate the imagination, and pervert the moral sense, have been contrived. They have sometimes brought forth
*126five or six hundred drunken women, calling at the bar of the Assembly for the blood of their own children, as being royalists or constitutionalists. Sometimes they have got a body of wretches, calling themselves fathers, to demand the murder of their sons; boasting that Rome had but one Brutus, but that they could shew five hundred. There were instances in which they inverted and retaliated the impiety, and produced sons, who called for the execution of their parents. The foundation of their Republick is laid in moral
*127paradoxes. Their patriotism is always prodigy. All those instances to be found in history, whether real or fabulous, of a doubtful publick spirit,
*128at which morality is perplexed, reason is staggered, and from which affrighted nature recoils, are their chosen, and almost sole examples for the instruction of their youth.The whole drift of their institution is contrary to that of the wise Legislators of all countries, who aimed at
*129improving instincts into morals, and at grafting the virtues on the stock of the natural affections. They, on the contrary, have omitted no pains to eradicate every benevolent and noble propensity in the mind of men. In their culture it is a rule always to graft virtues on vices. They think [74] everything unworthy of the name of publick virtue, unless it indicates violence on the private. All their new institutions, (and with them every thing is new,) strike at the root of our social nature. Other Legislators, knowing that marriage is the origin of all relations, and consequently the first element of all duties, have endeavoured, by every art, to make it sacred. The Christian Religion, by confining it to the pairs, and by rendering that relation indissoluble, has, by these two things, done more towards the peace, happiness, settlement, and civilization of the world, than by any other part in this whole scheme of Divine Wisdom. The direct contrary course has been taken in the Synagogue of Antichrist, I mean in that forge and manufactory of all evil, the sect which predominated in the Constituent Assembly of 1789. Those monsters employed the same, or greater industry, to desecrate and degrade that State, which other Legislators have used to render it holy and honourable. By a strange, uncalled-for declaration, they pronounced, that marriage was no better than a
*130common civil contract. It was one of their ordinary tricks, to put their sentiments into the mouths of certain personated characters, which they theatrically exhibited at the bar of what ought to be a serious Assembly. One of these was brought out in the figure of a prostitute, whom they called by the affected name of “a mother without being a wife.” This creature they made to call for a repeal of the incapacities, which in civilized States are put upon bastards. The prostitutes of the Assembly gave to this their puppet the sanction of their greater impudence. In consequence of the principles laid down, and the manners authorised, bastards were not long after put on the footing of the issue of lawful unions. Proceeding in the spirit of the first authors of their constitution, succeeding assemblies went the full length of the principle, and gave a licence to divorce at the mere [75] pleasure of either party, and at a month’s notice. With them the matrimonial connexion is brought into so degraded a state of concubinage, that, I believe, none of the wretches in London, who keep warehouses of infamy, would give out one of their victims to private custody on so short and insolent a tenure. There was indeed a kind of profligate equity in thus giving to women the same licentious power. The reason they assigned was as infamous as the act; declaring that women had been too long under the tyranny of parents and of husbands. It is not necessary to observe upon the horrible consequences of taking one half of the species wholly out of the guardianship and protection of the other.The practice of divorce, though in some countries permitted, has been discouraged in all. In the East polygamy and divorce are in discredit; and the manners correct the laws. In Rome, whilst Rome was in it’s integrity, the few causes allowed for divorce amounted in effect to a prohibition. They were only three. The arbitrary was totally excluded; and accordingly some hundreds of years passed, without a single example of that kind. When manners were corrupted, the laws were relaxed; as the latter always follow the former, when they are not able to regulate them, or to vanquish them. Of this circumstance the Legislators of vice and crime were pleased to take notice, as an inducement to adopt their regulation: holding out an hope, that the permission would as rarely be made use of. They knew the contrary to be true; and they had taken good care, that the laws should be well seconded by the manners. Their law of divorce, like all their laws, had not for it’s object the relief of domestick uneasiness, but the total corruption of all morals, the total disconnection of social life.It is a matter of curiosity to observe the operation of this encouragement to disorder. I have before me the Paris paper, correspondent to the usual register of births, marriages, [76] and deaths. Divorce, happily, is no regular head of registry among civilized nations. With the Jacobins it is remarkable, that divorce is not only a regular head, but it has the post of honour. It occupies the first place in the list. In the three first months of the year 1793, the number of divorces in that city amounted to 562. The marriages were 1785; so that the proportion of divorces to marriages was not much less than one to three; a thing unexampled, I believe, among mankind. I caused an enquiry to be made at Doctor’s Commons, concerning the number of divorces; and found, that all the divorces, (which, except by special Act of Parliament, are separations, and not proper divorces) did not amount in all those Courts, and in a hundred years, to much more than one fifth of those that passed, in the single city of Paris, in three months. I followed up the enquiry relative to that city through several of the subsequent months until I was tired, and found the proportions still the same. Since then I have heard that they have declared for a revisal of these laws: but I know of nothing done. It appears as if the contract that renovates the world was under no law at all. From this we may take our estimate of the havock that has been made through all the relations of life. With the Jacobins of France, vague intercourse is without reproach; marriage is reduced to the vilest concubinage; children are encouraged to cut the throats of their parents; mothers are taught that tenderness is no part of their character; and to demonstrate their attachment to their party, that they ought to make no scruple to rake with their bloody hands in the bowels of those who came from their own.To all this let us join the practice of
*131cannibalism, with which, in the proper terms, and with the greatest truth, their several factions accuse each other. By cannibalism, I mean their devouring, as a nutriment of their ferocity, some part of [77] the bodies of those they have murdered; their drinking the blood of their victims, and forcing the victims themselves to drink the blood of their kindred slaughtered before their faces. By cannibalism, I mean also to signify all their nameless, unmanly, and abominable insults on the bodies of those they slaughter.As to those whom they suffer to die a natural death, they do not permit them to enjoy the last consolations of mankind, or those rights of sepulture, which indicate hope, and which meer nature has taught to mankind in all countries, to soothe the afflictions, and to cover the infirmity of mortal condition. They disgrace men in the entry into life; they vitiate and enslave them through the whole course of it; and they deprive them of all comfort at the conclusion of their dishonoured and depraved existence. Endeavouring to persuade the people that they are no better than beasts, the whole body of their institution tends to make them beasts of prey, furious and savage. For this purpose the active part of them is disciplined into a ferocity which has no parallel. To this ferocity there is joined not one of the rude, unfashioned virtues, which accompany the vices, where the whole are left to grow up together in the rankness of uncultivated nature. But nothing is left to nature in their systems.The same discipline which hardens their hearts relaxes their morals. Whilst courts of justice were thrust out by revolutionary tribunals, and silent churches were only the funeral monuments of departed religion, there were no fewer than nineteen or twenty theatres, great and small, most of them kept open at the publick expence, and all of them crowded every night. Among the gaunt, haggard forms of famine and nakedness, amidst the yells of murder, the tears of affliction, and the cries of despair, the song, the dance, the mimick scene, the buffoon laughter, went on as regularly as in the gay hour of festive peace. I have it [78] from good authority, that under the scaffold of judicial murder, and the gaping planks that poured down blood on the spectators, the space was hired out for a shew of dancing dogs. I think, without concert, we have made the very same remark on reading some of their pieces, which, being written for other purposes, let us into a view of their social life. It struck us that the habits of Paris had no resemblance to the finished virtues, or to the polished vice, and elegant, though not blameless luxury, of the capital of a great empire. Their society was more like that of a den of outlaws upon a doubtful frontier; of a lewd tavern for the revels and debauches of banditti, assassins, bravos, smugglers, and their more desperate paramours, mixed with bombastick players, the refuse and rejected offal of strolling theatres, puffing out ill-sorted verses about virtue, mixed with the licentious and blasphemous songs, proper to the brutal and hardened course of life belonging to that sort of wretches. This system of manners in itself is at war with all orderly and moral society, and is in it’s neighbourhood unsafe. If great bodies of that kind were any where established in a bordering territory, we should have a right to demand of their Governments the suppression of such a nuisance. What are we to do if the Government and the whole community is of the same description? Yet that Government has thought proper to invite ours to lay by its unjust hatred, and to listen to the voice of humanity as taught by their example.The operation of dangerous and delusive first principles obliges us to have recourse to the true ones. In the intercourse between nations, we are apt to rely too much on the instrumental part. We lay too much weight upon the formality of treaties and compacts. We do not act much more wisely when we trust to the interests of men as guarantees of their engagements. The interests frequently tear to pieces [79] the engagements; and the passions trample upon both. Entirely to trust to either, is to disregard our own safety, or not to know mankind. Men are not tied to one another by
*132papers and seals. They are led to associate by resemblances, by conformities, by sympathies. It is with nations as with individuals.
*133Nothing is so strong a tie of amity between nation and nation as correspondence in laws, customs, manners, and habits of life. They have more than the force of treaties in themselves. They are obligations written in the heart. They approximate men to men, without their knowledge, and sometimes against their intentions. The secret, unseen, but irrefragable bond of habitual intercourse, holds them together, even when their perverse and litigious nature sets them to equivocate, scuffle, and fight about the terms of their written obligations.

