Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents and the Two Speeches on America
By Edmund Burke
The first three volumes of this set of Select Works of Edmund Burke, fully edited by Edward John Payne (1844-1904), were originally published by the Clarendon Press, Oxford, from 1874 to 1878. Liberty Fund now publishes them again, with a fourth volume of additional writings by Burke. The original set has been praised by Clara I. Gandy and Peter J. Stanlis as “an outstanding critical anthology of Burke’s essential works on the American and French revolutions”; and they went on to say: “The scholarship and criticism is perhaps the best on Burke during the last quarter of the nineteenth century.”… [From the Editor’s Foreword by Francis Canavan.]
Compiled and with a foreword and notes by Francis Canavan. Vols. 1-3 originally published Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1874-1878. E. J. Payne, Ed. Foreword and notes by Francis Canavan.
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Portions of this edited edition are under copyright.
On Moving His Resolutions for Conciliation with the Colonies
[Argument
INTRODUCTION, pp. 221-28.PART I, pp. 228-43. CONDITION OF AMERICA. 1. Population, p. 228. 2. Trade, p. 229. Agriculture, p. 234. Fisheries, p. 234. (Against the Use of Force, a passage properly belonging to Part II, inserted to prepare for the description of American character, p. 235.) 3. American Character, traced to six different sources, p. 237.PART II, pp. 243-66. HOW TO DEAL WITH AMERICA. The question, p. 243. Three Alternatives, 1. To alter the Moral Causes of the character of the Colonists, p. 246. 2. To prosecute them as Criminals, p. 250. 3. To yield to them, p. 253, giving up altogether the question of Right, p. 254. Such a concession would not lead to further demands, p. 256, and would be modelled on constitutional precedents, p. 258, which prove England to be in the wrong, p. 264.PART III, pp. 266-89. THE RESOLUTIONS, p. 267. Removal of objections, p. 277. Lord North’s Plan of Conciliation Criticised, p. 280.CONCLUSION, p. 284.]
*1I hope, Sir, that notwithstanding the austerity of the Chair, your good nature will incline you to some degree of indulgence
[162] towards human frailty. You will not think it unnatural, that those who have an object depending, which strongly engages their hopes and fears, should be somewhat inclined to superstition. As I came into the House full of anxiety about the event of my motion, I found, to my infinite surprise, that the *2grand penal Bill, by which we had passed sentence on the trade and sustenance of America, is to be returned to us from the other House. I do confess, I could not help looking on this event as a fortunate omen. I look upon it as a sort of providential favour; by which we are put once more in possession of our deliberative capacity, upon a business so very questionable in its nature, so very uncertain in its issue. By the return of this Bill, which seemed to have taken its flight for ever, we are at this very instant nearly as free to chuse a plan for our American Government as we were on the first day of the Session. If, Sir, we incline to the side of conciliation, we are not at all embarrassed (unless we please to make ourselves so) by any *3incongruous mixture of coercion and restraint. We are therefore called upon, as it were by a superior warning voice, again to attend to America; to attend to the whole of it together; and to review the subject with an unusual degree of care and calmness.Surely it is an awful subject; or there is none so on this side of the grave. When I first had the honour of a seat in this House, the affairs of that Continent pressed themselves upon us, as the most important and most delicate object of Parliamentary attention. My little share in this great deliberation oppressed me. I found myself a partaker in a very high trust; and having no sort of reason to rely on the strength of my natural abilities for the proper execution of that trust, *4I was obliged to take more than common pains to instruct myself in everything which relates to our Colonies. I was not less under the necessity of forming some fixed ideas
[163] concerning the general policy of the British Empire. Something of this sort seemed to be indispensable; in order, amidst so vast a fluctuation of passions and opinions, to concenter my thoughts; to ballast my conduct; to preserve me from being *5blown about by every wind of fashionable doctrine. I really did not think it safe, or manly, to have fresh principles to seek upon every fresh mail which should arrive from America.At that period I had the fortune to find myself *6in perfect concurrence with a large majority in this House. Bowing under that high authority, and penetrated with the sharpness and strength of that early impression, I have continued ever since, without the least deviation, in my original sentiments. Whether this be owing to an obstinate perseverance in error, or to a religious adherence to what appears to me truth and reason, it is in your equity to judge.Sir, Parliament having an enlarged view of objects, made, during this interval, more frequent changes in their sentiments and their conduct, than could be justified in a particular person upon the contracted scale of private information. But though I do not hazard anything approaching to a censure on the motives of former Parliaments to all those alterations, one fact is undoubted, that under them the state of America has been kept in continual agitation. Everything administered as remedy to the public complaint, if it did not produce, was at least followed by, an heightening of the distemper; until, by a variety of experiments, that important Country has been brought into her present situation; a situation which I will not miscall, which I dare not name; which I scarcely know how to comprehend in the terms of any description.In this posture, Sir, things stood at the beginning of the Session. About that time, a *7worthy Member of great Parliamentary
[164] experience, who, in the year 1766, filled the chair of the American Committee with much ability, took me aside; and, lamenting the present aspect of our politicks, told me, things were come to such a pass, that our former methods of proceeding in the House would be no longer tolerated. That the public tribunal (never too indulgent to a long and unsuccessful opposition) would now scrutinize our conduct with unusual severity. That the very vicissitudes and shiftings of Ministerial measures, instead of convicting their authours of inconstancy and want of system, would be taken as an occasion of charging us with a predetermined discontent, which nothing could satisfy; whilst we accused every measure of vigour as cruel, and every proposal of lenity as weak and irresolute. The publick, he said, would not have patience to see us play the game out with our adversaries: we must produce our hand. It would be expected, that those who for many years had been active in such affairs should show, that they had formed some clear and decided idea of the principles of Colony Government; and were capable of drawing out something like *8a platform of the ground which might be laid for future and permanent tranquillity.I felt the truth of what my Honourable Friend represented; but I felt my situation too. His application might have been made with far greater propriety to many other gentlemen. No man was indeed ever better disposed, or worse qualified, for such an undertaking, than myself. Though I *9gave so far into his opinion, that I immediately threw my thoughts into a sort of Parliamentary form, I was by no means equally ready to produce them. It generally argues some degree of natural impotence of mind, or some want of knowledge of the world, to *10hazard Plans of Government, except from a seat of Authority. Propositions are made, not only ineffectually, but somewhat *11disreputably, when the minds of men are
[165] not properly disposed for their reception; and for my part, I am not *12ambitious of ridicule; not absolutely a candidate for disgrace.Besides, Sir, to speak the plain truth, I have in general no very exalted opinion of the virtue of *13Paper Government; nor of any Politicks, in which the plan is to be wholly separated from the execution. But when I saw that anger and violence *14prevailed every day more and more; and that things were hastening towards an incurable alienation of our Colonies; I confess my caution gave way. I felt this, as one of those few moments in which decorum yields to a higher duty. *15Public calamity is a mighty leveller; and there are occasions when any, even the slightest, chance of doing good, must be laid hold on, even by the most inconsiderable person.To restore order and repose to an Empire so great and so distracted as ours, is, merely in the attempt, an undertaking that would *16ennoble the flights of the highest genius, and obtain pardon for the efforts of the meanest understanding. Struggling a good while with these thoughts, by degrees I felt myself more firm. I derived, at length, some confidence from what in other circumstances usually produces timidity. I grew less anxious, even from the idea of my own insignificance. For, judging of what you are, by what you ought to be, I persuaded myself that you would not reject a reasonable proposition, because it had nothing but its reason to recommend it. On the other hand, being totally destitute of all shadow of influence, natural or adventitious, I was very sure, that, if my proposition were futile or dangerous; if it were weakly conceived, or improperly timed, there was nothing exterior to it, of power to awe, *17dazzle, or delude you. You will see it just as it is; and you will treat it just as it deserves.*18The proposition is Peace. Not Peace through the medium
