A ludicrous picture, which he made with regard
to a passage in the speech of a late minister,* has
been brought up against him. That passage con-
tained a lamentation for the loss of monarchy to
the Americans, after they had separated from
Great Britain. He thought it to be unseasonable,
ill judged, and ill sorted with the circumstances of
all the parties. Mr. Burke, it seems, considered
it ridiculous to lament the" loss of some monarch
or other, to a rebel people, at the moment they
had for ever quitted their allegiance to their and
our sovereign ; at the time when they had broken
off all connexion with this nation, and had allied

.
* Lord Lansdown.

themselves



126 APPEAL FROM THE NEW

themselves with its enemies. He certainly must
have thought it open to ridicule : and, now that
it is recalled to his memory, (he had, I believe,
wholly forgotten the circumstance) he recollects
that he did treat it with some levity. But is it
a fair inference from a jest on this unseasonable
lamentation, that he was then an enemy to mo-
narchy either in this or in any other country?
The contrary perhaps ought to be inferred, if any
thing at all can be argued from pleasantries good
or bad. Is it for this reason, or for any thing he
has said or done relative to the American war,
that he is to enter into an alliance offensive and
defensive with every rebellion, in every country,
under every circumstance, and raised upon what-
ever pretence ? Is it because he did not wish the
Americans to be subdued by arms, that he must
be inconsistent with himself, if he reprobates the
conduct of those societies in England, who alleg-
ing no one act of tyranny or oppression, and com-
plaining of no hostile attempt against our ancient
laws, rights, and usages, are now endeavouring to
work the destruction of the crown of this king-
dom, and the whole of its constitution? Is he
obliged, from the concessions he wished to be
made to the colonies, to keep any terms with
those clubs and federations, who hold out to us as
a pattern for imitation, the proceedings in France,
in which a king, who had voluntarily and

formally



TO THE OLD WHIGS. 127

formally divested himself of the right of taxation,
and of all other species of arbitrary power, has
been dethroned ? Is it because Mr. Burke wished
to have America rather conciliated than vanquish-
ed, that he must wish well to the army of repub-
licks which are set up in France ; a country wherein
not the people, but the monarch was wholly on
the defensive (a poor, indeed, and feeble defen-
sive) to preserve some fragments of the royal autho-
rity against a determined and desperate body of
conspirators, whose object it was, with whatever
certainty of crimes, with whatever hazard of war,
and every other species of calamity, to annihilate
the whole of that authority ; to level all ranks,
orders, and distinctions in the state ; and utterly
to destroy property, not more by their acts than in
their principles ?

Mr. Burke has been also reproached with an in-
consistency between his late writings and his for-
mer conduct, because he had proposed in parlia-
ment several economical, leading to several con-
stitutional reforms. Mr. Burke thought, with a
majority of the house of commons, that the in-
fluence of the crown at one time was too great ;
but after his majesty had, by a gracious message,
and several subsequent acts of parliament, reduced
it to a standard which satisfied Mr. Fox himself,
and, apparently at least, contented whoever wish-
ed to go farthest in that reduction, is Mr. Burke

to



128 APPEAL FROM THE NEW

to allow that it would be right for us to proceed
to indefinite lengths upon that subject ? that it
would therefore be justifiable in a people owing
allegiance to a monarchy, and professing to main-
tain it, not to reduce, but wholly to take away all
prerogative, and all influence whatsoever? Must
his having made, in virtue of a plan of economical
regulation, a reduction of the influence of the
crown, compel him to allow, that it would be
right in the French or in us to bring a king to so
abject a state, as in function not to be so respectable
as an under- sheriff, but in person not to differ
from the condition of a mere prisoner ? Otfe
would think that such a thing as a medium had
never been heard of in the moral world.

This mode of arguing from your having done
any thing in a certain line, to the necessity of do-
ing every thing, has political consequences of other
moment than those of a logical fallacy. If no man
can propose any diminution or modification of an
invidious or dangerous power or influence in go-
vernment, without entitling friends turned into
adversaries to argue him into the destruction of
all prerogative, and to a spoliation of the whole
patronage of royalty, I do not know what can
more effectually deter persons of sober minds from
engaging in any reform ; nor how the worst ene-
mies to the liberty of the subject could contrive
any method more fit to bring all correctives on

the



TO THE OLD WHIGS. 129

the power of the Crown into suspicion and disre-
pute.

