The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1833-10-04 00:00:00

EDMUND BURKE.

It had been the old maxim of the pretended philosophers of
the Continent, that religion was useless or injurious as a fea-
ture of civil polity; that establishments for religion were among
the worn-out expedients of a system divided between the priest
and the king, hypocrisy and oppression, the tyranny of super-
stition and the tyranny of the sword. The charge was extended
from the tranquillity of nations to their times of disturbance.
Religion was libelled for the work of the passions. She was
pronounced to be the cause of more extravagant ambitions,
more profound perfidies, more sanguinary violences, and more
incurable subversions of empire, than all other causes combined.
She crag tho great tragic figure in the drama of human suffer-
ing; the great mover of those fiercer convulsions and confla-
grations, which, bursting up from the depths of society, like the
lava, or the earthquake, from caverns beyond the reach of man,
utterly perplex all human resistance, as they bailie all human
precaution. It was pronounced to be doubly fatal, by its sub-
stituting an illegitimate and imaginary conscience for a sense
of duty ; and while it retained the feeble through fear, and sti-
mulated the enthusiastic by hope, employing the theories of a
future world to overthrow the realities of the present, thus de-
priving reason of its influence, and law of its authority ; and, by
the erection of a fantastic tribunal in the heart, turning the re-
gicide and the rebel into the martyr.
This declamation had been a thousand times refuted ; but it
was too congenial to the profligate liberalism of the Continent
to be abandoned. At length a proof was to be given that
Atheism could outstrip at a single stride all the pretended hor-
rors that had ever been let loose by religion; that men who
had exiled the priest, and broken down the altar, might be
more ruthless and sanguinary than the fiercest persecutor; and
that the wiliest perversion of belief—the most flagitious dex-
terity of imposture, under the abused name of religion, could be
thrown into eclipse, by the remorseless craft and prodigal atro-
city of a rebellion, whose first proclamation sounded in the
astonished ears of Europe, THAT THERE WAS NO GOD I

This is succeeded by a short, but pithy view of the
state of Europe previously to the breaking out of the
French revolution, terminating in a finely drawn and
just character of Mr. PITT:—

But a preparatory period was still to be passed. The life of
nations is like the life of man. The true philosopher can
scarcely fail to discover when nations begin to assume a shape
—when they develope their successive energies, and when they
have reached the point of decline. The last ten years of the
eighteenth century were evidently marked for a great European
crisis. The state of manners, knowledge, and teelings on the
Continent, was evidently ripening for some consummate trial.
But it was in England that the most marked evidence of some
great preparatory agency was given. The partial failures of
Britain in the American war, so loftily compensated by her
havoc of the French and Spanish navies on the ocean, were
among the clearest lessons of where the true strength of the
country lay. And the national enthusiasm was vigorously
turned to that arm, on which was so soon to be staked the na-
tional safety in the greatest of all naval wars. But the finances
of England required reinstatement after the vast exhaustion of
a six years' contest, carried on at the distance of three thousand
miles. An interval, amply adequate to this purpose, now came.
From 1782 to 1789, was a time of the most serene, joyous, and
productive peace ever known in Europe. All the active inter-
courses, the graceful employments, the brilliant luxuries, the
opulent commerce—,of nations, were in unexampled life. The
prevalence of perpetual peace; the unassailable amity of all the
thrones of Europe; the establishment of codes of national law,
which should preclude all jealousies for all time to come, were
among the dreams of the hour, hut they were the dreams of vivid
health ; passing fantasies, but the splendid conceptions of
mind; at ease,a.ucl exulting is the glow of the prospect around
them. Yet this animated day was but a respite. The sentence
which bad long gone forth against the guilt of Europe, must be
executed ; and the exultation of those days of memorable and
almost extravagant enjoyment, was to be followed by the deep-
est suffering of nations since the fall of the Roman empire.
England was
.prepared against the change, by her internal
vigour, the activity of her laws, and the purity of her religion.
But the great instrument by which the power of the empire was
to be put in motion, was the minister. Pitt was born to stand
at the head of a great nation in its most perilous time. Bold,
pure, high-principled, equally disdaining submission to the
multitude and subserviency to the throne, he sustained both,
and he controlled both ; by the noblest displays of senatorial
ability he protected the crown against the aggressions of party
in the legislature ; by the most vigilant decision, he coerced this
violence of faction in the streets. And, for his reward, he saw
party rapidly sink into a depth of popular scorn, which extin-
guished it as an antagonist of administration ; and the old bit-
ternesses of the popular heart as rapidly changing into the
generous and glowing pride in the triumphs of their country,
which snakes the great redeeming quality of Englishmen.

