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

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I was an Irishman in the Irish business, just as much as I was an
American, when, on the same principles, I wished you to concede to
America at a time when she prayed concession at our feet. Just as much
was I an American, when I wished Parliament to offer terms in victory,
and not to wait the well-chosen hour of defeat, for making good by
weakness and by supplication a claim of prerogative, preeminence, and
authority.

Instead of requiring it from me, as a point of duty, to kindle with your
passions, had you all been as cool as I was, you would have been saved
disgraces and distresses that are unutterable. Do you remember our
commission? We sent out a solemn embassy across the Atlantic Ocean, to
lay the crown, the peerage, the commons of Great Britain at the feet of
the American Congress. That our disgrace might want no sort of
brightening and burnishing, observe who they were that composed this
famous embassy. My Lord Carlisle is among the first ranks of our
nobility. He is the identical man who, but two years before, had been
put forward, at the opening of a session, in the House of Lords, as the
mover of an haughty and rigorous address against America. He was put in
the front of the embassy of submission. Mr. Eden was taken from the
office of Lord Suffolk, to whom he was then Under-Secretary of
State,--from the office of that Lord Suffolk who but a few weeks before,
in his place in Parliament, did not deign to inquire where a congress of
vagrants was to be found. This Lord Suffolk sent Mr. Eden to find these
vagrants, without knowing where his king's generals were to be found who
were joined in the same commission of supplicating those whom they were
sent to subdue. They enter the capital of America only to abandon it;
and these assertors and representatives of the dignity of England, at
the tail of a flying army, let fly their Parthian shafts of memorials
and remonstrances at random behind them. Their promises and their
offers, their flatteries and their menaces, were all despised; and we
were saved the disgrace of their formal reception only because the
Congress scorned to receive them; whilst the State-house of independent
Philadelphia opened her doors to the public entry of the ambassador of
France. From war and blood we went to submission, and from submission
plunged back again to war and blood, to desolate and be desolated,
without measure, hope, or end. I am a Royalist: I blushed for this
degradation of the crown. I am a Whig: I blushed for the dishonor of
Parliament. I am a true Englishman: I felt to the quick for the
disgrace of England. I am a man: I felt for the melancholy reverse of
human affairs in the fall of the first power in the world.

To read what was approaching in Ireland, in the black and bloody
characters of the American war, was a painful, but it was a necessary
part of my public duty. For, Gentlemen, it is not your fond desires or
mine that can alter the nature of things; by contending against which,
what have we got, or shall ever get, but defeat and shame? I did not
obey your instructions. No. I conformed to the instructions of truth and
Nature, and maintained your interest, against your opinions, with a
constancy that became me. A representative worthy of you ought to be a
person of stability. I am to look, indeed, to your opinions,--but to
such opinions as you and I _must_ have five years hence. I was not to
look to the flash of the day. I knew that you chose me, in my place,
along with others, to be a pillar of the state, and not a weathercock on
the top of the edifice, exalted for my levity and versatility, and of no
use but to indicate the shiftings of every fashionable gale. Would to
God the value of my sentiments on Ireland and on America had been at
this day a subject of doubt and discussion! No matter what my sufferings
had been, so that this kingdom had kept the authority I wished it to
maintain, by a grave foresight, and by an equitable temperance in the
use of its power.

