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THE HARVARD CLASSICS

The Five-Foot Shelf of Books

Marie Antoinette on the way to her execution

From the fainting by Francois Flatneng

THE HARVARD CLASSICS
EDITED BY CHARLES W. ELIOT, LL.D.

Edmund Burke

On Taste

On the Sublime and Beautiful

Reflections on the French Revolution

A Letter to a Noble Lord

W;//j Introduction and l^otes
Volume 24

P. F. Collier & Son Corporation

NEW YORK

Copyright, rgop
By p. F. Collier & Son

manufactured in u. s. a.

CONTENTS

PAGE

PREFACE 7

ON TASTE

Introductory Discourse ii

THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL
PART I.

Section I. — Novelty 29

Sect. II. — Pain and Pleasure 30

Sect. III. — The Difference Between the Removal of Pain,

AND Positive Pleasure 31

Sect. IV. — Of Delight and Pleasure as Opposed to Each

Other .33

Sect. V. — Joy and Grief 34

Sect. VI. — Of the Passions Which Belong to Self-Preserva-

TION 35

Sect. VII. — Of the Sublime 35

Sect. VIII. — Of the Passions Which Belong to Society 36
Sect. IX. — The Final Cause of the Difference Between

the Passions Belonging to Self-Preservation and Those

Which Regard the Society of the Sexes 37

Sect. X. — Of Beauty 38

Sect. XI. — Society and Solitude 39

Sect. XII. — Sympathy, Imitation, and Ambition .... 39

Sect. XIII. — Sympathy 39

Sect. XIV. — The Effects of Sympathy in the Distresses of

Others 40

Sect. XV. — Of the Effects of Tragedy 42

Sect. XVI. — Imitation 43

Sect. XVII. — Ambition 44

Sect. XVIII. — The Recapitulation 45

Sect. XIX. — The Conclusion 46

r

2 CONTENTS

PAGE

PART II.

Section I. — Of the Passion Caused by the Sublime ... 49

Sect. II. — Terror 49

Sect. III. — Obscurity 50

Sect. IV. — Of the Difference Between Clearness and

Obscurity with Regard to the Passions 51

Sect. [IV.] — The Same Subject Continued 52

Sect. V. — Power 55

Sect. VI. — Privation 60

Sect. VII. — Vastness 61

Sect. VIII. — Infinity 62

Sect. IX. — Succession and Uniformity 63

Sect. X. — Magnitude in Building ........ 64

Sect. XI. — Infinity in Pleasing Objects 65

Sect. XII. — Difficulty 65

Sect. XIII. — Magnificence 66

Sect. XIV. — Light 67

Sect. XV. — Light in Building 68

Sect. XVI. — Colour Considered as Productive of the

Sublime 69

Sect. XVII. — Sound and Loudness 69

Sect. XVIII. — Suddenness 70

Sect. XIX. — Intermitting 70

Sect. XX. — The Cries of Animals 71

Sect. XXI. — Smell and Taste. Bitters and Stenches ... 71

Sect. XXII. — Feeling. Pain 73

PART III.

Section I. — Of Beauty 74

Sect. II. — Proportion not the Cause of Beauty in Veg-
etables 75

Sect. III. — Proportion not the Cause of Beauty in Animals 77
Sect. IV. — Proportion not the Cause of Beauty in the

Human Species 78

Sect. V. — Proportion Further Considered 83

Sect. VI. — ^Fitness not the Cause of Beauty 85

Sect. VII. — ^The Real Effects of Fitness 87

CONTENTS 3

PAGE

Sect. VIII. — The Recapitulation 89

Sect. IX. — Perfection not the Cause of Beauty .... 90
Sect. X. — How Far the Idea of Beauty May be Applied to

the Qualities of the Mind 9°

Sect. XI. — How Far the Idea of Beauty May be Applied

to Virtue • • 9^

Sect. XII. — The Real Cause of Beauty 92

Sect. XIII. — Beautiful Objects Small 92

Sect. XIV. — Smoothness 93

Sect. XV. — Gradual Variation 94

Sect. XVI.— Delicacy 95

Sect. XVII. — Beauty in Colour 95

Sect. XVIII. — Recapitulation 96

Sect. XIX. — The Physiognomy 96

Sect. XX.— The Eye 97

Sect. XXI. — Ugliness ■ ■ 97

Sect. XXII.— Grace 98

Sect. XXIII. — Elegance and Speciousness 98

Sect. XXIV. — The Beautiful in Feeling 98

Sect. XXV. — The Beautiful in Sounds . 100

Sect. XXVI. — Taste and Smell loi

Sect. XXVII. — The Sublime and Beautiful Compared . loi

PART IV.

Section I. — Of the Efficient Cause of the Sublime and

Beautiful 103

Sect. II. — Association . 104

Sect. III. — Cause of Pain and Fear 105

Sect. IV. — Continued 106

Sect. V. — How the Sublime is Produced 107

Sect. VI. — How Pain Can be a Cause of Delight .... 107
Sect. VII. — Exercise Necessary for the Finer Organs .108
Sect. VIII. — Why Things not Dangerous Produce a Passion

Like Terror 109

Sect. IX. — ^Why Visual Objects of Great Dimensions are

Sublime 109

Sect. X. — Unity, Why Requisite to Vastness no

4 CONTENTS

PAGE

Sect. XI. — The Artificial Infinite . iii

Sect. XII. — The Vibrations Must be Similar 112

Sect. XIII. — The Effects of Succession in Visual Objects

Explained 112

Sect. XIV. — Locke's Opinion Concerning Darkness Con-
sidered 114

Sect. XV. — Darkness Terrible in its Own Nature 115

Sect. XVI. — Why Darkness is Terrible 116

Sect. XVII. — The Effects of Blackness 117

Sect. XVIII. — The Effects of Blackness Moderated . . 119

Sect. XIX. — The Physical Cause of Love 119

Sect. XX. — Why Smoothness is Beautiful 120

Sect. XXI. — Sweetness, Its Nature . 121

Sect. XXII. — Sweetness Relaxing 123

Sect. XXIII. — Variation, Why Beautiful 124

Sect. XXIV. — Concerning Smallness 125

Sect. XXV. — Of Colour 127

PART V.

Section I. — Of Words 129

Sect. II. — The Common Effects of Poetry, Not by Raising

Ideas of Things 129

Sect. III. — General Words Before Ideas 131

Sect. IV. — The Effect of Words 132

Sect. V. — Examples that Words May Affect Without

Raising Images 133

Sect. VI. — Poetry not Strictly an Imitative Art .... 137

Sect. VII. — How Words Influence the Passions .... 137

REFLECTIONS ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE

143

A LETTER FROM THE RIGHT HON. EDMUND BURKE

TO A NOBLE LORD 381

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

Edmund Burke was born in Dublin in January, 1729, the son of an
attorney. His father was Protestant, his mother Catholic; and though
the son followed his father's religion, he was always tolerant of the other
faith. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, where he took his
B.A. in 1748, coming to London two years later to study law. But his
tastes were more literary than legal, and on giving up law, against his
father's wish, before he was called to the bar, he was forced to resort
to his pen for a livelihood.

The first of his productions to gain notice was his "Vindication of
Natural Society, by a late noble writer," an ironical imitation of the style
and arguments of Bolingbroke, carried out with great skill. This
pamphlet already showed Burke as a defender of the established order of
things. In the same year, 1756, appeared his famous "Philosophical
Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful."

For five years, from 1759 to 1764, Burke's time was largely occupied
by his duties as secretary to William Gerard Hamilton, practically his
only publications being in the "Annual Register," with which he was
connected for many years; yet in this period he found time to form in-
timacies with the famous group containing, among others, Garrick, Sir
Joshua Reynolds, and Dr. Johnson. During the short administration of
Lord Rockingham, Burke acted as that nobleman's private secretary, and
in January, 1766, he became a member of the House of Commons. Al-
most at once he came into prominence as a speaker, displaying in the
debates on American affairs, which then occupied the House, much inde-
pendence and a disposition toward a wise expediency rather than a harsh
insistence on theoretical sovereignty in dealing with the colonists.

In 1768 Burke bought an estate in Buckinghamshire, for which he
was never able to pay in full; and during most of his life he was in finan-
cial difficulties. During the Grafton ministry his chief publication was
his "Thoughts on the Present Discontents," in which he opposed the
reviving influence of the court, and championed the interests of the
people. American affairs continued to engage the attention of Parlia-
ment, and throughout the struggle with the colonies Burke's voice was
constantly raised on behalf of a policy of conciliation. With the aid of
his disciple, C. J. Fox, he forced the retirement of Lord North, and when
the Whigs came into power in 1782 he was made paymaster of the

6 INTRODUCTION

forces. Aristocratic jealousy, and the difficulties of his own temperament,
kept him out of a cabinet position then and later.

The next great issue on which Burke employed his oratorical talents
was the impeachment of Warren Hastings. Beginning in 1787, it dragged
on for seven years, Burke closing his colossal labors with a nine days'
speech. Though Hastings was acquitted, Burke's fervid indignation in
supporting the impeachment, and the impeachment itself, were indica-
tions of the growth of the sense of responsibility for the humane treat-
ment of subject peoples.

Meantime, the sympathy expressed in England for the French Revolu-
tion in its earlier stages roused Burke to express his opposition in his
famous "Reflections." In the debates which followed, Burke became
separated from his friends Sheridan and Fox, and finally from his party,
and he closed his political career in practical isolation.

On his retirement from Parliament in 1794, the King granted him a
(tension which Pitt found means to increase, but even this well-earned
reward he was not allowed to enjoy without the grudging assaults of
enemies. His last days were spent in vigorous support of the war against
France; and he died July 8, 1797.

Burke never attained a political office in any degree proportioned to
his ability and services, but he succeeded, nevertheless, in affecting pro-
foundly the opinion of his time. Latterly the House of Commons tired
of his fervid and imaginative eloquence, unwilling perhaps to make the
effort necessary to follow his keen intellectual processes, but he found
through his writings a larger audience. "Bacon alone excepted," says
Buckle, Burke was "the greatest political thinker who has ever devoted
himself to the practise of English politics."

PREFACE

I HAVE endeavoured to make this edition something more full and
satisfactory than the first. I have sought with the utmost care, and read
with equal attention, everything which has appeared in public against
my opinions; I have taken advantage of the candid liberty of my friends;
and if by these means I have been better enabled to discover the imper-
fections of the work, the indulgence it has received, imperfect as it was,
furnished me with a new motive to spare no reasonable pains for its
improvement. Though I have not found sufficient reason, or what ap-
peared to me sufficient, for making any material change in my theory, I
have found it necessary in many places to explain, illustrate, and enforce
it. I have prefixed an introductory discourse concerning Taste: it is a
matter curious in itself; and it leads naturally enough to the principal
inquiry. This, with the other explanations, has made the work con-
siderably larger; and by increasing its bulk, has, I am afraid, added to
its faults; so that, notwithstanding all my attention, it may stand in need
of a yet greater share of indulgence than it required at its first appearance.

They who are accustomed to studies of this nature will expect, and
they will allow too for many faults. They know that many of the objects
of our inquiry are in themselves obscure and intricate; and that many
others have been rendered so by affected refinements or false learning;
they know that there are many impediments in the subject, in the preju-
dices of others, and even in our own, that render it a matter of no small
difficulty to show in a clear light the genuine face of nature. They know
that, whilst the mind is intent on the general scheme of things, some
particular parts must be neglected; that we must often submit the style
to the matter, and frequently give up the praise of elegance, satisfied
with being clear.

The characters of nature are legible, it is true; but they are not plain
enough to enable those who run, to read them. We must make use of a
cautious, I had almost said a timorous, method of proceeding. We must
not attempt to fly, when we can scarcely pretend to creep. In considering
any complex matter, we ought to examine every distinct ingredient in the
composition, one by one; and reduce everything to the utmost simplicity;
since the condition of our nature binds us to a strict law and very narrow

8 PREFACE

limits. We ought afterwards to re-examine the principles by the effect
of the composition, as well as the composition by that of the principles.
We ought to compare our subject with things of a similar nature, and
even with things of a contrary nature; for discoveries may be, and often
are, made by the contrast, which would escape us on the single view.
The greater number of the comparisons we make, the more general and
the more certain our knowledge is like to prove, as built upon a more
extensive and perfect induction.

If an inquiry thus carefully conducted should fail at last of discovering
the truth, it may answer an end perhaps as useful, in discovering to us
the weakness of our own understanding. If it does not make us know-
ing, it may make us modest. If it does not preserve us from error, it may
at least from the spirit of error; and may make us cautious of pronouncing
with positiveness or with haste, when so much labour may end in so
much uncertainty.

I could wish that, in examining this theory, the same method were
pursued which I endeavoured to observe in forming it. The objections, in
my opinion, ought to be proposed, either to the several principles as they
are distinctly considered, or to the justness of the conclusion which is
drawn from them. But it is common to pass over both the premises and
conclusion in silence, and to produce, as an objection, some poetical
passage which does not seem' easily accounted for upon the principles I
endeavour to establish. This manner of proceeding I should think very
improper. The task would be infinite, if we could establish no principle
until we had previously unravelled the complex texture of every image
or description to be found in poets and orators. And though we should
never be able to reconcile the effect of such images to our principles, this
can never overturn the theory itself, whilst it is founded on certain and
indisputable facts. A theory founded on experiment, and not assumed, is
always good for so much as it explains. Our inability to push it indef-
initely is no argument at all against it. This inability may be owing to
our ignorance of some necessary mediums; to a want of proper applica-
tion; to many other causes besides a defect in the principles we employ.
In reality, the subject requires a much closer attention than we dare
claim from our manner of treating it.

If it should not apjsear on the face of the work, I must caution the
reader against imagining that I intended a full dissertation on the Sub-
lime and Beautiful. My inquiry went no farther than to the origin of
these ideas. If the qualities which I have ranged under the head of the
Sublime be all found consistent with each other, and all different from

PREFACE 9

those which I place under the head of Beauty; and if those which com-
pose the class of the Beautiful have the same consistency with themselves,
and the same opposition to those which are classed under the denomina-
tion of Sublime, I am in little pain whether anybody chooses to follow
the name I give them or not, provided he allows that what I dispose
under different heads are in reality different things in nature. The use I
make of the words may be blamed, as too confined or too extended; my
meaning cannot well be misunderstood.

To conclude: whatever progress may be made towards the discovery
of truth in this matter, I do not repent the pains I have taken in it. The
use of such inquiries may be very considerable. Whatever turns the soul
inward on itself, tends to concentre its forces, and to fit it for greater
and stronger flights of science. By looking into physical causes our minds
are opened and enlarged; and in this pursuit, whether we take or
whether we lose our game, the chase is certainly of service. Cicero, true
as he was to the academic philosophy, and consequently led to reject the
certainty of physical, as of every other kind of knowledge, yet freely
confesses its great importance to the human understanding; "Est ani-
tnorum ingeniorumque nostrorum naturale quoddam quasi pabulum
consideratio contemplatioque naturce." If we can direct the lights we
derive from such exalted speculations, upon the humbler field of the
imagination, whilst we investigate the springs, and trace the courses of
our passions, we may not only communicate to the taste a sort of philo-
sophical solidity, but we may reflect back on the severer sciences some
of the graces and elegancies of taste, without which the greatest pro-
ficiency in those sciences will always have the appearance of something
illiberal.

ON TASTE

INTRODUCTORY DISCOURSE

ON A superficial view, we may seem to differ very widely
I from each other in our reasonings, and no less in our
pleasures: but notwithstanding this difference, which I
think to be rather apparent than real, it is probable that the standard
both of reason and taste is the same in all human creatures. For if
there were not some principles of judgment as well as of sentiment
common to all mankind, no hold could possibly be taken either on
their reason or their passions, sufficient to maintain the ordinary
correspondence of life. It appears indeed to be generally acknowl-
edged, that with regard to truth and falsehood there is something
fixed. We find people in their disputes continually appealing to cer-
tain tests and standards, which are allowed on all sides, and are sup-
posed to be established in our common nature. But there is not the
same obvious concurrence in any uniform or settled principles which
relate to taste. It is even commonly supposed that this delicate and
aerial faculty, which seems too volatile to endure even the chains of
a definition, cannot be properly tried by any test, nor regulated by
any standard. There is so continual a call for the exercise of the
reasoning faculty, and it is so much strengthened by perpetual con-
tention, that certain maxims of right reason seem to be tacitly settled
amongst the most ignorant. The learned have improved on this
rude science, and reduced those maxims into a system. If taste has
not been so happily cultivated, it was not that the subject was barren,
but that the labourers were few or negligent; for, to say the truth,
there are not the same interesting motives to impel us to fix the one,
which urge us to ascertain the other. And, after all, if men differ in
their opinion concerning such matters, their difference is not at-
tended with the same important consequences; else I make no doubt
but that the logic of taste, if I may be allowed the expression, might

12 EDMUND BURKE

very possibly be as well digested, and we might come to discuss
matters of this nature with as much certainty, as those which seem
more immediately within the province of mere reason. And indeed,
it is very necessary, at the entrance into such an inquiry as our pres-
ent, to make this point as clear as possible; for if taste has no fixed
principles, if the imagination is not affected according to some in-
variable and certain laws, our labour is likely to be employed to very
little purpose; as it must be judged a useless, if not an absurd under-
taking, to lay down rules for caprice, and to set up for a legislator
of whims and fancies.

The term taste, like all other figurative terms, is not extremely
accurate; the thing which we understand by it is far from a simple
and determinate idea in the minds of most men, and it is therefore
liable to uncertainty and confusion. I have no great opinion of a
definition, the celebrated remedy for the cure of this disorder. For,
when we define, we seem in danger of circumscribing nature within
the bounds of our own notions, which we often take up by hazard,
or embrace on trust, or form out of a limited and partial considera-
tion of the object before us; instead of extending our ideas to take
in all that nature comprehends, according to her manner of com-
bining. We are limited in our inquiry by the strict laws to which
we have submitted at our setting out.

— Circa vilem patulumque tnorabimur orbetn,
Unde pudor projerre pedem vetat aut opens lex.

A definition may be very exact, and yet go but a very little way
towards informing us of the nature of the thing defined; but let the
virtue of a definition be what it will, in the order of things, it seems
rather to follow than to precede our inquiry, of which it ought to be
considered as the result. It must be acknowledged, that the methods
of disquisition and teaching may be sometimes different, and on very
good reason undoubtedly; but, for my part, I am convinced that the
method of teaching which approaches most nearly to the method of
investigation is incomparably the best; since, not content with serv-
ing up a few barren and lifeless truths, it leads to the stock on which
they grew; it tends to set the reader himself in the track of invention,
and to direct him into those paths in which the author has made his

ON TASTE 13

own discoveries, if he should be so happy as to have made any that
are valuable.

But to cut off all pretence for cavilling, I mean by the word Taste
no more than that faculty or those faculties of the mind, which are
affected with, or which form a judgment of, the works of imagina-
tion and the elegant arts. This is, I think, the most general idea
of that word, and what is the least connected with any particular
theory. And my point in this inquiry is, to find whether there are
any principles, on which the imagination is affected, so common to
all, so grounded and certain, as to supply the means of reasoning
satisfactorily about them. And such principles of taste I fancy there
are; however paradoxical it may seem to those, who on a superficial
view imagine, that there is so great a diversity of tastes, both in kind
and degree, that nothing can be more indeterminate.

All the natural powers in man, which I know, that are conversant
about external objects, are the senses; the imagination; and the judg-
ment. And first with regard to the senses. We do and we must
suppose, that as the conformation of their organs is nearly or alto-
gether the same in all men, so the manner of perceiving external
objects is in all men the same, or with little difference. We are satis-
fied that what appears to be light to one eye, appears light to another;
that what seems sweet to one palate, is sweet to another; that what is
dark and bitter to this man, is likewise dark and bitter to that; and
we conclude in the same manner of great and litde, hard and soft,
hot and cold, rough and smooth, and indeed of all the natural
qualities and affections of bodies. If we suffer ourselves to imagine,
that their senses present to different men different images of things,
this sceptical proceeding will make every sort of reasoning on every
subject vain and frivolous, even that sceptical reasoning itself which
had persuaded us to entertain a doubt concerning the agreement of
our perceptions. But as there will be little doubt that bodies present
similar images to the whole species, it must necessarily be allowed,
that the pleasures and the pains which every object excites in one
man, it must raise in all mankind, whilst it operates naturally,
simply, and by its proper powers only; for if we deny this, we must
imagine that the same cause, operating in the same manner, and on
subjects of the same kind, will produce different effects; which would

14 EDMUND BURKE

be highly absurd. Let us first consider this point in the sense of taste,
and the rather, as the faculty in question has taken its name from
that sense. All men are agreed to call vinegar sour, honey sweet, and
aloes bitter; and as they are all agreed in finding these qualities in
those objects, they do not in the least differ concerning their effects
with regard to pleasure and pain. They all concur in calling sweet-
ness pleasant, and sourness and bitterness unpleasant. Here there is
no diversity in their sentiments; and that there is not, appears fully
from the consent of all men in the metaphors which are taken from
the sense of taste. A sour temper, bitter expressions, bitter curses,
a bitter fate, are terms well and strongly understood by all. And we
are altogether as well understood when we say, a sweet disposition,
a sweet person, a sweet condition, and the like. It is confessed, that
custom and some other causes have made many deviations from the
natural pleasures or pains which belong to these several tastes: but
then the power of distinguishing between the natural and the ac-
quired relish remains to the very last. A man frequently comes to .
prefer the taste of tobacco to that of sugar, and the flavour of vinegar
to that of milk; but this makes no confusion in tastes, whilst he is
sensible that the tobacco and vinegar are not sweet, and whilst he
knows that habit alone has reconciled his palate to these alien
pleasures. Even with such a person we may speak, and with suffi-
cient precision, concerning tastes. But should any man be found who
declares, that to him tobacco has a taste like sugar, and that he
cannot distinguish between milk and vinegar; or that tobacco and
vinegar are sweet, milk bitter, and sugar sour; we immediately con-
clude that the organs of this man are out of order, and that his
palate is utterly vitiated. We are as far from conferring with such a
person upon tastes, as from reasoning concerning the relations of
quantity with one who should deny that all the parts together were
equal to the whole. We do not call a man of this kind wrong in
his notions, but absolutely mad. Exceptions of this sort, in either
way, do not at all impeach our general rule, nor make us conclude
that men have various principles concerning the relations of quan-
tity or the taste of things. So that when it is said, taste cannot be
disputed, it can only mean, that no one can strictly answer what
pleasure or pain some particular man may find from the taste of

ON TASTE 15

some particular thing. This indeed cannot be disputed; but we
may dispute, and with suflScient clearness too, concerning the things
which are naturally pleasing or disagreeable to the sense. But when
we talk of any peculiar or acquired relish, then we must know the
habits, the prejudices, or the distempers of this particular man, and
we must draw our conclusion from those.

This agreement of mankind is not confined to the taste solely.
The principle of pleasure derived from sight is the same in all.
Light is more pleasing than darkness. Summer, when the earth is
clad in green, when the heavens are serene and bright, is more
agreeable than winter, when everything makes a different appear-
ance. I never remember that anything beautiful, whether a man,
a beast, a bird, or a plant, was ever shown, though it were to a
hundred people, that they did not all immediately agree that it was
beautiful, though some might have thought that it fell short of their
expectation, or that other things were still finer. I believe no man
thinks a goose to be more beautiful than a swan, or imagines that
what they call a Friesland hen excels a peacock. It must be ob-
served, too, that the pleasures of the sight are not near so compli-
cated, and confused, and altered by unnatural habits and associa-
tions, as the pleasures of the taste are; because the pleasures of the
sight more commonly acquiesce in themselves; and are not so often
altered by considerations which are independent of the sight itself.
But things do not spontaneously present themselves to the palate
as they do to the sight; they are generally applied to it, either as
food or as medicine; and, from the qualities which they possess for
nutritive or medicinal purposes, they often form the palate by de-
grees, and by force of these associations. Thus opium is pleasing to
Turks, on account of the agreeable delirium it produces. Tobacco
is the delight of Dutchmen, as it diffuses a torpor and pleasing
stupefaction. Fermented spirits please our common people, because
they banish care, and all consideration of future or present evils.
All of these would lie absolutely neglected if their properties had
originally gone no further than the taste; but all these together,
with tea and coffee, and some other things, have passed from the
apothecary's shop to our tables, and were taken for health long
before they were thought of for pleasure. The effect of the drug has

l6 EDMUND BURKE

made us use it frequently; and frequent use, combined with the
agreeable effect, has made the taste itself at last agreeable. But this
does not in the least perplex our reasoning; because we distinguish
to the last the acquired from the natural relish. In describing the
taste of an unknown fruit, you would scarcely say that it had a sweet
and pleasant flavour like tobacco, opium, or garlic, although you
spoke to those who were in the constant use of these drugs, and
had great pleasure in them. There is in all men a sufficient remem-
brance of the original natural causes of pleasure, to enable them to
bring all things offered to their senses to that standard, and to regu-
late their feelings and opinions by it. Suppose one who had so
vitiated his palate as to take more pleasure in the taste of opium than
in that of butter or honey, to be presented with a bolus of squills;
there is hardly any doubt but that he would prefer the butter or
honey to this nauseous morsel, or to any bitter drug to which he
had not been accustomed; which proves that his palate was natu-
rally like that of other men in all things, that it is still like the palate
of other men in many things, and only vitiated in some particular
points. For in judging of any new thing, even of a taste similar to
that which he has been formed by habit to like, he finds his palate
affected in a natural manner, and on the common principles. Thus
the pleasure of all the senses, of the sight, and even of the taste, that
most ambiguous of the senses, is the same in all, high and low,
learned and unlearned.

Besides the ideas, with their annexed pains and pleasures, which
are presented by the sense; the mind of man possesses a sort of cre-
ative power of its own; either in representing at pleasure the images
of things in the order and manner in which they were received by
the senses, or in combining those images in a new manner, and
according to a different order. This power is called imagination;
and to this belongs whatever is called wit, fancy, invention, and
the like. But it must be observed, that this power of the imagina-
tion is incapable of producing anything absolutely new; it can only
vary the disposition of those ideas which it has received from the
senses. Now the imagination is the most extensive province of
pleasure and pain, as it is the region of our fears and our hopes, and
of all our passions that are connected with them; and whatever is

ON TASTE 17

calculated to affect the imagination with these commanding ideas,
by force of any original natural impression, must have the same
power pretty equally over all men. For since the imagination is
only the representation of the senses, it can only be pleased or dis-
pleased with the images, from the same principle on which the
sense is pleased or displeased with the realities; and consequently
there must be just as close an agreement in the imaginations as in
the senses of men. A little attention will convince us that this must
of necessity be the case.

But in the imagination, besides the pain or pleasure arising from
the properties of the natural object, a pleasure is perceived from
the resemblance which the imitation has to the original: the imagi-
nation, I conceive, can have no pleasure but what results from one
or other of these causes. And these causes operate pretty uniformly
upon all men, because they operate by principles in nature, and
which are not derived from any particular habits or advantages. Mr.
Locke very justly and finely observes of wit, that it is chiefly con-
versant in tracing resemblances: he remarks, at the same time, that
the business of judgment is rather in finding differences. It may
perhaps appear, on this supposition, that there is no material dis-
tinction between the wit and the judgment, as they both seem to
result from different operations of the same faculty of comparing.
But in reality, whether they are or are not dependent on the same
power of the mind, they differ so very materially in many re-
spects, that a perfect union of wit and judgment is one of the rarest
things in the world. When two distinct objects are unlike to each
other, it is only what we expect; things are in their common way;
and therefore they make no impression on the imagination: but
when two distinct objects have a resemblance, we are struck, we
attend to them, and we are pleased. The mind of man has naturally
a far greater alacrity and satisfaction in tracing resemblances than
in searching for differences: because by making resemblances we
produce new images; we unite, we create, we enlarge our stock;
but in making distinctions we offer no food at all to the imagina-
tion; the task itself is more severe and irksome, and what pleasure
we derive from it is something of a negative and indirect nature.
A piece of news is told me in the morning; this, merely as a piece of

1 8 EDMUND BURKE

news, as a fact added to my stock, gives me some pleasure. In the
evening I find there was nothing in it. What do I gain by this, but
the dissatisfaction to find that I have been imposed upon? Hence
it is that men are much more naturally inclined to belief than to
incredulity. And it is upon this principle, that the most ignorant
and barbarous nations have frequently excelled in similitudes, com-
parisons, metaphors, and allegories, who have been weak and back-
ward in distinguishing and sorting their ideas. And it is for a
reason of this kind, that Homer and the Oriental writers, though
very fond of similitudes, and though they often strike out such as
are truly admirable, seldom take care to have them exact; that is,
they are taken with the general resemblance, they paint it strongly,
and they take no notice of the difference which may be found
between the things compared.

Now, as the pleasure of resemblance is that which principally
flatters the imagination, all men are nearly equal in this point, as
far as their knowledge of the things represented or compared extends.
The principle of this knowledge is very much accidental, as it de-
pends upon experience and observation, and not on the strength or
weakness of any natural faculty; and it is from this difference in
knowledge, that what we commonly, though with no great exact-
ness, call a difference in taste proceeds. A man to whom sculpture
is new, sees a barber's block, or some ordinary piece of statuary, he
is immediately struck and pleased, because he sees something like
a human figure; and, entirely taken up with this likeness, he does
not at all attend to its defects. No person, I believe, at the first time
of seeing a piece of imitation ever did. Some time after, we sup-
pose that this novice lights upon a more artificial work of the same
nature; he now begins to look with contempt on what he admired
at first; not that he admired it even then for its unlikeness to a
man, but for that general, though inaccurate, resemblance which it
bore to the human figure. What he admired at different times in
these so different figures, is strictly the same; and though his knowl-
edge is improved, his taste is not altered. Hitherto his mistake was
from a want of knowledge in art; and this arose from his inex-
perience; but he may be still deficient from a want of knowledge
in natxire. For it is possible that the man in question may stop

ON TASTE 19

here, and that the masterpiece of a great hand may please him no
more than the middhng performance of a vulgar artist: and this
not for want of better or higher relish, but because all men do not
observe with sufficient accuracy on the human figure to enable
them to judge properly of an imitation of it. And that the critical
taste does not depend upon a superior principle in men, but upon
superior knowledge, may appear from several instances. The story
of the ancient painter and the shoemaker is very well known. The
shoemaker set the painter right with regard to some mistakes he
had made in the shoe of one of his figures, and which the painter,
who had not made such accurate observations on shoes, and was
content with a general resemblance, had never observed. But this
was no impeachment to the taste of the painter; it only showed some
want of knowledge in the art of making shoes. Let us imagine,
that an anatomist had come into the painter's working-room. His
piece is in general well done, the figure in question in a good atti-
tude, and the parts well adjusted to their various movements; yet
the anatomist, critical in his art, may observe the swell of some
muscle not quite just in the peculiar action of the figure. Here the
anatomist observes what the painter had not observed; and he
passes by what the shoemaker had remarked. But a want of the
last critical knowledge in anatomy no more reflected on the natural
good taste of the painter or of any common observer of his piece,
than the want of an exact knowledge in the formation of a shoe.
A fine piece of a decollated head of St. John the Baptist was shown
to a Turkish emperor; he praised many things, but he observed
one defect; he observed that the skin did not shrink from the
wounded part of the neck. The sultan on this occasion, though his
observation was very just, discovered no more natural taste than
the painter who executed this piece, or than a thousand European
connoisseurs, who probably never would have made the same ob-
servation. His Turkish Majesty had indeed been well acquainted
with that terrible spectacle, which the others could only have repre-
sented in their imagination. On the subject of their dislike there is
a difference between all these people, arising from the different
kinds and degrees of their knowledge; but there is something in
common to the painter, the shoemaker, the anatomist, and the

20 EDMUND BURKE

Turkish emperor, the pleasure arising from a natural object, so far
as each perceives it justly imitated; the satisfaction in seeing an
agreeable figure; the sympathy proceeding from a striking and
affecting incident. So far as taste is natural, it is nearly common
to all.

In poetry, and other pieces of imagination, the same parity may be
observed. It is true, that one man is charmed with Don Bellianis,
and reads Virgil coldly; whilst another is transported with the
Eneid, and leaves Don Bellianis to children. These two men seem
to have a taste very different from each other; but in fact they differ
very little. In both these pieces, which inspire such opposite senti-
ments, a tale exciting admiration is told; both are full of action,
both are passionate; in both are voyages, battles, triumphs, and con-
tinual changes of fortune. The admirer of Don Bellianis perhaps
does not understand the refined language of the Eneid, who, if it
was degraded into the style of the Pilgrim's Progress, might feel it
in all its energy, on the same principle which made him an admirer
of Don Bellianis.

In his favourite author he is not shocked with the continual
breaches of probability, the confusion of times, the offences against
manners, the trampling upon geography; for he knows nothing of
geography and chronology, and he has never examined the grounds
of probability. He perhaps reads of a shipwreck on the coast of
Bohemia; wholly taken up with so interesting an event, and only
solicitous for the fate of his hero, he is not in the least troubled at
this extravagant blunder. For why should he be shocked at a ship-
wreck on the coast of Bohemia, who does not know but that Bo-
hemia may be an island in the Atlantic ocean? and after all, what
reflection is this on the natural good taste of the person here sup-
posed?

So far then as taste belongs to the imagination, its principle is
the same in all men; there is no difference in the manner of their
being affected, nor in the causes of the affection; but in the degree
there is a difference, which arises from two causes principally; either
from a greater degree of natural sensibility, or from a closer and
longer attention to the object. To illustrate this by the procedure of
the senses, in which the same difference is found, let us suppose a

ON TASTE 21

very smooth marble table to be set before two men; they both per-
ceive it to be smooth; and they are both pleased with it because of
this quality. So far they agree. But suppose another, and after that
another table, the latter still smoother than the former, to be set
before them. It is now very probable that these men, who are so
agreed upon what is smooth, and in the pleasure from thence, will
disagree when they come to settle which table has the advantage in
point of polish. Here is indeed the great difference between tastes,
when men come to compare the excess or diminution of things which
are judged by degree and not by measure. Nor is it easy, when such
a difference arises, to setde the point, if the excess or diminution be
not glaring. If we differ in opinion about two quantities, we can
have recourse to a common measure, which may decide the question
with the utmost exactness; and this, I take it, is what gives mathe-
matical knowledge a greater certainty than any other. But in things
whose excess is not judged by greater or smaller, as smoothness and
roughness, hardness and softness, darkness and light, the shades of
colours, all these are very easily distinguished when the difference is
any way considerable, but not when it is minute, for want of some
common measures, which perhaps may never come to be discovered.
In these nice cases, supposing the acuteness of the sense equal, the
greater attention and habit in such things will have the advantage.
In the question about the tables, the marble-polisher will unques-
tionably determine the most accurately. But notwithstanding this
want of a common measure for settling many disputes relative to
the senses, and their representative the imagination, we find that the
principles are the same in all, and that there is no disagreement until
we come to examine into the pre-eminence or difference of things,
which brings us within the province of the judgment.

So long as we are conversant with the sensible qualities of things,
hardly any more than the imagination seems concerned; little more
also than the imagination seems concerned when the passions are
represented, because by the force of natural sympathy they are felt
in all men without any recourse to reasoning, and their justness
recognized in every breast. Love, grief, fear, anger, joy, all these
passions have, in their turns, affected every mind; and they do not
affect it in an arbitrary or casual manner, but upon certain, natural,

22 EDMUND BURKE

and uniform principles. But as many of the works of imagination
are not confined to the representation of sensible objects, nor to
efforts upon the passions, but extend themselves to the manners, the
characters, the actions, and designs of men, their relations, their vir-
tues, and vices, they come within the province of the judgment,
which is improved by attention, and by the habit of reasoning. All
these make a very considerable part of what are considered as the
objects of taste; and Horace sends us to the schools of philosophy
and the world for our instruction in them. Whatever certainty is to
be acquired in morality and the science of life; just the same degree
of certainty have we in what relates to them in the works of imi-
tation. Indeed it is for the most part in our skill in manners, and
in the observances of time and place, and of decency in general,
which is only to be learned in those schools to which Horace recom-
mends us, that what is called taste, by way of distinction, consists;
and which is in reality no other than a more refined judgment. On
the whole it appears to me, that what is called taste, in its most
general acceptation, is not a simple idea, but is partly made up of a
perception of the primary pleasures of sense, of the secondary pleas-
ures of the imagination, and of the conclusions of the reasoning
faculty, concerning the various relations pf these, and concerning the
human passions, manners, and actions. All this is requisite to form
taste, and the ground-work of all these is the same in the human
mind; for as the senses are the great originals of all our ideas, and
consequently of all our pleasures, if they are not uncertain and arbi-
trary, the whole ground-work of taste is common to all, and there-
fore there is a sufficient foundation for a conclusive reasoning on
these matters.

Whilst we consider taste merely according to its nature and spe-
cies, we shall find its principles entirely uniform; but the degree in
which these principles prevail in the several individuals of mankind,
is altogether as different as the principles themselves are similar..
For sensibility and judgment, which are the qualities that compose
what we commonly call a taste, vary exceedingly in various people.
From a defect in the former of these qualities arises a want of taste;
a weakness in the latter constitutes a wrong or a bad one. There are
some men formed with feelings so blunt, with tempers so cold and

ON TASTE 23

phlegmatic, that they can hardly be said to be awake during the
whole course of their lives. Upon such persons the most striking ob-
jects make but a faint and obscure impression. There are others
so continually in the agitation of gross and merely sensual pleasures,
or so occupied in the low drudgery of avarice, or so heated in the
chase of honours and distinction, that their minds, which had been
used continually to the storms of these violent and tempestuous pas-
sions, can hardly be put in motion by the delicate and refined play
of the imagination. These men, though from a different cause, be-
come as stupid and insensible as the former; but whenever either
of these happen to be struck with any natural elegance or great-
ness, or with these qualities in any work of art, they are moved upon
the same principle.

The cause of a wrong taste is a defect of judgment. And this may
arise from a natural weakness of understanding, (in whatever the
strength of that faculty may consist,) or, which is much more com-
monly the case, it may arise from a want of proper and well-directed
exercise, which alone can make it strong and ready. Besides that
ignorance, inattention, prejudice, rashness, levity, obstinacy, in short,
all those passions, and all those vices, which pervert the judgment in
other matters, prejudice it no less in this its more refined and ele-
gant province. These causes produce different opinions upon every-
thing which is an object of the understanding, without inducing us
to suppose that there are no settled principles of reason. And indeed,
on the whole, one may observe that there is rather less difference
upon matters of taste among mankind, than upon most of those
which depend upon the naked reason; and that men are far better
agreed on the excellency of a description in Virgil, than on the truth
or falsehood of a theory of Aristotle.

A rectitude of judgment in the arts, which may be called a good
taste, does in a great measure depend upon sensibility; because, if
the mind has no bent to the pleasures of the imagination, it will
never apply itself sufficiently to works of that species to acquire a
competent knowledge in them. But, though a degree of sensibility
is requisite to form a good judgment, yet a good judgment does not
necessarily arise from a quick sensibility of pleasure; it frequently
happens that a very poor judge, merely by force of a greater com-

24 EDMUND BURKE

plexional sensibility, is more affected by a very poor piece, than the
best judge by the most perfect; for as everything new, extraordinary,
grand, or passionate, is well calculated to affect such a person, and
that the faults do not affect him, his pleasure is more pure and un-
mixed; and as it is merely a pleasure of the imagination, it is much
higher than any which is derived from a rectitude of the judgment;
the judgment is for the greater part employed in throwing stum-
bling-blocks in the way of the imagination, in dissipating the scenes
of its enchantment, and in tying us down to the disagreeable yoke
of our reason: for almost the only pleasure that men have in judging
better than others, consists in a sort of conscious pride and superior-
ity, which arises from thinking rightly; but then, this is an indirect
pleasure, a pleasure which does not immediately result from the ob-
ject which is under contemplation. In the morning of our days,
when the senses are unworn and tender, when the whole man is
awake in every part, and the gloss of novelty fresh upon all the
objects that surround us, how lively at that time are our sensations,
but how false and inaccurate the judgments we form of things? I
despair of ever receiving the same degree of pleasure from the most
excellent performances of genius, which I felt at that age from
pieces which my present judgment regards as trifling and contempt-
ible. Every trivial cause of pleasure is apt to affect the man of too
sanguine a complexion: his appetite is too keen to suffer his taste
to be delicate; and he is in all respects what Ovid says of himself in
love,

Molle meum levibus cor est violabile telis,
Et semper causa est, cur ego semper amem.

One of this character can never be a refined judge; never what the
comic poet calls elegans jormarum spectator. The excellence and
force of a composition must always be imperfectly estimated from
its effect on the minds of any, except we know the temper and
character of those minds. The most powerful effects of poetry and
music have been displayed, and perhaps are still displayed, where
these arts are but in a very low and imperfect state. The rude hearer
is affected by the principles which operate in these arts even in their
rudest condition; and he is not skilful enough to perceive the

ON TASTE 25

defects. But as the arts advance towards their perfection, the science
of criticism advances with equal pace, and the pleasure of judges
is frequently interrupted by the faults which are discovered in the
most finished compositions.

Before I leave this subject I cannot help taking notice of an opin-
ion which many persons entertain, as if the taste were a separate
faculty of the mind, and distinct from the judgment and imagina-
tion; a species of instinct, by which we are struck naturally, and
at the first glance, without any previous reasoning, with the ex-
cellencies, or the defects, of a composition. So far as the imagina-
tion and the passions are concerned, I believe it true, that the reason
is little consulted; but where disposition, where decorum, where con-
gruity are concerned, in short, wherever the best taste difEers from
the worst, I am convinced that the understanding operates, and
nothing else; and its operation is in reality far from being always
sudden, or, when it is sudden, it is often far from being right. Men
of the best taste, by consideration, come frequently to change these
early and precipitate judgments, which the mind, from its aversion
to neutrality and doubt, loves to form on the spot. It is known that
the taste (whatever it is) is improved exactly as we improve our
judgment, by extending our knowledge, by a steady attention to
our object, and by frequent exercise. They who have not taken
these methods, if their taste decides quickly, it is always uncer-
tainly; and their quickness is owing to their presumption and rash-
ness, and not to any sudden irradiation, that in a moment dispels
all darkness from their minds. But they who have cultivated that
species of knowledge which makes the object of taste, by degrees,
and habitually, attain not only a soundness, but a readiness of judg-
ment, as men do by the same methods on all other occasions. At
first they are obliged to spell, but at least they read with ease and
with celerity; but this celerity of its operation is no proof that the
taste is a distinct faculty. Nobody, I believe, has attended the course
of a discussion, which turned upon matters within the sphere of
mere naked reason, but must have observed the extreme readiness
with which the whole process of the argument is carried on, the
grounds discovered, the objections raised and answered, and the con-
clusions drawn from premises, with a quickness altogether as great

26 EDMUND BURKE

as the taste can be supposed to work with; and yet where nothing
but plain reason either is or can be suspected to operate. To multi-
ply principles for every different appearance, is useless, and un-
phiJosophicaJ too in a high degree.

This matter might be pursued much further; but it is not the
extent of the subject which must prescribe our bounds, for what
subject does not branch out to infinity? It is the nature of our
particular scheme, and the single point of view in which we con-
sider it, which ought to put a stop to our researches.

A PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY

INTO THE ORIGIN OF OUR IDEAS
OF

THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL

WITH SEVERAL OTHER ADDITIONS

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

Burke's eminence in the field of aesthetic theory is not comparable to
the distinction he achieved as a statesman, orator, and political thinker;
yet it is probable that, in England especially, his political writings have
unduly overshadowed his contributions to the theory of the beautiful.

His "Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime
and Beautiful: with an Introductory Discourse concerning Taste" was
published in its first form in 1756, and in its enlarged form in 1757; but
it is understood that it was composed some years earlier. "It was a
vigorous enlargement of the principle," says Morley, "which Addison had
not long before timidly illustrated, that critics of art seek its principles
in the wrong place, so long as they limit their search to poems, pictures,
engravings, statues, and buildings, instead of first arranging the senti-
ments and faculties in man to which art makes its appeal. Addison's
treatment was slight and merely literary; Burke dealt boldly with his
subject on the basis of the most scientific psychology that was then within
his reach. To approach it on the psychological side at all, was to make
a distinct and remarkable advance in the method of the inquiry which
he had taken in hand."

The influence of the treatise outside of England was considerable and
important. Lessing undertook to translate it, and many instances have
been pointed out in which his "Laocoon" is indebted to Burke; so that
Burke ranks among the sources of that fertilising contribution to the
mind of the great German thinker which he was always eager to
acknowledge.

THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL
PART I

Section i. — ^Novelty

THE first and the simplest emotion which we discover in the
human mind, is Curiosity. By curiosity, I mean whatever
desire we have for, or whatever pleasure we take in, nov-
elty. We see children perpetually running from place to place, to
hunt out something new: they catch with great eagerness, and with
very little choice, at whatever comes before them; their attention is
engaged by everything, because everything has, in that stage of
life, the charm of novelty to recommend it. But as those things,
which engage us merely by their novelty, cannot attach us for any
length of time, curiosity is the most superficial of all the affections;
it changes its object perpetually, it has an appetite which is very
sharp, but very easily satisfied; and it has always an appearance of
giddiness, resdessness, and anxiety. Curiosity, from its nature, is a
very active principle; it quickly runs over the greatest part of its
objects, and soon exhausts the variety which is commonly to be met
with in nature; the same things make frequent returns, and they
return with less and less of any agreeable effect. In short, the oc-
currences of life, by the time we come to know it a little, would
be incapable of affecting the mind with any other sensations than
those of loathing and weariness, if many things were not adapted to
affect the mind by means of other powers besides novelty in them,
and of other passions besides curiosity in ourselves. These powers
and passions shall be considered in their place. But whatever these
powers are, or upon what principle soever they affect the mind, it
is absolutely necessary that they should not be exerted in those things
which a daily and vulgar use have brought into a stale unaffecting
familiarity. Some degree of novelty must be one of the materials in

29

30 EDMUND BURKE

every instrument which works upon the mind; and curiosity blends
itself more or less with all our passions.

SECT. II. — PAIN AND PLEASURE

It seems then necessary towards moving the passions of people
advanced in life to any considerable degree, that the objects designed
for that purpose, besides their being in some measure new, should
be capable of exciting pain or pleasure from other causes. Pain and
pleasure are simple ideas, incapable of definition. People are not
liable to be mistaken in their feelings, but they are very frequently
wrong in the names they give them, and in their reasonings about
them. Many are of the opinion, that pain arises necessarily from
the removal of some pleasure; as they think pleasure does from the
ceasing or diminution of some pain. For my part, I am rather in-
clined to imagine, that pain and pleasure, in their most simple and
natural manner of affecting, are each of a positive nature, and by no
means necessarily dependent on each other for their existence. The
human mind is often, and I think it is for the most part, in a state
neither of pain nor pleasure, which I call a state of indifference.
When I am carried from this state into a state of actual pleasure, it
does not appear necessary that I should pass through the medium of
any sort of pain. If in such a state of indifference, or ease, or tran-
quillity, or call it what you please, you were to be suddenly enter-
tained with a concert of music; or suppose some object of a fine
shape, and bright, lively colours, to be presented before you; or
imagine your smell is gratified with the fragrance of a rose; or if
without any previous thirst you were to drink of some pleasant kind
of wine, or to taste of some sweetmeat without being hungry; in all
the several senses, of hearing, smelling and tasting, you undoubt-
edly find a pleasure; yet if I inquire into the state of your mind
previous to these gratifications, you will hardly tell me that they
found you in any kind of pain; or, having satisfied these several
senses with their several pleasures, will you say that any pain has
succeeded, though the pleasure is absolutely over.? Suppose on the
other hand, a man in the same state of indifference, to receive a
violent blow, or to drink of some bitter potion, or to have his ears
wounded with some harsh and grating sound; here is no removal

ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 3I

of pleasure; and yet here is felt in every sense which is affected, a
pain very distinguishable. It may be said, perhaps, that the pain
in these cases had its rise from the removal of the pleasure which
the man enjoyed before, though that pleasure was of so low a de-
gree as to be perceived only by the removal. But this seems to me a
subtilty that is not discoverable in nature. For if, previous to the
pain, I do not feel any actual pleasure, I have no reason to judge
that any such thing exists; since pleasure is only pleasure as it is
felt. The same may be said of pain, and with equal reason. I can
never persuade myself that pleasure and pain are mere relations,
which can only exist as they are contrasted; but I think I can dis-
cern clearly that there are positive pains and pleasures, which do
not at all depend upon each other. Nothing is more certain to my
own feelings than this. There is nothing which I can distinguish
in my mind with more clearness than the three states, of indiffer-
ence, of pleasure, and of pain. Every one of these I can perceive
without any sort of idea of its relation to anything else. Caius is
afflicted with a fit of the colic; this man is actually in pain; stretch
Caius upon the rack, he will feel a much greater pain: but does
this pain of the rack arise from the removal of any pleasure? or
is the fit of the colic a pleasure or a pain, just as we are pleased to
consider it?

SECT. III. — THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE REMOVAL OF PAIN, AND
POSITIVE PLEASURE

We shall carry this proposition yet a step farther. We shall ven-
ture to propose, that pain and pleasure are not only not necessarily
dependent for their existence on their mutual diminution or re-
moval, but that, in reality, the diminution or ceasing of pleasure
does not operate like positive pain; and that the removal or diminu-
tion of pain, in its effect, has very little resemblance to positive
pleasure.' The former of these propositions will, I believe, be much
more readily allowed than the latter; because it is very evident that
pleasure, when it has run its career, sets us down very nearly where
it found us. Pleasure of every kind quickly satisfies; and when it

'Mr. Locke [Essay on the Human Understanding, 1. ii. c. 20, sect. 16] thinks that
the removal or lessening of a pain is considered and operates as a pleasure, and the
loss or diminishing of pleasure as a pain. It is this opinion which we consider here.

32 EDMUND BURKE

is over, we relapse into indifference, or rather we fall into a soft
tranquillity, which is tinged with the agreeable colour of the former
sensation. I own it is not at first view so apparent, that the removal
of a great pain does not resemble positive pleasure; but let us recol-
lect in what state we have found our minds upon escaping some im-
minent danger, or on being released from the severity of some cruel
pain. We have on such occasions found, if I am not much mistaken,
the temper of our minds in a tenor very remote from that which at-
tends the presence of positive pleasure; we have found them in a
state of much sobriety, impressed with a sense of awe, in a sort of
tranquillity shadowed with horror. The fashion of the countenance
and the gesture of the body on such occasions is so correspondent
to this state of mind, that any person, a stranger to the cause of
the appearance, would rather judge us under some consternation,
than in the enjoyment of anything like positive pleasure.

'Qs 5* &T* av avbp' &-nj TVKiv-fi XA^p, 6ffr' ivl vkTpxi
^WTtt KaTdKTtlva.^, 6XKo3v e^Uero dfjiwi',
'AvSpis is /upvfiov, ddju/Sos S' Jx" ('uropScoi'Tas.

Iliad.fi. 480.

As when a wretch, who, conscious of his crime.
Pursued for murder from his native clime.
Just gains some frontier, breathless, pale, amazed;
All gaze, all wonder!

This striking appearance of the man whom Homer supposes to
have just escaped an imminent danger, the sort of mixed passion
of terror and surprise, with which he affects the spectators, paints
very strongly the manner in which we find ourselves affected upon
occasions any way similar. For when we have suffered from any
violent emotion, the mind naturally continues in something like the
same condition, after the cause which first produced it has ceased to
operate. The tossing of the sea remains after the storm; and when
this remain of horror has entirely subsided, all the passion, which
the accident raised, subsides along with it; and the mind returns to
its usual state of indifference. In short, pleasure (I mean anything
either in the inward sensation, or in the outward appearance, like
pleasure from a positive cause) has never, I imagine, its origin from
the removal of pain or danger.

ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 33

SECT. IV. — OF DELIGHT AND PLEASURE AS OPPOSED TO EACH OTHER

But shall we therefore say, that the removal o£ pain or its diminu-
tion is always simply painful? or affirm that the cessation or the
lessening of pleasure is always attended itself with a pleasure.? By
no means. What I advance is no more than this; first, that there are
pleasures and pains of a positive and independent nature; and, sec-
ondly, that the feeling which results from the ceasing or diminution
of pain does not bear a sufficient resemblance to positive pleasure,
to have it considered as of the same nature, or to entitle it to be
known by the same name; and, thirdly, that upon the same princi-
ple the removal or qualification of pleasure has no resemblance to
positive pain. It is certain that the former feeling (the removal or
moderation of pain) has something in it far from distressing or
disagreeable in its nature. This feeling, in many cases so agreeable,
but in all so different from positive pleasure, has no name which I
know; but that hinders not its being a very real one, and very differ-
ent from all others. It is most certain that every species of satisfac-
tion or pleasure, how different soever in its manner of affecting, is
of a positive nature in the mind of him who feels it. The affection
is undoubtedly positive; but the cause may be, as in this case it cer-
tainly is, a sort of Privation. And it is very reasonable that we should
distinguish by some term two things so distinct in nature, as a
pleasure that is such simply, and without any relation, from that
pleasure which cannot exist without a relation, and that too a rela-
tion to pain. Very extraordinary it would be, if these affections, so
distinguishable in their causes, so different in their effects, should
be confounded with each other, because vulgar use has ranged them
under the same general title. Whenever I have occasion to speak
of this species of relative pleasure, I call it Delight; and I shall take
the best care I can to use that word in no other sense. I am satisfied
the word is not commonly used in this appropriated signification;
but I thought it better to take up a word already known, and to
limit its signification, than to introduce a new one, which would
not perhaps incorporate so well with the language. I should never
have presumed the least alteration in our words, if the nature of
the language, framed for the purposes of business rather than those

34 EDMUND BURKE

of philosophy, and the nature of my subject, that leads me out of the
common track of discourse, did not in a manner necessitate me to
it. I shall make use of this liberty with all possible caution. As I
make use of the word Delight to express the sensation which accom-
panies the removal of pain or danger; so when I speak of positive
pleasure, I shall for the most part call it simply Pleasure.

SECT. V. — JOY AND GRIEF

It must be observed that the cessation of pleasure affects the mind
three ways. If it simply ceases, after having continued a proper
time, the effect is indifference; if it be abruptly broken off, there en-
sues an uneasy sense called disappointment; if the object be so
totally lost that there is no chance of enjoying it again, a passion
arises in the mind, which is called grief. Now there is none of these,
not even grief, which is the most violent, that I think has any re-
semblance to positive pain. The person who grieves, suffers his
passion to grow upon him; he indulges it, he loves it: but this never
happens in the case of actual pain, which no man ever willingly en-
dured for any considerable time. That grief should be willingly
endured, though far from a simply pleasing sensation, is not so
difficult to be understood. It is the nature of grief to keep its object
perpetually in its eye, to present it in its most pleasurable views, to
repeat all the circumstances that attend it, even to the last minute-
ness; to go back to every particular enjoyment, to dwell upon each,
and to find a thousand new perfections in all, that were not suffi-
ciently understood before; in grief, the pleasure is still uppermost;
and the affliction we suffer has no resemblance to absolute pain,
which is always odious, and which we endeavor to shake off as
soon as possible. The Odyssey of Homer, which abounds with so
many natural and affecting images, has none more striking than
those which Menelaus raises of the calamitous fate of his friends,
and his own manner of feeling it. He owns, indeed, that he often
gives himself some intermission from such melancholy reflections;
but he observes, too, that, melancholy as they are, they give him
pleasure.

'AXX* ifxirris iravras ^xiv odvpdntvos /cat Ax^^Wf
IIoXXdKis ky fieyapoLtri Kad-fj^evoi rmerepotaiv,
"AXXore fjtep tc 'y6<i> tpptpa rkpTro/jiaLy aWore 5* atjTe
Uai/ofitu' aX^p6s 6k jcdpos xpiiGpoLo ydoio.

Hom. Od. A. 100.

ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 35

Still in short intervals of pleasing woe.
Regardful of the friendly dues I owe,
I to the glorious dead, for ever dear,
Indulge the tribute of a grateful tear.

On the other hand, when we recover our health, when we escape
an imminent danger, is it with joy that we are affected? The sense
on these occasions is far from that smooth and voluptuous satisfac-
tion which the assured prospect of pleasure bestows. The delight
which arises from the modifications of pain confesses the stock from
whence it sprung, in its solid, strong, and severe nature.

SECT. VI. — OF THE PASSIONS WHICH BELONG TO SELF-PRESERVATION

Most of the ideas which are capable of making a powerful im-
pression on the mind, whether simply of Pain or Pleasure, or of
the modifications of those, may be reduced very nearly to these two
heads, self-preservation and society; to the ends of one or the other
of which all our passions are calculated to answer. The passions
which concern self-preservation, turn mostly on pain or danger. The
ideas of pain, sic\ness, and death, fill the mind with strong emo-
tions of horror; but life and health, though they put us in a capacity
of being affected with pleasure, make no such impression by the
simple enjoyment. The passions therefore which are conversant
about the preservation of the individual turn chiefly on pain and
danger, and they are the most powerful of all the passions.

SECT. VII. — OF THE SUBLIME

Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain and
danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conver-
sant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to
terror, is a source of the sublime; that is, it is productive of the
strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling. I say the
strongest emotion, because I am satisfied the ideas of pain are much
more powerful than those which enter on the part of pleasure.
Without all doubt, the torments which we may be made to suffer
are much greater in their effect on the body and mind, than any
pleasures which the most learned voluptuary could suggest, or than
the liveliest imagination, and the most sound and exquisitely sensible

36 EDMUND BURKE

body, could enjoy. Nay, I am in great doubt whether any man
could be found, who would earn a life of the most perfect satisfac-
tion, at the price of ending it in the torments, which justice inflicted
in a few hours on the late unfortunate regicide in France. But as
pain is stronger in its operation than pleasure, so death is in gen-
eral a much more affecting idea than pain; because there are very
few pains, however exquisite, which are not preferred to death:
nay, what generally makes pain itself, if I may say so, more painful,
is, that it is considered as an emissary of this king of terrors. When
danger or pain press too nearly, they are incapable of giving any
delight, and are simply terrible; but at certain distances, and with
certain modifications, they may be, and they are, delightful, as we
every day experience. The cause of this I shall endeavour to investi-
gate hereafter.

SECT. VIII. — OF THE PASSIONS WHICH BELONG TO SOCIETY

The other head under which I class our passions, is that of
society, which may be divided into two sorts. I. The society of the
sexes, which answers the purposes of propagation; and next, that
more general society, which we have with men and with other ani-
mals, and which we may in some sort be said to have even with the
inanimate world. The passions belonging to the preservation of the
individual turn wholly on pain and danger: those which belong
to generation have their origin in gratifications and pleasures; the
pleasure most directly belonging to this purpose is of a lively char-
acter, rapturous and violent, and confessedly the highest pleasure
of sense; yet the absence of this so great an enjoyment scarce
amounts to an uneasiness; and, except at particular times, I do not
think it affects at all. When men describe in what manner they
are affected by pain and danger, they do not dwell on the pleasure
of health and the comfort of security, and then lament the loss of
these satisfactions: the whole turns upon the actual pains and hor-
rors which they endure. But if you listen to the complaints of a
forsaken lover, you observe that he insists largely on the pleasures
which he enjoyed, or hoped to enjoy, and on the perfection of the
object of his desires; it is the loss which is always uppermost in his
mind. The violent effects produced by love, which has sometimes

ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 37

been even wrought up to madness, is no objection to the rule which
we seek to estabHsh. When men have suffered their imaginations
to be long affected with any idea, it so wholly engrosses them as
to shut out by degrees almost every other, and to break down every
partition of the mind which would confine it. Any idea is sufficient
for the purpose, as is evident from the infinite variety of causes,
which give rise to madness: but this at most can only prove, that
the passion of love is capable of producing very extraordinary effects,
not that its extraordinary emotions have any connexion with posi-
tive pain.

SECT. IX.— THE FINAL CAUSE OF THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE PASSIONS

BELONGING TO SELF-PRESERVATION, AND THOSE WHICH REGARD

THE SOCIETY OF THE SEXES

The final cause of the difference in character between the passions
which regard self-preservation, and those which are directed to the
multiplication of the species, will illustrate the foregoing remarks
yet further; and it is, I imagine, worthy of observation even upon
its own account. As the performance of our duties of every kind
depends upon life, and the performing them with vigour and effi-
cacy depends upon health, we are very strongly affected with what-
ever threatens the destruction of either: but as we are not made to
acquiesce in life and health, the simple enjoyment of them is not
attended with any real pleasure, lest, satisfied with that, we should
give ourselves over to indolence and inaction. On the other hand,
the generation of mankind is a great purpose, and it is requisite
that men should be animated to the pursuit of it by some great
incentive. It is therefore attended with a very high pleasure; but
as it is by no means designed to be our constant business, it is not
fit that the absence of this pleasure should be attended with any
considerable pain. The difference between men and brutes, in this
point, seems to be remarkable. Men are at all times pretty equally
disposed to the pleasures of love, because they are to be guided by
reason in the time and manner of indulging them. Had any great
pain arisen from the want of this satisfaction, reason, I am afraid,
would find great difficulties in the performance of its office. But
brutes, who obey laws, in the execution of which their own reason

38 EDMUND BURKE

lias but little share, have their stated seasons; at such times it is not
improbable that the sensation from the want is very troublesome, be-
cause the end must be then answered, or be missed in many, per-
haps for ever; as the inclination returns only with its season.

SECT. X. — OF BEAUTY

The passion which belongs to generation, merely as such, is lust
only. This is evident in brutes, whose passions are more unmixed,
and which pursue their purposes more direcdy than ours. The only
distinction they observe with regard to their mates, is that of sex.
It is true, that they stick severally to their own species in preference
to all others. But this preference, I imagine, does not arise from
any sense of beauty which they find in their species, as Mr. Addison
supposes, but from a law of some other kind, to which they are
subject; and this we may fairly conclude, from their apparent want
of choice amongst those objects to which the barriers of their species
have confined them. But man, who is a creature adapted to a
greater variety and intricacy of relation, connects with the general
passion the idea of some social qualities, which direct and heighten
the appetite which he has in common with all other animals; and
as he is not designed like them to live at large, it is fit that he should
have something to create a preference, and fix his choice; and this
in general should be some sensible quality; as no other can so
quickly, so powerfully, or so surely produce its effect. The object
therefore of this mixed passion, which we call love, is the beauty
of the sex. Men are carried to the sex in general, as it is the sex,
and by the common law of nature; but they are attached to par-
ticulars by {personal beauty. I call beauty a social quality; for where
women and men, and not only they, but when other animals give
us a sense of joy and pleasure in beholding them, (and there are
many that do so,) they inspire us with sentiments of tenderness and
affection towards their persons; we like to have them near us, and
we enter willingly into a kind of relation with them, unless we
should have strong reasons to the contrary. But to what end, in
many cases, this was designed, I am unable to discover; for I see
no greater reason for a connexion between man and several animals
who are attired in so engaging a manner, than between him and

ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 39

some others who entirely want this attraction, or possess it in a far
weaker degree. But it is probable, that Providence did not make
even this distinction, but with a view to some great end; though
we cannot perceive distinctly what it is, as his wisdom is not our
wisdom, nor our ways his ways.

SECT. XI. — SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE

The second branch of the social passions is that which administers
to society in general. With regard to this, I observe, that society,
merely as society, without any particular heightenings, gives us no
positive pleasure in the enjoyment; but absolute and entire solitude,
that is, the total and perpetual exclusion from all society, is as great
a positive pain as can almost be conceived. Therefore in the balance
between the pleasure of general society and the pain of absolute
solitude, pain is the predominant idea. But the pleasure of any par-
ticular social enjoyment outweighs very considerably the uneasiness
caused by the want of that particular enjoyment; so that the strong-
est sensations relative to the habitudes of particular society are sensa-
tions of pleasure. Good company, lively conversation, and the en-
dearments of friendship, fill the mind with great pleasure; a tem-
porary solitude, on the other hand, is itself agreeable. This may
perhaps prove that we are creatures designed for contemplation as
well as action; since solitude as well as society has its pleasures;
as from the former observation we may discern, that an entire life
of solitude contradicts the purposes of our being, since death itself
is scarcely an idea of more terror.

SECT. XII. — SYMPATHY, IMITATION, AND AMBITION-

Under this denomination of society, the passions are of a com-
plicated kind, and branch out into a variety of forms, agreeably
to that variety of ends they are to serve in the great chain of so-
ciety. The three principal links in this chain are sympathy, imita-
tion, and ambition.

SECT. XIII. — SYMPATHY

It is by the first of these passions that we enter into the concerns
of others; that we are moved as they are moved, and are never

40 EDMUND BURKE

suffered to be indifferent spectators of almost anything which men
can do or suffer. For sympathy must be considered as a sort of
substitution, by which we are put into the place of another man,
and affected in many respects as he is affected; so that this passion
may either partake of the nature of those which regard self-preser-
vation, and turning upon pain may be a source of the sublime or it
may turn upon ideas of pleasure; and then whatever has been said
of the social affections, whether they regard society in general, or
only some particular modes of it, may be applicable here. It is by
this principle chiefly that poetry, painting, and other affecting arts,
transfuse their passions from one breast to another, and are often
capable of grafting a delight on wretchedness, misery, and death
itself. It is a common observation, that objects which in the reality
would shock, are in tragical, and such like representations, the
source of a very high species of pleasure. This, taken as a fact, has
been the cause of much reasoning. The satisfaction has been com-
monly attributed, first, to the comfort we receive in considering
that so melancholy a story is no more than a fiction; and, next, to
the contemplation of our own freedom from the evils which we see
represented. I am afraid it is a practice much too common in in-
quiries of this nature, to attribute the cause of feelings which merely
arise from the mechanical structure of our bodies, or from the natu-
ral frame and constitution of our minds, to certain conclusions of
the reasoning faculty on the objects presented to us; for I should
imagine, that the influence of reason in producing our passions is
nothing near so extensive as it is commonly believed.

SECT. XIV. — ^THE EFFECTS OF SYMPATHY IN THE DISTRESSES OF OTHERS

To examine this point concerning the effect of tragedy in a
proper manner, we must previously consider how we are affected by
the feelings of our fellow-creatures in circumstances of real dis-
tress. I am convinced we have a degree of delight, and that no
small one, in the real misfortunes and pains of others; for let the
affection be what it will in appearance, if it does not make us shun
such objects, if on the contrary it induces us to approach them, if
it makes us dwell upon them, in this case I conceive we must have
a delight or pleasure of some species or other in contemplating

ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 4I

objects of this kind. Do we not read the authentic histories of scenes
of this nature with as much pleasure as romances or poems, where
the incidents are fictitious? The prosperity of no empire, nor the
grandeur of no king, can so agreeably affect in the reading, as the
ruin of the state of Macedon, and the distress of its unhappy prince.
Such a catastrophe touches us in history as much as the destruction
of Troy does in fable. Our delight, in cases of this kind, is very
greatly heightened, if the sufferer be some excellent person who
sinks under an unworthy fortune. Scipio and Cato are both virtu-
ous characters; but we are more deeply affected by the violent death
of the one, and the ruin of the great cause he adhered to, than with
the deserved triumphs and uninterrupted prosperity of the other;
for terror is a passion which always produces delight when it does
not press too closely; and pity is a passion accompanied with pleas-
ure, because it arises from love and social affection. Whenever we
are formed by nature to any active purpose, the passion which ani-
mates us to it is attended with delight, or a pleasure of some kind,
let the subject-matter be what it will; and as our Creator has de-
signed that we should be united by the bond of sympathy, he
has strengthened that bond by a proportionable delight; and there
most where our sympathy is most wanted, — in the distresses of others.
If this passion was simply painful, we would shun with the greatest
care all persons and places that could excite such a passion; as
some, who are so far gone in indolence as not to endure any strong
impression, actually do. But the case is widely different with the
greater part of mankind; there is no spectacle we so eagerly pursue,
as that of some uncommon and grievous calamity; so that whether
the misfortune is before our eyes, or whether they are turned back
to it in history, it always touches with delight. This is not an un-
mixed delight, but blended with no small uneasiness. The delight
we have in such things, hinders us from shunning scenes of misery;
and the pain we feel prompts us to relieve ourselves in relieving
those who suffer; and all this antecedent to any reasoning, by an
instinct that works us to its own purposes without our concurrence.

42 EDMUND BURKE

SECT. XV. — OF THE EFFECTS OF TRAGEDY

It is thus in real calamities. In imitated distresses the only dif-
ference is the pleasure resulting from the effects of imitation; for
it is never so perfect, but we can perceive it is imitation, and on that
principle are somewhat pleased with it. And indeed in some cases
we derive as much or more pleasure from that source than from the
thing itself. But then I imagine we shall be much mistaken, if we
attribute any considerable part of our satisfaction in tragedy to the
consideration that tragedy is a deceit, and its representations no
realities. The nearer it approaches the reality, and the farther it re-
moves us from all idea of fiction, the more perfect is its power. But
be its power of what kind it will, it never approaches to what it
represents. Choose a day on which to represent the most sublime
and affecting tragedy we have; appoint the most favourite actors;
spare no cost upon the scenes and decorations, unite the greatest
efforts of poetry, painting, and music; and when you have col-
lected your audience, just at the moment when their minds are
erect with expectation, let it be reported that a state criminal of
high rank is on the point of being executed in the adjoining square;
in a moment the emptiness of the theatre would demonstrate the
comparative weakness of the imitative arts, and proclaim the tri-
umph of the real sympathy. I believe that this notion of our having
a simple pain in the reality, yet a delight in the representation, arises
from hence, that we do not sufficiently distinguish what we would
by no means choose to do, from what we should be eager enough
to see if it was once done. The delight in seeing things, which, so
far from doing, our heartiest wishes would be to see redressed. This
noble capital, the pride of England and of Europe, I believe no man
is so strangely wicked as to desire to see destroyed by a conflagra-
tion or an earthquake, though he should be removed himself to
the greatest distance from the danger. But suppose such a fatal ac-
cident to have happened, what numbers from all parts would crowd
to behold the ruins, and amongst many who would have been con-
tent never to have seen London in its glory! Nor is it, either in real
or fictitious distresses, our immunity from them which produces
our delight; in my own mind I can discover nothing like it. I

ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 43

apprehend that this mistake is owing to a sort of sophism, by which
we are frequently imposed upon; it arises from our not distin-
guishing between what is indeed a necessary condition to our doing
or suffering anything in general, and what is the cause of some
particular act. If a man kills me with a sword, it is a necessary con-
dition to this that we should have been both of us alive before the
fact; and yet it would be absurd to say, that our being both living
creatures was the cause of his crime and of my death. So it is certain,
that it is absolutely necessary my life should be out of any immi-
nent hazard, before I can take a delight in the sufferings of others,
real or imaginary, or indeed in anything else from any cause what-
soever. But then it is a sophism to argue from thence, that this
immunity is the cause of my delight either on these or on any
occasions. No one can distinguish such a cause of satisfaction in
his own mind, I believe; nay, when we do not suffer any very acute
pain, nor are exposed to any imminent danger of our lives, we can
feel for others, whilst we suffer ourselves; and often then most
when we are softened by affliction; we see with pity even distresses
which we would accept in the place of our own.

SECT. XVI. — IMITATION

The second passion belonging to society is imitation, or, if you
will, a desire of imitating, and consequently a pleasure in it. This
passion arises from much the same cause with sympathy. For as
sympathy makes us take a concern in whatever men feel, so this
affection prompts us to copy whatever they do; and consequently
we have a pleasure in imitating, and in whatever belongs to imita-
tion, merely as it is such, without any intervention of the reasoning
faculty, but solely from our natural constitution, which Providence
has framed in such a manner as to find either pleasure or delight,
according to the nature of the object, in whatever regards the pur-
poses of our being. It is by imitation far more than by precept, that
we learn everything; and what we learn thus, we acquire not only
more effectually, but more pleasantly. This forms our manners, our
opinions, our lives. It is one of the strongest links of society; it is
a species of mutual compliance, which all men yield to each other,
without constraint to themselves, and which is extremely flattering

44 EDMUND BURKE

to all. Herein it is that painting and many other agreeable arts have
laid one of the principal foundations of their power. And since, by
its influence on our manners and our passions, it is of such great
consequence, I shall here venture to lay down a rule, which may in-
form us with a good degree of certainty when we are to attribute the
power of the arts to imitation, or to our pleasure in the skill of
the imitator merely, and when to sympathy, or some other cause
in conjunction with it. When the object represented in poetry or
painting is such as we could have no desire of seeing in the reality,
then I may be sure that its power in poetry or painting is owing to
the power of imitation, and to no cause operating in the thing itself.
So it is with most of the pieces which the painters call still-life. In
these a cottage, a dunghill, the meanest and most ordinary utensils
of the kitchen, are capable of giving us pleasure. But when the
object of the painting or poem is such as we should run to see if
real, let it affect us with what odd sort of sense it will, we may
rely upon it, that the power of the poem or picture is more owing
to the nature of the thing itself than to the mere effect of imitation,
or to a consideration of the skill of the imitator, however excellent.
Aristotle has spoken so much and so boldly upon the force of imita-
tion in his Poetics, that it makes any further discourse upon this
subject the less necessary.

SECT. XVII. — AMBITION

Although imitation is one of the great instruments used by
Providence in bringing our nature towards its perfection, yet if men
gave themselves up to imitation entirely, and each followed the
other, and so on in an eternal circle, it is easy to see that there never
could be any improvement amongst them. Men must remain as
brutes do, the same at the end that they are at this day, and that they
were in the beginning of the world. To prevent this, God has
planted in man a sense of ambition, and a satisfaction arising from
the contemplation of his excelling his fellows in something deemed
valuable amongst them. It is this passion that drives men to all the
ways we see in use of signalizing themselves, and that tends to make
whatever excites in a man the idea of this distinction so very pleas-
ant. It has been so strong as to make very miserable men take

ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 45

comfort, that they were supreme in misery; and certain it is, that,
where we cannot distinguish ourselves by something excellent, we
begin to take a complacency in some singular infirmities, follies, or
defects of one kind or other. It is on this principle that flattery is
so prevalent; for flattery is no more than what raises in a man's
mind an idea of a preference which he has not. Now, whatever,
either on good or upon bad grounds, tends to raise a man in his
own opinion, produces a sort of swelling and triumph, that is ex-
tremely grateful to the human mind; and this swelling is never more
perceived, nor operates with more force, than when without danger
we are conversant with terrible objects; the mind always claiming
to itself some part of the dignity and importance of the things which
it contemplates. Hence proceeds what Longinus has observed of
that glorying sense of inward greatness, that always fills the reader
of such passages in poets and orators as are sublime; it is what every
man must have felt in himself upon such occasions.

SECT. XVIII. — THE RECAPITULATION

To draw the whole of what has been said into a few distinct
points: — The passions which belong to self-preservation turn on
pain and danger; they are simply painful when their causes imme-
diately affect us; they are delightful when we have an idea of pain
and danger, without being actually in such circumstances; this de-
light I have not called pleasure, because it turns on pain, and be-
cause it is different enough from any idea of positive pleasure.
Whatever excites this delight, I call sublime. The passions belong-
ing to self-preservation are the strongest of all the passions.

The second head to which the passions are referred with relation
to their final cause, is society. There are two sorts of societies. The
first is, the society of sex. The passion belonging to this is called
love, and it contains a mixture of lust; its object is the beauty of
women. The other is the great society with man and all other ani-
mals. The passion subservient to this is called likewise love, but it
has no mixture of lust, and its object is beauty; which is a name
I shall apply to all such qualities in things as induce in us a sense
of affection and tenderness, or some other passion the most nearly re-
sembling these. The passion of love has its rise in positive pleasure;

46 EDMUND BURKE

it is, like all things which grow out of pleasure, capable of being
mixed with a mode of uneasiness, that is, when an idea of its object
is excited in the mind with an idea at the same time of having
irretrievably lost it. This nndxed sense of pleasure I have not called
pain, because it turns upon actual pleasure, and because it is, both
in its cause and in most of its effects, of a nature altogether different.
Next to the general passion we have for society, to a choice in
which we are directed by the pleasure we have in the object, the
particular passion under this head called sympathy has the greatest
extent. The nature of this passion is, to put us in the place of an-
other in whatever circumstance he is in, and to affect us in a like
manner; so that this passion may, as the occasion requires, turn
either on pain or pleasure; but with the modifications mentioned in
some cases in sect. 11. As to imitation and preference, nothing more
need be said.

SECT. XIX. — THE CONCLUSION

I BELIEVED that an attempt to range and methodize some of our
most leading passions would be a good preparative to such an in-
quiry as we are going to make in the ensuing discourse. The pas-
sions I have mentioned are almost the only ones which it can be
necessary to consider in our present design; though the variety of
the passions is great, and worthy in every branch of that variety, of
an attentive investigation. The more accurately we search into the
human mind, the stronger traces we everywhere find of his wisdom
who made it. If a discourse on the use of the parts of the body may
be considered as an hymn to the Creator; the use of the passions,
which are the organs of the mind, cannot be barren of praise to
him, nor unproductive to ourselves of that noble and uncommon
union of science and admiration, which a contemplation of the
works of infinite wisdom alone can afford to a rational mind:
whilst, referring to him whatever we find of right or good or fair
in ourselves, discovering his strength and wisdom even in our own
weakness and imperfection, honouring them where we discover
them clearly, and adoring their profundity where we are lost in
our search, we may be inquisitive without impertinence, and ele-
vated without pride; we may be admitted, if I may dare to say so,

ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 47

into the counsels of the Almighty by a consideration of his works.
The elevation of the mind ought to be the principal end of all our
studies; which if they do not in some measure effect, they are of
very little service to us. But, beside this great purpose, a considera-
tion of the rationale of our passions seems to me very necessary for
all who would affect them upon solid and sure principles. It is
not enough to know them in general: to affect them after a deli-
cate manner, or to judge properly of any work designed to affect
them, we should know the exact boundaries of their several juris-
dictions; we should pursue them through all their variety of opera-
tions, and pierce into the inmost, and what might appear inaccessi-
ble, parts of our nature.

Quod latet arcand non enarrabile fibrd.

Without all this it is possible for a man, after a confused manner,
sometimes to satisfy his own mind of the truth of his work; but
he can never have a certain determinate rule to go by, nor can he
ever make his propositions sufficiently clear to others. Poets, and
orators, and painters, and those who cultivate other branches of the
liberal arts, have, without this critical knowledge, succeeded well
in their several provinces, and will succeed: as among artificers
there are many machines made and even invented without any
exact knowledge of the principles they are governed by. It is, I own,
not uncommon to be wrong in theory, and right in practice; and we
are happy that it is so. Men often act right from their feelings, who
afterwards reason but ill on them from principle: but as it is im-
possible to avoid an attempt at such reasoning, and equally im-
possible to prevent its having some influence on our practice, surely
it is worth taking some pains to have it just, and founded on the
basis of sure experience. We might expect that the artists them-
selves would have been our surest guides; but the artists have been
too much occupied in the practice: the philosophers have done little;
and what they have done, was mostly with a view to their own
schemes and systems: and as for those called critics, they have gen-
erally sought the rule of the arts in the wrong place; they sought it
among poems, pictures, engravings, statues, and buildings. But art
can never give the rules that make an art. This is, I believe, the

48 EDMUND BURKE

reason why artists in general, and poets principally, have been con-
fined in so narrow a circle: they have been rather imitators of one
another than of nature; and this with so faithful an uniformity, and
to so remote an antiquity, that it is hard to say who gave the
first model. Critics follow them, and therefore can do little as
guides. I can judge but poorly of anything, whilst I measure it by
no other standard than itself. The true standard of the arts is in
every man's power; and an easy observation of the most common,
sometimes of the meanest, things in nature, will give the truest
lights, where the greatest sagacity and industry, that slights such
observation, must leave us in the dark, or, what is worse, amuse and
mislead us by false lights. In an inquiry it is almost everything to be
once in a right road. I am satisfied I have done but little by these
observations considered in themselves; and I never should have
taken the pains to digest them, much less should I have ever ven-
tured to publish them, if I was not convinced that nothing tends
more to the corruption of science than to suffer it to stagnate. These
waters must be troubled, before they can exert their virtues. A
man who works beyond the surface of things, though he may be
wrong himself, yet he clears the way for others, and may chance
to make even his errors subservient to the cause of truth. In the
following parts I shall inquire what things they are that cause
in us the affections of the sublime and beautiful, as in this I have
considered the affections themselves. I only desire one favour, — that
no part of this discourse may be judged of by itself, and independ-
ently of the rest; for I am sensible I have not disposed my materials
to abide the test of a captious controversy, but of a sober and even
forgiving examination, that they are not armed at all points for
battle, but dressed to visit those who are willing to give a peaceful
entrance to truth.

PART II

Section I. — Of the Passion Caused by the Sublime

THE passion caused by the great and sublime in nature,
when those causes operate most powerfully, is astonish-
ment; and astonishment is that state o£ the soul, in which
all its motions are suspended, with some degree of horror.' In this
case the mind is so entirely filled with its object, that it cannot enter-
tain any other, nor by consequence reason on that object which em-
ploys it. Hence arises the great power of the sublime, that, far from
being produced by them, it anticipates our reasonings, and hurries
us on by an irresistible force. Astonishment, as I have said, is the
effect of the sublime in its highest degree; the inferior effects are
admiration, reverence, and respect.

sect. II. — TERROR .

No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting
and reasoning as jear^ For fear being an apprehension of pain or
death, it operates in a manner that resembles actual pain. What-
ever therefore is terrible, with regard to sight, is sublime too,
whether this cause of terror be endued with greatness of dimensions
or not; for it is impossible to look on anything as trifling, or con-
temptible, that may be dangerous. There are many animals, who
though far from being large, are yet capable of raising ideas of the
sublime, because they are considered as objects of terror. As serpents
and poisonous animals of almost all kinds. And to things of great
dimensions, if we annex an adventitious idea of terror, they become
without comparison greater. A level plain of a vast extent on land,
is certainly no mean idea; the prospect of such a plain may be as
extensive as a prospect of the ocean: but can it ever fill the mind
with anything so great as the ocean itself? This is owing to several
causes; but it is owing to none more than this, that the ocean is an
1 Part I. sect. 3, 4, 7. ^ Part IV. sect. 3-6.
49

50 EDMUND BURKE

object of no small terror. Indeed, terror is in all cases whatsover,
either more openly or latently, the ruling principle of the sublime.
Several languages bear a strong testimony to the affinity of these
ideas. They frequently use the same word, to signify indifferently
the modes of astonishment or admiration, and those of terror.
Oa/jL^os is in Greek, either fear or wonder; Suvo^ is terrible or re-
spectable; aiSeu, to reverence or to fear. Vereor in Latin, is what
aideo} is in Greek. The Romans used the verb stupeo, a term which
strongly marks the state of an astonished mind, to express the effect
either of simple fear or of astonishment; the word attonitus (thun-
der-struck) is equally expressive of the alliance of these ideas; and
do not the French etonnement, and the English astonishment and
amazement, point out as clearly the kindred emotions which attend
fear and wonder ? They who have a more general knowledge of lan-
guages, could produce, I make no doubt, many other and equally
striking examples.

SECT. in. — OBSCURITY

To make anything very terrible, obscurity' seems in general to
be necessary. When we know the full extent of any danger, when
we can accustom our eyes to it, a great deal of the apprehension
vanishes. Every one will be sensible of this, who considers how
greatly night adds to our dread, in all cases of danger, and how
much the notions of ghosts and goblins, of which none can form
clear ideas, affect minds which give credit to the popular tales con-
cerning such sorts of beings. Those despotic governments, which are
founded on the passions of men, and principally upon the passion
of fear, keep their chief as much as may be from the public eye.
The policy has been the same in many cases of religion. Almost
all the heathen temples were dark. Even in the barbarous temples
of the Americans at this day, they keep their idol in a dark part of
the hut, which is consecrated to his worship. For this purpose too
the Druids performed all their ceremonies in the bosom of the dark-
est woods, and in the shade of the oldest and most spreading oaks.
No person seems better to have understood the secret of heighten-
ing, or of setting terrible things, if I may use the expression, in their

'Part IV. sect. 14-16.

ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 5I

Strongest light, by the force of a judicious obscurity, than Mihon.
His description of Death in the second book is admirably studied;
it is astonishing with what a gloomy pomp, with what a significant
and expressive uncertainty of strokes and colouring, he has finished
the portrait of the king of terrors:

— The other shape,
If shape it might be called that shape had none
Distinguishable, in member, joint, or limb;
Or substance might be called that shadow seemed;
For each seemed either; black he stood as night;
Fierce as ten furies; terrible as bell;
And shook a deadly dart. What seemed his bead
The likeness of a kingly crown had on.

In this description all is dark, uncertain, confused, terrible, and
sublime to the last degree.

SECT. IV. — OF THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CLEARNESS AND OBSCURITY WITH
REGARD TO THE PASSIONS

It is one thing to make an idea clear, and another to make it
affecting to the imagination. If I make a drawing of a palace, or a
temple, or a landscape, I present a very clear idea of those objects; but
then (allowing for the effect of imitation, which is something) my
picture can at most affect only as the palace, temple, or landscape
would have affected in the reality. On the other hand, the most
lively and spirited verbal description I can give raises a very obscure
and imperfect idea of such objects; but then it is in my power to raise
a stronger emotion by the description than I could do by the best
painting. This experience constantly evinces. The proper manner
of conveying the affections of the mind from one to another, is by
words; there is a great insufficiency in all other methods of com-
munication; and so far is a clearness of imagery from being abso-
lutely necessary to an influence upon the passions, that they may be
considerably operated upon, without presenting any image at all, by
certain sounds adapted to that purpose; of which we have a suffi-
cient proof in the acknowledged and powerful effects of instru-
mental music. In reality, a great clearness helps but litde towards

52 EDMUND BURKE

affecting the passions, as it is in some sort an enemy to all enthusi-
asms whatsoever.

SECT. [iV.] — ^THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED

There are two verses in Horace's Art of Poetry, that seem to
contradict this opinion; for which reason I shall take a little more
pains in clearing it up. The verses are,

Segnius irritant animos demissa per aures,
Quam quce sunt oculis subjecta fidelibus.

On this the Abbe du Bos founds a criticism, wherein he gives
painting the preference to poetry in the article of moving the pas-
sions; principally on account of the greater clearness of the ideas it
represents. I believe this excellent judge was led into this mistake
(if it be a mistake) by his system; to which he found it more con-
formable than I imagine it will be found by experience. I know
several who admire and love painting, and yet who regard the ob-
jects of their admiration in that art with coolness enough in com-
parison of that warmth with which they are animated by affecting
pieces of poetry or rhetoric. Among the common sort of people, I
never could perceive that painting had much influence on their
passions. It is true, that the best sorts of painting, as well as the
best sorts of poetry, are not much understood in that sphere. But it is
most certain, that their passions are very strongly roused by a fanatic
preacher, or by the ballads of Chevy-chase, or the Children in the
Wood, and by other little popular poems and tales that are current
in that rank of life. I do not know of any paintings, bad or good,
that produce the same effect. So that poetry, with all its obscurity,
has a more general, as well as a more powerful, dominion over the
passions, than the other art. And I thmk there are reasons in na-
ture, why the obscure idea, when properly conveyed, should be
more affecting than the clear. It is our ignorance of things that
causes all our admiration, and chiefly excites our passions. Knowl-
edge and acquaintance make the most striking causes affect but
little. It is thus with the vulgar; and all men are as the vulgar in
what they do not understand. The ideas of eternity and infinity
are among the most affecting we have; and yet perhaps there is

ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 53

nothing of which we really understand so little, as of infinity and
eternity. We do not anywhere meet a more sublime description
than this justly celebrated one of Milton, wherein he gives the por-
trait of Satan with a dignity so suitable to the subject:

— He above the rest
In shape and gesture proudly eminent
Stood like a tower; his form had yet not lost
All her original brightness, nor appeared
Less than archangel ruined, and th' excess
Of glory obscured: as when the sun new risen
Looks through the horizontal misty air
Shorn of his beams; or from behind the moon
In dim eclipse disastrous twilight sheds
On half the nations; and with fear of change
Perplexes monarchs. —

Here is a very noble picture; and in what does this poetical picture
consist? In images of a tower, an archangel, the sun rising through
mists, or in an eclipse, the ruin of monarchs, and the revolutions
of kingdoms. The mind is hurried out of itself, by a crowd of great
and confused images; which affect because they are crowded and
confused. For, separate them, and you lose much of the greatness;
and join them, and you infallibly lose the clearness. The images
raised by poetry are always of this obscure kind; though in general
the effects of poetry are by no means to be attributed to the images
it raises; which point we shall examine more at large hereafter.'
But painting, when we have allowed for the pleasure of imitation,
can only affect simply by the images it presents; and even in paint-
ing, a judicious obscurity in some things contributes to the effect
of the picture; because the images in painting are exactly similar to
those in nature; and in nature, dark, confused, uncertain images
have a greater power on the fancy to form the grander passions,
than those have which are more clear and determinate. But where
and when this observation may be applied to practice, and how far
it shall be extended, will be better deduced from the nature of the
subject, and from the occasion, than from any rules that can be
given.

>Part V.

54 EDMUND BURKE

I am sensible that this idea has met with opposition, and is Hkely
still to be rejected by several. But let it be considered, that hardly
anything can strike the mind with its greatness, which does not
make some sort of approach towards infinity; which nothing can do
whilst we are able to perceive its bounds; but to see an object dis-
tinctly, and to perceive its bounds, is one and the same thing. A
clear idea is therefore another name for a litde idea. There is a
passage in the book of Job amazingly sublime, and this sublimity
is principally due to the terrible uncertainty of the thing described:
In thoughts from the visions of the night, when deep sleep falleth
upon men, fear came upon me, and trembling, which made all my
bones to sha\e. Then a spirit passed before my face; the hair of
m.y flesh stood up. It stood still, but I could not discern the form
thereof: an image was before mine eyes, there was silence, and I
heard a voice, — Shall mortal man be more just than God? We are
first prepared with the utmost solemnity for the vision; we are first
terrified, before we are let even into the obscure cause of our emo-
tion; but when this grand cause of terror makes it appearance, what
is it? Is it not wrapt up in the shades of its own incomprehensible
darkness, more awful, more- striking, more terrible, than the liveli-
est description, than the clearest painting, could possibly represent
it? When painters have attempted to give us clear representations
of these very fanciful and terrible ideas, they have, I think, almost
always failed; insomuch that I have been at a loss, in all the pic-
tures I have seen of hell, to determine whether the painter did not
intend something ludicrous. Several painters have handled a sub-
ject of this kind, with a view of assembling as many horrid phan-
toms as their imagination could suggest; but all the designs I have
chanced to meet of the temptation of St. Anthony were rather a
sort of odd, wild grotesques, than anything capable of producing
a serious passion. In all these subjects poetry is very happy. Its ap-
paritions, its chimeras, its harpies, its allegorical figures, are grand
and affecting; and though Virgil's Fame and Homer's Discord are
obscure, they are magnificent figures. These figures in painting
would be clear enough, but I fear they might become ridiculous.

ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 55

SECT. V. — POWER

Besides those things which directly suggest the idea of danger, and
those which produce a similar effect from a mechanical cause, I
know of nothing sublime, which is not some modification of power.
And this branch rises, as naturally as the other two branches, from
terror, the common stock of everything that is sublime. The idea of
power, at first view, seems of the class of those indifferent ones,
which may equally belong to pain or to pleasure. But in reality,
the affection, arising from the idea of vast power, is extremely re-
mote from that neutral character. For first, we must remember,^
that the idea of pain, in its highest degree, is much stronger than
the highest degree of pleasure; and that it preserves the same supe-
riority through all the subordinate gradations. From hence it is,
that where the chances for equal degrees of suffering or enjoyment
are in any sort equal, the idea of the suffering must always be preva-
lent. And indeed the ideas of pain, and, above all, of death, are so
very affecting, that whilst we remain in the presence of whatever
is supposed to have the power of inflicting either, it is impossible to
be perfecdy free from terror. Again, we know by experience, that,
for the enjoyment of pleasure, no great efforts of power are at all
necessary; nay, we know, that such efforts would go a great way
towards destroying our satisfaction: for pleasure must be stolen,
and not forced upon us; pleasure follows the will; and therefore we
are generally affected with it by many things of a force greatly in-
ferior to our own. But pain is always inflicted by a power in some
way superior, because we never submit to pain willingly. So that
strength, violence, pain, and terror, are ideas that rush in upon the
mind together. Look at a man, or any other animal of prodigious
strength, and what is your idea before reflection? Is it that this
strength will be subservient to you, to your ease, to your pleasure,
to your interest in any sense? No; the emotion you feel is, lest this
enormous strength should be employed to the purposes of rapine^
and destruction. That power derives all its sublimity from the
terror with which it is generally accompanied, will appear evidently
from its effect in the very few cases, in which it may be possible to

'Part I. sect. 7. ^Vide Part III. sect. 21.

56 EDMUND BURKE

Strip a considerable degree of strength of its ability to hurt. When
you do this, you spoil it of everything sublime, and it immediately
becornes contemptible. An ox is a creature of vast strength; but he
is an innocent creature, extremely serviceable, and not at all dan-
gerous; for which reason the idea of an ox is by no means grand.
A bull is strong too: but his strength is of another kind; often very
destructive, seldom (at least amongst us) of any use in our business;
the idea of a bull is therefore great, and it has frequently a place in
sublime descriptions, and elevating comparisons. Let us look at
another strong animal, in the two distinct lights in which we may
consider him. The horse in the light of a useful beast, fit for the
plough, the road, the draft; in every social, useful light, the horse
has nothing sublime: but is it thus that we are affected with him,
whose nec\ is clothed with thunder, the glory of whose nostrils is
terrible, who swalloweth the ground with fierceness and rage,
neither believeth that it is the sound of the trumpet? In this de-
scription, the useful character of the horse entirely disappears, and
the terrible and sublime blaze out together. We have continually
about us animals of a strength that is considerable, but not per-
nicious. Amongst these we never look for the sublime; it comes
upon us in the gloomy forest, and in the howling wilderness, in the
form of the lion, the tiger, the panther, or rhinoceros. Whenever
strength is only useful, and employed for our benefit or our pleasure,
then it is never sublime: for nothing can act agreeably to us, that
does not act in conformity to our will; but to act agreeably to our
will, it must be subject to us, and therefore can never be the cause
of a grand and commanding conception. The description of the
wild ass, in Job, is worked up into no small sublimity, merely by in-
sisting on his freedom, and his setting mankind at defiance; other-
wise the description of such an animal could have had nothing
noble in it. Who hath loosed (says he) the bands of the wild ass?
whose house I have made the wilderness, and the barren land his
dwellings. He scorneth the multitude of the city, neither regardeth
he the voice of the driver. The range of the mountains is his pas-
ture. The magnificent description of the unicorn and of leviathan,
in the same book, is full of the same heightening circumstances:
Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee? canst thou bind the uni-

ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 57

corn with his band in the furrow? wilt thou trust him because his
strength is great? — Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hoo}(? —
will he make a covenant with thee? wilt thou tal{e him for a servant
for ever? shall not one be cast down even at the sight of him? In
short, wheresoever we find strength, and in what light soever
we look upon power we shall all along observe the sublime the
concomitant of terror, and contempt the attendant on a strength that
is subservient and innoxious. The race of dogs, in many of their
kinds, have generally a competent degree of strength and swiftness;
and they exert these and other valuable qualities which they possess,
greatly to our convenience and pleasure. Dogs are indeed the most
social, affectionate, and amiable animals of the whole brute creation;
but love approaches much nearer to contempt than is commonly
imagined; and accordingly, though we caress dogs, we borrow
from them an appellation of the most despicable kind, when we em-
ploy terms of reproach; and this appellation is the common mark
of the last vileness and contempt in every language. Wolves have
not more strength than several species of dogs; but, on account of
their unmanageable fierceness, the idea of a wolf is not despicable;
it is not excluded from grand descriptions and similitudes. Thus
we are affected by strength, which is natural power. The power
which arises from institution in kings and commanders, has the
same connexion with terror. Sovereigns are frequently addressed
with the tide of dread majesty. And it may be observed, that young
persons, litde acquainted with the world, and who have not been
used to approach men in power, are commonly struck with an awe
which takes away the free use of their faculties. When I prepared
my seat in the street, (says Job,) the young men saw me, and hid
themselves. Indeed, so natural is this timidity with regard to power,
and so strongly does it inhere in our constitution, that very few are
able to conquer it, but by mixing much in the business of the great
world, or by using no small violence to their natural dispositions. I
know some people are of opinion, that no awe, no degree of terror,
accompanies the idea of power; and have hazarded to afSrm, that we
can contemplate the idea of God himself without any such emo-
tion. I purposely avoided, when I first considered this subject, to
introduce the idea of that great and tremendous Being, as an exam-

58 EDMUND BURKE

pie in an argument so light as this; though it frequently occurred
to me, not as an objection to, but as a strong confirmation of, my
notions in this matter. I hope, in what I am going to say, I shall
avoid presumption, where it is almost impossible for any mortal to
speak with strict propriety. I say then, that whilst we consider
the Godhead merely as he is an object of the understanding, which
forms a complex idea of power, wisdom, justice, goodness, all
stretched to a degree far exceeding the bounds of our comprehension,
whilst we consider the Divinity in this refined and abstracted light,
the imagination and passions are little or nothing affected. But
because we are bound, by the condition of our nature, to ascend to
these pure and intellectual ideas, through the medium of sensible
images, and to judge of these divine qualities by their evident acts
and exertions, it becomes extremely hard to disentangle our idea
of the cause from the effect by which we are led to know it. Thus
when we contemplate the Deity, his attributes and their operation,
coming united on the mind, form a sort of sensible image, and as
such are capable of affecting the imagination. Now, though in a
just idea of the Deity perhaps none of his attributes are predominant,
yet, to our imagination, his power is by far the most striking. Some
reflection, some comparing, is necessary to satisfy us of his wisdom,
his justice, and his goodness. To be struck with his power, it is only
necessary that we should open our eyes. But whilst we contem-
plate so vast an object, under the arm, as it were, of almighty power,
and invested upon every side with omnipresence, we shrink into the
minuteness of our own nature, and are, in a manner, annihilated
before him. And though a consideration of his other attributes may
relieve, in some measure, our apprehensions; yet no conviction of
the justice with which it is exercised, nor the mercy with which it is
tempered, can wholly remove the terror that naturally arises from
a force which nothing can withstand. If we rejoice, we rejoice with
trembling: and even whilst we are receiving benefits, we cannot but
shudder at a power which can confer benefits of such mighty im-
portance. When the prophet David contemplated the wonders of
wisdom and power which are displayed in the economy of man, he
seems to be struck with a sort of divine horror, and cries out. Fear-
fully and wonderfully am I made! An heathen poet has a senti-

ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 59

ment of a similar nature; Horace looks upon it as the last effort
of philosophical fortitude, to behold without terror and amazement,
this immense and glorious fabric of the universe:

Hunc solem, et Stellas, et decedentia certis
Tempora momentis, sunt qui formidine nulla
Imbuti spectent.

