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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)




Gentlemen, bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny. In such a country as
this they are of all bad things the worst,--worse by far than anywhere
else; and they derive a particular malignity even from the wisdom and
soundness of the rest of our institutions. For very obvious reasons you
cannot trust the crown with a dispensing power over any of your laws.
However, a government, be it as bad as it may, will, in the exercise of
a discretionary power, discriminate times and persons, and will not
ordinarily pursue any man, when its own safety is not concerned. A
mercenary informer knows no distinction. Under such a system, the
obnoxious people are slaves not only to the government, but they live at
the mercy of every individual; they are at once the slaves of the whole
community and of every part of it; and the worst and most unmerciful men
are those on whose goodness they most depend.

In this situation, men not only shrink from the frowns of a stern
magistrate, but they are obliged to fly from their very species. The
seeds of destruction are sown in civil intercourse, in social habitudes.
The blood of wholesome kindred is infected. Their tables and beds are
surrounded with snares. All the means given by Providence to make life
safe and comfortable are perverted into instruments of terror and
torment. This species of universal subserviency, that makes the very
servant who waits behind your chair the arbiter of your life and
fortune, has such a tendency to degrade and abase mankind, and to
deprive them of that assured and liberal state of mind which alone can
make us what we ought to be, that I vow to God I would sooner bring
myself to put a man to immediate death for opinions I disliked, and so
to get rid of the man and his opinions at once, than to fret him with a
feverish being, tainted with the jail-distemper of a contagious
servitude, to keep him above ground an animated mass of putrefaction,
corrupted himself, and corrupting all about him.

The act repealed was of this direct tendency; and it was made in the
manner which I have related to you. I will now tell you by whom the bill
of repeal was brought into Parliament. I find it has been industriously
given out in this city (from kindness to me, unquestionably) that I was
the mover or the seconder. The fact is, I did not once open my lips on
the subject during the whole progress of the bill. I do not say this as
disclaiming my share in that measure. Very far from it. I inform you of
this fact, lest I should seem to arrogate to myself the merits which
belong to others. To have been the man chosen out to redeem our
fellow-citizens from slavery, to purify our laws from absurdity and
injustice, and to cleanse our religion from the blot and stain of
persecution, would be an honor and happiness to which my wishes would
undoubtedly aspire, but to which nothing but my wishes could possibly
have entitled me. That great work was in hands in every respect far
better qualified than mine. The mover of the bill was Sir George
Savile.

When an act of great and signal humanity was to be done, and done with
all the weight and authority that belonged to it, the world could cast
its eyes upon none but him. I hope that few things which have a tendency
to bless or to adorn life have wholly escaped my observation in my
passage through it. I have sought the acquaintance of that gentleman,
and have seen him in all situations. He is a true genius; with an
understanding vigorous, and acute, and refined, and distinguishing even
to excess; and illuminated with a most unbounded, peculiar, and original
cast of imagination. With these he possesses many external and
instrumental advantages; and he makes use of them all. His fortune is
among the largest,--a fortune which, wholly unincumbered as it is with
one single charge from luxury, vanity, or excess, sinks under the
benevolence of its dispenser. This private benevolence, expanding itself
into patriotism, renders his whole being the estate of the public, in
which he has not reserved a _peculium_ for himself of profit, diversion,
or relaxation. During the session the first in and the last out of the
House of Commons, he passes from the senate to the camp; and seldom
seeing the seat of his ancestors, he is always in Parliament to serve
his country or in the field to defend it. But in all well-wrought
compositions some particulars stand out more eminently than the rest;
and the things which will carry his name to posterity are his two bills:
I mean that for a limitation of the claims of the crown upon landed
estates, and this for the relief of the Roman Catholics. By the former
he has emancipated property; by the latter he has quieted conscience;
and by both he has taught that grand lesson to government and
subject,--no longer to regard each other as adverse parties.