The next article of charge on my public conduct, and that which I find
rather the most prevalent of all, is Lord Beauchamp's bill: I mean his
bill of last session, for reforming the law-process concerning
imprisonment. It is said, to aggravate the offence, that I treated the
petition of this city with contempt even in presenting it to the House,
and expressed myself in terms of marked disrespect. Had this latter part
of the charge been true, no merits on the side of the question which I
took could possibly excuse me. But I am incapable of treating this city
with disrespect. Very fortunately, at this minute, (if my bad eyesight
does not deceive me,) the worthy gentleman[49] deputed on this business
stands directly before me. To him I appeal, whether I did not, though it
militated with my oldest and my most recent public opinions, deliver the
petition with a strong and more than usual recommendation to the
consideration of the House, on account of the character and consequence
of those who signed it. I believe the worthy gentleman will tell you,
that, the very day I received it, I applied to the Solicitor, now the
Attorney General, to give it an immediate consideration; and he most
obligingly and instantly consented to employ a great deal of his very
valuable time to write an explanation of the bill. I attended the
committee with all possible care and diligence, in order that every
objection of yours might meet with a solution, or produce an alteration.
I entreated your learned recorder (always ready in business in which you
take a concern) to attend. But what will you say to those who blame me
for supporting Lord Beauchamp's bill, as a disrespectful treatment of
your petition, when you hear, that, out of respect to you, I myself was
the cause of the loss of that very bill? For the noble lord who brought
it in, and who, I must say, has much merit for this and some other
measures, at my request consented to put it off for a week, which the
Speaker's illness lengthened to a fortnight; and then the frantic
tumult about Popery drove that and every rational business from the
House. So that, if I chose to make a defence of myself, on the little
principles of a culprit, pleading in his exculpation, I might not only
secure my acquittal, but make merit with the opposers of the bill. But I
shall do no such thing. The truth is, that I did occasion the loss of
the bill, and by a delay caused by my respect to you. But such an event
was never in my contemplation. And I am so far from taking credit for
the defeat of that measure, that I cannot sufficiently lament my
misfortune, if but one man, who ought to be at large, has passed a year
in prison by my means. I am a debtor to the debtors. I confess judgment.
I owe what, if ever it be in my power, I shall most certainly
pay,--ample atonement and usurious amends to liberty and humanity for my
unhappy lapse. For, Gentlemen, Lord Beauchamp's bill was a law of
justice and policy, as far as it went: I say, as far as it went; for its
fault was its being in the remedial part miserably defective.

There are two capital faults in our law with relation to civil debts.
One is, that every man is presumed solvent: a presumption, in
innumerable cases, directly against truth. Therefore the debtor is
ordered, on a supposition of ability and fraud, to be coerced his
liberty until he makes payment. By this means, in all cases of civil
insolvency, without a pardon from his creditor, he is to be imprisoned
for life; and thus a miserable mistaken invention of artificial science
operates to change a civil into a criminal judgment, and to scourge
misfortune or indiscretion with a punishment which the law does not
inflict on the greatest crimes.

The next fault is, that the inflicting of that punishment is not on the
opinion of an equal and public judge, but is referred to the arbitrary
discretion of a private, nay, interested, and irritated, individual. He,
who formally is, and substantially ought to be, the judge, is in reality
no more than ministerial, a mere executive instrument of a private man,
who is at once judge and party. Every idea of judicial order is
subverted by this procedure. If the insolvency be no crime, why is it
punished with arbitrary imprisonment? If it be a crime, why is it
delivered into private hands to pardon without discretion, or to punish
without mercy and without measure?

To these faults, gross and cruel faults in our law, the excellent
principle of Lord Beauchamp's bill applied some sort of remedy. I know
that credit must be preserved: but equity must be preserved, too; and it
is impossible that anything should be necessary to commerce which is
inconsistent with justice. The principle of credit was not weakened by
that bill. God forbid! The enforcement of that credit was only put into
the same public judicial hands on which we depend for our lives and all
that makes life dear to us. But, indeed, this business was taken up too
warmly, both here and elsewhere. The bill was extremely mistaken. It was
supposed to enact what it never enacted; and complaints were made of
clauses in it, as novelties, which existed before the noble lord that
brought in the bill was born. There was a fallacy that ran through the
whole of the objections. The gentlemen who opposed the bill always
argued as if the option lay between that bill and the ancient law. But
this is a grand mistake. For, practically, the option is between not
that bill and the old law, but between that bill and those occasional
laws called acts of grace. For the operation of the old law is so
savage, and so inconvenient to society, that for a long time past, once
in every Parliament, and lately twice, the legislature has been obliged
to make a general arbitrary jail-delivery, and at once to set open, by
its sovereign authority, all the prisons in England.

