No More Learning

A common soldier, a child, a girl at the door of an
inn, have changed the face of fortune, and almost of
Nature.
Such, and often influenced by such causes, has
commonly been the fate of monarchies of long duration. They have their ebbs and their flows. This
has been eminently the fate of the monarchy of
France. There have been times in which no power
has ever been brought so low. Few have ever flourished in greater glory. By turns elevated and depressed, that power had been, on the whole, rather on the increase; and it continued not only powerful,
but formidable, to the hour of the total ruin of the
monarchy. This fall of the monarchy was far from
being preceded by any exterior symptoms of decline.
The interior were not visible to every eye; and a
thousand accidents might have prevented the operation of what the most clear-sighted were not able to
discern nor the most provident to divine. A very little time before its dreadful catastrophe, there was a
kind of exterior splendor in the situation of the
crown, which usually adds to government strength
and authority at home. The crown seemed then to
have obtained some of the most splendid objects of
state ambition. None of the Continental powers of
Europe were the enemies of France. They were all
either tacitly disposed to her or publicly connected
? ? ? ? LETTER I. 237
with her; and in those who kept the most aloof
there was little appearance of jealousy, - of animosity there was no appearance at all. The British nation, her great preponderating rival, she had humbled, to all appearance she had weakened, certainly had endangered, by cutting off a very large and by
far the most growing part of her empire. In that its
acme of human prosperity and greatness, in the high
and palmy state of. the monarchy of France, it fell to
the ground without a struggle. It fell without any
of those vices in the monarch wlich have sometimes
been the causes of the fall of kingdoms, but which
existed, without any visible effect on the state, in the
highest degree in many other princes, and, far from
destroying their power, had only left some slight
stains on their character. The financial difficulties
were only pretexts and instruments of those who
accomplished the ruin of that monarchy; they were
not the causes of it.
Deprived of the old government, deprived in a
manner of all government, France, fallen as a monarchy, to common speculators might have appeared
more likely to be an object of pity or insult, according to the disposition of the circumjacent powers,
than to be the scourge and terror of them all: but
out of the tomb of the murdered monarchy in France
has arisen a vast, tremendous, unformed spectre, in a
far more terrific guise than any which ever yet have
overpowered the imagination and subdued the fortitude of man. Going straight forward to its end, unappalled by peril, unchecked by remorse, despising
all common maxims and all common means, that
hideous phantom overpowered those who could not
believe it was possible she could at all exist, except
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on the principles which habit rather than Nature had
persuaded them were necessary to their own particular welfare and to their own ordinary modes of
action. But the constitution of any political being,
as well as that of any physical being, ought to be
known, before one can venture to say what is fit for
its conservation, or what is the proper means of its
power. The poison of other states is the food of the
new Republic. That bankruptcy,-the very apprehension of which is one of the causes assigned for the fall
of the monarchy, was the capital on which she opened
her traffic with the world.
The Republic of Regicide, with an annihilated revenue, with defaced manufactures, with a ruined commerce, with an uncultivated and half-depopulated country, with a discontented, distressed, enslaved,
and famished people, passing, with a rapid, eccentric, incalculable course, from the wildest anarchy to
the sternest despotism, has actually conquered the
finest parts of Europe, has distressed, disunited, deranged, and broke to pieces all the rest, and so subdued the minds of the rulers in every nation, that hardly any resource presents itself to them, except
that of entitling themselves to a contemptuous mercy by a display of their imbecility and meanness.
Even in their greatest military efforts, and the greatest display of their fortitude, they seem not to hope,
they do not even appear to wish, the extinction of
what subsists to their certain ruin. Their ambition
is only to be admitted to a more favored class in the
order of servitude under that domineering power.
This seems the temper of the day. At first the
French force was too much despised. Now it is too
much dreaded. As inconsiderate courage has given
? ? ? ? LETTER I. 239
way to irrational fear, so it may be hoped, that,
through the medium of deliberate, sober apprehension, we may arrive at steady fortitude. Who knows
whether indignation may not succeed to terror, and
the revival of high sentiment, spurning away the, delusion of a safety purchased at the expense of glory,
may not yet drive us to that generous despair which
has often subdued distempers in the state for which
no remedy could be found in the wisest councils?
