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

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

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

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

VOL. VI.

PP

new.

not know that as bad may not be found in the This democracy begins very ill; and I feel no security that what has been rapacious and bloody, in its commencement, will be mild and protecting in its final settlement. They cannot, indeed, in future, rob so much, because they have left little that can be taken. I go to the full length of my principle. I should think the government of the deposed king of France, or of the late king of Prussia, or the present emperor, or the present czarina, none of them, perhaps, perfectly good people, to be far better than the government of twenty-four millions of men, all as good as you, and I do not know any body better; supposing that those twenty-four millions would be subject, as infallibly they would, to the same unrestrained, though virtuous, impulses; because it is plain that their majority would think every thing justified by their warm good intentionsthey would heat one another by their common zeal-counsel and advice would be lost on them -they would not listen to temperate individuals, and they would be less capable, infinitely, of moderation, than the most heady of those princes.

What have I to do with France, but as the common interest of humanity, and its example to this country, engages me? I know France, by observation and inquiry, pretty tolerably for a stranger; and I am not a man to fall in love with the faults or follies of the old or new government. You reason as if I were running a parallel between its former abusive government and the present tyranny. What had all this to do with the opinions I delivered in parliament,

which ran a parallel between the liberty they might have had, and this frantic delusion. This is the way by which you blind and deceive yourself, and beat the air in your argument with me. Why do you instruct me on a state of the case which has no existence? You know how to reason very well. What most of the newspapers make me say, I know not, nor do I much care. I don't think, however, they have thus stated me. There is a very fair abstract of my speech printed in a little pamphlet, which I would send you if it were worth putting you to the ex

pense.

To discuss the affairs of France and its revolution would require a volume, perhaps many volumes. Your general reflections about revolutions may be right or wrong: they conclude nothing. I don't find myself disposed to controvert them, for I do not think they apply to the present affairs; nay, I am sure they do not. I conceive you have got very imperfect accounts of these transactions. I believe I am much more exactly informed of them.

I am sorry, indeed, to find that our opinions do differ essentially, fundamentally, and are at the utmost possible distance from each other, if I understand you or myself clearly on this subject. Your freedom is far from displeasing to me; I love it; for I always wish to know the full of what is in the mind of the friend I converse with. I give you mine as freely; and I hope I shall offend you as little as you do me. I shall have no objection to your showing my letter to as many as you please. I have no secrets with regard to the public. I have never shrunk from

obloquy; and I have never courted popular applause. If I have met with any share of it, "non recepi sed rapui." No difference of opinion, however, shall hinder me from cultivating your friendship, while you permit me to do so. I have not written this to discuss these matters in a prolonged controversy (I wish we may never say more about them), but to comply with your commands, which ever shall have due weight with me. I am most respectfully and most affectionately yours,

EDMUND BURKE.

EDMUND BURKE TO ARTHUR MURPHY, ESQ.

Duke Street, Sunday, May 6, 1793.

MY DEAR SIR, I WAS in the country when your most valuable and most acceptable present was left at my house. Since my return, really and literally an instant of time has not been my own: except the hours in which I have sought in vain for sleep, I have passed almost every hour in Westminster Hall and its purlieus. From nine o'clock yesterday morning until past six in the evening, I did not stir from thence. Let this disagreeable employment be my excuse, for not having till now discharged the pleasing duty of making my acknowledgments to you for the great honour you have been pleased to confer upon me, with a promptitude equal to the warmth and sincerity of my gratitude. To have my name united with yours and that of Tacitus, is a distinction to which I am and ever shall be truly sensible.