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 LETTER MISSIVE 
 
 TO 
 
 LORD HOLLAND.
 
 S. GoMiell, Printer, Little Queen Street, London.
 
 LETTER MISSIVE 
 
 »o» 
 
 SIR PHILIP FRANCIS, K. B. 
 
 TO 
 
 LORD HOLLAND. 
 
 EX ABUNDANT!. 
 
 Dated 10th June, 
 Published 1st July. 
 
 \ 1816. 
 * » 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 PRINTED FOR RIDGWAYS, 179, PICCADILLY. 
 1816.
 
 
 
 • 
 
 
 
 
 1 .v':: \m 
 
 ■
 
 5V37<> 
 
 to 
 
 LORD HOLLAND. 
 
 
 E.v abundanti. 
 
 After some severe warnings to quit this te- 
 nement of clay, and with sundry good rea- 
 sons to be as willing to change my state as 
 a virgin turned of forty, there is but one 
 thing left to reconcile me to a removal. For 
 my own credit and nothing else, I should 
 like to leave a memorial to those, who are to 
 follow me in my own line, and to their chil- 
 dren, legitimate or natural, as it may hap- 
 pen, that, since" I have had an opportunity 
 of observing others, and knowing you, a 
 voluntary attachment grew with my know- 
 ledge of you. This affection was not plant- 
 ed or trained, but came of itself and has 
 thriven of its own accord. But when, with 
 a sight sharpened by experience, t examined 
 your principles and conduct as a public per- 
 il
 
 son, though possibly subject to deviations, 
 which have escaped me, impression changed 
 into conviction and is now the final act of 
 my understanding. Some men have pas- 
 sions in their heads and no where else; 
 mine are in my heart and from that source 
 all the ebbing intellect I pretend to is de- 
 rived. The Roman language thought, as I 
 do, that true wisdom, inseparable from ge- 
 nerous action, is not a native of the brain, 
 and is much more likely to die in the skull 
 than to live there. The exact sciences be- 
 long to intense thought and undisturbed me- 
 dilation. For a wise man, in the sense of 
 active zeal for the good of others, the Ro- 
 mans had an expression of their own, and 
 could not have a better than homo cordatus. 
 For a fool or a madman, the appropriated 
 term was vceors. For peace and harmony 
 on earth, their supplications and sacrifices, 
 prescribed by Lawgivers and Magistrates, 
 not by Priests, were offered to their gods in 
 the Temple of Concord. As a demand on be- 
 lief, or a tax on credulity, that mere mytho- 
 logy was full as extravagant as any other ; 
 still there was some sense and meaning at 
 the bottom of it. It is not quite an act of
 
 vulgar ignorance or superstition to deify the 
 virtues, by which the faculties of eminent 
 men have been instructed, as well as animat- 
 ed, to inform and enlighten mankind. You 
 see I am giving you the pedigree of your 
 abilities. As to myself, I am old enough 
 to be my own ancestor. My actions can dis- 
 grace nobody else, except a Select Committee 
 of the House of Commons, who signed the 
 record of my conduct in India, with the 
 names of Burke and Fox, and Grey at the 
 head of it. We all wish to live somewhat 
 longer than our lives, more or less, accord- 
 ing to the measure of our merits or preten- 
 sions. My name can be of no use to you, 
 but yours will sustain it. That argument, 
 though I have many others, would be enough 
 to make me adhere to you. The feeble pa- 
 rasite clings to the supporting power, and, 
 when it drops off, leaves the noble stem un- 
 injured. I feel and know too well that my 
 disposing mind is in disorder as well as de- 
 cay, and least of all equal to the regular 
 rules of method and connexion. You are 
 too good a Spaniard, however, to dislike an 
 Olla, or not to relish some of its ingredients. 
 Take the following items by themselves, and 
 
 jb 2
 
 4 
 
 not as if they led or belonged to one ano- 
 ther. On the whole, though you are not a 
 party to the bargain, I entreat you to make 
 the best of it, as you would do of the last 
 testament of an old friend, who had left his 
 affairs in confusion, and appointed you to be 
 his executor. 
 
 In the ordinary union of two individuals 
 of a different rank in life, there can be no- 
 thing very noxious to either of them, ex- 
 cepting the partial or mutual effect of evil 
 communication. When unequal nations 
 profess, what only one of them intends and 
 expects, to unite on even terms, it must be, 
 as it has been, by fraud and compulsion, 
 acting more or less on special profligacy and 
 public weakness. No contract between a 
 dupe and an impostor can bind them very 
 long, no form of marriage can make them 
 one flesh. Their embrace, while it lasts, is 
 misery to one of them, if not to both. In 
 the first instance, the stronger party strangles 
 the weaker, then dies slowly of the dead 
 bodv. Such a nominal union could be no- 
 thing but a real surrender to superior power, 
 with a quantum sitfficit of individual sale and 
 purchase, by direct corruption, under the 
 
 3
 
 equivalent name of compensation. Having 
 sold their honour as well as their Country, 
 some for a title, some for a sinecure with 
 a salary, and others for a pension with- 
 out a service or an office, to be paid by the 
 very country they have sold ; they desert the 
 victim of their vices, to court another resi- 
 dence, where excepting those, who attend a 
 public duty, a majority of the rest must stoop 
 for admission into common societv, or be 
 left to live with one another. Of this Island 
 it is still generally true that, whether you 
 look up to the top or down to the bottom, 
 whether vou mount with the froth or sink 
 with the sediment, no factitious character, no 
 titular rank can support a perfectly degraded 
 name. But what is this contract, and how 
 has it been executed ? In other treaties, if 
 a doubt arises, it is generally decided in 
 favour of that contracting party, which has 
 confided most in the good faith of the other, 
 and reserved no means of righting itself. In 
 this, the superior is the interpreter and con- 
 strues as he pleases. He cannot find Eman- 
 cipation in the bond, and he looks for it no 
 where else. As if the imprescriptible rights 
 of millions, and all the hopes of equality, 
 
 B 3
 
 
 
 held out to five-sixths of the population of 
 Ireland, were annihilated by the omission of 
 a word in a union on equal terms. Then 
 comes the misery, which drives to madness,- 
 and the ultimate argument for the suppression 
 of despair ; not to relieve or console, not to 
 cure the disorder, not to soften the symptoms 
 or assuage the pain, but to abate a nuisance by 
 pulling down the building, and extirpating, 
 as vermin, the native owners of the House. 
 
 But these labours are in vain. I hope and 
 I believe so. The eternal claim of right 
 against wrong may be suspended, but cannot 
 be extinguished. The debt of honour, not 
 the less due because it is not recoverable by 
 process of law ; the silent condition, for 
 which the equivalent has been paid, and 
 binding in the sense, in which it was 
 understood and accepted ; — the mute pro- 
 mise, to which you say there is no appeal, 
 because it was not engrossed on parchment, 
 with your hand and seal to the deed, and 
 witnesses to the delivery ; — these moral obli- 
 gations belong to the essence of our nature. 
 For a time you may discard or forget, but to 
 efface them from the human mind is impos- 
 sible. In Ireland, they are only in abey-
 
 ance. The weapons of power without con- 
 science cannot finally prevail, but by the 
 utter destruction of its object. To vacate the 
 demand, you must extirpate the being. But 
 there is a power above yours. The com- 
 mand, which you torture and crucify every 
 day, will rise again and against you. The 
 letter liilleth, but the Spirit givcth life. 
 
 To complete the mockery, as well as the 
 
 breach of faith among men, a question of 
 
 civil right and common justice is decided by 
 
 a religious distinction. " You believe in the 
 
 ~ real presence. We believe only in dogmas, 
 
 * which we all understand, since they fall 
 1 within the range of common sense and 
 \ the compass of right reason. Ergo, you are 
 \ not fit to be trusted by us, in the higher 
 ( offices of Society, though we trust you in 
 ' many others, which require as full a con- 
 ' fidence in your good faith, and fidelity to 
 ' the established government, as those, from 
 e which you are excluded. You acknow- 
 ' ledge the spiritual jurisdiction of a foreign 
 
 * tribunal over questions of faith only, or in 
 ' cases exclusively subject to that con- 
 
 * science, which the Deity has not given to 
 ' his creatures for nothing ; therefore, you 
 
 B4
 
 <( cannot be loyal subjects to the King, to 
 " whom you are bound by all the oaths and 
 " by all the moral obligations, whjch are 
 f held sacred in your own religion, and in 
 C( every religion that exists on earth, and 
 " which we are very well contented to pro- 
 " fess." 
 
 I will not submit to hold a trembling ba- 
 lance between the extremes of suffering right 
 and triumphant wrong; to blink the true ques- 
 tion, or to spare, the aggressors. — These are 
 the pretences of hypocrisy, not the motives 
 or result of honest conviction — the principles 
 of devils, pursuing their prey with whips of 
 scorpions, and fighting and destroying still, 
 under the pretended banners of religion. At 
 sight of such audacious profligacy with such 
 means to enforce it, the human heart, if there 
 be a human feeling left in it, recoils with ab- 
 horrence. 
 
 If the happiness or even the repose of 
 Ireland were your object, the road to it, as 
 you well know, is open and direct, with or 
 without what you call Emancipation. By 
 that very term, which will not give way, if 
 you understand your own language, you have 
 made a voluntary engagement, a strict union.
 
 9 
 
 with five or six millions of Slaves, and von 
 refuse to set them free. But that is not the 
 question now. In this country, the truth 
 about Ireland is little spoken out of Parlia- 
 ment ; and, if it were generally spoken, not 
 at all likelv to be listened to or understood. 
 A few honourable men allude to facts with a 
 caution, which it is in vain to call prudence. 
 They give you their opinions honestly and 
 firmly too, but still with a useless reserve of 
 discretion without hope ; not, as the case 
 demands, by arguments, in the last resort, 
 appealing to despair. What they say is true ; 
 but none of them, as far as my information 
 reaches, tell vou the whole truth ; not even 
 Henry Grattan, who, quoad hoc, is oracular; 
 and who assuredly never shrinks from his 
 purpose for want of tenacity, or of Spartan 
 fortitude to meet any question or any adver- 
 sary in front. Newport and Ponsonby would 
 speak out, if they thought it, as I do, safe to 
 their object and not hazardous to their cause, 
 to go the full length of their knowledge. 
 These men, I well know, are not to be awed 
 or restrained by self-interest or apprehension. 
 But their language, e're long, must be suited 
 to the exigency. The necessity of the case
 
 10 
 
 will overtake and compel them. They are 
 too wise to wait till the horse himself takes 
 the bit in his teeth and refuses the curb ; 
 when no alternative will be left to the rider, 
 but to be thrown from his seat or to kill or 
 cripple the noble animal that carries him. 
 
