lengths in his preference of the objects of his immediate solicitude than Mr. Burke has ever done. A man so circumstanced often seems to undervalue, to vilify, almost to reprobate and disown, those that are out of danger. This is the voice of nature and truth, and not of inconsistency and false pretence. The danger of any thing very dear to us removes, for the moment, every other affection from the mind. When Priam had his whole thoughts employed on the body of his Hector, he repels with indignation, and drives from him with a thousand reproaches, his surviving sons, who with an officious piety crowded about him to offer their assistance. A good critick (there is no better than Mr. Fox) would say, that this is a masterstroke, and marks a deep understanding of nature in the father of poetry. He would despise a Zoilus, who would conclude from this passage that Homer meant to represent this man of affliction as hating, or being indifferent and cold in his affections to, the poor relicks of his house, or that he preferred a dead carcass to his living children. Mr. Burke does not stand in need of an allowance of this kind, which, if he did, by candid criticks ought to be granted to him. If the principles of a mixed constitution be admitted, he wants no more to justify to consistency every thing he has said and done during the course of a political life just touching to its close. I believe that gentleman has kept himself more clear of running into the fashion of wild, visionary theories, or of seeking popularity through every means, than any man perhaps ever did in the same situation. He was the first man who, on the hustings, at a popular election, rejected the authority of instructions from constituents or who, in any place, has argued so fully against it. Perhaps the discredit into which that doctrine of compulsive instructions under our constitution is since fallen, may be due, in a great degree, to his opposing himself to it in that manner, and on that occasion. The reformers in representation, and the bills for shortening the duration of parliaments, he uniformly and steadily opposed for many years together, in contradiction to many of his best friends. 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 circumstances, and an inconsistency in principle. It was not then thought necessary to be freed of him as of an incumbrance. 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 assert 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 favour 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 constitution "(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." א These friends, however, in his better days, when they had more to hope from his service The liberty to which Mr. Burke declared himand more to fear from his loss than now they have,self attached is not French liberty. That liberty never chose to find any inconsistency between his is nothing but the rein given to vice and confuacts and expressions in favour of liberty, and his sion. Mr. Burke was then, as he was at the votes on those questions. But there is a time for writing of his Reflections, awfully impressed with all things. the difficulties arising from the complex state of our constitution 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. Against the opinion of many friends, even against the solicitation of some of them, he opposed those of the church clergy, who had petitioned the house of commons to be discharged from the subscription. Although he supported the dissenters in their petition 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 "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 circumspection with vigour, is absolutely necessary; but it is ex 66 tremely 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 a 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 possi"ble. We are members for a free country; and surely we all know that the machine of a free "constitution is no simple thing; but as intricate "and as delicate, as it is valuable. We are mem"bers 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 noble and well"constructed arch of our empire and our constiA constitution 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." "tution. In this manner Mr. Burke spoke to his constituents seventeen years ago. He spoke, not like a partisan of one particular member of our constitution, 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 pre-eminence 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 topick. 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 connexion 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, endeavoured 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 passed 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 passed 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 favour of America than for a security to its ancient condition. Mr. Burke's conversation with other Americans was large indeed, and his enquiries extensive and diligent. Trusting to the result of all these means of information, but trusting much more in the publick presumptive indications I have just referred to, and to the reiterated, solemn declarations of their assemblies, 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 assemblies 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 circumstance 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.* When, instead of this, a Boston port bill, a Massachuset's 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 compass, 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 circumstanced, 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 constitutional 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 burthen 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 burthened 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 passage 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 passage in the speech of a late minister,† has been brought up against him. That passage 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 circumstances 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 for ever quitted their allegiance to their and our sovereign; at the time when they had broken off all connexion 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 circumstance,) he recollects that he did treat it with some levity. But is it • See his speech on American taxation, the 19th of April, 1774. 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 any thing at all can be argued from pleasantries good or bad. Is it for this reason, or for any thing 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 circumstance, 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 endeavouring to work the destruction of the crown of this kingdom, and the whole of its constitution? 