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keep the people together; they refresh the mind Whatever they are, I wish my countrymes in its exertions; and they diffuse occasional gaiety rather to recommend to our neighbours the examover the severe brow of moral freedom. Every ple of the British constitution, than to ta politician ought to sacrifice to the graces; and to models from them for the improvement of e join compliance with reason. But in such an un- own. In the former they have got an invaluate dertaking as that in France, all these subsidiary treasure. They are not, I think, without s sentiments and artifices are of little avail. To make causes of apprehension and complaint; but th a government requires no great prudence. Settle they do not owe to their constitution, but to tier the seat of power; teach obedience: and the work own conduct. I think our happy situation own is done. To give freedom is still more easy. It is to our constitution; but owing to the whole of not necessary to guide; it only requires to let go and not to any part singly; owing in a great the rein. But to form a free government; that is, to measure to what we have left standing in temper together these opposite elements of liberty several reviews and reformations, as well as " and restraint in one consistent work, requires much what we have altered or superadded. Our peop thought, deep reflection, a sagacious, powerful, and will find employment enough for a truly patriotics combining mind. This I do not find in those who free, and independent spirit, in guarding wh take the lead in the National Assembly. Perhaps they possess from violation. I would not excla they are not so miserably deficient as they appear. alteration neither; but even when I changed, I rather believe it. It would put them below the should be to preserve. I should be led to my rem common level of human understanding. But by a great grievance. In what I did, I should telew when the leaders choose to make themselves bid- the example of our ancestors. I would make ders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in reparation as nearly as possible in the style of the construction of the state, will be of no service. building. A politick caution, a guarded ciremThey will become flatterers instead of legislators; spection, a moral rather than a complexional the instruments, not the guides, of the people. If dity, were among the ruling principles of our any of them should happen to propose a scheme of fathers in their most decided conduct. Not b liberty, soberly limited, and defined with proper illuminated with the light of which the gent qualifications, he will be immediately outbid by of France tell us they have got so abundant as his competitors, who will produce something more they acted under a strong impression of the splendidly popular. Suspicions will be raised of rance and fallibility of mankind. He that his fidelity to his cause. Moderation will be stig- made them thus fallible, rewarded them for targ matized as the virtue of cowards; and compromise in their conduct attended to their nature. La as the prudence of traitors; until, in hopes of pre-imitate their caution, if we wish to deserve serving the credit which may enable him to temper, and moderate, on some occasions, the popular leader is obliged to become active in propagating doctrines, and establishing powers, that will afterwards defeat any sober purpose at which he ultimately might have aimed.

But am I so unreasonable as to see nothing at all that deserves commendation in the indefatigable labours of this assembly? I do not deny that among an infinite number of acts of violence and folly, some good may have been done. They who destroy every thing certainly will remove some grievance. They who make every thing new, have a chance that they may establish something beneficial. To give them credit for what they have done in virtue of the authority they have usurped, or to excuse them in the crimes by which that authority has been acquired, it must appear, that the same things could not have been accomplished without producing such a revolution. Most as suredly they might; because almost every one of the regulations made by them, which is not very equivocal, was either, in the cession of the king, voluntarily made at the meeting of the states, or in the concurrent instructions to the orders. Some usages have been abolished on just grounds; but they were such, that if they had stood as they were to all eternity, they would little detract from the happiness and prosperity of any state. The improvements of the National Assembly are superficial, their errours fundamental.

fortune, or to retain their bequests. Let us |
if we please, but let us preserve what they
left; and, standing on the firm ground c =
British constitution, let us be satisfied to ad
rather than attempt to follow in their despe
flights the aeronauts of France.

Γ

I have told you candidly my sentiments i think they are not likely to alter yours. 1 know that they ought. You are young: cannot guide, but must follow the fortune of re country. But hereafter they may be of s use to you, in some future form which your c monwealth may take. In the present it hardly remain; but before its final settle it may be obliged to pass, as one of our p says, "through great varieties of untried be and in all its transmigrations to be purited fire and blood.