 Let Government begin with giving or 
 paying a moderate Salary to the Catholic 
 Clergy of Ireland, who are, more or less, 
 mere beggars. That measure would cost 
 very little, and would be well worth the pur- 
 chase at any expense. Compare it with that 
 of a standing army, sufficient to compel sub- 
 mission, and you will soon find that, besides 
 wasting the object, an armed government 
 squanders more money in a day, than pru- 
 dent laws and a just administration cost in 
 twenty. This motion, smooth gliding with- 
 out step, would go a great way, and with 
 the concurrence of another act, sine qud non, 
 would secure to you the peaceable attach- 
 ment of Ireland. You expect me to say Eman- 
 cipation. No. Not that I mean to violate 
 or abandon that moral obligation, that poli- 
 tical wisdom, that real though unwritten 
 contract. I cannot build as the bees do. 
 Good government, with all its sweetness, is
 
 11 
 
 a house, not a comb, and must be raised from 
 a foundation. I say that tranquillity may be 
 established in Ireland, without Emancipation, 
 but never, never without the abolition or 
 abatement of Catholic tithes to pay a Pro- 
 testant Establishment, for no service in return, 
 adverse to their faith, to their prejudices, to 
 their religious madness if you will. I know 
 the objections and the difficulties, particularly 
 how to provide that the owner shall not in- 
 crease the rent in proportion to the relief 
 given by the Legislature to the tenant. 
 My answer is, that, when wrong is to be 
 done, no objections are regarded, no difficul- 
 ties are insurmountable. Speak, out. Have 
 you deliberated, and are you resolved to 
 murder these tenants of hogsties, which you 
 call cabins, if when they have fed their own 
 Clergy they should refuse to pay tithes to a 
 Protestant parson, whom they never see and 
 seldom hear of but on the day of exaction, 
 and then only by his true representatives, 
 who glean all when they can gather no more. 
 You sav, and I admit, there are exceptions. 
 Then you help me to prove by irresistible 
 inference the truth of the proposition, which 
 you deny in terms. 
 
 I pass in silence over the deplorable mi-
 
 12 
 
 sery, the food taken from famine, from which 
 the tribute is extorted, though I have seen 
 it, quce ipse miserrima. The tyranny, I 
 mean, is inflicted on the mind, the torture 
 that penetrates to the heart, where it sinks 
 and rankles, till the vessel can hold no more 
 and bursts of itself. Why ? because the 
 Catholics, the many not the very few, right 
 or wrong, are sincere. If the principle, a 
 name too often given to barbarous injustice, 
 of forcing the same tenant of a few acres of 
 bogs and potatoes, to maintain two Church 
 Establishments, could be endured on any 
 terms, the mode of the exaction would excite 
 horror, in England at least, or any where but 
 in Ireland. For mc to enter into this part 
 of the case, as I intended, would now be 
 superfluous. As well might a feeble ray be 
 added" to the meridian sun as to the light, in 
 w 7 hich the collection of Catholic tithes in 
 Ireland is exhibited, in a letter to Lord Cas- 
 tlereagh lately published here, called Ireland, 
 not England. Of the Author, who is un- 
 known to me, I shall only say what I am 
 sure of, no common man could have written 
 
 such a tract. Ovx o ru%ftjv ctvr^. 
 
 You will not, I think, suspect me of caring 
 one farthing for the trompery of either side.
 
 13 
 
 Still the difference between the parties, as 
 objects of opinion, is material. I cannot 
 laugh at a cruel impostor. Nevertheless I 
 am no determined enemy of ceremonials : 
 as human nature has been moulded, I believe 
 them to be necessary. " The quarrels and 
 " divisions about religion were evils un- 
 " known to the heathens. The reason was, 
 " because the religion of the heathen con- 
 " sisted rather in rites and ceremonies than 
 " in any constant belief." 
 
 In a spiritual sense, I know as well as 
 you, that our faith has made us whole. 
 Whether, in every other, it may not have di- 
 vided or resolved the quiescent whole into 
 hostile parts, is more than I know. On this 
 question I hope, and intend (scilicet before 
 I die), to consult my own parochial Shep- 
 herd, Doctor Andrews, of whose charity 
 and benevolence, as well as of his eloquence, 
 I have rather a higher opinion than of his 
 temporal wisdom; and so much the better. 
 Those qualities are the essence of a Christian 
 pastor, who instructs and takes care of his 
 dock, and, on that account certainly, ex- 
 cites no envy, provokes no emulation in 
 other Shepherds. I should dwell longer on ^ 
 his virtues, if I had no reason to suspect
 
 14 
 
 that it might injure his preferment. They, 
 who fatten by their faith, have a laudable 
 antipathy to lean sheep. 
 
 I see you are at a loss for the tendency 
 of so much preface. What relation has it to 
 the title and subject of your Letter ? My 
 answer is, that similarity is not included in 
 connexion. Without a visible resemblance, 
 cause and effect are strictly related and be- 
 long to one another. An exorbitant price 
 and a real scarcity in one year may be traced 
 back to a ruinous abundance and cheapness 
 in the preceding. We know, or w T e shall 
 soon know it by experience, that the pro- 
 position, so stated and understood, does not 
 involve a contradiction. To understand me, 
 you must listen for a moment to the history 
 of my mind for some years past ; a branch 
 of knowledge, which, I believe, Lord Ba- 
 con, if he had thought of it, would not 
 have omitted among the desiderata in 
 science. Time has not yet made me garru- 
 lous, whatever it may do hereafter. My 
 recital concerning myself shall be inflicted 
 on you, as if it were an operation, with 
 compassion for the patient ; with the brevity 
 of impatience and the rapidity of youth ;
 
 15 
 
 for I fee), or fancy that I am gradually 
 growing young again, in my way back to 
 infancy. The taper that burns into the soc- 
 ket, flashes more than once before it dies. 
 I would not long outlive myself if I could 
 help it, like some of my old friends, who 
 pretend to be alive, when, to my certain 
 knowledge, they have been dead these seven 
 years. 
 
 The fact is, my mind sickens and revolts 
 at the scenes of public depravity, of personal 
 baseness, and of ruinous folly, little less 
 than universal, which have passed before 
 us, not in dramatic representation, but in 
 real action, since the year 1792, in the go- 
 vernment of this once flourishing, as well as 
 glorious kingdom. In that period, a deadly 
 revolution has taken place in the moral cha- 
 racter of the nation, and even in the instinct 
 of the gregarious multitude. Passion of any 
 kind, if it existed, might excite action. 
 With still many generous exceptions, the 
 body of the country is lost in apathy and in- 
 difference ; sometimes strutting on stilts, for 
 the most part grovelling on its belly — no life- 
 blood in the heart ; and, instead of reason 
 or reflection, a caput mortuum for a head-
 
 m 
 
 piece. Of all revolutions, this one is the 
 worst, because it makes any other impos- 
 sible. Of the events I allude to, of which 
 you and they, who survive me, will be the 
 victims, 1 consider myself now as nothing 
 but a witness, competent if not credible; 
 and, though careless of life, certainly de- 
 sirous that my testimony should not be in- 
 tercepted by sudden death: The warning 
 conveyed in it, I believe, will come too 
 late. In a case, however, which, to others, 
 may appear not utterly desperate, any chance 
 is to be taken. On my own account, I have 
 no interest in the result. I look back with 
 disgust, and forward with dismay, not for 
 mvself. but for some who are to succeed me. 
 Of the retrospect I know the worst, but 
 not of the prospect ; but the gloom is not 
 lessened by its obscurity. No eye, lit to 
 measure and estimate, as well as see, can 
 look steadfastly at such a view without 
 terror. A few instances in evidence, then 
 to consolation and repose among the monu- 
 ments of science and fragments of art, by 
 which ancient Greece still excites the curio- 
 sity, and confirms the admiration of man- 
 kind. This little island, too, after a lapse
 
 17 
 
 of ages, may possibly be visited, not by artists 
 in search of falling temples and broken sta- 
 tues, but by statesmen and philosophers, from 
 another hemisphere or some distant land, 
 whose curiosity shall be excited by moulder- 
 ing manuscripts, in a language dead and for- 
 gotten, or by vague unauthenticated tradition, 
 to inquire and discover, if it be possible, 
 what the extinguished character of England 
 once was, and what proofs of it have been 
 saved from the wreck of time, or escaped 
 from the armed force of a Vandal. If, then, 
 their deep laborious researches should be 
 rewarded with success, what can it amount 
 to, but to recover some traces of broken 
 laws, of mutilated institutions, of violated 
 charters, of rights and principles buried in 
 oblivion, and the whole fabric of an an- 
 tiquated constitution degraded and sunk into 
 unintelligible ruin? 
 
 In my long intimacy with Edmund 
 Burke, to me a great and venerable name, it 
 could not escape me, nor did he wish to con- 
 ceal it, that Cicero was the model, on which 
 he laboured to form his own character, in elo- 
 quence, in policy, in ethics, and philosophy. 
 With this view, he acted on a principle of
 
 IB 
 
 general imitation only, and, in my opinion, 
 infinitely surpassed the original. Yet, in the 
 year 1790, when the French revolution had 
 taken effect, the first thing he did was to 
 discard one of the wisest political maxims to 
 be found in his archetype, and by him at 
 least to be revered as the instruction of a 
 master : " Pere^ritil qfflc'mm est minime in 
 " aliend esse republied cuiiusum." As long 
 as the French were content and desirous, as 
 they were assuredly at that period, to settle 
 their own future constitution among them- 
 selves, and within the limits of their own 
 territory, we had neither right nor interest 
 to meddle with their proceedings, much less 
 to coerce them. Under various pretences 
 abroad, it was determined in the closet, that 
 there should be a war, nominally of kings 
 against a republic, but really of military 
 despots against the freedom of Europe. 
 So we have had the war with all its con- 
 sequences; ex Uldfonte. But the weather- 
 beaten vessel has weathered the storm, kept 
 afloat by the pump, and driving under jury- 
 masts. Existence on terms, on which, in 
 other times, the nation would have refused 
 to exist, is said to be triumphant. We have 
 military fame to show for the loss or surren-
 
 19 
 
 der of real honour, of general happiness, of 
 personal liberty, and national independence. 
 On the extending scale of the war, taxation 
 to support it grew with the demand, and se- 
 verity, equivalent to inquisition, to enforce 
 the levy and ensure the collection. All other 
 security gave way to the security of the re- 
 venue. And how could it be otherwise, 
 when England undertook to pay the com- 
 ponent members of a venal alliance for fight- 
 ing their own battles and defending their 
 own cause ? At this day, the most illustrious 
 House of Austria, by loan, without subsidy, 
 owes us fourteen millions sterling, with full 
 as much inclination as means to repay it. At 
 all events, her gratitude in future may be of 
 just as much use to us as it has been hereto- 
 tore. These, and many others, were only the 
 incipient evils of the war. Increase of taxes, 
 wherever a source or an object could be dis- 
 covered; a thousand millions of debt, gather- 
 ing like an imposthume; a voluntary war 
 with America, which the clamour of your 
 manufacturers forced you to abandon; the 
 industry of the country unpaid; the. la- 
 bourer and artist converted into beggars, 
 and driven to the parish, that is, to the land, 
 
 c 2
 
 20 
 
 for support ; an act of bankruptcy incurred 
 by the avowed authority, if not command, 
 of Mr. Pitt, under the misnomer of an order 
 in council, and certainly in collusion with 
 Government ; the whole metallic currency 
 of the united kingdom annihilated or car- 
 ried out of it ; and finally a deluge of paper, 
 immoderately inflaming the nominal price of 
 every thing saleable, without which, how- 
 ever, the interest of the debt could no more 
 have been even nominally liquidated than 
 the capital, much less could the ravenous ex- 
 penses of the war have been provided for. 
 At last came peace, armed at all points, and 
 issuing like Pallas, without her wisdom, from 
 an empty skull, with all and singular the 
 furniture and properties of war, pride, pomp, 
 and circumstance, except one, a singular 
 omission of an indispensible ingredient— 
 icithout a foreign enemy! Now, admitting, 
 as I do, that a standing army of 150,000 
 men, for the service or security of an island, 
 cannot be kept up, in peace at least, without 
 some hostile object : if that object be not 
 foreign, it must be domestic ; not, perhaps, 
 to be accomplished per solium, or at once ; 
 for I have kept too much company with can-
 
