LETTER.
My Dear Sir,—I received in due course your two very interesting and judicious letters, which gave me many new lights, and excited me to fresh activity in the important subject they related to. However, from that time I have not been perfectly free from doubt and uneasiness. I used a liberty with those letters, which, perhaps, nothing can thoroughly justify, and which certainly nothing but the delicacy of the crisis, the clearness of my intentions, and your great good-nature can at all excuse. I might conceal this from you; but I think it better to lay the whole matter before you, and submit myself to your mercy,—assuring you, at the same time, that, if you are so kind as to continue your confidence on this, or to renew it upon any other occasion, I shall never be tempted again to make so bold and unauthorized an use of the trust you place in me. I will state to you the history of the business since my last, and then you will see how far I am excusable by the circumstances.
On the 3rd of July I received a letter from the Attorney-General, dated the day before, in which, in a very open and obliging manner, he desires my thoughts of the Irish Toleration Bill, and particularly of the Dissenters' clause. I gave them to him, by the return of the post, at large; but, as the time pressed, I kept no copy of the letter. The general drift was strongly to recommend the whole, and principally to obviate the objections to the part that related to the Dissenters, with regard both to the general propriety and to the temporary policy at this juncture. I took, likewise, a good deal of pains to state the difference which had always subsisted with regard to the treatment of the Protestant Dissenters in Ireland and in England, and what I conceived the reason of that difference to be. About the same time I was called to town for a day; and I took an opportunity, in Westminster Hall, of urging the same points, with all the force I was master of, to the Solicitor-General. I attempted to see the Chancellor for the same purpose, but was not fortunate enough to meet him at home. Soon after my return hither, on Tuesday, I received a very polite and I may say friendly letter from him, wishing me (on supposition that I had continued in town) to dine with him as [on?] that day, in order to talk over the business of the Toleration Act, then before him. Unluckily I had company with me, and was not able to leave them until Thursday, when I went to town and called at his house, but missed him. However, in answer to his letter, I had before, and instantly on the receipt of it, written to him at large, and urged such topics, both with regard to the Catholics and Dissenters, as I imagined were the most likely to be prevalent with him. This letter I followed to town on Thursday. On my arrival I was much alarmed with a report that the ministry had thoughts of rejecting the whole bill. Mr. M'Namara seemed apprehensive that it was a determined measure; and there seemed to be but too much reason for his fears.
Not having met the Chancellor at home, either on my first visit or my second after receiving his letter, and fearful that the Cabinet should come to come unpleasant resolution, I went to the Treasury on Friday. There I saw Sir G. Cooper. I possessed him of the danger of a partial, and the inevitable mischief of the total rejection of the bill. I reminded him of the understood compact between parties, upon which the whole scheme of the toleration originating in the English bill was formed,—of the fair part which the Whigs had acted in a business which, though first started by them, was supposed equally acceptable to all sides, and the risk of which they took upon themselves, when others declined it. To this I added such matter as I thought most fit to engage government, as government,—not to sport with a singular opportunity which offered for the union of every description of men amongst us in support of the common interest of the whole; and I ended by desiring to see Lord North upon the subject. Sir Grey Cooper showed a very right sense of the matter, and in a few minutes after our conversation I went down from the Treasury chambers to Lord North's house. I had a great deal of discourse with him. He told me that his ideas of toleration were large, but that, large as they were, they did not comprehend a promiscuous establishment, even in matters merely civil; that he thought the established religion ought to be the religion of the state; that, in this idea, he was not for the repeal of the sacramental test; that, indeed, he knew the Dissenters in general did not greatly scruple it; but that very want of scruple showed less zeal against the Establishment; and, after all, there could no provision be made by human laws against those who made light of the tests which were formed to discriminate opinions. On all this he spoke with a good deal of temper. He did not, indeed, seem to think the test itself, which was rightly considered by Dissenters as in a manner dispensed with by an annual act of Parliament, and which in Ireland was of a late origin, and of much less extent than here, a matter of much moment. The thing which seemed to affect him most was the offence that would be taken at the repeal by the leaders among the Church clergy here, on one hand, and, on the other, the steps which would be taken for its repeal in England in the next session, in consequence of the repeal in Ireland. I assured him, with great truth, that we had no idea among the Whigs of moving the repeal of the test. I confessed very freely, for my own part, that, if it were brought in, I should certainly vote for it; but that I should neither use, nor did I think applicable, any arguments drawn from the analogy of what was done in other parts of the British dominions. We did not argue from analogy, even in this island and United Kingdom. Presbytery was established in Scotland. It became no reason either for its religious or civil establishment here. In New England the Independent Congregational Churches had an established legal maintenance; whilst that country continued part of the British empire, no argument in favor of Independency was adduced from the practice of New England. Government itself lately thought fit to establish the Roman Catholic religion in Canada; but they would not suffer an argument of analogy to be used for its establishment anywhere else. These things were governed, as all things of that nature are governed, not by general maxims, but their own local and peculiar circumstances. Finding, however, that, though he was very cool and patient, I made no great