The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 04 (of 12)

Before I shut up this discourse about neutral agency, (which I conceive is not to be found, or, if found, ought not to be used,) I have a few other remarks to make on the cause which I conceive gives rise to it.

In all that we do, whether in the struggle or after it, it is necessary that we should constantly have in our eye the nature and character of the enemy we have to contend with. The Jacobin Revolution is carried on by men of no rank, of no consideration, of wild, savage minds, full of levity, arrogance, and presumption, without morals, without probity, without prudence. What have they, then, to supply their innumerable defects, and to make them terrible even to the firmest minds? One thing, and one thing only,—but that one thing is worth a thousand;—they have energy. In France, all things being put into an universal ferment, in the decomposition of society, no man comes forward but by his spirit of enterprise and the vigor of his mind. If we meet this dreadful and portentous energy, restrained by no consideration of God or man, that is always vigilant, always on the attack, that allows itself no repose, and suffers none to rest an hour with impunity,—if we meet this energy with poor commonplace proceeding, with trivial maxims, paltry old saws, with doubts, fears, and suspicions, with a languid, uncertain hesitation, with a formal, official spirit, which is turned aside by every obstacle from its purpose, and which never sees a difficulty but to yield to it, or at best to evade it,—down we go to the bottom of the abyss, and nothing short of Omnipotence can save us. We must meet a vicious and distempered energy with a manly and rational vigor. As virtue is limited in its resources, we are doubly bound to use all that in the circle drawn about us by our morals we are able to command.

I do not contend against the advantages of distrust. In the world we live in it is but too necessary. Some of old called it the very sinews of discretion. But what signify commonplaces that always run parallel and equal? Distrust is good, or it is bad, according to our position and our purpose. Distrust is a defensive principle. They who have much to lose have much to fear. But in France we hold nothing. We are to break in upon a power in possession; we are to carry everything by storm, or by surprise, or by intelligence, or by all. Adventure, therefore, and not caution, is our policy. Here to be too presuming is the better error.

The world will judge of the spirit of our proceeding in those places of France which may fall into our power by our conduct in those that are already in our hands. Our wisdom should not be vulgar. Other times, perhaps other measures; but in this awful hour our politics ought to be made up of nothing but courage, decision, manliness, and rectitude. We should have all the magnanimity of good faith. This is a royal and commanding policy; and as long as we are true to it, we may give the law. Never can we assume this command, if we will not risk the consequences. For which reason we ought to be bottomed enough in principle not to be carried away upon the first prospect of any sinister advantage. For depend upon it, that, if we once give way to a sinister dealing, we shall teach others the game, and we shall be outwitted and overborne; the Spaniards, the Prussians, God knows who, will put us under contribution at their pleasure; and instead of being at the head of a great confederacy, and the arbiters of Europe, we shall, by our mistakes, break up a great design into a thousand little selfish quarrels, the enemy will triumph, and we shall sit down under the terms of unsafe and dependent peace, weakened, mortified, and disgraced, whilst all Europe, England included, is left open and defenceless on every part, to Jacobin principles, intrigues, and arms. In the case of the king of France, declared to be our friend and ally, we will still be considering ourselves in the contradictory character of an enemy. This contradiction, I am afraid, will, in spite of us, give a color of fraud to all our transactions, or at least will so complicate our politics that we shall ourselves be inextricably entangled in them.

I have Toulon in my eye. It was with infinite sorrow I heard, that, in taking the king of France's fleet in trust, we instantly unrigged and dismasted the ships, instead of keeping them in a condition to escape in case of disaster, and in order to fulfil our trust,—that is, to hold them for the use of the owner, and in the mean time to employ them for our common service. These ships are now so circumstanced, that, if we are forced to evacuate Toulon, they must fall into the hands of the enemy or be burnt by ourselves. I know this is by some considered as a fine thing for us. But the Athenians ought not to be better than the English, or Mr. Pitt less virtuous than Aristides.

