complete success. But how stands the matter in the mere attempt? Nothing, you know, is more common, than for men to wish, and call loudly too, for a refor. mation, who, when it arrives, do by no means like the severity of its aspect. Reformation is one of those pieces which must be put at some distance in order to please. Its greatest favourers love it better in the abstract than in the substance. When any old prejudice of their own, or any interest that they value, is touched, they become scrupulous, they become captious, and every man has his separate exception. Some pluck out the black hairs, some the grey; one point must be given up to one; another point must be yielded to another; nothing is suffered to prevail upon its own principle; the whole is so frittered down and disjointed, that scarcely a trace of the original scheme remains! Thus, between the resist ance of power, and the unsystematical process of larity, the undertaker and the undertaking are both exposed, and the poor reformer is hissed off the stage, both by friends and foes.*

popu

Observe, sir, that the apology for my undertaking (an apology which, though long, is no longer than necessary) is not grounded on my want of the fullest sense of the difficult and invidious nature of the task I under. take. I risque odium if I succeed, and contempt if I fail. My excuse must rest in mine and your conviction of the absolute, urgent necessity there is, that something of the kind should be done. If there is any sacrifice to be made, either of estimation or of fortune, the smallest is the best. Commanders in chief are not to be put upon the forlorn hope. But indeed it is necessary that the attempt should be made. It is necessary from our own political circumstances; it is necessary from the operations of the enemy; it is necessary from the

* While Burke was making these fine observations, the gentlemen of the house of commons, I can conceive, were coughing or scraping their feet against the floor, impatient for the question, that is, for the list of places, which were to be lopped off, or which they were still allowed to retain.

1.

demands of the people; whose desires, when they do not militate with the stable and eternal rules of justice and reason, (rules which are above us, and above them,) ought to be as a law to a house of commons.

As to our circumstances, I do not mean to aggravate the difficulties of them by the strength of any colouring whatsoever. On the contrary, I observe, and observe with pleasure, that our affairs wear rather a more pro. mising aspect than they did on the opening of the session. We have had some leading successes. But those who rate them at the highest (higher a great deal indeed than I dare to do) are of opinion, that, upon the ground of such advantages, we cannot at this time hope to make any treaty of peace, which would not be ruinous and completely disgraceful. In such an anxious state of things, if dawnings of success serve to animate our diligence, they are good; if they tend to increase our presumption, they are worse than defeats. The state of our affairs shall then be as promising as any one may choose to conceive it: it is however but promising. We must recollect, that with but half of our natural strength, we are at war against confederated powers who have singly threatened us with ruin: we must recollect, that whilst we are left naked on one side, our other flank is uncovered by any alliance; that whilst we are weighing and balancing our successes against our losses, we are accumulating debt to the amount of at least fourteen millions in the year. That loss is certain.

I have no wish to deny, that our successes are as brilliant as any one chooses to make them; our resources too may, for me, be as unfathomable as they are represented. Indeed they are just whatever the people possess, and will submit to pay. Taxing is an easy business. Any projector can contrive new imposi tions; any bungler can add to the old. But is it altogether wise to have no other bounds to your impositions, than the patience of those who are to bear them?

All I claim upon the subject of your resources is this;

that they are not likely to be increased by wasting them. I think I shall be permitted to assume, that a system of frugality will not lessen your riches, whatever they may be; I believe it will not be hotly disputed, that those resources which lie heavy on the subject, ought not to be objects of preference; that they ought not to be the very first choice, to an honest representative of the people.

This is all, sir, that I shall say upon our circumstances and our resources: I mean to say a little more on the operations of the enemy, because this matter seems to me very natural in our present deliberation. When I look to the other side of the water, I cannot help recollecting what Pyrrhus said on reconnoitering the Roman camp, "These barbarians have nothing barbarous in their discipline." When I look, as I have pretty carefully looked, into the proceedings of the French king, I am sorry to say it, I see nothing of the character and genius of arbitrary finance; none of the bold frauds of bankrupt power; none of the wild struggles and plunges of despotism in distress; no lopping off from the capital of debt; no suspension of interest; no robbery under the name of loan; no raising the value, no debasing the substance of the coin. I see neither Louis the Fourteenth, nor Louis the Fifteenth. On the contrary, I behold with astonishment, rising before me, by the very hands of arbitrary power, and in the very midst of war and confusion, a regular, methodical system of public credit; I behold a fabric laid on the natural and solid foundations of trust and confidence among men ; and rising, by fair gradations, order over order, according to the just rules of symmetry and art. What a reverse of things! Principle, method, regularity, economy, frugality, justice to individuals, and care of the people, are the resources with which France makes war upon Great Britain. God avert the omen! But if we should see any genius in war and politics arise in France, to second what is done in the bureau !-I turn my eyes from the consequences.

To the last kind of necessity, the desires of the people, I have but a very few words to say. The ministers seem to contest this point; and effect to doubt, whether the people do really desire a plan of economy in the civil government. Sir, this is too ridiculous. It is impossible that they should not desire it. It is impossible that a prodigality which draws its resources from their indigence, should be pleasing to them. Little factions of pensioners, and their dependants, may talk another language. But the voice of nature is against them, and it will be heard. The people of England will not, they cannot take it kindly, that representatives should refuse to their constituents, what an absolute sovereign voluntarily offers to his subjects. The expression of the petitions is, that "before any new burthens are laid upon this country, effectual measures be taken by this house, to enquire into, and correct, the gross abuses in the expenditure of public money."

This has been treated by the noble lord in the blue ribbon, as a wild factious language. It happens, however, that the people in their address to us, use almost word for word the same terms as the king of France uses in addressing himself to his people; and it differs only, as it falls short of the French king's idea of what is due to his subjects. "To convince," says he, "our faithful subjects of the desire we entertain not to recur to new impositions, until we have first exhausted all the resources which order and economy can possibly supply,"-&c. &c.

These desires of the people of England, which come far short of the voluntary concessions of the king of France, are moderate indeed. They only contend that we should interweave some economy with the taxes with which we have chosen to begin the war. They request, not that you should rely upon economy exclusively, but that you should give it rank and precedence, in the order of the ways and means of this single session.

But if it were possible, that the desires of our constituents, desires which are at once so natural, and so very much tempered and subdued, should have no weight with a house of commons, which has its eye elsewhere; I would turn my eyes to the very quarter to which theirs are directed. I would reason this matter with the house, on the mere policy of the question; and I would undertake to prove, that an early dereliction of abuse, is the direct interest of government, of government taken abstractedly from its duties, and considered merely as a system intending its own conservation.

If there is any one eminent criterion, which, above all the rest, distinguishes a wise government from an administration weak and improvident, it is this :-" well to know the best time, and manner of yielding, what it is impossible to keep."-There have been, sir, and there are, many who choose to chicane with their situation, rather than be instructed by it. Those gentlemen argue against every desire of reformation, upon the principles of a criminal prosecution. It is enough for them to justify their adherence to a pernicious system, that it is not of their contrivance; that it is an inheritance of absurdity, derived to them from their ancestors; that they can make out a long and unbroken pedigree of mismanagers that have gone before them. They are proud of the antiquity of their house; and they defend their errors, as if they were defending their inheritance: afraid of derogating from their nobility, and carefully avoiding a sort of blot in their scutcheon, which they think would degrade them for ever.

It was thus that the unfortunate Charles the First defended himself on the practice of the Stuart who went before him, and of all the Tudors; his partizans might have gone to the Plantagenets.-They might have found bad examples enough, both abroad and at home, that could have shewn an ancient and illustrious descent. But there is a time, when men will not suffer bad things because their ancestors have suffered worse. There is a