History of Civilization in England, Vol. 1 of 3

845

This, as Mr. Cooke truly says, is an instance of aristocratic prejudice; but it is certain that a hint from George III. would have remedied the shameful neglect. Cooke's Hist. of Party, vol. iii. p. 277, 278.

846

It is easy to imagine how George III. must have been offended by such sentiments as these: ‘I am not of the opinion of those gentlemen who are against disturbing the public repose; I like a clamour whenever there is an abuse. The fire-bell at midnight disturbs your sleep, but it keeps you from being burnt in your bed. The hue and cry alarms the county, but preserves all the property of the province.’ Burke's speech on Prosecutions for Libels, in 1771, in Parl. Hist. vol. xvii. p. 54.

847

He moved their repeal. Parl. Hist. vol. xxvi. p. 1169. Even Lord Chatham issued, in 1766, a proclamation against forestallers and regraters, very much to the admiration of Lord Mahon, who says, ‘Lord Chatham acted with characteristic energy.’ Mahon's Hist. of England, vol. v. p. 166. More than thirty years later, and after Burke's death, Lord Kenyon, then chief-justice, eulogised these preposterous laws. Holland's Mem. of the Whig Party, vol. i. p. 167. Compare Adolphus's Hist. of George III. vol. vii. p. 406; and Cockburn's Memorials of his Time, Edinb. 1856, p. 73.

848

‘That liberality in the commercial system, which, I trust, will one day be adopted.’ Burke's Works, vol. i. p. 223. And, in his letter to Burgh (Ibid. vol. ii. p. 409), ‘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.’

849

Prior's Life of Burke, p. 467; Burke's Works, vol. i. pp. 263–271, 537–561, vol. ii. pp. 431–447. He refutes (vol. i. p. 548) the notion that the coronation oath was intended to bind the crown in its legislative capacity. Compare Mem. of Mackintosh, vol. i. pp. 170, 171, with Butler's Reminiscences, vol. i. p. 134.

850

Parl. Hist. vol. xvii. pp. 435, 436, vol. xx. p. 306. See also Burke's Correspondence, vol. ii. pp. 17, 18; and Prior's Life of Burke, p. 143.

851

Burke's Works, vol. i. pp. 261, 262, part of his speech at Bristol.

852

Prior's Life of Burke, p. 317. See also his admirable remarks, in Works, vol. ii. p. 417; and his speech, in Parl. Hist. vol. xxviii. p. 146.

853

On this increasing cruelty of the English laws, compare Parr's Works, vol. iv. pp. 150, 259, with Parl. Hist. vol. xxii. p. 271, vol. xxiv. p. 1222, vol. xxvi. p. 1057, vol. xxviii. p. 143; and, in regard to the execution of them, see Life of Romilly, by Himself, vol. i. p. 65; and Alison's Hist. of Europe, vol. ix. p. 620.

854

In one short speech (Parl. Hist. vol. xx. pp. 150, 151), he has almost exhausted the arguments against enlistment for life.

855

In 1806, that is nine years after the death of Burke, parliament first authorized enlistment for a term of years. See an account of the debates in Alison's Hist. of Europe, vol. vii. pp. 380–391. Compare Nichols's Illustrations of the Eighteenth Century, vol. v. p. 475; and Holland's Mem. of the Whig Party, vol. ii. p. 116.

856

Prior's Life of Burke, p. 316; Parl. Hist. vol. xxvii. p. 502, vol. xxviii. pp. 69, 96; and Life of Wilberforce, vol. i. pp. 152, 171, contain evidence of his animosity against the slave-trade, and a more than sufficient answer to the ill-natured, and, what is worse, the ignorant, remark about Burke, in the Duke of Buckingham's Mem. of George III. vol. i. p. 350.

857

On the respect which George III. felt for the slave-trade, see note 259 to this chapter. I might also have quoted the testimony of Lord Brougham: ‘The court was decidedly against abolition. George III. always regarded the question with abhorrence, as savouring of innovation.’ Brougham's Statesmen, vol. ii. p. 104. Compare Combe's North America, vol. i. p. 332.

858

Burke's Works, vol. ii. pp. 490–496; Parl. Hist. vol. xvii. pp. 44–55, a very able speech, delivered in 1771. Compare a letter to Dowdeswell, in Burke's Correspond. vol. i. pp. 251, 252.