If, say his accusers, the dread of too great in-
fluence in the Crown of Great Britain could justify
the degree of reform which he adopted, the dread
of a return under the despotism of a monarchy
might justify the people of France in going much
further, and reducing monarchy to its present no-
thing. Mr. Burke does not allow that a sufficient
argument ad hominem is inferable from these pre-
mises. If the horrour of the excesses of an absolute
monarchy furnishes a reason for abolishing it, no
monarchy once absolute (all have been so at one
period or other) could ever be limited. It must
be destroyed ; otherwise no way could be found to
quiet the fears of those who were formerly sub-
jected to that sway. But the principle of Mr.
Burke's proceeding ought to lead him to a very
different conclusion ; to this conclusion, that a
monarchy is a thing perfectly susceptible of re-
form: perfectly susceptible of a balance of power;
and that, when reformed and balanced, for a great
country, it is the best of all governments. The
example of our country might have led France,
as it has led him, to perceive that monarchy is not
only reconcilable to liberty, but that it may be
rendered a great and stable security to its perpe-
tual enjoyment. No correctives which he pro-
posed to the power of the Crown could lead him

VOL. vi. K to



ISO APPEAL FROM THE NEW

to approve of a plan of a republick (if so it may
be reputed) which has no correctives, and which
he believes to be incapable of admitting any. No
principle of Mr. Burke's conduct or writings
obliged him, from consistency, to become an ad-
vocate for an exchange of mischiefs; no principle
of his could compel him to justify the setting up
in the place of a mitigated monarchy, a new and
far more despotick power, under which there is
no trace of liberty, except what appears in con-
fusion and in crime.

Mr. Burke does not admit that the faction pre-
dominant in France have abolished their monar-
chy and the orders of their state, from any dread
of arbitrary power that lay heavily on the minds of
the people. It is not very long since he has been
in that country. Whilst there he conversed with
many descriptions of its inhabitants. A few per-
sons of rank did, he allows, discover strong and
manifest tokens of such a spirit of liberty, as
might be expected one day to break all bounds.
Such gentlemen have since had more reason to re-
pent of their want of foresight than 1 hope any of
the same class will ever have in this country. But
this spirit was far from general even amongst the
gentlemen. As to the lower orders and those a
little above them, in whose name the present
powers domineer, they were far from discovering
any sort of dissatisfaction with the power and

prerogatives



TO THE OLD WHIGS.

prerogatives of the Crown. That vain people were
rather proud of them : they rather despised the
English for not having a monarch possessed of such
high and perfect authority. They had felt nothing
from Lettres de Cachet. The Bastile could inspire
no horrours into them. This was a treat for their
betters. It was by art and impulse ; it was by the
sinister use made of a season of scarcity ; it was
under an infinitely diversified succession of wicked
pretences, wholly foreign to the question of mo-
narchy or aristocracy, that this light people were
inspired with their present spirit of levelling.
Their old vanity was led by art to take another
turn : It was dazzled and seduced by military li-
veries, cockades, and epaulets ; until the French
populace was led to become the willing, but still
the proud and thoughtless instrument and victim
of another domination. Neither did that people
despise, or hate, or fear their nobility. On the
contrary, they valued themselves on the generous
qualities which distinguished the chiefs of their
nation.

So far as to the attack on Mr. Burke, in con-
sequence of his reforms.

