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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)




Excuse me, Sir, if, turning from such thoughts, I resume this
comparative view once more. You have seen it on a large scale; look at
it on a small one. I will point out to your attention a particular
instance of it in the single province of Pennsylvania. In the year 1704,
that province called for 11,459_l._ in value of your commodities,
native and foreign. This was the whole. What did it demand in 1772! Why,
nearly fifty times as much; for in that year the export to Pennsylvania
was 507,909_l._, nearly equal to the export to all the colonies
together in the first period.

I choose, Sir, to enter into these minute and particular details;
because generalities, which in all other cases are apt to heighten and
raise the subject, have here a tendency to sink it. When we speak of the
commerce with our colonies, fiction lags after truth, invention is
unfruitful, and imagination cold and barren.

So far, Sir, as to the importance of the object in the view of its
commerce, as concerned in the exports from England. If I were to detail
the imports, I could show how many enjoyments they procure which deceive
the burden of life, how many materials which invigorate the springs of
national industry and extend and animate every part of our foreign and
domestic commerce. This would be a curious subject indeed,--but I must
prescribe bounds to myself in a matter so vast and various.

I pass, therefore, to the colonies in another point of view,--their
agriculture. This they have prosecuted with such a spirit, that, besides
feeding plentifully their own growing multitude, their annual export of
grain, comprehending rice, has some years ago exceeded a million in
value. Of their last harvest, I am persuaded, they will export much
more. At the beginning of the century some of these colonies imported
corn from the mother country. For some time past the Old World has been
fed from the New. The scarcity which you have felt would have been a
desolating famine, if this child of your old age, with a true filial
piety, with a Roman charity, had not put the full breast of its youthful
exuberance to the mouth of its exhausted parent.

As to the wealth which the colonies have drawn from the sea by their
fisheries, you had all that matter fully opened at your bar. You surely
thought those acquisitions of value, for they seemed even to excite your
envy; and yet the spirit by which that enterprising employment has been
exercised ought rather, in my opinion, to have raised your esteem and
admiration. And pray, Sir, what in the world is equal to it? Pass by
the other parts, and look at the manner in which the people of New
England have of late carried on the whale-fishery. Whilst we follow them
among the tumbling mountains of ice, and behold them penetrating into
the deepest frozen recesses of Hudson's Bay and Davis's Straits, whilst
we are looking for them beneath the arctic circle, we hear that they
have pierced into the opposite region of polar cold, that they are at
the antipodes, and engaged under the frozen serpent of the South.
Falkland Island, which seemed too remote and romantic an object for the
grasp of national ambition, is but a stage and resting-place in the
progress of their victorious industry. Nor is the equinoctial heat more
discouraging to them than the accumulated winter of both the poles. We
know, that, whilst some of them draw the line and strike the harpoon on
the coast of Africa, others run the longitude, and pursue their gigantic
game along the coast of Brazil. No sea but what is vexed by their
fisheries. No climate that is not witness to their toils. Neither the
perseverance of Holland, nor the activity of France, nor the dexterous
and firm sagacity of English enterprise, ever carried this most perilous
mode of hardy industry to the extent to which it has been pushed by this
recent people,--a people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle,
and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood. When I contemplate these
things,--when I know that the colonies in general owe little or nothing
to any care of ours, and that they are not squeezed into this happy form
by the constraints of watchful and suspicious government, but that,
through a wise and salutary neglect, a generous nature has been
suffered to take her own way to perfection,--when I reflect upon these
effects, when I see how profitable they have been to us, I feel all the
pride of power sink, and all presumption in the wisdom of human
contrivances melt and die away within me,--my rigor relents,--I pardon
something to the spirit of liberty.

I am sensible, Sir, that all which I have asserted in my detail is
admitted in the gross, but that quite a different conclusion is drawn
from it. America, gentlemen say, is a noble object,--it is an object
well worth fighting for. Certainly it is, if fighting a people be the
best way of gaining them. Gentlemen in this respect will be led to their
choice of means by their complexions and their habits. Those who
understand the military art will of course have some predilection for
it. Those who wield the thunder of the state may have more confidence in
the efficacy of arms. But I confess, possibly for want of this
knowledge, my opinion is much more in favor of prudent management than
of force,--considering force not as an odious, but a feeble instrument,
for preserving a people so numerous, so active, so growing, so spirited
as this, in a profitable and subordinate connection with us.