[166] of War; not Peace to be hunted through the labyrinth of intricate and endless negociations; not Peace to arise out of universal discord, fomented, from principle, in all parts of the Empire; not Peace to depend on the Juridical Determination of perplexing questions; or the *19precise marking the shadowy boundaries of a complex Government. It is simple Peace; sought in its natural course, and in its ordinary haunts. It is Peace sought in the Spirit of Peace; and laid in principles purely pacific. I propose, by removing the Ground of the difference, and by restoring the *20former unsuspecting confidence of the Colonies in the Mother Country, to give permanent satisfaction to your people; and (far from a scheme of ruling by discord) to reconcile them to each other in the same act, and by the bond of the very same interest which reconciles them to British Government.My idea is nothing more. Refined policy ever has been the parent of confusion; and ever will be so, as long as the world endures. Plain good intention, which is as easily discovered at the first view, as fraud is surely detected at last, is, let me say, of no mean force in the Government of Mankind. *21Genuine Simplicity of heart is an healing and cementing principle. My Plan, therefore, being formed upon the most simple grounds imaginable, may disappoint some people, when they hear it. It has nothing to recommend it to the pruriency of curious ears. There is nothing at all new and captivating in it. It has nothing of the Splendor of the *22Project which has been lately laid upon your Table by the Noble Lord in the *23Blue Ribband. It does not propose to fill your lobby with squabbling Colony Agents, who will require the interposition of your Mace, at every instant, to keep the peace amongst them. It does not institute a magnificent Auction of Finance, where captivated provinces come to general ransom by bidding against each other, until you knock down the hammer, and determine a proportion of
[167] payments beyond all the powers of Algebra to equalize and settle.The plan which I shall presume to suggest, derives, however, one great advantage from the proposition and registry of that Noble Lord’s Project. The idea of conciliation is admissible. First, the House, in accepting the resolution moved by the Noble Lord, has admitted, notwithstanding the menacing front of our Address, notwithstanding our heavy Bills of Pains and Penalties—that we do not think ourselves precluded from all ideas of free Grace and Bounty.The House has gone farther; it has declared conciliation admissible, previous to any submission on the part of America. It has even shot a good deal beyond that mark, and has admitted, that the complaints of our former mode of exerting the Right of Taxation were not wholly unfounded. That right thus exerted is allowed to have something reprehensible in it; something unwise, or something grievous; since, in the midst of our heat and resentment, we, of ourselves, have proposed a capital alteration; and, in order to get rid of what seemed so very exceptionable, have instituted a mode that is altogether new; one that is, indeed, wholly alien from all the ancient methods and forms of Parliament.The principle of this proceeding is large enough for my purpose. The means proposed by the Noble Lord for carrying his ideas into execution, I think, indeed, are very indifferently suited to the end; and this I shall endeavour to show you before I sit down. But, for the present, I take my ground on the admitted principle. I mean to give peace. Peace implies reconciliation; and, where there has been a material dispute, reconciliation does in a manner always imply concession on the one part or on the other. In this state of things I make no difficulty in affirming that the proposal ought to originate from us. Great and acknowledged
[168] force is not impaired, either in effect or in opinion, by an unwillingness to exert itself. The superior power may offer peace with honour and with safety. Such an offer from such a power will be attributed to magnanimity. But the concessions of the weak are the concessions of fear. When such a one is disarmed, he is wholly at the mercy of his superior; and he loses for ever *24that time and those chances, which, as they happen to all men, are the strength and resources of all inferior power.The capital leading questions on which you must this day decide are these two: First, whether you ought to concede; and secondly, what your concession ought to be. On the first of these questions we have gained (as I have just taken the liberty of observing to you) some ground. But I am sensible that a good deal more is still to be done. Indeed, Sir, to enable us to determine both on the one and the other of these great questions with a firm and precise judgement, I think it may be necessary to consider distinctly the true nature and the peculiar circumstances of the object which we have before us. Because after all our struggle, whether we will or not, we must govern America, according to that nature, and to those circumstances; and not according to our own imaginations; nor according to abstract ideas of right; by no means according to mere general theories of government, the resort to which appears to me, in our present situation, no better than *25arrant trifling. I shall therefore endeavour, with your leave, to lay before you some of the most material of these circumstances in as full and as clear a manner as I am able to state them.
The first thing that we have to consider with regard to the nature of the object is— *26the number of people in the Colonies. I have taken for some years a good deal of pains on that point. I can by no calculation justify myself in
[169] placing the number below Two Millions of inhabitants of our own European blood and colour; besides at least 500,000 others, who form no inconsiderable part of the strength and opulence of the whole. This, Sir, is, I believe, about the true number. There is no occasion to exaggerate, where plain truth is of so much weight and importance. But whether I put the present numbers too high or too low, is a matter of little moment. Such is the strength with which population shoots in that part of the world, that, state the numbers as high as we will, *27whilst the dispute continues, the exaggeration ends. Whilst we are discussing any given magnitude, they are grown to it. Whilst we spend our time in deliberating on the mode of governing Two Millions, we shall find we have Millions more to manage. Your children do not grow faster from infancy to manhood, than they spread from families to communities, and from villages to nations.I put this consideration of the present and the growing numbers in the front of our deliberation; because, Sir, this consideration will make it evident to a blunter discernment than yours, that no partial, narrow, contracted, pinched, *28occasional system will be at all suitable to such an object. It will show you that it is not to be considered as one of those *29Minima which are out of the eye and consideration of the law; not a paltry excrescence of the state; not a mean dependant, who may be neglected with little damage, and provoked with little danger. It will prove that some degree of care and caution is required in the handling such an object; it will show that you ought not, in reason, to trifle with so large a mass of the interests and feelings of the human race. You could at no time do so without guilt; and be assured you will not be able to do it long with impunity.
But the population of this country, the great and growing
[170] population, though a very important consideration, will lose much of its weight, if not combined with other circumstances. The commerce of your Colonies is out of all proportion beyond the numbers of the people. This ground of their commerce indeed has been *30trod some days ago, and with great ability, by a distinguished person, at your bar. This gentleman, *31after Thirty-five years—it is so long since he first appeared at the same place to plead for the commerce of Great Britain—has come again before you to plead the same cause, without any other effect of time, than, that to the fire of imagination and extent of erudition, which even then marked him as one of the first literary characters of his age, he has added a consummate knowledge in the commercial interest of his country, formed by a long course of enlightened and discriminating experience.Sir, I should be inexcusable in coming after such a person with any detail; if a great part of the members who now fill the House had not the misfortune to be absent when he appeared at your bar. Besides, Sir, I propose to take the matter at periods of time somewhat different from his. There is, if I mistake not, a point of view, from whence if you will look at the subject, it is impossible that it should not make an impression upon you.I have in my hand two accounts; one a comparative state of the export trade of England to its Colonies, as it stood in the year 1704, and as it stood in the year 1772. The other a state of the export trade of this country to its Colonies alone, as it stood in 1772, compared with the whole trade of England to all parts of the world (the Colonies included) in the year 1704. They are from good vouchers; the latter period from the accounts on your table, the earlier from an original manuscript of *32Davenant, who first established the Inspector-General’s office, which has been ever since his time so abundant a source of Parliamentary information.[171] The export trade to the Colonies consists of three great branches. *33The African, which, terminating almost wholly in the Colonies, must be put to the account of their commerce; *34the West Indian; and the North American. All these are so interwoven, that the attempt to separate them, would tear to pieces the contexture of the whole; and if not entirely destroy, would very much depreciate the value of all the parts. I therefore consider these three denominations to be, what in effect they are, one trade.