Are we, then, so poor in resources that we can do no better with eighteen or twenty ships of the line than to burn them? Had we sent for French Royalist naval officers, of which some hundreds are to be had, and made them select such seamen as they could trust, and filled the rest with our own and Mediterranean seamen, which are all over Italy to be had by thousands, and put them under judicious English commanders-in-chief, and with a judicious mixture of our own subordinates, the West Indies would at this day have been ours. It may be said that these French officers would take them for the king of France, and that they would not be in our power. Be it so. The islands would not be ours, but they would not be Jacobinized. This is, however, a thing impossible. They must in effect and substance be ours. But all is upon that false principle of distrust, which, not confiding in strength, can never have the full use of it. They that pay, and feed, and equip, must direct. But I must speak plain upon this subject. The French islands, if they were all our own, ought not to be all kept. A fair partition only ought to be made of those territories. This is a subject of policy very serious, which has many relations and aspects. Just here I only hint at it as answering an objection, whilst I state the mischievous consequences which suffer us to be surprised into a virtual breach of faith by confounding our ally with our enemy, because they both belong to the same geographical territory.

My clear opinion is, that Toulon ought to be made, what we set out with, a royal French city. By the necessity of the case, it must be under the influence, civil and military, of the allies. But the only way of keeping that jealous and discordant mass from tearing its component parts to pieces, and hazarding the loss of the whole, is, to put the place into the nominal government of the regent, his officers being approved by us. This, I say, is absolutely necessary for a poise amongst ourselves. Otherwise is it to be believed that the Spaniards, who hold that place with us in a sort of partnership, contrary to our mutual interest, will see us absolute masters of the Mediterranean, with Gibraltar on one side and Toulon on the other, with a quiet and composed mind, whilst we do little less than declare that we are to take the whole West Indies into our hands, leaving the vast, unwieldy, and feeble body of the Spanish dominions in that part of the world absolutely at our mercy, without any power to balance us in the smallest degree? Nothing is so fatal to a nation as an extreme of self-partiality, and the total want of consideration of what others will naturally hope or fear. Spain must think she sees that we are taking advantage of the confusions which reign in France to disable that country, and of course every country, from affording her protection, and in the end to turn the Spanish monarchy into a province. If she saw things in a proper point of light, to be sure, she would not consider any other plan of politics as of the least moment in comparison of the extinction of Jacobinism. But her ministers (to say the best of them) are vulgar politicians. It is no wonder that they should postpone this great point, or balance it by considerations of the common politics, that is, the questions of power between state and state. If we manifestly endeavor to destroy the balance, especially the maritime and commercial balance, both in Europe and the West Indies, (the latter their sore and vulnerable part,) from fear of what France may do for Spain hereafter, is it to be wondered that Spain, infinitely weaker than we are, (weaker, indeed, than such a mass of empire ever was,) should feel the same fears from our uncontrolled power that we give way to ourselves from a supposed resurrection of the ancient power of France under a monarchy? It signifies nothing whether we are wrong or right in the abstract; but in respect to our relation to Spain, with such principles followed up in practice, it is absolutely impossible that any cordial alliance can subsist between the two nations. If Spain goes, Naples will speedily follow. Prussia is quite certain, and thinks of nothing but making a market of the present confusions. Italy is broken and divided. Switzerland is Jacobinized, I am afraid, completely. I have long seen with pain the progress of French principles in that country. Things cannot go on upon the present bottom. The possession of Toulon, which, well managed, might be of the greatest advantage, will be the greatest misfortune that ever happened to this nation. The more we multiply troops there, the more we shall multiply causes and means of quarrel amongst ourselves. I know but one way of avoiding it, which is, to give a greater degree of simplicity to our politics. Our situation does necessarily render them a good deal involved. And to this evil, instead of increasing it, we ought to apply all the remedies in our power.

