A \ B \ C \ D \ E \ F \ G \ H \ I \ J \ K \ L \ M \ N \ O \ P \ R \ S \ T \ U \ V \ W \Z

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

E >> Edmund Burke >> The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12)




At the same time, Mr. Burke moved for leave to bring in--

4th, "A bill for uniting the Duchy of Cornwall to the crown; for the
suppression of certain unnecessary offices now belonging thereto; for
the _ascertainment and security of tenant and other rights_; and for
the sale of certain rents, lands, and tenements, within or belonging to
the said Duchy; _and for applying the produce thereof to the public
service_."

But some objections being made by the Surveyor-General of the Duchy
concerning the rights of the Prince of Wales, now in his minority, and
Lord North remaining perfectly silent, Mr. Burke, at length, though he
strongly contended against the principle of the objection, consented to
withdraw this last motion _for the present_, to be renewed upon an early
occasion.

FOOTNOTES:

[31] This term comprehends various retributions made to persons whose
offices are taken away, or who in any other way suffer by the new
arrangements that are made.

[32] Edict registered 29th January, 1780.

[33] Thomas Gilbert, Esq., member for Lichfield.

[34] Here Lord North shook his head, and told those who sat near him
that Mr. Probert's pension was to depend on his success. It may be so.
Mr. Probert's pension was, however, no essential part of the question;
nor did Mr. B. care whether he still possessed it or not. His point was,
to show the ridicule of attempting an improvement of the Welsh revenue
under its present establishment.

[35] Case of Richard Lee, Esq., appellant, against George Venables Lord
Vernon, respondent, in the year 1775.

[36] Vide Lord Talbot's speech in Almon's Parliamentary Register. Vol
VII. p. 79, of the Proceedings of the Lords.

[37] More exactly, 378,616_l._ 10 _s._ 1-3/4 _d._

[38] Et quaunt viscount ou baillif eit comence de acompter, nul autre ne
seit resceu de aconter tanque le primer qe soit assis eit peraccompte,
et qe la somme soit resceu.--Stat. 5. Ann Dom. 1266.

[39] Summum jus summa injuria.

[40] It was supposed by the Lord Advocate, in a subsequent debate, that
Mr. Burke, because he objected to an inquiry into the pension list for
the purpose of economy and relief of the public, would have it withheld
from the judgment of Parliament for all purposes whatsoever. This
learned gentleman certainly misunderstood him. His plan shows that he
wished the whole list to be easily accessible; and he knows that the
public eye is of itself a great guard against abuse.

[41] Before the statute of Queen Anne, which limited the alienation of
land.

[42] Duke of Newcastle, whose dining-room is under the House of Commons.

[43] Letters between Dr. Addington and Sir James Wright.

[44] Titles of the bills read.

[45] W. Dowdeswell, Esq., Chancellor of the Exchequer, 1765.

[46] Rejection of Lord Shelburne's motion in the House of Lords.

[47] The motion was seconded by Mr. Fox.




SPEECH

AT THE

GUILDHALL IN BRISTOL, PREVIOUS TO THE LATE ELECTION IN THAT CITY,

UPON

CERTAIN POINTS RELATIVE TO HIS PARLIAMENTARY CONDUCT.

1780.




Mr. Mayor, and Gentlemen,--I am extremely pleased at the appearance of
this large and respectable meeting. The steps I may be obliged to take
will want the sanction of a considerable authority; and in explaining
anything which may appear doubtful in my public conduct, I must
naturally desire a very full audience.

I have been backward to begin my canvass. The dissolution of the
Parliament was uncertain; and it did not become me, by an unseasonable
importunity, to appear diffident of the effect of my six years'
endeavors to please you. I had served the city of Bristol honorably, and
the city of Bristol had no reason to think that the means of honorable
service to the public were become indifferent to me.

I found, on my arrival here, that three gentlemen had been long in eager
pursuit of an object which but two of us can obtain. I found that they
had all met with encouragement. A contested election in such a city as
this is no light thing. I paused on the brink of the precipice. These
three gentlemen, by various merits, and on various titles, I made no
doubt were worthy of your favor. I shall never attempt to raise myself
by depreciating the merits of my competitors. In the complexity and
confusion of these cross pursuits, I wished to take the authentic public
sense of my friends upon a business of so much delicacy. I wished to
take your opinion along with me, that, if I should give up the contest
at the very beginning, my surrender of my post may not seem the effect
of inconstancy, or timidity, or anger, or disgust, or indolence, or any
other temper unbecoming a man who has engaged in the public service. If,
on the contrary, I should undertake the election, and fail of success, I
was full as anxious that it should be manifest to the whole world that
the peace of the city had not been broken by my rashness, presumption,
or fond conceit of my own merit.