Such was the mover of the act that is complained of by men who are not
quite so good as he is,--an act most assuredly not brought in by him
from any partiality to that sect which is the object of it. For among
his faults I really cannot help reckoning a greater degree of prejudice
against that people than becomes so wise a man. I know that he inclines
to a sort of disgust, mixed with a considerable degree of asperity, to
the system; and he has few, or rather no habits with any of its
professors. What he has done was on quite other motives. The motives
were these, which he declared in his excellent speech on his motion for
the bill: namely, his extreme zeal to the Protestant religion, which he
thought utterly disgraced by the act of 1699; and his rooted hatred to
all kind of oppression, under any color, or upon any pretence
whatsoever.

The seconder was worthy of the mover and the motion. I was not the
seconder; it was Mr. Dunning, recorder of this city. I shall say the
less of him because his near relation to you makes you more particularly
acquainted with his merits. But I should appear little acquainted with
them, or little sensible of them, if I could utter his name on this
occasion without expressing my esteem for his character. I am not afraid
of offending a most learned body, and most jealous of its reputation for
that learning, when I say he is the first of his profession. It is a
point settled by those who settle everything else; and I must add (what
I am enabled to say from my own long and close observation) that there
is not a man, of any profession, or in any situation, of a more erect
and independent spirit, of a more proud honor, a more manly mind, a more
firm and determined integrity. Assure yourselves, that the names of two
such men will bear a great load of prejudice in the other scale before
they can be entirely outweighed.

With this mover and this seconder agreed the _whole_ House of Commons,
the _whole_ House of Lords, the _whole_ Bench of Bishops, the king, the
ministry, the opposition, all the distinguished clergy of the
Establishment, all the eminent lights (for they were consulted) of the
dissenting churches. This according voice of national wisdom ought to be
listened to with reverence. To say that all these descriptions of
Englishmen unanimously concurred in a scheme for introducing the
Catholic religion, or that none of them understood the nature and
effects of what they were doing so well as a few obscure clubs of people
whose names you never heard of, is shamelessly absurd. Surely it is
paying a miserable compliment to the religion we profess, to suggest
that everything eminent in the kingdom is indifferent or even adverse to
that religion, and that its security is wholly abandoned to the zeal of
those who have nothing but their zeal to distinguish them. In weighing
this unanimous concurrence of whatever the nation has to boast of, I
hope you will recollect that all these concurring parties do by no means
love one another enough to agree in any point which was not both
evidently and importantly right.

To prove this, to prove that the measure was both clearly and materially
proper, I will next lay before you (as I promised) the political grounds
and reasons for the repeal of that penal statute, and the motives to its
repeal at that particular time.

Gentlemen, America--When the English nation seemed to be dangerously,
if not irrecoverably divided,--when one, and that the most growing
branch, was torn from the parent stock, and ingrafted on the power of
France, a great terror fell upon this kingdom. On a sudden we awakened
from our dreams of conquest, and saw ourselves threatened with an
immediate invasion, which we were at that time very ill prepared to
resist. You remember the cloud that gloomed over us all. In that hour of
our dismay, from the bottom of the hiding-places into which the
indiscriminate rigor of our statutes had driven them, came out the body
of the Roman Catholics. They appeared before the steps of a tottering
throne, with one of the most sober, measured, steady, and dutiful
addresses that was ever presented to the crown. It was no holiday
ceremony, no anniversary compliment of parade and show. It was signed by
almost every gentleman of that persuasion, of note or property, in
England. At such a crisis, nothing but a decided resolution to stand or
fall with their country could have dictated such an address, the direct
tendency of which was to cut off all retreat, and to render them
peculiarly obnoxious to an invader of their own communion. The address
showed what I long languished to see, that all the subjects of England
had cast off all foreign views and connections, and that every man
looked for his relief from every grievance at the hands only of his own
natural government.

