alone truly and freely be represented; that is, in its royal blood, where alone the nation can be represented—that is, in its natural and inherent dignity. A throne cannot be represented by a prison. The honour of a nation cannot be represented by an assembly which disgraces and degrades it—at Coblentz only the king and the nation of France are to be found.

Your imperial majesty, who reigns and lives for glory, has nobly and wisely disdained to associate your crown with a faction which has for its object the subversion of all thrones.

You have not recognized this universal public enemy as a part of the system of Europe. You have refused to sully the lustre of your empire by any communion with a body of fanati cal usurpers and tyrants, drawn out of the dregs of society, and exalted to their evil eminence by the enormity of their crimes; an assemblage of tyrants, wholly destitute of any distinguished qualification, in a single person amongst them, that can command reverence from our reason, or seduce it from our prejudices. These enemies of sovereigns, if at all acknowledged, must be acknowledged on account of that enmity alone. They have nothing else to recommend them.

Madam, it is dangerous to praise any human virtue before the accomplishment of the tasks which it imposes on itself. But in expressing my part of what I hope is, or will become, the general voice, in admiration of what you have done, I run no risk at all. With your imperial majesty, declaration and execution, beginning and conclusion, are, at their different seasons, one and the same thing.

On the faith and declaration of some of the first potentates of Europe, several thousands of persons, comprehending the best men and the best gentlemen in France, have given up their country, their houses, their fortunes, their professional situation, their all; and are now in foreign lands, struggling under the most grievous distresses. Whatever appearances may menace, nobody fears that they can be finally abandoned. Such a dereliction could not be without a strong imputation on the public and private honour of sovereignty itself, nor without an irreparable injury to its interests. It would give occasion to represent monarchs as natural enemies to each other; and that they never support or countenance any subjects of a brother prince, except when they rebel against him. We individuals, mere spectators of the scene, but who seek our liberties under the shade of legal authority, and of course sympa thize with the sufferers in that cause, never can permit ourselves to believe that such an event can disgrace the history of our time. The only thing to be feared is delay; in which

are included many mischiefs. The constancy of the oppressed will be broken; the power of tyrants will be confirmed. Already the multitude of French officers, drawn from their several corps, by hopes inspired by the freely declared disposition of sovereigns, have left all the posts, in which they might one day have effectually served the good cause abandoned to the enemy.

Your imperial majesty's just influence, which is still greater than your extensive power, will animate and expedite the efforts of other sovereigns. From your wisdom other states will learn, that they who wait until all the powers of Europe are at once in motion can never move at all. It would add to the unexampled calamities of our time, if the uncommon union of sentiment in so many powers should prove the very cause of defeating the benefit which ought to flow from their general good disposition. No sovereign can run any risk from the designs of other powers, whilst engaged in this glorious and necessary work. If any attempt could be feared, your imperial majesty's power and justice would secure your allies against all danger. Madam, your glory will be compleat, if after having given peace to Europe by your moderation, you shall bestow stability on all its governments by your vigour and deci sion. The debt which your imperial majesty's august predecessors have contracted to the ancient manners of Europe, by means of which they civilized a vast empire, will be nobly repaid by preserving those manners from the hideous change with which they are now menaced. By the intervention of Russia the world will be preserved from barbarism and ruin.

A private individual, of a remote country, in himself wholly without importance, unauthorized and unconnected, not as an English subject, but as a citizen of the world, presumes to submit his thoughts to one of the greatest and wisest sovereigns that Europe has seen. He does it without fear, because he does not involve in his weakness (if such it is) his king, his country, or his friends. He is not afraid that he shall offend your im perial majesty; because, secure in itself, true greatness is always accessible; and because respectfully to speak what we conceive to be truth is the best homage which can be paid to true dignity.

7

I am, madam, with the utmost possible respect and vene. ration,

Your imperial majesty's
most obedient and

most humble servant,

Beaconsfield, November 1st, 1791.

EDM. BURKE,

LETTER

TO

SIR CHARLES BINGHAM, BART.

ON THE IRISH ABSENTEE TAX.*

DEAR SIR,

I AM much flattered by your very obliging letter; and the rather, because it promises an opening to our future correspondence. This may be my only indemnification for very great losses. One of the most odious parts of the proposed absentee tax is its tendency to separate friends, and to make as ugly breaches in private society as it must make in the unity of the great political body. I am sure, that much of the satisfaction of some circles in London will be lost by it. Do you think that our friend Mrs. Vesey will suffer her husband to vote for a tax that is to destroy the evenings at Bolton Row? I trust we shall have other supporters of the same sex, equally powerful, and equally deserving to be so, who will not abandon the common cause of their own liberties and our satisfactions. We shall be barbarised on both sides of the water, if we do not see one another now and then. We shall sink into surly, brutish Johns, and you will degenerate into wild Irish. It is impossible that we should be the wiser, or the more agreeable; certainly we shall not love one another the better for this forced separation, which our ministers, who have already done so much for the dissolution of every other sort of good connection, are now meditating for the further improvement of this too well united empire. Their next step will be to encourage all the colonies, about thirty separate governments, to keep their people from all intercourse with each other, and with the mother country. A gentleman of New-York or Barbadoes will be as much gazed at as a strange animal from Nova-Zembla or Otahitee; and those rogues, the travellers, will tell us what stories they please about poor old Ireland.