859

The arguments of Burke anticipated, by more than twenty years, Fox's celebrated Libel Bill, which was not passed till 1792; although, in 1752, juries had begun, in spite of the judges, to return general verdicts on the merits. See Campbell's Chancellors, vol. v. pp. 238, 243, 341–345, vol. vi. p. 210; and Meyer, Institutions Judiciaires, vol. ii. pp. 204, 205, Paris, 1823.

860

Mr. Farr, in his valuable essay on the statistics of the civil service (in Journal of Statist. Soc. vol. xii. pp. 103–125), calls Burke ‘one of the first and ablest financial reformers in parliament,’ p. 104. The truth, however, is, that he was not only one of the first, but the first. He was the first man who laid before parliament a general and systematic scheme for diminishing the expenses of government; and his preliminary speech on that occasion is one of the finest of all his compositions.

861

Prior's Life of Burke, pp. 206, 234. See also, on the retrenchments he effected, Sinclair's Hist. of the Revenue, vol. ii. pp. 84, 85; Burke's Correspond. vol. iii. p. 14; and Bisset's Life of Burke, vol. ii. pp. 57–60.

862

In 1788, Lord Rockingham said, in the House of Lords, ‘Instead of calling the war, the war of parliament, or of the people, it was called the king's war, his majesty's favourite war.’ Parl. Hist. vol. xix. p. 857. Compare Cooke's Hist. of Party, vol. iii. p. 235, with the pungent remarks in Walpole's George III. vol. iv. p. 114. Nicholls (Recollections, vol. i. p. 35) says: ‘The war was considered as the war of the king personally. Those who supported it were called the king's friends; while those who wished the country to pause, and reconsider the propriety of persevering in the contest, were branded as disloyal.’

863

‘I am not here going into the distinction of rights, nor attempting to mark their boundaries. I do not enter into these metaphysical distinctions; I hate the very sound of them.’ Speech on American taxation in 1774, in Burke's Works, vol. i. p. 173. In 1775 (vol. i. p. 192): ‘But my consideration is narrow, confined, and wholly limited to the policy of the question.’ At p. 183: we should act in regard to America, not ‘according to abstract ideas of right, by no means according to mere general theories of government; the resort to which appears to me, in our present situation, no better than arrant trifling.’ In one of his earliest political pamphlets, written in 1769, he says, that the arguments of the opponents of America ‘are conclusive; conclusive as to right; but the very reverse as to policy and practice,’ vol. i. p. 112. Compare a letter, written in 1775, in Burke's Correspond. vol. ii. p. 12.

864

In 1766, George III. writes to Lord Rockingham (Albemarle's Rockingham, vol. i. pp. 271, 272): ‘Talbot is as right as I can desire, in the Stamp Act; strong for our declaring our right, but willing to repeal!’ In other words, willing to offend the Americans, by a speculative assertion of an abstract right, but careful to forego the advantage which that right might produce.

865

The intense hatred with which George III. regarded the Americans, was so natural to such a mind as his, that one can hardly blame his constant exhibition of it during the time that the struggle was actually impending. But what is truly disgraceful is, that, after the war was over, he displayed this rancour on an occasion when, of all others, he was bound to suppress it. In 1786, Jefferson and Adams were in England officially, and, as a matter of courtesy to the king, made their appearance at court. So regardless, however, was George III. of the common decencies of his station, that he treated these eminent men with marked incivility, although they were then paying their respects to him in his own palace. See Tucker's Life of Jefferson, vol. i. p. 220; and Mem. and Corresp. of Jefferson, vol. i. p. 54.

866

All great revolutions have a direct tendency to increase insanity, as long as they last, and probably for some time afterwards: but in this, as in other respects, the French revolution stands alone in the number of its victims. On the horrible, but curious subject of madness caused by the excitement of the events which occurred in France late in the eighteenth century, compare Prichard on Insanity in relation to Jurisprudence, 1842, p. 90; his Treatise on Insanity, 1835, pp. 161, 183, 230, 339; Esquirol, Maladies Mentales, vol. i. pp. 43, 53, 54, 66, 211, 447, vol. ii. pp. 193, 726; Feuchtersleben's Medical Psychology, p. 254; Georget, De la Folie, p. 156; Pinel, Traité sur l'Aliénation Mentale, pp. 30, 108, 109, 177, 178, 185, 207, 215, 257, 349, 392, 457, 481; Alison's Hist. of Europe, vol. iii. p. 112.

