Volume V Part 10 (2/2)

It would be a most arrogant presumption in me to a.s.sume to myself the glory of what belongs to his Majesty, and to his ministers, and to his Parliament, and to the far greater majority of his faithful people: but had I stood alone to counsel, and that all were determined to be guided by my advice, and to follow it implicitly, then I should have been the sole author of a war. But it should have been a war on my ideas and my principles. However, let his Grace think as he may of my demerits with regard to the war with Regicide, he will find my guilt confined to that alone. He never shall, with the smallest color of reason, accuse me of being the author of a peace with Regicide.--But that is high matter, and ought not to be mixed with anything of so little moment as what may belong to me, or even to the Duke of Bedford.

I have the honor to be, &c.

EDMUND BURKE.

FOOTNOTES:

[15]

Tristius haud illis monstrum, nec saevior ulla Pestis et ira Deum Stygiis sese extulit undis.

Virginei volucrum vultus, fdissima ventris Proluvies, uncaeque ma.n.u.s, et pallida semper Ora fame.

Here the poet breaks the line, because he (and that _he_ is Virgil) had not verse or language to describe that monster even as he had conceived her. Had he lived to our time, he would have been more overpowered with the reality than he was with the imagination. Virgil only knew the horror of the times before him. Had he lived to see the revolutionists and const.i.tutionalists of France, he would have had more horrid and disgusting features of his harpies to describe, and more frequent failures in the attempt to describe them.

[16] London, J. Dodsley, 1792, 3 vols. 4to.--Vol. II. pp. 324-336, in the present edition.

[17] See the history of the melancholy catastrophe of the Duke of Buckingham. Temp. Hen. VIII.

[18] At si non aliam venturo fata Neroni, etc.

[19] Sir George Savile's act, called The _Nullum Tempus_ Act.

[20] ”Templum in modum arcis.”--TACITUS, of the temple of Jerusalem.

[21] There is nothing on which the leaders of the Republic one and indivisible value themselves more than on the chemical operations by which; through science, they convert the pride of aristocracy to an instrument of its own destruction,--on the operations by which they reduce the magnificent ancient country-seats of the n.o.bility, decorated with the _feudal_ t.i.tles of Duke, Marquis, or Earl, into magazines of what they call _revolutionary_ gunpowder. They tell us, that hitherto things ”had not yet been properly and in a _revolutionary_ manner explored,”--”The strong _chateaus_, those _feudal_ fortresses, that _were ordered to be demolished_ attracted next the attention of your committee. _Nature_ there had _secretly_ regained her _rights_, and had produced saltpetre, for the _purpose_, as it should seem, _of facilitating the execution of your decree by preparing the means of destruction_. From these _ruins_, which _still frown_ on the liberties of the Republic, we have extracted the means of producing good; and those piles which have hitherto glutted the _pride of despots_, and covered the plots of La Vendee, will soon furnish wherewithal to tame the traitors and to overwhelm the disaffected,”--”The _rebellious cities_, also, have afforded a large quant.i.ty of saltpetre. _Commune Affranchie_” (that is, the n.o.ble city of Lyons, reduced in many parts to an heap of ruins) ”and Toulon will pay a _second_ tribute to our artillery.”--_Report, 1st February_, 1794.

THREE LETTERS

ADDRESSED TO

A MEMBER OF THE PRESENT PARLIAMENT,

ON THE

PROPOSALS FOR PEACE WITH THE REGICIDE DIRECTORY OF FRANCE.

1796-7.

LETTER I.

ON THE OVERTURES OF PEACE.

My Dear Sir,--Our last conversation, though not in the tone of absolute despondency, was far from cheerful. We could not easily account for some unpleasant appearances. They were represented to us as indicating the state of the popular mind; and they were not at all what we should have expected from our old ideas even of the faults and vices of the English character. The disastrous events which have followed one upon another in a long, unbroken, funereal train, moving in a procession that seemed to have no end,--these were not the princ.i.p.al causes of our dejection. We feared more from what threatened to fail within than what menaced to oppress us from abroad. To a people who have once been proud and great, and great because they were proud, a change in the national spirit is the most terrible of all revolutions.

I shall not live to behold the unravelling of the intricate plot which saddens and perplexes the awful drama of Providence now acting on the moral theatre of the world. Whether for thought or for action, I am at the end of my career. You are in the middle of yours. In what part of its...o...b..t the nation with which we are carried along moves at this instant it is not easy to conjecture. It may, perhaps, be far advanced in its aphelion,--but when to return?

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