I am not come, by a false and counterfeit show of deference to your
judgment, to seduce it in my favor. I ask it seriously and unaffectedly.
If you wish that I should retire, I shall not consider that advice as a
censure upon my conduct, or an alteration in your sentiments, but as a
rational submission to the circumstances of affairs. If, on the
contrary, you should think it proper for me to proceed on my canvass, if
you will risk the trouble on your part, I will risk it on mine. My
pretensions are such as you cannot be ashamed of, whether they succeed
or fail.

If you call upon me, I shall solicit the favor of the city upon manly
ground. I come before you with the plain confidence of an honest servant
in the equity of a candid and discerning master. I come to claim your
approbation, not to amuse you with vain apologies, or with professions
still more vain and senseless. I have lived too long to be served by
apologies, or to stand in need of them. The part I have acted has been
in open day; and to hold out to a conduct which stands in that clear and
steady light for all its good and all its evil, to hold out to that
conduct the paltry winking tapers of excuses and promises,--I never
will do it. They may obscure it with their smoke, but they never can
illumine sunshine by such a flame as theirs.

I am sensible that no endeavors have been left untried to injure me in
your opinion. But the use of character is to be a shield against
calumny. I could wish, undoubtedly, (if idle wishes were not the most
idle of all things,) to make every part of my conduct agreeable to every
one of my constituents; but in so great a city, and so greatly divided
as this, it is weak to expect it.

In such a discordancy of sentiments it is better to look to the nature
of things than to the humors of men. The very attempt towards pleasing
everybody discovers a temper always flashy, and often false and
insincere. Therefore, as I have proceeded straight onward in my conduct,
so I will proceed in my account of those parts of it which have been
most excepted to. But I must first beg leave just to hint to you that we
may suffer very great detriment by being open to every talker. It is not
to be imagined how much of service is lost from spirits full of activity
and full of energy, who are pressing, who are rushing forward, to great
and capital objects, when you oblige them to be continually looking
back. Whilst they are defending one service, they defraud you of an
hundred. Applaud us when we run, console us when we fall, cheer us when
we recover; but let us pass on,--for God's sake, let us pass on!

Do you think, Gentlemen, that every public act in the six years since I
stood in this place before you, that all the arduous things which have
been done in this eventful period which has crowded into a few years'
space the revolutions of an age, can be opened to you on their fair
grounds in half an hour's conversation?

But it is no reason, because there is a bad mode of inquiry, that there
should be no examination at all. Most certainly it is our duty to
examine; it is our interest, too: but it must be with discretion, with
an attention to all the circumstances and to all the motives; like sound
judges, and not like cavilling pettifoggers and quibbling pleaders,
prying into flaws and hunting for exceptions. Look, Gentlemen, to the
_whole tenor_ of your member's conduct. Try whether his ambition or his
avarice have justled him out of the straight line of duty,--or whether
that grand foe of the offices of active life, that master vice in men of
business, a degenerate and inglorious sloth, has made him flag and
languish in his course. This is the object of our inquiry. If our
member's conduct can bear this touch, mark it for sterling. He may have
fallen into errors, he must have faults; but our error is greater, and
our fault is radically ruinous to ourselves, if we do not bear, if we do
not even applaud, the whole compound and mixed mass of such a character.
Not to act thus is folly; I had almost said it is impiety. He censures
God who quarrels with the imperfections of man.

Gentlemen, we must not be peevish with those who serve the people; for
none will serve us, whilst there is a court to serve, but those who are
of a nice and jealous honor. They who think everything, in comparison of
that honor, to be dust and ashes, will not bear to have it soiled and
impaired by those for whose sake they make a thousand sacrifices to
preserve it immaculate and whole. We shall either drive such men from
the public stage, or we shall send them to the court for protection,
where, if they must sacrifice their reputation, they will at least
secure their interest. Depend upon it, that the lovers of freedom will
be free. None will violate their conscience to please us, in order
afterwards to discharge that conscience, which they have violated, by
doing us faithful and affectionate service. If we degrade and deprave
their minds by servility, it will be absurd to expect that they who are
creeping and abject towards us will ever be bold and incorruptible
assertors of our freedom against the most seducing and the most
formidable of all powers. No! human nature is not so formed: nor shall
we improve the faculties or better the morals of public men by our
possession of the most infallible receipt in the world for making cheats
and hypocrites.

