The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 05 (of 12)

"With respect to the countries occupied by the French armies, and which have not been united to France, they, as well as other interests, political and commercial, may become the subject of a negotiation, which will present to the Directory the means of proving how much it desires to attain speedily to a happy pacification." That "the Directory is ready to receive, in this respect, any overtures that shall be just, reasonable, and compatible with the dignity of the Republic."

On the head of what is not to be the subject of negotiation, the Directory is clear and open. As to what may be a matter of treaty, all this open dealing is gone. She retires into her shell. There she expects overtures from you: and you are to guess what she shall judge just, reasonable, and, above all, compatible with her dignity.

In the records of pride there does not exist so insulting a declaration. It is insolent in words, in manner; but in substance it is not only insulting, but alarming. It is a specimen of what may be expected from the masters we are preparing for our humbled country. Their openness and candor consist in a direct avowal of their despotism and ambition. We know that their declared resolution had been to surrender no object belonging to France previous to the war. They had resolved that the Republic was entire, and must remain so. As to what she has conquered from the Allies and united to the same indivisible body, it is of the same nature. That is, the Allies are to give up whatever conquests they have made or may make upon France; but all which she has violently ravished from her neighbors, and thought fit to appropriate, are not to become so much as objects of negotiation.

In this unity and indivisibility of possession are sunk ten immense and wealthy provinces, full of strong, flourishing, and opulent cities, (the Austrian Netherlands,) the part of Europe the most necessary to preserve any communication between this kingdom and its natural allies, next to Holland the most interesting to this country, and without which Holland must virtually belong to France. Savoy and Nice, the keys of Italy, and the citadel in her hands to bridle Switzerland, are in that consolidation. The important territory of Liege is torn out of the heart of the Empire. All these are integrant parts of the Republic, not to be subject to any discussion, or to be purchased by any equivalent. Why? Because there is a law which prevents it. What law? The law of nations? The acknowledged public law of Europe? Treaties and conventions of parties? No,—not a pretence of the kind. It is a declaration not made in consequence of any prescription on her side,—not on any cession or dereliction, actual or tacit, of other powers. It is a declaration, pendente lite, in the middle of a war, one principal object of which was originally the defence, and has since been the recovery, of these very countries.

This strange law is not made for a trivial object, not for a single port or for a single fortress, but for a great kingdom,—for the religion, the morals, the laws, the liberties, the lives and fortunes of millions of human creatures, who, without their consent or that of their lawful government, are, by an arbitrary act of this regicide and homicide government which they call a law, incorporated into their tyranny.

In other words, their will is the law, not only at home, but as to the concerns of every nation. Who has made that law but the Regicide Republic itself, whose laws, like those of the Medes and Persians, they cannot alter or abrogate, or even so much as take into consideration? Without the least ceremony or compliment, they have sent out of the world whole sets of laws and lawgivers. They have swept away the very constitutions under which the legislatures acted and the laws were made. Even the fundamental sacred rights of man they have not scrupled to profane. They have set this holy code at nought with ignominy and scorn. Thus they treat all their domestic laws and constitutions, and even what they had considered as a law of Nature. But whatever they have put their seal on, for the purposes of their ambition, and the ruin of their neighbors, this alone is invulnerable, impassible, immortal. Assuming to be masters of everything human and divine, here, and here alone, it seems, they are limited, "cooped and cabined in," and this omnipotent legislature finds itself wholly without the power of exercising its favorite attribute, the love of peace. In other words, they are powerful to usurp, impotent to restore; and equally by their power and their impotence they aggrandize themselves, and weaken and impoverish you and all other nations.

