The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke Volume VI Part 4

Here was the answer from the throne of Regicide to the speech from the throne of Great Britain. They go out of their way to compliment General Was.h.i.+ngton on the supposed rancor of his heart towards this country. It is very remarkable, that they make this compliment of malice to the chief of the United States, who had first signed a treaty of peace, amity, and commerce with this kingdom. This radical hatred, according to their way of thinking, the most recent, solemn compacts of friends.h.i.+p cannot or ought not to remove. In this malice to England, as in the one great comprehensive virtue, all other merits of this ill.u.s.trious person are entirely merged. For my part, I do not believe the fact to be so as they represent it. Certainly it is not for Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton's honor as a gentleman, a Christian, or a President of the United States, after the treaty he has signed, to entertain such sentiments. I have a moral a.s.surance that the representation of the Regicide Directory is absolutely false and groundless. If it be, it is a stronger mark of their audacity and insolence, and still a stronger proof of the support they mean to give to the mischievous faction they are known to nourish there, to the ruin of those States, and to the end that no British affections should ever arise in that important part of the world, which would naturally lead to a cordial, hearty British alliance, upon the bottom of mutual interest and ancient affection. It shows in what part it is, and with what a weapon, they mean a deadly blow at the heart of Great Britain. One really would have expected, from this new Const.i.tution of theirs, which had been announced as a great reform, and which was to be, more than any of their former experimental schemes, alliable with other nations, that they would, in their very first public act, and their declaration to the collected representation of Europe and America, have affected some degree of moderation, or, at least, have observed a guarded silence with regard to their temper and their views.

No such thing: they were in haste to declare the principles which are spun into the primitive staple of their frame. They were afraid that a moment's doubt should exist about them. In their very infancy they were in haste to put their hand on their infernal altar, and to swear the same immortal hatred to England which was sworn in the succession of all the short-lived const.i.tutions that preceded it. With them everything else perishes almost as soon as it is formed; this hatred alone is immortal. This is their impure Vestal fire that never is extinguished: and never will it be extinguished, whilst the system of Regicide exists in France. What! are we not to believe them? Men are too apt to be deceitful enough in their professions of friends.h.i.+p, and this makes a wise man walk with some caution through life. Such professions, in some cases, may be even a ground of further distrust. But when a man declares himself your unalterable enemy! No man ever declared to another a rancor towards him which he did not feel. _Falsos in amore odia, non fingere_, said an author who points his observations so as to make them remembered.

Observe, my Lord, that, from their invasion of Flanders and Holland to this hour, they have never made the smallest signification of a desire of peace with this kingdom, with Austria, or, indeed, with any other power that I know of. As superiors, they expect others to begin. We have complied, as you may see. The hostile insolence with which they gave such a rebuff to our first overture, in the speech from the throne, did not hinder us from making, from the same throne, a second advance. The two Houses a second time coincided in the same sentiments, with a degree of apparent unanimity, (for there was no dissentient voice but yours,) with which, when they reflect on it, they will be as much ashamed as I am. To this our new humiliating overture (such, at whatever hazard, I must call it) what did the Regicide Directory answer? Not one public word of a readiness to treat. No,--they feel their proud situation too well. They never declared whether they would grant peace to you or not.

They only signified to you their pleasure as to the terms on which alone they would in any case admit you to it. You showed your general disposition to peace, and, to forward it, you left everything open to negotiations. As to any terms you can possibly obtain, they shut out all negotiation at the very commencement. They declared that they never would make a peace by which anything that ever belonged to France should be ceded. We would not treat with the monarchy, weakened as it must obviously be in any circ.u.mstance of restoration, without a reservation of something for indemnity and security,--and that, too, in words of the largest comprehension. You treat with the Regicides without any reservation at all. On their part, they a.s.sure you formally and publicly, that they will give you nothing in the name of indemnity or security, or for any other purpose.

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

To dispose us towards this peace,--an attempt in which our author has, I do not know whether to call it the good or ill fortune to agree with whatever is most seditious, factious, and treasonable in this country,--we are told by many dealers in speculation, but not so distinctly by the author himself, (too great distinctness of affirmation not being his fault,)--but we are told, that the French have lately obtained a very pretty sort of Const.i.tution, and that it resembles the British Const.i.tution as if they had been twinned together in the womb,--_mire sagaces fallere hospites discrimen obscurum_. It may be so: but I confess I am not yet made to it: nor is the n.o.ble author. He finds the "elements" excellent, but the disposition very inartificial indeed.

Contrary to what we might expect at Paris, the meat is good, the cookery abominable. I agree with him fully in the last; and if I were forced to allow the first, I should still think, with our old coa.r.s.e by-word, that the same power which furnished all their former _restaurateurs_ sent also their present cooks. I have a great opinion of Thomas Paine, and of all his productions: I remember his having been one of the committee for forming one of their annual Const.i.tutions, I mean the admirable Const.i.tution of 1793, after having been a chamber council to the no less admirable Const.i.tution of 1791. This pious patriot has his eyes still directed to his dear native country, notwithstanding her in grat.i.tude to so kind a benefactor. This outlaw of England, and lawgiver to France, is now, in secret probably, trying his hand again, and inviting us to him by making his Const.i.tution such as may give his disciples in England some plausible pretext for going into the house that he has opened. We have discovered, it seems, that all which the boasted wisdom of our ancestors has labored to bring to perfection for six or seven centuries is nearly, or altogether, matched in six or seven days, at the leisure hours and sober intervals of Citizen Thomas Paine.

