THE WORKS

OF

THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

EDMUND BURKE

IN TWELVE VOLUMES

VOLUME THE THIRD

[Illustration: Burke Coat of Arms. ]

LONDONJOHN C. NIMMO14, KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND, W. C. MDCCCLXXXVII

CONTENTS OF VOL. III. 

SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS, February 28, 1785; with an Appendix 1

SUBSTANCE OF SPEECH ON THE ARMY ESTIMATES, February 9, 1790 211

REFLECTIONS ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 231

SPEECH

ON THE

MOTION MADE FOR PAPERS

RELATIVE TO THE

DIRECTIONS FOR CHARGING THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S PRIVATE DEBTS TO EUROPEANSON THE REVENUES OF THE CARNATIC, FEBRUARY 28, 1785. 

WITH AN APPENDIX, CONTAINING SEVERAL DOCUMENTS. 

Ἐνταῦθα τί πράττειν ἐχρῆν ἄνδρα τῶν Πλάτωνος καὶ Ἀριστοτέλους ζηλωτὴνδογμάτων; ἆρα περιορᾶν ἀνθρώπους ἀθλίους τοῖς κλέπταις ἐκδιδομένους, ἢκατὰ δύναμιν αὐτοῖς ἀμύνειν, οἶμαι ὡς ἤδη τὸ κύκνειον; ἐξᾴδουσι διὰ τὸθεμισές ἐργαστήριον τῶν τοιούτων; Ἐμοὶ μὲν οὖν αἰσχρὸν εἶναι δοκεῖ τοὺςμὲν χιλιάρχους, ὅταν λείπωσι τὴν τάξιν, καταδικάζειν' . . . τὴν δὲ ὑπέρἀθλίων ἀνθρώπων ἀπολείπειν τάξιν, ὅταν δὲῃ πρὸς κλέπτας ἀγωνίζεσθαιτοιούτους, καὶ ταῦτα τοῦ θεοῦ συμμαχοῦντος ἡμῖν, ὅσπερ οὖν ἔταξεν. 

JULIANI Epist. 17. 

ADVERTISEMENT. 

That the least informed reader of this speech may be enabled to enterfully into the spirit of the transaction on occasion of which it wasdelivered, it may be proper to acquaint him, that, among the princesdependent on this nation in the southern part of India, the mostconsiderable at present is commonly known by the title of the Nabob ofArcot. 

This prince owed the establishment of his government, against the claimsof his elder brother, as well as those of other competitors, to the armsand influence of the British East India Company. Being thus establishedin a considerable part of the dominions he now possesses, he began, about the year 1765, to form, at the instigation (as he asserts) of theservants of the East India Company, a variety of designs for the furtherextension of his territories. Some years after, he carried his views tocertain objects of interior arrangement, of a very pernicious nature. None of these designs could be compassed without the aid of theCompany's arms; nor could those arms be employed consistently with anobedience to the Company's orders. He was therefore advised to form amore secret, but an equally powerful, interest among the servants ofthat Company, and among others both at home and abroad. By engaging themin his interests, the use of the Company's power might be obtainedwithout their ostensible authority; the power might even be employed indefiance of the authority, if the case should require, as in truth itoften did require, a proceeding of that degree of boldness. 

The Company had put him into possession of several great cities andmagnificent castles. The good order of his affairs, his sense ofpersonal dignity, his ideas of Oriental splendor, and the habits of anAsiatic life, (to which, being a native of India, and a Mahometan, hehad from his infancy been inured, ) would naturally have led him to fixthe seat of his government within his own dominions. Instead of this, hetotally sequestered himself from his country, and, abandoning allappearance of state, he took up his residence in an ordinary house, which he purchased in the suburbs of the Company's factory at Madras. Inthat place he has lived, without removing one day from thence, forseveral years past. He has there continued a constant cabal with theCompany's servants, from the highest to the lowest, --creating, out ofthe ruins of the country, brilliant fortunes for those who will, andentirely destroying those who will not, be subservient to his purposes. 

An opinion prevailed, strongly confirmed by several passages in his ownletters, as well as by a combination of circumstances forming a body ofevidence which cannot be resisted, that very great sums have been by himdistributed, through a long course of years, to some of the Company'sservants. Besides these presumed payments in ready money, (of which, from the nature of the thing, the direct proof is very difficult, ) debtshave at several periods been acknowledged to those gentlemen, to animmense amount, --that is, to some millions of sterling money. There isstrong reason to suspect that the body of these debts is whollyfictitious, and was never created by money _bonâ fide_ lent. But even ona supposition that this vast sum was really advanced, it was impossiblethat the very reality of such an astonishing transaction should notcause some degree of alarm and incite to some sort of inquiry. 

It was not at all seemly, at a moment when the Company itself was sodistressed as to require a suspension, by act of Parliament, of thepayment of bills drawn on them from India, --and also a direct tax uponevery house in England, in order to facilitate the vent of their goods, and to avoid instant insolvency, --at that very moment, that theirservants should appear in so flourishing a condition, as, besides tenmillions of other demands on their masters, to be entitled to claim adebt of three or four millions more from the territorial revenue of oneof their dependent princes. 

The ostensible pecuniary transactions of the Nabob of Arcot with veryprivate persons are so enormous, that they evidently set aside everypretence of policy which might induce a prudent government in someinstances to wink at ordinary loose practice in ill-managed departments. No caution could be too great in handling this matter, no scrutiny tooexact. It was evidently the interest, and as evidently at least in thepower, of the creditors, by admitting secret participation in this darkand undefined concern, to spread corruption to the greatest and the mostalarming extent. 

These facts relative to the debts were so notorious, the opinion oftheir being a principal source of the disorders of the Britishgovernment in India was so undisputed and universal, that there was noparty, no description of men in Parliament, who did not think themselvesbound, if not in honor and conscience, at least in common decency, toinstitute a vigorous inquiry into the very bottom of the business, before they admitted any part of that vast and suspicious charge to belaid upon an exhausted country. Every plan concurred in directing suchan inquiry, in order that whatever was discovered to be corrupt, fraudulent, or oppressive should lead to a due animadversion on theoffenders, and, if anything fair and equitable in its origin should befound, (nobody suspected that much, comparatively speaking, would be sofound, ) it might be provided for, --in due subordination, however, to theease of the subject and the service of the state. 

These were the alleged grounds for an inquiry, settled in all the billsbrought into Parliament relative to India, --and there were, I think, noless than four of them. By the bill commonly called Mr. Pitt's bill, theinquiry was specially, and by express words, committed to the Court ofDirectors, without any reserve for the interference of any other personor persons whatsoever. It was ordered that _they_ should make theinquiry into the origin and justice of these debts, as far as thematerials in _their_ possession enabled them to proceed; and where_they_ found those materials deficient, _they_ should order thePresidency of Fort St. George (Madras) to complete the inquiry. 

The Court of Directors applied themselves to the execution of the trustreposed in them. They first examined into the amount of the debt, whichthey computed, at compound interest, to be 2, 945, 600_l. _ sterling. Whether their mode of computation, either of the original sums or theamount on compound interest, was exact, that is, whether they took theinterest too high or the several capitals too low, is not material. Onwhatever principle any of the calculations were made up, none of themfound the debt to differ from the recital of the act, which assertedthat the sums claimed were "_very_ large. " The last head of these debtsthe Directors compute at 2, 465, 680_l. _ sterling. Of the existence ofthis debt the Directors heard nothing until 1776, and they say, that, "although they had _repeatedly_ written to the Nabob of Arcot, and totheir servants, respecting the debt, yet they _had never been able totrace the origin thereof, or to obtain any satisfactory information onthe subject_. "

The Court of Directors, after stating the circumstances under which thedebts appeared to them to have been contracted, add as follows:--"Forthese reasons we should have thought it our duty to inquire _veryminutely_ into those debts, even if the act of Parliament had beensilent on the subject, before we concurred in any measure for theirpayment. But with the positive injunctions of the act before us toexamine into their nature and origin, we are indispensably bound todirect such an inquiry to be instituted. " They then order the Presidentand Council of Madras to enter into a full examination, &c. , &c. 

The Directors, having drawn up their order to the Presidency on theseprinciples, communicated the draught of the general letter in whichthose orders were contained to the board of his Majesty's ministers, andother servants lately constituted by Mr. Pitt's East India Act. Theseministers, who had just carried through Parliament the bill ordering aspecific inquiry, immediately drew up another letter, on a principledirectly opposite to that which was prescribed by the act of Parliamentand followed by the Directors. In these second orders, all idea of aninquiry into the justice and origin of the pretended debts, particularlyof the last, the greatest, and the most obnoxious to suspicion, isabandoned. They are all admitted and established without anyinvestigation whatsoever, (except some private conference with theagents of the claimants is to pass for an investigation, ) and a fund fortheir discharge is assigned and set apart out of the revenues of theCarnatic. To this arrangement in favor of their servants, servantssuspected of corruption and convicted of disobedience, the Directors ofthe East India Company were ordered to set their hands, asserting it toarise from their own conviction and opinion, in flat contradiction totheir recorded sentiments, their strong remonstrance, and their declaredsense of their duty, as well under their general trust and their oath asDirectors, as under the express injunctions of an act of Parliament. 

The principles upon which this summary proceeding was adopted by theministerial board are stated by themselves in a number in the appendixto this speech. 

By another section of the same act, the same Court of Directors wereordered to take into consideration and to decide on the indeterminaterights of the Rajah of Tanjore and the Nabob of Arcot; and in this, asin the former case, no power of appeal, revision, or alteration wasreserved to any other. It was a jurisdiction, in a cause between partyand party, given to the Court of Directors specifically. It was knownthat the territories of the former of these princes had been twiceinvaded and pillaged, and the prince deposed and imprisoned, by theCompany's servants, influenced by the intrigues of the latter, and forthe purpose of paying his pretended debts. The Company had, in the year1775, ordered a restoration of the Rajah to his government, undercertain conditions. The Rajah complained, that his territories had notbeen completely restored to him, and that no part of his goods, money, revenues, or records, unjustly taken and withheld from him, were everreturned. The Nabob, on the other hand, never ceased to claim thecountry itself, and carried on a continued train of negotiation, that itshould again be given up to him, in violation of the Company's publicfaith. 

The Directors, in obedience to this part of the act, ordered an inquiry, and came to a determination to restore certain of his territories to theRajah. The ministers, proceeding as in the former case, without hearingany party, rescinded the decision of the Directors, refused therestitution of the territory, and, without regard to the condition ofthe country of Tanjore, which had been within a few years four timesplundered, (twice by the Nabob of Arcot, and twice by enemies broughtupon it solely by the politics of the same Nabob, the declared enemy ofthat people, ) and without discounting a shilling for their sufferings, they accumulate an arrear of about four hundred thousand pounds ofpretended tribute to this enemy; and then they order the Directors toput their hands to a new adjudication, directly contrary to a judgmentin a judicial character and trust solemnly given by them and entered ontheir records. 

These proceedings naturally called for some inquiry. On the 28th ofFebruary, 1785, Mr. Fox made the following motion in the House ofCommons, after moving that the clauses of the act should be read:--"Thatthe proper officer do lay before this House copies or extracts of allletters and orders of the Court of Directors of the United East IndiaCompany, in pursuance of the injunctions contained in the 37th and 38thclauses of the said act"; and the question being put, it passed in thenegative by a very great majority. 

The last speech in the debate was the following; which is given to thepublic, not as being more worthy of its attention than others, (some ofwhich were of consummate ability, ) but as entering more into the detailof the subject. 

SPEECH. 

The times we live in, Mr. Speaker, have been distinguished byextraordinary events. Habituated, however, as we are, to uncommoncombinations of men and of affairs, I believe nobody recollects anythingmore surprising than the spectacle of this day. The right honorablegentleman[1] whose conduct is now in question formerly stood forth inthis House, the prosecutor of the worthy baronet[2] who spoke after him. He charged him with several grievous acts of malversation in office, with abuses of a public trust of a great and heinous nature. In lessthan two years we see the situation of the parties reversed; and asingular revolution puts the worthy baronet in a fair way of returningthe prosecution in a recriminatory bill of pains and penalties, groundedon a breach of public trust relative to the government of the very samepart of India. If he should undertake a bill of that kind, he will findno difficulty in conducting it with a degree of skill and vigor fullyequal to all that have been exerted against him. 

But the change of relation between these two gentlemen is not sostriking as the total difference of their deportment under the sameunhappy circumstances. Whatever the merits of the worthy baronet'sdefence might have been, he did not shrink from the charge. He met itwith manliness of spirit and decency of behavior. What would have beenthought of him, if he had held the present language of his old accuser?When articles were exhibited against him by that right honorablegentleman, he did not think proper to tell the House that we ought toinstitute no inquiry, to inspect no paper, to examine no witness. He didnot tell us (what at that time he might have told us with some show ofreason) that our concerns in India were matters of delicacy, that todivulge anything relative to them would be mischievous to the state. Hedid not tell us that those who would inquire into his proceedings weredisposed to dismember the empire. He had not the presumption to say, that, for his part, having obtained, in his Indian presidency, theultimate object of his ambition, his honor was concerned in executingwith integrity the trust which had been legally committed to his charge:that others, not having been so fortunate, could not be sodisinterested; and therefore their accusations could spring from noother source than faction, and envy to his fortune. 

Had he been frontless enough to hold such vain, vaporing language in theface of a grave, a detailed, a specified matter of accusation, whilst heviolently resisted everything which could bring the merits of his causeto the test, --had he been wild enough to anticipate the absurdities ofthis day, --that is, had he inferred, as his late accuser has thoughtproper to do, that he could not have been guilty of malversation inoffice, for this sole and curious reason, that he had been inoffice, --had he argued the impossibility of his abusing his power onthis sole principle, that he had power to abuse, --he would have leftbut one impression on the mind of every man who heard him, and whobelieved him in his senses: that in the utmost extent he was guilty ofthe charge. 

But, Sir, leaving these two gentlemen to alternate as criminal andaccuser upon what principles they think expedient, it is for us toconsider whether the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Treasurer ofthe Navy, acting as a Board of Control, are justified by law or policyin suspending the legal arrangements made by the Court of Directors, inorder to transfer the public revenues to the private emolument ofcertain servants of the East India Company, without the inquiry into theorigin and justice of their claims prescribed by an act of Parliament. 

It is not contended that the act of Parliament did not expressly ordainan inquiry. It is not asserted that this inquiry was not, with equalprecision of terms, specially committed, under particular regulations, to the Court of Directors. I conceive, therefore, the Board of Controlhad no right whatsoever to intermeddle in that business. There isnothing certain in the principles of jurisprudence, if this be notundeniably true, that when, a special authority is given to any personsby name to do some particular act, that no others, by virtue of generalpowers, can obtain a legal title to intrude themselves into that trust, and to exercise those special functions in their place. I thereforeconsider the intermeddling of ministers in this affair as a downrightusurpation. But if the strained construction by which they have forcedthemselves into a suspicious office (which every man delicate withregard to character would rather have sought constructions to avoid)were perfectly sound and perfectly legal, of this I am certain, thatthey cannot be justified in declining the inquiry which had beenprescribed to the Court of Directors. If the Board of Control didlawfully possess the right of executing the special trust given to thatcourt, they must take it as they found it, subject to the very sameregulations which bound the Court of Directors. It will be allowed thatthe Court of Directors had no authority to dispense with either thesubstance or the mode of inquiry prescribed by the act of Parliament. Ifthey had not, where in the act did the Board of Control acquire thatcapacity? Indeed, it was impossible they should acquire it. What must wethink of the fabric and texture of an act of Parliament which shouldfind it necessary to prescribe a strict inquisition, that should descendinto minute regulations for the conduct of that inquisition, that shouldcommit this trust to a particular description of men, and in the verysame breath should enable another body, at their own pleasure, tosupersede all the provisions the legislature had made, and to defeat thewhole purpose, end, and object of the law? This cannot be supposed evenof an act of Parliament conceived by the ministers themselves, andbrought forth during the delirium of the last session. 

My honorable friend has told you in the speech which introduced hismotion, that fortunately this question is not a great deal involved inthe labyrinths of Indian detail. Certainly not. But if it were, I begleave to assure you that there is nothing in the Indian detail which ismore difficult than in the detail of any other business. I admit, because I have some experience of the fact, that for the interiorregulation of India a minute knowledge of India is requisite. But onany specific matter of delinquency in its government you are as capableof judging as if the same thing were done at your door. Fraud, injustice, oppression, peculation, engendered in India, are crimes ofthe same blood, family, and cast with those that are born and bred inEngland. To go no farther than the case before us: you are just ascompetent to judge whether the sum of four millions sterling ought orought not to be passed from the public treasury into a private pocketwithout any title except the claim of the parties, when the issue offact is laid in Madras, as when it is laid in Westminster. Terms of art, indeed, are different in different places; but they are generallyunderstood in none. The technical style of an Indian treasury is not onejot more remote than the jargon of our own Exchequer from the train ofour ordinary ideas or the idiom of our common language. The difference, therefore, in the two cases is not in the comparative difficulty orfacility of the two subjects, but in our attention to the one and ourtotal neglect of the other. Had this attention and neglect beenregulated by the value of the several objects, there would be nothing tocomplain of. But the reverse of that supposition is true. The scene ofthe Indian abuse is distant, indeed; but we must not infer that thevalue of our interest in it is decreased in proportion as it recedesfrom our view. In our politics, as in our common conduct, we shall beworse than infants, if we do not put our senses under the tuition of ourjudgment, and effectually cure ourselves of that optical illusion whichmakes a brier at our nose of greater magnitude than an oak at fivehundred yards' distance. 

I think I can trace all the calamities of this country to the singlesource of our not having had steadily before our eyes a general, comprehensive, well-connected, and well-proportioned view of the wholeof our dominions, and a just sense of their true bearings and relations. After all its reductions, the British empire is still vast and various. After all the reductions of the House of Commons, (stripped as we are ofour brightest ornaments and of our most important privileges, ) enoughare yet left to furnish us, if we please, with means of showing to theworld that we deserve the superintendence of as large an empire as thiskingdom ever held, and the continuance of as ample privileges as theHouse of Commons, in the plenitude of its power, had been habituated toassert. But if we make ourselves too little for the sphere of our duty, if, on the contrary, we do not stretch and expand our minds to thecompass of their object, be well assured that everything about us willdwindle by degrees, until at length our concerns are shrunk to thedimensions of our minds. It is not a predilection to mean, sordid, home-bred cares that will avert the consequences of a false estimationof our interest, or prevent the shameful dilapidation into which a greatempire must fall by mean reparations upon mighty ruins. 

I confess I feel a degree of disgust, almost leading to despair, at themanner in which we are acting in the great exigencies of our country. There is now a bill in this House appointing a rigid inquisition intothe minutest detail of our offices at home. The collection of sixteenmillions annually, a collection on which the public greatness, safety, and credit have their reliance, the whole order of criminaljurisprudence, which holds together society itself, have at no timeobliged us to call forth such powers, --no, nor anything like them. Thereis not a principle of the law and Constitution of this country that isnot subverted to favor the execution of that project. [3] And for what isall this apparatus of bustle and terror? Is it because anythingsubstantial is expected from it? No. The stir and bustle itself is theend proposed. The eye-servants of a short-sighted master will employthemselves, not on what is most essential to his affairs, but on what isnearest to his ken. Great difficulties have given a just value toeconomy; and our minister of the day must be an economist, whatever itmay cost us. But where is he to exert his talents? At home, to be sure;for where else can he obtain a profitable credit for their exertion? Itis nothing to him, whether the object on which he works under our eye bepromising or not. If he does not obtain any public benefit, he may makeregulations without end. Those are sure to pay in present expectation, whilst the effect is at a distance, and may be the concern of othertimes and other men. On these principles, he chooses to suppose (for hedoes not pretend more than to suppose) a naked possibility that he shalldraw some resource out of crumbs dropped from the trenchers of penury;that something shall be laid in store from the short allowance ofrevenue-officers overloaded with duty and famished for want ofbread, --by a reduction from officers who are at this very hour ready tobatter the Treasury with what breaks through stone walls for an_increase_ of their appointments. From the marrowless bones of theseskeleton establishments, by the use of every sort of cutting and ofevery sort of fretting tool, he flatters himself that he may chip andrasp an empirical alimentary powder, to diet into some similitude ofhealth and substance the languishing chimeras of fraudulent reformation. 

Whilst he is thus employed according to his policy and to his taste, hehas not leisure to inquire into those abuses in India that are drawingoff money by millions from the treasures of this country, which areexhausting the vital juices from members of the state, where the publicinanition is far more sorely felt than in the local exchequer ofEngland. Not content with winking at these abuses, whilst he attempts tosqueeze the laborious, ill-paid drudges of English revenue, he lavishes, in one act of corrupt prodigality, upon those who never served thepublic in any honest occupation at all, an annual income equal to twothirds of the whole collection of the revenues of this kingdom. 

Actuated by the same principle of choice, he has now on the anvilanother scheme, full of difficulty and desperate hazard, which totallyalters the commercial relation of two kingdoms, and, what end soever itshall have, may bequeath a legacy of heartburning and discontent to oneof the countries, perhaps to both, to be perpetuated to the latestposterity. This project is also undertaken on the hope of profit. It isprovided, that, out of some (I know not what) remains of the Irishhereditary revenue, a fund, at some time, and of some sort, should beapplied to the protection of the Irish trade. Here we are commandedagain to task our faith, and to persuade ourselves, that, out of thesurplus of deficiency, out of the savings of habitual and systematicprodigality, the minister of wonders will provide support for thisnation, sinking under the mountainous load of two hundred and thirtymillions of debt. But whilst we look with pain at his desperate andlaborious trifling, whilst we are apprehensive that he will break hisback in stooping to pick up chaff and straws, he recovers himself at anelastic bound, and with a broadcast swing of his arm he squanders overhis Indian field a sum far greater than the clear produce of the wholehereditary revenue of the kingdom of Ireland. [4]

Strange as this scheme of conduct in ministry is, and inconsistent withall just policy, it is still true to itself, and faithful to its ownperverted order. Those who are bountiful to crimes will be rigid tomerit and penurious to service. Their penury is even held out as a blindand cover to their prodigality. The economy of injustice is to furnishresources for the fund of corruption. Then they pay off their protectionto great crimes and great criminals by being inexorable to the paltryfrailties of little men; and these modern flagellants are sure, with arigid fidelity, to whip their own enormities on the vicarious back ofevery small offender. 

It is to draw your attention to economy of quite another order, it is toanimadvert on offences of a far different description, that my honorablefriend has brought before you the motion of this day. It is toperpetuate the abuses which are subverting the fabric of your empire, that the motion is opposed. It is, therefore, with reason (and if he haspower to carry himself through, I commend his prudence) that the righthonorable gentleman makes his stand at the very outset, and boldlyrefuses all Parliamentary information. Let him admit but one steptowards inquiry, and he is undone. You must be ignorant, or he cannot besafe. But before his curtain is let down, and the shades of eternalnight shall veil our Eastern dominions from our view, permit me, Sir, toavail myself of the means which were furnished in anxious andinquisitive times to demonstrate out of this single act of the presentminister what advantages you are to derive from permitting the greatestconcern of this nation to be separated from the cognizance, and exemptedeven out of the competence, of Parliament. The greatest body of yourrevenue, your most numerous armies, your most important commerce, therichest sources of your public credit, (contrary to every idea of theknown, settled policy of England, ) are on the point of being convertedinto a mystery of state. You are going to have one half of the globe hideven from the common liberal curiosity of an English gentleman. Here agrand revolution commences. Mark the period, and mark the circumstances. In most of the capital changes that are recorded in the principles andsystem of any government, a public benefit of some kind or other hasbeen pretended. The revolution commenced in something plausible, insomething which carried the appearance at least of punishment ofdelinquency or correction of abuse. But here, in the very moment of theconversion of a department of British government into an Indian mystery, and in the very act in which the change commences, a corrupt privateinterest is set up in direct opposition to the necessities of thenation. A diversion is made of millions of the public money from thepublic treasury to a private purse. It is not into secret negotiationsfor war, peace, or alliance that the House of Commons is forbidden toinquire. It is a matter of account; it is a pecuniary transaction; it isthe demand of a suspected steward upon ruined tenants and an embarrassedmaster that the Commons of Great Britain are commanded not to inspect. The whole tenor of the right honorable gentleman's argument is consonantto the nature of his policy. The system of concealment is fostered by asystem of falsehood. False facts, false colors, false names of personsand things, are its whole support. 

Sir, I mean to follow the right honorable gentleman over that field ofdeception, clearing what he has purposely obscured, and fairly statingwhat it was necessary for him to misrepresent. For this purpose, it isnecessary you should know, with some degree of distinctness, a little ofthe locality, the nature, the circumstances, the magnitude of thepretended debts on which this marvellous donation is founded, as well asof the persons from whom and by whom it is claimed. 

Madras, with its dependencies, is the second (but with a long interval, the second) member of the British empire in the East. The trade of thatcity, and of the adjacent territory, was not very long ago among themost flourishing in Asia. But since the establishment of the Britishpower it has wasted away under an uniform gradual decline, insomuch thatin the year 1779 not one merchant of eminence was to be found in thewhole country. [5] During this period of decay, about six hundredthousand sterling pounds a year have been drawn off by English gentlemenon their private account, by the way of China alone. [6] If we add fourhundred thousand, as probably remitted through other channels, and inother mediums, that is, in jewels, gold, and silver, directly brought toEurope, and in bills upon the British and foreign companies, you willscarcely think the matter overrated. If we fix the commencement of thisextraction of money from the Carnatic at a period no earlier than theyear 1760, and close it in the year 1780, it probably will not amount toa great deal less than twenty millions of money. 

During the deep, silent flow of this steady stream of wealth which setfrom India into Europe, it generally passed on with no adequateobservation; but happening at some periods to meet rifts of rocks thatchecked its course, it grew more noisy and attracted more notice. Thepecuniary discussions caused by an accumulation of part of the fortunesof their servants in a debt from the Nabob of Arcot was the first thingwhich very particularly called for, and long engaged, the attention ofthe Court of Directors. This debt amounted to eight hundred and eightythousand pounds sterling, and was claimed, for the greater part, byEnglish gentlemen residing at Madras. This grand capital, settled atlength by order at ten per cent, afforded an annuity of eighty-eightthousand pounds. [7]

Whilst the Directors were digesting their astonishment at thisinformation, a memorial was presented to them from three gentlemen, informing them that their friends had lent, likewise, to merchants ofCanton in China, a sum of not more than one million sterling. In thismemorial they called upon the Company for their assistance andinterposition with the Chinese government for the recovery of the debt. This sum lent to Chinese merchants was at twenty-four per cent, whichwould yield, if paid, an annuity of two hundred and forty thousandpounds. [8]

Perplexed as the Directors were with these demands, you may conceive, Sir, that they did not find themselves very much disembarrassed by beingmade acquainted that they must again exert their influence for a newreserve of the happy parsimony of their servants, collected into asecond debt from the Nabob of Arcot, amounting to two millions fourhundred thousand pounds, settled at an interest of twelve per cent. Thisis known by the name of the Consolidation of 1777, as the former of theNabob's debts was by the title of the Consolidation of 1767. To this wasadded, in a separate parcel, a little reserve, called the Cavalry Debt, of one hundred and sixty thousand pounds, at the same interest. Thewhole of these four capitals, amounting to four millions four hundredand forty thousand pounds, produced at their several rates, annuitiesamounting to six hundred and twenty-three thousand pounds a year: a gooddeal more than one third of the clear land-tax of England, at fourshillings in the pound; a good deal more than double the whole annualdividend of the East India Company, the nominal masters to theproprietors in these funds. Of this interest, three hundred andeighty-three thousand two hundred pounds a year stood chargeable on thepublic revenues of the Carnatic. 

Sir, at this moment, it will not be necessary to consider the variousoperations which the capital and interest of this debt have successivelyundergone. I shall speak to these operations when I come particularly toanswer the right honorable gentleman on each of the heads, as he hasthought proper to divide them. But this was the exact view in whichthese debts first appeared to the Court of Directors, and to the world. It varied afterwards. But it never appeared in any other than a mostquestionable shape. When this gigantic phantom of debt first appearedbefore a young minister, it naturally would have justified some degreeof doubt and apprehension. Such a prodigy would have filled any commonman with superstitious fears. He would exorcise that shapeless, namelessform, and by everything sacred would have adjured it to tell by whatmeans a small number of slight individuals, of no consequence orsituation, possessed of no lucrative offices, without the command ofarmies or the known administration of revenues, without profession ofany kind, without any sort of trade sufficient to employ a peddler, could have, in a few years, (as to some, even in a few months, ) amassedtreasures equal to the revenues of a respectable kingdom? Was it notenough to put these gentlemen, in the novitiate of their administration, on their guard, and to call upon them for a strict inquiry, (if not tojustify them in a reprobation of those demands without any inquiry atall, ) that, when all England, Scotland, and Ireland had for years beenwitness to the immense sums laid out by the servants of the Company instocks of all denominations, in the purchase of lands, in the buying andbuilding of houses, in the securing quiet seats in Parliament or in thetumultuous riot of contested elections, in wandering throughout thewhole range of those variegated modes of inventive prodigality whichsometimes have excited our wonder, sometimes roused our indignation, that, after all, India was four millions still in debt to _them_? Indiain debt to _them_! For what? Every debt, for which an equivalent of somekind or other is not given, is, on the face of it, a fraud. What is theequivalent they have given? What equivalent had they to give? What arethe articles of commerce, or the branches of manufacture, which thosegentlemen have carried hence to enrich India? What are the sciences theybeamed out to enlighten it? What are the arts they introduced to cheerand to adorn it? What are the religious, what the moral institutionsthey have taught among that people, as a guide to life, or as aconsolation when life is to be no more, that there is an eternal debt, adebt "still paying, still to owe, " which must be bound on the presentgeneration in India, and entailed on their mortgaged posterity forever?A debt of millions, in favor of a set of men whose names, with fewexceptions, are either buried in the obscurity of their origin andtalents or dragged into light by the enormity of their crimes!

In my opinion the courage of the minister was the most wonderful part ofthe transaction, especially as he must have read, or rather the righthonorable gentleman says he has read for him, whole volumes upon thesubject. The volumes, by the way, are not by one tenth part so numerousas the right honorable gentleman has thought proper to pretend, in orderto frighten you from inquiry; but in these volumes, such as they are, the minister must have found a full authority for a suspicion (at thevery least) of everything relative to the great fortunes made at Madras. What is that authority? Why, no other than the standing authority forall the claims which the ministry has thought fit to provide for, --thegrand debtor, --the Nabob of Arcot himself. Hear that prince, in theletter written to the Court of Directors, at the precise period whilstthe main body of these debts were contracting. In his letter he stateshimself to be, what undoubtedly he is, a most competent witness to thispoint. After speaking of the war with Hyder Ali in 1768 and 1769, and ofother measures which he censures, (whether right or wrong it signifiesnothing, ) and into which he says he had been led by the Company'sservants, he proceeds in this manner:--"If all these things were againstthe real interests of the Company, they are ten thousand times moreagainst mine, and against the prosperity of my country and the happinessof my people; for your interests and mine are the same. _What were theyowing to, then? To the private views of a few individuals, who haveenriched themselves at the expense of your influence and of my country:for your servants HAVE NO TRADE IN THIS COUNTRY, neither do you pay themhigh wages; yet in a few years they return to England with many lacs ofpagodas. How can you or I account for such immense fortunes acquired inso short a time, without any visible means of getting them?_"

When he asked this question, which involves its answer, it isextraordinary that curiosity did not prompt the Chancellor of theExchequer to that inquiry which might come in vain recommended to him byhis own act of Parliament. Does not the Nabob of Arcot tell us, in somany words, that there was no fair way of making the enormous sums sentby the Company's servants to England? And do you imagine that there wasor could be more honesty and good faith in the demands for what remainedbehind in India? Of what nature were the transactions with himself? Ifyou follow the train of his information, you must see, that, if thesegreat sums were at all lent, it was not property, but spoil, that waslent; if not lent, the transaction was not a contract, but a fraud. Either way, if light enough could not be furnished to authorize a fullcondemnation of these demands, they ought to have been left to theparties, who best knew and understood each other's proceedings. It wasnot necessary that the authority of government should interpose in favorof claims whose very foundation was a defiance of that authority, andwhose object and end was its entire subversion. 

It may be said that this letter was written by the Nabob of Arcot in amoody humor, under the influence of some chagrin. Certainly it was; butit is in such humors that truth comes out. And when he tells you, fromhis own knowledge, what every one must presume, from the extremeprobability of the thing, whether he told it or not, one such testimonyis worth a thousand that contradict that probability, when the partieshave a better understanding with each other, and when they have a pointto carry that may unite them in a common deceit. 

If this body of private claims of debt, real or devised, were aquestion, as it is falsely pretended, between the Nabob of Arcot, asdebtor, and Paul Benfield and his associates, as creditors, I am sure Ishould give myself but little trouble about it. If the hoards ofoppression were the fund for satisfying the claims of bribery andpeculation, who would wish to interfere between such litigants? If thedemands were confined to what might be drawn from the treasures whichthe Company's records uniformly assert that the Nabob is in possessionof, or if he had mines of gold or silver or diamonds, (as we know thathe has none, ) these gentlemen might break open his hoards or dig in hismines without any disturbance from me. But the gentlemen on the otherside of the House know as well as I do, and they dare not contradict me, that the Nabob of Arcot and his creditors are not adversaries, butcollusive parties, and that the whole transaction is under a false colorand false names. The litigation is not, nor ever has been, between theirrapacity and his hoarded riches. No: it is between him and themcombining and confederating, on one side, and the public revenues, andthe miserable inhabitants of a ruined country, on the other. These arethe real plaintiffs and the real defendants in the suit. Refusing ashilling from his hoards for the satisfaction of any demand, the Nabobof Arcot is always ready, nay, he earnestly, and with eagerness andpassion, contends for delivering up to these pretended creditors histerritory and his subjects. It is, therefore, not from treasuries andmines, but from the food of your unpaid armies, from the blood withheldfrom the veins and whipped out of the backs of the most miserable ofmen, that we are to pamper extortion, usury, and peculation, under thefalse names of debtors and creditors of state. 

The great patron of these creditors, (to whose honor they ought to erectstatues, ) the right honorable gentleman, [9] in stating the merits whichrecommended them to his favor, has ranked them under three granddivisions. The first, the creditors of 1767; then the creditors of thecavalry loan; and lastly, the creditors of the loan in 1777. Let usexamine them, one by one, as they pass in review before us. 

The first of these loans, that of 1767, he insists, has an indisputableclaim upon the public justice. The creditors, he affirms, lent theirmoney publicly; they advanced it with the express knowledge andapprobation of the Company; and it was contracted at the moderateinterest of ten per cent. In this loan, the demand is, according to him, not only just, but meritorious in a very high degree: and one would beinclined to believe he thought so, because he has put it last in theprovision he has made for these claims. 

I readily admit this debt to stand the fairest of the whole; for, whatever may be my suspicions concerning a part of it, I can convict itof nothing worse than the most enormous usury. But I can convict, uponthe spot, the right honorable gentleman of the most daringmisrepresentation in every one fact, without any exception, that he hasalleged in defence of this loan, and of his own conduct with regard toit. I will show you that this debt was never contracted with theknowledge of the Company; that it had not their approbation; that theyreceived the first intelligence of it with the utmost possible surprise, indignation, and alarm. 

So for from being previously apprised of the transaction from itsorigin, it was two years before the Court of Directors obtained anyofficial intelligence of it. "The dealings of the servants with theNabob were concealed from the first, until they were found out" (saysMr. Sayer, the Company's counsel) "by the report of the country. " ThePresidency, however, at last thought proper to send an official account. On this the Directors tell them, "To your great reproach, it has been_concealed from us_. We cannot but suspect this debt to have had itsweight in _your proposed aggrandizement of Mahomed Ali_ [the Nabob ofArcot]; but whether it has or has not, certain it is you are guilty ofan high breach of duty in _concealing_ it from us. "

These expressions, concerning the ground of the transaction, its effect, and its clandestine nature, are in the letters bearing date March 17, 1769. After receiving a more full account, on the 23d March, 1770, theystate, that "Messrs. John Pybus, John Call, and James Bourchier, astrustees for themselves and others of the Nabob's private creditors, hadproved a deed of assignment upon the Nabob and his son of FIFTEENdistricts of the Nabob's country, the revenues of which yielded, in timeof peace, eight lacs of pagodas [320, 000_l. _ sterling] annually; andlikewise an assignment of the yearly tribute paid the Nabob from theRajah of Tanjore, amounting to four lacs of rupees [40, 000_l. _]. " Theterritorial revenue at that time possessed by these gentlemen, withoutthe knowledge or consent of their masters, amounted to three hundred andsixty thousand pounds sterling annually. They were making rapid stridesto the entire possession of the country, when the Directors, whom theright honorable gentleman states as having authorized theseproceedings, were kept in such profound ignorance of this royalacquisition of territorial revenue by their servants, that in the sameletter they say, "This assignment was obtained by _three of the membersof your board_ in January, 1767; yet we do not find the _least trace_ ofit upon your Consultations until August, 1768, nor do any of yourletters to us afford any information relative to such transactions tillthe 1st of November, 1768. By your last letters of the 8th of May, 1769, you bring the whole proceedings to light in one view. "

As to the previous knowledge of the Company, and its sanction to thedebts, you see that this assertion of that knowledge is utterlyunfounded. But did the Directors approve of it, and ratify thetransaction, when it was known? The very reverse. On the same 3d ofMarch, the Directors declare, "upon an _impartial examination_ of thewhole conduct of our late Governor and Council of Fort George [Madras], and on the fullest consideration, that the said Governor and Councilhave, _in notorious violation of the trust_ reposed in them, manifestly_preferred the interest of private individuals to that of the Company_, in permitting the assignment of the revenues of certain valuabledistricts, to a very large amount, from the Nabob to individuals"; andthen, highly aggravating their crimes, they add, --"We order and directthat you do examine, in the most impartial manner, all theabove-mentioned transactions, and that you _punish_, by suspension, degradation, dismission, or otherwise, as to you shall seem meet, alland every such servant or servants of the Company who may by you befound guilty of any of the above offences. " "We had" (say theDirectors) "the mortification to find that the servants of the Company, who had been _raised, supported, and owed their present opulence to theadvantages_ gained in such service, have in this instance most_unfaithfully betrayed_ their trust, _abandoned_ the Company's interest, and _prostituted_ its influence to accomplish the _purposes ofindividuals, whilst the interest of the Company is almost whollyneglected_, and payment to us rendered extremely precarious. " Here, then, is the rock of approbation of the Court of Directors, on which theright honorable gentleman says this debt was founded. Any member, Mr. Speaker, who should come into the House, on my reading this sentence ofcondemnation of the Court of Directors against their unfaithfulservants, might well imagine that he had heard an harsh, severe, unqualified invective against the present ministerial Board of Control. So exactly do the proceedings of the patrons of this abuse tally withthose of the actors in it, that the expressions used in the condemnationof the one may serve for the reprobation of the other, without thechange of a word. 

To read you all the expressions of wrath and indignation fulminated inthis dispatch against the meritorious creditors of the right honorablegentleman, who according to him have been so fully approved by theCompany, would be to read the whole. 

The right honorable gentleman, with an address peculiar to himself, every now and then slides in the Presidency of Madras, as synonymous tothe Company. That the Presidency did approve the debt is certain. Butthe right honorable gentleman, as prudent in suppressing as skilful inbringing forward his matter, has not chosen to tell you that thePresidency were the very persons guilty of contracting thisloan, --creditors themselves, and agents and trustees for all the othercreditors. For this the Court of Directors accuse them of breach oftrust; and for this the right honorable gentleman considers them asperfectly good authority for those claims. It is pleasant to hear agentleman of the law quote the approbation of creditors as an authorityfor their own debt. 

How they came to contract the debt to themselves, how they came to actas agents for those whom they ought to have controlled, is for yourinquiry. The policy of this debt was announced to the Court of Directorsby the very persons concerned in creating it. "Till very lately, " saythe Presidency, "the Nabob placed his dependence on the Company. Now hehas been taught by ill advisers that an interest out of doors may standhim in good stead. He has been made to believe that _his privatecreditors have power and interest to overrule the Court ofDirectors_. "[10] The Nabob was not misinformed. The private creditorsinstantly qualified a vast number of votes; and having made themselvesmasters of the Court of Proprietors, as well as extending a powerfulcabal in other places as important, they so completely overturned theauthority of the Court of Directors at home and abroad, that this poor, baffled government was soon obliged to lower its tone. It was glad to beadmitted into partnership with its own servants. The Court ofDirectors, establishing the debt which they had reprobated as a breachof trust, and which was planned for the subversion of their authority, settled its payments on a par with those of the public; and even so werenot able to obtain peace, or even equality in their demands. All theconsequences lay in a regular and irresistible train. By employing theirinfluence for the recovery of this debt, their orders, issued in thesame breath, against creating new debts, only animated the strongdesires of their servants to this prohibited prolific sport, and it soonproduced a swarm of sons and daughters, not in the least degeneratedfrom the virtue of their parents. 

From that moment the authority of the Court of Directors expired in theCarnatic, and everywhere else. "Every man, " says the Presidency, "whoopposes the government and its measures, finds an immediate countenancefrom the Nabob; even our discarded officers, however unworthy, arereceived into the Nabob's service. "[11] It was, indeed, a matter of nowonderful sagacity to determine whether the Court of Directors, withtheir miserable salaries to their servants, of four or five hundredpounds a year, or the distributor of millions, was most likely to beobeyed. It was an invention beyond the imagination of all thespeculatists of our speculating age, to see a government quietly settledin one and the same town, composed of two distinct members: one to payscantily for obedience, and the other to bribe high for rebellion andrevolt. 

The next thing which recommends this particular debt to the righthonorable gentleman is, it seems, the moderate interest of ten per cent. It would be lost labor to observe on this assertion. The Nabob, in along apologetic letter[12] for the transaction between him and the bodyof the creditors, states the fact as I shall state it to you. In theaccumulation of this debt, the first interest paid was from thirty tothirty-six per cent; it was then brought down to twenty-five per cent;at length it was reduced to twenty; and there it found its rest. Duringthe whole process, as often as any of these monstrous interests fellinto an arrear, (into which they were continually falling, ) the arrear, formed into a new capital, [13] was added to the old, and the sameinterest of twenty per cent accrued upon both. The Company, having gotsome scent of the enormous usury which prevailed at Madras, thought itnecessary to interfere, and to order all interests to be lowered to tenper cent. This order, which contained no exception, though it by nomeans pointed particularly to this class of debts, came like athunderclap on the Nabob. He considered his political credit as ruined;but to find a remedy to this unexpected evil, he again added to the oldprincipal twenty per cent interest accruing for the last year. Thus anew fund was formed; and it was on that accumulation of variousprincipals, and interests heaped upon interests, not on the sumoriginally lent, as the right honorable gentleman would make youbelieve, that ten per cent was settled on the whole. 

When you consider the enormity of the interest at which these debts werecontracted, and the several interests added to the principal, I believeyou will not think me so skeptical, if I should doubt whether for thisdebt of 880, 000_l. _ the Nabob ever saw 100, 000_l. _ in real money. Theright honorable gentleman suspecting, with all his absolute dominionover fact, that he never will be able to defend even this venerablepatriarchal job, though sanctified by its numerous issue, and hoary withprescriptive years, has recourse to recrimination, the last resource ofguilt. He says that this loan of 1767 was provided for in Mr. Fox'sIndia bill; and judging of others by his own nature and principles, hemore than insinuates that this provision was made, not from any sense ofmerit in the claim, but from partiality to General Smith, a proprietor, and an agent for that debt. If partiality could have had any weightagainst justice and policy with the then ministers and their friends, General Smith had titles to it. But the right honorable gentleman knowsas well as I do, that General Smith was very far from looking on himselfas partially treated in the arrangements of that time; indeed, what mandared to hope for private partiality in that sacred plan for relief tonations?

It is not necessary that the right honorable gentleman shouldsarcastically call that time to our recollection. Well do I rememberevery circumstance of that memorable period. God forbid I should forgetit! O illustrious disgrace! O victorious defeat! May your memorial befresh and new to the latest generations! May the day of that generousconflict be stamped in characters never to be cancelled or worn out fromthe records of time! Let no man hear of us, who shall not hear, that, ina struggle against the intrigues of courts and the perfidious levity ofthe multitude, we fell in the cause of honor, in the cause of ourcountry, in the cause of human nature itself! But if fortune should beas powerful over fame as she has been prevalent over virtue, at leastour conscience is beyond her jurisdiction. My poor share in the supportof that great measure no man shall ravish from me. It shall be safelylodged in the sanctuary of my heart, --never, never to be torn fromthence, but with those holds that grapple it to life. 

I say, I well remember that bill, and every one of its honest and itswise provisions. It is not true that this debt was ever protected orenforced, or any revenue whatsoever set apart for it. It was left inthat bill just where it stood: to be paid or not to be paid out of theNabob's private treasures, according to his own discretion. The Companyhad actually given it their sanction, though always relying for itsvalidity on the sole security of the faith of him[14] who without theirknowledge or consent entered into the original obligation. It had noother sanction; it ought to have had no other. So far was Mr. Fox's billfrom providing _funds_ for it, as this ministry have wickedly done forthis, and for ten times worse transactions, out of the public estate, that an express clause immediately preceded, positively forbidding anyBritish subject from receiving assignments upon any part of theterritorial revenue, on any pretence whatsoever. [15]

You recollect, Mr. Speaker, that the Chancellor of the Exchequerstrongly professed to retain every part of Mr. Fox's bill which wasintended to prevent abuse; but in _his_ India bill, which (let me dojustice) is as able and skilful a performance, for its own purposes, asever issued from the wit of man, premeditating this iniquity, --

 Hoc ipsum ut strueret, Trojamque aperiret Achivis, --

expunged this essential clause, broke down the fence which was raised tocover the public property against the rapacity of his partisans, andthus levelling every obstruction, he made a firm, broad highway for sinand death, for usury and oppression, to renew their ravages throughoutthe devoted revenues of the Carnatic. 

The tenor, the policy, and the consequences of this debt of 1767 are inthe eyes of ministry so excellent, that its merits are irresistible; andit takes the lead to give credit and countenance to all the rest. Alongwith this chosen body of heavy-armed infantry, and to support it in theline, the right honorable gentleman has stationed his corps of blackcavalry. If there be any advantage between this debt and that of 1769, according to him the cavalry debt has it. It is not a subject ofdefence: it is a theme of panegyric. Listen to the right honorablegentleman, and you will find it was contracted to save the country, --toprevent mutiny in armies, --to introduce economy in revenues; and forall these honorable purposes, it originated at the express desire and bythe representative authority of the Company itself. 

First let me say a word to the authority. This debt was contracted, notby the authority of the Company, not by its representatives, (as theright honorable gentleman has the unparalleled confidence to assert, )but in the ever-memorable period of 1777, by the usurped power of thosewho rebelliously, in conjunction with the Nabob of Arcot, had overturnedthe lawful government of Madras. For that rebellion this Houseunanimously directed a public prosecution. The delinquents, after theyhad subverted government, in order to make to themselves a party tosupport them in their power, are universally known to have dealt jobsabout to the right and to the left, and to any who were willing toreceive them. This usurpation, which the right honorable gentleman wellknows was brought about by and for the great mass of these pretendeddebts, is the authority which is set up by him to represent theCompany, --to represent that Company which, from the first moment oftheir hearing of this corrupt and fraudulent transaction to this hour, have uniformly disowned and disavowed it. 

So much for the authority. As to the facts, partly true, and partlycolorable, as they stand recorded, they are in substance these. TheNabob of Arcot, as soon as he had thrown off the superiority of thiscountry by means of these creditors, kept up a great army which he neverpaid. Of course his soldiers were generally in a state of mutiny. [16]The usurping Council say that they labored hard with their master, theNabob, to persuade him to reduce these mutinous and useless troops. Heconsented; but, as usual, pleaded inability to pay them their arrears. Here was a difficulty. The Nabob had no money; the Company had no money;every public supply was empty. But there was one resource which noseason has ever yet dried up in that climate. The _soucars_ were athand: that is, private English money-jobbers offered their assistance. Messieurs Taylor, Majendie, and Call proposed to advance the small sumof 160, 000_l. _ to pay off the Nabob's black cavalry, provided theCompany's authority was given for their loan. This was the great pointof policy always aimed at, and pursued through a hundred devices by theservants at Madras. The Presidency, who themselves had no authority forthe functions they presumed to exercise, very readily gave the sanctionof the Company to those servants who knew that the Company, whosesanction was demanded, had positively prohibited all such transactions. 

However, so far as the reality of the dealing goes, all is hitherto fairand plausible; and here the right honorable gentleman concludes, withcommendable prudence, his account of the business. But here it is Ishall beg leave to commence my supplement: for the gentleman's discreetmodesty has led him to cut the thread of the story somewhat abruptly. One of the most essential parties is quite forgotten. Why should theepisode of the poor Nabob be omitted? When that prince chooses it, nobody can tell his story better. Excuse me, if I apply again to mybook, and give it you from the first hand: from the Nabob himself. 

"Mr. Stratton became acquainted with this, and got Mr. Taylor andothers to lend me four lacs of pagodas towards discharging the arrearsof pay of my troops. Upon this, I wrote a letter of thanks to Mr. Stratton; and upon the faith of this money being paid immediately, Iordered many of my troops to be discharged by a certain day, andlessened the number of my servants. Mr. Taylor, &c. , some time afteracquainted me, that they had no ready money, but they would grant teepspayable in four months. This astonished me; for I did not know whatmight happen, when the sepoys were dismissed from my service. I beggedof Mr. Taylor and the others to pay this sum to the officers of myregiments at the time they mentioned; and desired the officers, at thesame time, to pacify and persuade the men belonging to them that theirpay would be given to them _at the end of four months_, and that, tillthose arrears were discharged, their pay should be continued to them. _Two years_ are nearly expired since that time, but Mr. Taylor has notyet entirely discharged the arrears of those troops, and I am obliged tocontinue their pay from that time till this. I hoped to have been able, by this expedient, to have lessened the number of my troops, anddischarged the arrears due to them, considering the trifle of interestto Mr. Taylor and the others as no great matter; but instead of this, _Iam oppressed with the burden of pay due to those troops, and theinterest, which is going on to Mr. Taylor from the day the teeps weregranted to him_. " What I have read to you is an extract of a letter fromthe Nabob of the Carnatic to Governor Rumbold, dated the 22d, andreceived the 24th of March, 1779. [17]

Suppose his Highness not to be well broken in to things of this kind, it must, indeed, surprise so known and established a bond-vender as theNabob of Arcot, one who keeps himself the largest bond-warehouse in theworld, to find that he was now to receive in kind: not to take money forhis obligations, but to give his bond in exchange for the bond ofMessieurs Taylor, Majendie, and Call, and to pay, besides, a good, smartinterest, legally twelve per cent, (in reality, perhaps, twenty ortwenty-four per cent, ) for this exchange of paper. But his troops werenot to be so paid, or so disbanded. They wanted bread, and could notlive by cutting and shuffling of bonds. The Nabob still kept the troopsin service, and was obliged to continue, as you have seen, the wholeexpense to exonerate himself from which he became indebted to thesoucars. 

Had it stood here, the transaction would have been of the most audaciousstrain of fraud and usury perhaps ever before discovered, whatever mighthave been practised and concealed. But the same authority (I mean theNabob's) brings before you something, if possible, more striking. Hestates, that, for this their paper, he immediately handed over to thesegentlemen something very different from paper, --that is, the receipt ofa territorial revenue, of which, it seems, they continued as long inpossession as the Nabob himself continued in possession of anything. Their payments, therefore, not being to commence before the end of fourmonths, and not being completed in two years, it must be presumed(unless they prove the contrary) that their payments to the Nabob weremade out of the revenues they had received from his assignment. Thusthey condescended to accumulate a debt of 160, 000_l. _ with an interestof twelve per cent, in compensation for a lingering payment to theNabob of 160, 000_l. _ of his own money. 

Still we have not the whole. About two years after the assignment ofthose territorial revenues to these gentlemen, the Nabob receives aremonstrance from his chief manager in a principal province, of whichthis is the tenor. "The _entire_ revenue of those districts is by yourHighness's order set apart to discharge the tunkaws [assignments]granted to the Europeans. The gomastahs [agents] of Mr. Taylor to Mr. DeFries are there in order to collect those tunkaws; and as they receive_all_ the revenue that is collected, your Highness's troops have _sevenor eight months' pay due_, which they cannot receive, and are therebyreduced to the greatest _distress_. _In such times_ it is highlynecessary to provide for the sustenance of the troops, that they may beready to exert themselves in the service of your Highness. "

Here, Sir, you see how these causes and effects act upon one another. One body of troops mutinies for want of pay; a debt is contracted to paythem; and they still remain unpaid. A territory destined to pay othertroops is assigned for this debt; and these other troops fall into thesame state of indigence and mutiny with the first. Bond is paid by bond;arrear is turned into new arrear; usury engenders new usury; mutiny, suspended in one quarter, starts up in another; until all the revenuesand all the establishments are entangled into one inextricable knot ofconfusion, from which they are only disengaged by being entirelydestroyed. In that state of confusion, in a very few months after thedate of the memorial I have just read to you, things were found, whenthe Nabob's troops, famished to feed English soucars, instead ofdefending the country, joined the invaders, and deserted in entirebodies to Hyder Ali. [18]

The manner in which this transaction was carried on shows that goodexamples are not easily forgot, especially by those who are bred in agreat school. One of those splendid examples give me leave to mention, at a somewhat more early period; because one fraud furnishes light tothe discovery of another, and so on, until the whole secret ofmysterious iniquity bursts upon you in a blaze of detection. The paper Ishall read you is not on record. If you please, you may take it on myword. It is a letter written from one of undoubted information in Madrasto Sir John Clavering, describing the practice that prevailed there, whilst the Company's allies were under sale, during the time of GovernorWinch's administration. 

"One mode, " says Clavering's correspondent, "of amassing money at theNabob's cost is curious. He is generally in arrears to the Company. Herethe Governor, being cash-keeper, is generally on good terms with thebanker, who manages matters thus. The Governor presses the Nabob for thebalance due from him; the Nabob flies to his banker for relief; thebanker engages to pay the money, and grants his notes accordingly, whichhe puts in the cash-book as ready money; the Nabob pays him an interestfor it at two and three per cent _per mensem_, till the tunkaws hegrants on the particular districts for it are paid. Matters in the meantime are so managed that there is no call for this money for theCompany's service till the tunkaws become due. By this means not a cashis advanced by the banker, though he receives a heavy interest from theNabob, which is divided as lawful spoil. "

Here, Mr. Speaker, you have the whole art and mystery, the truefree-mason secret, of the profession of _soucaring_; by which a fewinnocent, inexperienced young Englishmen, such as Mr. Paul Benfield, forinstance, without property upon which any one would lend to themselves asingle shilling, are enabled at once to take provinces in mortgage, tomake princes their debtors, and to become creditors for millions. 

But it seems the right honorable gentleman's favorite soucar cavalryhave proved the payment before the Mayor's Court at Madras! Have theyso? Why, then, defraud our anxiety and their characters of that proof?Is it not enough that the charges which I have laid before you havestood on record against these poor injured gentlemen for eight years? Isit not enough that they are in print by the orders of the East IndiaCompany for five years? After these gentlemen have borne all the odiumof this publication and all the indignation of the Directors with suchunexampled equanimity, now that they are at length stimulated intofeeling are you to deny them their just relief? But will the righthonorable gentleman be pleased to tell us how they came not to give thissatisfaction to the Court of Directors, their lawful masters, during allthe eight years of this litigated claim? Were they not bound, by everytie that can bind man, to give them this satisfaction? This day, for thefirst time, we hear of the proofs. But when were these proofs offered?In what cause? Who were the parties? Who inspected, who contested thisbelated account? Let us see something to oppose to the body of recordwhich appears against them. The Mayor's Court! the Mayor's Court!Pleasant! Does not the honorable gentleman know that the first corps ofcreditors (the creditors of 1767) stated it as a sort of hardship tothem, that they could not have justice at Madras, from the impossibilityof their supporting their claims in the Mayor's Court? Why? Because, saythey, the members of that court were themselves creditors, and thereforecould not sit as judges. [19] Are we ripe to say that no creditor undersimilar circumstances was member of the court, when the payment which isthe ground of this cavalry debt was put in proof?[20] Nay, are we not ina manner compelled to conclude that the court was so constituted, whenwe know there is scarcely a man in Madras who has not some participationin these transactions? It is a shame to hear such proofs mentioned, instead of the honest, vigorous scrutiny which the circumstances of suchan affair so indispensably call for. 

But his Majesty's ministers, indulgent enough to other scrutinies, havenot been satisfied with authorizing the payment of this demand withoutsuch inquiry as the act has prescribed; but they have added the arrearof twelve per cent interest, from the year 1777 to the year 1784, tomake a new capital, raising thereby 160 to 294, 000_l. _ Then they chargea new twelve per cent on the whole from that period, for a transactionin which it will be a miracle if a single penny will be ever foundreally advanced from the private stock of the pretended creditors. 

In this manner, and at such an interest, the ministers have thoughtproper to dispose of 294, 000_l. _ of the public revenues, for what iscalled the Cavalry Loan. After dispatching this, the right honorablegentleman leads to battle his last grand division, the consolidated debtof 1777. But having exhausted all his panegyric on the two first, he hasnothing at all to say in favor of the last. On the contrary, he admitsthat it was contracted in defiance of the Company's orders, without eventhe pretended sanction of any pretended representatives. Nobody, indeed, has yet been found hardy enough to stand forth avowedly in its defence. But it is little to the credit of the age, that what has notplausibility enough to find an advocate has influence enough to obtain aprotector. Could any man expect to find that protector anywhere? Butwhat must every man think, when he finds that protector in the chairmanof the Committee of Secrecy[21], who had published to the House, and tothe world, the facts that condemn these debts, the orders that forbidthe incurring of them, the dreadful consequences which attended them?Even in his official letter, when he tramples on his Parliamentaryreport, yet his general language is the same. Read the preface to thispart of the ministerial arrangement, and you would imagine that thisdebt was to be crushed, with all the weight of indignation which couldfall from a vigilant guardian of the public treasury upon those whoattempted to rob it. What must be felt by every man who has feeling, when, after such a thundering preamble of condemnation, this debt isordered to be paid without any sort of inquiry into itsauthenticity, --without a single step taken to settle even the amount ofthe demand, --without an attempt so much as to ascertain the real personsclaiming a sum which rises in the accounts from one million threehundred thousand pound sterling to two million four hundred thousandpound, principal money, [22]--without an attempt made to ascertain theproprietors, of whom no list has ever yet been laid before the Court ofDirectors, --of proprietors who are known to be in a collusive shuffle, by which they never appear to be the same in any two lists handed aboutfor their own particular purposes?

My honorable friend who made you the motion has sufficiently exposed thenature of this debt. He has stated to you, that _its own agents_, in theyear 1781, in the arrangement _they proposed_ to make at Calcutta, weresatisfied to have twenty-five per cent at once struck off from thecapital of a great part of this debt, and prayed to have a provisionmade for this reduced principal, without any interest at all. This wasan arrangement of _their own_, an arrangement made by those who bestknew the true constitution of their own debt, who knew how little favorit merited, [23] and how little hopes they had to find any persons inauthority abandoned enough to support it as it stood. 

But what corrupt men, in the fond imaginations of a sanguine avarice, had not the confidence to propose, they have found a Chancellor of theExchequer in England hardy enough to undertake for them. He has cheeredtheir drooping spirits. He has thanked the peculators for not despairingof their commonwealth. He has told them they were too modest. He hasreplaced the twenty-five per cent which, in order to lighten themselves, they had abandoned in their conscious terror. Instead of cutting off theinterest, as they had themselves consented to do, with the fourth of thecapital, he has added the whole growth of four years' usury of twelveper cent to the first overgrown principal; and has again grafted on thismeliorated stock a perpetual annuity of six per cent, to take place fromthe year 1781. Let no man hereafter talk of the decaying energies ofNature. All the acts and monuments in the records of peculation, theconsolidated corruption of ages, the patterns of exemplary plunder inthe heroic times of Roman iniquity, never equalled the giganticcorruption of this single act. Never did Nero, in all the insolentprodigality of despotism, deal out to his prætorian guards a donationfit to be named with the largess showered down by the bounty of ourChancellor of the Exchequer on the faithful band of his Indian sepoys. 

The right honorable gentleman[24] lets you freely and voluntarily intothe whole transaction. So perfectly has his conduct confounded hisunderstanding, that he fairly tells you that through the course of thewhole business he has never conferred with any but the agents of thepretended creditors. After this, do you want more to establish a secretunderstanding with the parties, --to fix, beyond a doubt, their collusionand participation in a common fraud?

If this were not enough, he has furnished you with other presumptionsthat are not to be shaken. It is one of the known indications of guiltto stagger and prevaricate in a story, and to vary in the motives thatare assigned to conduct. Try these ministers by this rule. In theirofficial dispatch, they tell the Presidency of Madras that they haveestablished the debt for two reasons: first, because the Nabob (theparty indebted) does not dispute it; secondly, because it is mischievousto keep it longer afloat, and that the payment of the European creditorswill promote circulation in the country. These two motives (for theplainest reasons in the world) the right honorable gentleman has thisday thought fit totally to abandon. In the first place, he rejects theauthority of the Nabob of Arcot. It would, indeed, be pleasant to seehim adhere to this exploded testimony. He next, upon grounds equallysolid, abandons the benefits of that circulation which was to beproduced by drawing out all the juices of the body. Laying aside, orforgetting, these pretences of his dispatch, he has just now assumed aprinciple totally different, but to the full as extraordinary. Heproceeds upon a supposition that many of the claims may be fictitious. He then finds, that, in a case where many valid and many fraudulentclaims are blended together, the best course for their discrimination isindiscriminately to establish them all. He trusts, (I suppose, ) as theremay not be a fund sufficient for every description of creditors, thatthe best warranted claimants will exert themselves in bringing to lightthose debts which will not bear an inquiry. What he will not do himselfhe is persuaded will be done by others; and for this purpose he leavesto any person a general power of excepting to the debt. This totalchange of language and prevarication in principle is enough, if it stoodalone, to fix the presumption of unfair dealing. His dispatch assignsmotives of policy, concord, trade, and circulation: his speech proclaimsdiscord and litigations, and proposes, as the ultimate end, detection. 

But he may shift his reasons, and wind and turn as he will, confusionwaits him at all his doubles. Who will undertake this detection? Willthe Nabob? But the right honorable gentleman has himself this momenttold us that no prince of the country can by any motive be prevailedupon to discover any fraud that is practised upon him by the Company'sservants. He says what (with the exception of the complaint against theCavalry Loan) all the world knows to be true: and without that prince'sconcurrence, what evidence can be had of the fraud of any the smallestof these demands? The ministers never authorized any person to enterinto his exchequer and to search his records. Why, then, this shamefuland insulting mockery of a pretended contest? Already contests for apreference have arisen among these rival bond-creditors. Has not theCompany itself struggled for a preference for years, without any attemptat detection of the nature of those debts with which they contended?Well is the Nabob of Arcot attended to in the only specific complaint hehas ever made. He complained of unfair dealing in the Cavalry Loan. Itis fixed upon him with interest on interest; and this loan is exceptedfrom all power of litigation. 

This day, and not before, the right honorable gentleman thinks that thegeneral establishment of all claims is the surest way of laying open thefraud of some of them. In India this is a reach of deep policy. But whatwould be thought of this mode of acting on a demand upon the Treasury inEngland? Instead of all this cunning, is there not one plain wayopen, --that is, to put the burden of the proof on those who make thedemand? Ought not ministry to have said to the creditors, "The personwho admits your debt stands excepted to as evidence; he stands chargedas a collusive party, to hand over the public revenues to you forsinister purposes. You say, you have a demand of some millions on theIndian Treasury; prove that you have acted by lawful authority; prove, at least, that your money has been _bonâ fide_ advanced; entitleyourself to my protection by the fairness and fulness of thecommunications you make"? Did an honest creditor ever refuse thatreasonable and honest test?

There is little doubt that several individuals have been seduced by thepurveyors to the Nabob of Arcot to put their money (perhaps the whole ofhonest and laborious earnings) into their hands, and that at such highinterest as, being condemned at law, leaves them at the mercy of thegreat managers whom they trusted. These seduced creditors are probablypersons of no power or interest either in England or India, and may bejust objects of compassion. By taking, in this arrangement, no measuresfor discrimination and discovery, the fraudulent and the fair are in thefirst instance confounded in one mass. The subsequent selection anddistribution is left to the Nabob. With him the agents and instrumentsof his corruption, whom he sees to be omnipotent in England, and who mayserve him in future, as they have done in times past, will haveprecedence, if not an exclusive preference. These leading interestsdomineer, and have always domineered, over the whole. By thisarrangement, the persons seduced are made dependent on their seducers;honesty (comparative honesty at least) must become of the party offraud, and must quit its proper character and its just claims, toentitle itself to the alms of bribery and peculation. 

But be these English creditors what they may, the creditors mostcertainly not fraudulent are the natives, who are numerous and wretchedindeed: by exhausting the whole revenues of the Carnatic, nothing isleft for them. They lent _bonâ fide_; in all probability they were evenforced to lend, or to give goods and service for the Nabob'sobligations. They had no trusts to carry to his market. They had nofaith of alliances to sell. They had no nations to betray to robbery andruin. They had no lawful government seditiously to overturn; nor hadthey a governor, to whom it is owing that you exist in India, to deliverover to captivity, and to death in a shameful prison. [25]

These were the merits of the principal part of the debt of 1777, and theuniversally conceived causes of its growth; and thus the unhappy nativesare deprived of every hope of payment for their real debts, to makeprovision for the arrears of unsatisfied bribery and treason. You see inthis instance that the presumption of guilt is not only no exception tothe demands on the public treasury, but with these ministers it is anecessary condition to their support. But that you may not think thispreference solely owing to their known contempt of the natives, whoought with every generous mind to claim their first charities, you willfind the same rule religiously observed with Europeans too. Attend, Sir, to this decisive case. Since the beginning of the war, besides arrearsof every kind, a bond-debt has been contracted at Madras, uncertain inits amount, but represented from four hundred thousand pound to amillion sterling. It stands only at the low interest of eight per cent. Of the legal authority on which this debt was contracted, of itspurposes for the very being of the state, of its publicity and fairness, no doubt has been entertained for a moment. For this debt no sort ofprovision whatever has been made. It is rejected as an outcast, whilstthe whole undissipated attention of the minister has been employed forthe discharge of claims entitled to his favor by the merits we haveseen. 

I have endeavored to find out, if possible, the amount of the whole ofthose demands, in order to see how much, supposing the country in acondition to furnish the fund, may remain to satisfy the public debt andthe necessary establishments. But I have been foiled in my attempt. 

About one fourth, that is, about 220, 000_l. _, of the loan of 1767remains unpaid. How much interest is in arrear I could never discover:seven or eight years' at least, which would make the whole of that debtabout 396, 000_l. _ This stock, which the ministers in their instructionsto the Governor of Madras state as the least exceptionable, they havethought proper to distinguish by a marked severity, leaving it the onlyone on which the interest is not added to the principal to beget a newinterest. 

The Cavalry Loan, by the operation of the same authority, is made up to294, 000_l. _; and this 294, 000_l. _, made up of principal and interest, iscrowned with a new interest of twelve per cent. 

What the grand loan, the bribery loan of 1777, may be is amongst thedeepest mysteries of state. It is probably the first debt ever assumingthe title of Consolidation that did not express what the amount of thesum consolidated was. It is little less than a contradiction in terms. In the debt of the year 1767 the sum was stated in the act ofconsolidation, and made to amount to 880, 000_l. _ capital. When thisconsolidation of 1777 was first announced at the Durbar, it wasrepresented authentically at 2, 400, 000_l. _ In that, or rather in ahigher state, Sir Thomas Rumbold found and condemned it. [26] Itafterwards fell into such a terror as to sweat away a million of itsweight at once; and it sunk to 1, 400, 000_l. _[27] However, it never waswithout a resource for recruiting it to its old plumpness. There was asort of floating debt of about four or five hundred thousand pounds moreready to be added, as occasion should require. 

In short, when you pressed this sensitive-plant, it always contractedits dimensions. When the rude hand of inquiry was withdrawn, it expandedin all the luxuriant vigor of its original vegetation. In the treaty of1781, the whole of the Nabob's debt to private Europeans is by Mr. Sulivan, agent to the Nabob and his creditors, stated at 2, 800, 000_l. _, which, if the Cavalry Loan and the remains of the debt of 1767 besubtracted, leaves it nearly at the amount originally declared at theDurbar in 1777: but then there is a private instruction to Mr. Sulivan, which, it seems, will reduce it again to the lower standard of1, 400, 000_l. _

Failing in all my attempts, by a direct account, to ascertain the extentof the capital claimed, (where in all probability no capital was everadvanced, ) I endeavored, if possible, to discover it by the interestwhich was to be paid. For that purpose, I looked to the severalagreements for assigning the territories of the Carnatic to secure theprincipal and interest of this debt. In one of them, [28] I found, in asort of postscript, by way of an additional remark, (not in the body ofthe obligation, ) the debt represented at 1, 400, 000_l. _: but when Icomputed the sums to be paid for interest by instalments in anotherpaper, I found they produced an interest of two millions, at twelve percent; and the assignment supposed, that, if these instalments mightexceed, they might also fall short of, the real provision for thatinterest. [29] Another instalment-bond was afterwards granted: in thatbond the interest exactly tallies with a capital of 1, 400, 000_l. _:[30]but pursuing this capital through the correspondence, I lost sight of itagain, and it was asserted that this instalment-bond was considerablyshort of the interest that ought to be computed to the timementioned. [31]

Here are, therefore, two statements of equal authority, differing atleast a million from each other; and as neither persons claiming, norany special sum as belonging to each particular claimant, is ascertainedin the instruments of consolidation, or in the installment-bonds, alarge scope was left to throw in any sums for any persons, as theirmerits in advancing the interest of that loan might require; a power wasalso left for reduction, in case a harder hand, or more scanty funds, might be found to require it. Stronger grounds for a presumption offraud never appeared in any transaction. But the ministers, faithful tothe plan of the interested persons, whom alone they thought fit toconfer with on this occasion, have ordered the payment of the whole massof these unknown, unliquidated sums, without an attempt to ascertainthem. On this conduct, Sir, I leave you to make your own reflections. 

It is impossible (at least I have found it impossible) to fix on thereal amount of the pretended debts with which your ministers havethought proper to load the Carnatic. They are obscure; they shuninquiry; they are enormous. That is all you know of them. 

That you may judge what chance any honorable and useful end ofgovernment has for a provision that comes in for the leavings of thesegluttonous demands, I must take it on myself to bring before you thereal condition of that abused, insulted, racked, and ruined country;though in truth my mind revolts from it, though you will hear it withhorror, and I confess I tremble when I think on these awful andconfounding dispensations of Providence. I shall first trouble you witha few words as to the cause. 

The great fortunes made in India, in the beginnings of conquest, naturally excited an emulation in all the parts and through the wholesuccession of the Company's service. But in the Company it gave rise toother sentiments. They did not find the new channels of acquisition flowwith equal riches to them. On the contrary, the high flood-tide ofprivate emolument was generally in the lowest ebb of their affairs. Theybegan also to fear that the fortune of war might take away what thefortune of war had given. Wars were accordingly discouraged by repeatedinjunctions and menaces: and that the servants might not be bribed intothem by the native princes, they were strictly forbidden to take anymoney whatsoever from their hands. But vehement passion is ingenious inresources. The Company's servants were not only stimulated, but betterinstructed by the prohibition. They soon fell upon a contrivance whichanswered their purposes far better than the methods which wereforbidden: though in this also they violated an ancient, but theythought, an abrogated order. They reversed their proceedings. Instead ofreceiving presents, they made loans. Instead of carrying on wars intheir own name, they contrived an authority, at once irresistible andirresponsible, in whose name they might ravage at pleasure; and beingthus freed from all restraint, they indulged themselves in the mostextravagant speculations of plunder. The cabal of creditors who havebeen the object of the late bountiful grant from his Majesty'sministers, in order to possess themselves, under the name of creditorsand assignees, of every country in India, as fast as it should beconquered, inspired into the mind of the Nabob of Arcot (then adependant on the Company of the humblest order) a scheme of the mostwild and desperate ambition that I believe ever was admitted into thethoughts of a man so situated. [32] First, they persuaded him toconsider himself as a principal member in the political system ofEurope. In the next place, they held out to him, and he readily imbibed, the idea of the general empire of Hindostan. As a preliminary to thisundertaking, they prevailed on him to propose a tripartite division ofthat vast country: one part to the Company; another to the Mahrattas;and the third to himself. To himself he reserved all the southern partof the great peninsula, comprehended under the general name of theDeccan. 

On this scheme of their servants, the Company was to appear in theCarnatic in no other light than as a contractor for the provision ofarmies, and the hire of mercenaries for his use and under his direction. This disposition was to be secured by the Nabob's putting himself underthe guaranty of France, and, by the means of that rival nation, preventing the English forever from assuming an equality, much less asuperiority, in the Carnatic. In pursuance of this treasonable project, (treasonable on the part of the English, ) they extinguished the Companyas a sovereign power in that part of India; they withdrew the Company'sgarrisons out of all the forts and strongholds of the Carnatic; theydeclined to receive the ambassadors from foreign courts, and remittedthem to the Nabob of Arcot; they fell upon, and totally destroyed, theoldest ally of the Company, the king of Tanjore, and plundered thecountry to the amount of near five millions sterling; one afteranother, in the Nabob's name, but with English force, they brought intoa miserable servitude all the princes and great independent nobility ofa vast country. [33] In proportion to these treasons and violences, whichruined the people, the fund of the Nabob's debt grew and flourished. 

Among the victims to this magnificent plan of universal plunder, worthyof the heroic avarice of the projectors, you have all heard (and he hasmade himself to be well remembered) of an Indian chief called Hyder AliKhan. This man possessed the western, as the Company, under the name ofthe Nabob of Arcot, does the eastern division of the Carnatic. It wasamong the leading measures in the design of this cabal (according totheir own emphatic language) to _extirpate_ this Hyder Ali. [34] Theydeclared the Nabob of Arcot to be his sovereign, and himself to be arebel, and publicly invested their instrument with the sovereignty ofthe kingdom of Mysore. But their victim was not of the passive kind. They were soon obliged to conclude a treaty of peace and close alliancewith this rebel, at the gates of Madras. Both before and since thattreaty, every principle of policy pointed out this power as a naturalalliance; and on his part it was courted by every sort of amicableoffice. But the cabinet council of English creditors would not suffertheir Nabob of Arcot to sign the treaty, nor even to give to a prince atleast his equal the ordinary titles of respect and courtesy. [35] Fromthat time forward, a continued plot was carried on within the divan, black and white, of the Nabob of Arcot, for the destruction of HyderAli. As to the outward members of the double, or rather treblegovernment of Madras, which had signed the treaty, they were alwaysprevented by some overruling influence (which they do not describe, butwhich cannot be misunderstood) from performing what justice and interestcombined so evidently to enforce. [36]

When at length Hyder Ali found that he had to do with men who eitherwould sign no convention, or whom no treaty and no signature could bind, and who were the determined enemies of human intercourse itself, hedecreed to make the country possessed by these incorrigible andpredestinated criminals a memorable example to mankind. He resolved, inthe gloomy recesses of a mind capacious of such things, to leave thewhole Carnatic an everlasting monument of vengeance, and to putperpetual desolation as a barrier between him and those against whom thefaith which holds the moral elements of the world together was noprotection. He became at length so confident of his force, so collectedin his might, that he made no secret whatsoever of his dreadfulresolution. Having terminated his disputes with every enemy and everyrival, who buried their mutual animosities in their common detestationagainst the creditors of the Nabob of Arcot, he drew from every quarterwhatever a savage ferocity could add to his new rudiments in the arts ofdestruction; and compounding all the materials of fury, havoc, anddesolation into one black cloud, he hung for a while on the declivitiesof the mountains. Whilst the authors of all these evils were idly andstupidly gazing on this menacing meteor, which blackened all theirhorizon, it suddenly burst, and poured down the whole of its contentsupon the plains of the Carnatic. Then ensued a scene of woe, the like ofwhich no eye had seen, no heart conceived, and which no tongue canadequately tell. All the horrors of war before known or heard of weremercy to that new havoc. A storm of universal fire blasted every field, consumed every house, destroyed every temple. The miserable inhabitants, flying from their flaming villages, in part were slaughtered; others, without regard to sex, to age, to the respect of rank or sacredness offunction, fathers torn from children, husbands from wives, enveloped ina whirlwind of cavalry, and amidst the goading spears of drivers, andthe trampling of pursuing horses, were swept into captivity in anunknown and hostile land. Those who were able to evade this tempest fledto the walled cities; but escaping from fire, sword, and exile, theyfell into the jaws of famine. 

The alms of the settlement, in this dreadful exigency, were certainlyliberal; and all was done by charity that private charity could do: butit was a people in beggary; it was a nation which stretched out itshands for food. For months together, these creatures of sufferance, whose very excess and luxury in their most plenteous days had fallenshort of the allowance of our austerest fasts, silent, patient, resigned, without sedition or disturbance, almost without complaint, perished by an hundred a day in the streets of Madras; every day seventyat least laid their bodies in the streets or on the glacis of Tanjore, and expired of famine in the granary of India. I was going to awake yourjustice towards this unhappy part of our fellow-citizens, by bringingbefore you some of the circumstances of this plague of hunger: of allthe calamities which beset and waylay the life of man, this comes thenearest to our heart, and is that wherein the proudest of us all feelshimself to be nothing more than he is: but I find myself unable tomanage it with decorum; these details are of a species of horror sonauseous and disgusting, they are so degrading to the sufferers and tothe hearers, they are so humiliating to human nature itself, that, onbetter thoughts, I find it more advisable to throw a pall over thishideous object, and to leave it to your general conceptions. 

For eighteen months, [37] without intermission, this destruction ragedfrom the gates of Madras to the gates of Tanjore; and so completely didthese masters in their art, Hyder Ali and his more ferocious son, absolve themselves of their impious vow, that, when the British armiestraversed, as they did, the Carnatic for hundreds of miles in alldirections, through the whole line of their march they did not see oneman, not one woman, not one child, not one four-footed beast of anydescription whatever. One dead, uniform silence reigned over the wholeregion. With the inconsiderable exceptions of the narrow vicinage ofsome few forts, I wish to be understood as speaking literally. I mean toproduce to you more than three witnesses, above all exception, who willsupport this assertion in its full extent. That hurricane of war passedthrough every part of the central provinces of the Carnatic. Six orseven districts to the north and to the south (and these not whollyuntouched) escaped the general ravage. 

The Carnatic is a country not much inferior in extent to England. Figureto yourself, Mr. Speaker, the land in whose representative chair yousit; figure to yourself the form and fashion of your sweet and cheerfulcountry from Thames to Trent, north and south, and from the Irish to theGerman Sea, east and west, emptied and embowelled (may God avert theomen of our crimes!) by so accomplished a desolation. Extend yourimagination a little further, and then suppose your ministers taking asurvey of this scene of waste and desolation. What would be yourthoughts, if you should be informed that they were computing how muchhad been the amount of the excises, how much the customs, how much theland and malt tax, in order that they should charge (take it in the mostfavorable light) for public service, upon the relics of the satiatedvengeance of relentless enemies, the whole of what England had yieldedin the most exuberant seasons of peace and abundance? What would youcall it? To call it tyranny sublimed into madness would be too faint animage; yet this very madness is the principle upon which the ministersat your right hand have proceeded in their estimate of the revenues ofthe Carnatic, when they were providing, not supply for theestablishments of its protection, but rewards for the authors of itsruin. 

Every day you are fatigued and disgusted with this cant, "The Carnaticis a country that will soon recover, and become instantly as prosperousas ever. " They think they are talking to innocents, who will believe, that, by sowing of dragons' teeth, men may come up ready grown and readyarmed. They who will give themselves the trouble of considering (for itrequires no great reach of thought, no very profound knowledge) themanner in which mankind are increased, and countries cultivated, willregard all this raving as it ought to be regarded. In order that thepeople, after a long period of vexation and plunder, may be in acondition to maintain government, government must begin by maintainingthem. Here the road to economy lies not through receipt, but throughexpense; and in that country Nature has given no short cut to yourobject. Men must propagate, like other animals, by the mouth. Never didoppression light the nuptial torch; never did extortion and usury spreadout the genial bed. Does any of you think that England, so wasted, would, under such a nursing attendance, so rapidly and cheaply recover?But he is meanly acquainted with either England or India who does notknow that England would a thousand times sooner resume population, fertility, and what ought to be the ultimate secretion from both, revenue, than such a country as the Carnatic. 

The Carnatic is not by the bounty of Nature a fertile soil. The generalsize of its cattle is proof enough that it is much otherwise. It is somedays since I moved that a curious and interesting map, kept in theIndia House, should be laid before you. [38] The India House is not yetin readiness to send it; I have therefore brought down my own copy, andthere it lies for the use of any gentleman who may think such a matterworthy of his attention. It is, indeed, a noble map, and of noblethings; but it is decisive against the golden dreams and sanguinespeculations of avarice run mad. In addition to what you know must bethe case in every part of the world, (the necessity of a previousprovision of habitation, seed, stock, capital, ) that map will show youthat the uses of the influences of Heaven itself are in that country awork of art. The Carnatic is refreshed by few or no living brooks orrunning streams, and it has rain only at a season; but its product ofrice exacts the use of water subject to perpetual command. This is thenational bank of the Carnatic, on which it must have a perpetual credit, or it perishes irretrievably. For that reason, in the happier times ofIndia, a number, almost incredible, of reservoirs have been made inchosen places throughout the whole country: they are formed, for thegreater part, of mounds of earth and stones, with sluices of solidmasonry; the whole constructed with admirable skill and labor, andmaintained at a mighty charge. In the territory contained in that mapalone, I have been at the trouble of reckoning the reservoirs, and theyamount to upwards of eleven hundred, from the extent of two or threeacres to five miles in circuit. From these reservoirs currents areoccasionally drawn over the fields, and these watercourses again callfor a considerable expense to keep them properly scoured and dulylevelled. Taking the district in that map as a measure, there cannot bein the Carnatic and Tanjore fewer than ten thousand of these reservoirsof the larger and middling dimensions, to say nothing of those fordomestic services, and the use of religious purification. These are notthe enterprises of your power, nor in a style of magnificence suited tothe taste of your minister. These are the monuments of real kings, whowere the fathers of their people, --testators to a posterity which theyembraced as their own. These are the grand sepulchres built byambition, --but by the ambition of an insatiable benevolence, which, notcontented with reigning in the dispensation of happiness during thecontracted term of human life, had strained, with all the reachings andgraspings of a vivacious mind, to extend the dominion of their bountybeyond the limits of Nature, and to perpetuate themselves throughgenerations of generations, the guardians, the protectors, thenourishers of mankind. 

Long before the late invasion, the persons who are objects of the grantof public money now before you had so diverted the supply of the piousfunds of culture and population, that everywhere the reservoirs werefallen into a miserable decay. [39] But after those domestic enemies hadprovoked the entry of a cruel foreign foe into the country, he did notleave it, until his revenge had completed the destruction begun by theiravarice. Few, very few indeed, of these magazines of water that are noteither totally destroyed, or cut through with such gaps as to require aserious attention and much cost to reëstablish them, as the means ofpresent subsistence to the people and of future revenue to the state. 

What, Sir, would a virtuous and enlightened ministry do, on the view ofthe ruins of such works before them?--on the view of such a chasm ofdesolation as that which yawned in the midst of those countries, to thenorth and south, which still bore some vestiges of cultivation? Theywould have reduced all their most necessary establishments; they wouldhave suspended the justest payments; they would have employed everyshilling derived from the producing to reanimate the powers of theunproductive parts. While they were performing this fundamental duty, whilst they were celebrating these mysteries of justice and humanity, they would have told the corps of fictitious creditors, whose crimeswere their claims, that they must keep an awful distance, --that theymust silence their inauspicious tongues, --that they must hold off theirprofane, unhallowed paws from this holy work; they would haveproclaimed, with a voice that should make itself heard, that on everycountry the first creditor is the plough, --that this original, indefeasible claim supersedes every other demand. 

This is what a wise and virtuous ministry would have done and said. This, therefore, is what our minister could never think of saying ordoing. A ministry of another kind would have first improved the country, and have thus laid a solid foundation for future opulence and futureforce. But on this grand point of the restoration of the country thereis not one syllable to be found in the correspondence of our ministers, from the first to the last; they felt nothing for a land desolated byfire, sword, and famine: their sympathies took another direction; theywere touched with pity for bribery, so long tormented with a fruitlessitching of its palms; their bowels yearned for usury, that had longmissed the harvest of its returning months;[40] they felt forpeculation, which had been for so many years raking in the dust of anempty treasury; they were melted into compassion for rapine andoppression, licking their dry, parched, unbloody jaws. These were theobjects of their solicitude. These were the necessities for which theywere studious to provide. 

To state the country and its revenues in their real condition, and toprovide for those fictitious claims, consistently with the support of anarmy and a civil establishment, would have been impossible; thereforethe ministers are silent on that head, and rest themselves on theauthority of Lord Macartney, who, in a letter to the Court of Directors, written in the year 1781, speculating on what might be the result of awise management of the countries assigned by the Nabob of Arcot, ratesthe revenue, as in time of peace, at twelve hundred thousand pounds ayear, as he does those of the king of Tanjore (which had not beenassigned) at four hundred and fifty. On this Lord Macartney grounds hiscalculations, and on this they choose to ground theirs. It was on thiscalculation that the ministry, in direct opposition to the remonstrancesof the Court of Directors, have compelled that miserable enslaved bodyto put their hands to an order for appropriating the enormous sum of480, 000_l. _ annually, as a fund for paying to their rebellious servantsa debt contracted in defiance of their clearest and most positiveinjunctions. 

The authority and information of Lord Macartney is held high on thisoccasion, though it is totally rejected in every other particular ofthis business. I believe I have the honor of being almost as old anacquaintance as any Lord Macartney has. A constant and unbrokenfriendship has subsisted between us from a very early period; and Itrust he thinks, that, as I respect his character, and in general admirehis conduct, I am one of those who feel no common interest in hisreputation. Yet I do not hesitate wholly to disallow the calculation of1781, without any apprehension that I shall appear to distrust hisveracity or his judgment. This peace estimate of revenue was notgrounded on the state of the Carnatic, as it then, or as it hadrecently, stood. It was a statement of former and better times. There isno doubt that a period did exist, when the large portion of the Carnaticheld by the Nabob of Arcot might be fairly reputed to produce a revenueto that, or to a greater amount. But the whole had so melted away by theslow and silent hostility of oppression and mismanagement, that therevenues, sinking with the prosperity of the country, had fallen toabout 800, 000_l. _ a year, even before an enemy's horse had imprinted hishoof on the soil of the Carnatic. From that view, and independently ofthe decisive effects of the war which ensued, Sir Eyre Coote conceivedthat years must pass before the country could be restored to its formerprosperity, and production. It was that state of revenue (namely, theactual state before the war) which the Directors have opposed to LordMacartney's speculation. They refused to take the revenues for more than800, 000_l. _ In this they are justified by Lord Macartney himself, who, in a subsequent letter, informs the court that his sketch is a matter ofspeculation; it supposes the country restored to its ancient prosperity, and the revenue to be in a course of effective and honest collection. If, therefore, the ministers have gone wrong, they were not deceived byLord Macartney: they were deceived by no man. The estimate of theDirectors is nearly the very estimate furnished by the right honorablegentleman himself, and published to the world in one of the printedreports of his own committee;[41] but as soon as he obtained his power, he chose to abandon his account. No part of his official conduct can bedefended on the ground of his Parliamentary information. 

In this clashing of accounts and estimates, ought not the ministry, ifthey wished to preserve even appearances, to have waited for informationof the actual result of these speculations, before they laid a charge, and such a charge, not conditionally and eventually, but positively andauthoritatively, upon a country which they all knew, and which one ofthem had registered on the records of this House, to be wasted, beyondall example, by every oppression of an abusive government, and everyravage of a desolating war? But that you may discern in what manner theyuse the correspondence of office, and that thereby you may enter intothe true spirit of the ministerial Board of Control, I desire you, Mr. Speaker, to remark, that, through their whole controversy with the Courtof Directors, they do not so much as hint at their ever having seen anyother paper from Lord Macartney, or any other estimate of revenue thanthis of 1781. To this they hold. Here they take post; here they intrenchthemselves. 

When I first read this curious controversy between the ministerialboard and the Court of Directors, common candor obliged me to attributetheir tenacious adherence to the estimate of 1781 to a total ignoranceof what had appeared upon the records. But the right honorable gentlemanhas chosen to come forward with an uncalled-for declaration; heboastingly tells you, that he has seen, read, digested, comparedeverything, --and that, if he has sinned, he has sinned with his eyesbroad open. Since, then, the ministers will obstinately shut the gatesof mercy on themselves, let them add to their crimes what aggravationsthey please. They have, then, (since it must be so, ) wilfully andcorruptly suppressed the information which they ought to have produced, and, for the support of peculation, have made themselves guilty ofspoliation and suppression of evidence. [42] The paper I hold in my hand, which totally overturns (for the present, at least) the estimate of1781, they have no more taken notice of, in their controversy with theCourt of Directors, than if it had no existence. It is the report madeby a committee appointed at Madras to manage the whole of the sixcountries assigned to the Company by the Nabob of Arcot. This committeewas wisely instituted by Lord Macartney, to remove from himself thesuspicion of all improper management in so invidious a trust; and itseems to have been well chosen. This committee has made a comparativeestimate of the only six districts which were in a condition to be letto farm. In one set of columns they state the gross and net produce ofthe districts as let by the Nabob. To that statement they oppose theterms on which the same districts were rented for five years undertheir authority. Under the Nabob, the gross farm was so high as570, 000_l. _ sterling. What was the clear produce? Why, no more thanabout 250, 000_l. _; and this was the whole profit of the Nabob'streasury, under his own management of all the districts which were in acondition to be let to farm on the 27th of May, 1782. Lord Macartney'sleases stipulated a gross produce of no more than about 530, 000_l. _; butthen the estimated net amount was nearly double the Nabob's. It, however, did not then exceed 480, 000_l. _; and Lord Macartney'scommissioners take credit for an annual revenue amounting to this clearsum. Here is no speculation; here is no inaccurate account clandestinelyobtained from those who might wish, and were enabled, to deceive. It isthe authorized, recorded state of a real, recent transaction. Here isnot twelve hundred thousand pound, --not eight hundred. The whole revenueof the Carnatic yielded no more, in May, 1782, than four hundred andeighty thousand pounds: nearly the very precise sum which your minister, who is so careful of the public security, has carried from alldescriptions of establishment to form a fund for the private emolumentof his creatures. 

In this estimate, we see, as I have just observed, the Nabob's farmsrated so high as 570, 000_l. _ Hitherto all is well: but follow on to theeffective net revenue; there the illusion vanishes; and you will notfind nearly so much as half the produce. It is with reason, therefore, Lord Macartney invariably, throughout the whole correspondence, qualifies all his views and expectations of revenue, and all his plansfor its application, with this indispensable condition, that themanagement is not in the hands of the Nabob of Arcot. Should that fatalmeasure take place, he has over and over again told you that he has noprospect of realizing anything whatsoever for any public purpose. Withthese weighty declarations, confirmed by such a state of indisputablefact before them, what has been done by the Chancellor of the Exchequerand his accomplices? Shall I be believed? They have delivered over thosevery territories, on the keeping of which in the hands of the committeethe defence of our dominions, and, what was more dear to them, possibly, their own job, depended, --they have delivered back again, withoutcondition, without arrangement, without stipulation of any sort for thenatives of any rank, the whole of those vast countries, to many of whichhe had no just claim, into the ruinous mismanagement of the Nabob ofArcot. To crown all, according to their miserable practice, wheneverthey do anything transcendently absurd, they preface this theirabdication of their trust by a solemn declaration that they were notobliged to it by any principle of policy or any demand of justicewhatsoever. 