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 republicks 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 constitutional, 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 ↑ Lord Lansdown. per abject a state, as in function not to be so respect-many descriptions of its inhabitants. A few able as an under-sheriff, but in person not to differ sons of rank did, he allows, discover strong and from the condition of a mere prisoner? One manifest tokens of such a spirit of liberty, as would think that such a thing as a medium had might be expected one day to break all bounds. never been heard of in the moral world. Such gentlemen have since had more reason to reThis mode of arguing from your having done pent of their want of foresight than I hope any of any thing in a certain line, to the necessity of the same class will ever have in this country. But doing every thing, has political consequences of this spirit was far from general even amongst the other moment than those of a logical fallacy. If gentlemen. As to the lower orders and those a no man can propose any diminution or modifica- little above them, in whose name the present tion of an invidious or dangerous power or influ- powers domineer, they were far from discovering ence in government, without entitling friends turn- any sort of dissatisfaction with the power and ed into adversaries to argue him into the destruc- prerogatives of the Crown. That vain people were tion of all prerogative, and to a spoliation of the rather proud of them: they rather despised the whole patronage of royalty, I do not know what Englisli for not having a monarch possessed of such can more effectually deter persons of sober minds high and perfect authority. They had felt nothing from engaging in any reform; nor how the worst from Lettres de Cachet. The Bastile could inspire enemies to the liberty of the subject could contrive no horrours into them. This was a treat for their any method more fit to bring all correctives on betters. It was by art and impulse; it was by the the power of the Crown into suspicion and disrepute. sinister use made of a season of scarcity; it was If, say his accusers, the dread of too great in- under an infinitely diversified succession of wicked fluence in the Crown of Great Britain could justify pretences, wholly foreign to the question of mothe degree of reform which he adopted, the dread narchy or aristocracy, that this. light people were of a return under the despotism of a monarchy inspired with their present spirit of levelling. might justify the people of France in going much Their old vanity was led by art to take another further, and reducing monarchy to its present no- turn it was dazzled and seduced by military thing. Mr. Burke does not allow that a sufficient liveries, cockades, and epaulets; until the French argument ad hominem is inferable from these pre- populace was led to become the willing, but still mises. If the horrour of the excesses of an absolute the proud and thoughtless, instrument and victim monarchy furnishes a reason for abolishing it, no of another domination. Neither did that people monarchy once absolute (all have been so at one despise, or hate, or fear their nobility. On the period or other) could ever be limited. It must contrary, they valued themselves on the generous be destroyed; otherwise no way could be found to qualities which distinguished the chiefs of their quiet the fears of those who were formerly sub-nation. jected 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 republick (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 despotick power, under which there is no trace of liberty, except what appears fusion and in crime. in con 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 heavily on the minds of the people. It is not very long since he has been in that country. Whilst there he conversed with So far as to the attack on Mr. Burke, in consequence of his reforms. To shew 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 passage in a piece so lately published, which contradicts any thing 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 passage, so neither can they shew any thing in the general tendency and spirit of the whole work unfavourable 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 passed 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 circumference. 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. 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 titles 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. In the same debate Mr. Burke was represented by Mr. Fox as arguing in a manner which implied that the British constitution could not be defended, but by abusing all republicks ancient and modern. He said nothing to give the least ground for such a censure. He never abused all republicks. He The purpose, for which the abuses of governhas never professed himself a friend or an enemy ment are brought into view, forms a very material to republicks or to monarchies in the abstract. He consideration in the mode of treating them. The thought that the circumstances and habits of every complaints of a friend are things very different country, which it is always perilous and produc- from the invectives of an enemy. The charge of tive of the greatest calamities to force, are to de- abuses on the late monarchy of France was not cide upon the form of its government. There is intended to lead to its reformation, but to justify nothing in his nature, his temper, or his faculties, its destruction. They, who have raked into all hiswhich should make him an enemy to any repub- tory for the faults of kings, and who have aggralick modern or ancient. Far from it. He has vated every fault they have found, have acted constudied the form and spirit of republicks very sistently; because they acted as enemies. No early in life; he has studied them with great at- man can be a friend to a tempered monarchy who tention; and with a mind undisturbed by affec- bears a decided hatred to monarchy itself. He, tion or prejudice. He is indeed convinced that who, at the present time, is favourable, or even the science of government would be poorly culti- fair, to that system, must act towards it as towards vated without that study. But the result in his a friend with frailties, who is under the prosecumind from that investigation has been, and is, tion of implacable foes. I think it a duty, in that that neither England nor France, without infinite case, not to inflame the publick mind against the detriment to them, as well in the event as in the obnoxious person, by any exaggeration of his faults. experiment, could be brought into a republican It is our duty rather to palliate his errours and form; but that every thing republican which can defects, or to cast them into the shade, and indusbe introduced with safety into either of them, must triously to bring forward any good qualities that be built upon a monarchy; built upon a real, not he may happen to possess. But when the man is a nominal, monarchy, as its essential basis; that to be amended, and by amendment to be all such institutions, whether aristocratick or de-ed, then the line of duty takes another direction. mocratick, must originate from their crown, and When his safety is effectually provided for, it then in all their proceedings must refer to it; that by becomes the office of a friend to urge his faults the energy of that main spring alone those repub- and vices with all the energy of enlightened affeclican parts must be set in action, and from thence tion, to paint them in their most vivid colours, must derive their whole legal effect, (as amongst and to bring the moral patient to a better habit. us they actually do,) or the whole will fall into Thus I think with regard to individuals; thus I confusion. These republican members have no think with regard to ancient and respected goother point but the crown in which they can vernments and orders of men. A spirit of refor-possibly unite. mation is never more consistent with itself, than when it refuses to be rendered the means of destruction. 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 republick, might be more than sufficient to undeceive his understanding, and to free it for ever 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 preserv 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 connexion of argument, by what association of ideas, this apology for Mr. Fox and his party is, by him and them, brought to |