Other great states having been without any regular, certain course of elevation or decline, we may
hope that the British fortune may fluctuate also; because the public mind, which greatly influences that
fortune, may have its changes. We are therefore
never authorized to abandon our country to its fate,
or to act or advise as if it had no resource. There
is no reason to apprehend, because ordinary means
threaten to fail, that no others can spring up. Whilst
our heart is whole, it will find means, or make them.
The heart of the citizen is a perennial spring of energy to the state. Because the pulse seems to intermit, we must not presume that it will cease instantly to beat. The public must never be regarded as incurable. I remember, in the beginning of what has
lately been called the Seven Years' War, that an eloquent writer and ingenious speculator, Dr. Brown,
upon some reverses which happened in the beginning
of that war, published an elaborate philosophical discourse to prove that the distinguishing features of the
people of England had been totally changed, and that
a frivolous effeminacy was become the national character. Nothing could be more popular than that
work. It was thought a great consolation to us, the
light people of this country, (who were and are light,
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but who were not and are not effeminate,) that we
had found the causes of our misfortunes in our vices.
Pythagoras could hot be more pleased with his lead-.
ing discovery. But whilst, in that splenetic mood,
we amused ourselves in a sour, critical speculation,
of which we were ourselves the objects, and in which
every man lost his particular sense of the public disgrace in the epidemic nature of the distemper,whilst, as in the Alps, goitre kept goitre in countenance, - whilst we were thus abandoning ourselves to a direct confession of our inferiority to France, and
whilst many, very many, were ready to act upon a
sense of that inferiority,- a few months effected a
total change in our variable minds. We emerged
from the gulf of that speculative despondency, and
were buoyed up to the highest point of practical vigor. Never did the masculine spirit of England display itself with more energy, nor ever did its genius
soar with a prouder preeminence over France, than
at the time when frivolity and effeminacy had been
at least tacitly acknowledged as their national character by the good people of this kingdom.
For one, (if they be properly treated,) I despair
neither of the public fortune nor of the public mind.
There is much to be done, undoubtedly, and much to
be retrieved. We must walk in new ways, or we can
never encounter our enemy in his devious march.
We are not at an end of our struggle, nor near it.
Let us not deceive ourselves: we are at the begin
ning of great troubles. I readily acknowledge thal
the state of public affairs is infinitely more unprom
ising than at the period I have just now alluded to;
and the position of all the powers of Europe, in relation to us, and in relation to each other, is more in
? ? ? ? LETTER I. 241
tricate and critical beyond all comparison. Difficult
indeed is our situation. In all situations of difficulty, men will be influenced in the part they take, not only by the reason of the case, but by the peculiar
turn of their own character. The same ways to
safety do not present themselves to all men, nor to
the same men in different tempers. There is a cou
rageous wisdom: there is also a false, reptile pru
dence, the result, not of caution, but of fear. Under
misfortunes, it often happens that the nerves of the
understanding are so relaxed, the pressing peril of
the hour so completely confounds all the faculties,
that no future danger can be properly provided for,,
can be justly estimated, can be so much as fully seen.
The eye of the mind is dazzled and vanquished. An:
abject distrust of ourselves, an extravagant admira --
tion of the enemy, present us with no hope but in a,
compromise with his pride by a submission to his will.
This short plan of policy is the only counsel which
will obtain a hearing. We plunge into a dark gulf
with all the rash precipitation of fear. The nature of
courage is, without a question, to be conversant with
danger: but in the palpable night of their terrors,
men under consternation suppose, not that it is the
danger which by a sure instinct calls out the courage
to resist it, but that it is the courage which produces
the danger. They therefore seek for a refuge from
their fears in the fears themselves, and consider a
temporizing meanness as the only source of safety.
The rules and definitions of prudence can rarely
be exact, never universal. I do not deny, that, in
small, truckling states, a timely compromise with
power has often been the means, and the only means,
of drawling out their puny existence; but a great
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state is too much envied, too much dreaded, to find
safety in humiliation. To be secure, it must be respected. Power and eminence and consideration are
things not to be begged; they must be commanded:
and they who supplicate for mercy from others can
never hope for justice through themselves. What
justice they are to obtain, as the alms of an enemy,
depends upon his character; and that they ought well
to know before they implicitly confide.
