The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 06 (of 12)

As soon as I had returned to the country, this affair lay so much on my mind, and the absolute necessity of government's making a serious business of it, agreeably to the seriousness they professed, and the object required, that I wrote to Sir G. Cooper, to remind him of the principles upon which we went in our conversation, and to press the plan which was suggested for carrying them into execution. He wrote to me on the 20th, and assured me, "that Lord North had given all due attention and respect to what you said to him on Friday, and will pay the same respect to the sentiments conveyed in your letter: everything you say or write on the subject undoubtedly demands it." Whether this was mere civility, or showed anything effectual in their intentions, time and the success of this measure will show. It is wholly with them; and if it should fail, you are a witness that nothing on our part has been wanting to free so large a part of our fellow-subjects and fellow-citizens from slavery, and to free government from the weakness and danger of ruling them by force. As to my own particular part, the desire of doing this has betrayed me into a step which I cannot perfectly reconcile to myself. You are to judge how far, on the circumstances, it may be excused. I think it had a good effect. You may be assured that I made this communication in a manner effectually to exclude so false and groundless an idea as that I confer with you, any more than I confer with them, on any party principle whatsoever,—or that in this affair we look further than the measure which is in profession, and I am sure ought to be in reason, theirs.

I am ever, with the sincerest affection and esteem,

My dear Sir,

Your most faithful and obedient humble servant,

EDMUND BURKE.

BEACONSFIELD, 18th July, 1778.

I intended to have written sooner, but it has not been in my power.

To the Speaker of the House of Commons of Ireland.

TWO LETTERS

TO

THOMAS BURGH, ESQ.,

AND

JOHN MERLOTT, ESQ.,

IN VINDICATION OF HIS PARLIAMENTARY CONDUCT RELATIVE TO THE AFFAIRS OF IRELAND.

1780

LETTER

TO THOMAS BURGH, ESQ. 14

My Dear Sir,—I do not know in what manner I am to thank you properly for the very friendly solicitude you have been so good as to express for my reputation. The concern you have done me the honor to take in my affairs will be an ample indemnity from all that I may suffer from the rapid judgments of those who choose to form their opinions of men, not from the life, but from their portraits in a newspaper. I confess to you that my frame of mind is so constructed, I have in me so little of the constitution of a great man, that I am more gratified with a very moderate share of approbation from those few who know me than I should be with the most clamorous applause from those multitudes who love to admire at a due distance.

I am not, however, Stoic enough to be able to affirm with truth, or hypocrite enough affectedly to pretend, that I am wholly unmoved at the difficulty which you and others of my friends in Ireland have found in vindicating my conduct towards my native country. It undoubtedly hurts me in some degree: but the wound is not very deep. If I had sought popularity in Ireland, when, in the cause of that country, I was ready to sacrifice, and did sacrifice, a much nearer, a much more immediate, and a much more advantageous popularity here, I should find myself perfectly unhappy, because I should be totally disappointed in my expectations,—because I should discover, when it was too late, what common sense might have told me very early, that I risked the capital of my fame in the most disadvantageous lottery in the world. But I acted then, as I act now, and as I hope I shall act always, from a strong impulse of right, and from motives in which popularity, either here or there, has but a very little part.

With the support of that consciousness I can bear a good deal of the coquetry of public opinion, which has her caprices, and must have her way. Miseri, quibus intentata nitet! I, too, have had my holiday of popularity in Ireland. I have even heard of an intention to erect a statue.15 I believe my intimate acquaintance know how little that idea was encouraged by me; and I was sincerely glad that it never took effect. Such honors belong exclusively to the tomb,—the natural and only period of human inconstancy, with regard either to desert or to opinion: for they are the very same hands which erect, that very frequently (and sometimes with reason enough) pluck down the statue. Had such an unmerited and unlooked-for compliment been paid to me two years ago, the fragments of the piece might at this hour have the advantage of seeing actual service, while they were moving, according to the law of projectiles, to the windows of the Attorney-General, or of my old friend, Monk Mason.