1.
Page 62, line 2.Our last conversation. Burke assumes for his correspondent the same point of view as his own. Cp. post, p. 77, l. 8. The letters are therefore not controversial in
form. The Monthly Review, April, 1815, describes them as “addressed to those advocates of the peace who had originally been partizans of the war: and it was only with persons of this description that Mr. B. deigned to enter into controversy.” This is true of the ultimate public whom he hoped to influence, but not of the ostensible correspondent.

2.
l. 4.unpleasant appearances. The continued manifestations of a desire for peace with France.

3.
l. 8.disastrous events. The military disasters of the allies on the Continent, beginning with the battle of Fleurus in 1794, and followed by the separate treaties of peace successively made with the Republic by Tuscany, Prussia, Sweden, Holland, and Spain, leaving only Great Britain and Austria at war with it.

4.
l. 23.in its aphelion, i.e. in its deviation from its normal path. Burke would have hailed the returning popularity of the war in 1798 as a return to this normal path.

5.
l. 33.same periods of infancy, &c. The allusion is to an ever-popular but false theory of history, which may be traced as early as Polybius. In Burke’s time this theory was put forth in many forms. Churchill, Gotham, Book iii:

Let me not only the distempers know

Which in all states from common causes flow:

But likewise, those, which, by the will of fate,

On each peculiar mode of Empire wait:

Which in its very constitution lurk,

Too sure at last to do their destin’d work.
[354] So Young, Second Letter on Pleasure: “It has often been observed that it is with states as with men. They have their birth, growth, health, distemper, decay, and death. Men sometimes drop suddenly by an apoplexy, states by conquest; in full vigour both…. On the soft beds of luxury most kingdoms have expired. Casti, Animali Parlanti, Canto iv:

E tutti li politici systemi

In se di destruzion racchiudon’ semi.”

As to England, Mr. Hallam remarks that it differs from all free governments of powerful nations which history has recorded by manifesting, after the lapse of several centuries, not merely no symptoms of decay, but a more expansive energy. Middle Ages, vol. ii. chap. viii.

6.
P. 63, l. 3.similitudes—analogies. The hint has been developed by Mill, in his account of Fallacies of Generalization, Logic, Book 5. “Bodies politic,” says Mr. Mill, “die; but it is of disease, or violent death. They have no old age.”

7.
l. 10.moral essences. Cp. post, p. 139, l. 28.

8.
l. 14.There is not, &c. Specific attempts to create a “philosophy of history” have at length ceased with the extinction of the German schools of speculative philosophy. Burke’s criticism thoroughly agrees with the general spirit of the best historians.