Lucretius is a poet not to be suspected of giving way to supersti-
tious terrors; yet when he supposes the whole mechanism of nature
laid open by the master of his philosophy, his transport on this mag-
nificent view, which he has represented in the colours of such bold
and lively poetry, is overcast with a shade of secret dread and
horror:

His ibi me rebus qucedam divina voluptas
Percipit, atque horror; quod sic Natura, tua vi
Tarn manifesta patens, ex omni parte retecta est.

But the Scripture alone can supply ideas answerable to the majesty
of this subject. In the Scripture, wherever God is represented as
appearing or speaking, everything terrible in nature is called up
to heighten the awe and solemnity of the Divine presence. The
Psalms, and the prophetical books, are crowded with instances of
this kind. "The earth shoo\, (says the psalmist,) the heavens also
dropped at the presence of the Lord. And, what is remarkable, the
painting preserves the same character, not only when he is supposed
descending to take vengeance upon the wicked, but even when he
exerts the hke plenitude of power in acts of beneficence to mankind.
Tremble, thou earth! at the presence of the Lord; at the presence
of the God of Jacob; tvhich turned the roc\ into standing water, the
flint into a fountain of u/atersl It were endless to enumerate all
the passages, both in the sacred and profane writers, which establish
the general sentiment of mankind, concerning the inseparable union
of a sacred and reverential awe, with our ideas of the Divinity. Hence
the common maxim. Primus in orbe deos fecit timor. This maxim
may be, as I believe it is, false with regard to the origin of religion.
The maker of the maxim saw how inseparable these ideas were,
without considering that the notion of some great power must be
always precedent to our dread of it. But this dread must necessarily

6o EDMUND BURKE

follow the idea of such a power, when it is once excited in the mind.
It is on this principle that true religion has, and must have, so large
a mixture of salutary fear; and that false religions have generally
nothing else but fear to support them. Before the Christian religion
had, as it were, humanized the idea of the Divinity, and brought
it somewhat nearer to us, there was very little said of the love of
God. The followers of Plato have something of it, and only some-
thing; the other writers of pagan antiquity, whether poets or phi-
losophers, nothing at all. And they who consider with what infinite
attention, by what a disregard of every perishable object, through
what long habits of piety and contemplation, it is that any man is
able to attain an entire love and devotion to the Deity, will easily
perceive, that it is not the first, the most natural and the most strik-
ing, effect which proceeds from that idea. Thus we have traced
power through its several gradations unto the highest of all, where
our imagination is finally lost; and we find terror, quite through-
out the progress, its inseparable companion, and growing along
with it, as far as we can possibly trace them. Now as power is
undoubtedly a capital source of the sublime, this will point out evi-
dendy from whence its energy is derived, and to what class of
ideas we ought to unite it.

SECT. VI. — PRIVATION

All general privations are great, because they are all terrible;
Vacuity, Darkness, Solitude, and Silence. With what a fire of imagi-
nation, yet with what severity of judgment, has Virgil amassed all
these circumstances, where he knows that all the images of a tre-
mendous dignity ought to be united, at the mouth of hell! where,
before he unlocks the secrets of the great deep, he seems to be seized
with a religious horror, and to retire astonished at the boldness of
his own designs:

Dii, quibus imperium est animarum, umbrceque — silentes!

& Chaos, et Phlegethon, loca nocte silentia late.

Sit mihi fas audita loqui; sit, numine vestro,

Pandere res alta terra et caligine mersas.

Ibant obscuri, sola sub nocte, per umbram,

Perque domos Ditis vacuas, et inania regna.

ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 6l

Ye subterraneous gods, whose awful sway

The gUding ghosts and silent shades obey;

O Chaos hoar! and Phlegethon profound!

Whose solemn empire stretches wide around;

Give me, ye great, tremendous powers, to tell

Of scenes and wonders in the depth of hell:

Give me your mighty secrets to display

From those blac]^ realms of darkness to the day. — Pitt

Obscure they went through dreary shades that led
Along the waste dominions of the dead. — Dryden.

SECT. VII. — ^VASTNESS

Greatness' of dimension is a powerful cause of the sublime. This
is too evident, and the observation too common, to need any illus-
tration: it is not so common to consider in what ways greatness of
dimension, vastness of extent or quantity, has the most striking
effect. For certainly, there are ways and modes, wherein the same
quantity of extension shall produce greater effects than it is found
to do in others. Extension is either in length, height, or depth.
Of these the length strikes least; an hundred yards of even ground
will never work such an effect as a tower an hundred yards high,
or a rock or mountain of that altitude. I am apt to imagine like-
wise, that height is less grand than depth; and that we are more
struck at looking down from a precipice, than looking up at an
object of equal height; but of that I am not very positive. A per-
pendicular has more force in forming the sublime, than an inclined
plane; and the effects of a rugged and broken surface seem stronger
than where it is smooth and polished. It would carry us out of our
way to enter in this place into the cause of these appearances; but
certain it is they afford a large and fruitful field of speculation.
However, it may not be amiss to add to these remarks upon magni-
tude, that, as the great extreme of dimension is sublime, so the last
extreme of littleness is in some measure sublime likewise: when
we attend to the infinite divisibility of matter, when we pursue
animal life into these excessively small, and yet organized beings,
that escape the nicest inquisition of the sense; when we push our

' Part IV. sect. 9.

62 EDMUND BURKE

discoveries yet downward, and consider those creatures so many
degrees yet smaller, and the still diminishing scale of existence, in
tracing which the imagination is lost as well as the sense; we become
amazed and confounded at the wonders of minuteness; nor can y/e
distinguish in its effects this extreme of litdeness from the vast
itself. For division must be infinite as well as addition; because the
idea of a perfect unity can no more be arrived at, than that of a
complete whole, to which nothing may be added.

SECT. VIII. — INFINITY

Another source of the sublime is infinity; if it does not rather be-
long to the last. Infinity has a tendency to fill the mind with that
sort of delightful horror, which is the most genuine effect and truest
test of the sublime. There are scarce any things which can become
the objects of our senses, that are really and in their own nature
infinite. But the eye not being able to perceive the bounds of many
things, they seem to be infinite, and they produce the same effects
as if they were really so. We are deceived in the like manner, if
the parts of some large object are so continued to any indefinite
number, that the imagination meets no check which may hinder
its extending them at pleasure.

Whenever we repeat any idea frequently, the mind, by a sort
of mechanism, repeats it long after the first cause has ceased to
operate.^ After whirling about, when we sit down, the objects about
us still seem to whirl. After a long succession of noises, as the
fall of waters, or the beating of forge-hammers, the hammers beat
and the water roars in the imagination long after the first sounds
have ceased to affect it; and they die away at last by gradations
which are scarcely perceptible. If you hold up a straight pole, with
your eye to one end, it will seem extended to a length almost in-
credible.^ Place a number of uniform and equi-distant marks on this
pole, they will cause the same deception, and seem multiplied with-
out end. The senses, strongly affected in some one manner, cannot
quickly change their tenor, or adapt themselves to other things;
but they continue in their old channel until the strength of the
first mover decays. This is the reason of an appearance very fre-

' Part IV. sect. I2. ' Part IV. sect. 14.

ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 63

quent in madmen; that they remain whole days and nights, some-
times whole years, in the constant repetition of some remark, some
complaint, or song; which having struck powerfully on their dis-
ordered imagination in the beginning of their phrensy, every repe-
tition reinforces it with new strength; and the hurry of their spirits,
unrestrained by the curb of reason, continues it to the end of their
lives.

SECT. IX. — SUCCESSION AND UNIFORMITY

Succession and uniformity of parts are what constitute the arti-
ficial infinite, i. Succession; which is requisite that the parts may
be continued so long and in such a direction, as by their frequent im-
pulses on the sense to impress the imagination with an idea of their
progress beyond their actual limits. 2. Uniformity; because if the
figures of the parts should be changed, the imagination at every
change finds a check; you are presented at every alteration with
the termination of one idea, and the beginning of another; by which
means it becomes impossible to continue that uninterrupted pro-
gression, which alone can stamp on bounded objects the character
of infinity.' It is in this kind of artificial infinity, I believe, we ought
to look for the cause why a rotund has such a noble effect. For in
a rotund, whether it be a building or a plantation, you can nowhere
fix a boundary; turn which way you will, the same object still
seems to continue, and the imagination has no rest. But the parts
must be uniform, as well as circularly disposed, to give this figure its
full force; because any difference, whether it be in the disposition,
or in the figure, or even in the color of the parts, is highly preju-
dicial to the idea of infinity, which every change must check and
interrupt, at every alteration commencing a new series. On the
same principles of succession and uniformity, the grand appear-
ance of the ancient heathen temples, which were generally oblong
forms, with a range of uniform pillars on every side, will be easily
accounted for. From the same cause also may be derived the grand
effect of the aisles in many of our own old cathedrals. The form of
a cross used in some churches seems to me not so eligible as the

' Mr. Addison, in the Spectator, concerning the pleasures o£ Imagination, thinks
it is because in the rotund at one glance you see half the building. This I do not
imagine to be the real cause.

64 EDMUND BURKE

parallelogram of the ancients; at least, I imagine it is not so proper
for the outside. For, supposing the arms of the cross every way
equal, if you stand in a direction parallel to any of the side walls,
or colonnades, instead of a deception that makes the building more
extended than it is, you are cut off from a considerable part (two-
thirds) of its actual length; and to prevent all possibility of progres-
sion, the arms of the cross, taking a new direction, make a right
angle with the beam, and thereby wholly turn the imagination from
the repetition of the former idea. Or suppose the spectator placed
where he may take a direct view of such a building, what will be the
consequence ? The necessary consequence will be, that a good part of
the basis of each angle formed by the intersection of the arms of the
cross, must be inevitably lost; the whole must of course assume a
broken, unconnected figure; the lights must be unequal, here strong,
and there weak; without that noble gradation which the perspective
always effects on parts disposed uninterruptedly in a right line. Some
or all of these objections will lie against every figure of a cross, in
whatever view you take it. I exemplified them in the Greek cross,
in which these faults appear the most strongly; but they appear in
some degree in all sorts of crosses. Indeed there is nothing more
prejudicial to the grandeur of buildings, than to abound in angles;
a fault obvious in many; and owing to an inordinate thirst for
variety, which, whenever it prevails, is sure to leave very little true
taste.

SECT. X. — MAGNITUDE IN BUILDING

To the sublime in building, greatness of dimension seems requi-
site; for on a few parts, and those small, the imagination cannot
rise to any idea of infinity. No greatness in the manner can effec-
tually compensate for the want of proper dimensions. There is no
danger of drawing men into extravagant designs by this rule; it
carries its own caution along with it. Because too great a length in
buildings destroys the purpose of greatness, which it was intended to
promote; the perspective will lessen it in height as it gains in length;
and will bring it at last to a point; turning the whole figure into a
sort of triangle, the poorest in its effect of almost any figure that can
be presented to the eye. I have ever observed, that colonnades and

ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 65

avenues of trees of a moderate length, were, without comparison,
far grander, than when they were suffered to run to immense dis-
tances. A true artist should put a generous deceit on the spectators,
and effect the noblest designs by easy methods. Designs that are
vast only by their dimensions, are always the sign of a common and
low imagination. No work of art can be great, but as it deceives; to
be otherwise is the prerogative of nature only. A good eye will fix
the medium betwixt an excessive length or height, (for the same
objection lies against both,) and a short or broken quantity;
and perhaps it might be ascertained to a tolerable degree of exact-
ness, if it was my purpose to descend far into the particulars of
any art.

SECT. XI. — INFINITY IN PLEASING OBJECTS

Infinity, though of another kind, causes much of our pleasure in
agreeable, as well as of our delight in sublime, images. The spring
is the pleasantest of the seasons; and the young of most animals,
though far from being completely fashioned, afford a more agree-
able sensation than the full-grown; because the imagination is enter-
tained with the promise of something more, and does not acquiesce
in the present object of the sense. In unfinished sketches of drawing,
I have often seen something which pleased me beyond the best finish-
ing; and this I believe proceeds from the cause I have just now
assigned.

SECT. xn. — difficulty

Another' source of greatness is Difficulty. When any work seems
to have required immense force and labor to effect it, the idea is
grand. Stonehenge, neither for disposition nor ornament, has any-
thing admirable; but those huge rude masses of stone, set on end,
and piled each on other, turn the mind on the immense force
necessary for such a work. Nay, the rudeness of the work increases
this cause of grandeur, as it excludes the idea of art and contrivance;
for dexterity produces another sort of effect, which is different
enough from this.

■Part IV. sect. 4-6.

66 EDMUND BURKE

SECT. XIII. — MAGNIFICENCE

Magnificence is likewise a source of the sublime. A great profu-
sion of things, which are splendid or valuable in themselves, is mag-
nificent. The starry heaven, though it occurs so very frequently to
our view, never fails to excite an idea of grandeur. This cannot be
owing to the stars themselves, separately considered. The number
is certainly the cause. The apparent disorder augments the grandeur,
for the appearance of care is highly contrary to our idea of magnifi-
cence. Besides, the stars lie in such apparent confusion, as makes
it impossible on ordinary occasions to reckon them. This gives them
the advantage of a sort of infinity. In works of art, this kind of
grandeur, which consists in multitude, is to be very courteously
admitted; because a profusion of excellent things is not to be at-
tained, or with too much difficulty; and because in many cases this
splendid confusion would destroy all use, which should be attended
to in most of the works of art with the greatest care; besides, it is to
be considered, that unless you can produce an appearance of infinity
by your disorder, you will have disorder only without magnificence.
There are, however, a sort of fireworks, and some other things, that
in this way succeed well, and are truly grand. There are also many
descriptions in the poets and orators, which owe their sublimity to
a richness and profusion of images, in which the mind is so dazzled
as to make it impossible to attend to that exact coherence and agree-
ment of the allusions, which we should require on every other occa-
sion. I do not now remember a more striking example of this, than
the description which is given of the king's army in the play of
Henry the Fourth:

— All furnished, all in arms,
All plumed like ostriches that with the wind
Baited like eagles having lately bathed:
As full of spirit as the month of May,
And gorgeous as the sun in Midsummer,
Wanton as youthful goats, wild as young bulls.
I saw young Harry with his beaver on
Rise from the ground like feathered Mercury;
And vaulted with such ease into his seat.
As if an angel dropp'd down from the clouds
To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus.

ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 67

In that excellent book, so remarkable for the vivacity of its de-
scriptions as well as the solidity and penetration of its sentences, the
Wisdom of the Son of Sirach, there is a noble panegyric on the high
priest Simon the son of Onias; and it is a very fine example of the
point before us:

How was he honoured in the midst of the people, in his coming
out of the sanctuary! He was as the morning star in the midst of a
cloud, and as the moon at the full; as the sun shining upon the tem-
ple of the Most High, and as the rainbow giving light in the bright
clouds: and as the flower of roses in the spring of the year, as lilies
by the rivers of waters, and as the frankincense tree in summer; as
■fire and incense in the censer, and as a vessel of gold set with precious
stones; as a fair olive tree budding forth fruit, and as a cypress which
groweth up to the clouds. When he put on the robe of honour, and
was clothed with the perfection of glory, when he went up to the
holy altar, he made the garment of holiness honourable. He himself
stood by the hearth of the altar, compassed with his brethren round
about; as a young cedar in Libanus, and as palm trees compassed
they him about. So were all the sons of Aaron in their glory, and
the oblations of the Lord in their hands, &c,

SECT. XIV. — LIGHT

Having considered extension, so far as it is capable of raising ideas
of greatness; colour comes next under consideration. All colours
depend on light. Light therefore ought previously to be examined;
and with its opposite, darkness. With regard to light, to make it a
cause capable of producing the sublime, it must be attended with
some circumstances, besides its bare faculty of showing other objects.
Mere light is too common a thing to make a strong impression on
the mind, and without a strong impression nothing can be sublime.
But such a light as that of the sun, immediately exerted on the eye,
as it overpowers the sense, is a very great idea. Light of an inferior
strength to this, if it moves with great celerity, has the same power;
for lightning is certainly productive of grandeur, which it owes
chiefly to the extreme velocity of its motion. A quick transition from
light to darkness, or from darkness to light, has yet a greater effect.

68 EDMUND BURKE

But darkness is more productive of sublime ideas than light. Our
great poet was convinced of this; and indeed so full was he of this
idea, so entirely possessed with the power of a well-managed dark-
ness, that in describing the appearance of the Deity, amidst that
profusion of magnificent images, which the grandeur of his subject
provokes him to pour out upon every side, he is far from forgetting
the obscurity which surrounds the most incomprehensible of all
beings, but

— With majesty of darl{ness round
Circles his throne. —

And what is no less remarkable, our author had the secret of pre-
serving this idea, even when he seemed to depart the farthest from
it, when he describes the light and glory which flows from the Divine
presence; a light which by its very excess is converted into a species
of darkness.

Dar\ with excessive light thy skirts appear.

Here is an idea not only poetical in a high degree, but strictly and
philosophically just. Extreme light, by overcoming the organs of
sight, obliterates all objects, so as in its effect exactly to resemble
darkness. After looking for some time at the sun, two black spots,
the impression which it leaves, seem to dance before our eyes. Thus
are two ideas as opposite as can be imagined reconciled in the ex-
tremes of both; and both, in spite of their opposite nature, brought
to concur in producing the sublime. And this is not the only instance
wherein the opposite extremes operate equally in favour of the
sublime, which in all things abhors mediocrity.

SECT. XV. — LIGHT IN BUILDING

As the management of light is a matter of importance in archi-
tecture, it is worth inquiring, how far this remark is applicable to
building. I think then, that all edifices calculated to produce an
idea of the sublime, ought rather to be dark and gloomy, and this
for two reasons; the first is, that darkness itself on other occasions
is known by experience to have a greater effect on the passions than
light. The second is, that to make an object very striking, we should
make it as different as possible from the objects with which we have

ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 69

been immediately conversant; when therefore you enter a building,
you cannot pass into a greater light than you had in the open air;
to go into one some few degrees less luminous, can make only a
trifling change; but to make the transition thoroughly striking, you
ought to pass from the greatest light, to as much darkness as is con-
sistent with the uses of architecture. At night the contrary rule will
hold, but for the very same reason; and the more highly a room is
then illuminated, the grander will the passion be.

SECT. XVI. — COLOUR CONSIDERED AS PRODUCTIVE OF THE SUBLIME

Among colours, such as are soft or cheerful (except perhaps a
Strong red which is cheerful) are unfit to produce grand images.
An immense mountain covered with a shining green turf, is nothing,
in this respect, to one dark and gloomy; the cloudy sky is more
grand than the blue; and night more sublime and solemn than day.
Therefore in historical painting, a gay or gaudy drapery can never
have a happy effect: and in buildings, when the highest degree of
the sublime is intended, the materials and ornaments ought neither
to be white, nor green, nor yellow, nor blue, nor a pale red, nor
violet, nor spotted, but of sad and fuscous colours, as black, or brown,
or deep purple, and the like. Much of gilding, mosaics, painting,
or statues, contribute but little to the sublime. This rule need not be
put in practice, except where an uniform degree of the most striking
sublimity is to be produced, and that in every particular; for it ought
to be observed, that this melancholy kind of greatness, though it be
certainly the highest, ought not to be studied in all sorts of edifices,
where yet grandeur must be studied: in such cases the sublimity
must be drawn from the other sources; with a strict caution however
against anything light and riant; as nothing so effectually deadens
the whole taste of the sublime.

SECT. XVII. — SOUND AND LOUDNESS

The eye is not the only organ of sensation by which a sublime pas-
sion may be produced. Sounds have a great power in these as in
most other passions. I do not mean words, because words do not
affect simply by their sounds, but by means altogether different.
Excessive loudness alone is sufficient to overpower the soul, to sus-

TO EDMUND BURKE

pend its action, and to fill it with terror. The noise of vast cataracts,
raging storms, thunder, or artillery, awakes a great and awful sensa-
tion in the mind, though we can observe no nicety or artifice in
those sorts of music. The shouting of multitudes has a similar effect;
and, by the sole strength of the sound, so amazes and confounds the
imagination, that, in this staggering and hurry of the mind, the best-
established tempers can scarcely forbear being borne down, and
joining in the common cry, and common resolution of the crowd.

SECT. XVUI. — SUDDENNESS

A SUDDEN beginning or sudden cessation of sound of any consid-
erable force, has the same power. The attention is roused by this;
and the faculties driven forward, as it were, on their guard. What-
ever, either in sights or sounds, makes the transition from one ex-
treme to the other easy, causes no terror, and consequently can be
no cause of greatness. In everything sudden and unexpected, we are
apt to start; that is, we have a perception of danger, and our nature
rouses us to guard against it. It may be observed that a single sound
of some strength, though but of short duration, if repeated after in-
tervals, has a grand effect. Few things are more awful than the
striking of a great clock, when the silence of the night prevents the
attention from being too much dissipated. The same may be said of
a single stroke on a drum, repeated with pauses; and of the succes-
sive firing of cannon at a distance. All the effects mentioned in this
section have causes very nearly alike.

SECT. XIX. — INTERMITTING

A LOW, tremulous, intermitting sound, though it seems in some
respects opposite to that just mentioned, is productive of the sub-
lime. It is worth while to examine this a little. The fact itself must
be determined by every man's own experience and reflection. I have
already observed,^ that night increases our terror, more perhaps than
anything else; it is our nature, when we do not know what may
happen to us, to fear the worst that can happen; and hence it is, that
uncertainty is so terrible, that we often seek to be rid of it, at the
hazard of certain mischief. Now, some low, confused, uncertain

'Sect. 3.

ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL JI

sounds, leave us in the same fearful anxiety concerning their causes,
that no light, or an uncertain light, does concerning the objects that
surround us.

Quale per incertam lunam sub luce maligna
Est iter in sylvis. —

— A faint shadow of uncertain light.
Like as a lamp, whose life doth fade away;
Or as the moon clothed with cloudy night
Doth show to him who walks in fear and great afifright.

Spenser.

But light now appearing and now leaving us, and so off and on, is
even more terrible than total darkness: and a sort of uncertain sounds
are, when the necessary dispositions concur, more alarming than a
total silence.

SECT. XX. — THE CRIES OF ANIMALS

Such sounds as imitate the natural inarticulate voices of men, or
any animals in pain or danger, are capable of conveying great ideas;
unless it be the well-known voice of some creature, on which we
are used to look with contempt. The angry tones of wild beasts are
equally capable of causing a great and awful sensation.

Hinc exaudiri gemitus irteque leonum
Vincla recusantum, et sera sub node rudentum;
Setigerique sues, atque in prcesepibus ursi
Scevire; et forrme magnorum ululare luporum.

It might seem that these modulations of sound carry some connexion
with the nature of the things they represent, and are not merely
arbitrary; because the natural cries of all animals, even of those ani-
mals with whom we have not been acquainted, never fail to make
themselves sufficiently understood; this cannot be said of language.
The modifications of sound, which may be productive of the sub-
lime, are almost infinite. Those I have mentioned are only a few
instances to show on what principles they are all built.

SECT. XXI. — SMELL AND TASTE. BITTERS AND STENCHES

Smells and Tastes have some share too in ideas of greatness; but
it is a small one, weak in its nature, and confined in its operations.

72 EDMUND BURKE

I shall only observe, that no smells or tastes can produce a grand
sensation, except excessive bitters, and intolerable stenches. It is
true, that these affections of the smell and taste, when they are in
their full force, and lean directly upon the sensory, are simply pain-
ful, and accompanied with no sort of delight; but when they are
moderated, as in a description or narrative, they become sources of
the sublime, as genuine as any other, and upon the very same prin-
ciple of a moderated pain. "A cup of bitterness;" "to drain the bitter
cup of fortune;" "the bitter apples of Sodom;" these are all ideas
suitable to a sublime description. Nor is this passage of Virgil with-
out sublimity, where the stench of the vapour in Albunea conspires
so happily with the sacred horror and gloominess of that prophetic
forest:

At rex sollicitus monstris oracula Fauni
Fatidici genitoris adit, lucosque sub alta
Consulit Albunea, nemorum quce maxima sacro
Fonte sonat; sivamque exhalat opaca Mephitim.

In the sixth book, and in a very sublime description, the poisonous
exhalation of Acheron is not forgotten, nor does it all disagree with
the other images amongst which it is introduced :

Spelunca alta juit, vastoque immanis hiatu,
Scrupea, tuta lacu nigro, nemorumque tenebris;
Quam super haud ullte poterant impune volantes
Tendere iter pennis: talis sese halitus atris
Faucibus eflundens supera ad convexa ferebat.

I have added these examples, because some friends, for whose judg-
ment I have great deference, were of opinion that if the sentiment
stood nakedly by itself, it would be subject, at first view, to burlesque
and ridicule; but this I imagine would principally arise from con-
sidering the bitterness and stench in company with mean and
contemptible ideas, with which it must be owned they are often
united; such an union degrades the subhme in all other instances
as well as in those. But it is one of the tests by which the sublimity
of an image is to be tried, not whether it becomes mean when asso-
ciated with mean ideas; but whether, when united with images of
an allowed grandeur, the whole composition is supported with dig-

ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 73

nity. Things which are terrible are always great; but when things
possess disagreeable qualities, or such as have indeed some degree
of danger, but of a danger easily overcome, they are merely odious;
as toads and spiders.

SECT, XXII. — FEELING. PAIN

Of feeling, little more can be said than that the idea of bodily
pain, in all the modes and degrees of labour, pain, anguish, torment,
is productive of the sublime; and nothing else in this sense can pro-
duce it. I need not give here any fresh instances, as those given in
the former sections abundantly illustrate a remark that, in reality,
wants only an attention to nature, to be made by everybody.

Having thus run through the causes of the sublime with reference
to all the senses, my first observation (sect. 7) will be found very
nearly true; that the sublime is an idea belonging to self-preserva-
tion; that it is therefore one of the most affecting we have; that its
strongest emotion is an emotion of distress; and that no pleasure'
from a positive cause belongs to it. Numberless examples, besides
those mentioned, might be brought in support of these truths, and
many perhaps useful consequences drawn from them —

Sed fugit interea, fugit irrevocabile tempus.
Singula dum capti circumvectamur amore.

• Vide Part I. sect. 6.

PART III

Section I.— Of Beauty

IT IS my design to consider beauty as distinguished from the
sublime; and, in the course of the inquiry, to examine how
far it is consistent with it. But previous to this, we must take
a short review of the opinions already entertained of this quality;
which I think are hardly to be reduced to any fixed principles; be-
cause men are used to talk of beauty in a figurative manner, that
is to say, in a manner extremely uncertain, and indeterminate. By
beauty I mean that quality or those qualities in bodies, by which
they cause love, or some passion similar to it. I confine this definition
to the merely sensible qualities of things, for the sake of preserving
the utmost simplicity in a subject, which must always distract us
whenever we take in those various causes of sympathy which attach
us to any persons or things from secondary considerations, and not
from the direct force which they have merely on being viewed. I
likewise distinguish love (by which I mean that satisfaction which
arises to the mind upon contemplating anything beautiful, of what-
soever nature it may be) from desire or lust; which is an energy of
the mind, that hurries us on to the possession of certain objects, that
do not affect us as they are beautiful, but by means altogether differ-
ent. We shall have a strong desire for a woman of no remarkable
beauty; whilst the greatest beauty in men, or in other animals,
though it causes love, yet excites nothing at all of desire. Which
shows that beauty, and the passion caused by beauty, which I call
love, is different from desire, though desire may sometimes operate
along with it; but it is to this latter that we must attribute those
violent and tempestuous passions, and the consequent emotions of
the body, which attend what is called love in some of its ordi-
nary acceptations, and not to the effects of beauty merely as it is
such.

74

ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 75

SECT. II. — PROPORTION NOT THE CAUSE OF BEAUTY IN VEGETABLES

Beauty hath usually been said to consist in certain proportions of
parts. On considering the matter, I have great reason to doubt,
whether beauty be at all an idea belonging to proportion. Propor-
tion relates almost wholly to convenience, as every idea of order
seems to do; and it must therefore be considered as a creature of
the understanding, rather than a primary cause acting on the senses
and imagination. It is not by the force of long attention and inquiry
that we find any object to be beautiful; beauty demands no assistance
from our reasoning; even the will is unconcerned; the appearance of
beauty as effectually causes some degree of love in us, as the appli-
cation of ice or fire produces the ideas of heat or cold. To gain
something like a satisfactory conclusion in this point, it were well
to examine, what proportion is; since several who make use of that
word do not always seem to understand very clearly the force of the
term, nor to have very distinct ideas concerning the thing itself.
Proportion is the measure of relative quantity. Since all quantity is
divisible, it is evident that every distinct part, into which any quan-
tity is divided, must bear some relation to the other parts, or to the
whole. These relations give an origin to the idea of proportion.
They are discovered by mensuration, and they are the objects of
mathematical inquiry. But whether any part of any determinate
quantity be a fourth, or a fifth, or a sixth, or a moiety of the whole;
or whether it be of equal length with any other part, or double its
length, or but one half, is a matter merely indifferent to the mind;
it stands neuter in the question; and it is from this absolute indiffer-
ence and tranquillity of the mind, that mathematical speculations
derive some of their most considerable advantages; because there is
nothing to interest the imagination; because the judgment sits free
and unbiassed to examine the point. All proportions, every arrange-
ment of quantity, is alike to the understanding, because the same
truths result to it from all; from greater, from lesser, from equality
and inequality. But surely beauty is no idea belonging to mensura-
tion; nor has it anything to do with calculation and geometry. If
it had, we might then point out some certain measures which we
could demonstrate to be beautiful, either as simply considered, or

"](> EDMUND BURKE

as relating to others; and we could call in those natural objects, for
whose beauty we have no voucher but the sense, to this happy stand-
ard, and confirm the voice o£ our passions by the determination of
our reason. But since we have not this help, let us see whether pro-
portion can in any sense be considered as the cause of beauty, as
hath been so generally, and by some so confidently, affirmed. If
proportion be one of the constituents of beauty, it must derive that
power either from some natural properties inherent in certain
measures, which operate mechanically; from the operation of cus-
tom; or from the fitness which some measures have to answer some
particular ends of conveniency. Our business therefore is to inquire,
whether the parts of those objects, which are found beautiful in the
vegetable or animal kingdoms, are constantly so formed accord-
ing to such certain measures, as may serve to satisfy us that their
beauty results from those measures, on the principle of a natural
mechanical cause; or from custom; or, in fine, from their fitness for
any determinate purposes. I intend to examine this point under
each of these heads in their order. But before I proceed further, I
hope it will not be thought amiss, if I lay down the rules which
governed me in this inquiry, and which have misled me in it, if I
have gone astray, i. If two bodies produce the same or a similar
effect on the mind, and on examination they are found to agree in
some of their properties, and to differ in others; the common effect
is to be attributed to the properties in which they agree, and not to
those in which they differ. 2. Not to account for the effect of a
natural object from the effect of an artificial object. 3. Not to account
for the effect of any natural object from a conclusion of our reason
concerning its uses, if a natural cause may be assigned. 4. Not to
admit any determinate quantity, or any relation of quantity, as the
cause of a certain effect, if the effect is produced by different or op)-
posite measures and relations; or if these measures and relations
may exist, and yet the effect may not be produced. These are the
rules which I have chiefly followed, whilst I examined into the
power of proportion considered as a natural cause; and these, if he
thinks them just, I request the reader to carry with him throughout
the following discussion; whilst we inquire in the first place, in what
things we find this quality of beauty; next, to see whether in these

ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 77

we can find any assignable proportions, in such a manner as ought
to convince us that our idea of beauty results from them. We shall
consider this pleasing power, as it appears in vegetables, in the in-
ferior animals, and in man. Turning our eyes to the vegetable
creation, we find nothing there so beautiful as flowers; but flowers
are almost of every sort of shape, and of every sort of disposition;
they are turned and fashioned into an infinite variety of forms; and
from these forms botanists have given them their names, which
are almost as various. What proportion do we discover between
the stalks and the leaves of flowers, or between the leaves and the
pistils? How does the slender stalk of the rose agree with the bulky
head under which it bends? But the rose is a beautiful flower; and
can we undertake to say that it does not owe a great deal of its beauty
even to that disproportion: the rose is a large flower, yet it grows
upon a small shrub; the flower of the apple is very small, and grows
upon a large tree; yet the rose and the apple blossom are both beauti-
ful, and the plants that bear them are most engagingly attired, not-
withstanding this disproportion. What by general consent is allowed
to be a more beautiful object than an orange-tree, flourishing at
once with its leaves, its blossoms, and its fruit? but it is in vain that
we search here for any proportion between the height, the breadth,
or anything else concerning the dimensions of the whole, or con-
cerning the relation of the particular parts to each other. I grant
that we may observe, in many flowers, something of a regular figure,
and of a methodical disposition of the leaves. The rose has such a
figure and such a disposition of its petals; but in an oblique view,
when this figure is in a good measure lost, and the order of the
leaves confounded, it yet retains its beauty; the rose is even more
beautiful before it is full blown; in the bud, before this exact figure
is formed; and this is not the only instance wherein method and
exactness, the soul of proportion, are found rather prejudicial than
serviceable to the cause of beauty.

SECT. III. — PROPORTION NOT THE CAUSE OF BEAUTY IN ANIMALS

That proportion has but a small share in the formation of beauty,
is full as evident among animals. Here the greatest variety of
shapes and dispositions of parts are well fitted to excite this idea.

7^ EDMUND BURKE

The swan, confessedly a beautiful bird, has a neck longer than the
rest of his body, and but a very short tail : is this a beautiful propor-
tion? We must allow that it is. But then what shall we say to the
peacock, who has comparatively but a short neck, with a tail longer
than the neck and the rest of the body taken together? How many
birds are there that vary infinitely from each of these standards, and
from every other which you can fix; with proportions different, and
often directly opposite to each other! and yet many of these birds
are extremely beautiful; when upon considering them we find noth-
ing in any one part that might determine us, a priori, to say what the
others ought to be, nor indeed to guess anything about them, but
what experience might show to be full of disappointment and mis-
take. And with regard to the colours either of birds or flowers, for
there is something similar in the colouring of both, whether they are
considered in their extension or gradation, there is nothing of pro-
portion to be observed. Some are of but one single colour, others
have all the colours of the rainbow; some are of the primary colours,
others are of the mixt; in short, an attentive observer may soon con-
clude, that there is as litde of proportion in the colouring as in the
shapes of these objects. Turn next to beasts; examine the head of a
beautiful horse; find what proportion that bears to his body, and to
his limbs, and what relations these have to each other; and when
you have settled these proportions as a standard of beauty, then take
a dog or cat, or any other animal, and examine how far the same
proportions between their heads and their necks, between those and
the body, and so on, are found to hold. I think we may safely say,
that they differ in every species, yet that there are individuals, found
in a great many species so differing, that have a very striking beauty.
Now, if it be allowed that very different and even contrary forms
and dispositions are consistent with beauty, it amounts I believe to
a concession, that no certain measures, operating from a natural prin-
ciple, are necessary to produce it; at least so far as the brute species
is concerned.

SECT. rv. — PROPORTION NOT THE CAUSE OF BEAUTY IN THE HUMAN SPECIES

There are some parts of the human body that are observed to hold
certain proportions to each other; but before it can be proved that

ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 79

the efficient cause of beauty lies in these, it must be shown, that
wherever these are found exact, the person to whom they belong is
beautiful: I mean in the effect produced on the view, either of any
member distinctly considered, or of the whole body together. It
must be likewise shown, that these parts stand in such a relation to
each other, that the comparison between them may be easily made,
and that the affection of the mind may naturally result from it. For
my part, I have at several times very carefully examined many of
those proportions, and found them hold very nearly or altogether
alike in many subjects, which were not only very different from
one another, but where one has been very beautiful, and the other
very remote from beauty. With regard to the parts which are found
so proportioned, they are often so remote from each other, in situa-
tion, nature, and office, that I cannot see how they admit of any
comparison, nor consequently how any efJect owing to proportion
can result from them. The neck, say they, in beautiful bodies, should
measure with the calf of the leg; it should likewise be twice the cir-
cumference of the wrist. And an infinity of observations of this kind
are to be found in the writings and conversations of many. But what
relation has the calf of the leg to the neck; or either of these parts
to the wrist? These proportions are certainly to be found in hand-
some bodies. They are as certainly in ugly ones; as any who will
take the pains to try may find. Nay, I do not know but they may be
least perfect in some of the most beautiful. You may assign any
proportion you please to every part of the human body; and I under-
take that a painter shall religiously observe them all, and not-
withstanding produce, if he pleases, a very ugly figure. The same
painter shall considerably deviate from these proportions, and pro-
duce a very beautiful one. And indeed it may be observed in the
master-pieces of the ancient and modern statuary, that several of
them differ very widely from the proportions of others, in parts very
conspicuous and of great consideration; and that they differ no less
from the proportions we find in living men, of forms extremely
striking and agreeable. And after all, how are the partisans of pro-
portional beauty agreed amongst themselves about the proportions
of the human body? Some hold it to be seven heads; some make it
eight; whilst others extend it even to ten; a vast difference in such

8o EDMUND BURKE

a small number of divisions! Others take other methods of estimat-
ing the proportions, and all with equal success. But are these propor-
tions exactly the same in all handsome men? or are they at all the
proportions found in beautiful women? Nobody will say that they
are; yet both sexes are undoubtedly capable of beauty, and the fe-
male of the greatest; which advantage I believe will hardly be
attributed to the superior exactness of proportion in the fair sex. Let
us rest a moment on this point; and consider how much difference
there is between the measures that prevail in many similar parts of
the body, in the two sexes of this single species only. If you assign
any determinate proportions to the limbs of a man, and if you limit
human beauty to these proportions, when you find a woman who
differs in the make and measures of almost every part, you must
conclude her not to be beautiful, in spite of the suggestions of your
imagination; or, in obedience to your imagination, you must re-
nounce your rules; you must lay by the scale and compass, and look
out for some other cause of beauty. For if beauty be attached to
certain measures which operate from a principle in nature, why
should similar parts with different measures of proportion be found
to have beauty, and this too in the very same species? But to open
our view a little, it is worth observing, that almost all animals have
parts of very much the same nature, and destined nearly to the same
purposes; a head, neck, body, feet, eyes, ears, nose, and mouth; yet
Providence to provide in the best manner for their several wants,
and to display the riches of his wisdom and goodness in his creation,
has worked out of these few and similar organs and members, a di-
versity hardly short of infinite in their disposition, measures, and
relation. But, as we have before observed, amidst this infinite diver-
sity, one particular is common to many species: several of the
individuals which compose them are capable of affecting us with a
sense of loveliness; and whilst they agree in producing this effect,
they differ extremely in the relative measures of those parts which
have produced it. These considerations were sufficient to induce
me to reject the notion of any particular proportions that operated
by nature to produce a pleasing effect; but those who will agree with
me with regard to a particular proportion, are strongly prepossessed
in favour of one more indefinite. They imagine, that although beauty

ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 8 1

in general is annexed to no certain measures common to the several
kinds of pleasing plants and animals; yet that there is a certain pro-
portion in each species absolutely essential to the beauty of that
particular kind. If we consider the animal world in general, we find
beauty confined to no certain measures: but as some peculiar meas-
ure and relation of parts is what distinguishes each peculiar class
of animals, it must of necessity be, that the beautiful in each kind
will be found in the measures and proportions of that kind; for
otherwise it would deviate from its proper species, and become in
some sort monstrous: however, no species is so strictly confined to
any certain proportions, that there is not a considerable variation
amongst the individuals; and as it has been shown of the human,
so it may be shown of the brute kinds, that beauty is found indifler-
endy in all the proportions which each kind can admit, without
quitting its common form; and it is this idea of a common form that
makes the proportion of parts at all regarded, and not the operation
of any natural cause: indeed a little consideration will make it ap-
pear, that it is not measure, but manner, that creates all the beauty
which belongs to shape. What light do we borrow from these
boasted proportions, when we study ornamental design? It seems
amazing to me, that artists, if they were as well convinced as they
pretend to be, that proportion is a principal cause of beauty, have
not by them at all times accurate measurements of all sorts o£
beautiful animals to help them to proper proportions, when they
would contrive anything elegant; especially as they frequently assert
that it is from an observation of the beautiful in nature they direct
their practice. I know that it has been said long since, and echoed
backward and forward from one writer to another a thousand times,
that the proportions of building have been taken from those of the
human body. To make this forced analogy complete, they represent
a man with his arms raised and extended at full length, and then
describe a sort of square, as it is formed by passing lines along the
extremities of this strange figure. But it appears very clearly to me,
that the human figure never supplied the architect with any of his
ideas. For, in the first place, men are very rarely seen in this strained
posture; it is not natural to them; neither is it at all becoming.
Secondly, the view of the human figure so disposed, does not

82 EDMUND BURKE

naturally suggest the Idea o£ a square, but rather of a cross; as that
large space between the arms and the ground must be filled with
something before it can make anybody think of a square. Thirdly,
several buildings are by no means of the form of that particular
square, which are notwithstanding planned by the best architects,
and produce an effect altogether as good, and perhaps a better. And
certainly nothing could be more unaccountably whimsical, than for
an architect to model his performance by the human figure, since
no two things can have less resemblance or analogy, than a man and
a house, or temple: do we need to observe, that their purposes are
entirely different? What I am apt to suspect is this: that these
analogies were devised to give a credit to the work of art, by show-
ing a conformity between them and the noblest works in nature;
not that the latter served at all to supply hints for the perfection of
the former. And I am the more fully convinced, that the patrons
of proportion have transferred their artificial ideas to nature, and
not borrowed from thence the proportions they use in works of art;
because in any discussion of this subject they always quit as soon
as possible the open field of natural beauties, the animal and vege-
table kingdoms, and fortify themselves within the artificial lines and
angles of architecture. For there is in mankind an unfortunate pro-
pensity to make themselves, their views, and their works, the
measure of excellence in everything whatsoever. Therefore, having
observed that their dwellings were most commodious and firm when
they were thrown into regular figures, with parts answerable to
each other; they transferred these ideas to their gardens; they turned
their trees into pillars, pyramids, and obelisks; they formed their
hedges into so many green walls, and fashioned their walks into
squares, triangles, and other mathematical figures, with exactness
and symmetry; and they thought, if they were not imitating, they
were at least improving nature, and teaching her to know her busi-
ness. But nature has at last escaped from their discipline and their
fetters; and our gardens, if nothing else, declare we begin to feel
that mathematical ideas are not the true measures of beauty. And
surely they are full as little so in the animal as the vegetable world.
For is it not extraordinary, that in these fine descriptive pieces, these
innumerable odes and elegies, which are in the mouths of all the

ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 83

world, and many o£ which have been the entertainment o£ ages, that
in these pieces which describe love with such a passionate energy, and
represent its object in such an infinite variety of lights, not one word is
said of proportion, if it be, what some insist it is, the principal compo-
nent of beauty; whilst, at the same time, several other qualities are
very frequently and warmly mentioned? But if proportion has not
this power, it may appear odd how men came originally to be so pre-
possessed in its favour. It arose, I imagine, from the fondness I have
just mentioned, which men bear so remarkably to their own works
and notions; it arose from false reasonings on the effects of the
customary figure of animals; it arose from the Platonic theory of
fitness and aptitude. For which reason, in the next section, I shall
consider the effects of custom in the figure of animals; and after-
wards the idea of fitness: since, if proportion does not operate by a
natural power attending some measures, it must be either by custom,
or the idea of utility; there is no other way.

SECT. v. — PROPORTION FURTHER CONSIDERED

If I am not mistaken, a great deal of the prejudice in favour of
proportion has arisen, not so much from the observation of any
certain measures found in beautiful bodies, as from a wrong idea
of the relation which deformity bears to beauty, to which it has been
considered as the opposite; on this principle it was concluded, that
where the causes of deformity were removed, beauty must naturally
and necessarily be introduced. This I believe is a mistake. For
deformity is opposed not to beauty, but to the complete common
form. If one of the legs of a man be found shorter than the other,
the man is deformed; because there is something wanting to com-
plete the whole idea we form of a man; and this has the same effect
in natural faults, as maiming and mutilation produce from accidents.
So if the back be humped, the man is deformed; because his back has
an unusual figure, and what carries with it the idea of some disease
or misfortune. So if a man's neck be considerably longer or shorter
than usual, we say he is deformed in that part, because men are not
commonly made in that manner. But surely every hour's experience
may convince us, that a man may have his legs of an equal length,
and resembling each other in all respects, and his neck of a just size.

84 EDMUND BURKE

and his back quite straight, without having at the same time the
least perceivable beauty. Indeed beauty is so far from belonging to
the idea of custom, that in reality what affects us in that manner is
extremely rare and uncommon. The beautiful strikes us as much
by its novelty as the deformed itself. It is thus in those species of
animals with which we are acquainted; and if one of a new species
were represented, we should by no means wait until custom had
settled an idea of proportion, before we decided concerning its beauty
or ugliness: which shows that the general idea of beauty can be no
more owing to customary than to natural proportion. Deformity
arises from the want of the common proportions; but the necessary
result of their existence in any object is not beauty. If we suppose
proportion in natural things to be relative to custom and use, the
nature of use and custom will show, that beauty, which is a positive
and powerful quality, cannot result from it. We are so wonderfully
formed, that, whilst we are creatures vehemently desirous of novelty,
we are as strongly attached to habit and custom. But it is the nature
of things which hold us by custom, to affect us very little whilst we
are in possession of them, but strongly when they are absent. I
remember to have frequented a certain place every day for a long
time together; and I may truly say, that so far from finding pleasure
in it, I was affected with a sort of weariness and disgust; I came, I
went, I returned, without pleasure; yet if by any means I passed by
the usual time of my going thither, I was remarkably uneasy, and
was not quiet till I had got into my old track. They who use snuff,
take it almost without being sensible that they take it, and the acute
sense of smell is deadened, so as to feel hardly anything from so
sharp a stimulus; yet deprive the snuff-taker of his box, and he is
the most uneasy mortal in the world. Indeed so far are use and habit
from being causes of pleasure, merely as such, that the effect of
constant use is to make all things of whatever kind entirely un-
affecting. For as use at last takes off the painful effect of many
things, it reduces the pleasurable effect in others in the same man-
ner, and brings both to a sort of mediocrity and indifference. Very
justly is use called a second nature; and our natural and common
state is one of absolute indifference, equally prepared for pain or
pleasure. But when we are thrown out of this state, or deprived of

ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 85

anything requisite to maintain us in it; when this chance does not
happen by pleasure from some mechanical cause, we are always
hurt. It is so with the second nature, custom, in all things which
relate to it. Thus the want of the usual proportions in men and other
animals is sure to disgust, though their presence is by no means any
cause of real pleasure. It is true, that the proportions laid down as
causes of beauty in the human body, are frequently found in beauti-
ful ones, because they are generally found in all mankind; but if it
can be shown too, that they are found without beauty, and that
beauty frequently exists without them, and that this beauty, where
it exists, always can be assigned to other less equivocal causes, it will
naturally lead us to conclude, that proportion and beauty are not
ideas of the same nature. The true opposite to beauty is not dis-
proportion or deformity, but ugliness: and as it proceeds from causes
opposite to those of positive beauty, we cannot consider it until we
come to treat of that. Between beauty and ugliness there is a sort
of mediocrity, in which the assigned proportions are most commonly
found; but this has no effect upon the passions.

SECT. VI. — FITNESS NOT THE CAUSE OF BEAUTY

It is said that the idea of utility, or of a part's being well adapted
to answer its end, is the cause of beauty, or indeed beauty itself.
If it were not for this opinion, it had been impossible for the doc-
trine of proportion to have held its ground very long; the world
would be soon weary of hearing of measures which related to noth-
ing, either of a natural principle, or of a fitness to answer some end;
the idea which mankind most commonly conceive of proportion, is
the suitableness of means to certain ends, and, where this is not the
question, very seldom trouble themselves about the effect of different
measures of things. Therefore it was necessary for this theory to
insist, that not only artificial but natural objects took their beauty
from the fitness of the parts for their several purposes. But in
framing this theory, I am apprehensive that experience was not suf-
ficiently consulted. For, on that principle, the wedge-like snout of
a swine, with its tough cartilage at the end, the little sunk eyes, and
the whole make of the head, so well adapted to its offices of digging
and rooting, would be extremely beautiful. The great bag hanging

86 EDMUND BURKE

to the bill of a pelican, a thing highly useful to this animal, would
be likewise as beautiful in our eyes. The hedge-hog, so well secured
against all assaults by his prickly hide, and the porcupine with his
missile quills, would be then considered as creatures of no small
elegance. There are few animals whose parts are better contrived
than those of the monkey; he has the hands of a man, joined to the
springy limbs of a beast; he is admirably calculated for running,
leaping, grappling, and climbing; and yet there are few animals
which seem to have less beauty in the eyes of all mankind. I need
say little on the trunk of the elephant, of such various usefulness,
and which is so far from contributing to his beauty. How well fitted
is the wolf for running and leaping! how admirably is the lion armed
for batde! but will any one therefore call the elephant, the wolf, and
the lion, beautiful animals? I believe nobody will think the form
of a man's leg so well adapted to running, as those of a horse, a dog,
a deer, and several other creatures; at least they have not that appear-
ance: yet, I believe, a well-fashioned human leg will be allowed to
far exceed all these in beauty. If the fitness of parts was what con-
stituted the loveliness of their form, the actual employment of them
would undoubtedly much augment it; but this, though it is some-
times so upon another principle, is far from being always the case.
A bird on the wing is not so beautiful as when it is perched; nay,
there are several of the domestic fowls which are seldom seen to
fly, and which are nothing the less beautiful on that account; yet
birds are so extremely different in their form from the beast and
human kinds, that you cannot, on the principle of fitness, allow
them anything agreeable, but in consideration of their parts being
designed for quite other purposes. I never in my life chanced to see
a peacock fly; and yet before, very long before, I considered any apti-
tude in his form for the aerial life, I was struck with the extreme
beauty which raises that bird above many of the best flying fowls
in the world; though, for anything I saw, his way of living was much
like that of the swine, which fed in the farm-yard along with him.
The same may be said of cocks, hens, and the like; they are of the
flying kind in figure; in their manner of moving not very different
from men and beasts. To leave these foreign examples; if beauty in
our own species was annexed to use, men would be much more

ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 87

lovely than women; and strength and agility would be considered
as the only beauties. But to call strength by the name of beauty, to
have but one denomination for the qualities of a Venus and Her-
cules, so totally different in almost all respects, is surely a strange
confusion of ideas, or abuse of words. The cause of this confusion,
I imagine, proceeds from our frequently perceiving the parts of the
human and other animal bodies to be at once very beautiful, and
very well adapted to their purposes; and we are deceived by a soph-
ism, which makes us take that for a cause which is only a concomit-
ant: this is the sophism of the fly, who imagined he raised a great
dust, because he stood upon the chariot that really raised it. The
stomach, the lungs, the liver, as well as other parts, are incomparably
well adapted to their purposes; yet they are far from having any
beauty. Again, many things are very beautiful, in which it is im-
possible to discern any idea of use. And I appeal to the first and
most natural feelings of mankind, whether on beholding a beautiful
eye, or a well-fashioned mouth, or a well-turned leg, any ideas of
their being well fitted for seeing, eating, or running, ever present
themselves. What idea of use is it that flowers excite, the most beau-
tiful part of the vegetable world? It is true, that the infinitely wise
and good Creator has, of his bounty, frequendy joined beauty to
those things which he has made useful to us: but this does not
prove that an idea of use and beauty are the same thing, or that they
are any way dependent on each other.

SECT. VII. — THE REAL EFFECTS OF FITNESS

When I excluded proportion and fitness from any share in
beauty, I did not by any means intend to say that they were of no
value, or that they ought to be disregarded in works of art. Works
of art are the proper sphere of their power; and here it is that they
have their full effect. Whenever the wisdom of our Creator in-
tended that we should be affected with anything, he did not confide
the execution of his design to the languid and precarious operation
of our reason; but he endued it with powers and properties that
prevent the understanding, and even the will; which, seizing up)on
the senses and imagination, captivate the soul before the understand-
ing is ready either to join with them, or to oppose them. It is by a

88 EDMUND BURKE

long deduction, and much study, that we discover the adorable wis-
dom of God in his works: when we discover it, the effect is very
different, not only in the manner of acquiring it, but in its own
nature, from that which strikes us without any preparation from the
sublime or the beautiful. How different is the satisfaction of an
anatomist, who discovers the use of the muscles and of the skin, the
excellent contrivance of the one for the various movements of the
body, and the wonderful texture of the other, at once a general
covering, and at once a general outlet as well as inlet; how differ-
ent is this from the affection which possesses an ordinary man at
the sight of a delicate, smooth skin, and all the other parts of beauty,
which require no investigation to be perceived! In the former case,
whilst we look up to the Maker with admiration and praise, the
object which causes it may be odious and distasteful; the latter very
often so touches us by its power on the imagination, that we examine
but litde into the artifice of its contrivance; and we have need of a
strong effort of our reason to disentangle our minds from the allure-
ments of the object, to a consideration of that wisdom which invented
so powerful a machine. The effect of proportion and fitness, at least
so far as they proceed from a mere consideration of the work itself,
produces approbation, the acquiescence of the understanding, but
not love, nor any passion of that species. When we examine the
structure of a watch, when we come to know thoroughly the use of
every part of it, satisfied as we are with the fitness of the whole,
we are far enough from perceiving anything like beauty in the watch-
work itself; but let us look on the case, the labour of some curious
artist in engraving, with little or no idea of use, we shall have a much
livelier idea of beauty than we ever could have had from the watch
itself, though the master-piece of Graham. In beauty, as I said, the
effect is previous to any knowledge of the use; but to judge of pro-
portion, we must know the end for which any work is designed.
According to the end, the proportion varies. Thus there is one pro-
portion of a tower, another of a house; one proportion of a gallery,
another of a hall, another of a chamber. To judge of the propor-
tions of these, you must be first acquainted with the purposes for
which they were designed. Good sense and experience, acting to-
gether, find out what is fit to be done in every work of art. We are

ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 89

rational creatures, and in all our works we ought to regard their
end and purpose; the gratification of any passion, how innocent
soever, ought only to be of a secondary consideration. Herein is
placed the real power of fitness and proportion; they operate on the
understanding considering them, which approves the work and
acquiesces in it. The passions, and the imagination which princi-
pally raises them, have here very little to do. When a room appears
in its original nakedness, bare walls and a plain ceiling; let its pro-
portion be ever so excellent, it pleases very little; a cold approbation
is the utmost we can reach; a much worse proportioned room with
elegant mouldings and fine festoons, glasses, and other merely
ornamental furniture, will make the imagination revolt against the
reason; it will please much more than the naked proportion of the
first room, which the understanding has so much approved as ad-
mirably fitted for its purposes. What I have here said and before
concerning proportion, is by no means to persuade people absurdly to
neglect the idea of use in the works of art. It is only to show that
these excellent things, beauty and proportion, are not the same; not
that they should either of them be disregarded.

SECT. VIII. — ^THE RECAPITULATION

On the whole; if such parts in human bodies as are found propor-
tioned, were likewise constantly found beautiful, as they certainly
are not; or if they were so situated, as that a pleasure might flow
from the comparison, which they seldom are; or if any assignable
proportions were found, either in plants or animals, which were
always attended with beauty, which never was the case; or if, where
parts were well adapted to their purposes, they were constantly
beautiful, and when no use appeared, there was no beauty, which
is contrary to all experience; we might conclude, that beauty con-
sisted in proportion or utility. But since, in all respects, the case is
quite otherwise; we may be satisfied that beauty does not depend on
these, let it owe its origin to what else it will.

90 EDMUND BURKE

SECT. IX. — PERFECTION NOT THE CAUSE OF BEAUTY

There is another notion current, pretty closely allied to the former;
that Perfection is the constituent cause of beauty. This opinion has
been made to extend much further than to sensible objects. But in
these, so far is perfection, considered as such, from being the cause
of beauty, that this quality, where it is highest, in the female sex,
almost always carries with it an idea of weakness and imperfection.
Women are very sensible of this; for which reason, they learn to
lisp, to totter in their walk, to counterfeit weakness, and even sick-
ness. In all they are guided by nature. Beauty in distress is much
the most affecting beauty. Blushing has little less power; and mod-
esty in general, which is a tacit allowance of imperfection, is itself
considered as an amiable quality, and certainly heightens every other
that is so. I know it is in everybody's mouth, that we ought to love
perfection. This is to me a sufficient proof, that it is not the proper
object of love. Who ever said we ought to love a fine woman, or
even any of these beautiful animals which please us? Here to be
affected, there is no need of the concurrence of our will.

SECT. X. — HOW FAR THE IDEA OF BEAUTY MAY BE APPLIED TO THE
QUALITIES OF THE MIND

Nor is this remark in general less applicable to the qualities of the
mind. Those virtues which cause admiration, and are of the sub-
limer kind, produce terror rather than love; such as fortitude, justice,
wisdom, and the like. Never was any man amiable by force of these
qualities. Those which engage our hearts, which impress us with a
sense of loveliness, are the softer virtues; easiness of temper, com-
passion, kindness, and liberality; though certainly those latter are of
less immediate and momentous concern to society, and of less dig-
nity. But it is for that reason that they are so amiable. The great
virtues turn principally on dangers, punishments, and troubles, and
are exercised rather in preventing the worst mischiefs, than in dispens-
ing favours; and are therefore not lovely, though highly venerable.
The subordinate turn on reliefs, gratifications, and indulgences; and
are therefore more lovely, though inferior in dignity. Those per-

ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 9I

sons who creep into the hearts o£ most people, who are chosen as
the companions of their softer hours, and their reliefs from care and
anxiety, are never persons of shining qualities or strong virtues.
It is rather the soft green of the soul on which we rest our eyes, that
are fatigued with beholding more glaring objects. It is worth ob-
serving how we feel ourselves af?ected in reading the characters of
Caesar and Cato, as they are so finely drawn and contrasted in Sal-
lust. In one the ignoscendo largiundo; in the other, nil largiundo.
In one, the miseris perfugium; in the other, malis perniciem. In the
latter we have much to admire, much to reverence, and perhaps some-
thing to fear; we respect him, but we respect him at a distance. The
former makes us familiar with him; we love him, and he leads us
whither he pleases. To draw things closer to our first and most
natural feelings, I will add a remark made upon reading this sec-
tion by an ingenious friend. The authority of a father, so useful to
our well-being, and so jusdy venerable upon all accounts, hinders us
from having that entire love for him that we have for our mothers,
where the parental authority is almost melted down into the mother's
fondness and indulgence. But we generally have a great love for our
grandfathers, in whom this authority is removed a degree from us,
and where the weakness of age mellows it into something of a fem-
inine partiality.

SECT. XI. — HOW FAR THE IDEA OF BEAUTY MAY BE APPLIED TO VIRTUE

From what has been said in the foregoing section, we may easily
see how far the application of beauty to virtue may be made with
propriety. The general application of this quality to virtue, has a
strong tendency to confound our ideas of things; and it has given
rise to an infinite deal of whimsical theory; as the affixing the name
of beauty to proportion, congruity, and perfection, as well as to quali-
des of things yet more remote from our natural ideas of it, and
from one another, has tended to confound our ideas of beauty, and
left us no standard or rule to judge by, that was not even more
uncertain and fallacious than our own fancies. This loose and inac-
curate manner of speaking has therefore misled us both in the theory
of taste and of morals; and induced us to remove the science of our

92 EDMUND BURKE

duties from their proper basis, (our reason, our relations, and our
necessities,) to rest it upon foundations altogether visionary and
unsubstantial.

SECT. XII. — ^THE REAL CAUSE OF BEAUTY

Having endeavoured to show what beauty is not, it remains that
we should examine, at least with equal attention, in what it really
consists. Beauty is a thing much too affecting not to depend upon
some positive qualities. And, since it is no creature of our reason,
since it strikes us without any reference to use, and even where no
use at all can be discerned, since the order and method of nature
is generally very different from our measures and proportions, we
must conclude that beauty is, for the greater part, some quality in
bodies acting mechanically upon the human mind by the inter-
vention of the senses. We ought therefore to consider attentively
in what manner those sensible qualities are disposed, in such things
as by experience we find beautiful, or which excite in us the passion
of love, or some correspondent affection.

SECT. XIII. — ^BEAUTIFUL OBJECTS SMALL

The most obvious point that presents itself to us in examining
any object, is its extent or quantity. And what degree of extent pre-
vails in bodies that are held beautiful, may be gathered from the
usual manner of expression concerning it. I am told that, in most
languages, the objects of love are spoken of under diminutive epi-
thets. It is so in all languages of which I have any knowledge. In
Greek the loyy and other diminutive terms are almost always the
terms of affection and tenderness. These diminutives were commonly
added by the Greeks to the names of persons with whom they con-
versed on terms of friendship and familiarity. Though the Romans
were a people of less quick and delicate feelings, yet they naturally
slid into the lessening termination upon the same occasions. An-
ciently in the English language the diminishing ling was added to
the names of persons and things that were the objects of love. Some
we retain still, as darling, (or litde dear,) and a few others. But,
to this day, in ordinary conversation, it is usual to add the endearing
name of little to everything we love: the French and Italians make

ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 93

use of these affectionate diminutives even more than we. In the
animal creation, out of our own species, it is the small we are inclined
to be fond of; little birds, and some of the smaller kinds of beasts. A
great beautiful thing is a manner of expression scarcely ever used;
but that of a great ugly thing is very common. There is a wide
difference between admiration and love. The sublime, which is the
cause of the former, always dwells on great objects, and terrible; the
latter on small ones, and pleasing; we submit to what we admire,
but we love what submits to us; in one case we are forced, in the
other we are flattered, into compliance. In short, the ideas of the
sublime and the beautiful stand on foundations so different, that it
is hard, I had almost said impossible, to think of reconciling them
in the same subject, without considerably lessening the effect of the
one or the other upon the passions. So that, attending to their
quantity, beautiful objects are comparatively small.

SECT. XIV. — ^SMOOTHNESS

The next property constantly observable in such objects is smooth-
ness:^ a quality so essential to beauty, that I do not now recollect
anything beautiful that is not smooth. In trees and flowers, smooth
leaves are beautiful; smooth slopes of earth in gardens; smooth
streams in the landscape; smooth coats of birds and beasts in animal
beauties; in fine women, smooth skins; and in several sorts of orna-
mental furniture, smooth and polished surfaces. A very considerable
part of the effect of beauty is owing to this quality; indeed the most
considerable. For, take any beautiful object, and give it a broken
and rugged surface; and however well formed it may be in other
respects, it pleases no longer. Whereas, let it want ever so many
of the other constituents, if it wants not this, it becomes more pleas-
ing than almost all the others without it. This seems to me so evi-
dent, that I am a good deal surprised, that none who have handled
the subject have made any mention of the quality of smoothness, in
the enumeration of those that go to the forming of beauty. For in-
deed any ruggedness, any sudden projection, any sharp angle, is in
the highest degree contrary to that idea.

' Part IV. sect. 21.

94 EDMUND BURKE

SECT. XV. — GRADUAL VARIATION

But as perfectly beautiful bodies are not composed of angular
parts, so their parts never continue long in the same right line.' They
vary their direction every moment, and they change under the
eye by a deviation continually carrying on, but for whose beginning
or end you will find it difficult to ascertain a point. The view of a
beautiful bird will illustrate this observation. Here we see the head
increasing insensibly to the middle, from whence it lessens gradually
until it mixes with the neck; the neck loses itself in a larger swell,
which continues to the middle of the body, when the whole decreases
again to the tail; the tail takes a new direction; but it soon varies
its new course: it blends again with the other parts; and the line
is perpetually changing, above, below, upon every side. In this
description I have before me the idea of a dove; it agrees very well
with most of the conditions of beauty. It is smooth and downy; its
parts are (to use that expression) melted into one another; you are
presented with no sudden protuberance through the whole, and yet
the whole is continually changing. Observe that part of a beautiful
woman where she is perhaps the most beautiful, about the neck and
breasts; the smoothness; the softness; the easy and insensible swell;
the variety of the surface, which is never for the smallest space the
same; the deceitful maze, through which the unsteady eye slides
giddily, without knowing where to fix or whither it is carried. Is not
this a demonstration of that change of surface, continual, and yet
hardly perceptible at any point, which forms one of the great con-
stituents of beauty? It gives me no small pleasure to find that I can
strengthen my theory in this point, by the opinion of the very in-
genious Mr. Hogarth; whose idea of the line of beauty I take in gen-
eral to be extremely just. But the idea of variation, without attending
so accurately to the manner of the variation, has led him to consider
angular figures as beautiful: these figures, it is true, vary gready;
yet they vary in a sudden and broken manner; and I do not find any
natural object which is angular, and at the same time beautiful. In-
deed few natural objects are entirely angular. But I think those
which approach the most nearly to it are the ugliest. I must add too,

'Part IV, sect. 23.

ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 95

that, so far as I could observe of nature, though the varied line is
that alone in which complete beauty is found, yet there is no par-
ticular line which is always found in the most completely beautiful,
and which is therefore beautiful in preference to all other lines. At
least I never could observe it.

SECT. XVI. — ^DELICACY

An air of robustness and strength is very prejudicial to beauty. Aa
appearance of delicacy, and even of fragility, is almost essential to
it. Whoever examines the vegetable or animal creation will find this
observation to be founded in nature. It is not the oak, the ash, or the
elm, or any of the robust trees of the forest, which we consider as
beautiful; they are awful and majestic; they inspire a sort of rev-
erence. It is the delicate myrtle, it is the orange, it is the almond, it
is the jasmine, it is the vine, which we look on as vegetable beauties.
It is the flowery species, so remarkable for its weakness and mo-
mentary duration, that gives us the liveliest idea of beauty and
elegance. Among animals, the greyhound is more beautiful than the
mastiff; and the delicacy of a gennet, a barb, or an Arabian horse, is
much more amiable than the strength and stability of some horses of
war or carriage. I need here say little of the fair sex, where I believe
the point will be easily allowed me. The beauty of women is con-
siderably owing to their weakness or delicacy, and is even enhanced
by their timidity, a quality of mind analogous to it. I would not
here be understood to say, that weakness betraying very bad health
has any share in beauty; but the ill effect of this is not because it is
weakness, but because the ill state of health, which produces such
weakness, alters the other conditions of beauty; the parts in such a
case collapse; the bright color, the lumen purpureum juventce, is
gone; and the fine variation is lost in wrinkles, sudden breaks, and
right lines.

SECT. XVII. — BEAUTY IN COLOUR

As to the colours usually found in beautiful bodies, it may be
somewhat difficult to ascertain them, because, in the several parts
of nature, there is an infinite variety. However, even in this variety,
we may mark out something on which to setde. First, the colours

96 EDMUND BURKE

of beautiful bodies must not be dusky or muddy, but clean and fair.
Secondly, they must not be of the strongest kind. Those which seem
most appropriated to beauty, are the milder of every sort; light
greens; soft blues; weak whites; pink reds; and violets. Thirdly, if
the colours be strong and vivid, they are always diversified, and the
object is never of one strong colour; there are almost always such a
number of them, (as in variegated flowers,) that the strength and
glare of each is considerably abated. In a fine complexion, there is
not only some variety in the colouring, but the colours: neither the
red nor the white are strong and glaring. Besides, they are mixed
in such a manner, and with such gradations, that it is impossible to
fix the bounds. On the same principle it is, that the dubious colour
in the necks and tails of peacocks, and about the heads of drakes, is
so very agreeable. In reality, the beauty both of shape and colouring
are as nearly related, as we can well suppose it possible for things of
such different natures to be.

SECT. XVIII. — RECAPITULATION

On the whole, the qualities of beauty, as they are merely sensible
qualities, are the following: First, to be comparatively small. Sec-
ondly, to be smooth. Thirdly, to have a variety in the direction of
the parts; but, fourthly, to have those parts not angular, but melted
as it were into each other. Fifthly, to be of a delicate frame, without
any remarkable appearance of strength. Sixthly, to have its colours
clear and bright, but not very strong and glaring. Seventhly, or if
it should have any glaring colour, to have it diversified with others.
These are, I believe, the properties on which beauty depends; prop-
erties that operate by nature, and are less liable to be altered by
caprice, or confounded by a diversity of tastes, than any other.

SECT. XIX. — THE PHYSIOGNOMY

The physiognomy has a considerable share in beauty, especially in
that of our own species. The manners give a certain determination
to the countenance; which, being observed to correspond pretty
regularly with them, is capable of joining the effect of certain agree-
able qualities of the mind to those of the body. So that to form a
finished human beauty, and to give it its full influence, the face

ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 97

must be expressive of such gentle and amiable qualities as correspond
with the softness, smoothness, and delicacy of the outward form.

SECT, XX. — ^THE EYE

I HAVE hitherto purposely omitted to speak of the eye, which has
so great a share in the beauty of the animal creation, as it did not fall
so easily under the foregoing heads, though in fact it is reducible to
the same principles. I think, then, that the beauty of the eye consists,
first, in its clearness; what coloured eye shall please most, depends
a good deal on particular fancies; but none are pleased with an eye
whose water (to use that term) is dull and muddy.' We are pleased
with the eye in this view, on the principle upon which we like
diamonds, clear water, glass, and such like transparent substances.
Secondly, the motion of the eye contributes to its beauty, by con-
tinually shifting its direction; but a slow and languid motion is
more beautiful than a brisk one; the latter is enlivening; the former
lovely. Thirdly, with regard to the union of the eye with the neigh-
bouring parts, it is to hold the same rule that is given of other beauti-
ful ones; it is not to make a strong deviation from the line of the
neighbouring parts; nor to verge into any exact geometrical figure.
Besides all this, the eye affects, as it is expressive of some qualities
of the mind, and its principal power generally arises from this; so
that what we have just said of the physiognomy is applicable here.

SECT XXI. — UGLINESS

It may perhaps appear like a sort of repetition of what we have
before said, to insist here upon the nature of ugliness; as I imagine
it to be in all respects the opposite to those qualities which we have
laid down for the constituents of beauty. But though ugliness be
the opposite to beauty, it is not the opposite to proportion and fitness.
For it is possible that a thing may be very ugly with any proportions,
and with a perfect fitness to any uses. Ugliness I imagine likewise
to be consistent enough with an idea of the sublime. But I would
by no means insinuate that ugliness of itself is a sublime idea, unless
united with such qualities as excite a strong terror.

• Part IV. sect. 25.

98 EDMUND BURKE

SECT. XXII. — GRACE

Gracefulness is an idea not very different from beauty; it consists
of much the same things. Gracefulness is an idea belonging to
posture and motion. In both these, to be graceful, it is requisite that
there be no appearance of difficulty; there is required a small inflec-
tion of the body ; and a composure of the parts in such a manner, as
not to encumber each other, not to appear divided by sharp and sud-
den angles. In this ease, this roundness, this delicacy of attitude and
motion, it is that all the magic of grace consists, and what is called
its je ne sgai quoi; as will be obvious to any observer, who considers
attentively the Venus de Medicis, the Antinous, or any statue gen-
erally allowed to be graceful in a high degree.

SECT. XXIII. ELEGANCE AND SPECIOUSNESS

When any body is composed of parts smooth and polished with-
out pressing upon each other, without showing any ruggedness or
confusion, and at the same time affecting some regular shape, I call
it elegant. It is closely allied to the beautiful, differing from it only
in this regularity; which, however, as it makes a very material dif-
ference in the affection produced, may very well constitute another
species. Under this head I rank those delicate and regular works of
art, that imitate no determinate object in nature, as elegant build-
ings, and pieces of furniture. When any object partakes of the above-
mentioned qualities, or of those of beautiful bodies, and is withal of
great dimensions, it is full as remote from the idea of mere beauty;
I call it fine or specious.

SECT. XXIV. — ^THE BEAUTIFUL IN FEELING

The foregoing description of beauty, so far as it is taken in by the
eye, may be greatly illustrated by describing the nature of objects,
which produce a similar effect through the touch. This I call the
beautiful in Feeling. It corresponds wonderfully with what causes
the same species of pleasure to the sight. There is a chain in all our
sensations; they are all but different sorts of feelings calculated to be
affected by various sorts of objects, but all to be affected after the
same manner. All bodies that are pleasant to the touch, are so by the

ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 99

slightness of the resistance they make. Resistance is either to motion
along the surface, or to the pressure of the parts on one another: if
the former be slight, we call the body smooth; if the latter, soft.
The chief pleasure we receive by feeling, is in the one or the other of
these qualities; and if there be a combination of both, our pleasure is
greatly increased. This is so plain, that it is rather more fit to illus-
trate other things, than to be illustrated itself by an example. The
next source of pleasure in this sense, as in every other, is the con-
tinually presenting somewhat new; and we find that bodies which
continually vary their surface, are much the most pleasant or beauti-
ful to the feeling, as any one that pleases may experience. The third
property in such objects is, that though the surface continually varies
its direction, it never varies it suddenly. The application of anything
sudden, even though the impression itself have little or nothing of
violence, is disagreeable. The quick application of a finger a little
warmer or colder than usual, without notice, makes us start; a slight
tap on the shoulder, not expected, has the same effect. Hence it is
that angular bodies, bodies that suddenly vary the direction of the
outline, afford so little pleasure to the feeling. Every such change is
a sort of climbing or falling in miniature; so that squares, triangles,
and other angular figures, are neither beautiful to the sight nor feel-
ing. Whoever compares his state of mind, on feeling soft, smooth,
variegated, unangular bodies, with that in which he finds himself,
on the view of a beautiful object, will perceive a very striking analogy
in the effects of both; and which may go a good way towards dis-
covering their common cause. Feeling and sight, in this respect,
differ in but a few points. The touch takes in the pleasure of soft-
ness, which is not primarily an object of sight; the sight, on the other
hand, comprehends colour, which can hardly be made perceptible
to the touch; the touch, again, has the advantage in a new idea of
pleasure resulting from a moderate degree of warmth; but the eye
triumphs in the infinite extent and multiplicity of its objects. But
there is such a similitude in the pleasures of these senses, that I am
apt to fancy, if it were possible that one might discern colour by
feeling, (as it is said some blind men have done,) that the same
colours, and the same disposition of colouring, which are found
beautiful to the sight, would be found likewise most grateful to the

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touch. But, setting aside conjectures, let us pass to the other sense;
of Hearing.

SECT. XXV. THE BEAUTIFUL IN SOUNDS

In this sense we find an equal aptitude to be affected in a soft and
delicate manner; and how far sweet or beautiful sounds agree with
our descriptions of beauty in other senses, the experience of every one
must decide. Milton has described this species of music in one of
his juvenile poems.' I need not say that Milton was perfectly well
versed in that art; and that no man had a finer ear, with a happier
manner of expressing the affections of one sense by metaphors taken
from another. The description is as follows:

— ^And ever against eating cares,

Lap me in soft Lydian airs;

In notes with many a winding bout

Of linked sweetness long drawn out;

With wanton heed, and giddy cunning,

The melting voice through mazes running;

Untwisting all the chains that tie

The hidden soul of harmony.

Let us parallel this with the softness, the winding surface, the un-
broken continuance, the easy gradation of the beautiful in other
things; and all the diversities of the several senses, with all their
several affections, will rather help to throw lights from one another
to finish one clear, consistent idea of the whole, than to obscure it by
their intricacy and variety.

To the above-mentioned description I shall add one or two re-
marks. The first is; that the beautiful in music will not bear that
loudness and strength of sounds, which may be used to raise other
passions; nor notes which are shrill, or harsh, or deep; it agrees best
with such as are clear, even, smooth, and weak. The second is; that
great variety, and quick transitions from one measure or tone to
another, are contrary to the genius of the beautiful in music. Such
transitions^ often excite mirth, or other sudden and tumultuous pas-
sions; but not that sinking, that melting, that languor, which is the
characteristical effect of the beautiful as it regards every sense. The

1 L'AlIegro.
*I ne'er am merry, when I hear sweet music. — Shakespeake.

ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL lOI

passion excited by beauty is in fact nearer to a species of melancholy,
than to jollity and mirth. I do not here mean to confine music to any
one species of notes, or tones, neither is it an art in which I can say
I have any great skill. My sole design in this remark is, to settle a
consistent idea of beauty. The infinite variety of the affections of
the soul will suggest to a good head, and skilful ear, a variety of
such sounds as are fitted to raise them. It can be no prejudice to this,
to clear and distinguish some few particulars, that belong to the
same class, and are consistent with each other, from the immense
crowd of different, and sometimes contradictory, ideas, that rank
vulgarly under the standard of beauty. And of these it is my inten-
tion to mark such only of the leading points as show the conform-
ity of the sense of Hearing with all the other senses, in the article of
their pleasures.

SECT. XXVI. — TASTE AND SMELL

This general agreement of the senses is yet more evident on mi-
nutely considering those of taste and smell. We metaphorically apply
the idea of sweetness to sights and sounds; but as the qualities of
bodies, by which they are fitted to excite either pleasure or pain in
these senses, are not so obvious as they are in the others, we shall
refer an explanation of their analogy, which is a very close one, to
that part, wherein we come to consider the common efficient cause
of beauty, as it regards all the senses. I do not think anything better
fitted to establish a clear and settled idea of visual beauty than this
way of examining the similar pleasures of other senses; for one part
is sometimes clear in one of the senses, that is more obscure in an-
other; and where there is a clear concurrence of all, we may with
more certainty speak of any one of them. By this means, they bear
witness to each other; nature is, as it were, scrutinized; and we report
nothing of her but what we receive from her own information.

SECT. XXVII. — THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL COMPARED

On closing this general view of beauty, it naturally occurs, that we
should compare it with the sublime; and in this comparison there
appears a remarkable contrast. For sublime objects are vast in
their dimensions, beautiful ones comparatively small: beauty should

102 EDMUND BURKE

be smooth and polished; the great, rugged and neghgent; beauty
should shun the right line, yet deviate from it insensibly; the great
in many cases loves the right line, and when it deviates it often makes
a strong deviation: beauty should not be obscure; the great ought
to be dark and gloomy: beauty should be light and delicate; the great
ought to be solid, and even massive. They are indeed ideas of a
Tery different nature, one being founded on pain, the other on
pleasure; and however they may vary afterwards from the direct
nature of their causes, yet these causes keep up an eternal distinc-
tion between them, a distinction never to be forgotten by any whose
business it is to affect the passions. In the infinite variety of natural
combinations, we must expect to find the qualities of things the most
remote imaginable from each other united in the same object. We
must expect also to find combinations of the same kind in the works
of art. But when we consider the power of an object upon our pas-
sions, we must know that when anything is intended to affect the
mind by the force of some predominant property, the affection pro-
duced is like to be the more uniform and perfect, if all the other
properties or qualities of the object be of the same nature, and tend-
ing to the same design, as the principal.

If black and white blend, soften, and unite

A thousand ways, are there no black and white?

If the qualities of the sublime and beautiful are sometimes found
united, does this prove that they are the same; does it prove that
they are any way allied; does it prove even that they are not opposite
and contradictory? Black and white may soften, may blend; but
they are not therefore the same. Nor, when they are so softened
and blended with each other, or with different colours, is the power
of black as black, or of white as white, so strong as when each stands
uniform and distinguished.

PART IV

Section I. — Of the Efficient Cause of the Sublime and Beautiful

WHEN I say I intend to inquire into the efficient cause of
Sublimity and Beauty, I would not be understood to say,
that I can come to the ultimate cause. I do not pretend that
I shall ever be able to explain, why certain affections of the body
produce such a distinct emotion of mind, and no other; or why the
body is at all affected by the mind, or the mind by the body. A little
thought will show this to be impossible. But I conceive, if we can
discover what affections of the mind produce certain emotions of
the body, and what distinct feelings and qualities of body shall pro-
duce certain determinate passions in the mind, and no others, I
fancy a great deal will be done; something not unuseful towards a
distinct knowledge of our passions, so far at least as we have them
at present under our consideration. This is all, I believe, we can do.
If we could advance a step farther, difficulties would still remain,
as we should be still equally distant from the first cause. When
Newton first discovered the property of attraction, and setded its
laws, he found it served very well to explain several of the most re-
markable phaenomena in nature; but yet, with reference to the gen-
eral system of things, he could consider attraction but as an effect,
whose cause at that time he did not attempt to trace. But when he
afterwards began to account for it by a subtle elastic aether, this great
man (if in so great a man it be not impious to discover anything
like a blemish) seemed to have quitted his usual cautious manner of
philosophizing; since, perhaps, allowing all that has been advanced
on this subject to be sufficiently proved, I think it leaves us with as
many difficulties as it found us. The great chain of causes, which
links one to another, even to the throne of God himself, can never be
unravelled by any industry of ours. When we go but one step
beyond the immediate sensible qualities of things, we go out of our

103

104 EDMUND BURKE

depth. All we do after is but a faint struggle, that shows we are in
an element which does not belong to us. So that when I speak of
cause, and efficient cause, I only mean certain affections of the mind,
that cause certain changes in the body; or certain powers and prop-
erties in bodies, that work a change in the mind. As if I were to
explain the motion of a body falling to the ground, I would say it
was caused by gravity; and I would endeavour to show after what
manner this power operated, without attempting to show why it
operated in this manner: or if I were to explain the effects of bodies
striking one another by the common laws of percussion, I should not
endeavour to explain how motion itself is communicated.

SECT. II. — ASSOCIATION

It is no small bar in the way of our inquiry into the cause of our
passions, that the occasions of many of them are given, and that
their governing motions are communicated at a time when we have
not capacity to reflect on them; at a time of which all sort of mem-
ory is worn out of our minds. For besides such things as affect us in
various manners, according to their natural powers, there are associ-
ations made at that early season, which we find it very hard after-
wards to distinguish from natural effects. Not to mention the un-
accountable antipathies which we find in many persons, we all find
it impossible to remember when a steep became more terrible than
a plain; or fire or water more terrible than a clod of earth; though
all these are very probably either conclusions from experience, or
arising from the premonitions of others; and some of them im-
pressed, in all likelihood, pretty late. But as it must be allowed that
many things affect us after a certain manner, not by any natural
powers they have for that purpose, but by association; so it would be
absurd, on the other hand, to say that all things affect us by associ-
ation only; since some things must have been originally and natu-
rally agreeable or disagreeable, from which the others derive their
associated powers; and it would be, I fancy, to little purpose to look
for the cause of our passions in association, until we fail of it in the
natural properties of things.

ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL I05

SECT. III. — CAUSE OF PAIN AND FEAR

I HAVE before observed,' that whatever is quaUfied to cause terror
is a foundation capable of the subUme; to which I add, that not
only these, but many things from which we cannot probably appre-
hend any danger, have a similar effect, because they operate in a
similar manner. I observed too,'' that whatever produces pleasure,
positive and original pleasure, is fit to have beauty ingrafted on it.
Therefore, to clear up the nature of these qualities, it may be neces-
sary to explain the nature of pain and pleasure on which they depend.
A man who suffers under violent bodily pain, (I suppose the most
violent, because the effect may be the more obvious,) I say a man in
great pain has his teeth set, his eyebrows are violently contracted, his
forehead is wrinkled, his eyes are dragged inwards, and rolled with
great vehemence, his hair stands on end, the voice is forced out in
short shrieks and groans, and the whole fabric totters. Fear, or ter-
ror, which is an apprehension of pain or death, exhibits exacdy the
same effects, approaching in violence to those just mentioned, in
proportion to the nearness of the cause, and the weakness of the
subject. This is not only so in the human species; but I have more
than once observed in dogs, under an apprehension of punishment,
that they have writhed their bodies, and yelped, and howled, as if
they had actually felt the blows. From hence I conclude, that pain
and fear act upon the same parts of the body, and in the same man-
ner, though somewhat differing in degree; that pain and fear con-
sist in an unnatural tension of the nerves; that this is sometimes
accompanied with an unnatural strength, which sometimes sud-
denly changes into an extraordinary weakness; that these effects
often come on alternately, and are sometimes mixed with each other.
This is the nature of all convulsive agitations, especially in weaker
subjects, which are the most liable to the severest impressions of
pain and fear. The only difference between pain and terror is, that
things which cause pain operate on the mind by the intervention
of the body; whereas things that cause terror generally affect the
bodily organs by the operation of the mind suggesting the danger;
but both agreeing, either primarily or secondarily, in producing a
'Part I. sect. 8. ^Part I. sect. 10.

I06 EDMUND BURKE

tension, contraction, or violent emotion of the nerves,' they agree
likewise in everything else. For it appears very clearly to me, from
this, as well as from many other examples, that when the body is
disposed, by any means whatsoever, to such emotions as it would
acquire by the means of a certain passion; it will of itself excite some-
thing very like that passion in the mind.

SECT. IV. — CONTINUED

To this purpose Mr. Spon, in his Recherches d' Antiquite, gives
us a curious story of the celebrated physiognomist Campanella. This
man, it seems, had not only made very accurate observations on hu-
man faces, but was very expert in mimicking such as were any way
remarkable. When he had a mind to penetrate into the inclinations
of those he had to deal with, he composed his face, his gesture, and
his whole body, as nearly as he could into the exact similitude of the
person he intended to examine; and then carefully observed what
turn of mind he seemed to acquire by this change. So that, says my
author, he was able to enter into the dispositions and thoughts of
people as effectually as if he had been changed into the very men. I
have often observed, that on mimicking the looks and gestures of
angry, or placid, or frighted, or daring men, I have involuntarily
found my mind turned to that passion, whose appearance I endeav-
oured to imitate; nay, I am convinced it is hard to avoid it, though
one strove to separate the passion from its correspondent gestures.
Our minds and bodies are so closely and intimately connected, that
one is incapable of pain or pleasure without the other. Campanella,
of whom we have been speaking, could so abstract his attention from
any sufferings of his body, that he was able to endure the rack itself
without much pain; and in lesser pains everybody must have ob-
served, that, when we can employ our attention on anything else,
the pain has been for a time suspended: on the other hand, if by any
means the body is indisposed to perform such gestures, or to be
stimulated into such emotions, as any passion usually produces in
it, that passion itself never can arise, though its cause should be never

*I do not here enter into the question debated among physiologists, whether
pain be the effect o£ a contraction, or a tension of the nerves. Either will serve my
purpose; for by tension, I mean no more than a violent pulling of the fibres, which
compose any muscle or membrane, in whatever way this is done.

ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL IO7

SO strongly in action; though it should be merely mental, and im-
mediately affecting none of the senses. As an opiate or spirituous
liquors, shall suspend the operation of grief, or fear, or anger, in
spite of all our efforts to the contrary; and this by inducing in the
body a disposition contrary to that which it receives from these
passions.

SECT. V. — HOW THE SUBLIME IS PRODUCED

Having considered terror as producing an unnatural tension and
certain violent emotions of the nerves; it easily follows, from what
we have just said, that whatever is fitted to produce such a tension
must be productive of a passion similar to terror,' and consequendy
must be a source of the sublime, though it should have no idea of
danger connected with it. So that little remains towards showing
the cause of the sublime, but to show that the instances we have given
of it in the second part relate to such things as are fitted by nature
to produce this sort of tension, either by the primary operation of
the mind or the body. With regard to such things as effect by the
associated idea of danger, there can be no doubt but that they pro-
duce terror, and act by some modification of that passion; and that
terror, when sufficiently violent, raises the emotions of the body
just mentioned, can as little be doubted. But if the sublime is built
on terror, or some passion like it, which has pain for its object, it is
previously proper to inquire how any species of delight can be de-
rived from a cause so apparently contrary to it. I say delight,
because, as I have often remarked, it is very evidently different in its
cause, and in its own nature, from actual and positive pleasure.

SECT. VI. — HOW PAIN CAN BE A CAUSE OF DELIGHT

Providence has so ordered it, that a state of rest and inaction, how-
ever it may flatter our indolence, should be productive of many in-
conveniences; that it should generate such disorders, as may force
us to have recourse to some labour, as a thing absolutely requisite
to make us pass our lives with tolerable satisfaction; for the nature
of rest is to suffer all the parts of our bodies to fall into a relaxation,
that not only disables the members from performing their functions,

' Part IL sect. 3.

I08 EDMUND BURKE

but takes away the vigorous tone of fibre which is requisite for
carrying on the natural and necessary secretions. At the same time,
that in this languid inactive state, the nerves are more liable to the
most horrid convulsions, than when they are sufficiently braced and
strengthened. Melancholy, dejection, despair, and often self-murder,
is the consequence of the gloomy view we take of things in this re-
laxed state of body. The best remedy for all these evils is exercise
or labour; and labour is a surmounting of difficulties, an exertion of
the contracting power of the muscles; and as such resembles pain,
which consists in tension or contraction, in everything but degree.
Labour is not only requisite to preserve the coarser organs in a state
fit for their functions; but it is equally necessary to those finer and
more delicate organs, on which, and by which, the imagination, and
perhaps the other mental powers, act. Since it is probable, that not
only the inferior parts of the soul, as the passions are called, but
the understanding itself, makes use of some fine corporeal instru-
ments in its operation; though what they are, and where they are,
may be somewhat hard to settle; but that it does make use of such,
appears from hence; that a long exercise of the mental powers in-
duces a remarkable lassitude of the whole body; and, on the other
hand, that great bodily labour, or pain, weakens, and sometimes
actually destroys, the mental faculties. Now, as a due exercise is
essential to the coarse muscular parts of the constitution, and that
without this rousing they would become languid and diseased, the
very same rule holds with regard to those finer parts we have men-
tioned; to have them in proper order, they must be shaken and
worked to a proper degree.

SECT. VII. — ^EXERCISE NECESSARY FOR THE FINER ORGANS

As common labour, which is a mode of pain, is the exercise of the
grosser, a mode of terror is the exercise of the finer parts of the sys-
tem; and if a certain mode of pain be of such a nature as to act upon
the eye or the ear, as they are the most delicate organs, the affec-
tion approaches more nearly to that which has a mental cause. In
all these cases, if the pain and terror are so modified as not to be
actually noxious; if the pain is not carried to violence, and the terror
is not conversant about the present destruction of the person, as these

ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL IO9

emotions clear the parts, whether fine or gross, o£ a dangerous and
troublesome encumbrance, they are capable of producing delight;
not pleasure, but a sort of delightful horror, a sort of tranquillity
tinged with terror; which, as it belongs to self-preservation, is one of
the strongest of all the passions. Its object is the sublime.' Its high-
est degree I call astonishment; the subordinate degrees are awe,
reverence, and respect, which, by the very etymology of the words
show from what source they are derived, and how they stand dis-
tinguished from positive pleasure.

SECT. VIII. — WHY THINGS NOT DANGEROUS PRODUCE A PASSION LIKE TERROR

^A MODE of terror or pain is always the cause of the sublime. For
terror, or associated danger, the foregoing explication is, I believe,
sufficient. It will require something more trouble to show, that such
examples as I have given of the sublime in the second part are
capable of producing a mode of pain, and of being thus allied to
terror, and to be accounted for on the same principles. And first of
such objects as are great in their dimensions. I speak of visual objects.

SECT. IX. — ^WHY VISUAL OBJECTS OF GREAT DIMENSIONS ARE SUBLIME

Vision is performed by having a picture, formed by the rays of
light which are reflected from the object, painted in one piece, in-
stantaneously, on the retina, or last nervous part of the eye. Or,
according to others, there is but one point of any object painted on
the eye in such a manner as to be perceived at once; but by moving
the eye, we gather up, with great celerity, the several parts of the
object, so as to form one uniform piece. If the former opinion be
allowed, it will be considered,' that though all the light reflected
from a large body should strike the eye in one instant; yet we must
suppose that the body itself is formed of a vast number of distinct
points, every one of which, or the ray from every one, makes an
impression on the retina. So that, though the image of one point
should cause but a small tension of this membrane, another and
another, and another stroke, must in their progress cause a very
great one, until it arrives at last to the highest degree; and the whole

' Part II. sect 2. ^ Part I. sect. 7. Part II. sect 2.
'Part II. sect. 7.

no EDMUND BURKE

capacity of the eye, vibrating in all its parts, must approach near to
the nature of what causes pain, and consequently must produce an
idea of the sublime. Again, if we take it, that one point only of
an object is distinguishable at once, the matter will amount nearly
to the same thing, or rather it will make the origin of the sublime
from greatness of dimension yet clearer. For if but one point is
observed at once, the eye must traverse the vast space of such bodies
with great quickness, and consequendy the fine nerves and muscles
destined to the motion of that part must be very much strained; and
their great sensibility must make them highly affected by this strain-
ing. Besides, it signifies just nothing to the effect produced, whether
a body has its parts connected and makes its impression at once;
or, making but one impression of a point at a time, causes a suc-
cession of the same or others so quickly as to make them seem
united; as is evident from the common effect of whirling about a
lighted torch or piece of wood: which, if done with celerity, seems
a circle of fire.