 21 
 
 dour, not to have got a trick of it myself; 
 but more effectually and securely by mea- 
 sured and unsuspected gradations. Whatever 
 may be the present purpose or future appli- 
 cation of such a formidable pacific establish- 
 ment, it is against my nature to suspect, as 
 it shakes my reason to believe, that any 
 army, composed only of men born on Bri- 
 tish or Irish ground, would advisedly concur 
 in the execution of a foreign plot, if it were 
 fairly open to their view, or submit to a word 
 of command to enslave their country, by 
 laying it prostrate at the feet of a right en- 
 tirely military king, who, with a passionate 
 propensity to fighting, may be always out of 
 danger, and know nothing of a battle but by 
 hearsay from his equerries, or a report of the 
 Tower guns. On these terms, personal 
 bravery is one of the safest and most inno- 
 cent ingredients in the physical composition 
 of a king. 
 
 " Louis les animant du feu de sou courage. 
 
 " Se plaint de sa grandeur, qui I 'attache an rivage." 
 
 But time is the greatest innovator ; and who 
 is there now to calculate or compute how 
 soon, or how late, the once generous mind 
 
 c 3
 
 22 
 
 of England may be trained by military forms 
 to military principles, by the habits of an 
 exclusive society, and the empty discourses 
 
 > 
 
 of a profession ; by gaudy dresses ; by trum- 
 peters with the subsistence of a parish on 
 their backs ; by martial music from Ger- 
 many ; and, beyond all other causes of hu- 
 man degradation, by the deadly disuse of 
 reason; by the substitution of discipline for 
 volition ; fixed fate, instead of ,free will ; 
 and, by the origin of all evil, personal re- 
 straint without a rational occupation ? He, 
 who has served his time to his trade, and 
 learned to perfection how to kneel, stoop, 
 and stand, has received his education, and 
 will never be called upon or disposed to 
 practise any thing else. The evident tend- 
 ency, if not the purpose of the peace, as 
 well as the war, was to change the natural 
 appropriated character of Britain, the vital 
 principle of her existence in safety as well as 
 eminence, ever since Providence commanded 
 Nature to confine us to an island, and to 
 make this island an appendage to Germany ; 
 to renounce or abandon the insulated station 
 of a power, maritime nar ifyxw ; to exchange 
 the native dignity and security of our sepa^
 
 23 
 
 ration from the continental world, tor the 
 sake of an unnatural, though delightful, con- 
 nexion with a softer climate, the sweets of 
 which are wafted to us every day by gentle 
 gales from the north-east, and for the tender 
 mercies of a military government ; to sacri- 
 fice our island a living victim on a barbarous 
 altar in a Black Sea ; or, in the sonorous 
 language of Lord Chatham, 
 
 " Whose voice divine still vibrates in niv ear," 
 
 Qsivj h \uv a.p<p-yj)T o^p-/i....to ] chain Britain, like 
 Prometheus, to a rock, ivhile a vulture, by 
 settlement ivithout icings, gnawed Iter to the 
 heart, and devoured her vitals. Nay, pos- 
 sibly, at last, or falling still, to make her a 
 province or a principality, a verbal difference, 
 in a republic of princes, counts, and barons, 
 and in a land of graves. I see no reason 
 why, in your time, if not in mine, Great 
 Britain, or little Britain if you will, should 
 despair of falling into the rank of a tenth 
 or twentieth electorate. 
 
 No man, that I know of, has ever doubted 
 the animal courage of a British soldier, much 
 less of a British army. That quality in gene- 
 ral is connected with habit, society, and po- 
 
 C 4
 
 24 
 
 sition. I know they are at all times ready 
 enough to fight with any enemy, in the at- 
 tack or defence of any cause. But the dis- 
 cipline of this army, on foreign service, has 
 been quoted for an example to the Martinets 
 of Europe, and elevated almost to a compa- 
 rison with the Spartan virtue, that died at 
 Thermopylae in obedience to the laws of 
 Sparta; the only motive that I can conceive 
 for the sacrifice of Leonidas, and of the noble 
 band of voluntary victims, who marched and 
 perished with him, 
 
 " Firm and unmoved, 
 " In perfect phalanx to the Dorian mood." 
 
 The Commander-in-chief, I believe, has 
 done his utmost to efFect what no human 
 skill has yet accomplished, or ever will, to 
 teach an English army to excel in any mili- 
 tary virtue but fighting — I mean out of this 
 island. On the part of II. R. H. the Duke 
 of York, I admit the intention and the merit. 
 I respect him as a gentleman, in the honour- 
 able English sense of that character. The 
 question of fact concerning the discipline of 
 the army is, whether the best intentions and 
 erlbrts on his part have succeeded or not.
 
 25 
 
 On one side, a complimentary vote affirms *; 
 on the other, the authentic records of the 
 war pronounce and publish such sentences 
 of shame and dishonour, as never were 
 exhibited against any army, since the pha- 
 lanx, or the legion, or the battalion, or any 
 other mechanical form of arrangement has 
 existed, in which soldiers have been drilled 
 by commissioned officers, not much happier 
 than their men, to murder one another. Do 
 you remember the landing at Ferrol of the 
 expedition under Sir William Pulteney ? I 
 cannot now state the particulars ; but the 
 general impression adheres to my memory, 
 and can never be effaced. Have you forgot 
 '•' when the kingdom of Ireland f was pro- 
 " claimed to be in a state of open rebellion, 
 " and with difficulty kept down by a great 
 " army paid by England, which ought to 
 " have been employed against France, but 
 " which was then in such a state, as to be 
 "formidable to every one but the enemy* ! 
 " Specific evidence is unnecessary. The state 
 " of the army is sufficient to prove what the 
 
 * Vide Appendix. 
 
 f Question, in March J 798, p. 91. 
 
 X Public orders of Sir Ralph Abercromby.
 
 20 
 
 Y condition of the country must be, where 
 " soldiers range at large, not only exempt 
 " from civil authority, but from their own 
 *' discipline. But the groans of Ireland are 
 " too distant to be heard. Her sorrows are 
 ¥ not seen." 
 
 The name of Abercromby was not made 
 to be mentioned and passed by 
 
 ** Without the meed of some melodious praise." 
 
 He died on the shores of Egypt, not, like 
 Pompey, by the order of a royal assassin, or 
 by the sinister hand of a mutilated lord of the 
 bedchamber, unqualified for office until he 
 ceased to be a man, but in the arms of vic- 
 tory over veteran troops commanded by 
 the pupils and successors of Buonaparte, 
 who had left them to their despair and Egypt 
 to its fate. The wisdom of reserving him- 
 self for greater achievements in Europe, 
 has been proved by the event. The mag- 
 nanimity of providing for his own escape 
 is not quite so apparent. It required the 
 whole force of the house of Bourbon to 
 reconcile me, for a moment, to a cessa- 
 tion of abhorrence of that man. Whe- 
 ther I viewed him in the base subversion 
 of the liberty of France, in the treachery
 
 2; 
 
 of a Consul, who degrades and crushes a 
 commonwealth intrusted to his care into a 
 furious military despotism for himself; or 
 under the infernal visage of war, with Ate 
 by his side, laying Europe waste in carnage 
 and desolation from the Seine to the Volga, 
 for the pitiful rage of being talked of, which 
 he thought was ambition; — what was he, 
 even to eyes that admired him most, but a 
 glaring meteor driven by some mad projec- 
 tile power, crossing the system of Europe 
 in every direction, destroying or disturbing 
 the constituted spheres within its vortex, 
 and on all the rest shaking pestilence and 
 war ? What could he be in my mind but a 
 frantic idiot, wielding a force irresistible with 
 the desperate animation of a daemon, or a 
 compound out of both? Take the being 
 and his existence, not by a sample or an 
 instance, but collected in their mass — look 
 at what he is, and consider what he might 
 have been — then show me, if you can, a 
 particle, I will not say of wisdom, but of 
 common sense in his plan, if he had any, or 
 of genius in the execution. I cannot suf- 
 fer the flights or flashes of a disordered 
 imagination to be imposed upon me for 
 genius. Nee ilium invemsse puto, qui
 
 28 
 
 noyi jndicavit. Compare him on his own 
 principles, not generally, for that would 
 be to make a wolf or a jackal a pendant 
 to a lion because they are all beasts of prey ; 
 but in similar circumstances, with an im- 
 measurable superiority of physical force in 
 the scale of Buonaparte — compare him with 
 the character of Julius Caesar drawn by a 
 mastermind: " Voluntateet appetitu is erat, 
 " qui nunquam partis acquiescebat, sed ad ul- 
 " teriora semper tendebat; ita tamen ut non 
 " immaturo fastidio, sed legitimis spatiis, 
 " transitus actionum gubernaret. Semper 
 " enim perfectissimas clausulas actionibus 
 '* imponebat. Itaque ille, qui, post tot victo- 
 " rias et tantam partam securitatem,reliquias 
 " belli in Hispania non contempsit, sed prae- 
 H sens subegit; post illud bellum confectum 
 " et omnia undique pacata, expeditionem in 
 $i Parthos continuo moliebatur." 
 