I have stated to you the estimated produce of the territories of theCarnatic in a condition to be farmed in 1782, according to the differentmanagements into which they might fall; and this estimate the ministershave thought proper to suppress. Since that, two other accounts havebeen received. The first informs us, that there has been a recovery ofwhat is called arrear, as well as of an improvement of the revenue ofone of the six provinces which were let in 1782. [43] It was broughtabout by making a new war. After some sharp actions, by the resolutionand skill of Colonel Fullarton several of the petty princes of the mostsoutherly of the unwasted provinces were compelled to pay very heavyrents and tributes, who for a long time before had not paid anyacknowledgment. After this reduction, by the care of Mr. Irwin, one ofthe committee, that province was divided into twelve farms. Thisoperation raised the income of that particular province; the othersremain as they were first farmed. So that, instead of producing onlytheir original rent of 480, 000_l. _, they netted, in about two years anda quarter, 1, 320, 000_l. _ sterling, which would be about 660, 000_l. _ ayear, if the recovered arrear was not included. What deduction is to bemade on account of that arrear I cannot determine, but certainly whatwould reduce the annual income considerably below the rate I haveallowed. 

The second account received is the letting of the wasted provinces ofthe Carnatic. This I understand is at a growing rent, which may or maynot realize what it promises; but if it should answer, it will raise thewhole, at some future time, to 1, 200, 000_l. _

You must here remark, Mr. Speaker, that this revenue is the produce of_all_ the Nabob's dominions. During the assignment, the Nabob paidnothing, because the Company had all. Supposing the whole of the latelyassigned territory to yield up to the most sanguine expectations of theright honorable gentleman, and suppose 1, 200, 000_l. _ to be annuallyrealized, (of which we actually know of no more than the realizing ofsix hundred thousand, ) out of this you must deduct the subsidy and rentwhich the Nabob paid before the assignment, --namely, 340, 000_l. _ a year. This reduces back the revenue applicable to the new distribution made byhis Majesty's ministers to about 800, 000_l. _ Of that sum five eighthsare by them surrendered to the debts. The remaining three are the onlyfund left for all the purposes so magnificently displayed in the letterof the Board of Control: that is, for a new-cast peace establishment, anow fund for ordnance and fortifications, and a large allowance for whatthey call "the splendor of the Durbar. "

You have heard the account of these territories as they stood in 1782. You have seen the _actual_ receipt since the assignment in 1781, ofwhich I reckon about two years and a quarter productive. I have statedto you the expectation from the wasted part. For realizing all this youmay value yourselves on the vigor and diligence of a governor andcommittee that have done so much. If these hopes from the committee arerational, remember that the committee is no more. Your ministers, whohave formed their fund for these debts on the presumed effect of thecommittee's management, have put a complete end to that committee. Theiracts are rescinded; their leases are broken; their renters aredispersed. Your ministers knew, when they signed the death-warrant ofthe Carnatic, that the Nabob would not only turn all these unfortunatefarmers of revenue out of employment, but that he has denounced hisseverest vengeance against them, for acting under British authority. With a knowledge of this disposition, a British Chancellor of theExchequer and Treasurer of the Navy, incited by no public advantage, impelled by no public necessity, in a strain of the most wanton perfidywhich has ever stained the annals of mankind, have delivered over toplunder, imprisonment, exile, and death itself, according to the mercyof such execrable tyrants as Amir-ul-Omrah and Paul Benfield, theunhappy and deluded souls who, untaught by uniform example, were stillweak enough to put their trust in English faith. [44] They have gonefarther: they have thought proper to mock and outrage their misery byordering them protection and compensation. From what power is thisprotection to be derived, and from what fund is this compensation toarise? The revenues are delivered over to their oppressor; theterritorial jurisdiction, from whence that revenue is to arise, andunder which they live, is surrendered to the same iron hands: and thatthey shall be deprived of all refuge and all hope, the minister has madea solemn, voluntary declaration that he never will interfere with theNabob's internal government. [45]

The last thing considered by the Board of Control among the debts of theCarnatic was that arising to the East India Company, which, after theprovision for the cavalry, and the consolidation of 1777, was to dividethe residue of the fund of 480, 000_l. _ a year with the lenders of 1767. This debt the worthy chairman, who sits opposite to me, contends to bethree millions sterling. Lord Macartney's account of 1781 states it tobe at that period 1, 200, 000_l. _ The first account of the Court ofDirectors makes it 900, 000_l. _ This, like the private debt, beingwithout any solid existence, is incapable of any distinct limits. Whatever its amount or its validity may be, one thing is clear: it is ofthe nature and quality of a public debt. In that light nothing isprovided for it, but an eventual surplus to be divided with one classof the private demands, after satisfying the two first classes. Neverwas a more shameful postponing a public demand, which, by the reason ofthe thing, and the uniform practice of all nations, supersedes everyprivate claim. 

Those who gave this preference to private claims consider the Company'sas a lawful demand; else why did they pretend to provide for it? Ontheir own principles they are condemned. 

But I, Sir, who profess to speak to your understanding and to yourconscience, and to brush away from this business all false colors, allfalse appellations, as well as false facts, do positively deny that theCarnatic owes a shilling to the Company, --whatever the Company may beindebted to that undone country. It owes nothing to the Company, forthis plain and simple reason: the territory charged with the debt istheir own. To say that their revenues fall short, and owe them money, isto say they are in debt to themselves, which is only talking nonsense. The fact is, that, by the invasion of an enemy, and the ruin of thecountry, the Company, either in its own name, or in the names of theNabob of Arcot and Rajah of Tanjore, has lost for several years what itmight have looked to receive from its own estate. If men were allowed tocredit themselves upon such principles, any one might soon grow rich bythis mode of accounting. A flood comes down upon a man's estate in theBedford Level of a thousand pounds a year, and drowns his rents for tenyears. The Chancellor would put that man into the hands of a trustee, who would gravely make up his books, and for this loss credit himself inhis account for a debt due to him of 10, 000_l. _ It is, however, on thisprinciple the Company makes up its demands on the Carnatic. In peacethey go the full length, and indeed more than the full length, of whatthe people can bear for current establishments; then they are absurdenough to consolidate all the calamities of war into debts, --tometamorphose the devastations of the country into demands upon itsfuture production. What is this but to avow a resolution utterly todestroy their own country, and to force the people to pay for theirsufferings to a government which has proved unable to protect either theshare of the husbandman or their own? In every lease of a farm, theinvasion of an enemy, instead of forming a demand for arrear, is arelease of rent: nor for that release is it at all necessary to showthat the invasion has left nothing to the occupier of the soil; thoughin the present case it would be too easy to prove that melancholyfact. [46] I therefore applauded my right honorable friend, who, when hecanvassed the Company's accounts, as a preliminary to a bill that oughtnot to stand on falsehood of any kind, fixed his discerning eye and hisdeciding hand on these debts of the Company from the Nabob of Arcot andRajah of Tanjore, and at one stroke expunged them all, as utterlyirrecoverable: he might have added, as utterly unfounded. 

On these grounds I do not blame the arrangement this day in question, asa preference given to the debt of individuals over the Company's debt. In my eye it is no more than the preference of a fiction over a chimera;but I blame the preference given to those fictitious private debts overthe standing defence and the standing government. It is there the publicis robbed. It is robbed in its army; it is robbed in its civiladministration; it is robbed in its credit; it is robbed in itsinvestment, which forms the commercial connection between that countryand Europe. There is the robbery. 

But my principal objection lies a good deal deeper. That debt to theCompany is the pretext under which all the other debts lurk and coverthemselves. That debt forms the foul, putrid mucus in which areengendered the whole brood of creeping ascarides, all the endlessinvolutions, the eternal knot, added to a knot of those inexpugnabletape-worms which devour the nutriment and eat up the bowels ofIndia. [47] It is necessary, Sir, you should recollect two things. First, that the Nabob's debt to the Company carries no interest. In the nextplace, you will observe, that, whenever the Company has occasion toborrow, she has always commanded whatever she thought fit at eight percent. Carrying in your mind these two facts, attend to the process withregard to the public and private debt, and with what little appearanceof decency they play into each other's hands a game of utter perditionto the unhappy natives of India. The Nabob falls into an arrear to theCompany. The Presidency presses for payment. The Nabob's answer is, "Ihave no money. " Good! But there are soucars who will supply you on themortgage of your territories. Then steps forward some Paul Benfield, and, from his grateful compassion to the Nabob, and his filial regardto the Company, he unlocks the treasures of his virtuous industry, and, for a consideration of twenty-four or thirty-six per cent on a mortgageof the territorial revenue, becomes security to the Company for theNabob's arrear. 

All this intermediate usury thus becomes sanctified by the ultimate viewto the Company's payment. In this case, would not a plain man ask thisplain question of the Company: If you know that the Nabob must annuallymortgage his territories to your servants to pay his annual arrear toyou, why is not the assignment or mortgage made directly to the Companyitself? By this simple, obvious operation, the Company would be relievedand the debt paid, without the charge of a shilling interest to thatprince. But if that course should be thought too indulgent, why do theynot take that assignment with such interest to themselves as they pay toothers, that is, eight per cent? Or if it were thought more advisable(why it should I know not) that he must borrow, why do not the Companylend their own credit to the Nabob for their own payment? That creditwould not be weakened by the collateral security of his territorialmortgage. The money might still be had at eight per cent. Instead of anyof these honest and obvious methods, the Company has for years kept up ashow of disinterestedness and moderation, by suffering a debt toaccumulate to them from the country powers without any interest at all;and at the same time have seen before their eyes, on a pretext ofborrowing to pay that debt, the revenues of the country charged with anusury of twenty, twenty-four, thirty-six, and even eight-and-forty percent, with compound interest, [48] for the benefit of their servants. Allthis time they know that by having a debt subsisting without anyinterest, which is to be paid by contracting a debt on the highestinterest, they manifestly render it necessary to the Nabob of Arcot togive the private demand a preference to the public; and, by binding himand their servants together in a common cause, they enable him to form aparty to the utter ruin of their own authority and their own affairs. Thus their false moderation, and their affected purity, by the naturaloperation of everything false and everything affected, becomes panderand bawd to the unbridled debauchery and licentious lewdness of usuryand extortion. 

In consequence of this double game, all the territorial revenues have atone time or other been covered by those locusts, the English soucars. Not one single foot of the Carnatic has escaped them: a territory aslarge as England. During these operations what a scene has that countrypresented![49] The usurious European assignee supersedes the Nabob'snative farmer of the revenue; the farmer flies to the Nabob's presenceto claim his bargain; whilst his servants murmur for wages, and hissoldiers mutiny for pay. The mortgage to the European assignee is thenresumed, and the native farmer replaced, --replaced, again to be removedon the new clamor of the European assignee. [50] Every man of rank andlanded fortune being long since extinguished, the remaining miserablelast cultivator, who grows to the soil, after having his back scored bythe farmer, has it again flayed by the whip of the assignee, and isthus, by a ravenous, because a short-lived succession of claimants, lashed from oppressor to oppressor, whilst a single drop of blood isleft as the means of extorting a single grain of corn. Do not think Ipaint. Far, very far, from it: I do not reach the fact, nor approach toit. Men of respectable condition, men equal to your substantial Englishyeomen, are daily tied up and scourged to answer the multiplied demandsof various contending and contradictory titles, all issuing from one andthe same source. Tyrannous exaction brings on servile concealment; andthat again calls forth tyrannous coercion. They move in a circle, mutually producing and produced; till at length nothing of humanity isleft in the government, no trace of integrity, spirit, or manliness inthe people, who drag out a precarious and degraded existence under thissystem of outrage upon human nature. Such is the effect of theestablishment of a debt to the Company, as it has hitherto been managed, and as it ever will remain, until ideas are adopted totally differentfrom those which prevail at this time. 

Your worthy ministers, supporting what they are obliged to condemn, havethought fit to renew the Company's old order against contracting privatedebts in future. They begin by rewarding the violation of the ancientlaw; and then they gravely reenact provisions, of which they have givenbounties for the breach. This inconsistency has been well exposed. [51]But what will you say to their having gone the length of giving positivedirections for contracting the debt which they positively forbid?

I will explain myself. They order the Nabob, out of the revenues of theCarnatic, to allot four hundred and eighty thousand pounds a year, as afund for the debts before us. For the punctual payment of this annuity, they order him to give soucar security. [52] When a soucar, that is, amoney-dealer, becomes security for any native prince, the course is forthe native prince to counter-secure the money-dealer, by making over tohim in mortgage a portion of his territory equal to the sum annually tobe paid, with an interest of at least twenty-four per cent. The pointfit for the House to know is, who are these soucars to whom thissecurity on the revenues in favor of the Nabob's creditors is to begiven? The majority of the House, unaccustomed to these transactions, will hear with astonishment that these soucars are no other than thecreditors themselves. The minister, not content with authorizing thesetransactions in a manner and to an extent unhoped for by the rapaciousexpectations of usury itself, loads the broken back of the Indianrevenues, in favor of his worthy friends, the soucars, with anadditional twenty-four per cent for being security to themselves fortheir own claims, for condescending to take the country in mortgage topay to themselves the fruits of their own extortions. 

The interest to be paid for this security, according to the mostmoderate strain of soucar demand, comes to 118, 000_l. _ a year, which, added to the 480, 000_l. _ on which it is to accrue, will make the wholecharge amount to 598, 000_l. _ a year, --as much as even a long peace willenable those revenues to produce. Can any one reflect for a moment onall those claims of debt, which the minister exhausts himself incontrivances to augment with new usuries, without lifting up his handsand eyes in astonishment at the impudence both of the claim and of theadjudication? Services of some kind or other these servants of theCompany must have done, so great and eminent that the Chancellor of theExchequer cannot think that all they have brought home is half enough. He hallooes after them, "Gentlemen, you have forgot a large packetbehind you, in your hurry; you have not sufficiently recoveredyourselves; you ought to have, and you shall have, interest uponinterest upon a prohibited debt that is made up of interest uponinterest. Even this is too little. I have thought of another characterfor you, by which you may add something to your gains: you shall besecurity to yourselves; and hence will arise a new usury, which shallefface the memory of all the usuries suggested to you by your own dullinventions. "

I have done with the arrangement relative to the Carnatic. After this itis to little purpose to observe on what the ministers have done toTanjore. Your ministers have not observed even form and ceremony intheir outrageous and insulting robbery of that country, whose only crimehas been its early and constant adherence to the power of this, and thesuffering of an uniform pillage in consequence of it. The debt of theCompany from the Rajah of Tanjore is just of the same stuff with that ofthe Nabob of Arcot. 

The subsidy from Tanjore, on the arrear of which this pretended debt (ifany there be) has accrued to the Company, is not, like that paid by theNabob of Arcot, a compensation for vast countries obtained, augmented, and preserved for him; not the price of pillaged treasuries, ransackedhouses, and plundered territories: it is a large grant, from a smallkingdom not obtained by our arms; robbed, not protected, by our power; agrant for which no equivalent was ever given, or pretended to be given. The right honorable gentleman, however, bears witness in his reports tothe punctuality of the payments of this grant of bounty, or, if youplease, of fear. It amounts to one hundred and sixty thousand poundssterling net annual subsidy. He bears witness to a further grant of atown and port, with an annexed district of thirty thousand pound a year, surrendered to the Company since the first donation. He has not bornewitness, but the fact is, (he will not deny it, ) that in the midst ofwar, and during the ruin and desolation of a considerable part of histerritories, this prince made many very large payments. Notwithstandingthese merits and services, the first regulation of ministry is to forcefrom him a territory of an extent which they have not yet thought properto ascertain, [53] for a military peace establishment the particulars ofwhich they have not yet been pleased to settle. 

The next part of their arrangement is with regard to war. As confessedlythis prince had no share in stirring up any of the former wars, so allfuture wars are completely out of his power; for he has no troopswhatever, and is under a stipulation not so much as to correspond withany foreign state, except through the Company. Yet, in case theCompany's servants should be again involved in war, or should thinkproper again to provoke any enemy, as in times past they have wantonlyprovoked all India, he is to be subjected to a new penalty. To whatpenalty? Why, to no less than the confiscation of all his revenues. Butthis is to end with the war, and they are to be faithfully returned? Oh, no! nothing like it. The country is to remain under confiscation untilall the debt which the Company shall think fit to incur in such warshall be discharged: that is to say, forever. His sole comfort is, tofind his old enemy, the Nabob of Arcot, placed in the very samecondition. 

The revenues of that miserable country were, before the invasion ofHyder, reduced to a _gross_ annual receipt of three hundred and sixtythousand pound. [54] From this receipt the subsidy I have just stated istaken. This again, by payments in advance, by extorting deposits ofadditional sums to a vast amount for the benefit of their soucars, andby an endless variety of other extortions, public and private, is loadedwith a debt, the amount of which I never could ascertain, but which islarge undoubtedly, generating an usury the most completely ruinous thatprobably was ever heard of: _that is, forty-eight per cent, payablemonthly, with compound interest_. [55]

Such is the state to which the Company's servants have reduced thatcountry. Now come the reformers, restorers, and comforters of India. What have they done? In addition to all these tyrannous exactions, withall these ruinous debts in their train, looking to one side of anagreement whilst they wilfully shut their eyes to the other, theywithdraw from Tanjore all the benefits of the treaty of 1762, and theysubject that nation to a perpetual tribute of forty thousand a year tothe Nabob of Arcot: a tribute never due, or pretended to be due, to_him_, even when he appeared to be something; a tribute, as things nowstand, not to a real potentate, but to a shadow, a dream, an incubus ofoppression. After the Company has accepted in subsidy, in grant ofterritory, in remission of rent, as a compensation for their ownprotection, at least two hundred thousand pound a year, withoutdiscounting a shilling for that receipt, the ministers condemn thisharassed nation to be tributary to a person who is himself, by their ownarrangement, deprived of the right of war or peace, deprived of thepower of the sword, forbid to keep up a single regiment of soldiers, andis therefore wholly disabled from all protection of the country which isthe object of the pretended tribute. Tribute hangs on the sword. It isan incident inseparable from real, sovereign power. In the present case, to suppose its existence is as absurd as it is cruel and oppressive. Andhere, Mr. Speaker, you have a clear exemplification of the use of thosefalse names and false colors which the gentlemen who have lately takenpossession of India choose to lay on for the purpose of disguising theirplan of oppression. The Nabob of Arcot and Rajah of Tanjore have, intruth and substance, no more than a merely civil authority, held in themost entire dependence on the Company. The Nabob, without military, without federal capacity, is extinguished as a potentate; but then he iscarefully kept alive as an independent and sovereign power, for thepurpose of rapine and extortion, --for the purpose of perpetuating theold intrigues, animosities, usuries, and corruptions. 

It was not enough that this mockery of tribute was to be continuedwithout the correspondent protection, or any of the stipulatedequivalents, but ten years of arrear, to the amount of 400, 000_l. _sterling, is added to all the debts to the Company and to individuals, in order to create a new debt, to be paid (if at all possible to be paidin whole or in part) only by new usuries, --and all this for the Nabob ofArcot, or rather for Mr. Benfield and the corps of the Nabob's creditorsand their soucars. Thus these miserable Indian princes are continued intheir seats for no other purpose than to render them, in the firstinstance, objects of every species of extortion, and, in the second, toforce them to become, for the sake of a momentary shadow of reducedauthority, a sort of subordinate tyrants, the ruin and calamity, not thefathers and cherishers, of their people. 

But take this tribute only as a mere charge (without title, cause, orequivalent) on this people; what one step has been taken to furnishgrounds for a just calculation and estimate of the proportion of theburden and the ability? None, --not an attempt at it. They do not adaptthe burden to the strength, but they estimate the strength of thebearers by the burden they impose. Then what care is taken to leave afund sufficient to the future reproduction of the revenues that are tobear all these loads? Every one, but tolerably conversant in Indianaffairs, must know that the existence of this little kingdom depends onits control over the river Cavery. The benefits of Heaven to anycommunity ought never to be connected with political arrangements, ormade to depend on the personal conduct of princes, in which the mistake, or error, or neglect, or distress, or passion of a moment, on eitherside, may bring famine on millions, and ruin an innocent nation perhapsfor ages. The means of the subsistence of mankind should be as immutableas the laws of Nature, let power and dominion take what course theymay. --Observe what has been done with regard to this important concern. The use of this river is, indeed, at length given to the Rajah, and apower provided for its enjoyment _at his own charge_; but the means offurnishing that charge (and a mighty one it is) are wholly out off. Thisuse of the water, which ought to have no more connection than clouds andrains and sunshine with the politics of the Rajah, the Nabob, or theCompany, is expressly contrived as a means of enforcing demands andarrears of tribute. This horrid and unnatural instrument of extortionhad been a distinguishing feature in the enormities of the Carnaticpolitics, that loudly called for reformation. But the food of a wholepeople is by the reformers of India conditioned on payments from itsprince, at a moment that he is overpowered with a swarm of theirdemands, without regard to the ability of either prince or people. Infine, by opening an avenue to the irruption of the Nabob of Arcot'screditors and soucars, whom every man, who did not fall in love withoppression and corruption on an experience of the calamities theyproduced, would have raised wall before wall and mound before mound tokeep from a possibility of entrance, a more destructive enemy than HyderAli is introduced into that kingdom. By this part of their arrangement, in which they establish a debt to the Nabob of Arcot, in effect andsubstance, they deliver over Tanjore, bound hand and foot, to PaulBenfield, the old betrayer, insulter, oppressor, and scourge of acountry which has for years been an object of an unremitted, but, unhappily, an unequal struggle, between the bounties of Providence torenovate and the wickedness of mankind to destroy. 

The right honorable gentleman[56] talks of his fairness in determiningthe territorial dispute between the Nabob of Arcot and the prince ofthat country, when he superseded the determination of the Directors, inwhom the law had vested the decision of that controversy. He is in thisjust as feeble as he is in every other part. But it is not necessary tosay a word in refutation of any part of his argument. The mode of theproceeding sufficiently speaks the spirit of it. It is enough to fix hischaracter as a judge, that he _never heard the Directors in defence oftheir adjudication, nor either of the parties in support of theirrespective claims_. It is sufficient for me that he takes from the Rajahof Tanjore by this pretended adjudication, or rather from his unhappysubjects, 40, 000_l. _ a year of his and their revenue, and leaves uponhis and their shoulders all the charges that can be made on the part ofthe Nabob, on the part of his creditors, and on the part of the Company, without so much as hearing him as to right or to ability. But whatprincipally induces me to leave the affair of the territorial disputebetween the Nabob and the Rajah to another day is this, --that, both theparties being stripped of their all, it little signifies under which oftheir names the unhappy, undone people are delivered over to themerciless soucars, the allies of that right honorable gentleman and theChancellor of the Exchequer. In them ends the account of this longdispute of the Nabob of Arcot and the Rajah of Tanjore. 

The right honorable gentleman is of opinion that his judgment in thiscase can be censured by none but those who seem to act as if they werepaid agents to one of the parties. What does he think of his Court ofDirectors? If they are paid by either of the parties, by which of themdoes he think they are paid? He knows that their decision has beendirectly contrary to his. Shall I believe that it does not enter intohis heart to conceive that any person can steadily and actively interesthimself in the protection of the injured and oppressed without beingwell paid for his service? I have taken notice of this sort of discoursesome days ago, so far as it may be supposed to relate to me. I thencontented myself, as I shall now do, with giving it a cold, though avery direct contradiction. Thus much I do from respect to truth. If Idid more, it might be supposed, by my anxiety to clear myself, that Ihad imbibed the ideas which, for obvious reasons, the right honorablegentleman wishes to have received concerning all attempts to plead thecause of the natives of India, as if it were a disreputable employment. If he had not forgot, in his present occupation, every principle whichought to have guided him, and I hope did guide him, in his lateprofession, he would have known that he who takes a fee for pleading thecause of distress against power, and manfully performs the duty he hasassumed, receives an honorable recompense for a virtuous service. But ifthe right honorable gentleman will have no regard to fact in hisinsinuations or to reason in his opinions, I wish him at least toconsider, that, if taking an earnest part with regard to the oppressionsexercised in India, and with regard to this most oppressive case ofTanjore in particular, can ground a presumption of interested motives, he is himself the most mercenary man I know. His conduct, indeed, issuch that he is on all occasions the standing testimony against himself. He it was that first called to that case the attention of the House; thereports of his own committee are ample and affecting upon thatsubject;[57] and as many of us as have escaped his massacre mustremember the very pathetic picture he made of the sufferings of theTanjore country, on the day when he moved the unwieldy code of hisIndian resolutions. Has he not stated over and over again, in hisreports, the ill treatment of the Rajah of Tanjore (a branch of theroyal house of the Mahrattas, every injury to whom the Mahrattas felt asoffered to themselves) as a main cause of the alienation of that peoplefrom the British power? And does he now think that to betray hisprinciples, to contradict his declarations, and to become himself anactive instrument in those oppressions which he had so tragicallylamented, is the way to clear himself of having been actuated by apecuniary interest at the time when he chose to appear full oftenderness to that ruined nation?

The right honorable gentleman is fond of parading on the motives ofothers, and on his own. As to himself, he despises the imputations ofthose who suppose that anything corrupt could influence him in this hisunexampled liberality of the public treasure. I do not know that I amobliged to speak to the motives of ministry, in the arrangements theyhave made of the pretended debts of Arcot and Tanjore. If I prove fraudand collusion with regard to public money on those right honorablegentlemen, I am not obliged to assign their motives; because no goodmotives can be pleaded in favor of their conduct. Upon that case Istand; we are at issue; and I desire to go to trial. This, I am sure, isnot loose railing, or mean insinuation, according to their low anddegenerate fashion, when they make attacks on the measures of theiradversaries. It is a regular and juridical course; and unless I chooseit, nothing can compel me to go further. 

But since these unhappy gentlemen have dared to hold a lofty tone abouttheir motives, and affect to despise suspicion, instead of being carefulnot to give cause for it, I shall beg leave to lay before you somegeneral observations on what I conceive was their duty in so delicate abusiness. 

If I were worthy to suggest any line of prudence to that right honorablegentleman, I would tell him that the way to avoid suspicion in thesettlement of pecuniary transactions, in which great frauds have beenvery strongly presumed, is, to attend to these few plainprinciples:--First, to hear all parties equally, and not the managersfor the suspected claimants only; not to proceed in the dark, but to actwith as much publicity as possible; not to precipitate decision; to bereligious in following the rules prescribed in the commission underwhich we act; and, lastly, and above all, not to be fond of strainingconstructions, to force a jurisdiction, and to draw to ourselves themanagement of a trust in its nature invidious and obnoxious tosuspicion, where the plainest letter of the law does not compel it. Ifthese few plain rules are observed, no corruption ought to be suspected;if any of them are violated, suspicion will attach in proportion; if allof them are violated, a corrupt motive of some kind or other will notonly be suspected, but must be violently presumed. 

The persons in whose favor all these rules have been violated, and theconduct of ministers towards them, will naturally call for yourconsideration, and will serve to lead you through a series andcombination of facts and characters, if I do not mistake, into the veryinmost recesses of this mysterious business. You will then be inpossession of all the materials on which the principles of soundjurisprudence will found, or will reject, the presumption of corruptmotives, or, if such motives are indicated, will point out to you ofwhat particular nature the corruption is. 

Our wonderful minister, as you all know, formed a new plan, a plan_insigne, recens, indictum ore alio_, a plan for supporting the freedomof our Constitution by court intrigues, and for removing its corruptionsby Indian delinquency. To carry that bold, paradoxical design intoexecution, sufficient funds and apt instruments became necessary. Youare perfectly sensible that a Parliamentary reform occupies histhoughts day and night, as an essential member in this extraordinaryproject. In his anxious researches upon this subject, natural instinct, as well as sound policy, would direct his eyes and settle his choice onPaul Benfield. Paul Benfield is the grand Parliamentary reformer, thereformer to whom the whole choir of reformers bow, and to whom even theright honorable gentleman himself must yield the palm: for what regionin the empire, what city, what borough, what county, what tribunal inthis kingdom is not full of his labors? Others have been onlyspeculators; he is the grand practical reformer; and whilst theChancellor of the Exchequer pledges in vain the man and the minister, toincrease the provincial members, Mr. Benfield has auspiciously andpractically begun it. Leaving far behind him even Lord Camelford'sgenerous design of bestowing Old Sarum on the Bank of England, Mr. Benfield has thrown in the borough of Cricklade to reinforce the countyrepresentation. Not content with this, in order to station a steadyphalanx for all future reforms, this public-spirited usurer, amidst hischaritable toils for the relief of India, did not forget the poor, rotten Constitution of his native country. For her, he did not disdainto stoop to the trade of a wholesale upholsterer for this House, --tofurnish it, not with the faded tapestry figures of antiquated merit, such as decorate, and may reproach, some other houses, but with real, solid, living patterns of true modern virtue. Paul Benfield made(reckoning himself) no fewer than eight members in the last Parliament. What copious streams of pure blood must he not have transfused into theveins of the present!

But what is even more striking than the real services of thisnew-imported patriot is his modesty. As soon as he had conferred thisbenefit on the Constitution, he withdrew himself from our applause. Heconceived that the duties of a member of Parliament (which with theelect faithful, the true believers, the _Islam_ of Parliamentary reform, are of little or no merit, perhaps not much better than specious sins)might he as well attended to in India as in England, and the means ofreformation to Parliament itself be far better provided. Mr. Benfieldwas therefore no sooner elected than he set off for Madras, anddefrauded the longing eyes of Parliament. We have never enjoyed in thisHouse the luxury of beholding that minion of the human race, andcontemplating that visage which has so long reflected the happiness ofnations. 

It was therefore not possible for the minister to consult personallywith this great man. What, then, was he to do? Through a sagacity thatnever failed him in these pursuits, he found out, in Mr. Benfield'srepresentative, his exact resemblance. A specific attraction, by whichhe gravitates towards all such characters, soon brought our ministerinto a close connection with Mr. Benfield's agent and attorney, that is, with the grand contractor, (whom I name to honor, ) Mr. RichardAtkinson, --a name that will be well remembered as long as the records ofthis House, as long as the records of the British Treasury, as long asthe monumental debt of England, shall endure. 

This gentleman, Sir, acts as attorney for Mr. Paul Benfield. Every onewho hears me is well acquainted with the sacred friendship and thesteady mutual attachment that subsists between him and the presentminister. As many members as chose to attend in the first session ofthis Parliament can best tell their own feelings at the scenes whichwere then acted. How much that honorable gentleman was consulted in theoriginal frame and fabric of the bill, commonly called Mr. Pitt's IndiaBill, is matter only of conjecture, though by no means difficult todivine. But the public was an indignant witness of the ostentation withwhich the measure was made his own, and the authority with which hebrought up clause after clause, to stuff and fatten the rankness of thatcorrupt act. As fast as the clauses were brought up to the table, theywere accepted. No hesitation, no discussion. They were received by thenew minister, not with approbation, but with implicit submission. Thereformation may be estimated by seeing who was the reformer. PaulBenfield's associate and agent was held up to the world as legislator ofHindostan. But it was necessary to authenticate the coalition betweenthe men of intrigue in India and the minister of intrigue in England bya studied display of the power of this their connecting link. Everytrust, every honor, every distinction, was to be heaped upon him. He wasat once made a Director of the India Company, made an alderman ofLondon, and to be made, if ministry could prevail, (and I am sorry tosay how near, how very near, they were prevailing, ) representative ofthe capital of this kingdom. But to secure his services against allrisk, he was brought in for a ministerial borough. On his part, he wasnot wanting in zeal for the common cause. His advertisements show hismotives, and the merits upon which he stood. For your minister, thisworn-out veteran submitted to enter into the dusty field of the Londoncontest; and you all remember that in the same virtuous cause hesubmitted to keep a sort of public office or counting-house, where thewhole business of the last general election was managed. It was openlymanaged by the direct agent and attorney of Benfield. It was managedupon Indian principles and for an Indian interest. This was the goldencup of abominations, --this the chalice of the fornications of rapine, usury, and oppression, which was held out by the gorgeous Easternharlot, --which so many of the people, so many of the nobles of this landhad drained to the very dregs. Do you think that no reckoning was tofollow this lewd debauch? that no payment was to be demanded for thisriot of public drunkenness and national prostitution? Here, you have ithere before you! The principal of the grand election-manager must beindemnified; accordingly, the claims of Benfield and his crew must beput above all inquiry. 

For several years Benfield appeared as the chief proprietor, as well asthe chief agent, director, and controller of this system of debt. Theworthy chairman of the Company has stated the claims of this singlegentleman on the Nabob of Arcot as amounting to five hundred thousandpound. [58] Possibly at the time of the chairman's state they might havebeen as high. Eight hundred thousand pound had been mentioned some timebefore;[59] and, according to the practice of shifting the names ofcreditors in these transactions, and reducing or raising the debt itselfat pleasure, I think it not impossible that at one period the name ofBenfield might have stood before those frightful figures. But my bestinformation goes to fix his share no higher than four hundred thousandpounds. By the scheme of the present ministry for adding to theprincipal twelve per cent from the year 1777 to the year 1781, fourhundred thousand pounds, that smallest of the sums ever mentioned forMr. Benfield, will form a capital of 592, 000_l. _ at six per cent. Thus, besides the arrears of three years, amounting to 106, 500_l. _, (which, asfast as received, may be legally lent out at twelve per cent, ) Benfieldhas received, by the ministerial grant before you, an annuity of35, 520_l. _ a year, charged on the public revenues. 

Our mirror of ministers of finance did not think this enough for theservices of such a friend as Benfield. He found that Lord Macartney, inorder to frighten the Court of Directors from the project of obligingthe Nabob to give soucar security for his debt, assured them, that, ifthey should take that step, Benfield[60] would infallibly be the soucar, and would thereby become the entire master of the Carnatic. What LordMacartney thought sufficient to deter the very agents and partakers withBenfield in his iniquities was the inducement to the two right honorablegentlemen to order this very soucar security to be given, and to recallBenfield to the city of Madras from the sort of decent exile into whichhe had been relegated by Lord Macartney. You must therefore considerBenfield as soucar security for 480, 000_l. _ a year, which, attwenty-four per cent, (supposing him contented with that profit, ) will, with the interest of his old debt, produce an annual income of149, 520_l. _ a year. 

Here is a specimen of the new and pure aristocracy created by the righthonorable gentleman, [61] as the support of the crown and Constitutionagainst the old, corrupt, refractory, natural interests of this kingdom;and this is the grand counterpoise against all odious coalitions ofthese interests. A single Benfield outweighs them all: a criminal, wholong since ought to have fattened the region kites with his offal, is byhis Majesty's ministers enthroned in the government of a great kingdom, and enfeoffed with an estate which in the comparison effaces thesplendor of all the nobility of Europe. To bring a little moredistinctly into view the true secret of this dark transaction, I beg youparticularly to advert to the circumstances which I am going to placebefore you. 

The general corps of creditors, as well as Mr. Benfield himself, notlooking well into futurity, nor presaging the minister of this day, thought it not expedient for their common interest that such a name ashis should stand at the head of their list. It was therefore agreedamongst them that Mr. Benfield should disappear, by making over his debtto Messrs. Taylor, Majendie, and Call, and should in return be securedby their bond. 

The debt thus exonerated of so great a weight of its odium, andotherwise reduced from its alarming bulk, the agents thought they mightventure to print a list of the creditors. This was done for the firsttime in the year 1783, during the Duke of Portland's administration. Inthis list the name of Benfield was not to be seen. To this strongnegative testimony was added the further testimony of the Nabob ofArcot. That prince[62] (or rather Mr. Benfield for him) writes to theCourt of Directors a letter[63] full of complaints and accusationsagainst Lord Macartney, conveyed in such terms as were natural for oneof Mr. Benfield's habits and education to employ. Amongst the rest he ismade to complain of his Lordship's endeavoring to prevent an intercourseof politeness and sentiment between him and Mr. Benfield; and toaggravate the affront, he expressly declares Mr. Benfield's visits to beonly on account of respect and of gratitude, as no pecuniary transactionsubsisted between them. 

Such, for a considerable space of time, was the outward form of the loanof 1777, in which Mr. Benfield had no sort of concern. At lengthintelligence arrived at Madras, that this debt, which had always beenrenounced by the Court of Directors, was rather like to become thesubject of something more like a criminal inquiry than of any patronageor sanction from Parliament. Every ship brought accounts, one strongerthan the other, of the prevalence of the determined enemies of theIndian system. The public revenues became an object desperate to thehopes of Mr. Benfield; he therefore resolved to fall upon hisassociates, and, in violation of that faith which subsists among thosewho have abandoned all other, commences a suit in the Mayor's Courtagainst Taylor, Majendie, and Call, for the bond given to him, when heagreed to disappear for his own benefit as well as that of the commonconcern. The assignees of his debt, who little expected the springing ofthis mine, even from such an engineer as Mr. Benfield, after recoveringtheir first alarm, thought it best to take ground on the real state ofthe transaction. They divulged the whole mystery, and were prepared toplead that they had never received from Mr. Benfield any otherconsideration for the bond than a transfer, in trust for himself, of hisdemand on the Nabob of Arcot. An universal indignation arose against theperfidy of Mr. Benfield's proceeding; the event of the suit was lookedupon as so certain, that Benfield was compelled to retreat asprecipitately as he had advanced boldly; he gave up his bond, and wasreinstated in his original demand, to wait the fortune of otherclaimants. At that time, and at Madras, this hope was dull indeed; butat home another scene was preparing. 

It was long before any public account of this discovery at Madras hadarrived in England, that the present minister and his Board of Controlthought fit to determine on the debt of 1777. The recorded proceedingsat this time knew nothing of any debt to Benfield. There was his owntestimony, there was the testimony of the list, there was the testimonyof the Nabob of Arcot, against it. Yet such was the ministers' feelingof the true secret of this transaction, that they thought proper, in theteeth of all these testimonies, to give him license to return to Madras. Here the ministers were under some embarrassment. Confounded betweentheir resolution of rewarding the good services of Benfield's friendsand associates in England, and the shame of sending that notoriousincendiary to the court of the Nabob of Arcot, to renew his intriguesagainst the British government, at the time they authorize his return, they forbid him, under the severest penalties, from any conversationwith the Nabob or his ministers: that is, they forbid his communicationwith the very person on account of his dealings with whom they permithis return to that city. To overtop this contradiction, there is not aword restraining him from the freest intercourse with the Nabob's secondson, the real author of all that is done in the Nabob's name; who, inconjunction with this very Benfield, has acquired an absolute dominionover that unhappy man, is able to persuade him to put his signature towhatever paper they please, and often without any communication of thecontents. This management was detailed to them at full length by LordMacartney, and they cannot pretend ignorance of it. [64]

I believe, after this exposure of facts, no man can entertain a doubt ofthe collusion of ministers with the corrupt interest of the delinquentsin India. Whenever those in authority provide for the interest of anyperson, on the real, but concealed state of his affairs, without regardto his avowed, public, and ostensible pretences, it must be presumedthat they are in confederacy with him, because they act for him on thesame fraudulent principles on which he acts for himself. It is plainthat the ministers were fully apprised of Benfield's real situation, which he had used means to conceal, whilst concealment answered hispurposes. They were, or the person on whom they relied was, of thecabinet council of Benfield, in the very depth of all his mysteries. Anhonest magistrate compels men to abide by one story. An equitable judgewould not hear of the claim of a man who had himself thought proper torenounce it. With such a judge his shuffling and prevarication wouldhave damned his claims; such a judge never would have known, but inorder to animadvert upon, proceedings of that character. 

I have thus laid before you, Mr. Speaker, I think with sufficientclearness, the connection of the ministers with Mr. Atkinson at thegeneral election; I have laid open to you the connection of Atkinsonwith Benfield; I have shown Benfield's employment of his wealth increating a Parliamentary interest to procure a ministerial protection; Ihave set before your eyes his large concern in the debt, his practicesto hide that concern from the public eye, and the liberal protectionwhich he has received from the minister. If this chain of circumstancesdoes not lead you necessarily to conclude that the minister has paid tothe avarice of Benfield the services done by Benfield's connections tohis ambition, I do not know anything short of the confession of theparty that can persuade you of his guilt. Clandestine and collusivepractice can only be traced by combination and comparison ofcircumstances. To reject such combination and comparison is to rejectthe only means of detecting fraud; it is, indeed, to give it a patentand free license to cheat with impunity. 

I confine myself to the connection of ministers, mediately orimmediately, with only two persons concerned in this debt. How manyothers, who support their power and greatness within and without doors, are concerned originally, or by transfers of these debts, must be leftto general opinion. I refer to the reports of the Select Committee forthe proceedings of some of the agents in these affairs, and theirattempts, at least, to furnish ministers with the means of buyingGeneral Courts, and even whole Parliaments, in the gross. [65]

I know that the ministers will think it little less than acquittal, thatthey are not charged with having taken to themselves some part of themoney of which they have made so liberal a donation to their partisans, though the charge may be indisputably fixed upon the corruption of theirpolitics. For my part, I follow their crimes to that point to whichlegal presumptions and natural indications lead me, without consideringwhat species of evil motive tends most to aggravate or to extenuate theguilt of their conduct. But if I am to speak my private sentiments, Ithink that in a thousand cases for one it would be far less mischievousto the public, and full as little dishonorable to themselves, to bepolluted with direct bribery, than thus to become a standing auxiliaryto the oppression, usury, and peculation of multitudes, in order toobtain a corrupt support to their power. It is by bribing, not so oftenby being bribed, that wicked politicians bring rum on mankind. Avariceis a rival to the pursuits of many. It finds a multitude of checks, andmany opposers, in every walk of life. But the objects of ambition arefor the few; and every person who aims at indirect profit, and thereforewants other protection than innocence and law, instead of its rival, becomes its instrument. There is a natural allegiance and fealty due tothis domineering, paramount evil, from all the vassal vices, whichacknowledge its superiority, and readily militate under its banners; andit is under that discipline alone that avarice is able to spread to anyconsiderable extent, or to render itself a general, public mischief. Itis therefore no apology for ministers, that they have not been bought bythe East India delinquents, but that they have only formed an alliancewith them for screening each other from justice, according to theexigence of their several necessities. That they have done so isevident; and the junction of the power of office in England with theabuse of authority in the East has not only prevented even theappearance of redress to the grievances of India, but I wish it may notbe found to have dulled, if not extinguished, the honor, the candor, thegenerosity, the good-nature, which used formerly to characterize thepeople of England. I confess, I wish that some more feeling than I haveyet observed for the sufferings of our fellow-creatures andfellow-subjects in that oppressed part of the world had manifesteditself in any one quarter of the kingdom, or in any one largedescription of men. 

That these oppressions exist is a fact no more denied than it isresented as it ought to be. Much evil has been done in India under theBritish authority. What has been done to redress it? We are no longersurprised at anything. We are above the unlearned and vulgar passion ofadmiration. But it will astonish posterity, when they read our opinionsin our actions, that, after years of inquiry, we have found out that thesole grievance of India consisted in this, that the servants of theCompany there had not profited enough of their opportunities, nordrained it sufficiently of its treasures, --when they shall hear that thevery first and only important act of a commission specially named by actof Parliament is, to charge upon an undone country, in favor of ahandful of men in the humblest ranks of the public service, the enormoussum of perhaps four millions of sterling money. 

It is difficult for the most wise and upright government to correct theabuses of remote, delegated power, productive of unmeasured wealth, andprotected by the boldness and strength of the same ill-got riches. Theseabuses, full of their own wild native vigor, will grow and flourishunder mere neglect. But where the supreme authority, not content withwinking at the rapacity of its inferior instruments, is so shameless andcorrupt as openly to give bounties and premiums for disobedience to itslaws, --when it will not trust to the activity of avarice in the pursuitof its own gains, --when it secures public robbery by all the carefuljealousy and attention with which it ought to protect property from suchviolence, --the commonwealth then is become totally perverted from itspurposes; neither God nor man will long endure it; nor will it longendure itself. In that case, there is an unnatural infection, apestilential taint, fermenting in the constitution of society, whichfever and convulsions of some kind or other must throw off, or in whichthe vital powers, worsted in an unequal struggle, are pushed back uponthemselves, and, by a reversal of their whole functions, fester togangrene, to death, --and instead of what was but just now the delightand boast of the creation, there will be cast out in the face of the suna bloated, putrid, noisome carcass, full of stench and poison, anoffence, a horror, a lesson to the world. 

In my opinion, we ought not to wait for the fruitless instruction ofcalamity to inquire into the abuses which bring upon us ruin in theworst of its forms, in the loss of our fame and virtue. But the righthonorable gentleman[66] says, in answer to all the powerful arguments ofmy honorable friend, "that this inquiry is of a delicate nature, andthat the state will suffer detriment by the exposure of thistransaction. " But it is exposed; it is perfectly known in every member, in every particle, and in every way, except that which may lead to aremedy. He knows that the papers of correspondence are printed, and thatthey are in every hand. 

He and delicacy are a rare and a singular coalition. He thinks that todivulge our Indian politics may be highly dangerous. He! the mover, thechairman, the reporter of the Committee of Secrecy! he, that broughtforth in the utmost detail, in several vast, printed folios, the mostrecondite parts of the politics, the military, the revenues of theBritish empire in India! With six great chopping bastards, [67] each aslusty as an infant Hercules, this delicate creature blushes at the sightof his new bridegroom, assumes a virgin delicacy; or, to use a more fit, as well as a more poetic comparison, the person so squeamish, so timid, so trembling lest the winds of heaven should visit too roughly, isexpanded to broad sunshine, exposed like the sow of imperial augury, lying in the mud with all the prodigies of her fertility about her, asevidence of her delicate amours, --

 Triginta capitum fœtus enixa jacebat, Alba, solo recubans, albi circum ubera nati. 

Whilst discovery of the misgovernment of others led to his own power, itwas wise to inquire, it was safe to publish: there was then nodelicacy; there was then no danger. But when his object is obtained, andin his imitation he has outdone the crimes that he had reprobated involumes of reports and in sheets of bills of pains and penalties, thenconcealment becomes prudence, and it concerns the safety of the statethat we should not know, in a mode of Parliamentary cognizance, what allthe world knows but too well, that is, in what manner he chooses todispose of the public revenues to the creatures of his politics. 

The debate has been long, and as much so on my part, at least, as on thepart of those who have spoken before me. But long as it is, the morematerial half of the subject has hardly been touched on: that is, thecorrupt and destructive system to which this debt has been renderedsubservient, and which seems to be pursued with at least as much vigorand regularity as ever. If I considered your ease or my own, rather thanthe weight and importance of this question, I ought to make some apologyto you, perhaps some apology to myself, for having detained yourattention so long. I know on what ground I tread. This subject, at onetime taken up with so much fervor and zeal, is no longer a favorite inthis House. The House itself has undergone a great and signalrevolution. To some the subject is strange and uncouth; to several, harsh and distasteful; to the relics of the last Parliament it is amatter of fear and apprehension. It is natural for those who have seentheir friends sink in the tornado which raged during the late shift ofthe monsoon, and have hardly escaped on the planks of the general wreck, it is but too natural for them, as soon as they make the rocks andquicksands of their former disasters, to put about their new-builtbarks, and, as much as possible, to keep aloof from this perilous leeshore. 

But let us do what we please to put India from our thoughts, we can donothing to separate it from our public interest and our nationalreputation. Our attempts to banish this importunate duty will only makeit return upon us again and again, and every time in a shape moreunpleasant than the former. A government has been fabricated for thatgreat province; the right honorable gentleman says that therefore youought not to examine into its conduct. Heavens! what an argument isthis! We are not to examine into the conduct of the Direction, becauseit is an old government; we are not to examine into this Board ofControl, because it is a new one. Then we are only to examine into theconduct of those who have no conduct to account for. Unfortunately, thebasis of this new government has been laid on old, condemneddelinquents, and its superstructure is raised out of prosecutors turnedinto protectors. The event has been such as might be expected. But if ithad been otherwise constituted, had it been constituted even as Iwished, and as the mover of this question had planned, the better partof the proposed establishment was in the publicity of its proceedings, in its perpetual responsibility to Parliament. Without this check, whatis our government at home, even awed, as every European government is, by an audience formed of the other states of Europe, by the applause orcondemnation of the discerning and critical company before which itacts? But if the scene on the other side of the globe, which tempts, invites, almost compels, to tyranny and rapine, be not inspected withthe eye of a severe and unremitting vigilance, shame and destructionmust ensue. For one, the worst event of this day, though it may deject, shall not break or subdue me. The call upon us is authoritative. Let whowill shrink back, I shall be found at my post. Baffled, discountenanced, subdued, discredited, as the cause of justice and humanity is, it willbe only the dearer to me. Whoever, therefore, shall at any time bringbefore you anything towards the relief of our distressed fellow-citizensin India, and towards a subversion of the present most corrupt andoppressive system for its government, in me shall find a weak, I amafraid, but a steady, earnest, and faithful assistant. 

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Right Honorable Henry Dundas. 

[2] Sir Thomas Rumbold, late Governor of Madras. 

[3] Appendix, No. 1. 

[4] The whole of the net Irish hereditary revenue is, on a medium of thelast seven years, about 330, 000_l. _ yearly. The revenues of alldenominations fall short more than 150, 000_l. _ yearly of the charges. Onthe _present_ produce, if Mr. Pitt's scheme was to take place, he mightgain from seven to ten thousand pounds a year. 

[5] Mr. Smith's Examination before the Select Committee. Appendix, No. 2. 

[6] Appendix, No. 2. 

[7] Fourth Report, Mr. Dundas's Committee, p. 4. 

[8] A witness examined before the Committee of Secrecy says thateighteen per cent was the usual interest, but he had heard that more hadbeen given. The above is the account which Mr. B. Received. 

[9] Mr. Dundas. 

[10] For the threats of the creditors, and total subversion of theauthority of the Company in favor of the Nabob's power and the increasethereby of his evil dispositions, and the great derangement of allpublic concerns, see Select Committee Fort St. George's letters, 21stNovember, 1769, and January 31st, 1770; September 11, 1772; and GovernorBourchier's letters to the Nabob of Arcot, 21st November, 1769, andDecember 9th, 1769. 

[11] "He [the Nabob] is in a great degree the cause of our presentinability, by diverting the revenues of the Carnatic through _privatechannels_. " "Even this peshcush [the Tanjore tribute], circumstanced ashe and we are, he has assigned over to others, _who now set themselvesin opposition to the Company_. "--Consultations, October 11, 1769, on the12th communicated to the Nabob. 

[12] Nabob's letter to Governor Palk. Papers published by the Directorsin 1775; and papers printed by the same authority, 1781. 

[13] See papers printed by order of a General Court in 1780, pp. 222 and224; as also Nabob's letter to Governor Dupré, 19th July, 1771: "I havetaken up loans by which I have suffered a loss of _upwards of a crore ofpagodas_ [four millions sterling] _by interest on an heavy interest_. "Letter 15th January, 1772: "Notwithstanding I have taken much trouble, and have made many payments to my creditors, yet the load of my debt, _which became so great by interest and compound interest_, is notcleared. "

[14] The Nabob of Arcot. 

[15] Appendix, No. 3. 

[16] See Mr. Dundas's 1st, 2d, and 3d Reports. 

[17] See further Consultations, 3d February, 1778. 

[18] Mr. Dundas's 1st Report, pp. 26, 29, and Appendix, No. 2, 10, 18, for the mutinous state and desertion of the Nabob's troops for want ofpay. See also Report IV. Of the same committee. 

[19] Memorial from the creditors to the Governor and Council, 22dJanuary, 1770. 

[20] In the year 1778, Mr. James Call, one of the proprietors of thisspecific debt, was actually mayor. (Appendix to 2d Report of Mr. Dundas's committee, No. 65. ) The only proof which appeared on theinquiry instituted in the General Court of 1781 was an affidavit of _thelenders themselves_, deposing (what nobody ever denied) that they had_engaged_ and _agreed_ to pay--not that they _had_ paid--the sum of160, 000_l. _ This was two years after the transaction; and the affidavitis made before George Proctor, mayor, an attorney for certain of the oldcreditors. --Proceedings of the President and Council of Fort St. George, 22d February, 1779. 

[21] Right Honorable Henry Dundas. 

[22] Appendix to the 4th Report of Mr. Dundas's committee, No 15. 

[23] "No sense of the common danger, in case of a war, can prevail onhim [the Nabob of Arcot] to furnish the Company with what is absolutelynecessary to assemble an army, though it is beyond a doubt that money toa large amount is now hoarded up in his coffers at Chepauk; and tunkawsare granted to _individuals_, upon some of his most _valuablecountries_, for payment of part of those debts which he has contracted, and _which certainly will not bear inspection, as neither debtor norcreditors have ever had the confidence to submit the accounts to ourexamination_, though they expressed a wish to consolidate the debtsunder the auspices of this government, agreeably to a plan they hadformed. "--Madras Consultations, 20th July, 1778. Mr. Dundas's Appendixto 2nd Report, 143. See also last Appendix to ditto Report, No. 376, B. 

[24] Transcriber's note: Footnote missing in original text. 

[25] Lord Pigot

[26] In Sir Thomas Rumbold's letter to the Court of Directors, March15th, 1778, he represents it as higher, in the following manner:--"Howshall I paint to you my astonishment, on my arrival here, when I wasinformed, that, independent of this four lacs of pagodas [the CavalryLoan], independent of the Nabob's debt to his old creditors, and themoney due to the Company, he had contracted a debt to the enormousamount of sixty-three lacs of pagodas [2, 520, 000_l. _]. I mention thiscircumstance to you _with horror_; for the creditors being in general_servants of the Company_ renders my task, on the part of the Company, _difficult and invidious_. " "I have freed the sanction of thisgovernment from so _corrupt_ a transaction. It is in my mind the mostvenal of all proceedings to give the Company's protection to debts thatcannot bear the light; and though it appears exceedingly alarming, thata country on which you are to depend for resources should be so involvedas to be nearly three years' revenue in debt, --in a country, too, whereone year's revenue can never be called _secure_, by men who knowanything of the politics of this part of India. " "I think it proper tomention to you, that, although _the Nabob reports his private debt toamount to upwards of sixty lacs_, yet I understand that it is not quiteso much. " Afterwards Sir Thomas Rumbold recommended this debt to thefavorable attention of the Company, but without any sufficient reasonfor his change of disposition. However, he went no further. 

[27] Nabob's proposals, November 25th, 1778; and memorial of thecreditors, March 1st, 1779. 

[28] Nabob's proposals to his new consolidated creditors, November 25th, 1778. 

[29] Paper signed by the Nabob, 6th January, 1780. 

[30] Kistbundi to July 31, 1780. 

[31] Governor's letter to the Nabob, 25th July, 1779. 

[32] Report of the Select Committee, Madras Consultations, January 7, 1771. See also papers published by the order of the Court of Directorsin 1776; and Lord Macartney's correspondence with Mr. Hastings and theNabob of Arcot. See also Mr. Dundas's Appendix, No 376, B. Nabob'spropositions through Mr. Sulivan and Assam Khân, Art. 6, and indeed thewhole. 

[33] "The principal object of the expedition is, to get money fromTanjore to pay the Nabob's debt: if a surplus, to be applied indischarge of the Nabob's debts to his private creditors. "(Consultations, March 20, 1771; and for further lights, Consultations, 12th June, 1771. ) "We are alarmed lest this debt to _individuals_ shouldhave been the _real_ motive for the aggrandizement of Mahomed Ali [theNabob of Arcot], and that _we are plunged into a war_ to put him inpossession of the Mysore revenues _for the discharge of thedebt_. "--Letter from the Directors, March 17, 1769. 

[34] Letter from the Nabob, May 1st, 1768; and ditto, 24th April, 1770, 1st October; ditto, 16th September, 1772, 16th March, 1773. 

[35] Letter from the Presidency at Madras to the Court of Directors, 27th June, 1769. 

[36] Mr. Dundas's committee. Report L, Appendix, No. 29. 

[37] Appendix, No. 4, Report of the Committee of Assigned Revenue. 

[38] Mr. Barnard's map of the Jaghire

[39] See Report IV. , Mr. Dundas's committee, p. 46. 

[40] Interest is rated in India by the month. 

[41] Mr. Dundas's committee. Rep. I. P. 9, and ditto, Rep. IV. 69, wherethe revenue of 1777 stated only at 22 lacs, --30 lacs stated as therevenue, "_supposing_ the Carnatic to be _properly_ managed. "

[42] See Appendix, No. 4, statement in the Report of the Committee ofAssigned Revenue. 

[43] The province of Tinnevelly. 

[44] Appendix, No. 5. 

[45] See extract of their letter in the Appendix, No. 9. 

[46] "It is certain that the incursion of a _few_ of Hyder's horse intothe Jaghire, in 1767, cost the Company upwards of pagodas 27, 000, _inallowances for damages_. "--Consultations, February 11th, 1771. 

[47] Proceeding at Madras, 11th February, 1769, and throughout thecorrespondence on this subject; particularly Consultations, October 4th, 1769, and the creditors' memorial, 20th January, 1770. 

[48] Appendix, No. 7. 

[49] For some part of these usurious transactions, see Consultation, 28th January, 1781; and for the Nabob's excusing his oppressions onaccount of these debts, Consultation, 26th November, 1770. "Still Iundertook, first, the payment of the money belonging to the Company, whoare my kind friends, and by borrowing, and _mortgaging my jewels, &c. _, by _taking from every one of my servants_, in proportion to theircircumstances, by _fresh severities_ also on my country, _notwithstanding its distressed state_, as you know. "--The Board'sremark is as follows: after controverting some of the facts, they say, "That his countries are oppressed is most certain, but not from realnecessity; _his debts, indeed, have afforded him a constant pretence_for using severities and cruel oppressions. "

[50] See Consultation, 28th January, 1781, where it is asserted, and notdenied, that the Nabob's farmers of revenue seldom continue for threemonths together. From this the state of the country may be easily judgedof. 

[51] In Mr. Fox's speech. 

[52] The amended letter, Appendix, No. 9. 

[53] Appendix, No. 8. 

[54] Mr. Petrie's evidence before the Select Committee, Appendix, No. 7. 

[55] Appendix, No. 7. 

[56] Mr. Dundas. 

[57] See Report IV. , Committee of Secrecy, pp. 73 and 74; and Appendix, in sundry places. 

[58] Mr. Smith's protest. 

[59] Madras correspondence on this subject. 

[60] Appendix, No 6. 

[61] Right Honorable William Pitt. 

[62] Appendix, No. 10. 

[63] Dated 13th October. For further illustration of the style in whichthese letters were written, and the principles on which they proceed, see letters from the Nabob to the Court of Directors, dated August 16thand September 7th, 1783, delivered by Mr. James Macpherson, minister tothe Nabob, January 14, 1784. Appendix, No. 10. 

[64] Appendix, No. 6. 

[65] Second Report of Select (General Smith's) Committee. 

[66] Mr. Dundas. 

[67] Six Reports of the Committee of Secrecy. 

APPENDIX. 

 * * * * *

No. 1. 

CLAUSES OF MR PITT'S BILL. 

Referred to from p. 17. 

_Appointing Commissioners to inquire into the Fees, Gratuities, Perquisites, Emoluments, which are, or have been lately, received in theseveral Public Offices therein mentioned; to examine into any Abuseswhich may exist in the same, &c. _

And be it further enacted, that it shall and may be lawful to and forthe said commissioners, or any two of them, and they are herebyempowered, authorized, and required, _to examine upon oath_ (which oaththey, or any two of them, are hereby authorized to administer) theseveral persons, of _all_ descriptions, belonging to any of the officesor departments before mentioned, and _all other persons_ whom the saidcommissioners, or any two of them, shall think fit to examine, touching_the business_ of each office or department, and _the fees, gratuities, perquisites, and emoluments taken therein_, and touching all othermatters and things necessary for the execution of the powers vested inthe said commissioners by this act; _all which persons_ are herebyrequired and directed punctually to attend the said commissioners, _atsuch time and place as they, or any two of them, shall appoint, and alsoto observe and execute such orders and directions_ as the saidcommissioners, or any two of them, shall make or give for the purposesbefore mentioned. 

And be it enacted by the authority aforesaid, that the saidcommissioners, or any two of them, shall be and are hereby empowered toexamine into any corrupt and fraudulent practices, or other misconduct, committed by any person or persons concerned in the management of any ofthe offices or departments hereinbefore mentioned; and for the betterexecution of this present act, the said commissioners, or _any two ofthem, are hereby authorized to meet and sit, from time to time, in suchplace or places as they shall find most convenient, with, or withoutadjournment, and to send their precept or precepts, under their handsand seals, for any person or persons whatsoever, and for such books, papers, writings, or records, as they shall judge necessary for theirinformation, relating to any of the offices or departments hereinbeforementioned; and all bailiffs, constables, sheriffs, and other hisMajesty's officers, are hereby required to obey and execute such ordersand precepts aforesaid as shall be sent to them, or any of them, by thesaid commissioners, or any two of them, touching the premises. _

 * * * * *

No. 2. 

Referred to from p. 22. 

NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS. 

Mr. George Smith being asked, Whether the debts of the Nabob of Arcothave increased since he knew Madras? he said, Yes, they have. Hedistinguishes his debts into two sorts: those contracted before theyear 1766, and those contracted from that year to the year in which heleft Madras. --Being asked, What he thinks is the original amount of theold debts? he said, Between twenty-three and twenty-four lacs ofpagodas, as well as he can recollect. --Being asked, What was the amountof that debt when he left Madras? he said, Between four and five lacs ofpagodas, as he understood. --Being asked, What was the amount of the newdebt when he left Madras? he said, In November, 1777, that debtamounted, according to the Nabob's own account, and published atChepauk, his place of residence, to sixty lacs of pagodas, independentof the old debt, on which debt of sixty lacs of pagodas the Nabob didagree to pay an interest of twelve per cent per annum. --Being asked, Whether this debt was approved of by the Court of Directors? he said, Hedoes not know it was. --Being asked, Whether the old debt was recognizedby the Court of Directors? he said, Yes, it has been; and the Court ofDirectors have sent out repeated orders to the President and Council ofMadras to enforce its recovery and payment. --Being asked, If theinterest upon the new debt is punctually paid? he said, It was notduring his residence at Madras, from 1777 to 1779, in which period hethinks no more than five per cent interest was paid, in differentdividends of two and one per cent. --Being asked, What is the usualcourse taken by the Nabob concerning the arrears of interest? he said, Not having ever lent him moneys himself, he cannot fully answer as tothe mode of settling the interest with him. 

Being asked, Whether he has reason to believe the sixty lacs of pagodaswas all principal money really and truly advanced to the Nabob ofArcot, or a fictitious capital, made up of obligations given by him, where no money or goods were received, or which was increased by theuniting into it a greater interest than the twelve per cent expressed tobe due on the capital? he said, He has no reason to believe that the sumof sixty lacs of pagodas was lent in money or goods to the Nabob, because that sum he thinks is of more value than all the money, goods, and chattels in the settlement; but he does not know in what mode ormanner this debt of the Nabob's was incurred or accumulated. --Beingasked, Whether it was not a general and well-grounded opinion at Madras, that a great part of this sum was accumulated by obligations, and wasfor services performed or to be performed for the Nabob? he said, He hasheard that a part of this debt was given for the purposes mentioned inthe above question, but he does not know that it was so. --Being asked, Whether it was the general opinion of the settlement? he said, He cannotsay that it was the general opinion, but it was the opinion of aconsiderable part of the settlement. --Being asked, Whether it was thedeclared opinion of those that were concerned in the debt, or those thatwere not? he said, It was the opinion of both parties, at least such ofthem as he conversed with. --Being asked, Whether he has reason tobelieve that the interest really paid by the Nabob, upon obligationsgiven, or money lent, did not frequently exceed twelve per cent? hesaid, Prior to the 1st of August, 1774, he had had reason to believethat a higher interest than twelve per cent was paid by the Nabob onmoneys lent to him; but from and after that period, when the last act ofParliament took place in India, he does not know that more than twelveper cent had been paid by the Nabob, or received from him. --Being asked, Whether it is not his opinion that the Nabob has paid more than twelveper cent for money due since the 1st of August, 1774? he said, He hasheard that he has, but he does not know it. --Being asked, Whether he hasbeen told so by any considerable and weighty authority, that was like toknow? he said, He has been so informed by persons who he believes had avery good opportunity of knowing it. --Being asked, Whether he was evertold so by the Nabob of Arcot himself? he said, He does not recollectthat the Nabob of Arcot directly told him so, but from what he said hedid infer that he paid a higher interest than twelve per cent. 

Mr. Smith being asked, Whether, in the course of trade, he ever soldanything to the Nabob of Arcot? he said, In the year 1775 he did sell tothe Nabob of Arcot pearls to the amount of 32, 500 pagodas, for which theNabob gave him an order or tankah on the country of Tanjore, payable insix months, without interest. --Being asked, Whether, at the time heasked the Nabob his price for the pearls, the Nabob beat down thatprice, as dealers commonly do? he said, No; so far from it, he offeredhim more than he asked by 1000 pagodas, and which he rejected. --Beingasked, Whether, in settling a transaction of discount with the Nabob'sagent, he was not offered a greater discount than 12_l. _ per cent? hesaid, In discounting a soucar's bill for 180, 000 pagodas, the Nabob'sagent did offer him a discount of twenty-four per cent per annum, savingthat it was the usual rate of discount paid by the Nabob; but which hewould not accept of, thinking himself confined by the act of Parliamentlimiting the interest of moneys to twelve per cent, and accordingly hediscounted the bill at twelve per cent per annum only. --Being asked, Whether he does not think those offers were made him because the Nabobthought he was a person of some consequence in the settlement? he said, Being only a private merchant, he apprehends that the offer was made tohim more from its being a general practice than from any opinion of hisimportance. 

 * * * * *

No. 3. 

Referred to from p. 38. 

_A Bill for the Better Government of the Territorial Possessions andDependencies in India_. 

[ONE OF MR FOX'S INDIA BILLS. ]

And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, that the Nabob ofArcot, the Rajah of Tanjore, or any other native protected prince inIndia, shall not assign, mortgage, or pledge any territory or landwhatsoever, or the produce or revenue thereof, to any British subjectwhatsoever; neither shall it be lawful to and for any British subjectwhatsoever to take or receive any such assignment, mortgage, or pledge;and the same are hereby declared to be null and void; and all paymentsor deliveries of produce or revenue, under any such assignment, shalland may be recovered back, by such native prince paying or deliveringthe same, from the person or persons receiving the same, or his or theirrepresentatives. 

 * * * * *

No. 4. 

Referred to from pp. 64 and 73. 

(COPY. )

27th May, 1782. 

_Letter from the Committee of Assigned Revenue, to the President andSelect Committee, dated 27th May, 1782; with Comparative Statement, andMinute thereon. _

To the Right Honorable LORD MACARTNEY, K. B. , President, and Governor, &c. , Select Committee of Fort St. George. 

MY LORD, AND GENTLEMEN, --

Although we have, in obedience to your commands of the 5th January, regularly laid before you our proceedings at large, and haveoccasionally addressed you upon such points as required your resolutionsor orders for our guidance, we still think it necessary to collect anddigest in a summary report those transactions in the management of theassigned revenue which have principally engaged our attention, andwhich, upon the proceeding, are too much intermixed with ordinaryoccurrences to be readily traced and understood. 

Such a report may be formed with the greater propriety at this time, when your Lordship, &c. , have been pleased to conclude your arrangementsfor the rent of several of the Nabob's districts. Our aim in it isbriefly to explain the state of the Carnatic at the period of theNabob's assignment, --the particular causes which existed to theprejudice of that assignment, after it was made, --and the measures whichyour Lordship, &c. , have, upon our recommendation, adopted for removingthose causes, and introducing a more regular and beneficial system ofmanagement in the country. 

Hyder Ali having entered the Carnatic with his whole force, about themiddle of July, 1780, and employed fire and sword in its destruction fornear eighteen months before the Nabob's assignment took place, it willnot be difficult to conceive the state of the country at that period. Inthose provinces which were fully exposed to the ravages of horse, scarcea vestige remained either of population or agriculture: such of themiserable inhabitants as escaped the fury of the sword were eithercarried into the Mysore country or left to struggle under the horrors offamine. The Arcot and Trichinopoly districts began early to feel theeffects of this desolating war. Tinnevelly, Madura, and Ramnadaporum, though little infested with Hyder's troops, became a prey to theincursions of the Polygars, who stripped them of the greatest part ofthe revenues. Ongole, Nellore, and Palnaud, the only remainingdistricts, had suffered, but in a small degree. 

The misfortunes of war, however, were not the only evils which theCarnatic experienced. The Nabob's aumildars, and other servants, appearto have taken advantage of the general confusion to enrich themselves. Avery small part of the revenue was accounted for; and so high were theordinary expenses of every district, that double the apparent produce ofthe whole country would not have satisfied them. 

In this state, which we believe is no way exaggerated, the Company tookcharge of the assigned countries. Their prospect of relief from theheavy burdens of the war was, indeed, but little advanced by theNabob's concession; and the revenues of the Carnatic seemed in danger ofbeing irrecoverably lost, unless a speedy and entire change of systemcould be adopted. 

On our minutes of the 21st January we treated the subject of theassignment at some length, and pointed out the mischiefs which, inaddition to the effects of the war, had arisen from what we conceived tobe wrong and oppressive management. We used the freedom to suggest anentire alteration in the mode of realizing the revenues. We proposed aconsiderable and immediate reduction of expenses, and a total change ofthe principal aumildars who had been employed under the Nabob. 

Our ideas had the good fortune to receive your approbation; but theremoval of the Nabob's servants being thought improper at thatparticular period of the collections, we employed our attention chieflyin preserving what revenue was left the country, and acquiring suchmaterials as might lead to a more perfect knowledge of its former andpresent state. 

These pursuits, as we apprehended, met with great obstructions from theconduct of the Nabob's servants. The orders they received were evadedunder various pretexts; no attention was paid to the strong and repeatedapplications made to them for the accounts of their management; andtheir attachment to the Company's interest appeared, in every instance, so feeble, that we saw no prospect whatever of success, but in theappointment of renters under the Company's sole authority. 

Upon this principle, we judged it expedient to recommend that such ofthe Nabob's districts as were in a state to be farmed out might beimmediately let by a public advertisement, issued in the Company'sname, and circulated through every province of the Carnatic; and, withthe view of encouraging bidders, we proposed that the countries might beadvertised for the whole period of the Nabob's assignment, and thesecurity of the Company's protection promised in the fullest manner tosuch persons as might become renters. 

This plan had the desired effect; and the attempts which were secretlymade to counteract it afforded an unequivocal proof of its necessity:but the advantages resulting from it were more pleasingly evinced by thenumber of proposals that were delivered, and by the terms which were ingeneral offered for the districts intended to be farmed out. 

Having so far attained the purposes of the assignment, our attention wasnext turned to the heavy expenses entailed upon the different provinces;and here, we confess, our astonishment was raised to the highest pitch. In the Trichinopoly country the standing disbursements appeared, by theNabob's own accounts, to be one lac of rupees more than the receipts. Inother districts the charges were not in so high a proportion, but stillrated on a most extravagant scale; and we saw, by every account that wasbrought before us, the absolute necessity of retrenching considerably inall the articles of expense. 

Our own reason, aided by such inquiries as we were able to make, suggested the alterations we have recommended to your Lordship, &c. , under this head. You will observe that we have not acted sparingly, butwe chose rather, in cases of doubt, to incur the hazard of retrenchingtoo much than too little; because it would be easier, after any statedallowance for expenses, to add what might be necessary than todiminish. We hope, however, there will be no material increase in thearticles, as they now stand. 

One considerable charge upon the Nabob's country was for extraordinarysibbendies, sepoys, and horsemen, who appeared to us to be a veryunnecessary incumbrance on the revenue. Your Lordship, &c. , havedetermined to receive such of these people as will enlist into theCompany's service, and discharge the rest. This measure will not onlyrelieve the country of a heavy burden, but tend greatly to fix in theCompany that kind of authority which is requisite for the due collectionof the revenues. 

In consequence of your determination respecting the Nabob's sepoys, &c. , every charge under that head has been struck out of our account ofexpenses. If the whole number of these people be enlisted by theCompany, there will probably be no more than sufficient to completetheir ordinary military establishment. But should the present reductionof the Nabob's artillery render it expedient, after the war, to make anyaddition to the Company's establishment for the purposes of the assignedcountries, the expense of such addition, whatever it be, must bededucted from the present account of savings. 

In considering the charges of the several districts, in order toestablish better regulations, we were careful to discriminate thoseincurred for troops, kept or supposed to be kept up for the defence ofthe country, from those of the sibbendy, servants, &c. , for thecultivation of the lands and the collection of the revenues, as well asto pay attention, to such of the established customs of the country, ancient privileges of the inhabitants, and public charities, as werenecessarily allowed, and appeared proper to be continued, but which, under the Nabob's government, were not only rated much higher, but hadbeen blended under one confused and almost unintelligible title ofexpenses of the districts: so joined, perhaps, to afford pleas and meansof secreting and appropriating great part of the revenues to otherpurposes than fairly appeared; and certainly betraying the utmostneglect and mismanagement, as giving latitude for every species of fraudand oppression. Such a system has, in the few latter years of theNabob's necessities, brought all his countries into that situation fromwhich nothing but the most rigid economy, strict observance of theconduct of managers, and the most conciliating attention to the rightsof the inhabitants can possibly recover them. 

It now only remains for us to lay before your Lordship, &c. , theinclosed statement of the sums at which the districts lately advertisedhave been let, compared with the accounts of their produce delivered bythe Nabob, and entered on our proceedings of the 21st January, --likewisea comparative view of the former and present expenses. 

The Nabob's accounts of the produce of these districts state, as we havesome reason to think, the sums which former renters engaged to pay tohim, (and which were seldom, if ever, made good, ) and not the sumsactually produced by the districts; yet we have the satisfaction toobserve that the present aggregate rents, upon an average, are equal tothose accounts. Your Lordship, &c. , cannot, indeed, expect, that, in themidst of the danger, invasion, and distress which assail the Carnatic onevery side, the renters now appointed will be able at present to fulfilthe terms of their leases; but we trust, from the measures we havetaken, that very little, if any, of the actual collections will be lost, even during the war, --and that, on the return of peace and tranquillity, the renters will have it in their power fully to perform theirrespective agreements. 

We much regret that the situation of the Arcot province will not admitof the same settlement which has been made for the other districts; butthe enemy being in possession of the capital, together with severalother strongholds, and having entirely desolated the country, there islittle room to hope for more from it than a bare subsistence to the fewgarrisons we have left there. 

We shall not fail to give our attention towards obtaining everyinformation respecting this province that the present times will permit, and to take the first opportunity to propose such arrangements for themanagement as we may think eligible. 

We have the honor to be

Your most obedient humble servants, CHARLES OAKLEY, EYLES IRWIN, HALL PLUMER, DAVID HALIBURTON, GEORGE MOUBRAY. 

FORT ST. GEORGE, 27th May, 1782. 

A true copy. 

J. HUDLESTON, Sec. 

COMPARATIVE STATEMENT _of the Revenues and Expenses of the Nellore, Ongole, Palnaud, Trichinopoly, Madura, and Tinnevelly Countries, whilein the Hands of the Nabob, with those of the same Countries on the Termsof the Leases lately granted for Four Years, to commence with theBeginning of the Phazeley, 1192, or the 12th July, 1782. Abstracted fromthe Accounts received from the Nabob, and from the Rents stipulated forand Expenses allowed by the present Leases_. 

GROSS REVENUE. +---------------+------------------+------------------+| | Annual Gross Rent| Annual Rent by || | by the Nabob's | the present || | Account. | Leases, at an || | Average of the | Average of || | Four Years imme- | Four Years. || | diately preceding| || | the present War. | |+---------------+------------------+------------------+| | Star Pagodas. | Star Pagodas. || Nellore and | | || Sarapilly | 3, 22, 830 | 3, 61, 900 || Ongole | 1, 10, 967[68]| 55, 000 || Palnaud | 51, 355 | 53, 500 || Trichinopoly | 2, 89, 993[69]| 2, 73, 214 || Madura | 1, 02, 756 | 60, 290 || Tinnevelly | 5, 65, 537 | 5, 79, 713 |+---------------+------------------+------------------+| Total | 14, 43, 438 | 13, 83, 617 |+---------------+------------------+------------------+

EXPENSES. +---------------+------------------+------------------+------------------+| | Annual Expenses | Annual Expenses | Reduction in the || | by the Nabob's | allowed by the | Annual Expenses. || | Accounts. | present Leases | || | | at an Estimate. | |+---------------+------------------+------------------+------------------+| | Star Pagodas. | Star Pagodas. | Star Pagodas. || Nellore and | | | || Sarapilly | 1, 98, 794 | 33, 000 | 1, 65, 794 || Ongole | 88, 254 | . . . | 88, 254 || Palnaud | 25, 721 | 5, 698 | 20, 023 || Trichinopoly | 2, 82, 148 | 13, 143 | 2, 63, 005 || Madura | 63, 710 | 12, 037 | 51, 673 || Tinnevelly | 1, 64, 098 | 70, 368 | 93, 730 |+---------------+------------------+------------------+------------------+| Total | 8, 22, 725 | 1, 40, 246 | 6, 82, 479 |+---------------+------------------+------------------+------------------+

NET REVENUE. +---------------+------------------+------------------+------------------+| | Net Revenue | Net Revenue | Increase of || | by the Nabob's | by the | Net Revenue. || | Accounts. | present Leases. | |+---------------+------------------+------------------+------------------+| | Star Pagodas. | Star Pagodas. | Star Pagodas. || Nellore and | | | || Sarapilly | 1, 24, 036 | 3, 28, 900 | 2, 04, 864 || Ongole | 22, 713 | 55, 000 | 32, 287 || Palnaud | 25, 634 | 47, 802 | 22, 168 || Trichinopoly | 7, 845 | 2, 54, 071 | 2, 46, 226 || Madura | 39, 046 | 48, 253 | 9, 207 || Tinnevelly | 4, 01, 439 | 5, 09, 345 | 1, 07, 906 |+---------------+------------------+------------------+------------------+| Total | 6, 20, 713 | 12, 43, 371 | 6, 22, 658 |+---------------+------------------+------------------+------------------+

N. B. In this statement, Madras Pagodas are calculated at 10 per centBatta; Chuckrums at two thirds of a Porto Novo Pagoda, which arereckoned at 115 per 100 Star Pagodas; and Rupees at 350 per 100 StarPagodas. To avoid fractions, the nearest integral numbers have beentaken. 

Signed, CHARLES OAKLEY, EYLES IRWIN, HALL PLUMER, DAVID HALIBURTON, GEORGE MOUBRAY. 

FORT ST. GEORGE, 27th May, 1782. 

 * * * * *

No. 5. 

Referred to from p. 73. 

_Case of certain Persons renting the Assigned Lands wider the Authorityof the East India Company. _

Extract of a Letter from the President and Council of Fort St. George, 25th May, 1783. 

One of them [the renters], Ram Chunder Raus, was, indeed, one of thoseunfortunate rajahs whose country, _by being near to the territories ofthe Nabob_, forfeited its title to independence, and became the prey ofambition and cupidity. This man, though not able to resist the Company'sarms, _employed in such a deed at the Nabob's instigation_, had industryand ability. He acquired, _by a series of services_, even the confidenceof the Nabob, who suffered him to _rent apart of the country of which hehad deprived him of the property_. This man had afforded no motive forhis rejection by the Nabob, but that of being ready to engage with theCompany: a motive most powerful, indeed, but not to be avowed. 

[This is the person whom the English instruments of the Nabob of Arcothave had the audacity to charge with a corrupt transaction with LordMacartney, and, in support of that charge, to produce a forged letterfrom his Lordship's steward. The charge and letter the reader may see inthis Appendix, under the proper head. It is asserted by the unfortunateprince above mentioned, that the Company first settled on the coast ofCoromandel under the protection of one of his ancestors. If this betrue, (and it is far from unlikely, ) the world must judge of the returnthe descendant has met with. The case of another of the victims given upby the ministry, though not altogether so striking as the former, isworthy of attention. It is that of the renter of the Province ofNellore. ]

It is, with a wantonness of falsehood, and indifference to detection, asserted to you, in proof of the validity of the Nabob's objections, that this man's failures had already forced us to remove him: though infact he has continued invariably in office; though our _greatestsupplies have been received from him_; and that, in the disappointmentof your remittances [the remittances from Bengal] and of otherresources, the specie sent us _from Nellore alone_ has sometimes enabledus to carry on the public business; and that the _present expeditionagainst the French_ must, without _this_ assistance from the assignment, have been laid aside, or delayed until it might have become too late. 

[This man is by the ministry given over to the mercy of persons capableof making charges on him "_with a wantonness of falsehood, andindifference to detection_. " What is likely to happen to him and therest of the victims may appear by the following. ]

 * * * * *

_Letter to the Governor-General and Council, March 13th, 1782. _

The speedy termination, to which the people were taught to look, of theCompany's interference in the revenues, and the vengeance denouncedagainst those who, contrary to the mandate of the Durbar, should beconnected with them, as reported by Mr. Sullivan, may, as much as theformer exactions and oppressions of the Nabob in the revenue, asreported by the commander-in-chief, have deterred some of the fittestmen from offering to be concerned in it. 

The timid disposition of the Hindoo natives of this country was notlikely to be insensible to the specimen of that vengeance given by hisExcellency the Amir, who, upon the mere rumor, that a Bramin, of thename of Appagee Row, had given proposals to the Company for therentership of Vellore, had the temerity to send for him, and to put himin confinement. 

A man thus seized by the Nabob's sepoys within the walls of Madras gavea general alarm, and government found it necessary to promise theprotection of the Company, in order to calm the apprehensions of thepeople. 

 * * * * *

No. 6. 

Referred to from pp. 101 and 105. 

_Extract of a Letter from the Council and Select Committee at Fort St. George, to the Governor-General and Council, dated 25th May, 1783. _

In the prosecution of our duty, we beseech you to consider, as an act ofstrict and necessary justice, previous to reiteration of your orders forthe surrender of the assignment, how far it would be likely to affectthird persons who do not appear to have committed any breach of theirengagements. You command us to compel our aumils to deliver over theirrespective charges as shall be appointed by the Nabob, or to retaintheir trust under his sole authority, if he shall choose to confirmthem. These aumils are really renters; they were appointed in the roomof the Nabob's aumils, and contrary to his wishes; they have alreadybeen rejected by him, and are therefore not likely to be confirmed byhim. They applied to this government, in consequence of publicadvertisements in our name, as possessing in this instance the jointauthority of the Nabob and the Company, and have entered into mutual andstrict covenants with us, and we with them, relative to the certaindistricts not actually in the possession of the enemy; by whichcovenants, as they are bound to the punctual payment of their rents anddue management of the country, so we, and our constituents, and thepublic faith, are in like manner bound to maintain them in the enjoymentof their leases, during the continuance of the term. That term was forfive years, agreeably to the words of the assignment, which declare thatthe time of renting shall be for three or five years, as the Governorshall settle with the renters. --Their leases cannot be legally torn fromthem. Nothing but their previous breach of a part could justify ourbreach of the whole. Such a stretch and abuse of power would, indeed, not only savor of the assumption of sovereignty, but of arbitrary andoppressive despotism. In the present contest, whether the Nabob beguilty, or we be guilty, the renters are not guilty. Whichever of thecontending parties has broken the condition of the assignment, therenters have not broken the condition of their leases. These men, inconducting the business of the assignment, have acted in opposition tothe designs of the Nabob, in despite of the menaces denounced againstall who should dare to oppose the mandates of the Durbar justice. Gratitude and humanity require that provision should be made by you, before you set the Nabob's ministers loose on the country, for theprotection of the victims devoted to their vengeance. 

Mr. Benfield, to secure the permanency of his power, and the perfectionof his schemes, thought it necessary to render the Nabob an absolutestranger to the state of his affairs. He assured his Highness that fulljustice was not done to the strength of his sentiments and the keennessof his attacks, in the translations that were made by the Company'sservants from the original Persian of his letters. He therefore proposedto him that they should for the future be transmitted in English. --Ofthe English language or writing his Highness or the Amir cannot read oneword, though the latter can converse in it with sufficient fluency. ThePersian language, as the language of the Mahomedan conquerors, and ofthe court of Delhi, as an appendage or signal of authority, was at alltimes particularly affected by the Nabob. It is the language of all actsof state, and all public transactions, among the Mussulman chiefs ofHindostan. The Nabob thought to have gained no inconsiderable point, inprocuring the correspondence from our predecessors to the Rajah ofTanjore to be changed from the Mahratta language, which that Hindooprince understands, to the Persian, which he disclaims understanding. Toforce the Rajah to the Nabob's language was gratifying the latter with anew species of subserviency. He had formerly contended with considerableanxiety, and, it was thought, no inconsiderable cost, for particularforms of address to be used towards him in that language. But all of asudden, in favor of Mr. Benfield, he quits his former affections, hishabits, his knowledge, his curiosity, the increasing mistrust of age, tothrow himself upon the generous candor, the faithful interpretation, thegrateful return, and eloquent organ of Mr. Benfield!--_Mr. Benfieldrelates and reads what he pleases to his Excellency the Amir-ul-Omrah;his Excellency communicates with the Nabob, his father, in the languagethe latter understands. Through two channels so pure, the truth mustarrive at the Nabob in perfect refinement; through this double trust, his Highness receives whatever impression it may be convenient to makeon him: he abandons his signature to whatever paper they tell himcontains, in the English language, the sentiments with which they hadinspired him. He thus is surrounded on every side. He is totally attheir mercy, to believe what is not true, and to subscribe to what hedoes not mean. There is no system so new, so foreign to his intentions, that they may not pursue in his name, without possibility of detection:for they are cautious of who approach him, and have thought prudent todecline, for him, the visits of the Governor_, even upon the usualsolemn and acceptable occasion of delivering to his Highness theCompany's letters. _Such is the complete ascendency gained by Mr. Benfield. _ It may be partly explained by the facts observed already, some years ago, by Mr. Benfield himself, in regard to the Nabob, of theinfirmities natural to his advanced age, joined to the decays of hisconstitution. To this ascendency, in proportion as it grew, must chieflybe ascribed, if not the origin, at least the continuance and increase, of the Nabob's disunion with this Presidency: a disunion which createsthe importance and subserves the resentments of Mr. Benfield; _and anascendency which, if you effect the surrender of the assignment, willentirely leave the exercise of power and accumulation of fortune at hisboundless discretion: to him, and to the Amir-ul-Omrah, and to SeydAssam Cawn, the assignment would in fact be surrendered. HE WILL (IFANY) BE THE SOUCAR SECURITY; and security in this country iscounter-secured by possession. You would not choose to take theassignment from the Company, to give it to individuals_. Of theimpropriety of its returning to the Nabob, Mr. Benfield would now againargue from his former observations, that, under his Highness'smanagement, his country declined, his people emigrated, his revenuesdecreased, and his country was rapidly approaching to a state ofpolitical insolvency. Of Seyd Assam Cawn we judge only from theobservations this letter already contains. But of the other two persons[Amir-ul-Omrah and Mr. Benfield] we undertake to declare, not as partiesin a cause, or even as voluntary witnesses, but as executive officers, reporting to you, in the discharge of our duty, and under the impressionof the sacred obligation which binds us to truth, as well as to justice, that, from every observation of their principles and dispositions, andevery information of their character and conduct, they have prosecutedprojects to the injury and danger of the Company and individuals; _thatit would be improper to trust, and dangerous to employ them, in anypublic or important situation; that the tranquillity of the Carnaticrequires a restraint to the power of the Amir; and that the Company, whose service and protection Mr. Benfield has repeatedly and recentlyforfeited, would be more secure against danger and confusion, if hewere removed from their several Presidencies. _

[After the above solemn declaration from so weighty an authority, theprincipal object of that awful and deliberate warning, instead of being"removed from the several Presidencies, " is licensed to return to one ofthe principal of those Presidencies, and the grand theatre of theoperations on account of which the Presidency recommends his totalremoval. The reason given is, for the accommodation of that very debtwhich has been the chief instrument of his dangerous practices, and themain cause of all the confusions in the Company's government. ]

 * * * * *

No. 7. 

Referred to from pp. 82, 88, and 89. 

_Extracts from the Evidence of Mr. Petrie, late Resident for the Companyat Tanjore, given to the Select Committee, relative to the Revenues andState of the Country, &c. , &c. _

9th May, 1782. 

William Petrie, Esq. , attending according to order, was asked, In whatstation he was in the Company's service? he said, He went to India inthe year 1765, a writer upon the Madras establishment: he was employed, during the former war with Hyder Ali, in the capacity of paymaster andcommissary to part of the army, and was afterwards paymaster andcommissary to the army in the first siege of Tanjore, and thesubsequent campaigns; then secretary to the Secret Department from 1772to 1775; he came to England in 1775, and returned again to Madras thebeginning of 1778; he was resident at the durbar of the Rajah of Tanjorefrom that time to the month of May; and from that time to January, 1780, was chief of Nagore and Carrical, the first of which was received fromthe Rajah of Tanjore, and the second was taken from the French. --Beingasked, Who sent him to Tanjore? he said, Sir Thomas Rumbold, and theSecret Committee. --Being then asked, Upon what errand? he said, He wentfirst up with a letter from the Company to the Rajah of Tanjore: he wasdirected to give the Rajah the strongest assurances that he should bekept in possession of his country, and every privilege to which he hadbeen restored; he was likewise directed to negotiate with the Rajah ofTanjore for the cession of the seaport and district of Nagore in lieu ofthe town and district of Devicotta, which he had promised to Lord Pigot:these were the principal, and, to the best of his recollection atpresent, the only objects in view, when he was first sent up to Tanjore. In the course of his stay at Tanjore, other matters of business occurredbetween the Company and the Rajah, which came under his management asresident at that durbar. --Being asked, Whether the Rajah did deliver upto him the town and the annexed districts of Nagore voluntarily, orwhether he was forced to it? he said, When he made the first propositionto the Rajah, agreeable to the directions he had received from theSecret Committee at Madras, in the most free, open, and liberal manner, the Rajah told him the seaport of Nagore was entirely at the service ofhis benefactors, the Company, and that he was happy in having thatopportunity of testifying his gratitude to them. These may be supposedto be words of course; but, from every experience which he had of theRajah's mind and conduct, whilst he was at Tanjore, he has reason tobelieve that his declarations of gratitude to the Company were perfectlysincere. He speaks to the town of Nagore at present, and a certaindistrict, --not of the districts to the amount of which they afterwardsreceived. The Rajah asked him, To what amount he expected a jaghire tothe Company? And the witness further said, That he acknowledged to thecommittee that he was not instructed upon that head; that he wrote fororders to Madras, and was directed to ask the Rajah for a jaghire to acertain amount; that this gave rise to a long negotiation, the Rajahrepresenting to him his inability to make such a gift to the Company asthe Secret Committee at Madras seemed to expect; while he (the witness)on the other hand, was directed to make as good a bargain as he couldfor the Company. From the view that he then took of the Rajah'sfinances, from the situation of his country, and from the load of debtwhich pressed hard upon him, he believes he at different times, in hiscorrespondence with the government, represented the necessity of theirbeing moderate in their demands, and it was at last agreed to accept ofthe town of Nagore, valued at a certain annual revenue, and a jaghireannexed to the town, the whole amounting to 250, 000 rupees. --Beingasked, Whether it did turn out so valuable? he said, He had not a doubtbut it would turn out more, as it was let for more than that to farmersat Madras, if they had managed the districts properly; _but they werestrangers to the manners and customs of the people; when they camedown, they oppressed the inhabitants, and threw the whole district intoconfusion; the inhabitants, many of them, left the country, and desertedthe cultivation of their lands; of course the farmers were disappointedof their collections, and they have since failed, and the Company havelost a considerable part of what the farmers were to pay for thejaghire_. --Being asked, Who these farmers were? he said, One of them wasthe renter of the St. Thomé district, near Madras, and the other, andthe most responsible, was a Madras dubash. --Being asked, Whom he wasdubash to? he said, To Mr. Cass-major. 

Being asked, Whether the lease was made upon higher terms than thedistrict was rated to him by the Rajah? he said, It was. --Being thenasked, What reason was assigned why the district was not kept under theformer management by aumildars, or let to persons in the Tanjore countryacquainted with the district? he said, No reasons were assigned: he wasdirected from Madras to advertise them to be let to persons of thecountry; but before he received any proposal, he received accounts thatthey were let at Madras, in consequence of public advertisements whichhad been made there: he believes, indeed, there were very few men inthose districts responsible enough to have been intrusted with themanagement of those lands. --Being asked, Whether, at the time he wasauthorized to negotiate for Nagore in the place of Devicotta, Devicottawas given up to the Rajah? he said, No. --Being asked, Whether the Rajahof Tanjore did not frequently desire that the districts of Arnee andHanamantagoody should be restored to him, agreeable to treaty, and theCompany's orders to Lord Pigot? he said, Many a time; and hetransmitted his representations regularly to Madras. --Being then asked, Whether those places were restored to him? he said, Not while he was inIndia. 

