Thoughts on the Present Discontents, and Speeches. Edmund Burke

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СКАЧАТЬ serve admirably to reconcile the old quarrel between speculation and practice.  Many a stern republican, after gorging himself with a full feast of admiration of the Grecian commonwealths and of our true Saxon constitution, and discharging all the splendid bile of his virtuous indignation on King John and King James, sits down perfectly satisfied to the coarsest work and homeliest job of the day he lives in.  I believe there was no professed admirer of Henry the Eighth among the instruments of the last King James; nor in the court of Henry the Eighth was there, I dare say, to be found a single advocate for the favourites of Richard the Second.

      No complaisance to our Court, or to our age, can make me believe nature to be so changed but that public liberty will be among us, as among our ancestors, obnoxious to some person or other, and that opportunities will be furnished for attempting, at least, some alteration to the prejudice of our constitution.  These attempts will naturally vary in their mode, according to times and circumstances.  For ambition, though it has ever the same general views, has not at all times the same means, nor the same particular objects.  A great deal of the furniture of ancient tyranny is worn to rags; the rest is entirely out of fashion.  Besides, there are few statesmen so very clumsy and awkward in their business as to fall into the identical snare which has proved fatal to their predecessors.  When an arbitrary imposition is attempted upon the subject, undoubtedly it will not bear on its forehead the name of Ship-money.  There is no danger that an extension of the Forest laws should be the chosen mode of oppression in this age.  And when we hear any instance of ministerial rapacity to the prejudice of the rights of private life, it will certainly not be the exaction of two hundred pullets, from a woman of fashion, for leave to lie with her own husband.

      Every age has its own manners, and its politics dependent upon them; and the same attempts will not be made against a constitution fully formed and matured, that were used to destroy it in the cradle, or to resist its growth during its infancy.

      Against the being of Parliament, I am satisfied, no designs have ever been entertained since the Revolution.  Every one must perceive that it is strongly the interest of the Court to have some second cause interposed between the Ministers and the people.  The gentlemen of the House of Commons have an interest equally strong in sustaining the part of that intermediate cause.  However they may hire out the usufruct of their voices, they never will part with the fee and inheritance.  Accordingly those who have been of the most known devotion to the will and pleasure of a Court, have at the same time been most forward in asserting a high authority in the House of Commons.  When they knew who were to use that authority, and how it was to be employed, they thought it never could be carried too far.  It must be always the wish of an unconstitutional statesman, that a House of Commons who are entirely dependent upon him, should have every right of the people entirely dependent upon their pleasure.  It was soon discovered that the forms of a free, and the ends of an arbitrary Government, were things not altogether incompatible.

      The power of the Crown, almost dead and rotten as Prerogative, has grown up anew, with much more strength, and far less odium, under the name of Influence.  An influence which operated without noise and without violence; an influence which converted the very antagonist into the instrument of power; which contained in itself a perpetual principle of growth and renovation; and which the distresses and the prosperity of the country equally tended to augment, was an admirable substitute for a prerogative that, being only the offspring of antiquated prejudices, had moulded in its original stamina irresistible principles of decay and dissolution.  The ignorance of the people is a bottom but for a temporary system; the interest of active men in the State is a foundation perpetual and infallible.  However, some circumstances, arising, it must be confessed, in a great degree from accident, prevented the effects of this influence for a long time from breaking out in a manner capable of exciting any serious apprehensions.  Although Government was strong and flourished exceedingly, the Court had drawn far less advantage than one would imagine from this great source of power.

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      At the Revolution, the Crown, deprived, for the ends of the Revolution itself, of many prerogatives, was found too weak to struggle against all the difficulties which pressed so new and unsettled a Government.  The Court was obliged therefore to delegate a part of its powers to men of such interest as could support, and of such fidelity as would adhere to, its establishment.  Such men were able to draw in a greater number to a concurrence in the common defence.  This connection, necessary at first, continued long after convenient; and properly conducted might indeed, in all situations, be a useful instrument of Government.  At the same time, through the intervention of men of popular weight and character, the people possessed a security for their just proportion of importance in the State.  But as the title to the Crown grew stronger by long possession, and by the constant increase of its influence, these helps have of late seemed to certain persons no better than incumbrances.  The powerful managers for Government were not sufficiently submissive to the pleasure of the possessors of immediate and personal favour, sometimes from a confidence in their own strength, natural and acquired; sometimes from a fear of offending their friends, and weakening that lead in the country, which gave them a consideration independent of the Court.  Men acted as if the Court could receive, as well as confer, an obligation.  The influence of Government, thus divided in appearance between the Court and the leaders of parties, became in many cases an accession rather to the popular than to the royal scale; and some part of that influence, which would otherwise have been possessed as in a sort of mortmain and unalienable domain, returned again to the great ocean from whence it arose, and circulated among the people.  This method therefore of governing by men of great natural interest or great acquired consideration, was viewed in a very invidious light by the true lovers of absolute monarchy.  It is the nature of despotism to abhor power held by any means but its own momentary pleasure; and to annihilate all intermediate situations between boundless strength on its own part, and total debility on the part of the people.

      To get rid of all this intermediate and independent importance, and to secure to the Court the unlimited and uncontrolled use of its own vast influence, under the sole direction of its own private favour, has for some years past been the great object of policy.  If this were compassed, the influence of the Crown must of course produce all the effects which the most sanguine partisans of the Court could possibly desire.  Government might then be carried on without any concurrence on the part of the people; without any attention to the dignity of the greater, or to the affections of the lower sorts.  A new project was therefore devised by a certain set of intriguing men, totally different from the system of Administration which had prevailed since the accession of the House of Brunswick.  This project, I have heard, was first conceived by some persons in the Court of Frederick, Prince of Wales.

      The earliest attempt in the execution of this design was to set up for Minister a person, in rank indeed respectable, and very ample in fortune; but who, to the moment of this vast and sudden elevation, was little known or considered in the kingdom.  To him the whole nation was to yield an immediate and implicit submission.  But whether it was from want of firmness to bear up against the first opposition, or that things were not yet fully ripened, or that this method was not found the most eligible, that idea was soon abandoned.  The instrumental part of the project was a little altered, to accommodate it to the time, and to bring things more gradually and more surely to the one great end proposed.

      The first part of the reformed plan was to draw a line which should separate the Court from the Ministry.  Hitherto these names had been looked upon as synonymous; but, for the future, Court and Administration were to be considered as things totally distinct.  By this operation, two systems of Administration were to be formed: one which should be in the real secret and confidence; the other merely ostensible, to perform the official and executory duties of Government.  The latter were alone to be responsible; whilst the real advisers, who enjoyed all the power, were effectually removed from all the danger.

      Secondly, a party under these leaders was to be formed in favour of the Court against the Ministry: this party was to have a large share in the emoluments of Government, and to hold it totally separate from, and independent of, ostensible Administration.

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