Gentlemen, I never relished acts of grace, nor ever submitted to them
but from despair of better. They are a dishonorable invention, by which,
not from humanity, not from policy, but merely because we have not room
enough to hold these victims of the absurdity of our laws, we turn loose
upon the public three or four thousand naked wretches, corrupted by the
habits, debased by the ignominy of a prison. If the creditor had a right
to those carcasses as a natural security for his property, I am sure we
have no right to deprive him of that security. But if the few pounds of
flesh were not necessary to his security, we had not a right to detain
the unfortunate debtor, without any benefit at all to the person who
confined him. Take it as you will, we commit injustice. Now Lord
Beauchamp's bill intended to do deliberately, and with great caution and
circumspection, upon each several case, and with all attention to the
just claimant, what acts of grace do in a much greater measure, and with
very little care, caution, or deliberation.

I suspect that here, too, if we contrive to oppose this bill, we shall
be found in a struggle against the nature of things. For, as we grow
enlightened, the public will not bear, for any length of time, to pay
for the maintenance of whole armies of prisoners, nor, at their own
expense, submit to keep jails as a sort of garrisons, merely to fortify
the absurd principle of making men judges in their own cause. For credit
has little or no concern in this cruelty. I speak in a commercial
assembly. You know that credit is given because capital _must_ be
employed; that men calculate the chances of insolvency; and they either
withhold the credit, or make the debtor pay the risk in the price. The
counting-house has no alliance with the jail. Holland understands trade
as well as we, and she has done much more than this obnoxious bill
intended to do. There was not, when Mr. Howard visited Holland, more
than one prisoner for debt in the great city of Rotterdam. Although Lord
Beauchamp's act (which was previous to this bill, and intended to feel
the way for it) has already preserved liberty to thousands, and though
it is not three years since the last act of grace passed, yet, by Mr.
Howard's last account, there were near three thousand again in jail. I
cannot name this gentleman without remarking that his labors and
writings have done much to open the eyes and hearts of mankind. He has
visited all Europe,--not to survey the sumptuousness of palaces or the
stateliness of temples, not to make accurate measurements of the remains
of ancient grandeur nor to form a scale of the curiosity of modern art,
not to collect medals or collate manuscripts,--but to dive into the
depths of dungeons, to plunge into the infection of hospitals, to survey
the mansions of sorrow and pain, to take the gauge and dimensions of
misery, depression, and contempt, to remember the forgotten, to attend
to the neglected, to visit the forsaken, and to compare and collate the
distresses of all men in all countries. His plan is original; and it is
as full of genius as it is of humanity. It was a voyage of discovery, a
circumnavigation of charity. Already the benefit of his labor is felt
more or less in every country; I hope he will anticipate his final
reward by seeing all its effects fully realized in his own. He will
receive, not by retail, but in gross, the reward of those who visit the
prisoner; and he has so forestalled and monopolized this branch of
charity, that there will be, I trust, little room to merit by such acts
of benevolence hereafter.

Nothing now remains to trouble you with but the fourth charge against
me,--the business of the Roman Catholics. It is a business closely
connected with the rest. They are all on one and the same principle. My
little scheme of conduct, such as it is, is all arranged. I could do
nothing but what I have done on this subject, without confounding the
whole train of my ideas and disturbing the whole order of my life.
Gentlemen, I ought to apologize to you for seeming to think anything at
all necessary to be said upon this matter. The calumny is fitter to be
scrawled with the midnight chalk of incendiaries, with "No Popery," on
walls and doors of devoted houses, than to be mentioned in any civilized
company. I had heard that the spirit of discontent on that subject was
very prevalent here. With pleasure I find that I have been grossly
misinformed. If it exists at all in this city, the laws have crushed its
exertions, and our morals have shamed its appearance in daylight. I have
pursued this spirit wherever I could trace it; but it still fled from
me. It was a ghost which all had heard of, but none had seen. None would
acknowledge that he thought the public proceeding with regard to our
Catholic dissenters to be blamable; but several were sorry it had made
an ill impression upon others, and that my interest was hurt by my share
in the business. I find with satisfaction and pride, that not above four
or five in this city (and I dare say these misled by some gross
misrepresentation) have signed that symbol of delusion and bond of
sedition, that libel on the national religion and English character, the
Protestant Association. It is, therefore, Gentlemen, not by way of cure,
but of prevention, and lest the arts of wicked men may prevail over the
integrity of any one amongst us, that I think it necessary to open to
you the merits of this transaction pretty much at large; and I beg your
patience upon it: for, although the reasonings that have been used to
depreciate the act are of little force, and though the authority of the
men concerned in this ill design is not very imposing, yet the
audaciousness of these conspirators against the national honor, and the
extensive wickedness of their attempts, have raised persons of little
importance to a degree of evil eminence, and imparted a sort of sinister
dignity to proceedings that had their origin in only the meanest and
blindest malice.

