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persons in it as are disposed to disturb its future peace, as they have its past, I do not know how a more direct declaration can be made of a disposition to perpetual hostility against a government. The persons saved from the justice of the native magistrate by foreign authority will owe nothing to his clemency. He will, and must, look to those to whom he is indebted for the power he has of dispensing it. A jacobin faction, constantly fostered with the nourishment of foreign protection, will be kept alive.

act.

This desire of securing the safety of the actors in the present scene is owing to more laudable motives. Ministers have been made to consider the brothers of the late merciful king, and the nobility of France, who have been faithful to their honour and duty, as a set of inexorable and remorseless tyrants. How this notion has been infused into them I cannot be quite certain. I am sure it is not justified by any thing they have done. Never were the two princes guilty, in the day of their power, of a single hard or ill-natured No one instance of cruelty on the part of the gentlemen ever came to my ears. It is true that the English jacobins, (the natives have not thought of it,) as an excuse for their infernal system of murder, have so represented them. It is on this principle, that the massacres in the month of September 1792 were justified by a writer in the Morning Chronicle. He says, indeed, that "the whole French nation is to be given up to "the hands of an irritated and revengeful no"blesse :"-and, judging of others by himself and his brethren, he says, "Whoever succeeds in a "civil war will be cruel. But here the emigrants, flying to revenge in the cars of military victory, will almost insatiably call for their victims "and their booty; and a body of emigrant "traitors were attending the king of Prussia, and "the duke of Brunswick, to suggest the most sanguinary counsels." So says this wicked jacobin; but so cannot say the king of Prussia nor the duke of Brunswick, who never did receive any sanguinary counsel; nor did the king's brothers, or that great body of gentlemen who attended those princes, commit one single cruel action, or hurt the person or property of one individual. It would be right to quote the instance. It is like the military luxury attributed to those unfortunate sufferers in our common cause.

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If these princes had shewn a tyrannical disposition, it would be much to be lamented. We have no others to govern France. If we screened the body of murderers from their justice, we should only leave the innocent in future to the mercy of men of fierce and sanguinary dispositions, of which, in spite of all our intermeddling in their constitution, we could not prevent the effects. But as we have much more reason to fear their feeble lenity than any blamable rigour, we ought, in my opinion, to leave the matter to themselves.

If, however, I were asked to give an advice merely as such-here are my ideas. I am not for a total indemnity, nor a general punishment. And

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first, the body and mass of the people never ough to be treated as criminal. They may become an object of more or less constant watchfulness and suspicion, as their preservation may best require but they can never become an object of postment. This is one of the few fundamental and unalterable principles of politicks.

To punish them capitally would be to make massacres. Massacres only encrease the ferocity men, and teach them to regard their own livs and those of others as of little value; whereas tx great policy of government is to teach the perpe to think both of great importance in the eyes God and the state, and never to be sacrificed even hazarded to gratify their passions, or for ar thing but the duties prescribed by the rules morality, and under the direction of publick las and publick authority. To punish them with less penalties would be to debilitate the comme wealth, and make the nation miserable, which it s the business of government to render happy and flourishing.

As to crimes too, I would draw a strong line limitation. For no one offence, politically an of fence of rebellion, by council, contrivance, pe suasion, or compulsion, for none properly a milit offence of rebellion, or any thing done by c hostility in the field, should any man at al called in question; because such seems to be proper and natural death of civil dissensions. I offences of war are obliterated by peace.

Another class will of course be included in th indemnity, namely, all those who by their active in restoring lawful government shall oblitera their offences. The offence previously know the acceptance of service is a pardon for cr I fear that this class of men will not be ver numerous.