way in the business of the Dissenters, I turned myself to try whether, falling in with his maxims, some modification might not be found, the hint of which I received from your letter relative to the Irish Militia Bill, and the point I labored was so to alter the clause as to repeal the test quoad military and revenue offices: for these being only subservient parts in the economy and execution, rather than the administration of affairs, the politic, civil, and judicial parts would still continue in the hands of the conformists to religious establishments. Without giving any hopes, he, however, said that this distinction deserved to be considered. After this, I strongly pressed the mischief of rejecting the whole bill: that a notion went abroad, that government was not at this moment very well pleased with the Dissenters, as not very well affected to the monarchy; that, in general, I conceived this to be a mistake,—but if it were not, the rejection of a bill in favor of others, because something in favor of them was inserted, instead of humbling and mortifying, would infinitely exalt them: for, if the legislature had no means of favoring those whom they meant to favor, as long as the Dissenters could find means to get themselves included, this would make them, instead of their only being subject to restraint themselves, the arbitrators of the fate of others, and that not so much by their own strength (which could not be prevented in its operation) as by the coöperation of those whom they opposed. In the conclusion, I recommended, that, if they wished well to the measure which was the main object of the bill, they must explicitly make it their own, and stake themselves upon it; that hitherto all their difficulties had arisen from their indecision and their wrong measures; and to make Lord North sensible of the necessity of giving a firm support to some part of the bill, and to add weighty authority to my reasons, I read him your letter of the 10th of July. It seemed, in some measure, to answer the purpose which I intended. I pressed the necessity of the management of the affair, both as to conduct and as to gaining of men; and I renewed my former advice, that the Lord Lieutenant should be instructed to consult and cooperate with you in the whole affair. All this was, apparently, very fairly taken.
In the evening of that day I saw the Lord Chancellor. With him, too, I had much discourse. You know that he is intelligent, sagacious, systematic, and determined. At first he seemed of opinion that the relief contained in the bill was so inadequate to the mass of oppression it was intended to remove, that it would be better to let it stand over, until a more perfect and better digested plan could be settled. This seemed to possess him very strongly. In order to combat this notion, and to show that the bill, all things considered, was a very great acquisition, and that it was rather a preliminary than an obstruction to relief, I ventured to show him your letter. It had its effect. He declared himself roundly against giving anything to a confederacy, real or apparent, to distress government; that, if anything was done for Catholics or Dissenters, it should be done on its own separate merits, and not by way of bargain and compromise; that they should be each of them obliged to government, not each to the other; that this would be a perpetual nursery of faction. In a word, he seemed so determined on not uniting these plans, that all I could say, and I said everything I could think of, was to no purpose. But when I insisted on the disgrace to government which must arise from their rejecting a proposition recommended by themselves, because their opposers had made a mixture, separable too by themselves, I was better heard. On the whole, I found him well disposed.
As soon as I had returned to the country, this affair lay so much on my mind, and the absolute necessity of government's making a serious business of it, agreeably to the seriousness they professed, and the object required, that I wrote to Sir G. Cooper, to remind him of the principles upon which we went in our conversation, and to press the plan which was suggested for carrying them into execution. He wrote to me on the 20th, and assured me, "that Lord North had given all due attention and respect to what you said to him on Friday, and will pay the same respect to the sentiments conveyed in your letter: everything you say or write on the subject undoubtedly demands it." Whether this was mere civility, or showed anything effectual in their intentions, time and the success of this measure will show. It is wholly with them; and if it should fail, you are a witness that nothing on our part has been wanting to free so large a part of our fellow-subjects and fellow-citizens from slavery, and to free government from the weakness and danger of ruling them by force. As to my own particular part, the desire of doing this has betrayed me into a step which I cannot perfectly reconcile to myself. You are to judge how far, on the circumstances, it may be excused. I think it had a good effect. You may be assured that I made this communication in a manner effectually to exclude so false and groundless an idea as that I confer with you, any more than I confer with them, on any party principle whatsoever,—or that in this affair we look further than the measure which is in profession, and I am sure ought to be in reason, theirs.
I am ever, with the sincerest affection and esteem,
My dear Sir,
Your most faithful and obedient humble servant,
EDMUND BURKE.
BEACONSFIELD, 18th July, 1778.
I intended to have written sooner, but it has not been in my power.
To the Speaker of the House of Commons of Ireland.
TWO LETTERS
TO
THOMAS BURGH, ESQ.,
AND
JOHN MERLOTT, ESQ.,
IN VINDICATION OF HIS PARLIAMENTARY CONDUCT RELATIVE TO THE AFFAIRS OF IRELAND.
1780.
LETTER
TO THOMAS BURGH, ESQ.[14]
My Dear Sir,—I do not know in what manner I am to thank you properly for the very friendly solicitude you have been so good as to express for my reputation. The concern you have done me the honor to take in my affairs will be an ample indemnity from all that I may suffer from the rapid judgments of those who choose to form their opinions of men, not from the life, but from their portraits in a newspaper. I confess to you that my frame of mind is so constructed, I have in me so little of the constitution of a great man, that I am more gratified with a very moderate share of approbation from those few who know me than I should be with the most clamorous applause from those multitudes who love to admire at a due distance.
