Complete Works of Edmund Burke

by Edmund Burke

  In all this I see no sort of attention to the honour of this country. The first principle of dignity is independence. A government in profound peace with all its neighbours, which is not able, without external assistance, to enforce obedience from its own subjects, is in effect annihilated. The powers on whom such a phantom of authority depends, are the true and real government. The other is only a vassal. If we cannot govern it but by the forces of Russia and Hanover, Hanover and Russia are not only the Rulers of America, but they are the Masters of England.

  There must be some extraordinary weakness in Administration, some disinclination to the service in the gross of the people, something unusually colourable in the resistance, that at the very outset of the quarrel, has disabled the strongest power in the world. Our Ministers stumble at the threshold; they are out of wind before they have run the first heat. The first year of this war in America, they implore foreign nations to bring them out of that struggle, which, a little while ago, they told us might be ended by a very few of the superfluous regiments, which a prodigal peace establishment wantonly kept up for parade and shew — Such is the dignity of England in the hands of its present trustees!

  If we cannot end our own quarrels by our own wisdom, or our own power, they will never be ended. Foreigners very rarely, if ever, interfere with cordial purposes to the benefit of the party which calls them in. It will be their business, like lawyers, to prolong the suit, in order to exhaust the litigants.

  Whilst the quarrel continues, foreign powers know that you must comply with every demand, and submit to every insult. The old enemies of the kingdom will be sure to fan the flames of dissention. The very best affected of the foreign Courts will make themselves necessary as long as they can. They will assist you just enough to continue the dispute, but not to end it; because that dispute, and their superiority, must have exactly the same duration.

  Rather than consent to be thus at the mercy of foreigners, Dignity, if she would condescend to take common-sense into her councils, would think, that the cruel alternative proposed by the American Congress,

  “of returning to the situation in which we stood in 1762,”

  ought to be accepted. If English Dignity is to be compromised, I had rather settle amicably with America, than be obliged to too polite a submission to the House of Bourbon. I should consent rather to bear the Roughness of English Liberty, than subject myself to foreign Pride, and barbarian Insolence. I had rather shake Hancock and Adams by the hand, than cool my heels in the antichamber of Orloff and Potemkin.

  VALENS.

  LETTER IV. THE CAMPAIGN.

  Saturday, October 11.

  Mr. MILLER,

  THE proper answer to an address for war, is a tax. There can be no doubt, but that such an answer will be returned fairly and speedily, and without a shadow of equivocation. In this point at least, the Ministers are capable of giving perfect satisfaction to their admirers. To exhaust the sinking fund, — to accumulate debt, — to raise the land tax, — to put an additional duty on malt, and on malt liquors, — and to revive the home excise upon cyder, — these are things within the power of the most common financier. The ways of taking the public money, or of spending it when taken, are tolerably obvious. There is nothing required for these purposes, but patience on the part of the people. And Administration has had, for some time past, comfortable assurances, that the good people of England possess a sufficient share of that steady and useful, though not very shining virtue.

  The Addressers, with an honest eagerness and anxiety, ask for war, and they offer their fortunes. They need be under no sort of uneasiness. The one will be given, and the other will be taken; and as far as I can discover from the courtly language of the Gazette, this is what is desired, and all that is desired, in the many dutiful and loyal addresses with which that instructive paper has lately swelled so much beyond its usual dimensions.

  In former times, when the evil habits of faction had rendered men importunate and difficult, a little more than this would have been looked for. People would have been desirous of some account of the ends and purposes for which the public money had been expended; of the manner in which the war had been conducted; of the future prospect of success from the arrangements already made, or which were in apparent forwardness. If they received no satisfaction in these points, war would, in those times, have been thought very little more desirable than peace. Success, victory, glory, national reputation, national power, were the circumstances that formerly made war, and the train of war tolerable to a nation. The probability of a favourable event, and the beneficial consequences of victory, when attained, were always more or less in contemplation. At present the fashionable taste seems to be, for efforts without vigour, expence without return, preparation without action, and war without an object.

  I will not say, whether I have been well or ill employed; but abounding in leisure, as you will easily believe, I have read over all the public performances of the friends of Ministry. Not one, I imagine, has escaped me. The coffee house I frequent is well supplied with the papers. The papers are no less liberally supplied with political essays and paragraphs on the ministerial side of the question. At no time have Ministers more carefully attended to this mode of communication with the public; and they have spared no expence nor trouble to engage diligent and industrious writers in their cause.

  One circumstance has struck me as very singular. In all the course of this extensive and various reading, I never once observed a letter, or even one single paragraph, so much as insinuating, that

  “the war with America had been hitherto conducted with common sense.”

  If my recollection has failed me, some person of more retentive memory or more accurate observation will be so good as to supply my defects.