Much controversy there has been in Parliament,
and not a little amongst us out of doors, about the
instrumental means of this nation towards the maintenance of her dignity and the assertion of her rights.
On the most elaborate and correct detail of facts, the
result seems to be, that at no time has the wealth and
power of Great Britain been so considerable as it is at
this very perilous moment. We haye a vast interest
to preserve, and we possess great means of preserving it: but it is to be remembered that the artificer
may be incumbered by his tools, and that resources
may be among impediments. If wealth is the obedient and laborious slave of virtue and of public honor,
then wealth is in its place and has its use; but if this
order is changed, and honor is to be sacrificed to the
conservation of riches, riches, which have neither eyes
nor hands, nor anything truly vital in them, cannot
long survive the being of their vivifying powers, their
legitimate masters, and their potent protectors. If
we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free:
if our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed. We
are bought by the enemy with the treasure from our
own coffers. Too great a sense of the value of a subordinate interest may be the very source of its danger, as well as the certain ruin of interests of a su
? ? ? ? LETTER I. 243
perior order. Often has a man lost his all because he
would not submit to hazard all in defending it. A
display of our wealth before robbers is not the way
to restrain their boldness or to lessen their rapacity.
This display is made, I know, to persuade the people
of England that thereby we shall awe the enemy, and
improve the terms of our capitulation: it is made,
not that we should fight with more animation, but
that we should supplicate with better hopes. We are
mistaken. We have an enemy to deal with who
never regarded our contest as a measuring and
weighing of purses. He is the Gaul that puts his
sword into the scale. He is more tempted with our
wealth as booty than terrified with it as power. But
let us be rich or poor, let us be either in what proportion we may, Nature is false or this is true, that,
where the essential public force (of which money is
but a part) is in any degree upon a par in a conflict
between nations, that state which is resolved to hazard its existence rather than to abandon its objects
must have an infinite advantage over that which is
resolved to yield rather than to carry its resistance
beyond a certain point. Humanly speaking, that
people which bounds its efforts only with its being
must give the law to that nation which will not push
its opposition beyond its convenience.
If we look to nothing but our domestic condition,
the state of the nation is full even to plethora; but
if we imagine that this country can long maintain
its blood and its food as disjoined from the community of mankind, such an opinion does not deserve refutation as absurd, but pity as insane. I do not know that such an improvident and stupid selfishness deserves the discussion which perhaps
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I may bestow upon it hereafter. We cannot arrange
with our enemy, in the present conjuncture, without
abandoning the interest of mankind. If we look only
to our own petty peculium in the war, we have had
some advantages, - advantages ambiguous in their
nature, and dearly bought. We have not in the
slightest degree impaired the strength of the common
enemy in any one of those points in which his particular force consists, - at the same time that new enemies to ourselves, new allies to the Regicide Republic, have been made out of the wrecks and fragments of
the general confederacy. So far as to the selfish part.
As composing a part of the community of Europe,
and interested in its fate, it is not easy to conceive a
state of things more doubtful and perplexing. When
Louis the Fourteenth had made himself master of one
of the largest and most important provinces of Spain,
- when he had in a manner overrun Lombardy, and
was thundering at the gates of Turin,- when he had
mastered almost all Germany on this side the Rhine,
-when he was on the point of ruining the august
fabric of the Empire, -- when, with the Elector of
Bavaria in his alliance, hardly anything interposed
between him and Vienna, -- when the Turk hung
with a mighty force over the Empire on the other
side,- I do not know that in the beginning of 1704
(that is, in the third year of the renovated war with
Louis the Fourteenth) the state of Europe was so
truly alarming. To England it certainly was not.
Holland (and Holland is a matter to England of
value inestimable) was then powerful, was then independent, and, though greatly endangered, was then
full of energy and spirit. But the great resource of
Europe was in England: not in a sort of England
? ? ? ? LETTER I. 245
detached from the rest of the world, and amusing herself with the puppet-show of a naval power, (it can
be no better, whilst all the sources of that power, and
of every sort of power, are precarious,) but in that
sort of England who considered herself as embodied
with Europe, but in that sort of England who,
sympathetic with the adversity or the happiness of
mankind, felt that nothing in human affairs was foreign to her. We may consider it as a sure axiom,
that, as, on the one hand, no confederacy of the least
effect or duration can exist against France, of which
England is not only a part, but the head, so neither
can England pretend to cope with France but as connected with the body of Christendom.
