EDMUND BURKE TO CAPTAIN MERCER.

DEAR SIR, London, February 26th, 1790. THE speedy answer I return to your letter, I hope will convince you of the high value I set upon the regard you are so good to express for me, and the obliging trouble which you take to inform my judgment upon 'matters upon which we are all very deeply concerned. I think perfectly well of your heart and your principles, and of the strength of your natural understanding, which, according to your opportunities, you have not been wanting in pains to improve. If you are mistaken, it is perhaps owing to the impression almost inevitably made by the various careless conversations which we are engaged in through life; conversations in which those who propagate their doctrines have not been called upon for much reflection concerning their end and tendency; and in which those who imperceptibly imbibe the doctrines taught, are not required, by a particular duty, very closely to examine them, or to act from the impressions they receive, I am obliged to act, and am therefore bound to call my principles and sentiments to a strict account. As far as my share of a public trust goes, I am in trust religiously to maintain the rights and properties of all descriptions of people in the possession which they legally hold; and in the rule by which alone they can be secure in any possession. I do not find myself at liberty, either as a man, or as a trustee for men, to take a vested property from one man and to give it to another,

because I think that the portion of one is too great, and that of another too small. From my first juvenile rudiments of speculative study to the gray hairs of my present experience, I have never learned any thing else. I cannot be taught any thing else by reason; and when force comes, I shall consider whether I am to submit to it, or how I am to resist it. This I am sure of, that an early guard against the manifest tendency of a contrary doctrine is the only way by which those who love order can be prepared to resist such force.

The calling men by the names of " pampered and luxurious prelates," &c. is in you no more than a mark of your dislike to intemperate and idle expense; but in others it is used for other purposes. It is often used to extinguish the sense of justice in our minds, and the natural feelings of humanity in our bosoms. Such language does not mitigate the cruel effects of reducing men of opulent condition, and their innumerable dependants to the last distress. If I were to adopt the plan of a spoliatory reformation, I should probably employ such language; but it would aggravate instead of extenuating my guilt in overturning the sacred principles of property.

Sir, I say that church and state, and human society too, for which church and state are made, are subverted by such doctrines, joined to such practices, as leave no foundation for property in long possession. My dear Captain Mercer, it is not my calling the use you make of your plate in your house, either of dwelling or of prayer,

"pageantry and hypocrisy," that can justify me in taking from you your own property, and your own liberty to use your own property according to your own ideas of ornament. When you find

me attempting to break into your house to take your plate, under any pretence whatsoever, but most of all under pretence of purity of religion and Christian charity, shoot me for a robber and a hypocrite, as in that case I shall certainly be. The "true Christian religion" never taught me any such practices, nor did the religion of my nature, nor any religion, nor any law.

Let those who never abstained from a full meal, and as much wine as they could swallow, for a single day of their whole lives, satirize "luxurious and pampered prelates" if they will. Let them abuse such prelates, and such lords, and such squires, provided it be only to correct their vices. I care not much about the language of this moral satire, if they go no further than satire. But there are occasions, when the language of Falstaff, reproaching the Londoners, whom he robbed in their way to Canterbury, with gorbellies and their city luxury, is not so becoming.

It is not calling the landed estates, possessed by old prescriptive rights, the "accumulations of ignorance and superstition," that can support me in shaking that grand title, which supersedes all other title, and which all my studies of general jurisprudence have taught me to consider as one principal cause of the formation of states; I mean the ascertaining and securing prescription. But

these are donations made in the " ages of igno rance and superstition." Be it so. It proves that these donations were made long ago; and this is prescription: and this gives right and title. It is possible that many estates about you were originally obtained by arms, that is, by violence, a thing almost as bad as superstition, and not much short of ignorance: but it is old violence; and that which might be wrong in the beginning, is consecrated by time, and becomes lawful. This may be superstition in me, and ignorance; but I had rather remain in ignorance and superstition than be enlightened and purified out of the first principles of law and natural justice. I never will suffer you, if I can help it, to be deprived of the well earned fruits of your industry, because others may want your fortune more than you do, and may have laboured, and do now labour, in vain, to acquire even a subsistence. Nor on the contrary, if success had less smiled on your endeavours, and you had come home insolvent, would I take from any "pampered and luxurious lord” in your neighbourhood one acre of his land, or one spoon from his sideboard, to compensate your losses, though incurred (as they would have been incurred) in the course of a well spent, virtuous, and industrious life. God is the distributor of his own blessings. I will not impiously attempt to usurp his throne, but will keep according to the subordinate place and trust in which he has stationed me, to secure the order of property which I find established in my country. No guiltless man has ever been,

nor ever will, I trust, be ever able to say with truth, that he has been obliged to retrench a dish at his table for any reformations of mine.

You pay me the compliment to suppose me a foe to tyranny and oppression, and you are therefore surprised at the sentiments I have lately delivered in parliament. I am that determined foe to tyranny, or I greatly deceive myself in my character and I am sure I am an idiot in my conduct. It is because I am, and mean to continue so, that I abominate the example of France for this country. I know that tyranny seldom attacks the poor, never in the first instance. They are not its proper prey. It falls on the wealthy and the great, whom by rendering objects of envy, and otherwise obnoxious to the multitude, they may more easily destroy; and, when they are destroyed, that multitude which was led to that ill work by the arts of bad men, is itself undone for ever.

I hate tyranny, at least I think so; but I hate it most of all where most are concerned in it. The tyranny of a multitude is a multiplied tyranny. If, as society is constituted in these large countries of France and England, full of unequal property, I must make my choice (which God avert!) between the despotism of a single person or of the many, my election is made. As much injustice and tyranny has been practised in a few months by a French democracy, as in all the arbitrary monarchies in Europe in the forty years of my observation. I speak of public, glaring acts of tyranny; I say nothing of the common effects of old abusive governments, because I do

VOL. VI.

PP