Your address to the public, which you have been so good as to send to me, obliges me to break in upon that plan, and to look a little on what is behind, and very much on what is before me. It creates in my mind a variety of thoughts, and all of them unpleasant.

It is true, my lord, what you say, that, through our public life, we have generally sailed on somewhat different tacks. We have so undoubtedly, and we should do so still, if I had continued longer to keep the sea. In that difference, you rightly observe, that I have always done justice to your skill and ability as a navigator, and to your good intentions towards the safety of the cargo and of the ship's company. I cannot say now that we are on different tacks. There would be no propriety in the metaphor. I can sail no longer. My vessel cannot be said to be even in port. She is wholly condemned and broken up. To have an idea of that vessel, you must call to mind what you have often seen on the Kentish road. Those planks of tough and hardy oak, that used for years to brave the buffets of the Bay of Biscay, are now turned, with their warped grain, and empty trunnion-holes, into very wretched pales for the enclosure of a wretched farm yard.

The style of your pamphlet, and the eloquence and power of composition you display in it, are such as do great honour to your talents; and in conveying any other sentiments would give me very great pleasure. Perhaps I do not very perfectly comprehend your purpose, and the drift of your arguments. If I do not, pray do not attribute my mistake to want of candour, but to want of sagacity. I confess your address to the public, together with other accompanying circumstances, has filled me with a degree of grief and dismay, which I cannot find words to express. If the plan of politics 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 inde

pendence, to the very existence of this country. This is my feeble, perhaps, but clear, positive, decided, long and maturely reflected, 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 interest; 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 you may think, that my animosity to opposition is the cause of my dissent, on seeing the politics 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, on 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,

EDM. BURKE,

Beaconsfield, Oct. 30th, 1795. Friday evening.

MY DEAR LORD,

I AM not sure, that the best way of discussing 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 puppet-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 Inost 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 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 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 "last as long as a present love; or as the painted silks and cottons of the season."

The

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 Circumstances of the war in the fourth week of October, 1795." 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 public 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 fabric of his speculation might be overset by unforeseen vicissitudes;" and what is far more extraordinary, "that even the whole consideration might be varied whilst he was writing those pages." Truly, in my poor judgment, this circumstance formed a very substantial motive for his not publishing those ill-considered considerations at all. He ought to have followed the good advice of his motto; Que faire encore dans une telle nuit ?

Attendre le jour. He ought to have waited till he had got a little more day-light on this subject. Night itself is hardly darker than the fogs of that time.

he

Finding the last week in October so particularly referred to, and not perceiving any particular event relative to the war, which happened on any of the days in that week, I thought it possible, that they were marked by some astrological superstition, to which the greatest politicians have been subject. I therefore had recourse to my Rider's Almanac. T'here I found indeed something that characterised the work, and that gave directions concerning the sudden political and natural variations, and for eschewing the maladies that are most prevalent in that aguish intermittent season," the last week of October." On that week the sagacious astrologer, Rider, in his note on the third column of the calender side, teaches us to expect "variable and cold weather," but instead of encouraging us to trust ourselves to the haze and mist and doubtful lights of that changeable week, on the answerable part of the opposite page, I gives us a salutary caution, (indeed it is very nearly in the words of the author's motto:) "Avoid (says he) being out late at night, and in foggy weather, for a cold now caught may last the whole winter."* This ingenious author, who disdained the prudence of the almanac, walked out in the very fog he complains of, and has led us to a very unseasonable airing at that time. Whilst this noble writer, by the vigour of an excellent constitution, formed for the violent changes he prognosticates, may shake off the importunate rheum and malignant influenza, of this disagreeable week, a whole parliament may go on spitting and snivelling, and wheezing and coughing during a whole session. All this from listening to variable, hebdomedal politicians, who run away from their opinions without giving us a month's warning; and for not listening to the wise and friendly admonitions of Dr. Cardanus Rider, who never apprehends he may change his opinions before his pen is out of his hand, but always enables us to lay in, at least, a year's stock of useful information.

At first I took comfort. I said to myself, that if I should, as I fear I must, oppose the doctrines of the last week of October, it is pro

Here I have fallen into an unintentional mistake. Rider's Almanac for 1794 lay before me and, in truth, I then had no other. For variety, that sage astrologer has made some small changes on the weather side of 1795; but the caution is the same on the opposite page of instruction.

bable that, by this time, they are no longer those of the eminent writer, to whom they are attributed. He gives us hopes, that long before this he may have embraced the direct contrary sentiments. If I am found in a conflict with those of the last week of October, I may be in full agreement with those of the last week in December, or the first week in January, 1796. But a second edition, and a French translation (for the benefit, I must suppose, of the new regicide directory) have let down a little of these flattering hopes. We and the directory know, that the author, whatever changes his works seemed made to indicate like a weather-cock grown rusty, remains just where he was in the last week of last October. It is true, that his protest against binding him to his opinions, and his reservation of a right to whatever opinions he pleases, remain in their full force. This variability is pleasant, and shows a fertility of fancy;

