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

In matters of state, a constitutional competence to act is in many cases the smallest part of the question. Without disputing (God forbid I should dispute!) the sole competence of the king and the Parliament, each in its province, to decide on war and peace, I venture to say no war can be long carried on against the will of the people. This war, in particular, cannot be carried on, unless they are enthusiastically in favor of it. Acquiescence will not do. There must be zeal. Universal zeal in such a cause, and at such a time as this is, cannot be looked for; neither is it necessary. Zeal in the larger part carries the force of the whole. Without this, no government, certainly not our government, is capable of a great war. None of the ancient, regular governments have wherewithal to fight abroad with a foreign foe, and at home to overcome repining, reluctance, and chicane. It must be some portentous thing, like Regicide France, that can exhibit such a prodigy. Yet even she, the mother of monsters, more prolific than the country of old called ferax monstrorum, shows symptoms of being almost effete already; and she will be so, unless the fallow of a peace comes to recruit her fertility. But whatever may be represented concerning the meanness of the popular spirit, I, for one, do not think so desperately of the British nation. Our minds, as I said, are light, but they are not depraved. We are dreadfully open to delusion and to dejection; but we are capable of being animated and undeceived.

It cannot be concealed: we are a divided people. But in divisions, where a part is to be taken, we are to make a muster of our strength. I have often endeavored to compute and to class those who, in any political view, are to be called the people. Without doing something of this sort, we must proceed absurdly. We should not be much wiser, if we pretended to very great accuracy in our estimate; but I think, in the calculation I have made, the error cannot be very material. In England and Scotland, I compute that those of adult age, not declining in life, of tolerable leisure for such discussions, and of some means of information, more or less, and who are above menial dependence, (or what virtually is such,) may amount to about four hundred thousand. There is such a thing as a natural representative of the people. This body is that representative; and on this body, more than on the legal constituent, the artificial representative depends. This is the British public; and it is a public very numerous. The rest, when feeble, are the objects of protection,—when strong, the means of force. They who affect to consider that part of us in any other light insult while they cajole us; they do not want us for counsellors in deliberation, but to list us as soldiers for battle.

Of these four hundred thousand political citizens, I look upon one fifth, or about eighty thousand, to be pure Jacobins, utterly incapable of amendment, objects of eternal vigilance, and, when they break out, of legal constraint. On these, no reason, no argument, no example, no venerable authority, can have the slightest influence. They desire a change; and they will have it, if they can. If they cannot have it by English cabal, they will make no sort of scruple of having it by the cabal of France, into which already they are virtually incorporated. It is only their assured and confident expectation of the advantages of French fraternity, and the approaching blessings of Regicide intercourse, that skins over their mischievous dispositions with a momentary quiet.

This minority is great and formidable. I do not know whether, if I aimed at the total overthrow of a kingdom, I should wish to be incumbered with a larger body of partisans. They are more easily disciplined and directed than if the number were greater. These, by their spirit of intrigue, and by their restless agitating activity, are of a force far superior to their numbers, and, if times grew the least critical, have the means of debauching or intimidating many of those who are now sound, as well as of adding to their force large bodies of the more passive part of the nation. This minority is numerous enough to make a mighty cry for peace, or for war, or for any object they are led vehemently to desire. By passing from place to place with a velocity incredible, and diversifying their character and description, they are capable of mimicking the general voice. We must not always judge of the generality of the opinion by the noise of the acclamation.

The majority, the other four fifths, is perfectly sound, and of the best possible disposition to religion, to government, to the true and undivided interest of their country. Such men are naturally disposed to peace. They who are in possession of all they wish are languid and improvident. With this fault, (and I admit its existence in all its extent,) they would not endure to hear of a peace that led to the ruin of everything for which peace is dear to them. However, the desire of peace is essentially the weak side of that kind of men. All men that are ruined are ruined on the side of their natural propensities. There they are unguarded. Above all, good men do not suspect that their destruction is attempted through their virtues. This their enemies are perfectly aware of; and accordingly they, the most turbulent of mankind, who never made a scruple to shake the tranquillity of their country to its centre, raise a continual cry for peace with France. "Peace with Regicide, and war with the rest of the world," is their motto. From the beginning, and even whilst the French gave the blows, and we hardly opposed the vis inertiæ to their efforts, from that day to this hour, like importunate Guinea-fowls, crying one note day and night, they have called for peace.