SECT. X. — UNITY WHY REQUISITE TO VASTNESS

It may be objected to this theory, that the eye generally receives
an equal number of rays at all times, and that therefore a great object
cannot affect it by the number of rays, more than that variety of
objects which the eye must always discern whilst it remains open.
But to this I answer, that admitting an equal number of rays, or an
equal quantity of luminous particles, to strike the eye at all times,
yet if these rays frequendy vary their nature, now to blue, now to
red, and so on, or their manner of termination, as to a number of
petty squares, triangles, or the like, at every change, whether of
colour or shape, the organ has a sort of relaxation or rest; but this
relaxation and labour so often interrupted, is by no means pro-
ductive of ease; neither has it the effect of vigorous and uniform
labour. Whoever has remarked the different effects of some strong
exercise, and some little piddling action, will understand why a
teasing, fretful employment, which at once wearies and weakens the
body, should have nothing great; these sorts of impulses, which are
rather teasing than painful, by continually and suddenly altering
their tenor and direction, prevent that full tension, that species of

ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL III

uniform labour, which is allied to strong pain, and causes the sub-
lime. The sum total of things of various kinds, though it should
equal the number of the uniform parts composing some one entire
object, is not equal in its effect upon the organs of our bodies. Be-
sides the one already assigned, there is another very strong reason
for the difference. The mind in reality hardly ever can attend dili-
gently to more than one thing at a time; if this thing be little, the
effect is little, and a number of other little objects cannot engage
the attention; the mind is bounded by the bounds of the object; and
what is not attended to, and what does not exist, are much the
same in effect; but the eye, or the mind, (for in this case there is no
difference,) in great, uniform objects, does not readily arrive at their
bounds; it has no rest whilst it contemplates them; the image is
much the same everywhere. So that everything great by its quantity
must necessarily be one, simple and entire.

SECT. XI. — THE ARTIFICIAL INFINITE

We have observed, that a species of greatness arises from the
artificial infinite; and that this infinite consists in an uniform suc-
cession of great parts: we observed, too, that the same uniform suc-
cession had a like power in sounds. But because the effects of many
things are clearer in one of the senses than in another, and that all
the senses bear analogy to and illustrate one another, I shall begin
with this power in sounds, as the cause of the sublimity from suc-
cession is rather more obvious in the sense of hearing. And I shall
here, once for all, observe, that an investigation of the natural and
mechanical causes of our passions, besides the curiosity of the sub-
ject, gives, if they are discovered, a double strength and lustre to any
rules we deliver on such matters. When the ear receives any simple
sound, it is struck by a single pulse of the air, which makes the ear-
drum and the other membranous parts vibrate according to the nature
and species of the stroke. If the stroke be strong, the organ of hear-
ing suffers a considerable degree of tension. If the stroke be repeated
pretty soon after, the repetition causes an expectation of another
stroke. And it must be observed, that expectation itself causes a
tension. This is apparent in many animals, who, when they prepare
for hearing any sound, rouse themselves, and prick up their ears:

112 EDMUND BURKE

so that here the effect o£ the sounds is considerably augmented by a
new auxiliary, the expectation. But though, after a number of
strokes, we expect still more, not being able to ascertain the exact
time of their arrival, when they arrive, they produce a sort of sur-
prise, which increases this tension yet further. For I have observed,
that when at any time I have waited very earnestly for some sound,
that returned at intervals, (as the successive firing of cannon,) though
I fully expected the return of the sound, when it came it always
made me start a little; the ear-drum suffered a convulsion, and the
whole body consented with it. The tension of the part thus increas-
ing at every blow, by the united forces of the stroke itself, the expec-
tation, and the surprise, it is worked up to such a pitch as to be
capable of the sublime; it is brought just to the verge of pain. Even
when the cause has ceased, the organs of hearing being often suc-
cessively struck in a similar manner, continue to vibrate in that man-
ner for some time longer; this is an additional help to the greatness
of the effect.

SECT. XII. — ^THE VIBRATIONS MUST BE SIMILAR

But if the vibration be not similar at every impression, it can never
be carried beyond the number of actual impressions; for move any
body, as a pendulum, in one way, and it will continue to oscillate
in an arch of the same circle, until the known causes make it rest;
but if after first putting it in motion in one direction, you push it
into another, it can never reassume the first direction; because it
can never move itself, and consequently it can have but the effect of
that last motion; whereas, if in the same direction you act upon it
several times, it will describe a greater arch, and move a longer time.

SECT. XIII. — THE EFFECTS OF SUCCESSION IN VISUAL OBJECTS EXPLAINED

If we can comprehend clearly how things operate upon one of
our senses, there can be very little difficulty in conceiving in what
manner they affect the rest. To say a great deal therefore upon the
corresponding affections of every sense, would tend rather to fatigue
us by an useless repetition, than to throw any new light upon the
subject by that ample and diffuse manner of treating it; but as in
this discourse we chiefly attach ourselves to the sublime, as it affects

ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL II3

the eye, we shall consider particularly why a successive disposition of
uniform parts in the same right line should be sublime,' and upon
what principle this disposition is enabled to make a comparatively
small quantity of matter produce a grander eflfect, than a much larger
quantity disposed in another manner. To avoid the perplexity of
general notions; let us set before our eyes a colonnade of uniform
pillars planted in a right line; let us take our stand in such a manner,
that the eye may shoot along this colonnade, for it has its best
effect in this view. In our present situation it is plain, that the rays
from the first round pillar will cause in the eye a vibration of that
species; an image of the pillar itself. The pillar immediately suc-
ceeding increases it; that which follows renews and enforces the
impression; each in its order as it succeeds, repeats impulse after
impulse, and stroke after stroke, until the eye, long exercised in one
particular way, cannot lose that object immediately; and, being vio-
lently roused by this continued agitation, it presents the mind with
a grand or sublime conception. But instead of viewing a rank of
uniform pillars, let us suppose that they succeed each other, a round
and a square one alternately. In this case the vibration caused by
the first round pillar perishes as soon as it is formed: and one of
quite another sort (the square) directly occupies its place; which,
however, it resigns as quickly to the round one; and thus the eye
proceeds, alternately; taking up one image, and laying down another,
as long as the building continues. From whence it is obvious, that,
at the last pillar, the impression is as far from continuing as it was
at the very first; because, in fact, the sensory can receive no distinct
impression but from the last; and it can never of itself resume a
dissimilar impression: besides, every variation of the object is a rest
and relaxation to the organs of sight; and these reliefs prevent that
powerful emotion so necessary to produce the sublime. To produce
therefore a perfect grandeur in such things as we have been mention-
ing, there should be a perfect simplicity, an absolute uniformity in
disposition, shape, and colouring. Upon this principle of succession
and uniformity it may be asked, why a long bare wall should not
be a more sublime object than a colonnade; since the succession is
no way interrupted; since the eye meets no check; since nothing

'Part II. sect. 10.

114 EDMUND BURKE

more uniform can be conceived? A long bare wall is certainly not
so grand an object as a colonnade of the same length and height.
It is not altogether difficult to account for this difference. When we
look at a naked wall, from the evenness of the object, the eye runs
along its whole space, and arrives quickly at its termination; the
eye meets nothing which may interrupt its progress; but then it
meets nothing which may detain it a proper time to produce a very
great and lasting effect. The view of the bare wall, if it be of a
great height and length, is undoubtedly grand; but this is only one
idea, and not a repetition of similar ideas: it is therefore great, not
so much upon the principle of infinity, as upon that of vastness.
But we are not so powerfully affected with any one impulse, unless
it be one of a prodigious force indeed, as we are with a succession of
similar impulses; because the nerves of the sensory do not (if I may
use the expression) acquire a habit of repeating the same feeling in
such a manner as to continue it longer than its cause is in action;
besides, all the effects which I have attributed to expectation and
surprise in sect, ii, can have no place in a bare wall.

SECT. XIV. — Locke's opinion concerning darkness considered

It is Mr. Locke's opinion, that darkness is not naturally an idea
of terror; and that, though an excessive light is painful to the sense,
the greatest excess of darkness is no ways troublesome. He observes
indeed in another place, that a nurse or an old woman having once
associated the idea of ghosts and goblins with that of darkness, night,
ever after, becomes painful and horrible to the imagination. The
authority of this great man is doubtless as great as that of any man
can be, and it seems to stand in the way of our general principle.^
We have considered darkness as a cause of the sublime; and we
have all along considered the sublime as depending on some modi-
fication of pain or terror: so that if darkness be no way painful or
terrible to any, who have not had their minds early tainted with
superstitions, it can be no source of the sublime to them. But, with
all deference to such an authority, it seems to me, that an association
of a more general nature, an association which takes in all mankind,
and make darkness terrible; for in utter darkness it is impossible to

'Part II. sect. 3.

ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL II 5

know in what degree of safety we stand; we are ignorant of the
objects that surround us; we may every moment strike against some
dangerous obstruction; we may fall down a precipice the first step
we take; and if an enemy approach, we know not in what quarter
to defend ourselves; in such a case strength is no sure protection;
wisdom can only act by guess; the boldest are staggered, and he,
who would pray for nothing else towards his defence, is forced to
pray for light.

ZcG Trarep, AXXd trv ^vffai inr' riepos vlas *Axatcoi'"
Uolricrov S' aWpr/v, Sds S' 6<j>8a\iM>laiv iSi(T0ai,'
'Kv dk <^dct Kal oXeatrov,^

As to the association of ghosts and goblins; surely it is more
natural to think, that darkness, being originally an idea of terror,
was chosen as a fit scene for such terrible representations, than that
such representations have made darkness terrible. The mind of man
very easily slides into an error of the former sort; but it is very
hard to imagine, that the effect of an idea so universally terrible in all
times, and in all countries, as darkness, could possibly have been
owing to a set of idle stories, or to any cause of a nature so trivial,
and of an operation so precarious.

SECT. XV. — DARKNESS TERRIBLE IN ITS OWN NATURE

Perhaps it may appear on inquiry that blackness and darkness are
in some degree painful by their natural operation, independent of
any associations whatsoever. I must observe, that the ideas of dark-
ness and blackness are much the same; and they differ only in this,
that blackness is a more confined idea. Mr. Cheselden has given
us a very curious story of a boy, who had been born blind, and con-
tinued so until he was thirteen or fourteen years old; he was then
couched for a cataract, by which operation he received his sight.
Among many remarkable particulars that attended his first per-
ceptions and judgments on visual objects, Cheselden tells us, that
the first time the boy saw a black object, it gave him great uneasi-
ness; and that some time after, upon accidentally seeing a negro
woman, he was struck with great horror at the sight. The horror,
in this case, can scarcely be supposed to arise from any association.
The boy appears by the account to have been particularly observ-

Il6 EDMUND BURKE

ing and sensible for one o£ his age; and therefore it is probable, if
the great uneasiness he felt at the first sight of black had arisen
from its connexion with any other disagreeable ideas, he would have
observed and mentioned it. For an idea, disagreeable only by asso-
ciation, has the cause of its ill effect on the passions evident enough
at the first impression; in ordinary cases, it is indeed frequently lost;
but this is, because the original association was made very early, and
the consequent impression repeated often. In our instance, there was
no time for such a habit; and there is no reason to think that the ill
effects of black on his imagination were more owing to its con-
nexion with any disagreeable ideas, than that the good effects of
more cheerful colours were derived from their connexion with pleas-
ing ones. They had both probably their effects from their natural
operation.

SECT. XVI. — WHY DARKNESS IS TERRIBLE

It may be worth while to examine how darkness can operate in
such a manner as to cause pain. It is observable, that still as we
recede from the light, nature has so contrived it, that the pupil is
enlarged by the retiring of the iris, in proportion to our recess. Now,
instead of declining from it but a little, suppose that we withdraw
entirely from the light; it is reasonable to think, that the contraction
of the radial fibres of the iris is proportionably greater; and that this
part may by great darkness come to be so contracted as to strain the
nerves that compose it beyond their natural tone; and by this means
to produce a painful sensation. Such a tension it seems there cer-
tainly is, whilst we are involved in darkness; for in such a state, whilst
the eye remains open, there is a continual nisus to receive light; this
is manifest from the flashes and luminous appearances which often
seem in these circumstances to play before it; and which can be
nothing but the effect of spasms, produced by its own efforts in pur-
suit of its object: several other strong impulses will produce the
idea of light in the eye, besides the substance of light itself, as we
experience on many occasions. Some, who allow darkness to be a
cause of the sublime, would infer, from the dilatation of the pupil,
that a relaxation may be productive of the sublime, as well as a con-
vulsion: but they do not, I believe, consider that although the circular

ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL II 7

ring of the iris be in some sense a sphincter, which may possibly be
dilated by a simple relaxation, yet in one respect it differs from most
of the other sphincters of the body, that it is furnished with antago-
nist muscles, which are the radial fibres of the iris: no sooner does
the circular muscle begin to relax, than these fibres, wanting their
counterpoise, are forcibly drawn back, and open the pupil to a con-
siderable wideness. But though we were not apprized of this, I
believe any one will find, if he opens his eyes and makes an effort
to see in a dark place, that a very perceivable pain ensues. And I
have heard some ladies remark, that after having worked a long
time upon a ground of black, their eyes were so pained and weak-
ened, they could hardly see. It may perhaps be objected to this theory
of the mechanical effect of darkness, that the ill effects of darkness
or blackness seem rather mental than corporeal: and I own it is true,
that they do so; and so do all those that depend on the affections of
the finer parts of our system. The ill effects of bad weather appear
often no otherwise, than in a melancholy and dejection of spirits;
though without doubt, in this case, the bodily organs suffer first,
and the mind through these organs.

SECT. XVII. — THE EFFECTS OF BLACKNESS

Blackness is but a partial darkness; and therefore, it derives some
of its powers from being mixed and surrounded with coloured bodies.
In its own nature, it cannot be considered as a colour. Black bodies,
reflecting none or but a few rays, with regard to sight, are but as so
many vacant spaces dispersed among the objects we view. When the
eye lights on one of these vacuities, after having been kept in some
degree of tension by the play of the adjacent colours upon it, it sud-
denly falls into a relaxation; out of which it as suddenly recovers by a
convulsive spring. To illustrate this: let us consider, that when we in-
tend to sit on a chair, and find it much lower than was expected, the
shock is very violent; much more violent than could be thought from
so slight a fall as the difference between one chair and another can
possibly make. If, after descending a flight of stairs, we attempt inad-
vertendy to take another step in the manner of the former ones, the
shock is extremely rude and disagreeable; and by no art can we
cause such a shock by the same means when we expect and prepare

Il8 EDMUND BURKE

for it. When I say that this is owing to having the change made con-
trary to expectation, I do not mean solely, when the mind expects. I
mean, Ukewise, that when any organ of sense is for some time affected
in some one manner, if it be suddenly affected otherwise, there
ensues a convulsive motion; such a convulsion as is caused when
anything happens against the expectance of the mind. And though
it may appear strange that such a change as produces a relaxation
should immediately produce a sudden convulsion; it is yet most cer-
tainly so, and so in all the senses. Every one knows that sleep is a re-
laxation; and that silence, where nothing keeps the organs of hearing
in action, is in general fittest to bring on this relaxation; yet when
a sort of murmuring sounds dispose a man to sleep, let these sounds
cease suddenly, and the person immediately awakes; that is, the parts
are braced up suddenly, and he awakes. This I have often experi-
enced myself, and I have heard the same from observing persons.
In like manner, if a person in broad day-light were falling asleep, to
introduce a sudden darkness would prevent his sleep for that time,
though silence and darkness in themselves, and not suddenly intro-
duced, are very favourable to it. This 1 knew only by conjecture
on the analogy of the senses when I first digested these observations;
but I have since experienced it. And I have often experienced, and
so have a thousand others, that on the first inclining towards sleep,
we have been suddenly awakened with a most violent start; and that
this start was generally preceded by a sort of dream of our falling
down a precipice: whence does this strange motion arise, but from
the too sudden relaxation of the body, which by some mechanism
in nature restores itself by as quick and vigorous an exertion of the
contracting power of the muscles? The dream itself is caused by
this relaxation; and it is of too uniform a nature to be attributed
to any other cause. The parts relax too suddenly, which is in the
nature of falling; and this accident of the body induces this image in
the mind. When we are in a confirmed state of health and vigour,
as all changes are then less sudden, and less on the extreme, we can
seldom complain of this disagreeable sensation.

ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL II9

SECT. XVIII. — ^THE EFFECTS OF BLACKNESS MODERATED

Though the effects of black be painful originally, we must not
think they always continue so. Custom reconciles us to everything.
After we have been used to the sight of black objects, the terror
abates, and the smoothness and glossiness, or some agreeable acci-
dent, of bodies so coloured, softens in some measure the horror and
sternness of their original nature; yet the nature of their original
impression still continues. Black will always have something melan-
choly in it, because the sensory will always find the change to it
from other colours too violent; or if it occupy the whole compass
of the sight, it will then be darkness; and what was said of dark-
ness will be applicable here. I do not purpose to go into all that
might be said to illustrate this theory of the effects of light and dark-
ness, neither will I examine all the different effects produced by the
various modifications and mixtures of these two causes. If the fore-
going observations have any foundation in nature, I conceive them
very sufficient to account for all the phenomena that can arise from
all the combinations of black with other colours. To enter into every
particular, or to answer every objection, would be an endless labour.
We have only followed the most leading roads; and we shall
observe the same conduct in our inquiry into the cause of beauty.

SECT. XIX. — THE PHYSICAL CAUSE OF LOVE

When we have before us such objects as excite love and compla-
cency, the body is affected, so far as I could observe, much in the
following manner: the head reclines something on one side; the
eyelids are more closed than usual, and the eyes roll gently with
an inclination to the object; the mouth is a little opened, and the
breath drawn slowly, with now and then a low sigh; the whole
body is composed, and the hands fall idly to the sides. All this is
accompanied with an inward sense of melting and languor. These
appearances are always proportioned to the degree of beauty in the
object, and of sensibility in the observer. And this gradation from
the highest pitch of beauty and sensibility, even to the lowest of
mediocrity and indifference, and their correspondent effects, ought
to be kept in view, else this description will seem exaggerated, which

120 EDMUND BURKE

it certainly is not. But from this description it is almost impossible
not to conclude, that beauty acts by relaxing the solids of the whole
system. There are all the appearances of such a relaxation; and a
relaxation somewhat below the natural tone seems to me to be the
cause of all positive pleasure. Who is a stranger to that manner of
expression so common in all times and in all countries, of being
softened, relaxed, enervated, dissolved, melted away by pleasure?
The universal voice of mankind, faithful to their feelings, concurs in
affirming this uniform and general effect: and although some odd
and particular instance may perhaps be found, wherein there appears
a considerable degree of positive pleasure, without all the charac-
ters of relaxation, we must not therefore reject the conclusion we
had drawn from a concurrence of many experiments; but we must
still retain it, subjoining the exceptions which may occur, according
to the judicious rule laid down by Sir Isaac Newton in the third
book of his Optics. Our position will, I conceive, appear confirmed
beyond any reasonable doubt, if we can show that such things as we
have already observed to be the genuine constituents of beauty, have
each of them, separately taken, a natural tendency to relax the fibres.
And if it must be allowed lis, that the appearance of the human body,
when all these constituents are united together before the sensory,
further favours this opinion, we may venture, I believe, to conclude,
that the passion called love is produced by this relaxation. By the
same method of reasoning which we have used in the inquiry into
the causes of the sublime, we may likewise conclude, that as a beauti-
ful object presented to the sense, by causing a relaxation of the body,
produces the passion of love in the mind; so if by any means the
passion should first have its origin in the mind, a relaxation of the
outward organs will as certainly ensue in a degree proportioned to
the cause.

SECT. XX. — WHY SMOOTHNESS IS BEAUTIFUL

It is to explain the true cause of visual beauty, that I call in
the assistance of the other senses. If it appears that smoothness is a
principal cause of pleasure to the touch, taste, smell, and hearing,
it will be easily admitted a constituent of visual beauty; especially
as we have before shown, that this quality is found almost without

ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 121

exception in all bodies that are by general consent held beautiful.
There can be no doubt that bodies which are rough and angular,
rouse and vellicate the organs of feeling, causing a sense of pain,
which consists in the violent tension or contraction of the muscular
fibres. On the contrary, the application of smooth bodies relaxes;
gentle stroking with a smooth hand allays violent pains and cramps,
and relaxes the suffering parts from their unnatural tension; and
it has therefore very often no mean effect in removing swellings and
obstructions. The sense of feeling is highly gratified with smooth
bodies. A bed smoothly laid, and soft, that is, where the resistance
is every way inconsiderable, is a great luxury, disposing to an uni-
versal relaxation, and inducing beyond anything else that species of
it called sleep.

SECT, XXI. — SWEETNESS, ITS NATURE

Nor is it only in the touch that smooth bodies cause positive
pleasure by relaxation. In the smell and taste, we find all things
agreeable to them, and which are commonly called sweet, to be of a
smooth nature, and that they all evidently tend to relax their respec-
tive sensories. Let us first consider the taste. Since it is most easy
to inquire into the property of liquids, and since all things seem to
want a fluid vehicle to make them tasted at all, I intend rather to
consider the liquid than the solid parts of our food. The vehicles of
all tastes are water and oil. And what determines the taste is some
salt, which affects variously according to its nature, or its manner of
being combined with other things. Water and oil, simply consid-
ered, are capable of giving some pleasure to the taste. Water, when
simple, is insipid, inodorous, colourless, and smooth; it is found,
when not cold, to be a great resolver of spasms, and lubricator of
the fibres; this power it probably owes to its smoothness. For as
fluidity depends, according to the most general opinion, on the
roundness, smoothness, and weak cohesion, of the component parts
of any body; and as water acts merely as a simple fluid; it follows
that the cause of its fluidity is likewise the cause of its relaxing
quality; namely, the smoothness and slippery texture of its parts.
The other fluid vehicle of taste is oil. This too, when simple, is
insipid, inodorous, colourless, and smooth to the touch and taste.

122 EDMUND BURKE

It is smoother than water, and in many cases yet more relaxing.
Oil is in some degree pleasant to the eye, the touch, and the taste,
insipid as it is. Water is not so grateful; which I do not know on
what principle to account for, other than that water is not so soft
and smooth. Suppose that to this oil or water were added a certain
quantity of a specific salt, which had a power of putting the nervous
papillae of the tongue into a gentle vibratory motion; as suppose,
sugar dissolved in it. The smoothness of the oil, and the vibratory
power of the salt, cause the sense we call sweetness. In all sweet
bodies, sugar, or a substance very little different from sugar, is con-
stantly found. Every species of salt, examined by the microscope, has
its own distinct, regular, invariable form. That of nitre is a pointed
oblong; that of sea-salt an exact cube; that of sugar a perfect globe.
If you have tried how smooth globular bodies, as the marbles with
which boys amuse themselves, have affected the touch when they
are rolled backward and forward and over one another, you will
easily conceive how sweetness, which consists in a salt of such nature,
affects the taste; for a single globe, (though somewhat pleasant to
the feeling,) yet by the regularity of its form, and the somewhat
too sudden deviation of its parts from a right line, is nothing near
so pleasant to the touch as several globes, where the hand gently
rises to one and falls to another; and this pleasure is greatly in-
creased if the globes are in motion, and sliding over one another;
for this soft variety prevents that weariness, which the uniform dis-
position of the several globes would otherwise produce. Thus in
sweet liquors, the parts of the Huid vehicle, though most probably
round, are yet so minute, as to conceal the figure of their compo-
nent parts from the nicest inquisition of the microscope; and conse-
quently, being so excessively minute, they have a sort of flat sim-
plicity to the taste, resembling the effects of plain smooth bodies to
the touch; for if a body be composed of round parts excessively
small, and packed pretty closely together, the surface will be both to
the sight and touch as if it were nearly plain and smooth. It is clear
from their unveiling their figure to the microscope, that the particles
of sugar are considerably larger than those of water or oil, and con-
sequendy, that their effects from their roundness will be more dis-
tinct and palpable to the nervous papillae of that nice organ the

ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL I23

tongue: they will induce that sense called sweetness, which in a weak
manner we discover in oil, and in a yet weaker, in water; for, insipid
as they are, water and oil are in some degree sweet; and it may be
observed, that the insipid things of all kinds approach more nearly
to the nature of sweetness than to that of any other taste.

SECT. XXII. — ^SWEETNESS RELAXING

In the other senses we have remarked, that smooth things are re-
laxing. Now it ought to appear that sweet things, which are the
smooth of taste, are relaxing too. It is remarkable, that in some
languages, soft and sweet have but one name. Doux in French sig-
nifies soft as well as sweet. The Latin Dulcis, and the Italian Dolce,
have in many cases the same double signification. That sweet things
are generally relaxing, is evident; because all such, especially those
which are most oily, taken frequently, or in a large quantity, very
much enfeeble the tone of the stomach. Sweet smells, which bear a
great affinity to sweet tastes, relax very remarkably. The smell of
flowers disposes people to drowsiness; and this relaxing effect is
further apparent from the prejudice which people of weak nerves
receive from their use. It were worth while to examine, whether
tastes of this kind, sweet ones, tastes that are caused by smooth oils
and a relaxing salt, are not the original pleasant tastes. For many,
which use has rendered such, were not at all agreeable at first. The
way to examine this, is to try what nature has originally provided
for us, which she has undoubtedly made originally pleasant; and
to analyze this provision. Mil\ is the first support of our childhood.
The component parts of this are water, oil, and a sort of a very sweet
salt, called the sugar of milk. All these when blended have a great
smoothness to the taste, and a relaxing quality to the skin. The next
thing children covet is fruit, and of fruits those principally which are
sweet; and every one knows that the sweetness of fruit is caused
by a subtle oil, and such salt as that mentioned in the last section.
Afterwards custom, habit, the desire of novelty, and a thousand other
causes, confound, adulterate, and change our palates, so that we can
no longer reason with any satisfaction about them. Before we quit
this article, we must observe, that as smooth things are, as such,
agreeable to the taste, and are found of a relaxing quality; so, on

124 EDMUND BURKE

the other hand, things which are found by experience to be oF a
strengthening quality, and fit to brace the fibres, are almost uni-
versally rough and pungent to the taste, and in many cases rough
even to the touch. We often apply the quality of sweetness, meta-
phorically, to visual objects. For the better carrying on this re-
markable analogy of the senses, we may here call sweetness the
beautiful of the taste.

SECT. XXIII. — ^VARIATION, WHY BEAUTIFtn,

Another principal property of beautiful objects is, that the line of
their parts is continually varying its direction; but it varies it by a
very insensible deviation; it never varies it so quickly as to surprise,
or by the sharpness of its angle to cause any twitching or convul-
sion of the optic nerve. Nothing long continued in the same man-
ner, nothing very suddenly varied, can be beautiful; because both
are opposite to that agreeable relaxation which is the characteristic
effect of beauty. It is thus in all the senses. A motion in a right
line is that manner of moving, next to a very gentle descent, in
which we meet the least resistance; yet it is not that manner of
moving which, next to a descent, wearies us the least. Rest cer-
tainly tends to relax; yet there is a species of motion which relaxes
more than rest; a gentle oscillatory motion, a rising and falling.
Rocking sets children to sleep better than absolute rest; there is
indeed scarce anything at that age which gives more pleasure than
to be gently lifted up and down; the manner of playing which their
nurses use with children, and the weighing and swinging used
afterwards by themselves as a favourite amusement, evince this very
sufficiently. Most people must have observed the sort of sense they
have had on being swiftly drawn in an easy coach on a smooth turf,
with gradual ascents and declivities. This will give a better idea of
the beautiful, and point out its probable course better, than almost
anything else. On the contrary, when one is hurried over a rough,
rocky, broken road, the pain felt by these sudden inequalities shows
why similar sights, feelings, and sounds are so contrary to beauty:
and with regard to the feeling, it is exactly the same in its effect, or
very nearly the same, whether, for instance, I move my hand along
the surface of a body of a certain shape, or whether such a body is

ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL I25

moved along my hand. But to bring this analogy of the senses home
to the eye: if a body presented to that sense has such a waving sur-
face, that the rays of light reflected from it are in a continual in-
sensible deviation from the strongest to the weakest (which is always
the case in a surface gradually unequal,) it must be exacdy similar in
its effects on the eye and touch; upon the one of which it operates
directly, on the other, indirectly. And this body will be beautiful,
if the lines which compose its surface are not continued, even so
varied, in a manner that may weary or dissipate the attention. The
variation itself must be continually varied.

SECT. XXIV. — CONCERNING SMALLNESS

To avoid a sameness which may arise from the too frequent repe-
tition of the same reasonings, and of illustrations of the same nature,
I will not enter very minutely into every particular that regards
beauty, as it is founded on the disposition of its quantity, or its
quantity itself. In speaking of the magnitude of bodies there is great
uncertainty, because the ideas of great and small are terms almost
entirely relative to the species of the objects, which are infinite. It
is true, that having once fixed the species of any object, and the di-
mensions common in the individuals of that species, we may ob-
serve some that exceed, and some that fall short of, the ordinary
standard: those which greatly exceed are, by that excess, provided
the species itself be not very small, rather great and terrible than
beautiful; but as in the animal world, and in a good measure in the
vegetable world likewise, the qualities that constitute beauty may
possibly be united to things of greater dimensions; when they are so
united, they constitute a species something different both from the
sublime and beautiful, which I have before called fine: but this
kind, I imagine, has not such a power on the passions either as vast
bodies have which are endued with the correspondent qualities of
the sublime, or as the qualities of beauty have when united in a
small object. The affection produced by large bodies adorned with
the spoils of beauty, is a tension continually relieved; which ap-
proaches to the nature of mediocrity. But if I were to say how I find
myself affected upon such occasions, I should say, that the sublime
suffers less by being united to some of the qualities of beauty, than

126 EDMUND BURKE

beauty does by being joined to greatness of quantity, or any other
properties of the sublime. There is something so over-ruHng in
whatever inspires us with awe, in all things which belongs ever so
remotely to terror, that nothing else can stand in their presence.
There lie the qualities of beauty either dead or unoperative; or at
most exerted to mollify the rigour and sternness of the terror, which
is the natural concomitant of greatness. Besides the extraordinary
great in every species, the opposite to this, the dwarfish and diminu-
tive, ought to be considered. Littleness, merely as such, has nothing
contrary to the idea of beauty. The humming-bird, both in shape
and colouring, yields to none of the winged species, of which it is
the least; and perhaps his beauty is enhanced by his smallness. But
there are animals, which, when they are extremely small, are rarely
(if ever) beautiful. There is a dwarfish size of men and women,
which is almost constantly so gross and massive in comparison of
their height, that they present us with a very disagreeable image.
But should a man be found not above two or three feet high, sup-
posing such a person to have all the parts of his body of a delicacy
suitable to such a size, and otherwise endued with the common
qualities of other beautiful bodies, I am pretty well convinced that
a person of such a stature might be considered as beautiful; might be
the object of love; might give us very pleasing ideas on viewing
him. The only thing which could possibly interpose to check our
pleasure is, that such creatures, however formed, are unusual, and
are often therefore considered as something monstrous. The large
and gigantic, though very compatible with the sublime, is contrary
to the beautiful. It is impossible to suppose a giant the object of
love. When we let our imagination loose in romance, the ideas we
naturally annex to that size are those of tyranny, cruelty, injustice,
and everything horrid and abominable. We paint the giant ravag-
ing the country, plundering the innocent traveller, and afterwards
gorged with his half -living flesh: such are Polyphemus, Cacus, and
others, who make so great a figure in romances and heroic poems.
The event we attend to with the greatest satisfaction is their defeat
and death. I do not remember, in all that multitude of deaths with
which the Iliad is filled, that the fall of any man, remarkable for
his great stature and strength, touches us with pity; nor does it

ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL I27

appear that the author, so well read in human nature, ever intended
it should. It is Simoisius, in the soft bloom of youth, torn from his
parents, who tremble for a courage so ill suited to his strength; it is
another hurried by war from the new embraces of his bride, young,
and fair, and a novice to the field, who melts us by his untimely
fate. Achilles, in spite of the many qualities of beauty which Homer
has bestowed on his outward form, and the many great virtues with
which he has adorned his mind, can never make us love him. It
may be observed, that Homer has given the Trojans, whose fate he
has designed to excite our compassion, infinitely more of the amia-
ble, social virtues than he has distributed among his Greeks. With
regard to the Trojans, the passion he chooses to raise is pity; pity
is a passion founded on love; and these lesser, and if I may say
domestic virtues, are certainly the most amiable. But he has made
the Greeks far their superiors in the politic and military virtues.
The councils of Priam are weak; the arms of Hector comparatively
feeble; his courage far below that of Achilles. Yet we love Priam
more than Agamemnon, and Hector more than his conqueror
Achilles. Admiration is the passion which Homer would excite in
favour of the Greeks, and he has done it by bestowing on them the
virtues which have little to do with love. This short digression is
perhaps not wholly beside our purpose, where our business is to
show, that objects of great dimensions are incompatible with beauty,
the more incompatible as they are greater; whereas the small, if
ever they fail of beauty, this failure is not to be attributed to their
size.

SECT. XXV. — OF COLOUR

With regard to colour, the disquisition is almost infinite: but I
conceive the principles laid down in the beginning of this part are
sufficient to account for the effects of them all, as well as for the
agreeable effects of transparent bodies, whether fluid or solid. Sup-
pose I look at a bottle of muddy liquor, of a blue or red colour; the
blue or red rays cannot pass clearly to the eye, but are suddenly and
unequally stopped by the intervention of little opaque bodies, which
without preparation change the idea, and change it too into one
disagreeable in its own nature, conformably to the principles laid

128 EDMUND BURKE

down in sect. 24. But when the ray passes without such opposition
through the glass or liquor, when the glass or liquor is quite trans-
parent, the light is sometimes softened in the passage, which makes
it more agreeable even as light; and the liquor reflecting all the rays
of its proper colour evenly, it has such an effect on the eye, as
smooth opaque bodies have on the eye and touch. So that the plea-
sure here is compounded of the softness of the transmitted, and the
evenness of the reflected light. This pleasure may be heightened
by the common principles in other things, if the shape of the glass
which holds the transparent liquor be so judiciously varied, as to
present the colour gradually and interchangeably, weakened and
strengthened with all the variety which judgment in affairs of this
nature shall suggest. On a review of all that has been said of the
effects as well as the causes of both, it will appear, that the sublime
and beautiful are built on principles very different, and that their
affections are as different: the great has terror for its basis; which,
when it is modified, causes that emotion in the mind which I have
called astonishment; the beautiful is founded on mere positive
pleasure, and excites in the soul that feeling which is called love.
Their causes have made the subject of this fourth part.

PART V

Section I. — Of Words

NATURAL objects affect us, by the laws of that connexion
which Providence has established between certain mo-
tions and configurations of bodies, and certain consequent
feelings in our mind. Painting affects us in the same manner, but
with the superadded pleasure of imitation. Architecture affects by
the laws of nature, and the law of reason: from which latter result
the rules of proportion, which make a work to be praised or cen-
sured, in the whole or in some part, when the end for which it was
designed is or is not properly answered. But as to words; they seem
to me to affect us in a manner very different from that in which
we are affected by natural objects, or by painting or architecture;
yet words have as considerable a share in exciting ideas of beauty
and of the sublime as many of those, and sometimes a much greater
than any of them: therefore an inquiry into the manner by which
they excite such emotions is far from being unnecessary in a dis-
course of this kind.

SECT. II. — THE COMMON EFFECTS OF POETRY, NOT BY RAISING IDEAS OF

THINGS

The common notion of the power of poetry and eloquence, as well
as that of words in ordinary conversation, is that they affect the
mind by raising in it ideas of those things for which custom has ap-
pointed them to stand. To examine the truth of this notion, it may
be requisite to observe, that words may be divided into three sorts.
The first are such as represent many simple ideas united by nature
to form some one determinate composition, as man, horse, tree,
castle. Sec. These I call aggregate words. The second are they that
stand for one simple idea of such compositions, and no more; as
red, blue, round, square, and the like. These I call simple abstract

129

130 EDMUND BURKE

words. The third are those which are formed by an union, an
arbitrary union, of both the others, and of the various relations be-
tween them in greater or less degrees of complexity; as virtue, hon-
our, persuasion, magistrate, and the like. These I call compound
abstract words. Words, I am sensible, are capable of being classed
into more curious distinctions; but these seem to be natural, and
enough for our purpose; and they are disposed in that order in
which they are commonly taught, and in which the mind gets the
ideas they are substituted for. I shall begin with the third sort of
words; compound abstracts, such as virtue, honour, persuasion, do-
cility. Of these I am convinced, that whatever power they may
have on the passions, they do not derive it from any representation
raised in the mind of the things for which they stand. As composi-
tions, they are not real essences, and hardly cause, I think, any real
ideas. Nobody, I believe, immediately on hearing the sounds, vir-
tue, liberty, or honour, conceives any precise notions of the par-
ticular modes of action and thinking together with the mixt and
simple ideas and the several relations of them for which these words
are substituted; neither has he any general idea, compounded of
them; for if he had, then some of those particular ones, though in-
distinct perhaps, and confused, might come soon to be perceived.
But this, I take it, is hardly ever the case. For, put yoiurself upon
analyzing one of these words, and you must reduce it from one
set of general words to another, and then into the simple abstracts
and aggregates, in a much longer series than may be at first imag-
ined, before any real idea emerges to light, before you come to
discover anything like the first principles of such compositions; and
when you have made such a discovery of the original ideas, the effect
of the composition is utterly lost. A train of thinking of this sort
is much too long to be pursued in the ordinary ways of conversa-
tion; nor is it at all necessary that it should. Such words are in
reality but mere sounds; but they are sounds which being used on
particular occasions, wherein we receive some good, or suffer some
evil, or see others affected with good or evil; or which we hear
applied to other interesting things or events; and being applied in
such a variety of cases, that we know readily by habit to what things
they belong, they produce in the mind, whenever they are after-

ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL I3I

wards mentioned, effects similar to those of their occasions. The
sounds being often used without reference to any particular occa-
sion, and carrying still their first impressions, they at last utterly
lose their connexion with the particular occasions that gave rise to
them; yet the sound, without any annexed notion, continues to
operate as before.

SECT. III. — GENERAL WORDS BEFORE ffiEAS

Mr. Locke has somewhere observed, with his usual sagacity, that
most general words, those belonging to virtue and vice, good and
evil, especially, are taught before the particular modes of action to
which they belong are presented to the mind; and with them, the
love of the one, and the abhorrence of the other; for the minds of
children are so ductile, that a nurse, or any person about a child, by
seeming pleased or displeased with anything, or even any word,
may give the disposition of the child a similar turn. When, after-
wards, the several occurrences in life come to be applied to these
words, and that which is pleasant often appears under the name
of evil; and what is disagreeable to nature is called good and vir-
tuous; a strange confusion of ideas and affections arises in the minds
of many; and an appearance of no small contradiction between their
notions and their actions. There are many who love virtue and who
detest vice, and this not from hypocrisy or affectation, who not-
withstanding very frequently act ill and wickedly in particulars
without the least remorse; because these particular occasions never
come into view, when the passions on the side of virtue were so
warmly affected by certain words heated originally by the breath of
others; and for this reason, it is hard to repeat certain sets of words,
though owned by themselves unoperative, without being in some
degree affected; especially if a warm and affecting tone of voice
accompanies them, as suppose,

Wise, valiant, generous, good, and great.

These words, by having no application, ought to be imoperative;
but when words commonly sacred to great occasions are used, we
are affected by them even without the occasions. When words
which have been generally so applied are put together without any

132 EDMUND BURKE

rational view, or in such a manner that they do not rightly agree
with each other, the style is called bombast. And it requires in sev-
eral cases much good sense and experience to be guarded against
the force of such language; for when propriety is neglected, a
greater number of these affecting words may be taken into the service
and a greater variety may be indulged in combining them.

SECT. IV. — THE EFFECT OF WORDS

If words have all their possible extent of power, three effects
arise in the mind of the hearer. The first is, the sound; the second,
the picture, or representation of the thing signified by the sound;
the third is, the affection of the soul produced by one or by both
of the foregoing. Compounded abstract words, of which we have
been speaking, (honour, justice, liberty, and the like,) produce the
first and the last of these effects, but not the second. Simple abstracts
are used to signify some one simple idea, without much adverting to
others which may chance to attend it, as blue, green, hot, cold, and
the like; these are capable of affecting all three of the purposes of
words; as the aggregate words, man, castle, horse, &c., are in a yet
higher degree. But I am of opinion, that the most general effect,
even of these words, does not arise from their forming pictures of
the several things they would represent in the imagination; because,
on a very diligent examination of my own mind, and getting others
to consider theirs, I do not find that once in twenty times any such
picture is formed, and when it is, there is most commonly a par-
ticular effort of the imagination for that purpose. But the aggre-
gate words operate, as I said of the compound-abstracts, not by pre-
senting any image to the mind, but by having from use the same
effect on being mentioned, that their original has when it is seen.
Suppose we were to read a passage to this effect: "The river Danube
rises in a moist and mountainous soil in the heart of Germany,
where winding to and fro, it waters several principalities, until,
turning into Austria, and leaving the walls of Vienna, it passes into
Hungary; there with a vast flood, augmented by the Saave and the
Drave, it quits Christendom, and rolling through the barbarous
countries which border on Tartary, it enters by many mouths in
the Black Sea." In this description many things are mentioned, as

ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL I33

mountains, rivers, cities, the sea, &c. But let anybody examine him-
self, and see whether he has had impressed on his imagination any
pictures of a river, mountain, watery soil, Germany, &c. Indeed it is
impossible, in the rapidity and quick succession of words in con-
versation to have ideas both of the sound of the word, and of the
thing represented: besides, some words, expressing real essences, are
so mixed with others of a general and nominal import, that it is im-
practicable to jump from sense to thought, from particulars to gen-
erals, from things to words, in such a manner as to answer the pur-
poses of life; nor is it necessary that we should.

SECT. v. — EXAMPLES THAT WORDS MAY AFFECT WITHOUT RAISING IMAGES

I FIND it very hard to persuade several that their passions are
affected by words from whence they have no ideas; and yet ha.rder
to convince them, that in the ordinary course of conversation we
are sufficiently understood without raising any images of the things
concerning which we speak. It seems to be an odd subject of dispute
with any man, whether he has ideas in his mind or not. Of this, at
first view, every man, in his own forum, ought to judge without
appeal. But, strange as it may appear, we are often at a loss to know
what ideas we have of things, or whether we have any ideas at all
upon some subjects. It even requires a good deal of attention to be
thoroughly satisfied on this head. Since I wrote these papers, I
found two very striking instances of the possibility there is that a
man may hear words without having any idea of the things which
they represent, and yet afterwards be capable of returning them to
others, combined in a new way, and with great propriety, energy
and instruction. The first instance is that of Mr. Blacklock, a poet
blind from his birth. Few men blessed with the most perfect sight
can describe visual objects with more spirit and justness than this
blind man; which cannot possibly be attributed to his having a
clearer conception of the things he describes than is common to
other persons. Mr. Spence, in an elegant preface which he has writ-
ten to the works of this poet, reasons very ingeniously, and, I im-
agine, for the most part, very rightly, upon the cause of this extraor-
dinary phenomenon; but I cannot altogether agree with him, that
some improprieties in language and thought, which occur in these

134 EDMUND BURKE

poems, have arisen from the bUnd poet's imperfect conception of
visual objects, since such improprieties, and much greater, may be
found in writers even of a higher class than Mr. Blacklock, and
who notwithstanding possessed the faculty of seeing in its full per-
fection. Here is a poet doubtless as much affected by his own de-
scriptions as any that reads them can be; and yet he is affected with
this strong enthusiasm by things of which he neither has nor can
possibly have any idea further than that of a bare sound: and why
may not those who read his works be affected in the same manner
that he was, with as little of any real ideas of the things described?
The second instance is of Mr. Saunderson, professor of mathematics
in the university of Cambridge. This learned man had acquired
great knowledge in natural philosophy, in astronomy, and whatever
sciences depend upon mathematical skill. What was the most ex-
traordinary and the most to my purpose, he gave excellent lectures
upon light and colours; and this man taught others the theory of
these ideas which they had, and which he himself undoubtedly had
not. But it is probable that the words red, blue, green, answered to
him as well as the ideas of the colours themselves; for the ideas of
greater or lesser degrees of refrangibility being applied to these
words, and the blind man being instructed in what other respects
they were found to agree or to disagree, it was as easy for him to
reason upon the words, as if he had been fully master of the ideas.
Indeed it must be owned he could make no new discoveries in the
way of experiment. He did nothing but what we do every day in
common discourse. When I wrote this last sentence, and used the
words every day and common discourse, I had no images in my
mind of any succession of time; nor of men in conference with each
other; nor do I imagine that the reader will have any such ideas
on reading it. Neither when I spoke of red, or blue, and green, as
well as refrangibility, had I these several colours or the rays of light
passing into a different medium, and there diverted from their
course, painted before me in the way of images. I know very well
that the mind possesses a faculty of raising such images at pleasiure;
but then an act of the will is necessary to this; and in ordinary con-
versation or reading it is very rarely that any image at all is excited
in the mind. If I say, "I shall go to Italy next summer," I am well

ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 1 35

understood. Yet I believe nobody has by this painted in his imagi-
nation the exact figure of the speaker passing by land or by water, or
both; sometimes on horseback, sometimes in a carriage; with all the
particulars of the journey. Still less has he any idea of Italy, the
country to which I propose to go; or of the greenness of the fields,
the ripening of the fruits, and the warmth of the air, with the
change to this from a different season, which are the ideas for which
the word summer is substituted: but least of all has he any image
from the word next; for this word stands for the idea of many sum-
mers, with the exclusion of all but one: and surely the man who
says next summer, has no images of such a succession and such an
exclusion.

In short, it is not only of those ideas which are commonly called
abstract, and of which no image at all can be formed, but even of
particular, real beings, that we converse without any idea of them
excited in the imagination; as will certainly appear on a diligent
examination of our minds. Indeed, so little does poetry depend for
its effect on the power of raising sensible images, that I am con-
vinced it would lose a very considerable part of its energy, if this
were the necessary result of all description. Because that union of
affecting words, which is the most powerful of all poetical instru-
ments, would frequently lose its force, along with its propriety and
consistency, if the sensible images were always excited. There is
not perhaps in the whole Eneid a more grand and laboured passage
than the description of Vulcan's cavern in Etna, and the works that
are there carried on. Virgil dwells particularly on the formation of
the thunder, which he describes unfinished under the hammers of
the Cyclops. But what are the principles of this extraordinary
composition?

Tres imbris torti radios, tres nubis aquosce
Addiderant; rutili tres ignis, et alitis austri:
Fulgores nunc terrificos, sonitumque, metumque
Miscebant operi, flammisque sequacibus iras.

This seems to me admirably sublime; yet if we attend coolly to the
kind of sensible images which a combination of ideas of this sort
must form, the chimeras of madmen cannot appear more wild and

136 EDMUND BURKE

absurd than such a picture. "Three rays of twisted showers, three of
watery clouds, three of fire, and three of the winged south wind;
then mixed they in the wor\ terrific lightnings, and sound, and fear,
and anger, with pursuing flames!' This strange composition is
formed into a gross body; it is hammered by the Cyclops, it is in
part poHshed, and partly continues rough. The truth is, if poetry
gives us a noble assemblage of words corresponding to many noble
ideas which are connected by circumstances of time or place, or re-
lated to each other as cause and effect, or associated in any natural
way, they may be moulded together in any form, and perfectly an-
swer their end. The picturesque connexion is not demanded; be-
cause no real picture is formed; nor is the effect of the description
at all the less upon this account. What is said of Helen by Priam
and the old men of his council, is generally thought to give us the
highest possible idea of that fatal beauty.

06 vkii&Ti%, Tpwas Kal kvKi^jinidas ^Axaiovs,

Toirj 6' &;U(^Z yvvaLKl iroXuv XP^^^^ aXyta irao'xen''

hivu3i 6* dBavaryat. 6efjs els oj-jra toiKev,

They cried, No wonder such celestial charms
For nine long years have set the world in arms;
What winning graces! what majestic mien!
She moves a goddess, and she looks a queen. Pope.

Here is not one word said of the particulars of her beauty; nothing
which can in the least help us to any precise idea of her person;
but yet we are much more touched by this manner of mentioning
her than by those long and laboured descriptions of Helen, whether
handed down by tradition, or formed by fancy, which are to be met
with in some authors. I am sure it affects me much more than the
minute description which Spenser has given of Belphebe; though I
own that there are parts in that description, as there are in all the
descriptions of that excellent writer, extremely fine and poetical.

The terrible picture which Lucretius has drawn of religion, in
order to display the magnanimity of his philosophical hero in
opposing her, is thought to be designed with great boldness and
spirit.

Humana ante oculos fcedb cum vita jaceret.
In terris, oppressa gravi sub religione,

ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL I37

Quie caput e cceli regionibus ostendebat
Horribili super aspectu mortalibus instans;
Primus Graius homo mortales tollere contra
Est oculos ausus. —

What idea do you derive from so excellent a picture? none at all,
most certainly : neither has the poet said a single word which might
in the least serve to mark a single limb or feature of the phantom,
which he intended to represent in all the horrors imagination can
conceive. In reality, poetry and rhetoric do not succeed in exact de-
scription so well as painting does; their business is, to affect rather
by sympathy than imitation; to display rather the effect of things
on the mind of the speaker, or of others, than to present a clear idea
of the things themselves. This is their most extensive province, and
that in which they succeed the best.

SECT. VI. — POETRY NOT STRICTLY AN IMITATIVE ART

Hence we may observe that poetry, taken in its most general
sense, cannot with strict propriety be called an art of imitation. It
is indeed an imitation so far as it describes the manners and pas-
sions of men which their words can express; where animi motus
effert interprets lingua. There it is strictly imitation; and all merely
dramatic poetry is of this sort. But descriptive poetry operates chiefly
by substitution; by the means of sounds, which by custom have the
effect of realities. Nothing is an imitation further than as it resem-
bles some other thing; and words undoubtedly have no sort of re-
semblance to the ideas, for which they stand.

sect. VII. — HOW WORDS INFLUENCE THE PASSIONS

Now, as words affect, not by any original power, but by represen-
tation, it might be supposed, that their influence over the passions
should be but light; yet it is quite otherwise; for we find by experi-
ence, that eloquence and poetry are as capable, nay indeed much
more capable, of making deep and lively impressions than any other
arts, and even than nature itself in very many cases. And this arises
chiefly from these three causes. First, that we take an extraordi-
nary part in the passions of others, and that we are easily affected

138 EDMUND BURKE

and brought into sympathy by any tokens which are shown of them;
and there are no tokens which can express all the circumstances of
most passions so fully as words; so that if a person speaks upon any
subject, he can not only convey the subject to you, but likewise the
manner in which he is himself affected by it. Certain it is, that the
influence of most things on our passions is not so much from the
things themselves, as from our opinions concerning them; and these
again depend very much on the opinions of other men, conveyable
for the most part by words only. Secondly, there are many things
of a very affecting nature, which can seldom occur in the reality,
but the words that represent them often do; and thus they have an
opportunity of making a deep impression and taking root in the
mind, whilst the idea of the reality was transient; and to some per-
haps never really occurred in any shape, to whom it is notwith-
standing very affecting, as war, death, famine, &c. Besides, many
ideas have never been at all presented to the senses of any men but
by words, as God, angels, devils, heaven, and hell, all of which have,
however, a great influence over the passions. Thirdly, by words
we have it in our power to make such combinations as we cannot
possibly do otherwise. By this power of combining, we are able,
by the addition of well-chosen circumstances, to give a new life and
force to the simple object. In painting we may represent any fine
figure we please; but we never can give it those enlivening touches
which it may receive from words. To represent an angel in a pic-
ture, you can only draw a beautiful young man winged: but what
painting can furnish out anything so grand as the addition of one
word, "the angel of the Lord"? It is true, I have here no clear idea;
but these words affect the mind more than the sensible image did;
which is all I contend for. A picture of Priam dragged to the altar's
foot, and there murdered, if it were well executed, would undoubt-
edly be very moving, but there are very aggravating circumstances,
which it could never represent:

Sanguine fcedantem quos ipse saeraverat ignes.

As a further instance, let us consider those lines of Milton, where
he describes the travels of the fallen angels through their dismal
habitation:

ON THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL 1 39

— O'er many a dark and dreary vale

They passed, and many a region dolorous;

O'er many a frozen, many a fiery Alp;

Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death,

A universe of death. —

Here is displayed the force of union in

Rocks, caves, lakes, dens, bogs, fens, and shades;

which yet wrould lose the greatest part of their effect, if they were
not the

Rocks, caves, lakes, dens, bogs, fens, and shades —
of Death.

This idea or this affection caused by a word, which nothing but a
word could annex to the others, raises a very great degree of the
sublime; and this sublime is raised yet higher by what follows, a
"universe of Death." Here are again two ideas not presentable but
by language; and an union of them great and amazing beyond con-
ception; if they may properly be called ideas which present no dis-
tinct image to the mind: — but still it will be difficult to conceive
how words can move the passions which belong to real objects,
without representing these objects clearly. This is difficult to us,
because we do not sufficiently distinguish, in our observations upon
language, between a clear expression and a strong expression. These
are frequendy confounded with each other, though they are in real-
ity extremely different. The former regards the understanding, the
latter belongs to the passions. The one describes a thing as it is;
the latter describes it as it is felt. Now, as there is a moving tone of
voice, an impassioned countenance, an agitated gesture, which affect
independently of the things about which they are exerted, so there
are words, and certain dispositions of words, which being peculiarly
devoted to passionate subjects; and always used by those who are
under the influence of any passion, touch and move us more than
those which far more clearly and distinctly express the subject mat-
ter. We yield to sympathy what we refuse to description. The truth
is, all verbal description, merely as naked description, though never
so exact, conveys so poor and insufficient an idea of the thing de-
scribed, that it could scarcely have the smallest effect, if the speaker

140 EDMUND BURKE

did not call in to his aid those modes of speech that mark a strong
and lively feeling in himself. Then, by the contagion of our pas-
sions, we catch a fire already kindled in another, which probably
might never have been struck out by the object described. Words,
by strongly conveying the passions, by those means which we have
already mentioned, fully compensate for their weakness in other re-
spects. It may be observed, that very polished languages, and such
as are praised for their superior clearness and perspicuity, are gen-
erally deficient in strength. The French language has that perfec-
tion and that defect, whereas the Oriental tongues, and in general
the languages of most unpolished people, have a great force and
energy of expression; and this is but natural. Uncultivated people
are but ordinary observers of things, and not critical in distinguish-
ing them; but, for that reason, they admire more, and are more
affected with what they see, and therefore express themselves in a
warmer and more passionate manner. If the affection be well con-
veyed, it will work its effect without any clear idea, often without
any idea at all of the thing which has originally given rise to it.

It might be expected from the fertility of the subject, that I should
consider poetry, as it regards the sublime and beautiful, more at
large; but it must be observed that in this light it has been often
and well handled already. It was not my design to enter into the
criticism of the sublime and beautiful in any art, but to attempt to
lay down such principles as may tend to ascertain, to distinguish, and
to form a sort of standard for them; which purposes I thought
might be best effected by an inquiry into the properties of such
things in nature, as raise love and astonishment in us; and by show-
ing in what manner they operated to produce these passions. Words
were only so far to be considered, as to show upon what principle
they were capable of being the representatives of these natural
things, and by what powers they were able to affect us often as
strongly as the things they represent, and sometimes much more
strongly.

REFLECTIONS

THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE

AND

ON THE PROCEEDINGS IN CERTAIN SOCIETIES
IN LONDON RELATIVE TO THAT EVENT

IN A LETTER

INTENDED TO HAVE BEEN SENT
TO A GENTLEMAN IN PARIS

1790

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

The characteristic passion of Burke's life was his love of order. In
spite of the varying relations held by him tovifard the different parties in
England during his political career, one may easily find the key to his
consistency in this central principle. When the King's party sought to
increase the royal prerogative, he resisted; when the old Whigs sought
to make the government of the country a means to the enrichment of
their class, he resisted; and when the sympathizers with the Revolution
sought, as Burke thought, to abolish government, he resisted. Liberty
he claimed that he loved, but "a liberty connected with order"; and in
each of the political movements just mentioned he discerned an attack
on either liberty or order. He had a profound veneration for the ac-
cumulated wisdom of centuries of experience, and held that the bounds
of liberty should be enlarged with great caution and very gradually.
That a political system had lasted a long time was to him an argument
that it must to a large extent be fit for its purpose, and that therefore it
should not be rashly changed.

With such views, Burke was bound to oppose the French Revolution.
The sweeping away of the traditions of ages, the erection of new forms
of government built on abstract theories, were abhorrent to him; and
he threw himself with vehemence into opposition. Much that was hope-
ful in the Revolution he failed to see; and he could not in his passion
discriminate carefully among men and motives. But his treatment of the
situation in these "Reflections," written before the Terror had begun to
alienate sympathy, shows great insight and prophetic wisdom. This
book led the reaction in England and made its author a European figure.
In this country to-day, with our traditional sympathy with the great
upheaval, it is in the highest degree valuable to see these momentous
events through the eyes of a great contemporary conservative.

REFLECTIONS

ON

THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE

IN A LETTER

INTENDED TO HAVE BEEN SENT
TO A GENTLEMAN IN PARIS

[1790]

IT MAY not be unnecessary to inform the reader, that the follow-
ing Reflections had their origin in a correspondence between
the Author and a very young gentleman at Paris, who did him
the honour of desiring his opinion upon the important transactions,
which then, and ever since, have so much occupied the attention of
all men. An answer was written some time in the month of October,
1789; but it was kept back upon prudential considerations. That
letter is alluded to in the beginning of the following sheets. It has
been since forwarded to the person to whom it was addressed. The
reasons for the delay in sending it were assigned in a short letter
to the same gentleman. This produced on his part a new and press-
ing application for the Author's sentiments.

The Author began a second and more full discussion on the sub-
ject. This he had some thoughts of publishing early in the last
spring; but, the matter gaining upon him, he found that what he
had undertaken not only far exceeded the measure of a letter, but
that its importance required rather a more detailed consideration
than at that time he had any leisure to bestow upon it. However,
having thrown down his first thoughts in the form of a letter,
and, indeed, when he sat down to write, having intended it for a
private letter, he found it difficult to change the form of address,
when his sentiments had grown into a greater extent, and had re-

143

144 EDMUND BURKE

ceived another direction. A different plan, he is sensible, might be
more favourable to a commodious division and distribution of his
matter.

Dear Sir,

You are pleased to call again, and w^ith some earnestness, for my
thoughts on the late proceedings in France. I will not give you
reason to imagine that I think my sentiments of such value as to
wish myself to be solicited about them. They are of too little conse-
quence to be very anxiously either communicated or withheld. It
was from attention to you, and to you only, that I hesitated at the
time when you first desired to receive them. In the first letter I had
the honour to write to you, and which at length I send, I wrote
neither for, nor from, any description of men; nor shall I in this.
My errors, if any, are my own. My reputation alone is to answer for
them.

You see, Sir, by the long letter I have transmitted to you, that
though I do most heartily wish that France may be animated by a
spirit of rational liberty, and that I think you bound, in all honest
policy, to provide a permanent body in which that spirit may
reside, and an effectual organ by which it may act, it is my misfor-
tune to entertain great doubts concerning several material points in
your late transactions.

You imagined, when you wrote last, that I might possibly be
reckoned among the approvers of certain proceedings in France,
from the solemn public seal of sanction they have received from
two clubs of gentlemen in London, called the Constitutional Society,
and the Revolution Society.

I certainly have the honour to belong to more clubs than one, in
which the constitution of this kingdom, and the principles of the
glorious Revolution, are held in high reverence and I reckon myself
among the most forward in my zeal for maintaining that constitu-
tion and those principles in their utmost purity and vigour. It is
because I do so that I think it necessary for me that there should be
no mistake. Those who cultivate the memory of our Revolution,
and those who are attached to the constitution of this kingdom, will
take good care how they are involved with persons, who under the

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 1 45

pretext o£ zeal towards the Revolution and constitution too fre-
quently wander from their true principles; and are ready on every
occasion to depart from the firm but cautious and deliberate spirit
which produced the one, and which presides in the other. Before I
proceed to answer the more material particulars in your letter, I shall
beg leave to give you such information as I have been able to
obtain of the two clubs which have thought proper, as bodies, to
interfere in the concerns of France; first assuring you, that I am
not, and that I have never been, a member of either of those societies.

The first, calling itself the Constitutional Society, or Society for
Constitutional Information, or by some such title, is, I believe, of
seven or eight years standing. The institution of this society ap-
pears to be of a charitable, and so far of a laudable nature: it was
intended for the circulation, at the expense of the members, of many
books, which few others would be at the expense of buying; and
which might lie on the hands of the booksellers, to the great loss
of an useful body of men. Whether the books, so charitably circu-
lated, were ever as charitably read, is more than I know. Possibly
several of them have been exported to France; and, like goods not
in request here, may with you have found a market. I have heard
much talk of the lights to be drawn from books that are sent from
hence. What improvements they have had in their passage (as it is
said some liquors are meliorated by crossing the sea) I cannot tell:
but I never heard a man of common judgment, or the least degree
of information, speak a word in praise of the greater part of the
publications circulated by that society; nor have their proceedings
been accounted, except by some of themselves, as of any serious con-
sequence.

Your National Assembly seems to entertain much the same opin-
ion that I do of this poor charitable club. As a nation, you reserved
the whole stock of your eloquent acknowledgments for the Revolu-
tion Society; when their fellows in the Constitutional were, in
equity, entitled to some share. Since you have selected the Revolu-
tion Society as the great object of your national thanks and praises,
you will think me excusable in making its late conduct the subject
of my observations. The National Assembly of France has given
importance to these gentlemen by adopting them: and they return

146 EDMUND BURKE

the favour, by acting as a committee in England for extending the
principles of the National Assembly. Henceforward we must con-
sider them as a kind of privileged persons; as no inconsiderable
members in the diplomatic body. This is one among the revolutions
which have given splendour to obscurity, and distinction to undis-
cerned merit. Until very lately I do not recollect to have heard of this
club. I am quite sure that it never occupied a moment of my
thoughts; nor, I believe, those of any person out of their own set. I
find, upon inquiry, that on the anniversary of the Revolution in
1688, a club of dissenters, but of what denomination I know not,
have long had the custom of hearing a sermon in one of their
churches; and that afterwards they spent the day cheerfully, as other
clubs do, at the tavern. But I never heard that any public measure,
or political system, much less that the merits of the constitution of
any foreign nation, had been the subject of a formal proceeding at
their festivals; until, to my inexpressible surprise, I found them in
a sort of public capacity, by a congratulatory address, giving an
authoritative sanction to the proceedings of the National Assembly
in France.

In the ancient principles and conduct of the club, so far at least
as they were declared, I see nothing to which I could take exception.
I think it very probable, that for some purpose, new members may
have entered among them; and that some truly Christian politicians,
who love to dispense benefits, but are careful to conceal the hand
which distributes the dole, may have made them the instruments of
their pious designs. Whatever I may have reason to suspect concern-
ing private management, I shall speak of nothing as of a certainty
but what is public.

For one, I should be sorry to be thought, directly or indirectly,
concerned in their proceedings. I certainly take my full share, along
with the rest of the world, in my individual and private capacity, in
speculating on what has been done, or is doing, on the public stage,
in any place ancient or modern; in the republic of Rome, or the
republic of Paris; but having no general apostolical mission, being
a citizen of a particular state, and being bound up, in a consider-
able degree, by its public will, I should think it at least improper and
irregular for me to open a formal public correspondence with the

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE I47

actual government of a foreign nation, without the express authority
of the government under which I live.

I should be still more unwilling to enter into that correspondence
under anything like an equivocal description, which to many, un-
acquainted with our usages, might make the address, in which I
joined, appear as the act of persons in some sort of corporate ca-
pacity, acknowledged by the laws of this kingdom, and authorized
to speak the sense of some part of it. On account of the ambi-
guity and uncertainty of unauthorized general descriptions, and of
the deceit which may be practised under them, and not from mere
formality, the House of Commons would reject the most sneaking
petition for the most trifling object, under that mode of signature
to which you have thrown open the folding doors of your presence
chamber, and have ushered into your National Assembly with as
much ceremony and parade, and with as great a bustle of applause,
as if you had been visited by the whole representative majesty of
the whole English nation. If what this society has thought proper
to send forth had been a piece of argument, it would have signified
little whose argument it was. It would be neither the more nor the
less convincing on account of the party it came from. But this is
only a vote and resolution. It stands solely on authority; and in this
case it is the mere authority of individuals, few of whom appear.
Their signatures ought, in my opinion, to have been annexed to
their instrument. The world would then have the means of know-
ing how many they are; who they are; and of what value their opin-
ions may be, from their personal abilities, from their knowledge,
their experience, or their lead and authority in this state. To me,
who am but a plain man, the proceeding looks a little too refined,
and too ingenious; it has too much the air of a political stratagem,
adopted for the sake of giving, under a high-sounding name, an
importance to the public declarations of this club, which, when the
matter came to be closely inspected, they did not altogether so
well deserve. It is a policy that has very much the complexion of
a fraud.

I flatter myself that I love a manly, moral, regulated liberty as well
as any gentleman of that society, be he who he will; and perhaps
I have given as good proofs of my attachment to that cause, in the

148 EDMUND BURKE

whole course of my public conduct. I think I envy liberty as little
as they do, to any other nation. But I cannot stand forward, and
give praise or blame to anything which relates to human actions,
and human concerns, on a simple view of the object, as it stands
stripped of every relation, in all the nakedness and solitude of meta-
physical abstraction. Circumstances (which with some gentlemen
pass for nothing) give in reality to every political principle its dis-
tinguishing colour and discriminating effect. The circumstances
are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious
to mankind. Abstractedly speaking, government, as well as liberty,
is good; yet could I, in common sense, ten years ago, have felicitated
France on her enjoyment of a government (for she then had a gov-
ernment) without inquiry what the nature of that government was,
or how it was administered? Can I now congratulate the same
nation upon its freedom? Is it because liberty in the abstract may
be classed amongst the blessings of mankind, that I am seriously to
felicitate a mad-man, who has escaped from the protecting restraint
and wholesome darkness of his cell, on his restoration to the enjoy-
ment of light and liberty? Am I to congratulate a highwayman and
murderer, who has broke prison, upon the recovery of his natural
rights? This would be to act over again the scene of the criminals
condemned to the galleys, and their heroic deliverer, the metaphysic
knight of the sorrowful countenance.

When I see the spirit of liberty in action, I see a strong principle
at work; and this, for a while, is all I can possibly know of it. The
wild gas, the fixed air, is plainly broke loose: but we ought to sus-
pend our judgment until the first effervescence is a little subsided,
till the liquor is cleared, and until we see something deeper than
the agitation of a troubled and frothy surface. I must be tolerably
sure, before I venture publicly to congratulate men upon a blessing,
that they have really received one. Flattery corrupts both the re-
ceiver and the giver; and adulation is not of more service to the
people than to kings. I should therefore suspend my congratula-
tions on the new liberty of France, until I was informed how it had
been combined with government; with public force; with the disci-
pline and obedience of armies; with the collection of an effective
and well-distributed revenue; with morality and religion; with the

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 1 49

solidity of property; with peace and order; with civil and social
manners. All these (in their way) are good things too; and, without
them, liberty is not a benefit whilst it lasts, and is not likely to con-
tinue long. The effect of liberty to individuals is that they may do
what they please: we ought to see what it will please them to do,
before we risk congratulations, which may be soon turned into
complaints. Prudence would dictate this in the case of separate, in-
sulated, private men; but liberty, when men act in bodies, is power.
Considerate people, before they declare themselves, will observe the
use which is made of power; and particularly of so trying a thing
as new power in new persons, of whose principles, tempers, and
dispositions they have little or no experience, and in situations, where
those who appear the most stirring in the scene may possibly not be
the real movers.

All these considerations however were below the transcendental
dignity of the Revolution Society. Whilst I continued in the country,
from whence I had the honour of writing to you, I had but an im-
perfect idea of their transactions. On my coming to town, I sent for
an account of their proceedings, which had been published by their
authority, containing a sermon of Dr. Price, with the Duke de
Rochefaucault's and the Archbishop of Aix's letter, and several other
documents annexed. The whole of that publication, with the mani-
fest design of connecting the affairs of France with those of Eng-
land, by drawing us into an imitation of the conduct of the Na-
tional Assembly, gave me a considerable degree of uneasiness. The
effect of that conduct upon the power, credit, prosperity, and tran-
quillity of France, became every day more evident. The form of
constitution to be settled, for its future polity, became more clear.
We are now in a condition to discern, with tolerable exactness, the
true nature of the object held up to our imitation. If the prudence
of reserve and decorum dictates silence in some circumstances, in
others prudence of a higher order may justify us in speaking our
thoughts. The beginnings of confusion with us in England are at
present feeble enough; but, with you, we have seen an infancy, still
more feeble, growing by moments into a strength to heap moun-
tains upon mountains, and to wage war with heaven itself. When-
ever our neighbour's house is on fire, it cannot be amiss for the

150 EDMUND BURKE

engines to play a little on our own. Better to be despised for too
anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security.

Solicitous chiefly for the peace of my own country, but by no
means unconcerned for yours, I wish to communicate more largely
what was at first intended only for your private satisfaction. I shall
still keep your affairs in my eye, and continue to address myself to
you. Indulging myself in the freedom of epistolary intercourse, I
beg leave to throw out my thoughts, and express my feelings, just
as they arise in my mind, with very little attention to formal method.
I set out with the proceedings of the Revolution Society; but I shall
not confine myself to them. Is it possible I should? It appears
to me as if I were in a great crisis, not of the affairs of France
alone, but of all Europe, perhaps of more than Europe. All circum-
stances taken together, the French Revolution is the most astonish-
ing that has hitherto happened in the world. The most wonderful
things are brought about in many instances by means the most ab-
surd and ridiculous; in the most ridiculous modes; and, apparently,
by the most contemptible instruments. Everything seems out of na-
ture in this strange chaos of levity and ferocity, and of all sorts o£
crimes jumbled together with all sorts of follies. In viewing this
monstrous tragi-comic scene, the most opposite passions necessarily
succeed, and sometimes mix with each other in the mind; alternate
contempt and indignation; alternate laughter and tears; alternate
scorn and horror.

It cannot, however, be denied, that to some this strange scene ap-
peared in quite another point of view. Into them it inspired no other
sentiments than those of exultation and rapture. They saw nothing
in what has been done in France, but a firm and temperate exertion
of freedom; so consistent, on the whole, with morals and with piety
as to make it deserving not only of the secular applause of dashing
Machiavelian politicians, but to render it a fit theme for all the
devout effusions of sacred eloquence.

On the forenoon of the 4th of November last. Doctor Richard
Price, a non-conforming minister of eminence, preached at the dis-
senting meeting-house of the Old Jewry, to his club or society, a
very extraordinary miscellaneous sermon, in which there are some
good moral and religious sentiments, and not ill expressed, mixed

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE I51

up in a sort o£ porridge of various political opinions and reflections;
but the Revolution in France is the grand ingredient in the cauldron.
I consider the address transmitted by the Revolution Society to the
National Assembly, through Earl Stanhope, as originating in the
principles of the sermon, and as a corollary from them. It was
moved by the preacher of that discourse. It was passed by those
who came reeking from the effect of the sermon, without any cen-
sure or qualification, expressed or implied. If, however, any of the
gendemen concerned shall wish to separate the sermon from the
resolution, they know how to acknowledge the one, and to disavow
the other. They may do it: I cannot.

For my part, I looked on that sermon as the public declaration of
a man much connected with literary caballers, and intriguing phi-
losophers; with political theologians, and theological politicians, both
at home and abroad. I know they set him up as a sort of oracle;
because, with the best intentions in the world, he naturally philip-
pizes, and chants his prophetic song in exact unison with their
designs.

That sermon is in a strain which I believe has not been heard in
this kingdom, in any of the pulpits which are tolerated or encour-
aged in it, since the year 1648; when a predecessor of Dr. Price, the
Rev. Hugh Peters, made the vault of the king's own chapel at St.
James's ring with the honour and privilege of the saints, who, with
the "high praises of God in their mouths, and a two-e.Aged sword in
their hands, were to execute judgment on the heathen and punish-
ments upon the people; to bind their kings with chains, and their
nobles with fetters of iron.'" Few harangues from the pulpit, ex-
cept in the days of your league in France, or in the days of our
solemn league and covenant in England, have ever breathed less of
the spirit of moderation than this lecture in the Old Jewry. Sup-
posing, however, that something like moderation were visible in
this political sermon; yet politics and the pulpit are terms that have
little agreement. No sound ought to be heard in the church but
the healing voice of Christian charity. The cause of civil liberty
and civil government gains as little as that of religion by this con-
fusion of duties. Those who quit their proper character, to assume

' Psalm cxlix.

152 EDMUND BURKE

what does not belong to them, are, for the greater part, ignorant both
of the character they leave, and of the character they assume. Wholly
unacquainted with the world in which they are so fond of meddling,
and inexperienced in all its affairs, on which they pronounce with
so much confidence, they have nothing of politics but the passions
they excite. Surely the church is a place where one day's truce ought
to be allowed to the dissensions and animosities of mankind.

This pulpit style, revived after so long a discontinuance, had to
me the air of novelty, and of a novelty not wholly without danger.
I do not charge this danger equally to every part of the discourse.
The hint given to a noble and reverend lay-divine, who is supposed
high in office in one of our universities,^ and other lay-divines "of
ranl{ and literature," may be proper and seasonable, though some-
what new. If the noble Seekers should find nothing to satisfy their
pious fancies in the old staple of the national church, or in all the
rich variety to be found in the well-assorted warehouses of the dis-
senting congregations. Dr. Price advises them to improve upon non-
conformity; and to set up, each of them, a separate meeting-house
upon his own particular principles.' It is somewhat remarkable
that this reverend divine' should be so earnest for setting up new
churches, and so perfectly indifferent concerning the doctrine which
may be taught in them. His zeal is of a curious character. It is
not for the propagation of his own opinions, but of any opinions.
It is not for the diffusion of truth, but for the spreading of contra-
diction. Let the noble teachers but dissent, it is no matter from
whom or from what. This great point once secured, it is taken
for granted their religion will be rational and manly. I doubt
whether religion would reap all the benefits which the calculating
divine computes from this "great company of great preachers." It
would certainly be a valuable addition of nondescripts to the ample
collection of known classes, genera and species, which at present
beautify the hortus siccus of dissent. A sermon from a noble duke,

'Discourse on the Love of our Country, Nov. 4th, 1789, by Dr. Richard Price,
3rd edition, p. 17 and 18.

' "Those who dislike that mode of worship which is prescribed by public authority,
ought, if they can find no worship out of the church which thev approve, to set up a
separate worship jor themselves; and by doing this, and giving an example of a
rational and manly worship, men of iveight from their ranl{ and literature may do
the greatest service to society and the world." — ^P. 18, Dr. Price's Sermon.

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 1 53

or a noble marquis, or a noble earl, or baron bold, would certainly
increase and diversify the amusements of this town, which begins
to grow satiated with the uniform round of its vapid dissipations,
I should only stipulate that these new Mess-Johns in robes and coro-
nets should keep some sort of bounds in the democratic and levelling
principles which are expected from their titled pulpits. The new
evangelists will, I dare say, disappoint the hopes that are conceived
of them. They will not become, literally as well as figuratively,
polemic divines, nor be disposed so to drill their congregations, that
they may, as in former blessed times, preach their doctrines to regi-
ments of dragoons and corps of infantry and artillery. Such arrange-
ments, however favourable to the cause of compulsory freedom,
civil and religious, may not be equally conducive to the national tran-
quillity. These few restrictions I hope are no great stretches of
intolerance, no very violent exertions of despotism.

But I may say of our preacher, "utinam nugis tota ilia dedisset
tempora sceviuce!' — All things in this his fulminating bull are not
of so innoxious a tendency. His doctrines affect our constitution in
its vital parts. He tells the Revolution Society in this political ser-
mon, that his Majesty "is almost the only lawful king in the world,
because the only one who owes his crown to the choice of his
people." As to the kings of the world, all of whom (except one)
this archpontifl of the rights of men, with all the plenitude, and
with more than the boldness, of the papal deposing power in its
meridian fervour of the twelfth century, puts into one sweeping
clause of ban and anathema, and proclaims usurpers by circles of
longitude and latitude, over the whole globe, it behoves them to
consider how they admit into their territories these apostolic mis-
sionaries, who are to tell their subjects they are not lawful kings.
That is their concern. It is ours, as a domestic interest of some
moment, seriously to consider the solidity of the only principle upon
which these gentlemen acknowledge a king of Great Britain to be
entitled to their allegiance.

This doctrine, as applied to the prince now on the British throne,
either is nonsense, and therefore neither true nor false, or it affirms
a most unfounded, dangerous, illegal, and unconstitutional position.
According to this spiritual doctor of politics, if his Majesty does not

154 EDMUND BURKE

owe his crown to the choice of his people, he is no lawful kjng. Now
nothing can be more untrue than that the crown of this kingdom
is so held by his Majesty. Therefore if you follow their rule, the
king of Great Britain, who most certainly does not owe his high
office to any form of popular election, is in no respect better than
the rest of the gang of usurpers, who reign, or rather rob, all over
the face of this our miserable world, without any sort of right or
title to the allegiance of their people. The policy of this general
doctrine, so qualified, is evident enough. The propagators of this
political gospel are in hopes that their abstract principle (their prin-
ciple that a popular choice is necessary to the legal existence of the
sovereign magistracy) would be overlooked, whilst the king of
Great Britain was not affected by it. In the mean time the ears of
their congregations would be gradually habituated to it, as if it were
a first principle admitted without dispute. For the present it would
only operate as a theory, pickled in the preserving juices of pulpit
eloquence, and laid by for future use. Condo et compono quce mox
depromere possim. By this policy, whilst our government is
soothed with a reservation in its favour, to which it has no claim,
the security, which it has in common with all governments, so far
as opinion is security, is taken away.

Thus these politicians proceed, whilst litde notice is taken of their
doctrines; but when they come to be examined upon the plain
meaning of their words, and the direct tendency of their doctrines,
then equivocations and slippery constructions come into play. When
they say the king owes his crown to the choice of his people, and is
therefore the only lawful sovereign in the world, they will perhaps
tell us they mean to say no more than that some of the king's pred-
ecessors have been called to the throne by some sort of choice; and
therefore he owes his crown to the choice of his people. Thus, by a
miserable subterfuge, they hope to render their proposition safe, by
rendering it nugatory. They are welcome to the asylum they seek
for their offence, since they take refuge in their folly. For, if you ad-
mit this interpretation, how does their idea of election differ from
our idea of inheritance?

And how does the settlement of the crown in the Brunswick line
derived from James the First come to legalize our monarchy, rather

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE I55

than that of any of the neighbouring countries? At some time or
other, to be sure, all the beginners of dynasties were chosen by those
who called them to govern. There is ground enough for the opinion
that all the kingdoms of Europe were, at a remote period, elective,
with more or fewer limitations in the objects of choice. But what-
ever kings might have been here, or elsewhere, a thousand years
ago, or in whatever manner the ruling dynasties of England or
France may have begun, the king of Great Britain is, at this day,
king by a fixed rule of succession, according to the laws of his
country; and whilst the legal conditions of the compact of sover-
eignty are performed by him, (as they are performed,) he holds his
crown in contempt of the choice of the Revolution Society, who
have not a single vote for a king amongst them, either individually
or collectively; though I make no doubt they would soon erect them-
selves into an electoral college, if things were ripe to give effect to
their claim. His Majesty's heirs and successors, each in his time and
order, will come to the crown with the same contempt of their
choice with which his Majesty has succeeded to that he wears.

Whatever may be the success of evasion in explaining away the
gross error of fact, which supposes that his Majesty (though he
holds it in concurrence with the wishes) owes his crown to the
choice of his people, yet nothing can evade their full explicit declara-
tion concerning the principle of a right in the people to choose;
which right is directly maintained, and tenaciously adhered to. All
the oblique insinuations concerning election bottom in this proposi-
tion, and are referable to it. Lest the foundation of the king's ex-
clusive legal title should pass for a mere rant of adulatory freedom,
the political divine proceeds dogmatically to assert,* that, by the
principles of the Revolution, the people of England have acquired
three fundamental rights, all which, with him, compose one sys-
tem, and lie together in one short sentence; namely, that we have
acquired a right

1. "To choose our own governors."

2. "To cashier them for misconduct."

3. "To frame a government for ourselves."

This new, and hitherto unheard-of, bill of rights, though made in

*P. 34. Discourse on the Love of our Country, by Dr. Price.

156 EDMUND BURKE

the name of the whole people, belongs to those gentlemen and their
faction only. The body of the people of England have no share in
it. They utterly disclaim it. They will resist the practical assertion
of it with their lives and fortunes. They are bound to do so by the
laws of their country, made at the time of that very Revolution
which is appealed to in favour of the fictitious rights claimed by the
Society which abuses its name.

These gentlemen of the Old Jewry, in all their reasonings on the
Revolution of 1688, have a Revolution which happened in England
about forty years before, and the late French Revolution, so much
before their eyes, and in their hearts, that they are constantly con-
founding all the three together. It is necessary that we should sepa-
rate what they confound. We must recall their erring fancies to the
acts of the Revolution which we revere, for the discovery of its true
principles. If the principles of the Revolution of 1688 are anywhere
to be found, it is in the statute called the Declaration of Right. In
that most wise, sober, and considerate declaration, drawn up by
great lawyers and great statesmen, and not by warm and inexperi-
enced enthusiasts, not one word is said, nor one suggestion made,
of a general right "to choose our own governors; to cashier them for
misconduct; and to form a government for ourselves."

This Declaration of Right (the act of the ist of William and
Mary, sess. 2, ch. 2) is the corner-stone of our constitution, as rein-
forced, explained, improved, and in its fundamental principles for
ever settled. It is called "An Act for declaring the rights and liber-
ties of the subject, and for settling the succession of the crown." You
will observe, that these rights and this succession are declared in
one body, and bound indissolubly together.

A few years after this period, a second opportunity offered for
asserting a right of election to the crown. On the prospect of a total
failure of issue from King William, and from the Princess, after-
wards Queen Anne, the consideration of the settlement of the crown,
and of a further security for the liberties of the people, again came
before the legislature. Did they this second time make any pro-
vision for legalizing the crown on the spurious revolution princi-
ples of the Old Jewry? No. They followed the principles which
prevailed in the Declaration of Right; indicating with more pre-

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE I57

cision the persons who were to inherit in the Protestant line. This
act also incorporated, by the same policy, our liberties, and an
hereditary succession in the same act. Instead of a right to choose
our own governors, they declared that the succession in that line
(the Protestant line drawn from James the First) was absolutely
necessary "for the peace, quiet, and security of the realm," and that
it was equally urgent on them "to maintain a certainty in the suc-
cession thereof, to which the subjects may safely have recourse for
their protection." Both these acts, in which are heard the unerring,
unambiguous oracles of revolution policy, instead of countenanc-
ing the delusive, gipsy predictions of a "right to choose our gov-
ernors," prove to a demonstration how totally adverse the wis-
dom of the nation was from turning a case of necessity into a rule
of law.

Unquestionably there was at the Revolution, in the person of
King William, a small and a temporary deviation from the strict
order of a regular hereditary succession; but it is against all genu-
ine principles of jurisprudence to draw a principle from a law made
in a special case, and regarding an individual person. Privilegium
non transit in exemplum. If ever there was a time favourable for
establishing the principle, that a king of popular choice was the only
legal king, without all doubt it was at the Revolution. Its not being
done at that time is a proof that the nation was of opinion it ought
not to be done at any time. There is no person so completely igno-
rant of our history as not to know, that the majority in parliament of
both parties were so little disposed to anything resembling that prin-
ciple, that at first they were determined to place the vacant crown,
not on the head of the Prince of Orange, but on that of his wife
Mary, daughter of King James, the eldest born of the issue of that
king, which they acknowledged as undoubtedly his. It would be to
repeat a very trite story, to recall to your memory all those circum-
stances which demonstrated that their accepting King William
was not properly a choice; but to all those who did not wish, in
effect, to recall King James, or to deluge their country in blood, and
again to bring their religion, laws, and liberties into the peril they
had just escaped, it was an act of necessity, in the strictest moral
sense in which necessity can be taken.

158 EDMUND BURKE

In the very act, in which for a time, and in a single case, parlia-
ment departed from the strict order of inheritance, in favour of a
prince, who, though not next, was however very near, in the Une of
succession, it is curious to observe how Lord Somers, who drew the
bill called the Declaration of Right, has comported himself on that
delicate occasion. It is curious to observe with what address this
temporary solution of continuity is kept from the eye; whilst all
that could be found in this act of necessity to countenance the idea
of an hereditary succession is brought forward, and fostered, and
made the most of, by this great man, and by the legislature who
followed him. Quitting the dry, imperative style of an act of parlia-
ment, he makes the Lords and Commons fall to a pious, legislative
ejaculation, and declare, that they consider it "as a marvellous provi-
dence, and merciful goodness of God to this nation, to preserve
their said Majesties' royal persons, most happily to reign over us
on the throne of their ancestors, for which, from the bottom of their
hearts, they return their humblest thanks and praises." — The legis-
lature plainly had in view the act of recognition of the first of Queen
Elizabeth, chap. 3rd, and of that of James the First, chap, ist, both
acts strongly declaratory of the inheritable nature of the crown, and
in many parts they follow, with a nearly literal precision, the words
and even the form of thanksgiving which is found in these old
declaratory statutes.

The two Houses, in the act of King William, did not thank God
that they had found a fair opportunity to assert a right to choose
their own governors, much less to make an election the only lawful
title to the crown. Their having been in a condition to avoid the
very appearance of it, as much as possible, was by them considered
as a providential escape. They threw a politic, well-wrought veil
over every circumstance tending to weaken the rights, which in the
meliorated order of succession they meant to perpetuate; or which
might furnish a precedent for any future departure from what they
had then settled for ever. Accordingly, that they might not relax
the nerves of their monarchy, and that they might preserve a close
conformity to the practice of their ancestors, as it appeared in the
declaratory statutes of Queen Mary^ and Queen Elizabeth, in the
^ 1st Mary, sess. 3. ch. i.

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 1 59

next clause they vest, by recognition, in their Majesties, all the legal
prerogatives of the crown, declaring, "that in them they are most
fully, rightfully, and entirely invested, incorporated, united, and
annexed." In the clause which follows, for preventing questions, by
reason of any pretended titles to the crown, they declare, (observing
also in this the traditionary language, along with the traditionary
policy of the nation, and repeating as from a rubric the language of
the preceding acts of Elizabeth and James,) that on the preserving
"a certainty in the succession thereof, the unity, peace, and tran-
quillity of this nation doth, under God, wholly depend."

They knew that a doubtful title of succession would but too much
resemble an election; and that an election would be utterly destruc-
tive of the "unity, peace, and tranquillity of this nation," which
they thought to be considerations of some moment. To provide for
these objects, and therefore to exclude for ever the Old Jewry doc-
trine of "a right to choose our own governors," they follow with a
clause containing a most solemn pledge, taken from the preceding
act of Queen Elizabeth, as solemn a pledge as ever was or can be
given in favour of an hereditary succession, and as solemn a renun-
ciation as could be made of the principles by this Society imputed to
them. "The Lords spiritual and temporal, and Commons, do, in the
name of all the people aforesaid, most humbly and faithfully submit
themselves, their heirs and posterities for ever; and do faithfully
promise that they will stand to maintain, and defend their said
Majesties, and also the limitation of the crown, herein specified and
contained, to the utmost of their powers," &c. &c.

So far is it from being true, that we acquired a right by the Revolu-
tion to elect our kings, that if we had possessed it before, the English
nation did at that time most solemnly renounce and abdicate it, for
themselves, and for all their posterity for ever. These gentlemen
may value themselves as much as they please on their Whig princi-
ples; but I never desire to be thought a better Whig than Lord
Somers; or to understand the principles of the Revolution better
■than those by whom it was brought about; or to read in the Dec-
laration of Right any mysteries unknown to those whose penetrat-
ing style has engraved in our ordinances, and in our hearts, the
words and spirit of that immortal law.

l60 EDMUND BURKE

It is true, that, aided with the powers derived from force and
opportunity, the nation was at that time, in some sense, free to take
what course it pleased for filling the throne; but only free to do so
upon the same grounds on which they might have wholly abolished
their monarchy, and every other part of their constitution. How-
ever, they did not think such bold changes within their commis-
sion. It is indeed difficult, perhaps impossible, to give limits to the
mere abstract competence of the supreme power, such as was exer-
cised by parliament at that time; but the limits of a moral compe-
tence, subjecting, even in powers more indisputably sovereign, oc-
casional will to permanent reason, and to the steady maxims of
faith, justice, and fixed fundamental policy, are perfectly intelligi-
ble, and perfecdy binding upon those who exercise any authority,
under any name, or under any title, in the state. The House of
Lords, for instance, is not morally competent to dissolve the House
of Commons; no, nor even to dissolve itself, nor to abdicate, if it
would, its portion in the legislature of the kingdom. Though a king
may abdicate for his own person, he cannot abdicate for the mon-
archy. By as strong, or by a stronger reason, the House of Com-
mons cannot renounce its share of authority. The engagement and
pact of society, which generally goes by the name of the constitution,
forbids such invasion and such surrender. The constituent parts of
a state are obliged to hold their public faith with each other, and
with all those who derive any serious interest under their engage-
ments, as much as the whole state is bound to keep its faith with
separate communities. Otherwise competence and power would
soon be confounded, and no law be left but the will of a prevailing
force. On this principle the succession of the crown has always been
what it now is, an hereditary succession by law: in the old line it
was a succession by the common law; in the new by the statute
law, operating on the principles of the common law, not changing
the substance, but regulating the mode, and describing the persons.
Both these descriptions of law are of the same force, and are derived
from an equal authority, emanating from the common agreement
and original compact of the state, communi sponsione reipublicce,
and as such are equally binding on king and people too, as long as
the terms are observed, and they continue the same body polidc.

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE l6l

It is far from impossible to reconcile, if we do not suffer our-
selves to be entangled in the mazes of metaphysic sophistry, the use
both of a fixed rule and an occasional deviation; the sacredness of
an hereditary principle of succession in our government, with a
power of change in its application in cases of extreme emergency.
Even in that extremity, (if we take the measure of our rights by
our exercise of them at the Revolution,) the change is to be con-
fined to the peccant part only; to the part which produced the neces-
sary deviation; and even then it is to be effected without a decom-
position of the whole civil and political mass, for the purpose of
originating a new civil order out of the first elements of society.

A state without the means of some change is without the means
of its conservation. Without such means it might even risk the
loss of that part of the constitution which it wished the most re-
ligiously to preserve. The two principles of conservation and cor-
rection operated strongly at the two critical periods of the Restora-
tion and Revolution, when England found itself without a king.
At both those periods the nation had lost the bond of union in their
ancient edifice; they did not, however, dissolve the whole fabric.
On the contrary, in both cases they regenerated the deficient part
of the old constitution through the parts which were not impaired.
They kept these old parts exactly as they were, that the part re-
covered might be suited to them. They acted by the ancient or-
ganized states in the shape of their old organization, and not by the
organic molecule of a disbanded people. At no time, perhaps, did
the sovereign legislature manifest a more tender regard to that fun-
damental principle of British constitutional policy, than at the time
of the Revolution, when it deviated from the direct line of hereditary
succession. The crown was carried somewhat out of the line in
which it had before moved; but the new line was derived from the
same stock. It was still a line of hereditary descent; still an heredi-
tary descent in the same blood, though an hereditary descent quali-
fied with Protestantism. When the legislature altered the direction,
but kept the principle, they showed that they held it inviolable.

On this principle, the law of inheritance had admitted some
amendment in the old time, and long before the era of the Revolu-
tion. Some time after the conquest, great questions arose upon the

l62 EDMUND BURKE

legal principles of hereditary descent. It became a matter of doubt,
whether the heir per capita or the heir per stirpes was to succeed;
but whether the heir per capita gave way when the heirdom per
stirpes took place, or the Catholic heir when the Protestant was pre-
ferred, the inheritable principle survived with a sort of immortality
through all transmigrations — multosque per annos stat fortuna do-
mus, et avi numerantur avorum. This is the spirit of our constitu-
tion, not only in its settled course, but in all its revolutions. Who-
ever came in, or, however he came in, whether he obtained the
crown by law, or by force, the hereditary succession was either con-
tinued or adopted. The gentlemen of the Society for Revolutions
see nothing in that of 1688 but the deviation from the constitution;
and they take the deviation from the principle for the principle.
They have little regard to the obvious consequences of their doc-
trine, though they must see, that it leaves positive authority in very
few of the positive institutions of this country. When such an un-
warrantable maxim is once established, that no throne is lawful but
the elective, no one act of the princes who preceded this era of ficti-
tious election can be valid. Do these theorists mean to imitate some
of their predecessors, who dragged the bodies of our ancient sover-
eigns out of the quiet of their tombs? Do they mean to attaint and
disable backwards all the kings that have reigned before the Revo-
lution, and consequently to stain the throne of England with the
blot of a continual usurpation? Do they mean to invalidate, annul,
or to call into question, together with the titles of the whole line of
our kings, that great body of our statute law which passed under
those whom they treat as usurpers? to annul laws of inestimable
value to our liberties — of as great value at least as any which have
passed at or since the period of the Revolution? If kings, who did
not owe their crown to the choice of their people, had no title to
make laws, what will become of the statute de tallagio non con-
cedendo? — of the petition of right? — of the act of habeas corpus?
Do these new doctors of the rights of men presume to assert, that
King James the Second, who came to the crown as next of blood,
according to the rules of a then unqualified succession, was not to
all intents and purposes a lawful king of England, before he had
done any of those acts which were justly construed into an

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 1 63

abdication of his crown ? If he was not, much trouble in parhament
might have been saved at the period these gentlemen commemo-
rate. But King James was a bad king with a good title, and not an
usurper. The princes who succeeded according to the act of parlia-
ment which settled the crown on the Electress Sophia and on her
descendants, being Protestants, came in as much by a title of in-
heritance as King James did. He came in according to the law, as
it stood at his accession to the crown; and the princes of the House
of Brunswick came to the inheritance of the crown, not by election,
but by the law as it stood at their several accessions of Protestant
descent and inheritance, as I hope I have shown sufficiently.

The law, by which this royal family is specifically destined to the
succession, is the act of the 12th and 13th of King William. The
terms of this act bind "us and our heirs, and our posterity, to them,
their heirs, and their posterity," being Protestants, to the end of
time, in the same words as the Declaration of Right had bound us
to the heirs of King William and Queen Mary. It therefore secures
both an hereditary crown and an hereditary allegiance. On what
ground, except the constitutional policy of forming an establish-
ment to secure that kind of succession which is to preclude a choice
of the people for ever, could the legislature have fastidiously re-
jected the fair and abundant choice which our country presented to
them, and searched in strange lands for a foreign princess, from
whose womb the line of our future rulers were to derive their title
to govern millions of men through a series of ages?

The Princess Sophia was named in the act of settlement of the
i2th and 13th of King William, for a stocl^ and root of inheritance
to our kings, and not for her merits as a temporary administratrix
of a power, which she might not, and in fact did not, herself ever
exercise. She was adopted for one reason, and for one only, because,
says the act, "the most excellent Princess Sophia, Electress and Duch-
ess Dowager of Hanover, is daughter of the most excellent Princess
Elizabeth, late Queen of Bohemia, daughter of our late sovereign
lord King James the First, of happy memory, and is hereby de-
clared to be the next in succession in the Protestant line," &c., &c.;
"and the crown shall continue to the heirs of her body, being Prot-
estants." This limitation was made by parliament, that through the

164 EDMUND BURKE

Princess Sophia an inheritable line not only was to be continued in
future, but (what they thought very material) that through her it
was to be connected with the old stock of inheritance in King James
the First; in order that the monarchy might preserve an unbroken
unity through all ages, and might be preserved (with safety to our
religion) in the old approved mode by descent, in which, if our
liberties had been once endangered, they had often, through all
storms and struggles of prerogative and privilege, been preserved.
They did well. No experience has taught us, that in any other
course or method than that of an hereditary crown our liberties
can be regularly perpetuated and preserved sacred as our hereditary
right. An irregular, convulsive movement may be necessary to throw
off an irregular, convulsive disease. But the course of succession is
the healthy habit of the British constitution. Was it that the legis-
lature wanted, at the act for the limitation of the crown in the
Hanoverian line, drawn through the female descendants of James
the First, a due sense of the inconveniences of having two or three,
or possibly more, foreigners in succession to the British throne?
No! — they had a due sense of the evils which might happen from
such foreign rule, and more than a due sense of them. But a more
decisive proof cannot be given of the full conviction of the British
nation, that the principles of the Revolution did not authorize them
to elect kings at their pleasure, and without any attention to the an-
cient fundamental principles of our government, than their continu-
ing to adopt a plan of hereditary Protestant succession in the old
line, with all the dangers and all the inconveniences of its being a
foreign line full before their eyes, and operating with the utmost
force upon their minds.