867

Burke's Works, vol. ii. p. 268.

868

The earliest unmistakable instances of those violent outbreaks which showed the presence of disease, were in the debates on the regency bill, in February 1789, when Sir Richard Hill, with brutal candour, hinted at Burke's madness, even in his presence. Parl. Hist. vol. xxvii. p. 1249. Compare a letter from Sir William Young, in Buckingham's Mem. of George III. 1853, vol. ii. p. 73; ‘Burke finished his wild speech in a manner next to madness.’ This was in December 1788; and, from that time until his death, it became every year more evident that his intellect was disordered. See a melancholy description of him in a letter, written by Dr. Currie in 1792 (Life of Currie, vol. ii. p. 150); and, above all, see his own incoherent letter, in 1796, in his Correspond. with Laurence, p. 67.

869

His son died in August 1794 (Burke's Correspond. vol. iv. p. 224); and his most violent works were written between that period and his own death, in July 1797.

870

‘This disciple, as he was proud to acknowledge himself.’ Brougham's Statesmen, vol. i. p. 218. In 1791, Fox said, that Burke ‘had taught him everything he knew in politics.’ Parl. Hist. vol. xxix. p. 379. See also Adolphus's Hist. of George III. vol. iv. pp. 472, 610; and a letter from Fox to Parr, in Parr's Works, vol. vii. p. 287.

871

It had begun in 1766, when Fox was only seventeen. Russell's Mem. of Fox, vol. i. p. 26.

872

On this painful rupture, compare with the Parliamentary History, Holland's Mem. of the Whig Party, vol. i. pp. 10, 11; Prior's Life of Burke, pp. 375–379; Tomline's Life of Pitt, vol. ii. pp. 385–395. The complete change in Burke's feelings towards his old friend also appears in a very intemperate letter, written to Dr. Laurence in 1797. Burke's Correspond. with Laurence, p. 152. Compare Parr's Works, vol. iv. pp. 67–80, 84–90, 109.

873

Which used to be contrasted with the bluntness of Johnson; these eminent men being the two best talkers of their time. See Bisset's Life of Burke, vol. i. p. 127.

874

Rogers's Introduction to Burke's Works, p. xliv.; Prior's Life of Burke, p. 384.

875

There is an interesting account of the melancholy death of this remarkable man in Lamartine, Hist. des Girondins, vol. viii. pp. 76–80; and a contemporary relation in Musset-Pathay, Vie de Rousseau, vol. ii. pp. 42–47.

876

This is the honourable testimony of a political opponent; who says, that after the dissolution of the Assembly ‘La Fayette se conforma à a conduite de Washington, qu'il avait pris pour modèle.’ Cassagnac, Révolution Française, vol. iii. pp. 370, 371. Compare the grudging admission of his enemy Bouillé, Mém. de Bouillé, vol. i. p. 125; and for proofs of the affectionate intimacy between Washington and La Fayette, see Mém. de Lafayette, vol. i. pp. 16, 21, 29, 44, 55, 83, 92, 111, 165, 197, 204, 395, vol. ii. p. 123.

877

The Duke of Bedford, no bad judge of character, said in 1794, that La Fayette's ‘whole life was an illustration of truth, disinterestedness, and honour.’ Parl. Hist. vol. xxxi. p. 664. So, too, the continuator of Sismondi (Hist. des Français, vol. xxx. p. 355), ‘La Fayette, le chevalier de la liberté d'Amérique;’ and Lamartine (Hist. des Girondins, vol. iii. p. 200), ‘Martyr de la liberté après en avoir été le héros.’ Ségur, who was intimately acquainted with him, gives some account of his noble character, as it appeared when he was a boy of nineteen. Mém. de Ségur, vol. i. pp. 106, 107. Forty years later, Lady Morgan met him in France; and what she relates shows how little he had changed, and how simple his tastes and the habits of his mind still were. Morgan's France, vol. ii. pp. 285–312. Other notices, from personal knowledge, will be found in Life of Roscoe, vol. ii. p. 178; and in Trotter's Mem. of Fox, pp. 319 seq.