In this they are, as I confess in all things they are, perfectly consistent. They who wish to unite themselves to your enemies naturally desire that you should disarm yourself by a peace with these enemies. But it passes my conception how they who wish well to their country on its ancient system of laws and manners come not to be doubly alarmed, when they find nothing but a clamor for peace in the mouths of the men on earth the least disposed to it in their natural or in their habitual character.

I have a good opinion of the general abilities of the Jacobins: not that I suppose them better born than others; but strong passions awaken the faculties; they suffer not a particle of the man to be lost. The spirit of enterprise gives to this description the full use of all their native energies. If I have reason to conceive that my enemy, who, as such, must have an interest in my destruction, is also a person of discernment and sagacity, then I must be quite sure, that, in a contest, the object he violently pursues is the very thing by which my ruin is likely to be the most perfectly accomplished. Why do the Jacobins cry for peace? Because they know, that, this point gained, the rest will follow of course. On our part, why are all the rules of prudence, as sure as the laws of material Nature, to be, at this time reversed? How comes it, that now, for the first time, men think it right to be governed by the counsels of their enemies? Ought they not rather to tremble, when they are persuaded to travel on the same road and to tend to the same place of rest?

The minority I speak of is not susceptible of an impression from the topics of argument to be used to the larger part of the community. I therefore do not address to them any part of what I have to say. The more forcibly I drive my arguments against their system, so as to make an impression where I wish to make it, the more strongly I rivet them in their sentiments. As for us, who compose the far larger, and what I call the far better part of the people, let me say, that we have not been quite fairly dealt with, when called to this deliberation. The Jacobin minority have been abundantly supplied with stores and provisions of all kinds towards their warfare. No sort of argumentative materials, suited to their purposes, have been withheld. False they are, unsound, sophistical; but they are regular in their direction. They all bear one way, and they all go to the support of the substantial merits of their cause. The others have not had the question so much as fairly stated to them.

There has not been in this century any foreign peace or war, in its origin the fruit of popular desire, except the war that was made with Spain in 1739. Sir Robert Walpole was forced into the war by the people, who were inflamed to this measure by the most leading politicians, by the first orators, and the greatest poets of the time. For that war Pope sang his dying notes. For that war Johnson, in more energetic strains, employed the voice of his early genius. For that war Glover distinguished himself in the way in which his muse was the most natural and happy. The crowd readily followed the politicians in the cry for a war which threatened little bloodshed, and which promised victories that were attended with something more solid than glory. A war with Spain was a war of plunder. In the present conflict with Regicide, Mr. Pitt has not hitherto had, nor will perhaps for a few days have, many prizes to hold out in the lottery of war, to tempt the lower part of our character. He can only maintain it by an appeal to the higher; and to those in whom that higher part is the most predominant he must look the most for his support. Whilst he holds out no inducements to the wise nor bribes to the avaricious, he may be forced by a vulgar cry into a peace ten times more ruinous than the most disastrous war. The weaker he is in the fund of motives which apply to our avarice, to our laziness, and to our lassitude, if he means to carry the war to any end at all, the stronger he ought to be in his addresses to our magnanimity and to our reason.