See what is in that place the consequence (to say nothing of every other) of this complexity. Toulon has, as it were, two gates,—an English and a Spanish. The English gate is by our policy fast barred against the entrance of any Royalists. The Spaniards open theirs, I fear, upon no fixed principle, and with very little judgment. By means, however, of this foolish, mean, and jealous policy on our side, all the Royalists whom the English might select as most practicable, and most subservient to honest views, are totally excluded. Of those admitted the Spaniards are masters. As to the inhabitants, they are a nest of Jacobins, which is delivered into our hands, not from principle, but from fear. The inhabitants of Toulon may be described in a few words. It is differtum nautis, cauponibus atque malignis. The rest of the seaports are of the same description.

Another thing which I cannot account for is, the sending for the Bishop of Toulon and afterwards forbidding his entrance. This is as directly contrary to the declaration as it is to the practice of the allied powers. The king of Prussia did better. When he took Verdun, he actually reinstated the bishop and his chapter. When he thought he should be the master of Chalons, he called the bishop from Flanders, to put him into possession. The Austrians have restored the clergy wherever they obtained possession. We have proposed to restore religion as well as monarchy; and in Toulon we have restored neither the one nor the other. It is very likely that the Jacobin sans-culottes, or some of them, objected to this measure, who rather choose to have the atheistic buffoons of clergy they have got to sport with, till they are ready to come forward, with the rest of their worthy brethren, in Paris and other places, to declare that they are a set of impostors, that they never believed in God, and never will preach any sort of religion. If we give way to our Jacobins in this point, it is fully and fairly putting the government, civil and ecclesiastical, not in the king of France, to whom, as the protector and governor, and in substance the head of the Gallican Church, the nomination to the bishoprics belonged, and who made the Bishop of Toulon,—it does not leave it with him, or even in the hands of the king of England, or the king of Spain,—but in the basest Jacobins of a low seaport, to exercise, pro tempore, the sovereignty. If this point of religion is thus given up, the grand instrument for reclaiming France is abandoned. We cannot, if we would, delude ourselves about the true state of this dreadful contest. It is a religious war. It includes in its object, undoubtedly, every other interest of society as well as this; but this is the principal and leading feature. It is through this destruction of religion that our enemies propose the accomplishment of all their other views. The French Revolution, impious at once and fanatical, had no other plan for domestic power and foreign empire. Look at all the proceedings of the National Assembly, from the first day of declaring itself such, in the year 1789, to this very hour, and you will find full half of their business to be directly on this subject. In fact, it is the spirit of the whole. The religious system, called the Constitutional Church, was, on the face of the whole proceeding, set up only as a mere temporary amusement to the people, and so constantly stated in all their conversations, till the time should come when they might with safety cast off the very appearance of all religion whatsoever, and persecute Christianity throughout Europe with fire and sword. The Constitutional clergy are not the ministers of any religion: they are the agents and instruments of this horrible conspiracy against all morals. It was from a sense of this, that, in the English addition to the articles proposed at St. Domingo, tolerating all religions, we very wisely refused to suffer that kind of traitors and buffoons.

This religious war is not a controversy between sect and sect, as formerly, but a war against all sects and all religions. The question is not, whether you are to overturn the Catholic, to set up the Protestant. Such an idea, in the present state of the world, is too contemptible. Our business is, to leave to the schools the discussion of the controverted points, abating as much as we can the acrimony of disputants on all sides. It is for Christian statesmen, as the world is now circumstanced, to secure their common basis, and not to risk the subversion of the whole fabric by pursuing these distinctions with an ill-timed zeal. We have in the present grand alliance all modes of government, as well as all modes of religion. In government, we mean to restore that which, notwithstanding our diversity of forms, we are all agreed in as fundamental in government. The same principle ought to guide us in the religious part: conforming the mode, not to our particular ideas, (for in that point we have no ideas in common,) but to what will best promote the great, general ends of the alliance. As statesmen, we are to see which of those modes best suits with the interests of such a commonwealth as we wish to secure and promote. There can be no doubt but that the Catholic religion, which is fundamentally the religion of France, must go with the monarchy of France. We know that the monarchy did not survive the hierarchy, no, not even in appearance, for many months,—in substance, not for a single hour. As little can it exist in future, if that pillar is taken away, or even shattered and impaired.

