MEMOIR

OF THE POLITICAL LIFE

OF THE RIGHT HON.

EDMUND BURK E.

CHAPTER I.

Burke's Letters to Mercer-Robbery of the Church of FranceRemarks on the Constitutional Society-Burke's Character of Cromwell.

THE publicity of Burke's opinions entailed on him a vast variety of correspondence, frequently frivolous and captious; but even this correspondence assisted that knowledge which his whole life had been spent in cultivating, the knowledge of the public mind. To one of these volunteer writers, an obscure person, of the name of Mercer, who addressed him from that seat of republican politics, the north of Ireland, we probably owe some portions of his great work on the Revolu tion. This person, with the fearlessness of ignorance, had ventured to take Burke to task for his Parliamentary opinions on France, and with only inferior effrontery had proposed his own. But the letter was

It

turned to value by the manly intelligence of the mind which it was intended to convert, or to confound. was assumed as a fair statement of the opinions circulating among the middle order of the vain, half-taught, and presumptuous politicians of a day, when every idler was a politician; and Burke's answer to the writer shows not only the clear views which he had already formed on public rights, but the strong attention which he felt due to every echo of the national clamour. Some of his correspondent's letters, too, may be useful to the present race of rectifiers of all things human. It will show, how destitute of novelty are all their topics, and even their phrases; how solemnly England was pronounced to be undone, half a century ago; how lightly the prospect of general overthrow was contemplated, and with what perfect identity of language the pretence of purification then served to cloak the working of principles which were so soon to burst out in bloodshed and plunder. After a few vague sentences, the letter proceeds to state the general surprise at the imputation of sentiments in Burke, "exceedingly inimical to what was thought by many a most glorious revolution in France. The newspapers represent you, sir, as complaining that the National Assembly had totally subverted their ancient form of Government, and that they had also subverted their Church. To complain of the subversion of a Government, implies a belief of its having been a good one. The word Government never had a place in my mind, when I considered the condition of the French people. In a word, I saw no¬

thing but the most despotic tyranny, the subversion of which I thought would give the most sincere pleasure to every lover of civil liberty, of whatever nation he might be."

The Church, that universal theme of all the shallow, on which every haranguer is eloquent and endless; which every adventurer thinks himself entitled to rob, every profligate to reform, and every sciolist to treat with contumely; the Church of England, (under the affectation of discussing the crimes of the Church of France,) comes under this reformer's especial supervision. "With respect," says he, "to the subversion of the Church, it does not appear that any change in its doctrine has been attempted. In its discipline, there may be some alterations; it is probable that the National Assembly will enlarge those exemptions from the jurisdiction of Rome which it formerly enjoyed. For the rest if to take from pampered and luxurious prelates a part of those sumptuous livings which were accumulated in the times of ignorance and superstition, and to provide for the more comfortable subsistence of parish priests, be the subversion of a Church, millions of good men and good Christians will heartily wish, for the honour of true religion, distinct from pageantry and hypocrisy, that all such may in this manner be speedily subverted."

Of this calibre were the pretexts held out by the National Assembly for their determination on the fate of the National Church. There was to be a reform; but no injury of the slightest kind was to be permitted

by the system itself; there perhaps might be " some little interference with the revenues of the Church,” but it was to be merely for the purpose of an approach to an equalization of income in its pastors. The "working clergy" were at last to be taken under the wing of the State; the revenues "subducted from the overgrown abbots and bishops, were to be rigidly applied to the comfort and respectability of the learned, laborious, and long-ill-treated body of the parish priesthood." Who but must congratulate the country on so beneficial a change, who but must praise the Legislature for so pure, generous, and wise a regard for the state of the inferior clergy, and sympathize with the natural delight and gratitude which the clergy must feel in discovering their cause to be so feelingly adopted by the same great Assembly which had regenerated their country!

Before a year was over, from the time of those highflown declarations, which threw this letter-writer, and the headlong fools who shared his follies, into ecstasy; the French Legislature gave their practical interpretation of Church improvement. They equalized the Church revenues-by seizing on the whole property of the Establishment. They curtailed the pomps and vanities of a "few overgrown bishops,"-by murdering or banishing all. They provided for the comfort and respectability of the parish clergy, by shooting them by hundreds, and exiling them by thousands. They purified, strengthened, and regenerated the Establishment,-by levelling it to the dust; first pro

faning its places of worship with the most infamous scenes of licentiousness, and then giving them over for barracks to the soldiery, stripping the dead in their vaults for lead to cast into bullets, and burning the bodies in a funeral pile made of the ruins!

The remainder of the epistle is equally instructive. "Power over our fellow-men," says this reformer, "by whatever means it has been acquired, seems to be considered as man's dearest birthright,—he extends it from object to object, until the yoke becomes too heavy to be longer borne. And by what means are the aggrieved to get rid of it? Not by the most humble and abject intercessions, for both would be equally laughed to scorn; not by an appeal to the laws of the country, for the laws were made under the influence of the power complained of, and with a view to its perpetuation. There is therefore no remedy to be found, but in what is called a revolution; the intention of which being either to curtail or annul, or place in other hands the powers which be, it cannot be effected without some convulsion; nor is it possible so to order the matter, but in some cases many individuals may suffer injury and outrage; and this, so far as it goes, is to be lamented. But if it ends in freedom, in the deliverance of a nation from the despotism of one man, no price can be thought too dear to pay for it."

This language has its importance, from its perfect similitude to the language which has become vernacular among the multitude, and the low culprits and sensual hypocrites by whom that multitude is led, at