The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 06 (of 12)

My dear sir,—As some prefatory account of the materials which compose this second posthumous volume of the Works of Mr. Burke, and of the causes which have prevented its earlier appearance, will be expected from me, I hope I may be indulged in the inclination I feel to run over these matters in a letter to you, rather than in a formal address to the public.

Of the delay that has intervened since the publication of the former volume I shall first say a few words. Having undertaken, in conjunction with the late Dr. Laurence, to examine the manuscript papers of Mr. Burke, and to select and prepare for the press such of them as should be thought proper for publication, the difficulties attending our coöperation were soon experienced by us. The remoteness of our places of residence in summer, and our professional and other avocations in winter, opposed perpetual obstacles to the progress of our undertaking.

Soon after the publication of the fourth volume, I was rendered incapable of attending to any business by a severe and tedious illness. And it was not long after my recovery before the health of our invaluable friend began gradually to decline, and soon became unequal to the increasing labors of his profession and the discharge of his Parliamentary duties. At length we lost a man, of whom, as I shall have occasion to speak more particularly in another part of this undertaking, I will now content myself with saying, that in my humble opinion he merited, and certainly obtained with those best acquainted with his extensive learning and information, a considerable rank amongst the eminent persons who have adorned the age in which we have lived, and of whose services the public have been deprived by a premature death.

From these causes little progress had been made in our work when I was deprived of my coadjutor. But from that time you can testify of me that I have not been idle. You can bear witness to the confused state in which the materials that compose the present volume came into my hands. The difficulty of reading many of the manuscripts, obscured by innumerable erasures, corrections, interlineations, and marginal insertions, would perhaps have been insuperable to any person less conversant in the manuscripts of Mr. Burke than myself. To this difficulty succeeded that of selecting from several detached papers, written upon the same subject and the same topics, such as appeared to contain the author's last thoughts and emendations. When these difficulties were overcome, there still remained, in many instances, that of assigning its proper place to many detached members of the same piece, where no direct note of connection had been made. These circumstances, whilst they will lead the reader not to expect, in the cases to which they apply, the finished productions of Mr. Burke, imposed upon me a task of great delicacy and difficulty,—namely, that of deciding upon the publication of any, and which, of these unfinished pieces. I must here beg permission of you, and Lord Fitzwilliam, to inform the public, that in the execution of this part of my duty I requested and obtained your assistance.

Our first care was to ascertain, from such evidence, internal and external, as the manuscripts themselves afforded, what pieces appeared to have been at any time intended by the author for publication. Our next was to select such as, though not originally intended for publication, yet appeared to contain matter that might contribute to the gratification and instruction of the public. Our last object was to determine what degree of imperfection and incorrectness in papers of either of these classes ought or ought not to exclude them from a place in the present volume. This was, doubtless, the most nice and arduous part of our undertaking. The difficulty, however, was, in our minds, greatly diminished by our conviction that the reputation of our author stood far beyond the reach of injury from any injudicious conduct of ours in making this selection. On the other hand, we were desirous that nothing should be withheld, from which the public might derive any possible benefit.

Nothing more is now necessary than that I should give a short account of the writings which compose the present volume.

I. Fourth Letter on a Regicide Peace.

Some account has already been given of this Letter in the Advertisement to the fourth quarto volume.2 That part of it which is contained between the first and the middle of the page 673 is taken from a manuscript which, nearly to the conclusion, had received the author's last corrections: the subsequent part, to the middle of the page 71,4 is taken from some loose manuscripts, that were dictated by the author, but do not appear to have been revised by him; and though they, as well as what follows to the conclusion, were evidently designed to make a part of this Letter, the editor alone is responsible for the order in which they are here placed. The last part, from the middle of the page 71, had been printed as a part of the Letter which was originally intended to be the third on Regicide Peace, as in the preface to the fourth volume has already been noticed.

It was thought proper to communicate this Letter before its publication to Lord Auckland, the author of the pamphlet so frequently alluded to in it. His Lordship, in consequence of this communication, was pleased to put into my hands a letter with which he had sent his pamphlet to Mr. Burke at the time of its publication, and Mr. Burke's answer to that letter. These pieces, together with the note with which his Lordship transmitted them to me, are prefixed to the Letter on Regicide Peace.

II. Letter to the Empress of Russia.

III. Letter to Sir Charles Bingham.

IV. Letter to the Honorable Charles James Fox.

Of these Letters it will be sufficient to remark, that they come under the second of those classes into which, as I before observed, we divided the papers that presented themselves to our consideration.

V. Letter to the Marquis of Rockingham.

VI. An Address to the King.

VII. An Address to the British Colonists in North America.

These pieces relate to a most important period in the present reign; and I hope no apology will be necessary for giving them to the public.

VIII. Letter to the Right Honorable Edmund [Sexton] Pery.

IX. Letter to Thomas Burgh, Esq.

X. Letter to John Merlott, Esq.

The reader will find, in a note annexed to each of these Letters, an account of the occasions on which they were written. The Letter to T. Burgh, Esq., had found its way into some of the periodical prints of the time in Dublin.

XI. Reflections on the Approaching Executions.

It may not, perhaps, now be generally known that Mr. Burke was a marked object of the rioters in this disgraceful commotion, from whose fury he narrowly escaped. The Reflections will be found to contain maxims of the soundest judicial policy, and do equal honor to the head and heart of their illustrious writer.