9.
l. 29.It is often impossible, in these political enquiries, &c. Burke derived his observations from a favourite author: “La conservation des estats est chose qui vraysemblablement surpasse nostre intelligence: c’est comme dict Platon, chose puissante et de difficile dissolution, qu’une police civile; elle dure souvent contre les maladies mortelles et intestines, contre les injures des loix injustes, contre la tyrannie, contre le desbordement et ignorance des magistrats, license et sedition des peuples.” Montaigne, Liv. iii., chap. 9. In an earlier chapter of Montaigne, and in Bolingbroke, we have the duration of states compared with that of individuals.

10.
P. 64, l. 1.remained nearly as they have begun. e.g. China.

11.
l. 3.spent their vigour, &c. e.g. the Mahomedan Caliphate, the monarchy of Charlemagne, &c.

12.
l. 4.blazed out, &c. The allusion is clearly to the Mogul Empire in the time of Aurungzebe. “Most nations,” says Young, in the letter above quoted, “have been gayest when nearest to their end, and like a taper in the socket have blazed as they expired.”

13.
l. 5.meridian of some. Ancient Rome, Venice, Holland, are instances.

14.
l. 9.plunged in unfathomable abysses, &c. Burke has in mind the phrase “Mersus profundo pulchrior evenit.”

15.
l. 16.death of a man. Among many instances that will occur to the reader, Pericles is perhaps the best.

16.
Ibid.his disgust. Coriolanus is an instance.

17.
Ibid.his retreat. Burke probably alludes to Pitt, and his disastrous withdrawal from public affairs in 1768-1770. See vol. i. p. 206, where the revolt of [355] America from England is traced to this cause. The resignation of Charles V. is another instance, in its effects on the Netherlands.

18.
l. 17.his disgrace. The allusion is probably to the Constable Charles de Bourbon, whose disgrace at the French court led to the misfortunes sustained by France under Francis I.

19.
l. 18.A common soldier. The allusion is to Arnold of Winkelried, whose self-devotion on the field of Sempach secured the freedom of Switzerland.

20.
Ibid.a child. The allusion is to Hannibal, and the oath administered to him at twelve years old, by his father Hamilcar. Cp. p. 348, l. 14.

21.
Ibid.a girl at the door, &c. The allusion is to Joan of Arc, who according to one version of her story (probably the true one) acted as ostler at a small inn.

22.
P. 65, l. 9.humbled—weakened—endangered. By the independence of America, established by the aid of France.

23.
l. 13.high and palmy state. Hamlet, Act i. sc. 1.

24.
l. 29.a vast, tremendous, unformed spectre. Burke is thinking of Virgil’s “Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens.” Burke seems to have been the first Englishman who discerned accurately the portentous shape which France was assuming. This powerful description was fully justified during the following years.

25.
P. 66, l. 7.poison of other States, &c. A new application of the proverb that “one man’s meat is another’s poison.”

26.
l. 17.finest parts of Europe. The Austrian Netherlands, the Rhine, Savoy and Nice, Lombardy.

27.
l. 28.At first, &c. Burke himself was among those who believed France to be crushed as a nation by the Revolution: but he soon undeceived himself.

28.
P. 67, l. 15.publick—never regarded, &c. Burke has in mind the famous Roman maxim, “non de republica desperare.”

29.
l. 18.Dr. Brown. The work was his “Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the Times.” See vol. i. p. 88, and the Editor’s note.

30.
l. 27.Pythagoras. Burke probably means Archimedes, and alludes to the well-known story of his great discovery in solid geometry.

31.
l. 32.as in the Alps, goitre
kept goitre, &c. The phrase is Juvenal’s:

Quis tumidum guttur miratur in Alpibus?

—Sat. xiii. l. 162.

32.
P. 68, l. 5.never did the masculine spirit, &c. This great stir in the public mind occurred when Burke was a young man lately arrived in London, and just turning his attention to public affairs. It profoundly affected him, and influenced his whole life.

33.
l. 33.eye of the mind is dazzled and vanquished. Burke copies the phrase, “In bello oculi primi vincuntur.”

34.
P. 69, l. 6.palpable night. “Palpable darkness,” Par. Lost, xii. 188.

35.
[356]l. 29.at no time has the wealth, &c. See the Third Letter, pp. 254-306, where this is proved in detail.

36.
l. 31.vast interest to preserve—great means of preserving it. “You must not consider the money you spend in your defence, but the fortune you would lose if you were not defended; and further, you must recollect you will pay less to an immediate war, than to a peace with a war establishment and a war to follow it…. Your empire cannot be saved by a calculation.” Grattan, Speech on Downfall of Buonaparte. Reference to the use of the argument by Bacon and Swift will be given in a note to the Third Letter.

37.
P. 70, l. 7.If our wealth commands us, &c. So B. Jonson, “The Fox,” Act vi. sc. 12:

These possess wealth as sick men possess fevers,

Which trulier may be said to possess them.

The conceit is derived from a classical source: “Ea invasit homines habendi cupido ut possideri magis quam possidere videamur”: Pliny, Letters, B. ix. Lett. 30. So Archbishop Leighton, Commentary on 1 St. Peter, iv. 8: “Hearts glued to the poor riches they possess or rather are possessed by.” Leighton repeats it in his “Commentary on the Ten Commandments.”

38.
l. 8.poor indeed. Shakspeare, Othello, Act iii. sc. 3:

He that filches from me my good name,

Robs me of that which not enriches him,

And makes me poor indeed.

39.
l. 21.He is the Gaul, &c. Alluding to the story of Brennus, Livy, Lib. v. cap. 48.

40.
l. 27.that state which is resolved, &c. i.e. Republican France.

41.
P. 71, l. 9.petty peculium. Burke alludes to the additions by conquest to the colonial empire, which went on until both the French and the Dutch were left without any colonies at all.

