The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI | Page 8

against binding him to his opinions, and his
reservation of a right to whatever opinions he pleases, remain in their
full force. This variability is pleasant, and shows a fertility of fancy:--
Qualis in æthereo felix Vertumnus Olympo Mille habet ornatus, mille
decenter habet.
Yet, doing all justice to the sportive variability of these weekly, daily,
or hourly speculators, shall I be pardoned, if I attempt a word on the
part of us simple country folk? It is not good for us, however it may be
so for great statesmen, that we should be treated with variable politics. I
consider different relations as prescribing a different conduct. I allow,
that, in transactions with an enemy, a minister may, and often must,
vary his demands with the day, possibly with the hour. With an enemy,
a fixed plan, variable arrangements. This is the rule the nature of the
transaction prescribes. But all this belongs to treaty. All these shiftings
and changes are a sort of secret amongst the parties, till a definite
settlement is brought about. Such is the spirit of the proceedings in the
doubtful and transitory state of things between enmity and friendship.
In this change the subjects of the transformation are by nature carefully
wrapt up in their cocoons. The gay ornament of summer is not seemly
in his aurelia state. This mutability is allowed to a foreign negotiator;
but when a great politician condescends publicly to instruct his own
countrymen on a matter which may fix their fate forever, his opinions
ought not to be diurnal, or even weekly. These ephemerides of politics
are not made for our slow and coarse understandings. Our appetite
demands a piece of resistance. We require some food that will stick to
the ribs. We call for sentiments to which we can attach
ourselves,--sentiments in which we can take an interest,--sentiments on
which we can warm, on which we can ground some confidence in
ourselves or in others. We do not want a largess of inconstancy. Poor
souls, we have enough of that sort of poverty at home. There is a
difference, too, between deliberation and doctrine: a man ought to be
decided in his opinions before he attempts to teach. His fugitive lights
may serve himself in some unknown region, but they cannot free us
from the effects of the error into which we have been betrayed. His
active Will-o'-the-wisp may be gone nobody can guess where, whilst he

leaves us bemired and benighted in the bog.
Having premised these few reflections upon this new mode of teaching
a lesson, which whilst the scholar is getting by heart the master forgets,
I come to the lesson itself. On the fullest consideration of it, I am
utterly incapable of saying with any great certainty what it is, in the
detail, that the author means to affirm or deny, to dissuade or
recommend. His march is mostly oblique, and his doctrine rather in the
way of insinuation than of dogmatic assertion. It is not only fugitive in
its duration, but is slippery in the extreme whilst it lasts. Examining it
part by part, it seems almost everywhere to contradict itself; and the
author, who claims the privilege of varying his opinions, has exercised
this privilege in every section of his remarks. For this reason, amongst
others, I follow the advice which the able writer gives in his last page,
which is, "to consider the impression of what he has urged, taken from
the whole, and not from detached paragraphs." That caution was not
absolutely necessary. I should think it unfair to the author and to myself
to have proceeded otherwise. This author's whole, however, like every
other whole, cannot be so well comprehended without some reference
to the parts; but they shall be again referred to the whole. Without this
latter attention, several of the passages would certainly remain covered
with an impenetrable and truly oracular obscurity.
The great, general, pervading purpose, of the whole pamphlet is to
reconcile us to peace with the present usurpation in France. In this
general drift of the author I can hardly be mistaken. The other purposes,
less general, and subservient to the preceding scheme, are to show, first,
that the time of the Remarks was the favorable time for making that
peace upon our side; secondly, that on the enemy's side their
disposition towards the acceptance of such terms as he is pleased to
offer was rationally to be expected; the third purpose was, to make
some sort of disclosure of the terms which, if the Regicides are pleased
to grant them, this nation ought to be contented to accept: these form
the basis of the negotiation which the author, whoever he is, proposes
to open.
Before I consider these Remarks along with the other reasonings which