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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)




Parliament is not a _congress_ of ambassadors from different and hostile
interests, which interests each must maintain, as an agent and advocate,
against other agents and advocates; but Parliament is a _deliberative_
assembly of _one_ nation, with _one_ interest, that of the whole--where
not local purposes, not local prejudices, ought to guide, but the
general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole. You choose
a member, indeed; but when you have chosen him, he is not member of
Bristol, but he is a member of _Parliament_. If the local constituent
should have an interest or should form an hasty opinion evidently
opposite to the real good of the rest of the community, the member for
that place ought to be as far as any other from any endeavor to give it
effect. I beg pardon for saying so much on this subject; I have been
unwillingly drawn into it; but I shall ever use a respectful frankness
of communication with you. Your faithful friend, your devoted servant, I
shall be to the end of my life: a flatterer you do not wish for. On this
point of instructions, however, I think it scarcely possible we ever can
have any sort of difference. Perhaps I may give you too much, rather
than too little trouble.

From the first hour I was encouraged to court your favor, to this happy
day of obtaining it, I have never promised you anything but humble and
persevering endeavors to do my duty. The weight of that duty, I confess,
makes me tremble; and whoever well considers what it is, of all things
in the world, will fly from what has the least likeness to a positive
and precipitate engagement. To be a good member of Parliament is, let me
tell you, no easy task,--especially at this time, when there is so
strong a disposition to run into the perilous extremes of servile
compliance or wild popularity. To unite circumspection with vigor is
absolutely necessary, but it is extremely difficult. We are now members
for a rich commercial _city_; this city, however, is but a part of a
rich commercial _nation_, the interests of which are various, multiform,
and intricate. We are members for that great nation, which, however, is
itself but part of a great _empire_, extended by our virtue and our
fortune to the farthest limits of the East and of the West. All these
wide-spread interests must be considered,--must be compared,--must be
reconciled, if possible. We are members for a _free_ country; and surely
we all know that the machine of a free constitution is no simple thing,
but as intricate and as delicate as it is valuable. We are members in a
great and ancient _monarchy_; and we must preserve religiously the true,
legal rights of the sovereign, which form the keystone that binds
together the noble and well-constructed arch of our empire and our
Constitution. A constitution made up of balanced powers must ever be a
critical thing. As such I mean to touch that part of it which comes
within my reach. I know my inability, and I wish for support from every
quarter. In particular I shall aim at the friendship, and shall
cultivate the best correspondence, of the worthy colleague you have
given me.

I trouble you no farther than once more to thank you all: you,
Gentlemen, for your favors; the candidates, for their temperate and
polite behavior; and the sheriffs, for a conduct which may give a model
for all who are in public stations.

FOOTNOTES:

[17] Mr. Brickdale opened his poll, it seems, with a tally of those very
kind of freemen, and voted many hundreds of them.




SPEECH

ON

MOVING HIS RESOLUTIONS FOR CONCILIATION WITH THE COLONIES.

MARCH 22, 1775.




I hope, Sir, that, notwithstanding the austerity of the Chair, your
good-nature will incline you to some degree of indulgence towards human
frailty. You will not think it unnatural, that those who have an object
depending, which strongly engages their hopes and fears, should be
somewhat inclined to superstition. As I came into the House, full of
anxiety about the event of my motion, I found, to my infinite surprise,
that the grand penal bill by which we had passed sentence on the trade
and sustenance of America is to be returned to us from the other
House.[18] I do confess, I could not help looking on this event as a
fortunate omen. I look upon it as a sort of Providential favor, by which
we are put once more in possession of our deliberative capacity, upon a
business so very questionable in its nature, so very uncertain in its
issue. By the return of this bill, which seemed to have taken its flight
forever, we are at this very instant nearly as free to choose a plan for
our American government as we were on the first day of the session. If,
Sir, we incline to the side of conciliation, we are not at all
embarrassed (unless we please to make ourselves so) by any incongruous
mixture of coercion and restraint. We are therefore called upon, as it
were by a superior warning voice, again to attend to America,--to attend
to the whole of it together,--and to review the subject with an unusual
degree of care and calmness.

