The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 04 (of 12)

It is, however, out of these, or of such as these, guilty and impenitent, despising the experience of others, and their own, that some people talk of choosing their negotiators with those Jacobins who they suppose may be recovered to a sounder mind. They flatter themselves, it seems, that the friendly habits formed during their original partnership of iniquity, a similarity of character, and a conformity in the groundwork of their principles, might facilitate their conversion, and gain them over to some recognition of royalty. But surely this is to read human nature very ill. The several sectaries in this schism of the Jacobins are the very last men in the world to trust each other. Fellowship in treason is a bad ground of confidence. The last quarrels are the sorest; and the injuries received or offered by your own associates are ever the most bitterly resented. The people of France, of every name and description, would a thousand times sooner listen to the Prince de Condé, or to the Archbishop of Aix, or the Bishop of St. Pol, or to Monsieur de Cazalès, then to La Fayette, or Dumouriez, or the Vicomte de Noailles, or the Bishop of Autun, or Necker, or his disciple Lally Tollendal. Against the first description they have not the smallest animosity, beyond that of a merely political dissension. The others they regard as traitors.

The first description is that of the Christian Royalists, men who as earnestly wished for reformation, as they opposed innovation in the fundamental parts of their Church and State. Their part has been very decided. Accordingly, they are to be set aside in the restoration of Church and State. It is an odd kind of disqualification, where the restoration of religion and monarchy is the question. If England should (God forbid it should!) fall into the same misfortune with France, and that the court of Vienna should undertake the restoration of our monarchy, I think it would be extraordinary to object to the admission of Mr. Pitt or Lord Grenville or Mr. Dundas into any share in the management of that business, because in a day of trial they have stood up firmly and manfully, as I trust they always will do, and with distinguished powers, for the monarchy and the legitimate Constitution of their country. I am sure, if I were to suppose myself at Vienna at such a time, I should, as a man, as an Englishman, and as a Royalist, protest in that case, as I do in this, against a weak and ruinous principle of proceeding, which can have no other tendency than to make those who wish to support the crown meditate too profoundly on the consequences of the part they take, and consider whether for their open and forward zeal in the royal cause they may not be thrust out from any sort of confidence and employment, where the interest of crowned heads is concerned.

These are the parties. I have said, and said truly, that I know of no neutrals. But, as a general observation on this general principle of choosing neutrals on such occasions as the present, I have this to say, that it amounts to neither more nor less than this shocking proposition,—that we ought to exclude men of honor and ability from serving theirs and our cause, and to put the dearest interests of ourselves and our posterity into the hands of men of no decided character, without judgment to choose and without courage to profess any principle whatsoever.

Such men can serve no cause, for this plain reason,—they have no cause at heart. They can, at best, work only as mere mercenaries. They have not been guilty of great crimes; but it is only because they have not energy of mind to rise to any height of wickedness. They are not hawks or kites: they are only miserable fowls whose flight is not above their dunghill or hen-roost. But they tremble before the authors of these horrors. They admire them at a safe and respectful distance. There never was a mean and abject mind that did not admire an intrepid and dexterous villain. In the bottom of their hearts they believe such hardy miscreants to be the only men qualified for great affairs. If you set them to transact with such persons, they are instantly subdued. They dare not so much as look their antagonist in the face. They are made to be their subjects, not to be their arbiters or controllers.

These men, to be sure, can look at atrocious acts without indignation, and can behold suffering virtue without sympathy. Therefore they are considered as sober, dispassionate men. But they have their passions, though of another kind, and which are infinitely more likely to carry them out of the path of their duty. They are of a tame, timid, languid, inert temper, wherever the welfare of others is concerned. In such causes, as they have no motives to action, they never possess any real ability, and are totally destitute of all resource.