*From authentic documents, found with the copy of this letter among Mr. Burke's papers, it appears, that in the year 1773, a project of imposing a tax upon all proprietors of landed estates in Ireland, whose ordinary residence should be in Great Britain, had been adopted and avowed by his majesty's ministers at that time. A remonstrance against this measure, as highly unjust and impolitic, was presented to the ministers by several of the principal Irish absentees, and the project was subsequently abandoned,

In all seriousness (though I am a great deal more than half serious in what I have been saying) I look upon this projected tax in a very evil light; I think it is not advisable; I am sure it is not necessary; and as it is not a mere matter of finance, but involves a political question of much importance, I consider the principle and precedent as far worse than the thing itself. You are too kind in imagining I can suggest any thing new upon the subject. The objections to it are very glaring, and must strike the eyes of all those who have not their reasons for shutting them against evident truth. I have no feelings or opinions on this subject which I do not partake with all the sensible and informed people that I meet with. At first I could scarcely meet with any one who could believe that this scheme originated from English government. They considered it not only as absurd, but as something monstrous and unnatural. In the first instance, it strikes at the power of this coun try; in the end, at the union of the whole empire. I do not mean to express, most certainly I do not entertain in my mind any thing invidious concerning the superintending authority of Great-Britain. But if it be true, that the several bodies which make up this complicated mass, are to be preserved as one empire, an authority sufficient to preserve that unity, and by its equal weight and pressure to consolidate the various parts that compose it, must reside somewhere: that somewhere can only be in England. Possibly any one member, distinctly taken, might decide in favour of that residence within itself; but cer tainly no member would give its voice for any other except this. So that I look upon the residence of the supreme power to be settled here; not by force or tyranny, or even by mere long usage, but by the very nature of things, and the joint consent of the whole body.

If all this be admitted, then without question this country must have the sole right to the imperial legislation. By which I mean that law which regulates the polity and economy of the several parts, as they relate to one another and to the whole. But if any of the parts, which (not for oppression, but for order) are placed in a subordinate situation, will assume to themselves the power of hindering or checking the resort of their munici pal subjects to the center, or even to any other part of the empire, they arrogate to themselves the imperial rights, which do not, which cannot belong to them, and, so far as in them lies, destroy the happy arrangement of the entire empire.

A free communication, by discretionary residence, is necessary to all the other purposes of communication. For what purpose are the Irish and plantation laws sent hither, but as means [ 11 ]

VOL. V.

of preserving this sovereign constitution? Whether such a constitution was originally right or wrong, this is not the time of day. to dispute. If any evils arise from it, let us not strip it of what may be useful in it. By taking the English privy council into your legislature, you obtain a new, a further, and, possibly, a more liberal consideration of all your acts. If a local legislature shall, by oblique means, tend to deprive any of the people of this benefit, and shall make it penal to them to follow into England the laws which may affect them, then the English privy council will have to decide upon your acts without those lights that may enable them to judge upon what grounds you made them, or how far they ought to be modified, received, or rejected.

To what end is the ultimate appeal in judicature lodged in this kingdom, if men may be disabled from following their suits here, and may be taxed into an absolute denial of justice? You observe, my dear sir, that I do not assert, that, in all cases, two shillings will necessarily cut off this means of correcting legislative and judicial mistakes, and thus amount to a denial of justice. I might indeed state cases, in which this very quantum of tax would be fully sufficient to defeat this right. But I argue not on the case, but on the principle, and I am sure the principle implies it. They who may restrain, may prohibit. They who may impose two shillings, may impose ten shillings in the pound; and those who may condition the tax to six months annual absence, may carry that condition to six weeks, or even to six days, and thereby totally defeat the wise means which have been provided for extensive and impartial justice, and for or derly well-poised and well-connected government.

What is taxing the resort to and residence in any place, but declaring, that your connexion with that place is a grievance ? Is not such an Irish tax, as is now proposed, a virtual declaration, that England is a foreign country, and a renunciation on your part of the principle of common naturalization, which runs through this whole empire.

Do you, or does any Irish gentleman think it a mean privilege, that, the moment he sets his foot upon this ground, he is to all intents and purposes an Englishman? You will not be pleased with a law which, by its operation, tends to disqualify you from a seat in this parliament; and if your own virtue or fortune, or if that of your children should carry you or them to it, should you like to be excluded from the possibility of a peerage in this kingdom? If in Ireland we lay it down as a maxim, that a residence in Great Britain is a political evil, and to be discouraged by penal taxes, you must necessarily reject