Would Keppel have heard with patience that the conduct to be held on such occasions was to become short by the knees to the faction of the homicides, to entreat them quietly to retire? or, if the fortune of war should drive them from their first wicked and unprovoked invasion, that no security should be taken, no arrangement made, no barrier formed, no alliance entered into for the security of that which under a foreign name is the most precious part of England?  What would he have said, if it was even proposed that the Austrian Netherlands (which ought to be a barrier to Holland, and the tie of an alliance to protect her against any species of rule that might be erected or even be restored in France) should be formed into a republic under her influence and dependent upon her power?

But above all, what would he have said, if he had heard it made a matter of accusation against me, by his nephew, the Duke of Bedford, that I was the author of the war?  Had I a mind to keep that high distinction to myself, (as from pride I might, but from justice I dare not,) he would have snatched his share of it from my hand, and held it with the grasp of a dying convulsion to his end.

It would be a most arrogant presumption in me to assume to myself the glory of what belongs to his Majesty, and to his ministers, and to his Parliament, and to the far greater majority of his faithful people:  but had I stood alone to counsel, and that all were determined to be guided by my advice, and to follow it implicitly, then I should have been the sole author of a war.  But it should have been a war on my ideas and my principles.  However, let his Grace think as he may of my demerits with regard to the war with Regicide, he will find my guilt confined to that alone.  He never shall, with the smallest color of reason, accuse me of being the author of a peace with Regicide.—­But that is high matter, and ought not to be mixed with anything of so little moment as what may belong to me, or even to the Duke of Bedford.

I have the honor to be, &c.

EDMUND BURKE.

FOOTNOTES: 

[15]

    Tristius haud illis monstrum, nec saevior ulla
    Pestis et ira Deum Stygiis sese extulit undis. 
    Virginei volucrum vultus, foedissima ventris
    Proluvies, uncaeque manus, et pallida semper
    Ora fame.

Here the poet breaks the line, because he (and that he is Virgil) had not verse or language to describe that monster even as he had conceived her.  Had he lived to our time, he would have been more overpowered with the reality than he was with the imagination.  Virgil only knew the horror of the times before him.  Had he lived to see the revolutionists and constitutionalists of France, he would have had more horrid and disgusting features of his harpies to describe, and more frequent failures in the attempt to describe them.