First, Sir, permit me to observe, that the use of force alone is but
_temporary_. It may subdue for a moment; but it does not remove the
necessity of subduing again: and a nation is not governed which is
perpetually to be conquered.

My next objection is its _uncertainty_. Terror is not always the effect
of force, and an armament is not a victory. If you do not succeed, you
are without resource: for, conciliation failing, force remains; but,
force failing, no further hope of reconciliation is left. Power and
authority are sometimes bought by kindness; but they can never be begged
as alms by an impoverished and defeated violence.

A further objection to force is, that you _impair the object_ by your
very endeavors to preserve it. The thing you fought for is not the thing
which you recover, but depreciated, sunk, wasted, and consumed in the
contest. Nothing less will content me than _whole America_. I do not
choose to consume its strength along with our own; because in all parts
it is the British strength that I consume. I do not choose to be caught
by a foreign enemy at the end of this exhausting conflict, and still
less in the midst of it. I may escape, but I can make no insurance
against such an event. Let me add, that I do not choose wholly to break
the American spirit; because it is the spirit that has made the country.

Lastly, we have no sort of _experience_ in favor of force as an
instrument in the rule of our colonies. Their growth and their utility
has been owing to methods altogether different. Our ancient indulgence
has been said to be pursued to a fault. It may be so; but we know, if
feeling is evidence, that our fault was more tolerable than our attempt
to mend it, and our sin far more salutary than our penitence.

These, Sir, are my reasons for not entertaining that high opinion of
untried force by which many gentlemen, for whose sentiments in other
particulars I have great respect, seem to be so greatly captivated. But
there is still behind a third consideration concerning this object,
which serves to determine my opinion on the sort of policy which ought
to be pursued in the management of America, even more than its
population and its commerce: I mean its _temper and character_.

In this character of the Americans a love of freedom is the
predominating feature which marks and distinguishes the whole: and as an
ardent is always a jealous affection, your colonies become suspicious,
restive, and untractable, whenever they see the least attempt to wrest
from them by force, or shuffle from them by chicane, what they think the
only advantage worth living for. This fierce spirit of liberty is
stronger in the English colonies, probably, than in any other people of
the earth, and this from a great variety of powerful causes; which, to
understand the true temper of their minds, and the direction which this
spirit takes, it will not be amiss to lay open somewhat more largely.

First, the people of the colonies are descendants of Englishmen.
England, Sir, is a nation which still, I hope, respects, and formerly
adored, her freedom. The colonists emigrated from you when this part of
your character was most predominant; and they took this bias and
direction the moment they parted from your hands. They are therefore not
only devoted to liberty, but to liberty according to English ideas and
on English principles. Abstract liberty, like other mere abstractions,
is not to be found. Liberty inheres in some sensible object; and every
nation has formed to itself some favorite point, which by way of
eminence becomes the criterion of their happiness. It happened, you
know, Sir, that the great contests for freedom in this country were from
the earliest times chiefly upon the question of taxing. Most of the
contests in the ancient commonwealths turned primarily on the right of
election of magistrates, or on the balance among the several orders of
the state. The question of money was not with them so immediate. But in
England it was otherwise. On this point of taxes the ablest pens and
most eloquent tongues have been exercised, the greatest spirits have
acted and suffered. In order to give the fullest satisfaction concerning
the importance of this point, it was not only necessary for those who in
argument defended the excellence of the English Constitution to insist
on this privilege of granting money as a dry point of fact, and to prove
that the right had been acknowledged in ancient parchments and blind
usages to reside in a certain body called an House of Commons: they went
much further: they attempted to prove, and they succeeded, that in
theory it ought to be so, from the particular nature of a House of
Commons, as an immediate representative of the people, whether the old
records had delivered this oracle or not. They took infinite pains to
inculcate, as a fundamental principle, that in all monarchies the people
must in effect themselves, mediately or immediately, possess the power
of granting their own money, or no shadow of liberty could subsist. The
colonies draw from you, as with their life-blood, these ideas and
principles. Their love of liberty, as with you, fixed and attached on
this specific point of taxing. Liberty might be safe or might be
endangered in twenty other particulars without their being much pleased
or alarmed. Here they felt its pulse; and as they found that beat, they
thought themselves sick or sound. I do not say whether they were right
or wrong in applying your general arguments to their own case. It is not
easy, indeed, to make a monopoly of theorems and corollaries. The fact
is, that they did thus apply those general arguments; and your mode of
governing them, whether through lenity or indolence, through wisdom or
mistake, confirmed them in the imagination, that they, as well as you,
had an interest in these common principles.