To speak seriously,—let me assure you, my dear Sir, that, though I am not permitted to rejoice at all its effects, there is not one man on your side of the water more pleased to see the situation of Ireland so prosperous as that she can afford to throw away her friends. She has obtained, solely by her own efforts, the fruits of a great victory, which I am very ready to allow that the best efforts of her best well-wishers here could not have done for her so effectually in a great number of years, and perhaps could not have done at all. I could wish, however, merely for the sake of her own dignity, that, in turning her poor relations and antiquated friends out of doors, (though one of the most common effects of new prosperity,) she had thought proper to dismiss us with fewer tokens of unkindness. It is true that there is no sort of danger in affronting men who are not of importance enough to have any trust of ministerial, of royal, or of national honor to surrender. The unforced and unbought services of humble men, who have no medium of influence in great assemblies, but through the precarious force of reason, must be looked upon with contempt by those who by their wisdom and spirit have improved the critical moment of their fortune, and have debated with authority against pusillanimous dissent and ungracious compliance, at the head of forty thousand men.

Such feeble auxiliaries (as I talk of) to such a force, employed against such resistance, I must own, in the present moment, very little worthy of your attention. Yet, if one were to look forward, it scarcely seems altogether politic to bestow so much liberality of invective on the Whigs of this kingdom as I find has been the fashion to do both in and out of Parliament. That you should pay compliments, in some tone or other, whether ironical or serious, to the minister from whose imbecility you have extorted what you could never obtain from his bounty, is not unnatural. In the first effusions of Parliamentary gratitude to that minister for the early and voluntary benefits he has conferred upon Ireland, it might appear that you were wanting to the triumph of his surrender, if you did not lead some of his enemies captive before him. Neither could you feast him with decorum, if his particular taste were not consulted. A minister, who has never defended his measures in any other way than by railing at his adversaries, cannot have his palate made all at once to the relish of positive commendation. I cannot deny but that on this occasion there was displayed a great deal of the good-breeding which consists in the accommodation of the entertainment to the relish of the guest.

But that ceremony being past, it would not be unworthy of the wisdom of Ireland to consider what consequences the extinguishing every spark of freedom in this country may have upon your own liberties. You are at this instant flushed with victory, and full of the confidence natural to recent and untried power. We are in a temper equally natural, though very different. We feel as men do, who, having placed an unbounded reliance on their force, have found it totally to fail on trial. We feel faint and heartless, and without the smallest degree of self-opinion. In plain words, we are cowed. When men give up their violence and injustice without a struggle, their condition is next to desperate. When no art, no management, no argument, is necessary to abate their pride and overcome their prejudices, and their uneasiness only excites an obscure and feeble rattling in their throat, their final dissolution seems not far off. In this miserable state we are still further depressed by the overbearing influence of the crown. It acts with the officious cruelty of a mercenary nurse, who, under pretence of tenderness, stifles us with our clothes, and plucks the pillow from our heads. Injectu multæ vestis opprimi senem jubet. Under this influence we have so little will of our own, that, even in any apparent activity we may be got to assume, I may say, without any violence to sense, and with very little to language, we are merely passive. We have yielded to your demands this session. In the last session we refused to prevent them. In both cases, the passive and the active, our principle was the same. Had the crown pleased to retain the spirit, with regard to Ireland, which seems to be now all directed to America, we should have neglected our own immediate defence, and sent over the last man of our militia to fight with the last man of your volunteers.

