of our jurisdiction. This I fear is the case with many. But there is another cause full as powerful towards this security to enormous guilt, the desire which possesses people, who have once obtained power, to enjoy it at their ease. It is not humanity, but laziness and inertness of mind, which. produces the desire of this kind of indemnities. This description of men love general and short methods. If they punish, they make a promiscuous massacre; if they spare, they make a general act of oblivion. This is a want of disposition to proceed laboriously according to the cases, and according to the rules and principles of justice on each case; a want of disposition to assort criminals, to discriminate the degrees and modes of guilt, to separate accomplices from principals, leaders from followers, seducers from the seduced, and then, by following the same principles in the same detail, to class punishments, and to fit them to the nature and kind of the delinquency. If that were once attempted, we should soon see that the task was neither infinite, nor the execution cruel. There would be deaths, but, for the number of criminals, and the extent of France, not many. There would be cases of transportation; cases of labour to restore what has been wickedly destroyed; cases of imprisonment, and cases of mere exile. But be this as it may, I am sure that if justice is not done there, there can be neither peace nor justice there, nor in any part of Europe. History is resorted to for other acts of indemnity in other times. The princes are desired to look back to Henry the Fourth. We are desired to look to the restoration of King Charles. These things, in my opinion, have no resemblance whatsoever. They were cases of a civil war in France more ferocious, in England more moderate, than common. In neither country were the orders of society subverted, religion and morality destroyed on principle, or property totally annihilated. In England, the government of Cromwell was to be sure somewhat rigid, but, for a new power, no savage tyranny. The country was nearly as well in his hands as in those of Charles the Second, and in some points much better. The laws in general had their course, and were admirably administered. The king did not in reality grant an act of indemnity; the prevailing power, then in a manner the nation, in effect granted an indemnity to him. The idea of a preceding rebellion was not at all admitted in that convention and that parliament. The regicides were a common enemy, and as such given up. Among the ornaments of their place which eminently distinguish them, few people are better acquainted with the history of their own country than the illustrious princes now in exile; but I caution them not to be led into error by that which has been supposed to be the guide of life. I would give the same caution to all princes. Not that I derogate from the use of history. It is a great improver of the understanding, by showing both men and affairs in a great variety of views. From this source much political wisdom may be learned; that is, may be learned as habit, not as precept; and as an exercise to strengthen the mind, as furnishing materials to enlarge and enrich it, not as a repertory of cases and precedents for a lawyer: if it were, a thousand times better would it be that a statesman had never learned to read-vellem nescirent literas. This method turns their understanding from the object before them, and from the present exigencies of the world, to comparisons with former times, of which, after all, we can know very little and very imperfectly; and our guides, the historians, who are to give us their true interpretation, are often prejudiced, often ignorant, often fonder of system than of truth. Whereas if a man with reasonably good parts and natural sagacity, and not in the leading-strings of any master, will look steadily on the business before him, without being diverted by retrospect and comparison, he may be capable of forming a reasonably good judgment of what is to be done. There are some fundamental points in which nature never changes— but they are few and obvious, and belong rather to morals than to politics. But so far as regards political matter, the human mind and human affairs are susceptible of ir finite modifications, and of combinations wholly new and unlooked for. Very few, for instance, could have imagined that property, which has been taken for natural dominion, should, through the whole of a vast kingdom, lose all its importance and even its influence. This is what history or books of speculation could hardly have taught us. many could have thought, that the most complete and How formidable revolution in a great empire should be made by men of letters, not as subordinate instruments and trumpeters of sedition, but as the chief contrivers and managers, and in a short time as the open administrators and sovereign rulers ?