regicides may be. But I, who think the ministers unfortunately to be but too serious in their proceedings, find myself obliged to say a little more on this subject of the popular opinion. Before our opinions are quoted against ourselves, it is proper that, from our serious deliberation, they may be worth quoting. It is without reason we praise the wisdom of our constitution, in putting under the discretion of the crown, the awful trust of war and peace, if the ministers of the crown virtually return it again into our hands. The trust was placed as a sacred deposit, to secure us against popular rashness in plunging into wars, and against the defects of popular dismay, disgust, or lassitude in getting out of them as imprudently as we might first engage in them. To have no other measure in judging of those great objects than our momentary opinions and desires, is to throw us back upon that very democracy which, in this part, our constitution was formed to avoid. It is no excuse at all for a minister, who at our desire takes a measure contrary to our safety, that it is our own act. He who does not stay the hand of suicide, is guilty of murder. On our part I say, that to be instructed, is not to be degraded or enslaved. Information is an advantage to us; and we have a right to demand it. He that is bound to act in the dark cannot be said to act freely. When it appears evident to our governours that our desires and our interests are at variance, they ought not to gratify the former at the expense of the latter. Statesmen are placed on an eminence, that they may have a larger horizon than we can possibly command. They have a whole before them, which we can contemplate only in the parts, and often without the necessary relations. Ministers are not only our natural rulers but our natural guides. Reason clearly and manfully delivered, has in itself a mighty force: but reason in the mouth of legal authority, is, I may fairly say, irresistible. I admit that reason of state will not, in many circumstances, permit the disclosure of the true ground of a public proceeding. In that case silence is manly and it is wise. It is fair to call for trust when the principle of reason itself suspends its public use. I take the distinction to be this: The ground of a particular measure, making a part of a plan, it is rarely proper to divulge; all the broader grounds of policy on which the general plan is to be adopted, ought as rarely to be concealed. They who have not the whole cause before them, call them politicians, call them people, call them what you will, are no judges, The difficulties of the case, as well as its fair side, ought to be presented. This ought to be done; and it is all that can be done. When we have our true situation distinctly presented to us, if then we resolve with a blind and headlong violence, to resist the admonitions of our friends, and to cast ourselves into the hands of our potent and irreconcileable foes, then, and not till then, the ministers stand acquitted before God and man, for whatever may come. Lamenting as I do, that the matter has not had so full and free a discussion as it requires, I mean to omit none of the points which seem to me necessary for consideration, previous to an arrangement which is forever to decide the form and the fate of Europe. In the course, therefore, of what I shall have the honour to address to you, I propose the following ques tions to your serious thoughts:-1. Whether the present system which stands for a government in France, be such as in peace and war affects the neighbouring states in a manner different from the internal government that formerly prevailed in that country ?-2. Whether that system, supposing its views hostile to other nations, possesses any ineans of being hurtful to them peculiar to itself?-3. Whether there has been lately such a change in France, as to alter the nature of its system, or its effect upon other powers?-4. Whether any public declarations or engagements exist, on the part of the allied powers, which stand in the way of a treaty of peace, which suppo ses the right and confirms the power of the regicide faction in France ?-5. What the state of the other powers of Europe will be with respect to each other, and their colonies, on the conclusion of a regicide peace ?-6. Whether we are driven to the absolute necessity of making that kind of peace? These heads of inquiry will enable us to make the application of the several matters of fact and topics of argument, that occur in this vast discussion, to certain fixed principles. I do not mean to confine myself to the order in which they stand. I shall discuss them in such a manner as shall appear to me the best adapted for shewing their mutual bearings and relations. Here then I close the public matter of my letter; but before I have done, let me say one word in apology for myself. In wishing this nominal peace not to be precip itated, I am sure no man living is less disposed to blame the present ministry than I am. Some of my oldest friends, (and I wish I could say it of more of them) make a part in that ministry. There are some indeed, "whom my dim eyes in vain explore." In my mind a greater calamity could not have fallen on the public than the exclusion of one of them. But I drive away that, with other melancholy thoughts. A great deal ought to be said upon that subject or nothing. As to the distinguished persons to whom my friends who remain are joined, if the benefits, nobly and generously conferred, ought to procure good wishes, they are entitled to my best vows; and they have them all. They have administered to me the only consolation that I am capable of receiving, which is to know that no individual will suffer by my thirty years service to the public. If things should give us the comparative happiness of a struggle, I shall be found, I was a going to say fighting, (that would be foolish) but dying by the side of Mr. Pitt. I must add, that if any thing defensive in our