Being asked, Whether he was not authorized and required by thePresidency at Madras to demand a large sum of money over and above thefour lacs of pagodas that were to be annually paid by a grant of theRajah, made in the time of Lord Pigot? he said, He was: to the amount, he believes, of four lacs of pagodas, commonly known by the name ofdeposit-money. --Being asked, Whether the Rajah did not frequently pleadhis inability to pay that money? he said, He did every time he mentionedit, and complained loudly of the demand. --Being asked, Whether he thinksthose complaints were well founded? he says, He thinks the Rajah ofTanjore was not only not in a state of ability to pay the deposit-money, but that the annual payment of four lacs of pagodas was more than hisrevenues could afford. --Being asked, Whether he was not frequentlyobliged to borrow money, in order to pay the instalments of the annualpayments, and such parts as he paid of the deposit? he said, Yes, hewas. --Being asked, Where he borrowed the money? he said, He believesprincipally from soucars or native bankers, and some at Madras, as hetold him. --Being asked, Whether he told him that his credit was verygood, and that he borrowed upon moderate interest? he said, That he toldhim he found great difficulties in raising money, and was obliged toborrow at a most exorbitant interest, even some of it at forty-eight percent, and he believes not a great deal under it. _He desired him (thewitness) to speak to one of the soucars or bankers at Tanjore toaccommodate him with a loan of money: that man showed him an accountbetween him and the Rajah, from which it appeared that he chargedforty-eight per cent, besides compound interest_. --Being asked, Whetherthe sums duo were large? he said, Yes, they were considerable; though hedoes not recollect the amount. --Being asked, Whether the banker lent themoney? he said, He would not, unless the witness could procure himpayment of his old arrears. 

Being asked, What notice did the government of Madras take of the kingof Tanjore's representations of the state of his affairs, and hisinability to pay? he said, He does not recollect, that, in theircorrespondence with him, there was any reasoning upon the subject; andin his correspondence with Sir Thomas Rumbold, upon the amount of thejaghire, he seemed very desirous of adapting the demand of government tothe Rajah's circumstances; but, whilst he stayed at Tanjore, the Rajahwas not exonerated from any part of his burdens. --Being asked, Whetherthey ever desired the Rajah to make up a statement of his accounts, disbursements, debts, and payments to the Company, in order to ascertainwhether the country was able to pay the increasing demands upon it? hesaid, Through him he is certain they never did. --Being then asked, If heever heard whether they did through any one else? he said, He never did. 

Being asked, Whether the Rajah is not bound to furnish the cultivatorsof land with seed for their crops, according to the custom of thecountry? he said, _The king of Tanjore, as proprietor of the land, always makes advances of money for seed for the cultivation of theland. _--Being then asked, If money beyond his power of furnishing shouldbe extorted from him, might it not prevent, in the first instance, themeans of cultivating the country? he said, It certainly does; _he knowsit for a fact; and he knows, that, when he left the country, there wereseveral districts which were uncultivated from that cause_. --Beingasked, Whether it is not necessary to be at a considerable expense inorder to keep up the mounds and watercourses? he said, _A veryconsiderable one annually_. --Being asked, What would be the consequence, if money should fail for that? he said, _In the first instance, thecountry would be partially supplied with water, some districts would beoverflowed, and others would be parched_. --Being asked, Whether there isnot a considerable dam called the Anicut, on the keeping up of which theprosperity of the country greatly depends, and which requires a greatexpense? he said, Yes, there is: the whole of the Tanjore country isadmirably well supplied with water, nor can he conceive any method couldbe fallen upon more happily adapted to the cultivation and prosperity ofthe country; but, as the Anicut is the source of that prosperity, anyinjury done to that must essentially affect all the other works in thecountry: it is a most stupendous piece of masonry, but, from the verygreat floods, frequently requiring repairs, which if neglected, not onlythe expense of repairing must be greatly increased, but a general injurydone to the whole country. --Being asked, Whether that dam has been keptin as good preservation since the prevalence of the English governmentas before? he said, From his own knowledge he cannot tell, but fromeverything he has read or heard of the former prosperity and opulence ofthe kings of Tanjore, he should suppose not. --Being asked, Whether hedoes not know of several attempts that have been made to prevent therepair, and even to damage the work? he said, The Rajah himselffrequently complained of that to him, and he has likewise heard it fromothers at Tanjore. --Being asked, Who it was that attempted those acts ofviolence? he said, He was told it was the inhabitants of the Nabob'scountry adjoining to the Anicut. --Being asked, Whether they were not seton or instigated by the Nabob? he answered, The Rajah said so. --Andbeing asked, What steps the President and Council took to punish theauthors and prevent those violences? he said, To the best of hisrecollection, the Governor told him he would make inquiries into it, buthe does not know that any inquiries were made; that Sir Thomas Rumbold, the Governor, informed him that he had laid his representations withrespect to the Anicut before the Nabob, who denied that his people hadgiven any interruption to the repairs of that work. 

 * * * * *

10th May. 

Being asked, What he thinks the real clear receipt of the revenues ofTanjore were worth when he left it? he said, He cannot say what was thenet amount, as he does not know the expense of the Rajah's collection;but while he was at Tanjore, he understood from the Rajah himself, andfrom his ministers, that the gross collection did not exceed nine lacsof pagodas (360, 000_l. _). --Being asked, Whether he thinks the countrycould pay the eight lacs of pagodas which had been demanded to be paidin the course of one year? he said, Clearly not. --Being asked, Whetherthere was not an attempt made to remove the Rajah's minister, upon somedelay in payment of the deposit? he said, The Governor of Madras wroteto that effect, which he represented to the Rajah. --Being asked, Who wasmentioned to succeed to the minister that then was, in case he should beremoved? he said, When Sir Hector Munro came afterwards to Tanjore, theold daubiere was mentioned, and recommended to the Rajah as successor tohis then dewan. --Being asked, Of what age was the daubiere at that time?he said, Of a very great age: upwards of fourscore. --Being asked, Whether a person called Kanonga Saba Pilla was not likewise named? hesaid, Yes, he was: he was recommended by Sir Thomas Rumbold; and onerecommendation, as well as I can recollect, went through me. --Beingasked, What was the reason of his being recommended? he said, Heundertook to pay off the Rajah's debts, and to give security for theregular payment of the Rajah's instalments to the Company. --Being asked, Whether he offered to give any security for preserving the country fromoppression, and for supporting the dignity of the Rajah and his people?he said, He does not know that he did, or that it was asked ofhim. --Being asked, Whether he was a person agreeable to the Rajah? hesaid, He was not. --Being asked, Whether he was not a person who had fledout of the country to avoid the resentment of the Rajah? he said, Hewas. --Being asked, Whether he was not charged by the Rajah withmalpractices, and breach of trust relative to his effects? he said, Hewas; but he told the Governor that he would account for his conduct, andexplain everything to the satisfaction of the Rajah. --Being asked, Whether the Rajah did not consider this man as in the interest of hisenemies, and particularly of the Nabob of Arcot and Mr. Benfield? hesaid, He does not recollect that he did mention that to him: heremembers to have heard him complain of a transaction between KanongaSaba Pilla and Mr. Benfield; but he told him he had been guilty of avariety of malpractices in his administration, that he had oppressed thepeople, and defrauded him. --Being asked, In what branch of business theRajah had formerly employed him? he said, He was at one time, hebelieves, renter of the whole country, was supposed to have greatinfluence with the Rajah, and was in fact dewan some time. --Being asked, Whether the nomination of that man was not particularly odious to theRajah? he said, He found the Rajah's mind so exceedingly averse to thatman, that he believes he would almost as soon have submitted to hisbeing deposed as to submit to the nomination of that man to be hisprime-minister. 

 * * * * *

13th May. 

Mr. Petrie being asked, Whether he was informed by the Rajah, or byothers, at Tanjore or Madras, that Mr. Benfield, whilst he managed therevenues at Tanjore, during the usurpation of the Nabob, did not treatthe inhabitants with great rigor? he said, He did hear from the Rajahthat Mr. Benfield did treat the inhabitants with rigor during the timehe had anything to do with the administration of the revenues ofTanjore. --Being asked, If he recollects in what particulars? he said, The Rajah particularly complained that grain had been delivered out tothe inhabitants, for the purposes of cultivation, at a higher price thanthe market price of grain in the country; he cannot say the actualdifference of price, but it struck him at the time as something veryconsiderable. --Being asked, Whether that money was all recovered fromthe inhabitants? he said, The Rajah of Tanjore told him that the moneywas all recovered from the inhabitants. --Being asked, Whether he did nothear that the Nabob exacted from the country of Tanjore, whilst he wasin possession of it? he said, From the accounts which he received atTanjore of the revenues for a number of years past, it appeared that theNabob collected from the country, while he was in possession, rathermore than sixteen lacs of pagodas annually; whereas, when he was atTanjore, it did not yield more than nine lacs. --Being asked, From whencethat difference arose? he said, When Tanjore was conquered for theNabob, he has been told that many thousand of the native inhabitantsfled from the country, some into the country of Mysore, and others intothe dominions of the Mahrattas; he understood from the same authority, that, while the Nabob was in possession of the country, many inhabitantsfrom the Carnatic, allured by the superior fertility and opulence ofTanjore, and encouraged by the Nabob, took up their residence there, which enabled the Nabob to cultivate the whole country; and upon therestoration of the Rajah, he has heard that the Carnatic inhabitantswere carried back to their own country, which left a considerable blankin the population, which was not replaced while he was there, principally owing to an opinion which prevailed through the country thatthe Rajah's government was not to be permanent, but that anotherrevolution was fast approaching. During the Nabob's government, theprice of grain was considerably higher (owing to a very unusual scarcityin the Carnatic) than when he was in Tanjore. --Being asked, Whether hewas ever in the Marawar country? he said, Yes; he was commissary to thearmy in that expedition. --Being asked, Whether that country was muchwasted by the war? he said, Plunder was not permitted to the army, nordid the country suffer from its operations, except in causing manythousands of the inhabitants, who had been employed in the cultivationof the country, to leave it. --Being asked, Whether he knows what is donewith the palace and inhabitants of Ramnaut? he said, The town was takenby storm, but not plundered by the troops; it was immediately deliveredup to the Nabob's eldest son. --Being asked, Whether great riches werenot supposed to be in that palace and temple? he said, It wasuniversally believed so. --Being asked, What account was given of them?he said, He cannot tell; everything remained in the possession of theNabob. --Being asked, What became of the children and women of the familyof the prince of that country? he said, The Rajah was a minor; thegovernment was in the hands of the Ranny, his mother: from generalreport he has heard they were carried to Trichinopoly, and placed inconfinement there. --Being asked, Whether he perceived any difference inthe face of the Carnatic when he first knew it and when he last knew it?he said, He thinks he did, particularly in its population. --Being asked, Whether it was better or worse? he said, It was not so populous. --Beingasked, What is the condition of the Nabob's eldest son? he said, He wasin the Black Town of Madras, when he left the country. --Being asked, Whether he was entertained there in a manner suitable to his birth andexpectations? he said, No: he lived there without any of those exteriormarks of splendor which princes of his rank in India are particularlyfond of. --Being asked, Whether he has not heard that his appointmentswere poor and mean? he said, He has heard that they were not equal tohis rank and expectations. --Being asked, Whether he had any share in thegovernment? he said, He believes none: for some years past the Nabob hasdelegated most of the powers of government to his second son. --Beingasked, Whether the Rajah did not complain to him of the behavior of Mr. Benfield to himself personally; and what were the particulars? he said, He did so, and related to him the following particulars. About fifteendays after Lord Pigot's confinement, Mr. Benfield came to Tanjore, anddelivered the Rajah two letters from the then Governor, Mr. Stratton, --one public, and the other private. He demanded an immediateaccount of the presents which had been made to Lord Pigot, payment ofthe tunkahs which he (Mr. Benfield) had received from the Nabob upon thecountry, and that the Rajah should only write such letters to the Madrasgovernment as Mr. Benfield should approve and give to him. The Rajahanswered, that he did not acknowledge the validity of any demands madeby the Nabob upon the country; that those tunkahs related to accountswhich he (the Rajah) had no concern with; that he never had given LordPigot any presents, but Lord Pigot had given him many; and that as tohis correspondence with the Madras government, he would not trouble Mr. Benfield, because he would write his letters himself. That the Rajahtold the witness, that by reason of this answer he was much threatened, in consequence of which he desired Colonel Harper, who then commanded atTanjore, to be present at his next interview with Mr. Benfield; whenMr. Benfield denied many parts of the preceding conversation, and threwthe blame upon his interpreter, Comroo. When Mr. Benfield found (as theRajah informed him) that he could not carry these points which hadbrought him to Tanjore, he prepared to set off for Madras; that theRajah sent him a letter which he had drawn out in answer to one whichMr. Benfield had brought him; that Mr. Benfield disapproved of theanswer, and returned it by Comroo to the durbar, who did not deliver itinto the Rajah's hands, but threw it upon the ground, and expressedhimself improperly to him. 

Being asked, Whether it was at the king of Tanjore's desire, that suchpersons as Mr. Benfield and Comroo had been brought into his presence?he said, The Rajah told him, that, when Lord Pigot came to Tanjore, torestore him to his dominions, Comroo, without being sent for, or desiredto come to the palace, had found means to get access to his person: hemade an offer of introducing Mr. Benfield to the Rajah, which hedeclined. --Being asked, Whether the military officer commanding thereprotected the Rajah from the intrusion of such people? he said, TheRajah did not tell him that he called upon the military officer toprevent these intrusions, but that he desired Colonel Harper to bepresent as a witness to what might pass between him and Mr. Benfield. --Being asked, If it is usual for persons of the conditions andoccupations of Mr. Benfield and Comroo to intrude themselves into thepresence of the princes of the country, and to treat them with suchfreedom? he said, Certainly it is not: less there than in any othercountry. --Being asked, Whether the king of Tanjore has no ministers towhom application might be made to transact such business as Mr. Benfieldand Comroo had to do in the country? he said, Undoubtedly: his ministeris the person whose province it is to transact that business. --Beingasked, Before the invasion of the British troops into Tanjore, whatwould have been the consequence, if Mr. Benfield had intruded himselfinto the Rajah's presence, and behaved in that manner? he said, He couldnot say what would have been the consequence; but the attempt would havebeen madness, and could not have happened. --Being asked, Whether theRajah had not particular exceptions to Comroo, and thought he hadbetrayed him in very essential points? he said, Yes, he had. --Beingasked, Whether the Rajah has not been apprised that the Company havemade stipulations that their servants should not interfere in theconcerns of his government? he said, He signified it to the Rajah, thatit was the Company's positive orders, and that any of their servants sointerfering would incur their highest displeasure. 

 * * * * *

No. 8. 

Referred to from p. 87, &c. 

_Commissioners' Amended Clauses for the Fort St. George Dispatch, relative to the Indeterminate Mights and Pretensions of the Nabob ofArcot and Rajah of Tanjore. _

In our letter of the 28th January last we stated the reasonableness ofour expectation that certain contributions towards the expenses of thewar should be made by the Rajah of Tanjore. Since writing that letter, we have received one from the Rajah, of the 15th of October last, whichcontains at length his representations of his inability to make suchfurther payment. We think it unnecessary here to discuss whether theserepresentations are or are not exaggerated, because, from theexplanations we have given of our wishes for a new arrangement infuture, both with the Nabob of Arcot and the Rajah of Tanjore, and thedirections we have given you to carry that arrangement into execution, we think it impolitic to insist upon any demands upon the Rajah for theexpenses of the late war, beyond the sum of four lacs of pagodasannually: such a demand might tend to interrupt the harmony which shouldprevail between the Company and the Rajah, and impede the great objectsof the general system we have already so fully explained to you. 

But although it is not our opinion that any further claim should be madeon the Rajah for his share of the extraordinary expenses of the latewar, it is by no means our intention in any manner to affect the justclaim which the Nabob has on the Rajah for the arrears due to him onaccount of peshcush, for the regular payment of which we became guarantyby the treaty of 1762; but we have already expressed to you our hopesthat the Nabob may be induced to allow these arrears and the growingpayments, when due, to be received by the Company, and carried indischarge of his debt to us. You are at the same time to use every meansto convince him, that, when this debt shall be discharged, it is ourintention, as we are bound by the above treaty, to exert ourselves tothe utmost of our power to insure the constant and regular payment of itinto his own hands. 

We observe, by the plan sent to us by our Governor of Fort St. George, on the 30th October, 1781, that an arrangement is there proposed for thereceipt of those arrears from the Rajah in three years. 

We are unable to decide how far this proposal may be consistent with thepresent state of the Rajah's resources; but we direct you to use allproper means to bring these arrears to account as soon as possible, consistently with a due attention to this consideration. 

 * * * * *

CLAUSES H. 

You will observe, that, by the 38th section of the late act ofParliament, it is enacted, that, for settling upon a permanentfoundation the present indeterminate rights of the Nabob of Arcot andthe Rajah of Tanjore with respect to each other, we should take into ourimmediate consideration the said indeterminate rights and pretensions, and take and pursue such measures as in our judgment and discretionshall be best calculated to ascertain and settle the same, according tothe principles and the terms and stipulations contained in the treaty of1762 between the said Nabob and the said Rajah. 

On a retrospect of the proceedings transmitted to us from yourPresidency, on the subject of the disputes which have heretofore arisenbetween the Nabob and the Rajah, we find the following points remainunadjusted, viz. 

1st, Whether the jaghire of Arnee shall be enjoyed by the Nabob, ordelivered up, either to the Rajah, or the descendants of Tremaul Row, the late jaghiredar. 

2d, Whether the fort and district of Hanamantagoody, which is admittedby both parties to be within the Marawar, ought to be possessed by theNabob, or to be delivered up by him to the Rajah. 

3rd, To whom the government share of the crop of the Tanjore country, ofthe year 1775-6, properly belongs. 

Lastly, Whether the Rajah has a right, by usage and custom, or ought, from the necessity of the case, to be permitted to repair such part ofthe Anicut, or dam and banks of the Cavery, as lie within the districtof Trichinopoly, and to take earth and sand in the Trichinopolyterritory for the repairs of the dam and banks within either or both ofthose districts. 

In order to obtain a complete knowledge of the facts and circumstancesrelative to the several points in dispute, and how far they areconnected with the treaty of 1762, we have with great circumspectionexamined into all the materials before us on these subjects, and willproceed to state to you the result of our inquiries and deliberations. 

The objects of the treaty of 1762 appear to be restricted to the arrearsof tribute to be paid to the Nabob for his past claims, and to thequantum of the Rajah's future tribute or peshcush; the cancelling of acertain bond given by the Rajah's father to the father of the Nabob; theconfirmation to the Rajah of the districts of Coveladdy and Elangaud, and the restoration of Tremaul Row to his jaghire of Arnee, incondescension to the Rajah's request, upon certain stipulations, viz. , that the fort of Arnee and Doby Gudy should be retained by the Nabob;that Tremaul Row should not erect any fortress, walled pagoda, or otherstronghold, nor any wall round his dwelling-house exceeding eight feethigh or two feet thick, and should in all things behave himself withdue obedience to the government; and that he should pay yearly, in themonth of July, unto the Nabob or his successors, the sum of ten thousandrupees: the Rajah thereby becoming the security for Tremaul Row, that heshould in all things demean and behave himself accordingly, and payyearly the stipulated sum. 

Upon a review of this treaty, the only point now in dispute, whichappears to us to be so immediately connected with it as to bring itwithin the strict line of our duty to ascertain and settle according tothe terms and stipulations of the treaty, is that respecting Arnee. For, although the other points enumerated may in some respects have arelation to that treaty, yet, as they are foreign to the purposesexpressed in it, and could not be in the contemplation of thecontracting parties at the time of making it, those disputes cannot inour comprehension fall within the line of description of rights andpretensions to be now ascertained and settled by us, according to any ofthe terms and stipulations of it. 

In respect to the jaghire of Arnee, we do not find that our recordsafford us any satisfactory information by what title the Rajah claimsit, or what degree of relationship or connection has subsisted betweenthe Rajah and the Killadar of Arnee, save only that by the treaty of1762 the former became the surety for Tremaul Row's performance of hisengagements specified therein, as the conditions for his restoration tothat jaghire; on the death of Tremaul Row, we perceive that he wassucceeded by his widow, and after her death, by his grandsonSeneewasarow, both of whom were admitted to the jaghire by the Nabob. 

From your Minutes of Consultation of the 31st October, 1770, and theNabob's letter to the President of the 21st March, 1771, and the twoletters from Rajah Beerbur Atchenur Punt (who we presume was then theNabob's manager at Arcot) of the 16th and 18th March, referred to in theNabob's letter, and transmitted therewith to the President, we observe, that, previous to the treaty of 1762, Mr. Pigot concurred in theexpediency of the Nabob's taking possession of this jaghire, on accountof the troublesome and refractory behavior of the Arnee braminees, bytheir affording protection to all disturbers, who, by reason of thelittle distance between Arnee and Arcot, fled to the former, and werethere protected, and not given up, though demanded;--that, though thejaghire was restored in 1762, it was done under such conditions andrestrictions as were thought best calculated to preserve the peace andgood order of the place and due obedience to government;--that, nevertheless, the braminees (quarrelling among themselves) didafterwards, in express violation of the treaty, enlist and assemble manythousand sepoys, and other troops; that they erected gaddies and othersmall forts, provided themselves with wall-pieces, small guns, and otherwarlike stores, and raised troubles and disturbances in the neighborhoodof the city of Arcot and the forts of Arnee and Shaw Gaddy; and that, finally, they imprisoned the hircarrahs of the Nabob, sent with hisletters and instructions, in pursuance of the advice of your board, torequire certain of the braminees to repair to the Nabob at Chepauk, and, though peremptorily required to repair thither, paid no regard to those, or to any other orders from the circar. 

By the 13th article contained in the instructions given by the Nabob toMr. Dupré, as the basis for negotiating the treaty made with the Rajahin 1771, the Nabob required that the Arnee district should be deliveredup to the circar, because the braminees had broken the conditions whichthey were to have observed. In the answers given by the Rajah to thesepropositions, he says, "I am to give up to the circar the jaghiredistrict of Arnee"; and on the 7th of November, 1771, the Rajah, byletter to Seneewasarow, who appears by your Consultations and countrycorrespondence to have been the grandson of Tremaul Row, and to havebeen put in possession of the jaghire at your recommendation, (on thedeath of his grandmother, ) writes, acquainting him that he had given theArnee country, then in his (Seneewasarow's) possession, to the Nabob, towhose aumildars Seneewasarow was to deliver up the possession of thecountry. And in your letter to us of the 28th February, 1772, youcertified the district of Arnee to be one of the countries acquired bythis treaty, and to be of the estimated value of two lacs of rupees perannum. 

In our orders dated the 12th of April, 1775, we declared ourdetermination to replace the Rajah upon the throne of his ancestors, upon certain terms and conditions, to be agreed upon for the mutualbenefit of himself and the Company, without infringing the rights of theNabob. We declared that our faith stood pledged by the treaty of 1762 toobtain payment of the Rajah's tribute to the Nabob, and that for theinsuring such payment the fort of Tanjore should be garrisoned by ourtroops. We directed that you should pay no regard to the article of thetreaty of 1771 which respected the alienation of part of the Rajah'sdominions; and we declared, that, if the Nabob had not a just title tothose territories before the conclusion of the treaty, we denied that heobtained any right thereby, except such temporary sovereignty, forsecuring the payment of his expenses, as is therein mentioned. 

These instructions appear to have been executed in the month of April, 1776; and by your letter of the 14th May following you certified to usthat the Rajah had been put into the possession of the whole country hisfather held in 1762, when the treaty was concluded with the Nabob; butwe do not find that you came to any resolution, either antecedent orsubsequent to this advice, either for questioning or impeaching theright of the Nabob to the sovereignty of Arnee, or expressive of anydoubt of his title to it. Nevertheless, we find, that, although theBoard passed no such resolution, yet your President, in his letter tothe Nabob of the 30th July and 24th August, called upon his Highness togive up the possession of Arnee to the Rajah; and the Rajah himself, inseveral letters to us, particularly in those of 21st October, 1776, andthe 7th of June, 1777, expressed his expectation of our orders fordelivering up that fort and district to him; and so recently as the 15thof October, 1783, he reminds us of his former application, and states, that the country of Arnee being guarantied to him by the Company, it ofcourse is his right, but that it has not been given up to him, and hetherefore earnestly entreats our orders for putting him into thepossession of it. We also observe by your letter of the 14th of October, 1779, that the Rajah had not then accounted for the Nabob's peshcushsince his restoration, but had assigned as a reason for his withdrawingit, that the Nabob had retained from him the district of Arnee, with acertain other district, (Hanamantagoody, ) which is made the subject ofanother part of our present dispatches. 

We have thus stated to you the result of our inquiry into the grounds ofthe dispute relative to Arnee; and as the research has offered noevidence in support of the Rajah's claim, nor even any lights whereby wecan discover in what degree of relationship, by consanguinity, caste, orother circumstances, the Rajah now stands, or formerly stood, with theKilladar of Arnee, or the nature of his connection with or command overthat district, or the authority he exercised or assumed previous to thetreaty of 1771, we should think ourselves highly reprehensible incomplying with the Rajah's request, --and the more so, as it is expresslystated, in the treaty of 1762, that this fort and district were then inthe possession of the Nabob, as well as the person of the jaghiredar, onaccount of his disobedience, and were restored him by the Nabob, incondescension to the Rajah's request, upon such terms and stipulationsas could not, in our judgment, have been imposed by the one or submittedto by the other, if the sovereignty of the one or the dependency of theother had been at that time a matter of doubt. 

Although these materials have not furnished us with evidence in supportof the Rajah's claim, they are far from satisfactory to evince thejustice of or the political necessity for the Nabob's continuing towithhold the jaghire from the descendants of Tremaul Row; his hereditaryright to that jaghire seems to us to have been fully recognized by thestipulations of the treaty of 1762, and so little doubted, that, on hisdeath, his widow was admitted by the Nabob to hold it, on account, asmay be presumed, of the nonage of his grandson and heir, Seneewasarow, who appears to have been confirmed in the jaghire, on her death, by theNabob, as the lineal heir and successor to his grandfather. 

With respect to Seneewasarow, it does not appear, by any of theProceedings in our possession, that he was concerned in the misconductof the braminees, complained of by the Nabob in the year 1770, whichrendered it necessary for his Highness to take the jaghire into his ownhands, or that he was privy to or could have prevented thosedisturbances. 

We therefore direct, that, if the heir of Tremaul Row is not at presentin possession of the jaghire, and has not, by any violation of thetreaty, or act of disobedience, incurred a forfeiture thereof, he beforthwith restored to the possession of it, according to the terms andstipulations of the treaty of 1762. But if any powerful motive of regardto the peace and tranquillity of the Carnatic shall in your judgmentrender it expedient to suspend the execution of these orders, in thatcase you are with all convenient speed to transmit to us yourproceedings thereupon, with the full state of the facts, and of thereasons which have actuated your conduct. 

We have before given it as our opinion that the stipulations of thetreaty of 1762 do not apply to the points remaining to be decided. Butthe late act of Parliament having, from the nature of our connectionwith the two powers in the Carnatic, pointed out the expediency, andeven necessity, of settling the several matters in dispute between themby a speedy and permanent arrangement, we now proceed to give you ourinstructions upon, the several other heads of disputes beforeenumerated. 

With respect to the fort and district of Hanamantagoody, we observe, that, on the restoration of the Rajah in 1776, you informed us in yourletter of the 14th of May, That the Rajah had been put into possessionof the whole of the country his father held in 1762, when the treaty wasconcluded with the Nabob; and on the 25th of June you came to theresolution of putting the Rajah into possession of Hanamantagoody, onthe ground of its appearing, on reference to the Nabob's instructions toMr. Dupré in June, 1762, to his reply, and to the Rajah'srepresentations of 25th March, 1771, that Hanamantagoody was actually inthe hands of the late Rajah at the time of making the treaty of 1762. Wehave referred as well to those papers as to all the other proceedings onthis subject, and must confess they fall very short of demonstrating tous the truth of that fact. And we find, by the Secret Consultations ofFort William of the 7th of August, 1776, that the same doubt wasentertained by our Governor-General and Council. 

But whether, in point of fact, the late Rajah was or was not inpossession of Hanamantagoody in 1762, it is notorious that the Nabob hadalways claimed the dominion of the countries of which this fort anddistrict are a part. 

We observe that the Nabob is now in the actual possession of this fortand district; and we are not warranted, by any document we have seen, toconcur with the wishes of the Rajah to dispossess him. 

With regard to the government share of the crop of 1775-6, we observe bythe dobeer's memorandum, recited in your Consultations of the 13th ofMay, 1776, that it was the established custom of the Tanjore country togather in the harvest and complete the collections within the month ofMarch, but that, for the causes therein particularly stated, the harvest(and of course the collection of the government share of the crop) wasdelayed till the month of March was over. We also observe that the Rajahwas not restored to his kingdom until the 11th of April, 1776; and fromhence we infer, that, if the harvest and collection had been finished atthe usual time, the Nabob (being then sovereign of the country) wouldhave received the full benefit of that year's crop. 

Although the harvest and collection were delayed beyond the usual time, yet we find by the Proceedings of your government, and particularly byMr. Mackay's Minute of the 29th of May, 1776, and also by the dobeer'saccount, that the greatest part of the grain was cut down whilst theNabob remained in the government of the country. 

It is difficult, from the contradictory allegations on the subject, toascertain what was the precise amount of the collections made after theNabob ceased to have the possession of the country. But whatever it was, it appears from General Stuart's letter of the 2d of April, 1777, thatit had been asserted with good authority that the far greater part ofthe government share of the crop was plundered by individuals, and nevercame to account in the Rajah's treasury. 

Under all the circumstances of this case, we must be of opinion that thegovernment share of the crop of 1776 belonged to the Nabob, as the thenreigning sovereign of the kingdom of Tanjore, he being, _de facto_, inthe full and absolute possession of the government thereof; andconsequently that the assignments made by him of the government share ofthe crop were valid. 

Nevertheless, we would by no means be understood by this opinion tosuggest that any further demands ought to be made upon the Rajah, inrespect of such parts of the government share of the crop as werecollected by his people. 

For, on the contrary, after so great a length of time as hath elapsed, we should think it highly unjust that the Rajah should be now compelledeither to pay the supposed balances, whatever they may be, or be calledupon to render a specific account of the collection made by his people. 

The Rajah has already, in his letter to Governor Stratton of the 21st ofApril, 1777, given his assurance, that the produce of the precedingyear, accounted for to him, was little more than one lac of pagodas; andas you have acquainted us, by your letter of the 14th of October, 1779, that the Rajah has actually paid into our treasury one lac of pagodas, by way of deposit, on account of the Nabob's claims to the crop, tillour sentiments should be known, we direct you to surcease any furtherdemands from the Rajah on that account. 

We learn by the Proceedings, and particularly by the Nabob's letter toLord Pigot of the 6th of July, 1776, that the Nabob, previous to therestoration of the Rajah, actually made assignments or granted tunkawsof the whole of his share of the crop to his creditors and troops; andthat your government, (entertaining the same opinion as we do upon thequestion of right to that share, ) by letter to the Rajah of the 20th ofAugust, 1776, recommended to him "to restore to Mr. Benfield (one of theprincipal assignees or tunkaw-holders of the Nabob) the grain of thelast year, which was in possession of his people, and said to beforcibly taken from them, --and farther, to give Mr. Benfield allreasonable assistance in recovering such debts as should appear to havebeen justly due to him from the inhabitants; and acquainted the Rajahthat it had been judged by a majority of the Council that it was theCompany's intention to let the Nabob have the produce of the crop of1776, but that you had no intention that the Rajah should be accountablefor more than the government share, whatever that might be; and that youdid not mean to do more than recommend to him to see justice done, leaving the manner and time to himself. " Subsequent representationsappear to have been made to the Rajah by your government on the samesubject, in favor of the Nabob's mortgages. 

In answer to these applications, the Rajah, in his letter to Mr. Stratton of the 12th January, 1777, acquainted you "that he had givenorders respecting the grain which Mr. Benfield had heaped up in hiscountry; and with regard to the money due to him by the farmers, that hehad desired Mr. Benfield to bring accounts of it, that he might limit atime for the payment of it proportionably to their ability, and that thenecessary orders for stopping this money out of the inhabitants' shareof the crop had been sent to the ryots and aumildars; that Mr. Benfield's gomastah was then present there, and oversaw his affairs; andthat in everything that was just he (the Rajah) willingly obeyed ourGovernor and Council. "

Our opinion being that the Rajah ought to be answerable for no more thanthe amount of what he admits was collected by his people for thegovernment share of the crop; and the Proceedings before us notsufficiently explaining whether, in the sum which the Rajah, by hisbefore-mentioned letter of the 21st April, 1777, admits to havecollected, are included those parts of the government share of the cropwhich were taken by his people from Mr. Benfield, or from any other ofthe assignees or tunkaw-holders; and uninformed, as we also are, whatcompensation the Rajah has or has not made to Mr. Benfield, or any otherof the parties from whom the grain was taken by the Rajah's people; orwhether, by means of the Rajah's refusal so to do, or from any othercircumstance, any of the persons dispossessed of their grain may havehad recourse to the Nabob for satisfaction: we are, for these reasons, incompetent to form a proper judgment what disposition ought in justiceto be made of the one lac of pagodas deposited by the Rajah. But as oursentiments and intentions are so fully expressed upon the whole subject, we presume you, who are upon the spot, can have no doubt or difficultyin making such an application of the deposit as will be consistent withthose principles of justice whereon our sentiments are founded. Butshould any such difficulty suggest itself, you will suspend anyapplication of the deposit, until you have fully explained the same tous, and have received our further orders. 

With respect to the repairs of the Anicut and banks of the Cavery wehave upon various occasions fully expressed to you our sentiments, andin particular in our general letter of the 4th July, 1777, we referredyou to the investigation and correspondence on that subject of the year1764, and to the report made by Mr. James Bourchier, on his personalsurvey of the waters, and to several letters of the year 1765 and 1767;we also, by our said general letter, acquainted you that it appeared tous perfectly reasonable that the Rajah should be permitted to repairthose banks, and the Anicut, in the same manner as had been practised intimes past; and we directed you to establish such regulations, byreference to former usage, for keeping the said banks in repair, aswould be effectual, and remove all cause of complaint in future. 

Notwithstanding such our instructions, the Rajah, in his letter to us ofthe 15th October, 1783, complains of the destruction of the Anicut; andas the cultivation of the Tanjore country appears, by all the surveysand reports of our engineers employed on that service, to dependaltogether on a supply of water by the Cavery, which can only be securedby keeping the Anicut and banks in repair, we think it necessary torepeat to you our orders of the 4th July, 1777, on the subject of thoserepairs. 

And further, as it appears by the survey and report of Mr. Pringle, thatthose repairs are attended with a much heavier expense, when done withmaterials taken from the Tanjore district, than with those ofTrichinopoly, and that the last-mentioned materials are far preferableto the other, it is our order, that, if any occurrences should make itnecessary or expedient, you apply to the Nabob, in our name, to desirethat his Highness will permit proper spots of ground to be set out, andbounded by proper marks on the Trichinopoly side, where the Rajah andhis people may at all times take sand and earth sufficient for theserepairs; and that his Highness will grant his lease of such spots ofland for a certain term of years to the Company, at a reasonable annualrent, to the intent that through you the cultivation of the Tanjorecountry may be secured, without infringing or impairing the rights ofthe Nabob. 

If any attempts have been or shall be hereafter made to divert the waterfrom the Cavery into the Coleroon, by contracting the current of theUpper or Lower Cavery, by planting long grass, as mentioned in Mr. Pringle's report, or by any other means, we have no doubt his Highness, on a proper representation to him in our name, will prevent his peoplefrom taking any measures detrimental to the Tanjore country, in theprosperity of which his Highness, as well as the Company, is materiallyinterested. 

Should you succeed in reconciling the Nabob to this measure, we think itbut just that the proposed lease shall remain no longer in force thanwhilst the Rajah shall be punctual in the payment of the annual peshcushto the Nabob, as well as the rent to be reserved for the spots ofground. And in order effectually to remove all future occasions ofjealousy and complaint between the parties, --that the Rajah, on the onehand, may be satisfied that all necessary works for the cultivation ofhis country will be made and kept in repair, and that the Nabob, on theother hand, may be satisfied that no encroachment on his rights can bemade, nor any works detrimental to the fertility of his countryerected, --we think it proper that it should be recommended to theparties, as a part of the adjustment of this very important point, thatskilful engineers, appointed by the Company, be employed at the Rajah'sexpense to conduct all the necessary works, with the strictest attentionto the respective rights and interests of both parties. This will removeevery probability of injury or dispute. But should either partyunexpectedly conceive themselves to be injured, immediate redress mightbe obtained by application to the government of Madras, under whoseappointment the engineer will act, without any discussion between theparties, which might disturb that harmony which it is so much the wishof the Company to establish and preserve, as essential to the prosperityand peace of the Carnatic. 

Having now, in obedience to the directions of the act of Parliament, upon the fullest consideration of the indeterminate rights andpretensions of the Nabob and Rajah, pointed out such measures andarrangements as in our judgment and discretion will be best calculatedto ascertain and settle the same, we hope, that, upon a candidconsideration of the whole system, although each of the parties may feeldisappointed in our decision on particular points, they will beconvinced that we have been guided in our investigation by principles ofstrict justice and impartiality, and that the most anxious attention hasbeen paid to the substantial interests of both parties, and such ageneral and comprehensive plan of arrangement proposed as will mosteffectually prevent all future dissatisfaction. 

Approved by the Board. 

HENRY DUNDAS, WALSINGHAM, W. W. GRENVILLE, MULGRAVE. 

WHITEHALL, October 27, 1784. 

No. 9. 

Referred to from pp. 78 and 85. 

_Extract of a Letter from the Court of Directors to the President andCouncil of Fort St. George, as amended and approved by the Board ofControl. _

We have taken into our consideration the several advices and papersreceived from India, relative to the assignment of the revenues of theCarnatic, from the conclusion of the Bengal treaty to the date of yourletter in October, 1783, together with the representations of the Nabobof the Carnatic upon that subject; and although we might contend thatthe agreement should subsist till we are fully reimbursed his Highness'sproportion of the expenses of the war, yet, from a principle ofmoderation, and personal attachment to our old ally, his Highness theNabob of the Carnatic, for whose dignity and happiness we are eversolicitous, and to cement more strongly, if possible, that mutualharmony and confidence which our connection makes so essentiallynecessary for our reciprocal safety and welfare, _and for removing fromhis mind every idea of secret design on our part to lessen his authorityover the internal government of the Carnatic_, and the collection andadministration of its revenues, we have resolved that the assignmentshall be surrendered; and we do accordingly direct our President, inwhose name the assignment was taken, _without delay_, to surrender thesame to his Highness. But while we have adopted this resolution, werepose entire confidence in his Highness, that, actuated by the samemotives of liberality, and feelings of old friendship and alliance, hewill cheerfully and instantly accede to such arrangements as arenecessary to be adopted for our common safety, and for preserving therespect, rights, and interests we enjoy in the Carnatic. The followingare the heads and principles of such an arrangement as we are decisivelyof opinion must be adopted for these purposes, viz. 

That, for making a provision for discharging the Nabob's just debts tothe Company and individuals, (for the payment of which his Highness hasso frequently expressed the greatest solicitude, ) _the Nabob shall givesoucar security for the punctual payment, by instalments_, into theCompany's treasury, of twelve lacs of pagodas per annum, (as voluntarilyproposed by his Highness, ) until those debts, with interest, shall bedischarged; and shall also consent that the equitable provision latelymade by the British legislature for the liquidation of those debts, _andsuch resolutions and determinations as we shall hereafter make_, underthe authority of that provision for the liquidation and adjustment ofthe said debts, _bonâ fide_ incurred, shall be carried into full forceand effect. 

Should any difficulty arise between his Highness and our government ofFort St. George, in respect to _the responsibility of the soucarsecurity_, or the times and terms of the instalments, it is our pleasurethat you pay obedience to the orders and resolutions of ourGovernor-General and Council of Bengal in respect thereto, not doubtingbut the Nabob will in such case consent to abide by the determination ofour said supreme government. 

Although, from the great confidence we repose in the honor and integrityof the Nabob, and from an earnest desire not to subject him to anyembarrassment on this occasion, we have not proposed any specificassignment of territory or revenue for securing the payments aforesaid, we nevertheless think it our duty, as well to the private creditors, whose interests in this respect have been so solemnly intrusted to us bythe late act of Parliament, as from regard to the debt due to theCompany, to insist on a declaration, that, in the event of the failureof the security proposed, or in default of payment at the stipulatedperiods, we reserve to ourselves full right to demand of the Nabob such_additional security_, by assignment on his country, as shall beeffectual for answering the purposes of the agreement. 

After having conciliated the mind of the Nabob to this measure, andadjusted the particulars, you are to carry the same into execution by aformal deed between his Highness and the Company, according to the tenorof these instructions. 

As the administration of the British interests and connections in Indiahas in some respects assumed a new shape by the late act of Parliament, and a general peace in India has been happily accomplished, the presentappears to us to be the proper period, and which cannot without greatimprudence be omitted, to settle and arrange, by a just and equitabletreaty, a plan for the future defence and protection of the Carnatic, both in time of peace and war, on a solid and lasting foundation. 

For the accomplishment of this great and necessary object, we directyou, in the name of the Company, to use your utmost endeavors to impressthe expediency of, and the good effects to be derived from this measure, so strongly upon the minds of the Nabob and the Rajah of Tanjore, as toprevail upon them, jointly or separately, to enter into one or moretreaty or treaties with the Company, grounded on this principle ofequity: That all the contracting parties shall be bound to contributejointly to the support of the military force and garrisons, as well inpeace as in war. 

That the military peace establishment shall be forthwith settled andadjusted by the Company, in pursuance of the authority and directionsgiven to them by the late act of Parliament. 

As the payment of the troops and garrisons, occasional expenses in therepairs and improvements of fortifications, and other servicesincidental to a military establishment, must of necessity be punctualand accurate, no latitude of personal assurance or reciprocal confidenceof either of the parties on the other must be accepted or required; butthe Nabob and Rajah must of necessity specify particular districts andrevenues for securing the due and regular payment of their contributionsinto the treasury of the Company, with whom the charge of the defence ofthe coast, and of course the power of the sword, must be exclusivelyintrusted, with power for the Company, in case of failure or default ofsuch payments at the stipulated times and seasons, to enter upon andpossess such districts, and to let the same to renters, to be confirmedby the Nabob and the Rajah respectively; but, trusting that in theexecution of this part of the arrangement no undue obstruction will begiven by either of those powers, we direct that this part of the treatybe coupled with a most positive assurance, on our part, of ourdetermination to support the dignity and authority of the Nabob andRajah in the exclusive administration of the civil government andrevenues of their respective countries;--and further, that, in case of_any_ hostility committed against the territories of either of thecontracting parties on the coast of Coromandel, the whole revenues oftheir respective territories shall be considered as one common stock, tobe appropriated in the common cause of their defence; that the Company, on their part, shall engage to refrain, _during the war_, from theapplication of any part of their revenues to any commercial purposeswhatsoever, but apply the whole, save only the ordinary charges of theircivil government, to the purposes of the war; that the Nabob and theRajah shall in like manner engage, on their parts, to refrain, duringthe war, from the application of any part of their revenues, save onlywhat shall be actually necessary for the support of themselves and thecivil government of their respective countries, to any other purposesthan that of defraying the expenses of such military operations as theCompany may find it necessary to carry on for the common safety of theirinterests on the coast of Coromandel. 

And to obviate any difficulties or misunderstanding which might arisefrom leaving indeterminate the sum necessary to be appropriated for thecivil establishment of each of the respective powers, that the sum benow ascertained which is indispensably necessary to be applied to thosepurposes, and which is to be held sacred under every emergency, and setapart previous to the application of the rest of the revenues, as herebystipulated, for the purposes of mutual or common defence against anyenemy, for _clearing_ the incumbrance which may have become necessarilyincurred in addition to the expenditure of those revenues _which must bealways deemed part of the war establishment_. This we think absolutelynecessary; as nothing can tend so much to the preservation of peace, andto prevent the renewal of hostilities, as the early putting the financesof the several powers upon a clear footing, and the showing to all otherpowers that the Company, the Nabob, and the Rajah are firmly united inone common cause, and combined in one system of permanent and vigorousdefence, for the preservation of their respective territories and thegeneral tranquillity. 

That the whole aggregate revenue of the contracting parties shall, during the war, be under the application of the Company, and shallcontinue as long after the war _as shall be necessary, to discharge theburdens contracted by it_; but it must be declared that this provisionshall in no respect extend to deprive either the Nabob or the Rajah ofthe substantial authority necessary to the collection of the revenues oftheir respective countries. But it is meant that they shall faithfullyperform the conditions of this arrangement; and if a division of anypart of the revenues to any other than the stipulated purposes shalltake place, the Company shall be entitled to take upon themselves thecollection of the revenue. 

The Company are to engage, during the time they shall administer therevenues, to produce to the other contracting parties regular accountsof the application thereof to the purposes stipulated by the treaty, andfaithfully apply them in support of the war. 

And, lastly, as the defence of the Carnatic is thus to rest with theCompany, the Nabob shall be satisfied of the propriety of avoiding allunnecessary expense, and will therefore agree not to maintain a greaternumber of troops than shall be necessary for the support of his dignityand the splendor of the durbar, which number shall be specified in thetreaty; and if any military aid is requisite for the security andcollection of his revenues, other than the fixed establishment employedto enforce the ordinary collections and preserve the police of thecountry, the Company must be bound to furnish him with such aid: theRajah of Tanjore must likewise become bound by similar engagements, andbe entitled to similar aid. 

As, in virtue of the powers vested in Lord Macartney by the agreement ofDecember, 1781, sundry leases, of various periods, have been granted torenters, we direct that you apply to the Nabob, in our name, for hisconsent that they may be _permitted_ to hold their leases to the end ofthe stipulated term; and we have great reliance[70] on the liberalityand spirit of accommodation manifested by the Nabob on so manyoccasions, that he will be disposed to acquiesce in a proposition so_just and reasonable_. But if, contrary to our expectations, hisHighness should be impressed with any particular aversion to comply withthis proposition, we do not desire you to insist upon it as an essentialpart of the arrangement to take place between us; but, in that event, you must take especial care to give such indemnification to the rentersfor any loss they may sustain as you judge to be reasonable. 

It equally concerns the honor of our government, that such natives asmay have been put in any degree of authority over the collections, inconsequence of the deed of assignment, and who have proved faithful totheir trust, shall not suffer inconvenience on account of theirfidelity. 

Having thus given our sentiments at large, as well for the surrender ofthe assignment as with regard to those arrangements which we thinknecessary to adopt in consequence thereof, we cannot dismiss thissubject without expressing our highest approbation of _the ability, moderation, and command of temper_ with which our President at Madrashas conducted himself in the management of a very delicate andembarrassing situation. His conduct, and that of the Select Committee ofFort St. George, in the execution of the trust delegated to LordMacartney by the Nabob Mahomed Ali, has been vigorous and effectual, forthe purpose of realizing as great a revenue, at a crisis of necessity, as the nature of the case admitted; and the imputation of corruption, suggested in some of the Proceedings, appears to be totally groundlessand unwarranted. 

While we find so much to applaud, it is with regret we are induced toadvert to anything which may appear worthy of blame: as the step ofissuing the Torana Chits in Lord Macartney's own name can only bejustified upon the ground of absolute necessity;[71] and as his Lordshiphad every reason to believe that the demand, when made, would beirksome and disagreeable to the feelings of Mahomed Ali, everyprecaution ought to have been used and more time allowed for provingthat necessity, by previous acts of address, civility, and conciliation, applied for the purposes of obtaining his authority to such a measure. It appears to us that more of this might have been used; and thereforewe cannot consider the omission of it as blameless, consistent with ourwishes of sanctifying no act contrary to the spirit of the agreement, orderogatory to the authority of the Nabob of the Carnatic, in theexercise of any of his just rights in the government of the people underhis authority. 

We likewise observe, the Nabob has complained that no officialcommunication was made to him of the peace, for near a month after thecessation of arms took place. This, and every other mark of disrespectto the Nabob, will ever appear highly reprehensible in our eyes; and wedirect that you do, upon all occasions, pay the highest attention to himand his family. 

Lord Macartney, in his Minute of the 9th of September last, has beenfully under our consideration. We shall ever applaud the prudence andforesight of our servants which induces them to collect and communicateto us every opinion, or even ground of suspicion they may entertain, relative to any of the powers in India with whose conduct our interestand the safety of our settlements is essentially connected. At the sametime we earnestly recommend that those opinions and speculations becommunicated to us with prudence, discretion, and all possible secrecy, _and the terms in which they are conveyed be expressed in a manner aslittle offensive as possible to the powers whom they may concern andinto whose hands they may fall. _[72]

We next proceed to give you our sentiments respecting the private debtsof the Nabob; _and we cannot but acknowledge_ that the origin andjustice, both of the loan of 1767, and the loan of 1777, commonly calledthe Cavalry Loan, appear to us clear and indisputable, agreeable to thetrue sense and spirit of the late act of Parliament. 

In speaking of the loan of 1767, we are to be understood as speaking ofthe debt as constituted by the original bonds of that year, bearinginterest at 10_l. _ per cent; and therefore, if any of the Nabob'screditors, under a pretence that their debts made part of theconsolidated debt of 1767, although secured by bonds of a subsequentdate, carrying an interest exceeding 10_l. _ per cent, shall claim thebenefit of the following orders, we direct that you pay no regard tosuch claims, without further especial instructions for that purpose. 

With respect to the consolidated debt of 1777, it certainly stands upona less favorable footing. So early as the 27th March, 1769, it wasordered by our then President and Council of Fort St. George, that, forthe preventing all persons living under the Company's protection fromhaving any dealings with any of the country powers or their ministerswithout the knowledge or consent of the Board, an advertisement shouldbe published, by fixing it up at the sea-gate, and sending round a copyto the Company's servants and inhabitants, and to the differentsubordinates, and our garrisons, and giving it out in general orders, stating therein that the President and Council did consider theirreversible order of the Court of Directors of the year 1714 (wherebytheir people were prohibited from having any dealings with the countrygovernments in money matters) to be in full force and vigor, and therebyexpressly forbidding all servants of the Company, and other Europeansunder their jurisdiction, to make loans or have any money transactionswith any of the princes or states in India, without special license andpermission of the President and Council for the time being, except onlyin the particular cases there mentioned, and declaring that any wilfuldeviation therefrom should be deemed a breach of orders, and treated assuch. And on the 4th of March, 1778, it was resolved by our Presidentand Council of Fort St George, that the consolidated debt of 1777 wasnot, on any respect whatever, conducted under the auspices or protectionof that government; and on the circumstance of the consolidation of thesaid debt being made known to us, we did, on the 28rd of December, 1778, write to you in the following terms: "Your account of the Nabob'sprivate debts is very alarming; but from whatever cause or causes thosedebts have been contracted or increased, we hereby repeat our orders, that the sanction of the Company be on no account given to any kind ofsecurity for the payment or liquidation of any part thereof, (except bythe express authority of the Court of Directors, ) on any account orpretence whatever. "

The loan of 1777, therefore, has no sanction or authority from us; andin considering the situation and circumstances of this loan, we cannotomit to observe, that the creditors could not be ignorant how greatlythe affairs of the Nabob were at that time deranged, and that his debtto the Company was then very considerable, --the payment of which theparties took the most effectual means to postpone, by procuring anassignment of such specific revenues for the discharge of their owndebts as alone could have enabled the Nabob to have discharged that ofthe Company. 

Under all these circumstances, we should be warranted to refuse our aidor protection in the recovery of this loan. But when we consider theinexpediency of keeping the subject of the Nabob's debts longer afloatthan is absolutely necessary, --when we consider how much the finalconclusion of this business will tend to promote tranquillity, credit, and circulation of property in the Carnatic, --and when we consider thatthe debtor concurs with the creditor in establishing the justice ofthose debts consolidated in 1777 into gross sums, for which bonds weregiven, liable to be transferred to persons different from the originalcreditors, and having no share or knowledge of the transactions in whichthe debts originated, and of course how little ground there is to expectany substantial good to result from an unlimited investigation intothem, we have resolved so far to recognize the justice of those debts asto extend to them that protection which, upon _more_ forcible grounds, we have seen cause to allow to the other two classes of debts. Butalthough we so far adopt the general presumption in their favor as toadmit them to a participation in the manner hereafter directed, we donot mean to debar you from receiving any complaints against those debtsof 1777, at the instance either of the Nabob himself, or of othercreditors injured by their being so admitted, or by any other personshaving a proper interest, or stating reasonable grounds of objection;and if any complaints are offered, we order that the grounds of all suchbe attentively examined by you, and be transmitted to us, together withthe evidence adduced in support of them, for our final decision; and aswe have before directed that the sum of twelve lacs of pagodas, to bereceived annually from the Nabob, should be paid into our treasury, itis our order that the same be distributed according to the followingarrangement. 

That the debt be made up in the following manner, viz. 

The debt consolidated in 1767 to be made up to the end of the year 1784, with the current interest at ten per cent. 

The Cavalry Loan to be made up to the same period, with the currentinterest at twelve per cent. 

The debt consolidated in 1777 to be made up to the same period, with thecurrent interest at twelve per cent, to November, 1781, and from thencewith the current interest at six per cent. 

The twelve lacs annually to be received are then to be applied, --

1. To the growing interest on the Cavalry Loan, at twelve per cent. 

2. To the growing interest on the debt of 1777, at six per cent. 

The remainder to be equally divided: one half to be applied to theextinction of the Company's debt; the other half to be applied to thepayment of growing interest at 10_l. _ per cent, and towards thedischarge of the principal of the debt of 1767. 

This arrangement to continue till the principal of the debt 1767 isdischarged. 

The application of the twelve lacs is, then, to be, --

1. To the interest of the debt of 1777, as above. The remainder to bethen equally divided, --one half towards the discharge of the currentinterest and principal of the Cavalry Loan, and the other half towardsthe discharge of the Company's debt. 

When the Cavalry Loan shall be thus discharged, there shall then be paidtowards the discharge of the Company's debt seven lacs. 

To the growing interest and capital of the 1777 loan, five lacs. 

When the Company's debt shall be discharged, the whole is then to beapplied in discharge of the debt 1777. 

If the Nabob shall be prevailed upon to apply the arrears and growingpayments of the Tanjore peshcush in further discharge of his debts, overand above the twelve lacs of pagodas, we direct that the whole of thatpayment, when made, shall be applied towards the reduction of theCompany's debt. 

We have laid down these general rules of distribution, as appearing tous founded on justice, and the relative circumstances of the differentdebts; and therefore we give our authority and protection to them onlyon the supposition that they who ask our protection acquiesce in thecondition upon which it is given; and therefore we expressly order, that, if any creditor of the Nabob, a servant of the Company, or beingunder our protection, shall refuse to express his acquiescence in thesearrangements, he shall not only be excluded from receiving any share ofthe fund under your distribution, but shall be prohibited from takingany separate measures to recover his debt from the Nabob: it being onegreat inducement to our adopting this arrangement, that the Nabob shallbe relieved from all further disquietude by the importunities of hisindividual creditors, and be left at liberty to pursue those measuresfor the prosperity of his country which the embarrassments of hissituation have hitherto deprived him of the means of exerting. And wefurther direct, that, if any creditor shall be found refractory, ordisposed to disturb the arrangement we have suggested, he shall bedismissed the service, and sent home to England. 

The directions we have given only apply to the three classes of debtswhich have come under our observation. It has been surmised that theNabob has of late contracted further debts: if any of these are due toBritish subjects, we forbid any countenance or protection whatever to begiven to them, until the debt is fully investigated, the nature of itreported home, and our special instructions upon it received. 

We cannot conclude this subject without adverting in the strongest termsto the prohibitions which have from time to time issued under theauthority of different Courts of Directors against any of our servants, or of those under our protection, having any money transactions with anyof the country powers, without the knowledge and previous consent of ourrespective governments abroad. We are happy to find that the Nabob, sensible of the great embarrassments, both to his own and the Company'saffairs, which the enormous amount of their private claims haveoccasioned, is willing to engage not to incur any new debts withindividuals, and we think little difficulty will be found in persuadinghis Highness into a positive stipulation for that purpose. And thoughthe legislature has thus humanely interfered in behalf of suchindividuals as might otherwise have been reduced to great distress bythe past transactions, we hereby, in the most pointed and positiveterms, repeat our prohibition upon this subject, and direct that noperson, being a servant of the Company, or being under our protection, shall, on any pretence whatever, be concerned in any loan or other moneytransaction with any of the country powers, unless with the knowledgeand express permission of our respective governments. And if any of ourservants, or others, being under our protection, shall be discovered inany respect counteracting these orders, we strictly enjoin you to takethe first opportunity of sending them home to England, to be punished asguilty of disobedience of orders, and no protection or assistance of theCompany shall be given for the recovery of any loans connected with suchtransactions. Your particular attention to this subject is strictlyenjoined; and any connivance on your parts to a breach of our ordersupon it will incur our highest displeasure. In order to put an end tothose intrigues which have been so successfully carried on at theNabob's durbar, we repeat our prohibition in the strongest termsrespecting any intercourse between British subjects and the Nabob andhis family; as we are convinced that such an intercourse has beencarried on greatly to the detriment and expense of the Nabob, and merelyto the advantage of individuals. We therefore direct that all personswho shall offend against the letter and spirit of this necessary order, whether in the Company's service or under their protection, be forthwithsent to England. 

Approved by the Board. HENRY DUNDAS, WALSINGHAM, W. W. GRENVILLE, MULGRAVE. WHITEHALL, 15th Oct. 1784. 

 * * * * *

_Extract from the Representation of the Court of Directors of the EastIndia Company. _

MY LORDS AND GENTLEMEN, --

It is with extreme concern that we express a difference of opinion withyour right honorable board, in this early exercise of your controllingpower; but in so novel an institution, it can scarce be thoughtextraordinary, if the exact boundaries of our respective functions andduties should not at once, on either side, be precisely and familiarlyunderstood, and therefore confide in your justice and candor forbelieving that we have no wish to invade or frustrate the salutarypurposes of your institution, as we on our part are thoroughly satisfiedthat you have no wish to encroach on the legal powers of the East IndiaCompany. We shall proceed to state our objections to such of theamendments as appear to us to be either insufficient, inexpedient, orunwarranted. 

 6th. Concerning the private debts of the Nabob of Arcot, and the application of the fund of twelve lacs of pagodas per annum. 

Under this head you are pleased, in lieu of our paragraphs, tosubstantiate at once the justice of all those demands which the actrequires us to investigate, subject only to a right reserved to theNabob, or any other party concerned, to question the justice of any debtfalling within the last of the three classes. We submit, that at leastthe opportunity of questioning, within the limited time, the justice ofany of the debts, ought to have been fully preserved; and supposing thefirst and second classes to stand free from imputation, (as we inclineto believe they do, ) no injury can result to individuals from suchdiscussion: and we further submit to your consideration, how far theexpress direction of the act to examine the nature and origin of thedebts has been by the amended paragraphs complied with; and whether atleast the rate of interest, according to which the debts arising fromsoucar assignment of the land-revenues to the servants of the Company, acting in the capacity of native bankers, have been accumulated, oughtnot to be inquired into, as well as the reasonableness of the deductionof twenty-five per cent which the Bengal government directed to be madefrom a great part of the debts on certain conditions. But to yourappropriation of the fund our duty requires that we should state ourstrongest dissent. Our right to be paid the arrears of those expenses bywhich, almost to our own ruin, we have preserved the country and allthe property connected with it from falling a prey to a foreignconqueror, surely stands paramount to all claims for former debts uponthe revenues of a country so preserved, even if the legislature had notexpressly limited the assistance to be given the private creditors to besuch as should be consistent with our own rights. The Nabob had, longbefore passing the act, by treaty with our Bengal government, agreed topay us seven lacs of pagodas, as part of the twelve lacs, in liquidationof those arrears; of which seven lacs the arrangement you have beenpleased to lay down would take away from us more than the half, and giveit to private creditors, of whose demands there are only about a sixthpart which do not stand in a predicament that you declare would notentitle them to any aid or protection from us in the recovery thereof, were it not upon grounds of expediency, as will more particularly appearby the annexed estimate. Until our debt shall be discharged, we can byno means consent to give up any part of the seven lacs to the privatecreditors; and we humbly apprehend that in this declaration we do notexceed the limits of the authority and rights vested in us. 

 * * * * *

THE RIGHT HONORABLE THE COMMISSIONERS FOR THE AFFAIRS OF INDIA. 

_The Representation of the Court of Directors of the East IndiaCompany_. 

My Lords and Gentlemen, --

The Court, having duly attended to your reasonings and decisions on thesubjects of Arnee and Hanamantagoody, beg leave to observe, with duedeference to your judgment, that the directions we had given in theseparagraphs which did not obtain your approbation still appear to us tohave been consistent with justice, and agreeable to the late act ofParliament, which pointed out to us, as we apprehended, the treaty of1762 as our guide. 

Signed by order of the said Court, THO. MORTON, _Sec_. 

EAST INDIA HOUSE, the 3rd November, 1784. 

 * * * * *

_Extract of a Letter from the Commissioners for the Affairs of India, tothe Court of Directors, dated 3rd November, 1784, in Answer to theirRemonstrance_. 

SIXTH ARTICLE. 

We think it proper, considering the particular nature of the subject, tostate to you the following remarks on that part of your representationwhich relates to the plan for the discharging of the Nabob's debts. 

1st. You compute the revenue which the Carnatic may be expected toproduce only at twenty lacs of pagodas. If we concurred with you in thisopinion, we should certainly feel our hopes of advantage to all theparties from this arrangement considerably diminished. But we trust thatwe are not too sanguine on this head, when we place the greatestreliance on the estimate transmitted to you by your President of FortSt. George, having there the best means of information upon the fact, and stating it with a particular view to the subject matter of theseparagraphs. Some allowance, we are sensible, must be made for thedifference of collection in the Nabob's hands, but, we trust, not suchas to reduce the receipt nearly to what you suppose. 

2ndly. In making up the amount of the private debts, you take incompound interest at the different rates specified in our paragraph. This it was not our intention to allow; and lest any misconceptionshould arise on the spot, we have added an express direction that thedebts be made up with simple interest only, from the time of theirrespective consolidation. Clause F f. 

3rdly. We have also the strongest grounds to believe that the debts willbe in other respects considerably less than they are now computed byyou; and consequently, the Company's annual proportion of the twelvelacs will be larger than it appears on your estimate. But even on yourown statement of it, if we add to the 150, 000_l. _, or 3, 75, 000 pagodas, (which you take as the annual proportion to be received by the Companyfor five years to the end of 1789, ) the annual amount of the Tanjorepeshcush for the same period, and the arrears on the peshcush, (proposedby Lord Macartney to be received in three years, ) the whole will make asum not falling very short of pagodas 35, 00, 000, the amount of pagodas7, 00, 000 per annum for the same period. And if we carry our calculationsfarther, it will appear, that, both by the plan proposed by the Naboband adopted in your paragraphs, and by that which we transmitted to you, the debt from the Nabob, if taken at 3, 000, 000_l. _, will be dischargednearly at the same period, viz. , in the course of the eleventh year. Wecannot, therefore, be of opinion that there is the smallest ground forobjecting to this arrangement, as injurious to the interests of theCompany, even if the measure were to be considered on the mere groundof expediency, and with a view only to the wisdom of reëstablishingcredit and circulation in a commercial settlement, without anyconsideration of those motives of attention to the feelings and honor ofthe Nabob, of humanity to individuals, and of justice to persons in yourservice and living under your protection, which have actuated thelegislature, and which afford not only justifiable, but commendablegrounds for your conduct. 

Impressed with this conviction, we have not made any alteration in thegeneral outlines of the arrangement which we had before transmitted toyou. But, as the amount of the Nabob's revenue is matter of uncertainconjecture, and as it does not appear just to us that any deficiencyshould fall wholly on any one class of these debts, we have added adirection to your government of Fort St. George, that, if, notwithstanding the provisions contained in our former paragraphs, anydeficiency should arise, the payments of what shall be received shall bemade in the same proportion which would have obtained in the division ofthe whole twelve lacs, had they been paid. 

 * * * * *

No. 10. 

Referred to from p. 103. 

[The following extracts are subjoined, to show the matter and the styleof representation employed by those who have obtained that ascendencyover the Nabob of Arcot which is described in the letter marked No. 6 ofthe present Appendix, and which is so totally destructive of theauthority and credit of the lawful British government at Madras. Thecharges made by these persons have been solemnly denied by LordMacartney; and to judge from the character of the parties accused andaccusing, they are probably void of all foundation. But as the lettersare in the name and under the signature of a person of great rank andconsequence among the natives, --as they contain matter of the mostserious nature, --as they charge the most enormous crimes, andcorruptions of the grossest kind, on a British governor, --and as theyrefer to the Nabob's minister in Great Britain for proof and furtherelucidation of the matters complained of, --common decency and commonpolicy demanded an inquiry into their truth or falsehood. The writing isobviously the product of some English pen. If, on inquiry, these chargesshould be made good, (a thing very unlikely, ) the party accused wouldbecome a just object of animadversion. If they should be found (as inall probability they would be found) false and calumnious, and supportedby _forgery_, then the censure would fall on the accuser; at the sametime the necessity would be manifest for proper measures towards thesecurity of government against such infamous accusations. It is asnecessary to protect the honest fame of virtuous governors as it is topunish the corrupt and tyrannical. But neither the Court of Directorsnor the Board of Control have made any inquiry into the truth orfalsehood of these charges. They have covered over the accusers andaccused with abundance of compliments; they have insinuated some obliquecensures; and they have recommended perfect harmony between the chargersof corruption and peculation and the persons charged with thesecrimes. ]

13th October, 1782. _Extract of a Translation of a Letter from the Nabobof Arcot to the Chairman of the Court of Directors of the East IndiaCompany_. 

Fatally for me, and for the public interest, the Company's favor and myunbounded confidence have been lavished on a man totally unfit for theexalted station in which he has been placed, and unworthy of the truststhat have been reposed in him. When I speak of one who has so deeplystabbed my honor, my wounds bleed afresh, and I must be allowed thatfreedom of expression which the galling reflection of my injuries and mymisfortunes naturally draws from me. Shall your servants, unchecked, unrestrained, and unpunished, gratify their private views and ambitionat the expense of my honor, my peace, and my happiness, and to the ruinof my country, as well as of all your affairs? No sooner had LordMacartney obtained the favorite object of his ambition than he betrayedthe greatest insolence towards me, the most glaring neglect of thecommon civilities and attentions paid me by all former governors in theworst of times, and even by the most inveterate of my enemies. Heinsulted my servants, endeavored to defame my character by unjustlycensuring my administration, and extended his boundless usurpation tothe whole government of my dominions, in all the branches of judicatureand police; and, in violation of the express articles of the agreements, proceeded to send renters into the countries, unapproved of by me, menof bad character, and unequal to my management or responsibility. Though he is chargeable with the greatest acts of cruelty, even to theshedding the blood and cutting off the noses and ears of my subjects, bythose exercising his authority in the countries, and that even theduties of religion and public worship have been interrupted orprevented, and though he carries on all his business by the arbitraryexertion of military force, yet does he not collect from the countriesone fourth of the revenue that should be produced. The statement hepretends to hold forth of expected revenue is totally fallacious, andcan never be realized under the management of his Lordship, in theappointment of renters totally disqualified, rapacious, andirresponsible, who are actually embezzling and dissipating the publicrevenues that should assist in the support of the war. Totally occupiedby his private views, and governed by his passions, he has neglected orsacrificed all the essential objects of public good, and by want ofcoöperation with Sir Eyre Coote, and refusal to furnish the army withthe necessary supplies, has rendered the glorious and repeated victoriesof the gallant general ineffectual to the expulsion of our cruel enemy. To cover his insufficiency, and veil the discredit attendant on hisfailure in every measure, he throws out the most illiberal expressions, and institutes unjust accusations against me; and in aggravation of allthe distresses imposed upon me, he has abetted the meanest calumniatorsto bring forward false charges against me and my son, Amir-ul-Omrah, inorder to create embarrassment, and for the distress of my mind. Mypapers and writings sent to you must testify to the whole world themalevolence of his designs, and the means that have been used toforward them. He has violently seized and opened all letters addressedto me and my servants, on my public and private affairs. My vackeel, that attended him according to ancient custom, has been ignominiouslydismissed from his presence, and not suffered to approach theGovernment-House. He has in the meanest manner, and as he thought insecret, been tampering and intriguing with my family and relations forthe worst of purposes. And if I express the agonies of my mind underthese most pointed injuries and oppressions, and complain of theviolence and injustice of Lord Macartney, I am insulted by his affectedconstruction that my communications are dictated by the insinuations ofothers, at the same time that his conscious apprehensions for hismisconduct have produced the most abject applications to me to smothermy feelings, and entreaties to write in his Lordship's favor to England, and to submit all my affairs to his direction. When his submissions havefailed to mould me to his will, he has endeavored to effect his purposesby menaces of his secret influence with those in power in England, whichhe pretends to assert shall be effectual to confirm his usurpation, andto deprive me, and my family, in succession, of my rights of sovereigntyand government forever. To such a length have his passions and violencescarried him, that all my family, my dependants, and even my friends andvisitors, are persecuted with the strongest marks of his displeasure. Every shadow of authority in my person is taken from me, and respect tomy name discouraged throughout the whole country. When an officer ofhigh rank in his Majesty's service was some time since introduced to meby Lord Macartney, his Lordship took occasion to show a personalderision and contempt of me. Mr. Richard Sulivan, who has attended mydurbar under the commission of the Governor-General and Council ofBengal, has experienced his resentment; and Mr. Benfield, _with whom Ihave no business_, and who, as he has been accustomed to do for manyyears, has continued to pay me his visits of respect, has felt theweight of his Lordship's displeasure, and has had every unmeritedinsinuation thrown out against him, to prejudice him, and deter him frompaying me his compliments as usual. 

Thus, Gentlemen, have you delivered me over to a stranger; to a manunacquainted with government and business, and too opinionated to learn;to a man whose ignorance and prejudices operate to the neglect of everygood measure, or the liberal coöperation with any that wish well to thepublic interests; to a man who, to pursue his own passions, plans, anddesigns, will certainly ruin all mine, as well as the Company's affairs. His mismanagement and obstinacy have caused the loss of many lacs of myrevenues, dissipated and embezzled, and every public considerationsacrificed to his vanity and private views. I beg to offer an instancein proof of my assertions, and to justify the hope I have that you willcause to be made good to me all the losses I have sustained by themaladministration and bad practices of your servants, according to allthe account of receipts of former years, and which I made known to LordMacartney, amongst other papers of information, in the beginning of hismanagement in the collections. The district of Ongole produced annually, upon a medium of many years, 90, 000 pagodas; but Lord Macartney, _uponreceiving a sum of money from Ramchundry_[73] let it out to him, inApril last, for the inadequate rent of 50, 000 pagodas per annum, diminishing, in this district alone, near half the accustomed revenues. After this manner hath he exercised his powers over the countries, tosuit his own purposes and designs; and this secret mode has he taken toreduce the collections. 

 * * * * *

1st November, 1782. _Copy of a Letter from the Nabob of Arcot to theCourt of Directors, &c. _ Received 7th April, 1783. 

The distresses which I have set forth in my former letters are nowincreased to such an alarming pitch by the imprudent measures of yourGovernor, and by the arbitrary and impolitic conduct pursued with themerchants and importers of grain, that the very existence of the Fort ofMadras seems at stake, and that of the inhabitants of the settlementappears to have been totally overlooked: many thousands have died, andcontinue hourly to perish of famine, though the capacity of one of youryoungest servants, with diligence and attention, by doing justice, andgiving reasonable encouragement to the merchants, and by drawing thesupplies of grain which the northern countries would have afforded, might have secured us against all those dreadful calamities. I had withmuch difficulty procured and purchased a small quantity of rice, for theuse of myself, my family, and attendants, and with a view of sending offthe greatest part of the latter to the northern countries, with a littlesubsistence in their hands. But what must your surprise be, when youlearn that even this rice was seized by Lord Macartney, with a militaryforce! and thus am I unable to provide for the few people I have aboutme, who are driven to such extremity and misery that it gives me pain tobehold them. I have desired permission to get a little rice from thenorthern countries for the subsistence of my people, without its beingliable to seizure by your sepoys: this even has been refused me by LordMacartney. What must your feelings be, on such wanton cruelty exercisedtowards me, when you consider, that, of thousands of villages belongingto me, a single one would have sufficed for my subsistence!

 * * * * *

22d March, 1783. _Translation of a Letter from the Nabob of Arcot to theChairman and Directors of the East India Company_. Received from Mr. James Macpherson, 1st January, 1784. 

I am willing to attribute this continued usurpation to the fear ofdetection in Lord Macartney: he dreads the awful day when the scene ofhis enormities will be laid open, at my restoration to my country, andwhen the tongues of my oppressed subjects will be unloosed, and proclaimaloud the cruel tyrannies they have sustained. These sentiments of hisLordship's designs are corroborated by his sending, on the 10th instant, two gentlemen to me and my son, Amir-ul-Omrah; and these gentlemen fromLord Macartney especially set forth to me, and to my son, that alldependence on the power of the superior government of Bengal to enforcethe intentions of the Company to restore my country was vain andgroundless, --that the Company confided in his Lordship's judgment anddiscretion, and upon his representations, and that if I, and my son, Amir-ul-Omrah, would enter into friendship with Lord Macartney, and signa paper declaring all my charges and complaints against him to be false, that his Lordship might be induced to write to England that all hisallegations against me and my son were not well founded, and, notwithstanding his declarations to withhold my country, yet, on theseconsiderations, it might be still restored to me. 

What must be your feelings for your ancient and faithful friend, on hisreceiving such insults to his honor and understanding from yourprincipal servant, armed with your authority! From these manoeuvres, amongst thousands I have experienced, the truth must evidently appear toyou, that I have not been loaded with those injuries and oppressionsfrom motives of public service, but to answer the private views andinterests of his Lordship and his secret agents: _some papers to thispoint are inclosed_; others, almost without number, must be submitted toyour justice, when time and circumstances shall enable me fully toinvestigate those transactions. This opportunity will not permit thefull representation of my load of injuries and distresses: I beg leaveto refer you to my minister, Mr. Macpherson, for the papers, accordingto the inclosed list, which accompanied my last dispatches by theRodney, which I fear have failed; and my correspondence with LordMacartney subsequent to that period, such as I have been able to preparefor this opportunity, are inclosed. 

Notwithstanding all the violent acts and declarations of Lord Macartney, yet a consciousness of his own misconduct was the sole incentive to themenaces and overtures he has held out in various shapes. He has beeninsultingly lavish in his expressions of high respect for my person;has had the insolence to say that all his measures flowed from hisaffectionate regard alone; has presumed to say that all his enmity andoppression were levelled at my son, Amir-ul-Omrah, to whom he beforeacknowledged every aid and assistance; and his Lordship being withoutany just cause or foundation for complaint against us, or a veil tocover his own violences, he has now had recourse to the meanness and hasdared to intimate of my son, in order to intimidate me and to strengthenhis own wicked purposes, to be in league with our enemies the French. You must doubtless be astonished, no less at the assurance than at theabsurdity of such a wicked suggestion. 

 * * * * *

IN THE NABOB'S OWN HAND. 

P. S. In my own handwriting I acquainted Mr. Hastings, as I now do myancient friends the Company, with the insult offered to my honor andunderstanding, in the extraordinary propositions sent to me by LordMacartney, through two gentlemen, on the 10th instant, so artfullyveiled with menaces, hopes, and promises. But how can Lord Macartney addto his enormities, after his wicked and calumniating insinuations, soevidently directed against me and my family, through my faithful, mydutiful, and beloved son, Amir-ul-Omrah, who, you well know, has beenever born and bred amongst the English, whom I have studiously broughtup in the warmest sentiments of affection and attachment tothem, --sentiments that in his maturity have been his highest ambition toimprove, insomuch that he knows no happiness but in the faithful supportof our alliance and connection with the English nation?

 12th August, and Postscript of the 16th August, 1783. _Translation of a Letter to the Chairman and Directors of the East India Company. _ Received from Mr. James Macpherson, 14th January, 1784. 

Your astonishment and indignation will be equally raised with mine, whenyou hear that your President _has dared_, contrary to your intention, tocontinue to usurp the privileges and hereditary powers of the Nabob ofthe Carnatic, your old and unshaken friend, and the declared ally of theking of Great Britain. 

I will not take up your time by enumerating the particular acts of LordMacartney's violence, cruelty, and injustice: _they, indeed, occur toofrequently, and fall upon me and my devoted subjects and country toothick, to be regularly related_. I refer you to my minister, Mr. JamesMacpherson, _for a more circumstantial account of the oppressions andenormities by which he has brought both mine_ and the Company's affairsto the brink of destruction. I trust that such flagrant violations ofall justice, honor, and the faith of treaties will receive the severestmarks of your displeasure, and that Lord Macartney's conduct, in makinguse of your name and authority as a sanction for the continuance of hisusurpation, will be disclaimed with the utmost indignation, and followedwith the severest punishment. I conceive that his Lordship's arbitraryretention of my country and government can only originate in his_insatiable cravings_, in his implacable malevolence against me, andthrough fear of detection, which must follow the surrender of theCarnatic into my hands, of those nefarious proceedings which are nowsuppressed by the arm of violence and power. 

I did not fail to represent to the supreme government of Bengal thedeplorable situation to which I was reduced, and the unmeritedpersecutions I have unremittingly sustained from Lord Macartney; and Iearnestly implored them to stretch forth a saving arm, and interposethat controlling power which was vested in them, to check _rapacity andpresumption_, and preserve the honor and faith of the Company fromviolation. The Governor-General and Council not only felt the crueltyand injustice I had suffered, but were greatly alarmed for the fatalconsequences that might result from the distrust of the country powersin the professions of the English, when they saw the Nabob of theCarnatic, the friend of the Company, and the ally of Great Britain, thusstripped of his rights, his dominions, and his dignity, by the mostfraudulent means, and under the mask of friendship. The Bengalgovernment had already heard both the Mahrattas and the Nizam urge, asan objection to an alliance with the English, the faithless behavior ofLord Macartney to a prince whose life had been devoted and whosetreasures had been exhausted in their service and support; and they didnot hesitate to give positive orders to Lord Macartney for therestitution of my government and authority, on such terms as were notonly strictly honorable, but equally advantageous to my friends theCompany: for they justly thought that my honor and dignity and_sovereign rights_ were the first objects of my wishes and ambition. Buthow can I paint my astonishment at Lord Macartney's presumption incontinuing his usurpation after their positive and reiterated mandates, and, as if nettled by their interference, which he disdained, inredoubling the fury of his violence, and sacrificing the public andmyself to his malice and ungovernable passions?

I am, Gentlemen, at a loss to conceive where his usurpation will stopand have an end. Has he not solemnly declared that the assignment wasonly made for the support of war? and if neither your instructions northe orders of his superiors at Bengal were to be considered aseffectual, has not the treaty of peace virtually determined the periodof his tyrannical administration? But so far from surrendering theCarnatic into my hands, he has, since that event, affixed advertisementsto the walls and gates of the Black Town for letting to the best bidderthe various districts for the term of three years, --and has continuedthe Committee of Revenue, which you positively ordered to be abolished, to whom he has allowed enormous salaries, from 6000 to 4000 pagodas perannum, which each member has received from the time of his appointment, though his Lordship well knows that most of them are by your ordersdisqualified by being my principal creditors. 

If those acts of violence and outrage had been productive of publicadvantage, I conceive his Lordship might have held them forward inextenuation of his conduct; but whilst he cloaks his justification underthe veil of your records, it is impossible to refute his assertions orto expose to you their fallacy; and when he is no longer able to supporthis conduct by argument, he refers to those records, where, Iunderstand, he has exercised all his sophistry and maliciousinsinuations to render me and my family obnoxious in the eyes of theCompany and the British nation. And when the glorious victories of SirEyre Coote have been rendered abortive by a constant deficiency ofsupplies, --and when, since the departure of that excellent general toBengal, whose loss I must ever regret, a dreadful famine, at the closeof last year, occasioned by his Lordship's neglect to lay up asufficient stock of grain at a proper season, and from his prohibitoryorders to private merchants, --and when no exertion has been made, noradvantage gained over the enemy, --when Hyder's death and Tippoo's returnto his own dominions operated in no degree for the benefit of ouraffairs, --in short, when all has been a continued series ofdisappointment and disgrace under Lord Macartney's management, (and inhim alone has the management been vested, )--I want words to convey thoseideas of his insufficiency, ignorance, and obstinacy which I amconvinced you would entertain, had you been spectators of his ruinousand destructive conduct. 

But against me, and my son, Amir-ul-Omrah, has his Lordship's vengeancechiefly been exerted: even the Company's own subordinate zemindars havefound better treatment, probably because they were more rich; those ofNizanagoram have been permitted, contrary to your pointed orders, tohold their rich zemindaries at the old disproportionate rate of littlemore than a sixth part of the real revenue; and my zemindar of Tanjore, though he should have regarded himself equally concerned with us in theevent of the war, and from whose fertile country many valuable harvestshave been gathered in, which have sold at a vast price, has, Iunderstand, only contributed, last year, towards the public exigencies, the very inconsiderable sum of one lac of pagodas, and a few thousandpagodas' worth of grain. 

I am much concerned to acquaint you that ever since the peace a dreadfulfamine has swept away many thousands of the followers and sepoys'families of the army, from Lord Macartney's neglect to send down grainto the camp, though the roads are crowded with vessels: but his Lordshiphas been too intent upon his own disgraceful schemes to attend to thewants of the army. The negotiation with Tippoo, which he has set on footthrough the mediation of Monsieur Bussy, has employed all his thoughts, and to the attainment of that object he will sacrifice the dearestinterests of the Company to gratify his malevolence against me, and forhis own private advantages. The endeavor to treat with Tippoo, throughthe means of the French, must strike you, Gentlemen, as highly improperand impolitic; but it must raise your utmost indignation to hear, that, by intercepted letters from Bussy to Tippoo, as well as from theirrespective vakeels, and from various accounts from Cuddalore, we haveevery reason to conclude that his Lordship's secretary, Mr. Staunton, when at Cuddalore, as his agent to settle the cessation of arms with theFrench, was informed of all their operations and projects, and_consequently that Lord Macartney has secretly connived at MonsieurBussy's recommendation to Tippoo to return into the Carnatic, as themeans of procuring the most advantageous terms, and furnishing LordMacartney with the plea of necessity for concluding a peace after hisown manner_: and what further confirms the truth of this fact is, thatrepeated reports, as well as the alarms of the inhabitants to thewestward, leave us no reason to doubt that Tippoo is approachingtowards us. His Lordship has issued public orders that the garrisonstore of rice, for which we are indebted to the exertions of the Bengalgovernment, should be immediately disposed of, and has strictly forbidall private grain to be sold; by which act he effectually prohibits allprivate importation of grain, and may eventually cause as horrid afamine as that which we experienced at the close of last year from thesame shortsighted policy and destructive prohibitions of Lord Macartney. 

But as he has the fabrication of the records in his own hands, he truststo those partial representations of his character and conduct, becausethe signatures of those members of government whom he seldom consultsare affixed, as a public sanction; but you may form a just idea of theircorrectness and propriety, when you are informed that his Lordship, _upon my noticing the heavy disbursements made for secret service money, ordered the sums to be struck off, and the accounts to be erased fromthe cash-book of the Company_; and I think I cannot give you a betterproof of his management of my country and revenues than by calling yourattention to his conduct in the Ongole province, and by referring you tohis Lordship's administration of your own jaghire, from whence he hasbrought to the public account the sum of twelve hundred pagodas for thelast year's revenue, yet blazons forth his vast merits and exertions, and expects to receive the thanks of his Committee and Council. 

I will beg leave to refer you to my minister, James Macpherson, Esq. , for a more particular account of my sufferings and miseries, to whom Ihave transmitted copies of all papers that passed with his Lordship. 

I cannot conclude without calling your attention to _the situation of mydifferent creditors_, whose claims are the claims of justice, and whosedemands I am bound by honor and every moral obligation to discharge; itis not, therefore, without great concern I have heard insinuationstending to question the legality of their right to the payment of thosejust debts: they proceeded from advances made by them openly andhonorably for the support of my own and the public affairs. But I hopethe tongue of calumny will never drown the voice of truth and justice;and while that is heard, the wisdom of the English nation cannot fail toaccede to an effectual remedy for their distresses, by any arrangementin which their claims may be duly considered and equitably provided for:and for this purpose, my minister, _Mr. Macpherson, will readilysubscribe, in my name, to any agreement you may think proper to adopt, founded on the same principles_ with either of the engagements I enteredinto with the supreme government of Bengal for our mutual interest andadvantage. 

I always pray for your happiness and prosperity. 

 * * * * *

 6th September, and Postscript of 7th September, 1783. _Translation of a Letter from the Nabob of Arcot to the Chairman and Directors of the East India Company. _ Received from Mr. James Macpherson, 14th January, 1784. 

I refer you, Gentlemen, to my inclosed duplicate, as well as to myminister, Mr. Macpherson, for the particulars of my sufferings. There isno word or action of mine that is not perverted; and though it was myintention to have sent my son, Amir-ul-Omrah, who is well versed in myaffairs, to Bengal, to impress those gentlemen with a full sense of mysituation, yet I find myself obliged to lay it aside, from theinsinuations of the calumniating tongue of Lord Macartney, that takesevery license to traduce every action of my life and that of my son. Iam informed that Lord Macartney, at this late moment, intends to write aletter: I am ignorant of the subject, but fully perceive, that, bydelaying to send it till the very eve of the dispatch, he means todeprive me of all possibility of communicating my reply, and forwardingit for the information of my friends in England. Conscious of the weakground on which he stands, he is obliged to have recourse to theseartifices to mislead the judgment, and support for a time hisunjustifiable measures by deceit and imposition. I wish only to meet andcombat his charges and allegations fairly and openly, and I haverepeatedly and urgently demanded to be furnished with copies of thoseparts of his _fabricated_ records relative to myself; but as he wellknows I should refute his sophistry, I cannot be surprised at hisrefusal, though I lament that it prevents you, Gentlemen, from a clearinvestigation of his conduct towards me. 

Inclosed you have a translation of an arzee from the Killidar ofVellore. _I have thousands of the same kind_; but this, just nowreceived, will serve to give you some idea of the miseries brought uponthis my devoted country, and the wretched inhabitants that remain in it, by the oppressive hand of Lord Macartney's management: nor will the_embezzlements of collections_ thus obtained, when brought before you in_proof_, appear less extraordinary, --which _shall certainly be done indue time_. 

 _Translation of an Arzee, in the Persian Language, from Uzzim-ul-Doen Cawn, the Killidar of Vellore, to the Nabob_, dated 1st September, 1783. Inclosed in the Nabob's Letter to the Court of Directors, September, 1783. 

I have repeatedly represented to your Highness the violences andoppressions exercised by the present aumildar [collector of revenue], ofLord Macartney's appointment, over the few remaining inhabitants of thedistricts of Vellore, Amboor, Saulguda, &c. 

The outrages and violences now committed are of that astonishing natureas were never known or heard of during the administration of the Circar. Hyder Naik, the cruellest of tyrants, used every kind of oppression inthe Circar countries; but even his measures were not like those nowpursued. Such of the inhabitants as had escaped the sword and pillage ofHyder Naik, by taking refuge in the woods, and within the walls ofVellore, &c. , on the arrival of Lord Macartney's aumildar to Vellore, and in consequence of his cowle of protection and support, mostcheerfully returned to the villages, set about the cultivation of thelands, and with great pains rebuilt their cottages. --But now theaumildar has imprisoned the wives and children of the inhabitants, seized the few jewels that were on the bodies of the women, and then, before the faces of their husbands, flogged them, in order to make themproduce other jewels and effects, which he said they had buriedsomewhere under ground, and to make the inhabitants bring him money, notwithstanding there was yet no cultivation in the country. Terrifiedwith the flagellations, some of them produced their jewels andwearing-apparel of their women, to the amount of ten or fifteen pagodas, which they had hidden; others, who declared they had none, the aumildarflogged their women severely, tied cords around their breasts, and torethe sucking children from their teats, and exposed them to the scorchingheat of the sun. Those children died, as did the wife of Ramsoamy, aninhabitant of Bringpoor. Even this could not stir up compassion in thebreast of the aumildar. Some of the children that were somewhat large heexposed to sale. In short, the violences of the aumildar are soastonishing, that the people, on seeing the present situation, rememberthe loss of Hyder with regret. With whomsoever the aumildar finds asingle measure of natchinee or rice, he takes it away from him, andappropriates it to the expenses of the sibindy that he keeps up. Norevenues are collected from the countries, but from the effects of thepoor, wretched inhabitants. Those ryots [yeomen] who intended to returnto their habitations, hearing of those violences, have fled for refuge, with their wives and children, into Hyder's country. Every day isushered in and closed with these violences and disturbances. I have nopower to do anything; and who will hear what I have to say? My businessis to inform your Highness, who are my master. The people bring theircomplaints to me, and I tell them I will write to your Highness. [74]

 _Translation of a Tellinga Letter from Veira Permaul, Head Dubash to Lord Macartney, in his own Handwriting, to Rajah Ramchunda, the Renter of Ongole. _ Dated 25th of the Hindoo month Mausay, in the year Plavanamal, corresponding to 5th March, 1782. 

I present my respects to you, and am very well here, wishing to hearfrequently of your welfare. 

Your peasher Vancatroyloo has brought the Visseel Bakees, and deliveredthem to me, as _also what you sent him for me to deliver to my master, which I have done. My master at first refused to take it, because he isunacquainted with your disposition_, or what kind of a person you are. But after I made encomiums on your goodness and greatness of mind, andtook my oath to the same, and that _it would not become public_, but beheld as precious as our lives, _my master accepted it_. You may remainsatisfied that I will get the Ongole business settled in your name; Iwill cause the jamaubundee to be settled agreeable to your desire. Itwas formerly the Nabob's intention to give this business to you, as theGovernor knows full well, but did not at that time agree to it, whichyou must be well acquainted with. 

Your peasher Vancatroyloo is a very careful, good man; he is wellexperienced in business; _he has bound me by an oath to keep all thisbusiness secret, and that his own, yours, and my lives are responsiblefor it_. I write this letter to you with the greatest reluctance, and Isignified the same to your peasher, and declared that I would not writeto you by any means. To this the peasher urged, that, _if I did notwrite to his master, how could he know to whom he (the peasher)delivered the money_, and what must his master think of it? Therefore Iwrite you this letter, and send it by my servant Ramanah, accompanied bythe peasher's servant, and it will come safe to your hands. Afterperusal, you will send it back to me immediately: until I receive it, Idon't like to eat my victuals or take any sleep. Your peasher took hisoath, and urged me to write this for your satisfaction, and has engagedto me that I shall have this letter returned to me in the space oftwelve days. 

The present Governor is not like the former Governors: he is a verygreat man in Europe; and all the great men of Europe are much obliged, to him for his condescension in accepting the government of this place. It is his custom, when he makes friendship with any one, to continue italways; and if _he is at enmity with any one, he never will desist tillhe has worked his destruction. He is now exceedingly displeased withthe Nabob, and you will understand by-and-by that the Nabob's businesscannot be carried on_; he (the Nabob) will have no power to do anythingin his own affairs: _you have, therefore, no room to fear him_; you mayremain with a contented mind. I desired the Governor to write you aletter for your satisfaction: the Governor said he would do so, when thebusiness was settled. This letter you must peruse as soon as possible, and send it back with all speed by the bearer, Ramadoo, accompanied bythree or four of your people, to the end that no accident may happen onthe road. These people must be ordered to march in the night only, andto arrive here with the greatest dispatch. You sent ten mangoes for mymaster and two for me, all of which I have delivered to my master, thinking that ten was not sufficient to present him with. I write thisfor your information, and salute you with ten thousand respects. 

 I, Muttu Kistnah, of Madras Patnam, dubash, declare that I perfectly understand the Gentoo language, and do most solemnly affirm that the foregoing is a true translation of the annexed paper writing from the Gentoo language. 

 (Signed)

 Muttu Kistnah. 