Here we are introduced to tne character of B. Intim,
which we shall pass over, to mark the approach of those
events which worked the great and patriotic change in
his character—othat stamped his future fame as the friend
of his country—the enemy of revolution:—
Twenty years before the Tuilleries was stormed, and the
King sent to the block, the English statesman was as incapa-
ble as the French monarch, of that the element of
political ruin was in the streets. But, in 1780, a lesson was
given to our country, which opened all eyes and kept them
open. A harmless petition on a constitutional subject, pre-
sented through the legitimate channels, to the legitimate source
of redrew; a Protestant petition against a violation of the
national law, brought to the doors of Parliament by a body of
orderly remonstrants, suddenly gave birth to the most rapid,
furious, and devastating outrage, ever known in England.
The principles of law and peace, and even of religion, were
instantaneously blackened into public havoc; the cloud no
bigger than a man's hand grew before the eye into a tornado,
that threatened to hurry before it church, monarchy, and con-
stitution. Its violence was at last checked; but not till the
lesson was completely given; till the national mind was fully
awakened to the horrors of rabble fury; till the government
was put in possession of the whole secret of popular violence,
on any subject which might hereafter rouse the populace : and,
as if the lesson was to be pregnant with important uses in every
point of view, the hitherto failing respect of the empire for the
libelled character of one of the best Kings that ever sat upon
the throne, was, in the course of this hazardous period, cleared
from all its clouds, by the evidence of personal manliness, sense,
and feeling, exhibited by his Majesty, and even the character
of royalty itself was illustrated by the public proof of the ger-

vices which might be rendered by a Monarch in the general
perplexity and suspended strength of all inferior authority.
Even the location of this extraordinary event seemed to be a
part of the same preservative design. It this whirlwind of
popular frenzy had come ten or twenty years before, its recol-
lection must have partially faded away; or at least, it could
not have been in the personal experience of the generation by
whom the furies of jacobinism were to be controlled. If it had
risen ten years later, it would have come in the very tumult of
jacobinism, and would have made a parallel revolution in Eng-
land. But it was placed in the exact point of usefulness; not
too t'ar back for personal remembrance, nor too far forward for
national preservation. If this theory be fanciful, at least,
nothing could be more unequivocally protective than the prac-
tical results. From that time forth, the eye of government was
fixed with wise vigilance upon the first movements of popular
disaffection; the symptoms of disturbance, which in other times
might have been regarded but as ripples on the surface of the
popular expanse, were now justly watched, as formidable indi-
cations of tempests, that might heave it through all its depths.
The universal alarm of England at the now well-known Inuard
of letting loose the power of the multitude, strengthened the
hands of government to the fullest extent of providing for the
public security; rapidly enfeebled the influence of Opposition,
until it broke up its ranks, and bringing over the noblest and
ablest of its members, forced the remainder into a virtual exile
from Parliament, and placed England in a state of direct hos-
tility with jacobinism, an avowed, resolute, and principled war
with all the furies and follies of republicanism, that pointed her
out as the unfailing refuge of religion and law, the final barrier
of nations against popular license, and the natural, and, thank
God, the invincible defender of the last hopes of national inde-
pendence, against the last malice of Atheistic and popular pas-
sion, embodied in the form of the most grasping and r-morse-
less despotism.
Another of those preparations was the rapid ascendancy, we
might almost say, the supremacy, of Pitt. The sun of Chatham
must have been a powerful authority in any age of the legisla-
ture; but no man is equal to all things, and even his pre-emi-
nent ability must have been heavily iiapeded, if it had been
exposed at once to the activity of an opposition, still retaining
public favour, and the embarrassments of a war against the
new and startling fierceness of French republicanism. With
Fox in possession of the
.public heart, and jacobinism wielding
energies that seemed to invest it with a title to universal con-
quest, no ministry could have stood; it is altogether idle to con-
ceive that even the genius of Pitt could have done more than
yield with honour. If he had been summoned to face a French
war, at the earlier period, while he was struggling with the
India Bill, or the Regency Question of 1788, no strength of
man could have sustained "hint under such a complication of
difficulties. The perpetual assault in Parliament, and the flood
of civil trouble, popular discontent, French circumvention, and
European terror, must have broken him down at the first out-
pouring of the war. But, for some years before, every public
event strongly tended to disembarrass the minister of the en-
cumbrance of opposition. A series of measures, conceived in
the rishness of angry ambition, and urged with the recklessness
of political despair, continued to break down the vigour of
party ; until their conduct of the Regency Question seemed
even to render Fox's fidelity to the name of Whig doubtful, to
show him supporting principles directly adverse to the creed of
his old authorities, and, finally, gave his great rival all the ad-
vantage of taking the popular side, and carrying his measures
through the legislature with a bold and defying disregard of the
wrath of opposition. The Regency Question virtually extin-
guished the whole parliamentary foice of opposition, and strip-
ped it of all its old popularity in the nation, and deeply alien-
ated the hearts of its most steady and principled adherents.

