from their several corps by hopes inspired by the freely declared disposition of sovereigns, have left all the posts, in which they might one day have effectually served the good cause, abandoned to the enemy. Your Imperial Majesty's just influence, which is still greater than your extensive power, will animate and expedite the efforts of other sovereigns. From your wisdom other states will learn, that they, who wait until all the powers of Europe are at once in motion, can never move at all. It would add to the unexampled calamities of our time, if the uncommon union of sentiment in so many powers should prove the very cause of defeating the benefit, which ought to flow from their general good disposition. No sovereign can run any risk from the designs of other powers whilst engaged in this glorious and necessary work. If any attempt could be feared, your Imperial Majesty's power and justice would secure your allies against all danger. Madam, your glory will be complete, if, after having given peace to Europe by your moderation, you shall bestow stability on all its governments by your vigour and decision. The debt, which your Imperial Majesty's august predecessors have contracted to the ancient manners of Europe, by means of which they civilized a vast empire, will be nobly repaid by preserving those manners from the hideous change with which they are now menaced. By the intervention of Russia the world will be preserved from barbarism and ruin. A private individual, of a remote country, in himself wholly without importance, unauthorized and unconnected, not as an English subject, but as a citizen of the world, presumes to submit his thoughts to one of the greatest and wisest sovereigns that Europe has seen. He does it without fear, because he does not involve in his weakness (if such it is) his king, his country, or his friends. He is not afraid that he shall offend your Imperial Majesty; because, secure in itself, true greatness is always accessible; and because, respectfully to speak what we conceive to be truth, is the best homage which can be paid to true dignity. I am, Madam, with the utmost possible respect and veneration, Your Imperial Majesty's most obedient and most humble Servant, Edm. Burke. Beaconsfield, November 1st, 1791. LETTER TO SIR CHARLES BINGHAM, BART. ON THE IRISH ABSENTEE TAX.* DEAR SIR, I AM much flattered by your very obliging letter, and the rather, because it promises an opening to our future correspondence. This may be my only indemnification for very great losses. One of the most odious parts of the proposed absentee tax is its tendency to separate friends, and to make as ugly breaches in private society, as it must make in the unity of the great political body. I am sure, that much of the satisfaction of some circles in London will be lost by it. Do you think, that our friend Mrs. Vesey will suffer her husband to vote for a tax, that is to destroy the evenings at Bolton Row? I trust we shall have other supporters of the same sex, equally powerful, and equally deserving to be so, who will not abandon the common cause of their own liberties and our satisfactions. We shall be barbarized on both sides of the water, if we do not see one another now and then. We shall sink into surly, brutish Johns, and you will degenerate into wild Irish. It is impossible that From authentick documents found with the copy of this Letter among Mr. Burke's papers, it appears, that in the year 1773 a project of imposing a tax upon all proprietors of landed estates in Ireland, whose ordinary residence should be in Great Britain, had been adopted and avowed by his Majesty's minisVOL. II. 2 c we should be the wiser, or the more agreeable; certainly we shall not love one another the better, for this forced separation, which our ministers, who have already done so much for the dissolution of every other sort of good connexion, are now meditating for the further improvement of this too well united empire. Their next step will be to encourage all the colonies, about thirty separate governments, to keep their people from all intercourse with each other, and with the mother country. A gentleman of New York, or Barbadoes, will be as much gazed at, as a strange animal from Nova Zembla or Otaheite; and those rogues the travellers will tell us what stories they please about poor old Ireland. In all seriousness, (though I am a great deal more than half serious in what I have been saying,) I look upon this projected tax in a very evil light; I think it is not advisable; I am sure it is not necessary; and as it is not a mere matter of finance, but involves a political question of much import ters at that time. A remonstrance against this measure, as highly unjust and impolitick, was presented to the ministers by several of the principal Irish absentees, and the project was subsequently abandoned. decide upon your acts without those lights, that may enable them to judge upon what grounds you made them, or how far they ought to be modified, received, or rejected. ance, I consider the principle and precedent as far | worse than the thing itself. You are too kind in imagining I can suggest any thing new upon the subject. The objections to it are very glaring, and must strike the eyes of all those who have not To what end is the ultimate appeal in judicature their reasons for shutting them against evident lodged in this kingdom, if men may be disabled