Against the opinion of many friends, even against the solicitation of some of them, he opposed those of the Church clergy who had pet.i.tioned the House of Commons to be discharged from the subscription. Although he supported the Dissenters in their pet.i.tion for the indulgence which he had refused to the clergy of the Established Church, in this, as he was not guilty of it, so he was not reproached with inconsistency. At the same time he promoted, and against the wish of several, the clause that gave the Dissenting teachers another subscription in the place of that which was then taken away. Neither at that time was the reproach of inconsistency brought against him. People could then distinguish between a difference in conduct under a variation of circ.u.mstances and an inconsistency in principle. It was not then thought necessary to be freed of him as of an inc.u.mbrance.
These instances, a few among many, are produced as an answer to the insinuation of his having pursued high popular courses which in his late book he has abandoned. Perhaps in his whole life he has never omitted a fair occasion, with whatever risk to him of obloquy as an individual, with whatever detriment to his interest as a member of opposition, to a.s.sert the very same doctrines which appear in that book. He told the House, upon an important occasion, and pretty early in his service, that, "being warned by the ill effect of a contrary procedure in great examples, he had taken his ideas of liberty very low in order that they should stick to him and that he might stick to them to the end of his life."
At popular elections the most rigorous casuists will remit a little of their severity. They will allow to a candidate some unqualified effusions in favor of freedom, without binding him to adhere to them in their utmost extent. But Mr. Burke put a more strict rule upon himself than most moralists would put upon others. At his first offering himself to Bristol, where he was almost sure he should not obtain, on that or any occasion, a single Tory vote, (in fact, he did obtain but one,) and rested wholly on the Whig interest, he thought himself bound to tell to the electors, both before and after his election, exactly what a representative they had to expect in him.
"The _distinguishing_ part of our Const.i.tution," he said, "is its liberty. To preserve that liberty inviolate is the _peculiar_ duty and _proper_ trust of a member of the House of Commons. But the liberty, the _only_ liberty, I mean is a liberty connected with _order;_ and that not only exists _with_ order and virtue, but cannot exist at all _without_ them. It inheres in good and steady government, as in _its substance and vital principle_."
The liberty to which Mr. Burke declared himself attached is not French liberty. That liberty is nothing but the rein given to vice and confusion. Mr. Burke was then, as he was at the writing of his Reflections, awfully impressed with the difficulties arising from the complex state of our Const.i.tution and our empire, and that it might require in different emergencies different sorts of exertions, and the successive call upon all the various principles which uphold and justify it. This will appear from what he said at the close of the poll.
"To be a good member of Parliament is, let me tell you, no easy task,--especially at this time, when there is so strong a disposition to run into the perilous extremes of _servile_ compliance or _wild popularity_. To unite circ.u.mspection with vigor is absolutely necessary, but it is extremely difficult. We are now members for a rich commercial _city_; this city, however, is but a part of a rich commercial _nation_, the interests of which are _various, multiform, and intricate_. We are members for that great _nation_, which, however, is itself but part of a great _empire_, extended by our virtue and our fortune to the farthest limits of the East and of the West. _All_ these wide-spread interests must be _considered_,--must be _compared_,--must be _reconciled_, if possible. We are members for a _free_ country; and surely we all know that the machine of a free const.i.tution is no _simple_ thing, but as _intricate_ and as _delicate_ as it is valuable. We are members in a _great and ancient_ MONARCHY_; and we must preserve religiously the true, legal rights of the sovereign, which form the key-stone that binds together the n.o.ble and well-constructed arch of our empire and our Const.i.tution_. A const.i.tution made up of _balanced powers_ must ever be a critical thing. As such I mean to touch that part of it which comes within my reach."
In this manner Mr. Burke spoke to his const.i.tuents seventeen years ago.
He spoke, not like a partisan of one particular member of our Const.i.tution, but as a person strongly, and on principle, attached to them all. He thought these great and essential members ought to be preserved, and preserved each in its place,--and that the monarchy ought not only to be secured in its peculiar existence, but in its preeminence too, as the presiding and connecting principle of the whole. Let it be considered whether the language of his book, printed in 1790, differs from his speech at Bristol in 1774.