With

Qualis in æthereo felix Vertumnus Olympo Mille habet ornatus, mille decenter habet. Yet, doing all justice to the sportive variability of these weekly, daily, or hourly speculators, shall I be pardoned, if I attempt a word on the part of us simple country folk? It is not good for us, however it may be so for great statesmen, that we should be treated with variable politics. I consider different relations as prescribing a different conduct. I allow, that in transactions with an enemy, a minister may, and often must, vary his demands with the day, possibly with the hour. an enemy, a fixed plan, variable arrangements. This is the rule the nature of the transaction prescribes. But all this belongs to treaty. All these shifting and changes are a sort of secret among the parties, till a definite settlement is brought about. Such is the spirit of the proceedings in the doubtful and transitory state of things between enmity and friendship. In this change the subjects of the transformation are by nature carefully wrapt up in their coc coons. The gay ornament of summer is not seemly in his aurelia state. This mutability is allowed to a foreign negociator; but when a great politician condescends publicly to instruct his own countrymen, on a matter which may fix their fate for ever, his opinions ought not to be diurnal, or even weekly. These ephemerides of politics are not made for our slow and coarse understandings. Our appetite demands a piece of resistance. We require some food that will stick to the ribs. We call for sentiments, to which we can attach ourselves; sentiments, in which we can take

an interest; sentiments, on which we can warm, on which we can ground some confidence in ourselves or in others. We do not want a largess of inconstancy. Poor souls, we have enough of that sort of poverty at home. There is a difference too between delibera tion and doctrine: a man ought to be decided in his opinions before he attempts to teach. His fugitive lights may serve himself in some unknown region, but they cannot free us from the effects of the error, into which we have been betrayed. His active Will-o'-the-Wisp may be gone, nobody can guess where, whilst he leaves us bemired and benighted in the bog.

Having premised these few reflections upon this new mode of teaching a lesson, which whilst the scholar is getting by heart the master forgets, I come to the lesson itself. On the fullest consideration of it, I am utterly incapable of saying with any great certainty what it is in the detail, that the author means to affirm or deny, to dissuade or recommend. His march is mostly oblique, and his doctrine rather in the way of insinuation than of dogmatic assertion. It is not only fugitive in its duration, but is slippery, in the extreme whilst it lasts. Examining it part by part, it seems almost every where to contradict itself; and the author, who claims the privilege of varying his opinions, has exercised this privilege in every section of his remarks. For this reason, among others, I follow the advice which the able writer gives in his last page, which is "to consider the impression of what he has urged, taken from the whole, and not from detached paragraphs." That caution was not absolutely necessary. I should think it unfair to the author and to myself, to have proceeded otherwise. This author's whole, however, like every other whole, cannot be so well comprehended without some reference to the parts; but they shall be again referred to the whole. Without this latter attention, several of the passages would certainly remain covered with animpenetrable and truly oracular obscurity.

The great general pervading purpose of the whole pamphlet is to reconcile us to peace with the present usurpation in France. In this general drift of the author I can hardly be mistaken. The other purposes, less general, and subservient to the preceding scheme, are to show first, that the time of the remarks was the favourable time for making that peace upon our side; secondly, that on the enemy's side their disposition towards the acceptance of such terms, as he is pleased to offer, was rationally to be expected; the third purpose

was to make some sort of disclosure of the terms, which, if the regicides are pleased to grant them, this nation ought to be contented to accept: these form the basis of the negociation, which the author, whoever he is, proposes to open.

Before I consider these Remarks along with the other reasonings, which I hear on the same subject, I beg leave to recall to your mind the observation I made early in our correspondence, and which ought to attend us quite through the discussion of this proposed peace, amity, or fraternity, or whatever you may call it; that is, the real quality and character of the party you have to deal with. This, I find, as a thing of no importance, has every where escaped the author of the October Remarks. That hostile power, to the period of the fourth week in that month, has been ever called and considered as an usurpation. In that week, for the first time, it changed its name of an usurped power, and took the simple name of France. The word France is slipped in just as if the government stood exactly as before that revolution, which has astonished, terrified, and almost overpowered Europe. "France," says the author, "will do this;" "it is the interest of France;" "the returning honour and generosity of France;" &c. &c. always merely France; just as if we were in a common political war with an old recognized member of the commonwealth of christian Europe; and as if our dispute had turned upon a mere matter of territorial or commercial controversy, which a peace might settle by the imposition or the taking off a duty, with the gain, or the loss of a remote island, or a frontier town or two, on the one side or the other. This shifting of persons could not be done without the hocus-pocus of abstraction. We have been in a grievous error; we thought that we had been at war with rebels against the lawful government, but that we were friends and allies of what is properly France; friends and allies to the legal body politic of France. But by slight of hand the Jacobins are clean vanished, and it is France we have got under our cup. Blessings on his soul that first invented sleep, said Don Sancho Pancha the wise! All those blessings, and ten thousand times more, on him who found out abstraction, personification, and impersonals. In certain cases they are the first of all soporifics. Terribly alarmed we should be if things were proposed to us in the concrete; and if fraternity was held out to us with the individuals, who compose this France, by their proper names and descriptions: if we were told that it was