42.
l. 10.ambiguous in their nature. He alludes to the conquest of Martinique with its population of revolutionary people of colour.

43.
l. 12.any one of those points, &c. i.e. in his conquests on the border of France, especially Austrian Flanders.

44.
l. 19.When Louis the Fourteenth, &c. Burke describes the most critical period in the War of the Grand Alliance.

45.
l. 36.puppet shew of a naval power. See p. 164, where Burke maintains that England ought to have made a campaign with 100,000 men on the Continent.

46.
P. 72, l. 5.nothing in human affairs, &c. The common phrase “Nihil humani alienum.”

47.
l. 12.our account, &c. See note to p. 270, l. 6.

48.
l. 25.pale cast, &c. Hamlet, Act iii. sc. 2, transposed:

“And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,” &c.

49.
l. 32.prolific error, i.e. prolific of other errors. Cp. vol. i. p. 137, l. 31.

50.
[357]P. 73, l. 5.early victories. The capture of Valenciennes, Condé, Quesnoy, Landrécy, and Toulon. See the Introduction.

51.
l. 13.desertion. Prussia deserted the campaign as soon as it began to fail.

52.
l. 15.mutual accusations. Between England and Austria.

53.
P. 74, l. 7.cry is raised against it. Burke alludes to the public indignation which followed on the passing of the “Gagging Act” of 1794.

54.
l. 9.most efficient member, &c. Burke alludes to the failure of the prosecutions of Hardy and Horne Tooke at the Old Bailey in 1794.

55.
l. 11.highest tribunal of all. Parliament.

9.
”
*y1 Mussabat tacito medicina timore.”

56.
P. 75, l. 17.poisonous jaws, &c. The allusion is to the fascination said to be exercised by serpents over birds.

57.
l. 24.It is in the nature, &c. The modern historian will hardly sympathise with Burke’s lament over the failure of the State prosecutions, nor could Burke himself have seriously wished to recall the days of Scroggs and Jefferies. Besides, his wishes had been amply satisfied in the State Trials in Scotland, where, owing to the difference in procedure, all the prisoners had been convicted.

58.
l. 34.what the bulk of us must ever be. A powerful statement of the weaknesses inherent in democracies.

59.
P. 76, l. 16. Burke now powerfully enforces that view of the nature of the war of which he was the author, and for a long time the sole expositor. It was perfectly true, and in a year or two its truth was obvious to every one.

60.
L. 20.a system—an armed doctrine. Grattan, Speech on Downfall of Buonaparte: “Sirs, the French Government is war; it is a Stratocracy elective, aggressive, and predatory….. Their constitution is essentially war, and the object of that war is the downfall of Europe…. Not an army, but a military government in march!” Again: “If the government of any other country contains an insurrectionary principle, as France did when she offered to aid the insurrections of her neighbours, your interference is warranted: if the government of another country contains the principle of universal empire, as France did and promulgated, your interference is justifiable.” It was no easy task to prove to the English government and people how the France of the Directory differed from the France of Louis XIV. Macaulay, in a passage founded on the present one, has admirably described Mr. Pitt’s own blindness to what was so distinctly seen by Burke: “He went to war: but he would not understand the peculiar nature of that war. He was obstinately blind to the plain fact that he was contending against a state which was also a sect, and that the new quarrel between England and France was of quite a different kind from the old quarrels about colonies in America and fortresses in the Netherlands. He had to combat frantic enthusiasm, restless activity, the wildest and most audacious spirit of innovation: and he acted as if he had [358] had to deal with the harlots and fops of the old court of Versailles, with Madame de Pompadour and the Abbé Bernis.” “Biographies,” Pitt.

61.
l. 25.in every country. See the Second Letter, p. 155.

62.
Ibid.a Colossus. &c. Burke alludes to the famous Colossus which bestrode the harbour of Rhodes. Jacobin sympathies in England were rapidly extinguished after Burke’s death, when the struggle with France became a struggle for national existence.

63.
P. 77, l. 6.To their power = “as far as in them lies.”

64.
P. 78, l. 28.Regicides—first to declare war. This statement, pertinaciously repeated in the early Parliamentary debates on the Peace question, is not strictly true. England was the first to break off all diplomatic communication with France. The King recalled Lord Gower from Paris, and commanded that ordinary relations should cease with Chauvelin after the 10th of August, 1792, when the French monarchy was abolished. Chauvelin, whom the Convention still continued in London, was only communicated with as representing the monarchy, and on the execution of the King in January, 1793, he received from the English government notice to quit England. It is true that the French government had already instructed him to the same effect, but these instructions were unknown to the English government.

10.
Mr. Bird sent to state the real situation of the Duc de Choiseul.

65.
P. 80, l. 11.afflicted family of Asgill. Charles Asgill, a young captain in the British army in America, chosen by lot to be surrendered to the enemy’s mercy in reprisal for the execution of Huddy, April 12, 1782. Asgill’s mother appealed to the King and Queen of France to intercede in her son’s behalf. The intercession was successful: and Asgill visited Paris to acknowledge in person the exertions of Marie Antoinette.

11.
Boissy d’Anglas.

66.
P. 81, l. 22.a war of Government, &c. Such it unquestionably was in 1793. Whether it continued to be so when the French government avowedly carried it on for the purpose of destroying the European balance of power, and annihilating England, is another question.

67.
P. 82, l. 1.Speech from the Throne. Intended to stop the mouths of the opposition and prepare the way for negotiations with France. See Introduction. It had neither effect.

68.
l. 15.gipsey jargon. The phrase is borrowed from the account given in the Annual Register of the nomenclature adopted by the Convention.

69.
P. 83, l. 15.“Citizen Regicides,” &c. In Burke’s most effective Parliamentary style, and scarcely a caricature of the attitude assumed by the ministry. The passage reminds us of Thomson, Britannia:

Whence this unwonted patience, this weak doubt,
[359] This tame beseeching of rejected peace,

This weak forbearance?