Our account of the war, as a war of communion, to
the very point in which we began to throw out lures,
oglings, and glances for peace, was a war of disaster,
and of little else. The independent advantages obtained by us at the beginning of the war, and which
were made at the expense of that common cause, if
they deceive us about our largest and our surest
interest, are to be reckoned amongst our heaviest
losses.
The Allies, and Great Britain amongst the rest,
(and perhaps amongst the foremost,) have been miserably deluded by this great, fundamental error: that
it was in our power to make peace with this monster
of a state, whenever we chose to forget the crimes
that made it great and the designs that made it formidable. People imagined that their ceasing to resist was the sure way to be secure. This " pale cast of thought" sicklied over all their enterprises, and
turned all their politics awry. They could not, or
rather they would not, read, in the most unequivocal
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declarations of the enemy, and in his uniform conduct, that more safety was to be found in the most arduous war than in the friendship of that kind of
being. Its hostile amity can be obtained on no terms
that do not imply an inability hereafter to resist its
designs. This great, prolific error (I mean that peace
was always in our power) has been the cause that
rendered the Allies indifferent about the direction of
the war, and persuaded them that they might always
risk a choice and even a change in its -objects. They
seldom improved any advantage, -- hoping that the
enemy, affected by it, would make a proffer of peace.
Hence it was that all their early victories have been
followed almost immediately with the usual effects of
a defeat, whilst all the advantages obtained by the
Regicides have been followed by the consequences
that were natural. The discomfitures which the
Republic of Assassins has suffered have uniformly
called forth new exertions, which not only repaired
old losses, but prepared new conquests. The losses
of the Allies, on the contrary, (no provision having
been made on the speculation of such an event,) have
been followed by desertion, by dismay, by disunion,
by a dereliction of their policy, by a flight from their
principles, by an admiration of the enemy, by mutual accusations, by a distrust in every member of the Alliance of its fellow, of its cause, its power, and
its courage.
Great difficulties in consequence of our erroneous
policy, as I have said, press upon every side of us.
Far from desiring to conceal or even to palliate the
evil in the representation, I wish to lay it down as
my foundation, that never greater existed. In a moment when sudden panic is apprehended, it may be
? ? ? ? LETTER I. 247
wise for a while to conceal some great public disaster, or to reveal it by degrees, until the minds of the
people have time to be re-collected, that their understanding may have leisure to rally, and that more
steady councils may prevent their doing something
desperate under the first impressions of rage or terror. But with regard to a general state of things,
growing out of events and causes already known in
the gross, there is no piety in the fraud that covers
its true nature; because nothing but erroneous resolutions can be the result of false representations.
Those measures, which in common distress might be
available, in greater are no better than playing with
the evil. That the effort may bear a proportion to
the exigence, it is fit it should be known, --known
in its quality, in its extent, and in all the circumstances which attend it. Great reverses of fortune there
have been, and great embarrassments in council: a
principled regicide enemy possessed of the most important part of Europe, and struggling for the rest;
within ourselves a total relaxation of all authority,
whilst a cry is raised against it, as if it were the most
ferocious of all despotism. A worse phenomenon:
our government disowned by the most efficient member of its tribunals, -- ill-supported by any of their
constituent parts,- and the highest tribunal of all
(from causes not for our present purpose to examine) deprived of all that dignity and all that efficiency which might enforce, or regulate, or, if the case required it, might supply the want of every other
court. Public prosecutions are become little better
than schools for treason, - of no use but to improve
the dexterity of criminals in the mystery of evasion,
or to show with what complete impunity men may
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conspire against the commonwealth, with what safety
assassins may attempt its awful head. Everything
is secure, except what the laws have made sacred;
everything is tameness and languor that is not fury
and faction. Whilst the distempers of a relaxed fibre
prognosticate and prepare all the morbid force of convulsion in the body of the state, the steadiness of the
physician is overpowered by the very aspect of the
disease. * The doctor of the Constitution, pretending
to underrate what he is not able to contend with,
shrinks from his own operation. He doubts and
questions the salutary, but critical, terrors of the
cautery and the knife. He takes a poor credit even
from his defeat, and covers impotence under the mask
of lenity. He praises the moderation of the laws, as
in his hands he sees them baffled and despised. Is
all this because in our day the statutes of the kingdom are not engrossed in as firm a character and imprinted in as black and legible a type as ever? No! the law is a clear, but it is a dead letter. Dead and
putrid, it is insufficient to save the state, but potent
to infect and to kill. Living law, full of reason, and
of equity and justice, (as it is, or it should not exist,)
ought to be severe, and awful too, - or the words of
menace, whether written on the parchment roll of
England or cut into the brazen tablet of Rome, will
excite nothing but contempt. How comes it that in
all the state prosecutions of magnitude, from the
Revolution to within these two or three years, the
crown has scarcely ever retired disgraced and defeated from its courts? Whence this alarming change?