A few years ago I should be ashamed to overload a matter, so
capable of supporting itself, by the then unnecessary support of any
argument; but this seditious, unconstitutional doctrine is now pub-
licly taught, avowed, and printed. The dislike I feel to revolutions,
the signals for which have so often been given from pulpits; the
spirit of change that is gone abroad; the total contempt which pre-
vails with you, and may come to prevail with us, of all ancient in-
stitutions, when set in opposition to a present sense of convenience,
or to the bent of a present inclination: all these considerations make

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 1 65

it not unadvisable, in my opinion, to call back our attention to the
true principles of our own domestic laws; that, you, my French
friend, should begin to know, and that we should continue to cherish
them. We ought not, on either side of the water, to suffer ourselves
to be imposed upon by the counterfeit wares which some persons, by
a double fraud, export to you in illicit bottoms, as raw commodities
of British growth, though wholly alien to our soil, in order after-
wards to smuggle them back again into this country, manufactured
after the newest Paris fashion of an improved liberty.

The people of England will not ape the fashions they have never
tried, nor go back to those which they have found mischievous on
trial. They look upon the legal hereditary succession of their crown
as among their rights, not as among their wrongs; as a benefit, not
as a grievance; as a security for their liberty, not as a badge of servi-
tude. They look on the frame of their commonwealth, such as it
stands, to be of inestimable value; and they conceive the undisturbed
succession of the crown to be a pledge of the stability and perpetuity
of all the other members of our constitution.

I shall beg leave, before I go any further, to take notice of some
paltry artifices, which the abettors of election, as the only lawful
title to the crown, are ready to employ, in order to render the sup-
port of the just principles of our constitution a task somewhat in-
vidious. These sophisters substitute a fictitious cause, and feigned
personages, in whose favour they suppose you engaged, whenever
you defend the inheritable nature of the crown. It is common with
them to dispute as if they were in a conflict with some of those ex-
ploded fanatics of slavery, who formerly maintained, what I be-
lieve no creature now maintains, "that the crown is held by divine
hereditary and indefeasible right." — These old fanatics of single ar-
bitrary power dogmatized as if hereditary royalty was the only law-
ful government in the world, just as our new fanatics of popular ar-
bitrary power maintain that a popular election is the sole lawful
source of authority. The old prerogative enthusiasts, it is true, did
speculate foolishly, and perhaps impiously too, as if monarchy had
more of a divine sanction than any other mode of government; and
as if a right to govern by inheritance were in strictness indefeasible
in every person, who should be found in the succession to a throne.

1 66 EDMUND BURKE

and under every circumstance, which no civil or political right can
be. But an absurd opinion concerning the king's hereditary right to
the crown does not prejudice one that is rational, and bottomed upon
solid principles of law and policy. If all the absurd theories of law-
yers and divines were to vitiate the objects in which they are con-
versant, we should have no law and no religion left in the world.
But an absurd theory on one side of a question forms no justification
for alleging a false fact, or promulgating mischievous maxims, on
the other.

The second claim of the Revolution Society is "a right of cashier-
ing their governors for misconduct." Perhaps the apprehensions our
ancestors entertained of forming such a precedent as that "of cash-
iering for misconduct," was the cause that the declaration of the act,
which implied the abdication of King James, was, if it had any
fault, rather too guarded, and too circumstantial.^ But all this guard,
and all this accumulation of circumstances, serves to show the spirit
of caution which predominated in the national councils in a situa-
tion in which men irritated by oppression, and elevated by a tri-
umph over it, are apt to abandon themselves to violent and extreme
courses: it shows the anxiety of the great men who influenced the
conduct of affairs at that great event to make the Revolution a
parent of settlement, and not a nursery of future revolutions.

No government could stand a moment, if it could be blown dovra
with anything so loose and indefinite as an opinion of "misconduct."
They who led at the Revolution grounded the virtual abdication of
King James upon no such light and uncertain principle. They
charged him with nothing less than a design, confirmed by a multi-
tude of illegal overt acts, to subvert the Protestant church and state,
and their fundamental, unquestionable laws and liberties: they
charged him with having broken the original contract between
king and people. This was more than misconduct. A grave and
overruling necessity obliged them to take the step they took, and
took with infinite reluctance, as under that most rigorous of all

* "That King James the Second, having endeavoured to subvert the constitution
of the kingdom by breaking the original contract between King and people, and,
by the advice of Jesuits, and other wicked persons, having violated the fundamental
laws, and having withdrawn himself out of the kingdom, hath abdicated the govern-
ment, and the throne is thereby vacant."

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 167

laws. Their trust for the future preservation of the constitution was
not in future revolutions. The grand policy of all their regulations
was to render it almost impracticable for any future sovereign to
compel the states of the kingdom to have again recourse to those
violent remedies. They left the crown what, in the eye and estima-
tion of law, it had never been, perfectly irresponsible. In order to
lighten the crown still further, they aggravated responsibility on
ministers of state. By the statute of the ist of King William, sess.
2nd, called "the act for declaring the rights and liberties of the sub-
ject, and for settling the succession to the crown" they enacted, that
the ministers should serve the crown on the terms of that declara-
tion. They secured soon after the frequent meetings of parliament,
by which the whole government would be under the constant in-
spection and active control of the popular representative and of the
magnates of the kingdom. In the next great constitutional act, that
of the i2th and 13th of King William, for the further limitation of
the crown, and better securing the rights and liberties of the subject,
they provided, "that no pardon under the great seal of England
should be pleadable to an impeachment by the Commons in parlia-
ment." The rule laid down for government in the Declaration of
Right, the constant inspection of parliament, the practical claim of
impeachment, they thought infinitely a better security not only for
their constitutional liberty, but against the vices of administration,
than the reservation of a right so difficult in the practice, so uncertain
in the issue, and often so mischievous in the consequences, as that
of "cashiering their governors."

Dr. Price, in his sermon,^ condemns very properly the practice of
gross, adulatory addresses to kings. Instead of this fulsome style,
he proposes that his Majesty should be told, on occasions of con-
gratulation, that "he is to consider himself as more properly the
servant than the sovereign of his people." For a compliment, this
new form of address does not seem to be very soothing. Those who
are servants in name, as well as in effect, do not like to be told of
their situation, their duty, and their obligations. The slave, in the
old play, tells his master, "Hcec commemoratio est quasi exprobatio."
It is not pleasant as compliment; it is not wholesome as instruc-

' p. 22-24.

1 68 EDMUND BURKE

tion. After all, if the king were to bring himself to echo this new
kind of address, to adopt it in terms, and even to take the appella-
tion of Servant of the People as his royal style, how either he or we
should be much mended by it, I cannot imagine. I have seen very
assuming letters, signed, Your most obedient, humble servant. The
proudest denomination that ever was endured on earth took a title
of still greater humility than that which is now proposed for sover-
eigns by the Aposde of Liberty. Kings and nations were trampled
upon by the foot of one calling himself "the Servant of Servants;"
and mandates for deposing sovereigns were sealed with the signet of
"the Fisherman."

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

Kings, in one sense, are undoubtedly the servants of the people,
because their power has no other rational end than that of the gen-
eral advantage; but it is not true that they are, in the ordinary sense,
(by our constitution at least,) anything like servants; the essence of
whose situation is to obey the commands of some other, and to be
removable at pleasure. But the king of Great Britain obeys no other
person; all other persons are individually, and collectively too, under
him, and owe to him a legal obedience. The law, which knows
neither to flatter nor to insult, calls this high magistrate, not our
servant, as this humble divine calls him, but "our sovereign Lord
the king;" and we, on our parts, have learned to speak only the
primitive language of the law, and not the confused jargon of their
Babylonian pulpits.

As he is not to obey us, but as we are to obey the law in him,
our constitution has made no sort of provision towards rendering
him, as a servant, in any degree responsible. Our constitution
knows nothing of a magistrate like the fusticia of Arragon; nor of
any court legally appointed, nor of any process legally settled, for
submitting the king to the responsibility belonging to all servants.
In this he is not distinguished from the Commons and the Lords;
who, in their several public capacities, can never be called to an

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 1 69

account for their conduct; although the Revolution Society chooses
to assert, in direct opposition to one of the wisest and most beautiful
parts of our constitution, that "a king is no more than the first serv-
ant of the public, created by it, and responsible to it."

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

The ceremony of cashiering kings, of which these gendemen
talk so much at their ease, can rarely, if ever, be performed without
force. It then becomes a case of war, and not of constitution. Laws
are commanded to hold their tongues amongst arms; and tribunals
fall to the ground with the peace they are no longer able to uphold.
The Revolution of 1688 was obtained by a just war, in the only case
in which any war, and much more a civil war, can be just. "Justa
bella quibus necessaria." The question of dethroning, or, if these
gentlemen like the phrase better, "cashiering kings," will always
be, as it has always been, an extraordinary question of state, and
wholly out of the law; a question (like all other questions of state)
of dispositions, and of means, and of probable consequences, rather
than of positive rights. As it was not made for common abuses, so
it is not to be agitated by common minds. The speculative line of
demarcation, where obedience ought to end, and resistance must
begin, is faint, obscure, and not easily definable. It is not a single act,
or a single event, which determines it. Governments must be abused
and deranged indeed, before it can be thought of; and the prospect
of the future must be as bad as the experience of the past. When
things are in that lamentable condition, the nature of the disease is
to indicate the remedy to those whom nature has qualified to ad-
minister in extremities this critical, ambiguous, bitter potion to a
distempered state. Times, and occasions, and provocations, will
teach their own lessons. The wise will determine from the gravity

1 70 EDMUND BURKE

of the case; the irritable, from sensibility to oppression; the high-
minded, from disdain and indignation at abusive power in un-
worthy hands; the brave and bold, from the love of honourable
danger in a generous cause: but, with or without right, a revolu-
tion will be the very last resource of the thinking and the good.

The third head of right, asserted by the pulpit of the Old Jewry,
namely, the "right to form a government for ourselves," has, at least,
as little countenance from anything done at the Revolution, either
in precedent or principle, as the two first of their claims. The Revo-
lution was made to preserve our ancient, indisputable laws and lib-
erties, and that ancient constitution of government which is our
only security for law and liberty. If you are desirous of knowing the
spirit of our constitution, and the policy which predominated in
that great period which has secured it to this hour, pray look for
both in our histories, in our records, in our acts of parliament, and
journals of parliament, and not in the sermons of the Old Jewry,
and the after-dinner toasts of the Revolution Society. In the former
you will find other ideas and another language. Such a claim is as
ill-suited to our temper and wishes as it is unsupported by any ap-
pearance of authority. The very idea of the fabrication of a new
government is enough to fill us with disgust and horror. We wished
at the period of the Revolution, and do now wish, to derive all we
possess as an inheritance from our forefathers. Upon that body and
stock of inheritance we have taken care not to inoculate any scion
alien to the nature of the original plant. All the reformations we
have hitherto made have proceeded upon the principle of reverence
to antiquity; and I hope, nay I am persuaded, that all those which
possibly may be made hereafter, will be carefully formed upon
analogical precedent, authority, and example.

Our oldest reformation is that of Magna Charta. You will see
that Sir Edward Coke, that great oracle of our law, and indeed all
the great men who follow him, to Blackstone,* are industrious to
prove the pedigree of our liberties. They endeavour to prove, that
the ancient charter, the Magna Charta of King John, was connected
with another positive charter from Henry I., and that both the one
and the other were nothing more than a re-affirmance of the still

'See Blackstone's Magna Charta, printed at Oxford, 1759.

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE I7I

more ancient standing law of the kingdom. In the matter of fact,
for the greater part, these authors appear to be in the right; perhaps
not always; but if the lawyers mistake in some particulars, it proves
my position still the more strongly; because it demonstrates the pow-
erful prepossession towards antiquity, with which the minds of all
our lawyers and legislators, and of all the people whom they wish
to influence, have been always filled; and the stationary policy of
this kingdom in considering their most sacred rights and franchises
as an inheritance.

In the famous law of the 3rd of Charles I., called the Petition of
Right, the parliament says to the king, "Your subjects have inherited
this freedom," claiming their franchises not on abstract principles
"as the rights of men," but as the rights of Englishmen, and as a
patrimony derived from their forefathers. Selden, and the other
profoundly learned men, who drew this Petition of Right, were as
well acquainted, at least, with all the general theories concerning
tfie "rights of men," as any of the discoursers in our pulpits, or on
your tribune; full as well as Dr. Price, or as the Abbe Sieyes. But, for
reasons worthy of that practical wisdom which superseded their
theoretic science, they preferred this positive, recorded, hereditary
title to all which can be dear to the man and the citizen, to that
vague speculative right, which exposed their sure inheritance to be
scrambled for and torn to pieces by every wild, litigious spirit.

The same policy pervades all the laws which have since been
made for the preservation of our liberties. In the ist of William and
Mary, in the famous statute, called the Declaration of Right, the
two Houses utter not a syllable of "a right to frame a government
for themselves." You will see, that their whole care was to secure
the religion, laws, and liberties, that had been lonj possessed, and
had been lately endangered. "Taking'* into their most serious con-
sideration the best means for making such an establishment, that
their religion, laws, and liberties might not be in danger of being
again subverted," they auspicate all their proceedings, by stating as
some of those best means, "in the first place" to do "as their ances-
tors in li\e cases have usually done for vindicating their ancient
rights and liberties, to declare;" — and then they pray the king and

» I W. and M.

172 EDMUND BURKE

queen, "that it may be declared and enacted, that all and singular
the rights and liberties asserted and declared, are the true ancient
and indubitable rights and liberties of the people of this kingdom."

You will observe, that from Magna Charta to the Declaration of
Right, it has been the uniform policy of our constitution to claim
and assert our liberties, as an entailed inheritance derived to us from
our forefathers, and to be transmitted to our posterity; as an estate
specially belonging to the people of this kingdom, without any ref-
erence whatever to any other more general or prior right. By this
means our constitution preserves a unity in so great a diversity of
its parts. We have an inheritable crown; an inheritable peerage;
and a House of Commons and a people inheriting privileges, fran-
chises, and liberties, from a long line of ancestors.

This policy appears to me to be the result of profound reflection;
or rather the happy effect of following nature, which is wisdom
without reflection, and above it. A spirit of innovation is generally
the result of a selfish temper, and confined views. People will not
look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their an-
cestors. Besides, the people of England well know, that the idea of
inheritance furnishes a sure principle of conservation, and a sure
principle of transmission; without at all excluding a principle of im-
provement. It leaves acquisition free; but it secures what it acquires.
Whatever advantages are obtained by a state proceeding on these
maxims, are locked fast as in a sort of family settlement; grasped as
in a kind of mortmain for ever. By a constitutional policy, working
after the pattern of nature, we receive, we hold, we transmit our
government and our privileges, in the same manner in which we
enjoy and transmit our property and our lives. The institutions of
policy, the goods of fortune, the gifts of providence, are handed
down to us, and from us, in the same course and order. Our political
system is placed in a just correspondence and symmetry with the
order of the world, and with the mode of existence decreed to a
permanent body composed of transitory parts; wherein, by the dispo-
sition of a stupendous wisdom, moulding together the great myste-
rious incorporation of the human race, the whole, at one time, is
never old, or middle-aged, or young, but, in a condition of unchange-
able constancy, moves on through the varied tenor of perpetual

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 1 73

decay, fall, renovation, and progression. Thus, by preserving the
method of nature in the conduct of the state, in what we improve,
we are never wholly new; in what we retain, we are never wholly
obsolete. By adhering in this manner and on those principles to our
forefathers, we are guided not by the superstition of antiquarians,
but by the spirit of philosophic analogy. In this choice of inheritance
we have given to our frame of polity the image of a relation in blood;
binding up the constitution of our country with our dearest domes-
tic ties; adopting our fundamental laws into the bosom of our family
affections; keeping inseparable, and cherishing with the warmth of
all their combined and mutually reflected charities, our state, our
hearths, our sepulchres, and our altars.

Through the same plan of a conformity to nature in our artificial
institutions, and by calling in the aid of her unerring and powerful
instincts, to fortify the fallible and feeble contrivances of our '■eason,
we have derived several other, and those no small benefits, from con-
sidering our liberties in the light of an inheritance. Always acting
as if in the presence of canonized forefathers, the spirit of freedom,
leading in itself to misrule and excess, is tempered with an awful
gravity. This idea of a liberal descent inspires us with a sense of
habitual native dignity, which prevents that upstart insolence almost
inevitably adhering to and disgracing those who are the first ac-
quirers of any distinction. By this means our liberty becomes a noble
freedom. It carries an imposing and majestic aspect. It has a pedi-
gree and illustrating ancestors. It has its bearings and its ensigns
armorial. It has its gallery of portraits; its monumental inscriptions;
its records, evidences, and titles. We procure reverence to our civil
institutions on the principle upon which nature teaches us to revere
individual men; on account of their age, and on account of those
from whom they are descended. All your sophisters cannot produce
anything better adapted to preserve a rational and manly freedom
than the course that we have pursued, who have chosen our nature
rather than our speculations, our breasts rather than our inventions,
for the great conservatories and magazines of our rights and privi-
leges.

You might, if you pleased, have profited of our example, and have
given to your recovered freedom a correspondent dignity. Your

174 EDMUND BURKE

privileges, though discontinued, were not lost to memory. Your
constitution, it is true, whilst you were out of possession, suffered
waste and dilapidation; but you possessed in some parts the walls,
and, in all, the foundations, of a noble and venerable castle. You
might have repaired those walls; you might have built on those old
foundations. Your constitution was suspended before it was per-
fected; but you had the elements of a constitution very nearly as
good as could be wished. In your old states you possessed that variety
of parts corresponding with the various descriptions of which your
community was happily composed; you had all that combination,
and all that opposition of interests, you had that action and counter-
action, which, in the natural and in the political world, from the
reciprocal struggle of discordant powers, draws out the harmony of
the universe. These opposed and conflicting interests, which you con-
sidered as so great a blemish in your old and in our present constitu-
tion, interpose a salutary check to all precipitate resolutions. They
render deliberation a matter not of choice, but of necessity; they
make all change a subject of compromise, which naturally begets
moderation; they produce temperaments preventing the sore evil of
harsh, crude, unqualified. reformations; and rendering all the head-
long exertions of arbitrary power, in the few or in the many for ever
impracticable. Through that diversity of members and interests, gen-
eral liberty had as many securities as there were separate views in the
several orders; whilst by pressing down the whole by the weight of a
real monarchy, the separate parts would have been prevented from
warping, and starting from their allotted places.

You had all these advantages in your ancient states; but you chose
to act as if you had never been moulded into civil society, and had
everything to begin anew. You began ill, because you began by
despising everything that belonged to you. You set up your trade
without a capital. If the last generations of your country appeared
without much lustre in your eyes, you might have passed them by,
and derived your claims from a more early race of ancestors. Under
a pious predilection for those ancestors, your imaginations would
have realized in them a standard of virtue and wisdom, beyond the
vulgar practice of the hour; and you would have risen with the
example to whose imitation you aspired. Respecting your fore-

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE I75

fathers, you would have been taught to respect yourselves. You
would not have chosen to consider the French as a people of yester-
day, as a nation of low-born servile wretches until the emancipating
year of 1789. In order to furnish, at the expense of your honour, an
excuse to your apologists here for several enormities of yours, you
would not have been content to be represented as a gang of Maroon
slaves, suddenly broke loose from the house of bondage, and there-
fore to be pardoned for your abuse of the liberty to which you were
not accustomed, and ill fitted. Would it not, my worthy friend, have
been wiser to have you thought, what I, for one, always thought you,
a generous and gallant nation, long misled to your disadvantage by
your high and romantic sentiments of fidelity, honour, and loyalty;
that events had been unfavourable to you, but that you were not
enslaved through any illiberal or servile disposition; that in your
most devoted submission, you were actuated by a principle of pub-
lic spirit, and that it was your country you worshipped, in the person
of your king? Had you made it to be understood, that in the delu-
sion of this amiable error you had gone further than your wise
ancestors; that you were resolved to resume your ancient privileges,
whilst you preserved the spirit of your ancient and your recent loy-
alty and honour; or if, diffident of yourselves, and not clearly dis-
cerning the almost obliterated constitution of your ancestors, you
had looked to your neighbours in this land, who had kept alive the
ancient principles and models of the old common law of Europe
meliorated and adapted to its present state — by following wise ex-
amples you would have given new examples of wisdom to the world.
You would have rendered the cause of liberty venerable in the eyes
of every worthy mind in every nation. You would have shamed des-
potism from the earth, by showing that freedom was not only
reconcilable, but, as when well disciplined it is, auxiliary to law.
You would have had an unoppressive but a productive revenue.
You would have had a flourishing commerce to feed it. You would
have had a free constitution; a potent monarchy; a disciplined army;
a reformed and venerated clergy; a mitigated but spirited nobility, to
lead your virtue, not to overlay it; you would have had a liberal
order of commons, to emulate and to recruit that nobility; you would
have had a protected, satisfied, laborious, and obedient people, taught

176 EDMUND BURKE

to seek and to recognise the happiness that is to be found by virtue
in all conditions; in which consists the true moral equality of man-
kind, and not in that monstrous fiction, which, by inspiring false
ideas and vain expectations into men destined to travel in the obscure
walk of laborious life, serves only to aggravate and embitter that
real inequality, which it never can remove; and which the order of
civil life establishes as much for the benefit of those whom it must
leave in an humble state, as those whom it is able to exalt to a con-
dition more splendid, but not more happy. You had a smooth and
easy career of felicity and glory laid open to you, beyond anything
recorded in the history of the world; but you have shown that
difficulty is good for man.

Compute your gains: see what is got by those extravagant and pre-
sumptuous speculations which have taught your leaders to despise all
their predecessors, and all their contemporaries, and even to despise
themselves, until the moment in which they became truly despicable.
By following those false lights, France has bought undisguised
calamities at a higher price than any nation has purchased the most
unequivocal blessings! France has bought poverty by crime! France
has not sacrificed her virtue to her interest, but she has abandoned
her interest, that she might prostitute her virtue. All other nations
have begun the fabric of a new government, or the reformation of
an old, by establishing originally, or by enforcing with greater exact-
ness, some rites or other of religion. All other people have laid the
foundations of civil freedom in severer manners, and a system of a
more austere and masculine morality. France, when she let loose the
reins of regal authority, doubled the license of a ferocious dissolute-
ness in manners, and of an insolent irreligion in opinions and prac-
tices; and has extended through all ranks of life, as if she were com-
municating some privilege, or laying open some secluded benefit, all
the unhappy corruptions that usually were the disease of wealth and
power. This is one of the new principles of equality in France.

France, by the perfidy of her leaders, has utterly disgraced the tone
of lenient council in the cabinets of princes, and disarmed it of its
most potent topics. She has sanctified the dark, suspicious maxims of
tyrannous distrust; and taught kings to tremble at (what will here-
after be called) the delusive plausibilities of moral politicians. Sov-

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 1 77

ereigns will consider those, who advise them to place an unlimited
confidence in their people, as subverters of their thrones; as traitors
who aim at their destruction, by leading their easy good-nature,
under specious pretences, to admit combinations of bold and faith-
less men into a participation of their power. This alone (if there
were nothing else) is an irreparable calamity to you and to man-
kind. Remember that your parliament of Paris told your king,
that, in calling the states together, he had nothing to fear but the
prodigal excess of their zeal in providing for the support of the
throne. It is right that these men should hide their heads. It is right
that they should bear their part in the ruin which their counsel has
brought on their sovereign and their country. Such sanguine decla-
rations tend to lull authority asleep; to encourage it rashly to engage
in perilous adventures of untried policy; to neglect those provisions,
preparations, and precautions, which distinguish benevolence from
imbecility; and without which no man can answer for the salutary
effect of any abstract plan of government or of freedom. For want
of these, they have seen the medicine of the state corrupted into its
poison. They have seen the French rebel against a mild and lawful
monarch, with more fury, outrage, and insult, than ever any people
has been known to rise against the most illegal usurper, or the most
sanguinary tyrant. Their resistance was made to concession; their
revolt was from protection; their blow was aimed at a hand holding
out graces, favours, and immunities.

This was unnatural. The rest is in order. They have found their
punishment in their success. Laws overturned; tribunals subverted;
industry without vigour; commerce expiring; the revenue unpaid,
yet the people impoverished; a church pillaged, and a state not
relieved; civil and military anarchy made the constitution of the
kingdom; everything human and divine sacrificed to the idol of
public credit, and national bankruptcy the consequence; and, to
crown all, the paper securities of new, precarious, tottering power,
the discredited paper securities of impoverished fraud and beggared
rapine, held out as a currency for the support of an empire, in lieu
of the two great recognised species that represent the lasting, con-
ventional credit of mankind, which disappeared and hid themselves
in the earth from whence they came, when the principle of property,

178 EDMUND BURKE

whose creatures and representatives they are, was systematically
subverted.

Were all these dreadful things necessary ? Were they the inevitable
results of the desperate struggle of determined patriots, compelled
to wade through blood and tumult, to the quiet shore of a tranquil
and prosperous liberty? No! nothing like it. The fresh ruins of
France, which shock our feelings wherever we can turn our eyes,
are not the devastation of civil war; they are the sad but instructive
monuments of rash and ignorant counsel in time of profound peace.
They are the display of inconsiderate and presumptuous, because
unresisted and irresistible, authority. The persons who have thus
squandered away the precious treasure of their crimes, the persons
who have made this prodigal and wild waste of public evils, (the last
stake reserved for the ultimate ransom of the state,) have met in
their progress with little, or rather with no opposition at all. Their
whole march was more like a triumphal procession, than the prog-
ress of a war. Their pioneers have gone before them, and demolished
and laid everything level at their feet. Not one drop of their blood
have they shed in the cause of the country they have ruined. They
have made no sacrifices to. their projects of greater consequence than
their shoe-buckles, whilst they were imprisoning their king, mur-
dering their fellow-citizens, and bathing in tears, and plunging in
poverty and distress, thousands of worthy men and worthy families.
Their cruelty has not even been the base result of fear. It has been
the effect of their sense of perfect safety, in authorizing treasons,
robberies, rapes, assassinations, slaughters, and burnings, throughout
their harassed land. But the cause of all was plain from the begin-
ning.

This unforced choice, this fond election of evil, would appear
perfectly unaccountable, if we did not consider the composition of
the National Assembly : I do not mean its formal constitution, which,
as it now stands, is exceptionable enough, but the materials of which,
in a great measure, it is composed, which is of ten thousand times
greater consequence than all the formalities in the world. If we were
to know nothing of this assembly but by its title and function, no
colours could paint to the imagination anything more venerable.
In that light the mind of an inquirer, subdued by such an awful

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 1 79

image as that of the virtue and wisdom o£ a whole people collected
into a focus, would pause and hesitate in condemning things even
of the very worst aspect. Instead of blameable, they would appear
only mysterious. But no name, no power, no function, no artificial
institution whatsoever, can make the men of whom any system of
authority is composed any other than God, and nature, and educa-
tion, and their habits of life have made them. Capacities beyond
these the people have not to give. Virtue and wisdom may be the
objects of their choice; but their choice confers neither the one nor
the other on those upon whom they lay their ordaining hands. They
have not the engagement of nature, they have not the promise of
revelation, for any such powers.

After I had read over the list of the persons and descriptions
elected into the Tiers Etat, nothing which they afterwards did could
appear astonishing. Among them, indeed, I saw some of known
rank; some of shining talents; but of any practical experience in the
state, not one man was to be found. The best were only men of
theory. But whatever the distinguished few may have been, it is
the substance and mass of the body which constitutes its character,
and must finally determine its direction. In all bodies, those who
will lead, must also, in a considerable degree, follow. They must
conform their propositions to the taste, talent, and disposition, of
those whom they wish to conduct: therefore, if an assembly is
viciously or feebly composed in a very great part of it, nothing but
such a supreme degree of virtue as very rarely appears in the world,
and for that reason cannot enter into calculation, will prevent the
men of talent disseminated through it from becoming only the expert
instruments of absurd projects! If, what is the more likely event,
instead of that unusual degree of virtue, they should be actuated by
sinister ambition, and a lust of meretricious glory, then the feeble
part of the assembly, to whom at first they conform, becomes in its
turn the dupe and instrument of their designs. In this political
traffic, the leaders will be obliged to bow to the ignorance of their
followers, and the followers to become subservient to the worst
designs of their leaders.

To secure any degree of sobriety in the propositions made by the
leaders in any public assembly, they ought to respect, in some

l8o EDMUND BURKE

degree perhaps to fear, those whom they conduct. To be led any
otherwise than bhndly, the followers must be qualified, if not for
actors, at least for judges; they must also be judges of natural weight
and authority. Nothing can secure a steady and moderate conduct
in such assemblies, but that the body of them should be respectably
composed, in point of condition in life, or permanent property, of
education, and of such habits as enlarge and liberalize the under-
standing.

In the calling of the states-general of France, the first thing that
struck me, was a great departure from the ancient course. I found
the representation for the third estate composed of six hundred per-
sons. They were equal in number to the representatives of both the
other orders. If the orders were to act separately, the number would
not, beyond the consideration of the expense, be of much moment.
But when it became apparent that the three orders were to be melted
down into one, the policy and necessary effect of this numerous rep-
resentation became obvious. A very small desertion from either of
the other two orders must throw the power of both into the hands
of the third. In fact, the whole power of the state was soon resolved
into that body. Its due composition became therefore of infinitely
the greater importance.

Judge, Sir, of my surprise, when I found that a very great propor-
tion of the assembly (a majority, I believe, of the members who
attended) was composed of practitioners in the law. It was com-
posed, not of distinguished magistrates, who had given pledges to
their country of their science, prudence, and integrity; not of leading
advocates, the glory of the bar; not of renowned professors in uni-
versities; — ^but for the far greater part, as it must in such a number,
of the inferior, unlearned, mechanical, merely instrumental members
of the profession. There were distinguished exceptions; but the gen-
eral composition was of obscure provincial advocates, of stewards of
petty local jurisdictions, country attornies, notaries, and the whole
train of the ministers of municipal litigation, the fomenters and con-
ductors of the petty war of village vexation. From the moment I
read the list, I saw distinctly, and very nearly as it has happened,
all that was to follow.

The degree of estimation in which any profession is held becomes

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE l8l

the standard of the estimation in which the professors hold them-
selves. Whatever the personal merits of many individual lawyers
might have been, and in many it was undoubtedly very considerable,
in that military kingdom no part of the profession had been much
regarded, except the highest of all, who often united to their pro-
fessional offices great family splendour, and were invested with great
power and authority. These certainly were highly respected, and
even with no small degree of awe. The next rank was not much
esteemed; the mechanical part was in a very low degree of repute.
Whenever the supreme authority is vested in a body so com-
posed, it must evidently produce the consequences of supreme au-
thority placed in the hands of men not taught habitually to respect
themselves; who had no previous fortune in character at stake; who
could not be expected to bear with moderation, or to conduct with
discretion, a power, which they themselves, more than any others,
must be surprised to find in their hands. Who could flatter himself
that these men, suddenly, and, as it were, by enchantment, snatched
from the humblest rank of subordination, would not be intoxicated
with their unprepared greatness? Who eould conceive that men,
who are habitually meddling, daring, subtle, active, of litigious dis-
positions and unquiet minds, would easily fall back into their old
condition of obscure contention, and laborious, low, and unprofitable
chicane? Who could doubt but that, at any expense to the state, of
which they understood nothing, they must pursue their private
interests which they understood but too well? It was not an event
depending on chance, or contingency. It was inevitable; it was neces-
sary; it was planted in the nature of things. They must join (if their
capacity did not permit them to lead) in any project which could
procure to them a litigious constitution; which could lay open to
them those innumerable lucrative jobs, which follow in the train
of all great convulsions and revolutions in the state, and particularly
in all great and violent permutations of property. Was it to be ex-
pected that they would attend to the stability of property, whose
existence had always depended upon whatever rendered property
questionable, ambiguous, and insecure? Their objects would be
enlarged with their elevation, but their disposition and habits, and
mode of accomplishing their designs, must remain the same.

l82 EDMUND BURKE

Well! but these men were to be tempered and restrained by other
descriptions, of more sober and more enlarged understandings.
Were they then to be awed by the super-eminent authority and awful
dignity of a handful of country clowns, who have seats in that as-
sembly, some of whom are said not to be able to read and write?
and by not a greater number of traders, who, though somewhat more
instructed, and more conspicuous in the order of society, had never
known anything beyond their counting-house. No! both these
descriptions were more formed to be overborne and swayed by the
intrigues and artifices of lawyers, than to become their counterpoise.
With such a dangerous disproportion, the whole must needs be gov-
erned by them. To the faculty of law was joined a pretty consider-
able proportion of the faculty of medicine. This faculty had not, any
more than that of the law, possessed in France its just estimation.
Its professors, therefore, must have the qualities of men not habitu-
ated to sentiments of dignity. But supposing they had ranked as
they ought to do, and as with us they do actually, the sides of sick
beds are not the academies for forming statesmen and legislators.
Then came the dealers in stocks and funds, who must be eager, at
any expense, to change their ideal paper wealth for the more solid
substance of land. To these were joined men of other descriptions,
from whom as litde knowledge of, or attention to, the interests of
a great state was to be expected, and as little regard to the stability
of any institution; men formed to be instruments, not controls. Such
in general was the composition of the Tiers Etat in the National
Assembly; in which was scarcely to be perceived the slightest traces
of what we call the natural landed interest of the country.

We know that the British House of Commons, without shutting
its doors to any merit in any class, is, by the sure operation of ade-
quate causes, filled with everything illustrious in rank, in descent, in
hereditary and in acquired opulence, in cultivated talents, in military,
civil, naval, and politic distinction, that the country can afford. But
supposing, what hardly can be supposed as a case, that the House of
Commons should be composed in the same manner with the Tiers
Etat in France, would this dominion of chicane be borne with pa-
tience, or even conceived without horror? God forbid I should
insinuate anything derogatory to that profession, which is another

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 1 83

priesthood, administrating the rights of sacred justice. But whilst I
revere men in the functions which belong to them, and would do as
much as one man can do to prevent their exclusion from any, I can-
not, to flatter them, give the lie to nature. They are good and useful
in the composition; they must be mischievous if they preponderate
so as virtually to become the whole. Their very excellence in their
peculiar functions may be far from a qualification for others. It
cannot escape observation, that when men are too much confined
to professional and faculty habits, and as it were inveterate in the
recurrent employment of that narrow circle, they are rather disabled
than qualified for whatever depends on the knowledge of mankind,
on experience in mixed affairs, on a comprehensive, connected view
of the various, complicated, external and internal interests, which go
to the formation of that multifarious thing called a state.

After all, if the House of Commons were to have a wholly pro-
fessional and faculty composition, what is the power of the House of
Commons, circumscribed and shut in by the immovable barriers of
laws, usages, positive rules of doctrine and practice, counterpoised
by the House of Lords, and every moment of its existence at the dis-
cretion of the crown to continue, prorogue, or dissolve us? The
power of the House of Commons, direct or indirect, is indeed great;
and long may it be able to preserve its greatness, and the spirit be-
longing to true greatness, at the full; and it will do so, as long as it
can keep the breakers of law in India from becoming the makers
of law for England. The power, however, of the House of Com-
mons, when least diminished, is as a drop of water in the ocean,
compared to that residing in a settled majority of your National
Assembly. That assembly, since the destruction of the orders, has no
fundamental law, no strict convention, no respected usage to restrain
it. Instead of finding themselves obliged to conform to a fixed con-
stitution, they have a power to make a constitution which shall con-
form to their designs. Nothing in heaven or upon earth can serve
as a control on them. What ought to be the heads, the hearts, the
dispositions, that are qualified, or that dare, not only to make laws
under a fixed constitution, but at one heat to strike out a totally new
constitution for a great kingdom, and in every part of it, from the
monarch on the throne to the vestry of a parish? But — "fools rush

184 EDMUND BURKE

in where angels fear to tread." In such a state of unbounded power
for undefined and undefinable purposes, the evil of a moral and
almost physical inaptitude of the man to the function must be the
greatest we can conceive to happen in the management of human
affairs.

Having considered the composition of the third estate as it stood
in its original frame, I took a view of the representatives of the clergy.
There too it appeared, that full as little regard was had to the general
security of property, or to the aptitude of the deputies for the public
purposes, in the principles of their election. That election was so
contrived, as to send a very large proportion of mere country curates
to the great and arduous work of new-modelling a state; men who
never had seen the state so much as in a picture; men who knew
nothing of the world beyond the bounds of an obscure village; who,
immersed in hopeless poverty, could regard all property, whether
secular or ecclesiastical, with no other eye than that of envy; among
whom must be many who, for the smallest hope of the meanest divi-
dend in plunder, would readily join in any attempts upon a body of
wealth, in which they could hardly look to have any share, except in
a general scramble. Instead of balancing the power of the active
chicaners in the other assembly, these curates must necessarily be-
come the active coadjutors, or at best the passive instruments, of
those by whom they had been habitually guided in their petty village
concerns. They too could hardly be the most conscientious of their
kind, who presuming upon their incompetent understanding, could
intrigue for a trust which led them from their natural relation to
their flocks, and their natural spheres of action, to undertake the re-
generation of kingdoms. This preponderating weight, being added
to the force of the body of chicane in the Tiers Etat, completed that
momentum of ignorance, rashness, presumption, and lust of plunder,
which nothing has been able to resist.

To observing men it must have appeared from the beginning, that
the majority of the Third Estate, in conjunction with such a deputa-
tion from the clergy as I have described, whilst it pursued the destruc-
tion of the nobility, would inevitably become subservient to the
worst designs of individuals in that class. In the spoil and humili-

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 1 85

ation of their own order these individuals would possess a sure fund
for the pay of their new followers. To squander away the objects
which made the happiness of their fellows, would be to them no
sacrifice at all. Turbulent, discontented men of quality, in proportion
as they are puffed up with personal pride and arrogance, generally
despise their own order. One of the first symptoms they discover of
a selfish and mischievous ambition, is a profligate disregard of a
dignity which they partake with others. To be attached to the sub-
division, to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first
principle (the germ as it were) of public affections. It is the first
link in the series by which we proceed towards a love to our country,
and to mankind. The interest of that portion of social arrangement
is a trust in the hands of all those who compose it; and as none but
bad men would justify it in abuse, none but traitors would barter it
away for their own personal advantage.

There were in the time of our civil troubles in England (I do not
know whether you have any such in your assembly in France) sev-
eral persons, like the then Earl of Holland, who by themselves or
their families had brought an odium on the throne, by the prodigal
dispensation of its bounties towards them, who afterwards joined in
the rebellions arising from the discontents of which they were them-
selves the cause; men who helped to subvert that throne to which
they owed, some of them, their existence, others all that power which
they employed to ruin their benefactor. If any bounds are set to
the rapacious demands of that sort of people, or that others are per-
mitted to partake in the objects they would engross, revenge and envy
soon fill up the craving void that is left in their avarice. Confounded
by the complication of distempered passions, their reason is dis-
turbed; their views become vast and perplexed; to others inex-
plicable; to themselves uncertain. They find, on all sides, bounds to
their unprincipled ambition in any fixed order of things. Both in
the fog and haze of confusion all is enlarged, and appears without
any limit.

When men of rank sacrifice all ideas of dignity to an ambition
without a distinct object, and work with low instruments and for
low ends, the whole composition becomes low and base. Does not

l86 EDMUND BURKE

something like this now appear in France? Does it not produce
something ignoble and inglorious? a kind of meanness in all the
prevalent policy ? a tendency in all that is done to lower along with
individuals all the dignity and importance of the state? Other revo-
lutions have been conducted by persons, who, whilst they attempted
or affected changes in the commonwealth, sanctified their ambition
by advancing the dignity of the people whose peace they troubled.
They had long views. They aimed at the rule, not at the destruction,
of their country. They were men of great civil, and great military
talents, and if the terror, the ornament of their age. They were not
like Jew brokers, contending with each other who could best remedy
with fraudulent circulation and depreciated paper the wretchedness
and ruin brought on their country by their degenerate councils. The
compliment made to one of the great bad men of the old stamp
(Cromwell) by his kinsman, a favourite poet of that time, shows
what it was he proposed, and what indeed to a great degree he
accomplished, in the success of his ambition:

"Still as you rise, the state, exalted too,
Finds no distemper whilst 'tis changed by you;
Changed like the world's great scene, when without noise
The rising sun night's vulgar lights destroys."

These disturbers were not so much like men usurping power,
as asserting their natural place in society. Their rising was to illu-
minate and beautify the world. Their conquest over their competi-
tors was by outshining them. The hand that, like a destroying angel,
smote the country, communicated to it the force and energy under
which it suffered. I do not say, (God forbid)-! do not say, that
the virtues of such men were to be taken as a balance to their crimes;
but they were some corrective to their effects. Such was, as I said,
our Cromwell. Such were your whole race of Guises, Condes, and
Colignis. Such the Richelieus, who in more quiet times acted in the
spirit of a civil war. Such, as better men, and in a less dubious cause,
were your Henry the Fourth and your Sully, though nursed in civil
confusions, and not wholly without some of their taint. It is a thing
to be wondered at, to see how very soon France, when she had a

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 187

moment to respire, recovered and emerged from the longest and
most dreadful civil war that ever was known in any nation. Why ?
Because among all their massacres, they had not slain the mind in
their country. A conscious dignity, a noble pride, a generous sense
of glory and emulation, was not extinguished. On the contrary, it
was kindled and inflamed. The organs also of the state, however
shattered, existed. All the prizes of honour and virtue, all the
rewards, all the distinctions remained. But your present confusion,
like a palsy, has attacked the fountain of life itself. Every person
in your country, in a situation to be actuated by a principle of hon-
our, is disgraced and degraded, and can entertain no sensation of
life, except in a mortified and humiliated indignation. But this gen-
eration will quickly pass away. The next generation of the nobility
will resemble the artificers and clowns, and money-jobbers, usurers,
and Jews, who will be always their fellows, sometimes their
masters.

Believe me. Sir, those who attempt to level, never equalise. In all
societies, consisting of various descriptions of citizens, some descrip-
tion must be uppermost. The levellers therefore only change and
pervert the natural order of things; they load the edifice of society,
by setting up in the air what the solidity of the structure requires to
be on the ground. The association of tailors and carpenters, of which
the republic (of Paris, for instance) is composed, cannot be equal to
the situation, into which, by the worst of usurpations, an usurpation
on the prerogatives of nature, you attempt to force them.

The Chancellor of France at the opening of the states, said, in a
tone of oratorical flourish, that all occupations were honourable. If
he meant only, that no honest employment was disgraceful, he would
not have gone beyond the truth. But in asserting that anything is
honourable, we imply some distinction in its favour. The occupation
of a hair-dresser, or of a working tallow-chandler, cannot be a matter
of honour to any person — to say nothing of a number of other more
servile employments. Such descriptions of men ought not to sujffer
oppression from the state; but the state suffers oppression, if such as
they, either individually or collectively are permitted to rule. In this

1 88 EDMUND BURKE

you think you are combating prejudice, but you are at war with
nature.'"

I do not, my dear Sir, conceive you to be of that sophistical, cap-
tious spirit, or of that uncandid dulness, as to require, for every
general observation or sentiment, an explicit detail of the correc-
tives and exceptions, which reason will presume to be included in all
the general propositions which come from reasonable men. You do
not imagine, that I wish to confine power, authority, and distinction
to blood, and names, and titles. No, Sir. There is no qualification for
government but virtue and wisdom, actual or presumptive. Wher-
ever they are actually found, they have, in whatever state, condi-
tion, profession, or trade, the passport of Heaven to human place and
honour. Woe to the country which would madly and impiously
reject the service of the talents and virtues, civil, military, or religious,
that are given to grace and to serve it; and would condemn to ob-
scurity everything formed to diffuse lustre and glory around a state!
Woe to that country too, that, passing into the opposite extreme,
considers a low education, a mean contracted view of things, a sordid,
mercenary occupation, as a preferable title to command! Everything
ought to be open; but not indifferently to every man. No rotation;
no appointment by lot; no mode of election operating in the spirit
of sortition, or rotation, can be generally good in a government con-
versant in extensive objects. Because they have no tendency, direct or
indirect, to select the man with a view to the duty, or to accommo-
date the one to the other. I do not hesitate to say, that the road to
eminence and power, from obscure condition, ought not to be made
too easy, nor a thing too much of course. If rare merit be the rarest

w Ecdesiasticus, chap, xxxviii. verses 24, 25. "The wisdom of a learned man
Cometh by opportunity of leisure; and he that hath little business shall become
wise." — "How can he get wisdom that holdeth the plough, and that glorieth in the
goad; that driveth oxen; and is occupied in their labouns; and whose talk is of
bullocks?"

Ver. 27. "So every carpenter and work-master that laboureth night and day," &c.

Ver. 33. "They shall not be sought for in public counsel, nor sit high in the
congregation: They shall not sit on the judge's seat, nor understand the ientence
of judgment; they cannot declare justice and judgment, and they shall not be found
where parables are spoken."

Ver. 34. "But they will maintain the state of the world."

I do not determine whether this book be canonical, as the Gallican church (till
lately) has considered it, or apocryphal, as here it is taken. I am sure it contains a
great deal of sense and truth.

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 1 89

o£ all rare things, it ought to pass through some sort of probation.
The temple of honour ought to be seated on an eminence. If it be
opened through virtue, let it be remembered too, that virtue is never
tried but by some difficulty and some struggle.

Nothing is a due and adequate representation of a state, that does
not represent its ability, as well as its property. But as ability is a
vigorous and active principle, and as property is sluggish, inert, and
timid, it never can be safe from the invasions of ability, unless it be,
out of all proportion, predominant in the representation. It must be
represented too in great masses of accumulation, or it is not rightly
protected. The characteristic essence of property, formed out of the
combined principles of its acquisition and conservation, is to be
unequal. The great masses therefore which excite envy, and tempt
rapacity, must be put out of the possibility of danger. Then they
form a natural rampart about the lesser properties in all their grada-
tions. The same quantity of property, which is by the natural
course of things divided among many, has not the same operation.
Its defensive power is weakened as it is diffused. In this diffusion
each man's portion is less than what, in the eagerness of his desires,
he may flatter himself to obtain by dissipating the accumulations of
others. The plunder of the few would indeed give but a share incon-
ceivably small in the distribution to the many. But the many are not
capable of making this calculation; and those who lead them to
rapine never intend this distribution.

The power of perpetuating our property in our families is one
of the most valuable and interesting circumstances belonging to it,
and that which tends the most to the perpetuation of society itself.
It makes our weakness subservient to our virtue; it grafts benevo-
lence even upon avarice. The possessors of family wealth, and of
the distinction which attends hereditary possession, (as most con-
cerned in it) are the natural securities for this transmission. With
us the House of Peers is formed upon this principle. It is wholly
composed of hereditary property and hereditary distinction; and
made therefore the third of the legislature; and, in the last event,
the sole judge of all property in all its subdivisions. The House of
Commons too, though not necessarily, yet in fact, is always so com-
posed, in the far greater part. Let those large proprietors be what

190 EDMUND BURKE

they will, and they have their chance of being amongst the best, they
are, at the very worst, the ballast in the vessel of the commonwealth.
For though hereditary wealth, and the rank which goes with it,
are too much idolized by creeping sycophants, and the blind, abject
admirers of power, they are too rashly slighted in shallow specula-
tions of the petulant, assuming, short-sighted coxcombs of philoso-
phy. Some decent, regulated pre-eminence, some preference (not
exclusive appropriation) given to birth, is neither unnatural, nor
unjust, nor impolitic.

It is said, that twenty-four millions ought to prevail over two
hundred thousand. True; if the constitution of a kingdom be a
problem of arithmetic. This sort of discourse does well enough with
the lamp-post for its second: to men who may reason calmly, it is
ridiculous. The will of the many, and their interest, must very often
differ; and great will be the difference when they make an evil
choice. A government of five hundred country attornies and obscure
curates is not good for twenty-four millions of men, though it were
chosen by eight and forty millions; nor is it the better for being
guided by a dozen of persons of quality, who have betrayed their
trust in order to obtain that power. At present, you seem in every-
thing to have strayed out of the high road of nature. The property
of France does not govern it. Of course property is destroyed, and
rational liberty has no existence. All you have got for the present is
a paper circulation, and a stock-jobbing constitution: and, as to the
future, do you seriously think that the territory of France, upon the
republican system of eighty-three independent municipalities, (to
say nothing of the parts that compose them) can ever be governed as
one body, or can ever be set in motion by the impulse of one mind.''
When the National Assembly has completed its work, it will have
accomplished its ruin. These commonwealths will not long bear a
state of subjection to the republic of Paris. They will not bear that
this one body should monopolize the captivity of the king, and
the dominion over the assembly calling itself National. Each will
keep its own portion of the spoil of the church to itself; and it will
not suffer either that spoil, or the more just fruits of their industry,
or the natural produce of their soil, to be sent to swell the insolence,
or pamper the luxury, of the mechanics of Paris. In this they will see

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE I9I

none of the equality, under the pretence o£ which they have been
tempted to throw off their allegiance to their sovereign, as well as
the ancient constitution of their country. There can be no capital
city in such a constitution as they have lately made. They have for-
got, that when they framed democratic governments, they had vir-
tually dismembered their country. The person, whom they persevere
in calling king, has not power left to him by the hundredth part
sufficient to hold together this collection of republics. The republic
of Paris will endeavour indeed to complete the debauchery of the
army, and illegally to perpetuate the assembly, without resort to its
constituents, as the means of continuing its despotism. It will make
efforts, by becoming the heart of a boundless paper circulation, to
draw everything to itself; but in vain. All this policy in the end will
appear as feeble as it is now violent.

If this be your actual situation, compared to the situation to which
you were called, as it were by the voice of God and man, I cannot
find it in my heart to congratulate you on the choice you have made,
or the success which has attended your endeavours. I can as litde
recommend to any other nation a conduct grounded on such prin-
ciples, and productive of such effects. That I must leave to those who
can see farther into your affairs than I am able to do, and who best
know how far your actions are favourable to their designs. The
gentlemen of the Revolution Society, who were so early in their con-
gratulations, appear to be strongly of opinion that there is some
scheme of politics relative to this country in which your proceedings
may, in some way, be useful. For your Dr. Price, who seems to have
speculated himself into no small degree of fervour upon this sub-
ject, addresses his auditory in the following very remarkable words:
"I cannot conclude without recalling particularly to your recollec-
tion a consideration which I have more than once alluded to, and
which probably your thoughts have been all along anticipating; a
consideration with which my mind is impressed more than I can
express. I mean the consideration of the favourableness of the pres-
ent times to all exertions in the cause of liberty!'

It is plain that the mind of this political Preacher was at the time
big with some extraordinary design; and it is very probable that the

192 EDMUND BURKE

thoughts of his audience, who understood him better than I do, did
all along run before him in his reflection, and in the whole train of
consequences to which it led.

Before I read that sermon, I really thought I had lived in a free
country; and it was an error I cherished, because it gave me a greater
liking to the country I lived in. I was indeed, aware, that a jealous,
ever-waking vigilance, to guard the treasure of our liberty, not only
from invasion, but from decay and corruption, was our best wis-
dom, and our first duty. However, I considered that treasure rather
as a possession to be secured, than as a prize to be contended for.
I did not discern how the present time came to be so very favourable
to all exertions in the cause of freedom. The present time differs
from any other only by the circumstance of what is doing in France.
If the example of that nation is to have an influence on this, I can
easily conceive why some of their proceedings which have an un-
pleasant aspect, and are not quite reconcilable to humanity, gener-
osity, good faith, and justice, are palliated with so much milky good-
nature towards the actors, and borne with so much heroic fortitude
towards the sufferers. It is certainly not prudent to discredit the
authority of an example we mean to follow. But allowing this, we
are led to a very natural question; — What is that cause of liberty,
and what are those exertions in its favour, to which the example of
France is so singularly auspicious? Is our monarchy to be annihi-
lated, with all the laws, all the tribunals, and all the ancient corpo-
rations of the kingdom? Is every land-mark of the country to be
done away in favour of a geometrical and arithmetical constitution ?
Is the House of Lords to be voted useless? Is episcopacy to be abol-
ished? Are the church lands to be sold to Jews and jobbers; or given
to bribe new-invented municipal republics into a participation in
sacrilege? Are all the taxes to be voted grievances, and the revenue
reduced to a patriotic contribution, or patriotic presents? Are silver
shoe^buckles to be substituted in the place of the land tax and the
malt tax, for the support of the naval strength of this kingdom ? Are
all orders, ranks, and distinctions to be confounded, that out of uni-
versal anarchy, joined to national bankruptcy, three or four thousand
democracies should be formed into eighty-three, and that they may
all, by some sort of unknown attractive power, be organized into

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 1 93

one ? For this great end is the army to be seduced from its discipline
and its fidelity, first by every kind of debauchery, and then by the
terrible precedent of a donative in the increase of pay? Are the
curates to be seduced from their bishops, by holding out to them
the delusive hope of a dole out of the spoils of their own order?
Are the citizens of London to be drawn from their allegiance by feed-
ing them at the expense of their fellow-subjects? Is a compulsory
paper currency to be substituted in the place of the legal coin of this
kingdom ? Is what remains of the plundered stock of public revenue
to be employed in the wild project of maintaining two armies to
watch over and to fight with each other? If these are the ends and
means of the Revolution Society, I admit that they are well assorted;
and France may furnish them for both with precedents in point.

I see that your example is held out to shame us. I know that we
are supposed a dull, sluggish race, rendered passive by finding our
situation tolerable, and prevented by a mediocrity of freedom from
ever attaining to its full perfection. Your leaders in France began by
affecting to admire, almost to adore, the British constitution; but as
they advanced, they came to look upon it with a sovereign contempt.
The friends of your National Assembly amongst us have full as
mean an opinion of what was formerly thought the glory of their
country. The Revolution Society has discovered that the English
nation is not free. They are convinced that the inequality in our
representation is a "defect in our constitution so gross and palpable,
as to make it excellent chiefly in form and theory}^" That a repre-
sentation in the legislature of a kingdom is not only the basis of
all constitutional liberty in it, but of "all legitimate government; that
without it a government is nothing but an usurpation;" — that "when
the representation is partial, the kingdom possesses liberty only par-
tially; and if extremely partial, it gives only a semblance; and if not
only extremely partial, but corruptly chosen, it becomes a nuisance."
Dr. Price considers this inadequacy of representation as our funda-
mental grievance; and though, as to the corruption of this sem-
blance of representation, he hopes it is not yet arrived to its full per-
fection of depravity, he fears that "nothing will be done towards
gaining for us this essential blessing, until some great abuse of power

''Discourse on the Love of our Country, 3rd edit. p. 39.

194 EDMUND BURKE

again provokes our resentment, or some great calamity again alarms
our fears, or perhaps till the acquisition o£ a pure and equal represen-
tation by other countries, whilst we are moched with the shadow,
kindles our shame." To this he subjoins a note in these words: "A
representation chosen chiefly by the Treasury, and a few thousands
of the dregs of the people, who are generally paid for their votes."

You will smile here at the consistency of those democratists, who,
when they are not on their guard, treat the humbler part of the com-
munity with the greatest contempt, whilst, at the same time, they
pretend to make them the depositories of all power. It would re-
quire a long discourse to point out to you the many fallacies that
lurk in the generality and equivocal nature of the terms "inadequate
representation." I shall only say here, in justice to that old-fashioned
constitution, under which we have long prospered, that our repre-
sentation has been found perfectly adequate to all the purposes for
which a representation of the people can be desired or devised. I
defy the enemies of our constitution to show the contrary. To detail
the particulars in which it is found so well to promote its ends, would
demand a treatise on our practical constitution. I state here the doc-
trine of the Revolutionists, only that you and others may see what
an opinion these gentlemen entertain of the constitution of their
country, and why they seem to think that some great abuse of power,
or some great calamity, as giving a chance for the blessing of a
constitution according to their ideas, would be much palliated to
their feelings; you see why they are so much enamoured of your
fair and equal representation, which being once obtained, the same
effects might follow. You see they consider our House of Commons
as only "a semblance," "a form," "a theory," "a shadow," "a mock-
ery," perhaps "a nuisance."

These gentlemen value themselves on being systematic; and not
without reason. They must therefore look on this gross and palpable
defect of representation, this fundamental grievance, (so they call
it,) as a thing not only vicious in itself, but as rendering our whole
government absolutely illegitimate, and not at all better than a down-
right usurpation. Another revolution, to get rid of this illegitimate
and usurped government, would of course be perfectly justifiable,
if not absolutely necessary. Indeed their principle, if you observe it

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 1 95

with any attention, goes much further than to an akeration in the
election of the House of Commons; for, if popular representation, or
choice, is necessary to the legitimacy of all government, the House
of Lords is, at one stroke, bastardized and corrupted in blood. That
House is no representative of the people at all, even in "semblance
or in form." The case of the crown is altogether as bad. In vain the
crown may endeavour to screen itself against these gentlemen by the
authority of the establishment made on the Revolution. The Revo-
lution which is resorted to for a title, on their system, wants a tide
itself. The Revolution is built, according to their theory, upon a basis
not more solid than our present formalities, as it was made by a
House of Lords, not representing any one but themselves; and by a
House of Commons exactly such as the present, that is, as they term
it, by a mere "shadow and mockery" of representation.

Something they must destroy, or they seem to themselves to exist
for no purpose. One set is for destroying the civil power through the
ecclesiastical; another, for demolishing the ecclesiastic through the
civil. They are aware that the worst consequences might happen to
the public in accomplishing this double ruin of church and state;
but they are so heated with their theories, that they give more than
hints, that this ruin, with all the mischiefs that must lead to it and
attend it, and which to themselves appear quite certain, would not be
unacceptable to them, or very remote from their wishes. A man
amongst them of great authority, and certainly of great talents,
speaking of a supposed alliance between church and state says, "per-
haps we must wait for the fall of the civil powers before this most
unnatural alliance be broken. Calamitous no doubt will that time be.
But what convulsion in the political world ought to be a subject of
lamentation, if it be attended with so desirable an effect?" You see
with what a steady eye these gentlemen are prepared to view the
greatest calamities which can befall their country.

It is no wonder therefore, that with these ideas of everything in
their constitution and government at home, either in church or state,
as illegitimate and usurped, or at best as a vain mockery, they look
abroad with an eager and passionate enthusiasm. Whilst they are
possessed by these notions, it is vain to talk to them of the practice
of their ancestors, the fundamental laws of their country, the fixed

196 EDMUND BURKE

form of a constitution, whose merits are confirmed by the soHd test
of long experience, and an increasing pubUc strength and national
prosperity. They despise experience as the wisdom of unlettered
men; and as for the rest, they have wrought under-ground a mine
that will blow up, at one grand explosion, all examples of antiquity,
all precedents, charters, and acts of parliament. They have "the rights
of men." Against these there can be no prescription; against these no
agreement is binding: these admit no temperament, and no com-
promise: anything withheld from their full demand is so much of
fraud and injustice. Against these their rights of men let no gov-
ernment look for security in the length of its continuance, or in the
justice and lenity of its administration. The objections of these specu-
latists, if its forms do not quadrate with their theories, are as valid
against such an old and beneficent government, as against the most
violent tyranny, or the greenest usurpation. They are always at issue
with governments, not on a question of abuse, but a question of com-
petency, and a question of title. I have nothing to say to the clumsy
subtilty of their political metaphysics. Let them be their amusement
in the schools. — "Ilia se jactat in aula — /Eolus, et clauso ventorum
carcere regnet." — But let them not break prison to burst like a
Levanter, to sweep the earth with their hurricane, and to break up
the fountains of the great deep to overwhelm us.

Far am I from denying in theory, full as far is my heart from
withholding in practice, (if I were of power to give or to withhold,)
the real rights of men. In denying their false claims of right, I
do not mean to injure those which are real, and are such as their pre-
tended rights would totally destroy. If civil society be made for the
advantage of man, all the advantages for which it is made become his
right. It is an institution of beneficence; and law itself is only benefi-
cence acting by a rule. Men have a right to live by that rule; they
have a right to do justice, as between their fellows, whether their
fellows are in public function or in ordinary occupation. They have
a right to the fruits of their industry; and to the means of making
their industry fruitful. They have a right to the acquisitions of
their parents; to the nourishment and improvement of their off-
spring; to instruction in life, and to consolation in death. Whatever
each man can separately do, without trespassing upon others, he

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE I97

has a right to do for himself; and he has a right to a fair portion
of all which society, with all its combinations of skill and force, can
do in his favour. In this partnership all men have equal rights; but
not to equal things. He that has but five shillings in the partner-
ship, has as good a right to it, as he that has five hundred pounds
has to his larger proportion. But he has not a right to an equal
dividend in the product of the joint stock; and as to the share of
power, authority, and direction which each individual ought to have
in the management of the state, that I must deny to be amongst
the direct original rights of man in civil society; for I have in my
contemplation the civil social man, and no other. It is a thing to be
settled by convention.

If civil society be the offspring of convention, that convention must
be its law. That convention must limit and modify all the descrip-
tions of constitution which are formed under it. Every sort of legis-
lative, judicial, or executory power are its creatures. They can
have no being in any other state of things; and how can any man
claim under the conventions of civil society, rights which do not so
much as suppose its existence ? rights which are absolutely repugnant
to it? One of the first motives to civil society, and which becomes
one of its fundamental rules, is, that no man should be judge in his
own cause. By this each person has at once divested himself of the
first fundamental right of uncovenanted man, that is, to judge for
himself, and to assert his own cause. He abdicates all right to be his
own governor. He inclusively, in a great measure, abandons the
right of self-defence, the first law of nature. Men cannot enjoy the
rights of an uncivil and of a civil state together. That he may obtain
justice, he gives up his right of determining what it is in points the
most essential to him. That he may secure some liberty, he makes
a surrender in trust of the whole of it.

Government is not made in virtue of natural rights, which may
and do exist in total independence of it; and exist in much greater
clearness, and in a much greater degree of abstract perfection: but
their abstract perfection is their practical defect. By having a right to
everything they want everything. Government is a contrivance of
human wisdom to provide for human wants. Men have a right that
these wants should be provided for by this wisdom. Among these

198 EDMUND BURKE

wants is to be reckoned the want, out of civil society, of a sufficient
restraint upon their passions. Society requires not only that the
passions of individuals should be subjected, but that even in the
mass and body, as well as in the individuals, the inclinations of men
should frequently be thwarted, their will controlled, and their pas-
sions brought into subjection. This can only be done by a power out
of themselves; and not, in the exercise of its function, subject to that
will and to those passions which it is its office to bridle and subdue.
In this sense the restraints on men, as well as their liberties, are to
be reckoned among their rights. But as the liberties and the restric-
tions vary with times and circumstances, and admit of infinite modi-
fications, they cannot be settled upon any abstract rule; and nothing
is so foolish as to discuss them upon that principle.

The moment you abate anything from the full rights of men, each
to govern himself, and suffer any artificial, positive limitation upon
those rights, from that moment the whole organization of govern-
ment becomes a consideration of convenience. This it is which
makes the constitution of a state, and the due distribution of its
powers, a matter of the most delicate and complicated skill. It re-
quires a deep knowledge of human nature and human necessities,
and of the things which facilitate or obstruct the various ends, which
are to be pursued by the mechanism of civil institutions. The state
is to have recruits to its strength, and remedies to its distempers.
What is the use of discussing a man's abstract right to food or medi-
cine ? The question is upon the method of procuring and administer-
ing them. In that deliberation I shall always advise to call in the aid
of the farmer and the physician, rather than the professor of meta-
physics.

The science of constructing a commonwealth, or renovating it, or
reforming it, is, like every other experimental science, not to be
taught h priori. Nor is it a short experience that can instruct us in
that practical science: because the real effects of moral causes are not
always immediate; but that which in the first instance is prejudicial
may be excellent in its remoter operation; and its excellence may
arise even from the ill effects it produces in the beginning. The re-
verse also happens: and very plausible schemes, with very pleasing
commencements, have often shameful and lamentable conclusions.

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 1 99

In states there are often some obscure and almost latent causes, things
which appear at first view of little moment, on which a very great
part of its prosperity or adversity may most essentially depend. The
science of government being therefore so practical in itself, and in-
tended for such practical purposes, a matter which requires experi-
ence, and even more experience than any person can gain in his
whole life, however sagacious and observing he may be, it is with
infinite caution that any man ought to venture upon pulling down
an edifice, which has answered in any tolerable degree for ages the
common purposes of society, or on building it up again, without
having models and patterns of approved utility before his eyes.

These metaphysic rights entering into common life, like rays of
light which pierce into a dense medium, are, by the laws of nature,
refracted from their straight line. Indeed in the gross and compli-
cated mass of human passions and concerns, the primitive rights of
men undergo such a variety of refractions and reflections, that it
becomes absurd to talk of them as if they continued in the simplicity
of their original direction. The nature of man is intricate; the objects
of society are of the greatest possible complexity: and therefore no
simple disposition or direction of power can be suitable either to
man's nature, or to the quality of his affairs. When I hear the
simplicity of contrivance aimed at and boasted of in any new political
constitutions, I am at no loss to decide that the artificers are grossly
ignorant of their trade, or totally negligent of their duty. The simple
governments are fundamentally defective, to say no worse of them.
If you were to contemplate society in but one point of view, all these
simple modes of polity are infinitely captivating. In effect each
would answer its single end much more perfectly than the more com-
plex is able to attain all its complex purposes. But it is better that
the whole should be imperfectly and anomalously answered, than
that, while some parts are provided for with great exactness, others
might be totally neglected, or perhaps materially injured, by the over-
care of a favourite member.

The pretended rights of these theorists are all extremes: and in
proportion as they are metaphysically true, they are morally and
politically false. The rights of men are in a sort of middle, incapable
of definition, but not impossible to be discerned. The rights of men

200 EDMUND BURKE

in governments are their advantages; and these are often in balances
between differences of good; in compromises sometimes between
good and evil, and sometimes between evil and evil. Political reason
is a computing principle; adding, subtracting, multiplying, and divid-
ing, morally and not metaphysically, or mathematically, true moral
denominations.

By these theorists the right of the people is almost always sophisti-
cally confounded with their power. The body of the community,
whenever it can come to act, can meet with no effectual resistance;
but till power and right are the same, the whole body of them has no
right inconsistent with virtue, and the first of all virtues, prudence.
Men have no right to what is not reasonable, and to what is not for
their benefit; for though a pleasant writer said, Liceat perire poetis,
when one of them, in cold blood, is said to have leaped into the
flames of a volcanic revolution, Ardentem frigidus Aitnam insiluit,
I consider such a frolic rather as an unjustifiable poetic license, than
as one of the franchises of Parnassus; and whether he was a poet, or
divine, or politician, that chose to exercise this kind of right, I think
that more wise, because more charitable, thoughts would urge me
rather to save the man than to preserve his brazen slippers as the
monuments of his folly.

The kind of anniversary sermons to which a great part of what I
write refers, if men are not shamed out of their present course, in
commemorating the fact, will cheat many out of the principles, and
deprive them of the benefits, of the revolution they commemorate.
I confess to you. Sir, I never liked this continual talk of resistance,
and revolution, or the practice of making the extreme medicine of
the constitution its daily bread. It renders the habit of society dan-
gerously valetudinary: it is taking periodical doses of mercury
sublimate, and swallowing down repeated provocatives of canthar-
ides to our love of liberty.

This distemper of remedy, grown habitual, relaxes and wears out,
by a vulgar and prostituted use, the spring of that spirit which is to
be exerted on great occasions. It was in the most patient period of
Roman servitude that themes of tyrannicide made the ordinary ex-
ercise of boys at school — cttm perimit scevos classis numerosa tyran-
nos. In the ordinary state of things, it produces in a country like

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 201

ours the worst eflfects, even on the cause of that liberty which it
abuses with the dissoluteness of an extravagant speculation. Almost
all the high-bred republicans of my time have, after a short space,
become the most decided, thorough-paced courtiers; they soon left
the business of a tedious, moderate, but practical resistance, to those
of us whom, in the pride and intoxication of their theories, they have
slighted as not much better than Tories. Hypocrisy, of course, de-
lights in the most sublime speculations; for, never intending to go
beyond speculation, it costs nothing to have it magnificent. But
even in cases where rather levity than fraud was to be suspected in
these ranting speculations, the issue has been much the same. These
professors, finding their extreme principles not applicable to cases
which call only for a qualified, or, as I may say, civil and legal resis-
tance, in such cases employ no resistance at all. It is with them a war
or a revolution, or it is nothing. Finding their schemes of politics
not adapted to the state of the world in which they live, they often
come to think lightly of all public principle; and are ready, on their
part, to abandon for a very trivial interest what they find of very
trivial value. Some indeed are of more steady and persevering na-
tures; but these are eager politicians out of parliament, who have
little to tempt them to abandon their favourite projects. They have
some change in the church or state, or both, constantly in their view.
When that is the case, they are always bad citizens, and perfectly
unsure connexions. For, considering their speculative designs as of
infinite value, and the actual arrangement of the state as of no esti-
mation, they are at best indifferent about it. They see no merit in
the good, and no fault in the vicious, management of public affairs;
they rather rejoice in the latter, as more propitious to revolution.
They see no merit or demerit in any man, or any action, or any
political principle, any further than as they may forward or retard
their design of change: they therefore take up, one day, the most
violent and stretched prerogative, and another time the wildest
democratic ideas of freedom, and pass from one to the other without
any sort or regard to cause, to person, or to party.

In France you are now in the crisis of a revolution, and in the
transit from one form of government to another — you cannot see
that character of men exacdy in the same situation in which we see

202 EDMUND BURKE

it in this country. With us it is militant; with you it is triumphant;
and you know how it can act when its power is commensurate to its
will. I would not be supposed to confine those observations to any
description of men, or to comprehend all men of any description
within them — No! far from it. I am as incapable of that injustice,
as I am of keeping terms with those who profess principles of ex-
tremities; and who, under the name of religion, teach little else than
wild and dangerous politics. The worst of these politics of revolution
is this: they temper and harden the breast, in order to prepare it for
the desperate strokes which are sometimes used in extreme occasions.
But as these occasions may never arrive, the mind receives a gratu-
itous taint; and the moral sentiments suffer not a little, when no
political purpose is served by the depravation. This sort of people are
so taken up with their theories about the rights of man, that they
have totally forgotten his nature. Without opening one new avenue
to the understanding, they have succeeded in stopping up those that
lead to the heart. They have perverted in themselves, and in those
that attend to them, all the well-placed sympathies of the human
breast.

This famous sermon of the Old Jewry breathes nothing but this
spirit through all the political part. Plots, massacres, assassinations,
seem to some people a trivial price for obtaining a revolution. Cheap,
bloodless reformation, a guiltless liberty, appear flat and vapid to
their taste. There must be a great change of scene; there must be a
magnificent stage effect; there must be a grand spectacle to rouse
the imagination, grown torpid with the lazy enjoyment of sixty
years' security and the still unanimating repose of public prosperity.
The preacher found them all in the French Revolution. This in-
spires a juvenile warmth through his whole frame. His enthusi-
asm kindles as he advances; and when he arrives at his peroration
it is in a full blaze. Then viewing, from the Pisgah of his pulpit, the
free, moral, happy, flourishing and glorious state of France, as in a
bird's-eye landscape of a promised land, he breaks out into the fol-
lowing rapture:

"What an eventful period is this! I am thankful that I have lived
to it; I could almost say. Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart
in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation. — I have lived to see

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 203

a diffusion of knowledge, which has undermined superstition and
error. — I have lived to see the rights of men better understood than
ever; and nations panting for liberty which seemed to have lost the
idea of it. — I have lived to see Thirty Millions of People, indignant
and resolute, spurning at slavery, and demanding liberty with an
irresistible voice. Their \ing led in triumph and an arbitrary mon-
arch surrendering himself to his subjects}^"

Before I proceed further, I have to remark, that Dr. Price seems
rather to overvalue the great acquisitions of light which he has ob-
tained and diffused in this age. The last century appears to me to
have been quite as much enlightened. It had, though in a different
place, a triumph as memorable as that of Dr. Price; and some of the
great preachers of that period partook of it as eagerly as he has done
in the triumph of France. On the trial of the Rev. Hugh Peters for
high treason, it was deposed, that when King Charles was brought
to London for his trial, the Aposde of Liberty in that day conducted
the triumph. "I saw," says the witness, "his Majesty in the coach
with six horses, and Peters riding before the king, triumphing." Dr.
Price, when he talks as if he had made a discovery, only follows a
precedent; for, after the commencement of the king's trial, this
precursor, the same Dr. Peters, concluding a long prayer at the
Royal Chapel at Whitehall, (he had very triumphantly chosen his
place) said, "I have prayed and preached these twenty years; and now
I may say with old Simeon, Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart
in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation}^" Peters had not
the fruits of his prayer; for he neither departed so soon as he wished,
nor in peace. He became (what I heartily hope none of his followers
may be in this country) himself a sacrifice to the triumph which he
led as pontiff.

They dealt at the Restoration, perhaps, too hardly with this poor
good man. But we owe it to his memory and his sufferings, that he
had as much illumination, and as much zeal, and had as effectually

'^ Another of these reverend gentlemen, who was witness to some o£ the spectacles
which Paris has lately exhibited, expresses himself thus: — "A king dragged in sub-
missive triumph by his conquering subjects, is one of those appearances of grandeur
which seldom rise in the prospect of human aflairs, and which, during the remainder
of my life, I shall think of with wonder and gratification." These gentlemen agree
marvellously in their feelings. " State Trials, vol. ii. p. 360, p. 363.

204 EDMUND BURKE

undermined all the superstition and error which might impede the
great business he was engaged in, as any who follow and repeat
after him, in this age, which would assume to itself an exclusive title
to the knowledge of the rights of men, and all the glorious conse-
quences of that knowledge.

After this sally of the preacher of the Old Jewry, which differs
only in place and time, but agrees perfectly with the spirit and let-
ter of the rapture of 1648, the Revolution Society, the fabricators of
governments, the heroic band of cashierers of monarchs, electors of
sovereigns, and leaders of kings in triumph, strutting with a proud
consciousness of the diffusion of knowledge, of which every mem-
ber had obtained so large a share in the donative, were in haste to
make a general diffusion of the knowledge they had thus gratui-
tously received. To make this bountiful communication, they ad-
journed from the church in the Old Jewry to the London Tavern;
where the same Dr. Price, in whom the fumes of his oracular tripod
were not entirely evaporated, moved and carried the resolution, or
address of congratulation transmitted by Lord Stanhope to the Na-
tional Assembly of France.

I find a preacher of the gospel profaning the beautiful and pro-
phetic ejaculation, commonly called "nunc dimittis," made on the
first presentation of our Saviour in the Temple, and applying it, with
an inhuman and unnatural rapture, to the most horrid, atrocious,
and afflicting spectacle that perhaps ever was exhibited to the pity and
indignation of mankind. This "leading in triumph," a thing in its
best form unmanly and irreligious, which fills our preacher with
such unhallowed transports, must shock, I believe, the moral taste
of every well-born mind. Several English were the stupefied and
indignant spectators of that triumph. It was (unless we have been
strangely deceived) a spectacle more resembling a procession of
American savages, entering into Onondaga, after some of their mur-
ders called victories, and leading into hovels hung round with scalps,
their captives, overpowered with the scoffs and buffets of women as
ferocious as themselves, much more than it resembled the triumphal
pomp of a civilized, martial nation — if a civilized nation, or any men
who had a sense of generosity, were capable of a personal triumph
over the fallen and afflicted.

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 205

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

With a compelled appearance of deliberation, they vote under the
dominion of a stern necessity. They sit in the heart, as it were, of a
foreign republic: they have their residence in a city whose constitu-
tion has emanated neither from the charter of their king, nor from
their legislative power. There they are surrounded by an army not
raised either by the authority of their crown, or by their command;
and which, if they should order to dissolve itself, would instantly
dissolve them. There they sit, after a gang of assassins had driven
away some hundreds of the members; whilst those who held the
same moderate principles, with more patience or better hope, con-
tinued every day exposed to outrageous insults and murderous
threats. There a majority, sometimes real, sometimes pretended, cap-
tive itself, compels a captive king to issue as royal edicts, at third
hand, the polluted nonsense of their most licentious and giddy coffee-
houses. It is notorious, that all their measures are decided before
they are debated. It is beyond doubt, that under the terror of the
bayonet, and the lamp-post, and the torch to their houses, they are
obliged to adopt all the crude and desperate measures suggested by
clubs composed of a monstrous medley of all conditions, tongues, and
nations. Among these are found persons, in comparison of whom
Catiline would be thought scrupulous, and Cethegus a man of
sobriety and moderation. Nor is it in these clubs alone that the pub-
lic measures are deformed into monsters. They undergo a previous
distortion in academies, intended as so many seminaries for these
clubs, which are set up in all the places of public resort. In these
meetings of all sorts, every counsel, in proportion as it is daring, and
violent, and perfidious, is taken for the mark of superior genius.
Humanity and compassion are ridiculed as the fruits of superstition

206 EDMUND BURKE

and ignorance. Tenderness to individuals is considered as treason
to the public. Liberty is always to be estimated perfect as property
is rendered insecure. Amidst assassination, massacre, and confisca-
tion, perpetrated or meditated, they are forming plans for the good
order of future society. Embracing in their arms the carcases of base
criminals, and promoting their relations on the title of their offences,
they drive hundreds of virtuous persons to the same end, by forcing
them to subsist by beggary or by crime.

The assembly, their organ, acts before them the farce of delibera-
tion with as little decency as liberty. They act like the comedians of
a fair before a riotous audience; they act amidst the tumultuous cries
of a mixed mob of ferocious men, and of women lost to shame, who,
according to their insolent fancies, direct, control, applaud, explode
them; and sometimes mix and take their seats amongst them;
domineering over them with a strange mixture of servile petulance
and proud, presumptuous authority. As they have inverted order in
all things, the gallery is in the place of the house. This assembly,
which overthrows kings and kingdoms, has not even the physi-
ognomy and aspect of a grave legislative body — nee color imperii,
nee frons ulla senates. They have a power given to them, like that
of the evil principle, to subvert and destroy; but none to construct,
except such machines as may be fitted for further subversion and
further destruction.

Who is it that admires, and from the heart is attached to, national
representative assemblies, but must turn with horror and disgust
from such a profane burlesque, and abominable perversion of that
sacred institute? Lovers of monarchy, lovers of republics, must
alike abhor it. The members of your assembly must themselves
groan under the tyranny of which they have all the shame, none of
the direction, and little of the profit. I am sure many of the members
who compose even the majority of that body must feel as I do, not-
withstanding the applauses of the Revolution Society. Miserable
king! miserable assembly! How must that assembly be silently scan-
dalized with those of their members, who could call a day which
seemed to blot the sun out of heaven, "un beau jottr!^*" How must
they be inwardly indignant at hearing others, who thought fit to
" 6th of October, 1789.

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 10']

declare to them, "that the vessel of the state woxild fly forward in
her course towards regeneration with more speed than ever," from
the stiff gale of treason and murder, which preceded our preacher's
triumph! What must they have felt, whilst, with outward patience,
and inward indignation, they heard of the slaughter of innocent
gentlemen in their houses, that "the blood spilled was not the most
pure!" What must they have felt, when they were besieged by com-
plaints of disorders which shook their country to its foundations, at
being compelled coolly to tell the complainants, that they were
under the protection of the law, and that they would address the
king (the captive king) to cause the laws to be enforced for their
protection; when the enslaved ministers of that captive king had
formally notified to them, that there were neither law, nor authority,
nor power left to protect! What must they have felt at being obliged,
as a felicitation on the present new year, to request their captive
king to forget the stormy period of the last, on account of the great
good which he was likely to produce to his people; to the complete
attainment of which good they adjourned the practical demonstra-
tions of their loyalty, assuring him of their obedience, when he
should no longer possess any authority to command!

This address was made with much good nature and affection, to
be sure. But among the revolutions in France must be reckoned a
considerable revolution in their ideas of politeness. In England we
are said to learn manners at second-hand from your side of the water,
and that we dress our behaviour in the frippery of France. If so, we
are still in the old cut; and have not so far conformed to the new
Parisian mode of good breeding, as to think it quite in the most re-
fined strain of delicate compliment (whether in condolence or
congratulation) to say, to the most humiliated creature that crawls
upon the earth, that great public benefits are derived from the mur-
der of his servants, the attempted assassination of himself and of his
wife, and the mortification, disgrace, and degradation, that he has
personally suffered. It is a topic of consolation which our ordinary
of Newgate would be too humane to use to a criminal at the foot
of the gallows. I should have thought that the hangman of Paris,
now that he is liberalized by the vote of the National Assembly, and
is allowed his rank and arms in the herald's college of the rights of

208 EDMUND BURKE

men, would be too generous, too gallant a man, too full of the sense
of his new dignity, to employ that cutting consolation to any of the
persons whom the leze nation might bring under the administra-
tion of his executive powers.

A man is fallen indeed, when he is thus flattered. The anodyne
draught of oblivion, thus drugged, is well calculated to preserve a
galling wakefulness, and to feed the living ulcer of a corroding mem-
ory. Thus to administer the opiate potion of amnesty, powdered
with all the ingredients of scorn and contempt, is to hold to his lips,
instead of "the balm of hurt minds," the cup of human misery full
to the brim, and to force him to drink it to the dregs.

Yielding to reasons, at least as forcible as those which were so
delicately urged in the compliment on the new year, the king of
France will probably endeavour to forget these events and that com-
pliment. But history, who keeps a durable record of all our acts,
and exercises her awful censure over the proceedings of all sorts of
sovereigns, will not forget either those events, or the era of this
liberal refinement in the intercourse of mankind. History will re-
cord, that on the morning of the 6th of October, 1789, the king and
queen of France, after .a day of confusion, alarm, dismay, and
slaughter, lay down, under the pledged security of public faith, to
indulge nature in a few hours of respite, and troubled, melancholy
repose. From this sleep the queen was first startled by the voice of
the sentinel at her door, who cried out to her to save herself by
flight — that this was the last proof of fidelity he could give — that they
were upon him, and he was dead. Instantly he was cut down. A
band of cruel ruffians and assassins, reeking with his blood, rushed
into the chamber of the queen, and pierced with a hundred strokes
of bayonets and poniards the bed, from whence this persecuted
woman had but just time to fly almost naked, and, through ways
unknown to the murderers, had escaped to seek refuge at the feet
of a king and husband, not secure of his own life for a moment.

This king, to say no more of him, and this queen, and their infant
children, (who once would have been the pride and hope of a great
and generous people,) were then forced to abandon the sanctuary
of the most splendid palace in the world, which they left swimming
in blood, polluted by massacre, and strewed with scattered limbs and

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 2O9

mutilated carcases. Thence they were conducted into the capital of
their kingdom.

Two had been selected from the unprovoked, unresisted, promis-
cuous slaughter, which was made of the gentlemen of birth and
family who composed the king's body guard. These two gendemen,
with all the parade of an execution of justice, were cruelly and pub-
licly dragged to the block, and beheaded in the great court of the
palace. Their heads were stuck upon spears, and led the procession;
whilst the royal captives who followed in the train were slowly
moved along, amidst the horrid yells, and shrilling screams, and
frantic dances, and infamous contumelies, and all the unutterable
abominations of the furies of hell, in the abused shape of the vilest
of women.

After they had been made to taste, drop by drop, more than the
bitterness of death, in the slow torture of a journey of twelve miles,
protracted to six hours, they were, under a guard, composed of those
very soldiers who had thus conducted them through this famous
triumph, lodged in one of the old palaces of Paris, now converted
into a bastile for kings.

Is this a triumph to be consecrated at altars? to be commemo-
rated with grateful thanksgiving? to be offered to the divine human-
ity with fervent prayer and enthusiastic ejaculation? — These Theban
and Thracian orgies, acted in France, and applauded only in the
Old Jewry, I assure you, kindle prophetic enthusiasm in the minds
but of very few people in this kingdom: although a saint and apostle,
who may have revelations of his own, and who has so completely
vanquished all the mean superstitions of the heart, may incline to
think it pious and decorous to compare it with the entrance into
the world of the Prince of Peace, proclaimed in a holy temple by a
venerable sage, and not long before not worse announced by the
voice of angels to the quiet innocence of shepherds.

At first I was at a loss to account for this fit of unguarded trans-
port. I knew, indeed, that the sufferings of monarchs make a deli-
cious repast to some sort of palates. There were reflections which
might serve to keep this appetite within some bounds of temper-
ance. But when I took one circumstance into my consideration, I
was obliged to confess, that much allowance ought to be made for

210 EDMUND BURKE

the society, and that the temptation was too strong for common dis-
cretion ; I mean, the circumstance of the lo Pcean of the triumph, the
animating cry which called "for all the BISHOPS to be hanged on
the lamp-posts,''^ " might well have brought forth a burst of enthusi-
asm on the foreseen consequences of this happy day. I allow to so
much enthusiasm some little deviation from prudence. I allow this
prophet to break forth into hymns of joy and thanksgiving on an
event which appears like the precursor of the Millenium, and the pro-
jected fifth monarchy, in the destruction of all church establishments.
There was, however, (as in all human affairs there is) in the midst
of this joy, something to exercise the patience of these worthy gentle-
men, and to try the long-suffering of their faith. The actual murder
of the king and queen, and their child, was wanting to the other
auspicious circumstances of this "beautiful day." The actual murder
of the bishops, though called for by so many holy ejaculations, was
also wanting. A group of regicide and sacrilegious slaughter, was
indeed boldly sketched, but it was only sketched. It unhappily was
left unfinished, in this great history-piece of the massacre of inno-
cents. What hardy pencil of a great master, from the school of the
rights of men, will finish it, is to be seen hereafter. The age has not
yet the complete benefit of that diffusion of knowledge that has
undermined superstition and error; and the king of France wants
another object or two to consign to oblivion, in consideration of all
the good which is to arise from his own sufferings, and the patriotic
crimes of an enlightened age.'°

^^ Tous les Eveques a la lanterne.
'^It is proper here to refer to a letter written upon this sub)ect Ly an eye-witness.
That eye-witness was one of the most honest, intelligent, and eloquent members of
the National Assembly, one of the most active and zealous reformers of the state.
He was obliged to secede from the assembly; and he afterwards became a voluntary
exile, on account of the horrors of this pious triumph, and the dispositions of men,
who, profiting of crimes, if not causing them, have taken the lead in public affairs.

Extract of M. de Lally Tollendal's Second Letter to a Friend
"Parlous du parti que j'ai pris; il est bien justifi^ dans ma conscience. — Ni cette
ville coupable, ni cette assemblee plus coupable encore, ne meritoient que je me
justifie; mais j'ai a cceur que vous, et les personnes qui pensent comme vous, ne me
condamnent pas. — Ma sant6, je vous jure, me rendoit mes fonctions impossibles; mais
meme en les mettant de cotd il a et^ au-dessus de mes forces de supporter plus long-
tems I'horreur que me causoit ce sang, — ces tetes cette reine presque kgorgee, — ce roi,
— amen6 sclave, — entranta Paris, au milieu de ses assassins, et prec^d£> des tetes de
ses malheureux grades — ces perfides janissaires, ces assassins, ces femmes cannibales.

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 211

Although this work of our new Hght and knowledge did not go
to the length that in all probability it was intended it should be
carried, yet I must think that such treatment of any human creatures
must be shocking to any but those who are made for accomplishing
revolutions. But I cannot stop here. Influenced by the inborn feel-
ings of my nature, and not being illuminated by a single ray of this
new-sprung modern light, I confess to you. Sir, that the exalted rank
of the persons suffering, and particularly the sex, the beauty, and
the amiable qualities of the descendant of so many kings and emper-
ors, with the tender age of royal infants, insensible only through
infancy and innocence of the cruel outrages to which their parents
were exposed, instead of being a subject of exultation, adds not a
little to my sensibility on that most melancholy occasion.

I hear that the august person, who was the principal object of our
preacher's triumph, though he supported himself, felt much on that

ce cri de Tous les eveques a la lantekne, dans le moment ou le roi entre sa capitate
avec deux <5veques de son conseil dans sa voiture — un coup de fusil, que j'ai vti tirer
dans un des carosses de la reine. M. Bailly appellant cela un beau jour, — rassembl^
ayant d&lar^ froidement Ic matin, qu'il n'dtoit pas de sa dignity d'aller toute entiere
environner le roi- — M. Mirabcau disant impun^ment " dans cette assemblee que le
vaisseau de I'^tat, loins d'etre arrets dans sa course, s'^lanceroit avec plus de rapidity
que jamais vers sa rig^n^ration — M. Barnave, riant avec lui, quand des flots de sang
coulaient autour de nous — le vertueux Mounicr* 6chappant par miracle a vingt
assassins, qui avoient voulu faire de sa tete un troph^e de plus: Voila ce qui me fit
jurer de ne plus mettre le pied dans cette caverne d' Antropophages [the National
Assembly] ou je n'avois plus de force d'iSlever la voix, ou depuis six semaines je I'avois
flev& en vain.

"Moi, Mounier, et tous les honnetes gens, ont pensi que le dernier effort i faire pour
le bien ^toit d'en sortir. Aucune id^e de crainte ne s'est approch& de moi. Je
rougirois de m'en d<5fendre. J'avois encore refu sur la route de la part de ce peuple,
moins coupable que ceux qui I'ont enivr^ de fureur, des acclamations, et des applau-
dissements, dont d'autres auroient ^t^ flatt^s, et qui m'ont fait fr^mir. C'est ^
I'indignation, c'est a I'horreur, c'est aux convulsions physiques, que le seul aspect
du sang me fait ^prouver que j'ai c^de. On brave une seul mort; on la brave
plusieurs fois, quand elle pent etre utile. Mais aucune puissance sous le Ciel, mais
aucune opinion publique, ou privte n'ont le droit de me condamner a souffrir inutile-
ment mille supplices par minute, et k perir de d&espoir, de rage, au milieu des
triomphes, du crime que je n'ai pu arreter. lis me proscriront, ils confisqueront mes
biens. Je labourerai la terre, et je ne les verrai plus. — Voila ma justification. Vous
pourrez la lire, la montrer, la laisser copier; tant pis pour ceux qui ne la comprendront
pas; ce ne sera alors moi qui auroit eu tort de la leur donner."

This military man had not so good nerves as the peaceable gentleman of the Old
Jewry. — See Mens. Mounier's narrative of these transactions; a man also of honour,
and virtue, and talents, and therefore a fugitive.

*N. B. Mr. Mounier was then speaker of the National Assembly. He has since
been obliged to live in exile, though one of the firmest asserters of liberty.

212 EDMUND BURKE

shameful occasion. As a man, it became him to feel for his wife
and his children, and the faithful guards of his person, that were
massacred in cold blood about him; as a prince, it became him to feel
for the strange and frightful transformation of his civilized subjects,
and to be more grieved for them than solicitous for himself. It dero-
gates little from his fortitude, while it adds infinitely to the honour
of his humanity. I am very sorry to say it, very sorry indeed, that
such personages are in a situation in which it is not becoming in us
to praise the virtues of the great.

I hear, and I rejoice to hear, that the great lady, the other object
of the triumph, has borne that day, (one is interested that beings
made for suffering should suffer well) and that she bears all the
succeeding days, that she bears the imprisonment of her husband,
and her own captivity, and the exile of her friends, and the insulting
adulation of addresses, and the whole weight of her accumulated
wrongs, with a serene patience, in a manner suited to her rank and
race, and becoming the offspring of a sovereign distinguished for
her piety and her courage: that, like her, she has lofty sentiments;
that she feels with the dignity of a Roman matron; that in the last
extremity she will save herself from the last disgrace; and that, if
she must fall, she will fall by no ignoble hand.

It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of
France, then the dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never lighted
on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful
vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering
the elevated sphere she just began to move in, — glittering like the
morning-star, full of life, and splendour, and joy. Oh! what a revo-
lution! and what a heart must I have to contemplate without emo-
tion that elevation and that fall! Little did I dream when she added
titles of veneration to those of enthusiastic, distant, respectful love,
that she should ever be obliged to carry the sharp antidote against
disgrace concealed in that bosom; little did I dream that I should
have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her in a nation of gal-
lant men, in a nation of men of honour, and of cavaliers. I thought
ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to
avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 213

chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators, has
succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever. Never,
never more shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex,
that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination
of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an
exalted freedom. The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of
nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise, is gone!
It is gone, that sensibility of principle, that charity of honor, which
felt a stain like a wound, which inspired courage whilst it mitigated
ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice
itself lost half its evil, by losing all its grossness.

This mixed system of opinion and sentiment had its origin in the
ancient chivalry; and the principle, though varied in its appearance
by the varying state of human affairs, subsisted and influenced
through a long succession of generations, even to the time we live in.
If it should ever be totally extinguished, the loss I fear will be great.
It is this which has given its character to modern Europe. It is this
which has distinguished it under all its forms of government, and
distinguished it to its advantage, from the states of Asia, and pos-
sibly from those states which flourished in the most brilliant periods
of the antique world. It was this, which, without confounding
ranks, had produced a noble equality, and handed it down through
all the gradations of social life. It was this opinion which mitigated
kings into companions, and raised private men to be fellows with
kings. Without force or opposition, it subdued the fierceness of pride
and power; it obliged sovereigns to submit to the soft collar of social
esteem, compelled stern authority to submit to elegance, and gave a
dominating vanquisher of laws to be subdued by manners.

But now all is to be changed. All the pleasing illusions, which
made power gentle and obedience liberal, which harmonized the
different shades of life, and which, by a bland assimilation, incorpo-
rated into politics the sentiments which beautify and soften private
society, are to be dissolved by this new conquering empire of light
and reason. All the decent drapery of life is to be rudely torn off.
All the superadded ideas, furnished from the wardrobe of a moral
imagination, which the heart owns, and the understanding ratifies.

214 EDMUND BURKE

as necessary to cover the defects of our naked, shivering nature, and
to raise it to dignity in our own estimation, are to be exploded as a
ridiculous, absurd, and antiquated fashion.

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

On the scheme of this barbarous philosophy, which is the offspring
of cold hearts and muddy understandings, and which is as void of
solid wisdom as it is destitute of all taste and elegance, laws are to
be supported only by their own terrors, and by the concern which
each individual may find in them from his own private speculations,
or can spare to them from his own private interests. In the groves
of their academy, at the end of every vista, you see nothing but the
gallows. Nothing is left which engages the affections on the part
of the commonwealth. On the principles of this mechanic philoso-
phy, our institutions can never be embodied, if I may use the ex-
pression, in persons; so as to create in us love, veneration, admira-
tion, or attachment. But that sort of reason which banishes the
affections is incapable of filling their place. These public affections,
combined with manners, are required sometimes as supplements,
sometimes as correctives, always as aids to law. The precept given
by a wise man, as well as a great critic, for the construction of poems,
is equally true as to states: — Non satis est pulchra esse poemata,
, dulcia sunto. There ought to be a system of manners in every na-
tion, which a well-formed mind would be disposed to relish. To
make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.

But power, of some kind or other, will survive the shock in which
manners and opinions perish; and it will find other and worse means
for its support. The usurpation which, in order to subvert ancient

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 215

institutions, has destroyed ancient principles, will hold power by arts
similar to those by which it has acquired it. When the old feudal
and chivalrous spirit of fealty, which, by freeing kings from fear,
freed both kings and subjects from the precautions of tyranny, shall
be extinct in the minds of men, plots and assassinations will be an-
ticipated by preventive murder and preventive confiscation, and
that long roll of grim and bloody maxims, which form the political
code of all power, not standing on its own honour, and the honour
of those who are to obey it. Kings will be tyrants from policy,
when subjects are rebels from principle.

