me with a degree of grief and dismay, which I cannot find words to express. If the plan of politicks there recommended, pray excuse my freedom, should be adopted by the King's Councils, and by the good people of this kingdom, (as so recommended undoubtedly it will) nothing can be the consequence but utter and irretrievable ruin to the Ministry, to the Crown, to the Succession, to the importance, to the independence, to the very existence of this country. This is my feeble, perhaps, but clear, positive, decided, long and maturelyreflected, and frequently declared, opinion, from which all the events, which have lately come to pass, so far from turning me, have tended to confirm beyond the power of alteration, even by your eloquence and authority. I find, my dear Lord,

that

you think some persons, who are not satisfied with the securities of a Jacobin peace, to be persons of intemperate minds. I may be, and I fear I am, with you in that description: but pray, my Lord, recollect, that very few of the causes, which make men intemperate, can operate upon me. Sanguine hopes, vehement desires, inordinate ambition, implacable animosity, party attachments, or party interests;-all these with me have no existence. For myself, or for a family (alas! I have none) I have nothing to hope or to fear in this world. I am attached by principle, inclination, and gratitude, to the King, and to the present Ministry.

Perhaps

Perhaps you may think, that my animosity to Opposition is the cause of my dissent, on seeing the politicks of Mr. Fox, (which, while I was in the world, I combated by every instrument, which God had put into my hands, and in every situation, in which I had taken part) so completely, if I at all understand you, adopted in your Lordship's book: but it was with pain I broke with that great man for ever in that cause-and I assure you, it is not without pain, that I differ with your Lordship on the same principles. But it is of no concern. I am far below the region of those great and tempestuous passions. I feel nothing of the intemperance of mind. It is rather sorrow and dejection than anger.

Once more, my best thanks for your very polite attention, and do me the favour to believe me, with the most perfect sentiments of respect and regard, My dear Lord,

Your Lordship's

Most obedient and humble Servant,

Beaconsfield, Oct. 30th, 1795

Friday Evening.

EDM. BURKE.

LETTER

LETTER IV.

TO THE EARL FITZWILLIAM.

I

MY DEAR LORD,

AM not sure, that the best way of discussing

pup

any subject, except those, that concern the abstracted sciences, is not somewhat in the way of dialogue. To this mode, however, there are two objections; the first, that it happens, as in the pet-show, one man speaks for all the personages. An unnatural uniformity of tone is in a manner unavoidable. The other and more serious objection is, that as the author (if not an absolute sceptick) must have some opinion of his own to enforce, he will be continually tempted to enervate the arguments he puts into the mouth of his adversary, or to place them in a point of view most commodious for their refutation. There is, however, a sort of dialogue not quite so liable to these objections, because it approaches more nearly to truth and nature: it is called CONTROVERSY. Here the parties speak for themselves. If the writer, who attacks another's notions, does not deal fairly with his adversary, the diligent reader has it always in his VOL. IX.

B

power,

power, by resorting to the work examined, to do justice to the original author and to himself. For this reason you will not blame me, if, in my discussion of the merits of a Regicide Peace, I do not choose to trust to my own statements, but to bring forward along with them the arguments of the advocates for that measure. If I choose puny adversaries, writers of no estimation or authority, then you will justly blame me. I might as well bring in at once a fictitious speaker, and thus fall into all the inconveniences of an imaginary dialogue. This I shall avoid; and I shall take no notice of any author, who, my friends in town do not tell me, is in estimation with those, whose opinions he supports.

A Piece has been sent to me, called, "Remarks "on the apparent Circumstances of the War in the "fourth week of October 1795," with a French motto, Que faire encore une fois dans une telle nuit?-Attendre le jour. The very title seemed to me striking and peculiar, and to announce something uncommon. In the time I have lived to, I always seem to walk on enchanted ground. Every thing is new, and, according to the fashionable. phrase, revolutionary. In former days authors valued themselves upon the maturity and fulness of their deliberations. Accordingly they predicted (perhaps with more arrogance than reason) an eternal duration to their works. The quite contrary is our present fashion. Writers value themselves

now

now on the instability of their opinions and the transitory life of their productions. On this kind of credit the modern institutors open their schools. They write for youth, and it is sufficient if the instruction "lasts as long as a present love,-or as "the painted silks and cottons of the season."

The doctrines in this work are applied, for their standard, with great exactness to the shortest possible periods both of conception and duration. The title is "Some Remarks on the Apparent circum"stances of the War in the fourth Week of October

1795." The time is critically chosen. A month or so earlier would have made it the anniversary of a bloody Parisian September, when the French massacre one another. A day or two later would have carried it into a London November, the gloomy month, in which it is said by a pleasant author, that Englishmen hang and drown themselves. In truth, this work has a tendency to alarm us with symptoms of publick suicide. However, there is one comfort to be taken even from the gloomy time of year. It is a rotting season. If what is brought to market is not good, it is not likely to keep long. Even buildings run up in haste with untempered mortar in that humid weather, if they are ill-contrived tenements, do not threaten long to encumber the earth. The Author tells us (and I believe he is the very first author, that ever told such a thing to his readers) "that the entire fabrick of his speculations might