FOOTNOTES:

[68] In this statement, the Ongole country, though it is included underthe head of gross revenue, has been let for a certain sum, exclusive ofcharges. If the expenses specified in the Nabob's vassool accounts forthis district are added, the present gross revenue even would appear toexceed the Nabob's; and as the country is only let for one year, theremay hereafter be an increase of its revenue. 

[69] The Trichinopoly countries let for the above sum, exclusive of theexpenses of sibbendy and saderwared, amounting, by the Nabob's accounts, to rupees 1, 30, 00 per annum, which are to be defrayed by the renter. Andthe jaghires of Amir-ul-Omrah and the Begum are not included in thepresent lease. 

[70] For the ground of this "great reliance, " see the papers in thisAppendix, No. 5; as also the Nabob's letters to the Court of Directorsin this Appendix, No. 10. 

[71] For the full proof of this necessity, Lord Macartney's wholecorrespondence on the subject may be referred to. Without the act herecondemned, not one of the acts commended in the preceding paragraphcould be performed. By referring to the Nabob's letters in this Appendixit will be seen what sort of task a governor has on his hands, who is touse, according to the direction of this letter, "acts of address, civility, and conciliation, " and to pay, upon _all_ occasions, _thehighest attention_, to persons who at the very time are falsely, and inthe grossest terms, accusing him of peculation, corruption, treason, andevery species of malversation in office. The recommendation, undermenaces of such behavior, and under such circumstances, conveys a lessonthe tendency of which cannot be misunderstood. 

[72] The delicacy here recommended, in the _expressions_ concerningconduct "with which the safety of our settlements is essentiallyconnected, " is a lesson of the same nature with the former. Dangerousdesigns, if truly such, ought to be expressed according to their natureand qualities. And as for the _secrecy_ recommended concerning thedesigns here alluded to, nothing can be more absurd; as they appear veryfully and directly in the papers published by the authority of the Courtof Directors in 1775, and may be easily discerned from the propositionsfor the Bengal treaty, published in the Reports of the Committee ofSecrecy, and in the Reports of the Select Committee. The keeping of suchsecrets too long has been one cause of the Carnatic war, and of the ruinof our affairs in India. 

[73] See Tellinga letter, at the end of this correspondence. 

[74] The above-recited practices, or practices similar to them, haveprevailed in almost every part of the miserable countries on the coastof Coromandel for near twenty years past. That they prevailed asstrongly and generally as they could prevail, under the administrationof the Nabob, there can be no question, notwithstanding the assertion inthe beginning of the above petition; nor will it ever be otherwise, whilst affairs are conducted upon the principles which influence thepresent system. Whether the particulars here asserted are true or falseneither the Court of Directors nor their ministry have thought proper toinquire. If they are true, in order to bring them to affect LordMacartney, it ought to be proved that the complaint was made _to him, and that he had refused redress_. Instead of this fair course, thecomplaint is carried to the Court of Directors. --The above is one of thedocuments transmitted by the Nabob, in proof of his charge of corruptionagainst Lord Macartney. If genuine, it is conclusive, at least againstLord Macartney's principal agent and manager. If it be a forgery, (as inall likelihood it is, ) it is conclusive against the Nabob and his evilcounsellors, and folly demonstrates, if anything further were necessaryto demonstrate, the necessity of the clause in Mr. Fox's billprohibiting the residence of the native princes in the Company'sprincipal settlements, --which clause was, for obvious reasons, notadmitted into Mr. Pitt's. It shows, too, the absolute necessity of asevere and exemplary punishment on certain of his English evilcounsellors and creditors, by whom such practices are carried on. 

SUBSTANCE OF THE SPEECH

IN THE

DEBATE ON THE ARMY ESTIMATES

IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, ON TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 1790

COMPREHENDING

A DISCUSSION OF THE PRESENT SITUATION OF AFFAIRS IN FRANCE. 

SPEECH. 

Mr. Burke's speech on the report of the army estimates has not beencorrectly stated in some of the public papers. It is of consequence tohim not to be misunderstood. The matter which incidentally came intodiscussion is of the most serious importance. It is thought that theheads and substance of the speech will answer the purpose sufficiently. If, in making the abstract, through defect of memory in the person whonow gives it, any difference at all should be perceived from the speechas it was spoken, it will not, the editor imagines, be found in anythingwhich may amount to a retraction of the opinions he then maintained, orto any softening in the expressions in which they were conveyed. 

Mr. Burke spoke a considerable time in answer to various arguments, which had been insisted upon by Mr. Grenville and Mr. Pitt, for keepingan increased peace establishment, and against an improper jealousy ofthe ministers, in whom a full confidence, subject to responsibility, ought to be placed, on account of their knowledge of the real situationof affairs, the exact state of which it frequently happened that theycould not disclose without violating the constitutional and politicalsecrecy necessary to the well-being of their country. 

Mr. Burke said in substance, That confidence might become a vice, andjealousy a virtue, according to circumstances. That confidence, of allpublic virtues, was the most dangerous, and jealousy in an House ofCommons, of all public vices, the most tolerable, --- especially wherethe number and the charge of standing armies in time of peace was thequestion. 

That in the annual Mutiny Bill the annual army was declared to be forthe purpose of preserving the balance of power in Europe. The proprietyof its being larger or smaller depended, therefore, upon the true stateof that balance. If the increase of peace establishments demanded ofParliament agreed with the manifest appearance of the balance, confidence in ministers as to the particulars would be very proper. Ifthe increase was not at all supported by any such appearance, he thoughtgreat jealousy might be, and ought to be, entertained on that subject. 

That he did not find, on a review of all Europe, that, politically, westood in the smallest degree of danger from any one state or kingdom itcontained, nor that any other foreign powers than our own allies werelikely to obtain a considerable preponderance in the scale. 

That France had hitherto been our first object in all considerationsconcerning the balance of power. The presence or absence of Francetotally varied every sort of speculation relative to that balance. 

That France is at this time, in a political light, to be considered asexpunged out of the system of Europe. Whether she could ever appear init again, as a leading power, was not easy to determine; but at presentbe considered France as not politically existing; and most assuredly itwould take up much time to restore her to her former active existence:_Gallos quoque in bellis floruisse audivimus_ might possibly be thelanguage of the rising generation. He did not mean to deny that it wasour duty to keep our eye on that nation, and to regulate our preparationby the symptoms of her recovery. 

That it was to her _strength_, not to her _form of government_, which wewere to attend; because republics, as well as monarchies, weresusceptible of ambition, jealousy, and anger, the usual causes of war. 

But if, while France continued in this swoon, we should go on increasingour expenses, we should certainly make ourselves less a match for herwhen it became our concern to arm. 

It was said, that, as she had speedily fallen, she might speedily riseagain. He doubted this. That the fall from an height was with anaccelerated velocity; but to lift a weight up to that height again wasdifficult, and opposed by the laws of physical and politicalgravitation. 

In a political view, France was low indeed. She had lost everything, even to her name. 

 Jacet ingens littore truncus, Avolsumque humeris _caput_, et sine _nomine_ corpus. [75]

He was astonished at it; he was alarmed at it; he trembled at theuncertainty of all human greatness. 

Since the House had been prorogued in the summer much work was done inFrance. The French had shown themselves the ablest architects of ruinthat had hitherto existed in the world. In that very short space of timethey had completely pulled down to the ground their monarchy, theirchurch, their nobility, their law, their revenue, their army, theirnavy, their commerce, their arts, and their manufactures. They had donetheir business for us as rivals in a way in which twenty Ramillies orBlenheims could never have done it. Were we absolute conquerors, andFrance to lie prostrate at our feet, we should be ashamed to send acommission to settle their affairs which could impose so hard a law uponthe French, and so destructive of all their consequence as a nation, asthat they had imposed upon themselves. 

France, by the mere circumstance of its vicinity, had been, and in adegree always must be, an object of our vigilance, either with regard toher actual power or to her influence and example. As to the former hehad spoken; as to the latter (her example) he should say a few words:for by this example our friendship and our intercourse with that nationhad once been, and might again become, more dangerous to us than theirworst hostility. 

In the last century, Louis the Fourteenth had established a greater andbetter disciplined military force than ever had been before seen inEurope, and with it a perfect despotism. Though that despotism wasproudly arrayed in manners, gallantry, splendor, magnificence, and evencovered over with the imposing robes of science, literature, and arts, it was, in government, nothing better than a painted and gildedtyranny, --in religion, a hard, stern intolerance, the fit companion andauxiliary to the despotic tyranny which prevailed in its government. Thesame character of despotism insinuated itself into every court ofEurope, --the same spirit of disproportioned magnificence, --the same loveof standing armies, above the ability of the people. In particular, ourthen sovereigns, King Charles and King James, fell in love with thegovernment of their neighbor, so flattering to the pride of kings. Asimilarity of sentiments brought on connections equally dangerous to theinterests and liberties of their country. It were well that theinfection had gone no farther than the throne. The admiration of agovernment flourishing and successful, unchecked in its operations, andseeming, therefore, to compass its objects more speedily andeffectually, gained something upon all ranks of people. The goodpatriots of that day, however, struggled against it. They sought nothingmore anxiously than to break off all communication with France, and tobeget a total alienation from its councils and its example, --which, bythe animosity prevalent between the abettors of their religious systemand the assertors of ours, was in some degree effected. 

This day the evil is totally changed in France: but there is an evilthere. The disease is altered; but the vicinity of the two countriesremains, and must remain; and the natural mental habits of mankind aresuch, that the present distemper of France is far more likely to becontagious than the old one: for it is not quite easy to spread apassion for servitude among the people; but in all evils of the oppositekind our natural inclinations are flattered. In the case of despotism, there is the _fœdum crimen servitutis_: in the last, the _falsa SPECIESlibertatis_; and accordingly, as the historian says, _pronis auribusaccipitur_. 

In the last age we were in danger of being entangled by the example ofFrance in the net of a relentless despotism. It is not necessary to sayanything upon that example. It exists no longer. Our present danger fromthe example of a people whose character knows no medium is, with regardto government, a danger from anarchy: a danger of being led, through anadmiration of successful fraud and violence, to an imitation of theexcesses of an irrational, unprincipled, proscribing, confiscating, plundering, ferocious, bloody, and tyrannical democracy. On the side ofreligion, the danger of their example is no longer from intolerance, butfrom atheism: a foul, unnatural vice, foe to all the dignity andconsolation of mankind; which seems in France, for a long time, to havebeen embodied into a faction, accredited, and almost avowed. 

These are our present dangers from France. But, in his opinion, the veryworst part of the example set is in the late assumption of citizenshipby the army, and the whole of the arrangement, or rather disarrangement, of their military. 

He was sorry that his right honorable friend (Mr. Fox) had dropped evena word expressive of exultation on that circumstance, or that he seemedof opinion that the objection from standing armies was at all lessenedby it. He attributed this opinion of Mr. Fox entirely to his known zealfor the best of all causes, liberty. That it was with a paininexpressible he was obliged to have even the shadow of a differencewith his friend, whose authority would always be great with him, andwith all thinking people, --_Quæ maxima semper censetur nobis, et_ ERIT_quæ maxima semper_;--his confidence in Mr. Fox was such, and so ample, as to be almost implicit. That he was not ashamed to avow that degree ofdocility. That, when the choice is well made, it strengthens, instead ofoppressing our intellect. That he who calls in the aid of an equalunderstanding doubles his own. He who profits of a superiorunderstanding raises his powers to a level with the height of thesuperior understanding he unites with. He had found the benefit of sucha junction, and would not lightly depart from it. He wished almost, onall occasions, that his sentiments were understood to be conveyed in Mr. Fox's words. And that he wished, as amongst the greatest benefits hecould wish the country, an eminent share of power to that righthonorable gentleman; because he knew that to his great and masterlyunderstanding he had joined the greatest possible degree of that naturalmoderation which is the best corrective of power: that he was of themost artless, candid, open, and benevolent disposition; disinterested inthe extreme; of a temper mild and placable even to a fault; without onedrop of gall in his whole constitution. 

That the House must perceive, from his coming forward to mark anexpression or two of his best friend, how anxious he was to keep thedistemper of France from the least countenance in England, where he wassure some wicked persons had shown a strong disposition to recommend animitation of the French spirit of reform. He was so strongly opposed toany the least tendency towards the _means_ of introducing a democracylike theirs, as well as to the _end_ itself, that, much as it wouldafflict him, if such a thing could be attempted, and that any friend ofhis could concur in such measures, (he was far, very far, from believingthey could, ) he would abandon his best friends, and join with his worstenemies, to oppose either the means or the end, --and to resist allviolent exertions of the spirit of innovation, so distant from allprinciples of true and safe reformation: a spirit well calculated tooverturn states, but perfectly unfit to amend them. 

That he was no enemy to reformation. Almost every business in which hewas much concerned, from the first day he sat in that House to thathour, was a business of reformation; and when he had not been employedin correcting, he had been employed in resisting abuses. Some traces ofthis spirit in him now stand on their statute-book. In his opinion, anything which unnecessarily tore to pieces the contexture of the statenot only prevented all real reformation, but introduced evils whichwould call, but perhaps call in vain, for new reformation. 

That he thought the French nation very unwise. What they valuedthemselves on was a disgrace to them. They had gloried (and some peoplein England had thought fit to take share in that glory) in making aRevolution, as if revolutions were good things in themselves. All thehorrors and all the crimes of the anarchy which led to their Revolution, which attend its progress, and which may virtually attend it in itsestablishment, pass for nothing with the lovers of revolutions. TheFrench have made their way, through the destruction of their country, toa bad constitution, when they were absolutely in possession of a goodone. They were in possession of it the day the states met in separateorders. Their business, had they been either virtuous or wise, or hadbeen left to their own judgment, was to secure the stability andindependence of the states, according to those orders, under the monarchon the throne. It was then their duty to redress grievances. 

Instead of redressing grievances, and improving the fabric of theirstate, to which they were called by their monarch and sent by theircountry, they were made to take a very different course. They firstdestroyed all the balances and counterpoises which serve to fix thestate and to give it a steady direction, and which furnish surecorrectives to any violent spirit which may prevail in any of theorders. These balances existed in their oldest constitution, and in theconstitution of this country, and in the constitution of all thecountries in Europe. These they rashly destroyed, and then they melteddown the whole into one incongruous, ill-connected mass. 

When they had done this, they instantly, and with the most atrociousperfidy and breach of all faith among men, laid the axe to the root ofall property, and consequently of all national prosperity, by theprinciples they established and the example they set, in confiscatingall the possessions of the Church. They made and recorded a sort of_institute_ and _digest_ of anarchy, called the Rights of Man, in such apedantic abuse of elementary principles as would have disgraced boys atschool: but this declaration of rights was worse than trifling andpedantic in them; as by their name and authority they systematicallydestroyed every hold of authority by opinion, religious or civil, on theminds of the people. By this mad declaration they subverted the state, and brought on such calamities as no country, without a long war, hasever been known to suffer, and which may in the end produce such a war, and perhaps many such. 

With them the question was not between despotism and liberty. Thesacrifice they made of the peace and power of their country was not madeon the altar of freedom. Freedom, and a better security for freedom thanthat they have taken, they might have had without any sacrifice at all. They brought themselves into all the calamities they suffer, not thatthrough them they might obtain a British constitution; they plungedthemselves headlong into those calamities to prevent themselves fromsettling into that constitution, or into anything resembling it. 

That, if they should perfectly succeed in what they propose, as they arelikely enough to do, and establish a democracy, or a mob of democracies, in a country circumstanced like France, they will establish a very badgovernment, --a very bad species of tyranny. 

That the worst effect of all their proceeding was on their military, which was rendered an army for every purpose but that of defence. That, if the question was, whether soldiers were to forget they were citizens, as an abstract proposition, he could have no difference about it;though, as it is usual, when abstract principles are to be applied, muchwas to be thought on the manner of uniting the character of citizen andsoldier. But as applied to the events which had happened in France, where the abstract principle was clothed with its circumstances, hethought that his friend would agree with him, that what was done therefurnished no matter of exultation, either in the act or the example. These soldiers were not citizens, but base, hireling mutineers, andmercenary, sordid deserters, wholly destitute of any honorableprinciple. Their conduct was one of the fruits of that anarchic spiritfrom the evils of which a democracy itself was to be resorted to, bythose who were the least disposed to that form, as a sort of refuge. Itwas not an army in corps and with discipline, and embodied under therespectable patriot citizens of the state in resisting tyranny. Nothinglike it. It was the case of common soldiers deserting from theirofficers, to join a furious, licentious populace. It was a desertion toa cause the real object of which was to level all those institutions, and to break all those connections, natural and civil, that regulate andhold together the community by a chain of subordination: to raisesoldiers against their officers, servants against their masters, tradesmen against their customers, artificers against their employers, tenants against their landlords, curates against their bishops, andchildren against their parents. That this cause of theirs was not anenemy to servitude, but to society. 

He wished the House to consider how the members would like to have theirmansions pulled down and pillaged, their persons abused, insulted, anddestroyed, their title-deeds brought out and burned before their faces, and themselves and their families driven to seek refuge in every nationthroughout Europe, for no other reason than this, that, without anyfault of theirs, they were born gentlemen and men of property, and weresuspected of a desire to preserve their consideration and their estates. The desertion in France was to aid an abominable sedition, the veryprofessed principle of which was an implacable hostility to nobility andgentry, and whose savage war-whoop was, _"A l'Aristocrate!"_--by whichsenseless, bloody cry they animated one another to rapine and murder;whilst abetted by ambitious men of another class, they were crushingeverything respectable and virtuous in their nation, and to their powerdisgracing almost every name by which we formerly knew there was such acountry in the world as France. 

He knew too well, and he felt as much as any man, how difficult it wasto accommodate a standing army to a free constitution, or to anyconstitution. An armed disciplined body is, in its essence, dangerous toliberty; undisciplined, it is ruinous to society. Its component partsare in the latter case neither good citizens nor good soldiers. Whathave they thought of in France, under such a difficulty as almost putsthe human faculties to a stand? They have put their army under such avariety of principles of duty, that it is more likely to breedlitigants, pettifoggers, and mutineers than soldiers. [76] They have setup, to balance their crown army, another army, deriving under anotherauthority, called a municipal army, --a balance of armies, not of orders. These latter they have destroyed with every mark of insult andoppression. States may, and they will best, exist with a partition ofcivil powers. Armies cannot exist under a divided command. This state ofthings he thought in effect a state of war, or at best but a truce, instead of peace, in the country. 

What a dreadful thing is a standing army for the conduct of the whole orany part of which no man is responsible! In the present state of theFrench crown army, is the crown responsible for the whole of it? Isthere any general who can be responsible for the obedience of abrigade, any colonel for that of a regiment, any captain for that of acompany? And as to the municipal army, reinforced as it is by the newcitizen deserters, under whose command are they? Have we not seen them, not led by, but dragging, their nominal commander, with a rope about hisneck, when they, or those whom they accompanied, proceeded to the mostatrocious acts of treason and murder? Are any of these armies? Are anyof these citizens?

We have in such a difficulty as that of fitting a standing army to thestate, he conceived, done much better. We have not distracted our armyby divided principles of obedience. We have put them under a singleauthority, with a simple (our common) oath of fidelity; and we keep thewhole under our annual inspection. This was doing all that could besafely done. 

He felt some concern that this strange thing called a Revolution inFrance should be compared with the glorious event commonly called theRevolution in England, and the conduct of the soldiery on that occasioncompared with the behavior of some of the troops of France in thepresent instance. At that period, the Prince of Orange, a prince of theblood-royal in England, was called in by the flower of the Englisharistocracy to defend its ancient Constitution, and not to level alldistinctions. To this prince, so invited, the aristocratic leaders whocommanded the troops went over with their several corps, in bodies, tothe deliverer of their country. Aristocratic leaders brought up thecorps of citizens who newly enlisted in this cause. Military obediencechanged its object; but military discipline was not for a momentinterrupted in its principle. The troops were ready for war, butindisposed to mutiny. 

But as the conduct of the English armies was different, so was that ofthe whole English nation at that time. In truth, the circumstances ofour Revolution (as it is called) and that of France are just the reverseof each other in almost every particular, and in the whole spirit of thetransaction. With us it was the case of a legal monarch attemptingarbitrary power; in France it is the case of an arbitrary monarchbeginning, from whatever cause, to legalize his authority. The one wasto be resisted, the other was to be managed and directed; but in neithercase was the order of the state to be changed, lest government might beruined, which ought only to be corrected and legalized. With us we gotrid of the man, and preserved the constituent parts of the state. Therethey get rid of the constituent parts of the state, and keep the man. What we did was in truth and substance, and in a constitutional light, arevolution, not made, but prevented. We took solid securities; wesettled doubtful questions; we corrected anomalies in our law. In thestable, fundamental parts of our Constitution we made norevolution, --no, nor any alteration at all. We did not impair themonarchy. Perhaps it might be shown that we strengthened it veryconsiderably. The nation kept the same ranks, the same orders, the sameprivileges, the same franchises, the same rules for property, the samesubordinations, the same order in the law, in the revenue, and in themagistracy, --the same lords, the same commons, the same corporations, the same electors. 

The Church was not impaired. Her estates, her majesty, her splendor, herorders and gradations, continued the same. She was preserved in herfull efficiency, and cleared only of a certain intolerance, which washer weakness and disgrace. The Church and the State were the same afterthe Revolution that they were before, but better secured in every part. 

Was little done because a revolution was not made in the Constitution?No! Everything was done; because we commenced with reparation, not withruin. Accordingly, the state flourished. Instead of lying as dead, in asort of trance, or exposed, as some others, in an epileptic fit, to thepity or derision of the world, for her wild, ridiculous, convulsivemovements, impotent to every purpose but that of dashing out her brainsagainst the pavement, Great Britain rose above the standard even of herformer self. An era of a more improved domestic prosperity thencommenced, and still continues, not only unimpaired, but growing, underthe wasting hand of time. All the energies of the country were awakened. England never preserved a firmer countenance or a more vigorous arm toall her enemies and to all her rivals. Europe under her respired andrevived. Everywhere she appeared as the protector, assertor, or avengerof liberty. A war was made and supported against fortune itself. Thetreaty of Ryswick, which first limited the power of France, was soonafter made; the grand alliance very shortly followed, which shook to thefoundations the dreadful power which menaced the independence ofmankind. The states of Europe lay happy under the shade of a great andfree monarchy, which knew how to be great without endangering its ownpeace at home or the internal or external peace of any of itsneighbors. 

Mr. Burke said he should have felt very unpleasantly, if he had notdelivered these sentiments. He was near the end of his natural, probablystill nearer the end of his political career. That he was weak andweary, and wished for rest. That he was little disposed tocontroversies, or what is called a detailed opposition. That at his timeof life, if he could not do something by some sort of weight of opinion, natural or acquired, it was useless and indecorous to attempt anythingby mere struggle. _Turpe senex miles_. That he had for that reasonlittle attended the army business, or that of the revenue, or almost anyother matter of detail, for some years past. That he had, however, histask. He was far from condemning such opposition; on the contrary, hemost highly applauded it, where a just occasion existed for it, andgentlemen had vigor and capacity to pursue it. Where a great occasionoccurred, he was, and, while he continued in Parliament, would be, amongst the most active and the most earnest, --as he hoped he had shownon a late event. With respect to the Constitution itself, he wished fewalterations in it, --happy if he left it not the worse for any share hehad taken in its service. 

 * * * * *

Mr. Fox then rose, and declared, in substance, that, so far as regardedthe French army, he went no farther than the general principle, by whichthat army showed itself indisposed to be an instrument in the servitudeof their fellow-citizens, but did not enter into the particulars oftheir conduct. He declared that he did not affect a democracy: that healways thought any of the simple, unbalanced governments bad: simplemonarchy, simple aristocracy, simple democracy, --he held them allimperfect or vicious; all were bad by themselves; the composition alonewas good. That these had been always his principles, in which he hadagreed with his friend Mr. Burke, --of whom he had said many kind andflattering things, which Mr. Burke, I take it for granted, will knowhimself too well to think he merits from anything but Mr. Fox'sacknowledged good-nature. Mr. Fox thought, however, that, in many cases, Mr. Burke was rather carried too far by his hatred to innovation. 

Mr. Burke said, he well knew that these had been Mr. Fox's invariableopinions; that they were a sure ground for the confidence of hiscountry. But he had been fearful that cabals of very differentintentions would be ready to make use of his great name, against hischaracter and sentiments, in order to derive a credit to theirdestructive machinations. 

Mr. Sheridan then rose, and made a lively and eloquent speech againstMr. Burke; in which, among other things, he said that Mr. Burke hadlibelled the National Assembly of France, and had cast out reflectionson such characters as those of the Marquis de La Fayette and Mr. Bailly. 

Mr. Burke said, that he did not libel the National Assembly of France, whom he considered very little in the discussion of these matters. Thathe thought all the substantial power resided in the republic of Paris, whose authority guided, or whose example was followed by, all therepublics of France. The republic of Paris had an army under theirorders, and not under those of the National Assembly. 

N. B. As to the particular gentlemen, I do not remember that Mr. Burkementioned either of them, --certainly not Mr. Bailly. He alluded, undoubtedly, to the case of the Marquis de La Fayette; but whether whathe asserted of him be a libel on him must be left to those who areacquainted with the business. 

Mr. Pitt concluded the debate with becoming gravity and dignity, and areserve on both sides of the question, as related to France, fit for aperson in a ministerial situation. He said, that what he had spoken onlyregarded France when she should unite, which he rather thought she soonmight, with the liberty she had acquired, the blessings of law andorder. He, too, said several civil things concerning the sentiments ofMr. Burke, as applied to this country. 

FOOTNOTES:

[75] Mr. Burke probably had in his mind the remainder of the passage, and was filled with some congenial apprehensions:--

 Hæc finis Priami fatorum; hic exitus illum Sorte tulit, Trojam incensam et prolapsa videntem Pergama, tot quondam populis terrisque superbum Regnatorem Asiæ. Jacet ingens littore truncus, Avolsumque humeris caput, et sine nomine corpus. _At me_ tum primum sævus circumstetit horror. Obstupui: _subiit chari genitoris imago_. 

[76] They are Sworn to obey the king, the nation, and the law. 

REFLECTIONS

ON THE

REVOLUTION IN FRANCE, THE PROCEEDINGS IN CERTAIN SOCIETIES IN

LONDON RELATIVE TO THAT EVENT:

IN A LETTER

INTENDED TO HAVE BEEN SENT TO A GENTLEMAN IN PARIS. 

1790. 

It may not be unnecessary to inform the reader that the followingReflections had their origin in a correspondence between the author anda very young gentleman at Paris, who did him the honor of desiring hisopinion upon the important transactions which then, and ever since have, so much occupied the attention of all men. An answer was written sometime in the month of October, 1789; but it was kept back upon prudentialconsiderations. That letter is alluded to in the beginning of thefollowing sheets. It has been since forwarded to the person to whom itwas addressed. The reasons for the delay in sending it were assigned ina short letter to the same gentleman. This produced on his part a newand pressing application for the author's sentiments. 

The author began a second and more full discussion on the subject. Thishe had some thoughts of publishing early in the last spring; but thematter gaining upon him, he found that what he had undertaken not onlyfar exceeded the measure of a letter, but that its importance requiredrather a more detailed consideration than at that time he had anyleisure to bestow upon it. However, having thrown down his firstthoughts in the form of a letter, and, indeed, when he sat down towrite, having intended it for a private letter, he found it difficult tochange the form of address, when his sentiments had grown into a greaterextent and had received another direction. A different plan, he issensible, might be more favorable to a commodious division anddistribution of his matter. 

REFLECTIONS

ON

THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. 

Dear Sir, --You are pleased to call again, and with some earnestness, formy thoughts on the late proceedings in France. I will not give youreason to imagine that I think my sentiments of such value as to wishmyself to be solicited about them. They are of too little consequence tobe very anxiously either communicated or withheld. It was from attentionto you, and to you only, that I hesitated at the time when you firstdesired to receive them. In the first letter I had the honor to write toyou, and which at length I send, I wrote neither for nor from anydescription of men; nor shall I in this. My errors, if any, are my own. My reputation alone is to answer for them. 

You see, Sir, by the long letter I have transmitted to you, that, thoughI do most heartily wish that France may be animated by a spirit ofrational liberty, and that I think you bound, in all honest policy, toprovide a permanent body in which that spirit may reside, and aneffectual organ by which it may act, it is my misfortune to entertaingreat doubts concerning several material points in your latetransactions. 

You imagined, when you wrote last, that I might possibly be reckonedamong the approvers of certain proceedings in France, from the solemnpublic seal of sanction they have received from two clubs of gentlemenin London, called the Constitutional Society, and the RevolutionSociety. 

I certainly have the honor to belong to more clubs than one in which theConstitution of this kingdom and the principles of the gloriousRevolution are held in high reverence; and I reckon myself among themost forward in my zeal for maintaining that Constitution and thoseprinciples in their utmost purity and vigor. It is because I do so thatI think it necessary for me that there should be no mistake. Those whocultivate the memory of our Revolution, and those who are attached tothe Constitution of this kingdom, will take good care how they areinvolved with persons who, under the pretext of zeal towards theRevolution and Constitution, too frequently wander from their trueprinciples, and are ready on every occasion to depart from the firm, butcautious and deliberate, spirit which produced the one and whichpresides in the other. Before I proceed to answer the more materialparticulars in your letter, I shall beg leave to give you suchinformation as I have been able to obtain of the two clubs which havethought proper, as bodies, to interfere in the concerns ofFrance, --first assuring you that I am not, and that I have never been, amember of either of those societies. 

The first, calling itself the Constitutional Society, or Society forConstitutional Information, or by some such title, is, I believe, ofseven or eight years' standing. The institution of this society appearsto be of a charitable, and so far of a laudable nature: it was intendedfor the circulation, at the expense of the members, of many books whichfew others would be at the expense of buying, and which might lie on thehands of the booksellers, to the great loss of an useful body of men. Whether the books so charitably circulated were ever as charitably readis more than I know. Possibly several of them have been exported toFrance, and, like goods not in request here, may with you have found amarket. I have heard much talk of the lights to be drawn from books thatare sent from hence. What improvements they have had in their passage(as it is said some liquors are meliorated by crossing the sea) I cannottell; but I never heard a man of common judgment or the least degree ofinformation speak a word in praise of the greater part of thepublications circulated by that society; nor have their proceedings beenaccounted, except by some of themselves, as of any serious consequence. 

Your National Assembly seems to entertain much the same opinion that Ido of this poor charitable club. As a nation, you reserved the wholestock of your eloquent acknowledgments for the Revolution Society, whentheir fellows in the Constitutional were in equity entitled to someshare. Since you have selected the Revolution Society as the greatobject of your national thanks and praises, you will think me excusablein making its late conduct the subject of my observations. The NationalAssembly of France has given importance to these gentlemen by adoptingthem; and they return the favor by acting as a committee in England forextending the principles of the National Assembly. Henceforward we mustconsider them as a kind of privileged persons, as no inconsiderablemembers in the diplomatic body. This is one among the revolutions whichhave given splendor to obscurity and distinction to undiscerned merit. Until very lately I do not recollect to have heard of this club. I amquite sure that it never occupied a moment of my thoughts, --nor, Ibelieve, those of any person out of their own set. I find, upon inquiry, that, on the anniversary of the Revolution in 1688, a club ofDissenters, but of what denomination I know not, have long had thecustom of hearing a sermon in one of their churches, and that afterwardsthey spent the day cheerfully, as other clubs do, at the tavern. But Inever heard that any public measure or political system, much less thatthe merits of the constitution of any foreign nation, had been thesubject of a formal proceeding at their festivals, until, to myinexpressible surprise, I found them in a sort of public capacity, by acongratulatory address, giving an authoritative sanction to theproceedings of the National Assembly in France. 

In the ancient principles and conduct of the club, so far at least asthey were declared, I see nothing to which I could take exception. Ithink it very probable, that, for some purpose, new members may haveentered among them, --and that some truly Christian politicians, who loveto dispense benefits, but are careful to conceal the hand whichdistributes the dole, may have made them the instruments of their piousdesigns. Whatever I may have reason to suspect concerning privatemanagement, I shall speak of nothing as of a certainty but what ispublic. 

For one, I should be sorry to be thought directly or indirectlyconcerned in their proceedings. I certainly take my full share, alongwith the rest of the world, in my individual and private capacity, inspeculating on what has been done, or is doing, on the public stage, inany place, ancient or modern, --in the republic of Rome, or the republicof Paris; but having no general apostolical mission, being a citizen ofa particular state, and being bound up, in a considerable degree, by itspublic will, I should think it at least improper and irregular for me toopen a formal public correspondence with the actual government of aforeign nation, without the express authority of the government underwhich I live. 

I should be still more unwilling to enter into that correspondence underanything like an equivocal description, which to many, unacquainted withour usages, might make the address in which I joined appear as the actof persons in some sort of corporate capacity, acknowledged by the lawsof this kingdom, and authorized to speak the sense of some part of it. On account of the ambiguity and uncertainty of unauthorized generaldescriptions, and of the deceit which may be practised under them, andnot from mere formality, the House of Commons would reject the mostsneaking petition for the most trifling object, under that mode ofsignature to which you have thrown open the folding-doors of yourpresence-chamber, and have ushered into your National Assembly with asmuch ceremony and parade, and with as great a bustle of applause, as ifyou had been visited by the whole representative majesty of the wholeEnglish nation. If what this society has thought proper to send forthhad been a piece of argument, it would have signified little whoseargument it was. It would be neither the more nor the less convincing onaccount of the party it came from. But this is only a vote andresolution. It stands solely on authority; and in this case it is themere authority of individuals, few of whom appear. Their signaturesought, in my opinion, to have been annexed to their instrument. Theworld would then have the means of knowing how many they are, who theyare, and of what value their opinions may be, from their personalabilities, from their knowledge, their experience, or their lead andauthority in this state. To me, who am but a plain man, the proceedinglooks a little too refined and too ingenious; it has too much the air ofa political stratagem, adopted for the sake of giving, under ahigh-sounding name, an importance to the public declarations of thisclub, which, when the matter came to be closely inspected, they did notaltogether so well deserve. It is a policy that has very much thecomplexion of a fraud. 

I flatter myself that I love a manly, moral, regulated liberty as wellas any gentleman of that society, be he who he will; and perhaps I havegiven as good proofs of my attachment to that cause, in the whole courseof my public conduct. I think I envy liberty as little as they do to anyother nation. But I cannot stand forward, and give praise or blame toanything which relates to human actions and human concerns on a simpleview of the object, as it stands stripped of every relation, in all thenakedness and solitude of metaphysical abstraction. Circumstances (whichwith some gentlemen pass for nothing) give in reality to every politicalprinciple its distinguishing color and discriminating effect. Thecircumstances are what render every civil and political schemebeneficial or noxious to mankind. Abstractedly speaking, government, aswell as liberty, is good; yet could I, in common sense, ten years ago, have felicitated France on her enjoyment of a government, (for she thenhad a government, ) without inquiry what the nature of that governmentwas, or how it was administered? Can I now congratulate the same nationupon its freedom? Is it because liberty in the abstract may be classedamongst the blessings of mankind, that I am seriously to felicitate amadman who has escaped from the protecting restraint and wholesomedarkness of his cell on his restoration to the enjoyment of light andliberty? Am I to congratulate a highwayman and murderer who has brokeprison upon the recovery of his natural rights? This would be to actover again the scene of the criminals condemned to the galleys, andtheir heroic deliverer, the metaphysic Knight of the SorrowfulCountenance. 

When I see the spirit of liberty in action, I see a strong principle atwork; and this, for a while, is all I can possibly know of it. The wildgas, the fixed air, is plainly broke loose: but we ought to suspend ourjudgment until the first effervescence is a little subsided, till theliquor is cleared, and until we see something deeper than the agitationof a troubled and frothy surface. I must be tolerably sure, before Iventure publicly to congratulate men upon a blessing, that they havereally received one. Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver;and adulation is not of more service to the people than to kings. Ishould therefore suspend my congratulations on the new liberty ofFrance, until I was informed how it had been combined with government, with public force, with the discipline and obedience of armies, with thecollection of an effective and well-distributed revenue, with moralityand religion, with solidity and property, with peace and order, withcivil and social manners. All these (in their way) are good things, too;and without them, liberty is not a benefit whilst it lasts, and is notlikely to continue long. The effect of liberty to individuals is, thatthey may do what they please: we ought to see what it will please themto do, before we risk congratulations, which may be soon turned intocomplaints. Prudence would dictate this in the case of separate, insulated, private men. But liberty, when men act in bodies, is _power_. Considerate people, before they declare themselves, will observe the usewhich is made of _power_, --and particularly of so trying a thing as_new_ power in _new_ persons, of whose principles, tempers, anddispositions they have little or no experience, and in situations wherethose who appear the most stirring in the scene may possibly not be thereal movers. 

All these considerations, however, were below the transcendental dignityof the Revolution Society. Whilst I continued in the country, fromwhence I had the honor of writing to you, I had but an imperfect idea oftheir transactions. On my coming to town, I sent for an account of theirproceedings, which had been published by their authority, containing asermon of Dr. Price, with the Duke de Rochefoucault's and the Archbishopof Aix's letter and several other documents annexed. The whole of thatpublication, with the manifest design of connecting the affairs ofFrance with those of England, by drawing us into an imitation of theconduct of the National Assembly, gave me a considerable degree ofuneasiness. The effect of that conduct upon the power, credit, prosperity, and tranquillity of France became every day more evident. The form of constitution to be settled, for its future polity, becamemore clear. We are now in a condition to discern with tolerableexactness the true nature of the object held up to our imitation. If theprudence of reserve and decorum dictates silence in some circumstances, in others prudence of a higher order may justify us in speaking ourthoughts. The beginnings of confusion with us in England are at presentfeeble enough; but with you we have seen an infancy still more feeblegrowing by moments into a strength to heap mountains upon mountains, andto wage war with Heaven itself. Whenever our neighbor's house is onfire, it cannot be amiss for the engines to play a little on our own. Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions than ruined by tooconfident a security. 

Solicitous chiefly for the peace of my own country, but by no meansunconcerned for yours, I wish to communicate more largely what was atfirst intended only for your private satisfaction. I shall still keepyour affairs in my eye, and continue to address myself to you. Indulgingmyself in the freedom of epistolary intercourse, I beg leave to throwout my thoughts and express my feelings just as they arise in my mind, with very little attention to formal method. I set out with theproceedings of the Revolution Society; but I shall not confine myself tothem. Is it possible I should? It looks to me as if I were in a greatcrisis, not of the affairs of France alone, but of all Europe, perhapsof more than Europe. All circumstances taken together, the FrenchRevolution is the most astonishing that has hitherto happened in theworld. The most wonderful things are brought about in many instances bymeans the most absurd and ridiculous, in the most ridiculous modes, andapparently by the most contemptible instruments. Everything seems out ofnature in this strange chaos of levity and ferocity, and of all sorts ofcrimes jumbled together with all sorts of follies. In viewing thismonstrous tragi-comic scene, the most opposite passions necessarilysucceed and sometimes mix with each other in the mind: alternatecontempt and indignation, alternate laughter and tears, alternate scornand horror. 

It cannot, however, be denied that to some this strange scene appearedin quite another point of view. Into them it inspired no othersentiments than those of exultation and rapture. They saw nothing inwhat has been done in France but a firm and temperate exertion offreedom, --so consistent, on the whole, with morals and with piety as tomake it deserving not only of the secular applause of dashingMachiavelian politicians, but to render it a fit theme for all thedevout effusions of sacred eloquence. 

 * * * * *

On the forenoon of the fourth of November last, Doctor Richard Price, aNon-Conforming minister of eminence, preached at the Dissentingmeeting-house of the Old Jewry, to his club or society, a veryextraordinary miscellaneous sermon, in which there are some good moraland religious sentiments, and not ill expressed, mixed up with a sort ofporridge of various political opinions and reflections: but theRevolution in France is the grand ingredient in the caldron. I considerthe address transmitted by the Revolution Society to the NationalAssembly, through Earl Stanhope, as originating in the principles ofthe sermon, and as a corollary from them. It was moved by the preacherof that discourse. It was passed by those who came reeking from theeffect of the sermon, without any censure or qualification, expressed orimplied. If, however, any of the gentlemen concerned shall wish toseparate the sermon from the resolution, they know how to acknowledgethe one and to disavow the other. They may do it: I cannot. 

For my part, I looked on that sermon as the public declaration of a manmuch connected with literary caballers and intriguing philosophers, withpolitical theologians and theological politicians, both at home andabroad. I know they set him up as a sort of oracle; because, with thebest intentions in the world, he naturally _philippizes_, and chants hisprophetic song in exact unison with their designs. 

That sermon is in a strain which I believe has not been heard in thiskingdom, in any of the pulpits which are tolerated or encouraged in it, since the year 1648, --when a predecessor of Dr. Price, the Reverend HughPeters, made the vault of the king's own chapel at St. James's ring withthe honor and privilege of the saints, who, with the "high praises ofGod in their mouths, and a _two_-edged sword in their hands, were toexecute judgment on the heathen, and punishments upon the _people_; tobind their _kings_ with chains, and their _nobles_ with fetters ofiron. "[77] Few harangues from the pulpit, except in the days of yourLeague in France, or in the days of our Solemn League and Covenant inEngland, have ever breathed less of the spirit of moderation than thislecture in the Old Jewry. Supposing, however, that something likemoderation were visible in this political sermon, yet politics and thepulpit are terms that have little agreement. No sound ought to be heardin the church but the healing voice of Christian charity. The cause ofcivil liberty and civil government gains as little as that of religionby this confusion of duties. Those who quit their proper character toassume what does not belong to them are, for the greater part, ignorantboth of the character they leave and of the character they assume. Wholly unacquainted with the world, in which they are so fond ofmeddling, and inexperienced in all its affairs, on which they pronouncewith so much confidence, they have nothing of politics but the passionsthey excite. Surely the church is a place where one day's truce ought tobe allowed to the dissensions and animosities of mankind. 

This pulpit style, revived after so long a discontinuance, had to me theair of novelty, and of a novelty not wholly without danger. I do notcharge this danger equally to every part of the discourse. The hintgiven to a noble and reverend lay-divine, who is supposed high in officein one of our universities, [78] and other lay-divines "of _rank_ andliterature, " may be proper and seasonable, though somewhat new. If thenoble _Seekers_ should find nothing to satisfy their pious fancies inthe old staple of the national Church, or in all the rich variety to befound in the well-assorted warehouses of the Dissenting congregations, Dr. Price advises them to improve upon Non-Conformity, and to set up, each of them, a separate meeting-house upon his own particularprinciples. [79] It is somewhat remarkable that this reverend divineshould be so earnest for setting up new churches, and so perfectlyindifferent concerning the doctrine which may be taught in them. Hiszeal is of a curious character. It is not for the propagation of his ownopinions, but of any opinions. It is not for the diffusion of truth, butfor the spreading of contradiction. Let the noble teachers but dissent, it is no matter from whom or from what. This great point once secured, it is taken for granted their religion will be rational and manly. Idoubt whether religion would reap all the benefits which the calculatingdivine computes from this "great company of great preachers. " It wouldcertainly be a valuable addition of nondescripts to the ample collectionof known classes, genera, and species, which at present beautify the_hortus siccus_ of Dissent. A sermon from a noble duke, or a noblemarquis, or a noble earl, or baron bold, would certainly increase anddiversify the amusements of this town, which begins to grow satiatedwith the uniform round of its vapid dissipations. I should onlystipulate that these new _Mess-Johns_ in robes and coronets should keepsome sort of bounds in the democratic and levelling principles which areexpected from their titled pulpits. The new evangelists will, I daresay, disappoint the hopes that are conceived of them. They will notbecome, literally as well as figuratively, polemic divines, --nor bedisposed so to drill their congregations, that they may, as in formerblessed times, preach their doctrines to regiments of dragoons and corpsof infantry and artillery. Such arrangements, however favorable to thecause of compulsory freedom, civil and religious, may not be equallyconducive to the national tranquillity. These few restrictions I hopeare no great stretches of intolerance, no very violent exertions ofdespotism. 

But I may say of our preacher, "_Utinam nugis tota illa dedisset ettempora sævitiæ_. " All things in this his fulminating bull are not of soinnoxious a tendency. His doctrines affect our Constitution in its vitalparts. He tells the Revolution Society, in this political sermon, thathis Majesty "is almost the _only_ lawful king in the world, because the_only_ one who owes his crown to _the choice of his people_. " As to thekings of _the world_, all of whom (except one) this arch-pontiff of the_rights of men_, with all the plenitude and with more than the boldnessof the Papal deposing power in its meridian fervor of the twelfthcentury, puts into one sweeping clause of ban and anathema, andproclaims usurpers by circles of longitude and latitude over the wholeglobe, it behooves them to consider how they admit into theirterritories these apostolic missionaries, who are to tell their subjectsthey are not lawful kings. That is their concern. It is ours, as adomestic interest of some moment, seriously to consider the solidity ofthe _only_ principle upon which these gentlemen acknowledge a king ofGreat Britain to be entitled to their allegiance. 

This doctrine, as applied to the prince now on the British throne, either is nonsense, and therefore neither true nor false, or it affirmsa most unfounded, dangerous, illegal, and unconstitutional position. According to this spiritual doctor of politics, if his Majesty does notowe his crown to the choice of his people, he is no _lawful_ king. Nownothing can be more untrue than that the crown of this kingdom is soheld by his Majesty. Therefore, if you follow their rule, the king ofGreat Britain, who most certainly does not owe his high office to anyform of popular election, is in no respect better than the rest of thegang of usurpers, who reign, or rather rob, all over the face of thisour miserable world, without any sort of right or title to theallegiance of their people. The policy of this general doctrine, soqualified, is evident enough. The propagators of this political gospelare in hopes their abstract principle (their principle that a popularchoice is necessary to the legal existence of the sovereign magistracy)would be overlooked, whilst the king of Great Britain was not affectedby it. In the mean time the ears of their congregations would begradually habituated to it, as if it were a first principle admittedwithout dispute. For the present it would only operate as a theory, pickled in the preserving juices of pulpit eloquence, and laid by forfuture use. _Condo et compono quæ mox depromere passim_. By this policy, whilst our government is soothed with a reservation in its favor, towhich it has no claim, the security which it has in common with allgovernments, so far as opinion is security, is taken away. 

Thus these politicians proceed, whilst little notice is taken of theirdoctrines; but when they come to be examined upon the plain meaning oftheir words and the direct tendency of their doctrines, thenequivocations and slippery constructions come into play. When they saythe king owes his crown to the choice of his people, and is thereforethe only lawful sovereign in the world, they will perhaps tell us theymean to say no more than that some of the king's predecessors have beencalled to the throne by some sort of choice, and therefore he owes hiscrown to the choice of his people. Thus, by a miserable subterfuge, theyhope to render their proposition safe by rendering it nugatory. They arewelcome to the asylum they seek for their offence, since they takerefuge in their folly. For, if you admit this interpretation, how doestheir idea of election differ from our idea of inheritance? And how doesthe settlement of the crown in the Brunswick line, derived from Jamesthe First, come to legalize our monarchy rather than that of any of theneighboring countries? At some time or other, to be sure, all thebeginners of dynasties were chosen by those who called them to govern. There is ground enough for the opinion that all the kingdoms of Europewere at a remote period elective, with more or fewer limitations in theobjects of choice. But whatever kings might have been here or elsewherea thousand years ago, or in whatever manner the ruling dynasties ofEngland or France may have begun, the king of Great Britain is at thisday king by a fixed rule of succession, according to the laws of hiscountry; and whilst the legal conditions of the compact of sovereigntyare performed by him, (as they are performed, ) he holds his crown incontempt of the choice of the Revolution Society, who have not a singlevote for a king amongst them, either individually or collectively:though I make no doubt they would soon erect themselves into anelectoral college, if things were ripe to give effect to their claim. His Majesty's heirs and successors, each in his time and order, willcome to the crown with the same contempt of their choice with which hisMajesty has succeeded to that he wears. 

Whatever may be the success of evasion in explaining away the grosserror _fact_, which supposes that his Majesty (though he holds it inconcurrence with the wishes) owes his crown to the choice of his people, yet nothing can evade their full, explicit declaration concerning theprinciple of a right in the people to choose, --which right is directlymaintained, and tenaciously adhered to. All the oblique insinuationsconcerning election bottom in this proposition, and are referable to it. Lest the foundation of the king's exclusive legal title should pass fora mere rant of adulatory freedom, the political divine proceedsdogmatically to assert, [80] that, by the principles of the Revolution, the people of England have acquired three fundamental rights, all ofwhich, with him, compose one system, and lie together in one shortsentence: namely, that we have acquired a right

1. "To choose our own governors. "

2. "To cashier them for misconduct. "

3. "To frame a government for ourselves. "

This new, and hitherto unheard-of bill of rights, though made in thename of the whole people, belongs to those gentlemen and their factiononly. The body of the people of England have no share in it. Theyutterly disclaim it. They will resist the practical assertion of it withtheir lives and fortunes. They are bound to do so by the laws of theircountry, made at the time of that very Revolution which is appealed toin favor of the fictitious rights claimed by the society which abusesits name. 

These gentlemen of the Old Jewry, in all their reasonings on theRevolution of 1688, have a revolution which happened in England aboutforty years before, and the late French Revolution, so much before theireyes and in their hearts, that they are constantly confounding all thethree together. It is necessary that we should separate what theyconfound. We must recall their erring fancies to the _acts_ of theRevolution which we revere, for the discovery of its true _principles_. If the _principles_ of the Revolution of 1688 are anywhere to be found, it is in the statute called the _Declaration of Right_. In that mostwise, sober, and considerate declaration, drawn up by great lawyers andgreat statesmen, and not by warm and inexperienced enthusiasts, not oneword is said, nor one suggestion made, of a general right "to choose ourown _governors_, to cashier them for misconduct, and to _form_ agovernment for _ourselves_. "

This Declaration of Right (the act of the 1st of William and Mary, sess. 2, ch. 2) is the corner-stone of our Constitution, as reinforced, explained, improved, and in its fundamental principles forever settled. It is called "An act for declaring the rights and liberties of thesubject, and for _settling_ the _succession_ of the crown. " You willobserve that these rights and this succession are declared in one body, and bound indissolubly together. 

A few years after this period, a second opportunity offered forasserting a right of election to the crown. On the prospect of a totalfailure of issue from King William, and from the princess, afterwardsQueen Anne, the consideration of the settlement of the Crown, and of afurther security for the liberties of the people, again came before thelegislature. Did they this second time make any provision for legalizingthe crown on the spurious Revolution principles of the Old Jewry? No. They followed the principles which prevailed in the Declaration ofRight; indicating with more precision the persons who were to inherit inthe Protestant line. This act also incorporated, by the same policy, ourliberties and an hereditary succession in the same act. Instead of aright to choose our own governors, they declared that the _succession_in that line (the Protestant line drawn from James the First) wasabsolutely necessary "for the peace, quiet, and security of the realm, "and that it was equally urgent on them "to maintain a _certainty in thesuccession_ thereof, to which the subjects may safely have recourse fortheir protection. " Both these acts, in which are heard the unerring, unambiguous oracles of Revolution policy, instead of countenancing thedelusive gypsy predictions of a "right to choose our governors, " proveto a demonstration how totally adverse the wisdom of the nation was fromturning a case of necessity into a rule of law. 

Unquestionably there was at the Revolution, in the person of KingWilliam, a small and a temporary deviation from the strict order of aregular hereditary succession; but it is against all genuine principlesof jurisprudence to draw a principle from a law made in a special caseand regarding an individual person. _Privilegium non transit inexemplum_. If ever there was a time favorable for establishing theprinciple that a king of popular choice was the only legal king, withoutall doubt it was at the Revolution. Its not being done at that time isa proof that the nation was of opinion it ought not to be done at anytime. There is no person so completely ignorant of our history as not toknow that the majority in Parliament, of both parties, were so littledisposed to anything resembling that principle, that at first they weredetermined to place the vacant crown, not on the head of the Prince ofOrange, but on that of his wife, Mary, daughter of King James, theeldest born of the issue of that king, which they acknowledged asundoubtedly his. It would be to repeat a very trite story, to recall toyour memory all those circumstances which demonstrated that theiraccepting King William was not properly a _choice_; but to all those whodid not wish in effect to recall King James, or to deluge their countryin blood, and again to bring their religion, laws, and liberties intothe peril they had just escaped, it was an act of _necessity_, in thestrictest moral sense in which necessity can be taken. 

In the very act in which, for a time, and in a single case, Parliamentdeparted from the strict order of inheritance, in favor of a prince who, though not next, was, however, very near in the line of succession, itis curious to observe how Lord Somers, who drew the bill called theDeclaration of Right, has comported himself on that delicate occasion. It is curious to observe with what address this temporary solution ofcontinuity is kept from the eye; whilst all that could be found in thisact of necessity to countenance the idea of an hereditary succession isbrought forward, and fostered, and made the most of, by this great man, and by the legislature who followed him. Quitting the dry, imperativestyle of an act of Parliament, he makes the Lords and Commons fall to apious legislative ejaculation, and declare that they consider it "as amarvellous providence, and merciful goodness of God to this nation, topreserve their said Majesties' _royal_ persons most happily to reignover us _on the throne of their ancestors_, for which, from the bottomof their hearts, they return their humblest thanks and praises. " Thelegislature plainly had in view the Act of Recognition of the first ofQueen Elizabeth, chap. 3rd, and of that of James the First, chap. 1st, both acts strongly declaratory of the inheritable nature of the crown;and in many parts they follow, with a nearly literal precision, thewords, and even the form of thanksgiving which is found in these olddeclaratory statutes. 

The two Houses, in the act of King William, did not thank God that theyhad found a fair opportunity to assert a right to choose their owngovernors, much less to make an election the _only lawful_ title to thecrown. Their having been in a condition to avoid the very appearance ofit, as much as possible, was by them considered as a providentialescape. They threw a politic, well-wrought veil over every circumstancetending to weaken the rights which in the meliorated order of successionthey meant to perpetuate, or which might furnish a precedent for anyfuture departure from what they had then settled forever. Accordingly, that they might not relax the nerves of their monarchy, and that theymight preserve a close conformity to the practice of their ancestors, asit appeared in the declaratory statutes of Queen Mary[81] and QueenElizabeth, in the next clause they vest, by recognition, in theirMajesties _all_ the legal prerogatives of the crown, declaring "that inthem they are most _fully_, rightfully, and _entirely_ invested, incorporated, united, and annexed. " In the clause which follows, forpreventing questions, by reason of any pretended titles to the crown, they declare (observing also in this the traditionary language, alongwith the traditionary policy of the nation, and repeating as from arubric the language of the preceding acts of Elizabeth and James) thaton the preserving "a _certainty_ in the SUCCESSION thereof the unity, peace, and tranquillity of this nation doth, under God, wholly depend. "

They knew that a doubtful title of succession would but too muchresemble an election, and that an election would be utterly destructiveof the "unity, peace, and tranquillity of this nation, " which theythought to be considerations of some moment. To provide for theseobjects, and therefore to exclude forever the Old Jewry doctrine of "aright to choose our own governors, " they follow with a clause containinga most solemn pledge, taken from the preceding act of QueenElizabeth, --as solemn a pledge as ever was or can be given in favor ofan hereditary succession, and as solemn a renunciation as could be madeof the principles by this society imputed to them:--"The Lords Spiritualand Temporal, and Commons, do, in the name of all the people aforesaid, most humbly and faithfully submit _themselves, their heirs, andposterities forever_; and do faithfully promise that they will stand to, maintain, and defend their said Majesties, and also the _limitation ofthe crown_, herein specified and contained, to the utmost of theirpowers, " &c. , &c. 

So far is it from being true that we acquired a right by the Revolutionto elect our kings, that, if we had possessed it before, the Englishnation did at that time most solemnly renounce and abdicate it, forthemselves, and for all their posterity forever. These gentlemen mayvalue themselves as much as they please on their Whig principles; but Inever desire to be thought a better Whig than Lord Somers, or tounderstand the principles of the Revolution better than those by whom itwas brought about, or to read in the Declaration of Right any mysteriesunknown to those whose penetrating style has engraved in our ordinances, and in our hearts, the words and spirit of that immortal law. 

It is true, that, aided with the powers derived from force andopportunity, the nation was at that time, in some sense, free to takewhat course it pleased for filling the throne, --but only free to do soupon the same grounds on which they might have wholly abolished theirmonarchy, and every other part of their Constitution. However, they didnot think such bold changes within their commission. It is, indeed, difficult, perhaps impossible, to give limits to the mere _abstract_competence of the supreme power, such as was exercised by Parliament atthat time; but the limits of a _moral_ competence, subjecting, even inpowers more indisputably sovereign, occasional will to permanent reason, and to the steady maxims of faith, justice, and fixed fundamentalpolicy, are perfectly intelligible, and perfectly binding upon those whoexercise any authority, under any name, or under any title, in thestate. The House of Lords, for instance, is not morally competent todissolve the House of Commons, --no, nor even to dissolve itself, nor toabdicate, if it would, its portion in the legislature of the kingdom. Though a king may abdicate for his own person, he cannot abdicate forthe monarchy. By as strong, or by a stronger reason, the House ofCommons cannot renounce its share of authority. The engagement and pactof society, which generally goes by the name of the Constitution, forbids such invasion and such surrender. The constituent parts of astate are obliged to hold their public faith with each other, and withall those who derive any serious interest under their engagements, asmuch as the whole state is bound to keep its faith with separatecommunities: otherwise, competence and power would soon be confounded, and no law be left but the will of a prevailing force. On thisprinciple, the succession of the crown has always been what it now is, an hereditary succession by law: in the old line it was a succession bythe Common Law; in the new by the statute law, operating on theprinciples of the Common Law, not changing the substance, but regulatingthe mode and describing the persons. Both these descriptions of law areof the same force, and are derived from an equal authority, emanatingfrom the common agreement and original compact of the state, _communisponsione reipublicæ_, and as such are equally binding on king, andpeople too, as long as the terms are observed, and they continue thesame body politic. 

It is far from impossible to reconcile, if we do not suffer ourselves tobe entangled in the mazes of metaphysic sophistry, the use both of afixed rule and an occasional deviation, --the sacredness of an hereditaryprinciple of succession in our government with a power of change in itsapplication in cases of extreme emergency. Even in that extremity, (ifwe take the measure of our rights by our exercise of them at theRevolution, ) the change is to be confined to the peccant part only, --tothe part which produced the necessary deviation; and even then it is tobe effected without a decomposition of the whole civil and politicalmass, for the purpose of originating a new civil order out of the firstelements of society. 

A state without the means of some change is without the means of itsconservation. Without such means it might even risk the loss of thatpart of the Constitution which it wished the most religiously topreserve. The two principles of conservation and correction operatedstrongly at the two critical periods of the Restoration and Revolution, when England found itself without a king. At both those periods thenation had lost the bond of union in their ancient edifice: they didnot, however, dissolve the whole fabric. On the contrary, in both casesthey regenerated the deficient part of the old Constitution through theparts which were not impaired. They kept these old parts exactly as theywere, that the part recovered might be suited to them. They acted by theancient organized states in the shape of their old organization, and notby the organic _moleculæ_ of a disbanded people. At no time, perhaps, did the sovereign legislature manifest a more tender regard to thatfundamental principle of British constitutional policy than at the timeof the Revolution, when it deviated from the direct line of hereditarysuccession. The crown was carried somewhat out of the line in which ithad before moved; but the new line was derived from the same stock. Itwas still a line of hereditary descent; still an hereditary descent inthe same blood, though an hereditary descent qualified withProtestantism. When the legislature altered the direction, but kept theprinciple, they showed that they held it inviolable. 

On this principle, the law of inheritance had admitted some amendment inthe old time, and long before the era of the Revolution. Some time afterthe Conquest great questions arose upon the legal principles ofhereditary descent. It became a matter of doubt whether the heir _percapita_ or the heir _per stirpes_ was to succeed; but whether the heir_per capita_ gave way when the heirdom _per stirpes_ took place, or theCatholic heir when the Protestant was preferred, the inheritableprinciple survived with a sort of immortality through alltransmigrations, --

 Multosque per annos Stat fortuna domûs, et avi numerantur avorum. 

This is the spirit of our Constitution, not only in its settled course, but in all its revolutions. Whoever came in, or however he came in, whether he obtained the crown by law or by force, the hereditarysuccession was either continued or adopted. 

The gentlemen of the Society for Revolutions see nothing in that of 1688but the deviation from the Constitution; and they take the deviationfrom the principle for the principle. They have little regard to theobvious consequences of their doctrine, though they may see that itleaves positive authority in very few of the positive institutions ofthis country. When such an unwarrantable maxim is once established, thatno throne is lawful but the elective, no one act of the princes whopreceded this era of fictitious election can be valid. Do thesetheorists mean to imitate some of their predecessors, who dragged thebodies of our ancient sovereigns out of the quiet of their tombs? Dothey mean to attaint and disable backwards all the kings that havereigned before the Revolution, and consequently to stain the throne ofEngland with the blot of a continual usurpation? Do they mean toinvalidate, annul, or to call into question, together with the titles ofthe whole line of our kings, that great body of our statute law whichpassed under those whom they treat as usurpers? to annul laws ofinestimable value to our liberties, --of as great value at least as anywhich have passed at or since the period of the Revolution? If kings whodid not owe their crown to the choice of their people had no title tomake laws, what will become of the statute _De tallagio non concedendo?_of the _Petition of Right?_ of the act of _Habeas Corpus?_ Do these newdoctors of the rights of men presume to assert that King James theSecond, who came to the crown as next of blood, according to the rulesof a then unqualified succession, was not to all intents and purposes alawful king of England, before he had done any of those acts which werejustly construed into an abdication of his crown? If he was not, muchtrouble in Parliament might have been saved at the period thesegentlemen commemorate. But King James was a bad king with a good title, and not an usurper. The princes who succeeded according to the act ofParliament which settled the crown on the Electress Sophia and on herdescendants, being Protestants, came in as much by a title ofinheritance as King James did. He came in according to the law, as itstood at his accession to the crown; and the princes of the House ofBrunswick came to the inheritance of the crown, not by election, but bythe law, as it stood at their several accessions, of Protestant descentand inheritance, as I hope I have shown sufficiently. 

The law by which this royal family is specifically destined to thesuccession is the act of the 12th and 13th of King William. The terms ofthis act bind "us, and our _heirs_, and our _posterity_, to them, their_heirs_, and their _posterity_, " being Protestants, to the end of time, in the same words as the Declaration of Right had bound us to the heirsof King William and Queen Mary. It therefore secures both an hereditarycrown and an hereditary allegiance. On what ground, except theconstitutional policy of forming an establishment to secure that kind ofsuccession which is to preclude a choice of the people forever, couldthe legislature have fastidiously rejected the fair and abundant choicewhich our own country presented to them, and searched in strange landsfor a foreign princess, from whose womb the line of our future rulerswere to derive their title to govern millions of men through a series ofages?

The Princess Sophia was named in the act of settlement of the 12th and13th of King William, for a _stock_ and root of _inheritance_ to ourkings, and not for her merits as a temporary administratrix of a powerwhich she might not, and in fact did not, herself ever exercise. She wasadopted for one reason, and for one only, --because, says the act, "themost excellent Princess Sophia, Electress and Duchess Dowager ofHanover, is _daughter_ of the most excellent Princess Elizabeth, lateQueen of Bohemia, _daughter_ of our late _sovereign lord_ King James theFirst, of happy memory, and is hereby declared to be the next in_succession_ in the Protestant line, " &c. , &c. ; "and the crown shallcontinue to the _heirs_ of her body, being Protestants. " This limitationwas made by Parliament, that through the Princess Sophia an inheritableline not only was to be continued in future, but (what they thought verymaterial) that through her it was to be connected with the old stock ofinheritance in King James the First; in order that the monarchy mightpreserve an unbroken unity through all ages, and might be preserved(with safety to our religion) in the old approved mode by descent, inwhich, if our liberties had been once endangered, they had often, through all storms and struggles of prerogative and privilege, beenpreserved. They did well. No experience has taught us that in any othercourse or method than that of an _hereditary crown_ our liberties can beregularly perpetuated and preserved sacred as our _hereditary right_. Anirregular, convulsive movement may be necessary to throw off anirregular, convulsive disease. But the course of succession is thehealthy habit of the British Constitution. Was it that the legislaturewanted, at the act for the limitation of the crown in the Hanoverianline, drawn through the female descendants of James the First, a duesense of the inconveniences of having two or three, or possibly more, foreigners in succession to the British throne? No!--they had a duesense of the evils which might happen from such foreign rule, and morethan a due sense of them. But a more decisive proof cannot be given ofthe full conviction of the British nation that the principles of theRevolution did not authorize them to elect kings at their pleasure, andwithout any attention to the ancient fundamental principles of ourgovernment, than their continuing to adopt a plan of hereditaryProtestant succession in the old line, with all the dangers and all theinconveniences of its being a foreign line full before their eyes, andoperating with the utmost force upon their minds. 

A few years ago I should be ashamed to overload a matter so capable ofsupporting itself by the then unnecessary support of any argument; butthis seditious, unconstitutional doctrine is now publicly taught, avowed, and printed. The dislike I feel to revolutions, the signals forwhich have so often been given from pulpits, --the spirit of change thatis gone abroad, --the total contempt which prevails with you, and maycome to prevail with us, of all ancient institutions, when set inopposition to a present sense of convenience, or to the bent of apresent inclination, --all these considerations make it not unadvisable, in my opinion, to call back our attention to the true principles of ourown domestic laws, that you, my French friend, should begin to know, andthat we should continue to cherish them. We ought not, on either side ofthe water, to suffer ourselves to be imposed upon by the counterfeitwares which some persons, by a double fraud, export to you in illicitbottoms, as raw commodities of British growth, though wholly alien toour soil, in order afterwards to smuggle them back again into thiscountry, manufactured after the newest Paris fashion of an improvedliberty. 

The people of England will not ape the fashions they have never tried, nor go back to those which they have found mischievous on trial. Theylook upon the legal hereditary succession of their crown as among theirrights, not as among their wrongs, --as a benefit, not as agrievance, --as a security for their liberty, not as a badge ofservitude. They look on the frame of their commonwealth, _such as itstands_, to be of inestimable value; and they conceive the undisturbedsuccession of the crown to be a pledge of the stability and perpetuityof all the other members of our Constitution. 

I shall beg leave, before I go any further, to take notice of somepaltry artifices which the abettors of election as the only lawful titleto the crown are ready to employ, in order to render the support of thejust principles of our Constitution a task somewhat invidious. Thesesophisters substitute a fictitious cause, and feigned personages, inwhose favor they suppose you engaged, whenever you defend theinheritable nature of the crown. It is common with them to dispute as ifthey were in a conflict with some of those exploded fanatics of slaverywho formerly maintained, what I believe no creature now maintains, "thatthe crown is held by divine, hereditary, and indefeasible right. " Theseold fanatics of single arbitrary power dogmatized as if hereditaryroyalty was the only lawful government in the world, --just as our newfanatics of popular arbitrary power maintain that a popular election isthe sole lawful source of authority. The old prerogative enthusiasts, itis true, did speculate foolishly, and perhaps impiously too, as ifmonarchy had more of a divine sanction than any other mode ofgovernment, --and as if a right to govern by inheritance were instrictness _indefeasible_ in every person who should be found in thesuccession to a throne, and under every circumstance, which no civil orpolitical right can be. But an absurd opinion concerning the king'shereditary right to the crown does not prejudice one that is rational, and bottomed upon solid principles of law and policy. If all the absurdtheories of lawyers and divines were to vitiate the objects in whichthey are conversant, we should have no law and no religion left in theworld. But an absurd theory on one side of a question forms nojustification for alleging a false fact or promulgating mischievousmaxims on the other. 

 * * * * *

The second claim of the Revolution Society is "a right of cashieringtheir governors for _misconduct_. " Perhaps the apprehensions ourancestors entertained of forming such a precedent as that "of cashieringfor misconduct" was the cause that the declaration of the act whichimplied the abdication of King James was, if it had any fault, rathertoo guarded and too circumstantial. [82] But all this guard, and all thisaccumulation of circumstances, serves to show the spirit of cautionwhich predominated in the national councils, in a situation in which menirritated by oppression, and elevated by a triumph over it, are apt toabandon themselves to violent and extreme courses; it shows the anxietyof the great men who influenced the conduct of affairs at that greatevent to make the Revolution a parent of settlement, and not a nurseryof future revolutions. 

No government could stand a moment, if it could be blown down withanything so loose and indefinite as an opinion of "_misconduct_. " Theywho led at the Revolution grounded their virtual abdication of KingJames upon no such light and uncertain principle. They charged him withnothing less than a design, confirmed by a multitude of illegal overtacts, to _subvert the Protestant Church and State_, and their_fundamental_, unquestionable laws and liberties: they charged him withhaving broken the _original contrast_ between king and people. This wasmore than _misconduct_. A grave and overruling necessity obliged them totake the step they took, and took with infinite reluctance, as underthat most rigorous of all laws. Their trust for the future preservationof the Constitution was not in future revolutions. The grand policy ofall their regulations was to render it almost impracticable for anyfuture sovereign to compel the states of the kingdom to have againrecourse to those violent remedies. They left the crown, what in the eyeand estimation of law it had ever been, perfectly irresponsible. Inorder to lighten the crown still further, they aggravated responsibilityon ministers of state. By the statute of the first of King William, sess. 2d, called "_the act for declaring the rights and liberties of thesubject, and for settling the succession of the crown_, " they enactedthat the ministers should serve the crown on the terms of thatdeclaration. They secured soon after the _frequent meetings ofParliament_, by which the whole government would be under the constantinspection and active control of the popular representative and of themagnates of the kingdom. In the next great constitutional act, that ofthe 12th and 13th of King William, for the further limitation of thecrown, and _better_ securing the rights and liberties of the subject, they provided "that no pardon under the great seal of England should bepleadable to an impeachment by the Commons in Parliament. " The rule laiddown for government in the Declaration of Right, the constant inspectionof Parliament, the practical claim of impeachment, they thoughtinfinitely a better security not only for their constitutional liberty, but against the vices of administration, than the reservation of a rightso difficult in the practice, so uncertain in the issue, and often somischievous in the consequences, as that "cashiering their governors. "

Dr. Price, in this sermon, [83] condemns, very properly, the practice ofgross adulatory addresses to kings. Instead of this fulsome style, heproposes that his Majesty should be told, on occasions ofcongratulation, that "he is to consider himself as more properly theservant than the sovereign of his people. " For a compliment, this newform of address does not seem to be very soothing. Those who areservants in name, as well as in effect, do not like to be told of theirsituation, their duty, and their obligations. The slave in the old playtells his master, "_Hæc commemeratio est quasi exprobratio_. " It is notpleasant as compliment; it is not wholesome as instruction. After all, if the king were to bring himself to echo this new kind of address, toadopt it in terms, and even to take the appellation of Servant of thePeople as his royal style, how either he or we should be much mended byit I cannot imagine. I have seen very assuming letters signed, "Yourmost obedient, humble servant. " The proudest domination that ever wasendured on earth took a title of still greater humility than that whichis now proposed for sovereigns by the Apostle of Liberty. Kings andnations were trampled upon by the foot of one calling himself "TheServant of Servants"; and mandates for deposing sovereigns were sealedwith the signet of "The Fisherman. "

I should have considered all this as no more than a sort of flippant, vain discourse, in which, as in an unsavory fume, several persons sufferthe spirit of liberty to evaporate, if it were not plainly in support ofthe idea, and a part of the scheme, of "cashiering kings formisconduct. " In that light it is worth some observation. 

Kings, in one sense, are undoubtedly the servants of the people, becausetheir power has no other rational end than that of the generaladvantage; but it is not true that they are, in the ordinary sense, (byour Constitution, at least, ) anything like servants, --the essence ofwhose situation is to obey the commands of some other, and to beremovable at pleasure. But the king of Great Britain obeys no otherperson; all other persons are individually, and collectively too, underhim, and owe to him a legal obedience. The law, which knows neither toflatter nor to insult, calls this high-magistrate, not our servant, asthis humble divine calls him, but "_our sovereign lord the king_"; andwe, on our parts, have learned to speak only the primitive language ofthe law, and not the confused jargon of their Babylonian pulpits. 

As he is not to obey us, but we are to obey the law in him, ourConstitution has made no sort of provision towards rendering him, as aservant, in any degree responsible. Our Constitution knows nothing of amagistrate like the _Justicia_ of Aragon, --nor of any court legallyappointed, nor of any process legally settled, for submitting the kingto the responsibility belonging to all servants. In this he is notdistinguished from the commons and the lords, who, in their severalpublic capacities, can never be called to an account for their conduct;although the Revolution Society chooses to assert, in direct oppositionto one of the wisest and most beautiful parts of our Constitution, that"a king is no more than the first servant of the public, created by it, _and responsible to it_. "

Ill would our ancestors at the Revolution have deserved their fame forwisdom, if they had found no security for their freedom, but inrendering their government feeble in its operations and precarious inits tenure, --if they had been able to contrive no better remedy againstarbitrary power than civil confusion. Let these gentlemen state who that_representative_ public is to whom they will affirm the king, as aservant, to be responsible. It will be then time enough for me toproduce to them the positive statute law which affirms that he is not. 

The ceremony of cashiering kings, of which these gentlemen talk so muchat their ease, can rarely, if ever, be performed without force. It thenbecomes a case of war, and not of constitution. Laws are commanded tohold their tongues amongst arms; and tribunals fall to the ground withthe peace they are no longer able to uphold. The Revolution of 1688 wasobtained by a just war, in the only case in which any war, and much morea civil war, can be just. "_Justa bella quibus_ NECESSARIA. " Thequestion of dethroning, or, if these gentlemen, like the phrase better, "cashiering kings, " will always be, as it has always been, anextraordinary question of state, and wholly out of the law: a question(like all other questions of state) of dispositions, and of means, andof probable consequences, rather than of positive rights. As it was notmade for common abuses, so it is not to be agitated by common minds. Thespeculative line of demarcation, where obedience ought to end andresistance must begin, is faint, obscure, and not easily definable. Itis not a single act or a single event which determines it. Governmentsmust be abused and deranged indeed, before it can be thought of; and theprospect of the future must be as bad as the experience of the past. When things are in that lamentable condition, the nature of the diseaseis to indicate the remedy to those whom Nature has qualified toadminister in extremities this critical, ambiguous, bitter potion to adistempered state. Times and occasions and provocations will teach theirown lessons. The wise will determine from the gravity of the case; theirritable, from sensibility to oppression; the high-minded, from disdainand indignation at abusive power in unworthy hands; the brave and bold, from the love of honorable danger in a generous cause: but, with orwithout right, a revolution will be the very last resource of thethinking and the good. 

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The third head of right asserted by the pulpit of the Old Jewry, namely, the "right to form a government for ourselves, " has, at least, as littlecountenance from anything done at the Revolution, either in precedent orprinciple, as the two first of their claims. The Revolution was made topreserve our _ancient_ indisputable laws and liberties, and that_ancient_ constitution of government which is our only security for lawand liberty. If you are desirous of knowing the spirit of ourConstitution, and the policy which predominated in that great periodwhich has secured it to this hour, pray look for both in our histories, in our records, in our acts of Parliament and journals of Parliament, and not in the sermons of the Old Jewry, and the after-dinner toasts ofthe Revolution Society. In the former you will find other ideas andanother language. Such a claim is as ill-suited to our temper and wishesas it is unsupported by any appearance of authority. The very idea ofthe fabrication of a new government is enough to fill us with disgustand horror. We wished at the period of the Revolution, and do now wish, to derive all we possess as _an inheritance from our forefathers_. Uponthat body and stock of inheritance we have taken care not to inoculateany scion alien to the nature of the original plant. All thereformations we have hitherto made have proceeded upon the principle ofreference to antiquity; and I hope, nay, I am persuaded, that all thosewhich possibly may be made hereafter will be carefully formed uponanalogical precedent, authority, and example. 

Our oldest reformation is that of Magna Charta. You will see that SirEdward Coke, that great oracle of our law, and indeed all the great menwho follow him, to Blackstone, [84] are industrious to prove the pedigreeof our liberties. They endeavor to prove that the ancient charter, theMagna Charta of King John, was connected with another positive charterfrom Henry the First, and that both the one and the other were nothingmore than a reaffirmance of the still more ancient standing law of thekingdom. In the matter of fact, for the greater part, these authorsappear to be in the right; perhaps not always: but if the lawyersmistake in some particulars, it proves my position still the morestrongly; because it demonstrates the powerful prepossession towardsantiquity with which the minds of all our lawyers and legislators, andof all the people whom they wish to influence, have been always filled, and the stationary policy of this kingdom in considering their mostsacred rights and franchises as an _inheritance_. 

In the famous law of the 3rd of Charles the First, called the _Petitionof Right, _ the Parliament says to the king, "Your subjects have_inherited_ this freedom": claiming their franchises, not on abstractprinciples, "as the rights of men, " but as the rights of Englishmen, andas a patrimony derived from their forefathers. Selden, and the otherprofoundly learned men who drew this Petition of Right, were as wellacquainted, at least, with all the general theories concerning the"rights of men" as any of the discoursers in our pulpits or on yourtribune: full as well as Dr. Price, or as the Abbé Sièyes. But, forreasons worthy of that practical wisdom which superseded their theoreticscience, they preferred this positive, recorded, _hereditary_ title toall which can be dear to the man and the citizen to that vague, speculative right which exposed their sure inheritance to be scrambledfor and torn to pieces by every wild, litigious spirit. 

The same policy pervades all the laws which have since been made for thepreservation of our liberties. In the 1st of William and Mary, in thefamous statute called the Declaration of Right, the two Houses utter nota syllable of "a right to frame a government for themselves. " You willsee that their whole care was to secure the religion, laws, andliberties that had been long possessed, and had been lately endangered. "Taking[85] into their most serious consideration the _best_ means formaking such an establishment that their religion, laws, and libertiesmight not be in danger of being again subverted, " they auspicate alltheir proceedings by stating as some of those _best_ means, "in the_first place_, " to do "as their _ancestors in like cases have usually_done for vindicating their _ancient_ rights and liberties, to_declare_";--and then they pray the king and queen "that it may be_declared_ and enacted that _all and singular_ the rights and liberties_asserted and declared_ are the true _ancient_ and indubitable rightsand liberties of the people of this kingdom. "

You will observe, that, from Magna Charta to the Declaration of Right, it has been the uniform policy of our Constitution to claim and assertour liberties as an _entailed inheritance_ derived to us from ourforefathers, and to be transmitted to our posterity, --as an estatespecially belonging to the people of this kingdom, without any referencewhatever to any other more general or prior right. By this means ourConstitution preserves an unity in so great a diversity of its parts. Wehave an inheritable crown, an inheritable peerage, and a House ofCommons and a people inheriting privileges, franchises, and libertiesfrom a long line of ancestors. 

This policy appears to me to be the result of profound reflection, --orrather the happy effect of following Nature, which is wisdom withoutreflection, and above it. A spirit of innovation is generally the resultof a selfish temper and confined views. People will not look forward toposterity, who never look backward to their ancestors. Besides, thepeople of England well know that the idea of inheritance furnishes asure principle of conservation, and a sure principle of transmission, without at all excluding a principle of improvement. It leavesacquisition free; but it secures what it acquires. Whatever advantagesare obtained by a state proceeding on these maxims are locked fast as ina sort of family settlement, grasped as in a kind of mortmain forever. By a constitutional policy working after the pattern of Nature, wereceive, we hold, we transmit our government and our privileges, in thesame manner in which we enjoy and transmit our property and our lives. The institutions of policy, the goods of fortune, the gifts ofProvidence, are handed down to us, and from us, in the same course andorder. Our political system is placed in a just correspondence andsymmetry with the order of the world, and with the mode of existencedecreed to a permanent body composed of transitory parts, --wherein, bythe disposition of a stupendous wisdom, moulding together the greatmysterious incorporation of the human race, the whole, at one time, isnever old or middle-aged or young, but, in a condition of unchangeableconstancy, moves on through the varied tenor of perpetual decay, fall, renovation, and progression. Thus, by preserving the method of Nature inthe conduct of the state, in what we improve we are never wholly new, inwhat we retain we are never wholly obsolete. By adhering in this mannerand on those principles to our forefathers, we are guided, not by thesuperstition of antiquarians, but by the spirit of philosophic analogy. In this choice of inheritance we have given to our frame of polity theimage of a relation in blood: binding up the Constitution of our countrywith our dearest domestic ties; adopting our fundamental laws into thebosom of our family affections; keeping inseparable, and cherishing withthe warmth of all their combined and mutually reflected charities, ourstate, our hearths, our sepulchres, and our altars. 

Through the same plan of a conformity to Nature in our artificialinstitutions, and by calling in the aid of her unerring and powerfulinstincts to fortify the fallible and feeble contrivances of our reason, we have derived several other, and those no small benefits, fromconsidering our liberties in the light of an inheritance. Always actingas if in the presence of canonized forefathers, the spirit of freedom, leading in itself to misrule and excess, is tempered with an awfulgravity. This idea of a liberal descent inspires us with a sense ofhabitual native dignity, which prevents that upstart insolence almostinevitably adhering to and disgracing those who are the first acquirersof any distinction. By this means our liberty becomes a noble freedom. It carries an imposing and majestic aspect. It has a pedigree andillustrating ancestors. It has its bearings and its ensigns armorial. Ithas its gallery of portraits, its monumental inscriptions, its records, evidences, and titles. We procure reverence to our civil institutions onthe principle upon which Nature teaches us to revere individual men: onaccount of their age, and on account of those from whom they aredescended. All your sophisters cannot produce anything better adapted topreserve a rational and manly freedom than the course that we havepursued, who have chosen our nature rather than our speculations, ourbreasts rather than our inventions, for the great conservatories andmagazines of our rights and privileges. 

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You might, if you pleased, have profited of our example, and have givento your recovered freedom a correspondent dignity. Your privileges, though discontinued, were not lost to memory. Your Constitution, it istrue, whilst you were out of possession, suffered waste anddilapidation; but you possessed in some parts the walls, and in all thefoundations, of a noble and venerable castle. You might have repairedthose walls; you might have built on those old foundations. YourConstitution was suspended before it was perfected; but you had theelements of a Constitution very nearly as good as could be wished. Inyour old states you possessed that variety of parts corresponding withthe various descriptions of which your community was happily composed;you had all that combination and all that opposition of interests, youhad that action and counteraction, which, in the natural and in thepolitical world, from the reciprocal struggle of discordant powers drawsout the harmony of the universe. These opposed and conflictinginterests, which you considered as so great a blemish in your old and inour present Constitution, interpose a salutary check to all precipitateresolutions. They render deliberation a matter, not of choice, but ofnecessity; they make all change a subject of _compromise_, whichnaturally begets moderation; they produce _temperaments_, preventing thesore evil of harsh, crude, unqualified reformations, and rendering allthe headlong exertions of arbitrary power, in the few or in the many, forever impracticable. Through that diversity of members and interests, general liberty had as many securities as there were separate views inthe several orders; whilst by pressing down the whole by the weight of areal monarchy, the separate parts would have been prevented from warpingand starting from their allotted places. 

You had all these advantages in your ancient states; but you chose toact as if you had never been moulded into civil society, and hadeverything to begin anew. You began ill, because you began by despisingeverything that belonged to you. You set up your trade without acapital. If the last generations of your country appeared without muchlustre in your eyes, you might have passed them by, and derived yourclaims from a more early race of ancestors. Under a pious predilectionfor those ancestors, your imaginations would have realized in them astandard of virtue and wisdom beyond the vulgar practice of the hour;and you would have risen with the example to whose imitation youaspired. Respecting your forefathers, you would have been taught torespect yourselves. You would not have chosen to consider the French asa people of yesterday, as a nation of low-born, servile wretches untilthe emancipating year of 1789. In order to furnish, at the expense ofyour honor, an excuse to your apologists here for several enormities ofyours, you would not have been content to be represented as a gang ofMaroon slaves, suddenly broke loose from the house of bondage, andtherefore to be pardoned for your abuse of the liberty to which you werenot accustomed, and were ill fitted. Would it not, my worthy friend, have been wiser to have you thought, what I for one always thought you, a generous and gallant nation, long misled to your disadvantage by yourhigh and romantic sentiments of fidelity, honor, and loyalty; thatevents had been unfavorable to you, but that you were not enslavedthrough any illiberal or servile disposition; that, in your most devotedsubmission, you were actuated by a principle of public spirit; and thatit was your country you worshipped, in the person of your king? Had youmade it to be understood, that, in the delusion of this amiable error, you had gone further than your wise ancestors, --that you were resolvedto resume your ancient privileges, whilst you preserved the spirit ofyour ancient and your recent loyalty and honor; or if, diffident ofyourselves, and not clearly discerning the almost obliteratedConstitution of your ancestors, you had looked to your neighbors in thisland, who had kept alive the ancient principles and models of the oldcommon law of Europe, meliorated and adapted to its present state, --byfollowing wise examples you would have given new examples of wisdom tothe world. You would have rendered the cause of liberty venerable in theeyes of every worthy mind in every nation. You would have shameddespotism from the earth, by showing that freedom was not onlyreconcilable, but, as, when well disciplined, it is, auxiliary to law. You would have had an unoppressive, but a productive revenue. You wouldhave had a flourishing commerce to feed it. You would have had a freeConstitution, a potent monarchy, a disciplined army, a reformed andvenerated clergy, --a mitigated, but spirited nobility, to lead yourvirtue, not to overlay it; you would have had a liberal order ofcommons, to emulate and to recruit that nobility; you would have had aprotected, satisfied, laborious, and obedient people, taught to seek andto recognize the happiness that is to be found by virtue in allconditions, --in which consists the true moral equality of mankind, andnot in that monstrous fiction which, by inspiring false ideas and vainexpectations into men destined to travel in the obscure walk oflaborious life, serves only to aggravate and embitter that realinequality which it never can remove, and which the order of civil lifeestablishes as much for the benefit of those whom it must leave in anhumble state as those whom it is able to exalt to a condition moresplendid, but not more happy. You had a smooth and easy career offelicity and glory laid open to you, beyond anything recorded in thehistory of the world; but you have shown that difficulty is good forman. 

Compute your gains; see what is got by those extravagant andpresumptuous speculations which have taught your leaders to despise alltheir predecessors, and all their contemporaries, and even to despisethemselves, until the moment in which they became truly despicable. Byfollowing those false lights, France has bought undisguised calamitiesat a higher price than any nation has purchased the most unequivocalblessings. France has bought poverty by crime. France has not sacrificedher virtue to her interest; but she has abandoned her interest, that shemight prostitute her virtue. All other nations have begun the fabric ofa new government, or the reformation of an old, by establishingoriginally, or by enforcing with greater exactness, some rites or otherof religion. All other people have laid the foundations of civil freedomin severer manners, and a system of a more austere and masculinemorality. France, when she let loose the reins of regal authority, doubled the license of a ferocious dissoluteness in manners, and of aninsolent irreligion in opinions and practices, --and has extended throughall ranks of life, as if she were communicating some privilege, orlaying open some secluded benefit, all the unhappy corruptions thatusually were the disease of wealth and power. This is one of the newprinciples of equality in France. 

France, by the perfidy of her leaders, has utterly disgraced the tone oflenient council in the cabinets of princes, and disarmed it of its mostpotent topics. She has sanctified the dark, suspicious maxims oftyrannous distrust, and taught kings to tremble at (what will hereafterbe called) the delusive plausibilities of moral politicians. Sovereignswill consider those who advise them to place an unlimited confidence intheir people as subverters of their thrones, --as traitors who aim attheir destruction, by leading their easy good-nature, under speciouspretences, to admit combinations of bold and faithless men into aparticipation of their power. This alone (if there were nothing else) isan irreparable calamity to you and to mankind. Remember that yourParliament of Paris told your king, that, in calling the statestogether, he had nothing to fear but the prodigal excess of their zealin providing for the support of the throne. It is right that these menshould hide their heads. It is right that they should bear their part inthe ruin which their counsel has brought on their sovereign and theircountry. Such sanguine declarations tend to lull authority asleep, --toencourage it rashly to engage in perilous adventures of untriedpolicy, --to neglect those provisions, preparations, and precautionswhich distinguish benevolence from imbecility, and without which no mancan answer for the salutary effect of any abstract plan of government orof freedom. For want of these, they have seen the medicine of the statecorrupted into its poison. They have seen the French rebel against amild and lawful monarch, with more fury, outrage, and insult than everany people has been known to rise against the most illegal usurper orthe most sanguinary tyrant. Their resistance was made to concession;their revolt was from protection; their blow was aimed at a hand holdingout graces, favors, and immunities. 

This was unnatural. The rest is in order. They have found theirpunishment in their success. Laws overturned; tribunals subverted;industry without vigor; commerce expiring; the revenue unpaid, yet thepeople impoverished; a church pillaged, and a state not relieved; civiland military anarchy made the constitution of the kingdom; everythinghuman and divine sacrificed to the idol of public credit, and nationalbankruptcy the consequence; and, to crown all, the paper securities ofnew, precarious, tottering power, the discredited paper securities ofimpoverished fraud and beggared rapine, held out as a currency for thesupport of an empire, in lieu of the two great recognized species thatrepresent the lasting, conventional credit of mankind, which disappearedand hid themselves in the earth from whence they came, when theprinciple of property, whose creatures and representatives they are, wassystematically subverted. 

Were all these dreadful things necessary? Were they the inevitableresults of the desperate struggle of determined patriots, compelled towade through blood and tumult to the quiet shore of a tranquil andprosperous liberty? No! nothing like it. The fresh ruins of France, which shock our feelings wherever we can turn our eyes, are not thedevastation of civil war: they are the sad, but instructive monuments ofrash and ignorant counsel in time of profound peace. They are thedisplay of inconsiderate and presumptuous, because unresisted andirresistible authority. The persons who have thus squandered away theprecious treasure of their crimes, the persons who have made thisprodigal and wild waste of public evils, (the last stake reserved forthe ultimate ransom of the state, ) have met in their progress withlittle, or rather with no opposition at all. Their whole march was morelike a triumphal procession than the progress of a war. Their pioneershave gone before them, and demolished and laid everything level at theirfeet. Not one drop of _their_ blood have they shed in the cause of thecountry they have ruined. They have made no sacrifices to their projectsof greater consequence than their shoe-buckles, whilst they wereimprisoning their king, murdering their fellow-citizens, and bathing intears and plunging in poverty and distress thousands of worthy men andworthy families. Their cruelty has not even been the base result offear. It has been the effect of their sense of perfect safety, inauthorizing treasons, robberies, rapes, assassinations, slaughters, andburnings, throughout their harassed land. But the cause of all was plainfrom the beginning. 

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This unforced choice, this fond election of evil, would appear perfectlyunaccountable, if we did not consider the composition of the NationalAssembly: I do not mean its formal constitution, which, as it nowstands, is exceptionable enough, but the materials of which in a greatmeasure it is composed, which is of ten thousand times greaterconsequence than all the formalities in the world. If we were to knownothing of this assembly but by its title and function, no colors couldpaint to the imagination anything more venerable. In that light, themind of an inquirer, subdued by such an awful image as that of thevirtue and wisdom of a whole people collected into one focus, wouldpause and hesitate in condemning things even of the very worst aspect. Instead of blamable, they would appear only mysterious. But no name, nopower, no function, no artificial institution whatsoever, can make themen, of whom any system of authority is composed, any other than God, and Nature, and education, and their habits of life have made them. Capacities beyond these the people have not to give. Virtue and wisdommay be the objects of their choice; but their choice confers neither theone nor the other on those upon whom they lay their ordaining hands. They have not the engagement of Nature, they have not the promise ofRevelation for any such powers. 

After I had read over the list of the persons and descriptions electedinto the _Tiers État_, nothing which they afterwards did could appearastonishing. Among them, indeed, I saw some of known rank, some ofshining talents; but of any practical experience in the state not oneman was to be found. The best were only men of theory. But whatever thedistinguished few may have been, it is the substance and mass of thebody which constitutes its character, and must finally determine itsdirection. In all bodies, those who will lead must also, in aconsiderable degree, follow. They must conform their propositions to thetaste, talent, and disposition of those whom they wish to conduct:therefore, if an assembly is viciously or feebly composed in a verygreat part of it, nothing but such a supreme degree of virtue as veryrarely appears in the world, and for that reason cannot enter intocalculation, will prevent the men of talents disseminated through itfrom becoming only the expert instruments of absurd projects. If, whatis the more likely event, instead of that unusual degree of virtue, theyshould be actuated by sinister ambition and a lust of meretriciousglory, then the feeble part of the assembly, to whom at first theyconform, becomes, in its turn, the dupe and instrument of their designs. In this political traffic, the leaders will be obliged to bow to theignorance of their followers, and the followers to become subservient tothe worst designs of their leaders. 