It was necessary, on our part, that the natural government should show
itself worthy of that name. It was necessary, at the crisis I speak of,
that the supreme power of the state should meet the conciliatory
dispositions of the subject. To delay protection would be to reject
allegiance. And why should it be rejected, or even coldly and
suspiciously received? If any independent Catholic state should choose
to take part with this kingdom in a war with France and Spain, that
bigot (if such a bigot could be found) would be heard with little
respect, who could dream of objecting his religion to an ally whom the
nation would not only receive with its freest thanks, but purchase with
the last remains of its exhausted treasure. To such an ally we should
not dare to whisper a single syllable of those base and invidious topics
upon which some unhappy men would persuade the state to reject the duty
and allegiance of its own members. Is it, then, because foreigners are
in a condition to set our malice at defiance, that with _them_ we are
willing to contract engagements of friendship, and to keep them with
fidelity and honor, but that, because we conceive some descriptions of
our countrymen are not powerful enough to punish our malignity, we will
not permit them to support our common interest? Is it on that ground
that our anger is to be kindled by their offered kindness? Is it on that
ground that they are to be subjected to penalties, because they are
willing by actual merit to purge themselves from imputed crimes? Lest by
an adherence to the cause of their country they should acquire a title
to fair and equitable treatment, are we resolved to furnish them with
causes of eternal enmity, and rather supply them with just and founded
motives to disaffection than not to have that disaffection in existence
to justify an oppression which, not from policy, but disposition, we
have predetermined to exercise?

What shadow of reason could be assigned, why, at a time when the most
Protestant part of this Protestant empire found it for its advantage to
unite with the two principal Popish states, to unite itself in the
closest bonds with France and Spain, for our destruction, that we should
refuse to unite with our own Catholic countrymen for our own
preservation? Ought we, like madmen, to tear off the plasters that the
lenient hand of prudence had spread over the wounds and gashes which in
our delirium of ambition we had given to our own body? No person ever
reprobated the American war more than I did, and do, and ever shall. But
I never will consent that we should lay additional, voluntary penalties
on ourselves, for a fault which carries but too much of its own
punishment in its own nature. For one, I was delighted with the proposal
of internal peace. I accepted the blessing with thankfulness and
transport. I was truly happy to find _one_ good effect of our civil
distractions: that they had put an end to all religious strife and
heart-burning in our own bowels. What must be the sentiments of a man
who would wish to perpetuate domestic hostility when the causes of
dispute are at an end, and who, crying out for peace with one part of
the nation on the most humiliating terms, should deny it to those who
offer friendship without any terms at all?

But if I was unable to reconcile such a denial to the contracted
principles of local duty, what answer could I give to the broad claims
of general humanity? I confess to you freely, that the sufferings and
distresses of the people of America in this cruel war have at times
affected me more deeply than I can express. I felt every gazette of
triumph as a blow upon my heart, which has an hundred times sunk and
fainted within me at all the mischiefs brought upon those who bear the
whole brunt of war in the heart of their country. Yet the Americans are
utter strangers to me; a nation among whom I am not sure that I have a
single acquaintance. Was I to suffer my mind to be so unaccountably
warped, was I to keep such iniquitous weights and measures of temper and
of reason, as to sympathize with those who are in open rebellion against
an authority which I respect, at war with a country which by every title
ought to be, and is, most dear to me,--and yet to have no feeling at all
for the hardships and indignities suffered by men who by their very
vicinity are bound up in a nearer relation to us, who contribute their
share, and more than their share, to the common prosperity, who perform
the common offices of social life, and who obey the laws, to the full as
well as I do? Gentlemen, the danger to the state being out of the
question, (of which, let me tell you, statesmen themselves are apt to
have but too exquisite a sense,) I could assign no one reason of
justice, policy, or feeling, for not concurring most cordially, as most
cordially I did concur, in softening some part of that shameful
servitude under which several of my worthy fellow-citizens were
groaning.

Important effects followed this act of wisdom. They appeared at home and
abroad, to the great benefit of this kingdom, and, let me hope, to the
advantage of mankind at large. It betokened union among ourselves. It
showed soundness, even on the part of the persecuted, which generally is
the weak side of every community. But its most essential operation was
not in England. The act was immediately, though very imperfectly, copied
in Ireland; and this imperfect transcript of an imperfect act, this
first faint sketch of toleration, which did little more than disclose a
principle and mark out a disposition, completed in a most wonderful
manner the reunion to the state of all the Catholics of that country. It
made us what we ought always to have been, one family, one body, one
heart and soul, against the family combination and all other
combinations of our enemies. We have, indeed, obligations to that
people, who received such small benefits with so much gratitude, and for
which gratitude and attachment to us I am afraid they have suffered not
a little in other places.