In stating that Walpole was driven by a popular clamor into a measure not to be justified, I do not mean wholly to excuse his conduct. My time of observation did not exactly coincide with that event, but I read much of the controversies then carried on. Several years after the contests of parties had ceased, the people were amused, and in a degree warmed with them. The events of that era seemed then of magnitude, which the revolutions of our time have reduced to parochial importance; and the debates which then shook the nation now appear of no higher moment than a discussion in a vestry. When I was very young, a general fashion told me I was to admire some of the writings against that minister; a little more maturity taught me as much to despise them. I observed one fault in his general proceeding. He never manfully put forward the entire strength of his cause. He temporized, be managed, and, adopting very nearly the sentiments of his adversaries, he opposed their inferences. This, for a political commander, is the choice of a weak post. His adversaries had the better of the argument as he handled it, not as the reason and justice of his cause enabled him to manage it. I say this, after having seen, and with some care examined, the original documents concerning certain important transactions of those times. They perfectly satisfied me of the extreme injustice of that war, and of the falsehood of the colors which, to his own ruin, and guided by a mistaken policy, he suffered to be daubed over that measure. Some years after, it was my fortune to converse with many of the principal actors against that minister, and with those who principally excited that clamor. None of them, no, not one, did in the least defend the measure, or attempt to justify their conduct. They condemned it as freely as they would have done in commenting upon any proceeding in history in which they were totally unconcerned. Thus it will be. They who stir up the people to improper desires, whether of peace or war, will be condemned by themselves. They who weakly yield to them will be condemned by history.

In my opinion, the present ministry are as far from doing full justice to their cause in this war as Walpole was from doing justice to the peace which at that time he was willing to preserve. They throw the light on one side only of their case; though it is impossible they should not observe that the other side, which is kept in the shade, has its importance too. They must know that France is formidable, not only as she is France, but as she is Jacobin France. They knew from the beginning that the Jacobin party was not confined to that country. They knew, they felt, the strong disposition of the same faction in both countries to communicate and to coöperate. For some time past, these two points have been kept, and even industriously kept, out of sight. France is considered as merely a foreign power, and the seditious English only as a domestic faction. The merits of the war with the former have been argued solely on political grounds. To prevent the mischievous doctrines of the latter from corrupting our minds, matter and argument have been supplied abundantly, and even to surfeit, on the excellency of our own government. But nothing has been done to make us feel in what manner the safety of that government is connected with the principle and with the issue of this war. For anything which in the late discussion has appeared, the war is entirely collateral to the state of Jacobinism,—as truly a foreign war to us and to all our home concerns as the war with Spain in 1739, about Guardacostas, the Madrid Convention, and the fable of Captain Jenkins's ears.

Whenever the adverse party has raised a cry for peace with the Regicide, the answer has been little more than this: "That the administration wished for such a peace full as much as the opposition, but that the time was not convenient for making it." Whatever else has been said was much in the same spirit. Reasons of this kind never touched the substantial merits of the war. They were in the nature of dilatory pleas, exceptions of form, previous questions. Accordingly, all the arguments against a compliance with what was represented as the popular desire (urged on with all possible vehemence and earnestness by the Jacobins) have appeared flat and languid, feeble and evasive. They appeared to aim only at gaining time. They never entered into the peculiar and distinctive character of the war. They spoke neither to the understanding nor to the heart. Cold as ice themselves, they never could kindle in our breasts a spark of that zeal which is necessary to a conflict with an adverse zeal; much less were they made to infuse into our minds that stubborn, persevering spirit which alone is capable of bearing up against those vicissitudes of fortune which will probably occur, and those burdens which must be inevitably borne, in a long war. I speak it emphatically, and with a desire that it should be marked,—in a long war; because, without such a war, no experience has yet told us that a dangerous power has ever been reduced to measure or to reason. I do not throw back my view to the Peloponnesian War of twenty-seven years; nor to two of the Punic Wars, the first of twenty-four, the second of eighteen; nor to the more recent war concluded by the Treaty of Westphalia, which continued, I think, for thirty. I go to what is but just fallen behind living memory, and immediately touches our own country. Let the portion of our history from the year 1689 to 1713 be brought before us. We shall find that in all that period of twenty-four years there were hardly five that could be called a season of peace; and the interval between the two wars was in reality nothing more than a very active preparation for renovated hostility. During that period, every one of the propositions of peace came from the enemy: the first, when they were accepted, at the Peace of Ryswick; the second, where they were rejected, at the Congress at Gertruydenberg; the last, when the war ended by the Treaty of Utrecht. Even then, a very great part of the nation, and that which contained by far the most intelligent statesmen, was against the conclusion of the war. I do not enter into the merits of that question as between the parties. I only state the existence of that opinion as a fact, from whence you may draw such an inference as you think properly arises from it.