By a connection easily felt, and not impossible to be
traced to its cause, all the parts of the state have
* " Mussabat tacito medicina timore. "
? ? ? ? LETTER I. 249
their correspondence and consent.
They who bow
to the enemy abroad will not be of power to subdue
the conspirator at home. It is impossible not to observe, that, in proportion as we approximate to the poisonous jaws of anarchy, the fascination grows irresistible. In proportion as we are attracted towards the focus of illegality, irreligion, and desperate enterprise, all the venomous and blighting insects of the state are awakened into life. The promise of the
year is blasted and shrivelled and burned up before
them. Our most salutary and most beautiful institutions yield nothing but dust and smut; the harvest
of our law is no more than stubble. It is in the
nature of these eruptive diseases in the state to sink
in by fits and reappear. But the fuel of the malady
remains, and in my opinion is not in the smallest
degree mitigated in its malignity, though it waits
the favorable moment of a freer communication with
the source of regicide to exert and to increase its
force.
Is it that the people are changed, that the common
wealth cannot be protected by its laws? I hardly
think it. On the contrary, I conceive that these
things happen because men are not changed, but remain always what they always were; they remain what the bulk of us ever must be, when abandoned
to our vulgar propensities, without guide, leader, or
control: that is, made to be full of a blind elevation
in prosperity; to despise untried dangers; to be overpowered with unexpected reverses; to find no clew in a labyrinth of difficulties; to get out of a present
inconvenience with any risk of future ruin; to follow
and to bow to fortune; to admire successful, though
wicked enterprise, and to imitate what we admire; to
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contemn the government which announces danger
from sacrilege and regicide whilst they are only in
their infancy and their struggle, but which finds
nothing that can alarm in their adult state, and in
the power and triumph of those destructive principles. In a mass we cannot be left to ourselves. We
must have leaders. If none will undertake to lead us
right, we shall find guides who will contrive to conduct us to shame and ruin.
We are in a war of a peculiar nature. It is not
with an ordinary community, which is hostile or
friendly as passion or as interest may veer about,
not with a state which makes war through wantonness, and abandons it through lassitude. We are at
war with a system which by its essence is inimical to
all other governments, and which makes peace or war
as peace and war may best contribute to their subversion. It is with an armed doctrine that we are at war. It has, by its essence, a faction of opinion and of interest and of enthusiasm in every country. To us it
is a Colossus which bestrides our Channel. It has one
foot on a foreign shore, the other upon the British soil.
Thus advantaged, if it can at all exist, it must finally
prevail. Nothing can so completely ruin any of the
old governments, ours in particular, as the acknowledgment, directly or by implication, of any kind of superiority in this new power. This acknowledgment
we make, if, in a bad or doubtful situation of our affairs, we solicit peace, or if we yield to the modes of new humiliation in which alone she is content to give
us an hearing. By that means the terms cannot be
of our choosing, - no, not in any part.
It is laid in the unalterable constitution of things,
-- None can aspire to act greatly but those who are
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of force greatly to suffer. They who make their arrangements in the first run of misadventure, and in a
temper of mind the common fruit of disappointment
and dismay, put a seal on their calamities. To their
power they take a security against any favors which
they might hope from the usual inconstancy of fortune. I am therefore, my dear friend, invariably of
your opinion, (though full of respect for those who
think differently,) that neither the time chosen for
it, nor the manner of soliciting a negotiation, were
properly considered,- even though 1 had allowed (I
hardly shall allow) that with the horde of Regicides
we could by any selection of time or use of means
obtain anything at all deserving the name of peace.
