by Edmund Burke
VALENS.
LETTER VI. THE PLOT.
Thursday, November 2.
Mr. MILLER,
ON Monday the 23d of October, 1775, in the morning, Mr. Sayre, Banker, in Oxford Road, was seized by King’s Messengers, upon an accusation of nothing less than an horrid and detestable enterprize against the personal Liberty of our Sovereign. In the evening of that day he was committed to the Tower, by a warrant for treasonable practices. On the 24th the London Gazette announced to the world, that he was committed for High Treason. On the 25th all his friends, and even his counsel, were refused admittance to him. On the 27th he was carried before Lord Mansfield; — and without the least hesitation, doubt, or delay, he was admitted to bail, upon •50l. for each of his two securities, and 500l. for himself.
This is an exact, though short chronological History of the Banker’s Plot, one of the grand events, which, amidst the splendor of so many illustrious actions in peace and war, among so many laws wisely planned and firmly executed, will, in future times, distinguish the memorable period of the present administration. The nature of the offence for which Mr. Sayre was committed to the Tower, and guarded with such unusual strictness and severity, or the validity of the charge, or the legality or justice of the proceeding, will be estimated from the extraordinary bail, which has been accepted on the Habeas Corpus of this eminent State Criminal.
It is known, that no bail can be admitted to an accusation of High Treason, laid upon any tolerable ground. I do not mean exactly to limit the power of the Chief Justice of England on these occasions, but it is universally known, that such is the general nature of the offence. The security in the present case amounts (in effect) to no bail at all. The culprit himself, his partner, and his attorney, are the persons bound; and they are not all three bound in a sum amounting to more than a thousand pound. It is this special bail which forms at this moment the indissoluble texture of the triple cord of public security. It is at this price that the most desperate of traitors, if we believe the Minister, has purchased the means of escaping from the punishment of the past, or of ensuring the perpetration of his future crimes.
I believe there is no man under a serious charge of High Treason, who would not readily redeem his life at the price of one thousand pounds. There is no man daring enough to conceive such a Treason, to whom the fear of losing a thousand pounds would prove any restraint in his black designs. We all remember the clamour that was raised against Lord Mansfield, for admitting to bail, upon a sum nearly as considerable as this, a man who was accused of stealing a few quires of paper. No faction has as yet gone such lengths in this case; or been impudent enough to accuse that great Magistrate of illegality or partiality, in taking such bail for a person who stood charged with an attempt to steal the King.
Attempts, which in private cases would be but misdemeanors, or sometimes no definite offence at all, change their nature in cases which relate to the King’s person, and become crimes of the greatest magnitude, as they certainly are of the blackest die. Some time ago the depriving a few Printers Devils of their liberty, for a short time, was estimated at an higher sum than an attempt to take away the liberty of our Sovereign, and with it of course the liberty, as well as the happiness of all his people. It could not be, that Lord Mansfield, whose affection to his Majesty cannot be disputed, did not value his gracious Sovereign, benefactor, and friend, at more than one thousand pound. This estimation would fall below all precedents in similar cases, the value of money in different times and countries considered. It was not therefore the crime, but the charge and the process that were treated with such just contempt, by a firm, enlightened, and constitutional Chief Justice. Our guardian angel of the laws did but touch this diabolical plot with the spear of his pointed sagacity, when instantly it started up in its own proper shape, and moved the derision of the world.
Here we must commend the Chief Justice. No man ever spoke more constitutional language, or ever acted in a more constitutional manner. But when we have said this of Lord Mansfield, there end all the commendations that we can bestow upon the servants of the crown. It does not appear why they should at all have taken up Mr. Sayre, much less why they should have committed him close prisoner to the Tower, upon grounds, which at the very first view, a man of sense and knowledge perceived to be so contemptible. It does not appear upon what grounds a Minister of State chose to order so close and rigorous a confinement, for a matter which the head of the law considered as meriting in effect no confine ment at all.
The senses of our Ministers were so compleatly taken away (I suppose by the horror of so dreadful a plot) that they did not know for what particular matter it was, that they had chosen to commit this desperate and formidable conspirator. The warrant for taking Mr. Sayre is for High Treason, — the warrant for his commitment is for Treasonable Practices; — but when they come to inform the public of their proceedings, thro’ the Gazette, they return to their old ground, and tell us they have committed him upon a charge of High Treason. What could be the reason of all this confusion, contradiction, and prevarication? Their excuse on this affair, as on the affairs of America, and indeed on most others, is their want of knowledge on the subject.
Candour calls on me to admit, that a Secretary of State who has, or assumes the power of acting as a Magistrate, is not therefore obliged, or supposed to have in himself any knowledge of law or of his own duty in that situation; or indeed any knowledge of those rules of prudence, with which men, who have no authority to support them in their errors, are obliged to regulate their conduct. What I lament in men of their excellent dispositions, and what they will join me in lamenting, is, that they have no power.