[307]P. 222, L. 6.grand penal Bill, by which we had passed sentence. The Act to restrain the Commerce of the Provinces of Massachuset’s Bay and New Hampshire, and Colonies of Connecticut and Rhode Island, and Providence Plantation, in North America, to Great Britain, Ireland, and the British Islands in the West Indies; and to prohibit such Provinces and Colonies from carrying on any Fishery on the Banks of Newfoundland, and other places therein mentioned, under certain conditions and limitations. ( Original ed.)
L. 18.incongruous mixture of coercion and restraint. The coercion consisted in breaking the resistance to the Tea-duty; the restraint in prohibiting the New Englanders from the Newfoundland fisheries. The incongruity lay in the form, not in the spirit or method of these attempts.
L. 31.I was obliged to take more than common pains. Burke however had long before this taken more than common pains to instruct himself in the affairs of the Colonies. See note to p. 195, l. 5, ante.
P. 223, L. 3.blown about by every wind of fashionable doctrine. St. Paul to Eph. iv. 14. Cp. Reynolds, Discourse xii, “at the mercy of every gust of fashion.” Burke elsewhere speaks of “hebdomadal politicians.” Cp. p. 243, “Some rule which may give a little stability to our politicks.”
L. 21.gave so far into his opinion—i.e. assented to. So European Settlements in America, vol. i. p. 32: “This (the natural slavery of barbarians) was so general a notion, that Aristotle himself, with all his penetration, gave into it very seriously.”
L. 26.hazard Plans of Government, &c. Cp. note to p. 70, l. 14. “We live in a nation where, at present, there is scarce a single head that does not teem with politics. The whole island is peopled with statesmen, and not unlike Trinculo’s Kingdom of Viceroys. Every man has contrived a scheme of government for the benefit of his fellow subjects.” The Whig-Examiner, No. 5.
L. 33.Paper government. Burke possibly had in mind the original settlement of Carolina, with its “model of a constitution framed, and body of fundamental laws compiled by the famous philosopher, Mr. Locke.” (European Settlements in America, vol. ii. p. 237.) This absurd specimen of modern feudalism settled the lands in large and inalienable fiefs, on three classes of nobility: barons, cassiques (earls), and landgraves (dukes), and was tolerated for two generations. Shaftesbury had a hand in it. Burke’s resolutions would in effect have established a new charter for all the Colonies.
L. 23.dazzle or delude. These two ideas were generally connected by Burke. Cp. p. 184, l. 20. So elsewhere he speaks of the “dazzling and delusive wealth” of the Spanish and Portuguese Colonies (their gold, silver, and precious stones).
L. 25.The proposition is Peace. “What a pompous description is here! Mulier formosa superne Desinit in piscem. For after all, what is this Heaven-born pacific Scheme, of which we have heard so laboured an Encomium? Why truly; if we will grant the Colonies all that they shall require, and stipulate for nothing in Return; then they will be at Peace with us. I believe it; and on these simple Principles of simple Peace-making, I will engage to terminate every difference throughout the world.” Tucker, Letter, p. 44.
L. 35.former unsuspecting confidence of the Colonies, &c. These are the words of the Congress at Philadelphia in 1774. Letter to Sheriffs of Bristol, 1777: “Man is a creature of habit; and the first breach being of very short duration, the Colonies fell back exactly into their ancient state. The Congress has used an expression with regard to this pacification, which appears to me truly significant. After the repeal of the Stamp Act, ‘the Colonies fell,’ says this Assembly, ‘into their ancient state of unsuspecting confidence in the mother country.‘ This unsuspecting confidence is the true center of gravity amongst mankind, about which all the parts are at rest. It is this unsuspecting confidence that removes all difficulties, and reconciles all the contradictions, which occur in the complexity of all ancient, puzzled, political establishments. Happy are the rulers which have the secret of preserving it!” &c. Cp. with this passage, vol. ii. p. 333, on the tampering of the Assembly with the army: “They have touched the central point, about which the particles that compose armies are at repose.”
P. 226, L. 10.Genuine simplicity of heart is an healing, &c. “Truth in its nature is healing, and productive of reflection.” Glover’s Speech at the Bar, March 16, 1775.
L. 16.Project lately laid upon your table, &c. “That when the Governor, Council, or Assembly, or General Court, of any of his Majesty’s Provinces or Colonies in America, shall propose to make provision, according to the condition, circumstances, and situation, of such Province or Colony, for contributing their proportion to the Common Defence (such proportion to be raised under the Authority of the General Court, or General Assembly, of such
[309] Province or Colony, and disposable by Parliament), and shall engage to make provision also for the support of the Civil Government, and the Administration of Justice, in such Province or Colony, it will be proper, if such Proposal shall be approved by his Majesty, and the two Houses of Parliament, and for so long as such Provision shall be made accordingly, to forbear, in respect of such Province or Colony, to levy any Duty, Tax, or Assessment, or to impose any further Duty, Tax, or Assessment, except such duties as it may be expedient to continue to levy or impose, for the Regulation of Commerce; the Nett Produce of the Duties last mentioned to be carried to the account of such Province or Colony respectively.”—Resolution moved by Lord North in the Committee; and agreed to by the House, Feb. 27, 1775. ( Original ed.) See post, p. 280 sq.
L. 17.Blue Ribband. Lord North was conspicuous among the members of the Lower House by this badge of a Knight of the Garter. The only other commoner who had then obtained the Garter was Sir R. Walpole. Castlereagh and Palmerston are the only other instances of this distinction being offered to and accepted by commoners.
L. 15.The number of people in the Colonies. The computation of Mr. Bancroft (vol. iv. p. 128), which fully justifies Burke’s remarks, is as follows:
Whites
Blacks
Total
1750
1,040,000
220,000
1,260,000.
1754
1,165,000
260,000
1,425,000.
1760
1,385,000
310,000
1,695,000.
1770
1,850,000
462,000
2,312,000.
1780
2,383,000
562,000
2,945,000.
1790
3,177,257
752,069
3,929,326.
Cp. Johnson’s savage comment on this and other arguments; “We are told that the continent of North America contains three millions, not of men, merely, but of Whigs; of Whigs fierce for liberty, and disdainful of dominion (alluding to Chatham’s Speech of January 20, 1775); that they multiply with the fecundity of their own rattlesnakes, so that every quarter of a century doubles their numbers…. When it is urged that they will shoot up like the hydra, he (the English politician) naturally considers how the hydra was destroyed.” Taxation no Tyranny, Works, x. 96, 97.
L. 28.whilst the dispute continues, the exaggeration ends. Cp. note, p. 225, ante, on Burke’s repetition of his proposition, now put in a few words at once terse in expression, but weighty with antithesis, and now
[310] expanded in its fullest details. It is impossible to surpass the felicity of this antithesis.
P. 229, L. 4.Occasional—used in malam partem.Cp. ante p. 159, “occasional arguments.” Dr. Johnson speaks of Browne’s Hydriotaphia as “a treatise occasionally written.” So the Occasional Writer, a paper to which Bolingbroke contributed.