Some extracts from his correspondence are next given,
and partigularly with M. MENONVILLE, a member of
the national assembly, illustrative of his views of the
then state of affairs of France:—

It is clear, from those striking developments of his mind,
within so unripe a period as two months after the first blow of
the Revolution, and while it still wore its honours in their new-
est gloss, that Burke had already found the key to the whole
mystery. While others saw the Revolutionary shape only as-
suming the attributes of pomp and festivity, as if to do addi-
tional honours to the Monarch, his foresight saw the long train
of conspiracy that lurked under the ostentation of loyalty.—
He saw in the weak concessions, and fatal facility with which
the unfortunate King suffered himself to be led into the very
place of ruin, the destiny of the " gracious Duncan" sealed;
the Government, the laws, and the Crown, on the point of
being thrown at the feet of a bloody, perfidious, and regicidal
usurpation. He saw, further still, the fate of that usurpation ;
and, even at the time when its designs were still cloaked under
the most specious covering of patriotism, when all was shew
and confidence, lofty protestation and extravagant credulity,
he could mark the coming, of the retributive hour, when the
man of blood should feel his treachery recoiling upon him
self, and successive factions do the work of justice upon
each other, until France, sunk in the lowest humiliation,
should, like the she-fiend of Shakspeare, groan over the
memory of her temptations and her successes, and find,
that to wash out that one foul spot of royal murder, all remorse
was in vain.

But, in tracing this outline of the vigorous and virtuous
career of Burke, we are not to forget that he had other quali-
fications than those of the Senate, and that, largely as politics
occupied his life, he had a reserve for the more graceful pur-
poses of society. No man better knew the value of a general
taste for all the forms of acquirement that embellish -life, or
their use in the enjoyment of private intercourse, and even in
the illustration of the more refractory and uninalleable mate-
rials of which public Janie is made. An acknowledged and
copious source of the superiority of Burke's eloquence was to
be found in his extensive knowledge of the graceful arts. Giv-
ing. him vividness of imagery, rich allusions, and brilliant
variety of topic, it threw an unrivalled charm over his style.

The French Revolution had now begun its course, and the
eyes of England in astonishment, and of the Continent in terror,
were attracted to its progress. In the commencement all had
been professed purity ; the snow on the summit of the Alps was
not purer in the estimate of the thousands and tens of thousands
who stood gazing at its first slide. But its primitive position
was soon left behind. Then came the mass, gathering, rushing,
and thundering, till all resistance gave way, and it rolled down,
sweeping strength and weakness before it, ruining all that it
reached, and covering the ruins with a new weight of ruin,
which seemed to defy the labours of man. Burke's convictions
of this tremendous evil grew by the hour, and in speeches,
pamphlets, and letters, he deprecated the insane admiration of
Jacobinism. We may well be astonished that such admiration
ever existed. Where could be the wisdom of furious overthrow?
the security of extinguishing all the habitual defences of society
against the violence of popular passion ? or the propriety of
laying open the national property to the rapine of the populace?
What was to be expected from the future cultivation of the po-
litical soil, when the first act was to-break up the sluices and let
loose the waters of pestilence and sterility over it for years ?
What was to be the answer of heaven to the offerings of
France, from altars where the popular voice was mingled with
dying agonies, and where parricides and Atheists were the mi-
nisters of the worship? But this was a time for the trial of po-
litical professions. the boasted friends of universal freedom in
England took upon themselves the clientship of the bloodiest
tyranny ever known. The grossness and rage of the rabble
found eager advocates among men proverbial for the haughtiness
of their aristocracy; and even the horrid defiances and blas-
phemous cries of exasperation against Christianity, England,
and all that belonged to the name of England, found defenders
among men whose watchword was patriotism, whose whole vigi-
lance was ostentatiously employed in exploring every vestige of
fancied oppression in their own country, and whose eloquence
was lavished in eternal praises of the immaculate superiority of
the British Constitution.