I dare say you have all hoard of the privileges indulged to the Irish
Catholics residing in Spain. You have likewise heard with what
circumstances of severity they have been lately expelled from the
seaports of that kingdom, driven into the inland cities, and there
detained as a sort of prisoners of state. I have good reason to believe
that it was the zeal to our government and our cause (somewhat
indiscreetly expressed in one of the addresses of the Catholics of
Ireland) which has thus drawn down on their heads the indignation of the
court of Madrid, to the inexpressible loss of several individuals, and,
in future, perhaps to the great detriment of the whole of their body.
Now that our people should be persecuted in Spain for their attachment
to this country, and persecuted in this country for their supposed
enmity to us, is such a jarring reconciliation of contradictory
distresses, is a thing at once so dreadful and ridiculous, that no
malice short of diabolical would wish to continue any human creatures in
such a situation. But honest men will not forget either their merit or
their sufferings. There are men (and many, I trust, there are) who, out
of love to their country and their kind, would torture their invention
to find excuses for the mistakes of their brethren, and who, to stifle
dissension, would construe even doubtful appearances with the utmost
favor: such men will never persuade themselves to be ingenious and
refined in discovering disaffection and treason in the manifest,
palpable signs of suffering loyalty. Persecution is so unnatural to
them, that they gladly snatch the very first opportunity of laying aside
all the tricks and devices of penal politics, and of returning home,
after all their irksome and vexatious wanderings, to our natural family
mansion, to the grand social principle that unites all men, in all
descriptions, under the shadow of an equal and impartial justice.

Men of another sort, I mean the bigoted enemies to liberty, may,
perhaps, in their politics, make no account of the good or ill affection
of the Catholics of England, who are but an handful of people, (enough
to torment, but not enough to fear,) perhaps not so many, of both sexes
and of all ages, as fifty thousand. But, Gentlemen, it is possible you
may not know that the people of that persuasion in Ireland amount at
least to sixteen or seventeen hundred thousand souls. I do not at all
exaggerate the number. A _nation_ to be persecuted! Whilst we were
masters of the sea, embodied with America, and in alliance with half the
powers of the Continent, we might, perhaps, in that remote corner of
Europe, afford to tyrannize with impunity. But there is a revolution in
our affairs, which makes it prudent to be just. In our late awkward
contest with Ireland about trade, had religion been thrown in, to
ferment and embitter the mass of discontents, the consequences might
have been truly dreadful. But, very happily, that cause of quarrel was
previously quieted by the wisdom of the acts I am commending.

Even in England, where I admit the danger from the discontent of that
persuasion to be less than in Ireland, yet even here, had we listened to
the counsels of fanaticism and folly, we might have wounded ourselves
very deeply, and wounded ourselves in a very tender part. You are
apprised that the Catholics of England consist mostly of our best
manufacturers. Had the legislature chosen, instead of returning their
declarations of duty with correspondent good-will, to drive them to
despair, there is a country at their very door to which they would be
invited,--a country in all respects as good as ours, and with the finest
cities in the world ready built to receive them. And thus the bigotry of
a free country, and in an enlightened age, would have repeopled the
cities of Flanders, which, in the darkness of two hundred years ago, had
been desolated by the superstition of a cruel tyrant. Oar manufactures
were the growth of the persecutions in the Low Countries. What a
spectacle would it be to Europe, to see us at this time of day balancing
the account of tyranny with those very countries, and by our
persecutions driving back trade and manufacture, as a sort of vagabonds,
to their original settlement! But I trust we shall be saved this last of
disgraces.