I am not, however, Stoic enough to be able to affirm with truth, or hypocrite enough affectedly to pretend, that I am wholly unmoved at the difficulty which you and others of my friends in Ireland have found in vindicating my conduct towards my native country. It undoubtedly hurts me in some degree: but the wound is not very deep. If I had sought popularity in Ireland, when, in the cause of that country, I was ready to sacrifice, and did sacrifice, a much nearer, a much more immediate, and a much more advantageous popularity here, I should find myself perfectly unhappy, because I should be totally disappointed in my expectations,—because I should discover, when it was too late, what common sense might have told me very early, that I risked the capital of my fame in the most disadvantageous lottery in the world. But I acted then, as I act now, and as I hope I shall act always, from a strong impulse of right, and from motives in which popularity, either here or there, has but a very little part.
With the support of that consciousness I can bear a good deal of the coquetry of public opinion, which has her caprices, and must have her way. Miseri, quibus intentata nitet! I, too, have had my holiday of popularity in Ireland. I have even heard of an intention to erect a statue.[15] I believe my intimate acquaintance know how little that idea was encouraged by me; and I was sincerely glad that it never took effect. Such honors belong exclusively to the tomb,—the natural and only period of human inconstancy, with regard either to desert or to opinion: for they are the very same hands which erect, that very frequently (and sometimes with reason enough) pluck down the statue. Had such an unmerited and unlooked-for compliment been paid to me two years ago, the fragments of the piece might at this hour have the advantage of seeing actual service, while they were moving, according to the law of projectiles, to the windows of the Attorney-General, or of my old friend, Monk Mason.
To speak seriously,—let me assure you, my dear Sir, that, though I am not permitted to rejoice at all its effects, there is not one man on your side of the water more pleased to see the situation of Ireland so prosperous as that she can afford to throw away her friends. She has obtained, solely by her own efforts, the fruits of a great victory, which I am very ready to allow that the best efforts of her best well-wishers here could not have done for her so effectually in a great number of years, and perhaps could not have done at all. I could wish, however, merely for the sake of her own dignity, that, in turning her poor relations and antiquated friends out of doors, (though one of the most common effects of new prosperity,) she had thought proper to dismiss us with fewer tokens of unkindness. It is true that there is no sort of danger in affronting men who are not of importance enough to have any trust of ministerial, of royal, or of national honor to surrender. The unforced and unbought services of humble men, who have no medium of influence in great assemblies, but through the precarious force of reason, must be looked upon with contempt by those who by their wisdom and spirit have improved the critical moment of their fortune, and have debated with authority against pusillanimous dissent and ungracious compliance, at the head of forty thousand men.
Such feeble auxiliaries (as I talk of) to such a force, employed against such resistance, I must own, in the present moment, very little worthy of your attention. Yet, if one were to look forward, it scarcely seems altogether politic to bestow so much liberality of invective on the Whigs of this kingdom as I find has been the fashion to do both in and out of Parliament. That you should pay compliments, in some tone or other, whether ironical or serious, to the minister from whose imbecility you have extorted what you could never obtain from his bounty, is not unnatural. In the first effusions of Parliamentary gratitude to that minister for the early and voluntary benefits he has conferred upon Ireland, it might appear that you were wanting to the triumph of his surrender, if you did not lead some of his enemies captive before him. Neither could you feast him with decorum, if his particular taste were not consulted. A minister, who has never defended his measures in any other way than by railing at his adversaries, cannot have his palate made all at once to the relish of positive commendation. I cannot deny but that on this occasion there was displayed a great deal of the good-breeding which consists in the accommodation of the entertainment to the relish of the guest.
But that ceremony being past, it would not be unworthy of the wisdom of Ireland to consider what consequences the extinguishing every spark of freedom in this country may have upon your own liberties. You are at this instant flushed with victory, and full of the confidence natural to recent and untried power. We are in a temper equally natural, though very different. We feel as men do, who, having placed an unbounded reliance on their force, have found it totally to fail on trial. We feel faint and heartless, and without the smallest degree of self-opinion. In plain words, we are cowed. When men give up their violence and injustice without a struggle, their condition is next to desperate. When no art, no management, no argument, is necessary to abate their pride and overcome their prejudices, and their uneasiness only excites an obscure and feeble rattling in their throat, their final dissolution seems not far off. In this miserable state we are still further depressed by the overbearing influence of the crown. It acts with the officious cruelty of a mercenary nurse, who, under pretence of tenderness, stifles us with our clothes, and plucks the pillow from our heads. Injectu multæ vestis opprimi senem jubet. Under this influence we have so little will of our own, that, even in any apparent activity we may be got to assume, I may say, without any violence to sense, and with very little to language, we are merely passive. We have yielded to your demands this session. In the last session we refused to prevent them. In both cases, the passive and the active, our principle was the same. Had the crown pleased to retain the spirit, with regard to Ireland, which seems to be now all directed to America, we should have neglected our own immediate defence, and sent over the last man of our militia to fight with the last man of your volunteers.