L. 20.trod some days ago… by a distinguished person. Mr. Glover, who appeared at the bar (March 16), to support the petition of the West Indian Planters respecting the Non-Importation Agreement, praying that peace might be concluded with the Colonies, presented February 2. His Speech, Parl. Hist. xviii. 461-478, is well worthy of study, as an illustration of Burke’s relation to contemporary oratory. His Leonidas still survives; but few readers will be disposed to encounter his Athenaid, an epic in thirty books.
L. 17.The African, terminating almost wholly in the Colonies. Because little more than a trade in slaves, who were paid for with English wares. See Burke’s remarks on the African trade in his Account of America, vol. i. It was owing to the judgment with which the Portuguese carried on the trade in slaves that Brazil, in Burke’s time, was looked on as the richest and most promising of the American Colonies.
L. 19.the West Indian. More important than the legitimate trade was that carried on, against the Act of Navigation, between the Spanish Colonies and the English West Indies. See Lord Stanhope’s History, vol. ii.
L. 25.the trade to the Colonies, &c. Burke had employed the statistics of 1704 in his pamphlet of 1769 on the State of the Nation, to demonstrate the increase of the Colony trade. He there compares the total exports to the Colonies in 1704 (£483,265) with those to Jamaica in 1767 (£467,681).
P. 231, L. 23.is not this American trade an unnatural protuberance. “The people of the United States still constitute our largest and most valuable commercial connection. The business we carry on with them is nearly twice as extensive as that with any other people, and our transactions are almost wholly conducted on ready money terms.” Cobden’s Political Writings, vol. i. p. 98. The American official returns for the year ending June 30, 1873, shows that in that year more than one-third of the whole imports into the United States came from England, and that more than one-half of their whole exports, consisting chiefly of cotton, provisions, breadstuffs, and petroleum, were sent to England.
P. 232, L. 6.Mr. Speaker, &c. The transition, bold as it is, is happily managed.
[311] It is difficult to pass from arithmetical to rhetorical figures, but Burke seems to fuse the two elements into one by the mere force of his reasoning.
L. 14.my Lord Bathurst. The connexion of Lord Bathurst with English literature extends from Pope and Swift to Sterne (vide Sterne, Letters, p. 192). In 1704 he was more than “of an age at least to be made to comprehend,” &c., having been born in 1684: he took his seat in Parliament in 1705.
L. 15.cloud the setting of his day, i.e. sunset. Borrowed from Johnson, Vanity of Human Wishes:
But few there are whom hours like these await,
Who set unclouded in the gulphs of fate.
With this graceful figure Burke concludes one of the best-known of his passages, in a higher strain of rhetoric than is now permissible in Parliamentary speaking. This eloquent effort of imagination would have been better in place in the Address of Daniel Webster on the Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers. Dr. Johnson’s extemporaneous travesty of it, which illustrates the general temper of the country, shall be given in the words of Mrs. Piozzi.”It was in the year 1775 that Mr. Edmund Burke made the famous speech in Parliament, that struck even foes with admiration, and friends with delight. Among the nameless thousands who are contented to echo those praises they have not skill to invent, I ventured, before Dr. Johnson himself, to applaud with rapture the beautiful passage in it concerning Lord Bathurst and the Angel; which, said our Doctor, had I been in the House, I would have answered thus;” ‘Suppose, Mr. Speaker, that to Wharton, or to Marlborough or to any of the eminent Whigs of the last age, the devil had, not with any great impropriety, consented to appear; he would perhaps in somewhat like these words have commenced the conversation;[312] ” ‘You seem, my Lord, to be concerned at the judicious apprehension, that while you are sapping the foundations of royalty at home, and propagating here the dangerous doctrine of resistance, the distance of America may secure its inhabitants from your arts, though active; but I will unfold to you the gay prospects of futurity. This people, now so innocent and harmless, shall draw the sword against their mother country, and bathe its point in the blood of their benefactors; this people, now contented with a little, shall then refuse to spare what they themselves confess they could not miss; and these men, now so honest and so grateful, shall, in return for peace and protection, see their vile agents in the house of Parliament, there to sow the seeds of sedition, and propagate confusion, perplexity, and pain. Be not dispirited, then, at the contemplation of their present happy state; I promise you that anarchy, poverty, and death shall, by my care, be carried even across the spacious Atlantic, and settle in America itself, the sure consequences of our beloved Whiggism.’ ” Anecdotes of Dr. Johnson, p. 42.
L. 26.I choose, Sir, to enter, &c. “I think I know America,” wrote Burke to the Sheriffs of Bristol, in 1777. “If I do not, my ignorance is incurable, because I have spared no pains to understand it…. Everything that has been done there has arisen from a total misconception of the object.”
L. 16.with a Roman charity. The story of Xanthippe and Cimon, as told by Hyginus, was universally known by the name of the Roman Charity. It afforded an effective subject to several artists. Some authors (Plin. Nat. Hist. vii. 36, Valerius Maximus v. 47) represent a mother instead of a father as the object. Valerius Maximus in another version, and Festus and Solinus, agree with Hyginus.
L. 22.they seemed even to excite your envy. George Grenville had by his budget of 1764, practically resigned the whale fishery to America. “This,” says Mr. Bancroft, “is the most liberal act of Grenville’s administration, of which the merit is not diminished by the fact that American whale fishery was superseding the English under every discouragement.” England and Holland had formerly contested the whaling trade. The position of America was of course such that when the American fishery was freed from its burdens it overwhelmed both.
L. 25.what in the world is equal to it. At this time Massachusetts alone employed 183 vessels, carrying 13,820 tons, in the North, and 120 vessels, carrying 14,026 tons, in the South Atlantic fishery. The fishery was at first
[313] carried on from the shores, and then, as whales became scarce, they were pursued to their haunts. Hence the advantage of the Americans. See an interesting article in the Quarterly Review, vol. lxiii. p. 318.
L. 31.we hear that they have pierced into the opposite region of polar cold. It is interesting to be able to trace to the eloquent appeal of Burke some of the most important events in Colonial history. In 1775 ships were apparently for the first time fitted out by English owners for the purpose of following the track of the Americans in the South Seas. The bounties abolished by Grenville were revived in 1776 to favour this new branch of adventure; but it was not until 1785 that our navigators discovered the haunts of the sperm whale, and attained a success equalling that of the Americans. The enterprise of Mr. Enderby in 1788 extended the fisheries to the Pacific, and in 1820 to Japan. The consequences were a constant intercourse with the Spanish Colonies, which had no small share in leading them to their independence—the introduction of civilization into Polynesia, and the foundation of the Australian and Tasmanian Colonies. The whalers preceded the missionaries.
Ibid.Falkland Island. A letter from Port Egmont, dated 1770, in the Grenville Papers, vol. iv. p. 505, gives a dismal account of the Falkland Islands. “Barren of everything except sea-lions and seals. There is not an inch of Braddock Down that is not better than the very best of any of these islands; there is not a stick so big as the pen I am writing with on any of them. The soil is turf chiefly, and in short is one wild heath wherever you turn your eye…. We have been ordered off the island by the Spaniards, the French having given up their pretensions to their settlements.” This will explain the humour of an allusion in the first scene of Foote’s comedy of the “Cozeners,” where Mrs. Fleece’em promises an applicant for a place the surveyorship of the woods in Falkland’s Island, with the loppings and toppings for perquisites.