To this influence the principle of action, the principle of policy, and the principle of union of the present minority are opposed. These principles of the opposition are the only thing which preserves a single symptom of life in the nation. That opposition is composed of the far greater part of the independent property and independent rank of the kingdom, of whatever is most untainted in character, and of whatever ability remains unextinguished in the people, and of all which tends to draw the attention of foreign countries upon this. It is now in its final and conclusive struggle. It has to struggle against a force to which, I am afraid, it is not equal. The whole kingdom of Scotland ranges with the venal, the unprincipled, and the wrong-principled of this; and if the kingdom of Ireland thinks proper to pass into the same camp, we shall certainly be obliged to quit the field. In that case, if I know anything of this country, another constitutional opposition can never be formed in it; and if this be impossible, it will be at least as much so (if there can be degrees in impossibility) to have a constitutional administration at any future time. The possibility of the former is the only security for the existence of the latter. Whether the present administration be in the least like one, I must venture to doubt, even in the honey-moon of the Irish fondness to Lord North, which has succeeded to all their slappings and scratchings.

If liberty cannot maintain its ground in this kingdom, I am sure that it cannot have any long continuance in yours. Our liberty might now and then jar and strike a discord with that of Ireland. The thing is possible: but still the instruments might play in concert. But if ours be unstrung, yours will be hung up on a peg, and both will be mute forever. Your new military force may give you confidence, and it serves well for a turn; but you and I know that it has not root. It is not perennial, and would prove but a poor shelter for your liberty, when this nation, having no interest in its own, could look upon yours with the eye of envy and disgust. I cannot, therefore, help thinking, and telling you what with great submission I think, that, if the Parliament of Ireland be so jealous of the spirit of our common Constitution as she seems to be, it was not so discreet to mix with the panegyric on the minister so large a portion of acrimony to the independent part of this nation. You never received any sort of injury from them, and you are grown to that degree of importance that the discourses in your Parliament will have a much greater effect on our immediate fortune than our conversation can have upon yours. In the end they will seriously, affect both.

I have looked back upon our conduct and our public conversations in order to discover what it is that can have given you offence. I have done so, because I am ready to admit that to offend you without any cause would be as contrary to true policy as I am sure it must be to the inclinations of almost every one of us. About two years ago Lord Nugent moved six propositions in favor of Ireland in the House of Commons. At the time of the motions, and during the debate, Lord North was either wholly out of the House, or engaged in other matters of business or pleasantry, in the remotest recesses of the West Saxon corner. He took no part whatsoever in the affair; but it was supposed his neutrality was more inclined towards the side of favor. The mover being a person in office was, however, the only indication that was given of such a leaning. We who supported the propositions, finding them better relished than at first we looked for, pursued our advantage, and began to open a way for more essential benefits to Ireland. On the other hand, those who had hitherto opposed them in vain redoubled their efforts, and became exceedingly clamorous. Then it was that Lord North found it necessary to come out of his fastness, and to interpose between the contending parties. In this character of mediator, he declared, that, if anything beyond the first six resolutions should be attempted, he would oppose the whole, but that, if we rested there, the original motions should have his support. On this a sort of convention took place between him and the managers of the Irish business, in which the six resolutions were to be considered as an uti possidetis, and to be held sacred.

By this time other parties began to appear. A good many of the trading towns, and manufactures of various kinds, took the alarm. Petitions crowded in upon one another, and the bar was occupied by a formidable body of council. Lord N. was staggered by this new battery. He is not of a constitution to encounter such an opposition as had then risen, when there were no other objects in view than those that were then before the House. In order not to lose him, we were obliged to abandon, bit by bit, the most considerable part of the original agreement.