With equal justice his opinions on the American war are introduced, as if in his late work he had belied his conduct and opinions in the debates which arose upon that great event. On the American war he never had any opinions which he has seen occasion to retract, or which he has ever retracted. He, indeed, differs essentially from Mr. Fox as to the cause of that war. Mr. Fox has been pleased to say that the Americans rebelled "because they thought they had not enjoyed liberty enough."
This cause of the war, _from him_, I have heard of for the first time.
It is true that those who stimulated the nation to that measure did frequently urge this topic. They contended that the Americans had from the beginning aimed at independence,--that from the beginning they meant wholly to throw off the authority of the crown, and to break their connection with the parent country. This Mr. Burke never believed. When he moved his second conciliatory proposition, in the year 1776, he entered into the discussion of this point at very great length, and, from nine several heads of presumption, endeavored to prove the charge upon that people not to be true.
If the principles of all he has said and wrote on the occasion be viewed with common temper, the gentlemen of the party will perceive, that, on a supposition that the Americans had rebelled merely in order to enlarge their liberty, Mr. Burke would have thought very differently of the American cause. What might have been in the secret thoughts of some of their leaders it is impossible to say. As far as a man so locked up as Dr. Franklin could be expected to communicate his ideas, I believe he opened them to Mr. Burke. It was, I think, the very day before he set out for America that a very long conversation pa.s.sed between them, and with a greater air of openness on the Doctor"s side than Mr. Burke had observed in him before. In this discourse Dr. Franklin lamented, and with apparent sincerity, the separation which he feared was inevitable between Great Britain and her colonies. He certainly spoke of it as an event which gave him the greatest concern. America, he said, would never again see such happy days as she had pa.s.sed under the protection of England. He observed, that ours was the only instance of a great empire in which the most distant parts and members had been as well governed as the metropolis and its vicinage, but that the Americans were going to lose the means which secured to them this rare and precious advantage.
The question with them was not, whether they were to remain as they had been before the troubles,--for better, he allowed, they could not hope to be,--but whether they were to give up so happy a situation without a struggle. Mr. Burke had several other conversations with him about that time, in none of which, soured and exasperated as his mind certainly was, did he discover any other wish in favor of America than for a security to its _ancient_ condition. Mr. Burke"s conversation with other Americans was large, indeed, and his inquiries extensive and diligent.
Trusting to the result of all these means of information, but trusting much more in the public presumptive indications I have just referred to, and to the reiterated solemn declarations of their a.s.semblies, he always firmly believed that they were purely on the defensive in that rebellion. He considered the Americans as standing at that time, and in that controversy, in the same relation to England as England did to King James the Second in 1688. He believed that they had taken up arms from one motive only: that is, our attempting to tax them without their consent,--to tax them for the purposes of maintaining civil and military establishments. If this attempt of ours could have been practically established, he thought, with them, that their a.s.semblies would become totally useless,--that, under the system of policy which was then pursued, the Americans could have no sort of security for their laws or liberties, or for any part of them,--and that the very circ.u.mstance of _our_ freedom would have augmented the weight of _their_ slavery.
Considering the Americans on that defensive footing, he thought Great Britain ought instantly to have closed with them by the repeal of the taxing act. He was of opinion that our general rights over that country would have been preserved by this timely concession.[9] When, instead of this, a Boston Port Bill, a Ma.s.sachusetts Charter Bill, a Fishery Bill, an Intercourse Bill, I know not how many hostile bills, rushed out like so many tempests from all points of the compa.s.s, and were accompanied first with great fleets and armies of English, and followed afterwards with great bodies of foreign troops, he thought that their cause grew daily better, because daily more defensive,--and that ours, because daily more offensive, grew daily worse. He therefore, in two motions, in two successive years, proposed in Parliament many concessions beyond what he had reason to think in the beginning of the troubles would ever be seriously demanded.
So circ.u.mstanced, he certainly never could and never did wish the colonists to be subdued by arms. He was fully persuaded, that, if such should be the event, they must be held in that subdued state by a great body of standing forces, and perhaps of foreign forces. He was strongly of opinion that such armies, first victorious over Englishmen, in a conflict for English const.i.tutional rights and privileges, and afterwards habituated (though in America) to keep an English people in a state of abject subjection, would prove fatal in the end to the liberties of England itself; that in the mean time this military system would lie as an oppressive burden upon the national finances; that it would constantly breed and feed new discussions, full of heat and acrimony, leading possibly to a new series of wars; and that foreign powers, whilst we continued in a state at once burdened and distracted, must at length obtain a decided superiority over us. On what part of his late publication, or on what expression that might have escaped him in that work, is any man authorized to charge Mr. Burke with a contradiction to the line of his conduct and to the current of his doctrines on the American war? The pamphlet is in the hands of his accusers: let them point out the pa.s.sage, if they can.
