AN APPEAL

FROM

THE NEW TO THE OLD WHIGS,

IN CONSEQUENCE OF SOME LATE

DISCUSSIONS IN PARLIAMENT,

RELATIVE TO THE

REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

1791.

ADVERTISEMENT TO THE SECOND EDITION.

There are some corrections in this edition, which tend to render the sense less obscure in one or two places. The order of the two last members is also changed, and I believe for the better. This change was made on the suggestion of a very learned person, to the partiality of whose friendship I owe much; to the severity of whose judgment I owe more.

not reckon upon it. It has nothing to do with | His words at the outset of his Reflections are them as members of a party. In their publick these: capacity, in every thing that meets the publick ear, or publick eye, the body must be considered as unanimous.

"In the first letter I had the honour to write "to you, and which at length I send, I wrote "neither for, nor from, any description of men; nor shall I in this. My errours, if any, are my

own. My reputation alone is to answer for "them." In another place he says, (p. 126,) "I have no man's proxy. I speak only from myself, when I disclaim, as I do, with all possible "earnestness, all communion with the actors in "that triumph, or with the admirers of it. When "I assert any thing else, as concerning the people "of England, I speak from observation, not from "authority."

To say then, that the book did not contain the sentiments of their party, is not to contradict the author, or to clear themselves. If the party had denied his doctrines to be the current opinions of the majority in the nation, they would have put the question on its true issue. There, I hope and believe, his censurers will find on the trial, that the author is as faithful a representative of the general sentiment of the people of England, as any person amongst them can be of the ideas of his own party.

They must have been animated with a very warm zeal against those opinions, because they were under no necessity of acting as they did, from any just cause of apprehension that the errours of this writer should be taken for theirs. They might disapprove; it was not necessary they should disavow him, as they have done in the whole, and in all the parts of his book; because neither in the whole nor in any of the parts, were they directly, or by any implication, involved. The author was known indeed to have been warmly, strenuously, and affectionately, against all allurements of ambition, and all possibility of alienation from pride, or personal pique, or peevish jealousy, attached to the Whig party. With one of them he has had a long friendship, which he must ever remember with a melancholy pleasure. To the great, real, and amiable virtues, and to the unequalled abilities, of that gentleman, he shall always join with his country in paying a just tribute of applause. There are others in that party for whom, without any shade of sorrow, he bears as high a degree of The French Revolution can have no connexion love as can enter into the human heart; and as with the objects of any parties in England formed much veneration as ought to be paid to human before the period of that event, unless they choose creatures; because he firmly believes, that they to imitate any of its acts, or to consolidate any are endowed with as many and as great virtues, principles of that Revolution with their own opias the nature of man is capable of producing, nions. The French Revolution is no part of their joined to great clearness of intellect, to a just judg-original contract. The matter, standing by itself, ment, to a wonderful temper, and to true wisdom. is an open subject of political discussion, like all His sentiments with regard to them can never the other revolutions (and there are many) which vary, without subjecting him to the just indigna- have been attempted or accomplished in our age. tion of mankind, who are bound, and are gene-But if any considerable number of British subjects, rally disposed, to look up with reverence to the taking a factious interest in the proceedings of best patterns of their species, and such as give a France, begin publickly to incorporate themselves dignity to the nature of which we all participate. for the subversion of nothing short of the whole For the whole of the party he has high respect. constitution of this kingdom; to incorporate themUpon a view indeed of the composition of all selves for the utter overthrow of the body of its parties, he finds great satisfaction. It is, that in laws, civil and ecclesiastical, and with them of leaving the service of his country, he leaves par- the whole system of its manners, in favour of the liament without all comparison richer in abilities new constitution, and of the modern usages, of than he found it. Very solid and very brilliant the French nation, I think no party principle could talents distinguish the ministerial benches. The bind the author not to express his sentiments opposite rows are a sort of seminary of genius, strongly against such a faction. On the contrary, and have brought forth such and so great talents he was perhaps bound to mark his dissent, when as never before (amongst us at least) have appear- the leaders of the party were daily going out of ed together. If their owners are disposed to serve their way to make publick declarations in parliatheir country, (he trusts they are,) they are in a ment, which, notwithstanding the purity of their condition to render it services of the highest im- intentions, had a tendency to encourage ill-deportance. If, through mistake or passion, they are signing men in their practices against our constiled to contribute to its ruin, we shall at least have tution. a consolation denied to the ruined country that adjoins us—we shall not be destroyed by men of mean or secondary capacities.

All these considerations of party attachment, of personal regard, and of personal admiration, rendered the Author of the Reflections extremely cautious, lest the slightest suspicion should arise of his having undertaken to express the sentiments even of a single man of that description.