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

Indeed, in this good old house, where everything at least is well aired, I shall be content to put up my fatigued horses, and here take a bed for the long night that begins to darken upon me. Had I, however, the honor (I must now call it so) of being a member of any of the const.i.tutional clubs, I should think I had carried my point most completely. It is clear, by the applauses bestowed on what the author calls this new Const.i.tution, a mixed oligarchy, that the difference between the clubbists and the old adherents to the monarchy of this country is hardly worth a scuffle. Let it depart in peace, and light lie the earth on the British Const.i.tution! By this easy manner of treating the most difficult of all subjects, the const.i.tution for a great kingdom, and by letting loose an opinion that they may be made by any adventurers in speculation in a small given time, and for any country, all the ties, which, whether of reason or prejudice, attach mankind to their old, habitual, domestic governments, are not a little loosened; all communion, which the similarity of the basis has produced between all the governments that compose what we call the Christian world and the republic of Europe, would be dissolved. By these hazarded speculations France is more approximated to us in const.i.tution than in situation; and in proportion as we recede from the ancient system of Europe, we approach to that connection which alone can remain to us, a close alliance with the new-discovered moral and political world in France.

These theories would be of little importance, if we did not only know, but sorely feel, that there is a strong Jacobin faction in this country, which has long employed itself in speculating upon const.i.tutions, and to whom the circ.u.mstance of their government being home-bred and prescriptive seems no sort of recommendation. What seemed to us to be the best system of liberty that a nation ever enjoyed to them seems the yoke of an intolerable slavery. This speculative faction had long been at work. The French Revolution did not cause it: it only discovered it, increased it, and gave fresh vigor to its operations. I have reason to be persuaded that it was in this country, and from English writers and English caballers, that France herself was inst.i.tuted in this revolutionary fury. The communion of these two factions upon any pretended basis of similarity is a matter of very serious consideration.

They are always considering the formal distributions of power in a const.i.tution: the moral basis they consider as nothing. Very different is my opinion: I consider the moral basis as everything,--the formal arrangements, further than as they promote the moral principles of government, and the keeping desperately wicked persons as the subjects of laws and not the makers of them, to be of little importance. What signifies the cutting and shuffling of cards, while the pack still remains the same? As a basis for such a connection as has subsisted between the powers of Europe, we had nothing to fear, but from the lapses and frailties of men,--and that was enough; but this new pretended republic has given us more to apprehend from what they call their virtues than we had to dread from the vices of other men. Avowedly and systematically, they have given the upperhand to all the vicious and degenerate part of human nature. It is from their lapses and deviations from their principle that alone we have anything to hope.

I hear another inducement to fraternity with the present rulers. They have murdered one Robespierre. This Robespierre, they tell us, was a cruel tyrant, and now that he is put out of the way, all will go well in France. Astraea will again return to that earth from which she has been an emigrant, and all nations will resort to her golden scales. It is very extraordinary, that, the very instant the mode of Paris is known here, it becomes all the fas.h.i.+on in London. This is their jargon. It is the old _bon-ton_ of robbers, who cast their common crimes on the wickedness of their departed a.s.sociates. I care little about the memory of this same Robespierre. I am sure he was an execrable villain. I rejoiced at his punishment neither more nor less than I should at the execution of the present Directory, or any of its members. But who gave Robespierre the power of being a tyrant? and who were the instruments of his tyranny? The present virtuous const.i.tution-mongers. He was a tyrant; they were his satellites and his hangmen. Their sole merit is in the murder of their colleague. They have expiated their other murders by a new murder. It has always been the case among this banditti. They have always had the knife at each other's throats, after they had almost blunted it at the throats of every honest man. These people thought, that, in the commerce of murder, he was like to have the better of the bargain, if any time was lost; they therefore took one of their short revolutionary methods, and ma.s.sacred him in a manner so perfidious and cruel as would shock all humanity, if the stroke was not struck by the present rulers on one of their own a.s.sociates. But this last act of infidelity and murder is to expiate all the rest, and to qualify them for the amity of an humane and virtuous sovereign and civilized people.

I have heard that a Tartar believes, when he has killed a man, that all his estimable qualities pa.s.s with his clothes and arms to the murderer; but I have never heard that it was the opinion of any savage Scythian, that, if he kills a brother villain, he is, _ipso facto_, absolved of all his own offences. The Tartarian doctrine is the most tenable opinion. The murderers of Robespierre, besides what they are ent.i.tled to by being engaged in the same tontine of infamy, are his representatives, have inherited all his murderous qualities, in addition to their own private stock. But it seems we are always to be of a party with the last and victorious a.s.sa.s.sins. I confess I am of a different mind, and am rather inclined, of the two, to think and speak less hardly of a dead ruffian than to a.s.sociate with the living. I could better bear the stench of the gibbeted murderer than the society of the b.l.o.o.d.y felons who yet annoy the world. Whilst they wait the recompense due to their ancient crimes, they merit new punishment by the new offences they commit. There is a period to the offences of Robespierre. They survive in his a.s.sa.s.sins. "Better a living dog," says the old proverb, "than a dead lion." Not so here. Murderers and hogs never look well till they are hanged. From villany no good can arise, but in the example of its fate. So I leave them their dead Robespierre, either to gibbet his memory, or to deify him in their Pantheon with their Marat and their Mirabeau.