878

‘The impious sophistry of Condorcet.’ Letter to a Noble Lord, in Burke's Works, vol. ii. p. 273.

879

Thoughts on French Affairs in Burke's Works, vol. i. p. 574.

880

‘Condorcet (though no marquis, as he styled himself before the Revolution) is a man of another sort of birth, fashion, and occupation from Brissot; but in every principle and every disposition, to the lowest as well as the highest and most determined villainies, fully his equal.’ Thoughts on French Affairs, in Burke's Works, vol. i. p. 579.

881

‘Groaning under the most oppressive cruelty in the dungeons of Magdeburg.’ Belsham's Hist. of Great Brit. vol. ix. p. 151. See the afflicting details of his sufferings, in Mém. de Lafayette, vol. i. p. 479, vol. ii. pp. 75, 77, 78, 80, 91, 92; and on the noble equanimity with which he bore them, see De Staël, Rév. Françoise, Paris, 1820, vol. ii. p. 103.

882

It is hardly credible that such language should have been applied to a man like La Fayette; but I have copied it from the Parliamentary History, vol. xxxi. p. 51, and from Adolphus, vol. v. p. 593. The only difference is, that in Adolphus the expression is ‘I would not debase my humanity;’ but in the Parl. Hist., ‘I would not debauch my humanity.’ But both authorities are agreed as to the term ‘horrid ruffian’ being used by Burke. Compare Burke's Correspondence with Laurence, pp. 91, 99.

883

Burke's Works, vol. ii. p. 319. In every instance I quote the precise words employed by Burke.

884

Ibid. vol. ii. p. 279.

885

Burke's speech, in Parl. Hist. vol. xxxi. p. 379.

886

Burke's Works, vol. ii. p. 335.

887

Burke's Corresp. vol. iii. p. 140.

888

Burke's Works, vol. ii. p. 322.

889

Parl. Hist. vol. xxx. p. 115.

890

Ibid. p. 112.

891

Ibid. p. 188.

892

Ibid. p. 435.

893

Ibid. p. 646; the concluding sentence of one of Burke's speeches in 1793.

894

Ibid. vol. xxxi. p. 426.

895

Burke's Works, vol. ii. p. 320.

896

Ibid. p. 286.

897

Ibid. p. 322.

898

Ibid. p. 318.

899

Parl. Hist. vol. xxviii. p. 353, vol. xxx. p. 390; Adolphus, vol. iv. p. 467.

900

In the Letters on a Regicide Peace, published the year before he died, he says, ‘These ambassadors may easily return as good courtiers as they went: but can they ever return from that degrading residence loyal and faithful subjects; or with any true affection to their master, or true attachment to the constitution, religion, or laws of their country? There is great danger that they who enter smiling into this Tryphonian cave, will come out of it sad and serious conspirators; and such will continue as long as they live.’ Burke's Works, vol. ii. p. 282. He adds in the same work, p. 381, ‘Is it for this benefit we open “the usual relations of peace and amity?” Is it for this our youth of both sexes are to form themselves by travel? Is it for this that with expense and pains we form their lisping infant accents to the language of France?.. Let it be remembered, that no young man can go to any part of Europe without taking this place of pestilential contagion in his way; and, whilst the less active part of the community will be debauched by this travel, whilst children are poisoned at these schools, our trade will put the finishing hand to our ruin. No factory will be settled in France, that will not become a club of complete French Jacobins. The minds of young men of that description will receive a taint in their religion, their morals, and their politics, which they will in a short time communicate to the whole kingdom.’

901

In Observations on the Conduct of the Minority, 1793, he says, that during four years he had wished for ‘a general war against jacobins and jacobinism.’ Burke's Works, vol. i. p. 611.

902

For, in the first place, ‘the united sovereigns very much injured their cause by admitting that they had nothing to do with the interior arrangements of France.’ Heads for Consideration on the Present State of Affairs, written in November 1792, in Burke's Works, vol. i. p. 583. And that he knew that this was not merely a question of destroying a faction, appears from the observable circumstance, that even in January 1791 he wrote to Trevor respecting war, ‘France is weak indeed, divided and deranged; but God knows, when the things came to be tried, whether the invaders would not find that their enterprise was not to support a party, but to conquer a kingdom.’ Burke's Correspond. vol. iii. p. 184.