In explaining to you the proceedings of Parliament which have been
complained of, I will state to you,--first, the thing that was
done,--next, the persons who did it,--and lastly, the grounds and
reasons upon which the legislature proceeded in this deliberate act of
public justice and public prudence.

Gentlemen, the condition of our nature is such that we buy our blessings
at a price. The Reformation, one of the greatest periods of human
improvement, was a time of trouble and confusion. The vast structure of
superstition and tyranny which had been for ages in rearing, and which
was combined with the interest of the great and of the many, which was
moulded into the laws, the manners, and civil institutions of nations,
and blended with the frame and policy of states, could not be brought to
the ground without a fearful struggle; nor could it fall without a
violent concussion of itself and all about it. When this great
revolution was attempted in a more regular mode by government, it was
opposed by plots and seditions of the people; when by popular efforts,
it was repressed as rebellion by the hand of power; and bloody
executions (often bloodily returned) marked the whole of its progress
through all its stages. The affairs of religion, which are no longer
heard of in the tumult of our present contentions, made a principal
ingredient in the wars and politics of that time: the enthusiasm of
religion threw a gloom over the politics; and political interests
poisoned and perverted the spirit of religion upon all sides. The
Protestant religion, in that violent struggle, infected, as the Popish
had been before, by worldly interests and worldly passions, became a
persecutor in its turn, sometimes of the new sects, which carried their
own principles further than it was convenient to the original reformers,
and always of the body from whom they parted: and this persecuting
spirit arose, not only from the bitterness of retaliation, but from the
merciless policy of fear.

It was long before the spirit of true piety and true wisdom, involved in
the principles of the Reformation, could be depurated from the dregs and
feculence of the contention with which it was carried through. However,
until this be done, the Reformation is not complete: and those who think
themselves good Protestants, from their animosity to others, are in
that respect no Protestants at all. It was at first thought necessary,
perhaps, to oppose to Popery another Popery, to get the better of it.
Whatever was the cause, laws were made in many countries, and in this
kingdom in particular, against Papists, which are as bloody as any of
those which had been enacted by the Popish princes and states: and where
those laws were not bloody, in my opinion, they were worse; as they were
slow, cruel outrages on our nature, and kept men alive only to insult in
their persons every one of the rights and feelings of humanity. I pass
those statutes, because I would spare your pious ears the repetition of
such shocking things; and I come to that particular law the repeal of
which has produced so many unnatural and unexpected consequences.

A statute was fabricated in the year 1699, by which the saying mass (a
church service in the Latin tongue, not exactly the same as our liturgy,
but very near it, and containing no offence whatsoever against the laws,
or against good morals) was forged into a crime, punishable with
perpetual imprisonment. The teaching school, an useful and virtuous
occupation, even the teaching in a private family, was in every Catholic
subjected to the same unproportioned punishment. Your industry, and the
bread of your children, was taxed for a pecuniary reward to stimulate
avarice to do what Nature refused, to inform and prosecute on this law.
Every Roman Catholic was, under the same act, to forfeit his estate to
his nearest Protestant relation, until, through a profession of what he
did not believe, he redeemed by his hypocrisy what the law had
transferred to the kinsman as the recompense of his profligacy. When
thus turned out of doors from his paternal estate, he was disabled from
acquiring any other by any industry, donation, or charity; but was
rendered a foreigner in his native land, only because he retained the
religion, along with the property, handed down to him from those who had
been the old inhabitants of that land before him.