So far as to the effect of the act on the interests of this nation. With
regard to the interests of mankind at large, I am sure the benefit was
very considerable. Long before this act, indeed, the spirit of
toleration began to gain ground in Europe. In Holland the third part of
the people are Catholics; they live at ease, and are a sound part of the
state. In many parts of Germany, Protestants and Papists partake the
same cities, the same councils, and even the same churches. The
unbounded liberality of the king of Prussia's conduct on this occasion
is known to all the world; and it is of a piece with the other grand
maxims of his reign. The magnanimity of the Imperial court, breaking
through the narrow principles of its predecessors, has indulged its
Protestant subjects, not only with property, with worship, with liberal
education, but with honors and trusts, both civil and military. A worthy
Protestant gentleman of this country now fills, and fills with credit,
an high office in the Austrian Netherlands. Even the Lutheran obstinacy
of Sweden has thawed at length, and opened a toleration to all
religions. I know, myself, that in France the Protestants begin to be at
rest. The army, which in that country is everything, is open to them;
and some of the military rewards and decorations which the laws deny are
supplied by others, to make the service acceptable and honorable. The
first minister of finance in that country is a Protestant. Two years'
war without a tax is among the first fruits of their liberality.
Tarnished as the glory of this nation is, and far as it has waded into
the shades of an eclipse, some beams of its former illumination still
play upon its surface; and what is done in England is still looked to,
as argument, and as example. It is certainly true, that no law of this
country ever met with such universal applause abroad, or was so likely
to produce the perfection of that tolerating spirit which, as I
observed, has been long gaining ground in Europe: for abroad it was
universally thought that we had done what I am sorry to say we had not;
they thought we had granted a full toleration. That opinion was,
however, so far from hurting the Protestant cause, that I declare, with
the most serious solemnity, my firm belief that no one thing done for
these fifty years past was so likely to prove deeply beneficial to our
religion at large as Sir George Savile's act. In its effects it was "an
act for tolerating and protecting Protestantism throughout Europe"; and
I hope that those who were taking steps for the quiet and settlement of
our Protestant brethren in other countries will, even yet, rather
consider the steady equity of the greater and better part of the people
of Great Britain than the vanity and violence of a few.

I perceive, Gentlemen, by the manner of all about me, that you look with
horror on the wicked clamor which has been raised on this subject, and
that, instead of an apology for what was done, you rather demand from me
an account, why the execution of the scheme of toleration was not made
more answerable to the large and liberal grounds on which it was taken
up. The question is natural and proper; and I remember that a great and
learned magistrate,[50] distinguished for his strong and systematic
understanding, and who at that time was a member of the House of
Commons, made the same objection to the proceeding. The statutes, as
they now stand, are, without doubt, perfectly absurd. But I beg leave to
explain the cause of this gross imperfection in the tolerating plan, as
well and as shortly as I am able. It was universally thought that the
session ought not to pass over without doing _something_ in this
business. To revise the whole body of the penal statutes was conceived
to be an object too big for the time. The penal statute, therefore,
which was chosen for repeal (chosen to show our disposition to
conciliate, not to perfect a toleration) was this act of ludicrous
cruelty of which I have just given you the history. It is an act which,
though not by a great deal so fierce and bloody as some of the rest, was
infinitely more ready in the execution. It was the act which gave the
greatest encouragement to those pests of society, mercenary informers
and interested disturbers of household peace; and it was observed with
truth, that the prosecutions, either carried to conviction or
compounded, for many years, had been all commenced upon that act. It was
said, that, whilst we were deliberating on a more perfect scheme, the
spirit of the age would never come up to the execution of the statutes
which remained, especially as more steps, and a cooeperation of more
minds and powers, were required towards a mischievous use of them, than
for the execution of the act to be repealed: that it was better to
unravel this texture from below than from above, beginning with the
latest, which, in general practice, is the severest evil. It was
alleged, that this slow proceeding would be attended with the advantage
of a progressive experience,--and that the people would grow reconciled
to toleration, when they should find, by the effects, that justice was
not so irreconcilable an enemy to convenience as they had imagined.

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