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I have little to recommend my opinions long observation and much impartiality. come from one who has been no tool of no flatterer of greatness; and who in Es acts does not wish to belie the tenour of Ls 2 They come from one, almost the whole of . publick exertion has been a struggle for å liberty of others; from one in whose breast" anger durable or vehement has ever been u dled, but by what he considered as tyranns and who snatches from his share in the r vours which are used by good men to d opulent oppression, the hours he has emp

n your affairs; and who in so doing persuades imself he has not departed from his usual office: hey come from one who desires honours, disnctions, and emoluments, but little; and who xpects them not at all; who has no contempt or fame, and no fear of obloquy; who shuns ontention, though he will hazard an opinion:

from one who wishes to preserve consistency, but who would preserve consistency by varying his means to secure the unity of his end; and, when the equipoise of the vessel in which he sails may be endangered by overloading it upon one side, is desirous of carrying the small weight of his reasons to that which may preserve its equipoise.

A

LETTER FROM MR. BURKE,

TO

A MEMBER OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY;

IN ANSWER

TO SOME OBJECTIONS TO HIS BOOK ON FRENCH AFFAIRS.

1791.

SIR,

I HAD the honour to receive your letter of the 17th of November last; in which, with some exceptions, you are pleased to consider favourably the letter I have written on the affairs of France. I shall ever accept any mark of approbation at tended with instruction with more pleasure than general and unqualified praises. The latter can serve only to flatter our vanity; the former, whilst it encourages us to proceed, may help to improve us in our progress.

Some of the errours you point out to me in my printed letter are really such. One only I find to be material. It is corrected in the edition which I take the liberty of sending to you. As to the cavils which may be made on some part of my remarks, with regard to the gradations in your new constitution, you observe justly that they do not affect the substance of my objections. Whether there be a round more or less in the ladder of representation, by which your workmen ascend from their parochial tyranny to their federal anarchy, when the whole scale is false, appears to me of little or no importance.

I published my thoughts on that constitution, that my countrymen might be enabled to estimate the wisdom of the plans which were held out to their imitation. I conceived that the true character of those plans would be best collected from the committee appointed to prepare them. I thought that the scheme of their building would be better comprehended in the design of the architects than in the execution of the masons. It was not worth my reader's while to occupy himself with the alterations by which bungling practice corrects absurd theory. Such an investigation would be endless because every day's past experience of impracticability has driven, and every day's future experience will drive, those men to new devices as

exceptionable as the old; and which are no ce wise worthy of observation than as they ge daily proof of the delusion of their promises. the falsehood of their professions. Had I fol all these changes, my letter would have been 4. a gazette of their wanderings; a journal of march from errour to errour, through a dry d desert, unguided by the lights of heaven, the contrivance which wisdom has invented supply their place.

I am unalterably persuaded, that the atten oppress, degrade, impoverish, confiscate, and tinguish the original gentlemen, and lande perty of a whole nation, cannot be justified a any

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form it may assume. I am satisfied beve doubt, that the project of turning a great e. into a vestry, or into a collection of vestries, of governing it in the spirit of a parochial ar nistration, is senseless and absurd, in any or with any qualifications. I can never b vinced, that the scheme of placing the his powers of the state in churchwardens and s bles, and other such officers, guided by the pr dence of litigious attornies, and Jew brokers, set in action by shameless women of the condition, by keepers of hotels, taverns, an thels, by pert apprentices, by clerks, shop hair-dressers, fiddlers, and dancers on the s (who, in such a commonwealth as yours, future overbear, as already they have over the sober incapacity of dull, uninstructed 2 useful but laborious occupations,) can never b into any shape, that must not be both disa and destructive. The whole of this project, i if it were what it pretends to be, and was D reality, the dominion, through that dista medium, of half a dozen, or perhaps fewer triguing politicians, is so mean, so low-mnd.

stupid a contrivance, in point of wisdom, as well is so perfectly detestable for its wickedness, that I nust always consider the correctives, which might nake it in any degree practicable, to be so many new objections to it.