Nothing can be more proper or more manly than the state publication, called a Note, on this proceeding, dated Downing Street, the 10th of April, 1796. Only that it is better expressed, it perfectly agrees with the opinion I have taken the liberty of submitting to your consideration. I place it below at full length,25 as my justification in thinking that this astonishing paper from the Directory is not only a direct negative to all treaty, but is a rejection of every principle upon which treaties could be made. To admit it for a moment were to erect this power, usurped at home, into a legislature to govern mankind. It is an authority that on a thousand occasions they have asserted in claim, and, whenever they are able, exerted in practice. The dereliction, of this whole scheme of policy became, therefore, an indispensable previous condition to all renewal of treaty. The remark of the British Cabinet on this arrogant and tyrannical claim is natural and unavoidable. Our ministry state, that, "while these dispositions shall be persisted in, nothing is left for the king but to prosecute a war that is just and necessary."

It was of course that we should wait until the enemy showed some sort of disposition on his part to fulfil this condition. It was hoped, indeed, that our suppliant strains might be suffered to steal into the august ear in a more propitious season. That season, however, invoked by so many vows, conjurations, and prayers, did not come. Every declaration of hostility renovated, and every act pursued with double animosity,—the overrunning of Lombardy,—the subjugation of Piedmont,—the possession of its impregnable fortresses,—the seizing on all the neutral states of Italy,—our expulsion from Leghorn,—instances forever renewed for our expulsion from Genoa,—Spain rendered subject to them and hostile to us,—Portugal bent under the yoke,—half the Empire overrun and ravaged,—were the only signs which this mild Republic thought proper to manifest of her pacific sentiments. Every demonstration of an implacable rancor and an untamable pride were the only encouragements we received to the renewal of our supplications.

Here, therefore, they and we were fixed. Nothing was left to the British ministry but "to prosecute a war just and necessary,"—a war equally just as at the time of our engaging in it,—a war become ten times more necessary by everything which happened afterwards. This resolution was soon, however, forgot. It felt the heat of the season and melted away. New hopes were entertained from supplication. No expectations, indeed, were then formed from renewing a direct application to the French Regicides through the agent-general for the humiliation of sovereigns. At length a step was taken in degradation which even went lower than all the rest. Deficient in merits of our own, a mediator was to be sought,—and we looked for that mediator at Berlin! The King of Prussia's merits in abandoning the general cause might have obtained for him some sort of influence in favor of those whom he had deserted; but I have never heard that his Prussian Majesty had lately discovered so marked an affection for the Court of St. James's, or for the Court of Vienna, as to excite much hope of his interposing a very powerful mediation to deliver them from the distresses into which he had brought them.

If humiliation is the element in which we live, if it is become not only our occasional policy, but our habit, no great objection can be made to the modes in which it may be diversified,—though I confess I cannot be charmed with the idea of our exposing our lazar sores at the door of every proud servitor of the French Republic, where the court dogs will not deign to lick them. We had, if I am not mistaken, a minister at that court, who might try its temper, and recede and advance as he found backwardness or encouragement. But to send a gentleman there on no other errand than this, and with no assurance whatever that he should not find, what he did find, a repulse, seems to me to go far beyond all the demands of a humiliation merely politic. I hope it did not arise from a predilection for that mode of conduct.

The cup of bitterness was not, however, drained to the dregs. Basle and Berlin were not sufficient. After so many and so diversified repulses, we were resolved to make another experiment, and to try another mediator. Among the unhappy gentlemen in whose persons royalty is insulted and degraded at the seat of plebeian pride and upstart insolence, there is a minister from Denmark at Paris. Without any previous encouragement to that, any more than the other steps, we sent through, this turnpike to demand a passport for a person who on our part was to solicit peace in the metropolis, at the footstool of Regicide itself. It was not to be expected that any one of those degraded beings could have influence enough to settle any part of the terms in favor of the candidates for further degradation; besides, such intervention would be a direct breach in their system, which did not permit one sovereign power to utter a word in the concerns of his equal.—Another repulse. We were desired to apply directly in our persons. We submitted, and made the application.