L. 2.too remote and romantic an object for the grasp of national ambition. The Falkland Islands are about 200 in number, of which East and West Falkland were the chief. Discovered at the end of the sixteenth century, they were not considered worth occupation. In 1763 the French built Port Louis on East Falkland; England soon after built Port Egmont on West Falkland, but abandoned it in 1773. Through the whale-fishery they afterwards attained an unexpected importance. See Lord Stanhope’s History, vol. v.
L. 13. = bold, adventurous. So Goldsmith; “Bacon, that great and hardy genius.” Cp. p. 121, l. 26, ante, “an hardy attempt.” Burke however often used the word in the modern sense = patient of hardship.
P. 236, L. 5.not as an odious, but as a feeble instrument. The inability of European governments even to put down the buccaneers was doubtless present to Burke: “What armaments from England, Holland, and France have been sent in different times to America, whose remains returned without honour or advantage, is too clear, and perhaps too invidious a topic to be greatly insisted upon.” Account of America, vol. ii. p. 12.
L. 16.Power and authority—can never be begged. Cp. First Letter on Regicide Peace: “Power, and eminence, and consideration, are things not to be begged. They must be commanded; and they, who supplicate for mercy from others, can never hope for justice through themselves. What justice they are to obtain, as the alms of an enemy, depends upon his character; and that they ought well to know, before they implicitly confide.”
L. 22.I do not choose… the spirit that has made the country. Cp. First Letter on Regicide Peace; “Nation is a moral essence, not a geographical arrangement, or a denomination of the nomenclator.”
P. 237, L. 25.emigrated from you when this part of your character was most predominant. “The American freeholders at present are nearly, in point of condition, what the English Yeomen were of old, when they rendered us formidable to all Europe, and our name celebrated throughout the world. The former, from many obvious circumstances, are more enthusiastical lovers of liberty, than even our Yeomen were.” Burke, Ann. Reg. 1775, p. 14. The New England colonies had their origin in the time of the great struggle against the Stuarts.
L. 31.Liberty inheres in some sensible object. The Whigs and the popular party indulged in so much vain talk about liberty that such observations were to the point. “It inheres in good and steady government, as in its substance and vital principle.” Speech on arrival at Bristol, 1774.
L. 32.Every nation, &c. Burke adopts the well-known doctrine of Goldsmith’s “Traveller,” which belongs, however, rather to poetry than to political philosophy, though it is borrowed from Montesquieu. “The Traveller” was published in 1764.
[315] From art more various are the blessings sent,
Wealth, commerce, honour, liberty, content;
Yet these each others’ power so strong contest,
That either seems destructive of the rest.
Where wealth and freedom reign, contentment fails,
P. 238, L. 3.in the ancient commonwealths. Notably in Rome, an example always present to Burke’s mind. Read Swift’s Discourse on the Contests and Dissensions in Athens and Rome, which, though opposing Burke’s Whiggish doctrine of Party, furnished him with many hints.
L. 6.some are merely popular = purely, entirely. “The one sort we may for distinction safe call mixedly, and the other merely humane.” Hooker, Eccl. Pol. Book i. c. 10. New England was an aggregate of pure democracies, the foremost in spirit and popular organisation being Massachusett’s Bay and Connecticut. New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Maine, which was a part of Massachusetts, were the others. New York differed from New England chiefly from having been settled under large patents of land to individuals, instead of charters to towns. North of the Potomac were the two large proprietary governments, Pennsylvania with Delaware, under Thomas and Richard Penn, and Maryland, which belonged nominally to Lord Baltimore. There were five royal governments, the Carolinas, Georgia, Virginia, and New Jersey. See Bancroft, vol. iv. chap. 6. It was not, however, in the democratic governments that the most violent resolutions were passed. See Ann. Reg. 1775, p. 6.
L. 14.Religion, always a principle of energy. The incidents of the Anti-Slavery war show that this principle in the Americans is still in no way impaired.
L. 20. The Addisonian “aversion” is more usual. From is the proper construction. Johnson considers to improper, and towards very improper. (Cp. note to p. 83, l. 3.) Swift uses “aversion against.”
P. 240, L. 1.dissidence of dissent, &c. Cp. Hooker, Book iv. c. viii. “There
[316] hath arisen a sect in England, which following still the self same rule of policy, seeketh to reform even the French reformation.” Cp. Fourth Letter on a Regicide Peace, “They have apostatized from their apostasy.”
Ibid.such in our days were the Poles. “Poland seems to be a country formed to give the most disadvantageous idea of liberty, by the extreme to which it is carried, and the injustice with which it is distributed,” &c. See the rest of this interesting description of the state of affairs in Poland, Ann. Reg. 1763.
L. 10.In no country… is the law so general a study. American authors have not insisted on this as a cause, though the history of the Revolution is full of proofs of it. “The Lawyers of this place (New York),” writes the Lieutenant-Governor, to Conway, in 1765, “are the authors and conductors of the present sedition.” On the study of the law in the Italian Republics, see Hallam, Middle Ages, vol. iii. ch. 9, part 2. On the lawyers in the French Assembly, cp. vol. ii. p. 131.
L. 12.numerous and powerful. “In many of our settlements the lawyers have gathered to themselves the greatest part of the wealth of the country.” Europ. Settlements in America, vol. ii. p. 304. Burke censured as the cause of this, the burdening of the colonies with the mass of our common law, and the old statute law, and their adoption, with very little choice or discretion, of a great part of the new statute law. He thought “all that load of matter, perhaps so useless at home, without doubt extremely prejudicial in the colonies…. These infant settlements surely demanded a more simple, clear, and determinate legislation, though it were somewhat of a homelier kind.” Ibid.
L. 20.printing them for their own use. Burke says nothing of the general influence of the printing-press, which was by this time actively at work in the Colonies. “The press,” he writes, in the First Letter on a Regicide Peace, “in reality has made every government, in its spirit, almost democratic.”
L. 25.in Boston they have been enabled, by successful chicane. General Gage, in pursuance of the powers given him by the coercive statutes, had prohibited the calling of town meetings after August 1, 1774. A town meeting was, however, held, and asserted to be legal, not having been called, but adjourned over. “By such means,” said Gage, “you may keep your meeting alive these ten years.” He brought the subject before the new Council. “It is a point of law,” said they, “and should be referred to the Crown lawyers,” &c. Bancroft, vol. vii. ch. 8. Cp. Ann. Reg. 1775, p. 11.
L. 19.winged ministers of vengeance, who carry your bolts in their pounces, &c. “Winged ministers of vengeance” is a compound of Milton’s “ministers of vengeance” (Par. Lost, i. 170), and “winged messengers” (ib. iii. 229). Cp. ante, p. 236. “Those who wield the thunder of the State.” The image is borrowed from Lord Chatham’s Speech of January 22, 1770; “They have disarmed the imperial bird, the ministrum fulminis alitem. * The army is the thunder of the Crown—the ministry have tied up the hand which should direct the bolt.” Burke happily transfers it to the navy. The student should compare the beautiful expansion and application of this image by Canning, introduced with exquisite propriety in the speech made within sight of Plymouth docks, 1823.
L. 21.a power steps in… “So far shalt thou go and no farther.” The allusion is to the story of Canute and his courtiers, then recently popularized by Hume.
L. 27.In large bodies, &c. But cp. Letter to W. Elliott, Esq. “These analogies between bodies natural and politic, though they may sometimes illustrate arguments, furnish no argument of themselves.” The same observation occurs in the First Letter on a Regicide Peace. Mill has apparently made use of the latter passage in his account of “Fallacies of Generalization.”
P. 243, L. 1.in all his borders—watches times. These are well known Scriptural expressions. See note to p. 98, l. 32. “Temporibus servire” is a common maxim of Cicero.