Surely it is an awful subject,--or there is none so on this side of the
grave. When I first had the honor of a seat in this House, the affairs
of that continent pressed themselves upon us as the most important and
most delicate object of Parliamentary attention. My little share in this
great deliberation oppressed me. I found myself a partaker in a very
high trust; and having no sort of reason to rely on the strength of my
natural abilities for the proper execution of that trust, I was obliged
to take more than common pains to instruct myself in everything which
relates to our colonies. I was not less under the necessity of forming
some fixed ideas concerning the general policy of the British empire.
Something of this sort seemed to be indispensable, in order, amidst so
vast a fluctuation of passions and opinions, to concentre my thoughts,
to ballast my conduct, to preserve me from being blown about by every
wind of fashionable doctrine. I really did not think it safe or manly to
have fresh principles to seek upon every fresh mail which should arrive
from America.

At that period I had the fortune to find myself in perfect concurrence
with a large majority in this House. Bowing under that high authority,
and penetrated with the sharpness and strength of that early
impression, I have continued ever since, without the least deviation,
in my original sentiments. Whether this be owing to an obstinate
perseverance in error, or to a religious adherence to what appears to me
truth and reason, it is in your equity to judge.

Sir, Parliament, having an enlarged view of objects, made, during this
interval, more frequent changes in their sentiments and their conduct
than could be justified in a particular person upon the contracted scale
of private information. But though I do not hazard anything approaching
to a censure on the motives of former Parliaments to all those
alterations, one fact is undoubted,--that under them the state of
America has been kept in continual agitation. Everything administered as
remedy to the public complaint, if it did not produce, was at least
followed by, an heightening of the distemper, until, by a variety of
experiments, that important country has been brought into her present
situation,--a situation which I will not miscall, which I dare not name,
which I scarcely know how to comprehend in the terms of any description.

In this posture, Sir, things stood at the beginning of the session.
About that time, a worthy member,[19] of great Parliamentary experience,
who in the year 1766 filled the chair of the American Committee with
much ability, took me aside, and, lamenting the present aspect of our
politics, told me, things were come to such a pass that our former
methods of proceeding in the House would be no longer tolerated,--that
the public tribunal (never too indulgent to a long and unsuccessful
opposition) would now scrutinize our conduct with unusual
severity,--that the very vicissitudes and shiftings of ministerial
measures, instead of convicting their authors of inconstancy and want of
system, would be taken as an occasion of charging us with a
predetermined discontent which nothing could satisfy, whilst we accused
every measure of vigor as cruel and every proposal of lenity as weak and
irresolute. The public, he said, would not have patience to see us play
the game out with our adversaries; we must produce our hand: it would be
expected that those who for many years had been active in such affairs
should show that they had formed some clear and decided idea of the
principles of colony government, and were capable of drawing out
something like a platform of the ground which might be laid for future
and permanent tranquillity.

I felt the truth of what my honorable friend represented; but I felt my
situation, too. His application might have been made with far greater
propriety to many other gentlemen. No man was, indeed, ever better
disposed, or worse qualified, for such an undertaking, than myself.
Though I gave so far into his opinion, that I immediately threw my
thoughts into a sort of Parliamentary form, I was by no means equally
ready to produce them. It generally argues some degree of natural
impotence of mind, or some want of knowledge of the world, to hazard
plans of government, except from a seat of authority. Propositions are
made, not only ineffectually, but somewhat disreputably, when the minds
of men are not properly disposed for their reception; and for my part, I
am not ambitious of ridicule, not absolutely a candidate for disgrace.

Besides, Sir, to speak the plain truth, I have in general no very
exalted opinion of the virtue of paper government, nor of any polities
in which the plan is to be wholly separated from the execution. But when
I saw that anger and violence prevailed every day more and more, and
that things were hastening towards an incurable alienation of our
colonies, I confess my caution gave way. I felt this as one of those few
moments in which decorum yields to an higher duty. Public calamity is a
mighty leveller; and there are occasions when any, even the slightest,
chance of doing good must be laid hold on, even by the most
inconsiderable person.