XII. Letter to the Right Honorable Henry Dundas; with the Sketch of a Negro Code.

Mr. Burke, in the Letter to Mr. Dundas, has entered fully into his own views of the Slave Trade, and has thereby rendered any further explanation on that subject at present unnecessary. With respect to the Code itself, an unsuccessful attempt was made to procure the copy of it transmitted to Mr. Dundas. It was not to be found amongst his papers. The Editor has therefore been obliged to have recourse to a rough draft of it in Mr. Burke's own handwriting; from which he hopes he has succeeded in making a pretty correct transcript of it, as well as in the attempt he has made to supply the marginal references alluded to in Mr. Burke's Letter to Mr. Dundas.

XIII. Letter to the Chairman of the Buckinghamshire Meeting.

Of the occasion of this Letter an account is given in the note subjoined [prefixed] to it.

XIV. Tracts and Letters relative to the Laws against Popery in Ireland.

These pieces consist of,—

1. An unfinished Tract on the Popery Laws. Of this Tract the reader will find an account in the note prefixed to it.

2. A Letter to William Smith, Esq. Several copies of this letter having got abroad, it was printed and published in Dublin without the permission of Mr. Burke, or of the gentleman to whom it was addressed.

3. Second Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe. This may be considered as supplementary to the first letter, addressed to the same person in January, 1792, which was published in the third volume.5

4. Letter to Richard Burke, Esq. Of this letter it will be necessary to observe, that the first part of it appears to have been originally addressed by Mr. Burke to his son in the manner in which it is now printed, but to have been left unfinished; after whose death he probably designed to have given the substance of it, with additional observations, to the public in some other form, but never found leisure or inclination to finish it.

5. A Letter on the Affairs of Ireland, written in the year 1797. The name of the person to whom this letter was addressed does not appear on the manuscript; nor has the letter been found to which it was written as an answer. And as the gentleman whom he employed as an amanuensis is not now living, no discovery of it can be made, unless this publication of the letter should produce some information respecting it, that may enable us in a future volume to gratify, on this point, the curiosity of the reader. The letter was dictated, as he himself tells us, from his couch at Bath; to which place he had gone, by the advice of his physicians, in March, 1797. His health was now rapidly declining; the vigor of his mind remained unimpaired. This, my dear friend, was, I believe, the last letter dictated by him on public affairs:—here ended his political labors.

XV. Fragments and Notes of Speeches in Parliament.

1. Speech on the Acts of Uniformity.

2. Speech on a Bill for the Relief of Protestant Dissenters.

3. Speech on the Petition of the Unitarians.

4. Speech on the Middlesex Election.

5. Speech on a Bill for shortening the Duration of Parliaments.

6. Speech on the Reform of the Representation in Parliament.

7. Speech on a Bill for explaining the Powers of Juries in Prosecutions for Libels.

*7. Letter relative to the same subject.

8. Speech on a Bill for repealing the Marriage Act.

9. Speech on a Bill to quiet the Possessions of the Subject against Dormant Claims of the Church.

With respect to these fragments, I have already stated the reasons by which we were influenced in our determination to publish them. An account of the state in which these manuscripts were found is given in the note prefixed to this article.

XVI. Hints for an Essay on the Drama.

This fragment was perused in manuscript by a learned and judicious critic, our late lamented friend, Mr. Malone; and under the protection of his opinion we can feel no hesitation in submitting it to the judgment of the public.

XVII. We are now come to the concluding article of this volume,—the Essay on the History of England.

At what time of the author's life it was written cannot now be exactly ascertained; but it was certainly begun before he had attained the age of twenty-seven years, as it appears from an entry in the books of the late Mr. Dodsley, that eight sheets of it, which contain the first seventy-four pages of the present edition,6 were printed in the year 1757. This is the only part that has received the finishing stroke of the author. In those who are acquainted with the manner in which Mr. Burke usually composed his graver literary works, and of which some account is given in the Advertisement prefixed to the fourth volume, this circumstance will excite a deep regret; and whilst the public partakes with us in this feeling, it will doubtless be led to judge with candor and indulgence of a work left in this imperfect and unfinished state by its author.

Before I conclude, it may not be improper to take this opportunity of acquainting the public with the progress that has been made towards the completion of this undertaking. The sixth and seventh volumes, which will consist entirely of papers that have a relation to the affairs of the East India Company, and to the impeachment of Mr. Hastings, are now in the press. The suspension of the consideration of the affairs of the East India Company in Parliament till its nest session has made me very desirous to get the sixth volume out as early as possible in the next winter. The Ninth and Eleventh Reports of the Select Committee, appointed to take into consideration certain affairs of the East India Company in the year 1783, were written by Mr. Burke, and will be given in that volume. They contain a full and comprehensive view of the commerce, revenues, civil establishment, and general policy of the Company, and will therefore be peculiarly interesting at this time to the public.

The eighth and last volume will contain a narrative of the life of Mr. Burke, which will be accompanied with such parts of his familiar correspondence, and other occasional productions, as shall be thought fit for publication.7 The materials relating to the early years of his life, alluded to in the Advertisement to the fourth volume, have been lately recovered; and the communication of such as may still remain in the possession of any private individuals is again most earnestly requested.

Unequal as I feel myself to the task, I shall, my dear friend, lose no time, nor spare any pains, in discharging the arduous duty that has devolved upon me. You know the peculiar difficulties I labor under from the failure of my eyesight; and you may congratulate me upon the assistance which I have now procured from my neighbor, the worthy chaplain8 of Bromley College, who to the useful qualification of a most patient amanuensis adds that of a good scholar and intelligent critic.

And now, adieu, my dear friend,

And believe me ever affectionately yours,

WR. ROFFEN.

BROMLEY HOUSE, August 1, 1812.

PRELIMINARY CORRESPONDENCE

LETTER IV.

TO THE EARL FITZWILLIAM