In one point we are lucky. The Regicide has received our advances with scorn. We have an enemy
to whose virtues we can owe nothing, but on this occasion we are infinitely obliged to one of his vices.
We owe more to his insolence than to our own precaution. The haughtiness by which the proud repel
us has this of good in it, - that, in making us keep
our distance, they must keep their distance too. In
the present case, the pride of the Regicide may be
our safety. He has given time for our reason to operate, and for British dignity to recover from its surprise. From first to last he has rejected all our advances. Far as we have gone, he has still left a way open to our retreat.
There is always an augury to be taken of what a
peace is likely to be from the preliminary steps that
are made to bring it about. We may gather something from the time in which the first overtures are
made, from the quarter whence they come, from the
manner in which they are received. These discover
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the temper of the parties. If your enemy offers peace
in the moment of success, it indicates that he is satisfied with something. It shows that there are limits
to his ambition or his resentment. If he offers nothing under misfortune, it is probable. that it is more
painful to him to abandon the prospect of advantage
than to endure calamity. If he rejects solicitation,
and will not give even a nod to the suppliants for
peace, until a change in the fortune of the war
threatens him with ruin, then I think it evident that
he wishes nothing more than to disarm his adversary
to gain time. Afterwards a question arises, Which
of the parties is likely to obtain the greater advantages by continuing disarmed and by the use of time?
With these few plain indications in our minds, it
will not be improper to reconsider the conduct of the
enemy together with our own, from the day that a
question of peace has been in agitation. In considering this part of the question, I do not proceed on
my own hypothesis. I suppose, for a moment, that
this body of Regicide, calling itself a Republic, is a
politic person, with whom something deserving the
name of peace may be made. On that supposition,
let us examine our own proceeding. Let us compute
the profit it has brought, and the advantage that it is
likely to bring hereafter. A peace too eagerly sought
is not always the sooner obtained. The discovery
of vehement wishes generally frustrates their attainment, and your adversary has gained a great advantage over you when he finds you impatient to conclude a treaty. There is in reserve not only
something of dignity, but a great deal of prudence
too. A sort of courage belongs to negotiation, as
well as to operations of the field. A negotiator
? ? ? ? LETTER I. 253
must often seem willing to hazard the whole issue
of his treaty, if he wishes to secure any' one material point.
The Regicides were the first to declare war. We
are the first to sue for peace. In proportion to the
humility and perseverance we have shown in our
addresses has been the obstinacy of their arrogance
in rejecting our suit. The patience of their pride
seems to have been worn out with the importunity
of our courtship. Disgusted as they are with a conduct so different from all the sentiments by which
they are themselves filled, they think to put an end
to our vexatious solicitation by redoubling their insults.
It happens frequently that pride may reject a
public advance, while interest listens to a secret
suggestion of advantage. The opportunity has been
afforded. At a very early period in the diplomacy
of humiliation, a gentleman was sent on an errand,*
of which, from the motive of it, whatever the event
might be, we can never be ashamed. Humanity cannot be degraded by humiliation. It is its very character to submit to such things. There is a consanguinity between benevolence and humility. They are virtues of the same stock. Dignity is of as good
a race; but it belongs to the family of fortitude. In
the spirit of that benevolence, we sent a gentleman
to beseech the Directory of Regicide not to be quite
so prodigal as their republic had been of judicial
murder. We solicited them to spare the lives of
some unhappy persons of the first distinction, whose
safety at other times could not have been an object
of solicitation. They had quitted France on the
* Mr. Bird, sent to state the real situation of the Due de Choiseul
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faith of the declaration of the rights of citizens.
They never had been in the service of the Regicides,
nor at their hands had received any stipend. The
very system and constitution of government that now
prevails was settled subsequent to their emigration.
They were under the protection of Great Britain, and
in his Majesty's pay and service. Not an hostile invasion, but the disasters of the sea, had thrown them
upon a shore more barbarous and inhospitable than
the inclement ocean under the most pitiless of its
storms. Here was an opportunity to express a feeling for the miseries of war, and to open some sort of
conversation, which, (after our public overtures had
glutted their pride,) at a cautious and jealous distance, might lead to something like an accommodation. -- What was the event? A strange, uncouth thing, a theatrical figure of the opera, his head shaded with three-colored plumes, his body fantastically
habited, strutted from the back scenes, and, after a
short speech, in the mock-heroic falsetto of stupid
tragedy, delivered the gentleman who came to make
the representation into the custody of a guard, with
directions not to lose sight of him for a moment, and
then ordered him to be sent from Paris in two hours.