To restore order and repose to an empire so great and so distracted as
ours is, merely in the attempt, an undertaking that would ennoble the
flights of the highest genius, and obtain pardon for the efforts of the
meanest understanding. Struggling a good while with these thoughts, by
degrees I felt myself more firm. I derived, at length, some confidence
from what in other circumstances usually produces timidity. I grew less
anxious, even from the idea of my own insignificance. For, judging of
what you are by what you ought to be, I persuaded myself that you would
not reject a reasonable proposition because it had nothing but its
reason to recommend it. On the other hand, being totally destitute of
all shadow of influence, natural or adventitious, I was very sure, that,
if my proposition were futile or dangerous, if it were weakly conceived
or improperly timed, there was nothing exterior to it of power to awe,
dazzle, or delude you. You will see it just as it is, and you will treat
it just as it deserves.

The proposition is peace. Not peace through the medium of war; not peace
to be hunted through the labyrinth of intricate and endless
negotiations; not peace to arise out of universal discord, fomented from
principle, in all parts of the empire; not peace to depend on the
juridical determination of perplexing questions, or the precise marking
the shadowy boundaries of a complex government. It is simple peace,
sought in its natural course and in its ordinary haunts. It is peace
sought in the spirit of peace, and laid in principles purely pacific. I
propose, by removing the ground of the difference, and by restoring the
_former unsuspecting confidence of the colonies in the mother country_,
to give permanent satisfaction to your people,--and (far from a scheme
of ruling by discord) to reconcile them to each other in the same act
and by the bond of the very same interest which reconciles them to
British government.

My idea is nothing more. Refined policy ever has been the parent of
confusion,--and ever will be so, as long as the world endures. Plain
good intention, which is as easily discovered at the first view as fraud
is surely detected at last, is, let me say, of no mean force in the
government of mankind. Genuine simplicity of heart is an healing and
cementing principle. My plan, therefore, being formed upon the most
simple grounds imaginable, may disappoint some people, when they hear
it. It has nothing to recommend it to the pruriency of curious ears.
There is nothing at all new and captivating in it. It has nothing of the
splendor of the project which has been lately laid upon your table by
the noble lord in the blue riband.[20] It does not propose to fill your
lobby with squabbling colony agents, who will require the interposition
of your mace at every instant to keep the peace amongst them. It does
not institute a magnificent auction of finance, where captivated
provinces come to general ransom by bidding against each other, until
you knock down the hammer, and determine a proportion of payments beyond
all the powers of algebra to equalize and settle.

The plan which I shall presume to suggest derives, however, one great
advantage from the proposition and registry of that noble lord's
project. The idea of conciliation is admissible. First, the House, in
accepting the resolution moved by the noble lord, has admitted,
notwithstanding the menacing front of our address, notwithstanding our
heavy bill of pains and penalties, that we do not think ourselves
precluded from all ideas of free grace and bounty.

The House has gone farther: it has declared conciliation admissible
_previous_ to any submission on the part of America. It has even shot a
good deal beyond that mark, and has admitted that the complaints of our
former mode of exerting the right of taxation were not wholly unfounded.
That right thus exerted is allowed to have had something reprehensible
in it,--something unwise, or something grievous; since, in the midst of
our heat and resentment, we, of ourselves, have proposed a capital
alteration, and, in order to get rid of what seemed so very
exceptionable, have instituted a mode that is altogether new,--one that
is, indeed, wholly alien from all the ancient methods and forms of
Parliament.

The _principle_ of this proceeding is large enough for my purpose. The
means proposed by the noble lord for carrying his ideas into execution,
I think, indeed, are very indifferently suited to the end; and this I
shall endeavor to show you before I sit down. But, for the present, I
take my ground on the admitted principle. I mean to give peace. Peace
implies reconciliation; and where there has been a material dispute,
reconciliation does in a manner always imply concession on the one part
or on the other. In this state of things I make no difficulty in
affirming that the proposal ought to originate from us. Great and
acknowledged force is not impaired, either in effect or in opinion, by
an unwillingness to exert itself. The superior power may offer peace
with honor and with safety. Such an offer from such a power will be
attributed to magnanimity. But the concessions of the weak are the
concessions of fear. When such a one is disarmed, he is wholly at the
mercy of his superior; and he loses forever that time and those chances
which, as they happen to all men, are the strength and resources of all
inferior power.