 Observe, however, that my idea of 
 Buonaparte was drawn, or had painted it- 
 self on the retina of my mind, from a period 
 beginning not long after the battle of Ma- 
 rengo, and ending with his banishment to 
 Elba; from which our magnanimous go- 
 vernment, acknowledging him still to be a 
 sovereign sni juris, quietly suffered him to
 
 ?9 
 
 take wing and pounce again upon his prey* 
 For all the slaughter, for all the miseries, 
 which have been inflicted on France and her 
 allies since that day, they are infinitely 
 more criminal than the man himself! Till 
 then, I saw nothing in him but a falling de- 
 vil. The pacific march to Paris, and the 
 rapid conquest of France, revive him from 
 his ashes, and place his figure on a higher 
 pedestal, and in a more imposing attitude 
 than ever. But, then, you must divide your 
 admiration between the enterprise and the re- 
 sistance; between vigour invading apparently 
 without hope and attacking without means, 
 and imbecility in possession, with all the 
 weapons to defend it except a manly heart, 
 or nerves to make use of them. Great battles 
 are won by a lucky incident, commonly called 
 chance, full as often as by skill ; or, in some 
 cases, recovered by the hand when the head 
 has been lost. To distinguish and resolve at 
 a glance, in a question instant of life and 
 death, between extreme difficulty and posi- 
 tive impossibility, i$ the surest indication of 
 a superior mind. Then I said, what for the 
 first time I thought, This is no common man. 
 The mutinies in the fleet in 1797, were 
 enough to appal not the mere generality,
 
 30 
 
 but many of the firmest individuals amongst 
 us; especially when we saw the then great- 
 est and most resolute of our leaders on the 
 ocean, the immortal Howe, bend to the 
 seamen. In the course of that transaction 
 there was another incident, the only act for 
 which I have envied any man, and never to 
 be defrauded of its fame. History is good 
 for nothing, but when it penetrates into 
 character, as it delineates the mind, as it 
 furnishes examples and excites emulation. 
 On me there is no call to appeal to the tro- 
 phies of Marathon. What interest have / 
 in the battles and follies of the Iliad? But, 
 when the Father of Eloquence, with the 
 voice of virtue, swears by the recorded tri^ 
 umphs of his country that the Athenians, 
 though defeated, had not erred — when Hec- 
 tor tells the silly soothsayer, 
 
 " Mi/ only omen is my country's safety," 
 'E/f oiuivog a^ia-rog ciy.vvs<rQoti. tupi irwrmc, 
 
 the generous lesson wants no argument to il- 
 lustrate or narrative to sustain it. In the heat 
 and fury of that formidable conflict, an Admi- 
 ral hoisted his flag in his barge, rowed up to 
 the Marlborough, one of the principal ships in 
 the mutinv, and went on-board with a few
 
 31 
 
 of his officers. He then seized their leader 
 with his own hand, and told the senseless 
 crew that he feared them not, tho' his 
 life was at their disposal; he did not believe 
 they would murder their admiral; but, at 
 all events, the first pistol fired on board 
 would be a signal to the batteries on shore to 
 open instantly on the ship and sink them 
 directly and himself along with them. This, 
 I know by its impression, was an act not an 
 effort of intrepid genuine resolution, of the 
 highest order in morals as well as fortitude, 
 and brilliant without a flaw; — not inflamed 
 or encouraged by the ardour and confusion 
 of a battle, not animated by action, but 
 proceeding in cold determined blood to a 
 deliberate sacrifice, if it should be necessary, 
 of the insulated being to the safety of the 
 community. It is difficult to want courage, 
 and madness to betray it, in the presence of 
 many witnesses. But who can positively 
 answer for himself in the face of imminent 
 danger, unless he has been tried? When 
 the first emotions of delight and admiration 
 had subsided, a flattering idea occurred to 
 me, for so we are Constituted, to think it 
 possible that, in parallel circumstances, I 
 
 •
 
 32 
 
 might have acted like Keith Elphjnstone. 
 His titles add little to his name, and nothing 
 to my early esteem and long- established 
 friendship for him. 
 
 Cedite Romani victores, cedite Graii! 
 
 I despise and laugh at the vulgar preten- 
 sions of commonplace heroes; but not at an 
 indiscriminate profusion of titles and ho- 
 nours, though invariably bought by desert. 
 Knowing well that the foundation of the 
 commonwealth is undermined, and that the 
 temple totters, though / shall not live long- 
 enough to be crushed by its ruins, I cannot 
 see without grief and resentment the ancient 
 ornaments of the country torn down and 
 defaced by vanity and folly, or worse than 
 defaced by distribution. One order stood 
 eminent and alone in the history of English 
 chivalry. Look at it now. 
 
 The barbarous maniac, who sacrificed 
 his last faithful friends at Bender, was a 
 hero ! 
 
 Hide, blushing glory, hide Pultozva's day. 
 
 What was he, when he broke the pa- 
 triot of Livonia on the rack and mangled 
 him alive? What was Alexander before he 
 
 3
 
 38 
 
 Was intoxicated by wine and utterly de- 
 praved and brutified by flattery and adora- 
 tion ? What was the pupil of Aristotle, 
 when he dragged the living governor of 
 Gaza at his chariot- wheels round the city, 
 because that brave man had done his duty 
 in defending it? What was his ambition ? 
 Not to imitate but to surpass Achilles, 
 Whose brutal fury was confined to a dead 
 body. Such was the instruction he derived 
 from Homer in heroics. The original va- 
 nishes before the copy. 
 
 If it were possible to exalt the making 
 genius of Shakespeare above the station it 
 occupies in the brightest heaven of inven- 
 tion, I should say that the character of a 
 hero in terms does not exist in any of his 
 plays, nor even the title or the word, as far 
 as I am able to recollect. The beauties of 
 the French stage are formal and factitious, as 
 if the steps of a minuet were the march of 
 genius. Versification indeed, and perfect 
 in Racine, a great animal fettered and ba- 
 lancing on a tight rope with marvellous 
 skill, and never making a false step. Vol- 
 taire and D'Alembert have faiijy confessed 
 that their theatre is ci la glace. Instead of 
 
 D
 
 34 
 
 great men, as nature makes them, it exhibits 
 none but des heros de thidtre, puffed beyond 
 human dimensions and strutting on stilts. — 
 As to making Frenchmen comprehend Shake- 
 speare, even if they understood his language, 
 the thing is impossible. It is not in their 
 hearts, or ever can be until they are free, 
 as I hope they will be, though they were un- 
 fortunately to pay for it by the utter extinc- 
 tion of the House of Bourbon. 
 
 In naming the house and omitting the 
 family, there is more purpose than you think 
 of. The same house may have had many 
 tenants, of very different extraction. The 
 chastity of Anne of Austria, and the produce 
 thereof; the Iron Masque, and his brethren ; 
 the frolics or vagaries of the Duchess of 
 Burgundy ; the Orgies of the Regent and his 
 daughter; and, in our time, the Germanic 
 levities, for they are all cousins german, of 
 another Lady, lost, though not forgotten, in 
 the savage brutal barbarity, which pursued 
 her to the scaffold. Such a series of equi- 
 vocal generation, of spurious claims to inhe- 
 ritance by divine right, is quite enough to 
 make filiation an enigma, and pedigree ridi- 
 culous. He is said to be a wise son, who
 
 35 
 
 knows who his father was. On that ques- 
 tion, some of the ladies alluded to might 
 have been puzzled to make their sons any 
 wiser than themselves. If, in a case of this 
 extreme delicacy, you feel an inclination to 
 be better informed, you may safely consult 
 Lord Chesterfield, who, I presume, had no 
 thoughts of deceiving his son. He knew 
 what he was saying, and has left his disco- 
 veries on record*, without ambiguity or re- 
 serve, ita me dii ament. Whether the old Pre- 
 tender, whom Lewis XIV. acknowledged as 
 King of Great Britain, in order to defeat the 
 Act of Settlement and the positive succession 
 to the Crown, granted by Parliament to the 
 family of Hanover, was or was not the son 
 of that miserable bigot James the Second, I 
 care no more than he does now. The here- 
 ditary relation of their minds is indisputable. 
 In that line of succession, one fool begets 
 another, and they are all legitimate. Sed 
 revocare gradum. These excursions are too 
 inviting ; the descent is too easy. 
 
 On the 20th of February 1798, Sir 
 Ralph Abercromby declared, in public or- 
 
 * Vol. iii. p. SOQ. Vol. iv. p. 324- 
 D 2
 
 36 
 
 ders, " that the very disgraceful frequency 
 " of Courts-Martial and the many complaints 
 er of irregularities in the conduct of the 
 " troops in that kingdom (Ireland) had too 
 " unfortunately proved the army to be in a 
 <e state of licentiousness, ivliich must render 
 u it formidable to every one but the enemy.'* 
 The posthumous fame of Sir John Moore 
 cannot die, while there is life in this land ; 
 but he deserved a better fate. I knew him, 
 and never shall I look back to his hard lot, 
 without a pang of grief and indignation. 
 Desperate as it was, the man himself was 
 equal to his situation. To be deserted and 
 sacrificed at home, to be unassisted and 
 counteracted by the Spaniards ; to be dis- 
 obeyed by his own mutinous army, and ex- 
 posed to a superiority of force, gathering 
 round him, which it would have been mad- 
 ness to encounter— in this trial of the human 
 mind and all its faculties, the General was 
 never lost. His orders published at Bena- 
 vente, on the 27th of December 180S, tell 
 us more than enough of the rabble he had 
 to deal with. A Roman Senate would have 
 decimated those Legions, and disbanded the 
 rest. 

 
 s; 
 
 " The Commander of the forces has ob- 
 ** served with concern the extreme bad con* 
 " duct of the troops at a moment, when they 
 " are about to come into contact with the 
 " enemy, and when the greatest regularity 
 " and the best conduct are the most requi- 
 H site. 
 
 " The misbehaviour of the troops in the 
 " column, which marched by Valderas to 
 *' this place, exceeds ivhat he could have be- 
 t* lieved of British soldiers. It is disgraceful 
 w to the Officers, as it strongly marks their 
 ". negligence and inattention. 
 
 " He can feel no mercy towards Officers, 
 " who neglect, in times like these, essential 
 ¥ duties ; or towards Soldiers, who injure 
 " the Country they are sent to protect, &c." 
 
 But perhaps the army, under Lord Wel- 
 lington, was better instructed, or His Grace 
 has been more fortunate and more re- 
 spected in his command. Colonel Palmer, in 
 his evidence on the trial of Mr. Quentin *, 
 avers that, " in an hour after the troops 
 « entered Tafalla, after the battle of Vic- 
 tl toria, Lord Wellington came in with his 
 
 * Page 24 1. 
 P 3
 
 38 
 
 n Staff, and they (the Regiment) were 
 " obliged to change their quarters ; and it 
 '.' was a most disgraceful scene. When the 
 " regiment turned out, there were three- 
 " fourths of the men rolling on their horses 
 " quite drunk" This is but a special in- 
 stance — what says the Noble Duke himself 
 in his circular letter of the 28th of November 
 1812, promulgated to the whole army ? 
 
 " Besides these objects, I must draw 
 " your attention in a very particular manner, 
 " to the state of discipline of the troops. I 
 " am concerned to observe that the army 
 " under my command has fallen off, in this 
 " respect, in the late campaign, to a greater 
 " degree than any army, with which I have 
 «' ever served, or of which / have ever read! 
 " Yet this army has suffered no disaster, &c." 
 In effect, the whole letter is a satire, and 
 ought to have been a scourge, quatiente ani~ 
 mo tortore flagellum. 
 