To secure any degree of sobriety in the propositions made by the leadersin any public assembly, they ought to respect, in some degree perhaps tofear, those whom they conduct. To be led any otherwise than blindly, thefollowers must be qualified, if not for actors, at least for judges;they must also be judges of natural weight and authority. Nothing cansecure a steady and moderate conduct in such assemblies, but that thebody of them should be respectably composed, in point of condition inlife, of permanent property, of education, and of such habits as enlargeand liberalize the understanding. 

In the calling of the States-General of France, the first thing thatstruck me was a great departure from the ancient course. I found therepresentation for the third estate composed of six hundred persons. They were equal in number to the representatives of both the otherorders. If the orders were to act separately, the number would not, beyond the consideration of the expense, be of much moment. But when itbecame apparent that the three orders were to be melted down into one, the policy and necessary effect of this numerous representation becameobvious. A very small desertion from either of the other two ordersmust throw the power of both into the hands of the third. In fact, thewhole power of the state was soon resolved into that body. Its duecomposition became, therefore, of infinitely the greater importance. 

Judge, Sir, of my surprise, when I found that a very great proportion ofthe Assembly (a majority, I believe, of the members who attended) wascomposed of practitioners in the law. It was composed, not ofdistinguished magistrates, who had given pledges to their country oftheir science, prudence, and integrity, --not of leading advocates, theglory of the bar, --not of renowned professors in universities, --but forthe far greater part, as it must in such a number, of the inferior, unlearned, mechanical, merely instrumental members of the profession. There were distinguished exceptions; but the general composition was ofobscure provincial advocates, of stewards of petty local jurisdictions, country attorneys, notaries, and the whole train of the ministers ofmunicipal litigation, the fomenters and conductors of the petty war ofvillage vexation. From the moment I read the list, I saw distinctly, andvery nearly as it has happened, all that was to follow. 

The degree of estimation in which any profession is held becomes thestandard of the estimation in which the professors hold themselves. Whatever the personal merits of many individual lawyers might have been, (and in many it was undoubtedly very considerable, ) in that militarykingdom no part of the profession had been much regarded, except thehighest of all, who often united to their professional offices greatfamily splendor, and were invested with great power and authority. Thesecertainly were highly respected, and even with no small degree of awe. The next rank was not much esteemed; the mechanical part was in a verylow degree of repute. 

Whenever the supreme authority is vested in a body so composed, it mustevidently produce the consequences of supreme authority placed in thehands of men not taught habitually to respect themselves, --who had noprevious fortune in character at stake, --who could not be expected tobear with moderation or to conduct with discretion a power which theythemselves, more than any others, must be surprised to find in theirhands. Who could flatter himself that these men, suddenly, and as itwere by enchantment, snatched from the humblest rank of subordination, would not be intoxicated with their unprepared greatness? Who couldconceive that men who are habitually meddling, daring, subtle, active, of litigious dispositions and unquiet minds, would easily fall back intotheir old condition of obscure contention, and laborious, low, andunprofitable chicane? Who could doubt but that, at any expense to thestate, of which they understood nothing, they must pursue their privateinterests, which they understood but too well? It was not an eventdepending on chance or contingency. It was inevitable; it was necessary;it was planted in the nature of things. They must _join_ (if theircapacity did not permit them to _lead_) in any project which couldprocure to them a _litigious constitution_, --which could lay open tothem those innumerable lucrative jobs which follow in the train of allgreat convulsions and revolutions in the state, and particularly in allgreat and violent permutations of property. Was it to be expected thatthey would attend to the stability of property, whose existence hadalways depended upon whatever rendered property questionable, ambiguous, and insecure? Their objects would be enlarged with their elevation; buttheir disposition, and habits, and mode of accomplishing their designsmust remain the same. 

Well! but these men were to be tempered and restrained by otherdescriptions, of more sober minds and more enlarged understandings. Werethey, then, to be awed by the supereminent authority and awful dignityof a handful of country clowns, who have seats in that assembly, some ofwhom are said not to be able to read and write, --and by not a greaternumber of traders, who, though somewhat more instructed, and moreconspicuous in the order of society, had never known anything beyondtheir counting-house? No! both these descriptions were more formed to beoverborne and swayed by the intrigues and artifices of lawyers than tobecome their counterpoise. With such a dangerous disproportion, thewhole must needs be governed by them. 

To the faculty of law was joined a pretty considerable proportion of thefaculty of medicine. This faculty had not, any more than that of thelaw, possessed in France its just estimation. Its professors, therefore, must have the qualities of men not habituated to sentiments of dignity. But supposing they had ranked as they ought to do, and as with us theydo actually, the sides of sick-beds are not the academies for formingstatesmen and legislators. Then came the dealers in stocks and funds, who must be eager, at any expense, to change their ideal paper wealthfor the more solid substance of land. To these were joined men of otherdescriptions, from whom as little knowledge of or attention to theinterests of a great state was to be expected, and as little regard tothe stability of any institution, --men formed to be instruments, notcontrols. --Such, in general, was the composition of the _Tiers État_ inthe National Assembly; in which was scarcely to be perceived theslightest traces of what we call the natural landed interest of thecountry. 

We know that the British House of Commons, without shutting its doors toany merit in any class, is, by the sure operation of adequate causes, filled with everything illustrious in rank, in descent, in hereditaryand in acquired opulence, in cultivated talents, in military, civil, naval, and politic distinction, that the country can afford. Butsupposing, what hardly can be supposed as a case, that the House ofCommons should be composed in the same manner with the _Tiers État_ inFrance, --would this dominion of chicane be borne with patience, or evenconceived without horror? God forbid I should insinuate anythingderogatory to that profession which is another priesthood, administeringthe rights of sacred justice! But whilst I revere men in the functionswhich belong to them, and would do as much as one man can do to preventtheir exclusion from any, I cannot, to flatter them, give the lie toNature. They are good and useful in the composition; they must bemischievous, if they preponderate so as virtually to become the whole. Their very excellence in their peculiar functions may be far from aqualification for others. It cannot escape observation, that, when menare too much confined to professional and faculty habits, and, as itwere, inveterate in the recurrent employment of that narrow circle, theyare rather disabled than qualified for whatever depends on theknowledge of mankind, on experience in mixed affairs, on acomprehensive, connected view of the various, complicated, external, andinternal interests which go to the formation of that multifarious thingcalled a State. 

After all, if the House of Commons were to have an wholly professionaland faculty composition, what is the power of the House of Commons, circumscribed and shut in by the immovable barriers of laws, usages, positive rules of doctrine and practice, counterpoised by the House ofLords, and every moment of its existence at the discretion of the crownto continue, prorogue, or dissolve us? The power of the House ofCommons, direct or indirect, is, indeed, great: and long may it be ableto preserve its greatness, and the spirit belonging to true greatness, at the full!--and it will do so, as long as it can keep the breakers oflaw in India from becoming the makers of law for England. The power, however, of the House of Commons, when least diminished, is as a drop ofwater in the ocean, compared to that residing in a settled majority ofyour National Assembly. That assembly, since the destruction of theorders, has no fundamental law, no strict convention, no respected usageto restrain it. Instead of finding themselves obliged to conform to afixed constitution, they have a power to make a constitution which shallconform to their designs. Nothing in heaven or upon earth can serve as acontrol on them. What ought to be the heads, the hearts, thedispositions, that are qualified, or that dare, not only to make lawsunder a fixed constitution, but at one heat to strike out a totally newconstitution for a great kingdom, and in every part of it, from themonarch on the throne to the vestry of a parish? But

 "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. "

In such a state of unbounded power, for undefined and undefinablepurposes, the evil of a moral and almost physical inaptitude of the manto the function must be the greatest we can conceive to happen in themanagement of human affairs. 

Having considered the composition of the third estate, as it stood inits original frame, I took a view of the representatives of the clergy. There, too, it appeared that full as little regard was had to thegeneral security of property, or to the aptitude of the deputies fortheir public purposes, in the principles of their election. Thatelection was so contrived as to send a very large proportion of merecountry curates to the great and arduous work of new-modelling a state:men who never had seen the state so much as in a picture; men who knewnothing of the world beyond the bounds of an obscure village; who, immersed in hopeless poverty, could regard all property, whether secularor ecclesiastical, with no other eye than that of envy; among whom mustbe many who, for the smallest hope of the meanest dividend in plunder, would readily join in any attempts upon a body of wealth in which theycould hardly look to have any share, except in a general scramble. Instead of balancing the power of the active chicaners in the otherassembly, these curates must necessarily become the active coadjutors, or at best the passive instruments, of those by whom they had beenhabitually guided in their petty village concerns. They, too, couldhardly be the most conscientious of their kind, who, presuming upontheir incompetent understanding, could intrigue for a trust which ledthem from their natural relation to their flocks, and their naturalspheres of action, to undertake the regeneration of kingdoms. Thispreponderating weight, being added to the force of the body of chicanein the _Tiers État_, completed that momentum of ignorance, rashness, presumption, and lust of plunder, which nothing has been able to resist. 

To observing men it must have appeared from the beginning, that themajority of the third estate, in conjunction with such a deputation fromthe clergy as I have described, whilst it pursued the destruction of thenobility, would inevitably become subservient to the worst designs ofindividuals in that class. In the spoil and humiliation of their ownorder these individuals would possess a sure fund for the pay of theirnew followers. To squander away the objects which made the happiness oftheir fellows would be to them no sacrifice at all. Turbulent, discontented men of quality, in proportion as they are puffed up withpersonal pride and arrogance, generally despise their own order. One ofthe first symptoms they discover of a selfish and mischievous ambitionis a profligate disregard of a dignity which they partake with others. To be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belongto in society, is the first principle (the germ, as it were) of publicaffections. It is the first link in the series by which we proceedtowards a love to our country and to mankind. The interest of thatportion of social arrangement is a trust in the hands of all those whocompose it; and as none but bad men would justify it in abuse, none buttraitors would barter it away for their own personal advantage. 

There were, in the time of our civil troubles in England, (I do not knowwhether you have any such in your Assembly in France, ) several persons, like the then Earl of Holland, who by themselves or their families hadbrought an odium on the throne by the prodigal dispensation of itsbounties towards them, who afterwards joined in the rebellions arisingfrom the discontents of which they were themselves the cause: men whohelped to subvert that throne to which they owed, some of them, theirexistence, others all that power which they employed to ruin theirbenefactor. If any bounds are set to the rapacious demands of that sortof people, or that others are permitted to partake in the objects theywould engross, revenge and envy soon fill up the craving void that isleft in their avarice. Confounded by the complication of distemperedpassions, their reason is disturbed; their views become vast andperplexed, --to others inexplicable, to themselves uncertain. They find, on all sides, bounds to their unprincipled ambition in any fixed orderof things; but in the fog and haze of confusion all is enlarged, andappears without any limit. 

When men of rank sacrifice all ideas of dignity to an ambition without adistinct object, and work with low instruments and for low ends, thewhole composition becomes low and base. Does not something like this nowappear in France? Does it not produce something ignoble and inglorious:a kind of meanness in all the prevalent policy; a tendency in all thatis done to lower along with individuals all the dignity and importanceof the state? Other revolutions have been conducted by persons who, whilst they attempted or affected changes in the commonwealth, sanctified their ambition by advancing the dignity of the people whosepeace they troubled. They had long views. They aimed at the rule, not atthe destruction of their country. They were men of great civil and greatmilitary talents, and if the terror, the ornament of their age. Theywere not like Jew brokers contending with each other who could bestremedy with fraudulent circulation and depreciated paper thewretchedness and ruin brought on their country by their degeneratecouncils. The compliment made to one of the great bad men of the oldstamp (Cromwell) by his kinsman, a favorite poet of that time, showswhat it was he proposed, and what indeed to a great degree heaccomplished in the success of his ambition:--

 "Still as _you_ rise, the _state_, exalted too, Finds no distemper whilst 't is changed by _you_; Changed like the world's great scene, when without noise The rising sun night's _vulgar_ lights destroys. "

These disturbers were not so much like men usurping power as assertingtheir natural place in society. Their rising was to illuminate andbeautify the world. Their conquest over their competitors was byoutshining them. The hand, that, like a destroying angel, smote thecountry, communicated to it the force and energy under which itsuffered. I do not say, (God forbid!) I do not say that the virtues ofsuch men were to be taken as a balance to their crimes; but they weresome corrective to their effects. Such was, as I said, our Cromwell. Such were your whole race of Guises, Condés, and Colignys. Such theRichelieus, who in more quiet times acted in the spirit of a civil war. Such, as better men, and in a less dubious cause, were your Henry theFourth, and your Sully, though nursed in civil confusions, and notwholly without some of their taint. It is a thing to be wondered at, tosee how very soon France, when she had a moment to respire, recoveredand emerged from the longest and most dreadful civil war that ever wasknown in any nation. Why? Because, among all their massacres, they hadnot slain the _mind_ in their country. A conscious dignity, a noblepride, a generous sense of glory and emulation, was not extinguished. Onthe contrary, it was kindled and inflamed. The organs also of the state, however shattered, existed. All the prizes of honor and virtue, all therewards, all the distinctions, remained. But your present confusion, like a palsy, has attacked the fountain of life itself. Every person inyour country, in a situation to be actuated by a principle of honor, isdisgraced and degraded, and can entertain no sensation of life, exceptin a mortified and humiliated indignation. But this generation willquickly pass away. The next generation of the nobility will resemble theartificers and clowns, and money-jobbers, usurers, and Jews, who will bealways their fellows, sometimes their masters. Believe me, Sir, thosewho attempt to level never equalize. In all societies consisting ofvarious descriptions of citizens, some description must be uppermost. The levellers, therefore, only change and pervert the natural order ofthings: they load the edifice of society by setting up in the air whatthe solidity of the structure requires to be on the ground. Theassociations of tailors and carpenters, of which the republic (of Paris, for instance) is composed, cannot be equal to the situation into which, by the worst of usurpations, an usurpation on the prerogatives ofNature, you attempt to force them. 

The Chancellor of France, at the opening of the States, said, in a toneof oratorial flourish, that all occupations were honorable. If he meantonly that no honest employment was disgraceful, he would not have gonebeyond the truth. But in asserting that anything is honorable, we implysome distinction in its favor. The occupation of a hair-dresser, or of aworking tallow-chandler, cannot be a matter of honor to any person, --tosay nothing of a number of other more servile employments. Suchdescriptions of men ought not to suffer oppression from the state; butthe state suffers oppression, if such as they, either individually orcollectively, are permitted to rule. In this you think you are combatingprejudice, but you are at war with Nature. [86]

I do not, my dear Sir, conceive you to be of that sophistical, captiousspirit, or of that uncandid dullness, as to require, for every generalobservation or sentiment, an explicit detail of the correctives andexceptions which reason will presume to be included in all the generalpropositions which come from reasonable men. You do not imagine that Iwish to confine power, authority, and distinction to blood and names andtitles. No, Sir. There is no qualification for government but virtue andwisdom, actual or presumptive. Wherever they are actually found, theyhave, in whatever state, condition, profession, or trade, the passportof Heaven to human place and honor. Woe to the country which would madlyand impiously reject the service of the talents and virtues, civil, military, or religious, that are given to grace and to serve it; andwould condemn to obscurity everything formed to diffuse lustre and gloryaround a state! Woe to that country, too, that, passing into theopposite extreme, considers a low education, a mean, contracted view ofthings, a sordid, mercenary occupation, as a preferable title tocommand! Everything ought to be open, --but not indifferently to everyman. No rotation, no appointment by lot, no mode of election operatingin the spirit of sortition or rotation, can be generally good in agovernment conversant in extensive objects; because they have notendency, direct or indirect, to select the man with a view to the duty, or to accommodate the one to the other. I do not hesitate to say thatthe road to eminence and power, from obscure condition, ought not to bemade too easy, nor a thing too much of course. If rare merit be therarest of all rare things, it ought to pass through some sort ofprobation. The temple of honor ought to be seated on an eminence. If itbe opened through virtue, let it be remembered, too, that virtue isnever tried but by some difficulty and some struggle. 

Nothing is a due and adequate representation of a state, that does notrepresent its ability, as well as its property. But as ability is avigorous and active principle, and as property is sluggish, inert, andtimid, it never can be safe from the invasions of ability, unless it be, out of all proportion, predominant in the representation. It must berepresented, too, in great masses of accumulation, or it is not rightlyprotected. The characteristic essence of property, formed out of thecombined principles of its acquisition and conservation, is to be_unequal_. The great masses, therefore, which excite envy, and temptrapacity, must be put out of the possibility of danger. Then they form anatural rampart about the lesser properties in all their gradations. Thesame quantity of property which is by the natural course of thingsdivided among many has not the same operation. Its defensive power isweakened as it is diffused. In this diffusion each man's portion is lessthan what, in the eagerness of his desires, he may flatter himself toobtain by dissipating the accumulations of others. The plunder of thefew would, indeed, give but a share inconceivably small in thedistribution to the many. But the many are not capable of making thiscalculation; and those who lead them to rapine never intend thisdistribution. 

The power of perpetuating our property in our families is one of themost valuable and interesting circumstances belonging to it, and thatwhich tends the most to the perpetuation of society itself. It makes ourweakness subservient to our virtue; it grafts benevolence even uponavarice. The possessors of family wealth, and of the distinction whichattends hereditary possession, (as most concerned in it, ) are thenatural securities for this transmission. With us the House of Peers isformed upon this principle. It is wholly composed of hereditaryproperty and hereditary distinction, and made, therefore, the third ofthe legislature, and, in the last event, the sole judge of all propertyin all its subdivisions. The House of Commons, too, though notnecessarily, yet in fact, is always so composed, in the far greaterpart. Let those large proprietors be what they will, (and they havetheir chance of being amongst the best, ) they are, at the very worst, the ballast in the vessel of the commonwealth. For though hereditarywealth, and the rank which goes with it, are too much idolized bycreeping sycophants, and the blind, abject admirers of power, they aretoo rashly slighted in shallow speculations of the petulant, assuming, short-sighted coxcombs of philosophy. Some decent, regulatedpreëminence, some preference (not exclusive appropriation) given tobirth, is neither unnatural, nor unjust, nor impolitic. 

It is said that twenty-four millions ought to prevail over two hundredthousand. True; if the constitution of a kingdom be a problem ofarithmetic. This sort of discourse does well enough with the lamp-postfor its second: to men who _may_ reason calmly it is ridiculous The willof the many, and their interest, must very often differ; and great willbe the difference when they make an evil choice. A government of fivehundred country attorneys and obscure curates is not good fortwenty-four millions of men, though it were chosen by eight-and-fortymillions; nor is it the better for being guided by a dozen of persons ofquality who have betrayed their trust in order to obtain that power. Atpresent, you seem in everything to have strayed out of the high road ofNature. The property of France does not govern it. Of course propertyis destroyed, and rational liberty has no existence. All you have gotfor the present is a paper circulation, and a stock-jobbingconstitution: and as to the future, do you seriously think that theterritory of France, upon the republican system of eighty-threeindependent municipalities, (to say nothing of the parts that composethem, ) can ever be governed as one body, or can ever be set in motion bythe impulse of one mind? When the National Assembly has completed itswork, it will have accomplished its ruin. These commonwealths will notlong bear a state of subjection to the republic of Paris. They will notbear that this one body should monopolize the captivity of the king, andthe dominion over the assembly calling itself national. Each will keepits own portion of the spoil of the Church to itself; and it will notsuffer either that spoil, or the more just fruits of their industry, orthe natural produce of their soil, to be sent to swell the insolence orpamper the luxury of the mechanics of Paris. In this they will see noneof the equality, under the pretence of which they have been tempted tothrow off their allegiance to their sovereign, as well as the ancientconstitution of their country. There can be no capital city in such aconstitution as they have lately made. They have forgot, that, when theyframed democratic governments, they had virtually dismembered theircountry. The person whom they persevere in calling king has not powerleft to him by the hundredth part sufficient to hold together thiscollection of republics. The republic of Paris will endeavor, indeed, tocomplete the debauchery of the army, and illegally to perpetuate theAssembly, without resort to its constituents, as the means ofcontinuing its despotism. It will make efforts, by becoming the heartof a boundless paper circulation, to draw everything to itself: but invain. All this policy in the end will appear as feeble as it is nowviolent. 

 * * * * *

If this be your actual situation, compared to the situation to which youwere called, as it were by the voice of God and man, I cannot find it inmy heart to congratulate you on the choice you have made, or the successwhich has attended your endeavors. I can as little recommend to anyother nation a conduct grounded on such principles and productive ofsuch effects. That I must leave to those who can see further into youraffairs than I am able to do, and who best know how far your actions arefavorable to their designs. The gentlemen of the Revolution Society, whowere so early in their congratulations, appear to be strongly of opinionthat there is some scheme of politics relative to this country, in whichyour proceedings may in some way be useful. For your Dr. Price, whoseems to have speculated himself into no small degree of fervor uponthis subject, addresses his auditors in the following very remarkablewords:--"I cannot conclude without recalling _particularly_ to yourrecollection a consideration which I have _more than once alluded to_, and which probably your thoughts have _been all along anticipating_; aconsideration with which _my mind is impressed more than can express_: Imean the consideration of the _favorableness of the present times to allexertions in the cause of liberty_. "

It is plain that the mind of this _political_ preacher was at the timebig with some extraordinary design; and it is very probable that thethoughts of his audience, who understood him better than I do, did allalong run before him in his reflection, and in the whole train ofconsequences to which it led. 

Before I read that sermon, I really thought I had lived in a freecountry; and it was an error I cherished, because it gave me a greaterliking to the country I lived in. I was, indeed, aware that a jealous, ever-waking vigilance, to guard the treasure of our liberty, not onlyfrom invasion, but from decay and corruption, was our best wisdom andour first duty. However, I considered that treasure rather as apossession to be secured than as a prize to be contended for. I did notdiscern how the present time came to be so very favorable to all_exertions_ in the cause of freedom. The present time differs from anyother only by the circumstance of what is doing in France. If theexample of that nation is to have an influence on this, I can easilyconceive why some of their proceedings which have an unpleasant aspect, and are not quite reconcilable to humanity, generosity, good faith, andjustice, are palliated with so much milky good-nature towards theactors, and borne with so much heroic fortitude towards the sufferers. It is certainly not prudent to discredit the authority of an example wemean to follow. But allowing this, we are led to a very naturalquestion:--What is that cause of liberty, and what are those exertionsin its favor, to which the example of France is so singularlyauspicious? Is our monarchy to be annihilated, with all the laws, allthe tribunals, and all the ancient corporations of the kingdom? Is everylandmark of the country to be done away in favor of a geometrical andarithmetical constitution? Is the House of Lords to be voted useless?Is Episcopacy to be abolished? Are the Church lands to be sold to Jewsand jobbers, or given to bribe new-invented municipal republics into aparticipation in sacrilege? Are all the taxes to be voted grievances, and the revenue reduced to a patriotic contribution or patrioticpresents? Are silver shoe-buckles to be substituted in the place of theland-tax and the malt-tax, for the support of the naval strength of thiskingdom? Are all orders, ranks, and distinctions to be confounded, thatout of universal anarchy, joined to national bankruptcy, three or fourthousand democracies should be formed into eighty-three, and that theymay all, by some sort of unknown attractive power, be organized intoone? For this great end is the army to be seduced from its disciplineand its fidelity, first by every kind of debauchery, and then by theterrible precedent of a donative in the increase of pay? Are the curatesto be seduced from their bishops by holding out to them the delusivehope of a dole out of the spoils of their own order? Are the citizens ofLondon to be drawn from their allegiance by feeding them at the expenseof their fellow-subjects? Is a compulsory paper currency to besubstituted in the place of the legal coin of this kingdom? Is whatremains of the plundered stock of public revenue to be employed in thewild project of maintaining two armies to watch over and to fight witheach other? If these are the ends and means of the Revolution Society, Iadmit they are well assorted; and France may furnish them for both withprecedents in point. 

I see that your example is held out to shame us. I know that we aresupposed a dull, sluggish race, rendered passive by finding oursituation tolerable, and prevented by a mediocrity of freedom from everattaining to its full perfection. Your leaders in France began byaffecting to admire, almost to adore, the British Constitution; but asthey advanced, they came to look upon it with a sovereign contempt. Thefriends of your National Assembly amongst us have full as mean anopinion of what was formerly thought the glory of their country. TheRevolution Society has discovered that the English nation is not free. They are convinced that the inequality in our representation is a"defect in our Constitution _so gross and palpable_ as to make itexcellent chiefly in _form_ and _theory_";[87]--that a representation inthe legislature of a kingdom is not only the basis of all constitutionalliberty in it, but of "_all legitimate government_; that without it a_government_ is nothing but an _usurpation_";--that, "when therepresentation is _partial_, the kingdom possesses liberty only_partially_; and if extremely partial, it gives only a _semblance_; andif not only extremely partial, but corruptly chosen, it becomes a_nuisance_. " Dr. Price considers this inadequacy of representation asour _fundamental grievance_; and though, as to the corruption of thissemblance of representation, he hopes it is not yet arrived to its fullperfection of depravity, he fears that "nothing will be done towardsgaining for us this _essential blessing_, until some _great abuse ofpower_ again provokes our resentment, or some _great calamity_ againalarms our fears, or perhaps till the acquisition of a _pure and equalrepresentation by other countries, _ whilst we are _mocked_ with the_shadow_, kindles our shame. " To this he subjoins a note in thesewords:--"A representation chosen chiefly by the Treasury, and a _few_thousands of the _dregs_ of the people, who are generally paid for theirvotes. "

You will smile here at the consistency of those democratists who, whenthey are not on their guard, treat the humbler part of the communitywith the greatest contempt, whilst, at the same time, they pretend tomake them the depositories of all power. It would require a longdiscourse to point out to you the many fallacies that lurk in thegenerality and equivocal nature of the terms "inadequaterepresentation. " I shall only say here, in justice to that old-fashionedConstitution under which we have long prospered, that our representationhas been found perfectly adequate to all the purposes for which arepresentation of the people can be desired or devised. I defy theenemies of our Constitution to show the contrary. To detail theparticulars in which it is found so well to promote its ends woulddemand a treatise on our practical Constitution. I state here thedoctrine of the revolutionists, only that you and others may see what anopinion these gentlemen entertain of the Constitution of their country, and why they seem to think that some great abuse of power, or some greatcalamity, as giving a chance for the blessing of a Constitutionaccording to their ideas, would be much palliated to their feelings; yousee _why they_ are so much enamored of your fair and equalrepresentation, which being once obtained, the same effects mightfollow. You see they consider our House of Commons as only "asemblance, " "a form, " "a theory, " "a shadow, " "a mockery, " perhaps "anuisance. "

These gentlemen value themselves on being systematic, and not withoutreason. They must therefore look on this gross and palpable defect ofrepresentation, this fundamental grievance, (so they call it, ) as athing not only vicious in itself, but as rendering our whole governmentabsolutely _illegitimate_, and not at all better than a downright_usurpation_. Another revolution, to get rid of this illegitimate andusurped government, would of course be perfectly justifiable, if notabsolutely necessary. Indeed, their principle, if you observe it withany attention, goes much further than to an alteration in the electionof the House of Commons; for, if popular representation, or choice, isnecessary to the _legitimacy_ of all government, the House of Lords is, at one stroke, bastardized and corrupted in blood. That House is norepresentative of the people at all, even in "semblance" or "in form. "The case of the crown is altogether as bad. In vain the crown mayendeavor to screen itself against these gentlemen by the authority ofthe establishment made on the Revolution. The Revolution, which isresorted to for a title, on their system, wants a title itself. TheRevolution is built, according to their theory, upon a basis not moresolid than our present formalities, as it was made by a House of Lordsnot representing any one but themselves, and by a House of Commonsexactly such as the present, that is, as they term it, by a mere "shadowand mockery" of representation. 

Something they must destroy, or they seem to themselves to exist for nopurpose. One set is for destroying the civil power through theecclesiastical; another for demolishing the ecclesiastic through thecivil. They are aware that the worst consequences might happen to thepublic in accomplishing this double ruin of Church and State; but theyare so heated with their theories, that they give more than hints thatthis ruin, with all the mischiefs that must lead to it and attend it, and which to themselves appear quite certain, would not be unacceptableto them, or very remote from their wishes. A man amongst them of greatauthority, and certainly of great talents, speaking of a supposedalliance between Church and State, says, "Perhaps _we must wait for thefall of the civil powers_, before this most unnatural alliance bebroken. Calamitous, no doubt, will that time be. But what convulsion inthe political world ought to be a subject of lamentation, if it beattended with so desirable an effect?" You see with what a steady eyethese gentlemen are prepared to view the greatest calamities which canbefall their country!

It is no wonder, therefore, that, with these ideas of everything intheir Constitution and government at home, either in Church or State, asillegitimate and usurped, or at best as a vain mockery, they look abroadwith an eager and passionate enthusiasm. Whilst they are possessed bythese notions, it is vain to talk to them of the practice of theirancestors, the fundamental laws of their country, the fixed form of aConstitution whose merits are confirmed by the solid test of longexperience and an increasing public strength and national prosperity. They despise experience as the wisdom of unlettered men; and as for therest, they have wrought under ground a mine that will blow up, at onegrand explosion, all examples of antiquity, all precedents, charters, and acts of Parliament. They have "the rights of men. " Against thesethere can be no prescription; against these no argument is binding:these admit no temperament and no compromise: anything withheld fromtheir full demand is so much of fraud and injustice. Against these theirrights of men let no government look for security in the length of itscontinuance, or in the justice and lenity of its administration. Theobjections of these speculatists, if its forms do not quadrate withtheir theories, are as valid against such an old and beneficentgovernment as against the most violent tyranny or the greenestusurpation. They are always at issue with governments, not on a questionof abuse, but a question of competency and a question of title. I havenothing to say to the clumsy subtilty of their political metaphysics. Let them be their amusement in the schools. 

 _Illa_ se jactet in aula Æolus, et clauso ventorum carcere regnet. 

But let them not break prison to burst like a Levanter, to sweep theearth with their hurricane, and to break up the fountains of the greatdeep to overwhelm us!

Far am I from denying in theory, full as far is my heart fromwithholding in practice, (if I were of power to give or to withhold, )the _real_ rights of men. In denying their false claims of right, I donot mean to injure those which are real, and are such as their pretendedrights would totally destroy. If civil society be made for the advantageof man, all the advantages for which it is made become his right. It isan institution of beneficence; and law itself is only beneficence actingby a rule. Men have a right to live by that rule; they have a right tojustice, as between their fellows, whether their fellows are in politicfunction or in ordinary occupation. They have a right to the fruits oftheir industry, and to the means of making their industry fruitful. They have a right to the acquisitions of their parents, to thenourishment and improvement of their offspring, to instruction in lifeand to consolation in death. Whatever each man can separately do, without trespassing upon others, he has a right to do for himself; andhe has a right to a fair portion of all which society, with all itscombinations of skill and force, can do in his favor. In thispartnership all men have equal rights; but not to equal things. He thathas but five shillings in the partnership has as good a right to it ashe that has five hundred pounds has to his larger proportion; but he hasnot a right to an equal dividend in the product of the joint stock. Andas to the share of power, authority, and direction which each individualought to have in the management of the state, that I must deny to beamongst the direct original rights of man in civil society; for I havein my contemplation the civil social man, and no other. It is a thing tobe settled by convention. 

If civil society be the offspring of convention, that convention must beits law. That convention must limit and modify all the descriptions ofconstitution which are formed under it. Every sort of legislative, judicial, or executory power are its creatures. They can have no beingin any other state of things; and how can any man claim, under theconventions of civil society, rights which do not so much as suppose itsexistence, --rights which are absolutely repugnant to it? One of thefirst motives to civil society, and which becomes one of its fundamentalrules, is, _that no man should be judge in his own cause_. By this eachperson has at once divested himself of the first fundamental right ofuncovenanted man, that is, to judge for himself, and to assert his owncause. He abdicates all right to be his own governor. He inclusively, ina great measure, abandons the right of self-defence, the first law ofNature. Men cannot enjoy the rights of an uncivil and of a civil statetogether. That he may obtain justice, he gives up his right ofdetermining what it is in points the most essential to him. That he maysecure some liberty, he makes a surrender in trust of the whole of it. 

Government is not made in virtue of natural rights, which may and doexist in total independence of it, --and exist in much greater clearness, and in a much greater degree of abstract perfection: but their abstractperfection is their practical defect. By having a right to everythingthey want everything. Government is a contrivance of human wisdom toprovide for human _wants_. Men have a right that these wants should beprovided for by this wisdom. Among these wants is to be reckoned thewant, out of civil society, of a sufficient restraint upon theirpassions. Society requires not only that the passions of individualsshould be subjected, but that even in the mass and body, as well as inthe individuals, the inclinations of men should frequently be thwarted, their will controlled, and their passions brought into subjection. Thiscan only be done _by a power out of themselves_, and not, in theexercise of its function, subject to that will and to those passionswhich it is its office to bridle and subdue. In this sense therestraints on men, as well as their liberties, are to be reckoned amongtheir rights. But as the liberties and the restrictions vary with timesand circumstances, and admit of infinite modifications, they cannot besettled upon any abstract rule; and nothing is so foolish as to discussthem upon that principle. 

The moment you abate anything from the full rights of men each to governhimself, and suffer any artificial, positive limitation upon thoserights, from that moment the whole organization of government becomes aconsideration of convenience. This it is which makes the constitution ofa state, and the due distribution of its powers, a matter of the mostdelicate and complicated skill. It requires a deep knowledge of humannature and human necessities, and of the things which facilitate orobstruct the various ends which are to be pursued by the mechanism ofcivil institutions. The state is to have recruits to its strength andremedies to its distempers. What is the use of discussing a man'sabstract right to food or medicine? The question is upon the method ofprocuring and administering them. In that deliberation I shall alwaysadvise to call in the aid of the farmer and the physician, rather thanthe professor of metaphysics. 

The science of constructing a commonwealth, or renovating it, orreforming it, is, like every other experimental science, not to betaught _a priori_. Nor is it a short experience that can instruct us inthat practical science; because the real effects of moral causes are notalways immediate, but that which in the first instance is prejudicialmay be excellent in its remoter operation, and its excellence may ariseeven from the ill effects it produces in the beginning. The reverse alsohappens; and very plausible schemes, with very pleasing commencements, have often shameful and lamentable conclusions. In states there areoften some obscure and almost latent causes, things which appear atfirst view of little moment, on which a very great part of itsprosperity or adversity may most essentially depend. The science ofgovernment being, therefore, so practical in itself, and intended forsuch practical purposes, a matter which requires experience, and evenmore experience than any person can gain in his whole life, howeversagacious and observing he may be, it is with infinite caution that anyman ought to venture upon pulling down an edifice which has answered inany tolerable degree for ages the common purposes of society, or onbuilding it up again without having models and patterns of approvedutility before his eyes. 

These metaphysic rights entering into common life, like rays of lightwhich pierce into a dense medium, are, by the laws of Nature, refractedfrom their straight line. Indeed, in the gross and complicated mass ofhuman passions and concerns, the primitive rights of men undergo such avariety of refractions and reflections that it becomes absurd to talk ofthem as if they continued in the simplicity of their original direction. The nature of man is intricate; the objects of society are of thegreatest possible complexity: and therefore no simple disposition ordirection of power can be suitable either to man's nature or to thequality of his affairs. When I hear the simplicity of contrivance aimedat and boasted of in any new political constitutions, I am at no loss todecide that the artificers are grossly ignorant of their trade ortotally negligent of their duty. The simple governments arefundamentally defective, to say no worse of them. If you were tocontemplate society in but one point of view, all these simple modes ofpolity are infinitely captivating. In effect each would answer itssingle end much more perfectly than the more complex is able to attainall its complex purposes. But it is better that the whole, should beimperfectly and anomalously answered than that while some parts areprovided for with great exactness, others might be totally neglected, orperhaps materially injured, by the over-care of a favorite member. 

The pretended rights of these theorists are all extremes; and inproportion as they are metaphysically true, they are morally andpolitically false. The rights of men are in a sort of _middle_, incapable of definition, but not impossible to be discerned. The rightsof men in governments are their advantages; and these are often inbalances between differences of good, --in compromises sometimes betweengood and evil, and sometimes between evil and evil. Political reason isa computing principle: adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing, morally, and not metaphysically or mathematically, true moraldenominations. 

By these theorists the right of the people is almost alwayssophistically confounded with their power. The body of the community, whenever it can come to act, can meet with no effectual resistance; buttill power and right are the same, the whole body of them has no rightinconsistent with virtue, and the first of all virtues, prudence. Menhave no right to what is not reasonable, and to what is not for theirbenefit; for though a pleasant writer said, "_Liceat perire poetis_, "when one of them, in cold blood, is said to have leaped into the flamesof a volcanic revolution, "_ardentem frigidus Ætnam insiluit_, " Iconsider such a frolic rather as an unjustifiable poetic license thanas one of the franchises of Parnassus; and whether he were poet, ordivine, or politician, that chose to exercise this kind of right, Ithink that more wise, because more charitable, thoughts would urge merather to save the man than to preserve his brazen slippers as themonuments of his folly. 

 * * * * *

The kind of anniversary sermons to which a great part of what I writerefers, if men are not shamed out of their present course, incommemorating the fact, will cheat many out of the principles anddeprive them of the benefits of the Revolution they commemorate. Iconfess to you, Sir, I never liked this continual talk of resistance andrevolution, or the practice of making the extreme medicine of theConstitution its daily bread. It renders the habit of societydangerously valetudinary; it is taking periodical doses of mercurysublimate, and swallowing down repeated provocatives of cantharides toour love of liberty. 

This distemper of remedy, grown habitual, relaxes and wears out, by avulgar and prostituted use, the spring of that spirit which is to beexerted on great occasions. It was in the most patient period of Romanservitude that themes of tyrannicide made the ordinary exercise of boysat school, --_cum perimit sævos classis numerosa tyrannos_. In theordinary state of things, it produces in a country like ours the worsteffects, even on the cause of that liberty which it abuses with thedissoluteness of an extravagant speculation. Almost all the high-bredrepublicans of my time have, after a short space, become the mostdecided, thorough-paced courtiers; they soon left the business of atedious, moderate, but practical resistance, to those of us whom, inthe pride and intoxication of their theories, they have slighted as notmuch better than Tories. Hypocrisy, of course, delights in the mostsublime speculations; for, never intending to go beyond speculation, itcosts nothing to have it magnificent. But even in cases where ratherlevity than fraud was to be suspected in these ranting speculations, theissue has been much the same. These professors, finding their extremeprinciples not applicable to cases which call only for a qualified, or, as I may say, civil and legal resistance, in such cases employ noresistance at all. It is with them a war or a revolution, or it isnothing. Finding their schemes of politics not adapted to the state ofthe world in which they live, they often come to think lightly of allpublic principle, and are ready, on their part, to abandon for a verytrivial interest what they find of very trivial value. Some, indeed, areof more steady and persevering natures; but these are eager politiciansout of Parliament, who have little to tempt them to abandon theirfavorite projects. They have some change in the Church or State, orboth, constantly in their view. When that is the case, they are alwaysbad citizens, and perfectly unsure connections. For, considering theirspeculative designs as of infinite value, and the actual arrangement ofthe state as of no estimation, they are, at best, indifferent about it. They see no merit in the good, and no fault in the vicious management ofpublic affairs; they rather rejoice in the latter, as more propitious torevolution. They see no merit or demerit in any man, or any action, orany political principle, any further than as they may forward or retardtheir design of change; they therefore take up, one day, the mostviolent and stretched prerogative, and another time the wildestdemocratic ideas of freedom, and pass from the one to the other withoutany sort of regard to cause, to person, or to party. 

In France you are now in the crisis of a revolution, and in the transitfrom one form of government to another: you cannot see that character ofmen exactly in the same situation in which we see it in this country. With us it is militant, with you it is triumphant; and you know how itcan act, when its power is commensurate to its will. I would not besupposed to confine those observations to any description of men, or tocomprehend all men of any description within them, --no, far from it! Iam as incapable of that injustice as I am of keeping terms with thosewho profess principles of extremes, and who, under the name of religion, teach little else than wild and dangerous politics. The worst of thesepolitics of revolution is this: they temper and harden the breast, inorder to prepare it for the desperate strokes which are sometimes usedin extreme occasions. But as these occasions may never arrive, the mindreceives a gratuitous taint; and the moral sentiments suffer not alittle, when no political purpose is served by the depravation. Thissort of people are so taken up with their theories about the rights ofman, that they have totally forgot his nature. Without opening one newavenue to the understanding, they have succeeded in stopping up thosethat lead to the heart. They have perverted in themselves, and in thosethat attend to them, all the well-placed sympathies of the human breast. 

This famous sermon of the Old Jewry breathes nothing but this spiritthrough all the political part. Plots, massacres, assassinations, seemto some people a trivial price for obtaining a revolution. A cheap, bloodless reformation, a guiltless liberty, appear flat and vapid totheir taste. There must be a great change of scene; there must be amagnificent stage effect; there must be a grand spectacle to rouse theimagination, grown torpid with the lazy enjoyment of sixty years'security, and the still unanimating repose of public prosperity. Thepreacher found them all in the French Revolution. This inspires ajuvenile warmth through his whole frame. His enthusiasm kindles as headvances; and when he arrives at his peroration, it is in a full blaze. Then viewing, from the Pisgah of his pulpit, the free, moral, happy, flourishing, and glorious state of France, as in a bird-eye landscape ofa promised land, he breaks out into the following rapture:--

"What an eventful period is this! I am _thankful_ that I have lived toit; I could almost say, _Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart inpeace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation_. --I have lived to see a_diffusion_ of knowledge which has undermined superstition and error. --Ihave lived to see _the rights of men_ better understood than ever, andnations panting for liberty which seemed to have lost the idea of it. --Ihave lived to see _thirty millions of people_, indignant and resolute, spurning at slavery, and demanding liberty with an irresistible voice;_their king led in triumph, and an arbitrary monarch surrenderinghimself to his subjects_. "[88]

Before I proceed further, I have to remark that Dr. Price seems ratherto overvalue the great acquisitions of light which he has obtained anddiffused in this age. The last century appears to me to have been quiteas much enlightened. It had, though in a different place, a triumph asmemorable as that of Dr. Price; and some of the great preachers of thatperiod partook of it as eagerly as he has done in the triumph of France. On the trial of the Reverend Hugh Peters for high treason, it wasdeposed, that, when King Charles was brought to London for his trial, the Apostle of Liberty in that day conducted the _triumph_. "I saw, "says the witness, "his Majesty in the coach with six horses, and Petersriding before the king _triumphing_. " Dr. Price, when he talks as if hehad made a discovery, only follows a precedent; for, after thecommencement of the king's trial, this precursor, the same Dr. Peters, concluding a long prayer at the royal chapel at Whitehall, (he had verytriumphantly chosen his place, ) said, "I have prayed and preached thesetwenty years; and now I may say with old Simeon, _Lord, now lettest thouthy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thysalvation_. "[89] Peters had not the fruits of his prayer; for he neitherdeparted so soon as he wished, nor in peace. He became (what I heartilyhope none of his followers may be in this country) himself a sacrificeto the triumph which he led as pontiff. They dealt at the Restoration, perhaps, too hardly with this poor good man. But we owe it to his memoryand his sufferings, that he had as much illumination and as much zeal, and had as effectually undermined all _the superstition and error_ whichmight impede the great business he was engaged in, as any who follow andrepeat after him in this age, which would assume to itself an exclusivetitle to the knowledge of the rights of men, and all the gloriousconsequences of that knowledge. 

After this sally of the preacher of the Old Jewry, which differs only inplace and time, but agrees perfectly with the spirit and letter of therapture of 1648, the Revolution Society, the fabricators of governments, the heroic band of _cashierers_ of _monarchs_, electors of sovereigns, and leaders of kings in triumph, strutting with a proud consciousness ofthe diffusion of knowledge, of which every member had obtained so largea share in the donative, were in haste to make a generous diffusion ofthe knowledge they had thus gratuitously received. To make thisbountiful communication, they adjourned from the church in the Old Jewryto the London Tavern, where the same Dr. Price, in whom the fumes of hisoracular tripod were not entirely evaporated, moved and carried theresolution, or address of congratulation, transmitted by Lord Stanhopeto the National Assembly of France. 

I find a preacher of the Gospel profaning the beautiful and propheticejaculation, commonly called "_Nunc dimittis_, " made on the firstpresentation of our Saviour in the temple, and applying it, with aninhuman and unnatural rapture, to the most horrid, atrocious, andafflicting spectacle that perhaps ever was exhibited to the pity andindignation of mankind. This "_leading in triumph_, " a thing in its bestform unmanly and irreligious, which fills our preacher with suchunhallowed transports, must shock, I believe, the moral taste of everywell-born mind. Several English were the stupefied and indignantspectators of that triumph. It was (unless we have been strangelydeceived) a spectacle more resembling a procession of American savagesentering into Onondaga after some of their murders called victories, andleading into hovels hung round with scalps their captives overpoweredwith the scoffs and buffets of women as ferocious as themselves, muchmore than it resembled the triumphal pomp of a civilized martialnation;--if a civilized nation, or any men who had a sense ofgenerosity, were capable of a personal triumph over the fallen andafflicted. 

This, my dear Sir, was not the triumph of France. I must believe, that, as a nation, it overwhelmed you with shame and horror. I must believethat the National Assembly find themselves in a state of the greatesthumiliation in not being able to punish the authors of this triumph orthe actors in it, and that they are in a situation in which any inquirythey may make upon the subject must be destitute even of the appearanceof liberty or impartiality. The apology of that assembly is found intheir situation; but when we approve what they _must_ bear, it is in usthe degenerate choice of a vitiated mind. 

With a compelled appearance of deliberation, they vote under thedominion of a stern necessity. They sit in the heart, as it were, of aforeign republic: they have their residence in a city whose constitutionhas emanated neither from the charter of their king nor from theirlegislative power. There they are surrounded by an army not raisedeither by the authority of their crown or by their command, and which, if they should order to dissolve itself, would instantly dissolve them. There they sit, after a gang of assassins had driven away some hundredsof the members; whilst those who held the same moderate principles, withmore patience or better hope, continued every day exposed to outrageousinsults and murderous threats. There a majority, sometimes real, sometimes pretended, captive itself, compels a captive king to issue asroyal edicts, at third hand, the polluted nonsense of their mostlicentious and giddy coffee-houses. It is notorious that all theirmeasures are decided before they are debated. It is beyond doubt, that, under the terror of the bayonet, and the lamp-post, and the torch totheir houses, they are obliged to adopt all the crude and desperatemeasures suggested by clubs composed of a monstrous medley of allconditions, tongues, and nations. Among these are found persons incomparison of whom Catiline would be thought scrupulous, and Cethegus aman of sobriety and moderation. Nor is it in these clubs alone that thepublic measures are deformed into monsters. They undergo a previousdistortion in academies, intended as so many seminaries for these clubs, which are set up in all the places of public resort. In these meetingsof all sorts, every counsel, in proportion as it is daring and violentand perfidious, is taken for the mark of superior genius. Humanity andcompassion are ridiculed as the fruits of superstition and ignorance. Tenderness to individuals is considered as treason to the public. Liberty is always to be estimated perfect as property is renderedinsecure. Amidst assassination, massacre, and confiscation, perpetratedor meditated, they are forming plans for the good order of futuresociety. Embracing in their arms the carcasses of base criminals, andpromoting their relations on the title of their offences, they drivehundreds of virtuous persons to the same end, by forcing them to subsistby beggary or by crime. 

The Assembly, their organ, acts before them the farce of deliberationwith as little decency as liberty. They act like the comedians of afair, before a riotous audience; they act amidst the tumultuous cries ofa mixed mob of ferocious men, and of women lost to shame, who, accordingto their insolent fancies, direct, control, applaud, explode them, andsometimes mix and take their seats amongst them, --domineering over themwith a strange mixture of servile petulance and proud, presumptuousauthority. As they have inverted order in all things, the gallery is inthe place of the house. This assembly, which overthrows kings andkingdoms, has not even the physiognomy and aspect of a grave legislativebody, --_nec color imperii, nec frons erat ulla senatûs_. They have apower given to them, like that of the Evil Principle, to subvert anddestroy, --but none to construct, except such machines as may be fittedfor further subversion and further destruction. 

Who is it that admires, and from the heart is attached to nationalrepresentative assemblies, but must turn with horror and disgust fromsuch a profane burlesque and abominable perversion of that sacredinstitute? Lovers of monarchy, lovers of republics, must alike abhor it. The members of your Assembly must themselves groan under the tyranny ofwhich they have all the shame, none of the direction, and little of theprofit. I am sure many of the members who compose even the majority ofthat body must feel as I do, notwithstanding the applauses of theRevolution Society. Miserable king! miserable assembly! How must thatassembly be silently scandalized with those of their members who couldcall a day which seemed to blot the sun out of heaven "_un beaujour_"![90] How must they be inwardly indignant at hearing others whothought fit to declare to them, "that the vessel of the state would flyforward in her course towards regeneration with more speed than ever, "from the stiff gale of treason and murder which preceded our preacher'striumph! What must they have felt, whilst, with outward patience andinward indignation, they heard of the slaughter of innocent gentlemen intheir houses, that "the blood spilled was not the most pure"! What mustthey have felt, when they were besieged by complaints of disorders whichshook their country to its foundations, at being compelled coolly totell the complainants that they were under the protection of the law, and that they would address the king (the captive king) to cause thelaws to be enforced for their protection, when the enslaved ministers ofthat captive king had formally notified to them that there were neitherlaw nor authority nor power left to protect! What must they have felt atbeing obliged, as a felicitation on the present new year, to requesttheir captive king to forget the stormy period of the last, on accountof the great good which _he_ was likely to produce to his people, --tothe complete attainment of which good they adjourned the practicaldemonstrations of their loyalty, assuring him of their obedience when heshould no longer possess any authority to command!

This address was made with much good-nature and affection, to be sure. But among the revolutions in France must be reckoned a considerablerevolution in their ideas of politeness. In England we are said to learnmanners at second-hand from your side of the water, and that we dressour behavior in the frippery of France. If so, we are still in the oldcut, and have not so far conformed to the new Parisian mode of goodbreeding as to think it quite in the most refined strain of delicatecompliment (whether in condolence or congratulation) to say, to the mosthumiliated creature that crawls upon the earth, that great publicbenefits are derived from the murder of his servants, the attemptedassassination of himself and of his wife, and the mortification, disgrace, and degradation that he has personally suffered. It is a topicof consolation which our ordinary of Newgate would be too humane to useto a criminal at the foot of the gallows. I should have thought that thehangman of Paris, now that he is liberalized by the vote of the NationalAssembly, and is allowed his rank and arms in the Herald's College ofthe rights of men, would be too generous, too gallant a man, too full ofthe sense of his new dignity, to employ that cutting consolation to anyof the persons whom the _lèze-nation_ might bring under theadministration of his _executive powers_. 

A man is fallen indeed, when he is thus flattered. The anodyne draughtof oblivion, thus drugged, is well calculated to preserve a gallingwakefulness, and to feed the living ulcer of a corroding memory. Thus toadminister the opiate potion of amnesty, powdered with all theingredients of scorn and contempt, is to hold to his lips, instead of"the balm of hurt minds, " the cup of human misery full to the brim, andto force him to drink it to the dregs. 

Yielding to reasons at least as forcible as those which were sodelicately urged in the compliment on the new year, the king of Francewill probably endeavor to forget these events and that compliment. ButHistory, who keeps a durable record of all our acts, and exercises herawful censure over the proceedings of all sorts of sovereigns, will notforget either those events, or the era of this liberal refinement in theintercourse of mankind. History will record, that, on the morning of thesixth of October, 1789, the king and queen of France, after a day ofconfusion, alarm, dismay, and slaughter, lay down, under the pledgedsecurity of public faith, to indulge nature in a few hours of respite, and troubled, melancholy repose. From this sleep the queen was firststartled by the voice of the sentinel at her door, who cried out to herto save herself by flight, --that this was the last proof of fidelity hecould give, --that they were upon him, and he was dead. Instantly he wascut down. A band of cruel ruffians and assassins, reeking with hisblood, rushed into the chamber of the queen, and pierced with a hundredstrokes of bayonets and poniards the bed, from whence this persecutedwoman had but just time to fly almost naked, and, through ways unknownto the murderers, had escaped to seek refuge at the feet of a king andhusband not secure of his own life for a moment. 

This king, to say no more of him, and this queen, and their infantchildren, (who once would have been the pride and hope of a great andgenerous people, ) were then forced to abandon the sanctuary of the mostsplendid palace in the world, which they left swimming in blood, polluted by massacre, and strewed with scattered limbs and mutilatedcarcasses. Thence they were conducted into the capital of their kingdom. Two had been selected from the unprovoked, unresisted, promiscuousslaughter which was made of the gentlemen of birth and family whocomposed the king's body-guard. These two gentlemen, with all the paradeof an execution of justice, were cruelly and publicly dragged to theblock, and beheaded in the great court of the palace. Their heads werestuck upon spears, and led the procession; whilst the royal captives whofollowed in the train were slowly moved along, amidst the horrid yells, and shrilling screams, and frantic dances, and infamous contumelies, andall the unutterable abominations of the furies of hell, in the abusedshape of the vilest of women. After they had been made to taste, drop bydrop, more than the bitterness of death, in the slow torture of ajourney of twelve miles, protracted to six hours, they were, under aguard composed of those very soldiers who had thus conducted themthrough this famous triumph, lodged in one of the old palaces of Paris, now converted into a Bastile for kings. 

Is this a triumph to be consecrated at altars, to be commemorated withgrateful thanksgiving, to be offered to the Divine Humanity with ferventprayer and enthusiastic ejaculation?--These Theban and Thracian orgies, acted in France, and applauded only in the Old Jewry, I assure you, kindle prophetic enthusiasm in the minds but of very few people in thiskingdom: although a saint and apostle, who may have revelations of hisown, and who has so completely vanquished all the mean superstitions ofthe heart, may incline to think it pious and decorous to compare itwith the entrance into the world of the Prince of Peace, proclaimed inan holy temple by a venerable sage, and not long before not worseannounced by the voice of angels to the quiet innocence of shepherds. 

At first I was at a loss to account for this fit of unguarded transport. I knew, indeed, that the sufferings of monarchs make a delicious repastto some sort of palates. There were reflections which might serve tokeep this appetite within some bounds of temperance. But when I took onecircumstance into my consideration, I was obliged to confess that muchallowance ought to be made for the society, and that the temptation wastoo strong for common discretion: I mean, the circumstance of the IoPæan of the triumph, the animating cry which called for "_all_ theBISHOPS to be hanged on the lamp-posts, "[91] might well have broughtforth a burst of enthusiasm on the foreseen consequences of this happyday. I allow to so much enthusiasm some little deviation from prudence. I allow this prophet to break forth into hymns of joy and thanksgivingon an event which appears like the precursor of the Millennium, and theprojected Fifth Monarchy, in the destruction of all Churchestablishments. There was, however, (as in all human affairs there is, )in the midst of this joy, something to exercise the patience of theseworthy gentlemen, and to try the long-suffering of their faith. Theactual murder of the king and queen, and their child, was wanting to theother auspicious circumstances of this "_beautiful day_". The actualmurder of the bishops, though called for by so many holy ejaculations, was also wanting. A group of regicide and sacrilegious slaughter was, indeed, boldly sketched, but it was only sketched. It unhappily was leftunfinished, in this great history-piece of the massacre of innocents. What hardy pencil of a great master, from the school of the rights ofmen, will finish it, is to be seen hereafter. The age has not yet thecomplete benefit of that diffusion of knowledge that has underminedsuperstition and error; and the king of France wants another object ortwo to consign to oblivion, in consideration of all the good which is toarise from his own sufferings, and the patriotic crimes of anenlightened age. [92]

Although this work of our new light and knowledge did not go to thelength that in all probability it was intended it should be carried, yetI must think that such treatment of any human creatures must be shockingto any but those who are made for accomplishing revolutions. But Icannot stop here. Influenced by the inborn feelings of my nature, andnot being illuminated by a single ray of this new-sprung modern light, I confess to you, Sir, that the exalted rank of the persons suffering, and particularly the sex, the beauty, and the amiable qualities of thedescendant of so many kings and emperors, with the tender age of royalinfants, insensible only through infancy and innocence of the crueloutrages to which their parents were exposed, instead of being a subjectof exultation, adds not a little to my sensibility on that mostmelancholy occasion. 

I hear that the august person who was the principal object of ourpreacher's triumph, though he supported himself, felt much on thatshameful occasion. As a man, it became him to feel for his wife and hischildren, and the faithful guards of his person that were massacred incold blood about him; as a prince, it became him to feel for the strangeand frightful transformation of his civilized subjects, and to be moregrieved for them than solicitous for himself. It derogates little fromhis fortitude, while it adds infinitely to the honor of his humanity. Iam very sorry to say it, very sorry indeed, that such personages are ina situation in which it is not unbecoming in us to praise the virtues ofthe great. 

I hear, and I rejoice to hear, that the great lady, the other object ofthe triumph, has borne that day, (one is interested that beings made forsuffering should suffer well, ) and that she bears all the succeedingdays, that she bears the imprisonment of her husband, and her owncaptivity, and the exile of her friends, and the insulting adulation ofaddresses, and the whole weight of her accumulated wrongs, with a serenepatience, in a manner suited to her rank and race, and becoming theoffspring of a sovereign distinguished for her piety and her courage;that, like her, she has lofty sentiments; that she feels with thedignity of a Roman matron; that in the last extremity she will saveherself from the last disgrace; and that, if she must fall, she willfall by no ignoble hand. 

It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then the Dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never lighted on thisorb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I sawher just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphereshe just began to move in, --glittering like the morning-star, full oflife and splendor and joy. Oh! what a revolution! and what an heart mustI have, to contemplate without emotion that elevation and that fall!Little did I dream, when she added titles of veneration to those ofenthusiastic, distant, respectful love, that she should ever be obligedto carry the sharp antidote against disgrace concealed in that bosom!little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallenupon her in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor, and ofcavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from theirscabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But theage of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculatorshas succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever. Never, never more, shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, thatproud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of theheart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of anexalted freedom! The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence ofnations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise, is gone!It is gone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honor, whichfelt a stain like a wound, which inspired courage whilst it mitigatedferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which viceitself lost half its evil by losing all its grossness!

This mixed system of opinion and sentiment had its origin in the ancientchivalry; and the principle, though varied in its appearance by thevarying state of human affairs, subsisted and influenced through a longsuccession of generations, even to the time we live in. If it shouldever be totally extinguished, the loss, I fear, will be great. It isthis which has given its character to modern Europe. It is this whichhas distinguished it under all its forms of government, anddistinguished it to its advantage, from the states of Asia, and possiblyfrom those states which flourished in the most brilliant periods of theantique world. It was this, which, without confounding ranks, hadproduced a noble equality, and handed it down through all the gradationsof social life. It was this opinion which mitigated kings intocompanions, and raised private men to be fellows with kings. Withoutforce or opposition, it subdued the fierceness of pride and power; itobliged sovereigns to submit to the soft collar of social esteem, compelled stern authority to submit to elegance, and gave a domination, vanquisher of laws, to be subdued by manners. 

But now all is to be changed. All the pleasing illusions which madepower gentle and obedience liberal, which harmonized the differentshades of life, and which by a bland assimilation incorporated intopolitics the sentiments which beautify and soften private society, areto be dissolved by this new conquering empire of light and reason. Allthe decent drapery of life is to be rudely torn off. All the superaddedideas, furnished from the wardrobe of a moral imagination, which theheart owns and the understanding ratifies, as necessary to cover thedefects of our naked, shivering nature, and to raise it to dignity inour own estimation, are to be exploded, as a ridiculous, absurd, andantiquated fashion. 

On this scheme of things, a king is but a man, a queen is but a woman, awoman is but an animal, --and an animal not of the highest order. Allhomage paid to the sex in general as such, and without distinct views, is to be regarded as romance and folly. Regicide, and parricide, andsacrilege, are but fictions of superstition, corrupting jurisprudence bydestroying its simplicity. The murder of a king, or a queen, or abishop, or a father, are only common homicide, --and if the people are byany chance or in any way gainers by it, a sort of homicide much the mostpardonable, and into which we ought not to make too severe a scrutiny. 

On the scheme of this barbarous philosophy, which is the offspring ofcold hearts and muddy understandings and which is as void of solidwisdom as it is destitute of all taste and elegance, laws are to besupported only by their own terrors, and by the concern which eachindividual may find in them from his own private speculations, or canspare to them from his own private interests. In the groves of _their_academy, at the end of every visto, you see nothing but the gallows. Nothing is left which engages the affections on the part of thecommonwealth. On the principles of this mechanic philosophy, ourinstitutions can never be embodied, if I may use the expression, inpersons, --so as to create in us love, veneration, admiration, orattachment. But that sort of reason which banishes the affections isincapable of filling their place. These public affections, combined withmanners, are required sometimes as supplements, sometimes ascorrectives, always as aids to law. The precept given by a wise man, aswell as a great critic, for the construction of poems, is equally trueas to states:--"_Non satis est pulchra esse poemata, dulcia sunto_. "There ought to be a system of manners in every nation which awell-formed mind would be disposed to relish. To make us love ourcountry, our country ought to be lovely. 

But power, of some kind or other, will survive the shock in whichmanners and opinions perish; and it will find other and worse means forits support. The usurpation, which, in order to subvert ancientinstitutions, has destroyed ancient principles, will hold power by artssimilar to those by which it has acquired it. When the old feudal andchivalrous spirit of _fealty_, which, by freeing kings from fear, freedboth kings and subjects from the precautions of tyranny, shall beextinct in the minds of men, plots and assassinations will beanticipated by preventive murder and preventive confiscation, and thatlong roll of grim and bloody maxims which form the political code of allpower not standing on its own honor and the honor of those who are toobey it. Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebelsfrom principle. 

When ancient opinions and rules of life are taken away, the loss cannotpossibly be estimated. From that moment we have no compass to govern us, nor can we know distinctly to what port we steer. Europe, undoubtedly, taken in a mass, was in a flourishing condition the day on which yourRevolution was completed. How much of that prosperous state was owing tothe spirit of our old manners and opinions is not easy to say; but assuch causes cannot be indifferent in their operation, we must presume, that, on the whole, their operation was beneficial. 

We are but too apt to consider things in the state in which we findthem, without sufficiently adverting to the causes by which they havebeen produced, and possibly may be upheld. Nothing is more certain thanthat our manners, our civilization, and all the good things which areconnected with manners and with, civilization, have, in this Europeanworld of ours, depended for ages upon two principles, and were, indeed, the result of both combined: I mean the spirit of a gentleman, and thespirit of religion. The nobility and the clergy, the one by profession, and the other by patronage, kept learning in existence, even in themidst of arms and confusions, and whilst governments were rather intheir causes than formed. Learning paid back what it received tonobility and to priesthood, and paid it with usury, by enlarging theirideas, and by furnishing their minds. Happy, if they had all continuedto know their indissoluble union, and their proper place! Happy, iflearning, not debauched by ambition, had been satisfied to continue theinstructor, and not aspired to be the master! Along with its naturalprotectors and guardians, learning will be cast into the mire andtrodden down under the hoofs of a swinish multitude. [93]

If, as I suspect, modern letters owe more than they are always willingto own to ancient manners, so do other interests which we value full asmuch as they are worth. Even commerce, and trade, and manufacture, thegods of our economical politicians, are themselves perhaps butcreatures, are themselves but effects, which, as first causes, we chooseto worship. They certainly grew under the same shade in which learningflourished. They, too, may decay with their natural protectingprinciples. With you, for the present at least, they all threaten todisappear together. Where trade and manufactures are wanting to apeople, and the spirit of nobility and religion remains, sentimentsupplies, and not always ill supplies, their place; but if commerce andthe arts should be lost in an experiment to try how well a state maystand without these old fundamental principles, what sort of a thingmust be a nation of gross, stupid, ferocious, and at the same time poorand sordid barbarians, destitute of religion, honor, or manly pride, possessing nothing at present, and hoping for nothing hereafter?

I wish you may not be going fast, and by the shortest cut, to thathorrible and disgustful situation. Already there appears a poverty ofconception, a coarseness and vulgarity, in all the proceedings of theAssembly and of all their instructors. Their liberty is not liberal. Their science is presumptuous ignorance. Their humanity is savage andbrutal. 

It is not clear whether in England we learned those grand and decorousprinciples and manners, of which considerable traces yet remain, fromyou, or whether you took them from us. But to you, I think, we tracethem best. You seem to me to be _gentis incunabula nostræ_. France hasalways more or less influenced manners in England; and when yourfountain is choked up and polluted, the stream will not run long or notrun clear with us, or perhaps with any nation. This gives all Europe, inmy opinion, but too close and connected a concern in what is done inFrance. Excuse me, therefore, if I have dwelt too long on the atrociousspectacle of the sixth of October, 1789, or have given too much scope tothe reflections which have arisen in my mind on occasion of the mostimportant of all revolutions, which may be dated from that day: I mean arevolution in sentiments, manners, and moral opinions. As things nowstand, with everything respectable destroyed without us, and an attemptto destroy within us every principle of respect, one is almost forced toapologize for harboring the common feelings of men. 

 * * * * *

Why do I feel so differently from the Reverend Dr. Price, and those ofhis lay flock who will choose to adopt the sentiments of hisdiscourse?--For this plain reason: Because it is _natural_ I should;because we are so made as to be affected at such spectacles withmelancholy sentiments upon the unstable condition of mortal prosperity, and the tremendous uncertainty of human greatness; because in thosenatural feelings we learn great lessons; because in events like theseour passions instruct our reason; because, when kings are hurled fromtheir thrones by the Supreme Director of this great drama, and becomethe objects of insult to the base and of pity to the good, we beholdsuch disasters in the moral as we should behold a miracle in thephysical order of things. We are alarmed into reflection; our minds (asit has long since been observed) are purified by terror and pity; ourweak, unthinking pride is humbled under the dispensations of amysterious wisdom. Some tears might be drawn from me, if such aspectacle were exhibited on the stage. I should be truly ashamed offinding in myself that superficial, theatric sense of painted distress, whilst I could exult over it in real life. With such a perverted mind, Icould never venture to show my face at a tragedy. People would think thetears that Garrick formerly, or that Siddons not long since, haveextorted from me, were the tears of hypocrisy; I should know them to bethe tears of folly. 

Indeed, the theatre is a better school of moral sentiments than churcheswhere the feelings of humanity are thus outraged. Poets who have to dealwith an audience not yet graduated in the school of the rights of men, and who must apply themselves to the moral constitution of the heart, would not dare to produce such a triumph as a matter of exultation. There, where men follow their natural impulses, they would not bear theodious maxims of a Machiavelian policy, whether applied to theattainment of monarchical or democratic tyranny. They would reject themon the modern, as they once did on the ancient stage, where they couldnot bear even the hypothetical proposition of such wickedness in themouth of a personated tyrant, though suitable to the character hesustained. No theatric audience in Athens would bear what has been bornein the midst of the real tragedy of this triumphal day: a principalactor weighing, as it were in scales hung in a shop of horrors, so muchactual crime against so much contingent advantage, --and after putting inand out weights, declaring that the balance was on the side of theadvantages. They would not bear to see the crimes of new democracyposted as in a ledger against the crimes of old despotism, and thebook-keepers of politics finding democracy still in debt, but by nomeans unable or unwilling to pay the balance. In the theatre, the firstintuitive glance, without any elaborate process of reasoning, would showthat this method of political computation would justify every extent ofcrime. They would see, that, on these principles, even where the veryworst acts were not perpetrated, it was owing rather to the fortune ofthe conspirators than to their parsimony in the expenditure of treacheryand blood. They would soon see that criminal means, once tolerated, aresoon preferred. They present a shorter cut to the object than throughthe highway of the moral virtues. Justifying perfidy and murder forpublic benefit, public benefit would soon become the pretext, andperfidy and murder the end, --until rapacity, malice, revenge, and fearmore dreadful than revenge, could satiate their insatiable appetites. Such must be the consequences of losing, in the splendor of thesetriumphs of the rights of men, all natural sense of wrong and right. 

But the reverend pastor exults in this "leading in triumph, " because, truly, Louis the Sixteenth was "an arbitrary monarch": that is, in otherwords, neither more nor less than because he was Louis the Sixteenth, and because he had the misfortune to be born king of France, with theprerogatives of which a long line of ancestors, and a long acquiescenceof the people, without any act of his, had put him in possession. Amisfortune it has indeed turned out to him, that he was born king ofFrance. But misfortune is not crime, nor is indiscretion always thegreatest guilt. I shall never think that a prince, the acts of whosewhole reign were a series of concessions to his subjects, who waswilling to relax his authority, to remit his prerogatives, to call hispeople to a share of freedom not known, perhaps not desired, by theirancestors, --such a prince, though he should be subject to the commonfrailties attached to men and to princes, though he should have oncethought it necessary to provide force against the desperate designsmanifestly carrying on against his person and the remnants of hisauthority, --though all this should be taken into consideration, I shallbe led with great difficulty to think he deserves the cruel andinsulting triumph of Paris, and of Dr. Price. I tremble for the cause ofliberty, from such an example to kings. I tremble for the cause ofhumanity, in the unpunished outrages of the most wicked of mankind. Butthere are some people of that low and degenerate fashion of mind thatthey look up with a sort of complacent awe and admiration to kings whoknow to keep firm in their seat, to hold a strict hand over theirsubjects, to assert their prerogative, and, by the awakened vigilance ofa severe despotism, to guard against the very first approaches offreedom. Against such as these they never elevate their voice. Desertersfrom principle, listed with fortune, they never see any good insuffering virtue, nor any crime in prosperous usurpation. 

If it could have been made clear to me that the king and queen of France(those, I mean, who were such before the triumph) were inexorable andcruel tyrants, that they had formed a deliberate scheme for massacringthe National Assembly, (I think I have seen something like the latterinsinuated in certain publications, ) I should think their captivityjust. If this be true, much more ought to have been done, but done, inmy opinion, in another manner. The punishment of real tyrants is a nobleand awful act of justice; and it has with truth been said to beconsolatory to the human mind. But if I were to punish a wicked king, Ishould regard the dignity in avenging the crime. Justice is grave anddecorous, and in its punishments rather seems to submit to a necessitythan to make a choice. Had Nero, or Agrippina, or Louis the Eleventh, orCharles the Ninth been the subject, --if Charles the Twelfth of Sweden, after the murder of Patkul, or his predecessor, Christina, after themurder of Monaldeschi, had fallen into your hands, Sir, or into mine, Iam sure our conduct would have been different. 

If the French king, or king of the French, (or by whatever name he isknown in the new vocabulary of your Constitution, ) has in his own personand that of his queen really deserved these unavowed, but unavenged, murderous attempts, and those frequent indignities more cruel thanmurder, such a person would ill deserve even that subordinate executorytrust which I understand is to be placed in him; nor is he fit to becalled chief in a nation which he has outraged and oppressed. A worsechoice for such an office in a new commonwealth than that of a deposedtyrant could not possibly be made. But to degrade and insult a man asthe worst of criminals, and afterwards to trust him in your highestconcerns, as a faithful, honest, and zealous servant, is not consistentin reasoning, nor prudent in policy, nor safe in practice. Those whocould make such an appointment must be guilty of a more flagrant breachof trust than any they have yet committed against the people. As this isthe only crime in which your leading politicians could have actedinconsistently, I conclude that there is no sort of ground for thesehorrid insinuations. I think no better of all the other calumnies. 

In England, we give no credit to them. We are generous enemies; we arefaithful allies. We spurn from us with disgust and indignation theslanders of those who bring us their anecdotes with the attestation ofthe flower-de-luce on their shoulder. We have Lord George Gordon fast inNewgate; and neither his being a public proselyte to Judaism, nor hishaving, in his zeal against Catholic priests and all sorts ofecclesiastics, raised a mob (excuse the term, it is still in use here)which pulled down all our prisons, have preserved to him a liberty ofwhich he did not render himself worthy by a virtuous use of it. We haverebuilt Newgate, and tenanted the mansion. We have prisons almost asstrong as the Bastile, for those who dare to libel the queens of France. In this spiritual retreat let the noble libeller remain. Let him theremeditate on his Talmud, until he learns a conduct more becoming hisbirth and parts, and not so disgraceful to the ancient religion to whichhe has become a proselyte, --or until some persons from your side of thewater, to please your new Hebrew brethren, shall ransom him. He may thenbe enabled to purchase, with the old hoards of the synagogue, and a verysmall poundage on the long compound interest of the thirty pieces ofsilver, (Dr. Price has shown us what miracles compound interest willperform in 1790 years, ) the lands which are lately discovered to havebeen usurped by the Gallican Church. Send us your Popish Archbishop ofParis, and we will send you our Protestant Rabbin. We shall treat theperson you send us in exchange like a gentleman and an honest man, as heis: but pray let him bring with him the fund of his hospitality, bounty, and charity; and, depend upon it, we shall never confiscate a shillingof that honorable and pious fund, nor think of enriching the Treasurywith the spoils of the poor-box. 

To tell you the truth, my dear Sir, I think the honor of our nation tobe somewhat concerned in the disclaimer of the proceedings of thissociety of the Old Jewry and the London Tavern. I have no man's proxy. Ispeak only from myself, when I disclaim, as I do with all possibleearnestness, all communion with the actors in that triumph, or with theadmirers of it. When I assert anything else, as concerning the people ofEngland, I speak from observation, not from authority; but I speak fromthe experience I have had in a pretty extensive and mixed communicationwith the inhabitants of this kingdom, of all descriptions and ranks, andafter a course of attentive observation, begun in early life, andcontinued for near forty years. I have often been astonished, considering that we are divided from you but by a slender dike of abouttwenty-four miles, and that the mutual intercourse between the twocountries has lately been very great, to find how little you seem toknow of us. I suspect that this is owing to your forming a judgment ofthis nation from certain publications, which do, very erroneously, ifthey do at all, represent the opinions and dispositions generallyprevalent in England. The vanity, restlessness, petulance, and spiritof intrigue of several petty cabals, who attempt to hide their totalwant of consequence in bustle and noise, and puffing and mutualquotation of each other, makes you imagine that our contemptuous neglectof their abilities is a general mark of acquiescence in their opinions. No such thing, I assure you. Because half a dozen grasshoppers under afern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousandsof great cattle reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak chew thecud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noiseare the only inhabitants of the field, --that, of course, they are manyin number, --or that, after all, they are other than the little, shrivelled, meagre, hopping, though loud and troublesome insects of thehour. 

I almost venture to affirm that not one in a hundred amongst usparticipates in the "triumph" of the Revolution Society. If the king andqueen of France and their children were to fall into our hands by thechance of war, in the most acrimonious of all hostilities, (I deprecatesuch an event, I deprecate such hostility, ) they would be treated withanother sort of triumphal entry into London. We formerly have had a kingof France in that situation: you have read how he was treated by thevictor in the field, and in what manner he was afterwards received inEngland. Four hundred years have gone over us; but I believe we are notmaterially changed since that period. Thanks to our sullen resistance toinnovation, thanks to the cold sluggishness of our national character, we still bear the stamp of our forefathers. We have not (as I conceive)lost the generosity and dignity of thinking of the fourteenth century;nor as yet have we subtilized ourselves into savages. We are not theconverts of Rousseau; we are not the disciples of Voltaire; Helvetiushas made no progress amongst us. Atheists are not our preachers; madmenare not our lawgivers. We know that _we_ have made no discoveries, andwe think that no discoveries are to be made, in morality, --nor many inthe great principles of government, nor in the ideas of liberty, whichwere understood long before we were born altogether as well as they willbe after the grave has heaped its mould upon our presumption, and thesilent tomb shall have imposed its law on our pert loquacity. In Englandwe have not yet been completely embowelled of our natural entrails: westill feel within us, and we cherish and cultivate, those inbredsentiments which are the faithful guardians, the active monitors of ourduty, the true supporters of all liberal and manly morals. We have notbeen drawn and trussed, in order that we may be filled, like stuffedbirds in a museum, with chaff and rags, and paltry, blurred shreds ofpaper about the rights of man. We preserve the whole of our feelingsstill native and entire, unsophisticated by pedantry and infidelity. Wehave real hearts of flesh and blood beating in our bosoms. We fear God;we look up with awe to kings, with affection to Parliaments, with dutyto magistrates, with reverence to priests, and with respect tonobility. [94] Why? Because, when such ideas are brought before ourminds, it is _natural_ to be so affected; because all other feelings arefalse and spurious, and tend to corrupt our minds, to vitiate ourprimary morals, to render us unfit for rational liberty, and, byteaching us a servile, licentious, and abandoned insolence, to be ourlow sport for a few holidays, to make us perfectly fit for and justlydeserving of slavery through the whole course of our lives. 

You see, Sir, that in this enlightened age I am bold enough to confessthat we are generally men of untaught feelings: that, instead of castingaway all our old prejudices, we cherish them to a very considerabledegree; and, to take more shame to ourselves, we cherish them becausethey are prejudices; and the longer they have lasted, and the moregenerally they have prevailed, the more we cherish them. We are afraidto put men to live and trade each on his own private stock of reason;because we suspect that the stock in each man is small, and that theindividuals would do better to avail themselves of the general bank andcapital of nations and of ages. Many of our men of speculation, insteadof exploding general prejudices, employ their sagacity to discover thelatent wisdom which prevails in them. If they find what they seek, (andthey seldom fail, ) they think it more wise to continue the prejudice, with the reason involved, than to cast away the coat of prejudice, andto leave nothing but the naked reason; because prejudice, with itsreason, has a motive to give action to that reason, and an affectionwhich will give it permanence. Prejudice is of ready application in theemergency; it previously engages the mind in a steady course of wisdomand virtue, and does not leave the man hesitating in the moment ofdecision, skeptical, puzzled, and unresolved. Prejudice renders a man'svirtue his habit, and not a series of unconnected acts. Through justprejudice, his duty becomes a part of his nature. 

Your literary men, and your politicians, and so do the whole clan of theenlightened among us, essentially differ in these points. They have norespect for the wisdom of others; but they pay it off by a very fullmeasure of confidence in their own. With them it is a sufficient motiveto destroy an old scheme of things, because it is an old one. As to thenew, they are in no sort of fear with regard to the duration of abuilding run up in haste; because duration is no object to those whothink little or nothing has been done before their time, and who placeall their hopes in discovery. They conceive, very systematically, thatall things which give perpetuity are mischievous, and therefore they areat inexpiable war with all establishments. They think that governmentmay vary like modes of dress, and with as little ill effect; that thereneeds no principle of attachment, except a sense of present conveniency, to any constitution of the state. They always speak as if they were ofopinion that there is a singular species of compact between them andtheir magistrates, which binds the magistrate, but which has nothingreciprocal in it, but that the majesty of the people has a right todissolve it without any reason but its will. Their attachment to theircountry itself is only so far as it agrees with some of their fleetingprojects: it begins and ends with that scheme of polity which falls inwith their momentary opinion. 

These doctrines, or rather sentiments, seem prevalent with your newstatesmen. But they are wholly different from those on which we havealways acted in this country. 

I hear it is sometimes given out in France, that what is doing among youis after the example of England. I beg leave to affirm that scarcelyanything done with you has originated from the practice or the prevalentopinions of this people, either in the act or in the spirit of theproceeding. Let me add, that we are as unwilling to learn these lessonsfrom France as we are sure that we never taught them to that nation. Thecabals here who take a sort of share in your transactions as yet consistof but a handful of people. If, unfortunately, by their intrigues, theirsermons, their publications, and by a confidence derived from anexpected union with the counsels and forces of the French nation, theyshould draw considerable numbers into their faction, and in consequenceshould seriously attempt anything here in imitation of what has beendone with you, the event, I dare venture to prophesy, will be, that, with some trouble to their country, they will soon accomplish their owndestruction. This people refused to change their law in remote ages fromrespect to the infallibility of Popes, and they will not now alter itfrom a pious implicit faith in the dogmatism of philosophers, --thoughthe former was armed with the anathema and crusade, and though thelatter should act with the libel and the lamp-iron. 

Formerly your affairs were your own concern only. We felt for them asmen; but we kept aloof from them, because we were not citizens ofFrance. But when we see the model held up to ourselves, we must feel asEnglishmen, and, feeling, we must provide as Englishmen. Your affairs, in spite of us, are made a part of our interest, --so far at least as tokeep at a distance your panacea or your plague. If it be a panacea, wedo not want it: we know the consequences of unnecessary physic. If it bea plague, it is such a plague that the precautions of the most severequarantine ought to be established against it. 

I hear on all hands, that a cabal, calling itself philosophic, receivesthe glory of many of the late proceedings, and that their opinions andsystems are the true actuating spirit of the whole of them. I have heardof no party in England, literary or political, at any time, known bysuch a description. It is not with you composed of those men, is it?whom the vulgar, in their blunt, homely style, commonly call Atheistsand Infidels? If it be, I admit that we, too, have had writers of thatdescription, who made some noise in their day. At present they repose inlasting oblivion. Who, born within the last forty years, has read oneword of Collins, and Toland, and Tindal, and Chubb, and Morgan, and thatwhole race who called themselves Freethinkers? Who now readsBolingbroke? Who ever read him through? Ask the booksellers of Londonwhat is become of all these lights of the world. In as few years theirfew successors will go to the family vault of "all the Capulets. " Butwhatever they were, or are, with us they were and are wholly unconnectedindividuals. With us they kept the common nature of their kind, and werenot gregarious. They never acted in corps, nor were known as a factionin the state, nor presumed to influence in that name or character, orfor the purposes of such a faction, on any of our public concerns. Whether they ought so to exist, and so be permitted to act, is anotherquestion. As such cabals have not existed in England, so neither has thespirit of them had any influence in establishing the original frame ofour Constitution, or in any one of the several reparations andimprovements it has undergone. The whole has been done under theauspices, and is confirmed by the sanctions, of religion and piety. Thewhole has emanated from the simplicity of our national character, andfrom a sort of native plainness and directness of understanding, whichfor a long time characterized those men who have successively obtainedauthority among us. This disposition still remains, --at least in thegreat body of the people. 

We know, and, what is better, we feel inwardly, that religion is thebasis of civil society, and the source of all good, and of allcomfort. [95] In England we are so convinced of this, that there is norust of superstition, with which the accumulated absurdity of the humanmind might have crusted it over in the course of ages, that ninety-ninein a hundred of the people of England would not prefer to impiety. Weshall never be such fools as to call in an enemy to the substance of anysystem to remove its corruptions, to supply its defects, or to perfectits construction. If our religious tenets should ever want a furtherelucidation, we shall not call on Atheism to explain them. We shall notlight up our temple from that unhallowed fire. It will be illuminatedwith other lights. It will be perfumed with other incense than theinfectious stuff which is imported by the smugglers of adulteratedmetaphysics. If our ecclesiastical establishment should want a revision, it is not avarice or rapacity, public or private, that we shall employfor the audit or receipt or application of its consecrated revenue. Violently condemning neither the Greek nor the Armenian, nor, sinceheats are subsided, the Roman system of religion, we prefer theProtestant: not because we think it has less of the Christian religionin it, but because, in our judgment, it has more. We are Protestants, not from indifference, but from zeal. 

We know, and it is our pride to know, that man is by his constitution areligious animal; that atheism is against, not only our reason, but ourinstincts; and that it cannot prevail long. But if, in the moment ofriot, and in a drunken delirium from the hot spirit drawn out of thealembic of hell, which in France is now so furiously boiling, we shoulduncover our nakedness, by throwing off that Christian religion which hashitherto been our boast and comfort, and one great source ofcivilization amongst us, and among many other nations, we areapprehensive (being well aware that the mind will not endure a void)that some uncouth, pernicious, and degrading superstition might takeplace of it. 

For that reason, before we take from our establishment the natural, human means of estimation, and give it up to contempt, as you have done, and in doing it have incurred the penalties you well deserve to suffer, we desire that some other may be presented to us in the place of it. Weshall then form our judgment. 

On these ideas, instead of quarrelling with establishments, as some do, who have made a philosophy and a religion of their hostility to suchinstitutions, we cleave closely to them. We are resolved to keep anestablished church, an established monarchy, an established aristocracy, and an established democracy, each in the degree it exists, and in nogreater. I shall show you presently how much of each of these wepossess. 

It has been the misfortune (not, as these gentlemen think it, the glory)of this age, that everything is to be discussed, as if the Constitutionof our country were to be always a subject rather of altercation thanenjoyment. For this reason, as well as for the satisfaction of thoseamong you (if any such you have among you) who may wish to profit ofexamples, I venture to trouble you with a few thoughts upon each ofthese establishments. I do not think they were unwise in ancient Rome, who, when they wished to new-model their laws, sent commissioners toexamine the best-constituted republics within their reach. 

 * * * * *

First I beg leave to speak of our Church Establishment, which is thefirst of our prejudices, --not a prejudice destitute of reason, butinvolving in it profound and extensive wisdom. I speak of it first. Itis first, and last, and midst in our minds. For, taking ground on thatreligious system of which we are now in possession, we continue to acton the early received and uniformly continued sense of mankind. Thatsense not only, like a wise architect, hath built up the august fabricof states, but, like a provident proprietor, to preserve the structurefrom profanation and ruin, as a sacred temple, purged from all theimpurities of fraud and violence and injustice and tyranny, hathsolemnly and forever consecrated the commonwealth, and all thatofficiate in it. This consecration is made, that all who administer inthe government of men, in which they stand in the person of God Himself, should have high and worthy notions of their function and destination;that their hope should be full of immortality; that they should not lookto the paltry pelf of the moment, nor to the temporary and transientpraise of the vulgar, but to a solid, permanent existence, in thepermanent part of their nature, and to a permanent fame and glory, inthe example they leave as a rich inheritance to the world. 

Such sublime principles ought to be infused into persons of exaltedsituations, and religious establishments provided that may continuallyrevive and enforce them. Every sort of moral, every sort of civil, everysort of politic institution, aiding the rational and natural ties thatconnect the human understanding and affections to the divine, are notmore than necessary, in order to build up that wonderful structure, Man, --whose prerogative it is, to be in a great degree a creature of hisown making, and who, when made as he ought to be made, is destined tohold no trivial place in the creation. But whenever man is put over men, as the better nature ought ever to preside, in that case moreparticularly he should as nearly as possible be approximated to hisperfection. 

The consecration of the state by a state religious establishment isnecessary also to operate with a wholesome awe upon free citizens;because, in order to secure their freedom, they must enjoy somedeterminate portion of power. To them, therefore, a religion connectedwith the state, and with their duty towards it, becomes even morenecessary than in such societies where the people, by the terms of theirsubjection, are confined to private sentiments, and the management oftheir own family concerns. All persons possessing any portion of powerought to be strongly and awfully impressed with an idea that they act intrust, and that they are to account for their conduct in that trust tothe one great Master, Author, and Founder of society. 

This principle ought even to be more strongly impressed upon the mindsof those who compose the collective sovereignty than upon those ofsingle princes. Without instruments, these princes can do nothing. Whoever uses instruments, in finding helps, finds also impediments. Their power is therefore by no means complete; nor are they safe inextreme abuse. Such persons, however elevated by flattery, arrogance, and self-opinion, must be sensible, that, whether covered or not bypositive law, in some way or other they are accountable even here forthe abuse of their trust. If they are not cut off by a rebellion oftheir people, they may be strangled by the very janissaries kept fortheir security against all other rebellion. Thus we have seen the kingof France sold by his soldiers for an increase of pay. But where popularauthority is absolute and unrestrained, the people have an infinitelygreater, because a far better founded, confidence in their own power. They are themselves in a great measure their own instruments. They arenearer to their objects. Besides, they are less under responsibility toone of the greatest controlling powers on earth, the sense of fame andestimation. The share of infamy that is likely to fall to the lot ofeach individual in public acts is small indeed: the operation of opinionbeing in the inverse ratio to the number of those who abuse power. Theirown approbation of their own acts has to them the appearance of a publicjudgment in their favor. A perfect democracy is therefore the mostshameless thing in the world. As it is the most shameless, it is alsothe most fearless. No man apprehends in his person that he can be madesubject to punishment. Certainly the people at large never ought: for, as all punishments are for example towards the conservation of thepeople at large, the people at large can never become the subject ofpunishment by any human hand. [96] It is therefore of infinite importancethat they should not be suffered to imagine that their will, any morethan that of kings, is the standard of right and wrong. They ought to bepersuaded that they are full as little entitled, and far less qualified, with safety to themselves, to use any arbitrary power whatsoever; thattherefore they are not, under a false show of liberty, but in truth toexercise an unnatural, inverted domination, tyrannically to exact fromthose who officiate in the state, not an entire devotion to theirinterest, which is their right, but an abject submission to theiroccasional will: extinguishing thereby, in all those who serve them, allmoral principle, all sense of dignity, all use of judgment, and allconsistency of character; whilst by the very same process they givethemselves up a proper, a suitable, but a most contemptible prey to theservile ambition of popular sycophants or courtly flatterers. 

When the people have emptied themselves of all the lust of selfish will, which without religion it is utterly impossible they ever should, --whenthey are conscious that they exercise, and exercise perhaps in a higherlink of the order of delegation, the power which to be legitimate mustbe according to that eternal, immutable law in which will and reason arethe same, --they will be more careful how they place power in base andincapable hands. In their nomination to office, they will not appoint tothe exercise of authority as to a pitiful job, but as to a holyfunction; not according to their sordid, selfish interest, nor to theirwanton caprice, nor to their arbitrary will; but they will confer thatpower (which any man may well tremble to give or to receive) on thoseonly in whom they may discern that predominant proportion of activevirtue and wisdom, taken together and fitted to the charge, such as inthe great and inevitable mixed mass of human imperfections andinfirmities is to be found. 

When they are habitually convinced that no evil can be acceptable, either in the act or the permission, to Him whose essence is good, theywill be better able to extirpate out of the minds of all magistrates, civil, ecclesiastical, or military, anything that bears the leastresemblance to a proud and lawless domination. 

But one of the first and most leading principles on which thecommonwealth and the laws are consecrated is lest the temporarypossessors and life-renters in it, unmindful of what they have receivedfrom their ancestors, or of what is due to their posterity, should actas if they were the entire masters; that they should not think itamongst their rights to cut off the entail or commit waste on theinheritance, by destroying at their pleasure the whole original fabricof their society: hazarding to leave to those who come after them a ruininstead of an habitation, --and teaching these successors as little torespect their contrivances as they had themselves respected theinstitutions of their forefathers. By this unprincipled facility ofchanging the state as often and as much and in as many ways as there arefloating fancies or fashions, the whole chain and continuity of thecommonwealth would be broken; no one generation could link with theother; men would become little better than the flies of a summer. 

And first of all, the science of jurisprudence, the pride of the humanintellect, which, with all its defects, redundancies, and errors, is thecollected reason of ages, combining the principles of original justicewith the infinite variety of human concerns, as a heap of old explodederrors, would be no longer studied. Personal self-sufficiency andarrogance (the certain attendants upon all those who have neverexperienced a wisdom greater than their own) would usurp the tribunal. Of course no certain laws, establishing invariable grounds of hope andfear, would keep the actions of men in a certain course, or direct themto a certain end. Nothing stable in the modes of holding property orexercising function could form a solid ground on which any parent couldspeculate in the education of his offspring, or in a choice for theirfuture establishment in the world. No principles would be early workedinto the habits. As soon as the most able instructor had completed hislaborious course of institution, instead of sending forth his pupilaccomplished in a virtuous discipline fitted to procure him attentionand respect in his place in society, he would find everything altered, and that he had turned out a poor creature to the contempt and derisionof the world, ignorant of the true grounds of estimation. Who wouldinsure a tender and delicate sense of honor to beat almost with thefirst pulses of the heart, when no man could know what would be the testof honor in a nation continually varying the standard of its coin? Nopart of life would retain its acquisitions. Barbarism with regard toscience and literature, unskilfulness with regard to arts andmanufactures, would infallibly succeed to the want of a steady educationand settled principle; and thus the commonwealth itself would in a fewgenerations crumble away, be disconnected into the dust and powder ofindividuality, and at length dispersed to all the winds of heaven. 

