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French people. It would be difficult, in that or in any other age, to find two men of more active, or indeed enthusiastic benevolence, than Condorcet and La Fayette. Besides this, Condorcet was one of the most profound thinkers of his time, and will be remembered as long as genius is honoured among us. 325 La Fayette was no doubt inferior to Condorcet in point of ability; but he was the intimate friend of Washington, on whose conduct he modelled his own, 326 and by whose side he had fought for the liberties of America: his integrity was, and still is, unsullied; and his character had a chivalrous and noble turn, which Burke, in his better days, would have been the first to admire.327 Both, however, were natives of that hated country whose liberties they vainly attempted to achieve. On this account, Burke declared Condorcet to be guilty of "impious sophistry;" to be a "fanatic atheist, and furious democratic republican;"329 and to be capable of "the lowest, as well as the highest and most determined villanies. "30 As to La Fayette, when an attempt was made to mitigate the cruel treatment he was receiving from the Prussian government, Burke not only opposed the motion made for that purpose in the House of Commons, but took the opportunity of grossly insulting the unfortunate captive, who was then languishing in a dungeon.331

So

$25 There is an interesting account of the melancholy death of this remarkable man, in Lamartine, Hist. des Girondins, vol. viii. pp. 76-80; and a contemporary relation in Musset-Pathay, Vie de Rousseau, vol. ii. pp. 42-47.

326 This is the honourable testimony of a political opponent; who says, that after the dissolution of the Assembly "La Fayette se conforma à la conduite de Washington, qu'il avait pris pour modèle." Cassagnac, Révolution Française, vol. iii. pp. 370, 371. Compare the grudging admission of his enemy Bouillé, Mém. de Bouillé, vol. i. p. 125; and for proofs of the affectionate intimacy between Washington and La Fayette, see Mém. de Lafayette, vol. i. pp. 16, 21, 29, 44, 55, 83, 92, 111, 165, 197, 204, 395, vol. ii. p. 123.

327 The Duke of Bedford, no bad judge of character, said in 1794, that La Fayette's "whole life was an illustration of truth, disinterestedness, and honour." Parl. Hist. vol. xxxi. p. 664. So, too, the continuator of Sismondi (Hist. des Français, vol. xxx. p. 355), "La Fayette, le chevalier de la liberté d'Amérique;" and Lamartine (Hist. des Girondins, vol. iii. p. 200), "Martyr de la liberté après en avoir été le héros." Ségur, who was intimately acquainted with him, gives some account of his noble character, as it appeared when he was a boy of nineteen. Mém. de Ségur, vol. i. pp. 106, 107. Forty years later, Lady Morgan met him in France; and what she relates shows how little he had changed, and how simple his tastes and the habits of his mind still were. Morgan's France, vol. ii. pp. 285-312. Other notices, from personal knowledge, will be found in Life of Roscoe, vol. ii. p. 178; and in Trotter's Mem. of Fox, pp. 319 seq.

328 The impious sophistry of Condorcet." Letter to a Noble Lord, in Burke's Works, vol. ii. p. 273.

929

Thoughts on French Affairs, in Burke's Works, vol. i. p. 574.

330 "Condorcet (though no marquis, as he styled himself before the Revolution) is a man of another sort of birth, fashion, and occupation from Brissot; but in every principle and every disposition, to the lowest as well as the highest and most determined villanies, fully his equal." Thoughts on French Affairs, in Burke's Works, vol. i. p. 579.

931 "Groaning under the most oppressive cruelty in the dungeons of Magdeburg." VOL. I.-22

dead had he become on this subject, even to the common instincts of our nature, that, in his place in parliament, he could find no better way of speaking of this injured and high-souled man, than by calling him a ruffian: "I would not," says Burke, "I would not debase my humanity by supporting an application in behalf of such a horrid ruffian."332

As to France itself, it is "Cannibal Castle;"333 it is "the republic of assassins;"334 it is "a hell;"335 its government is composed of "the dirtiest, lowest, most fraudulent, most knavish, of chicaners;"336 its National Assembly are "miscreants;"337 its people are "an allied army of Amazonian and male cannibal Parisians; "338 they are "a nation of murderers;"339 they are "the basest of mankind;"340 they are murderous atheists;"341 they are a gang of robbers;"32 they are "the prostitute outcasts of mankind;"343 they are "a desperate gang of plunderers, murderers, tyrants, and atheists."344 To make the slightest concessions to such a country in order to preserve peace, is offering victims "on the altars of blasphemed regicide;" even to enter into negotiations is "exposing our lazar sores at the door of every proud servitor of the French republic, where the court-dogs will not deign to lick them."346 When our ambassador was actually in Paris, he "had the honour of passing his mornings in respectful attendance at the office of a regicide pettifogger;"347 and we were taunted with having sent a peer of the realm to the scum of the earth."348 France has no longer a place in Europe; it is expunged from the map; its very name should be forgotten.319 Why, then, need men travel in it?