 It is indeed to be regretted that such 
 censures of English troops on service should 
 have been found necessary by those persons* 
 who best knew how well they were applied^ 
 and how much more might have been added. 
 Yet, even in the cause of this regret, there
 
 is some mixture of consolation. The disci- 
 pline to me would be as formidable as the 
 numbers, as well as, for its own principal 
 purpose, useless ; since victories we see may 
 be obtained without it. What is a highly 
 disciplined standing army, on the principles 
 of our Constitution, or of any rational Go- 
 vernment, of which the defence of liberty 
 and property is the main object, but an im- 
 plicit submission to the Chief, who com- 
 mands it ? With that weapon in his hand, an 
 hereditary Monarch is a perpetual dictator, 
 if he pleases. In the tactics of Prussia, a sol- 
 dier was a slave, who could not escape, who 
 repined at the freedom of others, and was 
 ready to destroy what he could not partake of. 
 Let us float in our own element. A powerful 
 navy cannot be any thing but an honour and a 
 defence to an Island. In its nature it cannot 
 be an instrument of any other purpose. But, 
 if these principles were false and the reverse 
 were true in both instances, the conduct of 
 Ministers in proposing, and of Parliament in 
 submitting to vote a peace establishment of 
 15o,ooo men, would still be defenceless. If 
 they have made peace without a security of 
 its duration for any period ever so short, as 
 
 D 4
 
 40 
 
 their own act in continuing such an army, 
 confesses, they have betrayed their country 
 and their trust in making it. If the peace be 
 secure, then how is this enormous military 
 force to be employed ? The answer is in- 
 volved in the question. Since you have no 
 foreign enemy, your object must be do- 
 mestic. The dilemma admits of no escape, 
 tPwyavTK ovvzTouri. I cannot argue with the 
 deaf, or enlighten the blind. To me all other 
 national calamities and dangers vanish in the 
 comparison with that of an overwhelming 
 military power. Debts, taxes, bankruptcy 
 and ruin, a nation flying from itself — the na- 
 tives expatriating themselves by deserting 
 their country, a frightful emigration, a flight 
 of anti-locusts, who desolate by quitting, and 
 nourish where they settle; disorder and dis«. 
 tress in the heart and head of the system, 
 and in every branch of it, and followed by 
 an endless train of minor miseries, pursuing 
 existence into its last recesses, making life 
 a persecution, non v\ sed s(Epe cadcndo, and 
 death an asylum ; the silent afflictions, that 
 cannot be imparted; the sense of slights or 
 injuries, which take care to preclude com- 
 plaint; the cowardly offences, which skulk or 
 strut out of the reach of resentment; the
 
 41 
 
 latent sorrows of poverty and shame :— 
 these evils, until they finally crush the being, 
 may be endured, because they leave it still 
 within the limits of possibility that they may 
 end or be repaired ; — what are they all in the 
 comparison with an abject existence under 
 the power of the sword in the hand of a 
 foreigner! What signify your dead letter 
 laws, your antiquated rights, and all the 
 knots you can tie to bind the executive ma- 
 gistrate against the trenchant sabre, which 
 you leave in his hands ? 
 
 If principles are above your notice, and 
 common sense beneath it, look at facts. If 
 that fails, whether you laugh or cry, the 
 game is up. 
 
 The fiercest military despotism, which 
 has yet afflicted Europe, never assumed a 
 lawless power of at once cashiering, and, 
 to the utmost of that power, dishonouring 
 five and twenty officers, distinguished by 
 their bravery on service, without a trial, 
 without an inquiry, without putting them 
 pn their defence, nay, without asking any 
 one of them what he had to say for himself. 
 Has the army no law but will and pleasure? 
 Have we a Mutiny Act for nothing ? Or is, 
 there 3 prerogative in the Sovereign to dis*
 
 42 
 
 pense with common justice as well as law, 
 when officers are to be punched, and to go- 
 vern 150,000 men in arms by arbitrary 
 caprice? The wise King of Prussia, with 
 absolute power in his hand, never exercised 
 it over his troops ; he governed them by 
 rule and compass, and made it, what it was 
 in the seven years war, the admiration of 
 the world. He knew that if he treated 
 them as an ignorant Sultan does his Spahis 
 and Janissaries, they, in return, would treat 
 him as their Sultan, and murder, blind, or de- 
 pose him, whenever they were weary of him, 
 or of his minions. Of all the lives in Turkey, 
 Indostan, or Persia, that of the tyrant him- 
 self was always the least secure. At that 
 risk you may certainly enlist a rabble, as 
 numerous as you will, and call it an army, 
 but neither to be commanded in war, nor 
 governable in peace. Under the strictest 
 and most severe martial law, the only crime, 
 that demands and justifies instant punish- 
 ment by instant death, must be ignominious 
 as well as capital. Palpable cowardice in 
 the presence of the enemy ought to be cut 
 down upon the spot ; especially where an 
 officer, high in command, gives an infamous
 
 48 
 
 example to his men, and, unless they follow 
 it, takes care of himself and leaves them 
 to follow any body else. Exulting, as I do* 
 in the honour of my country, I state an im- 
 possible case of a British army, or of any 
 native officer belonging to it. 
 
 In assisting, as I did, within my own 
 narrow sphere, to relieve my neighbours and 
 myself from the exaction of the Property 
 Tax in time of peace, I did not go the 
 length of my principles and conviction, be- 
 cause I knew it would be in vain io struggle 
 against the stream, and to attempt it might 
 be hazardous to that half of my object, 
 which might be obtained. Speaking now 
 for myself only, I would no more submit 
 to that mode of exaction in war than in 
 peace. This upas is not a native of our 
 soil. As a root of taxation, it is not indige- 
 nous, nor can it ever be planted here, while 
 there is a third estate in this once limited 
 monarchy, who really give and grant. In 
 an extreme case, necessity itself can demand 
 nothing but the amount. For that purpose 
 only, it is not necessary (including, as it does, 
 vi termini, the qualities of irresistible and 
 unavoidable, which constitute necessity), to
 
 44 
 
 force every man to lay open the state and cir-» 
 cumstances of his domestic affairs, of his for- 
 tune or misfortunes, of his credit or his debts, 
 to the prying scrutiny of an impoverished Go* 
 vernment, of rapacious ministers, and of all 
 their basest instruments and spies. To raise 
 money by inquisition is a Spanish tyranny, 
 new to us, and unknown to that Catholic 
 religion, of which we truly dislike nothing, 
 but those who believe in it in Ireland. Ne- 
 cessity is the plea, and these are its effects. 
 If all human power be a trust, received from 
 the community, and held only for its benefit, 
 the Legislature cannot go this length without 
 a palpable breach of trust. Were the bur- 
 den, as a tax, so light or inconsiderable as 
 not to be regarded, the forms of the impo- 
 sition are not congenial with the Constitu- 
 tion of this island, nor fitted to an English 
 mind. But the mind, and with it the Con- 
 stitution, may be strained or contracted to 
 fit the imposition. Time and friction are 
 great wasters of impression. The rough 
 original character of the coin, once called 
 sterling, is melted down, or smoothed away 
 by use, until at last nothing is left for circu- 
 lation but ragged notes, which promise and
 
 45 
 
 never pay, and base shillings of pretended sil- 
 ver from the mint of Birmingham. If these 
 are the conditions of being permitted to live 
 under the dominion of the sword, life itself 
 is not worth its preservation. I would not 
 submit to hold it on such terms ; nee prop' 
 ter vitam vivendi perdere causas. 
 
 My head is still pregnant, and labours to 
 be delivered of two other subjects, to which 
 I am attached by many vexations, and pos- 
 sibly the more for the pangs they have cost 
 me : the Slave Trade and our empire in In- 
 dia. The first is still debated, or talked of, 
 more than enough. The second seems to 
 be lost and out of sight, or seen only in mi- 
 niature, through a telescope reversed. The 
 moral principle, which finally forced an act 
 of abolition, is not to be disputed, nor was it 
 ever, that I know of, denied by any man, who 
 did not deserve a halter for his instruction. 
 They, who promoted and carried the mea- 
 sure, saw it clearly with one eye, and, in 
 my opinion, very dimly with the other. 
 The affairs of this world must be governed 
 by prudence. The highest authorities and 
 the most elevated abilities, in this enlighten- 
 ed empire concurred, and were exerted, in
 
 4rt 
 
 abolishing our share in a trade, which I shall 
 not now attempt to criminate or qualify, 
 since all the epithets, which abhorrence can 
 provoke or eloquence can supply, have been 
 exhausted on it in vain. Neither am I call- 
 ed upon to prove or impeach the wisdom of 
 a benevolent intention, which has utterly 
 failed in its attempt. With many others, I 
 yielded to authority, and, in proportion to 
 my abilities, went as far as any man, in 
 promoting an experiment, which, to my 
 own internal conviction, had no chance or 
 possibility of success. If it were of mo- 
 ment to any body but myself, I could easily 
 prove that this persuasion, or this language, 
 if you will, is not assumed from the event. 
 Long before the year 1 806, when every plan 
 proposed for direct abolition had been reject- 
 ed by the House of Commons, I submitted 
 my opinion to Mr. Wilberforce, and repeat- 
 edly to Mr. Fox, that the abolition of the 
 Slave Trade could not be effected by an Act 
 of Parliament, or any other act of power. On 
 the contrary, the law, which passed in 3 8oO, 
 has made the case worse in its operation on 
 that part of the traffic, as they call it, which 
 a law of England might be expected to com- 
 
 ■
 
 u 
 
 mand,. than it was before. Difficulties un- 
 doubtedly were thrown in the way of those 
 persons who continued it, which could only 
 be surmounted or evaded by concealment; — 
 of what ? of a live contraband cargo of black 
 persons, full as human^as ourselves, whose 
 colour is, where it ought to be, on the sur- 
 face, not in the heart. Imagine, if you can, 
 how that concealment is provided for. How 
 man should have a property in man, other- 
 wise than by consent or agreement between 
 the parties, and then only in his labour, not 
 in his being, I know not, nor will I ever in- 
 quire. Admitting, nevertheless, that the law, 
 as to British Colonies and subjects, had an- 
 swered its purpose, what would it avail to the 
 general benefit of Africa, if Spain and Portu- 
 gal are open and at liberty to receive as 
 many Negroes as they can buy, or as can be 
 bought for them ? They will have slaves 
 from Africa, to be buried in their mines, and 
 at best to work for their owners above- 
 ground. So will the French, and Dutch, 
 and Swedes, and Danes, as long as Negroes 
 can be bought, and sugar can be sold. Is it 
 sure that these neutrals will not be a channel 
 ot supply to the British Islands ? Do you 
 know who furnishes them with a present
 
 48 
 
 capital, or who alone has it to furnish ? — Is 
 there no remedy, then ? Must this infernal 
 dealing proceed for ever ? No ; there is, or 
 there was, a remedy within your reach, and 
 attainable with common perseverance, not 
 by amputation, but $y so training the dis- 
 ease that it might die of itself. 
 
 On the eleventh of April 179&, I sub- 
 mitted to the House of Commons the ge- 
 neral principles and scheme of a measure, 
 by which the importation of slaves from 
 Africa to America must have gradually di- 
 minished, and, in a few years, been aban- 
 doned, and the purpose of abolition accom- 
 plished *. No man, whose malignity leaves 
 him in possession of his senses, would pay 
 an exorbitant price for foreign labour, when 
 what he wants of it is growing under his 
 care, and costs him nothing, or only some 
 trouble at the outset. Mr. * * * *, 3 
 character, capable of a better eminence, 
 merged in elevation, and Mr. Whitbread, 
 crossed me while I was speaking, and went 
 out of the House y being engaged to dinner. 
 I think of these things now, as they did 
 then, with profound indifference. Not so, 
 
 * Vkle Appendix, No. III.
 