In several parts, however, he continued fair and firm. For my own part, I acted, as I trust I commonly do, with decision. I saw very well that the things we had got were of no great consideration; but they were, even in their defects, somewhat leading. I was in hopes that we might obtain gradually and by parts what we might attempt at once and in the whole without success,—that one concession would lead to another,—and that the people of England discovering by a progressive experience that none of the concessions actually made were followed by the consequences they had dreaded, their fears from what they were yet to yield would considerably diminish. But that to which I attached myself the most particularly was, to fix the principle of a free trade in all the ports of these islands, as founded in justice, and beneficial to the whole, but principally to this, the seat of the supreme power. And this I labored to the utmost of my might, upon general principles, illustrated by all the commercial detail with which my little inquiries in life were able to furnish me. I ought to forget such trifling things as those, with all concerning myself; and possibly I might have forgotten them, if the Lord Advocate of Scotland had not, in a very flattering manner, revived them in my memory, in a full House in this session. He told me that my arguments, such as they were, had made him, at the period I allude to, change the opinion with which he had come into the House strongly impressed. I am sure that at the time at least twenty more told me the same thing. I certainly ought not to take their style of compliment as a testimony to fact; neither do I. But all this showed sufficiently, not what they thought of my ability, but what they saw of my zeal. I could say more in proof of the effects of that zeal, and of the unceasing industry with which I then acted, both in my endeavors which were apparent and those that were not so visible. Let it be remembered that I showed those dispositions while the Parliament of England was in a capacity to deliberate and in a situation to refuse, when there was something to be risked here by being suspected of a partiality to Ireland, when there was an honorable danger attending the profession of friendship to you, which heightened its relish, and made it worthy of a reception in manly minds. But as for the awkward and nauseous parade of debate without opposition, the flimsy device of tricking out necessity and disguising it in the habit of choice, the shallow stratagem of defending by argument, what all the world must perceive is yielded to force,—these are a sort of acts of friendship which I am sorry that any of my countrymen should require of their real friends. They are things not to my taste; and if they are looked upon as tests of friendship, I desire for one that I may be considered as an enemy.

What party purpose did my conduct answer at that time? I acted with Lord N. I went to all the ministerial meetings,—and he and his associates in office will do me the justice to say, that, aiming at the concord of the empire, I made it my business to give his concessions all the value of which they were capable, whilst some of those who were covered with his favors derogated from them, treated them with contempt, and openly threatened to oppose them. If I had acted with my dearest and most valued friends, if I had acted with the Marquis of Rockingham or the Duke of Richmond, in that situation, I could not have attended more to their honor, or endeavored more earnestly to give efficacy to the measures I had taken in common with them. The return which I, and all who acted as I did, have met with from him, does not make me repent the conduct which I then held.

As to the rest of the gentlemen with whom I have the honor to act, they did not then, or at any other time, make a party affair of Irish politics. That matter was always taken up without concert; but, in general, from the operation of our known liberal principles in government, in commerce, in religion, in everything, it was taken up favorably for Ireland. Where some local interests bore hard upon the members, they acted on the sense of their constituents, upon ideas which, though I do not always follow, I cannot blame. However, two or three persons, high in opposition, and high in public esteem, ran great risks in their boroughs on that occasion. But all this was without any particular plan. I need not say, that Ireland was in that affair much obliged to the liberal mind and enlarged understanding of Charles Fox, to Mr. Thomas Townshend, to Lord Midleton, and others. On reviewing that affair, which gave rise to all the subsequent manoeuvres, I am convinced that the whole of what has this day been done might have then been effected. But then the minister must have taken it up as a great plan of national policy, and paid with his person in every lodgment of his approach. He must have used that influence to quiet prejudice, which he has so often, used to corrupt principle: and I know, that, if he had, he must have succeeded. Many of the most active in opposition would have given him an unequivocal support. The corporation of London, and the great body of the London West India merchants and planters, which forms the greatest mass of that vast interest, were disposed to fall in with such a plan. They certainly gave no sort of discountenance to what was done or what was proposed. But these are not the kind of objects for which our ministers bring out the heavy artillery of the state. Therefore, as things stood at that time, a great deal more was not practicable.