Let me say, with plainness, I who am no longer in a public character,
that, if, by a fair, by an indulgent, by a gentlemanly behavior to our
representatives, we do not give confidence to their minds and a liberal
scope to their understandings, if we do not permit our members to act
upon a _very_ enlarged view of things, we shall at length infallibly
degrade our national representation into a confused and scuffling bustle
of local agency. When the popular member is narrowed in his ideas and
rendered timid in his proceedings, the service of the crown will be the
sole nursery of statesmen. Among the frolics of the court, it may at
length take that of attending to its business. Then the monopoly of
mental power will be added to the power of all other kinds it possesses.
On the side of the people there will be nothing but impotence: for
ignorance is impotence; narrowness of mind is impotence; timidity is
itself impotence, and makes all other qualities that go along with it
impotent and useless.

At present it is the plan of the court to make its servants
insignificant. If the people should fall into the same humor, and should
choose their servants on the same principles of mere obsequiousness and
flexibility and total vacancy or indifference of opinion in all public
matters, then no part of the state will be sound, and it will be in vain
to think of saving it.

I thought it very expedient at this time to give you this candid
counsel; and with this counsel I would willingly close, if the matters
which at various times have been objected to me in this city concerned
only myself and my own election. These charges, I think, are four in
number: my neglect of a due attention to my constituents, the not paying
more frequent visits here; my conduct on the affairs of the first Irish
Trade Acts; my opinion and mode of proceeding on Lord Beauchamp's
Debtors' Bills; and my votes on the late affairs of the Roman Catholics.
All of these (except perhaps the first) relate to matters of very
considerable public concern; and it is not lest you should censure me
improperly, but lest you should form improper opinions on matters of
some moment to you, that I trouble you at all upon the subject. My
conduct is of small importance.

With regard to the first charge, my friends have spoken to ms of it in
the style of amicable expostulation,--not so much blaming the thing as
lamenting the effects. Others, less partial to me, were less kind in
assigning the motives. I admit, there is a decorum and propriety in a
member of Parliament's paying a respectful court to his constituents. If
I were conscious to myself that pleasure, or dissipation, or low,
unworthy occupations had detained me from personal attendance on you, I
would readily admit my fault, and quietly submit to the penalty. But,
Gentlemen, I live at an hundred miles' distance from Bristol; and at the
end of a session I come to my own house, fatigued in body and in mind,
to a little repose, and to a very little attention to my family and my
private concerns. A visit to Bristol is always a sort of canvass, else
it will do more harm than good. To pass from the toils of a session to
the toils of a canvass is the furthest thing in the world from repose. I
could hardly serve you _as I have done_, and court you too. Most of you
have heard that I do not very remarkably spare myself in _public_
business; and in the _private_ business of my constituents I have done
very near as much as those who have nothing else to do. My canvass of
you was not on the 'change, nor in the county meetings, nor in the clubs
of this city: it was in the House of Commons; it was at the
Custom-House; it was at the Council; it was at the Treasury; it was at
the Admiralty. I canvassed you through your affairs, and not your
persons. I was not only your representative as a body; I was the agent,
the solicitor of individuals; I ran about wherever your affairs could
call me; and in acting for you, I often appeared rather as a ship-broker
than as a member of Parliament. There was nothing too laborious or too
low for me to undertake. The meanness of the business was raised by the
dignity of the object. If some lesser matters have slipped through my
fingers, it was because I filled my hands too full, and, in my eagerness
to serve you, took in more than any hands could grasp. Several gentlemen
stand round me who are my willing witnesses; and there are others who,
if they were here, would be still better, because they would be
unwilling witnesses to the same truth. It was in the middle of a summer
residence in London, and in the middle of a negotiation at the Admiralty
for your trade, that I was called to Bristol; and this late visit, at
this late day, has been possibly in prejudice to your affairs.