 4g 
 
 in transitu. A few of the petty tormentors 
 I have met with in a life, which, if it were 
 not transitory, would be little worth endur- 
 ing, have been men of acute natural abi- 
 lity, with a slighting manner, an air of 
 guarded importance and supreme ignorance, 
 under a perverse debating power. You 
 must date with me as you go on. We are 
 mutable beings, and do really change our 
 principles as well as our habits and opinions, 
 when time and other company make us 
 wiser or worse than we used to be. Mr. 
 Fox attended and applauded me, and I am 
 sure he thought as I did. On so clear a ques- 
 tion, I cannot believe it possible that his pa- 
 ramount sagacity should have misled him to 
 any other conclusion. But he was pledged 
 to Mr. Wilberforce, who had pledged him- 
 self to abolition. They know nothing of 
 Mr. Fox, who think that he was what is 
 commonly called ivell educated. I know it 
 was directly or very nearly the reverse. His 
 mind educated itself, not by early study or 
 instruction, but by active listening, and rapid 
 apprehension *. He said so in the House of 
 Commons, when he and Mr. Burke parted. 
 
 * Vide Appendix, No. IV. 
 E
 
 50 
 
 His powerful understanding grew like a 
 forest oak, not by cultivation but neglect. 
 
 Mr. Pitt was a plant of an inferior order, 
 though marvellous in its kind, a smooth bark, 
 with the deciduous pomp and decoration of a 
 rich foliage, and blossoms, and flowers, which 
 drop off of themselves, and leave the tree 
 naked at last to be judged of by its fruits. He, 
 indeed, as 1 suspect, had been educated more 
 than enough, until there was nothing natu- 
 ral and spontaneous left in him. He was too 
 polished and accurate in the minor embel- 
 lishments of his art, to be a great artist in any 
 thing. He could have painted the boat, and 
 the fish and the broken nets, but not the two 
 fishermen. Ungues exprimet et molles imita- 
 bitur cere capUlos. On one occasion only he 
 was sublime, but never, in my hearing, pa- 
 thetic. He knew his audience, and, with or 
 without eloquence, how to summon their 
 generous passions to his applause. The hu- 
 man eye soon grows weary of an unbounded 
 plain, and sooner, I believe, than of any 
 limited portion of space, whatever its di- 
 mensions may be. There is a calm delight, 
 a dolce riposo, in viewing the smooth-shaven 
 verdure of a bowling-green as long as it is 
 new. You must learn from repetition, that
 
 those properties are inseparable from the 
 idea of a flat surface, and that flat and tire- 
 some are synonymous. The works of nature, 
 which command admiration at once, and 
 never lose it, are compounded of grand in- 
 equalities. At last, I perceive that the judge- 
 ment of wise and honest men is coming 
 round to me. If they had taken the same 
 turn ten years ago, we might now have been 
 in sight of our object, and I might have 
 lived to see it accomplished. They, who 
 still say that their principles ivill not permit 
 them to negotiate until guilt, or to compound 
 with crimes, ivhile they forget or abandon 
 the suffering subject of the argument and 
 victim of the debate, are more magnanimous 
 than I am. 
 
 You have a dominion over India, which 
 is said to extend, in one way or other, 
 to a population of fifty or sixty mil- 
 lions. From this territory and its natives 
 the East India Company receives, or did re- 
 ceive, a net revenue, clear of all charges of 
 collection, and of all the fortunes of collectors, 
 which, if fairly accounted for, would raise the 
 annual amount levied from the said natives to 
 twenty millions, more or less. I say what I 
 
 £2
 
 52 
 
 believe ; and probably not so much as others 
 know. Between the receipt and the expen- 
 diture, the balance, or deficit against the 
 receipt, has, for many years, and, I doubt 
 not, does still amount annually to two 
 millions sterling, sometimes to much more* 
 for which the said trading company has 
 regularly applied to Parliament for reim- 
 bursement, and never, that I know of, been 
 refused. A war in India is the common 
 pretence, or the sufficient reason, or the 
 plausible plea for spending so much more 
 than they receive, and incurring a debt 
 of many millions, which they have no 
 thoughts of paying, nor could they if they 
 thought of it. When a great or powerful 
 enemy is not to be fpund, a little or a weak 
 one will do just #S{%ell. The greatest part 
 of the military feree of India has been sum- 
 moned to repel some formidable aggression 
 committed by a Rajah of Napaul, whose 
 elevated dominions lie to the north of the 
 mountains of JBootan, six hundred miles 
 from Calcutta. This great chief has at 
 last been reduced to reason ; but not until 
 many of our best officers had perished in 
 the conflict, and a multitude of European 
 soldiers as well as sepoys. In the established
 
 58 
 
 phraseology of England in Bengal, there 
 could be no peace, no security for our pos- 
 sessions, while that formidable power, that 
 restless vicinity, that desperate aggressor, 
 was permitted to exist in force to disturb 
 our frontier, to hang on our skirts, and to 
 threaten us with invasion. Now, if you had 
 heard that every soldier in Britain, including 
 the militia, had been assembled to repel or 
 subdue a Jcing of the Isle of Man, or of the 
 Isle of Dogs, and that, after an infinite or 
 indefinite loss of men and money (for the 
 truth of the amount is not to be spoken at 
 all times, nor is it exactly known here at any 
 time), we had subdued these crowned heads, 
 and made them pay costs of suit, by a sur- 
 render of half their noble dominions, you 
 might form a confused idea of the dignity 
 and importance of a contest between the 
 British empire in India and a petty prince 
 beyond the extremity of our provinces, whose 
 rocks and mountains were his territory as 
 well as his defence. Who made or con- 
 trived this war I know not ; but Lord 
 Moira put an end to it, and has had no thanks 
 for his pains. 
 
 e 3
 
 54 
 
 The subject, which I meant for a preface 
 or a prologue to this Letter, comes in last 
 and must take its place at the lower end of 
 the table. My thoughts stand not upon the 
 order of their going, but go as they come, 
 and are not worth marshalling. Even to 
 this preface there is a prelude fit to be consi- 
 dered, though not essential to the merits of 
 the principal question, whether the remains of 
 ancient statuary, brought from Athens by 
 Lord Elgin, and now in England, deserve to 
 be kept here for the service or credit of the 
 nation, and at the public expence. How it 
 is practicable to fix a positive money price on 
 an ideal value, I confess is beyond my com- 
 prehension. When the Pitt diamond was 
 offered to the Regent of France, for two mil- 
 lions of livres, or 90,000/. sterling, he re- 
 fused to treat for it, because the kingdom 
 was in distress, and their finances in dis- 
 order. It was no time to throw away or to 
 exchange so much real value for a pebble, 
 however brilliant and rare. The Due de 
 St. Simon, a very honest person with some 
 peculiarities, nevertheless persuaded him by 
 arguments, or incentives, derived from mere 
 ostentation, to make the purchase. Taking
 
 the circumstances together, the advice he 
 gave, in my opinion, was not to be defended. 
 Stultitiam pat'mntur opes. A very rich man 
 may squander his wealth on trifles, or throw 
 it away with impunity. In a person so qua- 
 lified, the purchase of a bauble, at any rate of 
 estimation, might not be an act of folly, 
 though, in another, it would be madness. 
 To a diamond it is impossible to annex the 
 remotest idea of real use or intrinsic value. 
 Yet nobody is censured for buying jewels 
 or any thing else of mere ornament, if he 
 can afford it. Mr. Fox had a singular par- 
 tiality for a phrase or a maxim of his own, 
 which I have often heard him insist upon, 
 " That he knew of nothing worth fi&hfiffs 
 " for but honour." The proposition is not 
 self-evident, and ought to have been accom- 
 panied with a definition of its terms, In 
 some senses, and with certain conditions, or 
 where an individual determines onlv for him- 
 self, it may have a rational meaning, but 
 not, as it stands, without explanation, We 
 are speaking of national not personal honour, 
 and then I affirm that there are manv things 
 much better worth the risque of a battle, a 
 the hazard of life, than pure honour ab- 
 
 S 4
 
 m 
 
 stracred from some properties or ingredients, 
 which possibly Mr. Fox might have included 
 in his definition. Liberty, property, national 
 independence, and, above all the rest, the 
 salus populi are to be provided for, in the 
 first instance and at all events, not only 
 without but at the expence of honour com- 
 monly called so, if the substance and the de- 
 coration are not to be had together. A 
 shirt without ruffles may answer its purpose, 
 and satisfy a plain man. But ruffles without 
 a shirt is simple foppery, and used to be the 
 farcical attribute of a French petit maitre. 
 Between two nations, no act of submission 
 is usually deemed more disgraceful, than 
 when one of them pays a tribute to the 
 other. Yet this disgrace has been volun- 
 tarily incurred, for the sake of a solid advan- 
 tage, by wise and powerful princes, who 
 weighed the candle against the game. In the 
 transactions between Lewis the Eleventh, 
 and our Edward the Fourth, France consent- 
 ed to pay a real, not a declared tribute to 
 England ; and if a question, arising from 
 calamitous events in war, had occurred in 
 our time, whether we should leave Ports- 
 mouth in the hands of a French army or get
 
 57 
 
 them out of the island by agreeing to pay 
 them in return a round sum annually, if that 
 were the option offered and we had no other, 
 is it possible to doubt about the choice ? In 
 short, it seems to me that, with this and 
 similar cases, I could have puzzled Mr. Fox 
 and his proposition out of their respective 
 senses. A prudent nation, having a will of 
 its own, will not trust any government with 
 a power to involve it in war, on their own 
 speculation, real or pretended, of national 
 honour. Had he said that few things were 
 worth paying for but honour, and that 
 honours are bought and sold every day, we 
 should soon have approximated, and, with a 
 few qualifications,, have come to an agree- 
 ment. Now I confess that my temper is so 
 impatient and my judgement so infirm, that 
 I could not endure to listen to a money 
 debate, whether England shall keep and pre- 
 serve the sublime remains of Phidias and of 
 all. the wonderful artists of his time, as if it 
 were about a tax upon lobsters or the toll of a 
 turnpike ; and that too in an assembly, where 
 it has been deemed equally wise and noble to 
 vote a hundred millions a year to establish 
 the descent of despotism every where in a 
 right line, to make tyranny legitimate, to
 
 58 
 
 tupply war with the means of carnage, and 
 to propagate desolation over the surface of 
 the world. Remember the intrepid answer 
 of Pericles to the Athenians, when some of 
 their rhetoricians charged him with wasting 
 the fortune of the Republic, in temples and 
 statues to gratify his own vanity. First, he 
 asked the people, in their public assembly, 
 whether they thought the expence excessive. 
 They said yes. " Then let it be charged to 
 " my account; take my estate, and my name 
 " shall be inscribed on these monuments, not 
 " yours." What was the reply of the whole 
 assembly ? An exclamation, with one voice, 
 worthy of Athens, and of the elevated station 
 she still holds in the history of nations. " No, 
 take what you ivill out of the public trea- 
 sury, apply it, spend it, and spare nothing" 
 Observe that this incident happened in the 
 midst of the Peloponnesian war. The frag- 
 ments of such a nation are venerable. The 
 magnanimity of Athens lives in her ruins. 
 