HIefe it is impossible that a sentiment of tenderness
should not strike athwart the sternness of politics,
and make us recall to painful memory the difference
between this insolent and bloody theatre and the
temperate, natural majesty of a civilized court, where
the afflicted family of Asgill did not in vain solicit
the mercy of the highest in rank and the most compassionate of the compassionate sex.
In this intercourse, at least, there was nothing to
promise a great deal of success in our future advan
? ? ? ? LETTER I. 255
ces. Whilst the fortune of the field was wholly with
the Regicides, nothing was thought of but to follow
where it led: and it led to everything. Not so much
as a talk of treaty. Laws were laid down with arrogance. The most moderate politician in their clan*
was chosen as the organ, not so much for prescribing
limits to their claims as to mark what for the present
they are content to leave to others. They made, not
laws, not conventions, not late possession, but physical Nature and political convenience the sole foundation of their claims. The Rhine, the Mediterranean, and the ocean were the bounds which, for the time,
they assigned to the Empire of Regicide. What was
the Chamber of Union of Louis the Fourteenth,
which astonished and provoked all Europe, compared
to this declaration? In truth, with these limits, and
their principle, they would not have left even the
shadow of liberty or safety to any nation. This plan
of empire was not taken up in the first intoxication
of unexpected success. You must recollect that it
was projected, just as the report has stated it, from
the very first revolt of the faction against their monarchy; and it has *been uniformly pursued, as a
standing maxim of national policy, from that time
to this. It is generally in the season of prosperity
that men discover their real temper, principles, and
designs. But this principle, suggested in their first
struggles, fully avowed in their prosperity, has, in
the most adverse state of their affairs, been tenaciously adhered to. The report, combined with their
conduct, forms an infallible criterion of the views of
this republic.
In their fortune there has been some fluctuation
* Boissy d'Anglas.
? ? ? ? 256 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
We are to see how their minds have been affected
with a change. Some impression it made on them,
undoubtedly. It produced some oblique notice of the
submissions that were made by suppliant nations.
The utmost they did was to make some of those cold,
formal, general professions of a love of peace which
no power has ever refused to make, because they
mean little and cost nothing. The first paper I
have seen (the publication at Hamburg) making a
show of that pacific disposition discovered a rooted
animosity against this nation, and an incurable rancor, even more than any one of their hostile acts. In
this Hamburg declaration they choose to suppose
that the war, on the part of England, is a war of government, begun and carried on against the sense and interests of the people, - thus sowing in their very overtures towards peace the seeds of tumult and sedition: for they never have abandofied, and never will they
abandon, in peace, in war, in treaty, in any situation,
or for one instant, their old, steady maxim of separating the people from their government. Let me
add, (and it is with unfeigned anxiety for the character and credit of ministers that I do add,) if our government perseveres in its as uniform course of acting under instruments with such preambles, it pleads
guilty to the charges made by our enemies against it,
both on its own part and on the part of Parliament
itself. The enemy must succeed in his plan for
loosening and disconnecting all the internal holdings of the kingdom.