So far as to indemnity. But where are t objects of justice, and of example, and of fuz security to the publick peace? They are natur pointed out, not by their having outraged pola and civil laws, nor their having rebelled the state, as a state, but by their having rebe against the law of nature, and outraged man as man. In this list, all the regicides in getta. all those who laid sacrilegious hands on the ki who without any thing in their own rebel mission to the convention to justify them, bregu him to his trial and unanimously voted guilty; all those who had a share in the ca murder of the queen, and the detestable proces ings with regard to the young king, and the happy princesses; all those who committed blooded murder any where, and particularly their revolutionary tribunals, where every of natural justice and of their own declared r of man have been trodden under foot with de most insolent mockery; all men concerned in the burning and demolition of houses or churc with audacious and marked acts of sacrilege a scorn offered to religion; in general, all the leade of jacobin clubs;-not one of these should escape a punishment suitable to the nature, quality,

degree, of their offence, by a steady but a mea- | day stronger and stronger. Our ideas of justice sured justice.

In the first place, no man ought to be subject to any penalty, from the highest to the lowest, but by a trial according to the course of law, carried on with all that caution and deliberation which has been used in the best times and precedents of the French jurisprudence, the criminal law of which country, faulty to be sure in some particulars, was highly laudable and tender of the lives of men. In restoring order and justice, every thing like retaiation ought to be religiously avoided; and an eximple ought to be set of a total alienation from the acobin proceedings in their accursed revolutionary ribunals. Every thing like lumping men in masses, and of forming tables of proscription, ought to be ivoided.

In all these punishments, any thing which can be alleged in mitigation of the offence should be ully considered. Mercy is not a thing opposed o justice. It is an essential part of it; as necesary in criminal cases, as in civil affairs equity is o law. It is only for the jacobins never to pardon. They have not done it in a single instance. A ouncil of mercy ought therefore to be appointed, with powers to report on each case, to soften the penalty, or entirely to remit it, according to cir

cumstances.

With these precautions, the very first foundaion of settlement must be to call to a strict acount those bloody and merciless offenders. With out it, government cannot stand a year. People ittle consider the utter impossibility of getting hose, who, having emerged from very low, some rom the lowest, classes of society, have exercised power so high, and with such unrelenting and loody a rage, quietly to fall back into their old anks, and become humble, peaceable, laborious, and useful members of society. It never can be. On the other hand, is it to be believed, that any worthy and virtuous subject, restored to the uins of his house, will with patience see the old-blooded murderer of his father, mother, wife, or children, or perhaps all of these relations, (such hings have been,) nose him in his own village, and insult him with the riches acquired from the lunder of his goods, ready again to head a acobin faction to attack his life? He is unworthy of the name of man who would suffer it. It 8 unworthy of the name of a government, which, taking justice out of the private hand, will not exercise it for the injured by the publick

arm.

I know it sounds plausibly, and is really adopted by those who have little sympathy with the sufferings of others, to wish to jumble the innocent and guilty into one mass, by a general indemnity. This cruel indifference dignifies itself with the name of humanity.

It is extraordinary that as the wicked arts of this regicide and tyrannous faction encrease in number, variety, and atrocity, the desire of punishing them becomes more and more faint, and the talk of an indemnity towards them every

appear to be fairly conquered and overpowered by guilt, when it is grown gigantic. It is not the point of view in which we are in the habit of viewing guilt. The crimes we every day punish are really below the penalties we inflict. The criminals are obscure and feeble. This is the view in which we see ordinary crimes and criminals. But when guilt is seen, though but for a time, to be furnished with the arms and to be invested with the robes of power, it seems to assume another nature, and to get, as it were, out 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 | struments and trumpeters of sedition, but as 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 errour 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 shewing 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 changesbut they are few and obvious, and belong rather to morals than to politicks. But so far as regards political matter, the human mind and human affairs are susceptible of infinite 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. How many could have thought, that the most complete and formidable revolution in a great empire should be made by men of letters, not as subordinate in

I

chief contrivers and managers, and in a shet time as the open administrators and sovereign rulers?-Who could have imagined that atheis could produce one of the most violently operate principles of fanaticism? Who could have ingined that, in a commonwealth in a manner cradled in war, and in extensive and dreadf war, military commanders should be of little no account? That the convention should contain one military man of name? That admi nistrative bodies in a state of the utmost conf: sion, and of but a momentary duration, and ca posed of men with not one imposing part i character, should be able to govern the count and its armies, with an authority which the mos settled senates, and the most respected monarchs scarcely ever had in the same degree? This i one, I confess I did not foresee, though all t rest was present to me very early, and not o my apprehension even for several years.