If it should please God to give to the allies the means of restoring peace and order in that focus of war and confusion, I would, as I said in the beginning of this memorial, first replace the whole of the old clergy; because we have proof more than sufficient, that, whether they err or not in the scholastic disputes with us, they are not tainted with atheism, the great political evil of the time. I hope I need not apologize for this phrase, as if I thought religion nothing but policy: it is far from my thoughts, and I hope it is not to be inferred from my expressions. But in the light of policy alone I am here considering the question. I speak of policy, too, in a large light; in which large light, policy, too, is a sacred thing.

There are many, perhaps half a million or more, calling themselves Protestants, in the South of France, and in other of the provinces. Some raise them to a much greater number; but I think this nearer to the mark. I am sorry to say that they have behaved shockingly since the very beginning of this rebellion, and have been uniformly concerned in its worst and most atrocious acts. Their clergy are just the same atheists with those of the Constitutional Catholics, but still more wicked and daring. Three of their number have met from their republican associates the reward of their crimes.

As the ancient Catholic religion is to be restored for the body of France, the ancient Calvinistic religion ought to be restored for the Protestants, with every kind of protection and privilege. But not one minister concerned in this rebellion ought to be suffered amongst them. If they have not clergy of their own, men well recommended, as untainted with Jacobinism, by the synods of those places where Calvinism prevails and French is spoken, ought to be sought. Many such there are. The Presbyterian discipline ought, in my opinion, to be established in its vigor, and the people professing it ought to be bound to its maintenance. No man, under the false and hypocritical pretence of liberty of conscience, ought to be suffered to have no conscience at all. The king's commissioner ought also to sit in their synods, as before the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. I am conscious that this discipline disposes men to republicanism: but it is still a discipline, and it is a cure (such as it is) for the perverse and undisciplined habits which for some time have prevailed. Republicanism repressed may have its use in the composition of a state. Inspection may be practicable, and responsibility in the teachers and elders may be established, in such an hierarchy as the Presbyterian. For a time like ours, it is a great point gained, that people should be taught to meet, to combine, and to be classed and arrayed in some other way than in clubs of Jacobins. If it be not the best mode of Protestantism under a monarchy, it is still an orderly Christian church, orthodox in the fundamentals, and, what is to our point, capable enough of rendering men useful citizens. It was the impolitic abolition of their discipline, which exposed them to the wild opinions and conduct that have prevailed amongst the Huguenots. The toleration in 1787 was owing to the good disposition of the late king; but it was modified by the profligate folly of his atheistic minister, the Cardinal de Loménie. This mischievous minister did not follow, in the edict of toleration, the wisdom of the Edict of Nantes. But his toleration was granted to non-Catholics,—a dangerous word, which might signify anything, and was but too expressive of a fatal indifference with regard to all piety. I speak for myself: I do not wish any man to be converted from his sect. The distinctions which we have reformed from animosity to emulation may be even useful to the cause of religion. By some moderate contention they keep alive zeal. Whereas people who change, except under strong conviction, (a thing now rather rare,) the religion of their early prejudices, especially if the conversion is brought about by any political machine, are very apt to degenerate into indifference, laxity, and often downright atheism.

Another political question arises about the mode of government which ought to be established. I think the proclamation (which I read before I had proceeded far in this memorial) puts it on the best footing, by postponing that arrangement to a time of peace.

When our politics lead us to enterprise a great and almost total political revolution in Europe, we ought to look seriously into the consequences of what we are about to do. Some eminent persons discover an apprehension that the monarchy, if restored in France, may be restored in too great strength for the liberty and happiness of the natives, and for the tranquillity of other states. They are therefore of opinion that terms ought to be made for the modification of that monarchy. They are persons too considerable, from the powers of their mind, and from their situation, as well as from the real respect I have for them, who seem to entertain these apprehensions, to let me pass them by unnoticed.