Ibid.Spain, in her provinces—i.e. in South America. The necessity of reform in the Spanish Colonial system was by this time obvious. In 1778 the monopoly of Cadiz was abolished, and a great stimulus was thus given to the Spanish Colony trade.
L. 3.this is the immutable condition, &c. Burke generalises from two bad instances, but the weakness of Spain and Turkey was then far less
[318] apparent than now. The Czar is as well obeyed on the Pacific shore as on the Baltic, and English government is as strong on the Ganges as on the Thames.
P. 246, L. 4.Sir, if I were capable, &c. This perhaps indicates that the Speaker exhibited an appearance of weariness or inattention, on Burke’s proposal to “go patiently round and round the subject.”
L. 20.It is radical in its principle. “The objects which I proposed were radical, systematic economy,” &c. Letter to Mr. Harford, April 4, 1780. It was Burke who brought the term into parliamentary if not into general use—not Pitt, as commonly asserted: cp. Fischel, English Const., p. 551.
P. 247, L. 5.The people would occupy without grants. See Bancroft, ch. xviii. and xxvii. “But the prohibition only set apart the Great Valley as the sanctuary of the unhappy, the adventurous and the free; of those whom enterprise, or curiosity, or disgust at the forms of life in the old plantations, raised above royal edicts…. The boundless West became the poor man’s City of Refuge,” &c. Vol. vi. p. 33, where see note.
L. 11.Already they have topped the Apalachian mountains—better known as the Alleghanies, the western frontier of the British settlements. The germ of the description which follows is in the Annual Register, vol. i. p. 2. Burke doubtless remembered with some vividness a passage on which he had bestowed much pains.
L. 17.Hordes of English Tartars. This idea seems to have been suggested by the history of the Buccaneers of St. Domingo, “a considerable number of men transformed by necessity into downright savages,” an account of whom, from the pen of Burke, is to be found in the Annual Register for 1761.
L. 24.Encrease and Multiply. Burke quotes from Milton, Par. Lost. x. 730. Authorised Version, “Be fruitful and multiply”; Vulgate (used by Milton), “Crescite et multiplicamini.”
L. 26.which God by an express Charter, &c. Cp. More’s Utopia (Bp. Burnet’s translation), Book ii: “They account it a very just cause of war for a nation to hinder others from possessing a part of the soil of which they make no use, but which is suffered to lie idle and uncultivated; since every man has, by the law of nature, a right to such a waste portion of the earth as is necessary for his subsistence.”
[319]Ibid.given to the children of men. Ps. cxv. 16. This is one of the rare instances in which Burke employs the arguments of what he called the “metaphysical” school. He evidently had in mind Locke, of Civil Government, Book ii. ch. v. The phrase is used in the Letter to a Bristol firm, May 2, 1778. Blackstone similarly deduces the rights of property from the “dominion over all the earth,” &c., conferred upon mankind at the creation. “This is the only true and solid foundation of man’s dominion over external things, whatever airy metaphysical notions may have been started by fanciful writers on this subject.” Cp. the expression “charter of nature,” p. 254.
L. 26.Spoliatis arma supersunt. Juvenal, Sat. viii. 124. The phrase seems also to have stuck in the memory of Hallam. “Arms, says the poet, remain to the plundered,” he writes in chapter xviii. of the Constitutional History. “Les nations doivent jouir de cette indépendance qu’on peut leur arracher un moment, mais qu’elles finissent toujours par reconquérir: spoliatis arma supersunt.” Chateaubriand, De la Monarchie selon la Charte, ch. xlvi.
P. 249, L. 2.to substitute the Roman Catholic, as a penalty. Why should Burke introduce this, which seems mere redundance? He casts an oblique glance at Ireland, and “counterchanges” the unjust penal laws which were there in force.
L. 4.inquisition and dragooning—alluding to the measures adopted by Spain to reduce the Netherlands, in the sixteenth century, and by Louis XIV, in the next, to conquer the Huguenots.
L. 8.burn their books of curious science. Acts xix. 12. Cp., in the pathetic Defence of Strafford, “It will be wisdom for yourselves and your posterity to cast into the fire these bloody and mysterious volumes of constructive and arbitrary treason, as the primitive Christians did their books of curious arts, and betake yourselves to the plain letter of the law and statute,” &c.
L. 21.any opinion of it—an elliptical expression, still in use—equivalent to “any favourable opinion of it.” Cp. the expression “to have no idea of a thing,” i.e. to disapprove it (found in Pitt’s speeches).
L. 30.a measure to which other people have had recourse. See Aristoph. Ran. 27, from which it appears that the slaves who had distinguished themselves at the battle of Arginusae, were presented with their freedom. Plutarch says that Cleomenes armed 2,000 Helots to oppose the Macedonian Leucaspedae, in his war with that people and the Achaeans. According to
[320] Pausanias, the Helots were present at the battle of Marathon. Among the Romans, as Virgil (Aen. ix. 547) tells us, it was highly criminal for slaves to enter the army of their masters, but in the Hannibalian War, after the battle of Cannae, 8,000 of them were armed, and by their valour in subsequent actions, earned their liberty. See Livy, Book xxiv.
L. 33.Slaves as these, &c. Burke, in his Account of the Settlements in America, was the first to point out that on English soil there were slaves enduring “a slavery more complete, and attended with far worse circumstances, than what any people in their condition suffer in any part of the world, or have suffered in any period of time.” The passage is quoted in Dr. Ogden’s Sermon against Oppression.
Ibid.dull as all men are from slavery. It was shown by Adam Smith that slave labour was so much dearer than free labour that none but the most lucrative trades could bear the loss it involved.
P. 250, L. 13.Ye gods, annihilate but space and time, &c. This piece of fustian is taken from Martinus Scriblerus, of the Art of Sinking in Poetry, where it is cited without name. It is said to come from one of Dryden’s plays. Cp. the humorous paper in the Ann. Reg. 1761, p. 207, in which, alluding to the “stage-coaches, machines, flys, and post-chaises,” which were plying about this time in great numbers on the improved turnpike-roads, the author says, “The lover now can almost literally annihilate time and space, and be with his mistress, before she dreams of his arrival.”
L. 4.Sir Edward Coke—Sir W. Rawleigh. See Howell’s State Trials, vol. ii. p. 7. sq. (Pronounce Cooke. Similarly, “Bolingbroke” should be pronounced Bullingbrook. Both names indeed were at one time spelt in this way.)
P. 254, L. 8.Sir, I think you must perceive. It is difficult to select any passage in this oration for special notice in point of style: but no one can fail to be struck with fresh admiration at the method of this paragraph, in which the “right of Taxation” is excluded from the discussion. The delicate irony with which the theorists are passed over gives place, by way of a surprising antithesis (“right to render your people miserable”—”interest to make them happy”), to the earnest remonstrance with which the passage
[321] concludes. The continuous irony of the first part of the paragraph seems to contribute to rather than detract from the general elevation of treatment.
L. 11.it is less than nothing. Isaiah xl. 17. “In matters of State, a constitutional competence to act, is, in many cases, the smallest part of the Question.” First Letter on a Regicide Peace.
L. 22.deep questions… great names, high and reverend authorities, &c. “As to the right of taxation, the gentlemen who opposed it produced many learned authorities from Locke, Selden, Harrington, and Puffendorf, shewing that the very foundation and ultimate point in view of all government, is the good of society,” &c. Annual Register, 1766. “These arguments were answered with great force of reason, and knowledge of the constitution, by the other side.” Ibid. The whole of this able summary, which is from the pen of Burke, is also to be read in the Parliamentary History, vol. xvi.