truth. I have no feelings or opinions on this sub- from following their suits here, and may be taxed ject, which I do not partake with all the sensible into an absolute denial of justice? You observe, and informed people that I meet with. At first my dear Sir, that I do not assert, that, in all cases, I could scarcely meet with any one, who could be- two shillings will necessarily cut off this means of lieve, that this scheme originated from the English correcting legislative and judicial mistakes, and government. They considered it not only as ab- thus amount to a denial of justice. I might indeed surd, but as something monstrous and unnatural. state cases, in which this very quantum of tax In the first instance it strikes at the power of this would be fully sufficient to defeat this right. But country; in the end, at the union of the whole I argue not on the case, but on the principle, and I empire. I do not mean to express, most certainly am sure the principle implies it. They who may I do not entertain in my mind, any thing invidious restrain, may prohibit. They who may impose concerning the superintending authority of Great two shillings, may impose ten shillings, in the Britain. But if it be true, that the several bodies, pound; and those who may condition the tax to which make up this complicated mass, are to be six months annual absence, may carry that conpreserved as one empire, an authority sufficient to dition to six weeks, or even to six days, and therepreserve that unity, and by its equal weight and by totally defeat the wise means which have been pressure to consolidate the various parts that com- provided for extensive and impartial justice, and pose it, must reside somewhere; that somewhere | for orderly, well-poised, and well-connected gocan only be in England. Possibly any one member, distinctly taken, might decide in favour of What is taxing the resort to and residence in that residence within itself; but certainly no mem- any place, but declaring, that your connexion with ber would give its voice for any other except this. that place is a grievance? Is not such an Irish So that I look upon the residence of the supreme tax, as is now proposed, a virtual declaration, power to be settled here ; not by force, or tyranny, that England is a foreign country, and a renunor even by mere long usage, but by the very na-ciation on your part of the principle of common ture of things, and the joint consent of the whole naturalization, which runs through this whole body. empire? If all this be admitted, then without question this country must have the sole right to the imperial legislation by which I mean that law, which regulates the polity and economy of the several parts, as they relate to one another and to the whole. But if any of the parts, which (not for oppression but for order) are placed in a subordinate situation, will assume to themselves the power of hindering or checking the resort of their municipal subjects to the centre, or even to any other part, of the empire, they arrogate to themselves the imperial rights, which do not, which cannot, belong to them, and, so far as in them lies, destroy the happy arrangement of the entire empire. A free communication, by discretionary residence, is necessary to all the other purposes of communication. For what purpose are the Irish and plantation laws sent hither, but as means of preserving this sovereign constitution? Whether such a constitution was originally right or wrong, this is not the time of day to dispute. If any evils arise from it, let us not strip it of what may be useful in it. By taking the English privy council into your legislature, you obtain a new, a further, and, possibly, a more liberal consider- | ation of all your acts. If a local legislature shall by oblique means tend to deprive any of the people of this benefit, and shall make it penal to them to follow into England the laws, which may affect them, then the English privy council will have to vernment. Do you, or does any Irish gentleman, think it a mean privilege, that, the moment he sets his foot upon this ground, he is to all intents and purposes an Englishman? You will not be pleased with a law, which by its operation tends to disqualify you from a seat in this parliament; and if your own virtue or fortune, or if that of your children, should carry you or them to it, should you like to be excluded from the possibility of a peerage in this kingdom? If in Ireland we lay it down as a maxim, that a residence in Great Britain is a political evil, and to be discouraged by penal taxes, you must necessarily reject all the privileges and benefits which are connected with such a residence. I can easily conceive, that a citizen of Dublin, who looks no further than his counter, may think, that Ireland will be repaid for such a loss by any small diminution of taxes, or any increase in the circulation of money, that may be laid out in the purchase of claret or groceries in his corporation. In such a man an errour of that kind, as it would be natural, would be excusable. But I cannot think, that any educated man, any man who looks with an enlightened eye on the interest of Ireland, can believe, that it is not highly for the advantage of Ireland, that this parliament, which, whether right or wrong, whether we will or not, will make some laws to bind Ireland, should always have in it some persons, who by connexion, by property, or