The Gazette

MONDAY, MARCH 25, 1799.

A Torrent of Eloquence,
From the pen of the late Right Honorable
EDMUND BURKE.

The following is an extract from Mr. Burke's "Third
Letter to a Member of Parliament, on the Proposals
for Peace with the Regicide Directory of France,"
published since his death.—"Mr. B. (say the Review-
ers) instead of the whirring, pitiful conduct of Mr.
Pitt, on the return of Lord Malmesbury from France,
would have had the minister adopt the language of
menace, and assume the attitude of defiance. Here
(say they) he pours out a torrent of eloquence, so
powerful and so terrible, that we cannot withhold it
from our readers."

AFTER such an elaborate display
had been made of the injustice and in-
solence of an enemy, who seems to have
been irritated by every one of the
means which had been commonly used
with effect to soothe the rage of intem-
perate power, the natural result would
be, that the scabbard, in which we in
vain attempted to plunge our sword,
should have been thrown away with
scorn. It would have been natural,
that, rising in the fulness of their might,
insulted majesty, despised dignity, vio-
lated justice, rejected supplication, pa-
tience goaded into fury, would have
poured out all the length of the reins
upon all the wrath which they had so
long restrained. It might have been
expected, that emulous of the glory of
the youthful hero* in alliance with him,
touched by the example of what one
man, well formed and well placed, may
do in the most desperate state of affairs.
convinced there is a courage of the cabi-
net full as powerful and far less vulgar
than that of the field, our minister
would have changed the whole line of
that unprosperous prudence, which
hitherto had produced all the effects
of the blindest temerity. If he found
his situation full of danger (and I do
not deny that it is perilous in the ex-
treme) he must see that it is also full
of glory; and that he is placed on a
stage, than which no muse of fire that
had ascended the highest heaven of in-
vention, could imagine any thing more
awful and august. It was hoped, that
in this swelling scene, in which he mov-
ed with some of the first potentates of
Europe for his fellow actors, and with
so many of the rest for the anxious
spectators of a part, which, as he plays
it, determines forever their destiny and
his own, like Ulysses, in the unravelling
point of the epic story, he would have
thrown off his patience and his rags to-
gether; and, stripped of unworthy dis-
guises, he would have stood forth in the
form and in the attitude of an hero.—
On that day, it was thought he would
have assumed the port of Mars; that
he would bid to be brought forth from
their hideous kennel (where his scru-
pulous tenderness had too long immured
them) those impatient dogs of war,
whose fierce regards affright even the
minister of Vengeance that feeds them;
that he would let them loose, in fam-
ine, fever, plagues, and death, upon a
guilty race, to whose frame, and to all
whose habits, order, peace, religion,
and virtue, are alien and abhorrent.—
It was expected that he would at last
have thought of active and effectual
war: that he would no longer amuse
the British lion in the chase of mice
and rats: that he would no longer em-
ploy the whole naval power of Great
Britain, once the terror of the world,
to prey upon the miserable remains of
a peddling commerce, which the enemy
did not regard, and from which none
could profit. It was expected that he
would have re-asserted the justice of his
cause: that he would have re-animated
whatever remained to him of his allies.
and endeavoured to recover those whom
their fears had led astray; that he
would have re-kindled the martial ardor
of his citizens: that he would have
held out to them the example of their
ancestry, the asserter of Europe, and
the scourge of French ambition; that
he would have reminded them of a
posterity, which, if this nefarious rob-
bery, under the fraudulent name and
false colour of a government, should in
full power be seated in the heart of Eu-
rope, must forever be consigned to
vice, impiety, barbarism, and the most
ignominious slavery of body and mind.
In so holy a cause, it was presumed that
he would (as in the beginning of the
war he did) have opened all the tem-
ples; and with prayer, with fasting,
and with supplication (better directed
than to the grim moloch of regicide in
France) have called upon us to raise
that united cry, which has so often
stormed heaven, and with a pious vio-
lence forced down blessings upon a re-
pentant people. It was hoped that
when he had invoked upon his endea-
vours the favourable regard of the
Protector of the human race, it would
be seen that his menaces to the enemy,
and his prayers to the Almighty, were
not followed, but accompanied, with
correspondent action. It was hoped
that his thrilling trumpet should be
heard, not to announce a show, but to
sound a charge."

* The Archduke Charles of Austria.