Since I have touched upon this matter, let me say, Gentlemen, that, if I
had a disposition or a right to complain, I have some cause of complaint
on my side. With a petition of this city in my hand, passed through the
corporation without a dissenting voice, a petition in unison with almost
the whole voice of the kingdom, (with whose formal thanks I was covered
over,) whilst I labored on no less than five bills for a public reform,
and fought, against the opposition of great abilities and of the
greatest power, every clause and every word of the largest of those
bills, almost to the very last day of a very long session,--all this
time a canvass in Bristol was as calmly carried on as if I were dead. I
was considered as a man wholly out of the question. Whilst I watched and
fasted and sweated in the House of Commons, by the most easy and
ordinary arts of election, by dinners and visits, by "How do you dos,"
and "My worthy friends," I was to be quietly moved out of my seat,--and
promises were made, and engagements entered into, without any exception
or reserve, as if my laborious zeal in my duty had been a regular
abdication of my trust.

To open my whole heart to you on this subject, I do confess, however,
that there were other times, besides the two years in which I did visit
you, when I was not wholly without leisure for repeating that mark of
my respect. But I could not bring my mind to see you. You remember that
in the beginning of this American war (that era of calamity, disgrace,
and downfall, an era which no feeling mind will ever mention without a
tear for England) you were greatly divided,--and a very strong body, if
not the strongest, opposed itself to the madness which every art and
every power were employed to render popular, in order that the errors of
the rulers might be lost in the general blindness of the nation. This
opposition continued until after our great, but most unfortunate victory
at Long Island. Then all the mounds and banks of our constancy were
borne down, at once, and the frenzy of the American war broke in upon us
like a deluge. This victory, which seemed to put an immediate end to all
difficulties, perfected us in that spirit of domination which our
unparalleled prosperity had but too long nurtured. We had been so very
powerful, and so very prosperous, that even the humblest of us were
degraded into the vices and follies of kings. We lost all measure
between means and ends; and our headlong desires became our politics and
our morals. All men who wished for peace, or retained any sentiments of
moderation, were overborne or silenced; and this city was led by every
artifice (and probably with the more management because I was one of
your members) to distinguish itself by its zeal for that fatal cause. In
this temper of yours and of my mind, I should sooner have fled to the
extremities of the earth than hate shown myself here. I, who saw in
every American victory (for you have had a long series of these
misfortunes) the germ and seed of the naval power of France and Spain,
which all our heat and warmth against America was only hatching into
life,--I should not have been a welcome visitant, with the brow and the
language of such feelings. When afterwards the other face of your
calamity was turned upon you, and showed itself in defeat and distress,
I shunned you full as much. I felt sorely this variety in our
wretchedness; and I did not wish to have the least appearance of
insulting you with that show of superiority, which, though it may not be
assumed, is generally suspected, in a time of calamity, from those whose
previous warnings have been despised. I could not bear to show you a
representative whose face did not reflect that of his constituents,--a
face that could not joy in your joys, and sorrow in your sorrows. But
time at length has made us all of one opinion, and we have all opened
our eyes on the true nature of the American war,--to the true nature of
all its successes and all its failures.

In that public storm, too, I had my private feelings. I had seen blown
down and prostrate on the ground several of those houses to whom I was
chiefly indebted for the honor this city has done me. I confess, that,
whilst the wounds of those I loved were yet green, I could not bear to
show myself in pride and triumph in that place into which their
partiality had brought me, and to appear at feasts and rejoicings in the
midst of the grief and calamity of my warm friends, my zealous
supporters, my generous benefactors. This is a true, unvarnished,
undisguised state of the affair. You will judge of it.

This is the only one of the charges in which I am personally concerned.
As to the other matters objected against me, which in their turn I shall
mention to you, remember once more I do not mean to extenuate or excuse.
Why should I, when the things charged are among those upon which I
found all my reputation? What would be left to me, if I myself was the
man who softened and blended and diluted and weakened all the
distinguishing colors of my life, so as to leave nothing distinct and
determinate in my whole conduct?

It has been said, and it is the second charge, that in the questions of
the Irish trade I did not consult the interest of my constituents,--or,
to speak out strongly, that I rather acted as a native of Ireland than
as an English member of Parliament.

I certainly have very warm good wishes for the place of my birth. But
the sphere of my duties is my true country. It was as a man attached to
your interests, and zealous for the conservation of your power and
dignity, that I acted on that occasion, and on all occasions. You were
involved in the American war. A new world of policy was opened, to which
it was necessary we should conform, whether we would or not; and my only
thought was how to conform to our situation in such a manner as to unite
to this kingdom, in prosperity and in affection, whatever remained of
the empire. I was true to my old, standing, invariable principle, that
all things which came from Great Britain should issue as a gift of her
bounty and beneficence, rather than as claims recovered against a
struggling litigant,--or at least, that, if your beneficence obtained no
credit in your concessions, yet that they should appear the salutary
provisions of your wisdom and foresight, not as things wrung from you
with your blood by the cruel gripe of a rigid necessity. The first
concessions, by being (much against my will) mangled and stripped of the
parts which were necessary to make out their just correspondence and
connection in trade, were of no use. The next year a feeble attempt was
made to bring the thing into better shape. This attempt, (countenanced
by the minister,) on the very first appearance of some popular
uneasiness, was, after a considerable progress through the House, thrown
out by _him_.