It was not enough that the speech from the throne,
in the opening of the session in 1795, threw out
oglings and glances of tenderness. Lest this coquetting should seem too cold and ambiguous, without
? ? ? ? LETTER I. 257
waiting for its effect,- the violent passion for a relation
to the Regicides produced a direct message from the
crown, and its consequences from the two Houses of
Parliament. On the part of the Regicides these declarations could not be entirely passed by without notice; but in that notice they discovered still more clearly the bottom of their character. The offer
made to them by the message to Parliament was
hinted at in their answer, -- but in an obscure and
oblique manner, as before. They accompanied their
notice of the indications manifested on our side with
every kind of insolent and taunting reflection. The
Regicide Directory, on the day which, in their gypsy
jargon, they call the 5th of Pluviose, in return for
our advances, charge us with eluding our declara --
tions under "evasive formalities and frivolous pretexts. " What these pretexts and evasions were they
do not say, and I have never heard. But they do
not rest there. They proceed to charge us, and, as it
should seem, our allies in the mass, with direct perfidy; they are so conciliatory in their language as
to hint that this perfidious character is not new in
our proceedings. However, notwithstanding this our
habitual perfidy, they will offer peace " on conditions
as moderate" - as what? as reason and as equity require? No, - as moderate " as are suitable to their
national dignity. " National dignity in all treaties 1
do admit is an important consideration: they have
given us an useful hint on that subject: but dignity
hitherto has belonged to the mode of proceeding, not
to the matter of a treaty. Never before has it been
mentioned as the standard for rating the conditions
of peace, - no, never by the most violent of conquerors. Indemnification is capable of some estimate;
VOL. V. 17
? ? ? ? 258 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
dignity has no standard. It is impossible to guess
what acquisitions pride and ambition may think fit
for their dignity. But lest any doubt should remain
on what they think for their dignity, the Regicides
in the next paragraph tell us "that they will have
no peace with their enemies, until they have reduced
them to a state which will put them under an impossibility of pursuing their wretched projects," - that
is, in plain French or English, until they have accomplished our utter and irretrievable ruin. This
is their pacific language. It flows from their unalterable principle, in whatever language they speak
or whatever steps they take, whether of real war or
of pretended pacification. They have never, to do
them justice, been at much trouble in concealing
their intentions. We were as obstinately resolved
to think them not in earnest: but I confess, jests. of this sort, whatever their urbanity may be, are
not much to my taste.
To this conciliatory and amicable public communication our sole answer, in effect, is this: -- " Citizen
Regicides! whenever you find yourselves in the humor, you may have a peace with us. That is a point
you may always command. We are constantly in
attendance, and nothing you can do shall hinder us
from the renewal of our supplications. You may
turn us out at the door, but we will jump in at the
window. "
To those who do not love to contemplate the fall
of human greatness, I do not know a more mortifying spectacle than to see the assembled majesty of
the crowned heads of Europe waiting as patient suitors in the antechamber of Regicide. They wait, it. seems, until the sanguinary tyrant Carnot shall have
? ? ? ? LETTER I. 259
snorted away the fumes of the indigested blood of
his sovereign. Then, when, sunk on the down of
usurped pomp, he shall have sufficiently indulged his
meditations with what monarch he shall next glut
his ravening maw, he may condescend to signify
that it is his pleasure to be awake, and that he is
at leisure to receive the proposals of his high and
mighty clients for the terms on which he may respite the execution of the sentence he has passed
upon them. At the opening of those doors, what
a sight it must be to behold the plenipotentiaries
of royal impotence, in the precedency which they
will intrigue to obtain, and which will be granted
to them according to the seniority of their degradation, sneaking into the Regicide presence, and, with
the relics of the smile which they had dressed up
for the levee of their masters still flickering on their
curled lips, presenting the faded remains of their
courtly graces, to meet the scornful, ferocious, sardonic grin of a bloody ruffian, who, whilst he is receiving their homage, is measuring them with his eye, and fitting to their size the slider of his guillotine! These ambassadors may easily return as good
courtiers as they went; but can they ever return
from that degrading residence loyal and faithful subjects, or with any true affection to their master, or
true attachment to the constitution, religion, or laws
of their country? There is great danger that they,
who enter smiling into this Trophoniian cave, will
come out of it sad and serious conspirators, and
such will continue as long as they live. They will
become true conductors of contagion to every country which has had the misfortune to send them to
the source of that electricity. At best, they will be
? ? ? ? 260 LETTERS ON A REGICIDE PEACE.
come totally indifferent to good and evil, to one institution or another. This species of indifference is but too generally distinguishable in those who have.
been much employed in foreign courts, but in the
present case the evil must be aggravated without
measure: for they go from their country, not with
the pride of the old character, but in a state of the
lowest degradation; and what must happen in their
place of residence can have no effect in raising them
to the level of true dignity or of chaste self-estimation, either as men or as representatives of crowned heads.
Our early proceeding, which has produced these returns of affront, appeared to me totally new, without being adapted to the new circumstances of affairs.
I have called to my mind the speeches and messages
in former times. I find nothing like these.