I believe very few were able to enter into t effects of mere terrour, as a principle not only the support of power in given hands or for but in those things in which the soundest politi. speculators were of opinion, that the least apper ance of force would be totally destructive,is the market, whether of money, provisica commodities of any kind. Yet for four year have seen loans made, treasuries supplied, armies levied and maintained, more numerous France ever shewed in the field, by the effect fear alone.

Here is a state of things of which, in its tota if history furnishes any examples at all, the very remote and feeble. I therefore am s ready as some are, to tax with folly or cow those who were not prepared to meet an evilo: nature. Even now, after the events, al causes may be somewhat difficult to ascert Very many are however traceable. But t things history and books of speculation (as 1. already said) did not teach men to foresee of course to resist. Now that they are no a matter of sagacity, but of experience, of > experience, of our own experience, it wo unjustifiable to go back to the records of times, to instruct us to manage what they 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.]

that it should be suppressed. To form and sup

ASES OF INTERFERENCE WITH INDE- port an unjust pretension, is to do an injury not

PENDENT POWERS.

BOOK II. CHAP. IV. § 53.

only to him who is interested in this pretension, but to mock at justice in general, and to injure

all nations.

To succour

ranny.

tion.

§ 56. If the prince, attacking the Ir then there is any where a nation of a restless fundamental laws, gives his subjects against tynd mischievous disposition, always ready to in- a legal right to resist him; if tyranny, re others, to traverse their designs, and to raise becoming insupportable, obliges the nation to rise mestick troubles, it is not to be doubted, that in their defence; every foreign power has a right I have a right to join in order to repress, chas- to succour an oppressed people who implore their se, and put it ever after out of its power to in-assistance. The English justly com- Case of Engre them. Such should be the just fruits of the plained of James the Second. The lish Revolulicy which Machiavel praises in Cæsar Borgia. nobility, and the most distinguished le conduct followed by Philip II. king of Spain, patriots, resolved to put a check on his enterprises, is adapted to unite all Europe against him; which manifestly tended to overthrow the constid it was from just reasons that Henry the Great❘ tution, and to destroy the liberties and the religion med the design of humbling a power, formid- of the people; and therefore applied for assistle by its forces, and pernicious by its maxims. ance to the United Provinces. The authority of § 70. Let us apply to the unjust, what we have the prince of Orange had, doubtless, an influence d above, (§ 53,) of a mischievous, or maleficent on the deliberations of the states-general; but it tion. If there be any that makes an open pro- did not make them commit injustice; for when a sion of trampling justice under foot, of despis- people, from good reasons, take up arms against 1 and violating the right of others,† whenever an oppressor, justice and generosity require, that finds an opportunity, the interest of human brave men should be assisted in the defence of iety will authorize all others to unite, in order their liberties. Whenever, therefore, Case of civil humble and chastise it. We do not here forget a civil war is kindled in a state, : maxim established in our preliminaries, that foreign powers may assist that party which foes not belong to nations to usurp the power of to them to have justice on their side. ng judges of each other. In particular cases, He who assists an odious tyrant, he rant Rebelble to the least doubt, it ought not to be sup- who declares FOR AN UNJUST AND REsed, that each of the parties may have some BELLIOUS PEOPLE, offends against his duty. When ht and the injustice of that which has com- the bands of the political society are broken, or at ted the injury may proceed from errour, and least suspended, between the sovereign . from a general contempt of justice. But if, and his people, they may then be his people constant maxims, and by a continued conduct, considered as two distinct powers; e nation shews, that it has evidently this per- and since each is independent of all ious disposition, and that it considers no right foreign authority, nobody has a right to judge sacred, the safety of the human race requires them. Either may be in the right; and each of

This is the case of France-Semonville at Turin-Jacobin – Liegois meeting-Flemish meeting-La Fayette's answer oot's embassy-Avignon.

war.

appears

An odious tylious people.