It is a.s.serted that this government promises stability. G.o.d of his mercy forbid! If it should, nothing upon earth besides itself can be stable.

We declare this stability to be the ground of our making peace with them. a.s.suming it, therefore, that the men and the system are what I have described, and that they have a determined hostility against this country,--an hostility not only of policy, but of predilection,--then I think that every rational being would go along with me in considering its permanence as the greatest of all possible evils. If, therefore, we are to look for peace with such a thing in any of its monstrous shapes, which I deprecate, it must be in that state of disorder, confusion, discord, anarchy, and insurrection, such as might oblige the momentary rulers to forbear their attempts on neighboring states, or to render these attempts less operative, if they should kindle new wars. When was it heard before, that the internal repose of a determined and wicked enemy, and the strength of his government, became the wish of his neighbor, and a security, against either his malice or his ambition? The direct contrary has always been inferred from that state of things: accordingly, it has ever been the policy of those who would preserve themselves against the enterprises of such a malignant and mischievous power to cut out so much work for him in his own states as might keep his dangerous activity employed at home.

It is said, in vindication of this system, which demands the stability of the Regicide power as a ground for peace with them, that, when they have obtained, as now it is said (though not by this n.o.ble author) they have, a permanent government, they will be _able_ to preserve amity with this kingdom, and with others who have the misfortune to be in their neighborhood. Granted. They will be _able_ to do so, without question; but are they willing to do so? Produce the act; produce the declaration.

Have they made any single step towards it? Have they ever once proposed to treat?

The a.s.surance of a stable peace, grounded on the stability of their system, proceeds on this hypothesis,--that their hostility to other nations has proceeded from their anarchy at home, and from the prevalence of a populace which their government had not strength enough to master. This I utterly deny. I insist upon it as a fact, that, in the daring commencement of all their hostilities, and their astonis.h.i.+ng perseverance in them, so as never once, in any fortune, high or low, to propose a treaty of peace to any power in Europe, they have never been actuated by the people: on the contrary, the people, I will not say have been moved, but impelled by them, and have generally acted under a compulsion, of which most of us are as yet, thank G.o.d, unable to form an adequate idea. The war against Austria was formally declared by the unhappy Louis the Sixteenth; but who has ever considered Louis the Sixteenth, since the Revolution, to have been the government? The second Regicide a.s.sembly, then the only government, was the author of that war; and neither the nominal king nor the nominal people had anything to do with it, further than in a reluctant obedience. It is to delude ourselves, to consider the state of France, since their Revolution, as a state of anarchy: it is something far worse. Anarchy it is, undoubtedly, if compared with government pursuing the peace, order, morals, and prosperity of the people; but regarding only the power that has really guided from the day of the Revolution to this time, it has been of all governments the most absolute, despotic, and effective that has. .h.i.therto appeared on earth. Never were the views and politics of any government pursued with half the regularity, system, and method that a diligent observer must have contemplated with amazement and terror in theirs.

Their state is not an anarchy, but a series of short-lived tyrannies. We do not call a republic with annual magistrates an anarchy: theirs is that kind of republic; but the succession is not effected by the expiration of the term of the magistrate's service, but by his murder.

Every new magistracy, succeeding by homicide, is auspicated by accusing its predecessors in the office of tyranny, and it continues by the exercise of what they charged upon others.

This strong hand is the law, and the sole law, in their state. I defy any person to show any other law,--or if any such should be found on paper, that it is in the smallest degree, or in any one instance, regarded or practised. In all their successions, not one magistrate, or one form of magistracy, has expired by a mere occasional popular tumult; everything has been the effect of the studied machinations of the one revolutionary cabal, operating within itself upon itself. That cabal is all in all. France has no public; it is the only nation I ever heard of, where the people are absolutely slaves, in the fullest sense, in all affairs, public and private, great and small, even down to the minutest and most recondite parts of their household concerns. The helots of Laconia, the regardants to the manor in Russia and in Poland, even the negroes in the West Indies, know nothing of so searching, so penetrating, so heart-breaking a slavery. Much would these servile wretches call for our pity under that unheard-of yoke, if for their perfidious and unnatural rebellion, and for their murder of the mildest of all monarchs, they did not richly deserve a punishment not greater than their crime.