It might be thought that here, at length, we had touched the bottom of humiliation; our lead was brought up covered with mud. But "in the lowest deep, a lower deep" was to open for us still more profound abysses of disgrace and shame. However, in we leaped. We came forward in our own name. The passport, such a passport and safe-conduct as would be granted to thieves who might come in to betray their accomplices, and no better, was granted to British supplication. To leave no doubt of its spirit, as soon as the rumor of this act of condescension could get abroad, it was formally announced with an explanation from authority, containing an invective against the ministry of Great Britain, their habitual frauds, their proverbial Punic perfidy. No such state-paper, as a preliminary to a negotiation for peace, has ever yet appeared. Very few declarations of war have ever shown so much and so unqualified animosity. I place it below,26 as a diplomatic curiosity, and in order to be the better understood in the few remarks I have to make upon a peace which, indeed, defies all description. "None but itself can be its parallel."

I pass by all the insolence and contumely of the performance, as it comes from them. The present question is not, how we are to be affected with it in regard to our dignity. That is gone. I shall say no more about it. Light lie the earth on the ashes of English pride! I shall only observe upon it politically, and as furnishing a direction for our own conduct in this low business.

The very idea of a negotiation for peace, whatever the inward sentiments of the parties may be, implies some confidence in their faith, some degree of belief in the professions which are made concerning it. A temporary and occasional credit, at least, is granted. Otherwise men stumble on the very threshold. I therefore wish to ask what hope we can have of their good faith, who, as the very basis of the negotiation, assume the ill faith and treachery of those they have to deal with? The terms, as against us, must be such as imply a full security against a treacherous conduct,—that is, such terms as this Directory stated in its first declaration, to place us "in an utter impossibility of executing our wretched projects." This is the omen, and the sole omen, under which we have consented to open our treaty.

The second observation I have to make upon it (much connected, undoubtedly, with the first) is, that they have informed you of the result they propose from the kind of peace they mean to grant you, —that is to say, the union they propose among nations with the view of rivalling our trade and destroying our naval power; and this they suppose (and with good reason, too) must be the inevitable effect of their peace. It forms one of their principal grounds for suspecting our ministers could not be in good earnest in their proposition. They make no scruple beforehand to tell you the whole of what they intend; and this is what we call, in the modern style, the acceptance of a proposition for peace! In old language it would be called a most haughty, offensive, and insolent rejection of all treaty.

Thirdly, they tell you what they conceive to be the perfidious policy which dictates your delusive offer: that is, the design of cheating not only them, but the people of England, against whose interest and inclination this war is supposed to be carried on.

If we proceed in this business, under this preliminary declaration, it seems to me that we admit, (now for the third time,) by something a great deal stronger than words, the truth of the charges of every kind which they make upon the British ministry, and the grounds of those foul imputations. The language used by us, which in other circumstances would not be exceptionable, in this case tends very strongly to confirm and realize the suspicion of our enemy: I mean the declaration, that, if we do not obtain such terms of peace as suits our opinion of what our interests require, then, and in that case, we shall continue the war with vigor. This offer, so reasoned, plainly implies, that, without it, our leaders themselves entertain great doubts of the opinion and good affections of the British people; otherwise there does not appear any cause why we should proceed, under the scandalous construction of our enemy, upon the former offer made by Mr. Wickham, and on the new offer made directly at Paris. It is not, therefore, from a sense of dignity, but from the danger of radicating that false sentiment in the breasts of the enemy, that I think, under the auspices of this declaration, we cannot, with the least hope of a good event, or, indeed, with any regard to the common safety, proceed in the train of this negotiation. I wish ministry would seriously consider the importance of their seeming to confirm the enemy in an opinion that his frequent use of appeals to the people against their government has not been without its effect. If it puts an end to this war, it will render another impracticable.