To avoid, therefore, the evils of inconstancy and versatility, tenthousand times worse than those of obstinacy and the blindest prejudice, we have consecrated the state, that no man should approach to look intoits defects or corruptions but with due caution; that he should neverdream of beginning its reformation by its subversion; that he shouldapproach to the faults of the state as to the wounds of a father, withpious awe and trembling solicitude. By this wise prejudice we are taughtto look with horror on those children of their country who are promptrashly to hack that aged parent in pieces and put him into the kettle ofmagicians, in hopes that by their poisonous weeds and wild incantationsthey may regenerate the paternal constitution and renovate theirfather's life. 

Society is, indeed, a contract. Subordinate contracts for objects ofmere occasional interest may be dissolved at pleasure; but the stateought not to be considered as nothing better than a partnershipagreement in a trade of pepper and coffee, calico or tobacco, or someother such low concern, to be taken up for a little temporary interest, and to be dissolved by the fancy of the parties. It is to be looked onwith other reverence; because it is not a partnership in thingssubservient only to the gross animal existence of a temporary andperishable nature. It is a partnership in all science, a partnership inall art, a partnership in every virtue and in all perfection. As theends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, itbecomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but betweenthose who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born. Each contract of each particular state is but a clause in the greatprimeval contract of eternal society, linking the lower with the highernatures, connecting the visible and invisible world, according to afixed compact sanctioned by the inviolable oath which holds all physicaland all moral natures each in their appointed place. This law is notsubject to the will of those who, by an obligation above them, andinfinitely superior, are bound to submit their will to that law. Themunicipal corporations of that universal kingdom are not morally atliberty, at their pleasure, and on their speculations of a contingentimprovement, wholly to separate and tear asunder the bands of theirsubordinate community, and to dissolve it into an unsocial, uncivil, unconnected chaos of elementary principles. It is the first and supremenecessity only, a necessity that is not chosen, but chooses, a necessityparamount to deliberation, that admits no discussion and demands noevidence, which alone can justify a resort to anarchy. This necessity isno exception to the rule; because this necessity itself is a part, too, of that moral and physical disposition of things to which man must beobedient by consent or force: but if that which is only submission tonecessity should be made the object of choice, the law is broken, Natureis disobeyed, and the rebellious are outlawed, cast forth, and exiled, from this world of reason, and order, and peace, and virtue, andfruitful penitence, into the antagonist world of madness, discord, vice, confusion, and unavailing sorrow. 

These, my dear Sir, are, were, and, I think, long will be, thesentiments of not the least learned and reflecting part of this kingdom. They who are included in this description form their opinions on suchgrounds as such persons ought to form them. The less inquiring receivethem from an authority which those whom Providence dooms to live ontrust need not be ashamed to rely on. These two sorts of men move in thesame direction, though in a different place. They both move with theorder of the universe. They all know or feel this great ancienttruth:--"_Quod illi principi et præpotenti Deo qui omnem hunc mundumregit nihil eorum quæ quidem fiant in terris acceptius quam concilia etcoetus hominum jure sociati quæ civitates appellantur_. " They take thistenet of the head and heart, not from the great name which itimmediately bears, nor from the greater from whence it is derived, butfrom that which alone can give true weight and sanction to any learnedopinion, the common nature and common relation of men. Persuaded thatall things ought to be done with reference, and referring all to thepoint of reference to which all should be directed, they thinkthemselves bound, not only as individuals in the sanctuary of the heart, or as congregated in that personal capacity, to renew the memory oftheir high origin and cast, but also in their corporate character toperform their national homage to the Institutor and Author and Protectorof civil society, without which civil society man could not by anypossibility arrive at the perfection of which his nature is capable, noreven make a remote and faint approach to it. They conceive that He whogave our nature to be perfected by our virtue willed also the necessarymeans of its perfection: He willed, therefore, the state: He willed itsconnection with the source and original archetype of all perfection. They who are convinced of this His will, which is the law of laws andthe sovereign of sovereigns, cannot think it reprehensible that this ourcorporate fealty and homage, that this our recognition of a signioryparamount, I had almost said this oblation of the state itself, as aworthy offering on the high altar of universal praise, should beperformed, as all public, solemn acts are performed, in buildings, inmusic, in decoration, in speech, in the dignity of persons, according tothe customs of mankind, taught by their nature, --that is, with modestsplendor, with unassuming state, with mild majesty and sober pomp. Forthose purposes they think some part of the wealth of the country is asusefully employed as it can be in fomenting the luxury of individuals. It is the public ornament. It is the public consolation. It nourishesthe public hope. The poorest man finds his own importance and dignity init, whilst the wealth and pride of individuals at every moment makes theman of humble rank and fortune sensible of his inferiority, and degradesand vilifies his condition. It is for the man in humble life, and toraise his nature, and to put him in mind of a state in which theprivileges of opulence will cease, when he will be equal by nature, andmay be more than equal by virtue, that this portion of the generalwealth of his country is employed and sanctified. 

I assure you I do not aim at singularity. I give you opinions which havebeen accepted amongst us, from very early times to this moment, with acontinued and general approbation, and which, indeed, are so worked intomy mind that I am unable to distinguish what I have learned from othersfrom the results of my own meditation. 

It is on some such principles that the majority of the people ofEngland, far from thinking a religious national establishment unlawful, hardly think it lawful to be without one. In France you are whollymistaken, if you do not believe us above all other things attached toit, and beyond all other nations; and when this people has actedunwisely and unjustifiably in its favor, (as in some instances they havedone, most certainly, ) in their very errors you will at least discovertheir zeal. 

This principle runs through the whole system of their polity. They donot consider their Church establishment as convenient, but as essentialto their state: not as a thing heterogeneous and separable, --somethingadded for accommodation, --what they may either keep up or lay aside, according to their temporary ideas of convenience. They consider it asthe foundation of their whole Constitution, with which, and with everypart of which, it holds an indissoluble union. Church and State areideas inseparable in their minds, and scarcely is the one ever mentionedwithout mentioning the other. 

Our education is so formed as to confirm and fix this impression. Oureducation is in a manner wholly in the hands of ecclesiastics, and inall stages from infancy to manhood. Even when our youth, leaving schoolsand universities, enter that most important period of life which beginsto link experience and study together, and when with that view theyvisit other countries, instead of old domestics whom we have seen asgovernors to principal men from other parts, three fourths of those whogo abroad with our young nobility and gentlemen are ecclesiastics: notas austere masters, nor as mere followers; but as friends and companionsof a graver character, and not seldom persons as well born asthemselves. With them, as relations, they most commonly keep up a closeconnection through life. By this connection we conceive that we attachour gentlemen to the Church; and we liberalize the Church by anintercourse with the leading characters of the country. 

So tenacious are we of the old ecclesiastical modes and fashions ofinstitution, that very little alteration has been made in them since thefourteenth or fifteenth century: adhering in this particular, as in allthings else, to our old settled maxim, never entirely nor at once todepart from antiquity. We found these old institutions, on the whole, favorable to morality and discipline; and we thought they weresusceptible of amendment, without altering the ground. We thought thatthey were capable of receiving and meliorating, and above all ofpreserving, the accessions of science and literature, as the order ofProvidence should successively produce them. And after all, with thisGothic and monkish education, (for such it is in the groundwork, ) we mayput in our claim to as ample and as early a share in all theimprovements in science, in arts, and in literature, which haveilluminated and adorned the modern world, as any other nation in Europe:we think one main cause of this improvement was our not despising thepatrimony of knowledge which was left us by our forefathers. 

It is from our attachment to a Church establishment, that the Englishnation did not think it wise to intrust that great fundamental interestof the whole to what they trust no part of their civil or militarypublic service, --that is, to the unsteady and precarious contribution ofindividuals. They go further. They certainly never have suffered, andnever will suffer, the fixed estate of the Church to be converted into apension, to depend on the Treasury, and to be delayed, withheld, orperhaps to be extinguished by fiscal difficulties: which difficultiesmay sometimes be pretended for political purposes, and are in fact oftenbrought on by the extravagance, negligence, and rapacity of politicians. The people of England think that they have constitutional motives, aswell as religious, against any project of turning their independentclergy into ecclesiastical pensioners of state. They tremble for theirliberty, from the influence of a clergy dependent on the crown; theytremble for the public tranquillity, from the disorders of a factiousclergy, if it were made to depend upon any other than the crown. Theytherefore made their Church, like their king and their nobility, independent. 

From the united considerations of religion and constitutional policy, from their opinion of a duty to make a sure provision for theconsolation of the feeble and the instruction of the ignorant, they haveincorporated and identified the estate of the Church with the mass of_private property_, of which the state is not the proprietor, either foruse or dominion, but the guardian only and the regulator. They haveordained that the provision of this establishment might be as stable asthe earth on which it stands, and should not fluctuate with the Euripusof funds and actions. 

The men of England, the men, I mean, of light and leading in England, whose wisdom (if they have any) is open and direct, would be ashamed, asof a silly, deceitful trick, to profess any religion in name, which bytheir proceedings they appear to contemn. If by their conduct (the onlylanguage that rarely lies) they seemed to regard the great rulingprinciple of the moral and the natural world as a mere invention to keepthe vulgar in obedience, they apprehend that by such a conduct theywould defeat the politic purpose they have in view. They would find itdifficult to make others believe in a system to which they manifestlygave no credit themselves. The Christian statesmen of this land would, indeed, first provide for the _multitude_, because it is the_multitude_, and is therefore, as such, the first object in theecclesiastical institution, and in all institutions. They have beentaught that the circumstance of the Gospel's being preached to the poorwas one of the great tests of its true mission. They think, therefore, that those do not believe it who do not take care it should be preachedto the poor. But as they know that charity is not confined to any onedescription, but ought to apply itself to all men who have wants, theyare not deprived of a due and anxious sensation of pity to thedistresses of the miserable great. They are not repelled, through afastidious delicacy, at the stench of their arrogance and presumption, from a medicinal attention to their mental blotches and running sores. They are sensible that religious instruction is of more consequence tothem than to any others: from the greatness of the temptation to whichthey are exposed; from the important consequences that attend theirfaults; from the contagion of their ill example; from the necessity ofbowing down the stubborn neck of their pride and ambition to the yoke ofmoderation and virtue; from a consideration of the fat stupidity andgross ignorance concerning what imports men most to know, which prevailsat courts, and at the head of armies, and in senates, as much as at theloom and in the field. 

The English people are satisfied, that to the great the consolations ofreligion are as necessary as its instructions. They, too, are among theunhappy. They feel personal pain and domestic sorrow. In these they haveno privilege, but are subject to pay their full contingent to thecontributions levied on mortality. They want this sovereign balm undertheir gnawing cares and anxieties, which, being less conversant aboutthe limited wants of animal life, range without limit, and arediversified by infinite combinations in the wild and unbounded regionsof imagination. Some charitable dole is wanting to these, our oftenvery unhappy brethren, to fill the gloomy void that reigns in mindswhich have nothing on earth to hope or fear; something to relieve in thekilling languor and over-labored lassitude of those who have nothing todo; something to excite an appetite to existence in the palled satietywhich attends on all pleasures which may be bought, where Nature is notleft to her own process, where even desire is anticipated, and thereforefruition defeated by meditated schemes and contrivances of delight, andno interval, no obstacle, is interposed between the wish and theaccomplishment. 

The people of England know how little influence the teachers of religionare likely to have with the wealthy and powerful of long standing, andhow much less with the newly fortunate, if they appear in a manner noway assorted to those with whom they must associate, and over whom theymust even exercise, in some cases, something like an authority. Whatmust they think of that body of teachers, if they see it in no partabove the establishment of their domestic servants? If the poverty werevoluntary, there might be some difference. Strong instances ofself-denial operate powerfully on our minds; and a man who has no wantshas obtained great freedom and firmness, and even dignity. But as themass of any description of men are but men, and their poverty cannot bevoluntary, that disrespect which attends upon all lay poverty will notdepart from the ecclesiastical. Our provident Constitution has thereforetaken care that those who are to instruct presumptuous ignorance, thosewho are to be censors over insolent vice, should neither incur theircontempt nor live upon their alms; nor will it tempt the rich to aneglect of the true medicine of their minds. For these reasons, whilstwe provide first for the poor, and with a parental solicitude, we havenot relegated religion (like something we were ashamed to show) toobscure municipalities or rustic villages. No! we will have her to exalther mitred front in courts and parliaments. We will have her mixedthroughout the whole mass of life, and blended with all the classes ofsociety. The people of England will show to the haughty potentates ofthe world, and to their talking sophisters, that a free, a generous, aninformed nation honors the high magistrates of its Church; that it willnot suffer the insolence of wealth and titles, or any other species ofproud pretension, to look down with scorn upon what they look up to withreverence, nor presume to trample on that acquired personal nobilitywhich they intend always to be, and which often is, the fruit, not thereward, (for what can be the reward?) of learning, piety, and virtue. They can see, without pain or grudging, an archbishop precede a duke. They can see a bishop of Durham or a bishop of Winchester in possessionof ten thousand pounds a year, and cannot conceive why it is in worsehands than estates to the like amount in the hands of this earl or thatsquire; although it may be true that so many dogs and horses are notkept by the former, and fed with the victuals which ought to nourish thechildren of the people. It is true, the whole Church revenue is notalways employed, and to every shilling, in charity; nor perhaps oughtit; but something is generally so employed. It is better to cherishvirtue and humanity, by leaving much to free will, even with some lossto the object, than to attempt to make men mere machines and instrumentsof a political benevolence. The world on the whole will gain by aliberty without which virtue cannot exist. 

When once the commonwealth has established the estates of the Church asproperty, it can consistently hear nothing of the more or the less. Toomuch and too little are treason against property. What evil can arisefrom the quantity in any hand, whilst the supreme authority has thefull, sovereign superintendence over this, as over any property, toprevent every species of abuse, --and whenever it notably deviates, togive to it a direction agreeable to the purposes of its institution?

In England most of us conceive that it is envy and malignity towardsthose who are often the beginners of their own fortune, and not a loveof the self-denial and mortification of the ancient Church, that makessome look askance at the distinctions and honors and revenues which, taken from no person, are set apart for virtue. The ears of the peopleof England are distinguishing. They hear these men speak broad. Theirtongue betrays them. Their language is in the _patois_ of fraud, in thecant and gibberish of hypocrisy. The people of England must think so, when these praters affect to carry back the clergy to that primitiveevangelic poverty which in the spirit ought always to exist in them, (and in us, too, however we may like it, ) but in the thing must bevaried, when the relation of that body to the state is altered, --whenmanners, when modes of life, when indeed the whole order of humanaffairs, has undergone a total revolution. We shall believe thosereformers to be then honest enthusiasts, not, as now we think them, cheats and deceivers, when we see them throwing their own goods intocommon, and submitting their own persons to the austere discipline ofthe early Church. 

With these ideas rooted in their minds, the Commons of Great Britain, inthe national emergencies, will never seek their resource from theconfiscation of the estates of the Church and poor. Sacrilege andproscription are not among the ways and means of our Committee ofSupply. The Jews in Change Alley have not yet dared to hint their hopesof a mortgage on the revenues belonging to the see of Canterbury. I amnot afraid that I shall be disavowed, when I assure you that there isnot _one_ public man in this kingdom, whom you wish to quote, --no, notone, of any party or description, --who does not reprobate the dishonest, perfidious, and cruel confiscation which the National Assembly has beencompelled to make of that property which it was their first duty toprotect. 

It is with the exultation of a little national pride I tell you thatthose amongst us who have wished to pledge the societies of Paris in thecup of their abominations have been disappointed. The robbery of yourChurch has proved a security to the possessions of ours. It has rousedthe people. They see with horror and alarm that enormous and shamelessact of proscription. It has opened, and will more and more open, theireyes upon the selfish enlargement of mind and the narrow liberality ofsentiment of insidious men, which, commencing in close hypocrisy andfraud, have ended in open violence and rapine. At home we behold similarbeginnings. We are on our guard against similar conclusions. 

I hope we shall never be so totally lost to all sense of the dutiesimposed upon us by the law of social union, as, upon any pretest ofpublic service, to confiscate the goods of a single unoffending citizen. Who but a tyrant (a name expressive of everything which can vitiate anddegrade human nature) could think of seizing on the property of men, unaccused, unheard, untried, by whole descriptions, by hundreds andthousands together? Who that had not lost every trace of humanity couldthink of casting down men of exalted rank and sacred function, some ofthem of an age to call at once for reverence and compassion, --of castingthem down from the highest situation in the commonwealth, wherein theywere maintained by their own landed property, to a state of indigence, depression, and contempt?

The confiscators truly have made some allowance to their victims fromthe scraps and fragments of their own tables, from which they have beenso harshly driven, and which have been so bountifully spread for a feastto the harpies of usury. But to drive men from independence to live onalms is itself great cruelty. That which might be a tolerable conditionto men in one state of life, and not habituated to other things, may, when all these circumstances are altered, be a dreadful revolution, andone to which a virtuous mind would feel pain in condemning any guilt, except that which would demand the life of the offender. But to manyminds this punishment of _degradation_ and _infamy_ is worse than death. Undoubtedly it is an infinite aggravation of this cruel suffering, thatthe persons who were taught a double prejudice in favor of religion, byeducation, and by the place they held in the administration of itsfunctions, are to receive the remnants of their property as alms fromthe profane and impious hands of those who had plundered them of all therest, --to receive (if they are at all to receive) not from thecharitable contributions of the faithful, but from the insolenttenderness of known and avowed atheism, the maintenance of religion, measured out to them on the standard of the contempt in which it isheld, and for the purpose of rendering those who receive the allowancevile and of no estimation in the eyes of mankind. 

But this act of seizure of property, it seems, is a judgment in law, andnot a confiscation. They have, it seems, found out in the academies ofthe Palais Royal and the Jacobins, that certain men had no right to thepossessions which they held under law, usage, the decisions of courts, and the accumulated prescription of a thousand years. They say thatecclesiastics are fictitious persons, creatures of the state, whom atpleasure they may destroy, and of course limit and modify in everyparticular; that the goods they possess are not properly theirs, butbelong to the state which created the fiction; and we are therefore notto trouble ourselves with what they may suffer in their natural feelingsand natural persons on account of what is done towards them in thistheir constructive character. Of what import is it, under what names youinjure men, and deprive them of the just emoluments of a profession inwhich they were not only permitted, but encouraged by the state toengage, and upon the supposed certainty of which emoluments they hadformed the plan of their lives, contracted debts, and led multitudes toan entire dependence upon them?

You do not imagine, Sir, that I am going to compliment this miserabledistinction of persons with any long discussion. The arguments oftyranny are as contemptible as its force is dreadful. Had not yourconfiscators by their early crimes obtained a power which securesindemnity to all the crimes of which they have since been guilty, orthat they can commit, it is not the syllogism of the logician, but thelash of the executioner, that would have refuted a sophistry whichbecomes an accomplice of theft and murder. The sophistic tyrants ofParis are loud in their declamations against the departed regal tyrantswho in former ages have vexed the world. They are thus bold, becausethey are safe from the dungeons and iron cages of their old masters. Shall we be more tender of the tyrants of our own time, when we see themacting worse tragedies under our eyes? Shall we not use the same libertythat they do, when we can use it with the same safety, when to speakhonest truth only requires a contempt of the opinions of those whoseactions we abhor?

This outrage on all the rights of property was at first covered withwhat, on the system of their conduct, was the most astonishing of allpretexts, --a regard to national faith. The enemies to property at firstpretended a most tender, delicate, and scrupulous anxiety for keepingthe king's engagements with the public creditor. These professors of therights of men are so busy in teaching others, that they have not leisureto learn anything themselves; otherwise they would have known that it isto the property of the citizen, and not to the demands of the creditorof the state, that the first and original faith of civil society ispledged. The claim of the citizen is prior in time, paramount in title, superior in equity. The fortunes of individuals, whether possessed byacquisition, or by descent, or in virtue of a participation in the goodsof some community, were no part of the creditor's security, expressed orimplied. They never so much as entered into his head, when he made hisbargain. He well knew that the public, whether represented by a monarchor by a senate, can pledge nothing but the public estate; and it canhave no public estate, except in what it derives from a just andproportioned imposition upon the citizens at large. This was engaged, and nothing else could be engaged, to the public creditor. No man canmortgage his injustice as a pawn for his fidelity. 

It is impossible to avoid some observation on the contradictions, causedby the extreme rigor and the extreme laxity of this new public faith, which influenced in this transaction, and which influenced not accordingto the nature of the obligation, but to the description of the personsto whom it was engaged. No acts of the old government of the kings ofFrance are held valid in the National Assembly, except its pecuniaryengagements: acts of all others of the most ambiguous legality. The restof the acts of that royal government are considered in so odious a lightthat to have a claim under its authority is looked on as a sort ofcrime. A pension, given as a reward for service to the state, is surelyas good a ground of property as any security for money advanced to thestate. It is a better; for money is paid, and well paid, to obtain thatservice. We have, however, seen multitudes of people under thisdescription in France, who never had been deprived of their allowancesby the most arbitrary ministers in the most arbitrary times, by thisassembly of the rights of men robbed without mercy. They were told, inanswer to their claim to the bread earned with their blood, that theirservices had not been rendered to the country that now exists. 

This laxity of public faith is not confined to those unfortunatepersons. The Assembly, with perfect consistency, it must be owned, isengaged in a respectable deliberation how far it is bound by thetreaties made with other nations under the former government; and theircommittee is to report which of them they ought to ratify, and whichnot. By this means they have put the external fidelity of this virginstate on a par with its internal. 

It is not easy to conceive upon what rational principle the royalgovernment should not, of the two, rather have possessed the power ofrewarding service and making treaties, in virtue of its prerogative, than that of pledging to creditors the revenue of the state, actual andpossible. The treasure of the nation, of all things, has been the leastallowed to the prerogative of the king of France, or to the prerogativeof any king in Europe. To mortgage the public revenue implies thesovereign dominion, in the fullest sense, over the public purse. It goesfar beyond the trust even of a temporary and occasional taxation. Theacts, however, of that dangerous power (the distinctive mark of aboundless despotism) have been alone held sacred. Whence arose thispreference given by a democratic assembly to a body of property derivingits title from the most critical and obnoxious of all the exertions ofmonarchical authority? Reason can furnish nothing to reconcileinconsistency; nor can partial favor be accounted for upon equitableprinciples. But the contradiction and partiality which admit nojustification are not the less without an adequate cause; and that causeI do not think it difficult to discover. 

By the vast debt of France a great moneyed interest has insensibly grownup, and with it a great power. By the ancient usages which prevailed inthat kingdom, the general circulation of property, and in particular themutual convertibility of land into money and of money into land, hadalways been a matter of difficulty. Family settlements, rather moregeneral and more strict than they are in England, the _jus retractûs_, the great mass of landed property held by the crown, and, by a maxim ofthe French law, held unalienably, the vast estates of the ecclesiasticcorporations, --all these had kept the landed and moneyed interests moreseparated in France, less miscible, and the owners of the two distinctspecies of property not so well disposed to each other as they are inthis country. 

The moneyed property was long looked on with rather an evil eye by thepeople. They saw it connected with their distresses, and aggravatingthem. It was no less envied by the old landed interests, --partly for thesame reasons that rendered it obnoxious to the people, but much more soas it eclipsed, by the splendor of an ostentatious luxury, the unendowedpedigrees and naked titles of several among the nobility. Even when thenobility, which represented the more permanent landed interest, unitedthemselves by marriage (which sometimes was the case) with the otherdescription, the wealth which saved the family from ruin was supposed tocontaminate and degrade it. Thus the enmities and heart burnings ofthese parties were increased even by the usual means by which discord ismade to cease and quarrels are turned into friendship. In the mean time, the pride of the wealthy men, not noble, or newly noble, increased withits cause. They felt with resentment an inferiority the grounds of whichthey did not acknowledge. There was no measure to which they were notwilling to lend themselves, in order to be revenged of the outrages ofthis rival pride, and to exalt their wealth to what they considered asits natural rank and estimation. They struck at the nobility through thecrown and the Church. They attacked them particularly on the side onwhich they thought them the most vulnerable, --that is, the possessionsof the Church, which, through the patronage of the crown, generallydevolved upon the nobility. The bishoprics and the great commendatoryabbeys were, with few exceptions, held by that order. 

In this state of real, though not always perceived, warfare between thenoble ancient landed interest and the new moneyed interest, thegreatest, because the most applicable, strength was in the hands of thelatter. The moneyed interest is in its nature more ready for anyadventure, and its possessors more disposed to new enterprises of anykind. Being of a recent acquisition, it falls in more naturally with anynovelties. It is therefore the kind of wealth which will be resorted toby all who wish for change. 

Along with the moneyed interest, a new description of men had grown up, with whom that interest soon formed a close and marked union: I mean thepolitical men of letters. Men of letters, fond of distinguishingthemselves, are rarely averse to innovation. Since the decline of thelife and greatness of Louis the Fourteenth, they were not so muchcultivated either by him, or by the Regent, or the successors to thecrown; nor were they engaged to the court by favors and emoluments sosystematically as during the splendid period of that ostentatious andnot impolitic reign. What they lost in the old court protection theyendeavored to make up by joining in a sort of incorporation of theirown; to which the two academies of France, and afterwards the vastundertaking of the Encyclopædia, carried on by a society of thesegentlemen, did not a little contribute. 

The literary cabal had some years ago formed something like a regularplan for the destruction of the Christian religion. This object theypursued with a degree of zeal which hitherto had been discovered only inthe propagators of some system of piety. They were possessed with aspirit of proselytism in the most fanatical degree, --and from thence, byan easy progress, with the spirit of persecution according to theirmeans. [97] What was not to be done towards their great end by any director immediate act might be wrought by a longer process through the mediumof opinion. To command that opinion, the first step is to establish adominion over those who direct it. They contrived to possess themselves, with great method and perseverance, of all the avenues to literary fame. Many of them, indeed, stood high in the ranks of literature and science. The world had done them justice, and in favor of general talents forgavethe evil tendency of their peculiar principles. This was trueliberality; which they returned by endeavoring to confine the reputationof sense, learning, and taste to themselves or their followers. I willventure to say that this narrow, exclusive spirit has not been lessprejudicial to literature and to taste than to morals and truephilosophy. These atheistical fathers have a bigotry of their own; andthey have learnt to talk against monks with the spirit of a monk. But insome things they are men of the world. The resources of intrigue arecalled in to supply the defects of argument and wit. To this system ofliterary monopoly was joined an unremitting industry to blacken anddiscredit in every way, and by every means, all those who did not holdto their faction. To those who have observed the spirit of their conductit has long been clear that nothing was wanted but the power of carryingthe intolerance of the tongue and of the pen into a persecution whichwould strike at property, liberty, and life. 

The desultory and faint persecution carried on against them, more fromcompliance with form and decency than with serious resentment, neitherweakened their strength nor relaxed their efforts. The issue of thewhole was, that, what with opposition, and what with success, a violentand malignant zeal, of a kind hitherto unknown in the world, had takenan entire possession of their minds, and rendered their wholeconversation, which otherwise would have been pleasing and instructive, perfectly disgusting. A spirit of cabal, intrigue, and proselytismpervaded all their thoughts, words, and actions. And as controversialzeal soon turns its thoughts on force, they began to insinuatethemselves into a correspondence with foreign princes, --in hopes, through their authority, which at first they flattered, they mightbring about the changes they had in view. To them it was indifferentwhether these changes were to be accomplished by the thunderbolt ofdespotism or by the earthquake of popular commotion. The correspondencebetween this cabal and the late king of Prussia will throw no smalllight upon the spirit of all their proceedings. [98] For the same purposefor which they intrigued with princes, they cultivated, in adistinguished manner, the moneyed interest of France; and partly throughthe means furnished by those whose peculiar offices gave them the mostextensive and certain means of communication, they carefully occupiedall the avenues to opinion. 

Writers, especially when they act in a body and with one direction, havegreat influence on the public mind; the alliance, therefore, of thesewriters with the moneyed interest[99] had no small effect in removingthe popular odium and envy which attended that species of wealth. Thesewriters, like the propagators of all novelties, pretended to a greatzeal for the poor and the lower orders, whilst in their satires theyrendered hateful, by every exaggeration, the faults of courts, ofnobility, and of priesthood. They became a sort of demagogues. Theyserved as a link to unite, in favor of one object, obnoxious wealth torestless and desperate poverty. 

As these two kinds of men appear principal leaders in all the latetransactions, their junction and politics will serve to account, notupon any principles of law or of policy, but as a _cause_, for thegeneral fury with which all the landed property of ecclesiasticalcorporations has been attacked, and the great care which, contrary totheir pretended principles, has been taken of a moneyed interestoriginating from the authority of the crown. All the envy against wealthand power was artificially directed against other descriptions ofriches. On what other principle than that which I have stated can weaccount for an appearance so extraordinary and unnatural as that of theecclesiastical possessions, which had stood so many successions of agesand shocks of civil violences, and were guarded at once by justice andby prejudice, being applied to the payment of debts comparativelyrecent, invidious, and contracted by a decried and subverted government?

Was the public estate a sufficient stake for the public debts? Assumethat it was not, and that a loss _must_ be incurred somewhere. When theonly estate lawfully possessed, and which the contracting parties had incontemplation at the time in which their bargain was made, happens tofail, who, according to the principles of natural and legal equity, ought to be the sufferer? Certainly it ought to be either the party whotrusted, or the party who persuaded him to trust, or both; and not thirdparties who had no concern with the transaction. Upon any insolvency, they ought to suffer who were weak enough to lend upon bad security, orthey who fraudulently held out a security that was not valid. Laws areacquainted with no other rules of decision. But by the new institute ofthe rights of men, the only persons who in equity ought to suffer arethe only persons who are to be saved harmless: those are to answer thedebt who neither were lenders nor borrowers, mortgagers nor mortgagees. 

What had the clergy to do with these transactions? What had they to dowith any public engagement further than the extent of their own debt? Tothat, to be sure, their estates were bound to the last acre. Nothing canlead more to the true spirit of the Assembly, which sits for publicconfiscation with its new equity and its new morality, than an attentionto their proceeding with regard to this debt of the clergy. The body ofconfiscators, true to that moneyed interest for which they were false toevery other, have found the clergy competent to incur a legal debt. Ofcourse they declared them legally entitled to the property which theirpower of incurring the debt and mortgaging the estate implied:recognizing the rights of those persecuted citizens in the very act inwhich they were thus grossly violated. 

If, as I said, any persons are to mate good deficiencies to the publiccreditor, besides the public at large, they must be those who managedthe agreement. Why, therefore, are not the estates of all thecomptrollers-general confiscated?[100] Why not those of the longsuccession of ministers, financiers, and bankers who have been enrichedwhilst the nation was impoverished by their dealings and their counsels?Why is not the estate of M. Laborde declared forfeited rather than ofthe Archbishop of Paris, who has had nothing to do in the creation or inthe jobbing of the public funds? Or, if you must confiscate old landedestates in favor of the money-jobbers, why is the penalty confined toone description? I do not know whether the expenses of the Duke deChoiseul have left anything of the infinite sums which he had derivedfrom the bounty of his master, during the transactions of a reign whichcontributed largely, by every species of prodigality in war and peace, to the present debt of France. If any such remains, why is not thisconfiscated? I remember to have been in Paris during the time of the oldgovernment. I was there just after the Duke d'Aiguillon had beensnatched (as it was generally thought) from the block by the hand of aprotecting despotism. He was a minister, and had some concern in theaffairs of that prodigal period. Why do I not see his estate deliveredup to the municipalities in which it is situated? The noble family ofNoailles have long been servants (meritorious servants I admit) to thecrown of France, and have had of course some share in its bounties. Whydo I hear nothing of the application of their estates to the publicdebt? Why is the estate of the Duke de Rochefoucault more sacred thanthat of the Cardinal de Rochefoucault? The former is, I doubt not, aworthy person; and (if it were not a sort of profaneness to talk of theuse, as affecting the title to property) he makes a good use of hisrevenues; but it is no disrespect to him to say, what authenticinformation well warrants me in saying, that the use made of a propertyequally valid, by his brother, [101] the Cardinal Archbishop of Rouen, was far more laudable and far more public-spirited. Can one hear of theproscription of such persons, and the confiscation of their effects, without indignation, and horror? He is not a man who does not feel suchemotions on such occasions. He does not deserve the name of a free manwho will not express them. 

Few barbarous conquerors have ever made so terrible a revolution inproperty. None of the heads of the Roman factions, when they established_crudelem illam hastam_ in all their auctions of rapine, have ever setup to sale the goods of the conquered citizen to such an enormousamount. It must be allowed in favor of those tyrants of antiquity, thatwhat was done by them could hardly be said to be done in cold blood. Their passions were inflamed, their tempers soured, their understandingsconfused with the spirit of revenge, with the innumerable reciprocatedand recent inflictions and retaliations of blood and rapine. They weredriven beyond all bounds of moderation by the apprehension of the returnof power with the return of property to the families of those they hadinjured beyond all hope of forgiveness. 

These Roman confiscators, who were yet only in the elements of tyranny, and were not instructed in the rights of men to exercise all sorts ofcruelties on each other without provocation, thought it necessary tospread a sort of color over their injustice. They considered thevanquished party as composed of traitors, who had borne arms, orotherwise had acted with hostility, against the commonwealth. Theyregarded them as persons who had forfeited their property by theircrimes. With you, in your improved state of the human mind, there was nosuch formality. You seized upon five millions sterling of annual rent, and turned forty or fifty thousand human creatures out of their houses, because "such was your pleasure. " The tyrant Harry the Eighth ofEngland, as he was not better enlightened than the Roman Mariuses andSyllas, and had not studied in your new schools, did not know what aneffectual instrument of despotism was to be found in that grandmagazine of offensive weapons, the rights of men. When he resolved torob the abbeys, as the club of the Jacobins have robbed all theecclesiastics, he began by setting on foot a commission to examine intothe crimes and abuses which prevailed in those communities. As it mightbe expected, his commission reported truths, exaggerations, andfalsehoods. But truly or falsely, it reported abuses and offences. However, as abuses might be corrected, as every crime of persons doesnot infer a forfeiture with regard to communities, and as property, inthat dark age, was not discovered to be a creature of prejudice, allthose abuses (and there were enough of them) were hardly thoughtsufficient ground for such a confiscation as it was for his purposes tomake. He therefore procured the formal surrender of these estates. Allthese operose proceedings were adopted by one of the most decidedtyrants in the rolls of history, as necessary preliminaries, before hecould venture, by bribing the members of his two servile Houses with ashare of the spoil, and holding out to them an eternal immunity fromtaxation, to demand a confirmation of his iniquitous proceedings by anact of Parliament. Had fate reserved him to our times, four technicalterms would have done his business, and saved him all this trouble; heneeded nothing more than one short form of incantation:--"_Philosophy, Light, Liberality, the Rights of Men_. "

I can say nothing in praise of those acts of tyranny, which no voice hashitherto ever commended under any of their false colors; yet in thesefalse colors an homage was paid by despotism to justice. The power whichwas above all fear and all remorse was not set above all shame. Whilstshame keeps its watch, virtue is not wholly extinguished in the heart, nor will moderation be utterly exiled from the minds of tyrants. 

I believe every honest man sympathizes in his reflections with ourpolitical poet on that occasion, and will pray to avert the omen, whenever these acts of rapacious despotism present themselves to hisview or his imagination:--

 "May no such storm Fall on our times, where rain must reform! Tell me, my Muse, what monstrous, dire offence, What crime could any Christian king incense To such a rage? Was't luxury, or lust Was _he_ so temperate, so chaste, so just? Were these their crimes? They were his own much more: But wealth is crime enough to him that's poor. "[102]

This same wealth, which is at all times treason and _lèze-nation_ toindigent and rapacious despotism, under all modes of polity, was yourtemptation to violate property, law, and religion, united in oneobject. But was the state of France so wretched and undone, that noother resource but rapine remained to preserve its existence? On thispoint I wish to receive some information. When the States met, was thecondition of the finances of France such, that, after economizing, onprinciples of justice and mercy, through all departments, no fairrepartition of burdens upon all the orders could possibly restore them?If such an equal imposition would have been sufficient, you well know itmight easily have been made. M. Necker, in the budget which he laidbefore the orders assembled at Versailles, made a detailed exposition ofthe state of the French nation. [103]

If we give credit to him, it was not necessary to have recourse to anynew impositions whatsoever, to put the receipts of France on a balancewith its expenses. He stated the permanent charges of all descriptions, including the interest of a new loan of four hundred millions, at531, 444, 000 livres; the fixed revenue at 475, 294, 000: making thedeficiency 56, 150, 000, or short of 2, 200, 000 _l. _ sterling. But tobalance it, he brought forward savings and improvements of revenue(considered as entirely certain) to rather more than the amount of thatdeficiency; and he concludes with these emphatical words (p. 39):--"Quelpays, Messieurs, que celui, où, _sans impôts_ et avec de simples objets_inaperçus_, on peut faire disparoître un déficit qui a fait tant debruit en Europe!" As to the reimbursement, the sinking of debt, and theother great objects of public credit and political arrangement indicatedin Monsieur Necker's speech, no doubt could be entertained but that avery moderate and proportioned assessment on the citizens withoutdistinction would have provided for all of them to the fullest extent oftheir demand. 

If this representation of M. Necker was false, then the Assembly are inthe highest degree culpable for having forced the king to accept as hisminister, and, since the king's deposition, for having employed as_their_ minister, a man who had been capable of abusing so notoriouslythe confidence of his master and their own: in a matter, too, of thehighest moment, and directly appertaining to his particular office. Butif the representation was exact, (as, having always, along with you, conceived a high degree of respect for M. Necker, I make no doubt itwas, ) then what can be said in favor of those who, instead of moderate, reasonable, and general contribution, have in cold blood, and impelledby no necessity, had recourse to a partial and cruel confiscation?

Was that contribution refused on a pretext of privilege, either on thepart of the clergy, or on that of the nobility? No, certainly. As to theclergy, they even ran before the wishes of the third order. Previous tothe meeting of the States, they had in all their instructions expresslydirected their deputies to renounce every immunity which put them upon afooting distinct from the condition of their fellow-subjects. In thisrenunciation the clergy were even more explicit than the nobility. 

But let us suppose that the deficiency had remained at the fifty-sixmillions, (or 2, 200, 000 _l. _ sterling, ) as at first stated by M. Necker. Let us allow that all the resources he opposed to that deficiency wereimpudent and groundless fictions, and that the Assembly (or their lordsof articles[104] at the Jacobins) were from thence justified in layingthe whole burden of that deficiency on the clergy, --yet allowing allthis, a necessity of 2, 200, 000 _l. _ sterling will not support aconfiscation to the amount of five millions. The imposition of 2, 200, 000_l. _ on the clergy, as partial, would have been oppressive and unjust, but it would not have been altogether ruinous to those on whom it wasimposed; and therefore it would not have answered the real purpose ofthe managers. 

Perhaps persons unacquainted with the state of France, on hearing theclergy and the noblesse were privileged in point of taxation, may be ledto imagine, that, previous to the Revolution, these bodies hadcontributed nothing to the state. This is a great mistake. Theycertainly did not contribute equally with each other, nor either of themequally with the commons. They both, however, contributed largely. Neither nobility nor clergy enjoyed any exemption from the excise onconsumable commodities, from duties of custom, or from any of the othernumerous _indirect_ impositions, which in France, as well as here, makeso very large a proportion of all payments to the public. The noblessepaid the capitation. They paid also a land-tax, called the twentiethpenny, to the height sometimes of three, sometimes of four shillings inthe pound: both of them _direct_ impositions, of no light nature, and notrivial produce. The clergy of the provinces annexed by conquest toFrance (which in extent make about an eighth part of the whole, but inwealth a much larger proportion) paid likewise to the capitation and thetwentieth penny, at the rate paid by the nobility. The clergy in the oldprovinces did not pay the capitation; but they had redeemed themselvesat the expense of about twenty-four millions, or a little more than amillion sterling. They were exempted from the twentieths: but then theymade free gifts; they contracted debts for the state; and they weresubject to some other charges, the whole computed at about a thirteenthpart of their clear income. They ought to have paid annually about fortythousand pounds more, to put them on a par with the contribution of thenobility. 

When the terrors of this tremendous proscription hung over the clergy, they made an offer of a contribution, through the Archbishop of Aix, which, for its extravagance, ought not to have been accepted. But it wasevidently and obviously more advantageous to the public creditor thananything which could rationally be promised by the confiscation. Why wasit not accepted? The reason is plain:--There was no desire that theChurch should be brought to serve the State. The service of the Statewas made a pretext to destroy the Church. In their way to thedestruction of the Church they would not scruple to destroy theircountry: and they have destroyed it. One great end in the project wouldhave been defeated, if the plan of extortion had been adopted in lieu ofthe scheme of confiscation. The new landed interest connected with thenew republic, and connected with it for its very being, could not havebeen created. This was among the reasons why that extravagant ransom wasnot accepted. 

The madness of the project of confiscation, on the plan that was firstpretended, soon became apparent. To bring this unwieldy mass of landedproperty, enlarged by the confiscation of all the vast landed domain ofthe crown, at once into market was obviously to defeat the profitsproposed by the confiscation, by depreciating the value of those lands, and indeed of all the landed estates throughout France. Such a suddendiversion of all its circulating money from trade to land must be anadditional mischief. What step was taken? Did the Assembly, on becomingsensible of the inevitable ill effects of their projected sale, revertto the offers of the clergy? No distress could oblige them to travel ina course which was disgraced by any appearance of justice. Giving overall hopes from a general immediate sale, another project seems to havesucceeded. They proposed to take stock in exchange for the Church lands. In that project great difficulties arose in equalizing the objects to beexchanged. Other obstacles also presented themselves, which threw themback again upon some project of sale. The municipalities had taken analarm. They would not hear of transferring the whole plunder of thekingdom to the stockholders in Paris. Many of those municipalities hadbeen (upon system) reduced to the most deplorable indigence. Money wasnowhere to be seen. They were therefore led to the point that was soardently desired. They panted for a currency of any kind which mightrevive their perishing industry. The municipalities were, then, to beadmitted to a share in the spoil, which evidently rendered the firstscheme (if ever it had been seriously entertained) altogetherimpracticable. Public exigencies pressed upon all sides. The Minister ofFinance reiterated his call for supply with, a most urgent, anxious, andboding voice. Thus pressed on all sides, instead of the first plan ofconverting their bankers into bishops and abbots, instead of paying theold debt, they contracted a new debt, at three per cent, creating a newpaper currency, founded on an eventual sale of the Church lands. Theyissued this paper currency to satisfy in the first instance chiefly thedemands made upon them by the _bank of discount_, the great machine orpaper-mill of their fictitious wealth. 

The spoil of the Church was now become the only resource of all theiroperations in finance, the vital principle of all their politics, thesole security for the existence of their power. It was necessary, byall, even the most violent means, to put every individual on the samebottom, and to bind the nation in one guilty interest to uphold thisact, and the authority of those by whom it was done. In order to forcethe most reluctant into a participation of their pillage, they renderedtheir paper circulation compulsory in all payments. Those who considerthe general tendency of their schemes to this one object as a centre, and a centre from which afterwards all their measures radiate, will notthink that I dwell too long upon this part of the proceedings of theNational Assembly. 

To cut off all appearance of connection between the crown and publicjustice, and to bring the whole under implicit obedience to thedictators in Paris, the old independent judicature of the Parliaments, with all its merits and all its faults, was wholly abolished. Whilst theParliaments existed, it was evident that the people might some time orother come to resort to them, and rally under the standard of theirancient laws. It became, however, a matter of consideration, that themagistrates and officers in the courts now abolished _had purchasedtheir places_ at a very high rate, for which, as well as for the dutythey performed, they received but a very low return of interest. Simpleconfiscation is a boon only for the clergy: to the lawyers someappearances of equity are to be observed; and they are to receivecompensation to an immense amount. Their compensation becomes part ofthe national debt, for the liquidation of which there is the oneexhaustless fund. The lawyers are to obtain their compensation in thenew Church paper, which is to march with the new principles ofjudicature and legislature. The dismissed magistrates are to take theirshare of martyrdom with the ecclesiastics, or to receive their ownproperty from such a fund and in such a manner as all those who havebeen seasoned with the ancient principles of jurisprudence, and had beenthe sworn guardians of property, must look upon with horror. Even theclergy are to receive their miserable allowance out of the depreciatedpaper, which is stamped with the indelible character of sacrilege, andwith the symbols of their own ruin, or they must starve. So violent anoutrage upon credit, property, and liberty, as this compulsory papercurrency, has seldom been exhibited by the alliance of bankruptcy andtyranny, at any time, or in any nation. 

In the course of all these operations, at length comes out the grand_arcanum_, --that in reality, and in a fair sense, the lands of theChurch (so far as anything certain can be gathered from theirproceedings) are not to be sold at all. By the late resolutions of theNational Assembly, they are, indeed, to be delivered to the highestbidder. But it is to be observed, that _a certain portion only of thepurchase-money is to be laid down_. A period of twelve years is to begiven for the payment of the rest. The philosophic purchasers aretherefore, on payment of a sort of fine, to be put instantly intopossession of the estate. It becomes in some respects a sort of gift tothem, --to be held on the feudal tenure of zeal to the new establishment. This project is evidently to let in a body of purchasers without money. The consequence will be, that these purchasers, or rather grantees, willpay, not only from the rents as they accrue, which might as well bereceived by the state, but from the spoil of the materials of buildings, from waste in woods, and from whatever money, by hands habituated to thegripings of usury, they can wring from the miserable peasant. He is tobe delivered over to the mercenary and arbitrary discretion of men whowill be stimulated to every species of extortion by the growing demandson the growing profits of an estate held under the precarioussettlement of a new political system. 

When all the frauds, impostures, violences, rapines, burnings, murders, confiscations, compulsory paper currencies, and every description oftyranny and cruelty employed to bring about and to uphold thisRevolution have their natural effect, that is, to shock the moralsentiments of all virtuous and sober minds, the abettors of thisphilosophic system immediately strain their throats in a declamationagainst the old monarchical government of France. When they haverendered that deposed power sufficiently black, they then proceed inargument, as if all those who disapprove of their new abuses must ofcourse be partisans of the old, --that those who reprobate their crudeand violent schemes of liberty ought to be treated as advocates forservitude. I admit that their necessities do compel them to this baseand contemptible fraud. Nothing can reconcile men to their proceedingsand projects but the supposition that there is no third option betweenthem and some tyranny as odious as can be furnished by the records ofhistory or by the invention of poets. This prattling of theirs hardlydeserves the name of sophistry. It is nothing but plain impudence. Havethese gentlemen never heard, in the whole circle of the worlds of theoryand practice, of anything between the despotism of the monarch and thedespotism of the multitude? Have they never heard of a monarchy directedby laws, controlled and balanced by the great hereditary wealth andhereditary dignity of a nation, and both again controlled by a judiciouscheck from the reason and feeling of the people at large, acting by asuitable and permanent organ? Is it, then, impossible that a man may befound who, without criminal ill intention or pitiable absurdity, shallprefer such a mixed and tempered government to either of theextremes, --and who may repute that nation to be destitute of all wisdomand of all virtue, which, having in its choice to obtain such agovernment with ease, _or rather to confirm it when actually possessed_, thought proper to commit a thousand crimes, and to subject their countryto a thousand evils, in order to avoid it? Is it, then, a truth souniversally acknowledged, that a pure democracy is the only tolerableform into which human society can be thrown, that a man is not permittedto hesitate about its merits, without the suspicion of being a friend totyranny, that is, of being a foe to mankind?

I do not know under what description to class the present rulingauthority in France. It affects to be a pure democracy, though I thinkit in a direct train of becoming shortly a mischievous and ignobleoligarchy. But for the present I admit it to be a contrivance of thenature and effect of what it pretends to. I reprobate no form ofgovernment merely upon abstract principles. There may be situations inwhich the purely democratic form will become necessary. There may besome (very few, and very particularly circumstanced) where it would beclearly desirable. This I do not take to be the case of France, or ofany other great country. Until now, we have seen no examples ofconsiderable democracies. The ancients were better acquainted with them. Not being wholly unread in the authors who had seen the most of thoseconstitutions, and who best understood them, I cannot help concurringwith their opinion, that an absolute democracy no more than absolutemonarchy is to be reckoned among the legitimate forms of government. They think it rather the corruption and degeneracy than the soundconstitution of a republic. If I recollect rightly, Aristotle observes, that a democracy has many striking points of resemblance with atyranny. [105] Of this I am certain, that in a democracy the majority ofthe citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions uponthe minority, whenever strong divisions prevail in that kind of polity, as they often must, --and that oppression of the minority will extend tofar greater numbers, and will be carried on with much greater fury, thancan almost ever be apprehended from the dominion of a single sceptre. Insuch a popular persecution, individual sufferers are in a much moredeplorable condition than in any other. Under a cruel prince they havethe balmy compassion of mankind to assuage the smart of their wounds, they have the plaudits of the people to animate their generous constancyunder their sufferings: but those who are subjected to wrong undermultitudes are deprived of all external consolation; they seem desertedby mankind, overpowered by a conspiracy of their whole species. 

But admitting democracy not to have that inevitable tendency to partytyranny which I suppose it to have, and admitting it to possess as muchgood in it when unmixed as I am sure it possesses when compounded withother forms; does monarchy, on its part, contain nothing at all torecommend it? I do not often quote Bolingbroke, nor have his works ingeneral left any permanent impression on my mind. He is a presumptuousand a superficial writer. But he has one observation which in my opinionis not without depth and solidity. He says that he prefers a monarchy toother governments, because you can better ingraft any description ofrepublic on a monarchy than anything of monarchy upon the republicanforms. I think him perfectly in the right. The fact is so historically, and it agrees well with the speculation. 

I know how easy a topic it is to dwell on the faults of departedgreatness. By a revolution in the state, the fawning sycophant ofyesterday is converted into the austere critic of the present hour. Butsteady, independent minds, when they have an object of so serious aconcern to mankind as government under their contemplation, will disdainto assume the part of satirists and declaimers. They will judge of humaninstitutions as they do of human characters. They will sort out the goodfrom the evil, which is mixed in mortal institutions as it is in mortalmen. 

Your government in France, though usually, and I think justly, reputedthe best of the unqualified or ill-qualified monarchies, was still fullof abuses. These abuses accumulated in a length of time, as they mustaccumulate in every monarchy not under the constant inspection of apopular representative. I am no stranger to the faults and defects ofthe subverted government of France; and I think I am not inclined bynature or policy to make a panegyric upon anything which is a just andnatural object of censure. But the question is not now of the vices ofthat monarchy, but of its existence. Is it, then, true, that the Frenchgovernment was such as to be incapable or undeserving of reform, so thatit was of absolute necessity the whole fabric should be at once pulleddown, and the area cleared for the erection of a theoretic, experimentaledifice in its place? All France was of a different opinion in thebeginning of the year 1789. The instructions to the representatives tothe States-General, from every district in that kingdom, were filledwith projects for the reformation of that government, without theremotest suggestion of a design to destroy it. Had such a design beenthen even insinuated, I believe there would have been but one voice, andthat voice for rejecting it with scorn and horror. Men have beensometimes led by degrees, sometimes hurried, into things of which, ifthey could have seen the whole together, they never would have permittedthe most remote approach. When those instructions were given, there wasno question but that abuses existed, and that they demanded a reform:nor is there now. In the interval between the instructions and theRevolution things changed their shape; and in consequence of thatchange, the true question at present is, whether those who would havereformed or those who have destroyed are in the right. 

To hear some men speak of the late monarchy of France, you would imaginethat they were talking of Persia bleeding under the ferocious sword ofThamas Kouli Khân, --or at least describing the barbarous anarchicdespotism of Turkey, where the finest countries in the most genialclimates in the world are wasted by peace more than any countries havebeen worried by war, where arts are unknown, where manufactureslanguish, where science is extinguished, where agriculture decays, wherethe human race itself melts away and perishes under the eye of theobserver. Was this the case of France? I have no way of determining thequestion but by a reference to facts. Facts do not support thisresemblance. Along with much evil, there is some good in monarchyitself; and some corrective to its evil from religion, from laws, frommanners, from opinions, the French monarchy must have received, whichrendered it (though by no means a free, and therefore by no means a goodconstitution) a despotism rather in appearance than in reality. 

Among the standards upon which the effects of government on any countryare to be estimated, I must consider the state of its population as notthe least certain. No country in which population flourishes, and is inprogressive improvement, can be under a _very_ mischievous government. About sixty years ago, the Intendants of the Generalities of Francemade, with other matters, a report of the population of their severaldistricts. I have not the books, which are very voluminous, by me, nordo I know where to procure them, (I am obliged to speak by memory, andtherefore the less positively, ) but I think the population of France wasby them, even at that period, estimated at twenty-two millions ofsouls. At the end of the last century it had been generally calculatedat eighteen. On either of these estimations, France was not ill-peopled. M. Necker, who is an authority for his own time at least equal to theIntendants for theirs, reckons, and upon apparently sure principles, thepeople of France, in the year 1780, at twenty-four millions six hundredand seventy thousand. But was this the probable ultimate term under theold establishment? Dr. Price is of opinion that the growth of populationin France was by no means at its acme in that year. I certainly defer toDr. Price's authority a good deal more in these speculations than I doin his general politics. This gentleman, taking ground on M. Necker'sdata, is very confident that since the period of that minister'scalculation the French population has increased rapidly, --so rapidly, that in the year 1789 he will not consent to rate the people of thatkingdom at a lower number than thirty millions. After abating much (andmuch I think ought to be abated) from the sanguine calculation of Dr. Price, I have no doubt that the population of France did increaseconsiderably during this latter period: but supposing that it increasedto nothing more than will be sufficient to complete the twenty-fourmillions six hundred and seventy thousand to twenty-five millions, stilla population of twenty-five millions, and that in an increasingprogress, on a space of about twenty-seven thousand square leagues, isimmense. It is, for instance, a good deal more than the proportionablepopulation of this island, or even than that of England, the bestpeopled part of the United Kingdom. 

It is not universally true that France is a fertile country. Considerable tracts of it are barren, and labor under other naturaldisadvantages. In the portions of that territory where things are morefavorable, as far as I am able to discover, the numbers of the peoplecorrespond to the indulgence of Nature. [106] The Generality of Lisle, (this I admit is the strongest example, ) upon an extent of four hundredand four leagues and a half, about ten years ago contained seven hundredand thirty-four thousand six hundred souls, which is one thousand sevenhundred and seventy-two inhabitants to each square league. The middleterm for the rest of France is about nine hundred inhabitants to thesame admeasurement. 

I do not attribute this population to the deposed government; because Ido not like to compliment the contrivances of men with what is due in agreat degree to the bounty of Providence. But that decried governmentcould not have obstructed, most probably it favored, the operation ofthose causes, (whatever they were, ) whether of Nature in the soil, orhabits of industry among the people, which has produced so large anumber of the species throughout that whole kingdom, and exhibited insome particular places such prodigies of population. I never willsuppose that fabric of a state to be the worst of all politicalinstitutions which by experience is found to contain a principlefavorable (however latent it may be) to the increase of mankind. 

The wealth of a country is another, and no contemptible standard, bywhich we may judge whether, on the whole, a government be protecting ordestructive. France far exceeds England in the multitude of her people;but I apprehend that her comparative wealth is much inferior toours, --that it is not so equal in the distribution, nor so ready in thecirculation. I believe the difference in the form of the two governmentsto be amongst the causes of this advantage on the side of England: Ispeak of England, not of the whole British dominions, --which, ifcompared with those of France, will in some degree weaken thecomparative rate of wealth upon our side. But that wealth, which willnot endure a comparison with the riches of England, may constitute avery respectable degree of opulence. M. Necker's book, published in1785, [107] contains an accurate and interesting collection of factsrelative to public economy and to political arithmetic; and hisspeculations on the subject are in general wise and liberal. In thatwork he gives an idea of the state of France, very remote from theportrait of a country whose government was a perfect grievance, anabsolute evil, admitting no cure but through the violent and uncertainremedy of a total revolution. He affirms, that from the year 1726 to theyear 1784 there was coined at the mint of France, in the species of goldand silver, to the amount of about one hundred millions of poundssterling. [108]

It is impossible that M. Necker should be mistaken in the amount of thebullion which has been coined in the mint. It is a matter of officialrecord. The reasonings of this able financier concerning the quantity ofgold and silver which remained for circulation, when he wrote in 1785, that is, about four years before the deposition and imprisonment of theFrench king, are not of equal certainty; but they are laid on grounds soapparently solid, that it is not easy to refuse a considerable degree ofassent to his calculation. He calculates the _numéraire_, or what wecall _specie_, then actually existing in France, at about eighty-eightmillions of the same English money. A great accumulation of wealth forone country, large as that country is! M. Necker was so far fromconsidering this influx of wealth as likely to cease, when he wrote in1785, that he presumes upon a future annual increase of two per centupon the money brought into France during the periods from which hecomputed. 

Some adequate cause must have originally introduced all the money coinedat its mint into that kingdom; and some cause as operative must havekept at home, or returned into its bosom, such a vast flood of treasureas M. Necker calculates to remain for domestic circulation. Suppose anyreasonable deductions from M. Necker's computation, the remainder muststill amount to an immense sum. Causes thus powerful to acquire and toretain cannot be found in discouraged industry, insecure property, and apositively destructive government. Indeed, when I consider the face ofthe kingdom of France, the multitude and opulence of her cities, theuseful magnificence of her spacious high-roads and bridges, theopportunity of her artificial canals and navigations opening theconveniences of maritime communication through a solid continent of soimmense an extent, --when I turn my eyes to the stupendous works of herports and harbors, and to her whole naval apparatus, whether for war ortrade, --when I bring before my view the number of her fortifications, constructed with so bold and masterly a skill, and made and maintainedat so prodigious a charge, presenting an armed front and impenetrablebarrier to her enemies upon every side, --when I recollect how very smalla part of that extensive region is without cultivation, and to whatcomplete perfection the culture of many of the best productions of theearth have been brought in France, --when I reflect on the excellence ofher manufactures and fabrics, second to none but ours, and in someparticulars not second, --when I contemplate the grand foundations ofcharity, public and private, --when I survey the state of all the artsthat beautify and polish life, --when I reckon the men she has bled forextending her fame in war, her able statesmen, the multitude of herprofound lawyers and theologians, her philosophers, her critics, herhistorians and antiquaries, her poets and her orators, sacred andprofane, --I behold in all this something which awes and commands theimagination, which checks the mind on the brink of precipitate andindiscriminate censure, and which demands that we should very seriouslyexamine what and how great are the latent vices that could authorize usat once to level so spacious a fabric with the ground. I do notrecognize in this view of things the despotism of Turkey. Nor do Idiscern the character of a government that has been on the whole sooppressive, or so corrupt, or so negligent, as to be utterly unfit _forall reformation_. I must think such a government well deserved to haveits excellences heightened, its faults corrected, and its capacitiesimproved into a British Constitution. 

Whoever has examined into the proceedings of that deposed governmentfor several years back cannot fail to have observed, amidst theinconstancy and fluctuation natural to courts, an earnest endeavortowards the prosperity and improvement of the country; he must admitthat it had long been employed, in some instances wholly to remove, inmany considerably to correct, the abusive practices and usages that hadprevailed in the state, --and that even the unlimited power of thesovereign over the persons of his subjects, inconsistent, as undoubtedlyit was, with law and liberty, had yet been every day growing moremitigated in the exercise. So far from refusing itself to reformation, that government was open, with a censurable degree of facility, to allsorts of projects and projectors on the subject. Rather too muchcountenance was given to the spirit of innovation, which soon was turnedagainst those who fostered it, and ended in their ruin. It is but cold, and no very flattering justice to that fallen monarchy, to say, that, for many years, it trespassed more by levity and want of judgment inseveral of its schemes than from any defect in diligence or in publicspirit. To compare the government of France for the last fifteen orsixteen years with wise and well-constituted establishments during that, or during any period, is not to act with fairness. But if in point ofprodigality in the expenditure of money, or in point of rigor in theexercise of power, it be compared with any of the former reigns, Ibelieve candid judges will give little credit to the good intentions ofthose who dwell perpetually on the donations to favorites, or on theexpenses of the court, or on the horrors of the Bastile, in the reign ofLouis the Sixteenth. [109]

Whether the system, if it deserves such a name, now built on the ruinsof that ancient monarchy, will be able to give a better account of thepopulation and wealth of the country which it has taken under its care, is a matter very doubtful. Instead of improving by the change, Iapprehend that a long series of years must be told, before it canrecover in any degree the effects of this philosophic Revolution, andbefore the nation can be replaced on its former footing. If Dr. Priceshould think fit, a few years hence, to favor us with an estimate of thepopulation of France, he will hardly be able to make up his tale ofthirty millions of souls, as computed in 1789, or the Assembly'scomputation of twenty-six millions of that year, or even M. Necker'stwenty-five millions in 1780. I hear that there are considerableemigrations from France, --and that many, quitting that voluptuousclimate, and that seductive Circean liberty, have taken refuge in thefrozen regions and under the British despotism of Canada. 

In the present disappearance of coin, no person could think it the samecountry in which the present minister of the finances has been able todiscover fourscore millions sterling in specie. From its general aspectone would conclude that it had been for some time past under the specialdirection of the learned academicians of Laputa and Balnibarbi. [110]Already the population of Paris has so declined, that M. Necker statedto the National Assembly the provision to be made for its subsistenceat a fifth less than what had formerly been found requisite. [111] It issaid (and I have never heard it contradicted) that a hundred thousandpeople are out of employment in that city, though it is become the seatof the imprisoned court and National Assembly. Nothing, I am crediblyinformed, can exceed the shocking and disgusting spectacle of mendicancydisplayed in that capital. Indeed, the votes of the National Assemblyleave no doubt of the fact. They have lately appointed a standingcommittee of mendicancy. They are contriving at once a vigorous policeon this subject, and, for the first time, the imposition of a tax tomaintain the poor, for whoso present relief great sums appear on theface of the public accounts of the year. [112] In the mean time theleaders of the legislative clubs and coffee-houses are intoxicated withadmiration at their own wisdom and ability. They speak with the mostsovereign contempt of the rest of the world. They toll the people, tocomfort them in the rags with which they have clothed them, that theyare a nation of philosophers; and sometimes, by all the arts ofquackish parade, by show, tumult, and bustle, sometimes by the alarmsof plots and invasions, they attempt to drown the cries of indigence, and to divert the eyes of the observer from the ruin and wretchedness ofthe state. A brave people will certainly prefer liberty accompanied witha virtuous poverty to a depraved and wealthy servitude. But before theprice of comfort and opulence is paid, one ought to be pretty sure it isreal liberty which is purchased, and that she is to be purchased at noother price. I shall always, however, consider that liberty as veryequivocal in her appearance, which has not wisdom and justice for hercompanions, and does not lead prosperity and plenty in her train. 

The advocates for this Revolution, not satisfied with exaggerating thevices of their ancient government, strike at the fame of their countryitself, by painting almost all that could have attracted the attentionof strangers, I mean their nobility and their clergy, as objects ofhorror. If this were only a libel, there had not been much in it. But ithas practical consequences. Had your nobility and gentry, who formedthe great body of your landed men and the whole of your militaryofficers, resembled those of Germany, at the period when the Hanse townswere necessitated to confederate against the nobles in defence of theirproperty, --had they been like the Orsini and Vitelli in Italy, who usedto sally from their fortified dens to rob the trader and traveller, --hadthey been such as the Mamelukes in Egypt, or the Nayres on the coast ofMalabar, --I do admit that too critical an inquiry might not be advisableinto the means of freeing the world from such a nuisance. The statues ofEquity and Mercy might be veiled for a moment. The tenderest minds, confounded with the dreadful exigence in which morality submits to thesuspension of its own rules in favor of its own principles, might turnaside whilst fraud and violence were accomplishing the destruction of apretended nobility, which disgraced, whilst it persecuted, human nature. The persons most abhorrent from blood and treason and arbitraryconfiscation might remain silent spectators of this civil war betweenthe vices. 

But did the privileged nobility who met under the king's precept atVersailles in 1789, or their constituents, deserve to be looked on asthe Nayres or Mamelukes of this age, or as the Orsini and Vitelli ofancient times? If I had then asked the question, I should have passedfor a madman. What have they since done, that they were to be driveninto exile, that their persons should be hunted about, mangled, andtortured, their families dispersed, their houses laid in ashes, and thattheir order should be abolished, and the memory of it, if possible, extinguished, by ordaining them to change the very names by which theywere usually known? Read their instructions to their representatives. They breathe the spirit of liberty as warmly, and they recommendreformation as strongly, as any other order. Their privileges relativeto contribution were voluntarily surrendered; as the king, from thebeginning, surrendered all pretence to a right of taxation. Upon a freeconstitution there was but one opinion in France. The absolute monarchywas at an end. It breathed its last without a groan, without struggle, without convulsion. All the struggle, all the dissension, aroseafterwards, upon the preference of a despotic democracy to a governmentof reciprocal control. The triumph of the victorious party was over theprinciples of a British Constitution. 

I have observed the affectation which for many years past has prevailedin Paris, even to a degree perfectly childish, of idolizing the memoryof your Henry the Fourth. If anything could put any one out of humorwith that ornament to the kingly character, it would be this overdonestyle of insidious panegyric. The persons who have worked this enginethe most busily are those who have ended their panegyrics in dethroninghis successor and descendant: a man as good-natured, at the least, asHenry the Fourth; altogether as fond of his people; and who has doneinfinitely more to correct the ancient vices of the state than thatgreat monarch did, or we are sure he ever meant to do. Well it is forhis panegyrists that they have not him to deal with! For Henry ofNavarre was a resolute, active, and politic prince. He possessed, indeed, great humanity and mildness, but an humanity and mildness thatnever stood in the way of his interests. He never sought to be lovedwithout putting himself first in a condition to be feared. He used softlanguage with determined conduct. He asserted and maintained hisauthority in the gross, and distributed his acts of concession only inthe detail. Ho spent the income of his prerogative nobly, but he tookcare not to break in upon the capital, --never abandoning for a momentany of the claims which he made under the fundamental laws, nor sparingto shed the blood of those who opposed him, often in the field, sometimes upon the scaffold. Because he knew how to make his virtuesrespected by the ungrateful, he has merited the praises of those whom, if they had lived in his time, he would have shut up in the Bastile, andbrought to punishment along with the regicides whom he hanged after hehad famished Paris into a surrender. 

If these panegyrists are in earnest in their admiration of Henry theFourth, they must remember that they cannot think more highly of himthan he did of the noblesse of France, --whose virtue, honor, courage, patriotism, and loyalty were his constant theme. 

But the nobility of France are degenerated since the days of Henry theFourth. --This is possible; but it is more than I can believe to be truein any great degree. I do not pretend to know France as correctly assome others; but I have endeavored through my whole life to make myselfacquainted with human nature, --otherwise I should be unfit to take evenmy humble part in the service of mankind. In that study I could not passby a vast portion of our nature as it appeared modified in a country buttwenty-four miles from the shore of this island. On my best observation, compared with my best inquiries, I found your nobility for the greaterpart composed of men of a high spirit, and of a delicate sense ofhonor, both with regard to themselves individually, and with regard totheir whole corps, over whom they kept, beyond what is common in othercountries, a censorial eye. They were tolerably well bred; veryofficious, humane, and hospitable; in their conversation frank and open;with a good military tone; and reasonably tinctured with literature, particularly of the authors in their own language. Many had pretensionsfar above this description. I speak of those who were generally metwith. 

As to their behavior to the inferior classes, they appeared to me tocomport themselves towards them with good-nature, and with somethingmore nearly approaching to familiarity than is generally practised withus in the intercourse between the higher and lower ranks of life. Tostrike any person, even in the most abject condition, was a thing in amanner unknown, and would be highly disgraceful. Instances of otherill-treatment of the humble part of the community were rare; and as toattacks made upon the property or the personal liberty of the commons, Inever heard of any whatsoever from _them_, --nor, whilst the laws were invigor under the ancient government, would such tyranny in subjects havebeen permitted. As men of landed estates, I had no fault to find withtheir conduct, though much to reprehend, and much to wish changed, inmany of the old tenures. Where the letting of their land was by rent, Icould not discover that their agreements with their farmers wereoppressive; nor when they were in partnership with the farmer, as oftenwas the case, have I heard that they had taken the lion's share. Theproportions seemed not inequitable. There might be exceptions; butcertainly they were exceptions only. I have no reason to believe that inthese respects the landed noblesse of France were worse than the landedgentry of this country, --certainly in no respect more vexatious than thelandholders, not noble, of their own nation. In cities the nobility hadno manner of power; in the country very little. You know, Sir, that muchof the civil government, and the police in the most essential parts, wasnot in the hands of that nobility which presents itself first to ourconsideration. The revenue, the system and collection of which were themost grievous parts of the French government, was not administered bythe men of the sword; nor were they answerable for the vices of itsprinciple, or the vexations, where any such existed, in its management. 

Denying, as I am well warranted to do, that the nobility had anyconsiderable share in the oppression of the people, in cases in whichreal oppression existed, I am ready to admit that they were not withoutconsiderable faults and errors. A foolish imitation of the worst part ofthe manners of England, which impaired their natural character, withoutsubstituting in its place what perhaps they meant to copy, has certainlyrendered them worse than formerly they were. Habitual dissoluteness ofmanners, continued beyond the pardonable period of life, was more commonamongst them than it is with us; and it reigned with the less hope ofremedy, though possibly with something of less mischief, by beingcovered with more exterior decorum. They countenanced too much thatlicentious philosophy which has helped to bring on their ruin. There wasanother error amongst them more fatal. Those of the commons whoapproached to or exceeded many of the nobility in point of wealth werenot fully admitted to the rank and estimation which wealth, in reasonand good policy, ought to bestow in every country, --though I think notequally with that of other nobility. The two kinds of aristocracy weretoo punctiliously kept asunder: less so, however, than in Germany andsome other nations. 

This separation, as I have already taken the liberty of suggesting toyou, I conceive to be one principal cause of the destruction of the oldnobility. The military, particularly, was too exclusively reserved formen of family. But, after all, this was an error of opinion, which aconflicting opinion would have rectified. A permanent Assembly, in whichthe commons had their share of power, would soon abolish whatever wastoo invidious and insulting in these distinctions; and even the faultsin the morals of the nobility would have been probably corrected, by thegreater varieties of occupation and pursuit to which a constitution byorders would have given rise. 

All this violent cry against the nobility I take to be a mere work ofart. To be honored and even privileged by the laws, opinions, andinveterate usages of our country, growing out of the prejudice of ages, has nothing to provoke horror and indignation in any man. Even to be tootenacious of those privileges is not absolutely a crime. The strongstruggle in every individual to preserve possession of what he has foundto belong to him, and to distinguish him, is one of the securitiesagainst injustice and despotism implanted in our nature. It operates asan instinct to secure property, and to preserve communities in a settledstate. What is there to shock in this? Nobility is a graceful ornamentto the civil order. It is the Corinthian capital of polished society. "_Omnes boni nobilitati semper favemus_, " was the saying of a wise andgood man. It is, indeed, one sign of a liberal and benevolent mind toincline to it with some sort of partial propensity. He feels noennobling principle in his own heart, who wishes to level all theartificial institutions which have been adopted for giving a body toopinion and permanence to fugitive esteem. It is a sour, malignant, envious disposition, without taste for the reality, or for any image orrepresentation of virtue, that sees with joy the unmerited fall of whathad long nourished in splendor and in honor. I do not like to seeanything destroyed, any void produced in society, any ruin on the faceof the land. It was therefore with no disappointment or dissatisfactionthat my inquiries and observations did not present to me anyincorrigible vices in the noblesse of France, or any abuse which couldnot be removed by a reform very short of abolition. Your noblesse didnot deserve punishment; but to degrade is to punish. 

It was with the same satisfaction I found that the result of my inquiryconcerning your clergy was not dissimilar. It is no soothing news to myears, that great bodies of men are incurably corrupt. It is not withmuch credulity I listen to any, when they speak evil of those whom theyare going to plunder. I rather suspect that vices are feigned orexaggerated, when profit is looked for in their punishment. An enemy isa bad witness; a robber is a worse. Vices and abuses there wereundoubtedly in that order, and must be. It was an old establishment, andnot frequently revised. But I saw no crimes in the individuals thatmerited confiscation of their substance, nor those cruel insults anddegradations, and that unnatural persecution, which have beensubstituted in the place of meliorating regulation. 

If there had been any just cause for this new religions persecution, theatheistic libellers, who act as trumpeters to animate the populace toplunder, do not love anybody so much as not to dwell with complacence onthe vices of the existing clergy. This they have not done. They findthemselves obliged to rake into the histories of former ages (which theyhave ransacked with a malignant and profligate industry) for everyinstance of oppression and persecution which has been made by that bodyor in its favor, in order to justify, upon very iniquitous because veryillogical principles of retaliation, their own persecutions and theirown cruelties. After destroying all other genealogies and familydistinctions, they invent a sort of pedigree of crimes. It is not veryjust to chastise men for the offences of their natural ancestors; but totake the fiction of ancestry in a corporate succession, as a ground forpunishing men who have no relation to guilty acts, except in names andgeneral descriptions, is a sort of refinement in injustice belonging tothe philosophy of this enlightened age. The Assembly punishes men, many, if not most, of whom abhor the violent conduct of ecclesiastics informer times as much as their present persecutors can do, and who wouldbe as loud and as strong in the expression of that sense, if they werenot well aware of the purposes for which all this declamation isemployed. 

Corporate bodies are immortal for the good of the members, but not fortheir punishment. Nations themselves are such corporations. As wellmight we in England think of waging inexpiable war upon all Frenchmenfor the evils which they have brought upon us in the several periods ofour mutual hostilities. You might, on your part, think yourselvesjustified in falling upon all Englishmen on account of the unparalleledcalamities brought upon the people of France by the unjust invasions ofour Henrys and our Edwards. Indeed, we should be mutually justified inthis exterminatory war upon each other, full as much as you are in theunprovoked persecution of your present countrymen, on account of theconduct of men of the same name in other times. 

We do not draw the moral lessons we might from history. On the contrary, without care it may be used to vitiate our minds and to destroy ourhappiness. In history a great volume is unrolled for our instruction, drawing the materials of future wisdom from the past errors andinfirmities of mankind. It may, in the perversion, serve for a magazine, furnishing offensive and defensive weapons for parties in Church andState, and supplying the means of keeping alive or reviving dissensionsand animosities, and adding fuel to civil fury. History consists, forthe greater part, of the miseries brought upon the world by pride, ambition, avarice, revenge, lust, sedition, hypocrisy, ungoverned zeal, and all the train of disorderly appetites, which shake the public withthe same

 "troublous storms that toss The private state, and render life unsweet. "

These vices are the _causes_ of those storms. Religion, morals, laws, prerogatives, privileges, liberties, rights of men, are the _pretexts_. The pretexts are always found in some specious appearance of a realgood. You would not secure men from tyranny and sedition by rooting outof the mind the principles to which these fraudulent pretexts apply? Ifyou did, you would root out everything that is valuable in the humanbreast. As these are the pretexts, so the ordinary actors andinstruments in great public evils are kings, priests, magistrates, senates, parliaments, national assemblies, judges, and captains. Youwould not cure the evil by resolving that there should be no moremonarchs, nor ministers of state, nor of the Gospel, --no interpreters oflaw, no general officers, no public councils. You might change thenames: the things in some shape must remain. A certain _quantum_ ofpower must always exist in the community, in some hands, and under someappellation. Wise men will apply their remedies to vices, not tonames, --to the causes of evil, which are permanent, not to theoccasional organs by which they act, and the transitory modes in whichthey appear. Otherwise you will be wise historically, a fool inpractice. Seldom have two ages the same fashion in their pretexts, andthe same modes of mischief. Wickedness is a little more inventive. Whilst you are discussing fashion, the fashion is gone by. The very samevice assumes a new body. The spirit transmigrates; and, far from losingits principle of life by the change of its appearance, it is renovatedin its new organs with the fresh vigor of a juvenile activity. It walksabroad, it continues its ravages, whilst you are gibbeting the carcassor demolishing the tomb. You are terrifying yourselves with ghosts andapparitions, whilst your house is the haunt of robbers. It is thus withall those who, attending only to the shell and husk of history, thinkthey are waging war with intolerance, pride, and cruelty, whilst, undercolor of abhorring the ill principles of antiquated parties, they areauthorizing and feeding the same odious vices in different factions, andperhaps in worse. 

Your citizens of Paris formerly had lent themselves as the readyinstruments to slaughter the followers of Calvin, at the infamousmassacre of St. Bartholomew. What should we say to those who could thinkof retaliating on the Parisians of this day the abominations and horrorsof that time? They are, indeed, brought to abhor _that_ massacre. Ferocious as they are, it is not difficult to make them dislike it, because the politicians and fashionable teachers have no interest ingiving their passions exactly the same direction. Still, however, theyfind it their interest to keep the same savage dispositions alive. Itwas but the other day that they caused this very massacre to be acted onthe stage for the diversion of the descendants of those who committedit. In this tragic farce they produced the Cardinal of Lorraine in hisrobes of function, ordering general slaughter. Was this spectacleintended to make the Parisians abhor persecution and loathe the effusionof blood? No: it was to teach them to persecute their own pastors; itwas to excite them, by raising a disgust and horror of their clergy, toan alacrity in hunting down to destruction an order which, if it oughtto exist at all, ought to exist not only in safety, but in reverence. Itwas to stimulate their cannibal appetites (which one would think hadbeen gorged sufficiently) by variety and seasoning, --and to quicken themto an alertness in new murders and massacres, if it should suit thepurpose of the Guises of the day. An Assembly in which sat a multitudeof priests and prelates was obliged to suffer this indignity at itsdoor. The author was not sent to the galleys, nor the players to thehouse of correction. Not long after this exhibition, those players cameforward to the Assembly to claim the rites of that very religion whichthey had dared to expose, and to show their prostituted faces in thesenate, whilst the Archbishop of Paris, whose function was known to hispeople only by his prayers and benedictions, and his wealth only byalms, is forced to abandon his house, and to fly from his flock, (asfrom ravenous wolves, ) because, truly, in the sixteenth century, theCardinal of Lorraine was a rebel and a murderer. [113]

Such is the effect of the perversion of history by those who, for thesame nefarious purposes, have perverted every other part of learning. But those who will stand upon that elevation of reason which placescenturies under our eye and brings things to the true point ofcomparison, which obscures little names and effaces the colors of littleparties, and to which nothing can ascend but the spirit and moralquality of human actions, will say to the teachers of the PalaisRoyal, --The Cardinal of Lorraine was the murderer of the sixteenthcentury; you have the glory of being the murderers in the eighteenth;and this is the only difference between you. But history in thenineteenth century, better understood and better employed, will, Itrust, teach a civilized posterity to abhor the misdeeds of both thesebarbarous ages. It will teach future priests and magistrates not toretaliate upon the speculative and inactive atheists of future timesthe enormities committed by the present practical zealots and furiousfanatics of that wretched error, which, in its quiescent state, is morethan punished, whenever it is embraced. It will teach posterity not tomake war upon either religion or philosophy for the abuse which thehypocrites of both have made of the two most valuable blessingsconferred upon us by the bounty of the universal Patron, who in allthings eminently favors and protects the race of man. 

If your clergy, or any clergy, should show themselves vicious beyond thefair bounds allowed to human infirmity, and to those professional faultswhich can hardly be separated from professional virtues, though theirvices never can countenance the exercise of oppression, I do admit thatthey would naturally have the effect of abating very much of ourindignation against the tyrants who exceed measure and justice in theirpunishment. I can allow in clergymen, through all their divisions, sometenaciousness of their own opinion, some overflowings of zeal for itspropagation, some predilection to their own state and office, someattachment to the interest of their own corps, some preference to thosewho Us ten with docility to their doctrines beyond those who scorn andderide them. I allow all this, because I am a man who have to deal withmen, and who would not, through a violence of toleration, run into thegreatest of all intolerance. I must bear with infirmities, until theyfester into crimes. 

Undoubtedly, the natural progress of the passions, from frailty to vice, ought to be prevented by a watchful eye and a firm hand. But is it truethat the body of your clergy had passed those limits of a justallowance? Prom the general style of your late publications of allsorts, one would be led to believe that your clergy in France were asort of monsters: an horrible composition of superstition, ignorance, sloth, fraud, avarice, and tyranny. But is this true? Is it true thatthe lapse of time, the cessation of conflicting interests, the wofulexperience of the evils resulting from party rage, have had no sort ofinfluence gradually to meliorate their minds? Is it true that they weredaily renewing invasions on the civil power, troubling the domesticquiet of their country, and rendering the operations of its governmentfeeble and precarious? Is it true that the clergy of our times havepressed down the laity with an iron hand, and were in all placeslighting up the fires of a savage persecution? Did they by every fraudendeavor to increase their estates? Did they use to exceed the duedemands on estates that were their own? Or, rigidly screwing up rightinto wrong, did they convert a legal claim into a vexatious extortion?When not possessed of power, were they filled with the vices of thosewho envy it? Were they inflamed with a violent, litigious spirit ofcontroversy? Goaded on with the ambition of intellectual sovereignty, were they ready to fly in the face of all magistracy, to fire churches, to massacre the priests of other descriptions, to pull down altars, andto make their way over the ruins of subverted governments to an empireof doctrine, sometimes flattering, sometimes forcing, the consciences ofmen from the jurisdiction of public institutions into a submission totheir personal authority, beginning with a claim of liberty and endingwith an abuse of power?

These, or some of these, were the vices objected, and not whollywithout foundation, to several of the churchmen of former times, whobelonged to the two great parties which then divided and distractedEurope. 

If there was in France, as in other countries there visibly is, a greatabatement, rather than any increase of these vices, instead of loadingthe present clergy with the crimes of other men and the odious characterof other times, in common equity they ought to be praised, encouraged, and supported, in their departure from a spirit which disgraced theirpredecessors, and for having assumed a temper of mind and manners moresuitable to their sacred function. 

When my occasions took me into France, towards the close of the latereign, the clergy, under all their forms, engaged a considerable part ofmy curiosity. So far from finding (except from one set of men, not thenvery numerous, though very active) the complaints and discontentsagainst that body which some publications had given me reason to expect, I perceived little or no public or private uneasiness on their account. On further examination, I found the clergy, in general, persons ofmoderate minds and decorous manners: I include the seculars, and theregulars of both sexes. I had not the good fortune to know a great manyof the parochial clergy: but in general I received a perfectly goodaccount of their morals, and of their attention to their duties. Withsome of the higher clergy I had a personal acquaintance, and of the restin that class a very good means of information. They were almost all ofthem persons of noble birth. They resembled others of their own rank;and where there was any difference, it was in their favor. They weremore fully educated than the military noblesse, --so as by no means todisgrace their profession by ignorance, or by want of fitness for theexercise of their authority. They seemed to me, beyond the clericalcharacter, liberal and open, with the hearts of gentlemen and men ofhonor, neither insolent nor servile in their manners and conduct. Theyseemed to me rather a superior class, --a set of men amongst whom youwould not be surprised to find a Fénelon. I saw among the clergy inParis (many of the description are not to be met with anywhere) men ofgreat learning and candor; and I had reason to believe that thisdescription was not confined to Paris. What I found in other places Iknow was accidental, and therefore to be presumed a fair sample. I spenta few days in a provincial town, where, in the absence of the bishop, Ipassed my evenings with three clergymen, his vicars-general, persons whowould have done honor to any church. They were all well-informed; two ofthem of deep, general, and extensive erudition, ancient and modern, Oriental and Western, --particularly in their own profession. They had amore extensive knowledge of our English divines than I expected; andthey entered into the genius of those writers with a critical accuracy. One of these gentlemen is since dead: the Abbé Morangis. I pay thistribute without reluctance to the memory of that noble, reverend, learned, and excellent person; and I should do the same with equalcheerfulness to the merits of the others, who I believe are stillliving, if I did not fear to hurt those whom I am unable to serve. 

Some of these ecclesiastics of rank are, by all titles, personsdeserving of general respect. They are deserving of gratitude from me, and from many English. If this letter should ever come into their hands, I hope they will believe there are those of our nation who feel fortheir unmerited fall, and for the cruel confiscation of their fortunes, with no common sensibility. What I say of them is a testimony, as far asone feeble voice can go, which I owe to truth. Whenever the question ofthis unnatural persecution is concerned, I will pay it. No one shallprevent me from being just and grateful. The time is fitted for theduty; and it is particularly becoming to show our justice and gratitude, when those who have deserved well of us and of mankind are laboringunder popular obloquy and the persecutions of oppressive power. 

You had before your Revolution about a hundred and twenty bishops. A fewof them were men of eminent sanctity, and charity without limit. When wetalk of the heroic, of course we talk of rare virtue. I believe theinstances of eminent depravity may be as rare amongst them as those oftranscendent goodness. Examples of avarice and of licentiousness may bepicked out, I do not question it, by those who delight in theinvestigation which leads to such discoveries. A man as old as I am willnot be astonished that several, in every description, do not lead thatperfect life of self-denial, with regard to wealth or to pleasure, whichis wished for by all, by some expected, but by none exacted with morerigor than by those who are the most attentive to their own interests orthe most indulgent to their own passions. When I was in France, I amcertain that the number of vicious prelates was not great. Certainindividuals among them, not distinguishable for the regularity of theirlives, made some amends for their want of the severe virtues in theirpossession of the liberal, and wore endowed with qualities which madethem useful in the Church and State. I am told, that, with fewexceptions, Louis the Sixteenth had been more attentive to character, inhis promotions to that rank, than his immediate predecessor; and Ibelieve (as some spirit of reform has prevailed through the whole reign)that it may be true. But the present ruling power has shown adisposition only to plunder the Church. It has punished _all_ prelates:which is to favor the vicious, at least in point of reputation. It hasmade a degrading pensionary establishment, to which no man of liberalideas or liberal condition will destine his children. It must settleinto the lowest classes of the people. As with you the inferior clergyare not numerous enough for their duties, as these duties are beyondmeasure minute and toilsome, as you have left no middle classes ofclergy at their ease, in future nothing of science or erudition canexist in the Gallican Church. To complete the project, without the leastattention to the rights of patrons, the Assembly has provided in futurean elective clergy: an arrangement which will drive out of the clericalprofession all men of sobriety, all who can pretend to independence intheir function or their conduct, --and which will throw the wholedirection of the public mind into the hands of a set of licentious, bold, crafty, factious, flattering wretches, of such condition and suchhabits of life as will make their contemptible pensions (in comparisonof which the stipend of an exciseman is lucrative and honorable) anobject of low and illiberal intrigue. Those officers whom they stillcall bishops are to be elected to a provision comparatively mean, through the same arts, (that is, electioneering arts, ) by men of allreligious tenets that are known or can be invented. The new lawgivershave not ascertained anything whatsoever concerning theirqualifications, relative either to doctrine or to morals, no more thanthey have done with regard to the subordinate clergy; nor does it appearbut that both the higher and the lower may, at their discretion, practise or preach any mode of religion or irreligion that they please. I do not yet see what the jurisdiction of bishops over theirsubordinates is to be, or whether they are to have any jurisdiction atall. 

In short, Sir, it seems to me that this new ecclesiastical establishmentis intended only to be temporary, and preparatory to the utterabolition, under any of its forms, of the Christian religion, wheneverthe minds of men are prepared for this last stroke against it by theaccomplishment of the plan for bringing its ministers into universalcontempt. They who will not believe that the philosophical fanatics whoguide in these matters have long entertained such a design are utterlyignorant of their character and proceedings. These enthusiasts do notscruple to avow their opinion, that a state can subsist without anyreligion better than with one, and that they are able to supply theplace of any good which may be in it by a project of their own, --namely, by a sort of education they have imagined, founded in a knowledge of thephysical wants of men, progressively carried to an enlightenedself-interest, which, when well understood, they tell us, will identifywith an interest more enlarged and public. The scheme of this educationhas been long known. Of late they distinguish it (as they have got anentirely new nomenclature of technical terms) by the name of a _CivicEducation_. 

I hope their partisans in England (to whom I rather attribute veryinconsiderate conduct than the ultimate object in this detestabledesign) will succeed neither in the pillage of the ecclesiastics nor inthe introduction of a principle of popular election to our bishopricsand parochial cures. This, in the present condition of the world, wouldbe the last corruption of the Church, the utter ruin of the clericalcharacter, the most dangerous shock that the state ever received througha misunderstood arrangement of religion. I know well enough that thebishoprics and cures, under kingly and seigniorial patronage, as nowthey are in England, and as they have been lately in France, aresometimes acquired by unworthy methods; but the other mode ofecclesiastical canvass subjects them infinitely more surely and moregenerally to all the evil arts of low ambition, which, operating on andthrough greater numbers, will produce mischief in proportion. 

Those of you who have robbed the clergy think that they shall easilyreconcile their conduct to all Protestant nations, because the clergywhom they have thus plundered, degraded, and given over to mockery andscorn, are of the Roman Catholic, that is, of _their own_ pretendedpersuasion. I have no doubt that some miserable bigots will be foundhere as well as elsewhere, who hate sects and parties different fromtheir own more than they love the substance of religion, and who aremore angry with those who differ from them in their particular plans andsystems than displeased with those who attack the foundation of ourcommon hope. These men will write and speak on the subject in the mannerthat is to be expected from their temper and character. Burnet says, that, when he was in France, in the year 1683, "the method which carriedover the men of the finest parts to Popery was this: they broughtthemselves to doubt of the whole Christian religion: when that was oncedone, it seemed a more indifferent thing of what side or form theycontinued outwardly. " If this was then the ecclesiastic policy ofFrance, it is what they have since but too much reason to repent of. They preferred atheism to a form of religion not agreeable to theirideas. They succeeded in destroying that form; and atheism has succeededin destroying them. I can readily give credit to Burnet's story; becauseI have observed too much of a similar spirit (for a little of it is"much too much") amongst ourselves. The humor, however, is not general. 

The teachers who reformed our religion in England bore no sort ofresemblance to your present reforming doctors in Paris. Perhaps theywere (like those whom they opposed) rather more than could be wishedunder the influence of a party spirit; but they were most sincerebelievers; men of the most fervent and exalted piety; ready to die (assome of them did die) like true heroes in defence of their particularideas of Christianity, --as they would with equal fortitude, and morecheerfully, for that stock of general truth for the branches of whichthey contended with their blood. These men would have disavowed withhorror those wretches who claimed a fellowship with them upon no othertitles than those of their having pillaged the persons with whom theymaintained controversies, and their having despised the common religion, for the purity of which they exerted themselves with a zeal whichunequivocally bespoke their highest reverence for the substance of thatsystem which they wished to reform. Many of their descendants haveretained the same zeal, but (as less engaged in conflict) with moremoderation. They do not forget that justice and mercy are substantialparts of religion. Impious men do not recommend themselves to theircommunion by iniquity and cruelty towards any description of theirfellow-creatures. 

We hear these new teachers continually boasting of their spirit oftoleration. That those persons should tolerate all opinions, who thinknone to be of estimation, is a matter of small merit. Equal neglect isnot impartial kindness. The species of benevolence which arises fromcontempt is no true charity. There are in England abundance of men whotolerate in the true spirit of toleration. They think the dogmas ofreligion, though in different degrees, are all of moment, and thatamongst them there is, as amongst all things of value, a just ground ofpreference. They favor, therefore, and they tolerate. They tolerate, notbecause they despise opinions, but because they respect justice. Theywould reverently and affectionately protect all religions, because theylove and venerate the great principle upon which they all agree, and thegreat object to which they are all directed. They begin more and moreplainly to discern that we have all a common cause, as against a commonenemy. They will not be so misled by the spirit of faction as not todistinguish what is done in favor of their subdivision from those actsof hostility which, through some particular description, are aimed atthe whole corps in which they themselves, under another denomination, are included. It is impossible for me to say what may be the characterof every description of men amongst us. But I speak for the greaterpart; and for them, I must tell you, that sacrilege is no part of theirdoctrine of good works; that, so far from calling you into theirfellowship on such title, if your professors are admitted to theircommunion, they must carefully conceal their doctrine of the lawfulnessof the proscription of innocent men, and that they must make restitutionof all stolen goods whatsoever. Till then they are none of ours. 