To this influence the principle of action, the principle of policy, and the principle of union of the present minority are opposed. These principles of the opposition are the only thing which preserves a single symptom of life in the nation. That opposition is composed of the far greater part of the independent property and independent rank of the kingdom, of whatever is most untainted in character, and of whatever ability remains unextinguished in the people, and of all which tends to draw the attention of foreign countries upon this. It is now in its final and conclusive struggle. It has to struggle against a force to which, I am afraid, it is not equal. The whole kingdom of Scotland ranges with the venal, the unprincipled, and the wrong-principled of this; and if the kingdom of Ireland thinks proper to pass into the same camp, we shall certainly be obliged to quit the field. In that case, if I know anything of this country, another constitutional opposition can never be formed in it; and if this be impossible, it will be at least as much so (if there can be degrees in impossibility) to have a constitutional administration at any future time. The possibility of the former is the only security for the existence of the latter. Whether the present administration be in the least like one, I must venture to doubt, even in the honey-moon of the Irish fondness to Lord North, which has succeeded to all their slappings and scratchings.
If liberty cannot maintain its ground in this kingdom, I am sure that it cannot have any long continuance in yours. Our liberty might now and then jar and strike a discord with that of Ireland. The thing is possible: but still the instruments might play in concert. But if ours be unstrung, yours will be hung up on a peg, and both will be mute forever. Your new military force may give you confidence, and it serves well for a turn; but you and I know that it has not root. It is not perennial, and would prove but a poor shelter for your liberty, when this nation, having no interest in its own, could look upon yours with the eye of envy and disgust. I cannot, therefore, help thinking, and telling you what with great submission I think, that, if the Parliament of Ireland be so jealous of the spirit of our common Constitution as she seems to be, it was not so discreet to mix with the panegyric on the minister so large a portion of acrimony to the independent part of this nation. You never received any sort of injury from them, and you are grown to that degree of importance that the discourses in your Parliament will have a much greater effect on our immediate fortune than our conversation can have upon yours. In the end they will seriously, affect both.
I have looked back upon our conduct and our public conversations in order to discover what it is that can have given you offence. I have done so, because I am ready to admit that to offend you without any cause would be as contrary to true policy as I am sure it must be to the inclinations of almost every one of us. About two years ago Lord Nugent moved six propositions in favor of Ireland in the House of Commons. At the time of the motions, and during the debate, Lord North was either wholly out of the House, or engaged in other matters of business or pleasantry, in the remotest recesses of the West Saxon corner. He took no part whatsoever in the affair; but it was supposed his neutrality was more inclined towards the side of favor. The mover being a person in office was, however, the only indication that was given of such a leaning. We who supported the propositions, finding them better relished than at first we looked for, pursued our advantage, and began to open a way for more essential benefits to Ireland. On the other hand, those who had hitherto opposed them in vain redoubled their efforts, and became exceedingly clamorous. Then it was that Lord North found it necessary to come out of his fastness, and to interpose between the contending parties. In this character of mediator, he declared, that, if anything beyond the first six resolutions should be attempted, he would oppose the whole, but that, if we rested there, the original motions should have his support. On this a sort of convention took place between him and the managers of the Irish business, in which the six resolutions were to be considered as an uti possidetis, and to be held sacred.
By this time other parties began to appear. A good many of the trading towns, and manufactures of various kinds, took the alarm. Petitions crowded in upon one another, and the bar was occupied by a formidable body of council. Lord N. was staggered by this new battery. He is not of a constitution to encounter such an opposition as had then risen, when there were no other objects in view than those that were then before the House. In order not to lose him, we were obliged to abandon, bit by bit, the most considerable part of the original agreement.
In several parts, however, he continued fair and firm. For my own part, I acted, as I trust I commonly do, with decision. I saw very well that the things we had got were of no great consideration; but they were, even in their defects, somewhat leading. I was in hopes that we might obtain gradually and by parts what we might attempt at once and in the whole without success,—that one concession would lead to another,—and that the people of England discovering by a progressive experience that none of the concessions actually made were followed by the consequences they had dreaded, their fears from what they were yet to yield would considerably diminish. But that to which I attached myself the most particularly was, to fix the principle of a free trade in all the ports of these islands, as founded in justice, and beneficial to the whole, but principally to this, the seat of the supreme power. And this I labored to the utmost of my might, upon general principles, illustrated by all the commercial detail with which my little inquiries in life were able to furnish me. I ought to forget such trifling things as those, with all concerning myself; and possibly I might have forgotten them, if the Lord Advocate of Scotland had not, in a very flattering manner, revived them in my memory, in a full House in this session. He told me that my arguments, such as they were, had made him, at the period I allude to, change the opinion with which he had come into the House strongly impressed. I am sure that at the time at least twenty more told me the same thing. I certainly ought not to take their style of compliment as a testimony to fact; neither do I. But all this showed sufficiently, not what they thought of my ability, but what they saw of my zeal. I could say more in proof of the effects of that zeal, and of the unceasing industry with which I then acted, both in my endeavors which were apparent and those that were not so visible. Let it be remembered that I showed those dispositions while the Parliament of England was in a capacity to deliberate and in a situation to refuse, when there was something to be risked here by being suspected of a partiality to Ireland, when there was an honorable danger attending the profession of friendship to you, which heightened its relish, and made it worthy of a reception in manly minds. But as for the awkward and nauseous parade of debate without opposition, the flimsy device of tricking out necessity and disguising it in the habit of choice, the shallow stratagem of defending by argument, what all the world must perceive is yielded to force,—these are a sort of acts of friendship which I am sorry that any of my countrymen should require of their real friends. They are things not to my taste; and if they are looked upon as tests of friendship, I desire for one that I may be considered as an enemy.