To shew that he has in his last publication
abandoned those principles of liberty which have
given energy to his youth, and in spite of his cen-
sors will afford repose and consolation to his de-
clining age, those, who have thought proper in
K 2 parliament



APPEAL FROM THE NEW

parliament to declare against his book, ought to
have produced something in it, which directly or
indirectly militates with any rational plan of free
government. It is something extraordinary, that
they, whose memories have so well served them
with regard to light and ludicrous expressions
which years had consigned to oblivion, should not
have been able to quote a single passage in a piece
so lately published, which contradicts any thing
he has formerly ever said in a style either ludi-
crous or serious. They quote his former speeches,
and his former votes, but not one syllable from
the book. It is only by a collation of the one
with the other that the alleged inconsistency can
be established. But as they are unable to cite any
such contradictory passage, so neither can they
shew any thing in the general tendency and spirit
of the whole work unfavourable to a rational and
generous spirit of liberty ; unless a Warm opposi-
tion to the spirit of levelling, to the spirit of im-
piety, to the spirit of proscription, plunder, mur-
der and cannibalism, be adverse to the true prin-
ciples of freedom.

The author of that book is supposed to have
passed from extreme to extreme ; but he has al-
ways kept himself in a medium. This charge is
not so wonderful. It is in the nature of things,
that they who are in the centre of a circle should
appear directly opposed to those who view them

from



TO THE OLD WHIGS. 1,33

from any part of the circumference. In that
middle point, however, he will still remain, though
he may hear people who themselves run beyond
Aurora and the Ganges, cry out, that he is at the
extremity of the west.

Inthe same debate Mr. Burke was represented by
Mr. Fox as arguing in a manner which implied that
the British constitution could not be defended, but
by abusing all republicks ancient and modern. He
said nothing to give the least ground for such a
censure. He never abused all republicks. He has
never professed himself a friend or an enemy to
republicks or to monarchies in the abstract. He
thought that the circumstances and habits of every
country, which it is always perilous and produc-
tive of the greatest calamities to force, are to de-
cide upon the form of its government. There is
nothing in his nature, his temper, or his faculties,
which should make him an enemy to any repub-
lick modern or ancient. Far from it. He has
studied the form and spirit of republicks very
early in life ; he has studied them with great at-
tention ; and with a mind undisturbed by affec-
tion or prejudice. He is indeed convinced that
the science of government would be poorly cul-
tivated without that study. But the result in his
mind from that investigation has been, and is,
that neither England nor France, without infinite
detriment to them, us well in the event as in the

K 3 experiment,



APPEAL FROM THE NEW

experiment, could be brought into a republican
form ; but that every thiug republican which can
be introduced with safety into either of them,
must be built upon a monarchy ; built upon a real,
not a nominal monarchy, as its essential basis ; that
all such institutions, whether aristocratick or de-
mocratick, must originate from their crown, and
in all their proceedings must refer to it ; that by
the energy of that main spring alone those repub-
lican parts must be set in action, and from thence
must derive their whole legal effect, (as amongst
us they actually do) or the whole will fall into
confusion. These republican members have no
other point but the crown in which they can
possibly unite.

This is the opinion expressed in Mr. Burke's
book. He has never varied in that opinion since
he came to years of discretion. But surely, if at
any time of his life he had entertained other no-
tions, (which however he has never held or pro-
fessed to hold) the horrible calamities brought
upon a great people, by the wild attempt to force
their country into a republick, might be more
than sufficient to undeceive his understanding, and
to free it for ever from such destructive fancies.
He is certain, that many, even in France, have
been made sick of their theories by their very suc-
cess in realizing them.

To fortify the imputation of a desertion from

his



TQ THE OLD WHIGS. 135

his principles, his constant attempts to reform
abuses have been brought forward. It is true*
it has been the business of his strength to reform
abuses in government ; and his last feeble efforts
are employed in a struggle against them. Politi-
cally he has lived in that element ; politically he
will die in it Before he departs, I will admit for
him that he deserves to have all his titles of merit
brought forth, as they have been, for grounds
of condemnation, if one word, justifying or sup-
porting abuses of any sort, is to be found in that
book which has kindled so much indignation in
the mind of a great man. On the contrary, it
spares no existing abuse. Its very purpose is to
make war with abuses ; not, indeed, to make war
with the dead, but with those which live, and
flourish, and reign.