70.
l. 24.patient suitors, &c. The picture which follows is in that vein of profound and scornful irony of which Burke was almost as great a master as his countryman Swift.

71.
l. 25.sanguinary tyrant Carnot. Burke has no word of toleration, much less of praise, for a single statesman of the Revolution. Cp. the allusion to Hoche, p. 221. Carnot’s vote for the death of the King outweighed everything else in the eyes of his critic.

72.
L. 27.down of usurped pomp. Carnot was one of the Directors, who lived in the palace of the Luxembourg.

73.
P. 84, l. 15.Trophonian Cave. The rites of the deity Trophonius were celebrated in a cave near Lebadea, in Boeotia. Pausanias denies the tradition to which Burke here alludes, that none ever laughed after once visiting the cave.

74.
l. 33.speeches and messages in former times. Burke’s usual line of argument. Cp. vol. i. p. 267. Burke in the next page qualifies this reference to the past, to avoid the charge of “pedantry.”

75.
P. 86, l. 29.squander away the fund of our submissions. Burke gloomily anticipates the time when this humiliating attitude on the part of England may really become necessary. Cp. vol. ii. p. 128, l. 26.

76.
L. 33.Barthélemy. This able diplomatist, who negotiated the Treaties with Spain and Prussia, afterwards became a Director. Allied with Carnot, his upright and statesmanlike opposition produced the Revolution of Fructidor. Carnot escaped: but Barthélemy was dragged through the streets of Paris, and before the windows of the Luxembourg, in an iron cage, on his way to the convict settlement of Cayenne.

77.
P. 89, l. 34.ten immense and wealthy provinces. Burke proceeds to characterize the pretensions of France to the “Rhine, Alps, and Mediterranean” boundary.

78.
P. 90, l. 25.a law, &c. The decree of the Convention incorporating Belgium with France, like Savoy and Nice.

79.
l. 34.sacred Rights of Man. See vol. ii. p. 149. The allusion is, of course, ironical.

80.
P. 91, l. 7.cooped and cabined in. “Cribbed, cabined, and confined.” Macbeth, Act iii. sc. 4.

12.
“This Court has seen, with regret, how far the tone and spirit of that answer, the nature and extent of the demands which it contains, and the manner of announcing them, are remote from any dispositions for peace.

“The inadmissible pretension is there avowed of appropriating to France all that the laws existing there may have comprised under the denomination of French territory. To a demand such as this, is added an express declaration that no proposal contrary to it will be made, or even listened to. And even this, under the pretence of an internal regulation, the provisions of which are wholly foreign to all other nations.”While these dispositions shall be persisted in, nothing is left for the King, but to prosecute a war equally just and necessary.”Whenever his enemies shall manifest more pacific sentiments, his Majesty will, at all times, be eager to concur in them, by lending himself, in concert with his allies, to all such measures as shall be calculated to re-establish general tranquillity on conditions just, honourable and permanent, either by the establishment of a general Congress, which has been so happily the means of restoring peace to Europe, or by a preliminary discussion of the principles which may be proposed, on either side, as a foundation of a general pacification; or, lastly, by an impartial examination of any other way which may be pointed out to him for arriving at the same salutary end.”Downing-Street, April 10, 1796.

81.
P. 92, l. 22.over-running of Lombardy. This had taken place early in the year (1796).

82.
l. 23.Piedmont—its impregnable fortresses. Alessandria, Tortona, Coni, Ceva, and others. See Hamley’s Operations of War, p. 142.

83.
l. 25.instances for ever renewed—Genoa. The Ligurian republic was constituted in the next year, and the French policy thus completed.

84.
l. 27.half the Empire. Swabia and Bavaria, overrun by Moreau in this year.

85.
[360]P. 94, l. 17.“in the lowest deep, a lower deep.” Par. Lost, Book iv. l. 76.

13.
Official Note, extracted from the Journal of the Defenders of the Country.

”
EXECUTIVE DIRECTORY.“Different Journals have advanced that an English Plenipotentiary had reached Paris, and had presented himself to the Executive Directory, but that his propositions not having appeared satisfactory, he had received orders instantly to quit France.”All these assertions are equally false.”The notices given, in the English Papers, of a Minister having been sent to Paris, there to treat of peace, bring to recollection the overtures of Mr. Wickham to the Ambassador of the Republick at Basle, and the rumours circulated relative to the mission of Mr. Hammond to the Court of Prussia. The
insignificance, or rather the
subtle duplicity, the
PUNICK stile of Mr. Wickham’s note, is not forgotten. According to the partizans of the English Ministry, it was to Paris that Mr. Hammond was to come to speak for peace: when his destination became publick, and it was known that he went to Prussia, the same writer repeated that it was to accelerate a peace, and notwithstanding the object, now well known, of this negociation, was to engage Prussia to break her treaties with the Republick, and to return into the coalition. The Court of Berlin, faithful to its engagements, repulsed these
perfidious propositions. But in converting this intrigue into a mission for peace, the English Ministry joined to the hope of giving a new enemy to France,
that of justifying the continuance of the war in the eyes of the English nation, and of throwing all the odium of it on the French Government. Such was also the aim of Mr. Wickham’s note.
Such is still that of the notices given at this time in the English papers.“This aim will appear evident, if we reflect how difficult it is, that the ambitious Government of England should sincerely wish for a peace that would
snatch from it it’s maritime preponderancy, would re-establish the freedom of the seas, would give a new impulse to the Spanish, Dutch, and French marines, and would carry to the highest degree of prosperity the industry and commerce of those nations in which it has always found
rivals, and which it has considered as
enemies of it’s commerce, when they were tired of being it’s
dupes.“But there will
no longer be any credit given to the pacific intentions of the English Ministry, when it is known, that it’s gold and it’s intrigues, it’s open practices, and it’s insinuations, besiege more than ever the Cabinet of Vienna, and are one of the principal obstacles to the negotiation which that Cabinet
would of itself be induced to enter on for peace.“They will no longer
be credited, finally, when the moment of the rumour of these overtures being circulated is considered.
The English nation supports impatiently the continuance of the war, a reply must be made to it’s complaints, it’s reproaches: the Parliament is about to re-open it’s sittings, the mouths of the orators who will declaim against the war must be shut, the demand of new taxes must be justified; and to obtain these results, it is necessary to be enabled to advance, that the French Government refuses every reasonable proposition of peace.”