The capital leading questions on which you must this day decide are
these two: First, whether you ought to concede; and secondly, what your
concession ought to be. On the first of these questions we have gained
(as I have just taken the liberty of observing to you) some ground. But
I am sensible that a good deal more is still to be done. Indeed, Sir, to
enable us to determine both on the one and the other of these great
questions with a firm and precise judgment, I think it may be necessary
to consider distinctly the true nature and the peculiar circumstances of
the object which we have before us: because, after all our struggle,
whether we will or not, we must govern America according to that nature
and to those circumstances, and not according to our own imaginations,
not according to abstract ideas of right, by no means according to mere
general theories of government, the resort to which appears to me, in
our present situation, no better than arrant trifling. I shall therefore
endeavor, with your leave, to lay before you some of the most material
of these circumstances in as full and as clear a manner as I am able to
state them.

The first thing that we have to consider with regard to the nature of
the object is the number of people in the colonies. I have taken for
some years a good deal of pains on that point. I can by no calculation
justify myself in placing the number below two millions of inhabitants
of our own European blood and color,--besides at least 500,000 others,
who form no inconsiderable part of the strength and opulence of the
whole. This, Sir, is, I believe, about the true number. There is no
occasion to exaggerate, where plain truth is of so much weight and
importance. But whether I put the present numbers too high or too low is
a matter of little moment. Such is the strength with which population
shoots in that part of the world, that, state the numbers as high as we
will, whilst the dispute continues, the exaggeration ends. Whilst we are
discussing any given magnitude, they are grown to it. Whilst we spend
our time in deliberating on the mode of governing two millions, we shall
find we have millions more to manage. Your children do not grow faster
from infancy to manhood than they spread from families to communities,
and from villages to nations.

I put this consideration of the present and the growing numbers in the
front of our deliberation, because, Sir, this consideration will make it
evident to a blunter discernment than yours, that no partial, narrow,
contracted, pinched, occasional system will be at all suitable to such
an object. It will show you that it is not to be considered as one of
those _minima_ which are out of the eye and consideration of the
law,--not a paltry excrescence of the state,--not a mean dependant, who
may be neglected with little damage and provoked with little danger. It
will prove that some degree of care and caution is required in the
handling such an object; it will show that you ought not, in reason, to
trifle with so large a mass of the interests and feelings of the human
race. You could at no time do so without guilt; and be assured you will
not be able to do it long with impunity.

But the population of this country, the great and growing population,
though a very important consideration, will lose much of its weight, if
not combined with other circumstances. The commerce of your colonies is
out of all proportion beyond the numbers of the people. This ground of
their commerce, indeed, has been trod some days ago, and with great
ability, by a distinguished person,[21] at your bar. This gentleman,
after thirty-five years,--it is so long since he first appeared at the
same place to plead for the commerce of Great Britain,--has come again
before you to plead the same cause, without any other effect of time
than that to the fire of imagination and extent of erudition, which even
then marked him as one of the first literary characters of his age, he
has added a consummate knowledge in the commercial interest of his
country, formed by a long course of enlightened and discriminating
experience.

Sir, I should be inexcusable in coming after such a person with any
detail, if a great part of the members who now fill the House had not
the misfortune to be absent when he appeared at your bar. Besides, Sir,
I propose to take the matter at periods of time somewhat different from
his. There is, if I mistake not, a point of view from whence, if you
will look at this subject, it is impossible that it should not make an
impression upon you.

I have in my hand two accounts: one a comparative state of the export
trade of England to its colonies, as it stood in the year 1704, and as
it stood in the year 1772; the other a state of the export trade of this
country to its colonies alone, as it stood in 1772, compared with the
whole trade of England to all parts of the world (the colonies included)
in the year 1704. They are from good vouchers: the latter period from
the accounts on your table; the earlier from an original manuscript of
Davenant, who first established the Inspector-General's office, which
has been ever since his time so abundant a source of Parliamentary
information.

The export trade to the colonies consists of three great branches: the
African, which, terminating almost wholly in the colonies, must be put
to the account of their commerce; the West Indian; and the North
American. All these are so interwoven, that the attempt to separate them
would tear to pieces the contexture of the whole, and, if not entirely
destroy, would very much depreciate, the value of all the parts. I
therefore consider these three denominations to be, what in effect they
are, one trade.