They were further confirmed in this pleasing error by the form of their
provincial legislative assemblies. Their governments are popular in an
high degree: some are merely popular; in all, the popular representative
is the most weighty; and this share of the people in their ordinary
government never fails to inspire them with lofty sentiments, and with a
strong aversion from whatever tends to deprive them of their chief
importance.

If anything were wanting to this necessary operation of the form of
government, religion would have given it a complete effect. Religion,
always a principle of energy, in this new people is no way worn out or
impaired; and their mode of professing it is also one main cause of this
free spirit. The people are Protestants, and of that kind which is the
most adverse to all implicit submission of mind and opinion. This is a
persuasion not only favorable to liberty, but built upon it. I do not
think, Sir, that the reason of this averseness in the dissenting
churches from all that looks like absolute government is so much to be
sought in their religious tenets as in their history. Every one knows
that the Roman Catholic religion is at least coeval with most of the
governments where it prevails, that it has generally gone hand in hand
with them, and received great favor and every kind of support from
authority. The Church of England, too, was formed from her cradle under
the nursing care of regular government. But the dissenting interests
have sprung up in direct opposition to all the ordinary powers of the
world, and could justify that opposition only on a strong claim to
natural liberty. Their very existence depended on the powerful and
unremitted assertion of that claim. All Protestantism, even the most
cold and passive, is a sort of dissent. But the religion most prevalent
in our northern colonies is a refinement on the principle of resistance:
it is the dissidence of dissent, and the protestantism of the Protestant
religion. This religion, under a variety of denominations agreeing in
nothing but in the communion of the spirit of liberty, is predominant in
most of the northern provinces, where the Church of England,
notwithstanding its legal rights, is in reality no more than a sort of
private sect, not composing, most probably, the tenth of the people. The
colonists left England when this spirit was high, and in the emigrants
was the highest of all; and even that stream of foreigners which has
been constantly flowing into these colonies has, for the greatest part,
been composed of dissenters from the establishments of their several
countries, and have brought with them a temper and character far from
alien to that of the people with whom they mixed.

Sir, I can perceive, by their manner, that some gentlemen object to the
latitude of this description, because in the southern colonies the
Church of England forms a large body, and has a regular establishment.
It is certainly true. There is, however, a circumstance attending these
colonies, which, in my opinion, fully counterbalances this difference,
and makes the spirit of liberty still more high and haughty than in
those to the northward. It is, that in Virginia and the Carolinas they
have a vast multitude of slaves. Where this is the case in any part of
the world, those who are free are by far the most proud and jealous of
their freedom. Freedom is to them not only an enjoyment, but a kind of
rank and privilege. Not seeing there, that freedom, as in countries
where it is a common blessing, and as broad and general as the air, may
be united with much abject toil, with great misery, with all the
exterior of servitude, liberty looks, amongst them, like something that
is more noble and liberal. I do not mean, Sir, to commend the superior
morality of this sentiment, which has at least as much pride as virtue
in it; but I cannot alter the nature of man. The fact is so; and these
people of the southern colonies are much more strongly, and with an
higher and more stubborn spirit, attached to liberty, than those to the
northward. Such were all the ancient commonwealths; such were our Gothic
ancestors; such in our days were the Poles; and such will be all masters
of slaves, who are not slaves themselves. In such a people, the
haughtiness of domination combines with the spirit of freedom, fortifies
it, and renders it invincible.