Believe a man who has seen much and observed something. I have seen, in the course of my life, a great many of that family of men. They are generally chosen because they have no opinion of their own; and as far as they can be got in good earnest to embrace any opinion, it is that of whoever happens to employ them, (neither longer nor shorter, narrower nor broader,) with whom they have no discussion or consultation. The only thing which occurs to such a man, when he has got a business for others into his hands, is, how to make his own fortune out of it. The person he is to treat with is not, with him, an adversary over whom he is to prevail, but a new friend he is to gain; therefore he always systematically betrays some part of his trust. Instead of thinking how he shall defend his ground to the last, and, if forced to retreat, how little he shall give up, this kind of man considers how much of the interest of his employer he is to sacrifice to his adversary. Having nothing but himself in view, he knows, that, in serving his principal with zeal, he must probably incur some resentment from the opposite party. His object is, to obtain the good-will of the person with whom he contends, that, when an agreement is made, he may join in rewarding him. I would not take one of these as my arbitrator in a dispute for so much as a fish-pond; for, if he reserved the mud to me, he would be sure to give the water that fed the pool to my adversary. In a great cause, I should certainly wish that my agent should possess conciliating qualities: that he should be of a frank, open, and candid disposition, soft in his nature, and of a temper to soften animosities and to win confidence. He ought not to be a man odious to the person he treats with, by personal injury, by violence, or by deceit, or, above all, by the dereliction of his cause in any former transactions. But I would be sure that my negotiator should be mine,—that he should be as earnest in the cause as myself, and known to be so,—that he should not be looked upon as a stipendiary advocate, but as a principled partisan. In all treaty it is a great point that all idea of gaining your agent is hopeless. I would not trust the cause of royalty with a man who, professing neutrality, is half a republican. The enemy has already a great part of his suit without a struggle,—and he contends with advantage for all the rest. The common principle allowed between your adversary and your agent gives your adversary the advantage in every discussion.

Before I shut up this discourse about neutral agency, (which I conceive is not to be found, or, if found, ought not to be used,) I have a few other remarks to make on the cause which I conceive gives rise to it.

In all that we do, whether in the struggle or after it, it is necessary that we should constantly have in our eye the nature and character of the enemy we have to contend with. The Jacobin Revolution is carried on by men of no rank, of no consideration, of wild, savage minds, full of levity, arrogance, and presumption, without morals, without probity, without prudence. What have they, then, to supply their innumerable defects, and to make them terrible even to the firmest minds? One thing, and one thing only,—but that one thing is worth a thousand;—they have energy. In France, all things being put into an universal ferment, in the decomposition of society, no man comes forward but by his spirit of enterprise and the vigor of his mind. If we meet this dreadful and portentous energy, restrained by no consideration of God or man, that is always vigilant, always on the attack, that allows itself no repose, and suffers none to rest an hour with impunity,—if we meet this energy with poor commonplace proceeding, with trivial maxims, paltry old saws, with doubts, fears, and suspicions, with a languid, uncertain hesitation, with a formal, official spirit, which is turned aside by every obstacle from its purpose, and which never sees a difficulty but to yield to it, or at best to evade it,—down we go to the bottom of the abyss, and nothing short of Omnipotence can save us. We must meet a vicious and distempered energy with a manly and rational vigor. As virtue is limited in its resources, we are doubly bound to use all that in the circle drawn about us by our morals we are able to command.

I do not contend against the advantages of distrust. In the world we live in it is but too necessary. Some of old called it the very sinews of discretion. But what signify commonplaces that always run parallel and equal? Distrust is good, or it is bad, according to our position and our purpose. Distrust is a defensive principle. They who have much to lose have much to fear. But in France we hold nothing. We are to break in upon a power in possession; we are to carry everything by storm, or by surprise, or by intelligence, or by all. Adventure, therefore, and not caution, is our policy. Here to be too presuming is the better error.

The world will judge of the spirit of our proceeding in those places of France which may fall into our power by our conduct in those that are already in our hands. Our wisdom should not be vulgar. Other times, perhaps other measures; but in this awful hour our politics ought to be made up of nothing but courage, decision, manliness, and rectitude. We should have all the magnanimity of good faith. This is a royal and commanding policy; and as long as we are true to it, we may give the law. Never can we assume this command, if we will not risk the consequences. For which reason we ought to be bottomed enough in principle not to be carried away upon the first prospect of any sinister advantage. For depend upon it, that, if we once give way to a sinister dealing, we shall teach others the game, and we shall be outwitted and overborne; the Spaniards, the Prussians, God knows who, will put us under contribution at their pleasure; and instead of being at the head of a great confederacy, and the arbiters of Europe, we shall, by our mistakes, break up a great design into a thousand little selfish quarrels, the enemy will triumph, and we shall sit down under the terms of unsafe and dependent peace, weakened, mortified, and disgraced, whilst all Europe, England included, is left open and defenceless on every part, to Jacobin principles, intrigues, and arms. In the case of the king of France, declared to be our friend and ally, we will still be considering ourselves in the contradictory character of an enemy. This contradiction, I am afraid, will, in spite of us, give a color of fraud to all our transactions, or at least will so complicate our politics that we shall ourselves be inextricably entangled in them.