On the whole, therefore, I take it to be a great mistake to think that the want of power in the government furnished a natural cause of war; whereas the greatness of its power, joined to its use of that power, the nature of its system, and the persons who acted in it, did naturally call for a strong military resistance to oppose them, and rendered it not only just, but necessary. But at present I say no more on the genius and character of the power set up in France. I may probably trouble you with it more at large hereafter: this subject calls for a very full exposure: at present it is enough for me, if I point it out as a matter well worthy of consideration, whether the true ground of hostility was not rightly conceived very early in this war, and whether anything has happened to change that system, except our ill success in a war which in no princ.i.p.al instance had its true destination as the object of its operations. That the war has succeeded ill in many cases is undoubted; but then let us speak the truth, and say we are defeated, exhausted, dispirited, and must submit. This would be intelligible. The world would be inclined to pardon the abject conduct of an undone nation. But let us not conceal from _ourselves_ our real situation, whilst, by every species of humiliation, we are but too strongly displaying our sense of it to the enemy.

The writer of the Remarks in the Last Week of October appears to think that the present government in France contains many of the elements which, when properly arranged, are known to form the best practical governments,--and that the system, whatever may become its particular form, is no longer likely to be an obstacle to negotiation. If its form now be no obstacle to such negotiation, I do not know why it was ever so. Suppose that this government promised greater permanency than any of the former, (a point on which I can form no judgment,) still a link is wanting to couple the permanence of the government with the permanence of the peace. On this not one word is said: nor can there be, in my opinion. This deficiency is made up by strengthening the first ringlet of the chain, that ought to be, but that is not, stretched to connect the two propositions. All seems to be done, if we can make out that the last French edition of Regicide is like to prove stable.

As a prognostic of this stability, it is said to be accepted by the people. Here again I join issue with the fraternizers, and positively deny the fact. Some submission or other has been obtained, by some means or other, to every government that hitherto has been set up. And the same submission would, by the same means, be obtained for any other project that the wit or folly of man could possibly devise. The Const.i.tution of 1790 was universally received. The Const.i.tution which followed it, under the name of a Convention, was universally submitted to. The Const.i.tution of 1793 was universally accepted. Unluckily, this year's Const.i.tution, which was formed, and its genethliacon sung by the n.o.ble author while it was yet in embryo, or was but just come b.l.o.o.d.y from the womb, is the only one which in its very formation has been generally resisted by a very great and powerful party in many parts of the kingdom, and particularly in the capital. It never had a popular choice even in show: those who arbitrarily erected the new building out of the old materials of their own Convention were obliged to send for an army to support their work: like brave gladiators, they fought it out in the streets of Paris, and even ma.s.sacred each other in their house of a.s.sembly, in the most edifying manner, and for the entertainment and instruction of their Excellencies the foreign amba.s.sadors, who had a box in this const.i.tutional amphitheatre of a free people.

At length, after a terrible struggle, the troops prevailed over the citizens. The citizen soldiers, the ever-famed national guards, who had deposed and murdered their sovereign, were disarmed by the inferior trumpeters of that rebellion. Twenty thousand regular troops garrison Paris. Thus a complete military government is formed. It has the strength, and it may count on the stability, of that kind of power. This power is to last as long as the Parisians think proper. Every other ground of stability, but from military force and terror, is clean out of the question. To secure them further, they have a strong corps of irregulars, ready-armed. Thousands of those h.e.l.l-hounds called Terrorists, whom they had shut up in prison, on their last Revolution, as the satellites of tyranny, are let loose on the people. The whole of their government, in its origination, in its continuance, in all its actions, and in all its resources, is force, and nothing but force: a forced const.i.tution, a forced election, a forced subsistence, a forced requisition of soldiers, a forced loan of money.

They differ nothing from all the preceding usurpations, but that to the same odium a good deal more of contempt is added. In this situation, notwithstanding all their military force, strengthened with the undisciplined power of the Terrorists, and the nearly general disarming of Paris, there would almost certainly have been before this an insurrection against them, but for one cause. The people of France languish for peace. They all despaired of obtaining it from the coalesced powers, whilst they had a gang of professed regicides at their head; and several of the least desperate republicans would have joined with better men to shake them wholly off, and to produce something more ostensible, if they had not been reiteratedly told that their sole hope of peace was the very contrary to what they naturally imagined: that they must leave off their cabals and insurrections, which could serve no purpose but to bring in that royalty which was wholly rejected by the coalesced kings; that, to satisfy them, they must tranquilly, if they could not cordially, submit themselves to the tyranny and the tyrants they despised and abhorred. Peace was held out by the allied monarchies to the people of France, as a bounty for supporting the Republic of Regicides. In fact, a coalition, begun for the avowed purpose of destroying that den of robbers, now exists only for their support. If evil happens to the princes of Europe from the success and stability of this infernal business, it is their own absolute crime.

We are to understand, however, (for sometimes so the author hints,) that something stable in the Const.i.tution of Regicide was required for our amity with it; but the n.o.ble Remarker is no more solicitous about this point than he is for the permanence of the whole body of his October speculations. "If," says he, speaking of the Regicide, "they can obtain a practicable const.i.tution, even for a limited period of time, they will be in a condition to reestablish the accustomed relations of peace and amity." Pray let us leave this bush-fighting. What is meant by a _limited period of time_? Does it mean the direct contrary to the terms, _an unlimited period_? If it is a limited period, what limitation does he fix as a ground for his opinion? Otherwise, his limitation is unlimited. If he only requires a const.i.tution that will last while the treaty goes on, ten days' existence will satisfy his demands. He knows that France never did want a practicable const.i.tution, nor a government, which endured for a limited period of time. Her const.i.tutions were but too practicable; and short as was their duration, it was but too long.