Indeed, the author has been well sifted and scrutinized by his friends.
He is even called to an account for every jocular and light expression.
A ludicrous picture which he made with regard to a pa.s.sage in the speech of a late minister[10] has been brought up against him. That pa.s.sage contained a lamentation for the loss of monarchy to the Americans, after they had separated from Great Britain. He thought it to be unseasonable, ill-judged, and ill-sorted with the circ.u.mstances of all the parties.
Mr. Burke, it seems, considered it ridiculous to lament the loss of some monarch or other to a rebel people, at the moment they had forever quitted their allegiance to theirs and our sovereign, at the time when they had broken off all connection with this nation and had allied themselves with its enemies. He certainly must have thought it open to ridicule; and now that it is recalled to his memory, (he had, I believe, wholly forgotten the circ.u.mstance,) he recollects that he did treat it with some levity. But is it a fair inference from a jest on this unseasonable lamentation, that he was then an enemy to monarchy, either in this or in any other country? The contrary perhaps ought to be inferred,--if anything at all can be argued from pleasantries good or bad. Is it for this reason, or for anything he has said or done relative to the American war, that he is to enter into an alliance offensive and defensive with every rebellion, in every country, under every circ.u.mstance, and raised upon whatever pretence? Is it because he did not wish the Americans to be subdued by arms, that he must be inconsistent with himself, if he reprobates the conduct of those societies in England, who, alleging no one act of tyranny or oppression, and complaining of no hostile attempt against our ancient laws, rights, and usages, are now endeavoring to work the destruction of the crown of this kingdom, and the whole of its Const.i.tution? Is he obliged, from the concessions he wished to be made to the colonies, to keep any terms with those clubs and federations who hold out to us, as a pattern for imitation, the proceedings in France, in which a king, who had voluntarily and formally divested himself of the right of taxation, and of all other species of arbitrary power, has been dethroned? Is it because Mr. Burke wished to have America rather conciliated than vanquished, that he must wish well to the army of republics which are set up in France,--a country wherein not the people, but the monarch, was wholly on the defensive, (a poor, indeed, and feeble defensive,) to preserve _some fragments_ of the royal authority against a determined and desperate body of conspirators, whose object it was, with whatever certainty of crimes, with whatever hazard of war, and every other species of calamity, to annihilate the _whole_ of that authority, to level all ranks, orders, and distinctions in the state, and utterly to destroy property, not more by their acts than in their principles?
Mr. Burke has been also reproached with an inconsistency between his late writings and his former conduct, because he had proposed in Parliament several economical, leading to several const.i.tutional reforms. Mr. Burke thought, with a majority of the House of Commons, that the influence of the crown at one time was too great; but after his Majesty had, by a gracious message, and several subsequent acts of Parliament, reduced it to a standard which satisfied Mr. Fox himself, and, apparently at least, contented whoever wished to go farthest in that reduction, is Mr. Burke to allow that it would be right for us to proceed to indefinite lengths upon that subject? that it would therefore be justifiable in a people owing allegiance to a monarchy, and professing to maintain it, not to _reduce_, but wholly to _take away all_ prerogative and _all_ influence whatsoever? Must his having made, in virtue of a plan of economical regulation, a reduction of the influence of the crown compel him to allow that it would be right in the French or in us to bring a king to so abject a state as in function not to be so respectable as an under-sheriff, but in person not to differ from the condition of a mere prisoner? One would think that such a thing as a medium had never been heard of in the moral world.
This mode of arguing from your having done _any_ thing in a certain line to the necessity of doing _every_ thing has political consequences of other moment than those of a logical fallacy. If no man can propose any diminution or modification of an invidious or dangerous power or influence in government, without ent.i.tling friends turned into adversaries to argue him into the destruction of all prerogative, and to a spoliation of the whole patronage of royalty, I do not know what can more effectually deter persons of sober minds from engaging in any reform, nor how the worst enemies to the liberty of the subject could contrive any method more fit to bring all correctives on the power of the crown into suspicion and disrepute.