Sovereign and

when distinct powers.

↑ The French acknowledge no power not directly emanating from the people.

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.

Not to be

jects to a re

volt.

But we ought not to abuse this pursued to an maxim for authorizing odious proextreme. ceedings against the tranquillity of states. It is a violation of the law of nations to Endeavour to persuade those subjects to revolt who persuade sub- actually obey their sovereign, though they complain of his government. The practice of nations is conformable to our maxims. When the German protestants came to the assistance of the reformed in France, the court never undertook to treat them otherwise than as common enemies, and according to the laws of war. France at the same time assisted the Netherlands, which took up arms against Spain, and did not pretend that her troops should be considered upon any other footing than as auxiliaries in a regular war. But no power avoids cite subjects complaining of an atrocious injury, to revolt. if any one attempts by his emissaries to excite his subjects to revolt.

Attempt to ex

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By the seventh Article of the Treaty of TRIPLE ALLIANCE, between France, England, and Holland, signed at the Hague, in the year 1717, it is stipulated, "that if the kingdoms, countries, "or provinces, of any of the allies, are disturbed by intestine " quarrels, or by rebellions, on account of the said successions, "[the protestant succession to the throne of Great Britain, and the succession to the throne of France, as settled by the treaty "of Utrecht,] or under any other pretext whatever, the ally thus in trouble shall have full right to demand of his allies the succours above mentioned; " that is to say, the same succours as in the case of an invasion from any foreign power; 8000 foot and 2000 horse to be furnished by France or England, and 4000 foot and 1000 horse by the States General.

ance to p

serve a keg

the state, limited as to its duration, to the reign of the contracting king. This of which we are here speaking is of another nature. For though it binds the state, since it is bound by all the pub lick acts of its sovereign, it is made directly in favour of the king and his family; it When an would therefore be absurd for it to terminate at the moment when they takes place have need of it, and at an event against which t was made. Besides, the king does not King does lose his quality merely by the loss of lose his his kingdom. If he is stripped of loss of b it unjustly by an usurper, or by re- kingdom. bels, he preserves his rights, in the number which are his alliances.

lity by the

But who shall judge, if the king be dethroned lawfully or by violence? An independent natos acknowledges no judge. If the body of the ta tion declares the king deprived of his rights b the abuse he has made of them, and deposes hr. it may justly do it when its grievances are vi founded, and no other power has a right to censur it. The personal ally of this king ought not the to assist him against the nation that has made of its right in deposing him if he attempts it, injures that nation. England declared war agains Louis the XIV. in the year 1688, for support: the interest of James the Second, who was depose in form by the nation. The same country & clared war against him a second time, at the be ginning of the present century, because that pr acknowledged the son of the deposed James, u the name of James the Third. In doubtful cases, and when the body of aid ma the nation has not pronounced or HAS given NOT PRONOUNCED FREELY, a sovereign may naturally support and defend an ally, and is then that the voluntary law of nations subs between different states. The party that has drive out the king pretends to have right on its s this unhappy king and his ally flatter themselve with having the same advantage; and as th have no common judge upon earth, they have: other method to take but to apply to arms to te minate the dispute: they therefore engage formal war.

Case when

posed t

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In short, when the foreign prince has faithft fulfilled his engagements towards an Not ob unfortunate monarch, when he has push done in his defence, or to procure his a certae restoration, all he was obliged to perform in virtue of the alliance; if his efforts ineffectual, the dethroned prince cannot re him to support an endless war in his favou expect that he will eternally remain the enemy

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By the fourth Article of the Treaty of QUADRUPLE ALLS between England, France, Holland, and the emperoura many, signed in the year 1718, the contracting powers p and oblige themselves that they will and ought to guarantee, and defend the right and succession to the "of France, according to the tenour of the treats BATH Utrecht the 11th day of April 1713, and this they shall ser "against all persons whatsoever who may presume to do ► "order of the said succession, in contradiction to the preva "and treaties subsequent thereon."

The above treaties have been revived and refre every subsequent treaty of peace between Great Bram France.-EDIT.

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