They endured time enough for treaties which benefited themselves and have done infinite mischief to our cause. But, granting him his strange thesis, that hitherto the mere form or the mere term of their const.i.tutions, and not their indisposition, but their instability, has been the cause of their not preserving the relations of amity,--how could a const.i.tution which might not last half an hour after the n.o.ble lord's signature of the treaty, in the company in which he must sign it, insure its observance? If you trouble yourself at all with their const.i.tutions, you are certainly more concerned with them after the treaty than before it, as the observance of conventions is of infinitely more consequence than the making them. Can anything be more palpably absurd and senseless than to object to a treaty of peace for want of durability in const.i.tutions which had an actual duration, and to trust a const.i.tution that at the time of the writing had not so much as a practical existence? There is no way of accounting for such discourse in the mouths of men of sense, but by supposing that they secretly entertain a hope that the very act of having made a peace with the Regicides will give a stability to the Regicide system. This will not clear the discourse from the absurdity, but it will account for the conduct, which such reasoning so ill defends. What a roundabout way is this to peace,--to make war for the destruction of regicides, and then to give them peace in order to insure a stability that will enable them to observe it! I say nothing of the honor displayed in such a system. It is plain it militates with itself almost in all the parts of it. In one part, it supposes stability in their Const.i.tution, as a ground of a stable peace; in another part, we are to hope for peace in a different way,--that is, by splitting this brilliant orb into little stars, and this would make the face of heaven so fine! No, there is no system upon which the peace which in humility we are to supplicate can possibly stand.

I believe, before this time, that the more form of a const.i.tution, in any country, never was fixed as the sole ground of objecting to a treaty with it. With other circ.u.mstances it may be of great moment. What is inc.u.mbent on the a.s.sertors of the Fourth Week of October system to prove is not whether their then expected Const.i.tution was likely to be stable or transitory, but whether it promised to this country and its allies, and to the peace and settlement of all Europe, more good-will or more good faith than any of the experiments which have gone before it. On these points I would willingly join issue.

Observe first the manner in which the Remarker describes (very truly, as I conceive) the people of France under that auspicious government, and then observe the conduct of that government to other nations. "The people without _any_ established const.i.tution; distracted by popular convulsions; in a state of inevitable bankruptcy; without any commerce; with their princ.i.p.al ports blockaded; and without a fleet that could venture to face one of our _detached squadrons_." Admitting, as fully as he has stated it, this condition of France, I would fain know how he reconciles this condition with his ideas of _any kind of a practicable const.i.tution_, or _duration for a limited period_, which are his _sine qua non_ of peace. But pa.s.sing by contradictions, as no fair objections to reasoning, this state of things would naturally, at other times, and in other governments, have produced a disposition to peace, almost on any terms. But, in that state of their country, did the Regicide government solicit peace or amity with other nations, or even lay any specious grounds for it, in propositions of affected moderation, or in the most loose and general conciliatory language? The direct contrary.

It was but a very few days before the n.o.ble writer had commenced his Remarks, as if it were to refute him by antic.i.p.ation, that his France thought fit to lay out a new territorial map of dominion, and to declare to us and to all Europe what territories she was willing to allot to her own empire, and what she is content (during her good pleasure) to leave to others.

This their law of empire was promulgated without any requisition on that subject, and proclaimed in a style and upon principles which never had been heard of in the annals of arrogance and ambition. She prescribed the limits to her empire, not upon principles of treaty, convention, possession, usage, habitude, the distinction of tribes, nations, or languages, but by physical apt.i.tudes. Having fixed herself as the arbiter of physical dominion, she construed the limits of Nature by her convenience. That was Nature which most extended and best secured the empire of France.

I need say no more on the insult offered not only to all equity and justice, but to the common sense of mankind, in deciding legal property by physical principles, and establis.h.i.+ng the convenience of a party as a rule of public law. The n.o.ble advocate for peace has, indeed, perfectly well exploded this daring and outrageous system of pride and tyranny. I am most happy in commending him, when he writes like himself. But hear still further and in the same good strain the great patron and advocate of amity with this accommodating, mild, and una.s.suming power, when he reports to you the law they give, and its immediate effects:--"They amount," says he, "to the sacrifice of powers that have been the most nearly connected with us,--the direct or indirect annexation to France of all the ports of the Continent from Dunkirk to Hamburg,--an immense accession of territory,--and, in one word, THE ABANDONMENT OF THE INDEPENDENCE OF EUROPE!" This is the LAW (the author and I use no different terms) which this new government, almost as soon as it could cry in the cradle, and as one of the very first acts by which it auspicated its entrance into function, the pledge it gives of the firmness of its policy,--such is the law that this proud power prescribes to abject nations. What is the comment upon this law by the great jurist who recommends us to the tribunal which issued the decree?

"An obedience to it would be" (says he) "dishonorable to us, and exhibit us to the present age and to posterity as submitting to the law prescribed to us by our enemy."