—Who could have imagined that atheism could produce one of the most violently operative principles of fanaticism? Who could have imagined that, in a commonwealth in a manner cradled in war, and in an extensive and dreadful war, military commanders should be of little or no account? That the convention should not contain one military man of name? That administrative bodies in a state of the utmost confusion, and of but a momentary duration, and composed of men with not one imposing part of character, should be able to govern the country and its armies, with an authority which the most settled senates, and the most respected monarchs, scarcely ever had in the same degree? This, for one, I confess I did not foresee, though all the rest was present to me very early, and not out of my apprehension even for several years. I believe very few were able to enter into the effects of mere terror, as a principle not only for the support of power in given hands or forms, but in those things in which the soundest political speculators were of opinion, that the least appearance of force would be totally destructive, such is the market, whether of money, provision, or commodities of any kind. Yet for four years we have seen loans made, treasuries supplied, and armies levied and maintained, more numerous than France ever showed in the field, by the effects of fear alone. Here is a state of things of which, in its totality, if history furnishes any examples at all, they are very remote and feeble. I therefore am not so ready as some are, to tax with folly or cowardice those who were not prepared to meet an evil of this nature. Even now, after the events, all the causes may be somewhat difficult to ascertain. Very many are however traceable. But these things history and books of speculation (as I have already said) did not teach men to foresee, and of course to resist. Now that they are no longer a matter of sagacity, but of experience, of recent experience, of our own experience, it would be unjustifiable to go back to the records of other times, to instruct us to manage what they never enabled us to foresee. APPENDIX. EXTRACTS FROM VATTELL'S LAW OF NATIONS. The titles, marginal abstracts, and notes, are by Mr. Burke, excepting such of the notes as are here distinguished.] CASES OF INTERFERENCE WITH INDEPENDENT POWERS, BOOK II. CHAP. IV. § 53. IF then there is anywhere a nation of a restless and mischievous disposition, always ready to injure others, to traverse their designs, and to raise domestic troubles, it is not to be doubted, that all have a right to join in order to repress, chastise, and put it ever after out of its power to injure them. Such should be the just fruits of the policy which Machiavel praises in Cæsar Borgia. The conduct followed by Philip II., king of Spain, was adapted to unite all Europe against and it was from just reasons that Henry the Great formed the design of humbling a power, formidable by its forces, and pernicious by its maxims. him; § 70. Let us apply to the unjust, what we have said above, (§ 53,) of a mischievous or maleficent nation. If there be any that makes an open profession of trampling justice under foot, of despising and violating the right of others,2 whenever it finds an opportunity, the interest of human society will authorize all others to unite, in order to humble and chastise it. We do not here forget the maxim established in our preliminaries, that it does not belong to nations to usurp the power of being judges of each other. In particular cases, liable to the least doubt, it ought to be supposed, that each of the parties may have some right: and the injustice of that which has committed the injury may proceed from This is the case of France-Semonville at Turin-Jacobin clubsLiegois meeting-Flemish meeting- La Fayette's answer-Cloot's em bassy-Avignon. 2 The French acknowledge no power not directly emanating from the people. error, and not from a general contempt of justice. But if, by constant maxims, and by a continued conduct, one nation shows, that it has evidently this pernicious disposition, and that it considers no right as sacred, the safety of the human race requires that it should be suppressed. To form and support an unjust pretension, is to do an injury not only to him who is interested in this pretension, but to mock at justice in general, and to injure all nations. To succour § 56. If the prince, attacking the fundamental laws, gives his subjects a legal right to resist against ty him; if tyranny, becoming insupportable, obliges Case of Eng Case of civil war. the nation to rise in their defence; every foreign power has right to succour an oppressed people who implore their assistance. The English justly complained of James the Second. The nobility, and the most distin- lish Revoluguished patriots, resolved to put a check on his tion. enterprises, which manifestly tended to overthrow the constitution, and to destroy the liberties and the religion of the people; and therefore applied for assistance to the United Provinces. The authority of the Prince of Orange had, doubtless, an influence on the deliberations of the states-general; but it did not make them commit injustice; for when a people, from good reasons, take up arms against an oppressor, justice and generosity require, that brave men should be assisted in the defence of their liberties. Whenever, therefore, a civil war is kindled in a state, foreign powers may assist that party which appears to them to have justice on their side. He an odious tyrant, he who declares FOR AN UNJUST AND REBELLIOUS PEOPLE, offends against his duty. When the bands of the political society are broken, or at least suspended, between the and his people, they may then be considered as two distinct powers; and since each is independent of all foreign authority, nobody has a right to judge them. Either may be in the right; and each of those who grant their assistance may believe that he supports a good cause. It follows then, in virtue of the voluntary laws of nations, (see Prelim. § 21,) that the two parties may act as having an equal right, and behave accordingly, till the decision of the affair. who assists An odious ty rant. Rebellious people. sovereign Sovereign and his people when distinct powers. |