  Notwithstanding this trifling omission, the Ministers, I must admit, have not been wholly wanting to themselves. They have carried on a notable war with the Mile-End Assembly. They have fought a very strenuous battle with Mr. Mascall. In my opinion, they have gained a compleat victory over him. They have laid Mr. Joel on his back. Atkinson Bush must be a bold man if he ventures to shew his face — For all these advantages, I give them full credit. But still the proscribed Hancock sits at the head of The United Colonies; and Putnam the carpenter, besieges and starves twelve thousand British troops with four of the best English Generals at their head.

  I have concealed nothing which has happened in favour of our great statesman. The above is a short but fair and impartial account of the advantages obtained, and the losses suffered by the ministerial arms of all sorts, at home and abroad, during the glorious campaign of 1775.

  At what a price all this glory has been acquired we shall not immediately know, though our inquisitive Parliament is so shortly to meet. Some part of the burthen we shall feel very soon. But the whole charge certainly will not be then displayed; lest it should throw some damp on the spirit of addressing, which at present seems the grand resource of the nation. There will undoubtedly be a large and constant demand on this fund of national politeness; and it will as largely and constantly answer the drafts at sight. Whatever may become of others, there is no danger that this Bank should ever be obliged to stop payment.

  The vein of addressing, in a situation like the present, is a phaenomenon rather unusual in the political world, though in the moral it is highly commendable. The compliments paid to defeat and misfortune, are the effect of true generosity. If the thing went no further, all might be well. But it grows serious when a compliment conveys a trust. To this hour the want of success was always deemed a presumption of the want of wisdom. It went beyond a presumption, if the ill success had attended upon great forces. Men grew out of humour, and became unwilling to commit their lives and fortunes to the care of those in whose hands they found that nothing prospered.

  If they thought a war eligible, this became a strong motive against confiding to the unfortunate, in that precise situation, in which of all others Fortune has the greatest share. They would
not say,

  “we ought to go to war with America, therefore, make a complimentary address to those who have lost that country. We ought to use force; therefore support those under whose direction power has sunk into impotence.”

  The period for these congratulatory addresses, and this solemn approbation of ministerial conduct is well chosen, and strongly marked. It surely deserves to be as much distinguished as an Aera in the Chronicles of Great Britain, as any event that has happened since the foundation of this monarchy. The Aera of THE EVACUATION OF BOSTON. The compliments arrive precisely in the great important moment when the British troops are compelled to quit the last British town in America. From this period we are, I suppose, to begin the reckoning of a new golden age of commerce, liberty, and empire.

  VALENS.

  LETTER V. OBJECT OF THE WAR.

  Saturday, October 24, 1775.

  MR. MILLER.

  I Remember Mr. Hume somewhere in his history observes, that amidst all the calamities of the great civil war between Charles the First and his people, the English enjoyed this singular good fortune, that no foreign nation interfered in their quarrels.

  Mr. Hume is in the right. The circumstance was fortunate; and I am afraid it will continue to be singular. The present melancholy civil war is of another kind, and is to be carried on, as it was begun, upon very different principles. It is a war in which, as foreigners have the sole interest, none but foreigners will finally decide. In the great civil war between Charles the First and the national Representative, both parties had in view such an object as usually passes for rational. Had Charles the First actually subdued his Parliament, he might possibly have levied taxes without the consent of those who were to pay them. He would then have been to England, what England claims to be to America, the sole virtual Representative of his people. Their consent would have been involved in his will. To resist would be to rebel. So far the politics of Charles the First and ours go on together; but there is a slight circumstance in which they differ.

  If he had carried his point, his power would have led to profit. The kingdom which he would have reduced, lay under his eye; and all its concerns were within his grasp. By a common revenue establishment, and a moderate standing army, there was no doubt but that he might easily have drawn into his own coffers, as much of the property of his subjects as would have supported that establishment, and paid that army; and left a surplus besides, for the purposes of avarice, ambition, or dissipation. The nation had the same interest to defend, which the King had to attack. Here was a war that had an object. Prince and people strongly interested, they wanted no intervention of foreigners to decide their quarrel.

  But if Charles the First had involved himself in all his difficulties, in order to tax, without their consent, a people who were 3000 miles by sea distant from him — if the people at that distance were scattered over a Wilderness, 1700 miles in length, and 500 in breadth — if their extended sea cost was pervious by a thousand havens, bays and creeks to every fraud, and every elusion of duties — if these duties, by the best collection, far from being able to support a vast standing army, a powerful navy, and numerous fortifications, would consessedly not suffice for the maintenance of a tenth part of a competent Revenue establishment — if such had been the attempts of Charles the First, nothing but the consideration of his insanity could have drawn the least degree of pity upon his misfortunes. The great subject of curiosity would be, how he came to find any abettors in so frantic an attempt. It would have been but natural for him to seek his instruments in every country but his own; as those people would be the most fit to fight his battles who were the least acquainted with his cause.