What party purpose did my conduct answer at that time? I acted with Lord N. I went to all the ministerial meetings,—and he and his associates in office will do me the justice to say, that, aiming at the concord of the empire, I made it my business to give his concessions all the value of which they were capable, whilst some of those who were covered with his favors derogated from them, treated them with contempt, and openly threatened to oppose them. If I had acted with my dearest and most valued friends, if I had acted with the Marquis of Rockingham or the Duke of Richmond, in that situation, I could not have attended more to their honor, or endeavored more earnestly to give efficacy to the measures I had taken in common with them. The return which I, and all who acted as I did, have met with from him, does not make me repent the conduct which I then held.
As to the rest of the gentlemen with whom I have the honor to act, they did not then, or at any other time, make a party affair of Irish politics. That matter was always taken up without concert; but, in general, from the operation of our known liberal principles in government, in commerce, in religion, in everything, it was taken up favorably for Ireland. Where some local interests bore hard upon the members, they acted on the sense of their constituents, upon ideas which, though I do not always follow, I cannot blame. However, two or three persons, high in opposition, and high in public esteem, ran great risks in their boroughs on that occasion. But all this was without any particular plan. I need not say, that Ireland was in that affair much obliged to the liberal mind and enlarged understanding of Charles Fox, to Mr. Thomas Townshend, to Lord Midleton, and others. On reviewing that affair, which gave rise to all the subsequent manoeuvres, I am convinced that the whole of what has this day been done might have then been effected. But then the minister must have taken it up as a great plan of national policy, and paid with his person in every lodgment of his approach. He must have used that influence to quiet prejudice, which he has so often, used to corrupt principle: and I know, that, if he had, he must have succeeded. Many of the most active in opposition would have given him an unequivocal support. The corporation of London, and the great body of the London West India merchants and planters, which forms the greatest mass of that vast interest, were disposed to fall in with such a plan. They certainly gave no sort of discountenance to what was done or what was proposed. But these are not the kind of objects for which our ministers bring out the heavy artillery of the state. Therefore, as things stood at that time, a great deal more was not practicable.
Last year another proposition was brought out for the relief of Ireland. It was started without any communication with a single person of activity in the country party, and, as it should seem, without any kind of concert with government. It appeared to me extremely raw and undigested. The behavior of Lord N., on the opening of that business, was the exact transcript of his conduct on the Irish question in the former session. It was a mode of proceeding which his nature has wrought into the texture of his politics, and which is inseparable from them. He chose to absent himself on the proposition and during the agitation of that business,—although the business of the House is that alone for which he has any kind of relish, or, as I am told, can be persuaded to listen to with any degree of attention. But he was willing to let it take its course. If it should pass without any considerable difficulty, he would bring his acquiescence to tell for merit in Ireland, and he would have the credit, out of his indolence, of giving quiet to that country. If difficulties should arise on the part of England, he knew that the House was so well trained that he might at his pleasure call us off from the hottest scent. As he acted in his usual manner and upon his usual principle, opposition acted upon theirs, and rather generally supported the measure. As to myself, I expressed a disapprobation at the practice of bringing imperfect and indigested projects into the House, before means were used to quiet the clamors which a misconception of what we were doing might occasion at home, and before measures were settled with men of weight and authority in Ireland, in order to render our acts useful and acceptable to that country. I said, that the only thing which could make the influence of the crown (enormous without as well as within the House) in any degree tolerable was, that it might be employed to give something of order and system to the proceedings of a popular assembly; that government being so situated as to have a large range of prospect, and as it were a bird's-eye view of everything, they might see distant dangers and distant advantages which were not so visible to those who stood on the common level; they might, besides, observe them, from this advantage, in their relative and combined state, which people locally instructed and partially informed could behold only in an insulated and unconnected manner;—but that for many years past we suffered under all the evils, without any one of the advantages of a government influence; that the business of a minister, or of those who acted as such, had been still further to contract the narrowness of men's ideas, to confirm inveterate prejudices, to inflame vulgar passions, and to abet all sorts of popular absurdities, in order the better to destroy popular rights and privileges; that, so far from methodizing the business of the House, they had let all things run into an inextricable confusion, and had left affairs of the most delicate policy wholly to chance.
After I had expressed myself with the warmth I felt on seeing all government and order buried under the ruins of liberty, and after I had made my protest against the insufficiency of the propositions, I supported the principle of enlargement at which they aimed, though short and somewhat wide of the mark,—giving, as my sole reason, that the more frequently these matters came into discussion, the more it would tend to dispel fears and to eradicate prejudices.
This was the only part I took. The detail was in the hands of Lord Newhaven and Lord Beauchamp, with some assistance from Earl Nugent and some independent gentlemen of Irish property. The dead weight of the minister being removed, the House recovered its tone and elasticity. We had a temporary appearance of a deliberative character. The business was debated freely on both sides, and with sufficient temper. And the sense of the members being influenced by nothing but what will naturally influence men unbought, their reason and their prejudices, these two principles had a fair conflict, and prejudice was obliged to give way to reason. A majority appeared, on a division, in favor of the propositions.