86.
P. 95, l. 2.“None but itself,” &c. The line “None but himself can be his parallel,” is quoted from Theobald, in Martinus Scriblerus, as a specimen of fustian.

87.
P. 96, l. 4.Light lie the earth, &c. The phrase, repeated from Letter IV (p. 351) is from the well-known elegy of Prior on Col. Villiers:

Light lie the earth, and flourish green the bough.

The conception is borrowed, through the Latins, from the Greek elegiac authors. Meleager in Anthol.;

Π
amm&eeivrgr;
torg&eeivrgr; χ
a&iivrgr;
re,
s&ugrgr;
t&ogrgr;
np&aacgr;
roς
o&upsgr;
bar&ugrgr;
ne&ipsacgr;ς
se A&ipsgr;
sig&eacgr;
n&eegr;
nka&upsgr;
t&eegrgr;
n&uivrgr;
n &epsgr;
p&eacgr;χ
oiς &apsgr;
bar&eeacgr;ς.

—See Martial, Ep. Lib. v. 34. Juv. Sat. vii. 207, &c.

88.
P. 99, l. 6.“If it be thus,” &c. St. Luke, xxiii. 31.

89.
l. 12.wax into our ears, &c. Burke alludes to the story of Ulysses and the Sirens, Odyssey, Book xii.

90.
l. 14.Reubel, Carnot, Tallien. The two former were Directors: but Tallien had by this time ceased to be a leading politician. He had sunk into obscurity as a member of the Council of Five Hundred. He afterwards went to Egypt, and in 1801 appeared in London as a prisoner, on which occasion he was feted by the Opposition.

91.
l. 15.Domiciliary Visitors. Under the law of August 1792, 3000 persons were at once dragged away to prison in one night.

92.
l. 17.Revolutionary Tribunals. The famous Revolutionary Tribunal, which took cognizance of treason against the Republic, was instituted by Danton, who was himself condemned by it. It had ceased to exist in December 1794, after employing its vigour during the last six months against the party of Robespierre. It sent to the guillotine 2,774 persons, including the Queen and the Princess Elizabeth.

93.
l. 18.Septembrizers. Alluding to the massacres at Paris in September 1792, in which 1500 persons perished. The “Septembriseur”
par excellence was Tallien.

94.
l. 26.little national window. One of the pleasantries which enlivened the despatches from Carrier to the Convention, describing his cruelties in La Vendée.

95.
l. 28.declaration of the Government. The Whitehall Declaration, which filled Burke with unbounded admiration, to which he more than once recurs (see pp. 156, 318), was from the pen of Lord Grenville.

14.
“In their place has succeeded a system destructive of all publick order, maintained by proscriptions, exiles, and confiscations, without number: by arbitrary imprisonment; by massacres which cannot be remembered without horror; 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.”—”They (the allies) have had to encounter acts of aggression without pretext, open violations of all treaties, unprovoked declarations of war; in a word, whatever corruption, intrigue or violence could effect for the purpose so openly avowed, of subverting all the institutions of society, and of extending over all the nations of Europe that confusion, which has produced the misery of France.”—”This state of things cannot exist in France without involving all the surrounding powers in one common danger, without giving them the right, without imposing it upon them as a duty, to stop the progress of an evil, which exists only by the successive violation of all law and all property, and which attacks the fundamental principles by which mankind is united in the bonds of civil society.”—”The King would impose none other than equitable and moderate conditions, not such as the expence, the risques and the sacrifices of the war might justify; but such as his Majesty thinks himself under the indispensable necessity of requiring, with a view to these considerations, and still more to that of his own security and of the future tranquillity of Europe. His Majesty desires nothing more sincerely than thus to terminate a war, which he in vain endeavoured to avoid, and all the calamities of which, as now experienced by France, are to be attributed only to the ambition, the perfidy and the violence of those, whose crimes have involved their own country in misery, and disgraced all civilized nations.”—”The King promises on his part the suspension of hostilities, friendship, and (as far as the course of events will allow, of which the will of man cannot dispose) security and protection to all those who, by declaring for a monarchical form of Government, shall shake off the yoke of sanguinary anarchy; of that anarchy which has broken all the most sacred bonds of society, dissolved all the relations of civil life, violated every right, confounded 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 it’s 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
lawful Sovereign.”

Declaration sent by his Majesty’s command to the Commanders of his Majesty’s fleets and armies employed against France, and to his Majesty’s Ministers employed at foreign Courts.—WHITEHALL,
Oct. 29, 1793.

96.
P. 101, l. 2.Plutarch. The allusion is not in Plutarch. Burke is thinking of Cicero, De Oratore, Lib. III, cap. 34, where the critic recalls the satire poured on Pericles by the comedians, who nevertheless ascribed to him such force and power of engaging attention “ut in eorum mentibus qui audissent quasi aculeos quosdam relinqueret.”

97.
[361]l. 18.With their spear, &c. The allusion is to the story of C. Popilius Laenas.

15.
*y2 Ut lethargicus hic, cum fit pugil, et medicum urget.—HOR.

98.
P. 104, l. 8.competence to act. Cp. vol. i. p. 254. Burke’s observations on the necessity of popular support to a great war, though apparently quite modern in spirit, were based on history, as he presently shows.