903

As Lord J. Russell truly calls it, Mem. of Fox, vol. iii. p. 34. See also Schlosser's Eighteenth Century, vol. ii. p. 93, vol. v. p. 109, vol. vi. p. 291; Nicholls's Recollections, vol. i. p. 300; Parr's Works, vol. iii. p. 242.

904

‘We cannot, if we would, delude ourselves about the true state of this dreadful contest. It is a religious war.’ Remarks on the Policy of the Allies, in Burke's Works, vol. i. p. 600.

905

See the long list of proscriptions in Burke's Works, vol. i. p. 604. And the principle of revenge is again advocated in a letter written in 1793, in Burke's Correspond. vol. iv. p. 183. And in 1794, he told the House of Commons that ‘the war must no longer be confined to the vain attempt of raising a barrier to the lawless and savage power of France; but must be directed to the only rational end it can pursue; namely, the entire destruction of the desperate horde which gave it birth.’ Parl. Hist. vol. xxxi. p. 427.

906

Letters on a Regicide Peace, in Burke's Works, vol. ii. p. 291. In this horrible sentence, perhaps the most horrible ever penned by an English politician, the italics are not my own; they are in the text.

907

‘I know,’ said Burke, in one of those magnificent speeches which mark the zenith of his intellect, – ‘I know the map of England as well as the noble lord, or as any other person; and I know that the way I take is not the road to preferment.’ Parl. Hist. vol. xvii. p. 1269.

908

See, among many other instances, an extraordinary passage on ‘Jacobinism,’ in his Works, vol. ii. p. 449, which should be compared with a letter he wrote in 1792, respecting a proposed coalition ministry, Correspond. vol. iii. pp. 519, 520: ‘But my advice was, that as a foundation of the whole, the political principle must be settled as the preliminary, namely, “a total hostility to the French system, at home and abroad.”’

909

The earliest evidence I have met with of the heart of George III. beginning to open towards Burke, is in August 1791; see in Burke's Correspondence, vol. iii. p. 278, an exquisitely absurd account of his reception at the levee. Burke must have been fallen, indeed, before he could write such a letter.

910

‘Said to have originated in the express wish of the king.’ Prior's Life of Burke, p. 489. Mr. Prior estimates these pensions at 3,700l. a-year; but if we may rely on Mr. Nicholls, the sum was even greater: ‘Mr. Burke was rewarded with two pensions, estimated to be worth 40,000l.’ Nicholls's Recollections, vol. i. p. 136. Burke was sixty-five; and a pension of 3,700l. a-year would not be worth 40,000l., as the tables were then calculated. The statement of Mr. Prior is, however, confirmed by Wansey, in 1794. See Nichols's Lit. Anec. of the Eighteenth Century, vol. iii. p. 81.

911

Prior's Life of Burke, p. 460; Nichols's Lit. Anec. vol. iii. p. 81; Bisset's Life of Burke, vol. ii. p. 414.

912

‘It had been proposed to Sir Robert Walpole to raise the revenue by imposing taxes on America; but that minister, who could foresee beyond the benefit of the actual moment, declared it must be a bolder man than himself who should venture on such an expedient.’ Walpole's George III. vol. ii. p. 70. Compare Phillimore's Mem. of Lyttleton, vol. ii. p. 662; Bancroft's American Revolution, vol. i. p. 96; Belsham's Hist. of Great Britain, vol. v. p. 102.

913

That some sort of rupture was unavoidable, must, I think, be admitted; but we are not bound to believe the assertion of Horace Walpole, who says (Mem. of George II. vol. i. p. 397) that in 1754 he predicted the American rebellion. Walpole, though a keen observer of the surface of society, was not the man to take a view of this kind; unless, as is hardly probable, he heard an opinion to that effect expressed by his father. Sir Robert Walpole may have said something respecting the increasing love of liberty in the colonies; but it was impossible for him to foresee how that love would be fostered by the arbitrary proceedings of the government of George III.