In that wretched state of things, some are afraid hat the authors of your miseries may be led to recipitate their further designs, by the hints they nay receive from the very arguments used to xpose the absurdity of their system, to mark the ncongruity of its parts, and its inconsistency with heir own principles; and that your masters may e led to render their schemes more consistent, by endering them more mischievous. Excuse the berty which your indulgence authorizes me to ake, when I observe to you, that such apprehenons as these would prevent all exertion of our culties in this great cause of mankind. •`

A rash recourse to force is not to be justified in state of real weakness. Such attempts bring on isgrace; and, in their failure, discountenance and iscourage more rational endeavours. But reason to be hazarded, though it may be perverted by aft and sophistry; for reason can suffer no loss or shame, nor can it impede any useful plan of ture policy. In the unavoidable uncertainty, as the effect, which attends on every measure of iman prudence, nothing seems a surer antidote the poison of fraud than its detection. It is ue the fraud may be swallowed after this disvery; and perhaps even swallowed the more eedily for being a detected fraud. Men somenes make a point of honour not to be disabused; id they had rather fall into an hundred errours an confess one. But after all,-when neither ir principles nor our dispositions, nor, perhaps, ir talents, enable us to encounter delusion with lusion, we must use our best reason to those that ight to be reasonable creatures, and to take our ance for the event. We cannot act on these omalies in the minds of men. I do not conive that the persons who have contrived these ings can be made much the better or the worse r any thing which can be said to them. They e reason proof. Here and there, some men, who ere at first carried away by wild, good intentions, ay be led, when their first fervours are abated, join in a sober survey of the schemes into which ey had been deluded. To those only (and I am rry to say they are not likely to make a large cription) we apply with any hope. I may speak upon an assurance almost approaching to absote knowledge, that nothing has been done that has ot been contrived from the beginning, even before e states had assembled. Nulla nova mihi res opinare surgit. They are the same men and the me designs that they were from the first, though aried in their appearance. It was the very same imal that at first crawled about in the shape of caterpillar, that you now see rise into the air, nd expand his wings to the sun.

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effectually exposed, than by demonstrating that they lead to consequences directly inconsistent with and subversive of the arrangements grounded upon them? If this kind of demonstration is not permitted, the process of reasoning called deductio ad absurdum which even the severity of geometry does not reject, could not be employed at all in legislative discussions. One of our strongest weapons against folly acting with authority would be lost.

You know, Sir, that even the virtuous efforts of your patriots to prevent the ruin of your country have had this very turn given to them. It has been said here, and in France too, that the reigning usurpers would not have carried their tyranny to such destructive lengths, if they had not been stimulated and provoked to it by the acrimony of your opposition. There is a dilemma to which every opposition to successful iniquity must, in the nature of things, be liable. If you lie still, you are considered as an accomplice in the measures in which you silently acquiesce. If you resist, you are accused of provoking irritable power to new excesses. The conduct of a losing party never appears right: at least it never can possess the only infallible criterion of wisdom to vulgar judgments-success.

The indulgence of a sort of undefined hope, an obscure confidence, that some lurking remains of virtue, some degree of shame, might exist in the breasts of the oppressors of France, has been among the causes which have helped to bring on the common ruin of king and people. There is no safety for honest men, but by believing all possible evil of evil men, and by acting with promptitude, decision, and steadiness on that belief. I well remember at every epocha of this wonderful history, in every scene of this tragick business, that when your sophistick usurpers were laying down mischievous principles, and even applying them in direct resolutions, it was the fashion to say, that they never intended to execute those declarations in their rigour. This made men careless in their opposition, and remiss in early precaution. By holding out this fallacious hope, the impostors deluded sometimes one description of men, and sometimes another, so that no means of resistance were provided against them, when they came to execute in cruelty what they had planned in fraud.

There are cases in which a man would be ashamed not to have been imposed on. There is a confidence necessary to human intercourse, and without which men are often more injured by their own suspicions than they would be by the perfidy of others. But when men whom we know to be wicked impose upon us, we are something worse than dupes. When we know them, their fair pretences become new motives for distrust. There is one case indeed, in which it would be madness not to give the fullest credit to the most deceitful of men, that is, when they make decla