domestic system can possibly save us from the disasters of a regicide peace, he is the man to save us. If the finances in such a case can be repaired, he is the man to repair them. If I should lament any of his acts, it is only when they appear to me to have no resemblance to acts of his. But let him not have a confidence in himself, which no human abilities can warrant. His abilities are fully equal (and that is to say much for any man) to those which are opposed to him. But if we look to him as our security against the consequences of a regicide peace, let us be assured that a regicide peace and a constitutional ministry are terms that will not agree. With a regicide peace the king cannot long have a minister to serve him, nor the minister a king to serve. If the Great Disposer, in reward of the royal and private virtues of our sovereign should call him from the calamitous spectacles, which will attend a state of amity with regicide, his successor will surely see them, unless the same providence greatly anticipates the course of nature. Thinking thus (and not, as I conceive, on light grounds) I dare not flatter the reigning sovereign, nor any minister he has or can have, nor his successor apparent, nor any of those who may be called to serve him with what appears to me a false state of their situation. We cannot have them and that peace together. I do not forget that there had been a considerable difference between several of our friends, (with my insignificant self) and the great man at the head of ministry, in an early stage of these discussions. But I am sure there was a period in which we agreed better in the danger of a jacobin existence in France. At one time he and all Europe seemed to feel it. But why am not I converted with so many great powers, and so many great ministers? It is because I am old and slow.-I am in this year, 1796, only where all the powers of Europe were in 1793. I cannot move with this precession of the equinoxes, which is preparing for us the return of some very old, I am afraid no golden æra, or the commencement of some new æra that must be denominated from some new metal. In this crisis I must hold my tongue or I must speak with freedom. Falsehood and delusion are allowed in no case whatever: but, as in the exercise of all the virtues, there is an economy of truth. It is a sort of temperance, by which a man speaks truth with measure that he may speak it the longer. But as the same rules do not hold in all cases-what would be right for you, who may presume on a series of years before you, would have no sense for me, who cannot, without absurdity, calculate on six months of life. What I say, I must say at once. Whatever I write is in its nature testamentary. It may have the weakness, but it has the sincerity of a dying declaration. For the few days I have to linger here, I am removed completely from the busy scene of the world? but I hold myself to be still responsible for every thing that I have done whilst I continued on the place of action. If the rawest Tyro in politics has been influenced by the authority of my gray hairs, and led by any thing in my speeches, or my writings, to enter into this war, he has a right to call upon me to know why I have changed my opinions, or why, when those I voted with, have adopted better notions, I persevere in exploded errour? When I seem not to acquiesce in the acts of those I respect in every degree of superstition, I am obliged to give my reasons fully. I cannot set my authority against their authority. But to exert reason is not to revolt against authority. Reason and authority do not move in the same parallel. That reason is an ami cus curia who speaks de plano not pro tribunali. It is a friend who makes an useful suggestion to the court, without questioning its jurisdiction. Whilst he acknowledges its competence, he promotes its efficiency. I shall pursue the plan I chalked out in my letters that follow this. LETTER II. ON THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AS IT REGARDS OTHER NATIONS. 1796. MY DEAR SIR, I CLOSED my first letter with serious matters, and I hope it has employed your thoughts. The system of peace must have a reference to the system of the war. On that ground, I must therefore again recall your mind to our original opinions, which time and events have not taught me to vary. My ideas and my principle led me, in this contest, to encounter France, not as a state, but as a faction. The vast territorial extent of that country, its immense population, its riches of production, its riches of commerce and convention-the whole aggregate mass of what, in ordinary cases, constitutes the force of a state, to me were but objects of secondary consideration. They might be balanced; and they have been often more than balanced. Great as these things are, they are not what make the faction formidable. It is the faction that makes them truly dreadful. That faction is the evil spirit that possesses the body of France; that informs it as a soul; that stamps upon its ambition, and up. on all its pursuits, a characteristic mark, which strongly distinguishes them from the same general passions, and the same general views, in other men and in other communities. It is that spirit which inspires into them, a new, a pernicious, a desolating activity. Constituted as France was ten years ago, it was not in that France to shake, to shatter, and to overwhelm Europe in the manner we behold. A sure destruction impends over those infatuated princes, who, in the conflict with this new and unheardof power, proceed as if they were engaged in a war that bore a resemblance to their former contests; or that they can make peace in the spirit of their former arrangements of pacification. Here the beaten path is the very reverse of the safe road. As to me, I was always steadily of opinion, that this disorder was not in its nature intermittent. I conceived that the contest once begun, could not be laid down again, to be resumed