When ancient opinions and rules of life are taken away, the loss
cannot possibly be estimated. From that moment we have no com-
pass to govern us; nor can we know distinctly to what port we steer.
Europe, undoubtedly, taken in a mass, was in a flourishing condi-
tion the day on which your revolution was completed. How much
of that prosperous state was owing to the spirit of our old manners
and opinions is not easy to say; but as such causes cannot be indiffer-
ent in their operation, we must presume, that, on the whole, their
operation was beneficial.

We are but too apt to consider things in the state in which we
find them, without sufficiently adverting to the causes by which
they have been produced, and possibly may be upheld. Nothing is
more certain, than that our manners, our civilization, and all the
good things which are connected with manners and with civiliza-
tion, have, in this European world of ours, depended for ages upon
two principles; and were indeed the result of both combined; I
mean the spirit of a gentleman, and the spirit of religion. The no-
bility and the clergy, the one by profession, the other by patronage,
kept learning in existence, even in the midst of arms and confusions,
and whilst governments were rather in their causes than formed.
Learning paid back what it received to nobility and to priesthood,
and paid it with usury, by enlarging their ideas, and by furnishing
their minds. Happy if they had all continued to know their in-
dissoluble union, and their proper place! Happy if learning, not
debauched by ambition, had been satisfied to continue the instruc-
tor, and not aspired to be the master! Along with its natural pro-

2l6 EDMUND BtJRKE

lectors and guardians, learning will be cast into the mire, and
trodden down under the hoofs of a swinish multitude."

If, as I suspect, modern letters owe more than they are always
willing to owe to ancient manners, so do other interests which we
value full as much as they are worth. Even commerce, and trade,
and manufacture, the gods of our economical politicians, are them-
selves perhaps but creatures; are themselves but effects, which, as
first causes, we choose to worship. They certainly grew under the
same shade in which learning flourished. They too may decay with
their natural protecting principles. With you, for the present at
least, they all threaten to disappear together. Where trade and
manufactures are wanting to a people, and the spirit of nobility and
religion remains, sentiment supplies, and not always ill supplies,
their place; but if commerce and the arts should be lost in an experi-
ment to try how well a state may stand without these old funda-
mental principles, what sort of a thing must be a nation of gross,
stupid, ferocious, and, at the same time, poor and sordid, barbarians,
destitute of religion, honour, or manly pride, possessing nothing at
present, and hoping for nothing hereafter?

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

It is not clear, whether in England we learned those grand and
decorous principles and manners, of which considerable traces yet
remain, from you, or whether you took them from us. But to you,
I think, we trace them best. You seem to me to be — gentis incuna-
bula nostrce. France has always more or less influenced manners
in England; and when your fountain is choked up and polluted,
the stream will not run long, or not run clear, with us, or perhaps
with any nation. This gives all Europe, in my opinion, but too
close and connected a concern in what is done in France. Excuse
me, therefore, if I have dwelt too long on the atrocious spectacle of

[ '^ See the fate of Bailly and Condorcet, supposed to be here particularly alluded to.
Compare the circumstances of the trial and execution of the former with this
prediction.]

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 21 7

the 6th of October, 1789, or have given too much scope to the re-
flections which have arisen in my mind on occasion of the most im-
portant of all revolutions, which may be dated from that day, I
mean a revolution in sentiments, manners, and moral opinions. As
things now stand, with everything respectable destroyed without us,
and an attempt to destroy within us every principle of respect, one is
almost forced to apologize for harbouring the common feelings of
men.

Why do I feel so differently from the Reverend Dr. Price, and
those of his lay flock who will choose to adopt the sentiments of his
discourse? — ^For this plain reason — because it is natural I should;
because we are so made, as to be affected at such spectacles with
melancholy sentiments upon the unstable condition of mortal pros-
perity, and the tremendous uncertainty of human greatness; be-
cause in those natural feelings we learn great lessons; because in
events like these our passions instruct our reason; because when
kings are hurled from their thrones by the Supreme Director of
this great drama, and become the objects of insult to the base, and
of pity to the good, we behold such disasters in the moral, as we
should behold a miracle in the physical, order of things. We are
alarmed into reflection; our minds (as it has long since been ob-
served) are purified by terror and pity; our weak, unthinking pride
is humbled under the dispensations of a mysterious wisdom. Some
tears might be drawn from me, if such a spectacle were exhibited on
the stage. I should be truly ashamed of finding in myself that
superficial, theatric sense of painted distress, whilst I could exult
over it in real life. With such a perverted mind, I could never
venture to show my face at a tragedy. People would think the tears
that Garrick formerly, or that Siddons not long since, have extorted
from me, were the tears of hypocrisy; I should know them to be the
tears of folly.

Indeed the theatre is a better school of moral sentiments than
churches, where the feelings of humanity are thus outraged. Poets
who have to deal with an audience not yet graduated in the school
of the rights of men, and who must apply themselves to the moral
constitution of the heart, would not dare to produce such a triumph
as a matter of exultation. There, where men follow their natural

2l8 EDMUND BURKE

impulses, they would not bear the odious maxims of a Machiavelian
policy, whether applied to the attainments of monarchical or demo-
cratic tyranny. They would reject them on the modern, as they
once did on the ancient stage, where they could not bear even the
hypothetical proposition of such wickedness in the mouth of a per-
sonated tyrant, though suitable to the character he sustained. No
theatric audience in Athens would bear what has been borne, in the
midst of the real tragedy of this triumphal day; a principal actor
weighing, as it were in scales hung in a shop of horrors, — so much
actual crime against so much contingent advantage, — and after
putting in and out weights, declaring that the balance was on the
side of the advantages. They would not bear to see the crimes of
new democracy posted as in a ledger against the crimes of old
despotism, and the book-keepers of politics finding democracy still
in debt, but by no means unable or unwilling to pay the balance.
In the theatre, the first intuitive glance, without any elaborate proc-
ess of reasoning, will show, that this method of political computa-
tion would justify every extent of crime. They would see, that on
these principles, even where the very worst acts were not perpe-
trated, it was owing rather to the fortune of the conspirators, than
to their parsimony in the expenditure of treachery and blood. They
would soon see, that criminal means once tolerated are soon pre-
ferred. They present a shorter cut to the object than through the
highway of the moral virtues. Justifying perfidy and murder for
public benefit, public benefit would soon become the pretext, and
perfidy and murder the end; until rapacity, malice, revenge, and
fear more dreadful than revenge, could satiate their insatiable appe-
tites. Such must be the consequences of losing, in the splendour
of these triumphs of the rights of men, all natural sense of wrong
and right.

But the Reverend Pastor exults in this "leading in triumph," be-
cause truly Louis the Sixteenth was "an arbitrary monarch;" that
is, in other words, neither more nor less than because he was Louis
the Sixteenth, and because he had the misfortune to be born king
of France, with the prerogatives of which, a long line of ancestors,
and a long acquiescence of the people, without any act of his, had
put him in possession. A misfortune it has indeed turned out to

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 219

him, that he was born king of France. But misfortune is not crime,
nor is indiscretion always the greatest guilt. I shall never think that
a prince, the acts of whose whole reign was a series of concessions to
his subjects, who was willing to relax his authority, to remit his
prerogatives, to call his people to a share of freedom, not known,
perhaps not desired by their ancestors; such a prince, though he
should be subjected to the common frailties attached to men and to
princes, though he should have once thought it necessary to provide
force against the desperate designs manifestly carrying on against
his person, and the remnants of his authority; though all this should
be taken into consideration, I shall be led with great diificulty to
think he deserves the cruel and insulting triumph of Paris and of
Dr. Price. I tremble for the cause of liberty, from such an example
to kings. I tremble for the cause of humanity, in the unpunished
outrages of the most wicked of mankind. But there are some people
of that low and degenerate fashion of mind, that they look up with
a sort of complacent awe and admiration to kings, who know
to keep firm in their seat, to hold a strict hand over their subjects,
to assert their prerogative, and, by the awakened vigilance of a se-
vere despotism, to guard against the very first approaches of free-
dom. Against such as these they never elevate their voice. Deserters
from principle, listed with fortune, they never see any good in
suffering virtue, nor any crime in prosperous usurpation.

If it could have been made clear to me, that the king and queen
of France (those I mean who were such before the triumph) were
inexorable and cruel tyrants, that they had formed a deliberate
scheme for massacring the National Assembly, (I think I have seen
something like the latter insinuated in certain publications) I should
think their captivity just. If this be true, much more ought to have
been done, but done, in my opinion, in another manner. The pun-
ishment of real tyrants is a noble and awful act of justice; and it
has with truth been said to be consolatory to the human mind. But
if I were to punish a wicked king, I should regard the dignity in
avenging the crime. Justice is grave and decorous, and in its pun-
ishments rather seems to submit to a necessity, than to make a
choice. Had Nero, or Agrippina, or Louis the Eleventh, or Charles
the Ninth, been the subject; if Charles the Twelfth of Sweden,

220 EDMUND BURKE

after the murder o£ Patkul, or his predecessor Christina, after the
murder of Monaldeschi, had fallen into your hands, Sir, or into
mine, I am sure our conduct would have been different.

If the French king, or king of the French, (or by whatever name
he is known in the new vocabulary of your constitution) has in his
own person, and that of his queen, really deserved these unavowed,
but unavenged, murderous attempts, and those frequent indignities
more cruel than murder, such a person would ill deserve even that
subordinate executory trust, which I understand is to be placed in
him; nor is he fit to be called chief in a nation which he has out-
raged and oppressed. A worse choice for such an office in a new
commonwealth, than that of a deposed tyrant, could not possibly
be made. But to degrade and insult a man as the worst of criminals,
and afterwards to trust him in your highest concerns, as a faithful,
honest, and zealous servant, is not consistent with reasoning, nor
prudent in policy, nor safe in practice. Those who could make such
an appointment must be guilty of a more flagrant breach of trust
than any they have yet committed against the people. As this is the
only crime in which your leading politicians could have acted in-
consistently, I conclude that there is no sort of ground for these
horrid insinuations. I think no better of all the other calumnies.

In England, we give no credit to them. We are generous enemies:
we are faithful allies. We spurn from us with disgust and indigna-
tion the slanders of those who bring us their anecdotes with the
attestation of the flower-de-luce on their shoulder. We have Lord
George Gordon fast in Newgate; and neither his being a public
proselyte to Judaism, nor his having, in his zeal against Catholic
priests and all sorts of ecclesiastics, raised a mob (excuse the term,
it is still in use here) which pulled down all our prisons, have pre-
served to him a liberty, of which he did not render himself worthy
by a virtuous use of it. We have rebuilt Newgate, and tenanted the
mansion. We have prisons almost as strong as the Bastile, for those
who dare to libel the queens of France. In this spiritual retreat, let
the noble libeller remain. Let him there meditate on his Thalmud,
until he learns a conduct more becoming his birth and parts, and
not so disgraceful to the ancient religion to which he has become
a proselyte; or until some persons from your side of the water, to

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 221

please your new Hebrew brethren, shall ransom him. He may then
be enabled to purchase, with the old hoards of the synagogue, and
a very small poundage on the long compound interest of the thirty
pieces of silver, (Dr. Price has shown us what miracles compound
interest will perform in 1790 years,) the lands which are lately dis-
covered to have been usurped by the Galilean church. Send us your
Popish archbishop of Paris, and we will send you our Protestant
Rabbin. We shall treat the person you send us in exchange like a
gendeman and an honest man, as he is; but pray let him bring with
him the fund of his hospitality, bounty, and charity; and, depend
upon it, we shall never confiscate a shilling of that honourable and
pious fund, nor think of enriching the treasury with the spoils of
the poor-box.

To tell you the truth, my dear Sir, I think the honour of our
nation to be somewhat concerned in the disclaimer of the proceed-
ings of this society of the Old Jewry and the London Tavern. I
have no man's proxy. I speak only for myself, when I disclaim, as
I do with all possible earnestness, all communion with the actors in
that triumph, or with the admirers of it. When I assert anything
else, as concerning the people of England, I speak from observation,
not from authority; but I speak from the experience I have had in
a pretty extensive and mixed communication with the inhabitants
of this kingdom, of all descriptions and ranks, and after a course
of attentive observations, began early in life, and continued for
nearly forty years. I have often been astonished, considering that
we are divided from you but by a slender dyke of about twenty-
four miles, and that the mutual intercourse between the two coun-
tries has lately been very great, to find how little you seem to know
of us. I suspect that this is owing to your forming a judgment of
this nation from certain publications, which do, very erroneously, if
they do at all, represent the opinions and dispositions generally prev-
alent in England. The vanity, restlessness, petulance, and spirit of
intrigue, of several petty cabals, who attempt to hide their total want
of consequence in bustle and noise, and puffing, and mutual quota-
tion of each other, makes you imagine that our contemptuous neg-
lect of their abilities is a mark of general acquiescence in their opin-
ions. No such thing, I assure you. Because half a dozen grass-

222 EDMUND BURKE

hoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate
chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow
of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine
that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field;
that, of course, they are many in number; or that, after all, they are
other than the little, shrivelled, meagre, hopping, though loud and
troublesome, insects of the hour.

I almost venture to affirm, that not one in a hundred amongst us
participates in the "triumph" of the Revolution Society. If the king
and queen of France, and their children, were to fall into our hands
by the chance of war, in the most acrimonious of all hostilities, (I
deprecate such an event, I deprecate such hostility,) they would be
treated with another sort of triumphal entry into London. We for-
merly have had a king of France in that situation; you have read
how he was treated by the victor in the field; and in what manner
he was afterwards received in England. Four hundred years have
gone over us; but I believe we are not materially changed since that
period. Thanks to our sullen resistance to innovation, thanks to the
cold sluggishness of our national character, we still bear the stamp
of our forefathers. We have not (as I conceive) lost the generosity
and dignity of thinking of the fourteenth century; nor as yet have
we subtilized ourselves into savages. We are not the converts of
Rousseau; we are not the disciples of Voltaire; Helvetius has made
no progress amongst us. Atheists are not our preachers; madmen
are not our lawgivers. We know that we have made no discoveries,
and we think that no discoveries are to be made, in morality; nor
many in the great principles of government, nor in the ideas of
liberty, which were understood long before we were born, alto-
gether as well as they will be after the grave has heaped its mould
upon our presumption, and the silent tomb shall have imposed its
law on our pert loquacity. In England we have not yet been
completely embowelled of our natural entrails; we still feel within
us, and we cherish and cultivate, those inbred sentiments which are
the faithful guardians, the active monitors of our duty, the true
supporters of all liberal and manly morals. We have not been drawn
and trussed, in order that we may be filled, like stuffed birds in a
museum, with chaff and rags and paltry blurred shreds of paper

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 223

about the rights of man. We preserve the whole of our feeUngs still
native and entire, unsophisticated by pedantry and infidelity. We
have real hearts of flesh and blood beating in our bosoms. We fear
God; we look up with awe to kings; with affection to parliaments;
with duty to magistrates; with reverence to priests; and with respect
to nobility.'^ Why? Because when such ideas are brought before
our minds, it is natural to be so affected; because all other feelings
are false and spurious, and tend to corrupt our minds, to vitiate our
primary morals, to render us unfit for rational liberty; and by teach-
ing us a servile, licentious, and abandoned insolence, to be our low
sport for a few holidays, to make us perfecdy fit for, and justly de-
serving of, slavery, through the whole course of our lives.

You see. Sir, that in this enlightened age I am bold enough to
confess, that we are generally men of untaught feelings; that instead
of casting away all our old prejudices, we cherish them to a very
considerable degree, and, to take more shame to ourselves, we
cherish them because they are prejudices; and the longer they have
lasted, and the more generally they have prevailed, the more we
cherish them. We are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his
own private stock of reason; because we suspect that this stock in
each man is small, and that the individuals would do better to
avail themselves of the general bank and capital of nations and of
ages. Many of our men of speculation, instead of exploding general
prejudices, employ their sagacity to discover the latent wisdom
which prevails in them. If they find what they seek, and they sel-
dom fail, they think it more wise to continue the prejudice, with
the reason involved, than to cast away the coat of prejudice, and to
leave nothing but the naked reason; because prejudice, with its rea-
son, has a motive to give action to that reason, and an affection
which will give it permanence. Prejudice is of ready application in
the emergency; it previously engages the mind in a steady course of

"The English are, I conceive, misrepresented in a letter published in one of the
papers, by a gentleman thought to be a dissenting minister. — ^When writing to Dr.
Price of the spirit which prevails at Paris, he says, "The spirit of the people in this
place has abolished all the proud distinctions which the k^ing and nobles had usurped
in their minds; whether they talk of the king, the noble, or the priest, their whole
language is that of the most enlightened and liberal amongst the English." If this
gentleman means to confine the terms enlightened and liberal to one set of men in
England, it may be true. It is not generally so.

224 EDMUND BURKE

wisdom and virtue, and does not leave the man hesitating in the
moment o£ decision, sceptical, puzzled, and unresolved. Prejudice
renders a man's virtue his habit; and not a series of unconnected
acts. Through just prejudice, his duty becomes a part of his nature-

Your literary men, and your politicians, and so do the whole clan
of the enlightened among us, essentially differ in these points. They
have no respect for the wisdom of others; but they pay it off by a
very full measure of confidence in their own. With them it is a
sufficient motive to destroy an old scheme of things, because it is an
old one. As to the new, they are in no sort of fear with regard
to the duration of a building run up in haste; because duration is
no object to those who think little or nothing has been done before
their time, and who place all their hopes in discovery. They con-
ceive, very systematically, that all things which give perpetuity are
mischievous, and therefore they are at inexpiable war with all estab-
lishments. They think that government may vary like modes of
dress, and with as little ill effect: that there needs no principle of
attachment, except a sense of present conveniency, to any constitu-
tion of the state. They always speak as if they were of opinion that
there is a singular species of compact between them and their mag-
istrates, which binds the magistrate, but which has nothing recip-
rocal in it, but that the majesty of the people has a right to dis-
solve it without any reason, but its will. Their attachment to their
country itself is only so far as it agrees with some of their fleeting
projects; it begins and ends with that scheme of polity which falls
in with their momentary opinion.

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

I hear it is sometimes given out in France, that what is doing
among you is after the example of England. I beg leave to affirm,
that scarcely anything done with you has originated from the prac-
tice or the prevalent opinions of this people, either in the act or
in the spirit of the proceeding. Let me add, that we are as unwill-
ing to learn these lessons from France, as we are sure that we
never taught them to that nation. The cabals here, who take a
sort of share in your transactions, as yet consist of but a handful

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 225

of people. If unfortunately by their intrigues, their sermons, their
publications, and by a confidence derived from an expected union
with the counsels and forces of the French nation, they should draw
considerable numbers into their faction, and in consequence should
seriously attempt anything here in imitation of what has been done
with you, the event, I dare venture to prophesy, will be, that, with
some trouble to their country, they will soon accomplish their own
destruction. This p>eople refused to change their law in remote
ages from respect to the infallibility of popes; and they will not now
alter it from a pious implicit faith in the dogmatism of philosophers;
though the former was armed with the anathema and crusade, and
though the latter should act with the libel and the lamp-iron.

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

I hear on all hands that a cabal, calling itself philosophic, re-
ceives the glory of many of the late proceedings; and that their
opinions and systems are the true actuating spirit of the whole of
them. I have heard of no party in England, literary or political, at
any time, known by such a description. It is not with you composed
of those men, is it? whom the vulgar, in their blunt, homely style,
commonly call atheists and infidels? If it be, I admit that we too
have had writers of that description, who made some noise in their
day. At present they repose in lasting oblivion. Who, born within
the last forty years, has read one word of Collins, and Toland, and
Tindal, and Chubb, and Morgan, and that whole race who called
themselves Freethinkers? Who now reads Bolingbroke? Whoever
read him through? Ask the booksellers of London what is become
of all these lights of the world. In as few years their few successors
will go to the famUy vault of "all the Capulets." But whatever they

226 EDMUND BURKE

were, or are, with us, they were and are wholly unconnected in-
dividuals. With us they kept the common nature of their kind, and
were not gregarious. They never acted in corps, or were known as
a faction in the state, nor presumed to influence in that name or
character, or for the purposes of such a faction, on any of our pub-
lic concerns. Whether they ought so to exist, and so be permitted
to act, is another question. As such cabals have not existed in Eng-
land, so neither has the spirit of them had any influence in estab-
lishing the original frame of our constitution, or in any one of the
several reparations and improvements it has undergone. The whole
has been done under the auspices, and is confirmed by the sanc-
tions, of religion and piety. The whole has emanated from the sim-
plicity of our national character, and from a sort of native plainness
and directness of understanding, which for a long time characterized
those men who have successively obtained authority amongst us.
This disposition still remains; at least in the great body of the
people.

We know, and what is better, we feel inwardly, that religion is the
basis of civil society, and the source of all good and of all comfort."
In England we are so convinced of this, that there is no rust of super-
stition, with which the accumulated absurdity of the human mind
might have crusted it over in the course of ages, that ninety-nine in
a hundred of the people of England would not prefer to impiety.
We shall never be such fools as to call in an enemy to the substance
of any system to remove its corruptions, to supply its defects, or to
perfect its construction. If our religious tenets should ever want a
further elucidation, we shall not call on atheism to explain them.
We shall not light up our temple from that unhallowed fire. It will
be illuminated with other lights. It will be perfumed with other
incense, than the infectious stuff which is imported by the smugglers
of adulterated metaphysics. If our ecclesiastical establishment should
want a revision, it is not avarice or rapacity, public or private, that
we shall employ for the audit, or receipt, or application of its con-

"Sit igitur hoc ab initio persuasum civibus, dominos esse omnium rerum ac
moderatores, deos; eaque, qu£c gerantur, eorum geri vi, ditione, ac numine; eos-
demque optime de genere hominum mereri; et qualis quisque sit, quid agat, quid in
se admittat, qua mente, qua pietate colat religiones intueri; piorum et impiorum
habere rationem. His enim rebus imbutae mentes haud sane abhorrebunt ab utili
et a vera sententia. Cic. de Legibus, 1. 2.

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 227

secrated revenue. Violently condemning neither the Greek nor the
Armenian, nor, since heats are subsided, the Roman system o£ re-
ligion, we prefer the Protestant; not because we think it has less
of the Christian religion in it, but because, in our judgment,
it has more. We are Protestants, not from indifEerence, but from
zeal.

We know, and it is our pride to know, that man is by his consti-
tution a religious animal; that atheism is against, not only our
reason, but our instincts; and that it cannot prevail long. But if,
in the moment of riot, and in a drunken delirium from the hot spirit
drawn out of the alembic of hell, which in France is now so furi-
ously boiling, we should uncover our nakedness, by throwing off
that Christian religion which has hitherto been our boast and com-
fort, and one great source of civilization amongst us, and amongst
many other nations, we are apprehensive (being well aware that the
mind will not endure a void) that some uncouth, pernicious, and
degrading superstition might take place of it.

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

On these ideas, instead of quarrelling with establishments, as
some do, who have made a philosophy and a religion of their hos-
tility to such institutions, we cleave closely to them. We are re-
solved to keep an established church, an established monarchy, an
established aristocracy, and an established democracy, each in the
degree it exists, and in no greater. I shall show you presently how
much of each of these we possess.

It has been the misfortune (not, as these gentlemen think it, the
glory) of this age, that everything is to be discussed, as if the con-
stitution of our country were to be always a subject rather of alter-
cation, than enjoyment. For this reason, as well as for the satis-
faction of those among you (if any such you have among you)
who may wish to profit of examples, I venture to trouble you with
a few thoughts upon each of these establishments. I do not think
they were unwise in ancient Rome, who, when they wished to new-

228 EDMUND BURKE

model their laws, set commissioners to examine the best constituted
republics within their reach.

First, I beg leave to speak of our church establishment, which is
the first of our prejudices, not a prejudice destitute of reason, but
involving in it profound and extensive wisdom. I speak of it first.
It is first, and last, and midst in our minds. For, taking ground on
that religious system, of which we are now in possession, we con-
tinue to act on the early received and uniformly continued sense of
mankind. That sense not only, like a wise architect, hath built up
the august fabric of states, but like a provident proprietor, to pre-
serve the structure from profanation and ruin, as a sacred temple
purged from all the impurities of fraud, and violence, and injustice,
and tyranny, hath solemnly and for ever consecrated the common-
wealth, and all that officiate in it. This consecration is made, that
all who administer in the government of men, in which they stand
in the person of God himself, should have high and worthy notions
of their function and destination; that their hope should be full of
immortality; that they should not look to the paltry pelf of the mo-
ment, nor to the temporary and transient praise of the vulgar, but
to a solid, permanent existence, in the permanent part of their na-
ture, and to a permanent fame and glory, in the example they leave
as a rich inheritance to the world.

Such sublime principles ought to be infused into persons of ex-
alted situations; and religious establishments provided, that may
continually revive and enforce them. Every sort of moral, every sort
of civil, every sort of politic institution, aiding the rational and natu-
ral ties that connect the human understanding and affections to the
divine, are not more than necessary, in order to build up that won-
derful structure, Man; whose prerogative it is, to be in a great de-
gree a creature of his own making; and who, when made as he
ought to be made, is destined to hold no trivial place in the creation.
But whenever man is put over men, as the better nature ought ever
to preside, in that case more particularly, he should as nearly as
possible be approximated to his perfection.

The consecration of the state, by a state religious establishment,
is necessary also to operate with a wholesale awe upon free citi-
zens; because, in order to secure their freedom, they must enjoy

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 229

some determinate portion of power. To them therefore a religion
connected with the state, and with their duty towards it, becomes
even more necessary than in such societies, where the people, by the
terms of their subjection, are confined to private sentiments, and the
management of their own family concerns. All persons possessing
any portion of power ought to be strongly and awfully impressed
with an idea that they act in trust: and that they are to account for
their conduct in that trust to the one great Master, Author, and
Founder of society.

This principle ought even to be more strongly impressed upon
the minds of those who compose the collective sovereignty, than
upon those of single princes. Without instruments, these princes can
do nothing. Whoever uses instruments, in finding helps, finds also
impediments. Their power is therefore by no means complete; nor
are they safe in extreme abuse. Such persons, however elevated by
flattery, arrogance, and self-opinion, must be sensible, that, whether
covered or not by positive law, in some way or other they are ac-
countable even here for the abuse of their trust. If they are not cut
off by a rebellion of their people, they may be strangled by the very
janissaries kept for their security against all other rebellion. Thus
we have seen the king of France sold by his soldiers for an increase
of pay. But where popular authority is absolute and unrestrained,"
the people have an infinitely greater, because a far better founded,
confidence in their own power. They are themselves, in a great
measure, their own instruments. They are nearer to their objects.
Besides, they are less under responsibility to one of the greatest con-
trolling powers on earth, the sense of fame and estimation. The
share of infamy, that is likely to fall to the lot of each individual in
public acts, is small indeed; the operation of opinion being in the
inverse ratio to the number of those who abuse power. Their own
approbation of their own acts has to them the appearance of a
public judgment in their favour. A perfect democracy is therefore
the most shameless thing in the world. As it is the most shameless,
it is also the most fearless. No man apprehends in his person that
he can be made subject to punishment. Certainly the people at
large never ought: for as all punishments are for example towards
the conservation of the people at large, the people at large can never

230 EDMUND BURKE

become the subject of punishment by any human hand.^" It is there-
fore of infinite importance that they should not be suffered to im-
agine that their will, any more than that of kings, is the standard of
right and wrong. They ought to be persuaded that they are full as
little entitled, and far less qualified with safety to themselves, to
use any arbitrary power whatsoever; that therefore they are not,
under a false show of liberty, but in truth, to exercise an unnatural,
inverted domination, tyrannically to exact, from those who officiate
in the state, not an entire devotion to their interest, which is their
right, but an abject submission to their occasional will; extinguish-
ing thereby, in all those who serve them, all moral principle, all sense
of dignity, all use of judgment, and all consistency of character;
whilst by the very same process they give themselves up a proper, a
suitable, but a most contemptible prey to the servile ambition of
popular sycophants, or courtly flatterers.

When the people have emptied themselves of all the lust of selfish
will, which without religion it is utterly impossible they ever should,
when they are conscious that they exercise, and exercise perhaps in
a higher link of the order of delegation, the power, which to be legiti-
mate must be according to that eternal, immutable law, in which
will and reason are the same, they will be more careful how they
place power in base and incapable hands. In their nomination to
office, they will not appoint to the exercise of authority, as to a
pitiful job, but as to a holy function; not according to their sordid,
selfish interest, nor to their wanton caprice, nor to their arbitrary
will; but they will confer that power (which any man may well
tremble to give or to receive) on those only, in whom they may
discern that predominant proportion of active virtue and wisdom,
taken together and fitted to the charge, such, as in the great and in-
evitable mixed mass of human imperfections and infirmities, is to
be found.

When they are habitually convinced that no evil can be acceptable,
either in the act or the permission, to him whose essence is good,
they will be better able to extirpate out of the minds of all magis-
trates, civil, ecclesiastical, or military, anything that bears the least
resemblance to a proud and lawless domination.
'" Quicquid mulos peccatur inultem.

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 23 1

But one of the first and most leading principles on which the
commonwealth and the laws are consecrated, is lest the temporary
possessors and life-renters in it, unmindful of what they have re-
ceived from their ancestors, or of what is due to their posterity,
should act as if they were the entire masters; that they should not
think it among their rights to cut off the entail, or commit waste
on the inheritance, by destroying at their pleasure the whole original
fabric of their society; hazarding to leave to those who come after
them a ruin instead of an habitation — and teaching these successors
as little to respect their contrivances, as they had themselves re-
spected the institutions of their forefathers. By this unprincipled
facility of changing the state as often, and as much, and in as many
ways, as there are floating fancies or fashions, the whole chain and
continuity of the commonwealth would be broken. No one genera-
tion could link with the other. Men would become little better than
the flies of a summer.

And first of all, the science of jurisprudence, the pride of the
human intellect, which, with all its defects, redundancies, and er-
rors, is the collected reason of ages, combining the principles of
original justice with the infinite variety of human concerns, as a
heap of old exploded errors, would be no longer studied. Personal
self-sufficiency and arrogance (the certain attendants upon all those
who have never experienced a wisdom greater than their own)
would usurp the tribunal. Of course no certain laws, establishing
invariable grounds of hope and fear, would keep the actions of men
in a certain course, or direct them to a certain end. Nothing stable
in the modes of holding property, or exercising function, could
form a solid ground on which any parent could speculate in the
education of his offspring, or in a choice for their future establish-
ment in the world. No principles would be early worked into the
habits. As soon as the most able instructor had completed his la-
borious course of institution, instead of sending forth his pupil, ac-
complished in a virtuous discipline, fitted to procure him attention
and respect, in his place in society, he would find everything altered;
and that he had turned out a poor creature to the contempt and
derision of the world, ignorant of the true grounds of estimation.
Who would insure a tender and delicate sense of honour to beat

232 EDMUND BURKE

almost with the first pulses of the heart, when no man could know
what would be the test of honour in a nation, continually varying
the standard of its coin? No part of life would retain its acquisi-
tions. Barbarism with regard to science and literature, unskilfulness
with regard to arts and manufactures, would infallibly succeed to
the want of a steady education and settled principle; and thus the
commonwealth itself would, in a few generations, crumble away, be
disconnected into the dust and powder of individuality, and at
length dispersed to all the winds of heaven.

To avoid therefore the evils of inconstancy and versatility, ten
thousand times worse than those of obstinacy and the blindest preju-
dice, we have consecrated the state, that no man should approach
to look into its defects or corruptions but with due caution; that he
should never dream of beginning its reformation by its subversion;
that he should approach to the faults of the state as to the wounds
of a father, with pious awe and trembling solicitude. By this wise
prejudice we are taught to look with horror on those children of
their country, who are prompt rashly to hack that aged parent in
pieces, and put him into the kettle of magicians, in hopes that by
their poisonous weeds, and wild incantations, they may regenerate
the paternal constitution, and renovate their father's life.

Society is indeed a contract. Subordinate contracts for objects of
mere occasional interest may be dissolved at pleasure — but the state
ought not to be considered as nothing better than a partnership
agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee, calico or tobacco, or
some other such low concern, to be taken up for a little temporary
interest, and to be dissolved by the fancy of the parties. It is to be
looked on with other reverence; because it is not a partnership in
things subservient only to the gross animal existence of a temporary
and perishable nature. It is a partnership in all science; a partner-
ship in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection.
As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many gen-
erations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are
living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and
those who are to be born. Each contract of each particular state is
but a clause in the great primaeval contract of eternal society, linking
the lower with the higher natures, connecting the visible and in-

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 233

visible world, according to a fixed compact sanctioned by the invio-
lable oath which holds all physical and all moral natures, each in
their appointed place. This law is not subject to the will of those,
who by an obligation above them, and infinitely superior, are bound
to submit their will to that law. The municipal corporations of that
universal kingdom are not morally at liberty at their pleasure, and
on their speculations of a contingent improvement, wholly to sepa-
rate and tear asunder the bands of their subordinate community, and
to dissolve it into an unsocial, uncivil, unconnected chaos of elemen-
tary principles. It is the first and supreme necessity only, a necessity
that is not chosen, but chooses, a necessity paramount to deliberation,
that admits no discussion, and demands no evidence, which alone
can justify a resort to anarchy. This necessity is no exception to
the rule; because this necessity itself is a part too of that moral and
physical disposition of things, to which man must be obedient by
consent or force; but if that which is only submission to necessity
should be made the object of choice, the law is broken, nature is dis-
obeyed, and the rebellious are outlawed, cast forth, and exiled, from
this world of reason, and order, and peace, and virtue, and fruitful
penitence, into the antagonist world of madness, discord, vice, con-
fusion, and unavailing sorrow.

These, my dear Sir, are, were, and, I think, long will be, the sen-
timents of not the least learned and reflecting part of this kingdom.
They, who are included in this description, form their opinions on
such grounds as such persons ought to form them. The less in-
quiring receive them from an authority, which those whom Provi-
dence dooms to live on trust need not be ashamed to rely on. These
two sorts of men move in the same direction, though in a different
place. They both move with the order of the universe. They all
know or feel this great ancient truth: "Quod illi principi et praepo-
tenti Deo qui omnem hunc mundum regit, nihil eorum quae quidem
fiant in terris acceptius quam concilia et ccEtus hominum jure sociati
quae civitates appellantur." They take this tenet of the head and
heart, not from the great name which it immediately bears, nor
from the greater from whence it is derived; but from that which
alone can give true weight and sanction to any learned opinion, the
common nature and common relation of men. Persuaded that all

234 EDMUND BURKE

things ought to be done with reference, and referring all to the
point of reference to which all should be directed, they think them-
selves bound, not only as individuals in the sanctuary of the heart,
or as congregated in that personal capacity, to renew the memory
of their high origin and cast; but also in their corporate character
to perform their national homage to the institutor, and author, and
protector of civil society; without which civil society man could not
by any possibility arrive at the perfection of which his nature is
capable, nor even make a remote and faint approach to it. They
conceive that He who gave our nature to be perfected by our virtue,
willed also the necessary means of its perfection. — He willed there-
fore the state — He willed its connexion with the source and original
archetype of all perfection. They who are convinced of this his will,
which is the law of laws, and the sovereign of sovereigns, cannot
think it reprehensible that this our corporate fealty and homage,
that this our recognition of a seigniory paramount, I had almost
said this oblation of the state itself, as a worthy offering on the
high altar of universal praise, should be performed as all public,
solemn acts are performed, in buildings, in music, in decoration, in
speech, in the dignity of. persons, according to the customs of man-
kind, taught by their nature; this is, with modest splendour and
unassuming state, with mild majesty and sober pomp. For those
purposes they think some part of the wealth of the country is as
usefully employed as it can be in fomenting the luxury of individ-
uals. It is the public ornament. It is the public consolation. It nour-
ishes the public hope. The poorest man finds his own importance
and dignity in it, whilst the wealth and pride of individuals at every
moment makes the man of humble rank and fortune sensible of
his inferiority, and degrades and vilifies his condition. It is for the
man in humble life, and to raise his nature, and to put him in
mind of a state in which the privileges of opulence will cease, when
he will be equal by nature, and may be more than equal by virtue,
that this portion of the general wealth of his country is employed
and sanctified.

I assure you I do not aim at singularity. I give you opinions which
have been accepted amongst us, from very early times to this mo-
ment, with a continued and general approbation, and which indeed

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 235

are so worked into my mind, that I am unable to distinguish what
1 have learned from others from the results of my own meditation.

It is on some such principles that the majority of the people of
England, far from thinking a religious national establishment un-
lawful, hardly think it lawful to be without one. In France you are
wholly mistaken if you do not believe us above all other things at-
tached to it, and beyond all other nations; and when this people has
acted unwisely and unjustifiably in its favour, (as in some instances
they have done most certainly) in their very errors you will at least
discover their zeal.

This principle runs through the whole system of their polity.
They do not consider their church establishment as convenient, but
as essential to their state; not as a thing heterogeneous and separa-
ble; something added for accommodation; what they may either
keep or lay aside, according to their temporary ideas of convenience.
They consider it as the foundation of their whole constitution, with
which, and with every part of which, it holds an indissoluble union.
Church and state are ideas inseparable in their minds, and scarcely
is the one ever mentioned without mentioning the other.

Our education is so formed as to confirm and fix this impression.
Our education is in a manner wholly in the hands of ecclesiastics,
and in all stages from infancy to manhood. Even when our youth,
leaving schools and universities, enter that most important period of
life which begins to link experience and study together, and when
with that view they visit other countries, instead of old domestics
whom we have seen as governors to principal men from other parts,
three-fourths of those who go abroad with our young nobility and
gentlemen are ecclesiastics; not as austere masters, nor as mere
followers; but as friends and companions of a graver character, and
not seldom persons as well born as themselves. With them, as rela-
tions, they most constantly keep up a close connexion through life.
By this connexion we conceive that we attach our gentlemen to the
church; and we liberalize the church by an intercourse with the
leading characters of the country.

So tenacious are we of the old ecclesiastical modes and fashions
of institution, that very little alteration has been made in them
since the fourteenth or fifteenth century: adhering in this particular,

236 EDMUND BURKE

as in all things else, to our old settled maxim, never entirely nor at
once to depart from antiquity. We found these old institutions,
on the whole, favourable to morality and discipline; and we thought
they were susceptible of amendment, without altering the ground.
We thought that they were capable of receiving and meliorating,
and above all of preserving, the accessions of science and literature,
as the order of Providence should successively produce them. And
after all, with this Gothic and monkish education (for such it is in
the ground-work) we may put in our claim to as ample and as
early a share in all the improvements in science, in arts, and in litera-
ture, which have illuminated and adorned the modern world, as
any other nation in Europe: we think one main cause of this im-
provement was our not despising the patrimony of knowledge which
was left us by our forefathers.

It is from our attachment to a church establishment, that the Eng-
lish nation did not think it wise to intrust that great, fundamental
interest of the whole to what they trust no part of their civil or
military public service, that is, to the unsteady and precarious con-
tribution of individuals. They go further. They certainly never
have suffered, and never will suffer, the fixed estate of the church
to be converted into a pension, to depend on the treasury, and to be
delayed, withheld, or perhaps to be extinguished, by fiscal diffi-
culties: which difficulties may sometimes be pretended for political
purposes, and are in fact often brought on by the extravagance, neg-
ligence, and rapacity of politicians. The people of England think
that they have constitutional motives, as well as religious, against
any project of turning their independent clergy into ecclesiastical
pensioners of state. They tremble for their liberty, from the influ-
ence of a clergy dependent on the crown; they tremble for the pub-
lic tranquillity from the disorders of a factious clergy, if it were
made to depend upon any other than the crown. They therefore
made their church, like their king and their nobility, independent.

From the united considerations of religion and constitutional
policy, from their opinion of a duty to make sure provision for the
consolation of the feeble and the instruction of the ignorant, they
have incorporated and identified the estate of the church with the
mass of private property, of which the state is not the proprietor.

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 237

either for use or dominion, but the guardian only and the regulator.
They have ordained that the provision o£ this estabHshment might
be as stable as the earth on which it stands, and should not fluctuate
with the Euripus of funds and actions.

The men of England, the men, I mean, of light and leading in
England, whose wisdom (if they have any) is open and direct,
would be ashamed, as of a silly, deceitful trick, to profess any re-
ligion in name, which by their proceedings, they appear to con-
temn. If by their conduct (the only language that rarely lies) they
seemed to regard the great ruling principle of the moral and the
natural world, as a mere invention to keep the vulgar in obedience,
they apprehend that by such a conduct they would defeat the politic
purpose they have in view. They would find it difficult to make
others believe in a system to which they manifestly give no credit
themselves. The Christian statesmen of this land would indeed first
provide for the multitude; because it is the multitude; and is there-
fore, as such, the first object in the ecclesiastical institution, and in
all institutions. They have been taught, that the circumstance of the
gospel's being preached to the poor, was one of the great tests of its
true mission. They think, therefore, that those do not believe
it, who do not take care it should be preached to the poor. But as
they know that charity is not confined to any one description, but
ought to apply itself to all men who have wants, they are not
deprived of a due and anxious sensation of pity to the distresses of
the miserable great. They are not repelled through a fastidious deli-
cacy, at the stench of their arrogance and presumption, from a me-
dicinal attention to their mental blotches and running sores. They
are sensible that religious instruction is of more consequence to
them than to any others; from the greatness of the temptation to
which they are exposed; from the important consequences that at-
tend their faults; from the contagion of their ill example; from the
necessity of bowing down the stubborn neck of their pride and ambi-
tion to the yoke of moderation and virtue; from a consideration of
the fat stupidity and gross ignorance concerning what imports men
most to know, which prevails at courts, and at the head of armies,
and in senates, as much as at the loom and in the field.

The English people are satisfied, that to the great the consolations

238 EDMUND BURKE

of religion are as necessary as its instructions. They too are among
the unhappy. They feel personal pain, and domestic sorrow. In these
they have no privilege, but are subject to pay their full contingent
to the contributions levied on mortality. They want this sovereign
balm under their gnawing cares and anxieties, which, being less
conversant about the limited wants of animal life, range without
limit, and are diversified by infinite combinations, in the wild and
unbounded regions of imagination. Some charitable dole is wanting
to these, our often very unhappy brethren, to fill the gloomy void
that reigns in minds which have nothing on earth to hope or fear;
something to relieve in the killing languor and over-laboured lassi-
tude of those who have nothing to do; something to excite an appe-
tite to existence in the palled satiety which attends on all pleasures
which may be bought, where nature is not left to her own process,
where even desire is anticipated, and therefore fruition defeated
by meditated schemes and contrivances of delight; and no interval,
no obstacle, is interposed between the wish and the accomplishment.
The people of England know how little influence the teachers of
religion are likely to have with the wealthy and powerful of long
standing, and how much less with the newly fortunate, if they ap-
pear in a manner no way assorted to those with whom they must
associate, and over whom they must even exercise, in some cases,
something like an authority. What must they think of that body
of teachers, if they see it in no part above the establishment of their
domestic servants? If the poverty were voluntary, there might be
some difference. Strong instances of self-denial operate powerfully
on our minds; and a man who has no wants has obtained great
freedom, and firmness, and even dignity. But as the mass of any
description of men are but men, and their poverty cannot be volun-
tary, that disrespect, which attends upon all lay poverty, will not de-
part from the ecclesiastical. Our provident constitution has there-
fore taken care that those who are to instruct presumptuous igno-
rance, those who are to be censors over insolent vice, should neither
incur their contempt, nor live upon their alms; nor will it tempt
the rich to a neglect of the true medicine of their minds. For these
reasons, whilst we provide first for the poor, and with a parental
solicitude, we have not relegated religion (like something we were

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 239

ashamed to show) to obscure municipalities, or rustic villages. No!
we will have her to exalt her mitred front in courts and parliaments.
We will have her mixed throughout the whole mass o£ life, and
blended with all the classes of society. The people of England will
show to the haughty potentates of the world, and to their talking
sophisters, that a free, a generous, an informed nation honours the
high magistrates of its church; that it will not suffer the insolence
of wealth and titles, or any other species of proud pretension, to look
down with scorn upon what they look up to with reverence; nor
presume to trample on that acquired personal nobility, which they
intend always to be, and which often is, the fruit, not the reward,
(for what can be the reward.?) of learning, piety, and virtue. They
can see, without pain or grudging, an archbishop precede a duke.
They can see a bishop of Durham, or a bishop of Winchester, in
possession of ten thousand pounds a year; and cannot conceive why
it is in worse hands than estates to the like amount in the hands of
this earl, or that squire; although it may be true, that so many dogs
and horses are not kept by the former, and fed with the victuals
which ought to nourish the children of the people. It is true, the
whole church revenue is not always employed, and to every shilling,
in charity; nor perhaps ought it; but something is generally so
employed. It is better to cherish virtue and humanity, by leaving
much to free will, even with some loss to the object, than to attempt
to make men mere machines and instruments of a political benevo-
lence. The world on the whole will gain by a liberty, without which
virtue cannot exist.

When once the commonwealth has established the estates of the
church as property, it can, consistently, hear nothing of the more or
the less. Too much and too little are treason against property. What
evil can arise from the quantity in any hand, whilst the supreme
authority has the full, sovereign superintendence over this, as over
all property, to prevent every species of abuse; and, whenever it
notably deviates, to give to it a direction agreeable to the purposes
of its institution.

In England most of us conceive that it is envy and malignity
towards those who are often the beginners of their own fortune, and
not a love of the self-denial and mortification of the ancient church.

240 EDMUND BURKE

that makes some look askance at the distinctions, and honours, and
revenues, which, taken from no person, are set apart for virtue. The
ears of the people of England are distinguishing. They hear these
men speak broad. Their tongue betrays them. Their language is
in the patois of fraud; in the cant and gibberish of hypocrisy. The
people of England must think so, when these praters affect to carry
back the clergy to that primitive, evangelic poverty, which, in the
spirit, ought always to exist in them, (and in us too, however we
may like it,) but in the thing must be varied, when the relation of
that body to the state is altered; when manners, when modes of life,
when indeed the whole order of human affairs, has undergone a
total revolution. We shall believe those reformers then to be honest
enthusiasts, not, as now we think them, cheats and deceivers, when
we see them throwing their own goods into common, and sub-
mitting their own persons to the austere discipline of the early
church.

With these ideas rooted in their minds, the Commons of Great
Britain, in the national emergencies, will never seek their resource
from the confiscation of the estates of the church and poor. Sac-
rilege and proscription are not among the ways and means of our
committee of supply. The Jews in Change Alley have not yet dared
to hint their hopes of a mortgage on the revenues belonging to the
see of Canterbury. I am not afraid that I shall be disavowed, when
I assure you, that there is not one public man in this kingdom,
whom you would wish to quote, no not one, of any party or de-
scription, who does not reprobate the dishonest, perfidious, and
cruel confiscation which the National Assembly has been compelled
to make of that property, which it was their first duty to protect.

It is with the exultation of a little national pride I tell you, that
those amongst us who have wished to pledge the societies of Paris in
the cup of their abominations have been disappointed. The robbery
of your church has proved a security to the possession of ours. It
has roused the people. They see with horror and alarm that enor-
mous and shameless act of proscription. It has opened, and will
more and more open, their eyes upon the selfish enlargement of
mind, and the narrow liberality of sentiment, of insidious men,
which, commencing in close hypocrisy and fraud, have ended in

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 24 1

open violence and rapine. At home we behold similar beginnings.
We are on our guard against similar conclusions.

I hope we shall never be so totally lost to all sense of the duties
imposed upon us by the law of social union, as upon any pretext
of public service, to confiscate the goods of a single unoffending citi-
zen. Who but a tyrant (a name expressive of everything which can
vitiate and degrade human nature) could think of seizing on the
property of men, unaccused, unheard, untried, by whole descrip-
tions, by hundreds and thousands together? Who, that had not lost
every trace of humanity, could think of casting down men of exalted
rank and sacred function, some of them of an age to call at once
for reverence and compassion, of casting them down from the high-
est situation in the commonwealth, wherein they were maintained
by their own landed property, to a state of indigence, depression,
and contempt?

The confiscators truly have made some allowance to their victims
from the scraps and fragments of their own tables, from which they
have been so harshly driven, and which have been so bountifully
spread for a feast to the harpies of usury. But to drive men from
independence to live on alms, is itself great cruelty. That which
might be a tolerable condition to men in one state of life, and not
habituated to other things, may, when all these circumstances are
altered, be a dreadful revolution; and one to which a virtuous mind
would feel pain in condemning any guilt, except that which would
demand the life of the offender. But to many minds this punish-
ment of degradation and infamy is worse than death. Undoubtedly
it is an infinite aggravation of this cruel suffering, that the persons
who were taught a double prejudice in favour of religion, by educa-
tion, and by the place they held in the administration of its func-
tions, are to receive the remnants of their property as alms from the
profane and impious hands of those who had plundered them of all
the rest; to receive (if they are at all to receive) not from the chari-
table contributions of the faithful, but from the insolent tenderness
of known and avowed atheism, the maintenance of religion, meas-
ured out to them on the standard of the contempt in which it is
held; and for the purpose of rendering those who receive the allow-
ance vile, and of no estimation, in the eyes of mankind.

242 EDMUND BURKE

But this act of seizure of property, it seems, is a judgment in law,
and not a confiscation. They have, it seems, found out in the acad-
emies of the Palais Royal, and the Jacobins, that certain men had
no right to the possessions which they held under law, usage, the
decisions of courts, and the accumulated prescription of a thousand
years. They say that ecclesiastics are fictitious persons, creatures of
the state, whom at pleasure they may destroy, and of course limit and
modify in every particular; that the goods they possess are not prop-
erly theirs, but belong to the state which created the fiction; and
we are therefore not to trouble ourselves with what they may suffer
in their natural feelings and natural persons, on account of what
is done towards them in this their constructive character. Of what
import is it under what names you injure men, and deprive them
of the just emoluments of a profession, in which they were not only
permitted but encouraged by the state to engage; and upon the
supposed certainty of which emoluments they had formed the plan
of their lives, contracted debts, and led multitudes to an entire de-
pendence upon them?

You do not imagine. Sir, that I am going to compliment this
miserable distinction of persons with any long discussion. The
arguments of tyranny are as contemptible as its force is dreadful.
Had not your confiscators, by their early crimes, obtained a power
which secures indemnity to all the crimes of which they have since
been guilty, or that they can commit, it is not the syllogism of the
logician, but the lash of the executioner, that would have refuted a
sophistry which becomes an accomplice of theft and murder. The
sophistic tyrants of Paris are loud in their declamations against the
departed regal tyrants, who in former ages have vexed the world.
They are thus bold, because they are safe from the dungeons and
iron cages of their old masters. Shall we be more tender of the
tyrants of our own time, when we see them acting worse tragedies
under our eyes? shall we not use the same liberty that they do, when
we can use it with the same safety? when to speak honest truth
only requires a contempt of the opinions of those whose actions we
abhor?

This outrage on all the rights of property was at first covered with
what, on the system of their conduct, was the most astonishing of all

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 243

pretexts — a regard to national faith. The enemies to property at first
pretended a most tender, dehcate, and scrupulous anxiety for keep-
ing the king's engagements with the public creditor. These pro-
fessors of the rights of men are so busy in teaching others, that they
have not leisure to learn anything themselves; otherwrise they would
have known, that it is to the property of the citizen, and not to the
demands of the creditor of the state, that the first and original faith
of civil society is pledged. The claim of the citizen is prior in time,
paramount in title, superior in equity. The fortunes of individuals,
whether possessed by acquisition, or by descent, or in virtue of a
participation in the goods of some community, were no part of the
creditor's security, expressed or implied. They never so much as
entered into his head when he made his bargain. He well knew
that the public, whether represented by a monarch or by a senate,
can pledge nothing but the public estate; and it can have no public
estate, except in what it derives from a just and proportioned im-
position upon the citizens at large. This was engaged, and nothing
else could be engaged, to the public creditor. No man can mortgage
his injustice as a pawn for his fidelity.

It is impossible to avoid some observation on the contradictions
caused by the extreme rigour and the extreme laxity of this new
public faith, which influenced in this transaction, and which influ-
enced not according to the nature of the obligation, but to the de-
scription of the persons to whom it was engaged. No acts of the old
government of the kings of France are held valid in the National
Assembly, except his pecuniary engagements; acts of all others of
the most ambiguous legality. The rest of all the acts of that
royal government are considered in so odious a light, that to have
a claim under its authority is looked on as a sort of crime. A pen-
sion, given as a reward for service to the state, is surely as good a
ground of property as any security for money advanced to the state.
It is better; for money is paid, and well paid, to obtain that service,
We have, however, seen multitudes of people under this description
in France, who never had been deprived of their allowances by the
most arbitrary ministers, in the most arbitrary times, by this assem-
bly of the rights of men, robbed without mercy. They were told, in
answer to their claim to the bread earned with their blood, that

244 EDMUND BURKE

their services had not been rendered to the country that now exists.

This laxity o£ pubHc faith is not confined to those unfortunate
persons. The Assembly, with perfect consistency it must be owned,
is engaged in a respectable deliberation how far it is bound by the
treaties made with other nations under the former government, and
their committee is to report which of them they ought to ratify, and
which not. By this means they have put the external fidelity of this
virgin state on a par with its internal.

It is not easy to conceive upon what rational principle the royal
government should not, of the two, rather have possessed the power
of rewarding service, and making treaties, in virtue of its preroga-
tive, than that of pledging to creditors the revenue of the state,
actual and possible. The treasure of the nation, of all things, has
been the least allowed to the prerogative of the king of France, or
to the prerogative of any king in Europe. To mortgage the public
revenue implies the sovereign dominion, in the fullest sense, over the
public purse. It goes far beyond the trust even of a temporary and
occasional taxation. The acts, however, of that dangerous power
(the distinctive mark of a boundless despotism) have been alone
held sacred. Whence arose this preference given by a democratic
assembly to a body of property deriving its title from the most criti-
cal and obnoxious of all the exertions of monarchical authority?
Reason can furnish nothing to reconcile inconsistency; nor can par-
tial favour be accounted for upon equitable principles. But the con-
tradiction and partiality which admit no justification, are not the
less without an adequate cause; and that cause I do not think it
difficult to discover.

By the vast debt of France a great monied interest has insensibly
grown up, and with it a great power. By the ancient usages which
prevailed in that kingdom, the general circulation of property, and
in particular the mutual convertibility of land into money, and of
money into land, had always been a matter of difficulty. Family
settlements, rather more general and more strict than they are in
England, the jus retractus, the great mass of landed property held
by the crown, and, by a maxim of the French law, held inalienably,
the vast estates of the ecclesiastical corporations, — all these had kept
the landed and monied interests more separated in France, less mis-

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 245

cible, and the owners of the two distinct species of property not so
well disposed to each other as they are in this country.

The monied property was long looked on with rather an evil eye
by the people. They saw it connected with their distresses, and ag-
gravating them. It was no less envied by the old landed interests,
partly for the same reasons that rendered it obnoxious to the peo-
ple, but much more so as it eclipsed, by the splendour of an osten-
tatious luxury, the unendowed pedigrees and naked titles of several
among the nobility. Even when the nobility, which represented the
more permanent landed interest, united themselves by marriage
(which sometimes was the case) with the other description, the
wealth which saved the family from ruin, was supposed to contami-
nate and degrade it. Thus the enmities and heart-burnings of these
parties were increased even by the usual means by which discord is
made to cease and quarrels are turned into friendship. In the mean
time, the pride of the wealthy men, not noble or newly noble, in-
creased with its cause. They felt with resentment an inferiority, the
grounds of which they did not acknowledge. There was no measure
to which they were not willing to lend themselves, in order to be re-
venged of the outrages of this rival pride, and to exalt their wealth
to what they considered as its natural rank and estimation. They
struck at the nobility through the crown and the church. They at-
tacked them particularly on the side on which they thought them
the most vulnerable, that is, the possessions of the church, which,
through the patronage of the crown, generally devolved upon the
nobility. The bishoprics, and the great commendatory abbeys, were,
with few exceptions, held by that order.

In this state of real, though not always perceived, warfare between
the noble ancient landed interest and the new monied interest, the
greatest because the most applicable strength was in the hands of
the latter. The monied interest is in its nature more ready for any
adventure; and its possessors more disposed to new enterprises of
any kind. Being of a recent acquisition, it falls in more naturally
with any novelties. It is therefore the kind of wealth which will be
resorted to by all who wish for change.

Along with the monied interest, a new description of men had
grown up, with whom that interest soon formed a close and marked

246 EDMUND BURKE

union; I mean the political men of letters. Men of letters, fond of
distinguishing themselves, are rarely averse to innovation. Since the
decline of the life and greatness of Louis the Fourteenth, they were
not so much cultivated either by him, or by the regent, or the suc-
cessors to the crown; nor were they engaged to the court by fa-
vours and emoluments so systematically as during the splendid
period of that ostentatious and not impolitic reign. What they lost
in the old court protection, they endeavoured to make up by joining
in a sort of incorporation of their own; to which the two academies
of France, and afterwards the vast undertaking of the Encyclo-
paedia, carried on by a society of these gentlemen, did not a little
contribute.

The literary cabal had some years ago formed something like a
regular plan for the destruction of the Christian religion. This ob-
ject they pursued with a degree of zeal which hitherto had been dis-
covered only in the propagators of some system of piety. They were
possessed with a spirit of proselytism in the most fanatical degree;
and from thence, by an easy progress, with the spirit of persecution
according to their means.^' What was not to be done towards their
great end by any direct or Immediate act, might be wrought by a
longer process through the medium of opinion. To command that
opinion, the first step is to establish a dominion over those who
direct it. They contrived to possess themselves, with great method
and perseverance, of all the avenues to literary fame. Many of them
indeed stood high in the ranks of literature and science. The world
had done them justice; and in favour of general talents forgave the
evil tendency of their peculiar principles. This was true liberality;
which they returned by endeavouring to confine the reputation of
sense, learning, and taste to themselves or their followers. I will
venture to say that this narrow, exclusive spirit has not been less
prejudicial to literature and to taste, than to morals and true philoso-
phy. These atheistical fathers have a bigotry of their own; and they
have learnt to talk against monks with the spirit of a monk. But
in some things they are men of the world. The resources of intrigue
are called in to supply the defects of argument and wit. To this

^' This (down to the end of the first sentence in the next paragraph) and some other
parts here and there, were inserted on his reading the manuscript, by my lost Son.

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 247

system of literary monopoly was joined an unremitting industry to
blacken and discredit in every way, and by every means, all those
who did not hold to their faction. To those who have observed the
spirit of their conduct, it has long been clear that nothing was
wanted but the power of carrying the intolerance of the tongue and
of the pen into a persecution which would strike at property, liberty,
and life.

The desultory and faint persecution carried on against them,
more from compliance with form and decency, than with serious
resentment, neither weakened their strength, nor relaxed their ef-
forts. The issue of the whole was, that, what with opposition, and
what with success, a violent and malignant zeal, of a kind hitherto
unknown in the world, had taken an entire possession of their
minds, and rendered their whole conversation, which otherwise
would have been pleasing and instructive, perfectly disgusting. A
spirit of cabal, intrigue, and proselytism, pervaded all their thoughts,
words, and actions. And, as controversial zeal soon turns its thoughts
on force, they began to insinuate themselves into a correspondence
with foreign princes; in hopes, through their authority, which at
first they flattered, they might bring about the changes they had in
view. To them it was indifferent whether these changes were to be
accomplished by the thunderbolt of despotism, or by the earthquake
of popular commotion. The correspondence between this cabal and
the late king of Prussia will throw no small light upon the spirit
of all their proceedings.^^ For the same purpose for which they in-
trigued with princes, they cultivated, in a distinguished manner, the
monied interest of France; and partly through the means furnished
by those whose peculiar offices gave them the most extensive and
certain means of communication, they carefully occupied all the
avenues to opinion.

Writers, especially when they act in a body, and with one direc-
tion, have great influence on the public mind; the alliance, therefore,
of these writers with the monied interest^^ had no small effect in
removing the popular odium and envy which attended that species
of wealth. These writers, like the propagators of all novelties, pre-

2^1 do not choose to shock the feeling of the moral reader with any quotation of
their vulgar, base, and profane language.

^ Their connexion with Turgot and almost all the people of the finance.

248 EDMUND BURKE

tended to a great zeal for the poor, and the lower orders, whilst in
their satires they rendered hateful, by every exaggeration, the faults
of courts, of nobility, and of priesthood. They became a sort of
demagogues. They served as a link to unite, in favour of one object,
obnoxious wealth to restless and desperate poverty.

As these two kinds of men appear principal leaders in all the late
transactions, their junction and politics will serve to account, not
upon any principles of law or of policy, but as a cause, for the general
fury with which all the landed property of ecclesiastical corporations
has been attacked; and the great care which, contrary to their pre-
tended principles, has been taken, of a monied interest originating
from the authority of the crown. All the envy against wealth and
power was artificially directed against other descriptions of riches.
On what other principle than that which I have stated can we ac-
count for an appearance so extraordinary and unnatural as that of
the ecclesiastical possessions, which had stood so many successions
of ages and shocks of civil violences, and were girded at once by
justice, and by prejudice, being applied to the payment of debts,
comparatively recent, invidious, and contracted by a decried and
subverted government?

Was the public estate a sufficient stake for the public debts? As-
sume that it was not, and that a loss must be incurred somewhere —
When the only estate lawfully possessed, and which the contracting
parties had in contemplation at the time in which their bargain was
made, happens to fail, who according to the principles of natural
and legal equity, ought to be the sufferer? Certainly it ought to
be either the party who trusted, or the party who persuaded him to
trust; or both; and not third parties who had no concern with the
transaction. Upon any insolvency they ought to suffer who are weak
enough to lend upon bad security, or they who fraudulently held
out a security that was not valid. Laws are acquainted with no
other rules of decision. But by the new institute of the rights of
men, the only persons, who in equity ought to suffer, are the only
persons who are to be saved harmless: those are to answer the debt
who neither were lenders nor borrowers, mortgagers nor mort-
gagees.

What had the clergy to do with these transactions? What had

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 249

they to do with any public engagement further than the extent of
their own debt? To that, to be sure, their estates were bound to the
last acre. Nothing can lead more to the true spirit of the Assem-
bly, which fits for public confiscation, with its new equity, and its
new morality, than an attention to their proceeding with regard to
this debt of the clergy. The body of confiscators, true to that monied
interest for which they were false to every other, have found the
clergy competent to incur a legal debt. Of course they declared them
legally entitled to the property which their power of incurring the
debt and mortgaging the estate implied; recognizing the rights of
those persecuted citizens, in the very act in which they were thus
grossly violated.

If, as I said, any persons are to make good deficiencies to the pub-
lic creditor, besides the public at large, they must be those who
managed the agreement. Why therefore are not the estates of all
the comptrollers-general confiscated.''^* Why not those of the long
succession of ministers, financiers, and bankers who have been
enriched whilst the nation was impoverished by their dealings and
their counsels? Why is not the estate of M. Laborde declared for-
feited rather than of the archbishop of Paris, who has had nothing
to do in the creation or in the jobbing of the public funds? Or, if
you must confiscate old landed estates in favour of the money-
jobbers, why is the penalty confined to one description? I do not
know whether the expenses of the Duke de Choiseul have left any-
thing of the infinite sums which he had derived from the bounty
of his master, during the transactions of a reign which contributed
largely by every species of prodigality in war and peace, to the pres-
ent debt of France. If any such remains, why is not this confiscated ?
I remember to have been in Paris during the time of the old gov-
ernment. I was there just after the Duke d'Aiguillon had been
snatched (as it was generally thought) from the block by the hand
of a protecting despotism. He was a minister, and had some con-
cern in the affairs of that prodigal period. Why do I not see his
estate delivered up to the municipalities in which it is situated?
The noble family of Noailles have long been servants (meritorious
servants I admit) to the crown of France, and have had of course
^* All have been confiscated in their turn.

250 EDMUND BURKE

some share in its bounties. Why do I hear nothing of the application
of their estates to the pubHc debt? Why is the estate of the Duke de
Rochefoucault more sacred than that of the Cardinal de Rochefou-
cault? The former is, I doubt not, a worthy person; and (if it were
not a sort of profaneness to talk of the use, as affecting the title to
the property) he makes a good use of his revenues; but it is no
disrespect to him to say, what authentic information well warrants
me in saying, that the use made of a property equally valid, by his
brother^^ the cardinal archbishop of Rouen, was far more laudable
and far more public-spirited. Can one hear of the proscription of
such persons, and the confiscation of their effects, without indigna-
tion and horror ? He is not a man who does not feel such emotions
on such occasions. He does not deserve the name of a free-man
who will not express them.

Few barbarous conquerors have ever made so terrible a revolution
in property. None of the heads of the Roman factions, when they
established "crudelem illam hastam" in all their auctions of rapine,
have ever set up to sale the goods of the conquered citizen to
such an enormous amount. It must be allowed in favour of those
tyrants of antiquity, that what was done by them could hardly be
said to be done in cold blood. Their passions were inflamed, their
tempers soured, their understandings confused, with the spirit of
revenge, with the innumerable reciprocated and recent inflictions
and retaliations of blood and rapine. They were driven beyond all
bounds of moderation by the apprehension of the return of power
with the return of property, to the families of those they had injured
beyond all hope of forgiveness.

These Roman confiscators, who were yet only in the elements of
tyranny, and were not instructed in the rights of men to exercise
all sorts of cruelties on each other without provocation, thought it
necessary to spread a sort of colour over their injustice. They con-
sidered the vanquished party as composed of traitors who had
borne arms, or otherwise had acted with hostility, against the com-
monwealth. They regarded them as persons who had forfeited their
property by their crimes. With you, in your improved state of the

2' Not his brother, nor any near relation; but this mistake does not affect the
argument.

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 25 1

human mind, there was no such formality. You seized upon five
millions sterling of annual rent, and turned forty or fifty thousand
human creatures out of their houses, because "such was your pleas-
ure." The tyrant Harry the Eighth of England, as he was not better
enlightened than the Roman Mariuses and Syllas, and had not
studied in your new schools, did not know what an effectual instru-
ment of despotism was to be found in that grand magazine of of-
fensive weapons, the rights of men. When he resolved to rob the
abbeys, as the club of the Jacobins have robbed all the ecclesiastics,
he began by setting on foot a commission to examine into the crimes
and abuses which prevailed in those communities. As it might be
expected, his commission reported truths, exaggerations, and false-
hoods. But truly or falsely, it reported abuses and offences. How-
ever, as abuses might be corrected, as every crime of persons does
not infer a forfeiture with regard to communities, and as property,
in that dark age, was not discovered to be a creature of prejudice,
all those abuses (and there were enow of them) were hardly thought
sufficient ground for such a confiscation as it was for his purpose
to make. He therefore procured the formal surrender of these es-
tates. All these operose proceedings were adopted by one of the
most decided tyrants in the rolls of history, as necessary prelimi-
naries, before he could venture, by bribing the members of his two
servile houses with a share of the spoil, and holding out to them
an eternal immunity from taxation, to demand a confirmation of
his iniquitous proceedings by an act of Parliament. Had fate re-
served him to our times, four technical terms would have done his
business, and saved him all this trouble; he needed nothing more
than one short form of incantation — "Philosophy, Light, Liberality,
the Rights of Men."

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

I believe every honest man sympathizes in his reflections with our

252 EDMUND BURKE

political poet on that occasion, and will pray to avert the omen
whenever these acts of rapacious despotism present themselves to
his view or his imagination:

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

This same wealth, which is at all times treason and lese nation
to indigent and rapacious despotism, under all modes of polity, was

^^ The rest of the passage is this —

"Who having spent the treasures of his crown,

Condemns their luxury to feed his own.

And yet this act, to varnish o'er the shame

Of sacrilege, must bear devotion's name.

No crime so bold, but would be understood

A real, or at least a seeming good;

Who fears not to do ill, yet fears the name.

And, free from conscience, is a slave to fame.

Thus he the church at once protects, and spoils;

But princes^ swords are sharper than their styles.

And thus to th' ages past he makes amends,

Their charity destroys, their faith defends.

Then did religion in a lazy cell,

In empty aery contemplation dwell;

And, like the Hock, unmoved lay; but ours,

As much too active, like the stork devours.

Is there no temperate region can be known,

Betwixt their frigid and our torrid zone?

Could we not wake from that lethargic dream,

But to be restless in a worse extreme?

And for that lethargy was there no cure.

But to be cast into a calenture;

Can knowledge have no bound, but must advance

So far, to make us wish for ignorance?

And rather in the dark to grope our way.

Than, led by a false guide, to err by day?

Who sees these dismal heaps, but would demand,

What barbarous invader sacked the land?

But when he hears, no Goth, no Turk did bring

This desolation, but a Christian king;

When nothing, but the name of zeal, appears

'Twixt our best actions and the worst of theirs,

what does he think our sacrilege would spare,

when such th' effects of our devotion are?"

Cooper's Hill, by Sir John Denham.

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 253

your temptation to violate property, law, and religion, united in
one object. But was the state of France so wretched and undone,
that no other recourse but rapine remained to preserve its existence ?
On this point I wish to receive some information. When the states
met, was the condition of the finances of France such, that, after
economizing on principles of justice and mercy through all depart-
ments, no fair repartition of burthens upon all the orders could possi-
bly restore them? If such an equal imposition would have been
sufficient, you well know it might easily have been made. M.
Necker, in the budget which he laid before the orders assembled at
Versailles, made a detailed exposition of the state of the French

nation."

If we give credit to him, it was not necessary to have recourse to
any new impositions whatsoever, to put the receipts of France on a
balance with its expenses. He stated the permanent charges of all
descriptions, including the interest of a new loan of four hundred
millions, at 531,444,000 livres; the fixed revenue at 475,294,000, mak-
ing the deficiency 56,150,000, or short of ^^ 2,200,000 sterling. But to
balance it, he brought forward savings and improvements of reve-
nue (considered as entirely certain) to rather more than the amount
of that deficiency; and he concludes with these emphatical words,
(p. 39,) "Quel pays. Messieurs, que celui, oii, sans impots et avec
de simples objets inappercus, on peut faire disparoitre un deficit
qui a fait tant de bruit en Europe." As to the reimbursement, the
sinking of debt, and the other great objects of public credit and
political arrangement indicated in Mons. Necker's speech, no doubt
could be entertained, but that a very moderate and proportioned
assessment on the citizens without distinction would have provided
for all of them to the fullest extent of their demand.

If this representation of Mons. Necker was false, then the Assem-
bly are in the highest degree culpable for having forced the king to
accept as his minister, and since the king's deposition, for having
employed, as their minister, a man who had been capable of abus-
ing so notoriously the confidence of his master and their own; in a
matter too of the highest moment, and directly appertaining to his

2' Rapport de Mons. le Directeur-G^n^ral des Finances, fait par ordre du Roi a
Versailles. Mai 5, 1789.

254 EDMUND BURKE

particular office. But if the representation was exact, (as having al-
ways, along with you, conceived a high degree of respect for M.
Necker, I make no doubt it was,) then what can be said in favour
of those, who, instead of moderate, reasonable, and general con-
tribution, have in cold blood, and impelled by no necessity, had
recourse to a partial and cruel confiscation?

Was that contribution refused on a pretext of privilege, either on
the part of the clergy, or on that of the nobility ? No, certainly. As
to the clergy, they even ran before the wishes of the third order.
Previous to the meeting of the states, they had in all their instruc-
tions expressly directed their deputies to renounce every immunity,
which put them upon a footing distinct from the condition of their
fellow-subjects. In this renunciation the clergy were even more
explicit than the nobility.

But let us suppose that the deficiency had remained at the fifty-six
millions, (or ;^2;2oo,ooo sterling), as at first stated by M. Necker.
Let us allow that all the resources he opposed to that deficiency
were impudent and groundless fictions; and that the Assembly (or
their lords of articles^ at the Jacobins) were from thence justified in
laying the whole burthen of that deficiency on the clergy, — yet al-
lowing all this, a necessity of ;r2,20o,ooo sterling will not support a
confiscation to the amount of five millions. The imposition of
;r2,2oo,ooo on the clergy, as partial, would have been oppressive and
unjust, but it would not have been altogether ruinous to those on
whom it was imposed; and therefore it would not have answered
the real purpose of the managers.

Perhaps persons unacquainted with the state of France, on hear-
ing the clergy and the noblesse were privileged in point of taxation,
may be led to imagine, that, previous to the Revolution, these bodies
had contributed nothing to the state. This is a great mistake. They
certainly did not contribute equally with each other, nor either of
them equally with the commons. They both, however, contributed
largely. Neither nobility nor clergy enjoyed any exemption from
the excise on consumable commodities, from duties of custom, or
from any of the other numerous indirect impositions, which in

^^In the constitution of Scotland, during the Stuart reigns, a committee sat for pre-
paring bills; and none could pass, but those previously approved by them. This
committee was called lords of articles.

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 255

France, as well as here, make so very large a proportion of all
payments to the public. The noblesse paid the capitation. They
paid also a land-tax, called the twentieth penny, to the height some-
times of three, sometimes of four, shillings in the pound; both of
them direct impositions of no light nature, and no trivial produce.
The clergy of the provinces annexed by conquest to France, (which
in extent make about an eighth part of the whole, but ui wealth a
much larger proportion,) paid likewise to the capitation and the
twentieth penny, at the rate paid by the nobility. The clergy in the
old provinces did not pay the capitation; but they had redeemed
themselves at the expense of about 24 millions, or a litde more than
a million sterling. They were exempted from the twentieths: but
then they made free gifts; they contracted debts for the state; and
they were subject to some other charges, the whole computed at
about a thirteenth part of their clear income. They ought to have
paid annually about forty thousand pounds more, to put them on a
par with the contribution of the nobility.

When the terrors of this tremendous proscription hung over the
clergy, they made an offer of a contribution^ through the archbishop
of Aix, which, for its extravagance, ought not to have been accepted.
But it was evidently and obviously more advantageous to the public
creditor than anything which could rationally be promised by the
confiscation. Why was it not accepted? The reason is plain — There
was no desire that the church should be brought to serve the state.
The service of the state was made a pretext to destroy the church.
In their way to the destruction of the church they would not scruple
to destroy their country: and they have destroyed it. One great
end in the project would have been defeated if the plan of extor-
tion had been adopted in lieu of the scheme of confiscation. The
new landed interest connected with the new republic, and connected
with it for its very being, could not have been created. This was
among the reasons why that extravagant ransom was not accepted.

The madness of the project of confiscation, on the plan that, was
first pretended, soon became apparent. To bring this unwieldy
mass of landed property, enlarged by the confiscation of all the vast
landed domain of the crown, at once into market, was obviously to
defeat the profits proposed by the confiscation, by depreciating the

256 EDMUND BURKE

value of those lands, and indeed of all the landed estates throughout
France. Such a sudden diversion of all its circulating money from
trade to land, must be an additional mischief. What step was taken?
Did the Assembly, on becoming sensible of the inevitable ill effects
of their projected sale, revert to the offers of the clergy? No dis-
tress could oblige them to travel in a course which was disgraced
by any appearance of justice. Giving over all hopes from a general
immediate sale, another project seems to have succeeded. They
proposed to take stock in exchange for i:he church lands. In that
project great difficulties arose in equalizing the objects to be ex-
changed. Other obstacles also presented themselves, which threw
them back again upon some project of sale. The municipalities had
taken an alarm. They would not hear of transferring the whole
plunder of the kingdom to the stock-holders in Paris. Many of
those municipalities had been (upon system) reduced to the most
deplorable indigence. Money was nowhere to be seen. They were
therefore led to the point that was so ardently desired. They panted
for a currency of any kind which might revive their perishing in-
dustry. The municipalities were then to be admitted to a share in
the spoil, which evidendy rendered the first scheme (if ever it had
been seriously entertained) altogether impracticable. Public exi-
gencies pressed upon all sides. The minister of finance reiterated his
call for supply with a most urgent, anxious, and boding voice. Thus
pressed on all sides, instead of the first plan of converting their
bankers into bishops and abbots, instead of paying the old debt, they
contracted a new debt, at 3 per cent., creating a new paper cur-
rency, founded on an eventual sale of the church lands. They issued
this paper currency to satisfy in the first instance chiefly the demands
made upon them by the banl{^ of discount, the great machine, or
paper-mill, of their fictitious wealth.

The spoil of the church was now become the only resource of all
their operations in finance, the vital principle of all their politics,
the sole security for the existence of their power. It was necessary
by all, even the most violent means, to put every individual on the
same bottom, and to bind the nation in one guilty interest to up-
hold this act, and the authority of those by whom it was done. In

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 257

order to force the most reluctant into a participation of their pillage,
they rendered their paper circulation compulsory in all payments.
Those who consider the general tendency of their schemes to this
one object as a centre, and a centre from which afterwards all their
measures radiate, will not think that I dwell too long upon this part
of the proceedings of the National Assembly.

To cut off all appearance of connexion between the crown and
public justice, and to bring the whole under implicit obedience to
the dictators in Paris, the old independent judicature of the parlia-
ments, with all its merits, and all its faults, was wholly abolished.
Whilst the parliaments existed, it was evident that the people might
some time or other come to resort to them, and rally under the
standard of their ancient laws. It became however a matter of
consideration that the magistrates and officers, in the courts now
abolished, had purchased their places at a very high rate, for which,
as well as for the duty they performed, they received but a very low
return of interest. Simple confiscation is a boon only for the clergy;
—to the lawyers some appearances of equity are to be observed;
and they are to receive compensation to an immense amount. Their
compensation becomes part of the national debt, for the liquidation
of which there is the one exhaustless fund. The lawyers are to
obtain their compensation in the new church paper, which is to
march with the new principles of judicature and legislature. The
dismissed magistrates are to take their share of martyrdom with the
ecclesiastics, or to receive their own property from such a fund, and
in such a manner, as all those, who have been seasoned with the
ancient principles of jurisprudence, and had been the sworn guard-
ians of property, must look upon with horror. Even the clergy
are to receive their miserable allowance out of the depreciated paper,
which is stamped with the indelible character of sacrilege, and with
the symbols of their own ruin, or they must starve. So violent an
outrage upon credit, property, and liberty, as this compulsory paper
currency, has seldom been exhibited by the alliance of bankruptcy
and tyranny, at any time, or in any nation.

In the course of all these operations, at length comes out the grand
arcanum; — that in reality, and in a fair sense, the lands of the church

258 EDMUND BURKE

(so far as anything certain can be gathered from their proceedings)
are not to be sold at all. By the late resolutions of the National As-
sembly, they are indeed to be delivered to the highest bidder. But
it is to be observed, that a certain portion only of the purchase money
is to be laid down. A period of twelve years is to be given for the
payment of the rest. The philosophic purchasers are therefore, on
payment of a sort of fine, to be put instantly into possession of the
estate. It becomes in some respects a sort of gift to them; to be held
on the feudal tenure of zeal to the new establishment. This project
is evidently to let in a body of purchasers without money. The con-
sequence will be, that these purchasers, or rather grantees, will pay,
not only from the rents as they accrue, which might as well be re-
ceived by the state, but from the spoil of the materials of buildings,
from waste in woods, and from whatever money, by hands habitu-
ated to the gripings of usury, they can wring from the miserable
peasant. He is to be delivered over to the mercenary and arbitrary
discretion of men, who will be stimulated to every species of extortion
by the growing demands on the growing profits of an estate held
under the precarious settlement of a new political system.

When all the frauds, impostures, violences, rapines, burnings,
murders, confiscations, compulsory paper currencies, and every de-
scription of tyranny and cruelty employed to bring about and to
uphold this Revolution, have their natural effect, that is, to shock the
moral sentiments of all virtuous and sober minds, the abettors of this
philosophic system immediately strain their throats in a declama-
tion against the old monarchical government of France. When they
have rendered that deposed power sufficiently black, they then pro-
ceed in argument, as if all those who disapprove of their new abuses
must of course be partisans of the old; that those who reprobate
their crude and violent schemes of liberty ought to be treated as
advocates for servitude. I admit that their necessities do compel
them to this base and contemptible fraud. Nothing can reconcile
men to their proceedings and projects, but the supposition that
there is no third option between them and some tyranny as odious
as can be furnished by the records of history, or by the invention
of poets. This prattling of theirs hardly deserves the name of soph-
istry. It is nothing but plain impudence. Have these gentlemen

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 259

never heard, in the whole circle of the worlds o£ theory and prac-
tice, of anything between the despotism of the monarch and the
despotism of the multitude? Have they never heard of a monarchy
directed by laws, controlled and balanced by the great hereditary
wealth and hereditary dignity of a nation; and both again controlled
by a judicious check from the reason and feeling of the people at
large, acting by a suitable and permanent organ? Is it then impos-
sible that a man may be found, who, without criminal ill intention,
or pitiable absurdity, shall prefer such a mixed and tempered govern-
ment to either of the extremes; and who may repute that nation to be
destitute of all wisdom and of all virtue, which, having in its choice
to obtain such a government with ease, or rather to confirm it when
actually possessed, thought proper to commit a thousand crimes, and
to subject their country to a thousand evils, in order to avoid it? Is
it then a truth so universally acknowledged, that a pure democracy
is the only tolerable form into which human society can be thrown,
that a man is not permitted to hesitate about its merits, without the
suspicion of being a friend to tyranny, that is, of being a foe to
mankind?

I do not know under what description to class the present ruling
authority in France. It affects to be a pure democracy, though I
think it in a direct train of becoming shortly a mischievous and ig-
noble oligarchy. But for the present I admit it to be a contrivance of
the nature and effect of what it pretends to. I reprobate no form of
government merely upon abstract principles. There may be situa-
tions in which the purely democratic form will become necessary.
There may be some (very few, and very particularly circumstanced)
where it would be clearly desirable. This I do not take to be the
case of France, or of any other great country. Until now, we have
seen no examples of considerable democracies. The ancients were
better acquainted with them. Not being wholly unread in the au-
thors, who had seen the most of those constitutions, and who best
understood them, I cannot help concurring with their opinion, that
an absolute democracy, no more than absolute monarchy, is to be
reckoned among the legitimate forms of government. They think it
rather the corruption and degeneracy, than the sound constitution of
a republic. If I recollect rightly, Aristotle observes, that a democracy

260 EDMUND BURKE

has many striking points of resemblance with a tyranny.^ Of this
I am certain, that in a democracy, the majority of the citizens is
capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority,
whenever strong divisions prevail in that kind of polity, as they often
must; and that oppression of the minority will extend to far greater
numbers, and will be carried on with much greater fury, than can
almost ever be apprehended from the dominion of a single sceptre.
In such a popular persecution, individual sufferers are in a much
more deplorable condition than in any other. Under a cruel prince
they have the balmy compassion of mankind to assuage the smart of
their wounds; they have the plaudits of the people to animate their
generous constancy under their sufferings: but those who are sub-
jected to wrong under multitudes, are deprived of all external con-
solation. They seem deserted by mankind, overpowered by a con-
spiracy of their whole species.

But admitting democracy not to have that inevitable tendency to
party tyranny, which I suppose it to have, and admitting it to pos-
sess as much good in it when unmixed, as I am sure it possesses
when compounded with other forms; does monarchy, on its part,
contain nothing at all to recommend it? I do not often quote Boling-
broke, nor have his works in general left any permanent impression
on my mind. He is a presumptuous and a superficial writer. But
he has one observation, which, in my opinion, is not without depth
and solidity. He says, that he prefers a monarchy to other govern-
ments; because you can better ingraft any description of republic on
a monarchy than anything of monarchy upon the republican forms.
I think him perfecdy in the right. The fact is so historically; and it
agrees well with the speculation.

^'When I wrote this I quoted from memory, after many years had elapsed from
my reading the passage. A learned friend has found it, and it is as follows:

Td ^os rd avrd, Kal S.iuf' SeaToriKA, rC>v Pfkribvwv, Kal ri \l/r)<i>laiiaTa, SiOTtp iKtl
rd iviTayiiaTh- Kal i &ii)xayojym Kal 6 /cAXof, ol airol Kal ifAXoyor Kal ^udXurra
hcA-Tepoi Trap' kKarkpois Uxx^ovtriv, ol fiev KdXaKes Trapd Tvp6,vvots, ol di Srjuayojyol irapd
TOts Srjiiois Tots toioOtols. —

"The ethical character is the same; both exercise despotism over the better class of
citizens; and decrees are in the one, what ordinances and arrets are in the other: the
demagogue too, and the court favourite, are not unfrequently the same identical
men, and always bear a close analogy; and these have the principal power, each in their
respective forms of government, favourites with the absolute monarch, and dema-
gogues with a people such as I have described." Arist. Politic, lib. iv. cap. 4.

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 26 1

I know how easy a topic it is to dwell on the faults of departed
greatness. By a revolution in the state, the fawning sycophant of
yesterday is converted into the austere critic of the present hour. But
steady, independent minds, when they have an object of so serious a
concern to mankind as government under their contemplation, will
disdain to assume the part of satirists and declaimers. They will
judge of human institutions as they do of human characters. They
will sort out the good from the evil, which is mixed in mortal
institutions, as it is in mortal men.

Your government in France, though usually, and I think justly,
reputed the best of the unqualified or ill-qualified monarchies, was
still full of abuses. These abuses accumulated in a length of time,
as they must accumulate in every monarchy not under the constant
inspection of a popular representative. I am no stranger to the faults
and defects of the subverted government of France; and I think I am
not inclined by nature or policy to make a panegyric upon anything
which is a just and natural object of censure. But the question is not
now of the vices of that monarchy, but of its existence. Is it then
true, that the French government was such as to be incapable or
undeserving of reform; so that it was of absolute necessity that the
whole fabric should be at once pulled down, and the area cleared
for the erection of a theoretic, experimental edifice in its place? All
France was of a different opinion in the beginning of the year 1789.
The instructions to the representatives to the states-general, from
every district in that kingdom, were filled with projects for the refor-
mation of that government, without the remotest suggestion of a
design to destroy it. Had such a design been even insinuated, I be-
lieve there would have been but one voice, and that voice for rejecting
it with scorn and horror. Men have been sometimes led by degrees,
sometimes hurried, into things of which, if they could have seen the
whole together, they never would have permitted the most remote
approach. When those instructions were given, there was no ques-
tion but that abuses existed, and that they demanded a reform; nor
is there now. In the interval between the instructions and the Revo-
lution, things changed their shape; and, in consequence of that
change, the true question at present is, Whether those who would
have reformed, or those who have destroyed, are in the right.?

262 EDMUND BURKE

To hear some men speak of the late monarchy of France, you
would imagine that they were talking of Persia bleeding under the
ferocious sword of Tahmas Kouli Khan; or at least describing the
barbarous anarchic despotism of Turkey, where the finest countries
in the most genial climates in the world are wasted by peace more
than any countries have been worried by war; where arts are un-
known, where manufactures languish, where science is extinguished,
where agriculture decays, where the human race itself melts away
and perishes under the eye of the observer. Was this the case of
France? I have no way of determining the question but by refer-
ence to facts. Facts do not support this resemblance. Along with
much evil, there is some good in monarchy itself; and some cor-
rective to its evil from religion, from laws, from manners, from
opinions, the French monarchy must have received; which ren-
dered it (though by no means a free, and therefore by no means
a good, constitution) a despotism rather in appearance than in
reality.

Among the standards upon which the effects of government on
any country are to be estimated, I must consider the state of its
population as not the least certain. No country in which population
flourishes, and is in progressive improvement, can be under a very
mischievous government. About sixty years ago, the Intendants of
the generalities of France made, with other matters, a report of the
population of their several districts. I have not the books, which are
very voluminous, by me, nor do I know where to procure them, (I
am obliged to speak by memory, and therefore the less positively,)
but I think the population of France was by them, even at that period,
estimated at twenty-two millions of souls. At the end of the last
century it had been generally calculated at eighteen. On either of
these estimations, France was not ill peopled. M. Necker, who is
an authority for his own time at least equal to the Intendants for
theirs, reckons, and upon apparently sure principles, the people of
France, in the year 1780, at twenty-four millions six hundred and
seventy thousand. But was this the probable ultimate term under
the old establishment.? Dr. Price is of opinion, that the growth of
population in France was by no means at its acme in that year. I
certainly defer to Dr. Price's authority a good deal more in these

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 263

speculations, than I do in his general politics. This gentleman,
taking ground on M. Necker's data, is very confident that since the
period of that minister's calculation, the French population has in-
creased rapidly; so rapidly, that in the year 1789 he will not consent
to rate the people of that kingdom at a lower number than thirty
millions. After abating much (and much I think ought to be abated)
from the sanguine calculation of Dr. Price, I have no doubt that
the population of France did increase considerably during this later
period : but supposing that it increased to nothing more than will be
sufficient to complete the twenty-four millions six hundred and sev-
enty thousand to twenty-five millions, still a population of twenty-
five millions, and that in an increasing progress, on a space of about
twenty-seven thousand square leagues, is immense. It is, for instance,
a good deal more than the proportionable population of this island,
or even than that of England, the best peopled part of the united
kingdom.

It is not universally true, that France is a fertile country. Con-
siderable tracts of it are barren, and labour under other natural dis-
advantages. In the portions of that territory where things are more
favourable, as far as I am able to discover, the numbers of the people
correspond to the indulgence of nature.^" The Generality of Lisle
(this I admit is the strongest example) upon an extent of four hun-
dred and four leagues and a half, about ten years ago, contained
seven hundred and thirty-four thousand six hundred souls, which
is one thousand seven hundred and seventy-two inhabitants to each
square league. The middle term for the rest of France is about nine
hundred inhabitants to the same admeasurement.

I do not attribute this population to the deposed government;
because I do not like to compliment the contrivances of men with
what is due in a great degree to the bounty of Providence. But that
decried government could not have obstructed, most probably it
favoured, the operation of those causes, (whatever they were,)
whether of nature in the soil, or habits of industry among the people,
which has produced so large a number of the species throughout that
whole kingdom, and exhibited in some particular places such prodi-
gies of population. I never will suppose that fabric of a state to be

'" De rAdministration des Finances de la France, par Mons. Neckcr, vol. i. p. 288.

264 EDMUND BURKE

the worst of all political institutions, which, by experience, is found
to contain a principle favourable (however latent it may be) to the
increase of mankind.

The wealth of a country is another, and no contemptible standard,
by which we may judge whether, on the whole, a government be
protecting or destructive. France far exceeds England in the multi-
tude of her people; but I apprehend that her comparative wealth is
much inferior to ours; that it is not so equal in the distribution, nor
so ready in the circulation. I believe the difference in the form of the
two governments to be amongst the causes of this advantage on the
side of England. I speak of England, not of the whole British
dominions; which, if compared with those of France, will, in some
degree, weaken the comparative rate of wealth upon our side. But
that wealth, which will not endure a comparison with the riches of
England, may constitute a very respectable degree of opulence. M.
Necker's book published in 1785,^' contains an accurate and inter-
esting collection of facts relative to public economy and to political
arithmetic; and his speculations on the subject are in general wise
and liberal. In that work he gives an idea of the state of France,
very remote from the portrait of a country whose government was
a perfect grievance, an absolute evil, admitting no cure but through
the violent and uncertain remedy of a total revolution. He affirms,
that from the year 1726 to the year 1784, there was coined at the
mint of France, in the species of gold and silver, to the amount of
about one hundred milUons of pounds sterling.^^

It is impossible that M. Necker should be mistaken in the amount
of the bullion which has been coined in the mint. It is a matter of
official record. The reasonings of this able financier, concerning the
quantity of gold and silver which remained for circulation, when he
wrote in 1785, that is, about four years before the deposition and im-
prisonment of the French king, are not of equal certainty; but they
are laid on grounds so apparently solid, that it is not easy to refuse
a considerable degree of assent to his calculation. He calculates the
numeraire, or what we call specie, then actually existing in France,
at about eighty-eight millions of the same English money. A great
accumulation of wealth for one country, large as that country is!

'' De rAdministrarion des Finances de la France, par Mons. Necker.
^2 Vol. iii. chap. 8 and chap. 9.

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 265

M. Necker was so far from considering this influx of wealth as likely
to cease, when he wrote in 1785, that he presumes upon a future
annual increase of two per cent, upon the money brought into France
during the periods from which he computed.

Some adequate cause must have originally introduced all the
money coined at its mint into that kingdom; and some cause as
operative must have kept at home, or returned into its bosom, such
a vast flood of treasure as M. Necker calculates to remain for domes-
tic circulation. Suppose any reasonable deductions from M. Necker's
computation, the remainder must still amount to an immense sum.
Causes thus powerful to acquire, and to retain, cannot be found in
discouraged industry, insecure property, and a positively destructive
government. Indeed, when I consider the face of the kingdom of
France; the multitude and opulence of her cities; the useful mag-
nificence of her spacious high roads and bridges; the opportunity of
her artificial canals and navigations opening the conveniences of
maritime communication through a solid continent of so immense
an extent; when I turn my eyes to the stupendous works of her ports
and harbours, and to her whole naval apparatus, whether for war
or trade; when I bring before my view the number of her fortifi-
cations, constructed with so bold and masterly a skill, and made
and maintained at so prodigious a charge, presenting an armed front
and impenetrable barrier to her enemies upon every side; when I
recollect how very small a part of that extensive region is without
cultivation, and to what complete perfection the culture of many of
the best productions of the earth have been brought in France; when
I reflect on the excellence of her manufactures and fabrics, second
to none but ours, and in some particulars not second; when I con-
template the grand foundations of charity, public and private; when
I survey the state of all the arts that beautify and polish life; when I
reckon the men she has bred for extending her fame in war, her able
statesmen, the multitude of her profound lawyers and theologians,
her philosophers, her critics, her historians and antiquaries, her poets
and her orators, sacred and profane; I behold in all this something
which awes and commands the imagination, which checks the mind
on the brink of precipitate and indiscriminate censure, and which
demands that we should very seriously examine, what and how great
are the latent vices that could authorize us at once to level so spa-

266 EDMUND BURKE

cious a fabric with the ground. I do not recognize in this view of
things, the despotism of Turkey. Nor do I discern the character of
a government, that has been, on the whole, so oppressive, or so
corrupt, or so negligent, as to be utterly unfit for all reformation. I
must think such a government well deserved to have its excellencies
heightened, its faults corrected, and its capacities improved into a
British constitution.

Whoever has examined into the proceedings of that deposed gov-
ernment for several years back, cannot fail to have observed, amidst
the inconstancy and fluctuation natural to courts, an earnest en-
deavour towards the prosperity and improvement of the country; he
must admit, that it had long been employed, in some instances
wholly to remove, in many considerably to correct, the abusive prac-
tices and usages that had prevailed in the state; and that even the
unlimited power of the sovereign over the persons of his subjects,
inconsistent, as undoubtedly it was, with law and liberty, had yet
been every day growing more mitigated in the exercise. So far from
refusing itself to reformation, that government was open, with a
censurable degree of facility, to all sorts of projects and projectors
on the subject. Rather too much countenance was given to the spirit
of innovation, which soon was turned against those who fostered it,
and ended in their ruin. It is but cold, and no very flattering, justice
to that fallen monarchy, to say, that, for many years, it trespassed
more by levity and want of judgment in several of its schemes, than
from any defect in diligence or in public spirit. To compare the gov-
ernment of France for the last fifteen or sixteen years with wise and
well<onstituted establishments during that, or during any period, is
not to act with fairness. But if in point of prodigality in the ex-
penditure of money, or in point of rigour in the exercise of power, it
be compared with any of the former reigns, I believe candid judges
will give little credit to the good intentions of those who dwell per-
petually on the donations to favourites, or on the expenses of the
court, or on the horrors of the Bastile, in the reign of Louis the Six-
teenth.^'

''The world is obliged to M. de Calonne for the pains he has taken to refute
the scandalous exaggerations relative to some of the royal expenses, and to detect
the fallacious account given of pensions, for the wicked purpose of provoking the
populace to all sorts of crimes.

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 267

Whether the system, if it deserves such a name, now built on the
ruins of that ancient monarchy, will be able to give a better account
of the population and wealth of the country, which it has taken under
its care, is a matter very doubtful. Instead of improving by the
change, I apprehend that a long series of years must be told, before
it can recover in any degree the effects of this philosophic revolution,
and before the nation can be replaced on its former footing. If Dr.
Price should think fit, a few years hence, to favour us with an esti-
mate of the population of France, he will hardly be able to make up
his tale of thirty millions of souls, as computed in 1789, or the As-
sembly's computation of twenty-six millions of that year; or even
M. Necker's twenty-five millions in 1780. I hear that there are con-
siderable emigrations from France; and that many, quitting that
voluptuous climate, and that seductive Circean liberty, have taken
refuge in the frozen regions, and under the British despotism, of
Canada.