 M But while the industrious people of 
 " England, for want of employment are 
 " actually in want of bread, you have no 
 *\ right to waste so many thousand pounds, 
 <i particularly in bank-paper, on the pur- 
 
 2 

 
 59 
 
 •< chase of foreign marbles, let their ima- 
 " ginary value be what it may." Here 
 again 1 feel a return of my reputed impa- 
 tience, which deprives me of expression, and 
 would make a better argument than mine 
 unintelligible. Still there are cases, in which 
 a confused impression may be trusted, and 
 stuttering passion may be in the right. Away 
 with all that sort of reason, which banishes 
 the affections. The objection is factitious, 
 and as false in its application as it would be 
 mean and pitiful, if it were in earnest. Is 
 there one human being in the three king- 
 doms, united now in their sorrows and 
 hereafter in their resentment, would eat ano- 
 ther morsel of bread by a saving of this mo- 
 ney ? On such a question, I will not appeal 
 to the multitude, because they are no judges 
 of it. I would serve the people, but I would 
 not court them, and least of all for popu- 
 larity. Much less would I appeal to them 
 for any judgement, but in a free choice of 
 their representatives. They are no fools, 
 and sooner or later find out, who are, and 
 who are not in earnest to serve them. If 
 England, as a nation, were to sutler these 
 marbles to be taken away, the nation itself
 
 Oo 
 
 ought to follow them, and complete the 
 emigration, which, as it now proceeds, is not 
 to be distinguished from expatriation. J do 
 not say that there are no excusable cases, or 
 none of necessity for a temporary removal to 
 other climates. Let those, who are rigorous 
 economists for the public, consider and cal- 
 culate, if they can, how many millions are 
 remitted to the continent for the support of 
 expences, worse than thrown away, that is, 
 wasted on foreigners, to animate the arts and 
 encourage the industry of rival nations. I 
 know that emigration cannot be generally 
 prevented by power ; though, in special in- 
 stances, it may be so by collusion with 
 foreign courts ; but, at least, the Legislature 
 might shelter those, who stay at home, from 
 making good all the taxes, which emigrants 
 can evade, and compel them to contribute 
 to the protection of whatever property 
 they leave behind them. At last .what 
 have you to show for so much active wealth 
 extracted from England, and squandered 
 among strangers, who make you no return 
 for it, but in redoubled fraud, insolence, in- 
 gratitude, and scorn ? This drain is formi- 
 dable in all its present effects and remoter
 
 61 
 
 consequences, of servants turned adrift and 
 many into thieves, of labourers and artists 
 unemployed, of houses untenanted, and all 
 the burthens of the country accumulated on 
 those, who do not desert it. I am sure the 
 vessel is settling to rights. You have wea- 
 thered the storm. Are you equal to the 
 swell ? Can you weather the calm ? Look 
 to it. 
 
 A few worthy and honourable persons* 
 obnoxious to their own flagitious govern- 
 ments, may seek for personal safety in Eng- 
 land, and here they ought to find it ; for here 
 alone they can be protected. All other 
 aliens, from the continent, come hither to 
 save money or to make it, at the expence of 
 our domestic industry, not to spend it. 
 Prince Esterhazy, one of the wealthiest indi- 
 viduals in Germany, a few years ago travelled 
 over England on the box of a stage coach, 
 that he might at once have a better view of 
 the country, and enjoy the conversation of 
 the coachman. 
 
 On the use and value of the Elgin mar- 
 bles as models for imitation I will not appeal, 
 as I might do with advantage and protection 
 to my opinion, to the unanimous evidence of
 
 62 
 
 the great artists, with Mr. West at the head 
 of them, of the admirers of the arts, and of all 
 the learned men, who have been consulted 
 and examined by a Select Committee of the 
 House of Commons. I would not let the ex- 
 pectation of an equivalent, or of a quid pro 
 quo, in any form, into my consideration of 
 the subject. I would not ask how soon we 
 should be reimbursed, or how much, per cent. 
 we should receive on the dormant capital. I 
 do not know how to strike a balance be- 
 tween profit and reputation. The security 
 of national honour is not provided for by the 
 law of merchants. Firmly believing every 
 thing the witnesses say on this point, I strike 
 it out of my account; because I would equally 
 buy the marbles, if I were sure that there 
 would never be another sculptor or statuary 
 in England. I would pay for the honour of 
 preserving them, and look for no other re- 
 imbursement. 
 
 In reading the Report of the Committee, 
 one of their first propositions, including an 
 historical assertion, seems to me a paradox, 
 the truth of which however I am not bound 
 or disposed to deny, viz. " that the date of 
 " these works must be referred to the ori-
 
 63 
 
 ff ginal building of the Parthenon, and to 
 ft the designs of Phidias, the dawn of every 
 " thing, which adorned and ennobled 
 " Greece." From this position, compared 
 with what we know of the architecture and 
 statuary of Athens, it follows that the first 
 productions of those arts were at once per- 
 feet, without previous defect or gradual im- 
 provement. The dawning light is in the me- 
 ridian. Birth and maturity have but one date. 
 This discovery is new in the natural history 
 of man. In all other attainments of human 
 skill, the arrival at perfection is by progres- 
 sion. Were there no temples or statues in 
 Athens or in Greece, before Phidias P By 
 whom, and when was the temple of Jupiter 
 built at Olympia ; or the temple of Theseus 
 at Athens ? On questions of date it is in vain 
 to look for accuracy in the Greek historians, 
 nor is it always safe to rely on their vera- 
 city. On this point I speak with more 
 moderation than I think. A peremptory 
 language, in matters of opinion, is always 
 offensive, and never in its place, but when it 
 is called upon to command. In me, who 
 court instruction because I want it, a tone of 
 authority would be worse than unbecoming.
 
 (54 
 
 Grcecia mend ax was proverbial among th£ 
 Romans. Plutarch and others speak of the 
 Hecatompedon and the Parthenon, as of one 
 and the same building. Now it appears to 
 me that either this must be a mistake, or the 
 text is not correct, or^a mere epithet care- 
 lessly used. The Hecatompedon was a 
 square temple of a hundred feet, and if it 
 were fifty feet high, would make half a cube. 
 Mr. Wilkins says that the area embraced by 
 the uppermost step of the Parthenon, is little 
 more than two hundred and twenty-seven 
 feet in length and one hundred and one in 
 breadth. The former then must have been 
 a. moderate building compared with the latter. 
 But Herodotus affirms that Xerxes burnt 
 the citadel, and with it the temple of the 
 Goddess, of which last he repented ; and that 
 the utter destruction of the whole city was 
 completed by Mardonius. Yet Mr. Stuart 
 says " The temple of Minerva in the Aero- 
 " polis was called the Parthenon and Heca- 
 " tompedon" Toweit is plain, that they were 
 different temples, on the same site, with very 
 different dimensions. The former was built 
 about fifty years after the Hecatompedon was 
 destroyed. Be all this as it may, I shall 
 leave it to the learned to discover the mean-
 
 m 
 
 ing of Plutarch's words, and proceed to other 
 questions in my mind of much greater inte- 
 rest and curiosity, concerning the two cele- 
 brated statues of Minerva and Jupiter, un- 
 doubtedly the works of Phidias, and placed 
 by him in their respective temples at Athens 
 and Olympia *. Here again we have a sin- 
 gular proof of the inaccuracy and careless- 
 ness of Grecian historians. Pausanias and 
 all of them say that these two statues, one 
 of which was fifty-four feet high, sitting, 
 the other thirty-nine feet, standing, were 
 positively made of ivory and gold. Of the 
 latter Pausanias says, umo h ex. ts sXsQoivtos to 
 ccyuX^a, xai y^vcov TrzTrowrczi. (p. 41.) Some, 
 of these careless writers, quoted by Meursius,- 
 describe the Minerva as made all of pure 
 gold ; others, as all of ivory without a qua- 
 lification, abatement, or explanation of any 
 kind. Even Pliny, on this point, is full as 
 inaccurate and obscure, as if he had never 
 seen the two statues, or never considered or 
 inquired what they were made of. He says 
 (liber 34. cap. 8), " Phidias, pneter Jovem 
 " Olympium, quern nemo emulatur, fecit et 
 " ex ebore cequd Minervam Athenis, quas est 
 P Vide Appendix, No. V. 
 F
 
 60 
 
 s< in Parthenone adstans :" which words, as 
 long as words express meaning, affirm that 
 both the statues were made of Ivory. Now 
 my conviction is that every one of these 
 writers, in the literal and indisputable sense 
 of their own language, assert a gross, ridicu- 
 lous falsehood. Such enormous statues 
 neither were nor could be made of gold or 
 ivory, in their solidity, as they might have 
 been of marble. A quantity of gold or ivory 
 or both, sufficient for the purpose, could not 
 have been found in all Greece, much less in 
 Attica; and, even if it hadexisted, Phidias and 
 Pericles, and indeed the people of Athens 
 and Elis must have been frantic to lavish and 
 waste such precious materials on the inside 
 of such statues. The fact is they were 
 hollow, and covered in some parts with 
 lamince, or thin plates applied of ivory, in 
 others of gold, which on occasion might be 
 and actually were taken off. All the gold, 
 furnished by Pericles to Phidias for the statue 
 of Minerva, amounted only to forty-four 
 talents of pure gold, equal to about 8525/. 
 in our standard. The intrinsic value of the 
 Attic talent is by no means ascertained by 
 comparison with any modern coin, much 
 less is it a clear case among the learned.
 
 6 7 
 
 This quantity might be sufficient to cover as 
 much of the statue as was not plated with 
 ivory, but would go a very little way to fill 
 it. The outside, so formed, was supported 
 by an internal construction or machinery 
 of brass and cedar wood. As far as I have 
 been able to trace this question, the first 
 person, who discovered the fallacy imposed 
 upon us by the Greek writers, and swallow- 
 ed without hesitation or inquiry by the mo- 
 derns, was M. de Paiav, a merciless inqui- 
 sitor into literary frauds, and a fatal foe to 
 learned impostors. The following extract 
 from his Rechcrches Philosophiques sur les 
 Grecs (Vol. ii. p. 1 12), printed at Berlin in 
 1/88, ought to excite the reader's curiosity. 
 After proving to demonstration that the 
 ivory and gold in question consisted of plates 
 laid on, or appliques, pa?" pieces rapportees, 
 &c. he says, 
 
 " Pour communiquer a toutes ces pieces 
 " rapportees le degre de consistance dont 
 " elles avoient besoin, il faut que la Minerve 
 " de Phidias ait ete intcricurement soutenue 
 " par un corps prodigieux de fer ou d'airain, 
 ct revetu dans sa principale longueur de 
 \* lames de bois de cedre, qui formoient 
 
 F 2
 
 OS 
 
 " Tame de ce colosse, dont toute la capacite 
 " etoit vuide ; et Lucien avoue que ces 
 " ouvrages d'ostentation, si riches en ap- 
 " parence, et oii Ton ne voyoit briller que 
 " J'or et l'ivoire, etoient inte'rieurement 
 " garnis de toiles d'araignees, et servoient 
 <c d'asyle aux insectes et aux animaux im- 
 M mondes, qui frequentoient les temples et 
 ** les autels de la Grece." 
 