It is for us at present to recollect what we have been, and to consider what, if we please, we may be still. At the period of those wars our principal strength was found in the resolution of the people, and that in the resolution of a part only of the then whole, which bore no proportion to our existing magnitude. England and Scotland were not united at the beginning of that mighty struggle. When, in the course of the contest, they were conjoined, it was in a raw, an ill-cemented, an unproductive, union. For the whole duration of the war, and long after, the names and other outward and visible signs of approximation rather augmented than diminished our insular feuds. They were rather the causes of new discontents and new troubles than promoters of cordiality and affection. The now single and potent Great Britain was then not only two countries, but, from the party heats in both, and the divisions formed in each of them, each of the old kingdoms within itself, in effect, was made up of two hostile nations. Ireland, now so large a source of the common opulence and power, and which, wisely managed, might be made much more beneficial and much more effective, was then the heaviest of the burdens. An army, not much less than forty thousand men, was drawn from the general effort, to keep that kingdom in a poor, unfruitful, and resourceless subjection.

Such was the state of the empire. The state of our finances was worse, if possible. Every branch of the revenue became less productive after the Revolution. Silver, not as now a sort of counter, but the body of the current coin, was reduced so low as not to have above three parts in four of the value in the shilling. In the greater part the value hardly amounted to a fourth. It required a dead expense of three millions sterling to renew the coinage. Public credit, that great, but ambiguous principle, which has so often been predicted as the cause of our certain ruin, but which for a century has been the constant companion, and often the means, of our prosperity and greatness, had its origin, and was cradled, I may say, in bankruptcy and beggary. At this day we have seen parties contending to be admitted, at a moderate premium, to advance eighteen millions to the exchequer. For infinitely smaller loans, the Chancellor of the Exchequer of that day, Montagu, the father of public credit, counter-securing the state by the appearance of the city with the Lord Mayor of London at his side, was obliged, like a solicitor for an hospital, to go cap in hand from shop to shop, to borrow an hundred pound, and even smaller sums. When made up in driblets as they could, their best securities were at an interest of twelve per cent. Even the paper of the Bank (now at par with cash, and generally preferred to it) was often at a discount of twenty per cent. By this the state of the rest may be judged.

As to our commerce, the imports and exports of the nation, now six-and-forty million, did not then amount to ten. The inland trade, which is commonly passed by in this sort of estimates, but which, in part growing out of the foreign, and connected with it, is more advantageous and more substantially nutritive to the state, is not only grown in a proportion of near five to one as the foreign, but has been augmented at least in a tenfold proportion. When I came to England, I remember but one river navigation, the rate of carriage on which was limited by an act of Parliament. It was made in the reign of William the Third. I mean that of the Aire and Calder. The rate was settled at thirteen pence. So high a price demonstrated the feebleness of these beginnings of our inland intercourse. In my time, one of the longest and sharpest contests I remember in your House, and which rather resembled a violent contention amongst national parties than a local dispute, was, as well as I can recollect, to hold the price up to threepence. Even this, which a very scanty justice to the proprietors required, was done with infinite difficulty. As to private credit, there were not, as I believe, twelve bankers' shops at that time out of London. In this their number, when I first saw the country, I cannot be quite exact; but certainly those machines of domestic credit were then very few. They are now in almost every market-town: and this circumstance (whether the thing be carried to an excess or not) demonstrates the astonishing increase of private confidence, of general circulation, and of internal commerce,—an increase out of all proportion to the growth of the foreign trade. Our naval strength in the time of King William's war was nearly matched by that of France; and though conjoined with Holland, then a maritime power hardly inferior to our own, even with that force we were not always victorious. Though finally superior, the allied fleets experienced many unpleasant reverses on their own element. In two years three thousand vessels were taken from the English trade. On the Continent we lost almost every battle we fought.