I have Toulon in my eye. It was with infinite sorrow I heard, that, in taking the king of France's fleet in trust, we instantly unrigged and dismasted the ships, instead of keeping them in a condition to escape in case of disaster, and in order to fulfil our trust,—that is, to hold them for the use of the owner, and in the mean time to employ them for our common service. These ships are now so circumstanced, that, if we are forced to evacuate Toulon, they must fall into the hands of the enemy or be burnt by ourselves. I know this is by some considered as a fine thing for us. But the Athenians ought not to be better than the English, or Mr. Pitt less virtuous than Aristides.

Are we, then, so poor in resources that we can do no better with eighteen or twenty ships of the line than to burn them? Had we sent for French Royalist naval officers, of which some hundreds are to be had, and made them select such seamen as they could trust, and filled the rest with our own and Mediterranean seamen, which are all over Italy to be had by thousands, and put them under judicious English commanders-in-chief, and with a judicious mixture of our own subordinates, the West Indies would at this day have been ours. It may be said that these French officers would take them for the king of France, and that they would not be in our power. Be it so. The islands would not be ours, but they would not be Jacobinized. This is, however, a thing impossible. They must in effect and substance be ours. But all is upon that false principle of distrust, which, not confiding in strength, can never have the full use of it. They that pay, and feed, and equip, must direct. But I must speak plain upon this subject. The French islands, if they were all our own, ought not to be all kept. A fair partition only ought to be made of those territories. This is a subject of policy very serious, which has many relations and aspects. Just here I only hint at it as answering an objection, whilst I state the mischievous consequences which suffer us to be surprised into a virtual breach of faith by confounding our ally with our enemy, because they both belong to the same geographical territory.

My clear opinion is, that Toulon ought to be made, what we set out with, a royal French city. By the necessity of the case, it must be under the influence, civil and military, of the allies. But the only way of keeping that jealous and discordant mass from tearing its component parts to pieces, and hazarding the loss of the whole, is, to put the place into the nominal government of the regent, his officers being approved by us. This, I say, is absolutely necessary for a poise amongst ourselves. Otherwise is it to be believed that the Spaniards, who hold that place with us in a sort of partnership, contrary to our mutual interest, will see us absolute masters of the Mediterranean, with Gibraltar on one side and Toulon on the other, with a quiet and composed mind, whilst we do little less than declare that we are to take the whole West Indies into our hands, leaving the vast, unwieldy, and feeble body of the Spanish dominions in that part of the world absolutely at our mercy, without any power to balance us in the smallest degree? Nothing is so fatal to a nation as an extreme of self-partiality, and the total want of consideration of what others will naturally hope or fear. Spain must think she sees that we are taking advantage of the confusions which reign in France to disable that country, and of course every country, from affording her protection, and in the end to turn the Spanish monarchy into a province. If she saw things in a proper point of light, to be sure, she would not consider any other plan of politics as of the least moment in comparison of the extinction of Jacobinism. But her ministers (to say the best of them) are vulgar politicians. It is no wonder that they should postpone this great point, or balance it by considerations of the common politics, that is, the questions of power between state and state. If we manifestly endeavor to destroy the balance, especially the maritime and commercial balance, both in Europe and the West Indies, (the latter their sore and vulnerable part,) from fear of what France may do for Spain hereafter, is it to be wondered that Spain, infinitely weaker than we are, (weaker, indeed, than such a mass of empire ever was,) should feel the same fears from our uncontrolled power that we give way to ourselves from a supposed resurrection of the ancient power of France under a monarchy? It signifies nothing whether we are wrong or right in the abstract; but in respect to our relation to Spain, with such principles followed up in practice, it is absolutely impossible that any cordial alliance can subsist between the two nations. If Spain goes, Naples will speedily follow. Prussia is quite certain, and thinks of nothing but making a market of the present confusions. Italy is broken and divided. Switzerland is Jacobinized, I am afraid, completely. I have long seen with pain the progress of French principles in that country. Things cannot go on upon the present bottom. The possession of Toulon, which, well managed, might be of the greatest advantage, will be the greatest misfortune that ever happened to this nation. The more we multiply troops there, the more we shall multiply causes and means of quarrel amongst ourselves. I know but one way of avoiding it, which is, to give a greater degree of simplicity to our politics. Our situation does necessarily render them a good deal involved. And to this evil, instead of increasing it, we ought to apply all the remedies in our power.