Permit me, Sir, to add another circumstance in our colonies, which
contributes no mean part towards the growth and effect of this
untractable spirit: I mean their education. In no country, perhaps, in
the world is the law so general a study. The profession itself is
numerous and powerful, and in most provinces it takes the lead. The
greater number of the deputies sent to the Congress were lawyers. But
all who read, and most do read, endeavor to obtain some smattering in
that science. I have been told by an eminent bookseller, that in no
branch of his business, after tracts of popular devotion, were so many
books as those on the law exported to the plantations. The colonists
have now fallen into the way of printing them for their own use. I hear
that they have sold nearly as many of Blackstone's "Commentaries" in
America as in England. General Gage marks out this disposition very
particularly in a letter on your table. He states, that all the people
in his government are lawyers, or smatterers in law,--and that in Boston
they have been enabled, by successful chicane, wholly to evade many
parts of one of your capital penal constitutions. The smartness of
debate will say, that this knowledge ought to teach them more clearly
the rights of legislature, their obligations to obedience, and the
penalties of rebellion. All this is mighty well. But my honorable and
learned friend[22] on the floor, who condescends to mark what I say for
animadversion, will disdain that ground. He has heard, as well as I,
that, when great honors and great emoluments do not win over this
knowledge to the service of the state, it is a formidable adversary to
government. If the spirit be not tamed and broken by these happy
methods, it is stubborn and litigious. _Abeunt studia in mores_. This
study renders men acute, inquisitive, dexterous, prompt in attack, ready
in defence, full of resources. In other countries, the people, more
simple, and of a less mercurial cast, judge of an ill principle in
government only by an actual grievance; here they anticipate the evil,
and judge of the pressure of the grievance by the badness of the
principle. They augur misgovernment at a distance, and snuff the
approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze.

The last cause of this disobedient spirit in the colonies is hardly less
powerful than the rest, as it is not merely moral, but laid deep in the
natural constitution of things. Three thousand miles of ocean lie
between you and them. No contrivance can prevent the effect of this
distance in weakening government. Seas roll, and months pass, between
the order and the execution; and the want of a speedy explanation of a
single point is enough to defeat an whole system. You have, indeed,
winged ministers of vengeance, who carry your bolts in their pounces to
the remotest verge of the sea: but there a power steps in, that limits
the arrogance of raging passions and furious elements, and says, "So far
shalt thou go, and no farther." Who are you, that should fret and rage,
and bite the chains of Nature? Nothing worse happens to you than does to
all nations who have extensive empire; and it happens in all the forms
into which empire can be thrown. In large bodies, the circulation of
power must be less vigorous at the extremities. Nature has said it. The
Turk cannot govern Egypt, and Arabia, and Kurdistan, as he governs
Thrace; nor has he the same dominion in Crimea and Algiers which he has
at Brusa and Smyrna. Despotism itself is obliged to truck and huckster.
The Sultan gets such obedience as he can. He governs with a loose rein,
that he may govern at all; and the whole of the force and vigor of his
authority in his centre is derived from a prudent relaxation in all his
borders. Spain, in her provinces, is perhaps not so well obeyed as you
are in yours. She complies, too; she submits; she watches times. This is
the immutable condition, the eternal law, of extensive and detached
empire.

Then, Sir, from these six capital sources, of descent, of form of
government, of religion in the northern provinces, of manners in the
southern, of education, of the remoteness of situation from the first
mover of government,--from all these causes a fierce spirit of liberty
has grown up. It has grown with the growth of the people in your
colonies, and increased with the increase of their wealth: a spirit,
that, unhappily meeting with an exercise of power in England, which,
however lawful, is not reconcilable to any ideas of liberty, much less
with theirs, has kindled this flame that is ready to consume us.

