TO DR. LAURENCE. MY DEAR LAURENCE, Dec. 9, 1796. The Budget day was a matter of great speculation, Pitt rather less insolent-Fox as furious as I expected. Grey has come forward and taken a sort of lead-Sheridan heads, I suppose, a corps de reserve. Tell me in three lines your remarks upon the general temper of the House on that night and on this. A fine business this of La Fayette. Good God! among all the imprisonments, confiscations, murders, and exiles, to find no one object for a British House of Commons to take up but Citizen de la Fayette. I see Fox proposes the repeal of the two Anti-Jacobin Acts -What do you think of making your debût upon them? Lord Fitzwilliam concurred in them. Unless perhaps you think that that ground is a little worn out. I think the taxes on the whole, if likely to be productive, are unexceptionable-The house-tax is the worst. Why did not Pitt tax the lower teas ?-a small duty would not have been felt, and surely tea-drinking, though it would be idle to restrain it, is not an object of direct encouragement amongst the lower orders of the people. Good night. My [pains] have raged all yesterday, all last night, and a great part of this day with tenfold fury, but a vomiting came on me, and I am a good deal easier this evening. Once more adieu. Mrs. Burke's affectionate compliments. I wrote to you by the coach yesterday. Yours ever, EDMUND Burke. TO DR. LAURENCE. Bath, Feb. 10th, 1797. MY DEAR LAURENCE, At I have been very weak for some days past, and so giddy that I am hardly able to walk across the room. the first coming on of this bad symptom I was not able to do so much-so that I am not without hopes that it may go off, though, take me on the whole, I am without all comparison worse than when I came hither, but yet the violent flatus's have not been quite so troublesome to me since the complaint in my head is come on. They have taken the town, and are now attacking the citadel-But enough of this. The affair of Mrs. Hastings has something in it that might move a third Cato to a horse-laugh, though the means, I am afraid, by which she and her paramour have made that and all the sums which they have got by their own dishonesty, or lost by the dishonesty of others or the confusion of the times, [might cause] the laughing Democritus to weep as much as his opponent: but let whoever laugh or weep, nothing plaintive will make Mr. Pitt or Mr. Dundas blush for having rewarded the criminal whom they prosecuted, and sent me and nineteen members of parliament to prosecute, for every mode of peculation and oppression, with a greater sum of money than ever yet was paid to any one British subject, except the Duke of Marlbro', for the most acknowledged public services, and not to him if you take Blenheim, which was an expense and not a charge, out of the account. All this and ten times more will not hinder them from adding the peerage, to make up the insufficiency of his pecuniary rewards. My illness, which came the more heavily and suddenly upon me by this flagitious act, whilst I was preparing a representation upon it, has hindered me, as you know, from doing justice to that act, to Mr. Hastings, to myself, to the House of Lords, to the House of Commons, and to the unhappy people of India, on that subject. It has made me leave the letters that I was writing to my Lord Chancellor and Mr. Dundas, as well as my petition to the House of Commons, unfinished. But you remember, likewise, that when I came hither at the beginning of last summer, I repeated to you that dying request which I now reiterate, that if at any time, without the danger of ruin to yourself, or over-distracting you from your professional and parliamentary duties, you can place in a short point of view, and support by the documents in print and writing which exist with me, or with Mr. Troward, or yourself, the general merits of this transaction, you will erect a cenotaph most grateful to my shade, and will clear my memory from that load which the East India Company, King, Lords, and Commons, and in a manner the whole British nation (God forgive them), have been pleased to lay as a monument upon my ashes. I am as conscious as any person can be of the little value of the good or evil opinion of mankind to the t part of me that shall remain, but I believe it is of some moment not to leave the fame of an evil example, of the expenditure of fourteen years' labour, and of not less (taking the expense of the suit, and the costs paid to Mr. Hastings, and the parliamentary charges) than near £300,000, This is a terrible example, and it is not acquittance at all to a public man, who, with all the means of undeceiving himself if he was wrong, has thus with such incredible pains, both of himself and others, persevered in the persecution of innocence and merit. It is, I say, no excuse at all to urge in his apology, that he has had enthusiastic good intentions. In reality, you know that I am no enthusiast, but [according] to the powers that God has given me, a sober and reflecting man. I have not even the other very bad excuse, of acting from personal resentment, or from the sense of private injury-never having received any; nor can I plead ignorance, no man ever having taken more pains to be informed. Therefore I say, Remember. Parliament is shortly to resume the broken thread of its business-if what it is doing deserves that name. I feel the same anxiety for your