In the present disappearance of coin, no person could think it
the same country, in which the present minister of the finances has
been able to discover fourscore millions sterling in specie. From its
general aspect one would conclude that it had been for some time
past under the special direction of the learned academicians of Laputa
and Balnibarbi.^* Already the population of Paris has so declined, that
M. Necker stated to the National Assembly the provision to be made
for its subsistence at a fifth less than what had formerly been found
requisite.^'' It is said (and I have never heard it contradicted) that a
hundred thousand people are out of employment in that city, though
it is become the seat of the imprisoned court and National Assembly.
Nothing, I am credibly informed, can exceed the shocking and dis-
gusting spectacle of mendicancy displayed in that capital. Indeed the
votes of the National Assembly leave no doubt of the fact. They
have lately appointed a standing committee of mendicancy. They are
contriving at once a vigorous police on this subject, and, for the first
time, the imposition of a tax to maintain the poor, for whose present
relief great sums appear on the face of the public accounts of the

'* See Gulliver's Travels for the idea of countries governed by philosophers.
'^ M. de Calonne states the falling off of the population of Paris as far more con-
siderable; and it may be so, since the period of M. Necker's calculation.

268 EDMUND BURKE

year.^^ In the meantime the leaders of the legislative clubs and coffee-
houses are intoxicated with admiration at their own wisdom and
ability. They speak with the most sovereign contempt of the rest of
the world. They tell the people, to comfort them in the rags with
which they have clothed them, that they are a nation of philosophers;
and sometimes, by all the arts of quackish parade, by show, tumult,
and bustle, sometimes by the alarms of plots and invasions, they
attempt to drown the cries of indigence, and to divert the eyes of the
observer from the ruin and wretchedness of the state. A brave
people will certainly prefer liberty accompanied with a virtuous pov-
erty to a depraved and wealthy servitude. But before the price of
comfort and opulence is paid, one ought to be pretty sure it is real
liberty which is purchased, and that she is to be purchased at no other
price. I shall always, however, consider that liberty as very equivocal
in her appearance, which has not wisdom and justice for her com-
panions; and does not lead prosperity and plenty in her train.

The advocates for this Revolution, not satisfied with exaggerating
the vices of their ancient government, strike at the fame of their
country itself, by painting almost all that could have attracted the
attention of strangers, I. mean their nobility and their clergy, as ob-
jects of horror. If this were only a libel, there had not been much
in it. But it has practical consequences. Had your nobility and
gentry, who formed the great body of your landed men, and the

^ Travaux de charitd' pour subvenir au manque de Ldvres. £ s. d.

travail a Paris et dans les provinces .... 3,866,920 — 161,121 13 4

Destruction de vagabondage et de la mendicity . 1,671,417 — 69,642 7 6

Primes pour I'importation de grains 5,671,907 — 236,329 9 2

Depenses relatives aux subsistances, deduction fait

des r&ouvrements qui ont eu lieu . . . .39,871,790 — 1,661,324 11 8

Total Iav. 51,082,034 — ;C2,i28,4i8 i 8

When I sent this book to the press, I entertained some doubt concerning the nature
and extent of the last article in the above accounts, which is only under a general
head, without any detail. Since then I have seen M. de Calonne's work. I must
think it a great loss to me that I had not that advantage earlier. M. de Calonne thinks
this article to be on account of general subsistence; but as he is not able to compre-
hend how so great a loss as upwards of £ 1,661,000 sterling could be sustained on the
difference between the price and the sale of grain, he seems to attribute this enormous
head of charge to secret expenses of the Revolution. I cannot say anything positively
on that subject. The reader is capable of judging, by the aggregate of these im-
mense charges, on the state and condition of France; and the system of public economy
adopted in that nation. These articles of account produced no inquiry or discussion
in the National Assembly.

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 269

whole of your military officers, resembled those of Germany, at the
period when the Hanse-towns were necessitated to confederate
against the nobles in defence of their property — had they been like the
Orsini and Vitelli in Italy, who used to sally from their fortified
dens to rob the trader and traveller — had they been such as the
Mameluhes in Egypt, or the Nayres on the coast of Malabar, I do
admit, that too critical an inquiry might not be advisable into the
means of freeing the world from such a nuisance. The statues of
Equity and Mercy might be veiled for a moment. The tenderest
minds, confounded with the dreadful exigence in which morality
submits to the suspension of its own rules in favour of its own prin-
ciples, might turn aside whilst fraud and violence were accomplish-
ing the destruction of a pretended nobility which disgraced, whilst
it persecuted, human nature. The persons most abhorrent from
blood, and treason, and arbitrary confiscation, might remain silent
spectators of this civil war between the vices.

But did the privileged nobility who met under the king's precept
at Versailles, in 1789, or their constituents, deserve to be looked on
as the Nayres or Mamelu\es of this age, or as the Orsini and Vitelli
of ancient times? If I had then asked the question I should have
passed for a madman. What have they since done that they were to
be driven into exile, that their persons should be hunted about,
mangled, and tortured, their families dispersed, their houses laid in
ashes, and that their order should be abolished, and the memory of
it, if possible, extinguished, by ordaining them to change the very
names by which they were usually known? Read their instructions
to their representatives. They breathe the spirit of liberty as warmly,
and they recommend reformation as strongly, as any other order.
Their privileges relative to contribution were voluntarily surren-
dered; as the king, from the beginning, surrendered all pretence to a
right of taxation. Upon a free constitution there was but one opinion
in France. The absolute monarchy was at an end. It breathed its last,
without a groan, without struggle, without convulsion. All the
struggle, all the dissension, arose afterwards upon the preference of
a despotic democracy to a government of reciprocal control. The tri-
umph of the victorious party was over the principles of a British
constitution.

270 EDMUND BURKE

I have observed the affectation, which for many years past, has
prevailed in Paris even to a degree perfectly childish, of idolizing the
memory of your Henry the Fourth. If anything could put one out of
humour with that ornament to the kingly character, it would be this
overdone style of insidious panegyric. The persons who have worked
this engine the most busily, are those who have ended their pane-
gyrics in dethroning his successor and descendant; a man, as good-
natured, at the least, as Henry the Fourth; altogether as fond of his
people; and who has done infinitely more to correct the ancient
vices of the state than that great monarch did, or we are sure he ever
meant to do. Well it is for his panegyrists that they have not him
to deal with. For Henry of Navarre was a resolute, active, and poli-
tic prince. He possessed indeed great humanity and mildness; but
a humanity and mildness that never stood in the way of his inter-
ests. He never sought to be loved without putting himself first in a
condition to be feared. He used soft language with determined con-
duct. He asserted and maintained his authority in the gross, and
distributed his acts of concession only in the detail. He spent the
income of his prerogative nobly; but he took care not to break in
upon the capital; never abandoning for a moment any of the claims
which he made under the fundamental laws, nor sparing to shed the
blood of those who opposed him, often in the field, sometimes upon
the scaffold. Because he knew how to make his virtues respected by
the ungrateful, he has merited the praises of those, whom, if they
had lived in his time, he would have shut up in the Bastile, and
brought to punishment along with the regicides whom he hanged
after he had famished Paris into a surrender.

If these panegyrists are in earnest in their admiration of Henry
the Fourth, they must remember, that they cannot think more highly
of him than he did of the noblesse of France; whose virtue, honour,
courage, patriotism, and loyalty were his constant theme.

But the nobility of France are degenerated since the days of Henry
the Fourth. This is possible. But it is more than I can believe to
be true in any great degree. I do not pretend to know France as
correctly as some others; but I have endeavoured through my whole
life to make myself acquainted with human nature; otherwise I
should be unfit to take even my humble part in the service of man-
kind. In that study I could not pass by a vast portion of our nature,

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 27 1

as it appeared modified in a country but twenty-four miles from the
shore of this island. On my best observation, compared with my
best inquiries, I found your nobility for the greater part composed
of men of high spirit, and of a delicate sense of honour, both with
regard to themselves individually, and with regard to their whole
corps, over whom they kept, beyond what is common in other coun-
tries, a censorial eye. They were tolerably well bred; very officious,
humane, and hospitable; in their conversation frank and open; with
a good military tone; and reasonably tinctured with literature, par-
ticularly of the authors in their own language. Many had preten-
sions far above this description. I speak of those who were gen-
erally met with.

As to their behaviour to the inferior classes, they appeared to me
to comport themselves towards them with good-nature, and with
something more nearly approaching to familiarity, than is generally
practised with us in the intercourse between the higher and lower
ranks of life. To strike any person, even in the most abject condition,
was a thing in a manner unknown, and would be highly disgraceful.
Instances of other ill-treatment of the humble part of the commu-
nity were rare : and as to attacks made upon the property or the per-
sonal liberty of the commons, I never heard of any whatsoever from
them; nor, whilst the laws were in vigour under the ancient gov-
ernment, would such tyranny in subjects have been permitted. As
men of landed estates, I had no fault to find with their conduct,
though much to reprehend, and much to wish changed, in many of
the old tenures. Where the letting of their land was by rent, I could
not discover that their agreements with their farmers were oppres-
sive; nor when they were in partnership with the farmer, as often
was the case, have I heard that they had taken the lion's share. The
proportions seemed not inequitable. There might be exceptions;
but certainly they were exceptions only. I have no reason to believe
that in these respects the landed noblesse of France were worse than
the landed gentry of this country; certainly in no respect more vexa-
tious than the landholders, not noble, of their own nation. In cities
the nobility had no manner of power; in the country very little.
You know, Sir, that much of the civil government, and the police
in the most essential parts was not in the hands of that nobility
which presents itself first to our consideration. The revenue, the

272 EDMUND BURKE

system and collection of which were the most grievous parts of the
French government, was not administered by the men of the sword;
nor were they answerable for the vices of its principle, or the vexa-
tions, where any such existed, in its management.

Denying, as I am well warranted to do, that the nobility had any
considerable share in the oppression of the people, in cases in which
real oppression existed, I am ready to admit that they were not with-
out considerable faults and errors. A foolish imitation of the worst
part of the manners of England, which impaired their natural char-
acter, without substituting in its place what perhaps, they meant to
copy, has certainly rendered them worse than formerly they were.
Habitual dissoluteness of manners continued beyond the pardonable
period of life, was more common amongst them than it is with us;
and it reigned with the less hope of remedy, though possibly with
something of less mischief by being covered with more exterior
decorum. They countenanced too much that licentious philosophy,
which has helped to bring on their ruin. There was another error
amongst them more fatal. Those of the commons, who approached
to or exceeded many of the nobility in point of wealth, were not
fully admitted to the rank and estimation which wealth, in reason
and good policy, ought to bestow in every country; though I think
not equally with that of other nobility. The two kinds of aristocracy
were too punctiliously kept asunder, less so, however, than in Ger-
many and some other nations.

This separation, as I have already taken the liberty of suggesting
to you, I conceive to be one principal cause of the destruction of the
old nobility. The military, particularly, was too exclusively reserved
for men of family. But, after all, this was an error of opinion, which
a conflicting opinion would have rectified. A permanent assembly,
in which the commons had their share of power, would soon abolish
whatever was too invidious and insulting in these distinctions; and
even the faults in the morals of the nobility would have been prob-
ably corrected, by the greater varieties of occupation and pursuit to
which a constitution by orders would have given rise.

All this violent cry against the nobility I take to be a mere work
of art. To be honoured and even privileged by the laws, opinions.

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 273

and inveterate usages of our country, growing out of the prejudice
of ages, has nothing to provoke horror and indignation in any man.
Even to be too tenacious of those privileges is not absolutely a crime.
The strong struggle in every individual to preserve possession of
what he has found to belong to him, and to distinguish him is one
of the securities against injustice and despotism implanted in our
nature. It operates as an instinct to secure property, and to pre-
serve communities in a settled state. What is there to shock in this.?
Nobility is a graceful ornament to the civil order. It is the Corinthian
capital of polished society. Omnes boni nobilitati semper fat/emus,
was the saying of a wise and good man. It is indeed one sign of a
liberal and benevolent mind to incline to it with some sort of partial
propensity. He feels no ennobling principle in his own heart, who
wishes to level all the artificial institutions which have been adopted
for giving a body to opinion, and permanence to fugitive esteem. It
is a sour, malignant, envious disposition, without taste for the reality,
or for any image or representation of virtue, that sees with joy the
unmerited fall of what had long flourished in splendour and in
honour. I do not like to see anything destroyed; any void pro-
duced in society; any ruin on the face of the land. It was therefore
with no disappointment or dissatisfaction that my inquiries and
observations did not present to me any incorrigible vices in the
noblesse of France, or any abuse which could not be removed by a
reform very short of abolition. Your noblesse did not deserve punish-
ment: but to degrade is to punish.

It was with the same satisfaction I found that the result of my
inquiry concerning your clergy was not dissimilar. It is no soothing
news to my ears, that great bodies of men are incurably corrupt. It
is not with much credulity I listen to any, when they speak evil of
those whom they are going to plunder. I rather suspect that vices
are feigned or exaggerated, when profit is looked for in their punish-
ment. An enemy is a bad witness; a robber is a worse. Vices and
abuses there were undoubtedly in that order, and must be. It was
an old establishment, and not frequently revised. But I saw no
crimes in the individuals that merited confiscation of their sub-
stance, nor those cruel insults and degradations, and that unnatural

274 EDMUND BURKE

persecution, which have been substituted in the place of meUorating
regulation.

If there had been any just cause for this new religious persecution,
the atheistic libellers, who act as trumpeters to animate the populace
to plunder, do not love any body so much as not to dwell with com-
placence on the vices of the existing clergy. This they have not done.
They find themselves obliged to rake into the histories of former
ages (which they have ransacked with a malignant and profligate
industry) for every instance of oppression and persecution which has
been made by that body or in its favour, in order to justify, upon very
iniquitous, because very illogical, principles of retaliation, their
own persecutions, and their own cruelties. After destroying all other
genealogies and family distinctions, they invent a sort of pedigree of
crimes. It is not very just to chastise men for the offences of their
natural ancestors: but to take the fiction of ancestry in a corporate
succession, as a ground for punishing men who have no relation
to guilty acts, except in names and general descriptions, is a sort of
refinement in injustice belonging to the philosophy of this enlight-
ened age. The Assembly punishes men, many, if not most, of whom
abhor the violent conduct of ecclesiastics in former times as much as
their present persecutors can do, and who would be as loud and as
strong in the expression of that sense, if they were not well aware of
the purposes for which all this declamation is employed.

Corporate bodies are immortal for the good of the members, but
not for their punishment. Nations themselves are such corporations.
As well might we in England think of waging inexpiable war upon
all Frenchmen for the evils which they have brought upon us in the
several periods of our mutual hostilities. You might, on your part,
think yourselves justified in falling upon all Englishmen on account
of the unparalleled calamities brought on the people of France by
the unjust invasions of our Henries and our Edwards. Indeed we
should be mutually justified in this exterminatory war upon each
other, full as much as you are in the unprovoked persecution of
your present countrymen, on account of the conduct of men of the
same name in other times.

We do not draw the moral lessons we might from history. On
the contrary, without care it may be used to vitiate our minds and

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 275

to destroy our happiness. In history a great volume is unrolled for
our instruction, drawing the materials of future wisdom from the
past errors and infirmities of mankind. It may, in the perversion,
serve for a magazine, furnishing offensive and defensive weapons
for parties in church and state, and supplying the means of keep-
ing alive, or reviving, dissensions and animosities, and adding fuel
to civil fury. History consists, for the greater part, of the miseries
brought upon the world by pride, ambition, avarice, revenge, lust,
sedition, hypocrisy, ungoverned zeal, and all the train of disorderly
appetites, which shake the public with the same

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

These vices are the causes of those storms. Religion, morals, laws,
prerogatives, privileges, liberties, rights of men, are the pretexts.
The pretexts are always found in some specious appearance of a real
good. You would not secure men from tyranny and sedition, by root-
ing out of the mind the principles to which these fraudulent pretexts
apply ? If you did, you would root out everything that is valuable in
the human breast. As these are the pretexts, so the ordinary actors
and instruments in great public evils are kings, priests, magistrates,
senates, parliaments, national assemblies, judges, and captains. You
would not cure the evil by resolving, that there should be no more
monarchs, nor ministers of state, nor of the gospel; no interpreters
of law; no general officers; no public councils. You might change
the names. The things in some shape must remain. A certain
quantum of power must always exist in the community, in some
hands, and under some appellation. Wise men will apply their reme-
dies to vices, not to names; to the causes of evil which are perma-
nent, not to the occasional organs by which they act, and the transi-
tory modes in which they appear. Otherwise you will be wise
historically, a fool in practice. Seldom have two ages the same
fashion in their pretexts and the same modes of mischief. Wicked-
ness is a litde more inventive. Whilst you are discussing fashion, the
fashion is gone by. The very same vice assumes a new body. The
spirit transmigrates; and, far from losing its principle of life by the
change of its appearance, it is renovated in its new organs with a

276 EDMUND BURKE

fresh vigour of a juvenile activity. It walks abroad, it continues its
ravages, whilst you are gibbeting the carcase, or demolishing the
tomb. You are terrifying yourselves with ghosts and apparitions,
whilst your house is the haunt of robbers. It is thus with all those,
who, attending only to the shell and husk of history, think they are
waging war with intolerance, pride, and cruelty, whilst, under colour
of abhorring the ill principles of antiquated parties, they are author-
izing and feeding the same odious vices in different factions, and
perhaps in worse.

Your citizens of Paris formerly had lent themselves as the ready
instruments to slaughter the followers of Calvin, at the infamous
massacre of St. Bartholomew. What should we say to those who
could think of retaliating on the Parisians of this day the abomina-
tions and horrors of that time? They are indeed brought to abhor
that massacre. Ferocious as they are, it is not difficult to make them
dislike it; because the politicians and fashionable teachers have no
interest in giving their passions exactly the same direction. Still,
however, they find it their interest to keep the same savage dispo-
sitions alive. It was but the other day that they caused this very
massacre to be acted on the stage for the diversion of the descend-
ants of those who committed it. In this tragic farce they produced
the cardinal of Lorraine in his robes of function, ordering general
slaughter. Was this spectacle intended to make the Parisians abhor
persecution, and loathe the effusion of blood? — ^No; it was to teach
them to persecute their own pastors; it was to excite them, by raising
a disgust and horror of their clergy, to an alacrity in hunting down
to destruction an order, which, if it ought to exist at all, ought to
exist not only in safety, but in reverence. It was to stimulate their
cannibal appetites (which one would think had been gorged suffi-
ciently) by variety and seasoning; and to quicken them to an alert-
ness in new murders and massacres, if it should suit the purpose of
the Guises of the day. An assembly, in which sat a multitude of
priests and prelates, was obliged to suffer this indignity at its door.
The author was not sent to the galleys, nor the players to the house
of correction. Not long after this exhibition, those players came
forward to the Assembly to claim the rites of that very religion
which they had dared to expose, and to show their prostituted faces

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 277

in the senate, whilst the archbishop of Paris, whose function was
known to his people only by his prayers and benedictions, and his
wealth only by his alms, is forced to abandon his house, and to fly
from his flock, (as from ravenous wolves,) because, truly, in the
sixteenth century, the cardinal of Lorraine was a rebel and a mur-
derer."

Such is the effect of the perversion of history, by those, who, for
the same nefarious purposes, have perverted every other part of
learning. But those who will stand upon that elevation of reason,
which places centuries under our eye, and brings things to the true
point of comparison, which obscures little names, and effaces the
colours of little parties, and to which nothing can ascend but the
spirit and moral quality of human actions, will say to the teachers of
the Palais Royal, — The cardinal of Lorraine was the murderer of
the sixteenth century, you have the glory of being the murderers in
the eighteenth; and this is the only difference between you. But his-
tory in the ninteenth century, better understood, and better employed,
will, I trust, teach a civilized posterity to abhor the misdeeds of both
these barbarous ages. It will teach future priests and magistrates not
to retaliate upon the speculative and inactive atheists of future times,
the enormities committed by the present practical zealots and furi-
ous fanatics of that wretched error, which, in its quiescent state, is
more than punished, whenever it is embraced. It will teach posterity
not to make war upon either religion or philosophy, for the abuse
which the hypocrites of both have made of the two most valuable
blessings conferred upon us by the bounty of the universal Patron,
who in all things eminently favours and protects the race of man.

If your clergy, or any clergy, should show themselves vicious be-
yond the fair bounds allowed to human infirmity, and to those pro-
fessional faults which can hardly be separated from professional
virtues, though their vices never can countenance the exercise of
oppression, I do admit, that they would naturally have the effect of
abating very much of our indignation against the tyrants who ex-
ceed measure and justice in their punishment. I can allow in clergy-
men, through all their divisions, some tenaciousness of their own

"This is on a supposition of the truth of this story, but he was not in France
at the time. One name serves as well as another.

278 EDMUND BURKE

opinion, some overflowings of zeal for its propagation, some predi-
lection to their own state and oflSce, some attachment to the inter-
ests of their own corps, some preference to those who listen with
docility to their doctrines, beyond those who scorn and deride them.
I allow all this, because I am a man who have to deal with men,
and who would not, through a violence of toleration, run into the
greatest of all intolerance. I must bear with infirmities until they
fester into crimes.

Undoubtedly, the natural progress of the passions, from frailty to
vice, ought to be prevented by a watchful eye and a firm hand. But
it is true that the body of your clergy had past those limits of a just
allowance. From the general style of your late publications of all
sorts, one would be led to believe that your clergy in France were a
sort of monsters; an horrible composition of superstition, ignorance,
sloth, fraud, avarice, and tyranny. But is this true? Is it true, that
the lapse of time, the cessation of conflicting interests, the woeful
experience of the evils resulting from party rage, have had no sort
of influence gradually to meliorate their minds ? Is it true, that they
were daily renewing invasions on the civil power, troubling the
domestic quiet of their country, and rendering the operations of its
government feeble and precarious ? Is it true, that the clergy of our
times have pressed down the laity with an iron hand, and were in all
places, lighting up the fires of a savage persecution? Did they by
every fraud endeavour to increase their estates? Did they use to
exceed the due demands on estates that were their own ? Or, rigidly
screwing up right into wrong, did they convert a legal claim into a
vexatious extortion ? When not possessed of power, were they filled
with the vices of those who envy it? Were they inflamed with a
violent, litigious spirit of controversy? Goaded on with the ambi-
tion of intellectual sovereignty, were they ready to fly in the face of
all magistracy, to fire churches, to massacre the priests of other
descriptions, to pull down altars, and to make their way over the
ruins of subverted governments to an empire or doctrine sometimes
flattering, sometimes forcing the consciences of men from the juris-
diction of public institutions into a submission of their personal au-
thority, beginning with a claim of liberty, and ending with an abuse
of power?

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 279

These, or some of these, were the vices objected, and not wholly
without foundation, to several of the churchmen of former times,
who belonged to the two great parties, which then divided and
distracted Europe.

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

When my occasions took me into France, towards the close of the
late reign, the clergy, under all their forms, engaged a considerable
part of my curiosity. So far from finding (except from one set of
men, not then very numerous, though very active) the complaints
and discontents against that body, which some publications had
given me reason to expect, I perceived litde or no public or private
uneasiness on their account. On further examination, I found the
clergy, in general, persons of moderate minds and decorous manners;
I include the seculars, and the regulars of both sexes. I had not the
good fortune to know a great many of the parochial clergy: but in
general I received a perfectly good account of their morals, and of
their attention to their duties. With some of the higher clergy
I had a personal acquaintance; and of the rest in that class, a very
good means of information. They were, almost all of them, per-
sons of noble birth. They resembled others of their own rank; and
where there was any difference, it was in their favour. They were
more fully educated than the military noblesse; so as by no means
to disgrace their profession by ignorance, or by want of fitness for
the exercise of their authority. They seemed to me, beyond the cleri-
cal character, liberal and open; with the hearts of gentlemen, and
men of honour; neither insolent nor servile in their manners and con-
duct. They seemed to me rather a superior class; a set of men,
amongst whom you would not be surprised to find a Fenelon. I
saw among the clergy in Paris (many of the description are not to be
met with anywhere) men of great learning and candour; and I had
reason to believe, that this description was not confined to Paris.

280 EDMUND BURKE

What I found in other places, I know was accidental; and therefore
to be presumed a fair example. I spent a few days in a provincial
town, where, in the absence of the bishop, I passed my evenings
with three clergymen, his vicars-general, persons who would have
done honour to any church. They were all well informed; two of
them of deep, general, and extensive erudition, ancient and modern,
oriental and western; particularly in their own profession. They had
a more extensive knowledge of our English divines than I expected
and they entered into the genius of those writers with a critical
accuracy. One of these gentlemen is since dead, the Abbe Morangis.
I pay this tribute, without reluctance, to the memory of that noble,
reverend, learned, and excellent person; and I should do the same
with equal cheerfulness, to the merits of the others, who I believe
are still living, if I did not fear to hurt those whom I am unable
to serve.

Some of these ecclesiastics of rank are, by all titles, persons deserv-
ing of general respect. They are deserving of gratitude from me,
and from many English. If this letter should ever come into their
hands, I hope they will believe there are those of our nation who feel
for their unmerited fall, and for the cruel confiscation of their for-
tunes, with no common sensibility. What I say of them is a testi-
mony, as far as one feeble voice can go, which I owe to truth. When-
ever the question of this unnatural persecution is concerned, I will
pay it. No one shall prevent me from being just and grateful. The
time is fitted for the duty; and it is particularly becoming to show
our justice and gratitude, when those, who have deserved well of us
and of mankind, are labouring under popular obloquy, and the per-
secutions of oppressive power.

You had before your Revolution about an hundred and twenty
bishops. A few of them were men of eminent sanctity, and charity
without limit. When we talk of the heroic, of course we talk of rare
virtue. I believe the instances of eminent depravity may be as rare
amongst them as those of transcendent goodness. Examples of
avarice and of licentiousness may be picked out, I do not question
it, by those who delight in the investigation which leads to such dis-
coveries. A man as old as I am will not be astonished that several,
in every description, do not lead that perfect life of self-denial,

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 28 1

with regard to wealth or to pleasure, which is wished for by all, by
some expected, but by none exacted with more rigour, than by those
who are the most attentive to their own interests, or the most indul-
gent to their own passions. When I was in France, I am certain that
the number of vicious prelates was not great. Certain individuals
among them, not distinguishable for the regularity of their lives,
made some amends for their want of the severe virtues, in their pos-
session of the liberal; and were endowed with qualities which made
them useful in the church and state. I am told, that, with few excep-
tions, Louis the Sixteenth had been more attentive to character, in his
promotions to that rank, than his immediate predecessor; and I be-
lieve (as some spirit of reform has prevailed through the whole
reign) that it may be true. But the present ruling power has shown
a disposition only to plunder the church. It has punished all pre-
lates; which is to favour the vicious, at least in point of reputation.
It has made a degrading pensionary establishment, to which no man
of liberal ideas or liberal condition will destine his children. It
must settle into the lowest classes of the people. As with you the
inferior clergy are not numerous enough for their duties; as these
duties are, beyond measure, minute and toilsome, as you have left
no middle classes of clergy at their ease, in future nothing of science
or erudition can exist in the Gallican church. To complete the proj-
ect, without the least attention to the rights of patrons, the Assembly
has provided in future an elective clergy; an arrangement which will
drive out of the clerical profession all men of sobriety; all who can
pretend to independence in their function or their conduct; and
which will throw the whole direction of the public mind into the
hands of a set of licentious, bold, crafty, factious, flattering wretches,
of such condition and such habits of life as will make their con-
temptible pensions (in comparison of which the stipend of an excise-
man is lucrative and honourable) an object of low and illiberal
intrigue. Those officers, whom they still call bishops, are to be elected
to a provision comparatively mean, through the same arts, (that is,
electioneering arts,) by men of all religious tenets that are known or
can be invented. The new lawgivers have not ascertained anything
whatsoever concerning their qualifications, relative either to doc-
trine or to morals; no more than they have done with regard to the

282 EDMUND BURKE

subordinate clergy: nor does it appear but that both the higher and
the lower may, at their discretion, practise or preach any mode of
religion or irreligion that they please. I do not yet see what the juris-
diction of bishops over their subordinates is to be, or whether they
are to have any jurisdiction at all.

In short. Sir, it seems to me, that this new ecclesiastical establish-
ment is intended only to be temporary, and preparatory to the utter
abolition, under any of its forms, of the Christian religion, whenever
the minds of men are prepared for this last stroke against it, by the
accomplishment of the plan for bringing its ministers into universal
contempt. They who will not believe, that the philosophical fanat-
ics, who guide in these matters, have long entertained such a design,
are utterly ignorant of their character and proceedings. These en-
thusiasts do not scruple to avow their opinion, that a state can subsist
without any religion better than with one and that they are able
to supply the place of any good which may be in it, by a project of
their own — namely, by a sort of education they have imagined,
founded in a knowledge of the physical wants of men; progressively
carried to an enlightened self-interest, which, when well understood,
they tell us, will identify with an interest more enlarged and public.
The scheme of this education has been long known. Of late they
distinguish it (as they have got an entirely new nomenclature of
technical terms) by the name of a Civic Education.

I hope their partisans in England (to whom I rather attribute very
inconsiderate conduct, than the ultimate object in this detestable
design) will succeed neither in the pillage of the ecclesiastics, nor
in the introduction of a principle of popular election to our bishoprics
and parochial cures. This, in the present condition of the world,
would be the last corruption of the church; the utter ruin of the
clerical character; the most dangerous shock that the state ever re-
ceived through a misunderstood arrangement of religion. I know
well enough that the bishoprics and cures, under kingly and seigni-
oral patronage, as now they are in England, and as they have been
lately in France, are sometimes acquired by unworthy methods; but
the other mode of ecclesiastical canvass subjects them infinitely more
surely and more generally to all the evil arts of low ambition, which,

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 283

operating on and through greater numbers, will produce mischief
in proportion.

Those of you, who have robbed the clergy, think that they shall
easily reconcile their conduct to all Protestant nations; because the
clergy, whom they have thus plundered, degraded, and given over
to mockery and scorn, are of the Roman Catholic, that is, of their
own pretended persuasion. I have no doubt that some miserable
bigots will be found here, as well as elsewhere, who hate sects and
parties different from their own, more than they love the substance
of religion; and who are more angry with those who differ from
them in their particular plans and systems, than displeased with those
who attack the foundation of our common hope. These men will
write and speak on the subject in the manner that is to be expected
from their temper and character. Burnet says, that when he was in
France, in the year 1683, "the method which carried over the men
of the finest parts to Popery was this — they brought themselves to
doubt of the whole Christian religion. When that was once done,
it seemed a more indifferent thing of what side or form they con-
tinued outwardly." If this was then the ecclesiastical policy of
France, it is what they have since but too much reason to repent of.
They preferred atheism to a form of religion not agreeable to their
ideas. They succeeded in destroying that form; and atheism has suc-
ceeded in destroying them. I can readily give credit to Burnet's story;
because I have observed too much of a similar spirit (for a little of
it is "much too much") amongst ourselves. The humour, however,
is not general.

The teachers who reformed our religion in England bore no sort
of resemblance to your present reforming doctors in Paris. Perhaps
they were (like those whom they opposed) rather more than could
be wished under the influence of a party spirit; but they were more
sincere believers; men of the most fervent and exalted piety; ready to
die (as some of them did die) like true heroes in defence of their
particular ideas of Christianity; as they would with equal fortitude,
and more cheerfully, for that stock of general truth, for the branches
of which they contended with their blood. These men would have
disavowed with horror those wretches who claimed a fellowship with

284 EDMUND BURKE

them upon no other titles than those of their having pillaged the
persons with whom they maintained controversies, and their having
despised the common religion, for the purity of which they exerted
themselves with a zeal, which unequivocally bespoke their highest
reverence for the substance of that system which they wished to
reform. Many of their descendants have retained the same zeal,
but (as less engaged in conflict) with more moderation. They do not
forget that justice and mercy are substantial parts of religion. Im-
pious men do not recommend themselves to their communion by
iniquity and cruelty towards any description of their fellow-creatures.
We hear these new teachers continually boasting of their spirit
of toleration. That those persons should tolerate all opinions, who
think none to be of estimation, is a matter of small merit. Equal
neglect is not impartial kindness. The species of benevolence, which
arises from contempt, is no true charity. There are in England
abundance of men who tolerate in the true spirit of toleration. They
think the dogmas of religion, though in different degrees, are all of
moment: and that amongst them there is, as amongst all things of
value, a just ground of preference. They favour, therefore, and they
tolerate. They tolerate, not because they despise opinions, but be-
cause they respect justice. They would reverently and affectionately
protect all religions, because they love and venerate the great prin-
ciple upon which they all agree, and the great object to which they
are all directed. They begin more and more plainly to discern, that
we have all a common cause, as against a common enemy. They will
not be so misled by the spirit of faction, as not to distinguish what is
done in favour of their subdivision, from those acts of hostility,
which, through some particular description, are aimed at the whole
corps, in which they themselves, under another denomination, are
included. It is impossible for me to say what may be the character
of every description of men amongst us. But I speak for the greater
part; and for them, I must tell you, that sacrilege is no part of their
doctrine of good works; that, so far from calling you into their fel-
lowship on such title, if your professors are admitted to their com-
munion, they must carefully conceal their doctrine of the lawfulness
of the prescription of innocent men; and that they must make resti-
tution of all stolen goods whatsoever. Till then they are none of ours.

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 285

You may suppose that we do not approve your confiscation o£
the revenues of bishops, and deans, and chapters, and parochial
clergy possessing independent estates arising from land, because we
have the same sort of establishment in England. That objection, you
will say, cannot hold as to the confiscation of the goods of monks
and nuns, and the abolition of their order. It is true that this par-
ticular part of your general confiscation does not affect England, as
a precedent in point: but the reason implies, and it goes a great
way. The long parliament confiscated the lands of deans and chap-
ters in England on the same ideas upon which your assembly set to
sale the lands of the monastic orders. But it is in the principle of
injustice that the danger lies, and not in the description of persons
on whom it is first exercised. I see, in a country very near us, a
course of policy pursued, which sets justice, the common concern of
mankind, at defiance. With the National Assembly of France, pos-
session is nothing, law and usage are nothing. I see the National
Assembly openly reprobate the doctrine of prescription, which one
of the greatest of their own lawyers'* tells us, with great truth, is a
part of the law of nature. He tells us, that the positive ascertain-
ment of its limits, and its security from invasion, were among the
causes for which civil society itself has been instituted. If prescrip-
tion be once shaken, no species of property is secure, when it once
becomes an object large enough to tempt the cupidity of indigent
power. I see a practice perfectly correspondent to their contempt
of this great fundamental part of natural law. I see the confiscators
begin with bishops and chapters, and monasteries; but I do not see
them end there. I see the princes of the blood, who by the oldest
usages of that kingdom, held large landed estates, (hardly with the
compliment of a debate,) deprived of their possessions, and, in lieu
of their stable, independent property, reduced to the hope of some
precarious, charitable pension, at the pleasure of an assembly, which
of course will pay little regard to the rights of pensioners at pleasure,
when it despises those of legal proprietors. Flushed with the inso-
lence of their first inglorious victories, and pressed by the distresses
caused by their lust of unhallowed lucre, disappointed but not dis-
couraged, they have at length ventured completely to subvert all

^ Domat.

286 EDMUND BURKE

property of all descriptions throughout the extent o£ a great king-
dom. They have compelled all men, in all transactions of commerce,
in the disposal of lands, in civil dealing, and through the whole com-
munion of life, to accept as perfect payment and good and lawful
tender, the symbols of their speculations on a projected sale of their
plunder. What vestiges of liberty or property have they left? The
tenant-right of a cabbage-garden, a year's interest in a hovel, the
good-will of an ale-house or a baker's shop, the very shadow of a
constructive property, are more ceremoniously treated in our parlia-
ment, than with you the oldest and most valuable landed possessions,
in the hands of the most respectable personages, or than the whole
body of the monied and commercial interest of your country. We
entertain a high opinion of the legislative authority; but we have
never dreamt that parliaments had any right whatever to violate
property, to overrule prescription, or to force a currency of their own
fiction in the place of that which is real, and recognised by the law
of nations. But you, who began with refusing to submit to the most
moderate restraints, have ended by establishing an unheard-of des-
potism. I find the ground upon which your confiscators go is this;
that indeed their proceedings could not be supported in a court of
justice; but that the rules of prescription cannot bind a legislative
assembly.^' So that this legislative assembly of a free nation sits, not
for the security, but for the destruction, of property, and not of
property only, but of every rule and maxim which can give it stabil-
ity, and of those instruments which can alone give it circulation.

When the Anabaptists of Munster, in the sixteenth century, had
filled Germany with confusion, by their system of levelling, and
their wild opinions concerning property, to what country in Europe
did not the progress of their fury furnish just cause of alarm? Of
all things, wisdom is the most terrified with epidemical fanaticism,
because of all enemies it is that against which she is the least able
to furnish any kind of resource. We cannot be ignorant of the spirit
of atheistical fanaticism, that is inspired by a multitude of writings,
dispersed with incredible assiduity and expense, and by sermons
delivered in all the streets and places of public resort in Paris. These
writings and sermons have filled the populace with a black and sav-

'' Speech of Mr. Camus, published by order of the National Assembly.

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 287

age atrocity of mind, which supersedes in them the commoQ feelings
of nature, as well as all sentiments of morality and religion; inso-
much that these wretches are induced to bear with a sullen patience
the intolerable distresses brought upon them by the violent convul-
sions and permutations that have been made in property/" The spirit
of proselytism attends this spirit of fanaticism. They have societies
to cabal and correspond at home and abroad for the propagation of
their tenets. The republic of Berne, one of the happiest, the most
prosperous, and the best governed countries upon earth, is one of the
great objects, at the destruction of which they aim. I am told they
have in some measure succeeded in sowing there the seeds of dis-
content. They are busy throughout Germany. Spain and Italy have
not been untried. England is not left out of the comprehensive
scheme of their malignant charity: and in England we find those
who stretch out their arms to them, who recommend their example
from more than one pulpit, and who choose in more than one peri-
odical meeting, publicly to correspond with them, to applaud them,
and to hold them up as objects for imitation; who receive from them
tokens of confraternity, and standards consecrated amidst their rights
and mysteries;'*' who suggest to them leagues of perpetual amity, at
the very time when the power, to which our constitution has exclu-
sively delegated the federative capacity of this kingdom, may find it
expedient to make war upon them.

It is not the confiscation of our church property from this example

40 Whether the following description is strictly true, I know not; but it is what the
publishers would have pass for true in order to animate others. In a letter from
Toul, given in one of their papers, is the following passage concerning the people
of that district: "Dans la Revolution actuelle, ils ont r^siste a toutes les seductions du
higotisme, aux persecutions, et aux tracasseries des ennemis de la Revolution. Oubliant
leurs plus grands interHs pour rendre hommage aux vues d'ordre general qui ont
determine I'Assembiee Nationale, ils voient, sans se plaindre, supprimer cette foule
d'etablissemens ecclesiastiques par lesquels ils subsistoient; et meme, en perdant leur
si^ge episcopal, la seul de toutes ses ressources qui pouvoit, ou plutot qui devoit, en
toute iquite, leur ctre conservee; condamncs a la plus efjrayante misbre, sans avoir
He ni pu lire entendus, ils ne murmurent point, ils restent fideles aux principes du
plus pur patriotisme; ils sont encore prets a verser leur sang pour le maintien de la
Constitution, qui va reduire leur ville a la plus deplorable nullite." These people are
not supposed to have endured those sufferings and injustices in a struggle for liberty,
for the same account states truly that they had been always free; their patience in
beggary and ruin, and their suffering, without remonstrance, the most flagrant and
confessed injustice, if strictly true, can be nothing but the effect of this dire fanati-
cism. A great multitude all over France is in the same condition and the same temper.

*' See the proceedings of the confederation at Nantz.

288 EDMUND BURKE

in France that I dread, though I think this would be no trifling
evil. The great source of my solicitude is, lest it should ever be
considered in England as the policy of a state to seek a resource in
confiscations of any kind; or that any one description of citizens
should be brought to regard any of the others as their proper prey "
Nations are wading deeper and deeper into an ocean of boundless
debt. Public debts, which at first were a security to governments, by
interesting many in the public tranquillity, are likely in their excess
to become the means of their subversion. If governments provide for
these debts by heavy impwasitions, they perish by becoming odious to
the people. If they do not provide for them they will be undone by
the efforts of the most dangerous of all parties; I mean an exten-
sive, discontented monied interest, injured and not destroyed. The
men who compose this interest look for their security, in the first
instance, to the fidelity of government; in the second, to its power.
If they find the old governments effete, worn out, and with their
springs relaxed, so as not to be of sufficient vigour for their purposes,
they may seek new ones that shall be possessed of more energy; and
this energy will be derived, not from an acquisition of resources,
but from a contempt of justice. Revolutions are favourable to con-
fiscation; and it is impossible to know under what obnoxious names
the next confiscations will be authorized. I am sure that the prin-
ciples predominant in France extend to very many persons, and
descriptions of persons, in all countries who think their innoxious
indolence their security. This kind of innocence in proprietors may
be argued into inutiUty; and inutiHty into an unfitness for their

*^ "Si plures sunt ii quibus improbe datum est, quam illi quibus injuste ademptum
est, idcirco plus etiam valent? Non enim numero hacc judicantur sed pondere.
Quam autem habet a:quitatem, ut agrum multis annis, aut etiam saculis ante
possessum, qui nullum habuit habeat; qui autem habuit amittat? Ac, propter hoc
injurijE genus, Laceda;monii Lysandrum Ephorum expulerunt: Agin rcgem (quod
nunquam antea apud eos acciderat) necaverunt: exque eo tempore tantiE discordiae
secutse sunt, ut et tyranni existerint, et optimates exterminarentur, et preclarissime
constituta respublica dilaberetur. Nee vero solum ipsa cecidit, sed etiam reliquam
Graeciam evertit contagionibus malorum, qua a Lacedacmoniis profectac manarunt
latius." — After speaking of the conduct of the model of true patriots, Aratus of Sicyon,
which was in a very different spirit, he says, "Sic par est agere cum civibus; non ut bis
jam vidimus, hastam in foro ponere et bona civium voci subjicere prjeconis. At ille
Grascus (id quod fuit sapientis et pracstantis viri) omnibus consulendum esse putavit:
eaque est summa ratio et sapientia boni civis, commoda civium non divellere, sed
omnes eadera squitate continere." — Cic. Off. 1. 2.

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 289

estates. Many parts of Europe are in open disorder. In many others
there is a hollow murmuring under ground; a confused movement is
felt, that threatens a general earthquake in the political world. Al-
ready confederacies and correspondencies of the most extraordinary
nature are forming, in several countries.*' In such a state of things
we ought to hold ourselves upon our guard. In all mutations (if
mutations must be) the circumstance which will serve most to blunt
the edge of their mischief, and to promote what good may be in
them, is that they should find us with our minds tenacious of justice,
and tender of property.

But it will be argued, that this confiscation in France ought not
to alarm other nations. They say it is not made from wanton ra-
pacity; that it is a great measure of national policy, adopted to
remove an extensive, inveterate, superstitious mischief. It is with the
greatest difficulty that I am able to separate policy from justice.
Justice itself is the great standing policy of civil society; and any
eminent departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the
suspicion of being no policy at all.

When men are encouraged to go into a certain mode of life by
the existing laws, and protected in that mode as in a lawful occupa-
tion — when they have accommodated all their ideas and all their
habits to it — when the law had long made their adherence to its
rules a ground of reputation, and their departure from them a
ground of disgrace and even of penalty — I am sure it is unjust in
legislature, by an arbitrary act, to offer a sudden violence to their
minds and their feelings; forcibly to degrade them from their state
and condition, and to stigmatize with shame and infamy that char-
acter, and those customs, which before had been made the measure
of their happiness and honour. If to this be added an expulsion
from their habitations, and a confiscation of all their goods, I am
not sagacious enough to discover how this despotic sport, made of
the feelings, consciences, prejudices, and properties of men, can be
discriminated from the rankest tyranny.

If the injustice of the course pursued in France be clear, the policy
of the measure, that is, the public benefit to be expected from it,

*^ See two books entitled, Enige Originalschriften des lUuminatenordens. — System
und Folgen des lUuminatenordens. Munchen, 1787.

290 EDMUND BURKE

ought to be at least as evident, and at least as important. To a
man who acts under the influence of no passion, who has nothing
in view in his projects but the public good, a great difference will
immediately strike him between what policy would dictate on the
original introduction of such institutions, and on a question of their
total abolition, where they have cast their roots wide and deep, and
where, by long habit, things more valuable than themselves are so
adapted to them, and in a manner interwoven with them, that the
one cannot be destroyed without notably impairing the other. He
might be embarrassed if the case were really such as sophisters rep-
resent it in their paltry style of debating. But in this, as in most
questions of state, there is a middle. There is something else than
the mere alternative of absolute destruction, or unreformed exist-
ence. Spartam nactus es; hanc exorna. This is, in my opinion, a
rule of profound sense, and ought never to depart from the mind of
an honest reformer. I cannot conceive how any man can have
brought himself to that pitch of presumption, to consider his coun-
try as nothing but carte blanche, upon which he may scribble what-
ever he pleases. A man full of warm, speculative benevolence may
wish his society otherwise constituted than he finds it; but a good
patriot, and a true politician, always considers how he shall make
the most of the existing materials of his country. A disposition to
preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my
standard of a statesman. Everything else is vulgar in the concep-
tion, perilous in the execution.

There are moments in the fortune of states, when particular men
are called to make improvements, by great mental exertion. In those
moments, even when they seem to enjoy the confidence of their
prince and country, and to be invested with full authority, they have
not always apt instruments. A politician, to do great things, looks
for a power, what our workmen call a purchase; and if he finds that
power, in politics as in mechanics, he cannot be at a loss to apply it.
In the monastic institutions, in my opinion, was found a great power
for the mechanism of politic benevolence. There were revenues with
a public direction; there were men wholly set apart and dedicated
to public purposes, without any other than public ties and public
principles; men without the possibility of converting the estate of

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 29 1

the community into a private fortune; men denied to self-interests,
whose avarice is for some community; men to vi^hom personal pov-
erty is honour, and implicit obedience stands in the place of free-
dom. In vain shall a man look to the possibility of making such
things when he wants them. The winds blow as they list. These
institutions are the products of enthusiasm; they are the instruments
of wisdom. Wisdom cannot create materials; they are the gifts of
nature or of chance; her pride is in the use. The perennial existence
of bodies corporate and their fortunes are things particularly suited
to a man who has long views; who meditates designs that require
time in fashioning, and which propose duration when they are ac-
complished. He is not deserving to rank high, or even to be men-
tioned in the order of great statesmen, who, having obtained the
command and direction of such a power as existed in the wealth, the
discipline, and the habits of such corporations, as those which you
have rashly destroyed, cannot find any way of converting it to the
great and lasting benefit of his country. On the view of this subject,
a thousand uses suggest themselves to a contriving mind. To de-
stroy any power, growing wild from the rank productive force of
the human mind, is almost tantamount, in the moral world, to the
destruction of the apparently active properties of bodies in the ma-
terial. It would be like the attempt to destroy (if it were in our
competence to destroy) the expansive force of fixed air in nitre, or
the power of steam, or of electricity, or of magnetism. These ener-
gies always existed in nature, and they were always discernible.
They seemed, some of them unserviceable, some noxious, some no
better than a sport to children; until contemplative ability, combin-
ing with practic skill, tamed their wild nature, subdued them to
use, and rendered them at once the most powerful and the most
tractable agents, in subservience to the great views and designs of
men. Did fifty thousand persons, whose mental and whose bodily
labour you might direct, and so many hundred thousand a year of
a revenue, which was neither lazy nor superstitious, appear too big
for your abilities to wield? Had you no way of using them but by
converting monks into pensioners? Had you no way of turning the
revenue to account, but through the improvident resource of a spend-
thrift sale? If you were thus destitute of mental funds, the proceed-

292 EDMUND BURKE

ing is in its natural course. Your politicians do not understand
their trade; and therefore they sell their tools.

But the institutions savour of superstition in their very principle;
and they nourish it by a permanent and standing influence. This I
do not mean to dispute; but this ought not to hinder you from de-
riving from superstition itself any resources which may thence be
furnished for the public advantage. You derive benefits from many
dispositions and many passions of the human mind, which are of as
doubtful a colour, in the moral eye, as superstition itself. It was
your business to correct and mitigate everything which was noxious
in this passion, as in all the passions. But is superstition the greatest
of all possible vices ? In its possible excess I think it becomes a very
great evil. It is, however, a moral subject; and of course admits of
all degrees and all modifications. Superstition is the religion of
feeble minds; and they must be tolerated in an intermixture of it,
in some trifling or some enthusiastic shape or other, else you will
deprive weak minds of a resource found necessary to the strongest.
The body of all true religion consists, to be sure, in obedience to the
will of the Sovereign of the world; in a confidence in his declara-
tions; and in imitation of his perfections. The rest is our own. It
may be prejudicial to the great end; it may be auxiliary. Wise men,
who as such are not admirers, (not admirers at least of the Munera
Terrce^ are not violently attached to these things, nor do they vio-
lently hate them. Wisdom is not the most severe corrector of folly.
They are the rival follies, which mutually wage so unrelenting a
war; and which make so cruel a use of their advantages, as they
can happen to engage the immoderate vulgar, on the one side, or the
other, in their quarrels. Prudence would be neuter; but if, in the
contention between fond attachment and fierce antipathy concern-
ing things in their nature not made to produce such heats, a pru-
dent man were obliged to make a choice of what errors and excesses
of enthusiasm he would condemn or bear, perhaps he would think
the superstition which builds, to be more tolerable than that which
demolishes — that which adorns a country, than that which deforms
it — that which endows, than that which plunders— that which dis-
poses to mistaken beneficence, than that which stimulates to real
justice— that which leads a man to refuse to himself lawful pleas-

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 293

ures, than that which snatches from others the scanty subsistence of
their self-denial. Such, I think, is very nearly the state of the ques-
tion between the ancient founders of monkish superstition, and the
superstition of the pretended philosophers of the hour.

For the present I postpone all consideration of the supposed pub-
lic profit of the sale, which however I conceive to be perfectly de-
lusive, I shall here only consider it as a transfer of property. On
the policy of that transfer I shall trouble you with a few thoughts.

In every prosperous community something more is produced than
goes to the immediate support of the producer. This surplus forms
the income of the landed capitalist. It will be spent by a proprietor
who does not labour. But this idleness is itself the spring of labour;
this repose the spur to industry. The only concern of the state is,
that the capital taken in rent from the land, should be returned again
to the industry from whence it came; and that its expenditure
should be with the least possible detriment to the morals of those
who expend it, and to those of the people to whom it is returned.

In all the views of receipt, expenditure, and personal employ-
ment, a sober legislator would carefully compare the possessor whom
he was recommended to expel, with the stranger who was proposed
to fill his place. Before the inconveniencies are incurred which must
attend all violent revolutions in property through extensive confisca-
tion, we ought to have some rational assurance that the purchasers
of the confiscated property will be in a considerable degree more
laborious, more virtuous, more sober, less disposed to extort an un-
reasonable proportion of the gains of the labourer, or to consume
on themselves a larger share than is fit for the measure of an in-
dividual; or that they should be qualified to dispense the surplus in
a more steady and equal mode, so as to answer the purposes of a
politic expenditure, than the old possessors, call those possessors
bishops, or canons, or commendatory abbots, or monks, or what you
please. The monks are lazy. Be it so. Suppose them no otherwise
employed than by singing in the choir. They are as usefully em-
ployed as those who neither sing nor say. As usefully even as those
who sing upon the stage. They are as usefully employed as if they
worked from dawn to dark in the innumerable servile, degrading,
unseemly, unmanly, and often most unwholesome and pestiferous

294 EDMUND BURKE

occupations, to which by the social economy so many wretches are
inevitably doomed. If it were not generally pernicious to disturb
the natural course of things, and to impede in any degree, the great
wheel of circulation which is turned by the strangely-directed labour
of these unhappy people, I should be infinitely more inclined forci-
bly to rescue them from their miserable industry, than violently to
disturb the tranquil repose of monastic quietude. Humanity, and
perhaps policy, might better justify me in the one than in the other.
It is a subject on which I have often reflected, and never reflected
without feeling from it. I am sure that no consideration, except the
necessity of submitting to the yoke of luxury, and the despotism of
fancy, who in their own imperious way will distribute the surplus
product of the soil, can justify the toleration of such trades and em-
ployments in a well-regulated state. But for this purpose of distri-
bution, it seems to me, that the idle expenses of monks are quite as
well directed as the idle expenses of us lay-loiterers.

When the advantages of the possession and of the project are on
a par, there is no motive for a change. But in the present case,
perhaps, they are not upon a par, and the di£Ference is in favour of
the possession. It does not appear to me, that the expenses of those
whom you are going to expel, do in fact take a course so directly
and so generally leading to vitiate and degrade and render miser-
able those through whom they pass, as the expenses of those fa-
vourites whom you are intruding into their houses. Why should the
expenditure of a great landed property, which is a dispersion of the
surplus product of the soil, appear intolerable to you or to me,
when it takes its course through the accumulation of vast libraries,
which are the history of the force and weakness of the human mind;
through great collections of ancient records, medals, and coins, which
attest and explain laws and customs; through paintings and statues,
that, by imitating nature, seem to extend the limits of creation;
through grand monuments of the dead, which continue the regards
and connexions of life beyond the grave; through collections of the
specimens of nature which become a representative assembly of all
the classes and families of the world, that by disposition facilitate,
and, by exciting curiosity, open the avenues to science? If by great
permanent estabHshments, all these objects of expense are better

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 295

secured from the inconstant sport of personal caprice and personal
extravagance, are they worse than if the same tastes prevailed in
scattered individuals? Does not the sweat of the mason and car-
penter, who toil in order to partake of the sweat of the peasant, flow
as pleasantly and as salubriously, in the construction and repair of
the majestic edifices of religion, as in the painted booths and sordid
sties of vice and luxury; as honourably and as profitably in repair-
ing those sacred works, which grow hoary with innumerable years,
as on the momentary receptacles of transient voluptuousness; in
opera-houses, and brothels, and gaming-houses, and club-houses, and
obelisks in the Champ de Mars? Is the surplus product of the olive
and the vine worse employed in the frugal sustenance of persons,
whom the fictions of a pious imagination raise to dignity by con-
struing in the service of God, than in pampering the innumerable
multitude of those who are degraded by being made useless domes-
tics, subservient to the pride of man? Are the decorations of temples
an expenditure less worthy a wise man, than ribbons, and laces, and
national cockades, and petit maisons, and petit soupers, and all the
innumerable fopperies and follies, in which opulence sports away
the burthen of its superfluity?

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

This comparison between the new individuals and the old corps
is made upon a supposition that no reform could be made in the
latter. But in a question of reformation, I always consider corporate
bodies, whether sole or consisting of many, to be much more sus-
ceptible of a public direction by the power of the state, in the use of
their property, and in the regulation of modes and habits of life in
their members, than private citizens ever can be, or perhaps ought to
be: and this seems to me a very material consideration for those
who undertake anything which merits the name of a politic enter-
prise. — So far as to the estates of monasteries.

296 EDMUND BURKE

With regard to the estates possessed by bishops and canons, and
commendatory abbots, I cannot find out for what reason some
landed estates may not be held otherwise than by inheritance. Can
any philosophic spoiler undertake to demonstrate the positive or the
comparative evil of having a certain, and that too a large, portion of
landed property, passing in succession through persons whose title
to it is, always in theory, and often in fact, an eminent degree of
piety, morals, and learning; a property, which, by its destination, in
their turn, and on the score of merit, gives to the noblest families
renovation and support, to the lowest the means of dignity and ele-
vation; a property, the tenure of which is the performance of some
duty, (whatever value you may choose to set upon that duty,) and
the character of whose proprietors demands, at least, an exterior
decorum, and gravity of manners; who are to exercise a generous
but temperate hospitality; part of whose income they are to consider
as a trust for charity; and who, even when they fail in their trust,
when they slide from their character, and degenerate into a mere
common secular nobleman or gentleman, are in no respect worse
than those who may succeed them in their forfeited possessions?
Is it better that estates should be held by those who have no duty,
than by those who have one? — ^by those whose character and destina-
tion point to virtues, than by those who have no rule and direction in
the expenditure of their estates but their own will and appetite?
Nor are these estates held altogether in the character or with the
evils supposed inherent in mortmain. They pass from hand to hand
with a more rapid circulation than any other. No excess is good;
and therefore too great a proportion of landed property may be held
officially for life: but it does not seem to me of material injury to
any commonwealth, that there should exist some estates that have a
chance of being acquired by other means than the previous acquisi-
tion of money.

This letter has grown to a great length, though it is indeed short
with regard to the infinite extent of the subject. Various avocations
have from time to time called my mind from the subject. I was not
sorry to give myself leisure to observe whether, in the proceedings
of the National Assembly, I might not find reasons to change or to
qualify some of my first sentiments. Everything has confirmed me

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 297

more strongly in my first opinions. It was my original purpose to
take a view of the principles of the National Assembly with regard
to the great and fundamental establishments; and to compare the
whole of what you have substituted in the place of what you have
destroyed, with the several members of our British constitution.
But this plan is of a greater extent than at first I computed, and I
find that you have little desire to take the advantage of any exam-
ples. At present I must content myself with some remarks upon
your establishments; reserving for another time what I proposed to
say concerning the spirit of our British monarchy, aristocracy, and
democracy, as practically they exist.

I have taken a view of what has been done by the governing
power in France. I have certainly spoke of it with freedom. Those
whose principle it is to despise the ancient, permanent sense of man-
kind, and to set up a scheme of society on new principles, must
naturally expect that such of us, who think better of the judgment
of the human race than of theirs, should consider both them and
their devices, as men and schemes upon their trial. They must take
it for granted that we attend much to their reason, but not at all to
their authority. They have not one of the great influencing preju-
dices of mankind in their favor. They avow their hostility to opin-
ion. Of course they must expect no support from that influence,
which, with every other authority, they have deposed from the seat
of its jurisdiction.

I can never consider this Assembly as anything else than a volun-
tary association of men, who have availed themselves of circum-
stances to seize upon the power of the state. They have not the
sanction and authority of the character under which they first met.
They have assumed another of a very different nature; and have
completely altered and inverted all the relations in which they origi-
nally stood. They do not hold the authority they exercise under any
constitutional law of the state. They have departed from the in-
structions, of the people by whom they were sent; which instruc-
tions, as the Assembly did not act in virtue of any ancient usage or
settled law, were the sole source of their authority. The most con-
siderable of their acts have not been done by great majorities; and
in this sort of near divisions, which carry only the constructive

298 EDMUND BURKE

authority of the whole, strangers will consider reasons as well as reso-
lutions.

If they had set up this new experimental government, as a neces-
sary substitute for an expelled tyranny, mankind would anticipate
the time of prescription, which, through long usage, mellows into
legality governments that were violent in their commencement. All
those who have affections which lead them to the conservation of
civil order would recognize, even in its cradle, the child as legiti-
mate, which has been produced from those principles of cogent ex-
pediency to which all just governments owe their birth, and on
which they justify their continuance. But they will be late and re-
luctant in giving any sort of countenance to the operations of a
power, which has derived its birth from no law and no necessity;
but which on the contrary has had its origin in those vices and sin-
ister practices by which the social union is often disturbed and some-
times destroyed. This Assembly has hardly a year's prescription.
We have their own word for it that they have made a revolution.
To make a revolution is a measure which, prima jronte, requires an
apology. To make a revolution is to subvert the ancient state of
our country; and no common reasons are called for to justify so
violent a proceeding. The sense of mankind authorizes us to exam-
ine into the mode of acquiring new power, and to criticise on the
use that is made of it, with less awe and reverence than that which
is usually conceded to a settled and recognized authority.

In obtaining and securing their power, the Assembly proceeds
upon principles the most opposite to those which appear to direct
them in the use of it. An observation on this difference will let us
into the true spirit of their conduct. Everything which they have
done, or continue to do, in order to obtain and keep their power, is
by the most common arts. They proceed exactly as their ancestors
of ambition have done before them. — Trace them through all their
artifices, frauds, and violences, you can find nothing at all that is
new. They follow precedents and examples with the punctilious ex-
actness of a pleader. They never depart an iota from the authentic
formulas of tyranny and usurpation. But in all the regulations rela-
tive to the public good, the spirit has been the very reverse of this.
There they commit the whole to the mercy of untried speculations;

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 299

they abandon the dearest interests of the public to those loose the-
ories, to which none of them would choose to trust the slightest of
his private concerns. They make this difference, because in their
desire of obtaining and securing power they are thoroughly in ear-
nest; there they travel in the beaten road. The public interests, be-
cause about them they have no real solicitude, they abandon wholly
to chance: I say to chance, because their schemes have nothing in
experience to prove their tendency beneficial.

We must always see with a pity not unmixed with respect, the
errors of those who are timid and doubtful of themselves with
regard to points wherein the happiness of mankind is concerned.
But in these gentlemen there is nothing of the tender, parental
solicitude, which fears to cut up the infant for the sake of an experi-
ment. In the vastness of their promises, and the confidence of their
predictions, they far outdo all the boasting of empirics. The arro-
gance of their pretensions, in a manner provokes and challenges us
to an inquiry into their foundation.

I am convinced that there are men of considerable parts among
the popular leaders in the National Assembly, Some of them display
eloquence in their speeches and their writings. This cannot be with-
out powerful and cultivated talents. But eloquence may exist with-
out a proportionable degree of wisdom. When I speak of ability, I
am obliged to distinguish. What they have done towards the sup-
port of their system bespeaks no ordinary men. In the system itself,
taken as the scheme of a republic constructed for procuring the pros-
perity and security of the citizen, and for promoting the strength
and grandeur of the state, I confess myself unable to find out any-
thing which displays, in a single instance the work of a comprehen-
sive and disposing mind, or even the provisions of a vulgar pru-
dence. Their purpose everywhere seems to have been to evade and
slip aside from difficulty. This it has been the glory of the great
masters in all the arts to confront, and to overcome; and when
they had overcome the first difficulty, to turn it into an instrument
for new conquests over new difficulties; thus to enable them to ex-
tend the empire of their science; and even to push forward, beyond
the reach of their original thoughts, the land-marks of the human
understanding itself. Difficulty is a severe instructor, set over us by

300 EDMUND BURKE

the supreme ordinance of a parental Guardian and Legislator, who
knows us better than we know ourselves, as he loves us better too.
Pater ipse colendi hand facilem esse viam voluit. He that wrestles
with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our an-
tagonist is our helper. This amicable conflict with difSculty obliges
us to an intimate acquaintance with our object, and compels us to
consider it in all its relations. It will not suffer us to be superficial.
It is the want of nerves of understanding for such a task, it is the
degenerate fondness for tricking short-cuts, and little fallacious fa-
cilities, that has in so many parts of the world created governments
with arbitrary powers. They have created the late arbitrary mon-
archy of France. They have created the arbitrary republic of Paris.
With them defects in wisdom are to be supplied by the plentitude
of force. They get nothing by it. Commencing their labours on a
principle of sloth, they have the common fortune of slothful men.
The difficulties, which they rather had eluded than escaped, meet
them again in their course; they multiply and thicken on them;
they are involved, through a labyrinth of confused detail, in an
industry without limit, and without direction; and, in conclusion,
the whole of their work becomes feeble, vicious, and insecure.

It is this inability to wresde with difficulty which has obliged the
arbitrary Assembly of France to commence their schemes of reform
with abolition and total destruction.''* But is it in destroying and
pulling down that skill is displayed? Your mob can do this as well
at least as your assemblies. The shallowest understanding, the rud-
est hand, is more than equal to that task. Rage and phrensy will
pull down more in half an hour, than prudence, deliberation, and
foresight can build up in a hundred years. The errors and defects
of old establishments are visible and palpable. It calls for little

*^ A leading member of the Assembly, M. Rabaud de St. Etienne, has expressed the
principle of all their proceedings as clearly as possible. — ^Nothing can be more simple; —
"Tous les etablissemens en France couronnent le malheur du peuple: pour le rendre
heureux it faut le renouveler; changer ses idies; changer ses toix; changer ses mceurs;
. . . changer les hommes; changer les choses; changer les mots . . . tout dStruire;
oui, tout dkruire; puisque tout est h recreer." This gendeman was chosen president
in an assembly not sitting at the Quinze-vingt, or the Vetits Maisons; and composed
of persons giving themselves out to be rational beings; but neither his ideas, language,
or conduct, differ in the smallest degree from the discourses, opinions, and actions
of those within and without the Assembly, who direct the operations of the machine
now at work in France.

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 3OI

ability to point them out; and where absolute power is given, it
requires but a word wholly to abolish the vice and the establish-
ment together. The same lazy but restless disposition, which loves
sloth and hates quiet, directs the politicians, when they come to
work for supplying the place of what they have destroyed. To make
everything the reverse of what they have seen is quite as easy as to
destroy. No difficulties occur in what has never been tried. Criti-
cism is almost baffled in discovering the defects of what has not
existed; and eager enthusiasm and cheating hope have all the wide
field of imagination, in which they may expatiate with little or no
opposition.

At once to preserve and to reform is quite another thing. When
the useful parts of an old establishment are kept, and what is
superadded is to be fitted to what is retained, a vigorous mind,
steady, persevering attention, various powers of comparison and
combination, and the resources of an understanding fruitful in
expedients, are to be exercised; they are to be exercised in a contin-
ued conflict with the combined force of opposite vices, with the ob-
stinacy that rejects all improvement, and the levity that is fatigued
and disgusted with everything of which it is in possession. But you
may object — "A process of this kind is slow. It is not fit for an
assembly, which glories in performing in a few months the work
of ages. Such a mode of reforming, possibly, might take up many
years." Without question it might; and it ought. It is one of the
excellencies of a method in which time is amongst the assistants,
that its operation is slow, and in some cases almost imperceptible.
If circumspection and caution are a part of wisdom, when we work
only upon inanimate matter, surely they become a part of duty too,
when the subject of our demolition and construction is not brick
and timber, but sentient beings, by the sudden alteration of whose
state, condition, and habits, multitudes may be rendered miserable.
But it seems as if it were the prevalent opinion in Paris, that an
unfeeling heart, and an undoubting confidence, are the sole quali-
fications for a perfect legislator. Far different are my ideas of that
high office. The true lawgiver ought to have a heart full of sensi-
bility. He ought to love and respect his kind, and to fear himself.
It may be allowed to his temperament to catch his ultimate object

302 EDMUND BURKE

with an intuitive glance; but his movements towards it ought to be
deliberate. Political arrangement, as it is a work for social ends, is
to be only wrought by social means. There mind must conspire
with mind. Time is required to produce that union of minds which
alone can produce all the good we aim at. Our patience will achieve
more than our force. If I might venture to appeal to what is so
much out of fashion in Paris, I mean to experience, I should tell
you, that in my course I have known, and, according to my measure,
have co-operated with great men; and I have never yet seen any
plan which has not been mended by the observations of those who
were much inferior in understanding to the person who took the
lead in the business. By a slow but well-sustained progress, the
effect of each step is watched; the good or ill success of the first gives
light to us in the second; and so, from light to light, we are con-
ducted with safety through the whole series. We see that the parts
or the system do not clash. The evils latent in the most promising
contrivances are provided for as they arise. One advantage is as
little as possible sacrificed to another. We compensate, we reconcile,
we balance. We are enabled to unite into a consistent whole the
various anomalies and contending principles that are found in the
minds and afEairs of men. From hence arises, not an excellence in
simplicity, but one far superior, an excellence in composition.
Where the great interests of mankind are concerned through a long
succession of generations, that succession ought to be admitted into
some share in the councils, which are so deeply to affect them. If
justice requires this, the work itself requires the aid of more minds
than one age can furnish. It is from this view of things that the
best legislators have been often satisfied with the establishment of
some sure, solid, and ruling principle in government; a power like
that which some of the philosophers have called a plastic nature;
and having fixed the principle, they have left it afterwards to its
own operation.

To proceed in this manner, that is, to proceed with a presiding
pr'inciple, and a prolific energy, is with me the criterion of pro-
found wisdom. What your politicians think the marks of a bold,
hardy genius, are only proofs of a deplorable want of ability. By
their violent haste and their defiance of the process of nature, they

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 303

are delivered over blindly to every projector and adventurer, to
every alchymist and empiric. They despair o£ turning to account
anything that is common. Diet is nothing in their system of remedy.
The worst of it is, that this their despair of curing common distem-
pers by regular methods, arises not only from defect of compre-
hension, but, I fear, from some malignity of disposition. Your legis-
lators seem to have taken their opinions of all professions, ranks, and
offices, from the declamations and buffooneries of satirists; who
would themselves be astonished if they were held to the letter of
their own descriptions. By listening only to these, your leaders re-
gard all things only on the side of their vices and faults, and view
those vices and faults under every colour of exaggeration. It is un-
doubtedly true, though it may seem paradoxical; but in general,
those who are habitually employed in finding and displaying faults,
are unqualified for the work of reformation: because their minds are
not only unfurnished with patterns of the fair and good, but by
habit they come to take no delight in the contemplation of those
things. By hating vices too much, they come to love men too little.
It is therefore not wonderful, that they should be indisposed and
unable to serve them. From hence arises the complexional disposi-
tion of some of your guides to pull everything in pieces. At this
malicious game they display the whole of their quadrimanous ac-
tivity. As to the rest, the paradoxes of eloquent writers, brought
forth purely as a sport of fancy, to try their talents, to rouse atten-
tion and excite surprise, are taken up by these gentlemen, not in the
spirit of the original authors, as means of cultivating their taste and
improving their style. These paradoxes become with them serious
grounds of action, upon which they proceed in regulating the most
important concerns of the state. Cicero ludicrously describes Cato
as endeavouring to act, in the commonwealth, upon the school para-
doxes, which exercised the wits of the junior students in the
Stoic philosophy. If this was true of Cato, these gentlemen copy
after him in the manner of some persons who lived about his time —
pede nudo Catonem. Mr. Hume told me that he had from Rousseau
himself the secret of his principles of composition. That acute
though eccentric observer had perceived, that to strike and interest
the public, the marvellous must be produced; that the marvellous of

304 EDMUND BURKE

the heathen mythology had long since lost its effect; that giants,
magicians, fairies, and heroes of romance which succeeded, had ex-
hausted the portion of credulity which belonged to their age; that
now nothing was left to the writer but that species of the marvel-
lous which might still be produced, and with as great an effect as
ever, though in another way; that is, the marvellous in life, in man-
ners, in characters, and in extraordinary situations, giving rise to
new and unlooked-for strokes in politics and morals. I believe, that
were Rousseau alive, and in one of his lucid intervals, he would be
shocked at the practical phrensy of his scholars, who in their para-
doxes are servile imitators, and even in their incredulity discover an
implicit faith.

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

It is in the model of the sovereign and presiding part of this new
republic, that we should expect their grand display. Here they were
to prove their title to their proud demands. For the plan itself at
large, and for the reasons on which it is grounded, I refer to the
journals of the Assembly of the 29th of September, 1789, and to the
subsequent proceedings which have made any alterations in the
plan. So far as in a matter somewhat confused I can see light,
the system remains substantially as it has been originally framed.
My few remarks will be such as regard its spirit, its tendency,
and its fitness for framing a popular commonwealth, which

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 305

they profess theirs to be, suited to the ends for which any common-
weakh, and particularly such a commonwealth, is made. At the
same time, I mean to consider its consistency with itself and its own
principles.

Old establishments are tried by their effects. If the people are
happy, united, wealthy, and powerful, we presume the rest. We
conclude that to be good from whence good is derived. In old estab-
lishments various correctives have been found for their aberrations
from theory. Indeed they are the results of various necessities and
expediences. They are not often constructed after any theory; the-
ories are rather drawn from them. In them we often see the end
best obtained, where the means seem not perfectly reconcilable to
what we may fancy was the original scheme. The means taught by
experience may be better suited to political ends than those con-
trived in the original project. They again react upon the primitive
constitution, and sometimes improve the design itself, from which
they seem to have departed. I think all this might be curiously ex-
emplified in the British Constitution. At worst, the errors and
deviations of every kind in reckoning are found and computed, and
the ship proceeds in her course. This is the case of old establish-
ments; but in a new and merely theoretic system, it is expected that
every contrivance shall appear, on the face of it, to answer its ends;
especially where the projectors are no way embarrassed with an en-
deavour to accommodate the new building to an old one, neither in
the walls or on the foundations.

The French builders, clearing away as mere rubbish whatever
they found, and, like their ornamental gardeners, forming every-
thing into an exact level, propose to rest the whole local and general
legislature on three bases of three different kinds; one geometrical,
one arithmetical, and the third financial; the first of which they call
the basis of territory; the second, the basis of population; and the
third, the basis of contribution. For the accomplishment of the first
of these purposes, they divide the area of their country into eighty-
three pieces, regularly square, of eighteen leagues by eighteen. These
large divisions are called Departments. These they portion, proceed-
ing by square measurement, into seventeen hundred and twenty dis-
tricts, called Communes. These again they subdivide, still proceed-

306 EDMUND BURKE

ing by square measurement, into smaller districts called Cantons,
making in all 6400.

At first view this geometrical basis of theirs, presents not much
to admire or to blame. It calls for no great legislative talents. Noth-
ing more than an accurate land surveyor, with his chain, sight, and
theodolite, is requisite for such a plan as this. In the old divisions of
the country, various accidents at various times, and the ebb and flow
of various properties and jurisdictions, settled their bounds. These
bounds were not made upon any fixed system undoubtedly. They
were subject to some inconveniences: but they were inconveniences
for which use had found remedies, and habit had supplied accom-
modation and patience. In this new pavement of square within
square, and this organization, and semi-organization, made on the
system of Empedocles and Buflon, and not upon any politic prin-
ciple, it is impossible that innumerable local inconveniences, to which
men are not habituated, must not arise. But these I pass over, be-
cause it requires an accurate knowledge of the country, which I do
not possess, to specify them.

When these state surveyors came to take a view of their work of
measurement they soon found, that in politics the most fallacious of
all things was geometrical demonstration. They had then recourse
to another basis (or rather buttress) to support the building, which
tottered on that false foundation. It was evident, that the goodness
of the soil, the number of the people, their wealth, and the large-
ness of their contribution, made such infinite variations between
square and square, as to render mensuration a ridiculous standard
of power in the commonwealth, and equality in geometry the most
unequal of all measures in the distribution of men. However, they
could not give it up. But dividing their political and civil represen-
tation into three parts, they allotted one of those parts to the square
measurement, without a single fact or calculation to ascertain
whether this territorial proportion of representation was fairly as-
signed, and ought upon any principle really to be a third. Having
however given to geometry this portion (of a third for her dower)
out of compliment, I suppose, to that sublime science, they left the
other two to be scuffled for between the other parts, population and
contribution.

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 307

When they came to provide for population, they were not able to
proceed quite so smoothly as they had done in the field of their
geometry. Here their arithmetic came to bear upon their juridical
metaphysics. Had they stuck to their metaphysic principles, the
arithmetical process would be simple indeed. Men, with them, are
stricdy equal, and are entitled to equal rights in their own govern-
ment. Each head, on this system, would have its vote, and every man
would vote directly for the person who was to represent him in the
legislature. "But soft — ^by regular degrees, not yet." This meta-
physic principle, to which law, custom, usage, policy, reason, were
to yield, is to yield itself to their pleasure. There must be many
degrees, and some stages, before the representative can come in con-
tact with his constituent. Indeed, as we shall soon see, these two
persons are to have no sort of communion with each other. First,
the voters in the Canton, who compose what they call primary
assemblies, are to have a qualification. What! a qualification on
the indefeasible rights of men? Yes; but it shall be a very small
qualification. Our injustice shall be very little oppressive; only the
local valuation of three days' labour paid to the public. Why, this
is not much, I readily admit, for anything but the utter subversion
of your equalising principle. As a qualification it might as well be
let alone; for it answers no one purpose for which qualifications are
established; and, on your ideas, it excludes from a vote the man of
all others whose natural equality stands the most in need of pro-
tection and defence: I mean the man who has nothing else but his
natural equality to guard him. You order him to buy the right,
which you before told him nature had given to him gratuitously at
his birth, and of which no authority on earth could lawfully deprive
him. With regard to the person who cannot come up to your mar-
ket, a tyrannous aristocracy, as against him, is established at the
very outset, by you who pretend to be its sworn foe.

The gradation proceeds. These primary assemblies of the Canton
elect deputies to the Commune; one for every two hundred qualified
inhabitants. Here is the first medium put between the primary
elector and the representative legislator; and here a new turnpike is
fixed for taxing the rights of men with a second qualification: for
none can be elected into the Commune who does not pay the

308 EDMUND BURKE

amount o£ ten days' labour. Nor have we yet done. There is still
to be another gradation.*' These Communes, chosen by the Canton,
choose to the Department; and the deputies of the Department
choose their deputies to the National Assembly. Here is a third
barrier of a senseless qualification. Every deputy to the National
Assembly must pay, in direct contribution, to the value of a mar\
of silver. Of all these qualifying barriers we must think alike; that
they are impotent to secure independence; strong only to destroy the
rights of men.

In all this process, which in its fundamental elements affects to
consider only population upon a principle of natural right, there is
a manifest attention to property; which, however just and reason-
able on other schemes, is on theirs perfectly unsupportable.

When they come to their third basis, that of Contribution, we
find that they have more completely lost sight of their rights of men.
This last basis rests entirely on property. A principle totally differ-
ent from the equality of men, and utterly irreconcilable to it, is
thereby admitted; but no sooner is this principle admitted, than
(as usual) it is subverted; and it is not subverted (as we shall pres-
ently see) to approximate the inequality of riches to the level of
nature. The additional share in the third portion of representation
(a portion reserved exclusively for the higher contribution) is made
to regard the district only, and not the individuals in it who pay. It
is easy to perceive, by the course of their reasonings, how much they
were embarrassed by their contradictory ideas of the rights of men
and the privileges of riches. The committee of constitution do as
good as admit that they are wholly irreconcilable. "The relation
with regard to the contributions, is without doubt null (say they)
when the question is on the balance of the political rights as between
individual and individual; without which personal equality would
be destroyed, and an aristocracy of the rich would be established.
But this inconvenience entirely disappears when the proportional

^'The Assembly, in executing the plan of their committee, made some alterations.
They have struck out one stage in these gradations; this removes a part of the
objection; but the main objection, namely, that in their scheme the first constituent
voter has no connexion with the representative legislator, remains in all its force.
There are other alterations, some possibly for the better, some certainly for the worse;
but to the author the merit or demerit of these smaller alterations appears to be of no
moment, where the scheme itself is fundamentally vicious and absurd.

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 309

relation of the contribution is only considered in the great masses,
and is solely between province and province; it serves in that case
only to form a just reciprocal proportion between the cities, without
affecting the personal rights of the citizens."

Here the principle of contribution, as taken between man and
man, is reprobated as null, and destructive to equality and as per-
nicious too; because it leads to the establishment of an aristocracy
of the rich. However, it must not be abandoned. And the way of
getting rid of the difficulty is to establish the inequality as between
department and department, leaving all the individuals in each de-
partment upon an exact par. Observe, that this parity between in-
dividuals had been before destroyed, when the qualifications within
the departments were settled; nor does it seem a matter of great
importance whether the equality of men be injured by masses or in-
dividually. An individual is not of the same importance in a mass
represented by a few, as in a mass represented by many. It would
be too much to tell a man jealous of his equality, that the elector has
the same franchise who votes for three members as he who votes
for ten.

Now take it in the other point of view, and let us suppose their
principle of representation according to contribution, that is, accord-
ing to riches, to be well imagined, and to be a necessary basis for
their republic. In this their third basis they assume, that riches ought
to be respected, and that justice and policy require that they should
entitle men, in some mode or other, to a larger share in the admin-
istration of public affairs; it is now to be seen how the Assembly
provides for the pre-eminence, or even for the security, of the rich,
by conferring, in virtue of their opulence, that larger measure of
power to their district which is denied to them personally. I readily
admit (indeed I should lay it down as a fundamental principle)
that in a republican government, which has a democratic basis, the
rich do require an additional security above what is necessary to
them in monarchies. They are subject to envy, and through envy
to oppression. On the present scheme it is impossible to divine
what advantage they derive from the aristocratic preference upon
which the unequal representation of the masses is founded. The
rich cannot feel it, either as a support to dignity, or as security

JIO EDMUND BURKE

to fortune: for the aristocratic mass is generated from purely demo-
cratic principles; and the preference given to it in the general repre-
sentation has no sort of reference to, or connexion with, the persons,,
upon account of whose property this superiority of the mass is estab-
lished. If the contrivers of this scheme meant any sort of favour
to the rich, in consequence of their contribution, they ought to have
conferred the privilege either on the individual rich, or on some
class formed of rich persons (as historians represent Servius Tullius
to have done in the early constitution of Rome); because the con-
test between the rich and the poor is not a struggle between cor-
poration and corporation, but a contest between men and men; a
competition not between districts, but between descriptions. It
would answer its purpose better if the scheme were inverted; that
the votes of the masses were rendered equal; and that the votes
within each mass were proportioned to property.

Let us suppose one man in a district (it is an easy supposition) to
contribute as much as an hundred of his neighbours. Against these
he has but one vote. If there were but one representative for the
mass, his poor neighbours would outvote him by an hundred to
one for that single representative. Bad enough. But amends are to
be made him. How? The district, in virtue of his wealth, is to
choose, say ten members instead of one: that is to say, by paying a
very large contribution he has the happiness of being outvoted, an
hundred to one, by the poor, for ten representatives, instead of being
outvoted exactly in the same proportion for a single member. In
truth, instead of benefiting by this superior quantity of representa-
tion, the rich man is subjected to an additional hardship. The in-
crease of representation within his province sets up nine persons
more, and as many more than nine as there may be democratic
candidates, to cabal and intrigue, and to flatter the people at his
expense and to his oppression. An interest is by this means held out
to multitudes of the inferior sort, in obtaining a salary of eighteen
livres a day, (to them a vast object,) besides the pleasure of a resi-
dence in Paris, and their share in the government of the kingdom.
The more the objects of ambition are multiplied and become demo-
cratic, just in that proportion the rich are endangered.

Thus it must fare between the poor and the rich in the province

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 3II

deemed aristocratic, which in its internal relation is the very re-
verse of that character. In its external relation, that is, its relation
to the other provinces, I cannot see how the unequal representation,
which is given to masses on account of wealth, becomes the means
of preserving the equipoise and the tranquillity of the common-
wealth. For if it be one of the objects to secure the weak from
being crushed by the strong, (as in all society undoubtedly it is,)
how are the smaller and poorer of these masses to be saved from
the tyranny of the more wealthy? Is it by adding to the wealthy
further and more systematical means of oppressing them ? When we
come to a balance of representation between corporate bodies, pro-
vincial interests, emulations, and jealousies are full as likely to arise
among them as among individuals; and their divisions are likely
to produce a much hotter spirit of dissension, and something leading
much more nearly to a war.

I see that these aristocratic masses are made upon what is called
the principle of direct contribution. Nothing can be a more un-
equal standard than this. The indirect contribution, that which
arises from duties on consumption, is in truth a better standard, and
follows and discovers wealth more naturally than this of direct con-
tribution. It is difficult indeed to fix a standard of local preference
on account of the one, or of the other, or of both, because some
provinces may pay the more of either or of both, on account of
causes not intrinsic, but originating from those very districts over
whom they have obtained a preference in consequence of their
ostensible contribution. If the masses were independent, sovereign
bodies, who were to provide for a federative treasury by distinct
contingents, and that the revenue had not (as it has) many imposi-
tions running through the whole, which affect men individually,
and not corporately, and which, by their nature, confound all terri-
torial limits, something might be said for the basis of contribution
as founded on masses. But of all things, this representation, to be
measured by contribution, is the most difficult to settle upon princi-
ples of equity in a country, which considers its districts as members
of a whole. For a great city, such as Bourdeaux, or Paris, appears
to pay a vast body of duties, almost out of all assignable proportion
to other places, and its mass is considered accordingly. But are these

312 EDMUND BURKE

cities the true contributors in that proportion ? No. The consumers
of the commodities imported into Bourdeaux, who are scattered
through all France, pay the import duties of Bourdeaux. The prod-
uce of the vintage in Guienne and Languedoc, give to that city the
means of its contribution growing out of an export commerce. The
landholders who spend their estates in Paris, and are thereby the
creators of that city, contribute for Paris from the provinces out of
which their revenues arise. Very nearly the same arguments will
apply to the representative share given on account of direct contri-
butions: because the direct contribution must be assessed on wealth
real or presumed; and that local wealth will itself arise from causes
not local, and which therefore in equity ought not to produce a
local preference.

It is very remarkable, that in this fundamental regulation, which
settles the representation of the mass upon the direct contribution,
they have not yet settled how that direct contribution shall be laid,
and how apportioned. Perhaps there is some latent policy towards
the continuance of the present Assembly in this strange procedure.
However, until they do this, they can have no certain constitution.
It must depend at last upon the system of taxation, and must vary
with every variation in that system. As they have contrived mat-
ters, their taxation does not so much depend on their constitution,
as their constitution on their taxation. This must introduce great
confusion among the masses; as the variable qualification for votes
within the district must, if ever real contested elections take place,
cause infinite internal controversies.

To compare together the three bases, not on their political reason,
but on the ideas on which the Assembly works, and to try its con-
sistency with itself, we cannot avoid observing, that the principle
which the committee call the basis of population, does not begin to
operate from the same point with the two other principles called
the bases of territory and of contribution, which are both of an aris-
tocratic nature. The consequence is, that, where all three begin to
operate together, there is the most absurd inequality produced by
the operation of the former on the two latter principles. Every can-
ton contains four square leagues, and is estimated to contain, on the
average, 4000 inhabitants, or 680 voters in the primary assemblies,

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 313

which vary in numbers with the population of the canton, and send
one deputy to the commune for every 200 voters. Nine cantons make
a commune.

Now let us take a canton containing a sea-port town of trade, or
a great manufacturing town. Let us suppose the population of this
canton to be 12,700 inhabitants, or 2193 voters, forming three pri-
mary assemblies, and sending ten deputies to the commune.

Oppose to this one canton two others of the remaining eight in the
same commune. These we may suppose to have their fair popula-
tion of 4000 inhabitants and 680 voters each, or 8000 inhabitants and
1360 voters, both together. These will form only two primary assem-
blies, and send only six deputies to the commune.

When the assembly of the commune comes to vote on the basis of
territory, which principle is first admitted to operate in that assem-
bly, the single canton, which has half the territory of the other two,
will have ten voices to six in the election of three deputies to the
assembly of the department, chosen on the express ground of a
representation of territory. This inequality, striking as it is, will
be yet highly aggravated, if we suppose, as we fairly may, the sev-
eral other cantons of the commune to fall proportionably short of
the average population, as much as the principal canton exceeds it.

Now as to the basis of contribution, which also is a principle ad-
mitted first to operate in the assembly of the commune. Let us
again take one canton, such as is stated above. If the whole of the
direct contributions paid by a great trading or manufacturing town
be divided equally among the inhabitants, each individual will be
found to pay much more than an individual living in the country
according to the same average. The whole paid by the inhabitants
of the former will be more than the whole paid by the inhabitants
of the latter — we may fairly assume one-third more. Then the
12,700 inhabitants, or 2193 voters of the canton, will pay as much
as 19,050 inhabitants, or 3289 voters of the other cantons, which are
nearly the estimated proportion of inhabitants and voters of five
other cantons. Now the 2193 voters will, as I before said, send only
ten deputies to the assembly; the 3289 voters will send sixteen. Thus,
for an equal share in the contribution of the whole commune, there
will be a difference of sixteen voices to ten in voting for deputies

314 EDMUND BURKE

to be chosen on the principle of representing the general contribu-
tion of the whole commune.

By the same mode of computation we shall find 15,875 inhabit-
ants, or 2741 voters of the other cantons, who pay one-sixth less to
the contribution of the whole commune, will have three voices
MORE than the 12,700 inhabitants, or 2193 voters of the one canton.

Such is the fantastical and unjust inequality between mass and
mass, in this curious repartition of the rights of representation aris-
ing out of territory and contribution. The qualifications which
these confer are in truth negative qualifications, that give a right in
an inverse proportion to the possession of them.

In this whole contrivance of the three bases, consider it in any
light you please, I do not see a variety of objects reconciled in one
consistent whole, but several contradictory principles reluctantly and
irreconcilably brought and held together by your philosophers, like
wild beasts shut up in a cage, to claw and bite each other to their
mutual destruction.

I am afraid I have gone too far into their way of considering the
formation of a constitution. They have much, but bad, metaphysics;
much, but bad, geometry; much, but false, proportionate arithme-
tic; but if it were all as exact as metaphysics, geometry, and arith-
metic ought to be, and if their schemes were perfectly consistent
in all their parts, it would make only a more fair and sightly vision.
It is remarkable, that, in a great arrangement of mankind, not one
reference whatsoever is to be found to anything moral or anything
politic; nothing that relates to the concerns, the actions, the passions,
the interests of men. Hominem non sapiunt.

You see I only consider this constitution as electoral, and leading
by steps to the National Assembly. I do not enter into the internal
government of the departments, and their genealogy through the
communes and cantons. These local governments are, in the origi-
nal plan, to be as nearly as possible composed in the same manner
and on the same principles with the elective assemblies. They are
each of them bodies perfectly compact and rounded in themselves.

You cannot but perceive in this scheme, that it has a direct and
immediate tendency to sever France into a variety of republics, and
to render them totally independent of each other without any direct

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 315

constitutional means of coherence, connexion, or subordination, ex-
cept what may be derived from their acquiescence in the determina-
tions of the general congress of the ambassadors from each inde-
pendent republic. Such in reality is the National Assembly, and
such governments I admit do exist in the world, though in forms
infinitely more suitable to the local and habitual circumstances of
their people. But such associations, rather than bodies politic, have
generally been the effect of necessity, not choice; and I believe the
present French power is the very first body of citizens, who, having
obtained full authority to do with their country what they pleased,
have chosen to dissever it in this barbarous manner.

It is impossible not to observe, that, in the spirit of this geometri-
cal distribution, and arithmetical arrangement, these pretended citi-
zens treat France exactly like a country of conquest. Acting as con-
querors, they have imitated the policy of the harshest of that harsh
race. The policy of such barbarous victors, who contemn a subdued
people, and insult their feelings, has ever been, as much as in them
lay, to destroy all vestiges of the ancient country, in religion, in
polity, in laws, and in manners; to confound all territorial limits;
to produce a general poverty; to put up their properties to auction;
to crush their princes, nobles, and pontiffs; to lay low everything
which had lifted its head above the level, or which could serve to
combine or rally, in their distresses, the disbanded people, under
the standard of old opinion. They have made France free in the
manner in which those sincere friends to the rights of mankind, the
Romans, freed Greece, Macedon, and other nations. They de-
stroyed the bonds of their union, under colour of providing for the
independence of each of their cities.

When the members who compose these new bodies of cantons,
communes, and departments, arrangements purposely produced
through the medium of confusion, begin to act, they will find them-
selves in a great measure strangers to one another. The electors and
elected throughout, especially in the rural cantons, will be frequently
without any civil habitudes or connexions, or any of that natural dis-
cipline which is the soul of a true republic. Magistrates and col-
lectors of revenue are now no longer acquainted with their districts,
bishops with their dioceses, or curates with their parishes. These

3l6 EDMUND BURKE

new colonies of the rights of men bear a strong resemblance to that
sort of military colonies which Tacitus has observed upon in the
declining policy of Rome. In better and wiser days (whatever course
they took with foreign nations) they were careful to make the ele-
ments of methodical subordination and settlement to be coeval; and
even to lay the foundations of civil discipline in the military.*" But,
when all the good arts had fallen into ruin, they proceeded, as your
Assembly does, upon the equality of men, and with as little judg-
ment, and as little care for those things which make a republic tol-
erable or durable. But in this, as well as almost every instance,
your new commonwealth is born, and bred, and fed, in those cor-
ruptions which mark degenerated and worn-out republics. Your
child comes into the world with the symptoms of death; the fades
Hippocratica forms the character of its physiognomy, and the prog-
nostic of its fate.

The legislators who framed the ancient republics knew that their
business was too arduous to be accomplished with no better ap-
paratus than the metaphysics of an undergraduate, and the mathe-
matics and arithmetic of an exciseman. They had to do with men,
and they were obliged to study human nature. They had to do
with citizens, and they were obliged to study the effects of those
habits which are communicated by the circumstances of civil life.
They were sensible that the operation of this second nature on the
first produced a new combination; and thence arose many diver-
sities amongst men, according to their birth, their education, their
professions, the periods of their lives, their residence in towns or
in the country, their several ways of acquiring and of fixing prop-
erty, and according to the quality of the property itself, all which
rendered them as it were so many different species of animals.
From hence they thought themselves obliged to dispose their citi-
zens into such classes, and to place them in such situations in the
state, as their peculiar habits might qualify them to fill, and to
allot to them such appropriated privileges as might secure to them

^ Non, ut olim, universe legiones deducebantur cum tribunis, et centurionibus, et
sui cujusque ordinis militibus, ut consensu et caritate rempublicam afficerent; sed
ignoti inter se, diversis manipulis, sine rectore, sine affectibus mutuis, quasi ex alio
genere mortalium, repente in unum collecti, numerus magis quam colonia. Tac.
Annal. 1. 14, sect. 27. All this will be still more applicable to the unconnected,
rotatory, biennial national assemblies, in this absurd and senseless constitution.

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 317

what their specific occasions required, and which might furnish
to each description such force as might protect it in the conflict
caused by the diversity of interests, that must exist, and must con-
tend, in all complex society: for the legislator would have been
ashamed, that the coarse husbandman should well know how to
assort and to use his sheep, horses, and oxen, and should have enough
of common sense, not to abstract and equalize them all into ani-
mals, without providing for each kind an appropriate food, care, and
employment; whilst he, the economist, disposer, and shepherd of
his own kindred, subliming himself into an airy metaphysician, was
resolved to know nothing of his flocks but as men in general. It is
for this reason that Montesquieu observed very justly, that in their
classification of the citizens, the great legislators of antiquity made
the greatest display of their powers, and even soared above them-
selves. It is here that your modern legislators have gone deep into
the negative series, and sunk even below their own nothing. As the
first sort of legislators attended to the different kinds of citizens,
and combined them into one commonwealth, the others, the meta-
physical and alchemistical legislators, have taken the direct contrary
course. They have attempted to confound all sorts of citizens, as
well as they could, into one homogeneous mass; and then they di-
vided this their amalgama into a number of incoherent republics.
They reduce men to loose counters, merely for the sake of simple
telling, and not to figures whose power is to arise from their place
in the table. The elements of their own metaphysics might have
taught them better lessons. The troll of their categorical table might
have informed them that there was something else in the intellec-
tual world besides substance and quantity. They might learn from
the catechism of metaphysics that there were eight heads more," in
every complex deliberation, which they have never thought of;
though these, of all the ten, are the subjects on which the skill of
man can operate anything at all.

So far from this able disposition of some of the old republican

legislators, which follows with a solicitous accuracy the moral

conditions and propensities of men, they have levelled and crushed

together all the orders which they found, even under the coarse

^'Qualitas, Relatio, Actio, Passio, Ubi, Quando, Situs, Habitus.

3l8 EDMUND BURKE

unartificial arrangement o£ the monarchy, in which mode o£ govern-
ment the classing of the citizens is not of so much importance as
in a republic. It is true, however, that every such classification, if
properly ordered, is good in all forms of government; and com-
poses a strong barrier against the excesses of despotism, as well as it
is the necessary means of giving effect and permanence to a repub-
lic. For want of something of this kind, if the present project of a
republic should fail, all securities to a moderated freedom fail
along with it; all the indirect restraints which mitigate despotism
are removed; insomuch that if monarchy should ever again obtain
an entire ascendancy in France, under this or under any other dy-
nasty, it will probably be, if not voluntarily tempered, at setting out,
by the wise and virtuous counsels of the prince, the most completely
arbitrary power that has ever appeared on earth. This is to play a
most desperate game.

