Two Letters…, on the Proposals for Peace with the Regicide Directory of France.

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Of the Two Letters

Letters on a Regicide Peace or Letters … on the Proposals for Peace with the Regicide Directory of France were a series of four letters written by Edmund Burke during the 1790s in opposition to Prime Minister William Pitt’s seeking of peace with the revolutionary French Directorate. It was completed and two letters published in 1796.

Burke had already written the popular Reflections on the Revolution in France in late 1790, and by 1795 many of his gloomier predictions had come true.

By January 1796, Burke was finishing his Letter on a Regicide Peace, and parts of it were already printed. However, the work was delayed and it was published 20 October 1796, together with the second letter, as Two Letters on a Regicide Peace. An unauthorized version, printed by John Owen, a printer who had worked on the letters earlier in the year, appeared the day before Burke’s edition was published. Burke’s letters were popular, and the work went into 11 editions by the end of 1796.

“In October 1796 George Stevens remarks that ‘of Mr. Burke’s genuine pamphlet, published on the 20^th by the Rivington’s, five editions, consisting of a thousand each, are already sold; and half as many of the spurious and pirated copy by Owens, are said to have been dispersed.’” Todd Pg. 200

Although the work was popular, many people attacked the first two letters from both sides of the political spectrum. The government’s paper the True Briton attacked Burke’s language and claimed that his ideas about restoring the French monarchs would be impossible. The Morning Chronicle, an opposition paper, claimed that Burke was working with the government and that the letters were a government plot to gain opposition to a peace with France.

The last of the letters written, but the third in the series, was occasioned by the inability of Pitt’s ministry to make peace with France; on 19 December 1796, Britain’s envoy was expelled by the French. The letter included the subtitle “On the rupture of the negotiations, the terms of peace proposed, and the resources of the country for the continuance of the war”.

The fourth letter, addressed to William Fitzwilliam, was written following Burke’s reading of William Eden’s Some Remarks on the Apparent Circumstances of the War in the Fourth Week of October 1795. When Pitt’s government tried to negotiate peace with France, Burke stopped composing the letter and instead published what became the first two letters, called Two Letters on a Regicide Peace. Burke attempted to rewrite the letter to Fitzwilliam, but he did not finish before dying. The 1812 edition of his works did include a copy of the fourth letter that was pieced together from a manuscript copy by Burke, an uncorrected manuscript, and parts of the third letter’s proof sheet.

Per Wikipedia