The members of this faction leave no doubt of the nature and the extent of the mischief they mean to produce. They declare it openly and decisively. Their intentions are not left equivocal. They are put out of all dispute by the thanks which formally, and as it were officially, they issue, in order to recommend and to promote the circulation of the most atrocious and treasonable libels against all the hitherto cherished objects of the love and

veneration of this people. Is it contrary to the duty of a good subject, to reprobate such proceedings? Is it alien to the office of a good member of parliament, when such practices encrease, and when the audacity of the conspirators grows with their impunity, to point out in his place their evil tendency to the happy constitution which he is chosen to guard? Is it wrong, in any sense, to render the people of England sensible how much they must suffer, if, unfortunately, such a wicked faction should become possessed in this country of the same power which their allies in the very next to us have so perfidiously usurped, and so outrageously abused! Is it inhuman to prevent, if possible, the spilling their blood, or imprudent to guard against the effusion of our own? Is it contrary to any of the honest principles of party, or repugnant to any of the known duties of friendship, for any senator, respectfully, and amicably, to caution his brother members against countenancing, by inconsiderate expressions, a sort of proceeding which it is impossible they should deliberately approve?

any example that can be found in the civilized European world of our age; that therefore the lovers of it must be lovers, not of liberty, but if they really understand its nature, of the lowest and basest of all servitude.

He proposed to prove, that the present state of things in France is not a transient evil, productive, as some have too favourably represented it, of a lasting good; but that the present evil is only the means of producing future and (if that were possible) worse evils.-That it is not an undigested, imperfect, and crude scheme of liberty, which may gradually be mellowed and ripened into an orderly and social freedom; but that it is so fundamentally wrong, as to be utterly incapable of correcting itself by any length of time, or of being formed into any mode of polity, of which a member of the house of commons could publickly declare his approbation.

If it had been permitted to Mr. Burke, he would have shewn distinctly, and in detail, that what the Assembly, calling itself National, had held out as a large and liberal toleration, is in reality a cruel and insidious religious persecution; infinitely more bitter than any which had been heard of within this century. That it had a feature in it worse than the old persecutions. That the old persecutors acted, or pretended to act, from zeal, towards some system of piety and virtue: they gave strong preferences to their own; and if they drove people from one religion, they provided for them another, in which men might take refuge and expect consolation. That their new persecution is not against a variety in conscience, but against all conscience. That it professes contempt towards its object; and whilst it treats all religion with scorn, is not so much as neutral about the modes: it unites the opposite evils of intolerance and of indifference.

He had undertaken to demonstrate by arguments, which he thought could not be refuted, and by documents, which he was sure could not be denied, that no comparison was to be made between the British government and the French usurpation. That they who endeavoured madly to compare them, were by no means making the comparison of one good system with another good system, which varied only in local and circumstantial differences; much less, that they were holding out to us a superiour pattern of legal liberty, which we might substitute in the place of our old, and, as they described it, superannuated, constitution. He meant to demonstrate, that the French scheme was not a comparative good, but a positive evil. That the question did not at all turn, as had been stated, on a parallel between a mo- He could have proved, that it is so far from renarchy and a republick. He denied that the pre-jecting tests, (as unaccountably had been asserted,) sent scheme of things in France did at all deserve the respectable name of a republick: he had therefore no comparison between monarchies and republicks to make.-That what was done in France was a wild attempt to methodize anarchy; to perpetuate and fix disorder. That it was a foul, impious, monstrous thing, wholly out of the course of moral nature. He undertook to prove, that it was generated in treachery, fraud, falsehood, hypocrisy, and unprovoked murder. He offered to make out, that those who have led in that business had conducted themselves with the utmost perfidy to their colleagues in function, and with the most flagrant perjury both towards their king and their constituents; to the one of whom the Assembly had sworn fealty, and to the other, when under no sort of violence or constraint, they had sworn a full obedience to instructions.-That, by the terrour of assassination, they had driven away a very great number of the members, so as to produce a false appearance of a majority. That this fictitious majority had fabricated a constitution, which, as now it stands, is a tyranny far beyond

that the Assembly had imposed tests of a peculiar hardship, arising from a cruel and premeditated pecuniary fraud: tests against old principles, sanctioned by the laws, and binding upon the conscience. That these tests were not imposed as titles to some new honour or some new benefit, but to enable men to hold a poor compensation for their legal estates, of which they had been unjustly deprived; and, as they had before been reduced from affluence to indigence; so, on refusal to swear against their conscience, they are now driven from indigence to famine, and treated with every possible degree of outrage, insult, and inhumanity. That these tests, which their imposers well knew would not be taken, were intended for the very purpose of cheating their miserable victims out of the compensation which the tyrannick impostors of the Assembly had previously and purposely rendered the publick unable to pay. That thus their ultimate violence arose from their original fraud.