The confusion which attends on all such proceedings, they even
declare to be one of their objects, and they hope to secure their con-
stitution by a terror of a return of those evils which attended their
making it, "By this," say they, "its destruction will become diffi-
cult to authority, which cannot break it up without the entire dis-
organization of the whole state." They presume, that if this au-
thority should ever come to the same degree of power that they have
acquired, it would make a more moderate and chastised use of it,
and would piously tremble entirely to disorganize the state in the
savage manner that they have done. They expect, from the virtues
of returning despotism, the security which is to be enjoyed by the
offspring of their popular vices.

I wish. Sir, that you and my readers would give an attentive
perusal to the work of M. de Calonne, on this subject. It is indeed
not only an eloquent, but an able and instructive, performance. I
confine myself to what he says relative to the constitution of the
new state, and to the condition of the revenue. As to the disputes
of this minister with his rivals, I do not wish to pronounce upon
them. As little do I mean to hazard any opinion concerning his
ways and means, financial or political, for taking his country out
of its present disgraceful and deplorable situation of servitude,
anarchy, bankruptcy, and beggary. I cannot speculate quite so san-

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 319

guinely as he does: but he is a Frenchman, and has a closer duty
relative to those objects, and better means of judging of them, than
I can have. I wish that the formal avowal which he refers to, made
by one of the principal leaders in the Assembly, concerning the tend-
ency of their scheme to bring France not only from a monarchy
to a republic, but from a republic to a mere confederacy, may be
very particularly attended to. It adds new force to my observations:
and indeed M. de Calonne's work supplies my deficiencies by many
new and striking arguments on most of the subjects of this letter.**
It is this resolution, to break their country into separate republics,
which has driven them into the greatest number of their difficulties
and contradictions. If it were not for this, all the questions of
exact equality, and these balances, never to be settled, of individual
rights, population, and contribution, would be wholly useless. The
representation, though derived from parts, would be a duty which
equally regarded the whole. Each deputy to the Assembly would
be the representative of France, and of all its descriptions, of the
many and of the few, of the rich and of the poor, of the great dis-
tricts and of the small. All these districts would themselves be sub-
ordinate to some standing authority, existing independently of them,
an authority in which their representation, and everything that be-
longs to it, originated, and to which it was pointed. This standing,
unalterable, fundamental government would make, and it is the
only thing which could make, that territory truly and properly a
whole. With us, when we elect popular representatives, we send
them to a council, in which each man individually is a subject, and
submitted to a government complete in all its ordinary functions.
With you the elective Assembly is the sovereign, and the sole sover-
eign; all the members are therefore integral parts of this sole sover-
eignty. But with us it is totally different. With us the representa-
tive, separated from the other parts, can have no action and no exist-
ence. The government is the point of reference of the several mem-
bers and districts of our representation. This is the centre of our
unity. This government of reference is a trustee for the whole, and
not for the parts. So is the other branch of our public council, I
mean the House of Lords. With us the king and the lords are
^' See I'Etat de la France, p. 363.

320 EDMUND BURKE

several and joint securities for the equality of each district, each
province, each city. When did you hear in Great Britain of any
province suffering from the inequality of its representation; what
district from having no representation at all? Not only our mon-
archy and our peerage secure the equality on which our unity de-
pends, but it is the spirit of the House of Commons itself. The
very inequality of representation, which is so foolishly complained
of, is perhaps the very thing which prevents us from thinking or
acting as members for districts. Cornwall elects as many members
as all Scotland. But is Cornwall better taken care of than Scotland?
Few trouble their heads about any of your bases, out of some giddy
clubs. Most of those who wish for any change, upon any plausible
grounds, desire it on different ideas.

Your new constitution is the very reverse of ours in its princi-
ple; and I am astonished how any persons could dream of holding
out anything done in it, as an example for Great Britain. With
you there is little, or rather no, connexion between the last repre-
sentative and the first constituent. The member who goes to the
National Assembly is not chosen by the people, nor accountable to
them. There are three elections before he is chosen: two sets of
magistracy intervene between him and the primary assembly, so as
to render him, as I have said, an ambassador of a state, and not
the representative of the people within a state. By this the whole
spirit of the election is changed; nor can any corrective, which your
constitution-mongers have devised, render him anything else than
what he is. The very attempt to do it would inevitably introduce
a confusion, if possible, more horrid than the present. There is no
way to make a connexion between the original constituent and the
representative, but by the circuitous means which may lead the
candidate to apply in the first instance to the primary electors, in
order that by their authoritative instructions (and something more
perhaps) these primary electors may force the two succeeding bodies
of electors to make a choice agreeable to their wishes. But this
would plainly subvert the whole scheme. It would be to plunge
them back into that tumult and confusion of popular election,
which, by their interposed gradation of elections, they mean to
avoid, and at length to risk the whole fortune of the state with those

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 32 1

who have the least knowledge of it, and the least interest in it. This
is a perpetual dilemma, into which they are thrown by the vicious,
weak, and contradictory principles they have chosen. Unless the
people break up and level this gradation, it is plain that they do
not at all substantially elect to the Assembly; indeed they elect as
little in appearance as reality.

What is it we all seek for in an election? To answer its real pur-
poses, you must first possess the means of knowing the fitness of
your man; and then you must retain some hold upon him by per-
sonal obligation or dependence. For what end are these primary
electors complimented, or rather mocked, with a choice? They can
never know anything of the qualities of him that is to serve them,
nor has he any obligation whatsoever to them. Of all the powers
unfit to be delegated by those who have any real means of judging,
that most peculiarly unfit is what relates to a personal choice. In
case of abuse, that body of primary electors never can call the repre-
sentative to an account for his conduct. He is too far removed from
them in the chain of representation. If he acts improperly at the
end of his two years' lease, it does not concern him for two years
more. By the new French constitution the best and the wisest rep-
resentatives go equally with the worst into this Limbus Patrum.
Their bottoms are supposed foul, and they must go into dock to be
refitted. Every man who has served in an assembly is ineligible for
two years after. Just as these magistrates begin to learn their trade,
like chimney-sweepers, they are disqualified for exercising it. Super-
ficial, new, petulant acquisition, and interrupted, dronish, broken,
ill recollection, is to be the destined character of all your future gov-
ernors. Your constitution has too much of jealousy to have much
of sense in it. You consider the breach of trust in the representa-
tive so principally, that you do not at all regard the question of
his fitness to execute it.

This purgatory interval is not unfavorable to a faithless repre-
sentative, who may be as good a canvasser as he was a bad gover-
nor. In this time he may cabal himself into a superiority over the
wisest and most virtuous. As, in the end, all the members of this
elective constitution are equally fugitive, and exist only for the elec-
tion, they may be no longer the same persons who had chosen him.

322 EDMUND BURKE

to whom he is to be responsible when he solicits for a renewal of
his trust. To call all the secondary electors of the Commune to ac-
count, is ridiculous, impracticable, and unjust; they may themselves
have been deceived in their choice, as the third set of electors, those
of the Department, may be in theirs. In your elections responsibility
cannot exist.

Finding no sort of principle of coherence with each other in the
nature and constitution of the several new republics of France, I
considered what cement the legislators had provided for them from
any extraneous materials. Their confederations, their spectacles,
their civic feasts, and their enthusiasm, I take no notice of; they are
nothing but mere tricks; but tracing their policy through their ac-
tions, I think I can distinguish the arrangements by which they pro-
pose to hold these republics together. The first, is the confiscation,
with the compulsory paper currency annexed to it; the second, is
the supreme power of the city of Paris; the third, is the general
army of the state. Of this last I shall reserve what I have to say, until
I come to consider the army as a head by itself.

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

One thing only is certain in this scheme, which is an effect seem-
ingly collateral, but direct, I have no doubt, in the minds of those
who conduct this business, that is, its effect in producing an Oli-
garchy in every one of the republics. A paper circulation, not

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 323

founded on any real money deposited or engaged for, amounting al-
reaidy to four-and-forty millions of English money, and this currency
by force substituted in the place of the coin of the kingdom, becom-
ing thereby the substance of its revenue, as well as the medium of all
its commercial and civil intercourse, must put the whole of what
power, authority, and influence is left, in any form whatsoever it
may assume, into the hands of the managers and conductors of this
circulation.

In England we feel the influence of the bank; though it is only
the centre of a voluntary dealing. He knows little indeed of the in-
fluence of money upon mankind, who does not see the force of the
management of a monied concern, which is so much more exten-
sive, and in its nature so much more depending on the managers,
than any of ours. But this is not merely a money concern. There
is another member in the system inseparably connected with this
money management. It consists in the means of drawing out at
discretion portions of the confiscated lands for sale; and carrying on
a process of continual transmutation of paper into land, and land
into paper. When we follow this process in its effects, we may con-
ceive something of the intensity of the force with which this system
must operate. By this means the spirit of money-jobbing and specu-
lation goes into the mass of land itself, and incorporates with it.
By this kind of operation, that species of property becomes (as it
were) volatilized; it assumes an unnatural and monstrous activity,
and thereby throws into the hands of the several managers, princi-
pal and subordinate, Parisian and provincial, all the representative
of money, and perhaps a full tenth part of all the land in France,
which has now acquired the worst and most pernicious part of the
evil of a paper circulation, the greatest possible uncertainty in its
value. They have reversed the Latonian kindness to the landed
property of Delos. They have sent theirs to be blown about, like the
light fragments of a wreck, or as et littora circum.

The new dealers, being all habitually adventurers, and without
any fixed habits or local predilections, will purchase to job out again,
as the market of paper, or of money, or of land, shall present an
advantage. For though a holy bishop thinks that agriculture will
derive great advantages from the "enlightened" usurers who are to
purchase the church confiscations, I, who am not a good, but an old

324 EDMUND BURKE

farmer, with great humility beg leave to tell his late lordship, that
usury is not a tutor of agriculture; and if the word "enlightened"
be understood according to the new dictionary, as it always is in
your new schools, I cannot conceive how a man's not believing in
God can teach him to cultivate the earth with the least of any
additional skill or encouragement. "Diis immortalibus sero," said
an old Roman, when he held one handle of the plough, whilst
Death held the other. Though you were to join in the commission
all the directors of the two academies to the directors of the Caisse
d'Escotnpte, one old, experienced peasant is worth them all. I have
got more information upon a curious and interesting branch of
husbandry, in one short conversation with an old Carthusian monk,
than I have derived from all the Bank directors that I have ever con-
versed with. However, there is no cause for apprehension from
the meddling of money-dealers with rural economy. These gentle-
men are too wise in their generation. At first, perhaps, their tender
and susceptible imaginations may be captivated with the innocent
and unprofitable delights of a pastoral life; but in a little time they
will find that agriculture is a trade much more laborious, and much
less lucrative, than that, which they had left. After making its pane-
gyric, they will turn their backs on it like their great precursor and
prototype. They may, like him, begin by singing "Beatus tile" — ^but
what will be the end ?

Htec ubi locutus joenerator Alphius,
Jam jam juturus rusticus
Omnem relegit idibus pecuniam;
Qucerit calendis ponere.

They will cultivate the Caisse d'Eglise, under the sacred auspices
of this prelate, with much more profit than its vineyards and its
corn-fields. They will employ their talents according to their habits
and their interests. They will not follow the plough whilst they
can direct treasuries, and govern provinces.

Your legislators, in everything new, are the very first who have
founded a commonwealth upon gaming, and infused this spirit into
it as its vital breath. The great object in these politics is to meta-
morphose France from a great kingdom into one great play-table;

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 325

to turn its inhabitants into a nation o£ gamesters; to make specula-
tion as extensive as life; to mix it with all its concerns; and to divert
the whole of the hopes and fears of the people from their usual
channels into the impulses, passions, and superstitions of those who
live on chances. They loudly proclaim their opinion, that this their
present system of a republic cannot possibly exist without this kind
of gaming fund; and that the very thread of its life is spun out of
the staple of these speculations. The old gaming in funds was mis-
chievous enough undoubtedly; but it was so only to individuals.
Even when it had its greatest extent, in the Mississippi and South
Sea, it affected but few, comparatively; where it extends further, as
in lotteries, the spirit has but a single object. But where the law,
which in most circumstances forbids, and in none countenances,
gaming, is itself debauched, so as to reverse its nature and policy,
and expressly to force the subject to this destructive table, by bring-
ing the spirit and symbols of gaming into the minutest matters, and
engaging everybody in it, and in everything, a more dreadful epi-
demic distemper of that kind is spread than yet has appeared in the
world. With you a man can neither earn nor buy his dinner with-
out a speculation. What he receives in the morning will not have
the same value at night. What he is compelled to take as pay for
an old debt will not be received as the same when he comes to pay
a debt contracted by himself; nor will it be the same when by
prompt payment he would avoid contracting any debt at all. Indus-
try must wither away. Economy must be driven from your coun-
try. Careful provision will have no existence. Who will labour
without knowing the amount of his pay? Who will study to in-
crease what none can estimate? Who will accumulate, when he
does not know the value of what he saves? If you abstract it from
its uses in gaming, to accumulate your paper wealth, would be
not the providence of a man, but the distempered instinct of a
jackdaw.

The truly melancholy part of the policy of systematically making
a nation of gamesters is this, that though all are forced to play, few
can understand the game; and fewer still are in a condition to avail
themselves of the knowledge. The many must be the dupes of the
few who conduct the machine of these speculations. What effect it

326 EDMUND BURKE

must have on the country people is visible. The townsman can cal-
culate from day to day; not so the inhabitant of the country. When
the peasant first brings his corn to market, the magistrate in the
towns obliges him to take the assignat at par; when he goes to the
shop with his money, he finds it seven per cent, the worse for
crossing the way. This market he will not readily resort to again.
The towns-people will be inflamed; they will force the country peo-
ple to bring their corn. Resistance will begin, and the murders of
Paris and St. Denis may be renewed through all France.

What signifies the empty compliment paid to the country, by giv-
ing it, perhaps, more than its share in the theory of your representa-
tion? Where have you placed the real power over monied and
landed circulation? Where have you placed the means of raising
and falling the value of every man's freehold ? Those, whose opera-
tions can take from, or add ten per cent, to, the possessions of every
man in France, must be the masters of every man in France. The
whole of the power obtained by this revolution will setde in the
towns among the burghers, and the monied directors who lead
them. The landed gentleman, the yeoman, and the peasant, have,
none of them, habits, or inclinations, or experience, which can lead
them to any share in this the sole source of power and influence
now left in France. The very nature of a country life, the very
nature of landed property, in all the occupations, and all the
pleasures they afford, render combination and arrangement (the
sole way of procuring and exerting influence) in a manner impossi-
ble amongst country people. Combine them by all the art you can,
and all the industry, they are always dissolving into individuality.
Anything in the nature of incorporation is almost impracticable
amongst them. Hope, fear, alarm, jealousy, the ephemerous tale
that does its business and dies in a day, all these things, which are
the reins and spurs by which leaders check or urge the minds of
followers, are not easily employed, or hardly at all, amongst scat-
tered people. They assemble, they arm, they act, with the utmost
difficulty, and at the greatest charge. Their efforts, if ever they can
be commenced, cannot be sustained. They cannot proceed system-
atically. If the country gentlemen attempt an influence through the
mere income of their property, what is it to that of those who have

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 327

ten times their income to sell, and who can ruin their property by
bringing their plunder to meet it at market? If the landed man
wishes to mortgage, he falls the value of his land, and raises the
value of assignats. He augments the power of his enemy by the
very means he must take to contend with him. The country gentle-
man therefore, the officer by sea and land, the man of liberal views
and habits, attached to no profession, will be as completely excluded
from the government of his country as if he were legislatively pro-
scribed. It is obvious, that in the towns, all things which conspire
against the country gentleman combine in favour of the money
manager and director. In towns combination is natural. The habits
of burghers, their occupations, their diversion, their business, their
idleness, continually bring them into mutual contact. Their vir-
tues and their vices are sociable; they are always in garrison; and
they come embodied and half disciplined into the hands of those
who mean to form them for civil or military action.

All these considerations leave no doubt on my mind, that if this
monster of a constitution can continue, France will be wholly gov-
erned by the agitators in corporations, by societies in the towns
formed of directors of assignats, and trustees for the sale of church
lands, attornies, agents, money-jobbers, speculators, and adventurers,
composing an ignoble oligarchy, founded on the destruction of the
crown, the church, the nobility, and the people. Here end all the
deceitful dreams and visions of the equality and rights of men.
In "the Serbonian bog" of this base oligarchy they are all absorbed,
sunk, and lost for ever.

Though human eyes cannot trace them, one would be tempted to
think some great offences in France must cry to heaven, which has
thought fit to punish it with a subjection to a vile and inglorious
domination, in which no comfort or compensation is to be found
in any even of those false splendours, which, playing about other
tyrannies, prevent mankind from feeling themselves dishonoured
even whilst they are oppressed. I must confess I am touched with
a sorrow, mixed with some indignation, at the conduct of a few
men, once of great rank, and still of great character, who, deluded
with specious names, have engaged in a business too deep for the
line of their understanding to fathom; who have lent their fair rep-

328 EDMUND BURKE

utation, and the authority of their high-sounding names, to the de-
signs of men with whom they could not be acquainted; and have
thereby made their very virtues operate to the ruin of their country.

So far as to the first cementing principle.

The second material of cement for their new republic is the su-
periority of the city of Paris: and this I admit is strongly connected
with the other cementing principle of paper circulation and confis-
cation. It is in this part of the project we must look for the cause
of the destruction of all the old bounds of provinces and jurisdic-
tions, ecclesiastical and secular, and the dissolution of all ancient
combinations of things, as well as the formation of so many small
unconnected republics. The power of the city of Paris is evidently
one great spring of all their politics. It is through the power of
Paris, now become the centre and focus of jobbing, that the leaders
of this faction direct, or rather command, the whole legislative and
the whole executive government. Everything therefore must be
done which can confirm the authority of that city over the other
republics. Paris is compact; she has an enormous strength, wholly
disproportioned to the force of any of the square republics; and this
strength is collected and condensed within a narrow compass. Paris
has a natural and easy connexion of its parts, which will not be
affected by any scheme of a geometrical constitution, nor does it
much signify whether its proportion of representation be more or
less, since it has the whole draft of fishes in its drag-net. The other
divisions of the kingdom being hackled and torn to pieces, and sepa-
rated from all their habitual means, and even principles of union,
cannot, for some time at least, confederate against her. Nothing was
to be left in all the subordinate members, but weakness, disconnexion,
and confusion. To confirm this part of the plan, the Assembly has
lately come to a resolution, that no two of their republics shall have
the same commander-in-chief.

To a person who takes a view of the whole, the strength of Paris,
thus formed, will appear a system of general weakness. It is boasted
that the geometrical policy has been adopted, that all local ideas
should be sunk, and that the people should no longer be Gascons,
Picards, Bretons, Normans; but Frenchmen, with one country, one
heart, and one Assembly. But instead of being all Frenchmen, the

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 329

greater likelihood is, that the inhabitants of that region will shortly
have no country. No man ever was attached by a sense of pride,
partiality, or real affection, to a description of square measurement.
He never will glory in belonging to the Chequer No. 71, or to any
other badge-ticket. We begin our public affections in our families.
No cold relation is a zealous citizen. We pass on to our neighbour-
hoods, and our habitual provincial connexions. These are inns and
resting-places. Such divisions of our country as have been formed
by habit, and not by a sudden jerk of authority, were so many little
images of the great country in which the heart found something
which it could fill. The love to the whole is not extinguished by this
subordinate partiality. Perhaps it is a sort of elemental training to
those higher and more large regards, by which alone men come to be
affected, as with their own concern, in the prosperity of a kingdom
so extensive as that of France. In that general territory itself, as in
the old name of provinces, the citizens are interested from old preju-
dices and unreasoned habits, and not on account of the geometric
properties of its figure. The power and pre-eminence of Paris does
certainly press down and hold these republics together as long as it
lasts. But, for the reasons I have already given you, I think it cannot
last very long.

Passing from the civil creating and the civil cementing principles
of this constitution, to the National Assembly, which is to appear and
act as sovereign, we see a body in its constitution with every possible
power, and no possible external control. We see a body without
fundamental laws, without established maxims, without respected
rules of proceeding, which nothing can keep firm to any system
whatsoever. Their idea of their powers is always taken at the ut-
most stretch of legislative competency, and their examples for com-
mon cases from the exceptions of the most urgent necessity. The
future is to be in most respects like the present Assembly; but, by
the mode of the new elections and the tendency of the new circula-
tions, it will be purged of the small degree of internal control exist-
ing in a minority chosen originally from various interests, and
preserving something of their spirit. If possible, the next Assembly
must be worse than the present. The present, by destroying and
altering everything, will leave to their successors apparendy nothing

330 EDMUND BURKE

popular to do. They will be roused by emulation and example to
enterprises the boldest and the most absurd. To suppose such an
Assembly sitting in perfect quietude is ridiculous.

Your all-sufficient legislators, in their hurry to do everything at
once, have forgot one thing that seems essential, and which I believe
never has been before, in the theory or the practice, omitted by any
projector of a republic. They have forgot to constitute a senate, or
something of that nature and character. Never, before this time,
was heard of a body politic composed of one legislative and active
assembly, and its executive officers, without such a council; without
something to which foreign states might connect themselves; some-
thing to which, in the ordinary detail of government, the people
could look up; something which might give a bias, and steadiness,
and preserve something like consistency in the proceedings of state.
Such a body kings generally have as a council. A monarchy may
exist without it; but it seems to be in the very essence of a republican
government. It holds a sort of middle place between the supreme
power exercised by the people, or immediately delegated from them,
and the mere executive. Of this there are no traces in your constitu-
tion; and, in providing nothing of this kind, your Solons and Numas
have, as much as in anything else, discovered a sovereign incapacity.

Let us now turn our eyes to what they have done towards the
formation of an executive power. For this they have chosen a de-
graded king. This their first executive officer is to be a machine,
without any sort of deliberative discretion in any one act of his func-
tion. At best he is but a channel to convey to the National Assembly
such matter as it may import that body to know. If he had been
made the exclusive channel, the power would not have been without
its importance; though infinitely perilous to those who would choose
to exercise it. But public intelligence and statement of facts may
pass to the Assembly with equal authenticity, through any other con-
veyance. As to the means, therefore, of giving a direction to measures
by the statement of an authorized reporter, this office of intelligence
is as nothing.

To consider the French scheme of an executive officer, in its two
natural divisions of civil and political. — In the first it must be ob-
served, that, according to the new constitution, the higher parts of

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 33 1

judicature, in either of its lines, are not in the king. The king of
France is not the fountain of justice. The judges, neither the original
nor the appellate, are of his nomination. He neither proposes the
candidates, nor has a negative on the choice. He is not even the
public prosecutor. He serves only as a notary to authenticate the
choice made of the judges in the several districts. By his officers he
is to execute their sentence. When we look into the true nature of
his authority, he appears to be nothing more than a chief of bum-
bailiffs, sergeants at mace, catch-poles, jailers, and hangmen. It is im-
possible to place anything called royalty in a more degrading point
of view. A thousand times better had it been for the dignity of this
unhappy prince, that he had nothing at all to do with the administra-
tion of justice, deprived as he is of all that is venerable, and all that
is consolatory, in that function, without power of originating any
process; without a power of suspension, mitigation, or pardon. Every-
thing in justice that is vile and odious is thrown upon him. It was
not for nothing that the Assembly has been at such pains to remove
the stigma from certain offices, when they are resolved to place the
persons who had lately been their king in a situation but one degree
above the executioner, and in an office nearly of the same quality.
It is not in nature, that, situated as the king of the French now is,
he can respect himself, or can be respected by others.

View this new executive officer on the side of his political capacity,
as he acts under the orders of the National Assembly. To execute
laws is a royal office; to execute orders is not to be a king. How-
ever, a political executive magistracy, though merely such, is a great
trust. It is a trust indeed that has much depending upon its faithful
and diligent performance, both in the person presiding in it and in
all its subordinates. Means of performing this duty ought to be
given by regulation; and dispositions toward it ought to be infused
by the circumstances attendant on the trust. It ought to be en-
vironed with dignity, authority, and consideration, and it ought to
lead to glory. The office of execution is an office of exertion. It is
not from impotence we are to expect the tasks of power. What sort
of a person is a king to command executory service, who has no
means whatsoever to reward it? Not in a permanent office; not in a
grant of land; no, not in a pension of fifty pounds a year; not in the

332 EDMUND BURKE

vainest and most trivial title. In France the king is no more the
fountain of honour than he is the fountain of justice. All rewards,
all distinctions, are in other hands. Those who serve the king can
be actuated by no natural motive but fear; by a fear of everything
except their master. His functions of internal coercion are as odious
as those which he exercises in the department of justice. If relief is
to be given to any municipality, the Assembly gives it. If troops are
to be sent to reduce them to obedience to the Assembly, the king is
to execute the order; and upon every occasion he is to be spattered
over with the blood of his people. He has no negative; yet his name
and authority is used to enforce every harsh decree. Nay, he must
concur in the butchery of those who shall attempt to free him from
his imprisonment, or show the slightest attachment to his person or
to his ancient authority.

Executive magistracy ought to be constituted in such a manner,
that those who compose it should be disposed to love and to venerate
those whom they are bound to obey. A purposed neglect, or, what
is worse, a literal but perverse and malignant obedience, must be the
ruin of the wisest counsels. In vain will the law attempt to antici-
pate or to follow such studied neglects and fraudulent attentions.
To make them act zealously is not in the competence of law. Kings,
even such as are truly kings, may and ought to bear the freedom
of subjects that are obnoxious to them. They may too, without
derogating from themselves, bear even the authority of such persons,
if it promotes their service. Louis the Thirteenth mortally hated the
Cardinal de Richelieu; but his support of that minister against his
rivals was the source of all the glory of his reign, and the solid
foundation of his throne itself. Louis the Fourteenth, when come
to the throne, did not love the Cardinal Mazarin; but for his inter-
ests he preserved him in power. When old, he detested Louvois; but
for years, whilst he faithfully served his greatness, he endured his
person. When George the Second took Mr. Pitt, who certainly was
not agreeable to him, into his councils, he did nothing which could
humble a wise sovereign. But these ministers, who were chosen by
affairs, not by affections, acted in the name of, and in trust for, kings;
and not as their avowed, constitutional, and ostensible masters. I
think it impossible that any king, when he has recovered his first

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 333

terrors, can cordially infuse vivacity and vigour into measures which
he knows to be dictated by those, who, he must be persuaded, are in
the highest degree ill affected to his person. Will any ministers, who
serve such a king (or whatever he may be called) with but a decent
appearance of respect, cordially obey the orders of those whom but
the other day in his name they had committed to the Bastile? will
they obey the orders of those whom, whilst they were exercising
despotic justice upon them, they conceived they were treating with
lenity; and from whom, in a prison, they thought they had provided
an asylum ? If you expect such obedience, amongst your other inno-
vations and regenerations, you ought to make a revolution in nature,
and provide a new constitution for the human mind. Otherwise,
your supreme government cannot harmonize with its executory
system. There are cases in which we cannot take up with names
and abstractions. You may call half a dozen leading individuals,
whom we have reason to fear and hate, the nation. It makes no other
difference, than to make us fear and hate them the more. If it had
been thought justifiable and expedient to make such a revolution by
such means, and through such persons, as you have made yours, it
would have been more wise to have completed the business of the
fifth and sixth of October. The new executive officer would then owe
his situation to those who are his creators as well as his masters;
and he might be bound in interest, in the society of crime, and (if
in crimes there could be virtues) in gratitude, to serve those who had
promoted him to a place of great lucre and great sensual indulgence;
and of something more: for more he must have received from those
who certainly would not have limited an aggrandized creature, as
they have done a submitting antagonist.

A king circumstanced as the present, if he is totally stupefied by
his misfortunes, so as to think it not the necessity, but the premium
and privilege of life, to eat and sleep, without any regard to glory,
can never be fit for the office. If he feels as men commonly feel, he
must be sensible, that an office so circumstanced is one in which he
can obtain no fame or reputation. He has no generous interest that
can excite him to action. At best, his conduct will be passive and
defensive. To inferior people such an office might be matter of hon-
our. But to be raised to it, and to descend to it, are different things,

334 EDMUND BURKE

and suggest different sentiments. Does he really name the ministers?
They will have a sympathy with him. Are they forced upon him?
The whole business between them and the nominal king will be
mutual counteraction. In all other countries, the office of ministers
of state is of the highest dignity. In France it is full of peril, and
incapable of glory. Rivals, however, they will have in their nothing-
ness, whilst shallow ambition exists in the world, or the desire of a
miserable salary is an incentive to short-sighted avarice. Those com-
petitors of the ministers are enabled by your constitution to attack
them in their vital parts, whilst they have not the means of repelling
their charges in any other than the degrading character of culprits.
The ministers of state in France are the only persons in that country
who are incapable of a share in the national councils. What min-
isters! What councils! What a nation! — But they are responsible.
It is a poor service that is to be had from responsibility. The eleva-
tion of mind to be derived from fear will never make a nation glori-
ous. Responsibility prevents crimes. It makes all attempts against
the laws dangerous. But for a principle of active and zealous service,
none but idiots could think of it. Is the conduct of a war to be trusted
to a man who may abhor its principle; who, in every step he may
take to render it successful, confirms the power of those by whom he
is oppressed ? Will foreign states seriously treat with him who has no
prerogative of peace or war; no, not so much as in a single vote by
himself or his ministers, or by any one whom he can possibly influ-
ence? A state of contempt is not a state for a prince: better get rid of
him at once.

I know it will be said that these humours in the court and execu-
tive government will continue only through this generation; and that
the king has been brought to declare the dauphin shall be educated
in a conformity to his situation. If he is made to conform to his
situation, he will have no education at all. His training must be
worse even than that of an arbitrary monarch. If he reads — whether
he reads or not, some good or evil genius will tell him his ancestors
were kings. Thenceforward his object must be to assert himself and
to avenge his parents. This you will say is not his duty. That may
be; but it is nature; and whilst you pique nature against you, you do
unwisely to trust to duty. In this futile scheme of polity, the state

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 335

nurses in its bosom, for the present, a source o£ weakness, perplexity,
counteraction, inefficiency, and decay; and it prepares the means of
its final ruin. In short, I see nothing in the executive force (I cannot
call it authority) that has even an appearance of vigour, or that has
the smallest degree of just correspondence or symmetry, or amicable
relation with the supreme power, either as it now exists, or as it is
planned for the future government.

You have settled, by an economy as perverted as the f)olicy, two**
establishments of government; one real, one fictitious. Both main-
tained at a vast expense; but the fictitious at, I think, the greatest.
Such a machine as the latter is not worth the grease of its wheels.
The expense is exorbitant; and neither the show nor the use deserve
the tenth part of the charge. Oh! but I don't do justice to the talents
of the legislators: I don't allow, as I ought to do, for necessity. Their
scheme of executive force was not their choice. This pageant must be
kept. The people would not consent to part with it. Right; I under-
stand you. You do, in spite of your grand theories, to which you
would have heaven and earth to bend, you do know how to conform
yourselves to the nature and circumstances of things. But when you
were obliged to conform thus far to circumstances, you ought to
have carried your submission farther, and to have made, what you
were obliged to take, a proper instrument, and useful to its end. That
was in your power. For instance, among many others, it was in your
power to leave to your king the right of peace and war. What! to
leave to the executive magistrate the most dangerous of all preroga-
tives.? I know none more dangerous; nor any one more necessary
to be so trusted. I do not say that this prerogative ought to be trusted
to your king, unless he enjoyed other auxiliary trusts along with it,
which he does not now hold. But, if he did possess them, hazardous
as they are undoubtedly, advantages would arise from such a consti-
tution, more than compensating the risk. There is no other way of
keeping the several potentates of Europe from intriguing distinctly
and personally with the members of your Assembly, from inter-
meddling in all your concerns, and fomenting, in the heart of your
country, the most pernicious of all factions; factions in the interest
and under the direction of foreign powers. From that worst of evils,
*^ In reality three, to reckon the provincial republican establishments.

336 EDMUND BURKE

thank God, we are still free. Your skill, if you had any, would be
well employed to find out indirect correctives and controls upon
this perilous trust. If you did not like those which in England we
have chosen, your leaders might have exerted their abilities in con-
triving better. If it were necessary to exemplify the consequences of
such an executive government as yours, in the management of great
affairs, I should refer you to the late reports of M. de Montmorin to
the National Assembly, and all the other proceedings relative to the
differences between Great Britain and Spain. It would be treating
your understanding with disrespect to point them out to you.

I hear that the persons who are called ministers have signified
an intention of resigning their places. I am rather astonished that
they have not resigned long since. For the universe I would not
have stood in the situation in which they have been for this last
twelvemonth. They wished well, I take it for granted, to the Revo-
lution. Let this fact be as it may, they could not, placed as they were
upon an eminence, though an eminence of humiliation, but be the
first to see collectively, and to feel each in his own department, the
evils which have been produced by that revolution. In every step
which they took, or forbore to take, they must have felt the degraded
situation of their country, and their utter incapacity of serving it.
They are in a species of subordinate servitude, in which no men be-
fore them were ever seen. Without confidence from their sovereign,
on whom they were forced, or from the Assembly who forced them
upon him, all the noble functions of their office are executed by com-
mittees of the Assembly, without any regard whatsoever to their
personal or their official authority. They are to execute, without
power; they are to be responsible, without discretion; they are to
deliberate, without choice. In their puzzled situation, under two
sovereigns, over neither of whom they have any influence, they must
act in such a manner as (in effect, whatever they may intend) some-
times to betray the one, sometimes the other, and always to betray
themselves. Such has been their situation; such must be the situation
of those who succeed them. I have much respect, and many good
wishes, for M. Necker. I am obliged to him for attentions. I thought
when his enemies had driven him from Versailles, that his exile was
a subject of most serious congratulation — sed multce urbes et publica

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 337

vota vicerunt. He is now sitting on the ruins of the finances, and
of the monarchy of France.

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

As little genius and talent am I able to perceive in the plan of
judicature formed by the National Assembly. According to their
invariable course, the framers of your constitution have begun with
the utter abolition of the parliaments. These venerable bodies, like
the rest of the old government, stood in need of reform, even though
there should be no change made in the monarchy. They required
several more alterations to adapt them to the system of a free con-
stitution. But they had particulars in their constitution, and those
not a few, which deserved approbation from the wise. They pos-
sessed one fundamental excellence; they were independent. The
most doubtful circumstance attendant on their office, that of its being
vendible, contributed however to this independency of character.
They held for life. Indeed they may be said to have held by inheri-
tance. Appointed by the monarch, they were considered as nearly out
of his power. The most determined exertions of that authority
against them only showed their radical independence. They com-
posed permanent bodies politic, constituted to resist arbitrary innova-
tion; and from that corporate constitution, and from most of their
forms, they were well calculated to afford both certainty and stability
to the laws. They had been a safe asylum to secure these laws, in all
the revolutions of humour and opinion. They had saved that sacred
deposit of the country during the reigns of arbitrary princes, and
the struggles of arbitrary factions. They kept alive the memory and
record of the constitution. They were the great security to private
property; which might be said (when personal liberty had no ex-
istence) to be, in fact, as well guarded in France as in any other
country. Whatever is supreme in a state, ought to have, as much as
possible, its judicial authority so constituted as not only not to depend
upon it, but in some sort to balance it. It ought to give a security to
its justice against its power. It ought to make its judicature, as it
were, something exterior to the state.

338 EDMUND BURKE

These parliaments had furnished, not the best certainly, but some
considerable corrective to the excesses and vices of the monarchy.
Such an independent judicature was ten times more necessary when
a democracy became the absolute power of the country. In that con-
stitution, elective, temporary, local judges, such as you have con-
trived, exercising their dependent functions in a narrow society,
must be the worst of all tribunals. In them it will be vain to look
for any appearance of justice towards strangers, towards the ob-
noxious rich, towards the minority of routed parties, towards all those
who in the election have supported unsuccessful candidates. It will
be impossible to keep the new tribunals clear of the worst spirit of
faction. All contrivances by ballot we know experimentally to be
vain and childish to prevent a discovery of inclinations. Where they
may the best answer the purposes of concealment, they answer to
produce suspicion, and this is a still more mischievous cause of
partiality.

If the parliaments had been preserved, instead of being dissolved
at so ruinous a change to the nation, they might have served in this
new commonwealth, perhaps not precisely the same, (I do not mean
an exact parallel,) but nearly the same, purposes as the court and
senate of Areopagus did in Athens; that is, as one of the balances and
correctives to the evils of a light and unjust democracy. Every one
knows that this tribunal was the great stay of that state; every one
knows with what care it was upheld, and with what a religious awe
it was consecrated. The parliaments were not wholly free from fac-
tion, I admit; but this evil was exterior and accidental, and not so
much the vice of their constitution itself, as it must be in your new
contrivance of sexennial elective judicatories. Several English com-
mend the abolition of the old tribunals, as supposing that they deter-
mined everything by bribery and corruption. But they have stood
the test of monarchic and republican scrutiny. The court was well
disposed to prove corruption on those bodies when they were dis-
solved in 1771. — Those who have again dissolved them would have
done the same if they could — but both inquisitions having failed, I
conclude, that gross pecuniary corruption must have been rather rare
amongst them.

It would have been prudent, along with the parliaments, to pre-

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 339

serve their ancient power of registering, and of remonstrating at
least, upon all the decrees of the National Assembly, as they did
upon those which passed in the time of the monarchy. It would be
a means of squaring the occasional decrees of a democracy to some
principles of general jurisprudence. The vice of the ancient democra-
cies, and one cause of their ruin, was, that they ruled, as you do,
by occasional decrees, psephismata. This practice soon broke in upon
the tenour and consistency of the laws; it abated the respect of the
people towards them; and totally destroyed them in the end.

Your vesting the power of remonstrance, which, in the time of the
monarchy, existed in the parliament of Paris, in your principal execu-
tive officer, whom, in spite of common sense, you persevere in calling
king, is the height of absurdity. You ought never to suffer remon-
strance from him who is to execute. This is to understand neither
council nor execution; neither authority nor obedience. The person
whom you call king, ought not to have this power, or he ought to
have more.

Your present arrangement is strictly judicial. Instead of imitating
your monarchy, and seating your judges on a bench of independence,
your object is to reduce them to the most blind obedience. As you
have changed all things, you have invented new principles of order.
You first appoint judges, who, I suppose, are to determine according
to law, and then you let them know, that at some time or other,
you intend to give them some law by which they are to determine.
Any studies which they have made (if any they have made) are to
be useless to them. But to supply these studies, they are to be sworn
to obey all the rules, orders, and instructions which from time to
time they are to receive from the National Assembly. These if they
submit to, they leave no ground of law to the subject. They become
complete and most dangerous instruments in the hands of the gov-
erning power, which, in the midst of a cause, or on the prospect of
it, may wholly change the rule of decision. If these orders of the
National Assembly come to be contrary to the will of the people,
who locally choose those judges, such confusion must happen as is
terrible to think of. For the judges owe their places to the local
authority; and the commands they are sworn to obey come from
those who have no share in their appointment. In the mean time

340 EDMUND BURKE

they have the example of the court of Chatelet to encourage and
guide them in the exercise of their functions. That court is to try
criminals sent to it by the National Assembly, or brought before it
by other courses of delation. They sit under a guard to save their
own lives. They know^ not by what law they judge, nor under what
authority they act, nor by what tenure they hold. It is thought that
they are sometimes obliged to condemn at peril of their lives. This
is not perhaps certain, nor can it be ascertained; but when they
acquit, we know they have seen the persons whom they dis-
charge, with perfect impunity to the actors, hanged at the door of
their court.

The Assembly indeed promises that they will form a body of law,
which shall be short, simple, clear, and so forth. That is, by their
short laws, they will leave much to the discretion of the judge; whilst
they have exploded the authority of all the learning which could
make judicial discretion (a thing perilous at best) deserving the
appellation of a sound discretion.

It is curious to observe, that the administrative bodies are carefully
exempted from the jurisdiction of these new tribunals. That is, those
persons are exempted from the power of the laws, who ought to be
the most entirely submitted to them. Those who execute public
pecuniary trusts, ought of all men to be the most strictly held to their
duty. One would have thought that it must have been among your
earliest cares, if you did not mean that those administrative bodies
should be real, sovereign, independent states, to form an awful
tribunal, like your late parliaments, or like our king's bench, where
all corporate officers might obtain protection in the legal exercise of
their functions, and would find coercion if they trespassed against
their legal duty. But the cause of the exemption is plain. These
administrative bodies are the great instruments of the present leaders
in their progress through democracy to oligarchy. They must there-
fore be put above the law. It will be said, that the legal tribunals
which you have made are unfit to coerce them. They are undoubt-
edly. They are unfit for any rational purpose. It will be said too, that
the administrative bodies will be accountable to the General Assem-
bly. This I fear is talking without much consideration of the nature
of that Assembly, or of these corporations. However, to be subject to

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 34 1

the pleasure of that Assembly, is not to be subject to law either for
protection or for constraint.

This establishment of judges as yet wants something to its com-
pletion. It is to be crowned by a new tribunal. This is to be a grand
state judicature; and it is to judge of crimes committed against the
nation, that is, against the power of the Assembly. It seems as if they
had something in their view of the nature of the high court of jus-
tice erected in England during the time of the great usurpation. As
they have not yet finished this part of the scheme, it is impossible
to form a right judgment upon it. However, if great care is not taken
to form it in a spirit very different from that which has guided
them in their proceedings relative to state offences, this tribunal, sub-
servient to their inquisition, the committee of research, will extin-
guish the last sparks of liberty in France, and settle the most dread-
ful and arbitrary tyranny ever known in any nation. If they wish to
give to this tribunal any appearance of liberty and justice, they must
not evoke from or send to it the causes relative to their own mem-
bers, at their pleasure. They must also remove the seat of that
tribunal out of the republic of Paris.^°

Has more wisdom been displayed in the constitution of your
army than what is discoverable in your plan of judicature? The able
arrangement of this part is the more difficult, and requires the great-
est skill and attention, not only as the great concern in itself, but
as it is the third cementing principle in the new body of republics,
which you call the French nation. Truly it is not easy to divine what
that army may become at last. You have voted a very large one, and
on good appointments, at least fully equal to your apparent means
of payment. But what is the principle of its discipline ? or whom is it
to obey? You have got the wolf by the ears, and I wish you joy of
the happy position in which you have chosen to place yourselves, and
in which you are well circumstanced for a free deliberation, rela-
tively to that army, or to anything else.

The minister and secretary of state for the war department is M.
de la Tour du Pin. This gentleman, like his colleagues in administra-
tion, is a most zealous assertor of the Revolution, and a sanguine

'" For further elucidations upon the subject of all these judicatures, and of the
committee of research, see M. de Calonne's work.

342 EDMUND BURKE

admirer of the new constitution, which originated in that event.
His statement of facts, relative to the military of France, is impor-
tant, not only from his official and personal authority, but because it
displays very clearly the actual condition of the army in France, and
because it throws light on the principles upon which the Assembly
proceeds, in the administration of this critical object. It may enable
us to form some judgment, how far it may be expedient in this coun-
try to imitate the martial policy of France.

M. de la Tour du Pin, on the fourth of last June, comes to give an
account of the state of his department, as it exists under the auspices
of the National Assembly. No man knows it so well; no man can
express it better. Addressing himself to the National Assembly, he
says, "His Majesty has this day sent me to apprize you of the multi-
plied disorders of which every day he receives the most distressing
intelligence. The army (le corps militaire) threatens to fall into the
most turbulent anarchy. Entire regiments have dared to violate at
once the respect due to the laws, to the king, to the order established
by your decrees, and to the oaths which they have taken with the
most awful solemnity. Compelled by my duty to give you informa-
tion of these excesses, my heart bleeds when I consider who they are
that have committed them. Those, against whom it is not in my
power to withhold the most grievous complaints, are a part of that
very soldiery which to this day have been so full of honour and loy-
alty, and with whom, for fifty years, I have lived the comrade and
the friend.

"What incomprehensible spirit of delirium and delusion has all at
once led them astray? Whilst you are indefatigable in establishing
uniformity in the empire, and moulding the whole into one coherent
and consistent body; whilst the French are taught by you at once the
respect which the laws owe to the rights of man, and that which the
citizens owe to the laws, the administration of the army presents
nothing but disturbance and confusion. I see in more than one corps
the bonds of discipline relaxed or broken; the most unheard-of pre-
tensions avowed directly and without any disguise; the ordinances
without force; the chiefs without authority; the military chest and
the colours carried off; the authority of the king himself [risum
teneatis?] proudly defied; the officers despised, degraded, threatened,

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 343

driven away, and some of them prisoners in the midst of their corps,
dragging on a precarious life in the bosom of disgust and humili-
ation. To fill up the measure of all these horrors, the commandants
of places have had their throats cut, under the eyes, and almost in
the arms, of their own soldiers.

"These evils are great; but they are not the worst consequences
which may be produced by such military insurrections. Sooner or
later they may menace the nation itself. The nature of things re-
quires that the army should never act but as an instrument. The
moment that, erecting itself into a deliberative body, it shall act
according to its own resolutions, the government, be it what it may,
will immediately degenerate into a military democracy; a species
of political monster, which has always ended by devouring those
who have produced it.

"After all this, who must not be alarmed at the irregular consulta-
tions, and turbulent committees, formed in some regiments by the
common soldiers and non-commissioned officers, without the knowl-
edge, or even in contempt of the authority, of their superiors; al-
though the presence and concurrence of those superiors could give
no authority to such monstrous democratic assemblies [cornices]."

It is not necessary to add much to this finished picture: finished
as far as its canvas admits; but as I apprehend, not taking in the
whole of the nature and complexity of the disorders of this military
democracy, which, the minister at war truly and wisely observes,
wherever it exists, must be the true constitution of the state, by what-
ever formal appellation it may pass. For, though he informs the
Assembly that the more considerable part of the army have not cast
off their obedience, but are still attached to their duty, yet those trav-
ellers, who have seen the corps whose conduct is the best, rather ob-
serve in them the absence of mutiny, than the existence of discipline.

I cannot help pausing here for a moment, to reflect upon the ex-
pressions of surprise which this minister has let fall, relative to the
excesses he relates. To him the departure of the troops from their
ancient principles of loyalty and honour seems quite inconceivable.
Surely those to whom he addresses himself know the causes of it
but too well. They know the doctrines which they have preached,
the decrees which they have passed, the practices which they have

344 EDMUND BURKE

countenanced. The soldiers remember the 6th o£ October. They
recollect the French guards. They have not forgotten the taking of
the king's castles in Paris and Marseilles. That the governors in
both places were murdered with impunity, is a fact that has not
passed out of their minds. They do not abandon the principles laid
down so ostentatiously and laboriously of the quality of men. They
cannot shut their eyes to the degradation of the whole noblesse of
France, and the suppression of the very idea of a gentleman. The
total abolition of titles and distinctions is not lost upon them. But
M. de la Tour du Pin is astonished at their disloyalty, when the doc-
tors of the Assembly have taught them at the same time the respect
due to laws. It is easy to judge which of the two sorts of lessons
men with arms in their hands are likely to learn. As to the authority
of the king, we may collect from the minister himself (if any argu-
ment on that head were not quite superfluous) that it is not of more
consideration with these troops, than it is with everybody else. "The
king," says he, "has over and over again repeated his orders to put
a stop to these excesses: but, in so terrible a crisis, your [the As-
sembly's] concurrence is become indispensably necessary to prevent
the evils which menace the state. You unite to the force of the
legislative power, that of opinion still more important." To be sure
the army can have no opinion of the power or authority of the king.
Perhaps the soldier has by this time learned, that the Assembly itself
does not enjoy a much greater degree of liberty than that royal figure.
It is now to be seen what has been proposed in this exigency, one
of the greatest that can happen in a state. The minister requests the
Assembly to array itself in all its terrors, and to call forth all its
majesty. He desires that the grave and severe principles announced
by them may give vigour to the king's proclamation. After this we
should have looked for courts civil and martial; breaking of some
corps, decimating of others, and all the terrible means which neces-
sity has employed in such cases to arrest the progress of the most
terrible of all evils; particularly, one might expect, that a serious
inquiry would be made into the murder of commandants in the view
of their soldiers. Not one word of all this, or of anything like it.
After they had been told that the soldiery trampled upon the decrees
of the Assembly promulgated by the king, the Assembly pass new

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 345

decrees; and they authorize the king to make new proclamations.
After the secretary at war had stated that the regiments had paid no
regard to oaths pretes avec la plus imposante solemnite — they pro-
pose — what? More oaths. They renew decrees and proclamations
as they experience their insufficiency, and they multiply oaths in pro-
portion as they weaken, in the minds o£ men, the sanctions of religion.
I hope that handy abridgments of the excellent sermons of Voltaire,
d'Alembert, Diderot, and Helvetius, on the Immortality of the Soul,
on a particular superintending Providence, and on a Future State of
Rewards and Punishments, are sent down to the soldiers along with
their civic oaths. Of this I have no doubt; as I understand that a
certain description of reading makes no inconsiderable part of their
military exercises, and that they are full as well supplied with the
ammunition of pamphlets as of cartridges.

To prevent the mischiefs arising from conspiracies, irregular con-
sultations, seditious committees, and monstrous democratic assem-
blies ["comitia, comices"] of the soldiers, and all the disorders arising
from idleness, luxury, dissipation, and insubordination, I believe the
most astonishing means have been used that ever occurred to men,
even in all the inventions of this prolific age. It is no less than this: —
The king has promulgated in circular letters to all the regiments his
direct authority and encouragement, that the several corps should
join themselves with the clubs and confederations in the several
municipalities, and mix with them in their feasts and civic entertain-
ments! This jolly discipline, it seems, is to soften the ferocity of their
minds; to reconcile them to their botde companions of other descrip-
tions; and to merge particular conspiracies in more general associ-
ations.*' That this remedy would be pleasing to the soldiers, as they
are described by M. de la Tour du Pin, I can readily believe; and
that, however mutinous otherwise, they will dutifully submit them-
selves to these royal proclamations. But I should question whether
all this civic swearing, clubbing, and feasting, would dispose them,
more than at present they are disposed, to an obedience to their

5' Comme sa majesty y a reconnu, non une systeme d'associations particuli^res, mais
une reunion de volont^s de tous les Francois pour la liberty et la prosp^rite communes,
ainsi pour la maintien de I'ordre publique; il a pense qu'il convenoit que chaque
regiment prit part a ces fetes civiques pour multiplier les rapports et referrer les
Hens d'union entre les citoyens et les troupes. — Lest I should not be credited, I insert
the words, authorizing the troops to feast with the popular confederacies.

346 EDMUND BURKE

officers; or teach them better to submit to the austere rules of mihtary
discipline. It will make them admirable citizens after the French
mode, but not quite so good soldiers after any mode. A doubt might
well arise, whether the conversations at these good tables would fit
them a great deal the better for the character of mere instruments,
which this veteran officer and statesman justly observes the nature of
things always requires an army to be.

Concerning the likelihood of this improvement in discipline, by
the free conversation of the soldiers with municipal festive societies,
which is thus officially encouraged by royal authority and sanction,
we may judge by the state of the municipalities themselves, fur-
nished to us by the war minister in this very speech. He conceives
good hopes of the success of his endeavours towards restoring order
/or the present from the good disposition of certain regiments; but
he finds something cloudy with regard to the future. As to pre-
venting the return of confusion, "for this, the administration (says
he) cannot be answerable to you, as long as they see the munici-
palities arrogate to themselves an authority over the troops, which
your institutions have reserved wholly to the monarch. You have
fixed the limits of the military authority and the municipal authority.
You have bounded the action, which you have permitted to the latter
over the former, to the right of requisition; but never did the letter
or the spirit of your decrees authorize the commons in these munici-
palities to break the officers, to try them, to give orders to the soldiers,
to drive them from the posts committed to their guard, to stop them
in their marches ordered by the king, or, in a word, to enslave the
troops to the caprice of each of the cities, or even market town,
through which they are to pass."

Such is the character and disposition of the municipal society
which is to reclaim the soldiery, to bring them back to the true
principles of military subordination, and to render them machines in
the hands of the supreme power of the country! Such are the dis-
tempers of the French troops! Such is their cure! As the army is,
so is the navy. The municipalities supersede the orders of the As-
sembly, and the seamen in their turn supersede the orders of the
municipalities. From my heart I pity the condition of a respectable
servant of the public, like this war minister, obliged in his old age to

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 347

pledge the Assembly in their civic cups, and to enter with a hoary
head into all the fantastic vagaries of these juvenile politicians. Such
schemes are not like propositions coming from a man of fifty years'
wear and tear amongst mankind. They seem rather such as ought
to be expected from those grand compounders in politics, who
shorten the road to their degrees in the state; and have a certain
inward fanatical assurance and illumination upon all subjects; upon
the credit of which one of their doctors has thought fit, with great ap-
plause, and greater success, to caution the Assembly not to attend to
old men, or to any persons who valued themselves upon their experi-
ence. I suppose all the ministers of state must qualify, and take this
test; wholly abjuring the errors and heresies of experience and
observation. Every man has his own relish. But I think if I could
not attain to the wisdom, I would at least preserve something of the
stiff and peremptory dignity of age. These gentlemen deal in regen-
eration: but at any price I should hardly yield my rigid fibres to be
regenerated by them; nor begin, in my grand climacteric, to squall
in their new accents, or to stammer, in my second cradle, the ele-
mental sounds of their barbarous metaphysics.^^ Si isti mihi largi-
antur ut repueriscam, et in eorum cunts vagiam, valde recusem!

The imbecility of any part of the puerile and pedantic system,
which they call a constitution, cannot be laid open without discover-
ing the utter insufficiency and mischief of every other part with
which it comes in contact, or that bears any the remotest relation to
it. You cannot propose a remedy for the incompetence of the crown,
without displaying the debility of the Assembly. You cannot delib-
erate on the confusion of the army of the state, without disclosing
the worse disorders of the armed municipalities. The military lays
open the civil, and the civil betrays the military, anarchy. I wish
everybody carefully to peruse the eloquent speech (such it is) of
Mons. de la Tour du Pin. He attributes the salvation of the munici-
palities to the good behaviour of some of the troops. These troops are
to preserve the well-disposed part of those municipalities, which is
confessed to be the weakest, from the pillage of the worst disposed,
which is the strongest. But the municipalities affect a sovereignty,
and will command those troops which are necessary for their pro-
^2 This war minister has since quitted the school, and resigned his office.

348 EDMUND BURKE

tection. Indeed they must command them or court them. The mu-
nicipahties, by the necessity of their situation, and by the repubhcan
powers they have obtained, must, with relation to the miUtary, be
the masters, or the servants, or the confederates, or each successively;
or they must make a jumble of all together, according to circum-
stances. What government is there to coerce the army but the munici-
pality, or the municipality but the army ? To preserve concord where
authority is extinguished, at the hazard of all consequences, the
Assembly attempts to cure the distempers by the distempers them-
selves; and they hope to preserve themselves from a purely mili-
tary democracy, by giving it a debauched interest in the munic-
ipal.

If the soldiers once come to mix for any time in the municipal
clubs, cabals, and confederacies, an elective attraction will draw
them to the lowest and most desperate part. With them will be their
habits, affections, and sympathies. The military conspiracies, which
are to be remedied by civic confederacies; the rebellious munici-
palities, which are to be rendered obedient by furnishing them with
the means of seducing the very armies of the state that are to keep
them in order; all these, chimeras of a monstrous and portentous
policy must aggravate the confusion from which they have arisen.
There must be blood. The want of common judgment manifested
in the construction of all their descriptions of forces, and in all their
kinds of civil and judicial authorities, will make it flow. Disorders
may be quieted in one time and in one part. They will break out
in others; because the evil is radical and intrinsic. All these schemes
of mixing mutinous soldiers with seditious citizens must weaken
still more and more the military connexion of soldiers with their
officers, as well as add military and mutinous audacity to turbulent
artificers and peasants. To secure a real army, the officer should be
first and last in the eye of the soldier; first and last in his attention,
observance, and esteem. Officers it seems there are to be, whose chief
qualification must be temper and patience. They are to manage their
troops by electioneering arts. They must bear themselves as candi-
dates, not as commanders. But as by such means power may be
occasionally in their hands, the authority by which they are to be
nominated becomes of high importance.

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 349

What you may do finally does not appear; nor is it of much mo-
ment, whilst the strange and contradictory relation between your
army and all the parts of your republic, as well as the puzzled rela-
tion of those parts to each other and to the whole, remain as they
are. You seem to have given the provisional nomination of the
officers, in the first instance, to the king, with a reserve of approba-
tion by the National Assembly. Men who have an interest to pur-
sue are extremely sagacious in discovering the true seat of power.
They must soon perceive that those, who can negative indefinitely,
in reality appoint. The officers must therefore look to their intrigues
in that Assembly, as the sole, certain road to promotion. Still, how-
ever, by your new constitution they must begin their solicitation at
court. This double negotiation for military rank seems to me a con-
trivance as well adapted, as if it were studied for no other end, to
promote faction in the Assembly itself, relative to this vast military
patronage; and then to poison the corps of officers with factions of a
nature still more dangerous to the safety of government, upon any
bottom on which it can be placed, and destructive in the end to the
efficiency of the army itself. Those officers, who lose the promotions
intended for them by the crown, must become of a faction opposite
to that of the Assembly, which has rejected their claims, and must
nourish discontents in the heart of the army against the ruling
powers. Those officers, on the other hand, who, by carrying their
point through an interest in the Assembly, feel themselves to be at
best only second in the good-will of the crown, though first in that
of the Assembly, must slight an authority which would not advance
and could not retard their promotion. If to avoid these evils you
will have no other rule for command or promotion than seniority,
you will have an army of formality; at the same time it will become
more independent, and more of a military republic. Not they, but the
king is the machine. A king is not to be deposed by halves. If he is
not everything in the command of an army, he is nothing. What is
the effect of a power placed nominally at the head of the army, who
to that army is no object of gratitude, or of fear ? Such a cipher is not
fit for the administration of an object, of all things the most delicate,
the supreme command of military men. They must be constrained
(and their inclinations lead them to what their necessities require)

350 EDMUND BURKE

by a real, vigorous, effective, decided, personal authority. The au-
thority of the Assembly itself suffers by passing through such a de-
bilitating channel as they have chosen. The army will not long look
to an assembly acting through the organ of false show, and palpable
imposition. They will not seriously yield obedience to a prisoner.
They will either despise a pageant, or they will pity a captive king.
This relation of your army to the crown will, if I am not greatly mis-
taken, become a serious dilemma in your politics.

It is besides to be considered, whether an assembly like yours,
even supposing that it was in possession of another sort of organ
through which its orders were to pass, is fit for promoting the obedi-
ence and discipline of an army. It is known, that armies have hith-
erto yielded a very precarious and uncertain obedience to any senate,
or popular authority; and they will least of all yield it to an assembly
which is only to have a continuance of two years. The officers must
totally lose the characteristic disposition of military men, if they see
with perfect submission and due admiration, the dominion of plead-
ers; especially when they find that they have a new court to pay
to an endless succession of those pleaders; whose military policy,
and the genius of whose command, (if they should have any,) must
be as uncertain as their duration is transient. In the weakness of one
kind of authority, and in the fluctuation of all, the officers of an
army will remain for some time mutinous and full of faction, until
some popular general, who understands the art of conciliating the
soldiery, and who possesses the true spirit of command, shall draw
the eyes of all men upon himself. Armies will obey him on his per-
sonal account. There is no other way of securing military obedience
in this state of things. But the moment in which that event shall
happen, the person who really commands the army is your master;
the master (that is little) of your king, the master of your Assembly,
the master of your whole republic.

How came the Assembly by their present power over the army?
Chiefly, to be sure, by debauching the soldiers from their officers.
They have begun by a most terrible operation. They have touched
the central point, about which the particles that compose armies are
at repose. They have destroyed the principle of obedience in the
great, essential, critical link between the officer and the soldier, just

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 35 1

where the chain of military subordination commences and on which
the whole of that system depends. The soldier is told he is a citizen,
and has the rights of man and citizen. The right of a man, he is told,
is to be his own governor, and to be ruled only by those to whom he
delegates that self-government. It is very natural he should think that
he ought most of all to have his choice where he is to yield the great-
est degree of obedience. He will therefore, in all probability, sys-
tematically do, what he does at present occasionally; that is, he will
exercise at least a negative in the choice of his officers. At present
the officers are known at best to be only permissive, and on their good
behaviour. In fact, there have been many instances in which they
have been cashiered by their corps. Here is a second negative on the
choice of the king; a negative as effectual at least as the other of the
Assembly. The soldiers know already that it has been a question, not
ill received in the National Assembly, whether they ought not to
have the direct choice of their officers, or some proportion of them?
When such matters are in deliberation it is no extravagant suppo-
sition that they will incline to the opinion most favourable to their
pretensions. They will not bear to be deemed the army of an im-
prisoned king, whilst another army in the same country, with whom
too they are to feast and confederate, is to be considered as the free
army of a free constitution. They will cast their eyes on the other
and more permanent army; I mean the municipal. That corps, they
well know, does actually elect its own officers. They may not be able
to discern the grounds of distinction on which they are not to elect
a Marquis de la Fayette (or what is his new name?) of their own.
If this election of a commander-in-chief be a part of the rights of
men, why not of theirs? They see elective justices of peace, elective
judges, elective curates, elective bishops, elective municipalities, and
elective commanders of the Parisian army. — Why should they alone
be excluded? Are the brave troops of France the only men in that
nation who are not the fit judges of military merit, and of the quali-
fications necessary for a commander-in-chief? Are they paid by the
state, and do they therefore lose the rights of men? They are a part
of that nation themselves, and contribute to that pay. And is not
the king, is not the National Assembly, and are not all who elect
the National Assembly likewise paid? Instead of seeing all these

352 EDMUND BURKE

forfeit their rights by their receiving a salary, they perceive that in
all these cases a salary is given for the exercise of those rights. All
your resolutions, all your proceedings, all your debates, all the works
of your doctors in religion and politics, have industriously been put
into their hands; and you expect that they will apply to their own
case just as much of your doctrines and examples as suits your
pleasure.

Everything depends upon the army in such a government as yours;
for you have industriously destroyed all the opinions, and prejudices,
and, as far as in you lay, all the instincts which support government.
Therefore the moment any difference arises between your National
Assembly and any part of the nation, you must have recourse to
force. Nothing else is left to you; or rather you have left nothing
else to yourselves. You see, by the report of your war minister, that
the distribution of the army is in a great measure made with a view
of internal coercion.^' You must rule by an army; and you have
infused into that army by which you rule, as well as into the whole
body of the nation, principles which after a time must disable you
in the use you resolve to make of it. The king is to call out troops
to act against his people, when the world has been told, and the
assertion is still ringing in our ears, that troops ought not to fire on
citizens. The colonies assert to themselves an independent constitu-
tion and a free trade. They must be constrained by troops. In what
chapter of your code of the rights of men are they able to read, that
it is a part of the rights of men to have their commerce monopolized
and restrained for the benefit of others? As the colonists rise on
you, the negroes rise on them. Troops again — Massacre, torture,
hanging! These are your rights of men! These are the fruits of
metaphysic declarations wantonly made, and shamefully retracted!
It was but the other day, that the farmers of land in one of your
provinces refused to pay some sort of rents to the lord of the soil.
In consequence of this, you decree, that the country people shall pay
all rents and dues, except those which as grievances you have abol-
ished; and if they refuse, then you order the king to march troops
against them. You lay down metaphysic propositions which infer
universal consequences, and then you attempt to limit logic by
5' Courier Franjois, 30th July, 1790. Assemble Nationale, Numero 210.

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 353

despotism. The leaders of the present system tell them of their
rights, as men, to take fortresses, to murder guards, to seize on kings
without the least appearance of authority even from the Assembly,
whilst, as the sovereign legislative body, that Assembly was sitting
in the name of the nation — and yet these leaders presume to order
out the troops which have acted in these very disorders, to coerce
those who shall judge on the principles, and follow the examples,
which have been guaranteed by their own approbation.

The leaders teach the people to abhor and reject all feodality as
the barbarism of tyranny, and they tell them afterwards how much
of that barbarous tyranny they are to bear with patience. As they are
prodigal of light with regard to grievances, so the people find them
sparing in the extreme with regard to redress. They know that not
only certain quit-rents and personal duties, which you have per-
mitted them to redeem, (but have furnished no money for the re-
demption,) are as nothing to those burthens for which you have
made no provision at all. They know, that almost the whole sys-
tem of landed property in its origin is feudal; that it is the distribu-
tion of the possessions of the original proprietors, made by a bar-
barous conqueror to his barbarous instruments; and that the most
grievous effects of the conquest are the land rents of every kind, as
without question they are.

The peasants, in all probability, are the descendants of these
ancient proprietors, Romans or Gauls. But if they fail, in any degree,
in the titles which they make on the principles of antiquaries and
lawyers, they retreat into the citadel of the rights of men. There
they find that men are equal; and the earth, the kind and equal
mother of all, ought not to be monopolized to foster the pride and
luxury of any men, who by nature are no better than themselves,
and who, if they do not labour for their bread, are worse. They find,
that by the laws of nature the occupant and subduer of the soil is
the true proprietor; that there is no prescription against nature; and
that the agreements (where any there are) which have been made
with the landlords, during the time of slavery, are only the effect of
duresse and force; and that when the people re-entered into the rights
of men, those agreements were made as void, as everything else
which had been settled under the prevalence of the old feudal and

354 EDMUND BURKE

aristocratic tyranny. They will tell you that they see no difference
between an idler with a hat and a national cockade, and an idler in
a cowl, or in a rochet. I£ you ground the title to rents on succession
and prescription, they tell you from the speech of M. Camus, pub-
lished by the National Assembly for their information, that things
ill begun cannot avail themselves of prescription; that the title of
these lords was vicious in its origin; and that force is at least as bad
as fraud. As to the title by succession, they will tell you, that the
succession of those who have cultivated the soil is the true pedigree
of property, and not rotten parchments and silly substitutions; that
the lords have enjoyed their usurpation too long; and that if they
allow to these lay monks any charitable pension, they ought to be
thankful to the bounty of the true proprietor, who is so generous
towards a false claimant to his goods.

When the peasants give you back that coin of sophistic reason, on
which you have set your image and superscription, you cry it down
as base money, and tell them you will pay for the future with French
guards, and dragoons, and hussars. You hold up, to chastise them,
the second-hand authority of a king, who is only the instrument of
destroying, without any power of protecting either the people or his
own person. Through him it seems you will make yourselves
obeyed. They answer. You have taught us that there are no gentle-
men; and which of your principles teach us to bow to kings whom
we have not elected? We know without your teaching, that lands
were given for the support of feudal dignities, feudal titles, and
feudal offices. When you took down the cause as a grievance, why
should the more grievous effect remain ? As there are now no heredi-
tary honours, and no distinguished families, why are we taxed to
maintain what you tell us ought not to exist? You have sent down
our old aristocratic landlords in no other character, and with no
other title, but that of exactors under your authority. Have you en-
deavoured to make these your rent-gatherers respectable to us? No.
You have sent them to us with their arms reversed, their shields
broken, their impresses defaced; and so displumed, degraded, and
metamorphosed, such unfeathered two-legged things, that we no
longer know them. They are strangers to us. They do not even go
by the names of our ancient lords. Physically they may be the same

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 355

men; though we are not quite sure of that, on your new philosophic
doctrines of personal identity. In all other respects they are totally
changed. We do not see why we have not as good a right to refuse
them their rents as you have to abrogate all their honours, titles, and
distinctions. This we have never commissioned you to do; and it is
one instance, among many indeed, of your assumption of undele-
gated power. We see the burghers of Paris, through their clubs,
their mobs, and their national guards, directing you at their pleasure,
and giving that as law to you, which, under your authority is trans-
mitted as law to us. Through you these burghers dispose of the
lives and fortunes of us all. Why should not you attend as much to
the desires of the laborious husbandman with regard to our rent, by
which we are affected in the most serious manner, as you do to the
demands of these insolent burghers, relative to distinctions and titles
of honour, by which neither they nor we are affected at all? But
we find you pay more regard to their fancies than to our necessities.
Is it among the rights of man to pay tribute to his equals? Before
this measure of yours, we might have thought we were not perfectly
equal. We might have entertained some old, habitual, unmeaning
prepossession in favour of those landlords; but we cannot conceive
with what other view than that of destroying all respect to them,
you could have made the law that degrades them. You have for-
bidden us to treat them with any of the old formalities of respect,
and now you send troops to sabre and to bayonet us into a submission
to fear and force, which you did not suffer us to yield to the mild
authority of opinion.

The ground of some of these arguments is horrid and ridiculous
to all rational ears; but to the politicians of metaphysics who have
opened schools for sophistry, and made establishments for anarchy,
it is solid and conclusive. It is obvious, that on a mere consideration
of the right, the leaders in the Assembly would not in the least have
scrupled to abrogate the rents along with the titles and family en-
signs. It would be only to follow up the principle of their reason-
ings, and to complete the analogy of their conduct. But they had
newly possessed themselves of a great body of landed property by
confiscation. They had this commodity at market; and the market
would have been wholly destroyed, if they were to permit the hus-

356 EDMUND BURKE

bandmen to riot in the speculations with which they so freely intoxi-
cated themselves. The only security which property enjoys in any
one of its descriptions, is from the interests of their rapacity with
regard to some other. They have left nothing but their own arbi-
trary pleasure, to determine what property is to be protected and
what subverted.

Neither have they left any principle by which any of their munici-
palities can be bound to obedience; or even conscientiously obliged
not to separate from the whole to become independent, or to connect
itself with some other state. The people of Lyons, it seems, have re-
fused lately to pay taxes. Why should they not? What lawful au-
thority is there left to exact them ? The king imposed some of them.
The old states, methodized by orders, settled the more ancient. They
may say to the Assembly, Who are you, that are not our kings, nor
the states we have elected, nor sit on the principles on which we have
elected you ? And who are we, that when we see the gabelles, which
you have ordered to be paid, wholly shaken off, when we see the
act of disobedience afterwards ratified by yourselves, who are we,
that we are not to judge what taxes we ought or ought not to pay,
and who are not to avail ourselves of the same powers, the validity of
which you have approved in others? To this the answer is. We
will send troops. The last reason of kings is always the first with
your Assembly. This military aid may serve for a time, whilst the
impression of the increase of pay remains, and the vanity of being
umpires in all disputes is flattered. But this weapon will snap short,
unfaithful to the hand that employs it. The Assembly keep a school,
where, systematically, and with unremitting perseverance, they teach
principles, and form regulations, destructive to all spirit of subordi-
nation, civil and military — and then they expect that they shall hold
in obedience an anarchic people by an anarchic army.

The municipal army which, according to the new policy, is to
balance this national army, if considered in itself only, is of a consti-
tution much more simple, and in every respect less exceptionable.
It is a mere democratic body, unconnected with the crown or the
kingdom; armed, and trained, and officered at the pleasure of the
districts to which the corps severally belong; and the personal service

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 357

of the individuals, who compose, or the fine in lieu of personal
service, are directed by the same authority." Nothing is more uni-
form. If, however, considered in any relation to the crown, to the
National Assembly, to the public tribunals, or to the other army,
or considered in a view to any coherence or connexion between its
parts, it seems a monster, and can hardly fail to terminate its per-
plexed movements in some great national calamity. It is a worse
preservative of a general constitution, than the systasis of Crete, or
the confederation of Poland, or any other ill-devised corrective which
has yet been imagined, in the necessities produced by an ill-con-
structed system of government.

Having concluded my few remarks on the constitution of the
supreme power, the executive, the judicature, the military, and on
the reciprocal relation of all these establishments, I shall say some-
thing of the ability showed by your legislators with regard to the
revenue.

In their proceedings relative to this object, if possible, still fewer
traces appear of political judgment or financial resource. When the
states met, it seemed to be the great object to improve the system of
revenue, to enlarge its collection, to cleanse it of oppression and vexa-
tion, and to establish it on the most solid footing. Great were the
expectations entertained on that head throughout Europe. It was
by this grand arrangement that France was to stand or fall; and
this became, in my opinion, very properly, the test by which the skill
and patriotism of those who ruled in that Assembly would be tried.
The revenue of the state is the state. In effect all depends upon it,
whether for support or for reformation. The dignity of every occu-
pation wholly depends upon the quantity and the kind of virtue
that may be exerted in it. As all great qualities of the mind which
operate in public, and are not merely suffering and passive, require
force for their display, I had almost said for their unequivocal exist-
ence, the revenue, which is the spring of all power, becomes in its

5* I see by M. Necker's account, that the national guards of Paris have received, over
and above the money levied within their own city, about ;C 145,000 sterling out of the
public treasure. Whether this be an actual payment for the nine months of their
existence, or an estimate of their yearly charge, I do not clearly perceive. It is of no
great importance, as certainly they may take whatever they please.

358 EDMUND BURKE

administration the sphere of every active virtue. Public virtue, being
o£ a nature magnificent and splendid, instituted for great things,
and conversant about great concerns, requires abundant scope and
room and cannot spread and grow under confinement, and in cir-
cumstances straitened, narrow, and sordid. Through the revenue
alone the body politic can act in its true genius and character, and
therefore it will display just as much of its collective virtue, and as
much of that virtue which may characterize those who move it,
and are, as it were, its life and guiding principle, as it is possessed
of a just revenue. For from hence not only magnanimity, and liber-
ality, and beneficence, and fortitude, and providence, and the tutelary
protection of all good arts, derive their food, and the growth of their
organs, but continence, and self-denial, and labour, and vigilance,
and frugality, and whatever else there is in which the mind shows
itself above the appetite, are nowhere more in their proper element
than in the provision and distribution of the public wealth. It is
therefore not without reason that the science of speculative and prac-
tical finance, which must take to its aid so many auxiliary branches
of knowledge, stands high in the estimation not only of the ordinary
sort, but of the wisest and best men; and as this science has grown
with the progress of its object, the prosperity and improvement of
nations has generally increased with the increase of their revenues;
and they will both continue to grow and flourish, as long as the bal-
ance between what is left to strengthen the efforts of individuals,
and what is collected for the common efforts of the state, bear to
each other a due reciprocal proportion, and are kept in a close cor-
respondence and communication. And perhaps it may be owing to
the greatness of revenues, and to the urgency of state necessities,
that old abuses in the constitution of finances are discovered, and
their true nature and rational theory comes to be more perfecdy
understood; insomuch, that a smaller revenue might have been more
distressing in one period than a far greater is found to be in another;
the proportionate wealth even remaining the same. In this state of
things, the French Assembly found something in their revenues to
preserve, to secure, and wisely to administer, as well as to abrogate
and alter. Though their proud assumption might justify the severest
tests, yet in trying their abilities on their financial proceedings, I

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 359

would only consider what is die plain, obvious duty o£ a common
finance minister, and try them upon that, and not upon models o£
ideal perfection.

The objects of a financier are, then, to secure an ample revenue; to
impose it with judgment and equality; to employ it economically;
and, when necessity obliges him to make use of credit, to secure its
foundations in that instance, and for ever, by the clearness and
candour of his proceedings, the exactness of his calculations, and the
solidity of his funds. On these heads we may take a short and dis-
tinct view of the merits and abilities of those in the National Assem-
bly, who have taken to themselves the management of this arduous
concern. Far from any increase of revenue in their hands, I find, by
a report of M. Vernier, from the committee of finances, of the second
of August last, that the amount of the national revenue, as compared
with its produce before the Revolution, was diminished by the sum
of two hundred millions, or eight millions sterling of the annual
income, considerably more than one-third of the whole.

If this be the result of great ability, never surely was ability dis-
played in a more distinguished manner, or with so powerful an
effect. No common folly, no vulgar incapacity, no ordinary official
negligence, even no official crime, no corruption, no peculation,
hardly any direct hostility which we have seen in the modern world,
could in so short a time have made so complete an overthrow of the
finances, and with them, of the strength of a great kingdom. — Cedd
qui vestram rempublicam tantam amisistis tarn cito?

The sophisters and declaimers, as soon as the Assembly met, began
with decrying the ancient constitution of the revenue in many of its
most essential branches, such as the public monopoly of salt. They
charged it, as truly as unwisely, with being ill-contrived, oppressive,
and partial. This representation they were not satisfied to make use
of in speeches preliminary to some plan of reform; they declared
it in a solemn resolution or public sentence, as it were judicially,
passed upon it; and this they dispersed throughout the nation. At
the time they passed the decree, with the same gravity they ordered
the same absurd, oppressive, and partial tax to be paid, until they
could find a revenue to replace it. The consequence was inevitable.
The provinces .which had been always exempted from this salt

360 EDMUND BURKE

monopoly, some of whom were charged with other contributions,
perhaps equivalent, were totally disinclined to bear any part of the
burthen, which by an equal distribution was to redeem the others.-
As to the Assembly, occupied as it was with the declaration and
violation of the rights of men, and with their arrangements for gen-
eral confusion, it had neither leisure nor capacity to contrive, nor
authority to enforce, any plan of any kind relative to the replacing
the tax or equalizing it, or compensating the provinces, or for con-
ducting their minds to any scheme of accommodation with other
districts which were to be relieved.

The people of the salt provinces, impatient under taxes, damned
by the authority which had directed their payment, very soon found
their patience exhausted. They thought themselves as skilful in de-
molishing as the Assembly could be. They relieved themselves by
throwing off the whole burthen. Animated by this example, each
district, or part of a district, judging of its own grievance by its own
feeling, and of its remedy by its own opinion, did as it pleased
with other taxes.

We are next to see how they have conducted themselves in contriv-
ing equal impositions, proportioned to the means of the citizens, and
the least likely to lean heavy on the active capital employed in the
generation of that private wealth, from whence the public fortune
must be derived. By suffering the several districts, and several of the
individuals in each district, to judge of what part of the old revenue
they might withhold, instead of better principles of equality, a new
inequality was introduced of the most oppressive kind. Payments
were regulated by dispositions. The parts of the kingdom which
were the most submissive, the most orderly, or the most affectionate
to the commonwealth, bore the whole burthen of the state. Nothing
turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government. To
fill up all the deficiencies in the old impositions, and the new defi-
ciencies of every kind which were to be expected, what remained to
a state without authority? The National Assembly called for a
voluntary benevolence; for a fourth part of the income of all the
citizens, to be estimated on the honour of those who were to pay.
They obtained something more than could be rationally calculated,
but what was far indeed from answerable to their real necessities,

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 36 1

and much less to their fond expectations. Rational people could have
hoped for little from this their tax in the disguise of a benevolence;
a tax weak, ineffective, and unequal; a tax by which luxury, avarice,
and selfishness were screened, and the load thrown upon productive
capital, upon integrity, generosity, and public spirit — a tax of regu-
lation upon virtue. At length the mask is thrown off, and they are
now trying means (with little success) of exacting their benevolence
by force.

This benevolence, the ricketty offspring of weakness, was to be
supported by another resource, the twin brother of the same prolific
imbecility. The patriotic donations were to make good the failure of
the patriotic contribution. John Doe was to become security for
Richard Roe. By this scheme they took things of much price from
the giver, comparatively of small value to the receiver; they ruined
several trades; they pillaged the crown of its ornaments, the churches
of their plate, and the people of their personal decorations. The in-
vention of these juvenile pretenders to liberty was in reality nothing
more than a servile imitation of one of the poorest resources of doting
despotism. They took an old huge full-bottomed periwig out of the
wardrobe of the antiquated frippery of Louis the Fourteenth, to
cover the premature baldness of the National Assembly. They pro-
duced this old-fashioned formal folly, though it had been so abun-
dantly exposed in the Memoirs of the Duke de St. Simon, if to
reasonable men it had wanted any arguments to display its mischief
and insufficiency. A device of the same kind was tried in my mem-
ory by Louis the Fifteenth, but it answered at no time. However,
the necessities of ruinous wars were some excuse for desperate proj-
ects. The deliberations of calamity are rarely wise. But here was a
season for disposition and providence. It was in a time of profound
peace, then enjoyed for five years, and promising a much longer
continuance, that they had recourse to this desperate trifling. They
were sure to lose more reputation by sporting, in their serious situa-
tion, with these toys and playthings of finance, which have filled
half their journals, than could possibly be compensated by the poor
temporary supply which they afforded. It seemed as if those who
adopted such projects were wholly ignorant of their circumstances,
or wholly unequal to their necessities. Whatever virtue may be in

362 EDMUND BURKE

these devices, it is obvious that neither the patriotic gifts, nor the
patriotic contribution, can ever be resorted to again. The resources
of public folly are soon exhausted. The whole indeed of their scheme
of revenue is to make, by any artifice, an appearance of a full reser-
voir for the hour, whilst at the same time they cut off the springs
and living fountains of perennial supply. The account not long
since furnished by M. Necker was meant, without question, to be
favourable. He gives a flattering view of the means of getting
through the year; but he expresses, as it is natural he should, some
apprehension for that which was to succeed. On this last prognostic,
instead of entering into the grounds of this apprehension, in order,
by a proper foresight, to prevent the prognosticated evil, M. Necker
receives a sort of friendly reprimand from the president of the
Assembly.

As to their other schemes of taxation, it is impossible to say any-
thing of them with certainty; because they have not yet had their
operation: but nobody is so sanguine as to imagine they will fill up
any perceptible part of the wide gaping breach which their incapac-
ity has made in their revenues. At present the state of their treasury
sinks every day more and more in cash, and swells more and more
in fictitious representation. When so little within or without is now
found but paper, the representative not of opulence but of want,
the creature not of credit but of power, they imagine that our flour-
ishing state in England is owing to that bank-paper, and not the
bank-paper to the flourishing condition of our commerce, to the
solidity of our credit, and to the total exclusion of all idea of power
from any part of the transaction. They forget that, in England, not
one shilling of paper-money of any description is received but of
choice; that the whole has had its origin in cash actually deposited;
and that it is convertible at pleasure, in an instant, and without the
smallest loss, into cash again. Our paper is of value in commerce,
because in law it is of none. It is powerful on 'Change, because in
Westminster Hall it is impotent. In payment of a debt of twenty
shillings, a creditor may refuse all the paper of the bank of England.
Nor is there amongst us a single public security, of any quality or
nature whatsoever, that is enforced by authority. In fact it might
be easily shown, that our paper wealth, instead of lessening the real

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 363

coin, has a tendency to increase it; instead o£ being a substitute for
money, it only facilitates its entry, its exit, and its circulation; that
it is the symbol of prosperity, and not the badge of distress. Never
was a scarcity of cash, and an exuberance of paper, a subject of com-
plaint in this nation.

Well! but a lessening of prodigal expenses, and the economy which
has been introduced by the virtuous and sapient Assembly, make
amends for the losses sustained in the receipt of revenue. In this at
least they have fulfilled the duty of a financier. — Have those, who
say so, looked at the expenses of the National Assembly itself.? of
the municipalities? of the city of Paris.? of the increased pay of the
two armies.? of the new police.? of the new judicatures? Have they
even carefully compared the present pension list with the former.?
These politicians have been cruel, not economical. Comparing the
expense of the former prodigal government and its relation to the
then revenues with the expenses of this new system as opposed to
the state of its new treasury, I believe the present will be found
beyond all comparison more chargeable.^'"

It remains only to consider the proofs of financial ability, furnished
by the present French managers when they are to raise supplies on
credit. Here I am a little at a stand; for credit, properly speaking,
they have none. The credit of the ancient government was not in-
deed the best; but they could always, on some terms, command
money, not only at home, but from most of the countries of Europe
where a surplus capital was accumulated; and the credit of that gov-
ernment was improving daily. The establishment of a system of lib-
erty would of course be supposed to give it new strength: and so it
would actually have done, if a system of liberty had been established.

*' The reader will observe, that I have but lightly touched (my plan demanded
nothing more) on the condition of the French finances, as connected with the demands
upon them. If I had intended to do otherwise, the materials in my hands for such
a task are not altogether perfect. On this subject I refer the reader to M. de Calonne's
work; and the tremendous display that he has made of the havoc and devastation in
the public estate, and in all the affairs of France, caused by the presumptuous good
intentions of ignorance and incapacity. Such eflrects those causes will always produce.
Looking over that account with a pretty strict eye, and, with perhaps too much rigour,
deducting everything which may be placed to the account of a financier out of place,,
who might be supposed by his enemies desirous of making the most of his cause,
I believe it will be found, that a more salutary lesson of caution against the daring
spirit of innovators, than what has been supplied at the expense of France, never
was at any time furnished to mankind.

364 EDMUND BURKE

What offers has their government of pretended Hberty had from Hol-
land, from Hamburgh, from Switzerland, from Genoa, from Eng-
land, for a dealing in their paper? Why should these nations of com-
merce and economy enter into any pecuniary dealings with a people,
who attempt to reverse the very nature of things; amongst whom
they see the debtor prescribing at the point of the bayonet, the
medium of his solvency to the creditor; discharging one of his en-
gagements with another; turning his very penury into his resource;
and paying his interest with his rags?

Their fanatical confidence in the omnipotence of church plunder
has induced these philosophers to overlook all care of the public
estate, just as the dream of the philosopher's stone induces dupes,
under the more plausible delusion of the hermetic art, to neglect all
rational means of improving their fortunes. With these philosophic
financiers, this universal medicine made of church mummy is to cure
all the evils of the state. These gentlemen perhaps do not believe
a great deal in the miracles of piety; but it cannot be questioned, that
they have an undoubting faith in the prodigies of sacrilege. Is there
a debt which presses them? — Issue assignats. Are compensations to
be made, or a maintenance decreed to those whom they have robbed
of their freehold in their office, or expelled from their profession? —
Assignats. Is a fleet to be fitted out? — Assignats. If sixteen millions
sterling of these assignats, forced on the people, leave the wants of
the state as urgent as ever — issue, says one, thirty millions sterling
of assignats — says another, issue fourscore millions more of assignats.
The only difference among their financial factions is on the greater
or the lesser quantity of assignats to be imposed on the public suffer-
ance. They are all professors of assignats. Even those, whose natu-
ral good sense and knowledge of commerce, not obliterated by
philosophy, furnish decisive arguments against this delusion, con-
clude their arguments, by proposing the emission of assignats. I
suppose they must talk of assignats, as no other language would be
understood. All experience of their inefficiency does not in the least
discourage them. Are the old assignats depreciated at market? —
What is the remedy? Issue new assignats. — Mais si maladia, oponia-
tria, non vult se garire, quid illi facere? assignare — postea assignare;
ensuita assignare. The word is a trifle altered. The Latin of your

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 365

present doctors may be better than that of your old comedy; their
wisdom and the variety of their resources are the same. They have
not more notes in their song than the cuckoo; though, far from the
softness of that harbinger of summer and plenty, their voice is as
harsh and as ominous as that of the raven.

Who but the most desperate adventurers in philosophy and finance
could at all have thought of destroying the settled revenue of the
state, the sole security for the public credit, in the hope of rebuild-
ing it with the materials of confiscated property? If, however, an
excessive zeal for the state should have led a pious and venerable
prelate (by anticipation a father of the church^*) to pillage his own
order, and, for the good of the church and people, to take upon
himself the place of grand financier of confiscation, and comptroller-
general of sacrilege, he and his coadjutors were in my opinion,
bound to show, by their subsequent conduct, that they knew some-
thing of the office they assumed. When they had resolved to appro-
priate to the Fisc, a certain portion of the landed property of their
conquered country, it was their business to render their bank
a real fund of credit, as far as such a bank. was capable of becom-
ing so.

To establish a current circulating credit upon any Land-ban\,
under any circumstances whatsoever, has hitherto proved difficult at
the very least. The attempt has commonly ended in bankruptcy.
But when the Assembly were led, through a contempt of moral, to
a defiance of economical, principles, it might at least have been ex-
pected, that nothing would be omitted on their part to lessen this
difficulty, to prevent any aggravation of this bankruptcy. It might
be expected, that to render your Land-banl{^ tolerable, every means
would be adopted that could display openness and candour in the
statement of the security; everything which could aid the recovery
of the demand. To take things in their most favourable point of
view, your condition was that of a man of a large landed estate,
which he wished to dispose of for the discharge of a debt, and the
supply of certain services. Not being able instantly to sell, you
wished to mortgage. What would a man of fair intentions, and a
commonly clear understanding, do in such circumstances.'' Ought
^ La Bruyfere of Bossuet.

366 EDMUND BURKE

he not first to ascertain the gross value o£ the estate; the charges of
its management and disposition; the encumbrances perpetual and
temporary of all kinds that affect it; then, striking a net surplus,
to calculate the just value of the security? When that surplus (the
only security to the creditor) had been clearly ascertained, and prop-
erly vested in the hands of trustees; then he would indicate the par-
cels to be sold, and the time and conditions of sale; after this, he
would admit the public creditor, if he chose it, to subscribe his stock
into this new fund; or he might receive proposals for an assignat
from those who would advance money to purchase this species of
security.

This would be to proceed like men of business, methodically and
rationally; and on the only principles of public and private credit
that have an existence. The dealer would then know exactly what
he purchased; and the only doubt which could hang upon his mind
would be, the dread of the resumption of the spoil, which one day
might be made (perhaps with an addition of punishment) from the
sacrilegious gripe of those execrable wretches who could become
purchasers at the auction of their innocent fellow-citizens.

An open and exact statement of the clear value of the property,
and of the time, the circumstances, and the place of sale, were all
necessary, to efface as much as possible the stigma that has hitherto
been branded on every kind of Land-bank. It became necessary on
another principle, that is, on account of a pledge of faith previously
given on that subject, that their future fidelity in a slippery concern
might be established by their adherence to their first engagement.
When they had finally determined on a state resource from church
booty, they came, on the 14th of April, 1790, to a solemn resolu-
tion on the subject; and pledged themselves to their country,
"that in the statement of the public charges for each year, there
should be brought to account a sum sufficient for defraying the
expenses of the R. C. A. religion, the support of the ministers at the
altars, the relief of the poor, the pensions to the ecclesiastics, secular
as well as regular, of the one and of the other sex, in order that the
estates and goods which are at the disposal of the nation may be
disengaged of all charges, and employed by the representatives, or
the legislative body, to the great and most pressing exigencies of

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 367

the State." They further engaged, on the same day, that the sum
necessary for the year 1791 should be forthwith determined.

In this resolution they admit it their duty to show distinctly the
expense of the above objects, which, by other resolutions, they had
before engaged should be first in the order of provision. They admit
that they ought to show the estate clear and disengaged of all
charges, and that they should show it immediately. Have they done
this immediately, or at any time? Have they ever furnished a rent-
roll of the immovable estates, or given in an inventory of the mov-
able effects, which they confiscate to their assignats? In what man-
ner they can fulfill their engagements of holding out to public
service, "an estate disengaged of all charges," without authenticating
the value of the estate, or the quantum of the charges, I leave it to
their English admirers to explain. Instantly upon this assurance,
and previously to any one step towards making it good, they issue,
on the credit of so handsome a declaration, sixteen millions sterling
of their paper. This was manly. Who, after this masterly stroke,
can doubt of their abilities in finance? — But then, before any other
emission of these financial indulgences, they took care at least to
make good their original promise! — If such estimate, either of the
value of the estate or the amount of the encumbrances, has been
made, it has escaped me. I never heard of it.

At length they have spoken out, and they have made a full dis-
covery of their abominable fraud, in holding out the church lands
as a security for any debts, or any service whatsoever. They rob
only to enable them to cheat; but in a very short time they defeat the
ends both of the robbery and the fraud, by making out accounts
for other purposes, which blow up their whole apparatus of force
and of deception. I am obliged to M. de Calonne for his reference
to the document which proves this extraordinary fact; it had by
some means escaped me. Indeed it was not necessary to make out
my assertion as to the breach of faith on the declaration of the 14th
of April, 1790. By a report of their committee it now appears, that
the charge of keeping up the reduced ecclesiastical establishments,
and other expenses attendant on religion, and maintaining the re-
ligious of both sexes, retained or pensioned, and the other concom-
itant expenses of the same nature, which they have brought upon

368 EDMUND BURKE

themselves by this convulsion in property, exceeds the income of the
estates acquired by it in the enormous sum of two millions sterling
annually; besides a debt of seven millions and upwards. These are
the calculating powers of imposture! This is the finance of philoso-
phy! This is the result of all the delusions held out to engage a
miserable people in rebellion, murder, and sacrilege, and to make
them prompt and zealous instruments in the ruin of their country!
Never did a state, in any case, enrich itself by the confiscations of
the citizens. This new experiment has succeeded like all the rest.
Every honest mind, every true lover of liberty and humanity, must
rejoice to find that injustice is not always good policy, nor rapine the
high road to riches. I subjoin with pleasure, in a note, the able and
spirited observations of M. de Calonne on this subject."

In order to persuade the world of the bottomless resource of
ecclesiastical confiscation, the Assembly have proceeded to other con-
fiscations of estates in offices, which could not be done with any
common colour without being compensated out of this grand con-
fiscation of landed property. They have thrown upon this fund,
which was to show a surplus disengaged of all charges, a new
charge; namely, the compensation to the whole body of the dis-
banded judicature; and of all suppressed offices and estates; a
charge which I cannot ascertain, but which unquestionably amounts
to many French millions. Another of the new charges in an annuity

^'"Ce n'est point a I'assemblee entiere que je m'adresse ici; je ne parle qu'a ceux
qui I'^garent, en lui cachant sous des gazes s^duisantes le but ou ils I'entrainent.
C'est a eux que je dis: votre objet, vous n'en disconviendrez pas, c'est doter tout
espoir au clerg^, et de consommer sa ruine; c'est-la, en ne vous soupjonnant d'aucune
combinaison de cupidity, d'aucun regard sur le jeu des effets publics, c'est-la ce qu'on
doit croire que vous avez en vue dans la terrible operation que vous proposez; c'est
ce qui doit en etre le fruit. Mais le peuple que vous y int^ressez, quel avantage peut-il
y trouver? En vous servant sans cesse de lui, que faites vous pour lui? Rien,
absolument rien; et, au contraire, vous faites ce qui ne conduit qu'i I'accabler de
nouvelles charges. Vous avez rejet^, a son prejudice, une offre de 400 millions, dent
I'acceptation pouvoit devenir un moyen de soulagement en sa faveur; et a cette
ressource, aussi profitable que legitime, vous avez substitue une injustice ruineuse,
qui, de votre propre aveu, charge le tr^sor public, et par cons<5quent le peuple, d'un
surcroit de d^pense annuelle de 50 millions au moins, et d'un remboursement de
150 millions.

"Malheureux peuplel voilk ce que vous vaut en dernier risultat I'expropriation de
I'Eglise, et la duret^ des decrets taxateurs du traitement des ministres d'une religion
bienfaisante; et d^sormais ils seront a votre charge: leurs charit^s soulageoient les
pauvres; et vous allez etre imposes pour subvenir a leur entretienl" — De I'Etat de la
France, p. 81. See also p. 92, and the following pages.

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 369

of four hundred and eighty thousand pounds sterling, to be paid
(if they choose to keep faith) by daily payments, for the interest of
the first assignats. Have they ever given themselves the trouble to
state fairly the expense of the management of the church lands in
the hands of the municipalities, to whose care, skill, and diligence,
and that of their legion of unknown under-agents, they have chosen
to commit the charge of the forfeited estates, and the consequence
of which had been so ably pointed out by the bishop of Nancy ?