 Lucian's words, to which M. Pauw re- 
 fers, are, <c The richest of these statues 
 " were covered with ivory, and here and 
 " there fyXr/ov oa-ov) glittered with gold. 
 *' Withinside they were supported by frames 
 '* of wood (•jVcJuAc/), in which whole troops 
 " of mice took shelter, and formed their 
 " commonwealth." {piyMt ^.vuv) *. 
 
 It seems to me remarkable that it is not 
 stated by Pausanius or Pliny that the statue 
 of Victory, of four cubits high (therefore 
 not a VkloriolaJ , stood, or was placed stand- 
 ing, on the extended right hand of the Mi- 
 nerva, which must include the arm, or there 
 would be no extension. But Epictetus-f does 
 say so distinctly. Now, if the Victory were 
 
 * In the Jupiter Tragoedus. f Lib. ii. cap. 8.
 
 <5g 
 
 solid of any metal, it must weigh down the 
 arm, or break it, unless the inside of the 
 limb were of brass, and that too attached to 
 a metallic frame supporting the statue. 
 
 Supposing this state of the case, as 
 far as relates to the outward appearance and 
 internal machinerv of the statues, to be in- 
 disputable, a question remains, which he, 
 who can answer it in plain intelligible lan- 
 guage and not in terms of art, must have 
 much more skill and sagacity than I can pre- 
 tend to. My own superannuated thoughts 
 have been wasted on it in vain. The figures 
 of the god and goddess must have been 
 composed and formed on a covered frame of 
 some kind or other, and that frame support- 
 ed thro'out by internal bars of brass or 
 wood. I ask what was the composition of 
 that frame, and of the figures or shapes, 
 which were supported by it, and how, or 
 by what medium or contact they were sup- 
 ported by the inside machinery. To me it 
 appears that the forms, at least, of the sta- 
 tues must have been finished, before the 
 lamincc of gold and ivory could be applied 
 to those forms, by way of ornament or 
 dress. Here I shall conclude this part of my 
 
 f 3
 
 meditations, with one note of admiration 
 more to the statues. Is it possible, or is it 
 conceivable, that Pausanias, Plutarch, and 
 Pliny, should not have known the internal 
 construction of these colossal statues, or 
 that they should have believed or imagined 
 that they were literally made of solid gold 
 and ivory ! On the subject of these won- 
 derful works of art, there remains still one 
 consideration, worthy of your taste and ge- 
 nius, and then you shall be at liberty, porta 
 mittendus cburnd. 
 
 The enormous disproportion of the size 
 of these statues to the temples, which held 
 them, must have been obvious to every eye. 
 Nay, I should think, it must have been the 
 first impression made upon the spectator, 
 the moment he entered the temple. Yet, if 
 my utmost researches have not failed or mis- 
 led me, it is certainly true that no ancient 
 writer has taken notice, or, if at all, very 
 slightly, of this manifest and striking dis- 
 proportion, except Strabo, much less to ac- 
 count for it. The geographer says only that 
 " The greatest of all was the ivory statue of 
 " Jupiter (sXstpavTivcv %cewov) made by Phidias, 
 " of such a magnitude that, although the
 
 71 
 
 '* temple was of the greatest size, the artist 
 " seemed to have missed the mark, or failed, 
 " of symmetry (between the statue and the 
 " templej. He made the statue sitting, yet 
 " almost touching the roof with the summit 
 f i of its head, giving an impression on the 
 " eye that, if the God were to rise and stand 
 " upright, he must unroof the temple." In 
 this place it is natural to ask a question, 
 which, as far as my little learning reaches, 
 has never been answered, why, of all the 
 single statues of the heathen celestial gods, 
 the Jupiter alone is represented sitting? 
 Because he was their supreme divinity. The 
 others, even the Minerva, or Goddess of 
 Wisdom, were his ministers or agents, and, 
 as his inferiors, stood in his presence, when- 
 ever they were personified. He alone is not 
 in action. His power is in repose, serene 
 and majestic, and executes his pleasure, not 
 by motion or command, but by pure voli- 
 tion. 
 
 Is it to be believed that Phidias was not 
 aware of a palpable violation of the laws of 
 symmetry between his own work and thecase, 
 which contained it ? or that, seeing the fact, 
 he should not have intended it ? or that, with 
 
 F 4
 
 72 
 
 that intention, he should have had no ra- 
 tional purpose to be answered by it ? I '11 
 not believe it. The dimensions of so great 
 an artist are not to be measured by the mere 
 visual faculty of vulgar eyes. The altitude 
 of such a being must be taken with a qua- 
 drant. First, undoubtedly he meant to mag- 
 nify his statue at the expcnce of the temple; 
 and, so meaning, the disproportion he re- 
 sorted to could not fail of its effect. So far, 
 a common caviller might accuse him of va- 
 nity. A critic of a higher order might con- 
 tent himself with subscribing to the accurate 
 and enlightened conclusion of Quintilian, 
 who illustrates the statue of Jupiter by its 
 moral impression ; " cujus pulchritudo adje- 
 " cisse aliquid etiarri receptae religioni vide- 
 " tur, adeo majcstas operis deum ajquavit." 
 Was that all ? Had he no theory, of a 
 more elevated ascent, in contemplation ? 
 Yes : I swear bv the Genius of Phidias 
 himself, he had another purpose worthy of 
 him, which he has left it to the statue to 
 denounce. The Deity I represent fills 
 
 HIS OWN TEMPLE, AND LEAVES NO ROOM FOR 
 ANY OTHER GOD. 
 
 By Lord Bacon I was taught long ago,
 
 7z 
 
 that " leves gustus in philosophic ad atheis- 
 " mum fortasse movere, sed pleniores haus- 
 " tus ad religionem reducere." 
 
 The true God extends through all extent; 
 and, by his own plenitude, occupies all 
 space. 
 
 This is my profession of faith. My creed 
 is immovable, and will accept of no autho- 
 rity to confirm it. Were it otherwise, it is 
 not to the refuse of religion, to priests or 
 friars, to Jesuits or barefooted Carmelites, 
 to establishments or to sectaries, that I 
 would submit to appeal. I should call on 
 the greatest luminaries of science and medi- 
 tation, of piety and wisdom, which have 
 enlightened the world: on Bacon, Gassendi, 
 Sydenham, Descartes, Newton, Locke, and, 
 on this subject, the equal, as he was the 
 pupil of them all, Maclaurin, to be my 
 compurgators. 
 
 Vive ct vale. 
 
 PHILIP FRANCIS.
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 No. I. referred to in Page 25. 
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 
 
 July 4,tk, 1816. 
 
 Resolved — " That the thanks of this House 
 be given to Field-Marshal His Royal Highness 
 the Duke of York, Commander in Chief of His 
 Majesty's Forces, for his continued, effectual, 
 and unremitting exertions in the discharge of 
 the duties of his high situation, during a period 
 of upwards of twenty years, in which the Bri- 
 tish army has attained a state of discipline and 
 military science hitherto unknown, and which, 
 under Providence, have contributed, in a great 
 degree, to acquire for this empire its present 
 height of military glory among the nations of 
 Europe." 
 
 No. II. Vide Page 30. 
 
 1. Lord and Lady Howe went on board the 
 mutinous fleet at Portsmouth, accompanied by 
 the Delegates, on the 15th of Mav 1797. 
 
 2. Lord Keith went on board the MarU 
 borough, at Plymouth, on the 6th of July 1797.
 
 76* 
 
 No. III. 
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 
 
 April lltli, 1796. 
 
 Extract of Sir Philip Francis's Speech on the 
 Slave Trade, p. 57. 
 
 " With all these transactions in mv view, I 
 declare now, on the principles and in the lan- 
 guage of Lord Chatham, that I rejoice that 
 America resisted. I rejoice that America re- 
 sisted with success, because it was a triumph of 
 unquestionable right over outrageous wrong, of 
 courage and virtue, over tyranny and force ; 
 because the issue of that contest has provided a 
 refuge and left an asylum, when existence in 
 Europe, perhaps even in England, can no longer 
 be endured. The nations crushed by taxes for 
 the support of powers that oppress, and of wars 
 that destroy them, have still the consolation of 
 knowing that peace and freedom and plenty 
 are to be found in America; that there is still a 
 country in the world, where every man enjoys 
 the fruits of his industry and the produce of his 
 labour. Who is there, who can pronounce with 
 certainty that a period is not approaching, when 
 no other refuge may be left to us ?" 
 
 No. IV. 
 
 A friend of Mr. Fox, observing that be 
 listened attentively to Doctor Laurence, at
 
 000 564 009 
 
 *7S 
 
 that time a slow benumbing Speaker, though full 
 of information, asked him, " How can you endure. 
 " him?" Answer. " I intend to speak the Doc- 
 " tor's speech again, and let nobody know it." 
 
 No. V. 
 
 Pausanias says that the temple of Jupiter at 
 Olympia was built, but not when, by a native 
 architect called Libo ; that it was sixty-eight 
 feet high, ninety-five feet wide, and two hundred 
 and thirty feet long. He says that the God, 
 sitting on a throne, was made of gold and ivory. 
 Lib. 5. p. 504-5-6*. The temple must have been 
 built long before the Peloponnesian war ! 
 
 No. VI. Vide Page 73. 
 
 6' 
 
 I nunc, et die casu id factum, quod non 
 potuerit fieri sapientius, quodque, si factum 
 aliter fuisset, in hunc, quo jam se habet, modum, 
 ut recte haberet, restituendum fuisset. Gassendi 
 in Epicurum, 1 . 359- Vide, vide. 
 
 Quoties naturam nomino, toties causarum 
 naturalium complexnm quendam significari volo ; 
 qua3 quidem causa? brutse licet, atque omni con- 
 silio destitutae, non tamen sine summo consilio 
 reguntur, dum suas qureque operationes edunt, 
 suosque efTectus exequuntur. Nimirum supre- 
 mum illud Numen, cujus vi producta sunt omnia 
 et a cujus nutu dependent, infinita sua sapientia 
 sic disponit omnia. Vide Sydenham, p. 92.
 
 -78 
 
 No. VII. Vide Page 62. 
 
 After a long search, I cannot discover with 
 certainty, by whom or when the temple of 
 Theseus was built. On the whole, however, it 
 seems probable that it was erected by Cimon, or 
 in his time, or about forty years before Pericles. 
 I leave it to the learned to consider, whether 
 that date of such a temple, with such statuary, 
 can be consistent with the assertion of ths 
 Committee. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 ERRATUM. 
 
 Page 5, line 9, for stoop read have dooped. 
 
 3. Oosnell, Printer, Litcte Queen Street, London.