He would have shewn that the universal peace and concord amongst nations, which these com

each position decisive evidence, correspondent to the nature and quality of the several allegations.

mon enemies to mankind had held out with the same fraudulent ends and pretences with which they had uniformly conducted every part of their In order to judge on the propriety of the interproceeding, was a coarse and clumsy deception, ruption given to Mr. Burke, in his speech in the unworthy to be proposed as an example, by an committee of the Quebec bill, it is necessary to informed and sagacious British senator, to any inquire, first, whether, on general principles, he other country.—That far from peace and good- ought to have been suffered to prove his allegawill to men, they meditated war against all other tions? Secondly, whether the time he had chosen governments; and proposed systematically to ex- was so very unseasonable as to make his exercise cite in them all the very worst kind of seditions, of a parliamentary right productive of ill effects in order to lead to their common destruction.— on his friends or his country? Thirdly, whether That they had discovered, in the few instances in the opinions delivered in his book, and which he which they have hitherto had the power of dis-had begun to expatiate upon that day, were in covering it, (as at Avignon, and in the Comtat, at contradiction to his former principles, and inconCavailhon and at Carpentras,) in what a savage sistent with the general tenour of his publick conmanner they mean to conduct the seditions and duct? wars they have planned against their neighbours, for the sake of putting themselves at the head of a confederation of republicks as wild and as mischievous as their own. He would have shewn in what manner that wicked scheme was carried on in those places, without being directly either owned or disclaimed, in hopes that the undone people should at length be obliged to fly to their tyrannick protection, as some sort of refuge from their barbarous and treacherous hostility. He would have shewn from those examples, that neither this nor any other society could be in safety as long as such a publick enemy was in a condition to continue directly or indirectly such practices against its peace. That Great Britain was a principal object of their machinations; and that they had begun by establishing correspondences, communications, and a sort of federal union with the factious here. That no practical enjoyment of a thing so imperfect and precarious as human happiness must be, even under the very best of governments, could be a security for the existence of these governments, during the prevalence of the principles of France, propagated from that grand school of every disorder and every vice.

He was prepared to shew the madness of their declaration of the pretended rights of man; the childish futility of some of their maxims; the gross and stupid absurdity, and the palpable falsity, of others; and the mischievous tendency of all such declarations to the well-being of men and of citizens, and to the safety and prosperity of every just commonwealth. He was prepared to shew that, in their conduct, the Assembly had directly violated not only every sound principle of government, but every one, without exception, of their own false or futile maxims; and indeed every rule they had pretended to lay down for their own direction.

They, who have made eloquent panegyricks on the French Revolution, and who think a free discussion so very advantageous in every case, and under every circumstance, ought not, in my opinion, to have prevented their eulogies from being tried on the test of facts. If their panegyrick had been answered with an invective (bating the difference in point of eloquence) the one would have been as good as the other: that is, they would both of them have been good for nothing. The panegyrick and the satire ought to be suffered to go to trial; and that which shrinks from it_must be contented to stand, at best, as a mere declamation.

I do not think Mr. Burke was wrong in the course he took. That which seemed to be recommended to him by Mr. Pitt, was rather to extol the English constitution, than to attack the French. I do not determine what would be best for Mr. Pitt to do in his situation. I do not deny that he may have good reasons for his reserve. Perhaps they might have been as good for a similar reserve on the part of Mr. Fox, if his zeal had suffered him to listen to them. But there were no motives of ministerial prudence, or of that prudence which ought to guide a man perhaps on the eve of being minister, to restrain the author of the Reflections. He is in no office under the Crown; he is not the organ of any party.

The excellencies of the British constitution had already exercised and exhausted the talents of the best thinkers, and the most eloquent writers and speakers, that the world ever saw. But in the present case, a system declared to be far better, and which certainly is much newer, (to restless and unstable minds no small recommendation,) was held out to the admiration of the good people of England. In that case, it was surely proper for those, who had far other thoughts of the French constitution, to scrutinize that plan which has been recommended to our imitation by active and zealous factions, at home and abroad. complexion is such, that we are palled with enig-joyment, and stimulated with hope; that we become less sensible to a long-possessed benefit, from the very circumstance that it is become habitual. Specious, untried, ambiguous prospects of new advantage, recommend themselves to the spirit of

In a word, he was ready to shew, that those who could, after such a full and fair exposure, continue to countenance the French insanity, were not mistaken politicians, but bad men; but he thought that in this case, as in many others, norance had been the cause of admiration.

These are strong assertions. They required strong proofs. The member who laid down these positions was and is ready to give, in his place, to

Our