If, say his accusers, the dread of too great influence in the crown of Great Britain could justify the degree of reform which he adopted, the dread of a return under the despotism of a monarchy might justify the people of France in going much further, and reducing monarchy to its present nothing.--Mr. Burke does not allow that a sufficient argument _ad hominem_ is inferable from these premises. If the horror of the excesses of an absolute monarchy furnishes a reason for abolishing it, no monarchy once absolute (all have been so at one period or other) could ever be limited. It must be destroyed; otherwise no way could be found to quiet the fears of those who were formerly subjected to that sway. But the principle of Mr. Burke"s proceeding ought to lead him to a very different conclusion,--to this conclusion,--that a monarchy is a thing perfectly susceptible of reform, perfectly susceptible of a balance of power, and that, when reformed and balanced, for a great country it is the best of all governments. The example of our country might have led France, as it has led him, to perceive that monarchy is not only reconcilable to liberty, but that it may be rendered a great and stable security to its perpetual enjoyment. No correctives which he proposed to the power of the crown could lead him to approve of a plan of a republic (if so it may be reputed) which has no correctives, and which he believes to be incapable of admitting any. No principle of Mr.
Burke"s conduct or writings obliged him from consistency to become an advocate for an exchange of mischiefs; no principle of his could compel him to justify the setting up in the place of a mitigated monarchy a new and far more despotic power, under which there is no trace of liberty, except what appears in confusion and in crime.
Mr. Burke does not admit that the faction predominant in France have abolished their monarchy, and the orders of their state, from any dread of arbitrary power that lay heavy on the minds of the people. It is not very long since he has been in that country. Whilst there he conversed with many descriptions of its inhabitants. A few persons of rank did, he allows, discover strong and manifest tokens of such a spirit of liberty as might be expected one day to break all bounds. Such gentlemen have since had more reason to repent of their want of foresight than I hope any of the same cla.s.s will ever have in this country. But this spirit was far from general, even amongst the gentlemen. As to the lower orders, and those little above them, in whose name the present powers domineer, they were far from discovering any sort of dissatisfaction with the power and prerogatives of the crown. That vain people were rather proud of them: they rather despised the English for not having a monarch possessed of such high and perfect authority. _They_ had felt nothing from _lettres de cachet_. The Bastile could inspire no horrors into _them_. This was a treat for their betters. It was by art and impulse, it was by the sinister use made of a season of scarcity, it was under an infinitely diversified succession of wicked pretences wholly foreign to the question of monarchy or aristocracy, that this light people were inspired with their present spirit of levelling. Their old vanity was led by art to take another turn: it was dazzled and seduced by military liveries, c.o.c.kades, and epaulets, until the French populace was led to become the willing, but still the proud and thoughtless, instrument and victim of another domination. Neither did that people despise or hate or fear their n.o.bility: on the contrary, they valued themselves on the generous qualities which distinguished the chiefs of their nation.
So far as to the attack on Mr. Burke in consequence of his reforms.
To show that he has in his last publication abandoned those principles of liberty which have given energy to his youth, and in spite of his censors will afford repose and consolation to his declining age, those who have thought proper in Parliament to declare against his book ought to have produced something in it which directly or indirectly militates with any rational plan of free government. It is something extraordinary, that they whose memories have so well served them with regard to light and ludicrous expressions, which years had consigned to oblivion, should not have been able to quote a single pa.s.sage in a piece so lately published, which contradicts anything he has formerly ever said in a style either ludicrous or serious. They quote his former speeches and his former votes, but not one syllable from the book. It is only by a collation of the one with the other that the alleged inconsistency can be established. But as they are unable to cite any such contradictory pa.s.sage, so neither can they show anything in the general tendency and spirit of the whole work unfavorable to a rational and generous spirit of liberty; unless a warm opposition to the spirit of levelling, to the spirit of impiety, to the spirit of proscription, plunder, murder, and cannibalism, be adverse to the true principles of freedom.
The author of that book is supposed to have pa.s.sed from extreme to extreme; but he has always kept himself in a medium. This charge is not so wonderful. It is in the nature of things, that they who are in the centre of a circle should appear directly opposed to those who view them from any part of the circ.u.mference. In that middle point, however, he will still remain, though he may hear people who themselves run beyond Aurora and the Ganges cry out that he is at the extremity of the West.