Whoever goes to the Directorial presence under this passport, with this offensive comment and foul explanation, goes, in the avowed sense of the court to which he is sent, as the instrument of a government dissociated from the interests and wishes of the nation, for the purpose of cheating both the people of France and the people of England. He goes out the declared emissary of a faithless ministry. He has perfidy for his credentials. He has national weakness for his full powers. I yet doubt whether any one can be found to invest himself with that character. If there should, it would be pleasant to read his instructions on the answer which he is to give to the Directory, in case they should repeat to him the substance of the manifesto which he carries with him in his portfolio.

So much for the first manifesto of the Regicide Court which went along with the passport. Lest this declaration should seem the effect of haste, or a mere sudden effusion of pride and insolence, on full deliberation, about a week after comes out a second. This manifesto is dated the 5th of October, one day before the speech from the throne, on the vigil of the festive day of cordial unanimity so happily celebrated by all parties in the British Parliament. In this piece the Regicides, our worthy friends, (I call them by advance and by courtesy what by law I shall be obliged to call them hereafter,) our worthy friends, I say, renew and enforce the former declaration concerning our faith and sincerity, which they pinned to our passport. On three other points, which run through all their declarations, they are more explicit than ever.

First, they more directly undertake to be the real representatives of the people of this kingdom: and on a supposition, in which they agree with our Parliamentary reformers, that the House of Commons is not that representative, the function being vacant, they, as our true constitutional organ, inform his Majesty and the world of the sense of the nation. They tell us that "the English people see with regret his Majesty's government squandering away the funds which had been granted to him." This astonishing assumption of the public voice of England is but a slight foretaste of the usurpation which, on a peace, we may be assured they will make of all the powers in all the parts of our vassal Constitution. "If they do these things in the green tree, what shall be done in the dry?"

Next they tell us, as a condition to our treaty, that "this government must abjure the unjust hatred it bears to them, and at last open its ears to the voice of humanity." Truly, this is, even from them, an extraordinary demand. Hitherto, it seems, we have put wax into our ears, to shut them up against the tender, soothing strains, in the affettuoso of humanity, warbled from the throats of Reubell, Carnot, Tallien, and the whole chorus of confiscators, domiciliary visitors, committee-men of research, jurors and presidents of revolutionary tribunals, regicides, assassins, massacrers, and Septembrisers. It is not difficult to discern what sort of humanity our government is to learn from these Siren singers. Our government also; I admit, with some reason, as a step towards the proposed fraternity, is required to abjure the unjust hatred which it bears to this body of honor and virtue. I thank God I am neither a minister nor a leader of opposition. I protest I cannot do what they desire. I could not do it, if I were under the guillotine,—or, as they ingeniously and pleasantly express it, "looking out of the little national window." Even at that opening I could receive none of their light. I am fortified against all such affections by the declaration of the government, which I must yet consider as lawful, made on the 29th of October, 1793,27 and still ringing in my ears. This Declaration was transmitted not only to all our commanders by sea and land, but to our ministers in every court of Europe. It is the most eloquent and highly finished in the style, the most judicious in the choice of topics, the most orderly in the arrangement, and the most rich in the coloring, without employing the smallest degree of exaggeration, of any state-paper that has ever yet appeared. An ancient writer (Plutarch, I think it is) quotes some verses on the eloquence of Pericles, who is called "the only orator that left stings in the minds of his hearers." Like his, the eloquence of the Declaration, not contradicting, but enforcing, sentiments of the truest humanity, has left stings that have penetrated more than skin-deep into my mind and never can they be extracted by all the surgery of murder; never can the throbbings they have created be assuaged by all the emollient cataplasms of robbery and confiscation. I cannot love the Republic.

The third point, which they have more clearly expressed than ever, is of equal importance with the rest, and with them furnishes a complete view of the Regicide system. For they demand as a condition, without which our ambassador of obedience cannot be received with any hope of success, that he shall be "provided with full powers to negotiate a peace between the French Republic and Great Britain, and to conclude it definitively between the TWO powers." With their spear they draw a circle about us. They will hear nothing of a joint treaty. We must make a peace separately from our allies. We must, as the very first and preliminary step, be guilty of that perfidy towards our friends and associates with which they reproach us in our transactions with them, our enemies. We are called upon scandalously to betray the fundamental securities to ourselves and to all nations. In my opinion, (it is perhaps but a poor one,) if we are meanly bold enough to send an ambassador such as this official note of the enemy requires, we cannot even dispatch our emissary without danger of being charged with a breach of our alliance. Government now understands the full meaning of the passport.