I do not mean to commend either the spirit in this excess, or the moral
causes which produce it. Perhaps a more smooth and accommodating spirit
of freedom in them would be more acceptable to us. Perhaps ideas of
liberty might be desired more reconcilable with an arbitrary and
boundless authority. Perhaps we might wish the colonists to be persuaded
that their liberty is more secure when held in trust for them by us (as
their guardians during a perpetual minority) than with any part of it in
their own hands. But the question is not, whether their spirit deserves
praise or blame,--what, in the name of God, shall we do with it? You
have before you the object, such as it is,--with all its glories, with
all its imperfections on its head. You see the magnitude, the
importance, the temper, the habits, the disorders. By all these
considerations we are strongly urged to determine something concerning
it. We are called upon to fix some rule and line for our future conduct,
which may give a little stability to our politics, and prevent the
return of such unhappy deliberations as the present. Every such return
will bring the matter before us in a still more untractable form. For
what astonishing and incredible things have we not seen already! What
monsters have not been generated from this unnatural contention! Whilst
every principle of authority and resistance has been pushed, upon both
sides, as far as it would go, there is nothing so solid and certain,
either in reasoning or in practice, that has not been shaken. Until very
lately, all authority in America seemed to be nothing but an emanation
from yours. Even the popular part of the colony constitution derived all
its activity, and its first vital movement, from the pleasure of the
crown. We thought, Sir, that the utmost which the discontented colonists
could do was to disturb authority; we never dreamt they could of
themselves supply it, knowing in general what an operose business it is
to establish a government absolutely new. But having, for our purposes
in this contention, resolved that none but an obedient assembly should
sit, the humors of the people there, finding all passage through the
legal channel stopped, with great violence broke out another way. Some
provinces have tried their experiment, as we have tried ours; and theirs
has succeeded. They have formed a government sufficient for its
purposes, without the bustle of a revolution, or the troublesome
formality of an election. Evident necessity and tacit consent have done
the business in an instant. So well they have done it, that Lord Dunmore
(the account is among the fragments on your table) tells you that the
new institution is infinitely better obeyed than the ancient government
ever was in its most fortunate periods. Obedience is what makes
government, and not the names by which it is called: not the name of
Governor, as formerly, or Committee, as at present. This new government
has originated directly from the people, and was not transmitted
through any of the ordinary artificial media of a positive constitution.
It was not a manufacture ready formed, and transmitted to them in that
condition from England. The evil arising from hence is this: that the
colonists having once found the possibility of enjoying the advantages
of order in the midst of a struggle for liberty, such struggles will not
henceforward seem so terrible to the settled and sober part of mankind
as they had appeared before the trial.

Pursuing the same plan of punishing by the denial of the exercise of
government to still greater lengths, we wholly abrogated the ancient
government of Massachusetts. We were confident that the first feeling,
if not the very prospect of anarchy, would instantly enforce a complete
submission. The experiment was tried. A new, strange, unexpected face of
things appeared. Anarchy is found tolerable. A vast province has now
subsisted, and subsisted in a considerable degree of health and vigor,
for near a twelvemonth, without governor, without public council,
without judges, without executive magistrates. How long it will continue
in this state, or what may arise out of this unheard-of situation, how
can the wisest of us conjecture? Our late experience has taught us that
many of those fundamental principles formerly believed infallible are
either not of the importance they were imagined to be, or that we have
not at all adverted to some other far more important and far more
powerful principles which entirely overrule those we had considered as
omnipotent. I am much against any further experiments which tend to put
to the proof any more of these allowed opinions which contribute so much
to the public tranquillity. In effect, we suffer as much at home by
this loosening of all ties, and this concussion of all established
opinions, as we do abroad. For, in order to prove that the Americans
have no right to their liberties, we are every day endeavoring to
subvert the maxims which preserve the whole spirit of our own. To prove
that the Americans ought not to be free, we are obliged to depreciate
the value of freedom itself; and we never seem to gain a paltry
advantage over them in debate, without attacking some of those
principles, or deriding some of those feelings, for which our ancestors
have shed their blood.

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