by early prepossessions and affec tions, are attached to the welfare of that country. I am so clear upon this point, not only from the clear reason of the thing, but from the constant course of my observation, by now having sat eight sessions in parliament, that I declare it to you, as my sincere opinion, that (if you must do either the one or the other) it would be wiser by far, and far better for Ireland, that some new privileges should attend the estates of Irishmen, members of the two houses here, than that their characters should be stained by penal impositions, and their properties loaded by unequal and unheard-of modes of taxation. I do really trust, that, when the matter comes a little to be considered, a majority of our gentlemen will never consent to establish such a principle of disqualification against themselves and their posterity, and, for the sake of gratifying the schemes of a transitory administration of the cockpit or the castle, or in compliance with the lightest part of the most vulgar and transient popularity, fix so irreparable an injury on the permanent interest of their country. This law seems, therefore, to me to go directly against the fundamental points of the legislative and judicial constitution of these kingdoms, and against the happy communion of their privileges. But there is another matter in the tax proposed, that contradicts as essentially a very great principle necessary for preserving the union of the various parts of a state; because it does, in effect, discountenance mutual intermarriage and inheritance; things that bind countries more closely together, than any laws or constitutions whatsoever. Is it right, that a woman, who marries into Ireland, and perhaps well purchases her jointure or her dower there, should not after her husband's death have it in her choice to return to her country and her friends without being taxed for it? If an Irish heiress should marry into an English family, and that great property in both countries should thereby come to be united in this common issue, shall the descendant of that marriage abandon his natural connexion, his family interests, his publick and his private duties, and be compelled to take up his residence in Ireland? Is there any sense or any justice in it, unless you affirm, that there should be no such intermarriage, and no such mutual inheritance between the natives? Is there a shadow of reason, that, because a Lord Rockingham, a Duke of Devonshire, a Sir George Saville, possess property in Ireland, which has descended to them without any act of theirs, they should abandon their duty in parliament, and spend the winters in Dublin? or, having spent the session in Westminster, must they abandon their seats and all their family interests in Yorkshire and Derbyshire, and pass the rest of the year in Wicklow, in Cork, or Tyrone? See what the consequence must be from a municipal legislature considering itself as an unconnected body, and attempting to enforce a partial residence. A man may have property in more parts than two of this empire. He may have property in Jamaica and in North America, as well as in England and Ireland. I know some, that have property in all of them. What shall we say to this case? After the poor distracted citizen of the whole empire has, in compliance with your partial law, removed his family, bid adieu to his connexions, and settled himself quietly and snug in a pretty box by the Liffey, he hears, that the parliament of Great Britain is of opinion, that all English estates ought to be spent in England, and that they will tax him double, if he does not return. Suppose him, then, (if the nature of the two laws will permit it,) providing a flying camp, and dividing his year, as well as he can, between England and Ireland, and at the charge of two town-houses, and two country-houses, in both kingdoms; in this situation he receives an account, that a law is transmitted from Jamaica, and another from Pennsylvania, to tax absentees from these provinces, which are impoverished by the European residence of the possessors of their lands. How is he to escape this ricochet cross-firing of so many opposite batteries of police and regulation? If he attempts to comply, he is likely to be more a citizen of the Atlantick ocean and the Irish sea, than of any of these countries. The matter is absurd and ridiculous; and while ever the idea of mutual marriages, inheritances, purchases, and privileges subsist, can never be carried into execution with common sense or common justice. I do not know how gentlemen of Ireland reconcile such an idea to their own liberties, or to the natural use and enjoyment of their estates. If any of their children should be left in a minority, and a guardian should think, as many do, (it matters not whether properly or no,) that his ward had better be educated in a school or university here, than in Ireland, is he sure, that he can justify the bringing a tax of ten per cent., perhaps twenty, on his pupil's estate, by giving what, in his opinion, is the best education in general, or the best for that pupil's particular character and circumstances? Can he justify his sending him to travel, a necessary part of the higher style of education, and notwithstanding what some narrow writers have said, of great benefit to all countries, but very particularly so to Ireland? Suppose a guardian, under the authority or pretence of such