The purpose^ for which the abuses of govern-
ment are brought into view, forms a very mate-
rial consideration in the mode of treating them.
The complaints of a friend are things very differ-
ent from the invectives of an enemy. The charge
of abuses on the late monarchy of France was not
intended to lead to its reformation, but to justify
its destruction. They, who have raked into all
history for the faults of kings, and who have
aggravated every fault they have found, have
acted consistently ; because they acted as enemies.
No man can be a friend to a tempered monarchy

K 4 who



APPEAL FROM THE NEW

who bears a decided hatred to monarchy itself.
He, who, at the present time, is favourable, or
even fair to that system, must act towards it as
towards a friend with frailties, who is under the
prosecution of implacable foes. I think it a duty, in
that case, not to inflame the publick mind against
the obnoxious person, by any exaggeration of his
faults. It is our duty rather to palliate his errours
and defects, or to cast them into the shade, and
industriously to bring forward any good qualities
that he may happen to possess. But when the man
is to be amended, and by amendment to be pre-
served, then the line of duty takes another direc-
tion. When his safety is effectually provided for,
it then becomes the office of a friend to urge his
faults and vices with all the energy of enlightened
affection, to paint them in their most vivid co-
lours, and to bring the moral patient to a better
habit. Thus I think with regard to individuals ;
thus I think with regard to ancient and re-
spected governments and orders of men. A spirit
of reformation is never more consistent with it-
self, than when it refuses to be rendered the means
of destruction.

I suppose that enough is said upon these heads
of accusation. One more I had nearly forgotten,
but I shall soon dispatch it. The author of the
Reflections, in the opening of the last parliament,
entered on the Journals of the House of Commons

a motion



TO THK OLD WHIGS. 137

a motion for a remonstrance to the Crown, which
is substantially a defence of the preceding parlia-
ment, that had been dissolved under displeasure.
It is a defence of Mr. Fox. It is a defence of the
Whigs. By what connexion of argument, by
what association of ideas, this apology for Mr. Fox
and his party is, by him and them, brought to
criminate his and their apologist, I cannot easily
divine. It is true, that Mr. Burke received no
previous encouragement from Mr. Fox, nor any
the least countenance or support, at the time when
the motion was made, from him or from any
gentleman of the party ; one only excepted, from
whose friendship, on that and on other occasions,
he derives an honour to which he must be dull
indeed to be insensible*. If that remonstrance
therefore was a false or feeble defence of the mea-
sures of the party, they were in no wise affected
by it. It stands on the Journals. This secures to
it a permanence which the author cannot expect
to any other work of his. Let it speak for itself
to the present age, and to all posterity. The party
had no concern in it ; and it can never be quoted
against them. But in the late debate it was pro-
duced, not to clear the party from an improper
defence in which they had no share, but for the
kind purpose of insinuating an inconsistency be-
tween the principles of Mr. Burke's defence of

* Mr. Windham.

the



the dissolved parliament, and those on which he
preceded in his late Reflections on France.

It requires great ingenuity to make out such a
parallel between the two cases, as to found a
charge of inconsistency in the principles assumed
in arguing the. one and the other. What relation
had Mr. Fox's India bill to the constitution of
France ? What relation had that constitution of
the question of right, in a house of commons, to
give or to withold its confidence from ministers,
and to state that opinion to the Crown? What
had this discussion to do with Mr. Burke's ideas in
1784, of the ill consequences which must in the
end arise to the Crown from setting up the com-
mons at large as an opposite interest to the com-
mons in parliament ? What has this discussion to
do with a recorded warning to the people of their
rashly forming a precipitate judgment against their
representatives ? What had Mr. Burke's opinion
of the danger of introducing new theoretick lan-
guage, unknown to the records of the kingdom,
and calculated to excite vexatious questions, into
a parliamentary proceeding, to do with the French
assembly, which defies all precedent, and places
its whole glory in realizing what had been thought
the most visionary theories ? What had this in
common with the abolition of the French mo-
narchy, or with the principles upon which the
English Revolution was justified ; a revolution in