As these proceedings got out of doors, Glasgow and Manchester, and, I think, Liverpool, began to move, but in a manner much more slow and languid than formerly. Nothing, in my opinion, would have been less difficult than entirely to have overborne their opposition. The London West India trade was, as on the former occasion, so on this, perfectly liberal and perfectly quiet; and there is abroad so much respect for the united wisdom of the House, when supposed to act upon a fair view of a political situation, that I scarcely ever remember any considerable uneasiness out of doors, when the most active members, and those of most property and consideration in the minority, have joined themselves to the administration. Many factious people in the towns I mentioned began, indeed, to revile Lord North, and to reproach his neutrality as treacherous and ungrateful to those who had so heartily and so warmly entered into all his views with regard to America. That noble lord, whose decided character it is to give way to the latest and nearest pressure, without any sort of regard to distant consequences of any kind, thought fit to appear, on this signification of the pleasure of those his worthy friends and partisans, and, putting himself at the head of the posse scaccarii, wholly regardless of the dignity and consistency of our miserable House, drove the propositions entirely out of doors by a majority newly summoned to duty.
In order to atone to Ireland for this gratification to Manchester, he graciously permitted, or rather forwarded, two bills,—that for encouraging the growth of tobacco, and that for giving a bounty on exportation of hemp from Ireland. They were brought in by two very worthy members, and on good principles; but I was sorry to see them, and, after expressing my doubts of their propriety, left the House. Little also [else?] was said upon them. My objections were two: the first, that the cultivation of those weeds (if one of them could be at all cultivated to profit) was adverse to the introduction of a good course of agriculture; the other, that the encouragement given to them tended to establish that mischievous policy of considering Ireland as a country of staple, and a producer of raw materials.
When the rejection of the first propositions and the acceptance of the last had jointly, as it was natural, raised a very strong discontent in Ireland, Lord Rockingham, who frequently said that there never seemed a more opportune time for the relief of Ireland than that moment when Lord North had rejected all rational propositions for its relief, without consulting, I believe, any one living, did what he is not often very willing to do; but he thought this an occasion of magnitude enough to justify an extraordinary step. He went into the closet, and made a strong representation on the matter to the king, which was not ill received, and I believe produced good effects. He then made the motion in the House of Lords which you may recollect; but he was content to withdraw all of censure which it contained, on the solemn promise of ministry, that they would in the recess of Parliament prepare a plan for the benefit of Ireland, and have it in readiness to produce at the next meeting. You may recollect that Lord Gower became in a particular manner bound for the fulfilling this engagement. Even this did not satisfy, and most of the minority were very unwilling that Parliament should be prorogued until something effectual on the subject should be done,—particularly as we saw that the distresses, discontents, and armaments of Ireland were increasing every day, and that we are not so much lost to common sense as not to know the wisdom and efficacy of early concession in circumstances such as ours.
The session was now at an end. The ministers, instead of attending to a duty that was so urgent on them, employed themselves, as usual, in endeavors to destroy the reputation of those who were bold enough to remind them of it. They caused it to be industriously circulated through the nation, that the distresses of Ireland were of a nature hard to be traced to the true source, that they had been monstrously magnified, and that, in particular, the official reports from Ireland had given the lie (that was their phrase) to Lord Rockingham's representations: and attributing the origin of the Irish proceedings wholly to us, they asserted that everything done in Parliament upon the subject was with a view of stirring up rebellion; "that neither the Irish legislature nor their constituents had signified any dissatisfaction at the relief obtained in the session preceding the last; that, to convince both of the impropriety of their peaceable conduct, opposition, by making demands in the name of Ireland, pointed out what she might extort from Great Britain; that the facility with which relief was (formerly) granted, instead of satisfying opposition, was calculated to create new demands; these demands, as they interfered with the commerce of Great Britain, were certain of being opposed,—a circumstance which could not fail to create that desirable confusion which suits the views of the party; that they (the Irish) had long felt their own misery, without knowing well from whence it came; our worthy patriots, by pointing out Great Britain as the cause of Irish distress, may have some chance of rousing Irish resentment." This I quote from a pamphlet as perfectly contemptible in point of writing as it is false in its facts and wicked in its design: but as it is written under the authority of ministers, by one of their principal literary pensioners, and was circulated with great diligence, and, as I am credibly informed, at a considerable expense to the public, I use the words of that book to let you see in what manner the friends and patrons of Ireland, the heroes of your Parliament, represented all efforts for your relief here, what means they took to dispose the minds of the people towards that great object, and what encouragement they gave to all who should choose to exert themselves in your favor. Their unwearied endeavors were not wholly without success, and the unthinking people in many places became ill-affected towards us on this account. For the ministers proceeded in your affairs just as they did with regard to those of America. They always represented you as a parcel of blockheads, without sense, or even feeling; that all your words were only the echo of faction here; and (as you have seen above) that you had not understanding enough to know that your trade was cramped by restrictive acts of the British Parliament, unless we had, for factious purposes, given you the information. They were so far from giving the least intimation of the measures which have since taken place, that those who were supposed the best to know their intentions declared them impossible in the actual state of the two kingdoms, and spoke of nothing but an act of union, as the only way that could be found of giving freedom of trade to Ireland, consistently with the interests of this kingdom. Even when the session opened, Lord North declared that he did not know what remedy to apply to a disease of the cause of which he was ignorant; and ministry not being then entirely resolved how far they should submit to your energy, they, by anticipation, set the above author or some of his associates to fill the newspapers with invectives against us, as distressing the minister by extravagant demands in favor of Ireland.