a tax of police, had prevented our dear friend, Lord Charlemont, from going abroad, would he have lost no satisfaction? Would his friends have lost nothing in the companion? Would his country have lost nothing in the cultivated taste, with which he has adorned it in so many ways? His natural elegance of mind would undoubtedly do a great deal; but I will venture to assert, without the danger of being contradicted, that he adorns his present residence in Ireland much the more for having resided a long time out of it. Will Mr. Flood himself think he ought to have been driven by taxes into Ireland, whilst he prepared himself, by an English education, to understand and to defend the rights of the subject in Ireland, or to support the dignity of government there, according as his opinions, or the situation of things, may lead him to take either part, upon respectable principles? I hope it is not forgot, that an Irish act of parliament sends its youth to England for the study of the law, and compels a residence in the Inns of Court here for some years. Will you send out with one breath, and recall with another? This act plainly provides for that intercourse, which supposes the strictest union in laws and policy, in both which the intended tax supposes an entire separation. It would be endless to go into all the inconveniences this tax will lead to, in the conduct of private life, and the use of property. How many infirm people are obliged to change their climate, whose life depends upon that change! How many families straitened in their circumstances are there, who from the shame, sometimes from the utter impossibility otherwise of retrenching, are obliged to remove from their country, in order to preserve their estates in their families! You begin, then, to burthen these people precisely at the time, when their circumstances of health and fortune render them rather objects of relief and commiseration. and oppressions, the question of strength is of the highest importance. It little becomes the feeble to be unjust. Justice is the shield of the weak; and when they choose to lay this down, and fight naked in the contest of mere power, the event will be what must be expected from such imprudence. I ought to beg your pardon for running into this length. You want no arguments to convince you on this subject; and you want no resources of matter to convince others. I ought too to ask pardon for having delayed my answer so long; but I received your letter on Tuesday, in town, and I was obliged to come to the country on business. From the country I write at present; but this day I shall go to town again. I shall see Lord Rockingham, who has spared neither time nor trouble in making a vigorous opposition to this inconsiderate measure. I hope to be able to you the which will give you papers, information of the steps he has taken. He has pursued this business with the foresight, diligence, and I know very well, that a great proportion of the good sense, with which he generally resists unmoney of every subordinate country will flow to- constitutional attempts of government. A life of wards the metropolis. This is unavoidable. Other disinterestedness, generosity, and publick spirit, inconveniencies too will result to particular parts: are titles to have it believed, that the effect, which -and why? Why, because they are particular the tax may have upon his private property, is parts; each a member of a greater, and not an not the sole nor the principal motive to his exerwhole within itself. But those members are to tions. I know he is of opinion, that the oppoconsider, whether these inconveniencies are not sition in Ireland ought to be carried on with that fully balanced, perhaps more than balanced, by spirit, as if no aid was expected from this country; the united strength of a great and compact body. and here, as if nothing would be done in Ireland I am sensible, too, of a difficulty, that will be—many things have been lost by not acting in this started against the application of some of the principles, which I reason upon, to the case of Ireland. It will be said, that Ireland, in many particulars, is not bound to consider itself as a part of the British body; because this country, in many instances, is mistaken enough to treat you as foreigners, and draws away your money by absentees, without suffering you to enjoy your natural advantages in trade and commerce. No man living loves restrictive regulations of any kind less than myself; at best, nine times in ten, they are little better than laborious and vexatious follies. Often, as in your case, they are great oppressions, as well as great absurdities. But still an injury is not always a reason for retaliation; nor is the folly of others, with regard to us, a reason for imitating it, with regard to them. Before we attempt to retort, we ought to consider, whether we may not injure ourselves even more than our adversary; since in the contest who shall go the greatest length in absurdity, the victor is generally the greatest sufferer. Besides, when there is an unfortunate emulation in restraints manner. I am told, that you are not likely to be alone in the generous stand you are to make against this unnatural monster of court popularity. It is said, Mr. Hussey, who is so very considerable at present, and who is every thing in expectation, will give you his assistance. I rejoice to see (that very rare spectacle) a