L. 27.the great Serbonian bog, &c. Par. Lost, ii. 592. “He climbed and descended precipices on which vulgar mortals tremble to look: he passed marshes like the Serbonian bog, where armies whole have sunk, &c.” The Idler, No. 49. Cp. “the Serbonian bog of this base oligarchy,” vol. ii. p. 305. See Herodotus, iii. 5.
P. 255, L. 8.assertion of my title… loss of my suit. “It would have been a poor compensation that we had triumphed in a dispute, whilst we lost an Empire.” Letter to Sheriffs of Bristol.
L. 15.rights of citizens… posterity to all generations. The allusion is to a question which is fully discussed in vol. ii. p. 106, where Burke takes the contrary view to that which is implied here.
L. 28.roots of our primitive constitution. From which the representation of the Commons naturally sprang. Burke is correct, and in his time such a view implied some originality.
L. 31.gave us at least, &c., i. e. the liberties secured by Magna Charta gave the people at once some weight and consequence in the state, and this weight and consequence were felt in Parliament when the people attained distinct representation.
P. 260, L. 3.your standard could never be advanced an inch beyond your privileges; i. e. the privileges of the Pale. See Hallam’s Const. Hist., ch. xviii.
L. 4.Sir John Davies. “Discoverie of the true Causes why Ireland was never entirely subdued until the beginning of his Majestie’s happy reign.” 4to., 1612. Davies was in this year made Speaker of the first Irish House of Commons. He was afterwards Lord Chief Justice of England. He is still remembered as the author of a curious metaphysical poem on the Immortality of the Soul, and as a legal reporter.
L. 25.formally taxed her. Queen Elizabeth attempted to tax the Irish landowners by an Order in Council, which was resisted. On the question of the competency of the Parliament of England to tax Ireland, see the last pages of Hallam’s Constitutional History.
P. 261, L. 5.my next example is Wales. “Perhaps it is not generally known that Wales was once the Ireland of the English Government.” O’Connell, Speech at Waterford, August 30, 1826. He applies to Ireland, with much ingenuity, all that Burke here says of Wales. O’Connell also quoted this part of the Speech at length in his Speech at the Association, February 2, 1827. The “strange heterogeneous monster, something between hostility and government,” he marked as “an epitome of Irish history—I love to repeat it.”
L. 11.put into the hands of Lords Marchers. See Scott’s “The Betrothed,” and the Appendix to Pennant’s Tour in Wales. The conquest of Wales by ordinary military operations having been found impossible, the kings of England granted to these lords “such lands as they could win from the Welshmen.” The first conquests were made in the neighbourhood of the great frontier towns; and the lords were “suffered to take upon them such prerogative and authority as were fit for the quiet government of the country.” No actual
[323] records of these grants remain, as the writs from the King’s Courts did not run into Wales, nor were there any sheriffs to execute such writs. The towns of Wales grew up around the castles of the Lords Marchers. They executed the English laws, for the most part, within their lordships; but where the ancient laws of the land were sufficiently ascertained, they seem to a certain extent to have respected them: there being in many lordships separate Courts for the Welsh and English. The text must not be understood to imply that the governments by Lords Marchers were established by Edward I. On the contrary, after Edward II was made Prince of Wales, no more Lordships Marchers were created, and no Lord Marcher could claim any liberty or prerogative more than they had before, without a grant. These lordships were held of the King in chief, and not of the principality of Wales.
P. 262, L. 4.fifteen acts of penal regulation. In addition to those specified by Burke, no Welshman might be a burgess, or purchase any land in a town, 2 Henry IV, c. 12 and 20. No Welshman was to have any castle or fortress, save such as was in the time of Edward I, except bishops and temporal lords.
L. 26.Now if the doctrines, &c. Burke’s argument would be weightier if he were not obliged to abandon it when confronted with the question “How can America be represented in a British Parliament?”
P. 265, L. 24.Opposuit natura. Juv. x. 152. Canning borrowed this quotation in his eloquent speech on the Roman Catholic Disability Removal Bill, March 16, 1821.
P. 266, L. 4.Republick of Plato… Utopia of More (pronounce Moore)… Oceana of Harrington. Adam Smith and many others class the Utopia and the Oceana together as idle schemes. Nothing, however, can be more contrary than the spirit of the works of Plato and More on the one hand, and of Harrington on the other. More’s work is pervaded by Greek ideas, and, like Plato’s Republic, was intended to form a bright artificial picture, with the view of exhibiting more clearly by contrast the dark mass of contemporary realities. Beyond this, both works contain much sound sense and many practical suggestions. The “Utopia,” even in its English dress, is a fine model of the method of composition. The “Oceana” is quite a different thing. It is a complete, pragmatical scheme of what Burke calls “paper government,” constructed as if human beings were so many counters, and
[324] the human soul some common machine: the work of an ingenious but unimaginative man, who knew too much of history, and too little of the nature of men.
L. 27.temple of British concord. A grand and appropriate image. There is an allusion to the Temple of Concord at Rome, so celebrated in the story of the Conspiracy of Catiline. Cp. p. 287, “The sacred temple consecrated to our common faith.”
L. 23.Is this description, &c. A paragraph in Burke’s best style. The copiousness of thought and the economy of words are equally remarkable, and both contribute to the general effect of weight and perspicuity.
L. 4.guilty of tampering. Absolutely used, in the old and classical sense, not noticed in Johnson = “variis remediorum generibus curam morbi tentare.” (Bailey.) So in the pamphlet on the State of the Nation the “injudicious tampering” of the ministers at one time, is contrasted with their supine negligence at another.
L. 8.not to be wise beyond what was written.t&ogrgr;
m&eegrgr; &udagr;
p&egrgr;
r &odaacgr;
g&eacgr;
graptai &phgr;
rone&iivrgr;
n. St. Paul, 1 Ep. to Cor. iv. 6. Whether Burke is the author of this elegant mistranslation, which has now become a classical phrase, or whether he adopted it from some English divine, I cannot say. The authorized translation seems to be correct, though Professor Scholefield supports that given by Burke. “That he is resolved not ‘to be wise beyond what is written’ in the legislative record and practice.” App. from New to Old Whigs.
P. 272, L. 14.passions of the misguided people. Public opinion in England was certainly in favour of American taxation. The extent in which the English people were overwhelmed with taxes, and the difficulty of devising new ones, should not be forgotten.
P. 278, L. 19.mistake to imagine, &c. Arnold says of Popery, that men “judge it naturally from the tendency of its most offensive principles; supposing that all men will carry their principles into practice, and ignorant of the checks and palliatives which in actual life neutralise their virulence.” On Christian duty of conceding the Roman Catholic Claims. Macaulay more than once refers to this variation between theory and action; once at great length in the Essay on Hallam’s Constitutional History. There is a remarkable passage much to the same effect at the close of Jeremy Taylor’s second sermon on the “Miracles of the Divine Mercy.”
L. 29.We give and take—we remit some rights, &c. “Of one thing I am perfectly clear, that it is not by deciding the suit, but by compromising the difference, that peace can be restored or kept.” Letter to Sheriffs of Bristol.
P. 279, L. 1.The purchase paid = purchase-money. So the Spectator, No. 152: “Short labours or dangers are but a cheap purchase of jollity, triumph, victory,” &c. Cp. Europ. Sett. in America, vol. ii. p. 197: “Not aiming at a sudden profit, he (Penn) disposed of his land at a very light purchase.” Young’s Night Thoughts: “Insolvent worlds the purchase cannot pay.”