You may suppose that we do not approve your confiscation of the revenuesof bishops, and deans, and chapters, and parochial clergy possessingindependent estates arising from land, because we have the same sort ofestablishment in England. That objection, you will say, cannot hold asto the confiscation of the goods of monks and nuns, and the abolition oftheir order. It is true that this particular part of your generalconfiscation does not affect England, as a precedent in point; but thereason applies, and it goes a great way. The Long Parliament confiscatedthe lands of deans and chapters in England on the same ideas upon whichyour Assembly set to sale the lands of the monastic orders. But it is inthe principle of injustice that the danger lies, and not in thedescription of persons on whom it is first exercised. I see, in acountry very near us, a course of policy pursued, which sets justice, the common concern of mankind, at defiance. With the National Assemblyof France possession is nothing, law and usage are nothing. I see theNational Assembly openly reprobate the doctrine of prescription, whichone of the greatest of their own lawyers[114] tells us, with greattruth, is a part of the law of Nature. He tells us that the positiveascertainment of its limits, and its security from invasion, were amongthe causes for which civil society itself has been instituted. Ifprescription be once shaken, no species of property is secure, when itonce becomes an object large enough to tempt the cupidity of indigentpower. I see a practice perfectly correspondent to their contempt ofthis great fundamental part of natural law. I see the confiscators beginwith bishops, and chapters, and monasteries; but I do not see them endthere. I see the princes of the blood, who, by the oldest usages of thatkingdom, held large landed estates, (hardly with the compliment of adebate, ) deprived of their possessions, and, in lieu of their stable, independent property, reduced to the hope of some precarious charitablepension at the pleasure of an Assembly, which of course will pay littleregard to the rights of pensioners at pleasure, when it despises thoseof legal proprietors. Flushed with the insolence of their firstinglorious victories, and pressed by the distresses caused by their lustof unhallowed lucre, disappointed, but not discouraged, they have atlength ventured completely to subvert all property of all descriptionsthroughout the extent of a great kingdom. They have compelled all men, in all transactions of commerce, in the disposal of lands, in civildealing, and through the whole communion of life, to accept, as perfectpayment and good and lawful tender, the symbols of their speculations ona projected sale of their plunder. What vestiges of liberty or propertyhave they left? The tenant-right of a cabbage-garden, a year's interestin a hovel, the good-will of an ale-house or a baker's shop, the veryshadow of a constructive property, are more ceremoniously treated in ourParliament than with you the oldest and most valuable landedpossessions, in the hands of the most respectable personages, or thanthe whole body of the moneyed and commercial interest of your country. We entertain a high opinion of the legislative authority; but we havenever dreamt that Parliaments had any right whatever to violateproperty, to overrule prescription, or to force a currency of their ownfiction in the place of that which is real, and recognized by the law ofnations. But you, who began with refusing to submit to the most moderaterestraints, have ended by establishing an unheard-of despotism. I findthe ground upon which your confiscators go is this: that, indeed, theirproceedings could not be supported in a court of justice, but that therules of prescription cannot bind a legislative assembly. [115] So thatthis legislative assembly of a free nation sits, not for the security, but for the destruction of property, --and not of property only, but ofevery rule and maxim which can give it stability, and of thoseinstruments which can alone give it circulation. 

When the Anabaptists of Munster, in the sixteenth century, had filledGermany with confusion, by their system of levelling, and their wildopinions concerning property, to what country in Europe did not theprogress of their fury furnish just cause of alarm? Of all things, wisdom is the most terrified with epidemical fanaticism, because of allenemies it is that against which she is the least able to furnish anykind of resource. We cannot be ignorant of the spirit of atheisticalfanaticism, that is inspired by a multitude of writings dispersed withincredible assiduity and expense, and by sermons delivered in all thestreets and places of public resort in Paris. These writings and sermonshave filled the populace with a black and savage atrocity of mind, whichsupersedes in them the common feelings of Nature, as well as allsentiments of morality and religion; insomuch that these wretches areinduced to bear with a sullen patience the intolerable distressesbrought upon them by the violent convulsions and permutations that havebeen made in property. [116] The spirit of proselytism attends thisspirit of fanaticism. They have societies to cabal and correspond athome and abroad for the propagation of their tenets. The republic ofBerne, one of the happiest, the most prosperous, and the best-governedcountries upon earth, is one of the great objects at the destruction ofwhich they aim. I am told they have in some measure succeeded in sowingthere the seeds of discontent. They are busy throughout Germany. Spainand Italy have not been untried. England is not left out of thecomprehensive scheme of their malignant charity: and in England we findthose who stretch out their arms to them, who recommend their examplefrom more than one pulpit, and who choose, in more than one periodicalmeeting, publicly to correspond with them, to applaud them, and to holdthem up as objects for imitation; who receive from them tokens ofconfraternity, and standards consecrated amidst their rites andmysteries;[117] who suggest to them leagues of perpetual amity, at thevery time when the power to which our Constitution has exclusivelydelegated the federative capacity of this kingdom may find it expedientto make war upon them. 

It is not the confiscation of our Church property from this example inFrance that I dread, though I think this would be no trifling evil. Thegreat source of my solicitude is, lest it should ever be considered inEngland as the policy of a state to seek a resource in confiscations ofany kind, or that any one description of citizens should be brought toregard any of the others as their proper prey. [118] Nations are wadingdeeper and deeper into an ocean of boundless debt. Public debts, whichat first were a security to governments, by interesting many in thepublic tranquillity, are likely in their excess to become the means oftheir subversion. If governments provide for these debts by heavyimpositions, they perish by becoming odious to the people. If they donot provide for them, they will be undone by the efforts of the mostdangerous of all parties: I mean an extensive, discontented moneyedinterest, injured and not destroyed. The men who compose this interestlook for their security, in the first instance, to the fidelity ofgovernment; in the second, to its power. If they find the oldgovernments effete, worn out, and with their springs relaxed, so as notto be of sufficient vigor for their purposes, they may seek new onesthat shall be possessed of more energy; and this energy will bederived, not from an acquisition of resources, but from a contempt ofjustice. Revolutions are favorable to confiscation; and it is impossibleto know under what obnoxious names the next confiscations will beauthorized. I am sure that the principles predominant in France extendto very many persons, and descriptions of persons, in all countries, whothink their innoxious indolence their security. This kind of innocencein proprietors may be argued into inutility; and inutility into anunfitness for their estates. Many parts of Europe are in open disorder. In many others there is a hollow murmuring under ground; a confusedmovement is felt, that threatens a general earthquake in the politicalworld. Already confederacies and correspondences of the mostextraordinary nature are forming in several countries. [119] In such astate of things we ought to hold ourselves upon our guard. In allmutations (if mutations must be) the circumstance which will serve mostto blunt the edge of their mischief, and to promote what good may be inthem, is, that they should find us with our minds tenacious of justiceand tender of property. 

But it will be argued, that this confiscation in France ought not toalarm other nations. They say it is not made from wanton rapacity; thatit is a great measure of national policy, adopted to remove anextensive, inveterate, superstitious mischief. --It is with the greatestdifficulty that I am able to separate policy from justice. Justice isitself the great standing policy of civil society; and any eminentdeparture from it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion ofbeing no policy at all. 

When men are encouraged to go into a certain mode of life by theexisting laws, and protected in that mode as in a lawfuloccupation, --when they have accommodated all their ideas and all theirhabits to it, --when the law had long made their adherence to its rules aground of reputation, and their departure from them a ground of disgraceand even of penalty, --I am sure it is unjust in legislature, by anarbitrary act, to offer a sudden violence to their minds and theirfeelings, forcibly to degrade them from their state and condition, andto stigmatize with shame and infamy that character and those customswhich before had been made the measure of their happiness and honor. Ifto this be added an expulsion from their habitations and a confiscationof all their goods, I am not sagacious enough to discover how thisdespotic sport made of the feelings, consciences, prejudices, andproperties of men can be discriminated from the rankest tyranny. 

If the injustice of the course pursued in France be clear, the policy ofthe measure, that is, the public benefit to be expected from it, oughtto be at least as evident, and at least as important. To a man who actsunder the influence of no passion, who has nothing in view in hisprojects but the public good, a great difference will immediately strikehim, between what policy would dictate on the original introduction ofsuch institutions, and on a question of their total abolition, wherethey have cast their roots wide and deep, and where, by long habit, things more valuable than themselves are so adapted to them, and in amanner interwoven with them, that the one cannot be destroyed withoutnotably impairing the other. He might be embarrassed, if the case werereally such as sophisters represent it in their paltry style ofdebating. But in this, as in most questions of state, there is a middle. There is something else than the mere alternative of absolutedestruction or unreformed existence. _Spartam nactus es; hanc exorna_. This is, in my opinion, a rule of profound sense, and ought never todepart from the mind of an honest reformer. I cannot conceive how anyman can have brought himself to that pitch of presumption, to considerhis country as nothing but _carte blanche_, upon which he may scribblewhatever he pleases. A man full of warm, speculative benevolence maywish his society otherwise constituted than he finds it; but a goodpatriot, and a true politician, always considers how he shall make themost of the existing materials of his country. A disposition topreserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be mystandard of a statesman. Everything else is vulgar in the conception, perilous in the execution. 

There are moments in the fortune of states, when particular men arecalled to make improvements by great mental exertion. In those moments, even when they seem to enjoy the confidence of their prince and country, and to be invested with full authority, they have not always aptinstruments. A politician, to do great things, looks for a _power_, whatour workmen call a _purchase_; and if he finds that power, in politicsas in mechanics, he cannot be at a loss to apply it. In the monasticinstitutions, in my opinion, was found a great _power_ for the mechanismof politic benevolence. There were revenues with a public direction;there were men wholly set apart and dedicated to public purposes, without any other than public ties and public principles, --men withoutthe possibility of converting the estate of the community into a privatefortune, --men denied to self-interests, whose avarice is for somecommunity, --men to whom personal poverty is honor, and implicitobedience stands in the place of freedom. In vain shall a man look tothe possibility of making such things when he wants them. The winds blowas they list. These institutions are the products of enthusiasm; theyare the instruments of wisdom. Wisdom cannot create materials; they arethe gifts of Nature or of chance; her pride is in the use. The perennialexistence of bodies corporate and their fortunes are things particularlysuited to a man who has long views, --who meditates designs that requiretime in fashioning, and which propose duration when they areaccomplished. He is not deserving to rank high, or even to be mentionedin the order of great statesmen, who, having obtained the command anddirection of such a power as existed in the wealth, the discipline, andthe habits of such corporations as those which you have rashlydestroyed, cannot find any way of converting it to the great and lastingbenefit of his country. On the view of this subject, a thousand usessuggest themselves to a contriving mind. To destroy any power growingwild from the rank productive force of the human mind is almosttantamount, in the moral world, to the destruction of the apparentlyactive properties of bodies in the material. It would be like theattempt to destroy (if it were in our competence to destroy) theexpansive force of fixed air in nitre, or the power of steam, or ofelectricity, or of magnetism. These energies always existed in Nature, and they were always discernible. They seemed, some of themunserviceable, some noxious, some no better than a sport tochildren, --until contemplative ability, combining with practic skill, tamed their wild nature, subdued them to use, and rendered them at oncethe most powerful and the most tractable agents, in subservience to thegreat views and designs of men. Did fifty thousand persons, whose mentaland whose bodily labor you might direct, and so many hundred thousand ayear of a revenue, which was neither lazy nor superstitious, appear toobig for your abilities to wield? Had you no way of using the men, but byconverting monks into pensioners? Had you no way of turning the revenueto account, but through the improvident resource of a spendthrift sale?If you were thus destitute of mental funds, the proceeding is in itsnatural course. Your politicians do not understand their trade; andtherefore they sell their tools. 

But the institutions savor of superstition in their very principle; andthey nourish it by a permanent and standing influence. --This I do notmean to dispute; but this ought not to hinder you from deriving fromsuperstition itself any resources which may thence be furnished for thepublic advantage. You derive benefits from many dispositions and manypassions of the human mind which are of as doubtful a color, in themoral eye, as superstition itself. It was your business to correct andmitigate everything which was noxious in this passion, as in all thepassions. But is superstition the greatest of all possible vices? In itspossible excess I think it becomes a very great evil. It is, however, amoral subject, and of course admits of all degrees and allmodifications. Superstition is the religion of feeble minds; and theymust be tolerated in an intermixture of it, in some trifling or someenthusiastic shape or other, else you will deprive weak minds of aresource found necessary to the strongest. The body of all true religionconsists, to be sure, in obedience to the will of the Sovereign of theworld, in a confidence in His declarations, and in imitation of Hisperfections. The rest is our own. It may be prejudicial to the greatend, --it may be auxiliary. Wise men, who, as such, are not _admirers_, (not admirers at least of the _munera terræ_, ) are not violentlyattached to these things, nor do they violently hate them. Wisdom is notthe most severe corrector of folly. They are the rival follies whichmutually wage so unrelenting a war, and which make so cruel a use oftheir advantages, as they can happen to engage the immoderate vulgar, onthe one side or the other, in their quarrels. Prudence would be neuter;but if, in the contention between fond attachment and fierce antipathyconcerning things in their nature not made to produce such heats, aprudent man were obliged to make a choice of what errors and excesses ofenthusiasm he would condemn or bear, perhaps he would think thesuperstition which builds to be more tolerable than that whichdemolishes, --that which adorns a country, than that which deformsit, --that which endows, than that which plunders, --that which disposesto mistaken beneficence, than that which stimulates to realinjustice, --that which leads a man to refuse to himself lawfulpleasures, than that which snatches from others the scanty subsistenceof their self-denial. Such, I think, is very nearly the state of thequestion between the ancient founders of monkish superstition and thesuperstition of the pretended philosophers of the hour. 

For the present I postpone all consideration of the supposed publicprofit of the sale, which, however, I conceive to be perfectly delusive. I shall here only consider it as a transfer of property. On the policyof that transfer I shall trouble you with a few thoughts. 

In every prosperous community something more is produced than goes tothe immediate support of the producer. This surplus forms the income ofthe landed capitalist. It will be spent by a proprietor who does notlabor. But this idleness is itself the spring of labor, this repose thespur to industry. The only concern for the state is, that the capitaltaken in rent from the land should be returned again to the industryfrom whence it came, and that its expenditure should be with the leastpossible detriment to the morals of those who expend it and to those ofthe people to whom it is returned. 

In all the views of receipt, expenditure, and personal employment, asober legislator would carefully compare the possessor whom he wasrecommended to expel with the stranger who was proposed to fill hisplace. Before the inconveniences are incurred which _must_ attend allviolent revolutions in property through extensive confiscation, we oughtto have some rational assurance that the purchasers of the confiscatedproperty will be in a considerable degree more laborious, more virtuous, more sober, less disposed to extort an unreasonable proportion of thegains of the laborer, or to consume on themselves a larger share than isfit for the measure of an individual, --or that they should be qualifiedto dispense the surplus in a more steady and equal mode, so as toanswer the purposes of a politic expenditure, than the old possessors, call those possessors bishops, or canons, or commendatory abbots, ormonks, or what you please. The monks are lazy. Be it so. Suppose them nootherwise employed than by singing in the choir. They are as usefullyemployed as those who neither sing nor say, --as usefully even as thosewho sing upon the stage. They are as usefully employed as if they workedfrom dawn to dark in the innumerable servile, degrading, unseemly, unmanly, and often most unwholesome and pestiferous occupations to whichby the social economy so many wretches are inevitably doomed. If it werenot generally pernicious to disturb the natural course of things, and toimpede in any degree the great wheel of circulation which is turned bythe strangely directed labor of these unhappy people, I should beinfinitely more inclined forcibly to rescue them from their miserableindustry than violently to disturb the tranquil repose of monasticquietude. Humanity, and perhaps policy, might better justify me in theone than in the other. It is a subject on which I have often reflected, and never reflected without feeling from it. I am sure that noconsideration, except the necessity of submitting to the yoke of luxuryand the despotism of fancy, who in their own imperious way willdistribute the surplus product of the soil, can justify the tolerationof such trades and employments in a well-regulated state. But for thispurpose of distribution, it seems to me that the idle expenses of monksare quite as well directed as the idle expenses of us lay loiterers. 

When the advantages of the possession and of the project are on a par, there is no motive for a change. But in the present case, perhaps, theyare not upon a par, and the difference is in favor of the possession. Itdoes not appear to me that the expenses of those whom you are going toexpel do in fact take a course so directly and so generally leading tovitiate and degrade and render miserable those through whom they pass asthe expenses of those favorites whom you are intruding into theirhouses. Why should the expenditure of a great landed property, which isa dispersion of the surplus product of the soil, appear intolerable toyou or to me, when it takes its course through the accumulation of vastlibraries, which are the history of the force and weakness of the humanmind, --through great collections of ancient records, medals, and coins, which attest and explain laws and customs, --through paintings andstatues, that, by imitating Nature, seem to extend the limits ofcreation, --through grand monuments of the dead, which continue theregards and connections of life beyond the grave, --through collectionsof the specimens of Nature, which become a representative assembly ofall the classes and families of the world, that by dispositionfacilitate, and by exciting curiosity open, the avenues to science? Ifby great permanent establishments all these objects of expense arebetter secured from the inconstant sport of personal caprice andpersonal extravagance, are they worse than if the same tastes prevailedin scattered individuals? Does not the sweat of the mason and carpenter, who toil in order to partake the sweat of the peasant, flow aspleasantly and as salubriously in the construction and repair of themajestic edifices of religion as in the painted booths and sordid stiesof vice and luxury? as honorably and as profitably in repairing thosesacred works which grow hoary with innumerable years as on the momentaryreceptacles of transient voluptuousness, --in opera-houses, and brothels, and gaming-houses, and club-houses, and obelisks in the Champ de Mars?Is the surplus product of the olive and the vine worse employed in thefrugal sustenance of persons whom the fictions of a pious imaginationraise to dignity by construing in the service of God than in pamperingthe innumerable multitude of those who are degraded by being madeuseless domestics, subservient to the pride of man? Are the decorationsof temples an expenditure less worthy a wise man than ribbons, andlaces, and national cockades, and petit maisons, and petit soupers, andall the innumerable fopperies and follies in which opulence sports awaythe burden of its superfluity?

We tolerate even these, --not from love of them, but for fear of worse. We tolerate them, because property and liberty, to a degree, requirethat toleration. But why proscribe the other, and surely, in every pointof view, the more laudable use of estates? Why, through the violation ofall property, through an outrage upon every principle of liberty, forcibly carry them from the better to the worse?

This comparison between the new individuals and the old corps is madeupon a supposition that no reform could be made in the latter. But, in aquestion of reformation, I always consider corporate bodies, whethersole or consisting of many, to be much more susceptible of a publicdirection, by the power of the state, in the use of their property, andin the regulation of modes and habits of life in their members, thanprivate citizens ever can be, or perhaps ought to be; and this seems tome a very material consideration for those who undertake anything whichmerits the name of a politic enterprise. --So far as to the estates ofmonasteries. 

With regard to the estates possessed by bishops and canons andcommendatory abbots, I cannot find out for what reason some landedestates may not be held otherwise than by inheritance. Can anyphilosophic spoiler undertake to demonstrate the positive or thecomparative evil of having a certain, and that, too, a large, portion oflanded property passing in succession through persons whose title to itis, always in theory and often in fact, an eminent degree of piety, morals, and learning; a property which by its destination, in theirturn, and on the score of merit, gives to the noblest familiesrenovation and support, to the lowest the means of dignity andelevation; a property, the tenure of which is the performance of someduty, (whatever value you may choose to set upon that duty, ) and thecharacter of whose proprietors demands at least an exterior decorum andgravity of manners, --who are to exercise a generous, but temperatehospitality, --part of whose income they are to consider as a trust forcharity, --and who, even when they fail in their trust, when they slidefrom their character, and degenerate into a mere common secular noblemanor gentleman, are in no respect worse than those who may succeed them intheir forfeited possessions? Is it better that estates should be held bythose who have no duty than by those who have one? by those whosecharacter and destination point to virtues than by those who have norule and direction in the expenditure of their estates but their ownwill and appetite? Nor are these estates held altogether in thecharacter or with the evils supposed inherent in mortmain. They passfrom hand to hand with a more rapid circulation than any other. Noexcess is good, and therefore too great a proportion of landed propertymay be held officially for life; but it does not seem to me of materialinjury to any common wealth that there should exist some estates thathave a chance of being acquired by other means than the previousacquisition of money. 

 * * * * *

This letter is grown to a great length, though it is, indeed, short withregard to the infinite extent of the subject. Various avocations havefrom time to time called my mind from the subject. I was not sorry togive myself leisure to observe whether in the proceedings of theNational Assembly I might not find reasons to change or to qualify someof my first sentiments. Everything has confirmed me more strongly in myfirst opinions. It was my original purpose to take a view of theprinciples of the National Assembly with regard to the great andfundamental establishments, and to compare the whole of what you havesubstituted in the place of what you have destroyed with the severalmembers of our British Constitution. But this plan is of greater extentthan at first I computed, and I find that you have little desire to takethe advantage of any examples. At present I must content myself withsome remarks upon your establishments, reserving for another time what Iproposed to say concerning the spirit of our British monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, as practically they exist. 

I have taken a view of what has been done by the governing power inFrance. I have certainly spoke of it with freedom. Those whose principleit is to despise the ancient, permanent sense of mankind, and to set upa scheme of society on new principles, must naturally expect that suchof us who think better of the judgment of the human race than, of theirsshould consider both them and their devices as men and schemes upontheir trial. They must take it for granted that we attend much to theirreason, but not at all to their authority. They have not one of thegreat influencing prejudices of mankind in their favor. They avow theirhostility to opinion. Of course they must expect no support from thatinfluence, which, with every other authority, they have deposed from theseat of its jurisdiction. 

I can never consider this Assembly as anything else than a voluntaryassociation of men who have availed themselves of circumstances to seizeupon the power of the state. They have not the sanction and authority ofthe character under which they first met. They have assumed another of avery different nature, and have completely altered and inverted all therelations in which they originally stood. They do not hold the authoritythey exercise under any constitutional law of the state. They havedeparted from the instructions of the people by whom they were sent;which instructions, as the Assembly did not act in virtue of any ancientusage or settled law, were the sole source of their authority. The mostconsiderable of their acts have not been done by great majorities; andin this sort of near divisions, which carry only the constructiveauthority of the whole, strangers will consider reasons as well asresolutions. 

If they had set up this new, experimental government as a necessarysubstitute for an expelled tyranny, mankind would anticipate the time ofprescription, which through long usage mellows into legality governmentsthat were violent in their commencement. All those who have affectionswhich lead them to the conservation of civil order would recognize, evenin its cradle, the child as legitimate, which has been produced fromthose principles of cogent expediency to which all just governments owetheir birth, and on which they justify their continuance. But they willbe late and reluctant in giving any sort of countenance to theoperations of a power which has derived its birth from no law and nonecessity, but which, on the contrary, has had its origin in those vicesand sinister practices by which the social union is often disturbed andsometimes destroyed. This Assembly has hardly a year's prescription. Wehave their own word for it that they have made a revolution. To make arevolution is a measure which, _primâ fronte_, requires an apology. Tomake a revolution is to subvert the ancient state of our country; and nocommon reasons are called for to justify so violent a proceeding. Thesense of mankind authorizes us to examine into the mode of acquiring newpower, and to criticize on the use that is made of it, with less awe andreverence than that which is usually conceded to a settled andrecognized authority. 

In obtaining and securing their power, the Assembly proceeds uponprinciples the most opposite from those which appear to direct them inthe use of it. An observation on this difference will let us into thetrue spirit of their conduct. Everything which they have done, orcontinue to do, in order to obtain and keep their power, is by the mostcommon arts. They proceed exactly as their ancestors of ambition havedone before them. Trace them through all their artifices, frauds, andviolences, you can find nothing at all that is new. They followprecedents and examples with the punctilious exactness of a pleader. They never depart an iota from the authentic formulas of tyranny andusurpation. But in all the regulations relative to the public good thespirit has been the very reverse of this. There they commit the whole tothe mercy of untried speculations; they abandon the dearest interests ofthe public to those loose theories to which none of them would choose totrust the slightest of his private concerns. They make this difference, because in their desire of obtaining and securing power they arethoroughly in earnest; there they travel in the beaten road. The publicinterests, because about them they have no real solicitude, they abandonwholly to chance: I say to chance, because their schemes have nothing inexperience to prove their tendency beneficial. 

We must always see with a pity not unmixed with respect the errors ofthose who are timid and doubtful of themselves with regard to pointswherein the happiness of mankind is concerned. But in these gentlementhere is nothing of the tender parental solicitude which fears to cut upthe infant for the sake of an experiment. In the vastness of theirpromises and the confidence of their predictions they far outdo all theboasting of empirics. The arrogance of their pretensions in a mannerprovokes and challenges us to an inquiry into their foundation. 

I am convinced that there are men of considerable parts among thepopular leaders in the National Assembly. Some of them display eloquencein their speeches and their writings. This cannot be without powerfuland cultivated talents. But eloquence may exist without a proportionabledegree of wisdom. When I speak of ability, I am obliged to distinguish. What they have done towards the support of their system bespeaks noordinary men. In the system itself, taken as the scheme of a republicconstructed for procuring the prosperity and security of the citizen, and for promoting the strength and grandeur of the state, I confessmyself unable to find out anything which displays, in a single instance, the work of a comprehensive and disposing mind, or even the provisionsof a vulgar prudence. Their purpose everywhere seems to have been toevade and slip aside from _difficulty_. This it has been the glory ofthe great masters in all the arts to confront, and to overcome, --andwhen they had overcome the first difficulty, to turn it into aninstrument for new conquests over new difficulties: thus to enable themto extend the empire of their science, and even to push forward, beyondthe reach of their original thoughts, the landmarks of the humanunderstanding itself. Difficulty is a severe instructor, set over us bythe supreme ordinance of a parental Guardian and Legislator, who knowsus better than we know ourselves, as He loves us better too. _Pater ipsecolendi haud facilem esse viam voluit_. He that wrestles with usstrengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is ourhelper. This amicable conflict with difficulty obliges us to an intimateacquaintance with our object, and compels us to consider it in all itsrelations. It will not suffer us to be superficial. It is the want ofnerves of understanding for such a task, it is the degenerate fondnessfor tricking short-outs and little fallacious facilities, that has in somany parts of the world created governments with arbitrary powers. Theyhave created the late arbitrary monarchy of France. They have createdthe arbitrary republic of Paris. With them defects in wisdom are to besupplied by the plenitude of force. They get nothing by it. Commencingtheir labors on a principle of sloth, they have the common fortune ofslothful men. The difficulties, which they rather had eluded thanescaped, meet them again in their course; they multiply and thicken onthem; they are involved, through a labyrinth of confused detail, in anindustry without limit and without direction; and in conclusion, thewhole of their work becomes feeble, vicious, and insecure. 

It is this inability to wrestle with difficulty which has obliged thearbitrary Assembly of France to commence their schemes of reform withabolition and total destruction. [120] But is it in destroying andpulling down that skill is displayed? Your mob can do this as well atleast as your assemblies. The shallowest understanding, the rudest hand, is more than equal to that task. Rage and frenzy will pull down more inhalf an hour than prudence, deliberation, and foresight can build up ina hundred years. The errors and defects of old establishments arevisible and palpable. It calls for little ability to point them out; andwhere absolute power is given, it requires but a word wholly to abolishthe vice and the establishment together. The same lazy, but restlessdisposition, which loves sloth and hates quiet, directs thesepoliticians, when they come to work for supplying the place of what theyhave destroyed. To make everything the reverse of what they have seen isquite as easy as to destroy. No difficulties occur in what has neverbeen tried. Criticism is almost baffled in discovering the defects ofwhat has not existed; and eager enthusiasm and cheating hope have allthe wide field of imagination, in which they may expatiate with littleor no opposition. 

At once to preserve and to reform is quite another thing. When theuseful parts of an old establishment are kept, and what is superadded isto be fitted to what is retained, a vigorous mind, steady, perseveringattention, various powers of comparison and combination, and theresources of an understanding fruitful in expedients are to beexercised; they are to be exercised in a continued conflict with thecombined force of opposite vices, with the obstinacy that rejects allimprovement, and the levity that is fatigued and disgusted witheverything of which it is in possession. But you may object, --"A processof this kind is slow. It is not fit for an Assembly which glories inperforming in a few months the work of ages. Such a mode of reforming, possibly, might take up many years. " Without question it might; and itought. It is one of the excellences of a method in which time is amongstthe assistants, that its operation is slow, and in some cases almostimperceptible. If circumspection and caution are a part of wisdom, whenwe work only upon inanimate matter, surely they become a part of dutytoo, when the subject of our demolition and construction is not brickand timber, but sentient beings, by the sudden alteration of whosestate, condition, and habits, multitudes may be rendered miserable. Butit seems as if it were the prevalent opinion in Paris, that an unfeelingheart and an undoubting confidence are the sole qualifications for aperfect legislator. Far different are my ideas of that high office. Thetrue lawgiver ought to have a heart full of sensibility. He ought tolove and respect his kind, and to fear himself. It may be allowed to histemperament to catch his ultimate object with an intuitive glance; buthis movements towards it ought to be deliberate. Political arrangement, as it is a work for social ends, is to be only wrought by social means. There mind must conspire with mind. Time is required to produce thatunion of minds which alone can produce all the good we aim at. Ourpatience will achieve more than our force. If I might venture to appealto what is so much out of fashion in Paris, --I mean to experience, --Ishould tell you, that in my course I have known, and, according to mymeasure, have coöperated with great men; and I have never yet seen anyplan which has not been mended by the observations of those who weremuch inferior in understanding to the person who took the lead in thebusiness. By a slow, but well-sustained progress, the effect of eachstep is watched; the good or ill success of the first gives light to usin the second; and so, from light to light, we are conducted with safetythrough the whole series. We see that the parts of the system do notclash. The evils latent in the most promising contrivances are providedfor as they arise. One advantage is as little as possible sacrificed toanother. We compensate, we reconcile, we balance. We are enabled tounite into a consistent whole the various anomalies and contendingprinciples that are found in the minds and affairs of men. From hencearises, not an excellence in simplicity, but one far superior, anexcellence in composition. Where the great interests of mankind areconcerned through a long succession of generations, that successionought to be admitted into some share in the councils which are so deeplyto affect them. If justice requires this, the work itself requires theaid of more minds than one age can furnish. It is from this view ofthings that the best legislators have been often satisfied with theestablishment of some sure, solid, and ruling principle ingovernment, --a power like that which some of the philosophers havecalled a plastic Nature; and having fixed the principle, they have leftit afterwards to its own operation. 

To proceed in this manner, that is, to proceed with a presidingprinciple and a prolific energy, is with me the criterion of profoundwisdom. What your politicians think the marks of a bold, hardy geniusare only proofs of a deplorable want of ability. By their violent haste, and their defiance of the process of Nature, they are delivered overblindly to every projector and adventurer, to every alchemist andempiric. They despair of turning to account anything that is common. Diet is nothing in their system of remedy. The worst of it is, that thistheir despair of curing common distempers by regular methods arises notonly from defect of comprehension, but, I fear, from some malignity ofdisposition. Your legislators seem to have taken their opinions of allprofessions, ranks, and offices from the declamations and buffooneriesof satirists, --who would themselves be astonished, if they were held tothe letter of their own descriptions. By listening only to these, yourleaders regard all things only on the side of their vices and faults, and view those vices and faults under every color of exaggeration. It isundoubtedly true, though it may seem paradoxical, --but, in general, those who are habitually employed in finding and displaying faults areunqualified for the work of reformation; because their minds are notonly unfurnished with patterns of the fair and good, but by habit theycome to take no delight in the contemplation of those things. By hatingvices too much, they come to love men too little. It is therefore notwonderful that they should be indisposed and unable to serve them. Fromhence arises the complexional disposition of some of your guides to pulleverything in pieces. At this malicious game they display the whole oftheir _quadrimanous_ activity. As to the rest, the paradoxes of eloquentwriters, brought forth purely as a sport of fancy, to try their talents, to rouse attention, and excite surprise, are taken up by thesegentlemen, not in the spirit of the original authors, as means ofcultivating their taste and improving their style: these paradoxesbecome with them serious grounds of action, upon which they proceed inregulating the most important concerns of the state. Cicero ludicrouslydescribes Cato as endeavoring to act in the commonwealth upon the schoolparadoxes which exercised the wits of the junior students in the Stoicphilosophy. If this was true of Cato, these gentlemen copy after him inthe manner of some persons who lived about his time, --_pede nudoCatonem_. Mr. Hume told me that he had from Rousseau himself the secretof his principles of composition. That acute, though eccentric observer, had perceived, that, to strike and interest the public, the marvellousmust be produced; that the marvellous of the heathen mythology had longsince lost its effects; that giants, magicians, fairies, and heroes ofromance, which succeeded, had exhausted the portion of credulity whichbelonged to their age; that now nothing was left to a writer but thatspecies of the marvellous, which might still be produced, and with asgreat an effect as ever, though in another way, --that is, the marvellousin life, in manners, in characters, and in extraordinary situations, giving rise to new and unlooked-for strokes in politics and morals. Ibelieve, that, were Rousseau alive, and in one of his lucid intervals, he would be shocked at the practical frenzy of his scholars, who intheir paradoxes are servile imitators, and even in their incredulitydiscover an implicit faith. 

Men who undertake considerable things, even in a regular way, ought togive us ground to presume ability. But the physician of the state, who, not satisfied with the cure of distempers, undertakes to regenerateconstitutions, ought to show uncommon powers. Some very unusualappearances of wisdom ought to display themselves on the face of thedesigns of those who appeal to no practice and who copy after no model. Has any such been manifested? I shall take a view (it shall for thesubject be a very short one) of what the Assembly has done, with regard, first, to the constitution of the legislature; in the next place, tothat of the executive power; then to that of the judicature; afterwardsto the model of the army; and conclude with the system of finance: tosee whether we can discover in any part of their schemes the portentousability which may justify these bold undertakers in the superioritywhich they assume over mankind. 

It is in the model of the sovereign and presiding part of this newrepublic that we should expect their grand display. Here they were toprove their title to their proud demands. For the plan itself at large, and for the reasons on which it is grounded, I refer to the journals ofthe Assembly of the 29th of September, 1789, and to the subsequentproceedings which have made any alterations in the plan. So far as in amatter somewhat confused I can see light, the system remainssubstantially as it has been originally framed. My few remarks will besuch as regard its spirit, its tendency, and its fitness for framing apopular commonwealth, which they profess theirs to be, suited to theends for which any commonwealth, and particularly such a commonwealth, is made. At the same time I mean to consider its consistency with itselfand its own principles. 

Old establishments are tried by their effects. If the people are happy, united, wealthy, and powerful, we presume the rest. We conclude that tobe good from whence good is derived. In old establishments variouscorrectives have been found for their aberrations from theory. Indeed, they are the results of various necessities and expediences. They arenot often constructed after any theory: theories are rather drawn fromthem. In them we often see the end best obtained, where the means seemnot perfectly reconcilable to what we may fancy was the original scheme. The means taught by experience may be better suited to political endsthan those contrived in the original project. They again react upon theprimitive constitution, and sometimes improve the design itself, fromwhich they seem to have departed. I think all this might be curiouslyexemplified in the British Constitution. At worst, the errors anddeviations of every kind in reckoning are found and computed, and theship proceeds in her course. This is the case of old establishments; butin a new and merely theoretic system, it is expected that everycontrivance shall appear, on the face of it, to answer its ends, especially where the projectors are no way embarrassed with an endeavorto accommodate the new building to an old one, either in the walls or onthe foundations. 

The French builders, clearing away as mere rubbish whatever they found, and, like their ornamental gardeners, forming everything into an exactlevel, propose to rest the whole local and general legislature on threebases of three different kinds, --one geometrical, one arithmetical, andthe third financial; the first of which they call _the basis ofterritory_; the second, _the basis of population_; and the third, _thebasis of contribution_. For the accomplishment of the first of thesepurposes, they divide the area of their country into eighty-threepieces, regularly square, of eighteen leagues by eighteen. These largedivisions are called _Departments_. These they portion, proceeding bysquare measurement, into seventeen hundred and twenty districts, called_Communes_. These again they subdivide, still proceeding by squaremeasurement, into smaller districts, called _Cantons_, making in all6, 400. 

At first view this geometrical basis of theirs presents not much toadmire or to blame. It calls for no great legislative talents. Nothingmore than an accurate land-surveyor, with his chain, sight, andtheodolite, is requisite for such a plan as this. In the old divisionsof the country, various accidents at times, and the ebb and flow ofvarious properties and jurisdictions, settled their bounds. These boundswere not made upon any fixed system, undoubtedly. They were subject tosome inconveniences; but they were inconveniences for which use hadfound remedies, and habit had supplied accommodation and patience. Inthis new pavement of square within square, and this organization andsemi-organization, made on the system of Empedocles and Buffon, and notupon any politic principle, it is impossible that innumerable localinconveniences, to which men are not habituated, must not arise. Butthese I pass over, because it requires an accurate knowledge of thecountry, which I do not possess, to specify them. 

When these state surveyors came to take a view of their work ofmeasurement, they soon found that in politics the most fallacious of allthings was geometrical demonstration. They had then recourse to anotherbasis (or rather buttress) to support the building, which tottered onthat false foundation. It was evident that the goodness of the soil, thenumber of the people, their wealth, and the largeness of theircontribution, made such infinite variations between square and squareas to render mensuration a ridiculous standard of power in thecommonwealth, and equality in geometry the most unequal of all measuresin the distribution of men. However, they could not give it up, --but, dividing their political and civil representation into three parts, theyallotted one of those parts to the square measurement, without a singlefact or calculation to ascertain whether this territorial proportion ofrepresentation was fairly assigned, and ought upon any principle reallyto be a third. Having, however, given to geometry this portion, (of athird for her dower, ) out of compliment, I suppose, to that sublimescience, they left the other two to be scuffled for between the otherparts, population and contribution. 

When they came to provide for population, they were not able to proceedquite so smoothly as they had done in the field of their geometry. Heretheir arithmetic came to bear upon their juridical metaphysics. Had theystuck to their metaphysic principles, the arithmetical process would besimple indeed. Men, with them, are strictly equal, and are entitled toequal rights in their own government. Each head, on this system, wouldhave its vote, and every man would vote directly for the person who wasto represent him in the legislature. "But soft, --by regular degrees, notyet. " This metaphysic principle, to which law, custom, usage, policy, reason, were to yield, is to yield itself to their pleasure. There mustbe many degrees, and some stages, before the representative can come incontact with his constituent. Indeed, as we shall soon see, these twopersons are to have no sort of communion with each other. First, thevoters in the _Canton_, who compose what they call _primaryassemblies_, are to have a _qualification_. What! a qualification on theindefeasible rights of men? Yes; but it shall be a very smallqualification. Our injustice shall be very little oppressive: only thelocal valuation of three days' labor paid to the public. Why, this isnot much, I readily admit, for anything but the utter subversion of yourequalizing principle. As a qualification it might as well be let alone;for it answers no one purpose for which qualifications are established;and, on your ideas, it excludes from a vote the man of all others whosenatural equality stands the most in need of protection and defence: Imean the man who has nothing else but his natural equality to guard him. You order him to buy the right which you before told him Nature hadgiven to him gratuitously at his birth, and of which no authority onearth could lawfully deprive him. With regard to the person who cannotcome up to your market, a tyrannous aristocracy, as against him, isestablished at the very outset, by you who pretend to be its sworn foe. 

The gradation proceeds. These primary assemblies of the _Canton_ electdeputies to the _Commune_, --one for every two hundred qualifiedinhabitants. Here is the first medium put between the primary electorand the representative legislator; and here a new turnpike is fixed fortaxing the rights of men with a second qualification: for none can beelected into the _Commune_ who does not pay the amount of ten days'labor. Nor have we yet done. There is still to be anothergradation. [121] These _Communes_, chosen by the _Canton_, choose to the_Department_; and the deputies of the _Department_ choose their deputiesto the _National Assembly_. Here is a third barrier of a senselessqualification. Every deputy to the National Assembly must pay, in directcontribution, to the value of a _mark of silver_. Of all thesequalifying barriers we must think alike: that they are impotent tosecure independence, strong only to destroy the rights of men. 

In all this process, which in its fundamental elements affects toconsider only _population_, upon a principle of natural right, there isa manifest attention to _property_, --which, however just and reasonableon other schemes, is on theirs perfectly unsupportable. 

When they come to their third basis, that of _Contribution_, we findthat they have more completely lost sight of the rights of men. Thislast basis rests _entirely_ on property. A principle totally differentfrom the equality of men, and utterly irreconcilable to it, is therebyadmitted: but no sooner is this principle admitted than (as usual) it issubverted; and it is not subverted (as we shall presently see) toapproximate the inequality of riches to the level of Nature. Theadditional share in the third portion of representation (a portionreserved exclusively for the higher contribution) is made to regard the_district_ only, and not the individuals in it who pay. It is easy toperceive, by the course of their reasonings, how much they wereembarrassed by their contradictory ideas of the rights of men and theprivileges of riches. The Committee of Constitution do as good as admitthat they are wholly irreconcilable. "The relation with regard to thecontributions is without doubt _null_, (say they, ) when the question ison the balance of the political rights as between individual andindividual; without which _personal equality would be destroyed_, and_an aristocracy of the rich_ would be established. But thisinconvenience entirely disappears, when the proportional relation of thecontribution is only considered in the _great masses_, and is solelybetween province and province; it serves in that case only to form ajust reciprocal proportion between the cities, without affecting thepersonal rights of the citizens. "

Here the principle of _contribution_, as taken between man and man, isreprobated as _null_, and destructive to equality, --and as pernicious, too, because it leads to the establishment of an _aristocracy of therich_. However, it must not be abandoned. And the way of getting rid ofthe difficulty is to establish the inequality as between department anddepartment, leaving all the individuals in each department upon an exactpar. Observe, that this parity between individuals had been beforedestroyed, when the qualifications within the departments were settled;nor does it seem a matter of great importance whether the equality ofmen be injured by masses or individually. An individual is not of thesame importance in a mass represented by a few as in a mass representedby many. It would be too much to tell a man jealous of his equality, that the elector has the same franchise who votes for three members ashe who votes for ten. 

Now take it in the other point of view, and let us suppose theirprinciple of representation according to contribution, that is accordingto riches, to be well imagined, and to be a necessary basis for theirrepublic. In this their third basis they assume that riches ought to berespected, and that justice and policy require that they should entitlemen, in some mode or other, to a larger share in the administration ofpublic affairs; it is now to be seen how the Assembly provides for thepreëminence, or even for the security of the rich, by conferring, invirtue of their opulence, that larger measure of power to their districtwhich is denied to them personally. I readily admit (indeed, I shouldlay it down as a fundamental principle) that in a republican government, which has a democratic basis, the rich do require an additional securityabove what is necessary to them in monarchies. They are subject to envy, and through envy to oppression. On the present scheme it is impossibleto divine what advantage they derive from the aristocratic preferenceupon which the unequal representation of the masses is founded. The richcannot feel it, either as a support to dignity or as security tofortune: for the aristocratic mass is generated from purely democraticprinciples; and the prevalence given to it in the general representationhas no sort of reference to or connection with the persons upon accountof whose property this superiority of the mass is established. If thecontrivers of this scheme meant any sort of favor to the rich, inconsequence of their contribution, they ought to have conferred theprivilege either on the individual rich, or on some class formed of richpersons (as historians represent Servius Tullius to have done in theearly constitution of Rome); because the contest between the rich andthe poor is not a struggle between corporation and corporation, but acontest between men and men, --a competition, not between districts, butbetween descriptions. It would answer its purpose better, if the schemewere inverted: that the votes of the masses were rendered equal, andthat the votes within each mass were proportioned to property. 

Let us suppose one man in a district (it is an easy supposition) tocontribute as much as a hundred of his neighbors. Against these he hasbut one vote. If there were but one representative for the mass, hispoor neighbors would outvote him by an hundred to one for that singlerepresentative. Bad enough! But amends are to be made him. How? Thedistrict, in virtue of his wealth, is to choose, say ten members insteadof one: that is to say, by paying a very large contribution he has thehappiness of being outvoted, an hundred to one, by the poor, for tenrepresentatives, instead of being outvoted exactly in the sameproportion for a single member. In truth, instead of benefiting by thissuperior quantity of representation, the rich man is subjected to anadditional hardship. The increase of representation within his provincesets up nine persons more, and as many more than nine as there may bedemocratic candidates, to cabal and intrigue and to flatter the peopleat his expense and to his oppression. An interest is by this means heldout to multitudes of the inferior sort, in obtaining a salary ofeighteen livres a day, (to them a vast object, ) besides the pleasure ofa residence in Paris, and their share in the government of the kingdom. The more the objects of ambition are multiplied and become democratic, just in that proportion the rich are endangered. 

Thus it must fare between the poor and the rich in the province deemedaristocratic, which in its internal relation is the very reverse of thatcharacter. In its external relation, that is, in its relation to theother provinces, I cannot see how the unequal representation which isgiven to masses on account of wealth becomes the means of preserving theequipoise and the tranquillity of the commonwealth. For, if it be one ofthe objects to secure the weak from being crushed by the strong, (as inall society undoubtedly it is, ) how are the smaller and poorer of thesemasses to be saved from the tyranny of the more wealthy? Is it by addingto the wealthy further and more systematical means of oppressing them?When we come to a balance of representation between corporate bodies, provincial interests, emulations, and jealousies are full as likely toarise among them as among individuals; and their divisions are likely toproduce a much hotter spirit of dissension, and something leading muchmore nearly to a war. 

I see that these aristocratic masses are made upon what is called theprinciple of direct contribution. Nothing can be a more unequal standardthan this. The indirect contribution, that which arises from duties onconsumption, is in truth a better standard, and follows and discoverswealth more naturally than this of direct contribution. It is difficult, indeed, to fix a standard of local preference on account of the one, orof the other, or of both, because some provinces may pay the more ofeither or of both on account of causes not intrinsic, but originatingfrom those very districts over whom they have obtained a preference inconsequence of their ostensible contribution. If the masses wereindependent, sovereign bodies, who were to provide for a federativetreasury by distinct contingents, and that the revenue had not (as ithas) many impositions running through the whole, which affect menindividually, and not corporately, and which, by their nature, confoundall territorial limits, something might be said for the basis ofcontribution as founded on masses. But, of all things, thisrepresentation, to be measured by contribution, is the most difficult tosettle upon principles of equity in a country which considers itsdistricts as members of a whole. For a great city, such as Bordeaux orParis, appears to pay a vast body of duties, almost out of allassignable proportion to other places, and its mass is consideredaccordingly. But are these cities the true contributors in thatproportion? No. The consumers of the commodities imported into Bordeaux, who are scattered through all France, pay the import duties of Bordeaux. The produce of the vintage in Guienne and Languedoc give to that citythe means of its contribution growing out of an export commerce. Thelandholders who spend their estates in Paris, and are thereby thecreators of that city, contribute for Paris from the provinces out ofwhich their revenues arise. Very nearly the same arguments will apply tothe representative share given on account of _direct_ contribution:because the direct contribution must be assessed on wealth, real orpresumed; and that local wealth will itself arise from causes not local, and which therefore in equity ought not to produce a local preference. 

It is very remarkable, that, in this fundamental regulation whichsettles the representation of the mass upon the direct contribution, they have not yet settled how that direct contribution shall be laid, and how apportioned. Perhaps there is some latent policy towards thecontinuance of the present Assembly in this strange procedure. However, until they do this, they can have no certain constitution. It mustdepend at last upon the system of taxation, and must vary with everyvariation in that system. As they have contrived matters, their taxationdoes not so much depend on their constitution as their constitution ontheir taxation. This must introduce great confusion among the masses; asthe variable qualification for votes within the district must, if everreal contested elections take place, cause infinite internalcontroversies. 

To compare together the three bases, not on their political reason, buton the ideas on which the Assembly works, and to try its consistencywith itself, we cannot avoid observing that the principle which thecommittee call the basis of _population_ does not begin to operate fromthe same point with the two other principles, called the bases of_territory_ and of _contribution_, which are both of an aristocraticnature. The consequence is, that, where all three begin to operatetogether, there is the most absurd inequality produced by the operationof the former on the two latter principles. Every canton contains foursquare leagues, and is estimated to contain, on the average, 4, 000inhabitants, or 680 voters in the _primary assemblies_, which vary innumbers with the population of the canton, and send _one deputy_ to the_commune_ for every 200 voters. _Nine cantons_ make a _commune_. 

Now let us take _a canton_ containing _a seaport town of trade_, or _agreat manufacturing town_. Let us suppose the population of this cantonto be 12, 700 inhabitants, or 2, 193 voters, forming _three primaryassemblies_, and sending _ten deputies_ to the _commune_. 

Oppose to this _one_ canton _two_ others of the remaining eight in thesame commune. These we may suppose to have their fair population, of4, 000 inhabitants, and 680 voters each, or 8, 000 inhabitants and 1, 360voters, both together. These will form only _two primary assemblies_, and send only _six_ deputies to the _commune_. 

When the assembly of the _commune_ comes to vote on the _basis ofterritory_, which principle is first admitted to operate in thatassembly, the _single canton_, which has _half_ the territory of the_other two_, will have _ten_ voices to _six_ in the election of _threedeputies_ to the assembly of the department, chosen on the expressground of a representation of territory. This inequality, striking as itis, will be yet highly aggravated, if we suppose, as we fairly may, the_several_ other cantons of the _commune_ to fall proportionally short ofthe average population, as much as the _principal canton_ exceeds it. 

Now as to _the basis of contribution_, which also is a principleadmitted first to operate in the assembly of the _commune_. Let us againtake _one_ canton, such as is stated above. If the whole of the directcontributions paid by a great trading or manufacturing town be dividedequally among the inhabitants, each individual will be found to pay muchmore than an individual living in the country according to the sameaverage. The whole paid by the inhabitants of the former will be morethan the whole paid by the inhabitants of the latter, --we may fairlyassume one third more. Then the 12, 700 inhabitants, or 2, 193 voters ofthe canton, will pay as much as 19, 050 inhabitants, or 3, 289 voters ofthe _other cantons_, which are nearly the estimated proportion ofinhabitants and voters of _five_ other cantons. Now the 2, 193 voterswill, as I before said, send only _ten_ deputies to the assembly; the3, 289 voters will send _sixteen_. Thus, for an _equal_ share in thecontribution of the whole _commune_, there will be a difference of_sixteen_ voices to _ten_ in voting for deputies to be chosen on theprinciple of representing the general contribution of the whole_commune_. 

By the same mode of computation, we shall find 15, 875 inhabitants, or2, 741 voters of the _other_ cantons, who pay _one sixth_ LESS to thecontribution of the whole _commune_, will have _three_ voices MORE thanthe 12, 700 inhabitants, or 2, 193 voters of the _one_ canton. 

Such is the fantastical and unjust inequality between mass and mass, inthis curious repartition of the rights of representation arising out of_territory_ and _contribution_. The qualifications which these conferare in truth negative qualifications, that give a right in an inverseproportion to the possession of them. 

In this whole contrivance of the three bases, consider it in any lightyou please, I do not see a variety of objects reconciled in oneconsistent whole, but several contradictory principles reluctantly andirreconcilably brought and held together by your philosophers, like wildbeasts shut up in a cage, to claw and bite each other to their mutualdestruction. 

I am afraid I have gone too far into their way of considering theformation of a Constitution. They have much, but bad, metaphysics, --much, but bad, geometry, --much, but false, proportionatearithmetic; but if it were all as exact as metaphysics, geometry, andarithmetic ought to be, and if their schemes were perfectly consistentin all their parts, it would make only a more fair and sightly vision. It is remarkable, that, in a great arrangement of mankind, not onereference whatsoever is to be found to anything moral or anythingpolitic, --nothing that relates to the concerns, the actions, thepassions, the interests of men. _Hominem non sapiunt_. 

You see I only consider this Constitution as electoral, and leading bysteps to the National Assembly. I do not enter into the internalgovernment of the departments, and their genealogy through the communesand cantons. These local governments are, in the original plan, to be asnearly as possible composed in the same manner and on the sameprinciples with the elective assemblies. They are each of them bodiesperfectly compact and rounded in themselves. 

You cannot but perceive in this scheme, that it has a direct andimmediate tendency to sever France into a variety of republics, and torender them totally independent of each other, without any directconstitutional means of coherence, connection, or subordination, exceptwhat may be derived from their acquiescence in the determinations of thegeneral congress of the ambassadors from each independent republic. Suchin reality is the National Assembly; and such governments, I admit, doexist in the world, though, in forms infinitely more suitable to thelocal and habitual circumstances of their people. But such associations, rather than bodies politic, have generally been the effect of necessity, not choice; and I believe the present French power is the very firstbody of citizens who, having obtained full authority to do with theircountry what they pleased, have chosen to dissever it in this barbarousmanner. 

It is impossible not to observe, that, in the spirit of this geometricaldistribution and arithmetical arrangement, these pretended citizenstreat France exactly like a country of conquest. Acting as conquerors, they have imitated the policy of the harshest of that harsh race. Thepolicy of such barbarous victors, who contemn a subdued people, andinsult their feelings, has ever been, as much as in them lay, to destroyall vestiges of the ancient country, in religion, in polity, in laws, and in manners; to confound all territorial limits; to produce a generalpoverty; to put up their properties to auction; to crush their princes, nobles, and pontiffs; to lay low everything which had lifted its headabove the level, or which could serve to combine or rally, in theirdistresses, the disbanded people, under the standard of old opinion. They have made France free in the manner in which those sincere friendsto the rights of mankind, the Romans, freed Greece, Macedon, and othernations. They destroyed the bonds of their union, under color ofproviding for the independence of each of their cities. 

When the members who compose these new bodies of cantons, communes, anddepartments, arrangements purposely produced through the medium ofconfusion, begin to act, they will find themselves in a great measurestrangers to one another. The electors and elected throughout, especially in the rural _cantons_, will be frequently without any civilhabitudes or connections, or any of that natural discipline which is thesoul of a true republic. Magistrates and collectors of revenue are nowno longer acquainted with their districts, bishops with their dioceses, or curates with their parishes. These new colonies of the rights of menbear a strong resemblance to that sort of military colonies whichTacitus has observed upon in the declining policy of Rome. In better andwiser days (whatever course they took with foreign nations) they werecareful to make the elements of a methodical subordination andsettlement to be coeval, and even to lay the foundations of disciplinein the military. [122] But when all the good arts had fallen into ruin, they proceeded, as your Assembly does, upon the equality of men, andwith as little judgment, and as little care for those things which makea republic tolerable or durable. But in this, as well as almost everyinstance, your new commonwealth is born and bred and fed in thosecorruptions which mark degenerated and worn-out republics. Your childcomes into the world with the symptoms of death; the _faciesHippocratica_ forms the character of its physiognomy and the prognosticof its fate. 

The legislators who framed the ancient republics knew that theirbusiness was too arduous to be accomplished with no better apparatusthan the metaphysics of an undergraduate and the mathematics andarithmetic of an exciseman. They had to do with men, and they wereobliged to study human nature. They had to do with citizens, and theywere obliged to study the effects of those habits which arecommunicated by the circumstances of civil life. They were sensiblethat the operation of this second nature on the first produced a newcombination, --and thence arose many diversities amongst men, accordingto their birth, their education, their professions, the periods of theirlives, their residence in towns or in the country, their several ways ofacquiring and of fixing property, and according to the quality of theproperty itself, all which rendered them, as it were, so many differentspecies of animals. From hence they thought themselves obliged todispose their citizens into such classes, and to place them in suchsituations in the state, as their peculiar habits might qualify them tofill, and to allot to them such appropriated privileges as might secureto them what their specific occasions required, and which might furnishto each description such force as might protect it in the conflictcaused by the diversity of interests that must exist, and must contend, in all complex society: for the legislator would have been ashamed thatthe coarse husbandman should well know how to assort and to use hissheep, horses, and oxen, and should have enough of common sense not toabstract and equalize them all into animals, without providing for eachkind an appropriate food, care, and employment, --whilst he, theeconomist, disposer, and shepherd of his own kindred, subliming himselfinto an airy metaphysician, was resolved to know nothing of his flocksbut as men in general. It is for this reason that Montesquieu observed, very justly, that, in their classification of the citizens, the greatlegislators of antiquity made the greatest display of their powers, andeven soared above themselves. It is here that your modern legislatorshave gone deep into the negative series, and sunk even below their ownnothing. As the first sort of legislators attended to the differentkinds of citizens, and combined them into one commonwealth, the others, the metaphysical and alchemistical legislators, have taken the directlycontrary course. They have attempted to confound all sorts of citizens, as well as they could, into one homogeneous mass; and then they dividedthis their amalgama into a number of incoherent republics. They reducemen to loose counters, merely for the sake of simple telling, and not tofigures, whose power is to arise from their place in the table. Theelements of their own metaphysics might have taught them better lessons. The troll of their categorical table might have informed them that therewas something else in the intellectual world besides _substance_ and_quantity_. They might learn from the catechism of metaphysics thatthere were eight heads more, [123] in every complex deliberation, whichthey have never thought of; though these, of all the ten, are thesubject on which the skill of man can operate anything at all. 

So far from this able disposition of some of the old republicanlegislators, which follows with a solicitous accuracy the moralconditions and propensities of men, they have levelled and crushedtogether all the orders which they found, even under the coarse, unartificial arrangement of the monarchy, in which mode of governmentthe classing of the citizens is not of so much importance as in arepublic. It is true, however, that every such classification, ifproperly ordered, is good in all forms of government, and composes astrong barrier against the excesses of despotism, as well as it is thenecessary means of giving effect and permanence to a republic. For wantof something of this kind, if the present project of a republic shouldfail, all securities to a moderated freedom fail along with it, all theindirect restraints which mitigate despotism are removed; insomuch that, if monarchy should ever again obtain an entire ascendency in France, under this or any other dynasty, it will probably be, if not voluntarilytempered, at setting out, by the wise and virtuous counsels of theprince, the most completely arbitrary power that has ever appeared onearth. This is to play a most desperate game. 

The confusion which attends on all such proceedings they even declare tobe one of their objects, and they hope to secure their Constitution by aterror of a return of those evils which attended their making it. "Bythis, " say they, "its destruction will become difficult to authority, which cannot break it up without the entire disorganization of the wholestate. " They presume, that, if this authority should ever come to thesame degree of power that they have acquired, it would make a moremoderate and chastised use of it, and would piously tremble entirely todisorganize the state in the savage manner that they have done. Theyexpect from the virtues of returning despotism the security which is tobe enjoyed by the offspring of their popular vices. 

I wish, Sir, that you and my readers would give an attentive perusal tothe work of M. De Calonne on this subject. It is, indeed, not only aneloquent, but an able and instructive performance. I confine myself towhat he says relative to the Constitution of the new state, and to thecondition of the revenue. As to the disputes of this minister with hisrivals, I do not wish to pronounce upon them. As little do I mean tohazard any opinion concerning his ways and means, financial orpolitical, for taking his country out of its present disgraceful anddeplorable situation of servitude, anarchy, bankruptcy, and beggary. Icannot speculate quite so sanguinely as he does: but he is a Frenchman, and has a closer duty relative to those objects, and better means ofjudging of them, than I can have. I wish that the formal avowal which herefers to, made by one of the principal leaders in the Assembly, concerning the tendency of their scheme to bring France not only from amonarchy to a republic, but from a republic to a mere confederacy, maybe very particularly attended to. It adds new force to my observations:and, indeed, M. De Calonne's work supplies my deficiencies by many newand striking arguments on most of the subjects of this letter. [124]

It is this resolution to break their country into separate republicswhich has driven them into the greatest number of their difficulties andcontradictions. If it were not for this, all the questions of exactequality, and these balances, never to be settled, of individual rights, population, and contribution, would be wholly useless. Therepresentation, though derived from parts, would be a duty which equallyregarded the whole. Each deputy to the Assembly would be therepresentative of France, and of all its descriptions, of the many andof the few, of the rich and of the poor, of the great districts and ofthe small. All these districts would themselves be subordinate to somestanding authority, existing independently of them, --an authority inwhich their representation, and everything that belongs to it, originated, and to which it was pointed. This standing, unalterable, fundamental government would make, and it is the only thing which couldmake, that territory truly and properly a whole. With us, when we electpopular representatives, we send them to a council in which each manindividually is a subject, and submitted to a government complete in allits ordinary functions. With you the elective Assembly is the sovereign, and the sole sovereign; all the members are therefore integral parts ofthis sole sovereignty. But with us it is totally different. With us therepresentative, separated from the other parts, can have no action andno existence. The government is the point of reference of the severalmembers and districts of our representation. This is the centre of ourunity. This government of reference is a trustee for the _whole_, andnot for the parts. So is the other branch of our public council: I meanthe House of Lords. With us the King and the Lords are several and jointsecurities for the equality of each district, each province, each city. When did you hear in Great Britain of any province suffering from theinequality of its representation? what district from having norepresentation at all? Not only our monarchy and our peerage secure theequality on which our unity depends, but it is the spirit of the Houseof Commons itself. The very inequality of representation, which is sofoolishly complained of, is perhaps the very thing which prevents usfrom thinking or acting as members for districts. Cornwall elects asmany members as all Scotland. But is Cornwall better taken care of thanScotland? Few trouble their heads about any of your bases, out of somegiddy clubs. Most of those who wish for any change, upon any plausiblegrounds, desire it on different ideas. 

Your new Constitution is the very reverse of ours in its principle; andI am astonished how any persons could dream of holding out anything donein it as an example for Great Britain. With you there is little, orrather no, connection between the last representative and the firstconstituent. The member who goes to the National Assembly is not chosenby the people, nor accountable to them. There are three elections beforehe is chosen; two sets of magistracy intervene between him and theprimary assembly, so as to render him, as I have said, an ambassador ofa state, and not the representative of the people within a state. Bythis the whole spirit of the election is changed; nor can any correctiveyour Constitution-mongers have devised render him anything else thanwhat he is. The very attempt to do it would inevitably introduce aconfusion, if possible, more horrid than the present. There is no way tomake a connection between the original constituent and therepresentative, but by the circuitous means which may lead the candidateto apply in the first instance to the primary electors, in order that bytheir authoritative instructions (and something more perhaps) theseprimary electors may force the two succeeding bodies of electors to makea choice agreeable to their wishes. But this would plainly subvert thewhole scheme. It would be to plunge them back into that tumult andconfusion of popular election, which, by their interposed gradation ofelections, they mean to avoid, and at length to risk the whole fortuneof the state with those who have the least knowledge of it and theleast interest in it. This is a perpetual dilemma, into which they arethrown by the vicious, weak, and contradictory principles they havechosen. Unless the people break up and level this gradation, it is plainthat they do not at all substantially elect to the Assembly; indeed, they elect as little in appearance as reality. 

What is it we all seek for in an election? To answer its real purposes, you must first possess the means of knowing the fitness of your man; andthen you must retain some hold upon him by personal obligation ordependence. For what end are these primary electors complimented, orrather mocked, with a choice? They can never know anything of thequalities of him that is to serve them, nor has he any obligationwhatsoever to them. Of all the powers unfit to be delegated by those whohave any real means of judging, that most peculiarly unfit is whatrelates to a _personal_ choice. In case of abuse, that body of primaryelectors never can call the representative to an account for hisconduct. He is too far removed from them in the chain of representation. If he acts improperly at the end of his two years' lease, it does notconcern him for two years more. By the new French Constitution the bestand the wisest representatives go equally with the worst into this_Limbus Patrum_. Their bottoms are supposed foul, and they must go intodock to be refitted. Every man who has served in an Assembly isineligible for two years after. Just as these magistrates begin to learntheir trade, like chimney-sweepers, they are disqualified for exercisingit. Superficial, new, petulant acquisition, and interrupted, dronish, broken, ill recollection, is to be the destined character of all yourfuture governors. Your Constitution has too much of jealousy to havemuch of sense in it. You consider the breach of trust in therepresentative so principally that you do not at all regard the questionof his fitness to execute it. 

This purgatory interval is not unfavorable to a faithlessrepresentative, who may be as good a canvasser as he was a bad governor. In this time he may cabal himself into a superiority over the wisest andmost virtuous. As, in the end, all the members of this electiveConstitution are equally fugitive, and exist only for the election, theymay be no longer the same persons who had chosen him, to whom he is tobe responsible when he solicits for a renewal of his trust. To call allthe secondary electors of the _commune_ to account is ridiculous, impracticable, and unjust: they may themselves have been deceived intheir choice, as the third set of electors, those of the _department_, may be in theirs. In your elections responsibility cannot exist. 

Finding no sort of principle of coherence with each other in the natureand constitution of the several new republics of France, I consideredwhat cement the legislators had provided for them from any extraneousmaterials. Their confederations, their _spectacles_, their civic feasts, and their enthusiasm I take no notice of; they are nothing but meretricks; but tracing their policy through their actions, I think I candistinguish the arrangements by which they propose to hold theserepublics together. The first is the _confiscation_, with the compulsorypaper currency annexed to it; the second is the supreme power of thecity of Paris; the third is the general army of the state. Of this lastI shall reserve what I have to say, until I come to consider the armyas an head by itself. 

As to the operation of the first (the confiscation and paper currency)merely as a cement, I cannot deny that these, the one depending on theother, may for some time compose some sort of cement, if their madnessand folly in the management, and in the tempering of the parts together, does not produce a repulsion in the very outset. But allowing to thescheme some coherence and some duration, it appears to me, that, if, after a while, the confiscation should not be found sufficient tosupport the paper coinage, (as I am morally certain it will not, ) then, instead of cementing, it will add infinitely to the dissociation, distraction, and confusion of these confederate republics, both withrelation to each other and to the several parts within themselves. Butif the confiscation should so far succeed as to sink the paper currency, the cement is gone with the circulation. In the mean time its bindingforce will be very uncertain, and it will straiten or relax with everyvariation in the credit of the paper. 

One thing only is certain in this scheme, which is an effect seeminglycollateral, but direct, I have no doubt, in the minds of those whoconduct this business; that is, its effect in producing an _oligarchy_in every one of the republics. A paper circulation, not founded on anyreal money deposited or engaged for, amounting already to four-and-fortymillions of English money, and this currency by force substituted in theplace of the coin of the kingdom, becoming thereby the substance of itsrevenue, as well as the medium of all its commercial and civilintercourse, must put the whole of what power, authority, and influenceis left, in any form whatsoever it may assume, into the hands of themanagers and conductors of this circulation. 

In England we feel the influence of the Bank, though it is only thecentre of a voluntary dealing. He knows little, indeed, of the influenceof money upon mankind, who does not see the force of the management of amoneyed concern which is so much more extensive, and in its nature somuch more depending on the managers, than any of ours. But this is notmerely a money concern. There is another member in the systeminseparably connected with this money management. It consists in themeans of drawing out at discretion portions of the confiscated lands forsale, and carrying on a process of continual transmutation of paper intoland and land into paper. When we follow this process in its effects, wemay conceive something of the intensity of the force with which thissystem must operate. By this means the spirit of money-jobbing andspeculation goes into the mass of land itself, and incorporates with it. By this kind of operation, that species of property becomes, as it were, volatilized; it assumes an unnatural and monstrous activity, and therebythrows into the hands of the several managers, principal andsubordinate, Parisian and provincial, all the representative of money, and perhaps a full tenth part of all the land in France, which has nowacquired the worst and most pernicious part of the evil of a papercirculation, the greatest possible uncertainty in its value. They havereversed the Latonian kindness to the landed property of Delos. Theyhave sent theirs to be blown about, like the light fragments of a wreck, _oras et littora circum_. 

The new dealers, being all habitually adventurers, and without any fixedhabits or local predilections, will purchase to job out again, as themarket of paper or of money or of land shall present an advantage. Forthough a holy bishop thinks that agriculture will derive greatadvantages from the "_enlightened_" usurers who are to purchase theChurch confiscations, I, who am not a good, but an old farmer, withgreat humility beg leave to tell his late Lordship that usury is not atutor of agriculture; and if the word "enlightened" be understoodaccording to the new dictionary, as it always is in your new schools, Icannot conceive how a man's not believing in God can teach him tocultivate the earth with the least of any additional skill orencouragement. "_Diis immortalibus sero_, " said an old Roman, when heheld one handle of the plough, whilst Death held the other. Though youwere to join in the commission all the directors of the two Academies tothe directors of the _Caisse d'Escompte_, an old experienced peasant isworth them all. I have got more information upon a curious andinteresting branch of husbandry, in one short conversation with an oldCarthusian monk, than I have derived from all the bank directors that Ihave ever conversed with. However, there is no cause for apprehensionfrom the meddling of money-dealers with rural economy. These gentlemenare too wise in their generation. At first, perhaps, their tender andsusceptible imaginations may be captivated with the innocent andunprofitable delights of a pastoral life; but in a little time they willfind that agriculture is a trade much more laborious and much lesslucrative than that which they had left. After making its panegyric, they will turn their backs on it, like their great precursor andprototype. They may, like him, begin by singing, "_Beatus ille_"--butwhat will be the end?

 Hæc ubi locutus fœnerator Alphius, Jam jam futurus rusticus, Omnem relegit Idibus pecuniam, Quærit Calendis ponere. 

They will cultivate the _Caisse d'Église_, under the sacred auspices ofthis prelate, with much more profit than its vineyards and itscorn-fields. They will employ their talents according to their habitsand their interests. They will not follow the plough, whilst they candirect treasuries and govern provinces. 

Your legislators, in everything new, are the very first who have foundeda commonwealth upon gaming, and infused this spirit into it as its vitalbreath. The great object in these politics is to metamorphose Francefrom a great kingdom into one great play-table, --to turn its inhabitantsinto a nation of gamesters, --to make speculation as extensive aslife, --to mix it with all its concerns, --and to divert the whole of thehopes and fears of the people from their usual channels into theimpulses, passions, and superstitions of those who live on chances. Theyloudly proclaim their opinion, that this their present system of arepublic cannot possibly exist without this kind of gaming fund, andthat the very thread of its life is spun out of the staple of thesespeculations. The old gaming in funds was mischievous enough, undoubtedly; but it was so only to individuals. Even when it had itsgreatest extent, in the Mississippi and South Sea, it affected but few, comparatively; where it extends further, as in lotteries, the spirit hasbut a single object. But where the law, which in most circumstancesforbids, and in none countenances gaming, is itself debauched, so as toreverse its nature and policy, and expressly to force the subject tothis destructive table, by bringing the spirit and symbols of gaminginto the minutest matters, and engaging everybody in it, and ineverything, a more dreadful epidemic distemper of that kind is spreadthan yet has appeared in the world. With you a man can neither earn norbuy his dinner without a speculation. What he receives in the morningwill not have the same value at night. What he is compelled to take aspay for an old debt will not be received as the same, when he comes topay a debt contracted by himself; nor will it be the same, when byprompt payment he would avoid contracting any debt at all. Industry mustwither away. Economy must be driven from your country. Careful provisionwill have no existence. Who will labor without knowing the amount of hispay? Who will study to increase what none can estimate? Who willaccumulate, when he does not know the value of what he saves? If youabstract it from its uses in gaming, to accumulate your paper wealthwould be, not the providence of a man, but the distempered instinct of ajackdaw. 

The truly melancholy part of the policy of systematically making anation of gamesters is this, --that, though all are forced to play, fewcan understand the game, and fewer still are in a condition to availthemselves of that knowledge. The many must be the dupes of the few whoconduct the machine of these speculations. What effect it must have onthe country-people is visible. The townsman can calculate from day today; not so the inhabitant of the country. When the peasant first bringshis corn to market, the magistrate in the towns obliges him to take theassignat at par; when he goes to the shop with this money, he finds itseven per cent the worse for crossing the way. This market he will notreadily resort to again. The towns-people will be inflamed; they willforce the country-people to bring their corn. Resistance will begin, andthe murders of Paris and St. Denis may be renewed through all France. 

What signifies the empty compliment paid to the country, by giving it, perhaps, more than its share in the theory of your representation? Wherehave you placed the real power over moneyed and landed circulation?Where have you placed the means of raising and falling the value ofevery man's freehold? Those whose operations can take from or add tenper cent to the possessions of every man in France must be the mastersof every man in France. The whole of the power obtained by thisRevolution will settle in the towns among the burghers, and the moneyeddirectors who lead them. The landed gentleman, the yeoman, and thepeasant have, none of them, habits or inclinations or experience whichcan lead them to any share in this the sole source of power andinfluence now left in France. The very nature of a country life, thevery nature of landed property, in all the occupations and all thepleasures they afford, render combination and arrangement (the sole wayof procuring and exerting influence) in a manner impossible amongstcountry-people. Combine them by all the art you can, and all theindustry, they are always dissolving into individuality. Anything in thenature of incorporation is almost impracticable amongst them. Hope, fear, alarm, jealousy, the ephemerous tale that does its business anddies in a day, all these things, which are the reins and spurs by whichleaders check or urge the minds of followers, are not easily employed, or hardly at all, amongst scattered people. They assemble, they arm, they act, with the utmost difficulty, and at the greatest charge. Theirefforts, if ever they can be commenced, cannot be sustained. They cannotproceed systematically. If the country-gentlemen attempt an influencethrough the mere income of their property, what is it to that of thosewho have ten times their income to sell, and who can ruin their propertyby bringing their plunder to meet it at market? If the landed man wishesto mortgage, he falls the value of his land and raises the value ofassignats. He augments the power of his enemy by the very means he musttake to contend with him. The country-gentleman, therefore, the officerby sea and land, the man of liberal views and habits, attached to noprofession, will be as completely excluded from the government of hiscountry as if he were legislatively proscribed. It is obvious, that, inthe towns, all the things which conspire against the country-gentlemancombine in favor of the money manager and director. In towns combinationis natural. The habits of burghers, their occupations, their diversion, their business, their idleness, continually bring them into mutualcontact. Their virtues and their vices are sociable; they are always ingarrison; and they come embodied and half-disciplined into the hands ofthose who mean to form them for civil or military action. 

All these considerations leave no doubt on my mind, that, if thismonster of a Constitution can continue, France will be wholly governedby the agitators in corporations, by societies in the towns, formed ofdirectors in assignats, and trustees for the sale of Church lands, attorneys, agents, money-jobbers, speculators, and adventurers, composing an ignoble oligarchy, founded on the destruction of the crown, the Church, the nobility, and the people. Here end all the deceitfuldreams and visions of the equality and rights of men. In "the Serbonianbog" of this base oligarchy they are all absorbed, sunk, and lostforever. 

Though human eyes cannot trace them, one would be tempted to think somegreat offences in France must cry to Heaven, which has thought fit topunish it with a subjection to a vile and inglorious domination, inwhich no comfort or compensation is to be found in any even of thosefalse splendors which, playing about other tyrannies, prevent mankindfrom feeling themselves dishonored even whilst they are oppressed. Imust confess I am touched with a sorrow mixed with some indignation, atthe conduct of a few men, once of great rank, and still of greatcharacter, who, deluded with specious names, have engaged in a businesstoo deep for the line of their understanding to fathom, --who have lenttheir fair reputation and the authority of their high-sounding names tothe designs of men with whom they could not be acquainted, and havethereby made their very virtues operate to the ruin of their country. 

So far as to the first cementing principle. 

The second material of cement for their new republic is the superiorityof the city of Paris; and this, I admit, is strongly connected with theother cementing principle of paper circulation and confiscation. It isin this part of the project we must look for the cause of thedestruction of all the old bounds of provinces and jurisdictions, ecclesiastical and secular, and the dissolution of all ancientcombinations of things, as well as the formation of so many smallunconnected republics. The power of the city of Paris is evidently onegreat spring of all their politics. It is through the power of Paris, now become the centre and focus of jobbing, that the leaders of thisfaction direct, or rather command, the whole legislative and the wholeexecutive government. Everything, therefore, must be done which canconfirm the authority of that city over the other republics. Paris iscompact; she has an enormous strength, wholly disproportioned to theforce of any of the square republics; and this strength is collected andcondensed within a narrow compass. Paris has a natural and easyconnection of its parts, which will not be affected by any scheme of ageometrical constitution; nor does it much signify whether itsproportion of representation be more or less, since it has the wholedraught of fishes in its drag-net. The other divisions of the kingdom, being hackled and torn to pieces, and separated from all their habitualmeans and even principles of union, cannot, for some time at least, confederate against her. Nothing was to be left in all the subordinatemembers, but weakness, disconnection, and confusion. To confirm thispart of the plan, the Assembly has lately come to a resolution that notwo of their republics shall have the same commander-in-chief. 

To a person who takes a view of the whole, the strength of Paris, thusformed, will appear a system of general weakness. It is boasted that thegeometrical policy has been adopted, that all local ideas should besunk, and that the people should be no longer Gascons, Picards, Bretons, Normans, --but Frenchmen, with one country, one heart, and one Assembly. But, instead of being all Frenchmen, the greater likelihood is that theinhabitants of that region will shortly have no country. No man ever wasattached by a sense of pride, partiality, or real affection, to adescription of square measurement. He never will glory in belonging tothe chequer No. 71, or to any other badge-ticket. We begin our publicaffections in our families. No cold relation is a zealous citizen. Wepass on to our neighborhoods, and our habitual provincial connections. These are inns and resting-places. Such divisions of our country as havebeen formed by habit, and not by a sudden jerk of authority, were somany little images of the great country, in which the heart foundsomething which it could fill. The love to the whole is not extinguishedby this subordinate partiality. Perhaps it is a sort of elementaltraining to those higher and more large regards by which alone men cometo be affected, as with their own concern, in the prosperity of akingdom so extensive as that of France. In that general territoryitself, as in the old name of Provinces, the citizens are interestedfrom old prejudices and unreasoned habits, and not on account of thegeometric properties of its figure. The power and preëminence of Parisdoes certainly press down and hold these republics together as long asit lasts: but, for the reasons I have already given you, I think it cannot last very long. 

Passing from the civil creating and the civil cementing principles ofthis Constitution to the National Assembly, which is to appear and actas sovereign, we see a body in its constitution with every possiblepower and no possible external control. We see a body withoutfundamental laws, without established maxims, without respected rules ofproceeding, which nothing can keep firm to any system whatsoever. Theiridea of their powers is always taken at the utmost stretch oflegislative competency, and their examples for common cases from theexceptions of the most urgent necessity. The future is to be in mostrespects like the present Assembly; but, by the mode of the newelections and the tendency of the new circulations, it will be purged ofthe small degree of internal control existing in a minority chosenoriginally from various interests, and preserving something of theirspirit. If possible, the next Assembly must be worse than the present. The present, by destroying and altering everything, will leave to theirsuccessors apparently nothing popular to do. They will be roused byemulation and example to enterprises the boldest and the most absurd. Tosuppose such an Assembly sitting in perfect quietude is ridiculous. 

Your all-sufficient legislators, in their hurry to do everything atonce, have forgot one thing that seems essential, and which, I believe, never has been before, in the theory or the practice, omitted by anyprojector of a republic. They have forgot to constitute a _senate_, orsomething of that nature and character. Never, before this time, washeard of a body politic composed of one legislative and active assembly, and its executive officers, without such a council: without something towhich foreign states might connect themselves, --something to which, inthe ordinary detail of government, the people could look up, --somethingwhich might give a bias and steadiness, and preserve something likeconsistency in the proceedings of state. Such a body kings generallyhave as a council. A monarchy may exist without it; but it seems to bein the very essence of a republican government. It holds a sort ofmiddle place between the supreme power exercised by the people, orimmediately delegated from them, and the mere executive. Of this thereare no traces in your Constitution; and in providing nothing of thiskind, your Solons and Numas have, as much as in anything else, discovered a sovereign incapacity. 

Let us now turn our eyes to what they have done towards the formation ofan executive power. For this they have chosen a degraded king. Thistheir first executive officer is to be a machine, without any sort ofdeliberative discretion in any one act of his function. At best, he isbut a channel to convey to the National Assembly such matter as mayimport that body to know. If he had been made the exclusive channel, thepower would not have been without its importance, though infinitelyperilous to those who would choose to exercise it. But publicintelligence and statement of facts may pass to the Assembly with equalauthenticity through any other conveyance. As to the means, therefore, of giving a direction to measures by the statement of an authorizedreporter, this office of intelligence is as nothing. 

To consider the French scheme of an executive officer, in its twonatural divisions of civil and political. --In the first it must beobserved, that, according to the new Constitution, the higher parts ofjudicature, in either of its lines, are not in the king. The king ofFrance is not the fountain of justice. The judges, neither the originalnor the appellate, are of his nomination. He neither proposes thecandidates nor has a negative on the choice. He is not even the publicprosecutor. He serves only as a notary, to authenticate the choice madeof the judges in the several districts. By his officers he is to executetheir sentence. When we look into the true nature of his authority, heappears to be nothing more than a chief of bumbailiffs, sergeants-at-mace, catchpoles, jailers, and hangmen. It is impossible toplace anything called royalty in a more degrading point of view. Athousand times better it had been for the dignity of this unhappyprince, that he had nothing at all to do with the administration ofjustice, deprived as he is of all that is venerable and all that isconsolatory in that function, without power of originating any process, without a power of suspension, mitigation, or pardon. Everything injustice that is vile and odious is thrown upon him. It was not fornothing that the Assembly has been at such pains to remove the stigmafrom certain offices, when they were resolved to place the person whohad lately been their king in a situation but one degree above theexecutioner, and in an office nearly of the same quality. It is not inNature, that, situated as the king of the French now is, he can respecthimself or can be respected by others. 

View this new executive officer on the side of his political capacity, as he acts under the orders of the National Assembly. To execute laws isa royal office; to execute orders is not to be a king. However, apolitical executive magistracy, though merely such, is a great trust. Itis a trust, indeed, that has much depending upon its faithful anddiligent performance, both in the person presiding in it and in all itssubordinates. Means of performing this duty ought to be given byregulation; and dispositions towards it ought to be infused by thecircumstances attendant on the trust. It ought to be environed withdignity, authority, and consideration, and it ought to lead to glory. The office of execution is an office of exertion. It is not fromimpotence we are to expect the tasks of power. What sort of person is aking to command executory service, who has no means whatsoever to rewardit:--not in a permanent office; not in a grant of land; no, not in apension of fifty pounds a year; not in the vainest and most trivialtitle? In France the king is no more the fountain of honor than he isthe fountain of justice. All rewards, all distinctions, are in otherhands. Those who serve the king can be actuated by no natural motive butfear, --by a fear of everything except their master. His functions ofinternal coercion are as odious as those which he exercises in thedepartment of justice. If relief is to be given to any municipality, theAssembly gives it. If troops are to be sent to reduce them to obedienceto the Assembly, the king is to execute the order; and upon everyoccasion he is to be spattered over with the blood of his people. He hasno negative; yet his name and authority is used to enforce every harshdecree. Nay, he must concur in the butchery of those who shall attemptto free him from his imprisonment, or show the slightest attachment tohis person or to his ancient authority. 

Executive magistracy ought to be constituted in such a manner that thosewho compose it should be disposed to love and to venerate those whomthey are bound to obey. A purposed neglect, or, what is worse, aliteral, but perverse and malignant obedience, must be the ruin of thewisest counsels. In vain will the law attempt to anticipate or to followsuch studied neglects and fraudulent attentions. To make them actzealously is not in the competence of law. Kings, even such as are trulykings, may and ought to bear the freedom of subjects that are obnoxiousto them. They may, too, without derogating from themselves, bear eventhe authority of such persons, if it promotes their service. Louis theThirteenth mortally hated the Cardinal de Richelieu; but his support ofthat minister against his rivals was the source of all the glory of hisreign, and the solid foundation of his throne itself. Louis theFourteenth, when come to the throne, did not love the Cardinal Mazarin;but for his interests he preserved him in power. When old, he detestedLouvois; but for years, whilst he faithfully served his greatness, heendured his person. When George the Second took Mr. Pitt, who certainlywas not agreeable to him, into his councils, he did nothing which couldhumble a wise sovereign. But these ministers, who were chosen byaffairs, not by affections, acted in the name of and in trust for kings, and not as their avowed constitutional and ostensible masters. I thinkit impossible that any king, when he has recovered his first terrors, can cordially infuse vivacity and vigor into measures which he knows tobe dictated by those who, he must be persuaded, are in the highestdegree ill affected to his person. Will any ministers, who serve such aking (or whatever he may be called) with but a decent appearance ofrespect, cordially obey the orders of those whom but the other day inhis name they had committed to the Bastile? will they obey the ordersof those whom, whilst they were exercising despotic justice upon them, they conceived they were treating with lenity, and for whom in a prisonthey thought they had provided an asylum? If you expect such obedience, amongst your other innovations and regenerations, you ought to make arevolution in Nature, and provide a new constitution, for the humanmind: otherwise your supreme government cannot harmonize with itsexecutory system. There are cases in which we cannot take up with namesand abstractions. You may call half a dozen leading individuals, whom wehave reason to fear and hate, the nation. It makes no other differencethan to make us fear and hate them the more. If it had been thoughtjustifiable and expedient to make such a revolution by such means andthrough such persons as you have made yours, it would have been morewise to have completed the business of the fifth and sixth of October. The new executive officer would then owe his situation to those who arehis creators as well as his masters; and he might be bound in interest, in the society of crime, and (if in crimes there could be virtues) ingratitude, to serve those who had promoted him to a place of great lucreand great sensual indulgence, --and of something more: for more he musthave received from those who certainly would not have limited anaggrandized creature as they have done a submitting antagonist. 

A king circumstanced as the present, if he is totally stupefied by hismisfortunes, so as to think it not the necessity, but the premium andprivilege of life, to eat and sleep, without any regard to glory, cannever be fit for the office. If he feels as men commonly feel, he musthe sensible that an office so circumstanced is one in which he canobtain no fame or reputation. He has no generous interest that canexcite him to action. At best, his conduct will be passive anddefensive. To inferior people such an office might be matter of honor. But to be raised to it and to descend to it are different things, andsuggest different sentiments. Does he _really_ name the ministers? Theywill have a sympathy with him. Are they forced upon him? The wholebusiness between them and the nominal king will be mutual counteraction. In all other countries the office of ministers of state is of thehighest dignity. In France it is full of peril, and incapable of glory. Rivals, however, they will have in their nothingness, whilst shallowambition exists in the world, or the desire of a miserable salary is anincentive to short-sighted avarice. Those competitors of the ministersare enabled by your Constitution to attack them in their vital parts, whilst they have not the means of repelling their charges in any otherthan the degrading character of culprits. The ministers of state inPrance are the only persons in that country who are incapable of a sharein the national councils. What ministers! What councils! What anation!--But they are responsible. It is a poor service that is to behad from responsibility. The elevation of mind to be derived from fearwill never make a nation glorious. Responsibility prevents crimes. Itmakes all attempts against the laws dangerous. But for a principle ofactive and zealous service, none but idiots could think of it. Is theconduct of a war to be trusted to a man who may abhor itsprinciple, --who, in every step he may take to render it successful, confirms the power of those by whom he is oppressed? Will foreignstates seriously treat with him who has no prerogative of peace orwar, --no, not so much as in a single vote by himself or his ministers, or by any one whom he can possibly influence? A state of contempt is nota state for a prince: better get rid of him at once. 

I know it will be said that these humors in the court and executivegovernment will continue only through this generation, and that the kinghas been brought to declare the dauphin shall be educated in aconformity to his situation. If he is made to conform to his situation, he will have no education at all. His training must be worse even thanthat of an arbitrary monarch. If he reads, --whether he reads or not, some good or evil genius will tell him his ancestors were kings. Thenceforward his object must be to assert himself and to avenge hisparents. This you will say is not his duty. That may be; but it isNature; and whilst you pique Nature against you, you do unwisely totrust to duty. In this futile scheme of polity, the state nurses in itsbosom, for the present, a source of weakness, perplexity, counteraction, inefficiency, and decay; and it prepares the means of its final ruin. Inshort, I see nothing in the executive force (I cannot call it authority)that has even an appearance of vigor, or that has the smallest degree ofjust correspondence or symmetry or amicable relation with the supremepower, either as it now exists, or as it is planned for the futuregovernment. 

You have settled, by an economy as perverted as the policy, two[125]establishments of government, --one real, one fictitious: bothmaintained at a vast expense; but the fictitious at, I think, thegreatest. Such a machine as the latter is not worth the grease of itswheels. The expense is exorbitant; and neither the show nor the usedeserve the tenth part of the charge. --Oh! but I don't do justice to thetalents of the legislators: I don't allow, as I ought to do, fornecessity. Their scheme of executive force was not their choice. Thispageant must be kept. The people would not consent to part withit. --Right: I understand you. You do, in spite of your grand theories, to which you would have heaven and earth to bend, you do know how toconform yourselves to the nature and circumstances of things. But whenyou were obliged to conform thus far to circumstances, you ought to havecarried your submission farther, and to have made, what you were obligedto take, a proper instrument, and useful to its end. That was in yourpower. For instance, among many others, it was in your power to leave toyour king the right of peace and war. --What! to leave to the executivemagistrate the most dangerous of all prerogatives?--I know none moredangerous; nor any one more necessary to be so trusted. I do not saythat this prerogative ought to be trusted to your king, unless heenjoyed other auxiliary trusts along with it, which he does not nowhold. But, if he did possess them, hazardous as they are undoubtedly, advantages would arise from such a Constitution, more than compensatingthe risk. There is no other way of keeping the several potentates ofEurope from intriguing distinctly and personally with the members ofyour Assembly, from intermeddling in all your concerns, and fomenting, in the heart of your country, the most pernicious of allfactions, --factions in the interest and under the direction of foreignpowers. From that worst of evils, thank God, we are still free. Yourskill, if you had any, would be well employed to find out indirectcorrectives and controls upon this perilous trust. If you did not likethose which in England we have chosen, your leaders might have exertedtheir abilities in contriving better. If it were necessary to exemplifythe consequences of such an executive government as yours, in themanagement of great affairs, I should refer you to the late reports ofM. De Montmorin to the National Assembly, and all the other proceedingsrelative to the differences between Great Britain and Spain. It would betreating your understanding with disrespect to point them out to you. 

I hear that the persons who are called ministers have signified anintention of resigning their places. I am rather astonished that theyhave not resigned long since. For the universe I would not have stood inthe situation in which they have been for this last twelvemonth. Theywished well, I take it for granted, to the Revolution. Let this fact beas it may, they could not, placed as they were upon an eminence, thoughan eminence of humiliation, but be the first to see collectively, and tofeel each in his own department, the evils which have been produced bythat Revolution. In every step which they took, or forbore to take, theymust have felt the degraded situation of their country, and their utterincapacity of serving it. They are in a species of subordinate servitudein which no men before them were ever seen. Without confidence fromtheir sovereign on whom they were forced, or from the Assembly whoforced them upon him, all the noble functions of their office areexecuted by committees of the Assembly, without any regard whatsoever totheir personal or their official authority. They are to execute, withoutpower; they are to be responsible, without discretion; they are todeliberate, without choice. In their puzzled situation, under twosovereigns, over neither of whom they have any influence, they must actin such a manner as (in effect, whatever they may intend) sometimes tobetray the one, sometimes the other, and always to betray themselves. Such has been their situation; such must be the situation of those whosucceed them. I have much respect, and many good wishes, for M. Necker. I am obliged to him for attentions. I thought, when his enemies haddriven him from Versailles, that his exile was a subject of most seriouscongratulation. _Sed multæ urbes et publica vota vicerunt_. He is nowsitting on the ruins of the finances and of the monarchy of France. 

A great deal more might be observed on the strange constitution of theexecutory part of the new government; but fatigue must give bounds tothe discussion of subjects which in themselves have hardly any limits. 

As little genius and talent am I able to perceive in the plan ofjudicature formed by the National Assembly. According to theirinvariable course, the framers of your Constitution have begun with theutter abolition of the parliaments. These venerable bodies, like therest of the old government, stood in need of reform, even though thereshould be no change made in the monarchy. They required several morealterations to adapt them to the system of a free Constitution. Butthey had particulars in their constitution, and those not a few, whichdeserved approbation from the wise. They possessed one fundamentalexcellence: they were independent. The most doubtful circumstanceattendant on their office, that of its being vendible, contributed, however, to this independency of character. They held for life. Indeed, they may be said to have held by inheritance. Appointed by the monarch, they were considered as nearly out of his power. The most determinedexertions of that authority against them only showed their radicalindependence. They composed permanent bodies politic, constituted toresist arbitrary innovation; and from that corporate constitution, andfrom most of their forms, they were well calculated to afford bothcertainty and stability to the laws. They had been a safe asylum tosecure these laws, in all the revolutions of humor and opinion. They hadsaved that sacred deposit of the country during the reigns of arbitraryprinces and the struggles of arbitrary factions. They kept alive thememory and record of the Constitution. They were the great security toprivate property; which might be said (when personal liberty had noexistence) to be, in fact, as well guarded in France as in any othercountry. Whatever is supreme in a state ought to have, as much aspossible, ifs judicial authority so constituted as not only not todepend upon it, but in some sort to balance it. It ought to give asecurity to its justice against its power. It ought to make itsjudicature, as it were, something exterior to the state. 