which



TO THE OLD WHIGS. 139

which parliament, in all its acts and all its decla-
rations, religiously adheres to " the form of sound
" words," without excluding from private dis-
cussions such terms of art as may serve to con-
duct an inquiry for which none but private per-
sons are responsible ? These were the topicks of
Mr. Burke's proposed remonstrance ; all of which
topicks suppose the existence and mutual relation
of our three estates ; as well as the relation of the
East India Company to the Crown, to parliament,
and to the peculiar laws, rights, and usages, of the
people of Hindostan. What reference, I say, had
these topicks to the constitution of France ; in
which there is no king, no lords, no commons, no
India company to injure or support, no Indian em-
pire to govern or oppress ? What relation had all
or any of these, or any question which could arise
between the prerogatives of the Crown and the
privileges of parliament, with the censure of those
factious persons in Great Britain, whom Mr. Burke
states to be engaged, not in favour of privilege
against prerogative, or of prerogative against pri-
vilege, but in an open attempt against our Crown
and our parliament; against our constitution in
church and state ; against all the parts and orders
which compose the one and the other ?

No persons were more fiercely active against
Mr. Fox, and against the measures of the house
of commons dissolved in 1?84, which Mr. Burke

defends



140 APPEAL FROM THE NEW

defends in that remonstrance, than several of those
revolution-makers, whom Mr. Burke condemns
alike in his remonstrance, and in his book. These
revolutionists indeed may be well thought to vary
in their conduct. He is, however, far from ac-
cusing them, in this variation, of the smallest de-
gree of inconsistency. He is persuaded, that they
are totally indifferent at which end they begin the
demolition of the constitution. Some are for com-
mencing their operations with the destruction of
the civil powers, in order the better to pull down
the ecclesiastical ; some wish to begin with the ec-
clesiastical in order to facilitate the ruin of the
civil ; some would destroy the house of commons
through the Crown ; some the Crown through the
house of commons ; and some would overturn
both the one and the other through what they call
the people. But I believe that this injured writer
will think it not at all inconsistent with his present
duty, or with his former life, strenuously to op-
pose all the various partisans of destruction, let
them begin where, or when, or how they will.
No man would set his face more determinedly
against those who should attempt to deprive them,
or any description of men, of the rights they pos-
sess. No man would be more steady in prevent-
ing them from abusing those rights to the destruc-
tion of that happy order under which they enjoy
them, As to their title to any thing further, it

ought



TO THP: OLD WHIGS. 141

ought to be grounded on the proof they give of
the safety with which power may be trusted in
their hands. When they attempt without disguise,
not to win it from our affections, but to force it
from our fears, they shew, in the character of their
means of obtaining it, the use they would make
of their dominion. That writer is too well read in
men not to know how often the desire and design
of a tyrannick domination lurks in the claim of an
extravagant liberty. Perhaps in the beginning it
always displays itself in that manner. No man has
ever affected power which he did not hope from
the favour of the existing government, in any other
mode.

The attacks on the author's consistency relative
to France are (however grievous they may be to
his feelings^in a great degree external to him and
to us, and comparatively of little moment to the
people of England. The substantial charge upon
him is concerning his doctrines relative to the re-
volution of 1 688. Here it is, that they who speak
in the name of the party have thought proper to
censure him the most loudly, and with the greatest
asperity. Here they fasten ; and, if they are right
in their fact, with sufficient judgment in their se-
lection. If he be guilty in this point he is equally
blamable, whether he is consistent or not. If he
-endeavours to delude his countrymen by a false
representation of the spirit of that leading event,

and



142 APPEAL FROM THE NEW

and of the true nature and tenure of the govern-
ment formed in consequence of it, he is deeply re-
sponsible ; he is an enemy to the free constitution
of the kingdom. But he is not guilty in any sense.
I maintain that in his Reflections he has stated
the Revolution and the Settlement upon their
true principles of legal reason and constitutional
policy.

His authorities are the acts and declarations of
parliament given in their proper words. So far
as these go, nothing can be added to what he has
quoted. The question is, whether he has under-
stood them rightly. I think they speak plainly
enough. But we must now see whether he pro-
ceeds with other authority than his own construc-
tions ; and if he does, on what sort of authority
he proceeds. In this part, his defence will not be
made by argument, but by wager of law. He
takes his compurgators, his vouchers, his guaran-
tees, along with him. I know, that he will not