What was the consequence? The whole kingdom of Ireland was instantly in
a flame. Threatened by foreigners, and, as they thought, insulted by
England, they resolved at once to resist the power of France and to cast
off yours. As for us, we were able neither to protect nor to restrain
them. Forty thousand men were raised and disciplined without commission
from the crown. Two illegal armies were seen with banners displayed at
the same time and in the same country. No executive magistrate, no
judicature, in Ireland, would acknowledge the legality of the army which
bore the king's commission; and no law, or appearance of law, authorized
the army commissioned by itself. In this unexampled state of things,
which the least error, the least trespass on the right or left, would
have hurried down the precipice into an abyss of blood and confusion,
the people of Ireland demand a freedom of trade with arms in their
hands. They interdict all commerce between the two nations. They deny
all new supply in the House of Commons, although in time of war. They
stint the trust of the old revenue, given for two years to all the
king's predecessors, to six months. The British Parliament, in a former
session, frightened into a limited concession by the menaces of Ireland,
frightened out of it by the menaces of England, was now frightened back
again, and made an universal surrender of all that had been thought the
peculiar, reserved, uncommunicable rights of England: the exclusive
commerce of America, of Africa, of the West Indies,--all the
enumerations of the Acts of Navigation,--all the manufactures,--iron,
glass, even the last pledge of jealousy and pride, the interest hid in
the secret of our hearts, the inveterate prejudice moulded into the
constitution of our frame, even the sacred fleece itself, all went
together. No reserve, no exception; no debate, no discussion. A sudden
light broke in upon us all. It broke in, not through well-contrived and
well-disposed windows, but through flaws and breaches,--through the
yawning chasms of our ruin. We were taught wisdom by humiliation. No
town in England presumed to have a prejudice, or dared to mutter a
petition. What was worse, the whole Parliament of England, which
retained authority for nothing but surrenders, was despoiled of every
shadow of its superintendence. It was, without any qualification, denied
in theory, as it had been trampled upon in practice. This scene of shame
and disgrace has, in a manner, whilst I am speaking, ended by the
perpetual establishment of a military power in the dominions of this
crown, without consent of the British legislature,[48] contrary to the
policy of the Constitution, contrary to the Declaration of Right; and by
this your liberties are swept away along with your supreme
authority,--and both, linked together from the beginning, have, I am
afraid, both together perished forever.

What! Gentlemen, was I not to foresee, or foreseeing, was I not to
endeavor to save you from all these multiplied mischiefs and disgraces?
Would the little, silly, canvass prattle of obeying instructions, and
having no opinions but yours, and such idle, senseless tales, which
amuse the vacant ears of unthinking men, have saved you from "the
pelting of that pitiless storm," to which the loose improvidence, the
cowardly rashness, of those who dare not look danger in the face so as
to provide against it in time, and therefore throw themselves headlong
into the midst of it, have exposed this degraded nation, beat down and
prostrate on the earth, unsheltered, unarmed, unresisting? Was I an
Irishman on that day that I boldly withstood our pride? or on the day
that I hung down my head, and wept in shame and silence over the
humiliation of Great Britain? I became unpopular in England for the one,
and in Ireland for the other. What then? What obligation lay on me to be
popular? I was bound to serve both kingdoms. To be pleased with my
service was their affair, not mine.

Copyright (c) 2007. bestextbooks.com. All rights reserved.

Booth Tarkington and Harry Leon Wilson - "The Man from Home"

Charles Frederic Goss - "The Redemption of David Corson"

H. A. Cody - "Jess of the Rebel Trail"

Hugo Muensterberg - "Psychology and Industrial Efficiency"

Review: The Dying Game by Melanie King
Articles published by guardian.co.uk Books

Review: Hang the DJ edited by Angus Cargill
Review: The Dying Game: A Curious History of Death by Melanie King

Review: Bait by Nick Brownlee
Review: Hang the DJ: An Alternative Book of Music Lists edited by Angus Cargill