Those parliaments had furnished, not the best certainly, but someconsiderable corrective to the excesses and vices of the monarchy. Suchan independent judicature was ten times more necessary when a democracybecame the absolute power of the country. In that Constitution, elective, temporary, local judges, such as you have contrived, exercising their dependent functions in a narrow society, must be theworst of all tribunals. In them it will be vain to look for anyappearance of justice towards strangers, towards the obnoxious rich, towards the minority of routed parties, towards all those who in theelection have supported unsuccessful candidates. It will be impossibleto keep the new tribunals clear of the worst spirit of faction. Allcontrivances by ballot we know experimentally to be vain and childish toprevent a discovery of inclinations. Where they may the best answer thepurposes of concealment, they answer to produce suspicion, and this is astill more mischievous cause of partiality. 

If the parliaments had been preserved, instead of being dissolved at soruinous a change to the nation, they might have served in this newcommonwealth, perhaps not precisely the same, (I do not mean an exactparallel, ) but near the same purposes as the court and senate ofAreopagus did in Athens: that is, as one of the balances and correctivesto the evils of a light and unjust democracy. Every one knows that thistribunal was the great stay of that state; every one knows with whatcare it was upheld, and with what a religious awe it was consecrated. The parliaments were not wholly free from faction, I admit; but thisevil was exterior and accidental, and not so much the vice of theirconstitution itself as it must be in your new contrivance of sexennialelective judicatories. Several English commend the abolition of the oldtribunals, as supposing that they determined everything by bribery andcorruption. But they have stood the test of monarchic and republicanscrutiny. The court was well disposed to prove corruption on thosebodies, when they were dissolved in 1771; those who have again dissolvedthem would have done the same, if they could; but both inquisitionshaving failed, I conclude that gross pecuniary corruption must have beenrather rare amongst them. 

It would have been prudent, along with the parliaments, to preservetheir ancient power of registering, and of remonstrating at least upon, all the decrees of the National Assembly, as they did upon those whichpassed in the time of the monarchy. It would be a means of squaring theoccasional decrees of a democracy to some principles of generaljurisprudence. The vice of the ancient democracies, and one cause oftheir ruin, was, that they ruled, as you do, by occasional decrees, _psephismata_. This practice soon broke in upon the tenor andconsistency of the laws; it abated the respect of the people towardsthem, and totally destroyed them in the end. 

Your vesting the power of remonstrance, which, in the time of themonarchy, existed in the Parliament of Paris, in your principalexecutive officer, whom, in spite of common sense, you persevere incalling king, is the height of absurdity. You ought never to sufferremonstrance from him who is to execute. This is to understand neithercouncil nor execution, neither authority nor obedience. The person whomyou call king ought not to have this power, or he ought to have more. 

Your present arrangement is strictly judicial. Instead of imitating yourmonarchy, and seating your judges on a bench of independence, yourobject is to reduce them to the most blind obedience. As you havechanged all things, you have invented new principles of order. You firstappoint judges, who, I suppose, are to determine according to law, andthen you let them know, that, at some time or other, you intend to givethem some law by which they are to determine. Any studies which theyhave made (if any they have made) are to be useless to them. But tosupply these studies, they are to be sworn to obey all the rules, orders, and instructions which from time to time they are to receivefrom the National Assembly. These if they submit to, they leave noground of law to the subject. They become complete and most dangerousinstruments in the hands of the governing power, which, in the midst ofa cause, or on the prospect of it, may wholly change the rule ofdecision. If these orders of the National Assembly come to be contraryto the will of the people who locally choose those judges, suchconfusion must happen as is terrible to think of. For the judges owetheir place to the local authority, and the commands they are sworn toobey come from those who have no share in their appointment. In the meantime they have the example of the court of _Châtelet_ to encourage andguide them in the exercise of their functions. That court is to trycriminals sent to it by the National Assembly, or brought before it byother courses of delation. They sit under a guard to save their ownlives. They know not by what law they judge, nor under what authoritythey act, nor by what tenure they hold. It is thought that they aresometimes obliged to condemn at peril of their lives. This is notperhaps certain, nor can it be ascertained; but when they acquit, weknow they have seen the persons whom they discharge, with perfectimpunity to the actors, hanged at the door of their court. 

The Assembly, indeed, promises that they will form a body of law, whichshall be short, simple, clear, and so forth. That is, by their shortlaws, they will leave much to the discretion of the judge, whilst theyhave exploded the authority of all the learning which could makejudicial discretion (a thing perilous at best) deserving the appellationof a _sound_ discretion. 

It is curious to observe, that the administrative bodies are carefullyexempted from the jurisdiction of these new tribunals. That is, thosepersons are exempted from the power of the laws who ought to be the mostentirely submitted to them. Those who execute public pecuniary trustsought of all men to be the most strictly held to their duty. One wouldhave thought that it must have been among your earliest cares, if youdid not mean that those administrative bodies should be real, sovereign, independent states, to form an awful tribunal, like your lateparliaments, or like our King's Bench, where all corporate officersmight obtain protection in the legal exercise of their functions, andwould find coercion, if they trespassed against their legal duty. Butthe cause of the exemption is plain. These administrative bodies are thegreat instruments of the present leaders in their progress throughdemocracy to oligarchy. They must therefore be put above the law. Itwill be said that the legal tribunals which you have made are unfit tocoerce them. They are, undoubtedly. They are unfit for any rationalpurpose. It will be said, too, that the administrative bodies will beaccountable to the general Assembly. This, I fear, is talking withoutmuch consideration of the nature of that Assembly or of thesecorporations. However, to be subject to the pleasure of that Assembly isnot to be subject to law, either for protection or for constraint. 

This establishment of judges as yet wants something to its completion. It is to be crowned by a new tribunal. This is to be a grand statejudicature; and it is to judge of crimes committed against the nation, that is, against the power of the Assembly. It seems as if they hadsomething in their view of the nature of the high court of justiceerected in England during the time of the great usurpation. As they havenot yet finished this part of the scheme, it is impossible to form adirect judgment upon it. However, if great care is not taken to form itin a spirit very different from that which has guided them in theirproceedings relative to state offences, this tribunal, subservient totheir inquisition, _the Committee of Research_, will extinguish the lastsparks of liberty in France, and settle the most dreadful and arbitrarytyranny ever known in any nation. If they wish to give to this tribunalany appearance of liberty and justice, they must not evoke from or sendto it the causes relative to their own members, at their pleasure. Theymust also remove the seat of that tribunal out of the republic ofParis. [126]

Has more wisdom been displayed in the constitution of your army thanwhat is discoverable in your plan of judicature? The able arrangement ofthis part is the more difficult, and requires the greater skill andattention, not only as a great concern in itself, but as it is the thirdcementing principle in the new body of republics which you call theFrench nation. Truly, it is not easy to divine what that army may becomeat last. You have voted a very large one, and on good appointments, atleast fully equal to your apparent means of payment. But what is theprinciple of its discipline? or whom is it to obey? You have got thewolf by the ears, and I wish you joy of the happy position in which youhave chosen to place yourselves, and in which you are well circumstancedfor a free deliberation relatively to that army, or to anything else. 

The minister and secretary of state for the War Department is M. De LaTour du Pin. This gentleman, like his colleagues in administration, is amost zealous assertor of the Revolution, and a sanguine admirer of thenew Constitution which originated in that event. His statement of factsrelative to the military of France is important, not only from hisofficial and personal authority, but because it displays very clearlythe actual condition of the army in France, and because it throws lighton the principles upon which the Assembly proceeds in the administrationof this critical object. It may enable us to form some judgment how farit may be expedient in this country to imitate the martial policy ofFrance. 

M. De La Tour du Pin, on the fourth of last June, comes to give anaccount of the state of his department, as it exists under the auspicesof the National Assembly. No man knows it so well; no man can express itbetter. Addressing himself to the National Assembly, he says, --

"His Majesty has _this day_ sent me to apprise you of the multiplieddisorders of which _every day_ he receives the most distressingintelligence. The army [_le corps militaire_] threatens to fall into themost turbulent anarchy. Entire regiments have dared to violate at oncethe respect due to the laws, to the king, to the order established byyour decrees, and to the oaths which they have taken with the most awfulsolemnity. Compelled by my duty to give you information of theseexcesses, my heart bleeds, when I consider who they are that havecommitted them. Those against whom it is not in my power to withhold themost grievous complaints are a part of that very soldiery which to thisday have been so full of honor and loyalty, and with whom for fiftyyears I have lived the comrade and the friend. 

"What incomprehensible spirit of delirium and delusion has all at onceled them astray? Whilst you are indefatigable in establishing uniformityin the empire and moulding the whole into one coherent and consistentbody, whilst the French are taught by you at once the respect which thelaws owe to the rights of man and that which the citizens owe to thelaws, the administration of the army presents nothing but disturbanceand confusion. I see in more than one corps the bonds of disciplinerelaxed or broken, --the most unheard-of pretensions avowed directly andwithout any disguise, --the ordinances without force, --the chiefs withoutauthority, --the military chest and the colors carried off, --theauthority of the king himself [_risum teneatis_] proudly defied, --theofficers despised, degraded, threatened, driven away, and some of themprisoners in the midst of their corps, dragging on a precarious life inthe bosom of disgust and humiliation. To fill up the measure of allthese horrors, the commandants of places have had their throats outunder the eyes and almost in the arms of their own soldiers. 

"These evils are great; but they are not the worst consequences whichmay be produced by such military insurrections. Sooner or later they maymenace the nation itself. _The nature of things requires_ that the armyshould never act but as _an instrument_. The moment that, erectingitself into a deliberate body, it shall act according to its ownresolutions, _the government, be it what it may, will immediatelydegenerate into a military democracy_: a species of political monsterwhich has always ended by devouring those who have produced it. 

"After all this, who must not be alarmed at the irregular consultationsand turbulent committees formed in some regiments by the common soldiersand non-commissioned officers, without the knowledge, or even incontempt of the authority, of their superiors?--although the presenceand concurrence of those superiors could give no authority to suchmonstrous democratic assemblies [_comices_]. "

It is not necessary to add much to this finished picture, --finished asfar as its canvas admits, but, as I apprehend, not taking in the wholeof the nature and complexity of the disorders of this militarydemocracy, which, the minister at war truly and wisely observes, wherever it exists, must be the true constitution of the state, bywhatever formal appellation it may pass. For, though he informs theAssembly that the more considerable part of the army have not cast offtheir obedience, but are still attached to their duty, yet thosetravellers who have seen the corps whose conduct is the best ratherobserve in them the absence of mutiny than the existence of discipline. 

I cannot help pausing here for a moment, to reflect upon the expressionsof surprise which this minister has let fall relative to the excesses herelates. To him the departure of the troops from their ancientprinciples of loyalty and honor seems quite inconceivable. Surely thoseto whom he addresses himself know the causes of it but too well. Theyknow the doctrines which they have preached, the decrees which they havepassed, the practices which they have countenanced. The soldiersremember the sixth of October. They recollect the French guards. Theyhave not forgot the taking of the king's castles in Paris and atMarseilles. That the governors in both places were murdered withimpunity is a fact that has not passed out of their minds. They do notabandon the principles, laid down so ostentatiously and laboriously, ofthe equality of men. They cannot shut their eyes to the degradation ofthe whole noblesse of France, and the suppression of the very idea of agentleman. The total abolition of titles and distinctions is not lostupon them. But M. Du Pin is astonished at their disloyalty, when thedoctors of the Assembly have taught them at the same time the respectdue to laws. It is easy to judge which of the two sorts of lessons menwith arms in their hands are likely to learn. As to the authority of theking, we may collect from the minister himself (if any argument on thathead were not quite superfluous) that it is not of more considerationwith these troops than it is with everybody else. "The king, " says he, "has over and over again repeated his orders to put a stop to theseexcesses; but in so terrible a crisis, _your_ [the Assembly's]concurrence is become indispensably necessary to prevent the evils whichmenace the state. _You_ unite to the force of the legislative power_that of opinion_, still more important. " To be sure, the army can haveno opinion of the power or authority of the king. Perhaps the soldierhas by this time learned, that the Assembly itself does not enjoy a muchgreater degree of liberty than that royal figure. 

It is now to be seen what has been proposed in this exigency, one of thegreatest that can happen in a state. The minister requests the Assemblyto array itself in all its terrors, and to call forth all its majesty. He desires that the grave and severe principles announced by them maygive vigor to the king's proclamation. After this we should have lookedfor courts civil and martial, breaking of some corps, decimating ofothers, and all the terrible means which necessity has employed in suchcases to arrest the progress of the most terrible of all evils;particularly, one might expect that a serious inquiry would be made intothe murder of commandants in the view of their soldiers. Not one word ofall this, or of anything like it. After they had been told that thesoldiery trampled upon the decrees of the Assembly promulgated by theking, the Assembly pass new decrees, and they authorize the king to makenew proclamations. After the secretary at war had stated that theregiments had paid no regard to oaths, _prêtés avec la plus imposantesolennité_, they propose--what? More oaths. They renew decrees andproclamations as they experience their insufficiency, and they multiplyoaths in proportion as they weaken in the minds of men the sanctions ofreligion. I hope that handy abridgments of the excellent sermons ofVoltaire, D'Alembert, Diderot, and Helvétius, on the Immortality of theSoul, on a Particular Superintending Providence, and on a Future Stateof Rewards and Punishments, are sent down to the soldiers along withtheir civic oaths. Of this I have no doubt; as I understand that acertain description of reading makes no inconsiderable part of theirmilitary exercises, and that they are full as well supplied with theammunition of pamphlets as of cartridges. 

To prevent the mischiefs arising from conspiracies, irregularconsultations, seditious committees, and monstrous democratic assemblies[_comitia, comices_] of the soldiers, and all the disorders arising fromidleness, luxury, dissipation, and insubordination, I believe the mostastonishing means have been used that ever occurred to men, even in allthe inventions of this prolific age. It is no less than this:--The kinghas promulgated in circular letters to all the regiments his directauthority and encouragement, that the several corps should jointhemselves with the clubs and confederations in the severalmunicipalities, and mix with them in their feasts and civicentertainments! This jolly discipline, it seems, is to soften theferocity of their minds, to reconcile them to their bottle companions ofother descriptions, and to merge particular conspiracies in more generalassociations. [127] That this remedy would be pleasing to the soldiers, as they are described by M. De La Tour du Pin, I can readilybelieve, --and that, however mutinous otherwise, they will dutifullysubmit themselves to _these_ royal proclamations. But I should questionwhether all this civic swearing, clubbing, and feasting would disposethem, more than at present they are disposed, to an obedience to theirofficers, or teach them better to submit to the austere rules ofmilitary discipline. It will make them admirable citizens after theFrench mode, but not quite so good soldiers after any mode. A doubtmight well arise, whether the conversations at these good tables wouldfit them a great deal the better for the character of _mereinstruments_, which this veteran officer and statesman justly observesthe nature of things always requires an army to be. 

Concerning the likelihood of this improvement in discipline by the freeconversation of the soldiers with the municipal festive societies, whichis thus officially encouraged by royal authority and sanction, we mayjudge by the state of the municipalities themselves, furnished to us bythe war minister in this very speech. He conceives good hopes of thesuccess of his endeavors towards restoring order _for the present_ fromthe good disposition of certain regiments; but he finds something cloudywith regard to the future. As to preventing the return of confusion, "for this the administration" (says he) "cannot be answerable to you, aslong as they see the municipalities arrogate to themselves an authorityover the troops which your institutions have reserved wholly to themonarch. You have fixed the limits of the military authority and themunicipal authority. You have bounded the action which you havepermitted to the latter over the former to the right of requisition; butnever did the letter or the spirit of your decrees authorize the commonsin these municipalities to break the officers, to try them, to giveorders to the soldiers, to drive them from the posts committed to theirguard, to stop them in their marches ordered by the king, or, in a word, to enslave the troops to the caprice of each of the cities or evenmarket-towns through which they are to pass. "

Such is the character and disposition of the municipal society which isto reclaim the soldiery, to bring them back to the true principles ofmilitary subordination, and to lender them machines in the hands of thesupreme power of the country! Such are the distempers of the Frenchtroops! Such is their cure! As the army is, so is the navy. Themunicipalities supersede the orders of the Assembly, and the seamen intheir turn supersede the orders of the municipalities. From my heart Ipity the condition of a respectable servant of the public, like this warminister, obliged in his old age to pledge the Assembly in their civiccups, and to enter with a hoary head into all the fantastic vagaries ofthese juvenile politicians. Such schemes are not like propositionscoming from a man of fifty years' wear and tear amongst mankind. Theyseem rather such as ought to be expected from those grand compounders inpolitics who shorten the road to their degrees in the state, and have acertain inward fanatical assurance and illumination upon allsubjects, --upon the credit of which, one of their doctors has thoughtfit, with great applause, and greater success, to caution the Assemblynot to attend to old men, or to any persons who value themselves upontheir experience. I suppose all the ministers of state must qualify, andtake this test, --wholly abjuring the errors and heresies of experienceand observation. Every man has his own relish; but I think, if I couldnot attain to the wisdom, I would at least preserve something of thestiff and peremptory dignity of age. These gentlemen deal inregeneration: but at any price I should hardly yield my rigid fibres tobe regenerated by them, --nor begin, in my grand climacteric, to squallin their new accents, or to stammer, in my second cradle, the elementalsounds of their barbarous metaphysics. [128] _Si isti mihi largiantur utrepuerascam, et in eorum cunis vagiam, valde recusem!_

The imbecility of any part of the puerile and pedantic system which theycall a Constitution cannot be laid open without discovering the utterinsufficiency and mischief of every other part with which it comes incontact, or that bears any the remotest relation to it. You cannotpropose a remedy for the incompetence of the crown, without displayingthe debility of the Assembly. You cannot deliberate on the confusion ofthe army of the state, without disclosing the worse disorders of thearmed municipalities. The military lays open the civil, and the civilbetrays the military anarchy. I wish everybody carefully to peruse theeloquent speech (such it is) of Mons. De La Tour du Pin. He attributesthe salvation of the municipalities to the good behavior of some of thetroops. These troops are to preserve the well-disposed part of themunicipalities, which is confessed to be the weakest, from the pillageof the worst disposed, which is the strongest. But the municipalitiesaffect a sovereignty, and will command those troops which are necessaryfor their protection. Indeed, they must command them or court them. Themunicipalities, by the necessity of their situation, and by therepublican powers they have obtained, must, with relation to themilitary, be the masters, or the servants, or the confederates, or eachsuccessively, or they must make a jumble of all together, according tocircumstances. What government is there to coerce the army but themunicipality, or the municipality but the army? To preserve concordwhere authority is extinguished, at the hazard of all consequences, theAssembly attempts to cure the distempers by the distempers themselves;and they hope to preserve themselves from a purely military democracy bygiving it a debauched interest in the municipal. 

If the soldiers once come to mix for any time in the municipal clubs, cabals, and confederacies, an elective attraction will draw them to thelowest and most desperate part. With them will be their habits, affections, and sympathies. The military conspiracies which are to beremedied by civic confederacies, the rebellious municipalities which areto be rendered obedient by furnishing them with the means of seducingthe very armies of the state that are to keep them in order, --all thesechimeras of a monstrous and portentous policy must aggravate theconfusion from which they have arisen. There must be blood. The want ofcommon judgment manifested in the construction of all their descriptionsof forces, and in all their kinds of civil and judicial authorities, will make it flow. Disorders may be quieted in one time and in onepart. They will break out in others; because the evil is radical andintrinsic. All these schemes of mixing mutinous soldiers with seditiouscitizens must weaken still more and more the military connection ofsoldiers with their officers, as well as add military and mutinousaudacity to turbulent artificers and peasants. To secure a real army, the officer should be first and last in the eye of the soldier, --firstand last in his attention, observance, and esteem. Officers, it seems, there are to be, whose chief qualification must be temper and patience. They are to manage their troops by electioneering arts. They must bearthemselves as candidates, not as commanders. But as by such means powermay be occasionally in their hands, the authority by which they are tobe nominated becomes of high importance. 

What you may do finally does not appear: nor is it of much moment, whilst the strange and contradictory relation between your army and allthe parts of your republic, as well as the puzzled relation of thoseparts to each other and to the whole, remain as they are. You seem tohave given the provisional nomination of the officers, in the firstinstance, to the king, with a reserve of approbation by the NationalAssembly. Men who have an interest to pursue are extremely sagacious indiscovering the true seat of power. They must soon perceive that thosewho can negative indefinitely in reality appoint. The officers musttherefore look to their intrigues in the Assembly as the sole certainroad to promotion. Still, however, by your new Constitution, they mustbegin their solicitation at court. This double negotiation for militaryrank seems to me a contrivance, as well adapted as if it were studiedfor no other end, to promote faction in the Assembly itself relative tothis vast military patronage, --and then to poison the corps of officerswith factions of a nature still more dangerous to the safety ofgovernment, upon any bottom on which it can be placed, and destructivein the end to the efficacy of the army itself. Those officers who losethe promotions intended for them by the crown must become of a factionopposite to that of the Assembly which has rejected their claims, andmust nourish discontents in the heart of the army against the rulingpowers. Those officers, on the other hand, who, by carrying their pointthrough an interest in the Assembly, feel themselves to be at best onlysecond in the good-will of the crown, though first in that of theAssembly, must slight an authority which would not advance and could notretard their promotion. If, to avoid these evils, you will have no otherrule for command or promotion than seniority, you will have an army offormality; at the same time it will become more independent and more ofa military republic. Not they, but the king is the machine. A king isnot to be deposed by halves. If he is not everything in the command ofan army, he is nothing. What is the effect of a power placed nominallyat the head of the army, who to that army is no object of gratitude orof fear? Such a cipher is not fit for the administration of an object ofall things the most delicate, the supreme command of military men. Theymust be constrained (and their inclinations lead them to what theirnecessities require) by a real, vigorous, effective, decided, personalauthority. The authority of the Assembly itself suffers by passingthrough such a debilitating channel as they have chosen. The army willnot long look to an Assembly acting through the organ of false show andpalpable imposition. They will not seriously yield obedience to aprisoner. They will either despise a pageant, or they will pity acaptive king. This relation of your army to the crown will, if I am notgreatly mistaken, become a serious dilemma in your politics. 

It is besides to be considered, whether an Assembly like yours, evensupposing that it was in possession of another sort of organ, throughwhich its orders were to pass, is fit for promoting the obedience anddiscipline of an army. It is known that armies have hitherto yielded avery precarious and uncertain obedience to any senate or popularauthority; and they will least of all yield it to an Assembly which isto have only a continuance of two years. The officers must totally losethe characteristic disposition of military men, if they see with perfectsubmission and due admiration the dominion of pleaders, --especially whenthey find that they have a new court to pay to an endless succession ofthose pleaders, whose military policy, and the genius of whose command, (if they should have any, ) must be as uncertain as their duration istransient. In the weakness of one kind of authority, and in thefluctuation of all, the officers of an army will remain for some timemutinous and full of faction, until some popular general, whounderstands the art of conciliating the soldiery, and who possesses thetrue spirit of command, shall draw the eyes of all men upon himself. Armies will obey him on his personal account. There is no other way ofsecuring military obedience in this state of things. But the moment inwhich that event shall happen, the person who really commands the armyis your master, --the master (that is little) of your king, the master ofyour Assembly, the master of your whole republic. 

How came the Assembly by their present power over the army? Chiefly, tobe sure, by debauching the soldiers from their officers. They have begunby a most terrible operation. They have touched the central point aboutwhich the particles that compose armies are at repose. They havedestroyed the principle of obedience in the great, essential, criticallink between the officer and the soldier, just where the chain ofmilitary subordination commences, and on which the whole of that system, depends. The soldier is told he is a citizen, and has the rights of manand citizen. The right of a man, he is told, is, to be his own governor, and to be ruled only by those to whom he delegates that self-government. It is very natural he should think that he ought most of all to have hischoice where he is to yield the greatest degree of obedience. He willtherefore, in all probability, systematically do what he does at presentoccasionally: that is, he will exercise at least a negative in thechoice of his officers. At present the officers are known at best to beonly permissive, and on their good behavior. In fact, there have beenmany instances in which they have been cashiered by their corps. Here isa second negative on the choice of the king: a negative as effectual, atleast, as the other of the Assembly. The soldiers know already that ithas been a question, not ill received in the National Assembly, whetherthey ought not to have the direct choice of their officers, or someproportion of them. When such matters are in deliberation, it is noextravagant supposition that they will incline to the opinion mostfavorable to their pretensions. They will not bear to be deemed the armyof an imprisoned king, whilst another army in the same country, withwhom too they are to feast and confederate, is to be considered as thefree army of a free Constitution. They will cast their eyes on the otherand more permanent army: I mean the municipal. That corps, they wellknow, does actually elect its own officers. They may not be able todiscern the grounds of distinction on which they are not to elect aMarquis de La Fayette (or what is his new name?) of their own. If thiselection of a commander-in-chief be a part of the rights of men, why notof theirs? They see elective justices of peace, elective judges, elective curates, elective bishops, elective municipalities, andelective commanders of the Parisian army. Why should they alone beexcluded? Are the brave troops of France the only men in that nation whoare not the fit judges of military merit, and of the qualificationsnecessary for a commander-in-chief? Are they paid by the state, and dothey therefore lose the rights of men? They are a part of that nationthemselves, and contribute to that pay. And is not the king, is not theNational Assembly, and are not all who elect the National Assembly, likewise paid? Instead of seeing all these forfeit their rights by theirreceiving a salary, they perceive that in all these cases a salary isgiven for the exercise of those rights. All your resolutions, all yourproceedings, all your debates, all the works of your doctors in religionand politics, have industriously been put into their hands; and youexpect that they will apply to their own case just as much of yourdoctrines and examples as suits your pleasure. 

Everything depends upon the army in such a government as yours; for youhave industriously destroyed all the opinions and prejudices, and, asfar as in you lay, all the instincts which support government. Thereforethe moment any difference arises between your National Assembly and anypart of the nation, you must have recourse to force. Nothing else isleft to you, --or rather, you have left nothing else to yourselves. Yousee, by the report of your war minister, that the distribution of thearmy is in a great measure made with a view of internal coercion. [129]You must rule by an army; and you have infused into that army by whichyou rule, as well as into the whole body of the nation, principles whichafter a time must disable you in the use you resolve to make of it. Theking is to call out troops to act against his people, when the world hasbeen told, and the assertion is still ringing in our ears, that troopsought not to fire on citizens. The colonies assert to themselves anindependent constitution and a free trade. They must be constrained bytroops. In what chapter of your code of the rights of men are they ableto read that it is a part of the rights of men to have their commercemonopolized and restrained for the benefit of others? As the colonistsrise on you, the negroes rise on them. Troops again, --massacre, torture, hanging! These are your rights of men! These are the fruits ofmetaphysic declarations wantonly made and shamefully retracted! It wasbut the other day that the farmers of land in one of your provincesrefused to pay some sorts of rents to the lord of the soil. Inconsequence of this, you decree that the country-people shall pay allrents and dues, except those which as grievances you have abolished; andif they refuse, then you order the king to march troops against them. You lay down metaphysic propositions which infer universal consequences, and then you attempt to limit logic by despotism. The leaders of thepresent system tell them of their rights, as men, to take fortresses, tomurder guards, to seize on kings without the least appearance ofauthority even from the Assembly, whilst, as the sovereign legislativebody, that Assembly was sitting in the name of the nation; and yet theseleaders presume to order out the troops which have acted in these verydisorders, to coerce those who shall judge on the principles and followthe examples which have been guarantied by their own approbation. 

The leaders teach the people to abhor and reject all feodality as thebarbarism of tyranny; and they tell them afterwards how much of thatbarbarous tyranny they are to bear with patience. As they are prodigalof light with regard to grievances, so the people find them sparing inthe extreme with regard to redress. They know that not only certainquit-rents and personal duties, which you have permitted them to redeem, (but have furnished no money for the redemption, ) are as nothing tothose burdens for which you have made no provision at all; they knowthat almost the whole system of landed property in its origin isfeudal, --that it is the distribution of the possessions of the originalproprietors made by a barbarous conqueror to his barbarousinstruments, --and that the most grievous effects of the conquest axe theland-rents of every kind, as without question they are. 

The peasants, in all probability, are the descendants of these ancientproprietors, Romans or Gauls. But if they fail, in any degree, in thetitles which they make on the principles of antiquaries and lawyers, they retreat into the citadel of the rights of men. There they find thatmen are equal; and the earth, the kind and equal mother of all, oughtnot to be monopolized to foster the pride and luxury of any men, who bynature are no better than themselves, and who, if they do not labor fortheir bread, are worse. They find, that, by the laws of Nature, theoccupant and subduer of the soil is the true proprietor, --that there isno prescription against Nature, --and that the agreements (where anythere are) which have been made with the landlords during the time ofslavery are only the effect of duresse and force, --and that, when thepeople reëntered into the rights of men, those agreements were made asvoid as everything else which had been settled under the prevalence ofthe old feudal and aristocratic tyranny. They will tell you that theysee no difference between an idler with a hat and a national cockade andan idler in a cowl or in a rochet. If you ground the title to rents onsuccession and prescription, they tell you from the speech of M. Camus, published by the National Assembly for their information, that thingsill begun cannot avail themselves of prescription, --that the title ofthose lords was vicious in its origin, --and that force is at least asbad as fraud. As to the title by succession, they will tell you that thesuccession of those who have cultivated the soil is the true pedigree ofproperty, and not rotten parchments and silly substitutions, --that thelords have enjoyed their usurpation too long, --and that, if they allowto these lay monks any charitable pension, they ought to be thankful tothe bounty of the true proprietor, who is so generous towards a falseclaimant to his goods. 

When the peasants give you back that coin of sophistic reason on whichyou have set your image and superscription, you cry it down as basemoney, and tell them you will pay for the future with French guards anddragoons and hussars. You hold up, to chastise them, the second-handauthority of a king, who is only the instrument of destroying, withoutany power of protecting either the people or his own person. Throughhim, it seems, you will make yourselves obeyed. They answer, --"You havetaught us that there are no gentlemen; and which of your principlesteach us to bow to kings whom we have not elected? We know, without yourteaching, that lands were given for the support of feudal dignities, feudal titles, and feudal offices. When you took down the cause as agrievance, why should the more grievous effect remain? As there are nowno hereditary honors and no distinguished families, why are we taxed tomaintain what you tell us ought not to exist? You have sent down our oldaristocratic landlords in no other character and with no other title butthat of exactors under your authority. Have you endeavored to make theseyour rent-gatherers respectable to us? No. You have sent them to us withtheir arms reversed, their shields broken, their impresses defaced, --andso displumed, degraded, and metamorphosed, such unfeathered two-leggedthings, that we no longer know them. They are strangers to us. They donot even go by the names of our ancient lords. Physically they may bethe same men, --though we are not quite sure of that, on your newphilosophic doctrines of personal identity. In all other respects theyare totally changed. We do not see why we have not as good a right torefuse them their rents as you have to abrogate all their honors, titles, and distinctions. This we have never commissioned you to do; andit is one instance among many, indeed, of your assumption of undelegatedpower. We see the burghers of Paris, through their clubs, their mobs, and their national guards, directing you at their pleasure, and givingthat as law to you, which, under your authority, is transmitted as lawto us. Through you, these burghers dispose of the lives and fortunes ofus all. Why should not you attend as much to the desires of thelaborious husbandman with regard to our rent, by which we are affectedin the most serious manner, as you do to the demands of these insolentburghers relative to distinctions and titles of honor, by which neitherthey nor we are affected at all? But we find you pay more regard totheir fancies than to our necessities. Is it among the rights of man topay tribute to his equals? Before this measure of yours we might havethought we were not perfectly equal; we might have entertained some old, habitual, unmeaning prepossession in favor of those landlords; but wecannot conceive with what other view than that of destroying all respectto them you could have made the law that degrades them. You haveforbidden us to treat them with any of the old formalities of respect;and now you send troops to sabre and to bayonet us into a submission tofear and force which you did not suffer us to yield to the mildauthority of opinion. "

The ground of some of these arguments is horrid and ridiculous to allrational ears; but to the politicians of metaphysics, who have openedschools for sophistry, and made establishments for anarchy, it is solidand conclusive. It is obvious, that, on a mere consideration of theright, the leaders in the Assembly would not in the least have scrupledto abrogate the rents along with the titles and family ensigns. It wouldbe only to follow up the principle of their reasonings, and to completethe analogy of their conduct. But they had newly possessed themselves ofa great body of landed property by confiscation. They had this commodityat market; and the market would have been wholly destroyed, if they wereto permit the husbandmen to riot in the speculations with which they sofreely intoxicated themselves. The only security which property enjoysin any one of its descriptions is from the interests of their rapacitywith regard to some other. They have left nothing but their ownarbitrary pleasure to determine what property is to be protected andwhat subverted. 

Neither have they left any principle by which any of theirmunicipalities can be bound to obedience, --or even conscientiouslyobliged not to separate from the whole, to become independent, or toconnect itself with some other state. The people of Lyons, it seems, have refused lately to pay taxes. Why should they not? What lawfulauthority is there left to exact them? The king imposed some of them. The old States, methodized by orders, settled the more ancient. They maysay to the Assembly, --"Who are you, that are not our kings, nor theStates we have elected, nor sit on the principles on which we haveelected you? And who are we, that, when we see the _gabelles_ which youhave ordered to be paid wholly shaken off, when we see the act ofdisobedience afterwards ratified by yourselves, who are we, that we arenot to judge what taxes we ought or ought not to pay, and are not toavail ourselves of the same powers the validity of which you haveapproved in others?" To this the answer is, "We will send troops. " Thelast reason of kings is always the first with your Assembly. Thismilitary aid may serve for a time, whilst the impression of the increaseof pay remains, and the vanity of being umpires in all disputes isflattered. But this weapon will snap short, unfaithful to the hand thatemploys it. The Assembly keep a school, where, systematically, and withunremitting perseverance, they teach principles and form regulationsdestructive to all spirit of subordination, civil and military, --andthen they expect that they shall hold in obedience an anarchic people byan anarchic army. 

The municipal army, which, according to their new policy, is to balancethis national army, if considered in itself only, is of a constitutionmuch more simple, and in every respect less exceptionable. It is a meredemocratic body, unconnected with the crown or the kingdom, armed andtrained and officered at the pleasure of the districts to which thecorps severally belong; and the personal service of the individuals whocompose, or the fine in lieu of personal service, are directed by thesame authority. [130] Nothing is more uniform. If, however, considered inany relation to the crown, to the National Assembly, to the publictribunals, or to the other army, or considered in a view to anycoherence or connection between its parts, it seems a monster, and canhardly fail to terminate its perplexed movements in some great nationalcalamity. It is a worse preservative of a general constitution than thesystasis of Crete, or the confederation of Poland, or any otherill-devised corrective which has yet been imagined, in the necessitiesproduced by an ill-constructed system of government. 

 * * * * *

Having concluded my few remarks on the constitution of the supremepower, the executive, the judicature, the military, and on thereciprocal relation of all these establishments, I shall say somethingof the ability showed by your legislators with regard to the revenue. 

In their proceedings relative to this object, if possible, still fewertraces appear of political judgment or financial resource. When theStates met, it seemed to be the great object to improve the system ofrevenue, to enlarge its collection, to cleanse it of oppression andvexation, and to establish it on the most solid footing. Great were theexpectations entertained on that head throughout Europe. It was by thisgrand arrangement that France was to stand or fall; and this became, inmy opinion very properly, the test by which the skill and patriotism ofthose who ruled in that Assembly would be tried. The revenue of thestate is the state. In effect, all depends upon it, whether for supportor for reformation. The dignity of every occupation wholly depends uponthe quantity and the kind of virtue that may be exerted in it. As allgreat qualities of the mind which operate in public, and are not merelysuffering and passive, require force for their display, I had almostsaid for their unequivocal existence, the revenue, which is the springof all power, becomes in its administration the sphere of every activevirtue. Public virtue, being of a nature magnificent and splendid, instituted for great things, and conversant about great concerns, requires abundant scope and room, and cannot spread and grow underconfinement, and in circumstances straitened, narrow, and sordid. Through the revenue alone the body politic can act in its true geniusand character; and therefore it will display just as much of itscollective virtue, and as much of that virtue which may characterizethose who move it, and are, as it were, its life and guiding principle, as it is possessed of a just revenue. For from hence not onlymagnanimity, and liberality, and beneficence, and fortitude, andprovidence, and the tutelary protection of all good arts derive theirfood, and the growth of their organs, but continence, and self-denial, and labor, and vigilance, and frugality, and whatever else there is inwhich the mind shows itself above the appetite, are nowhere more intheir proper element than in the provision and distribution of thepublic wealth. It is therefore not without reason that the science ofspeculative and practical finance, which must take to its aid so manyauxiliary branches of knowledge, stands high in the estimation not onlyof the ordinary sort, but of the wisest and best men; and as thisscience has grown with the progress of its object, the prosperity andimprovement of nations has generally increased with the increase oftheir revenues; and they will both continue to grow and flourish as longas the balance between what is left to strengthen the efforts ofindividuals and what is collected for the common efforts of the statebear to each other a due reciprocal proportion, and are kept in a closecorrespondence and communication. And perhaps it may be owing to thegreatness of revenues, and to the urgency of state necessities, that oldabuses in the constitution of finances are discovered, and their truenature and rational theory comes to be more perfectly understood;insomuch that a smaller revenue might have been more distressing in oneperiod than a far greater is found to be in another, the proportionatewealth even remaining the same. In this state of things, the FrenchAssembly found something in their revenues to preserve, to secure, andwisely to administer, as well as to abrogate and alter. Though theirproud assumption might justify the severest tests, yet, in trying theirabilities on their financial proceedings, I would only consider what isthe plain, obvious duty of a common finance minister, and try them uponthat, and not upon models of ideal perfection. 

The objects of a financier are, then, to secure an ample revenue; toimpose it with judgment and equality; to employ it economically; andwhen necessity obliges him to make use of credit, to secure itsfoundations in that instance, and forever, by the clearness and candorof his proceedings, the exactness of his calculations, and the solidityof his funds. On these heads we may take a short and distinct view ofthe merits and abilities of those in the National Assembly who havetaken to themselves the management of this arduous concern. 

Far from any increase of revenue in their hands, I find, by a report ofM. Vernier, from the Committee of Finances, of the second of Augustlast, that the amount of the national revenue, as compared with itsproduce before the Revolution, was diminished by the sum of two hundredmillions, or _eight millions sterling_, of the annualincome, --considerably more than one third of the whole. 

If this be the result of great ability, never surely was abilitydisplayed in a more distinguished manner or with so powerful an effect. No common folly, no vulgar incapacity, no ordinary official negligence, even no official crime, no corruption, no peculation, hardly any directhostility, which we have seen in the modern world, could in so short atime have made so complete an overthrow of the finances, and, with them, of the strength of a great kingdom. --_Cedo quî vestram rempublicamtantam amisistis tam cito?_

The sophisters and declaimers, as soon as the Assembly met, began withdecrying the ancient constitution of the revenue in many of its mostessential branches, such as the public monopoly of salt. They chargedit, as truly as unwisely, with being ill-contrived, oppressive, andpartial. This representation they were not satisfied to make use of inspeeches preliminary to some plan of reform; they declared it in asolemn resolution or public sentence, as it were judicially passed uponit; and this they dispersed throughout the nation. At the time theypassed the decree, with the same gravity they ordered the same absurd, oppressive, and partial tax to be paid, until they could find a revenueto replace it. The consequence was inevitable. The provinces which hadbeen always exempted from this salt monopoly, some of whom were chargedwith other contributions, perhaps equivalent, were totally disinclinedto bear any part of the burden, which by an equal distribution was toredeem the others. As to the Assembly, occupied as it was with thedeclaration and violation of the rights of men, and with theirarrangements for general confusion, it had neither leisure nor capacityto contrive, nor authority to enforce, any plan of any kind relative tothe replacing the tax, or equalizing it, or compensating the provinces, or for conducting their minds to any scheme of accommodation with theother districts which were to be relieved. The people of the saltprovinces, impatient under taxes damned by the authority which haddirected their payment, very soon found their patience exhausted. Theythought themselves as skilful in demolishing as the Assembly could be. They relieved themselves by throwing off the whole burden. Animated bythis example, each district, or part of a district, judging of its owngrievance by its own feeling, and of its remedy by its own opinion, didas it pleased with other taxes. 

We are next to see how they have conducted themselves in contrivingequal impositions, proportioned to the means of the citizens, and theleast likely to lean heavy on the active capital employed in thegeneration of that private wealth from whence the public fortune must bederived. By suffering the several districts, and several of theindividuals in each district, to judge of what part of the old revenuethey might withhold, instead of better principles of equality, a newinequality was introduced of the most oppressive kind. Payments wereregulated by dispositions. The parts of the kingdom which were the mostsubmissive, the most orderly, or the most affectionate to thecommonwealth, bore the whole burden of the state. Nothing turns out tobe so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government. To fill up all thedeficiencies in the old impositions, and the new deficiencies of everykind which were to be expected, what remained to a state withoutauthority? The National Assembly called for a voluntarybenevolence, --for a fourth part of the income of all the citizens, to beestimated on the honor of those who were to pay. They obtained somethingmore than could be rationally calculated, but what was far indeed fromanswerable to their real necessities, and much less to their fondexpectations. Rational people could have hoped for little from thistheir tax in the disguise of a benevolence, --tax weak, ineffective, andunequal, --a tax by which luxury, avarice, and selfishness were screened, and the load thrown upon productive capital, upon integrity, generosity, and public spirit, --a tax of regulation upon virtue. At length the maskis thrown off, and they are now trying means (with little success) ofexacting their benevolence by force. 

This benevolence, the rickety offspring of weakness, was to be supportedby another resource, the twin brother of the same prolific imbecility. The patriotic donations were to make good the failure of the patrioticcontribution. John Doe was to become security for Richard Roe. By thisscheme they took things of much price from the giver, comparatively ofsmall value to the receiver; they ruined several trades; they pillagedthe crown of its ornaments, the churches of their plate, and the peopleof their personal decorations. The invention of those juvenilepretenders to liberty was in reality nothing more than a servileimitation of one of the poorest resources of doting despotism. They tookan old, huge, full-bottomed periwig out of the wardrobe of theantiquated frippery of Louis the Fourteenth, to cover the prematurebaldness of the National Assembly. They produced this old-fashionedformal folly, though it had been so abundantly exposed in the Memoirs ofthe Duke de Saint-Simon, --if to reasonable men it had wanted anyarguments to display its mischief and insufficiency. A device of thesame kind was tried in my memory by Louis the Fifteenth, but it answeredat no time. However, the necessities of ruinous wars were some excusefor desperate projects. The deliberations of calamity are rarely wise. But here was a season for disposition and providence. It was in a timeof profound peace, then enjoyed for five years, and promising a muchlonger continuance, that they had recourse to this desperate trifling. They were sure to lose more reputation by sporting, in their serioussituation, with these toys and playthings of finance, which have filledhalf their journals, than could possibly be compensated by the poortemporary supply which they afforded. It seemed as if those who adoptedsuch projects were wholly ignorant of their circumstances, or whollyunequal to their necessities. Whatever virtue may be in these devices, it is obvious that neither the patriotic gifts nor the patrioticcontribution can ever be resorted to again. The resources of publicfolly are soon exhausted. The whole, indeed, of their scheme of revenueis to make, by any artifice, an appearance of a full reservoir for thehour, whilst at the same time they cut off the springs and livingfountains of perennial supply. The account not long since furnished byM. Necker was meant, without question, to be favorable. He gives aflattering view of the means of getting through the year; but heexpresses, as it is natural he should, some apprehension for that whichwas to succeed. On this last prognostic, instead of entering into thegrounds of this apprehension, in order, by a proper foresight, toprevent the prognosticated evil, M. Necker receives a sort of friendlyreprimand from the President of the Assembly. 

As to their other schemes of taxation, it is impossible to say anythingof them with certainty, because they have not yet had their operation;but nobody is so sanguine as to imagine they will fill up anyperceptible part of the wide gaping breach which their incapacity hasmade in their revenues. At present the state of their treasury sinksevery day more and more in cash, and swells more and more in fictitiousrepresentation. When so little within or without is now found but paper, the representative not of opulence, but of want, the creature not ofcredit, but of power, they imagine that our flourishing state in Englandis owing to that bank-paper, and not the bank-paper to the flourishingcondition of our commerce, to the solidity of our credit, and to thetotal exclusion of all idea of power from any part of the transaction. They forget that in England not one shilling of paper money of anydescription is received but of choice, --that the whole has had itsorigin in cash actually deposited, --and that it is convertible atpleasure, in an instant, and without the smallest loss, into cash again. Our paper is of value in commerce, because in law it is of none. It ispowerful on 'Change, because in Westminster Hall it is impotent. Inpayment of a debt of twenty shillings a creditor may refuse all thepaper of the Bank of England. Nor is there amongst us a single publicsecurity, of any quality or nature whatsoever, that is enforced byauthority. In fact, it might be easily shown that our paper wealth, instead of lessening the real coin, has a tendency to increaseit, --instead of being a substitute for money, it only facilitates itsentry, its exit, and its circulation, --that it is the symbol ofprosperity, and not the badge of distress. Never was a scarcity of cashand an exuberance of paper a subject of complaint in this nation. 

Well! but a lessening of prodigal expenses, and the economy which hasbeen introduced by the virtuous and sapient Assembly, make amends forthe losses sustained in the receipt of revenue. In this at least theyhave fulfilled the duty of a financier. --Have those who say so looked atthe expenses of the National Assembly itself? of the municipalities? ofthe city of Paris? of the increased pay of the two armies? of the newpolice? of the new judicatures? Have they even carefully compared thepresent pension-list with the former? These politicians have been cruel, not economical. Comparing the expenses of the former prodigal governmentand its relation to the then revenues with the expenses of this newsystem as opposed to the state of its new treasury, I believe thepresent will be found beyond all comparison more chargeable. [131]

It remains only to consider the proofs of financial ability furnishedby the present French managers when they are to raise supplies oncredit. Here I am a little at a stand; for credit, properly speaking, they have none. The credit of the ancient government was not, indeed, the best; but they could always, on some terms, command money, not onlyat home, but from most of the countries of Europe where a surpluscapital was accumulated; and the credit of that government was improvingdaily. The establishment of a system of liberty would of course besupposed to give it new strength: and so it would actually have done, ifa system of liberty had been established. What offers has theirgovernment of pretended liberty had from Holland, from Hamburg, fromSwitzerland, from Genoa, from England, for a dealing in their paper? Whyshould these nations of commerce and economy enter into any pecuniarydealings with a people who attempt to reverse the very nature ofthings, --amongst whom they see the debtor prescribing at the point ofthe bayonet the medium of his solvency to the creditor, discharging oneof his engagements with another, turning his very penury into hisresource, and paying his interest with his rags?

Their fanatical confidence in the omnipotence of Church plunder hasinduced these philosophers to overlook all care of the public estate, just as the dream of the philosopher's stone induces dupes, under themore plausible delusion of the hermetic art, to neglect all rationalmeans of improving their fortunes. With these philosophic financiers, this universal medicine made of Church mummy is to cure all the evils ofthe state. These gentlemen perhaps do not believe a great deal in themiracles of piety; but it cannot be questioned that they have anundoubting faith in the prodigies of sacrilege. Is there a debt whichpresses them? Issue _assignats_. Are compensations to be made or amaintenance decreed to those whom they have robbed of their freehold intheir office or expelled from their profession? _Assignats_. Is a fleetto be fitted out? _Assignats_. If sixteen millions sterling of these_assignats_ forced on the people leave the wants of the state as urgentas ever, Issue, says one, thirty millions sterling of _assignats_, --saysanother, Issue fourscore millions more of _assignats_. The onlydifference among their financial factions is on the greater or thelesser quantity of _assignats_ to be imposed on the public sufferance. They are all professors of _assignats_. Even those whose natural goodsense and knowledge of commerce, not obliterated by philosophy, furnishdecisive arguments against this delusion, conclude their arguments byproposing the emission of _assignats_. I suppose they must talk of_assignats_, as no other language would be understood. All experience oftheir inefficacy does not in the least discourage them. Are the old_assignats_ depreciated at market? What is the remedy? Issue new_assignats_. --_Mais si maladia opiniatria non vult se garire, quid illifacere? Assignare; postea assignare; ensuita assignare_. The word is atrifle altered. The Latin of your present doctors may be better thanthat of your old comedy; their wisdom and the variety of their resourcesare the same. They have not more notes in their song than the cuckoo;though, far from the softness of that harbinger of summer and plenty, their voice is as harsh and as ominous as that of the raven. 

Who but the most desperate adventurers in philosophy and finance couldat all have thought of destroying the settled revenue of the state, thesole security for the public credit, in the hope of rebuilding it withthe materials of confiscated property? If, however, an excessive zealfor the state should have led a pious and venerable prelate (byanticipation a father of the Church[132]) to pillage his own order, and, for the good of the Church and people, to take upon himself the place ofgrand financier of confiscation and comptroller-general of sacrilege, heand his coadjutors were, in my opinion, bound to show, by theirsubsequent conduct, that they knew something of the office they assumed. When they had resolved to appropriate to the _fisc_ a certain portion ofthe landed property of their conquered country, it was their business torender their bank a real fund of credit, --as far as such a bank wascapable of becoming so. 

To establish a current circulating credit upon any _land-bank_, underany circumstances whatsoever, has hitherto proved difficult at the veryleast. The attempt has commonly ended in bankruptcy. But when theAssembly were led, through a contempt of moral, to a defiance ofeconomical principles, it might at least have been expected that nothingwould be omitted on their part to lessen this difficulty, to preventany aggravation of this bankruptcy. It might be expected, that, torender your land-bank tolerable, every means would be adopted that coulddisplay openness and candor in the statement of the security, everythingwhich could aid the recovery of the demand. To take things in their mostfavorable point of view, your condition was that of a man of a largelanded estate which he wished to dispose of for the discharge of a debtand the supply of certain services. Not being able instantly to sell, you wished to mortgage. What would a man of fair intentions and acommonly clear understanding do in such circumstances? Ought he notfirst to ascertain the gross value of the estate, the charges of itsmanagement and disposition, the incumbrances perpetual and temporary ofall kinds that affect it, --then, striking a net surplus, to calculatethe just value of the security? When that surplus (the only security tothe creditor) had been clearly ascertained, and properly vested in thehands of trustees, then he would indicate the parcels to be sold, andthe time and conditions of sale; after this he would admit the publiccreditor, if he chose it, to subscribe his stock into this new fund, --orhe might receive proposals for an _assignat_ from those who wouldadvance money to purchase this species of security. This would be toproceed like men of business, methodically and rationally, and on theonly principles of public and private credit that have an existence. Thedealer would then know exactly what he purchased; and the only doubtwhich could hang upon his mind would be the dread of the resumption ofthe spoil, which one day might be made (perhaps with an addition ofpunishment) from the sacrilegious gripe of those execrable wretches whocould become purchasers at the auction of their innocentfellow-citizens. 

An open, and exact statement of the clear value of the property, and ofthe time, the circumstances, and the place of sale, were all necessary, to efface as much as possible the stigma that has hitherto been brandedon every kind of land-bank. It became necessary on anotherprinciple, --that is, on account of a pledge of faith previously given onthat subject, that their future fidelity in a slippery concern might beestablished by their adherence to their first engagement. When they hadfinally determined on a state resource from Church booty, they came, onthe fourteenth of April, 1790, to a solemn resolution on the subject, and pledged themselves to their country, "that, in the statement of thepublic charges for each year, there should be brought to account a sumsufficient for defraying the expenses of the R. C. A. Religion, thesupport of the ministers at the altars, the relief of the poor, thepensions to the ecclesiastics, secular as well as regular, of the oneand of the other sex, _in order that the estates and goods which are atthe disposal of the nation may be disengaged of all charges, andemployed by the representatives, or the legislative body, to the greatand most pressing exigencies of the state. "_ They further engaged, onthe same day, that the sum necessary for the year 1791 should beforthwith determined. 

In this resolution they admit it their duty to show distinctly theexpense of the above objects, which, by other resolutions, they hadbefore engaged should be first in the order of provision. They admitthat they ought to show the estate clear and disengaged of all charges, and that they should show it immediately. Have they done thisimmediately, or at any time? Have they ever furnished a rent-roll of theimmovable estate, or given in an inventory of the movable effects, whichthey confiscate to their assignats? In what manner they can fulfil theirengagements of holding out to public service "an estate disengaged ofall charges, " without authenticating the value of the estate or thequantum of the charges, I leave it to their English admirers to explain. Instantly upon this assurance, and previously to any one step towardsmaking it good, they issue, on the credit of so handsome a declaration, sixteen millions sterling of their paper. This was manly. Who, afterthis masterly stroke, can doubt of their abilities in finance?--Butthen, before any other emission of these financial _indulgences_, theytook care at least to make good their original promise. --If suchestimate, either of the value of the estate or the amount of theincumbrances, has been made, it has escaped me. I never heard of it. 

At length they have spoken out, and they have made a full discovery oftheir abominable fraud in holding out the Church lands as a security forany debts or any service whatsoever. They rob only to enable them tocheat; but in a very short time they defeat the ends both of the robberyand the fraud, by making out accounts for other purposes, which blow uptheir whole apparatus of force and of deception. I am obliged to M. DeCalonne for his reference to the document which proves thisextraordinary fact: it had by some means escaped me. Indeed, it was notnecessary to make out my assertion as to the breach of faith on thedeclaration of the fourteenth of April, 1790. By a report of theircommittee it now appears that the charge of keeping up the reducedecclesiastical establishments, and other expenses attendant on religion, and maintaining the religious of both sexes, retained or pensioned, andthe other concomitant expenses of the same nature, which they havebrought upon themselves by this convulsion in property, exceeds theincome of the estates acquired by it in the enormous sum of two millionssterling annually, --besides a debt of seven millions and upwards. Theseare the calculating powers of imposture! This is the finance ofphilosophy! This is the result of all the delusions held out to engage amiserable people in rebellion, murder, and sacrilege, and to make themprompt and zealous instruments in the ruin of their country! Never did astate, in any case, enrich itself by the confiscations of the citizens. This new experiment has succeeded like all the rest. Every honest mind, every true lover of liberty and humanity, must rejoice to find thatinjustice is not always good policy, nor rapine the high-road to riches. I subjoin with pleasure, in a note, the able and spirited observationsof M. De Calonne on this subject. [133]

In order to persuade the world of the bottomless resource ofecclesiastical confiscation, the Assembly have proceeded to otherconfiscations of estates in offices, which could not be done with anycommon color without being compensated out of this grand confiscation oflanded property. They have thrown upon this fund, which was to show asurplus disengaged of all charges, a new charge, namely, thecompensation to the whole body of the disbanded judicature, and of allsuppressed offices and estates: a charge which I cannot ascertain, butwhich unquestionably amounts to many French millions. Another of the newcharges is an annuity of four hundred and eighty thousand poundssterling, to be paid (if they choose to keep faith) by daily payments, for the interest of the first assignats. Have they ever given themselvesthe trouble to state fairly the expense of the management of the Churchlands in the hands of the municipalities, to whose care, skill, anddiligence, and that of their legion of unknown under-agents, they havechosen to commit the charge of the forfeited estates, and theconsequence of which had been so ably pointed out by the Bishop ofNancy?

But it is unnecessary to dwell on these obvious heads of incumbrance. Have they made out any clear state of the grand incumbrance of all, Imean the whole of the general and municipal establishments of all sorts, and compared it with the regular income by revenue? Every deficiency inthese becomes a charge on the confiscated estate, before the creditorcan plant his cabbages on an acre of Church property. There is no otherprop than this confiscation to keep the whole state from tumbling to theground. In this situation they have purposely covered all, that theyought industriously to have cleared, with a thick fog; and then, blindfold themselves, like bulls that shut their eyes when they push, they drive, by the point of the bayonets, their slaves, blindfoldedindeed no worse than their lords, to take their fictions for currencies, and to swallow down paper pills by thirty-four millions sterling at adose. Then they proudly lay in their claim to a future credit, onfailure of all their past engagements, and at a time when (if in such amatter anything can be clear) it is clear that the surplus estates willnever answer even the first of their mortgages, --I mean that of the fourhundred millions (or sixteen millions sterling) of assignats. In allthis procedure I can discern neither the solid sense of plain dealingnor the subtle dexterity of ingenious fraud. The objections within theAssembly to pulling up the flood-gates for this inundation of fraud areunanswered; but they are thoroughly refuted by an hundred thousandfinanciers in the street. These are the numbers by which the metaphysicarithmeticians compute. These are the grand calculations on which aphilosophical public credit is founded in France. They cannot raisesupplies; but they can raise mobs. Let them rejoice in the applauses ofthe club at Dundee for their wisdom and patriotism in having thusapplied the plunder of the citizens to the service of the state. I hearof no address upon this subject from the directors of the Bank ofEngland, --though their approbation would be of a _little_ more weight inthe scale of credit than that of the club at Dundee. But to do justiceto the club, I believe the gentlemen who compose it to be wiser thanthey appear, --that they will be less liberal of their money than oftheir addresses, and that they would not give a dog's ear of their mostrumpled and ragged Scotch paper for twenty of your fairest assignats. 

Early in this year the Assembly issued paper to the amount of sixteenmillions sterling. What must have been the state into which the Assemblyhas brought your affairs, that the relief afforded by so vast a supplyhas been hardly perceptible? This paper also felt an almost immediatedepreciation of five per cent, which in a little time came to aboutseven. The effect of these assignats on the receipt of the revenue isremarkable. M. Necker found that the collectors of the revenue, whoreceived in coin, paid the treasury in assignats. The collectors madeseven per cent by thus receiving in money, and accounting in depreciatedpaper. It was not very difficult to foresee that this must beinevitable. It was, however, not the less embarrassing. M. Necker wasobliged (I believe, for a considerable part, in the market of London) tobuy gold and silver for the mint, which amounted to about twelvethousand pounds above the value of the commodity gained. That ministerwas of opinion, that, whatever their secret nutritive virtue might be, the state could not live upon assignats alone, --that some real silverwas necessary, particularly for the satisfaction of those who, havingiron in their hands, were not likely to distinguish themselves forpatience, when they should perceive, that, whilst an increase of pay washeld out to them in real money, it was again to be fraudulently drawnback by depreciated paper. The minister, in this very natural distress, applied to the Assembly, that they should order the collectors to pay inspecie what in specie they had received. It could not escape him, that, if the Treasury paid three per cent for the use of a currency whichshould be returned seven per cent worse than the minister issued it, such a dealing could not very greatly tend to enrich the public. TheAssembly took no notice of his recommendation. They were in thisdilemma: If they continued to receive the assignats, cash must become analien to their Treasury; if the Treasury should refuse those paper_amulets_, or should discountenance them in any degree, they mustdestroy the credit of their sole resource. They seem, then, to have madetheir option, and to have given some sort of credit to their paper bytaking it themselves; at the same time, in their speeches, they made asort of swaggering declaration, something, I rather think, abovelegislative competence, --that is, that there is no difference in valuebetween metallic money and their assignats. This was a good, stout, proof article of faith, pronounced under an anathema by the venerablefathers of this philosophic synod. _Credat_ who will, --certainly not_Judæus Apella_. 

A noble indignation rises in the minds of your popular leaders, onhearing the magic-lantern in their show of finance compared to thefraudulent exhibitions of Mr. Law. They cannot bear to hear the sandsof his Mississippi compared with the rock of the Church, on which theybuild their system. Pray let them suppress this glorious spirit, untilthey show to the world what piece of solid ground there is for theirassignats, which they have not preoccupied by other charges. They doinjustice to that great mother fraud, to compare it with theirdegenerate imitation. It is not true that Law built solely on aspeculation concerning the Mississippi. He added the East India trade;he added the African trade; he added the farms of all the farmed revenueof France. All these together unquestionably could not support thestructure which the public enthusiasm, not he, chose to build upon thesebases. But these were, however, in comparison, generous delusions. Theysupposed, and they aimed at, an increase of the commerce of France. Theyopened to it the whole range of the two hemispheres. They did not thinkof feeding France from its own substance. A grand imagination found inthis flight of commerce something to captivate. It was wherewithal todazzle the eye of an eagle. It was not made to entice the smell of amole, nuzzling and burying himself in his mother earth, as yours is. Menwere not then quite shrunk from their natural dimensions by a degradingand sordid philosophy, and fitted for low and vulgar deceptions. Aboveall, remember, that, in imposing on the imagination, the then managersof the system made a compliment to the freedom of men. In their fraudthere was no mixture of force. This was reserved to our time, to quenchthe little glimmerings of reason which might break in upon the soliddarkness of this enlightened age. 

On recollection, I have said nothing of a scheme of finance which may beurged in favor of the abilities of these gentlemen, and which has beenintroduced with great pomp, though not yet finally adopted in theNational Assembly. It comes with something solid in aid of the credit ofthe paper circulation; and much has been said of its utility and itselegance. I mean the project for coining into money the bells of thesuppressed churches. This is their alchemy. There are some follies whichbaffle argument, which go beyond ridicule, and which excite no feelingin us but disgust; and therefore I say no more upon it. 

It is as little worth remarking any farther upon all their drawing andre-drawing, on their circulation for putting off the evil day, on theplay between the Treasury and the _Caisse d'Escompte_, and on all theseold, exploded contrivances of mercantile fraud, now exalted into policyof state. The revenue will not be trifled with. The prattling about therights of men will not be accepted in payment of a biscuit or a pound ofgunpowder. Here, then, the metaphysicians descend from their airyspeculations, and faithfully follow examples. What examples? Theexamples of bankrupts. But defeated, baffled, disgraced, when theirbreath, their strength, their inventions, their fancies desert them, their confidence still maintains its ground. In the manifest failure oftheir abilities, they take credit for their benevolence. When therevenue disappears in their hands, they have the presumption, in some oftheir late proceedings, to value _themselves_ on the relief given to thepeople. They did not relieve the people. If they entertained suchintentions, why did they order the obnoxious taxes to be paid? Thepeople relieved themselves, in spite of the Assembly. 

But waiving all discussion on the parties who may claim the merit ofthis fallacious relief, has there been, in effect, any relief to thepeople in any form? M. Bailly, one of the grand agents of papercirculation, lets you into the nature of this relief. His speech to theNational Assembly contained a high and labored panegyric on theinhabitants of Paris, for the constancy and unbroken resolution withwhich they have borne their distress and misery. A fine picture ofpublic felicity! What! great courage and unconquerable firmness of mindto endure benefits and sustain redress? One would think, from the speechof this learned lord mayor, that the Parisians, for this twelvemonthpast, had been suffering the straits of some dreadful blockade, --thatHenry the Fourth had been stopping up the avenues to their supply, andSully thundering with his ordnance at the gates of Paris, --when inreality they are besieged by no other enemies than their own madness andfolly, their own credulity and perverseness. But M. Bailly will soonerthaw the eternal ice of his Atlantic regions than restore the centralheat to Paris, whilst it remains "smitten with the cold, dry, petrificmace" of a false and unfeeling philosophy. Some time after this speech, that is, on the thirteenth of last August, the same magistrate, givingan account of his government at the bar of the same Assembly, expresseshimself as follows:--"In the month of July, 1789, " (the period ofeverlasting commemoration, ) "the finances of the city of Paris were_yet_ in good order; the expenditure was counterbalanced by the receipt, and she had at that time a million [forty thousand pounds sterling] inbank. The expenses which she has been constrained to incur, _subsequentto the Revolution_, amount to 2, 500, 000 livres. From these expenses, andthe great falling off in the product of the _free gifts_, not only amomentary, but a _total_, want of money has taken place. " This is theParis upon whose nourishment, in the course of the last year, suchimmense sums, drawn from the vitals of all France, have been expended. As long as Paris stands in the place of ancient Rome, so long she willbe maintained by the subject provinces. It is an evil inevitablyattendant on the dominion of sovereign democratic republics. As ithappened in Rome, it may survive that republican domination which gaverise to it. In that case despotism itself must submit to the vices ofpopularity. Rome, under her emperors, united the evils of both systems;and this unnatural combination was one great cause of her ruin. 

To tell the people that they are relieved by the dilapidation of theirpublic estate is a cruel and insolent imposition. Statesmen, before theyvalued themselves on the relief given to the people by the destructionof their revenue, ought first to have carefully attended to the solutionof this problem:--Whether it be more advantageous to the people to payconsiderably and to gain in proportion, or to gain little or nothing andto be disburdened of all contribution? My mind is made up to decide infavor of the first proposition. Experience is with me, and, I believe, the best opinions also. To keep a balance between the power ofacquisition on the part of the subject and the demands he is to answeron the part of the state is the fundamental part of the skill of a truepolitician. The means of acquisition are prior in time and inarrangement. Good order is the foundation of all good things. To beenabled to acquire, the people, without being servile, must be tractableand obedient. The magistrate must have his reverence, the laws theirauthority. The body of the people must not find the principles ofnatural subordination by art rooted out of their minds. They mustrespect that property of which they cannot partake. They must labor toobtain what by labor can be obtained; and when they find, as theycommonly do, the success disproportioned to the endeavor, they must betaught their consolation in the final proportions of eternal justice. Ofthis consolation whoever deprives them deadens their industry, andstrikes at the root of all acquisition as of all conservation. He thatdoes this is the cruel oppressor, the merciless enemy of the poor andwretched; at the same time that by his wicked speculations he exposesthe fruits of successful industry and the accumulations of fortune tothe plunder of the negligent, the disappointed, and the unprosperous. 

Too many of the financiers by profession are apt to see nothing inrevenue but banks, and circulations, and annuities on lives, andtontines, and perpetual rents, and all the small wares of the shop. In asettled order of the state, these things are not to be slighted, nor isthe skill in them to be held of trivial estimation. They are good, butthen only good when they assume the effects of that settled order, andare built upon it. But when men think that these beggarly contrivancesmay supply a resource for the evils which result from breaking up thefoundations of public order, and from causing or suffering theprinciples of property to be subverted, they will, in the ruin of theircountry, leave a melancholy and lasting monument of the effect ofpreposterous politics, and presumptuous, short-sighted, narrow-mindedwisdom. 

The effects of the incapacity shown by the popular leaders in all thegreat members of the commonwealth are to be covered with the"all-atoning name" of Liberty. In some people I see great liberty, indeed; in many, if not in the most, an oppressive, degrading servitude. But what is liberty without wisdom and without virtue? It is thegreatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint. Those who know what virtuous liberty iscannot bear to see it disgraced by incapable heads, on account of theirhaving high-sounding words in their mouths. Grand, swelling sentimentsof liberty I am sure I do not despise. They warm the heart; they enlargeand liberalize our minds; they animate our courage in a time ofconflict. Old as I am, I read the fine raptures of Lucan and Corneillewith pleasure. Neither do I wholly condemn the little arts and devicesof popularity. They facilitate the carrying of many points of moment;they keep the people together; they refresh the mind in its exertions;and they diffuse occasional gayety over the severe brow of moralfreedom. Every politician ought to sacrifice to the Graces, and to joincompliance with reason. But in such an undertaking as that in France allthese subsidiary sentiments and artifices are of little avail. To make agovernment requires no great prudence. Settle the seat of power, teachobedience, and the work is done. To give freedom is still more easy. Itis not necessary to guide; it only requires to let go the rein. But toform a _free government_, that is, to temper together these oppositeelements of liberty and restraint in one consistent work, requires muchthought, deep reflection, a sagacious, powerful, and combining mind. This I do not find in those who take the lead in the National Assembly. Perhaps they are not so miserably deficient as they appear. I ratherbelieve it. It would put them below the common level of humanunderstanding. But when the leaders choose to make themselves bidders atan auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of thestate, will be of no service. They will become flatterers instead oflegislators, --the instruments, not the guides of the people. If any ofthem should happen to propose a scheme of liberty soberly limited, anddefined with proper qualifications, he will be immediately outbid by hiscompetitors, who will produce something more splendidly popular. Suspicions will be raised of his fidelity to his cause. Moderation willbe stigmatized as the virtue of cowards, and compromise as the prudenceof traitors, --until, in hopes of preserving the credit which may enablehim to temper and moderate on some occasions, the popular leader isobliged to become active in propagating doctrines and establishingpowers that will afterwards defeat any sober purpose at which heultimately might have aimed. 

 * * * * *

But am I so unreasonable as to see nothing at all that deservescommendation in the indefatigable labors of this Assembly? I do notdeny, that, among an infinite number of acts of violence and folly, somegood may have been done. They who destroy everything certainly willremove some grievance. They who make everything new have a chance thatthey may establish something beneficial. To give them credit for whatthey have done in virtue of the authority they have usurped, or toexcuse them in the crimes by which that authority has been acquired, itmust appear that the same things could not have been accomplishedwithout producing such a revolution. Most assuredly they might; becausealmost every one of the regulations made by them, which is not veryequivocal, was either in the cession of the king, voluntarily made atthe meeting of the States, or in the concurrent instructions to theorders. Some usages have been abolished on just grounds; but they weresuch, that, if they had stood as they were to all eternity, they wouldlittle detract from the happiness and prosperity of any state. Theimprovements of the National Assembly are superficial, their errorsfundamental. 

Whatever they are, I wish my countrymen rather to recommend to ourneighbors the example of the British Constitution than to take modelsfrom them for the improvement of our own. In the former they have got aninvaluable treasure. They are not, I think, without some causes ofapprehension and complaint; but these they do not owe to theirConstitution, but to their own conduct. I think our happy situationowing to our Constitution, --but owing to the whole of it, and not to anypart singly, --owing in a great measure to what we have left standing inour several reviews and reformations, as well as to what we have alteredor superadded. Our people will find employment enough for a trulypatriotic, free, and independent spirit, in guarding what they possessfrom violation. I would not exclude alteration neither; but even when Ichanged, it should be to preserve. I should be led to my remedy by agreat grievance. In what I did, I should follow the example of ourancestors. I would make the reparation as nearly as possible in thestyle of the building. A politic caution, a guarded circumspection, amoral rather than a complexional timidity, were among the rulingprinciples of our forefathers in their most decided conduct. Not beingilluminated with the light of which the gentlemen of France tell us theyhave got so abundant a share, they acted under a strong impression ofthe ignorance and fallibility of mankind. He that had made them thusfallible rewarded them for having in their conduct attended to theirnature. Let us imitate their caution, if we wish to deserve theirfortune or to retain their bequests. Let us add, if we please, but letus preserve what they have left; and standing on the firm ground of theBritish Constitution, let us be satisfied to admire, rather than attemptto follow in their desperate flights, the aëronauts of France. 

I have told you candidly my sentiments. I think they are not likely toalter yours. I do not know that they ought. You are young; you cannotguide, but must follow, the fortune of your country. But hereafter theymay be of some use to you, in some future form which your commonwealthmay take. In the present it can hardly remain; but before its finalsettlement, it may be obliged to pass, as one of our poets says, "through great varieties of untried being, " and in all itstransmigrations to be purified by fire and blood. 

I have little to recommend my opinions but long observation and muchimpartiality. They come from one who has been no tool of power, noflatterer of greatness, and who in his last acts does not wish to beliethe tenor of his life. They come from one almost the whole of whosepublic exertion has been a struggle for the liberty of others, --from onein whose breast no anger durable or vehement has ever been kindled butby what he considered as tyranny, and who snatches from his share in theendeavors which are used by good men to discredit opulent oppression thehours he has employed on your affairs, and who in so doing persuadeshimself he has not departed from his usual office. They come from onewho desires honors, distinctions, and emoluments but little, and whoexpects them not at all, --who has no contempt for fame, and no fear ofobloquy, --who shuns contention, though he will hazard an opinion; fromone who wishes to preserve consistency, but who would preserveconsistency 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 byoverloading it upon one side, is desirous of carrying the small weightof his reasons to that which may preserve its equipoise. 

FOOTNOTES:

[77] Ps. Cxlix. 

[78] Discourse on the Love of our Country, Nov. 4, 1789, by Dr. RichardPrice, 3d edition, p. 17 and 18. 

[79] "Those who dislike that mode of worship which is prescribed bypublic authority ought, if they can find _no_ worship _out_ of theChurch which they approve, _to set up a separate worship forthemselves_; and by doing this, and giving an example of a rational andmanly worship, men of _weight_ from their _rank_ and literature may dothe greatest service to society and the world. "--P. 18, Dr. Price'sSermon. 

[80] P. 34, Discourse on the Love of our Country, by Dr. Price. 

[81] 1st Mary, sess. 3, ch. 1. 

[82] "That King James the Second, having endeavored _to subvert theConstitution_ of the kingdom, by breaking the _original contract_between king and people, and, by the advice of Jesuits and other wickedpersons, having violated the _fundamental_ laws, and _having withdrawnhimself out of the kingdom_, hath _abdicated_ the government, and thethrone is thereby _vacant_. "

[83] P. 23, 23, 24. 

[84] See Blackstone's Magna Charta, printed at Oxford, 1759. 

[85] 1 W. And M. 

[86] Ecclesiasticus, chap, xxxviii. Ver. 24, 25. "The wisdom of alearned man cometh by opportunity of leisure: and he that hath littlebusiness shall become wise. How can he get wisdom that holdeth theplough, and that glorieth in the goad; that driveth oxen, and isoccupied in their labors, and whose talk is of bullocks?"

Ver. 27. "So every carpenter and workmaster, that laboreth night andday, " &c. 

Ver. 33. "They shall not be sought for in public counsel, nor sit highin the congregation: they shall not sit on the judge's seat, norunderstand the sentence of judgment: they cannot declare justice andjudgment, and they shall not be found where parables are spoken. "

Ver. 34. "But they will maintain the state of the world. "

I do not determine whether this book be canonical, as the GallicanChurch (till lately) has considered it, or apocryphal, as here it istaken. I am sure it contains a great deal of sense and truth. 

[87] Discourse on the Love of our Country, 3rd edit p. 39. 

[88] Another of these reverend gentlemen, who was witness to some of thespectacles which Paris has lately exhibited, expresses himselfthus:--"_A king dragged in submissive triumph by his conqueringsubjects_ is one of those appearances of grandeur which seldom rise inthe prospect of human affairs, and which, during the remainder of mylife, I shall think of with wonder and gratification. " These gentlemenagree marvellously in their feelings. 

[89] State Trials, Vol. II. P. 360, 363. 

[90] 6th of October, 1789. 

[91] "Tous les Évêques à la lanterne!"

[92] It is proper here to refer to a letter written upon this subject byan eyewitness. That eyewitness was one of the most honest, intelligent, and eloquent members of the National Assembly, one of the most activeand zealous reformers of the state. He was obliged to secede from theAssembly; and he afterwards became a voluntary exile, on account of thehorrors of this pious triumph, and the dispositions of men, who, profiting of crimes, if not causing them, have taken the lead in publicaffairs. 

_Extract of M. De Lally Tollendal's Second Letter to a Friend_. 

"Parlons du parti que j'ai pris; il est bien justifé dans maconscience. --Ni cette ville coupable, ni cette assemblée plus coupableencore, ne méritoient que je me justifie; mais j'ai à cœur que vous, etles personnes qui pensent comme vous, ne me condamnent pas. --Ma santé, je vous jure, me rendoit mes fonctions impossibles; mais même en lesmettant de côté il a été au-dessus de mes forces de supporter pluslongtems l'horreur que me causoit ce sang, --ces têtes, --cette reine_presque egorgée_, --ce roi, amené _esclave_, entrant à Paris au milieude ses assassins, et précédé des têtes de ses malheureux gardes, --cesperfides janissaires, ces assassins, ces femmes cannibales, --ce cri deTOUS LES ÉVÊQUES À LA LANTERNE, dans le moment où le roi entre sacapitale avec deux évêques de son conseil dans sa voiture, --un _coup defusil_, que j'ai vu tirer dans un _des carrosses de la reine_, --M. Bailly appellant cela _un beau jour_, --l'assemblée ayant déclaréfroidement le matin, qu'il n'étoit pas de sa dignité d'aller touteentière environner le roi, --M. Mirabeau disant impunément dans cetteassemblée, que le vaisseau de l'état, loin d'être arrêté dans sa course, s'élanceroit avec plus de rapidité que jamais vers sa régénération, --M. Barnave, riant avec lui, quand des flots de sang couloient autour denous, --le vertueux Mounier[A] échappant par miracle à vingt assassins, qui avoient voulu faire de sa tête un trophée de plus: Voilà ce qui mefit jurer de ne plus mettre le pied _dans cette caverne d'Antropophages_[The National Assembly], où je n'avois plus de force d'élever la voix, où depuis six semaines je l'avois élevée en vain. 

"Moi, Mounier, et tous les honnêtes gens, ont pensé que le derniereffort à faire pour le bien étoit d'en sortir. Aucune idée de crainte nes'est approchée de moi. Je rougirois de m'en défendre. J'avois encorereçû sur la route de la part de ce peuple, moins coupable que ceux quil'ont enivré de fureur, des acclamations, et des applaudissements, dontd'autres auroient été flattés, et qui m'ont fait frémir. C'est àl'indignation, c'est à l'horreur, c'est aux convulsions physiques, quele seul aspect du sang me fait éprouver que j'ai cédé. On brave uneseule mort; on la brave plusieurs fois, quand elle peut être utile. Maisaucune puissance sous le ciel, mais aucune opinion publique ou privéen'ont le droit de me condamner à souffrir inutilement mille supplicespar minute, et à périr de désespoir, de rage, au milieu des _triomphes_, du crime que je n'ai pu arrêter. Ils me proscriront, ils confisquerontmes biens. Je labourerai la terre, et je ne les verrai plus. Voilà majustification. Vous pourrez la lire, la montrer, la laisser copier; tantpis pour ceux qui ne la comprendront pas; ce ne sera alors moi quiauroit eu tort de la leur donner. "

This military man had not so good nerves as the peaceable gentlemen ofthe Old Jewry. --See Mons. Mounier's narrative of these transactions: aman also of honor and virtue and talents, and therefore a fugitive. 

[A] N. B. M. Mounier was then speaker of the National Assembly. He hassince been obliged to live in exile, though one of the firmest assertorsof liberty. 

[93] See the fate of Bailly and Condorcet, supposed to be hereparticularly alluded to. Compare the circumstances of the trial andexecution of the former with this prediction. 

[94] The English are, I conceive, misrepresented in a letter publishedin one of the papers, by a gentleman thought to be a Dissentingminister. When writing to Dr. Price of the spirit which prevails atParis, he says, --"The spirit of the people in this place has abolishedall the proud _distinctions_ which the _king_ and _nobles_ had usurpedin their minds: whether they talk of _the king, the noble, or thepriest_, their whole language is that of the most _enlightened andliberal amongst the English_. " If this gentleman means to confine theterms _enlightened and liberal_ to one set of men in England, it may betrue. It is not generally so. 

[95] Sit igitur hoc ab initio persuasum civibus, dominos esse omniumrerum ac moderatores deos; eaque, quæ gerantur, eorum geri vi, ditione, ac numine; eosdemque optime de genere hominum mereri; et qualis quisquesit, quid agat, quid in se admittat, qua mente, qua pietate colatreligiones intueri: piorum et impiorum habere rationem. His enim rebusimbutæ mentes haud sane abhorrebunt ab utili et a vera sententia. --Cic. De Legibus, l. 2. 

[96] Quicquid multis peccatur inultum. 

[97] This (down to the end of the first sentence in the next paragraph)and some other parts, here and there, were inserted, on his reading themanuscript, by my lost son. 

[98] I do not choose to shock the feeling of the moral reader with anyquotation of their vulgar, base, and profane language. 

[99] Their connection with Turgot and almost all the people of thefinance. 

[100] All have been confiscated in their turn. 

[101] Not his brother, nor any near relation; but this mistake does notaffect the argument. 

[102] The rest of the passage is this:--

 "Who, having spent the treasures of his crown, Condemns their luxury to feed his own. And yet this act, to varnish o'er the shame Of sacrilege, must bear Devotion's name. No crime so bold, but would be understood A Real, or at least a seeming good. Who fears not to do ill, yet fears the name, And free from conscience, is a slave to fame. Thus he the Church at once protects and spoils: But princes' swords are sharper than their styles. And thus to th' ages past he makes amends, Their charity destroys, their faith defends. Then did Religion in a lazy cell, In empty, airy contemplations, dwell; And like the block, unmovèd lay: but ours, As much too active, like the stork devours. Is there no temperate region can be known Betwixt their frigid and our torrid zone? Could we not wake from that lethargic dream, But to be restless in a worse extreme? And for that lethargy was there no care, But to be cast into a calenture? Can knowledge have no bound, but must advance So far, to make us wish for ignorance, And rather in the dark to grope our way, Than, led by a false guide, to err by day? Who sees these dismal heaps, but would demand What barbarous invader sack'd the land? But when he hears no Goth, no Turk did bring This desolation, but a Christian king, When nothing but the name of zeal appears 'Twixt our best actions and the worst of theirs, What does he think our sacrilege would spare, When such th' effects of our devotions are?"

 _Cooper's Hill_, by Sir JOHN DENHAM. 

[103] Rapport de Mons. Le Directeur-Général des Finances, fait par Ordredu Roi à Versailles. Mai 5, 1789. 

[104] In the Constitution of Scotland, during the Stuart reigns, acommittee sat for preparing bills; and none could pass, but thosepreviously approved by them. This committee was called Lords ofArticles. 

[105] When I wrote this I quoted from memory, after many years hadelapsed from my reading the passage. A learned friend has found it andit is as follows:--

τὸ ἠ̂θος τὸ αὐτό, καὶ ἄμφω δεσποτικὰ τω̂ν βελτιόνων, καὶ τὰψηφίσματα ὥσπερ ἐκει̂ τὰ ἐπιτάγματα, καὶ ὁ δημαγωγὸς καὶ ὁκόλαξ οἱ αὐτοὶ καὶ ἀνάλογον. καὶ μάλιστα δ' ἑκάτεροι παρ'ἑκατέροις ἰσχύουσιν, οἱ μὲν κόλακες παρὰ τοι̂ς τυράννοις, οἱδὲ δημαγωγοὶ παρὰ τοι̂ς δήμοις τοι̂ς τοιούτοις. 

"The ethical character is the same: both exercise despotism over thebetter class of citizens; and decrees are in the one what ordinances andarrêts are in the other: the demagogue, too, and the court favorite, arenot unfrequently the same identical men, and always bear a closeanalogy; and these have the principal power, each in their respectiveforms of government, favorites with the absolute monarch, and demagogueswith a people such as I have described. "--Arist. Politic. Lib. Iv. Cap. 4. 

[106] De l'Administration des Finances de la France, par Mons. Necker, Vol. I. P. 288. 

[107] De l'Administration des Finances de la France, par M. Necker. 

[108] Vol. III. Chap. 8 and chap. 9. 

[109] The world is obliged to M. De Calonne for the pains he has takento refute the scandalous exaggerations relative to some of the royalexpenses, and to detect the fallacious account given of pensions, forthe wicked purpose of provoking the populace to all sorts of crimes. 

[110] See Gulliver's Travels for the idea of countries governed byphilosophers. 

[111] M. De Calonne states the falling off of the population of Paris asfar more considerable; and it may be so, since the period of M. Necker'scalculation. 

[112]

Travaux de charité pour subvenir au manque de travail à Livres. £ s. D. Paris et dans les provinces 3, 866, 920 161, 121 13 4Destruction de vagabondage et de la mendicité 1, 671, 417 69, 642 7 6Primes pour l'importation de grains 5, 671, 907 235, 329 9 2Dépenses relatives aux subsistances, déduction fait des reconvrements qui out en lieu 39, 871, 790 1, 661, 324 11 8 ----------------------------- Total 51, 082, 034 2, 128, 418 1 8

When I sent this book to the press, I entertained some doubt concerningthe nature and extent of the last article in the above accounts, whichis only under a general head, without any detail. Since then I have seenM. De Calonne's work. I must think it a great loss to me that I had notthat advantage earlier. M. De Calonne thinks this article to be onaccount of general subsistence; but as he is not able to comprehend howso great a loss as upwards of 1, 661, 000_l. _ sterling could be sustainedon the difference between the price and the sale of grain, he seems toattribute this enormous head of charge to secret expenses of theRevolution. I cannot say anything positively on that subject. The readeris capable of judging, by the aggregate of these immense charges, on thestate and condition of France, and the system of public economy adoptedin that nation. These articles of account produced no inquiry ordiscussion in the National Assembly. 

[113] This is on a supposition of the truth of this story; but he wasnot in France at the time. One name serves as well as another. 

[114] Domat. 

[115] Speech of M. Camus, published by order of the National Assembly. 

[116] Whether the following description is strictly true I know not; butit is what the publishers would have pass for true, in order to animateothers. In a letter from Toul, given in one of their papers, is thefollowing passage concerning the people of that district:--"Dans laRévolution actuelle, ils ont résisté à toutes les _séductions dubigotisme, aux persécutions et aux tracasseries_ des ennemis de laRévolution. _Oubliant leurs plus grands intérêts_ pour rendre hommageaux vues d'ordre général qui out déterminé l'Assemblée Nationale, ilsvoient, _sans se plaindre_, supprimer cette foule d'établissemensecclésiastiques par lesquels _ils subsistoient_; et même, en perdantleur siège épiscopal, la seule de toutes ces ressources qui pouvoit, onplutôt _qui devoit, en toute équité_, leur être conservée, condamnés _àla plus effrayante misère_ sans avoir _été ni pu être entendus, ils nemurmurent point_, ils restent fidèles aux principes du plus purpatriotisme; ils sont encore prêts à _verser leur sang_ pour le maintiende la constitution, qui va réduire leur ville _à la plus déplorablenullité_. "--These people are not supposed to have endured thosesufferings and injustices in a struggle for liberty, for the sameaccount states truly that they have been always free; their patience inbeggary and ruin, and their suffering, without remonstrance, the mostflagrant and confessed injustice, if strictly true, can be nothing butthe effect of this dire fanaticism. A great multitude all over France isin the same condition and the same temper. 

[117] See the proceedings of the confederation at Nantes. 

[118] "Si plures sunt ii quibus improbe datum est, quam illi quibusinjuste ademptum est, idcirco plus etiam valent? Non enim numero hæcjudicantur, sed pondere. Quam autem habet æquitatem, ut agrum multisannis, aut etiam sæculis ante possessum, qui nullum habuit habeat, quiautem habuit amittat? Ac, propter hoc injuriæ genus, LacedæmoniiLysandrum Ephorum expulerunt; Agin regem (quod nunquam antea apud eosacciderat) necaverunt; exque eo tempore tantæ discordiæ secutæ sunt, utet tyranni exsisterent, et optimates exterminarentur, et preclarissimeconstituta respublica dilaberetur. Nec vero solum ipsa cecidit, sedetiam reliquam Græciam evertit contagionibus malorum, quæ a Lacedæmoniisprofectæ manarunt latius. "--After speaking of the conduct of the modelof true patriots, Aratus of Sicyon, which was in a very differentspirit, he says, --"Sic par est agere cum civibus; non (ut bis jamvidimus) hastam in foro ponere et bona civium voci subjicere præconis. At ille Græcus (id quod fuit sapientis et præstantis viri) omnibusconsulendum esse putavit: eaque est summa ratio et sapientia boni civis, commoda civium non divellere, sed omnes eadem æquitate continere. "--Cic. Off. 1. 2. 

[119] See two books entitled, "Einige Originalschriften desIlluminatenordens, "--"System und Folgen des Illuminatenordens. " München, 1787. 

[120] A leading member of the Assembly, M. Rabaut de St. Étienne, hasexpressed the principle of all their proceedings as clearly as possible;nothing can be more simple:--"_Tous les établissemens en Francecouronnent le malheur du peuple: pour le rendre heureux, il faut lerenouveler, changer ses idées, changer ses loix, changer ses mœurs, . . . Changer les hommes, changer les choses, changer ses mots, . . . Toutdétruire; oui, tout détruire; puisque tout est à récréer_. "--Thisgentleman was chosen president in an assembly not sitting at_Quinze-Vingt_ or the _Petites Maisons_, and composed of persons givingthemselves out to be rational beings; but neither his ideas, language, or conduct differ in the smallest degree from the discourses, opinions, and actions of those, within and without the Assembly, who direct theoperations of the machine now at work in France. 

[121] The Assembly, in executing the plan of their committee, made somealterations. They have struck out one stage in these gradations; thisremoves a part of the objection; but the main objection, namely, that intheir scheme the first constituent voter has no connection with therepresentative legislator, remains in all its force. There are otheralterations, some possibly for the better, some certainly for the worse:but to the author the merit or demerit of these smaller alterationsappears to be of no moment, where the scheme itself is fundamentallyvicious and absurd. 

[122] "Non, ut olim, universæ legiones deducebantur, cum tribunis, etcenturionibus, et sui cujusque ordinis militibus, ut consensu etcaritate rempublicam efficerent; sed ignoti inter se, diversismanipulis, sine rectore, sine affectibus mutuis, quasi ex alio generemortalium repente in unum collecti, numerus magis quam colonia. "--Tac. Annal. Lib. 14, sect. 27. --All this will be still more applicable to theunconnected, rotatory, biennial national assemblies, in this absurd andsenseless constitution. 

[123] Qualitas, Relatio, Actio, Passio, Ubi, Quando, Situs, Habitus. 

[124] See l'État de la France, p. 363. 

[125] In reality three, to reckon the provincial republicanestablishments. 

[126] For further elucidations upon the subject of all these judicaturesand of the Committee of Research, see M. De Calonne's work. 

[127] "Comme sa Majesté a reconnu, non un système d'associationsparticulières, mais une réunion de volontés de tous les François pour laliberté et la prospérité communes, ainsi pour le maintien de l'ordrepublique, il a pensé qu'il convenoit que chaque régiment prît part à cesfêtes civiques pour multiplier les rapports, et resserrer les liensd'union entre les citoyens et les troupes. "--Lest I should not becredited, I insert the words authorizing the troops to feast with thepopular confederacies. 

[128] This war minister has since quitted the school and resigned hisoffice. 

[129] Courrier François, 30 July, 1790. Assemblée Nationale, Numero 210. 

[130] I see by M. Necker's account, that the national guards of Parishave received, over and above the money levied within their own city, about 145, 000_l. _ sterling out of the public treasure. Whether this bean actual payment for the nine months of their existence, or an estimateof their yearly charge, I do not clearly perceive. It is of no greatimportance, as certainly they may take whatever they please. 

[131] The reader will observe that I have but lightly touched (my plandemanded nothing more) on the condition of the French finances asconnected with the demands upon them. If I had intended to do otherwise, the materials in my hands for such a task are not altogether perfect. Onthis subject I refer the reader to M. De Calonne's work, and thetremendous display that he has made of the havoc and devastation in thepublic estate, and in all the affairs of France, caused by thepresumptuous good intentions of ignorance and incapacity. Such effectsthose causes will always produce. Looking over that account with apretty strict eye, and, with perhaps too much rigor, deductingeverything which may be placed to the account of a financier out ofplace, who might be supposed by his enemies desirous of making the mostof his cause, I believe it will be found that a more salutary lesson ofcaution against the daring spirit of innovators than what has beensupplied at the expense of France never was at any time furnished tomankind. 

[132] La Bruyère of Bossuet. 

[133] "Ce n'est point à l'assemblée entière que je m'adresse ici; je neparle qu'à ceux qui l'égarent, en lui cachant sous des gazes séduisantesle but où ils l'entraînent. C'est à eux que je dis: Votre objet, vousn'en disconviendrez pas, c'est d'ôter tout espoir au clergé, et deconsommer sa ruine; c'est-là, en ne vous soupçonnant d'aucunecombinaison de cupidité, d'aucun regard sur le jeu des effets publics, c'est-là ce qu'on doit croire que vous avez en vue dans la terribleopération que vous proposez; c'est ce qui doit en être le fruit. Mais lepeuple qui vous y intéressez, quel avantage peut-il y trouver? En vousservant sans cesse de lui, que faites-vous pour lui? Rien, absolumentrien; et, au contraire, vous faites ce qui ne conduit qu'à l'accabler denouvelles charges. Vous avez rejeté, à son préjudice, une offre de 400millions, dont l'acceptation pouvoit devenir un moyen de soulagement ensa faveur; et à cette ressource, aussi profitable que légitime, vousavez substitué une injustice ruineuse, qui, de votre propre aveu, chargele trésor public, et par consequent le peuple, d'un surcroît de dépenseannuelle de 50 millions an moins, et d'un remboursement de 150 millions. 

"Malheureux peuple! voilà ce que vous vaut en dernier résultatl'expropriation de l'Église, et la dureté des décrets taxateurs dutraitement des ministres d'une religion bienfaisante; et désormais ilsscront à votre charge: leurs charités soulageoient les pauvres; et vousallez être imposés pour subvenir à leur entretien!"--_De l'État de laFrance, _ p. 81. See also p. 92, and the following pages. 

END OF VOL. III.