But it is unnecessary to dwell on these obvious heads of encum-
brance. Have they made out any clear state of the grand encum-
brance of all, I mean the whole of the general and municipal estab-
lishments of all sorts, and compared it with the regular income by
revenue? Every deficiency in these becomes a charge on the con-
fiscated estate, before the creditor can plant his cabbages on an acre
of church property. There is no other prop than this confiscation
to keep the whole state from tumbling to the ground. In this situa-
tion they have purposely covered all, that they ought industriously
to have cleared, with a thick fog; and then, blindfold themselves,
like bulls that shut their eyes when they push, they drive, by the
point of the bayonets, their slaves, blindfolded indeed no worse than
their lords, to take their fictions for currencies, and to swallow down
paper pills by thirty-four millions sterling at a dose. Then they
proudly lay in their claim to a future credit, on failure of all their
past engagements, and at a time when (if in such a matter anything
can be clear) it is clear that the surplus estates will never answer even
the first of their mortgages, I mean that of the four hundred mil-
lions (or sixteen millions sterling) of assignats. In all this procedure
I can discern neither the solid sense of plain dealing, nor the subtle
dexterity of ingenious fraud. The objections within the Assembly
to pulling up the flood-gates for this inundation of fraud are unan-
swered; but they are thoroughly refuted by an hundred thousand
financiers in the street. These are the numbers by which the meta-
physic arithmeticians compute. These are the grand calculations
on which a philosophical public credit is founded in France. They
cannot raise supplies; but they can raise mobs. Let them rejoice in
the applauses of the club at Dundee, for their wisdom and patri-
otism in having thus applied the plunder of the citizens to the

370 EDMUND BURKE

service of the state. I hear of no address upon this subject from
the directors of the bank of England; though their approbation
would be of a little more weight in the scale of credit than that of
the club at Dundee. But, to do justice to the club, I believe the
gentlemen who compose it to be wiser than they appear; that they
will be less liberal of their money than of their addresses; and that
they would not give a dog's-ear of their most rumpled and ragged
Scotch paper for twenty of your fairest assignats.

Early in this year the Assembly issued paper to the amount of
sixteen millions sterling: what must have been the state into which
the Assembly has brought your affairs, that the relief afforded by
so vast a supply has been hardly perceptible? This paper also felt
an almost immediate depreciation of five per cent., which in a little
time came to about seven. The effect of these assignats on the re-
ceipt of the revenue is remarkable. M. Necker found that the col-
lectors of the revenue, who received in coin, paid the treasury in
assignats. The collectors made seven per cent, by thus receiving in
money, and accounting in depreciated paper. It was not very diffi-
cult to foresee, that this must be inevitable. It was, however, not the
less embarrassing. M. Necker was obliged (I believe, for a consider-
able part, in the market of London) to buy gold and silver for the
mint, which amounted to about twelve thousand pounds above the
value of the commodity gained. That minister was of opinion,
that, whatever their secret nutritive virtue might be, the state could
not live upon assignats alone; that some real silver was necessary,
particularly for the satisfaction of those who, having iron in their
hands, were not likely to distinguish themselves for patience, when
they should perceive that, whilst an increase of pay was held out to
them in real money, it was again to be fraudulently drawn back by
depreciated paper. The minister, in this very natural distress, ap-
plied to the Assembly, that they should order the collectors to pay
in specie what in specie they had received. It could not escape him,
that if the treasury paid three per cent, for the use of a currency,
which should be returned seven per cent, worse than the minister
issued it, such a dealing could not very greatly tend to enrich the
public. The Assembly took no notice of his recommendation. They
were in this dilemma — If they continued to receive the assignats,

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 37I

cash must become an alien to their treasury: if the treasury should
refuse those paper amulets, or should discountenance them in any
degree, they must destroy the credit of their sole resource. They
seem then to have made their option; and to have given some sort
of credit to their paper by taking it themselves; at the same time
in their speeches they made a sort of swaggering declaration, some-
thing, I rather think, above legislative competence; that is, that there
is no difference in value between metallic money and their assignats.
This was a good, stout, proof article of faith, pronounced under an
anathema, by the venerable fathers of this philosophic synod. Credat
who will — certainly not Judceus Apella.

A noble indignation rises in the minds of your popular leaders, on
hearing the magic lantern in their show of finance compared to the
fraudulent exhibitions of Mr. Law. They cannot bear to hear the
sands of his Mississippi compared with the rock of the church, on
which they build their system. Pray let them suppress this glorious
spirit, until they show to the world what piece of solid ground there
is for their assignats, which they have not pre-occupied by other
charges. They do injustice to that great, mother fraud, to compare
it with their degenerate imitation. It is not true that Law built
solely on a speculation concerning the Mississippi. He added the
East India trade; he added the African trade; he added the farms of
all the farmed revenue of France. All these together unquestionably
could not support the structure which the public enthusiasm, not
he, chose to build upon these bases. But these were, however, in
comparison, generous delusions. They supposed, and they aimed
at, an increase of the commerce of France. They opened to it the
whole range of the two hemispheres. They did not think of feeding
France from its own substance, A grand imagination found in this
flight of commerce something to captivate. It was wherewithal to
dazzle the eye of an eagle. It was not made to entice the smell of a
mole, nuzzling and burying himself in his mother earth, as yours
is. Men were not then quite shrunk from their natural dimensions
by a degrading and sordid philosophy, and fitted for low and vulgar
deceptions. Above all, remember, that, in imposing on the imagina-
tion, the then managers of the system made a compliment to the
freedom of men. In their fraud there was no mixture of force. This

y]2. EDMUND BURKE

was reserved to our time, to quench the little glimmerings of reason
which might break in upon the solid darkness of this enlightened
age.

On recollection, I have said nothing of a scheme of finance which
may be urged in favor of the abilities of these gentlemen, and
which has been introduced with great pomp, though not yet finally
adopted, in the National Assembly. It comes with something solid
in aid of the credit of the paper circulation; and much has been
said of its utility and its elegance. I mean the project for coining
into money the bells of the suppressed churches. This is their
alchemy. There are some follies which baffle argument; which go
beyond ridicule; and which excite no feeling in us but disgust; and
therefore I say no more upon it.

It is as little worth remarking any further upon all their drawing
and re-drawing, on their circulation for putting off the evil day,
on the play between the treasury and the Caisse d'Escompte, and
on all these old, exploded contrivances of mercantile fraud, now
exalted into policy of state. The revenue will not be trifled with.
The prattling about the rights of men will not be accepted in pay-
ment for a biscuit or a pound of gunpowder. Here then the meta-
physicians descend from their airy speculations, and faithfully follow
examples. What examples? The examples of bankrupts. But de-
feated, baffled, disgraced, when their breath, their strength, their
inventions, their fancies desert them, their confidence still maintains
its ground. In the manifest failure of their abilities, they take credit
for their benevolence. When the revenue disappears in their hands,
they have the presumption, in some of their late proceedings, to
value themselves on the relief given to the people. They did not
relieve the people. If they entertained such intentions, why did they
order the obnoxious taxes to be paid? The people relieved them-
selves in spite of the Assembly.

But waiving all discussion on the parties who may claim the merit
of this fallacious relief, has there been, in effect, any relief to the
people in any form? Mr. Bailly, one of the grand agents of paper
circulation, lets you into the nature of this relief. His speech to
the National Assembly contained a high and laboured panegyric on
the inhabitants of Paris, for the constancy and unbroken resolution

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 373

with which they have borne their distress and misery. A fine pic-
ture of public felicity! What! great courage and unconquerable
firmness of mind to endure benefits, and sustain redress? One
would think from the speech of this learned lord mayor, that the
Parisians, for this twelvemonth past, had been suffering the straits
of some dreadful blockade; that Henry the Fourth had been stop-
ping up the avenues to their supply, and Sully thundering with his
ordnance at the gates of Paris; when in reality they are besieged by
no other enemies than their own madness and folly, their own cre-
dulity and perverseness. But Mr. Bailly will sooner thaw the eternal
ice of his Atlantic regions, than restore the central heat to Paris,
whilst it remains "smitten with the cold, dry, petrific mace" of a
false and unfeeling philosophy. Some time after this speech, that
is, on the thirteenth of last August, the same magistrate, giving an
account of his government at the bar of the same Assembly, ex-
presses himself as follows: "In the month of July, 1789," [the period
of everlasting commemoration,] "the finances of the city of Paris
were yet in good order; the expenditure was counterbalanced by
the receipt, and she had at that time a million" [forty thousand
pounds sterling] "in bank. The expenses which she has been con-
strained to incur, subsequent to the Revolution, amount to 2,500,000
livres. From these expenses, and the great falling off in the product
of the free gifts, not only a momentary, but a total, want of money
has taken place." This is the Paris, upon whose nourishment, in
the course of the last year, such immense sums, drawn from the
vitals of all France, have been expended. As long as Paris stands
in the place of ancient Rome, so long she will be maintained by the
subject provinces. It is an evil inevitably attendant on the do-
minion of sovereign democratic republics. As it happened in Rome,
it may survive that republican domination which gave rise to it. In
that case despotism itself must submit to the vices of popularity.
Rome, under her emperors, united the evils of both systems; and
this unnatural combination was one great cause of her ruin.

To tell the people that they are relieved by the dilapidation of
their public estate, is a cruel and insolent imposition. Statesmen,
before they valued themselves on the relief given to the people by
the destruction of their revenue, ought first to have carefully

374 EDMUND BURKE

attended to the solution of this problem: — Whether it be more
advantageous to the people to pay considerably, and to gain in pro-
portion; or to gain little or nothing, and to be disburthened of all
contribution ? My mind is made up to decide in favour of the first
proposition. Experience is with me, and, I believe, the best opinions
also. To keep a balance between the power of acquisition on the
part of the subject, and the demands he is to answer on the part
of the state, is the fundamental part of the skill of a true politician.
The means of acquisition are prior in time and in arrangement.
Good order is the foundation of all good things. To be enabled to
acquire, the people, without being servile, must be tractable and
obedient. The magistrate must have his reverence, the laws their
authority. The body of the people must not find the principles of
natural subordination by art rooted out of their minds. They must
respect that property of which they cannot partake. They must la-
bour to obtain what by labour can be obtained; and when they find,
as they commonly do, the success disproportioned to the endeavour,
they must be taught their consolation in the final proportions of
eternal justice. Of this consolation whoever deprives them, deadens
their industry, and strikes at the root of all acquisition as of all con-
servation. He that does this is the cruel oppressor, the merciless
enemy of the poor and wretched; at the same time that by his wicked
speculations he exposes the fruits of successful industry, and the
accumulations of fortune, to the plunder of the negligent, the dis-
appointed, and the unprosperous.

Too many of the financiers by profession are apt to see nothing in
revenue but banks, and circulations, and annuities on lives, and
tontines, and perpetual rents, and all the small wares of the shop.
In a settled order of the state, these things are not to be slighted,
nor is the skill in them to be held of trivial estimation. They are
good, but then only good, when they assume the effects of that
settled order, and are built upon it. But when men think that these
beggarly contrivances may supply a resource for the evils which
result from breaking up the foundations of public order, and from
causing or suffering the principles of property to be subverted, they
will, in the ruin of their country, leave a melancholy and lasting

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 375

monument of the effect of preposterous politics, and presumptuous,
short-sighted, narrow-minded wisdom.

The effects of the incapacity shown by the popular leaders in all
the great members of the commonwealth are to be covered with the
"all-atoning name" of liberty. In some people I see great liberty in-
deed; in many, if not in the most, an oppressive, degrading servi-
tude. But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It
is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness,
without tuition or restraint. Those who know what virtuous liberty
is, cannot bear to see it disgraced by incapable heads, on account of
their having high-sounding words in their mouths. Grand, swelling
sentiments of liberty I am sure I do not despise. They warm the
heart; they enlarge and liberalize our minds; they animate our
courage in a time of conflict. Old as I am, I read the fine raptures
of Lucan and Corneille with pleasure. Neither do I wholly con-
demn the little arts and devices of popularity. They facilitate the
carrying of many points of moment; they keep the people together;
they refresh the mind in its exertions; and they diffuse occasional
gaiety over the severe brow of moral freedom. Every politician ought
to sacrifice to the graces; and to join compliance with reason. But
in such an undertaking as that in France, all these subsidiary senti-
ments and artifices are of little avail. To make a government re-
quires no great prudence. Settle the seat of power; teach obedience
and the work is done. To give freedom is still more easy. It is not
necessary to guide; it only requires to let go the rein. But to form
a free government; that is, to temper together these opposite ele-
ments of liberty and restraint in one consistent work, requires much
thought, deep reflection, a sagacious, powerful, and combining mind.
This I do not find in those who take the lead in the National As-
sembly. Perhaps they are not so miserably deficient as they appear.
I rather believe it. It would put them below the common level of
human understanding. But when the leaders choose to make them-
selves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the con-
itruction of the state, will be of no service. They will become flat-
terers instead of legislators; the instruments, not the guides, of the
people. If any of them should happen to propose a scheme of liberty,

376 EDMUND BURKE

soberly limited, and defined with proper qualifications, he will be
immediately outbid by his competitors, who will produce some-
thing more splendidly popular. Suspicions will be raised of his
fidelity to his cause. Moderation will be stigmatized as the virtue
of cowards; and compromise as the prudence of traitors; until, in
hopes of preserving the credit which may enable him to temper, and
moderate, on some occasions, the popular leader is obliged to become
active in propagating doctrines, and establishing powers, that will
afterwards defeat any sober purpose at which he ultimately might
have aimed.

But am I so unreasonable as to see nothing at all that deserves
commendation in the indefatigable labours of this Assembly? I
do not deny that, among an infinite number of acts of violence and
folly, some good may have been done. They who destroy every-
thing certainly will remove some grievance. They who make every-
thing new, have a chance that they may establish something bene-
ficial. To give them credit for what they have done in virtue of the
authority they have usurped, or which can excuse them in the crimes
by which that authority has been acquired, it must appear, that the
same things could not have been accomplished without producing
such a revolution. Most assuredly they might; because almost every
one of the regulations made by them, which is not very equivocal,
was either in the cession of the king, voluntarily made at the meet-
ing of the states, or in the concurrent instructions to the orders.
Some usages have been abolished on just grounds; but they were
such, that if they had stood as they were to all eternity, they would
little detract from the happiness and prosperity of any state. The
improvements of the National Assembly are superficial, their errors
fundamental.

Whatever they are, I wish my countrymen rather to recommend
to our neighbours the example of the British constitution, than to
take models from them for the improvement of our own. In the
former they have got an invaluable treasure. They are not, I think,
without some causes of apprehension and complaint; but these they
do not owe to their constitution, but to their own conduct. I think
our happy situation owing to our constitution; but owing to the
whole of it, and not to any part singly; owing in a great measure to

ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE 377

what we have left standing in our several reviews and reformations,
as well as to what we have altered or superadded. Our people will
find employment enough for a truly patriotic, free, and independent
spirit, in guarding what they possess from violation. I would not
exclude alteration neither; but even when I changed, it should be
to preserve. I should be led to my remedy by a great grievance.
In what I did, I should follow the example of our ancestors. I
would make the reparation as nearly as possible in the style of the
building. A politic caution, a guarded circumspection, a moral
rather than a complexional timidity, were among the ruling princi-
ples of our forefathers in their most decided conduct. Not being
illuminated with the light of which the gentlemen of France tell us
they have got so abundant a share, they acted under a strong im-
pression of the ignorance and fallibility of mankind. He that had
made them thus fallible, rewarded them for having in their conduct
attended to their nature. Let us imitate their caution, if we wish to
deserve their fortune, or to retain their bequests. Let us add, if we
please, but let us preserve what they have left; and standing on the
firm ground of the British constitution, let us be satisfied to admire,
rather than attempt to follow in their desperate flights, the aeronauts
of France.

I have told you candidly my sentiments. I think they are not
likely to alter yours. I do know that they ought. You are young;
you cannot guide, but must follow the fortune of your country. But
hereafter they may be of some use to you, in some future form
which your commonwealth may take. In the present it can hardly
remain; but before its final settlement it may be obliged to pass, as
one of our poets says, "through great varieties of untried being,"
and in all its transmigrations to be purified by fire and blood.

I have little to recommend my opinions but long observation and
much impartiality. They come from one who has been no tool of
power, no flatterer of greatness; and who in his last acts does not
wish to belie the tenour of his life. They come from one, almost the
whole of whose public exertion has been a struggle for the liberty
of others; from one in whose breast no anger durable or vehement
has ever been kindled, but by what he considered as tyranny; and
who snatches from his share in the endeavours which are used by

378 EDMUND BURKE

good men to discredit opulent oppression, the hours he has employed
on your affairs; and who in so doing persuades himself he has not
departed from his usual office: they come from one who desires
honours, distinctions, and emoluments, but little; and who expects
them not at all; who has no contempt for fame, and no fear of
obloquy; who shuns contention, though he will hazard an opinion:
from one who wishes to preserve consistency, but who would pre-
serve consistency by varying his means to secure the unity of his
end; and, when the equipoise of the vessel in which he sails may
be endangered by overloading it upon one side, is desirous of carry-
ing the small weight of his reasons to that which may preserve its
equipoise.

A LETTER

FROM

THE RIGHT HON. EDMUND BURKE
TO A NOBLE LORD

ON THE ATTACKS MADE UPON HIM AND HIS PENSION, IN THE

HOUSE OF LORDS, BY THE DUKE OF BEDFORD AND THE

EARL OF LAUDERDALE, EARLY IN THE PRESENT

SESSION OF PARLIAMENT

1796

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

When Burke retired from Parliament at the close of his labors in the
trial of Warren Hastings, it was proposed to raise him to the peerage as
Lord Beaconsfield; but before the matter came to a point, Burke's son
Richard, in whom all his hopes and affections were centered, died and
left his father desolate. A hereditary honor was no longer in question,
and it was arranged, since Burke was now, as always, in financial diffi-
culties, that he should get ^^ 1,200 a year from the Civil List so long as
his wife lived, and that the King should propose to Parliament a more
liberal recognition of his services. But Pitt, probably in order to avoid
unseemly opposition from Burke's enemies, arranged a grant of ;{|2,500
a year directly from the Crown, so that Burke, though glad to get the
money, was disappointed in its not being a more broadly national
reward.

Pitt's caution seems to have been justified, for in the next year, when
party feeling was running high, the Duke of Bedford and Lord Lauder-
dale seized upon the granting of the pension as a weapon with which to
attack the administration. Burke at once saw, in the fact that the assault
came from the head of the house of Bedford, an opportunity for the most
telling repartee, and this opportunity he availed himself of with tre-
mendous effect. As politics, it gives us Burke's own view of his record
as an administrator; as literature, the piece is probably unsurpassed in
the language for lofty and scornful invective.

A LETTER

FROM

THE RIGHT HON. EDMUND BURKE

TO A NOBLE LORD

[1796]

My Lord,

I COULD hardly flatter myself with the hope, that so very early
in the season I should have to acknowledge obligations to the
Duke of Bedford, and to the Earl of Lauderdale. These noble
persons have lost no time in conferring upon me that sort of honour,
which it is alone within their competence, and which it is certainly
most congenial to their nature, and to their manners, to bestow.

To be ill spoken of, in whatever language they speak, by the
zealots of the new sect in philosophy and politics, of which these
noble persons think so charitably, and of which others think so
justly, to me, is no matter of uneasiness or surprise. To have in-
curred the displeasure of the Duke of Orleans or the Duke of Bed-
ford, to fall under the censure of citizen Brissot or of his friend the
Earl of Lauderdale, I ought to consider as proofs, not the least
satisfactory, that I have produced some part to the effect I pro-
posed by my endeavours. I have laboured hard to earn, what the
noble lords are generous enough to pay. Personal offence I have
given them none. The part they take against me is from zeal to the
cause. It is well! It is perfectly well! I have to do homage to their
justice. I have to thank the Bedfords and the Lauderdales for hav-
ing so faithfully and so fully acquitted towards me whatever arrear
of debt was left undischarged by the Priestleys and the Paines.

Some, perhaps, may think them executors in their own wrong: I
at least have nothing to complain of. They have gone beyond the
demands of justice. They have been (a little perhaps beyond their
intention) favourable to me. They have been the means of bringing

381

382 EDMUND BURKE

out, by their invectives, the handsome things vi^hich Lord Grenville
has had the goodness and condescension to say in my behalf. Re-
tired as I am from the world, and from all its affairs and all its
pleasures, I confess it does kindle, in my nearly extinguished feel-
ings, a very vivid satisfaction to be so attacked and so commended
It is soothing to my wounded mind, to be commended by an able,
vigorous, and well-informed statesman, and at the very moment
when he stands forth with a manliness and resolution, worthy of
himself and of his cause, for the preservation of the person and gov-
ernment of our sovereign, and therein for the security of the laws,
the liberties, the morals, and the lives of his people. To be in any
fair way connected with such things, is indeed a distinction. No
philosophy can make me above it; no melancholy can depress me
so low, as to make me wholly insensible to such an honour.

Why will they not let me remain in obscurity and inaction?
Are they apprehensive, that if an atom of me remains, the sect has
something to fear.'' Must I be annihilated, lest, like old John Zisca's,
my skin might be made into a drum, to animate Europe to eternal
battle, against a tyranny that threatens to overwhelm all Europe,
and all the human race.?

My Lord, it is a subject of awful meditation. Before this of
France, the annals of all time have not furnished an instance of a
complete revolution. That Revolution seems to have extended even
to the constitution of the mind of man. It has this of wonderful in
it, that it resembles what Lord Verulam says of the operations of
nature. It was perfect, not only in its elements and principles, but
in all its members and its organs from the very beginning. The
moral scheme of France furnishes the only pattern ever known,
which they who admire will instantly resemble. It is indeed an
inexhaustible repertory of one kind of examples. In my wretched
condition, though hardly to be classed with the living, I am not
safe from them. They have tigers to fall upon animated strength.
They have hyenas to prey upon carcasses. The national menagerie
is collected by the first physiologists of the time; and it is defective
in no description of savage nature. They pursue even such as me,
into the obscurest retreats, and haul them before their revolution-
ary tribunals. Neither sex, nor age, nor the sanctuary of the tomb.

A LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD 383

is sacred to them. They have so determined a hatred to all privi-
leged orders, that they deny even to the departed the sad immuni-
ties of the grave. They are not wholly without an object. Their
turpitude purveys to their malice; and they unplumb the dead for
bullets to assassinate the living. If all revolutionists were not proof
against all caution, I should recommend it to their consideration,
that no persons were ever known in history, either sacred or pro-
fane, to vex the sepulchre, and, by their sorceries, to call up the
prophetic dead, with any other event, than the prediction of their
own disastrous fate. — ^"Leave me, oh leave me to repose!"

In one thing I can excuse the Duke of Bedford for his attack
upon me and my mortuary pension. He cannot readily comprehend
the transaction he condemns. What I have obtained was the fruit
of no bargain; the production of no intrigue; the result of no com-
promise; the effect of no solicitation. The first suggestion of it
never came from me, mediately or immediately, to his Majesty or
any of his ministers. It was long known that the instant my engage-
ments would permit it, and before the heaviest of all calamities had
for ever condemned me to obscurity and sorrow, I had resolved on
a total retreat. I had executed that design. I was entirely out of the
way of serving or of hurting any statesman, or any party, when the
ministers so generously and so nobly carried into effect the spon-
taneous bounty of the crown. Both descriptions have acted as be-
came them. When I could no longer serve them, the ministers have
considered my situation. When I could no longer hurt them, the
revolutionists have trampled on my infirmity. My gratitude, I trust,
is equal to the manner in which the benefit was conferred. It came
to me indeed, at a time of life, and in a state of mind and body,
in which no circumstance of fortune could afford me any real pleas-
ure. But this was no fault in the royal donor, or in his ministers,
who were pleased, in acknowledging the merits of an invalid servant
of the public, to assuage the sorrows of a desolate old man.

It would ill become me to boast of anything. It would as ill
become me, thus called upon, to depreciate the value of a long life,
spent with unexampled toil in the service of my country. Since the
total body of my services, on account of the industry which was
shown in them, and the fairness of my intention.s, have obtained the

384 EDMUND BURKE

acceptance of my sovereign, it would be absurd in me to range my-
self on the side of the Duke of Bedford and the corresponding
society, or, as far as in me lies, to permit a dispute on the rate at
which the authority appointed by our constitution to estimate such
things has been pleased to set them.

Loose libels ought to be passed by in silence and contempt. By
me they have been so always. I knew that as long as I remained
in public, I should live down the calumnies of malice, and the judg-
ments of ignorance. If I happened to be now and then in the
wrong, (as who is not?) like all other men, I must bear the con-
sequence of my faults and my mistakes. The libels of the present
day are just of the same stuff as the libels of the past. But they
derive an importance from the rank of the persons they come from,
and the gravity of the place where they were uttered. In some way
or other I ought to take some notice of them. To assert myself thus
traduced is not vanity or arrogance. It is a demand of justice; it is
a demonstration of gratitude. If I am unworthy, the ministers are
worse than prodigal. On that hypothesis, I perfectly agree with the
Duke of Bedford.

For whatever I have been (I am now no more) I put myself on
my country. I ought to be allowed a reasonable freedom, because
I stand upon my deliverance; and no culprit ought to plead in
irons. Even in the utmost latitude of defensive liberty, I wish to
preserve all possible decorum. Whatever it may be in the eyes of
these noble persons themselves, to me their situation calls for the
most profound respect. If I should happen to trespass a little, which
I trust I shall not, let it always be supposed, that a confusion of char-
acters may produce mistakes; that, in the masquerades of the grand
carnival of our age, whimsical adventures happen; odd things are
said and pass off. If I should fail a single point in the high respect
I owe to those illustrious persons, I cannot be supposed to mean the
Duke of Bedford and the Earl of Lauderdale of the House of Peers,
but the Duke of Bedford and the Earl of Lauderdale of Palace-
Yard! — The Dukes and Earls of Brentford. There they are on the
pavement; there they seem to come nearer to my humble level;
and, virtually at least, to have waived their high privilege.

Making this protestation, I refuse all revolutionary tribunals,

A LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD 385

where men have been put to death for no other reason, than that
they had obtained favours from the Crown. I claim, not the letter,
but the spirit, of the old English law, that is, to be tried by my
peers. I decline his Grace's jurisdiction as a judge. I challenge the
Duke of Bedford as a juror to pass upon the value of my services.
Whatever his natural parts may be, I cannot recognize, in his few
and idle years, the competence to judge of my long and laborious
life. If I can help it, he shall not be on the inquest of my quantum
meruit. Poor rich man! He can hardly know anything of public
industry in its exertions, or can estimate its compensations when its
work is done. I have no doubt of his Grace's readiness in all the
calculations of vulgar arithmetic; but I shrewdly suspect, that he is
little studied in the theory of moral proportions; and has never
learned the rule of three in the arithmetic of policy and state.

His Grace thinks I have obtained too much. I answer, that my
exertions, whatever they have been, were such as no hopes of pe-
cuniary reward could possibly excite; and no pecuniary compensa-
tion can possibly reward them. Between nioney and such services,
if done by abler men than I am, there is no common principle of
comparison; they are quantities incommensurable. Money is made
for the comfort and convenience of animal life. It cannot be a re-
ward for what mere animal life must indeed sustain, but never can
inspire. With submission to his Grace, I have not had more than
sufficient. As to any noble use, I trust I know how to employ, as
well as he, a much greater fortune than he possesses. In a more
confined application, I certainly stand in need of every kind of
relief and easement much more than he does. When I say I have
not received more than I deserve, is this the language I hold to
Majesty? No! Far, very far, from it! Before that presence, I claim
no merit at all. Everything towards me is favour, and bounty. One
style to a gracious benefactor; another to a proud and insulting foe.

His Grace is pleased to aggravate my guilt, by charging my ac-
ceptance of his Majesty's grant as a departure from my ideas, and
the spirit of my conduct with regard to economy. If it be, my
ideas of economy were false and ill-founded. But they are the Duke
of Bedford's ideas of economy I have contradicted, and not my
own. If he means to allude to certain bills brought in by me on

386 EDMUND BURKE

a message from the throne in 1782, I tell him that there is nothing
in my conduct that can contradict either the letter or the spirit of
those acts. Does he mean the pay-office act? I take it for granted
he does not. The act to which he alludes, is, I suppose, the estab-
lishment act. I greatly doubt whether his Grace has ever read the
one or the other. The first of these systems cost me, with every as-
sistance which my then situation gave me, pains incredible. I found
an opinion common through all the offices, and general in the public
at large, that it would prove impossible to reform and methodize the
office of paymaster-general. I undertook it, however; and I suc-
ceeded in my undertaking. Whether the military service, or whether
the general economy of our finances, have profited by that act, I
leave to those who are acquainted with the army, and with the
treasury, to judge.

An opinion full as general prevailed also at the same time, that
nothing could be done for the regulation of the civil-list establish-
ment. The very attempt to introduce method into it, and any limi-
tations to its services, was held absurd. I had not seen the man,
who so much as suggested one economical principle, or an economi-
cal expedient, upon that subject. Nothing but coarse amputation, or
coarser taxation, were then talked of, both of them without design,
combination, or the least shadow of principle. Blind and headlong
zeal, or factious fury, were the whole contribution brought by the
most noisy on that occasion, towards the satisfaction of the public,
or the relief of the Crown.

Let me tell my youthful censor, that the necessities of that time
required something very different from what others then suggested,
or what his Grace now conceives. Let me inform him, that it was
one of the most critical periods in our annals.

Astronomers have supposed, that if a certain comet, whose path
intercepted the ecliptic, had met the earth in some (I forget what)
sign, it would have whirled us along with it, in its eccentric course,
into God knows what regions of heat and cold. Had the portentous
comet of the rights of man, (which "from its horrid hair shakes
pestilence and war," and "with fear of change perplexes monarchs,")
had that comet crossed upon us in that internal state of England,
nothing human could have prevented our being irresistibly hurried,

A LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD 387

out of the highway of heaven, into all the vices, crimes, horrors, and
miseries of the French Revolution.

Happily, France vi^as not then Jacobinised. Her hostility was at
a good distance. We had a limb cut off; but we preserved the body.
We lost our colonies; but we kept our constitution. There was,
indeed, much intestine heat; there was a dreadful fermentation.
Wild and savage insurrection quitted the woods, and prowled about
our streets in the name of reform. Such was the distemper of the
public mind, that there was no madman, in his maddest ideas, and
maddest projects, who might not count upon numbers to support
his principles and execute his designs.

Many of the changes, by a great misnomer called parliamentary
reforms, went, not in the intention of all the professors and sup-
porters of them, undoubtedly, but went in their certain, and, in my
opinion, not very remote effect, home to the utter destruction of the
constitution of this kingdom. Had they taken place, not France,
but England, would have had the honour of leading up the death-
dance of democratic revolution. Other projects, exactly coincident
in time with those, struck at the very existence of the kingdom under
any constitution. There are those who remember the blind fury of
some, and the lamentable helplessness of others; here, a torpid con-
fusion, from a panic fear of the danger; there, the same inaction from
a stupid insensibility to it; here, well-wishers to the mischief; there,
indifferent lookers-on. At the same time, a sort of national conven-
tion, dubious in its nature, and perilous in its example, nosed parlia-
ment in the very seat of its authority; sat with a sort of superin-
tendence over it; and little less than dictated to it, not only laws,
but the very form and essence of legislature itself. In Ireland things
ran in a still more eccentric course. Government was unnerved,
confounded, and in a manner suspended. Its equipoise was totally
gone. I do not mean to speak disrespectfully of Lord North. He
was a man of admirable parts; of general knowledge; of a versatile
understanding fitted for every sort of business; of infinite wit and
pleasantry; of a delightful temper; and with a mind most perfectly
disinterested. But it would be only to degrade myself by a weak
adulation, and not to honour the memory of a great man, to deny
that he wanted something of the vigilance and spirit of command.

388 EDMUND BURKE

that the time required. Indeed, a darkness, next to the fog of this
awful day, loured over the whole region. For a little time the helm
appeared abandoned —

Ipse diem noctemque negat discernere coelo,
Nee meminisse vice medid Palinurus in undd.

At that time I was connected with men of high place in the com-
munity. They loved liberty as much as the Duke of Bedford can
do; and they understood it at least as well. Perhaps their politics,
as usual, took a tincture from their character, and they cultivated
what they loved. The liberty they pursued was a liberty insepara-
ble from order, from virtue, from morals, and from religion; and
was neither hypocritically nor fanatically followed. They did not
wish, that liberty, in itself one of the first of blessings, should in
its perversion become the greatest curse which could fall upon man-
kind. To preserve the constitution entire, and practically equal to
all the great ends of its formation, not in one single part, but in all
its parts, was to them the first object. Popularity and power they
regarded alike. These were with them only different means of ob-
taining that object; and had no preference over each other in their
minds, but as one or the other might afford a surer or a less certain
prospect of arriving at that end. It is some consolation to me in the
cheerless gloom, which darkens the evening of my life, that with
them I commenced my political career, and never for a moment,
in reality, nor in appearance, for any length of time, was separated
from their good wishes and good opinion.

By what accident it matters not, nor upon what desert, but just
then, and in the midst of that hunt of obloquy, which ever has
pursued me with a full cry through life, I had obtained a very con-
siderable degree of public confidence. I know well enough how
equivocal a test this kind of popular opinion forms of the merit
that obtained it. I am no stranger to the insecurity of its tenure. I do
not boast of it. It is mentioned to show, not how highly I prize
the thing, but my right to value the use I made of it. I endeavoured
to turn that short-lived advantage to myself into a permanent benefit
to my country. Far am I from detracting from the merit of some
gentlemen, out of office or in it, on that occasion. No! — It is not

A LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD 389

my way to refuse a full and heaped measure of justice to the aids
that I receive. I have, through life, been willing to give every-
thing to others; and to reserve nothing for myself, but the inward
conscience, that I had omitted no pains to discover, to animate, to
discipline, to direct the abilities of the country for its service, and
to place them in the best light to improve their age, or to adorn
it. This conscience I have. I have never suppressed any man; never
checked him for a moment in his course, by any jealousy or by any
policy. I was always ready, to the height of my means, (and they
were always infinitely below my desires,) to forward those abilities
which overpowered my own. He is an ill-furnished undertaker, who
has no machinery but his own hands to work with. Poor in my own
faculties, I ever thought myself rich in theirs. In that period of
difficulty and danger, more especially, I consulted, and sincerely
co-operated with, men of all parties, who seemed disposed to the
same ends, or to any main part of them. Nothing to prevent dis-
order was omitted: when it appeared, nothing to subdue it was left
uncounselled, nor unexecuted, as far as I could prevail. At the
time I speak of, and having a momentary lead, so aided and so
encouraged, and as a feeble instrument in a mighty hand — I do not
say I saved my country; I am sure I did my country important
service. There were few, indeed, that did not at that time acknowl-
edge it, and that time was thirteen years ago. It was but one voice,
that no man in the kingdom better deserved an honourable provi-
sion should be made for him.

So much for my general conduct through the whole of the por-
tentous crisis from 1780 to 1782, and the general sense then enter-
tained of that conduct by my country. But my character, as a re-
former, in the particular instances which the Duke of Bedford refers
to, is so connected in principle with my opinions on the hideous
changes, which have since barbarized France, and, spreading thence,
threaten the political and moral order of the whole world, that it
seems to demand something of a more detailed discussion.

My economical reforms were not, as his Grace may think, the
suppression of a paltry pension or employment, more or less. Econ-
omy in my plans was, as it ought to be, secondary, subordinate, in-
strumental. I acted on state principles. I found a great distemper in

390 EDMUND BURKE

the commonwealth; and, according to the nature o£ the evil and
of the object, I treated it. The malady was deep; it was complicated,
in the causes and in the symptoms. Throughout it was full of contra-
indicants. On one hand government, daily growing more invidious
from an apparent increase of the means of strength, was every day
growing more contemptible by real weakness. Nor was this disso-
lution confined to government commonly so called. It extended to
parliament; which was losing not a little in its dignity and estima-
tion, by an opinion of its not acting on worthy motives. On the
other hand, the desires of the people (partly natural and partly in-
fused into them by art) appeared in so wild and inconsiderate a
manner, with regard to the economical object, (for I set aside for
a moment the dreadful tampering with the body of the constitution
itself,) that, if their petitions had literally been complied with, the
state would have been convulsed; and a gate would have been
opened, through which all property might be sacked and ravaged.
Nothing could have saved the public from the mischiefs of the false
reform but its absurdity; which would soon have brought itself,
and with it all real reform, into discredit. This would have left a
rankling wound in the hearts of the people, who would know they
had failed in the accomplishment of their wishes, but who, like the
rest of mankind in all ages, would impute the blame to anything
rather than to their own proceedings. But there were then persons
in the world, who nourished complaint; and would have been thor-
oughly disappointed if the people were ever satisfied. I was not of
that humour. I wished that they should be satisfied. It was my aim
to give to the people the substance of what I knew they desired, and
what I thought was right, whether they desired it or not, before it
had been modified for them into senseless petitions. I knew that
there is a manifest, marked distinction, which ill men with ill de-
signs, or weak men incapable of any design, will constantly be con-
founding, that is, a marked distinction between change and reforma-
tion. The former alters the substance of the objects themselves;
and gets rid of all their essential good, as well as of all the accidental
evil, annexed to them. Change is novelty; and whether it is to
operate any one of the effects of reformation at all, or whether it
may not contradict the very principle upon which reformation is

A LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD 39 1

desired, cannot be certainly known beforehand. Reform is, not a
change in the substance, or in the primary modification, of the ob-
ject, but, a direct application of a remedy to the grievance com-
plained of. So far as that is removed, all is sure. It stops there; and,
if it fails, the substance which underwent the operation, at the very-
worst, is but where it was.

All this, in effect, I think, but am not sure, I have said elsewhere.
It cannot at this time be too often repeated; line upon line; precept
upon precept; until it comes into the currency of a proverb, to inno-
vate is not to reform. The French revolutionists complained of
everything; they refused to reform anything; and they left nothing,
no, nothing at all unchanged. The consequences are before us, —
not in remote history; not in future prognostication: they are about
us; they are upon us. They shake the public security; they menace
private enjoyment. They dwarf the growth of the young; they break
the quiet of the old. If we travel, they stop our way. They infest us
in town; they pursue us to the country. Our business is interrupted;
our repose is troubled; our pleasures are saddened; our very studies
are poisoned and perverted, and knowledge is rendered worse than
ignorance, by the enormous evils of this dreadful innovation. The
revolution harpies of France, sprung from night and hell, or from
that chaotic anarchy, which generates equivocally "all monstrous,
all prodigious things," cuckoo-like, adulterously lay their eggs, and
brood over, and hatch them in the nest of every neighbouring state.
These obscene harpies, who deck themselves in I know not what
divine attributes, but who in reality are foul and ravenous birds of
prey, (both mothers and daughters,) flutter over our heads, and
souse down upon our tables, and leave nothing unrent, unrifled, un-
ravaged, or unpolluted with the slime of their filthy offal.'

'Tristius haud illis monstrum, nee s£evior uUa
Pestis, et ira Deum Stygiis sese extulit undis
Virginei volucrum vultus; fEcdissima ventris
Proluvies; uncaeque manus; et pallida semper
Ora fame- —
Here the poet breaks the line, because he (and that he is Virgil) had not verse or
language to describe that monster even as he had conceived her. Had he lived in
our time, he would have been more overpowered with the reality than he was with
the imagination. Virgil only knew the horror of the times before him. Had he lived
to see the revolutionists and constitutionalists of France, he would have had more
horrid and disgusting features of his harpies to describe, and more frequent failures
in the attempt to describe them.

392 EDMUND BURKE

If his Grace can contemplate the result of this complete innova-
tion, or, as some friends of his will call it, reform, in the whole
body of its solidity and compounded mass, at which, as Hamlet
says, the face of heaven glows with horror and indignation, and
which, in truth, makes every reflecting mind, and every feeling
heart, perfectly thought-sick, without a thorough abhorrence of
everything they say, and everything they do, I am amazed at the
morbid strength or the natural infirmity of his mind.

It was then not my love, but my hatred, to innovation, that pro-
duced my plan of reform. Without troubling myself with the ex-
actness of the logical diagram, I considered them as things sub-
stantially opposite. It was to prevent that evil, that I proposed the
measures, which his Grace is pleased, and I am not sorry he is
pleased, to recall to my recollection. I had (what I hope that noble
duke will remember in all its operations) a state to preserve, as well
as a state to reform. I had a people to gratify, but not to inflame, or
to mislead. I do not claim half the credit for what I did, as for
what I prevented from being done. In that situation of the public
mind, I did not undertake, as was then proposed, to new-model
the House of Commons or the House of Lords; or to change the
authority under which any officer of the Crown acted, who was
suffered at all to exist. Crown, Lords, Commons, judicial system,
system of administration, existed as they had existed before; and in
the mode and manner in which they had always existed. My meas-
ures were, what I then truly stated them to the House to be, in
their intent, healing and mediatorial. A complaint was made of too
much influence in the House of Commons; I reduced it in both
Houses; and I gave my reasons article by article for every reduction,
and showed why I thought it safe for the service of the state. I
heaved the lead every inch of way I made. A disposition to
expense was complained of; to that I opposed, not mere retrench-
ment, but a system of economy, which would make a random ex-
pense, without plan or foresight, in future not easily practicable.
I proceeded upon principles of research to put me in possession of
my matter; on principles of method to regulate it; and on princi-
ples in the human mind and in civil affairs to secure and perpetuate
the operation. I conceived nothing arbitrarily; nor proposed any-

A LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD 393

thing to be done by the will and pleasure of others, or my own;
but by reason, and by reason only. I have ever abhorred, since the
first dawn of my understanding to this its obscure twilight, all the
operations of opinion, fancy, inclination, and will, in the affairs of
government, where only a sovereign reason, paramount to all forms
of legislation and administration, should dictate. Government is
made for the very purpose of opposing that reason to will and ca-
price, in the reformers or in the reformed, in the governors or in
the governed, in kings, in senates, or in people.

On a careful review, therefore, and analysis, of all the component
parts of the civil list, and on weighing them against each other, in
order to make, as much as possible, all of them a subject of estimate,
(the foundation and cornerstone of all regular provident economy,)
is appeared to me evident, that this was impracdcable, whilst that
part, called the pensiofl list, was totally discretionary in its amount.
For this reason, and for this only, I proposed to reduce it, both in its
gross quantity, and in its larger individual proportions, to a certainty;
lest, if it were left without a general limit, it might eat up the civil-
list service; if suffered to be granted in portions too great for the
fund, it might defeat its own end; and, by unlimited allowances to
some, it might disable the Crown in means of providing for others.
The pension list was to be kept as a sacred fund; but it could not
be kept as a constant, open fund, suiHcient for growing demands, if
some demands would wholly devour it. The tenour of the act will
show that it regarded the civil list only, the reduction of which to
some sort of estimate was my great object.

No other of the Crown funds did I meddle with, because they
had not the same relations. This of the four and a half per cents,
does his Grace imagine had escaped me, or had escaped all the men
of business, who acted with me in those regulations? I knew that
such a fund existed, and that pensions had been always granted on
it, before his Grace was born. This fund was full in my eye. It was
full in the eyes of those who worked with me. It was left on princi-
ple. On principle I did what was then done; and on principle what
was left undone was omitted. I did not dare to rob the nation of
all funds to reward merit. If I pressed this point too close, I acted
contrary to the avowed principles on which I went. Gentlemen are

394 EDMUND BURKE

very fond of quoting me; but if any one thinks it worth his while
to know the rules that guided me in my plan of reform, he will read
my printed speech on that subject; at least what is contained from
page 230 to page 241 in the second volume of the collection which
a friend has given himself the trouble to make of my publications.
Be this as it may, these two bills, (though achieved with the great-
est labour, and management of every sort, both within and without
the House,) were only a part, and but a small part, of a very large
system, comprehending all the objects I stated in opening my propo-
sition, and, indeed, many more, which I just hinted at in my speech
to the electors of Bristol, when I was put out of that representation.
All these, in some state or other of forwardness, I have long had
by me.

But do I justify his Majesty's grace on these grounds? I think
them the least of my services! The time gave them an occasional
value. What I have done in the way of political economy was far
from confined to this body of measures. I did not come into parlia-
ment to con my lesson. I had earned my pension before I set my
foot in St. Stephen's chapel. I was prepared and disciplined to this
political warfare. The first session I sat in parliament, I found it
necessary to analyze the whole commercial, financial, constitutional,
and foreign interests of Great Britain and its empire, A great deal
was then done; and more, far more, would have been done, if more
had been permitted by events. Then, in the vigour of my man-
hood, my constitution sunk under my labour. Had I then died,
(and I seemed to myself very near death,) I had then earned for
those who belonged to me, more than the Duke of Bedford's ideas
of service are of power to estimate. But, in truth, these services I
am called to account for are not those on which I value myself the
most. If I were to call for a reward, (which I have never done,) it
should be for those in which for fourteen years, without intermis-
sion, I showed the most industry, and had the least success; I mean
in the affairs of India. They are those on which I value myself
the most; most for the importance; most for the labour; most for
the judgment; most for constancy and perseverance in the pursuit.
Others may value them most for the intention. In that, surely, they
are not mistaken.

A LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD 395

Does his Grace think, that they, who advised the Crown to make
my retreat easy, considered me only as an economist? That, well
understood, however, is a good deal. If I had not deemed it of
some value, I should not have made political economy an object of
my humble studies, from my very early youth to near the end of
my service in parliament, even before (at least to any knowledge of
mine) it had employed the thoughts of speculative men in other
parts of Europe. At that time it was still in its infancy in England,
where, in the last century, it had its origin. Great and learned men
thought my studies were not wholly thrown away, and deigned to
communicate with me now and then on some particulars of their
immortal works. Something of these studies may appear inciden-
tally in some of the earliest things I published. The House has
been witness to their effect, and has profited of them more or less
for above eight and twenty years.

To their estimate I leave the matter. I was not, like his Grace of
Bedford, swaddled, and rocked, and dandled into a legislator;
"Nitor in adversutn" is the motto for a man like me. I possessed not
one of the qualities, nor cultivated one of the arts, that recom-
mend men to the favour and protection of the great. I was not
made for a minion or a tool. As little did I follow the trade of
winning the hearts, by imposing on the understandings, of the peo-
ple. At every step of my progress in life, (for in every step was I
traversed and opposed,) and at every turnpike I met, I was obliged
to show my passport, and again and again to prove my sole title to
the honour of being useful to my country, by a proof that I was not
wholly unacquainted with its laws, and the whole system of its in-
terests both abroad and at home. Otherwise no rank, no toleration,
even for me. I had no arts but manly arts. On them I have stood,
and, please God, in spite of the Duke of Bedford and the Earl of
Lauderdale, to the last gasp will I stand.

Had his Grace condescended to inquire concerning the person,
whom he has not thought it below him to reproach, he might have
found that, in the whole course of my life, I have never, on any pre-
tence of economy, or on any other pretence, so much as in a single
instance, stood between any man and his reward of service, or his
encouragement in useful talent and pursuit, from the highest of

396 EDMUND BURKE

those services and pursuits to the lowest. On the contrary I have,
on an hundred occasions, exerted myself with singular zeal to for-
ward every man's even tolerable pretensions. I have more than
once had good-natured reprehensions from my friends for carrying
the matter to something bordering on abuse. This line of conduct,
whatever its merits might be, was partly owing to natural disposi-
tion; but I think full as much to reason and principle. I looked on
the consideration of public service, or public ornament, to be real
and very justice: and I ever held a scanty and penurious justice to
partake of the nature of a wrong. I held it to be, in its conse-
quences, the worst economy in the world. In saving money, I soon
can count up all the good I do; but when, by a cold penury, I blast
the abilities of a nation, and stunt the growth of its active energies,
the ill I may do is beyond all calculation. Whether it be too much
or too litde, whatever I have done has been general and systematic.
I have never entered into those trifling, vexatious, and oppressive
details, that have been falsely, and most ridiculously, laid to my
charge.

Did I blame the pensions given to Mr. Barre and Mr. Dunning
between the proposition and execution of my plan? No! surely no!
Those pensions were within my principles. I assert it, those gentle-
men deserved their pensions, their titles — all they had; and more
had they had, I should have been but pleased the more. They were
men of talents; they were men of service. I put the profession of
the law out of the question in one of them. It is a service that re-
wards itself. But their public service, though, from their abilities
unquestionably of more value than mine, in its quantity and its
duration was not to be mentioned with it. But I never could drive
a hard bargain in my life, concerning any matter whatever; and
least of all do I know how to haggle and huckster with merit. Pen-
sion for myself I obtained none; nor did I solicit any. Yet I was
loaded with hatred for everything that was withheld, and with oblo-
quy for everything that was given. I was thus left to support the
grants of a name ever dear to me, and ever venerable to the world,
in favour of those, who were no friends of mine or of his, against
the rude attacks of those who were at that time friends to the gran-
tees, and their own zealous partisans. I have never heard the Earl

A LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD 397

of Lauderdale complain of these pensions. He finds nothing wrong
till he comes to me. This is impartiality, in the true, modern, revo-
lutionary style.

Whatever I did at that time, so far as it regarded order and
economy, is stable and eternal; as all principles must be. A par-
ticular order of things may be altered; order itself cannot lose its
value. As to other particulars, they are variable by time and by
circumstances. Laws of regulation are not fundamental laws. The
public exigencies are the masters of all such laws. They rule the
laws, and are not to be ruled by them. They who exercise the legis-
lative power at the time must j udge.

It may be new to his Grace, but I beg leave to tell him, that mere
parsimony is not economy. It is separable in theory from it; and in
fact it may, or it may not, be a part of economy, according to cir-
cumstances. Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in
true economy. If parsimony were to be considered as one of the
kinds of that virtue, there is however another and a higher econ-
omy. Economy is a distributive virtue, and consists not in saving,
but in selection. Parsimony requires no providence, no sagacity, no
powers of combination, no comparison, no judgment. Mere instinct,
and that not an instinct of the noblest kind, may produce this false
economy in perfection. The other economy has larger views. It
demands a discriminating judgment, and a firm, sagacious mind. It
shuts one door to impudent importunity, only to open another, and
a wider, to unpresuming merit. If none but meritorious service or
real talent were to be rewarded, this nation has not wanted, and this
nation will not want, the means of rewarding all the service it ever
will receive, and encouraging all the merit it ever will produce. No
state, since the foundation of society, has been impoverished by that
species of profusion. Had the economy of selection and proportion
been at all times observed, we should not now have had an over-
grown Duke of Bedford, to oppress the industry of humble men,
and to limit, by the standard of his own conceptions, the justice, the
bounty, or, if he pleases, the charity of the Crown.

His Grace may think as meanly as he will of my deserts in the
far greater part of my conduct in life. It is free for him to do so.
There will always be some difference of opinion in the value of

398 EDMUND BURKE

political services. But there is one merit of mine, which he, of all men
living, ought to be the last to call in question. I have supported with
very great zeal, and I am told with some degree of success, those
opinions, or if his Grace likes another expression better, those old
prejudices, which buoy up the ponderous mass of his nobility, wealth,
and titles. I have omitted no exertion to prevent him and them from
sinking to that level, to which the meretricious French faction, his
Grace at least coquets with, omit no exertion to reduce both. I have
done all I could to discountenance their inquiries into the fortunes of
those, who hold large portions of wealth without any apparent
merit of their own. I have strained every nerve to keep the Duke of
Bedford in that situation, which alone makes him my superior.
Your Lordship has been a witness of the use he makes of that pre-
eminence.

But be it, that this is virtue! Be it, that there is virtue in this
well-selected rigour; yet all virtues are not equally becoming to all
men and at all times. There are crimes, undoubtedly there are
crimes, which in all seasons of our existence, ought to put a generous
antipathy in action; crimes that provoke an indignant justice, and
call forth a warm and animated pursuit. But all things that concern,
what I may call, the preventive police of morality, all things merely
rigid, harsh, and censorial, the antiquated moralists, at whose feet
I was brought up, would not have thought these the fittest matter
to form the favourite virtues of young men of rank. What might
have been well enough, and have been received with a veneration
mixed with awe and terror, from an old, severe, crabbed Cato,
would have wanted something of propriety in the young Scipios,
the ornament of the Roman nobility, in the flower of their life. But
the times, the morals, the masters, the scholars, have all undergone a
thorough revolution. It is a vile illiberal school, this new French
academy of the sans culottes. There is nothing in it that is fit for a
gentleman to learn.

Whatever its vogue may be, I still flatter myself, that the parents
of the growing generation will be satisfied with what is to be taught
to their children in Westminster, in Eton, or in Winchester: I still
indulge the hope that no grown gentleman or nobleman of our time
will think of finishing at Mr. Tbelwall's lecture whatever may

A LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD 399

have been left incomplete at the old universities of his country. I
would give to Lord Grenville and Mr. Pitt for a motto, what was
said of a Roman censor or praetor (or what was he?) who, in virtue
of a Senatus consultum, shut up certain academies,
"Cludere ludum impudentiis jussit."
Every honest father of a family in the kingdom will rejoice at the
breaking up for the holidays, and will pray that there may be a
very long vacation in all such schools.

The awful state of the time, and not myself, or my own justifica-
tion, is my true object in what I now write; or in what I shall ever
write or say. It little signifies to the world what becomes of such
things as me, or even as the Duke of Bedford. What I say about
either of us is nothing more than a vehicle, as you, my Lord, will
easily perceive, to convey my sentiments on matters far more worthy
of your attention. It is when I stick to my apparent first subject that
I ought to apologize, not when I depart from it. I therefore must
beg your Lordship's pardon for again resuming it after this very
short digression; assuring you that I shall never altogether lose
sight of such matter as persons abler than I am may turn to some
profit.

The Duke of Bedford conceives, that he is obliged to call the
attention of the House of Peers to his Majesty's grant to me, which
he considers as excessive, and out of all bounds.

I know not how it has happened, but it really seems, that, whilst
his Grace was meditating his well-considered censure upon me, he
fell into a sort of sleep. Homer nods; and the Duke of Bedford
may dream; and as dreams (even his golden dreams) are apt to be
ill-pieced and incongruously put together, his Grace preserved his
idea of reproach to me, but took the subject-matter from the Crown
grants to his own family. This is "the stuff of which his dreams are
made." In that way of putting things together his Grace is perfectly
in the right. The grants to the house of Russell were so enormous,
as not only to outrage economy, but even to stagger credibility. The
Duke of Bedford is the leviathan among all the creatures of the
Crown. He tumbles about his unwieldy bulk; he plays and frolics
in the ocean of the royal bounty. Huge as he is, and whilst "he
lies floating many a rood," he is still a creature. His ribs, his fins, his

400 EDMUND BURKE

whalebone, his blubber, the very spiracles through which he spouts
a torrent of brine against his origin, and covers me all over with the
spray, — everything of him and about him is from the throne. Is it
for him to question the dispensation of the royal favour?

I really am at a loss to draw any sort of parallel between the
public merits of his Grace, by which he justifies the grants he holds,
and these services of mine, on the favourable construction of which
I have obtained what his Grace so much disapproves. In private
life, I have not at all the honour of acquaintance with the noble
Duke. But I ought to presume, and it costs me nothing to do so,
that he abundantly deserves the esteem and love of all who live with
him. But as to public service, why truly it would not be more ridicu-
lous for me to compare myself in rank, in fortune, in splendid de-
scent, in youth, strength, or figure, with the Duke of Bedford, than
to make a parallel between his services and my attempts to be
useful to my country. It would not be gross adulation, but uncivil
irony, to say, that he has any public merit of his own to keep alive
the idea of the services, by which his vast landed pensions were
obtained. My merits, whatever they are, are original and personal;
his are derivative. It is his ancestor, the original pensioner, that has
laid up this inexhaustible fund of merit, which makes his Grace so
very delicate and exceptions about the merit of all other grantees of
the Crown. Had he permitted me to remain in quiet, I should
have said, 'tis his estate; that's enough. It is his by law; what have
I to do with it or its history? He would naturally have said on
his side, 'tis this man's fortune. — He is as good now as my ancestor
was two hundred and fifty years ago. I am a young man with very
old pensions; he is an old man with very young pensions, — that's all.

Why will his Grace, by attacking me, force me reluctantly to
compare my little merit with that which obtained from the Crown
those prodigies of profuse donation, by which he tramples on the
mediocrity of humble and laborious individuals? I would willingly
leave him to the herald's college, which the philosophy of the sans-
culottes (prouder by far than all the Garters, and Norroys, and
Clarencieux, and Rouge Dragons, that ever pranced in a procession
of what his friends call aristocrats and despots) will abolish with
contumely and scorn. These historians, recorders, and blazoners of

A LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD 4OI

virtues and arms, differ wholly from that other description o£ his-
torians, who never assign any act of politicians to a good motive.
These gentle historians, on the contrary, dip their pens in nothing
but the milk of human kindness. They seek no further for merit
than the preamble of a patent, or the inscription on a tomb. With
them every man created a peer is first a hero ready made. They
judge of every man's capacity for office by the offices he has filled;
and the more offices the more ability. Every general officer with
them is a Marlborough; every statesman a Burleigh; every judge a
Murray or a Yorke. They who, alive, were laughed at or pitied by
all their acquaintance, make as good a figure as the best of them in
the pages of Guillim, Edmondson, and Collins.

To these recorders, so full of good nature to the great and pros-
perous, I would willingly leave the first Baron Russell, and Earl of
Bedford, and the merits of his grants. But the aulnager, the
weigher, the meter of grants will not suffer us to acquiesce in the
judgment of the prince reigning at the time when they were made.
They are never good to those who earn them. Well then; since the
new grantees have war made on them by the old, and that the
word of the sovereign is not to be taken, let us turn our eyes to
history, in which great men have always a pleasure in contemplating
the heroic origin of their house.

The first peer of the name, the first purchaser of the grants, was
a Mr. Russell, a person of an ancient gentleman's family raised by
being a minion of Henry the Eighth. As there generally is some
resemblance of character to create these relations, the favourite was
in all likelihood much such another as his master. The first of those
immoderate grants was not taken from the ancient demesne of the
Crown, but from the recent confiscation of the ancient nobility of
the land. The lion having sucked the blood of his prey, threw the
offal carcass to the jackal in waiting. Having tasted once the food
of confiscation, the favourites became fierce and ravenous. This
worthy favourite's first grant was from the lay nobility. The sec-
ond, infinitely improving on the enormity of the first, was from
the plunder of the church. In truth his Grace is somewhat excusable
for his dislike to a grant like mine, not only in its quantity, but in
its kind so different from his own.

402 EDMUND BURKE

Mine was from a mild and benevolent sovereign; his from Henry
the Eighth.

Mine had not its fund in the murder of any innocent person of
illustrious rank/ or in the pillage of any body of unoffending men.
His grants were from the aggregate and consolidated funds of
judgments iniquitously legal, and from possessions voluntarily sur-
rendered by the lawful proprietors, with the gibbet at their door.

The merit of the grantee whom he derives from was that of being
a prompt and greedy instrument of a levelling tyrant, who oppressed
all descriptions of his people, but who fell with particular fury on
everything that was great and noble. Mine has been, in endeavour-
ing to screen every man, in every class, from oppression, and par-
ticularly in defending the high and eminent, who in the bad times
of confiscating princes, confiscating chief governors, or confiscating
demagogues, are the most exposed to jealousy, avarice, and envy.

The merit of the original grantee of his Grace's pensions was in
giving his hand to the work and partaking the spoil with a prince,
who plundered a part of the national church of his time and coun-
try. Mine was in defending the whole of the national church of my
own time and my own country, and the whole of the national
churches of all countries, from the principles and the examples
which lead to ecclesiastical pillage, thence to a contempt of all pre-
scriptive titles, thence to the pillage of all property, and thence to
universal desolation.

The merit of the origin of his Grace's fortune was in being a
favourite and chief adviser to a prince, who left no liberty to their
native country. My endeavour was to obtain liberty for the munici-
pal country in which I was born, and for all descriptions and de-
nominations in it. Mine was to support with unrelaxing vigilance
every right, every privilege, every franchise, in this my adopted, my
dearer, and more comprehensive country; and not only to preserve
those rights in this chief seat of empire, but in every nation, in
every land, in every climate, language, and religion, in the vast do-
main that is still under the protection, and the larger that was once
under the protection, of the British Crown.

^ See the history of the melancholy catastrophe of the Duke of Buckingham. Temp.
Hen. 8.

A LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD 4O3

His founder's merits were, by arts in which he served his master
and made his fortune, to bring poverty, wretchedness, and depopula-
tion on his country. Mine were, under a benevolent prince, in pro-
moting the commerce, manufactures, and agriculture of his king-
dom; in which his Majesty shows an eminent example, who even
in his amusements is a patriot, and in hours of leisure an improver
of his native soil.

His founder's merit was the merit of a gentleman raised by the
arts of a court, and the protection of a Wolsey, to the eminence of
a great and potent lord. His merit in that eminence was, by insti-
gating a tyrant to injustice, to provoke a people to rebellion. My
merit was, to awaken the sober part of the country, that they might
put themselves on their guard against any one potent lord, or any
greater number of potent lords, or any combination of great lead-
ing men of any sort, if ever they should attempt to proceed in the
same courses, but in the reverse order; that is, by instigating a cor-
rupted populace to rebellion, and, through that rebellion, introduc-
ing a tyranny yet worse than the tyranny which his Grace's ances-
tor supported, and of which he profited in the manner we behold
in the despotism of Henry the Eighth.

The political merit of the first pensioner of his Grace's house
was that of being concerned as a counsellor of state in advising, and
in his person executing, the conditions of a dishonourable peace with
France; the surrendering the fortress of Boulogne, then our out-
guard on the continent. By that surrender, Calais, the key of
France, and the bridle in the mouth of that power, was, not many
years afterwards, finally lost. My merit has been in resisting the
power and pride of France, under any form of its rule; but in op-
posing it with the greatest zeal and earnestness, when that rule ap-
peared in the worst form it could assume; the worst indeed which
the prime cause and principle of all evil could possibly give it. It
was my endeavour by every means to excite a spirit in the House
where I had the honour of a seat, for carrying on, with early vigour
and decision, the most clearly just and necessary war, that this or
any nation ever carried on; in order to save my country from the
iron yoke of its power, and from the more dreadful contagion of its
principles; to preserve, while they can be preserved, pure and

404 EDMUND BURKE

untainted, the ancient, inbred integrity, piety, good nature, and good
humour of the people of England, from the dreadful pestilence,
which, beginning in France, threatens to lay waste the whole moral,
and in a great degree the whole physical, world, having done both
in the focus of its most intense malignity.

The labours of his Grace's founder merited the curses, not loud
but deep, of the Commons of England, on whom he and his master
had effected a complete parliamentary reform, by making them, in
their slavery and humiliation, the true and adequate representatives
of a debased, degraded, and undone people. My merits were, in
having had an active, though not always an ostentatious, share, in
every one act, without exception, of undisputed constitutional util-
ity in my time, and in having supported, on all occasions, the au-
thority, the efficiency, and the privileges of the Commons of Great
Britain. I ended my services by a recorded and fully reasoned asser-
tion on their own journals of their constitutional rights, and a vin-
dication of their constitutional conduct. I laboured in all things to
merit their inward approbation, and (along with the assistance of
the largest, the greatest, and best of my endeavours) I received their
free, unbiassed, public, and solemn thanks.

Thus stands the account of the comparative merits of the Crown
grants which compose the Duke of Bedford's fortune as balanced
against mine. In the name of common sense, why should the Duke
of Bedford think that none but of the House of Russell are entitled
to the favour of the Crown? Why should he imagine that no king
of England has been capable of judging of merit but King Henry
the Eighth? Indeed, he will pardon me; he is a little mistaken; all
virtue did not end in the first Earl of Bedford. All discernment
did not lose its vision when his Creator closed his eyes. Let him
remit his rigour on the disproportion between merit and reward
in others, and they will make no inquiry into the origin of his
fortune. They will regard with much more satisfaction as he will
contemplate with infinitely more advantage, whatever in his pedi-
gree has been dulcified by an exposure to the influence of heaven
in a long flow of generations, from the hard, acidulous, metallic
tincture of the spring. It is little to be doubted, that several of his
forefathers in that long series have degenerated into honour and

A LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD 405

virtue. Let the Duke of Bedford (I am sure he will) reject with
scorn and horror the counsels of the lecturers, those wicked panders
to avarice and ambition, who would tempt him, in the troubles of
his country, to seek another enormous fortune from the forfeitures
of another nobility, and the plunder of another church. Let him
(and I trust that yet he will) employ all the energy of his youth,
and all the resources of his wealth, to crush rebellious principles
which have no foundation in morals, and rebellious movements that
have no provocation in tyranny.

Then will be forgot the rebellions, which, by a doubtful priority,
in crime, his ancestor had provoked and extinguished. On such a
conduct in the noble Duke, many of his countrymen might, and
with some excuse might, give way to the enthusiasm of their grati-
tude, and, in the dashing style of some of the old declaimers, cry
out, that if the fates had found no other way in which they could
give a' Duke of Bedford and his opulence as props to a tottering
world, then the butchery of the Duke of Buckingham might be
tolerated; it might be regarded even with complacency, whilst in
the heir of confiscation they saw the sympathizing comforter of the
martyrs, who suffered under the cruel confiscation of this day;
whilst they behold with admiration his zealous protection of the
virtuous and loyal nobility of France, and his manly support of his
brethren, the yet standing nobility and gentry of his native land.
Then his Grace's merit would be pure, and new, and sharp, as fresh
from the mint of honour. As he pleased he might reflect honour on
his predecessors, or throw it forward on those who were to succeed
him. He might be the propagator of the stock of honour, or the root
of it, as he thought proper.

Had it pleased God to continue to me the hopes of succession,
I should have been, according to my mediocrity, and the mediocrity
of the age I live in, a sort of founder of a family. I should have
left a son, who, in all the points in which personal merit can be
viewed, in science, in erudition, in genius, in taste, in honour, in
generosity, in humanity, in every liberal sentiment, and every liberal
accomplishment, would not have shown himself inferior to the Duke
of Bedford or to any of those whom he traces in his line. His Grace
^At si non aliam venture fata Neroni, &c.

4o6 EDMUND BURKE

very soon would have wanted all plausibility in his attack upon that
provision which belonged more to mine than to me. He would
soon have supplied every deficiency, and symmetrized every dis-
proportion. It would not have been for that successor to resort to
any stagnant wasting reservoir of merit in me, or in any ancestry.
He had in himself a salient, living spring of generous and manly
action. Every day he lived he would have re-purchased the bounty
of the Crown, and ten times more, if ten times more he had received.
He was made a public creature; and had no enjoyment whatever,
but in the performance of some duty. At this exigent moment, the
loss of a finished man is not easily supplied.

But a Disposer whose power we are little able to resist, and whose
wisdom it behoves us not at all to dispute, has ordained it in another
manner, and (whatever my querulous weakness might suggest) a
far better. The storm has gone over me; and I lie like one of those
old oaks which the late hurricane has scattered about me. I am
stripped of all my honours, I am torn up by the roots, and lie
prostrate on the earth! There, and prostrate there, I most un-
feignedly recognize the Divine justice, and in some degree submit to
it. But whilst I humble myself before God, I do not know that it
is forbidden to repel the attacks of unjust and inconsiderate men.
The patience of Job is proverbial. After some of the convulsive
struggles of our irritable nature, he submitted himself, and repented
in dust and ashes. But even so, I do not find him blamed for repre-
hending, and with a considerable degree of verbal asperity, those
ill-natured neighbours of his, who visited his dunghill to read moral,
political, and economical lectures on his misery. I am alone, I have
none to meet my enemies in the gate. Indeed, my Lord, I greatly
deceive myself, if in this hard season I would give a peck of refuse
wheat for all that is called fame and honour in the world. This
is the appetite but of a few. It is a luxury, it is a privilege, it is an
indulgence for those who are at their ease. But we are all of us
made to shun disgrace, as we are made to shrink from pain, and
poverty, and disease. It is an instinct; and under the direction of
reason, instinct is always in the right. I live in an inverted order.
They who ought to have succeeded me are gone before me. They
who should have been to me a posterity are in the place of ances-

A LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD 407

tors. I owe to the dearest relation (which ever must subsist in mem-
ory) that act of piety, which he would have performed to me; I owe
it to him to show that he was not descended, as the Duke of Bed-
ford would have it, from an unworthy parent.

The Crown has considered me after long service: the Crown
has paid the Duke of Bedford by advance. He has had a long credit
for any service which he may perform hereafter. He is secure, and
long may he be secure, in his advance, whether he performs any
services or not. But let him take care how he endangers the safety
of that constitution which secures his own utility or his own insig-
nificance; or how he discourages those, who take up, even puny
arms, to defend an order of things, which, like the sun of heaven,
shines alike on the useful and the worthless. His grants are in-
grafted on the public law of Europe, covered with the awful hoar of
innumerable ages. They are guarded by the sacred rules of pre-
scription, found in that full treasury of jurisprudence from which
the jejuneness and penury of our municipal law has, by degrees,
been enriched and strengthened. This prescription I had my share
(a very full share) in bringing to its perfection.* The Duke of Bed-
ford will stand as long as prescriptive law endures: as long as the
great stable laws of property, common to us with all civilized na-
tions, are kept in their integrity, and without the smallest intermix-
ture of laws, maxims, principles, or precedents of the grand Revolu-
tion. They are secure against all changes but one. The whole revo-
lutionary system, institutes, digest, code, novels, text, gloss, comment
are, not only not the same, but they are the very reverse, and the
reverse fundamentally, of all the laws, on which civil life has hith-
erto been upheld in all the governments of the world. The learned
professors of the rights of man regard prescription, not as a title to
bar all claim, set up against all possession — but they look on pre-
scription as itself a bar against the possessor and proprietor. They
hold an immemorial possession to be no more than a long<ontiaued,
and therefore an aggravated injustice.

Such are their ideas; such their religion; and such their law. But
as to our country and our race, as long as the well-compacted struc-
ture of our church and state, the sanctuary, the holy of holies of that
■• Sir George Savile's Act called The Nullum Tempus Act.

408 EDMUND BURKE

ancient law, defended by reverence, defended by power, a fortress
at once and a temple,'' shall stand inviolate on the brow of the
British Sion — as long as the British monarchy, not more limited
than fenced by the orders of the state, shall, like the proud Keep
of Windsor, rising in the majesty of proportion, and girt with the
double belt of its kindred and coeval towers, as long as this awful
structure shall oversee and guard the subjected land — so long the
mounds and dykes of the low, fat Bedford level will have nothing
to fear from the pickaxes of all the levellers of France. As long as
our sovereign lord the king, and his faithful subjects, the Lords and
Commons of this realm, — the triple cord, which no man can break;
the solemn, sworn, constitutional frank-pledge of this nation; the
firm guarantees of each other's being, and each other's rights; the
joint and several securities, each in its place and order, for every
kind and every quality, of property and of dignity; — as long as
these endure, so long the Duke of Bedford is safe: and we are all
safe together — the high from the blights of envy and the spoliations
of rapacity; the low from the iron hand of oppression and the in-
solent spurn of contempt. Amen! and so be it: and so it will be,

Dum domus JEnece Capitoli immobile saxum
Accolet; imperiumque pater Romanus kabebit. —

But if the rude inroad of Gallic tumult, with its sophistical rights
of man, to falsify the account, and its sword as a make-weight to
throw into the scale, shall be introduced into our city by a mis-
guided populace, set on by proud great men, themselves blinded and
intoxicated by a frantic ambition, we shall, all of us, perish and be
overwhelmed in a common ruin. If a great storm blow on our
coast, it will cast the whales on the strand as well as the periwinkles.
His Grace will not survive the poor grantee he despises, no, not for
a twelvemonth. If the great look for safety in the services they
render to this Gallic cause, it is to be foolish, even above the weight
of privilege allowed to wealth. If his Grace be one of these whom
they endeavour to proselytize, he ought to be aware of the character
of the sect, whose doctrines he is invited to embrace. With them
insurrection is the most sacred of revolutionary duties to the state.
^ Templum in modum arcis. Tacitus, o£ the Temple o£ Jerusalem.

A LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD 409

Ingratitude to benefactors is the first of revolutionary virtues. In-
gratitude is indeed their four cardinal virtues compacted and amal-
gamated into one; and he will find it in everything that has
happened since the commencement of the philosophic Revolution
to this hour. If he pleads the merit of having performed the duty
of insurrection against the order he lives, (God forbid he ever
should,) the merit of others v^^ill be to perform the duty of insurrec-
tion against him. If he pleads (again God forbid he should, and
I do not suspect he will) his ingratitude to the Crown for its
creation of his family, others will plead their right and duty to pay
him in kind. They will laugh, indeed they will laugh, at his parch-
ment and his wax. His deeds will be drawn out with the rest of
the lumber of his evidence room, and burnt to the tune of ^a ira in
the courts of Bedford (then Equality) house.

Am I to blame, if I attempt to pay his Grace's hostile reproaches
to me with a friendly admonition to himself? Can I be blamed, for
pointing out to him in what manner he is likely to be affected, if the
sect of the cannibal philosophers of France should proselytize any
considerable part of this people, and by their joint proselytizing arms,
should conquer that government, to which his Grace does not seem
to me to give all the support his own security demands? Surely it
is proper, that he, and that others like him, should know the true
genius of this sect; what their opinions are, what they have done;
and to whom; and what (if a prognostic is to be formed from the
dispositions and actions of men) it is certain they will do hereafter.
He ought to know, that they have sworn assistance, the only engage-
ment they ever will keep, to all in this country, who bear a resem-
blance to themselves, and who think as such, that The whole duty of
man consists in destruction. They are a misallied and disparaged
branch of the house of Nimrod. They are the Duke of Bedford's
natural hunters; and he is their natural game. Because he is not very
profoundly reflecting, he sleeps in profound security: they, on the
contrary, are always vigilant, active, enterprising, and, though far
removed from any knowledge which makes men estimable or use-
ful, in all the instruments and resources of evil, their leaders are not
meanly instructed, or insufficiently furnished. In the French Revo-
lution everything is new; and, from want of preparation to meet so

4IO EDMUND BURKE

unlooked-for an evil, everything is dangerous. Never, before this
time, was a set of literary men converted into a gang of robbers and
assassins. Never before did a den of bravoes and banditti assume the
garb and tone of an academy of philosophers.

Let me tell his Grace, that an union of such characters, monstrous
as it seems, is not made for producing despicable enemies. But if
they are formidable as foes, as friends they are dreadful indeed. The
men of property in France confiding in a force, which seemed to be
irresistible, because it had never been tried, neglected to prepare for
a conflict with their enemies at their own weapons. They were
found in such a situation as the Mexicans were, when they were
attacked by the dogs, the cavalry, the iron, and the gunpowder, of
a handful of bearded men, whom they did not know to exist in
nature. This is a comparison that some, I think, have made; and it
is just. In France they had their enemies within their houses. They
were even in the bosoms of many of them. But they had not sagacity
to discern their savage character. They seemed tame, and even caress-
ing. They had nothing but douce humanite in their mouth. They
could not bear the punishment of the mildest laws on the greatest
criminals. The slightest severity of justice made their flesh creep.
The very idea that war existed in the world disturbed their repose.
Military glory was no more, with them, than a splendid infamy.
Hardly would they hear of self-defence, which they reduced within
such bounds, as to leave it no defence at all. All this while they medi-
tated the confiscations and massacres we have seen. Had any one
told these unfortunate noblemen and gentlemen, how, and by whom,
the grand fabric of the French monarchy under which they flour-
ished would be subverted, they would not have pitied him as a vision-
ary, but would have turned from him as what they call a mauvais
plaisant. Yet we have seen what has happened. The persons who
have suffered from the cannibal philosophy of France, are so like
the Duke of Bedford, that nothing but his Grace's probably not
speaking quite so good French could enable us to find out any differ-
ence, A great many of them had as pompous titles as he, and were
of full as illustrious a race: some few of them had fortunes as ample:
several of them, without meaning the least disparagement to the
Duke of Bedford, were as wise, and as virtuous, and as valiant, and

A LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD 4II

as well educated, and as complete in all the lineaments of men o£
honour, as he is: and to all this they had added the powerful out-
guard of a military profession, which, in its nature, renders men
somewhat more cautious than those, who have nothing to attend to
but the lazy enjoyment of undisturbed possessions. But security was
their ruin. They had dashed to pieces in the storm, and our shores
are covered with the wrecks. If they had been aware that such a
thing might happen, such a thing never could have happened.

I assure his Grace, that if I state to him the designs of his enemies,
in a manner which may appear to him ludicrous and impossible, I
tell him nothing that has not exactly happened, point by point, but
twenty-four miles from our own shore. I assure him that the Frenchi-
fied faction, more encouraged, than others are warned, by what has
happened in France, look at him and his landed possessions as an
object at once of curiosity and rapacity. He is made for them in
every part of their double character. As robbers, to them he is a
noble booty; as speculatists, he is a glorious subject for their experi-
mental philosophy. He affords matter for an extensive analysis, in
all the branches of their science, geometrical, physical, civil, and politi-
cal. These philosophers are fanatics; independent of any interest,
which if it operated alone would make them much more tractable,
they are carried with such a headlong rage towards every desperate
trial, that they would sacrifice the whole human race to the slightest
of their experiments. I am better able to enter into the character of
this description of men than the noble Duke can be. I have lived
long and variously in the world. Without any considerable preten-
sions to literature in myself, I have aspired to the love of letters. I
have lived for a great many years in habitudes with those who pro-
fessed them. I can form a tolerable estimate of what is likely to
happen from a character, chiefly dependent for fame and fortune on
knowledge and talent, as well in its morbid and perverted state, as
in that which is sound and natural. Naturally men so formed and
finished are the first gifts of Providence to the world. But when they
have once thrown off the fear of God, which was in all ages too often
the case, and the fear of man, which is now the case, and when in
that state they come to understand one another, and to act in corps,
a more dreadful calamity cannot arise out of hell to scourge man-

412 EDMUND BURKE

kind. Nothing can be conceived more hard than the heart of a
thoroughbred metaphysician. It comes nearer to the cold malignity
of a wicked spirit than to the frailty and passion of a man. It is like
that of the principle of evil himself, incorporeal, pure, unmixed,
dephlegmated, defecated evil. It is no easy operation to eradicate
humanity from the human breast. What Shakspeare calls "the com-
punctious visitings of nature" will sometimes knock at their hearts,
and protest against their murderous speculations. But they have a
means of compounding with their nature. Their humanity is not
dissolved. They only give it a long prorogation. They are ready to
declare, that they do not think two thousand years too long a period
for the good that they pursue. It is remarkable, that they never see
any way to their projected good but by the road of some evil. Their
imagination is not fatigued with the contemplation of human suffer-
ing through the wild waste of centuries added to centuries of misery
and desolation. Their humanity is at their horizon — and, like the
horizon, it always flies before them. The geometricians, and the
chemists, bring, the one from the dry bones of their diagrams, and
the other from the soot of their furnaces, dispositions that make them
worse than indifferent about those feelings and habitudes, which
are the support of the moral world. Ambition is come upon them
suddenly; they are intoxicated with it, and it has rendered them fear-
less of the danger, which may from thence arise to others or to them-
selves. These philosophers consider men in their experiments, no
more than they do mice in an air pump, or in a recipient of mephitic
gas. Whatever his Grace may think of himself, they look upon him,
and everything that belongs to him, with no more regard than they
do upon the whiskers of that little long-tailed animal that has been
long the game of the grave, demure, insidious, spring-nailed, velvet-
pawed, green-eyed philosophers, whether going upon two legs, or
upon four.

His Grace's landed possessions are irresistibly inviting to an
agrarian experiment. They are a downright insult upon the rights
of man. They are more extensive than the territory of many of the
Grecian republics; and they are without comparison more fertile
than most of them. There are now republics in Italy, in Germany,
and in Switzerland, which do not possess anything like so fair and

A LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD 413

ample a domain. There is scope for seven philosophers to proceed in
their analytical experiments, upon Harrington's seven different forms
of republics, in the acres of this one duke. Hitherto they have been
wholly unproductive to speculation; fitted for nothing but to fatten
bullocks, and to produce grain for beer, still more to stupify the dull
English understanding. Abbe Sieyes has whole nests of pigeon-holes
full of constitutions ready made, ticketed, sorted, and numbered;
suited to every person and every fancy; some with the top of the
pattern at the bottom, and some with the bottom at the top; some
plain, some flowered; some distinguished for their simplicity, others
for their complexity; some of blood colour; some of boue de Paris;
some with directories, others without a direction; some with coun-
cils of elders, and councils of youngsters; some without any council
at all. Some where the electors choose the representatives; others,
where the representatives choose the electors. Some in long coats,
and some in short cloaks; some with pantaloons; some without
breeches. Some with five-shilling qualifications; some totally un-
qualified. So that no constitution-fancier may go unsuited from his
shop, provided he loves a pattern of pillage, oppression, arbitrary im-
prisonment, confiscation, exile, revolutionary judgment, and legal-
ized premeditated murder, in any shapes into which they can be put.
What a pity it is, that the progress of experimental philosophy should
be checked by his Grace's monopoly! Such are their sentiments, I
assure him; such is their language, when they dare to speak; and
such are their proceedings, when they have the means to act.

Their geographers and geometricians have been some time out of
practice. It is some time since they have divided their own country
into squares. That figure has lost the charms of its novelty. They
want new lands for new trials. It is not only the geometricians of
the republic that find him a good subject, the chemists have bespoken
him after the geometricians have done with him. As the first set
have an eye on his Grace's lands, the chemists are not less taken with
his buildings. They consider mortar as a very anti-revolutionary in-
vention in its present state; but properly employed, an admirable
material for overturning all establishments. They have found that
the gunpowder of ruins is far the fittest for making other ruins, and
so ad infinitum. They have calculated what quantity of matter con-

414 EDMUND BURKE

vertible into nitre is to be found in Bedford House, in Woburn Ab-
bey, and in what his Grace and his trustees have still suffered
to stand of that foolish royalist Inigo Jones, in Covent Garden.
Churches, play-houses, coffee-houses, all alike are destined to be
mingled, and equalized, and blended into one common rubbish;
and, well sifted and lixiviated, to crystallize into true, democratic,
explosive, insurrectionary nitre. Their academy del Cimento (per
antiphrasin) with Morveau and Hassenfrats at its head, have com-
puted that the brave sans culottes may make war on all the aris-
tocracy of Europe for a twelve-month, out of the rubbish of the
Duke of Bedford's buildings.'^

While the Morveaux and Priestleys are proceeding with these ex-
periments upon the Duke of Bedford's houses, the Sieyes, and the
rest of the analytical legislators, and constitution-vendors, are quite
as busy in their trade of decomposing organization, in forming his
Grace's vassals into primary assemblies, national guards, first, second,
and third requisitioners, committees of research, conductors of the
travelling guillotine, judges of revolutionary tribunals, legislative
hangmen, supervisors of domiciliary visitation, exactors of forced
loans, and assessors of the maximum.

The din of all this smithery may some time or other possibly
wake this noble Duke, and push him to an endeavour to save some
little matter from their experimental philosophy. If he pleads his
grants from the Crown, he is ruined at the outset. If he pleads he has

^ There is nothing, on which the leaders of the republic, one and indivisible, value
themselves, more than on the chemical operations, by which, through science, they
convert the pride of aristocracy to an instrument of its own destruction — on the
operations by which they reduce the magnificent, ancient country seats of the nobility,
decorated with the feudal titles of Duke, Marquis, or Earl, into magazines of what
they call revolutionary gunpowder. They tell us, that hitherto things "had not yet
been properly and in a revolutionary manner explored." — "The strong chateaus,
those feudal fortresses that were ordered to he demolished, attracted next the attention
of your committee. Nature there had secretly regained her rights, and had produced
saltpetre for the purpose, as it should seem, of facilitating the execution of your
decree by preparing the means of destruction. From these ruins, which still frown
on the liberties of the republic, we have extracted the means of producing good; and
those piles, which have hitherto glutted the pride of despots, and covered the plots
of La Vendue, will soon furnish wherewithal to tame the traitors, and to overwhelm
the disaffected." — "The rebellious cities, also, have afforded a large quantity of
saltpetre. Commune Affranchie, (that is, the noble city of Lyons reduced in many
parts to a heap of ruins,) and Toulon, will pay a second tribute to our artillery."
Report, 1st February, 1794.

A LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD 415

received them from the pillage o£ superstitious corporations, this in-
deed will stagger them a little, because they are enemies to all corpo-
rations, and to all religion. However, they will soon recover them-
selves, and will tell his Grace, or his learned council, that all such
property belongs to the nation; and that it would be more wise for
him if he wishes to live the natural term of a citizen, (that is, accord-
ing to Condorcet's calculation, six months on an average,) not to pass
for an usurper upon the national property. This is what the Serjeants
at law of the rights of man will say to the puny apprentices of the
common law of England.

Is the genius of philosophy not yet known? You may as well
think the garden of the Tuileries was well protected with the cords
of ribbon insultingly stretched by the National Assembly to keep the
sovereign canaille from intruding on the retirement of the poor
king of the French, as that such flimsy cobwebs will stand between
the savages of the Revolution and their natural prey. Deep philoso-
phers are no triflers; brave sans-culottes are no formalists. They will
no more regard a Marquis of Tavistock than an Abbot of Tavistock;
the Lord of Woburn will not be more respectable in their eyes than
the Prior of Woburn; they will make no difference between the
superior of a Covent Garden of nuns, and of a Covent Garden of
another description. They will not care a rush whether his coat is
long or short; whether the colour be purple or blue and buff. They
will not trouble their heads, with what part of his head his hair is
cut from; and they will look with equal respect on a tonsure and a
crop. Their only question will be that of their Legendre, or some
other of their legislative butchers, how he cuts up.? how he tallows in
the cawl, or on the kidneys.?

Is it not a singular phenomenon, that whilst the sans-culotte car-
cass-butchers, and the philosophers of the shambles, are pricking
their dotted lines upon his hide, and, like the print of the poor ox
that we see in the shop-windows at Charing Cross, alive as he is,
and thinking no harm in the world, he is divided into rumps, and
sirloins, and briskets, into all sorts of pieces for roasting, boiling,
and stewing, that all the while they are measuring him, his
Grace is measuring me; is invidiously comparing the bounty of the
Crown with the deserts of the defender of his order, and in the same

4l6 EDMUND BURKE

moment fawning on those who have the knife half out of the sheath
— poor innocent!

"Pleas'd to the last, he crops the flow'ry food,
And licks the hand just raised to shed his blood."

No man lives too long, who lives to do with spirit, and suffer
with resignation, what Providence pleases to command, or inflict;
but indeed they are sharp incommodities which beset old age. It
was but the other day, that, on putting in order some things which
had been brought here on my taking leave of London for ever, I
looked over a number of fine portraits, most of them of persons now
dead, but whose society, in my better days, made this a proud and
happy place. Amongst these was the picture of Lord Keppel. It
was painted by an artist worthy of the subject, the excellent friend
of that excellent man from their earliest youth, and a common
friend of us both, with whom we lived for many years without a
moment of coldness, of peevishness, of jealousy, or of jar, to the day of
our final separation.

I ever looked on Lord Keppel as one of the greatest and best men
of his age; and I loved and cultivated him accordingly. He was
much in my heart, and I believe I was in his to the very last beat. It
was after his trial at Portsmouth that he gave me this picture. With
what zeal and anxious affection I attended him through that his
agony of glory, what part my son took in the early flush and enthusi-
asm of his virtue, and the pious passion with which he attached
himself to all my connexions, with what prodigality we both squan-
dered ourselves in courting almost every sort of enmity for his sake,
I believe he felt, just as I should have felt such friendship on such
an occasion. I partook indeed of this honour, with several of the
first, and best, and ablest in the kingdom, but I was behindhand with
none of them; and I am sure, that if to the eternal disgrace of this
nation, and to the total annihilation of every trace of honour and
virtue in it, things had taken a different turn from what they did,
I should have attended him to the quarter-deck with no less good will
and more pride, though with far other feelings, than I partook of
the general flow of national joy that attended the justice that was
done to his virtue.

A LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD 417

Pardon, my Lord, the feeble garrulity of age, which loves to diffuse
itself in discourse of the departed great. At my years we live in
retrospect alone; and, wholly unfitted for the society of vigorous life,
we enjoy the best balm to all wounds, the consolation of friend-
ship, in those only whom we have lost for ever. Feeling the loss of
Lord Keppel at all times, at no time did I feel it so much as on the
first day when I was attacked in the House of Lords.

Had he lived, that reverend form would have risen in its place,
and, with a mild, parental reprehension to his nephew the Duke of
Bedford, he would have told him that the favour of that gracious
Prince, who had honoured his virtues with the govermnent of the
navy of Great Britain, and with a seat in the hereditary great council
of his kingdom, was not undeservedly shown to the friend of the
best portion of his life, and his faithful companion and counsellor
under his rudest trials. He would have told him, that to whomever
else these reproaches might be becoming, they were not decorous in
his near kindred. He would have told him, that when men in that
rank lose decorum they lose everything.

On that day I had a loss in Lord Keppel; but the public loss of
him in this awful crisis — ! I speak from much knowledge of the
person, he never would have listened to any compromise with the
rabble rout of this sans-culotterie of France. His goodness of heart,
his reason, his taste, his public duty, his principles, his prejudices,
would have repelled him for ever from all connexion with that horrid
medley of madness, vice, impiety, and crime.

Lord Keppel had two countries; one of descent, and one of birth.
Their interest and their glory are the same; and his mind was capa-
cious of both. His family was noble, and it was Dutch: that is, he
was of the oldest and purest nobility that Europe can boast, among
a people renowned above all others for love of their native land.
Though it was never shown in insult to any human being, Lord
Keppel was something high. It was a wild stock of pride, on which
the tenderest of all hearts had grafted the milder virtues. He valued
ancient nobility; and he was not disinclined to augment it with new
honours. He valued the old nobility and the new, not as an excuse
for inglorious sloth, but as an incitement to virtuous activity. He
considered it as a sort of cure for selfishness and a narrow mind;

4l8 EDMUND BURKE

conceiving that a man born in an elevated place in himself was
nothing, but everything in what went before and what was to come
after him. Without much speculation, but by the sure instinct of
ingenuous feelings, and by the dictates of plain unsophisticated,
natural understanding, he felt, that no great commonwealth could
by any possibility long subsist, without a body of some kind or
other of nobility, decorated with honour, and fortified by privilege.
This nobility forms the chain that connects the ages of a nation,
which otherwise (with Mr. Paine) would soon be taught that no
one generation can bind another. He felt that no political fabric
could be well made without some such order of things as might,
through a series of time, afford a rational hope of securing unity,
coherence, consistency, and stability to the state. He felt that nothing
else can protect it against the levity of courts, and the greater levity of
the multitude. That to talk of hereditary monarchy, without any-
thing else of hereditary reverence in the commonwealth, was a low-
minded absurdity, fit only for those detestable "fools aspiring to be
knaves," who began to forge in 1789 the false money of the French
constitution — That it is one fatal objection to all new fancied and new
fabricated republics, (among a people, who, once possessing such an
advantage, have wickedly and insolently rejected it,) that the preju-
dice of an old nobility is a thing that cannot be made. It may be
improved, it may be corrected, it may be replenished: men may be
taken from it or aggregated to it, but the thing itself is matter of
inveterate opinion, and therefore cannot be matter of mere positive
institution. He felt that this nobility in fact does not exist in wrong
of other orders of the state, but by them, and for them.

I knew the man I speak of: and, if we can divine the future, out
of what we collect from the past, no person living would look with
more scorn and horror on the impious parricide committed on all
their ancestry, and on the desperate attainder passed on all their pos-
terity, by the Orleans, and the Rochefoucaulds, and the Fayettes, and
the Vicomtes de Noailles, and the false Perigords, and the long et
ccetera of the perfidious sans-culottes of the court, who like demoni-
acs, possessed with a spirit of fallen pride, and inverted ambition, ab-
dicated their dignities, disowned their families, betrayed the most
sacred of all trusts, and, by breaking to pieces a great link of society

A LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD 419

and all the cramps and holdings of the state, brought eternal con-
fusion and desolation on their country. For the fate of the miscreant
parricides themselves he would have had no pity. Compassion for
the myriads of men, of whom the world was not worthy, who by
their means have perished in prisons, or on scaffolds, or are pining
in beggary and exile, would leave no room in his, or in any well-
informed mind, for any such sensation. We are not made at once
to pity the oppressor and the oppressed.

Looking to his Batavian descent, how could he bear to behold his
kindred, the descendants of the brave nobility of Holland, whose
blood, prodigally poured out, had, more than all the canals, meres,
and inundations of their country, protected their independence, to
behold them bowed in the basest servitude to the basest and vilest
of the human race; in servitude to those who in no respect were supe-
rior in dignity, or could aspire to a better place than that of hang-
man to the tyrants, to whose sceptred pride they had opposed an
elevation of soul, that surmounted, and overpowered, the loftiness
of Castile, the haughtiness of Austria, and the overbearing arrogance
of France ?

Could he with patience bear, that the children of that nobility,
who would have deluged their country and given it to the sea, rather
than submit to Louis XIV., who was then in his meridian glory,
when his arms were conducted by the Turennes, by the Luxem-
bourgs, by the Boufflers; when his councils were directed by the
Colberts, and the Louvois; when his tribunals were filled by the
Lamoignons and the Daguessaus — that these should be given up
to the cruel sport of the Pichegrus, the Jourdans, the Santerres, under
the Rolands, the Brissots, and Gorfas, and Robespierres, the Reubels,
the Carnots, and Talliens, and Dantons, and the whole tribe of regi-
cides, robbers, and revolutionary judges, that, from the rotten car-
cass of their own murdered country, have poured out innumerable
swarms of the lowest, and at once the most destructive, of the classes
of animated nature, which, like columns of locusts, have laid waste
the fairest part of the world?

Would Keppel have borne to see the ruin of the virtuous patri-
cians, that happy union of the noble and the burgher, who, with sig-
nal prudence and integrity, had long governed the cities of the

420 EDMUND BURKE

confederate republic, the cherishing fathers of their country, who,
denying commerce to themselves, made it flourish in a manner
unexampled under their protection? Could Keppel have borne that
a vile faction should totally destroy this harmonious construction, in
favour of a robbing democracy, founded on the spurious rights
of man?

He was no great clerk, but he was perfectly well versed in the
interests of Europe, and he could not have heard with patience, that
the country of Grotius, the cradle of the law of nations, and one of
the richest repositories of all law, should be taught a new code by the
ignorant flippancy of Thomas Paine, the presumptuous foppery of
La Fayette, with his stolen rights of man in his hand, the wild, profli-
gate intrigue, and turbulency, of Marat, and the impious sophistry
of Condorcet, in his insolent addresses to the Batavian republic.

Could Keppel, who idolized the house of Nassau, who was him-
self given to England along with the blessings of the British and
Dutch revolutions; with revolutions of stability; with revolutions
which consolidated and married the liberties and the interests of the
two nations for ever, could he see the fountain of British liberty itself
in servitude to France? Could he see with patience a Prince of
Orange expelled as a sort of diminutive despot, with every kind of
contumely, from the country, which that family of deliverers had so
often rescued from slavery, and obliged to live in exile in another
country, which owes its liberty to his house?

Would Keppel have heard with patience, that the conduct to be
held on such occasions was to become short by the knees to the fac-
tion of the homicides, to entreat them quietly to retire? or, if the
fortune of war should drive them from their first wicked and un-
provoked invasion, that no security should be taken, no arrangement
made, no barrier formed, no alliance entered into for the security
of that, which under a foreign name is the most precious part of
England? What would he have said, if it was even proposed that
the Austrian Netherlands (which ought to be a barrier to Holland,
and the tie of an alliance, to protect her against any species of rule
that might be erected, or even be restored in France) should be
formed into a republic under her influence, and dependent upon her
power ?

A LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD 42 1

But above all, what would he have said, if he had heard it made
a matter of accusation against me, by his nephew the Duke of Bed-
ford, that I was the author of the war? Had I a mind to keep that
high distinction to myself, as from pride I might, but from justice I
dare not, he would have snatched his share of it from my hand,
and held it with the grasp of a dying convulsion to his end.

It would be a most arrogant presumption in me to assume to my-
self the glory of what belongs to his Majesty, and to his ministers,
and to his parliament, and to the far greater majority of his faithful
people: but had I stood alone to counsel, and that all were determined
to be guided by my advice, and to follow it implicitly — then I should
have been the sole author of a war. But it should have been a war
on my ideas and my principles. However, let his Grace think as he
may of my demerits with regard to the war with regicide, he will
find my guilt confined to that alone. He never shall, with the small-
est colour of reason, accuse me of being the author of a peace with
regicide. But that is high matter; and ought not to be mixed with
anything of so little moment, as what may belong to me, or even
to the Duke of Bedford.

I have the honour to be, &c.

Edmund Burke.