99.
P. 104, l. 25.country of old called ferax monstrorum. Burke quotes as usual from memory, “Asia, terra ferax miraculorum,” Plin. Epist. 173.

100.
l. 34.muster of our strength. The remarkable estimate which follows excludes, as usual with Burke, the mass of the people, who are regarded (P. 105, l. 15) as merely the “objects of protection,” and the “means of force.” It is curious that one who had laid down the rational doctrine of the causes of hostility between people and government contained in vol. i. p. 75 (Present Discontents), should now see no anomaly in the existence of an incurable Jacobin faction numbering one-fifth of the effective forces of the country.

101.
P. 106, l. 10.By passing from place to place, &c. Cp. vol. ii. p. 180.

102.
l. 18.naturally disposed to peace. The observation is true: and it illustrates Pitt’s difficulty. The mass of his supporters in the country were interested in peace.

103.
l. 19.languid and improvident. Dryden, the Medal:

The wise and wealthy love the surest way,

And are content to thrive and to obey:

But wisdom is to sloth too great a slave.

104.
P. 107, l. 11.But strong passions awaken the faculties, &c. Burke clearly has in mind the lines of Akenside, “Pleasures of the Imagination,” Bk. ii.

“Passion’s fierce illapse

Rouses the mind’s whole fabric, with supplies

Of daily impulse, keeps the elastic powers

Intensely poised,” &c.

105.
P. 108, l. 14.Pope—dying notes. See the last fifty lines of the two dialogues called “Epilogue to the Satires.”

106.
l. 15.Johnson. See the first sixty lines of “London” (1738).

107.
l. 17.Glover. See his poem, London, or the Progress of Commerce, and the pathetic ballad, Admiral Hosier’s Ghost.

108.
l. 35.driven by a popular clamour, &c. See Lord Stanhope’s History of England.

109.
P. 110, l. 25.Guarda-Costas. The coast-guards of Spanish America, whose insolence to English ships was a main cause of the war.

110.
Ibid.Madrid Convention. Made in 1713, for thirty years. It secured to England the “Assiento,” or contract for supplying Spanish America with African slaves.

111.
l. 26.Captain Jenkins’s
ears. Exhibited in the House of Commons as having being cut off by a Spanish captain.

112.
l. 34.dilatory pleas, exceptions of form. Proceedings under the old [362] legal system, which deferred the consideration of the question without touching its merits. Moving and carrying the
previous question has the same effect in parliamentary debate.

113.
P. 113, l. 7.contending to be admitted at a moderate premium. Burke states the circumstances of the loan voted in December, 1795, with the partiality to be expected. For the facts, see the notes, post, to pp. 254-60.

114.
l. 26.When I came to England. In 1750.

115.
l. 29.Aire and Calder. The improvement of the navigation of these rivers, which connected the West Riding with the port of Hull, may be said to be the first step in the construction of those two great networks of canals and railways, which have played so important a part in developing English trade and manufactures. Burke returns to the subject in the Third Letter, p. 290.

116.
P. 118, l. 26.three great immoveable pillars. Cp. vol. i. p. 295, note to p. 73, l. 17.

16.
See the Declaration.

117.
P. 121, l. 14.“Of large discourse,” &c. Hamlet, Act iv. sc. 4.

118.
P. 122, l. 8.If the war, &c. In these three brief paragraphs Burke puts his argument for the war into a compendious and striking form. Compare with the whole argument Bacon’s very similar plea for a Holy War. As will be seen, Burke evidently had Bacon in mind in some other passages: “Such people as have utterly degenerated from the laws of Nature, as have in their very body and frame of estate a monstrosity, and may be truly accounted, according to the examples we have formerly recited, common enemies and grievances of mankind and disgraces and reproaches to human nature—such people all nations are interested or ought to be interested to reform.” “When the constitution of a State and the fundamental laws and customs of the same, if laws they may be called, are against the laws of Nature and of Nations, then I say a war upon them is lawful.”

17.
See declaration, Whitehall, October 29, 1793. [Ante, p. 99.]

119.
P. 123, l. 31.abolition of the law. Cp. vol. ii. p. 191.

120.
P. 125, l. 9.Jacobinism is the revolt, &c. So Southey, Essay on Popular Disaffection: “Of mere men of letters, wherever they exist as a separate class, a large proportion are always enlisted in hostility, open or secret, against the established order of things.”

18.
Nothing could be more solemn than their promulgation of this principle as a preamble to the destructive code of their famous articles for the decomposition of society into whatever country they should enter. “La Convention Nationale, après avoir entendu le rapport de ses Comités de Finances, de la Guerre, & Diplomatiques réunis, fidèle
au principe de souveraineté de peuples qui ne lui permet pas de reconnoître aucune institution qui y porte atteinte,” &c. &c. Decrêt sur le Rapport de Cambon, Dec. 18, 1792, and see the subsequent proclamation.

121.
l. 27.regular decree. The allusion is to the frantic efforts made under the Convention to get rid of Christianity and even faith in a God and the soul. They came to an end with the acknowledgment of Deism as the national faith, and the establishment of the Festival of the Supreme Being by Robespierre in 1794.

122.
P. 126, l. 2.profane apotheosis. The allusion is to the funeral honours paid to the remains of Marat in the Pantheon.

123.
l. 8.rites in honour of Reason. Burke alludes to the scene of Nov. 10, 1793, when the Commune of Paris enthroned a superannuated prostitute in Nôtre Dame as the goddess of Reason. Similar scenes were repeated throughout the country.

124.
l. 11.schools founded at the publick expence. By the Convention. They [363] were mere primary schools, in which were to be taught reading, writing, arithmetic, and the republican catechism.

125.
l. 23.Manners are what, &c. Burke draws his arguments from the old, French school itself. Massillon (Vices et Vertus des Grands): “Moeurs cultivées, bienséances voisines de la vertu.” Again, “Les bienséances qui sont inseparables du rang, et qui sont comme la première école de la vertu.”