Strange revolutions have happened in the ways of thinking and in the feelings of men; but it is a very extraordinary coalition of parties indeed, and a kind of unheard-of unanimity in public councils, which can impose this new-discovered system of negotiation, as sound national policy, on the understanding of a spectator of this wonderful scene, who judges on the principles of anything he ever before saw, read, or heard of, and, above all, on the understanding of a person who has in his eye the transactions of the last seven years.

I know it is supposed, that, if good terms of capitulation are not granted, after we have thus so repeatedly hung out the white flag, the national spirit will revive with tenfold ardor. This is an experiment cautiously to be made. Reculer pour mieux sauter, according to the French byword, cannot be trusted to as a general rule of conduct. To diet a man into weakness and languor, afterwards to give him the greater strength, has more of the empiric than the rational physician. It is true that some persons have been kicked into courage,—and this is no bad hint to give to those who are too forward and liberal in bestowing insults and outrages on their passive companions; but such a course does not at first view appear a well-chosen discipline to form men to a nice sense of honor or a quick resentment of injuries. A long habit of humiliation does not seem a very good preparative to manly and vigorous sentiment. It may not leave, perhaps, enough of energy in the mind fairly to discern what are good terms or what are not. Men low and dispirited may regard those terms as not at all amiss which in another state of mind they would think intolerable: if they grow peevish in this state of mind, they may be roused, not against the enemy whom they have been taught to fear, but against the ministry,28 who are more within their reach, and who have refused conditions that are not unreasonable, from power that they have been taught to consider as irresistible.

If all that for some months I have heard have the least foundation, (I hope it has not,) the ministers are, perhaps, not quite so much to be blamed as their condition is to be lamented. I have been given to understand that these proceedings are not in their origin properly theirs. It is said that there is a secret in the House of Commons. It is said that ministers act, not according to the votes, but according to the dispositions, of the majority. I hear that the minority has long since spoken the general sense of the nation; and that to prevent those who compose it from having the open and avowed lead in that House, or perhaps in both Houses, it was necessary to preoccupy their ground, and to take their propositions out of their mouths, even with the hazard of being afterwards reproached with a compliance which it was foreseen would be fruitless.

If the general disposition of the people be, as I hear it is, for an immediate peace with Regicide, without so much as considering our public and solemn engagements to the party in France whose cause we had espoused, or the engagements expressed in our general alliances, not only without an inquiry into the terms, but with a certain knowledge that none but the worst terms will be offered, it is all over with us. It is strange, but it may be true, that, as the danger from Jacobinism is increased in my eyes and in yours, the fear of it is lessened in the eyes of many people who formerly regarded it with horror. It seems, they act under the impression of terrors of another sort, which have frightened them out of their first apprehensions. But let their fears, or their hopes, or their desires, be what they will, they should recollect that they who would make peace without a previous knowledge of the terms make a surrender. They are conquered. They do not treat; they receive the law. Is this the disposition of the people of England? Then the people of England are contented to seek in the kindness of a foreign, systematic enemy, combined with a dangerous faction at home, a security which they cannot find in their own patriotism and their own courage. They are willing to trust to the sympathy of regicides the guaranty of the British monarchy. They are content to rest their religion on the piety of atheists by establishment. They are satisfied to seek in the clemency of practised murderers the security of their lives. They are pleased to confide their property to the safeguard of those who are robbers by inclination, interest, habit, and system. If this be our deliberate mind, truly we deserve to lose, what it is impossible we should long retain, the name of a nation.