To this accurate view of the progress of revolutinary
proceedings succeeds the comparison, which, we fear,
holds too true, between the earlier of those proceedings
and what has recently passed under our observation
nearer home, with which we must close our extracts :
The spirit of French Jacobinism, and of all Jacobinism, is
combined envy and love of rapine. The French populace and
their leaders cared nothing for the insulted dignity of religion,
for the corruption of the law, for the abstraction of the public
revenues, or for the levities of kings and courtiers. But they
hated the rank which they saw above them, whether virtuous
or vicious ,• and thus longed to grasp at the property in the
hands of their superiors, whether earned by honour or disho-
nour. Not one in a million of those who tore down the banners
and escutcheons of the French noblesse, burned their mansions
and drank their blood, knew or cared whether they were more
or less profligate than the clowns around them. Burt they were
their superiors ; they inherited a place in society which set
them over the heads of the clowns, and the clowns were deter-
mined to have the grinning triumph of tearing them down.
Are the rabble, and the leaders of the rabble. among ourselves
at this hour, impelled, or capable of beinn- impelled,- by loftier
motives? Their outcries against the abuses of government,
against places and pensions, hereditary rank and the existence
of an established church, are outcries on subjects of which they
know no mote than they do of the Copernican system. Whe-
ther for good or evil, those things are totally above their means
of judging. But the cobblers and tinkers who legislate by pull-
ing down, know perfectly that in destroying those institutions
they would level a class superior to themselves; they would
have the gratification of tearing down those to whom they
could never hope to rise; and in their plunder seizing on pro-
perty which they could never hope to earn. The popular lan-
guage of the rabble leaders is full evidence of the gross selfish- i
ness of their motives. Their name of scorn for the Pe'er- I
age is the proud aristocracy, as if the pride of any class
of society could be a political crime; their true offence is,
that their rank galls the sense of inferiority. The name of scorn
for the clergy is the " fat Prelacy and the lazy incumbents ;" as
if either fat or laziness were crimes that could affect the political
welfare of the rabble purifiers of the state. But while they are
conceived in the gross apprehensions of the crowd, to be the
proofs of property, they assume the shape of crimes of sufficient
magnitude to embitter every angry and .covetous heart against
the possessors of that property. Ihe clamour against the Bri-
tish prelacy is one of the most undisguised evidences of popular
selfishness. Their merits or demerits as servants of religion are
totally out of the question ,• their fitness for sacrifice is, that
they are presumed to be rich. It never enters into the conside-
ration of those arbiters of the streets, that British episcopacy is
among those institutions which may be said to belong to the
people, that its highest offices are not merely open to the sons
of the humblest, but that they are chiefly held by those sons ;
that prelacy, in fact, throws open one of the widest gates in our
whole public system to the advance of the lower classes into the
foremost ranks of subjects. No; the craver for plunder, or the
rancorous hater of dignities, looks only to the present moment.
He would shut up the gate were it ten times as wide, provided
he could trample a bishop into the acknowledgment that he
was no better than the ruffian who trode him under foot; or
could grasp, with his sanguinary clutch, the opulence which en-
abled a man, probably of the nighest learning and virtue, to
eat his bread without the labour of his hands. The cry against
the French clergy was not their impurity or impiety, for indi-
vidually they were popular; and whether popular or not, the
loadauds of Paris and 'Versailles cared nothing for their virtues
or vices. It was their church income, and on the strength of it
they massacred as many of them as they could seize, and ba-
nished the remainder. In the war of the peasants against the
nobility, it was not the gay man of fashion, or the severe feu-
dalist, that they held as the enemy; their enemy was the pos-
' sessor of the neighbouring chateau, the master of so many
chariots and horses, the proprietor of so many services of
plate. The rental was the treason, and the plunder of all
that he was worth, the formal execution of national justice.
No man in France thought that he would be the wiser, purer,
or freer for the murder of the King; but thousands and mil-
-1 lions rejoiced in that most remorseless act of blood, as the
triumph of their vanity: it made every beggar and bandit in
France as great as his King, for the time; and the stimulant
was enough with the legislators of the streets, to urge them to
the murder of every branch of the royal family in their grasp.
Such was the lesson of rabble supremacy in Fiance, and such
would be the example in England, if, in the vengeance of Hea-
ven, we should ever suffer the mob to dictate to our Parliament,
or domineer over the educated classes of the empire. 'With the
mob all change is rapine in prospect; and all patriotism con-
sists in the art of pulling down. Let England beware, for she
will have her trial yet; the ground is shaking under her feet,
and nothing but the vigilance and vigour which saved her
before, can-save her again.

SUPPLEMENT LIVERPOOL STANDARD.