L. 2.immediate jewel of his soul. From Burke’s favourite play, Othello, Act iii. Sc. 5. Cp. p. 70, “Reputation, the most precious possession of every individual.” So in Fourth Letter on Regicide Peace, “Our ruin will be disguised in profit, and the sale of a few wretched baubles will bribe a degenerate people to barter away the most precious jewel of their souls.”
L. 16.cords of man. Hosea xi. 4. “To draw them without persecuting the others, by the cords of love into the pale of the Church,” &c. Bolingbroke, Diss. on Parties, Letter ii.
L. 26.which is itself the security, &c. Similarly, on the subject of Jacobinism, Burke points out that the large masses of property are natural ramparts which protect the smaller ones.
P. 280, L. 9.promoted the union of the whole. Burke lived to see this pleasant state of things reversed, and to approve the abolition of a separate Irish legislature.
P. 281, L. 3.Experimentum in corpore vili. This well-known saying seems to have had its origin from an anecdote of Muretus. He was attacked by
[326] sickness when on a journey, and two physicians, who attended him, supposing him some obscure person, agreed to use a novel remedy, with the remark, “Faciamus periculum in anima vili.” Muretus tranquilly asked, “Vilem animam appellas, pro qua Christus non dedignatus est mori?” (Menagiana, 3rd ed. p. 129.)
L. 7.fatal in the end to our Constitution. Burke apprehends that the taxation of the mother country, following such an example, might escape the direct control of Parliament.
P. 285, L. 11.richest mine, &c. Mr. Hallam, comparing the grants of revenue before and after the Revolution, says: “The supplies meted out with niggardly caution by former parliaments to sovereigns whom they could not trust, have flowed with redundant profuseness, when they could judge of their necessity, and direct their application.” Const. Hist. ch. xv.
L. 34.voluntary flow of heaped-up luxuriance. “He that will milk his Cattle, must feed them well; and it encourages men to gather and lay up when they have law to hold by what they have.” N. Bacon (Henry VIII). So Lord Brooke, Treatise of Monarchie, sect. x.:
Rich both in people’s treasures and their loves;
What Midas wish, what dreams of Alchimy
Can with these true crown-mines compared be?
Burke’s metaphor is borrowed from the wine-press. The “mustum sponte defluens antequam calcentur uvae” was highly valued by the ancients, and is still prized in some varieties of modern wine. “Among the many excellent parts of this speech, I find you have got many proselytes by so cleverly showing that the way to get most revenue, is to let it come freely from them.” Duke of Richmond to Burke, June 16, 1775.
P. 287, L. 8.enemies that we are most likely to have. France and Spain, then usually allied against England. The interests of France in the West Indies were at this time great and increasing.
L. 11.For that service, for all service, &c. No passage affords a more
[327] curious illustration of the manner in which Burke in his more impassioned appeals, refunds his “rich thievery” of the Bible and the English poets. The remarkable independence of Burke’s usual style makes the contrast striking. The concluding sentence is a reminiscence of Virg. Aen. vi. 726, &c.:
The active mind, infus’d thro’ all the space,
Unites and mingles with the mighty mass. —Dryden’s transl. ll. 984, 985.
Burke evidently borrowed this use of it from Bacon, Adv. of Learning, xxiii. 47, where it is applied to government in general: “We see, all governments are obscure and invisible;
Totamque infusa per artus
Mens agitat molem, et magno se corpore miscet.
Such is the description of governments.” South uses it in the same way: “The spirit which animates and acts the universe, is the spirit of government.” (Sermon on the Episcopal Function.) Shakespeare and the Bible supply most of the other phrases in the passage. “My trust is in her,” &c., Psalms. “Light as air, strong,” &c., Othello. “Grapple to you,” Hamlet, &c. “No force under heaven will be of power to tear you,” &c., St. Paul. “Chosen race,” Tate and Brady. “Turn their faces toward you,” 1 Kings ix. 44, 5; Dan. vi. 10. “Perfect obedience”; “mysterious whole,” Pope. Cp. note to p. 236, l. 22.
L. 20.your government one thing, and their privileges another… the cement is gone, &c. Cp. the passage in Erskine’s speech for Stockdale; “Your government—having no root in consent or affection, no foundation in similarity of interests, nor support from any one principle which cements men together in society, could only be upheld by alternate strategem and force.”
L. 6.Do not entertain so weak an imagination: “imagination” = thought. “Nobody was so unacquainted with the world as to entertain so puerile an imagination.” Ann. Reg. 1763, p. 40.
L. 8.Cockets. The term “cocket” designates primarily the custom-house seal, and secondarily the sealed parchment delivered by the officer to the merchant as warrant that the goods have been customed.
L. 20.Land Tax Act. The Land Tax was formerly a much more important item in the Revenue than now: it used to contribute more than a third of the whole, but it now yields about a sixty-fourth. Until 1798 it fluctuated, in peace being assessed at two or three shillings, in war, at four; but in 1798 it was made permanent at four shillings in the pound.
L. 23.Mutiny Bill. “The people of England, jealous on all subjects which relate to liberty, have exceeded, on the subject of the army, their usual caution.
[328] They have in the preamble of their annual Mutiny Bill claimed their birthright; they recite part of the Declaration of Right, ‘that standing armies and martial law in peace, without the consent of Parliament, are illegal’; and having stated the simplicity and purity of their ancient constitution, and having set forth a great principle of Magna Charta, they admit a partial and temporary repeal of it; they admit an army and a law for its regulation, but they limit the number of the former, and the duration of both; confining all the troops themselves, the law that regulates, and the power that commands them, to one year. Thus is the army of England rendered a Parliamentary army; the constitutional ascendancy of the subject over the soldier preserved; the military rendered effectually subordinate to the civil magistrate; the government of the sword controlled in its exercise, because limited in its duration; and the King entrusted with the command of the army during good behaviour only.” Grattan, “Observations on the [Irish] Mutiny Bill,” 1781.
L. 25.deep stake they have in such a glorious institution. The Conservative commonplace, a stake in the country, usually attributed to Canning, was borrowed by him in his Speech at Liverpool, March 18, 1820, from Burke: “Those who have the greatest stake in the country,” Speech on Fox’s Bill for the Repeal of the Marriage Act, 1781 (among the fragments).
Ibid.Magnanimity in politics, &c. “It is a true saying, and has often been repeated, that a very moderate share of human wisdom is sufficient for the guidance of human affairs. But there is another truth, equally indisputable, which is, that a man who aspires to govern mankind ought to bring to the task generous sentiments, compassionate sympathies, and noble and elevated thoughts.” Lord Palmerston, Debate on the Claims against Greece, 1850.
L. 9.Sursum corda! The canticle of the Church, “Lift up your hearts.” Cp. Gordon, Discourses on Tacitus, Disc. iv; “Great souls are always sincere…. Good sense and greatness of mind are always found together, and justice is inseparable from either.” Burke’s works are full of lofty appeals in this strain. “But if we make ourselves too little for the sphere of our duty; if, on the contrary, we do not stretch and expand our minds to the compass of their object: be well assured, that everything about us will dwindle by degrees, until at length our concerns are shrunk to the dimensions of our minds.” Speech on Nabob of Arcot’s Debts. Cp. Mr. Gladstone, Speech on Irish Church, March 1, 1869: “Every man who proceeds to the discussion is under the most solemn obligation to raise the level of his vision, and to expand its scope in proportion to the greatness of the object.”