In the same debate Mr. Burke was represented by Mr. Fox as arguing in a manner which implied that the British Const.i.tution could not be defended, but by abusing all republics ancient and modern. He said nothing to give the least ground for such a censure. He never abused all republics. He has never professed himself a friend or an enemy to republics or to monarchies in the abstract. He thought that the circ.u.mstances and habits of every country, which it is always perilous and productive of the greatest calamities to force, are to decide upon the form of its government. There is nothing in his nature, his temper, or his faculties which should make him an enemy to any republic, modern or ancient. Far from it. He has studied the form and spirit of republics very early in life; he has studied them with great attention, and with a mind undisturbed by affection or prejudice. He is, indeed, convinced that the science of government would be poorly cultivated without that study. But the result in his mind from that investigation has been and is, that neither England nor France, without infinite detriment to them, as well in the event as in the experiment, could be brought into a republican form; but that everything republican which can be introduced with safety into either of them must be built upon a monarchy,--built upon a real, not a nominal monarchy, _as its essential basis_; that all such inst.i.tutions, whether aristocratic or democratic, must originate from their crown, and in all their proceedings must refer to it; that by the energy of that mainspring alone those republican parts must be set in action, and from thence must derive their whole legal effect, (as amongst us they actually do,) or the whole will fall into confusion.
These republican members have no other point but the crown in which they can possibly unite.
This is the opinion expressed in Mr. Burke"s book. He has never varied in that opinion since he came to years of discretion. But surely, if at any time of his life he had entertained other notions, (which, however, he has never held or professed to hold,) the horrible calamities brought upon a great people by the wild attempt to force their country into a republic might be more than sufficient to undeceive his understanding, and to free it forever from such destructive fancies. He is certain that many, even in France, have been made sick of their theories by their very success in realizing them.
To fortify the imputation of a desertion from his principles, his constant attempts to reform abuses have been brought forward. It is true, it has been the business of his strength to reform abuses in government, and his last feeble efforts are employed in a struggle against them. Politically he has lived in that element; politically he will die in it. Before he departs, I will admit for him that he deserves to have all his t.i.tles of merit brought forth, as they have been, for grounds of condemnation, if one word justifying or supporting abuses of any sort is to be found in that book which has kindled so much indignation in the mind of a great man. On the contrary, it spares no existing abuse. Its very purpose is to make war with abuses,--not, indeed, to make war with the dead, but with those which live, and flourish, and reign.
The _purpose_ for which the abuses of government are brought into view forms a very material consideration in the mode of treating them. The complaints of a friend are things very different from the invectives of an enemy. The charge of abuses on the late monarchy of France was not intended to lead to its reformation, but to justify its destruction.
They who have raked into all history for the faults of kings, and who have aggravated every fault they have found, have acted consistently, because they acted as enemies. No man can be a friend to a tempered monarchy who bears a decided hatred to monarchy itself. He, who, at the present time, is favorable or even fair to that system, must act towards it as towards a friend with frailties who is under the prosecution of implacable foes. I think it a duty, in that case, not to inflame the public mind against the obnoxious person by any exaggeration of his faults. It is our duty rather to palliate his errors and defects, or to cast them into the shade, and industriously to bring forward any good qualities that he may happen to possess. But when the man is to be amended, and by amendment to be preserved, then the line of duty takes another direction. When his safety is effectually provided for, it then becomes the office of a friend to urge his faults and vices with all the energy of enlightened affection, to paint them in their most vivid colors, and to bring the moral patient to a better habit. Thus I think with regard to individuals; thus I think with regard to ancient and respected governments and orders of men. A spirit of reformation is never more consistent with itself than when it refuses to be rendered the means of destruction.
I suppose that enough is said upon these heads of accusation. One more I had nearly forgotten, but I shall soon dispatch it. The author of the Reflections, in the opening of the last Parliament, entered on the journals of the House of Commons a motion for a remonstrance to the crown, which is substantially a defence of the preceding Parliament, that had been dissolved under displeasure. It is a defence of Mr. Fox.