As to the power of France as a state, and in its exterior relations, I confess my fears are on the part of its extreme reduction. There is undoubtedly something in the vicinity of France, which makes it naturally and properly an object of our watchfulness and jealousy, whatever form its government may take. But the difference is great between a plan for our own security and a scheme for the utter destruction of France. If there were no other countries in the political map but these two, I admit that policy might justify a wish to lower our neighbor to a standard which would even render her in some measure, if not wholly, our dependant. But the system of Europe is extensive and extremely complex. However formidable to us, as taken in this one relation, France is not equally dreadful to all other states. On the contrary, my clear opinion is, that the liberties of Europe cannot possibly be preserved but by her remaining a very great and preponderating power. The design at present evidently pursued by the combined potentates, or of the two who lead, is totally to destroy her as such a power. For Great Britain resolves that she shall have no colonies, no commerce, and no marine. Austria means to take away the whole frontier, from the borders of Switzerland to Dunkirk. It is their plan also to render the interior government lax and feeble, by prescribing, by force of the arms of rival and jealous nations, and without consulting the natural interests of the kingdom, such arrangements as, in the actual state of Jacobinism in France, and the unsettled state in which property must remain for a long time, will inevitably produce such distraction and debility in government as to reduce it to nothing, or to throw it back into its old confusion. One cannot conceive so frightful a state of a nation. A maritime country without a marine and without commerce; a continental country without a frontier, and for a thousand miles surrounded with powerful, warlike, and ambitious neighbors! It is possible that she might submit to lose her commerce and her colonies: her security she never can abandon. If, contrary to all expectations, under such a disgraced and impotent government, any energy should remain in that country, she will make every effort to recover her security, which will involve Europe for a century in war and blood. What has it cost to France to make that frontier? What will it cost to recover it? Austria thinks that without a frontier she cannot secure the Netherlands. But without her frontier France cannot secure herself. Austria has been, however, secure for an hundred years in those very Netherlands, and has never been dispossessed of them by the chance of war without a moral certainty of receiving them again on the restoration of peace. Her late dangers have arisen not from the power or ambition of the king of France. They arose from her own ill policy, which dismantled all her towns, and discontented all her subjects by Jacobinical innovations. She dismantles her own towns, and then says, "Give me the frontier of France!" But let us depend upon it, whatever tends, under the name of security, to aggrandize Austria, will discontent and alarm Prussia. Such a length of frontier on the side of France, separated from itself, and separated from the mass of the Austrian country, will be weak, unless connected at the expense of the Elector of Bavaria (the Elector Palatine) and other lesser princes, or by such exchanges as will again convulse the Empire.

Take it the other way, and let us suppose that France so broken in spirit as to be content to remain naked and defenceless by sea and by land. Is such a country no prey? Have other nations no views? Is Poland the only country of which it is worth while to make a partition? We cannot be so childish as to imagine that ambition is local, and that no others can be infected with it but those who rule within certain parallels of latitude and longitude. In this way I hold war equally certain. But I can conceive that both these principles may operate: ambition on the part of Austria to cut more and more from France; and French impatience under her degraded and unsafe condition. In such a contest will the other powers stand by? Will not Prussia call for indemnity, as well as Austria and England? Is she satisfied with her gains in Poland? By no means. Germany must pay; or we shall infallibly see Prussia leagued with France and Spain, and possibly with other powers, for the reduction of Austria; and such may be the situation of things, that it will not be so easy to decide what part England may take in such a contest.