In 1697, (it is not quite an hundred years ago,) in that state of things, amidst the general debasement of the coin, the fall of the ordinary revenue, the failure of all the extraordinary supplies, the ruin of commerce, and the almost total extinction of an infant credit, the Chancellor of the Exchequer himself, whom we have just seen begging from door to door, came forward to move a resolution full of vigor, in which, far from being discouraged by the generally adverse fortune and the long continuance of the war, the Commons agreed to address the crown in the following manly, spirited, and truly animating style:—

"This is the EIGHTH year in which your Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Commons in Parliament assembled, have assisted your Majesty with large supplies for carrying on a just and necessary war, in defence of our religion, preservation of our laws, and vindication of the rights and liberties of the people of England."

Afterwards they proceed in this manner:—

"And to show to your Majesty and all Christendom that the Commons of England will not be amused or diverted from their firm resolutions of obtaining by WAR a safe and honorable peace, we do, in the name of all those we represent, renew our assurances to your Majesty that this House will support your Majesty and your government against all your enemies, both at home and abroad, and that they will effectually assist you in the prosecution and carrying on the present war against France."

The amusement and diversion they speak of was the suggestion of a treaty proposed by the enemy, and announced from the throne. Thus the people of England felt in the eighth, not in the fourth year of the war. No sighing or panting after negotiation; no motions from the opposition to force the ministry into a peace; no messages from ministers to palsy and deaden the resolution of Parliament or the spirit of the nation. They did not so much as advise the king to listen to the propositions of the enemy, nor to seek for peace, but through the mediation of a vigorous war. This address was moved in an hot, a divided, a factious, and, in a great part, disaffected House of Commons; and it was carried, nemine contradicente.

While that first war (which was ill smothered by the Treaty of Ryswick) slept in the thin ashes of a seeming peace, a new conflagration was in its immediate causes. A fresh and a far greater war was in preparation. A year had hardly elapsed, when arrangements were made for renewing the contest with tenfold fury. The steps which were taken, at that time, to compose, to reconcile, to unite, and to discipline all Europe against the growth of France, certainly furnish to a statesman the finest and most interesting part in the history of that great period. It formed the masterpiece of King William's policy, dexterity, and perseverance. Full of the idea of preserving not only a local civil liberty united with order to our country, but to embody it in the political liberty, the order, and the independence of nations united under a natural head, the king called upon his Parliament to put itself into a posture "to preserve to England the weight and influence it at present had on the councils and affairs ABROAD. It will be requisite Europe Should see you will not be wanting to yourselves."

Baffled as that monarch was, and almost heartbroken at the disappointment he met with in the mode he first proposed for that great end, he held on his course. He was faithful to his object; and in councils, as in arms, over and over again repulsed, over and over again he returned to the charge. All the mortifications he had suffered from the last Parliament, and the greater he had to apprehend from that newly chosen, were not capable of relaxing the vigor of his mind. He was in Holland when he combined the vast plan of his foreign negotiations. When he came to open his design to his ministers in England, even the sober firmness of Somers, the undaunted resolution of Shrewsbury, and the adventurous spirit of Montagu and Orford were staggered. They were not yet mounted to the elevation of the king. The cabinet, then the regency, met on the subject at Tunbridge Wells, the 28th of August, 1698; and there, Lord Somers holding the pen, after expressing doubts on the state of the Continent, which they ultimately refer to the king, as best informed, they give him a most discouraging portrait of the spirit of this nation. "So far as relates to England," say these ministers, "it would be want of duty not to give your Majesty this clear account: that there is a deadness and want of spirit in the nation universally, so as not at all to be disposed to the thought of entering into a new war; and that they seem to be tired out with taxes to a degree beyond what was discerned, till it appeared upon the occasion of the late elections. This is the truth of the fact, upon which your Majesty will determine what resolutions are proper to be taken."