at our discretion; but that our first struggle with this evil would also be our last. I never thought we could make peace with the system; because it was not for the sake of an object we pursued in rivalry with each other, but with the system itself that we were at war. As I understood the matter, we were at war not with its conduct, but with its existence; convinced that its existence and its hostility were the same. The faction is not local or territorial. It is a genera' evi. Where it least appears in action, it is still full of life. In its sleep it recruits its strength, and prepares its exertion. Its spirit lies deep in the corruption of our common nature. The social order which restrains it, feeds it. It exists in every country in Europe; and among all orders of men in every country, who look up to France as a common head. The centre is there. The circumference is the world of Europe wherever the race of Europe may be settled. Every where else the fac tion is militant; in France it is triumphant. In France is the bank of deposit, and the bank of circulation, of all the pernicious principles that are forming in every state. It will be a folly scarcely deserving of pity, and too mischievous for contempt, to think of restraining it in any other country whilst it is predominant there. War, instead of being the cause of its force, has suspended its operation. It has given a reprieve, at least to the Christian world. The true nature of a jacobin war, in the beginning, was, by most of the Christian powers, felt, acknowledged, and even in the most precise manner declared. In the joint manifesto, published by the emperour and the king of Prus sia, on the 4th of August, 1792, it is expressed in the clearest terms, and on principles, which could not fail, if they had adhered to them, of classing those monarchs with the first benefactors of mankind. This manifesto was published, as they themselves express it, "to lay open to the present generation, as well as to posterity, their motives, their intentions, and the disinterestedness of their personal views; taking up arms for the purpose of preserving social and political order among all civilized nations, and to secure to each state its religion, happiness. independence, territories, and real constitution." -"On this ground, they hoped that all empires, and all states would be unanimous; and becoming the firm guardians of the happiness of mankind, that they could not fail to unite their ef forts to rescue a numerous nation from its own fury, to preserve Europe from the return of barbarism, and the universe from the subversion and anarchy with which it was threatened." The whole of that noble performance ought to be read at the first meeting of any congress, which may assemble for the purpose of pacification. In that piece "these powers expressly renounce all views of personal aggrandizement," and confine themselves to objects worthy of so generous, so heroic, and so perfectly wise and politic an enterprise. It was to the principles of this confederation and to no other, that we wished our sovereign and our country to accede, as a part of the commonwealth of Europe. To these principles with some trifling exceptions and limitations they did fully accede.* And all our friends who took office according to the ministry (whether * See Declaration, Whitehall, Oct. 29, 1793. LETTERS ON A wisely or not) as I always understood the As long as these powers flattered themselves They saw it was a civil war. business to persuade their adversaries that it It was their ought to be a foreign war. The jacobins every where set up a cry against the new crusade; and they intrigued with effect in the cabinet, in the field, and in every private society in Europe. Their task was not difficult. The condition of princes, and sometimes of first ministers too, is to be pitied. The creatures of the desk, and the creatures of favour, had no relish for the principles of the manifestoes. They promised no governments, no regiments, no revenues from whence emoluments might arise, by perquisite or by grant. In truth, the tribe of vulgar politicians are the lowest of our species. There is no trade so vile and mechanical as government in their hands. Virtue is not their habit. They are out of theinselves in any course of conduct recommended only by conscience and glory. A large liberal and prospective view of the interests of states, ples that recommend it for the wanderings of passes with them for romance; and the princicompute them out of their senses. The jesters a disordered imagination. The calculators and buffoons shame them out of every thing grand and elevated. Littleness in object and briety. They think there is nothing worth in means, to them appears soundness and sopursuit, but that which they can handle; which they can measure with a two-foot rule; which they can tell upon ten fingers. Without the principles of the jacobins, perhaps without any principles at all, they played the game of that faction. There was a beaten road beFrance had always appeared dangerous; the fore them. The powers of Europe were armed; tion, to France as a state. war was easily diverted from France as a faceasily taught to slide back into their old habitThe princes were ual course of politics. They were easily led France, not as a warning to protect their own to consider the flames that were consuming buildings (which were without any party wall, France,) but as an happy occasion for pillagand linked by a contignation into the edifice of ing the goods, and for carrying off the materials of their neighbour's house. Their provident fears were changed into avaricious hopes. They carried on their new designs without policy. They pretended to seek, or they flatseeming to abandon the principles of their old tered themselves that they sought, in the accesdefensive security. But the security wanted sion of new fortresses and new territories, a truly dangerous in its fortresses nor in its terwas against a