  Charles, besides the obvious lucrative advantage which he possessed, had another apology for his arbitrary undertakings; and Mr. Hume is too skilful an advocate to let it pass. His people were far from liberal in their supplies. They frequently even refused any subsidy to his greatest wants. What an aggravation would it have been of his misconduct, if all the world had known, and if he himself had confessed on record, that the grants of his people had outgone his requisitions, and that their supplies, while voluntary, had far exceeded their abilities? Join then together the two suppositions which I have made, and let every candid man form a judgment on the wisdom of that sovereign power (call it King or Parliament, or by what name you please) which could wage a destructive war for an object of taxation impossible to be attained, in order to avoid having recourse to a quiet mode of application which had never failed.

  It is in our power obstinately to shut our eyes to the genuine appearances of things. If we please, we may stop our ears against reason; or we may prevent the voice of truth from being heard, by the din of our own passionate talking. But still reason and truth will one way or other have their operation; and though not seen or heard, they will cause themselves to be felt. They are at this minute in full energy; and are now, though not so sensibly in the mode as in the effects, acting with irresistible power. While Parliament votes, and Corporations address, a general torpor and deadness have benumbed the whole community. The state is paralytic. We have nothing left alive, but that miserable and feeble voice, with which we sue for compassion to the enemies of our former greatness, and call upon foreign nations to obtain for us some sort of authority among our own people.

  England feels she has no interest in this quarrel. The army cannot be recruited to any tolerable degree of strength, much less to a force adequate to the necessities of the present bloody service. It is because the yet uncorrupted body of the people of England are brave and generous, that they do not chuse to shed their blood in this quarrel. All the ink that has been, or ever can be shed in addresses, will not persuade them to join with German vassals and Russian slaves, in exterminating the little remnant of freedom which still continues to bless the world.

  Unsupported by English arms, the Ministers fly to Scotland. The gallant and sagacious people of that country, worthy to be for ever, in sentiments as in government, one with England, have declined to employ their valour for the destruction of their sole asylum from despotism and opprssioen. They will not chuse to pass from praedial to military servitude. They will not suffer themselves to be turned into merchandize, for the profit of those men who are bartering for lucrative places and for regiments, the lives that are not yet sacrificed to their avarice as landlords. The Scotch are indeed going to America; but they are going as settlers, not as soldiers. An illegal order has been issued to compel them by force to continue in the house of bondage, and to keep them from tasting the fertility and freedom of America.

  The application to Ireland has been as unsuccessful as it was indecent. Did they imagine that generous people to be such an herd of blunderers, as to spill their blood, in order to enable Ministers to tax, without their consent, all the countries subject to this crown? The Irish Roman Catholics feel as the Protestants do. They also know America as an Asylum. None but a very few vagabonds have been captivated by the half guinea liberality of the Earl of Kenmore, or the military rhetoric of Major Boyle Roche.

  English, Scotch, Irish, failing; Canada, French and Popish, has been applied to as the last resource among British subjects. Canada, French and Popish, have refused. Laws have been suspended, and military despotism proclaimed in The Canadians have heard the sound of liberty.

  The Ministry thus disowned, not in words but in practice by every old and every new subject of this empire, are obliged to go about begging at the door of every petty Court and every venal State of Germany. They have prostrated English dignity before Russian despotism. They are satisfied to sneak like servile Gentlemen Ushers before the State of the French Ambassador; while all Europe looks with derision at their aukward, second-hand airs, and their imitated grimaces of exotic complaisance. They stoop their stiff backs, to kiss the baffled hands of Spain. Our heroic Ministers tremble before the fugitives from Algiers. Sir Joseph Yorke, under their direction, is employed in a manner that is certainly odious to so liberal a mind as his; and, inde
ed, must be so to any man who has served his country in better times. He is alert and active, and watches day and night. But he watches, not the Councils, but the Ports of Holland. He is obliged to thrust his nose into the hatchway of every Dutch Dogger, and to rummage and cross examine every paltry Package. The Ambassador Extraordinary of England is sunk into an attentive Tidewaiter. But all this expence of honour has purchased scarce any sort of advantage. Their negociations and their searches have been as unsuccessful and as impotent as their arms. All they can as yet do, is to deliver over Gibraltar and Minorca to Hanoverians. But though they have failed in procuring other nations to destroy our Colonies, our Colonies may imitate their example in calling in foreign aid; and as with a more decent excuse, so in all human probability with better success.

  In this unparalelled state of distress and degradation of their country, the Ministers are not without their comforts. They hold their places; they enjoy their salaries; they receive their addresses. At present they are in high spirits. They are persuaded, that their pay and disgrace may be continued a year longer. They will again hold out delusive ideas of peace upon terms which they know are not admissible, trusting that the deceit of the session will hold out until the recess; as to the rest, they tell us that all is now perfectly right; that the Savages of the desart have undertaken the government of the British Colonies. They inform us that they intend to change their mode of making war. They have it seems, by some means or other, at length found out, that to be besieged is not the way to conquer. They propose to ravage what they are not capable of governing; and abandoning all idea of being conquerors and legislators, they are in hopes of becoming successful Pirates.