See what is in that place the consequence (to say nothing of every other) of this complexity. Toulon has, as it were, two gates,—an English and a Spanish. The English gate is by our policy fast barred against the entrance of any Royalists. The Spaniards open theirs, I fear, upon no fixed principle, and with very little judgment. By means, however, of this foolish, mean, and jealous policy on our side, all the Royalists whom the English might select as most practicable, and most subservient to honest views, are totally excluded. Of those admitted the Spaniards are masters. As to the inhabitants, they are a nest of Jacobins, which is delivered into our hands, not from principle, but from fear. The inhabitants of Toulon may be described in a few words. It is differtum nautis, cauponibus atque malignis. The rest of the seaports are of the same description.

Another thing which I cannot account for is, the sending for the Bishop of Toulon and afterwards forbidding his entrance. This is as directly contrary to the declaration as it is to the practice of the allied powers. The king of Prussia did better. When he took Verdun, he actually reinstated the bishop and his chapter. When he thought he should be the master of Chalons, he called the bishop from Flanders, to put him into possession. The Austrians have restored the clergy wherever they obtained possession. We have proposed to restore religion as well as monarchy; and in Toulon we have restored neither the one nor the other. It is very likely that the Jacobin sans-culottes, or some of them, objected to this measure, who rather choose to have the atheistic buffoons of clergy they have got to sport with, till they are ready to come forward, with the rest of their worthy brethren, in Paris and other places, to declare that they are a set of impostors, that they never believed in God, and never will preach any sort of religion. If we give way to our Jacobins in this point, it is fully and fairly putting the government, civil and ecclesiastical, not in the king of France, to whom, as the protector and governor, and in substance the head of the Gallican Church, the nomination to the bishoprics belonged, and who made the Bishop of Toulon,—it does not leave it with him, or even in the hands of the king of England, or the king of Spain,—but in the basest Jacobins of a low seaport, to exercise, pro tempore, the sovereignty. If this point of religion is thus given up, the grand instrument for reclaiming France is abandoned. We cannot, if we would, delude ourselves about the true state of this dreadful contest. It is a religious war. It includes in its object, undoubtedly, every other interest of society as well as this; but this is the principal and leading feature. It is through this destruction of religion that our enemies propose the accomplishment of all their other views. The French Revolution, impious at once and fanatical, had no other plan for domestic power and foreign empire. Look at all the proceedings of the National Assembly, from the first day of declaring itself such, in the year 1789, to this very hour, and you will find full half of their business to be directly on this subject. In fact, it is the spirit of the whole. The religious system, called the Constitutional Church, was, on the face of the whole proceeding, set up only as a mere temporary amusement to the people, and so constantly stated in all their conversations, till the time should come when they might with safety cast off the very appearance of all religion whatsoever, and persecute Christianity throughout Europe with fire and sword. The Constitutional clergy are not the ministers of any religion: they are the agents and instruments of this horrible conspiracy against all morals. It was from a sense of this, that, in the English addition to the articles proposed at St. Domingo, tolerating all religions, we very wisely refused to suffer that kind of traitors and buffoons.