Here I recognize the voice of a British plenipotentiary: I begin to feel proud of my country. But, alas! the short date of human elevation! The accents of dignity died upon his tongue. This author will not a.s.sure us of his sentiments for the whole of a pamphlet; but, in the sole energetic part of it, he does not continue the same through an whole sentence, if it happens to be of any sweep or compa.s.s. In the very womb of this last sentence, pregnant, as it should seem, with a Hercules, there is formed a little bantling of the mortal race, a degenerate, puny parenthesis, that totally frustrates our most sanguine views and expectations, and disgraces the whole gestation. Here is this destructive parenthesis: "Unless some adequate compensation be secured _to us_." _To us!_ The Christian world may s.h.i.+ft for itself, Europe may groan in slavery, we may be dishonored by receiving law from an enemy,--but all is well, provided the compensation _to us_ be adequate.

To what are we reserved? An _adequate_ compensation "for the sacrifice of powers the most nearly connected with us";--an _adequate_ compensation "for the direct or indirect annexation to France of all the ports of the Continent from Dunkirk to Hamburg";--an _adequate_ compensation "for the abandonment of the independence of Europe"! Would that, when all our manly sentiments are thus changed, our manly language were changed along with them, and that the English tongue were not employed to utter what our ancestors never dreamed could enter into an English heart!

But let us consider this matter of adequate compensation. Who is to furnish it? From what funds is it to be drawn? Is it by another treaty of commerce? I have no objections to treaties of commerce upon principles of commerce. Traffic for traffic,--all is fair. But commerce in exchange for empire, for safety, for glory! We set out in our dealing with a miserable cheat upon ourselves. I know it may be said, that we may prevail on this proud, philosophical, military Republic, which looks down with contempt on trade, to declare it unfit for the sovereign of nations to be _eundem negotiatorem et dominum_: that, in virtue of this maxim of her state, the English in France may be permitted, as the Jews are in Poland and in Turkey, to execute all the little inglorious occupations,--to be the sellers of new and the buyers of old clothes, to be their brokers and factors, and to be employed in casting up their debits and credits, whilst the master Republic cultivates the arts of empire, prescribes the forms of peace to nations, and dictates laws to a subjected world. But are we quite sure, that, when we have surrendered half Europe to them in hope of this compensation, the Republic will confer upon us those privileges of dishonor? Are we quite certain that she will permit us to farm the guillotine,--to contract for the provision of her twenty thousand Bastiles,--to furnish transports for the myriads of her exiles to Guiana,--to become commissioners for her naval stores,--or to engage for the clothing of those armies which are to subdue the poor relics of Christian Europe? No! She is bespoke by the Jew subjects of her own Amsterdam for all these services.

But if these, or matters similar, are not the compensations the Remarker demands, and that on consideration he finds them neither adequate nor certain, who else is to be the chapman, and to furnish the purchase-money, at this market, of all the grand principles of empire, of law, of civilization, of morals, and of religion, where British faith and honor are to be sold by inch of candle? Who is to be the _dedecorum pretiosus emptor_? Is it the _navis Hispanae magister_? Is it to be furnished by the Prince of Peace? Unquestionably. Spain as yet possesses mines of gold and silver, and may give us in _pesos duros_ an adequate compensation for our honor and our virtue. When these things are at all to be sold, they are the vilest commodities at market.

It is full as singular as any of the other singularities in this work, that the Remarker, talking so much as he does of cessions and compensations, pa.s.ses by Spain in his general settlement, as if there were no such country on the globe,--as if there were no Spain in Europe, no Spain in America. But this great matter of political deliberation cannot be put out of our thoughts by his silence. She _has_ furnished compensations,--not to you, but to France. The Regicide Republic and the still nominally subsisting monarchy of Spain are united,--and are united upon a principle of jealousy, if not of bitter enmity, to Great Britain.

The n.o.ble writer has here another matter for meditation. It is not from Dunkirk to Hamburg that the ports are in the hands of France: they are in the hands of France from Hamburg to Gibraltar. How long the new dominion will last I cannot tell; but France the Republic has conquered Spain, and the ruling party in that court acts by her orders and exists by her power.

The n.o.ble writer, in his views into futurity, has forgotten to look back to the past. If he chooses it, he may recollect, that, on the prospect of the death of Philip the Fourth, and still more on the event, all Europe was moved to its foundations. In the treaties of part.i.tion that first were entered into, and in the war that afterwards blazed out to prevent those crowns from being actually or virtually united in the House of Bourbon, the predominance of France in Spain, and above all, in the Spanish Indies, was the great object of all these movements in the cabinet and in the field. The Grand Alliance was formed upon that apprehension. On that apprehension the mighty war was continued during such a number of years as the degenerate and pusillanimous impatience of our dwindled race can hardly bear to have reckoned: a war equal, within a few years, in duration, and not, perhaps, inferior in bloodshed, to any of those great contests for empire which in history make the most awful matter of recorded memory.