I am well aware how invidious a task it is to oppose anything which tends to the apparent aggrandizement of our own country. But I think no country can be aggrandized whilst France is Jacobinized. This post removed, it will be a serious question how far her further reduction will contribute to the general safety, which I always consider as included. Among precautions against ambition, it may not be amiss to take one precaution against our own. I must fairly say, I dread our own power and our own ambition; I dread our being too much dreaded. It is ridiculous to say we are not men, and that, as men, we shall never wish to aggrandize ourselves in some way or other. Can we say that even at this very hour we are not invidiously aggrandized? We are already in possession of almost all the commerce of the world. Our empire in India is an awful thing. If we should come to be in a condition not only to have all this ascendant in commerce, but to be absolutely able, without the least control, to hold the commerce of all other nations totally dependent upon our good pleasure, we may say that we shall not abuse this astonishing and hitherto unheard-of power. But every other nation will think we shall abuse it. It is impossible but that, sooner or later, this state of things must produce a combination against us which may end in our ruin.

As to France, I must observe that for a long time she has been stationary. She has, during this whole century, obtained far less by conquest or negotiation than any of the three great Continental powers. Some part of Lorraine excepted, I recollect nothing she has gained,—no, not a village. In truth, this Lorraine acquisition does little more than secure her barrier. In effect and substance it was her own before.

However that may be, I consider these things at present chiefly in one point of view, as obstructions to the war on Jacobinism, which must stand as long as the powers think its extirpation but a secondary object, and think of taking advantage, under the name of indemnity and security, to make war upon the whole nation of France, royal and Jacobin, for the aggrandizement of the allies, on the ordinary principles of interest, as if no Jacobinism existed in the world.

So far is France from being formidable to its neighbors for its domestic strength, that I conceive it will be as much as all its neighbors can do, by a steady guaranty, to keep that monarchy at all upon its basis. It will be their business to nurse France, not to exhaust it. France, such as it is, is indeed highly formidable: not formidable, however, as a great republic; but as the most dreadful gang of robbers and murderers that ever was embodied. But this distempered strength of France will be the cause of proportionable weakness on its recovery. Never was a country so completely ruined; and they who calculate the resurrection of her power by former examples have not sufficiently considered what is the present state of things. Without detailing the inventory of what organs of government have been destroyed, together with the very materials of which alone they can be recomposed, I wish it to be considered what an operose affair the whole system of taxation is in the old states of Europe. It is such as never could be made but in a long course of years. In France all taxes are abolished. The present powers resort to the capital, and to the capital in kind. But a savage, undisciplined people suffer a robbery with more patience than an impost. The former is in their habits and their dispositions. They consider it as transient, and as what, in their turn, they may exercise. But the terrors of the present power are such as no regular government can possibly employ. They who enter into France do not succeed to their resources. They have not a system to reform, but a system to begin. The whole estate of government is to be reacquired.

What difficulties this will meet with in a country exhausted by the taking of the capital, and among a people in a manner new-principled, trained, and actually disciplined to anarchy, rebellion, disorder, and impiety, may be conceived by those who know what Jacobin France is, and who may have occupied themselves by revolving in their thoughts what they were to do, if it fell to their lot to reëstablish the affairs of France. What support or what limitations the restored monarchy must have may be a doubt, or how it will pitch and settle at last. But one thing I conceive to be far beyond a doubt: that the settlement cannot be immediate; but that it must be preceded by some sort of power, equal at least in vigor, vigilance, promptitude, and decision, to a military government. For such a preparatory government, no slow-paced, methodical, formal, lawyer-like system, still less that of a showy, superficial, trifling, intriguing court, guided by cabals of ladies, or of men like ladies, least of all a philosophic, theoretic, disputatious school of sophistry,—none of these ever will or ever can lay the foundations of an order that can last. Whoever claims a right by birth to govern there must find in his breast, or must conjure up in it, an energy not to be expected, perhaps not always to be wished for, in well-ordered states. The lawful prince must have, in everything but crime, the character of an usurper. He is gone, if he imagines himself the quiet possessor of a throne. He is to contend for it as much after an apparent conquest as before. His task is, to win it: he must leave posterity to enjoy and to adorn it. No velvet cushions for him. He is to be always (I speak nearly to the letter) on horseback. This opinion is the result of much patient thinking on the subject, which I conceive no event is likely to alter.