kind of power, which was not so ritories, as in its spirit and its principles. themselves against a danger, from which there They aimed, or pretended to aim, at defending armies and fortresses were a defence against can be no security in any defensive plan. If jacobinism, Louis the Sixteenth would this day reign a powerful monarch over an happy people. This errour obliged them, even in their of fensive operations, to adopt a plan of war, thing little short of mathematical demonstration. against the success of which there was someThey refused to take any step which might strike at the heart of affairs. They seemed unwilling to wound the enemy in any vital part. They acted through the whole as if they power; as what might be more favourable than really wished the conservation of the jacobin petty objects they looked for. They always the lawful government to the attainment of the kept on the circumference; and the wider and remoter the circle was, the more eagerly they choose it as their sphere of action in this centrifugal war. The plan they pursued, in its nature demanded great length of time. In its execution, they, who went the nearest way to work, were obliged to cover an incredible extent of country. It left to the enemy every means of destroying this extended line of weakness. Ill success in any part was sure to defeat the effect of the whole. This is true of Austria. It is still more true of England. On this false plan, even good fortune, by further weakening the victor, put him but the further off from his object. As long as there was any appearance of success, the spirit of aggrandizement, and consequently the spirit of mutual jealousy seized upon all the coalesced powers. Some sought an accession of territory at the expense of France, some at the expense of each other; some at the expense of third parties; and when the vicissitude of disaster took its turn, they found common distress a treacherous bond of faith and friendship. The greatest skill conducting the greatest military apparatus has been employed; but it has been worse than uselessly employed, through the false policy of the war. The operations of the field suffered by the errours of the cabinet. If the same spirit continues when peace is made, the peace will fix and perpetuate all the errours of the war, because it will be made upon the same false principle. What has been lost in the field, in the field may be regained. An arrangement of peace in its nature is a permanent settlement; it is the effect of council and deliberation and not of fortuitous events. If built upon a basis fundamentally erroneous, it can only be retrieved by some of those unforeseen dispensations, which the all-wise but mysterious Governour of the world, sometimes interposes, to snatch nations from ruin. It would not be pious errour, but mad and impious presumption for any one to trust in an unknown order of dispensations, in defiance of the rules of prudence, which are formed upon the known march of the ordinary providence of God. It was not of that sort of war that I was among the least considerable, but among the most zealous advisers; and it is not by the sort of peace now talked of, that I wish it concluded. It would answer no great purpose to enter into the particular errours of the war. The whole has been but one errour. It was but nominally a war of alliance. As the combined powers pursued it, there was nothing to hold an alliance together. There could be no tie of honour, in a society for pillage. There could be no tie of a common interest where the object did not offer such a division among the parties, as could well give them a warm concern in the gains of each other, or could indeed form such a body of equivalents, as might make one of them willing to abandon a separate object of his ambition for the gratification of any other member of the alliance. The partition of Poland offered an object of spoil in which the parties might agree. They were circumjacent; and each might take a portion convenient to his own territory. They might dispute about the value of their several shares, but the contiguity to each of the demandants always furnished the means of an adjustment. Though hereafter the world will have cause to rue this iniquitous measure, and they most who were most concerned in it, for the moment, there was wherewithal in the object to preserve peace among confederates in wrong. But the spoil of France did not afford the same facilities for accommodation. What might satisfy the house of Austria in a Flemish frontier afforded no equivalent to tempt the cupidity of the king of Prussia. What might be desired by Great Britain in the West Indies, must be coldly and remotely, if at all, felt as an interest at Vienna; and it would be felt as something worse than a negative interest at Madrid. Austria, long possessed with unwise and dangerous designs on Italy, could not be very much in earnest about the conservation of the old patrimony of the house of Savoy; and Sar dinia, who owed to an Italian force all her means of shutting out France from Italy, of which she has been supposed to hold the key, would not purchase the means of strength upon one side by yielding it upon the other. She would not readily give the possession of Novara for the hope of Savoy. No continental power was willing to lose any of its continental objects for the increase of the naval power of Great Britain; and Great Britain would not give up any of the objects she sought for as the means of an increase to her naval power, to further their aggrandizement. The moment this war came to be considered as a war merely of profit, the actual circumstances are such that it never could become really a war of alliance. Nor can the peace be a peace of alliance, until things are put upon their right bottom. I don't find it denied, that when a treaty is entered into for peace, a demand will be made on the regicides to surrender a great part of their conquests on the continent. Will they, |