This religious war is not a controversy between sect and sect, as formerly, but a war against all sects and all religions. The question is not, whether you are to overturn the Catholic, to set up the Protestant. Such an idea, in the present state of the world, is too contemptible. Our business is, to leave to the schools the discussion of the controverted points, abating as much as we can the acrimony of disputants on all sides. It is for Christian statesmen, as the world is now circumstanced, to secure their common basis, and not to risk the subversion of the whole fabric by pursuing these distinctions with an ill-timed zeal. We have in the present grand alliance all modes of government, as well as all modes of religion. In government, we mean to restore that which, notwithstanding our diversity of forms, we are all agreed in as fundamental in government. The same principle ought to guide us in the religious part: conforming the mode, not to our particular ideas, (for in that point we have no ideas in common,) but to what will best promote the great, general ends of the alliance. As statesmen, we are to see which of those modes best suits with the interests of such a commonwealth as we wish to secure and promote. There can be no doubt but that the Catholic religion, which is fundamentally the religion of France, must go with the monarchy of France. We know that the monarchy did not survive the hierarchy, no, not even in appearance, for many months,—in substance, not for a single hour. As little can it exist in future, if that pillar is taken away, or even shattered and impaired.

If it should please God to give to the allies the means of restoring peace and order in that focus of war and confusion, I would, as I said in the beginning of this memorial, first replace the whole of the old clergy; because we have proof more than sufficient, that, whether they err or not in the scholastic disputes with us, they are not tainted with atheism, the great political evil of the time. I hope I need not apologize for this phrase, as if I thought religion nothing but policy: it is far from my thoughts, and I hope it is not to be inferred from my expressions. But in the light of policy alone I am here considering the question. I speak of policy, too, in a large light; in which large light, policy, too, is a sacred thing.

There are many, perhaps half a million or more, calling themselves Protestants, in the South of France, and in other of the provinces. Some raise them to a much greater number; but I think this nearer to the mark. I am sorry to say that they have behaved shockingly since the very beginning of this rebellion, and have been uniformly concerned in its worst and most atrocious acts. Their clergy are just the same atheists with those of the Constitutional Catholics, but still more wicked and daring. Three of their number have met from their republican associates the reward of their crimes.

As the ancient Catholic religion is to be restored for the body of France, the ancient Calvinistic religion ought to be restored for the Protestants, with every kind of protection and privilege. But not one minister concerned in this rebellion ought to be suffered amongst them. If they have not clergy of their own, men well recommended, as untainted with Jacobinism, by the synods of those places where Calvinism prevails and French is spoken, ought to be sought. Many such there are. The Presbyterian discipline ought, in my opinion, to be established in its vigor, and the people professing it ought to be bound to its maintenance. No man, under the false and hypocritical pretence of liberty of conscience, ought to be suffered to have no conscience at all. The king's commissioner ought also to sit in their synods, as before the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. I am conscious that this discipline disposes men to republicanism: but it is still a discipline, and it is a cure (such as it is) for the perverse and undisciplined habits which for some time have prevailed. Republicanism repressed may have its use in the composition of a state. Inspection may be practicable, and responsibility in the teachers and elders may be established, in such an hierarchy as the Presbyterian. For a time like ours, it is a great point gained, that people should be taught to meet, to combine, and to be classed and arrayed in some other way than in clubs of Jacobins. If it be not the best mode of Protestantism under a monarchy, it is still an orderly Christian church, orthodox in the fundamentals, and, what is to our point, capable enough of rendering men useful citizens. It was the impolitic abolition of their discipline, which exposed them to the wild opinions and conduct that have prevailed amongst the Huguenots. The toleration in 1787 was owing to the good disposition of the late king; but it was modified by the profligate folly of his atheistic minister, the Cardinal de Loménie. This mischievous minister did not follow, in the edict of toleration, the wisdom of the Edict of Nantes. But his toleration was granted to non-Catholics,—a dangerous word, which might signify anything, and was but too expressive of a fatal indifference with regard to all piety. I speak for myself: I do not wish any man to be converted from his sect. The distinctions which we have reformed from animosity to emulation may be even useful to the cause of religion. By some moderate contention they keep alive zeal. Whereas people who change, except under strong conviction, (a thing now rather rare,) the religion of their early prejudices, especially if the conversion is brought about by any political machine, are very apt to degenerate into indifference, laxity, and often downright atheism.