Does any one who hears me approve this scheme of things, or think there
is common justice, common sense, or common honesty in any part of it? If
any does, let him say it, and I am ready to discuss the point with
temper and candor. But instead of approving, I perceive a virtuous
indignation beginning to rise in your minds on the mere cold stating of
the statute.

But what will you feel, when you know from history how this statute
passed, and what were the motives, and what the mode of making it? A
party in this nation, enemies to the system of the Revolution, were in
opposition to the government of King William. They knew that our
glorious deliverer was an enemy to all persecution. They knew that he
came to free us from slavery and Popery, out of a country where a third
of the people are contented Catholics under a Protestant government. He
came with a part of his army composed of those very Catholics, to
overset the power of a Popish prince. Such is the effect of a tolerating
spirit; and so much is liberty served in every way, and by all persons,
by a manly adherence to its own principles. Whilst freedom is true to
itself, everything becomes subject to it, and its very adversaries are
an instrument in its hands.

The party I speak of (like some amongst us who would disparage the best
friends of their country) resolved to make the king either violate his
principles of toleration or incur the odium of protecting Papists. They
therefore brought in this bill, and made it purposely wicked and absurd
that it might be rejected. The then court party, discovering their game,
turned the tables on them, and returned their bill to them stuffed with
still greater absurdities, that its loss might lie upon its original
authors. They, finding their own ball thrown back to them, kicked it
back again to their adversaries. And thus this act, loaded with the
double injustice of two parties, neither of whom intended to pass what
they hoped the other would be persuaded to reject, went through the
legislature, contrary to the real wish of all parts of it, and of all
the parties that composed it. In this manner these insolent and
profligate factions, as if they were playing with balls and counters,
made a sport of the fortunes and the liberties of their
fellow-creatures. Other acts of persecution have been acts of malice.
This was a subversion of justice from wantonness and petulance. Look
into the history of Bishop Burnet. He is a witness without exception.

The effects of the act have been as mischievous as its origin was
ludicrous and shameful. From that time, every person of that communion,
lay and ecclesiastic, has been obliged to fly from the face of day. The
clergy, concealed in garrets of private houses, or obliged to take a
shelter (hardly safe to themselves, but infinitely dangerous to their
country) under the privileges of foreign ministers, officiated as their
servants and under their protection. The whole body of the Catholics,
condemned to beggary and to ignorance in their native land, have been
obliged to learn the principles of letters, at the hazard of all their
other principles, from the charity of your enemies. They have been taxed
to their ruin at the pleasure of necessitous and profligate relations,
and according to the measure of their necessity and profligacy. Examples
of this are many and affecting. Some of them are known by a friend who
stands near me in this hall. It is but six or seven years since a
clergyman, of the name of Malony, a man of morals, neither guilty nor
accused of anything noxious to the state, was condemned to perpetual
imprisonment for exercising the functions of his religion; and after
lying in jail two or three years, was relieved by the mercy of
government from perpetual imprisonment, on condition of perpetual
banishment. A brother of the Earl of Shrewsbury, a Talbot, a name
respectable in this country whilst its glory is any part of its concern,
was hauled to the bar of the Old Bailey, among common felons, and only
escaped the same doom, either by some error in the process, or that the
wretch who brought him there could not correctly describe his person,--I
now forget which. In short, the persecution would never have relented
for a moment, if the judges, superseding (though with an ambiguous
example) the strict rule of their artificial duty by the higher
obligation of their conscience, did not constantly throw every
difficulty in the way of such informers. But so ineffectual is the power
of legal evasion against legal iniquity, that it was but the other day
that a lady of condition, beyond the middle of life, was on the point of
being stripped of her whole fortune by a near relation to whom she had
been a friend and benefactor; and she must have been totally ruined,
without a power of redress or mitigation from the courts of law, had
not the legislature itself rushed in, and by a special act of Parliament
rescued her from the injustice of its own statutes. One of the acts
authorizing such things was that which we in part repealed, knowing what
our duty was, and doing that duty as men of honor and virtue, as good
Protestants, and as good citizens. Let him stand forth that disapproves
what we have done!

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