very proper to enter into the closest bonds of amity and good correspondence with the devout, pacific, and tender-hearted Syeyes, with the all-accomplished Rewbel, with the humane guillotinists of Bourdeaux, Tallien and Isabeau; with the meek butcher Legendre, and with "the returned humanity and generosity" (that had been only on a visit abroad) of the virtuous regicide brewer Santerre. This would seem at the outset a very strange scheme of amity and concord;-nay, though we had held out to us, as an additional douceur, an assurance of the cordial fraternal embrace of our pious and patriotic countryman Thomas Paine. But plain truth would here be shocking and absurd; therefore comes in abstraction and personification. "Make your peace with France." That word France sounds quite as well as any other, and it conveys no idea, but that of a very pleasant country and very hospitable inhabitants. Nothing absurd and shocking in amity and good correspondence with France. Permit me to say, that I am not yet well acquainted with this new-coined France, and, without a careful assay, I am not willing to receive it in currency in place of the old Louis d'or.

Having therefore slipped the persons, with whom we are to treat, out of view, we are next to be satisfied, that the French revolution, which this peace is to fix and consolidate, ought to give us no just cause of apprehension. Though the author labours this point, yet he confesses a fact (indeed he could not conceal it) which renders all his labours utterly fruitless. He confesses, that the regicide means to dictate a pacification, and that this pacification according to their decree passed but a very few days before his publication appeared, is to "unite to their empire, either in possession or dependence, new barriers, many frontier places of strength, a large sea-coast, and I many sea-ports:" he ought to have stated it, that they would annex to their territory a country about a third as large as France, and much more than half as rich; and in a situation the most important for command, that it would be possible for her any where to possess. To remove this terrour (even if the regicides should carry their point) and to give us perfect repose with regard to their empire, whatever they may acquire, or whomsoever they might destroy, he raises a doubt "whether France will not be ruined by retaining these conquests, and whether she will not wholly lose that preponderance, which she has held in the scale of European powers, and will not eventually be destroyed by the effect of her present

successes; or, at least, whether, so far as the political interests of England are concerned, she [France] will remain an object of as much jealousy and alarm, as she was under the reign of a monarch." Here, indeed, is a paragraph full of meaning! It gives matter for meditation almost in every word of it. The secret of the pacific politicians is out. This republic, at all hazards, is to be maintained. It is to be confined within some bounds, if we can; if not, with every possible acquisition of power, it is still to be cherished and supported. It is the return of the monarchy we are to dread, and therefore we ought to pray for the permanence of the regicide authority. Esto perpetua is the ejaculation of our Fra Paolo for the republic one and indivisible. It was the monarchy that rendered France dangerous;—regicide neutralizes all the acrimony of that power, and renders it safe and social. The October speculator is of opinion, that monarchy is of so poisonous a quality, that a moderate territorial power is far more dangerous to its neighbours under that abominable regimen, than the greatest empire in the hands of a republic. This is jacobinism sublime and exalted into most pure and perfect essence. It is a doctrine, I admit, made to allure and captivate, if any thing in the world can, the jacobin directory, to mollify the ferocity of regicide, and to persuade those patriotic hangmen, after their reiterated oaths for our extirpation, to admit this well-humbled nation to the fraternal embrace. I do not wonder that this tub of October has been racked off into a French cask. It must make its fortune at Paris, That translation seems the language the most suited to these sentiments. Our author tells the French jacobins that the political interests of Great Britain are in perfect unison with the principles of their government; that they may take and keep the keys of the civilized world, for they are safe in their unambitious and faithful custody. We say to them-We may indeed, wish you to be a little less murderous, wicked, and atheistical, for the sake of morals: We may think it were better you were less new-fangled in your speech, for the sake of grammar: but, as politicians, provided you keep clear of monarchy, all our fears, alarms, and jealousies are at an end: at least they sink into nothing in comparison of our dread of your detestable royalty. A flatterer of Cardinal Maxarin said, when that minister had just settled the match between the young Louis XIV. and a daughter of Spain, that this alliance had the effect of faith, and had removed mountains; that the Pyrenees were