The King’s Privy Council was not able to cammand the attendance of any of the great Law Officers of the Crown. The Chief Justice would not be present. The Attorney General (no one suspects it was through fear) declined attendance. It is said, that Mr. Wedderburne was the law director on this occasion. But until Mr. Wedderburne avows this folly, it is not handsome, and I fear it might possibly be actionable to charge a gentleman of a learned profession with any share in so unbookish a proceeding.
One might have imagined that the master of the Thief-takers, whom (with that propriety which distinguishes all their conduct) they thought proper to assume as their assessor, and on whom the safety of the King and kingdom, and the execution of their most important laws, were rested in such a critical moment, he, one would imagine, might have acquired, in his extensive practices, a little more knowledge of business. But it is possible, that this great magistrate, like some other great men on great occasions, was called to Council only for form, to give the sanction of his important presence to this very grave proceeding. His advice was, most probably, not taken though his figure was exhibited. The Ministers very naturally meant to cover themselves by the name and authority of Sir John Fielding.
They wisely considered, that the eyes not only of England and America, but of all Europe, were upon them. They therefore chose to bestow upon this transaction a degree of public solemnity equal to its intrinsic value, To accomplish this intention, the Property-man of the Court Theartre had orders to fill a part in this splendid spectacle with our blind seer, the sage Tiresias of the British Nation. The whole corps diplomatique was infinitely edified. The foreign Ministers now look with admiration (an admiration for the first time wholly unmixed with envy) on the profound wisdom, astonishing resources, and incredible success of our Statesmen, in all their concerns, from the evacuation of Boston to the discharge of Mr. Sayre.
We are yet to see the second part of this business opened; and to behold Mr. Sayre in the character of a prosecutor, not a culprit; of an assailant, not a defender. We shall see him, like his brethren of Boston, besieging that Minister who had blocked up his shop. Here the case will be greatly altered; and such contemptible bail will not, I apprehend, be taken, in the action, which Mr. Sayre, will probably bring against the Secretary of State, for having seized and committed a man in trade upon such frivol
ous grounds, and by such an illegal method of proceeding. The King’s Exchequer must support the credit of Mr. Sayre’s Bank. There will be new reason to call upon this goodnatured Parliament to pay the debts of his Majesty’s Civil List, incurred by the want of knowledge, precipitancy, and shallow politics of his Ministers.
This will now become a regular head, and settled charge in the account of the Treasurer of the Chamber:
l. s. d.
Blunders of his Majesty’s Ministers,
It is no trivial sum which has hitherto filled up, or which will hereafter fill the above blank. The charge is certain and infallible, and must be provided for; though, like the Navy Debt and the extraordinaries of the army, it cannot be brought into estimate. There must be some unknown, but important and singular advantage to a nation in being governed by foolish Ministers, since people are content to pay so dearly for that benefit.
This sham plot appears at first view to have been a miserable and ludicrous affair from the beginning to the end. Yet, however conducted, I do not think it was wholly devoid of a certain sort of policy in the original scheme. It might answer a present purpose, and at a critical moment. Its operation lasted as long as political plots are necessary to hold. Like Moor-Game brought from the North, the haut gout and fumette recommend it for a day; the next it stinks.
The Ministers opened the session under a few small disadvantages. Among other items of charge, they were under some slight apprehensions that they might possibly be called to some account for the loss of an empire. They felt themselves in danger. They were obliged, like those they sent to other disagreeable services, to fortify themselves on the Neck. The addresses were their intrenchments; the plot was the mine; and thus well secured in front they did not fear the unpaid body of Rifle-Men, who were charged and ready to let fly at them.
The bringing down his Majesty to his Parliament under a double guard, and with a double proportion of the mob of constables and trading Justices, in order to guard that guard, was on the whole, a manoeuvre not ill calculated to inspire panic terrors, and rob the poor multitude of their little remaining stock of common sense.
The Ministry were sensible of the zeal and affection of the people to their Prince. They hoped that the danger of the state might be forgotten in the supposed danger of the Soverign. They hoped that our anxiety for his Majesty’s safety might suspend our resentment for the loss of his empire; and that in this general dismay and confusion, nobody would enquire into the merits of that invaluable speech, which had escaped to the sanctuary of Parliament, through so many surrounding perils.
This ludicrous proceeding has a serious moral. Ministers ought not to trifle with the safety of their master. They ought not to presume to make that sacred object the play-thing of their paltry politics. They ought to be as far from encouraging a manifestly corrupt, or an evidently trivial charge, as from neglecting a grave and weighty information. The levity or low cunning which tempts them to such petty arts, have effects that may be fatal. They tend to lessen that horror which used to attend a charge of High Treason. By false alarms they prepare the way for real dangers. They encourage conspiracies by weakening the public belief in them. That man is not without a large share of the guilt of any future, wicked enterprize, who with sham plots and childish stories amuses the public credulity, always prone to believe too much or too little.