Ad confligendum venientibus undique Poenis, Omnia c.u.m belli trepido concussa tumultu Horrida contremuere sub altis aetheris auris, In dubioque fuit sub utrorum regna cadendum Omnibus humanis esset terraque marique.--

When this war was ended, (I cannot stay now to examine how,) the object of the war was the object of the treaty. When it was found impracticable, or less desirable than before, wholly to exclude a branch of the Bourbon race from that immense succession, the point of Utrecht was to prevent the mischiefs to arise from the influence of the greater upon the lesser branch. His Lords.h.i.+p is a great member of the diplomatic body; he has, of course, all the fundamental treaties which make the public statute law of Europe by heart: and, indeed, no active member of Parliament ought to be ignorant of their general tenor and leading provisions. In the treaty which closed that war, and of which it is a fundamental part, because relating to the whole policy of the compact, it was agreed that Spain should not give anything from her territory in the West Indies to France. This article, apparently onerous to Spain, was in truth highly beneficial. But, oh, the blindness of the greatest statesman to the infinite and unlooked-for combinations of things which lie hid in the dark prolific womb of futurity! The great trunk of Bourbon is cut down; the withered branch is worked up into the construction of a French Regicide Republic. Here we have formed a new, unlooked-for, monstrous, heterogeneous alliance,--a double-natured monster, republic above and monarchy below. There is no centaur of fiction, no poetic satyr of the woods, nothing short of the hieroglyphic monsters of Egypt, dog in head and man in body, that can give an idea of it. None of these things can subsist in Nature (so, at least, it is thought); but the moral world admits monsters which the physical rejects.

In this metamorphosis, the first thing done by Spain, in the honey-moon of her new servitude, was, with all the hardihood of pusillanimity, utterly to defy the most solemn treaties with Great Britain and the guaranty of Europe. She has yielded the largest and fairest part of one of the largest and fairest islands in the West Indies, perhaps on the globe, to the usurped powers of France. She completes the t.i.tle of those powers to the whole of that important central island of Hispaniola. She has solemnly surrendered to the regicides and butchers of the Bourbon family what that court never ventured, perhaps never wished, to bestow on the patriarchal stock of her own august house.

The n.o.ble negotiator takes no notice of this portentous junction and this audacious surrender. The effect is no less than the total subversion of the balance of power in the West Indies, and indeed everywhere else. This arrangement, considered in itself, but much more as it indicates a complete union of France with Spain, is truly alarming. Does he feel nothing of the change this makes in that part of his description of the state of France where he supposes her not able to face one of our detached squadrons? Does he feel nothing for the condition of Portugal under this new coalition? Is it for this state of things he recommends our junction in that common alliance as a remedy?

It is surely already monstrous enough. We see every standing principle of policy, every old governing opinion of nations, completely gone, and with it the foundation of all their establishments. Can Spain keep herself internally where she is, with this connection? Does he dream that Spain, unchristian, or even uncatholic, can exist as a monarchy?

This author indulges himself in speculations of the division of the French Republic. I only say, that with much greater reason he might speculate on the republicanism and the subdivision of Spain.

It is not peace with France which secures that feeble government; it is that peace which, if it shall continue, decisively ruins Spain. Such a peace is not the peace which the remnant of Christianity celebrates at this holy season. In it there is no glory to G.o.d on high, and not the least tincture of good-will to man. What things we have lived to see!

The King of Spain in a group of Moors, Jews, and Renegadoes; and the clergy taxed to pay for his conversion! The Catholic King in the strict embraces of the most Unchristian Republic! I hope we shall never see his Apostolic Majesty, his Faithful Majesty, and the King, Defender of the Faith, added to that unhallowed and impious fraternity.

The n.o.ble author has glimpses of the consequences of peace, as well as I. He feels for the colonies of Great Britain, one of the princ.i.p.al resources of our commerce and our naval power, if piratical France shall be established, as he knows she must be, in the West Indies, if we sue for peace on such terms as they may condescend to grant us. He feels that their very colonial system for the interior is not compatible with the existence of our colonies. I tell him, and doubt not I shall be able to demonstrate, that, being what she is, if she possesses a rock there, we cannot be safe. Has this author had in his view the transactions between the Regicide Republic and the yet nominally subsisting monarchy of Spain?

I bring this matter under your Lords.h.i.+p's consideration, that you may have a more complete view than this author chooses to give of the _true France_ you have to deal with, as to its nature, and to its force and its disposition. Mark it, my Lord, France, in giving her law to Spain, stipulated for none of her indemnities in Europe, no enlargement whatever of her frontier. Whilst we are looking for indemnities from France, betraying our own safety in a sacrifice of the independence of Europe, France secures hers by the most important acquisition of territory ever made in the West Indies since their first settlement. She appears (it is only in appearance) to give up the frontier of Spain; and she is compensated, not in appearance, but in reality, by a territory that makes a dreadful frontier to the colonies of Great Britain.

It is sufficiently alarming that she is to have the possession of this great island. But all the Spanish colonies, virtually, are hers. Is there so puny a whipster in the _petty form_ of the school of politics who can be at a loss for the fate of the British colonies, when he combines the French and Spanish consolidation with the known critical and dubious dispositions of the United States of America, as they are at present, but which, when a peace is made, when the basis of a Regicide ascendency in Spain is laid, will no longer be so good as dubious and critical? But I go a great deal further; and on much consideration of the condition and circ.u.mstances of the West Indies, and of the genius of this new republic, as it has operated and is likely to operate on them, I say, that, if a single rock in the West Indies is in the hands of this _transatlantic Morocco_, we have not an hour's safety there.