It is a defence of the Whigs. By what connection of argument, by what a.s.sociation of ideas, this apology for Mr. Fox and his party is by him and them brought to criminate his and their apologist, I cannot easily divine. It is true that Mr. Burke received no previous encouragement from Mr. Fox, nor any the least countenance or support, at the time when the motion was made, from him or from any gentleman of the party,--one only excepted, from whose friendship, on that and on other occasions, he derives an honor to which he must be dull indeed to be insensible.[11]
If that remonstrance, therefore, was a false or feeble defence of the measures of the party, they were in no wise affected by it. It stands on the journals. This secures to it a permanence which the author cannot expect to any other work of his. Let it speak for itself to the present age and to all posterity. The party had no concern in it; and it can never be quoted against them. But in the late debate it was produced, not to clear the party from an improper defence in which they had no share, but for the kind purpose of insinuating an inconsistency between the principles of Mr. Burke"s defence of the dissolved Parliament and those on which he proceeded in his late Reflections on France.
It requires great ingenuity to make out such a parallel between the two cases as to found a charge of inconsistency in the principles a.s.sumed in arguing the one and the other. What relation had Mr. Fox"s India Bill to the Const.i.tution of France? What relation had that Const.i.tution to the question of right in an House of Commons to give or to withhold its confidence from ministers, and to state that opinion to the crown? What had this discussion to do with Mr. Burke"s idea in 1784 of the ill consequences which must in the end arise to the crown from setting up the commons at large as an opposite interest to the commons in Parliament? What has this discussion to do with a recorded warning to the people of their rashly forming a precipitate judgment against their representatives? What had Mr. Burke"s opinion of the danger of introducing new theoretic language, unknown to the records of the kingdom, and calculated to excite vexatious questions, into a Parliamentary proceeding, to do with the French a.s.sembly, which defies all precedent, and places its whole glory in realizing what had been thought the most visionary theories? What had this in common with the abolition of the French monarchy, or with the principles upon which the English Revolution was justified,--a Revolution in which Parliament, in all its acts and all its declarations, religiously adheres to "the form of sound words," without excluding from private discussions such terms of art as may serve to conduct an inquiry for which none but private persons are responsible? These were the topics of Mr. Burke"s proposed remonstrance; all of which topics suppose the existence and mutual relation of our three estates,--as well as the relation of the East India Company to the crown, to Parliament, and to the peculiar laws, rights, and usages of the people of Hindostan. What reference, I say, had these topics to the Const.i.tution of France, in which there is no king, no lords, no commons, no India Company to injure or support, no Indian empire to govern or oppress? What relation had all or any of these, or any question which could arise between the prerogatives of the crown and the privileges of Parliament, with the censure of those factious persons in Great Britain whom Mr. Burke states to be engaged, not in favor of privilege against prerogative, or of prerogative against privilege, but in an open attempt against our crown and our Parliament, against our Const.i.tution in Church and State, against all the parts and orders which compose the one and the other?
No persons were more fiercely active against Mr. Fox, and against the measures of the House of Commons dissolved in 1784, which Mr. Burke defends in that remonstrance, than several of those revolution-makers whom Mr. Burke condemns alike in his remonstrance and in his book. These revolutionists, indeed, may be well thought to vary in their conduct. He is, however, far from accusing them, in this variation, of the smallest degree of inconsistency. He is persuaded that they are totally indifferent at which end they begin the demolition of the Const.i.tution.
Some are for commencing their operations with the destruction of the civil powers, in order the better to pull down the ecclesiastical,--some wish to begin with the ecclesiastical, in order to facilitate the ruin of the civil; some would destroy the House of Commons through the crown, some the crown through the House of Commons, and some would overturn both the one and the other through what they call the people. But I believe that this injured writer will think it not at all inconsistent with his present duty or with his former life strenuously to oppose all the various partisans of destruction, let them begin where or when or how they will. No man would set his face more determinedly against those who should attempt to deprive them, or any description of men, of the rights they possess. No man would be more steady in preventing them from abusing those rights to the destruction of that happy order under which they enjoy them. As to their t.i.tle to anything further, it ought to be grounded on the proof they give of the safety with which power may be trusted in their hands. When they attempt without disguise, not to win it from our affections, but to force it from our fears, they show, in the character of their means of obtaining it, the use they would make of their dominion. That writer is too well read in men not to know how often the desire and design of a tyrannic domination lurks in the claim of an extravagant liberty. Perhaps in the beginning it _always_ displays itself in that manner. No man has ever affected power which he did not hope from the favor of the existing government in any other mode.