I trust that the spirit now rising in Parliament will animate honest men to an enquiry into the affair, without being diverted from their other important enquiries. They will know how Ministers come to sport with High Treason, whilst impeachments are hanging over their own heads. They will ask how they came to deceive into the support of their ruinous measures, men in the highest offices, and the most entitled to a faithful communication? They will ask why they betrayed private trust as well as public confidence? They will ask the Ministers, why, in the last year, they demanded an implicit reliance from their extensive knowledge, and this year argue their innocence from their ignorance? They will call for an account of the treasures, the arms, the commerce, the reputation, the dominion of their country, which have been foolishly squandered, feebly employed, wantonly sacrificed, shamefully tarnished, lamentably lost. When these questions receive the only answers they can receive, and these answers the only reply they deserve, then may there be some hopes of salvation for this country.
VALENS.
POSTCRIPT.
I really do not conceive an object more worthy of a manly and respectful compassion, than a great mind sacrificing its dearest interest and risking even total ruin upon a principle of dignity. But, before a man becomes a martyr to any opinion, he ought to be supposed to have some notion of the merits of the cause in which he gives so painful a proof of his sincerity. If we had not had ten years war with Mr. Wilkes, begun on the principles, and ended in the manner in which that ever memorable war was begun and ended, before our eyes, we might be at a loss to conceive what ideas of dignity our Ministers had conceived. I believe it is generally remembered, that that noble and successful struggle was made entirely for dignity. Our American war was also undertaken for dignity. All the world sees with what dignity it is conducted. All the world sees the dignity which was so uniformly sustained in the Tragi-comedy of
“Majesty preserved, or the Sayre Plot discovered.”
The rule of the drama was there intirely well observed.
servetur ad imum
Qualis ab incepto processerit, et sibi constet,
never was known a proceeding so perfectly consistent with itself, and with every other proceeding of it’s authors.
The court Gazette, at the opening of Parliament announces to all Europe a design of seizing the King in his capital, in the most frequented street of that capital, surrounded by his guards, and in the very act of his solemn meeting of his nobles and his people. Since the grand Gunpowder Treason we have not heard of a more desperate conspiracy. Does any man (out of the ministry) imagine that the personal honour of the King, that the glory of our nation, in a word, that British dignity was enhanced by this public avowal of so daring an attempt on the sacred person of a King, without using any means to punish the criminal, to guard against his farther attempts, or to prevent the terrible effects of such a glaring example of wickedness and impunity?
The reputation for courage and wisdom has hitherto been considered as the only source of dignity. If the danger from this conspiracy was contemptible, it was a poor display of courage to manifest so great an alarm upon it. If deep and serious, it shewed a deplorable want of wisdom in doing nothing whatever in consequence of it.
I am not speaking of the honesty and justice of that measure toward the subject. Of this Ministers may hear at another season. I confine myself solely to the manner in which they consulted the dignity of their Sovereign, and his reputation amongst the other Crowned Heads of Europe. Instead of an Object of awe and respect, he is at best held out as an object of compassion; when with all his virtues he could not be preserved from such attempts; and with all the aid of his laws, and all the supplementary authority of his Parliament, he was not able to punish them.
Ministers have no way to save themselves from these imputations, but by admitting that they did not themselves believe one word of that plot, which they announced to the world with so much parade. Had they believed it, they would, they must, have brought it before Parliament. It was their duty so to do. That I confess is not so strong a proof that they would have done so. But it was their interest to have done it; and in the course of things, if they had known matter, that carried even a grave appearance, they certainly would have laid it before Parliament. But they have never opened their lips in either House upon the subject. Even their well trained majority was not to be trusted with disgracing themselves by the adoption of so foolish and so foul a scheme. One act of public disgrace is merely ministerial, and has not been communicated with Parliament.
If they have been silent in Parliament, have they opened their mouths in the Courts of Justice, were thi
s daring attempt, (if it ever had birth,) ought to have been pursued to the death of the bold and bad contrivers? So far from pursuing Mr. Sayre in a Court of Justice, they were not to be provoked to a word of justification of their conduct, when Mr. Sayre brought them there by claiming his right of standing in his country like other innocent men, free from charge and free from bail.
These abortive plots tend to disgrace the Crown, the Law, and the Magistrates of England, with other states. They tend to render the King jealous of his people. In whatever light they are viewed, they are at once ridiculous and alarming.
But our worthy representatives have looked on with perfect indifference. To them the wisdom, or the folly; the reality, or the falsity of the plot; the danger of the King, or of the subject; the base neglect of the ministry in dropping, or the scandalous diligence in beginning, the prosecution; the honour of the national wisdom, or the national justice; these are matters in which they have no concern. This is an improvement in the fashionable nonchalance and inattention in modern good breeding. One would have imagined that common civility should have induced a Parliament, so versed in polite address, to make some enquiry how his Majesty had rested after such an attempt. The circumstance, of the attempt being made on a visit to them, might have called upon them for some sort of notice. But times as well as countries have their customs.
