Letters on a Regicide Peace

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.

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

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.

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.

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:

[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:

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.

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.”

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.”

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

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

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

Ibid.his disgust. Coriolanus is an instance.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.”

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

l. 11.highest tribunal of all. Parliament.

”
^*y1 Mussabat tacito medicina timore.”

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Boissy d’Anglas.

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.

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.

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

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:

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.

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.

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

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

“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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.”

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.

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:

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

“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.”

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.”

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

See the Declaration.

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

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.”

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

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

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.”

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.”

“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.

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.”

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

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

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

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.”

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

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

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:

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

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.

Declaration, Whitehall, Oct. 29, 1793.

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:

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

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

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