126.
P. 127, l. 8.five or six hundred drunken women. It may be objected that Burke has no business to charge upon the Directory all the excesses of the Assembly and Convention. The presumption in the eyes of any candid observer was now in favour of reaction. Burke had denied the reality of the reaction in his then unpublished Fourth Letter.

127.
l. 17.paradoxes. Cp. vol. ii. p. 277, l. 13.

128.
l. 20.at which morality is perplexed, &c. The same idea is admirably expressed by Molière: “Ne fatiguez point mon devoir par les propositions d’une facheuse extrémité dont peut être nous n’aurons pas besoin.” Mons. Pourceaugnac, Act i, Scene 4.

129.
l. 24.improving instincts into morals. On this doctrine, so often insisted on by Burke, see Introduction to vol. ii. p. 40, &c.

130.
P. 128, l. 12.common civil contract. Here again Burke goes back to the early legislation of the Revolution. Subsequent legislation, in European countries least to be suspected of revolutionism, has justified the advocates of the measure.

131.
P. 130, l. 21.cannibalism. Burke follows Bacon, in the Tract on a Holy War, in arguing from the cannibalism, among other traits, of the American Indians that their territory was forfeited by the Law of Nations, and that the Spaniards, or any one else, might lawfully invade it.

132.
P. 132, l. 21.papers and seals. Cp. vol. i. p. 288, &c.

133.
l. 24.Nothing is so strong, &c. Burke’s sketch of the European system may remind the reader of the relations of the Greek communities as reflected in Herodotus and Thucydides.

134.
l. 33.As to war—sole means of justice. Burke uses a saying of Bacon, “Wars are the highest trials of right,” Observations on a Libel.

135.
P. 133, l. 28.several orders. i.e. church, nobles, and commons.

136.
P. 134, l. 2.continued in greater perfection, &c. As in Venice, Holland, and Switzerland. This was natural enough. The power of a Crown counterbalanced the authority of the upper orders.

137.
l. 25.formed resolution, &c. Peace had however been made by France with all Europe except England and Austria.

138.
P. 135, l. 11.never in a state, &c. Cp. Introduction to vol. ii. pp. 44-45.

139.
l. 32.praetorian law. The “Equity” of Roman law.

140.
Ibid.Law of Neighbourhood. So M. de Puisaye, quoted by Southey, “Public Opinion and the Political Reformers”: “It is with the independence of nations as with the liberty of individuals, they have a right to do everything which involves no wrong to others. So long as my neighbour demeans [364] himself conformably to the laws his conduct is no concern of mine: but if he converts his house into a brothel or commence a manufactory there which should poison my family with its unwholesome stench, I prosecute him for a nuisance.”

19.
“This state of things cannot exist in France without involving all the surrounding powers in one common danger, without giving them the right, without imposing it on them as a duty, to stop the progress of an evil which attacks the fundamental principles by which mankind is united in civil society.” Declaration, 29th Oct., 1793.

141.
P. 137, l. 9.ground of action—ground of war. So Bacon, On a War with Spain. “Wars (I speak not of ambitious, predatory wars) are suits of appeal to the Tribunal of God’s justice.”

142.
P. 138, l. 1.trifling points of honour, &c. Imitated by Casti, Anim. Parl. Canto iii.:

Due passi pi� o men lunghi, pi� o men corti,

Un inchino talor pi� o men profondo,

Capace è di mandar sossopra il mondo.

143.
l. 5.wild-cat skins. In the American settlements.

144.
P. 139, l. 23.bailliages. Districts of judicature.

145.
P. 140, l. 4.France is out of her bounds. Burke means that the emigrants were the real France. Sheridan often refers to this striking expression of Burke on the subject: “Look at the map of Europe: there, where a great man (who however was always wrong on this subject) said he looked for France, and found nothing but a chasm.” Speech, Dec. 8, 1802. Again, Aug. 13, 1807: “France,”—as Mr. Burke described it—”a blank in the map of Europe.”

146.
P. 142, l. 9.negro slaves. Burke alludes to the blacks of Hayti.

147.
l. 15.Oppression makes, &c. Ecclesiastes vii. 7.

148.
l. 19.bitterness of soul. Burke evidently had in mind the lines of Addison (The Campaign) describing the cry of Europe for deliverance from Louis XIV:

States that their new captivity bemoan’d,

Armies of martyrs that in exile groan’d,

Sighs from the depth of gloomy dungeons heard,

And prayers in bitterness of soul preferr’d.

This poem was sometimes quoted in the debates on peace in Parliament.

149.
P. 143, l. 30.Algiers. The argument had been advanced by Fox, on the occasion of the famous debate, Dec. 15, 1792, when Burke first took his seat on the Treasury bench. Mr. Fox moved the house to send a minister to Paris to treat with the provisional government. “If we objected to the existing form of government in France, we had as strong objections to the form of government at Algiers; yet at Algiers we had a consul.” The argument from Mahomedan communities is derived from the controversial theologians of a preceding age. See Hooker, Eccl. Pol. iv. 7, &c.

20.
Declaration, Whitehall, Oct. 29, 1793.

150.
P. 146, l. 22.“Thus painters write,” &c. Prior, “Protogenes and Apelles.” Apelles of Co (Cos) visits his brother artist at Rhodes, and not finding him at home, draws a perfect circle on a panel:

And will you please, sweet-heart, said he,

To show your master this from me?
[365] By it he presently will know

How painters write their names at Co.

Burke alludes to Grenville’s master-hand similarly displayed in the Declaration.

151.
P. 149, l. 30.whom my dim eyes, &c. Burke has in mind a pathetic triplet from Pope’s Homer:

Two, while I speak, my eyes in vain explore,

Two from one mother sprung—my Polydore,

And lov’d Lycaon; now perhaps no more!

—Iliad, xxii. 63.

Vol. 3, Letters on a Regicide Peace, Letter II