The Remarker, though he slips aside from the main consideration, seems aware that this arrangement, standing as it does, in the West Indies, leaves us at the mercy of the new coalition, or rather at the mercy of the sole guiding part of it. He does not, indeed, adopt a supposition such as I make, who am confident that anything which can give them a single good port and opportune piratical station there would lead to our ruin: the author proceeds upon an idea that the Regicides may be an existing and considerable territorial power in the West Indies, and, of course, her piratical system more dangerous and as real. However, for that desperate case he has an easy remedy; but, surely, in his whole shop there is nothing so extraordinary. It is, that we three, France, Spain, and England, (there are no other of any moment,) should adopt some "_a.n.a.logy_ in the interior systems of government in the several islands which we may respectively retain after the closing of the war."

This plainly can be done only by a convention between the parties; and I believe it would be the first war ever made to terminate in an a.n.a.logy of the interior government of any country, or any parts of such countries. Such a partners.h.i.+p in domestic government is, I think, carrying fraternity as far as it will go.

It will be an affront to your sagacity to pursue this matter into all its details: suffice it to say, that, if this convention for a.n.a.logous domestic government is made, it immediately gives a right for the residence of a consul (in all likelihood some negro or man of color) in every one of your islands; a Regicide amba.s.sador in London will be at all your meetings of West India merchants and planters, and, in effect, in all our colonial councils. Not one order of Council can hereafter be made, or any one act of Parliament relative to the West India colonies even be agitated, which will not always afford reasons for protests and perpetual interference; the Regicide Republic will become an integral part of the colonial legislature, and, so far as the colonies are concerned, of the British too. But it will be still worse: as all our domestic affairs are interlaced more or less intimately with our external, this intermeddling must everywhere insinuate itself into all other interior transactions, and produce a copartners.h.i.+p in our domestic concerns of every description.

Such are the plain, inevitable consequences of this arrangement of a system, of a.n.a.logous interior government. On the other hand, without it, the author a.s.sures us, and in this I heartily agree with him, "that the correspondence and communications between the neighboring colonies will be great, that the disagreements will be incessant, and that causes even of national quarrels will arise _from day to day_." Most true. But, for the reasons I have given, the case, if possible, will be worse by the proposed remedy, by the triple fraternal interior a.n.a.logy,--an a.n.a.logy itself most fruitful, and more foodful than the old Ephesian statue with the three tier of b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Your Lords.h.i.+p must also observe how infinitely this business must be complicated by our interference in the slow-paced Saturnian movements of Spain and the rapid parabolic flights of France. But such is the disease,--such is the cure,--such is, and must be, the effect of Regicide vicinity.

But what astonishes me is, that the negotiator, who has certainly an exercised understanding, did not see that every person habituated to such meditations must necessarily pursue the train of thought further than he has carried it, and must ask himself whether what he states so truly of the necessity of our arranging an a.n.a.logous interior government, in consequence of the vicinity of our possessions, in the West Indies, does not as extensively apply, and much more forcibly, to the circ.u.mstance of our much nearer vicinity with the parent and author of this mischief. I defy even his acuteness and ingenuity to show me any one point in which the cases differ, except that it is plainly more necessary in Europe than in America. Indeed, the further we trace the details of the proposed peace, the more your Lords.h.i.+p will be satisfied that I have not been guilty of any abuse of terms, when I use indiscriminately (as I always do, in speaking of arrangements with Regicide) the words peace and fraternity. An a.n.a.logy between our interior governments must be the consequence. The n.o.ble negotiator sees it as well as I do. I deprecate this Jacobin interior a.n.a.logy. But hereafter, perhaps, I may say a good deal more upon this part of the subject.

The n.o.ble lord insists on very little more than on the excellence of their Const.i.tution, the hope of their dwindling into little republics, and this close copartners.h.i.+p in government. I hear of others, indeed, that offer by other arguments to reconcile us to this peace and fraternity. The Regicides, they say, have renounced the creed of the Rights of Man, and declared equality a chimera. This is still more strange than all the rest. They have apostatized from their apostasy.

They are renegadoes from that impious faith for which they subverted the ancient government, murdered their king, and imprisoned, butchered, confiscated, and banished their fellow-subjects, and to which they forced every man to swear at the peril of his life. And now, to reconcile themselves to the world, they declare this creed, bought by so much blood, to be an imposture and a chimera. I have no doubt that they always thought it to be so, when they were destroying everything at home and abroad for its establishment. It is no strange thing, to those who look into the nature of corrupted man, to find a violent persecutor a perfect unbeliever of his own creed. But this is the very first time that any man or set of men were hardy enough to attempt to lay the ground of confidence in them by an acknowledgment of their own falsehood, fraud, hypocrisy, treachery, heterodox doctrine, persecution, and cruelty. Everything we hear from them is new, and, to use a phrase of their own, _revolutionary_; everything supposes a total revolution in all the principles of reason, prudence, and moral feeling.

If possible, this their recantation of the chief parts in the canon of the Rights of Man is more infamous and causes greater horror than their originally promulgating and forcing down the throats of mankind that symbol of all evil. It is raking too much into the dirt and ordure of human nature to say more of it.