The trade to the colonies, taken on the export side, at the beginning of
this century, that is, in the year 1704, stood thus:--

Exports to North America and the West
Indies L 483,265
To Africa 86,665
---------
L 569,930

In the year 1772, which I take as a middle year between the highest and
lowest of those lately laid on your table, the account was as follows:--

To North America and the West Indies L 4,791,734
To Africa 866,398
To which if you add the export trade
from Scotland, which had in 1704 no
existence 364,000
----------
L6,024,171

From five hundred and odd thousand, it has grown to six millions. It has
increased no less than twelve-fold. This is the state of the colony
trade, as compared with itself at these two periods, within this
century;--and this is matter for meditation. But this is not all.
Examine my second account. See how the export trade to the colonies
alone in 1772 stood in the other point of view, that is, as compared to
the whole trade of England in 1704.

The whole export trade of England, including
that to the colonies, in 1704 L6,509,000
Export to the colonies alone, in 1772 6,024,000
---------
Difference L485,000

The trade with America alone is now within less than 500,000_l._ of
being equal to what this great commercial nation, England, carried on at
the beginning of this century with the whole world! If I had taken the
largest year of those on your table, it would rather have exceeded. But,
it will be said, is not this American trade an unnatural protuberance,
that has drawn the juices from the rest of the body? The reverse. It is
the very food that has nourished every other part into its present
magnitude. Our general trade has been greatly augmented, and augmented
more or less in almost every part to which it ever extended, but with
this material difference: that of the six millions which in the
beginning of the century constituted the whole mass of our export
commerce the colony trade was but one twelfth part; it is now (as a part
of sixteen millions) considerably more than a third of the whole. This
is the relative proportion of the importance of the colonies at these
two periods: and all reasoning concerning our mode of treating them must
have this proportion as its basis, or it is a reasoning weak, rotten,
and sophistical.

Mr. Speaker, I cannot prevail on myself to hurry over this great
consideration. It is good for us to be here. We stand where we have an
immense view of what is, and what is past. Clouds indeed, and darkness,
rest upon the future. Let us, however, before we descend from this noble
eminence, reflect that this growth of our national prosperity has
happened within the short period of the life of man. It has happened
within sixty-eight years. There are those alive whose memory might touch
the two extremities. For instance, my Lord Bathurst might remember all
the stages of the progress. He was in 1704 of an age at least to be made
to comprehend such things. He was then old enough _acta parentum jam
legere, et quae sit poterit cognoscere virtus_. Suppose, Sir, that the
angel of this auspicious youth, foreseeing the many virtues which made
him one of the most amiable, as he is one of the most fortunate men of
his age, had opened to him in vision, that, when, in the fourth
generation, the third prince of the House of Brunswick had sat twelve
years on the throne of that nation which (by the happy issue of moderate
and healing councils) was to be made Great Britain, he should see his
son, Lord Chancellor of England, turn back the current of hereditary
dignity to its fountain, and raise him to an higher rank of peerage,
whilst he enriched the family with a new one,--if, amidst these bright
and happy scenes of domestic honor and prosperity, that angel should
have drawn up the curtain, and unfolded the rising glories of his
country, and whilst he was gazing with admiration on the then commercial
grandeur of England, the genius should point out to him a little speck,
scarce visible in the mass of the national interest, a small seminal
principle rather than a formed body, and should tell him,--"Young man,
there is America,--which at this day serves for little more than to
amuse you with stories of savage men and uncouth manners, yet shall,
before you taste of death, show itself equal to the whole of that
commerce which now attracts the envy of the world. Whatever England has
been growing to by a progressive increase of improvement, brought in by
varieties of people, by succession of civilizing conquests and
civilizing settlements in a series of seventeen hundred years, you shall
see as much added to her by America in the course of a single life!" If
this state of his country had been foretold to him, would it not require
all the sanguine credulity of youth, and all the fervid glow of
enthusiasm, to make him believe it? Fortunate man, he has lived to see
it! Fortunate indeed, if he lives to see nothing that shall vary the
prospect, and cloud the setting of his day!

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