The attacks on the author"s consistency relative to France are (however grievous they may be to his feelings) in a great degree external to him and to us, and comparatively of little moment to the people of England.
The substantial charge upon him is concerning his doctrines relative to the Revolution of 1688. Here it is that they who speak in the name of the party have thought proper to censure him the most loudly and with the greatest asperity. Here they fasten, and, if they are right in their fact, with sufficient judgment in their selection. If he be guilty in this point, he is equally blamable, whether he is consistent or not. If he endeavors to delude his countrymen by a false representation of the spirit of that leading event, and of the true nature and tenure of the government formed in consequence of it, he is deeply responsible, he is an enemy to the free Const.i.tution of the kingdom. But he is not guilty in any sense. I maintain that in his Reflections he has stated the Revolution and the Settlement upon their true principles of legal reason and const.i.tutional policy.
His authorities are the acts and declarations of Parliament, given in their proper words. So far as these go, nothing can be added to what he has quoted. The question is, whether he has understood them rightly. I think they speak plain enough. But we must now see whether he proceeds with other authority than his own constructions, and, if he does, on what sort of authority he proceeds. In this part, his defence will not be made by argument, but by wager of law. He takes his compurgators, his vouchers, his guaranties, along with him. I know that he will not be satisfied with a justification proceeding on general reasons of policy.
He must be defended on party grounds, too, or his cause is not so tenable as I wish it to appear. It must be made out for him not only that in his construction of these public acts and monuments he conforms himself to the rules of fair, legal, and logical interpretation, but it must be proved that his construction is in perfect harmony with that of the ancient Whigs, to whom, against the sentence of the modern, on his part, I here appeal.
This July it will be twenty-six years[12] since he became connected with a man whose memory will ever be precious to Englishmen of all parties, as long as the ideas of honor and virtue, public and private, are understood and cherished in this nation. That memory will be kept alive with particular veneration by all rational and honorable Whigs. Mr.
Burke entered into a connection with that party through that man, at an age far from raw and immature,--at those years when men are all they are ever likely to become,--when he was in the prime and vigor of his life,--when the powers of his understanding, according to their standard, were at the best, his memory exercised, his judgment formed, and his reading much fresher in the recollection and much readier in the application than now it is. He was at that time as likely as most men to know what were Whig and what were Tory principles. He was in a situation to discern what sort of Whig principles they entertained with whom it was his wish to form an eternal connection. Foolish he would have been at that time of life (more foolish than any man who undertakes a public trust would be thought) to adhere to a cause which he, amongst all those who were engaged in it, had the least sanguine hopes of as a road to power.
There are who remember, that, on the removal of the Whigs in the year 1766, he was as free to choose another connection as any man in the kingdom. To put himself out of the way of the negotiations which were then carrying on very eagerly and through many channels with the Earl of Chatham, he went to Ireland very soon after the change of ministry, and did not return until the meeting of Parliament. He was at that time free from anything which looked like an engagement. He was further free at the desire of his friends; for, the very day of his return, the Marquis of Rockingham wished him to accept an employment under the new system.
He believes he might have had such a situation; but again he cheerfully took his fate with the party.
It would be a serious imputation upon the prudence of my friend, to have made even such trivial sacrifices as it was in his power to make for principles which he did not truly embrace or did not perfectly understand. In either case the folly would have been great. The question now is, whether, when he first practically professed Whig principles, he understood what principles he professed, and whether in his book he has faithfully expressed them.
When he entered into the Whig party, he did not conceive that they pretended to any discoveries. They did not affect to be better Whigs than those were who lived in the days in which principle was put to the test. Some of the Whigs of those days were then living. They were what the Whigs had been at the Revolution,--what they had been during the reign of Queen Anne,--what they had been at the accession of the present royal family.
What they were at those periods is to be seen. It rarely happens to a party to have the opportunity of a clear, authentic, recorded declaration of their political tenets upon the subject of a great const.i.tutional event like that of the Revolution. The Whigs had that opportunity,--or to speak more properly, they made it. The impeachment of Dr. Sacheverell was undertaken by a Whig ministry and a Whig House of Commons, and carried on before a prevalent and steady majority of Whig peers. It was carried on for the express purpose of stating the true grounds and principles of the Revolution,--what the Commons emphatically called their _foundation_. It was carried on for the purpose of condemning the principles on which the Revolution was first opposed and afterwards calumniated, in order, by a juridical sentence of the highest authority, to confirm and fix Whig principles, as they had operated both in the resistance to King James and in the subsequent settlement, and to fix them in the extent and with the limitations with which it was meant they should be understood by posterity. The ministers and managers for the Commons were persons who had, many of them, an active share in the Revolution. Most of them had seen it at an age capable of reflection.