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Belsham's Hist. of Great Brit. vol. ix. p. 151. See the afflicting details of his sufferings, in Mem. de Lafayette, vol. i. p. 479, vol. ii. pp. 75, 77, 78, 80, 91, 92; and on the noble equanimity with which he bore them, see De Staël, Rev. Françoise, Paris, 1820, vol. ii. p. 103.

332 It is hardly credible that such language should have been applied to a man like La Fayette; but I have copied it from the Parliamentary History, vol. xxxi. p. 51, and from Adolphus, vol. v. p. 593. The only difference is, that in Adolphus the expression is "I would not debase my humanity;" but in the Parl. Hist. “I would not debauch my humanity." But both authorities are agreed as to the term "horrid ruffian" being used by Burke. Compare Burke's Correspondence with Laurence, pp. 91, 99.

333 Burke's Works, vol. ii. p. 319. In every instance I quote the precise words employed by Burke.

335 Ibid. vol. ii. p. 279.

336 Burke's speech, in Parl. Hist. vol. xxxi. p. 379.

330 Burke's Works, vol. ii. p. 335.

337 Burke's Corresp. vol. iii. p. 140.

339 Parl. Hist. vol. xxx. p. 115.

341 Ibid. p. 188.

338 Burke's Works, vol. ii. p. 322.

340 Ibid. p. 112.

342 Ibid. p. 435.

343 Ibid. p. 646; the concluding sentence of one of Burke's speeches in 1793.

344 Ibid, vol. xxxi. p. 426.

346 Ibid. p. 286.

345 Burke's Works, vol. ii. p. 320. 348 Ibid. p. 318.

347 Ibid. p. 322.

349 Parl. Hist. vol. xxviii. p. 353, vol. xxx. p. 390; Adolphus, vol. iv. p. 467.

Why need our children learn its language? and why are we to endanger the morals of our ambassadors ? who can hardly fail to return from such a land with their principles corrupted, and with a wish to conspire against their own country.350

This is sad, indeed, from such a man as Burke once was; but what remains, shows still more clearly how the associations and composition of his mind had been altered. He who, with humanity not less than with wisdom, had strenuously laboured to prevent the American war, devoted the last few years of his life to kindle a new war, compared to which that with America was a light and trivial episode. In his calmer moments, no one would have more willingly recognized that the opinions prevalent in any country are the inevitable results of the circumstances in which that country had been placed. But now he sought to alter those opinions by force. From the beginning of the French Revolution, he insisted upon the right, and indeed upon the necessity, of compelling France to change her principles;351 and, at a later period, he blamed the allied sovereigns for not dictating to a great people the government they ought to adopt.352 Such was the havoc circumstances had made in his well-ordered intellect, that to this one principle he sacrificed every consideration of justice, of mercy, and of expediency. As if war, even in its mildest form, were not sufficiently hateful, he sought to give to

360 In the Letters on a Regicide Peace, published the year before he died, he says, "These ambassadors may easily return as good courtiers as they went: but can they ever return from that degrading residence loyal and faithful subjects; or with any true affection to their master, or true attachment to the constitution, religion, or laws of their country? There is great danger that they who enter smiling into this Triphonian cave, will come out of it sad and serious conspirators; and such will continue as long as they live." Burke's Works, vol. ii. p. 282. He adds in the same work, p. 381, "Is it for this benefit we open the usual relations of peace and amity?' Is it for this our youth of both sexes are to form themselves by travel? Is it for this that with expense and pains we form their lisping infant accents to the language of France? Let it be remembered, that no young man can go to any part of Europe without taking this place of pestilential contagion in his way; and, whilst the less active part of the community will be debauched by this travel, whilst children are poisoned at these schools, our trade will put the finishing hand to our ruin. No factory will be settled in France, that will not become a club of complete French Jacobins. The minds of young men of that description will receive a taint in their religion, their morals, and their politics, which they will in a short time communicate to the whole kingdom."

361 In Observations on the Conduct of the Minority, 1793, he says, that during four years he had wished for "a general war against jacobins and jacobinism." Burke's Works, vol. i. p. 611.

352For, in the first place, the united sovereigns very much injured their cause by admitting that they had nothing to do with the interior arrangements of France." Heads for Consideration on the Present State of Affairs, written in November, 1792, in Burke's Works, vol. i. p. 583. And that he knew that this was not merely a question of destroying a faction, appears from the observable circumstance, that even in January, 1791, he wrote to Trevor respecting war, "France is weak indeed, divided and deranged; but God knows, when the things came to be tried, whether the invaders would not find that their enterprize was not to support a party, but to conquer a kingdom." Burke's Correspond. vol. iii. p. 184.

it that character of a crusade 355 which increasing knowledge had long since banished; and loudly proclaiming that the contest was religious, rather than temporal, he revived old prejudices in order to cause fresh crimes. 354 He also declared that the war should be carried on for revenge as well as for defence, and that we must never lay down our arms until we had utterly destroyed the men by whom the Revolution was brought about.355 And, as if these things were not enough, he insisted that this, the most awful of all wars, being begun, was not to be hurried over; although it was to be carried on for revenge as well as for religion, and the resources of civilized men were to be quickened by the ferocious passions of crusaders, still it was not to be soon ended; it was to be durable; it must have permanence; it must, says Burke, in the spirit of a burning hatred, be protracted in a long war: "I speak it emphatically, and with a desire that it should be marked, in a long war. 99356