I need not inform you, that everything they asserted of the steps taken in Ireland, as the result of our machinations, was utterly false and groundless. For myself, I seriously protest to you, that I neither wrote a word or received a line upon any matter relative to the trade of Ireland, or to the polities of it, from the beginning of the last session to the day that I was honored with your letter. It would be an affront to the talents in the Irish Parliament to say one word more.
What was done in Ireland during that period, in and out of Parliament, never will be forgotten. You raised an army new in its kind and adequate to its purposes. It effected its end without its exertion. It was not under the authority of law, most certainly, but it derived from an authority still higher; and as they say of faith, that it is not contrary to reason, but above it, so this army did not so much contradict the spirit of the law as supersede it. What you did in the legislative body is above all praise. By your proceeding with regard to the supplies, you revived the grand use and characteristic benefit of Parliament, which was on the point of being entirely lost amongst us. These sentiments I never concealed, and never shall; and Mr. Fox expressed them with his usual power, when he spoke on the subject.
All this is very honorable to you. But in what light must we see it? How are we to consider your armament without commission from the crown, when some of the first people in this kingdom have been refused arms, at the time they did not only not reject, but solicited the king's commissions? Here to arm and embody would be represented as little less than high treason, if done on private authority: with you it receives the thanks of a Privy Counsellor of Great Britain, who obeys the Irish House of Lords in that point with pleasure, and is made Secretary of State, the moment he lands here, for his reward. You shortened the credit given to the crown to six months; you hung up the public credit of your kingdom by a thread; you refused to raise any taxes, whilst you confessed the public debt and public exigencies to be great and urgent beyond example. You certainly acted in a great style, and on sound and invincible principles. But if we in the opposition, which fills Ireland with such loyal horrors, had even attempted, what we never did even attempt, the smallest delay or the smallest limitation of supply, in order to a constitutional coercion of the crown, we should have been decried by all the court and Tory mouths of this kingdom, as a desperate faction, aiming at the direct ruin of the country, and to surrender it bound hand and foot to a foreign enemy. By actually doing what we never ventured to attempt, you have paid your court with such address, and have won so much favor with his Majesty and his cabinet, that they have, of their special grace and mere motion, raised you to new titles, and for the first time, ill a speech from the throne, complimented you with the appellation of "faithful and loyal,"—and, in order to insult our low-spirited and degenerate obedience, have thrown these epithets and your resistance together in our teeth! What do you think were the feelings of every man who looks upon Parliament in an higher light than that of a market-overt for legalizing a base traffic of votes and pensions, when he saw you employ such means of coercion to the crown, in order to coerce our Parliament through that medium? How much his Majesty is pleased with his part of the civility must be left to his own taste. But as to us, you declared to the world that you knew that the way of bringing us to reason was to apply yourselves to the true source of all our opinions and the only motive to all our conduct! Now, it seems, you think yourselves affronted, because a few of us express some indignation at the minister who has thought fit to strip us stark naked, and expose the true state of our poxed and pestilential habit to the world! Think or say what you will in Ireland, I shall ever think it a crime hardly to be expiated by his blood. He might, and ought, by a longer continuance or by an earlier meeting of this Parliament, to have given us the credit of some wisdom in foreseeing and anticipating an approaching force. So far from it, Lord Gower, coming out of his own cabinet, declares that one principal cause of his resignation was his not being able to prevail on the present minister to give any sort of application to this business. Even on the late meeting of Parliament, nothing determinate could be drawn from him, or from any of his associates, until you had actually passed the short money bill,—which measure they flattered themselves, and assured others, you would never come up to. Disappointed in their expectation at [of?] seeing the siege raised, they surrendered at discretion.
Judge, my dear Sir, of our surprise at finding your censure directed against those whose only crime was in accusing the ministers of not having prevented your demands by our graces, of not having given you the natural advantages of your country in the most ample, the most early, and the most liberal manner, and for not having given away authority in such a manner as to insure friendship. That you should make the panegyric of the ministers is what I expected; because, in praising their bounty, you paid a just compliment to your own force. But that you should rail at us, either individually or collectively, is what I can scarcely think a natural proceeding. I can easily conceive that gentlemen might grow frightened at what they had done,—that they might imagine they had undertaken a business above their direction,—that, having obtained a state of independence for their country, they meant to take the deserted helm into their own hands, and supply by their very real abilities the total inefficacy of the nominal government. All these might be real, and might be very justifiable motives for their reconciling themselves cordially to the present court system. But I do not so well discover the reasons that could induce them, at the first feeble dawning of life in this country, to do all in their power to cast a cloud over it, and to prevent the least hope of our effecting the necessary reformations which are aimed at in our Constitution and in our national economy.