good mind, a great genius, and publick activity, united together, and united so early in life. By not running into every popular humour, he may depend upon it the popularity of his character will wear the better. Non ponebat enim rumores ante salutem; Ergo postque magisque viri nunc gloria claret. Adieu, dear Sir. Give my my best respects Lady Bingham; and believe me, with great truth and esteem, Beaconsfield, Your most obedient to and most humble Servant, EDM. BURKE, To Sir Chas. Bingham. LETTER TO THE HONOURABLE CHARLES JAMES FOX. MY DEAR CHArles, I AM, on many accounts, exceedingly pleased with your journey to Ireland. I do not think it was possible to dispose better of the interval between this and the meeting of parliament. I told you as much, in the same general terms, by the post. My opinion of the infidelity of that conveyance hindered me from being particular. I now sit down with malice prepense to kill you with a very long letter, and must take my chance for some safe method of conveying the dose. Before say any thing to you of the place you are in, the business of it, on which, by the way, a great deal might be said, I will turn myself to the concluding part of your letter from Chatsworth. I or You are sensible, that I do not differ from you in many things and most certainly I do not dissent from the main of your doctrine concerning the heresy of depending upon contingencies. You must recollect how uniform my sentiments have been on that subject. I have ever wished a settled plan of our own, founded in the very essence of the American business, wholly unconnected with the events of the war, and framed in such a manner as to keep up our credit, and maintain our system at home, in spite of any thing which may happen abroad. I am now convinced, by a long and somewhat vexatious experience, that such a plan is absolutely impracticable. I think with you, that some faults in the constitution of those, whom we must love and trust, are among the causes of this impracticability; they are faults too, that one can hardly wish them perfectly cured of, as I am afraid they are intimately connected with honest, disinterested intentions, plentiful fortunes, assured rank, and quiet homes. A great deal of activity and enterprise can scarcely ever be expected from such men, unless some horrible calamity is just over their heads; or unless they suffer some gross personal insults from power, the resentment of which may be as unquiet and stimulating a principle in their minds, as ambition is in those of a different complexion. To say the truth, I cannot greatly blame them. We live at a time, when men are not repaid in fame for what they sacrifice in interest or repose. On the whole, when I consider of what discordant, and particularly of what fleeting, materials the opposition has been all along composed, and at the same time review what Lord Rockingham has done, with that and with his own shattered constitution, for these last twelve years, I confess I am rather surprised, that he has done so much, and persevered so long, than that he has felt now and then some cold fits, and that he grows somewhat languid and desponding at last. I know, that he, and those who are much prevalent with him, though they are not thought so much devoted to popularity as others, do very much look to the people; and more than I think is wise in them, who do so little to guide and direct the publick opinion. Without this they act, indeed; but they act as it were from compulsion, and because it is impossible, in their situation, to avoid taking some part. All this it is impossible to change, and to no purpose to complain of. As to that popular humour, which is the medium we float in, if I can discern any thing at all of its present state, it is far worse than I have ever known, or could ever imagine it. The faults of the people are not popular vices; at least they are not such as grow out of what we used to take to be the English temper and character. The greatest number have a sort of an heavy, lumpish acquiescence in government, without much respect or esteem for those that compose it. I really cannot avoid making some very unpleasant prognosticks from this disposition of the people. I think many of the symptoms must have struck you; I will mention one or two, that are to me very remarkable. You must know, that at Bristol we grow, as an election interest, and even as a party interest, rather stronger than we were when I was chosen. We have just now a majority in the corporation. In this state of matters, what, think you, have they done? They have voted their freedom to Lord Sandwich, and Lord Suffolk !— to the first at the very moment, when the American privateers were domineering in the Irish sea, and taking the Bristol traders in the Bristol channel ;-to the latter, when his remonstrances on the subject of captures were the jest of Paris and of Europe. This fine step was taken, it seems, in honour of the zeal of these two profound statesmen in the prosecution of John the Painter; so totally negligent are they of every thing essential, and so long and so deeply affected with trash the most low and contemptible; just as if they thought the merit of Sir John Fielding was the most shining point in the character of great ministers, in the most critical of all times, and, of all others, the most deeply interesting to the commercial world! My best friends in the corporation had no |