Proceeding, therefore, as we are obliged to pro-rations of hostility against us. Ped, that is, upon an hypothesis that we address I find that some persons entertain other hopes, tional men, can false political principles be more which I confess appear more specious than those

by which at first so many were deluded and disarmed. They flatter themselves that the extreme misery brought upon the people by their folly will at last open the eyes of the multitude, if not of their leaders. Much the contrary, I fear. As to the leaders in this system of imposture, you know, that cheats and deceivers never can repent. The fraudulent have no resource but in fraud. They have no other goods in their magazine. They have no virtue or wisdom in their minds, to which, in a disappointment concerning the profitable effects of fraud and cunning, they can retreat. The wearing out of an old serves only to put them upon the invention of a new delusion. Unluckily too, the credulity of dupes is as inexhaustible as the invention of knaves. They never give people possession; but they always keep them in hope. Your state doctors do not so much as pretend that any good whatsoever has hitherto been derived from their operations, or that the publick has prospered in any one instance, under their management. The nation is sick, very sick, by their medicines. But the charlatan tells them that what is passed cannot be helped ; they have taken the draught, and they must wait its operation with patience;-that the first effects indeed are unpleasant, but that the very sickness is a proof that the dose is of no sluggish operation; that sickness is inevitable in all constitutional revolutions;—that the body must pass through pain to ease; that the prescriber is not an empirick who proceeds by vulgar experience, but one who grounds this practice on the sure rules of art, which cannot possibly fail. You have read, Sir, the last manifesto, or mountebank's bill, of the National Assembly. You see their presumption in their promises is not lessened by all their failures in the performance. Compare this last address of the Assembly and the present state of your affairs with the early engagements of that body; engagements which, not content with declaring, they solemnly deposed upon oath; swearing lustily, that if they were supported they would make their country glorious and happy; and then judge whether those who can write such things, or those who can bear to read them, are of themselves to be brought to any reasonable course of thought or action.

As to the people at large, when once these miserable sheep have broken the fold, and have got themselves loose, not from the restraint, but from the protection, of all the principles of natural authority and legitimate subordination, they become the natural prey of impostors. When they have once tasted of the flattery of knaves, they can no longer endure reason, which appears to them only in the form of censure and reproach. Great distress has never hitherto taught, and whilst the world lasts it never will teach, wise lessons to any part of mankind. Men are as much blinded by the extremes of misery as by the extremes of prosperity. Desperate situations produce desperate

It is said in the last quackish address of the National Assembly to the people of France, that they have not formed their

councils and desperate measures. The people w France, almost generally, have been taught to look for other resources than those which can be de rived from order, frugality, and industry. Th are generally armed; and they are made to exper much from the use of arms. Nihil non arrog armis. Besides this, the retrograde order of ciety has something flattering to the disposition of mankind. The life of adventurers, gamestes gipsies, beggars, and robbers is not unpleaser: It requires restraint to keep men from falling that habit. The shifting tides of fear and b the flight and pursuit, the peril and escape t alternate famine and feasts of the savage and thief, after a time, render all course of slow, steat progressive, unvaried occupation, and the ppect only of a limited mediocrity at the e long labour, to the last degree tame, languid. a insipid. Those who have been once intoxic with power, and have derived any kind of ene ment from it, even though but for one year, can willingly abandon it. They may be distre in the midst of all their power; but they never look to any thing but power for their re When did distress ever oblige a prince to abs his authority? And what effect will it have those who are made to believe themselves a pe of princes?

The more active and stirring part of the orders having got government, and the distrib of plunder into their hands, they will use t sources in each municipality to form a bo adherents. These rulers, and their adherents. be strong enough to overpower the discontest those who have not been able to assert their " of the spoil. The unfortunate adventurerscheating lottery of plunder will probably b least sagacious, or the most inactive and irres of the gang. If, on disappointment, they sh dare to stir, they will soon be suppressed as and mutineers by their brother rebels. Se fed for a while with the offal of plunder, will drop off by degrees; they will be dr out of sight and out of thought; and they be left to perish obscurely, like rats, in boles

corners.

From the forced repentance of invalid neers and disbanded thieves, you can hope i resource. Government itself, which ought ther strain the more bold and dextrous of these bers, is their accomplice. Its arms, its treas its all are in their hands. Judicature, which ab * all things should awe them, is their creature their instrument. Nothing seems to me to your internal situation more desperate that L one circumstance of the state of your jud Many days are not passed since we have ser set of men brought forth by your rulers for a critical function. Your rulers brought forth a of men, steaming from the sweat and dr and all black with the smoke and soot, of the of confiscation and robbery-ardentis massa "n arrangements upon vulgar practice; but on a thecry art.*** not fail, or something to that effect.

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