success as if what has been the best part of me was in your place, and engaged as he would have been in the same work, and I presume to take the same liberty with you that I would have done with him. The plan you have formed, like all the plans of such comprehensive minds as yours, is vast, but it will require all the skill of a mind as judicious and selecting as yours to bring it within the compass of the apprehensions and dispositions of those upon whom it is to operate. There would be difficulty in giving to it its just extent in the very opening, if you could count even upon one person able and willing to support you; but as you will be attacked by one side of the House with all its force, reluctantly heard and totally abandoned by the other, if you are permitted any reply at. all, a thing which under similar circumstances has been refused to me, it will not be heard by the exhausted attention of that House, which is hardly to be kept alive, except to what concerns the factious interests of the two discordant chiefs, who with different personal views, but on the same political principles, divide and distract the nation. But all this I must leave to your judgment, which, with less parlia mentary experience, has infinitely more natural power than mine ever had, when it was at the best. This only I shall beg leave to suggest, that if it should be impossible (as perhaps it may be) to bring your opening speech within any narrow compass, such as two hours or thereabouts, that you will make your reply as sharp, and pointed at the personal attacks that I am sure will be made upon you, as you can; and that you will content yourself with reasserting the substance of the facts, declaring your readiness to enter into them if ever you are furnished with the means. I have no doubt that in the course of the debate, or in this session, you will find opportunities to bring forth what your discretion may reserve on the present occasion for a future one, when you may be at more liberty. Though I am sensible enough of the difficulty of finding a place in debate for any of those who are not arranged in the line of battle, abreast or ahead, in support of the one or the other of the great admirals. My dear friend, you will have the goodness to excuse the interposition of an exhausted and sickly judgment like mine, at its best infirm, with a mind like yours, the most robust that ever was made, and in the vigour of its faculties; but allowance is made for the anxious solicitude of those whom sex, age, or debility exclude from a share in those combats in which they take a deep concern. Yours ever, EDMUND BURKE. 12th February. P. S. My health continues as it was when I began this letter. I have read Erskine's pamphlet, which is better done than I expected to find it. But it is little more than a digest of the old matter, and a proposal to remove all our evils by a universal popular representation at home, by giving to France at once all that we have thought proper to offer, on supposition of concession, and all that she has chosen. to demand without any regard to our concession, together with a cordial connexion with her and a total alienation from other powers, as a pledge of future peace. This, together with bringing Mr. Fox into power, forms the whole of the pamphlet. This would certainly make short work of the treaty. This pamphlet does not make your motion the less necessary, and without a reference to it you may keep it in your eye. Mrs. Burke, thank God, is better of her cold: She salutes you. DEAR SIR, I have suppressed the newspapers-He knows nothing of this disagreeable business; but I am in hopes, from Dr. King's letter to me, that an injunction will be laid early tomorrow, to prevent the sale, and that you all will pursue such rigorous measures against Swift and Owen, as the law will enable you to do. I had a letter by the coach, informing me of it. Will you beg of Doctor King to write to Mr. Burke to-morrow, and tell him what he has done in Rivington's business. Yours truly, TO DR. LAURENCE. E. NAGLE. MY DEAR LAUrence, March 16th, 1797. It is very unlucky that the reputation of a speaker in the House of Commons depends far less on what he says there, than on the account of it in the newspapers. Your speeches, which are made late in the night, supposing no foul play (which however I suspect), are taken by the journeymen note-makers, and when there is not room for them in the paper, even if they were able to follow you. In the late instance, however, this was unavoidable, since you spoke to vindicate the reputation of your friend, which no consideration of prudence with regard to yourself could prevail on you to omit. As you stated [it] in your letter, it must have been very impressive, and as honourable to your abilities as it was to the goodness of your heart. As to Mr. Fox's speeches, he seemed to have laid [aside] his abilities along with all decency, liberality, and fairness; and placed himself in the rank of the Adairs, the Bastards, and those gentlemen whose cause he supported, and to whose understandings, "by an extraordinary alacrity in sinking," he chose to level himself. What he said of me was nothing more than his old song, frequently sung, though with a little more liberality in my own presence, and always responded to without a possibility of reply. The major part of his topics have been answered by me in print, and the public must |