But, it seems, I was silent at the passing the resolutions. Why, what had I to say? If I had thought them too much, I should have been accused of an endeavor to inflame England. If I should represent them as too little, I should have been charged with a design of fomenting the discontents of Ireland into actual rebellion. The Treasury bench represented that the affair was a matter of state: they represented it truly. I therefore only asked whether they knew these propositions to be such as would satisfy Ireland; for if they were so, they would satisfy me. This did not indicate that I thought them too ample. In this our silence (however dishonorable to Parliament) there was one advantage,—that the whole passed, as far as it is gone, with complete unanimity, and so quickly that there was no time left to excite any opposition to it out of doors. In the West India business, reasoning on what had lately passed in the Parliament of Ireland, and on the mode in which it was opened here, I thought I saw much matter of perplexity. But I have now better reason than ever to be pleased with my silence. If I had spoken, one of the most honest and able men[16] in the Irish Parliament would probably have thought my observation an endeavor to sow dissension, which he was resolved to prevent,—and one of the most, ingenious and one of the most amiable men[17] that ever graced yours or any House of Parliament might have looked on it as a chimera. In the silence I observed, I was strongly countenanced (to say no more of it) by every gentleman of Ireland that I had the honor of conversing with in London. The only word, for that reason, which I spoke, was to restrain a worthy county member,[18] who had received some communication from a great trading place in the county he represents, which, if it had been opened to the House, would have led to a perplexing discussion of one of the most troublesome matters that could arise in this business. I got up to put a stop to it; and I believe, if you knew what the topic was, you would commend my discretion.
That it should be a matter of public discretion in me to be silent on the affairs of Ireland is what on all accounts I bitterly lament. I stated to the House what I felt; and I felt, as strongly as human sensibility can feel, the extinction of my Parliamentary capacity, where I wished to use it most. When I came into this Parliament, just fourteen years ago,—into this Parliament, then, in vulgar opinion at least, the presiding council of the greatest empire existing, (and perhaps, all things considered, that ever did exist,) obscure and a stranger as I was, I considered myself as raised to the highest dignity to which a creature of our species could aspire. In that opinion, one of the chief pleasures in my situation, what was first and-uppermost in my thoughts, was the hope, without injury to this country, to be somewhat useful to the place of my birth and education, which in many respects, internal and external, I thought ill and impolitically governed. But when I found that the House, surrendering itself to the guidance of an authority, not grown out of an experienced wisdom and integrity, but out of the accidents of court favor, had become the sport of the passions of men at once rash and pusillanimous,—that it had even got into the habit of refusing everything to reason and surrendering everything to force, all my power of obliging either my country or individuals was gone, all the lustre of my imaginary rank was tarnished, and I felt degraded even by my elevation. I said this, or something to this effect. If it gives offence to Ireland, I am sorry for it: it was the reason I gave for my silence; and it was, as far as it went, the true one.
With you, this silence of mine and of others was represented as factious, and as a discountenance to the measure of your relief. Do you think us children? If it had been our wish to embroil matters, and, for the sake of distressing ministry, to commit the two kingdoms in a dispute, we had nothing to do but (without at all condemning the propositions) to have gone into the commercial detail of the objects of them. It could not have been refused to us: and you, who know the nature of business so well, must know that this would have caused such delays, and given rise during that delay to such discussions, as all the wisdom of your favorite minister could never have settled. But, indeed, you mistake your men. We tremble at the idea of a disunion of these two nations. The only thing in which we differ with you is this,—that we do not think your attaching yourselves to the court and quarrelling with the independent part of this people is the way to promote the union of two free countries, or of holding them together by the most natural and salutary ties.
You will be frightened, when you see this long letter. I smile, when I consider the length of it myself. I never, that I remember, wrote any of the same extent. But it shows me that the reproaches of the country that I once belonged to, and in which I still have a dearness of instinct more than I can justify to reason, make a greater impression on me than I had imagined. But parting words are admitted to be a little tedious, because they are not likely to be renewed. If it will not be making yourself as troublesome to others as I am to you, I shall be obliged to you, if you will show this, at their greatest leisure, to the Speaker, to your excellent kinsman, to Mr. Grattan, Mr. Yelverton, and Mr. Daly: all these I have the honor of being personally known to, except Mr. Yelverton, to whom I am only known by my obligations to him. If you live in any habits with my old friend, the Provost, I shall be glad that he, too, sees this my humble apology.
Adieu! once more accept my best thanks for the interest you take in me. Believe that it is received by an heart not yet so old as to have lost its susceptibility. All here give you the best old-fashioned wishes of the season; and believe me, with the greatest truth and regard,
My dear Sir,
Your most faithful and obliged humble servant,
EDMUND BURKE.
BEACONSFIELD, New year's Day, 1780.
I am frightened at the trouble I give you and our friends; but I recollect that you are mostly lawyers, and habituated to read long, tiresome papers—and, where your friendship is concerned, without a fee; I am sure, too, that you will not act the lawyer in scrutinizing too minutely every expression which my haste may make me use. I forgot to mention my friend O'Hara, and others; but you will communicate it as you please.