Last year another proposition was brought out for the relief of Ireland. It was started without any communication with a single person of activity in the country party, and, as it should seem, without any kind of concert with government. It appeared to me extremely raw and undigested. The behavior of Lord N., on the opening of that business, was the exact transcript of his conduct on the Irish question in the former session. It was a mode of proceeding which his nature has wrought into the texture of his politics, and which is inseparable from them. He chose to absent himself on the proposition and during the agitation of that business,—although the business of the House is that alone for which he has any kind of relish, or, as I am told, can be persuaded to listen to with any degree of attention. But he was willing to let it take its course. If it should pass without any considerable difficulty, he would bring his acquiescence to tell for merit in Ireland, and he would have the credit, out of his indolence, of giving quiet to that country. If difficulties should arise on the part of England, he knew that the House was so well trained that he might at his pleasure call us off from the hottest scent. As he acted in his usual manner and upon his usual principle, opposition acted upon theirs, and rather generally supported the measure. As to myself, I expressed a disapprobation at the practice of bringing imperfect and indigested projects into the House, before means were used to quiet the clamors which a misconception of what we were doing might occasion at home, and before measures were settled with men of weight and authority in Ireland, in order to render our acts useful and acceptable to that country. I said, that the only thing which could make the influence of the crown (enormous without as well as within the House) in any degree tolerable was, that it might be employed to give something of order and system to the proceedings of a popular assembly; that government being so situated as to have a large range of prospect, and as it were a bird's-eye view of everything, they might see distant dangers and distant advantages which were not so visible to those who stood on the common level; they might, besides, observe them, from this advantage, in their relative and combined state, which people locally instructed and partially informed could behold only in an insulated and unconnected manner;—but that for many years past we suffered under all the evils, without any one of the advantages of a government influence; that the business of a minister, or of those who acted as such, had been still further to contract the narrowness of men's ideas, to confirm inveterate prejudices, to inflame vulgar passions, and to abet all sorts of popular absurdities, in order the better to destroy popular rights and privileges; that, so far from methodizing the business of the House, they had let all things run into an inextricable confusion, and had left affairs of the most delicate policy wholly to chance.

After I had expressed myself with the warmth I felt on seeing all government and order buried under the ruins of liberty, and after I had made my protest against the insufficiency of the propositions, I supported the principle of enlargement at which they aimed, though short and somewhat wide of the mark,—giving, as my sole reason, that the more frequently these matters came into discussion, the more it would tend to dispel fears and to eradicate prejudices.

This was the only part I took. The detail was in the hands of Lord Newhaven and Lord Beauchamp, with some assistance from Earl Nugent and some independent gentlemen of Irish property. The dead weight of the minister being removed, the House recovered its tone and elasticity. We had a temporary appearance of a deliberative character. The business was debated freely on both sides, and with sufficient temper. And the sense of the members being influenced by nothing but what will naturally influence men unbought, their reason and their prejudices, these two principles had a fair conflict, and prejudice was obliged to give way to reason. A majority appeared, on a division, in favor of the propositions.

As these proceedings got out of doors, Glasgow and Manchester, and, I think, Liverpool, began to move, but in a manner much more slow and languid than formerly. Nothing, in my opinion, would have been less difficult than entirely to have overborne their opposition. The London West India trade was, as on the former occasion, so on this, perfectly liberal and perfectly quiet; and there is abroad so much respect for the united wisdom of the House, when supposed to act upon a fair view of a political situation, that I scarcely ever remember any considerable uneasiness out of doors, when the most active members, and those of most property and consideration in the minority, have joined themselves to the administration. Many factious people in the towns I mentioned began, indeed, to revile Lord North, and to reproach his neutrality as treacherous and ungrateful to those who had so heartily and so warmly entered into all his views with regard to America. That noble lord, whose decided character it is to give way to the latest and nearest pressure, without any sort of regard to distant consequences of any kind, thought fit to appear, on this signification of the pleasure of those his worthy friends and partisans, and, putting himself at the head of the posse scaccarii, wholly regardless of the dignity and consistency of our miserable House, drove the propositions entirely out of doors by a majority newly summoned to duty.