It was to be a war to force a great people to change their government. It was to be a war carried on for the purpose of punishment. It was also to be a religious war. Finally, it was to be a long war. Was there ever any other man who wished to afflict the human race with such extensive, searching, and protracted calamities? Such cruel, such reckless, and yet such deliberate opinions, if they issued from a sane mind, would immortalize even the most obscure statesman, because they would load his name with imperishable infamy. For where can we find, even among the most ignorant or most sanguinary politicians, sentiments like these ? Yet they proceed from one who, a very few years before, was the most eminent political philosopher England has ever possessed. To us it is only given to mourn over so noble a wreck. More than this no one should do. We may contemplate with reverence the mighty ruin; but the mysteries of its decay let no man presume to invade, unless, to use the language of the greatest of our masters, he can tell how to

363 As Lord J. Russell truly calls it, Mem. of Fox, vol. iii. p. 34. See also Schlosser's Eighteenth Century, vol. ii. p. 93, vol. v. p. 109, vol. vi. p. 291; Nicholls's Recollections, vol. i. p. 300; Parr's Works, vol. iii. p. 242.

354"We cannot, if we would, delude ourselves about the true state of this dreadful contest. It is a religious war." Remarks on the Policy of the Allies, in Burke's Works, vol. i. p. 600.

365 See the long list of proscriptions in Burke's Works, vol. i. p. 604. And the principle of revenge is again advocated in a letter written in 1793, in Burke's Correspond. vol. iv. p. 183. And in 1794, he told the House of Commons that "the war must no longer be confined to the vain attempt of raising a barrier to the lawless and savage power of France; but must be directed to the only rational end it can pursue; namely, the entire destruction of the desperate horde which gave it birth." Parl. Hist. vol. xxxi. p. 427.

366 Letters on a Regicide Peace, in Burke's Works, vol. ii. p. 291. In this horrible sentence, perhaps the most horrible ever penned by an English politician, the italics are not my own; they are in the text.

minister to a deceased mind, pluck the sorrows which are rooted in the memory, and raze out the troubles that are rooted in the brain.

It is a relief to turn from so painful a subject, even though we descend to the petty, huckstering politics of the English court. And truly, the history of the treatment experienced by the most illustrious of our politicians, is highly characteristic of the prince under whom he lived. While Burke was consuming his life in great public services, labouring to reform our finances, improve our laws, and enlighten our commercial policy,-while he was occupied with these things, the king regarded him with coldness and aversion. 357 But when the great statesman degenerated into an angry brawler; when, irritated by disease, he made it the sole aim of his declining years to kindle a deadly war between the two first countries of Europe, and declared that to this barbarous object he would sacrifice all other questions of policy, however important they might be ;35-then it was that a perception of his vast abilities began to dawn upon the mind of the king. Before this, no one had been bold enough to circulate in the palace even a whisper of his merits. Now, however, in the successive, and eventually, the rapid decline of his powers, he had fallen almost to the level of the royal intellect; and now he was first warmed by the beams of the royal favour. Now he was a man after the king's own heart.359 Less than two years before his death, there was settled upon him, at the express desire of George III., two considerable pensions ;360 and the king even wished to raise him to the peerage, in order that the House of Lords might benefit by the services of so great a counsellor, 361

367 "I know," said Burke, in one of those magnificent speeches which mark the zenith of his intellect,-"I know the map of England as well as the noble lord, or as any other person; and I know that the way I take is not the road to preferment." Parl. Hist. vol. xvii. p. 1269.

368 See, among many other instances, an extraordinary passage on "Jacobinism," in his Works, vol. ii. p. 449, which should be compared with a letter he wrote in 1792, respecting a proposed coalition ministry, Correspond. vol. iii. pp. 519, 520: "But my advice was, that as a foundation of the whole, the political principle must be settled as the preliminary, namely, 'a total hostility to the French system, at home and abroad.'"

359 The earliest evidence I have met with of the heart of George III. beginning to open towards Burke is in August, 1791: see, in Burke's Correspondence, vol. iii. p. 278, an exquisitely absurd account of his reception at the levee. Burke must have been fallen, indeed, before he could write such a letter.

360 Said to have originated in the express wish of the king." Prior's Life of Burke, p. 489. Mr. Prior estimates these pensions at 3700l. a-year; but if we may rely on Mr. Nicholls, the sum was even greater: "Mr. Burke was rewarded with two pensions, estimated to be worth 40,000l." Nicholls's Recollections, vol. i. p. 136. Burke was sixty-five; and a pension of 3700l. a-year would not be worth 40,000l., as the tables were then calculated. The statement of Mr. Prior is, however, confirm ed by Wansey, in 1794. See Nichols's Lit. Anec. of the Eighteenth Century, vol. iii. p. 81.

301 Prior's Life of Burke, p. 460; Nichols's Lit. Anec. vol. iii. p. 81; Bisset's Life of Burke, vol. ii. p. 414.

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