The grand event, and all the discussions which led to it and followed it, were then alive in the memory and conversation of all men. The managers for the Commons must be supposed to have spoken on that subject the prevalent ideas of the leading party in the Commons, and of the Whig ministry. Undoubtedly they spoke also their own private opinions; and the private opinions of such men are not without weight. They were not _umbratiles doctores_, men who had studied a free Const.i.tution only in its anatomy and upon dead systems. They knew it alive and in action.
In this proceeding the Whig principles, as applied to the Revolution and Settlement, are to be found, or they are to be found nowhere. I wish the Whig readers of this Appeal first to turn to Mr. Burke"s Reflections, from page 20 to page 50,[13] and then to attend to the following extracts from the trial of Dr. Sacheverell. After this, they will consider two things: first, whether the doctrine in Mr. Burke"s Reflections be consonant to that of the Whigs of that period; and, secondly, whether they choose to abandon the principles which belonged to the progenitors of some of them, and to the predecessors of them all, and to learn new principles of Whiggism, imported from France, and disseminated in this country from Dissenting pulpits, from Federation societies, and from the pamphlets, which (as containing the political creed of those synods) are industriously circulated in all parts of the two kingdoms. This is their affair, and they will make their option.
These new Whigs hold that the sovereignty, whether exercised by one or many, did not only originate _from_ the people, (a position not denied nor worth denying or a.s.senting to,) but that in the people the same sovereignty constantly and unalienably resides; that the people may lawfully depose kings, not only for misconduct, but without any misconduct at all; that they may set up any new fashion of government for themselves, or continue without any government, at their pleasure; that the people are essentially their own rule, and their will the measure of their conduct; that the tenure of magistracy is not a proper subject of contract, because magistrates have duties, but no rights; and that, if a contract _de facto_ is made with them in one age, allowing that it binds at all, it only binds those who are immediately concerned in it, but does not pa.s.s to posterity. These doctrines concerning _the people_ (a term which they are far from accurately defining, but by which, from many circ.u.mstances, it is plain enough they mean their own faction, if they should grow, by early arming, by treachery, or violence, into the prevailing force) tend, in my opinion, to the utter subversion, not only of all government, in all modes, and to all stable securities to rational freedom, but to all the rules and principles of morality itself.
I a.s.sert that the ancient Whigs held doctrines totally different from those I have last mentioned. I a.s.sert, that the foundations laid down by the Commons, on the trial of Dr. Sacheverell, for justifying the Revolution of 1688, are the very same laid down in Mr. Burke"s Reflections,--that is to say, a breach of the _original contrast_, implied and expressed in the Const.i.tution of this country, as a scheme of government fundamentally and inviolably fixed in King, Lords, and Commons;--that the fundamental subversion of this ancient Const.i.tution, by one of its parts, having been attempted, and in effect accomplished, justified the Revolution;--that it was justified _only_ upon the _necessity_ of the case, as the _only_ means left for the recovery of that _ancient_ Const.i.tution formed by the _original contract_ of the British state, as well as for the future preservation of the _same_ government. These are the points to be proved.
A general opening to the charge against Dr. Sacheverell was made by the attorney-general, Sir John Montague; but as there is nothing in that opening speech which tends very accurately to settle the principle upon which the Whigs proceeded in the prosecution, (the plan of the speech not requiring it,) I proceed to that of Mr. Lechmere, the manager, who spoke next after him. The following are extracts, given, not in the exact order in which they stand in the printed trial, but in that which is thought most fit to bring the ideas of the Whig Commons distinctly under our view.
_Mr. Lechmere_[14]
"It becomes an _indispensable_ duty upon us, who appear in the name and on the behalf of all the commons of Great Britain, not only to demand your Lordships" justice on such a criminal, [Dr. Sacheverell,] _but clearly and openly to a.s.sert our foundations_."